Of Knights and Dogfights

by Ellie Midwood

  And then the commissars began their work among them, subtly and cunningly. They didn’t beat anyone, no. They influenced them in a far more artful way, making an appearance in the barracks and offering a doubling of portions to everyone, who wanted to come to a political meeting on Sunday and hear the commissar talk. An enterprise that was quite successful; the barracks that served as a meeting hall was stuffed with men who stared at the podium with starved eyes. For an extra ration, they didn’t mind listening to some communist propaganda for a couple of hours.

  Then, the psychological warfare got worse. We’re looking to fill positions in the new kitchen. Our soldiers won’t be in charge anymore; you’ll be cooking for yourselves. Former members of the German Communist Party step forward, please. Johann watched in stupefaction when several men strode forward with resolution.

  “That’s Müller,” Johann heard one of his fellow inmates mutter. “He was in the SS!”

  “And that’s our Gruber,” another voice chimed in, as confused as the first one. “He was the biggest Nazi around.”

  But none of it mattered to the commissars, as long as those former SS men “embraced” the new Soviet ideology and began parroting their doctrines to their former comrades while measuring watery soup into their respective bowls. Those “kitchen communists” began growing nice and fat fairly quickly while the others were working outside and dying in their tens. All this was making less and less sense to Johann, who was much too honest to know what was good for him and was also growing gaunter and weaker simply because he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the words in which he didn’t believe, just like he’d refused to do back in Germany. It was all wrong, the National Socialism, the Communism and so very strikingly similar at the same time. Well, with one difference; here, the prisoners weren’t beaten because the Soviet people had some strange morals on that account. It’s not right, beating someone who’s already down, such was their new ideology. During the war, such moralistic trifles didn’t seem to bother them, Johann thought to himself gloomily.

  And then the news came; transfer. Nothing else could be pried out of the commandant who had put the paper in front of Johann and moved a pen toward him.

  “Sign it.”

  “It’s in Russian. I don’t understand what it says.”

  “It says that you’re agreeing to be transferred to a better camp.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Johann signed the paper. After all, there couldn’t have been possibly a worse camp after this swampland, could there?

  It was about fifty of them on the train – all officers – and this time they were moving westward and this already cheered them up. When they spilled onto the platform, hollow-eyed and depleted, they were taken into what indeed appeared to be a palace compared to their previous place of confinement.

  “Welcome to Camp 5093!” A camp commandant received them personally, a cane in hand, strangely resembling an SS officer in his jodhpurs and tall, shiny boots. “An officers’ paradise.”

  It was, for a few days at least. Johann was given an “office job,” which was typing the reports for the camp’s accountant, a young man in round glasses who hardly spoke two words with him except for actual work matters. He was a former accountant in a concentration camp, prior to his superiors shipping him off to the front during the last months of the war, it turned out. In response to Johann’s astonished look as to how he was still alive, Klein only shrugged with wonderful nonchalance. “They wanted an accountant more than they wanted to execute another Nazi. And I have a lot of experience.”

  Johann stopped asking questions right after that. He suddenly had nothing else to talk to the fellow about.

  The camp consisted of two parts, separated with a stream in which the POWs were allowed to swim whenever they wanted. Carrying his books from the accountant’s office to the Kommandatura, he still couldn’t believe that there was a soccer field and a field for gymnastics, with a volleyball net, stretched between two poles; that there was a barrack which housed a movie theater and another one with a concert hall. But as soon as he started inquiring about all those places, the response that he got suddenly made a lot of sense.

  “Those are all for the Party members, sonny. The League of German Officers and National Committee Freies Deutschland,” an elderly man with a weary look in his eyes and a head full of gray hair, replied. “Indulge all you like; just hand them over your dignity first.”

  The elderly man was a former General, Johann learned in a few days. A former General and a “fascist.” The man was never in the Nazi Party, to begin with, but just like Johann, he disagreed to submit to yet another totalitarian regime which was no better than the previous one, in his eyes. An agitator. Not at all like the good, old “communists” from the former SS who lounged in the sun and exchanged jokes with the guards like good, old friends.

  Another perk that those “good, old friends” enjoyed, were the parcels and letters they were getting weekly from the same guards. Each of Johann’s requests to send a letter to his wife and let her know that he was alive, at least, was met with stony silence.

  “If you would like to complain about that, why don’t you go to the commandant himself,” one of the guards finally offered. “He’s an agreeable fellow; surely, you can work something out with him.”

  The camp commandant received him with a broad smile on his face as though he’d been expecting him any time soon. Next to him, stood a man in a neatly cleaned and pressed German uniform, beaming as well, familiar and confusing at the same time.

  “Rudi?” Johann started, uncomprehending and perplexed.

  With a glance in the commandant’s direction – May I? – Wiedmeyer walked around the table and scooped Johann in a bear hug, almost lifting him off his feet. It wasn’t a particularly difficult task; Johann weighed barely sixty kilograms, unlike his former comrade, who looked as strong as a bear. He said something to the commandant, all the while grinning from ear to ear and pointing at Johann while babbling in Russian with great enthusiasm.

