Fiction: The tragic life of Albrecht von Haar in Journal format by Peter Bakke

It has been over three weeks now that the Chinese have fended off the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army.

I am mightily impressed and surprised. The Chinese have taken a beating, with thousands of civilians and soldiers dead in the streets and fields surrounding Shanghai. Despite superior guns, planes and training, the Japanese have failed to break the Chinese and have called for a “strategic retreat,” but have not left the Chinese mainland.

Japanese Admiral Shiozawa has been ‘disgraced’ and replaced by Admiral Nomura. Army General Ueda has been ‘disgraced’  and replaced by General Shirokawa. In the old days, the Japanese military Bushido creed would have required the disgraced officers to kill themselves. The Japapnese have obviously determined that such a practice would result in an unacceptable  loss of line officers and have instead come up with the ‘strategic retreat’ gambit to save face.

What can the German militarists learn from this Japanese debacle? I assume they are studying the results with typical Prussian thoroughness and come to the conclusion that the Japanese did not have enough firepower and troops focused  against the weakest points of the Chinese forces. Or they may conclude that there are just too many damn Chinese to win major land battles.

Instead of victory, the Japanese are licking their wounds and have succeeded in branding themselves as bandits by the international community. They have also strengthened the nationalist hand of Chiang Kai-shek, who is now seen as a hero.

My Chinese contacts in Berlin tell me that the whole reason for the invasion was the result of militant ultra-nationalist Japanese monks who purposefully attacked Chinese merchants and were shot and killed. This pretext of “killing Japanese citizens” by the Chinese was used as a ruse to invade Shanghai. I am guessing that a similar subterfuge was used in the Mukden incident. This kind of illicit sham by Tokyo will surely gain the attention of Hitler and his cronies. Mark my words. You cannot believe everything you read in the papers. There are Machiavellian forces at work in the world…. across the vast seas and right here in Germany.

My sources tell me that Hitler has decided to dive head first into the presidential race against Paul von Hindenburg. Herr Hitler is putting his political career on the line and perhaps his head on the chopping block. The coming weeks may very well determine his personal political fate as well as that of National Socialism. He is going all in.My instincts tell me that Hitler will be around for quite a while, regardless of the outcome, unless he is assassinated.

Once again I bring the point that in order for Hitler to run in the presidential election, he must become a German citizen. I await some news on this topic shortly. All eyes are on Brunswick as its elected Nazi leadership has the ability to appoint Hitler to a local government post, thus automatically making him a German citizen, rather than the stateless person he is at this hour. It is a rather remarkable phenomenon that most people don’t know Hitler has neither German nor Austrian citizenship.

So, why have I fixated on Herr Hitler and his Nazi followers? To our great national misfortune, I believe National Socialism will emerge victorious from this messy soup of political parties we have today in Germany. Too many people are terrified of the communists and their Soviet puppet masters. That party will go nowhere but down and out. They are checkmated on all sides. Besides, the Soviets are ruthlessly managing their economy, experiencing terrible, devastating famines. The Red Menace is too ingrained in the minds of a majority of working class and aristocratic Germans for those groups to ever turn in the leftist direction.

The Catholic Center party and the so-called conservatives are losing ground and I don’t believe Hindenburg can get a clear majority in the looming presidential campaign. Compared to Hitler’s vigor, the old man appears drained and feeble and will  only appeal to a portion of the electorate desiring a return to the old ways.

In contrast, the energetic Hitler, with populist promises and spectacular parades, is reaching across many political lines to appeal to an electorate hungry for Germany’s return to its rightful place on the world stage. His speeches are imbued with uniting Germany, not tearing it apart, which is a clever tactic. He appeals to the volk and rails against popularized common ‘enemies’ – communists, liberals, parliamentarians, The Wiemar Republicans, foreign capitalists, the strictures of the Versailles treaty and all its signers, and finally, but not least, weak-kneed diplomatic back-stabbers responsible for losing the Great war, which many Germans believe we never lost. My father boasts to this day that his artillery battalion was never defeated on the field of battle by the Russians, French, British or Americans.

My favorable political prediction for the eventual success of the Nazis does concern me enormously, of course, because underlying Hitler’s campaign to legally take control of Germany (vs. his putsch attempt in Munich 10 years ago) is an undercurrent of totalitarianism, ultra-nationalism and antisemitism. No one disputes Hitler is envious of Mussolini’s fascist success. Hitler, like Mussolini, is a rabid bully.

Herr Hitler has toned down his antisemitism as a main thrust in his speeches, but one only has to read passages from Mien Kampf to see that in backrooms he uses parasitic analogies to condemn all ‘foreigners’ in Germany, particularly Jews. I counter than German Jews are not foreigners. My family has been in this country for over 100 years. Nazi philosophy ignores the ‘Germanness,’ loyalty, and integration Jews have enjoyed in Germany, including the fact that Jews fought in the Great War in the same proportion as any other German group. Nazism is a vile philosophy cloaked in a thin veneer of respectability – the underpinnings of which are so heinous that Hitler and his staff must keep its xenophobic origins under wraps during the coming campaign. But the truth of it all will all surface one day. I hope to help make that happen.

