Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin

by Harald Gilbers

  With an effort, Oppenheimer managed to look up at the sky. He thought he could hear a hostile droning and wanted to localize the source. But with each of Hoffmann’s handlebar moves, pure survival instinct directed his gaze back to the road. Finally, they came to a stretch of road that was in a tolerable state.

  When Oppenheimer was finally able to turn around, he froze. The sky behind him was studded with dark spots that carried white condensation stripes behind them. They were headed straight for the city center. Without a doubt, this was the big retaliation attack.

  Suddenly, Oppenheimer shouted at his driver, “Get on with it, man!”

  * * *

  Although the Kameradschaftssiedlung remained untouched, Oppenheimer knew that terrible things must have happened in other parts of town.

  They had spent hours in the cellar, waiting restlessly. The radio controller listened carefully on his headphones while Vogler sat on the chair with his arms folded. Oppenheimer couldn’t think of anything meaningful to do either. He thought of Lisa. What might have happened to her? He had seen her this morning. If he remembered correctly, she was on early shifts this week. That meant that she would already have been at work when the attacks started.

  When the sirens blared the all clear at quarter past one, they received a radio message. The radio controller handed Vogler the headphones. “Hauptsturmführer Vogler,” he said. Even from the opposite side of the room, Oppenheimer could hear the fuzzy crackle from the headphones. Somebody seemed to be bellowing at the top of his lungs on the other end of the line. Whatever the message was, it seemed to make a big impression on Vogler. While he listened, he turned ashen. Initially, he seemed to have problems speaking, but then he swallowed and uttered a croaky, “Yes, sir.”

  Vogler numbly took off the headphones. An uncontrollable twitch in his face showed Oppenheimer that something monstrous had happened.

  “What is it?” Oppenheimer asked.

  Vogler didn’t react. He hastily charged upstairs and called out, “Where is Hoffmann with the car?”

  22

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1944–THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1944

  It was as if they had stepped onto the surface of a foreign planet, a bizarre landscape with an atmosphere utterly hostile to life. But after some hesitation, Oppenheimer decided to trust his eyes. This all had to be real. His imagination would barely have sufficed to paint such a scenario.

  It had been a very heavy attack. The closer they got to the government district, the more the daylight darkened. They soon encountered vehicles with their headlights switched on to see anything in the fog created by soot and dust. Then they reached the first streets where the electric streetlights were on. Hoffmann also switched on his headlights. He did his best to reach Voßstraße, but this was a difficult undertaking in this chaos.

  The rubble from the destroyed buildings cut off entire streets, and emergency services blocked their way, desperately trying to quash the fires; survivors wandered around aimlessly while others tried to rescue their belongings from the houses. The drive through the bombed-out streets resembled an obstacle course. Their driver tried various alternative routes, but eventually, he had to give up and let them get out.

  When Oppenheimer opened the door, he was assailed by hot air. Although he hadn’t moved yet, he already started to sweat. He pulled off his jacket and hung it over his arm. Then he looked around and registered the unfathomable.

  The sun was just a milky disk behind the blue-black fumes that had settled upon the entire city center. Despite the extreme heat and the fact that houses were on fire and sparks rained down from the sky, the ground was thick with snow. But even in the gloom of the polluted air, it was clear that the snow was not white. The olive-green flakes on the ground consisted of dust and limestone debris.

  Vogler, too, failed to get his bearings. “Bloody hell,” he swore. “Where are we, Hoffmann?”

  “We’ve already crossed the canal. It can’t be far now. Leipziger Straße is somewhere over there. A bit off to the left, and you’ll get to the building of the Reich Chancellery.”

  Vogler slammed the car door shut and looked up and down the road. The streetlights were powerless against the smoke. The street disappeared into the gloom just a few meters away.

  “Right. Off we go, then,” he said to Oppenheimer and strode off ahead.

