The Edelweiss Sisters: An epic, heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel

by Kate Hewitt

  She gave Franz one last squeeze before she stepped away. “You smell nice,” she told him.

  Franz let out a laugh. “Better than a sewer, you mean,” he said. “I had a wash at the pump last night. The water was freezing but it felt good.”

  “You need to be careful,” she admonished, as she always did, and Franz gave her a look that was half tender, half exasperated.

  “I am, Johanna. I never go out when there are visitors.”

  “It can’t be too much longer,” Johanna told him, unconvincingly.

  Franz let out another laugh, this one hard. “Oh, I think it can.”

  Johanna often brought him a newspaper, even though they contained nothing but propaganda and outright lies. They usually put Franz in a dark mood, yet she brought them anyway because she knew he was desperate for news, for anything other than the four walls of this shed, the confines of the abbey garden.

  “Surely it will change soon,” Johanna insisted. “Things haven’t been going quite as well lately, if you read between the lines of the newspapers.”

  “Hitler’s still high on his success.” In June the Wehrmacht had mounted a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, with thousands and thousands of troops, including, Johanna knew, Werner’s First Gebirgsjäger, deployed to the Ukraine to march towards Moscow, racking up easy victories along the way.

  Yet only a few days ago Soviet troops had killed a thousand German soldiers through booby traps in Kiev, and Hitler had promised a swift and vicious reprisal. He had already proclaimed that Leningrad would be starved into submission.

  Franz had insisted that the Soviet Union’s vast resources of both weapons and men—cannon fodder, he’d called them bitterly—would be more than a match for Hitler, but it would take time. Time no one knew if they had.

  “You must keep hope,” Johanna told him staunchly. “We are nothing without it.”

  “I know.” But he didn’t sound convinced, and Johanna could hardly blame him. He’d been living in what was essentially a cupboard for a long time, with brief forays into the garden, and on little more than starvation rations. The nuns were as generous as they could be, but food was scarce for everyone, and their diet was simple enough as it was.

  And, Johanna knew, the few nuns who were not aware of who he really was might notice if food went missing. They couldn’t be too careful.

  As Franz moved away from her to pace the shed, she saw how pale he was, despite the three months of summer sunshine they’d just had. He was thinner too, his naturally rangy form bordering on gaunt even though there was still strength in his arms, his force of personality as compelling as ever. She’d loved him for five years, yet a future together seemed as far away as it had ever been, if not more.

  “How is your father?” Franz asked, as he always did, and as usual Johanna didn’t want to give an honest answer.

  Ever since her father had returned from the Gestapo headquarters on Holfgasse, he had been a broken man. He’d only been gone a single night, returning the following morning looking haggard and dazed, but without a mark on him.

  Hedwig had fallen upon him, weeping, and Manfred had patted her arm a bit clumsily without saying a word, while Birgit and Johanna had both watched, overcome with a cautious joy. Then a cold, creeping feeling of dread had stolen over Johanna as she’d registered the vacant look on her father’s face.

  “Papa,” she’d asked, “what happened? Are you all right? Did they…” She couldn’t make herself finish that question.

  Her father had nodded, an almost mechanical up and down, as he’d continued to pat his wife’s arm. “I’m back,” he’d said, over and over again. “I’m back.”

  He had refused to say anything about his ordeal at Holfgasse, whether because he didn’t want to or he simply couldn’t, Johanna didn’t know. What she did know was that her father had changed; some necessary, vibrant part of him had been irretrievably lost. Whether it was the old war injury to his head coming back with a vengeance, or the unseen torture that could have been inflicted on him, no one knew, and her father wouldn’t—or couldn’t—say, but he had been irrevocably changed.

  What remained was a shell—pleasant, congenial, with hints of the wry humor she’d so loved, but no more than that. His headaches came with more frequency and severity, as well as his episodes of confusion, which alarmed Johanna more than anything. He stopped work almost entirely, without even discussing it; he rose late, went to bed early, and spent hours in front of the sitting room window, staring into space. Sometimes he’d read, but usually the book lay forgotten in his lap after just a few pages.

