“Yes, I know,” the father interrupts at this point, “he had a cold.”
“It was at your suggestion that he absented himself,” Fritzekarl continues, his voice breaking and going hoarse over the phrase, “You wrote me some sort of excuse, to say that he was staying home at your wish.”
The father puts his weight first on one foot and then on the other. “As a matter of fact, it is my wish that he stay home when he has such a severe cold.”
“Oh, I didn’t have such a bad cold at all,” the son breaks in. He is leaning on the handle-bars of the bicycle that his father had to fight for. “I could have gone, perfectly well.”
The man looks at his son, a long look of surprise and pain and the resignation he has learned. “Well,” he says, and moves toward the door.
But Fritzekarl stops him. “A moment, please,” he insists, but politely. “Your son was in school on that day and the following day. So he cannot have been really ill. Let me call your attention to the fact that he should have been present at practice and that it is my duty to report the absence!”
“Oh, please —” the boy was speaking for his father, quickly, bargaining “— don’t do that, please! It won’t ever happen again — will it, father? —really, never again!”
The father wanted to protest; he felt the despairing look of his wife, the outrage and embarrassment of the scene. “How dare you speak to me like that!” was what he was repeating in his mind. But he knew the consequences of such an argument, for himself, and for his son. Even if he could convince the Nazi authorities of his own part, and Fritzekarl’s rudeness, his son would still have to face the Jungvolk, paying for his father’s moment of “courage.” And so he only said, hesitatingly and stiffly, “No — it certainly will never happen again!”
“I thank you,” replied the fourteen-year-old superior of the treasonable son. The father was dismissed.
He cannot air his resentment; he has to expect eavesdroppers and spies everywhere. His wife tells their son everything — not out of malice, but in the mistaken hope of reclaiming him this way. And the new maid is a person to be feared. She listens at doors, reads everything that’s lying around the house, and she happens to be having an affair with a Blockwart; he could destroy a family single-handed. The boy would hardly denounce his own father, the man reflects, but if he repeats some remark to the maid, she will run to her Blockwart, the Gestapo (Secret State Police) will have it right away, and the doom will begin to move on them. Or, if they decide to dismiss the maid, her vengeance hanging over their heads may be even worse.
With these conditions, nothing is to the point but care and extreme reticence. Families guard this reticence, and live side by side like strangers, or enemies.
One boy of seventeen, an aristocrat, and delicate, wants to study philosophy, in spite of the times. He is slender and well-built, and most of his racial heritage is rated excellent. He has never been brilliant in sports, but, helped by his name and his determination, he may enter Hitler’s personal bodyguard (Leibstandarte), and he pushes towards this end passionately. He is looking worse all the time, paler and more desperate, and his foreign friends insist on getting to the bottom of it. They tell him not to lose courage; he’ll surely be admitted, all will end well. But he shakes his head: “That’s just it!” he answers. “Of course, they’ll admit me; and that will be the end of everything.”
But is he fighting so passionately for something he hates? The boy makes them swear not to tell a soul — not even his own family — and then breaks down. He tells them that his father is so terribly anti-Nazi, he loathes it all; besides being careless, he is rebellious; and for years, he has refused to join the Party. The son knows his father’s danger. “They’ll just take him away some day,” he says. “A nobleman who won’t play their game! That’s serious…. They’re after him.”
His friends begin to see the picture he is chalking in for them. “Something has to be done,” the boy continues. “We have to show them we’re good Nazis, not just arrogant aristocrats. I hate them, God knows. But I’ll join the Leibstandarte; I will not see my father endangered.”
When they meet his father a little later, he tells them: “My own son, insisting on joining the guard — horrible, isn’t it? He knows how I hate the whole business. But, if he insists, I shan’t do anything to stop him. After all, he might end by denouncing me.”
The members of a family are alone, living side by side, like strangers, or enemies.
Does the German child suffer under these conditions?
Is he subjectively unhappy?
Is he aware of loss? Does he realize his situation?
Human beings — the Germans proved this during the war — can become accustomed to almost anything if they are led to believe its necessity. And children seem to be adjusting to altered conditions, accepting their novelty without criticism. They have not been given time to come to their senses; they accept Nazi life almost unconsciously.
It is true that the average child is neither gay nor very serious. He is cruel, but not courageous; hard, but not firm in character; sly but not clever; unchildlike, not mature. So far, the average German child is neither unhappy nor even rebellious.
But were we German children of 1914 subjectively unhappy during the War? Did we protest? Did we question? Hitler’s government goes farther than the Kaiser’s in what it wishes the people to accept, but it also goes farther toward supporting its premises and making them credible. It concentrates upon the conquest of the “inner enemy”; between 1914 and 1918, there were other troubles to be met and mastered.
The isolation of the Nazi world protects the growing child from seeing things as they are, and so from unhappiness. One day the child grown up will inevitably come face to face with truth, and be struck by its lightning glare. Susceptible to the “new,” the German youth of the future will find in truth, apart from its general power, the might of the unexpected. It will have the force of a revelation.
But this has not yet happened.
Of course, some children suffer under the pressure of the everlasting propaganda, the monotony of days that are dreary in spite of dictated festivity. Many suffer because now they can never be alone, left to themselves to read and invent stories and pictures.
There are other lacks. Children who had been sent to Switzerland, because of insufficient food supplies at home, were often at a loss in the beginning for something to help them spend their time. This sudden freedom was a desert; the day was empty without commands. Only gradually, as they found themselves accepted by other people, they began to find themselves; they might sit for hours in the garden with a book, deep in a childhood world withheld at home; or eat normal food, good eggs, rich milk, and white bread. At first they couldn’t get enough. They were like the “holiday children” during the War; they would overeat on these “delicacies” and be ill. But they would soon recover and accept freedom and plenty here as they had learned to accept want and drill at home.
It is generally known that want is great in Germany, and that growing children suffer especially from it. There is a shortage of most foodstuffs: fats are rationed, and good meat, fresh eggs and pure flour have not been inexpensive and plentiful for a long time. Bread is spoiled by the addition of potato meal and other Zusatz — it is dark, damp and almost indigestible, and the breadcard, that most dreaded of war measures, seems inevitable. Great physical endurance is demanded of the children; they suffer most.