The Execution

by Andy Marino

  In the meantime, Mutti and Papa had removed the Hoffmanns from the resistance for their own safety. Last year, Max would have been fine with going into hiding, keeping out of sight until the end of the war. But he was no longer the same boy he had been in 1943. Meeting Frau Becker and her comrades had awakened something within him. He didn’t know what to call this awakening, but a man like Stauffenberg seemed to be a living example of it.

  The willingness to do what was right without fear or hesitation.

  To act in opposition to everything the Nazis stood for.

  Max couldn’t imagine a man like that with a noose around his neck.

  “He’s still alive,” Max said. “The Nazis will never get him.”

  Gerta laughed bitterly. “He’s human, Maxi. He can die like everybody else.”

  Max shook his head. “He’s not like everybody else.”

  JUNE 7, 1944

  D-DAY PLUS ONE

  The view from the Berghof, Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps, was spectacular. From the cliffside perch of the compound, a dense forest cascaded down to unfurl in patches through the rolling hills of the valley below. Where the trees parted, bits of the low foliage that carpeted the valley could be seen, lush and bright in the summer sun. For Claus von Stauffenberg, it brought to mind his childhood on the family estate in Lautlingen, four hundred kilometers west of the Berghof. Long afternoons shouting poetry at his brother Berthold as the two of them clambered over the rocky outcrops high above the clover fields, gazing out across an evergreen wood that hid endless mysteries.

  Stauffenberg could almost hear Berthold shouting back, quoting their hero, the poet Stefan George: “The summer field is parched with evil fire …”

  Evil fire.

  The phrase lodged itself in Stauffenberg’s unquiet mind. And no wonder, he thought as he stepped into the stifling conference room in the bowels of the Berghof. Here, at the table, were the men responsible for bringing evil fire down upon the summer fields of Europe. And now, with the Allies finally landed in France, they would begin to reap what they had sown.

  But not soon enough, he reflected, sweeping his eyes along the faces of the Nazi high command as the men pored over detailed situation maps.

  There was Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect and Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. With his probing countenance and a mind both focused and wide-ranging, Speer was the only man in the room who Stauffenberg was not immediately revolted by. Instead, he inspired within Stauffenberg a sad kind of wonder that such a brilliant architect and clear thinker should have devoted himself to the cause of a vicious, petty madman.

  Next to Speer sat Field Marshal Keitel, Hitler’s most dependable toady in the military. Nervous and grasping, Keitel was forever concerned with falling out of favor with Hitler. Stauffenberg took some small measure of satisfaction in the fact that the man was not seated next to Hitler, which was bound to make Keitel worried that his position among these men was far from secure.

  After Keitel came Heinrich Himmler, the man responsible for the rise of the SS. Besides Hitler himself, Stauffenberg thought, there was no one more deserving of being hanged for crimes against humanity. Builder of death camps and organizer of mass exterminations, Himmler was a bland, bespectacled functionary who, with the stroke of a pen, authorized horrors on an incomprehensible scale.

  But then, of course, there was the pasty Hermann Göring, Reich Minister of Aviation and Hitler’s second-in-command, whose smug, childish grin was always plastered to his face—along with caked-on makeup that seemed to ooze in the humid air of the conference room. Stauffenberg could barely comprehend such a creature, even when Göring was standing right in front of him.

  Were these men supposed to represent the ideal of the pure Aryan race, who would lead Germany’s glorious thousand-year Reich? All Stauffenberg saw was a room full of scheming, sweating psychopaths.

  He wished that his briefcase contained a bomb instead of papers. For the past few weeks, there had been no question in his mind that he would have to be the one to carry out the assassination of Adolf Hitler. There had been too many failures already, too many false starts and near misses, and the urgency was growing. Now, as he stepped toward the round table to meet the Führer himself, he was certain that he could do it without hesitation.

  He would do it for what remained of Europe, and for the entire world. There were countless prisoners in the camps and soldiers on the front lines who could still be saved, if the Nazi high command was eliminated and Operation Valkyrie set into motion.