  Her mother, Johanna soon saw, had become fiercely protective of her husband, swooping down on anyone who dared disturb his peace, not that anyone did. Occasionally Birgit had asked their father for advice on something to do with the shop, as she continued to toil in it alone, but mostly they let him be, hoping with time and space and sunshine, he’d improve.

  And perhaps, Johanna had to acknowledge, he had improved, at least a little. The day war was declared on Germany—and therefore on Osterreich, as well—he concentrated on the report on the radio as September sunshine had flooded the sitting room.

  “We knew this would come,” he’d said sorrowfully, looking around them all, after it had ended. “We knew.”

  Johanna had just been glad he’d said anything at all.

  “He’s the same,” she told Franz as he continued to pace the little shed. “I don’t think he’s ever going to get better, not really.”

  “At least he hasn’t gotten worse.”

  “Yes.” Perhaps that was all they could hope for these days, for things not to get worse. At this point, Johanna realized, that would be enough for her. As long as they could have this…

  “Come, sit on the blanket,” she invited. “I’ve brought coffee.”

  “You mean chicory?” Franz returned, but he was smiling.

  “Well, yes.” Johanna gave a little laugh as she set up a picnic on the blanket—a carafe of coffee, as well as some cakes her mother had made, albeit with margarine and powdered egg, much to Hedwig’s disgust. More than once she had muttered under her breath that if they’d stayed in the Tyrol, they would still have eggs and butter, fresh, creamy milk by the pail. “I’m not a magician, after all,” Johanna told him with a smile, for there had not been real coffee for months.

  “You’re better than that,” Franz replied. His face turned serious in a way Johanna didn’t like, because it meant he was becoming melancholy and she couldn’t bear that. “What would I do without you, Johanna?”

  “Good thing you don’t have to find out,” she answered breezily, but he refused to be dissuaded.

  “If I were a better man, I would have let you go. I should have.”

  They’d had this conversation too many times before. “Then I’m glad you’re not a better man.”

  “Still.” Franz’s normally laughing face fell into discontented, and worse, despairing, lines. “I’m selfish, to allow you to keep risking your life, coming here to visit me. If I’d set you free, you might have met someone else, perhaps at work.”

  Since graduating from her secretarial course over a year ago, Johanna had secured a position as a secretary at an accountant’s, typing letters and taking shorthand. It was terribly dull, and it made her wonder why she’d wanted to learn to type so badly, but at least it brought in some money.

  “Then I’m glad you’re selfish,” Johanna stated, thrusting her face close to his. “And what is this about allowing me anything, Franz Weber? I’m my own woman, you know.”

  “I know you are.” He smiled again, catching her up in his arms as they lay back on the blanket and he kissed her, tenderly at first and then with a passion that fired Johanna’s body and soul.

  “I’m never letting you go,” she murmured against his mouth, and felt his smile in return.

  “Good.”

  A little while later, as they ate the cake and drank the coffee, they played a game they’d started
when Franz had first come to Nonnberg, a game of make-believe that sustained Johanna with its fairy-tale hope.

  “Let’s talk about our house,” she said dreamily as she leaned against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her. “Our little farmhouse in Galtur,” she continued, although sometimes it was a flat in Vienna, a villa in Aigen, or an estate near Linz. The one place they never picked was Paris, because that felt too sacred. “Will we have a garden?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Franz replied as his arms tightened around her. “I’ve always wanted to grow roses.”

  “Roses! Do you suppose roses grow in the mountains?”

  “Why shouldn’t they? Or if they don’t, I’ll build a glasshouse. Then you can have roses and tomatoes.”

  “And we’ll swim every morning in the river that runs by the house,” Johanna said. She had only been to Galtur, a village high in the mountains of the Tyrol, once, as a child, but she remembered a joyfully burbling river. “And there will be a bedroom upstairs for the children, and one downstairs for us.”

