The Nazi Officer's Wife Read online

  He offered me his hand, “My name is Werner Vetter.”

  “Mine is Grete Denner.”

  “Would you like to join me for lunch?”

  “If you keep telling me interesting stories about painters.”

  So he did. This Werner Vetter came from Wuppertal in the Rhineland near Düsseldorf. He knew a great deal about art, much more than I, and that impressed me. He had come to Munich for a two-week vacation. Seven days of it remained.

  He asked me to contribute my food coupons (he was the only man I had met who did this) and then ordered sandwiches. Werner cut his with a knife and fork and ate it like a schnitzel. He caught me staring.

  “My tante Paula taught me never to eat with my fingers,” he explained. “I was about twelve at the time, but some things stick.”

  He looked so sweet and eccentric, this big man eating the sandwich with such delicacy, that I was quite charmed. On the other hand, he was a member of the party. On the other hand, he had such a friendly smile. On the other hand, he could be a plainclothes member of the SS. On the other hand, he knew so much about art….

  “Max Liebermann was a pretty good painter too,” he said, washing his lunch down with a beer. “Too bad he was a Jew.”

  I agreed to meet him the next day. It was the first time I had ever agreed to meet any German twice. We ended up spending the rest of his vacation together.

  When I think of the risk I took—he could have been anyone!—I am astounded, even now. But I liked Werner, you see. He was easygoing and entertaining. He loved to talk, so I didn’t have to say much. And he seemed so typical of the Germans around me: committed to the Führer, confident of total military victory, scornful of the Russians, full of the latest gossip about Goebbels and his mistresses. During that week with Werner, I learned what I needed to know to successfully pretend to be one of them. It was Grete’s training period.

  And then, of course, there was the fact that he made me feel like a woman again, the way he held doors open for me and handed me up the train steps every evening. I felt that I had wandered into one of those Heimat paintings, that I was turning gold and orange like the idealized cornfields. It was a strange, surreal feeling. One month you’re a starving, hunted, undesired liability. The next month you’re a Rhinemaiden on a tourist holiday and the king of the Vikings is paying you compliments and trying to persuade you not to catch that last train to Deisenhofen before the evening blackout, so you can stay the night with him.

  HE TOOK ME to Nymphenburg, the summer residence of the Wittelsbachs, Bavaria’s ancient rulers. We wandered through the vast gardens, the baroque pavilions. We admired display cases full of porcelain figurines—seventeenth-century dandies with cascading wigs and gold-buckled shoes, graceful performers in the costumes of the commedia dell’arte.

  Werner made fun of it all. He had the workingman’s contempt for the aristocracy. He struck mocking poses as a courtier, making people laugh. He lifted me up onto pedestals so that I could imitate a cherub and hug the Wittelsbach coat of arms. I did not dare to think of Mama, slaving I supposed as a maid or a seamstress in some ghetto. I tried to concentrate on being Grete, an Aryan tourist, and to feel completely entitled to my “vacation.” But when a policeman passed, I panicked and quickly slipped behind my tall companion.

  We went to the English garden, with its endless lawns. He stretched himself out on the grass in the late-summer sun, his head on my knees.

  “I have three brothers,” he said. “Robert and Gert are at the front. My other brother got himself an easy job sitting on his behind doing work for the party. Gert has a cute little girl named Bärbl, my favorite niece.”

  We bought a floppy doll for Bärbl, with ochre pigtails and an embroidered mouth. We stopped for beer. Werner poured his down; I sipped mine. He found that enormously amusing, the way I sipped my beer. I made a mental note to try to learn to drink lustily, like a local girl.

  “When I was a boy, my father left us,” he said. “And my mother, well, my mother liked her beer a bit better than you do. So we boys were very poor and very wild. Mother kept herself clean enough—but not us, and not our house. Our house was a mess. I hate that.

