The War That Came Early: West and East (64 page)

“I’m doing it,” the panzer driver replied, and matched action to word. Theo knew what
he
thought of the
Führer
’s military judgment (among other things). He would have been very surprised if Adi Stoss didn’t share his views: Adi probably had stronger reasons for such opinions than he did himself.

None of which would matter if the Ivans set this perambulating coffin on fire. As it did so often, the local got in the way of the general. Once they freed themselves from this mess, Theo could worry about other things. Once they did … If they did … He wished the damned panzer would go faster.

SARAH GOLDMAN HAD GOT USED
to the
Gestapo
and the rest of the SS in Münster. Even when the blackshirts weren’t harassing her or her family, she had a feel for how often she’d see them. They’d become a familiar if unwelcome part of the local fauna, like rats or cockroaches. The comparison wasn’t hers: it came from her father in a low voice when they were both out on the street and away from any likely microphones. Once she heard it, she couldn’t get it out of her mind; it fit too well.

When she started noticing far more SS uniforms than usual, alarm filled her. One possible—even probable—reason for a swarm of SS men was a pogrom.

To her surprise, Father didn’t seem especially worried. “You may be
right, of course,” Samuel Goldman said, “but they already had more people than they needed if that’s what they’ve got in mind. Importing more would be like running over a kitten with a panzer.”

Checkpoints sprang up on every other street corner. “Your papers!” a blackshirt barked at Sarah, holding out his hand.

Gulping, she gave them to him. “Here—here you are.”

He looked them over, then returned them. His lip curled; that seemed a job requirement when Sarah dealt with blackshirts. But she’d heard plenty of his colleagues who sounded nastier than he did when he asked, “You are a native of Münster? You have lived here your whole life?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she answered.

“All right, then. We don’t expect trouble tonight from your kind. Pass on,” the SS man said. He glowered at the gray-haired man behind her. “Your papers!”

Pass on Sarah did. She wanted to scratch her head. Only the fear that the SS men at the checkpoint would find the gesture suspicious made her hold back. She hurried home to help her mother peel potatoes and turnips … and to pass on the curious news.

“They could have given you a worse time, but they didn’t?” Hanna Goldman sounded as if she had trouble believing her ears. Sarah understood that. If her mother had told her the same thing, she too would have had trouble believing it. After a long pause for thought, Mother went on, “I wonder what they’re up to.”

“Beats me,” Sarah said. Noise from the usually quiet street in front of the house made them both stop peeling and hurry out to the living room to see what was going on. Teams of horses drew two enormous antiaircraft guns down the street. The men who served the guns followed in a horse-drawn wagon (but one with modern rubber tires, or it would have been much noisier). Like the fellows in charge of the gun teams, they wore SS black.

“Well, I don’t know what’s going on, either,” Hanna Goldman said. “I wonder whether anyone does these days.” That made more sense to Sarah than anything she’d heard outside the house lately.

When Father got home, he had no doubts. He seldom did. He wasn’t
always right, but he was almost always sure. “Somebody important must be making a speech tonight,” he declared. “Göring? Goebbels? Hess? Any one of them is possible, but my money’s on Hitler.”

“Ah,” Sarah said. She didn’t
know
if he had things straight, but her money was that he did. His explanation cleared up why Münster was full of blackshirts: they were here to protect Somebody Important from the
Wehrmacht …
and, perhaps incidentally, from the British and French. She told her father about the antiaircraft guns and their SS crews.

He nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. If Somebody Important starts talking in Berlin or Dresden or Breslau, the Western democracies can’t do anything about it—even if the Russians might. But here? Once they know a big
Bonz
is talking, they can put planes in the air and drop their bombs before he’s finished.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “That’s what you get for letting your speeches run long. An abrupt way to edit, but no doubt sincere.”

Sarah kissed him on his stubbly cheek. “You’re quite mad,” she said affectionately.

“Well, I do try.” Father looked pleased with himself.

