The Goddess of Freedom

A monstrous tyrant in his pomp…

A desperate suicide bid to kill him…

The Goddess of

Die Göttin der Freiheit

Freedom

Mike Ogden

Copyright 2013 Mike Ogden

Cover image copyright Marc de Oliveira

Smashwords Edition

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword – The Approaching Giant

Chapter 1 – Summer Semester

Chapter 2 – Orders Come to the Obersalzberg

Chapter 3 – Picnic in the City Forest

Chapter 4 – Dinner in Dahlem

Chapter 5 – Three Uncles

Chapter 6 – The Delights and Vexations of Power

Chapter 7 – Sara Becomes Pia

Chapter 8 – A Change of Plan

Chapter 9 – Party in Babelsberg

Chapter 10 – Partings and Greetings

Chapter 11 – The Stairway to Heaven

Chapter 12 – Two Grand Entrances

Chapter 13 – Opposite Poles Attract

Chapter 14 – Flouting the Rules

Chapter 15 – Welcome and Unwelcome Attentions

Chapter 16 – A Message is Received

Chapter 17 – Hope from Despair

Chapter 18 – Misery from Desire

Chapter 19 – Tragedy at Night

Chapter 20 – Nemesis

Chapter 21 – Frustrated Plans

Chapter 22 – New York Brings New Hope

Chapter 23 – Consummation

Chapter 24 – The Living and the Dead

Postscript – Fiction and Fact

Post-postscript – Not a Technical Appendix, But a Little Bit About Zeppelins

Principal Sources of Information

About the Author

Out Soon from Mike Ogden: The Devil You Know

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FOREWORD

THE APPROACHING GIANT

Der Annähernde Riese

Zeppelins are extinct. Like the dodo and the great auk, like the woolly mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, they have disappeared from the world and we will not see their like again. The few airships flying today are very much smaller than the mighty Zeppelins of the 1920s and ‘30s, and they are used for specialised purposes such as advertising and aerial survey.

New projects are coming forward, matching 21st century know-how with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s 19th century concept, and these may extend airships’ capabilities into new fields. But they are still likely to be workaday roles, however useful and valuable. No-one expects to see airships in the glamorous role of carrying passengers over the great oceans as did the Zeppelins of eighty years ago. Zeppelins are extinct.

Yet because something has become extinct there is no reason for us to have no interest in it. Dinosaurs are extinct, and look at the hold they have on the public imagination. The fact that such remarkable creatures existed at all is enough to fascinate us. And in some ways Zeppelins bear comparison with dinosaurs. They were huge, magnificent and vastly superior to anything competing with them at the time. They were also (let’s be honest) faintly ridiculous, and far more dangerous than anything flying today. What’s not to like?

Regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs we can only speculate. But we can date the extinction of the Zeppelins to the exact place and the exact time – the day, the hour, the very minute – that it happened…..

It is 7:21 in the evening of Thursday 6th May, 1937. Lakehurst is a small New Jersey town, once a winter resort popular with people escaping from the harsher winters of New York and New England. It is now a Navy town even though it is some miles inland. Its Navy base has for many years been the east-coast home of the American military airship fleet. And now, under an agreement between the German and US governments, it doubles as the American base for the transatlantic Zeppelin passenger service.

Like those of Britain, France and Italy, American airships have suffered a series of appalling crashes with major loss of life. But the Zeppelins have carried civilian passengers for nearly thirty years without fatal accident. At a time when aeroplanes are small, crude, noisy, unreliable and limited in range, German airships rule the skies for long-distance travel.

And none more so than Hindenburg. Since her maiden flight in March, 1936, she has made seventeen return flights across the Atlantic Ocean, carrying 3,500 passengers. Her record for the crossing was set in August 1936 – a flight from Lakehurst to Frankfurt, her German base, in the near-miraculous time of 43 hours and two minutes.

Two and a half days is more typical, especially flying westward into the prevailing winds, but that is at least twice as fast as the best ocean liners. Hindenburg is the Concorde of her day and, like Concorde, she attracts the wealthy and the fashionable and the famous, for whom travelling in style means travelling fast and paying more for the privilege.

Hindenburg is, by any standards, enormous. 803 feet long and 135 feet in girth, she is carried aloft by seven million cubic feet of hydrogen. She is, and probably always will be, the biggest flying object ever built. A stately, awesome giant, she is now approaching Lakehurst at the end of her first transatlantic crossing of the year.

