The Arms Maker of Berlin

FOURTEEN

Berlin—Thursday, December 10, 1942

KURT BAUER NO LONGER RODE his bicycle past Liesl’s house each and every day, pinging his bell in hopes she would appear at the window. Fifteen tries without a response finally convinced him he was a making a lovesick fool of himself, and as weeks turned to months he avoided her side of town altogether, not even venturing into the Grunewald.

But one evening toward sunset eleven months later, with the anniversary of their breakup approaching, he found himself exiting the Krumme Lanke U-Bahn stop with his bicycle. As if drawn by a homing beacon, he began pedaling hypnotically toward the quaint little house on Alsbacherweg. He had no clear plan in mind. He knew only that he had to return to the scene. So on he rode even as his hands grew numb.

Pale light cast long shadows across the small lawn, and he braked to a stop as if facing a shrine. Looking up to her window, he flexed his left thumb to flick the tiny bell. Once, twice, a third time. Then he waited, breath huffing like steam from an idling locomotive.

Was it his imagination, or had the curtain twitched? He watched until his eyes hurt from the cold, but nothing budged. Finally he turned and pedaled away, slower now, but still with a sense of mission. He crossed the frozen ground of leafy woodland trails for twenty minutes until he reached the sand beach of the Wannsee.

Kurt stared across the chop toward the far horizon, where a pale band of orange lined the treetops in the last light of dusk. You couldn’t see the Stuckart villa from here, so he settled for the nearest familiar landmark—the conference house where Erich’s father had gone that day for the big meeting. Kurt now viewed it as a symbol of his failure—of that terrible moment when his nerve had faltered and Liesl’s had exceeded the bounds of common sense. So many things he should have done differently.

Fortunately no harm had come to Liesl as the result of her reckless remarks, although the elder Stuckart had looked into the matter further the following morning. He had then passed along his findings to Reinhard Bauer, father to father. Kurt’s dad took him aside that night after dinner.

“Herr Stuckart told me of this foolishness with that Folkerts girl you’re seeing. Are you sure you’re quite sane, spending time with people like her?”

“What of it?” Kurt answered, not wanting to admit she had rejected him.

“What of it? Well, seeing as how you only seem capable of thinking of yourself, go ahead and forget for a moment what this could have meant for your family, or for our future livelihood. Do you realize what can happen to people who say things like that, and, in turn, to all of their friends?”

Kurt stared at the floor, unwilling to even nod. The pain Liesl had inflicted still hurt more than anything his father could dish out.

“Well, do you?”

“Yes,” Kurt said without looking up.

“They line you up and shoot you, or drop you from a gallows. Or maybe they lop off your head. Not that you get to choose. And first, of course, they take you down to the cellar on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where they do God knows what so that you’ll tell them whatever they want to hear. That is why I want you to stay away from people like the Folkerts girl, who, by the way, according to Stuckart’s sources, also spends her Sunday afternoons meeting with friends at that renegade Pastor Bonhoeffer’s house. Or did you, perhaps, already know this?”

Kurt kept his head down.

“As I suspected. You are even more foolish than I thought. That is why I’m making this more than a request or a plea. It is an order. Understand? You will no longer see this girl. For the sake of all of us.”

Kurt looked up abruptly.

“You needn’t worry,” he said in disgust. “She refuses to see me anymore.”

His father’s look of relief was infuriating, and Kurt was only enraged further by the hypocrisy of his father’s next words.

“She was right, of course. That’s why it was so dangerous for her to say it. The war is lost. Any fool can see it.”

Then, as if to make it clear he wasn’t faulting the current leadership, or the German national character, Reinhard Bauer proceeded to analyze the situation from the point of view of an industrialist. Perhaps he saw it as another opportunity to further his son’s education, because he then took out pencil and paper and began toting up precise columns of numbers. Production quotas and available raw materials. Shortages across the board. Here was the reason Germany could no longer win, he said. Because they could no longer outproduce the American and Russian makers of guns, planes, and ammo.

