Chapter 39 Limbo #2
The second idea: The announcement of his death was a ruse put out to stymie the Soviets; Hitler has actually escaped to the south and is regrouping his forces in Bavaria.
He’s certainly not anywhere around here!
Is he meant to be in Berchtesgaden? They’ll have a job prying him out of there—the place is at the top of a mountain, and if he has SS troops with him …
Shall I confess that I hope Joe won’t be among those who pursue him?
Only in this book will I admit that. Frau Lindemann seems perfectly capable of coming after me for it!
The woman is beside herself. Her husband is SS and serving in Poland.
How many SS there do seem to be in that place!
I haven’t heard any rumors about Joe’s stay with us, fortunately; the neighbors were hiding with their blackout curtains drawn when his friends came for him, and the boy across the street, whose name is Axel, apparently got such a scolding—and more than a scolding—from his mother for slipping out into the battle and popping off with his pistol that he hasn’t dared speak of what he did there.
His mother is one of those who just wants the whole thing over and insists she never supported Hitler in the least. She is ostentatiously civil to Dr. Becker.
He tells me with a wry smile that it’s quite remarkable how many Germans have always objected to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.
They’ve objected very silently, it seems.
Frau Neumann’s entry in the Where’s-Hitler lottery: He killed himself in the Führerbunker in Berlin.
“Mark my words,” she says, “he won’t have wanted to go the same way as Mussolini.
Men like that are always cowards, in the end.
No, he’s shot himself and had his minions burn his body so the Russians couldn’t do to him what the Italians did to Il Duce.
You won’t find him hanging by his heels!
Beneath his dignity, oh, yes, certainly.
” What an uproar that caused! Frau Lindemann was heard to utter the words “my husband,” but Frau Neumann only scoffed.
“What will your husband do about it, then? He’s taken by the Red Army already, most likely.
” We may have to begin assigning them separate arrival times; I honestly feared bloodshed, or hair pulling at the least.
Dr. Müller’s hypothesis (a widower, he does his own shopping): Hitler was flown out of Germany by Goering himself, and the two of them are hiding somewhere in South America.
Everyone scoffed at this one. “When was the last time any of us have even seen a Luftwaffe plane?” Also, “How can you think Goering would even fit in the seat? He’d get his fat bottom stuck fast, and there he’d be, half in and half out, waiting for the Red Army to come take a shot at him.
” That last was Frau Neumann, of course.
If Hitler were in disguise, though, and traveling more humbly, without the very recognizable Goering, would it actually be impossible?
What does one know of his appearance, after all?
An unhealthy, puffy sort of man, ordinary-looking but for his toothbrush mustache and distinctive forelock.
Without the mustache, wearing spectacles, perhaps, his hair cut short like a soldier’s and dyed gray, dressed as a laborer or a common soldier, who would even know him?
Meanwhile, I continue to stretch our baking supplies and we wait here in limbo.
Frau Adelberg asked me today about my “heirloom.” I would gladly sell the brooch, but to whom?
There are very few Americans here. I’d imagined they’d be more of an occupying force, but that hasn’t happened so far, at least not here.
We limp along, nobody knowing what the rules are.
Ration coupons are no longer issued, and we hear there will be a new system under the Americans, but when?
It will take time, I imagine, for a new authority to be set in place.
I hope it’s soon. We are all very tired of potatoes.
But then again, who will offer us anything else?
Does a conqueror normally feed the conquered?
Not in the Slavic countries, by all accounts, after the Nazis took them.
How I wish my father were here to answer such questions!
I fear we are all very much in the dark.
And Joe:
May 5, 1945
Dear Dad,
Things are changing every day now. We’re still moving south and east, as we have been all along. Some of the guys say we’ll end up in Austria. Fine by me. At least they’ve surrendered there!
We left Munich yesterday afternoon, taking more prisoners along the way—and equipment, too. There were only 100 or so planes on the ground at the airport. No wonder the Krauts couldn’t muster any air cover!
Nobody seems to know much more than we do.
The German soldiers we capture now are oddly jubilant, celebrating the end of the war and not seeming to care much that they’re prisoners.
“At least we’ll eat!” one jolly guy told me.
“Will you send us to England, do you think? Do they still have steak and kidney pudding there?” I told him I had no idea.
There’s been no overture for peace as far as any of us have heard, so the war’s still going on, though these guys are sure done with it.
We just gather them up and take them to the nearest mustering point, and they come along quite happily.
Hitler had practically any man who could walk and any boy over 10 shooting a rifle.
I hope, wherever he is, alive or dead (dead, the Germans say, but they would, wouldn’t they?), there’s a special Hell waiting for him.
Not very Jewish of me, I know. Maybe it’s all the pork I’ve had to eat!
No choice, if I don’t want to starve. No Kosher rations in the U.S. Army!
Oh—one last rumor making the rounds: that we’re down here because they’re about to send us to the spider’s hideout in the Alps. Berchtesgaden is almost in Austria, so I guess it makes sense—if he’s there. That’s an assignment I’d take on with pleasure.
Love to Mom,
Joe
May 7, 1945
Dear Dad,
Well, it’s happened—you’ll know long before you get this letter, I’m sure! The German generals have signed a surrender, and it’s over.
We don’t feel much like celebrating, to tell you the truth.
For one thing, the guys in the Pacific are still in the thick of it.
For the other, we mostly just feel tired.
Too much has happened, and maybe we haven’t taken it all in yet.
