Joe turned the volume up.
“… reorganization of the government at the instigation of the late Reichsfuhrer Himmler, Albert Speer and others, two weeks of official mourning were declared, and already many shops and businesses have closed, it was reported. As yet no word has come as to the expected convening of the Reichstag, the formal parliament of the Third Reich, whose approval is required…”
“It’ll be Heydrich,” Joe said.
“I wish it would be that big blond fellow, that Schirach,” she said. “Christ, so he finally died. Do you think Schirach has a chance?”
“No,” Joe said shortly.
“Maybe there’ll be a civil war now,” she said. “But those guys are so old now. Göring and Goebbels—all those old Party boys.”
The radio was saying, “…reached at his retreat in the Alps near Brenner…”
Joe said, “This’ll be Fat Hermann.”
“… said merely that he was grief-stricken by the loss not only of a soldier and patriot and faithful Partei Leader, but also, as he has said many times over, of a personal friend, whom, one will recall, he backed in the interregnum dispute shortly after the war when it appeared for a time that elements hostile to Herr Bormann’s ascension to supreme authority—”
Juliana shut the radio off.
“They’re just babbling,” she said. “Why do they use words like that? Those terrible murderers are talked about as if they were like the rest of us.”
“They are like us,” Joe said. He reseated himself and once more ate, “There isn’t anything they’ve done we wouldn’t have done if we’d been in their places. They saved the world from Communism. We’d be living under Red rule now, if it wasn’t for Germany. We’d be worse off.”
“You’re just talking,” Juliana said. “Like the radio. Babbling.”
“I been living under the Nazis,” Joe said. “I know what it’s like. Is that just talk, to live twelve, thirteen years—longer than that—almost fifteen years? I got a work card from OT; I worked for Organization Todt since 1947, in North Africa and the U.S.A. Listen—” He jabbed his finger at her. “I got the Italian genius for earthworks; OT gave me a high rating. I wasn’t shoveling asphalt and mixing concrete for the autobahns. I was helping design. Engineer. One day Doctor Todt came by and inspected what our work crew did. He said to me, “You got good hands.” That’s a big moment, Juliana. Dignity of labor; they’re not talking only words. Before them, the Nazis, everyone looked down on manual jobs; myself, too. Aristocratic. The Labor Front put an end to that. I seen my own hands for the first time.” He spoke so swiftly that his accent began to take over; she had trouble understanding him. “We all lived out there in the woods, in Upper State New York, like brothers. Sang songs. Marched to work. Spirit of the war, only rebuilding, not breaking down. Those were the best days of all, rebuilding after the war—fine, clean, long-lasting rows of public buildings block by block, whole new downtown, New York and Baltimore. Now of course that work’s past. Big cartels like New Jersey Krupp and Sohnen running the show. But that’s not Nazi; that’s just old European powerful. Worse, you hear? Nazis like Rommel and Todt a million times better men than industrialists like Krupp and bankers, all those Prussians; ought to have been gassed. All those gentlemen in vests.”
But, Juliana thought, those gentlemen in vests are in forever. And your idols, Rommel and Doctor Todt; they just came in after hostilities, to clear the rubble, build the autobahns, start industry humming. They even let the Jews live, lucky surprise—amnesty so the Jews could pitch in. Until ‘49, anyhow… and then good-bye Todt and Rommel, retired to graze.