Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Sharon Maas

  ‘And… to preserve precious German men for more noble causes – you can guess what those causes are – they needed cheap labour. And so, they need a so-called labour camp to provide workers for the quarry. It’s a simple as that. They found this place: Le Struthof, a picturesque and charming site, 700 metres high, where the good citizens of Strasbourg can go skiing in winter and walking in summer, for a healthy, relaxing holiday among pine forests, meadows and mountains, far away from the spectre of war, beautiful scenery thrown in as an extra. Perfect for Nazi needs. Our friend Blumberg was delighted. Specialists came to measure, survey, draw up plans, excavate, expropriate, requisition everything. Struthof has become a nest of Nazis. That’s what you witnessed when you were up there, Juliette.’

  ‘So basically, a prison camp?’

  Jacques nodded. ‘I presume for Jews. Or anyone who crosses the Nazi regime. Political dissidents. Resisters. You and me.’

  He looked from one to the other. ‘We don’t know yet who will be incarcerated there. We only know it’s being built.’

  A pregnant pause followed. Jacques had always had this sense of the dramatic. Juliette could almost hear the drum roll, the thumping of her heart. He wasn’t finished. She knew her brother well.

  ‘And…?’

  ‘And guess what? Marie-Claire’s immediate boss, a grim Nazi officer called Dietrich Kurtz, the Kreisleiter for this region, is headed for a top administration post when the camp is up and running.’

  ‘Does Marie-Claire know all this?’

  ‘No, of course not. She’s just the courier who delivered the information to us. That’s her only role. Was her only role, as far as we’re concerned; looks like that source has dried up, no more information will be coming our way. Marie-Claire continues as his secretary, but she knows nothing.’

  Juliette and Nathan, stunned into silence, looked at each other through the gloom. Then Juliette spoke. ‘You said – you said that’s where I come in?’

  ‘Yes, Juliette. I want you to return to Natzwiller. I want you to keep a watch on the camp, and report back to me whatever you can find out. I want all the information you can get. We need to keep an eye on that place.’

  Thirty-Nine

  Marie-Claire

  On the third day after the Christmas break, the Kreisleiter returned to work and summoned Marie-Claire to his office. She rose from her desk in the secretaries’ room and straightened her skirt.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Ursula and patted Marie-Claire’s hair so that not a strand was out of place. Erika whipped a small compact out of her handbag and dabbed at Marie-Claire’s forehead with a ragged piece of sponge. Gertrud stood before her and fiddled at her blouse, opening two buttons.

  ‘But it’s the eyes that will do it, mostly. The eyes!’ said Erika.

  Marie-Claire rolled her eyes, extracting herself from Gertrud’s grasp. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gertrud, not that button; he’ll think I’m a floozy or something.’ She re-fastened the lower button.

  Gertrud giggled. ‘But maybe he needs a little nudge in the right direction. A little encouragement. Graf Koks von Schmerlenbach isn’t a pushover, remember!’

  ‘Stop it! If I think of that name I’ll end up in a fit of giggles and ruin everything. I have to be serious.’ Marie-Claire pulled a hand over her face as if lowering a grim expression. ‘So… serious, yet still seductive. How’s this?’

  ‘Perfect. Now run along, don’t keep the Graf waiting!’

  Marie-Claire wiggled her hips and with a saucy kiss of the air slid out the door. ‘Good luck!’ they cried after her.

  She climbed the stairs to the first floor, walked down the hall and rapped on his door.

  ‘Herein!’ came the call, and she pressed the handle, opened it and walked in. He was sitting at his desk, bent over a ledger, pen in hand, but looked up as she entered.

  ‘Ah, Fräulein Gauss. There you are. Good morning. Come in. There are a few letters I need to dictate.’

  ‘Guten Morgen, Herr Kreisleiter,’ said Marie-Claire as she drew her chair up at the desk, next to his. Slightly closer, but not ostentatiously so, than usual. She crossed her legs, making sure that in doing so one shapely calf was favourably angled against the other. Notebook and pencil in hand, she looked at him in expectation.

