Getting Even Page 2

  The Schmeed Memoirs

  The seemingly inexhaustible spate of literature on the Third Reich continues unabated with the soon to be published Memoirs of Friedrich Schmeed. Schmeed, the best-known barber in wartime Germany, provided tonsorial services for Hitler and many highly placed government and military officials. As was noted during the Nuremberg Trials, Schmeed not only seemed to be always at the right place at the right time but possessed “more than total recall,” and was thus uniquely qualified to write this incisive guide to innermost Nazi Germany. Following are a few brief excerpts:

  In the spring of 1940, a large Mercedes pulled up in front of my barbershop at 127 Koenigstrasse, and Hitler walked in. “I just want a light trim,” he said, “and don’t take too much off the top.” I explained to him there would be a brief wait because von Ribbentrop was ahead of him. Hitler said he was in a rush and asked Ribbentrop if he could be taken next, but Ribbentrop insisted it would look bad for the Foreign Office if he were passed over. Hitler thereupon made a quick phone call, and Ribbentrop was immediately transferred to the Afrika Korps, and Hitler got his haircut. This sort of rivalry went on all the time. Once, Goring had Heydrich detained by the police on false pretenses, so that he could get the chair by the window. Goring was a dissolute and often wanted to sit on the hobbyhorse to get his haircuts. The Nazi high command was embarrassed by this but could do nothing. One day, Hess challenged him. “I want the hobbyhorse today, Herr Field Marshal,” he said.

  “Impossible. I have it reserved,” Goring shot back.

  “I have orders directly from the Fuhrer. They state that I am to be allowed to sit on the horse for my haircut.” And Hess produced a letter from Hitler to that effect. Goring was livid. He never forgave Hess, and said that in the future he would have his wife cut his hair at home with a bowl. Hitler laughed when he heard this, but Goring was serious and would have carried it out had not the Minister of Arms turned down his requisition for a thinning shears.

  I have been asked if I was aware of the moral implications of what I was doing. As I told the tribunal at Nuremberg, I did not know that Hitler was a Nazi. The truth was that for years I thought he worked for the phone company. When I finally did find out what a monster he was, it was too late to do anything, as I had made a down payment on some furniture. Once, toward the end of the war, I did contemplate loosening the Fuhrer’s neck-napkin and allowing some tiny hairs to get down his back, but at the last minute my nerve failed me.

  At Berchtesgaden one day, Hitler turned to me and said, “How would I look in sideburns?” Speer laughed, and Hitler became affronted. “I’m quite serious, Herr Speer,” he said. “I think I might look good in sideburns.” Goring, that obsequious clown, concurred instantly, saying, “The Fuhrer in sideburns-what an excellent idea!” Speer still disagreed. He was, in fact, the only one with enough integrity to tell the Fuhrer when he needed a haircut. “Too flashy,” Speer said now. “Sideburns are the kind of thing I’d associate with Churchill.” Hitler became incensed. Was Churchill contemplating sideburns, he wanted to know, and if so, how many and when? Himmler, supposedly in charge of Intelligence, was summoned immediately. Goring was annoyed by Speer’s attitude and whispered to him, “Why are you making waves, eh? If he wants sideburns, let him have sideburns.” Speer, usually tactful to a fault, called Goring a hypocrite and “an order of bean curd in a German uniform.” Goring swore he would get even, and it was rumored later that he had special S.S. guards french Speer’s bed.

  Himmler arrived in a frenzy. He had been in the midst of a tap-dancing lesson when the phone rang, summoning him to Berchtesgaden. He was afraid it was about a misplaced carload of several thousand cone-shaped party hats that had been promised Rommel for his winter offensive. (Himmler was not accustomed to being invited to dinner at Berchtesgaden, because his eyesight was poor and Hitler could not bear to watch him bring the fork up to his face and then stick the food somewhere on his cheek.) Himmler knew something was wrong, because Hitler was calling him “Shorty,” which he only did when annoyed. Suddenly the Fuhrer turned on him, shouting, “Is Churchill going to grow sideburns?”

