Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Then you’re going ahead with your tour?” asked Mildred.

  Martha nodded, her gaze darting from Hans Thomsen to other guests in Nazi regalia strolling through the garden, serpents uncoiling in Eden. “If nothing else, it will get me out of Germany for a while. I’ve had enough blood and terror to last me the rest of my life.”

  “Haven’t we all?” said Mildred softly, reaching for Arvid’s hand.

  Gleichschaltung had swept over the nation so relentlessly that Mildred feared it would soon demolish every last good and true thing that stood in its way. She and Arvid loved the old Germany of literature, reason, and the rule of law, but Berlin was a diverse and modern city in an increasingly fascist realm. They knew Germany well, but even they were sometimes confounded by the increasingly unfamiliar country that confronted them daily. How much more inscrutable Germany must seem to a recently arrived ambassador and the far-distant president who had appointed him.

  Some developments were so obviously foreboding that Mildred could not understand why the American government showed so little concern. Germany had left the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles seemed powerless to constrain Hitler’s ambition. And although Hitler repeatedly insisted that he wanted peace and even hinted that he might support a nonaggression pact with France and Great Britain, in the countryside all around Berlin, unemployed men had been hired for vast new construction projects—administrative buildings, airfields, barracks, training grounds, antiaircraft bunkers. Soldiers drilled in the forests and meadows; Hitler Youth marched, trained with rifles, and played vigorous war games that usually ended in bloody fistfights between opposing teams, a quick, efficient means to toughen them up.

  Everything pointed to one malignant ambition.

  Visiting Americans—members of the press, diplomats, businessmen—observed these troubling signs and carried warnings home to Washington, where, as far as Mildred could tell, they were promptly dismissed and forgotten.

  More than a week after the party, on the evening of July 13, Mildred and Arvid gathered with other members of the extended family at his cousin Klaus Bonhoeffer’s house to tune in on the radio as Chancellor Hitler addressed the Reichstag at the Kroll Opera House. In the first official account of the violent purge, Hitler proclaimed his hope that the events would endure in German history for all time as both a sad reminder and a warning. He blamed the crisis upon “a few isolated fools and criminals” who had sought to impose communism and anarchy upon the fledgling Reich, a revolt of mutineers who had briefly gained possession of the government.

  On and on he went, accusing Röhm and other treacherous Germans of conspiring with an unnamed foreign power to overthrow the government. He described in great detail how the Reich had responded, acknowledged that their intervention had been “ruthless and bloody,” and explained why such extreme measures had been necessary. Once he veered off on a tangent to denounce the press, especially foreign correspondents who had “flooded the world with untrue and incorrect assertions and reports in the absence of any kind of objective and just reporting,” but he soon returned to his main thrust, justifying his actions during the horrific bloody hours he called the Night of the Long Knives.

  Throughout the long, vehement speech his audience often burst into applause and thunderous shouts of approval, culminating in a deafening, uncanny roar when he declared himself solely responsible for every decision made, every blow struck. Hitler’s vile words were enough to make Mildred sick to her stomach, but the crowd’s rapturous cheers were somehow even worse.

  Three weeks passed, fraught with tension that eased almost imperceptibly day by day. The sanctioned bloodshed had ceased, or so it appeared. Roving gangs of SA no longer prowled the city beating Communists, breaking the windows of Jewish shops, or assaulting foreigners who failed to offer the Nazi salute. On the streets Mildred heard murmurs of relief and tentative expressions of hope that they had survived the worst and better days were coming.

  But on August 2, the government announced that President Hindenburg had died at his country estate. The last impediment to Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy was gone.

  Hitler moved swiftly. In honor of the late beloved statesman who had served Germany so long, he vowed that the title of president would never be borne by another. Laws were quickly enacted merging the roles of president and chancellor. Hitler assumed the title of Führer und Reichskanzler—leader and chancellor—and became at once both Germany’s head of state and its head of government.

