Chocolate Cake With Hitler (10 page)

1942

The summer when I was ten we made a film for Papa. It was Mummy’s idea. We spent the summer in the countryside, away from the bombing – Swan Island, then Castle Lanke, and finally a farm in the small
village
of Obergau. Papa had to stay in Berlin because of work. We wanted him to be able to see the fatherland in all its summer glory.

It was quite good fun making the film because we did lots of nice things – swimming, riding, playing with the farm animals, picnicking in the woods – so that we could get them on the film. At one point we filmed a visit from General Field Marshall Rommel. He’s my favourite general. We lined up on the front steps and presented him with flowers when he arrived. We were all on our best behaviour, even Heide, who didn’t always put on her best front for filming. In fact, the film begins with Heide complaining about Papa hurting her bottom when he smacked her, which I thought we should cut out, but Mummy said Papa would think that was funny. Mummy says Papa likes to see a bit of spirit. I hate that about grown-ups. They drum it into you that you’ve got to be good and not make a fuss and you try your hardest to do that, only to discover that they think your little sister is really sweet when she behaves like a rascal.

I had my birthday during the filming and we filmed
Mummy giving me an accordion and me playing it really badly. That’s the most embarrassing bit – at least as far as I’m concerned. The film ends, as the summer ended, at school in Wandlitz. They filmed Helmut in his class.

It started with the “Hail Hitler” salute.

“Today,” said the teacher, “I am feeling really curious. I would like to know what you children would like to be when you grow up.” The teacher himself was more than grown up – one of those who had been brought out of retirement because so many teachers had joined the army. He was thin, bald, with a shorn halo of white hair.

Almost all the hands in the class shot up. Helmut was chosen. He stands very properly, hands straight down by his sides. Papa will like that.

“I would like to be a forester.”

“I would like that too,” says the teacher. Helmut sits back down and the teacher picks other children. He only chooses boys. Another one wants to be a forester. Someone wants to be a hunter.

At last he chooses a girl, “Margaret.”

She stands up with a big smile, “A nurse.”

“A good job for a woman. Some jobs are right for girls, some for boys. Look at all these hands. I can’t ask all of you. Helmut, tell us, why do you want to be a forester?”

Helmut jumps back out of his seat. This time he
stutters. “Because I like being with animals and being in the beautiful forest.”

“Yes, being a forester is a good healthy job. What skills do you need to be a forester?”

Again, he picks on the boys to answer. Someone mentions shooting, someone mentions maths.

“Indeed. I have a friend who is a forester. He shoots ducks. There are ten ducks. He shoots one, how many are left?”

Almost everyone’s hand goes up, but not Helmut’s.

“Helmut?”

Helmut jumps back up. He hasn’t been listening. He stutters more, “The same number as before, minus one.”

“And how many is that?”

Silence from Helmut; he looks all round the room. Hands sticking up and waving all around.

“How many were there before?”

Long pause, “Seven?”

“Try again.”

Someone must have muttered it.

“Ten.”

“Correct, and how many were shot?”

“One.”

“Correct, so how many are left?”

You can see the relief on Helmut’s face – he thinks he is on safe ground: “Ten minus one is nine, so nine ducks are left.”

“No. There are none left. Who can explain why there are none left?”

This time he actually chooses a girl.

“So, Helmut,” he says, “having heard her
explanation
. Tell us all why there are no ducks left.”

“Because,” Helmut stammers, repeating the girl’s words, “the ducks have been scared by the shot and they have all flown away!”

Granny B. was with us all summer. If I couldn’t sleep I would go down in the evenings and she would ask one of the maids to make us warm milk and we would sit on the sofa – she would be doing her embroidery and I would be knitting – and she would tell me all her stories about the olden days, picking up from wherever she felt like, depending on what mood she was in.