  Himmler turned red.

  “Well?”

  Himmler said there had been word that Churchill contemplated sideburns but it was all unofficial. As to size and number, he explained, there would probably be two, of a medium length, but no one wanted to say before they could be sure. Hitler screamed and banged his fist on the table. (This was a triumph for Goring over Speer.) Hitler pulled out a map and showed us how he meant to cut off England’s supply of hot towels. By blockading the Dardanelles, Doenitz could keep the towels from being brought ashore and laid across anxiously awaiting British faces. But the basic question remained: Could Hitler beat Churchill to sideburns? Himmler said Churchill had a head start and that it might be impossible to catch him. Goring, that vacuous optimist, said the Fuhrer could probably grow sideburns quicker, particularly if we marshalled all of Germany’s might in a concentrated effort. Von Rundstedt, at a meeting of the General Staff, said it was a mistake to try to grow sideburns on two fronts at once and advised that it would be wiser to concentrate all efforts on one good sideburn. Hitler said he could do it on both cheeks simultaneously. Rommel agreed with von Rundstedt. “They will never come out even, mein Fuhrer,” he said. “Not if you rush them.” Hitler became enraged and said that it was a matter for him and his barber. Speer promised he could triple our output of shaving cream by the fall, and Hitler was euphoric. Then, in the winter of 1942, the Russians launched a counter-offensive and the sideburns came to a halt. Hitler grew despondent, fearing that soon Churchill would look wonderful while he still remained “ordinary,” but shortly thereafter we received news that Churchill had abandoned the idea of sideburns as too costly. Once again the Fuhrer had been proved right.

  After the Allied invasion, Hitler developed dry, unruly hair. This was due in part to the Allies’ success and in part to the advice of Goebbels, who told him to wash it every day. When General Guderian heard this, he immediately returned home from the Russian front and told the Fuhrer he must shampoo his hair no more than three times weekly. This was the procedure followed with great success by the General Staff in two previous wars. Hitler once again overruled his generals and continued washing daily. Bormann helped Hitler with the rinsing and always seemed to be there with a comb. Eventually, Hitler became dependent on Bormann, and before he looked in a mirror he would always have Bormann look in it first. As the Allied armies pushed east, Hitler’s hair grew worse. Dry and unkempt, he often raged for hours about how he would get a nice haircut and a shave when Germany won the war, and maybe even a shine. I realize now he never had any intention of doing those things.

  One day, Hess took the Fuhrer’s bottle of Vitalis and set out in a plane for England. The German high command was furious. They felt Hess planned to give it to the Allies in return for amnesty for himself. Hitler was particularly enraged when he heard the news, as he had just stepped out of the shower and was about to do his hair. (Hess later explained at Nuremberg that his plan was to give Churchill a scalp treatment inan effort to end the war. He had got as far as bending Churchill over a basin when he was apprehended.)

  Late in 1944, Goring grew a mustache, causing talk that he was soon to replace Hitler. Hitler was furious and accused Goring of disloyalty. “There must be only one mustache among the leaders of the Reich, and it shall be mine!” he cried. Goring argued that two mustaches might give the German people a greater sense of hope about the war, which was going poorly, but Hitler thought not. Then, in January of 1945, a plot by several generals to shave Hitler’s mustache in his sleep and proclaim Doenitz the new leader failed when von Stauffenberg, in the darkness of Hitler’s bedroom, shaved off one of the Fuhrer’s eyebrows instead. A state of emergency was proclaimed, and suddenly Goebbels appeared at my shop. “An attempt was just made on the Fuhrer’s mustache; but it was unsuccessful,” he said, trembling. Goebbels arranged for me to go on radio and address the Ge
rman people, which I did, with a minimum of notes. “The Fuhrer is all right,” I assured them. “He still has his mustache. Repeat. The Fuhrer still has his mustache. A plot to shave it has failed.”