  “Tante Paula, mother’s sister, would come and take care of us. One day she arrived and found my mother passed out, and she looked under the bed and saw all the stinking, empty bottles, and she simply picked us up—me and my little brother Gert—and took us home with her to Berlin.

  “Her husband was a Jew named Simon-Colani, a professor of Sanskrit, a very smart fellow—you know, one of these real thinkers. I guess he thought I had some talent because he decided to send me to art school so that I would have a trade.”

  He has Jews in his family, I thought. We are not all monsters to him.

  “But just because you were trained and talented didn’t mean you could get work in the Depression,” Werner continued. “I was so broke I had to sleep in the forest one summer. There were a lot of us, young fellows with no way to make a living.” His voice was low, raspy. “The Nazis put us into a volunteer labor organization and gave us a place to live and a uniform. So then I began to feel a little better about myself, you know? I wanted to go back to Tante Paula and show her and my uncle how well I had done. And then he died.”

  I uttered a little cry. I had not expected this end to the story.

  “So I went to his funeral.”

  I pictured a funeral like my father’s, the Hebrew prayers, the men chanting, and this tall blond nephew with a Nazi uniform barging in. The whole idea took my breath away.

  “Is that why you got a job that keeps you out of the war?” I asked. “Because you joined the party?”

  “Ah, no, no—it’s because I am blind in one eye. I had a motorbike accident and cracked my skull and severed the optic nerve. Look closely, you’ll see.” He leaned across the table to show me his blind eye. I leaned across the table to look. He leaned closer. I looked harder. He kissed me.

  It was a shock, how much I enjoyed that experience. I was surprised at myself, and I must have blushed. Werner laughed at my embarrassment. “My God, you’re a sweet girl,” he said.

  Werner and I went to see the Frauenkirche, the Peterskirche, the summer palace at Schleissheim. We went to Garmisch Parten-kirchen, a beautiful resort area, and spent a whole day climbing in the hills, wading in the streams. I let him pick me up and carry me over rough terrain. Since we were alone, with no soldiers or policemen around, I felt somewhat more relaxed, which was a great danger—because I might forget myself and become myself. So I censored every word and look. Apparently Werner liked that. The self-limited me pleased him. He knew no other version.

  Every afternoon we would gather with a crowd at a certain café to hear the broadcast of Wehrmacht Bericht, the war news, and update ourselves on the battle then raging at Stalingrad. Hitler had invaded Russia in June of 1941, and the Wehrmacht had been conquering one Russian city after another. But recently the Russians had begun ferocious counterattacks. And winter was coming. For the first time, in the crowd at that café, I saw a glimmer of concern in the Germans. Back at Frau Gerl’s house, I had a letter from Frau Doktor saying that she—who had so much against the church—was going to mass every day and saying special prayers as a penance to save the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad.

  Werner wasn’t worried. “General Paulus is a military genius,” he said. “He’ll soon take the city, and our men will sleep inside, warm for the winter.”

  I walked along the third step of a lovely monument to raise myself up. He walked on the ground next to me, his arm around my shoulders. We came to a statue of a naked woman. He pulled me out of sight behind her and kissed me passionately. His embrace engulfed me—big, strong, a sensation of being completely buried and hidden. For me, in my situation, this was an undeniable comfort. I could hide in his shadow. His volubility made it unnecessary for me to say much. I felt protected with Werner, as though he completed my disguise.

  As we were heading for the evening train, Werner real
ized that he had left his camera at the coffee house. The camera was very valuable; you couldn’t buy one at that time. However, if we went back to get it, I would have missed my connection to Deisenhofen, and we would have had to spend the night. I was certainly not ready for that.

  “You stay and look for the camera,” I said. “I’ll go home on my own.”

  “No. You are with me. I shall see you home.”

  “But it’s more important to …”

  I saw a glint of anger in his eye that scared me.

  “Don’t argue, Grete. Never argue with me, and never tell me what to do.”

  Simultaneously gallant and frightening—that was the essential Werner.