“Do you remember all those men who came here from America during the Olympic Games?” he asked.

Kurt nodded, holding his tongue. The Bauer companies had thrown a reception in 1936 for a delegation of manufacturing tycoons from the American heartland. At the time, Berlin had been putting its best face forward for a skeptical world. Every street was clean. Bums and ne’er-do-wells were swept from view. The Americans, to a man, had spoken enviously of the orderly nature of the new regime. No unions, no strikers, and no one stirring up the rabble. Everything worked, and everything ran on time. FDR could learn a thing or two from Hitler, they gushed.

But now those same men were working overtime to make sure Berlin was reduced to cinders, so of course defeat was inevitable.

“What that means, Kurt, is that if you really want to go running around with young girls who insist on speaking their mind, then all you have to do is wait. Because it will only be a matter of years, or even months, before the fighting will end. Understand?”

“Perfectly.”

He then stormed upstairs to his books and phonograph records, and refused to accompany his father to a reception at the home of a Siemens executive.

As the months passed, Kurt kept expecting the pain to fade. He had always recovered quickly from such things before. But he couldn’t shake his deep sense of loss over Liesl. Nor did it help that he sometimes glimpsed her at the university. Once he called out her name, but she didn’t even glance back. Now, with winter returning, the pain of estrangement was as fresh as ever.

Other aspects of his life, on the other hand, were only getting more complicated. His biggest worry was that he might soon be a soldier. He had just turned seventeen. As Erich’s father had predicted, there was talk of lowering the age of conscription. With an entire army surrounded at Stalingrad, it seemed likely any day.

In addition, a pall of worry had fallen over the Bauer household. Manfred hadn’t been heard from in weeks on the eastern front, and there was a new cloud over his sister Traudl’s prospects for marriage. Two grim fellows from the SS Racial Office had visited ages ago to collect family genealogical information. They were supposed to have completed their background check in three months. But it had now been eleven months, and the case was still on hold due to unspecified complications. Reinhard refused to discuss it, and Kurt’s mother grew deathly silent every time Traudl brought it up. The would-be bride, at least, was making the most of the delay, by hoarding enough fabric coupons for their seamstress to make the grandest possible dress. And she never had to fret about the safety of her prospective groom. Bruno Scharf had been posted to the coast of France, and his letters spoke glowingly of a farmhouse billet with fresh eggs and a cellar full of wine.

But the strangest and most troubling development had come to Kurt’s attention that very morning, when his father had again taken him aside for a chat. Reinhard had returned the previous night from a visit to some of their suppliers in Switzerland, where the family had a factory near Bern.

Kurt shut the door behind him as his father instructed, figuring he was about to be subjected to a rehash of Reinhard’s efforts to ensure speedier and more bountiful deliveries. It soon became clear that something more momentous was in the works. At first the elder Bauer did nothing but pace. When he finally came to rest in his desk chair, his face was ashen.

“Kurt, the things I am about to tell you must not pass beyond these walls. Not to anyone, under any circumstances. Not even your mother is to know. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You must promise.”

“I promise.”

Reinhard took a deep breath and planted his hands on his knees.

“Do you remember a man I once brought to the house to introduce to your brother, an investment banker, Gero von Gaevernitz?”

“Vaguely. Wasn’t his father some kind of professor?”

“Yes. Years earlier, but correct.”

An indistinct image of a handsome—even dashing—fellow in a double-breasted suit with short, wavy hair came fleetingly to mind. His mother had been charmed by the man, but he remembered little else. In those carefree days Kurt hadn’t been expected to pay attention to such callers, so he hadn’t.

“Well, he’s in Switzerland now, and I am afraid he is not a supporter of our current government. But he is nonetheless a useful man among the Germans there, and last night I met with him. Or, rather, I met with one of his representatives.”

“He is in business there?”

“No. Well, yes. It’s rather more complicated than that. I suppose the polite term for his new line of work would be that he is an information broker. He collects bits and pieces, makes introductions for his clients, that sort of thing.”

