Out of the Smoke

by Gerald N. Lund

  At his desk, Hans finished off his tepid coffee. Resisting the temptation to take a quick nap, he chose to read the paper instead and went into the living room where he could stretch out on the sofa and be more comfortable.

  Four minutes later, he thrust the paper aside, went to the phone, and quickly dialed a number.

  Richelle answered it on the third ring. “Allo? Zeidner residence.”

  “Hello, Richelle. This is Hans.”

  “Guten Morgen, Hans. How are you today?”

  “Fine. Uh . . . does Alemann happen to be there?’

  “Ja.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “He’s creating his exams. Final exams start next week. Hold, please. I will get him.”

  A moment later there was a click on the line. “Hans? Guten Morgen. Good to hear from you again.”

  “Alemann. I know you’re very busy, but is there any way you could come over for a few minutes? I’d come to you, but Emilee has the car.”

  “I. . . . Of course I’ll come. What is it, Hans?”

  “It’s not an emergency. I’m all right. I just. . . . I’d like to talk with you. But not over the phone.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Chapter Notes

  The sources for the various events included in Hans’s list are too numerous to list here. They include Shirer’s Rise and Fall, Read’s The Devil’s Disciples, Spector’s World without Civilization, Vaizey’s Surviving Hitler’s War, and Trager’s The People’s Chronology, along with numerous Internet websites.

  May 7, 1933, 11:11 a.m.—Eckhardt Home

  Hans barely waited for Alemann to be seated in the side chair across from him before he spoke. “Thank you, Alemann. Thank you again for coming on such short notice. Richelle told me you are in the midst of preparing your final exams, so I apologize.”

  His friend smiled lazily. “Hans, believe me when I say that you never have to apologize to a college professor for taking him away from exam preparation. Of all the things I do at the university, it is my least favorite.”

  “Well, I still feel bad.” Hans reached over picked up the morning paper. “Have you seen the news this morning?”

  Alemann shook his head. “It’s still on my desk waiting for me to get to it.”

  Hans grunted and opened the paper to the third page and began to read from a short article near the bottom. “‘The Office of Press and Propaganda has announced a national day of Action against the Un-German Spirit.’”

  His friend grunted, his brow wrinkling. “Is that what they’re calling it?”

  Hans nodded and read on grimly. “‘Two weeks ago, the office called on the Deutsche Studentenschaft,, a national organization of university and college student unions, to take the lead in implementing a day of national Säuberung to be held on the evening of May 10 in major cities across the Fatherland.

  “‘Cleansing?’” Alemann almost spit out the word. “Why is it that they so love to choose such noble-sounding words for such ­despicable ends.”

  Hans lowered the paper for a moment. “You know about this?”

  “If it is what I think it is, yes. But keep reading. Cleansing of what?”

  Hans continued. “The Student Union at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich announced last evening that city officials were able to move a local music concert to another day so that a Säuberung rally can be held at Königsplatz this Wednesday evening beginning at 8:30 p.m. The program will include a speech from the president of the student union. He will be followed by Herr Helmut Dorfuss, the head of the Nazi Party in the state of Bavaria. Most exciting, however, was the announcement that following Dorfuss’s speech, the rally will join the Deutschland National Radio Network for a broadcast from Berlin. The Most Honorable Herr Joseph Goebbels, head of Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, will address all assembled across the nation.’”

  “Oh,” Alemann said, “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “And do you know what follows Joseph’s speech?” Hans asked, taken aback that this news was not a surprise to his friend.

  Alemann’s jaw set in as he spat out two words. “Book burnings.”

  “Ja!” Hans cried. “That’s the ‘cleansing.’ Why haven’t I heard about any of this? And how come you know about it?”

  “I thought you knew, Hans. I know it hasn’t been in the papers, but we were informed about it last Wednesday. I just assumed that your office was keeping you informed.”

  “I’m not sure that my office even knows I still exist,” Hans said, “though I’m not complaining about that.”

  “Well, the very next day,” Alemann explained, “leaders from the student union came to our offices. They were accompanied by the Brown Shirts. Of course! What else? And they did that all across the campus. It was closely coordinated and launched without any advanced notice so that no one could take any action beforehand.”

  “To your offices?” Hans blurted. “Your individual offices, or the university administrative offices?”

  “Both. Suddenly, there they were outside my office door, hammering on it with their fists. When I opened it, two students pushed past me without a word. One of the storm trooper goons stood at the door, hand resting on his pistol, glowering at me, daring me to protest. I could see other S.A. men out in the hallways.

  “It’s part of the Gleichschaltung program started by Goebbels’s ministry a few weeks ago. I told you that there was something evil behind it. ‘Synchronization?’ Another sugar-coated word for a very nasty program. But it perfectly encapsulates what the party is determined to do. To synchronize, in their minds, is to standardize, to bring into line, to achieve complete compliance. That is what this is all about, Hans. Though I must admit, I did not see this coming when I first read about it.”

  “And just exactly what is ‘this’?” Hans asked.