It has not been an easy crossing. Strong headwinds have held the airship back all the way from Frankfurt, and it is well over seventy hours since she took off. Even more frustratingly, the weather at Lakehurst has been poor all day, with intermittent thunderstorms and heavy rain, and bursts of fitful sunshine. Hindenburg has already been overhead, ready to land, but a sudden, violent squall and more thunder has forced her on an infuriating, three-hour detour over the New Jersey Shore.

But at last she is making her approach. She is 180ft above the ground, her four big Daimler-Benz engines throttled back as she drifts slowly up-wind towards Lakehurst’s mooring mast. A little reverse power is sufficient to bring her vast bulk to a halt, floating silently and serenely in mid-air above the waiting ground crew. Two heavy landing lines have been dropped, to be caught by the men on the ground, and the steel mooring cable is being lowered from her nose. Once secured she will valve hydrogen to reduce lift and bring her gently down to the ground. Then her passengers can disembark and the passengers for the return flight – many of them members of fashionable American society, bound for the coronation of King George VI in London next week – can board and leave for Europe.

That moment does not come. People on the ground – and there are hundreds of them – see something alarming. Back near Hindenburg’s swastika-adorned tail fins, and near the top of her enormous hull, a small flame is burning….

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CHAPTER 1

SUMMER SEMESTER

Sommer Semester

Are you going to college today, or not? Sara’s mother, having finally got her son Daniel off to school, turns her attention to her daughter. Her voice cuts sharply into Sara’s reverie.

Oh, there’s no rush, Ma, she says. I don’t have to be there till eleven.

You couldn’t get there fast enough last year, her mother remarks, and Sara smiles.

Well, I’m not a new girl any more. I’m going soon. What are you going to be doing today?

Same as I do most days. Write letters. Fill in forms. Waste my time.

Keep trying, Ma. We’ll be lucky one day. Some country will have us.

If we don’t starve first. You know they’re taking your Pa’s business, don’t you?

Sara nods. The swine. How much will he get for it?

A fraction of what it was worth before they frightened off all the non-Jewish customers. And then it’ll be sold at a knock-down price – to one of his competitors, no doubt. Somebody who doesn’t have the misfortune to be Jewish.

It’s terrible. We’ve got to get away!

Us and half a million more, Sara’s mother says sourly.

We’ll be alright. You’ll see. Maybe today there’ll be a letter saying we’ve got visas for England.

Her mother laughs. Or France. Or Holland. Or Belgium. Or Palestine. We’ve applied to them all. Oh, there’s a warm welcome for the concert pianists and the scientists and university professors, and so on. When it comes to furniture store owners, who wants them?

Sara finishes her coffee and gets up from the table. What about Peter, Ma? she queries. Is there any chance of getting him out of that camp?

Peter is Sara’s other brother, older than her by just one year. He was drawn into left-wing politics when Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party came to power in Germany four years ago. Now he has paid the price for his Marxist views. Along with many, many others that the government regards as a nuisance he is in Dachau Konzentrationslager, near Munich in Bavaria. Hard information about the place is sparse, but its reputation is grim.

Her mother’s face seems to crumple. Your Pa’s doing what he can, she says sadly. They say some of the camp officers are bribeable, but that takes money and we haven’t got a lot of that.

Not for the first time, Sara wonders what her parents will do if they actually get visas to emigrate from Germany while Peter is still in Dachau. She knows better than to broach such a painful subject just now, so she puts her arm around her mother’s shoulders and kisses her cheek. You know, you’re a good sort, she says.

Her mother smiles bravely. Not really. I’ll never forgive myself for bringing you and the boys into this horrible world.

It wasn’t horrible then, Ma. And it isn’t all horrible now.

Germany’s horrible. That’s all I know.

I’d better go. Try to keep cheerful, Ma. I’ll see you this evening.

Summer semester! Sara ought to be looking forward to it eagerly, after the triumphs of the winter semester. She knows she excelled, and everything about her work points to the brightest of futures for her. Design talent seems to flow through her veins, and an innate, confident flair imbues all that she produces. In the study of architecture she has truly found herself.

And yet….and yet….on the first morning of the summer semester this same Sara has been dawdling at home over breakfast, toying moodily with her food while her mother chases the fourteen-year-old Daniel off to school. Sara’s father, always an early riser, has already finished his breakfast and set off to walk the two kilometres to the furniture store that the family owns, for the moment.

