Chapter 6 Chapter Six

Pamela drove Lieutenant Colonel Henry and her father to Swinamonti.It would have been faster to take the train, but Henry wanted to see the countryside and small towns here, and the Englishman was exactly what he wanted.If you stay outside the cities, you almost like the Germans, he said.Pug was amazed at the way the girl drove.As she drives the rented Mercedes around Berlin, she obediently obeys all traffic lights and speed regulations.But as soon as she got on the highway, she let the speed pointer rush to one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.The wind was howling, and Tudsbury was talking, not paying much attention to the scenery passing by the window.

He thought now that the war might not be fought.The British finally got serious about negotiating a military alliance with the Russians.They began to increase the rate of aircraft production, and before long they would catch up with the Air Force counterpart they had lost in 1936.Their assurance to Poland was to show Hitler that Chamberlain was in charge this time.The Nazi party in Danzig has stopped making trouble.Mussolini had simply told Hitler (according to Tudsbury's tip) that he was not yet ready for war.The reporter estimates that there are still two or three years of respite.In the meantime, strained democracies rearmed faster than the Germans could possibly do.A dictator driven to the brink either falls or wages war and is crushed—or, quite possibly, stabbed to death.

"From what he's been doing, I can't understand why he hasn't been shot at. He's got the amulet," Tudsbury exclaimed.Now their car sped onto a road where two cars could walk abreast, over a long line of rumbling trucks laden with brand new gray-painted Army tanks.Pug Henry clung to the handrail as another truck approached from the opposite direction, inflated like a hydrogen balloon.As the car drove by, it let out an angry howl, followed by another sharp hiss.Half a second earlier, Pamela had flashed out between the two trucks at lightning speed, drove on her own way, and then used a small free hand to brush back the hair hanging from her forehead. "But his talisman depends on his success. Once he fails to make his way, it loses its power. He killed a lot of people in the process of his success. They all have relatives."

Lieutenant Colonel Groc drove a car to meet them at the gate of the base.Tudsbury barely squeezed into the car.Pamela hurried to a hotel.Sometimes by car, sometimes on foot, Grok led the two of them on a long circuit through the Swinamonti docks.It was a gloomy afternoon, with a low-hanging cloud in the sky brewing with rain.After the sweltering heat of Berlin, the humid easterly wind from the Baltic Sea was cool and pleasant.Victor Henry felt that the flat, sandy, desolate coastal base was very similar to New London ①.In fact, if you ignore the flags and signs hanging, the naval facilities of major countries are difficult to distinguish.They all do the same thing, modeled after the British Navy (which first brought the industrial age to sea warfare).Swarms of low-slung, black German U-boats moored to the long quays or on dry-dock slipways; the smell of pitch, hot metal, sea water; the slow clang and high-pitched hiss of cranes overhead ; the flash of the welder's flame; the rattling sound of the riveter; sections of straight or curved steel members, yellow or red painted detonators swaying in mid-air; a huge open workshop; piled up mountains of steel pipes, steel cables, lumber, and gasoline drums; groups of greasy, smiling men in dirty overalls, goggles, and hardshell hats; half-finished buildings perched on cross-rails, propped up by logs, leaning toward the sewage the hull of a ship—as if he were in Japan, France, Italy, or America.The real difference—the decisive number and character of the action—is indistinguishable.

He could see that the Germans hadn't changed the traditional twin-hull subs, and like the Americans, they were welding more.He was eager to measure the steel members of the pressure hull with the tape measure in his pocket.The steel plates they use seem to be thinner than the American subs.If so, German submarines probably wouldn't be able to go that deep unless the Germans had developed a new alloy that was particularly hard.But on this type of visit, only the eyes are used, not a camera or tape measure. ①In the southeastern part of Connecticut, USA, it is one of the US naval bases and shipbuilding centers.

