His Majesty's Hope (38 page)

The train was crowded—full of new recruits, both men and women, soldiers and civilians, on their way to various training camps. They were loud and their laughter was raucous. She walked the smoke-filled corridors looking for an empty seat, ignoring the occasional whistle or catcall from a man in uniform.

She found an empty compartment and sat down on the dusty velvet seat cushion. Then, with a screaming whistle, the train began to lurch forward, on its way to Scotland.

Maggie startled when the conductor knocked on the door, asking for her ticket, her heart beating wildly, her brain full of images of train journeys in Berlin. But she gave it to him, and he moved on without noticing her trembling hands.

She blinked, as though to clear the memories, took off her
gloves, and rummaged in her handbag for the book she’d brought, one she’d once read in an English class at Wellesley College. She’d memorized the words then, but she hadn’t understood them. But the poem haunted her, and she wanted to give it another chance now. She opened the yellowing pages.

As the urban landscape slipped away into the darkness, she read and reread the words. English class had always scared her. Unlike math, there was never a right answer. Words always seemed slippery, with multiple meanings—impossible to pin down. But now there was an odd relief in that very property.

Although the words of the poem were bleak, she felt a strange comfort in them. Yeats himself, who’d survived the Great War, had felt as she did. Through the years, through the centuries, many, many people had felt the same way.

Absently, her hand went to her side, feeling the outline of the bullet there, just beneath her skin. And she braced herself for whatever lay ahead.

Clara Hess was the new occupant of the Queen’s House at the Tower of London, billeted next door to Stefan Krueger.

With no makeup on her face, her long hair loose, and wearing
her prison-issued jumpsuit, she looked years younger than she had in Berlin, girlish even. She sat at a small wooden desk, writing in a journal.

When the two guards at her door announced that Edmund Hope had arrived to see her, she didn’t seem surprised in the least. When Edmund entered, Clara smiled, a warm and generous smile.

One he did not return. He took off his hat but did not sit down.

“Hello, Edmund,” Clara said, rising and walking over to him, her feet bare on the cold stone floor.

He did not respond but stared, as if unable to fuse together the pictures in his mind of his late wife with the woman in front of him.

“Don’t stare, darling,” she said finally. “Or at least blink once in a while. Otherwise it’s rude.”

Finally, finally, Edmund spoke, almost in a whisper. “There are people here, people in charge, who believe you have turned to our side now, and that you’re willing to work for us. They hold the Machiavellian, and I say cynical, belief that they can use you.”

Clara opened her mouth to reply, but Edmund put up a hand. “You’ll never see her again. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Oh, Edmund,” Clara said, stretching like a cat. “She’ll return. Wait and see.”

Biting back unsaid words, Edmund strode out of the room, calling “Guard!” The door closed behind him, and then she heard the series of locks click, one by one, fifteen in all.

Clara turned back to the window, staring out over the Thames and Tower Bridge, a small smile playing on her lips.

As with
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary
and
Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, His Majesty’s Hope
is not a history, nor is it meant to be—it’s a novel, an imaginary tale.

However, I used many historical sources. Instrumental to writing about Berlin in 1941 were the books
Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery
, by Richard Bassett;
Berlin: The Downfall, 1945
, by Anthony Beevor;
Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II
and
Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror
, by Michael Burleigh;
The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My Grandfather’s Secret Past
, by Martin Davidson;
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape
, by Brian Ladd;
In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
, by Eric Larson;
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
, by Eric Metaxas;
Berlin at War
, by Roger Moorhouse; and
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power
, by Andrew Nagorski.

To research the Children’s Euthanasia Program, also known as Operation Compassionate Death (renamed Aktion T4 after the war), I relied on
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race
, by Edwin Black;
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942
, by Christopher R. Browning;
Eugenics and Other Evils
, by G. K. Chesterton;
Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust
and People with Disabilities
, by Suzanne E. Evans;
The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution
, by Henry Friedlander;
A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen;
The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930–1965
, by Michael Phayer;
Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust
, by Richard Rhodes; and
Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience
, by Gitta Sereny.

In researching the Special Operations Executive’s spies and the XX Committee, I relied on the following:
Secret Agent’s Handbook: The Top Secret Manual of Wartime Weapons, Gadgets, Disguises and Devices
, introduction by Roderick Bailey;
The Insider’s Guide to 150 Spy Sites in London
, by Mark Birdsall, Deborah Plisko, and Peter Thompson;
SOE Agent: Churchill’s Secret Warriors
, by Terry Crowdy;
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII
, by Sarah Helm;
Sisterhood of Spies, The Women of the
OSS, by Elizabeth P. McIntosh;
Agent ZigZag: The True Story of Espionage, Love and Betrayal
, by Ben Macintyre;
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–1945
, by Leo Marks;
Christine: SOE Agent and Churchill’s Favorite Spy
, by Madeleine Masson;
Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs
, by Patrick K. O’Donnell; and
How to Be a Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual
, introduction by Denis Rigden.

