The Berlin Girl

by Mandy Robotham

  She had also begun researching an article on the BDM, the female wing of the Hitler Youth. Much like the pre-Nuremberg article, she hoped it would be no exercise in free publicity for the Nazis; instead, when she quoted thirteen-year-old girls as ‘willing to die for our beloved Führer’, sitting alongside their smiling parents, British readers would surely see it as unhealthy fanaticism. Unhealthy and dangerous. And once they reached Nuremberg, she trusted her assigned photographer would capture further proof for the Chronicle to see, leaving them no excuse not to print.

  Between the constant juggling of work, when Kasper arrived at her door Georgie was eager for some light relief. And wholly relieved to see he wasn’t in uniform. He had on dark grey flannel trousers pulled in to his lean waist, a casual blue shirt pressed so as to be almost creaseless, and a black leather jacket hooked on a finger over his shoulder. His smile was as bright as the day promised to be, and those eyes … still intensely alluring. Politics aside, this man would surely be considered something of a catch back in England.

  Frida was already up and out, and Simone was still in her room, where she often dwelled among the pillows until midday, which avoided any awkward small talk.

  ‘I thought we would head over to the Grunewald and perhaps have a picnic in the forest,’ Kasper said, gesturing to a large basket in the back of the impressive open-topped car, quick to add that he’d borrowed it from a friend: ‘The Reich doesn’t pay its junior attachés that well!’ He gave Georgie that slightly complicit look again; quickly, it was becoming clear that he could engineer a certain self-deprecation very well, the gentle mockery of his own Reich. It was a winning part of his charm, but was it real?

  Heading west out of the city, the drive was beautiful – more lines of feathered evergreen reaching up to the cloud-peppered sky, little patch pockets of houses and the odd village churning at a slow pace through life. In no time at all they’d left behind the bustle of Berlin completely. The sun was already up, and although it was breezy in the car and she’d tucked her blonde hair under a scarf, the warm wind felt glorious on her face. It didn’t escape Georgie’s notice that to any onlooker, they surely appeared the perfect Aryan couple out for the day, enjoying their very charmed life.

  Conversation was limited due to the wind and the noise of the engine, aside from Kasper’s attempts at being a tour guide, pushing out his long arm and hollering proudly: ‘Eleven thousand acres of forest, and all protected.’

  They pulled into a well-used picnic area, patches of grass levelled by bodies previously lying in the most popular spots, the tall branches providing a canopy to a sun that was now blazing overhead. The space, then, was almost empty but Georgie was reassured to see one or two other couples sitting near to their cars. So far Kasper had been a gentleman, but it was always wise to remember that she was a foreign woman alone, with a near stranger. And a Nazi.

  ‘It is perfect, yes?’ He was trying out his English, competent but a little stilted.

  ‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’

  Kasper had left nothing to chance, providing an abundant picnic basket. The food was German but light – sausage and cheeses, plus an array of fruit she’d only seen at Café Kranzler or the Adlon, and with bread that wasn’t black or dense. He’d supplied both lemonade and wine, and they chinked their glasses to a background hum of swing music, issued from the tiniest gramophone player Georgie had ever seen, compacted in a metal case half the size of the heavy black disc. Kasper beamed with pleasure as he wound up the little machine and its echoey speaker pushed out the sound. Yes, it was actually quite perfect.

  They sprawled across the picnic blanket, with no sense of awkwardness. As they ate, they talked about Britain and Berlin, about their families and where they had grown up; Georgie could relate her own images of the Cotswold countryside around Stroud, in similar woodlands, eating with her friends and feeling free. And yet not once did he ask about her work. Maybe he didn’t want to know, or maybe he just assumed she was from a wealthy enough family that Mummy and Daddy were bank-rolling her pretend plans to write, humouring her until the impetus fizzled. In past years, Berlin had been full of real and would-be novelists, and to him, she was perhaps one of a flock.

  ‘So, what are your plans for life?’ she said lazily. Innocently, she hoped, but still with a real curiosity, and not simply as a journalist. He had a history degree from the University of Berlin, so what was he doing in Hitler’s ranks when no one had – yet – been forced to pick sides and join up?

