Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “It won’t be so lovely if the RAF comes,” said Adam.

  “Don’t you have air raid sirens in this neighborhood?”

  “Let’s go to the roof,” Greta suggested, nudging Libertas toward the door.

  “Save some cognac for me,” Adam called.

  “No promises,” Libertas teased as the door closed behind them.

  They settled on the rooftop on two weathered wooden chairs another resident had left there long before. Sipping cognac, breathing deeply of the fresh spring air, they sat for a long moment in silence, the blackout darkness complete except for the quarter moon and the faint light of stars.

  “You could almost believe the city wasn’t there,” said Libertas softly, a note of deep weariness and strain in her voice.

  “Almost.” Was it the cognac that allowed her friend to let down her guard, or was it because it was just the two of them, with no husbands there to observe and appraise?

  “Greta, Hitler must be stopped. He’s a monster.”

  “I know he is.”

  “You think you do but you don’t.” Libertas paused to refresh her glass. “Terrible things are happening, worse than your worst nightmares. It began in Poland but it’s spreading. Harro has access to the classified reports at Luftwaffe headquarters. The Nazis are committing terrible crimes—enslavement, torture, gruesome killings—”

  Despite the warm summer air, Greta went cold. “On enemy soldiers?”

  “Soldiers, civilians, Jews—especially Jews. Entire families are marched from their villages into the woods, shot, dumped in mass graves—” Libertas drank deeply, then clutched her glass in both hands just below her chin, shivering. “In my deepest heart, somehow I still cannot believe that the German people are capable of committing such horrific deeds. I know what Harro suffered when he was imprisoned years ago, and poor Hans Otto, and the Jews, and the foreign workers here in Berlin, and countless others. But mass murder, the slaughter of entire peoples—”

  She broke down in tears. Greta put her arms around her friend and held her, rocking her gently, stroking her back. “Hitler will fall,” she said softly. “His time is almost up. He will pay for his crimes, I promise you.”

  Perhaps the Soviet army would strike the blow that toppled the Führer from power, and sooner than he could possibly imagine.

  As the end of June approached and the German military’s preparations entered the final stages, Harro and Arvid compiled one last, meticulously detailed memorandum for Erdberg about Operation Barbarossa. Nine German armies with the force of 150 divisions would begin an offensive at dawn on June 22. The report included a list of the Luftwaffe’s primary targets and the plan for the German civilian administration of occupied Soviet territories.

  On the evening of June 21, Greta and Adam set the blackout curtains and talked quietly over dinner about Adam’s idea for a new novel, a letter Greta had received from her brother, and the clever, amusing things their son had said and done that day. After they put Ule to bed, they settled down on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting upon his chest. Together they finished off the bottle of cognac, for despite her teasing, Libertas liked Adam and even in her distress had remembered to save some for him.

  Tomorrow Germany would go to war with the Soviet Union, expecting certain victory thanks to the element of surprise and overwhelming force. But the Soviets knew what was coming. The resistance had given them sufficient time to prepare their defenses without alerting their erstwhile Nazi allies that they knew war was imminent. Even now the Soviet military could be taking their positions and waiting for the dawn.

  Sunrise would herald a new day, the beginning of the end.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  June–July 1941

  Mildred

  Mildred woke shortly after dawn on Sunday, June 22, to find Arvid already awake, staring up at the ceiling. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked, snuggling closer, kissing him on the cheek.

  “A little.” He kissed her forehead and stroked her arm gently, but he radiated tension. “By now the German army has crossed the Soviet frontier. What an ugly surprise the Wehrmacht must have discovered waiting for them—the entire Red Army, firmly entrenched and on high alert.”

  Mildred shuddered, imagining the bloodshed and chaos. “Let’s hope the Soviets took measures to protect civilians in the path of the advance.”

  “Let’s hope.” Arvid kissed her and sat up. “Time to face whatever comes.”

  They washed and dressed, and as Mildred set out breakfast, Arvid turned on the radio. “No news yet,” he said, shaking his head as he tuned in one station after another and found only music and a weather report.

