Berlin 1936

by Oliver Hilmes

  After the accident at Cádiz harbor, there’s no longer any doubt that the Travel Club Union consists of something other than a bunch of tourists with nothing more in their luggage than summer clothing. Trautloft, von Hoyos and the others are part of a group of German soldiers who will later be known as the Legion Condor.

  Spain saw a military putsch in mid-July. Under the leadership of General Francisco Franco, large parts of the Spanish army have risen up against the government of the Second Republic, which had just been elected in February. In late July, while attending the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Hitler decided that Germany would help transport Spanish soldiers from the colony of Morocco to the Spanish mainland. To this end, he sent sixteen German aircraft along with other military hardware to the Iberian Peninsula. Hitler saved the nationalist rebellion from defeat, leading to the start of the Spanish Civil War.

  The putschists get even more support from the Italian government, while the Republic receives help from countries as diverse as the Soviet Union and Mexico. Hitler is pursuing selfish aims in Spain. With Mussolini, he wants to forge a right-wing alliance against the European Left. In addition, Spain has raw materials needed by the German arms industry. Initially, this looks like a limited political adventure. The Germans keep their activities supporting the putsch secret—nothing can be allowed to contradict the staged image of Nazi Germany as the peace-loving host of the Olympic Games. “After the Olympics, we’ll get ruthless,” Goebbels confides in his diary on 7 August. “Then there will be some shooting.”

  * * *

  *

  In the Olympic Village people are constantly coming and going. New athletes move in, while others, whose competitions have finished, leave the facility. Today, the Village’s population has reached its peak with 4,275 athletes. In addition there are 1,241 staff who work in administration, in the kitchens, in cleaning and in medical services. All in all, 5,516 people have to be provided for, and that demands precise logistics. Decentralization is key. Every participating nation brings along its own kitchen, and some even provide the cooks, so that the broad spectrum of national preferences and tastes can be satisfied. Peruvian athletes eat as many as ten eggs a day, while athletes from the Philippines don’t like cauliflower, honey or cheese. Poles love cabbage, Hungarians prefer pork, Turks eat lots of lamb, and Luxembourgers consume a conspicuous amount of vegetables. Americans devour all sorts of meat—including rare steaks before they’re set to compete—but won’t touch smoked fish. As side dishes, Jesse Owens and his countrymen favor baked potatoes and vegetables, and for dessert it’s custard or ice cream. The Japanese eat 10 ounces of rice a day and a lot of fish—they’ve brought their own soy bean products with them. For Argentinians, meat is all-important. To be on the safe side, they’ve shipped more than 8,000 pounds of their best beef to Berlin so that they can daily enjoy bife a la plancha and empanadas criollas. For breakfast, German athletes get four eggs, milk with glucose, tomato juice, quark with linseed oil, and bread with lots of butter. They also eat lots of meat (such as minced raw liver), potatoes and vegetables bound with flour. There’s no ban on alcohol in the Village, but the athletes don’t drink much. Only the Italians and French refuse to do without their Chianti and vin rouge. Athletes from la grande nation in particular are discriminating diners and insist on the finest-quality filets and ragouts. The chefs at the Olympic Village cater to their every wish.

  All in all, over the course of the Games, the athletes will consume 175,000 pounds of meat, 6,500 pounds of fresh fish, 20,000 pounds of pasta, 130,000 pounds of bread, 130,000 pounds of fresh vegetables, 120,000 pounds of potatoes, 5,500 pounds of coffee, 19,000 gallons of milk, 232,029 eggs, 24,060 lemons and 233,748 oranges.

  NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY PRESS SERVICE REPORT: “Ministers Nenné and Cale serving the maharaja of Baroda (India) paid a visit to the NSDAP’s Office for Racial Policy to inform themselves about the National Socialist standpoint on the race question and racial legislation in the new Germany. The two visitors were particularly interested in the laws concerning Aryans. There was agreement on basic questions.”

