Chapter 1

I lay awake enduring the silence of the prison they had incarcerated me in. The cold was unbearable, my bedding, what there was of it, was soaked through, and it was all made worse by the moss growing on the moisture laden walls of my cell in the outbuildings of the old Bavarian castle in the city of Munich. There was the stench of urine in the air. What little clothing I had been left with was totally ineffective against the cold chill of winter in this dungeon of a place. Would I have to suffer much more of this and the answer to that question was, probably not. Branded as a traitor, I had been told that they had only one way of dealing with traitors and that was to shoot them. My excellent service record with the Luftwaffe, and my job as a test pilot for the new Me262 jet engined fighter would not save me from the death penalty.

For my sanity, I had tried to keep track of time, but I had given up the task of trying to work out whether it was morning or evening. I no longer had any interest in knowing what day it was as if I didn’t have a future there was no point. My will to live was a desire of the past. My battered and tortured body just wanted to rest, and, at this stage, I would welcome the release of death. My body and mind had suffered enough and couldn’t take much more of their treatment. I couldn’t even hang myself as they had anticipated my thought processes and left me with nothing that I could use to make a noose. Part of their torture was to let me suffer the agony, leaving me with no way of escaping. The nights were a refuge as they never came to get me until the early morning and, although I couldn’t sleep, I had time to think, and, what little comfort I got came from my memories.

I was now twenty four years of age having been born in 1917 in the North German port of Lubeck. I don’t remember much about my early years, when Germany was struggling to recover from being heavily defeated in the First World War. I lived with my mother and her parents in a small terraced house in a suburb within walking distance of the centre of the city. They managed, by various means, to get food to survive when food was practically non-existent, but survive we did. We were luckier than most as my grandad, my grandfather on my father’s side, owned a bakery, and we had a daily supply of bread.

When I was old enough to understand, my mother told me that my father had been killed fighting for Germany at the battle of the Somme in 1916 before I was born. I was told by some of the neighbours, who had lived in the area for a long time that they thought I had a twin brother, but nobody ever explained to me what had happened to him. My mother never brought up the subject, so I assumed he had died quite young in a similar fashion to many other babies at that time. I learnt later that in the period 1917 to 1920, when there was such a shortage of the basic food stuffs and also outbreaks of disease, such as the flu of 1918 that the infant mortality rates were unusually high.

Germany was not a suitable place to grow up in during the 1920’s. There was not only the deprivation, but it also was extremely dangerous to go out on the streets as there were a lot of political marches and unrest surrounded these marches. The suburb of the picturesque old town of Lubeck that I lived in was called St Lorenz Sud. I was able to walk to school and also to play in an enclosed public park close to my home. This park, totally enclosed by a high stone wall, was a fantastic haven for young boys. There was an old quarry that we could catch fish in, grass we could play football on and bushes and trees, we could hide in or climb. It was my escape from reality.

Even the most basic of food was rationed, and often we had to go hungry, so I loved to escape the confines of my home and go to the park as often as possible. For some reason, the hunger pains weren’t so hard to bear when I was playing outside. I know that my mother and my grandparents often went without, and added their share to mine, to prevent me from suffering from malnutrition. I also noticed that valuable items were disappearing from our home. A way of getting money to buy items on the black market. Despite the shortages, I grew up into a healthy child able to withstand the diseases that were claiming so many of the young people in the town in those years.

As I was growing up, I remember frequently looking at a picture of my father in his uniform that sat on a table in my grandad’s bakery. I had never met him, so it was the only connection that I had to my natural father. He seemed remarkably tall to my young eyes, and he wasn’t just tall but was well built to match his height. Even though he was just a photograph to me, I was extremely proud of my father, and I missed him. My grandad was always telling me to eat up and behave so that I would grow up to be a man like my father.

In the winter of 1926, my grandpa, the grandfather on my mother’s side, who I lived with, died. He had not been well since he had been injured in the war and every winter he had struggled to survive. He had been invalided out of the army in 1915 when the gas, being used by the German army against the French, had been blown back into their own trenches at the second battle of Ypres. He had never fully recovered from the disastrous effects of the gas. In the warmer summer months, he seemed to be able to breathe normally; however, once the cold damp days of winter came he wheezed and coughed for hours on end. The funeral service was held in the local Lutheran church, and then the internment took place in the local graveyard. My mother went to the service in the church, but didn’t go to the grave side ceremony as it was frowned on for women to attend. I had to go with my Uncle in her place.

Living in the house with my grandpa had not been a pleasant experience. As a result of the damage to his lungs, he was always coughing uncontrollably. He was extremely irritable and, as I was the smallest in the house, he was always shouting at me. They had moved his bed into the kitchen which was the only room that was heated, so to escape from his tirade, I had to go and play in the park. In winter, when it was bitterly cold outside, and there was deep snow, I couldn’t escape to the park so had to stay indoors. I hid away in my bedroom keeping warm under the bed covers. I felt guilty at being very relieved when he died, but pretended to my mother that I was as sad as she was.

