Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “You did all of this without our knowledge or consent,” her mother said tearfully.

  “Yes, because otherwise you wouldn’t go.” Sara embraced her. “You have to go. Now. You can’t miss this train. We’ll see you again in Switzerland.”

  Natan hauled their luggage toward the train, his jaw set as if he were prepared to carry his parents aboard too if he must. With minutes to spare, they embraced on the platform, distraught parents and resolute children saying farewell for no one knew how long.

  At the last moment, Sara’s mother gripped her tightly by the shoulders. “Sell the silver. The utensils and smaller pieces are stored in two brown leather cases at Schloss Federle with the other heirlooms. Phone Herr Albrecht, the groundskeeper, and arrange for him to deliver them to you. It was going to be yours someday anyway. Sell it piece by piece. Find a good, safe place to live and don’t let yourself go hungry.” She released Sara and turned to embrace her son. “Please watch over her. She has a way of stumbling into trouble.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Natan replied gruffly, holding his mother close and kissing the top of her head.

  The whistle blew. Their parents hurried aboard the train and quickly appeared at a window. They waved, their eyes bright with tears, until the train pulled too far ahead and Sara and Natan could not see them anymore.

  “They might forgive you someday,” Natan remarked as the train disappeared into a tunnel.

  “Will you?”

  He pulled a face. “There’s nothing to forgive. You did the right thing. Like I said in the ghetto, you and I can survive here. They couldn’t. And now, thanks to you, they won’t have to.”

  Thanks to Mildred and her mysterious contact, Sara almost added, but she kept silent. She could tell from bystanders’ sidelong glances and curious stares that their tearful parting had attracted notice. Natan must have sensed it too, for he put his arm around her shoulders and quickly ushered her from the platform.

  She tried not to brood over the onlookers’ hostile, curious stares as she and her brother made their way back to Friedenau. Just as they turned onto their street, a mechanical roar thundered overhead. Shading her eyes with her hand, Sara looked up and spotted airplanes flying in precise military formation toward the northeast, wave after wave of aircraft, dark, angular shapes stark and swift against the cerulean sky.

  “Heinkels and Messerschmitts,” said Natan. “The Luftwaffe’s on their way to the Brandenburg Gate to send old Adolf best wishes on his birthday.”

  “May he never see another,” Sara retorted, her gaze fixed on the soaring aircraft, heedless of who might overhear.

  Chapter Forty-four

  May–August 1939

  Mildred

  Although the American presence in Germany had greatly diminished, as long as Donald Heath remained at his post, Arvid and Mildred trusted that the State Department knew what was going on in Germany. What the United States government would do with that information was another question entirely.

  On long, deceptively sedate walks through the Tiergarten, embraced by gentle breezes carrying the fragrance of fresh blossoms and the music of songbirds, the two men walked a few paces ahead, their voices quietly urgent as they discussed what Germany’s finances revealed about Hitler’s plans for the future. Mildred and Louise followed after with Don Jr., keeping a lookout for anyone who might be trailing them or observing them too keenly as they passed.

  By late spring, Arvid was convinced that Hitler intended to invade Poland. He was equally certain that if France and Great Britain stood united in strong opposition, imposing strict economic sanctions or sending in troops to curtail Hitler’s plans for expansion, the damage to his prestige could be enough to bring down the Nazi regime from within. Arvid also told Heath that the resistance distrusted Neville Chamberlain and suspected he sympathized with Hitler. “Chamberlain suffers under the illusion that Hitler’s ambition is limited to Eastern Europe and that he can be appeased with some gifts of territory here and there,” Arvid said. “My friends and I aren’t fooled. We place our trust in Roosevelt and in his democratic ideals. We believe in him. We only hope he believes in us.”

  Mildred and Arvid had no doubt that Heath trusted the intelligence Arvid provided, but as summer approached, they began to suspect that the United States government would never understand the perilous urgency of the situation unless they heard it from Arvid himself.

