Fritzie laid a hand on his shoulder. “He’s all right. They’re bandaging up a cut on his head and one on his arm. Dimitri’s got a bad gash above his eye. It’s bandaged now, but Nurse Rheems wants to take him to the hospital to have it stitched up.”
That was good. Hans looked around, and to his surprise, there was no more fighting. There was still a lot of noise, but it was the low rumble of people’s voices. And then he realized that the hall was half-full of people and more were streaming in from the main doors. He turned back to Fritzie. “What’s happening? I remember gunshots. Who had a gun?”
“We never found that out,” Fritzie said. “He must have slipped out through the kitchen. But fortunately, whoever it was, he fired into the ceiling and not into the crowd.”
“But we whipped the Commies,” Anatoly crowed. “We whipped their tails and drove them out of the hall. Now they’re running for home, licking their wounds like the cowards they are.”
“But. . . .” Hans gestured toward the crowds. “Who are they?”
“They’re our people,” Anatoly exclaimed. “When they fled the hall, they didn’t go home. They waited outside. The same with the ones we saw outside who couldn’t get tickets. Most of them stayed too. The Führer told us to bring them all back in. He’s going to finish his speech.”
“What?” Hans started to shake his head in protest, but he stopped instantly when pain erupted in sharp bursts. He was also starting to feel the mud in his brain again, but he turned to where Adolf was talking to Emil Maurice and Ernst Roehm. “Adolf?” His voice was a croak, but immediately Adolf turned and hurried over to him. Hans’s good hand shot out and gripped Adolf’s arm. “You’re not going to continue speaking, surely.”
Suddenly, Emil Maurice and Ernst Roehm were beside Adolf. “He is, Hans,” Emil said, frowning deeply. “Tell him that isn’t necessary. We’ve been through enough tonight.” He turned and gestured toward the hall. “And this place is in shambles.”
Adolf swung around sharply. “No! It is absolutely essential that I finish the speech, notwithstanding all that has happened. And that’s not because of what I have to say. It is to show the world that we were not beaten here tonight. That we were not driven from this hall, even though our boys were greatly outnumbered. I must finish it, and there must be an audience to hear me finish it. That must be.”
Of course. Hans was stunned, but he saw it instantly. Of course he had to finish. That was what his little lecture to the men beforehand was all about. The German people admired strength. And then came another thought, as if he had read Adolf’s mind. And there was something else. If he did not finish his speech, that would be in all the papers tomorrow. And if he did. . . . Hans wanted to laugh out loud. That would be in all the papers tomorrow, too.
11:55 p.m.—Eckhardt residence
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Hans cried through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Emilee said as she pulled a small sliver of glass from the longest cut on his arm. She held it up for him to see. “That’s the last one.” She dropped it in a small tin on the table and then reached over and pulled the roasting pan closer. It was about a third filled with water. “Put your arm in there,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a mild saline solution.”
“What?”
“Salt water. I want you to soak your arm in it for about five minutes. Many of your cuts have closed up, and that means they’ll likely be infected. So soaking them in salt water will hopefully open them up enough that saline solution can get into the wounds and clean them.”
“All right,” he said. “Whatever you say. What about the cut on the back of my head?”
“The nurse did a good job bandaging that. We’ll leave it alone. But try not to sleep on it.”
Hans grimaced. “That won’t be a problem. It’s throbbing pretty badly.”
“I’ll get you some laudanum while you’re soaking.” Emilee moved the pan over so it was right beside him. “This is going to sting a little bit.”
He sat up enough to lower his arm into the water. As he did, he gave a low howl and his face contorted. “Oh my gosh, Emilee!” he gasped. “This is your idea of a little bit?”
“If I had said it was going to hurt a lot, you wouldn’t have done it,” she shot back.
Hans was biting his lower lip. “Well, don’t look so happy about it. This is your way of punishing me for going, isn’t it?” he growled.
Emilee started to smile but then frowned instead. “Believe it or not, though it makes me sick to my stomach when I think about what could have happened to you tonight, I am glad that you went.”
“You are? And Ernst too?”
“Yes, Ernst too. Can’t you hear him and Mama talking upstairs? He wanted me to remove his bandages so he could show Mama his wounds. And guess what he kept saying over and over. ‘Hans trusted me. He wanted me to be with him.’ And he said that you told the commander of the S.A. that he was one of your own storm troopers. He’s very proud of that.”
Still wincing from the burn of the salt water, Hans replied, “When that guy clobbered me with his beer mug, Ernst was on top of him like a hawk on a sparrow. If he hadn’t come running, it would have been a lot worse that it was.”
“You need to tell him that.”
“I already did, coming home.”
Emilee looked away, and Hans saw a frown crease her brow. Here it comes. He started flexing his left hand in and out to see if it eased the sting of the salt water a little. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you don’t want me going to party meetings anymore if they’re going to turn out like it did tonight. That I’m a father now, and soon we’ll be having a second child, and I have a responsibility to them. And to you, too. But tonight was a fluke. A turn of bad luck. We were changing offices today, and the phones weren’t working, and—”
Emilee got up abruptly, cutting him off, and walked to the cupboard. A moment later she returned with the bag of salt, unfolding the top part of the sack. Hans’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Putting in more salt,” she said.
