“They say they have no choice.” He reached for her hand. “No one dares publish a book about communism or the Soviet Union now. It’s too controversial, too dangerous. They fear that everyone in the publishing house would be thrown into prison.”
“Oh, Arvid. I’m so sorry.”
“They’ve already destroyed the printing plates.” His voice was dull with exhaustion and resignation. “They’re letting me keep the advance.”
“That’s the least they could do,” said Mildred. “Anyway, they couldn’t get it back. We’ve spent it.”
“Mildred, darling, I’m so sorry. This book—” He interlaced his fingers through hers and brought her hand to his lips, but he could not meet her gaze. “I was counting on this book to get me a position as a university professor at last. We could have stopped living from hand to mouth—”
“What about your second book? The manuscript’s finished, and I think it’s even stronger than your first. Since it’s based upon your graduate research at the UW, I’m sure Professor Commons would write a foreword. Perhaps Rowohlt would publish this book in place of the one on the Soviet Union.”
“I don’t think they’ll consider the Marxist labor movement in the United States any less dangerous a topic than the one they’ve rejected.” He shook his head, pensive. “Perhaps I should burn the manuscript.”
“You mustn’t,” Mildred protested. “It’s a powerful, important book, representing years of research and analysis.”
“But if the police raid our flat—”
Mildred thought quickly. “You could give the manuscript to Reverend Turner at the American Church. I’m sure he’d keep it safe for you until the political winds shift.”
“By that time, my research may no longer be relevant.”
Nevertheless, the next morning, Arvid carefully packed up the manuscript and took it to the minister for safekeeping.
Mildred meant to spend the day writing and preparing for her evening classes, but she felt restless and uneasy, watching from the cupola windows for the police truck she feared would soon appear at the curb below. When Arvid finally came home from work, her relief faded at the sight of his stricken expression. Over dinner, he told her that after leaving his manuscript with Reverend Turner, instead of going to the office he had gone to the home of his ARPLAN colleague Paul Massing, a sociologist actively involved with the Communist Party in Berlin. “He was not there,” Arvid said. “His girlfriend said he had been taken to a detention center across from the Tempelhof airfield. When she went to visit him, she was told that he had been sent to a prison camp in Oranienburg.”
“On what grounds? What prison camp exists for someone who hasn’t been tried and convicted?”
“A concentration camp for political prisoners, from the sound of it.” Arvid pushed his food around on his plate, then set down his fork without taking a bite. “I left in haste, in case his flat was being watched. When I arrived at the office, I phoned Friedrich Lenz at the University of Giessen. I thought that as president of ARPLAN, he should be informed.”
Mildred studied the lines of tension in her husband’s face. “Professor Lenz already knew?”
“Not specifically about Massing, but he’d had his own encounters with the local Schutzstaffel. The Blackshirts raided Massing’s house, and apparently they found something that suggested he has close ties to Moscow. They denounced him as a Communist and perpetrator of Marxist ideas, and the university responded by suspending his lectures.”
“How has he managed to avoid arrest?”
“I don’t know. A good number of our members aren’t waiting to see if they’ll be next. They’ve fled the country.” Arvid’s gaze turned inward, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and resigned. “Professor Lenz and I agreed to disband ARPLAN. We’ve notified everyone we could, and I’ve destroyed the membership list.”
“I’m sorry, darling.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s a shame, but I think you made the prudent choice.”
“It was the only choice,” he said wearily, but he managed a thin, reassuring smile as he took up his fork again and tried to eat.
Her heart went out to him, full of love and sorrow and pride. How well he bore it, seeing so much of his life’s work destroyed or undone, all in a matter of days! A lesser man would have crumbled beneath the weight of so much disappointment, but not her Arvid.
“I hope you know how much I love you,” she said.
He responded with a look full of warmth and thankfulness.
His dreams of an academic career thwarted, Arvid resolved to find other work in economics, if not in the university, then in government. In the meantime, his cousin Klaus helped him find a more lucrative position as a lawyer with Lufthansa, where Klaus was the corporate counsel. Arvid worked as his cousin’s assistant by day, and in the evenings he prepared for the state examinations to qualify for the civil service.
Soon after Arvid’s first day at Lufthansa, on March 23, the new Reichstag convened at the former Kroll Opera House, on the Königsplatz across from the ruins of the former Reichstagsgebäude. There the National Socialist coalition pushed through a measure that essentially abolished what remained of the Weimar Constitution. The “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich” granted Chancellor Hitler and his cabinet the authority to enact laws without any oversight or involvement of the legislature. The Social Democrats voted against it, but it passed regardless. The Nazis celebrated their victory by banning the Social Democrat party altogether, eliminating them as rivals as they had the Communists before them. The political parties that remained, fearing that they would be next, quickly disbanded rather than risk imprisonment in Oranienburg or at the new concentration camp that had opened at Dachau only two days before.
In a single day, the Reichstag had rendered itself obsolete.
Swiftly, inexplicably, willingly, the people of Germany had voted themselves out of a democratic republic and into a dictatorship.
Part Two
Chapter Twelve