  Stauffenberg presented his left hand, with its three remaining fingers. As Hitler grasped it in his own two hands, Stauffenberg noted a slight tremor in the Führer’s grip. He also noted the way Hitler was forced to look up at him—Stauffenberg was considerably taller than the Nazi leader. He was surprised to find that Hitler’s famously hypnotic gaze was a veiled shadow of its former self. Under Stauffenberg’s cool appraisal, the Führer actually flicked his eyes away.

  Careful, Claus, he admonished himself. Hitler was already paranoid—intimidating him or making him suspicious would only work against the Valkyrie plotters. Stauffenberg gave a deferential bow.

  “My Führer,” he said, brusque yet respectful, as befitting a man of Stauffenberg’s impeccable reputation.

  “Colonel,” Hitler said, “how wonderful to finally meet you.”

  Hitler released Stauffenberg’s hand, regarded him for a moment longer, then paced back around to the other side of the table. Stauffenberg felt the eyes of the other Nazi leaders on him, weighing the interaction for meaning, testing the air for subtle shifts in power. The atmosphere sapped his energy. This conference room was a stale, paralyzing place. He had not been here for very long—a minute or two—yet already he felt exhausted by the company of these men. News of the Allied invasion had them all subdued, that was to be expected—but there was something else, too. A seeping rot, a poison haze, a miasma that soured the air around them.

  Well, no matter. This meeting had already achieved its goal, assuring Stauffenberg that his reputation among the high command was such that he could get himself invited to the Berghof, where he could move freely around Hitler himself.

  He would not have to endure the company of these men much longer. Nor would the rest of the world. Soon, very soon, Claus von Stauffenberg would cleanse Germany of evil with a fire of his own.

  Operation Valkyrie, Max thought, remembering the name that Stauffenberg had given the plot to kill Hitler and remove the Nazis from power.

  He sketched a curved line across the parchment paper balanced on the slab of wood in his lap. Valkyrie. The name conjured up a mighty winged creature, and Max penciled in rows of long feathers. The communist underground had dropped off pencils, charcoal, and a motley stack of paper, from newsprint to the heavy brown stuff that butchers used to wrap meat. (Max supposed that there wasn’t much use for butcher paper when meat was scarce.) He found that he could easily lose himself in drawing. It proved to be a better way to pass the time than reading French theater programs over and over again.

  Low voices from the radio drifted up the stairs. It was the third day after the D-Day landings, and Mutti, Papa, and Gerta were glued to the speaker. There had been talk of a German secret weapon—some kind of land-based torpedo—that would push the Allies back into the sea. Max thought it was all a bluff, but secret weapon or no, the fighting was fierce and the Allies’ progress slow. At this rate, inching across western France, it would take them until 1950 to reach Paris—forget about Berlin.

  Max pressed the pencil harder into the page, darkening the line of the Valkyrie’s steel helmet. He tried to imagine being stuck in this safe house for years and years, emerging into the sunlight as an old man with a long white beard.

  Poor Kat, he thought. She was completely cut off from any news. Her mother could have been killed a month ago, and she would never know.

  She hadn’t said a word at last night’s dinner—thin root-vegetable
stew and some kind of mushy grain—and Max hadn’t seen her since.

  He set the drawing down and went to his window. Outside, it was another bright, sunny day. Their little side street at the northern edge of Prenzlauer Berg had been untouched by RAF bombs, and he stared at the plain, neatly kept row houses across the street, wondering if anybody else felt as cooped up as he did. He let the curtain fall back into place and counted his paces to the opposite wall—one, two, three, four.

  He closed his eyes.

  Valkyrie meant action. Valkyrie meant taking responsibility. Valkyrie meant changing things for the better.

  Max thought of Kat Vogel, just across the hall, lying in bed in the middle of the day, staring up at the ceiling or sliding into fitful sleep.

  Claus von Stauffenberg wouldn’t just sit around and let her suffer in silence.

  While Max thought this over, he heard his sister padding lightly up the stairs. He leaned out of his bedroom door and beckoned for her to come in.