A low sun peeked out from under the gray clouds.The car cast a long, thin shadow as Grok pulled up near the entrance to a dock.There, a submarine rests on the slipway.On one side of the dock was a pontoon bridge with railings, and on the other a long, rickety plank leading diagonally to the deck of the submarine below. "Well, the tour is over," Grocker said. "This is my flagship. Tudsbury, indeed I should like to invite you aboard, and since that cannot be done, we shall all part here." Henry took his cue from the German's smile. "Well, let's not come here. If I can get in the boat, I'll come; Tudsbury won't."

"Oh, yes," said the Englishman. "Anyway, I have nothing to do here." The German submarine commander spread his hands: "I don't want to destroy the friendship between Britain and the United States." While they were talking, the whistle sounded.Workers poured out of ships, docks and workshops.Before long they were filling the way to the gate.They bustled out of the submarine and onto the pontoon. "There's always been a danger in the Navy Yard," Henry said. "Get out of here as soon as five o'clock, or they're going to trample you to death." Grocker laughed. .”

Tudsbury said: "Well, in my next broadcast, I'll just have to say that the German submarine command is busy. I hope they will notice that in London." "Just tell them what you've seen," said Groc, shaking his hand from the car window. "We want to be friends with you. We know you have the most powerful navy in the world. These ridiculous little boats can do no small amount of harm. One of my officers will drive you back to your hotel." As the pontoon was packed with workers, Grok grinned at Henry, then pointed his thumb toward the long board at the other end of the dock.Pug nodded.The German gestured for him to go first.It was about seventy feet from the longboard to the oily puddle in the concrete dock below.Pug walked down the rickety, paint-spattered longboard, trying to look calmer than he felt.The lads of the guard of honor in white uniforms watched from below with dull eyes.They stood at attention as soon as he came on deck.Grok laughed as he stepped off the squeaky longboard. "Not bad, our two old fellows are actually here too."

"U-46" looked a lot like an American submarine, but it was surprisingly clean, shiny, and neat.An American submarine laying in dry dock and put to work by non-combatants would get dirty in no time.Naturally, in order to entertain the American guests, Groc must have ordered the cleaning in advance.Pug himself had always been relentless when it came to tidiness, so he appreciated that.Even so, he had to admire the performance of the Germans.The diesel engine looked as if it had never been run, and the red paint and brass fittings on it were not stained at all.The gun set seems to be fresh from the factory.The sailors are all handsome young men in military uniforms, almost a team of musical comedy with the theme of the navy.As for the design of German submarines, when you cram the main parts and machinery of a battleship into a long tube shaped like a sausage skin, the result is the same in any country: just change the explanations on the instruments to English, and put the captain Move the cabin from port to starboard, lengthen the wardroom by two feet, change a few clapper valves and you're on the Grayling.

"It smells delicious," he said.At this moment, they were passing the small galley in the boat, where the white-coated cooks were preparing dinner, and they seemed to be refreshing from a sweat. Groc looked back at him. "You don't want to eat on board, do you? It's very cramped here. But our food isn't too bad." Pug had made an appointment to have dinner with the Tudsburys, but he said immediately, "I'm glad to be here." So he ate elbow to elbow with the captain and the officers on board in the small officer's room.He ate very happily.He was more at home here than in his silk-draped dining room in Berlin.The four young officers are all thin-lipped, ruddy-faced, fair-haired, shy, and look like Americans, but their eyes are very different, nervous and careful than Americans.They sat there in silence at first.It was not long before hearing the American's compliments on their submarine and Grocker's jokes (he was in high spirits after eating and drinking) and the enthusiasm grew.They talked about the stupidity and laziness of the workers in the Navy Yard.Pug's best joke about the clogged lavatory on the West Virginia made them laugh.He had noticed before that Germans liked to hear humorous stories about bathrooms.The officers told what they found ridiculous about their early training: first about cleaning toilets, then about how they would have to withstand electric shocks without flinching -- while their reactions were filmed; Bend your knees until you fall to the ground; go to the "valley of death"—a seventy-pound load on your back, a gas mask, and a cross-country run through the rugged foothills.They say that one becomes a better officer after such torture.Only Grok disagreed.He thought this sadistic Prussian approach was outdated.In combat at sea, a soldier's initiative is more important than the blind obedience instilled by torture. "The Americans are on the right track," he said, either because he sensed Pug's shock, or out of extra-partisan conviction.Their feast consisted of cabbage soup, boiled salmon, roast pork, potato gnocchi, and gooseberry torten.Apparently Grok had prepared for Pug to stay in case, so he had arranged such a banquet in advance.

