Blood of the Reich Read Free Page A

not?”
    Raeder knew this interview could be a path to promotion. “So the Führer teaches, Reichsführer .” He felt like he was squatting, looking up at the big desk.
    “The Aryan race has continually been in competition with the Slavic, the Asiatic, and the Negroid,” Himmler said. “Rome was invincible until it allowed itself to be polluted by the inferiors it conquered, and then was defeated by our ancestor Arminius in ancient Germany. And the Germanic tribes were invincible as long as they kept to themselves behind the Rhine, and vulnerable once they became mongrelized. Ultimately, there can only be one evolutionary winner, and the Aryan can win only through purity of blood. It is about breeding, Untersturmführer —breeding. Take it from a chicken farmer.”
    The dogma was nothing Raeder hadn’t heard in the tedious SS classes that half the membership skipped—the men wanted action, not eccentric pedantry—but the reference to chicken farming startled the explorer. There were jokes about Himmler’s brief unhappy experiments with animal husbandry, but he’d never dreamed the Reichsführer would bring up this past. “Your scholarship is reflected in the teachings of the Schutzstaffel ,” he managed.
    Himmler’s smile was thin as a razor. “You think I don’t know the disparagement of my agricultural background? I know everything, about everyone.” He tapped the files. For a horrible moment Raeder thought the reference was directly to him, and he furiously wracked his brain for when he might have mocked the head of the SS. Was this meeting a prelude to a concentration camp?
    “I hear all the jokes,” Himmler went on. “About our Führer , about me, about Göring, about the lot. Do you think this makes me angry?”
    Raeder was beginning to sweat. “I swear I’ve never . . .”
    “Listen to me, Untersturmführer . The powerful act, and the powerless make jokes about them. Better to be the superior who is the butt of a joke than its minion teller, trust me. This is how society functions. This is how life functions. Struggle.” He held Raeder’s gaze. “Yes, I raised chickens and learned life is breed against breed, and the holy mission of the SS is to purify our race and raise mankind to a new level. Our mission is scientific. It is mystical. It is evolutionary. And when we’re done, the planet will be a utopia unknown since the ancient days of Ultima Thule when our ancestors came down from the stars.” He nodded, as if affirming the point often enough would ensure its truth.
    Raeder finally managed a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me this, Reichsführer ?”
    “Because you’ve been called to duty by God as I have,” Himmler said calmly. “I, to purify. You, to apply your expertise in Tibet toward the National Socialist cause. You’ve been there twice, have you not?”
    “Yes.” He exhaled, realizing he was here for his experience, not some indiscreet remark. “Two exploratory zoological and anthropological missions.”
    “Hunting. With a rifle.”
    “To collect specimens.”
    “A Mauser M98, .375 Magnum, on expeditions with American funding and led by Dr. Benjamin Hood of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.” Himmler was reading from the folder. “Four months from Nepal to the Himalayas in 1930, and six from China to eastern Tibet in 1934. You wrote a book, High Himalaya , and used classification and preparation of the bird and animal skins to win your doctorate from the Berlin Academy. Adventure combined with science, and notoriety before you were twenty-five. An alpinist as well, with some notable first ascents. An exemplar, one might say, of the new Germany.”
    “I had some good fortune.”
    “And the swastika is an ancient symbol of good fortune in Tibet, is it not?”
    “Yes, Reichsführer . You see it everywhere.”
    “Have you ever wondered why?”
    “An Eastern invention, I suppose.”
    “Or an Aryan invention, and a connection between our Aryan