by Jane Thynne
“Thanks for lending me the car.”
It was Albert who had taught her to drive the year before, sitting beside her nervously as she swerved her way around the streets of Berlin, cursing theatrically as she slammed on the brakes, relaxing only when they reached the empty vistas of autobahn stretching into the countryside. Now she passed him the keys, but he waved them away.
“Keep it for a while, darling. I’m not using it at the moment and your life is so much more glamorous than my own. I imagine a car comes in handy.”
Albert always tried to balance his voracious appetite for gossip with the discretion that politics demanded. On the subject of Clara’s encounters with the Goebbelses, he accepted that the less he knew the better.
“I just hope your trip to Schwanenwerder was successful.”
“I don’t know about successful. It was interesting.”
Albert stretched out and helped himself to the bottle of schnapps that rested in the bottom drawer of his desk. He knew Clara far too well to worry about drinking in front of her, though she noticed that the bottle had taken quite a hit since she last saw it. Everyone had their own ways of coping with the atmosphere at the studios. Albert took a deep swig and surveyed her, his eyes crinkled in concern.
“You seem a bit jumpy this morning, darling. And rather pale. Not in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“Trouble?” Clara gave a light laugh. “Quite the opposite. I’m getting plenty of work, aren’t I?”
It was true. Clara had been in almost continuous demand since her arrival in Germany. The advent of the talkies meant actors were discovering that their voices mattered just as much as their looks. Some stars dropped out of fashion overnight, because their voices were too high, or their accents too comical. Others complained that they couldn’t party at night anymore, because of all the lines they had to learn. Clara’s first film, Black Roses, had been one of the innovative trilingual talkies shot in German, French, and English, but that experiment didn’t last long. Foreigners lost their appetite for the films being shot in the new Germany. Especially now that war films, starring brave German soldiers ready to die for their country, dominated the screens.
Albert abandoned attempts to probe her mood. “Did you hear our Master’s latest theory?” He waved the new issue of Filmwoche, compulsory reading in the industry, which contained a lavish profile of Goebbels. “He says in here that the ideal woman should be composed of the three Ms—the Mother, the Madonna, and the Mistress.”
“I thought he preferred to keep them separate.”
“So did I. But if what I’m hearing about Lida Baarová is true, he’s thinking she might like to combine two roles.”
Lida Baarová was Goebbels’s latest girlfriend. A sultry Czech actress with stunning Slavic cheekbones, Baarová had been propelled to stardom by her devoted admirer. Her new film, Patriots, about a courageous German soldier befriended by a French girl, was to be the subject of a lavish premiere later that month at the city’s plushest cinema, the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.
“So it’s serious this time?”
“He’s really smitten. Obsessed. He vets all her leading men. I’ve heard he makes her leave her phone line open so that when he’s at his desk he can pick up the earpiece just to hear her breathing.”
“Her breathing!”
“Romantic, isn’t it? Or perhaps he wants to hear if she’s packing her bags for Hollywood like everyone else. They say he’s so desperate to keep her he’s going to ask Magda for a divorce.”
“I thought Lida was already married.”
“What’s marriage? A piece of paper. Goebbels is good at fixing paperwork.”
Clara moved away from the window. Even though he was a hundred meters distant at the studio gate, she had the sudden feeling that Goebbels might have eyes in the back of his head. As if he read her mind, Albert laughed.
“You don’t need to worry, darling. You’re obviously doing something right. Looking forward to your first title role?”
The part in the new film, The Pilot’s Wife, was technically Clara’s first major role. She was playing Gretchen, the young wife of a Luftwaffe flying ace, known for his heroics in the sky until he was tragically shot down. The story was a simple one. Gretchen alone refused to believe her husband was dead, and daringly, she learned to fly so that she could seek him out and bring him home. Evading enemy guns, she landed in hostile territory and found her husband injured but alive. So far, so standard. Brave Luftwaffe, long-suffering heroine, happy ending. There were any number of films like that being made right now, but this one would be a surefire, cast-iron, guaranteed success. Because of Ernst Udet.
She smiled. “We all know who the real star is.”
She moved over to Albert’s desk and flipped through a stack of postcards featuring Udet’s beaming figure in a variety of poses. He was a born celebrity. During his time in Hollywood, he liked to perform his stunts in a full dress suit and top hat. One of his favorites was to fly at zero height scooping objects from the ground. The press had been ecstatic when he won a bet with Mary Pickford to pick her handkerchief off the grass with his wingtip as he flew past.
“The sad thing is, this is his last part,” remarked Albert. “They say the Führer’s banning him from filming or performing any more stunts.”
“I thought his film work was supposed to be great propaganda for aviation?”
Udet’s last film, The Miracle of Flight, the story of a boy who wanted to be a pilot, had been box-office gold.
“It is. But now he’s too important to the Luftwaffe. They can’t risk anything happening to him. He’s so miserable about it, I heard he’s talking about going to America.”
“Does he not like his job?”
“Hates it. He’s a real duck out of water. Sits at his desk all day doodling and making paper airplanes.”
