from a neighbouring village to go to a youth group meeting. When they arrived, he soon learned what had upset his mother: the attack was on everybody’s lips. One boy said his father was killing Russians at that very moment.
‘I thought he was an army cook. The only way he’ll ever kill someone is with food poisoning.’
A boy from Warschken, another village nearby, turned to Karl and said, ‘Maybe your father will send sweets from Moscow.’
‘Maybe he won’t go there,’ Karl replied.
‘Of course he will. The whole army’s going.’
They were convinced that the German army would beat the Russians, and anyone whose father or grandfather had fought at the battle of Tannenberg compared it with what was happening now. No one had grasped that the present offensive, three or four hundred kilometres to the east, was not just a battle but the start of a new war: the Soviet-German War.
Three million German soldiers were pitted against the same number of Russians, whose opposing army would soon grow to six million. The largest military invasion ever was under way. Across eastern Europe the boys’ fathers were behind thousands of heavy guns, pounding Russian positions. Soon the front would extend over four thousand kilometres, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, the entire land mass of eastern Europe sealed behind a wall of German soldiers and guns.
One boy announced that Hitler himself was in East Prussia, unaware that the Führer had constructed new headquarters there from which to direct the offensive. The Wolfsschanze – Wolf ’s Lair – was buried deep in the forests south-east of Samland.
Before the offensive had begun, the Prussian army commanders – a constant source of irritation to Hitler – were far from united behind the decision to invade Russia. Some had agreed that if they had to go ahead, now was the best time to surprise the enemy because Stalin had murdered his best commanders during the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938. Others, though, would have preferred to abide by the Non-Aggression Pact: the steppes were too vast and the war was being fought on too many other fronts. Hitler himself had once written that an attack on Russia, as well as a western theatre, would spell the end of Germany.
Once the war with Russia was under way Germau remained oddly calm. For a time photographs were published in Königsberg newspapers showing Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians welcoming German soldiers as liberators freeing them from Stalin’s tyranny. Ida’s sister, in Berlin, rarely mentioned the war in her letters.
That spring, shortly before the Führer’s birthday, a Hitler Youth representative had come to the village to talk to Ida about a ceremony that Karl was to attend. Ida was reluctant to let him go, but she had no choice. Karl by contrast was more excited than she had ever seen him. He had gone with the man and a large group of boys from the peninsula by train to Pillau where they crossed the Bay of Danzig on a Strength Through Joy cruise liner.
Two older boys had stolen some photographs of Jewish prisoners, which they wanted to get rid of now – they knew they would get into trouble if the theft was discovered. They had concealed the evidence among the younger boys’ belongings. When Karl found three photos in his clothes, he became frightened and pushed them to the bottom of his bag. He would throw them away when he got home.
From Danzig, the younger boys went on to Marienburg, the ancient headquarters of the Teutonic Knights with the largest castle Karl had ever seen. They arrived at dusk and joined thousands of others. Karl’s group entered a huge chamber illuminated by torchlight. They stood to attention for nearly two hours as they sang Hitler Youth songs and listened to a long speech: the Reichsjugendführer, the highest-ranking official in the league, talked endlessly about commitment, discipline and personal strength. Later, each new recruit took an oath under the flickering torches: ‘I promise that, in the Hitler Youth, I will always do my duty, with love and faithfulness, and help the Führer, so help me God.’
Afterwards the hall reverberated to the boom of drums, the boys’ faces glowing orange in the torchlight. Soon they were singing again – a thousand boys in harmony – ‘Forward, forward …’ The sounds echoed in Karl’s mind long after he had returned to Germau.
In July he went camping with his group to Palmnicken where they pitched tents on a plateau above the Baltic. On the first night after the leader had told everyone to go to sleep, Karl felt the hand of the boy to his left slide across his belly and downwards. Startled, he pretended to be asleep. Soon he felt a new and pleasant sensation, one he’d never experienced before, between his legs. He turned over – and the boy on his right kissed him on his mouth. Karl tensed, and the first boy whispered that he would report him if he didn’t join in with their game.
The next morning, the three behaved as if nothing had happened. Karl climbed out of the tent and walked over to where the ground fell away to the sea below and watched two men in a pit carrying a burlap sack filled with amber. When he turned back to see the other boys coming out of their tents, he wondered if they were harbouring a similar secret.
That afternoon the leader took the boys through the woods and across a field, beyond which the blue-green waters of the Baltic stretched to the horizon. At points along the western edge of the peninsula, steep sandy cliffs fell as much as ten metres to the beach below. The leader announced that to earn a dagger, each boy must run at top speed to the edge of the cliff and jump out as far as he could.
‘What if we’re killed?’ a boy asked.
‘I’ll give the knife to your mother.’
Laughter erupted.
‘It’s only sand, idiot,’ a boy near the back yelled.
‘But my cousin broke his leg falling from the cliff in Rauschen.’
The leader told them that each boy would run and jump, then get up, move out of the way and remain on the beach with the assistant, who was already down there. ‘If you do break your leg don’t scream. You don’t want to be captured by the Russians, do you?’
He pointed at a terrified-looking boy. ‘You first. Run on the count of three.’
‘But—’
‘One. Two—’
The boy started running.
‘I said on the count of three!’ shouted the leader. ‘Faster!’
The boy’s pace increased and the group held their breath when he neared the edge of the cliff, expecting him to stop. But he didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, his eyes on the horizon, until the ground fell from beneath his feet and he disappeared. They heard him scream, and the distant roar of breakers.
The sixteen-year-old leader walked back to them grinning. ‘Let’s hope he’s not dead.’
This time nobody laughed.
‘Anyone scared?’
The group were mute.
‘I’m going to stand here and watch until every one
