As they approached the heart of the city, Martha’s heart sank with dismay at the sight of heavy army trucks, machine guns, soldiers posted here and there, black-clad SS officers marching, and more police, their green uniforms standing out against the stone buildings.
“Where are the SA?” said Boris, slowing the car to give way to a heavy military truck turning onto the boulevard before them.
Martha’s breath caught in her throat as she looked around. There was not a Brownshirt to be seen.
Traffic slowed to a crawl, and when they reached the Tiergarten, they discovered more military trucks loaded with soldiers and what Martha guessed were stores of weapons. Armed soldiers had taken up positions on the sidewalks and in the park, and some streets were blocked off and heavily guarded. Her heart thudded as they approached a checkpoint, but the soldier scrutinized the diplomatic plate on Boris’s Ford and waved them through.
“Boris,” she said shakily, “what’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” He inched the car along, nodding politely to the soldiers who made way for them. “Stay calm.”
She nodded and clasped her hands together in her lap, willing her features into a dispassionate mask. At last Tiergartenstrasse 27a came into view, but her breath caught in her throat at the sight of more trucks, soldiers, and armaments arranged across the street before it. Not far away, Standartenstrasse was entirely roped off, a cordon of green-uniformed police barring passage to all.
“I have to get to my embassy,” Boris said as they drew closer to the residence.
“I know. Just drop me off at the end of the driveway.”
“Are you sure?”
She inhaled deeply and nodded. Keeping one hand on the wheel and his eyes on the streets and soldiers, Boris reached for her hand and squeezed it. She clasped it in both of hers and held on tightly until he brought the car to a halt in front of the residence. There was no time for parting endearments; she snatched up her bag and hat, darted from the car, and ran down the driveway to the front entrance without looking back.
Hurrying inside and shutting the door hard behind her, Martha was momentarily blinded by the darkness of the foyer, dizzied by the sudden coolness of the air after hours of blazing sunshine. Dropping her belongings, she stumbled up the stairs to the main floor, her breath coming in quick gasps.
“Martha, is that you?” she heard her brother call. A moment later he held her by the arms and was peering into her face, his expression drawn and tense. “Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick.”
“Traffic,” she managed to say. “Trucks and soldiers and SS everywhere. What’s going on? Has there been a coup?”
“Schleicher has been shot and killed.” Bill led her into the green reception room. “We don’t know what’s happening. Martial law has been declared in Berlin.”
For a moment she turned over the name in her thoughts without recognition, until suddenly she remembered—General Kurt von Schleicher, Adolf Hitler’s predecessor as chancellor, well regarded as an officer and a gentleman and a shrewd politician. Though he had resigned months before, he retained a great deal of influence in the Reichswehr and was feared by the Nazis, who saw in him a potential rival to Hitler.
“Why did they shoot him?” Mildred sank into a soft chair away from the window, distressed. “What has he done? Hitler can’t shoot everyone who opposes him or there won’t be anyone left to run the country.”
“They killed Schleicher’s wife too.” Bill’s words came in a rush, strained and harried. “From what I’ve been told, several of Göring’s police appeared at their front door and demanded to speak with him. When a servant said he was out in the garden, the police stormed into the house, through his office, and out the back door. They found Schleicher walking with his wife in the garden, facing away from the house. The police didn’t even call out a warning before firing multiple times into their backs.”
“Oh my God.” Mildred pressed a hand to her mouth, head spinning. It was cold-blooded murder, and for what? Schleicher was a potential political rival even in retirement, but what crime had he committed? And Frau von Schleicher—how could anyone justify killing her?
Just then Martha’s mother rushed into the room. “Martha, dear,” she exclaimed tearfully. “Thank God you’re home! Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” said Martha, rising to embrace her. Her thoughts flew to Boris. She hoped he had made it safely to the Soviet embassy, and she wondered what he had learned there.
