THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, October 2, 2019 |A
The Honored
Prisoner
A Guest of the Reich
By Peter Finn
(Pantheon, 240 pages, $28.95)BOOKSHELF| By Moira Hodgson
I
n September 1944, while at the Ritz in Paris celebrating
the city’s liberation, Gertrude Legendre made the
reckless decision to visit the front. She loved adventure
and wanted to get close enough “to smell the fighting.”
Together with three American intelligence officers, she set
off for the German border village of Wallendorf, which they
thought had been taken by the Allies. The idea was to
“mosey up to the line,” as one of her companions put it, “so
the lady could hear some gunfire.” When they arrived, they
heard plenty of shots, but the shots were directed at them.
The village had been retaken by the Nazis.
In “A Guest of the Reich,” his gripping account of Legendre’s
captivity by the Germans in World War II, Peter Finn brings to
light an unfamiliar side of the Nazi regime. During her time as
a prisoner, Mr. Finn tells us, Legendre discovered that there
was “a parallel Nazi detention system whose relative privileges
stood in stark contrast to the horrors and barbarism of the
death camps.” Castles, private villas and hotels were used to
detain high-ranking figures. “Eventually, the system housed
hundreds of prisoners; members
of several European royal families;
German dissidents whom Hitler
or Himmler didn’t wish to be
killed, at least not immediately.”
Legendre (1902-2000) was a
big-game hunter from South
Carolina high society. After the
attack on Pearl Harbor she joined
the OSS, the wartime intelligence
agency created by Franklin
Roosevelt, and worked first in
Washington, then in London,
where she was privy to closely
guarded government secrets. She was not
afraid of danger. She’d always rebelled against
the strictures of high society, preferring the wild outdoors to
balls and debutante parties. Before the war, she and her
husband would spend months hunting in Africa and Asia,
leaving their two children at home with a nanny. Most of
the animals she felled were brought back to museums and
other institutions in America. It’s hard to read about her
expeditions, which Mr. Finn recounts in gory detail, without
a feeling of revulsion. After she shot a lion standing with his
pride—three lionesses and six small cubs—Legendre wrote
in her diary, “It was a gala, red letter day.” She shot zebras
for their skins, which her tailor made into “summer sports
coats.” (You needed six for one coat.) When she shot a rhino,
the wounded animal let out such “high shrill shrieks” that
she almost felt sorry for killing “such a huge, happy beast.”
The big strip she took off its back made a nice tabletop.
Autres temps, autres moeurs.
Legendre saw Germany firsthand on a trip across the
country in August 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics. Mr.
Finn reports that she gives no account of Nazis in her
journal. You’d think they’d be hard to miss. In 1938 the news
that Hitler was threatening Czechoslovakia also made little
impact on her. She was hunting in Persia at the time and
couldn’t imagine “war being declared over something so
hopelessly small and pathetic as Czecho.” She was an anti-
Semite and a racist, “casual with her prejudice in her private
correspondence.”
When she accidently crossed the front line into Germany
with her friends, Legendre was dressed in the khaki uniform
of the Women’s Army Corps. The Nazis at first suspected her
of being a spy. She was relentlessly interrogated (but not
tortured) and subjected to stretches of solitary confinement.
Once they became aware of her wealth (and connections to
senior American generals) they saw a potential propaganda
tool and treated her as a “special and honored” prisoner.When the Allies pushed toward the Rhine, the Germans
retreated, taking their prisoners with them. Legendre was
moved from city to city and witnessed firsthand the damage
done by the Allies. She arrived in Frankfurt under moonlight
to see “crumbled buildings, heaps of rubble, gaunt skeletons
of towers” silhouetted against the night sky, a shocking con-
trast to the vibrant town with its medieval center that she
had visited in 1936. The center of Berlin was a “dead city”;
the gaunt pedestrians wore “masks of defeat and apathy.”
Eventually she was escorted to the Rheinhotel Dreesen in
Bad Godesberg. The hotel had been a favorite of the Führer
before the war, the place where he and Goebbels planned the
Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders.
Legendre found the distinguished Art Nouveau building,
despite the barbed wire, watchtowers and SS troops on its
grounds, less like a prison than an old-folks’ home. There
were hot-water bottles; games of chess, bridge and Chinese
checkers; math lessons; lectures; even deck tennis. Residents
each had a favorite chair and were given to picky grumbling
about the food, which was plentiful.
Other “guests” included retired French officers—
generals and 75 colonels—and Marie-Agnès Cailliau de
Gaulle, older sister of Charles, who had been arrested in
Normandy. After much pleading on her part, her husband—
who had been sent to the Buchenwald death camp—was
finally allowed to join them at the hotel. His arrival was a
stark reminder of the other side of Nazi prison life. He’d lost
so much weight that at first his wife didn’t recognize him.
