The Boy Who Dared

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  “Heinrich Mann! Where did you get that?” whispers Rudi.

  “At work,” says Helmuth in an excited whisper. “There’s a whole storeroom filled with forbidden books. Rows and rows of them.”

  Rudi backs away. “You’re crazy,” he says. “Do you know how much trouble you can get in? If the Gestapo catch you stealing books — ”

  “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it. And the Gestapo have better things to do than catch me.” Helmuth thumbs through Geist und Tat, stops at a page he has lightly outlined with pencil. “Listen to this. Heinrich Mann says that revolutions are rare because people are too selfish. They think only of themselves.”

  Rudi looks at Helmuth incredulously. “You want to start a revolution?”

  “Think about it — if more Germans spoke out, leaders like Hitler wouldn’t be allowed to lie and say ‘I want peace’ and then start a war.” Helmuth jabs at the page with his forefinger. “The French knew how to overthrow oppression and tyranny. We could learn a lot from the French.”

  “Helmuth!” says Rudi, shocked. “You could get arrested for saying those things.”

  Helmuth continues to flip through the book. “Just look at the French Revolution! Look at their motto — Equality, Liberty, Fraternity. That was their battle cry! Those are things we’ve given up, that the Nazis have taken from us.”

  Rudi’s face folds into worry. “What is it that you want, Helmuth?”

  Helmuth sits, closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Feels a warm calm fill him, and suddenly knows. He opens his eyes. “Geist und Tat,” he says. Spirit and Action. That’s what Helmuth wants.

  * * *

  By June, it seems as though Hitler can do no wrong. The Nazis have overrun Greece and Yugoslavia. Some countries join the Germans: Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, and Romania. One Saturday night, Helmuth is eating dinner with Mutti and Hugo — a rare occurrence since Helmuth has moved in with his grandparents. Helmuth spears a potato dumpling with his fork when Hugo says, “Have you heard your old friend Heinrich Worbs has been arrested?”

  “Arrested! For what?”

  “That old fool,” says Hugo. “Doesn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut, to keep his opinions to himself. He spouted off about a Nazi statue!”

  “What did he say?” asks Mutti, clearly worried.

  Hugo shakes his head in disbelief. “‘Another Nazi butcher that we must salute.’ That’s what he said. What does he think he’s going to gain? He knows the law.”

  “How could they arrest an old man?” says Mutti.

  Hugo pounds the table with his fist. “We’re at war! We can’t permit such defeatist talk. Complainers and grumblers, doubters and agitators — they only serve to embolden the enemy.”

  Mutti grows quiet. Helmuth pushes himself away from the table, doesn’t feel like eating. He leaves the flat, doesn’t feel like going home to his grandparents. He walks along the River Bille and watches the water sweeping past.

  His head throbs with sorrow and anger and disgust. It’s just as Heinrich Mann said, no one is willing to go against the current, to take a stand. Life is too short to think about others.

  The next day, Helmuth finds Rudi and Karl before church. “I have terrible news,” says Helmuth. “The Gestapo arrested Brother Worbs!”

  “Heinrich Worbs?” says Karl. “Why?”

  Helmuth tells them what Hugo had said, that Brother Worbs was denounced by someone who heard him criticize the Nazis, and now he was taken into protective custody.

  “Protective custody,” says Karl sarcastically. “And where are they protecting him?”

  “Neuengamme,” says Helmuth.

  “Not a place for a sixty-six-year-old man,” says Rudi, his voice filled with sympathy.

  It is well known that Neuengamme is a concentration camp near Hamburg, notorious for its subhuman conditions, where brutal guards force prisoners to do hard labor with inadequate food and live in squalid cells.

  “We have no one to blame but ourselves,” says Helmuth. “The Nazis tell us what to think, what to feel. They tell us to hate and we call it love. They tell us to denounce our neighbors and we call it patriotism.”

  “But look what they do to people who dare to challenge them,” says Karl. “They crush dissent, any way they can.”

  It’s June 22, 1941, a hot summer day, and the boys meet after work at the community swimming pool at Ohlsdorf. They shake out their towels, spread them on the grass. Through loudspeakers surrounding the pool, a Schubert sonata plays, violins and cellos.

