In Europe

families. The girls usually went to a convent, were given another name and then transferred so often that they could never be found again. Europe turned its attention to other matters.
    The Spanish bourgeoisie and the old feudal authorities had overturned a democratically elected government. Then they had succeeded in crushing a popular uprising. In addition, a simultaneous revolution had been blown up by the anarchists and betrayed by the Bolsheviks. A free Spain would remain an illusion for two, three generations. These were the simple facts at the end of the civil war.
    The great thinkers and rhetoricians of the left and right had been killed or forced into exile: Andrés Nin, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, La Pasionaria, Gil Robles, José Calvo Sotelo. The war had cost almost half a million lives. About 200,000 Spaniards died on the battlefield, 30,000 died of starvation, the rest were murdered. Then came the long, dry years of statistics, prayers and silence.



Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
Fermont
    ‘I AM THE SON OF ERNST VON WEIZSÄCKER. MY FATHER WAS AN official at the ministry of foreign affairs, later a state secretary and ambassador. He was the driving force behind the Munich Agreement. When Hitler came to power, I was almost thirteen.
    ‘It's hard to draw the line between everything that was later said and written about that period, and the things you remember yourself. What I do remember clearly is my father's standpoint during those early years. The amendment of the Treaty of Versailles, by strictly peaceful means, was the political line of the entire German diplomatic corps in those years. Almost all the diplomats shuddered at the Nazis’ bellicose amateurism. That was the great problem faced by my father and his colleagues. They weren't yet particularly aware of the dangers and the depraved morals of the National Socialists in general. It was unimaginable to them, it didn't fit at all into their way of thinking.
    ‘I remember quite clearly those lovely, summery June days in 1934, that infamous weekend of “the Night of the Long Knives”. It was the first time that it became crystal clear that, if necessary, the new German regime would dispense with law and order. At that moment my father was working in Bern, I must have gone with him that weekend, because I still remember how he instructed me to listen to the radio: “Richard, I want you to report to me immediately on any news from Germany!” When I think back on those days, I can still feel the deep anxiety that overcame me.
    ‘I come from a solid, civilised German family. We were certainly not rich, at least not in those first years. Our household was sober and modest. Sunday was the only day we had butter on our bread. One time, when I broke my arm, our family could scarcely pay the doctor's bill.
    ‘My mother was a socially engaged and very practical woman. During the First World War she had worked as a nurse and surgical assistant in the field hospitals. She played a loving, central role in our family. The ties were strong. My idealistic brother Heinrich was particularly close to me. Our house was always full of music, and at one point we even formed a trio, with my sister on piano, Heinrich on cello and I on the violin. At Christmas my parents would put on plays with an old puppet theatre. We read classic dramas aloud on Sunday afternoons, and each of us was given a role. It took a long time before we started making friends of our own outside the family circle.
    ‘My mother began quite early on with protests against the persecution of certain clergymen, she was quite committed to that. She knew Martin Niemöller, a former submarine commander who had become a pastor and who was very outspoken in his convictions. He had written a book,
From Submarine to Pulpit
, but my father always said: “That book should be called
With the Submarine in the Pulpit
!” That's the kind of man Niemöller was. It wasn't long before he was arrested. Along with a few other people, my mother went to great lengths to obtain his release. During that period I didn't have much contact with Germany, I was usually abroad, at boarding school. Our family had a system of codes for our correspondence: a dash at the end of a sentence, for example, indicated that the opposite was meant of what had been written.
    ‘My father kept on working for the German government. Meanwhile he had become an important negotiator. Hitler, in the same way he later showed the generals how far