After shutting the door firmly against eavesdropping servants, Martha’s mother said that her father was in his office preparing telegrams for the State Department and fielding phone calls from anxious diplomats. Then Bill explained what he had learned from his friends in the press and the diplomatic corps of the events of the day and the previous night.
It was a harrowing tale. The Schleichers were only two of at least twenty-five and perhaps as many as several hundred people killed by the Nazis that day, and at that very moment the death toll continued to rise as assassination squads prowled the country carrying out peremptory executions. Karl Ernst, the chief of the Berlin SA, had been dragged off a ship in Bremen as he prepared to embark on his honeymoon. Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action and an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, had been murdered in his office. Many Jews had been shot simply for being Jews. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, who only days before had infuriated Hitler by making a speech in Marburg denouncing authoritarianism and calling for greater democracy in government, had been arrested. His speechwriter and press secretary had been killed outright. Captain Röhm, apprehended at a resort in Munich while in bed with a young SA paramour, had been arrested and dragged off to prison still declaring his loyalty to Hitler even as the insignia was torn from his uniform. His fate was unknown.
At three o’clock, Hermann Göring had given a press conference at the Reich Chancellery, where he had announced that the strike’s purpose was to quash an imminent putsch by the SA, plotted by Captain Röhm with the complicity of an unnamed foreign power.
“Everyone presumed he meant France,” added Bill. “When the reporters asked what connection people like Schleicher and Klausener could possibly have to an SA putsch, Göring grinned and claimed they had plotted against the regime.”
“This is all too horrible,” their mother murmured. “Where will it end—”
They started as the door opened and Fritz entered, paler than usual, to announce more phone calls and letters received. Bill quickly got rid of him and shut the door again, but the obsequious butler frequently returned, interrupting their hushed conversation with new messages or to inquire after their needs. Other servants too entered the room on any pretext, their faces white and scared. Martha suspected they were afraid and yet eager to learn what the Nazis had done, but her family dared not trust them with their secrets.
As notes and phone calls flooded the residence in the tense hours and anxious days that followed, the horrifying extent of the purge gradually sank in. One of Bill’s friends in the diplomatic corps came by the house, visibly shaken, and after conferring privately with the ambassador, he told Bill and Martha that Lichterfield, a prison in a Berlin suburb, had been turned into a veritable shooting gallery, with human bodies as targets.
“Why doesn’t the army fight back?” Martha asked in a whisper, glancing over her shoulder for Fritz, who seemed to be perpetually lurking about. “So many officers in the Reichswehr have been murdered. Why doesn’t the army avenge them?”
“The army hates the Brownshirts more than they resent the insult to their own,” Bill’s friend said. “They may be willing to sacrifice a few of their officers if it means the utter destruction of the SA.”
Martha shook her head, sickened. Even if only a few of those killed were army officers, how could that not be enough to compel their leadership to intervene? The official death toll released by the German government was less than 100, but the reports Martha’s father received from American consulates in oth
er German cities put the total at 235, although an SS officer had told the consul in Brandenburg that 500 had been killed and 1,500 arrested. It was impossible to know for certain.
By Sunday evening, Martha’s father had confirmed that Captain Röhm was dead. Röhm had been confined at Stadelheim Prison since his arrest, as Hitler had struggled to give the order to execute his old friend. Eventually Röhm had been given a loaded gun, a newspaper describing recent events in order to crush his last vestiges of hope, and time alone in his cell, but he had refused to oblige his captors by taking his own life. According to one account, when the impatient SS men checked in on him, Röhm had declared, “If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.” The officers relieved him of the gun and shot him on the spot.
Early the next morning, the Dodds learned that Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had scheduled a radio address for that evening. “We expect him to offer an official account of the events of the past forty-eight hours,” said Martha’s father, his voice thin with strain, his face gray, his hands trembling from exhaustion. He had hardly slept since the purge began. “Although how anyone can justify such brutality, the outright murder of men and women who have been neither charged with a crime nor proven guilty is beyond my comprehension.”
