by Donald Hunt
Anna placed a chair in the corner and sat down in the dark. Her emotions turned inside her as though they were sailing along on some kind of inner roller coaster. She thought of leaving the door unlocked then changed her mind. She waited, aware of every sound. There were muted conversations across the hall and she could hear footsteps on the street as people made their way to their destinations in the night. When the footsteps faded, the silence was jarring.
She heard the sound of a key being inserted into the lock. Her heart began to pound in her chest. Dear God, could everyone hear it? The door quickly opened and closed, then she heard the click of the lock a second time.
“Anna?” Christian whispered. “Over here.”
He moved toward her voice as his eyes searched for her. She stood to meet him. As his arms found her soft shoulders, he said more to himself than to her,
“Thank God you’re here!”
He kissed her gently, then again, slowly. They had always had stolen kisses in the hospital, always hoping no one would see. Now, he had her alone. Her lips met his and he breathed her in as he continued to kiss her. His arms encircled her and he lifted her up to him, holding her tightly. She put her head against his shoulder.
“We need to talk…before anything else,” she whispered.
Christian waited while she poured two glasses of wine. He took his glass and sat down. As she moved across the room, he lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled.
“I have been working on the plan for your escape,” he said softly. “It’s too dangerous now for you to get out of the country. We can make it look as if you have left the country, then change your identity.”
“I don’t want to just go into hiding, Christian. The war could last for years. I want to work against the Nazis.”
Christian took a deep breath. He tried to digest what Anna had just said. “My sister lives in Leipzig. She works at a bank. She can arrange proper documents for you. She has been smuggling Jews out of the country but it’s now too dangerous. I already sent her your picture. She’s going to create a new name for you and a proper I.D.”
Christian put his cigarette to his lips and inhaled again. He was nervous. “She is very resourceful, my love. She will find you work.”
Anna walked back toward Christian and slid onto his lap. She placed one long kiss on his lips.
“You think she will need about a month or so?” “More like six.”
Anna held his head on her chest and began running her fingers through his hair. Christian now had the opportunity to pour out his heart to her.
“I observed you, first at a distance, then up close. You have eyes that sparkle and are so honest. When others speak, you never look away. To have you now is an unspeakable gift. I have longed to be with you, to hold you close. Where ever you are is where I want to be. I am incomplete without you. Just to be near you like this is something I had only imagined.”
He spoke softly to her for what seemed like just a few minutes, when he realized she was asleep. The stress of her life and work had taken its toll. Anna was physically and emotionally exhausted. Deep in the recesses of her mind was the anarchic Nazi Reich, now implementing the ‘final solution’ for the Jews of Europe.
She lay quietly, wrapped up in the down quilt in a paradigm she had not experienced since her childhood. In this night, in the arms of the man she loved, she had escaped the horror of being Jewish in Germany.
She had not realized Christian’s move from her arms to leave. Suddenly, he was above her, whispering in her ear and kissing her as he spoke.“It’s five o’clock. I have to leave now. I’ll see you later at the hospital.” “Be careful,” she demanded. “I love you.”
Anna locked the door behind him and went into the bathroom. She couldn’t walk to her apartment as yet. She decided to shower. As the warm water ran across her face and body, she remembered Christian’s hands. But instead of the ache she might have felt for him, a sense of anger overtook her. She was in a trap set by her own country. She was in love with a man who could be arrested for loving her back. Instead of losing herself in love, she would have to work to survive.
Anna began to cry. She might never have children. She might never be able to live with Christian. There would be no home in their country. No chance to grow old with the man she loved.
Anna let the water wash over her face. She kept her hands tightly against her mouth. She cried silently until the water turned cold. As her body cooled down, she stepped out of the shower and stood without moving.
I will stay alive, she mouthed. I will work for their defeat….. work against these monsters who want to destroy my life and my people.
It was an abrupt ending to their night together. She dressed quickly and left the apartment. There were no tears now, no emotion. Nothing. Exactly what they wanted of her.
* * *
The first week of May, 1940, displayed for the world, a new kind of military tactic. The German tank divisions had their own self-propelled artillery and a brigade of motorized infantry. The tank commanders were bold in their decisions and skilled in execution. One young Brigadier General, Erwin Rommel, was especially daring. At the same time, the British Government was resolving a cabinet crisis of leadership. On the evening of May 10th, Winston Churchill replaced Lord Chamberlain as Prime Minister. He was a leader determined to keep Europe out of any plan that would master them by the Germans.
In the meantime, the German Luftwaffe ruled the skies. Although the Belgian army fought valiantly, they were overrun in a matter of weeks. They were near collapse in the north and German armor was advancing up from the south on the coast of France. Caught in a trap at Dunkirk, were nine divisions of the British Expeditionary force, ten divisions of the French First Army and the remaining troops of the Belgian Army. A crisis of inestimable scale faced the new Prime Minister.
