DOWNFALL
Review by Joseph T Major of
A PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR:
A Novel of Alternative History
by Joseph Wurtenbaugh
(2017; Amazon Digital Services; $7.99)
YouTube editors of various types have had a great success in distributing what is called “Hitler Rants”, adding different humorous subtitles to a particular movie scene. The movie Downfall [Der Untergang] (2004) has a scene where Hitler (Bruno Ganz) is informed that SS General Steiner’s army will be unable to relieve Berlin. Hitler’s response to this news is to launch into a epic tantrum, throwing things, cursing his subordinates, and screaming that he had been betrayed.
This was not the first time he had done so.
The book is a collection of messages and selections from (entirely fictional) memoirs and histories. One can tell that there is a big difference on the second page, where there is a quote from My Name Is Ike — Reflections on Fifty Years of Service as Soldier and Statesman (1986) by Senator Dwight D. Eisenhower. Not to mention the aggressively pro-Hitler memoir of one Harald Quandt (Magda Goebbels’s son by her first marriage). But the principal focus of the narrative is a diary kept by a young Bavarian Adelmann named Karl von Haydenreich.
The young life of von Haydenreich was particularly tragic. His mother died when he was an infant. His uncle was killed in the trenches. And his father (who was hated by his grandfather for the temerity of having dared to restore the family’s finances) also died young. Not to mention his stepmother, who was, horror of horrors, Jewish.
Once he became able to get around, von Haydenreich did something that sounds incredibly out of context and of class; he became an ardent Nazi, at the age of twelve. Just in time to see the Beer Hall Putsch, and see Hitler fleeing.
His subsequent life was exotic; going to an English boarding school, somehow coming out not homosexual, meeting a young British activist of a rather outré political attitude — no not Communist, Imperialist! — and developing his musical talent.
Then he had to go back home. He had connections, and managed to get into the Reichswehr. Much to Robert Heinlein’s disappointment, von Haydenreich describes his career in the ranks as an officer candidate. (I refer, of course, to the claim in Starship Troopers (1959; NHOL G.149) that uniquely for a military “every [officer] candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops”. Unless there will be a constant state of war, the Mobile Infantry is going to run out of officers and have to lower its standards.)
Meanwhile, Germany continues its slow downfall. Hitler gets into power. By some ill omen, von Haydenreich gets to see the arrest of Ernst Röhm and his commanders, and is torn between disgust for their personal lives and disgust at the illegality of their trials.
He has been approached by the former chief of the Truppenamt, Generaloberst Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. The general is getting information on the Führer’s military buildup and things some other people would be interested to know. As it happens, von Haydenreich has a potentially helpful foreign contact.
It seems that Major Eisenhower had met von Haydenreich’s father, and having a mind to the shortness of life and abruptness of death, Vati asked the friendly Ami to be his son Kurt’s godfather, overseeing his estate. (His own father and inlaws weren’t the most suited.) Ike has done this well, and continued an interest in the young man.
But he fell afoul of Douglas MacArthur during the Bonus Army march, and with little enough hope for an army career, got himself posted as US Army Military Attaché to Berlin. This enables him to meet Kurt every now and then — and pass on information. (The SIS officer in the British Embassy seems a little torpid; C [Sir Hugh “Quex” Sinclair] was probably Not Happy at this.)
Meanwhile the German military preparation begins. Part of this is the Reoccupation of the Rhineland — the Germans had been forbidden to station troops in the areas west of the Rhine river or fifty kilometers to the east of it. This was not to be endured.
But the reoccupation force was a joke. It was mostly police, and soldiers without heavy arms. And they had orders to withdraw if they met any resistance.
This is one of the things that gets passed on to the British. Here we have relevant comments from the memoirs of higher officials; those of Stanley Baldwin and of various French officials — along with A. A. Milne, who was a member of something called the Peace Ballot, utterly opposed to any sort of aggressive moves. Oh Pooh.
The British can back it up. But the French have to send in the troops. And with many trepidations and outright dislikes on both sides they send in a armored column under the command of France’s armored expert — yes, Charles de Gaulle.
Sure enough, the Germans withdraw. Except the Führer vacillates, and one German officer is wounded. In the spirit of conciliation de Gaulle has the man tended to. This causes problems.
Pause for a Hitler Rant.
Fortunately the Gestapo is not asleep and quickly pins the leak on von Haydenreich, who is brought down for some aggresive questioning. But the Gestapo is so focused on this that they don’t even seem to notice that von Hammerstein-Equord is mobilizing for a coup.
And it happens, with a dramatic ending — too late for von Haydenreich. Though his comment to Heydrich is particularly wounding.
There are a lot of editing errors in this. For example, von Hammerstein-Equord and his unwilling collaborator the Reichswehrminister Werner von Blomberg (the „Rubberlöwe” [“Rubber Lion”]) were not Generalmajor, they were Generaloberst. Karl von Haydenrich’s stepmother was from a German-Jewish family (actually it’s even more complicated that that, and how they didn’t know is a wonder) and would be unlikely to speak Yiddish. Worst of all, Hitler’s first name is given throughout the book as “Adolph”. Nein! Nein! Nein! „Adolf”!
There were so many times when Hitler could have been stopped, so many times when the world could have been changed for the better, that we have the proof that Leibnitz was wrong, that the hideous misfortunes that Dr. Pangloss endures, cheerfully burbling all the while that “this is the best of all possible worlds”, are more realistic, and could be better.