During her six months’ captivity, Mr. Finn writes,
Legendre showed a great deal of courage. She had a
personality that “radiated confidence and resolve” and was
“an archetypical American woman, endowed with a kind of
bullying certainty, as if she had just strolled, cigarette in
hand, out of a celluloid frame.” She also had an enormous
ego and a strong sense of entitlement.
At the Rheinhotel there was plenty of wine on hand but
water was limited. Baths were allowed just once a month.
During air raids, Legendre, who hated to go down to the
cellar, would stay back so she could steal some of the hotel’s
supply of hot water. “Without a twinge of conscience, I
hopped into many a tub not meant for me and thus
increased my baths far above the legal quota.”
Mr. Finn, the Washington Post’s national-security editor
and the co-author of “The Zhivago Affair” (2014), has drawn
upon memoirs, diaries, letters and OSS archives to provide
both a fascinating character-portrait and an intriguing foot-
note to events that led up to the collapse of Nazi Germany.
His book is as well-paced and exciting to read as a good thriller.Ms. Hodgson is the author of “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at
the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food.”Gertrude Legendre, an American socialite
with a taste for adventure, was for six months
held captive by the Nazis.Electricity Doesn’t Light Up the Soul
T
he 20th-century left
tended to define prog-
ress in terms of mate-
rial goods, and that was true
of liberals and Communists
alike. Lyndon B. Johnson
waged “war on poverty,” and
in 1920 Lenin confidently de-
clared that “communism is
Soviet government plus the
electrification of the whole
country.”
That optimism is gone.
Americans live in a world of
mass air travel, endless enter-
tainment options, food deliv-
ery, constant connectivity and
air-conditioning, and the left
insists we have to renounce it
all. “Every one of the world’s
major polluting countries,”
writes novelist Jonathan Fran-
zen in the New Yorker, must
“institute draconian conserva-
tion measures, shut down
much of its energy and trans-
portation infrastructure, and
completely retool its economy.
...Human beings, including
millions of government-hating
Americans, need to accept
high taxes and severe curtail-
ment of their familiar life
styles without revolting. They
must accept the reality of cli-
mate change and have faith in
the extreme measures taken
to combat it....Everyday,
instead of thinking about
breakfast, they have to think
about death.”Children shouldn’t even
think about schoolwork, ac-
cording to 16-year-old Greta
Thunberg, organizer of the
Global Climate Strike: “Why
should we study for a future
that is being taken away from
us?” This atmosphere pro-
motes an antipathy to reli-gious optimism. “Thinking of
sending your ‘thoughts and
prayers’?” asks a CNN report.
Don’t bother: “Some atheists
and agnostics would pay
money to avoid them, accord-
ing to a study.” A co-author of
the study told the network
that the “result is surprising
because one might expect that
atheists/agnostics would be in-
different to people praying for
them—why care, if you don’t
believe in the gesture?”
Secular humanism seems
to be having an existential
crisis. Five-year plans and so-
cial engineering didn’t pro-
duce happiness. We got the
electricity, and it’s destroying
the planet. Yet the failure
hasn’t persuaded ideologues
to change their approach.
“Some people say that we
should study to become cli-
mate scientists so that we can
‘solve the climate crisis,’ ”
Ms. Thunberg says. “But the
climate crisis has already
been solved. We already have
all the facts and solutions.”Here it comes again: All
youhavetodoisacceptthe
answers. Yet even if the solu-
tions advocated by Ms. Thun-
berg work, they won’t stop
history. The human system
can’t be sealed off at the per-
fect moment. Tomorrow keeps
upsetting arrangements with
new events, new informa-
tion—Pearl Harbor, the Soviet
Union’s collapse, 9/11, the
2008 financial crisis, Brexit.
Part of the reason progres-
sives find President Trump so
maddening is that after com-
ing so close, they had to begin
all over again.
Kurt Godel warned that
there would be questions we
could not answer without ap-
pealing to a larger system in a
universe with one puzzle
nested inside another. There’s
nothing to do but see where it
goes—though it helps if you
have faith.Mr. Fernandez is a soft-
ware developer and author of
the Belmont Club blog.By Richard Fernandez
Secular humanism
was full of promise.
Now it’s having an
existential crisis.OPINION
Watergate
compari-
sons are in
the air but a
big differ-
ence is over-
looked. Only
a few days
elapsed be-
tween news
breaking of
anonymous
whistleblower allegations
against Donald Trump (the ac-
tual report hadn’t even been
seen yet) and Nancy Pelosi’s
opening of an impeachment
inquiry.
