As far as my work for the party’s concerned, there’s much less chance of a calamitous surprise. If no one turns up at the next treff in two weeks’ time, the liaison people in Amsterdam will assume that something unforeseen has occurred—I could have broken an ankle or already been tortured to death—and they will wait at least another month before sending someone else in to find out.
Over the last few days, I have had long conversations with Franke and Opatz, two of the three whom I should have already invited to form a cell. Neither man gave me reason to doubt him, and once Erich returns I shall take that step. The two-month delay will mean much more to Walter than Hitler.
One thing I asked both Franke and Opatz—something I should have asked them before—was why they weren’t in Müller’s Working Group. They both gave me the same answer: that in the current situation, talking felt like a waste of time.
I neither agree nor disagree—in my experience it depends on who you are. Some comrades rely on the sense of solidarity that “talking” builds to fortify their commitment. Others don’t. They will be true as long as they believe in themselves.
Thursday, October 20
The Czech bourgeoisie has wasted no time in turning the loss of the Sudetenland to its advantage. With Beneš gone, the new government has banned the Communist Party and started persecuting the country’s Jews in earnest. All Jewish teachers have been suspended, and the confiscation of all Jewish-owned businesses is underway.
I expected better of the Czechs. God knows why.
Saturday, October 22
Walter and I went to the barber’s this morning and took turns waiting for each other to be sheared. I had offered to bring Marco as well, but should have realized that Verena takes care of her son’s crinkly hair. An average German barber wouldn’t know how to deal with it, and she’s probably rightly afraid of the comments Marco might get from the man and his other customers.
Walter and I had only football talk and several bad jokes to contend with, as the Führer looked on disapprovingly from his place on the wall. Most of the barber’s creams and lotions are now imprinted with swastikas, and I found myself wondering if the barber himself should have one tattooed on his forehead.
We finally emerged into the cold grey morning, and I was about to offer coffee and cake when Walter preempted me. “It’s Mama’s birthday today,” he said, almost aggressively, as if everyone else were deliberately ignoring the fact. “She’s thirty-seven,” he added. “I want to buy some flowers and a box of Mohrenköpfe. It’s her favorite cake, and I thought we could all have one for supper. And think of her.” He looked up at me and probably saw the surprise in my face. “Does that sound silly?”
I said it most certainly didn’t.
We went to the confectioner’s first, where Walter picked the most expensive-looking Mohrenköpfe on display. He had obviously been saving the pocket money Verena gives him on Anna’s behalf, but watching him counting out his coins, I realized he was coming up short and insisted on sharing the cost. He tried to protest but relented when I pointed out he’d have more to spend on the flowers.
With it being almost November, the choice at the stall was limited, but there were more than enough dark red roses for a decent bunch. Either the florist was having a generous day, or she saw the feeling in Walter’s eyes, because she gave him the lot at a vastly reduced rate.
When we got home, Verena brought out a vase, and the roses took pride of place on the dining room sideboard. This evening we each had one of the cream-filled, chocolate-glazed cakes and sang the birthday song for Anna. I found myself shedding tears for the first time in twenty years, and I wasn’t alone—both boys, Jakob, Verena, and Andreas, all of them were crying. Even Gerritzen seemed close to tears, leaving Buchloh just looking stunned, as if he’d stumbled into a mass nervous breakdown.
If an Indian I met in Peru is right, and feelings cross countries like radio waves, then Anna will have had a lump in her throat.
Monday, October 24
An unexpected development at work. There are one or more noticeboards in most of the buildings that make up the Reichsbahn complex in Hamm, and when the morning shift clocked on this morning, a copy of the same exposé was pinned to each and every one of them. The man accused is Dietmar Hefelmann, who’s in charge of the depot’s Labor Front section. The accusation, spelled out in exquisite detail, and with an abundance of damning statistics, is that a substantial proportion of our Labor Front dues over the last three years have disappeared into his pockets. There was even a list of his purchases, which include a Frisian Islands beach house, the latest Adler Trumpf motorcar, and a flat in Dortmund for a woman named Lulu.
Now, hardly anyone of my acquaintance has ever believed that his or her Labor Front subscription ended up benefitting laborers, but seeing what they really were being spent on spelled out like this in black and white was still a bit of a shock. Not to mention enraging.
I read only half of the piece myself. The sheet was ripped from the board in front of my eyes by one of Hefelmann’s minions. Many didn’t see it at all, because every copy was found and removed before an hour had gone by. But enough had read it for word of mouth to do the rest, and by midmorning there were few who remained in ignorance of either the gist or the details. In our dispatch office, the only men wearing smiles were the cynics—even some of the regime’s staunchest supporters were incandescent with rage.
I took frequent glances through the window, half expecting a visit from the Gestapo, but no cars pulled into the lot. It looked as if no one had reported the outrage—were Hefelmann and his cronies more afraid of an investigation than they were of their angry members? If so, we members had a pretty strong hand.
