BRIDGE TO TOMORROW: COLD PEACE -- MEET JAKOB LIEBHERR

 Jakob Liebherr isn't young any more. In fact, he's losing his hair and two years in a concentration camp have left his internal organs damaged in a variety of ways. But his determination to make Germany a better place is unbroken. He can see the dangers bright as day -- just as he saw the danger Hitler posed 1930 - 1933. He knows the enemy is in the East, disguised as "Socialist solidarity" and "brotherhood of the working classes." But as the Russian bear licks his chops and prepares to devour Berlin, Jakob begins to despair about the willingness of the West to stand up to him.

Excerpt 1:

Her husband sighed and then admitted in a small voice, “I’m frightened, Trude.”

 

Trude sank into the chair her son had vacated. She reached across the table and took her husband’s hands in hers. Through two world wars, a revolution, and incarceration in a concentration camp, she had never heard her husband admit he was afraid. Gently she probed, “What frightens you, Jakob?”

 

“The whole situation. I always thought that if we could just get rid of the Nazis, we could rebuild, start anew. I thought we could draft a new social democratic constitution and write new laws…. But look at us! Two and a half years after the end of the war, the country is not only still occupied, it is sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. The currency is worthless. The black-market flourishes, enriching only the dishonest. Honest people have nothing left to sell — except their bodies. And while the Soviets rob us of everything — our food, our industrial capacity, our children, our hope — the Western allies send diplomatic notes of protest! They still view us — rather than the Soviets — as their enemies. I had such hopes when they first arrived. I thought they would protect us from the Red Army and the NKVD. I thought they would support our aspirations for democracy. Instead, they let the Russians lead them around by the nose.” 

 

Trude nodded sadly. She had no words of comfort. She felt as discouraged as her husband.

 

“Ernst Reuter was elected mayor last June.” Her husband reminded her, “The Soviet Military Administration vetoed his right to take office in July and it is now December, yet nothing — absolutely nothing — has been undertaken to enable him to govern. Instead, the Soviet-appointed police commissioners grow bolder and Soviet-appointed officials usurp the power of the elected government with impunity.”

 

“The Allied Foreign Ministers are meeting in London,” Trude reminded him, grasping at straws. “The American Secretary of State, General George Marshall, is not as naïve as his predecessors. Maybe things will start to change.”

 

Jakob didn’t believe that but he knew Trude was trying to cheer him up. Besides, there wasn’t any other straw to cling to, so he forced a smile and muttered, “Let’s hope so.”

Jakob Liebherr represents the stalwarts of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the SPD, who opposed Hitler before he came to power and continued to oppose him after he seized power. The SPD that was the sole party to vote against Hitler's enabling law, and many leaders and members of the SPD were arrested, sent to concentration camps or executed for treason. Their ranks includes such giants as Julius Leber and William Leuschner (who is pictured above as my prototype for Jakob Liebherr) and secondary figures who escaped death by going into exile -- and lived to rise to positions of prominence in the Federal Republic of Germany. Men such as Willy Brandt and Ernst Reuter. 

Although Jakob Liebherr is a fictional character, he is modeled after Leber and Leuschner and his wife Trude, herself an active member of the SPD, is a reminder that women played an important role in German Social Democracy in this period.  Jakob comes from a working-class background. He has worked his way up through the ranks of the party, serving in local  and municipal governments, until in 1928 he stands for a parliamentary seat and wins. He is still a member of the Reichstag in 1933, when Hitler introduces his "Enabling Law" that effectively dismantled the democratic constitution and replaced it with an racist, authoritarian dictatorship. Liebherr proudly votes with his colleagues against the law. Within months, the Nazis have arrested him without due cause and send him to a concentration camp without due process. He is there for two years. On his release, although he keeps a low profile, he continues to maintain contact with like-minded men and is actively involved in helping opponents of the regime obtain false documents, food, clothes and hiding places.  Too old to be conscripted into the armed forces, he survives the war in Berlin, where he witnesses at first hand both the fanaticism of Hitler's supporters in the closing days of the war and the brutality and greed of the Soviets in the first days of the peace. 

