Now sweat ran down Wolf’s arms, slickening the insides of his elbows. His tongue seemed to thicken. Himmler was said to have personally ordered the executions of 85 SA leaders in order to eliminate political rivals. The dreaded Gestapo ultimately answered to him. Nevertheless, he was going to face this man. His mother had sold her soul to position him for this moment. He would not disappoint her now.
Gradually, several older boys joined him in the hall. Although Wolf had been the first boy seated, several were called into the headmaster’s office before him. At times he heard shouting. That was not so peculiar at the Reich School, as the instructors were passionate about their work. Each preceding boy spent several minutes in the office, and then was escorted down the hall by the scharführer, who would then return to escort the next boy in.
When Wolf’s name was finally called, he entered in a hurry, clicking the heels of his shoes together in an emphatic “Heil Hitler!”
The room smelled like oak furniture. The office walls were painted the same shade of yellow as the building’s exterior. The window provided a clear view of the lake, the surface of which was peppered with hard rain.
Himmler was not there. The man standing behind the headmaster’s desk was much older. His cap was pulled low over his brown eyes. He held his chin elevated, so that he literally looked down his nose at the young cadet. He wore a thick but narrow mustache that, in subsequent eras, would be regarded as a staple of Hitler parodies. In this era, it was nothing less than an homage to the führer.
Wolf had noticed him that morning from the roof of the barn. He had been in Himmler’s entourage. Had he helped carry Albert’s body back to campus? He wore jackboots and black pants that were tight in the knees and bloomed around the thighs. An Iron Cross – a highly coveted black and silver combat medal – hung just over the knot on his tie. He wore a forest-green shirt with a black tie under his coat. His lapels showed the double-thunderbolt runes of the SS, and were decorated with three diamonds and two double-stripes, making him a hauptsturmführer, a captain.
“This is Obergruppenführer Nagel,” the scharführer said as he shut the door behind him. Wolf jumped, having forgotten that anyone else was in the room.
Nagel walked around the desk until he was standing directly in front of the cadet. He touched Wolf’s face with his right hand, holding the boy’s chin between the oversized thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
“Strong jaw,” he observed, inspecting him as a farmer might appraise a prize goat. With the calloused thumb of his other hand, he stretched open Wolf’s eyelids and peered straight into them. “Blue eyes.”
The scharführer held out a half-inch thick file with Wolf’s name on it. Nagel removed his hands from the cadet’s face and took it, walking back around the desk to the window. With his back to Wolf, the officer licked his fingertips and began flipping through documents detailing Wolf’s Hitler Youth activity, school history, examination results and Reich School enrollment materials, including documentation proving his Germanic bloodline. A separate section contained information about his parents, brother and extended family.
“Competent student,” he said without turning from the window. “How is your French?”
“Bon. And I also speak English.”
Nagel nodded and read on. “A seven-generation German?” He grunted with approval and read silently for a minute more, then snapped the folder shut. “You may relax.” He turned toward the window, watching a flock of ducks in V-formation circle the lake. “What do you imagine you’ll do when you graduate from this place?”
“Become a scientist and one day teach. Like my father.”
The officer laughed, but the expression on his face was dark. “Who do you think you are going to teach? If the war goes on for another year or two, every man between 16 and 60 will be fighting the Russians.”
The remark had been made almost casually, yet Wolf felt stung by it. What did that mean? Were the Russians so strong that it might really take two years to defeat them?
“My brother is in Stalingrad,” Wolf said. “His latest letter said the Soviet army is larger than he expected, but that Germany weaponry was more sophisticated. He wrote that the Wehrmacht was already in control of 90 percent of the city.”
“We could control the entire city,” Nagel replied, “But what good does that do if the Soviets control all that surround it?”
Wolf didn’t know how to take this. Was the obergruppenführer speaking hypothetically or factually?
Nagel walked around the desk again, studying Wolf’s face. He gestured to the scharführer to leave. The squad leader did so quickly, exiting through a side door that Wolf assumed lead to another office.
“Most of the cadets I meet don’t want to teach,” Nagel said with an edge to his voice. “They don’t want to fulfill the political leadership roles we are grooming them for. They just want to kill Russians.”
True, Wolf was not like the others. He did not even care for hunting. When he had first arrived at the Reich School, he noticed how often his fellow cadets had talked longingly of fighting the French, drinking their wine and taking their women. But with German occupation in France and Belgium, the nation’s longstanding grudge against the French seemed to have been avenged, and the focus was now on the Russians. Meanwhile, his own fantasies were still centered on academics.
Now Nagel searched Wolf’s face. “Don’t you want to defeat Bolshevism?” he said.
“I will serve the Fatherland in any way the führer sees fit,” he said, dodging the question without lying.
Nagel’s eyes returned to the massive file in his hands. “Your father served in the Deutsches Ahnenerbe,” he said.
