BERLIN: Reaping the Whirlwind (The Schultz family story Book 2)

by Paul Grant

  Dobrovsky laughed. I sensed some nervousness in it, but the rest was laced with scorn. ‘I would take the opportunity if I was you, Sergeant Schultz. What awaits you is not good. Even for a Russian it wouldn’t be good.’

  ‘You’re not me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m not in your position, that’s for sure. I hear Kolyma is not very nice at this time of year, or any time of the year for that matter.’

  I’d not heard of the place, but I imagined it was somewhere north and east. When threatened with a place in Russia, apart from Lubjanka, it usually was. He was unusually confident about our guilt, and that the outcome was inevitable. It probably was, but there was something else in his manner. I decided I’d had enough of him and his certainty. I wanted to throw him off guard. I wanted to throw him off his stool, but the former would have to suffice for now.

  ‘I killed them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your two comrades. I shot them. I take full responsibility.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary...’

  I was more forceful now. ‘Give me your forms and I will sign the confession.’

  He paused for a moment, then he reached forward to light another cigarette.

  ‘On one condition...’ I said.

  He raised his bushels.

  ‘You release all the others, including Marz. They are not involved.’

  He dragged hard on his cigarette like he was thinking. I’d done a lot of thinking to come to that decision. I felt I had no choice. If I could buy their freedom, the ones still left to enjoy it, I wanted to try at least. What happened to me was another matter but, consigned to a long spell in a camp, I wouldn’t have thought twice about escape. If this worked, then Schram, Koegel and even Marz, if he was still alive, could enjoy their freedom. Now I only waited for Dobrovsky’s response.

  ‘The thing is, Sergeant Schultz, much as I admire your bravery, even stupidity, I know you didn’t do it,’ he said.

  ‘Then why are we here?’

  He looked down, summoning an explanation from somewhere. In that instant, I thought I detected a flash of humanity, something which momentarily challenged my previous impression of Major Dobrovsky. He turned to the two guards and motioned for them to leave with a flick of his head. I wasn’t sure if I was worried or happy. Whatever the case, I felt the truth was about to rear its head.

  He waited for the door to close and he lit another cigarette with the one that was still alight, grinding the spent one into the ash tray. He took a pull on the new one, exhaled, and then cleared the fug from in front of him with his other hand. ‘Sometimes, Schultz, things are decided for you. You’re in a giant machine and there’s nothing you can do about it. Certain things dictate what happens, aside from truths. Let’s say it’s a bit like a numbers’ game. Inevitably, your number comes up and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  He stopped there like I should have understood. He was like a friend giving some advice in a bar, “Just accept it, Klaus. It’s the way it is.” Now, that would have been easy to take if it meant working an extra few hours or putting up with the mother-in-law for an afternoon, but this was about life and death. Survival.

  I shook my head in miscomprehension, incredulity.

  At this he seemed to lose patience, like it didn’t matter to him. The mask of hate that had slipped before was back in place. ‘We know you are guilty. You and your men. You will be sentenced shortly.’ He was dismissive, like it wasn’t important.

  ‘You just said you know I didn’t do it. What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Do it? That is irrelevant. You and your men are guilty. You are all guilty.’

  This was more like the Dobrovsky I knew. Institutionalised, brainwashed. I wondered how many men and women he’d consigned to the dustbin of the camps of Russia without proof, without a fair trial.

  ‘So we are guilty? Why bring us here? Why bother with the confession?’

  He stood up and rested both his fists on the table, ‘It’s paperwork. It doesn’t matter if you sign or not because, in the end, you will pay for the crimes of Stalingrad.’

  I wasn’t having it. If I was going down, I was going down fighting. I stood up to face him. ‘We’ve already done that. For this particular crime, I am not guilty.’

  He eyeballed me now, remnants of smoke still coming from his nostrils. ‘You are, Schultz, and we have a signed confession from one of your comrades to prove it.’

  The news took some time to sink in. My mind started to whirr. I sat down, but not consciously; my legs must have been weak. The cogs went round like the coding machine we’d used at the front. It took time, due to the shock, but eventually all the reels fell into place and the answer was spelled out in front of my eyes. I didn’t want to believe it.

  I barely uttered, ‘Marz? It’s not possible.’

  Dobrovsky was nodding ever so slightly. A smile broke out across his face. It was the same as before. It didn’t really register. I could only see the face of Oskar Marz as he was dragged from the cell. Now I knew he’d dropped us in it; the very men who had saved his neck on more than one occasion. We’d loved him as one of our own. Now, he’d paid us back like this. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe, Schultz. You have been betrayed and for that you will receive a long sentence. You won’t be going home. Ever.’ He was loving it. The bastard genuinely loved his job. I don’t know if it was knowing what Marz had done or whether it was receiving the news in such a vile way, but my breath was shortening. I could feel something rising in me that I’d not felt for a long time. Probably since that day when the Brownshirts had come onto our street and evicted poor Dr. Cohen, the man who’d been so kind to Maria when she was ill. I felt it then and I felt it now. It was screaming at me to act. I couldn’t then, because Michael Stein had prevented me by knocking me out for my own good. I’d regretted it ever since.