By early 1948, Jakob has seen the worst of human nature and he is getting weary and discouraged, but he is not defeated. He's still fighting to save Germany, this time from the Russian threat. He does so in his capacity as an elected member of the Berlin City Government, but also at home where he is fighting the disinformation spread by the Soviets which his son Karl has swallowed blindly.

Excerpt 2:

“You think only capitalists commit mass murder?” Jakob Liebherr asked his son Karl incredulously. 

 

As usual, Karl was home for Saturday dinner, but because Trude had been delayed at the hospital where she worked, the two men were cooking for themselves. This amounted to Jakob frying eggs and onions, while Karl sat at the kitchen table nursing a bottle of local beer in a brown bottle. “Who killed the Kulaks?” Jakob asked his son.

 

“Don’t try to change the subject!” His son protested frowning.

 

“I’m not changing the subject. You said only capitalism produces tyranny and mass murder. I’m simply pointing out you are wrong. Your 'Great Socialist Motherland' has also carried out the slaughter of millions of people.”

 

“Nothing comparable to the death camps, Vati! How can you, a victim of the Nazis, talk such nonsense?”

 

“Because it is true. Millions of kulaks were killed and many more millions died of starvation because of the forced collectivization of agriculture.”

 

“That was nothing like what the Nazis did!” Karl insisted. “It was only because the Kulaks offered resistance that they had to be eliminated. That is the key difference that you either fail to understand or refuse to recognize,” Karl insisted. “Fascists kill for their own benefit, for individual profit, not for the good of the working masses." 

 

J akob switched off the gas on the stove and with the handle of the skillet wrapped in a hot pad, carried it to the table. With a spatula, he dished half the eggs onto Karl’s waiting plate and the other half on his own. Then he returned the skillet to the stove and put salt and pepper on the table before sitting down. His son had already started scooping the eggs and onions into his mouth with an evident appetite. 

 

Taking advantage of his son’s mouth being full, Jakob asked, “Aside from the fact that Hitler justified the slaughter of the Jews with the exact same argument, tell me who profited from the collectivization, Karl? Livestock was slaughtered on a massive scale and the meat rotted. Agricultural productivity declined. Famine followed. Millions starved to death. Who profited? The masses? The peasants?”

 

“You’re turning things on their head! The Kulaks killed the livestock and caused agricultural production to fall because they didn’t cooperate! The famine was not the fault of collectivization but of the profit-seeking Kulaks!” 

 

Jakob had not taken a bite to eat yet, but he leaned forward to speak more softly and directly to his son. “No one in Moscow starved, Karl. Or St. Petersburg. Or Kyiv. In Moscow, they gave banquets with caviar and white bread heaped in mounds.”

 

“That’s propaganda!” Karl protested angrily. 

 

“I read it in Pravda, Karl, and so can you if you go to an archive. Pravda bragged and printed pictures of the receptions in Moscow, of Stalin at state dinners, of Molotov entertaining foreign dignitaries. At every opportunity, it claimed that the famine was Western propaganda, a fabrication, a lie. Agricultural production Pravda said, had never been higher.”

 

Karl frowned, recognizing too late that his father had laid a trap for him, but he doggedly fought back. “The Kulaks were capitalists, laying claim to land — which can only be held collectively for the common good of all people — and seeking to make profit from the sale of agricultural produce that belongs by rights to the entire people. They had to be eliminated.”

 

“Why? It couldn’t have been for the benefit of the people, Karl, because the rest of the population had more food when the Kulaks had farms than they have had at any time since the collectivization. In short, collectivization failed and failed miserably.”

 

“That is not true!”

 

“It is true! It is a fact — an objective, verifiable fact and only wilful blindless prevents you from seeing and admitting it. Until you start facing facts, you will be living in a fantasy, following a mirage that will lead you to ever greater darkness and misery. Wake up!”

 

BRIDGE TO TOMORROW: COLD PEACE -- MEET DAVID GOLDMAN

 David Goldman is an outsider everywhere. A German Jew whose family emigrated to Canada in 1934, he is a Jew in Germany and a German in Canada. In 1940, he volunteers to fly for the RAF -- only to get shot down and so badly burned that it takes 18 months and several rounds of plastic surgery to reconstruct a face. David fights his way back to flying status and spends the rest of the war as an instructor to instructors. He has almost found a home in the RAF, when the war ends. Suddenly his surviving friends are "de-mobbed" and going their separate ways, while the sense of purpose and comradery evaporates. And then his father dies.

