Armageddon - Leon Uris

He wanted to tell her about the exercises in degrading the human spirit and the ease with which he beat up defenseless men; and that after his first revulsion, there was a pleasure in the power one had, in seeing men cower before you.

Dietrich turned from the window. Ernestine lay on the bed, half dressed. She looked like an innocent child, winding up the music box. As he came to her, her eyes showed him how filled with love she was.

Ernestine was reassuring herself that Dietrich had not really changed; he was compassionate, and all during that first trembling night alone he had been ever so gentle with her. Perhaps he was right about his desire to become an SS officer. It had given him manliness and respect. A man must have what he wants. Mother always told her that ... give the man what he wants ... the man is everything.

Dietrich sat alongside her. She tried to understand his silence, longed to make him happy, fulfill him completely. He stroked her hair. It was thick and golden and his fingers became entwined in it. Suddenly, his fingers tightened. He hurt her. He pulled his hand away and stared at it almost madly... .

“Kadett Rascher!”

“Jawohl!”

“I am your Hauptsturmfuehrer. Each new candidate like yourself is assigned a shepherd puppy as he enters his SS training. An SS officer must understand animals, how to train them, and how to use them. And, as our beloved Fuehrer said, how to imitate their power and virility. You shall pick a dog from this litter and after it is properly housebroken the dog will share your quarters with you.”

Dietrich looked into the kennel of furry balls, lifted a puppy, and smiled as its wet nose and tongue drenched him with affection.

“Aha. The only bitch in the litter. What will you call her, Kadett Rascher?”

“I will call her Ernestine. She will be my girl until I can return to another Ernestine.”

Even the cruel taskmasters were pleased at the way Kadett Rascher trained his bitch, Ernestine. There was the magnificent communication between man and beast strived for but seldom reached. No getting away from it, Rascher had a way with animals. He could get more from his bitch whispering in her ear than all the other cadets with their leashes, straps, choke collars, and throw chains. For that first year the young cadet and his dog were together day and night, the patrols of Schwabenwald, the hunts for escapees, guard duty. The hard discipline, the ugliness of the camp were all forgotten in the evening when he sat on his cot and read and reached down and was able to run his hand through the dog’s fur.

A few days before the graduation ceremony, the permanent awarding of the black uniform, the death’s head insignia, and the SS dagger, Kadett Dietrich Rascher and his dog were called into a blank, stone room in the kennel. His Hauptsturmfuehrer was there.

“I am pleased with your progress, Rascher,” the captain said. “You have learned your lessons well. You will be a credit to the master race. Before receiving your SS dagger there is, however, a final obedience test that all SS men must take.”

“Jawohl,” Rascher snapped from his position to attention.

“You will, at this instant, choke your dog to death.”

SS Kadett Dietrich Rascher passed his final test of obedience. With neither qualm, hesitation, nor visible show of personal emotion, he reached down, grabbed the trusting animal, put a choke hold on her, and pressured quickly to snap her neck. He then came back to attention.

“With men like you,” the captain congratulated, “we are undefeatable.”

A sudden wind beat a tattoo of water on the window. Dietrich continued to stare at his hand.

“What is it, darling?” she pleaded, “what is it?”

“How long can this go on?” Bruno Falkenstein moaned. “Maybe it would be better if a bomb fell on us and killed us all.”

“Please don’t speak like that before the girls,” Herta pleaded.

“Yesterday, six hours of raids and the day before that all day. Today, it may never end. What have we done to deserve this?”

Ernestine looked at her father quizzically. Perhaps the people of Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London wondered the same thing, she thought. Strange, father didn’t seem unhappy about it then.

“Turn that damn music box off, it drives me crazy!” he commanded.

“Yes, Father.”

Ernestine was shocked when she saw Dietrich on his furlough from the Eastern Front. She knew that the war would do something to him, but he was still not much more than a boy. Dietrich was twenty-two now, but all that was gentle was gone.

Furloughs were created to bring a soldier happiness and renew his vigor to fight. Ernestine had kept a belief that Dietrich Rascher would never slip beyond the power of her love. She had lost him.

Every night of his leave he was stinking from schnaps and beer. He lolled on the bed too drunk to make love ... he babbled ... was given to sudden wild rages and weeping incoherent confessions about unknown crimes.

Corpses ... Jew corpses ... tens of thousands of naked Jews ... burning barns ... burning villages ... men with beards praying ... naked mothers ... sisters ... grandmothers ... pits filled with burning corpses ... his machine gun rattled into the corpses ... dogs ripped the Jew throats ... the wild eyes of the cheering Ukrainians while the SS gunned the Jews into the pits ... the nightmare, again and again ... he drowned in blood, Jew blood ... his hands and mouth and hair dripping and sticky with blood ....

“Drink! I must have a drink!”

“Dietrich! Wake up, darling! Wake up!”

“Drink! Give me a drink!”

“Oh, my darling. Please let me help you. Please don’t shut me out.”

“Help me tomorrow, woman. I need a drink now.”

“Darling, let me love you. Please! Please! Let us marry ... tomorrow ... now.”

“Marry you? How humorous! I am married to the SS. I have no room for another wife.”

“Oh God, dear God.”

“Stop your bloody weeping and get me schnaps!”

“Now you listen to me, Dietrich Rascher. This war will end one day. I don’t know what you have seen or how it has hurt you, but you will need to forget. I will be waiting here to help you. I will wait until time runs out ... until my heart stops ... I will never stop waiting and I will help you forget.”

The all-clear sounded.

They trudged up to the demolished street. All of them stood in the dusk’s fading light and stared at their broken house. Once it had stood two stories, square and solid. Most of the top floor was gone. The rest was riddled with holes, gouges, smashed and broken windows. The pretty little flower garden, so meticulously nursed by Frau Falkenstein, was destroyed. Falkenstein’s auto was in flames, gutted beyond use.

The neighbors crawled from their cellars one by one and began to dig through the rubble. Reimer’s house down the street, which had taken a direct hit, was flattened to the foundation. The rest of the street was a shambles. Once it was a nice street, lined with shade trees and neatly cut shrubs.

“I had better go to the store and see if there is anything left,” a voice said.

“Don’t bother. The store took direct hits.”

“Frau Winkelmann and both her children are dead.” Perhaps it was better for them, Falkenstein thought. Frau Winkelmann had been crippled in a raid a half year earlier and the children had become a burden to all the neighbors. Her husband had been killed long before in Tunis.

“Someone get over to the defense command and find out about the water main. There is no water coming into my house.”

The air was grimy with unsettled dust, fires burned, and the sirens screeched all around them, hauling off the wounded, digging for the dead. There was little time for either sympathy or contemplation or to mourn dead children, broken homes, or look for bread or fill the water buckets. They knew that the American fires from the day would light a path for the British bombers by night, and when darkness came the raid would go on. Nights were somewhat better. The Americans picked an area to precision-bomb. If you were caught in the American target, like today, it could be ghastly. The Lancaster Bombers of the British tried to saturate the entire city with incendiaries so their target was spread and the chances of survival better.