Goering was so determined that his old war colleague should be at the forefront of the Luftwaffe’s rapid expansion that he had made Udet head of the entire Technical Division of the Luftwaffe, responsible for the development of all fighter and bomber planes and other specialized aircraft. Udet’s trouble was, he hated paperwork and Party politics as much as he loved women, alcohol, and planes. Nor did the public seem to understand that he was now a dignified Party bureaucrat. They persisted in begging him for autographs whenever he walked down the street. The studio was making the most of Udet’s celebrity status. That morning he was due to sign promotional postcards and posters for the forthcoming film.
The phone rang. Albert picked it up and semaphored to Clara.
“That’s it. He’s arrived. Want to come and meet your screen husband?”
They hurried through the offices and took a shortcut via the Great Hall, where all the filming took place. It was the size of an aircraft hangar and housed a dozen sets crammed in back to back, preparing a dozen different versions of reality to distract the German public from military maneuvers and butter shortages. Ropes and electrical cables snaked over the floor. Skirting the tattered backs of the sets, behind the wooden props, they passed a cluster of bishops chatting with men in powdered wigs and lace cravats. A director complained about the sound of drilling and bellowed “Ruhe!” for silence. They exited the other end of the hall and crossed the lot to a red-brick reception office. There a robust figure in his early forties stood, wearing a slate-gray Luftwaffe uniform that emphasized his dazzling blue eyes.
“Herr Generaloberst, may I introduce Clara Vine?”
Udet had a smile hovering around his lips as though engaged in some elaborate practical joke. He clicked his heels and kissed Clara’s hand with old-fashioned courtesy.
“My sweetheart! On film at least. And, may I say, an excellent choice.”
“We’re delighted you could make time for this, Herr Generaloberst,” said Albert obsequiously.
“I’m delighted too, let me tell you,” Udet said, winking at Clara. “I nearly didn’t make it. I had an accident the other day. The plane was a complete shit crate.
I escaped, but another inch and I’d have been singing soprano.”
Behind Udet, Clara saw a pair of secretaries stop and signal to each other, covering their mouths and giggling. Those girls saw famous actors every day of the week, so if they went weak at the knees over Udet, he had to be a megastar. Everything Clara had heard about Udet’s charisma and the easygoing jollity that prompted people to besiege him in the street seemed true. She found herself warming to him instantly.
“Ever done any flying?” he asked her.
“I’m afraid not. But I saw your Olympics display last year.”
Like everything he had a hand in, Hermann Goering’s Olympics gala for seven hundred guests at his Leipziger Platz home could not be called understated. A swimming pool had been built in the garden, complete with swans. There was a miniature French village, a carnival, shooting galleries, and a merry-go-round. An entire corps de ballet was brought in to dance on the moonlit grass, while above them Udet’s plane had performed a dizzying series of gliding acrobatics, swooping and circling in the sky.
Udet beamed. “You enjoyed that, did you?”
“It was the most amazing stunt I’ve ever seen.” It was the truth. The sight of the plane curving down in the night sky, twisting through beams of light with balletic swoops, had transfixed her.
“I’ll arrange a flight for you, if you like.”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“You’ll love it! It’ll help you get into character. Isn’t that what you actresses say?”
“In that case, it’s very kind of you.”
“Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
Albert gestured to the pile of promotional material he was carrying. “We were wondering, Herr Generaloberst,” he said unctuously, “if you could spare the time, whether you could come to my office and sign some of these?”
“And,” Clara intervened, “may I ask you for an autograph for a young admirer? A friend of mine named Erich has seen you fly, and he wants to join the Luftwaffe when he’s old enough.”
Udet peeled off a postcard from the top of Albert’s stack. It was a shot of himself standing next to a Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber, wearing his cap at a jaunty angle. With a flourish he scrawled on the back, To Erich! Best wishes, Ernst Udet!
Then he took another postcard, wrote on it, and handed it to Clara with a mock bow. She read, Fräulein Clara Vine is invited to a party at Pommersche Strasse 4, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. October 18, 8:00 p.m.
“I hope you can come and meet some of my friends, Fräulein. We should get to know each other, considering you are going to be my bride. Bring Herr Lindemann here with you. But be warned: I make a pretty lethal cocktail.”
CHAPTER
6
A sharp breeze corrugated the surface of the Wannsee, setting the water dancing and nudging the boats against their moorings. Until a few years ago these boats had names like Edda or Ute or Gretel on their bows, but these names had now been painted over. They’d been replaced with grander, National Socialist aspirations like Courage or Victory or Endurance. Clara turned away from the view and shivered. Perhaps it was the chill breeze blowing through the opened French windows of the Goebbelses’ drawing room, but more likely it was the company that was gathered around her.
The furniture had been cleared to make way for a crowd of women in bright sheath dresses, the glint of their jewelry competing with the gleam of silver death’s-heads on black SS dress uniforms. As always, it was an unnerving experience to be in close proximity to a bunch of SS officers. The bark of German conversation was interspersed with the familiar bray of the English upper classes, but so far no one had taken up the offer of Clara’s translation. The Germans pretended they already understood, and the English assumed that speaking their own tongue both more loudly and more slowly would make them perfectly comprehensible.
