Chapter Forty-six
September–October 1939
Mildred
All German radio stations carried the same announcement: At four o’clock that morning, German troops had crossed the Polish frontier and were advancing toward the east. In this valiant counterattack against Polish terrorists who had repeatedly assaulted innocent German civilians, force would be met with force. German honor would be defended.
“Counterattack?” echoed Mildred, incredulous. “This is a flagrant, unprovoked act of aggression! Surely no one believes this nonsense.”
“Those who want to believe it, will,” said Arvid. He turned the dial from one station to another, but each announcer only repeated the same bare sketch of the invasion, the same nationalist platitudes.
Eventually they remembered their breakfasts cooling on the table. Dazed, a knot in her stomach, Mildred finished her coffee but could barely swallow a piece of toast. “I suppose I’ll go to work,” Arvid said as they cleared the dishes, uncertain. It seemed strange to carry on as if it were an ordinary day, as if they were not at war.
It was a beautiful morning—abundant sunshine, a cool, gentle breeze carrying the first hint of autumn. Unable to settle down to her work, Mildred went for a walk in the Tiergarten to clear her head. She found Berlin outwardly unchanged—quieter, perhaps, more subdued, with slightly less traffic on the streets. On her way home, when throngs of delighted children passed her as they dashed along the sidewalks in their school uniforms, their knapsacks bouncing as they ran and skipped, she realized school must have closed early.
She arrived home at ten o’clock and turned on the radio just in time to hear Hitler address a special session of the Reichstag. She sank into a chair to listen, imagining Arvid gathered with his coworkers around a radio at the Economics Ministry, carefully concealing his emotions or feigning those expected of a loyal Nazi.
Hitler sounded more tired than usual, hoarse, even hesitant, but as he spoke, his voice gradually took on its usual vigor as he blamed Poland for starting the conflict with terrorist provocations and refusing to negotiate a peaceful settlement. The struggle would demand sacrifice of the German people, Hitler declared, the same sacrifice he had been willing to make as a soldier in the Great War, the same he was willing to make for the Fatherland now. His words met with thunderous cheers and an earsplitting chorus of “Sieg Heil,” which continued unabated until the announcer broke in to say that Hitler had left the chamber.
Sick to her stomach, Mildred was tempted to turn off the radio, but she paused with her hand on the dial as the announcer read off specific sacrifices the government now required of the German people. Ration cards would be distributed that day. Hoarding was forbidden and would be severely punished. In Berlin, residents must stack sandbags around cellar and ground-floor windows for protection from potential bomb blasts. Beginning that evening, blackout regulations would be strictly enforced: Every source of light in the city must be extinguished, filtered, or shaded during hours of darkness. All windows and doors must be shuttered or curtained, skylights and basement vents sealed with waxed paper. If lights in railway stations, buses, and trams could not be switched off entirely, they were to be shielded with blue filters.
Mildred could hardly believe her ears when the announcer noted that while these regulations would be strictly enforced, they would prove unnecessary. German military defenses would never allow a Polish, French, or British bomber to get anywhere near Berlin.
Berlin could be bombed, Mildred thought, staring at the radio, pressing a hand to her mouth. Their own apartment block could be struck. That was what happened in a war. That was what was happening to the people of Poland at that very moment, although she could not hear the roar of aircraft or feel the shudder of impact or smell the acrid smoke. It all seemed very far away and not quite real.
Eventually she turned off the radio.
She felt tremulous and fragile as she gathered her purse and sweater and set out to collect their ration cards. The queue at the office was predictably long, the people waiting subdued and silent. Eventually Mildred reached the front and was given seven color-coded ration cards—blue for meat, orange for bread, green for eggs, pink for flour, rice, and oatmeal, and so on—printed on heavy paper, perforated so that coupons could be torn off with each purchase. TheMarkenwould be valid for four weeks, after which new cards would be issued.
As Mildred stepped aside to tuck the ration cards into her purse, the next person in line, a younger woman holding the hand of a little boy about four years old, stepped up to the counter. The clerk, who had been perfectly courteous and efficient moments before, spoke to the woman so harshly that Mildred instinctively glanced up to see what was the matter. The woman kept her voice low and demure, and as the clerk continued to query her about her paperwork, she pulled the little boy closer, inch by inch, until he clung to her leg. Eventually the clerk heaved a sigh and shoved the woman’sMarkenacross the counter. The woman released her son’s hand long enough to gather up the cards, but before she could put them away, Mildred saw that they were overprinted with red Js. The woman quickly took the boy’s hand again and led him away from the queue. For a moment her gaze locked on Mildred’s—tense, haunted—but then she pressed her lips together, tore her gaze away, and gently tugged on her son’s hand to urge him to hurry. Then they were gone.
