Armageddon (49 page)

Such were things! In the old days, girls like her loved for love and adventure. The Paris Cabaret rocked with laughter and not this dirge-like sentimentality. Beautiful women could not swim the treacherous channel today ... they had to crash into the rocks.

But ... without me, he rationalized, they would be prowling the streets and making love in rubble piles for worthless occupation currency.

A note was handed him. It was a lucky night. A case of excellent champagne was being offered for five women to come to the French officers’ billet.

After the first week Hildegaard seemed most annoyed by her lack of guilt. Moreover, she had an insatiable desire to return. She enjoyed the game, enjoyed withholding, hated the lust of the men.

They all fell into one of several categories, which Elke had defined, but there was a basic reaction by all of them. Appeal to his vanity, feign interest in his babbling, let him act possessive, laugh at his idiotic jokes, touch him, watch the evening grow, watch his anticipation rise. The drive through darkened streets to billets they had requisitioned. In the final act, Hilde played out a role of demure innocence that brought them to a passionate pitch.

She had never loved a man in her life and what she was forced to do came out in a hatred in the dark. She was drawn to make them plead for her body, and when she submitted she went berserk until the man collapsed. As he lay moaning, she was always awake with the twinge of victory. She was the ultimate whore that every man craves in woman, one who could run the gamut from innocence to savage lover.

At the Paris Cabaret they said here was one girl who made love and loved it. Fritz Stumpf alone seemed to realize that she was, in truth, committing murder through the sex act. He saw that she stuck close to Elke, enjoyed Elke’s morbid humor, which condemned their lives.

Stumpf became suspicious when Hilde curtly told him one day she would accept only two dates a week. This could only mean one of two things. Either she had a steady lover or was making her own arrangements. He had Hippold watch her and was puzzled to learn that she rarely left her room on the days she did not come to the Paris Cabaret.

Hilde’s motives were simple. On those nights she worked, she wore herself into exhaustion. She cared too much for her beauty to use it up. In addition, she was earning more in two nights than most of the others in an entire week.

She was determined to come out of the experience whole. Yet, exposure brought risks. She realized that Elke was a Lesbian with designs on her; the cool patience and mystery of Fritz Stumpf frightened her... she could run into roughness and ugliness. One had to fight against slipping and staying out of serious trouble.

One night, as it comes to all in that ancient trade, Hilde found herself in a desperate situation. Her date, an Ami officer, grew quite drunk. As he did, his remarks about Germans became more vicious. He was a Jewish boy, and in bed his hatred of himself and of her erupted and he beat her up.

Her father and mother apparently accepted the story that she was accosted by Russian soldiers on the street, but Ernestine knew otherwise.

She tended Hilde day and night and watched her sister sink into a deep wordless depression on the realization that there was no coming out whole.

Ernestine was awakened by Hilde’s sobbing. “The scar on my breast won’t ever go away.”

Ernestine was glad to hear Hilde’s first words since the incident. “Those are not the only scars. You cannot see the others, Hilde, but they are there and they may not go away either.”

“Don’t!”

“We must talk, Hilde. We used to talk to each other. We were so close.”

“My breast used to be perfect ... those Russian beasts!”

“
I know all about Hilde Diehl and the Paris Cabaret,” Ernestine said abruptly.

Hilde buried her face in the pillow. “You spied on me!”

“I am your sister.”

She forced Hilde to turn over and dried her tears and stroked her hair. “Oh, Erna! I am so terribly confused. What has happened to us?”

“It is hard to realize but there will be a tomorrow someday without this nightmare.”

“There is not tomorrow here in Berlin,” Hilde said.

“We have to live to believe there is. But every time you enter that place you destroy your tomorrow. I have sat here night after night waiting for you to come home and I say to myself ... how have I failed Hilde? How can I make her understand?”

“You have always been too good, Erna. You have always suffered for others. When we were little ... you would take the blame when Gerd and I were naughty. I used to think ... I can be a bad girl, Ernestine will pay for me being bad.”

“Shhh.”

“You are too good for all of us. But all your goodness cannot help here. Look at this place. I walk there at night and I see that street ... and I know ... the linden trees will never bloom again.”

