TRAITORS For the Sake of Humanity

Christian saw instantly that the blackout was only carelessly observed. True, the neon lights of the advertisements had been turned off, the streetlights darkened, and the headlights of the cars shaded, but as people entered and left the various establishments, light spilled from the doors, while many people carried flashlights, which they brazenly used. To Philip’s utter amazement, Christian sternly declared, “There’s supposed to be a blackout! Don’t these people know the regulations?”

Philip could hardly believe his ears. “Since when did you become a believer in regulations?”

Christian, furious, ignored his brother’s question and continued fuming, “These people act as if the war were over! Don’t they realize that we’re still dying out there? Don’t they care?” 

Before they attracted any more attention, Philip took his brother’s arm and started walking in the direction of home. He tried to explain, “The war doesn’t seem very real to the average Berliner—”

“What does it take to make it real to them? We’re flying combat sorties twice a day. Some of the pilots are so exhausted, they fall asleep over their dinner. Fighter and bomber squadrons have been decimated. The Me110s have forty percent casualties! I don’t know if any of my friends will be alive when I get back. I don’t know if I’ll be alive this weekend! What can be more real than that?”

“Nothing, but how are they to know about it?” Philip gestured vaguely to the crowds around them.

“From the radio, the papers—”

“Christian, all that comes over the radio are victory announcements----the number of British planes shot down, the cities ‘obliterated’, and the factories ‘crushed.’ According to the papers, all is going according to plan. The British are being bombed back into the Stone Age, and the Führer’s unequaled genius gets demonstrated every day.” Philip sensed his own bitterness getting out of hand and cut himself off.

Christian halted and turned to him. In a rational yet demanding tone, he asked, “Is the Battle of Britain important or not?”

“It was—but, although it’s apparently gone unnoticed in the Chancellery, we’ve already lost it.”

“Lost it? It isn’t over yet!” Christian protested, raising his voice in agitation. 

“Yes, it is—”

“The day after tomorrow, I’m going to be back fighting the bloody battle. Don’t you dare tell me it’s over!”

“Christian….” Philip, calm, steadily met Christian’s gaze from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “You may be fighting it every day of whatever life you have left, but the battle has been lost because the objective has slipped beyond our grasp.”

“This is a real war, not a General Staff exercise!” Christian realized how much remarks like this hurt Philip, because Philip didn’t fight back. Tonight, he simply fell silent for a moment, collected himself, then said, softly, “Christian, no matter how you look at it, the purpose of the bombing was to win air superiority in preparation for an invasion. The invasion has been canceled because the Luftwaffe failed—”

“WE HAVE NOT FAILED!” 

“Christian….” Philip spoke so softly that Christian sensed more than heard him. He realized that he was standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk shouting— and people were staring at him.

“Let’s take a taxi home,” Christian decided and stepped off the curb into traffic to hail the nearest one.

They didn’t speak in the taxi, but gradually, Christian began to calm down. Philip was right. Of course, Philip was right, they had lost the Battle of Britain. But it wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t over. Tomorrow or the day after, he would be asked to fly and possibly die in a battle already lost.

The taxi pulled up in front of the house. Philip leaned forward to pay the driver, and Christian stepped out into the cool, dark street. Here, the blackout was strictly enforced, and the street silent and dark in both directions. Christian could hear the lapping of the water in the canal and the rustle of leaves overhead, but his mind was in France.

How had so much sacrifice, courage, and hard-won success produced a defeat? The bombers, despite the losses, still went in again and again, and they found their targets. “We were winning,” Christian declared abruptly, almost belligerently, as Philip unlocked the door. “At an atrociously high cost, but we were winning. Fighter for fighter, we shot down more of their planes, but their pilots just climbed into new ones and our pilots became POWs, at best. Still, the bombers were getting through. Ever since we reorganized the fighter defense to go in in waves and started flying multiple sorties a day, we’ve been able to protect them. They were finding their targets and we were knocking out their airfields and aircraft factories. Philip, I swear to you, we would have had air superiority in time for the invasion, if only we hadn’t wasted so many men and machines on London. Why did we start bombing London?”

They had reached their own apartment. As Philip closed the door behind them, he answered his brother helplessly with another question, “Why did ‘they’ stop the panzers miles from Dunkirk?”

“Damn it! I don’t want riddles, I want answers! What the hell is going on here in Berlin?”

Philip lost his temper. “An idiot is running the war!”

They stared at each other in the darkness, then Christian half laughed. Yes, of course, that was it. An idiot was running the war. You couldn’t expect rational policy from an idiot. Christian, who had always been able to make fun of Hitler, suddenly didn’t find him very funny anymore.