Volk (36 page)

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As it happened, he was able to return to them in two months, just before things really got bad at the front. Knowing that he could not speak for his own future, let alone Quality's, he told her that she would have to go to a Lebensborn maternity home. There at least she would be safe until the baby came, and perhaps thereafter. He hated to do it, but the thought of her fate if he was unable to return convinced him. At least he would not have to worry about her.

For the bad news at the front was the largest anti-partisan effort yet, Operation Cottbus. Two partisan groups had joined together and formed what they called “The Republic of Lake Palik,” which extended on the southern end to within twenty miles of the Minsk-Moscow railway, and to another Moscow line in the north. There could be real trouble if the partisans started sabotaging the railways. That would interrupt the shipment of supplies and troops to the front. So this had to be dealt with, if German power in the region was to be maintained.

General Gottberg rounded up more than sixteen thousand men for the operation. Most of them were police from the Baltic states, or Russian volunteers. But it also included a civilian emergency force, part of which was comprised of ninety administrative workers from Minsk. Ernst suspected he knew how they felt: desk workers hauled out to the field, like himself. And of course there were the SS personnel.

The partisan forces were no mere ragtag bands. They now had tanks, field guns, an air strip and troop-carrying gliders under the command of a Russian Brigadier General. This had become an aspect of the front line, for that line had become dangerously porous. On the map this was pacified territory, but the map was a fiction. Ernst remembered Quality's remark: “If Germany loses the war.” Out here it was unfortunately easy to recognize that possibility. The folly of not taking Moscow, thus leaving the head of the bear in place, was starkly clear. As was the folly of slaughtering the natives, for each one killed seemed to generate two more partisans.

Ernst had always regarded Adolf Hitler as a great man. Now even that belief was wearing thin. Perhaps if Hitler could come out here and see the reality, the policy would change. But Hitler, and Germany, seemed to be locked in to this course. In fact Hitler was giving ever greater support to the SS Einsatzgruppen, because its methods were more effective than those of the more fastidious Wehrmacht. It was like Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the gods, as the final battle loomed. The gods were destined to lose, and all things to be destroyed. Richard Wagner's music for this was beautiful, but the reality was grim.

Would Quality be allowed to take her books and Victrola to the maternity home, so she could continue listening to Wagner? He hoped so. She was a foreigner, but she wore his swastika, which others would misinterpret as her political statement. How could they refuse her Nietzsche and Wagner?

Operation Cottbus proceeded. The Luftwaffe supported it, bombing the suspect towns. It was full-scale war, and this time there were many partisans killed in true action. But for Ernst it was worse, because he was assigned to assist the notorious Dierlewanger Regiment, the one composed of Nazi party members who were convicted criminals. They were called “poachers,” but there was no masking their nature. Ernst, as an intelligence officer, had to help interrogate prisoners and monitor the activities and attitudes of personnel assigned to “special details.” In reality, the execution squads. He wished he could get drunk on vodka himself, but of course he couldn't.

As it happened, he was given no command responsibility, which was a relief. He had merely to be on hand as the work proceeded. He was in effect a spectator. But what he witnessed turned his stomach.

For the partisans had particular strongholds, and these were protected by minefields. It was folly for soldiers to march across those fields; if they managed to escape the mines, they would be picked off by the partisan sharpshooters. But the Dierlewanger men had a simple, ruthless solution: they routed out the women and children who were left behind in the towns, and forced them to march across the mine fields. The German troops followed, and the partisans could not fire on them without first gunning down their own families. As a result they held their fire, and watched their own people getting blown up by their own mines.

Ernst watched it happening, unable to turn away lest his horror be manifest. He could not help picturing Quality there, carrying his baby within her, stepping on a hidden mine and being blown apart. For each of those women were beloved by someone. He watched, and did not flinch, but his heart was turning leaden. This was the twilight of decency. What possible cause could be worth this?

He would have renounced it all, and fled the region, if he could. But he could not, because there was no honorable release from military service, and a dishonorable one would have cost him not only his life, but Quality's—and probably Krista's too. His own people remained hostage to his performance. So though he shot no partisans directly, and gave no orders to sacrifice women, he felt the blackening blood on his hands, that could never be washed off. He was part of the massive dishonor that was the SS Einsatzgruppen.

The operation began in mid May and continued through the month of June, 1943. Some fifteen thousand partisans were reported killed: six thousand in action, five thousand as suspects, and four thousand women and children used in the mine spotting. Five and a half thousand women and children were also conscripted for the labor force. Only a hundred and twenty seven Germans were killed. Thus Operation Cottbus was considered a great success. The fact that the countryside seemed to be no safer than before for Germans was ignored.

Yet there was additional irony. Ernst overheard the story of one person who had tried to follow a more civilized course. General Kube, Governor of White Russia, tried to win over the villagers in the region of Minsk so that the harvest would not be abandoned. Food was a real problem, and any fields that could be saved would help alleviate hunger. So General Kube's representative followed behind the troops in a loudspeaker van, attempting to drum up support. “The resistance is over. Return to your homes and work, and there will be no further reprisals. Cooperate, and we will work with you to restore your lives and bring food. You have everything to gain by peace.”

But even as he was making his appeal, an SS colonel was giving orders to burn the village. The representative came across half-burned human bodies being eaten by pigs on the floor of a burned-out barn. Seeing the futility of his effort, he returned to Minsk and reported to the General. Outraged, Kube directed a complaint to his superiors. Nothing came of it.

Ernst knew exactly how the General felt.

•  •  •

In August Ernst finally got more leave time. He returned to Berlin, and to Tiergarten, but the room was empty. He inquired, and the hotel manager gave him the message Quality had left: “She is at the Lebensborn at this address.” He held a slip of paper. But he did not give it to Ernst immediately. “Her account was overdue, but we did not press her for it, knowing you would make it good.”

