Children to a Degree - Growing Up Under the Third Reich (6 page)

“Mutti, I am not telling them anything about Herr Hitler. I don’t know much about him and grandpa says that he is an incompetent quack.”

“But you said that you would be on assignment from the HJ,” (Hitler Youth) his mother objected.

“Mutti, I am only in the Junkvolk. The HJ starts when I am 14 years old. And, my assignment will not include talking about the Nazis.” Karl was happy that his mother was in favor of him leaving for camp. But he did not share her enthusiasm for Hitler.

“Well, then you have everything under control, Karl, and you don’t need me to see the principal,” his father concluded when he came home and Karl’s mother told him about Karl’s plot.

“Yes, I think that I do need you when I go and see the principal. I need you to show him my report cards and tell him that you are supporting me,” Karl implored his father.

“No Karl, this is your idea. I trust you enough to do this without me.  So, you go alone. Stand up straight because you can be proud of your report cards. They are your accomplishments and not mine. Assert yourself when you get questioned. However, if the principal questions my support he can send me a note. Then, and only then, I will go and talk to him.”

Herr Veth was sure that he was doing the right thing. However, Karl’s mother was of a different opinion.

“You should go with Karl. He might not be able to express himself in front of the principal.”

“No, my dear,” Herr Veth said, shaking his head. “This is not how this works. Karl conceived this plan, so he knows best how to get it across or defend it when needed. We are raising adults, Vera. We don’t do Karl any favor by doing the work for him and keeping him on a child level.” End of discussion. The master of the house had spoken.

***

A few days later Karl went again to see Rudy.

“Here is your assignment.” Rudy handed Karl a sealed envelope.

“Is your father going with you to see the principal?” he asked.

“No,” answered Karl. “My father supports me but I need to do this by myself.”

Rudy looked at the boy in front of him. “Karl, wake up. There is nothing left for you to do. You succeeded already. You are holding in your hand an assignment which is directly from the Bann leader. Your school is obligated and, if necessary, forced to honor it. Your dream, or whatever you wish to call it, is coming true. Congratulations.”

Karl did not know what to think. A few days ago he had an incomplete thought and now he was holding an assignment in his hand.

“Does it always work so fast, Rudy?” he asked.

The squad leader came around his desk and locked eyes with Karl.

“What went fast?”

“This here. My dream from conception to reality.”

“There is something you don’t get, Karl. Nothing went fast. How long did you study to obtain your grades?”

“Over a year,” answered Karl.

“How many class breaks did you sacrifice for your studies?”

“All of them. It was not a big deal, I like to study.”

“How often do you shine your shoes?” Rudy drilled.

“Well, before I go to bed, of course. And at noon too.”

“Let me explain something to you, Karl, because there is a lesson in it. Whenever you pursue something, you might not get what you want or aim at, but you will always obtain results. If you don’t like the results, you can benefit from your efforts by adjusting your aim.”

Rudy shook a stunned Karl by the shoulders.

“You earned this assignment, Karl, by studying for the Napola and then by adjusting to the results. Get it? Nobody handed you this assignment out of the goodness of their heart. You earned it.”

Rudy let go of Karl and returned to his seat behind the desk.

“What do I need to do now?” Karl asked, still dazed from Rudy’s lecture.

“Nothing special,” said Rudy. “Hand the letter to your teacher and wait for departure instructions. By the way, where do you wish to go? You have a choice of the Baltic Sea or the Bavarian mountains.”

“The Baltic Sea would be nice,” answered Karl and then continued, “but don’t I have to ask the principal for an assignment to a lower age group?”

“No, Karl. I liked your idea when you explained it to me. It made sense.  We, the Bann leader and the leadership of the Jungvolk, already took care of the details.”

Karl almost forgot to salute when he went out the door.

“This is amazing,” cried his mother when he came home and showed her the sealed envelope. His father said nothing, but Karl could see that he was pleased.

Five

Karl received his travel orders two weeks later. In the meantime, he tried to get some questions answered by his grandfather. The demeanor of the Prussian cavalry officer had changed during the past few months.

Karl did not know exactly why or how, but his opa was now a lot friendlier to his mother. He did not order her around anymore and during some visits he even tolerated giggling and other noises from his brother and little sister.

When his grandfather had heard about Karl’s decision to join a KLV camp, he told his son that he wished that his grandson would visit him at least one more time before he left.

“I am glad that you showed up without your Hitler uniform,” he announced to Karl when he opened the door for the family to enter. “I’ll be ready in a moment. We will go for a walk and maybe to the garden. It is easier to converse without any interruptions.” Karl gathered that the grandfather meant the interruptions from his brother and sister.

A few minutes later they were walking down the Pariser Strasse and turned into the Emser Strasse. Karl’s grandfather maintained a small garden lot in this area. He leased it from the city of Berlin and grew potatoes and strawberries and a few bushes of gooseberries.

Karl told his grandfather how he had obtained his assignment and about the lesson he had received from Rudy. “I wonder if you have something to add?” he asked.

The old officer took his time before he answered. “Your Rudy has it about right. I would have put it a little differently. If you take certain actions and don’t like the results, you should change the actions which produced the unsatisfactory results. However, in your particular case he was right.”

He opened the main gate leading to the individual garden lots. The walkway dropped a few feet below the street level.

“You failed in your original attempt to gain admission to the Nazi school.” Karl could hear the contempt in his grandfather’s voice. He was sure that it was directed to the school and not to him.

“But then you used the result of your actions, your report cards and your general accomplishments, to assist you in reaching a different goal.” He turned and they entered a small side trail leading to a shaded bench and sat down. “Others might call this self-serving, though in your case I call it very smart. Well done, Karl. I am proud of you.” Karl turned red in embarrassment. His grandpa had never called him smart before.

