She found a seat on a bench near the wall but could not breathe easily until Arvid joined her there. With his arm around her shoulders, she shivered in the cool dark, her gaze fixed on the half window above, a faint outline on the opposite wall, sandbags barely visible through the glass. The air was dank and thick with the smell of fear and sweat, perfume and soiled diapers, stale cigarettes. A baby fretted. The minutes stretched out endlessly, and eventually speculation broke out whether it was the Poles, the Brits, or the French coming to bomb them, or if it was all just an unannounced drill, or why they bothered to cower in a basement anyway since the building would never withstand a direct hit. A few people hissed at that remark, and one man ordered the speaker to shut up before he frightened the children.
Mildred strained her ears, listening for explosions in the distance, but she heard only sirens and, infrequent and almost inaudible, a man issuing commands over a loudspeaker. Eventually the all-clear sounded, and Mildred and Arvid made their way back upstairs. “A false alarm, I suppose,” she said with false bravado as he unlocked the door to their apartment.
“Or a propaganda exercise,” he replied. “That would be my guess.”
The radio reported nothing, and in the morning, the papers praised the exemplary responses of the block wardens and citizens without disclosing the reason for the alarm. Rumors flew through the city all day, a few concurring with Arvid that it had been orchestrated for propaganda purposes, some that a careless officer had set off the sirens by mistake, and others who claimed that a single plane straying too close to the capital had provoked the air raid warning.
Throughout that beautiful, sunny autumn day, enthusiastic reports of artillery bombardments, military advances, and Polish treachery filled the airwaves, punctuated by occasional references to ongoing negotiations between British ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson and his counterparts in the German Foreign Ministry. From an illicit BBC broadcast, Mildred learned that President Roosevelt had urged the leaders of every nation involved in the conflict to affirm that its armed forces would not bomb civilian populations from the air. Mildred thought it was a noble appeal, and she fervently hoped it would succeed, but she could not imagine Hitler agreeing to anything that might bind his hands.
The air raid sirens remained silent that night, but in the morning she and Arvid learned that Henderson had delivered an ultimatum to the Reich Chancellery. If Germany did not immediately cease all aggressive action against Poland and withdraw its troops by eleven o’clock, a state of war would exist between Great Britain and Germany.
Shortly after the deadline, the British ambassador returned to the Wilhelmstrasse and received Hitler’s reply in the form of a memo. Germany rejected the ultimatum. Germany and Great Britain were at war.
Mildred learned the dreadful news as she was on her way to deliver an edited manuscript to Rütten & Loening, halting on the sidewalk amid other pedestrians as Hitler’s speech was broadcast over loudspeakers throughout the city. Rousing herself from her shock, she hurried on her way, wishing she could leave the strident voice behind, but as soon as it began to fade she would approach anotherPlatzwith more loudspeakers, and so the madman dogged her steps all the way to the publisher’s office.
The next day, the British and French embassies closed and their diplomats and families left Berlin, scenes to Mildred painfully reminiscent of the partial closure of the American embassy. It seemed that every friendly nation, every potential ally of the resistance, was leaving Germany as swiftly as their chartered trains could carry them away.
In the days that followed, if Mildred did not turn on the radio and hear the exultant reports of the Luftwaffe raining down destruction upon Poland as the Wehrmacht marched inexorably eastward, she could almost believe that the nation was not at war. Early in the morning of September 9, an air raid siren again broke the predawn silence, but the all-clear sounded soon enough and it was evident Berlin had never been in danger. The British had sent twenty-five planes to bomb Wilhelmshaven and had dropped leaflets over the Rhineland, but if the reports were true, not a single shot had been fired along the western front. Mildred and Arvid heard halfhearted jokes around the city that they were engaged in a “phony war,” and indeed, except for the rationing and the blackouts, life went on almost as it ever had. Restaurants and shops were open, theaters and concert halls and cinemas enjoyed full houses. Rumors that a peace accord with France and Great Britain was imminent alternated with reports that Russia was preparing to invade Poland from the east. From what Arvid observed in the Economics Ministry, he found the latter far more plausible than the former.
He was right. On September 17, the Soviet army invaded eastern Poland. Ten days later, after relentless artillery bombardments, Warsaw surrendered to Germany.
In the first week of October, on the same day that Mildred successfully defended her dissertation and earned her doctorate at long last, Adolf Hitler appeared before the Reichstag to announce a peace proposal for Great Britain and France. Essentially he offered the two countries peace in the West if they did not interfere with Germany’s plans to acquireLebensraumin Eastern Europe. Bitter experience must have taught their leaders to put no trust in Hitler’s promises, for this time they did not concede.