On a related note, Ada and I went to see Franz Schrecker’s opera “Der Schmied von Gent” last night. Showing the racist face of Nazism, Brownshirts were outside the opera theater harassing patrons. You see, Schrecker is Jewish. Ada didn’t want to go into the theater when she saw the commotion, but I insisted and we continued on our way. I gripped Ada’s hand tightly and pushed through the throng. The hatred on the faces of the fascist hate mongers took my breath away. I pulled Ada close and we made it safely inside the theater.  These staged Nazi protests are not going to prevent me from supporting  artists in Berlin, regardless of race, and I will not be bullied. I will stand my ground.

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I finished my article about Japanese imperialism since the Russo-Japanese war and what happens? The Japanese are at it again! They continue to tweak the nose of China, Russia, and the world, for that matter.  The Japanese cruiser Oi with 500 marines and the 15th Japanese destroyer flotilla comprising Hagi, Susuki, Fuji and Kuru dropped anchor at the mouth of the Whangpoo river directly opposite the international settlement at Shanghai. The Japanese aircraft carrier Notoro and two others (unidentified) arrived from Chingwangtao. The fleet now comprises 37 ships.

Once the aircraft carriers arrived, I predicted to my father yesterday that an invasion was unstoppable when the Japanese ground forces had air cover. That’s precisely what happened. Hundreds of defenseless Chinese citizens are being slaughtered in the warrens of the Chapei section of northern Shanghai and the world stands by and does nothing.

Hitler’s men are watching keenly as U.S. Secretary of State Stimson and his British counterparts request “clarification” of Japanese intentions. Stimson indicates the U.S. Asiatic fleet may be used to remove American citizens from the international section of Shanghai. That’s the extent of the U.S. and British concern at this point. Clarification and evacuation. The great powers are responding to Japanese strength with plans to evacuate. Let the yellow races kill each other and what does the world care? The fact is, the world reels at Japan’s might in its own sphere of influence and there is nothing any other nation can or is willing to do about it.

Meanwhile, the League of Nations has been predictably paralyzed by Japan’s statement that the League Council “must bear a terrible responsibility if through its action a world conflagration should be precipitated.”

Sadly, the sole action of League of Nations in far away Geneva is a plan to send ten ambassadors to Shanghai to ‘ascertain the situation.’ This was announced only after the Chinese ambassador invoked articles 10 and 15 of the Charter. Quite frankly, the situation will be over in a few days, if not hours. Chang kai Shek has dispatched nationalist Chinese soldiers from Nanking by train to help the local Chinese police, but the northern train station in Shanghai has been destroyed. I am sure the Japanese will be in total control within 48 hours and will ask the Chinese to sue for peace. Combined with their recent actions in Mukden, the Japanese continue to show their aggression and total contempt for Chinese lives and culture. The Japanese understand that the  League of nations can do nothing but talk.

Hitler is taking notes while the British, Americans, Russians and Chinese wring their hands.

The old war horse Paul von Hindenburg has said he will run again for president. Elections are not far off – March 13, 1932, and one has to wonder what the Hitlerites will do. Hitler himself is talking as if he has already won the presidency, but he isn’t even a German citizen! He has no country. His native countrymen, the Austrians, wiped their hands of him almost 15 years ago when he joined the Bavarian army. They don’t want that rabble-rouser back any more than we want him running our country!

A Nazi informant says of Hitler, “The Fuehrer  has his plans all finished. He speaks, acts and feels as if we were already in power.”

What are the Nazis cooking up that will make Herr Hitler a citizen? Another source indicates there are plans afoot in Brunswick to appoint Hitler to a position that will grant him automatic citizenship. If so, we shall see if the public likes such crafty political moves when they vote next month.

I have been having a recurring dream. I am locked in a dank prison cell somewhere in Berlin. I know I am in Berlin because I recognize the church steeple rising above the prison wall in the distance.

A large beetle tries unsuccessfully to right itself on the concrete windowsill of the cold, stone-floored room. Its legs gyrate in slow but methodical motion as it attempts to grasp something, anything, to pull itself upright.

I immediately recognize that the plight of the unfortunate insect is remarkably similar to my own. I am unable to get my bearings in this topsy-turvy world. Gently, I push the struggling beetle through the iron bars of the window and watch longingly as it tumbles over the sill, downward to freedom and perhaps even flight. If only my own deliverance could be so easily obtained.

I knew that Hitler was in Berlin today to give one of his wild speeches. I was taking a break and having a  smoke on Albrechtstrasse  about 3pm when five lorries of heavily armed policemen flew by in the direction of Hitler’s sermon. With sirens wailing, it was quite a sight in the generally quiet streets. A women nearby exclaimed that, “The revolution has begun!” and fell into a dead faint!

