And yet, it again dawned on me that, from here, the seat of a power waging campaigns across two continents against forty nations, the war was the furthest thing from these people’s minds. Oh to be sure, they had maps and reports and communiqués. But the actual life-and-death struggle being waged on their behalf by men at their wit’s end was beyond their understanding at this point. They knew nothing of the soldier’s lot: scared to the point of madness, hungry, exhausted, filthy and in pain, suffering in the harshest of climates from the stifling heat of the African desert to the vicious cold of the Russian steppe, fighting in a brutal fashion with demoniacal fury just to make it through another day alive. The battlefields of the Wehrmacht were as alien to the men atop this mountain retreat as the surface of the moon.
As if to underscore that sentiment, a haughty voice greeted us and we turned to see Hermann Göring. He strutted over in his powder-blue uniform and heavily braided visor cap, with his massive gut protruding over his leather pistol belt. His high riding boots clop-clopped on the slate. We extended our arms in “Heil Hitler,” and then he took each of our hands and offered his personal congratulations. I looked into his blue eyes and saw a vacuous glint as if he were under the effects of a dreamy narcotic. His skin was pale and clay-like, prompting us to conclude that the air marshal wore make-up.
One of his adjutants introduced me to him.
“Ah!” he crowed. “Captain Becker! At last we meet in person.”
I clicked my heels. “An honor, Herr Reischmarschall.”
“Ach,” he chortled. “The honor is mine, lad. I understand you’ve racked up one hundred air victories? Half of them in the west. And an impressive thirty-two heavies?”
I nodded, slightly embarrassed to be lauded in front of the others. But Göring was unrelenting.
“Now this is the kind of spirit we need if we’re to turn back the criminal raids against the Fatherland. It’s refreshing to see that the British do not hold a monopoly on guts in the air.” He was referring to the Tommies’ brave stance against the Luftwaffe in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. We fliers had heard this unfair comparison before and resented it, as we knew it was the blundering high command more than German fliers who lost that fight.
An odd man, Göring. Vain, pompous, completely isolated from the growing strain the constant combat with the bombers was inflicting upon the Luftwaffe. My verdict: although he genuinely cared about his pilots, he simply did not understand what we were up against.
“Well done, Becker,” he concluded with a pat on my shoulder. He was about to turn away when something occurred to him, almost as an afterthought. “By the way, I understand you qualified for this honor months ago. When I checked, your commander Seebeck claimed that the paperwork was misplaced. Yet I saw Hanny Trautloft’s signature. What do think of that, eh?”
I drew myself to attention and stared ahead, showing my displeasure. “If that is what Major Seebeck says, then it must be so, Herr Reichsmarschall. But I’m grateful to Major Trautloft for the double honor, sir.”
“Well said, Becker,” he said with a cunning grin. “Very politic. You know I’m dear friends with Hans Seebeck’s parents. They have more money than God. It was a shame what happened to the young man’s eye. He was never quite himself after. Always trying to prove himself.” Then under his breath Göring added cryptically: “It’s easy to make enemies in this game…on both sides of the channel. If you’re successful enough. Keep it up, lad.” Then he lumbered off, disappearing inside.
After a half hour more of fine wine, fresh mountain air, and lively banter, a high-command colonel appeared and led us inside to the Führer’s study. On the wall hung a huge map of Europe with arrows indicating the momentum of the conflict. I could see Göring staring up at it, his arms locked behind his wide back. He seemed fixated. And no wonder. From Italy in the south to Russia in the east, the arrows were all pointed towards Germany. I caught just a glimpse before several SS men hastily drew a curtain over it.
Then the Führer himself, with a small band of aides and his chief of high command, Field Marshal Jodl, in tow, entered the room. We immediately drew to attention, arms straight out, angled up to the heavens. “Heil Hitler!”
And there he was. The epicenter of my world. The man to whom I had sworn final loyalty. And I was disconcerted by what I saw.
This was not the robust, heroic figure with the steely gaze of the propaganda posters or newsreels. That man, I quickly realized, was a myth. Like so much else here on this Mount Olympus, the disconnect from reality was unsettling.
