Jack Fernley - America Über Alles

‘We have a car!’ said Karl proudly. ‘We captured it yesterday.’

‘You captured it?’

Paul spoke up. ‘It was our reward.’

‘Your reward?’

‘Yes, our reward for telling the Feldgendarmerie about Genscher the grocer’s son; he was a deserter and his father was trying to protect him. They gave us the Volkswagen.’

‘Where is this Volkswagen?’

‘Outside his store.’

Reitsch and von Greim exchanged a smile. ‘And where might that be?’

‘Oh, just off Friedrichstrasse. Come on, I’ll take you there.’

‘Won’t be long,’ she said to von Greim.

‘Don’t worry, Paul and Wilf will protect me,’ he said with a further smile.

Reitsch and Karl jogged down the pockmarked street. The light was lowering now. It must be about seven-thirty, she thought. For the first time she was able to get a sense of Berlin as it was, a city under siege. She had last been here a little over a year ago, just after the terrible bombings of March 1944. Then she had thought that there was not much more the city could take, but the bombs had continued to fall for a year, night after night of devastation, with barely a break. And then the last month had brought a fresh round of annihilation. Nothing had been spared, it seemed. But it wasn’t the ghostly half-destroyed buildings that struck her; it was the acrid, fume-laden air, dark with smoke. As they ran through the streets, jumping over rubble from fallen buildings and the debris of homes long lost, she realised that the constant grittiness in her mouth was because the air was thick with masonry. It seemed as if the buildings were dissolving into the atmosphere, taking the life of the city with it, soon to leave nothing but memories and apparitions behind. A falling shell rudely interrupted her reverie.

‘They’ll be coming again soon,’ Karl shouted. ‘They send Katyusha rockets first, then the proper shells come. But there’s no planes now. Not for five nights. Because the British and the Americans are letting the Russians in. Cowards. Wait till we get them here, on our streets. Look, there it is.’

The boy pointed to a grey Volkswagen. Amid the rubble and the destruction, it was oddly perfect, the thin sheet of dust across it like wrapping paper around a present. It was parked outside the grocer’s store with its windows broken, its shelves empty. It had been looted. Outside, from a lamp post, two bodies hung, just a few feet off the ground. From one a hastily written sign hung from the neck: ‘ Wer kumpft kahn sterben. Wer sein Vaterland verrat mufs sterben. WIR MUSTEN STERBEN! ’: ‘Whoever fights can die. Whoever betrays his Fatherland must die. We had to die!’

‘The Genschers,’ the boy said without emotion. ‘Look, the keys are still here!’

‘Then we better go for a ride,’ she replied, barely giving the Genschers a look.

It was only a matter of a few minutes’ drive to von Greim. They put the general in the front passenger seat, the three boys squeezed into the back and Reitsch drove. Shells had started to fall intermittently in greater numbers, the roads were strewn with everything from fallen masonry to upturned carts, but it did not take long to drive from the crash site to the Reich Chancellery on Vossstrasse.

‘Will you introduce us to the Führer, General?’ Paul asked.

‘The Führer is always busy, he has little time for niceties. He has the Army, the Navy, the Luftwaffe, the defence of the Reich to organise. I can’t think any other man could handle such responsibility,’ von Greim answered.

‘Tsch, General. I am sure the Führer would only be too honoured to meet such brave defenders of Berlin as these boys.’

‘They say that General Wenck and the Twelfth Army are no more than a day away from breaking though the Russians and then we’ll see the Communist swine off for good,’ Paul again.

Reitsch stared straight ahead. Von Greim hesitated. ‘He is a great general and the Twelfth Army is one of our finest armies… if anyone can do it, it will be General Wenck. The Führer tells us he will be here soon, so we must believe he will.’

Reitsch stopped the car abruptly to the left of a heavily sandbagged gun placement in front of the Chancellery’s large brass doors. She swung open the car door and called out to the four troops manning the post: ‘Heil Hitler! I am Hanna Reitsch, holder of the Iron Cross First Class. I am here with Generaloberst Ritter von Greim, ordered by the Führer himself to come for an urgent conference. The Generaloberst is injured. I need you to come quickly to help him into the Chancellery!’

The soldiers looked at each other, confused. They had strict orders not to abandon their post, but the insistent tone of the woman intimidated them.

‘What are you waiting for? Come on!’ she screamed, getting out of the car.

The men now ran forward and made to pick up von Greim, carrying him quickly from the car into the Chancellery, Reitsch following. As they reached the doors, Reitsch stopped. Karl, Wilf and Paul were standing by the Volkswagen, mutely.

‘Hey, boys, I thought you wanted to meet the Führer, what are you waiting for?’

She saw the smiles break out on the boys’ faces, but her pleasure was disturbed by a low, whining sound. She knew what it was. She threw herself to the ground before the shell arrived. There was a torrent of noise, and then dirt and concrete formed a heavy cloud, small remnants of the street paving dropping on her body, a cruel hailstorm. She slowly raised herself. The Volkswagen had disappeared, replaced by a five-metre-wide crater. Of Karl, Wilf and Paul, there was no sign they had ever existed.

‘Dear Generaloberst, Hanna!’

They were in Ludwig Stumpfegger’s medical room, deep in the bunker underneath the Chancellery. Von Greim lay on a canvas bed, his wounded foot had been treated by the surgeon, painkillers had given him respite. The door flew open and the ermine-clad figure of Magdalena Goebbels entered. She embraced Reitsch warmly.

‘Magdalena, how are you? The children, are they with you and Joseph?’

‘They are, dear Hanna. They are the pride of the Reich. They take it all so well; they understand the sacrifices that have to be made. If the rest of the nation were so bold and brave, we would not be in this terrible mess. Cowards, cowards everywhere, those old Prussians in the army have betrayed the Führer. There are even’ – her voice moved into a softer register – ‘traitors here in the bunker. Some of them have started to run already. We haven’t seen Fegelein for two days.’

‘Probably holed up with one of his whores in that place he has over at Charlottenburg,’ von Greim joined in.

‘Generaloberst, I heard you had been wounded. You are always so dashing, so brave. You have raised everyone’s spirits by coming here. The Führer will be overjoyed. But your leg?’

‘Ach, these are nothing,’ he replied, addressing his bandaged leg and foot. ‘Scratches, my dear, mere scratches. Herr Stumpfegger and his nurses sorted it. You should thank Hanna we’re here; she landed the plane.’

‘Really? You landed it? Hanna, you must tell me everything, and the children, they will be so excited to see you again.’

There was a sudden commotion outside the door. The door opened again, there was a pause, and in came a small, shrunken figure. It took a second before both von Greim and Reitsch recognised the man standing before them.

‘Mein Führer,’ the general said, attempting to stand.

‘Dear Generaloberst, please, stay. It should be I bending my knee to you. You came. You both came. Dear Hanna,’ he reached out to take her hand and kissed it.

She noticed his shaking left arm, the result of the treacherous assassination attempt the previous July. His voice sounded weak, exhausted, his face ashen, his eyes rheumy, with pain running through them. Such sadness, she thought.