  “I’ll be your interpreter today.” He turned to Johann again. “Comrade Commandant says, he’s delighted that you finally came to your senses and decided to speak to him. They’re grand fellows, the NKVD; I tell you! I’ve been with them since 1943 and look at me now – promoted to Camp Senior, just recently. As soon as they captured me, I thought the end of me had come. But what do you know? No one laid a finger on me. Not once. No one forced me into anything. They offered me kindly to work for them if I didn’t fancy going to the Vorkuta – who does, after all? – and so, it’s been two years now and I couldn’t be happier that I didn’t shoot myself that day when my Stuka saw her last. The propaganda, pure propaganda they were feeding us this entire time! The Soviet people and the NKVD are grand fellows!”

  Johann stared at him in disbelief. Who was this man, who was just as unashamedly praising the Soviets as he was bashing them when he last saw him? What have they done to him, these commissars who never hit anyone and only smile mysteriously, getting into people’s minds better than some Gestapo butchers? It couldn’t have been lies, either; they even left him his wristwatch – he recognized the Luftwaffe signature glowing face of it – and the Knight’s Cross was still attached to his uniform, along with the rest of his insignia.

  “I found out that you were rotting there, in Siberia,” Rudi continued meanwhile. “It was me, who asked for you. You wouldn’t last long there, my good fellow. Here is the place to be. A veritable sanatorium, eh?”

  He clapped Johann’s shoulder.

  “They don’t let me write letters to my wife,” Johann said, finally finding his voice.

  “Is that all?” Rudi’s dark brows shot up. “But that can be easily fixed. You’ll write to her right after Comrade Commissar speaks to you and I’ll personally mail it for you, how about that?”

  The first uncertain smile broke on Johann’s gaunt face. He lowered himself onto a chair which Rudi had indicated for him. The commandant produced a bottle of vodk
a and three shot glasses from under the table and a few pieces of bread to go with it.

  “Comrade Commissar proposes a toast for the unity.”

  “That’s a good toast,” Johann agreed and downed his glass, biting into the offered bread. The portions here were much larger than in Siberia, but even if he wasn’t on the verge of starvation anymore, he was still constantly hungry, as the good stuff, like rare offerings of meat and sausage only went to the members of the League of German Officers. Everyone else had to make do with simple gruel until they came to their senses, that is. Such motivation produced terrific results, leaving only the most stubborn ones unbroken.

  The strangest thing was that those stubborn ones weren’t Nazis by conviction at all; the most prominent Nazis all jumped ship as soon as it started sinking and were now just as ardent communists as they were national-socialists a mere few months ago. No, it was the idealists, the non-believers, the humanitarians, and the honest ones that were left, Johann together with them.

  “Comrade Commissar wants you to tell him about your service. I told him that you were the highest scoring ace in history and he was simply delighted to have you here. He’s very much looking forward to hearing your story.”

  Johann shifted his apprehensive gaze from one to another. So far it looked so innocent, so friendly and warm. He started speaking, slowly and unconvincingly. Hitlerjugend. Labor Service. Flying School. Afrika Korps. Willi. Mina…

  “Can I please write to my wife and tell her that I’m alive?” he begged, pulling forward suddenly. It was that stupid vodka, damn it. He’d come here to demand and now look at him, sitting there, lips trembling, eyes brimming with tears, almost begging for a handout.

  The commandant nodded, yes you can. Rudi was beaming, positively delighted, after the third glass of vodka. Grand fellows those NKVD commissars, didn’t I tell you?

  He dropped his guard and allowed himself to believe them both. They were so kind and generous and he was so tired of everything.

  “Would you like to return to flying?” the commissar asked, through Rudi, playing with his lighter. “We can organize that too. We can organize a lot of things. Your wife – we can take good care of her. Comrade Wiedmeyer’s family are under direct NKVD supervision in Germany. They’re getting rations that only our senior officers get. The entire country is starving, you see. Surely, you don’t want your wife to starve, together with your children?”

  Rudi nodded a few times, stuffing the bread into his mouth. “It’s true. Not propaganda. There’s nothing to eat in Germany. They have their ration books, but those rations are miserable, I tell you. They can provide for your whole family, the NKVD.”

  “And what do I have to do?”

  “Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Just join the League.”

  “Become a communist then.”

  “No! Have you been listening to me at all? Am I a communist, you think?”

  Johann threw a glare at Wiedmeyer, who was clearly on a short leg with the camp commandant. “You certainly fooled me, if you aren’t one.”

  Wiedmeyer broke into belly-shaking laughter and waved his hand in front of himself. “No one makes you actually believe all that crap you agree to. It’s a formality, like when we had to go through that Hitlerjugend affair! Did you believe in all that? No. But you had to do it, so you agreed.”

  “As soon as I was free to make my own decisions, I made one. I was never a member of the Party then and won’t become a member of another Party now.”

  “Don’t be daft, Johann! Look at the whole picture; as a member of the League, I’ll be able to go to Germany soon! My family is taken care of and I will return to them alive when the time comes. They guarantee us job positions upon our return – good ones; administrative positions! – and it will be us, who will eventually rebuild Germany from the ashes. Don’t you want the same?”