  ‘I want to travel, and then maybe marriage and a family,’ he said, pouring out the last of the lemonade. ‘I thought the military was a good starting point.’

  ‘Always supposing there isn’t …’ Georgie started, but thought better of it.

  ‘A war, you mean?’ He flashed his white smile, as if to say: yes, it’s all right, we can talk about that.

  ‘Well, yes. It would put paid to a lot of plans.’

  He lay back on the blanket, staring directly into the canopy of green above. His tone was relaxed, unchallenging. ‘If there is, it won’t be at the Führer’s behest. It’s the rest of Europe that seems determined to force a confrontation. Hitler is a peacemaker who only wants the best for his people.’ He closed his eyes, as if what he said was simply gospel. To him, she supposed it was.

  Should I argue it? Georgie reasoned. Should I point out the treaties Hitler has already marched across – quite literally, with large jackboots – tearing up the agreements between nations after the Great War? Not to mention rearming Germany, and the creation of a formidable air force expressly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles?

  But what good would it do? Kasper seemed nice enough as a person, but he’d undoubtedly swallowed the propaganda pill, a regular dose since the Nazi rise to power in 1934. He was a product of the Reich. Equally, she had no evidence that he was guilty of any crime, and he was good company on a beautiful day. Hadn’t Rod already taught her there were other battles more worthy of a fight?

  Maybe he felt the weight of her pause, because he suddenly sat up. ‘Care to dance?’ A wide smile spread across his lips. Strangely, in that moment, their differences were not so much swept away as diluted – by the sunshine, the occasion, even the wine perhaps.

  And so they danced, not under the sparkling Resi illuminations, but the dappling of the sun through the trees, to the tinny sounds from the gramophone. How utterly bizarre, Georgie thought and laughed inside herself. One other couple still present looked up but there was no annoyance at the intrusion. It was too nice a day for that.

  Kasper gripped her hand as they circled over the grass, his other palm resting on her hip and they moulded into each other, close but not intimate, as if he were measuring the correct distance. Order at every turn. He smelled nice, of good cologne, and Georgie could only wonder at his motivations for the entire day. Did he simply want to practise his English, or be seen with a European woman? Or did he find her visibly attractive, since he’d approached her at the Resi based on looks alone? Never very confident in her own appearance, Georgie found that option quite implausible. Yet here she was: a girl from the Cotswolds in a forest somewhere in Germany, dancing with an officer of Hitler’s Reich. Quite, quite mad.

  As the gramophone ran out of steam and their post-lunch lethargy waned, they packed up. But Kasper wasn’t done yet with his magical mystery tour – his drive took them through several villages, past Hansel and Gretel houses and farmers working in leather lederhosen. Finally, they drew into a small town with a village square. She felt a chill run down her spine, recalling events in the last traditional marketplace she’d seen. But this space was virtually empty, being a Sunday, and they found a hotel and a bar and drank a jug of very good beer, reminding Georgie of her father and how he would appreciate this brew very much.

  Kasper was a master at good conversation, more so at sidestepping the issue of his profession versus hers. She knew he was an attaché, but to what, whom or where, he didn’t offer. It did seem as though he was en
joying the break from Berlin and the inevitable restrictions of military barracks. Could she ever believe they were simply two people relishing the freedom of the day?

  ‘I’ve enjoyed myself – very much,’ he said as he drew up to Frida’s flat. ‘Perhaps we can do it again, dinner at some point?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Georgie found herself saying, more surprised that he was asking for a repeat.

  ‘I have to go away for a month or so – a very dull training course,’ he said, that slight scorn again, accompanied by a smile. ‘But I’ll be sure to call when I’m back?’

  She nodded, silently pondering if part of his time would be at Nuremberg, but given the reports of the sheer numbers expected, they were unlikely to cross paths. Hopefully not.

  ‘Thank you for your company, Fraulein Young.’ He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek, a brief peck, but gentle. And as she climbed the steps to her own front door, she wondered how she felt about his touch – how she should feel. In truth, not as bad as she ought.

  It was early evening and the flat was populated with some of Frida’s theatre friends having drinks before they headed out. ‘Join us?’ Frida flitted by, a Martini in hand.

