Return to Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  As potential open revolt simmered at the University of Munich, Gauleiter Paul Geisel of Bavaria, an unquestioning follower of Hitler, called a mandatory assemblage of the students of the university. In a vast meeting hall where all doors were guarded, Geisel ridiculed the male students who had already been injured in combat and demanded that they drop their studies and offer service to the Wehrmacht. Then he declared that female students could better serve the German nation by bearing children than by acquiring a higher education.

  “Stop wasting time reading books!” he told the female students. “Find a husband and produce a child for the Third Reich!”

  That was enough to move the audience to its feet, but not in approval. The students shouted him down and drove him from the stage. Guards moved in and attempted to arrest those who had booed Geisel. The crowd surged forward. They attacked, overpowered and beat the Gestapo and SS guards who attempted the arrests and who stood at the doors to the lecture hall. The students picked up some of them and threw them down flights of stairs and trampled them. The insurrection spilled out onto the streets of Munich. Paul Geisel somehow escaped with his life.

  Members of The White Rose, most of whom had been in the lecture hall, concluded that the time was now right to spread the anti-Hitler revolt across Germany. Overnight, loud bold graffiti that read Down With Hitler! appeared not just on the walls of university buildings but also on public buildings in Munich. Sophie Scholl bought a can of white paint and splashed the single word Freiheit! - Freedom! - on the exterior wall of the building that housed the main university lecture hall.

  Gestapo flooded into the area the next day and put down the demonstration, the first anti-government rally in public since Hitler took office in 1933.

  But White Rose was ready with their next move. Pamphlets printed and distributed by members of the group urging open revolt across Germany appeared on February eighteenth. Sophie, Hans, Lilo, Frieda, Ilse, Alexander and maybe two dozen others, scurried about overnight distributing them. They played a dangerous cat and mouse game with the Gestapo and SS. Pamphlets were distributed in ever increasing bundles around the city. Supporters with access to copying machines made copies and distributed them further.

  The pamphlets spread to neighboring towns. Within a day they were circulating at universities in Bremen and Berlin and Hamburg, then to Essen, Nuremburg, Cologne and Stuttgart. In the text, there was an enumeration of crimes committed against the people of Germany. The text cited the many failures of the Nazi party and made an urgent appeal to the honor of the officer corps of the professional army to overthrow Hitler.

  “We demand a return of our beloved German nation,” declared the pamphlets, “from the most appalling tyranny that our people have ever endured!”

  For several hours, something akin to revolution gripped Munich, just as it had in the Twenties when Hitler’s storm troopers seized the streets. On the nineteenth of February, an unprecedented event took place in Munich: a large street demonstration of hundreds of students, workers and war veterans marched against Hitler in defiance of the government. The demonstration surged beyond the confines of the university and into the city and back again in an attempt to incite an insurrection across Germany that would halt the war and bring down the Nazi government.

  As the students passed one university building, a pro-Nazi block captain named Jakob Schmidt watched the demonstration. He was also the university’s head porter and a major resident snitch, loyal to the party and on the party payroll. He recognized several of the students, in particular a brother and sister who had flagrantly thrown bundles of the leaflets into university buildings. Rather than confronting them, he ratted them out by name to the Gestapo. The Gestapo put them under surveillance.

  In the days that followed, Gestapo and SS were everywhere in Munich. Some members of the White Rose continued to go to class and operate ‘underground’ at night, slipping around the city steps ahead or around the government agents who stalked them. Others went in separate directions.

  Ilse fled Munich, leaving her room in university housing just minutes before Gestapo arrived to arrest her. She connected with a resistance group east of Munich and made her way southward. She had access to a Swiss passport through her family if she could return home to retrieve it. She had an aunt and uncle living in Switzerland. It was her intention to rejoin her family in the south and, if possible, leave the country out for the duration of the war.

  Frieda, complete with pale blue scarf and fur cap, did not return to the university area of Munich. She stayed close to her boarding school. Then two days after the quasi-insurrection in Munich two men in Naval uniforms arrived at her school looking for her.

  They exchanged a few words with the school’s headmaster, then went to a classroom and pulled Frieda out, kicking and screaming, in the middle of a class. One man held a hand over her mouth. She bit him, drawing blood. What was odd was that they were forceful, but not brutal. They could have beaten her but didn’t.

  They dragged her to her room and ordered her to pack. In tears, she did.

  They were taking her to Berlin “for questioning and for her safety,” her abductors said to the terrified faculty of her school. They removed all trace of Frieda from the school and demanded anything from the registrar’s office that bore her name.

  Those at the school were told not to discuss her and not to mention her name.

  Frieda would never be seen there again. Friends who remembered her only said her name among themselves in hushed tones and with the utmost of secrecy and the height of discretion. It was only after the war that they would learn, in shock and by unconfirmed rumor, what had happened.

  Chapter 40

  Berlin

  February 1943

  Late on the first morning after Cochrane’s arrest, new guards came to see him. They uncuffed his wrists and allowed him to visit a bathroom. The manacles remained on his ankles. The guards pulled him to his feet and pushed him through the police station.