If only they had given this strong, united response years ago, Mildred thought. Now it seemed that another world war was inevitable, and her dread of what might befall them was infused with a deep sense of failure. For years the resistance had worked to oust Hitler in order to avoid war, to end suffering. Now Hitler was more powerful than ever, and although the Allies had met the terms of their treaty with Poland by declaring war on Germany, they seemed reluctant to engage in battle.
“You should have stayed in the United States,” Arvid told Mildred one evening as they fixed the blackout curtains in place. “I wish I would have insisted.”
“It would have broken my heart to disobey you,” said Mildred lightly. “I wouldn’t have stayed without you, and I couldn’t have stayed without a way to support myself.”
“Your sisters and brother offered you a place to stay.”
“I refuse to become a burden to them. They have enough mouths to feed.”
But she did often wish that she and Arvid were safe in America. So many other friends had fled. With renewed confidence thanks to her doctorate, and with little to lose, Mildred sent out another round of inquiries and applied for Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships. She arranged for all replies to be sent to Donald Heath at the American embassy, for it would jeopardize Arvid’s position in the Economics Ministry if it became known that his wife was trying to leave the country.
In the meantime, preparations for war went on. On the western front, British and French forces built fortifications on one side of the Rhine in plain view of German defenses on the other, but no shots were fired. Children were swiftly packed off to relatives in the countryside for their safety, despite official assurances that it was impossible for enemy planes to get past German defenses and bomb Berlin. Death notices began appearing in the papers, poignant tributes by bereft parents mourning sons killed in battle in Poland.
One afternoon in mid-October, Arvid came home unexpectedly early from work and barely paused to greet her in his haste to pack a bag. He was going to Jena, he called over his shoulder on his way to their bedroom. His mother had been arrested.
“I’m coming with you,” said Mildred, quickly following.
As they threw clothing and money and ration cards into their suitcases, Arvid explained that an hour ago, his sister Inge had called him at his office to give him the terrible news. She was waiting outside with her husband’s car. Falk was already en route from Weimar.
Inge, pale and trembling, slid over to let Arvid take the wheel as he and Mildred loaded their suitcases in the trunk and took their seats. As they sped southwest from Berlin, she explained what had happened. That morning, Mutti Clara had been out for her daily walk when she passed a park where several children were playing. When she overheard them singing songs from the Hitler Youth and Jungmädelbund, she asked if they knew that there were better songs to sing—GermanVolkslieder, for example. As the children eagerly gathered around so she could teach them a traditional tune about a little bluebird, an outraged passerby stormed off to report her to the Gestapo.
“What has this world come to that an elderly woman can be thrown into prison for teaching children an innocent song?” said Inge, fighting back tears.
When they reached the Gestapo’s main office in Thuringia, they found Falk speaking with a disgruntled, impatient officer, arguing and cajoling by turns for his mother’s release. With tangible relief, he let his older brother take over. Arvid quickly assessed the facts of the case, the charges against his mother, and the evidence, which seemed to consist solely of the informant’s testimony and Mutti Clara’s “confession” that she had indeed taught the children the song.
While Arvid reasoned with the official, Inge and Mildred were allowed into the cellblock to see Mutti Clara. To their relief, they found her in good health and spirits, bemused by all the fuss and annoyed at the inconvenience. “I wasn’t teaching them ‘La Marseillaise,’ for heaven’s sake,” she said, wringing her hands in agitation.
Mildred suspected it was not theVolksliedbut the implication that Nazi songs were inferior that had prompted her mother-in-law’s arrest, and when she and Inge rejoined Arvid and Falk, the brothers were addressing that very point with the Gestapo officer assigned to the case. “By discouraging the children to renounce their Hitlerjugend and Jungmädelbund songs, Frau Harnack was undermining the authority of their leaders, and by extension, that of the Reich,” the officer said, his faint flush belying his firm tone. Was he angry, or was he embarrassed by the absurdity of prosecuting an elderly woman for such a trivial misdeed?
“She wasn’t asking them to renounce anything, but rather to addVolksliederto their repertoire,” said Arvid. “Surely you agree with our Führer that children should learn the songs of theVolk?”
“Certainly, but a woman of her advanced years should know better than to question the children’s instruction.”
“A woman of her advanced years is easily confused,” said Arvid. “You know how the older generation is affected by talk of war, having such vivid memories of the last one. She has been deeply upset by the bombings in Poland, and it has affected her mind.”
