the absence of any enthusiasm for the invasion. The Anschluss had provoked celebrations on the street, great smiles and songs and abundant national pride, but Mildred observed none of that now.
When she reached her own block, she was brought up short by the sight of an enormous pile of sand dumped in the courtyard of the building next door. A few young children climbed upon the mound or pushed toy trucks and trains through the spillage near the bottom, while older teens and adults worked busily, women sewing hessian cloth into bags, men filling the bags with sand for others to haul away and stack near ground-floor windows. The knot in Mildred’s stomach tightened as she hurried upstairs to leave her purse and collect her sewing kit before returning to join one of the sewing circles. She recognized a few residents of her own building, but most were strangers.
“Did you hear that as of today it’s illegal to listen to foreign broadcasts?” one young woman piped up. Her hair was cut short in a sleek dark bob, and her hands were pale and slender with perfectly lacquered nails. “If you’re found guilty of intentionally listening, you’ll go to prison. If you’re convicted of spreading around what you heard and undermining German morale, you’ll be executed.”
Mildred kept her expression carefully neutral. She and Arvid listened to the BBC several times a day, both the English and German broadcasts out of London.
“How are they going to enforce that?” scoffed an older, stouter woman keeping one eye on her work and the other on a pair of rambunctious boys scrambling around the sand pile. “How could they know who’s listening to what? Will they send men to every home in Berlin to listen at doors?”
“They’ll rely on denunciations, of course,” said a white-haired woman, peering intently through her glasses as she threaded a needle. “Neighbors will inform on neighbors. Hitler Youth will inform on their own parents to their group leaders. You’ll see.”
A few of the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Who wants to listen to foreign broadcasts anyway?” said one pretty young woman whose infant slept beside her in a bassinet. “They’re nothing but lies invented by Jews.”
There were a few murmurs of assent, but the conversation trailed off into an uneasy silence. “Those two,” the stout woman suddenly grumbled, exasperated. “They’ll take half the sand home with them in their shoes and trousers if they don’t settle down.” Gathering up her things, she strode over to the pile and spoke vigorously to a pair of tousle-haired boys, then glanced warily around the courtyard and joined a different sewing circle some distance away.
Mildred sewed until midafternoon, when she returned home to start supper and prepare for the blackout. She listened to German radio as she worked, but eventually, repulsed by rapturous descriptions of the Wehrmacht’s swift and merciless pulverization of Poland, she lowered the volume and tuned to the BBC. The announcer described the ongoing attack in far more somber tones, the relentless forward march of German troops, villages and farms bombed into utter ruin, the destruction of the Polish air force, courageous but futile charges of the Polish cavalry upon German tanks.
Mildred hung on every word, but she heard nothing of a British or French response. She knew both nations were bound by treaty to go to Poland’s defense, but whether they would honor their commitment remained to be seen.
When Arvid returned home, he turned down the volume until it was barely audible. Over supper he said that he had observed the same despondent mood on the streets as she had, very different from the jubilation and confidence he remembered from the commencement of the Great War. “Perhaps it’s different in the countryside, in villages and small towns,” he reflected. “Berliners are worldly, and their memories are too full of the last war to embrace a new one with reckless abandon. But if Germany can take Poland swiftly and France and Britain do nothing, even Berliners will rally to the cause. Nothing seduces like victory.”
They lingered at the table, saying little but finding comfort in each other’s company. Later they settled down in the living room, Arvid with a stack of economic reports, Mildred with the revised draft of her dissertation. Knowing how close she was to completing her life’s goal sent a thrill of pride and relief through her, and yet she knew she would miss the engrossing distraction the work provided. She hoped to submit a polished and perfected dissertation