Wolf Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by The Herbert J. Stern Corporation, Inc.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Paul Qualcom

  Cover photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5108-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-5110-1

  Printed in the United States of America.

  In honor of Bernhard Weiss

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part II

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part III

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part IV

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Historical Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  In October 1918, an amnesiac soldier encounters a corporal suffering from hysterical blindness in the mental ward of Pasewalk Hospital. Their friendship based on mutual dependency is the spine of this story that ranges from the founding of the Nazi Party to Hitler’s ascendency as Germany’s absolute dictator in 1934.

  Wolf is the account of German democracy strangling itself in excessive division and discord until, finally, its exhausted citizens turn to a dictator . . . who then eliminates all dissent.

  Wolf is historical fiction because there are fictional characters. Nevertheless, the events and vast majority of people depicted are historically accurate . . . more so than many accounts termed “history.”

  Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures

  —Jessamyn West

  Prologue

  Berlin, February 28, 1933

  “I am to meet Bernhard Weiss at this address.”

  “He doesn’t live here,” said Lucie. Lucie Fuld-Traumann was a stout, married woman in her fifties. The whites of her eyes became more visible as her gaze traveled from my black high boots to the red swastika armband to the shoulder epaulets and finally to the SS lightning bolts on my collar. Her lips trembled in fear. Her gnarled hands twisted a blue-and-white dishtowel into knots.

  “Damn it, woman, we don’t have a moment to waste. Where is your brother?” I brushed past her and slammed the door before removing my peaked cap. “You don’t want your neighbors gossiping that an Obergruppenführer was seen standing in your entranceway. Now get Bernhard.”

  Lucie stood her ground. “I told you, Bernhard is not here.”

  The house was compact: crystal chandelier above our heads, living area with an upright piano to the left, kitchen straight ahead, and the dining room to my right. The dinner table had been set for three. I knew that Lucie and her husband, Alfred, who must have been cowering in an upstairs room, did not have children. After Bernhard Weiss, deputy police commissioner of Berlin, had been removed from office some months earlier, he sent his wife and daughter to Prague while he sought refuge in his sister’s house . . . hiding from the very police he once commanded.

  I turned back to Lucie. “Didn’t he tell you to expect Friedrich Richard?” I showed her my identification card. “I’m Friedrich.” Lucie remained frozen in place, unsure of what to do.

  Time was of the essence. “You must trust me. We have a window of opportunity to get Bernhard to safety and join his family in Prague. It’s a seven-hour drive through the back roads to the Czech border. If we leave now, we can stay ahead of the men who have been dispatched to arrest him. Now take me to him. Immediately.” I glared down at her. “You brother’s life is in your hands.”

  Without further denial, Lucie guided me to the basement door. It was dark. At the bottom, she pushed a button and a small light buzzed to life, casting macabre shadows on the damp walls. She called her brother’s name.

  Then I bellowed, “It’s me. Friedrich. We need to go . . . now.”

  Clothes rustled from an unlit corner. A soot-smeared Bernhard Weiss emerged from behind the coal stack. He coughed into a handkerchief before he could speak.

  “I knew you would come,” he said without preamble. We clasped hands.

  “Goebbels has ordered your immediate arrest. We don’t have much time.”

  Weiss nodded and pushed passed me. Upstairs, he grabbed a packed bag stashed for the day he needed a quick getaway, snatched a pistol from a side table that he shoved into the back of his pants, hugged his sister, promised he would see her again, and left his beloved Berlin.

  *

  We headed south in silence, each absorbed in the import of what we were doing. It was a cloudless, cold night. A full moon illuminated the country roads. After an hour, oncoming traffic ceased. We sped along with growing confidence that we would be safe . . . at least until we reached the border.

  I broke the silence. “Did you hear about the fire in the Reichstag?”

  “Lucie told me Hitler announced that the Communists attempted a putsch. That seems far-fetched. Do they have any proof of such a plot?”

  Until six months ago, Bernhard Weiss, slight of frame yet huge of intellect, was the leading policeman in all of Prussia, which included Berlin. He single-handedly brought German police work into the twentieth century by introducing forensic techniques that became standard for criminal investigations throughout Europe. A thorn in the side of Joseph Goebbels, he refused to let Hitler’s twisted mouthpiece issue vituperative rants against both him and the Jewish community with impunity. Weiss clamped down
each time Goebbels defamed him, successfully suing him, even putting him in jail. The irony! Weiss had fallen from highest-ranking Jew in the police department to a hunted man.

