Two Brothers

That Man Berlin, 30 January 1933

IT WAS STUNNING. Unbelievable. Incomprehensible. Incredible. Impossible.

Only yesterday, yesterday, everything had been fine.

And now out of the blue, that man had suddenly become Chancellor.

‘He hasn’t even got a majority!’ Wolfgang kept saying, over and over again as the Stengels sat down for supper that dreadful night. ‘The bastard was losing ground.’

It was true. They’d recently even begun to relax. All through the previous year he’d stalked them. That man. For month after month throughout 1932 every newspaper headline had seemed to bring him a little closer to their door. Louring over them like some murderous medieval golem. But just recently he’d been slipping. His vote had peaked. It was falling. Goebbels had begun to sound desperate. The crisis was passing.

‘And now just because of a bunch of cowardly fucking Junkers and that senile old cunt Hindenburg, he’s got his chance. Fuck them! Fuck them to hell!’

The boys looked up, their faces half shocked, half amused.

‘Please, Wolf!’ Frieda said, banging her water glass down in protest, trying to keep the fear from her voice, ‘not at the supper table! The children…’

Wolfgang mumbled an apology, biting his lip, his knuckles white around the schnapps glass which he had just refilled.

‘I don’t care, Mum,’ Otto said, stuffing his mouth full of food. ‘I think Hindenburg’s a cunt too.’

‘Otto!’

Frieda actually reached over and slapped him, something she had never done before in her life. ‘Don’t you dare use that disgusting language in front of me! Don’t you dare…’

She couldn’t continue, there were tears in her eyes now.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Otto said, as shocked as his mother was. ‘I deserved it.’

‘No, Otto. I’m sorry. I can’t believe I hit you.’

‘It’s all right.’

Frieda got up and went around the table to hug Otto.

‘See what he’s done to us already, that terrible man.’

The four of them sat and ate for a few moments in silence. Bean soup and bread. There were cold cuts and beetroot to follow.

‘They think they can do a deal,’ Wolfgang muttered, unable to keep his frustration to himself, tearing at the bread as if it was a Nazi neck. ‘A deal! With Hitler!’

‘Please, Wolf,’ Frieda said, ‘let’s leave it alone while we eat.’

Paulus had been looking at the evening newspaper, the one announcing the formation of Hitler’s cabinet.

‘The Nazis still only have a couple of seats,’ Paulus said. ‘The paper says he can’t do anything without the other party’s agreement. Perhaps Herr von Papen can—’

‘Oh they’re all bloody vons,’ Wolfgang said. ‘Von Hindenburg and Von Papen and Von bloody Schleicher and they think that means they’ll be able to tell him what to do. Like he was still a corporal and them all generals and field marshals… Oh thank you for letting me be Chancellor, now I’ll do what I’m told like a good little Nazi! Haven’t they heard him speak? Haven’t they seen his private army? Like fuck he’ll let them tell him what to do!’

‘Wolf, please, this isn’t helping.’

Later on, after supper, the family watched from their apartment window as the night sky flickered red and yellow from the light of the torch-lit victory procession that was stamping and shouting its way across the city.

Through the Brandenburg Gate.

That same crooked cross parading beneath it as had first appeared scrawled on the helmets of the Freikorps in 1920. Except this time the swastikas were not scribbled in chalk but flying red, black and crimson from a thousand banners. And the crowd that had gathered were not silent in protest but hysterical with joy.

Frieda struggled to remain calm and matter-of-fact as she cleared away the supper things.

‘Don’t forget your homework,’ she told the boys, ‘and scrape your football boots into one of the window boxes.’

Wolfgang just sat at the window and looked at the sky, cursing quietly under his breath. Slowly picking out the recent American hit Happy Days Are Here Again on his ukulele. Until Frieda told him to stop.

Not because she didn’t appreciate the irony. But because she was scared. Since noon that day when the announcement had been made and that man had appeared, smiling, almost for the first time in his public career, it had been unsafe for Jews to draw attention to themselves. The ukulele was a penetrating instrument. And the walls of the apartment were thin.