The Arms Maker of Berlin (7 page)

SEVEN

Berlin—December 20, 1941

D
ON’T YOU HATE PARTIES
like this?”

Not much of a pickup line, but the girl brightened as if someone had finally pushed the right button. Or maybe it was just the glow of the candles from the Christmas tree, a towering spruce that lit up the room even more than the Biedermeier chandeliers.

“Don’t I ever,” she said above the roar of conversation. “It’s the uniforms I hate most. Everyone showing off, even the ones who aren’t in the Wehrmacht. What good is a uniform when you’re just working for some ministry, sitting in an office all day?”

“Exactly,” the boy said.

“Sometimes I think we’ve all gone a little mad with this war mentality. My name is Liesl, by the way. Liesl Folkerts. And you are?”

“Kurt. Kurt Bauer. And I feel exactly the same.”

He didn’t really. Nor did he hate the uniforms, except out of envy. He wished he was wearing one, if only because then he might look eighteen. If anything, he found the girl’s comments bracingly scandalous, the sort of remarks that might have caused a more seasoned listener to employ the precautionary tactic now known as the
Berliner Blick
—an over-the-shoulder glance for eavesdroppers.

But at age sixteen Kurt was too young and inexperienced, not to mention spellbound.

The girl’s boldness was especially remarkable considering the setting—a Christmas party at the elegant home of Wilhelm Stuckart, second in command at the Interior Ministry. The many various uniforms of the Reich were indeed in abundance on this icy winter evening. Already Kurt had spotted the fussy getups of the Ministries of Interior, Armaments, Economy, and Propaganda. One Luftwaffe staff officer wore a god-awful white jacket as silly as Goring’s, and with almost as many bogus ribbons. The only members of the uniformed class not strutting like peacocks were two Gestapo wraiths dressed in the black of the SS. They lurked amid the holiday greenery like tall, somber elves.

Otherwise the scene was festive enough, with a bounty and opulence rare to behold in this year of rationing and restrictions. Brisk servants toted trays of champagne and foie gras across the Oriental rugs and floors of Italian marble. A long, sturdy buffet table made of Black Forest walnut held a huge silver platter of smoked ham and an icy bed of oysters on the half shell. There were also overflowing bowls of potatoes, beans, salads, and baskets of bread, plus more chocolates and pastries than Kurt had seen in ages. He had already spotted a magnificent butter stollen for later sampling.

The pleasant surprises were not limited to the buffet. The Stuckart washroom offered real toilet paper and scented bars of genuine soap.

But the evening’s most interesting fare was the talk. This was some of the best-informed gossip in Berlin. Even seemingly frivolous blab offered tasty morsels. Moments earlier Kurt had overheard two spangled women debating which hotels in occupied Paris would offer the most stylish accommodations for visiting Germans come springtime.

The hottest topic was the Americans, who had just entered the war. From what Kurt could gather, the consensus from the corridors of power on Wilhelmstrasse seemed to be that the Yanks wouldn’t make much of an impact for at least a year, and by then the war would be over.

One of the few topics he
hadn’t
heard discussed was why the German advance on Moscow had suddenly stalled. Too risky, he supposed. Yet here was this slip of a girl named Liesl daring to proclaim that she was sick of uniforms and then openly questioning the nation’s war fever. Kurt was enchanted. Then again, he was predisposed to enchantment, having just spent ten minutes maneuvering himself into position to speak with her.

And on at least one count he genuinely agreed with her: These sorts of parties weren’t to his liking. Coming here had been his father’s idea. It was yet another session in Reinhard Bauer’s crash course in the social dynamics of wartime commerce, a tutelage that had begun just after Kurt’s sixteenth birthday. Already he had endured weeks of formal introductions, factory visits, and ministry auditions.

This week had been typical: Monday, coffee at the Bosch Works in Kleinmachnow. Tuesday, lunch at the Ministry of Armaments. Then a Wednesday train ride to the city’s northwest reaches for a tour of the Rheinmetall-Borsig factory, followed by Thursday’s engineering tutorial on metallurgy and Friday’s luncheon with accountants at the Red-White Tennis Club, where his father was appalled to discover that the ballroom had been commandeered as a barracks for the crew of an antiaircraft battery, newly positioned on the back lawn.