  Karl and Rudi are discussing Hitler’s closest friend and third-highest Nazi, Rudolf Hess, who has been missing for several weeks. The Nazis claim that Comrade Hess met with an accident over the North Sea while piloting a fighter plane.

  “The Führer says Hess was deranged, in no condition to fly,” says Karl. “Apparently he’s been suffering hallucinations.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?” asks Rudi.

  “He’s not deranged or dead,” says Helmuth without thinking. “He’s sitting in a British jail.”

  Rudi and Karl move closer. “How do you know that?” asks Rudi.

  Helmuth realizes he’s given himself away. The BBC announced Hess’s desertion weeks ago. Hess had commandeered a fighter plane and landed in Glasgow, Scotland, where he was captured. The BBC called it the greatest escape in history.

  Helmuth toys with the idea of telling his friends the truth. He knows he can trust them. But he doesn’t get the chance to answer. Suddenly the music stops, interrupted by a strident-voiced announcer.

  “Achtung!“ says the newscaster. “Attention! At four-fifteen this morning, German troops crossed the Soviet border and our Luftwaffe began to bomb Soviet naval and air bases, destroying one-quarter of the Russian air force. At six A.M. the Führer declared war on Russia!”

  There’s a flare of military music, and then Adolf Hitler’s voice comes over the radio. “German people!” shouts Hitler. “At this moment, an attack unprecedented in the history of the world in its extent and size has begun. The purpose of this front is no longer the protection of the individual nation, but the safety of Europe, and therefore the salvation of everyone. May God help us in this battle.”

  All around, men, women, and children freeze in their places, stone still. Their faces are worried. They swallow hard, speak in hushed whispers.

  “Now we’re fighting the British and the Russians!” says Karl.

  “This will take double the troops and military supplies,” whispers Helmuth. “Every day that Germans spend at the Russian front will be a gain for the British.”

  “But we’ve got the best army in the world,” says Rudi. “And if Hitler wins Russia, think of what it will give him — Russian airplanes and tanks and guns —”

  But Helmuth knows different. “No one in history has ever conquered the Russians. Now how many more people will have to die?”

  * * *

  On the RRG Helmuth hears how the advancing Germans capture or kill great numbers of Russian soldiers. But the RRG never lists German losses. And so, for the truth, Helmuth tunes in to the BBC. Late each night, he opens the hall closet and takes out the Rola radio. He locks the flat door, and then hears a different story: about German planes destroyed by the Russians, sunken transport ships, and soldiers killed or captured. The Russians are fighting bitterly and bravely, but only Helmuth seems to know.

  When the BBC broadcast ends, he has trouble falling asleep. The BBC keys him up, makes him hate Hitler and the Nazis and their secrets and lies all the more. Makes him ache with worry for Gerhard.

  Some mornings, Oma comments on the dark circles under Helmuth’s eyes. She presses her hand against his forehead to check for fever.

  “Are you getting enough sleep?” she asks.

  “I’m fine, Oma,” he says. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  But he knows plenty that worries him, and one warm August night, as Helmuth walks with Karl along the Bille, their talk turns to the war in Russia.
The German people have been asked to donate woolen and fur clothing for the soldiers at the Russian front, where winter comes early.

  “All the fur and woolen clothing can’t prepare our soldiers for winter in Russia,” says Karl.

  “Our luck can’t hold,” says Helmuth. “No army has ever won Russia, not even Frederick the Great or Napoleon.”

  “If we stop now, we’d have Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland,” says Karl. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Europe isn’t enough for Hitler,” Helmuth says bitterly. “Hitler believes that world peace can only come through German domination.”

  The two friends walk on in silence. The secrets Helmuth keeps to himself weigh heavier with each step. He thinks of Heinrich Mann and feels selfish. God gave him the ability to think for himself — and yet he fears doing what he knows is right. He longs to share the truth with Karl.

  “You know what I think?” he says to Karl.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” answers Karl.

  Helmuth lowers his voice. “Our government is lying to us. That’s what I think.”