  He wrote to me several times after his return to Brandenburg and sent me a little model of a sculpture called The Innocent of the Seine. For his birthday in September, I thought I might buy him some gloves.

  “No, no, no,” protested Frau Gerl. “You must send him a cake!”

  “But I don’t know how to bake a cake.”

  She smiled. “I do.”

  And that is how Werner Vetter in Brandenburg came to receive a cake from Grete Denner in Deisenhofen for his birthday, a gesture that he would not forget.

  MY RED CROSS training began in October. The course lasted three weeks and took place in a very beautiful retreat in the forest at Locham in the city of Gräfelfing, where members of the Bakers’ Guild would go on holiday. It was an old-fashioned wood and stucco building, with the fanciful insignia of the guild painted on the ceiling above the dining area. The forest in autumn was like heaven. So many things about Germany were like that: beautiful settings, bizarre behavior.

  I did not become close to the other women working at the Red Cross. I kept to myself and did what was necessary. I said “Good morning” and “Good evening.” In the morning, real nurses taught us the rudiments of anatomy and instructed us in the preparation of dressings and bandages. But then in the afternoon, representatives of the Frauenschaft, the women’s auxiliary of the Nazi Party, came to instruct us in our real mission: to boost the morale of the wounded and spread the propaganda of German invincibility.

  “You must make sure that every single soldier in your care knows that, despite the cowardly British air attack last May, the Cologne cathedral is still standing,” said the sturdy, uniformed instructor. “You must also tell everyone that there has been no bombing in the Rhineland. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we all said.

  In fact, the Rhineland was being crushed by Allied air attacks.

  “You are herewith invited to participate in the Germanizing of Vartegau in occupied Poland by settling and raising large families there. Conditions are excellent. You will receive an estate with plenty of cheap labor. The Poles now have come to understand that they are Üntermenschen and that their destiny is to work for German superiors.”

  I did not think that many of the Red Cross girls would take all this seriously, but it turned out that thousands of Germans did go and enjoy their time as conquerors in the Vartegau. Later on, when the war had been lost and they came streaming back, destitute, with their hands out, very few of their countrymen wanted to help them.

  You will wonder how it was possible for me to endure the same kind of “tomorrow the world” talk that had sent me running away from Hainburg. The answer is simply that I had run out of places to run away to. Surrounded by a population that had been completely sold on monstrous ideas, I simply retreated down, down, down, trying to live in imitation of the German writer Erich Kästner, whom I had always admired and who responded to the Nazi years with what was called “internal emigration.”

  The soul withdrew to a rational silence. The body remained there in the madness.

  “Remember,” said our Nazi tutor. “The Red Cross nurses are nearest and dearest to Hitler’s heart. He loves you. And you must return his love without reservation.”

  She made us swear a special oath to the Führer. We raised our arms. We said “Heil Hitler!” In my soul’s fastness, I prayed: “Let the beast Hitler be destroyed. Let the Americans and the RAF bomb the Nazis to dust. Let the German Army freeze at Stalingrad. Let me not be forgotten here. Let someone remember who I really am.”

  WINTER WAS COMING, and I was waiting for my hospital assignment. As it grew colder, I thought I might make one last trip to Vienna. I wanted so desperately to talk to somebody; I needed to break the silence that was closing over me, to spend a few hours with people to whom I could speak honestly.

  I told Frau Gerl that I had to go to Vienna to pick up some winter clothes—she never questioned this explanation—and I got back on the train. The trip felt somewhat safer now because I had a Red Cross ID with my picture on it.

  The reception in Vienna broke my heart. Pepi seemed embarrassed at my sudden appearance; he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with me anymore. Jultschi’s life had deteriorated. She had very little work. Jewish rations had been cut. Little Otti had not been declared a Mischling, so now, like all Jewish children, he received no milk at all. He would not be allowed to attend school. I tried to talk about the Red Cross, Frau Gerl, and Munich, but she didn’t want to hear.

