A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (7 page)

BOOK: A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
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The brothers took to the skies, Franz in front, August behind, to practice August’s least favorite mission—flying blind. Soon after takeoff, Franz ordered August “under the hood.” August pulled a handle and a black cloth covered his canopy, locking him into a cockpit lit only by instruments. Franz flew the plane for a while to disorient August. Then he shouted orders between cockpits and told August which course to steer and for how long. Franz knew that August had no idea where he was going.

An hour and a half later, Franz told August he was taking control of the plane. August asked to remove the hood, which was customary, but Franz denied the request. Franz landed the craft, taxied to a stop, and only then told August he could remove the hood. August started to give Franz a piece of his mind for keeping him in the dark for so long, but he stopped mid-sentence.

Waiting for him by a hangar on the tarmac was his fiancée. August immediately recognized the airport—Regensburg—they weren’t back at Dresden—they were home. August’s fiancée giggled at the shock on his face. She knew what Franz had done.
*
August embraced his fiancée and tried to rustle Franz’s hair as Franz squirmed away. They were like boys again.

During their weeklong holiday the brothers stayed at their boyhood home on a quiet street in Amberg. While looking for August one afternoon, Franz wandered into his brother’s bedroom. There on August’s desk, Franz found a stack of letters. Franz picked one up and read it. His hands began to tremble. The letter was a copy of “With Burning Concern,” the Vatican’s secretly composed message to all of Germany’s Catholics. On Palm Sunday, 1937, the letter had been read by every priest, bishop, and cardinal across Germany to their congregations and three hundred thousand copies had been disseminated. Drafted by Munich’s Cardinal von Faulhaber and Pope Pius XI, it told German Catholics in carefully veiled terms that National Socialism was an evil religion based on racism that stood contrary to the church’s teachings and every man’s right to equality. It made reference to “an insane and arrogant prophet” without naming Hitler. When Hitler found out about the letter, he and The Party roared in backlash, outlawing the letter and seizing monks, priests, and any press shops that had printed it.

Franz’s mind raced as he set down the letter. Franz wanted to burn
it and the others. He wanted to run. Instead, he waited on the front steps for August to return home. Franz suspected the letters really belonged to August’s fiancée, the cardinal’s niece. The Catholic clergy of Germany were known enemies of The Party, thanks to their sermons that reviled Hitler, his Gestapo secret police, and the early crimes of the Third Reich. Franz was certain that his brother’s fiancée, via her uncle, was dragging his brother into something dangerous: opposition.

When August returned, Franz confronted him, asking him what he was doing with such dangerous literature. August brushed Franz off and said he had found the letters and kept them as a curiosity. Franz reminded August that the letters were dangerous.

“Do you want to wind up in Dachau?” Franz asked him. August scowled. They both knew of Dachau and the concentration camps that existed to “concentrate” in one place any Germans who had angered The Party.

The camps were common knowledge in most German households. The Party wanted the camps to be known, as a deterrent, and had publicized Dachau as their “model camp.” The Party had built Dachau in 1933. Any German, regardless of religion or background, could be labeled a “political enemy” and imprisoned there. A year after seizing power, in 1934, The Party had passed a law that made a person’s private or public criticism of The Party a crime worthy of a camp sentence.

The Party went to great lengths to show their fellow Germans, and the world, that Dachau was a “civilized” camp. The Party’s private security force, the SS, ran the camps and even invited Red Cross representatives and American prison wardens to tour Dachau. The international visitors walked away impressed with what they saw: well-fed prisoners who whistled as they marched to work details, tidy barracks, flower beds, and even a store where the prisoners could purchase tinned food. When the prisoners were released, the SS gave them back their possessions. This was the image of a concentration camp that The Party had fed Franz, August, their fellow Germans, and the world, during the 1930s. The camps were so well publicized that German mothers
used to tell their children that if they were bad, they would be taken away to Dachau.
*

Seeing Franz’s turmoil, August promised to dispose of the letters. Franz did not fault August for opposing Hitler. Franz knew their parents opposed Hitler, too. They always said that Hitler was not their leader. In 1933 they had voted for the BVP (the Bavarian People’s Party), the Catholic party that had won a million votes but still fell far short of the National Socialists’ 44 percent. As a teenager, Franz had paid little attention to the 1933 election. He was apathetic about politics and not initially alarmed by the National Socialists’ victory.

But now, as a twenty-four-year-old man in spring 1939, Franz had come to think of The Party differently than he had as a boy in 1933. He had come to realize that The Party had turned Germany itself into a concentration camp. There were no elections. No freedom of press. No freedom of speech. No freedom to travel. No freedom to choose to serve in the military. No freedom to change things. In the days when possessing an outlawed letter could earn someone a sentence in a camp, the best Franz knew was to stay out of the line of fire, so neither he nor his brother would end up in Dachau.