  Karl winces and draws away. “It’s dangerous to think that much,” he says.

  “Freedom has always been dangerous,” says Helmuth. “Come to my place tonight, and I’ll prove the Nazis are lying. But wait until after nine, after my grandparents go to bed.”

  * * *

  After a frugal supper of cabbage-and-carrot soup and Leberwurst, liver sausage, Helmuth hurries Oma as they clear away the dishes. Finally Oma and Opa retreat to their bedroom and latch the door behind them.

  Helmuth paces the living room and listens for footsteps. At last he hears feet shuffle outside the flat. Before Karl has a chance to knock, Helmuth swings open the door. He ushers him in, his finger to his lips, signaling for quiet.

  “So what is it?” whispers Karl. “What sort of proof do you have?”

  “You’ll see,” says Helmuth.

  He eases open the closet, takes out the Rola shortwave radio, sets it on the kitchen table, directly in front of Karl.

  Karl swallows hard. “Are you crazy?” He gingerly touches the raised Rola lettering, as if afraid it will shock him, but then his eyes shine with interest. “What can you hear on it?”

  “You’ll see,” says Helmuth as he rigs up the wire antenna. He turns out the kitchen light, snaps on the radio. The radio hums to life; its dim amber light casts an eerie glow in the darkness.

  Helmuth turns the dial. The radio crackles and squawks, interrupted now and then by a soothing French voice, then a wisp of violin and a quiet French horn. And then the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony crackle from the speaker, followed by an announcer who says in crisp German, “The BBC London presents the news in German.”

  Karl bolts upright. “That’s England!”

  Helmuth gives Karl a triumphant look. “Settle down,” he says. “You don’t want to wake my grandparents.” He adjusts the volume.

  “What if someone hears us?” says Karl.

  Helmuth hears the nervousness edging Karl’s voice. He nods toward the flat door and tells Karl, “You don’t have to stay if you’re afraid.”

  Karl shakes his head, settles himself firmly in the chair. “I’m not afraid,” he says.

  “Good,” says Helmuth, but he understands Karl’s fear. His own heart pounds each time he listens to the BBC. It is every good German’s duty to report enemy propaganda to the Gestapo, to turn in anyone suspected of listening to or reading enemy propaganda. Helmuth tries not to think about the danger.

  The news that night is all about the Russian campaign. It’s nothing like the German reports. All week long the RRG had boasted of great successes in Russia, one battle victory after another, with little or no German losses as the German army advanced on Smolensk.

  But the BBC tells a different story.

  “The Germans approached within rifle range,” recounts the BBC broadcaster. “Then the Russians opened up with grenades and machine guns. The Russians organized a bayonet counterattack and forced the Germans to retreat. The Nazis left behind twenty-five hundred dead and wounded, thirty tanks and Bren Gun Carriers, eighty motorcycles, almost five hundred automatic weapons, ninety machine guns, and forty-five mortars.”

  Karl looks sickened. “A bayonet charge!”

  Helmuth feels sickened, too. He can’t bear to think what Gerhard might face if he’s sent to Russia.

  “Do you think the BBC is telling the truth?” asks Karl.

  Helmuth nods. “The BBC reports give more details. They give their own casualties, too, not just ours. They don’t hide the news from the British people. They just give the information, without telling us how to interpret it.” He looks at Karl. “I despise the Nazis. I hate the way they bully people. I hate the way they lie to us. And I hate them telling me what to think.”

  “But what can we do? Look what happens when people speak out! They’re arrested. Taken to camps. Some are never seen again. Look what they did to Brother Worbs!”

  “I hate myself for doing nothing,” says Helmuth bitterly. “For allowing this to happen. Everyone craves security. But gaining freedom means losing security.”

  “You sound like a bloody pamphlet,” says Karl.

  Helmuth likes that. “Do you want to listen again tomorrow?” he asks.

  Karl grimaces, looks sheepish. “My parents won’t let me out every night. They’re afraid I’ll get caught in an air raid.”

  Helmuth knows Karl’s parents are strict about curfew, especially his father. But he also senses his friend’s fear of breaking the law.