“Oh no. In a little time Gerd and our boys will come home. You must not be tainted then, Hilde.”

Hildegaard laughed bitterly. “A German boy? Exist in this rat hole? I will find an Ami officer who will marry me and take me to America.”

“Hilde, Hilde, when will you stop dreaming?”

“It is you who is the dreamer, Erna. What else is there in this rotten world our dear father made for us?”

“Don’t speak against father.”

“No ... don’t speak against father,” Hilde mumbled. “But who made them hate us? Don’t you know their hatred of our German souls? Don’t you know I feel that hatred from all of them? Our beloved father and our beloved fatherland brought us to this.”

Chapter Twelve

A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
Kommandatura worked with the Germans to update the 1920 Constitution of the city. The Berlin Assembly, the lawmakers, would consist of 130 members voted from the twenty boroughs.

The Assembly, in turn, would select an Oberburgermeister and two deputy mayors to be approved by the Kommandatura.

The Magistrat, the executive branch, held eighteen civic departments running the functions of police, transportation, welfare, education, and the like.

As the Constitution neared completion it would signal a city-wide election for a new Assembly.

This election was pondered broadly by the commissars, for the Communist Party in Austria had been soundly beaten in an open election and they were not looking forward to a repetition in Berlin.

Rudi Wöhlman felt that, with his control of the labor union and the propaganda apparatus, and with Communists already imbedded in the government, a victory was sure. Furthermore, the People’s Proletariat Party were the true anti-Fascists and would be accepted as the way to redemption by choice of the German people.

Heinrich Hirsch was not so certain. The opposition Democrats had come out of the war the strongest and by sheer weight of numbers had the most people working in the Magistrat and could control the new Assembly. Some of the Democrats could be frightened, bought, bent, terrorized ... but not Ulrich Falkenstein. How deeply did Falkenstein’s influence run with the people?

As both Constitution and election grew imminent, V. V. Azov received instructions from the planners in Moscow:
UNIFY ALL POLITICAL PARTIES IN BERLIN INTO A SINGLE ANTI-FASCIST FRONT WITHOUT DELAY.

They were calling for a textbook maneuver to swallow the other parties.

There were three free parties in Berlin. The Christian Party was a religious front, Catholic-dominated. Its main strength was in western Germany along the Rhine, and in Bavaria.

The smallest of the parties was the Conservatives, who represented right-of-center businessmen’s ideology.

Ulrich Falkenstein’s Democrats were the plum and the target. Berlin was traditionally a labor city and the Democrats their political arm; Berlin, furthermore, was the Democratic stronghold of Germany.

Wöhlman decided to lop off the Democrats first, leaving the other opposition stripped. A meeting between the two executive committees was arranged in the office of Berthold Hollweg, the appointed Democratic Oberburgermeister who was also on the Democrat’s Executive. Hollweg was weak, but still earned a good name and the Democratic tag. It was widely known that the Communists who flanked him—Heinz Eck, first deputy, and Adolph Schatz, president of police—held the true power of his office.

The third member of the Democratic Executive was Hanna Kirchner, a grandmother and the leading woman politician in all of Germany. She had fled to Sweden early in the Nazi era, kept a liaison with the first cousins of the German Democrats, the British Labor Party, and the Social Democrats around Europe. During the war she worked for the International Red Cross.

The Communist/People’s Proletariat Executive consisted of Rudi Wöhlman, Heinrich Hirsch, Deputy Mayor Heinz Eck. The fourth man was there for no other purpose than a naked display of police terror. He was Adolph Schatz.

“Comrades,” Rudi Wöhlman said, smiling his toothy smile to all sides of the conference table, “we have requested this meeting to put forth a proposal which we know will benefit Berlin and help clarify the political confusion. We are now pulling in separate directions. Soon, a new Constitution will be granted. It is time for us Berliners to work together to put this city on its feet.”

Berliners, indeed, Falkenstein thought. None of the four Communists remembered Berlin, they had been in Russia so long.

“It is our proposal that we form a single political group ... one great anti-Fascist front. With such solidarity and strength, the Nazi elements will never again be able to rise and destroy the German people.”