  Near the end, I came to Hitler’s bunker. The Allied armies were closing in on Berlin, and Hitler felt that if the Russians got there first he would need a full haircut but if the Americans did he could get by with a light trim. Everyone quarrelled. In the midst of all this, Bormann wanted a shave, and I promised him I would get to work on some blueprints. Hitler grew morose and remote. He talked of parting his hair from ear to ear and then claimed that the development of the electric razor would turn the war for Germany. “We will be able to shave in seconds, eh, Schmeed?” he muttered. He mentioned other wild schemes and said that someday he would have his hair not just cut but shaped. Obsessed as usual by sheer size, he vowed he would eventually have a huge pompadour-“one that will make the world tremble and will require an honor guard to comb.” Finally, we shook hands and I gave him a last trim. He tipped me one pfennig. “I wish it could be more,” he said, “but ever since the Allies have overrun Europe I’ve been a little short.”

  My Philosophy

  The development of my philosophy came about as follows: My wife, inviting me to sample her very first souffle, accidentally dropped a spoonful of it on my foot, fracturing several small bones. Doctors were called in, X-rays taken and examined, and I was ordered to bed for a month. During this convalescence, I turned to the works of some of Western society’s most formidable thinkers-a stack of books I had laid aside for just such an eventuality. Scorning chronological order, I began with Kierkegaard and Sartre, then moved quickly to Spinoza, Hume, Kafka, and Camus. I was not bored, as I had feared I might be; rather, I found myself fascinated by the alacrity with which these great minds unflinchingly attacked morality, art, ethics, life, and death. I remember my reaction to a typically luminous observation of Kierkegaard’s: “Such a relation which relates itself to its own self (that is to say, a self) must either have constituted itself or have been constituted by another.” The concept brought tears to my eyes. My word, I thought, to be that clever! (I’m a man who has trouble writing two meaningful sentences on “My Day at the Zoo.”) True, the passage was totally incomprehensible to me, but what of it as long as Kierkegaard was having fun? Suddenly confident that metaphysics was the work I had always been meant to do, I took up my pen and began at once to jot down the first of my own musings. The work proceeded apace, and in a mere two afternoons-with time out for dozing and trying to get the two little BBs into the eyes of the bear-I had completed the philosophical work that I am hoping will not be uncovered until after my death, or until the year 3000 (whichever comes first), and which I modestly believe will assure me a place of reverence among history’s weightiest thinkers. Here is but a small sample of the main body of intellectual treasure that I leave for posterity, or until the cleaning woman comes.

  I. Critique of Pure Dread

  In formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, “My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.” By “knowable,” incidentally, I do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be Known or to possess a Knownness or Knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.

  Can we actually “know” the universe? My God, it’s hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown. The point, however, is: Is there anything out there? And why? And must they be so noisy? Finally, there can be no doubt that the one characteristic of “reality” is that it lacks essence. That is not to say it has no essence, but merely lacks it. (The reality I speak of here is the same one Hobbes described, but a little smaller.) Therefore the Cartesian dictum “I think, therefore I am” might better be expressed “Hey, there goes Edna with a saxophone!” So, then, to know a substance or an idea we must doubt it, and thus, doubting it, come to perceive the qualities it possesses in its finite state, which are truly “in the thing itself,” or “of the thing itself,” or of something or nothing. If this is clear, we can leave epistemology for the moment.