“Who are his clients?”

Reinhard cleared his throat and smoothed a wrinkle on his trousers.

“The Americans, mostly. Or exclusively, perhaps.”

Kurt was shocked.

“So he is in the intelligence business. A spy. And you met with him?”

“With his representative.”

“Does that really make a difference?”

“No. Not if anyone here ever found out.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Because I plan to see him again, next time I go back. This time it will be Gero himself. And at some point, if you’re not sent off to war, I’m hoping that you may also have a chance to meet him. Assuming, of course, that I can arrange a travel pass, so that you can accompany me across the border.”

For a man who had been so appalled by Liesl’s mere words, this news was beyond astounding.

“Dad, what exactly are you saying?”

“That I have begun planning for our future. The family’s. The company’s. And, frankly, the Fatherland’s. These people running our country now …” He paused, fully aware that he had entered uncharted waters. “Well, I think we all know they’re not going to survive much longer. When the war ends, they’ll be gone. The Allies will insist. And when that happens, we’re going to want—need—friends among the Allies. People we can talk to, and who might be willing to trust us. The Russians? Forget it, unless you’re a Bolshevik. The Americans are our hope. Those men you met during the Olympic Games, people like them. And people like Gaevernitz, who, by the way, is a dual citizen. He’s American, too.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He wasn’t exactly advertising it back then. But it’s why he fled the country, about a year ago.”

“And he’s spying now for the Americans?”

Kurt’s father winced at the word, but he nodded.

“My long-term goal is to meet with Gero’s boss, although some elaborate arrangements may be required. If I do, I will try to reach some sort of understanding. For later.”

“What sort of elaborate arrangements?”

“Middlemen. Secure locations. Evidently these things are quite complex. They have to be, I suppose, because the Gestapo and the Abwehr have people all over Bern as well. You see them in rail stations, hotel lobbies. All types from all sides, right there together. It takes some getting used to, I must say. You can’t just meet people out in the open.”

“And when you have this meeting, what sort of things will you tell them that a spy would want to know?”

Another wince.

“I can assure you it would be nothing you would ever be ashamed of, or that would place anyone’s life in danger. Just my impressions on how things are going here. Information on industrial production. What we have lots of, what we lack. Morale, the state of our workforce. Transportation issues.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“In case something happens to me. If I was unable to return across the border, or was detained, then you will know where you must try to go, and who you must contact.”

“Gaevernitz?”

“Or his boss, in Bern. An American named Allen Dulles. He arrived only a month ago, but he is reputed to be the personal representative of President Roosevelt. He has taken up residence in the city center, at 23 Herrengasse. I want you to remember that address. Can you?”

“23 Herrengasse. Allen Dulles.”

“Very good. But repeat it to no one. Not as long as you are on German soil, and certainly never to anyone in Berlin.”

“Of course.”

“And, Kurt?”

“Yes.”

“You should also know that I have been contemplating this kind of action for quite a while. It is one reason I was so appalled last year when I heard about the remarks made by that Folkerts girl. Now that I have chosen this path, we must remain above suspicion in every possible way. So I certainly hope that you have had no further contact with her.”

“No, sir,” he said dolefully. “I have not seen her at all.”

“And what about her circle of friends? I’m told the Gestapo has put a guard outside that fellow Bonhoeffer’s house, so I doubt anyone in his right mind goes there anymore.”

Kurt was aghast, but tried not to show it.

“No. She’s the only reason I ever saw any of them.”

“Good. Because this is not a game, Kurt, especially with the war going so badly. Many Germans will be trying to arrange the same sort of accommodations, and the authorities know it. Take great care in what you say and who you are seen with. Mere words are no longer worth taking a risk for. Mere words will not bring an end to our current disastrous situation. Actions, on the other hand, can make a difference, and may help build a better future. That is why I have made my choice. It is why you must be prepared to fill my shoes, if necessary. For the sake of our family.”