  After just a few minutes, Oppenheimer’s eyes began to smart. His lungs hurt from the heavy smoke. It occurred to him that he could have made good use of the gas mask now, which he had organized on Lisa’s prompting, but unfortunately, that was at home. While he stomped through the dust and clambered across empty window frames, he searched through his pockets. He finally found the motorbike goggles that Vogler had given him for his reluctant trips in the sidecar. He put them on and briefly blew into the gap between goggles and eyes to dispel the worst of the dirt before pressing them down tightly.

  The streets were teeming with firemen, SS men, forced laborers, and prisoners who, with the last of their strength, were trying to battle the effects of the bomb attack.

  And then there were the others.

  The victims.

  The people who had been bombed out moved mechanically through the inferno, rags and burned flesh clinging to their bodies. “Why doesn’t anyone protect us?” a woman called. Others sat outside their destroyed homes and were happy to still be alive, while teenage boys from the Hitler Youth gathered up the bodies in zinc tubs just a couple of meters away. A man with shriveled eyeballs lurched toward them. Oppenheimer tried not to look, but there were too many horrors around them to not take it in. Wherever he looked, there were new details, each gruesomer. A mother packing her burned child into her air raid case to take it with her; the corpses in the open shelter; curtains of fire whipping out of empty window openings.

  Oppenheimer walked quickly, but there was no way of escaping these impressions. However, he did notice something else. While some housing blocks were blazing fiercely, others didn’t have a scratch on them although they were right next door. The streets were too wide for the fire to spread uncontrollably. Berlin did not burn well, although the sheer number of hits during this attack had been more than enough to keep the fire brigade busy.

  Toward the Berlin Palace, streaks of flames kept flaring up into the sky. It seemed that this area had suffered the worst hits. Vogler led Oppenheimer in a semicircle around a bomb crater full of bubbling water.

  A sudden detonation!

  A pressure wave shot through the streets, then stones clattered to the ground from the black cloud above them. Vogler and Oppenheimer jumped aside and sought refuge behind a wall. “These bloody time fuses!” Vogler shouted angrily. Impossible to know how many bombs were still lying around, waiting to detonate in order to send rescue teams, those who’d already been bombed out, and firefighters to their deaths.

  A few meters away stood a sooty wire mesh that had once been a stroller. The sight of it made Oppenheimer painfully aware of the fact that even Hitler’s opponents were willing to sacrifice their higher ideals for a cynical rationale. Their bombs were not able to differentiate between Nazis and opponents to the regime, not to mention the Germans who couldn’t be categorized as either. It might be a controversial question whether all humans were equal before God, but there was no doubt in regard to the bombs: they claimed any life. The question of how bad the good were allowed to become when they fought the bad no longer existed for Oppenheimer. Terror was answered with sheer terror.

  It took three-quarters of an hour for them to make their way to the Reich Chancellery. A man in uniform was already waiting for them. It seemed that he was the commander of the Leibstandarte, the SS bodyguards whose task it was to guard the building.

  “Are you that Vogler fellow?” he called out to them.

  Vogler saluted. “Hauptsturmführer Vogler at your service!”

  “It’s about time you got here,” the commander said. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “We had trouble gettin
g through,” Vogler replied.

  The response was a croaky laugh. “Oh, really? Well, get a move on. We want to get rid of all traces as soon as possible!”

  The new Reich Chancellery consisted of several buildings that lined the northern side of Voßstraße. In between the Führer’s Chancellery and the actual Reich Chancellery, there was a middle section, slightly set back. This building’s courtyard was separated from the path by a waist-high stone balustrade.

  The commander led them to a passageway on the western end of the building. A piece of tarpaulin lay right in the middle of the courtyard, guarded by two SS men. The tarpaulin had an unusual format. It was almost square, maybe five by five feet, definitely too small to cover a corpse.

  The commander removed the tarpaulin, and Oppenheimer pulled his motorbike goggles off in disbelief. It seemed that the human flesh had not only been burned, it was warped, had melted away, only to clump together in a new, bizarre shape right here in the heart of the government district. This was the only explanation Oppenheimer could come up with at first sight.