  He did not meet her gaze. Instead, he turned slightly away from her as he opened a desk drawer and fumbled with its contents, finally removing what looked like a small address book.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Ah… Fräulein Gauss. I hope you had an enjoyable holiday.’

  Marie-Claire frowned slightly before answering. The question was very much out of character. Polite chit-chat was not something he engaged in, ever.

  ‘Yes, I did, thank you, Herr Kreisleiter,’ she replied.

  ‘And, aaaah… did you – did you manage to finish the book?’

  ‘The book? I don’t… Oh! The book! Yes, yes, of course. I er, I enjoyed it very much.’

  Mein Kampf. Oh, hell. She had never got past the first twenty pages, and had struggled even with those. She had, though, retrieved the book from the wardrobe where she’d thrown it, and packed it into her suitcase when she returned to Colmar, and it was in her room in the rue Stanislas. She would have left it at the chateau, but hadn’t wanted to risk it being found by Maman. Not that she actually cared about Maman’s opinion, she just didn’t want to deliver yet more ammunition for rebuke and mockery.

  The Kreisleiter frowned, indicating that her reply did not meet his approval.

  ‘It’s not exactly a book one enjoys, though, is it. It’s a book that one reads for enlightenment. For self-education. I hope you gleaned more from it than mere enjoyment.’

  ‘Yes! Yes, indeed. It was most enlightening. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’ He paused. She waited, pencil poised in hand. He started again. ‘Um, Fräulein Gauss. I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Kreisleiter?’

  ‘Well… now that we are here to stay. We Germans, I mean. Here in Alsace, in Colmar.’

  ‘Yes?’ She had never known him to speak so hesitantly, so awkwardly. Usually he’d launch into a lecture or a speech and never stop.

  ‘Well, I realise that many Alsatians don’t welcome us. Don’t appreciate our presence here and don’t understand that we came not to conquer, but to absorb. To absorb them. We want them to know that we consider them as our Mitbürger. Our co-citizens. We want to do all we can to make them feel welcome, as full German citizens. This year we’ll be consolidating that absorption into the Third Reich by issuing new identity cards, German identity cards, and other steps are planned. Every Alsatian citizen will have the full rights – and duties – of a German, with all the advantages that offers. We came as friends, not as enemies.’

  He paused, glanced at Marie-Claire, looked away again. She had never experienced him so very fidgety – almost nervous. She waited for him to continue, controlling the urge to fidget herself.

  ‘This is where you, as a native Alsatian, can be of enormous help.’

  ‘Me? Me personally?’ She pointed at herself in alarm.

  ‘Yes, you, Fräulein Gauss. As a native of this district you are the connecting link. The bridge, one might say, between two cultures, the bridge through which we Germans can communicate our own culture, through which that culture can be merged into the old Alsatian identity. A new identity is to be born, the old cast aside, like a caterpillar sloughing off a cocoon. Over the holidays I have been considering ways and means by which this could be done. And I have had a very good idea. This is where you can come in, in a practical sense.’

  Another pause. She waited. He glanced at her again, and she noticed – yes, his glance had been directed not towards her face, but towards her upper body. She felt an urge to raise her hand, cover that part of her chest, rebutton the open lapels of her blouse. Close it up to her chin. Accepting the dare had been a bad idea, she concluded. A very bad idea; bad, because it seemed to be working in a way sh
e had not planned.

  Even as if the Kreisleiter had been thinking all too favourably about her, and had returned to work with a completely altered approach. More familiar. Too familiar… Where was the carefully sustained distance that had characterised their working relationship? The distance she had been goaded to shatter?

  ‘As you know, that book I gave you, Mein Kampf, is the central doctrine of the new Era Germanica. I would say it is required reading for anyone with the desire to understand what is happening to the world today. Most especially, the young need to understand. People of your generation, young men and women.’

  He leaned over, picked up his briefcase off the floor, fumbled inside it, but removed nothing.

