Two Brothers

Reichssportfeld, Grunewald Berlin, 1 August 1936

THE ROAR WAS like nothing that either Otto or Dagmar had ever heard before.

Solid, like a blow. An assault on the senses. Thunderous. Volcanic. An eruption of noise. The air was dense and heavy with it. Noise as a palpable physical entity. Wave upon wave crashing against them. Assaulting them. Punching them.

Dagmar tried to speak, to shout, but her mouth seemed to move in silence. No single voice could prosper amongst those hundred and ten thousand joined as one.

Dagmar and Otto were drowning in a sea of sound.

It crashed into their faces like breaking surf. Filling their heads. Dizzying and disorientating them.

And just when they had imagined it could get no louder, the amorphous atmospheric cacophony took shape and form. Words as well as sound engulfed them.

‘Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!’

Each ‘heil’ an airborne battering ram. Shaking and vibrating their heads, their bodies and the concrete stand beneath their feet until it seemed as if it would crack under the pressure.

Dagmar pressed her hips against Otto’s. He could feel her shaking and knew that he was shaking too.

Not with fear but with excitement.

It was simply magnificent. The greatest stadium ever built stretched out before them. A vast and elegant oval, surrounding the greenest of fields and the straightest of tracks, on which were assembled, in perfect rows, athletes from every corner of the globe. The finest human bodies on the planet, all gathered together behind their flags in celebration of excellence.

And beyond them, the great viewing platform. Far grander and more monumental than any Caesar had ever looked down on. And on it a tiny cluster of men, with one man standing completely apart. Forward from the rest and alone. His arm outstretched.

The Leader. Sternly acknowledging the familiar salute.

‘Hail victory! Hail victory! Hail victory!’

The German team arrived last and stood closest to the podium. The largest team, it seemed to Otto, and clad entirely in white. Such a brilliant choice. Such a perfect piece of theatre. A deliberate and inspired contrast to the rest. Setting Germany apart completely from the various multi-coloured rigs worn by the nations that had preceded them into the stadium. The striped blazers, jolly boaters and bright ties, the garish turbans, and strangely incongruous bits and pieces of national dress. The flowing scarves, the rowing caps, the neckerchiefs in every hue. And the Italians, strangest of all in what looked like black battle tunics and military-style caps.

Only the Germans wore one single unifying visual theme. And that theme was purest white.

From the white caps on their heads to the white shoes and socks on their feet, they were the white team.

Like a regiment of angels.

The only splash of colour was the blood red banner behind which they marched.

One hundred and ten thousand people stood and raised their right arms in salute. Including Otto and Dagmar. They would have done as much for safety’s sake in such a crowd, but in that moment and amidst that strange infectious madness, they actually almost wanted to salute.

Dagmar put her free arm around Otto and held him tight. He could feel her thigh against his.

Another roar rose up out of the ongoing noise as, far away across the hugeness of the stadium, Hitler approached the microphones. At such a distance he was but a tiny figure, and yet unmistakable. The most famous man in the world. Otto thought he would have been recognizable from across a continent.

The man just held himself in that way.

That particular Hitler way that cartoonists and comedians around the world had been ridiculing for a decade but which for all their efforts remained undeniably uniquely impressive.

Stern. Detached. Separate. Alone.

Few men who had come so far could have borne themselves with the same measured and quiet confidence at such a time. To stand before a hundred and ten thousand people greeting him as a deity and still remain somehow detached.

No triumphalism in his stance. No glee. Plenty around him of course, but not him. For him just the manner of a man who finds things in order and had expected no less.

The Leader’s voice rang round the stadium.

‘I proclaim open the eleventh games of the modern Olympic era,’ he said, ‘here in Berlin.’

Again a brilliant choice. Simple, like the white of his team. No ranting and raving. No spitting passion as the world had come to expect. Just the quiet authority of a man in absolute charge.

The Leader’s brief address unleashed another verbal cannonade of siegs and heils which rang once more around the stadium. The Olympic flame was lit and the games themselves began.

Many spectators left at that point, preferring political theatre to athletics, but Dagmar and Otto intended to stay and watch every single moment that their tickets allowed.

‘If only I could be one of them,’ Dagmar said when finally it became possible to communicate at anything less than a scream. ‘Imagine it! To be in the middle of all this. Ready to compete. Representing Germany. Dressed in pure white.’

‘Ah,’ Otto replied, ‘but if you were competing, you wouldn’t be able to stuff yourself with beer and sausages, which is what I’m going to get for us right now!’

They sat and watched the events all day. Finding themselves cheering on the German team despite themselves. Despite the fact that each athlete turned to the podium and gave the Nazi salute before and after they competed.

‘Who else are we supposed to cheer for?’ Dagmar asked, her mouth full of bratwurst and beer.

They drank all day without anybody seeming to mind their youth. Possibly the stallholders didn’t recognize Otto’s black Napola uniform was a school one, and Dagmar could easily have been twenty-one.

They were drunk of course by the time they drifted out of the stadium, and so instead of going home took the tram into the Tiergarten for coffee.

The whole of Berlin seemed to be celebrating the successful opening of the games and also the surprising number of early German victories, and Dagmar and Otto forgot their cares as they strolled together through the packed and happy throng.

‘Don’t you have to be back at school?’ Dagmar asked.

‘Fuck ’em,’ Otto replied.

Dagmar’s face fell. ‘Otto, you can’t say that.’

‘Why not? They sent me to that school. I didn’t ask to go.’

‘Yes, but you have to stay there now, Otts. For my sake. The better a Nazi you are, the more you can take me out and we can have fun — that was Pauly’s plan.’

‘Oh yes of course,’ Otto said quickly. ‘I know that. Don’t worry, I know lots of windows I can sneak back in through, and if they catch me I’ll tell them the tram got stuck in the crowd or something. If I get a beating it’ll be worth it. Just to spend a bit more time with you.’

‘Oh, Ottsy. That is such a romantic thing to say. I remember the first beating you took for me. At Wannsee when poor Pauly got four extra for being too clever.’

Dagmar put her arms around Otto and kissed him. There were many couples doing likewise in the exciting twilight of the park and she kissed him long and hard.

‘It’s been so wonderful getting to go out again, Ottsy,’ Dagmar whispered. ‘I feel like I’m alive again.’

Otto felt alive also and hugged her closer and more desperately.

‘Dagmar,’ he half gasped, ‘do you think maybe… maybe some time we could…’

‘Yes!’ Dagmar whispered. ‘But not now. Some time… I want to. Really I do. But not tonight…’

‘We could go to your mum’s place,’ Otto blurted. ‘She never comes upstairs—’

‘No, Ottsy!’ Dagmar said, disengaging herself with reluctance. ‘It’s too dangerous. If you were seen there we’d be punished. Besides, you have to get back to school. You mustn’t lose your privileges. You’re amongst the elite.’

‘Do you think I care about that?’ Otto protested.

‘You may not, darling. But I do. I like having an elite boyfriend.’

‘Did… did you just call me “darling”?’ Otto said, a huge half-idiot smile spreading across his face.

‘Yes, I did… darling. Because that’s what you are. My darling. All mine. Now you get back to school and don’t get caught sneaking in. Because if they gated you then you wouldn’t be able to take me out, would you? And that wouldn’t do at all.’