by Karin Tanabe
So when a sharp knock on the double front door jolted awake the three residents of 9000 River Road on a still January night, they never would have guessed that it wasn’t the pounding of dreams arousing them but rather something more: a tiny fracture in their reality.
Just one week before, the Lange family had ushered in 1943 with champagne and the pleasant tinkling of laughter. In the company of the esteemed congressman from Wisconsin’s fourth district with the long Polish name—who said he could only stay for an hour and one drink, but stayed for five and a few bottles—the family had moved excitedly through the house, greeting their guests, buzzing with anticipation for the new year.
But it wasn’t just the congressman who gave their soiree its clout. River Hills’ most glamorous young wives, and the men who made Milwaukee run, had also walked through the Langes’ front door, greeted by the family with the warmth reserved for old friends. They were somebodies who would always remain somebodies, Franz and Helene Lange thought to themselves, just like they did every year when they opened the door for the first guest. Hadn’t the war proven that? Even the owner of the city’s baseball club and his glamorous horsewoman of a wife, who still wore her mink sable, had stopped by for nearly thirty minutes. And when they left, light as champagne corks, they’d said they were reluctant to go, as the Langes’ would surely be the best party of the night. Helene had blushed and said, “Of course it won’t be. With your circle of friends?” But she knew they were right. She and her husband did throw a wonderful party. Helene was sure of that.
She wasn’t skilled at everything, but Helene Lange was an accomplished hostess. She knew to always have double the amount of food per guest, as even those who declined would end up coming, and to have the waiters refill the drinks before they were half-consumed. “A party feels wrong in these uncertain times,” a few guests had said when they arrived, but that sentiment was forgotten when they saw the sizzling suckling pig with rosemary and garlic potatoes and caviar garnish being served in enormous quantities. Helene knew that during war, delicacies were appreciated even more.
It was true that all over the country, celebrations had been muted out of respect for the conflict raging abroad, but Helene and Franz were sure they were exempt from such behavior. Their annual New Year’s Eve party was buoyed by a decadence and happiness that floated above life’s annoyances and it shouldn’t be canceled because of what was happening thousands of miles away. More important, everyone associated the evening with Lange Steel, and that helped the family’s bank accounts swell.
Franz Lange, an engineer by trade, had founded Lange Steel only seven years after immigrating to the United States in 1921 and molded it into one of the Midwest’s largest producers of steel wire. For a company like Lange, war had been a boon, turning its profits ever upward. With peace nowhere in sight, forty-seven-year-old, perpetually power-hungry Franz was even thinking of expansion. On that New Year’s Eve, he and his graceful wife, Helene, had of course shared sympathetic thoughts for those fighting and prayers for families dealing with loss, but imagined the best was yet to come for them and their only child, Christian.
As the sound of a tree branch grazing a window echoed through the room, there was another knock on the door.
“Is your father in here?” the anxious voice of Helene Lange whispered from just outside Christian’s open bedroom door.
“He’s not with you?” Christian asked, his pitch newly baritone. He was already sitting up in bed, his goose feather pillows strewn across the floor next to him.
“He must have fallen asleep listening to the radio,” said Helene, looking around her son’s room as if she didn’t quite believe that her husband was not there.
“The news of the Russian troop movements in Stalingrad,” Christian reminded his mother. “He was listening to the report after supper.”
When the fist hit the door a third time, Christian pushed his blankets back, let them slide onto the carpeted floor, and stood up next to his mother. “Dad must be awake now—” he said. He stopped midsentence as they heard the distinct creak of their front door. Then a voice unmarked by a midwestern twang rang through the still house.
“You are Franz Lange?”
In River Hills, it was always a good thing to be Franz Lange. Franz Lange had a glamorous wife, a big house, and a son who grew more handsome with every sunrise. But from the sound of his voice, this night crawler did not care for Franz Lange.
For Christian, it was the note of callousness that snapped him wide awake. Suddenly, he knew who these men were. He had thought of them often in the past year, but they had seemed more like fictional characters, laughable villains in a police novel, not brusque men who could push into his home. His mother retied the belt of her thin pink robe, higher than usual since her stomach had grown noticeably larger over the holidays, and motioned to her son to follow her down the stairs.
There were many kinds of people in Milwaukee, but there was only one kind of person in River Hills—rich. And the two strangers standing in the Langes’ foyer did not look rich. One was tall and fair like the Lange men, the other dark-haired and stout, with a hairline that stopped just an inch above his shaggy eyebrows. Once inside, they had pulled out identification cards, showing they were who Christian had guessed: FBI agents. The shorter one was Smith, the taller Jakobsson. A Swedish name to match his yellow Viking hair, thought Christian, though his cheap suit undercut his good looks.
Christian felt himself grab on to his mother’s robe, a childish instinct that surprised them both. She reached for his hand.
“You all deaf? Family of mutes?” asked the shorter one. “We’ve been standing there knocking for damn near ten minutes. I was about to bust down the door. It’s snowing, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Franz said, offering to take their coats, an offer that was rudely waved off. “It’s rather late. I’m afraid we were all sound asleep.”
