Читаем The World полностью

Hitler had to reconquer his own Party, bringing in a young socialist journalist, Joseph Goebbels, who was dazzled by ‘those large blue eyes like stars’ and helped him build his personal leadership, founded on a quasi-messianic cult, with its own bible, Mein Kampf, its own official greeting ‘Heil Hitler!’ and its own bodyguard, the black-clad Schutzstaffel (SS). The SS was commanded by Heinrich Himmler, a failed Bavarian chicken farmer with nervous stomach ailments, the gawky, myopic son of a headmaster and royal tutor. Hitler believed his time would come: ‘I have been the prophet of many things.’ In October 1929, the Crash threw Germany into a desperate economic spiral of inflation, unemployment and violence.

In March 1930, Hindenburg, advised by the camarilla of his son Oskar and his wartime adjutant Colonel Kurt von Schleicher, rejected parliamentary government and resorted instead to autocratic rule through Article 48 of the constitution, appointing a chancellor and ruling by decree. Hindenburg was repudiating parliamentary democracy just as Hitler’s extremism, along with proliferating rightist movements, became popular not just among the threatened middle class but among the elite who hated the socialists, feared the Communists, resented Versailles and craved authoritarianism. Prince Wilhelm August, a son of the kaiser (still living in Holland), was one of the first of many aristocrats and tycoons to join the Nazis.^*

In the elections of September 1930, Hitler won 18.3 per cent of the vote, second only to the Social Democrats. While the SA terrorized the streets, the Nazis, led by Göring, dominated the Reichstag. The Nazis expected power, but none came. Instead Hitler suffered a familial blow. His niece Geli Raubal, cheerful daughter of his half-sister Angela, nineteen years his junior, was his frequent companion on his tireless political tours, but when she fell in love with his chauffeur, Uncle Alf banned the relationship. Hitler admired women, often praising them as ‘big and blonde and wonderful’, but unlike his priapic father he was awkward, asking at least two girls, ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’ to which they answered, ‘No, Herr Hitler.’ But he probably loved the omnipresent Geli, encouraging her to become a singer, and he certainly preferred younger girls, as his father had. ‘There’s nothing better than educating a young thing,’ he reflected, ‘malleable as wax.’ In September 1931, Geli shot herself with a pistol given to her by Uncle Alf. No one knows why she killed herself, but most likely she found herself suffocated by Hitler’s control.

‘The days are sad right now,’ a poleaxed Hitler told Winifred Wagner, the composer’s daughter-in-law and one of the devoted hostesses who served as surrogate mothers. The suicide made him a vegetarian and confirmed that love and family mattered little to him. ‘I’m the most limited person in the world in this area,’ he said, ‘I am a fully non-familial being.’ Soon afterwards, Hitler, now forty, met the eighteen-year-old Eva Braun, a schoolteacher’s daughter and assistant to his photographer Hoffmann, who fitted Hitler’s ideal of ‘big and blonde and wonderful’. When she too attempted suicide, it won her a permanent place in his life – ‘This girl did this out of love for me’ – but her discretion allowed him to declare frequently, ‘I have another bride. I am married: to the German people.’ That marriage looked like it might never happen. In autumn 1931, Hindenburg met Hitler at a conference. Hitler thought him ‘an old fool’ while Hindenburg hated ‘that Austrian corporal’. It seemed unlikely he would ever come to power and it was not Germany but Japan that became the sparkwheel of world conflict.

On 18 September 1931, Japanese officers blew up a bridge outside Mukden that pushed the emperor and his generals into sending more troops into China. Hirohito backed the seizure of much of Manchuria, where he allowed the last Manchu, Puyi, to be crowned puppet emperor. The success encouraged ultra-nationalists and expansionist generals who were convinced that a Japanese empire in China was their country’s right. Force was the only way: at home they assassinated the premier and planned coups; abroad they provoked fighting with Chinese troops in Shanghai.

Chiang Kai-shek realized that a Japanese war was inevitable but sought ‘Domestic Stability First’ – the eradication of Communist Jiangxi. He also tried to get his son back from Stalin. ‘I’ve been longing to see my son more than ever,’ he wrote. ‘I dreamed of my late mother and cried out to her twice … I’ve committed a great sin against her.’ Advised by German generals, he launched five campaigns to destroy Mao’s Communist base, encircling it with blockhouses. Stalin punished Chiang by sending his son to work in the mines.