HHhH: A Novel полностью

It is essential to sort out the Czech teachers because the teaching profession is a breeding ground for opposition. It must be destroyed, and all Czech secondary schools must be shut. The Czech youth must be torn away from this subversive atmosphere and educated elsewhere. I cannot think of a better place for this than a sports ground. With sport and physical education, we will simultaneously guarantee their development, their education, and their reeducation.

I think that covers all the main points.

The possibility of reopening the Czech universities—hit by a three-year ban in November 1939 for political agitation—is not even considered. It’s up to Moravec to find an excuse for prolonging their closure when the three years are up.

Reading Heydrich’s speech, I have three comments:

1.

In the Czech state, as elsewhere, the feeblest defender of the values of national education is the responsible minister. Having been a virulent anti-Nazi, Emanuel Moravec became, after Munich, the most active collaborator in Heydrich’s Czech government and the Germans’ preferred Czech representative—much more so than senile old President Hácha. Local history books tend to call him “the Czech Quisling.”

2.

The staunchest defenders of the values of national education are teachers because, whatever we might otherwise think of them, they have the authority and the will to be subversive. And they deserve praise for that.

3.

Sport? What a load of fascist rubbish it is.

169

Once again I find myself frustrated by my genre’s constraints. No ordinary novel would encumber itself with three characters sharing the same name—unless the author were after a very particular effect. Me, I’m stuck not only with Colonel Moravec, the brave head of Czech secret services in London, but with the heroic Moravec family who are part of the internal Resistance, and with Emanuel Moravec, the infamous collaborationist minister. And that’s without even counting Captain Václav Morávek, the head of the Tri kralové Resistance network. This must be tiresome and confusing for the reader. In a fiction, you’d just do away with the problem: Colonel Moravec would become Colonel Novak, for instance, and the Moravec family would be transformed into the Svigar family—why not?—while the traitor might be rebaptized with a fanciful name like Nutella or Kodak or Prada. But of course I am not going to play that game. My only concession to the reader’s convenience consists in not declining the proper nouns: so, even if the feminine form of “Moravec” ought logically to be “Moravcova,” I will nevertheless keep the basic form when talking about Aunt Moravec. I do this in order not to add one complication (the homonyms of real people) to another (the declension of feminine or plural proper nouns in the Slav languages). Well, I’m not writing a Russian novel, am I? Anyway, it’s worth noting that in the French translation of War and Peace, Natasha Rostova becomes (or remains) Natasha Rostov.

170

Goebbels’s diary, February 6, 1942:

Gregory gave me a report on the Protectorate. The atmosphere is very good. Heydrich has worked brilliantly. He has shown such prudence and political intelligence that there is no more talk of crisis. Heydrich wanted to replace Gregory with an SS-Führer. I don’t agree. Gregory has an excellent knowledge of the Protectorate and the Czech population, and Heydrich’s staff is not always very intelligent. Above all, it does not show much leadership. That’s why I keep faith with Gregory.

Sorry, I don’t have the faintest idea who this Gregory could be. And just so my falsely offhand tone doesn’t give you the wrong idea: I have tried to find out!

171

Goebbels’s diary, February 15, 1942:

I had a long conversation with Heydrich about the situation in the Protectorate. Sentiment there is now much more favorable to us. Heydrich’s measures are producing good results. It is true that the intelligentsia is still hostile to us, but the danger to German security from Czech elements in the Protectorate has been completely neutralized. Heydrich is clever. He plays cat and mouse with the Czechs and they swallow everything he tells them. He has carried out a number of extremely popular measures, first and foremost the almost total conquest of the black market. It is absolutely staggering to see how much food people have hidden away. He is successfully Germanizing a large number of Czechs. He proceeds in this matter with great caution but he will undoubtedly achieve good results in the long term. The Slavs, he emphasized, cannot be educated as one educates a Germanic people. One must either break them or humble them constantly. At present he does the latter. Our task in the Protectorate is perfectly clear. Neurath completely misjudged it, and that’s how the first crisis in Prague arose.