“It’s a lovely spot you have here, Frau Doktor,” said one. “I hear the Führer sometimes prefers Schwanenwerder to Berchtesgaden.”
“Nothing could be better than Berchtesgaden!” interceded a gawky Englishwoman with a straw-colored bob. “Berchtesgaden is the nearest you can get to heaven.”
Unity Valkyrie Mitford had a stolid, impassive look, which reminded Clara of the stone women on the theater façade on Nollendorfplatz. Her face, with its high, plucked eyebrows, was like a blank pool into which you longed to throw a pebble. The girl who had asked a German newspaper to let everyone know she was a “Jew-hater” had a sullen air, like a cow that has been thwarted at a gate. Though she was only twenty-three, Unity had relocated to Germany to be as close to Hitler as possible, basing herself in Munich and hoping each day for an invitation from the Führer to lunch, or the opera, or just to take tea at his apartment. Occasionally she was asked to make speeches or write newspaper articles. Then she would turn out a tirade against the Jews as dull and plodding as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl’s essay.
Unity’s awkward woodenness only served to emphasize the beauty of her sister Diana. Four years older, smaller by a head, and exquisitely dressed in cream Dior, Diana had milky blond hair and eyes of bright, hostile blue. The two had the same broad brow and high cheekbones, but the features that produced Diana’s loveliness were cast more coarsely in Unity. Looking at the two sisters together made one wonder how birth could fashion such different outcomes from identical raw materials. The same thought must have occurred to Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s personal photographer, who was circling the guests with surprising nimbleness armed with a Leica.
“Don’t mind me. Please don’t let me disturb you!”
Hoffmann was a dapper character with the practiced charm and ingratiating smile of the professional hotel manager. His hair was slicked with pungent pomade, and a silk handkerchief bloomed extravagantly from his top pocket. The fact that he had for many years been the only photographer permitted to take official portraits of the Führer meant he was the VIP photographer of choice at gatherings of senior Party figures. That evening he had abandoned lights and tripod in favor of a handheld camera, but his efforts to remain unobtrusive were quite unnecessary because the Mitfords ignored him completely. Being photographed was, for them, entirely routine.
“The Berghof is terrifically homely,” agreed Diana, who had just returned from a break at the Führer’s hideaway in the Bavarian Alps. “The view is glorious, though it is just the teensiest bit like staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Bournemouth. The cushions have little slogans embroidered on them, can you believe?” She had a sharp, tinkling laugh, like a champagne glass being smashed. “There was even one that said, The German Woman is knitting again! And the cushion itself was knitted! Isn’t that funny! If there hadn’t been so many great big guards around, I would have popped it in my bag and taken it home.”
“That’s a terrible thing to suggest,” objected Unity humorlessly. “Guests wanting souvenirs from the Berghof are a frightful problem for him, poor Führer, but he can hardly say anything. His spoons get stolen by everyone. Even the brushes and nail files from the bathroom. Just because they’re engraved with his initials.”
“Perhaps he should be more careful with his guests then,” concluded Diana brightly. “I must say, some of those women at dinner the other night seemed of doubtful origin. And not much to look at either. I don’t know how the darling Führer can stand to look at them. Figures like the Hindenburg, didn’t you think?”
Diana’s body by comparison was as fine and delicate as a whippet’s. In profile her face had a freakish perfection, like that of a Greek goddess. Beside her Magda Goebbels, in a white dress and striped cardigan, an ashy film of powder on her face, looked stout, her ankles swollen. The sisters began talking to Hoffmann’s daughter Henny, a vivacious girl whom they knew from Munich, as her father took another photograph. Henny spoke in a low, gossipy whisper.
“You were lucky to be sitting with the Führer at the Berghof. I was stuck next to Herr Bormann. He kept gabbling on about his grand plans for matrimony in the Reich. He wants to institute mass we
ddings with fifty couples getting married at the same time. Can you imagine anything more awful?”
“I think it would be rather a hoot,” said Diana. “Just think of all the brides’ mothers, competing in pastels.”
Clara wondered if Archie Dyson was right in his assessment of the Mitford sisters as a busted flush. They seemed to her to occupy an extraordinary place in the Nazi hierarchy. They were respected guests of Hitler, privy to intimate conversations among the top brass at his Bavarian retreat. They listened firsthand to the Führer’s plans for Europe’s future and in turn fed him a vision of England that was eccentric in the extreme. Contemplating this, she sensed Diana’s clever eyes travel over her, as if reading her thoughts.
“Clara! How lovely to find you here. I haven’t seen you for too long. How’s your divine sister, Angela?”
Diana knew Angela, but she was closer to Angela’s new husband, Gerald, a stolid barrister who had political ambitions and, in Clara’s eyes, absolutely no redeeming features. Gerald had flirted with joining Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, though in the end he had opted for the Conservative Party as a safer bet.
“Angela’s very well, thank you. She’s coming over soon.”
