by Heinz Kohler
“Are you sure?” I asked impudently. “What about all the people who pray for their husbands and fathers and brothers fighting on the eastern front? Could we conclude that those who died had relatives who didn’t pray or didn’t pray enough?”
Pastor Jahn gave me a withering look. I suppose he had never met such an angry child before.
“If you truly believe and pray, thou shalt receive,” Pastor Jahn insisted, but I wouldn’t let it go.
“That would be easy to test,” I said. “Why don’t we ask everyone in Ziesar whether they prayed for someone in the war and whether their loved ones are still alive? Then we can see how often prayer worked.”
“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord!” Pastor Jahn thundered, but there was no stopping me then.
“Don’t the Russians and the French and the English pray, too?” I asked. “Then why does anybody die on either side? Do only those who aren’t prayed for die?”
That’s when Pastor Jahn came after me with the Yellow Uncle. He said something about my being a “satanic child,” but I don’t remember the details. My mind went somewhere else. I was thinking of Dieter and how Mrs. Meyer had always prayed so much in the air raid shelter. I have no idea whether he hit me or how much. I didn’t feel anything.
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That afternoon, we had our Contemporary Issues class with Dr. Dietrich. He said that his classes were the most important ones in school because he taught us to be good Germans. He made us stand at attention when he entered the room, and he made us face the big poster on the front wall. “A German Says Heil Hitler,” it said.
With our right hands raised, we sang “Germany, Germany above all,” every single verse. And Dr. Dietrich made sure that we didn’t rest our tired arms on the shoulders of those who stood in front of us.
A large map hung on the wall across from the windows. The map had pins in it with colored heads. They marked the position of German troops: from the North Cape of Norway to the deserts of Tunisia, from the Channel Islands to the Caucasus. The front lines were somewhat out of date, but Dr. Dietrich explained that the positions on the map would be recaptured soon, which is why he didn't bother moving back the pins.
“There is no way the enemy can win this war,” he said.
He had been in France, England, and even in America, in the ’20s, when he was working on his Doctor of Geography degree, he said. He knew the mentality of the enemy.
“The French are corrupt and disorganized,” he said, “and that’s why they have lost the war already, just as they lost the last one and the one before that. When you get to the next grade, you'll read Emile Zola. He wrote all about their corruption, in a book called J’Accuse.”
Dr. Dietrich also told us why the French government could never get anything done.
“There is a basic flaw in their system,” he sneered. “Elections follow elections; they hold endless debates on everything. It was the same, of course, in the Weimar Republic, and that’s why the Führer put an end to the black, red, and mustard flag.”
“The French do have the meter, though,” Dr. Dietrich continued, “the only true meter. It’s a metal rod, made of platinum, and it lies in alcohol with a thermometer attached so it won’t contract or expand. That’s very important, for nobody would otherwise know what a meter was. Someday, we’ll move it to Berlin, and then you can look at it. Why should all people go to Paris to check their measuring sticks?”
Dr. Dietrich also told us that German troops had left Paris for a while, but the French didn’t know the whole story:
“The whole city is mined; dynamite has been placed everywhere. And just when the French get ready to celebrate, the Führer presses a button, and all goes up in smoke!”
“The English,” Dr. Dietrich continued, “the English aren’t any smarter. They even look stupid with their helmets shaped like soup dishes. They don’t even have the decimal system, they drive on the left side of the street, and all their windows are warped and won’t shut. They don’t have fir trees at Yuletide, either, just mistletoe. And men can often be seen walking to a lady’s right!”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked and pointed to Gertrud Kleist.
“A gentleman always walks to a lady’s left so as not to injure her when he draws his sword in her defense,” Gertrud answered.
That was certainly news to me.
“Excellent,” said Dr. Dietrich, and he moved on to discuss the Americans.
“Every year, fewer storks return from Africa; have you ever asked yourselves why?” he asked. "Because the blacks shoot at the harmless white birds!” he explained. “Some of the storks fly around for weeks with broken arrows in their bodies, and they can’t make it back across the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a shame, and it tells us a lot about the intelligence of African natives. That will be the downfall of the Americans. Their blood is all mixed up with that of the inferior African races; their brain power is ever decreasing.”
