The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

our own to see the tanks without telling them, just as I sometimes did when I went to the forest, but I was secretly relieved that she forbade us as I was not fond of noise and large numbers of strange people, even if Theodor was with me.

But soon the excitement came back. It might not have been on the very first day of walking to school, but it was within the first week that we saw the planes go by overhead. There were dozens of them flying eastwards in formation, their engines thrumming. Warplanes! Now this was really thrilling to Theodor, and I was quite curious about them.

“Ludwig, look!” Theodor pointed up at them. “Messerschmidts, Junkers, Heinkels, Dorniers!”

I had no idea what these names meant, but the airplanes were very impressive in their grey-green tones with the iron crosses painted under their wings.

“Where are they going?” I had not thought to ask this about the tanks.

“Poland,” Theodor said smugly. He always liked it when he knew something I did not know.

“Why? Why is the war there?”

“The Poles attacked a border station! Can you imagine a little country like that trying to attack Germany? They are very silly, and they will be taught a lesson. Papa says that they will lose this war.” He paused and then unnecessarily added, “And I agree with him.”

I continued staring upwards at the airplanes, trying not to trip as we continued walking. I did not know anything about countries or about warplanes. My interests lay much more with trees and birds. Nonetheless, this was very exciting.

Incidentally, I presume the reader knows that the “Polish soldiers” who attacked the border station were actually SS operatives in disguise. I do not think that anyone other than little boys like Theodor and me really swallowed the story, but nonetheless it provided Hitler with the fig leaf he needed to invade Poland.

Kindergarten began every morning with a stirring rendition of the “Deutschlandlied” (“Song of Germany”), our national anthem. It is still the national anthem of Germany, but they have wisely dropped the infamous first stanza:

Germany, Germany above all,

Above all in the world,

When, for protection and defence,

It always stands brotherly together.

From the Meuse to the ,

From the Adige to the Belt!

I had no idea about this at the time, but the Meuse River is in Belgium and France, the Neman is in Lithuania, the Adige is in northern Italy and the Belt refers to a stretch of water between Germany and Denmark. In any case, none of this mattered to me in 1939. Nor did it matter to me that the flag at the front of the classroom had a big swastika on it. I did not know or care that it was a Nazi Party symbol and not a traditional German symbol. And nor did I care that a big gold-rimmed portrait of Adolf Hitler had pride of place on the wall beside the blackboard. I knew who he was, sort of, but he was more of an abstract and distant uncle figure than anyone I had to concern myself with. But I did love the music. I learned later that the great composer Joseph Haydn was responsible for the glorious melody of the “Deutschlandlied.” He had written it in 1797 for the birthday of the Habsburg Austrian Emperor Franz II. The lyrics came later, in 1841, and are misunderstood. “Germany above all in the world” was meant to inspire quarrelling little duchies and principalities to unite as one Germany and put Germany above their petty local interests. It did not mean that Germany should conquer the world! Mama taught me this. And the ambitious geography described by those rivers in the “Deutschlandlied” is a fairly innocent reference to the old boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, which was the closest Germany came to resemble a unified country in the Middle Ages, although it was quite multicultural and only very loosely held together. It wasn’t meant as an expansionistic blueprint, but as everyone would find out, that is not the way Hitler saw it.

After the singing, the lessons began and these were less stirring. My doltish classmates struggled to write their ABCs on the blackboard while I stared out the window, hoping to catch sight of a bird. Do I feel bad for calling them “doltish”? It is arrogant and unfair, but that is how I felt then. Theodor was smart, my parents were smart, my oma was smart. It was too soon to say about Clara or Johann, but everyone around me at home was smart, so these kids seemed unnaturally slow to me.

The lessons were mercifully brief as there was also play time in Kindergarten and then the whole thing was done at noon. Theodor’s school went until one, so I walked home by myself. It was not far. I would have loved to have gone straight to the Pleisse, to the forest, but I was expected home for lunch. Lunch was the biggest meal of the day. Mama shopped and cooked for it all morning. We had to wait for Theodor and Papa to come home. In Germany everything closed for two hours in the middle of the day so that men could go home to eat lunch and have a nap. Many people do not know that. Not only the Spanish have siesta, but the Germans do too! Ours was shorter and, well, at the risk of promoting a stereotype, more efficient.

One day in the first few weeks of the war Mama cooked my favourite for lunch — a noodle casserole baked with a crust of breadcrumbs and cheese on top and served with a tomato sauce. I sat on a stool in the kitchen and watched her make it, waiting for the crispy, half-burnt noodles from the edge of the casserole. Papa did not like to see these, but I thought they were a great treat. In fact, Papa did not like this meal at all. He called it food for