  “Only one bedroom for the children?”

  “It’s a small house. Cozy.”

  “Very well.” When it was Franz’s turn to embroider their dreams, he chose, not the plain cloth of a Tyrolean farmhouse, but the jeweled threads and fine fabrics of a stately apartment in Vienna or Budapest, with its high ceilings and walls of mirrors and paneled wood. “And what about the kitchen?”

  “There will be an icebox,” Johanna said firmly. “And the newest range. And a table that you’ll make yourself.”

  “I’m a woodworker now!”

  “You will be.” Anything was possible when they were spinning their dreams. “And you’ll teach our son.”

  Franz was silent for a moment, his arms still around her. “I’d like that,” he finally said, and his voice held a throb of both sincerity and sorrow. “I’d like that very much.”

  They were silent for a moment, and Johanna closed her eyes, doing her best to imagine it all—the farmhouse, the table, the children upstairs tucked in bed. It could happen. They could have it all. Then the bell for compline rang, and she jumped up. “I’m late,” she cried. “My parents will be worried.”

  “Go now.” Franz reached for her coat and helped her into it. “Quickly. Stay out of sight as much as you can.”

  “I know.” It was never wise to wander the street after dark, a woman alone. She embraced him, and he held her tightly for a second before he gave her a push towards the door. “Go.”

  Johanna did, slipping along the cloister and then the alleyway, down to the Nonnbergstiege, keeping to the shadows, in case anyone might see her and become suspicious. She hurried along Kaigasse to the magnificent Residenzplatz, now nearly empty under the moonlight. On to Alter Markt where the once Jewish-opened shops had all been reopened under new Aryan names, and then to Getreidegasse and home. She slipped inside the side door with a sigh of relief. Safe.

  “Where were you?” Birgit asked as she came upstairs. Their parents had already gone to bed, and her sister was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking. It was a habit she’d taken up since she’d got involved with the resistance, and Johanna thought it made her look jaded.

  “I was with Franz.”

  “You stayed out awfully late.”

  “I know.” Johanna tucked her hair back into its bun and glanced at her sister with a frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked, because clearly something was.

  Birgit didn’t answer for a moment, her gaze distant and unseeing as she drew on her cigarette. “Werner is on leave,” she finally said.

  “That’s not a good thing?” Johanna was never quite sure how her sister felt about her sweetheart. She knew she spied on him, and passed any tidbits of information she gleaned onto Ingrid, but she also knew, or at least suspected, that she still loved him, no matter that he was a proud soldier in the First Gebirsgjäger, and an enthusiast of Hitler, or at least he seemed enough of one to Johanna.

  “It would be, perhaps…” Birgit let out a long, low breath as she stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer on the table. “His commanding officer has been awarded the Knight’s Cross. Apparently Hitler is very taken with him.” She pursed his lips. “He’s invited the entire division to a reception at Berchtesgaden, along with their wives and girlfriends.”

  Johanna’s mouth dropped open. “Berchtesgaden… you mean the Berghof?” Birgit nodded. It was Hitler’s mountain retreat, just thirty kilometers outside of Salzburg, and yet thankfully a world away. “You’re going to meet Hitler,” she said incredulously, and Birgit gave her a grim look.

  “If I go.”

  “But of course you must go,” Johanna exclaimed. “Think of the opportunity, Birgit. What you might learn that you can pass onto Ingrid! Who knows what any of those officers or even the man himself might say in your presence?”

  “Do you actually think they’re going to discuss military plans in front of a bunch of strange women?” Birgit retorted in disgust. “You know what Hitler thinks of our sex.”

  “Still—”

  “I don’t want to go.” Birgit shivered, and then reached for her pack of cigarettes again. “It feels as good as a death sentence.”

  “It will be a party—”

  “With Hitler.”

  Johanna was silent for a moment. She knew she wouldn’t want to go, of course she wouldn’t. “It will be worse if you don’t attend,” she said at last. “Werner might suspect something, never mind our great Führer.” Bitter sarcasm corroded the words.