Dr. Dietrich was on a roll.
“Now consider the eastern front,” he said, and the Yellow Uncle swept across the map. “There has been much talk recently about the large number of Russian tanks. And it is true; they produce three tanks while we make one or two. But you should see their tanks!”
“Unfinished, unpolished, rusty even as they leave the factory! A veritable monument to the stupid, depraved vodka drinkers who produce them! In contrast, our tanks are made to last. German quality! Everything is perfect, inside and out, right down to the little brass signs that tell the soldiers where to put their caps and gloves and water flasks.”
“Yet they have three tanks for our two. What then is the proper response?” Dr. Dietrich asked, and he pointed to Gertrud Kleist once again.
I liked her long braids and kept looking at her breasts, but my thoughts were quickly interrupted.
“The German troops must retreat temporarily,” Gertrud answered, “while production is being reorganized.”
“Go on, go on,” prompted Dr. Dietrich.
“For every tank we produce we can also produce a hundred bazookas; and a hundred such Panzerfausts can stop an army of Russian tanks,” Gertrud explained.
I figured that all this must have been discussed before.
“Superb!” said Dr. Dietrich, almost dancing for joy on his podium, “You have done your homework well.”
Then Dr. Dietrich held up a newspaper.
“Seven hundred fifty-two Soviet tanks destroyed!” the headline said.
“We’ll show that eastern vermin!” Dr. Dietrich yelled. “We’ll show those Marxist sows!”
That’s when the bell rang. Dr. Dietrich told us to chew our lunches well.
“Every bite thirty-two times,” he said, “once for every tooth.”
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Fritz Hebbel shared his lunch with me. He was a little older than I, but I knew him because his mother was working with my mother at the ceramics plant. His father was a farmer; so Fritz had plenty of good things to eat, like bread and pork sausage. I let him drink out of my bottle of pop that tasted like woodruff.
I was glad we didn’t have to walk in a circle as in Berlin. We could do more interesting things, like setting leaves on fire with sun rays captured by a magnifying glass or burning yellow sulfur powder that we stole from our chemistry lab. I liked the blue flames; I also liked making deals.
“Sure would like to borrow your magic lantern tonight,” Fritz would say.
“Sure would like to have a liverwurst for supper,” I would reply.
“Could be done,” he would say.
Aunt Martel had sent me the lantern for Christmas and it had made me pretty popular. The Laterna Magica was a projector that only required a light bulb and an electric outlet to work. It came with hundreds of color slides, depicting scenes from fairy tales and the Old Testament mostly, and it could project them on any white-washed wall. Fritz wanted to treat his girl friend Gisela to a private showing.
After lunch, we had a lesson in the German language. Dr. Dietric
h told us about words.
“There are three types,” he said, “Germanic words, foreign words, and borrowed words. It is very important to recognize which is which and to use Germanic words whenever possible. Our language, just like our blood, must be kept pure. The Aryan race can be ruined by contamination with the blood of inferior people. That much is obvious. But our race can also be destroyed by the language of the inferior ones. The effect is subtle, but just as real. If we talk as our enemies do, we will soon think as they do. We will be as corrupt as the French, as stupid as the English, as sloppy as the Russians.”
He called on Helga to name Germanic words.
“Adolf,” she said, “the noble wolf. Herbert, the glory of the army. Gertrud, the spear maiden.”
“Splendid, splendid,” said Dr. Dietrich.
He asked me for a foreign word.
“Stop,” I said, and I suddenly realized why all the STOP signs had been changed to read HALT.
“Splendid, splendid,” said Dr. Dietrich, “but who can think of a borrowed word? It is the trickiest of them all. Like a spy, it looks like one of us, but it is one of theirs.”
Only Rosel raised her hand.
“Nose,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Dr. Dietrich, “and that’s another kind of word one should replace. ‘Facial bay' or 'blow horn' might be good.”
