Steelie 20

A minor-key waltz floated in the ether and then disappeared into the screeching metal of an overhead train on the train bridge near Zoologischer Garten. Von Stehle wondered how a street violinist could create such beauty with fingers frozen together and why a musician of such pedigree would be out in Artic conditions. The answer was tromping through fresh snow in front of him, snug inside a coat with a fur collar, warm inner lining of cotton, back vents that rose and fells as marched showing shades of the jacket beneath. He’d seen enough of them. The violinist was most likely an unemployed Jew, trying to make enough for a hot cup of tea or coffee, and a few warm chestnuts to fill his belly. Excluded from the work bonanzas that rearmament brought.  If he’d a family, a few coins to take home.

In a tenement house above their head, a Nazi flag covered the window. Radio static. Then Hitler’s ranting turned up to almost full volume. A pledge of patriotism which followed at their back.

Von Stehle recognised Joseph Goebbels’s genius. Hitler’s mouthpiece was the long-wave, mass-produced People’s Radio. One week’s wage, 35 Reichsmarks. A bargain for the newly rich, labouring class, who were able to pay in instalments. Radio waves weren’t choosey. They provided everything the working class, National Socialist, needed. German military music. German radio plays. Speeches by their Fuhrer, who made it all possible.

It lacked the sophistication and short-wave function more expensive radio set Von Stehle had in his study at home, The Blaupunkt, encased in polished wood.

The more battered British version, Willi had in the basement. He was wiry and hunched from old shrapnel wound, bending and ducking in and out the doorway punched into the wall suited his nocturnal activities. Cot bed with a grey army blanket, battered writing desk, blacked-out oil lamp made it home. The only natural light he seemed to need was from stubby roll ups wedged into the corner of his mouth. The darkroom had a red light bulb which matched his eyes. A false panel and blackout curtain separated it from the coal storage, were he kept his Voigtländer Bessa and the latest Leica IIIa (Model G) cameras. A drying line strung between hooks in the rafters, always hung with something wet, usually ration books, with the odd passport flung in. His mismatched glass jars labelled in Latin in smudged handwriting. And his homely recipes of inks and stinks, iron gall powdered with charcoal or rust to match official tones. Smells of stop gap, fixer and sulphur like rotten eggs. An extractor fan made from scavenged machine parts, vented into the old coal chute, but it was always on the blink. Von Stehle had to bring the paper from one of his shopping trips to the Galeries Lafayette in Paris.  French stationery like French fashion proved best. Soaked, aged, and pressed with his custom-cut stamps, mimics Reich documents. Willi was a genius with Watermarks probably because he was permanently drunk. He recreated them from Aniline dye or by embossing dampened paper between brass dies. Gum arabic and gelatin for reapplying seals or modifying paper texture stopped his hands from shaking but made him spit out his fag but swear even more.  

 Their radios were mismatched but  cosmopolitan. They featured longwave and shortwave reception. A dial that moved worlds, thin horizontal lines representing radio frequencies. Short-wave reception enables it to pick up foreign news broadcasts.

Cheap and functional as a Volkswagen, The People’s Radio, was loud and proud. It did not pick up foreigners or fake foreign news channels.

 Hitler proclaimed on the air waves, again and again and again to anyone that would listen, he wanted nothing but lasting peace but Germany must have room to grow. It no longer had the colonies that other nations such as Britain had. Rebuilding a nation’s army, navy and air force was simply a way of rebuilding a nation’s pride. He wanted peace, but not at any cost. Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield, he argued, but by the machinations of the pestilent Jews. The coming Olympic Games in Berlin would allow Germany to stretch out its hand to other nations in peaceful reconciliation. Von Stehle didn’t think it would have been possible for Hitler to seize power without the mobilizing force of the People’s Radio. That was Goebbels’s genius and gift to their nation.   

He resisted the urge to turn back, pick through his wallet and dropping a ten or twenty Reichsmarks in his hat, but he was too tired, and Mole was out on his feet.

He bumped into the back of Mole who flinched. His wide frightened eyes on two men in long coats crouched over a makeshift brazier. The removal of anti-Jewish signs and crude cartoonish posters depicting Jews as vermin for the upcoming Olympics revealed the more subtle nature of Nazi propaganda. Their policies success was more reliant on local colour. Von Stehle had thought it would be too cold for Blockwarte who watched and listened with silent calculation to be out and about.

Loitering with intent, near the entrance to his street. A squat man with a cigarette wedged between yellowed fingers, stumbled forward. He’d obviously been drinking. Willi knew how to play them better than anyone. He sometimes brought out a bottle of brandy and stood beside them smoking roll-ups, drinking and laughing with them. Learning what they knew and Willi was always the last to leave.

‘Cold night, Herr Baron?’ His eyes flicked to Mole.'Who’s that?'

‘A distant relative,’ Von Stehle answered. ‘From Vienna. Sickly child—his parents sent him to me for the Olympics. He so loves sport and doesn’t want to miss it.’

The second man, taller and thinner, frowned. ‘You got family out there?’

Von Stehle put his hand on Mole’s shoulder. ‘ Not really. But we all got family somewhere, don’t we?’

A pause, a long inhale from the fag in his gob, then a shrug as he spat it out at his feet. ‘Of course, Herr Baron. Of course.’

‘Someone calling in a favour. We’ve all got to do our bit.’ Von Stehle waved a hand dismissively over Mole’s head. ‘Hitler’s nephew.’

‘Heil Hitler!’

‘Heil Hitler!’

They bumped against each other as they flung out their arms in an uncoordinated salute.

‘Yes, Heil Hitler, indeed gentleman.’ Von Stehle smiled and bent his head as he guided Mole past then towards the sanctuary of his home.