One of his footballing friends passed him the identity papers with his new name on them-and without anything to show he was a Jew. In the Nazis’ Reich, greater friendship than that no man had. The photo didn’t look a whole lot like him, but who worried about such things? Besides, the documents he’d got since joining the Wehrmacht bore his authentic mug shot.
By now, at least half the people in the regiment knew he was a Jew. The National Socialist Loyalty Officer wasn’t one of them. Of course, there were a great many things Major Stähler didn’t know. To Saul, at least, that was one of the more important ones, though.
“Hey, Sergeant!” he called.
“What’s cooking, Adi?” Witt came back.
“Got a question for you,” Saul said.
“I’m all ears.”
“Suppose we get an order to start shooting canister at the civilians in Münster. What do we do then?”
Panzers carried only a few rounds of canister. You didn’t use it very often. It was like an overgrown shotgun shell full of shrapnel balls. If the Russians charged arm in arm, the way they sometimes did, a canister round could get rid of a couple of dozen of them at once. It could smash a crowd of civilians into red ruin in nothing flat, too.
Hermann Witt made a horrible face. “Don’t ask me shit like that, all right? If they’re trying to set fire to the panzer or something, I’m entitled to try to stay alive myself. If they’re not … Der Herr Gott im Himmel, who would give an order like that if they’re not?”
Saul scratched his head. Actually, he scratched his service cap. It bore the regime’s embroidered eagle clutching a swastika in its talons. Not quite by accident, his forefinger brushed the fylfot several times. If Witt got it, fine. If not, Saul hadn’t said anything that could land him in hot water.
Witt got it-Saul had thought he would. The panzer commander sighed and rolled his eyes. “I hope they don’t, that’s all,” he said.
“But what happens if they do?” Saul asked.
He’d pushed it too far. He saw as much right away. “We won’t worry about that till the time comes-if it comes, and I hope like hell it doesn’t,” Witt said sharply. “Till then, we’re not going to worry about it. We won’t bang our gums about it till then, either, all right?”
“All right, Sergeant,” Saul answered. Had he been an Aryan, he might have kept pushing. Since he wasn’t, since he had his own secrets to guard, he needed to walk soft.
Lothar Eckhardt felt no such limits. “Know what I heard?” he said after a trip to the spare-parts depot to pick up a new and allegedly improved reticle for the gunsight.
“Something juicy, by the way your tongue’s hanging out,” Saul said. “You look like a hound in front of a butcher’s shop.”
“Do I? Wouldn’t be surprised,” the gunner said. “They’re saying the generals have started plotting against the Führer again.”
“They’ve been saying that since the war started,” Saul reminded him. “And whenever it looked like it might come true, the Führer went out and shot himself some generals.”
“Yes, but-” Eckhardt protested.
Saul cut him off. “But, nothing. When the Führer needs the Wehrmacht inside of Germany, of course they’re going to start saying that kind of stuff again. Saying it doesn’t make it so.”
“But-” Eckhardt tried again.
“No buts, dammit.” Saul stopped him again, too. “Don’t you think the SS and the SD are listening to hear exactly who’s spouting that shit? Use your head for something better than a hat rack, Lothar. You’re no dope. Don’t you figure the SS and the SD are starting rumors like that so they can find out who likes them? You go running your mouth, you’re just handing them the excuse to get their hooks into you.”
“Oh,” the gunner said in a small voice. “Thanks, Adi. No, that hadn’t crossed my mind.”
“Well, it should have. Don’t take chances, man.” Saul knew all about not taking chances. Maybe Lothar’s rumors were even true. He could hope so. The generals would have to be better than the Party Bonzen … wouldn’t they? But whether the rumors were true or not, he had no intention of passing them along.
Arno Baatz knew how to handle troublemakers in territory the Reich had occupied. If they gave you any lip, you smashed them in the head with your rifle butt. If they still showed fight after that, you shot them or hanged them. If you hanged somebody, you put a placard around his neck so his friends and relations would get the message. It was all simple.
Now he and the men he led were back in Münster, though. He still wanted to clobber anyone who squawked, and to kill anyone who squawked twice. He was loyal to the Führer, even if the people here weren’t.
But things weren’t so simple here as they had been in fleabitten Russian villages. These people weren’t Ivans. They were as German as he was. And, while shooting them wouldn’t have bothered him one bit, the idea plainly did bother a lot of soldiers.
“We put on the uniform to protect these people,” grumbled a private named Bruno Gadermann. “We didn’t put it on to shoot them down like dogs or Russians.”
“We put on the uniform to protect the state, the Grossdeutsches Reich,” Baatz explained. “That’s what we swore our oath to the Führer to do. Sure, we have to fight against our foreign enemies. But we have to fight against treason at home, too. Treason is what ruined the Reich in 1918-the stab in the back.”
He believed what he said. He was too young to remember those days himself, but that was what people had said ever since he started noticing what people said. Adolf Hitler said it. The National Socialist Party-to which Arno was proud to belong-said it: thundered it, even. Why wouldn’t he believe it, then?
Not everybody did, not quite. Adam Pfaff stirred when he spoke of the stab in the back. Pfaff’s politics had always been suspect, at least as far as Arno Baatz was concerned. But the Obergefreiter only stirred. You couldn’t gig a man for that. He might have had an itch or something. Baatz didn’t believe it for a minute, but an officer, even the loyalty officer, would want more in the way of proof than he could give.
“It doesn’t seem right, that’s all,” Gadermann said.
“Following your superiors’ orders doesn’t seem right?” Arno asked, his voice ominously calm.
He was disappointed when Gadermann saw the rapids ahead before he crashed into the rocks and turned over. “I didn’t mean that, Corporal,” the soldier answered quickly.
“Well, what did you mean, then?”
“Nothing, Corporal. I didn’t mean anything.” Gadermann made a production of charging his pipe with tobacco, tamping it down, and lighting it. Baatz thought pipes looked faggy and the stuff guys smoked in them smelled foul, but they weren’t against regulations or anything.
Questioning your superiors’ authority was. The National Socialist Loyalty Officer would be very interested to hear about it. What happened to Bruno Gadermann after that wouldn’t be pretty. Unlike Pfaff, he didn’t know when to keep his big trap shut.
On the other hand, he’d probably be scared enough to shut up and do as he was told from now on. If he disappeared, the rest of the men in the squad would understand why. That might scare them, too. Or it might make them sympathize with Gadermann and with the rebels in Münster, and leave them unreliable when they were needed most.