“Impossible.”
“But why?”
“I decide who is a Jew.”
“But poor Thilde has an ulcer,” I inform Adi. “Mother says she talks of her ulcer as if it were another person: It is hungry. It needs hot soup. It wants some tea. Poor Thilde is in constant battle with her ulcer.”
“Ulcers are the Jewish disease,” he replies.
I know Adi hates diseases and has done everything possible to encourage good health. When he came to power, he urged regular exams and the eating of vegetables. Smokers were asked to quit, and he banned smoking in many public places. It was our friend Dr. Fritz Lickint who found evidence between cigarettes, ulcers and cancer, a fact that is encouraging me to quit. I’m down to eight cigarettes a week because our body belongs to the Führer… especially mine.
Adi was so strict about perfect health that before the war a man could not join the SS who even had a tooth filled.
Find another cook, I tell Mother. Thilde can’t be returned. Adi spends most of his time with maps and charts. What more can I tell Mother? But she only writes to me in desperation: “Sometimes I think anti-Semitism is nothing more than just a way to eliminate our servants.”
12
WITH GENERAL EPAULETTES on his immaculate pearl-gray uniform and booted up to the knees, Keitel limps from the map room and stops by the dining area for a canteen of schnapps. His limp, he claims, is from battle maneuvers, but often he forgets it and steps briskly. Goebbels says Keitel is as listless and weary as Goethe’s second Faust.
Some time after we invaded Russia, General Keitel, his white hair neatly parted, arrived at the Berghof to brief Adi. He found me on the terrace having tea. Unable to control his anger, he raged: “I tell you, Fräulein, my biggest problem in this war is dealing with the intolerable Corporal Götz Rupp.”
Adi insists that a corporal be present at meetings with his generals. It’s his safeguard against what he considers the awful “theory” of war. That’s why he chose Götz Rupp. Little Götz, only 5 feet 4 inches tall, has two lower teeth missing from Operation Gelb where he helped push the Allies back between Calais and Ostend. But even more important, he has a low narrow chin and cheekbones like a whippet and occasionally wears the uniform of the Kaiser’s War in honor of the Führer. Götz was “anointed” after Adi saw him sitting in the Die Neue Welt Bierhalle before a glass of tea when everybody else was drinking hot egg beer and walnut schnapps. A corporal who only drinks tea—though he did eat meat—was the ideal candidate. Meat was deleted soon enough when Bormann enrolled Götz in the snobbish Union Club in Berlin, and Adi ordered the chef to serve the little corporal asparagus, semolina noodles with eggs, and warm pears. So Götz Rupp continues to sit among the rich and the aristocratic who all own racing stables. Everyone assumed he was a guest of Göring who is amused by the weird and uneducated. But Götz, to Adi’s delight, was heard to say loudly over his plum soup: “Today, only grocers are impressed with vons.” Since Götz Rupp was given status that supersedes generals, even the vons of the diplomatic corps never dare to disagree with him. Fancy aristocrats in Mainz who don’t use their titles believing them to be an affectation defer to Götz. For a reward, Adi ordered two racing horses for Götz Rupp—horses housed and fed by the SS that Götz never rode and has never seen.
Adapting to the rich lifestyle, Götz is a proud example of the new worthy bourgeoisie created by the Third Reich from the devastation of a republic.
Magda considers Götz Rupp a eunuch. That’s the way he’s treated by the staff and by the secretaries here in the Bunker. We women talk about our monthlies in front of him, pluck our eyebrows while he sits stiffly by Adi’s door on a duffle bag waiting to be called. But Adi treats Götz with uniform courtesy and quotes him in great detail. Corporal Götz Rupp has no firm party ties and can act as a bridge between Adi and the common soldier. Götz’s wife once worked at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg building U-boats that she and her coworkers completed ahead of schedule. This adds to Adi’s admiration of Götz.
Götz Rupp helps Adi bypass not only theorists but also those stagnant diplomats who quibble over things like Auschwitz Protocols. Equally important, Götz Rupp plays the piano having learned from his grandmother in Wiesbaden. Götz’s night blessings on the piano—So legt euch denn ihr Bruder—to bed, then, brothers—eases Adi’s insomnia.
“What has Corporal Rupp said now?” I asked Keitel.
“You want a soldier to be fearless, give him whiskey.”
“And what did you answer, Herr Generalmajor?”
“So those are the two fronts you would have us fight—hangovers and war! Then I told that sawed-off runt with his trench complex that his notion of horizontal warfare is flawed. Head on collision with the enemy? That’s not valid any more. Rommel and Montgomery keep on the move in tanks and caravans. Götz never listens. All he does is mutter, ‘the trench in a soldier’s soul is what concerns Germany.’”
“Götz Rupp can be peculiar at times.”
“He says he has no real party ties, but he’s driven around in an official Daimler-Benz limousine with the battle-flag of the Reich flying from the front fender.”
“General, he has a civilian chauffeur.”
“Nevertheless, Fräulein, I don’t like him in Mein Reich.”
“But you have to respect him for being in Germany’s Wer Ist Wer?”
“Any feckless idiot can get in Who’s Who,” Keitel snapped showing two front gold teeth and giving a slight brush to his medal from King Carol of Romania. “Rupp signs orders with ‘G.R. im Auftrage’ that allows him the authority of decision. And he had an appliance made for his sleeve to support his arm so he can hold a salute for hours when the Führer speaks.”
But I’m grateful to Götz, especially for making my Easter in the Bunker a happy one. Easter isn’t popular as a holiday any more, not the religious part of it. But this time it was festive because of that sweet dolt, Götz, who came down the stairwell with a sack of hard-to-find fresh farm eggs. He didn’t carry them himself as he has two aides appointed to him by Adi—Private Schnederut and Private Klimke. Schnederut lost part of his nose and both his ears and four fingers on his left hand during the winter campaign in 1942 and is relegated to staff work. Klimke was hit by a grenade, and a beard will not grow on his right side. He insists on a half-beard anyway, and I tried to ignore the bushy side of his face.
So these two aides emptied the sack on a table in the dining area with Götz saying they looked like Russia’s white egg-shaped hand grenades and we could practice patriotism by turning them into Easter eggs. He also gave me a small cake from the Osterhase, Easter hare, and I instantly wondered what I could make with the paper doily under it. (I use it as a little round cloth for my dressing table.)
“Herr Private Schnederut, you are to reconnoiter the kitchen and bring back a big pan for boiling these eggs,” Götz ordered.
“Jawohl, Herr Corporal.” With the smell of cordite coming off his dusty uniform, Private Schnederut did an about-face, his half-nose half sniffing above a Close Combat Clasp in silver.
Götz acquired some food coloring from a little store still standing in the Nollendorfplatz. When Private Schnederut came back with a large stew pot, we put in water and all the eggs to boil. After they cooled, we dipped each egg in little bowls of red, green and yellow with as much care and delicacy as an icon painter.
Coming in briefly, Goebbels quickly colored a red egg for each of his children. He was pale, carried a large bottle of laxatives in his pocket, and occasionally rubbed his stomach. Taking more time with what he termed an “organ-ment,” he hastily drew shorts on one egg and pasted a small carrot to stick out in an appropriate spot. Waving the virile edifice at us, he left to put it on the officers’ Easter table.