by Alan Gratz
We stood in a street outside the old Reich Chancellery. Adolf Hitler ruled the German nation from this building, just as the president of the Weimar Republic had before him, and the emperor of Prussia before him. The main building was all white columns and tall windows and black gabled roof. Like the country house of a European king. Connected to it were modern buildings added by the Nazis: square, gray towers with flat roofs, which housed the administrative clerks and officials that formed the octopus-like arms of the government. The Nazis loved their Amtsschimmel. Their “bureaucratic mildew.” The stacks and stacks of government paperwork they used to document every little thing. In English we called it “red tape.” If the Allies managed to hit the Reich Chancellery with a bomb, it wouldn’t rain brick and ash. It would rain burning papers.
But the chancellery still looked immaculate. I didn’t know how they did it. It was brilliant white in a city filled with dust and gray smoke, and covered in crisp, clean, red, white, and black swastika flags. But the more I stared at the building, the more I realized there was something off. Most of the flags hung from the usual places—beneath awnings and under windows and over arched walkways. But some of the flags hung in odd places, like between windows and on the roof. One of the oddly placed flags fluttered in the wind, and I saw behind it the wall was cracked and crumbling. The Reich Chancellery had taken damage from Allied bombs after all. The Nazis had just draped swastikas over the damage, hiding it the same way they covered up their recent defeats in Stalingrad and Northern Africa.
SS officers surrounded us. Members of Hitler’s personal guard. The boys around me grew tense. Straighter. Stood taller. Even I caught myself straining to see around the guards. To see Hitler in person, the great boogyman that had bedeviled Europe and the rest of the world, was like catching a glimpse of a leprechaun. A very, very evil leprechaun.
But it wasn’t Hitler who pushed through the guards—it was Artur Axmann, the head of the Hitler Youth. You could almost feel a silent, collective groan from the boys. None of us had met Axmann, but none of us particularly wanted to. He was the one who wrote all the ridiculous speeches and silly directives that our youth leaders read to us during our weekly Hitler Youth meetings.
Axmann looked as dumb as his weekly pronouncements, like a thug in an officer’s uniform.
“Welcome. Welcome,” Axmann said quickly. “This is a great day for you. A great day indeed. To meet me, and meet the Führer. I hope you all appreciate what an honor this is. You will tell your grandchildren of this day. I may be your inspiration, your mentor, your second father, but the superimposing leader of all desires of youth is Adolf Hitler.”
I fought a powerful urge to roll my eyes.
And then the Führer himself was there. Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler was a few inches shorter than all of his guards. The first thing you noticed about him was his pale face and his long, ratlike nose with that bushy little mustache under it. His dark brown hair swept down across his forehead to just above his eyes, which were baggy and tired-looking. Maybe it was from the long hours spent running a world war. Or maybe he couldn’t sleep for all the bombs the Allies dropped on him day and night. He wore the brown uniform and red swastika armband of the German army, but unlike everybody else in Germany who were so mad for medals that they bought them from shops, Hitler wore only one: the Iron Cross First Class he’d won for bravery in World War I. (I knew because I’d had to memorize that fact to pass my Hitler Youth initiation.)
Hitler blinked in the bright sunlight of the late winter afternoon like a hedgehog emerging from hibernation.
“Heil Hitler!” Axmann cried.
We all overcame our momentary astonishment at seeing the Führer in person and threw our right arms in the air. “Heil Hitler!” we cried. I felt like a traitor, but this was no time to take a stand. I had to pretend to love him the same way everybody else did.
Hitler smiled at us like an affectionate old grandfather.
“Your name, my Führer, is the happiness of youth,” Axmann said. “Your name, my Führer, is for us everlasting life!”
He was laying it on a bit thick, I thought, but Hitler must have been used to it from everybody he met. He nodded to Axmann, which somehow also seemed to communicate that it was time for him to shut up. Axmann took the hint and faded back among the towering elite SS guards.
