Adam was a fool if he believed being a woman and a mother gave her some natural immunity against Nazi violence. Did the Nazis spare Jewish women? Communist women? The wives of their political enemies? Even before the Night of the Long Knives, women had paid the price for their own insurgence as well as that of their husbands. Why pretend otherwise?
“We bear all the risks the men do, but our opinions matter half as much,” Greta complained to Mildred a few days later while they washed and dried the supper dishes in the Harnacks’ tiny kitchenette. Arvid had invited the Kuckhoffs over, but although they discussed politics and strategy as equals over the meal, afterward the men went to the living room to continue the conversation while the women cleared the table and tidied up. “They want to shield me from their resistance activities because I’m a mother. If they believe the Gestapo could search our apartment and not immediately know that I’m as guilty as they are, they’re fooling themselves. And it’s precisely because Iama mother that I’m committed to the resistance. I have to make the world better for Ule. Did you know that next month, participation in the Hitler Youth becomes compulsory for all boys aged ten through eighteen?”
Mildred nodded soberly. “Yes, I know.”
“I won’t allow it.” Greta shook her head as she furiously wiped a plate dry. “I won’t let them make him into a little Nazi automaton, worshipping Hitler and singing cheerful tunes about blood and soil.”
“Ule has eight years before he would be old enough. God help us all if Hitler is still in power then.”
“Exactly, which is why the resistance needs every one of us. Not just the men. Everyone who is willing and able, including mothers. Including me.” Scowling, Greta draped the dishtowel over her shoulder while Mildred scrubbed the last pan. “I’m the only mother in our circle, and so they treat me differently than they treat you, or Sophie Sieg—”
“Greta—”
“I get up before dawn and stay up late for my resistance work. I never neglect Ule, not one moment.”
“Of course you don’t. No one would ever accuse you of that. But Greta, listen—” Mildred hesitated, rinsed the soap from her hands, and plucked the dishtowel from Greta’s shoulder to dry them. “You’re not going to be the only mother in our circle for long.”
“You mean Sophie—”
Mildred shook her head, eyes shining.
“Mildred, you?” Greta exclaimed, and when Mildred nodded, Greta embraced her. “How wonderful! How far along?”
“Six weeks.” Mildred’s face glowed with joy. “I know it’s still early, which is why we haven’t told anyone yet. Except you.”
Suddenly Greta’s words came rushing back to her. “Mildred, you mustn’t worry that the men will put you aside once you become a mother. They can’t afford to lose you, not with your contacts among the Americans.”
“They can’t afford to lose you either, even if they don’t always realize it.”
Greta smiled, heartened by her friend’s encouragement, delighted beyond measure that Mildred’s long-cherished dream to have a child was at last coming true. She would not think of spoiling her friend’s happiness with cautions about how difficult it was to raise children in the Reich, not only because of rationing and shortages and the pervasive fear that at any moment this strangeSitzkrieg, the “phony war,” would suddenly burst forth like a long-held breath into all-out warfare, with British bombs laying waste to Berlin as Germany’s bombs had done to Warsaw. It was the poisonous influence of Nazi propaganda and scenes of arbitrary violence Greta feared most, and the older Ule grew, the more difficult it would be to shield him.
With the return of fair weather, Greta had resumed taking Ule on outings to the Tiergarten for fresh air and sunshine. She had hidden her dismay as he had admired older boys marching past in their crisp uniforms of the Hitler Youth, singing songs in praise of the Führer and banging upon drums. Whenever Ule saw other little children waving small swastika flags, he begged Greta for one of his own. “We don’t have a ration coupon for a new flag,” she usually told him, which was true, but only because no coupon was needed.
One lovely spring evening after Greta and Adam had taken Ule for a walk around the neighborhood, savoring the longer days that allowed them more time to enjoy the outdoors between supper and the blackout, Ule had brought his hand out from behind his back and proudly showed them a swastika flag he had found lying on the sidewalk. “It was lost,” he said, his voice sweet with happiness. “I found it, Mama.”
“I see,” she said noncommittally, sickened by the sight of her innocent boy waving about that symbol of hatred and cruelty. When her eyes met Adam’s over their son’s head, she knew he shared her anger, her disgust and frustration. But what could they do? If they took the flag from him and he told his friends, and their parents overheard, they could be reported.
Then Adam stooped down beside Ule, pretending to admire the flag. “It’s a bit on the small side. Why don’t you go outside and plant it in the garden so it can grow into a larger one?”
Ule’s face had lit up. He had fetched his toy pail and shovel, seized Adam’s hand, and pulled him to the door to go outside and bury the flag. Greta had watched them go, impressed by her husband’s cleverness—although until they returned, she had paced through the apartment half in a panic that a vigilant neighbor would witness the scene and promptly call the Gestapo.
But she saw no reason to trouble Mildred with such worries. It would be years before the Harnacks’ child would walk and talk and covet other children’s swastika flags. Greta had to believe Hitler would be gone by then.
Greta’s determination to persist in resisting the Reich any way she could strengthened as spring passed and the German army marched on Europe. On April 9, Nazi forces occupied Norway and Denmark—for their own good, the Reich insisted in an official statement, to protect their freedom and independence from the Allies, who were determined to “spread the war” and would never respect the two countries’ declared neutrality. Rejecting the Nazis’ unsought, unwanted, dubious protection, the Norwegians put up a fight, but eventually were forced to surrender.
TheSitzkriegwas over. Nothing was phony about the war now.
A month later, at dawn on May 10, the German army invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. In his order to the troops, Hitler proclaimed, “The battle beginning today will decide the future of the German nation for the next thousand years.” Police forces in Luxembourg fought back against the German troops, but by noon their capital city was overrun. Four days later, the Dutch army capitulated. The Belgians fought on with their British and French allies a fortnight longer, until King Leopold surrendered on May 28.
Then German tanks rolled into France, capturing Paris, driving Allied troops so far back that British and some French troops were forced to make a desperate evacuation across the Channel at Dunkirk, resorting to a civilian fleet of British commercial ferries, fishing boats, and leisure craft to rescue hundreds of thousands of men. Many tens of thousands more remained behind, with no choice but to surrender to the German army.
On June 21, in a clearing in the forest of Compiègne, the precise spot where nearly twenty-two years before the armistice that ended the Great War had been signed, Adolf Hitler presented his armistice terms to France. In the preamble to the document, he declared that he had not chosen the site out of revenge, but merely to right an old wrong. Even if that were true, it made no difference to the French. Their humiliation was complete.
A three-day public holiday was declared throughout the Reich to celebrate the fall of Paris. There were massive parades, proud speeches, grand processions. Church bells rang and flags waved. Hitler’s popularity soared. Germany had confronted Great Britain and France on the field of battle and emerged triumphant. The unbridled jubilation in the streets of Berlin sickened and angered Greta so much that unless she had absolutely no choice but to go out, she stayed at home with the windows closed and the radio tuned to the BBC.
But as the holiday ran its course and she witnessed the surging pride and newly invigorated confidence of devoted Nazis and everyday Germans alike, she felt her resolve hardening. The beleaguered resistance had to intensify their efforts. There was no time to nurse wounds, to sit at home dazed from shock that the Allies had been so swiftly and thoroughly overwhelmed.
Their resistance circle had to expand in size and scope, and Greta knew where to begin.
