by Heinz Kohler
Each of them got to know the Yellow Uncle a carefully measured three times on the naked bottom. Except for Fifty-six. He had wriggled and kicked. Mr. Eisler held him by the hair and told him to show his hands. He slapped him a few extra times on the palm of his right hand, on the fatty part, just below the thumb. Saying “hello” to the Yellow Uncle, he called it.
Then Mr. Eisler handed each of us a note for our parents. It told them that we would be graded on ten subjects in half a year: Behavior, Attention, Industry, Religion, German, Geography, Handwriting, Arithmetic, Music, and Punctuality.
Finally, it was time to go home.
“Let us pray,” Mr. Eisler said. “We thank thee, Heavenly Father, for teaching us the meaning of order and discipline, of perfection and cleanliness. Preserve us as we now are, One People, One Nation, One Führer. Amen.”
Mr. Eisler smiled at me as I left. He sat again at his desk, and this time he was rubbing the Yellow Uncle with an onion.
“Adds elasticity and makes for a longer life,” he explained with a grin.
I felt safe enough. My name was Five.
The Nazi view of schoolchildren:
You, too, belong to the Leader.
7. Hail to the Victors!
[February-December 1939]
When I look back at my first year of school in Berlin, from the vantage point of someone who has by now spent several decades on the other side of the Atlantic, one thing strikes me as amazing: The speed with which we learned things in those days. It exceeded greatly the academic progress made by the typical first grader in America today. Learning, in contrast to playing, was a serious business then, and we spent many hours at it every day, even Saturdays.
Mr. Eisler lost no time initiating us into the subjects he had promised to teach, but he had a special way of doing so, which surprised our mothers greatly. When they went to school, way back in the midst of World War I, different subjects were taught by different teachers during different hours of the day. Not so in our school. Mr. Eisler was our only teacher that year and he merged all the subjects into one. Dieter and I liked it a lot. In fact, we were fascinated.
Within a month of our arrival, Mr. Eisler put up a huge map that covered an entire wall. It was a map of Germany in 1918, he said. We all had to make our own copies of it, first learning about different provinces and then about the oceans to the north, the mountains to the south, and all sorts of rivers and towns in-between. In the process, we learned geography, but we also learned how to read and spell and write such fancy words as Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, and Silesia. Before long, I could spell North Sea and Baltic Sea and Elbe and Oder and even Harz Mountains and Tyrolean Alps. Moreover, I could find all of them on the map. And my own little map got filled with the names of cities, such as Berlin and Brandenburg, Dresden and Hamburg, Munich and Nuremberg.
Arithmetic came into the picture as well. Thus, we learned about the height of mountains, the length of rivers, and the numbers of inhabitants in cities. The Matterhorn was 4,505 meters high, Mr. Eisler told us, the Grossglockner peaked at 3,798 m, and the Zugspitze came to only 2,963 m. Just for fun, Mr. Eisler made us add or subtract some of the numbers, such as those found in the Matterhorn measurement:
4 + 5 + 0 + 5 came to 14, while 4 + 5 + 0 – 5 came to only 4.
We played similar games with rivers, noting that the length of the Danube was 2,850 kilometers, the Rhine came to 1,320 km, the Elbe to 1,144 km, the Vistula to 1,059 km, and the Oder to only 898 km.
“How much longer than the Oder is the Elbe?” Mr. Eisler asked.
I knew:
1,144 – 898 = 246
Cities were fair game as well. Berlin, I found out, had 3.33 million people in it, Vienna had 1.76 million, and Hamburg 1.61 million. And thus we learned about decimal points and numbers being divided into 100 equal parts.
There was more! By adding ever more colors to his map, Mr. Eisler showed us how the Führer had made Germany grow. Thus, the Führer added the Saar in 1935, Austria in 1938, and the Sudetenland in 1939, just a few months ago. Now, Mr. Eisler told us one summer day, Adolf Hitler wants Danzig to join the Reich and he has asked the Poles for a corridor road to link up East Prussia with Pomerania and the rest of us.
