‘Oh, yes.’ Hester tried to behave as if forging passports and visas was of no account whatsoever. ‘And can I ask who is going to break this news to Max and Hugo? Is it going to be you, or me?’

‘You dear, I think,’ Vicky said serenely. ‘Max and Hugo seem to do nothing but get cross with me these days. And now to other things. Heini said he wanted a game. We have time, I think, don’t we?’

Chapter Twenty

London, Yorkshire and Berlin, September 1938

‘We have a Prime Minister who is a shilly-shallier, Remer,’ Max’s Controller said, an expression of distaste on his patrician features. ‘He thinks the best of people and it robs him of backbone. What I want is intelligence that will put the fear of God in him and convince him that war with Hitler is inevitable.’

Max glanced through the window to where the Cenotaph could be seen, bathed in mellow sunlight. The transition from the fevered war-mongering atmosphere of Berlin, swastika-emblazoned flags fluttering from every building, to the prosaic, unflurried atmosphere in London, always disorientated him. If Hitler’s behaviour of the last few months hadn’t put the fear of God into Chamberlain, then he didn’t see how he could do so.

What Chamberlain needed was to be among the masses when Hitler gave one of his fevered exhibitions of demagoguery. He needed to be deafened by the cheering of thousands when the Führer harangued on the need for greater living space, living space that could only come from conquered territory. He needed to spend time among Germany’s Jews. He needed to see for himself what it was like to be robbed of citizenship in a country you had fought for; what it was like to be forcibly ‘retired’, to be barred from serving in government posts or from practising law or practising as a doctor or participating in any kind of cultural enterprise; what it was like to live in terror of being arrested and for no one—friends and family—to know of your whereabouts.

The chance of that happening was, of course, nil. Chamberlain would continue his policy of appeasement, believing that every demand Hitler made was his last, even though experience already showed otherwise.

He said, ‘Everything I hear, from whatever source, is the same. Hitler is determined on welding all ethnic Germans into one huge nation—and he’s going to let nothing stand in his way. He wants Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking Sudetenland incorporated into the Reich and so, unless Britain and France are prepared to go to war over it, that is what will happen.’

‘And what is the feeling of the man in the street? Is there real fear that war is imminent?’

Max thought of the round-the-clock production taking place in the House of Remer steelworks, the giant Krupp steelworks and Fritz Thyssen’s vast United Steelworks, production that was nearly all militarily based. He thought of the euphoria with which the Anchluss with Austria had been greeted, euphoria in which the Austrians had shared. He thought of how even Zelda—who had as much reason to abhor Hitler as anyone—still grudgingly admitted he was making Germany into the strongest country in Europe.