No Ben Bradlee. No weeks
and months as the story de-
veloped to ponder and reflect
on what it might mean. Luck-
ily, media ranks today are
overflowing with people who
don’t need to labor their
minds over the matters that
come before them. They in-
stantly know the answer be-
cause Twitter tells them.
And yet, once again, their
rush to judgment is getting
ready to blow up in their
faces.
Numerous press accounts
claimed falsely, even with the
evidence in hand, that Mr.
Trump had asked for a “favor”
from Ukraine’s president in the
form of “dirt” on Joe Biden.
Yet the plain words of the
available transcript show the
“favor” he sought was cooper-
ation with the Justice Depart-
ment’s perfectly proper inves-
tigation of the 2016 election.
Now come reports in the
Journal, the New York Times
and the Washington Post that
at the behest of Attorney Gen-
eral William Barr, the admin-
All Roads Lead to Mueller
istration has reached out in
similar fashion to other gov-
ernments, including Italy’s,
Britain’s and Australia’s.
House Democrats, of
course, are free to impeach
over any charge that can win a
majority, including a claim Mr.
Trump sought foreign inter-
ference in the 2020 election.
But they didn’t bargain on the
Russia-collusion fiasco forcing
its way into the drama they
are trying to create. Even a
daily email blast from the
Trump-unfriendly Columbia
Journalism Review acknowl-
edges that the “Trump-
Ukraine story, it’s safe to say,
is now about much more than
Trump and Ukraine.”
Democrats were going to
face powerful counterargu-
ments anyway: The U.S. media
itself had raised questions
about Mr. Biden; Mr. Trump
had merely asked Ukraine to
take up the allegations with
the U.S. attorney general,
which is a pretty good shield
against Mr. Trump himself
lapsing toward any illegalities.
But more important is the
new outpouring of reporting
that sets these questions in
the broader context of a legiti-
mate inquiry into the actions
of U.S. intelligence agencies in
the last presidential election.
The implications are not
small. Democrats may have to
reconsider their selection of
Adam Schiff as impeachment
frontman because of his role
in promoting the Russia-collu-
sion canard. Questions will
have to be asked about the
motives of the whistle-
blower—a CIA official who
dropped his highly polishedbomb on the eve of a Justice
Department inspector gen-
eral’s report that will begin
opening the lid on FBI and CIA
actions during the 2016 cam-
paign.
At least by the public, ques-
tions should also be asked
about the mainstream media’s
conspicuous reluctance to look
into Democratic and Obama
administration behavior in theRussia-collusion matter. Why,
it’s almost like the press
doesn’t want the subject in-
vestigated, for fear of what
might be learned about the
press.
Three years ago, I had an
epiphany watching the George
Stephanopoulos show on ABC.
Mr. Trump behaved badly
(typically) when the family of
a slain soldier appeared at the
Democratic convention, but he
never equated the dead sol-
dier with a radical Islamic ter-
rorist, as one of the ABC
show’s panelists said.
An unspoken decision
seems to have been made that
Mr. Trump has no reputation
to injure; he is an illegitimate
president, so the media is free
to put words in his mouth. It
happened with his Charlottes-
ville comments. It happened
with his infamous tweet that
tried to say something a lot
more complicated than justthat four congresswomen of
color should “go back” to their
countries of ethnic origin.
And it continues. The magi-
cal ellipses have been rolled
out again to make Mr. Trump’s
conversation with the Ukrai-
nian president sound a lot less
ambiguous and a lot more in-
criminating than it was.
The media’s hopscotching
from one impeachment cause
to another, until they landed
on one Mrs. Pelosi would en-
dorse, is not likely at this late
date to convince a broad spec-
trum of Americans. How fit-
ting, though, that they hop-
scotched to one that serves
Mr. Trump’s own obsession
with 2016. All roads lead back
to Mueller, and the fact that
Mr. Trump, surely one of the
most controversial and sin-
ning of presidents, may also
be the most sinned against.
He is the paradox that
keeps on giving. Illicit actions
by FBI chief James Comey
may have helped elect him.
Joe Biden, said to be the op-
ponent he fears most, is being
taken out by friendly fire.
Questions about 2016 that
could have been aired years
ago, if the mainstream media
had played it straight, may
soon crowd out the Demo-
cratic hopes of a 2020 cam-
paign focused on his manifest
deficiencies.
If liberals are looking for
someone to blame, they might
start with their own favorite
news outlets, which owed it to
them to keep their critique of
Mr. Trump grounded in reali-
ties and even mention the oc-
casional unwelcome truth
once in a while.The Russia collusion
morass threatens to
spoil the Democrats’
impeachment drama.BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.
