The Arms Maker of Berlin (24 page)

I ask you, do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?

“Ja!”

Even Kurt almost shivered. But given what they had endured earlier that evening, the worst moment came a few seconds later.

Do you agree that those who harm the war effort should lose their heads?

“Ja!”

They sounded like they meant it. Liesl pressed closer and turned her face to his.

“I’m scared, Kurt. And the worst part is, I’m not sure I will ever stop being scared. Not after tonight.”

“It will be better in the morning,” he said, stroking her hair. “It always is. We’ll go for a walk in the Grunewald. Enjoy some of that fake sunshine you see on the tree bark.”

She shook her head, as if that was no good at all.

“Sometimes I think we’ll never even survive the year. Not just us. Everyone. Either the police will take us away or some bomb will blow us all to pieces.”

His arms were around her now, and her face rose to his.

“Tell me that if they ever come for me you will do everything you can to save me,” she said. “Promise me.”

“Of course I will. I promise.”

“And that should be true for your family as well. Your sister. Your mother and father. We must all do everything in our power to save each other from the madmen. No matter what happens, no matter what the risk.”

Her eyes pleaded, on the verge of tears. Her emotions had reached a peak, and they were alone. No parents. No Hannelore. Just the two of them pressed together on the soft leather couch in the dim glow of a single lamp. He kissed her, and she responded with urgency. And when, a few moments later, he slipped his hands beneath her sweater she didn’t resist as she had in the past. Instead, she pulled his shirttail from his trousers and slid her own hands up his back, pressing closer.

Kurt was not particularly experienced in these matters. The closest he had come before to sexual conquest had been in the backseat of Erich’s car with a girl from their school who was said to be available to all comers, although she had only let Kurt briefly slide his hands to the tops of her thighs.

But at that moment with Liesl experience was no longer necessary, because matters took on a momentum of their own. They moved as if racing against time, one step leading to the next until his pants were off, and then her undergarments. Then he was climbing atop her, groping for position. Her hand guided him into place as she stared up at him, the vow they had made still evident in her eyes. Life or death, and this was their choice.

His movements were a little awkward at first. And just when it was seeming perfectly natural and comfortable, it ended all too quickly. But that, too, was okay, because she smiled and ran a finger down his chest, then softly kissed his lips, his nose, his eyelids. It was almost holy, a consecration of their promise.

“I am glad,” she whispered. “Glad that we did this.”

The radio had moved on to a marching song, with a drumbeat like the tramping of a thousand boots. They lay still, as if to let this army pass by their hiding place, and when the song was over she said again, “I am glad we did this.”

“I am, too.”

Outside, the sound of laughter. Cheerful voices were approaching up the sidewalk.

“My parents!” she cried.

She grabbed her clothes and ran for the bathroom. Kurt buttoned his shirt and pulled up his trousers. Whoever it was had stopped, even though the chatter continued. Of course. They had gone out with neighbors and were now saying good-bye. It gave him just enough time to cram his shirttail in and buckle his belt. His socks were still on, and he jammed his shoes on just as the door opened. Liesl’s father gave him a puzzled look.

“Where is Liesl?”

“She’s, uh, in the back. She should be right out.”

Liesl’s mother smiled and said hello, although her father still seemed wary. He had clearly been brought up short by the idea that Kurt and Liesl had been here alone. Thank goodness everyone stank these days, enough to cover all the telltale smells. And thank goodness the lights were low, so that they couldn’t see the flush of his face.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” Liesl appeared, smiling, hair combed. “How was your evening?”

“Ah, too much wine,” her mother said, “but that’s a nice problem for a change.”

She was obviously too jolly to notice anything untoward, although Liesl’s father was now looking everywhere, eyes darting, as if studying the evidence.

“Kurt and I just got back,” Liesl said. “But he can only stay long enough for a bite of chocolate. We both took a little nibble right when we came in.”

“That’s what it’s here for, so please do. Just don’t ask me how much I paid for it while your father is in the room.”

This finally coaxed a smile from the man, and Kurt breathed easier. Two close calls in one night. But the earlier episode made this one feel like a lark.

Liesl walked him outside, and rose on her toes to kiss him goodbye. Such a momentous day, and now the perfect ending—an embrace beneath the sheltering pines. He searched her face in the glow from the window. Was there a touch of regret? Perhaps. But there was also an unmistakable freshness, the excitement of new territory, a look that said there would be more time together just like this and no one could stop them.

