The House of Rumour A Novel - By Jake Arnott Page 0,149

his brain for meaning.

It was the Jews who were behind it all, of course. He knew that clearly, though he had to be careful what he said. They would be listening, after all. When the question came up he would refer to the Madagascar Plan. All the Jews in Europe could be settled on that large island to the east of Africa. It was under French colonial control; all it needed was for the British fleet to collaborate in the massive immigration to this Gross-Getto. There was documentation of this proposal in the Foreign Ministry and the German Admiralty, though he knew from his conversations with Rosenberg on the day of his flight that the Reich had abandoned the idea. The war in the East was now a matter of extermination. But he could always hide behind the fanciful notion that if his peace plan had worked, Madagascar could have been an option.

Manic episodes punctuated his growing depression. The success of the Africa Korps in the Western Desert; the Sixth Army sweeping through the Caucasus; fanfares on the radio as Berlin announced another U-boat victory. But all the time he was struggling to outwit those around him.

When all the good news from the outside world began to peter out he retreated into a mental oblivion. He told the doctors who examined him that a fog had descended, obliterating past events, people, ideas. He claimed to have forgotten his childhood in Egypt, his schooldays in Germany, his service in the Great War, the leading role he had played in the early years of the party. He could no longer recall the names of visitors or sometimes even the orderlies and officers who guarded him.

He reluctantly agreed to drug therapy, feeling that this might prepare him for greater tests that lay ahead. They were desperate to prove whether or not his amnesia was real. They injected him with a truth serum and conducted an interrogation. It took all his will to remain conscious while miming unconsciousness, to maintain his antic disposition. But as he passed this stage of inquisition he knew that one day a greater trial would come. There was already much talk about war crimes and tribunals. In the meantime he prepared his own judgement on a mad world.

One morning in February 1945 he woke early and called for a doctor, announcing to him that his memory had been restored and that he had something important to tell the world. He had composed a list of all the people who had been hypnotised by the Jews and he wanted it forwarded to Churchill. Churchill, of course, was named: hypnotism had changed him from anti-Bolshevik to pro-Soviet. The Jews, Hess explained, had a secret drug that could put people in a trance during which they would act in an abnormal way. The king of Italy, von Stauffenberg and the others who had plotted to kill the Führer, General von Paulus, Anthony Eden, the Bulgarian government – the catalogue went on. The doctor remarked that even the name Rudolf Hess appeared on the list. Oh yes, Hess replied; once at a state banquet in Italy he had been very rude to his hosts and the only explanation he had for his behaviour was that he must have been under the influence of this Jewish drug.

That night he took a bread-knife from the kitchen. He dressed in his Luftwaffe uniform, leaving the tunic open. He stabbed himself in the chest. He thought that he had aimed for the heart but when they came for him they found the wound to be quite shallow and wide of the mark.

The Russians had swept through Poland and were now inside Germany. The British and the Americans were ready to cross the Rhine. And the bombing of the cities became ever more intense: now Dresden had been incinerated in a firestorm. The air war he had dreaded. He had flown for peace, to end this battle in the heavens.

Newspapers carried haunting photographs, terrible accounts of atrocities as the advancing Allies entered the concentration camps. Fearful apparitions of a horror he refused to face. This was the dementia of history, he decided. He would wilfully forget such things. So instead he concentrated on composing an account of his own captivity, noting that for four years he had been guarded by people with a mental condition caused by a secret chemical hitherto unknown to the world.

When out walking in the grounds he found a small key, for a desk