of the ghetto, a dilapidated building already overcrowded with poor Aryans and immigrants from elsewhere in the Reich. They resented their new Jewish neighbors, who were usually better educated, more cultured, better dressed, and profoundly disconsolate, as if they considered themselves too good for the place. Never mind that most of the Jews were unemployed and constantly hungry from subsisting on much smaller rations. Never mind that they were all poor now, all threatened by the same British bombs.
Whenever the air raid sirens wailed, the German residents made a mad rush for the shelter in the cellar, but Jews were forbidden to enter. Instead Sara, Natan, and a few dozen others descended to the ground floor and waited out the terrifying hours in the central hallway, bracing themselves against the walls, avoiding the windows at either end, covering their heads with their arms when the roar of British planes intensified.
“We should paint ‘Jews Here’ on the roof so that the British know to drop their bombs elsewhere,” Natan said wearily the morning after a long, harrowing, sleepless night in mid-October. “Why should they kill us? We hate the Nazis even more than they do.”
“I don’t think that would help,” Sara replied, stifling a yawn, trying to ignore the gnawing ache in her empty stomach. “The Americans painted ‘USA’ on the roof of their embassy, but they still have to put out fires when incendiaries land in their gardens.”
“In their gardens,” Natan said, raising a finger for emphasis, “not on their roof.”
Sara managed a wan laugh. “I still say your signal is a very bad idea. If the British don’t bomb us, the Luftwaffe will.”
As autumn passed into a winter of long nights, overcast skies, and frigid cold, Berlin’s air raid sirens blared almost every night, interrupting sleep and sending terrified residents scrambling for shelter. In September the RAF bombed the capital about four times every week, but in October the number of raids dropped slightly, and in November Berlin was struck only eight times. But although the frequency of attacks had diminished, they were no less destructive—on both sides, for the German defenses had improved dramatically and had brought down many British planes. By the first snowfall of December, almost every district in Berlin had been struck at least once. The Reichstag building, the Propaganda Ministry, the criminal courts at Moabit, the Berlin Zoo, and the palace at Charlottenburg all had sustained damage. So many factories, military sites, and railroads had been destroyed that Sara sustained a faint hope that the German military would be immobilized and the war would grind to a halt. But it was a small flame, quickly extinguished when she observed how swiftly the Nazis cleared away the rubble and made repairs.
In the last week of December, when Sara stopped by the Harnacks’ apartment on a courier run, Mildred told her that a few days before, Hitler had signed a secret directive officially ordering the attack on the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa called for the German military to crush the Soviet Union in a swift, decisive campaign before the war upon Britain was concluded. Preparations were to be completed by May 15, 1941.
Sara felt a stirring of hope and fear. “Arvid and Harro have said that a two-front war would be disastrous for Hitler.”
“It could be,” said Mildred guardedly, “but if Germany defeats the Soviet Union and assimilates their resources and materiel, it will be disastrous for Great Britain.”
“And for us,” said Sara, meaning the resistance, the Jews, every enemy of the Reich.
“And the United States,” said Mildred. “They’ll be forced to fight in the end. I only wish they would see that and intervene now. The sooner they do, the more lives will be saved, I’m sure of it.”
Sara understood Mildred’s frustration. The Harnacks had been passing military and economic secrets to the U.S. government for years, apparently to no avail. They could only hope that plans were developing behind the scenes, that the risks they took were not for nothing.
In January, as bitter cold enveloped northern Germany, Harro Schulze-Boysen and the rest of the executive staff were transferred to the Luftwaffe’s wartime headquarters in Wildpark-Werder near Potsdam. His new post gave Harro access to confidential information about the Axis air forces as well as secret diplomatic and military reports from German consulates and embassies. Within his first few days, he learned that the Luftwaffe was planning photographic reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory, and he also met several experts on the Soviet Union who had