The thought kept him content all the way home, even as he pedaled into a wintry headwind. There was a nervous moment when a pair of cops stopped him on Kantstrasse. But they were only checking identity papers, and by the time he reached Charlottenburg he was even toying with the idea of another raid on the office paper supply.

It was well past eleven o’clock, and Kurt expected he would have some explaining to do. Instead, he threw open the door to find everyone in the parlor, gathered in a tight circle that had the air of an emergency. His sister, Traudl, was sobbing, his father ashen. His mother’s head was bowed, and her hands were folded in her lap.

“What’s wrong?”

Reinhard shook his head.

“Everything,” he said. “The SS people were here. From the Racial Office.”

His father handed him a sheet of paper. It was some sort of genealogical chart with the words “Bauer Family” printed beneath a swastika.

“Your great-great-grandmother,” his father explained. “On your mother’s side.”

Reinhard didn’t say it disapprovingly, but Kurt’s mother looked away in shame and wiped a tear from her eye, as if she had forfeited the right to let them fall.

“Tainted,” she whispered. “My blood is tainted.”

Kurt found it halfway across the page:

“Anna Goldfarb, Jew.”

Born in Breslau, East Prussia, in 1826. She had married Karl Becker—his mother’s maiden name was Becker—whose lineage otherwise contained nothing but Aryan heritage, all the way back to 1800. But none of that mattered now.

“What does this mean?” Kurt asked.

“What do you think?” Traudl shrieked. “The wedding is off! My life is ruined!”

She ran from the room and up the stairs. Her bedroom door slammed.

“What does this mean?” he asked again.

“I don’t know yet,” his father said. “But it’s serious. We could lose everything.”

“They can’t. We’re too vital to the war effort. Speer won’t let them.”

“Everything,” his father repeated. “The worst part is, I saw it coming. Once they didn’t answer after three months I knew they must have found something, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I think that’s one reason I started checking possibilities in Bern.”

“Bern?” Kurt’s mother asked. “In Switzerland?”

Kurt and his father exchanged glances.

“It’s complicated,” Reinhard said. “And meaningless. Now I’ll never get another pass to travel.”

Kurt was sorry to hear that. He had grudgingly warmed to the idea of contacting the Americans. And to his surprise his father had been making progress. Only a week ago Reinhard had returned from Bern to confide pridefully that he had been granted a personal audience with the much-heralded Mr. Dulles. The American had even assigned his father a code name, Magneto. Useless now, of course, if the family lost its factories.

And what of Liesl? Surely she wouldn’t object to this Jewish connection, but her parents might. Even if they didn’t, Kurt might now be sent away, or imprisoned. Would they sew a Star of David onto his clothes just for this? Worse still, what if the authorities now decided to dig further into their activities? Surely they would discover not only his connections to Bonhoeffer but also everything about the local cell of the White Rose. His father was right. This meant disaster.

Kurt was too agitated to sit and watch his parents stare blankly at the floor, so he went upstairs. Perhaps something could be done to stave off events, given all their connections. He stepped into the bathroom and splashed his face. Then he looked in the mirror, studying his features, searching for some sign of his Jewish blood. Could you tell? He turned in profile, wondering if he had become so inured to all the propaganda that he was now imagining things about the set of his eyes, the shape of his nose. Perhaps later tonight there would be a knock at the door, and his family would be transported to one of the resettlement camps that no one ever discussed. Board a train at Grunewald station, one of those long ones that always left full and returned empty. A one-way ticket east.

And what had he been doing up to now to stop such diabolical measures? Hardly anything, really. Risking his neck to steal paper, or to cast votes on the wording of a pamphlet. What good was a pamphlet in times like these? Once again, he had fallen back on the relative safety of mere words. “Easy grace,” as Bonhoeffer had put it. There must be some stronger action he could take, not just for his family but for Liesl and him as well. He recalled her words from an hour ago: “We must all do everything in our power.”

Then an idea occurred to him, striking in its simplicity: a one-man job, a bold operation with no need to rely on weak vessels like Dieter or unstable temperaments like Hannelore’s. Lots of planning would be necessary, of course. But surely he could manage.

Then the doubts began leaking in. Costly sacrifices and trade-offs would be required, and none of them would come easily. Blood might even be spilled, perhaps by people he admired and respected. The price was too high. His conscience would never be able to bear the burden. He sighed, temporarily defeated.

