is obvious. But now there is a movement afoot to unseat God, a plot to install the Führer as the ultimate authority in our lives. Should this happen—”
A burst of static, then silence.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sara, alarmed.
Arvid leapt up to check the radio. “Nothing’s wrong with the set.”
“They must have cut off his microphone,” said Karl Behrens. “I hope that’s all they did.”
Mildred gasped.
“I’m sure Dietrich is fine,” said Arvid, but the strain in his voice revealed his uncertainty.
It was not until the following day that Arvid was able to reach his cousin and find out that he was safe and unharmed—and furious. Unaware that someone in the station had switched off his microphone, he had continued for another five minutes, warning the German people not to imbue Adolf Hitler with the qualities of a religious icon.
“Dietrich is determined to get his whole message out, so he’s arranging to have it published,” Arvid told Mildred afterward. “He’s already begun work on a new essay arguing that Christians have a moral and religious obligation to defend the Jews from persecution.”
“I hope he changes a lot of minds, and quickly.”
“Dietrich isn’t alone. Others are speaking out, and we must too, before we lose our opportunity. We must uproot Hitler from his new office now, before he digs himself in too deeply.”
But all around were signs that they were running out of time. Two days later, Chancellor Hitler tightened his grip on his newfound authority by convincing President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and set a new general election for March 5.
Alarmed and outraged, socialists and Communists joined forces to oppose the move. Mildred and Arvid were among two hundred thousand demonstrators who gathered at the Lustgarten on the frosty night of February 7 to protest Hitler’s appointment, bearing torches, chanting slogans, singing songs of unity and peace. Shivering in the cold, Mildred was nonetheless heartened by the sheer numbers of protestors filling the plaza, people like her and Arvid and their friends who recognized the danger of the fascist surge and refused to be swept up in it. Some Brownshirts stood about in clusters on the edges of the protest, glaring malevolently, but on that night, greatly outnumbered, they refrained from their usual violence.
It was a triumphant, hopeful protest, but in the days that followed, the SA arrested thousands of political enemies, mostly Communists, dragging them off to makeshift prisons on the slightest of pretexts. By the middle of February, violence in the streets of Berlin surged as Brownshirt mobs attacked members of the Catholic Center Party and trade unionists as well as their usual targets, Communists and Social Democrats. Some politicians appealed for calm as the election approached, but many prominent officials were strangely silent.
“Everyone knows the Nazis are responsible for the violence,” Arvid said. “No reasonable person wants more of this. Surely the German people will vote Hitler and his whole party out of office.”
Mildred hoped he was right. The situation was untenable, and in the end, reason and common sense had to prevail. The March 5 election was their chance to get the political situation back on track so they could focus on the economy, on jobs, and on helping the poor.
Then, late in the evening on February 27, just as Mildred was yawning over a pile of student essays and contemplating going to bed, the wailing of a fire engine drew her and Arvid to the cupola windows. Another siren joined the first, and then another, until the cold winter night itself seemed to shriek with alarm.
Off to the northwest the horizon glowed red, and when the wind gusted, it carried the scent of burning. Arvid wanted to go out to see what was ablaze and whether Neukölln was in any danger, but Mildred would not allow it, fearing riots or worse. “Check the radio,” she urged, but the few stations still broadcasting at that hour played music as they did on any ordinary night.
Mildred and Arvid lingered near the windows, watching and listening past midnight, until the quieting of the sirens and the absence of fire trucks on Hasenheide convinced them that the fire had been contained. Exhausted, they went to bed and dropped into restless sleep.
In the morning, they learned that the source of the smoke and flame was the Reichstagsgebäude, now a smoldering ruin on the edge of the Tiergarten.
Chapter Ten
February–March 1933
Sara
The distant wail of sirens woke Sara in the early morning hours of the last day of February, but after a moment of disorientation