On May 29th, with the Germans closing in rapidly from the south, they suddenly halted their advance. The order to stop was given by Hitler himself, though the reasons were unclear. Goering may have had some influence so he could steal the glory from the army and allow his air force to finish off the allies from the air. There was also the possibility that Hitler decided to spare Britain a bitter humiliation thus increasing the chance of a peace settlement. There were actually some in the British aristocracy who were sympathetic toward Hitler. He had information that these sentiments might even be shared by some members of the royal family. Another possible reason for his action, Hitler was aware that the American Ambassador might be more favorable toward the Nazis if they acted with some restraint. As a last resort, the Germans could always use the trapped soldiers as bargaining ‘chips’. But in their arrogance, it did not occur to the Germans that they might not be in total control of the situation.
Unknown to the Germans, the British had been planning for days to attempt a massive evacuation. They dubbed it Operation Dynamo. The German High Command viewed the British and French as trapped rats waiting for destruction by the cat – the German army. But the Allied troops were not waiting; they were leaving…. by sea. By the time the stunned German High Command realized what was happening, more than 300,000 British and French troops had been safely evacuated across the channel to England. The last four days of the operation were accomplished in weather bad enough to ground the Luftwaffe. The last day of the evacuation, June 4th, Churchill delivered a stirring speech in the House of Commons.
“Even though large tracts of Europe may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight in the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air; we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.”
The Germans were unfazed. They swept across France like a forest fire on parched ground. June 16, 1940, an armistice was signed by France. Hitler was so sure the British would ag
ree to his terms, he made no plans for crossing the English Channel and continuing the war on English soil. In his view, why should Britain fight alone against hopeless odds when it could get peace and remain intact? This question was asked everywhere except at the residence of the British Prime Minister on Downing Street. There, surrender was never considered. England had an ‘inflexible resolve’ to continue the war. And not just for themselves, but for Norway, Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, and above all, France. Churchill boldly declared that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth should last for a thousand years, men will say……. “This was their finest hour.”
The Chief of Operations at the OKW (High Command of the Armed Forces), General Jodl, wrote on June 30th…“the final victory over England is now only a question of time.” The invasion plan for England was Operation Sea Lion. But there really was no enthusiasm to implement it. The Germans didn’t have the naval strength to take on the British Fleet and simultaneously transport an invasion force across the English Channel. By September Hitler gave up the idea completely and turned to Goering and the Air Force to destroy the R.A.F.
The air offensive was launched on August 15th. That day, more than 1,500 bomber and fighter sorties were flown, but the British Fighter Command, using Spitfires and Hurricanes, inflicted severe damage on the attacking Germans. One rather stark advantage employed by the out-numbered British was something new in warfare - radar. The attacking German planes could be tracked from the moment they left their bases in western Europe. This paradigm shift in technology puzzled the Germans who were far behind the British in the field of electronics.
Adding to the Nazi problems in what history would call ‘the Battle of Britain’, was Goering’s decision not to attack the radar instillations. As the Germans continued to pound Britain with their superior number of aircraft, the attrition was beginning to take a toll on British planes and pilots. Now Goering made a second major tactical error. He stopped attacking the battered R.A.F. and shifted to massive night bombings of London, apparently in the belief that the bombings would destroy the will of the British people. He was wrong.
On August 23rd, German bombers were ordered to target factories and oil storage tanks on the outskirts of London. They missed their targets and dropped their bomb loads in the center of the city killing some 30 civilians. The following night, in retaliation, R.A.F. planes bombed Berlin. This was the first time bombs had fallen on the German capital and it was a major psychological blow. The Nazis were outraged, in spite of the fact they had been bombing other countries for months. Nazi controlled newspapers cried “brutality” in their descriptions of the British. The Luftwaffe intensified its bombing runs over England, but continued to lose more and more aircraft. By mid- September the Battle of Britain was a stalemate. With no real winner, thus Germany was essentially the loser.
Even before the plans to invade Britain were completely abandoned, Adolph Hitler had come to a decision. In the spring of 1941, he decided to turn to Russia and complete the conquest of the European Continent. Where Napoleon had failed 130 years ago, Hitler was determined to succeed.
* * *
As the Battle of Britain was drawing to a close in May, 1941, the race for building a bomb was becoming more intense. Germany had access to the world’s only heavy- water factory and to thousands of tons of Uranium from the Belgian Congo. The only thing it did not have was a cyclotron. Eichenwald and his associates had decided that their biggest problem was isotope separation of U-238 and U-235. This was a very expensive proposition, but necessary. They were going to bank on a ‘physical separation’ technique. To move the process forward, a large wooden laboratory was being built on the KWI campus to house a breeder reactor. To keep espionage agents from becoming too curious, they named it the Virus House.
