Page 21 of Winter of the World (The Century 2)

Walter and Maud were struggling frantically to save Germany's fragile democracy. Lloyd shared their desperation, partly because they were good people whom he had known off and on all his life, and partly because he feared that Britain could follow Germany down the road to hell.

The election had resolved nothing. The Nazis got 44 percent, an increase but still short of the 51 percent they craved.

Walter saw hope. Driving to the opening of the parliament, he said: "Even with massive intimidation, they failed to win the votes of most Germans." He banged his fist on the steering wheel. "Despite everything they say, they are not popular. And the longer they stay in government, the better people will get to know their wickedness."

Lloyd was not so sure. "They've closed opposition newspapers, thrown Reichstag deputies in jail, and corrupted the police," he said. "And yet forty-four percent of Germans approve? I don't find that reassuring."

The Reichstag building was badly fire-damaged and quite unusable, so the parliament assembled in the Kroll Opera House, on the opposite side of the Konigs Platz. It was a vast complex with three concert halls and fourteen smaller auditoria, plus restaurants and bars.

When they arrived they had a shock. The place was surrounded by Brownshirts. Deputies and their aides crowded around the entrances, trying to get in. Walter said furiously: "Is this how Hitler plans to get his way--by preventing us from entering the chamber?"

Lloyd saw that the doors were barred by Brownshirts. They admitted those in Nazi uniform without question, but everyone else had to produce credentials. A boy younger than Lloyd looked him up and down contemptuously before grudgingly letting him in. This was intimidation, pure and simple.

Lloyd felt his temper beginning to simmer. He hated to be bullied. He knew he could knock the Brownshirt boy down with one good left hook. He forced himself to remain calm, turn away, and walk through the door.

After the fight in the People's Theater, his mother had examined the egg-shaped lump on his head and ordered him to go home to England. He had talked her round, but it had been a close thing.

She said he had no sense of danger, but that was not quite right. He did get scared sometimes, but it always made him feel combative. His instinct was to go on the attack, not to retreat. This scared his mother.

Ironically, she was just the same. She was not going home. She was frightened, but she was also thrilled to be here in Berlin at this turning point in German history, and outraged by the violence and repression she was witnessing. She felt sure she could write a book that would forewarn democrats in other countries about Fascist tactics. "You're worse than me," Lloyd had said to her, and she had had no answer.

Inside, the opera house was swarming with Brownshirts and SS men, many of them armed. They guarded every door and showed, with looks and gestures, their hatred and contempt for anyone not supporting the Nazis.

Walter was late for a Social Democratic Party group meeting. Lloyd hurried around the building looking for the right room. Glancing into the debating chamber, he saw that a giant swastika hung from the ceiling, dominating the room.

The first matter to be discussed, when proceedings began that afternoon, was to be the Enabling Act, which would permit Hitler's cabinet to pass laws without the approval of the Reichstag.

The act offered a dreadful prospect. It would make Hitler a dictator. The repression, intimidation, violence, torture, and murder that Germany had seen in the past few weeks would become permanent. It was unthinkable.

But Lloyd could not imagine that any parliament in the world would pass such a law. They would be voting themselves out of power. It was political suicide.

He found the Social Democrats in a small auditorium. Their meeting had already begun. Lloyd hurried Walter to the room, then he was sent for coffee.

Waiting in the queue, he found himself behind a pale, intense-looking young man dressed in funereal black. Lloyd's German had become more fluent and colloquial, and he now had the confidence to strike up a conversation with a stranger. The man in black was Heinrich von Kessel, he learned. He was doing the same sort of job as Lloyd, working as an unpaid aide to his father, Gottfried von Kessel, a deputy for the Centre Party, which was Catholic.

"My father knows Walter von Ulrich very well," Heinrich said. "They were both attaches at the German embassy in London in 1914."

The world of international politics and diplomacy was quite small, Lloyd reflected.

Heinrich told Lloyd that a return to the Christian faith was the answer to Germany's problems.

"I'm not much of a Christian," Lloyd said candidly. "I hope you don't mind my saying so. My grandparents are Welsh Bible-punchers, but my mother is indifferent and my stepfather's Jewish. Occasionally we go to the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, mainly because the pastor is a Labour Party member."

Heinrich smiled and said: "I'll pray for you."

Catholics were not proselytizers, Lloyd remembered. What a contrast with his dogmatic grandparents in Aberowen, who thought that people who did not believe as they did were willfully blinding themselves to the Gospel, and would be condemned to eternal damnation.

When Lloyd reentered the Social Democratic Party meeting, Walter was speaking. "It can't happen!" he said. "The Enabling Act is a constitutional amendment. Two-thirds of the representatives must be present, which would be 4

32 out of a possible 647. And two-thirds of those present must approve."

Lloyd added up the numbers in his head as he put the tray down on the table. The Nazis had 288 seats, and the Nationalists, who were their close allies, had 52, making 340--nearly 100 short. Walter was right. The act could not be passed. Lloyd was comforted, and sat down to listen to the discussion and improve his German.

But his relief was short-lived. "Don't be so sure," said a man with a working-class Berlin accent. "The Nazis are caucusing with the Centre Party." That was Heinrich's lot, Lloyd recalled. "That could give them another 74," the man finished.

Lloyd frowned. Why would the Centre Party support a measure that would take away all its power?

Walter voiced the same thought more bluntly. "How could the Catholics be so stupid?"

---