Dr. Dietrich also taught us new, National Socialist words, like artfremd [racially alien] and Einsatz [strike force] and Garant [pledge] and Gleichschaltung [being on the same circuit, the equalization of everyone’s thinking] and Kessel [cauldron, a group of forces encircled by the enemy] and Scholle [holy soil] and Untermensch [subhuman] and Volksgenosse [racial comrade].
“To be a racial comrade,” Dr. Dietrich explained, “one must be purely Aryan, of course. One cannot be a Mischling [mixed race person], such as a quarter or half Jew. Nor can one be a Geltungsjude [a legally Jewish person], such as a person who has married a Jew or joined a synagogue.”
When my mother saw my notes, she said Dr. Dietrich was stupid and I should forget about this revolting jargon. Still, that night, I turned off my mother’s snoring by tapping on her blow horn.
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Christmas 1944 was a sad affair. We didn’t have a tree and my father and grandmother and Aunt Martel were all far away. We were cold, despite the fact that we had lots of blankets on our beds. My mother sang songs for us. Oh, Tannenbaum [Oh, Christmas Tree]…Stille Nacht [Silent Night]….Süsser die Glocken nie klingen [Never the Bells Sound Sweeter]… Leise rieselt der Schnee [Softly Falleth the Snow]….
I only half listened. I kept staring at the louvered closet doors across the room, waiting for evil witches to emerge to join the dragons beneath my bed. I kept thinking of the newspaper I had just read, about the German offensive in the Ardennes, commanded by General von Rundstedt, which would reverse the war in the west, the paper had said. I pictured the stories in my mind: soldiers battling one another in knee-deep snow, General George Patton’s tanks sliding down steep and slippery hills like children’s sleds, General Hasso von Manteuffel’s men standing on ground so hard they had to use dynamite to dig trenches…And I had nightmares of airplanes strafing people on the ground and of Dieter standing with me on the bridge.
Apparently, I got up in my sleep and tried to climb out of the window, but my mother caught me. Dr. Weiss said not to worry; it was a case of somnambulism, I was just being attracted by the moon. My mother gave me two Valerian drops.
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When we returned to school after Christmas, Dr. Dietrich looked at my chapped lips, which must have been unusually red, and accused me of wearing lipstick.
“Disgusting,” he said.
Then he made us sing a new song.
“To Adolf Hit…” and then came a long pause, “…ler we are sworn…”
For some reason, the pause was very important. We never learned why. But Dr. Dietrich did tell us about the day he first saw the Führer.
“It was in Berlin,” he said, “in the early '30s. A hundred thousand people were packed into a small square. The sky was overcast; it drizzled now and then. We waited for hours. By the time he came, we were cold. He appeared on the platform and just stood there. He didn’t move until everything was quiet as a mouse. Then he raised his hands, and he talked:
Of the shameful Treaty of Versailles.
Of colonies stolen from us.
Of hunger stalking in our midst.
His eyes were everywhere, his voice rose up mightily, and his words moved our hearts.
‘Do you want jobs?’ he asked. ‘Do you want food?’
And just then the clouds parted, and a single beam of sunlight fell upon the Führer. Like a consecration! We were seized by a feeling of incredible joy. We fell into each other’s arms, perfect strangers, and cried.”
“A few years later,” Dr. Dietrich continued, “I had the great honor of meeting the Führer in private. ‘This was the most beautiful day of my life,’ I wrote in my diary. We were at the Party Congress, in Nuremberg. He shook my hands with the strength of steel. His eyes looked through me as if he could read my thoughts. They were the eyes of Odovakar, conqueror of Rome, and the eyes of Frederick the Great, marvelous dark blue eyes. And later! I wish you could have seen him at the airport, how he walked to the plane, firmly, then waved. The engines roared, and off he went into the clouds. Like a prophet!”
“And that’s what we should celebrate at the time of winter solstice,” Dr. Dietrich continued, “the appearance among us of the incarnate light, the Lichtkind, the Child of Light.”