So that was it! It was so transparent, Ulrich had all he could do to keep a straight face as Hirsch and Eck added their voices. When they were done, Ulrich quickly averted an open discussion. “We will talk about it and reach you,” he said.

The three remained after the Communists left.

“It is an outrageous attempt to swallow us up,” Hanna Kirchner said, “under a guise of unity. Oh, certainly, they’ll put us in a few posts as window dressing.”

“Why must we suspect the worst,” Hollweg said.

“Because this is the worst,” Ulrich answered.

“But what can we do to stop it?” Hollweg retorted. “You know the pressure we are going to come under. We are not strong enough to stand against the Russians and the Americans are not going to lift a finger in our behalf.”

Berthold Hollweg had come out of a shack on the Teltow Canal to assume an important role in the rebirth of the Democratic Party. Much of his old iron had been taken by the humiliations of the Nazi years, but still Ulrich knew that he spoke truth.

When Ulrich and Hanna left, Heinz Eck, the deputy mayor, came to his office.

“It was a good meeting,” Eck said. “I have a feeling you see the merit of the plan.”

The gambit had begun. Hollweg knew they were to be singled out now and brought under pressure. Heinz Eck was an automatic functionary, a robot—a man with neither mind nor soul.

“It would be comforting for us to know you intend to support the anti-Fascist front,” he pressed.

“I must think it over carefully.”

“By all means, examine all aspects. Only then can you realize it is the only way for Berlin. How else are we to build? How else can we stop the rebirth of Nazism which the West fosters in our midst. May I say more? We in the People’s Proletariat Party have long recognized you as the true strength of the Democrats.”

A detestable lie, Hollweg thought. I am a relic of the past, living on past glory.

“Speaking with frankness, Comrade Hollweg, we would support your candidacy as Oberburgermeister again in the election.”

No doubt with you as my first deputy, Hollweg thought. “A fair price for services,” he mumbled.

“Can we say that we can depend on you?”

“I said, I would think it over.”

Immediately following the meeting the Action Squads, supported by the political section of Schatz’s police, began to single out Democrats to “convince” them of the merit of the unity plan. Those who were “convinced” set up a demand for an open meeting of delegates to vote in the form of a referendum.

Ulrich and Hanna knew that such an open meeting staged in the Russian Sector of the city would put a rubber stamp on the anti-Fascist front and be the death warrant of the Democrats.

Neither the Christian nor Conservative parties were in a position to do anything but follow the Democrats. They were too weak by themselves and Wöhlman had maneuvered to lop them off one at a time.

When Berthold Hollweg announced he supported the open meeting, Ulrich knew he was being brought under heavy, heavy pressure. He also knew he was out of maneuvering room.

Sean greeted Falkenstein at American Headquarters. Each made half-hearted apologies for not seeing more of the other since they had been in Berlin.

“We have followed your work with great interest. You’ve done a hell of a job of putting the Democratic Party together.”

“Which may all prove in vain,” Ulrich answered. “We always spoke to each other straight-out in Rombaden, Major O’Sullivan.”

“Shoot.”

“The Communists are trying to force us into a political union. It is an old trick.”

“We know all about it,” Sean said.

“Good. Now, what do you intend to do?”

“Nothing.”

“I have always known the Americans are naive.” He held up his hand to stop a retort. “How long do you expect the free parties to survive?”

“Officially, we have to consider this a German family affair.”

“Nonsense. The Communists are no more German than you are. They are men with German names being backed up by Russians guns. How do you conclude it is a German affair?”

“Herr Falkenstein, freedom is not something that can be presented to you, compliments of America, in a neatly wrapped package.”

“Your country has never been exposed to the ugly facts of life we face.”

“I challenge that, Herr Falkenstein. We won our spurs in a bloody Civil War and we have fought the German people twice in a lifetime because of ideas.”

“Do you really think then that you can stay here and keep from getting your hands dirty? I am telling you how this works. I have seen the terror before and it is all coming back. The Action Squads used to be called Brownshirts and there is no difference, sir, between the NKVD and the Gestapo. They will single out weak men, break their spirit, convert them. The slogans and speeches are all the same. You Americans have to know there are Germans here who speak for the West and you cannot conveniently turn your backs on us.”