But no civil war today.

Instead, I did hear from my brother Hans this evening that Hitler and his crew quietly climbed aboard a train back to Munich, but not before declaring that the government must resign immediately,  “for the country to move forward.” Bruening will not resign. We shall see what the next election will hold for us all. God help us.

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I returned to Berlin yesterday. Ada stopped by tonight and informed me that she was in Dussseldorf last week  visiting her parents. She tells me there was quite a riot when Hitler spoke to local industrialists at a large hall in downtown Dusseldorf. The Communists gathered outside and caused quite a scene. Someone cried out, “Death to Hitler!” and the rush was on.

Hitler’s personal guard, the SA, did what they do best. They cracked heads. There was quite a bit of blood in the street. Ada explained that the SA is simply better armed and trained than the Reds and it showed. The local police came to clean up the mess, but not until after the storm troopers had their way with the Communists. Hitler made it clear that the Reds will think again before tackling  his well-trained bodyguards.

Ada’s parents were so shocked at the violence that they put her on the next train to Berlin and here we are. She’ll stay the night. I’ll finish my article on Japanese expansionism and tomorrow Ada and I will spend the day together.  

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My father the retired general and I had a rather long discussion today, sometimes heated, about the Japanese situation.

He has long admired Japan and its ruling class. He has written a book and lectured on the topic.  He religiously compares Germany’s destiny in Europe to that of Japan’s undisguised determination in Asia.

The dissenting  point I made in our argument was that Japan’s long standing ambitions in Manchuria and other parts of China and Korea will inevitably bring it into conflict with the United States and possibly Britain. I also pointed out that if Germany continues to likewise cast its eye on the vast grain fields and oil fields to the East, as my father suggests it should, our Fatherland will run afoul of  Britain, France and the United States, not to mention Russia.

In this kind of war-gaming we frequently engage in ( I’m no military man, I’m an academic! )  I hold strongly to my conviction that Germany can never win a two front war. My father is not convinced. Even when I remind him that when the Bolsheviks sued for peace in the Great War and we were able to completely focus our military resources on the Western Front, we still could not win. Then I hear the usual shit from the general that the Great War was lost at home by traitors, not at the front. I never fail to point out that the German army lost the war when they failed to take Paris in the first few months of the conflict and the coup de grace occurred when a million fresh troops from the U.S. joined the fray in 1917.

Countering, my father argues  that he has no esteem for the United States. He feels it is too far away, is now isolationist and has no interest in European politics or war. I cautioned my father that Germany is currently in no condition to go to war over anything, much less lebensraum. The French have a sword hanging over our head with 200 divisions on the border and Russia is too vast to conquer, as Napoleon found out.

We both did agree that Britain is too war weary to care a whit about any German plans to expand in the East. They lost the flower of their aristocracy in the Great War and have no stomach to once again police German actions.

We have no standing army, navy or decent political leader, so my father the general’s geoploitical ambition for Germany to turn Eastward is nothing but poppycock. Talking about geopolitics does serve to get us through two excellent cigars.

Father warned  me to watch this Hitler fellow. Hitler could make things happen for Germany, he said. After all, ten years ago my dear  father the general had tutored Hitler’s closest friend, our good Rudolph Hess, about Germany’s destiny to rule central and eastern Europe. Hess had not been the brightest student, father has rued many times, but herr  Hess makes up for lack of intellect with ambition, drive, and now, the ear of Adolph Hitler. I tell my father I am watching Hitler and his minions and am particularly sensitive to their antisemitism. He glanced at my mother and nodded knowingly.

“If that son of a bitch can put Germany back on the map. I’ll be a happy man. But watch his cronies. I agree many of his advisors are dangerous to people like us.”

“What do you mean, ‘ people like us’, ” I asked.

“People who think for themselves.”

We closed our talk with some schnapps and agreed to discuss Japan again the next time I came south to visit. My brother Hans arrived in the evening and we had a late supper. Hans mentioned that the communists and Nazis are fighting violently in the streets of Munich. This is nothing new.  I return to Berlin in the morning.

I decided to visit my parents. We have an old ancestral home in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps near Munich.

My monotonous  train ride from Berlin to Munich was interrupted in Nurnberg when four tough SA Brownshirts boarded the train and sat in the row in front of me.  They entertained themselves by pulling out their wallets and sharing pictures. At first I thought the pictures were of girlfriends, but I overheard one of the Stormtroopers say, “Isn’t he good looking?”

I leaned forward a bit, pretending to retrieve a section of my newspaper. This is when I caught a glance of one of the pictures. It was a handsome young man. A member of the SA party met my glance and immediately gave me a cold, hard stare. This is when I decided I would find a seat elsewhere, farther away from these scar-faced thugs.

My father the WWI  general will be interested to know that Hitler’s SA tolerates open homosexuality. But this is no surprise as it is headed by Ernst Roehm.

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