  “Säuberung,” Alemann answered softly. “Purging, and, in this case, purging by fire. The cleansing began with the elimination of Jewish elements throughout the key institutions of our country. The courts. Civil servants. Because those institutions were deemed to be politically impure, they had to be made to ‘synchronize’ with Nazi philosophy. Goebbels’s ministry is now in the process of defining what is unacceptable, what is out of line—or out of sync—with the party line. Anything they define as degenerate is to be cleansed.

  “Goebbels knew he had a strong ally in the various student associations at our large universities. Many of those students were raised by parents who were early members of the party. Many of them are the product of the Hitlerjugend. But even if they weren’t members of the youth program, by nature young college and university students have always been prone to be idealistic, antiestablishment, and quick to demonstrate against anything that annoys them. They revel in opportunities to riot in favor of causes they espouse or against causes and programs they abhor. And all across the nation, those are the ones who have taken control of the student unions.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Hans said. “I know that students often tend toward the more radical, but. . . .”

  “It’s more than that, Hans. They are fanatically loyal to Hitler and the National Socialist Party, so it was only natural when Goebbels decided to launch this new program that he looked to them. The Ministry of Public Enlightenment? Oh, how they love their big words and fancy phrases.”

  “So tell me what happened,” Hans said. “They came to your office. Then what?”

  “Well, before that, without anyone paying much attention, the Ministry sent students into the university libraries, examining every single book on the shelves. They were looking for anything subversive, anything they viewed as degenerate, anything that even hinted that it might have been produced by so-called Jewish pseudointellectuals, anything counter to the ‘Aryan ideal.’ And they compiled lists of those books and sent them to the Ministry. I mean, they went through liter
ally thousands and thousands of books, identifying anything that needed to be ‘cleansed,’ or purged from our culture completely.”

  “I had heard about some of that,” Hans said, his head down, fingers massaging his temples, “but not about the books. So what happened to you?”

  “The Ministry sent those lists out to the student unions in all of the major university cities encouraging them to seize such books and add any new ones to their lists as they saw fit. And that’s what they did. They brought little trolleys, and with the storm troopers standing by to make sure I did not interfere, they went through my personal library, book by book, shelf by shelf. They went through my files and—”

  “No!” Hans blurted.

  “Yes, Hans. My bookshelves. My files. My desk drawers. They took anything that they deemed to be tainted. If an author’s name even ‘sounded’ Jewish, onto the pile it went. Works by the so-called avant-garde authors or those who are left-leaning in any way were also pulled. Even if a book contained words like Jew, or Jerusalem, or Israel, it went onto the cart.”

  A profound sense of horror was rising somewhere deep inside Hans.

  “They went through the university library, too. It made me sick. I saw students carting out wheelbarrows full of books. They filled up truck after truck with them. And that is what they will be burning on the tenth.”

  “I won’t go,” Hans said quietly. “I won’t.”

  “Of course you will,” Alemann snapped. “And so will I. And so will Richelle and Emilee.”

  Hans’s head snapped up.

  “Don’t you get it, Hans? This is Säuberung. The cleansing by fire. And they will demand that everyone be a witness to it.” When Hans still said nothing, Alemann leaned forward. “You know that they are going to invite all of the important party dignitaries to the rally.”

  “I. . . .”

  “Your department is part of the Ministry of Public Enlighten­ment and Propaganda, is it not?”

  Hans groaned. “It is.”

  “Then you know you will be invited, and you’ll probably be asked to sit on the stand with all the dignitaries. And there’s something else, Hans.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Alemann ignored that. “You can’t say anything about this to Emilee or the girls until it is announced. But one of my sources, one that I trust, told me that the Bogenhausen Academy is going to require all of their students ten years of age and up to attend the rally.”

  “What?”

  “And,” he added slowly, staring at the floor, “the plan is that they are going to build a huge pyre of books in the center of Königsplatz. It will be doused with petrol and set afire. There will also be several truckloads of more books lining the street, so once the pile has burned down sufficiently, Herr Dorfuss will invite the youth to—”

  Hans straightened so fast that he gasped in pain. “No!”

  “Yes, my friend,” Alemann said grimly. “Tomorrow morning at school, the headmaster of the Bogenhausen Academy, who is a fervent Nazi Party member, will announce that all Academy students, ten and up, will have the great honor of being the very first ones to throw additional books into the flames.”

  May 7, 1933, 12:05 p.m.—Eckhardt Home

  Alemann waited for the initial shock to pass and then went on. “I was going to call you later and see if Richelle and I could come over and speak with you and Emilee about this, but. . . . I have to complete my exams. I turn them in first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I understand, Alemann.”

  “There’s actually nothing more that we can do today, other than to warn our daughters that they are not to openly react when the headmaster makes the announcement tomorrow.”

  “Oh yes, definitely that. Both of my girls love to read, but Lisa is especially voracious when it comes to books. This announcement is going to hit her pretty hard. And you know my Lisa. She’s not afraid of speaking her mind. I’ll tell them that there’s going to be an announcement tomorrow, but not what it is. But I’ll caution them not to react to it.”