  Gleichschaltung was complete. The last checks and balances on National Socialist power had been extinguished. Adolf Hitler had established totalitarian control of Germany.

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-five

  August 1934

  Greta

  Just before noon on August 7, Greta walked alone through the Tiergarten on her way to meet Adam at the Staatstheater. People strolled by as calmly as ever, as if they were insensible to the somber tolling of bells filling the air with the melancholy proclamation of President Hindenburg’s funeral, which had begun at eleven o’clock that morning nearly six hundred kilometers to the east at the Tannenberg Memorial in Hohenstein. The late president would have strongly disapproved of Hitler’s arrangements. Before his death, he had publicly stated that he did not want to be buried at the site of his great military victory of 1914 but in his family plot in Hanover. But Hindenburg was dead, unable to protest, and who would deny Führer und Reichskanzler Hitler the pomp and circumstance he demanded?

  The funeral bells were still tolling when Greta reached the Gendarmenmarkt. From across the Platz she paused to take in the elegant classical structure of the Staatstheater, the six Ionic pillars and the ornamental crowning of the portico rising dramatically above a central staircase. As always its beauty moved her, even as she reflected mournfully upon the recent suffering of artists who had once considered it a second home. So many eminent lights of the German stage had been snuffed out, none more horrifically than Hans Otto, Adam’s brother-in-law, his first wife’s second husband.

  After his abrupt dismissal from the Staatstheater in February 1933, Otto could have followed many of his colleagues into exile, but he had insisted upon remaining in Berlin to try to piece back together the decimated remains of the Communist Party. Eight months later, five storm troopers had burst into the small café on Viktoria-Luise-Platz where he had been meeting with Gerhard Hinze, a fellow Communist activist and actor. Otto and Hinze had been arrested and hauled off to an SS retreat outside Berlin, where they had been flogged, kicked, and beaten as their captors demanded the names of their compatriots. When Otto had refused to talk, they had slammed his head into a wall.

  For days the two men had been tortured and interrogated, frequently transported from one filthy, vermin-ridden, overcrowded basement or cellblock to another, each smelling of blood and urine and fear. Ultimately they had been taken to the SA barracks on Volkstrasse back in the city, where they were separated. As Hinze later told Marie, the last time he had seen her husband, Otto had been beaten into unconsciousness. Water had been thrown upon him, but when he failed to revive, the SA officers had dragged him away.

  Otto was found soon thereafter dumped on a city sidewalk, barely alive. He was taken to a public hospital, where on November 24, 1933, he died from his injuries.

  The Gestapo had informed Marie that Otto had committed suicide by leaping to his death from a window on the top floor of the barracks building. Goebbels himself had personally attested to that version of events. If Hinze had not been released and told what he witnessed, Otto’s grieving widow might never have learned the truth.

  In the days following Otto’s death, the Nazis had warned his family and close associates that any mention of his death in the press was forbidden and that attending his funeral would be considered an offense against the Reich. Adam risked it anyway, although he insisted that Greta stay home. He was among only a handful of family and friends who dare attend, and the description he gave afterward was h
arrowing—the shocked and grieving mourners, the watchful Gestapo agents lurking about the cemetery, the heartfelt eulogies. But if the Nazis had hoped to keep Hans Otto’s death a secret, they failed. He was too beloved and admired as an actor simply to fade from public memory.

  Months had passed since Otto’s horrifying murder. Adam told Greta that if not for their son, he feared Marie might lose her will to live. Her sister was one source of strength and comfort, Adam another. Perhaps the sisters were too preoccupied with their loss to care about petty jealousies, but they welcomed Greta too into their unusual little family without bitterness. Adam had always said that they would, but she had not believed him. She still felt awkward in the sisters’ presence, although Marie and Gertrud both seemed perfectly comfortable around her.

  Once Marie and Gertrud had accepted her, their extended family in the theater community had too. Now Greta felt as much a part of the close-knit circle as she had the Friday Niters, so long ago and far away.