They house they live in, a tired old place near the River Main, is just off Börneplatz, in an area of Frankfurt that is still sometimes known as Judengasse, the ‘Jews’ Alley’. For three hundred years until the end of the eighteenth century Jews were forbidden to live within the city walls, and the Judengasse, outside the walls, was the ghetto where the Jewish community congregated.

There is still a sizeable Jewish population in Frankfurt, so many in fact that the Nazis derisively call it ‘Jerusalem-am-Main’, but most of them have long since moved to other parts of the city. Fire and old age have claimed a lot of the housing in the Judengasse, though some Jewish families, like Sara’s, cling on there. It was, until the Nazis took over the government of Germany in 1933, a fairly agreeable place to grow up in.

Four years on, of course, things are very different. The Jews of Frankfurt, as in every other German city, now know what it’s like to be harassed, reviled, insulted, intimidated, exploited and robbed. And they also know that, whatever hardship or injustice is inflicted upon them, no-one in authority will lift a finger to help them, because inflicting hardship and injustice on Jews is the whole thrust of government policy. In the lives of German Jews there is one unchanging pattern – that however difficult and unpleasant today is, tomorrow will be a little worse.

And so it is at the School of Architecture, where Sara is, on paper, a highly promising student. The reality is a constant undercurrent of resentment at her presence on the course. She is the only Jew, which is bad enough, but she is also the only female. Apart from their revulsion towards the Jews, the Nazis have firm views about women’s place in the ideal society they are bent on creating. It is a German woman’s place to make a good home for her husband and, if at all possible, to bear him at least four Aryan children. Women with ambition and talent are anathema to the Nazis. A Jewish woman with ambition and talent is an unspeakable horror.

It is part of Sara’s problem that she will not moderate her ambitions, or tone down her opinions, in an effort to divert attention from herself. Far from it. She is driven to succeed, to excel, to flaunt her abilities in the faces of the insufferably arrogant Nazi supporters on the architecture course. There are plenty of them and it makes them hate her even more, but she can’t help it. And her awareness off the deepening gulf between her and the other students on the architecture course is wearing away steadily at her confidence.

Just occasionally there is quiet support from other students, when they think it won’t make them targets for abuse, or worse. But few people are willing to speak out openly. That is part of Sara’s problem as well –that among the silent faces it’s hard to know who might be a friend.

There are still some Jewish students on other university courses whose shoulders she can cry on. They are experiencing similar problems, naturally. Best of all, though, there is Ernst. A student of literature at Goethe University, he is a Gentile and a year older than Sara. Rather shy and diffident in his manner, at first he seemed an unlikely suitor for the outgoing, outspoken and good-looking Sara, but they took to each other when they met at a party last year. He doesn’t say a lot about politics in public – few do, except the Nazis – but in private he is passionate in his contempt for them. Of all the students Sara has met since starting at college, Ernst is the only one with whom she feels truly comfortable.

She’s off to meet him now. His family live on a farm near Düsseldorf and he’s coming back to Frankfurt by train this morning for the new semester. Sara walks to Börneplatz, takes a tram to the city centre and walks to the station. Ernst’s train has arrived and he’s waiting for her outside: a tall, slim young man with a shock of black curls. He looks, if anything, more Jewish than Sara whose hair is chestnut-brown, though there is no Jewish blood in his family that he knows of.

Ernst grins happily and waves as he sees Sara hastening towards him. They clasp one another’s hands and kiss on both cheeks, and then they kiss properly. Oh! It’s good to feel Ernst’s arms around her again, holding her close. Wonderful to feel his warm, tender kiss. She gazes up at him in delight, marvelling at how much better she feels for seeing him.

I’m so pleased to see you again! she cries. You’re getting a tan. Have you been sunbathing?

Working on the farm, Ernst says. My God, you look lovely. Surely there’s somebody in Frankfurt with enough brains to steal you away from me?

Sara laughs. No, she says. They’re all scared of you.

Oh, of course, he smiles. I’m pretty deadly with a Shakespeare sonnet. They kiss again. I’ve really missed you, Sara. I worry about you, you know.

Well, you mustn’t. I’m alright, aren’t I?

How are things at home?