The Ahnenerbe, as it was commonly known, was the Society of German Ancestral Heritage. It had been founded by Heinrich Himmler as a government initiative to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race. A singular preoccupation with rediscovering not only the accomplishments of the Fatherland’s Aryan ancestors, but also the origin of the race. Although the Ahnenerbe was a division of the SS, which was itself a paramilitary organization, it took a fact-finding approach to the war of propaganda, publishing its research in newspapers and books.
The country’s museums were filling up with artifacts from Ahnenerbe expeditions to far-flung places such as Persia and Antarctica. Reich School textbooks were peppered with exotic photographs of strange-looking beasts, alien terrain and savage tribes that looked as if they had been summoned from a prehistoric era.
“Yes,” Wolf answered. “My father died after returning from an Ahnenerbe expedition to Tibet. Some disease he caught from the locals.”
Nagel nodded, but his face was devoid of sympathy. “By all accounts, your father served the Ahnenerbe admirably. Once he was convinced to join, that is.”
“Sir?”
“Your father did not join the party until there was virtually no other choice.”
This was also true. Wolf wondered what else was in the file. Did Nagel also know that his mother, Gertrude, had herself only joined the Nazi party in order to get work? For the past three years, she had toiled as a nurse in the Lebensborn birth program in Munich. Lebensborn was a government organization that helped families with racially desirable blood to meet and have children. Joining the party had been a non-negotiable requirement.
“Himmler is looking for an elite, handpicked group of boys to help him carry out special operations,” Nagel said.
The phrase “special operations” made his blood run cold. He imagined a troop of young saboteurs working behind enemy lines to poison food supplies or explode weapons factories. It sounded dangerous. Regardless of how well-designed the propaganda posters put up around the school, no matter how moving Himmler’s speeches, Wolf did not want to give his life for the Nazi movement.
“He wants young recruits from respectable German families. In the strictest political sense, you are not ideal. There are cadets here whose parents joined the party as far back as 1921. Tru
e loyalists. But there are other things more important than the date of one’s party registration. The ability to speak foreign languages, for example.”
The temptation to name other students that had superior translation skills came and went in a hot flash. He managed to resist, sensing that overt displays of cowardice would not be tolerated. He focused on the window as it rattled with intense wind and rain.
“And your exemplary genealogical documentation is highly valued,” Nagel went on. “Four centuries of church baptismal records as proof. Remarkable.”
Wolf’s voice quivered with nervousness. “Thank you, sir.”
“Which brings me to one other requirement.” Nagel rested his backside on the headmaster’s desk. “The recruit must have an advanced knowledge of Christianity.”
With that, Wolf’s face reddened, and he could no longer contain himself. He smelled a trap. “Our family has disavowed Catholicism,” he exclaimed with nearly as much conviction as when he had practiced the line with Lang. “We have not set foot in church for three years.”
Nagel clucked his tongue. “Of course you haven’t. But there is no need to be ashamed of what you know. My own father was a Lutheran pastor in Pomerania. As you know, Hitler himself was raised Catholic. And prior to attending the Reich School, you studied under some of the brightest Jesuits in Germany. Is this not so?”
“My studies were rigorous,” Wolf conceded.
Nagel shouted for the scharführer, who must have been waiting in the next room, for he was back inside in an instant, holding a small wooden box. “As of this moment, this cadet, Sebastian Wolf, is a Reich School graduate.”
Wolf felt certain he had misheard. He was not due to graduate for two more years.
"As a sign that you are a full member of our community, I present this weapon, which you have earned.”
The scharführer set the box on the table, took a sheathed dagger from it, and passed it into Nagel’s waiting hands. The officer then handed it to Wolf. Reality itself seemed to crumble. The presentation of the dagger was a rite of manhood that every student looked forward to. Wolf felt far from ready to receive it.
“Go on,” Nagel said, sensing the cadet’s anxiousness. Wolf unsheathed the blade and read the inscription: Mehr Sein als Scheinen. Be More Than What You Seem.
He studied the dagger, flipping it over and over in his hands, testing the sharpness of the point against the palm of his hand.
Meanwhile, Nagel resumed his position behind the desk and watched as the scharführer hunched over it, completing a government form. When it was finished, he pushed it across the wooden desktop to Nagel, who signed his name with angular, forceful strokes. Nagel picked up a purple stick of wax and heated it with a lighter until it dripped a coin-sized spot onto the document near his signature. He made a fist and pressed the skull ring from his left index finger into the hot wax.
The scharführer presented the document to Wolf. “Go to your room and gather your personal items,” he said. “You are limited to one piece of luggage. You may leave your clothing here, as new uniforms and gear will be issued. Report downstairs in 20 minutes.”
Wolf staggered into the hallway in total disbelief. Only five hours earlier, he had awakened believing that he, Albert and Heinz would be roommates for nearly two more years. He had believed that the war was winding toward its inevitable conclusion, with victory in Russia. He had envisioned himself earning an advanced degree at the University of Munich while enjoying the privileges of a Reich School pedigree. The entirety of his dreams seemed to be suddenly reduced to what he held in his arms. A knife and a notice of conscription.