 

Excerpt 1:

“First, allow me to offer my condolences on the death of your father,” the solicitor intoned solemnly. “I’m sure it was a terrible shock.” David and Sarah’s father had been only 57 at the time of his sudden death from heart failure three weeks earlier.

 

The solicitor next explained that his instructions were to read the testament to them from start to finish, and he asked them not to interrupt him. He assured him there would be plenty of time for questions after he finished. The Goldman siblings willingly murmured their assent, and the solicitor opened the leather folder on his desk.  

 

David felt no particular emotion. His relationship with his father had always been tense, and after his father called him a “failure” for being shot down in the Battle of Britain, David had disowned his father. They’d had no direct communication since, and David had been perfectly happy that way. 

 

The solicitor came to the part of the testament that stated that all Mr Goldman’s voting shares in the Canadian bank he had established with two partners went to his eldest son. One thousand preferred shares with a nominal value of one Canadian Dollar apiece were settled on each of his daughters. Sarah nodded her agreement unconsciously. No shares were designated for David. The sum of one hundred thousand Canadian dollars was left to Sarah in addition to her shares. 

 

The Solicitor cleared his throat and continued reading. “To my son David, I bequeath all claims to property in Germany formerly in the possession of myself or my late sister Anna and her husband Otto, both of whom, along with their children, were murdered in Dachau Concentration Camp and the lump sum of five hundred thousand Canadian dollars which —”

 

Despite the solicitor’s warning not to interrupt, David could not keep still. “Excuse me. Did you say five hundred or five thousand dollars 

 ?”

 

“I said five hundred thousand dollars, sir.”

 

“That’s not possible,” David protested.

 

“The money has already been deposited in an escrow account controlled by this firm, sir. I assure you the amount is correct. It converts to close to 350,000 pounds sterling at today’s exchange rate.”

 

David could not grasp it. It didn’t make sense. His father had called him a disgrace since childhood. He had steadfastly disapproved of his compulsion to learn to fly. He viewed his wartime service as a failure and had not attempted to contact him after David severed all ties. Why would his father leave him such an enormous sum?

 

The solicitor finished reading, cleared his throat and asked if they had any questions. Sarah asked about some paintings and furnishings in the family home, and when Sarah was satisfied, the solicitor requested that they provide him with the details of bank accounts into which he could transfer the sums held in escrow for them. Both Sarah and David provided the necessary information. They thanked the solicitor, went out into the street, and flagged down a taxi. 

 

“I told you Father wasn’t as bad as you made him out to be,” Sarah declared as the cab set off for the Savoy.

 

“You don’t understand, Sarah. I would have preferred him to value me for what I am then to give me five hundred thousand — or even one million — dollars after he was dead. I don’t want his five hundred thousand dollars — much less any claims to property taken from Uncle Otto and Aunt Anna by the Nazis. I don’t even want to think about it — Uncle Otto’s beautiful home on Schwanenwerder, his optician’s office on the Kurfuerstendam. I can’t deal with it — or what they did to him and Aunt Anna and our cousins. I don’t want to.”

David's unexpected and unwanted inheritance forces him to abandon his comfortable cocoon. Whether he wants to or not, he cannot ignore what happened to the relatives who remained behind in "the Third Reich." He feels compelled to return to Germany and at least find out what has become of their things -- not because he wants them but because he doesn't want any Nazi to profit from them by default. 

 

And so a chain reaction is set in motion that takes David -- and his partners -- to unexpected places and pushes them to go in new directions. David's surprise journey forms a major plot line in the novel as his endeavours pull in more and more of the characters. It all starts one night at the Savoy when meeting with an old squadron mate Charles "Kiwi" Murray.....

Excerpt 2:

Yet the next thought hit him so unexpectedly that he gasped. He grabbed Kiwi’s arm. “Kiwi! Listen! I’ve got an idea! It’s not going to take me a lifetime to find out what happened to half a dozen pieces of property. You might even be right about there being nothing left. In two to three months’, I’ll have that behind me, and I can take the money, buy an aircraft and set up some kind of flying business. Between the two of us, we can fly anything.”