① German: big cake. ②See Section 4 of Chapter 23 of the Old Testament • Psalms. The setting sun was breaking through the clouds, sending streaks of red when Henry and Grok left the submarine.On the pier, some boat crews, naked except for shorts, spread gray mats on the crane rails and wrestled among cheering crowds.Everywhere Henry saw German youth enjoying this strenuous and rowdy game.Each of them is like a strong puppy. These German submariners look stronger and healthier than American sailors. "So, Victor, are you going to see your English friend now?" "Unless you have a better idea." The German patted him on the shoulder. "Okay! Come on." They drove out the gate. "It's pretty quiet after five," said Pug. "Well, it's not. Dead. Always." Pug lit a cigarette. "As far as I understand, the British are working in two or three shifts in their shipyards." Groc gave him a strange look. "I think they're making up for lost time." Two miles from the base, near the water in the middle of a green field, they drove past rows of wooden farmhouses. "My daughter lives here," Grocker said, ringing the doorbell.A young woman with a bright face and blond hair opened the door.The three children recognized that it was Grok who rang the bell, and rushed up to snatch the paper-wrapped candy he had brought out.The woman's husband was on a maneuver at sea, and there was a picture of him on an upright piano in the small living room: young, long-jawed, fair-haired, grim. "It's good for Paul to go to sea," Grocker said. "He thinks I dote on the children too much." As he spoke, he picked up the children and played with them until they forgot to be shy in front of the Americans, laughing, yelling, and running around.The mother tried to ask for coffee and pastries, but Grok stopped her. "The lieutenant colonel is busy. I just came to see the boys. Now we're leaving." After they got into the car, they looked back and saw three little faces staring at them from the window.He said: "It's not a dwelling, not like your mansion in Greenwood. It's just a cracker box. The pay scale in Germany is not the same as in America. I thought you might be interested to see how they lived." The situation. He's an able submarine officer, and they're happy. Within two years, he'll be in command. If there's a war, it will be. But there won't be a war. Not yet." "I hope not." "I know. Won't fight for Poland—how? Back to Swinamonti?" "Ok." As they pulled into the little seaside town, Pug said, "Hey, I can have a beer. How are you? Is there a good place here?" "Now you're talking. There's nothing to do in this dreary little town. But I can take you to where the officers gather. Isn't Tudsbury waiting for you?" "He'll arrange it himself." "Yeah, the British are good at that," Grocker laughed.He was clearly happy to be able to separate the US naval attache from the reporter. In a dark, smoky wooden basement, young men in tight-necked sweatshirts and duffel jackets sat at long tables, listening to an accordion. A song was sung loudly to the accompaniment—a fat man in a leather apron was playing the accordion, pacing up and down. "Victor, I've had a lot of beer here," Grocker said.They sat down at a small table against the wall under an amber light.Pug showed him pictures of Warren, Byron, and Madeleine.After two glasses of beer, he spoke of his anxiety about Warren's relationship with an older woman.Groc smiled softly. "Well, think of what I did when I was young and strong! Mainly: he's going to be a pilot. Not as good as being a submariner, of course, but next to that. Haha! Looks like he's a Smart lad. He'll settle down." Pug joined in on a tune he knew well.He didn't know music, and he sang very out of tune.This made Groc very happy. "Victor, I swear to God," he said, after a good laugh, wiping his eyes. "Is there anything crazier in the world than this war clamor? I tell you, if the matter were left to the navies on both sides, the war would never be fought. We are decent men, we understand each other, and our Same goals in life. Politicians. Hitler was a great man, Roosevelt was a great man. But they both got some very mean advice. One good thing though: Adolf Hitler was smarter than all those politicians. Never going to war for Poland." He drained the beer in the thick glass and slammed it down on the table with all his might to attract the attention of the maid who passed by. "Geben sic gut acht auf den osten," he said, blinking once, and lowering his voice. ① German: Pay attention to the East. "Pay attention to the