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“It’s about Göring. He tells the press he has overwhelming evidence of the Communist Party’s guilt for the fire. Reams of evidence, he says. So? Where is this evidence? When will he show it to us? Will he ever show it to us?” Gerlich opened the basket, pulled out an orange, and started peeling it. “He won’t. He won’t ever show this so-called proof because he doesn’t have any. Because it was Hitler’s men who set the fire and then blamed their political enemies. Emperor Nero would be proud!”

“Fritz, you promised me,” said Sophie warningly.

Gerlich set down the fruit. “I promised you what, Sophie? That I’d be careful? I’m being careful. I’ve hired a guard. You passed him as you walked in.”

“You’re going after people who have the power to shut you down right now, Fritz. To close your office and detain you indefinitely in—what do they call it, protective custody?”

“Which is precisely the time to expose them, Sophie.” He took her arms. “Don’t you see? This is when journalism is most crucial.”

Sophie deflated. They’d repeated this argument endlessly. “Listen, the next round of parliamentary elections is next week, right?”

“March the fifth,” said Gerlich.

“Can you wait to see how those elections turn out? The public should be disgusted by what Hitler is doing.”

Gerlich shook his head. “Most of the nation believes what they read in the official press. They think the Communists and the Social Democrats burned down the Reichstag and were plotting a coup! I don’t think they’ll fare well in the elections, do you? And most of the candidates are currently being detained in some unknown location by Hitler’s SA troops. And the ones who aren’t detained aren’t exactly campaigning—most of them are in hiding from the SA.” He flipped his hand. “Hitler could not have stacked the deck more in his favor.”

“What about President von Hindenburg?”

“The man is seriously ill.” Gerlich shrugged. “The only reason he agreed to seek reelection in the first place is that he didn’t want Hitler to win. I’m told he has little over a year at most, and he’s so frail as it is. He’s not going to stop Hitler. I’m telling you, Sophie—this is when a journalist is needed the most: to expose the truth.”

“But you can’t expose anything if you’re locked up,” she said. “Or if you’re dead. Do I have to become a widow to win this argument? Can’t we move to Switzerland like we discussed? You can publish your newspaper from there.”

Gerlich threw up his hands. “This is exactly what they want, you know. To scare us into abdication—”

“Oh, yes, I know, Fritz. I’ve heard it a hundred times. Here’s what I don’t know.” She was silent a moment. “What is your greatest commitment? Is it to this job? Or is it to me, your wife?”

“Sophie, don’t ask me to—”

She turned and slammed the door behind her.

Gerlich dropped into his seat with a heavy sigh. “Sophie,” he whispered. “You deserve better.”

Then he started writing his editorial.

69

March 9, 1933

Munich Police Department

Directorate 22, the Bogenhausen District

THOMAS BAUER, RUNNING LATE from his dishwashing shift at the Osteria Bavaria, threw on his patrol uniform. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Some special assignment,” he was told.

Bauer didn’t dare let his imagination run wild. The city was essentially under martial law, Hitler’s armed SA and SS thugs having at least as much authority as the police.

He began his shift as always, responding to purse snatchings and robberies and various acts of violence. The city was on edge since the Reichstag Fire Decree, as it was called, which had suspended all civil liberties throughout the country. Violence against immigrants and Jews, already high, was on a grand upswing. Jewish rabbis and community leaders were disappearing by the day.

As Bauer turned the corner in a small neighborhood in northeast Bogenhausen, he saw a mob down the block and a number of uniformed officers as well. He heard chants of “Communists, leave! Communists, leave!”—a common refrain over the last several days.

He saw the police chief, Heinrich Müller, in full dress uniform, standing with a bullhorn outside the Munich branch of the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany. “All members of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands shall voluntarily remove themselves from the premises and submit to protective custody,” he called out. “You will be taken by force if necessary.”

The crowd continued its chant—“Communists, leave!”—as members of the Munich Police Department thrust men onto the cobblestone street, even those surrendering peacefully, slapping them into handcuffs and loading the detainees onto large trucks.

“What’s going on?” Bauer asked a fellow patrol officer as Chief Müller repeated his orders via megaphone.