The Hunt aka 27 by William Diehl Page B

me like a saber.”
    “Should we go back to the chalet?”
    “Nein! It is a fear I must deal with. Someday I will overcome it. Perhaps I will get badly sunburned, e h , and then I will fear the warm more than the cold. Ha! Besides, I am sure you know what it is like to sleep on cold pavement.”
    “Not as bad as in the trenches wher e it rained,” Ingersoll said. “My greatest fear was drowning in mud. When the rains came I was terrified the trench would slide in on me. After dark I would crawl out and sleep with the dead ones. And then in the morning I’d crawl back in the ditch. To prefer sleeping with the dead, now that’s fear.”
    “You were a good soldier,” Hitler said.
    “So were you.”
    “We still are, Hans. The war is just beginning.” “The sooner the better.”
    “Spoken like a true Nazi.”
    “1 have read Mein Kampf a dozen times, memorized passages, spoken them aloud just to hear their power,” Ingersoll said enthusiastically. “I’ve read all your works, mein Führer. “And he recited:
    “Ohne Juda, ohne Rom,
    Wird gebaut Germaniens Dom!
    Heil!”
    “My God,” Hitler said, surprised, “I wrote that, let’s see, that was in
    “Nineteen-twelve.”
    “Ja, 1912,” he said with surprise and repeated it:
    “Without Jews, without Rome,
    We shall build Germany’s cathedral!
    Hail!”
    “I was twenty-four years old at the time. People laughed at me, you know,” Hitler said.
    “A prophet must always endure s corn.”
    “You are a student of Nietzsche, too?”
    “I am familiar with his works.”
    “You are quite the scholar, Hans Wolfe,” Hitler said, impressed. “Do you like music? Wagner -?”
    “Very much.”
    They continued down the path toward the tea house.
    “Do you know when I was a boy in the Waldviertel my friend Gustl and I wrote an opera. An outrageous thing, filled with madness, violence, murder, miracles, mythology, magic, suicide. Oh, it was quite Wagnerian.
    Suddenly Hitler’s mood swung again, this time from nostalgia to petulance. His voice grew slightly louder, its pitch a shade higher.
    “That is another thing about the fools down there,” he went on. “They do not even understand Wagner. Only I under stood the magnitude of Wagner’s vision, Hans. Only I understand that the creation was an act of violence, and so all creation must continue on a path of violence.”
    Just as suddenly his voice lowered, became almost a whisper. He leaned closer to Ingersoll.
    “This is the beginning. Last Monday when that doddering, senile old fool made me chancellor, that was the start of it. First there was the Holy Roman Empire, then the Prussian Hohenzollerns and now the glorious Third Reich. We are going to change the world. We are going to obliterate Versailles. Obliterate the Jews and the Gypsies and the Communists. We are going to create a population of pure Aryans, smarter, stronger, better- looking than any other race in history. We are going to do all this.” He stopped for a moment, his eyes blazing, his breath coining in short, wispy breaths. “Do you believe that, Hans? Do you believe that the Third Reich now exists?”
    “Yes, mein Führer,” said Ingersoll. He was staring transfixed by the simple power of Hitler’s voice. He had heard or read all the words before, in various speeches and in books. But he had never heard them performed with such mastery. And he did believe it. There was no question in his mind.
    “The Third Reich is you, mein Führer,” he blurted passionately. And impulsively he stepped back and threw out his arm in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler,” he said. “Hail the Chancellor.”
    A faint smile played on Hitler’s lips. He lifted his hand in response. They walked on down the footpath.
    The tea house looked like a large, enclosed gazebo on the edge of a cliff at the foot of the overlook walk. As they neared it Hitler picked up the pace, anxious to get out of the cold. They rushed inside and slammed the door against the freezing