Mildred walked home, struck by the somber resignation on the faces of the people she passed. The shops were busy, crowded with tense customers making use of their new ration cards, puzzling out the restrictions, confounded by the point system established for the purchase of clothing. She overheard some grumbling, but more surprising was the absence of any enthusiasm for the invasion. TheAnschlusshad provoked celebrations on the street, great smiles and songs and abundant national pride, but Mildred observed none of that now.
When she reached her own block, she was brought up short by the sight of an enormous pile of sand dumped in the courtyard of the building next door. A few young children climbed upon the mound or pushed toy trucks and trains through the spillage near the bottom, while older teens and adults worked busily, women sewing hessian cloth into bags, men filling the bags with sand for others to haul away and stack near ground-floor windows. The knot in Mildred’s stomach tightened as she hurried upstairs to leave her purse and collect her sewing kit before returning to join one of the sewing circles. She recognized a few residents of her own building, but most were strangers.
“Did you hear that as of today it’s illegal to listen to foreign broadcasts?” one young woman piped up. Her hair was cut short in a sleek dark bob, and her hands were pale and slender with perfectly lacquered nails. “If you’re found guilty of intentionally listening, you’ll go to prison. If you’re convicted of spreading around what you heard and undermining German morale, you’ll be executed.”
Mildred kept her expression carefully neutral. She and Arvid listened to the BBC several times a day, both the English and German broadcasts out of London.
“How are they going to enforce that?” scoffed an older, stouter woman keeping one eye on her work and the other on a pair of rambunctious boys scrambling around the sand pile. “How could they know who’s listening to what? Will they send men to every home in Berlin to listen at doors?”
“They’ll rely on denunciations, of course,” said a white-haired woman, peering intently through her glasses as she threaded a needle. “Neighbors will inform on neighbors. Hitler Youth will inform on their own parents to their group leaders. You’ll see.”
A few of the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Who wants to listen to foreign broadcasts anyway?” said one pretty young woman whose infant slept beside her in a bassinet. “They’re nothing but lies invented by Jews.”
There were a few murmurs of assent, but the conversation trailed off into an uneasy silence. “Those two,” the stout woman suddenly grumbled, exasperated. “They’ll take half the sand home with them in their shoes and trousers if they don’t settle down.” Gathering up her things, she strode over to the pile and spoke vigorously to a pair of tousle-haired boys, then glanced warily around the courtyard and joined a different sewing circle some distance away.
Mildred sewed until midafternoon, when she returned home to start supper and prepare for the blackout. She listened to German radio as she worked, but eventually, repulsed by rapturous descriptions of the Wehrmacht’s swift and merciless pulverization of Poland, she lowered the volume and tuned to the BBC. The announcer described the ongoing attack in far more somber tones, the relentless forward march of German troops, villages and farms bombed into utter ruin, the destruction of the Polish air force, courageous but futile charges of the Polish cavalry upon German tanks.
Mildred hung on every word, but she heard nothing of a British or French response. She knew both nations were bound by treaty to go to Poland’s defense, but whether they would honor their commitment remained to be seen.
When Arvid returned home, he turned down the volume until it was barely audible. Over supper he said that he had observed the same despondent mood on the streets as she had, very different from the jubilation and confidence he remembered from the commencement of the Great War. “Perhaps it’s different in the countryside, in villages and small towns,” he reflected. “Berliners are worldly, and their memories are too full of the last war to embrace a new one with reckless abandon. But if Germany can take Poland swiftly and France and Britain do nothing, even Berliners will rally to the cause. Nothing seduces like victory.”
They lingered at the table, saying little but finding comfort in each other’s company. Later they settled down in the living room, Arvid with a stack of economic reports, Mildred with the revised draft of her dissertation. Knowing how close she was to completing her life’s goal sent a thrill of pride and relief through her, and yet she knew she would miss the engrossing distraction the work provided. She hoped to submit a polished and perfected dissertation to her professor by late September, and if all went well, she would defend it in early October and have her doctorate in hand soon thereafter. Surely then American universities would find her a more promising candidate, when the economy improved and they began hiring again.
At seven o’clock, an earsplitting wail shattered the night skies.
“Air raid,” Arvid barked, bounding from his chair, snatching up his attaché case with one hand and the flashlight from the mantel with the other. Mildred barely had time to put on her shoes before Arvid took her arm and swiftly guided her into the hallway, pushing her toward the stairwell as he paused to lock the door. Racing downstairs, fighting back terror when slower residents blocked her way, she glanced over her shoulder and felt her heart constrict when she glimpsed Arvid a flight above. He gestured for her to proceed, so she did, crowding into the basement with other couples, families with small children, a few elderly men and women. The block warden had organized the shelter months before, and all residents had been required to participate in drills, but this was different, the semidarkness disorienting, the shriek of the sirens filling her ears and drowning out every sense but terror.
