Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [49]
“I am doing it for the sake of law and order.”
“Ah, but Sean, a conqueror is not expected to be benevolent. Don’t you think the women here are expecting to get raped? Don’t you think the German soldiers raped the women of my province and the Polish women and the Russian women?”
“More of your centuries-old traditions, Maurice?”
“More of your American naiveté, Sean. We Europeans are not dreamers, but realists. The husbands, sons, and lovers will take their women back, tainted or not.”
“I don’t understand you people!” Sean snapped in anger.
“And I don’t understand you. How long do you think you Americans are going to be able to keep up with this idiotic nonfraternization? How long will it be before your clean-living American boys go frantic for the touch of a woman?” And then, Duquesne laughed heartily. “By God, you are missing out on one of the true rewards for winning the war.”
Chapter Twenty-two
ROMBADEN GASPED FOR LIFE amidst its devastation. The full impact of defeat drove deeper with each passing day. No water, no food ... ashes. Frightened movement stirred behind the charred walls as the armed Poles patrolled the streets.
The coming of Ulrich Falkenstein disturbed them deeply. The tyrannical but paternal rule of the Von Romstein dynasty was over for the first time in history. Although Count Ludwig and his brothers had governed with an iron fist, they had worked for the solid status quo of traditional life. The Von Romsteins were the father. The Von Romsteins would take care of them.
Now, Falkenstein, enemy of the Reich, scorned for two decades, sat at the right hand of the Allied governor.
Sean’s first doubts about the meaning of Falkenstein’s Germanness faded. Falkenstein would have no truck with the Nazis. Moreover, he could smell them. A few people from the whitelist and a few political survivors of Schwabenwald were placed in key civic positions. The Nazis were routed.
It became clear that every person in Rombaden and the Landkreis was going to have to account for his past activities. Rumor had it that the military government was preparing a questionnaire with hundreds of questions which every man and woman had to answer. Imprisonments grew daily.
Dante Arosa and Shenandoah Blessing played upon the shocked condition of the people to build a system of informers. The safest way for one to clear one’s name was to implicate someone else. Inform. Tell on your neighbor. Informing had become a fine art during the Nazi days; no one had been safe from prying eyes. Informers had been glorified by the Nazis ... children were rewarded for telling on their parents and parents on their children and brother on sister and cousin on cousin.
Werner Hoffman, a deputy of Falkenstein, became the unofficial liaison between the informers and the Allied authorities. Hoffman had been a minor Socialist official in pre-Nazi days and somehow survived five years at Schwabenwald. He walked bent from his back which had been broken by a guard’s rifle butt. He had been made a freak whose constant pain had amused the SS, so they let him live. Hoffman was not a particularly efficient official, but he was a rare being ... a trusted anti-Nazi.
Hoffman made the rendezvous on Princess Allee. Hoffman made the deals with the informers for extra rations and extra consideration.
This disintegration of morality added to Sean’s disgust of the Germans. And it brought the usual snide and knowing observations of Maurice Duquesne. “Why are you so shocked? They are defeated and they wish to survive. You Americans have never had to live under the conditions of defeat. You have never had to account for the actions of your life. If a German army was occupying New York you would be amazed how many Americans tongues would waggle.”
There began a wild scramble to exonerate one’s guilt
“You must make the Americans understand I joined the party because my job was at stake.”
“My job was nonpolitical, strictly