There were days she found some consolation in reflecting that perhaps it was better not to bring an innocent child into a world that had turned so ugly, so full of fear and hatred.
Even without a child, their lives and hearts were full. She and Arvid had each other. They had many dear friends, although their once vibrant salons had diminished with the emigration of so many gifted writers, editors, and scholars. They had fulfilling work. Arvid was busy practicing law and studying for the arduous exams that would qualify him to work in the civil service. Mildred continued to write by day and teach at the Abendgymnasium at night, avoiding as best she could the ubiquitous scrutiny of the National Socialist German Students’ Association.
In recent months she had struggled to publish anything of significant academic value, a problem that had plagued her colleagues and writer friends for more than a year, ever since Joseph Goebbels’s Reich Chamber of Culture had issued a multitude of regulations intended to impose Aryan uniformity on all publishing in Germany. Mildred had managed to slip a few subversive pieces of literary criticism past the censors, including an essay in the Berliner Tageblatt that deftly ignored the Nazi reverence for Blut und Boden by offering a sympathetic analysis of racial issues in Faulkner’s fiction, but for the most part she had been restricted to picturesque reminiscences of her Wisconsin girlhood. Her most promising long-term project was a translation of Lust for Life, Irving Stone’s biographical novel of Vincent van Gogh. Since Universitas Publishers had already accepted the manuscript, she had reasonable expectations that the book would see print, but she knew an overzealous censor could quash the project at any time.
Once Mildred had hoped that this sort of quiet resistance would be enough. Enlightening her students, inoculating them against Nazi propaganda, writing essays that inspired a better vision of humanity—these dangerous activities would earn her the outrage of the Nazis if she were exposed. She could lose her job, or face arrest or even deportation. Yet the severity of the punishments she faced seemed wildly out of proportion to the damage she was inflicting upon the Nazi regime. She felt as if she were stubbornly flinging pebbles against a vast stone fortress—a nuisance, nothing more. Only when she helped Jewish friends escape the Reich did she feel that she was accomplishing any real good.
Arvid shared her frustration, that infuriating sense of powerlessness before the Nazi juggernaut. Quietly, obliquely, he spoke with friends who shared their antifascist beliefs, hoping to build a discreet opposition network, sharing ideas and information. “There is strength in numbers,” he often said, “and power in knowledge.”
One evening, Arvid returned home from work with an unusual lightness in his step, the carefully benign mask he wore on the streets falling away to reveal cautious anticipation. “Rudolf Heberle came to see me today,” he said. “I invited him to join us for supper, but he couldn’t come.”
“Oh, I wish he had,” said Mildred as she set the table. “We haven’t visited with him and Franziska in ages. It would be so lovely to talk over old times in Madison.”
Like Arvid, Rudolf had come to the University of Wisconsin as a Rockefeller Fellow to study with Professor John R. Commons, and the two couples had become friends through the Friday Niters. Rudolf was a Privatdozent in sociology at the University of Kiel, but also like Arvid, he had been denied a professorship because of his political beliefs. His most recent book, a study of the rise of National Socialism amid the rural population of Schleswig-Holstein, was unlikely ever to be published in Germany while the Nazis remained in power.
“Rudolf agrees that opposition to the Reich is too weak, too scattered and directionless,” Arvid said.
“Yes, but how do we unite when anyone we approach might be a Gestapo agent?”
“We begin with friends we trust, and then friends of friends. Franziska has a second cousin in the intelligence office of the Air Ministry.”
“And we should start with him?”
“I know it sounds unlikely, but apparently he despises the Nazis as much as we do. Rudolf suggests we collaborate.”
Arvid explained that he had agreed to meet with Franziska’s cousin, Harro Schulze-Boysen, at their flat the following evening. “He and I shouldn’t be seen together in public, in case we need to deny knowing each other later,” Arvid explained. “I want you to meet him too, Liebling. If your intuition tells you we can’t trust him, I won’t.”
