The Flight

When Karl came downstairs half an hour later, she tried to think of a way to explain what had happened, but she didn’t understand why Germany was attacking Russia. She had understood the offensive against the French – during her childhood her father had talked incessantly about the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles – but she could think of no reason to justify their attack on Russia, especially since Russia in the Non-Aggression Pact had agreed not to attack Germany.

At breakfast, Karl noticed his mother distressed and anxious, but she said nothing and he didn’t ask; he had to meet a boy from a neighbouring village to go to a youth group meeting. When they arrived, he soon learned what had upset his mother: the attack was on everybody’s lips. One boy said his father was killing Russians at that very moment.

‘I thought he was an army cook. The only way he’ll ever kill someone is with food poisoning.’

A boy from Warschken, another village nearby, turned to Karl and said, ‘Maybe your father will send sweets from Moscow.’

‘Maybe he won’t go there,’ Karl replied.

‘Of course he will. The whole army’s going.’

They were convinced that the German army would beat the Russians, and anyone whose father or grandfather had fought at the battle of Tannenberg compared it with what was happening now. No one had grasped that the present offensive, three or four hundred kilometres to the east, was not just a battle but the start of a new war: the Soviet-German War.

Three million German soldiers were pitted against the same number of Russians, whose opposing army would soon grow to six million. The largest military invasion ever was under way. Across eastern Europe the boys’ fathers were behind thousands of heavy guns, pounding Russian positions. Soon the front would extend over four thousand kilometres, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, the entire land mass of eastern Europe sealed behind a wall of German soldiers and guns.

One boy announced that Hitler himself was in East Prussia, unaware that the Führer had constructed new headquarters there from which to direct the offensive. The Wolfsschanze – Wolf ’s Lair – was buried deep in the forests south-east of Samland.

Before the offensive had begun, the Prussian army commanders – a constant source of irritation to Hitler – were far from united behind the decision to invade Russia. Some had agreed that if they had to go ahead, now was the best time to surprise the enemy because Stalin had murdered his best commanders during the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938. Others, though, would have preferred to abide by the Non-Aggression Pact: the steppes were too vast and the war was being fought on too many other fronts. Hitler himself had once written that an attack on Russia, as well as a western theatre, would spell the end of Germany.

BOOK II (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)

A Childhood

Chapter 1 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)

Once the war with Russia was under way Germau remained oddly calm. For a time photographs were published in Königsberg newspapers showing Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians welcoming German soldiers as liberators freeing them from Stalin’s tyranny. Ida’s sister, in Berlin, rarely mentioned the war in her letters.

That spring, shortly before the Führer’s birthday, a Hitler Youth representative had come to the village to talk to Ida about a ceremony that Karl was to attend. Ida was reluctant to let him go, but she had no choice. Karl by contrast was more excited than she had ever seen him. He had gone with the man and a large group of boys from the peninsula by train to Pillau where they crossed the Bay of Danzig on a Strength Through Joy cruise liner.

Two older boys had stolen some photographs of Jewish prisoners, which they wanted to get rid of now – they knew they would get into trouble if the theft was discovered. They had concealed the evidence among the younger boys’ belongings. When Karl found three photos in his clothes, he became frightened and pushed them to the bottom of his bag. He would throw them away when he got home.

From Danzig, the younger boys went on to Marienburg, the ancient headquarters of the Teutonic Knights with the largest castle Karl had ever seen. They arrived at dusk and joined thousands of others. Karl’s group entered a huge chamber illuminated by torchlight. They stood to attention for nearly two hours as they sang Hitler Youth songs and listened to a long speech: the Reichsjugendführer, the highest-ranking official in the league, talked endlessly about commitment, discipline and personal strength. Later, each new recruit took an oath under the flickering torches: ‘I promise that, in the Hitler Youth, I will always do my duty, with love and faithfulness, and help the Führer, so help me God.’

Afterwards the hall reverberated to the boom of drums, the boys’ faces glowing orange in the torchlight. Soon they were singing again – a thousand boys in harmony – ‘Forward, forward …’ The sounds echoed in Karl’s mind long after he had returned to Germau.