Then he considered the consequences of doing nothing, and realized that the cost was even greater. This was what war demanded of people, he supposed. It thrust upon you unclean decisions with unclean results. The best you could hope for was to minimize the damage, to act before others decided matters for you.

So, with a dizzying sense of destiny buzzing in his temples, Kurt resolved to act while he still could, if only because this new idea offered the one possibility that most heartened and excited him: guaranteed survival for Liesl and him, as well as for his family and its business empire. Not only for the duration of the war but on into peacetime. Surely that would be enough to justify almost anything, especially when the alternative was doom for them all.

Fifteen days, he told himself. That would be his deadline. Fifteen days to either carry out this bold plan or come up with another course of action. Either way he was now grimly certain that the coming weeks would define him as a man from that point onward.

Kurt stared defiantly into the mirror, as if daring himself to raise an objection.

TWENTY-TWO

Berlin—March 5, 1943

J
UST BEFORE 10 A.M.
on a blustery Friday in late winter, Kurt Bauer strolled nervously into the shadow of the city’s most dreaded building. The structure itself wasn’t imposing. Five stories of stone with a mansard roof, it had once been a hotel, then an art school. Its elegant rows of high windows suggested a place of light and enlightenment. Its current name suggested otherwise: the Reich Main Security Office, home to the Gestapo and the SS.

Kurt had already approached the entrance once, only to have his nerve fail him. On his second try he again veered away, heading north toward the Brandenburg Gate while taking deep breaths of the chill morning air. After fifteen days of thought and planning, he had finally settled on a risky course of action, and by day’s end he hoped to have secured a safe future for his family and, more important, for Liesl and him.

But first he had to go through with it.

He had set out from Charlottenburg at sunrise, hoping to steel his resolve by making the four-mile journey on foot. It was bitterly cold, and even with gloves on he kept his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The sights along the way did little to put him in the right mood. Half the shops on the Ku-Damm were shuttered. Charlottenburger Chaussee, normally a grand, sun-washed promenade, was cast in eternal twilight by a canopy of camouflage netting, a ruse to hide the street grid from daylight bomber attacks. Even the Tiergarten was a mess. Its trees had been hacked away for firewood, and its expansive lawns were cross-stitched by trenches, dug as emergency shelter from bombs. Two soldiers stood begging on a street corner, their greatcoats still muddy from the eastern front. A third, missing a leg, slept on a park bench. Had the poor man even survived the night? Kurt didn’t have the heart to check.

The most depressing sight of all, at least to Kurt, was the brooding Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Normally its high steeple and Romanesque towers evoked stateliness and strength, but this morning they only reminded him of the aborted rendezvous that should have occurred there a week earlier.

It was to have been a pivotal moment for the Berlin chapter of the White Rose. Hans Scholl, one of the White Rose founders in Munich, had been due to meet Falk Harnack, the young soldier who had been present for the Berlin chapter’s formative meeting. Harnack was then supposed to escort Scholl to Bonhoeffer’s house for a meeting that would connect the White Rose movement to the heart of the German resistance.

News of this scary but welcome development had made Kurt rethink his plan of action. Considering the predicament his family was in, he hadn’t felt like risking his life for mere pamphlets anymore. But if bolder action was in the offing, maybe he would hold off on his one-man operation. His father had even mentioned rumors of an assassination plot against Hitler, with help coming from high inside the German officer corps. With the war going so badly, it was the one act that might spare the country further destruction, and in turn spare his family.

But Scholl never showed up. Harnack nervously smoked a few cigarettes in the dark, passed word of the aborted rendezvous to Bonhoeffer and to the other White Rose members, and then returned empty-handed to his army unit in Chemnitz.

By the following afternoon the reason became painfully clear. News spread that the Scholls had been arrested a week earlier. They had been taken to Munich Gestapo headquarters for questioning, and four days later they were executed by guillotine.

Further details were sketchy, but apparently the roundup of White Rose members in Munich was continuing. Some of the arrested members had ties to Harnack, and to Helmut Hartert, who had organized the Berlin cell. If they talked, then every Berlin member would soon be at risk.

The cell met hastily to discuss what to do. One member, Renate Fensel, had already dropped out after their earlier near escape. That left eight of them, not counting Harnack, who was still serving in the army. Everyone agreed that it would be best to lay low for a while—everyone, that is, except Hannelore, who urged immediate action.