  “I think I know how to make Kat feel better,” he whispered.

  Gerta raised an eyebrow. “Max, no offense, but you might not be the best person for the job.”

  “We’re all going crazy, cooped up in here.” He sniffed the air. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Better than a cell underneath Gestapo headquarters.”

  “I get why Mutti and Papa had to bring us here, Gerta,” Max said. “I know we can’t just live in our old house and act like nothing happened. But I think we should be able to take Kat out for some fresh air as long as we’re careful, don’t you?”

  Gerta frowned. “Mutti and Papa will never let us go outside.”

  “I bet we can convince them if we work as a team. We’ve done it before.”

  “No.” Gerta shook her head. Max recognized the sudden faraway look in her eyes: She was coming up with a scheme. “No, they’ll never allow it … but I do think you’re right. Going outside is exactly what Kat needs. I think it’s what I need, too.” Her eyes went to Max’s half-finished Valkyrie drawing. “And definitely what you need.”

  Max knew where this was going. “Gerta …”

  She lowered her voice to the faintest whisper. Max leaned in close.

  “Here’s what we do,” she said. “We wait till Mutti and Papa are sleeping, then wait another half hour to be sure. Then we go out the back door, into the yard, where the communists drop off our food. It’s all overgrown. The weeds will hide us from any neighbors who might still be awake. As long as we wear dark clothes, we should be fine. The city’s still blacked out at night.”

  Max recalled the night they’d spent in the public shelter, and his guts churned as the old woman’s dead eye floated up from the place he’d buried it in the back of his mind.

  “Every time we sneak out something bad happens,” he said.

  “Which is why nothing bad will happen this time,” she said. “The universe owes us a favor.”

  “The universe isn’t fair,” he muttered.

  Gerta hopped off the bed. “See you at midnight. Don’t make me wake you up.”

  The back door to the safe house was stuck. Max turned the knob, pressed his shoulder against the door, and leaned forward with all his weight. It didn’t budge. He glanced behind him at the shadowy figures of Gerta and Kat. The three of them were squeezed into the narrow passage behind the kitchen, a haven for muddy shoes and overcoats in happier times.

  “It won’t open,” Max whispered. His voice sounded like a scream in the silence of the house after midnight. Even Papa’s snoring had ceased—these days, it came in waves instead of being a steady presence throughout the night. Max thought that Papa must be tossing and turning, darting in and out of uneasy dreams. Being cooped up all day was not a recipe for a good night’s rest.

  “Let me,” Kat said, stepping forward and nudging Max out of the way. She reached up and slid aside a metal latch that had been barring the door shut.

  “I was just about to do that,” Max said.

  Kat turned the knob and opened the door slowly and carefully. Gerta and Kat stepped out into the dark backyard. Max followed, easing the door shut behind him, giving the knob a turn to make sure it was unlocked so they could sneak back in later.

  They stood close together while their eyes adjusted. After a moment, an eerie night-garden took shape in the pale light of a sliver of moon, looming stalks of untended weeds as high as their heads and coils of brambles at their feet. Max breathed deeply. After so long inside the safe house, even the air of wartime Berlin tasted fresh and clean.

  The weeds waved languidly in a light breeze. He listened to his sister and Kat take deep breaths of their own and felt a mild contentment settle over him. They were outside! He felt like he had been set free from the thoughts that spiraled endlessly through his head. How easy it was to get wrapped up in your own world when you were staring at the same walls all day long! They hadn’t taken three steps from the door and already he felt sprung from his cage.

  He wondered: Was this heady taste of freedom, of action, how Stauffenberg felt all the time?

  “Come on,” Kat said. She was whispering, but there was a spark of life in her voice—an eagerness he hadn’t heard from her in several days. Max and Gerta let Kat lead them to the back fence, where another latch opened the gate out into the packed-earth alley behind the house. For Max, it recalled their flight from the Dahlem villa—a dim dream version of the February morning when they left their old lives behind. Some unexplainable sensation made him shiver. He saw his life in ever-narrowing circles, repeating variations, a symphony of hours, days, weeks …

  A small change in the darkness made his heart leap. A window in an upper room of a neighboring flat was suddenly outlined in a blue-tinted glow. The outline became a wedge of light as a shadowed figure moved a curtain aside.

