Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  A similar scene played out at the University of Chicago, except that four men in derivative Brownshirt uniforms approached her podium before her host could escort her away. They asked, politely and in very good German, if she and her chaperone would do them the honor of joining them for dinner. Before Mildred could respond, the event host, a silver-haired professor of Germanic languages, answered in flawless German that Frau Harnack must offer her regrets due to a prior engagement for which she was already five minutes late. “You didn’t look like you wanted to go with them,” she said in an undertone after the men walked away disappointed. “I certainly didn’t, and it would have been inappropriate for you to go alone.”

  “Thank you,” Mildred murmured back. “I’d much rather have dinner with you, if you’re free.”

  Mildred suggested a restaurant she had visited years before, but the professor insisted upon treating her to a home-cooked meal. Quite serendipitously, Mildred found herself sharing a delicious supper with the professor, her husband, and their eldest granddaughter, and spending the night in their redbrick town house on South Blackstone Avenue in Hyde Park, less than a block away from where the Dodds had lived when Mr. Dodd was on the university faculty.

  By the time her tour brought her to Madison, she had learned to spot members of the Bund at a glance even when they were not clad in their full regalia, and to evade their pointed questions.

  The lecture at the University of Wisconsin was the event she had most looked forward to, and it proved to be a wonderful homecoming. Many friends and former teachers and colleagues were in the audience, as well as her brother and his family. Her former mentor, William Ellery Leonard, also attended—but he provided the lone disappointing moment of the evening. He damned her with faint praise when a group of former classmates cheerfully asked for his review of her lecture, saying with a shrug that it was precisely what he had expected it to be. Mildred concealed her embarrassment with a smile, but she could not maintain the pretense later when he took her aside and told her that there were no faculty positions available for her in Madison. “You have many splendid achievements as wife, as Frau Professorin, and as an ambassador of American literature, since you’ve mastered a foreign language well enough to translate our nation’s great works for that wonderful culture,” he said, smiling indulgently with only the barest trace of regret. “But unfortunately, we don’t need this in Madison in these wretched days.’’

  “I understand completely,” Mildred said, smiling, pleasant, professional. “I trust you’ll let me know if circumstances change.”

  She was not surprised to hear that the UW English Department had no faculty positions available; none of the other universities on her tour were hiring either. What troubled her most was Leonard’s dismissive, condescending tone. She did not understand what she had done to disappoint him, but apparently her former mentor no longer believed in her. Perhaps it was the simple fact that she had never completed her doctorate. That, at least, she could put right. As soon as she returned to Berlin, she would resume work on her dissertation in earnest and not stop until she had earned her degree. Even if she could no longer count on Leonard for a letter of recommendation, she would have a much better chance of finding a university position with her doctorate in hand.

  Although her job search had proven fruitless, and her encounters with the German American Bund unsettling, she did not regret her tour. Her lectures had been well received, and she had met several fascinating scholars with whom she hoped to keep in touch. She had reunited with old friends, which had been lovely, most of the time. After the Madison event, she spent several days at her brother Bob’s farm south of Madison, enjoying his company and that of her sister Marion, their spouses, and their children. Surrounded by loved ones on the beautiful, rich land thriving beneath the capricious midwestern skies, she felt truly at home for the first time since she had returned to America. But when she walked through the apple orchard where she and Arvid had married, she longed for him so intensely that tears came to her eyes.

  Even more urgently than Martha had done, her brother and sister begged her not to return to Germany. They offered her and Arvid a place to stay until they found work and could get back on their feet.

  “If we can’t earn a living, we can’t stay,” she said after explaining her futile job search. “Also, we have important work to do back home.”

  Her siblings exchanged a look. “You called Germany home,” Marion said sadly.

  “Wherever Arvid is, that’s home,” she replied, and when they glanced at their own spouses, she knew they understood.

  The visit restored her spirits more than she could have imagined possible. In early August, as she traveled by train east to Washington where Arvid waited for her, she was able to appreciate and admire her country as she had not when she was caught up in the stress of the tour. She admired the pastoral landscape speeding past her window, farms and small towns, creeks and forests. Times were still tough, but thanks to Roosevelt’s New Deal—which the Friday Niters had strongly influenced—people were going back to work. Bridges were being built, roads repaired, art created for public places. There was an air of renewal, of hope and restored confidence. Perhaps the American economy was not rebounding from the Great Depression as quickly as was Germany’s, but no one had to be denied citizenship to improve America’s unemployment statistics. People did not have to be kicked out of professions by the tens of thousands to create jobs for others. Compassion and respect could build an economy too—not overnight, but steadily, and with more enduring results.

  Mildred delighted anew in all the things she had missed about America. Overheard conversations and jokes in regional accents. Newspapers free to present the facts as reporters discovered them, with editorials representing a broad political spectrum. Bookstores full of works that uplifted and questioned and instructed and challenged. Baseball. Jazz. City blocks where whites and Jews and Negroes and immigrants lived side by side, if not always in friendship, then at least in mutual respect. The rule of law. Due process. The Bill of Rights. Every mile brought a new reflection, something lost to Germany, rediscovered in the land of her birth.