Mildred’s intuition told her she could trust Franziska and Rudolf, but Arvid’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment of the new risks he was prepared to accept sent a shiver up her spine. She consented, but throughout the next day, as she cleaned the flat and baked an Apfelkuchen from Mutti Harnack’s recipe, her hopes warred with apprehension, and she was tempted to phone Arvid and beg him to call off the meeting. Instead she busied herself with work, translating paragraphs of Stone’s Lust for Life until Van Gogh’s world seemed more vivid than her own.
The sound of Arvid’s key turning in the lock broke the spell. She set aside her books and papers and hurried to meet him, but they had only a few minutes to confer before a knock sounded on the door, precisely at the appointed hour. When Mildred answered, Rudolf quickly led a tall man in his midtwenties into the foyer. Although he wore black slacks and a black sweater beneath his black wool topcoat rather than a uniform, Harro Schulze-Boysen otherwise could have stepped right out of a Luftwaffe recruiting poster. He had broad shoulders and a military bearing that seemed to add inches to his height; handsome, patrician features; a strong chin and a confident smile; dark blond hair, a bit thin but not a strand out of place; and a keen blue-eyed gaze that, Mildred suspected, missed nothing. When he removed his hat, she quickly hid her surprise—part of his right ear was missing.
Rudolf waited until she had locked the door behind them to greet her fondly, but it was a brief, insufficient reunion, with little time to spare for family news. Mildred showed them into the sitting room where Arvid waited. Rudolf made introductions, Arvid and Harro shook hands heartily, and as they seated themselves, Mildred returned to the kitchen for Kaffee und Kuchen. By the time she returned, the men were so engrossed in their conversation that they scarcely glanced her way when she poured a cup of coffee for herself and took a seat. Arvid had asked her to observe and evaluate the Luftwaffe officer and she intended to do so.
She soon concluded that Harro despised the Nazis with such palpable antipathy that it could not possibly be a ruse. Although he was an avowed Communist, his patriotism sprang from an illustrious family military tradition; his great-uncle was the renowned Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and in the Great War, his father, Commander Edgar Schulze, had served in Belgium as chief of staff to the German naval commander. Harro explained that he had joined Göring’s intelligence office not to serve the Reich but to hasten its demise, preserving Germany as a sovereign nation, governed by Germans. He was deeply concerned that Hitler’s overreaching ambitions could provoke another world war, and if the Reich fell, the nations of Europe would install their own puppet government in its place.
Mildred did not doubt Harro’s opposition to the Nazis, but as he cheerfully recounted his exploits to prove his bona fides, she began to have grave concerns about his judgment. Several years before, as the outspoken editor of the banned radical opposition magazine Gegner, he had tried to unite the Right and Left against the fascists, holding boisterous meetings in restaurants and rallying his comrades to march in May Day parades. He deliberately sought attention, hoping to inspire others to join his cause, but in March 1933, a squad of SS had burst into a Gegner editorial meeting and arrested the entire staff.
“Our prison was a cellar, our bed a cold stone floor strewn with hay,” said Harro, his mouth set in a grim, defiant smile. “Some of my colleagues were soon released, but a friend and I were stripped naked and ordered to run a gauntlet of guards armed with lead-weighted whips. Three times they ordered us to pass between their ranks while they beat us with all their strength.”
Sickened, Mildred pressed her lips togethe
r to hold back a gasp.
“After the third time through, my friend collapsed, unconscious, and later he would die of his injuries.” Harro absently fingered his scarred right ear. “I suffered injuries too, but anger kept me on my feet. I staggered, bruised and bleeding, to the starting point, clicked my heels together, and shouted, ‘Reporting for duty! Orders carried out plus one more for luck!’”
Rudolf nodded approvingly, but Arvid’s brow furrowed. “After all you had suffered, you mocked them to their faces?”
Harro shrugged. “Mockery was the only weapon at my disposal. It seemed to impress them. They declined to send me through the gauntlet again, and the leader told me admiringly that I belonged with them.”
