The Unlikely Allies (13 page)

“Thank you, Father.”

It had been one of the greatest moments of General
Grüber’s life when he had discovered that Derek had performed not just as an average soldier but had gone beyond the call of duty to rescue his commanding officer. He tried not to show it, but those who served under him were well aware of his pleasure in his son’s action.

Derek waited until the company was dismissed. He saw his father standing beside the general’s staff, still watching him. He nodded, then left. When he got to his room, he pulled off his jacket and hung it up carefully, and going to the desk, he opened the drawer and picked up the letter he had received from Rachel—the only one he had received since he had been in Spain.

Derek reread the letter, which was three pages long, although he had committed it to memory. When he got to the last page, he slowed down and read it carefully.

Derek folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and returned
it to the drawer. He took out the long letter to Rachel that he had been working on earlier when he’d had to leave for the ceremony. Now he picked up where he left off.

Even as he wrote this, Derek felt uneasy. No one knew what Adolf Hitler would do. He had attacked other nations, and the talk at General Headquarters was that Czechoslovakia was on the führer’s agenda. He continued writing:

He closed the letter, pledging his love as always, and then sealed it.

Later that day he was going to try to mail it, but he encountered his father, who stopped him.

After Derek saluted him, his father said, “Big things are brewing. I’ve just gotten orders to go home with all my staff. We’ll be leaving at once.”

“That’s good news, sir.”

Derek felt the letter in his pocket, and touching it, he thought,
I may get to see Rachel before this letter can get there. That would be all I could ask. The best thing I could think of!

CHAPTER TEN

The Net Tightens

A faint blue haze of cigar smoke filled the room as four men sat around an ornate walnut table. General Wilhelm Grüber ignored the glass of brandy in front of him, for he was more interested in the man who sat across from him than in drinking.

It was his third meeting with Adolf Hitler, and as always, Grüber was mesmerized by the man who had led Germany out of a crushing depression to become a world power. To Hitler’s left sat Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and to his right Hermann Göring, minister of the economy.

As Hitler exchanged small talk with the others, Grüber allowed his gaze to rest upon Himmler, an ex-police chief from Munich. Heinrich Himmler was anything but an inspiring figure. He was an awkward man, regarded as a meddling but generally well-meaning fussbudget before his rise to power. He wore a heavy coat that overwhelmed his spare frame, emphasizing his narrow shoulders and thin chest. Himmler’s pinched face with its modest mustache and thick round glasses displayed none of the fervor of a revolutionary. As usual, he wore an air of confusion and anxiety.

He may look like nothing, but he’s a carnivore.
Grüber knew the violence that lay beneath the mild manner of Himmler and was repelled by the cruelty of the man.

He shifted his gaze to the bulky figure of Hermann Göring. He was not the slim figure he had been while shooting down enough planes in the Great War to make him an ace. His
body had thickened, his face had rounded, and rumors were circulating that he was a cocaine addict. He served as commander of the German infantry and was given to ornate ceremonies and fancy uniforms. There was something of a clown in him, but like Himmler, he was a deadly man and totally dedicated to his master, Adolf Hitler.

“Well, my führer,” Göring started, “we have come a long way.” He picked up his glass of brandy and drank it, his broad face beaming. “I think often of the days after the Great War.”

“They humiliated Germany!” Hitler stated harshly, his eyes burning. Indeed, postwar Germany had been transformed into an economic wreck by the terms imposed at Versailles. The treaty made there had pared German territories down to the bone. Inflation had made the reichsmark absolutely worthless, so much so that women used the paper money to start their fires. The German people had felt ashamed and believed their punishment was undeserved. Hitler had fed upon their misery and desire to hold their heads up. He had screamed, “You are humiliated! You are degraded! Germany is a sick nation!” And he always blamed everything on people he called Jewish Communists.

Grüber knew that Hitler was basically a shy man and an awkward speaker. Grüber was aware that Hitler rehearsed long hours to bring the impact and impression of spontaneity to his speeches. Grüber thought it strange that now at the crest of his power, Hitler was still nervous. He twitched in his chair and wrung his hands together in an agonizing gesture as he spoke. But when he addressed masses of people, all this changed. He learned artfully honed gesticulations, imparting such force to his words that they became a raging torrent.

Hitler was not imposing physically. His small square mustache was his most noted feature. His straight brown hair was often unruly and sometimes fell over his forehead. By no stretch of the imagination could he be called handsome. His eyes, however, could be as powerful and penetrating as a bolt
of lightning. And even now, in the privacy of this secluded room, power seemed to emanate from him.

“All that is past,” Himmler said nervously. “Need we speak of it?”

“You are right, Heinrich. We have risen out of the ashes, and now we must think of Germany.” He looked down at his hands, and when he raised his eyes, they seemed to burn with a hidden fire. “We must talk of
Lebensraum.
” The word, which meant simply
living room,
had become the key to Hitler’s entire strategy. He had insisted that Germany be fenced in on all sides, so there was no room for growth of any kind. He had screamed at the masses at Nuremberg and other huge gatherings, “Germany must have room to grow to its full potential!”

