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their cane supports. That day he was to help his mother pick them, as he had done ever since he was a little boy.
    He wondered whether the farm would ever be his again. Little things bothered him too. Like those raspberries. Had they just withered or been eaten by birds? Or had the German soldiers picked them? Then there were all his mother’s jams and pickles. Whole shelves of them, carefully ladled into old jam jars and sealed, labelled and dated ready for the winter. Had the soldiers taken them or would they just be left to go mouldy in the dark?
    How could he have known when he left the farm he would never go back? The kitchen stove was still ticking over. His cosy, fusty bed with its soft, old blankets. The copy of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword that his mother had been reading aloud from in the evenings, left open on the sitting-room table. He had enjoyed hearing this story of Poland’s struggle against the Russian Empire. The first chapter had stuck in his mind.
    The year 1647 was astonishing in that many signs in the heavens and on earth announced misfortune and unusual events. Contemporary chroniclers tell of locusts swarming in springtime, destroying the grain and the grass; this was a forerunner of Tartar raids. In the summer there was a great eclipse of the sun, and soon after a comet appeared in the sky.
    None of those portents had happened in 1939 or 1941, although the catastrophe that had overtaken Poland was far greater.
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    The next day, Traudl took him to the local library to enrol. Peter asked if they had a copy of Sienkiewicz’s book. When he mentioned the author’s name to the librarian, a dour, pasty woman with an enamel Nazi Party badge pinned to her cardigan, she looked at him with scorn. ‘A Polack author?’ she snorted, and so loudly that other people using the library all turned around to look. ‘You’ll be asking for one by a Yid next. Where on earth did you get the idea that we’d have books by Polacks?’
    Traudl had immediately come to his aid. ‘Peter is a new arrival in Berlin, Frau Knopf. He is still learning the ropes.’
    The head librarian came over, increasing Peter’s embarrassment. But rather than admonish him further, the man led Peter away to the children’s section and picked up Winnetou, der rote Gentleman . ‘Karl May’s cowboys and Indians books will be more suitable,’ he said. ‘They were a great favourite of the Führer’s when he was a young lad.’
    Peter took the book home and read about the wise old Apache chief Winnetou and his German ‘blood brother’ Shatterhand, who could knock out his enemies with a single punch. He was puzzled as to why Hitler would enjoy reading about the natives of North America when he had such open contempt for other un-Germanic people such as the Slavs and Jews.
    Another book he had taken out, Durch die weite Welt – Into the Modern World – was far more interesting. It portrayed a future of vast passenger aircraft, twin-deck underground trains shaped like bullets, heliports on the flat roofs of tall buildings, and a massive six-lane highway beneath the Tiergarten. He showed it to his Onkel Franz that very evening. Kaltenbach ruffled his hair again. ‘All of this,’ he said proudly, ‘is what awaits us, as soon as the war is won.’
    Peter could absolutely believe it. He could never imagine anything like this coming out of Poland. The Germans, he had no doubt, were the most advanced nation on earth. And here he was, right in the middle of it all, lucky enough to be one of them.

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    CHAPTER 9
    Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin
    September 30, 1941
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    Professor Kaltenbach was especially keen for Peter to attend his opening lecture for the new students at the Institute, on Racial Science and the work of his department. It was one of the big moments in his annual calendar. ‘You must come,’ he said over breakfast.