Chapter VI

At the sound of someone at the front door, Brezel shot up from where he lay on the living room rug, releasing a furious flurry of barks. I jumped off the couch and snatched the record from the turntable. As I shoved it back into its sleeve and behind a couch pillow, I could hear the front door open and the dog continuing to bark.

“Brezel!” came Otto’s harsh whisper down the entry hall. “It’s just me, you lunatic!”

I plucked a random book off the coffee table and sat down, pretending to read it. Otto entered the living room with a very happy Brezel in his arms just as I settled into my mock relaxation. 

“Oh, hey, Milo,” he said when he noticed me. “You’re still up?”

I nonchalantly glanced up from the book. “Hey, Otto.”

“How was your day?”

“Good.” I gulped, trying not to appear nervous. I turned the focus of the conversation back to him, hoping he wouldn’t notice anything was up with me. “How about yours? Have you gotten to build a car yet?” 

Otto walked over to the couch and took a seat with the dog on his lap. Stretching his back out a bit, he leaned deeply into the couch pillow — the one I’d just hidden the record behind. I grimaced as I imagined it cracking in half.  

“Not yet,” Otto replied as he pet Brezel. “I will be training on how to use the machines for a while. Besides, it’s not like I get to build the car all by myself. It’s an assembly line.”

I feigned a smile so I would stop thinking about my record’s probable demise. “That makes sense.” 

“I like the fellows who are training me, though,” Otto said, also smiling. “We all got to talking about our commitment to the Party, and one of them who volunteers with the Schutzstaffel said that I should join too.” 

I blinked. “The Schutzstaffel?”

And there it was: the source of the contention between Otto and the rest of the family. Sure, he was the responsible child — the hard worker and the achiever — but his dedication to the Nazi Party following the Führer’s rise to power had concerned Mama and Father, and it was the only thing that ever drove a wedge between him and them. 

I do believe that Otto was once a good person at heart, but I also believe he has always been the type to fall for anything. He was truly convinced of the Party’s promises to bring prosperity to the working class, and he believed in all their rhetoric about why they weren’t prospering. It was easy to see how someone like him could agree the “elites” and the “intellectuals” were to blame. While Otto may have been smart about practical things, reading and academics didn’t come easily to him. He only stayed in school until grade ten, after which he began working at the mechanic shop. 

Oftentimes, he insinuated that it was a waste of time for me to go to gymnasium or to think about university. He didn’t understand it — and I guess many people are suspicious of what they don’t understand. The Party relied on this, of course, because then they could manipulate people like my brother into being hostile to exactly the things they wanted.

Before Hitler, maybe Otto had thought that others looked down on someone like him. But after, as long as he did exactly what the Party wanted, he was the perfect person. Not only did he look the part of the ideal “Aryan”, tall and strong with his pale skin, hair, and eyes; he acted it too. Perhaps it made him feel like he was important to be considered the “best”  for once after receiving only criticism from his teachers for not understanding his lessons. 

Mama and Father had always tried to voice their concerns about the Party, but Otto would have none of it. He thought our parents were alarmists and that their religious convictions held them back from accepting progress. He remained stalwart in his support of the Party. While he was still in school, he became a member of the Hitlerjugend, and when he turned eighteen, he joined the Party without hesitation. Otto even expressed his desire to join the Sturmabteilung, but Mama objected, threatening to kick him out of the house if he did. The SA were nothing but thugs, and after their ranks were purged of so-called traitors in Night of Long Knives, they had lost much of their importance to the Führer. Maybe this was why Otto hadn’t pushed it with Mama. 

But now, here he was, considering joining the Schutzstaffel. While the SA had fallen to the wayside over time, the SS was there to take their place  as the main paramilitary of the Party. Becoming a member of the SS ranks would be the strongest stance Otto could ever take in favor of the Party, for no one is more dedicated to the Führer and his ideology than they are.

Did Otto really think that Mama would be accepting of such a thing? Maybe he believed that since she no longer had Father to back her up, she’d just have to put up with it. I didn’t want to imagine that my brother could even have such manipulative thoughts, but that was certainly what it seemed like.  

“What’s that look for?” Otto accused when he must’ve noticed I was frowning and contemplating.

I closed the book, setting it aside, and tried to soften my expression a bit. “Are you sure Mama will be alright with that? You know how she is.”

“I know.” Otto rolled his eyes. “But she’ll just have to accept it. Someday she’ll learn that her precious Pope doesn’t have all the answers.”

I shifted in my seat uncomfortably. I couldn’t help but think how hypocritical it was for Otto to say that. Sure — maybe Mama did follow the Pope without question — but how was that any different than Otto’s allegiance to the Führer?

“You worry too much,” Otto scoffed with a dismissive smirk on his face. 

I just bit my tongue, holding back any objection I may have had because I knew it would be fruitless. Otto stood up from the couch to stretch out his back. 

“Alright,” he said. “I’m going to bed. Gute Nacht, Milo.”

I sighed. “Gute Nacht…”

It wasn’t long before Otto was out of the living room and up the stairs. Then I took my opportunity to grab the record from behind the couch pillow. To my pleasant surprise, I found it was unharmed when I pulled it out of its sleeve. After that, I hid the record under my bed right next to my sketchbook and tried to fall asleep.

The following weeks were rather uneventful. Just a lot of school, Hitlerjugend, and spending time with Anton and his friends. They all continued to be nice to me, which made me feel oddly uneasy — and all the while the enigma that was Lukas Richter continued to pique my interest. 

Even if their words were to be taken with a grain of salt, I still learned more about him from the gossip my so-called friends continued to spread. Apparently, he had moved to Stuttgart from Hamburg the previous year to live with his father’s aunt and uncle. Something about his father, a high-ranking SS official, wanting to remove him from “degenerate” influences. 

Anton and the others went on and on about how disturbing — disgusting even — it was to them that an officer in the Schutzstaffel could have an illegitimate child with a Jewish woman. All I thought about it, though, was that it was sad.

Obviously, Lukas’s parents had loved each other once — in the before times — but then everything changed. How hard it must have been for Lukas to watch his parents come to despise each other. To be taken away from his mother, and for his father to send him away to live with relatives like some dirty, little secret. 

My situation was definitely not the same, but I did know how it felt for my father to be disappointed in me. Maybe that was the reason I was so intrigued by Lukas. 

It wasn’t until a week or so later that things became really interesting. It was the first day I decided I would ditch Hitlerjugend. Normally, I didn’t do things like that, but the spring weather was getting warmer, and both school and the troop were beginning to force more physical activity on us. Which, if you recall, I despised.