A crackling anticipation filled the air and a hush swept over the room. A flare burst to life on the lawn, and then came a roar so loud it made my ears ache. Red and blue fire spilled from beneath an enormous rocket, and after some seconds, the missile rose, smooth and steady. There were gasps of delight and cheers, then riotous applause as the rocket disappeared from view.
It might have been going anywhere—into orbit, into space, to the moon. It might have been taking man to new heights, expanding our understanding of the universe and the galaxy—extending our knowledge about our world and ourselves. But that rocket wasn’t a space exploration device—it was a warhead, destined for some unsuspecting village or city…some innocent family in their home, just as Jürgen had once feared. His rockets, now public knowledge, were renamed Vergeltungswaffe 2, Retribution Weapon 2, part of the set of Nazi “vengeance weapons” that were supposed to turn the tide of the war. Since September, over three thousand V-2 rockets had been launched, mostly against Belgium and London. Each was almost fifty feet high and weighed thirty thousand pounds. My head ached if I thought about the scale and size of the operation.
Jürgen was the next to receive his medal, and when he was invited to the podium, I watched him closely. He had been quiet and pensive by my side until they called his name. He played the role so well, he momentarily looked like a different man as he stood—a stony, cruel version of the man I’d loved for my entire adult life.
He barked the victory salute back at the official, his gaze firm and his muscles tense. But once he’d returned to his seat beside me, and when the lights in that room went down and the curtain again opened, the burst of flame from another rocket lit up over the lawn. I dragged my eyes from the rocket so that I could watch Jürgen’s reaction to it.
The colors of the flames were reflected in the sheen of tears in his eyes as he watched the rocket’s flare. Jürgen’s expression suggested he might have been staring into hell itself.
An instinct sounded. Was he going to refuse to join the SS? Surely not. It would be an act of suicide—
A chill ran down my spine.
What if that was the point?
We were both more than a little tipsy by the time we tumbled into bed, and for the first time in months, we held one another. After a while, Jürgen lifted the blanket over our heads. It had been so long since we’d seen each other, longer since we’d been through this routine, but the act of hiding beneath the blankets was so ingrained in our relationship—as intimate as making love. I took no solace in the action, not that night. We were about to have the conversation I’d been dreading all evening.
“You have to do it,” I said. Jürgen remained silent. “Why would this be the line you refuse to cross? After everything we’ve done?” I drew in a breath. “Is it true that the war is almost over anyway? Hitler is losing?”
The papers suggested the opposite, of course. Victory was within reach, and if our troops were pulling back, this was simply for “strategic reasons.” But I learned to make the ordinary folk of Berlin my bellwether, and whispers on the streets were that the war was all but lost.
“It is only a matter of time,” Jürgen admitted. “And when Germany capitulates, the world will see what we’ve done across the Reich. The SS has been the driver for so much of the cruelty. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes in this war, but aligning myself with those bastards cannot be one of them.”
I pondered this, my heart sinking. Of course the SS would be targets—they’d been the architects of the concentration camps.
“So you think if you decline the invitation to join the SS, you’ll fare better when the Allies arrive,” I surmised.
“Can you really be so naive?” he whispered fiercely. “One way or another, I’m as good as dead. I am the technical manager of a program built on forced labor, Sofie. The rockets are nightmarish enough—they’ve almost certainly resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But the Mittelwerk operation is an abomination. I’ll hang.” His voice broke as he added weakly, “I should hang.”
“But you were only following orders,” I whispered. “You aren’t responsible for whatever has gone wrong at Mittelwerk. Are you?”
He sighed then, a miserable, resigned sound that almost broke my heart.
“This isn’t a conversation you have under a blanket,” I whispered, tearing up suddenly. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”