Goldengirl

‘Exactly,’ said Serafin. ‘The theory that a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed people had carried the torch of civilization since primitive times and survived in Germany to found another great culture under Hitler’s leadership, a state that would become more noble even than Aryan Greece. It was a theory that conveniently placed a high priority on sports and physical development, so that the Germans were able to continue to practice their gymnastics and outdoor pursuits, but in Nazi-oriented organizations. The Youth Movement grew to a membership of almost eight million. From the age of six in the Deutsches Jungvolk, and from fourteen in the Hitler Youth, the young people took part in a strenuous program of boxing, wrestling, gymnastics, camping and soldiering that occupied their time out of school. Much of it was, of course, competitive, which appealed to the German temperament and provided a massive pyramid of achievement. The children who emerged as the finest physical specimens were taken out of the normal schools, the Gymnasien, and placed in special schools, Nationalpolitischeerziehungsanstalten, which even Germans found too much of a mouthful and contracted to Napolas. They were equipped with outstanding facilities for every kind of physical development, and usually situated beside a lake. There, these selected few were trained, physically and politically, to become the elite of Germany, the future torchbearers of the Third Reich.

‘It happened that one of these children was a girl, a pretty child of conspicuous athletic ability, who came to a Napola in Lower Saxony that took girls from the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the female branch of the Youth Movement. Let’s call her Gretchen. Even in the hand-picked community of the Napola, Gretchen showed up as a superb all-round athlete, and one morning in 1935, when she was seventeen, she was summoned to the director’s office and told that she was to join a squad of women gymnasts training for possible selection for the Olympic Games. You may imagine her excitement. The 1936 Olympic Games were scheduled for Berlin and were to be a Nazi showpiece, Hitler’s opportunity to demonstrate to the world the achievements of the Third Reich and the brilliance of his Aryan athletes.

‘The story of those Games has been told often enough, gentlemen. Let us concentrate simply on Gretchen. She was duly selected to be one of the eight women who represented Germany in the Combined Exercises team event. There were no individual gymnastic contests for women in the Olympic Games at that time, or she would probably have competed in more than one event. But gymnastics was the parade sport of the Games for the Germans, their traditional ideal of sport, and every seat was sold months ahead for the program in the Dietrich Eckart Stadium, specially built in a wooded ravine at the edge of the Olympic complex. As it was, Germany’s gymnasts dominated those Games in the men’s and women’s events, and Gretchen won a gold medal. She could not have done more for her Führer.’ Dr. Serafin paused, glancing down at his fingernails. The room was silent. If there had been any question earlier who was in control, it no longer applied.

‘But there was one service more that was required of her. As a product of the Napola and an Olympic champion, she was a flower of German womanhood, the female equivalent of one of the SS. Had she been a man, there is no doubt that she would have graduated to one of the Ordensburgen, in which selected members of the SS received further indoctrination. Her name was certainly in the card-index system of RuSHA, the SS Race and Resettlement Bureau, for one afternoon soon after the outbreak of the war she was visited by two members of the SS. They reminded her of the benefits the Reich had bestowed on her and of her obligations as one of the Frauenschaft. Then they spoke to her of the commission the Führer had given Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, to make facilities for RuSHA-approved racially pure unmarried women to bear children by similarly approved members of the SS.’

‘The human stud farms?’ said Valenti.

‘Yes. The infamous Lebensborn. In setting up this “Fount of Life” association, Himmler had issued a notice to all SS officers reminding them of their duty to set an example to all Germans by rearing a healthy family of at least four children. Those unable to perform this obligation were to sponsor “racially and hereditarily worthwhile children” instead, and Lebensborn would provide for them. The evidence eventually provided by the Nuremburg Trials established conclusively that “valuable and racially pure men” performed as so-called “conception assistants” in the service of the state.’

‘And that’s what happened to Gretchen?’ said Armitage.