Oh….much the same. Sara doesn’t want to spoil this happy moment with talk about her family’s problems. Everyone’s well, she says simply. Are your family alright?

Oh yes. The farm’s doing well. And my brother’s landed a good job at the Opel factory in Bochum. He starts there next week.

That’s good. Are you looking forward to the new semester?

Ernst pulls a face. I wish I could answer yes to that, he says. But what’s the point of studying literature in a country that burns works of literature? I’ll just be glad to finish the course.

Then what will you do?

Teach, probably. If the Nazis have left us anything to study. Do you know, they’ve banned Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy? Isn’t that pathetic?

I suppose so. But why, for God’s sake?

"Oh….well, it’s about suicide, you know. Hamlet’s wondering whether to kill himself. In the wonderful new National Socialist Germany, contemplating suicide is very defeatist and degenerate. Therefore, verboten!"

Come on! Sara urges, not wanting to see him so gloomy. Let’s go and get some coffee and cakes at the Kenschen . It’s too nice a day to spend talking about the Nazis.

She puts her arm through his and steers him along the street to the café. Inside it’s quite crowded, but a table near the front window becomes vacant just as they enter, and they sit down. A waitress appears moments later, a stout, middle-aged woman with blonde plaits, but she hasn’t come to take their order. In fact she seems very hesitant and unsure of herself, and Sara and Ernst look up at her in surprise.

Er….excuse me asking you, she begins, looking at Ernst, but are you….Jewish?

Ernst’s surprise turns to astonishment. No, I’m not, he says sharply. Why do you want to know?

The woman looks mortified, and starts to blush deeply. I’m very sorry, she says. I didn’t mean any offence.

I haven’t taken offence, Ernst remarks with, Sara thinks, great dignity. But I should like to know why you asked?

Well….it’s the new owner’s policy, the waitress says, becoming more uncomfortable by the second. We don’t serve Jews now.

Ernst sits back in his chair and looks across at Sara. Oh, my God! he says in a voice for all to hear. The Nazis have taken over the Kenschen.

I can take your order now, sir, the waitress says, glancing nervously around the café to see who is watching. Just about everyone is. The door opens at that moment and Sara is dismayed to see two familiar young men enter – two fellow architecture students, and both of them ardent Nazi supporters. They spot Sara and Ernst, and at once make their way over to them.

Well! one of them sneers. Here’s Sara Solomon with her poodle!

Shut up, Max! Sara says, and she reaches across the table to restrain Ernst who is getting to his feet in protest. It’s his mop of black, curly hair that has earned him the nickname of ‘Poodle’ from this smirking oaf and his friends. He doesn’t like it, but there is little he can do about it. Max Holtz is a strongly built and very fit young man, a competitor in last year’s Olympic Games in Berlin. He could beat Ernst to a pulp without breaking sweat. And would, given half an excuse.

While Ernst glowers across the table at Max, the waitress tries to regain control of the situation. She has heard Sara’s name, and drawn the obvious conclusion. Er…..if this young lady is Jewish, she says to Ernst, I’m afraid I can’t take her order.

Max laughs. Oh, Hilde, you can make an exception for Sara, surely? he says. She can be my guest.

Ernst wants to object but the waitress gets in first. Herr Holtz said no Jews!

And Herr Holtz happens to be my uncle, Max remarks. So I think you should do as I say. Besides Sara doesn’t look Jewish, does she? She’s much too pretty.

That’s enough, Holtz ! Ernst shouts. He shakes himself free of Sara’s grip on his arm and steps towards Max who regards him with faint disdain, as if he had just noticed a caterpillar on his sleeve.

Piss off, Poodle, he says quietly.

Sara manages to grab Ernst’s arm again before he can take a swing at Max. Ernst! For God’s sake leave him! she says. "Let’s go, please!" She stands up and pulls Ernst away from the grinning Max.

Going, are you? he says. Good. We can have your table. He and his friend sit down promptly. We’ll have two coffees with milk, and some cakes, Hilde, he is saying to the waitress as Sara and Ernst head for the door. The other customers look away or gaze blankly at them, their faces unreadable. If any of them sympathise they are not going to show it.

Inspiration strikes. As they reach the door Sara turns round and addresses the customers in a loud voice that they can’t ignore. Two words will wipe that silly smirk off his face, she says, pointing at Max. JESSE OWENS! She is most gratified to see Max’s face drop into a thunderous scowl. He half-rises from his seat, then sits down again, fuming.