  II. Eschatological Dialectics As a Means of Coping

  with Shingles

  We can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call “atoms,” or else we will call it “monads.” Democritus called it atoms. Leibnitz called it monads. Fortunately, the two men never met, or there would have been a very dull argument. These “particles” were set in motion by some cause or underlying principle, or perhaps something fell someplace. The point is that it’s too late to do anything about it now, except possibly to eat plenty of raw fish. This, of course, does not explain why the soul is immortal. Nor does it say anything about an afterlife, or about the feeling my Uncle Sender has that he is being followed by Albanians. The causal relationship between the first principle (i.e., God, or a strong wind) and any teleological concept of being (Being) is, according to Pascal, “so ludicrous that it’s not even funny (Funny).” Schopenhauer called this “will,” but his physician diagnosed it as hay fever. In his later years, he became embittered by it, or more likely because of his increasing suspicion that he was not Mozart.

  III. The Cosmos on Five Dollars a Day

  What, then, is “beautiful”? The merging of harmony with the just, or the merging of harmony with something that just sounds like “the just”? Possibly harmony should have been merged with “the crust” and this is what’s been giving us our trouble. Truth, to be sure, is beauty-or “the necessary.” That is, what is good or possessing the qualities of “the good” results in “truth.” If it doesn’t, you can bet the thing is not beautiful, although it may still be waterproof. I am beginning to think I was right in the first place and that everything should be merged with the crust. Oh, well.

  Two Parables

  A man approaches a palace. Its only entrance is guarded by some fierce Huns who will only let men named Julius enter. The man tries to bribe the guards by offering them a year’s supply of choice chicken parts. They neither scorn his offer nor accept it, but merely take, his nose and twist it till it looks like a Molly screw. The man says it is imperative that he enter the palace because he is bringing the emperor a change of underwear. When the guards still refuse, the man begins to Charleston. They seem to enjoy his dancing but soon become morose over the treatment of the Navajos by the federal government. Out of breath, the man collapses. He dies, never having seen the emperor and owing the Steinway people sixty dollars on a piano he had rented from them in August.

  *

  I am given a message to deliver to a general. I ride and ride, but the general’s headquarters seem to get farther and farther away. Finally, a giant black panther leaps upon me and devours my mind and heart. This puts a terrific crimp in my evening. No matter how hard I try, I cannot catch the general, whom I see running in the distance in his shorts and whispering the word “nutmeg” to his enemies.

  Aphorisms

  It is impossible to experience one’s own death objectively and still carry a tune.

  *

  The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God’s mind-a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house.

  *

  Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you’re dressed for it.

  *

  If only Dionysus were alive! Where would he eat?

  *

  Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

  Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?

  I was leafing through a magazine while waiting for Joseph K., my beagle, to emerge from his regular Tuesday fifty-minute hour with a Park Avenue therapist-a Jungian veterinarian
who, for fifty dollars per session, labors valiantly to convince him that jowls are not a social drawback -when I came across a sentence at the bottom of the page that caught my eye like an overdraft notice. It was just another item in one of those boiler-plate specials with a title like “Historagrams” or “Betcha Didn’t Know,” but its magnitude shook me with the power of the opening strains of Beethoven’s Ninth. “The sandwich,” it read, “was invented by the Earl of Sandwich.” Stunned by the news, I read it again and broke into an involuntary tremble. My mind whirled as it began to conjure with the immense dreams, the hopes and obstacles, that must have gone into the invention of the first sandwich. My eyes became moist as I looked out the window at the shimmering towers of the city, and I experienced a sense of eternity, marvelling at man’s ineradicable place in the universe. Man the inventor! Da Vinci’s notebooks loomed before me-brave blueprints for the highest aspirations of the human race. I thought of Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare. The First Folio. Newton. Handel’s Messiah. Monet. Impressionism. Edison. Cubism. Stravinsky. E=mc2…

  Holding firmly to a mental picture of the first sandwich lying encased at the British Museum, I spent the ensuing three months working up a brief biography of its great inventor, his nibs the Earl. Though my grasp of history is a bit shaky, and though my capacity for romanticizing easily dwarfs that of the average acidhead, I hope I have captured at least the essence of this unappreciated genius, and that these sparse notes will inspire a true historian to take it from here.