”Berlin sounded too disdainful in his ears. A new name was required, one worthy of a capital of world renown. A name like Germania, perhaps.”
In 1944, ”Berlin sounded too disdainful in his ears. A new name was required, one worthy of a capital of world renown. A name like Germania, perhaps.”
In 1944, Berlin is being bombed into oblivion. If there is going to be a Germania, it will be built on the smoldering ruins of the old. Richard Oppenheimer lives in a Jewish house with his Aryan wife. His marriage to her has been the only thing that has kept him alive. When a man in an SD (Sicherheitsdienst) uniform shows up at his door in the middle of the night, he believes his luck has run out. He feels a sense of relief that finally his wife Lisa will be rid of the burden of him. She will be safe and free of the constant worry of the sound of heavy boots on the stairs coming to take them away.
But as it turns out, the SS has a use for him.
Before the rise of the Nazis, he was a well-regarded police inspector, and now they have need of his special skills to help them find a depraved, serial killer who is viciously mutilating the genitalia of women and leaving them as offerings before monuments from World War One.
These aren’t prostitutes, exactly, who are being murdered, but they are women who are engaging in sexual activity with men who are highly placed in the Nazi regime. Needless to say, the powers that be would like the killer caught and the murders swept under the rubble. If the SS fail to find satisfactory answers, Oppenheimer will make a perfect scapegoat.
Serial killers are difficult to catch, even in modern times, and it is much harder trying to catch one against the backdrop of a world war with allied bombing raids frequently forcing Oppenheimer to seek shelter as he chases down every slender lead he is fortunate to know about.
I’ve read many books regarding the blitz of London, but I’ve spent very little time reading about the bombing of Berlin. The conditions in Berlin were, in many ways, worse than they were in London, with many people expecting to die at any moment and many, including Oppenheimer of course, secretly hoping for an Allied win. Oppenheimer keeps himself propped up through the chaos on a steady dose of Pervitin, an early form of crystal meth. It was liberally distributed to German soldiers to allow them to exist on very little sleep and be kept in a constant state of euphoria. Oppenheimer has a doctor friend who keeps him supplied. Doctor Hilde’s house is a warehouse for banned books. ”She opened the door to the black stove in the corner of the room, stood in front of it, and proclaimed, ‘For Stefan Zweig.’ Then she threw the luxury edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf onto the coals and lit it with a match.” Hilde is also Oppenheimer’s connection to the German resistance, and soon they want to know everything he is learning about the activities of the Golden Pheasants, the nickname for the senior party members, who skim off the cream of food and goods and live in the lap of luxury while the city around them starves. Oppenheimer has enough trouble staying alive without getting himself caught up in politics, but when they offer him an opportunity to flee the country with his wife, the temptation to cooperate is too good to pass up.
It’s not just that he wants to solve the crime to stay alive. He feels alive again, for the first time in years, and wants to catch the killer for his own satisfaction as well. It becomes almost as important to him as his own life.
The killer is becoming frustrated, too. He has sent letters to the police that have never been read. His missives are buried in a huge pile of letters sent by citizens denouncing their neighbors or family for violations against the Third Reich. These are people who fully understand that, by doing so, they are not just getting their neighbors and family members in trouble but are potentially condemning them to death. The Nazis rely on bullets more than incarceration for punishments. These tattle tales/liars/judgemental people consider themselves to be good people, but it is examples like these situations that make it very hard to like humanity.
Circling back to the burning copy of Mein Kampf, I find this passage to be very interesting as well: ”Oppenheimer doubted that Mrs. Korber had ever actually read Hitler’s book. Even among his most zealous followers, there were very few who voluntarily did that. Similar to a dusty family Bible, the work was more of a devotional object used to show your disposition than reading material that you perused to uplift yourself.” I’ve never really equated Mein Kampf with The Bible, but the blind faith of their followers is very similar indeed. If you want to have an intelligent conversation with someone about The Bible, don’t have it with a Christian; have it with an atheist. The atheist is much more likely to have read the book. I’m sure the same can be said about White Supremacists. I would postulate that few have read Hitler’s book, but probably all of them own a copy. Blind faith is easier to maintain than building a belief on a bedrock of truth.
Oppenheimer is in the unenviable position of trying to keep too many people happy and succeeding with none of them. As he closes in on the killer, he realizes that the window for having any kind of future for himself is also closing. When he is no longer useful, what will be his fate?
This reminds me of the TV show Foyle’s War in the sense that it sometimes seemed ridiculous to be looking for the killer of a person(s) in the midst of a war that is grinding up human beings by the millions. Serial killers are terrifying, but hardly in the same league as the politicians who send men into the bloody battlefields to be slaughtered, but then there is no mystery to be solved there. We know the culprits. Trying to figure out the motives for the vicious murders of these women is even more interesting than catching the killer. The case is intriguing, but what is most fascinating for me is the time that Harald Gilbers spends showing the reader the daily lives of these people under siege.
I received a free ARC of Germania by Harald Gilbers from Macmillan in exchange for an honest review.
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