When I think that we landed in Marseilles just five months ago, some of us convinced it would all be over before we could get our licks in—half hoping for that, and half disappointed—well, I’m not sure I even know those green kids anymore, playing cards and making jokes and wondering if we’d meet any pretty girls.
I remind myself that I’m still nineteen, that I still have all my living to do, and I’m just …
blank. I can’t even imagine my life after the war.
I’m sure the Brits can imagine it even less.
I’ve been here five months; they’ve been at it five YEARS.
Maybe we’ll feel better once we’ve had some rest. That’s supposed to be the brief for now: at least a week off to rest and repair our equipment.
Meanwhile, we held a service in a cemetery today and said a prayer for all the Allied soldiers who’ve lost their lives over here.
A solemn moment. What a waste this thing has been, and all because nobody believed such an insignificant, crazy little man would really do what he did—even after he’d started doing it.
Don’t pay too much attention to this. I seem to be in a blue mood tonight.
Love to Mom,
Joe
May 23, 1945
Dear Dad.
Sorry about that last letter. I did feel a little better after a week of rest. Guess I was just tired. Guess we all were.
We’re in the Tyrol now, in Austria. Things are crazy here, just nuts.
We’ve become traffic cops: stationed on every road and trail and checking every mountain cabin or hotel, stopping all movement.
Why? Because so many high-up Nazis are running away from Germany, like rats from a sinking ship, and where are they going?
Not east, you can count on that, and not to jolly old England!
Someplace that speaks German, of course, which means Austria and/or Switzerland, then looking to get through to neutral Spain or Portugal and go on from there.
They’ve ditched their uniforms and their Party buttons and are trying to blend in.
Meanwhile, civilians still need to travel, so the Army’s job is to try to figure out who is and isn’t a war criminal pretty darn quick.
I’m becoming fairly good at it. Still interpreting, of course, for the Counter-Intelligence Corps this time, but interpreting my interpretations!
You know how I can tell?
The Nazi officials and SS officers are the only ones who aren’t skinny. That’s a tell right there. I haven’t seen anybody half as fat as Goering in five months over here, and they’ve just kept on getting thinner.
Their clothes. The military ones tend to be wearing an odd mixture of badly fitting clothes, probably given to them by some kindhearted civilian.
And underneath that? They never think to get rid of their Army underwear.
Sure enough, you tell them to remove their shirt, and there it is: that gray woolen Army-issue undershirt.
As soon as you see that, you’ve got them.
We got General Schorner the other day, the commander of Nazi forces in Czechoslovakia.
The word is that he had any soldier found behind the front lines court-martialed and hanged.
Here’s the kicker—he showed up here after he’d deserted and flown to Austria!
Then he tried to get through us dressed as an enlisted man.
These Counter-Intelligence guys are good, but I flagged him myself.
It was the look in his eyes. German civilians (except the high-ranking Nazis) and regular soldiers aren’t arrogant anymore.
What really cooked his goose, though, was that those regular soldiers ratted him out.
Serves him right. We gave him back to the Soviets, and he was mighty unhappy to go.
I don’t guess they’ll be showing him a good time.
The POW camps are huge, as you can imagine—all the regular soldiers we find get sent there, and German officers are put in charge of them—with Army guards, of course.
I’m glad we’re not assigned to guard them in camp.
What am I afraid of? That I’d be too sympathetic, once I realized that they’re mostly just ordinary men and boys drafted to fight?
Or, which might be worse, that I wouldn’t have any sympathy at all? I can’t even tell you.
OK, Dad, I have something to say now that you’re not going to like, the real reason for this letter. We heard today that we’re going to be training in Japanese tactics, and get some extra physical conditioning, too. I’m sure you can guess why.
Some pretty glum faces at that news. On the one hand, we know the guys in the Pacific have been through hell, maybe even worse than here.
On the other hand—boy, do we not want to have to do all this again.
Simple as that. Since it’s not up to us, though, there’s no choice but to buckle down and help finish the job.
I sure would’ve liked to see that girl again, though.
Daisy. I had some kind of idea that I’d get leave, once they started mustering us out, and get back there, and—what?
Say thanks, I guess. Give the kids some more chocolate.
I know that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t explain it.
She’s a pretty girl, sure—a very pretty girl—but there are lots of pretty German girls.
Marlene Dietrich isn’t the only one! No, it was the way she talked to me.
She’s sort of a lively person, and self-possessed at the same time, like she knows who she is, if that makes sense.
Bright as can be, and funny, too, and not afraid to boss me around and tell it like it is.
Hard to faze that girl, I think, because from what the other fellows tell me, she walked a mighty long way to get me help, and she had to be scared.
And, of course, dragging me into the house in the first place.
I don’t know—I was half out of my mind some of the time, sure, but still—I liked her better than I guess I’ve liked any girl, even Rachel.
I think Rachel hoped I’d propose before I left home, but I wasn’t even nineteen, and facing—I didn’t even know what.
Rachel’s a great girl, and I’ve known her and her folks half my life, but Daisy was something else.
That’s the best I can do. She was something else.
It's strange to care so much about that. I guess war does tend to change the way you think. In any case, like I said—what would I have done if I’d been able to see her again?
I’d probably just feel worse, especially if she quite rightly told me to get lost!
We’re the enemy over here still—conquerors, not liberators.
Maybe the Germans will change their minds about that once they’ve had a few years to think about the road they were heading down, but right now? Nope.
I don’t know why I went into all that. Probably trying not to think about Japan. But as we all know now—I’m bullet-resistant. I’ll be coming home. Count on it.
Love to Mom, and to you. Keep writing back, please—I can use the lift.
Joe