  ‘No thanks,’ Georgie said, ‘I’m really tired.’ Frida’s eyebrows arched and Georgie frowned in reply.

  ‘Had a nice day?’ Max’s voice came from a chair in the corner, where he was veiled by Simone’s lithe form. The question was loaded – for all Frida’s prowess at protecting her professional sources, she was a terrible gossip when it came to romance. And Max’s tone was challenging – no hint of their new-found truce.

  ‘Yes, a lovely time, thanks,’ Georgie came back, clipped with conviction. How dare he judge her? Especially as Simone had draped herself like a blanket across Max, in a clear exhibition.

  Georgie was thankful when they left en masse and the flat was silent. She made herself some tea – the British leaves her mother had packaged up and sent by post – and cast her mind back to home, rather than the previous hours. She was forced to admit to herself that she was intentionally evading the situation, having to think about the morality of a date with Kasper. No, not Kasper. An SS officer. A Nazi. Could the man be separated from the uniform? Maybe now, but perhaps not in time, not if Hitler continued on his current trajectory. And yet, was it so bad, enjoying the here and now, when the whole of Europe might soon be immersed in total conflict, and her time in Germany would forcibly come to an end?

  Damn! There she was, thinking about it. Justifying it. She sighed and lay back, filling her mind instead with memories of a Cotswold summer and the taste of English strawberries on her tongue.

  15

  The Pantomime

  Nuremberg, 6th September 1938

  No one in the press pack had the stomach for an entire week of Nazi grandiosity, and so they set off for Nuremberg a day after its opening, a small motorcade of cars, with Rod and Georgie’s posse in the lead car and a new driver; Rod was fervent in his opposition to anti-Semitism, but had the good sense to know when it had the potential get Rubin in serious trouble – or worse.

  Tired and desperate for a bath after a 400-kilometre drive, Georgie was unprepared for the circus facing her. The mediaeval castle town of Nuremberg had already been transformed by the thousands of Nazi flags dripping from its gabled buildings, further still by shoals of brown and black shirts moving through the narrow streets, singing and chanting, drunk on beer and rhetoric, all waiting for just one man, one true icon to worship. Georgie watched their driver’s eyes widen at the increasing intimidation of the crowds as they inched slowly through, eyes fixed firmly on the road until the hotel came in sight.

  Bill and Rod were veterans of Nuremberg and took it in their stride. Max, however, stepped out of the car and echoed Georgie’s reaction – a pair of rabbits in the headlights.

  ‘And I thought an English cup final was bad enough,’ he uttered as they headed through the hotel door.

  It was the tip of a large iceberg. In the next days, rally upon rally was attended by the German High Command, whipping up the already converted crowds – Hess, Himmler, Goebbels and Göring as the stage stars. Hitler rationed his appearances, despite the throngs baying for his presence outside his hotel, gaggles of BDM girls shrieking for just a glimpse. He kept the early day speeches to a minimum, an expert at stoking the excitement and anticipation. And on his plinth at every event, overseeing the spectacle, Joseph Goebbels acted as the master puppeteer, smiling at his perfect pageant.

  Georgie wrote copious notes and wondered how she would ever make sense of them in her own head, let alone on the page. It was like being taken to the circus as a child; overwhelmed by the display, wanting to see everything and yet always looking around corners for any leering, scary clown to jump out. As with any Nazi affair, order was paramount, but with the volume of beer consumed, tongues were inevitably loosened. It meant that, at times, she was glad Rubin wasn’t present, wincing as she heard with her own ears the intense hatred aimed at Jews, ugly mouths spewing with venom and laughter. The Stormtroopers gaily burst into song at regular intervals, ‘When Jewish blood spurts from my knife’ sung with particular gusto. Georgie wished then her German was not quite so acute.

  Each day, she and the pack filed their reports home. The Nazis were spouting the same rhetoric as in past years, Rod and Bill reported, but even they sensed a heightened zeal among the devotees, a total belief that Hitler’s projections for a true, vast Fatherland could be realised. And soon.