“Of course, your mother’s marriage to Gunther Quandt didn’t last. The age difference was too great. But I think the thing that finally ended it was her
stepson
Helmut’s death. It devastated your mother. He was only eighteen. He had appendicitis. He should not have died but he was studying, first in London and then in Paris, and the stupid, stupid English and French doctors didn’t know what they were doing. In London they told him to avoid spicy foods and to sleep with a hot-water bottle. He just got iller and iller. Finally a French doctor diagnosed his problem and operated, but
it was too late, the appendix had burst and the poison had spread throughout his body. Magda and Gunther rushed from Berlin. He was in agonies. Not even morphine could help him. Magda stayed with him for three days. He died in her arms, whilst Gunther paced up and down the streets. I don’t think they ever spoke about it. It was like a wound at the heart of their
marriage
. Something too painful to touch. Two years later they divorced, and to be fair, Gunther was generous to her, and he has always been a good father to Harald. He allowed Harald to live with her, unless she
remarried
, which of course she did, when she married your father. Harald must have been about ten. But even then Gunther made sure that Harald was living so close to his mother that, in fact, he spent most of his time with her.”

“What happened to Mummy’s friend Victor?”

“Well, he followed his dream, and he died for it. He went to live in the new Jewish homeland in Palestine and became one of the chief negotiators, I believe, with the British and German governments. But one evening he was strolling on the beach with his wife when two men approached. The story goes that they came up to Victor and asked him the time. As he reached for his pocket watch one of the men shot him. There were memorial services for him in four different countries – you would have been a baby at this time – the Berlin memorial service was held in the Philharmonie Hall. It
was enormous. Thousands must have attended. There were certainly reports of hundreds of people crowding the streets outside. That will have been a comfort to his mother. Of course, your mother couldn’t go – it wouldn’t be done for the wife of Josef Goebbels to be seen at the funeral of a Jew. Not after all the trouble there had been with the Jewish Question. I imagine she had her memories.”

I always wanted to hear about when Mummy and Papa met.

“Well, they’re the ones to ask about that. All I know is that after the divorce your mother was looking for something to keep her busy. All the talk was of the Nazis – how they were going to turn this country around, and one of her friends took her to a rally. That’s where she first saw your father. I remember meeting her in a café shortly after. She told me of her plans to volunteer to work in your father’s office.

“‘Mama,’ she said. ‘You have never seen anything like it. The energy. The intelligence. This man is electric. He is going to set Germany on fire.’

“She’s always liked powerful men, your mother, always. I wonder whether you will be the same.”

The year ended with one of our most miserable Christmases. It started with a visit to see Mummy in the sanatorium. It was about two weeks before Christmas,
and we were supposed to be celebrating Mummy and Papa’s wedding anniversary. Mummy was recovering from a heart attack. She looked old without her
makeup
on, and she had big black bags under her eyes. We took bunches of ivy and laurel because we didn’t have any flowers in the garden.

We’d planned to sing her some carols but she had a bad headache, so we sang her a very quiet lullaby:

We thought she’d be home for Christmas, but she wasn’t well enough. It meant we didn’t wrap the presents for the poor, which is one of my best bits. I always help by holding down the paper whilst Mummy ties the
ribbons
, and the dining room always feels so cosy with the fire blazing and the lamps shining and all the beautiful wrapping paper laid out on the table. The scissors are always lost and my legs get pins and needles, but at the end of the afternoon we have two big piles of presents – one for the poor and one for the servants.

This year the piles just appeared ready wrapped. I think Papa’s secretaries must have done them. We
still went to the big party to give out the presents but it just didn’t feel Christmassy.

It was the same with decorating the tree on Christmas Eve. The maids did it instead of Mummy and it didn’t feel at all exciting. Because of rationing, all the
decorations
were wooden and metal; nothing you could eat, no little marzipan apples. Papa read us the Christmas story and we opened our presents – I can’t remember what they were – and we munched little bits of chopped-up apple and some raisins instead of
chocolate
. I knew Edda Goering would be stuffing her ugly little face with all the chocolates and marzipan she could shovel in. We tried to persuade Papa to let us have a little bit of chocolate for Christmas, but he insisted that we couldn’t: “We must show the servants a good example. We are not the Goerings. We are not cheats.”

