“Because the Reichstag is nothing more than a glorified rubber stamp,” Horst commented, after a moment. “Finding a way to change that will be the next step, I think.”
Gudrun shifted, uncomfortably. “Can’t the elections be opened to everyone?”
“The voters have to be members of the Nazi Party in good standing,” Sven explained. “I don’t think they’ll let us change that in a hurry.”
“But most of the population are members of the Nazi Party,” Horst pointed out. “The trick would be getting them into the beer halls to vote. Have any of you seen your parents vote?”
Gudrun shook her head. Her father had never voted, as far as she knew; she hadn’t even known people could, technically, vote until she’d started the whole movement. But then, Horst was right; the Reichstag was nothing more than a rubber stamp. True power came from climbing up the ladder in the civil bureaucracy, the military or the SS. And yet, if that were true, what would happen when Volker Schulze started trying to change things?
She was still mulling over the problem as they went for lunch – another of their classes was cancelled without explanation – and walked down into the cafeteria. Someone had hung a black-edged photograph of Hartwig and a couple of other students, one of them a young woman, from the wall, a chilling reminder that their new freedom of speech had come with a price. Gudrun had never been sure what to make of Hartwig – he’d seemed more interested in chasing girls than actually doing his studies – but he hadn’t deserved to die on the streets of Berlin. The handful of testimonials written below the pictures suggested that Hartwig had died on his feet, fighting the police. She had no idea if that were actually true.
“I didn’t see him fall,” she said, when one of his friends saw her and asked. Everyone knew she’d been arrested by now, thanks to Sven and Horst. It was embarrassing, but perhaps she could use it. “It was a nightmare.”
“Tell us what happened,” someone shouted.
Gudrun braced herself as all eyes turned to her. She’d never been particularly shy, but being in prison, if only for a night, had left her with scars. She wondered, suddenly, if Horst had watched as she’d stripped naked for the policemen, then decided he probably hadn’t been able to go to the police station without an excuse. Gritting her teeth, knowing that she was committing herself, she climbed onto a chair. Thankfully, she had been taught how to recite sections of Mein Kampf at school.
“The strikers wanted to be paid for their work,” she said. Most of the students surrounding her wouldn’t have had a proper job. “But the corporations were demanding more work for less money.”
She ran through the whole story, somewhat awkwardly, then changed the tone. “My boyfriend went to South Africa,” she said. “And then I lost contact with him. It wasn’t until his father demanded answers that I found out the truth. My boyfriend was badly wounded, so badly wounded that he hangs on the border between life and death. He will probably never recover, but they won’t even let him die.
“They lied to us,” she added. She wished she’d had a chance to write a proper speech, instead of speaking from the heart. “They told us that the war in South Africa would never be anything more than a police action, that only a handful of soldiers would have to die. But they were lying! What else are they lying about?
“I went to prison, but we are all in prison, a prison camp called the Reich. We went to school, where we were taught our lessons by rote and punished for asking questions, and then to the Hitler Youth, where we were made to march in unison. How many lies were we told in school? How many times were we told never to question our superiors? How much has been buried beneath a wave of lies?”
She was tempted to mention what Grandpa Frank had told her, but she knew it would be wasted effort. Her audience had been taught to hate and fear Jews, even though none of them had ever seen a Jew – and, if Grandpa Frank was right, wouldn’t even recognise one if they did. Nor would they shed many tears over the hundreds of thousands of Untermenschen, worked to death in the labour camps or struggling to build the giant autobahns. But they’d understand their own people, students and workers, being punished just for speaking out.
“I’m sick of the fear,” she said. “I’m sick of never daring to speak, of never daring to say a word for fear it will be used against me. I’m sick of being told I should be a good little girl and never question the men; I’m sick of hearing my brothers told they should be proud to fight for the Reich. I’m sick of being forced to deny it when I see the discrepancy between their lies and objective truth. I’m sick of being trapped in this prison camp!”
She took a moment to steady herself, then went on. “I know; many of you are scared, many of you are nervous about stepping forward and taking a stand. We have all been taught that questioning authority, that failing to parrot back their words brings us nothing but pain. We have all been taught that the Reich is invincible, that any who dare to stand against it die horrible deaths. And yet, who told us that? Who ordered punishment for those who didn’t accept it at once? The people who wanted us to believe it!
“They told us a lie. They told us that the Reich was invincible. They told us that anyone who dared to question the Reich was a naughty child at best, an evil American spy at worst! But look around you. Look at your friends and tell me – are they evil? And when we showed our strength, the Reich stumbled rather than trying to fight. Alone, none of us have any power; together, we are strong enough to shake the Reich. And as long as we stay together, we will win.”
She stepped down from the chair and was instantly surrounded by a mob of students, some cheering her name and others patting her on the back. It had been a risk – her father was likely to explode with rage when he heard about it, while she might get arrested again within the hour – but she’d spoken from the heart. She was sick of living in the Reich. And there were more cracks in the edifice than she’d dared suppose. If Horst could forsake his duty, how many others in the SS, the bastion of the state, felt the same way?
And if we remain united, she told herself firmly, we can win.
Horst had been taught to keep his head down, to avoid being noticed. It was dreary tradecraft, all the more so when he was forced to play the role of a loud student at the university, but he’d long since mastered the trick of appearing to be one of them without compromising himself. And yet, Gudrun – in a moment of madness – had stood up and openly declared herself to be a dissident. Her speech had been clumsy, with none of the polish he heard from the Reich’s broadcasters, but it had transformed the mood of the student body. They now had a leader.
That was careless of her, he thought, savagely. How could she put herself in so much danger? Anyone else, male or female, would have been a better choice. Gudrun simply knew too much to risk attracting attention. A session with the Reich’s interrogators, men experienced in inflicting unimaginable levels of pain, would probably break her. She could get us all killed!
There was nothing he could say, in public, so all he could do was watch as Gudrun worked to rally the students, encouraging them to work together. Perhaps it was better that she steer the growing protest movement, rather than someone who hadn’t been there at the start, but it was still a security nightmare. Horst would have been surprised if someone in the room – someone else – hadn’t been an undercover SS agent, watching and waiting to see what happened. He’d have to come up with something to tell his handlers or they’d start wondering just what he’d been doing at the university. Gudrun might just have accidentally exposed his duel loyalties to his superiors. By the time she slipped out of the room, back towards the meeting room, he’d had plenty of time to get angry.