in locked drawers, out of sight but not out of reach, her handwriting on every page. She indicated the bookcases along the walls, where beside Adam’s scripts and novels and her own cherished volumes sat dozens of banned books entrusted to them by nervous friends who had purged their own shelves of illicit literature. “I’m already involved up to my neck. There’s no point in shutting me out.”
Adam was a fool if he believed being a woman and a mother gave her some natural immunity against Nazi violence. Did the Nazis spare Jewish women? Communist women? The wives of their political enemies? Even before the Night of the Long Knives, women had paid the price for their own insurgence as well as that of their husbands. Why pretend otherwise?
“We bear all the risks the men do, but our opinions matter half as much,” Greta complained to Mildred a few days later while they washed and dried the supper dishes in the Harnacks’ tiny kitchenette. Arvid had invited the Kuckhoffs over, but although they discussed politics and strategy as equals over the meal, afterward the men went to the living room to continue the conversation while the women cleared the table and tidied up. “They want to shield me from their resistance activities because I’m a mother. If they believe the Gestapo could search our apartment and not immediately know that I’m as guilty as they are, they’re fooling themselves. And it’s precisely because I am a mother that I’m committed to the resistance. I have to make the world better for Ule. Did you know that next month, participation in the Hitler Youth becomes compulsory for all boys aged ten through eighteen?”
Mildred nodded soberly. “Yes, I know.”
“I won’t allow it.” Greta shook her head as she furiously wiped a plate dry. “I won’t let them make him into a little Nazi automaton, worshipping Hitler and singing cheerful tunes about blood and soil.”
“Ule has eight years before he would be old enough. God help us all if Hitler is still in power then.”
“Exactly, which is why the resistance needs every one of us. Not just the men. Everyone who is willing and able, including mothers. Including me.” Scowling, Greta draped the dishtowel over her shoulder while Mildred scrubbed the last pan. “I’m the only mother in our circle, and so they treat me differently than they treat you, or Sophie Sieg—”
“Greta—”
“I get up before dawn and stay up late for my resistance work. I never neglect Ule, not one moment.”
“Of course you don’t. No one would ever accuse you of that. But Greta, listen—” Mildred hesitated, rinsed the soap from her hands, and plucked the dishtowel from Greta’s shoulder to dry them. “You’re not going to be the only mother in our circle for long.”
“You mean Sophie—”
Mildred shook her head, eyes shining.
“Mildred, you?” Greta exclaimed, and when Mildred nodded, Greta embraced her. “How wonderful! How far along?”
“Six weeks.” Mildred’s face glowed with joy. “I know it’s still early, which is why we haven’t told anyone yet. Except you.”
Suddenly Greta’s words came rushing back to her. “Mildred, you mustn’t worry that the men will put you aside once you become a mother. They can’t afford to lose you, not with your contacts among the Americans.”
“They can’t afford to lose you either, even if they don’t always realize it.”
Greta smiled, heartened by her friend’s encouragement, delighted beyond measure that Mildred’s long-cherished dream to have a child was at last coming true. She would not think of spoiling her friend’s happiness with cautions about how difficult it was to raise children in the Reich, not only because of rationing and shortages and the pervasive fear that at any moment this strange Sitzkrieg, the “phony war,” would suddenly burst forth like a long-held breath into all-out warfare, with British bombs laying waste to Berlin as Germany’s bombs had done to Warsaw. It was the poisonous influence of Nazi propaganda and scenes of arbitrary violence Greta feared most, and the older Ule grew, the more difficult it would be to shield him.
With the return of fair weather, Greta had resumed taking Ule on outings to the Tiergarten for fresh air and sunshine. She had hidden her dismay as he had admired older boys marching past in their crisp uniforms of the Hitler Youth, singing songs in praise of the Führer and banging upon drums. Whenever Ule saw other little children waving small swastika flags, he begged Greta for one of his own. “We don’t have a