  When her train pulled into the station in Washington, Arvid met her on the platform, swept her into an embrace, and kissed her cheek, murmuring endearments in English and German. They spent the night at the Willard Hotel two blocks from the White House, dining and dancing in the evening, ordering a hearty breakfast in their room the following morning—all expenses paid by the Economics Ministry, since Arvid was officially traveling on business.

  Arvid too seemed more relaxed than when they had left Germany. “I feel like a houseplant neglected in a pot on the windowsill, shriveled and drooping, and suddenly some kind Hausfrau emptied the watering can over me,” he said in English as they strolled hand in hand along the Washington Mall.

  Mildred had to laugh. “What an image.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand. She was happy to see him cheerful again, when he had good reason to be discouraged. His meeting with Heath’s colleagues had gone about as well as her job search. Arvid had warned the Treasury Department officials of Hitler’s intention to invade Poland and had provided copies of incriminating financial records as evidence. Warning them that war was imminent, he had listed significant hidden German assets the United States should be prepared to seize when the day came. The officials had listened politely, examined the documents he had smuggled out of Germany at enormous risk to himself, and promptly dismissed him. His letter to the State Department offering his services in the inevitable fight against the Third Reich would almost certainly never be delivered.

  After another day in the nation’s capital, Mildred and Arvid went to Maryland to spend time with Mildred’s eldest sister, Harriette, her husband and children, and their mother. It was a joyful reunion, at least on Mildred’s part, but on the eve of their departure, Harriette took her aside and asked if she would not prefer to stay and let Arvid go home alone. “He can’t make you g
o back,” she said firmly. “We’ll all stand with you.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Mildred, astonished. “He would never make me go back, or make me go anywhere.”

  “Mildred, I’m your sister. You can be honest with me.” Harriette fixed her with a loving but stern gaze. “Arvid’s changed. We never had the chance to get to know him well, but now we can see he’s a typical German. He’s a Nazi.”

  “That’s not true. He joined the party because he had to, but he’s no Nazi.” He’s in the resistance, she almost blurted, and I am too. But she couldn’t. The risk was too great. “Please trust me. He’s a good man. I wouldn’t stay with him if he weren’t.”

  Harriette studied her for a moment in silence, but eventually she nodded, still dubious.

  It was an unhappy note to mark their parting, and the uncomfortable reticence lingered as Mildred and Arvid bade the family goodbye and boarded the train for New York. Someday, Mildred silently assured herself, when the Reich was no more and Arvid’s role in the resistance could be made known, her family would realize their mistake. Perhaps as soon as their next visit, she and Arvid would both be welcomed back with warm embraces.

  In mid-August, they departed on a ship bound for Hamburg, dispirited and doubtful that Arvid’s warnings would be heeded by the United States, apprehensive about what awaited them back in Germany. They were together, Mildred reminded herself, and that would be enough to get her through whatever might come next.

  Chapter Forty-five

  August–September 1939

  Greta

  Late one August night while Adam worked on a screenplay in the living room, Greta put Ule to bed, tidied the kitchen, folded the laundry, answered her son’s plea for a drink of water, soothed him back to sleep again, and then—only then, exhausted and tempted to give up and go to bed—settled down at the kitchen table to the work she had set out hours before.

  It was not recent, the speech she intended to translate for a flyer to distribute around Neukölln, the universities, and perhaps the ghetto too, if she could scrounge up enough paper. President Roosevelt had delivered the speech the previous October, but she had received the transcript only recently from a friend in the foreign press corps. And yet, with the Gestapo squeezing Berlin’s Jews into a few overcrowded, dilapidated blocks and the Wehrmacht going through maneuvers along the border with Poland, Mr. Roosevelt’s words remained sharply relevant. The Ministry of Propaganda controlled the flow of information within the Reich so absolutely that most Germans had no idea what the leaders of other nations said about their country. Most Germans probably did not care, content to believe whatever Goebbels told them to think. But for those people like herself who hated fascism, loved democracy, and longed for reassurance that the free world had not forgotten them, an inspiring speech from a leader like President Roosevelt could make the difference between sustaining hope and succumbing to despair.

  “It is becoming increasingly clear that peace by fear has no higher or more enduring quality than peace by the sword,” she murmured aloud, tapping her knee with her pencil, searching for the perfect German phrases to capture Mr. Roosevelt’s eloquent balance of authority and compassion. “There can be no peace if the reign of law is to be replaced by a recurrent sanctification of sheer force.”

  The American president did not need to mention Hitler by name for the subject of his speech to be perfectly clear. Greta firmly believed that the German people needed to know that not every Western leader had been duped by Hitler’s hollow claims that he wanted peace. Some Germans would find that a heartening revelation, others an existential threat.

  Greta wrote steadily, translating the phrases, referring to her well-worn German-English dictionary, circling a word she knew was not quite right to remind herself to choose a better synonym later. Mildred would know, but the Harnacks had no telephone, and at that hour she was probably asleep anyway.

