Look Who's Back

by Timur Vermes

Even in unusual situations, however, the soldier must have certain automatic responses; this is the point of drill. If soldiers lack these automatic responses, then the army is worthless.

I made a mental note to have Rust dismissed. The man had been Reich Minister for Education since 1934, and there is no place for such abysmal sloppiness in education. How is a young soldier supposed to find the victorious path to Moscow, to the very heart of Bolshevism, if he cannot even recognise his own supreme commander?

“Pull yourself together, woman! As a fellow German you have your duties and obligations! We are at war! What do you think the Russians would do to you if they got here? Do you honestly think a Russian would glance at your child and say, ‘Well, what a fine young German girl we have here, but for the child’s sake I will leave my baser urges in my trousers?’ At this very hour, on this very day, the future of the German Volk, the purity of German blood, indeed the survival of humanity itself is at stake. Do you wish to be responsible for the end of civilisation merely because, in your extraordinary stupidity, you are unwilling to show the Führer of the German Reich the way to his Reich Chancellery?”

I was no longer being treated like a commander-in-chief, like a Reichsführer. The footballers, the elderly gentleman, the bicyclist, the perambulator woman – this was no coincidence. My first instinct was to notify the security agencies, to restore order. But I curbed this instinct. I had insufficient knowledge of my circumstances. I needed more information.

I looked around. And under my bench I did find something resembling a newspaper, albeit printed far more lavishly. The paper was in colour, something new to me. It was called Media Market – for the life of me I could not recall having given my approval to such a publication, nor would I ever have approved it.

“You should have a bigger breakfast,” he said, before sitting down again. “Are you filming nearby?” “Filming … ?” “You know, a documentary. A film. They’re always filming around here.”

“Goodness me, you’re in a right state.” Pointing at me, he laughed. “Or do you always go around like this?”

“They run those Hitler stories every three issues nowadays. I don’t reckon you need do any more research. You’re amazing.” “Thank you,” I said absently. “No, I really mean it,” he said. “I’ve seen Downfall. Twice. Bruno Ganz was superb, but he’s not a patch on you. Your whole demeanour … I mean, one would almost think you were the man himself.” I

I flipped up my arm in response to his salute: “I am the Führer!” He laughed once more. “Incredible, you’re a natural.”

He looked confused. “With your girlfriend, I mean. Who was to blame?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Ultimately Churchill, I expect.”

“Whatever,” he said dismissively. “O.K. Let’s say you spend a day or two here, and I’ll have a word with one or two of my customers. The latest issue of Theatre Today arrived yesterday, along with one of the film magazines. One by one they’ll come and buy their copies. Maybe we can fix something up. I’ll be absolutely honest with you: the uniform is so spot on it wouldn’t even matter if you weren’t much of a performer …”

“Do I look like a criminal?” He looked at me. “You look like Adolf Hitler.” “Exactly,” I said.

It transpired that in the last sixty-six years the number of Soviet soldiers on the territory of the German Reich had fallen substantially, particularly in the Greater Berlin area. The current figure was between thirty and fifty men; in a flash I could see that this afforded the Wehrmacht a far better prospect of victory compared to the last estimate from my general staff of around 2.5 million enemy soldiers on the Eastern Front alone. I toyed, albeit momentarily, with the idea that I had been the victim of a plot, an abduction, in which the enemy’s intelligence service had concocted an elaborate hoax, circumventing my iron will to prise from me key secrets. But the technological demands of creating an entirely new world in which, after all, I could move about freely – that variation on reality was even more inconceivable than the one I found myself in, with the ability to grasp things with my hands and see with my eyes. No, I had to wage the struggle in this bizarre here and now. And the first step in any struggle is always reconnaissance.

We all know, of course, what to make of our newspapers. The deaf man writes down what the blind man has told him, the village idiot edits it, and their colleagues in the other press houses copy it. Each story is doused afresh with the same stagnant infusion of lies, so that the “splendid” brew can then be served up to a clueless Volk.

Political parties existed again, with all the infantile, counter-productive squabbling this entails. Social Democracy, that ineradicable pest, was making merry mischief once more at the expense of the long-suffering German Volk.

