“Perhaps her family missed the warning somehow,” said Arvid, pensive. “Or perhaps the embassy decided they couldn’t risk revealing how much they knew.”
“But why not warn their expatriates—or better yet, begin evacuating them—the moment the attack began, when it was no longer a secret?”
Just then the radio announcer cut to a press conference by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. Mildred and Arvid listened as he delivered an address similar to the one Hitler gave to domestic and international journalists gathered at the Foreign Office. When that concluded, the programming switched to a repeat of Goebbels reading Hitler’s proclamation. Realizing that they were unlikely to learn anything of substance from Reich radio, they moved to the bedroom, placed the blackout curtains, and took Falk’s shortwave from its hiding place in the wardrobe. Greta, Adam, and Ule arrived just as Arvid tuned in the BBC.
They listened in shock and with increasing horror as the announcer described the German military’s devastating assault on the Soviet Union. The Reich had deployed more than three million troops. The Red Army had offered little resistance, and by every indication they had been caught entirely by surprise. The Wehrmacht had marched almost unimpeded deep into Russian territory. The Luftwaffe had bombed miles of Soviet roads and railways, rendering them useless, and had destroyed nearly two thousand Soviet aircraft parked on runways and airfields. One by one towns and villages had been overrun by invaders or leveled by German tanks, and the list of names was devastatingly familiar.
“Everything is unfolding exactly as Harro and Arvid reported to Erdberg,” said Greta, appalled. “Where are the defenses? Why weren’t those villages evacuated days ago?”
“They didn’t believe us,” said Mildred, feeling faint. “All those reports, all that intelligence, and Moscow did nothing. They didn’t even warn their military.”
“Erdberg believed us,” said Arvid. “I’m certain.”
“A fat lot of good that does those poor, helpless people in the path of the invasion,” Greta retorted.
“With so much at stake, how could they have disregarded everything we told them?” asked Adam. “Were our reports too cautious? Did the Soviets not trust us because we weren’t motivated by Communist affiliations or financial gain?”
“Stalin probably couldn’t believe that his good friend Hitler would ever betray him,” said Greta bitterly, folding her arms across her chest. “Honor among dictators, I suppose.”
When the BBC began to repeat earlier reports, Arvid tuned in a German station, and at the sound of Hitler’s voice, Mildred recoiled as if she had been struck. “German soldiers!” he said, his voice ringing with pride and warning. “You enter a fight that will be both hard and laden with responsibility because the fate of Europe, the future of the German Reich, and the existence of our people rests solely in your hands.”
Muttering a curse, Adam reached past Arvid to turn the dial. On another Reich station, an announcer triumphantly described the German military’s swift and crushing advance, their courage, discipline, and unparalleled might. Russian troops were fleeing in terror, the announcer jubilantly reported. Victory would be swift and certain. Within weeks the Soviet Union would surrender to avoid total annihilation, Great Britain would have no choice but to sue for peace, and nothing more would prevent the Third Reich from assuming dominion over the earth.
The four friends sat in stunned silence as the radio played on.
“What happens now?” asked Mildred shakily, imagining Nadia at home somewhere in the city, cradling her daughter in her arms, listening to the radio with increasing terror.
“Do you have any way to reach Erdberg?” Adam asked Arvid.
“I’ll call him from a public phone,” said Arvid. “We won’t be able to speak freely, but it’s better than nothing.”
Arvid left at once, but he returned fifteen minutes later shaking his head. “My call wouldn’t go through. I suspect the phone lines have been cut.”
“Why don’t I just go to the embassy?” asked Greta, rising from her chair. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only curious spectator.”
Arvid regarded her, incredulous. “You do realize the Gestapo has the building under constant surveillance?”
“That’s why I should go instead of you or Adam.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Mildred. “We’ll pretend we’re just out for a Sunday stroll. We’ll pause in front of the building to adjust a shoe strap, and with any luck Erdberg will be watching from the window and will follow us to a safe place where we can talk.”
“And if he doesn’t,” Greta added, “we’ll knock on the front door and ask to speak to him.”
Their husbands protested, but Mildred and Greta parried their objections, and eventually the men’s desire for information won out. Mildred and Greta discussed strategy as they walked, but when they arrived at the Soviet embassy, they found the building entirely surrounded by SS units. No one was allowed in or out. Two dozen or so Berliners observed the scene from across the street, but most passersby only stole a quick glance without breaking stride, pretending there was nothing to see.
Their hopes of meeting with Erdberg quashed, Mildred and Greta nonetheless lingered at the edge of the crowd. He would spot them easily if he came to a window, but all the blinds were drawn, and despite the warm, summery weather, a thick plume of gray smoke churned continuously from the chimney. “Do you see that?” Mildred murmured, indicating the chimney with a slight nod. “One flue is connected to flash-burning ovens. I’m sure all hands are busy destroying documents, records, codes, anything the Nazis might find valuable.”
Greta eyed the heavily armed SS men stationed around the building. “How long before they storm the embassy?”
“I don’t think they dare,” said Mildred, thinking again of Nadia and her family, of her few remaining acquaintances at the embassy, wishing they were all safely far away. “Remember, there are German diplomats at the embassy in Moscow, and their fate depends upon what happens here.”
It was not until the next day that Mildred read in the papers that the families of Soviet diplomats along with all other Soviet citizens living in Germany had been rounded up. Those in Berlin had been detained briefly at Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse before being transported to an SS camp on the outskirts of the city, where their compatriots from other cities and towns soon joined them. The roughly 1,150 Soviet men, women, and children would be held until they could be exchanged for the 120 German citizens stranded in Moscow.
Erdberg was not among them, as Mildred and her friends soon learned, but remained with the other diplomats within the heavily guarded embassy. Two days after the invasion, the Soviet first secretary bribed an SS officer with Reichsmarks, Russian caviar, vodka, and cognac to smuggle Erdberg out of the embassy on the pretense that he wished to bid farewell to his German fiancée. As soon as Erdberg was alone, he called the Kuckhoffs from a public phone and asked them to meet him at the Rüdesheimer Platz. Concerned for Greta’s safety, Adam took Arvid instead.
“Erdberg and the other Soviet citizens will be deported soon under diplomatic protection,” Arvid told Mildred afterward. “He offered me twelve thousand marks and said it was unlikely we would meet again. I reminded him that I wasn’t doing this for money, but he insisted that I keep it for our expenses. I’ll divide it up among the group.”
Erdberg had also taught Arvid and Adam a coding system to use in their radio communications, using the key word “Schraube” and a key book,Der Kurier aus Spanien. Arvid would give one copy of the popular novel to Hans Coppi, and Erdberg would give another to the radio receivers in Moscow. It would be a very difficult code to break, even if the Nazis discovered what key book they used, which they were very unlikely to do.