That black man left him for dead in the two hundred metres at Berlin last year, Sara explained cheerfully to the customers. Amazing what we inferior races can do, isn’t it?

Max points a furious finger at her and mouths the words Jew bitch!, but Sara hears a quiet Bravo, Fraülein from another table that heartens her. She stalks out, well satisfied with the encounter.

Outside the café she has the difficult job of calming Ernst down. He slams his fist against the brick wall of the café and regrets it at once. The pain doesn’t improve his mood, nor does it help that Sara is so pleased with herself. For her, the ignominy of being thrown out of the café is far outweighed by the pleasure of getting the better of Max Holtz. Ernst has nothing but a bruised pride and a sore hand to take home from the incident.

It’s all very well for you! he says savagely. You can come out with clever remarks and walk out with your nose in the air, towing me after you. Maybe I am your poodle.

Sara slips her arms around his waist and kisses him. Don’t be silly, Ernst! she urges. And don’t take it so seriously. It really doesn’t matter.

Of course it matters! You’ve made an enemy of that Max Holtz now.

He was an enemy before. Don’t worry! I can handle him.

I hope so. What a fine bloody start to the new semester!

Come on. Let’s find another café, where we’re both welcome. That place round the corner is alright.

After half an hour and a cup of coffee Ernst has somewhat recovered his spirits and they go their separate ways, promising to meet the next day. Sara makes her way to the School of Architecture, greeting such other students who are still on friendly terms with her. In her pigeon-hole are several notices and messages: all routine stuff, except for one. It is a typed note from Professor Neumann’s secretary, and it asks Sara to present herself at the professor’s study at one pm.

Standing looking at the note, Sara wonders why the head of the school wants to see her. There is nothing in the previous semester’s work that has indicated any problems for her. The request is unsettling, somehow. It suggests that the Professor knows something that he wants to tell her. In the current, oppressive climate that can only be bad news.

And so it is. When Sara leaves Professor Neumann’s study at one-thirty she is distraught. She has wept, lost her temper and shouted, and she has made very unwise remarks about the Führer and all his works – particularly his views on architecture, which she despises. And it has done her no good at all, of course.

Neumann has been polite – sympathetic, even, but he has merely been a messenger. The fact is that the Ministry of Education has issued an edict, banning Jewish graduates from taking doctoral examinations. Sara is, on her record, a first-rate candidate to study for a doctorate in architecture after she graduates. But that will not happen now. No point the school even offering her a post-graduate place if she can’t sit the final exams.

Sara has raged to no effect about the sheer injustice of it all. She has even, in her fury, annoyed Neumann by spurning his sympathy. She’s reminded him acidly that he owes his position to the forced removal of the previous head of the school – a Jew – not long after the Nazis took over. It says much for the professor’s high opinion of Sara that he is still willing to help her find work in Britain, if she and her family are able to get visas to settle there.

That is scant comfort to Sara as she walks away from Neumann’s office. Her head is spinning, her throat choked with emotion, and she goes into that afternoon’s gathering with great reluctance. It’s simply a short session for all the students in her year of the course to meet the lecturers for a preview of the semester’s programme. The hostility towards Sara is palpable now, and not just from Max Holtz and his friend from the café. She can count on the fingers of one hand how many students are still willing to risk Max Holtz’s wrath and be friendly towards her. She’s grateful to them, but it’s not enough. It’s far from enough.

It is a relief to go home, but when she gets there she finds little to comfort her. Her brother Daniel is upset because, despite being easily the best goalkeeper in the school, he is not welcomed by some of the boys in the football team. He has made two fine saves during that afternoon’s match, but he is still shunned in the changing rooms. He has even been denied access to the showers until the others had finished. Full of pity, yet unable to help, Sara leaves her mother trying to comfort Daniel and goes to talk to her father.

But he too is in low spirits. He has spent hours that day trying, with little success, to improve the terms under which the government is to purchase the family business as part of its ‘Aryanisation’ programme to bring all economic assets, especially those owned by Jews, under the control of ethnic Germans.

It was a damned good business, Sara! he says. You can remember how busy the store used to be, can’t you?

Sara nods. I certainly can. When I was a little girl there always seemed to be lots of customers.

"And not just Jews. We had plenty of Gentile customers as