I sized him up as he returned our salutes with his unique palm flip. He was stooped, with a slight hunch to his back. His left hand trembled. His face was drawn and haggard, like a wax mask sagging in the heat of the sun. Dark circles swooped under his pale blue eyes. His gray uniform coat fell loosely about his frail figure. The man actually looked physically weighed down by the pressure of managing a world war. And yet he seemed animated enough, flashing his slit smile beneath the square mustache.
Our arms fell to our sides, and we continued to stand at attention like chess pieces. He clasped his hands and rubbed them together as he moved about the room. He paused in front of us and in his French horn voice exclaimed: “So here are the great knights of the Reich! I welcome you to my home as recognition of your outstanding bravery in upholding the true ideals of that greatest of God’s creations: the German soldier. At ease, my comrades.” We shifted to parade rest as he launched into a stream of rhetoric which, judging by the bored look of the general staff, he’d given many times before along the same lines.
“This war,” he continued, pacing and staring down at the wooden floor, “was launched to create an ideal Europe in which the superior Germanic race can live in peace, security and homogeny, its progress unfettered by the inertia of the Untermensch. And it was started because the honor of our people demanded it. The world laughed at us in 1919, humiliating us at Versailles. But after we entered Austria, annexed Czechoslovakia, rolled over Poland, swept through the Low Countries and, most satisfying, utterly annihilated the arrogant French in less than a lunar cycle, it was they who trembled.
“The British will soon come to their senses, of this I am sure. The Russians are on the brink of collapse. The Americans are corrupt and soft. As we speak we are clearing living space for our people, ridding Europe of the pestilence of international Jewry and its bastard child Bolshevism. A great light shines upon us. This, my dear soldiers, is your moment!”
The fawning staff bellowed a loud “Hear! Hear!”
The Führer then turned to an adjutant who was carrying six elongated black leatherette cases, each containing a Knight’s Cross. The officer opened them and handed the decorations to him as he made his way down the line of us. As flashbulbs popped, he draped the medal over each of our heads so it hung down over our chests suspended by a ribbon of black, red, and white. Each man clicked his heels and gave the Nazi salute. Hitler returned the gesture and then shook each man’s hand, offering a quiet “well done” or “congratulations.” When I and a fellow pilot were presented, Göring made it a point to stand just behind the Führer, so as to be in the photos.
When I looked Hitler in his eyes, it was then that I understood how the man could take such hold over my country. His gaze was intense, hypnotic, and unwavering. I cannot honestly say that, had I met him earlier, when Germany was in happier times and the Wehrmacht was conqueror of all Europe, I would not have willingly followed him to whatever end he chose. I’m therefore glad I met him when I did.
I dutifully saluted my Führer with outstretched palm, clicked my heels smartly, and shook his soft hand.
And then, just like that, the bizarre ceremony was over. Hitler disappeared alone into the bowels of the Berghof, and we were left to mingle with the high command. One of the staffers took us on a brief tour of the kennels, where the Führer bred magnificent Alsatians. A few of these pedigreed p
ets roamed the grounds. It gave one the impression of wolves lurking about to keep the guests in line.
We strolled the half-mile up to the “Eagle’s Nest” and took in the spectacular scene. Considering we’d come so far, several traveling much greater distances than I, it all seemed a rather pointlessly quick affair. Although it did confirm what I already knew. Seebeck was very well-placed in Berlin. He had the ear of the air marshal himself. I’d better just grit my teeth and take my lumps when I returned from my unauthorized, though not forbidden, trip home.
Back at the Berghof, more photos were taken. By now I was anxious for my driver to take me to the Berchtesgaden station, where an overnight train would send me back to Andeville. But there was still some time to kill. I tried to mingle, discussing tactics with my Luftwaffe comrade, or lending an ear to the Panzer commander’s tale of the enormous Kursk battle that featured the largest tank-versus-tank fight in history. (Reading between the lines, it sounded like a major defeat.) But small talk was never my strong suit. The other RK recipients seemed so old, so battle-hardened. Did the war show on my face so much as well?