“And he has asked nicely!” Mr. Eisler exclaimed. “But are the Poles listening?”
Dieter and I didn’t know the answer to that; in addition, our thoughts got sidetracked on the way home from school. The streets were suddenly filled with hundreds of red flags, hanging from poles at the corners of every street and also from almost every balcony, but not all of them had the white circle with the black swastika on them. Many flags pictured a five-pointed star with a hammer and sickle inside. For Dieter and me that was big news! What was happening to the world?
When we got home, my mother and Mrs. Meyer explained.
“The hammer-and-sickle flag is the flag of Russia,” my mother said. “An important man of theirs is visiting Berlin today.”
Mrs. Meyer, as usual, was fiddling with the radio. When the squealing stopped, we could hear an excited announcer tell the story:
“At this very moment, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, who has recently replaced the Jew Maxim Litvinov in this post, is departing Tempelhof airport in his black limousine---on his way, we believe, to the Soviet Embassy. Earlier, he was cordially greeted by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop who told us that a 10-year non-aggression pact has been signed in Moscow and important follow-up talks were about to begin. For additional news, we now switch to the Hotel Adlon where….”
The voice disappeared, as Mrs. Meyer had turned off the radio.
“And thus the Bolsheviks have conquered Berlin!” she said with a big grin. “Well, let’s hope Arthur and his SPD pals were wrong with their ‘Hitler means war’ talk.”
By then she was talking, of course, about my father.
-----
Back in school, Mr. Eisler expressed a similar sentiment. He praised the Führer for his ceaseless efforts to make Europe a place of peace. And he showed us the outlines of our new friend Russia on his giant map. Before long, we added the Volga (3,688 km) and the Dnyepr (2,285 km) to our own maps. We also learned that Moscow had 5.60 million inhabitants, while Leningrad had only 3.00 million.
“How much shorter than the Volga is the Dnyepr?” Mr. Eisler asked.
I knew how to do it and volunteered:
2,285 – 3,688 = – 1,403
“One thousand four hundred three kilometers,” I said eagerly.
My mother had already taught me about negative numbers. Mr. Eisler smiled at me and then called on Twenty-Nine to work a similar problem.
“How much smaller than Moscow is Leningrad?” he asked.
Twenty-Nine didn’t know what to do and was made to say hello to the Yellow Uncle.
“Pay attention!” Mr. Eisler said as Twenty-Nine pulled up his pants.
Then Mr. Eisler made him go to the blackboard and add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. As he was working, ever so slowly, I remembered the trick my mother had taught me.
“In your mind, picture all the numbers between 1 and 100 in a row: 1, 2, 3…97, 98, 99, and 100,” she had said. “Then note that 1 + 99 = 100. That 2 + 98 = 100 as well. That 3 + 97 = 100, too. In this way, by the time you reach 49 + 51 = 100, you have found a sum of 100 forty-nine times! And by then you have used all the numbers in your initial row, except the 50 and the 100. Therefore, the grand sum you seek equals
49 times 100 = 4,900 plus the remaining 50 + 100, or 5,050.”
While Twenty-Nine was still struggling with the first ten numbers, I gave Mr. Eisler the answer. He said I was a talented and gifted child. He may well recommend a TAG child such as me for the special Adolf Hitler School in Munich. Being the conceited little creature that I was rapidly becoming, I felt very proud of myself.
“Elementary, really,” I thought.
----
Mr. Eisler gave Twenty-Nine another task, counting backwards from 100 in
steps of seven. As Twenty-Nine struggled with the list—100, 93, 86 ––Mr. Eisler returned to the main issue of the day. He was uncertain, he said, about the prospects for peace with other countries.
“Although the Führer has secured peace with Russia,” he said, “unfortunately, one cannot trust the Poles.”
“Four years ago,” he continued, pointing to his map with a long stick, “the Poles had a map that showed Poland’s western frontier reaching all the way to the Elbe River, right here. On their map, all the German towns you have learned about had Polish names. Apparently, their map was part of a secret invasion plan, but our Secret Service exposed it. That’s why we must be ever watchful. We can’t trust the Poles; they are not only defiant, but also deceptive.”