  Unexpectedly, an opportunity arose to test their theory.

  In July, the Economics Ministry sent Arvid to Washington to meet with U.S. trade officials. His official assignment was to secure copper and aluminum supplies for Germany’s factories, but he had a second, secret mission of his own to offer to help the United States against the Third Reich. Heath had arranged for him to meet with several trusted colleagues in the Treasury Department, and he assured Arvid that if they were impressed with his interview, they would take his offer to the secretary of state.

  Mildred accompanied Arvid as he sailed from Hamburg to New York, but while he continued on to Washington, she remained in New York to visit friends, after which she would embark on a lecture tour of several universities in the Northeast and Midwest. Since it was verboten to take enough money as she needed out of Germany, her friend Clara Leiser had invited her to stay with her while she was in the city.

  Mildred had not seen Clara since she had visited Berlin in August 1935 on behalf of the New York courts. As Mildred unpacked her suitcase in the guest room, Clara sat cross-legged on the floor and asked if the grim reports out of Germany were accurate.

  “Whatever you’ve learned from the American press,” Mildred replied wearily, “the reality is far worse.”

  “Why haven’t you put any of this in your letters?” Clara protested. “The Nazis haven’t turned you, have they?”

  “Of course not,” Mildred replied, taken aback. “Our mail is censored, and the Gestapo isn’t constrained by ordinary laws. They can arrest anyone on a whim, condemn anyone to prison or a concentration camp without even the pretense of a trial.”

  “Ah, yes, their trials.” Clara sighed. “I remember them well. I wish more had come of my work in Berlin than a stern condemnation of the farcical Nazi judicial system from the New York judiciary. I was so annoyed by their silence that I started a book, a collection of quotes from Hitler and other prominent Nazis. Let them condemn themselves with their own words.” Suddenly she brightened. “You could help me. You could send me anecdotes and quotes from Berlin, choice bits that don’t make it into the papers.”

  “I’d like to help, but . . .” Mildred put her last blouse on a hanger and shut the closet. “As I told you, our mail is censored. A letter containing disparaging stories about prominent Nazis would probably never make it out of the country. Worse yet, anything I put in a letter could be used against me, or against Arvid.”

  Clara studied her, frowning. “Wouldn’t it be worth it, to make the American people aware of what they’re really like?”

  “Worth my life? I’m sorry, Clara, but if I’m going to risk my life, and Arvid’s, and his family’s—” She shook her head. “It will have to be to accomplish something no one else can do, and in no other way.”

  Disappointed, Clara shrugged and let the subject drop, but as the days passed, Mildred sometimes caught her old friend studying her, worry and suspicion in her eyes.

  It was the first, but regrettably not the last, uncomfortable exchange of Mildred’s visit. In their Madison days Clara had been confident and outspoken, but over the years she had become more blunt and less thoughtful, quicker to judge and unwilling to temper her criticism. On one occasion, when Mildred mentioned that she planned to inquire about faculty positions at the universities she visited on her lecture tour, Clara winced and said, “I don’t mean to be cruel, but don’t you realize that people who have been teaching American literature for years, and are already living on this side of the Atlantic, and have earned their doctorates haven’t been able to find work?”

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p; “I understand jobs are scarce,” said Mildred, “but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “Why waste your time? You know you’d never leave Arvid, not for the best faculty job in America.”

  “No, I probably wouldn’t,” Mildred conceded, forcing a smile. She had no intention of leaving him. If she were fortunate enough to land a faculty position in the States, she would convince him to return with her or she would decline the offer. Still, she thought it unkind of her longtime friend to imply that it was presumptuous of her to inquire.

  Of all the friends she had hoped to see while she was in New York, after Clara, Martha had been at the top of the list. As soon as Arvid booked their tickets, Mildred had written to Martha at her new address on Central Park West to let her know when she would be in the city. No reply came before they sailed, but eight days after her arrival, a small package arrived for her at Clara’s apartment. It was dense and solid, wrapped in heavy brown paper with a postmark from Ridgefield, Connecticut. Unwrapping it, Mildred discovered a book with a red cover and the title and author printed in gold type on the spine. “Through Embassy Eyes,” Martha read aloud, “by Martha Dodd.”