He tried a question he had never dared to ask but had been bothered about for a long time.

“Opa,” he began, “why don’t you like my mom?”

The old man bent down to pick up a twig and played with it while he answered.

“Karl, I like your mom. I actually like her a whole lot. She is a good woman and a good mother. I just don’t like her fixation with the Nazi movement.”

Karl thought for a moment before he asked, “What do you mean by that, Opa?”

This time the answer came faster. “I mean that your mother has her head in the sand. Meaning she does not want to see or hear what is really going on in Germany. Even if she thinks or maybe believes that there is some underlying historical reason for the war, she is totally blind to the fact that the Nazi’s persecute dissidents and that we are printing money without any backing.”

Karl had to think again. “Sorry, Opa, I don’t understand.”

“It’s easy, Karl. When a government prints money it creates a currency. If this currency is not backed by a gold reserve or receivables, such as a national product, then this money will become worthless in trading with other countries. Eventually it will self-destruct.” He broke the twig and picked up another one.

“To make it even simpler, Hitler is printing money to meet the payrolls of the military and to pay for Germany’s armament. People in this country accept it, but the world will not stand by and accept it as something of value.”

He looked around to find another twig. Karl could see that his grandfather was nervous.

“And, that my mom does not see it or understand it…this is what bothers you, Opa?”

“No,” the old man shook his head. “Your mother is no dummy. She understands and is able to see it, alright. It bothers me that she refuses to see it. It’s no use, Karl. It is the timeless question if believing is a curse or a blessing.”

“This went over my head, Opa.”

“I know,” answered the old soldier. “It goes over the head of many people. But I will keep it simple for you.” He had found a smaller twig and played with it again, twirling it around his fingers.

“When a man is lost in a desert and walks west because he believes there is water and then finds it, his belief was a blessing because walking in any other direction would have led to his demise. However, if he walks west but the water is in the east, then his belief is a curse because he will perish.”

“The man in this example is unable to help himself because he does not know where the water is. However, if your mother would open her eyes she would know. Instead she chooses to stick her head in the sand. And, this is what bothers me, Karl.”

“Thank you, Opa, I think I understand.” Karl looked up to his grandfather, happy to hear that his mom was not a dummy. He already knew that she was in favor of the Nazis.

“Opa,” he started again, “I will be something like a helper, I guess, for the younger children in the camp. Is there something you can teach me or tell me I should know?” He was eager to make the most of the time with his grandfather.

“When do you leave, Karl?”

“In seven days, Opa. Do we have to go home already?”

“Yes, Karl, I promised your grandma to bring you back within an hour. Do you know that she baked a cake in your honor? It is supposed to be a surprise for you.”

Karl was indeed surprised. His Oma baked wonderful cakes but only for birthdays and Christmas. He was all for going back in a hurry.

“I don’t like surprises,” said his grandpa as they went up the stairs to his apartment. “I like to keep my eyes open and always know what is going on.”

Karl was astonished to see that his grandma had not one but two cakes waiting for him. The coffee party lasted over two hours and his grandpa even conversed with his mother. This had never happened before. Maybe Grandpa mellowed out. He did not understand what that meant, but he had heard his father mentioning it.

***

There had been some British air raid attacks during the last few months. They had been directed at some of the railroad stations but missed most of the time. They did, however, wipe out a few apartment buildings.

His grandfather had taken the time to show him the damage and informed him that this was only the beginning of what he called
extensive destruction
which was sure to follow. Karl had noticed that since these bombing attacks, the school authorities had sent letters to the parents to enroll their children in the KLV camps.

Karl had told his grandpa about this and the old man had told him the same thing:
This is just the beginning, soon it will be mandatory.

Now, as Karl was looking out the rear window of his grandfather’s apartment, he pondered about everything the old officer had told him. He had gone to the window to give the impression to his parents that he was not listening to their discussions but he was already taking the advice from his opa to keep his eyes open. In this case he kept his ears open; he wanted to know what was going on.

What he heard was not of great interest to him because the conversation was about funeral expenses in the case of fatalities from an air attack. The family consensus seemed to be that the Nazi party should pay for all of it while his grandpa maintained that this was a mute issue. “
The bombs will take care of it. There will be no one left to bury.”
Karl figured that this was strictly a subject for adults but somehow he did enjoy hearing his mother talk in the presence of his grandpa. Even his grandma had something to say. Could it be that the air attacks somehow got the family closer to each other?

“Enjoy,” said his grandma when she handed him a packet of leftover cake. Karl was in 7th heaven as he went down the stairs. One hand held his little brother and the other the cake. He could manage this anytime.

While there were some dimmed lights illuminating the staircases, the streets were totally blacked out. The few automobiles they passed on their way home had hoods over the headlights. A tiny slit in the hood emitted a tiny bit of light. Karl wondered how the drivers could see anything in this darkness.

He, along with his brother and parents, had large illumination buttons on their clothing. The button had some kind of phosphor coating and you had to expose it to a lamp before you were going out. The light from the lamp ‘loaded’ the button and for a little while-maybe five minutes-the button emitted a soft glow. Not enough to illuminate anything. That was not its purpose. The button was glowing to be seen by others passing by and to prevent people from running into each other. It worked pretty well for a short while but by the time the Veth family had reached their apartment dwelling, the buttons had lost their power.

“Karl, keep holding hands with your brother. If he falls we will have a hard time finding him,” his mother instructed him almost every minute while she was carrying his little sister. His father walked besides his mother, holding her arm, and when the sidewalk narrowed he inquired: “Karl, are you still behind us?”

It was not often that the Veth family walked at night but when they did, it was nothing short of an adventure.

At home all the windows were covered with black out curtains and Karl was instructed to walk from room to room to inspect the windows, making sure that no light could be seen from the outside.