Winter of the World

Woody sensed the meeting turning against Molotov. The Russian clearly had the same impression. He was conferring with his aides loudly enough for Woody to hear the fury in his voice. But would he walk out?

The Belgian foreign minister, bald and podgy with a double chin, proposed a compromise, a motion expressing the hope that the new Polish government might be organized in time to be represented here in San Francisco before the end of the conference.

Everyone looked at Molotov. He was being offered a face-saver. But would he accept it?

He still looked angry. However, he gave a slight but unmistakable nod of assent.

And the crisis was over.

Well, Woody thought, two victories in one day. Things are looking up.

(v)

Carla went out to queue for water.

There had been no water in the taps for two days. Luckily, Berlin’s housewives had discovered that every few blocks there were old-fashioned street pumps, long disused, connected to underground wells. They were rusty and creaky but, amazingly, they still worked. So every morning now the women stood in line, holding their buckets and jugs.

The air raids had stopped, presumably because the enemy was on the point of entering the city. But it was still dangerous to be on the street, because the Red Army’s artillery was shelling. Carla was not sure why they bothered. Much of the city had gone. Whole blocks and even larger areas had been completely flattened. All utilities were cut off. No trains or buses ran. Thousands were homeless, perhaps millions. The city was one huge refugee camp. But the shelling went on. Most people spent all day in their cellars or in public air-raid shelters, but they had to come out for water.

On the radio, shortly before the electricity went off permanently, the BBC had announced that the Sachsenhausen concentration camp had been liberated by the Red Army. Sachsenhausen was north of Berlin, so clearly the Soviets, coming from the east, were encircling the city instead of marching straight in. Carla’s mother, Maud, deduced that the Russians wanted to keep out the American, British, French and Canadian forces rapidly approaching from the west. She had quoted Lenin: ‘Who controls Berlin, controls Germany; and who controls Germany, controls Europe.’

Yet the German army had not given up. Outnumbered, outgunned, short of ammunition and fuel, and half starved, they slogged on. Again and again their leaders hurled them at overwhelming enemy forces, and again and again they obeyed orders, fought with spirit and courage, and died in their hundreds of thousands. Among them were the two men Carla loved: her brother, Erik, and her boyfriend, Werner. She had no idea where they were fighting or even whether they were alive.

Carla had wound up the spy ring. The fighting was deteriorating into chaos. Battle plans meant little. Secret intelligence from Berlin was of small value to the conquering Soviets. It was no longer worth the risk. The spies had burned their code books and hidden their radio transmitters in the rubble of bombed buildings. They had agreed never to speak of their work. They had been brave, they had shortened the war, and they had saved lives; but it was too much to expect the defeated German people to see things that way. Their courage would remain forever secret.

While Carla waited her turn at the tap, a Hitler Youth tank-hunting squad went past, heading east, towards the fighting. There were two men in their fifties and a dozen teenage boys, all on bicycles. Strapped to the front of each bicycle were two of the new one-shot anti-tank weapons called Panzerfäuste. The uniforms were too large for the boys, and their oversize helmets would have looked comical if their plight had not been so pathetic. They were off to fight the Red Army.

They were going to die.

Carla looked away as they passed: she did not want to remember their faces.

As she was filling her bucket, the woman behind her in line, Frau Reichs, spoke to her quietly, so that no one else could hear: ‘You’re a friend of the doctor’s wife, aren’t you?’

Carla tensed. Frau Reichs was obviously talking about Hannelore Rothmann. The doctor had disappeared along with the mental patients from the Jewish Hospital. Hannelore’s son, Rudi, had thrown away his yellow star and joined those Jews living clandestinely, called U-boats in Berlin slang. But Hannelore, not herself Jewish, was still at the old house.

For twelve years a question such as the one just asked – are you a friend of a Jew’s wife? – had been an accusation. What was it today? Carla did not know. Frau Reichs was only a nodding acquaintance: she could not be trusted.

Carla turned off the tap. ‘Dr Rothmann was our family physician when I was a child,’ she said guardedly. ‘Why?’

The other woman took her place at the standpipe and began to fill a large can that had once held cooking oil. ‘Frau Rothmann has been taken away,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’