The German and U.S. efforts to manufacture a bomb were both affected by the Nazi Wehrmacht, but in opposite ways. In the U.S., the program was beginning to bog down in bureaucratic doubt. It was dramatically rescued by Operation Barbarossa, the German Blitzkrieg invasion of Russia that began at dawn on Sunday, June 22nd. The American program, in danger for its life in May, was now back on track. Aiding the U.S. effort was their British counterpart, the MAUD Report, which in October was terminated and transferred to the U.S. At the time of the transfer, the British were convinced of the success of a Uranium bomb, possibly by 1944. The collaboration of the two programs added significantly to expectations.
The invasion of Russia was now a reality and the German bomb program was being de-emphasized. This change in posture was worrisome to Hanz Eichenwald, but not for military reasons. His safety depended on his role as program director. But just as there appeared to be serious doubt about the future of the bomb, Fritz Houtermans became involved.
Houtermans was a tall, raw-boned Austrian. Half Jewish, he had also had links to the Communist Party. His father was Dutch, his mother Austrian. He was proud of his mother’s Jewish origin. His PhD. in experimental physics was earned in Gottingen. He had brilliant ideas. One he developed in Berlin with a visiting British astronomer, Robert Atkinson. Together they worked out a theory about the expenditure of energy in stars. At the extremely high temperatures in stars (in excess of 10 million degrees) nuclei could penetrate other nuclei and cause reactions, releasing enormous amounts of energy over billions of years. Because of the extremely high temperatures, they called these events thermonuclear reactions.
In 1933, he had immigrated to the Soviet Union but ended up in prison, a victim of one of Stalin’s purges. His wife and two small children managed to escape to the U.S. It appeared he would languish in a Soviet jail. But when Hitler made his temporary pact with Stalin, Houtermans wound up being part of a prisoner exchange and in 1939, was handed over to the Gestapo. He was then saved from the fate of a concentration camp by a physicist colleague, Max von Laue, one of the few German scientists who would stand up to the Nazis. Von Laue got him a job in private industry where, by August, 1941, he had worked out all of the basic ideas necessary for a bomb. Although kept private, his ideas moved the process along.
* * *
About a month after the ‘miracle at Dunkirk’, Winston Churchill sent a personal letter to Stalin warning him of the danger of Nazi hegemony in Europe. The Soviet dictator did not bother answering. Instead, he actually showed the letter to the Berlin government. Britain wanted to maintain a balance of power. As later would become evident, Stalin possessed incomprehensible ignorance of the drama that would soon engulf his country. In fact, at the moment of Stalin’s complacency, Hitler was making his final plans to launch his attack against Russia. With the fall of France and the prospects of a British demise, he felt free to turn his Wehrmacht from West to East. In June of 1940, Hitler announced to his generals his intention to ‘turn to Russia’ and asked them to begin preparations for the invasion. Hitler believed Britain had weathered the storm partially because the English thought Russia would throw them a lifeline, as a man on the shore would do for a drowning man in the water. This sophistry led to his conclusion – “The sooner Russia is smashed the better!” He obviously believed he could neutralize the British by taking out the Russians. The course of the entire war would hang on this judgment.
His aim was to shatter the Soviet Nation in one great blow. He would use 120 divisions in two great armies. One would move south to Kiev and the Dnieper River, and the second north up through the Baltic States to Moscow. The attack would begin in May 1941, and the operation completed in five months.
In the fall of 1940, the Germans began troop deployments in preparation for the spring offensive. Ten infantry and two armored divisions were sent from the west to Poland. The panzer tank units were given the mission of protecting the oil fields in Rumania. The Russian General Staff was informed that the troop movements were strictly replacements of older men who were moving out of the military into industry. They apparently believed this fabrication, at least to some degree.
As a matter of clarification, the Russian foreign minister, Molotov, was sent to Berlin in November of 1940. Bilateral talks were held but the discussion started on the subject of the four powers: Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan. The focus of the discussion centered on how to define their individual ‘spheres of interest’. Hitler assured Molotov that they would “finish off” England as soon as the weather broke. He also briefly touched on the problem of America, feeling the U.S. had no business in Europe, Asia or Africa. Molotov agreed, but that was the only thing about which the two men agreed.
The following evening the Russians held a banquet in their embassy. Molotov had just proposed a friendly toast when air-raid sirens began to blare. The roar of British bombers and the thunder of the flack guns could be heard overhead. The two foreign ministers scurried to shelters and continued their dialogue. His German counterpart, Ribbentrop, pulled out a draft of a mendacious agreement, attempting to draw the Russians to their side. It was based on the position that the war with England had been won. In response, Molotov retorted, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter and whose bombs are falling on us?” In the final preparation for Operation Barbarossa, the so called ‘Commissar Order’ was issued by Hitler. The commissars were any individuals in Russia who opposed the ideology of German National Socialism. The order was that they all should be killed including women and teens. Any German soldier guilty of breaking international law would not be prosecuted. It stressed that Russia did not participate in the Hague Convention and therefore, had no rights of international law. The implication was that any soldier could decide guilt or innocence and meter out instant justice. In reality, that meant execution. Hitler intended for the German foot soldier to be a killing machine – and not just of enemy troops.