Making history

a tactical error. (Am Anjang, Rudolf Gloder, Berlin 1932, 'My Early Life', trans. Gottlob Blumenbach, New York 1933) Gloder would use anti-Semitism amongst the workers as a unifying slogan, but not at the expense of wasting the vital resources of Jewish science and banking. In secret meetings with the Jewish community throughout his early years, meetings of which even his most trusted allies were unaware, Gloder was able to convince prominent Jews that his party's anti-Semitism was public posture and that Jews in Germany had less to fear from him than from the Marxists and other rightist factions.

Gloder's third plank of policy in these early days was to organize an inner cadre, under the ruthless leadership of Ernst Rohm (q.v.), which used violent techniques of street-fightina and intimidation to frighten off opponents

privately to disavow and deprecate, to those who mattered, the brutal methods of his own party. He personally made friends with many writers, scientists, intellectuals, industrialists and jurists for whom Nazism seemed anathema, apparently convincing them that the tactics of Rohm, the party's second-m-command and Gloder's personally appointed deputy, were a temporary expedient, a price worth paying for the defeat of communism. At the same time, Gloder travelled regularly and extensively, visiting France, Britain, Russia and the United States, making great use of his linguistic gifts and charm of manner. Although during this period (1922-1925) the Nazi Party had not run in a single election, it had grown within four years to become, after the Social Democrats (q.v.) and Communists, the third largest party in Germany and a real force to be reckoned with. Gloder's journeys abroad, in his famous red Fokker

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airplane (trading none too subtly on the universally respected image of Baron von Richthofen with whom he also later claimed kinship) were designed to demonstrate to the world and to Germans back home that he was a reasonable, civilized man, a man of culture and statecraft who cut a credible figure on the world stage. He explained to those foreign politicians who would receive him (and there were many) that he could not put his party up for election until he was able to ameliorate the terms of the Versailles Treaty (q.v.). In this way he outflanked the Social Democrats,

forged links with power-brokers in Europe and America and made a name for himself in the international arena at a time when Germany was an almost entirely inwardlooking nation, still dealing with the shame of military defeat and the humiliation of the enforced peace. During these years of travel, Gloder appeared in a Hollywood silent picture, guying his own reputation for oratory and wit (The Public Speaker, Hal Roach, 1924), played golf with the Prince of Wales (q.v.), danced with Josephine Baker (q.v.), climbed the Matter-horn and forged many friendships and alliances which were to prove crucial in the years to come.

In 1923 Gloder repelled the advances of Erich Ludendorff (q.v.) whose dreams of power encompassed the dismantling of the Weimar Republic (q.v.) and the installation of a military-style junta in its place. Ludendorff had attempted to seize power once before in Berlin during the abortive Kapp putsch of 1920 and Gloder distrusted the veteran General's political judgement. He distrusted even more the extreme forms of paranoia against Freemasonry, Jesuitism and Judaism exhibited by Ludendorffs insistence that 'supranational powers' had caused the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (q.v.) in Sarajevo as well as the military defeat of Germany in 1918. The General had even gone so far as to claim that both Mozart and Schiller had been murdered by 'the grand Cheka of the supranational secret society'. Gloder gave

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orders that no Nazi should assist Ludendorff in this new attempt to take the reins of power and it is probable he tipped off the Weimar

authorities in November when, at the head of an army of barely two hundred, Ludendorff rode into the center of Munich from the Biirgerbraukeller, to be summarily arrested on a charge of treason.

This ability on the part of Gloder to wait for the right moment was best tested five years later in 1928, when he once more refused to allow the NSDAP to run in the national elections. He persuaded the upper echelons of his party that they could not expect to win such an election and that even were they to do so, the economic conditions were not propitious. An element of prosperity was entering German life and the Social Democrats were riding high in public opinion. It was far better to exercise patience and to wait.