  They shoved him out the back door of the police station and into an alley. There was a guard on each end of the alley. A crowd had gathered. Cochrane kept his eyes down. He felt the hostility of the German people upon him.

  The guards shoved him into the backseat of an unmarked police car. In the middle of the back seat there was an iron rail. One of the guards forced Cochrane’s wrists to the rail. The guard shackled him to the interior of the vehicle. The police pulled shades down on the side windows at the rear of the car. The car door slammed closed so quickly that he had no time to resist. Cochrane could see out only through the front window.

  The guards came around and jumped into the front seats. The vehicle pulled out into city traffic, which was light. There was rain again and visibility was difficult. The more belligerent members of the crowd, survivors of the air raid no doubt, closed in on the vehicle and threw bottles and stones. The car accelerated, nicking several onlookers as it pulled out into Berlin traffic, which was light.

  The guards drove him somewhere for several hours, speaking only occasionally and in low tones. Then they stopped. The guards pushed him out of the car. He was given a quarter loaf of bread and a jar of water. His hands were freed temporarily, but his ankles were not.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  The guards laughed. One of them made a gesture of a gun to the temple. They laughed again. The guards put the manacles back on Cochrane’s wrists. They pushed him back into the car. It was only then they he realized that there was a second car following. More guards, he suspected.

  They drove for two more hours. They arrived in a remote wooded area. It was near dusk and there was a heavy rainstorm. Cochrane looked in every direction, hoping to take in any detail that might help an escape in the unlikely event that he was able to break free. But the rain rolled in in heavy sheets, like smoke from an aerial bombardment. He couldn’t see anything that would help. They were in a rural area and Cochrane figured he would be shot there and buried without a trace or a m
arker. It was wartime: things like this happened all the time.

  The guards led him to across a short pathway through a clump of trees. Cochrane saw what he assumed was his destination. It was an old trailer, or caravan, set in a depression in the ground. Not far away was a bomb crater. The trailer looked as if it had once been yellow with blue trim but now it was just shabby and rusty. The windows had been covered with metal which was bolted into place. Like Cochrane, the trailer wasn’t going anywhere. The tires were gone. It was propped up on bricks.

  His jailers led him to the door to the trailer. They had keys and unlocked it. The trailer was two steps up on a pair of cinder blocks. They pushed Cochrane into it. The chains on his ankles caught and he fell, knocking his head and his shoulder as he hit the ground. The door slammed and he was in darkness.

  It occurred to him that he was being held overnight way out of the ordinary field of prisoners or captured spies. Why? One part of him suggested that he was being lined up for a horrible questioning, torture and execution. He pictured the guillotine that they used: the one where the victim had to lie face up to experience the true horror of his end. He couldn’t shake the image.

  The thought made him feel so nauseous that he had to fight to dismiss it. Then he thought of Laura and hoped that if he were to be executed, she would do well. He prayed that her sadness would diminish over time and that she would marry again and not be alone.

  There, he told himself. That would be his recurring prayer. Best to exit this word with a normal thought based on love rather than bitterness. What else could he hope for?

  A night passed. He was given more water, a rotting apple and a full loaf of old bread. Twice a day he was led out of the trailer at gunpoint to relive his kidneys and bowels. Then he was returned to the trailer and locked up again. There was a kerosene heater outside the trailer which kept the inside just above freezing.

  A few extraordinary notions came upon him. He hadn’t yet been shot. He hadn’t been tortured. He was still alive after a day or two in captivity. And, strangest of all, he hadn’t been interrogated. Putting all of these ideas in place, it occurred to him that he was being kept alive and not injured for a reason. That was the positive thought.

  But for how long? That was the negative thought.

  Granted, the reprieve could end very quickly. But so far, it hadn’t.

  From time to time he hallucinated or lost consciousness. On what he thought was the third day, his guards changed. Hans Wesselmann, looking smug and triumphant, returned with another man. They forced Cochrane into another car, a pre-war German Ford. They took him on another drive. He was again surprised that he hadn’t been blindfolded.

  He followed the route that his driver took. Suddenly something connected. He recognized a few buildings. They were driving through the western half of Berlin. Cochrane only had a vague idea of where he was. He had been in this area of Berlin when he had lived here. They crossed Havel River. They were distant from the center of the city, but he could see bomb damage. Houses became less frequent and the rain started again. It beat on the roof of the car.

  Wesselmann drove. There was another guard who shared the front seat with him. The second man was huge. His head barely fit beneath the roof of the car. The captors smoked incessantly. They said little. When they did speak they communicated in low guttural whispers which Cochrane had trouble understanding.

  First the drumbeat of the rain on the roof of the car was a problem, but so was the low quality of their speech. Like most Gestapo, they were thuggish and uneducated, reveling in both qualities. They had a loose grip on their own language.