  Karl leaves and Helmuth sits back at the table, presses his back against the chair. He twists the dial to the RRG, and as he listens, he grows angry all over again at its twisted lies.

  Suddenly Karl’s face floats in front of Helmuth. You sound like a bloody pamphlet.

  You sound like a bloody pamphlet.

  A bloody pamphlet.

  A pamphlet.

  Helmuth feels his thoughts changing, charging ahead to a dangerous place. Slowly an idea rises to the surface, floats in front of Helmuth. He catches it, breathes it in, and it grips him, won’t let him go.

  He snaps on the light, takes out a piece of paper, jots down everything he can remember from the BBC broadcast. By midnight he has an essay, titled, “Who Is Lying?”

  * * *

  The next night Helmuth invites Rudi to listen to the radio. He doesn’t mention that Karl listened the night before. It’s safer that way.

  As soon as the announcer says, “This is BBC London,” Rudi nearly knocks over his chair. “That’s a shortwave!” he cries. “What if someone hears?”

  “No one will hear if you keep your voice down,” says Helmuth. “I’ve been listening for weeks now and I’m still here.”

  Rudi looks unconvinced. “But it’s against the law!”

  “I won’t force you to stay,” says Helmuth. “You can leave now and never come back. Maybe someday you will find some courage.”

  The words sting, Helmuth knows. He regrets hurting Rudi’s feelings, but he tells himself that the words are for Rudi’s own good.

  Rudi plants himself solidly in his chair. “I’m staying.”

  “It’s fine,” Helmuth assures him. “You want to know the truth, don’t you?”

  * * *

  Throughout August, Helmuth listens to the BBC, one night with Karl and another night with Rudi. He feels guilty over this deception, but he knows it’s best to meet separately, for their own sake as well as his.

  They sit in the dark, the small flat lit only by the dim amber light of the radio, and listen to the British voices pulsing across the crackling airwaves. It’s thrilling, too, to know they’re breaking the Nazi law. Breaking the law goes against their church teachings, but the boys feel sure that they have a responsibility to learn the truth.

  * * *

  September. Helmuth decides it’s time to bring Karl and Rudi together, so they can all listen to the BBC. As he waits for
Karl one night, he grows impatient. Usually Karl is right on time, but tonight he’s late.

  At last, at the familiar knock, Helmuth flings open the door. “Where have you been?” he asks.

  Helmuth doesn’t wait for Karl to answer. He beckons him inside. At the kitchen table sits Rudi. The two boys stare in shock at each other and then in betrayal at Helmuth.

  Helmuth ushers them outside, saying, “Let’s get some fresh air. I’ll explain everything.”

  Outside Karl paces back and forth, angry. “Why the secrecy, Helmuth? Didn’t you think you could trust us?”

  “Of course I trust you!” says Helmuth. “It was for your own protection, your own safety —”

  “Safety!” says Karl. “That’s what the Nazis say when they keep the truth from us.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” says Helmuth. “Suppose the Gestapo arrested you or Rudi, suppose they questioned you. You know they’ll stop at nothing to get names. This way, you only knew one name, mine.”

  Fear flashes across Rudi’s face. “He’s right, Karl. Remember what happened to me in the hospital?”

  “But Helmuth wasn’t honest with us!” says Karl. “We had a right to know. We’re not Nazis.”

  The words sting, but Helmuth knows that Karl is right — even if Helmuth’s intentions were good. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  Karl lets the apology settle over him. “All right,” he says. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. Let’s go inside.”

  And just like that, the tension is lifted as the three friends head inside.

  * * *

  In the kitchen Helmuth tries to tune in London. The radio bleeps and buzzes and squawks and crackles so much that it’s impossible to hear a word. He waits a few minutes, tries again, turning the dial this way and that, but no use. The jamming is too strong.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” says Rudi. He stands, looks anxious to leave. Karl stands, too.

  Helmuth remains seated. He looks at his friends. “Wait. There’s another reason why I brought you together tonight. I want you both to know that I’ve decided to serve the Fatherland.”