In the old days, when the unions actually meant something, the stewards would have come around with the time and place of a meeting. In 1938 it’s more like Chinese whispers, with the word getting around by something akin to osmosis. Noon in the canteen was what filtered through, and when the time came, the place was packed. Hefelmann’s minions had tried to block the entrance, but had been beaten back by sheer weight of numbers and were now stuck in the middle of the crowd, nervously eyeing their neighbors.
Several men got up on one of the tables to speak, the canteen women behind them offering vocal encouragement. Müller was one of the speakers and, like all the others, refused to condemn the Labor Front. It was rotten apples like Hefelmann whom they objected to, men whose venal ways brought the whole organization into disrepute. “The Führer will be furious!” Müller concluded, not even bothering to conceal his smile. Half his audience grimly applauded; the other half laughed as they did so.
It was agreed that a three-man delegation—Müller, Joachim Wosz and an engineer I didn’t know—would visit the works director and demand Hefelmann’s dismissal and prosecution. It duly did so and, as we learned within the hour, were duly fobbed off. The bosses were either fighting each other or waiting for party instructions. I was still keeping one eye on the window, but by the time our shift ended, the Gestapo remained conspicuous by their absence.
So what will happen next? Given the wealth of detail in the original accusation, I presume that the author won’t be that hard to catch. There can’t be that many men with access to that sort of information. So are Hefelmann and co. now wondering what to do with the author? Handing him over to the police will bring the whole business into the open and enrage his fellow workers. Dealing with him themselves might keep the matter under wraps for a while, but having a workmate fished out of the canal will make the rest of us even angrier.
The other option for those in power is to cut their losses and toss Hefelmann overboard, hoping thereby to nip the business in the bud. Could they do that and keep face?
A cold look at the facts suggests that neither side is in a good position. If the Nazis don’t dare call the workers’ bluff, they will either be tarred with Hefelmann’s sordid brush or look l
ike people who abandon their own. But if they do call that bluff, then the workers will have a problem. Strikes of any kind are illegal, and the way things are going stopping to catch your breath will soon be considered sabotage. How many KZ consignments will it take to bring the workforce back into line?
There is of course another explanation for what happened today—that it’s all a provocation, designed to bring troublemakers into the open. But that doesn’t seem likely. I can imagine Hefelmann having enemies on his own side who would consider his downfall a collateral bonus, but such a scheme seems far too subtle for the people involved. These are men who adore boots and whips.
Tuesday, October 25
The unmasking of Hefelmann’s corruption was not a provocation. This morning word spread through the works that a man named Wilhelm Spoerl has been arrested and is helping the Gestapo with their inquiries. He’s an accountant in the Labor Front office, which makes Hefelmann’s guilt more or less certain, because who could be better placed to know?
With the management saying nothing, another workers’ meeting was called for noon in the canteen. We arrived to find widely separate parts of the ceiling were being painted, a ploy about as subtle as a Der Stürmer editorial. Everyone just moved outside, ignoring demands from Hefelmann’s men that we all return to work. The meeting was held in the parking lot, and after several angry speeches, an almost unanimous vote sent our delegation back to the bosses for some sort of clear response.
One was promised but has still not been given. Management is taking care not to exacerbate matters—the Gestapo was noticeably missing in action again—hoping that soon it will all blow away and that things will get back to normal.
If the mood at this evening’s Working Group was anything to go by, I think they’ll have a long wait. Müller and Wosz had invited the third member of the delegation to join us, and the only thing on the agenda was what our next move should be. It felt like the twenties all over again. Here we were, a bunch of comrades gnawing away at a juicy political bone, working out ways to strengthen ourselves and weaken the opposition.
As usual, Giesemann pushed the more extreme options—working to rule, wildcat walkouts, a full-on strike. He had a few supporters for once, but wiser heads prevailed. Most people knew that pushing too hard would be a mistake; it was better to tell the bosses that we sought a resolution that suited both them and us. Our threats would need to be regretful—that we were holding the wilder ones back, that a failure to meet our demands would result in a potentially crippling lack of cooperation, an epidemic of absenteeism, slow working, and holdups caused by accidents. That the very last thing the Reichsbahn needed in times like these was a collapse in morale.
And to avoid these deeply unpleasant results, all that management needed to do was sack the man who had brought disgrace on their organization and reinstate the one who had bravely exposed him. Heil Hitler!
Whether or not our tactics will work remains to be seen, but I walked back home from the meeting feeling more than a little exhilarated.
Wednesday, October 26
Walter’s history teacher has been replaced, and as far as Walter’s aware, no explanation has been offered to any of his classes. If the man has been sacked or even arrested, no one is saying why or what for. But rumors abound. According to Walter, Herr Scheringer was one of his better teachers. He had tried to be fair to everyone—not supporting one point of view and dismissing others, but encouraging his pupils to look at them all and make up their own minds. He hadn’t expressed any criticism of current developments in Walter’s class, but he had often asked the more fanatical boys to justify their viewpoints, and their attempts to do so had sometimes been embarrassingly stupid.