“They’ll have us all in the net soon anyway,” she said. “We might as well fight back.”

She proposed that they do something to grab the public’s attention. Throw a firebomb at Goebbels’s headquarters, or toss one at his Wannsee villa. The others looked at her like she was crazy, even Liesl, and every morning since then Kurt had opened the morning newspaper expecting to see Hannelore’s name splashed across the front. If they were lucky, maybe she would be shot in the act and never have a chance to reveal their names.

At his family’s home in Charlottenburg, meanwhile, things were even worse than before. His brother, Manfred, had been reported missing during the retreat from Stalingrad. His mother barely ate, and his sister wouldn’t leave the house. She moped around with a copy of Goethe’s
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, the novel that had once inspired thousands of lovesick German boys to leap to their deaths.

The only bright spot was that his father had somehow wangled a travel permit for another trip to Switzerland. But even that turned out badly when he failed to secure a second meeting with Dulles. The Americans seemed to be losing interest.

So, on the day after the most recent White Rose meeting, Kurt decided to carry out his one-man plan after all. Now he just had to steel up the nerve to go through with it.

He circled the Brandenburg Gate and set course once again for the Reich Main Security Office. Glancing toward Pariser Platz, he spotted the hulking antiaircraft battery atop I. G Farben headquarters. It reminded him of his father, who had boasted just the other day of government plans to put a similar battery atop the Bauer offices in Spandau. Amazing that the old man could still play the role of proud patriot after everything that had happened. Perhaps that was all his father had left. Unless Kurt acted now.

Five blocks later he began his third approach, and this time he kept going. He pushed through the heavy doors past a pair of sentries into a bustling lobby. At the security station next to the stairway, flanked by two more sentries, he was greeted by an officious-looking fellow seated at a big desk.

“Yes, young man?”

Kurt spoke quickly. Pause now and he might never get the words out.

“I have important information to report.”

“As does everyone who comes through that door.” The man sounded bored. He looked down at his desk and began flipping through a magazine. “Your name?”

“Kurt Bauer.”

“Fill this out.”

Without looking up, the man shoved forward an official-looking form. Kurt stood straighter, cleared his throat, and spoke louder.

“I am the son of Reinhard Bauer, of the Bauer Armament Works.”

The fellow stopped turning pages and looked up for a reappraisal, no doubt taking note of Kurt’s fine wool overcoat, the dark kid gloves, and the white shirt with its starched collar. He shut his magazine.

“What is the nature of this report?”

“Firsthand information concerning the activities of a local resistance organization.”

The fellow cocked his head.

“Firsthand, you said?”

“I know who is distributing those pamphlets from the group known as the White Rose. All of that and more. But I am putting you on notice that in exchange for this information I expect to receive certain considerations. For myself and for my family.”

It was the last part of this sales pitch that had been hardest to plan. Informing on friends was terrible enough. Kurt had justified it to himself on the grounds that their names would soon be known anyway, due to the recent arrests. But to demand a favor from the Gestapo took more fortitude than anything he had yet attempted. For all he knew, they might laugh in his face, then take him out back to be shot.

Yet now that he was actually speaking, he heard in his voice the tone that his father usually reserved for balky clerks and secretaries, or shop foremen who weren’t pulling their weight. Maybe all that training to prepare him for the business world was finally paying off. Already he sensed that this clerk wasn’t accustomed to dealing with the likes of a Bauer, so Kurt pressed his advantage.

“I don’t wish to speak to just anyone. Nor will I tolerate a lengthy wait. Well? What do you plan to do about it?”

“I know just the person,” the man said, nodding briskly as he raised a finger. His manner was transformed. An observer might have figured him for a deskman in a posh hotel, attending to a valued guest. “Excuse me while I phone him for you.”

A
T THAT MOMENT
, Martin Gollner was in a staff room upstairs, hoping that no one smelled the coffee he was brewing. It was his first real coffee in months, and he didn’t wish to share. It had been delivered an hour earlier, a bribe from an old Jew who had been outed by a neighbor after the neighbor grew tired of the Jew’s barking dog. Not that the bribe did any good. The Jew was now locked in a cell downstairs, awaiting questioning. He would be pumped for any information on the whereabouts of friends and relatives, and by tomorrow afternoon he would be riding an eastbound train. But it was the nosy neighbor that Gollner wanted to throttle, because now there was a lot of extra paperwork to take care of, when what Gollner really wanted was a day off.