 

T
HAT SUMMER
, F
RANZ
pinned the wings on August’s uniform when he graduated from flight school. August received his wings in time to
wear them when he married his fiancée shortly thereafter. During the wedding ceremony, Franz could not bring himself to look upon his new sister-in-law with much affection. He was still worried. After the wedding, August went to twin-engine school, the path of a bomber pilot, and Franz returned to instructing.

 

T
HAT AUTUMN
1939, Franz’s cadets approached him in the mess hall one morning waving newspapers in their hands. The big, gothic headlines declared:
WAR WITH POLAND!
The young cadets were smiling and shouting. They wanted Franz’s opinion—would their training be hurried so they could get into the war? Franz did not share their glee. War was the last thing he wanted. But in the minds of the flight school cadets, the world’s affairs were simple. According to the German papers, the Poles had threatened German farmers on the shared border. Polish troops had attacked a German radio station on the border in order to transmit slander against the Germans, and Hitler had no choice but to declare war. The cadets thought Hitler was right, just like they had reasoned that Germany’s other neighbors, Czechoslovakia and Austria, had wanted to become part of the new German empire. The annexation of those countries, that year and the year prior, had been bloodless.

In reality, the Austrians and Czechs had no choice. Germany had been militarily rebuilt and seemed unstoppable. And the “Polish troops” who had raided the German radio station were actually German commandos wearing Polish uniforms. Hitler had ordered this. He wanted a war of expansion, and he lied to his own people to get it. What neither Franz nor any of the cadets could fathom was that Hitler had knowingly picked a fight with much of the rest of Europe, dragging Germany into a repeat of their fathers’ war. Britain and France had pledged that if Poland was ever attacked their empires would fight on the Polish side. Hitler attacked Poland anyway. His gamble would eventually cost the lives of more than 4 million German
soldiers and more than a million civilians. World War II had officially begun.

ONE YEAR LATER, MID-OCTOBER 1940

 

Franz worked alone at his desk in an empty classroom. His instructors were out, each training students for war. German troops now occupied all of Europe from Poland to France and had beaten the English back to their island. The “Battle of Britain,” as the British called it, was over. The battle had taken place late that summer when the Germans had tried to destroy the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in the sky and to bomb their airfields on the ground. But before the German Air Force could succeed, a grievous mistake shook their focus. During a night raid, a German bomber mistakenly missed its target, an oil depot east of London, and bombed several homes on London’s East End neighborhood. Hitler had given orders that British cities were not to be bombed. But a week later, another German bomber hit homes again. In response, the British sent bombers to attack Berlin, a raid that also missed its military targets and bombed the city’s civilians. In a speech Hitler warned the British to stop their attacks on German cities, but it was too late—both sides had stepped over the line. Cities and civilians soon became fair game.

From then on, both sides bombed each other’s cities at night and called one another “terror bombers.” Franz knew August was on the front lines, flying a Ju-88 bomber, a fast, twin-engine plane with a four man crew. August and his crew had been assigned to Squadron KG-806 and were based in Caen, France, from where they bombed England at night. At first their targets were airfields and docks. Then they were ordered to bomb cities. Franz knew August would not have liked this, but would have had no choice.

Franz looked up in surprise when he heard the door to his classroom open slowly. The cadets usually kicked it open in glee after a
mission. Franz saw Father Josef standing in the doorway. The priest was dressed in civilian attire but still wore his large wooden cross. Franz moved toward him, his heart racing. Then he stopped. Father Josef was not smiling.

“Sit down, Franz,” he said.

Franz stayed standing, his feet frozen. Father Josef was his father’s best friend. Franz assumed something must have happened to his father.

The priest’s eyes welled with tears.

Franz’s legs became wobbly, as if his body knew the answer even before his mind made the suggestion. Father Josef rushed to him and guided him into a seat among the many empty desks.

“August is with God,” he said.

 

F
RANZ WOULD NOT
allow Father Josef to provide him with any details until the following day, when he was able to control his emotions. Father Josef told Franz that August had crashed on takeoff for a night mission to London several days prior on October 10. August and his entire crew had been killed. The reason for the crash was unknown. It had happened at night and all witnesses saw was a flash.

There would be no funeral. August was already buried in Caen, France. Father Josef gave Franz a letter written by August’s commanding officer that said that August had died “a hero.” Franz tossed the letter aside.

Franz blamed himself for August’s crash. He had trained him.
What could I have missed?

He blamed the people who had built August’s plane.
Had they made a mistake?

BOOK: A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
3.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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