“Sure you were.” Smith removed his hat and looked up at Franz. “We have permission to search your home, Mr. Lange. I’m sure you know why.”
“Because I am German and we are at war,” said Franz. “I am not ignorant of what is happening in the world.” He turned around and looked at his wife. “Helene, please, fetch our papers,” he said, a touch too haughtily given the circumstances. “He, Christian, is American,” he said of his son, who had remained a step behind his mother. Helene reluctantly let go of her son’s hand and rushed back up the carpeted hallway without a word, nodding for Christian to follow her. The two men walked farther inside.
While the family was prepared to watch the agents start turning the house upside down, searching every corner, every drawer—as they’d been told was their practice—all the men did at first was stroll through the rooms as if they were guests, examining the expensive furniture and peering out the window at the faint outline of the nearby Milwaukee River, only visible because of the night’s blue-tinted full moon.
Helene and Christian were allowed to change into day clothes, though when Christian emerged from his room without socks, it was clear his nerves had gotten the better of his dress sense. Helene, her red hair hastily pinned up, handed the taller man their alien registration cards, their German passports, and Christian’s American one.
“He is an American,” she said of her son, echoing her husband. “And we are legal residents.” She pointed at their photos and the round stamps embossed years ago in a bland government building in Milwaukee. “My husband is a pillar of this community,” she declared. “Franz Lange. Everyone here knows Franz Lange.”
Christian put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze, sure that trying to defend themselves was not the right course of action with such men. But Helene continued. “We are members of the country club,” she said, waving in its general direction. “The one on Range Line Road. The best in Milwaukee.”
Christian wished his mother would stop. She sounded desperate, and desperation made her sound guilty.
Jakobsson took th
e documents from her and flipped roughly through the small stamped pages, his fingers playing with the edges, then turned to study the expensive Karl Caspar drawing on the wall. The black-and-white depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, expertly framed in gold-painted wood, had been given by the artist to Franz’s wealthy parents years ago. “Your golfing habits,” Jakobsson said to Helene coldly, “are of no interest to me.”
To Helene, who had never succeeded in diluting her thick German accent, being a member of the Milwaukee Country Club was the ultimate badge of Americanness. The club was where she and her family celebrated the Fourth of July, where she and other housewives browned themselves—or reddened themselves, as in her case—by the large swimming pool. It was one of two at the club, she had written to her mother when they were first accepted as members. Her husband went as often as she did, playing golf and making important connections to build up Lange steel.
Franz had lost his accent much faster than Helene, had assimilated more rapidly, too, and she admired him almost too much for it. He had grown up in cosmopolitan Berlin and had started studying English much younger than she had, and in the right schools. He spoke German like an aristocrat, English first like an Englishman and now like an upper-crust American, and was even proficient in French. She was the daughter of a baker and had spent her childhood and adolescence in a rural town with chickens and a donkey named Aldo. She would never lose her accent.
Franz’s easy command of English was something he’d liked to show off when the two had started dating in Berlin. He was a young engineer, and she was a violin student at the Stern Conservatory.
Because of her reserve, Franz didn’t seduce her in the forthright way he had used—many times successfully—with other women. Instead, he went the playground route and teased her about the color of her hair, calling her Mrs. Tomato Soup in his proper English. The nickname stuck, and even years later he would use it when he had had too much wine and they were rediscovering each other in bed at night.
Their son had picked up on it, too, even though it was supposed to be reserved for private moments, and for some reason that silly name came to him now as he watched his mother standing rigidly under the light of the dining room chandelier. Tomato soup—that was as American as it got, wasn’t it? So why were the agents there?
The Lange family didn’t live in the predominantly German area of Milwaukee, Franz didn’t belong to the German Club, and he didn’t frequent beer halls full of immigrants. And while the three spoke the language to each other when alone, they always spoke English outside the house. Still, here were two brusque men walking around their home as if they were planning to measure the walls and move in.
Christian and his parents had talked about such visitations in whispers since the bombing of Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941. Since then, they had heard of some German nationals being arrested in Milwaukee, had been told how their houses were scoured by agents, but they weren’t their kind of people. And so few of them were being arrested in proportion to their numbers. There were millions of German-Americans in the United States. Surely, the Langes thought, the odds would protect them.
The Japanese were the ones being targeted, everyone said. Christian had heard the news reports, had seen pictures of white children in magazines holding up placards that read “Jap-hunting season” and “yellow peril.” Signs like that were all over California. Those people were at risk, not his parents. Not him. The images had made him feel sick, but part of him had been relieved it was them, thinking that it meant he had been spared. The Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese were all the enemies of the United States. The Axis, all allies.
Franz and Helene were so confident of their safety that they never shielded their son from their conversations. He should know what was happening in their country, in their state, and in the world at war, they thought, and he should trust that it would have almost no effect on him. No one would come for Franz, since he employed more than one hundred people, almost all American citizens. So by the time 1942 had wound down, the three Langes were sure they would safely ride out the war.
