Two Brothers

Thirteenth Birthdays Munich and Berlin, 1933

THE STENGEL TWINS and the Nazi Party shared another birthday that February but this time it was the Munich celebration that was raucous and joyful while the mood at the party in Berlin was a little more subdued than usual, all the regular guests from previous years having declined their invitations.

‘The problem is we just don’t know enough Jews,’ Wolfgang observed dryly.

‘I hardly even knew I was a bloody Jew until a couple of weeks ago,’ Paulus remarked moodily. ‘I certainly don’t think I look like one.’

‘What does a damn Jew look like?’ Wolfgang demanded.

‘Please can we stop all this swearing,’ Frieda pleaded. ‘Just because they have no standards doesn’t mean we can forget ours.’

Even Silke wasn’t at the birthday party, having managed the previous day to send a card explaining that she was to be locked in her room for the day by her mum’s SA boyfriend.

Dagmar was in fact the only non-family guest.

Although, if they were honest, the twins were actually perfectly happy with that. They were both so completely in love with Dagmar they would have had eyes for no one else anyway.

Dagmar didn’t mind either. The Stengel twins were both growing up into fine, handsome boys. Very different from each other but both attractive in their way. Paulus was perhaps the more handsome by conventional standards, with thick, copper-black hair, deep ebony eyes and fine, sensitive cheekbones. Otto was a little shorter, with sandy hair, pale grey eyes and a tendency to freckles. But there was a fiery intensity about him which made people take notice and he was also extremely strong.

Dagmar had no objection at all to being the absolute centre of their combined attention.

Also, although it was their birthday, both twins had prepared gifts for her. Paulus had composed an extravagant epic love poem in which Dagmar was the heroine and he the hero (Otto had a minor role as Paulus’s squire). He’d written it in High German and had inscribed it with great care in Gothic script. He’d even aged the leaves of paper with cold coffee to make them look like parchment.

Otto had made Dagmar a miniature chest of drawers in his school woodwork class. He was becoming a skilled craftsman and the tiny piece of furniture was beautifully finished, sanded and varnished with little pearl buttons for drawer handles.

‘To go on your dressing table,’ he said shyly, ‘you know, to put stuff in, little stuff, like rings you know… and stuff.’

Dagmar was delighted with her gifts and both boys got a kiss, which turned them crimson, while their parents and grandparents smiled indulgently.

‘Anyone would think it was Dagmar’s birthday,’ Frieda said, pouring out the lemonade, ‘so come on, let’s cut this wonderful cake she’s brought. I see Fischer’s bakers are as skilled as ever.’

But of course before the cake could be cut, Herr Tauber insisted on being allowed to make his customary speech. The old policeman had aged noticeably even in the three weeks since Hitler had become Chancellor, but now he addressed the table with his old robust authority.

‘Otto, Paulus, I am proud of you,’ he said sternly. ‘You are thirteen now and fine young men. This is fortunate. Because Germany will soon be in need of fine young men. Good Germans who will step forward and take up the challenge of rebuilding our Fatherland’s reputation in the civilized world. This is why today, on your birthday, I beg you boys to be careful. I see you with bruises and scratches on your faces and know that you have been fighting. Of course you have, you are brave and proud and these are intolerable times. But we must tolerate them, for mark my words, this current aberration will pass, and it will pass soon. There are fresh elections in March and until then, despite everything that man may say, the law and the constitution still protect us. They are bigger than any one government. I know that the scum of the beer halls are marauding in the streets at present, but the law is the law and even that man cannot just wish it away. I am still a captain of police, you know. If you find yourself in danger, you come to me. As long as we don’t go getting ourselves murdered by stray SA men drunk on their success we will come through all this, you’ll see. The greatest and most advanced nation in Europe will not allow itself to be ruled by street hooligans for long. The law will prevail. Mark my words. And now let us cut the cake.’

Three days later, on 27 February, the adolescent Nazi Party got another of its belated birthday gifts.

Somebody burnt down the Reichstag and the delinquent thirteen-year-old used the so-called ‘provocation’ to throw the birthday party of its dreams.

With mass arrests, countless killings and beatings, thousands of ‘disappearances’ and the outlawing of all but the most token political opposition.

Herr Tauber’s beloved law was no protection now as three million brown-shirted SA hooligans were drafted into the regular police.

The newly empowered Nazi Party, a baby no more but a vicious, cunning teenage psychopath, issued carte blanche for robbery, rape and murder. Its Leader announced that crimes committed against the party’s ‘enemies’ were not crimes at all but legitimate services to the German state.

The criminals were sitting in judgement and the law was dead.