  They were waiting for her even now. Greta crossed the Gendarmenmarkt, turned down an alley, and entered the theater through the stage door, where the sound of voices drew her to the largest dressing room. She found the props master turning the dial on an old radio, actors distractedly leafing through scripts, dancers with towels draped over their necks working out kinks in sore muscles. Adam was engrossed in an intense discussion with one of the producers, but when he glanced up and spotted Greta in the doorway, he broke off, smiled, and waved her over.

  How good it was to be among like-minded friends in such dreadful times, friends who shared her love not only for theater and literature and the arts, but for freedom, liberty, democracy. Sick with anguish for her homeland, which had undergone a tectonic shift into the horrifying and surreal, Greta turned her gaze longingly to the democratic West, to Roosevelt and the New Deal, to Madison, the Friday Niters, and the Wisconsin Idea. She could not comprehend how Germany, a country of great philosophers, artists, and intellectual achievement, could have succumbed to the poisonous allure of populism.

  For years Greta, Adam, Mildred, Arvid, and their friends had fought the rise of fascism by resisting Gleichschaltung and educating others about the threat confronting them, but their efforts had failed. Totalitarianism had crept up on them steadily, menacingly, and then, with one swift lunge, it had seized them around the throats. Adolf Hitler controlled every branch of government—and now the military as well, having compelled all military officers to swear personal allegiance to him rather than the country. “I swear before God to give my unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Reich and of the German people, supreme commander of the Wehrmacht,” they were obliged to vow if they wished to keep their posts, “and I pledge my word as a brave soldier to observe this oath always, even at peril of my life.”

  It was a nightmare, incomprehensible, and yet it was happening.

  Although they knew they must be more circumspect than ever to avoid attracting the attention of the Gestapo, they were resolved not to abandon their resistance activities. If anything, they were determined to redouble them. They would never give up, not while any chance remained that they might prevail.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  August 1934

  Sara

  “I have a sworn affidavit from senior editor Karl Meinholz confirming that my brother was not employed by the Berliner Tageblatt after December thirty-first of last year.” Sara took the document from her folder and placed it on the attorney’s desk. The editor had taken a risk by putting his signature to the carefully phrased assertions, and her hopes rose when Herr Mandelbaum picked up the letter and studied it. Of the last six lawyers she had visited, two had recoiled at the sight of the paper, three had ignored it, and one had demanded that she take it away immediately. Four other attorneys had not even let her get that far, but had asked her to leave as soon as she explained that she needed their help securing Natan’s release from a Nazi work camp.

  “From the time the law went into effect through the day my brother was arrested, his byline doesn’t appear in the paper even once,” Sara added, encouraged by Herr Mandelbaum’s studious frown as he examined Meinholz’s letter. She clasped her hands together in her lap, silently willing him to help her. She had to find someone to take Natan’s case. A legal challenge was his last and best hope for release, if he yet lived. Natan was forbidden visitors and his only letter had been smuggled out six weeks before, so all they had left was hope—

  Sara’s heart cinched as Mandelbaum sighed, shook his head, and returned the affidavit. “I’m sorry, Fraulein Weitz, but as you surely know, as a Jew I’m forbidden to practice law anymore. I could be arrested merely for advising you.”

  Tears of frustration and disappointment threatened, but Sara kept her voice steady. “Then why did you agree to meet with me?”

  “Out of respect for your father.” Chagrin clouded his expression. “I suggest you retain an Aryan lawyer.”

  “I’ve tried.” Even longtime friends of the family had declined the case.

  Mandelbaum studied her in silence for a moment, then took up a pen, tore his letterhead from a piece of creamy ivory stationery, and jotted down three names and addresses. “These gentlemen might be able to help you,” he said, holding out the page. “Even if they can’t represent your brother, they may be able to arrange for your family to visit him.” Sara rose and took the list by the torn edge, but he held on to it a moment longer. “Don’t show anyone this paper, and don’t say I referred you.”