“I understand.”

“Very good. All right, then. You may go.”

So where had he gone? Straight back to Liesl’s. Exactly the place his father wanted him to avoid. And as Kurt stood on the Wannsee beach, gazing at the white villa across the water, he now realized why his father’s chat had prompted him to come here. Defiant or not, it was a triumph of action over words. Because now he was certain that action, not talk, was the only possible means of winning Liesl back. He must do something bold, something to convince her that he was mature, and courageous. As he stared across the waves he decided on his approach. He would take the first risky step that weekend.

HIS FATHER WAS RIGHT. There was indeed a surveillance man hanging around outside Bonhoeffer’s house when Kurt pedaled down the narrow lane that Sunday afternoon. The man was brazen, stationed beneath a telephone pole just across the street. His black trench coat and dark hat made it painfully obvious who he was working for. Perhaps that’s the way the Gestapo wanted it, planting the fellow like a scarecrow to keep everyone away.

Kurt pedaled past him until the pavement ended, then turned onto a dirt path that cut into the forest at the end of the street. Screened by the trees, he circled back to the right, behind the Bonhoeffer home. He leaned his bike against a tree and set off on foot, working his way toward the rear garden, where he ducked through a hedge and between bare rosebushes to the home’s rear door. He knocked lightly.

An elderly woman in an apron, who must have been Bonhoeffer’s mother, answered, not seeming at all surprised to receive a visitor at the back door. She invited him inside without asking his name, and then called upstairs to her son. The pastor appeared a few seconds later with a quizzical expression, but he immediately recognized Kurt.

“Come up to my study,” he said.

The room was small and spartan. Bookshelves took up an entire wall, and there was a dark wooden desk in the corner. A stack of foolscap, a fountain pen, and an inkwell indicated that Kurt had interrupted the pastor’s writing.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he said.

“Quite all right. It gets a bit desolate here on Sunday afternoons anymore. The rest of my family often goes out walking, so I take advantage of the solitude. I take it you must have noticed my little friend out front?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, you realize that if he saw you going around to the back, that will only make him more suspicious.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Don’t worry. He’s usually pretty bored by this time of day. He doesn’t even come every day anymore, although he is always here on Sundays. I suppose one of my neighbors must have gotten nervous about all the students who were coming here and mentioned it to the authorities.”

“Do you really think that’s what happened?” He didn’t have the guts to tell Bonhoeffer about Stuckart.

“I only know for sure that one Sunday there he was, with a camera and a notebook. So, sadly, I felt I had no choice but to advise your friends to stop coming. But, of course, by then you had already stopped coming.”

Kurt realized the timing made him look suspicious.

“I can assure you that I never—”

“It’s quite all right. I never thought you did. I had already attributed your absence to girl trouble.”

Kurt blushed.

“You’re right,” he said. “It was Liesl’s decision.”

“I gathered as much. Especially from the way she defended you to the others. Almost like she was feeling sorry for you.”

“Defended me?”

“Some of them concluded from your absence that you were to blame for the man out front. But don’t worry. She set them straight.”

“It must be hard getting used to things like that.” He nodded toward the front window.

“Oh, that’s pretty mild, actually. Here, let me show you something.”

Bonhoeffer reached up to a shelf and plucked a postcard from between two thick volumes. He handed it to Kurt.

“I came across it in a bookstall in 1936. The ‘CC stands for the Confessing Church, of course. A reference to my seminary, the one the Nazis shut down.”

It was a short poem, quite nasty:After the end of the Olympiade

We’ll bash the CC to marmalade.

Then once we’ve chucked out the Jews,

The CC we will terminate, too.

Suddenly there was a loud blast of static from below. Hitler’s amplified voice shouted up the stairwell. More promises of death and damnation for the enemy. A roaring crowd. It was only the radio, but Kurt felt wobbly all the same.

“Excuse me, will you?” Bonhoeffer said.