Hitler looked out over us. Now each and every one of us really was standing as straight and tall as we could get. Even me. I needed to blend in, it was true, but there was something about the man that made you want to appear perfect in his eyes.
Maybe it was fear.
“We older ones are used up,” Hitler said. He spoke so softly at first that we had to lean in to hear him—which was a good trick, I realized. “We are rotten to the marrow. We are cowardly and sentimental.”
“No!” some of the boys called out. Hitler held up a hand to quiet them.
“It is true. We adults bear the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters!” Hitler said, gazing out lovingly at all of us. “Are there any finer ones in the world? Look at these young men and boys. What material! With you, I can make a new world. This is the heroic stage of youth. Out of it will come the creative man, the man-god. You.”
A tingle thrilled through me, despite how much I hated him. To hear someone tell you that you will rebuild the world, that you will be a hero, a man-god, was a powerful thing. I wanted to do all that. To be all that. Just not for Hitler and the Nazis.
“You, my youth, are our nation’s most precious guarantee for a great future.” Hitler’s voice rose as he went on. “The Thousand-Year Reich. You are destined to be the leaders of a glorious new order under the supremacy of National Socialism. Never forget that one day, you will rule the world!”
The boys around me broke out in a spontaneous “Sieg Heil!”
“Learn, while you are still young, that life for you must mean sacrifice: sacrifice of your personal freedom, sacrifice of your free time, sacrifice of many of the small pleasures of life.”
I turned to look at Fritz, who stood beside me. He wasn’t looking at Hitler just then. He had his eyes to the ground just beyond the Führer, as though something Hitler said had him lost in thought.
“To do so, you must be violently active. Dominating. Intrepid. Brutal.” Hitler’s voice rose and fell, ebbing and flowing like the Irish Sea. It was captivating. Impossible to ignore. “Youth must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness in you. No tenderness. You must learn to do without, to endure criticism and injustice, to be reliable, discreet, decent, and loyal. You must be as swift as greyhounds. Tough as leather. As hard as Krupp steel!”
I noticed Hitler didn’t say anything about being smart. Intelligence had no place in the Hitler Youth. Or in Nazi Germany, for that matter. But Fritz was nodding emphatically beside me. Whatever it was he’d been thinking about, he’d made up his mind.
Hitler started in on how the tide of the war would soon turn in Germany’s favor again, and I tuned out. From the corner of my eye, I watched Fritz and Horst and Ottmar and Erhard, the four boys on the science team. They quivered as Hitler spoke, like five-year-olds so anxious to open their presents on Christmas morning they were going to puke. They were euphoric. Ecstatic. They could barely control themselves. Tears filled their eyes. Not everyone was like that, I realized. Everyone was a little awestruck, but those four looked like they were about to drop to their knees and kiss the ground Hitler walked on. Every time he talked about tossing Germany’s enemies back into the sea or smashing the Russians, they were the first and the loudest to shout “Heil Hitler!”
And that’s when I finally understood. That’s when I knew why Fritz and Horst and Ottmar and Erhard were on the science team.
And why I wasn’t.
“They’re fanatics!” I told Simon. After getting home from the Hitler rally, I’d burst into my house and run straight to the secret room.
“That’s why they were recruited. Because they’re zealots. You should have seen these four guys. It was like God himself had come down from on high to talk to them. I saw it in their faces. Heard it in their shouts. It’s like a religion for them. They believe Hitler’s nonsense. Aryan supremacy. The Jewish threat. World domination. All of it.”
“So speaking English has nothing to do with it,” Simon said.
“No. They love Hitler so much they would do anything for him. Kill for him. Die for him. To get on that team, all I have to do is prove to them I’m a super-Nazi. I just don’t know how.”
Simon nodded. “I know how,” he said. “You have to turn me in.”
You have to turn me in.
Simon’s words hung in the air like a bomb, waiting to explode.
“No,” I said. “Never!”
My parents joined us in the secret room, and Simon told them his idea.