The Reichsmark was no longer legal tender, even though others – probably some clueless dilettantes on the side of the victorious powers – had clearly adapted my plan to turn it into a European-wide currency. At any rate, transactions were now being carried out in an artificial currency called “Euro”, regarded, as one would expect, with a high level of mistrust. I could have told those responsible that this would be the case.

“I agree, it is a bit dirty,” I said, somewhat crestfallen. “But even soiled, a soldier’s coat is forever nobler than the spotless dinner jacket of a fraudulent diplomat.”

“Do you always have to get in such a lather?” the vendor said with a hint of impatience. “It’s not just what your uniform looks like …”

“You don’t seem like the violent type to me at any rate,” he said thoughtfully. “Well,” I said, running my fingers over my parting, “I am a soldier, of course …”

How should the simple man protest when so-called professionals and academic nonentities have, for six decades, been proclaiming from the lecterns in their “temples of knowledge” that the Führer is dead? Who would hold it against the man who, amidst his daily struggle for survival, cannot find the strength to say, “Where is he then, the dead Führer? Show him to me!”

But did I want to put myself through all those painful sacrifices a second time? Swallow all the privations and derision again, nay, gulp them down with disdain? Spend my nights in an armchair beside a water urn in which sausages are heated up during the day for human consumption? And all this for the love of a people which, in the struggle for its destiny, had already left its Führer in the lurch once before? Whatever happened to the Steiner offensive? Or Paulus, that ignominious blackguard?

Under the right leadership the simple soldier has always done his best – how can he be upbraided if he is unable to march loyally into enemy fire because cowardly, neglectful generals surrender his opportunity to die an honourable soldier’s death?

“I’m not wearing these,” I said. “Why, they make me look like a buffoon!”

No doubt insulted, he made a remark to the effect that he disapproved of the way I wore the trousers, but I ignored this. I wrapped the legs of the genes tightly around my calves and pushed them into my boots.

“You really don’t want to look like other people, do you?” the newspaper vendor said. “Where do you think it would have got me if I had always done everything like so-called ‘other p...

The strong man is mightiest alone, an axiom as true now as it ever was.

My preliminary survey was rather positive: the country, or the city at least, seemed free of rubble and in good order; overall one might certify it satisfactorily pre-war.

The other thing that struck me was how many people seemed to be equipped with wireless receivers – an admirable number. Radar dishes were attached to windows everywhere, for receiving radio transmissions, no doubt. Were I to have the opportunity to speak over the radio waves, then winning over a new horde of staunch comrades amongst the Volk would be as easy as marching into Denmark.

They were wrapped in a transparent material, not dissimilar to the substance my bag was made of. In fact, everything seemed to be wrapped in this stuff. I had once seen something similar in a laboratory, but I.G. Farben must have come a long way with it in recent years. According to what I knew, the production of this material was highly dependent on a ready supply of crude oil; correspondingly it came at great expense. But the way in which synthetic materials were used here – indeed, the extent to which automobiles were driven – suggested that crude oil was no longer a problem. Had the Reich somehow kept possession of the Roumanian deposits? Unlikely. Had Göring ultimately discovered new sources on home soil? A bitter chuckle rose within my chest. Göring! That incompetent morphine addict! He would sooner find gold up his own nostrils than oil in Germany. I wonder what had become of him.

Back then, after the Great War, at least I was the anonymous man from the heart of the Volk. Now I was Herr Stromberg – not the first Stromberg, but the other one. The man who always did the Nazi stuff. The man who did not care which name he put on a sheet of tissue paper.

“That,” I interrupted him “is merely what the books say. Any old halfwit could root that out. Answer the question!” “But I …” “The question! Do you not understand German, man? What! Do you! Know! About! The history! Of Poland!”

“Of course not,” I said. “The Poland routine had been planned down to the finest detail by June ’39.”

Providence had presented the German Volk with this wonderful, magnificent opportunity for propaganda, and it was being squandered on the production of leek rings. I was so furious that I could have hurled the entire apparatus out of the window, but then it occurred to me that there were many more buttons on the little box besides the simple on/off one.

