Read Online Winds of War by Herman Wouk - Free Book Online

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    The bow wave was boiling away, a V of white foam on the blue sunlit sea, and the Bremen was rolling like a battleship. Wind from the northwest, Pug estimated, glancing up at the thin smoke from the stacks, and at the sea; wind speed fifteen knots, ship’s speed eighteen, number four sea on the port quarter, rain and high winds far ahead under the cumulo-nimbus. Nostalgia swept over him. Four years since he had served at sea; eleven since he had had a command! He stood by the forward rail, leaning against a lifeboat davit, sniffing the sea air. Four unmistakable Jews walked by in jolly conversation, two middle-aged couples in fine sports clothes. They went out of sight around the deckhouse. He was still looking after them when he heard Tudsbury blare, “Hello there, Commander. I hear you were out walking my Pam at the crack of dawn.”
    “Hello. Did you see those people who just went by?”
    “Yes. There’s no understanding Jews. I say, is that my book? How touching. How far have you got?”
    “I just drew it from the library.”
    Tudsbury’s moustache drooped sadly. “What! You didn’t buy it? Damn all libraries. Now you’ll read it and I won’t gain a penny by it.” He bellowed a laugh and rested one green-stockinged leg on the rail. He was wearing a baggy pepper-and-salt golfing outfit and a green tam o’shanter. “It’s a bad book, really a fake, but it’s selling in your country, luckily for me. If you didn’t happen to hear my drivelling on the air in the past year or two, there are a couple of interesting paragraphs. Footnotes to history. My thing on Hitler’s entry into Vienna is actually not too awful. Quite a time we’re living in, Commander.”
    He talked about the German take-over of Austria, sounding much as he did on the air: positive, informed, full of scorn for democratic politicians, and cheerfully ominous. Tudsbury’s special note was that the world would very likely go up in flames, but that it might prove a good show. “Can you picture the bizarre and horrible triumph that we let him get away with, dear fellow? I saw it all. Something straight out of Plutarch, that was! A zero of a man, with no schooling, of no known family - at twenty a dropped-out student, a drifter and a failure - five years a dirty, seedy tramp in a Vienna doss house - did you know that Henry? Do you know that for five years this Führer was what you call a Bowery bum, sharing a vile room with other assorted flotsam, eating in soup kitchens, and not because there was a depression - Vienna was fat and prosperous then - but because he was a dreamy, lazy, incompetent misfit? That house painter story is hogwash. He sold a few hand-painted postcards, but to the age of twenty-six he was a sidewalk-wandering vagrant, and then for four years a soldier in the German army, a lance corporal, a messenger-runner, a low job for a man of even minimum intelligence, and at thirty he was lying broke, discharged, and gassed in an army hospital. That is the background of the Führer.
    “And then -” The ship’s horn blasted, drowning out Tudsbury’s voice, which was beginning to roll in his broadcasting style. He winced, laughed, and went on: “And then, what happened? Why, then this same ugly, sickly, uncouth, prejudiced, benighted, half-mad little wretch leaped out of his hospital bed, and went careering in ten years straight to the top of a German nation thirsting for a return match. The man was a foreigner, Henry! He was an Austrian. They had to fake up a citizenship proceeding for him, so he could run against Hindenburg! And I myself watched this man ride in triumph through the streets of Vienna, where he had sold postcards and gone hungry, the sole heir to the combined thrones of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns.” Victor Henry smiled, and Tudsbury’s impassioned popeyed stare gave way to a loud guffaw. “A-hawr, hawr, hawr! I suppose it is rather funny when you think about it. But this grotesque fantasy