Mr. Eisler then took the occasion to give us a spelling lesson and also teach us about rhyme. He told us about scary leaflets the Poles had recently dropped along the Oder River. And he copied one of them to the blackboard:
Betet noch ein Vaterunser, morgen seit Ihr unser!
[Quickly say another Lord’s Prayer, for tomorrow you belong to us!]
Then time was up. Mr. Eisler told us, in turn, quickly to copy the message off the blackboard and take it home.
My mother said it was a Nazi fake and Mrs. Meyer agreed, which provided the occasion for their explaining to me and Dieter the meaning of fake, but that was not the end of the story. Just a week later, on September 1, 1939, the “Polish problem,” as Mr. Eisler had called it, returned with a vengeance. At breakfast time, even before we left for school, the radio was filled with martial music and then Dr. Goebbels made another speech.
“Our proposals for a peaceful solution to the problem of Danzig and the Polish corridor have been rejected by Poland,” he said. “Now, as if to add insult to injury, the Poles have visited atrocities on German citizens, especially women and children, killing many of them. Our patience is at an end. Accordingly, as the Führer has just put it, ‘bomb will be met by bomb.’ At this moment, under the command of General Walther von Brauchitsch, 33 German army divisions, supported by 1,600 aircraft, are doing what is necessary to defend our fatherland. And as of today, Danzig enters the Reich as a German city.”
-----
By the time we got to school, Mr. Eisler had already updated his teaching devices. A new map of Europe hung on the big wall, with Greater Germany highlighted in a pretty green. Judging by the color, Danzig had clearly entered the Reich, just as Dr. Goebbels had said. For the time being, all of Poland had been painted yellow by Mr. Eisler so we could better appreciate its place in the world. And, just to the left of the new map, Mr. Eisler had made other arrangements as well. I saw two photographs and a brand-new bulletin board.
One of the photographs showed Paul von Hindenburg, the World War I Field Marshal, who later became President and, just before his death, appointed Hitler as chancellor. The same photograph showed the Führer as well and a giant caption read “The Marshal and the Corporal—Fighting With Us for Peace and Equal Rights.”
The second photograph showed the Führer shaking hands with the papal ambassador, Basallo di Torregrossa, who was quoted in the caption: “For a long time, I did not understand you. But equally long I have tried to. Today I understand you.”
Actually, I didn’t read this till the midday break. Before then, Mr. Eisler had focused on the bulletin board, onto which, he said, we would henceforth write the news. That in itself turned out to be a complicated process.
During the coming weeks, Mr. Eisler told us the latest news each morning. Then one of us had to write a summary sentence or two on the blackboard and possibly had to write it again and again until perfection was achieved. Finally, the rest of us had to copy the perfect product to our tablets of slate, while Mr. Eisler himself made the same entry on the bulletin board. Needless to say, the Yellow Uncle had to help some of us, but I was lucky. I never had to shake his hand.
This is what the bulletin board looked like as we left for our first winter vacation:
1939
September 1
German army enters Poland to defend the Reich
September 3
Britain and France declare war on Germany; Australia, India, and New Zealand follow suit
September 4
British liner Athenia, carrying 1,400 passengers, torpedoed and sunk
September 6
South Africa declares war on Germany
September 8
Troops of General Walter von Reichenau reach Warsaw suburbs
September 10
Canada declares war on Germany
September 17
Soviet troops march into eastern Poland
German U-Boat sinks British aircraft carrier Courageous
September 27
After massive air raid, Warsaw surrenders to German troops
September 30
The war in Poland is over! Germany has won!