As word of Goebbel’s radio address spread, another flurry of messages and phone calls arrived from American expatriates and foreign diplomats who urgently wished to listen to the speech at the American embassy. Perhaps they felt safer there, more able to speak freely. Martha certainly did. She had come to loathe and fear the Nazis as much as she had once admired them. How could she have been so blind?
The guests included several of her own friends, whom she hoped would have information about mutual acquaintances yet unaccounted for. As twilight fell, she welcomed friends with the new greeting that Berliners had swiftly adopted during those shocking, harrowing days—spoken ironically, with a slight smirk or an arched eyebrow to mask one’s fear: “Lebst du noch?”
Are you still among the living?
Chapter Twenty-four
July 1934
Mildred
On the afternoon of July 4, Mildred and Arvid were among the three hundred Americans, embassy and consulate staff, members of the press, German officials, and foreign diplomats invited to attend the American embassy’s annual Independence Day celebration.
“One might have expected Mr. and Mrs. Dodd to cancel the party in the aftermath of such horror,” said Arvid as they dressed.
“They wouldn’t.” Inspecting herself in the mirror, Mildred tucked a loose strand of golden hair back into her chignon. “It’s not just a party anymore but a reminder of American democracy and freedom, of the refuge our country offers to those fleeing oppression.”
“And the refuge it offers expatriates.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips, his gaze warm and understanding. “Whatever turmoil goes on outside the embassy doors, for a few hours you’ll be on American soil among your own people. Perhaps . . . perhaps you should enjoy that sense of belonging and security every day.”
“I don’t think Martha wants a roommate.”
“You know what I mean. You could go home to the U.S. and return when things are better here.”
It was true that the harrowing events had intensified Mildred’s homesickness for Wisconsin and her family, but she knew from experience that a prolonged separation from Arvid would be even more difficult to bear. “My home is wherever you are,” she said, kissing him, “and you and your family and our friends are my people.”
And yet, for the day at least, she welcomed the promised respite from Nazi rule. The bloody purge had left her badly shaken, weighed down by a heavy sense of dread. The killings had ceased, or so the public was told, but rumors and revelations about the extent of the carnage heightened her worry that the slaughter continued somewhere out of sight.
Only the day before, the chancellor’s cabinet had enacted a law retroactively making all executions carried out over the weekend legal, as actions conducted “in emergency defense of the state.” Mildred felt as if Germany had crossed into a dangerous shadowland where the letter of the law had never been more strictly enforced even as the rule of law had become arbitrary. The Independence Day celebration would be the first formal occasion after the purge where Americans and Germans would mingle socially. She could not imagine how they would be able to carry on as if their world had not fundamentally changed.
The afternoon was warm and overcast, but Tiergartenstrasse 27a was pleasantly cool as Mildred and Arvid climbed the foyer stairs to the main floor, beckoned by the sounds of conversation, laughter, and music. They found the Dodd family receiving their guests at the ballroom entrance. Mrs. Dodd looked lovely in a long, flowing blue-and-white dress, her hair pure silver and radiant in the subdued light, her voice as ever soft and gracious, enhanced by the notes of her native Virginia. Only the unusually bright flush to her fair skin and a certain keen look in her dark eyes suggested that her thoughts were troubled or that her mind was anywhere but on the pleasant light conversation she made with each guest.
The ambassador concealed his strain better than his wife did. He greeted Mildred and Arvid with affable good humor and just a hint of irony, enough for her to know that he was sincere when he said he was pleased they had come.
Next in the receiving line, Bill welcomed them almost too heartily, his jaw clenched when he smiled and lines of tension around his eyes, but Martha made no pretense of her true feelings. “Lebst du noch?” she asked sardonically as she kissed Mildred’s cheek and nodded to Arvid.
“For now,” said Arvid. “The day is young.”
