Chocolate Cake With Hitler (11 page)

1943

Mummy took me and Hilde to the Sport Palace where Papa was making a very important speech. There were hundreds and hundreds of rows of people, hats on laps. Papa was amazing. The whole crowd screamed and cheered. His message was that every single German had to put all their effort into the war. This is total war. Everyone has to be involved. We need one million more soldiers and we can easily find them. Everything which doesn’t contribute to the war effort is going to be closed down: there will be no more circuses, no more theatres, no more restaurants, no more shops except chemists, grocers and cobblers. And the grocers will have to sell essential food, no fancy stuff. Cake-making is banned. Women have got to do all the jobs they
possibly
can so that all men are free to join the army. For instance, only women are going to be allowed to cut hair, even men’s hair. All the barbers have got to join the army. Grandmothers will have to look after the children so that all women under 50 can do useful jobs. And everyone has to make do without servants so that the servants can help us win the war too.

Sitting in the car on the way home, I was trying to imagine what it was going to be like, but Mummy said that for us nothing much was going to change. I felt rather disappointed. She said that because she and Papa are already working so hard for the war effort, and for
the German people, they really couldn’t manage so many children and houses without servants. Uncle Leader has made Papa Empire Plenipotentiary for Total Mobilisation, which means he’s in charge of everything really now – not just films and newspapers. It’s a great honour. And Mummy is taking on even more war work. She is going to work for a factory, sewing
uniforms
, although she’s going to do the sewing on her own machine at Castle Lanke, then each week she’ll take the things she’s made into the factory. At work Papa has had to close lots of departments. For instance, they’ve had to give up making cartoons. Papa says that once we’ve won the war we’ll go full speed ahead on cartoons and soon be making even better ones than the Americans. Colour ones.

In his speech, Papa explained that the Russian Communists are trying to take over the whole of Europe. They want a Jewish World Revolution. Unless we stop them the Russians will overtake Germany and then the Jewish murder squads will come in and kill all the leaders, all the intelligent people. Papa says a family like ours would be one of the first to be killed, which actually might be quite lucky for us because everyone else will be forced into slavery and millions will die of starvation. England should be helping us fight against this evil, but they are being stupid. Papa says they have been tricked into thinking that Jews are perfectly safe. So it’s up to us Germans to save Europe.

There were lots of wounded soldiers at the front of the stadium. Hilde and I saw one man who had lost an arm and he was clapping his leg like mad with his good hand. We tried it to see if you could make as loud a noise with one hand as you can with two, but Mummy said it was rude to copy.

Papa was shouting so much and thumping the air that he was completely dripping with sweat. At the end of the speech he shouted: “Now people arise and let the storm break loose!” And everybody went absolutely mad, cheering the Leader and clapping and doing the Hail Victory salute. It was crazy, and then somehow we all started singing
Germany, Germany, above all, above all the world!
, which always makes the hair on my arms stand on end. Thousands of people all singing at the tops of their voices. It felt like the whole nation was joined together: and no one could defeat us! I felt so proud of Papa.

This was one of the best years of the war because we stayed in one place – Castle Lanke – most of the time and went to school in Wandlitz. Things began to feel a bit more normal, and more like we were in our own home, which is much better than feeling like you’re a guest all the time. We also got another new nanny – well, she wasn’t really a nanny – we were too old for a nanny – she was a governess. The youngest three had
their own governess, Miss Schroeter, who was as old as the hills, but Hilde and Helmut and I had Hubi –Miss Hubner, but we called her Hubi, even after she married and became Mrs. Leske. She mostly helped Helmut with catch-up lessons because he tended to get behind at school. At first I didn’t like her because I didn’t need extra help and I didn’t want to do extra work. Also Helmut seemed to be her favourite. She called him “
little
brother” because he had the same birthday as her brother, which was annoying, but actually she turned out to be very kind and good at sticking up for us.

Mostly Papa wasn’t there, because he had to stay in Berlin and work, but sometimes he came home at weekends. As soon as he walked through the door it was like someone had switched a bright light on. Instead of quietly eating our meals, telling Mummy about school and concentrating on spreading our butter ration as far as possible, suddenly there was no time to think about what you were eating because Papa was blasting questions:

“What’s the capital of Japan?”

“Name three operas by Wagner.”

“Name five other German composers.”

“13 x 13?”

“Quick, quick, quick. Come on Helmut – don’t let your sisters show you up!”

And then there were games. Games you never knew whether to win or lose, because Papa likes to see us do
our best, but sometimes he bites our heads off if he loses.

