Greta fixed her gaze on the file as Libertas opened it, suddenly apprehensive. “The Nazis document their deeds to the point of obsession. Why would they forbid this?”
“You’ll see.”
Libertas turned photos faceup on her desktop, one after another, snapshots from the front—soldiers holding pistols to other men’s heads, torturing victims bound to chairs, smiling arm in arm as they stood before open graves filled with bloody corpses, pulling bayonets from victims whose faces were still contorted in pain, one horror after another after another—
Greta staggered back, pressing a hand to her mouth, dizzy with nausea. “My God,” she breathed, when she could speak. “Those poor people! How can you bear it?”
“Most days I can scarcely hold myself together.” Libertas’s voice was strangely flat as she gathered up the photos and returned them to the file. “I spared you the pictures of murdered children, the dead babies.”
“How—” Greta’s breath caught in her throat. “How did you manage to get these?”
“Most were given to me by the soldiers themselves—young, gray-haired, and every age in between.” Shaking her head, Libertas gathered up the photos and returned the file to the cabinet. “They’re eager to brag about their adventures at the front when a pretty young thing flutters her eyelashes and acts impressed. They pull out their photos, and with a little flattery, a little flirtation, I convince them to let me make copies. We have all the necessary equipment—” She gestured vaguely toward the wall separating them from the rest of the department. “They assume—even though such photos are officially verboten—that I want them for the Kulturfilm archives or for a Reich propaganda film.”
“Instead you’re creating your own archive.”
“Yes.” Sparing a glance for the door, Libertas drew closer. “At first, I used it to discourage young people from joining Nazi organizations by showing them the sort of atrocities they would be expected to perform. Now I’m documenting war crimes.”
Someday, when the nightmare was over, the Nazis would be brought to justice, and Libertas resolved to make sure the prosecutors had irrefutable evidence of their offenses. For every photograph and reel of film she gathered, she collected names, addresses, and testimony, although the officers she spoke with would never give that name to it. She simply asked questions in a conversational tone about where they had been, what they had done, and why. As soon as she was alone, she wrote it all down, every incriminating detail.
Greta marveled at her foresight, but she was compelled to warn her friend of the potential danger, the dire consequences she would face if her archive were discovered. “I know the risks,” Libertas said, a tremor in her voice, defiance and fear. “I have to do this. If I don’t, who will? The only way I can get through the days is by promising myself that someday these monsters will be brought to justice.”
Someday, Greta silently echoed, willing that day to come swiftly, knowing it would not unless Germany lost the war.
By late November, thanks to concurring intelligence from Luftwaffe headquarters and the Economics Ministry, their resistance circle knew that the German military had been unable to sustain its advance into the Soviet Union. As the seasons changed, the Wehrmacht’s trucks and tanks had become bogged down in thick mud, and winter snows were imminent. With supply lines strained to the limit, food and fuel reserves were running dangerously low. Hitler had expected to be in Moscow before the first snows fell, but now German soldiers on the front lines were digging in for an arduous winter campaign clad in nothing heavier than the uniforms they had worn when the invasion began in June. Most Germans, absorbed in the steady stream of propaganda issuing from the Reich press, had no idea how their sons, husbands, and brothers at the front suffered.
Somehow, even as winter descended, heavy and ominous, the German army struggled on into December, only to come to an abrupt halt barely ten miles from Moscow as the muddy roads turned to ice. Temperatures plummeted to −35°C. Tanks, trucks, and artillery became useless as the oil froze within their mechanisms. Quartermasters had prioritized munitions above food and clothing, so the well-armed, poorly clad soldiers suffered from hunger, frostbite, and despair.
Then, on December 6, Harro risked a phone call from his office at Luftwaffe headquarters to tell Adam and Greta that the Soviet Union had launched a massive counterattack against the icebound German army. One hundred Soviet divisions punched into