If this was modern sport, it made one fear for the fitness of the men undertaking military service.

Telephones rang incessantly, and all of a sudden I realised why the Volk had been obliged to spend a fortune on ringtones: so that in this labour camp one could at least tell when one’s own phone was ringing.

Locusts. I sighed. It was as I had always feared. No Lebensraum, no land to produce bread to feed the Volk. So now Germans were resorting to eating insects like negroes.

I knew from past experience the particular effect I have on women. It is virtually impossible for a woman to feel nothing when in the presence of the commander-in-chief of the most powerful army on earth.

If they have to spend a fortune on ringtones, just so that they can distinguish their telephone from that of their neighbour? Who bears the responsibility? Who will help the German worker in his time of need? To whom can he turn? Will his superior help? No, for he sends the worker to that man there, and that man there in turn sends him to another! And is this an isolated case?

“We’re all agreed that the Jews are no laughing matter.” “You are absolutely right,” I concurred, almost relieved. At last here was someone who knew what she was talking about.

What irritates me most of all about these morning people is their horribly good temper, as if they had been up for three hours and already conquered France.

In my opinion, only bakers need to work early in the morning. And the Gestapo, of course – that is self-evident.

On second thoughts it might be more accurate to say that he would have ensured nobody requested such bureaucratic niceties a second time.

It is a popular misconception that a Führer needs to know everything. He does not have to know everything. He does not even have to know most things; indeed it can be the case that he need not know anything at all. He can be the most ignorant of the ignorant. Yes, and blind and deaf too in the tragic wake of an enemy bomb blast. On a wooden leg. Or even without arms and legs, rendering the Nazi salute impossible at parades, and when the German anthem is sung only a bitter tear runs from a lifeless eye. I will even postulate that a Führer can be without memory. A total amnesiac. For a Führer’s unique talent is not the accumulation of dry facts – his unique talent is rapid decision-making, and assuming responsibility for those decisions. Critics love to make light of this, citing the old joke about the man who – when moving house, for example – chooses to carry the “responsibility” rather than any crates.

“Strange. But what about America? I mean, you’re fifty-six. Haven’t you ever been to America?” “I did, very seriously, plan to go,” I said. “But unfortunately I was stopped in my tracks.”

Thousands of these had completed their tasks regardless of the burden placed on them, even though they could have easily complained, “What are we to do with all these Jews? It makes no sense anymore; they’re being delivered faster than we can load them into the gas chambers!”

whenever I received someone in the Reich Chancellery, I noticed at once that he felt the superiority of the German Reich, felt it physically. Speer got everything so right. Just take the Great Reception Hall – each chandelier alone must have weighed a tonne; had any one of them come down they would have crushed a man below, turning him to a pulp, a mash of bones and blood and squashed flesh, with maybe some hair sticking out the side. I was almost afraid to stand beneath them myself. I never gave any hint of this, of course; why, I strolled beneath those chandeliers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was just a matter of getting used to them.

For how could one spend millions and millions on a Reich Chancellery, only for someone to come in and say to himself, “Oh, I thought it would be bigger than this”? The point is, this man must not think at all, he must feel it viscerally, instinctively. He is nothing; the German Volk is everything! A master race! The edifice must emit an aura, like a pope, but a pope, of course, who smites the slightest contradiction with fire and sword, like the Lord God himself.

I sighed deeply and gazed out of the window. It gave onto a motor park with dustbins in an array of colours, the reason for this being that waste was carefully separated, no doubt another consequence of the raw materials shortage. I shuddered to contemplate from which bin’s contents the wretched floor covering had been made.

Then I chuckled to myself at Destiny’s bitter irony. If only the Volk had made a greater effort at the right time, there would be no need to collect refuse in this manner, given the wealth of raw materials in the East. All kinds of waste could have been happily tipped into just two dustbins, or even a single one. I shook my head in disbelief.

One would have to content oneself that the wall did not come crashing down with the weight. Once upon a time I enjoyed four hundred square metres of office; now the Führer of the Greater German Reich sat in a shoebox.