Suddenly, Lang appeared beside him. “Did you see Himmler?” he asked breathlessly. Before Wolf could answer, he was surrounded by other boys, most of them seniors. Lang grabbed at the conscription order, running his fingers over the wax seal. Only then did Wolf observe the double thunderbolt runes on the document.
The reality of what had just happened seemed to hit him all at once. He had been drafted into the SS.
*
Wolf descended the stairs of the yellow mansion for the final time, carrying a small brown suitcase containing the few personal effects he had managed to fit into it. A pair of athletic shoes made by a specialty shop in Munich. Assorted socks, briefs and a black peacoat. Two books of essays that he had composed in school. A green Duncan yo-yo that his father had brought back from a lecture series in America several years ago. Several family photographs. A framed photo of Lang, Albert and himself taken at a school festival the previous year.
He wished for a Bible, although he knew that even if he had one, he could not risk carrying it. Instead he brought a wilderness survival handbook and, with much regret, left all his other reading material behind. With the remaining space in his bag he had packed a deck of playing cards, a new leather-bound journal, pencil bag and, of course, his newest possession, the Reich School dagger.
He was shepherded through the pouring rain into the back of an Opel Blitz, a large green vehicle with a long wheelbase covered by wooden shingles on both sides of the truck bed. The top was covered with a brown canvas canopy and the back was left open.
Two more troop transports arrived. Over the course of the next 20 minutes the trucks were gradually filled with cadets. Wolf was joined by nine other boys, most of whom he knew only casually, as they were two years older. Regardless of age, all appeared to be in shock.
It was with great relief that, just as the truck motor started, Heinz Lang climbed into the back. The two boys grinned and shook hands, stopping just short of embracing. They grew silent as the vehicle began moving, watching out the open back as the yellow mansion they had called home gradually shrunk away.
“Where are we going?” one of the boys said.
Lang turned. “Isn’t it obvious?” He held up his conscription notice and pointed to a mark in the upper left-hand corner. It was the symbol of an Irminsul, the Life Tree in the ancient Saxon religion. “We’re not just in the SS. We’re in the Ahnenerbe. We’re headed to Berlin.”
At this observation, a gloom settled over the boys. For cadets that wanted nothing more than to bayonet a Russian in the chest, the prospect of joining the Ahnenerbe was a fate only slightly preferable to death.
“I wish they had sent me to a NAPOLA,” the boy said. The NAPOLA schools – or National Political Institutes of Education – were, despite the name implying otherwise, primarily military in nature. The Third Reich needed a steady supply of well-trained young officers who were properly indoctrinated in National Socialism.
Wolf was just as shell-shocked as anyone. But if he was going to be drafted, he wasn’t going to complain about the Ahnenerbe. The society’s members were recruited from all walks of life. They were anthropologists, pathologists, poets, scientists, runologists and even anthropologists, such as his father.
And this was the part that confounded Wolf most. The boys had obviously not gone to university. They possessed no particular field of study. They had not really even properly graduated from the Reich School. What use would they be? What were these special operations Nagel had alluded to?
Central Train Station
Munich
Unlike most of the other boys, Wolf had not been afflicted by homesickness during his time at the Reich School. Perhaps this was due to how drastically home had changed recently. His father was dead, his brother was off to war, and his mother was, for the first time in her life, working full-time to support the family. Despite its rigors, his time in Feldafing had seemed, at times, like a kind of extended vacation from life itself.
And yet as they stepped out of the trucks and were marched into the train station, Wolf was hit with a painful urge to see his mother. The Lebensborn clinic where she worked was scarcely five blocks south of the train station. He had not seen her since September, when parents were invited to watch the boys compete in a track and field competition.
Perhaps she was here, waiting for him? Surely the school had called to notif
y her of his graduation. The cadets were immediately marched inside the enormous glass and steel structure and toward their platform, where a short passenger train awaited them. None of the boys’ families were on hand. The only familiar faces belonged to Nagel and his staff.
Near the first platform, a brass and wind ensemble was playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries for a group of Wehrmacht recruits boarding a train bound for the eastern front. Wolf did not envy the soldiers’ destination, but he envied their company. The soldiers were, one and all, draped with women – girlfriends, sisters, mothers and wives.
Wolf and Lang sat next to each other as the train snaked away from Munich and into the outlying farmland. The boys from the Reich School were packed into a single coach car. There were more cadets than seats, so three of them sat on their luggage near the rear.
Shortly, Nagel stepped in from an adjoining car that Wolf imagined was far more comfortable than their own. Observing Nagel from a distance, Wolf noticed how heavily decorated his uniform was. In addition to the Iron Cross that hung from his collar, he also wore a Wound Badge and a War Merit Cross and many other medals that must have been from the Great War.
He was an intimidating figure, but there was also something paternal about him. The boys quieted, focusing their attention on Nagel in hopes that he would reveal details of their journey. To their surprise, he grinned broadly and began singing a capella:
Good-bye, my sweet darling,
good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
The Fellowship Page 21