Dr. Dietrich said we had wasted enough time listening to crazy stories about that Jew in a manger. He had a better project for us. We should all go out and ask people about the Führer. Dr. Dietrich wanted a written report from each one of us within a week.
----
I decided to interview all the store owners.
The lady in the shoe store said she had never seen Adolf Hitler herself, but that the Führer, obviously, was a genius.
“Marvelous, the way he built the Autobahn,” she said, “and how he sandblasted all the old castles to make them look like new, simply marvelous.”
The baker said the war was bad, but it wasn’t Adolf Hitler’s fault.
“Sometimes a nation has to go through a painful process of cleansing itself,” he said.
I didn’t understand what he meant, but I wrote it down anyway. The baker also said the Führer was very, very smart.
“He got rid of the depression, just like that. And right now, just as in our school, all the gymnasiums in the country are stocked with canned food,” he said. “That way, we can carry on the fight for years to come. Marvelous.”
The lady in the tobacco store, which was right across the street from us, said that the war was going badly, but it wasn’t Adolf Hitler's fault.
“He is too trusting,” she said, “shouldn’t have relied on the Italians and Rumanians. A bunch of gypsies, that’s what they are!”
Like Dr. Dietrich, Mr. Albrecht had seen Adolf Hitler, too, but he didn’t agree with Dr. Dietrich at all.
“Saw the little shrimp in Berlin,” he said, “the day I bought my smoking chamber. Waddled like a duck. His shoulders drooped. He looked at me with those cold fish eyes of his and didn’t say a thing. Sure does a lot of hysterical screaming on the radio, though.”
I watched Mr. Albrecht hang up the liverwursts, then the braunschweiger. My mouth watered. “He's a Catholic, too,” Mr. Albrecht added. I left for the grocery store.
“The day Adolf Hitler took power,” the grocery lady said, “my husband stood in the yard and shot all the brown chickens. He pretended they were brownshirts, shot them all, one after the other. Never had brown ones again either.”
“And was he ever right!” she added. “Look at all the trouble we are in with the war. And at all that Nazi nonsense. I can’t even listen to the Mid-Summer Night’s Dream just because Mendelssohn was a Jew. I am supposed to ignore Tchaikov
sky because he was an inferior Slav. Insane, that’s what it is, insane.”
She told me to go right ahead and tell that to Dr. Dietrich. Because her husband had died in Greece, she didn’t care what happened to her. But my mother wouldn't let me hand in my report.
“He is using you as informers,” she said.
And Mrs. Albrecht said the whole Nazi enterprise would never have gotten started if the Hitler family hadn’t changed its name.
“They were called Schicklgruber, you know. Imagine saying ‘Heil Schicklgruber!’ Everybody would just have laughed.”
I was a good little boy and obeyed my mother. I told Dr. Dietrich that I couldn’t write a report because of a stomach ache. I offered to bring my Hitler stamps to school instead and to show them to everybody. He liked the idea. I also brought a picture of Günther Prien, the hero of Scapa Flow. And for good measure I brought another picture, this one of Adolf Galland, commander of the Luftwaffe fighter force. Like the Red Baron, he was an ace, having shot down 94 enemy aircraft in the Battle of France alone. The stack of news clippings under my bed was really handy.
Dr. Dietrich praised me for being so creative, but he didn't like at all what Fritz Hebbel had done. He had collected enemy leaflets and shown them to everyone. Since the war had started, one of them said, 37.8% of our soldiers, but only 2.5% of our Party leaders had been killed or captured. Dr. Dietrich made Fritz put his hands flat on the desk. He hit them for a long time with the Yellow Uncle.
He also made all of us stay after school to listen to the radio. First, there was music. Zarah Leander sang. “I Know That Sometimes a Miracle Will Happen.” It was a song from her movie, The Great Love. Then Adolf Hitler made a long speech.
“The Jewish-Bolshevik arch enemy has launched a massive attack,” he yelled. “He seeks to reduce Germany to ruins and to exterminate the German people. While old men and children are to be murdered, women and girls are to be debased as whores. The rest are to march to Siberia. But we shall suffocate their attack in a bloodbath!”