  * * *

  *

  The Poststadium on Lehrter Strasse is bursting at the seams. Twenty-five thousand people have turned out to watch the football quarter-final match between Germany and Norway. The German national team under coach Otto Nerz is considered one of the tournament favorites, and after the sensational 9–0 victory over Luxembourg, no one has any doubts that the Germans will beat the Norwegians as well. Looking ahead to the semifinal, Nerz has elected to rest many of his regular starters, fielding a team of reserve players instead. At exactly 5:30 p.m., referee Arthur Barton from England blows the opening whistle, and the drama begins.

  In the first few minutes a defensive blunder by the Germans sends Norwegian winger Odd Frantzen clean through on goal. Alf Martinsen takes the ball, then passes it to Reidar Kvammen, who finds Magnar Isaksen. The stadium clock reads 5:37 when Isaksen puts Norway ahead 1–0. Conceding such an early goal shocks the Germans. Their defense is tentative, and in attack they’re out of luck. Time is beginning to run out in the second half. In the 83rd minute, Isaksen—again assisted by Martinsen and Kvammen—scores his second goal. The 2–0 victory sends Norway through to the semis; Germany is out of the competition. “The Führer is very upset, and I can hardly control myself,” Goebbels writes in his diary. “It was a real test for the nerves. The spectators went berserk. A battle never seen before. A game as a piece of mass suggestion.”

  As is so often the case, disappointed fans blame the coach. Nerz is fired, and his former assistant, Sepp Herberger, takes over the national team.

  EXCERPT FROM THE DAILY INSTRUCTIONS OF THE REICH PRESS CONFERENCE: “The Italian gold medalist is named Georg Oberweger, not Giorgio Oberweger. Sports reporters are to take care not to de-Germanify athletes’ first names.”

  * * *

  *

  Back at Eislebener Strasse, the publisher’s offices have been transformed, and the guests are arriving. Rowohlt’s authors’ evenings are very popular, and it’s not unusual that as many as a hundred people show up. Aside from Rowohlt writers, authors with other publishers, journalists, artists, scientists and businesspeople often attend, as well as various others connected with or somehow deemed useful to Rowohlt.

  Tonight’s guest of honor is Thomas Wolfe. Rowohlt is proud of his best-selling American author and wants to show him off to his guests. In garbled English, Rowohlt welcomes all his guests and launches into a short speech, beginning with the remark that he and his “husband” are happy everyone has come. Wolfe grins, while Ledig shakes his head in despair. He’s told the publisher over and over that the word is “wife” and not “husband,” but Rowohlt can’t seem to get that into his head. He’s sure, the publisher continues, that some day Wolfe, too, will find himself a good husband, pronouncing the word as “hosenband.” After a few other malapropisms, he opens Schlichter’s buffet, which the guests greedily pounce upon.

  At Wolfe’s request, Rowohlt has invited Thea Voelcker, with whom the author is no longer angry, Martha Dodd, and Mildred Harnack and her husband, Arvid. Mildred comes from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and works as a literary scholar and translator in Berlin. Arvid is an economist in the service of the Reich economics minister. Wolfe likes the Harnacks, particularly appreciating Mildred’s calm, collected manner, which differs so greatly from his own impulsive temperament. In fact, in a number of ways Mildred exerts an exotic attraction over the author. She is a relatively large woman with slicked-back hair and a severe look to her face. Since she invariably wears gray, she looks a bit like a nun. What Wolfe doesn’t know is that for more than a year the Harnacks have been working as spies for the Soviet Union.