A few months later, the Wall Street Crash (q.v.) and the onset of the Great Depression (q.v.) was to prove the acumen of this political judgement. Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen, Gustav Krupp, Friedrich Flick (q.q.q.q.v.) and other wealthy German industrial magnates quickly gauged the incompetence of the Social Democrats in the face of this unprecedented world slump and began to pour money into the coffers of Gloder's Nazi party, by now convinced that only he possessed the necessary combination of sophisticated statecraft and popular backing to lead Germany out of its spiraling economic crisis.

By the Fall of 1929, with hyperinflation rampant and unemployment reaching epidemic proportions it was clear that ...

'Christ, Mikey, how much longer are you gonna be?' I looked up, startled. 'What time is it?'

'Damn near six o'clock.'

'Hell, I've only just begun. Can I take these books away with me?'

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Steve shook his head. 'Not the reference stuff, not the encyclopaedias and all. They have to stay on site. Guess you can take out these okay ...'

He went to the table and picked up two smaller books. Textbooks on European History.

'I'll take them then,' I said and stood and stretched. 'Christ I'm sorry. You must have been so-o-o bored, Steve. Why didn't you go? I reckon I know my way back to Henry Hall by now.'

Steve tucked the books under his arm. 'I'll tag along,' he said.

'Honestly, you don't have to.'

He looked down at the carpet, embarrassed. 'Fact is, Mikey ...'

'What?'

'See, Professor Taylor, he told me not to let you out of my sight.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Yes. I see. Thinks I'm dangerous, does he?' 'Maybe he figures you might get lost. You know, get yourself into trouble, do yourself some more damage.'

I nodded. 'Well, it's awful for you. I'm sorry.'

'Hey, will you do me a favor? Will you stop apologising all the time?'

'It's an English habit,' I said. 'We've so much to be sorry for.'

'Yeah, right.'

As I opened the door into the corridor, Steve stopped. 'Gee! I just had a thought. Does it have to be books?'

'Yeah, if you wanna study history you can take out carts.' 'I don't want to sound stupid,' I said, 'but what the hell is a cart?'

Ten minutes later we were walking out of the Firestone building, two borrowable library books and a stack of carts under my arm.

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'So,' said Steve. 'You going to tell me what this is all about? This sudden need to know all about the Nazi Party?'

'I wish I could tell you,' I said. 'But I know you'd just think I was mad.'

Steve stopped and considered for a moment. 'Here's what we do. See that building over there? That's the Chancellor Green Student Center. We go in. We pick up some pizzas and some donuts and some soda and whatever stuff else we feel like and we take it back to your place. Then you tell me everything that's in your mind. Deal?'

'Deal,' I said.

I was relieved to arrive back at Henry Hall. The sight of so many students in the Rotunda at the Student Center had unnerved me, reminded me of how adrift I was, how alienated. The particularities of foreign food, foreign ways of serving it, foreign money, foreign shouts and calls, foreign laughing, foreign smells and foreign

looks ... they had hemmed me in on all sides until I wanted to scream. My room in Henry Hall, so strange to me this morning, now took on all the comfort and familiarity of an old pair of docksiders.

We dumped the brown paper bags of food onto the desk by the window. It was still light, but I wrestled with the blind-rod until the slats closed and switched on a lamp. There was a feeling I had, a hunted feeling, a need to nest down.

As we champed on our wedges of pizza I looked up at the walls.

'These people here,' I said, pointing to a poster. 'Who the hell are they?'

'You kidding?'

'No, really. Tell me.'

'They are the New York Yankees, Mike. You take a train to Penn Station to watch them play most every time you can.'

'Oh, and them?' 'Mandrax.'

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'Mandrax,' I repeated. 'They're a band, right?' 'They're a band.'

'And I like them do I?' . Steve nodded with a smile.

'They look like the saddest load of old farts I've ever seen,' I said. 'Are you sure I like them?'

'Sure/ he nodded. 'They're neat.'

'Neat are they? Well, if they're neat I must be crazy about them. I happen to love neat. How about the Beatles? Do I like them? The Rolling Stones? Led Zeppelin? Elton John? Blur? Oily-Moily? Oasis?'