  “Go back,” she said. “I don’t want you here anymore.”

  I had expected to stay with her for three days. After only two, I returned to Deisenhofen, miserable and rejected. And there in Frau Gerl’s front hall was a telegram from Werner, saying that he was arriving in Munich in the morning and simply had to see me. It’s amazing to consider these turns of fate. If I had stayed three days in Vienna, I would not have returned in time to receive that telegram. But by chance I did—by chance.

  Early the next morning, I went to Munich to meet Werner. In the train station, I took my hat off, fearing that he would not recognize me in my winter clothes. But he spotted me instantly. He shouted a greeting, scooped me up in his arms, showered me with kisses, and sat me down for breakfast in the café at the House of German Art.

  “I decided on my way to work yesterday that I had to have you,” he said, kneading my hand.

  “What?”

  “That’s right. It has to be. You must be my wife.”

  “What?”

  “So I took time off from work by telling the boss at Arado that my mother’s house in the Rhineland was bombed and I had to go and make sure she was all right.”

  “Werner! You can go to prison for that! False excuses! Absenteeism!”

  “But they believed me. Look at this face.” He grinned. “This is a face you must believe. So, when will you marry me?”

  “We’re in the middle of a war! People shouldn’t get married in wartime.”

  “I am madly in love with you! You do not leave my thoughts for one minute. I sit in the bathtub, I think of you, and the water begins to boil.”

  “Oh, Werner, stop that …”

  “I want to meet your father. I will go to Vienna to meet him. He will think I am wonderful, you’ll see.”

  My mind was racing. I had thought to spend a day with a charming man, bandaging my wounded ego. I had never dreamed of this! What was I going to do? Werner was ready to jump on the train to Vienna and ask my father for my hand in marriage. Where was I going to get a father?

  “Now, please, slow down. This is not rational; we have known each other only a few days.”

  “For me, this is enough. I am a man of action.”

  “But why didn’t you write to me? Why did you endanger yourself by lying to the company?”

  He leaned back in his chair, sighed, and hung his head. “Because I felt guilty. Because I told you a lie about being a bachelor. I’m married and in the middle of a divorce, that’s the truth, and my little niece Bärbl that I spoke of—well, she is really my daughter Bärbl. So I thought that since I had not been honest with you at first, now I must see you in person face-to-face to tell you the truth. I love you, Grete. You are my inspiration. Come and live with me in Brandenburg, and as soon as the divorce comes through, we can get married.”r />
  My coffee sloshed onto the table because my trembling hand could not control the cup. I was terrified. He wanted me to meet his brother Robert and his sister-in-law Gertrude and the famous Tante Paula; he wanted to introduce me to his friends; it was endless.

  We went into the museum. He pressed me and pressed me as we walked past those huge Nazi paintings and friezes, by Helmut Schaarschmidt and Hermann Eisenmenger and Conrad Hommel, portraits of Hitler and Göring, skies full of fire and eagles, grimfaced soldiers with steel helmets, Arno Breker’s stone god-men with their Parthenon stances, waving their mighty swords. Werner didn’t even look at them. He was holding my hand and talking into my ear, telling me what a nice flat he had and what a good job he had and how happy he would make me. “Think of the bathtub! Think of the sofa! Think of the Volkswagen I am buying for us both!”

  It went on and on for hours.

  “The world is too unsettled,” I protested. “What if you are sent to the front and killed in battle?”

  Werner laughed heartily. “They’ll never send me to the front! I’m half blind!”

  “What if the Red Cross hospital is bombed and I am killed?”

  “What if they send you to another hospital and some soldier sees you and falls in love with you as I have done, and I lose you? It would be unbearable! I would not be able to go on living!”

  “Oh Werner, stop that….”

  “Tell me about your father.”

  He was a dedicated Jew, and if he knew I was even walking through a museum with the likes of you he would kill me and then have another heart attack himself and die again.