The grass was tipped with the first frost of the season, glowing faintly in the purple pre-dawn light. Although it was still too dark to see clearly, they formed remarkably symmetrical callisthenic lines. The previous months and years of drilling had instilled a sense of automated navigation in the boys. They moved as a single organism, powerful in their unity.
Obersturmfuhrer Beck- a veteran of the first war with France whose fingers were calloused and bent, like tree roots — led more than 200 students in jumping jacks, pushups, sit-ups and various stretching exercises. Beck’s voice exuded unforgiving authority, and yet somehow, managed to be encouraging rather than punishing. A full year after his arrival at the Reich School, the boys were fully synchronized, bending, stretching and pushing in perfect harmony.
As the purple morning light faded to bluish yellow, Wolf noticed that the bleachers, which were typically free of spectators, were full. Two men sat front row center, surrounded by a large number of aides. Soon whispers began, blowing softly across the field from one column of students to the next.
“Vogel,” Lang whispered just after he had heard it from another boy. A visit from Otto Vogel, Hitler’s private secretary, was not so unusual. The Reich School was the most prestigious of all Germany’s political leadership institutions, and it was only natural that Hitler, through Vogel, wanted regular progress reports on his country’s future leaders. But Vogel had another reason for coming to the school so often. His son, Adolf Otto Vogel Jr. — named after his godfather, Adolf Hitler — was enrolled in one of the lower grades. The concept of royalty was anathema to National Socialism, but there was no denying that the Vogel boy, by virtue of his relationship to the fuhrer, was regarded as a prince.
Wolf imagined the solid-looking Vogel, a man with a square jaw and no neck to speak of. The red lapels of his uniform — adorned with the party eagle surrounded by gold laurels — marked him as one of the party elite.
As the boys launched into jumping jacks, Lang whispered, “Himmler!”
This was truly a name worthy of gossip. Heinrich Himmler was head of the Schutzstaffel, or the SS. Following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich months earlier, Himmler had firmly established himself as the second-most powerful man in Germany. The very name prompted Wolf to step up his workout. Himmler was a man to be feared.
*
After calisthenics, the boys were split into their units and marched toward the lake. They marched everywhere, and always in neat columns. Despite the frigid water, Wolf looked forward to these morning swims. Upon his first visit to the Reich School, he had been stunned to see the picturesque community of yellow mansions situated on the verdant shore of Lake Starnberg. Although it was an easy train trip from his hometown, Munich, the campus felt refreshingly isolated from the political tension he had grown up with in the city. As far back as he could remember Munich had been a place of endless party rallies, political speeches, military parades and ethnic violence.
Now the lakefront glistened orange as the sun rose over the surrounding hills. Wolf removed his clothes and leapt over a half-meter patch of semi-solid ice around the lake’s perimeter. None of the boys complained about the temperature as they swam the four laps between the shore and Rose Island. That was typical of the Reich School attitude. But with the high command watching, there were no pranks today. No boy dunked any other boy, and no boy pretended to be taken under by the ghost of Ludwig II, the Bavarian King who had drowned in the lake in 1886.
A breeze had picked up by the time Wolf and Lang returned to shore and began dressing. As usual, Albert was still swimming his last lap. Albert was a slow swimmer, and Beck usually waited for him before moving the unit to their next activity. Not today. As Beck began marching the shivering unit across a wheat field that the cadets had harvested themselves in July, Albert was alone in the water.
Wolf looked over his shoulder as they rounded the first hilltop. There was still no sign of Albert.
“He better catch up,” Lang muttered. “Himmler will bring the dogs.”
Stories of Himmler’s cruelty were legendary. One tale had him picking out a straggler from a line of boys and, after giving the student a 20-second head start toward a grove of trees, setting a pack of vicious dogs on his trail.
“Nonsense. Maybe at the NAPOLA schools. But not here. They have invested too much in us.”
It was true that the Reich School had the highest admissions standards of all schools in Germany. Exemplary achievement in either athletics or academics was mandatory. Another hurdle was racial qualification. A person born in Eastern Europe was not eligible for enrollment at the Reich School. Neither was a person whose family had been in Germany for less than 140 years. The bloodline, it was thought, needed at least that much time to be purified of other races. In addition, students were eligible for admittance only if they could prove that their family had been of pure German descent since the year 1800.
Wolf’s mother, Gertrude, had hired a certified genealogist to create an extensive family tree showing that the family had been of Germanic descent since at least the 1500s. And even with all the right paperwork in place, doctors from the SS came to the family apartment in Munich to measure Wolf’s cranium. It was believed that the skull should be of a certain size as proof of intellectual aptitude and, of course, there were certain undesirable curvatures that were supposedly telltale signs of an ethnic minority. To Wolf, these requirements had seemed more ludicrous than sinister. After placing a set of very cold calipers against Wolf’s head, the doctor declared, “Your skull is not overly round.” Within two months, he had received his admission letter.
*
The unit did not catch sight of Himmler and Vogel until they neared a barn in a neighboring field. There was still no sign of Albert. Wolf offered a stiff-arm salute as he passed wordlessly, feeling the inspecting eyes of the German high command upon him.
Moments later, Wolf spotted the longcoats. They were standing at the end of a barn with stone siding and a gambrel roof. They were setting up a movie camera.
A movie camera could mean only one thing. They were going to jump today.
Trust jumps. That is what Beck called them. In Wolf’s two years at the Reich School, he had leapt from a guard tower, several school and government buildings and, once, a gorge in the Austrian Alps. Trust jumps were always unannounced and, more often than not, they were also filmed. The footage of boy after boy leaping from great heights made terrific propaganda footage. It was nothing less than proof that the country’s next generation of leaders had already coalesced into a formidable, unified socialist machine. Germany’s future was bright indeed.
What awaited the boys on the ground was always a mystery. Sometimes they landed on a sort of trampoline held by older boys. At other times, a safety net had been tied in place ahead of time. In the Alps they had landed in a deep river. There was no choice but to have faith in Beck’s preparation. That, of course, had been the point. To follow orders without hesitation.
But Wolf had no faith in Beck’s oversight of this activity. His stomach filled with dread with each new ascent. His mind exploded with questions. When had Beck prepared the landing? Had he scouted the landing himself, or had he delegated the task to a junior instructor? What if the conditions had changed in the hours since the landing had been prepared? Could a trampoline tie not break? Could a tree or an animal or a boulder not fall into their path?