—
From the beginning of 1923, Germany had been in a constant state of crisis. Our enemies kept demanding more and more reparations, even though we had nothing available for payment. The French used this as an excuse to send in their troops to occupy the Ruhr, our industrial heartland. Hitler denounced the occupation at every rally, and even the normally spineless Weimar government called for a campaign of passive resistance. I don’t think there was a single true German, no matter how meek, who wasn’t incensed by this attempt to humiliate us further.
As of July 1, the exchange rate for one American dollar was 160,000 marks. A month later, it was a million marks. After that I lost track: The numbers were in the billions. People panicked. As soon as they came into any money, they rushed to buy something before their marks became even more worthless. There was rioting in Berlin over the price of bread; all normal commerce was breaking down. Many people raided potato fields. Others frantically sold whatever family treasures they had for suitcases full of money, only to discover that they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough for it to be of much use beyond feeding themselves for a few more days.
One afternoon when I went to meet Sabine, I was startled to see her crying. This was something I had never seen before.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oh, Karl, you have no idea what’s happening in this city. I never thought I’d see anything like it. I was walking down Sendlinger Strasse and saw a totally hysterical woman picking up marks from the gutter. I tried to talk to her, but she was beyond that.
“I asked a shopkeeper who was standing in front of his door what had happened. He said that the woman had dragged a big basket of money and stopped in front of his store. She had seemed nervous but normal. Then she put her basket down, stepped into the almost empty store, glanced around quickly and came back out. But in that brief interval, someone had dumped the mounds of paper money into the gutter and stolen her basket.” Sabine wiped away her tears. “What’s happened to everyone?”
“I know—it’s everywhere.” Then I added: “That’s why we have to fight to set this country right.”
I was far from alone in thinking that way. Hitler kept signing up members to the Nazi Party, thirty-five thousand between January and October alone. The SA also kept attracting recruits, fifteen thousand in the same period. There were so many newcomers in our ranks that I already felt like a veteran. And then there were the women, not young ones but “the varicose vein squad,” as we called them: the old ladies who hung on Hitler’s every word at our meetings and, rumor had it, provided a lot of the party financing. Despite the economic hard times, we still paid for the meeting halls, the uniforms, the flags and the party publications that spread our message. Hitler was a master at loosening the purse strings of the rich, especially women. Some of them even auctioned their expensive jewelry for the cause. The movement was growing stronger and stronger as the nation got weaker and weaker.
I could tell that Hitler was energized by the crisis. He was increasingly impatient to strike, not just against some local group of reds but against the rulers who were responsible for what was happening. I remember his words from a rally in Nuremberg: “I can only take action where my fanatical belief for the entire German people leads me.” Everyone took such declarations as a promise, a promise that we would help him keep.
—
Before dropping off to sleep at night, I often imagined what it would be like to march north and claim the capital for our movement, Auf nach Berlin!— On to Berlin! I’d be returning to my home city as part of a conquering, or liberating, army. I could see my old school friends—Jürgen, Peter and the others—lined up on Pariser Platz as I marched through the Brandenburg Gate. They’d be awed by the rows and rows of brownshirted troops. And wouldn’t they be amazed to see me in the front ranks? And jealous. I wouldn’t lord it over them, just give them a short, dignified wave. And I’d even visit my mother to make sure she was all right. To show her that I had made something of my life, that all her worrying was for nothing. And, of course, I could tell Sabine that I had kept my promise.
In the barracks, we played guessing games about whether the Bavarian leaders would join us or not. Their support could transform our fantasy into reality, and for a while, it looked like the Bavarian leaders might be among those succumbing to Hitler’s powers of persuasion. Bavaria was the only state in Germany that hadn’t banned the Nazi Party at the time, and the authorities often winked at our behavior. They were diligent about arresting leftists who attacked or assassinated their opponents. You had a much better chance of getting away with such behavior if you were with us. “They know we’re all on the same side,” Uwe had explained to me early on. “You don’t have to worry much about the police here.”
For those of us who wanted to believe that the Bavarian authorities were on our side, the signs of tensions between Berlin and Munich were good news. The Weimar government demanded that Bavaria ban our newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, and arrest several officers who sympathized with our cause. But Commissioner von Kahr, the man who had recently been granted broad powers by the Bavarian government to keep control over the situation, was a German nationalist. He wasn’t about to accept orders from a government he hated as much as we did. Nor was General von Lossow, the commander of the army in Bavaria. Both refused to carry out the orders from Berlin. This was what fueled the talk that we might soon be marching north together.
Uwe didn’t believe it, though. “We’re going to have to conquer Munich before we can seriously think about taking Berlin,” he warned.
Stefan, who was as eager to get back to Berlin as I was, tried to argue, but Uwe wouldn’t budge. “Remember, it was von Kahr who banned some of our meetings.”
“Yes, but only for a while,” Stefan pointed out. “It wasn’t as if he was serious about closing us down.”
