Chapter I

MILO - 1938

It is true that life before the Führer was a time of chaos. Germany had just lost the Great War, and our economy was in a rut the likes of which had probably never been seen — ever — and I was born in 1921, right at the beginning of it all. 

While I was too young to remember, I often heard the stories. The inflation skyrocketed to the point where folks really did have to take wheelbarrows full of marks to the market to buy one loaf of bread. It was just the sort of absurdity that destabilizes an entire nation — the sort of thing an autocrat lies in wait for. 

Then — as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse — the United States’ stock market crashed in 1929 and they took the rest of the world down with them. Soon economic turmoil similar to what we’d been experiencing was felt around the globe, and what was already happening to us became twofold. The Depression affected my family, of course, but a lot of what I remember from that time is — thankfully — not terrible.

I grew up in Württemberg, on the outskirts of Reutlingen, not far from the Swabian Alps, where the people are still close to nature and live a simpler life. My father was from Baden, but just before the War, he had moved to Württemberg to get some independence from his family and a job far away from agriculture. My mother had spent her entire life in Reutlingen before she volunteered as a nurse for the War. 

At the Battle of Verdun, my father was grievously injured, and he had to have his leg amputated. Following that was when he met my mother. She was the one who nursed him back to health, which led to them falling in love, I suppose. One would’ve thought my mother might think twice before marrying a crippled man with no prospects, but she wasn’t the kind of person who saw things that way. The two of them had much in common, namely their deep faith and dedication to the Catholic Church. 

My eldest brother, Otto, was born in 1917. Then there was me, and following that, my sister, Lorelei, in 1925. Last was Max, who was born in 1929 — right before the big crash. Before the War, my father had been a very talented machinist at a factory, and despite his injuries, he tried to continue such work when the War was over. For a time, he used crutches and a false leg and went to work until he just couldn’t any longer.

Although things weren’t exactly easy growing up, my father continued to receive his pension from the military — however meager it could be at times — and my mother was a skilled seamstress and worked her way up at a local clothing mill. This was the way things were for as long as I could remember: my parents, my siblings, and I just making ends meet, but not suffering as much as some did. 

Lurking in the background, waiting to take advantage of the suffering of our country, however, was Hitler. As soon as any unrest was felt, which wasn’t long after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, there he was, promising to right the mistakes of the politicians in Weimar if he and his National Socialists could be in charge. 

At first, they weren’t taken very seriously. Many thought they were buffoons — crazy. Surely no sane person would let such radical nationalists have any place in a civilized government. But hunger and desperation change people, and this has been true for much of humanity’s history since the dawn of time. 

Eventually, many folks became fed up with the Depression and what they thought were empty promises from the Republic. How would they feed  their children? Clothe them? First, Belgium and France put pressure on us to repay for the damage we’d caused them during the war, but our economy couldn’t keep up. Then the Depression destroyed our economy even more. It was as if we couldn’t catch a single break, and it’s easy to see how people could become dissatisfied. Restless.

Meanwhile, others still — angry about the aforementioned grievances — really agreed with Hitler’s ideas about Germans being "superior". He leaned into the narrative that we were being unfairly persecuted and that we needed to blame everyone else for our problems. After all, it’s easier to blame others than it is to take a long, hard look at yourself — especially when a devil with a silver tongue gives you the permission to do so. 

Then there were moderate folks like my parents. They had never forgotten how years earlier, Hitler and his followers had unsuccess-fully staged a coup during the Beer Hall Putsch and had been imprisoned for a time. How could anyone trust a person to lead a government after such a treasonous act against democracy? They told themselves that there was no way such extremism could push out sanity and reason.

They were wrong.

After Hitler gained control of the government and became the Führer, even people like my parents eventually relented to the new status quo.  Many more were able to ignore things that didn’t affect them directly. As long as there was some improvement over the Republic, what was so bad about giving up on the rights of others? 

Not to mention, it was exhausting to weather the barrage of crises after crisis. First, the Reichstag burned. Then they blamed the Communists for doing it. Then, in an attempt to keep order, the government had to be consolidated. Habeas Corpus suspended. All for our “protection”, of course. Always it was our so-called “enemies” out to get us. The Communists. The unions. The intellectuals. The Jews.  

Pretty soon, people began to just live from day to day. Focusing on providing for their families and existing became enough. And so came the complacency.

I hadn’t even turned twelve yet in January 1933, when the Führer became Chancellor. Complacency was perhaps all I knew how to feel then, and it was how I felt for years after that. Politics aren’t something a young boy really thinks about, after all. However, there came a time in my life where everything changed for me. It was 1938, and I was sixteen years old. That was the year my father died.