  “I won’t,” Sara promised. With a nod, he released the paper and she slipped it into her bag. Soon she was outside his garden gate stifling a groan of anguish and outrage. Another favor called in for nothing, another meeting that brought her brother no closer to freedom. Even the list in her bag was essentially meaningless. What could these Aryan lawyers—strangers—do for Natan that Wilhelm, with all of his aristocratic and military connections, had been unable to accomplish? It was thanks to Wilhelm that the family knew Natan had been arrested while browsing in a Charlottenburg bookshop, that he had spent five weeks in Columbia Haus, a once obsolete military prison near the Tempelhof airfield recently reopened to accommodate the vast overflow of prisoners from the Gestapo’s overcrowded jails. Rumors told that the guards at Columbia Haus specialized in torture and interrogation, and that after every last confession was brutally wrung from their captives, those who survived were shipped off to concentration camps to serve out their sentences. As if to confirm every horror the family imagined, in due course Natan had been transferred to Konzentrationslager Oranienburg, a concentration camp just north of Berlin for political prisoners, homosexuals, and other “undesirables.”

  The Brownshirts had established KZ Oranienburg in a defunct brewery more than a year before, but after the SA was wiped out in Hitler’s purge, control of the camp had passed to the SS. Prisoners were forced to perform hard labor for the local council, and nearly every day they were marched through the town to and from the worksites. Many times Sara and Amalie had traveled to the town bearing letters and parcels of food and clothing that they hoped to pass to Natan, but although they peered through the fences into the camp perimeter and searched the rows of thin, bedraggled men as they were marched under guard through the center of Oranienburg, they never once glimpsed their beloved brother. They feared that Natan was dead or that he had been transferred to one of the so-called wild camps rumored to exist in the countryside, where anarchy reigned and enemies of the Reich were tortured or killed on a whim, but Wilhelm’s friends in the Wehrmacht confirmed that Natan was in Oranienburg and promised to do what they could to see that he was well treated. Sara’s mother was frantic, her father haggard and aging beyond his years. No assurances could ease their suffering. Only Natan’s release would do that.

  Thoughts churning, Sara walked down the sidewalk, clutching her bag to her side. Even if she ran all the way to campus she would arrive too late for her afternoon class. She decided to go to Natan’s apartment instead
, nagged by the faint hope that she might find something there she had overlooked before, something that would convince the Nazis to release her brother at once.

  She paused at a curb to let traffic pass. Glancing to her right through the buildings and vehicles, she glimpsed the green of the Tiergarten a few blocks away and realized she was near Herr Panofsky’s beautiful home, where in better days he had hosted lovely parties for his employees and their families. How clever he was to have leased his home to the American ambassador. Even though Panofsky was wealthy, cultured, and powerful, the exact sort of Jew that the Nazis despised most, the Gestapo dared not harass his family, not with such an illustrious tenant there to observe and report on every indignity.

  Suddenly, inspiration struck.

  All around her, other pedestrians surged forward, carrying her across the street in their current, but her thoughts lingered upon Tiergartenstrasse 27a and the ingenious shield Mr. Panofsky had erected around his home and family. Perhaps she too could contrive a way to convince the Gestapo that even if Natan had committed a crime, it would be in their best interest to leave him alone.

  Mildred Harnack would help her. Her influential acquaintance at the American embassy, George Messersmith, had left Germany in May to accept the post of ambassador to Austria, but Ambassador Dodd had hired Mildred to type and edit the manuscript for his history of the Old South and she was close friends with his daughter. Perhaps she could persuade the ambassador to make inquiries on Natan’s behalf, as embassy officials had done for numerous Americans and foreign correspondents whom the Nazis had unjustly arrested. Natan was not an American citizen, but if the Americans took up his cause, perhaps the Nazis would release him rather than risk worsening Germany’s already strained relations with the United States.