  I turned to Bernhard. “Proof of a plot? They are looking for proof. If they don’t find it, they’ll try to manufacture it. In the end, it won’t matter. They’ll do what they want.”

  “Reich President Hindenburg is our last hope. He hates Hitler. He would never let him get away with that.”

  “Then you haven’t heard this morning’s news. Hitler got the Old General to invoke Article 48 of the Constitution. All civil liberties in Germany have been suspended.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted,” Weiss reminded me of a past argument, “a dictatorship to restore Germany’s greatness?”

  “I wanted a temporary dictator the way ancient Romans occasionally summoned one to solidify political power in an emergency. Nothing more. I did not want the suspension of all civil rights of our citizens.”

  Even in the silver cast of the moon’s light, I could see Bernhard grow pale. We rode for a few minutes while he considered the ramifications of a suspended constitution. More than once, he started to say something only to stop and rethink it.

  “Let me get this straight,” Bernhard said. “By Hindenburg handing him the country, there is no more freedom of the press. The right to object to one’s own arrest has just been eliminated. All dissent will be silenced.” Then he added, “Legally, if Hitler does half of what he claims he will do, life for us will become intolerable.”

  I knew “us” did not mean all Germans. Weiss was speaking for his fellow Jews. There was no need to discuss this further. I did not have the heart to tell him that Hitler had already ordered Wilhelm Frick, his minister of Interior, to draft racial laws forcing Jews out of German life. The first law, ejecting all Jews from the civil service, would be implemented in five weeks, along with laws to prevent Jews from taking bar exams and Jewish doctors from receiving compensation under national health insurance. This would herald the end of Jewish doctors, lawyers, and public servants in German society. I argued with Hitler not to do this, but to no avail.

  We lapsed into silence. I had a basket of food in case we got hungry and cans of petrol anticipating that stations would be closed in the dead of night. When nature called, we relieved ourselves alongside the car.

  We neared the border crossing as rays of the early morning sun peaked above the horizon. I hopped out of the car and opened the trunk. “Get in. It’s better if they don’t see you.”

  While the diminutive Weiss curled into the trunk, he still balked. “Get me out as soon as it’s safe. I hate being confined like this.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  I closed the trunk and restarted the car, rounded the bend, and rolled up to a large gate that blocked the road. White, narrow guardhouses flanked either side of the barrier. A sleepy-eyed guard ambled toward the car, wagging his gun for me to roll down the window.

  “You must turn around.”

  “I have urgent matters to attend to. Let me through.”

  “The border is closed until the Communist conspirators who burned down the Reichstag building have been rounded up.”

  “I just came from Berlin. You may not have heard: they captured all of them. Now let me pass.”

  By now, the guard in the other station poked his head out to see what the commotion was about. I opened the door and stood to my full measure, towering over the guard. “Do you know who I am?”

  A glance at the uniform of an SS General brought the man to heel-clicking attention. But still, he remained suspicious. “I must see some identification.”

  “This is insane,” I muttered under my breath. I handed him my identification card plus my SS membership card.

  The guard’s assuredness evaporated. “You’re an Obergruppenführer? Other than Himmler, that’s the highest Schutzstaffel rank.”

  “There is no time for military lessons. Let me pass.”

  He compared my face to the picture on the SS card. By this time, the second guard wandered closer. “How is it I have never heard of you?” asked the first.

  “Because I perform secret missions for the Führer.”

  “Even so, I should be familiar with your name.” He asked the other guard if he had ever heard of me. The man shrugged.

  “This will clarify matters for you. Then I must be on my way.” I handed him a letter with the Führer’s unmistakable signature, that validated I spoke as his personal representative. “I assume you have a phone in your guardhouse. Call the Führer. Ask who I am. Explain to him why you deem it necessary to detain me.”

  The guard handed back my identification cards and letter. “That won’t be necessary, Herr Obergruppenführer.”

  I saluted. “Heil Hitler.”

  I wheeled around. With my back to the guards, I made a show of adjusting my cap to wipe my brow. I reached for the car door handle when a muffled cough broke out from the rear.

  “What was that?” called the guard.

  I cleared my throat. “That was me.”

  He raised his rifle. “Hold it right there.”