  “Good idea. We’ll sit Erika and Leyna down too.”

  “But, Alemann, I’m thinking it might be wise if we met with them before the rally to talk about what they must and must not do.”

  “I totally agree. Leyna will be the one who is most outraged. We can’t have them doing something foolish.”

  “Here’s a thought,” Hans said. “The rally is Wednesday night.”

  “And it’s going to be packed. Parking will be a nightmare.”

  “Just what I was thinking. So, first thing tomorrow, I will call my secretary. I will tell her that I plan to attend the rally. However, I will also point out that I cannot walk very far, so I will have her arrange for us to park as close to the stand as possible.”

  “If he knows you’re coming, Herr Dorfuss will feel obligated to invite you to sit on the stand.”

  “I thought of that too,” Hans agreed. “So I’ll instruct her to write a note to the party leader and explain that it is very painful for me to sit for very long, especially on hard wooden chairs, which is what they’ll have on the stand. So she will tell him that while I much appreciate his invitation, I will do much better standing, and so I will stay down with my family.”

  “Excellent!”

  Hans’s mind was clicking now. “Emilee and I and will leave the younger children with my mother. She will definitely not want to attend the rally, and tending the children will give us a good excuse for her staying home. We will then come over to your home and pick you up. Having eight in the car will be crowded, but the girls can sit on each other’s laps.”

  “Our car has a little more room.”

  “Yes, and if they give me a parking pass that I can put in any car, we can do that. But if it is for my car only, then we’ll have to stay with mine.”

  “Ja,” Alemann said. “I see what you’re saying. But we do need to stay together.”

  “Exactly. So, Emilee and I and the girls will come to your house early. Early enough that we can sit down with the girls and talk about what they must and must not do.”

  “Perfect!” Alemann exclaimed. “I’m glad you’re thinking this through, Hans. What if we have you over for dinner?”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I’m guessing that Emilee will want to stay and get the younger children settled somewhat before we leave. But we do want to have the time to talk with the girls. And we will also have to allow time for traffic. What if we are at your house at seven?”

  “I will tell Richelle. Hans, thank you. Sorry that I have other work I need to do.”

  “It is not a problem, Alemann. Thank you for taking time this morning. This has been most useful. We’ll see you Wednesday evening at seven.”

  May 10, 1933, 6:44 p.m.—Eckhardt Home

  Hans looked up as his two oldest daughters came out from the hallway into the living room. Emilee and Oma Inga were right behind them. The girls were smiling. Their long hair gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows. Watching them brought an ache deep down inside Hans. He started to get up to give them a hug, but then it registered. They were both wearing their school uniforms.

  Hans frowned. “No, Alisa. I told you to wear your Hitlerjugend uniform.”

  Emilee stepped up. “And I told her to wear her school uniform,” she said calmly.

  Hans lumbered to his feet, using his cane to steady himself. “Emilee, we are going to be seen tonight. When we arrive, there are going to be party officials all around us, some of whom will stop to talk with us. It matters very much what she is wearing.”

  “Yes, I know all of that.”

  He pointed at Jo. “We bought Jolanda her own Hitler Youth uniform for this very reason. We don’t want people asking her about why she isn’t in Hitler Youth since she is now eleven.”

  Emilee stepped forw
ard and touched her daughters on the shoulder. They were watching this interchange with some anxiety. “Go get in the car, girls.”

  As they went out the back door to the garage, Emilee calmly came over to face her husband. “Hans, listen to me. I know that this will be your first time out in public since the accident. And you’re right. There will be many of your colleagues who will likely come over and speak with you. Which, incidentally, I dread,” she added.

  “And if it were just Lisa with us,” she went on, “then I would heartily agree about the uniform. But it is not, Hans. Jo is not enrolled for Hitler Youth again this summer, because of her”—Emilee made quotation marks in the air—“allergies.” Some in your office surely know that. Won’t they wonder why she is wearing a uniform, then? What if someone is chatting with us and asks Jo which camp she is going to this summer? What about that?”

  Hans opened his mouth but then shut it again. That thought had not crossed his mind.

  “And Erika and Leyna will be there in their school uniforms, right next to our girls. Do you really want party officials asking Alemann and Richelle why their girls are not enrolled?”

  Now Hans’s mother spoke up. “Hans, you are right to be concerned about drawing attention to yourself, but Emilee is right on this one. If anyone asks, you can say that their headmaster said they must wear their school uniforms tonight. Which he did. That should satisfy them.”

  Hans was nodding even before she finished. “You’re right, Schatzi,” he said to Emilee. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be, but I’m as nervous as a fox in a forest full of hounds.”

  She went over to him and kissed him softly. “The paper said that there might be some visitors from Berlin there tonight. If that’s the case, all the local officials will be stumbling over themselves to make a good impression on them. They won’t be worrying about you.”

  He kissed her back and then managed a smile. “You really know how to make a man feel good.” Then, before Emilee could reply, he added, “How did you get to be so much smarter than me?”