Cold War

David got to his feet and left the library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and rich Persian carpets. He wandered into the cheerful winter garden. This offered large windows and potted palms. His dog Sammy, a Collie-mix with blond hair on his head and back but a white belly, jumped down from his favourite sofa to demand attention, and David absently patted the dog’s head while gazing out of the French windows.

Until a week ago, the view from here had been of a wide, well-kept lawn stretching to the banks of the Havel River. It had been as lush, green and gracious as his childhood home above the Aussen Alster in Hamburg. With the start of this blockade, however, the Priestmans’ Polish cook Jasha had, with the help of the gardener, turned most of it into a massive kitchen garden.

Much as he loved the understated luxury that had characterised the house before this conversion, he found the spirit of endeavour exemplified by the cook and gardener significant. Rather than moaning to the Western Allies about dried eggs, dried milk and dried potatoes — much less rioting as the Soviets had expected — all across the city the Berliners were defiantly digging in and declaring their determination to fight for their freedom. That impressed him. It even inspired him a little. It was part of the inchoate spirit that slumbered under the ruins of this city and made him warm to it despite its hideous face.

After all, his own face had once been hideous too. When he was first delivered to Dr McIndoe’s care after being shot down in September 1940, it had been so repulsive it had made one nurse vomit. As the famous plastic surgeon reconstructed his face one operation at a time, it went through phases when it resembled a Chinese rice paddy, Frankenstein and a Greek theatre mask. Only gradually had it fused and formed itself into something more human. Eventually, it had become supple and marked by wrinkles. Few people nowadays suspected that his eyebrows had been cut from the skin under his arms or that his lips and eyelids were taken from the inside of his thighs. Yet even when his face had been at its most alien, the flame of his being had burned beneath the ugly surface.

Berlin, he thought, might be like that. Disfigured not only by the occupation and the bombing but by the Nazis before that. The Nazis — loud, violent, and aggressive — had obscured and drowned out the others, but they had never represented all of Germany.

Living here had brought back memories of two childhood friends who stood by him after the Nazis came to power. The memory of their support had been buried under the corpses of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and all the rest. What were two teenage boys distressed by what was happening to their Jewish friend compared to the horrors of Nazi genocide? Yet they had been good to the core, and they were not alone.

People like Ernst Reuter, Berlin’s Social Democratic Mayor, and the city councillor Jakob Liebherr had spent years in a concentration camp because of their opposition to the regime. Christian Freiherr von Feldburg, despite having flown Messerschmitts for the Luftwaffe, hated the Nazis with every bone of his body because they had dishonoured his country. Indeed, Feldburg was bitterly committed to bringing the worst criminals to justice, while proudly reminding the Allies — and the Germans themselves — that not all Germans had been blinded by Nazi propaganda and victories. David had discovered that he wanted to work with men like these who were determined to rebuild a better Germany.

And it wasn’t just the opponents of the Nazis who had won him over. David had also come to sympathise with men like Dr Schlaer, the optometrist who had taken over his uncle’s shop on the Kurfurstendam. Yes, Dr Schlaer had done nothing to stop the SA from breaking the windows. Yes, he’d served as a medic in the Wehrmacht. Yet he remembered David’s uncle with respect and affection and was ashamed of what had been done in the name of Germany. That, David had discovered, was enough. Men like Schlaer would also contribute to a new Germany and David was comfortable helping them.

He knew that the vast majority of Germans had cheered and preened and lapped up Nazi racial ideology. They had loved being “the master race,” predestined to conquer, rule and prosper. He understood that their selfish egotism had enabled the slaughter of millions. He despised the Germans who had swelled with pride when they oppressed others and now wallowed in self-pity because they were themselves oppressed. For such men and women, however, the humiliation of complete defeat and occupation represented sufficient retribution. Their presence no longer deterred David from wanting to remain in Berlin.