  I was up off the chair and my hands were round his neck before he even moved. My feet kicked away my chair to get nearer to him and my knees were on the table. I wanted Dobrovsky dead. I wanted him wiped out so he couldn’t do this to somebody else. Maybe I saw a bit of Oskar Marz in him, too. My thumbs were on his windpipe. I’d done this before, in Stalingrad, when we had no weapons. I knew Dobrovsky hadn’t. I knew I had him.

  He scrambled and struggled but I continued applying the pressure. He reached for the table, but I didn’t care. I should have, because the gun was still there. He did reach it, but when he grabbed for it, it fell from the table and clattered to the floor. This obviously attracted the guards, because, within seconds, the door crashed open and the heavies returned. It took me a long time to let go of Dobrovsky’s throat. I did let go, though and when they got to work on me, I let go of consciousness, too. Anger and recklessness had overtaken me and, for a brief moment, it had felt good.

  EPILOGUE

  SEPTEMBER 1945, MOSCOW/BERLIN

  Dobrovsky took the butt of my anger that day in the cellars of the Lubjanka. I meant to reserve my rage for Oskar Marz. There was no other conceivable explanation except that he had betrayed us. He had denounced us and bought his freedom in the process. I couldn’t help feeling his beating at the hands of other prisoners at Vorkuta played its part. We would never know his motives. We were here and he wasn’t. Now we were facing the worst the Soviet judicial system could throw at us, and I wasn’t optimistic.

  It took three weeks to recover from the beating they had given me after the incident with Dobrovsky. I was tended throughout the period by Koegel and Schram. I felt sorry for them, especially Schram. It was a dubious honour to have undergone an interrogation like Koegel and I had done, but at least we’d had chance to face the people who wanted to deny us our freedom. Schram had never had the chance to look Dobrovsky in the eye, or to have his fingers around the man’s throat. For an emotional type like him that would be hard to take.

  Our trial was a sham. Exactly a month a
fter my last meeting with Dobrovsky, we were taken to be cleaned up in typically cynical fashion. Better fitting clothes were provided and we were pushed through a door into a courtroom. I was struck by how remarkably relaxed the place seemed. The courtroom was like any other; there was a large long bench opposite us. A judge presided on the bench, flanked by two uniformed NKVD officers. A mammoth-sized portrait of Josef Stalin oversaw proceedings, dwarfing the judge. The Chief Prosecutor was chatting amiably with the men on the Bench, like he was catching up with old friends. There were other officials in the room, mostly sporting a uniform of one type or another, all of whom seemed to be smoking constantly. It filled the room with a fug much like a bar or mess room, rather than a court room. The three of us stood, perplexed, in the dock, taking in this strangely laid-back atmosphere.

  If we felt this ambiance might give us a better chance to put our case forward, then we were wrong. The charge list was as long as my arm and it included crimes not mentioned by Dobrovsky or in the confession I’d been invited to sign. I could feel Schram’s anger rising next to me. Koegel hung his head low, probably trying to understand why we were here. I’d already resigned myself to the outcome. When we were asked to speak, Schram made a good case in fluent Russian. However, his ability to speak the language only seemed to arouse suspicion among the gathered officials rather than impress them. I wondered if they might add an espionage charge to the list because of it.

  However well Schram put our case, it was totally irrelevant. We were convicted within four hours, guilty of all the charges made against us. In some ways, it was all going on around me, like I wasn’t even involved. I couldn’t follow the Russian, even when the translator was speaking passable German. I took little interest in proceedings. It was partly because I knew the outcome before we started, and so did those on the bench. But it was mainly due to my anger and frustration.

  Our sentence was twenty-five years hard labour, essentially a death sentence. They didn’t mention Marz by name in the trial, of course. The court was told of a “source of the security services not to be disclosed.” We knew who it was, and I was only thinking about what he had done to us after all we’d been through and suffered together. Now our suffering was to be further prolonged because of his treachery.

  Even when Dobrovsky appeared moments before the verdict was delivered, still looking slightly tender around the neck, I didn’t flicker. I wanted revenge for my plight and those of my comrades, Markus Schram and Arthur Koegel. Whilst there was breath left in my body, I knew that I wouldn’t give up until I caught up with Marz. Back in the cell, my mind turned to Maria and the kids. I could not imagine they even knew I was still alive, let alone about this. The look of pain on Ulrich’s face that day I left the platform in Berlin was etched indelibly on my mind. Now, I knew I wouldn’t be going home to them any time soon, if ever.

  ***

  Maria Schultz was feeling better about herself. Physically life was as hard as during the last days of the war, but without the bombs. Food continued to be in short supply and hardly anything worked; trams, gas, water. The only way to get a ration card these days was to work. Maria had joined the Kolonen (columns) of Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) clearing the bomb debris from Berlin’s streets. They demolished the unstable buildings, then the rubble was picked by hand, chipped down to single bricks to rebuild Berlin. The work was tough, but the comradeship of the women helped Maria. She didn’t have to go far to find women who had experienced similar misfortunes to her, some had had it worse. The manual work with those women, in all weathers, somehow eased her pain, even made life bearable.