I laughed with pleasure at his blank stare. 'Christ, I

am going to make a killing' I giggled. 'Here, listen to this. Ha-hem! Yesterday? all my troubles seemed so far away! Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh I believe in yes-ter-day. What do you reckon?'

'Ouch!' said Steve, his hands over his ears.

'Mm, you have to hear the harmonies, I suppose ... what about this, then? Imagine there's no heaven .... No, you're right, you're absolutely right. I'll need some time alone with a synthesiser.'

I stood and walked around the walls. 'Who's this then?' 'Luke White.'

He s a singer?

'Get outta here! He's a movie star.'

'Hm, rather cute, isn't he? Why've I got him up on my wall?'

'That's what a lot of people would like to know,' Steve said and then turned a furious shade of red.

As he tried to cover up his confusion by concentrating on the interior of a donut, a thought that I had been carrying at the back of my mind forced itself upon me.

'Um, Steve. This is going to sound like a really stupid question, but I'm not gay am I?'

Steve frowned. 'Gay? Sometimes, I guess. Sure.'

'No, no, you misunderstand me. Am I ... you know, like ...

um, you know ... ?' 'Huh?'

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'You know! Am I ... a fairy? Queer?'

Steve went absolutely white. 'Fuck's sake, Mikey!'

'Well, it isn't so strange a question, is it? I mean, you know. You said I didn't have any girlfriends. And

then I thought, well, these posters ... I just, you know ...

wondered, that's all.' 'Jesus, man. Are you crazy?'

'Well, I know I never used to be, in Camb ... in my memory, that is. At least I don't think I was. Particularly. You know ... any more than normal. I had a girlfriend, but frankly, it was a pretty weird relationship in some ways. She was older than me and it was as much convenience as anything, sharing a house, that sort of thing. I mean I loved her and everything, but I often used to envy James and Double Eddie slightly. Perhaps all the time I was ...

hell, I just wondered, you know. I expect it's normal. No big deal.'

Steve was staring at his Coke can as if it held the secret of life. 'No big deal?' he said unsteadily. 'You shouldn't talk like that, Mikey. You'll go getting yourself into trouble.'

'Into trouble? You talk about it as if it's a crime. I mean, all I'm asking is, am I now, or have I ever been ... oh my God!' I broke off abruptly, the rhythms of that old McCarthyite mantra causing a sudden terrible understanding to dawn. 'It is, isn't it? It's a crime!'

He turned to me and I could almost believe that there were tears in his eyes. 'Of course it's a fucking crime, you asshole! Where the hell have you been living?'

'Well that's just it, Steve,' I said. 'That just it. You see, where I come from it isn't a crime.'

'Oh, right. Sure. Like on Mars, in the valley of the Big Rock Candy Mountain where marshmallows grow on the candy-cane trees and everybody skips and jumps and bakes cherry pie for strangers.'

I couldn't think of anything else to say.

Steve finished the Coke, pressed the sides of the can in with his thumbs and fumbled for a cigarette.

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I lit one too and cleared my throat, hating the silence. 'I assume that we've never ... that is ... the two of us ...'

He glared at me furiously. 'Mm. I'll take that as a no then.'

He leaned forward in his chair and looked down between his legs at the carpet, his hair flopping straight down and obscuring his face.

Once more silence reigned.

'Look Steve,' I said. 'If I told you that I did come from Mars, you'd think I was mad, wouldn't you? But suppose, just suppose I came from ... another place, just as strange, from a culture quite different from your own?' Steve said nothing, just continued to scrutinise the carpet. 'You're a rational man,' I went on. 'You must concede that what has apparently happened to me is hard to explain. The way I talk, it's not put on, you know that. Even Professor Taylor saw it and he's genuinely English. Well genuinely over-English, frankly. You've seen me change, in a second - one sudden nanosecond, against a wall in Palmer Square - change from the guy you knew, allAmerican, philosophy-majoring, baseball-pitching, toothflossing regular old Mikey Young into someone completely different. I'm not different on the outside, but on the inside I am. You can't deny that. It's as plain as the hair on your head, which for some reason is all I can see of you at the moment. I know thousands of things I never knew

before, but thousands of things I should know - I don't. I don't know who's President of the United States, I don't know where Hertford Connecticut is, I'm not even that sure where Connecticut itself is, come to that - somewhere on the right-hand-side, that's all I'm sure of. I had never seen this campus before in my life until this morning, you know I wasn't faking that. But I can tell you things about European History before 1920 that I couldn't possibly know unless I'd studied it deeply. Here, I'll prove it. Take this book and ask me any fact. Anything.'

