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I look up. “The film,” I say to her. “Where is the reel?”
She turns and looks at me. “Go!”
“Film!” I shout at her. “The film?”
She yells something at me in response, but I can’t make it out.
“Go!” she finally says, tears in her eyes now. “Go, go, go!”
I push open the door and pull out my suitcase. I take one last look at Franklin, who risked his life to meet with me and died for it. Before I can even close the door, the SUV speeds away, leaving me outside departures with my suitcase.
I am still trying to process everything that just happened, my body quaking from the aftershock, when I gather myself and realize that I should probably not be out here in the open. I should get inside, get through the security line, where it would be exceptionally difficult for anyone to follow me, much less with a weapon.
I find the nearest bathroom to look at myself. A few spatters of blood on my face, more on my long gray coat. My hands are shaking but I fold my coat and force it into my roller suitcase. I wipe my face with a wet paper towel.
I reach into my pocket for my phone and realize it’s still recording—meaning I will now have a memory of an ordeal that I will never forget, anyway. I hit the red button to stop it.
I put my hands on the bathroom sink and close my eyes, fighting back emotion.
I would never compare myself to people like Thomas Bauer or Fritz Gerlich or Erich von der Haas, who risked their lives trying to stop an evil man who caused so much death and destruction in the name of hate. I am no hero. I am just someone viewing things from the cheap seats. But I admit I felt a kinship with them. I was trying to do my small part to reveal more about that evil man, who to this day inspires so many people around the world.
I failed. I did my best, with whatever meager tools I had. But I failed.
“I tried,” I whisper to nobody, to Thomas Bauer, to Fritz Gerlich, to Franklin Linderman, to Monica Bauer, to my precious daughter Annabelle. “I tried.”
Part Five
“Today I am at the head of the strongest army in the world, the most gigantic air force and of a proud navy. Behind and around me stands the party with which I became great and which has become great through me. Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the two thousand years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today.”
—Adolf Hitler, addressing the Reichstag in declaring war on the United States, December 11, 1941
103
April 1942
The Deutscher Hof hotel
Nuremberg
A FEW CITY BLOCKS from Nuremberg’s train station and next to the opera house, the five-story Deutscher Hof was Adolf Hitler’s favorite hotel. In 1936, the hotel had added an extension that included spacious apartments for Hitler and a Führer Balkon, or Führer balcony, overlooking the street, where Hitler would wave to crowds.
Today, Hitler was scheduled to enjoy a formal dinner with party superiors in the luxurious hotel dining room before giving a speech. But first, at 4:00 p.m., he was to address the Nuremberg chapter of the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, from the Führer balcony.
In anticipation, Hitler’s elite security team, the Führerbegleitkommando, in concert with other units of the SS, cordoned off the street outside the Deutscher Hof and the park directly across from it, creating a one-block perimeter. SS officers stopped civilians in the area, demanding their papers and inquiring about their purpose. If anything remotely suspicious arose, orders were to arrest first, ask questions later.
Hitler was traditionally fond of standing on the Führer balcony, built as it was exclusively for him and offering him a nice view of the center of Nuremberg, one of his favorite cities. Would Hitler step out onto the balcony today before the festivities began, before his 4:00 p.m. address to the Hitler Youth, while the street was empty and quiet?
Thomas Bauer, for one, was counting on it. Because he’d rather kill Hitler alone than in front of a thousand young men marching in the street.
Bauer, now more than eighteen months removed from nearly dying at Hitler’s mountainside retreat, had spent countless weeks in recovery. Thank God Erich von der Haas had been able to bring him to trusted medical attention in time. Bauer’s recovery had been slow and painful, but he continued to gain strength.
And his dedication to targeting Hitler never wavered.
World War II had taken decisive turns in the past year and a half. Hitler had swept through Europe, invading Yugoslavia and Greece, and continuing to shell England by air. Over eight months of bombing by the Luftwaffe, London had suffered damage to more than a million buildings, and had lost over forty thousand civilians.
Though Hitler had signed a nonaggression pact with Russia’s Stalin, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of Russia—in June 1941. “With Russia smashed,” Hitler had told his generals, “Britain’s last hope would be shattered. Germany will then be master of Europe and the Balkans.” And in December, Japan, Hitler’s Axis partner, had bombed Pearl Harbor, now drawing the United States of America into the war.
Tonight, Bauer was positioned in an administrative building across the street from the opera house. He was over a block away from his target and did not have a great angle. Bauer had been in the building since last night, hiding inside an industrial closet behind an old exhaust fan, until the SS had declared the building vacant and secured.