  Astonished and apprehensive in equal measure, Mildred settled down in a chair by the window and opened the book. Inside the front cover she found an ivory-colored envelope holding a letter written on ivory stationery with a black border, which she recognized as the same one Martha had used in May 1938 when she had shared the sorrowful news of her mother’s unexpected death from heart failure.

  “I’m sorry I won’t be able to see you while you’re in the city,” Martha had written. “I so wanted to introduce you to my darling Alfred and to hear all the news from Berlin, and to see the expression on your face when I handed you my book. Can you believe it? After all my talk about my audacious ambition, I finally did it. It’s part memoir, part juicy exposé. If I have to be a bit indiscreet to open people’s eyes about what’s going on in Nazi Germany, then so be it.”

  Mildred’s heart plummeted. How indiscreet had Martha been? Surely she would not have been so eager to drive up book sales and settle old scores that she would have put the lives of her friends in the resistance in jeopardy.

  Steeling herself, Mildred read on.

  “You’ll recognize yourself in these pages, I have no doubt,” Martha continued. “But never fear. I named no names—well, I named plenty of names, as you’ll see, but not yours and not Arvid’s. I refer to you once as ‘a German married to an American’ and another time as ‘a lovely German woman who detests the terror of Nazi Germany.’ No one will ever guess I meant you.”

  Mildred hoped with all her heart that Martha was right.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to finish the book before your return journey, because it’s been banned in Germany,” Martha added. “Those tender, sensitive Nazis couldn’t bear to have unflattering—but utterly truthful—portrayals of themselves flying off bookstore shelves from Hamburg to Munich. So read through to the end before you go back to Berlin, or, better yet, don’t go back at all. I know what it’s like, and as your true friend I urge you not to return. If money is the issue, you can stay with me and Alfred in New York or our estate in Connecticut. If you’re worried that Arvid will object, don’t. I’m sure he cares for your safety above all else.”

  He did, Mildred reflected. She was rather surprised that he had not suggested she stay in America too, unless he was saving that argument for when they reunited after her tour.

  “Please write to me before you return to Germany so I’ll receive at least one letter in which you can speak freely without fear of the censors,” Martha urged. “It’s frustrating to know so little and worry so much about our mutual friends. Please take good care of yourself. Be safe and know that I’m doing what I can on this side of the Atlantic by telling the truth of what I witnessed there.”

  Perhaps Martha’s book would help change minds, Mildred thought as she returned the letter to its envelope. As the former ambassador’s daughter and an eyewitness to the rising Nazi menace, she was well placed to refute the angry shouts of the “America First” movement.

  Mildred read Through Embassy Eyes in two days. Although it was forthcoming and detailed, she found it more gossipy than intellectual, but she still hoped it would enlighten American readers. She was relieved to find that Martha had protected her sources in the resistance well, although she had not done the same for certain Nazi officials who deserved censure. “If there were any logic or objectivity in Nazi sterilization laws Dr. Goebbels would have been sterilized quite some time ago,” she had written archly in a profile of the propaganda minister, and if Adolf Hitler ever read Martha’s description of their lunch date, he would surely explode in a fit of outrage and humiliation. It was little wonder the book had been banned throughout the Third Reich.

  On her last day in New York, Mildred began her lecture tour at New York University. Clara and several other academic friends were in the audience, which appeared to number more than two hundred. In her presentation, titled “The German Relation to Current American Literature,” she spoke of how renowned American authors such as Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Carl Sandburg, and Thomas Wolfe were regarded in Europe. As she discussed various political and social themes in the authors’ works, she spoke candidly about the Nazi blacklisting of “degenerate” authors and the massive book burnings of May 1933. “I not only witnessed important works of literature turning to ash,” she told them, “but also the absolute suppression of dissenting voices that followed.”

