“Or what’s left of them,” said Mildred.
“Or,” said Greta, “perhaps Stalin isn’t smart at all. Hitler has broken every international agreement he’s ever made. Didn’t this very pact with Russia shatter an understanding Germany had with Japan? Just five years ago, Hitler made a similar pact with Poland, and you see how he disregards that now. When Hitler has wrung everything he wants out of Russia, this so-called friendship will be obsolete.”
Arvid’s eyebrows rose. “So you agree with me rather than your husband.”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Greta, but then she gave him a wry smile. Sometimes their old rivalry resurfaced in moments of tension, inconvenient and childish. She had to do better.
Arvid briefly returned her smile, but it soon faded. “For now, our primary goal should be to gather information. I suspect things are going to unravel quickly, and we need to stay one step ahead.”
But in the days that followed, Greta felt as if they were racing to catch up from behind.
Rumors of impending conflict sizzled and sparked through Berlin as the military requisitioned private automobiles and installed antiaircraft weapons on the rooftops of strategic buildings along Unter den Linden. On August 24, as German bombers flew over the city almost without respite all day, Greta was startled by a loud pounding on her door. It was a friend of Adam’s, Jon Cutting, a member of the British press corps and an aspiring playwright. Breathless, apologizing profusely for disturbing her, he asked for Adam.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not home.” She held open the door wider. “Would you like to wait? He should be back soon.”
“Sorry, no time. Might I beg a favor?” He held out a set of keys. “Our embassy has ordered all British correspondents to leave for Denmark tonight. Would you ask Adam to take charge of my car while I’m away?”
Startled, Greta took the keys. “Of course.”
“It’s parked out front, with a full tank,” he said, inclining his head toward the window. “I don’t expect to be gone very long—ten days, perhaps, until the embassy gives us the all-clear to return to do our jobs.”
Greta promised they would take good care of his car, the first step being to move it someplace more discreet. He thanked her and dashed off before she had a chance to ask him if anything in particular had prompted the British embassy to urge them to leave the country.
Two days later, when she and Mildred met in the Tiergarten for a walk with Ule, Mildred revealed that earlier that morning, the United States embassy had issued a statement urging all Americans whose presence was not absolutely necessary to leave Germany immediately. “Most businesses and correspondents have already sent their wives and children away,” Mildred said, taking a turn pushing Ule’s stroller. “They’ve chartered two trains to take the rest to Denmark later this week.”
“Will you be on one of them?” Greta asked.
Mildred shook her head. “Arvid wants me to go. When he couldn’t persuade me, he asked Donald Heath to try. But I won’t leave Arvid, and Arvid won’t leave Germany to the Nazis.”
“You should go.”
Mildred gave her a sidelong smile. “You don’t really want me to leave, do you?”
“It’s for your own good,” Greta countered, but of course Mildred was right. She did not want to lose her dearest friend.
Early the next day, the news broke that beginning Monday, August 28, the government would begin rationing essentials including food, soap, shoes, clothing, and coal. The announcement sent a shock rippling through Berlin, dredging up distressing memories of rationing during the Great War, when more than a million German civilians had perished from malnutrition. If she had not been so uneasy, Greta might have laughed at the newspaper articles that accompanied the announcement, column after column describing in excessive detail the abundance of the nation’s food reserves. “Starving is impossible!” one report claimed, which Greta and Adam sardonically agreed was hardly a confirmed scientific fact.
That same morning, before ration cards were issued, before purchases were restricted, Greta left Ule with her neighbor and fellow resistance woman Erika von Brockdorff and hurried out to the shops to stock up on essentials, joining thousands of other Berliners similarly inspired. Quickly, before the shelves were emptied, she snatched up kitchen staples and nonperishable goods, and after dropping the cartloads off at home, she set out again in search of warm winter coats for herself and Adam, winter boots for herself, and entire wardrobes for Ule, enough clothes in increasing sizes to see him through the next two years. She depleted almost all of their household cash and in the end resorted to credit, but instinct told her this was no time to be frugal. She could not take the chance that by the time Ule outgrew his clothes, she would be able to buy him what he needed. She could not say exactly what she thought might prevent Berlin’s shopkeepers from restocking their wares, but there were only a few reasons a nation might impose rationing upon its citizens, and none of them inspired confidence in the future.
At the end of her long day of shopping—waiting in overcrowded queues, noting the swiftly multiplying empty spaces on store shelves, fearing that she might have forgotten something important, avoiding eye contact with other shoppers out of a vague shame for their implied covetousness and pessimism—Greta collected Ule, arranged to watch little Saskia the next day so Erika could shop, and went home, exhausted. When she turned on the radio to listen to the news while she prepared supper, she heard a description of the rationing system, which seemed so convoluted that Greta wondered how it could possibly succeed. All German citizens and permanent residents would be divided into three categories based upon the physical demands of their work—normal consumer, heavy worker, and very heavy worker—and would be allotted rations accordingly, with additional categories for infants, children, and adolescents. Special arrangements were made for Jews. Their allotments would be drastically smaller, and they would be forbidden to shop except during certain times of the day, typically the last half hour before the shops closed. If what Greta had witnessed in the stores that day was any indication, by the time the Jews were allowed to shop, there might be nothing left to buy.
When Greta took Ule and Saskia out for a walk through the Tiergarten on the morning of August 29, the day was sunny and warm, but the mood in Berlin was dejected and somber. Troops flowed through the city in a steady stream from west to east, but with none of the glamour of the parades made to feed Hitler’s vanity. Some soldiers rode in troop transports, but others were packed into commercial moving vans and grocery trucks, proving that expediency had become more important than military protocol.
Diplomatic talks were ongoing, Greta knew, no doubt at an increasingly frenzied pace as the days passed. She wanted to believe that the recent spectacle of war preparations—the rationing, the bold proclamations in the press, the flight maneuvers, the rapid shifting of troops in the direction of the Polish border, the official assurances to Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Switzerland that Germany would respect their neutrality in case of war—was a show staged to intimidate Great Britain and France, and that ultimately no war would come. Judging by the apprehensive expressions and slumped shoulders of the people Greta passed on the streets of Berlin, the thought of imminent war filled them with dread.
In the last days of August, strange reports appeared in the press of Polish terrorists crossing the border to attack German troops. “I don’t believe it,” said Adam, incredulous and angry, after they read of an alleged attack on a radio station in the German border town of Gleiwitz. “If these stories aren’t complete fabrications, then the incidents must have been staged.”
Greta agreed. Poland had no reason to provoke their increasingly aggressive neighbor, whereas Hitler was strongly motivated to create evidence to justify a strike against Poland. If they required any more reason to doubt the truth of the official accounts of what was happening on the Polish border, they need only consider the fact that Hitler was a proven liar, a master of propaganda and manipulation.
The next morning, Greta woke to a hand on her shoulder, the faint aroma of coffee, an urgent voice. “Greta.” Adam shook her gently. “Greta, wake up.”
She blinked at him, then at the clock. Adam always rose first and started breakfast, minding Ule and allowing her to sleep undisturbed as long as she could. But although it was past dawn—“What’s wrong?” It was too early. She scrambled to sit up. “Is Ule—”
“Ule is fine,” he said quickly. “He’s fine.”
“Thank God. But what—”
“Greta, it’s happened. This morning at dawn, Germany invaded Poland.”