  “Have you tried the BBC?”

  “I could barely get a signal, but it was enough to know they weren’t discussing Russia.”

  “Perhaps it’s too early. Word might not have reached London yet.”

  How disconcerting it was to know they were among a mere handful of Berliners aware that events of monumental importance were unfolding hundreds of miles to the east. Soon the news would crash upon the city like floodwaters after a dam burst, but until then, the serenity of that warm, sunny morning would feel glaring and false, an untenable lie.

  “Keep close to home today,” Arvid urged after breakfast when they parted at the front door with a kiss.

  “Greta is expecting me to meet her for a walk through the Tiergarten,” she said. “Don’t worry. If the Russian bombers come, we know where the public shelters are.”

  Arvid looked dubious, but he nodded, kissed her again, and set off for the office. He knew better than to order her to stay home, because if the RAF air raids had taught them anything, it was that no place was safer than any other. Sometimes people who sought refuge in the familiar shelters of their own buildings perished while others away from home survived because they had stayed late at work or had missed their usual train.

  Mildred had been waiting at the appointed spot for ten minutes when Greta suddenly arrived, breathless, her hat askew. “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized. “Adam and I overslept. How could we oversleep on such a day?”

  “Never mind.” Mildred smiled and adjusted her friend’s hat. “This may be our last quiet morning for a while. Let’s enjoy it.”

  They strolled along their favorite paths, savoring the sunshine, the fresh breezes, the fragrance of summer blossoms. Deliberately avoiding talk of war, they discussed Ule’s latest antics, various plays in development for the Berlin stage, and Mildred’s new job. The war had extinguished German publishers’ interest in translating English and American books, but Mildred had found work teaching English for the Foreign Studies Department at the University of Berlin. She never would have expected to rejoin the university faculty after they had dismissed her so abruptly back in May 1932, but suddenly English classes were in high demand, and she was both a native speaker and an experienced teacher with a doctorate.

  The primary purpose of the Foreign Studies Department was to train Nazi officers for the foreign service, and many of Mildred’s students were women intending to become interpreters or translators. Apparently the dogma of Kinder, Kirche, Küche could be ignored if the menfolk were busy conquering Europe for the Führer. Although the department chair was a major in the SS, several other members of the faculty were with the resistance, including Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid’s longtime friend Egmont Zechlin. Nor were all of the students inveterate Nazis; Mildred had already recruited a few resolute antifascists for their group.

  As Mildred and Greta approached the Rosengarten, they passed a dark-haired, stylishly dressed woman pushing a pram. When their eyes met and the woman smiled, Mildred gave a start of recognition. “Nadia, zdravstvuyte,” she exclaimed.

  “Guten Tag, Mildred,” Nadia replied in richly accented German. “It’s been too long.”

  “It certainly has.” Mildred peered into the pram at a dark-haired baby about four months old, sleeping peacefully with her fist in her mouth. She ached to cu
ddle her. “Who is this little darling?”

  “Allow me to introduce my daughter, Anfisa Ivanovna,” Nadia said proudly.

  “She’s adorable,” said Greta warmly, smiling.

  With a laugh for her own bad manners, Mildred quickly introduced her two friends, but as they chatted, the baby began to stir and mewl. Nadia smiled apologetically and went on her way, lulling little Anfisa Ivanovna back to sleep before she woke up completely.

  A faint worry stirred in the back of Mildred’s mind as she and Greta walked on together—not the usual, painful longing inspired by the sight of a more fortunate woman with a child, but something else, a sensation of dread that grew as she mulled it over. “Something’s wrong.”

  As if by instinct, Greta’s gaze turned skyward. “What do you hear?”

  “No, that’s not it.” Mildred halted in the middle of the path, thoughts racing. “Nadia seemed very calm and content, don’t you think?”

  “Anfisa Ivanovna must be a much better sleeper than Ule ever was.”

  “But how could Nadia be so at ease, on this day of all days?”

