Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [46]
Ulrich Falkenstein and his brother were war horses of the Social Democratic Party. He had dared to stand up to Hitler even when the end had come. In the party paper and in fighting speeches he denounced the Nazis at a time when most of his comrades were either escaping Germany or frightened into silence.
In the beginning the Nazis tried to buy off the Falkenstein brothers with offers of high positions. It was rumored that Ulrich was enticed with an important post. He could neither be bought nor silenced, even though he almost signed his own death warrant by resisting.
At the epic trial in 1935, Ulrich Falkenstein made his last public statement. He predicted that this new era of tyranny would lead Germany to total destruction and universal damnation. His voice was the last of the thin cries of indignation drowned out by the thumping of jackboots and the choruses of “sieg heils.” Yet, not even in 1935 did Hitler feel strong enough to order the execution of “a foremost enemy of the Third Reich.”
Falkenstein joined a legion which swelled to a half-million Germans thrown into concentration camps for real or imagined opposition to the regime. When the night of terror was done, Hitler’s surviving opposition was a pitiful handful like Falkenstein and a few priests, a few writers, and a few thinkers. For practical purposes, there was no German opposition to the Nazis.
Somehow or another Ulrich Falkenstein managed to stay alive. At one time he possessed a powerful body, which resisted the beatings and kickings, the weeks and months in solitary. When it became known that no torture unto death could break his spirit he became the object of calculated degradation. The SS delighted in such humiliations before the entire prison. He bore the indignity with a dignity that increased his stature and enraged his tormentors. There could be no victory in his death unless he begged for life. And this he refused to do.
Falkenstein apologized for his drunken scene to Blessing the next morning and thanked him for his understanding.
For the first time in Rombaden, Sean O’Sullivan stood up in the presence of a German and greeted him warmly.
“I am overwhelmed,” Falkenstein said, “to be remembered.” He reveled in the luxury of a cigarette. The tobacco made him heady. And the coffee! A long time ago he had forgotten how to cry, but now the taste of coffee brought him nearly to tears.
As they chatted, Sean wondered what kind of man sat before him. The history of concentration camps showed it only took a year or two to completely break a normal man ... to debase him ... to drain his will ... to lower him to an animal instinct for sheer survival. Those whom Hitler released from the camps never dared speak of it.
What was the thing that kept Ulrich Falkenstein defiant? What was the thing that made him refuse the exchange of freedom for the promise of silence?
Except for a tiny scar at the edge of a horseshoe of white hair on a bald head, he showed little outward signs of the punishment. He seemed a little tired. His eyes were an amazing blue, like the Danube, and he radiated a look of tenderness that sometimes one obtains only through long and difficult suffering. His eyelids gave him a drowsy look—deceptive, and concealing the thoughts that were hidden behind them.
“How does the war go?” he asked.
“The Western Front is in a state of collapse. It will only be a matter of days,” Sean answered.
“And Berlin?”
“We have stopped at the Elbe River. The Russians are assaulting Berlin from the Oder-Neisse Line.”
Falkenstein meditated for a long time, lit another cigarette. “I am a Berliner,” he said at last. “I have a family there, a wife, two brothers, Bruno and Wolfgang, and Bruno’s family of course. I suppose it is impossible to obtain information about them?”
“I’m afraid it can’t be done now.”
“You know, it is a pity you are letting the Russians capture Berlin.”
“But the Russians are our allies. They’ve suffered terribly at the hands