To close out the week they had come to the Stuckart party, where Kurt was expected to feign a politely casual air and exude holiday cheer even as he strived to make an impression. The Stuckarts lived only a few blocks from the Bauers’ home in Charlottenburg, and Kurt had sweated beneath his starched collar as they walked the darkened streets of the blacked-out city. Hard to believe that only two winters ago he had been among the crews of teen boys daubing the neighborhood curbs with luminous white paint to help people find their way in the dark. It was a Hitler Youth project, speaking of silly uniforms. Kurt’s group had also helped the neighbors build sandbagged new exits from their basements, which had been converted to bomb shelters.

At least Kurt’s father hadn’t insisted that he wear the annoying Hitler Youth lapel pin. Kurt had left that behind in a dresser drawer. Good riddance. Nothing was more certain to mark you as a juvenile if you happened to meet some attractive young woman.

It wasn’t that Kurt didn’t sympathize with his father’s need to display loyalty. That would always be an issue for the Bauers. Reinhard blamed himself, tutting that he had waited too late to join the Nazi Party. He had then compounded his problems by dropping the aristocratic “von” from the family name. As acts of appeasement go, it didn’t exactly rank with Neville Chamberlain at Munich, but it was nearly as ineffective. Party hacks still mistrusted them as Hohenzollern blue bloods, and their peers now dimly regarded them as slumming opportunists, little better than Jews in their grasping zeal for reichsmarks.

Not so long ago, Kurt would have welcomed his status as an industrial debutante. He had once longed for the day when, like his forebears, he would be counted on to make big decisions affecting the livelihoods of thousands. But that sort of trust had been reserved instead for his older brother, Manfred, and for years it had been Manfred who got the grooming and the testing. Manfred tagged along on corporate retreats into the fresh air of the Hartz Mountains, and on collegial weekend hikes into the piney depths of the Grunewald. When war seemed imminent, Reinhard fretted over whether to press for an officer’s posting for Manfred in the Wehrmacht or to instead finagle placement in some safer endeavor that would still offer the badge of national service.

Then along came the blitzkrieg. Like everyone else, Reinhard watched the grainy newsreels of hapless Poles with their lances and horses, and then the fleeing Frenchmen in medieval helmets. He concluded that the rest of the war would also proceed in this “easy” fashion, even as patriotic obituaries soon began filling the newspapers. And so, to Manfred’s delight, Reinhard steered his elder son into the officer corps.

He should have known better, of course. It was like putting all of your money into a stock at its peak value. Two months after Manfred departed for the front lines, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union. By the time of the first snowfall it was apparent that the stock price was falling, although up to now everyone had been too stunned to even whisper about selling. So, with Manfred indisposed for the indeterminate future, Reinhard decided he had better begin preparing Kurt, just in case.

The boy at least had a head for math and physics, and he was also a whiz at English. And with so many students gone off to war he had been able to enroll in university a year ahead of schedule. But it soon became clear to Reinhard that Kurt had been left to his own devices for too long. He had developed an unfortunate appreciation for literature and music, plus a certain dreaminess that meshed poorly with the no-nonsense mentality of high commerce. It was making for a rocky transition.

Kurt, then, had walked to the party with an air of resignation, and when a Stuckart servant held open the leather blackout curtain in the foyer and took his overcoat, he braced himself for a trying night.

At least Erich would be there. Erich Stuckart, son of the party’s host, was an entertaining schoolmate always good for a few laughs. Kurt immediately spotted the long, horsey face, just like his dad’s. Erich, too, wore a suit—boring pinstripes in midnight blue. It might have made him resemble the Gestapo wraiths if not for a bright red necktie, which Kurt saw now was pinned with a tiny gold swastika. His father’s doing, no doubt, because Erich’s first order of business was always devilment and drinking, an agenda that already showed in the high flush of his cheeks.

“You’ve escaped your father. Well done!” Erich said. “I’ve run my own gauntlet of government types. Dad’s idea, of course. But hopefully I’m through for the duration.”

