In Europe

themselves.’
    The tribunal's written verdict is still kept in a drawer at the house in Dahlem. In it one reads that Jünger, during an air battle between a few German interceptors and hundreds of British bombers, had said that the German air war looked more like a clay-pigeon contest. During an alarm in the barracks, Siedler had claimed that the ‘evacuation’ of the Jews amounted to nothing more than extermination. ‘And Jünger added: “And if Hitler is to be hanged, then I'll tighten the noose for him! If it comes down to that, I'll walk barefoot from Berlin to Potsdam to bring him the noose!”’
    Fortunately for them, the rest of the class was unanimous about the accusations: none of them had heard a word of it. Siedler: ‘That saved my life. It's actually a wonder how the naval court in the field was able to keep Jünger and myself out of the hands of the Nazi courts, and let us get away with only a few months in jail.’
    That miracle perhaps had something to do with the fact that Jünger's father had a legendary reputation within the
Wehrmacht
. ‘Old Ernst Jünger, the writer, the First World War hero, came to visit us in the cell, wearing his uniform. When someone commented on this, he said: ‘The only occasion on which one can wear one's decorations with honour these days is when one visits one's son in prison.”’
    In the end, the two boys were sent to the Italian Front with a so-called
Himmelfahrtkommando
in autumn 1944. Siedler was soon wounded. That saved his life. Jünger was killed the first day out, his parents heard about it only weeks later. On 11 January, 1945, Ernst Jünger wrote in his diary: ‘Ernstel is dead, killed in combat, my dear child, dead ever since 29 November last year!’
    Siedler would never forget those long months in the naval brig at Wilhelmshaven. During air raids, all the condemned men were put togetherin the same bomb shelter: it was the only time when the prisoners saw each other. Every Tuesday and Thursday, between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., the boys would hear a couple of their companions in misfortune being taken from their cells, hear their footsteps going down the stone corridor. They heard one of them say: ‘You can hang me today, but in six months’ time Germany will have lost the war and then it will be your turn to be hanged.’ One boy screamed: ‘Let me live! I haven't done anything!’ A blond sailor, a baby-faced boy with freckles, had told his fellow seamen that the ‘bigwigs’ had ‘villas in Switzerland’ they could flee to if things went wrong. That was why he was on death row, only for having said that. ‘When they dragged him away, we heard him beg them in desperation whether they couldn't give him another chance: “Why don't you send me to the front, instead of hanging me?”’
    Almost all these men were killed for having made a few comments. They had said that the war was lost anyway, they had talked about the crimes of the SS, or they may have simply listened to the BBC, the
Feindsender
. At the end of the war, things like that were enough to be sentenced to death for ‘defeatism’. None of them had committed any act of actual resistance. And they had all been informed on by their friends or neigh-bours.
    Siedler: ‘I remember talking to this young officer whose only concern was whether he would be shot or hanged. The noose, he considered that a dishonourable death, that was something for traitors. During one of those air raids – we were sitting around in a little group – he told us that unimaginable atrocities were being carried out in the East. People there were being clubbed to death, hanged, tortured, burned alive, horrible things, for no good reason. “But,” that officer said, “those stories about the death factories, that's nothing but English propaganda.” That's what that officer said, with the deepest conviction, one week before he was executed.’

Chapter THIRTY-ONE
Himmlerstadt
    EARLY IN THE MORNING OF TUESDAY, 25 FEBRUARY, 1941, A WILDCAT strike broke out in Amsterdam and the towns along the River Zaan. Tram drivers occupied the garages, stevedores in Amsterdam North blocked the ports, factories along the Zaan remained closed. In the course of the morning the strike spread to the offices and businesses in the centre of Amsterdam. It was a sunny day. Ferries loaded with cheering workers crossed the River IJ from Amsterdam North to the city centre. The ‘Internationale’ was sung, boys picked up the factory