east! There is movement over there." The waitress took two glasses of frothy beer from the tray in her hand and placed them on their table with a clatter.Grok drank, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Suppose I told you that I heard the Führer himself address the German submarine commanders and tell them there would be no war? Do you want to report this to Washington? Go ahead and report it, it happens to be true. Do you think he Will we start a war against Britain with seventy-four combat submarines? When we have three hundred, that will be another matter. At that time, if Britain provokes, it will have to think carefully. And in For eighteen months, that's exactly what we'll have. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the East." "Pay attention to the east?" Victor Henry said in a hesitant tone. "Ah, do you find it a little strange? I have a brother in the Foreign Office. Watch out for the East! We won't fight. Henry, not this year. I promise you. So what? We'll only have one year at a time. Don't you, don't you? I don't know anything about music like you do, but let's have a song." Victor Henry sat in his rosewood paneled study with his old portable typewriter on his lap.The stately antique desk was too high for comfortable typing; besides, the typewriter scratched the red leather top.It was not yet four o'clock in the morning, the stars had disappeared, and in the garden, there was a blue sky, and the birds had begun to sing.White paper, yellow paper, and carbon paper were scattered around him, and the room was filled with smoke.He's been typing since midnight.He stopped and yawned.He found a cold chicken breast in the kitchen and ate it with a glass of milk while he brewed a third pot of coffee.He went back to his study, put together the top non-copied copy of the typed reports for Naval Intelligence, and began to read. Nazi Germany's Battle Preparations an estimate Nazi Germany was a very strange country.As soon as an observer arrives, he feels conflicted.Old Germany is still there - medieval buildings, chic rural clothes, big clean cities, good order, good-natured, neat, "meticulous" spirit, beautiful scenery, beautiful men and women - especially children.But there was another layer of something new and very different: Nazi rule.It spread like a fever throughout the ancient country.How deep its roots are is a question that cannot be ignored.Indeed, the Nazis were outwardly very patriotic, very belligerent, very pompous. A-shaped flags, new buildings, parades, Hitler Youth League, torch parades, etc., are extremely eye-catching.But what lies behind these facades?Is it a powerful potential to wage war?Or is it mostly just propaganda and intimidation? This report is the first impression of an officer who spent four weeks in Germany, exploring the facts. It is well known that since 1933 Germany has been frankly, even boastfully rearming.Long before Hitler came to power, his army had been secretly armed and trained with the help of the Bolsheviks in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.After the Nazi Party seized power, although its ties with Russia were severed, its rearmament was intensified and made public.But twenty years ago the country was disarmed, and seven years ago it was still powerless compared with the Allies.The question is: to what extent has this gap been closed by Hitler?Building a modern fighting force is a massive industrial process.It takes materials, people and time, regardless of the bombastic claims made by political leaders. From the facts gathered by this observer, two interesting preliminary conclusions can be drawn: 1.Nazi Germany hadn't closed the gap close enough to start a war against Britain and France. 2.The regime is not going all out to close that gap. The bottom five pages contained figures for ten years of German factory production, industrial expansion, and production of machinery and supplies—quite different from the many intelligence reports he had read.His sources come primarily from his own reading and exploration.He compared the total national production, land, sea, and air forces of France, Britain, and Germany over the past ten years.The numbers—as he laid them out—suggest that all but the Air Force are at an operational disadvantage, and that they haven't pushed industrial production very hard to catch up.Contrary to the rumors of world public opinion, Germany has not made an effort to accumulate arms, as can be seen by comparing the capacities of its factories with the figures of