dinner, but Nadia’s husband is a businessman, not a diplomat. He has no official affiliation with the Soviet embassy.”
Greta hurried to catch up. “Then the Soviets didn’t inform their expatriate citizens of the attack. But why? They’re in terrible danger.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the Soviets feared that evacuating their citizens would have tipped off the Nazis that they knew an attack was coming.”
“I hope that’s all it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure.” Greta quickened her pace. “But I agree—something is very, very wrong.”
They parted at the station after deciding that Greta would go home, collect Adam and Ule, and meet Mildred at her apartment, where they would scan the shortwave for news of the invasion. When Mildred arrived home, she was surprised to find Arvid in the living room listening to their old radio. “It’s happened,” he said, waving her over. “Every German station is broadcasting Goebbels reading an official proclamation from Hitler.”
Mildred locked the door and hurried to sit on the floor beside him. “I had an odd encounter in the Tiergarten—” she began, but she fell silent at the sound of the propaganda minister’s voice.
“German people! National Socialists!” Goebbels intoned on Hitler’s behalf. “Weighed down with heavy cares, condemned to months-long silence, the hour has come when at last I can speak frankly.” With that, Goebbels launched into a lengthy denunciation of the British, followed by an unequivocal condemnation of the Soviet Union and their “Jewish Bolshevist rulers.” He then announced what by then every German within range of a radio already knew: As of half past five o’clock that morning, Germany and the Soviet Union were at war.
“Arvid, listen,” Mildred said at the first pause in the program. “I don’t think the Soviet embassy informed their citizens about the attack.”
Quickly she described her encounter with Nadia.
“Perhaps her family missed the warning somehow,” said Arvid, pensive. “Or perhaps the embassy decided they couldn’t risk revealing how much they knew.”
“But why not warn their expatriates—or better yet, begin evacuating them—the moment the attack began, when it was no longer a secret?”
Just then the radio announcer cut to a press conference by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. Mildred and Arvid listened as he delivered an address similar to the one Hitler gave to domestic and international journalists gathered at the Foreign Office. When that concluded, the programming switched to a repeat of Goebbels reading Hitler’s proclamation. Realizing that they were unlikely to learn anything of substance from Reich radio, they moved to the bedroom, placed the blackout curtains, and took Falk’s shortwave from its hiding place in the wardrobe. Greta, Adam, and Ule arrived just as Arvid tuned in the BBC.
They listened in shock and with increasing horror as the announcer described the German military’s devastating assault on the Soviet Union. The Reich had deployed more than three million troops. The Red Army had offered little resistance, and by every indication they had been caught entirely by surprise. The Wehrmacht had marched almost unimpeded deep into Russian territory. The Luftwaffe had bombed miles of Soviet roads and railways, rendering them useless, and had destroyed nearly two thousand Soviet aircraft parked on runways and airfields. One by one towns and villages had been overrun by invaders or leveled by German tanks, and the list of names was devastatingly familiar.
“Everything is unfolding exactly as Harro and Arvid reported to Erdberg,” said Greta, appalled. “Where are the defenses? Why weren’t those villages evacuated days ago?”
“They didn’t believe us,” said Mildred, feeling faint. “All those reports, all that intelligence, and Moscow did nothing. They didn’t even warn their military.”
“Erdberg believed us,” said Arvid. “I’m certain.”
“A fat lot of good that does those poor, helpless people in the path of the invasion,” Greta retorted.
“With so much at stake, how could they have disregarded everything we told them?” asked Adam. “Were our reports too cautious? Did the Soviets not trust us because we weren’t motivated by Communist affiliations or financial gain?”
“Stalin probably couldn’t believe that his good friend Hitler would ever betray him,” said Greta bitterly, folding her arms across her chest. “Honor among dictators, I suppose.”
When the BBC began to repeat earlier reports, Arvid tuned in a German station, and at the sound of Hitler’s voice, Mildred recoiled as if she had been struck. “German soldiers!” he said, his voice ringing with pride and warning. “You enter a fight that will be both hard and laden with responsibility because the fate of Europe, the future of the German Reich, and the existence of our people rests