Prevailing upon influential friends of Harro’s father, his mother had managed to get him released, half-starved, ill, with thick ropes of scars from the whips on his back and swastikas knife-carved into his thigh. He had required weeks to heal and regain his strength, but as soon as he was able, he had resumed his opposition work, though more covertly. Obtaining a post in the Luftwaffe Ministry was unlikely for someone with Harro’s record, and indeed, at first the personnel chief had declined his application for a commission. But soon thereafter, Reichsminister Hermann Göring had personally overruled the decision, impressed by Harro’s military lineage, persuaded by powerful mutual friends, and charmed by Harro’s aristocratic wife, Libertas, the beautiful, captivating, flirtatious granddaughter of Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld.
As Harro described his professional duties, it seemed to Mildred that Arvid and Rudolf could barely contain their excitement. Fluent in five languages, Harro reviewed and summarized reports on foreign air forces for Göring, handled intelligence reports from Luftwaffe officers serving abroad, and disseminated confidential documents throughout the Air Ministry. There was no question that he had access to extremely valuable military intelligence, but when Mildred and Arvid exchanged a surreptitious glance, she knew her husband was wondering, as she was, what price the resistance might ultimately be forced to pay for it.
When the interview ended, the men wished one another good luck and courage, and Rudolf and Harro departed. Pretending to adjust the curtains, Mildred watched from the window as the men emerged from the building a few minutes apart and walked off in separate directions.
“What did you make of him?” asked Arvid, hugging her from behind and resting his chin on her shoulder.
Sighing, she turned in the circle of his arms and cupped his cheek in her hand. “His zeal is impressive, and when I think of the state secrets that cross his desk on any given day, I can’t imagine any better place to have an ally. And yet . . .”
“He’s reckless,” Arvid finished for her. “He’s intelligent and courageous, but impulsive, and he’s already too well known to the Gestapo.”
“Do you think you could rein him in?” asked Mildred. “Teach him discretion?”
“I don’t think discretion is in his nature. One careless moment of bravado could bring down the entire group.”
“We don’t have a group, not yet,” Mildred reminded him. “With his connections, Harro could help us develop one.”
“Or he could get us thrown into a prison camp.” Arvid shook his head, frowning. “I hate to let his access to military intelligence slip through our fingers, but I’m not convinced it would be worth the risk.”
A few days later, Arvid returned home from work just as Mildred was leaving for the Abendgymnasium. Rudolf had come by the law firm that morning to ask if he should arrange a second meeting.
“I asked him to tell Harro that I appreciate his time and trust, but although I’m very interested, I can’t see him again,” said Arvid. “It’s simply too dangerous.”
Mildred agreed. It was some consolation to know that Harro would continue his opposition work with or without them. She wished him success, for they were on the same side even if they dared not work together.
Chapter Twenty-nine
January–February 1935
Sara
The first time Sara, Amalie, and their parents were permitted to visit Natan at KZ Oranienburg, they were escorted into a small office with one wooden chair and bars on the windows. Twenty anxious minutes later, Natan was brought stumbling into the room—handcuffed, filthy, unshaven, held upright by two guards, one on each arm. Bursting into tears, Sara’s mother hurried to ease him into the chair.
For a moment, Natan blinked at his family in disbelief. “Good to see you,” he said hoarsely, as if he were welcoming them to his flat and not to hell on earth. “Glad you could come.” A fit of coughing prevented him from saying more, but he managed a slow, ironic grin, revealing the gap of two missing teeth.
A guard remained in the room with them throughout their visit, but when Sara and Amalie pleaded, he unlocked Natan’s handcuffs so that he could eat some of the food his mother had packed. He chewed and swallowed slowly, carefully, as if his jaw pained him, but he saved most of the food to take back to his cell, along with the clean, warm clothes they had brought, several books, and a packet of letters from friends. Most were unsigned, with subtle clues only Natan would recognize to identify the authors, full of good cheer, innocuous enough to pass the censors.