He turned on the radio. The music that poured out of it would have needed to be more interesting to sound boring. Sarah thought the orchestra must have been dripped in treacle. When the tune ended, an announcer spoke in awed tones: “Tonight, the
Führer
addresses the German
Volk
and the German
Reich
from Münster!”

Father looked even more pleased with himself, almost indecently so. He’d not only figured out what was going on, he’d had the timing down to a T. Even a clever man, which Samuel Goldman was, didn’t get to seem so clever very often. Sarah imagined airmen in flight suits jumping into airplanes with roundels of blue-white-red or red-white-blue and roaring off into the night toward her home town.

Stormy applause greeted the
Führer
. She wondered where exactly he was. Did Nazi bigwigs fill the concert hall? Or was he speaking at the stadium? Sudden tears stung her eyes. Saul had played there. He’d won cheers for his skill, if not cheers like these. What good did it do him? She only hoped he was still alive.

“People of Germany!” That hot, familiar, hatefully exciting voice
roared out of the radio. “People of Germany, I came here to tell you that the
Reich
can never be defeated!” More applause: waves of sound climbing up and falling back. Hitler went on, “Foreign foes cannot beat us! And neither can our own traitors! They tried their best to stab us in the back again, the way the Jews stabbed us at the end of the last war, but their best was not good enough.”

Samuel Goldman made a rude noise. If the
Gestapo
did have a microphone hidden in the house, their technicians might take it for a burst of static. What they’d make of Sarah’s giggle right afterwards …

Hitler, of course, wasn’t finished. “We will hang the traitors!” he thundered. “We will hang them all, small and great together. For we have no right to hang the small ones while leaving the great ones fat and safe at home!” Oh, the listening Nazis cheered! Sarah wondered how they, or anyone, could take him seriously. Those savage sentiments mixed with that sticky-sweet Austrian accent!

“Year ago, the Socialists told me, ‘Turn back, Adolf Hitler!’ I was only a newly discharged veteran, a nobody, but I never turned back once,” the
Führer
declared. “I never have. I never will. The
Reich
goes forward—forward to victory!”

“Sieg heil!”
the Party faithful cried.

“Sieg heil!”
Hitler echoed. “And we must go on to victory, for one year of Bolshevism would ruin Germany. The richest, most beautiful civilization in the history of the world would fall into madness and destruction. The Reds would spare nothing, not even our morals and our faith. And I tell you this,
Volk
of the
Reich:
I shall not spare their backers inside Germany, and I shall not spare the godless Jewish masters in Moscow!”

“Sieg heil!”
the audience shouted again.
“Heil
Hitler!”

“There will be no peace in our country until we smash Bolshevism and treason of every kind,” Hitler said. “I put my whole life into this struggle every day, and so must everyone who has joined me in it. I have attacked the traitors and murderers here. With my own hand I have shot them dead. And now the
Wehrmacht
, at last purified from the stupid struggles of internal politics, will show its thanks through devotion and loyalty and victory. For Germany is pledged to victory: to victory over our foolish Western foes, and to a final solution for the Bolshevik-Jewish Russian
monster! We shall not falter. We shall not fail. Like St. George, we will slay the dragon, and he will never rise again!”

“Sieg heil! Heil
Hitler!” the listening Nazis roared. Hitler thumped a fist down on the lectern to show he’d finished. They cheered and cheered.

Two and a half hours later, Münster’s air-raid sirens wailed a warning. Flak guns bellowed. Bombs whistled down out of the heartless sky. Banned from any proper shelter, Sarah and her parents huddled under the dining-room table and hoped the house wouldn’t come down on top of it.

“I knew they’d show up late.” Her father might have been talking about a student who hadn’t turned his paper in on time. “They might have nailed him if only they’d hustled, but he’s bound to be gone by now.”

“He’s bound to be gone,” Sarah agreed, “and the war’s bound to go on.” Right that minute, she could think of nothing worse to say.