In a moment of quiet reflection I withdrew from the little cocktail party and stepped back out onto the balcony. It seemed as if all of Oberbayern stretched out in the valley below me. Beyond it, Hitler’s native Austria. From this viewpoint I spied a chain of slumbering lakes, with ancient shrine-chapels hidden within folds of towering rocks and sylvan gullies. Such a beautiful country, I thought. One worth fighting for. But were the leaders I’d just met doing their best to bring this fight to a close and spare my home the ravages of conflict? I wondered. Had they lost control?
I kept glancing down at my new decoration. A black Maltese Cross inlaid over a silver frame. Inscribed on the medal itself was the swastika; underneath, it read “1939,” the year it was instituted by Hitler. I should have felt elation. But I knew better. For a soldier, such an award meant that death was always near. And when I considered my Führer, a question jelled in my mind. I remembered all the men I’d seen die violently over the past two and a half years. All the future potential wasted, robbed from Germany by an unending war against the world. And I thought: this Hitler whom I’ve just met face-to-face. Whose eyes I saw up close. He’s just a man. And a frail one at that. Could this be the same man to whom I’d sworn my life? For the first time I wrestled with the nagging feeling that I was not ready to die for the Third Reich anymore. Even if my Knight’s Cross testified to the contrary.
Perhaps I really didn’t deserve such an award, no matter how many enemy planes I destroyed. Maybe, in his jealous and petty desire to prevent me from wearing the medal, Seebeck had been right all along.
32
I tried to sleep on the eight-hour train ride to Belgium, but it was impossible. The momentousness of my meeting with Hitler was fading in my mind, being crowded out by a more sinister encounter. I kept running Keitel’s warning through my head and then rewinding it again. Did he already know about the Krupinskis? And now my complicity in Amelia’s madness? I dismissed this troubling notion; he would have never allowed me to leave Stauffenberg had he known. Instead, I concluded that he could detect a hairline fissure in my patriotic armor. Indeed, to a man like him, I was as great a danger to my country as the bombers I would soon be knocking down again.
I spent the entire day barely moving from my seat, my forehead against the window watching the greater part of southwestern Germany pass by my line of sight. White-capped mountains jutted up defiantly against the steady snowfall that inked the ground like a watercolor in alabaster. The fresh coating may have hidden many scars upon the earth from the escalating war that was rolling ever closer to the German border. But it could hide only so much. For above the blanket of white, as if protruding through a layer of clouds, were the signs of things to come: burned-out homes, obliterated towns, felled bridges, and the occasional dead horse lying beside a shattered ammunition cart blown to pieces by Allied bombs.
A jostling train ride gives a young man in the midst of a world war more time to think than he would like. Especially if he’s coming to suspect his side is losing. I reflected on Hitler, Göring, and the rest so high up in the mountains, isolated, like some Nazi coven. So oblivious. It all seemed so surreal. The wall map I was not meant to see, with its red arrows pointing from east to west, like spears aimed at the heart of Germany, kept appearing before me. There it was. I believed that, whatever his past greatness had brought us, my Führer lived in a fantasy now. But the boys like me he’d sent to war lived a brutal reality. Only those still fighting—and Hitler was not—could understand what he’d put his armies through.
33
I stood shivering in the cold, leaning against the outside wall of the hangar nearest the runway with my shoulders hunched up to my ears. The fur lining of an American flying jacket caressed my stinging cheeks. I heard myself saying as if in a dream, “Leo, I will tell no one of this.” Damn that woman.
I’d arrived back in Andeville that evening and was given a ride to the base by a generous Belgian shopkeeper. The men were in the Kasino but I stayed away. It was just after 11 p.m., and blackout conditions were in effect. Still, I could discern the ghostly silhouettes of our night fighters as they hummed high above me in the black sky en route to meet the incoming RAF. Just faint echoes reverberating off the low clouds.
