by Heinz Rein
And to the east and west of the city the fronts rise up like a dark curtain of clouds. They seem like storms in the distance, no rumble of thunder can yet be heard, lightning still lurks behind the wall of clouds, but a whirling wind heralds the approaching storm, an oppressive, sulphurous yellow brightness spreads, a stormy closeness weighs upon the city. A fearful sense of expectation has taken hold of the city’s inhabitants, they oscillate between hope of a miracle that has been repeatedly promised and presented as imminent by the Party leadership, and the paralysing horror of a terrible end. While exploding and incendiary bombs fall on the city, just as pitch and sulphur once rained on Sodom and Gomorrah, the little groups of the resistance movement wait with painful longing for liberation, because they cannot free themselves by their own power.
Part I
* * *
UNEASE BEFORE THE STORM
‘We must now think and act like Friedrich the Great. But if we perish, the whole German people will perish with us, so gloriously that even after one thousand years the heroic downfall of the Germans will occupy pride of place in world history.’
Dr Joseph Goebbels
Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to journalists, March 1945
I
14 April, 2.00 p.m.
In the early hours of the afternoon on 14 April 1945, the door of a restaurant on Strasse Am Schlesischen Bahnhof opens as it has never been opened before. It is not thrown wide open, or simply pushed open with the feet, as some guests like to do, nor is it hurled aside boisterously or with great force, or simply opened unceremoniously. No, the door is opened slowly, almost carefully, only a narrow chink, the gap between the door frame and the large window next to it is just wide enough for a slender young man to be able to slip through. He hastily closes the door, darts his eyes around the empty restaurant and then, as if afraid that someone might get in his way, makes quickly for the furthest, darkest corner. Here he slumps heavily onto a chair with a deep, almost audible sigh, leans back for a few seconds and closes his eyes, but then, with a mighty effort that runs through him almost like a shock, opens his eyelids again and says loudly, ‘A beer!’
In his thirty-year career in hospitality, the landlord of this pub has served many a curious character so he is especially good at gauging his customers. He can tell at a glance a thug from an opportunist thief, a full-time lady of the night from an amateur prostitute, a con man from an ordinary card-player, he knows immediately when he is dealing with a brawler and when with a harmless drunk. He draws his conclusions, if that is what one wishes to call his rather instinctive cognitions, from behaviour and clothing, attitude and gesture, language and expression, and in the case of this individual – who has just pushed his way through the door, huddled shyly in a dark corner and exhaled with relief as if he had just jumped into the last lifeboat, whose eyes are filled with harassment and anxiety, whose movements are nervously alert, whose clothes have been assembled at random and are not exactly by the very best tailor, clothes in which in all likelihood he doesn’t belong, because the young man’s hands are not well kept, long, slender hands with pliant, nimble fingers – it is plain that a number of things do not quite add up.
The landlord, as he froths the beer in a mug and then brings the full weight of his massive body out from behind the bar, studies the solitary guest again, the ski-cap with dirty fingerprints on the right-hand side, the mud-splashed boots which he has quite clearly not taken off for days, his threadbare green rucksack: it is quite clear. The young man is a deserter.
When the landlord sets the beer down in front of him he says, as if in passing, ‘So, where are we off to, young man?’
The man thus addressed gives a start and blinks uneasily. ‘Off to?’ he asks back. ‘Why should I be going off somewhere? Do I look like a traveller?’
The landlord chuckles.
‘You shouldn’t take these things so literally, young man,’ he says. ‘It was just a question. You have to talk to your customers, don’t you?’
As he speaks he sits down opposite his guest and looks him in the eye with unconcealed curiosity.
‘Of course,’ the young man confirms, but it isn’t hard to tell from his face that he has no wish to be entertained, that the conversation might even be an annoyance to him. He drains the beer in one great swig and hastily pushes the glass towards the landlord. ‘Same again!’
‘Of course,’ the landlord says, but gives no indication of wanting to get to his feet, his little eyes between swollen lids will not let go of his guest, and constantly circle him.
The young man turns awkwardly away and begins to read the posters on the walls. ‘One Volk, one Reich, one Führer!’, ‘Boa-Lie, the deliciously refreshing drink’, ‘We will never capitulate!’, ‘So appetisingly fresh, Bergmann Privat’, ‘No entry to Jews!’ He turns away, repelled, takes the 12-Uhr-Blatt from the newspaper hook and begins to read.
Wehrmacht Senior Command: Focus on the Central Section
Severe street-fighting rage in the Danube city – Weimar falls.
The headlines spread, bold and black, like victory fanfares. He skips the report, apparently interested only in the front lines around Berlin.
Führer’s Headquarters, 13 April
From the front to the Bay of Pomerania no combat operations of any significance are reported. The enemy are continuing with their preparations to attack in Silesia and on the lower Oder. Naval battleships were sunk …
‘Here,’ says the landlord and taps the table a few times with his index finger. ‘There’s something I’d like to ask you.’
The young man flinches briefly, but he doesn’t look up from the newspaper.