He disappeared for a moment. The volume of the broadcast dropped to a dull murmur just as he returned.

“My apologies. My mother likes to turn up his speeches.”

“She does?”

“Only so the neighbors will know we’re listening.” He shrugged. “She thinks she is teaching a lesson to whoever informed on us. Or maybe she only wants my little shadow out there to write it down in his notebook.”

“He looks like such a fool when he speaks,” Kurt said, blushing immediately. He wasn’t sure where the remark came from, and at some level he supposed he was only trying to ingratiate himself with this calm man who might be able to help him.

Bonhoeffer studied his face. Kurt hoped the pastor didn’t think he had been trying to bait him into an inflammatory response.

“He does twitch and flail about,” Bonhoeffer said. “But whatever you think of his words, or of the terrible things he does, when he is up there on that podium he speaks with a genuine passion, and that is one reason he is able to connect with so many people. I am not saying I admire him, far from it. But we in the church would be more effective in spreading the word of God if we, too, exhibited some genuine passion, instead of being so didactic and precise.

“When I spent a summer in New York, years ago, I often attended a Baptist church among the Negroes of Harlem. And I have to say, no one ever fell asleep in their pews. Maybe you would have made fun of all their shouting and carrying on, but to me it was quite rapturous. If we pastors had spoken straight from our hearts instead of from our minds, maybe we would have gotten through to more people before it was too late. Instead, we droned on like chemistry professors while that little man with the mustache played the pantomime fool and lured away most of our flock.”

Kurt sensed the opening he had been seeking.

“But it seems too late to change that now. Haven’t we passed the moment when mere words are enough?”

Bonhoeffer gave him a long look before speaking again.

“Is that why you are here? To seek my counsel on how to best take direct action? Because I may actually be able to offer some advice. But first you must tell me something: Which cause are you here to fight for? The opposition to that man on the radio? Or the cause of winning back the affections of Liesl Folkerts?”

An outright lie would never have worked, so Kurt decided on a half-truth.

“Both. With someone like her, you can’t just strive for the one or the other. You have to prove yourself to Liesl in the way that you live, not just in the way you talk.”

In a moment of serendipity, Kurt then recalled something Bonhoeffer had said during his first visit to the house.

“It is like when you spoke of the difference between a cheap grace—one that comes easily and is all talk—and a costly grace, one where you are willing to make true sacrifice and take real risks.”

It seemed to clinch the deal, because the next thing Bonhoeffer reached for was a pamphlet that would forever change Kurt’s life, and Liesl’s too. Bonhoeffer gave it to him without a word. Simply holding it in his hands seemed like a provocative act, especially when he read the first sentence: “Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as to allow itself to be ‘governed’ without any opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to basest instincts. It is certainly the case today that every honest German is ashamed of his government.”

“Well?” Bonhoeffer asked. “What do you think of that? Mere words, perhaps, but a real action to print and distribute them, don’t you think?”

It was all Kurt could do not to immediately hand it back, and it took an effort to keep his hands from trembling.

“Yes,” he said. “It is quite an action.”

“Tell me,” Bonhoeffer said, “have you seen one of these before?”

“No. What is it?”

“It was printed last summer by a small group of university students in Munich. Some of them were soldiers, on leave from the front. One is a young girl, a student much like Liesl. They call themselves the White Rose, and since then they have printed three more flyers, growing bolder with every one. By the third leaflet they were calling openly for the defeat of National Socialism, and even advocating sabotage.”

“Sabotage?”

“Of Party rallies, newspapers.” He paused, his eyes boring straight into Kurt’s. “Even armaments factories. In the fourth pamphlet they dared to state, ‘Every word out of Hitler’s mouth is a lie.’ Now their work has begun making its way to Berlin. The flyer in your hand was carried into the city only last week by a volunteer. I would be happy to let you keep it, but, well, with our friend out front there, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

“Yes, of course. Here.”