its output.In passing, he described the silence and desolation of the Swinamonti Naval Shipyard on weekdays after hours.They didn't even run double shifts in the construction of submarines, the lynchpin of Germany's naval warfare.He also argues that Germany's air superiority will soon disappear as Britain ramps up aircraft production and buys them from the United States.As for the readiness on land, it is indeed impressive, judging by the numbers of soldiers passing through the streets of the cities; but the figures prove that France alone can put on the field more numerous, longer trained and better equipped troops. army. As he passed the squadron commander's tiny office on a German submarine, he had seen numbers and abbreviations scrawled on the cover of a typed report.He estimated that what he wrote was: those in combat state. 51; at sea, 6; in the military port, 40; under maintenance, 5.These figures are consistent with British and French intelligence estimates.Groc had claimed that they had seventy-four combat submarines, which could be considered an overestimate for a foreign intelligence officer's self-boasting.But even if Groc was exaggerating, he didn't get it to a hundred.It can almost be asserted that Nazi Germany's undersea force consisted of fifty submarines, only about thirteen of which were under construction, and the discrepancy was five.In 1918 alone, Germany lost more than a hundred submarines. Then comes the most critical paragraph of the report.During this period of playing, he stopped many times.After typing, he worriedly read the text several times. Moving on to predictions, which may therefore also be considered flippant, or smack of a journalist.However, the impression obtained by this observer strongly points to a possibility, and it seems necessary to include this judgment in this report.All indications point to me that Adolf Hitler is currently negotiating a military alliance with the Soviet Union. As an argument in support of this view, Victor Henry refers to the Rapallo Treaty of 1922.At that time, the Bolsheviks and Germany shocked a European economic conference, they suddenly withdrew, and separately made a deal in a wide range of areas.He pointed out that the current German ambassador to Moscow, Schulenburg, was involved in the "Rapallo" deal, while the Russian Foreign Minister Litvinov, who is of Jewish descent and pro-Western, recently stepped down.Hitler omitted his usual attacks on Bolshevism in both speeches.News of the Russo-German trade agreement appeared for a while, but suddenly all the papers were silent about it.He also quotes a senior officer in command on a German submarine: "Look to the east. There is movement over there. I have a younger brother in the Foreign Office." pledge not to fight for Poland. All this, he concedes, does not add up to conclusive intelligence nor is it enough to be taken seriously by the embassy's career diplomats.There are always rumors of dramatic mutations, they say.They insist on grounding themselves in basic facts.The Nazi movement was based on fear and hatred of Bolshevism and pledged to destroy it.The whole theme of the campaign was to secure "living space" for Germany and to conquer the southeastern provinces of Russia.A military reconciliation of the two systems is inconceivable.Hitler would never have suggested that.If he proposed it, Stalin would also consider it a trap and would never accept it.The responses Henry most often heard were "fantasy" and "bizarre". But he still believed that such a move was not only plausible, but inevitable.Hitler had gone too far in intimidating Poland.A dictator cannot back down.However, his preparations for fighting a world war are stretched.Contrary to all that blustery propaganda clamor of "no butter, no guns," he hasn't even put his country on a production-for-war basis.This was mostly to avoid alarming the people.Despite the diabolical rhetoric of Nazi politicians and newspapers, the German people in general did not want war, and Hitler knew that.An alliance with Russia would be the way out of this dilemma.If Russia allowed the Germans to do whatever they wanted in Poland, the British guarantee to Poland would lose its meaning.Neither France nor England could render aid to Poland in time to prevent it from being quickly conquered.Therefore, the Poles will not resist.They would cede the city of Danzig and the territory on both sides of the road along the Polish Corridor, which is all Hitler wanted at the moment.Perhaps in the future he will enter the army, as