  Strangely, the conversation at Rowohlt’s authors’ evenings almost never turns to literature. Mostly people talk about current social issues or politics, and of course tonight the Olympics are on everyone’s minds. Wolfe is fulsome in his praise. “With no past experience in such affairs,�
� he’ll write later, “the Germans had constructed a mighty stadium which was the most beautiful and most perfect in its design that had ever been built. And all the accessories of this monstrous plant—the swimming pools, the enormous halls, the lesser stadia—had been laid out and designed with this same cohesion of beauty and of use. The organization was superb. Not only were the events themselves, down to the minutest detail of each competition, staged and run off like clockwork, but the crowds—such crowds as no other great city has ever had to cope with, and the like of which would certainly have snarled and maddened the traffic of New York beyond hope of untangling—were handled with a quietness, order, and speed that was astounding.” Mildred Harnack listens to Wolfe’s paean to German organizational talent without batting an eyelid, but her gaze must contain the hint of an objection, because Wolfe suddenly falls silent. You have to be very careful, Mildred begins, but before she can finish her sentence, they’re joined by other guests who want to talk to the famous author. As they tell Wolfe how much they admired his last novel, Of Time and the River, he thinks about Mildred’s warning. What was she trying to tell him?

  The evening takes its course, and the mood grows ever more relaxed. Suddenly, Ernst Rowohlt’s booming voice breaks into a song: “I have a little Mosel…a little Mosel.” Thus far there’s only been beer and schnapps, but now the publisher serves up some of his precious white wine. Every bottle that is uncorked, and there are quite a few of them, is welcomed with a joyful “I have a little Mosel…” Rowohlt is greatly amusing himself by teaching Wolfe the words to obscene German songs. One of them goes “Lick, lick, lick the cat’s arse,” and Rowohlt, swinging a bottle of Mosel, gleefully performs it for his star author. Wolfe has no idea what the words he parrots back mean. Ernst von Salomon will later write that like the hours “in which fraternization took place on the battlefield, these were times in which people freely admitted the deepest truth about themselves and embraced one another in a spontaneous way that lasted a lifetime.”

  The only one who isn’t enjoying the festivities is Thea Voelcker. It’s only the second time she has met Wolfe. In essence, she doesn’t know him at all, and now she’s being forced to watch him exchange intimacies with Martha Dodd. She’s a stranger here, and she finds Mildred Harnack’s stern appearance, Rowohlt’s lack of inhibition and the generally boisterous mood thoroughly unsettling. They all make her feel like an intruder who doesn’t belong amidst the other guests. And on top of that she increasingly comes to believe that Ledig is following her every move suspiciously. Once, their gazes cross, and she instinctively recognizes deep animosity in his eyes. At least she thinks she does. For Wolfe this is just silly. In his eyes it’s typically German that two people who aren’t acquainted at all should immediately mistrust one another. At least he’s never encountered anything similar anywhere else in the world. But what if this is not a case of individual animosity? What if Germany has been infected with an insidious disease that has eaten its way into society and poisoned relations between people? Before Wolfe can ponder the thought, Ernst Rowohlt strikes up his Mosel song once more and tugs him back into the whirl of the authors’ evening.

  Dawn is breaking by the time the final guests leave Eislebener Strasse. Wolfe only has a few hundred yards to walk to his hotel. While he strolls through the streets of a city that is beginning to wake up, he can’t help but think about Mildred Harnack’s mysterious warning.

  * * *

  *

  “Early to bed,” Goebbels writes in his diary. “Today the Olympics are one week old. Hopefully they’ll be over soon.”

  A glance into another world. The Ciro Bar seems to be a sanctuary from Nazi terror. Credit 8

  Saturday, 8 August 1936

  REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Heavy clouds, with isolated thundery showers. Somewhat cooler, with weak northwesterly winds. High of 21°C.

  EXCERPT FROM THE DAILY INSTRUCTIONS OF THE REICH PRESS CONFERENCE: “It is requested that special care be taken when translating German articles and special supplements. Foreigners have repeatedly complained that the English and French versions of articles have been extraordinarily bad.”