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Steve took the proffered book doubtfully. 'So maybe you know stuff about Europe. So what?'

'You know me pretty well ... you think you know me pretty well. Look around you at my bookshelves, not one single history book. Did I do any history in my first two years? Take any courses in it?'

'Guess not

'Right. So test me. Anything from before 1930, say.'

Steve flipped through the book and stopped at a page. 'Okay then, what was the Holy Alliance?'

I smiled. 'Sir, please sir, easy-peasy, sir!' I said, shooting my hand up in the air. 'The Holy Alliance was the name given to a compact, sir, a compact signed by the extremely unholy trinity of... let me see, the Tsar of Russia - that would have been Alexander the First - and by Friedrich Wilhelm the Third of Prussia and by the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis the Second, though of course he was just plain old Francis the First of Austria now, wasn't he? - what with Napoleon's arse being whipped at Waterloo and all.'

'Who else signed it?' Steve was studying the book carefully.

'Well, sir, Naples, sir, Sardinia, sir, France and Spain, sir. It was subsequently signed and ratified by Britain - the Prince Regent, later George IV, his father being potty at the time of course, though Britain was part of the Quadruple Alliance which was quite different. And the Ottoman Sultan signed it too. Though I'm afraid to say I can't remember his name, if I ever knew it, and of course the Pope blessed it with a great blessing. The compact was signed in 1815. For an extra ten points and the holiday in Barbados I would go for 26th September. Am I right?'

'Okay, okay ...' Steve rifled through the book again. 'How about ... Benjamin Disraeli?'

'Benjamin Disraeli? What can't I tell you?' I was just humming now, in my element, skating elegantly on thick ict. 'Born 1804, 21st December I think. Coined the phrase

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"the greasy pole" to describe his rise from humble Jewish origins to the Prime Ministership of high Victorian England and Empire. Son of a Sephardic dilettante, writer, antiquarian and sweetie by the name of Isaac who converted his whole family to Christianity in 1817. Ben started off as a law apprentice, dropped a bundle on bad investments and so turned himself into a novelist and wit to fund his dandy lifestyle and political aspirations. Wrote a series of books known as the Young England Novels, notably Coningsby, or the Younger Generation and Sybil, or the Two Nations. He'd been first elected to parliament a few years earlier, round about 18371 think, his fifth attempt at a seat. Anti-Whig, anti-utilitarian, he made a name for himself attacking his own government. He coined the phrase

"organised hypocrisy" to describe Robert Peel's attempts to repeal the Corn Laws. Hung around for years after that as leader of the party, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Derby, framing the Second Reform Act of i860 which extended the vote to borough householders. Briefly became Prime Minister in 1868. Finally won an election against his great rival, William Ewart Gladstone in 1874, first Conservative win since 1841. Shoved through a load of trade-union and social reforms, borrowed four million quid to purchase the Suez Canal for Queen Victoria who was crazy about him, especially after he gave her the official new title "Empress of India". He returned from the Congress of Berlin in 1878 claiming "Peace with Honour", not unlike Chamberlain after Munich - though that won't be in your book, I'm afraid - was created the First Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876, having turned down a dukedom earlier, died in 1881 after being booted out of office the previous year. 19th April was the day he died, eight years and a day before the birth of Adolf Hitler, of whom you've also never heard. His followers call themselves the Primrose League and to this day go on about One Nation Conservatism. His wife called him "Dizzy" and she was famous for her devotion, lack of tact and general

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