Soviet troops invade Finland, bomb Helsinki airport
Marshal Karl von Mannerheim leads defenses with success
October 14
German U-Boat passes through Scapa Flow submarine defenses in Orkney Islands, then sinks British battleship Royal Oak
December 14
German battleship Admiral Graf Spee battles British cruisers Achilles, Ajax, and Exeter, then seeks safety in Montevideo harbor. Denied refuge and shelled with mustard gas, German crew sinks own ship in the Rio de la Plata
The bulletin board, however, gave only the barest outline of what we learned that fall. Each entry not only taught us to read and write better, it also gave occasion to all sorts of additional lessons from Mr. Eisler. Thus, the Graf Spee incident became the subject of our art class, in which we were asked to draw a copy of the vessel’s tailpiece, a 3-meter tall bronze eagle resting on top of a swastika. The Scapa Flow story, in turn, led to our drawing of a detailed map of the 70 islands making up the Orkneys. And we learned that they had been settled by the Picts, only to be conquered by Norsemen in 875. They became part of Scotland in 1472. And yes, adding the numbers in the latter year came to 1 + 4 + 7 + 2 = 14.
Similarly, the final victory over Poland excited Mr. Eisler greatly and caused him to devote a whole day to General Heinz Guderian’s 1933 book, Achtung! Panzer! [Attention! Tanks!].
“That book,” Mr. Eisler told us, “first proposed the recently so successful Blitzkrieg strategy. Such a lightning-fast war,” Mr. Eisler continued, “avoids the lengthy and indecisive trench warfare of former times. Based on mobile forces, such as artillery, tanks, and aircraft, all of which are equipped with enormous firepower and are moving at rapid speed, such strategy defeats the enemy in a single offensive.”
“Just as in Poland,” Mr. Eisler concluded.
True enough, many of us had trouble with Mr. Eisler’s approach. At first, his long sentences and all the fancy words he used just went above our heads. But he kept it up and never let a subject go until we had mastered it. In a matter of a single year, we moved from the duck that said quack-quack and the cat that said meow to reading, writing, and using such complicated words as Blitzkrieg and aircraft carrier and military strategy. Before long, our minds could move from Montevideo harbor to the Mannerheim line and back to the Tyrolean Alps just as easily as our feet moved us from home to school and back again.
My mother and Mrs. Meyer, however, didn’t believe the Montevideo story, especially the part about the mustard gas. They always whispered about Mr. Eisler, particularly after the Street Warden had paid Dieter and Mr. and Mrs. Meyer a visit. In some miraculous fashion, the Warden had gotten hold of a little essay that Dieter had handed in to Mr. Eisler.
“What I had for Sunday Dinner,” said the title. Dieter had written about pork roast and mashed potatoes with gravy, sauerkraut and applesauce and, of course, Rote Grütze. That was a problem.
“Apparently,” said the Warden to Mrs. Meyer, “you are not paying attention to the Führer’s edict about waste in time of war. You are to be less lavish, more economical, m
ake Eintopf meals, saving food for our brave men at the front.”
About two minutes after the Warden had left, Mrs. Meyer rang our door bell.
“Can you believe this?” she said to my mother, “I always knew that Eisler was a snake! Now he uses our children to rat us out! This time it’s only about single-pot meals; what’s it going to be tomorrow? And are we to live on nothing but Adolf’s flour soup?”
“We have to watch more closely what the boys are doing at school,” my mother replied. ”Did I tell you the Warden came here, too? He wanted to know why I was never hanging out the flag from the balcony, can you believe it? I told him I couldn’t afford one now that Arthur is gone.”
“And you know what he said?” my mother continued. “Now that there is a war, things could change, he said. Maybe you could help bring Arthur home if you would just join the Frauenschaft, he said. Picture me joining the women’s auxiliary of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!”
“But then,” she continued, “maybe he has a point. I did say I would lend a hand with the Winter Help Campaign. Collecting money at the street corner for two days won’t kill me. Who knows what they do with it, but maybe it helps the right people somewhere.”
And my mother did volunteer for that campaign. The Warden was so pleased. He brought her a big red box and a bell and he said I could go along, hold the sign, hand out the little books, and even ring the bell. My mother said it was all right.
Before we left, I read the sign. “It is the highest duty of every German,” it said, “to help those in need. This year’s campaign is the first one in times of war. The Führer demands that you not just give, but that you sacrifice!”
I also read the instructions. Those who gave more than 5 Reichsmark were to be rewarded with the little booklet. “The Führer Makes History,” the title said.