“I will make it good,” Ernst agreed. He settled the account, and was given the address. He probably could have run down the address himself, but he did want to settle any debts, and preferred to keep the matter quiet.

He went there, and found the home crowded with children. In December 1942 thousands of racial German children had been forcibly removed from Poland. The maternity houses were required to be used until the children were adopted by suitable parents. Thus the nursery facilities were overflowing, for adoptions were slow. Good German families had other concerns now, such as feeding themselves.

Quality was there without Krista. She was now in her eighth month, her belly well swollen. She remained lovely to his eyes, and seemed to be in good health. The swastika shone at her bosom. He knew she did not accept its symbolism, but wore it only because it was his gift to her. Still, it had surely helped her gain entry and good treatment here, for the authorities would have taken it as evidence of her conversion to Nazism.

He kissed her chastely. “I am sorry I took so long,” he said. “I settled the account.”

“Account?”

“The money you owed the hotel. I paid it.”

“I owed the hotel no money. We left when we ran out, assuming no debt.”

Ernst realized that he had been taken. There was nothing he could do about it. “You are safe; that is all that matters.”

“Krista went home to Wiesbaden. Perhaps thee should visit her, too. She was very good to me.”

He shook his head. “Even if I had the time and the money, I would not care to see her alone. There is only respect between us, now.”

“Of course.” That was it. There was no privacy for any serious dialogue, and his leave was short. He had to return to the front. The truth was that there was little he would have cared to tell her about his activity. He felt unworthy to be in her company, for she was a gentle, practicing pacifist, and his hands were stained. He understood the alienation she had suffered from Lane Dowling, because now it applied to himself. He loved her, but how could he be with her?

He set himself to go, though he longed to remain. But Quality held him. “Ernst, what troubles thee?”

He shook his head. “Nothing I can speak about.”

She touched the swastika. “Does thee wish to recover thy—”

“No!” For that would signal the end of their private marriage. “Oh, Quality, never think that! I am unworthy of you, but I will love you till I die. It is just that I wish things were not as they are. That the war did not exist. That all men and all women were like you. That I could be all that you would have me be.”

She nodded. “I know thee is enmeshed in horror, Ernst. I can see it in thy face and feel it in thy hand. But this is not of thy making.”

“It stains me nevertheless.”

“I, too, am stained.”

“Not in my eyes.”

“Nor thee in mine.”

He could not ague with her. “I will come again when I can.” He kissed her again, quickly, and departed.

•  •  •

During the final months of 1943 the situation of the Germans grew desperate. It seemed impossible to eradicate the partisans, and the Russians were advancing. It was becoming obvious that the German tenure in Russia was ending.

This brought a new policy: scorched earth. It was necessary to destroy the ability of the land to support life, so that the partisans could not exist on it. Nevertheless, resources were diverted to exterminate the few Jews who remained unaccounted for in earlier actions. Not because they had done anything, but just because they were Jews. Hitler wanted a Jew-free Europe, even if Germany lost the war while implementing this policy.

Of course the partisans controlled much of the open countryside, so that it was hazardous to go out and actually scorch the earth. Troops would go out in the morning and return at night, claiming to have reduced a particular section, but Ernst knew that it was more likely that they had spent their time hiding from the partisans.

By the turn of the year, the Russians had advanced so far that Minsk was now not far from the front. Then the Russians broke through to the south, so that Minsk was threatened with encirclement. Retreat was mandatory, lest there be another Stalingrad disaster. The anti-partisan activity became pointless; the only concern was to extricate the German forces before they were cut off.

Ernst was transferred back to Berlin in April, 1944. By the look of it, few Germans would remain behind long.

But things were confused in Berlin, too, and he was not reassigned immediately. It seemed that the authorities were too busy trying to understand the disaster to bother with the paperwork of individual assignment. Ernst was for the moment left to his own devices.

Naturally he went to the Lebensborn maternity home to see Quality. She was there, working as a volunteer to care for the children, which still crowded the premises. She was slender again, and in good health, and she still wore his swastika in plain sight. “But the baby—” Ernst asked.

“I bore a son in September,” she said. “He was healthy, but they told me that I lacked the proper qualities to raise an Aryan child, so my baby would have to join the racial Germans in awaiting adoption. I was allowed to leave and fend for myself, or to remain to work for bed and board. Since I had no money, and this was the only way I could remain close to Ernst Junior, I agreed to remain. I am, it seems, good with children, and they are shorthanded, so it is a fair compromise. It allows me to remain close to Junior, who is now seven months old. I try not to favor him too much, so as not to attract attention, but he knows me. They all know me.”

“But the child is mine,” Ernst protested. “He must not be adopted!”

“I had hoped thee would feel that way,” she confessed demurely. “Few folk care to assume the added burden of another couple's child in these troubled times, but I quail whenever a prospective couple comes to look. I am afraid that mine will be the one they choose.”

Ernst talked to the proprietors, who referred him to the higher Lebensborn authority. His application was taken for consideration. “But you are not married,” the clerk pointed out.

That stopped him. If he married Quality now, legally, she would be the wife of a Nazi officer—as Germany lost the war. That was no albatross to hang on her at this time.

“But I will marry thee,” Quality said as he tried to explain. “We are already married in our hearts; the outer symbol is merely confirmation.” She touched the swastika.

“It is no good for you,” he said. “You must be free to return unencumbered to America.”

“Not without thee and our son,” she said firmly.

So he applied for permission to marry. His application was taken, and lost in the shuffle. He could not marry Quality until his petition was granted, and he could not secure Ernst Junior until he married.