  The murderer had arranged four arms on the ground. Oppenheimer knew that they must be the arms of Kitty’s missing worker. The other two arms would no doubt turn out to belong to Traudel Herrmann.

  Oppenheimer found his voice again. “Fingerprints?”

  “All done,” the commander interjected. “We also have photographs. Do you gentlemen have any other requests?”

  Oppenheimer shook his head. “No, all good.”

  “Many thanks,” the commander responded. Oppenheimer stepped back onto the path and leaned against one of the waist-high pillars. Although he had slept well that night, he suddenly felt utterly exhausted. He fished a Pervitin tablet from the small vial, swallowed it, and thought about what he had seen.

  The murderer had achieved something that rarely ever happened. He’d succeeded in shocking Oppenheimer. After the investigations in the Großmann case, he’d thought that nothing else would shock him, but today, this had turned out to be an illusion.

  At least the mystery of what the murderer had done with the arms of the last two victims had now been solved. He hadn’t wanted to draft one of his usual letters to appeal to the NSDAP leadership but instead had come up with this surprise to show everyone he supported the party.

  Oppenheimer wondered where all this was supposed to lead. He leaned against the stone pillar for a moment with his eyes closed.

  When he opened them again, he flinched. He thought he’d seen something on the other side of the road.

  There was an old crime squad rule that a perpetrator always returned to the scene of the crime. Hilde had often made fun of this, but Oppenheimer knew it was true. There were different reasons for this behavior. Some criminals wanted to make sure that they had covered their tracks; others relished in the spectacle the police made and felt vindicated in their superiority. Oppenheimer knew that their murderer was out for recognition; his letters made this all too clear. Now he had possibly taken the biggest risk of all, leaving body parts right under the noses of the SS men who were guarding the entrance to Hitler’s Chancellery just a few meters away. And all of this during a heavy bombardment, which had worked to the murderer’s advantage in a treacherous way, for while the place was usually crawling with party officials, they had all taken to the bunkers when the attack started. And so the murderer had been able to implement his plan without being seen by anyone. Nonetheless, Oppenheimer had not expected the perpetrator to be as daring as to observe the scene of the crime. But a glance at the opposite side of the street sufficed to convince him. When Oppenheimer had opened his eyes, he had looked straight at the beast.

  Several curious passersby watched what was going on in the courtyard from opposite the Reich Chancellery. But the presence of the SS bodyguards scared them away. However, in the direction of Wilhelmstraße, one person stood outside the building of the German Reich Railway Company and looked across toward Oppenheimer. While everyone around him hurried on, this man seemed to have all the time in the world, his hands casually stuck in his leather coat and his hat low on his forehead. But it hadn’t been the man’s immobility that Oppenheimer had noticed first. It was his mocking grin and his gaze that was fixed on Oppenheimer, allowing only one conclusion: the man knew what was going on there, knew precisely what gruesome find they had just made.

  A wave of energy shot through Oppenheimer’s body. “Hauptsturmführer?” But Vogler was gone. When he looked back at the opposite side of the street, the man had also disappeared. Oppenheimer had been too fixated on the grin to memorize the face properly. He couldn’t let him get away. He quickly crossed the road. The stranger must have gone in the direction of Wilhelmstraße. And indeed, he saw the man hurrying away from the site, now about two hundred meters ahead. Oppenheimer’s coat over his arm hampered his pursuit, so he quickly slipped it on.

  The man seemed to have noticed that someone was following him, but he didn’t increase his speed. He crossed the road, went past the steps to the subway station at Kaiserhof, and continued straight toward Mauerstraße. Oppenheimer noticed the man’s strange gait. Although he was limping, it didn’t prevent him from walking fast.