“I don’t trust them or anybody here,” Uwe insisted. “Not von Kahr, not von Lossow, not that von Seisser,” he added, referring to the police chief who was another key figure in Bavaria. He was equally dismissive of the Kampfbund, the right-wing parties who should have been our allies. “Some of them just want to make Bavaria an independent state. Instead of making us the rulers of a strong and proud Germany, they’d break the country apart.”
At the rallies that I helped guard, Hitler sounded increasingly angry with the Bavarian leaders, especially after they sent emissaries to Berlin and seemed to be losing their enthusiasm for challenging the government. He confirmed Uwe’s skepticism. “The halfhearted and the lukewarm have remained the curse of Germany,” Hitler shouted. His attacks were directed at the Weimar government—or the Versailles government, as he always called it—but we realized they were aimed at Munich as well.
We sensed we were on the brink of some momentous action or huge letdown. Hitler, I believed, wouldn’t permit the latter. We had come too far and fought too hard to let everything unravel now. Something had to happen, I was convinced. Something very big.
—
I didn’t see Sabine as often as before. As the tensions in the city and the country mounted, we were frequently kept on alert several days at a time, without permission to leave the barracks except for official duties. Falling asleep in my bunk at night, I missed her. I wanted to reach out and draw her to me, to feel her body against mine. Occasionally when I was half asleep, her image would blur and then change altogether. I found myself envisaging someone I had seen on the street or in a shop, a girl I didn’t know at all. Or one of the women who would show up at the beer halls and drink with the likes of Uwe or Stefan and then disappear with them for an hour or so. They’d boast about those escapades in the barracks later, the way Jürgen did about Ulrike back in Berlin. I’d laugh with the others, but it was a forced laugh. I still couldn’t imagine going with such women: They scared me. But they were also tempting, and I couldn’t block them out of my mind, either.
All of which left me feeling sheepish the next time I saw Sabine. She
embraced me so trustingly, holding nothing back. And there I was fresh from some sordid fantasy, even if I hadn’t acted upon it. When we were together, those thoughts evaporated quickly; she was too real a presence to allow for fantasy substitutes, at least in those days.
On a Tuesday morning in early October, I was given permission to leave the barracks until the evening. I had stood guard at a big meeting the night before, and I had no particular duties that day. So I decided to surprise Sabine at work, then walk around the city until she got off and we could head back to her apartment. It had been about a week since I saw her last, which seemed like forever. Just the thought of her rushing into my arms made me slightly giddy.
The weather had turned cool, and the path I used to cut across the English Gardens was already strewn with yellow leaves. As I left the park, I nearly tripped over a small furry object that came rolling out of a pile of leaves. An older man sitting on a tattered blanket quickly snatched it back, and it was then I saw that he was keeping tabs on a whole litter of puppies, all of them a mangy brown. He still had the puppy I had narrowly avoided, grasping him casually in a large, gnarled hand from which a cigarette protruded from the other side.
“Hey, want one?” he asked, holding the squirming puppy up higher. “A fine specimen—almost a purebred. And you can get him cheap.”
I laughed. “A purebred what?”
“Well, since you’re obviously royalty, the likes of him is too lowly for you.” The man turned his back on me and began to gather up the puppies in the blanket.
“Listen,” I said, “sorry. I’m broke. And I don’t have anywhere to keep one.”
The man didn’t seem to hear. I watched him walk down a street that led away from the park to a corner where he put down his blanket again and let the puppies play so passersby would see them.
I didn’t stick around to see if he had any luck. I headed quickly toward the doctor’s office. I paused before I composed myself and knocked. When the door opened, I wanted to grab Sabine and kiss her right there, even if she had always warned me against any such displays near her patients or her boss. This had been one of our longest separations, and I figured she’d forgive me. Just this once, anyway.
But when the door opened, I found myself facing a heavyset nurse with a broad, flat face fixed in what looked like a permanent angry scowl.
“What do you want?”
I found it hard to get an answer out.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Is Sabine here?” I asked, trying to clear the frog in my throat.
“No, she isn’t. Who’s asking?”
“I’m Karl Naumann.”
Her face softened ever so slightly. “Oh, yes, Karl. She said if you dropped by to tell you what happened. You see, her grandmother died. And the funeral is today, or was today. It’s probably over by now. She won’t be back at work until tomorrow.”
“I see,” I said, turning away. “Thanks.”
I walked off, heading in the direction of Sabine’s apartment. How would she feel, I wondered, all alone in that place. Sure, it had been hard to care for her, but her grandmother had been the only family she had left. I had known enough to realize they had been very close.
After a few steps, I stopped. I turned around and headed back toward the English Gardens. At the corner where I had last seen him, the old man with the puppies was still there. A little girl with frizzy blond hair was playing with one. She pleaded for her mother to buy him, but the woman yanked her away. “Would you want me to starve your little brother so that you can have a pet?” she scolded. The girl’s eyes filled with tears as she looked back at the puppy before they disappeared down the street.
“Would you sell me one of them?” I asked, stepping up to the man.
He looked at me with guarded eyes. “For what? You said you had no money.”
I emptied my pockets of a few million marks and held them out. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“That might be enough to buy me a roll,” he said contemptuously.