  “I think he might suspect something already.”

  “How? He hasn’t been home in months.” The First Gebirsgjäger had been given leave last Christmas, and then again in the summer before they’d set off for the Ukraine. Both times Birgit had gone out with Werner, seeming tense and brittle when she returned.

  “And whenever he is home, I keep asking him questions,” Birgit reminded her. “Questions about what he’s doing, where he’s been, where he’s going. It sounds suspicious, even to me.”

  “Then don’t ask any questions this time. Just listen.”

  Birgit shook her head as she lit her second cigarette. “I don’t know if I can do this any more. I feel as if I’m selling my soul.”

  “Because you’re lying to Werner?” Johanna couldn’t keep the scorn from her voice.

  “I still love him, you know,” Birgit said quietly. She drew in deeply on her cigarette and exhaled. “He’s not a bad man, no matter what you think. I still love him.”

  “Even though he doesn’t know about what you do?” Johanna said quietly. “The nights you slip out?”

  Birgit gave her a fathomless look through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Best not to talk about that.”

  “What do you think he would do if he found out, Birgit?”

  Her sister simply shook her head.

  In the last two and a half years, Johanna knew, Werner had been involved in the invasion of Poland, the Battle of France, the invasion of Yugoslavia, and more recently, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Birgit had gleaned a few details about each of those operations—even if it was just a thoughtless lament about the lack of equipment, or the fact that they would be joining the Second Gebirgsjager when they crossed the Stalin Line. Any and all information could be useful, and Ingrid seemed to be glad of it all, always eager for more.

  Johanna could see how anxious the duplicity made her sister, and yet she struggled to summon sympathy. Werner was a Nazi, whether Birgit wanted to believe it or not.

  “So will you go or not?” she asked, and Birgit blew out a stream of smoke as she stared at the night sky, looking far older and wearier than her twenty-five years.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Birgit

  September 1941

  Birgit lay flat on her stomach as she strained to see in the darkness, waiting to hear the sound of the coming train. The autumn air was chilly, the damp from the ground seeping through her clothes as she watc
hed Ingrid creep slowly towards the railroad tracks.

  They were a mile outside of Salzburg, on the edge of a forest, and they were about to derail a train.

  In the two and a half years since Birgit had officially joined the resistance, she’d participated in a dozen or so of these missions; they’d blown up several railway lines, raided two depots for weapons, and once they’d rescued several patients from a nearby psychiatric hospital, spiriting them away into the woods, before they could be systematically killed by the new regime. Every time Birgit wondered at the morality of what she was doing, she reminded herself of what the Nazis were capable of. Ingrid was right. Violence was the only way to fight. To win.

  Ingrid had reached the tracks and Birgit tensed instinctively. She knew the other woman was experienced, far more than she was, at placing a bomb, but it was still a dangerous thing to do—and that was without accounting for the possibility of being discovered. Once the train was derailed, they would melt back into the woods, using the valuable few minutes it would take for any soldiers on the train to mount an attack. So far those minutes had been enough.

  Birgit’s ears pricked as she heard a rumble, distant and faint. She whistled once as a signal, a quick, high trill, and saw Ingrid start to scuttle back. The rumble grew louder and Birgit came into a crouch, ready to run. Ingrid continued to edge backwards as the train came into sight, a dark hulk against the night sky.

  If Ingrid didn’t move faster, she’d be blown up by the bomb she’d just placed. Birgit rose, her heart thudding. She glanced to her right at Elsa, another woman in their group, standing a dozen meters away. They had chosen not to involve men in any of their nighttime endeavors, because the punishment was much harsher for what was classed as military activity. Women attracted less attention, and yet Birgit knew they would most likely be hung, the same as a man would, if they were caught.

  The train was seconds away from running over the bomb, and Ingrid wasn’t far away enough. As she peered through the darkness, Birgit realized Ingrid had to be stuck; she looked as if she were trying to yank her foot free from something.