  ‘I have thought of a way to do this in a friendly way that is not intrusive, not overpowering. I want you to be a German ambassador. You have a foot in both cultures, born Alsatian but with an open heart and mind to the German way. You, more than anyone else, are in a position to do good. And what I thought is this:

  ‘You will go to the registration office downstairs and request a list of all couples who have recently married. You are to find out their addresses and personally visit every one of these couples with a goodwill message from the mayoral office. And as a congratulatory gift, you are to give each couple a copy of Mein Kampf, and encourage them to read it. We think that is the way to foster a good relationship. I have already put in an order for a hundred copies of the book. As soon as that order arrives I want you to go ahead. I think you will find this work extremely rewarding.’

  Marie-Claire could only stare back at him. It was as if all words, any viable response, had been knocked out of her head. The Kreisleiter paid no attention. He lined up a pile of papers on his desk with the flat of his hand, moved the bottle of ink two centimetres to the right, wheeled his chair nearer to the desk, flexed his fingers, lit a cigarette and continued, almost in the same breath:

  ‘So, Fräulein Gauss, you’ll start with that immediately, today. In the meantime, please take down the letter I’m about to dictate. Are you ready?’

  ‘J-jaaa, Herr Kreisleiter!’ Marie-Claire found her voice. Pencil poised above her pad, she prepared to take notes.

  * * *

  ‘You mean, he flirted with you? It’s not possible. I can’t imagine it.’

  ‘No, no. He didn’t flirt, exactly. It was something different. Something – something odd. Too familiar, too intimate, as if he was no longer my superior but just another colleague – as if he had lowered himself and wasn’t this high and mighty Kreisleiter but just someone asking a favour. He wasn’t even suggestive, or in any way rude. Though I did notice he was staring at my boobs.’

  They all giggled, and everyone spoke at once. ‘Well, they are rather – attractive, you know, especially in that blouse. Of course he had to peep.’

  ‘But, Margarethe, this is wonderful news. It means he has his eye on you. It means you’ve already broken the ice.’

  ‘It sounds as if he was thinking of you over the holidays and decided to make a move.’

  ‘The trouble is, what am I going to do about it? I can’t encourage him, can I? Anyway, the bet is off. I can’t go through with it any more.’

  ‘You don’t have to encourage him, darling. Just be your own ravishing self. A bat of the eyelids here, a Mona Lisa smile there – that’s all it will take.’

  ‘You don’t understand – I don’t want his interest! It was all just a game, a challenge. To see if I could cut through his armour. I’m not serious about him at all! Quite the contrary! I really don’t want him to court me.’

  She had to raise her voice to cut through the excited chatter, and her last words, vehement and shrill, fell into an astounded silence. It was Gertrud who finally spoke.

  ‘But, Margarethe—why not? I mean, he’s the top officer in the Mairie. The highest prize. If you can get him, why not?’

  Klara chimed in. ‘I mean, do you really want to spend the rest of your life in the secretaries’ room? Marry some lowly clerk?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll never have to do that,’ said Ursula. ‘Not with her looks. She’ll be able to choose when the time comes. But, Margarethe, you must be sensible about it all. I remember you complained he’s old and ugly. Surely that’s not what’s putting you off?’

  ‘If so, you’re being perfectly silly!’ said Erika. ‘Who cares about age and looks! A woman betters herself by moving up the ladder. Aim for the highest, is what I say, and here in Colmar, you can’t do much better than the Kreisleiter!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that!’ said Klara. ‘There’s a rather dishy major in the Wehrmacht – I met him at the Christmas dance. Major von Haagen. A lot younger and more attractive than Graf Goks.’

  ‘Please, please don’t call him that any more. This has gone beyond a joke. What can I do? I can’t encourage him but how do I put him off without appearing rude?’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’d want to put him off. When you’ve got the biggest fish on the line, why on earth wouldn’t you reel him in?’

  ‘Because-because – what about love? What about falling in love with someone who’s-who’s your other half? The love of your life? The one you dream about at night?’