I am proud of Mummy and Papa, but sometimes I wish our parents weren’t such goody-goodies, always doing what’s right rather than what’s nice.

Day Seven in the Bunker

Saturday 28 April, 1945

T
ea with Uncle Adi was very crowded: Auntie Eva, Mummy and Papa, Flight Captain Reitsch, General Von Greim, all the dogs. Uncle Leader’s mind was
completely
elsewhere. He didn’t play with Blondi or do any tricks. He didn’t ask any questions. He just ate cake. His hand was shakier than ever. He spilled his hot chocolate again, all down the front of his jacket, but this time he either didn’t notice or he didn’t care. He stuffed the cake into his mouth. Crumbs stuck to his moustache. The room smells revolting.

Flight Captain Reitsch did most of the talking. How brave the German soldiers are. What a beautiful spring. I don’t know. Anyway, in the end she did what I was dreading and clapped her hands:

“My Leader, I have taught the children a new song which they are going to sing for you.”

Uncle Adi shifted his position on the sofa and picked up another piece of cake.

“Children.” She fixed her staring eyes upon us.

We got into our positions in a semi circle facing Uncle Adi. Flight Captain Reitsch stood with her back to him conducting us, and blocking my view of him, so I had no idea whether he was enjoying it.

We sang the lullaby through, once all together and then in two parts – me and Heide and Helmut
together
, Hilde and Holde and Hedda together – and then in three parts. I was with Heide. I expected to find Uncle Adi snoozing by the time we finished, but he clapped one hand on his knee with mild enthusiasm.

All the other grown-ups clapped loudly, and then everyone went quiet. None of us mentioned Snow White. Not even Helmut. Auntie Eva suggested that we go and play hide-and-seek. And that was that.

All these days are blurring into one. I’m playing patience. Mummy strokes my hair as she wafts past. Smiles vaguely, but doesn’t look me in the eye. Mrs. Junge twitters endlessly but doesn’t say anything useful, and she doesn’t stop and listen if you ask her a question. Papa either doesn’t notice us at all, if we see him in the Leader Bunker, or he comes up here and claps his hands and asks how everyone is, and is all smiles for a moment, and then he’s gone. Every time he tells us the
same thing: “We’re very close to victory now. The troops are fighting magnificently.” I used to believe him, but now I can see that his eyes are lying. He doesn’t believe it himself. The others haven’t a clue. Helmut always says “Hurray!” None of them worry about the war at all.

It must have been this morning that I saw Auntie Eva talking to Mrs. Junge and one of the other secretaries – a woman called Dara; I don’t really know her. Liesl says she was a model for Elizabeth Arden before she came to work for Uncle Leader. She’s quite
beautiful
in a slightly horsey way. Auntie Eva became quite giggly and in a loud whisper – which us children could obviously hear, but we knew we were meant to pretend that we couldn’t – she said to the two secretaries: “I bet you’ll be crying again by this evening.”

Mrs. Junge looked horrified. “Will it be as soon as that?” Dara was sucking hard on her cigarette.

But Auntie Eva was laughing. “No, not like that. It’s nothing to worry about. I can’t tell you any more about it yet.”

The thing that bothered me about this conversation was not Auntie Eva’s secretiveness, which is really no surprise, but Mrs. Junge’s reaction. She’s clearly
expecting
something very bad to happen.

I asked Auntie Eva whether Gretl had had her baby, but she said she didn’t know. So I’ve no idea what
yesterday’s
crying was all about.

Mummy put us to bed tonight. She read us “The Wolf and the Man” from the Brothers Grimm book; it’s one of the shortest but quite funny. The she clapped the book shut and, giving each of us a quick kiss on the forehead, flicked off the light switch and left. In the dark with my eyes shut I can see the young soldier boy dropping the glass, and I can see it shatter on the concrete floor.