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Albert Einstein

Chartwell

Kent, England

Tuesday, 14 March 1933

WINSTON CHURCHILL TOOK the proffered brick from the proud hand of his eleven-year-old daughter Mary. It was a bright, crisp day in the Weald of Kent at his beloved country home, Chartwell, about which he felt that a day away from it was a day wasted. His youngest child, Mary, was a pretty girl with curly blonde hair and a sunny disposition. She was made more precious to his wife, Clementine, and him because of the tragic death of their fourth child, Marigold, from meningitis at age three in August 1921. The birth of Mary twelve months later had helped heal their broken hearts.

Churchill placed Mary’s brick on top of two other bricks that had received freshly applied mortar from Churchill’s hand. At his present rate of bricklaying, the unpredictable English weather permitting, he calculated he would be finished by mid-July with the walls of the summer house he was building in the walled garden adjacent to the main house.  Of course, he would have to run those calculations past the Prof, his good friend Frederick Lindemann, who would be visiting Chartwell in a few days where they would discuss how to make the future of Nazi Germany a short one.

Churchill was quite proud of his brick laying skills and the fact that he had been made a member, albeit as an adult apprentice, of the Bricklayers Union. Bricklaying, like his painting, gave him a respite from the rigors and pressures of politics and, like his painting, required a high level of skill. Contrary to the falsehoods spread by his Socialist political adversaries in the Labour Party, Churchill had always supported the rights of trade unions to strike and bargain collectively with oppressive owners, especially coal mine owners in Wales.

Churchill’s thoughts were interrupted by a breathless female voice behind him.

“Mr. Churchill, Mr. Churchill,” the voice said, “your luncheon guests have arrived.”

“Thank you, Mrs. P,” Churchill replied, turning to face his secretary Violet Pearman, known to him fondly as ‘Mrs. P’. “Please escort them to my study after they have had an opportunity to freshen up from their journey. Pray tell my guests I shall be with them in a moment, just as soon as I finish this last brick. Also, please advise Miss Johansson of their arrival and ask her to join us there,” Churchill said as he sliced off the excess mortar with a trowel and deposited it in the bucket beside him.

“Come, Mary,” Churchill said to his daughter, extending his hand which she eagerly grasped, “bricklaying will have to be postponed for today as I have important guests who have just arrived.” Father and daughter then walked hand-in-hand back up the hill to the main house.

Ten minutes later, having changed from his bricklaying overalls into a three-piece, navy blue pinstripe suit and blue bow tie with white polka dots, Churchill walked into in his study one floor above the ground floor. It had a high cathedral ceiling with two large wooden beams crossing the room from one side to the other. A fire blazed in the fireplace at the end of the room. He placed his cigar on a nearby crystal ashtray, walked over to a sideboard and poured a small measure of whisky into a crystal tumbler. He added a splash of water, retrieved his cigar and stood before the wide window in his study overlooking the weald of Kent. He thought it was the most beautiful view in the world.

His guests had not yet arrived and, alternately taking a sip of whisky and a puff on his cigar, Churchill thought about all that had happened in Germany in the past seven weeks since Adolf Hitler had become its Chancellor.

Churchill’s 23-year old journalist son, Randolph, had covered Hitler’s two unsuccessful election campaigns in 1932 to defeat the German President Hindenburg and had predicted that, if Hitler ever came to power in Germany, war was inevitable. He tended to agree with his son who had met Hitler while Churchill had not. The closest Churchill had come to meeting the man was last year in Munich where he had been conducting research for a biography of his relative John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. Hitler’s foreign press secretary, the half-American, Harvard-educated Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, thought he had persuaded the Nazi leader to join Churchill’s party at dinner. He was wrong. Hitler stood them up.

Though Churchill had been out of government office since 1929 when his last post as Chancellor of the Exchequer ended, he maintained a network of intelligence sources throughout Europe, including Germany, who kept him as well informed on developments there as the British Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary. From them, he knew that in the last two months, Germany literally had become a gangster nation. The police made no effort to interfere with the SA, the ‘Brownshirts’ who served as the Nazi Party’s private army. Scores were settled with impunity. Robberies, rapes, beatings and murders were commonplace. Their victims were Communists, Social Democrats, Jews and anyone else who had ever offended the brown-shirted Storm Troopers of the SA.

The violence against the Jews and Hitler’s failure to rein it in were, in Churchill’s opinion, his first two big mistakes. He had told Hanfstaengl last year to pass on this advice to his boss:

“Tell him from me that anti-Semitism may be a good starter, but it’s a bad sticker.”

Now, Churchill was planning to make Hitler pay. The Jews were key. In the short term, with a little luck, what Churchill knew to be a very weak German economy could collapse and with it the entire odious Nazi regime. If not, then in the long term, Germany’s ability to re-arm and wage war would be dramatically weakened.

Churchill may have been out of power and out of influence, but he was not out of ideas. He had a multi-faceted plan for dealing with Hitler and the threat to the peace of Europe he posed. He hoped that the first, but not the last, step would be taken in a few moments.

“MR. CHURCHILL,” MRS. P SAID, “Professor Einstein and Rabbi Silver are here. And Miss Johansson, of course.”

“Thank you Mrs. P,” Churchill said as he placed his drink down and walked forward to greet his three guests. “Please ask Inches to bring us a chilled bottle of Pol Roger and four flutes.”

“Professor Einstein, Rabbi Silver,” Churchill said, “I’m so pleased you both were able to join me today for luncheon. Have you met our other guest, Miss Johansson?” he asked as he shook their hands.

Ingrid Johansson was a statuesque blonde in her early 30s. She wore a dove gray business suit cut to flatter a figure that needed little flattery. She was the owner and publisher of Freedom House Press, an American book publisher specializing in pro-liberty, pro-democracy, anti-fascist and, most recently, anti-Nazi books. She had engaged Churchill to write the Introduction to an American edition of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf. Churchill had agreed because it was to be heavily annotated with footnotes correcting all the book’s many inaccuracies and downright lies.

Albert Einstein, a Nobel Prize winner and professor of physics at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was a short man in his early 50s with bushy gray hair and a broad, black mustache. He offered a vivid contrast to the much taller man, several inches over six feet, who towered beside him—Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, the chief rabbi of The Temple in Cleveland, the largest Reform Jewish congregation in the United States. Silver was a vigorous 40 year old whose dark hair, graying at the temples, was swept straight back from his forehead. Both men wore dark vested suits, but Einstein’s was rumpled and creased, looking for all the world as if he had slept in it. Silver’s suit, in contrast, was immaculately tailored, the crease in its trousers sharp and precise.

“Yes, we have,” Einstein replied in a high-pitched voice. “We were talking with her a moment ago about the two books her publishing company will be putting out later this year and early next year—the annotated Mein Kampf and Hitler’s less than heroic service in the Great War.”

“Indeed, we must thank you for bringing us together with such a bright and courageous young woman,” Rabbi Silver said in a golden baritone voice that immediately reminded Churchill of his own mentor, the Irish-American statesman Bourke Cockran. “I have already placed my order for both of the books and I’ve promised to mention them favorably in one of my Sunday morning sermons to our congregation at The Temple in Cleveland. I also plan to send them to my rabbinical colleagues throughout the country.”  

“And I thank you, Winston,” Ingrid said as she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, “for allowing me the honor of meeting two such distinguished gentlemen. I fear I am out of my league with a Nobel laureate and the man who has taken Bourke Cockran’s place as America’s greatest orator.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Miss Johansson,” Rabbi Silver said. “I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Cockran speak on several occasions and it is an honor to be mentioned as one of his successors.”

Churchill motioned for his guests to join...