Reflecting on the fading drone of distant engines and the insistent howling of a fierce wind sending silver wisps of loose snow across the deserted runway, I didn’t notice Mueller’s approach. Instead I detected a faint whiff of alcohol mingling with the sour aroma of petrol fumes and engine oi that constantly laced the air. I turned to find him leaning back against the wall by my side, staring up at the night sky. He gripped a half-drained bottle of Chablis in one hand and an extinguished cigar in the other.
“It’s good to have you back, Harmon,” he said.
“Seebeck say anything to you?” I asked with a knot in my stomach.
“Not a word.” A pause. “So how is the Führer?”
“Optimistic,” I said. I peered up to the northwest. I could make out faint white lines of searchlights crisscrossing the sky. “Do the Allies ever rest?”
“No,” he said. “At least not yet.” Mueller gulped a swig of wine straight from the bottle and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He was in his garrison blue uniform, his flight cap jammed over his tight auburn hair. “Why don’t you come inside and join us? It’s cold.”
I shrugged. “No thank you, Lieutenant. I’m fine out here. These American jackets are warm. You should get one.” I was wearing the bomber jacket of a Yank whose body I’d stumbled across while inspecting the twisted wreckage of kill number eighty-two: a B-24 called the Mary Lee that crash-landed after my head-on attack near the little village of Bastogne. I wondered who Mary Lee was. His wife? Lover? Now grieving mother perhaps? It didn’t matter anymore. And he certainly had no more use for his jacket, which was more practical for daily wear than our wool knee-length greatcoats.
“I suppose you’ve had too much to drink to feel anything?” I said to my wingman.
“Eat, drink, and be merry,” he exhorted, “for tomorrow we die.”
He offered me his bottle and I willingly gulped a mouthful of the dry white wine. “I’d offer you some cheese, but the only kind I have on me is from the crack of my arse!” He howled at that, and I tried to maintain a stoic front. I handed him back his bottle as a grin slowly cut through my frozen cheeks. I took a deep breath and leaned my head back, staring up at the busy night sky. Flak batteries—like the ones that killed had Kluge—began to flash in the distance, rumbling like faraway lightning.
I exhaled deeply, watching the fog of my breath curl away. I turned to my wingman. “Any word on Edelmann?”
Mueller nodded. “They found his body yesterday.”
I stole another mouthful before surrendering the bottle back to him.
“Oh Josef,”
I finally said. “It gets so hard now. What do I say to the families?”
The drunken lieutenant swallowed and wiped his mouth. “You tell them that they died defending their Fatherland.” I thought he was being sarcastic, but his earnest expression told me he was serious. He offered me the bottle again. “Take another swallow,” he ordered. “You think too much, my friend.”
“And you, not enough,” I said. Another mouthful.
He chuckled at that. “I think when I have to. Harmon, this may be my last night alive. If I survive this war, then I shall return to thinking proper. But for now give me a fine wine, a good cigar, a buxom blonde and I will smack my heels, shout ‘Jawohl!’ and do my duty to my Führer and my country.”
I thought of the Krupinskis and how the country had so turned on them. I thought of the Führer I’d just met with his trembling hand and fantasy war. “I hope you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
Then I added: “Whatever right is these days.”
Mueller gently removed the bottle from my hand. I felt a need to lean on the wall now to steady myself. But for the distant thumping of the flak beating back some RAF raid far away and the occasional muffled sounds of carousing from the officer’s Kasino, all was still. And that was when Lieutenant Mueller got a sublime look in his glazed eyes. He touched me on the arm as if to say, Look at me if you want the secret.
“What’s right,” he began, “is what’s best for Germany. I grew up in Dresden. Have you ever been?” I shook my head no. “Oh it’s a beautiful city, Harmon, right on the Elbe. The baroque architecture of the Zwinger, the royal palace, the equestrian statues of Frederick, the opera house, and Frauenkirche. I would like to return to it intact when this whole business is decided. Those Allied bastards are trying to level my country. That, my friend, is all a soldier needs to know.”
Of Another Time and Place Page 16