Between Ems and Weser …
In Wittenberge on the Elbe reconnaissance fighters are in combat with our bridgehead troops on the western shore. Further to the south the Americans are advancing against Magdeburg.
‘Stop pulling faces!’ the landlord says, his voice a strange mixture of command and request. ‘How long have you been on the road?’
The young man casts another quick glance at the headlines.
‘A ruined continent sends its curses to Roosevelt.’
‘The war-makers judged by fate.’
‘Great consternation in London.’
‘Mass murders on his debit account.’
Then he lowers the paper and stares at the landlord with his eyes wide open.
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘If you’ve done a bunk I want to know!’ the landlord says impatiently.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the young man says, and sets the newspaper aside again as if it bothers him now, then he sits up stiffly, puts both hands on his knees and leans forward. His attitude suggests tension and a readiness to pounce.
‘Don’t try and fool me, son,’ the landlord says, and twists his fat, flabby mouth into a broad grin, ‘you’ve done a bunk, you’re on the run, you’ve hightailed it, you’ve skedaddled or – to put it another way – you have deserted.’
The young man leaps to his feet and hastily pulls a revolver from his coat pocket. ‘I’ll blow your brains out if you try to hand me over to the cops,’ he yells breathlessly.
The landlord leans back comfortably in the chair, rests his chin on his chest and looks up from beneath raised eyebrows. ‘Put that thing away,’ he says calmly. ‘You don’t need that here.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ the young man says agitatedly, and keeps his finger on the trigger. ‘I don’t trust anybody, these days everyone is …’
‘Not everyone, son, not everyone,’ the landlord cuts in. ‘Put that thing away and sit down again.’
The young man sits uncertainly back in his chair, but he doesn’t put the revolver away and observes the landlord’s every movement. ‘Who are you,’ he asks, ‘that you are so special?’
The landlord laughs loudly. ‘I’m Oskar Klose, pub landlord. My name is up there in big wide letters for everyone who knows how to read. And who are you?�
��
‘No, no,’ the young man says, ‘you can’t talk to me like that. Sounding me out here and then …’ He shakes his head, takes a money bag out of his coat and leaves a five-mark note on the table. ‘Pour the beer.’
The landlord flicks the note contemptuously back. ‘Why don’t you trust me, son?’ he asks.
‘Why should I trust you of all people?’ the young man asks back. ‘Trust is a plant that no longer flourishes in Hitler’s Germany.’
‘Now you’ve given yourself away, son,’ Klose says, and rests his fat hand on the young man’s arm.
The young man automatically shakes his hand away. ‘Stop that, or …’ he adds threateningly and sets the gun down again.
‘But that’s enough nonsense for now,’ Klose says angrily and strikes the table with the flat of his hand. ‘I’m trying to help you … and you … You’re fed up with all that crap, right to the brim, that much is obvious.’
‘I bet I’m not the only one in Germany,’ the young man adds.
‘No, you certainly aren’t,’ Klose says. ‘And you can believe that I hate that brown-shirted shower like the plague, you can trust me. Or do you think you’re the first one to find his way to my bar because he threw that damned uniform in the dirt and did a bunk, whatever the consequences?’
‘You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already, Mr Klose,’ the young man says. ‘But there is so much betrayal and spying …’
‘It happens, it even happens a lot,’ Mr Klose the landlord admits, ‘but at my place …’ He shakes his head. ‘Sit down again, there’s something I’d like to tell you.’
The young man sits down on a chair again, but he sits right on the edge, alert and ready to pounce, still not letting go of his revolver.
‘I fought in the First War,’ Klose begins. ‘Of course, I mean I had to fight. I was a bad soldier, not that I’m a coward, I’ve often proved the contrary in my life, but it didn’t enter my head that we little people are supposed to let the big bosses smash our bones to bits, and once you’ve got thoughts like that in your head, you can’t be a good soldier. Isn’t that right?’
The young man nods. ‘That’s exactly how it is, but …’
Klose waves his words away. ‘You can have your say afterwards, just let me talk first. They tied me to the post a few times, you don’t forget that kind of thing as long as you live, and much else besides, like for example the way the brownshirts smashed windows after what they call the “seizure of power”, and beat me black and blue, because Solidarity and the Fichte Sports Association used to meet at my pub and because I always donated to Workers’ International Relief and the Red Cross and the Iron Front, but I’m sure none of that means a thing to you. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-two.’
Klose shook his head regretfully. ‘You didn’t grow up in normal times, that is, it wasn’t all that normal even before … But when you started thinking, the troublemakers had already glued up your brain. And what’s your name?’ The young man hesitates before answering, and plays awkwardly with the revolver.
‘Come on, out with it, lad,’ Klose says encouragingly.
‘Joachim Lassehn,’ the young man says at last.
‘Very nice,’ Klose says with an ironic bow. ‘And I’m Oscar Klose, fifty-eight years old, widowed, owner of this grand coachmen’s pub, but you know that already. And what’s your trade?’