in the Czech Republic, and occupy other parts of Poland, but not now. Victor Henry argues that old enemies suddenly turned into allies is an old European tactic, particularly characteristic of German-Russian diplomacy.He gave many examples from a large number of histories which he had recently read.He points out that Hitler himself came to power in the first place by a sharp reversal of political course—making a deal with his nemesis Franz von Papen. ① Papen (born in 1879), Chancellor of Germany before Hitler came to power. He tore up the carbon paper and threw it into the wastebasket, put the original and two copies of the report in his shirt, and fell asleep on the red leather chaise longue with all his clothes.He slept for a while, very restless.When he opened his eyes wide, the sun was shining faintly through the treetops.He showered, dressed, read the report again, and walked the five miles from Greenwood to William Street, thinking about the document all the way.Compared with Tolliver's report that he had studied, his presumptuous discussion of overall strategy far exceeded his ability and position, and it was exactly what the Chief of Naval Operations personally warned him not to write. Drew Pearson column"① stuff.But on the other hand, he felt that he was writing based on facts.He has sent out several technical reports like Kip's.He also planned to write a report on Swinamontai. Battle Preparations in Nazi Germany is an expedition into unknowable territory.In the workshops of the military academy, as long as officers below the general level talk about "global strategy", the instructors will be very rude and ridiculed.The question is, now that the report has been written, should it be sent up, or should it be left aside?Pug Henry wrote and tore up quite a few of these papers.He has a constant tendency to go beyond the bounds of routine.The results can be good or disastrous.The memorandum he wrote on his own initiative on the mine protection of warships had removed him from the list of maritime duties that should have been assigned to him, and he was placed in Berlin.As a member of the Bureau of Ordnance, that report was at least within his range, but in diplomacy and general strategy he was an ignorant novice.Colonel Forrest was well acquainted with conditions in Germany.He had long ago dismissed Henry's opinion as nonsense and pushed it aside.Pug tried talking to the charge d'affaires again, and his only comment was a subtle smile. ①Pearson was a relatively well-known columnist in the United States at that time, and the content of this column was mainly speculative insider news. A foreign courier was to fly to England at ten o'clock in the morning to board the Queen Mary bound for New York.This document could be on the desk of the Chief of Naval Operations within a week. Henry hadn't made up his mind when he came to the embassy.He had only half an hour to think about it.Apart from Rhoda, he had no one else to discuss with.Rhoda likes to sleep late, if he calls Rhoda now, it will probably wake her up.Even then, he could not go into detail about the contents of his report on the German phone.Besides, what judgment could Rhoda come up with worth considering?He doesn't think so.It was up to him to decide: to give it to the courier, or to burn it in the wastebasket. Sitting at his desk in the cluttered high-ceilinged office, he sipped his coffee and looked across at the towering pink marble of Hitler's new Chancellery on Hermann Goering Strasse.The sentries were changing: eight SS men in steel helmets and black uniforms marched in procession, and the other eight marched away to the sound of drums and flutes.From the open window he heard the salute, the flute, and the step of big black boots screeched in German. Victor Henry decided that since his job was to gather intelligence, the report, for better or worse, would always be a true reflection of what he had seen so far in Germany.He found the courier and handed him the papers as a dispatch to Naval Intelligence. A week later, Admiral Prieber read "Battle Preparations in Nazi Germany" and forwarded a one-page summary to the President.On August 22, the Nazi-Soviet Pact shook the world as one of the most astonishing events in history.On the 24th, the White House returned the summary page to Preble in an envelope.The President scrawled vigorously on the bottom of the envelope with a pen and black ink: Send me V. Henry's service records. Frederick 1. ①The abbreviation of Roosevelt's full name "Franklin Delano Roosevelt".