But here they were, and Christian was having trouble not thinking the worst. The draft age had been changed to eighteen the year before, but just a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, he hadn’t been concerned. He had college ahead of him, not war. His parents had assured him that he would not be drafted, just as they assured him that the FBI would not knock on their door. Perhaps, thought Christian, they were wrong about both.
Christian watched the two men open the drawers in his father’s office, knocking about the wooden desk that he’d loved sitting at as a boy. They riffled through Franz’s papers as he stood there, looking foolish.
“What is it you are searching for?” Franz finally asked. “Surely the fact that we are German citizens is not enough reason for you to tear apart our home in the middle of the night.”
Christian looked away from the men, relieved that his father was finally standing up for his family.
“That’s more than enough, Mr. Lange,” said Jakobsson, the blue veins in his neck protruding with excitement. “We are at war with your country. Your rights, or these rights you assume incorrectly that you have, no longer exist. We can search whomever we please, whenever we please, if they are citizens of a country we are fighting against. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with J. Edgar Hoover.”
Smith, busy thumbing through Franz’s bank ledgers, raised his eyebrows at the sight of the high-six-figure balances.
“We’re looking for dangerous enemy aliens, and we are authorized to do all we need to find them,” Jakobsson went on, looking a little too long at a picture of Helene in a low-cut evening dress on Franz’s desk, her pale chest filling half the frame. “But to be frank with you, Mr. Lange,” he said, waving his arms around to indicate the house, “all this is ancillary. I don’t need to search this house. I don’t need these letters.” He flipped a few onto the floor. “Though I will be taking some of them with me.”
He folded a pile of documents and handed them to his colleague. Pausing a moment, he took the framed picture of young Helene. He ran his finger lewdly over the image before saying, “My real questions lie here.” He patted his worn briefcase and pulled it onto the desk, where he opened it slowly.
“This, Mr. Lange,” he said, pointing to the top of the pile of papers, “is a letter written by you to Fritz Kuhn, the head of the German American Bund. In it, you write all about your support of the Nazi Party and how you intended to help spread its message in America, particularly the Midwest, where President Franklin D. Rosenfeld has less influence. You even say proudly that you’ve funded programs for Nazi youth in Grafton, Wisconsin, for several years. Makes for a disturbing read.”
“You must be joking,” Franz said, reaching for the paper. Jakobsson pulled it away before he could touch it.
“I didn’t write any such letter,” Franz said firmly. “I would never say, or write, such things. And I have never had any interaction with Fritz Kuhn or the Bund.”
“Is this not your writing, Mr. Lange?” asked Jakobsson.
“No!” said Franz, trying to grab the paper again. Jakobsson pulled it out of his reach, obviously amused by his game.
“So you are not a member of the Bund? And you did not give money to the camp in Grafton in the thirties? What was it called?” he asked his colleague.
“Camp Hindenburg,” said Smith. “It was full of Nazi youth running around raising swastikas and hating Jews.”
“Right,” said Jakobsson. “That’s the place.”
“Of course not,” Franz said, struggling to remain polite, his body tense with restraint. “I have nothing to do with that camp or that Nazi group. I take great issue with its presence in America.”
Christian looked at his father, his square jaw tight, his light eyes starting to water from frustration. There had to be an explanation. He had never heard Franz say a positive word about the Nazis, but he had never been a rallying force
against them, either.
“But you knew it was an American Nazi group. You just said so,” said Jakobsson, smiling.
“No, you said so,” Franz replied. “I’m repeating your words.”
“Yet there is this letter,” said Jakobsson, flicking the paper. “It looks quite a bit like your writing. I would call it identical.” He finally put it down on the desk next to a condolence letter that Franz had been composing to a colleague. The handwriting on the two documents—slanted to the left, big capitals, and almost illegible at the end of each sentence—was indistinguishable.
“Obviously, the letter to Kuhn is fraudulent,” said Franz, bending down to examine the heavy black script. “Someone is playing a malicious joke on me.”
“Obviously,” Jakobsson replied.
Christian and Helene moved closer to see the letter, Christian’s panic rising, but Smith kept them at a distance.
“I’m afraid it’s not just the matter of the letter,” said Smith stoically. “Two of your employees confided—after not much pressing—that they heard you make pro-Nazi statements in the office. And one claimed to have seen you spit on an American flag. Any recollection of using the Stars and Stripes as a spittoon?” he asked, running his hand back and forth on the desk, causing even more papers to fall.
“You are gravely mistaken,” said Franz, no longer succeeding in keeping his temper in check. “I love this country. My wife and I chose to build our lives together here and to have our son right here in Wisconsin. I am as much an American as I am a German.”
“No,” said Smith. “You are not an American and will never be.”
Helene stared at him as if he had taken her country club membership and pitched it in an incinerator.
“We could hunt through your house for contraband, but we have enough to arrest you right now,” Smith said to Franz, the agent’s forehead beginning to sweat as the warm air of the Langes’ house caught up with him.