My grandmother seemed to give up her desire for living after that, and she only outlived my grandpa by about four months. So within a very short period of time, we had gone from a family of four to just my mother and me. My mother worked in the bakery run by my grandad. Up to the time my grandparents died they had taken care of me when she was out at work as she commenced work each day at 6:00 am. The bread and cakes had to be ready and freshly baked for the Customers when the doors opened at 6:30 am. The bakery was closed every Friday, but open every weekend. With their deaths, there was no one to look after me, and I had to get myself up and off to school every morning during term time. On a Saturday and a Sunday, I went to my grandad’s bakery and made some pocket money by delivering bread around the area.

I was a quiet child well able to look after myself. Being brought up surrounded by grandparents made me respectful and aware of other people. I had friends in school, but when I wasn’t in school I tended to keep to myself. There wasn’t a lot of happiness around with people being so badly affected by what was going on around them and the struggle they had simply to survive. Smiles were few and far between.

Looking back now to those days I realise that we just existed. The only day that my mother had off from her work was Friday, when the bakery was closed, and she used that time to catch up on the washing and keeping the house clean. I supposed she loved me, but there wasn’t much expression of love in our house. We survived from day to day, and I was just glad that I didn’t have to go and live somewhere else.

Just after my eleventh birthday in March 1928 my mother, when she arrived home from work, told me to sit down as she had something to tell me.

‘Markus, Frau Peters talked to me in the shop today, and asked me if her son Walter could come and stay with us for a little while.’

‘Is that the fat Walter in my class at school?’ I asked.

‘Yes; Walter that goes to school with you. Her husband has just got a job in Munich, and she wants to go with him. Their only option at the moment is to stay with relations there. Unfortunately, the relations don’t like children, so she can’t take Walter and Olga with them. She offered to pay me if I cared for Walter.’

‘So he would come and live here; like a brother?’ I exclaimed, very excited by the idea.

‘Exactly! You could either share a room or he could sleep in the bedroom over the hallway.’

‘I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room as him Mum. If I fell out with him for some reason, I would have nowhere to go to get away from him.’ I liked Walter, but at times he could be extremely annoying, and I liked to escape to be by myself on occasions.

‘Well, I told Frau Peters that I would talk to you and give her an answer tomorrow. I take it then that I can tell her yes?’

‘Yes Mum, it will be great to have him here as we can do everything together.’ Having Walter around would lessen the loneliness that I felt when my mother wasn’t around.

The following Monday Walter moved into our house, and I now had a brother in residence. He wasn’t as good at waking up in the morning as I was, so the first problem that I had with him, was getting him out on time for school each day. At least he didn’t get grumpy when I pulled him out of bed. After school, we usually went to the park, and the quarry to keep ourselves amused. I felt a lot safer with the two of us always together. I was starting to grow quite tall for my age and Walter was also well built and strong. The bullies tended to find someone else to pick on. My mother had told me that my father had been quite tall at just under two meters, and she was expecting me to grow to a similar height.

They started up a junior football team in the local stadium which Walter and I joined. It was only a ten minute walk from my house, so it was easy to get there. They used to play matches most weekends and then practice one night during the week. I was much bigger than the other children in my age group so was always the first one picked for the team. Walter had two left feet and was a little fat, so he always was one of the last picked.

After practice one evening, the leader of the group, a twenty six year old man called Stefan Mulder, called me over and said that he wanted to talk to me.

‘Markus, I have noticed you and how much effort that you put into your play. You also are always on time for practice.’ I always made a big effort to get there on time.

‘I thoroughly enjoy the football, and the matches and training sessions give me something to do,’ I replied.

‘I have been ordered to form a branch of the Hitler Youth in this suburb of Lubeck, and you are the type of young man I have been told to recruit into the group. Your time keeping is excellent and you try hard to win every match. What is also tremendously important is that you look the part. You have the blue eyes, the square jaw and the high cheek bones that we have been told to look for in a typical German male. You are also quite tall for your age, and your sandy coloured hair is also what we have been told to look out for.’

‘In school we have been told that Hitler wants to develop a ‘Master Race’, is this what he was referring to? I asked.

‘Yes, he believes that the Aryan male is the ideal German and if we fill our sports teams and army with these people we will attain world domination.’

‘Can Walter Peters join with me as he stays in my house?’ I didn’t want to have to leave Walter sitting at home while I attended the meetings.

‘Yes he can come along if he wants. Will you ask him and tell me?’

‘I am sure that he will want to come with me, but I will ask him.’

The following week Walter and I attended our first Hitler Youth meeting at the stadium. My mother had tried to dissuade me as she said that she had heard so many terrible stories about the movement. I just told her that it was a Youth Club and was the same as the Football Club which she had encouraged me to join. Little did I know what my membership of the Hitler Youth would lead to and where my country was headed?