  As they walked along Zietenplatz, Oppenheimer tried to reduce the gap between them, but the rubble everywhere made the pursuit difficult. Swearing, Oppenheimer stumbled past the destroyed Hotel Kaiserhof. Strange growths rose up out of the rubble toward the sun. Twisted steel girders.

  The clatter of bricks. “Careful!” A brick wall bulged toward Oppenheimer from the right and caved in.

  “Watch where you’re walking!” an old woman with a lined face called out through the cloud of dust. Oppenheimer nodded briefly. He didn’t have time to reply, as the man he was pursuing had made good use of the distraction. When Oppenheimer looked ahead toward Mauerstraße, he could just about spot the man disappearing around the corner.

  Oppenheimer started to run. When he reached the corner, the man had veered off and was now running diagonally opposite behind the remains of the Holy Trinity Church. The roof dome had been completely destroyed by a bomb; empty window openings jutted upward. Oppenheimer hurried around the nave of the church and at the last moment managed to see the man turning into Kronenstraße.

  Oppenheimer no longer paid any attention to what was going on around him. He ignored the shoveling forced laborers and the honking fire engines. He hastened across the street, an obstacle course amidst people and building materials. He sensed how close he was to solving this case. He could not afford to mess up this opportunity.

  Next, his prey had to cross Friedrichstraße. It was one of the main thoroughfares and quite wide, so there was no cover. The man in the leather coat sought to make up for this by running even faster, taking the crossroad to Leipziger Straße. Oppenheimer’s mouth was dry. Dust and ash burned in his chest. His eyes began to water, as in his haste he’d completely forgotten to put the goggles back on.

  His breath rattling, he managed to cross Leipziger Straße. His legs felt wobbly. He wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace for much longer.

  The man had run into a closely built-up neighborhood. Oppenheimer had to stop at the next crossroads to get his bearings. Frantically, he glanced left and right into corners and alleyways. Just when he feared he’d lost him, he spotted him again. His target also seemed to be out of breath. He was leaning against a wall, his chest heaving. His lead had dwindled. Oppenheimer was just about to set off again when something held on to him.

  He looked down in irritation. Next to him stood a member of the Hitler Youth in uniform. He was barely five feet tall and held a shovel out toward Oppenheimer.

  “Hey, Jew!” he shouted. Oppenheimer flinched. How on earth did he recognize me? Then he realized that he’d forgotten to take the yellow star off his coat after Mrs. Schlesinger’s visit. He had been running right through the center of Berlin with the Star of David.

  “Help clear the rubble!” the little rascal commanded and continued to hold on to Oppenhei
mer. But Oppenheimer had more important things to do than clear the streets.

  The man in the leather coat had noticed him and set off at a run, gasping for breath, increasing the distance. Oppenheimer wanted to tear himself away, but the boy continued to cling to his coat.

  “Don’t you understand, Jew?” he shouted in his boyish soprano. Oppenheimer did what he felt the boy’s parents should have done a long time ago. Without a word, he slapped him round the face.

  Oppenheimer just caught a glimpse of the boy’s astounded expression before he set off to chase the murderer. When he got to the next crossroad where the man had vanished, he heard distant shouts behind him but didn’t pay any attention. When he got to the next corner, he stopped. The man had disappeared.

  Oppenheimer looked to the left, but the alleyway was empty. Nor was there anyone in the alley to the right. His thoughts were racing. The man couldn’t have gotten far. The row of houses was quite short, but it seemed impossible that he’d made it to the next side street. And yet the man seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Oppenheimer was completely baffled. His target must have run through the rubble piling up along the street.

  Oppenheimer was about to cut straight across when his gaze fell upon an open doorway. It was possible that his target had run in there, either to hide or to find another way out. One side of the building was already destroyed, but the other part still looked inhabited.

  Oppenheimer pulled the door open and entered the building. In the dim light, he could make out the faint outline of a handrail. He tried to control his breath and listened. Initially, he only perceived the throbbing of his own pulse. He was surrounded by silence. Nothing appeared to move. But something was there.