  Johann stared in front of himself for a very long moment. “Can I please write that letter now?”

  “Just say that you will agree to think about it.”

  Johann shot Rudi a glare.

  “He won’t send it, unless you say it,” Rudi almost whispered, lowering his eyes.

  “I will think about it.”

  The commissar shook his hand.

  Thirty-One

  The Soviet Union. The Gulag, 1945-1951

  * * *

  Hearing the steps behind the door of the bunker, Johann wondered half-heartedly if it was going to be Rudi or the Soviet commissar today. After he declined the NKVD’s proposition, a Russian political officer took charge of him, hoping to succeed where a German Wiedmeyer hadn’t. Johann didn’t care for this new one’s threats so much; Rudi had already mailed his letter to Mina a month ago and therefore, he could sleep peacefully, even though on the dirt floor and in a four by six cell with no light in it.

  “Still being an obstinate ass, Brandt?”

  The Russian then; not Rudi. Rudi came with cigarettes and coaxing. The Russian – with mocking torrents of abuse.

  Johann shielded his eyes from the bright light, which poured into the cell.

  “Damn, it stinks in here!” The commissar screwed up his face. “Don’t you want to go outside and enjoy some fresh air? Why do you so stubbornly refuse to live like a normal human being?”

  “I would. If your government didn’t violate your own Lenin’s principles, I would have long been home with my family. But it seems you only use his postulates when it suits you,” Johann barked back.

  The commissar seemed taken aback. “You know Lenin’s works?”

  “Yes, I have read all of them.” He did, out of curiosity, when Wiedmeyer defied him with logic and asked, how could he reject something he knew nothing about. So, Johann read them all. Now, he knew exactly what he was rejecting. “You perverted his ideology and still call yourselves communists. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  The commissar sneered and extracted something out of his pocket. It was an envelope; no, a few of them. “Look what I have here. Your wife Mina writes to you so ardently, every week. It’s bad luck that you can’t read them though, or reply anything back. Such bad luck.”

  He tsked several times. Johann stared at the letters without blinking. It was Mina’s handwriting. And the stamp, it was a Berlin one, too. The commissar waved them in front of Johann’s nose as though teasing a dog with a meaty bone. “I bet you’d like to know how your sons are doing. Well? Aren’t you curious?”

  Johann forced himself to turn away from him.

  “You fascists are indeed heartless bastards!” The commissar exclaimed, turning on his heel. “To not even care one bit for your own wife and children!”

  Only after the door slammed shut after him did Johann allow himself to break into soft sobbing.

  Of course he cared for his wife and children. He cared so much that not a day went by that he didn’t think of them. Thoughts of Mina were the only thing that got him through days and nights which morphed into one never-ending nightmare when memories of her sweet face and loving arms became the only salvation from this terror around him. On certain days, he was afraid that he would break. He was always afraid that Rudi would come to visit him during such moments of weakness. But no, so far, it was only the Russian commissar and it was rather easy to say no to him.

  They took him back to the “fascists” barracks eventually and a few more months passed in the same routine. Work – sleep – interrogations in between, with Rudi and the Russian altering their roles. Soon, Johann didn’t even care which one was saying what.

  It was worse in the accountant’s office on mail days, when the former SS camp fellow would break into a rare smile and even go as far as showing Johann a picture of his family.

  “My youngest is two already! Look how big he has grown! A little man…” He always smiled fondly after turning the picture back to himself. “And here’s my Alma. She wrote me a letter, all by herself, imagine that? She’s five. She writes, Papa, come back soon, we all miss you very much. How about tha
t? My little sweetheart.”

  That’s when the solitude became unbearable.

  Today, it was a Rudi day. He seemed different, agitated for some reason.

  “Here.” He quickly thrust something into Johann’s hand. “Read it but fast! If someone finds out I gave it to you, it’ll be off with my head.”

  Johann stared at the familiar handwriting in utter disbelief before tearing into the paper like a starved man tearing into a loaf of bread.

  “Dearest Johann! We’re all fine here. Gerd and Willi are fine too…”

  Johann quickly wiped a tear.

  “Your parents and Harald are sending their best regards and hope for your return…”

  They’re fine as well – thank God! Everybody’s alive… Johann quickly read the rest – simple, ordinary life which seemed so distant, so unattainable now. Reluctantly, he handed the letter back to Rudi, who quickly lowered it into his pocket, offering Johann a sad, apologetic grin. Only now did Johann notice that he was holding another piece of paper in his hand. A scowl creased Johann’s brow.

  “Just sign this paper, and you will be out of here.” Rudi tilted his head to one side, almost pleading. “You’ll be home with your family in just a few days.”

  Even that was a ploy. A little glimpse of human kindness, for which Johann mistook as real. That sly move was a mere sham like everything else here.

  “What do you want me to sign?” He rubbed his forehead tiredly.

  “First of all, your confession that you, as part of the German Army, maliciously attacked the Soviet Union and committed war crimes during your service. It’s a mere formality,” Rudi interrupted a protest that was ready to fly off Johann’s lips, “nothing more. Just to appease them. And then, you’ll sign your agreement to work for the air force in Eastern Germany. Don’t you want to go back to flying?”