While Natan ate, they shared news of the family and the neighborhood, carefully editing the facts for the guard’s ears. Natan said very little about the conditions he endured in the prison, but his thin, disheveled appearance confirmed their worst fears. His hair had been hacked off, his clothes were threadbare and stained, and a faint sour odor clung to his skin. Even so, his bloodshot eyes were alert, and he never cringed when the guards shifted their weight or touched the rubber truncheons on their belts. All the while, he held his left arm close to his side, and when Sara embraced him, he stiffened in pain.
Abruptly and all too soon, the guards ended the interview, but before they shackled Natan’s hands again, Sara darted forward to murmur in his ear, “We’ll be back to see you soon. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“Don’t bring Mutti next time,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Don’t let her see me like this.”
The guards took him away before Sara could vow that next time he would leave the prison camp with them. It was just as well that she had not given him false hope. A fortnight passed and a second visit was granted, but although Mildred’s contacts at the American embassy continued to pressure the commandant, he would not release Natan.
It was also just as well that Sara had not promised Natan to convince their mother to stay at home. When she tentatively suggested it, her mother drew herself up, pale and dignified. “Of course I’m going to see my boy,” she said. “Nothing would keep me away.”
The weeks passed. Twice each month Sara and her parents were granted an hour with Natan, and they were permitted to give him one small carton of food and clothing and necessities, carefully inspected at the entrance for contraband. Sara’s father learned to leave a bottle of schnapps or a tin of caviar on top as a bribe for the guard at the gate, swiftly pocketed as the family was waved through.
Weeks turned into months. Natan’s hair was hacked off again, and once he was given a rough, careless shave, leaving him with patches of stubble and skin scraped raw. His cough worsened as winter deepened, and he continued to lose weight, and they soon realized he shared the food they brought him with the other prisoners. “What would you have me do? Watch them starve?” he replied when they begged him to keep more for himself. “In my place, could you?”
One day the family passed the camp commandant in the corridor as the guards escorted them to the small, bare office. He watched them pass, frowning imperiously, and afterward, he intercepted them as they were being led to the exit. “You are Herr Weitz, the banker, are you not?” he inquired crisply.
Sara’s father clasped his hat in front of his chest and offered a small, formal bow. “I am, Herr Kommandant.”
“You served in the Great War?”
“I did, sir. I was woun
ded at Verdun.”
The commandant’s eyebrows rose. “That was a bad business.”
“Yes, Herr Kommandant, it was.”
“How does your son know Regierungspräsident Diels?”
Sara’s father shrugged deferentially. “I was not aware they were acquainted.”
“You’re regrettably ignorant where your son is concerned. Even so, perhaps you can tell me why the Americans are so interested in one Jew journalist. What is he to them?”
“Who can say why Americans do anything?”
“Quite right.” The commandant nodded to the guards. “Take these Jews away.”
Sara felt a surge of panic, but when the guards merely led them to the exit, she took a deep, shuddering breath and willed her heart to stop racing. In the backseat of Wilhelm’s car, she and Amalie held hands tightly until the driver left her and her parents at home.
Mildred promised that Martha Dodd would not let her father forget Natan, and that Martha’s contact would see to it that he would be well treated. Sara was sickened to imagine what poor treatment looked like if what Natan received was considered better.
As winter passed, Sara saw Dieter only rarely. Business took him out of the country for weeks at a time, but it was almost a relief to have him gone. In recent weeks, their infrequent, tense, and uncomfortable discussions about what their married life would look like retraced the same circular arguments and resolved nothing. “Perhaps this is a sign that as much as you love each other, this marriage is simply not meant to be,” Amalie had gently suggested after Sara had tearfully confessed her frustration. Perhaps Amalie was right, but Sara did not know what to do. If she broke off the engagement, she would lose Dieter forever, and what if all they needed was a little more time to work things out? For now, postponing the wedding while the family focused on obtaining Natan’s release was the most she could do.
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