Bonhoeffer took it from his fingers and slid it back onto the shelf, well out of sight. Kurt sagged in relief. How could such work be going on right under the government’s nose? It was both thrilling and terrifying.

“Definitely not ‘easy grace,’ associating with some movement like that, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.”

Bonhoeffer stepped slowly to the window, where he stared across the street for a moment before turning around to again look Kurt in the eye. He seemed to have arrived at a conclusion. Or maybe he had only paused to give Kurt time to reconsider.

“I am going to tell you something in strictest confidence,” he said, “because it involves both Liesl and this concept of costly grace. Do you think you are strong enough to confront both, simultaneously?”

Kurt nodded, but a nod wasn’t enough.

“If that is a yes, then please say so.”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Because if you choose to take this step, there will be no turning back. Not only for your own sake, but for Liesl’s. This Tuesday, at four o’clock in the afternoon, several people will be meeting at Saint Anne’s Church in Dahlem. Do you know it?”

Kurt shook his head.

“Speak up, Kurt. This is not a time for timid silence.”

“No. I don’t know it.”

“It is Martin Niemoller’s church. You are familiar with his name, I would imagine.”

“Yes.”

Niemoller had helped found the Confessing Church along with Bonhoeffer.

“He no longer preaches there, of course. He has been in a concentration camp for nearly six years. His wife still lives next door in the parsonage, but it will probably be too risky for her to attend on Tuesday.”

“I see.”

“No. I’m not sure you do. This meeting is for the purpose of organizing a Berlin chapter of the White Rose. And your friend Liesl is one of the leaders. In fact, she was the one who brought me their pamphlets, at no small risk to herself. She picked up an entire box of them from the train station last week, and she is part of the effort to make sure that thousands more will be printed and distributed. If you attend this meeting on Tuesday, perhaps you will impress her with your fortitude. But in the eyes of the government you will officially be making yourself a party to these efforts. You will be seen as an active resister, an enemy of the state.”

“Who else will be there?”

“Perhaps only a handful. Perhaps more.” He shrugged. “One never really knows who will have the courage until the moment presents itself.”

“Will you be there?”

“No.”

Kurt raised his eyebrows.

“My presence would only make it more likely to attract unwanted attention. You see, I have been banned from preaching, or even teaching. For me, simply to enter a church is seen as a provocation, as terrible as that sounds. I would also be jeopardizing other activities of mine in which, frankly, the stakes are even graver. It is probably indiscreet of me to say even that. I just didn’t want you believing that I was choosing the course of ‘easy grace,’ not out of vanity but because it would certainly not be setting the right example.”

Kurt found it hard to imagine what could involve graver stakes than advocating the downfall of the government, and he wasn’t sure he would have wanted Bonhoeffer to tell him.

“If you decide to attend,” Bonhoeffer continued, “then you should gather in the pews beneath the organ loft. Quite a lot of people go there to pray, even at odd hours, so the authorities are accustomed to people coming and going in small groups. The building is historic, so secular organizations meet there as well. If anyone else asks why you are there, tell them you have come for a history discussion. Early Christian settlements in Dahlemdorf.”

He then placed a hand companionably on Kurt’s shoulder and walked him downstairs. The sun was low in the sky, and soon it would be dark, but the man in the black coat was still at his post, smoking a cigarette. It now seemed more important than ever that Kurt not be seen.

“I’ll leave by the front door and go for a walk,” Bonhoeffer said, turning from the window. “That should distract him long enough for you to make a clean exit from out back. Good luck, and God be with you.”

“With you as well. And thank you.”

“No. Thank you.”

Kurt was fearful, he was excited, and he was already wondering what in the hell sort of foolishness he had just gotten into. Dahlem on a Tuesday, right next door to Niemoller’s house? Possibly with snoops just like the man across the street posted on every corner? Madness.

Then he thought of Liesl, her face turned toward his for a tender kiss, in contrast to the lonely agony of the past eleven months. And that was enough. Whatever the risk, Kurt was ready for it.

On Tuesday he would see her again.