The War Begins in Paris by Theodore Wheeler

Author:Theodore Wheeler [WHEELER, THEODORE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

INVITATION TO GOMORRAH

It was after the first of March when two officials came from Berlin to fetch Bob Best. He and three of the American journalists who had come from Paris were summoned: Harl, Whitcomb, and, of course, Mielle. The Nazis wanted to speak only with those who were compromised—the three men who had families stuck in German territory, plus, at the invitation of Jane Anderson, her “good friend” Mielle. Alden and the other recalcitrant journalists were told to stay away.

One of the round tables in the dining room was set with real coffee and shortbread cookies on saucers. Two men were waiting when the Americans came in. Mielle didn’t recognize either of them.

“I am Anton Winkelnkemper,” the first said, with only a little accent. He was an SS man and newly in charge of foreign broadcasts for the state propaganda organ. He held his hand out, though only Best shook it.

“And I’m William Joyce,” the other said. They all recognized his voice immediately. It was Lord Haw-Haw! Though he wasn’t a large man, he had a deep baritone and spoke in a working-class cant. They’d heard his broadcasts dozens of times on the radio. Here was the most famous British traitor of the whole war, sitting across the table with a shortbread cookie pinched between his fingers.

Joyce had a so-called Glasgow smile etched on his face, a deep scar that stretched from one corner of his mouth to the ear on that side, from a razor slash twenty years earlier that he blamed on a Jewish Communist rioter. He was thin, pale, intense, with a face that looked a bit crooked, all the way from his severely bent nose to his cleft chin. His treason was something of a sensation in London those years because of the blasphemous things he said about the king and royal family. He portrayed himself as a proper English gentleman, but he had actually been born in Brooklyn and was Irish, as his last name would suggest. The English-gentry bit was an act. In person, he looked like a brawler.

“I hope you have guessed why we’re here,” he said. “My show has been such a success that our hosts in this country require a few copacetic personalities who could complement what already there is on the air. The U.S.A. Zone in particular.”

“There will be auditions in Berlin, the end of this week,” Winkelnkemper said. “The pay is generous. One thousand five hundred reichsmarks per week, plus an Unter den Linden flat, rent paid. If things work out, you get your own time slot, four nights a week. If it does not work out, you will be sent back here to Bad Nauheim. I promise.”

“That’s the bait, such as it is,” Joyce said. “And, if you ask me, that’s an awful lot of notoriety for small potatoes like you chaps, and miss.”

“And what do you expect from us in return?” Whitcomb said. His voice shook as if his bow tie were choking him.

“All we ask is the same as the Reich has always asked,” Winkelnkemper told him.

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