 

Kiwi laughed.

 

“I’m serious, Kiwi.”

 

“It’s that much money?” Kiwi focused on him, his open face reflecting his disbelief.

 

“Well,” David was embarrassed. He tried to think of some way to say it discreetly, but then simply admitted “Yes.” Then a rare smile spread across his reconstructed face. “Remember what I said about ‘he who laughs last?’ I think — just maybe — the last laugh’s mine, after all. My father knew I wouldn’t be able to leave this much money just lying around. He thought by giving me a small fortune, he would turn me into a ‘proper businessman.’ What he failed to foresee was that I could use it to build a flying business.” 

 

“I’ll drink to that, mate!” They clicked and drained their glasses. 

 

David ordered a second round, and then grew serious again as he decided, “But not an airline. That’s way too complicated and risky. It would be madness to go head-to-head with BOAC and BEA. Maybe a small charter company of some kind? You did some odd flying jobs before the war. What exactly did you do?”

 

“Everything,” Kiwi answered flippantly, but then his expression changed. Suddenly deadly serious, he looked at his friend and asked. “Are you serious about including me in this?” 

 

“I can’t manage on my own,” David answered as if he hadn’t noticed how much his offer meant to Kiwi. “But we need to find a niche, something that not every ex-bomber pilot with a little extra cash is trying to do. Something unique. What could we do other than passengers or freight?”

 

“Did a lot of firefighting and crop-dusting in Australia, but there’s not much need for that on this rain-drenched island….” Kiwi reflected with a bitter shrug. 

 

It hurt David to see him so beaten down. It was as if he was afraid to dream any more. David’s imagination on the other hand was on fire. He was sure he was on to something, something exciting and potentially transformational. He shared his thoughts out loud, “Preferably we’d find something we could do with a converted bomber. They’ll be cheaper to acquire.”

 

“Air ambulance,” Kiwi suggested at once. “Did that in Australia, too. Bombers can be converted easily for loading and off-loading stretchers. The problem with the air ambulance business is you also need some medical equipment on board — you know, stuff to monitor pulse, heartbeat and the like — and oxygen and heating, of course. I think it may be mandatory for a nurse to fly with the patient too. At least the outfits I flew for all had them.”

 

David stared at Kiwi while he digested the suggestion, and then having decided this was the perfect fit he declared enthusiastically, “That’s it! It’s brilliant!” His thoughts tumbled out in a rush of words. “The very fact that it’s complicated will keep down the competition, but it’s the kind of business we could operate out of an obscure airfield in the middle of nowhere where the fees aren’t so high. Wait. Stop.” David held up his hand as if to someone else, but only to stop his flood of thoughts.

 

Kiwi waited mesmerised yet uncertain. 

 

“We need to set up a company as soon as possible, so I can put you on the payroll,” David announced. “That way you can do a lot of the leg work, while I’m in Germany making sure no Nazi is getting rich with my uncle’s assets. When could you leave your job?”

 

Kiwi looked down at his watch. “Hm. It’s 7:35. It will take me about two minutes to put a phone call through. Is that soon enough?”

 

They grinned at each other, and then David answered, “Monday’s soon enough. Now, is twenty pounds a month enough for a base salary? Just for the start-up phase.” David hastened to assure his friend. “Once you start flying, you’ll get flight pay, of course, and once we make profits, we’ll split them 25% each and plough the rest back into the company. Sound fair?”

 

“You bet,” Kiwi agreed readily, but then he reached out and put a restraining hand on David’s arm, interrupting his monologue about the best legal structure for the company. “Banks!” When he had his friend’s undivided attention, he told him earnestly. “I’m not some wizard businessman. Surely you know that by now, don’t you?”

 

David met his eyes. “You don’t have to be, Kiwi. That’s what my father is forcing me to become."

Note: David is the main character in "A Stranger in the Mirror" in the Grounded Eagles Trilogy and he and Kiwi were both secondary characters in "Where Eagles Never Flew."