In The Presence Of My Enemies

Even if watching Buckliger's speech turned out not to be such a good idea, she could still listen to it. She opened her window a few centimeters so she could hear better. the Fuhrer wasn't there yet, so none of the SS snipers took a shot at her.

Noise from down below swelled as the crowd built up. You could put a lot of people between the two main wings of the university buildings. From the excited buzz that rose, she knew to the minute when

Heinz Buckliger came into sight.

"Guten Tag,students, faculty, and friends," Buckliger said. His amplified voice sounded a little tinny. Technicians would probably improve it for the radio and televisor. "I am glad to come to this great center of learning. Knowledge is at the heart of the Reich 's progress in war and peace. Without our talented scientists and engineers, we could not have won our great victories. Nor would the peace that followed have been so prosperous, so healthy, or so enjoyable."

He got a hand. Susanna might have known he would. She wouldn't have cheered that, not in a million years. Buckliger proved he was a German after all. The Volk might live prosperous, healthy, enjoyable lives. What about the Jews? The gypsies? Homosexuals? Poles? Russians? Ukrainians? Serbs? Arabs? Negroes? Feebleminded people? Did he think of them at all? Or only of his own comfort? From what he said, the answer seemed all too obvious.

"We need to know ourselves as well," the Fuhrer said, after showing he didn't know himself so well even if he could sound like Marcus Aurelius. Would a Roman Emperor count as an Aryan? Probably not, not when he'd been fighting Germans along the Danube while he wrote the Meditations. Buckliger continued, "And the best way to know ourselves is to tell ourselves the truth.

"We cannot do that while the Reichstag is only a rubber stamp. It has been nothing more for much too long. As Hitler pointed out in the first edition of Mein Kampf, democratic elections are the best way to find representatives who will serve the people who chose them and not themselves alone." He paused for applause, and got it.

"This being so," he went on, "I am calling new elections to the Reichstag, voting to take place on Sunday, July 10. All seats are to be contested. Candidates need not be members of the Party, so long as they are of Aryan blood and good character. Ballots will be secret. There will be no penalty for voting one's conscience. I have not the slightest particle of doubt that the best will prevail. And the Volk and the Reich will be better for it."

The ovation this time was hesitant, as if the Fuhrer 's audience was not sure whether it was allowed to cheer. That didn't surprise Susanna. What Heinz Buckliger had said did. But it was hardly surprising to be surprised in Berlin these days. That speech of Rolf Stolle's in the Adolf Hitler Platz where the crowd drove off the SS band…The SS had gone away, and not only did no one get arrested, the story made the evening news. Heinrich had been there. Up till today, Susanna had been sick with envy. Now she too had a moment of history to claim as her own.

"We National Socialists have ruled Germany wisely and well for many years," Buckliger said. "I have faith that the Volk will recognize our service and give us the large majority in the Reichstag we deserve."

Loud, confident applause rang out. Of course people knew they were safe clapping after the Fuhrer praised the Nazis. Susanna thought Buckliger was probably right about the Party's winning most of the seats in the Reichstag. Even now, how many non-Nazis would be bold enough to run against Party Bonzen? How many who did run would win? Maybe some. Many? It seemed unlikely.

Did Buckliger really believe the Nazis had ruled Germany well and wisely? They'd won, thanks in no small measure to Hitler's demonic energy and Himmler's grim ruthlessness. But the blood of the people they'd murdered-the blood of the peoples they'd murdered-still cried out from the grave…and from the crematorium for those millions who'd never got a grave.

"I know reform, revitalization, cannot come overnight," the Fuhrer said. "The Reich is large and complex.

Those who call for everything to be perfect by tomorrow are naive. But those who say nothing needs repair are willfully blind. Change is part of life. It is here. It will go forward. And it will succeed."

He got another big hand. Susanna was intrigued by his methods. In back-to-back sentences, he'd skewered Rolf Stolle and Lothar Prutzmann. No doubt he meant to show himself as a moderate, as a man embarked on the only possible course. That could work. But she remembered the thought she'd had not so long before. A moderate was also somebody vulnerable from both the left and the right. Did Heinz Buckliger see that?

Most people would say,What do you think you're doing, trying to guess along with the Fuhrer?Susanna cared very little about what most people said. If she had, she would have dropped her Judaism like a grenade with the fuse lit.