  Elisabeth L. is 10 years old and, until recently, she lived with her parents in a lovely flat. The Ls owned tables, chairs, beds, wardrobes, a sideboard and many other things. There was also a small kitchen where Elisabeth’s mother cooked for the family. A cross was nailed above the kitchen door—the Ls are Catholics—and pictures hung on the walls. There were cushions on the sofa, the windows had curtains, and flowers decorated the tables. The parents worked during the day while their children were at school. Most people would think that Elisabeth, her parents and her siblings were a completely average German family. Not in Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick’s view. For a while now, he’s trained his sights upon people like Elisabeth. For him the 10-year-old girl is an irritant, even a personal affront. As far as the Nazis are concerned, the Ls are “gypsies,” and there’s no place for gypsies in the Olympic city of Berlin. With his decree “For Combating the Gypsy Plague” of June 1936, Frick charged the police president in Berlin with carrying out a “gypsy manhunt day.” The goal was to remove all of the capital’s Sinti and Roma from their apartments or camping sites and intern them in a single spot outside the city center.

  On Thursday, 16 July 1936, two weeks before the Olympic Games get underway, the initiative begins. Early in the morning, with 600 other Sinti and Roma, the Ls are arrested and taken to the outlying district of Marzahn. Marzahn has been part of Greater Berlin since 1920 but it’s retained much of its original small-town character. There’s a small nineteenth-century church and a picturesque school from the late Wilhelmine Empire. But not everywhere in Marzahn is so idyllic. Next to the rail line to Ahrensfelde and Werneuchen there are sewage farms where Berlin’s waste water is processed. Trucks arrive constantly and pump sewage into the fields, causing a terrible stench. Here, between the train tracks, the septic fields and the municipal cemetery, is where the new Sinti and Roma camp is located. Families like the Ls who have always lived in apartment buildings suddenly find themselves deposited on a damp field. “In Marzahn there were a couple of wooden barracks and a couple of caravans with no wheels that had been propped up on stones,” Elisabeth will remember. “We were taken from our lovely flat and put into an old caravan. That was where we were supposed to live, the entire family. We weren’t allowed to take anything with us from our flat. Even if we had been, there were no flats in Marzahn where we could have put our things. There was nothing.”

  Living conditions in the camp are catastrophic, with the 600 inmates having only two toilets at their disposal. Immediately after the camp opens, there are outbreaks of skin diseases and infections. The inmates are completely abandoned, not provided for in the slightest. The Sinti and Roma have to buy their food from local shops. The camp has no source of drinking water, so Elisabeth and the others are forced to walk a mile and fetch water from Marzahn town center. When they arrive there, they’re often met by waves of hatred. Many shopkeepers refuse to sell them anything but scraps. Elisabeth becomes familiar with a completely unknown sensation: hunger.

  In August 1936, the camp isn’t yet fenced, but local police diligently monitor everyone who comes and goes. People are only allowed to leave the camp to go to work and buy food. Internees are required to check in and out of the place, and there’s a curfew at 10 p.m. Anyone violating the rules faces rubber truncheons and guard dogs. “Basically we lived in constant fear,” another of the internees later recalls. “We were afraid of the police, the local residents, anyone and everyone.”

  The Olympic Stadium is 15 miles away from Marzahn. Elisabeth has heard that many happy people from all over the world are celebrating a gigantic festival—a festival of friendship and peace between nations. She doesn’t experience any of that in her rickety caravan. The camp is located on the other side of the city, in an out-of-the-way location where no tourists ever stray to share their celebrations with a little girl
. Elisabeth doesn’t feel like celebrating, anyway. She doesn’t fully understand what “peace between nations” means, but if it entails innocent people being taken from their homes and dragged to a place like this, it can’t be anything good.

  Elisabeth wants to go back home with her parents to their flat. She wants to sleep in her own bed again. Little does she know that things are about to get much, much worse for herself and her family.

  * * *

  *

  In the Stadium am Gesundbrunnen, the last football quarter-final begins at 5:30 p.m.: Austria versus Peru. Although the stadium has a capacity of 36,000, only around 5,000 people turn out for the match. The duel between the Austrians and the Peruvians obviously hasn’t caught the popular imagination. Perhaps that’s because it’s the first time the national team of the Andean nation is taking part in a tournament outside South America. Peru is an unknown quantity, but opponents underestimate them at their peril. In the round of sixteen, the Peruvians dispatched Finland 7–3.