“I got lucky,” Kurt said. “The minute we walked in he was cornered by some state secretary for economics having a wet dream about the subject of Reichsbahn rolling stock.”

“There’s
the only rolling stock
I’m
interested in. Check out the caboose on that one.”

Erich tipped his glass toward a passing woman whose dress was several sizes too tight.

“This clothes-rationing business is simply the best,” he said. “My mother’s seamstress tells her that most women now are rehemming their skirts instead of buying new ones when the edges start to fray. A few more years of war and everything will be mid-thigh. So here’s to the plucky Red Army. Long may they hold out in their rat-infested dachas.”

Kurt snatched a dripping champagne glass from a passing tray.

“Nice spread you’ve got, speaking of rationing.”

“Shellfish aren’t covered, you know, so the oysters were a breeze. The ham and champagne are straight from Paris. The only problem was that everything was sitting in some warehouse west of town, with no trucks and no gasoline. Dad had to find three droopy Poles to lug it here on handcarts. They covered everything with blankets the whole way or they never would have made it through Spandau. People took one look at the sad sacks pulling the load and probably figured it was a mound of horse manure. So drink up. This could be your last bubbly for months. Or at least until your sister Traudl’s wedding.”

“He hasn’t even asked her yet.”

“Oh, he will. All the SS men are getting hitched. It’s all the rage before going to the front. You better brace yourself for a lot of stupid background checks. They go back six generations, you know. All very silly.”

Kurt had overheard his parents expressing worries about this very prospect. But before he could muster up any anxiety of his own, he saw the girl. She was across the room, laughing at something a woman next to her had just said. The candlelight lent her face the radiance of a flower that has just opened its petals. Eyes full of promise. Delicate features. He instinctively wanted to provide her with special care and handling and shepherd her away from this bruising hubbub. Yet the more he watched her talk, the more her movements revealed an underlying fierceness. An emphatic passion punctuated every word.

He couldn’t hear a word of what she was saying. It might have been as frivolous as hemlines, or as grim as a casualty list. But did that really matter? She could probably make any topic seem vitally important. He was so riveted that he didn’t notice that his father had tracked him down.

“Ah, there you are, Kurt. There is someone you need to meet, right over here. This way, then.
Kurt!
Come along!”

Erich offered a sympathetic shrug, and Kurt spent the next several minutes nodding dutifully at the remarks of a crusty old Prussian named Helmut who was supposedly doing great things with aircraft components over at the Argus Works in Reinickendorf. He exclaimed in earnest approval for the next five minutes while wishing he could tear his eyes away for another glance at the girl. Finally both men were spirited away once again by the man from Economics, who was still gushing about rolling stock.

Kurt turned to search the room. She was still there. He made a bee-line back to Erich, hoping for useful intelligence. But Erich spoke first.

“Have you seen that hot little number who just arrived? My God, how perfect.”

Oh, no. Had he, too, been struck by the same bolt of lightning?

“Which one?” Kurt asked apprehensively.

“The one in pink. Over there.”

Erich pointed to a young woman whom Kurt’s mother would have charitably described as a floozy. She had large breasts, amply displayed, and deeply rouged cheeks. She was showing far too much leg—another victim of rationing, perhaps—and was waving a cigarette as if it were a conductor’s baton. Her orchestra was three attentive men in uniform, who by all appearances were just as impressed as Erich.

“Very nice. But who’s that one, over there by the tree?”

Erich grudgingly shifted his gaze.

“Oh, you mean Liesl?” He smiled. “Now there’s an odd one. Pretty. But an odd duck for sure.”

“Odd how?” Kurt’s tone was defensive.

“Give her a chat, you’ll see. Just don’t let your father hear what you’re talking about. Or mine, either.
That
kind of odd.”

Erich, like his dad, had cultivated the ability of damning by implication without offering any specifics that he might have to account for later.

“The good news is that if you happen to like her, she’s one of our fellow students at the university. A year ahead of us, but still …”

That was all the encouragement Kurt needed to take up the chase. And now there he was, talking to her at last, and finding to his relief that along with her other powers, she also had the ability to put him immediately at ease, which was rarely the case with Kurt and pretty girls.