  Greta’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. “She shouldn’t be strolling through the Tiergarten. She and her daughter shouldn’t even be in Germany. They should have been evacuated days ago.”

  Mildred turned and headed briskly in the direction of the nearest subway station. “We met at an embassy dinner, but Nadia’s husband is a businessman, not a diplomat. He has no official affiliation with the Soviet embassy.”

  Greta hurried to catch up. “Then the Soviets didn’t inform their expatriate citizens of the attack. But why? They’re in terrible danger.”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps the Soviets feared that evacuating their citizens would have tipped off the Nazis that they knew an attack was coming.”

  “I hope that’s all it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” Greta quickened her pace. “But I agree—something is very, very wrong.”

  They parted at the station after deciding that Greta would go home, collect Adam and Ule, and meet Mildred at her apartment, where they would scan the shortwave for news of the invasion. When Mildred arrived home, she was surprised to find Arvid in the living room listening to their old radio. “It’s happened,” he said, waving her over. “Every German station is broadcasting Goebbels reading an official proclamation from Hitler.”

  Mildred locked the door and hurried to sit on the floor beside him. “I had an odd encounter in the Tiergarten—” she began, but she fell silent at the sound of the propaganda minister’s voice.

  “German people! National Socialists!” Goebbels intoned on Hitler’s behalf. “Weighed down with heavy cares, condemned to months-long silence, the hour has come when at last I can speak frankly.” With that, Goebbels launched into a lengthy denunciation of the British, followed by an unequivocal condemnation of the Soviet Union and their “Jewish Bolshevist rulers.” He then announced what by then every German within range of a radio already knew: As of half past five o’clock that morning, Germany and the Soviet Union were at war.

  “Arvid, listen,” Mildred said at the first pause in the program. “I don’t think the Soviet embassy informed their citizens about the attack.”

  Quickly she described her encounter with Nadia.

  “Perhaps her family missed the warning somehow,” said Arvid, pensive. “Or perhaps the embassy decided they couldn’t risk revealing how much they knew.”

  “But why not warn their expatriates—or better yet, begin evacuating them—the moment the attack began, when it was no longer a secret?”

  Just then the radio announcer cut to a press conference by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. Mildred and Arvid listened as he delivered an address similar to the one Hitler gave to domestic and international journalists gathered at the Foreign Office. When that concluded, the programming switched to a repeat of Goebbels reading Hitler’s proclamation. Realizing that they were unlikely to learn anything of substance from Reich radio, they moved to the bedroom, placed the blackout curtains, and took Falk’s shortwave from its hiding place in the wardrobe. Greta, Adam, and Ule arrived just as Arvid tuned in the BBC.

  They listened in shock and with increasing horror as the announcer described the German military’s devastating assault on the Soviet Union. The Reich had deployed more than three million troops. The Red Army had offered little resistance, and by every indication they had been caught entirely by surprise. The Wehrmacht had marched almost unimpeded deep into Russian territory. The Luftwaffe had bombed miles of Soviet roads and railways, rendering them useless, and had destroyed nearly two thousand Soviet aircraft parked on runways and airfields. One by one towns and villages had been overrun by invaders or leveled by German tanks, and the list of names was devastatingly familiar.

  “Everything is unfolding exactly as Harro and Arvid reported to Erdberg,” said Greta, appalled. “Where are the defenses? Why weren’t those villages evacuated days ago?”

  “They didn’t believe us,” said Mildred, feeling faint. “All those reports, all that intelligence, and Moscow did nothing. They didn’t even warn their military.”

  “Erdberg believed us,” said Arvid. “I’m certain.”

  “A fat lot of good that does those poor, helpless people in the path of the invasion,” Greta retorted.

  “With so much at stake, how could they have disregarded everything we told them?” asked Adam. “Were our reports too cautious? Did the Soviets not trust us because we weren’t motivated by Communist affiliations or financial gain?”

  “Stalin probably couldn’t believe that his good friend Hitler would ever betray him,” said Greta bitterly, folding her arms across her chest. “Honor among dictators, I suppose.”

