George Washington's Ghost

Eleanor, seeing a good man distraught with shame for acts over which he had no control but nevertheless, still felt palpably responsible, stepped forward and gave him a hug. This was not a thing she had often had occasion to do, notwithstanding Lothar, two years her senior, was actually her nephew.

In that moment there was a horrible sense of familial, royal and patriotic duties getting irretrievably tangled, torn, warped and the Queen knew as well as anyone in the room that there were things were going on around them – unforgivable things – which would taint Anglo-German relations for generations to come. The scale of the disaster was as incalculable as it was intangible, such was the surreal atmosphere of that dreadful day.

It was obvious that no man felt the dire consequences of the catastrophe unravelling about him more keenly that Lothar von Bismarck.

In preparation for his life-long career; first as a junior secretary in the Kaiser’s Colonial Office followed by a succession of increasingly senior posts until eventually, he succeeded his father at the Wilhelmstrasse, the German Foreign Office on the Unter den Linden in Berlin, Lothar had spent two years at Harrow, and subsequently studied Classics and Medieval History at Balliol College, Oxford, where he had first met with many of the men with whom, it was anticipated, he would work with, and more often against, in pursuance of his Kaiser’s policies in later life.

In comparison with the giant, somewhat fiercely over-bearing persona of his illustrious forebear depicted in nineteenth century portraits and monochrome photographs – the acknowledged guiding hand behind the Treaty of Paris, the man every German child was taught was the ‘saviour of the First Reich’ – Lothar was a man constructed on slighter, more dapper lines belying the fact he was the ‘Iron Man’s’ great-great grandson.

Born into an age when in polite German society to be an Anglophile was a thing to be greatly admired and respected, a mark of distinction; and in England to be regarded as a Teutophile or Germanophile, was viewed as thoroughly ‘good form’ and demonstrative of a man or woman having a healthy surfeit of ‘the right stuff’, Lothar had always taken unquenchable pride in his familial connections to the Royal Family. His mother was Eleanor’s eldest sister, a thing that was until he was in his twenties just an incidental matter but then the atrocity of Empire Day 1961 had occurred, and suddenly, his aunt had become, overnight, the Queen Consort of the King of England, and his old friend ‘Bertie’, George V, and thus, by an accident of history Lothar von Bismarck presently found himself nineteenth in line of succession to the English throne.

Bizarrely, at one stage back in the 1950s he had actually been seventh in line to the British throne but – much to his relief – the present King of England’s offspring had, of late loyally, dutifully and with no little gusto been producing new royal princes and princesses at a rate which far outstripped the demise of their seniors in the Royal blood line. Inevitably, in the last few years as tensions bubbled just beneath the surface, in Germany the Press took a malicious pleasure in teasing Lothar about his ‘British antecedents’. For example, cartoons of him hob-knobbing with the Royal Family, referring to the King as ‘Bertie’ and the Queen calling him ‘Bissi’, appeared in the papers every time he was accused of being ‘soft on the Brits’.

To his immense mortification he had been sent to the Charlottenburg to deliver a personal message from the Kaiser by acclamation.

Kaiser durch Akklamation.

Lothar von Bismarck had choked on the words.

He could hardly look King George in the eye.

‘It is my Kaiser’s command that I inform you, Your Majesty,’ he intoned, grieving for times now forever past, ‘that you should remove your Royal person from the lands of the German Empire this day. My Kaiser states that he no longer considers himself to be related to the Windsor branch of the Anglo-Germanic blood line. He declares that you and all members of your court and of your government, including the diplomatic service, are hereby deemed persona non grata in the Empire. All diplomatic and governmental relations with the British Empire are henceforth severed. Further, all British Empire assets on German soil are hereby forfeit.’

The German Foreign Minister shook his head.

Despairing now…

‘Further, it is decreed that the airspace above the German Empire is closed to British Empire aircraft. Likewise, German waters are closed to all British vessels upon the seas. Ships of the merchant marine of the German Navy will no longer salute, give respect or right of way to any British or British Empire registered merchant vessel or Royal Navy ship…’

By then George Walpole was staring at his friend, aghast.