“He sounds like a good teacher,” I said, pleased that Walter had come up to my room to discuss the matter. Since Anna’s transfer, he hasn’t shared as much as he used to.
“His replacement arrived today,” Walter told me. Herr Bodenschatz was young and very nervous, “as if he’s afraid of making mistakes.” And the very first homework he’d set was an essay on the Führer’s genius.
“So what should I say?” Walter asked.
“Say that he’s brought ten million Germans back to the fatherland without starting a war,” I began.
“But the Austrians were never part of the fatherland,” Walter protested.
I shook my head. “I don’t think you need to point that out. Say that he’s made Germany strong and feared and made our enemies look weak and divided.”
“Which is true. But . . .”
I told him the English had a phrase: “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“So what you just said is the truth, but not the whole truth.”
“Exactly. I don’t expect this teacher will want to hear the whole truth.”
“No, I’m sure he won’t. But what do you think? Is the Führer a genius, at least in part?”
“Time will tell. If he’s a genius, he’ll know when to stop.”
Walter thought about that. “Maybe he’s an evil genius,” he said. “Like Fu Manchu.”
I said I didn’t think Herr Bodenschatz would like that comparison.
The grin was pure Walter.
Thursday, October 27
It has taken us two days to prevail, but the authorities have finally conceded defeat. The mood at work over those forty-eight hours has been sufficiently mutinous—several quarrels that turned into fights, a rash of accidents and time-consuming breakdowns, a veritable deluge of sick notes—that they must have felt they had no choice. Our heroic accountant has been released and was back at work this afternoon, moving rather gingerly but without any obvious bruising where it shows. Dietmar Hefelmann has been removed from his position, and the police will “consider the possibility” of bringing charges. I’ll believe that when I see it—the more likely outcome is that he’ll just swap places with another official who’s had his hand in the jar somewhere else.
The victory isn’t complete, but it certainly has been a victory. The workers have shown their solidarity and consequent power for the first time in years, and the enemy looks more vulnerable than it did. A spell has been broken, and things that seemed out of the question seem possible again. Hope is contagious. When I take the plunge and ask my chosen men to do the same, it won’t just feel, to them or me, as if I’m looking for sacrificial lambs.
Friday, October 28
Those Jews with Polish citizenship who currently live in Germany are facing a crisis. Yesterday our government announced its decision to deport them, and today the Poles announced their refusal to take them back. Around fifteen thousand Jews have been shoved across the border—or, more accurately, into the no-man’s-land between the two countries—and are stuck there with no food or shelter until either Berlin or Warsaw backs down.
What’s even more depressing is my strong suspicion that large majorities of the German and Polish populations think their government should stick to its guns. It’s hard to believe how much better people might be when they seem so determined to show you what they are.
Saturday, October 29
It’s two in the morning, and the house is wrapped in silence. Jakob and I spent the evening at the Social Club, and after drinking as much as we did, I didn’t foresee any problem falling asleep. But for once too much alcohol had the opposite effect, and after tossing in bed for a couple of hours, I got myself up again, retrieved this journal from its hiding place in the window frame, and sat down by my window to write.
Today—yesterday now—was the last Saturday of the month, and I didn’t turn up for the treff in Bochum. Instead I took a very long walk into the countryside, and slowly put aside the mental picture of Dieter waiting in vain for those thirty minutes our protocol dictates. To say I felt guilty would be to overstate, but I will admit to that sense of unease that goes with behaving uncharacteristically. I reminded myself
that Dieter wouldn’t be risking a few days in Germany to see only me. I told myself that I had given the Comintern fifteen years of my life and that it could spare a few weeks in return. And I enjoyed my walk.
Immersion in the natural world has always brought me peace, and as a boy my favored futures included exploring, foresting, and plant gathering. At Walter’s age I had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of trees, now mostly forgotten after twenty years living not just in cities but in those neighborhoods less blessed with space and greenery. Would I have been happier as a botanist? Perhaps. But happiness and fulfillment are different things, and I have often felt fulfilled in the life I chose. If someone had asked me a few months ago, I would have denied I had any lasting regrets gnawing away at my heart, and that remains more true than not. But if I had to pick one, it would be the lack of closeness in my life. I have not been a monk, but Lin was the first and last woman I know I loved, and leaving her that night was the greatest mistake of my life.
I suppose everyone has regrets. There are always choices to be made, and who can choose right each and every time? Esther Brennan used to quote me a line from one of the women detective writers she loves—as usual I can’t remember the name—to the effect that people always have the defects of their qualities. And of course vice versa.
I imagine lives are much the same.
Monday, October 31
A momentary respite from our national woes. This evening’s extraordinary news concerned an American radio adaption of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, a book I read in a Ukrainian trench with more amusement than fright, having used up all my reserves of the latter on the war going on around me. This new American adaptation, which went on the air yesterday evening, was apparently too realistic, and succeeded in convincing large numbers of Americans that beings from Mars had invaded their country. The authorities were swamped with alarm calls, frightened mobs roamed the streets, and emergency rooms filled up with people displaying serious symptoms of shock.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave Page 23