  “‘There can be no peace if national policy adopts as a deliberate instrument the threat of war,’” Greta read aloud, carrying the transcript in one hand as she went to put the kettle on, yawning until her eyes watered. She ought to go to bed, but Ule was so busy and bright and curious all day long that late nights and early mornings were the only times she could get any work done. “‘There can be no peace if national policy adopts as a deliberate instrument the dispersion all over the world of millions of helpless and persecuted wanderers with no place to lay their heads.’”

  “Greta?” Adam called from the living room.

  Sighing, she set the kettle on the burner, tossed the transcript on the table next to her notes, and went to the living room, where she found Adam turning up the volume on the radio.

  “Are you deliberately trying to wake up Ule?” she asked wearily, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. Despite the late hour, the heat of the day had barely diminished with the sunset.

  “Come listen,” he urged, without turning away from the radio.

  An announcer had interrupted the scheduled classical music program with a news bulletin, but since Greta had missed the beginning, at first she did not understand what he was saying. Sickening dread filled her when she realized that the German minister for foreign affairs was en route to Moscow to sign a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.

  “How can this be?” asked Greta. “Fascists and Communists, allies? They’re on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The Nazis have been persecuting German Communists for years. How could Stalin form an alliance with their tormentor?”

  “Think of poor Poland, trapped between them in a pincer grip.” Adam ran a hand over his jaw, grimacing. “Just a few days ago, Harnack was trying to convince me that Hitler would eventually attack the Soviet Union, that he’d send the Wehrmacht toward the Caucasus to secure a steady supply of oil for the Reich. Now he won’t have to. He just gained access to the Soviet Union’s raw materials without firing a shot.”

  “But what does Stalin get out of it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s buying time. Maybe he and Hitler have agreed to divide up Poland between them.”

  To Greta that seemed all too likely. Apparently Hitler had fooled Stalin as easily as he had Chamberlain and Daladier.

  They stayed up for another hour, hoping to learn more, but the music resumed without interruption. Greta went off to bed shortly after midnight, but Adam decided to stay up another hour, just in case.

  In the morning, Adam told her that nothing more had been announced before he had come to bed at two o’clock. The Nazi press had been busy overnight, though, for all the major papers had put out extra editions hailing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact as a tremendous diplomatic victory over Great Britain, shattering their ongoing negotiations with France and Russia for an alliance that would have left Germany encircled by its rivals. Jubilant editorials proclaimed that a resolution of the matter of Poland would soon follow. “The world stands before a towering fact,” enthused Der Angriff, the Nazi paper Goebbels had founded when Hitler was just beginning to ascend to power. “Two peoples have placed themselves on the basis of a common foreign policy which during a long and traditional friendship produced a foundation for a common understanding.”

  “Long and traditional friendship,” retorted Adam, giving the paper a shake. “It’s ten hours old and as abnormal a friendship as the world has ever known.”

  Later that morning, when Adam phoned Arvid at his office and suggested they meet, Arvid invited him and Greta for supper that evening. The Kuckhoffs brought food and wine, Mildred provided dessert and coffee, and while little Ule played at their feet or tumbled from lap to lap, squealing and giggling, they pooled their information, which was frustratingly meager.

  Arvid was adamant that the friendship between Hitler and Stalin would be short-lived. “It’s absolutely clear that Hitler will now prepare even more determinedly for war against the Soviet Union,” he said.

  “You’ve seen a draft of a declaration of war?” Greta asked arch
ly, annoyed by his didactic certainty.

  “Economically, he’s not yet prepared,” Arvid replied, ignoring her tone. “He’ll try to gain control of other countries’ raw materials and production facilities as quickly as possible.”

  “Poland will be the first,” said Mildred.

  “But not the last. The longer this fragile pact between Germany and Russia lasts, the more of Europe Hitler will consume.”

  “Maybe Stalin is smarter than you give him credit for,” said Adam. “I know you despise him, and you have good reason. He killed your friends. But hear me out. What if Hitler intends to provoke a war between Germany and the West? In the resulting chaos, the Bolsheviks could step in and impose communism upon the countries involved—”

  “Or what’s left of them,” said Mildred.

  “Or,” said Greta, “perhaps Stalin isn’t smart at all. Hitler has broken every international agreement he’s ever made. Didn’t this very pact with Russia shatter an understanding Germany had with Japan? Just five years ago, Hitler made a similar pact with Poland, and you see how he disregards that now. When Hitler has wrung everything he wants out of Russia, this so-called friendship will be obsolete.”

  Arvid’s eyebrows rose. “So you agree with me rather than your husband.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Greta, but then she gave him a wry smile. Sometimes their old rivalry resurfaced in moments of tension, inconvenient and childish. She had to do better.

  Arvid briefly returned her smile, but it soon faded. “For now, our primary goal should be to gather information. I suspect things are going to unravel quickly, and we need to stay one step ahead.”

  But in the days that followed, Greta felt as if they were racing to catch up from behind.