“Oh, my God.”
She appeared standing over him, knowing now the reason for his torment. And she knew the depth of his love. “I am as much to blame as you. I lived with him and closed my eyes and my ears.”
“Erna ... what are we going to do?”
She was numb as he had been numb for months. “Your life,” she whispered, “and the work of my uncle are too good to throw away on a Nazi. You will go to General Hansen and tell him.”
“No ... I can’t ...”
“You will do what you must do.”
“I won’t give you up! We did not make this ...”
“Germans,” she mumbled almost incoherently, “redeem the sins of your fathers.”
“Stop it!”
She laughed with bitter tears. “We make an exception of Colonel O’Sullivan’s German Schatzie. Oh God ... we were insane from the first minute.”
“Hear me, Erna ... we will overcome this.”
“And you will spend a lifetime hearing me cry in my sleep with my father in prison and my mother withering to death. What of my sister, who grieves beyond grief for that flyer who died, or my uncle, who struggles to restore us to our dignity.”
“To hell with them!”
“Oh my Sean, I love you so. I will not let you become an instrument of your own destruction. I will not let you disgrace your uniform ...”
“
Deutschland, Deutschland, Ueber Alles ...
Ueber Alles in der Welt ...”
“Ernestine! Ernestine!”
“I am a German woman.”
“Ernestine!”
“Germans are a superstitious people. We are guided by fates we cannot control.”
“Erna! I swear to you we’ll find the strength.”
“Liam! Tim! Those names you cry out in your dreams. Sean! Give me your brothers’ blessings.”
He sunk to his knees and buried his head in her belly.
“Oh God!” she cried in anguish, “we tried so hard!”
Chapter Forty-two
SEAN WALKED SLOWLY TOWARD General Hansen’s desk. He lay the file of Bruno Falkenstein on it. The general glanced at it, set it aside.
“I’m glad you made the decision to bring this in,” he said.
“Sir ... I am guilty ...”
“Sean. These papers took a long time being processed at your desk. That is all there is to it.”
“Sir ...”
That is all there is to it, understand.”
“Not after what I did to another man for the same thing.”
“There are differences. You will refuse to recognize them now because of the punishment you are inflicting on yourself. I should like to know about Fraulein Falkenstein?”
“She sent me away.”
Hansen realized that the girl’s decision had come out of love for him to allow him to try to create some kind of normal life.
“I’m sorry, Sean.”
“Our wounds run too deep. I cannot make peace with the Germans. Erna and I ... tried to fool ourselves. No real peace can ever be made until we pass on and the new generation of Americans and Germans make it.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Sean.”
“General, please help me get out of Germany.”
A PAUSE FOR REFLECTION
by Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury
West Berlin is delirious with victory. The Western world has won its first and only victory of the cold war.
In a year’s time, a quarter of a million flights into Berlin carried two and a half million tons of cargo flying over a half million miles.
It cost us a quarter of a billion dollars and seventy lives. This is cheap, as battles go. We gained immeasurable technical knowledge and this victory brought out the finest qualities of American courage and ingenuity.
We have renewed our bond with the British ally and we have found a new ally. In this first test, the Berliner was pure iron. But those among us who believe this is a final victory are fools. The Soviet Union has had its momentum halted by the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Airlift. The Kremlin is merely pausing to reflect.
The agreement ending the Berlin blockade, like all Soviet agreements, is useful to them for the moment. They have not changed an iota of the promise to devour the human race with communism.
The Soviet Union will catch its bearings and shop around for cheap victories. The West will be tested again and again.
In the end, the Soviet Union must always come back to Berlin, the scene of their defeat. As long as the West remains, the Soviet Union cannot consolidate her colonies behind closed doors and is faced with living with exposure of her way of life.
Already one sees the drab existence that lies in store for the Russian Zone of Germany, now contrasted by the surge in West Germany. The Kremlin cannot stand such public exposure and they must try to run us out of Berlin again and again. A battle is won. The war goes on.
The end of the Second World War saw the Russians, secluded for centuries, suddenly come out of their shell and pour beyond their borders.
I think it will take a long time for them to learn to live with the rest of the world and to learn that most of the human race has no desire to be made over in their image.
American determination must make new Russian victories come harder. Then will they look into their own house, cleanse their own ills and decide to join the family of man and let the world live in peace. Until the Soviet Union learns this, we are in for many hard years.
And what about the Germans?
The present generation would like to forget the Nazi era. Tough luck. They are bathed in the blood of thirty million dead. There is no way to cleanse themselves.
What of the German who swears he was not a Nazi?
Before we pass judgment on the Germans let me say that I have never found an American who has expressed personal guilt over the fact that we destroyed a people and their civilization in brutal indifference to gain the North American continent. And damned few feel guilt as Americans for the dropping of atomic weapons on undefended civilian cities.
Fewer still take personal responsibility for the fact that twenty million Americans live as second-class citizens in our country. While it is easy for us to see the faults in the Germans and the Russians, we most conveniently fail to see them in ourselves.
The Germans tell us that all men are inhuman. True. Nonetheless, when the final book on man’s inhumanity to man is written, the blackest chapter will be awarded to the German people in the Nazi era.
How about the coming generation of Germans? Are they to be held responsible for the sins of their fathers? Can a German boy be any more innocent than the Polish boy who must live with the scars inflicted by the German?
All of us are the sum total of our past. The Nazi era is part of the sum total of the heritage of unborn German generations. Yes, they are responsible.
The road to redemption is to face up to the truth of the past. Only the successful experience of a democracy will ever bring these people around.
The German citizen who has historically permitted himself to be politically ignorant must stop turning his “fate” over to the “father” who fills his lunch bucket.
There must be more to German political stature than a loaf of bread and making the best deal to survive. Already we hear complaints about the taxation to save Berlin. Yet, we must be skilled and patient and hope that by living with Americans some of it will rub off on them.
If there is ever to be a redemption of the German people, it began in Berlin.
Berliners boast that they are different. So do the people of Hamburg, Munich, and San Francisco. Which Berliners are different? The ones in the Western Sectors or those in the Soviet Sector?
We see too many fearsome signs of Nazi-like revivals across the Brandenburg Gate. The only difference is the color of the flag and the hammer and sickle replacing the swastika. All the rest is the same. They are, in fact a weak people who must lean upon someone else.