In July he went camping with his group to Palmnicken where they pitched tents on a plateau above the Baltic. On the first night after the leader had told everyone to go to sleep, Karl felt the hand of the boy to his left slide across his belly and downwards. Startled, he pretended to be asleep. Soon he felt a new and pleasant sensation, one he’d never experienced before, between his legs. He turned over – and the boy on his right kissed him on his mouth. Karl tensed, and the first boy whispered that he would report him if he didn’t join in with their game.

The next morning, the three behaved as if nothing had happened. Karl climbed out of the tent and walked over to where the ground fell away to the sea below and watched two men in a pit carrying a burlap sack filled with amber. When he turned back to see the other boys coming out of their tents, he wondered if they were harbouring a similar secret.

That afternoon the leader took the boys through the woods and across a field, beyond which the blue-green waters of the Baltic stretched to the horizon. At points along the western edge of the peninsula, steep sandy cliffs fell as much as ten metres to the beach below. The leader announced that to earn a dagger, each boy must run at top speed to the edge of the cliff and jump out as far as he could.

‘What if we’re killed?’ a boy asked.

‘I’ll give the knife to your mother.’

Laughter erupted.

‘It’s only sand, idiot,’ a boy near the back yelled.

‘But my cousin broke his leg falling from the cliff in Rauschen.’

The leader told them that each boy would run and jump, then get up, move out of the way and remain on the beach with the assistant, who was already down there. ‘If you do break your leg don’t scream. You don’t want to be captured by the Russians, do you?’

He pointed at a terrified-looking boy. ‘You first. Run on the count of three.’

‘But—’

‘One. Two—’

The boy started running.

‘I said on the count of three!’ shouted the leader. ‘Faster!’

The boy’s pace increased and the group held their breath when he neared the edge of the cliff, expecting him to stop. But he didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, his eyes on the horizon, until the ground fell from beneath his feet and he disappeared. They heard him scream, and the distant roar of breakers.

The sixteen-year-old leader walked back to them grinning. ‘Let’s hope he’s not dead.’

This time nobody laughed.

‘Anyone scared?’

The group were mute.

‘I’m going to stand here and watch until every one of you has jumped off the cliff. Anyone who slows down before he jumps doesn’t get his dagger.’

As Karl waited, he looked over the tall grass to the cliff’s edge, feeling as if he had been called to a duty greater than himself. That spring the leader had come to his village only for him: no other local children had gone to the castle at Marienburg. He felt an epiphany of quietness as he prepared for his jump – and dismissed the fleeting thought that last night’s illicit adventure might have contributed to today’s confidence. He pictured himself walking into Germau with his shoulder strap across his chest and his new dagger on his belt.

When the leader signalled to him, he started to run and felt himself stride, with a sense of supreme confidence. As he neared the edge of the cliff, his eyes rose above the horizon – he leapt as high as possible, aware that his body sailing into the sky towards the sea created a silhouette seen by the leader and boys who still waited their turn. Airborne, he squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to remember for ever how it felt to float over the earth, the air above coalescing with the water below, whose merging currents buoyed him as he floated outwards into its transmuting body.

Chapter 2 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)

When he got home two days later, Karl didn’t tell his mother what had happened in the tent, but he showed her his new knife. She wasn’t very interested; he decided she hadn’t grasped its significance. However, he would always have been the first in his village to join the youth group, which no one in Germau would forget. The children were already asking him about his adventures.

Ida took the dagger from him and read the inscription, ‘Blood and Honour’, then handed it back. ‘We have enough knives. I wish they’d given you something useful.’

‘It is useful.’

Ida didn’t argue. ‘It’s time for your piano practice.’

‘But I told everyone I’d go back out after I’d shown you the knife.’

‘All right then, just for a little while. But I want you to practise before supper.’

When Karl opened the front door the children had gathered round the tree at the centre of the square, waiting for him.

‘Can I hold it?’ Werner asked.

‘In a minute.’