Chase around the table was one game. It was easy to win because we could duck under the table and Papa couldn’t – normally that was fine. In the end, or
actually
quite quickly, Papa would catch Heide and tickle her and we’d all laugh. But one day Helmut, who was trying to make up for not knowing the name of the leader of Russia, even though I was mouthing it across the table, decided to prove his ability by sticking a hand out from under the table and grabbing at Papa’s ankle as he ran past. Papa went flying, knocking over a side table. We all stopped dead. Papa went bright red and the sides of his jaws started throbbing, which is always a bad sign. I went over to help him get up, but he screamed at me to get away. We all backed out of the room as quickly as we could, even Papa’s adjutants Schwagermann and von Oven. Papa started yelling for Helmut. Bravely, HeImut went back into the room on his own. We could hear Papa shouting and shouting about what an idiot Helmut was, what a
disappointment
. It went on and on. The rest of the house was silent. Eventually Helmut emerged, his face deep red and smeared with tears. He rushed straight up to his room, slamming the door behind him. We all left him alone to get over it. About half an hour later, Papa called for Hubi.

When Papa had been shouting at Helmut, Hubi had
muttered under her breath, “That man’s a sadist.” I didn’t know what a sadist was, and it wasn’t a time to ask questions, but apparently one of the kitchen staff reported her to Papa for insulting him.

Hubi was in Papa’s office for ages. We thought she was going to get the sack, but in the end she came out quite calmly and went up to see Helmut. Having heard Papa shouting for Hubi, he was now more worried that he would lose Hubi than upset about being told off by Papa. She told Helmut that Papa was a fair man who could see when he made a mistake, and there would be no more punishments.

I think it was after the tripping incident that Mummy and Papa got Georg Schertz to come and stay to be a friend for Helmut. They decided he needed someone other than Papa to trip up, and that being with all us girls the whole time was turning him into a sissy. I heard Hubi telling Cook. They chose Georg because he came from a good family with a house on Swan Island. Georg was OK. Quite shy, and he didn’t stop being shy even though he stayed with us at Castle Lanke for most of a summer. He never talked much to anyone except Helmut. Actually, to be strictly truthful, I don’t think he talked much to Helmut. They just
endlessly
arrested each other and spied on each other and shot each other with sticks.

The only time the rest of us saw friends was at school. The teacher, Mr. Klink, was a bit strict. He was very old,
with little round glasses and fluffy white hair. Like all my teachers, he always picked boys to answer the
questions
. Often I’d have my hand up so long it felt like it was going to drop off and I’d have to prop it up with my other hand. I don’t think he thought there was much point in teaching girls. He’d ask us questions which we had to chant the answers to:

“What is the most noble life?”

“
The life of a farmer is the most noble life
.”

“What is a woman’s greatest destiny?”

“
A woman’s greatest destiny is to be a mother
.”

He’d come back from retirement and he had loads of stories about the last war. He’d fought in France. He told us about the mud and the rats and endless rattle of the artillery. He told us about the treachery of the Jews, stealing the soldiers’ money. He told us about his friend Fritz who was killed by a grenade as he passed Mr. Klink a cigarette. His stories made the class very quiet. Most of the children were thinking of their fathers at the front.

My two best friends were Anni and Sophie. I liked Anni the minute I met her because she had curly black hair and thick black eyelashes that made you stare at her eyes. Anni and her twin brother Rudi had come to Wandlitz to live with their grandmother after their house in Berlin was bombed. Sophie told me that Anni’s mother and baby brother were killed, but Anni never talked about that. Sophie told me stories about
all the children. Whose father had been killed, or was missing. She had lived her whole life in Wandlitz and seemed to know everything about everything. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters and she lived alone with her mother. You could tell. She had neat plaits and a well-stocked pencil case. And if I played too much with Anni she would pretend to ignore us until one of us went and begged her to join in. I didn’t think about it at the time, but the one person she never talked about was her own father. I really felt I could trust Anni and Sophie because they never teased me about being a Goebbels. Helmut had to put up with a lot of that. There was a group of boys in his class who did exaggerated limps in the playground and
apparently
they had this mad staring-eye look that they’d give each other when Helmut spoke in class.

Both our grannies had houses in the grounds of Castle Lanke. Every Sunday afternoon we would go and visit Granny Goebbels and sing to her. Always when we got there she’d be sitting in her chair with her eyes closed, muttering to herself and fingering her rosary beads. Papa didn’t usually come with us, but she would always ask after him. She used to call him “that boy” as if she didn’t realise that he had grown up. “What has that boy done now?” she would ask. “Always up to no good. I don’t know how many grey hairs he’s given me!” A lot,
was the answer: her hair was completely white. Every Sunday she said the same things. And Auntie Maria who was living with her always said, “Come on, Mother, you know what he’s like.” And she’d say “I know, I know, I know – that’s why I spend so much time
praying
for his soul!”