  Max froze. Gerta and Kat moved on down the alley. He didn’t dare call to them. They were all three dressed in black, yet Max felt completely exposed, as if the hidden eyes of the neighbor at the window were locked on his own.

  Calm down. He cycled through his breathing exercise. It had been so long since he’d been sneaking around outside, he was out of practice. His brain could not separate danger from the normal goings-on in a quiet district like Prenzlauer Berg.

  It’s just somebody who can’t sleep, he told himself, and hurried to catch up with Kat and Gerta.

  The alley dumped them out onto a nondescript street crowded on both sides by modest row houses. Phosphorescent paint marked the sidewalk in neat stripes. To the east was the market, a long, low-slung building that took up nearly an entire city block. To the west was the community garden, a patch of pure, pitch-black emptiness. There was nobody out on the street.

  Kat turned left, toward the darkness of the garden.

  Leading the way, Kat moved with purpose, as if she had an urgent errand to run. When Max had come up with this plan of “getting some air,” he hadn’t given a moment’s thought to where they would go once they were outside. Now he thought they should circle the block and go home before Mutti and Papa noticed they were gone. Or before something terrible happened.

  He flashed to the ruined shelter, the cries of the lost and the injured, the unblinking eye …

  “I think we should turn back,” he said.

  “I need trees,” Kat said, picking up the pace.

  “What?”

  “Kat needs trees,” Gerta said.

  Max glanced over his shoulder, reassuring himself that the street was empty, then followed the girls up the sidewalk. Ahead, the blankness of the garden loomed, cut from the fabric of the night.

  Kat broke into a jog and disappeared. Her shoes clip-clopped on the cobblestones.

  Gerta ran to catch up, leaving Max alone in the dark. He hurried after the girls and joined them at the edge of the garden, where Kat was in some kind of strange thrall to a venerable old oak tree. She ran her hand along the grooves in the bark.

  “My mother used to say that she could hear the tr
ees breathe when she was a little girl,” Kat said, putting her ear up to the trunk.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Max said. Gerta elbowed him in the gut.

  “It feels like years since I’ve even seen a tree,” Kat said.

  Max and Gerta moved closer to the oak’s thick trunk. Max closed his eyes and listened hard. After a moment, he could swear that he really did hear a faint rhythm—one, two, one, two, one, two …

  “I think I hear it!” Gerta whispered.

  Max began to worry as the rhythm grew louder. The noise was no gentle exhalation—it was something brutal and regimented, and it was getting closer.

  “Get down,” he said, pulling Gerta’s sleeve. She dragged Kat down with them, and together they huddled in the deep shadows of the oak.

  A moment later, the rhythm resolved into footsteps—heavy jackboots pounding the street in unison.

  The telltale approach of Nazis.

  An orange glow slid down the street, followed by its source: a flaming torch held aloft by a stocky, blond-haired boy in a light brown uniform with a hat that resembled the short-brimmed cap of a soldier.

  He was flanked by a pair of unsmiling, heavyset teenagers holding torches of their own. Behind them marched a dozen more boys. They were all several years older than Max—sixteen or seventeen, he thought.

  “Hitler Youth,” Kat whispered in disgust.

  Membership in the Hitler Youth had been compulsory since 1936. Karl and Ingrid Hoffmann had risked the suspicion of the authorities by not enrolling Max in the Hitler Youth or Gerta in the League of German Girls, but Karl’s position as a surgeon working to save the city’s bombing victims had given them a reprieve from some of the Nazis’ restrictions. Still, Herr Siewert had reminded them over and over again that a boy like Max ought to be serving in the Nazi youth organization.

  He remembered, with a rush of shame, how he had once wished to join one of the Hitler Youth soccer teams.