Such petty motives were typical for him lately. His caseload was drowning in trivia—shrewish wives denouncing unfaithful husbands, unfaithful husbands denouncing troublesome mistresses, troublesome mistresses denouncing shrewish wives. The circle never stopped. And don’t get him started on all the disputes between neighbors, or students and teachers, or employees and bosses. Most of it came from the nattering rabble of the
Mittelstand
, cooped up during the bombing raids in overcrowded basements where everything smelled of mud and rat dung. No wonder they were at one another’s throats.

The problem for Gollner was that once any complaint, no matter how small, became official, it had to be investigated. Because the only thing worse to his bosses than letting a political malcontent or an undiscovered Jew run free was letting uncleared casework pile up on their desks. The joke of it was that most of these busybody informants believed that his office was all-powerful. Everyone imagined a vast network of spies, all of them super-Nazis of SS rank. The reality was that the Gestapo relied heavily on the rabble for its tips. Berlin had become a city of tattletales, a gossip mill with eyes and ears in every building.

Gollner, like most of his coworkers, had been a cop before the war. He had walked a beat for a year and served a mere two months as a gumshoe before the new hierarchy took over. But he was bright, and he knew when to keep his mouth shut, so he was promoted quickly through the ranks. He now had an SD uniform to go with the imposing title of Sturmbandfuhrer. Currently he straddled two desks in Berlin’s district operations, reporting to the head of Subsection A, which looked into matters of political opposition and sabotage, and also to the head of Subsection B, which kept a lookout for Jews and renegade clerics.

At the moment his only productive paid informant was a Catholic priest who was so desperate to hang on to his job that he sent Gollner weekly summaries of his parishioners’ confessions. Hilarious stuff, mostly. But worthy of an arrest or two when things got slow.

The coffee was finally brewed, and so far no one had noticed. Gollner picked up the pot just as his phone rang next door. His secretary shouted for him.

“Coming!” he answered. He carried the pot with him, supposing that now he would have to share it with her. By the time he picked up the receiver she was already pouring herself a cup, and her mug was bigger than Gollner’s.

“Yes?”

It was Brinkmann, the toad from the lobby. Yet another visitor was seeking an audience, although for a change Brinkmann was on his best behavior. When Gollner heard the visitor’s name, he understood why. His senses went on full alert.

“Send him up immediately,” he said. “In fact, you are to escort him personally. Have one of the sentries sit in for you. Take Mr. Bauer to interview room 7-A and lock the door. Tell no one else who he is.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d better leave him with some water, a full pitcher with a glass. And ask first if he needs to use the toilet. We’ll go carefully with this one.”

He needed to speak with his boss. They weren’t accustomed to this type of visitor. The rich and the privileged almost never brought their complaints through the front door. They tended to either settle matters between themselves or go straight to the top. In fact, wasn’t Rein-hard Bauer supposedly a pal of Wilhelm Stuckart’s? Gollner had seen them in the papers, photographed together along with Speer. Then why was the man’s son here, strolling in off the street like some street cleaner from Moabit?

Gollner sighed. This would be interesting, but potentially tricky. He picked up the phone and dialed the number for his boss.

T
HE DOOR SHUT
as the obsequious little clerk from downstairs departed. Kurt poured himself a glass of water and took stock. The windowless room was chilly, so he kept his coat on. Framed photos of Hitler and Kaltenbrunner, the new boss here, faced him from the opposite wall. He wondered how long they had waited before taking down Heydrich’s picture after the assassination in Prague the year before. He drummed a finger on the table, then stopped, thinking someone might be listening at the door. He didn’t want to let them know how nervous he was. Despite the chill he had begun to sweat, so he took off his coat and folded it across the back of another chair. At least they had let him take a pee.

After about fifteen minutes, the door opened. Kurt rose instinctively, just as he had been taught to do when one of his elders entered a room. The man was surprisingly young, and didn’t cut a particularly impressive figure. In fact, what he mostly looked like was a dull drone, a cop, someone to whom you might report a bike theft or a vandalized window. The man paused in the doorway, as if also taking stock. Then he entered, followed by a stenographer. The two of them sat down across the table, side by side.