“I won’t do it!” I said. “I can’t! It would ruin everything! What about Projekt 1065? If Simon’s caught, the Allies will never get the jet fighter plans.”
“You’ll have to take those with you to Switzerland,” Simon said. “You can give them to Professor Goldsmit to take back to the Allies after you stop his assassination.”
I threw my hands up. Because that wouldn’t be dangerous at all. If I got caught with the plans for Projekt 1065, I wouldn’t even make it to Switzerland to save Goldsmit. But that wasn’t nearly the biggest problem with this plan.
“You’ll get in trouble too,” I told my parents. “They’ll know you hid him here.”
Da nodded. Ma sat down slowly in Da’s desk chair. They were on the fence, I could tell. But the fact that they were even considering this was crazy.
I stood and went to my parents. “We can’t do this!” I said to Ma. “You told me before, it’s too valuable to give up everything you’ve worked for just for one man, and Goldsmit’s just one man.”
“One man who may know how to build an atomic bomb,” Ma said. “Not to mention that this could finally get those jet fighter plans into the hands of the Allies. We just have to decide if it’s worth trading one for the other.”
“The decision is whether or not we can put our son in that kind of danger,” Da said.
“He can do it. I know he can,” Simon said.
It’s what I’d wanted to hear—what I’d longed to hear. That I was good enough to be a proper spy. But now I didn’t want it. Not if it meant giving up Simon to the Nazis.
“Michael, you have to save Professor Goldsmit,” Simon said. “The only way you can do it is to get on that team, and the only way you can get on that team is to do something so radical they automatically promote you, like the boy who turned in his parents. And you’ll be doing him one better—you’ll be turning in a British spy who also just happens to be a Jew.”
I shook my head. I felt sick, like I might throw up. Or cry. I’d had fun sneaking around and writing coded messages. Memorizing the plans for Projekt 1065 had been fun too. Up until now, it had all been a game. Kim’s Game. The game of spies. But if I turned Simon in, if I turned my parents in, this wouldn’t be a game anymore. This would be real. We were talking about real sacrifice here—and not my sacrifice. The sacrifice of people I loved and cared about.
“You’ll be sent to a concentration camp,” I told my parents, my voice cracking.
“No,” Da said. “We’ll be long gone.”
I frowned. What was he talking about?
“I want out, Michael,” Da said. “I want all of us out. It’s too dangerous. The tide has turned with the German defeat at Stalingrad. The Nazis are like cornered animals. Savage. Wild. Putting thirteen-year-olds in charge of antiaircraft guns, sending seventeen-year-olds to the front lines. I don’t know how much longer the war will last—another year? Two? Three? But the longer it lasts, the more abominable the Nazis will become. One way or another, we will die if we stay here. I’ve already talked it over with your mother.”
Ma nodded, her lips pursed. “We were going to put in for a transfer,” she explained. “But if we turn Simon in to get Michael on the team, there won’t be time for that. We’ll have to sneak out. I’ll get in touch with my network. By the time Simon is taken into ‘protective custody,’ your father and I will have disappeared. It’ll make us look more the guilty, anyhow, and you more the hero.”
“But you said it would take weeks to set up another escape route for Simon,” I said, desperately trying to find a logical reason to cancel this crazy plan. “And now you’re going to escape?”
“Yes,” Ma said. “We’ll be winging it, to be sure. But I know the network, and the both of us know the territory.” Da nodded at her. “Simon didn’t. And we have diplomatic immunity, which might count for something if we’re caught.”
“It’s the Nazis! Diplomatic immunity won’t count for anything, and you know it! If you’re caught, you’ll be killed!” I was on the verge of tears again.
“We’ll be killed if we stay,” Da said.
I paced restlessly. “And Simon?” I asked.
Simon bowed his head. No one else answered the question, so I did for them.
“He’ll be sent to a concentration camp,” I said.
I saw it all in my “head cinema.” Torture. Interrogation. Imprisonment. All the horrible things everybody knew happened at the concentration camps, but we didn’t let ourselves think about.