When Oliver
Wendell
Holmes Jr.
was a Har-
vard under-
graduate, he
wrote an es-
say criticiz-
ing Plato as
“loose and
unscientific”
and sent it to
his intellectual hero, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, who
promptly set him straight. “I
have read your piece,” Emer-
son replied. “When you
strike at a king, you must kill
him.”
While it is too early to
gauge how likely impeach-
ment-minded Democrats are to
meet Emerson’s test, the early
signs aren’t encouraging.
Public opinion is sharply di-
vided, as illustrated in two
surveys released Sept. 30. A
CNN poll found 47% of respon-
dents in favor of impeaching
and removing President Trump
from office (a 6-point gain
since late May) and 45% op-
posed. Democrats support pur-
suing this course by a 55-point
margin, Republicans resist it
by a 66-point margin, and in-
dependents are split down the
middle.
These results should be in-
terpreted in a wider context.
By many measures, Mr. Trump
is the most polarizing presi-
dent in the history of survey
research. It is nothing new for
his adversaries to support ex-
pelling him from office. An-
other CNN poll, conducted in
September 2018, found 47% of
Americans in favor of im-
Polls Argue Against Impeachment
peaching and removing him,
and support for this outcome
has averaged 42% in seven
CNN surveys since the summer
of 2018. Although recent
events have had an effect on
public opinion, it is important
not to exaggerate the extent of
the change.
The latest Quinnipiac sur-
vey underscores this cau-
tionary note. Mr. Trump’s
job approval stands at 41%,
within its narrow 4-point
range throughout 2019. The
share of respondents ex-
pressing “strong” approval
of the president jumped from
29% to 35%, its highest level
ever, and the share regarding
him as “honest” rose from
30% to 37%. The Democrats’
decision to open an impeach-
ment inquiry appears to have
rallied the president’s core
supporters.
It has also energized Mr.
Trump’s opponents. Quinnipiac
finds that the share of regis-
tered voters favoring impeach-
ment and removal surged by
10 points while opposition fell
by the same amount. This
large shift leaves the American
people divided, 47% to 47%,
and partisan polarization has
only intensified.
Most of the increased sup-
port for removing the presi-
dent has come from Demo-
crats, among whom it rose
from 73% to 90%. The rest is
attributable to independents,
up from 34% to 42%, while 92%
of Republicans continue to op-
pose the Democrats’ effort.
Despite the revelations of
the past week, Democrats still
face substantial public skepti-cism about their motives. Ac-
cording to the Quinnipiac sur-
vey, only 36% of the electorate
believes that advocates of im-
peachment and removal are
responding to the facts, com-
pared with 56% who think
they are moved mainly by
“partisan politics.”
Nevertheless, there is some
basis for Democrats’ hopes.
The Republicans’ attempt to
remove President Clinton from
office fell short, not because
the American people doubtedthe truth of the charges
against him, but rather be-
cause they overwhelmingly
concluded that the charges
didn’t rise to the level of im-
peachable offenses.
Not this time. Fifty-two
percent of voters, including
54% of independents, believe
that asking a foreign leader
for help defeating an oppo-
nent in the forthcoming elec-
tion is enough to warrant re-
moving the president. If Mr.
Trump’s accusers can make a
convincing case that this is
what happened, they will
probably gain ground among
independent voters.
Still, the chances of bipar-
tisan support for President
Trump’s removal are slim.
When the House Judiciary
Committee voted on impeach-ing President Nixon in 1974,
six out of 17 Republicans sup-
ported the charge that he had
obstructed justice, and seven
agreed with the charge that
he had abused the powers of
his office. This presaged the
dramatic trip down Pennsyl-
vania Avenue of a Republican
delegation headed by Sen.
Barry Goldwater to inform
Nixon that his support in the
Senate had collapsed. In 1998,
by contrast, only five House
Democrats out of 205 favored
any of the articles of im-
peachment against Mr. Clin-
ton, who retained the support
of every Senate Democrat,
leaving the Republicans far
short of the two-thirds
threshold for conviction.
This year is shaping up as
a rerun of 1998. It is possible
that not a single House Re-
publican will support any ar-
ticle of impeachment against
Mr. Trump. Of the 53 Senate
Republicans, 45 hail from sol-
idly red states where the
main threat to their re-elec-
tion would come from a pri-
mary contest in which their
opponent was backed by Mr.
Trump. Of the remaining
eight, only four will face the
voters in 2020.
The odds are that when
Democrats strike at the king,
they won’t kill him. Now is
the time for them to ask
whether this outcome will
improve their chances of de-
feating Mr. Trump in the
2020 election and, if not,
whether they should pursue a
course more likely to benefit
the country and their own
prospects.Nixon only fell after
Republicans defected.
So far, Trump retains
their strong support.POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston