Voices in Time

by Hugh Maclennan

  For just as Canaris had predicted, Hitler finally brought most of the world against Germany. The air attacks became steadily more terrible, and as the range of the bombers increased, Berlin was battered again and again. Life in the city became so dangerous that Gottfried Dehmel sent his wife out of the city to live in Freiburg.

  It was during this time that Canaris discovered a new role for Conrad. They both knew there was no hope of peace while Hitler was alive; they knew also that another year of this kind of bombing would smash the German cities into heaps of broken stones. Conrad now became one of a variety of men (some of them architects and art historians) who catalogued the country’s most famous buildings and assembled the plans and designs of the ancient cities. These were stored in safe places in the hope that Germany could be rebuilt after the war. How large a role Conrad himself played in this operation I don’t know, but certainly after the war the old Germany rose like a phoenix from its ashes.

  Conrad dated the turning point for Hitler with the death of his brother Siegfried. For two years the submarines had been so successful that the sailors believed they could starve the British into surrender. Then suddenly, within a single month, the British destroyed seventy U-boats. The German Admiralty knew they were using a new kind of weapon but they did not know what it was. This meant that the German navy was virtually finished. Among the boats that failed to return was Siegfried’s.

  It had been a long time since Conrad had seen his father, but when this news arrived he visited him. He found a man whose face proclaimed more than grief for his son. At last Gottfried Dehmel understood that once more his beloved country had lost a great war.

  Conrad said to him, “I’ve been thinking that it’s only the losers who can have ultimate dignity.”

  If his father heard this remark he gave no sign of it. His eyes flashed open and he began to shout.

  “The idiot! The maniac!”

  Conrad remembered his last night in Freiburg when he and his father had looked at Goya’s war pictures. He said nothing. His father went on:

  “He lied to us. He broke his promise to us. If he had waited till the navy was ready, nothing could have prevented us from winning this war. Now millions of American troops and millions of tons of food and matériel are pouring across the Atlantic as though it were a lake. Those fool generals and politicians! This is the second time they’ve refused to understand what sea power means. This war must end while there’s still something left.”

  “Does Hitler know it’s lost?”

  Gottfried Dehmel stared out the window and made no comment.

  Now, just as Admiral Canaris had predicted – and Dr. Erlich had predicted even before the war – Hitler’s personality went out of control. He was far from the only one who had preached that Jews were the curse of mankind, but now in the profundity of his psychosis he believed that they were responsible for all the shames and miseries he himself had suffered since the day of his birth. Some time before this he had given orders for what he called the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, but now this became his chief aim. Though he never admitted that he had lost the war, he knew that he had lost it, just as the Admiral had said he would know it. Now he was determined to exterminate all the Jews of Europe before he was exterminated himself.

  A week after visiting his father, Conrad was in Freiburg staying with his mother in a small flat near the Minster. Her hair was now very white. The arthritis had closed in on her fingers and she could no longer play her piano, but her eyes were as gentle and understanding as they had always been. She thanked him for having gone to his father after the death of Siegfried.

  Conrad said, “Mother, you always knew it would come to this, didn’t you?”

  “So did you, but we both hoped it wouldn’t.”

  He stayed in Freiburg for several weeks. He knew and loved every corner of that city and now that he was seeing Germany in terms of doom, he haunted the Minster and the Minster Platz of the ancient section of the town. He met with the Burgomaster and with several of the aldermen and learned that they also were making plans for the reconstruction of the city if it was destroyed.

  I will now turn the narrative back to Conrad as he himself wrote it. This section of the papers I left to the last because they were written in German, and my own German, which never had been too good, had become extremely rusty. I finally managed to translate it, and it is my own translation I am offering now. Though it is addressed to my mother, Conrad himself says there are many things about this period of his life that he had never told her before, and as she could not read German, it seems probable to me that she died without ever understanding why he was killed. Nor, for that matter, did anyone else.

  ____________

  PART EIGHT

  CONRAD DEHMEL’S STORY

  as told by himself

  You know, Stephanie, because I made no secret of it, that at the war’s end I was in the Belsen concentration camp and would have died there if the British Army had not arrived and liberated the survivors. I have never tried to describe the experience because nobody could describe its reality. Everyone, of course, has seen pictures of the walking skeletons. But nobody who was not there has smelled them or has had to sleep beside the corpses.

  You have seen the faded scars on my body and sometimes you have heard me scream in the night. You must often have wondered if you were married to two different men – the calm scholar and, perhaps, the hidden horror. I have loved you and I still do, but for years it has been impossible for me to love myself and now I feel compelled to tell you why.

  Belsen? The thousands of corpses stacked there like cordwood? The guards, Germans like myself, and what they did and what they were? I never told you of one incident that has seared itself into my memory cells. A few weeks before the British came, a starved prisoner collapsed and fell on the ground a few meters away from me. I was weak and starving too, but when I bent down automatically to help him, a guard cuffed me aside, turned the man over on his back, and carefully smashed four gold teeth out of his mouth with a hammer. The man was still alive. He had enough strength left to moan and sob. The guard put the teeth into his pocket and I stood there watching him.

  Nor did I tell you how it happened that I was sent to Belsen. After the war was over, anyone who had been in a concentration camp was regarded as a martyr or a hero. A sentence to a camp exonerated even a German from any kind of collective guilt. Naturally, some people believed I was in the German underground.

  But there was no underground among the German people during that war. The police were everywhere and made any kind of popular revolt impossible. All the young men were mobilized into the armies, and the fighting was desperate. Night after night the allied planes bombarded the cities. The only resistance to Hitler came from a tiny group of high officers and it completely failed.

  During the early days of the war I played an ignoble part; my sole purpose was to survive. But this changed when Hanna Erlich came home because her father had been arrested. I have confessed to you my impulsive, idiotic marriage to Eva Schmidt when I was blown up with delusions of intellectual grandeur and I have told you how deeply and happily I was in love with Hanna when we were both in England. But I never told you the whole truth about this. Hanna in England was one thing; Hanna in Hitler’s Germany was another, for in Germany her sole purpose was to protect her parents. I have also told you a little about Admiral Canaris, who was my protector in those days.

  I was in Freiburg visiting my mother when a call came from Canaris ordering me to return to Berlin immediately. I arrived several hours behind time because the city had been struck by a ferocious air raid the night before and half a kilometer of railway track had to be cleared before trains could enter the city. I emerged from the ruins of the station into a wilderness of shattered buildings with fires burning everywhere and the smoke so thick that the central city was in twilight though the sun was shining brightly above it. People with smoke-blackened faces and desperate, enduring eyes were comi
ng out of mass shelters and basements and plodding to work. Corpses were scattered here and there, fire engines were squirting water, fire hoses wriggled like pythons across bomb-holed streets. My lungs were dry and aching from the smoke, my nostrils were desiccated. There were blizzards of scorched paper, geysers of water spouted up from shattered mains. When finally I reached the Admiral his face was dusky and his eyes were red.

  Canaris did not rise when I entered his room. He remained as he was, his small body hunched forward and his chin on the heels of his hands.

  “How many more nights like this can our people stand?” he said as if to himself.

  “Was it much worse than usual?”

  “Yes, and less than what will come later.” He took a deep breath as though to clear the smoke from his lungs. “However, I didn’t summon you from Freiburg to tell you that. The time has come at last. At any moment Dr. Erlich may be picked up. As Hanna is with him now, she will be picked up, too.”

  I said nothing and waited. His next question was not long in coming.

  “Those trains – those freight trains with Jews packed into them like sardines – have you seen any of them?”

  “So it’s true?”

  “Most people know nothing of them.” The Admiral nodded toward the window through which we could see the drifting smoke. “With all they are suffering and will have to suffer, who should blame them if they don’t think about what he’s doing to the Jews? Yes, it’s true. It’s so unbelievably true that not even I believed it would come to this.”

  The Admiral’s eyes closed, his head sank into his hands so that only the white cap of his hair was visible. It was the first time I had seen his mask crack open.

  “Oh, Dehmel, so many of us have longed for this country to be honorable. Now on account of this man we are hated and despised as no people has ever been. There will be no mercy. The vengeance will be terrible. They have decided to destroy us.” He drew another ponderous breath and coughed. Then his voice firmed. “I will continue in the way I have chosen, but I can’t hope to last much longer.”

  We sat there and coughed. I watched Canaris pick up a pen and doodle aimlessly on a scrap of paper.

  “Can you do nothing for the Erlichs, sir?”

  “My position is so slippery I may be arrested myself. My service is a travesty of what it once was. The party has virtually taken it over. I’ve had to be devious, Dehmel. Very devious and for such a long time that my brain feels like a weary muscle. So many balls in the air at once. Sooner or later one of them is bound to drop. They have always known that Dr. Erlich is my friend. For me to intervene on his behalf would not only be useless, it would be fatal to us both.” He paused and looked me in the eyes. “However, it is not known that you wish to marry his daughter.”

  “Has Hanna blown her cover?”

  “No, but she’s with her father. She feels he can’t be left alone. Three weeks ago her mother went to Switzerland to visit the doctor’s brother there. You can guess why she went. She was stopped at the border when she tried to return a few days later. She is still in Switzerland. Somehow Goebbels has found out where the doctor is. The change of name – somebody must have talked. Sooner or later they will come for him and if Hanna is there …” He lifted his hands and let them drop.

  I waited for more. It soon came.

  “If you still mean what you once said to me, you may be able to save them if you’re lucky. Don’t be shocked by what I’m going to propose to you. Your only chance is to join the Gestapo.”

  I murmured, “Oh, my God!”

  “In a Gestapo uniform you might pretend to arrest them and get them away from that village before the exterminators arrive. No local functionary will question a man in the black uniform.”

  “And then?”

  “You must hide them somewhere. In some place where they can stay until the war is over. That could be sooner than you think.”

  “But would the Gestapo accept a man like me?”

  The Admiral’s expression was resigned. “I’ve told you many times that these people are not normal.

  Himmler hates all professional officers like your father. He knows what they say and think about him. He also knows he can’t do without them.”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “I’m still on terms with Himmler. I still have a certain power over him. What that power is I have mentioned to nobody but himself. Anyway, I took the liberty of telling him that you had asked me to recommend you to the ss. The idea of your father’s son wanting to join his gangsters is not unattractive to this chicken farmer.”

  “Would he want me to spy on my father?”

  “Probably.”

  “My father never has spoken about him in my presence.”

  “He’s an outspoken man. Never?”

  “He was always careful until my brother was lost.”

  “Your father and I have had several conversations these past few months. He’s a man I respect very much, but he’s not fitted for the situation we’re in now. However, say nothing to Himmler about him that you do not know to be true. He knows much about your father.”

  I was silent.

  Canaris said, “I may be wrong. I often am. But I believe Himmler will accept you.”

  I rose and went to the window and looked out at the smoke drifting through the street. Even when Germany was everywhere triumphant, my intuition had told me it would finally come to this, but only in recent months had I truly believed it. Berlin was half destroyed already. Soon it would be totally destroyed. Many people had already dug caves out of the shattered masonry and were living in them with the corpses underneath. Soon all the German cities would be smashed. But the land would remain. The wonderful, varied land of forests and rivers and plains and mountains would still be there after the Devil had gone back to hell.

  Bombs from an earlier raid had fallen near by and destroyed half a block. The ruins were outlined by the blackened stumps of torn linden trees. I turned away and sat down again.

  “Is there any discharge from the ss?”

  “Don’t waste your time thinking about that.”

  “But doesn’t the training take months?”

  “In your case I don’t think so. You would be employed as a functionary.”

  “Would I be ordered to take part in this – this thing against the Jews?”

  “That is precisely why I make this proposal to you.”

  I began to tremble. “No, sir! Not even for Hanna. She’d kill herself if she knew this was the price of her life. She’d kill me, too.”

  “I did not say you would have to do it. I said you’d be ordered to do it. I’m not pretending your position won’t be horrible to someone with your temperament. Even a few weeks of training with them will be a nasty experience. And if you help them escape and desert afterwards, as I propose that you do” – he shrugged – “you know what they will do to you if they catch you. But this is how I see it. If Himmler accepts you, they will give you a very short course of instruction. This operation against the Jews is now so enormous it has created a bureaucracy. They’re very short-handed and they don’t require the military types for much of this kind of work. They’re now in such a hurry I doubt if your training period will last more than three weeks at the most. At the end of that time – perhaps even during it – tell them your mother is in Freiburg and has taken seriously ill. Ask for a few days’ leave to visit her before they post you somewhere else. Whoever is your commander will probably grant this because you’ve been sent to him by Himmler. But don’t try to hide the Erlichs in Freiburg.”

  I asked if it would be possible to get them into Switzerland. Perhaps the Gestapo officer he had squeezed a few years ago could be used again?

  “Not unless he rises from the dead. He was killed by Russian partisans six months ago. No, I see no way of getting them into Switzerland now. The Swiss themselves are very nervous and with good reason. We’re pressing them one way, the Allies are pressing them another.”

/>   “Why do you tell me not to hide them in Freiburg? Nobody knows them there.”

  “Do you know anyone in the city apart from your mother who would take them in?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a Gestapo headquarters there and any newcomers would be investigated. There’s also another reason. At any moment the Allies will land in Europe. The invasion is sure to come through France, though the Leader thinks it may come in several other places. These past two years the English Intelligence has been uncannily clever. But they and the Americans will invade and they are sure to succeed. When they break through and close in on Germany, Freiburg will almost certainly be bombed to death.”

  “But it has no military significance whatever.”

  Canaris’s expression did not change. “The air power of the Allies is now overwhelming, as you can see for yourself. Their air marshals are also functionaries. Blowing up cities has become their business, and with each passing month there are fewer cities left intact. One has the power. One uses it.” He paused. “You are fond of walking. Do you know the Black Forest well?”

  “Most of it.”

  I sensed then what was in the Admiral’s mind and asked him to give me a few minutes to think.

  In recent weeks I had often thought of the Black Forest as a refuge for Hanna and her father. I had even formed a tentative plan. The last time I visited Mother, I had gone for a walk to the place where I caught the hares during the hunger in the First War. The forester’s cottage was still there and an old widower was living in it alone. He was the same man who had been the forester many years ago when I was a boy. His cottage was empty at the time I caught the hares near it, because he had been drafted into the army at the end of the war. He had been gassed and wounded in Flanders, but after the war he had been given back his old job. When Hitler’s war began, a great deal of timber was cut in the forest, but for some reason very little was cut in this area. Though the man’s meager pay had come through regularly, he told me that it was more than a year since he had received any instructions. At first he was unwilling to talk, but when I told him about the hares in my boyhood the old man smiled.