Da signaled for me to sit and be quiet, and Ma went to the door to make sure none of the staff were listening in. I sat back down in my chair, my chest heaving. My hands balled into fists. I desperately wanted to hit something.
“Did you hear the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scotsman who were all sentenced to a year in prison?” Simon asked.
“I don’t want to hear any jokes!” I told him. He was trying to calm me down, but I didn’t want to be calm. “I’m not turning you in, Simon. It’s not worth it.”
Simon got serious. “Michael, the atomic bomb program is perhaps the most important project of the entire war. Maybe of all time. If this thing does what people think it will, it will change the way wars are fought. It will change the whole world. Far more than any jet fighter plans. Every night, the British drop tens of thousands of bombs on Berlin, and it still stands. With an atomic bomb, you drop just one, and it destroys an entire city. If there can be such a thing as an atomic bomb, it’s vital the Allies build one first. And Professor Goldsmit is vital to its creation.”
Da took a deep breath and nodded. “Then we do it.”
Ma took my hand and nodded her agreement.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I pulled my hand away and stood, but I didn’t yell. “No. I can’t. I won’t. There has to be another way,” I told them, and I left to go find it.
People stepped off the sidewalk to avoid me as I walked through the streets of Berlin. I liked to think it was the angry aura around me, the clenched fists that told them not to bump into me, or there’d be a fight. That I was a walking atomic bomb, ready to go off and level this stinking city any second. The truth was, of course, it was the uniform that made them scared. But I pretended they could feel the rage coming off of me in waves. Like I could warp the world with my fury. I wished I could.
Turn in Simon. Send my parents on the run! How could they really think that was the answer? How did they really think I could do that? I had to find another way to get on that team.
My feet took me to Fritz’s house before I even understood my idea. It wasn’t a particularly good idea, but it was all I could think of, all that made it through the white noise of outrage screaming in my head like an air raid siren. Fritz was the answer. He had to be. He and I were friends. Of a sort. We had been friends once, briefly. True, over the last couple of weeks we’d grown apart. And not just because he’d been spending most of his free time with the science team. It was more than that. Fritz was changing. Becoming something … different. Something I didn’t like. But that boy who’d asked me to help him be s
tronger, that boy who’d helped me be stronger, the boy who’d dragged me upstairs to share his detective novels with me, that boy—that friend—had to still be in there somewhere. And that friend would see the light. That friend would help me save the scientist.
Fritz’s sister, Lina, met me at the door.
“Hello, future wife,” I said. “Is my future brother-in-law at home?”
Lina didn’t say a word but opened the door wider for me to come inside. She pointed not upstairs, where Fritz’s room was, but down the first-floor hallway, to the back of the house.
I went down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house, but Fritz wasn’t there. I sniffed. I thought I smelled smoke, but the oven wasn’t on, and there was nothing on the stove. I caught a glimpse of a dark gray cloud curling into the sky through the window in the back door, and I stepped outside.
Fritz was in the backyard, throwing his collection of detective novels into a bucket full of flames.
I threw myself across the yard, grabbing the book in Fritz’s hand.
“What are you doing?” I cried. “Stop!”
Half his collection was already burning in the bucket. Fritz yanked the book back from me and tried to hold it over his head where I couldn’t reach it, but I was taller than he was. I snatched at the book, and we wrestled over it for a few desperate seconds until at last I had it.
I was about to ask him again what the bloody hell he thought he was doing, when he punched me in the nose.
It was fast and straight and his feet were planted just right and I’d never seen it coming—all the things I’d taught him to do. I staggered back, lost my footing, and fell on my butt. I put a hand to my nose and came away with blood.
Fritz stood over me, a look of fierce cruelty in his knitted eyebrows, and suddenly I understood. Why Fritz had wanted me to teach him how to fight. Why he’d been so desperate to join the SRD. All his life, Fritz had been the boy with the bloody nose sitting here on the ground, looking up at the bully who’d beaten him.