To research Bletchley Park, I’m indebted to
Bletchley Park People: Churchill’s Geese That Never Cackled
, by Marion Hill; and
Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park
, edited by F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp. For an overview of code breaking, I cannot speak highly enough of
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
, by Simon Singh.

Many films and documentaries were also helpful with research, including
Operation Barbarossa; Legendary Sin Cities: Berlin;
Leni Riefenstahl’s
Triumph of the Will; Bonhoeffer: Hanged on a Twisted
Cross: The Life, Conviction and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer;
and
The Ninth Day
.

Father Jean Licht is a fictional character but inspired by a real priest, Father Bernhard Lichtenberg. Father Lichtenberg was a German Roman Catholic priest at St. Hedwig’s Cathedial in Berlin during World War II. After Kristallnacht, he was known for praying publicly for the Jews every evening:
I pray for the priests in the concentration camps, for the Jews, for the non-Aryans. What happened yesterday, we know. What will happen tomorrow, we don’t. But what happened today, we lived through. Outside, the Synagogue is burning. It, too, is a house of God
.

Lichtenberg protested against the Aktion T4 by writing a letter to the chief physician of the Reich:
I, as a human being, a Christian, a priest, and a German demand of you, Chief Physician of the Reich, that you answer for the crimes that have been perpetrated at your bidding, and with your consent, and which will call forth the vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German people
. He was arrested, tried, sentenced, and sent to Dachau. He died in transit.

In June 1996, Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Germany, beatified Lichtenberg (meaning that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, he has entered into Heaven and has the capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his name). The process of Bernhard Lichtenberg’s canonization (to declare him officially a saint by the Catholic Church) is still pending. His tomb is in the crypt of St. Hedwig’s in Berlin.

Cardinal Konrad von Preysing and Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen (bishops during the war and elevated to cardinals after) were also real people, who both spoke out against the Nazis’
Aktion T4 program, despite intense pressure to stay silent. Cardinal von Preysing was the Bishop of Berlin during World War II and was an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, saying: “We have fallen into the hands of criminals and fools.” In a homily in March 1941, Bishop von Preysing reaffirmed his opposition to the killing of the sick or infirm.

Cardinal August Graf von Galen was the Bishop of Münster during the war, and an outspoken critic of Hitler and the Nazis. He also spoke publicly against the Aktion T4 program. In his homily on August 3, 1941, von Galen spoke against the deportation and murder of the mentally ill.
These are people, our brothers and sisters
, he said.
Maybe their life is unproductive, but productivity is not a justification for killing
.

It is a fact that Adolf Hitler was booed by Germans at the Hofbräuhaus, by people enraged by what they’d learned from German bishops, such as von Preysing and von Galen. According to Gitta Sereny in
Into That Darkness
, it was the only time Hitler was ever booed. He ostensibly shut the Aktion T4 program down soon after the incident, but it continued in secret, with doctors using starvation and overdoses of medicine instead of gas chambers to kill children. The last of the children were killed in a hospital in Bavaria, three weeks after the Germans had surrendered, in an area already occupied by U.S. forces.

According to evidence presented at the Nuremberg Trials, 275,000 people died because of the Aktion T4 program. It began with killing young children, then expanded to include older children, then the elderly. It also included
Mischlinge
—mixed Jewish and Aryan children.

Hitler gave his approval to the Aktion T4 program in 1939, signing a “euthanasia decree” backdated to September 1, 1939 (the
official outbreak of war), which authorized Drs. Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt to carry out a program of “euthanasia.” The letter states:
Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the competence of certain physicians, designated by name, so that patients who, on the basis of human judgment are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death after a discerning diagnosis
.

In the United States, I am grateful to the traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” which I was able to see in Philadelphia. Curated by Dr. Susan Bachrach, the exhibition shows how the Nazi regime aimed to change the genetic makeup of the population through measures known as “racial hygiene.” I was also able to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and was particularly moved by the exhibition “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda.”

In Berlin, I was privileged to visit the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, the Liebermann-Villa at Wannsee, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, the German Historical Museum, the Holocaust Memorial, and the Topography of Terror museum.

Tiergartenstrasse 4 still exists, but the building that housed the T4 offices was bombed during the war. However, there is a plaque on the sidewalk at the address, reading:

A link between Aktion T4 and the Holocaust has been found by historians. Gerald Reitlinger, in his
Early History of the Final Solution
, notes the direct connection between the personnel and gas chamber technology of the T4 killing centers and the Final Solution, officially put into words at the Wannsee conference in January 1942.

The historian Raul Hilberg, in
The Destruction of the European Jews
, 1985 edition, also noted the connection between the Aktion T4 program and the subsequent annihilation of Jews:
Euthanasia was a conceptual as well as a technological and administrative prefiguration of the final solution in the death camps
.