Martha laughed shortly, but Mildred suppressed a shudder. “You two and your gallows humor,” she said, managing a smile as she took Arvid’s arm and led him away.
The ballroom and reception rooms were beautifully decorated for the holiday, with abundant red, white, and blue floral arrangements and small American flags adorning the tables and mantelpieces. In the ballroom, an orchestra performed traditional American favorites and lively jazz tunes. Mildred and Arvid lingered to listen until tempted away by delicious aromas wafting from the dining room, where they found a banquet table generously laden with plates of enticing food and drink. After serving themselves, they found seats at a table near a window that offered a lovely view of the Tiergarten in one direction and the receiving line in the other. Mildred noticed that on several occasions, a diplomat or a correspondent would draw Mr. Dodd away from the line for a brief hushed, intense conversation, interrupting the flow of arriving guests until the ambassador could return to his place between his wife and son.
Mildred and Arvid had almost finished eating when the stocky blond butler approached Martha and murmured in her ear. After exchanging a quick word with her mother, Martha hurried off down the grand staircase. Mildred assumed her friend was dealing with some calamity in the kitchen, but when she did not promptly return, Mildred knew something more urgent had called her away.
As Mildred kept an eye out for Martha, she and Arvid mingled among the other guests, conversing in guarded murmurs with close friends, limiting themselves to light pleasantries with everyone else. An electric tension pervaded the gathering as the Americans, Germans, and diplomats of other nations wandered about the ballroom and reception rooms, onto the terrace, or through the gardens, exploring the gravel paths and lingering in the cooling shade. The guests chatted and gossiped, enjoyed food and drink, bantered and laughed with such ostensible ease that the scene probably resembled the Independence Day celebrations going on at American embassies throughout Europe—and yet behind their smiles the Germans seemed tense, the foreign diplomats anxious.
Mildred and Arvid were strolling through the garden when, more than an hour after Martha had broken away from the receiving line, they spotted her on the terrace above, her eyes bright, a slight flush to her cheeks. She caught sight of them, gave a little wave, and descended toward the stairs. Mildred and Arvid exchanged a kno
wing look and went to meet her.
“Are you enjoying the party?” Martha asked, an ironic lilt in her voice.
“Indeed, as much as we expected to,” Mildred replied as Martha linked arms with her and led her and Arvid to a secluded corner away from the other guests. “How is Comrade Boris?”
“You think I was off on some tryst?” said Martha, wounded. “I went to meet Franzie von Papen. His entire family is under house arrest. The SS is tapping their phones and censoring their mail, and guards have been posted inside and out. They only let Franzie leave so that he could take his final exams. By now I’m sure he’s returned to his prison.”
“How is the vice chancellor?” asked Arvid.
“He’s still alive, but Franzie says the SS have made it clear that he could be shot at any moment.” Martha clasped her shoulders as if warding off a chill. “He’s been charged with conspiring with Röhm and Schleicher to overthrow Hitler. Franzie insists that his father was not involved in any plot. He despised Röhm and mistrusted Schleicher’s ambitions, and wouldn’t have had anything to do with either man. It’s a complete lie.”
“I don’t think the truth matters anymore,” said Mildred.
“Franzie believes that his father would have been executed days ago if President Hindenburg weren’t so fond of him. That friendship is all that shields him from death—”
Martha broke off abruptly as Hans Thomsen strolled past nearby, Elmina Rangabe, the Greek minister’s beautiful dark-haired daughter, on his arm. Mildred was surprised to see the Kanzlei liaison there after the way he had rebuked Martha for playing the Nazi anthem at her birthday party, but apparently Ambassador Dodd still considered him a valuable ally.
“The longer they delay Papen’s execution, the more likely it is that he’ll survive the purge,” said Arvid after the couple moved on.
“I hope you’re right,” said Martha. “As for me, I’ll never trust the Nazis again. How deluded I was, thinking their political coup was some noble and glorious revolution. For that, we’ll have to look to the Soviet Union.”
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