Read Online The Hess Cross by James Thayer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: James Thayer
Ads: Link
his crossing." Sackville-West produced another manila folder and passed it to Crown.
The thin sheets in the folder had only one green stripe. The first page was entitled, " EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES BY RUDOLF HESS SHOWING HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD ADOLF HITLER." Crown glanced down the sheet. Each quotation was preceded by a date, a place, the name of the audience, and the purpose of the speech. The quotations were thickly obsequious:
Hitler is simply reason incarnate.
One must want the Führer.
With pride we see that one man remains beyond criticism, that is the Führer. This is because everyone feels and knows: he is always right, and he will always be right. The National Socialism of all of us is anchored in uncritical loyalty, in the surrender to the Führer that does not ask for the why in individual cases, in the silent execution of his orders. We believe that the Führer is obeying a higher call to fashion German history. There can be no criticism of this belief.
"This is sickening," Crown said as he handed the folder back. "Hess can fawn like no one I've ever heard of before."
"My thoughts, too. So the psychiatrists in England began their studies of Hess almost with their tongues in theircheeks. They had Hess figured out before he landed. He was a slobbering puppet.
"His mind seemed to deteriorate in his cell. As I mentioned earlier, he would at times completely withdraw from human contact, refusing to talk or to listen to the doctors. He suffered hallucinations and short spells of complete amnesia. He would spend hours staring at a blank wall."
Everette Smithson raised his hand slightly, as if he were asking a teacher for permission to speak. "It sounds like he may have been crazy all along. What's more crazy—saying idiot things about Hitler or staring at a wall?"
"Few of the top Nazi leaders were ever sane," Sackville-West said as he smiled at Smithson, who beamed, grateful for the recognition.
Sackville-West returned to the folder. "A few months after the amnesia and hallucinations began, Hess started dropping phrases like 'fission,' 'heavy water,' and 'uranium.' At first the doctors thought nothing of it, thinking it was the wandering of a deranged man. But the more Hess's mind seemed to deteriorate, the more these scientific words cropped up. The doctors soon realized they were not qualified to question Hess further, because they had no idea what he was talking about."
"So the European Documentation Center was called in?"
"Yes. Normally, Hess would have been referred to them immediately after his arrival. But he was clearly having mental troubles, and it was thought that psychiatrists would be more efficient gaining whatever information Hess could offer.
"The EDC produced a report after interviewing Hess one week. Mind you, the doctors were also present during these interviews. The EDC people, as good as they are, do not have psychiatric training, and we didn't want to lose whatever strands of sanity Hess still possessed.
"The EDC report indicates that Hess, far from being a do-nothing party speechmaker, had a very important role. For some reason unknown to us, he understood the potentials of what Professor Otto Hahn told the German leaders about an ultimate bomb long before other Nazi leaders did. He became interested in nuclear physics. Perhaps as a pacifier, Hitler assigned him to oversee the nuclear experiments and to act as liaison between the scientists and the Führer. Hess apparently kept a close watch on the experiments and became knowledgeable about them. For several years Hahn and the other German physicists told him immense amounts of scientific data in order to convince Hess to keep money coming to the experiments."
"How technical is Hess's information?" Crown asked.
"We don't know. The EDC men don't know anything about nuclear physics, so they can't ask intelligent questions. The best they can do is to scribble down what Hess mutters and pass it
The thin sheets in the folder had only one green stripe. The first page was entitled, " EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES BY RUDOLF HESS SHOWING HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD ADOLF HITLER." Crown glanced down the sheet. Each quotation was preceded by a date, a place, the name of the audience, and the purpose of the speech. The quotations were thickly obsequious:
Hitler is simply reason incarnate.
One must want the Führer.
With pride we see that one man remains beyond criticism, that is the Führer. This is because everyone feels and knows: he is always right, and he will always be right. The National Socialism of all of us is anchored in uncritical loyalty, in the surrender to the Führer that does not ask for the why in individual cases, in the silent execution of his orders. We believe that the Führer is obeying a higher call to fashion German history. There can be no criticism of this belief.
"This is sickening," Crown said as he handed the folder back. "Hess can fawn like no one I've ever heard of before."
"My thoughts, too. So the psychiatrists in England began their studies of Hess almost with their tongues in theircheeks. They had Hess figured out before he landed. He was a slobbering puppet.
"His mind seemed to deteriorate in his cell. As I mentioned earlier, he would at times completely withdraw from human contact, refusing to talk or to listen to the doctors. He suffered hallucinations and short spells of complete amnesia. He would spend hours staring at a blank wall."
Everette Smithson raised his hand slightly, as if he were asking a teacher for permission to speak. "It sounds like he may have been crazy all along. What's more crazy—saying idiot things about Hitler or staring at a wall?"
"Few of the top Nazi leaders were ever sane," Sackville-West said as he smiled at Smithson, who beamed, grateful for the recognition.
Sackville-West returned to the folder. "A few months after the amnesia and hallucinations began, Hess started dropping phrases like 'fission,' 'heavy water,' and 'uranium.' At first the doctors thought nothing of it, thinking it was the wandering of a deranged man. But the more Hess's mind seemed to deteriorate, the more these scientific words cropped up. The doctors soon realized they were not qualified to question Hess further, because they had no idea what he was talking about."
"So the European Documentation Center was called in?"
"Yes. Normally, Hess would have been referred to them immediately after his arrival. But he was clearly having mental troubles, and it was thought that psychiatrists would be more efficient gaining whatever information Hess could offer.
"The EDC produced a report after interviewing Hess one week. Mind you, the doctors were also present during these interviews. The EDC people, as good as they are, do not have psychiatric training, and we didn't want to lose whatever strands of sanity Hess still possessed.
"The EDC report indicates that Hess, far from being a do-nothing party speechmaker, had a very important role. For some reason unknown to us, he understood the potentials of what Professor Otto Hahn told the German leaders about an ultimate bomb long before other Nazi leaders did. He became interested in nuclear physics. Perhaps as a pacifier, Hitler assigned him to oversee the nuclear experiments and to act as liaison between the scientists and the Führer. Hess apparently kept a close watch on the experiments and became knowledgeable about them. For several years Hahn and the other German physicists told him immense amounts of scientific data in order to convince Hess to keep money coming to the experiments."
"How technical is Hess's information?" Crown asked.
"We don't know. The EDC men don't know anything about nuclear physics, so they can't ask intelligent questions. The best they can do is to scribble down what Hess mutters and pass it
Similar Books