  When the BBC began to repeat earlier reports, Arvid tuned in a German station, and at the sound of Hitler’s voice, Mildred recoiled as if she had been struck. “German soldiers!” he said, his voice ringing with pride and warning. “You enter a fight that will be both hard and laden with responsibility because the fate of Europe, the future of the German Reich, and the existence of our people rests solely in your hands.”

  Muttering a curse, Adam reached past Arvid to turn the dial. On another Reich station, an announcer triumphantly described the German military’s swift and crushing advance, their courage, discipline, and unparalleled might. Russian troops were fleeing in terror, the announcer jubilantly reported. Victory would be swift and certain. Within weeks the Soviet Union would surrender to avoid total annihilation, Great Britain would have no choice but to sue for peace, and nothing more would prevent the Third Reich from assuming dominion over the earth.

  The four friends sat in stunned silence as the radio played on.

  “What happens now?” asked Mildred shakily, imagining Nadia at home somewhere in the city, cradling her daughter in her arms, listening to the radio with increasing terror.

  “Do you have any way to reach Erdberg?” Adam asked Arvid.

  “I’ll call him from a public phone,” said Arvid. “We won’t be able to speak freely, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Arvid left at once, but he returned fifteen minutes later shaking his head. “My call wouldn’t go through. I suspect the phone lines have been cut.”

  “Why don’t I just go to the embassy?” asked Greta, rising from her chair. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only curious spectator.”

  Arvid regarded her, incredulous. “You do realize the Gestapo has the building under constant surveillance?”

  “That’s why I should go instead of you or Adam.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Mildred. “We’ll pretend we’re just out for a Sunday stroll. We’ll pause in front of the building to adjust a shoe strap, and with any luck Erdberg will be watching from the window and will follow us to a safe place where we can talk.”

  “And if he doesn’t,” Greta added, “we’ll knock on the front door and ask to speak to him.”

  Their husband
s protested, but Mildred and Greta parried their objections, and eventually the men’s desire for information won out. Mildred and Greta discussed strategy as they walked, but when they arrived at the Soviet embassy, they found the building entirely surrounded by SS units. No one was allowed in or out. Two dozen or so Berliners observed the scene from across the street, but most passersby only stole a quick glance without breaking stride, pretending there was nothing to see.

  Their hopes of meeting with Erdberg quashed, Mildred and Greta nonetheless lingered at the edge of the crowd. He would spot them easily if he came to a window, but all the blinds were drawn, and despite the warm, summery weather, a thick plume of gray smoke churned continuously from the chimney. “Do you see that?” Mildred murmured, indicating the chimney with a slight nod. “One flue is connected to flash-burning ovens. I’m sure all hands are busy destroying documents, records, codes, anything the Nazis might find valuable.”

  Greta eyed the heavily armed SS men stationed around the building. “How long before they storm the embassy?”

  “I don’t think they dare,” said Mildred, thinking again of Nadia and her family, of her few remaining acquaintances at the embassy, wishing they were all safely far away. “Remember, there are German diplomats at the embassy in Moscow, and their fate depends upon what happens here.”

  It was not until the next day that Mildred read in the papers that the families of Soviet diplomats along with all other Soviet citizens living in Germany had been rounded up. Those in Berlin had been detained briefly at Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse before being transported to an SS camp on the outskirts of the city, where their compatriots from other cities and towns soon joined them. The roughly 1,150 Soviet men, women, and children would be held until they could be exchanged for the 120 German citizens stranded in Moscow.

  Erdberg was not among them, as Mildred and her friends soon learned, but remained with the other diplomats within the heavily guarded embassy. Two days after the invasion, the Soviet first secretary bribed an SS officer with Reichsmarks, Russian caviar, vodka, and cognac to smuggle Erdberg out of the embassy on the pretense that he wished to bid farewell to his German fiancée. As soon as Erdberg was alone, he called the Kuckhoffs from a public phone and asked them to meet him at the Rüdesheimer Platz. Concerned for Greta’s safety, Adam took Arvid instead.