Lassehn laughs bitterly and shrugs with resignation. ‘Trade?’ he asks. ‘How could I learn a trade? Have a think, Mr Klose, then you’ll see that your question, forgive me, is nonsense. In Easter forty-one I did my school-leaving exam, then I enrolled at music college, studying piano, I finished a term there, and then I was called up for labour service. It was incredibly hard for me, because I’m not especially manly, and my hands’ – he holds his slender, delicate hands out to the landlord – ‘are more designed for playing the piano than for shovelling. And from labour service I went straight to the army. How could I have a trade?’
‘You’re right, Joachim,’ Klose agrees, ‘it was a silly question. Go on?’
‘It won’t take long, Mr Klose,’ Lassehn replies. ‘Basic training in Münster, occupation in Norway and then off we go playing Chase the Soviets. I’d soon had enough, you can believe me. I don’t know if I’m a special kind of person, but I didn’t really connect with my comrades. They always thought everything was being done right and well and took everything at face value, but perhaps we shouldn’t judge them too harshly, because they were brought up to be unable to make judgements, to stick rigidly to the rules, to idolize. Six years of Nazi school, four years of Hitler Youth, one year of labour service, and then the papers and the radio are constantly hammering away at our brains, you can hardly be surprised …’
‘Nothing suprises me any more,’ Klose says, but he doesn’t smile, an angry, pinched expression has appeared on his benign, broad, jowly face. ‘You’re right, son, damn it all, but now tell me something about yourself. Obviously, they’d have worked out pretty quickly what was up with you.’
‘Of course,’ Lassehn confirms, ‘they bullied and tortured according to all the rules of Prussian military art, whenever they could, particularly when they caught me handing out a Soviet flyer.’
‘What kind of a flyer’ Klose asks.
‘One written by German soldiers in Russian captivity, I can still remember pretty clearly what it said:’
Front-line soldiers! German men and women!
Our sacrifices are senseless and pointless. Our comrades are dying for a completely hopeless cause.
There are two Germanys: the Germany of the Nazi freeloaders and the Germany of the workers, the Germany of the animal robbers and murderers and the Germany of honest hard-working people.
A chasm gapes between these two Germanys. The second people do not need the enslavement of other peoples, but its own liberation from Nazi serfdom.
The German people do not need to become the masters of foreign territories, but the masters of their own country. They must cleanse their own house of the Nazi plague, which condemns them to hunger, deprivation and endless wars.
Through the fall of Hitler our people can and will be able to take the fate of Germany into their own hands.
They will create a new Germany in which the people will be masters in their own house.
‘That was more or less what it said.’
‘I know it, son,’ Klose says.
‘You know it?’ Lassehn says, amazed. ‘Were you out there too?’
‘No,’ Klose laughs, ‘but Moscow broadcasts in Germany on shortwave thirty-one metres.’
Lassehn nods. ‘So that’s how. But let me go on. One day, when I refused to execute Russian POWs whose only crime was to carry a Communist Party membership card or to be Jewish, or simply because they looked intelligent, that was, as they say, it. I ended up in a punishment unit.’
Klose nods. ‘I know, the suicide team, digging up mines, defusing squibs, building bridges under enemy fire and so on. Right?’
‘Right!’ Lassehn agrees. ‘Even then I tried to run off and join the Reds, but it was impossible, the SS kept too sharp an eye on me. Then in December forty-three I was wounded at Voronezh, at first it seemed to be a simple bullet to the thigh, but the wound got worse because they’d neglected to give me a tetanus jab. For weeks there was a danger that my right leg would have to come off, or at least I lay there for months, first in Harkov, then in Kovel, and finally fetched up in Ratibor, when our magnificent Führer was on his way home with that great victory march of his. When the Russians were launching their major attack at the Baranov bridgehead, our hospital was ruthlessly cleared, and anyone who wasn’t exactly on the brink of death was decreed fit to fight. In Ratibor a reserve division was set up, and I was assigned to that. The division wasn’t even fully equipped when the Russians entered the Upper Silesian industrial zone. We ended up at the front, just as we were, some of us unarmed, without warm clothes, everything was at sixes and sevens – a
nd I decided I wasn’t joining in, I threw the shooter away, got hold of some civilian clothes from an abandoned farmhouse and set off. It was a hellishly difficult business to get to Berlin, it’s crawling with military police thugs and swarming with Gestapo, and they’re very quick to turn you in these days. Well, at least I’m in Berlin now.’
Klose had been listening carefully. ‘All very lovely, son,’ he says, ‘but what happens now?’
Lassehn shrugs his narrow shoulders. ‘I don’t have any particular plan,’ he replies. ‘The war can’t go on for much longer, our men are completely finished. Once the Russkis get going at the Oder …’
‘That’s exactly what I think,’ Klose agrees, ‘but let’s leave high strategy aside for a moment and address the burning question of the day. Where are you going to stay? Where do your parents live?’
Lassehn lowers his head. ‘My parents died in the big raid on Lankwitz in forty-three,’ he says quietly.
There is a short pause. Klose shrugs slowly as if to express regret, then he gets up and turns on the radio. ‘Let’s see how things are in the air,’ he says.