  Cochrane then recognized where they were. They were entering an area called Grunewald. It was a forest located in the western side of Berlin and on the east side of the Havel, mainly in the Grunewald locality. It was the largest green area in Berlin. Soviet and British bombs had fallen on it recently, so its tranquility and natural beauty had been deeply compromised.

  The guard drove fast and kept looking at his rear view mirror. It must have been midmorning. They hit a smooth road through a stand of very tall trees and then hit a winding road that went through a ridge of tall pines.

  They continued for twenty minutes when a farmhouse came into view. The driver turned sharply into a driveway and the car felt as if it were on gravel. There was a wall of trees on each side of the driveway and an open field beyond the house. There was a dark green Opel, relatively new, in the driveway. The vehicle was in good condition.

  The guards escorted Cochrane into the farmhouse through the front door. Cochrane remained in handcuffs and ankle shackles. Wesselmann stopped him in the entrance foyer and made to stand at attention. The taller guard went into the next room.

  A brief conversation followed with a man in the adjoining room. Cochrane was struck by the clash between the peasant inflections of his captors and whoever waited for him. The latter man was educated and spoke in a very precise proper native “high” German.

  The conversation concluded with the unseen German speaker concluding brusquely, “Bring him in.”

  Wesselmann grabbed Cochrane by the arm and marched him to the next room. Cochrane nearly stumbled from the brisk movement with manacles on his ankles. Wesselmann held him upright.

  In the adjoining chamber, there was a severe looking man with grayish temples sitting in an armchair. The man surveyed Cochrane disdainfully as the guards hustled the captured spy before him.

  The man looked military. The two guards fell into positions of attention behind Cochrane, one on the left, one on the right.

  “You are William Thomas Cochrane,” the man said quietly. “You are an American spy.”

  “I’m not who you think I am,” Cochrane attempted. “I’m a Canadian businessman with business with the Reich.”

  The man laughed. He skipped past Cochrane’s denial. He already knew the truth. No need to argue. The man had done his homework. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a paper.

  “Oh? Really?” the man scoffed. He held the paper aloft so that Cochrane could see it. The document was a copy of a passport control registration from 1936, when Cochrane had first entered Nazi Germany.

  Cochrane looked at it, felt a further tumbling sensation, but didn’t say anything.

  “This is you, isn’t it?” the man said.

  Cochrane said nothing. Behind him, he heard the shuffling of his guards’ feet. They were anxious to get on with things.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.

  “No,” Cochrane answered.

  “Think hard. Have you ever seen me before?”

  “If I have, I don’t remember.”

  “Would you remember?”

  “Probably.”

  The man laughed. A heavy silence filled the room.

  Then, “You are correct,” the man said very formally. “We have never met man-to-man.”

  Cochrane tried to fight back revealing how fearful he really was.

  “I regret never having had the honor,” said Cochrane.

  He was aware of the two guards behind him, shuffling even more nervously. The vision of Cambulat and Skordeno shot from behind on the tarmac in Vichy France resounded all over his psyche and set his mind on fire.

  “I’m sure you do regret having never met man to man. It might have changed things. And you will continue to regret this,” said the German. “But in the past we shared something of considerable value and import.”

  “What was that?” asked Cochrane.

  “My wife,” said the man. “Theresia. She had an affair with you when I was on Naval maneuvers. Repeated sexual liaisons. Don’t deny it. I know everything. I am Heinrich Koehler. You know my name as well as I know yours.”

  Cochrane felt as if a load of bricks had dropped on him. He was too nonplussed to deny what they both knew. He also felt that this was the final nail in his coffin. He began to anticipate death in very real terms. He hoped it would be quick and merciful.

  “Do you deny
knowing her?” the German said with an edge.

  From somewhere deep within him, Cochrane dredged up some truth.

  “No. I don’t deny it And I agree that she was a very fine woman. I regret that she was murdered and I regret any pain I caused you.”

  “Of course you do,” Koehler said, without sounding as if he meant it. “We’re all filled with regrets as the days of our lives comes to an end. Is that not the case, Herr Cochrane?”

  Cochrane did not reply.

  Koehler flew into a sudden rage. “Answer me!” he roared. “Look me in the eye and answer me!”

  “That’s the case,” Cochrane said.

  “You made love to my wife many times when I was away in service to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. You must understand how ‘dishonored’ I have been.”

  “I understand.”

  Koehler drew a pistol. He began to gesture with it.

  “Since we all agree,” Koehler said bitterly. “Let us get on with the execution.”

  Chapter 41

  Berlin

  February 1943

  Koehler gestured to the two guards. They came up behind Cochrane again. They lifted him and turned him, then moved him along back through the entrance area and then outside.

  Wesselmann put a hard knee into Cochrane’s back. The guards dragged Cochrane into the Ford. They shoved him into the backseat, locking him to the chassis again with a metal attachment that rose from the floor and which was bolted in place.

  Koehler came out of his house. He watched. He went to the Opel that stood in the driveway. There was no rain, just a mist. A quarter moon was shining. Cochrane could see the moon through the front window of the Ford and, absurdly perhaps, was struck by the notion that it was the last moon he would probably ever see.