He said this casually but I heard the pain behind his words, and it left me stricken.
“Jürgen…”
“Name a European city you love and German rockets may one day wipe it off the face of the earth.”
I gasped. “Are you close to that?”
“The components are all there. In theory—the rest is just a matter of persistence and experimentation to make those components work consistently.” He didn’t sound optimistic or proud. His tone was heavier than ever.
“The Reich is ever expanding. Even if we landed a man on the moon, Hitler would just want to occupy that too. And Otto says that as soon as we can prove the new prototype works, we’ll be asked to produce thousands of them.” Jürgen downed the rest of his wine in one gulp, then threw the glass into the fire. I flinched when it shattered. He kept his voice low, but he did nothing to curtail the fury it contained. “Thousands of them? It’s insanity. Do you know how we’re going to resource that production? It won’t be with paid laborers, that’s for damned sure.”
“How, then?” I asked hesitantly.
“Prisoners,” he said, and his voice broke. It was thick with tears as he whispered, “We are already using them to a lesser extent—we hire them from the SS. They bring busloads from the camps every few weeks.”
“German prisoners?”
“From all over Europe. Mostly Jews.” Jürgen slumped. He lifted a shaking hand to rub his forehead. “If Hitler orders us to go to full-scale production, it will be innocent Jewish men who pay the price.”
I’d seen my husband up and down over the years—but I’d never seen him like this. He was broken and angry and hard and almost oozing shame and guilt. A shiver of fear ran through me.
“We tell ourselves that we’re only protecting our family, but the family is damaged by our decision to protect it,” I blurted. “Georg and Laura are awash in propaganda and we can’t correct them. You’re a part of something you hate, and I can see that it’s killing you.”
Life in Berlin was close to normal, aside from some rationing and, at one point, a series of air raids. The papers painted the Reich as the victim of European aggression, always pushing forward to do good, never to harm. But the war machine was powered by German men, and when they were released on periods of furlough, they brought reality home with them. I’d heard enough rumors of systemic imprisonment of Jews across the expanded Reich to know there was hideous truth there. These whispers circled around me, each one a tiny piece of a puzzle I knew in my heart was dark, even if I couldn’t see the whole picture, and even if, day-to-day, it all seemed so very far away. “Every morning, I wake up and carry on as if this is all acceptable, so I’m complicit too, aren’t I?” I whispered.
We sat in silence for a long time, and I sought that sense of peace again, trying to focus on the sights and sounds and the scents of the lake. But I couldn’t relax—not after hearing the torment in my husband’s voice, and especially not after he turned to me and said quietly, “I would do anything for you and the children. Anything.”
“I know.” He had more than proved that over these years.
“Every day, when it feels like it’s all too much, when I want to scream with the insanity of it all, I think of you and the children and that is all I can do to keep going.”
“But the madness is spiraling all over Europe, and we’re just sitting here drinking wine?” I cried bitterly.
“That’s exactly why I wanted this place. Why we need it. The day might come when we decide that keeping the family safe can’t be our highest priority in the context of what’s happening.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I realized that if the point comes when we need to draw a line in the sand and say this far and no further…well, so long as we’re meeting here, we can find a way to speak freely. We can work together to make a plan.”
After that weekend, I vowed to make trips to the lake house my highest priority.
Georg had been asking if Hans could join us for a weekend at the lake house from his very first visit, and I’d always discouraged this—wanting to reserve that place for our family. But over the summer of 1942, I finally gave in, and Hans joined us for a week. He was about to turn thirteen, and I sensed he was relieved to have a break from the bustle of his own home. Lydia and Karl achieved their goal of eight children for the Reich, but despite their small team of nannies, it seemed they expected Hans to parent himself. I knew from my own childhood exactly how lonely that could feel.