  Klara laughed. ‘You’ve seen too many romantic films! That sort of thing doesn’t really happen. Not in real life, and certainly not in wartime. I would say grab what you can. I thought you said your big dream was Paris?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well, how on earth do you expect to get there with the love of your life? That could be anyone. It could be Tobias from the supplies store, or Rudolf from Security: small fry. Many a girl’s life has been ruined by choosing love above ambition. One has to be pragmatic in these things, if you have a dream for a better life. For you, that’s Paris. It’s always been Paris.’

  ‘How would encouraging the Kreisleiter get me to Paris?’

  ‘Are you being deliberately obtuse? You silly girl. You reel him in, marry him, and every night you whisper in his ear that he should get himself promoted to a post in Paris. It’s as easy as that.’

  ‘Klara, don’t be silly. Officers don’t just get posted to Paris because their wives say so. They climb the ladder of promotion.’

  ‘Oh, it might take time. But one promotion leads to another and I know for a fact that wives can steer the direction. Clever wives, that is. And our Margarethe is clever enough to do it.’

  ‘You all forgot one thing. It might be possible to marry out of ambition but nobody’s spoken of marriage. Just because the Kreisleiter let his eyes roll over my bosom doesn’t mean he’s looking for a bloody wife. Maybe he just wants to… to get into my knickers.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy. You don’t let him. You lead him on, tease him, make him crazy. And let him know he’s getting nothing till there’s a ring on your finger.’

  ‘These men are all the same,’ Klara agreed. ‘Why would you buy a cow when you can milk it through the fence? You need to play your cards wisely. Let him know you’re a respectable woman, a virgin, and there’s only one way he can have you.’

  ‘You are a virgin, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course! But you’re all missing the point. I don’t want to marry him. Like I said, he’s old and ugly and – and, well, a bit creepy. I don’t like him. Why would I want to marry someone I don’t even like?’

  ‘Yes, he is a bit weird, I’ll give you that. Old and ugly – that’s nothing. Just shut your eyes and keep him sated, that’s all. And anyway, we’ve all agreed he’s not really old. Fifty is old. Around forty is a good age. By then, they’re established in their career and they know how to treat a woman. They’re distinguished.’

  ‘Klara, you sound as if you’re an expert on men!’

  ‘Well, actually, I am. I’ve been around the block once or twice. I know men.’

  ‘The more you all talk about it, the more depressed I feel. I don’t want to encourage him. I don’t want to marry him. I don’t want to go to bed with him. So
what shall I do?’

  The last word came out as a wail. For the first time in her life, Marie-Claire was out of her depth with a man, and the girls weren’t helping with their talk of marriage.

  Ursula patted her on the back.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Just think about it for a couple of days. Do this thing with the married couples – that will at least get you out of the office. Don’t encourage him, but don’t insult him either by rejecting him. Play it by ear. Play with him a little. Keep him at a distance, but not too far. Nothing’s going to happen in the next few weeks anyway. Make sure he moves slowly, and play him cleverly. A man is a man; we have to look out for ourselves, we women. And he’s a really, really good catch. Don’t dismiss him out of hand. Let the idea work on you, and see how things develop.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Gertrud. ‘We shouldn’t be rushing you. It’s just all so exciting.’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Marie-Claire. ‘It’s the most awkward situation I’ve ever been in.’

  All of a sudden a great deep longing for home overcame her. To sit around the kitchen table with Maman and Victoire and maybe even Juliette – Juliette was so very sensible! – and talk things through with women who didn’t have ambition as their primary motive in life. But she had cut all ties with home, and this was her new reality. She sighed.

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘I’m off to bed.’

  ‘Think about what we said!’ Klara cried after her as she slipped out of the door.

  * * *

  Marie-Claire dressed for work the next day in her most dreary clothes, an old brown sweater with a polo neck and a tweed skirt that was unshapely around the hips. She wore a minimum of make-up: just a dab of powder and no lipstick or eyeshadow or rouge. At the breakfast table, the girls were appalled.