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t have anymore. And I need a puppy badly—for my girlfriend. I just found out her grandmother died, and she has no one else.”
The man turned away, looking up and down the street. A few people were walking by, but no one was paying any attention to his puppies.
“All right,” he said. “At least it’s one roll. And I’ll probably have to drown them anyway. Certainly can’t feed them.”
I was delighted. “Thanks, you’ve really helped me out.” I handed him the money and scooped up the closest puppy. “Boy or girl?”
“A boy,” he replied. “Can’t you see?”
“Oh, yeah.” I laughed. “By the way, what kind of dogs are these?”
The old man shrugged. “Hell if I know. I found them yesterday abandoned at a garbage dump.”
The puppy snuggled up on my chest as I walked quickly back in the direction of Sabine’s apartment. It was a long walk, and he squirmed only occasionally. But just before I reached Sabine’s building, I felt a trickle of moisture on my shirt. I pulled the puppy away and looked down at the wet spot. “Now look what you’ve done,” I admonished him. He looked back with his innocent brown eyes, and I felt my face break into a broad grin.
Sabine wasn’t home yet, so I sat on the top stair and let the dog explore the small landing. I put my head down and must have dozed off. The next thing I remember is Sabine shaking my shoulder gently. “Karl, Karl, what’s this?” she asked. She was holding the puppy and looking at him with puffy red eyes that were filling up with tears.
“I thought you’d like some company. I mean, your grandmother, I’m sorry, I really am. I bought him on my way here.”
“Come,” she said, pulling me up with one hand and still holding the puppy with the other. As we stepped into her apartment, she threw her free arm around my neck and was both laughing and crying. “You’re crazy. How am I supposed to care for a dog?” she said. “I love him already. God, I’ll miss her.”
“I know,” I said, holding her tightly. “I know.”
We talked for hours that afternoon; rather, Sabine did most of the talking while I listened and stroked her face and arms or played with the puppy. She talked about her parents, her grandmother, even told stories she had heard about her grandfather, who died before she was born. I’ve never been good about listening to family stories, but I let them wash over me, hearing enough to realize how much warmer a family this must have been than mine ever was. But it wasn’t until she was back on the subject of her grandmother that I abruptly started to focus.
“You know, she heard us all those times,” Sabine was saying.
“What, you mean when—”
“Yes, dummy. She pretended not to, but she did.”
“You told me she was nearly deaf.”
“Her hearing wasn’t good, but it was good enough. A curtain across the room hardly qualifies as a major sound barrier.”
I was angry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And if I had, what would we have done? She didn’t admit she heard everything exactly, but she dropped enough hints. You know what she said? ‘Bravo child, life is short. I don’t want to prevent you from enjoying as much of it as you can.’ Then she told me how she and Grandfather used to do it in the apartment they shared with her mother because they didn’t have a place of their own for a long time after they were married. ‘Some things never change,’ she said. ‘It’s life.’ ”
I thought about those blue eyes that had sparkled in the old woman’s tired face, and I no longer felt any resentment. “She was a good woman, a very good woman.”
I picked up the puppy and let him dangle over my head as I lay back on the bed. Sabine was sitting on its edge, her hands cupping her face.
“But I still feel like an idiot,” I said.
Sabine turned around and grinned. “So do I. Remember the time that you put . . .”
“Stop, I don’t want to hear about it,” I said beating my
chest with my free hand in mock agony. “Don’t do this to me.”
I put the puppy back down on the floor, reached for her shoulders and pulled her back until she was lying beside me again. At first she was very still. Then she kissed me, long and insistently. I forgot all about the dog.
—
I saw Sabine only once more that October, late in the month. We were almost always on alert, and the barracks were buzzing more than ever with rumors that Hitler was planning a major operation soon. When I explained to Sabine that I might not be able to see her for quite a while, that we were likely to be involved in a showdown of some sort, she pleaded with me to quit the SA and find a normal job.
“Quit now, when they need us most?” I retorted. “No way.”
Sabine didn’t say anything more, but I knew she was trying hard not to show how worried she was. For the first time, I detected a bit of anger or disappointment, although that, too, was suppressed.
Back in the barracks, I quickly convinced myself that I had exaggerated whatever Sabine was feeling. Besides, there was too much else to think about. If we had been expecting something for a long time, by early November there was little doubt. Our officers kept drilling us, and we remained on full alert without any passes. We were supposed to be ready to move out at any time.
On November 8 the order came. We donned our uniforms, checked to make sure our pistols were loaded and lined up in front of our barracks. Winter had arrived early. Snow was already falling in the hills just outside Munich. The city air was cold and damp; I shuddered as I stood at attention. Our orders were to accompany Hitler to the Bürgerbräukeller, the beer hall where the triumvirate of von Kahr, von Lossow and von Seisser were addressing their supporters that evening. We had heard that Hitler was trying to convince them to join him in a rebellion against the national government, but so far he hadn’t succeeded. This, we realized, could be the decisive confrontation.
Last Stop Vienna Page 7