  On their last night, the rally was orchestrated as the ultimate finale and the global press were out in force. Despite their sometimes irritable relationship, Georgie sensed she and Max had again reached some understanding in Nuremberg – this time, a form of continued astonishment. They were driven close to the Zeppelin field outside of the city and Max nudged at her, half in joke. ‘Hold on to your hat,’ he said. ‘Prepare to be blown away.’

  Old Joey did not disappoint. Where the Olympic stadium in ’36 had been built to house spectators, here there were 100,000 participants alone – row upon row of marching SS, Stormtroopers, Wehrmacht army, Jungvolk, with the BDM girls in their distinctive white shirts and neat, golden plaits, standard bearers and flocks of static eagles swaying in the air. Those armies of flag-making women had been busy again.

  Georgie screwed up her eyes as the SS formation trooped past, wondered if Kasper was among the moving swarm below. But he would have been impossible to single out – an ant in the ranks. It was the precise symmetry that fascinated her the most; every platoon in strict formation, blocks of colour and people, yet not one straying from the lines, not a foot out of step. People in containment, not allowed to move freely. Or think independently. That’s his secret – keep them all in the box.

  Amongst the crush of spectators, there was less reserve; a continual cascade of emotion for the Reich as solemn Wagner and rousing Beethoven pumped out of the numerous speakers. Before the sun went down, Georgie eyed the crowds, the women especially as they thrust the Heil Hitler salute in unison, gaping in a trance of ecstasy at a huge eagle icon spiked like a dead butterfly to the back of the speaker’s platform. It was where he would appear. Then, the sun’s glow fading rapidly, Joey put his light spectacle into operation – a fan of military searchlights, scores of them, shooting from ground level into the sky, strobing to a central point and creating his ‘cathedral of light’. An intense beat of drums began, almost tribal, gaining pace to charge the air with man-made electricity amid the deafening drub of noise.

  Into this drove the emperor Adolf, standing and saluting, the women shrieking with delirium. If she hadn’t been there, rooted in the reality of it, Georgie might have read it as fiction – verging on a horror story. How do I ever relay this to any reader back in England? she wondered. Who would ever believe me?

  The Führer, though, proved himself all too human up close – small and inconsequential at first glance, his angry, hateful rhetoric was soon projecting into the air, his bo
dy rigid with animosity towards Jews, the West, Communism. Anything not purely Germanic. Flecks of his spit cast against the light from their nearby position in the press box, and yet his inner circle only gazed with outward adoration. At each pause, the crowd went wild with applause. Max turned his head towards Georgie, and she felt their fears align.

  Oh Lord, his look said. Look what’s coming.

  16

  Life and Oppression

  Berlin, 14th September 1938

  ‘Winded’ had been the only word Georgie managed to conjure for Henry in verbalising her first experience of Nuremberg.

  ‘I have had to tone your reports down a little,’ he said on the phone days later, though with more humour than irritation. ‘We’ve the owners to placate, and we can’t be seen as biased.’

  Georgie told him she understood, but in truth, she was mystified. Why weren’t people overtly opposed to the events in Berlin, all over Germany? How could they all be so blinkered?

  ‘What’s the feeling in London?’ she said. ‘Is it making any impact?’

  ‘On the street, few people are talking of Hitler,’ Henry sighed. ‘With Chamberlain set to meet him, they think a deal will be made and he’ll go away satisfied, happy to get his hands on the Sudetenland.’

  Georgie was sceptical, recalling the little man before her eyes just days before, combusting with righteousness. His hot, sweaty loathing for the world at large. ‘I don’t think he will,’ she murmured, though whether her words reached across the lines to London, she couldn’t tell. Henry thanked her for holding the fort so well, confessing that he didn’t know when Paul Adamson would return – apparently, the baby had been born healthy, but there were issues with his family. Georgie made a mental note not to hold her breath.

  In the end, it was as the reporters predicted and feared. In mid-September, and again a week later, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler on the Führer’s home ground of his Bavarian mountaintop retreat, the smiling diplomacy of British and French leaders masking their total submission. Hitler would get his Sudetenland without a single bullet being fired. Reading the reports, Georgie imagined Hitler as the child who’d thrown his toys out of the pram, with the rest of Europe considering whether to pick them up. The child held fast, and those around him plucked each one off the floor.