  The guard motioned for his comrade to keep an eye on me. With my back still to the guard, I unbuttoned my coat. The first guard edged to the rear of the car.

  “What’s in the trunk?”

  “Nothing.” I said in a loud voice. “It’s not locked. Open it and see for yourself.”

  The guard lifted the hatch with his left hand and stepped back as the trunk sprung open. Two shots rang out from inside the trunk and the soldier crumpled to the ground. I whipped out my Luger and shot the second guard before he had time to react.

  I ran to the back; Weiss climbed out of the car. “Are you hurt?”

  Weiss shook his head as he knelt over the guard and pressed the carotid artery. “This one’s dead; the other one?”

  “Still alive.” I had aimed wide on purpose. The second guard lay on the ground attempting to staunch the flow of blood from his right shoulder with his left hand.

  Weiss and I approached him, pistols in hand.

  He pleaded. “Please, Herr Obergruppenführer, I will not report you . . . I . . . ”

  “Will say nothing,” said Weiss . . . who then placed his gun muzzle to the man’s temple and squeezed the trigger.

  I raised my arms. “For God’s sake, why did you do that?”

  Weiss scowled. “How could you return to Berlin if that man lived?”

  “That’s just it. I have no intention of going back.”

  “We will talk about this later.” He looked down. “For now, they can’t be found this way. We need to make it look like they were defending the border.” Together, we fired a number of rounds from our pistols into the guardhouses, breaking the windows and sending shards of wood flying. Then we grabbed their rifles and dragged each to a guardhouse, propping them against the splintered siding. Satisfied the staging was believable, we resumed our journey without discussing what happened.

  *

  When we found the address on Kaprova Street, in Prague’s Jewish Quarter of Josefov, Bernhard said, “Don’t stop. We’ll get out a few blocks from here. No need to connect this car to my family’s address.”

  We parked on a street with many stores. As I came around the car to join him, Bernhard motioned me to the other side of the street. “We make an odd couple. People will remember us if asked. Walk over there.” He made a valid point. I was more than a head taller than him. I walked at a different pace than him, turning corners a few seconds after he did. After a number of blocks, he looked both ways before entering an aged apartment house. I counted to twenty and then followed through the front door.

  “Here.” I looked up. Weiss leaned over the railing and pointed to the stairs. There was an open door to the left of the landing. I found Bernhard hugging and kissing his wife and daughter in the salon. After he introduced me, I followed him into a smaller room.

  “Close the door.” There was a small table wit
h two wooden chairs arranged below medallion macramé lace curtains.

  Before he said anything, I blurted, “I can’t go back. Not after what we just did.”

  “Friedrich, no one but us knows what happened today.” His steel-gray eyes were piercing as he added, “There were no witnesses.”

  “I’m not talking about just today, Bernhard. I’m talking about what is in store for your people in the days and years ahead. The Nazis are fanatical in their racial theories.”

  “That is all the more reason why you have to go back.”

  “I don’t know if I can return to Berlin and look at Hitler or those around him in the eye anymore.”

  “No one is closer to the Führer than you. You’re the only one in a position to do something. You must return.”

  I pushed up from the small table and paced like a caged animal. “If I try to stop them I’ll be killed.”

  “No one expects you to march into a room and wipe out every one. But there will be opportune times when you may be able to affect change. You’re Hitler’s favorite. There is no one in a better position to speak sense to him. That’s your destiny. To make that possible.” He raised his right hand. “God help me, I didn’t want to, but I had to execute that poor guard.”

  I went to the window, lifted the edge of the curtain, and gazed out at the city I thought might be my new home. When I dressed in my uniform before fetching Bernhard, I believed it would have been the last time I would wear it. That’s why I stuffed my pockets with Reichsmarks, took my precious photograph that I had carried since the war, and left everything else, intending never to return.

  Bernhard cleared his throat.

  I turned from the curtain and faced him.

  “There’s one more thing you must do, Friedrich. You need to keep an account.”

  “An account of what?”

  “You were there at the beginning. When the Nazis weren’t even the Nazis. When they were an aimless group of puny men who met in a tavern to swill beer and discuss politics. No one knows the history of how this happened better than you. Write it down. Don’t leave out anything. Then, when this madness is over, share it with the world.”

  “To what end?”

  “To make certain no one forgets.”

  I thought about the magnitude of what he asked. “There has been so much. I would not know where to begin.”