  Her remarks met with enthusiastic and sustained applause. Several professors and students approached her afterward with questions about literature or the state of affairs in Germany, which she answered as thoughtfully and thoroughly as she could. Most of these conversations were cordial and interesting, but two stood out as oddly strained, even confrontational. The first was with a man—dressed almost entirely in brown except for his black boots, an outfit disconcertingly reminiscent of the Brownshirts—who wanted her opinion on the “rhetorical genius” of Joseph Goebbels. The other was with three smiling young blond women clad in nearly identical black skirts and white blouses who expressed admiration for her work and wanted to know how, as a wife and mother, she found time for a career. “I have no children,” she said simply, nodding politely when they expressed their abundant pity. She refrained from pointing out that no one ever asked her husband or any other man how, as a husband and father, he managed to find time for a career.

  She tried to forget those brief unpleasant moments and simply enjoy her success. That evening, Clara threw her a combination farewell party and celebratory reception, crowding into her apartment about four dozen old acquaintances Mildred had not seen in years and who had come into the city especially to see her. Several had attended her lecture, and most congratulated her warmly, but one former colleague from her brief stint at Goucher College peered at her over the rim of his glass, took a deep drink, and remarked, “You were awfully friendly with that bunch from the Bund.”

  “The Bund?” Mildred echoed.

  “The German American Bund. Surely you didn’t miss the uniforms. That fellow in the jackboots and the girls in the black-and-white getups and blond braids.” He took another drink, regarding her quizzically as if he was not sure whether her confusion was genuine. “The Bund is an American pro-Nazi organization, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. They number in the thousands across the country, holding pro-Hitler rallies, waving their swastika flags, putting their little boys in summer camps like the Hitler Youth. It’s all rather disgusting.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Mildred pressed a hand to her stomach, suddenly nauseous. Had she said anything that could put her friends or Arvid’s family in danger should those Bund people report it to the Gestapo? “I wonder why they came to my lecture.”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” he said flatly, draining his whiskey sour in one last gulp and moving off into the crowd.

  After that, Mildred guard
ed her words, plagued by thoughts of storm troopers apprehending Greta as she strolled with Ule in the Tiergarten, or hauling Arvid’s brother Falk out of a classroom in Munich, or dragging his mother away from her easel at her home in Jena. What might they do to the people she loved in retaliation for anything offensive she said or did? What might they do to her and Arvid the moment they disembarked from their ship at Hamburg?

  More than once, as the evening passed, she caught herself glancing over her shoulder in midsentence and turning back to find the person she was conversing with watching her, bemused. These were old friends, she admonished herself. None of them corresponded with Nazis. And yet she could not shake off her cautious reserve. Any hope she might have had that no one noticed was dispelled when, just as she was about to enter the kitchen, she overheard someone within telling a companion that she feared Mildred had “gone Nazi.” Rather than enter the room and calmly reassure them that she had not, she silently withdrew.

  It was with heartbreaking relief the next morning that she packed her bags, tucked Martha’s book carefully in with her academic papers, thanked Clara for her hospitality, and departed for Penn Station. She caught the midmorning train to Philadelphia and from there traveled on northwest of the city, where later that evening she spoke at Haverford College. There the reception to her lecture was even more enthusiastic than in New York. “You discussed these contemporary trends in European literature with a charm, power, and vividness that I have rarely seen equaled,” declared one philosophy professor when he and several other faculty members joined her onstage afterward as the audience filed from the auditorium. “You have almost restored my ebbing faith in the function of the interpretive lecture.”

  Mildred could hardly have asked for higher praise than that, but her glow of gratitude diminished when she glimpsed members of the German American Bund congregating in one of the aisles, watching her expectantly, no doubt hoping to speak with her on her way out. Fortunately, her hosts instead led her backstage and out a side door to a cab, which quickly whisked her off to the charming inn where they had arranged for her to spend the night.