  She’d taken up Fräulein Sommer’s offer. The decision had already been made in Maria’s mind before she’d met up with her that summer day on the Ku’daam. The rest had been about plucking up courage to do what she felt she had to do. Maria Schultz normally took that for granted, but taking away something which would otherwise grow into a baby was not something to be done lightly, whatever the circumstances leading to the decision. However distasteful, it had to be done.

  Life slowly returned to normal. Ulrich had gone back to school and was working hard. He still suffered from the odd quiet spell or mood swings, but that was usual for any teenager. He had done more than most in his young life. Maria was grateful he was able to go on and build his life; it wasn’t the case for all children his age at the end of the war. She couldn’t have managed without him and was always happy she had his support. Eva had started nursery school and was starting to display similar headstrong tendencies to her mother, although Maria wouldn’t openly admit it.

  Sitting in her crumbling apartment, Maria had some reasons to be optimistic. She also knew there was one part of her life, one person, who was still missing. She glanced across at the photograph of her husband in his uniform. She had already been to see the relevant Russian authorities in an attempt to track down Klaus. So far, she had been unsuccessful, but she wasn’t one for giving in. She knew with certainty he’d been captured at Stalingrad. She also knew, like her, he was a survivor. She would never give up on Klaus Schultz.

  Maria knew the coming years would be tough and not without incident, but she and her children had ridden out the war. They were not unscathed, by any means, but together they could build for the future and wait for the return of Klaus. For the first time in a long time, Maria felt herself smile. It was a small victory in life.

  She got up to call on Helmi. She was improving, but normality for her wouldn’t come overnight.

  Maria opened the door and went to climb the stairs.

  She sensed somebody below her, coming up.

  Maria turned, not quite believing her eyes at first. Now she understood what Fräulein Sommer had meant.

  ‘You didn’t like the idea of Palestine then?’ Maria said, hand to her mouth in shock. It was the last person she had expected to see back in Berlin.

  Hannah Hirsch was a picture of happiness and health.

  She shrugged nonchalantly.

  ‘Berlin’s not a place you can shake that easily.’

  Maria went to Hannah and took her in her arms.

  She couldn’t help thinking, for all the terrible hardship and suffering the war had brought them, there were some blessings, and light at the end of the tunnel.

  Thank you for reading

  I would like to thank you for taking the time to read Berlin: Reaping the Whirlwind.

  Other books about the Schultz family and Berlin are also available:

  BERLIN: Caught in the Mousetrap

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071G6Q7X7 or

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071G6Q7X7

  For further information, please visit my website blog below.

  I hope you enjoyed it and, if so, I would be grateful if you would leave a review.

  You can find more information about the author online:

  www.paulgrant-author.com

  E-mail:

  info@paulgrant.com

  About the Author

  Paul Grant is originally from Leeds, UK, and continues to live in West Yorkshire, England. His first degree was in History, specialising in Germany between the wars, during the period of the Third Reich and the Cold War.

  Acknowledgements and comments

  I used a number of excellent books whilst researching this novel and it is important to acknowledge them here. Probably the best reference was Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad. This is a book I will never tire of reading and continue to refer to on a regular basis.

  Anne Applebaum’s book, Gulag – A History, is a must read for anybody interested in the subject. The sheer scale of the Gulag camp system was incredible and provided many insights during my research.

  Information about Berlin is easy to find. There are a number of excellent books covering the city’s history during the War and the turbulent period after. Much has been written on the subject. Again, Anthony Beevor’s Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is an excellent source on the topic. A lot has also been written about the subject of rap
e in Berlin and wider Germany as the Soviet forces advanced. A Woman in Berlin provides a chilling picture of the life for the women of Berlin as the Russian front line arrived on their doorstep.

  For general books on Berlin I found, David Clay Large’s Berlin: A Modern History very good.

  Berlin: Reaping the Whirlwind is a work of fiction based closely on historical fact. In writing the book, I wanted to explore the social effects of war, in this case upon the family Schultz. I find the recent history of Berlin to be absolutely fascinating and a history we must continue to learn from.

  I thought long and hard about the title. The saying comes from the Torah, Hosea 8:7. “They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.” It’s been used a number of times since, most notably by Arthur Harris, head of British Air Force during the Second World War. He said, “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now, they are going to reap the whirlwind.”

  His words seem rather chilling in the light of the death and destruction that the bombing of German cities caused in the latter half of the war. Klaus and Maria Schultz, among millions of others, seemingly “reaped the whirlwind” they didn’t sow. The title however does rather aptly portray the backlash Germany felt in the final years of the war. I make no comment on how deserved some might continue to think that was. War always brings suffering, usually to those who are not responsible for bringing it about in the first instance.