Grüber listened as Hitler spoke erratically of his plans, as he often did. Obviously he intended to enlarge Germany’s territory. In order to do this, he would have to occupy the nations that surrounded Germany. After Hitler mentioned Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Austria as being rightful German territory, Grüber spoke for the first time.

“And what about England, my führer?”

“They are of the Aryan race. If they will be reasonable, we will not invade them.”

They all knew that Hitler admired the English. None of them really understood why, but Himmler and Göring simply accepted Hitler’s dictum that Germans were the master race and all other races were inferior. Yet somehow he was able, in his thinking, to include England under that general umbrella. Göring continued to drink his brandy, and his face grew flushed. Finally he said, “We need to talk about Norway. I think we must have that territory, my führer.”

Hitler shook his head. “I would prefer for them to remain neutral.”

Göring rarely argued with his master, but he had obviously spent some time thinking about this. “We need Swedish iron
for our war machines. We can only get it by passing through Norway. They can shut us down anytime they choose.”

“Germany must have her day in the sun!” Hitler responded harshly. “The master race cannot be stopped by a tiny country like Norway.”

Göring leaned forward. “Then you would not absolutely rule out occupying Norway.”

“No. But it will be a last resort. Now, let the plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia be set in motion.”

Himmler shook his head slightly and protested. “There will be trouble over that with England and France.”

“They are weak! We Germans are strong. We will take what must be ours so that Germany will one day be the premier nation on the planet!”

The meeting ended abruptly, but Hitler took time to come around and shake the hand of Wilhelm Grüber. He was charming when he chose to show it. He could be kind to dogs and peasants, could win their sympathies and their admiration. Now his grip was firm as he said, “We shall count on you, General Grüber, to help fulfill the destiny of Germany.”

“I know my duty as a soldier, my führer.”

“Good. You will receive your orders shortly.”

Grüber left the room, not stopping to speak to Göring or Himmler. A strange thought crossed his mind. He knew that Himmler had developed techniques for racial selection, dreaming up pseudoscientific tests of the ideal Aryan look. The final product was a tall, strong, and handsome people with fair hair, not unlike most Germans. But none of the three men who led Germany fit Himmler’s own criteria for what an ideal German should be. Göring was fat and round-faced, a drug addict. Hitler was not even a German but an Austrian—and certainly did not look like the fair-haired, blue-eyed, tall, strong master race that Himmler envisioned. Himmler himself looked more like a bank clerk than anything else.

The thought discouraged Grüber, and as he left, he thought about Himmler’s pronouncement that it was the patriotic
duty of every man in the SS to sire at least four children. He had flatly ordered all SS men to impregnate their wives, and when possible, to serve as “conception assistants” to childless women age thirty or older. It was not the sort of world Grüber could admire, but he was a faithful German and had given his life to the military. He knew better than to question anything that went on with these three men.

****

As Derek stepped outside headquarters, the brisk March wind bit at his face. It had been a cold, hard winter, and he imagined how welcome spring would be. But he soon became gloomy once again as he thought back to his interview with his superior officer, Major Hinton. Derek had gone in to see if his request for leave had been approved, but Major Hinton had smiled and said, “These things take time, Lieutenant. You must be patient.”

Now as Derek moved along the sidewalk, he struggled not to feel angry with his father. When Hinton had first refused his request, he had thought,
It’s my father. He’s behind this.
He and his father had not spoken about Rachel Mindel since their first conversation about her, but the subject lay like a wall between them, almost physical in its enormity.

As Derek continued along the sidewalk, he passed a group of six SS men, one of them a major. This in itself was not unusual, but there were two civilians framed within the group, and both of them had placards with writing hung about their necks.

The woman was tall with blond hair and blue eyes. The man was short with protruding ears. He wore a gray suit and a neat blue bow tie, and misery was written across his face. Derek read the sign on the woman, which said, “At this place I am the greatest swine: I take Jews and make them mine.” The man’s sign said, “As a Jewish boy, I always take German girls up to my room!”

Instantly Derek understood that these two had violated the
Nazi doctrine forbidding sexual intercourse between Jews and Gentiles. He watched as the SS men shoved them so that they almost stumbled and jeered at them, cursing and laughing. Other soldiers they passed took up the catcalls, but Derek was disgusted. He tried to put the scene out of his mind but could not help wondering what would happen to the two. He suspected that they would be sent to concentration camps. This thought troubled him so deeply that his face assumed an iron cast. He had never been to one of the camps, but he had heard rumors about the inhumanities that went on there. Derek was a sensitive man, but clearly the German leadership was not. They seemed to care nothing about snuffing out the human spirit in the most degrading way possible.

When he reached his quarters, he picked up a pen and began writing a letter, dating it March 12, 1938.

He wrote page after page before he had said everything he wanted to say.