“No, Emilee!” he cried. “This is killing me as it is. I’ve had enough.”
“And so have I,” she said. “Maybe this will shut you up.”
“What? You’ve had enough of what?”
“You talking to me like I was Alisa.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I don’t need you to tell me what I want or what I’m thinking. Why don’t you just ask me, then let me speak for myself?”
Hans stared at her for a long moment and then said, “All right. What are you thinking?”
“When the government here in Bavaria was overthrown and a Soviet republic set up, Colonel von Schiller contacted you and asked you to join up with him again. We weren’t married yet, but you asked me what I thought you should do.”
He was nodding. “And you told me I needed to do it.”
“Because I thought war was glorious and wonderful? No. I knew it was a critical time in Bavaria and that the Reds needed to be stopped. So why would you automatically assume that I am upset with you stopping the Reds from taking over the party?”
“You were pretty upset when Ernst and I came home tonight all cut up and bloody.”
“Of course I was. I’d been sitting here all night waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for you to tell me what was going on. Wondering if you had been killed or something. But when you and Ernst told us what had happened, I was so proud of you both.”
“You were?”
Emilee shook her head sadly. “Could you not see that on my face?” She reached over and took his free hand. “I am a German wife too, Hans.”
He looked at her more closely.
“Ernst told me what Adolf said to the men before they went inside th
e hall. About how we Germans admire strength and courage. About how the German women of long ago stood by their men in times of war and danger. Well, it hurts to think that you don’t see me as that kind of a woman.”
He squeezed her hand, fully contrite now. “I’m sorry, Emilee. You’re right. But I do see you as a woman of tremendous courage. I. . . .” He pulled a face. “Any chance I could use my concussion as an excuse for being stupid?”
She gave him a long look. “If it weren’t for your concussion, you’d be sleeping out in your shop tonight.” As he laughed, she picked up a towel. “All right, you can take your arm out now. I’ll let you dry it off while I get some bandages for you.”
As she went into the bathroom, he called after her. “Emilee?”
She poked her head out.
“What was it that made you start reading to me at night up there in the hospital?”
That took her aback. “I . . . I’m not sure. Why?”
“I don’t know. Just wondered. It couldn’t have been my baby-blue eyes. They were all bandaged up. And it couldn’t have been my manners. I remember kicking you very hard one night.”
Now it was Emilee who chuckled. “I thought you had broken my leg.”
“So I guess it was just my natural charm, eh?”
She looked at him for a long time and then, straight-faced, shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that, that’s for sure.”
Hans smiled and then quickly sobered. “Then what?”
“You won’t believe this, but. . . . Well, I’ve asked myself that same question more than once. And I finally decided that it was the Lord.”
“The Lord?” That was hardly what he had expected.
“Yes. I really believe that the Lord, through His Holy Spirit, whispered in my ear and said, ‘Emilee, this is the man you’re going to marry.’”
Hans said nothing, so she went to work bandaging his arm. He remained quiet until she was done. As she sat back, he finally spoke. “Thank you. Can I ask another favor of you?”
“Of course. What is it?”
“The next time you go to church, will you tell the Lord thank you for telling you that?”
Emilee’s eyes widened and immediately filled with tears. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come to church with me and tell Him yourself?”
“Nein. That won’t work.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Why not?”
“If you say it, the Lord will say, ‘Oh, that’s Emilee Eckhardt down there. She’s one of my favorites, so I was happy to do it.’ But if I say it, He’ll say, ‘Who is that down there? And what is he doing in one of my churches?’”
Chapter Notes
In his autobiography, which was written just two years later, Hitler describes the November 4, 1921, meeting of the party in considerable detail. Though I had to insert additional aspects to make the narrative flow more smoothly, the major points are all his. This includes the situation with the office phones, that there were only “about fifty” storm troopers there, that “about eight hundred” of the opposition had come early to take over the hall, how they used empty beer steins as weapons, the firing of a pistol by an unknown person, the final rout of their enemies, and Hitler’s insistence that the people be let back in so that he could finish his speech. It was another major turning point for the National Socialists and brought them national attention in addition to making them a powerful force in Bavarian politics (see Mein Kampf, 214–15).
July 11, 1922, 9:55 a.m.—Eckhardt residence
“Here,” Hans said, striding across the room to where Emilee sat in the rocking chair. “I’ll burp her.”
“I thought you were supposed to open the garage at ten.”
He shrugged as he carefully took the baby from Emilee, making sure the blanket stayed wrapped around her body. “Ernst already left. He wanted to clean up the workbench a little before that greengrocer brings his truck by at ten fifteen.” He put the baby up on his shoulder and began to pat her back as he walked back and forth. She immediately started to fuss. “There, there, Jo Jo, it’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s okay. Let’s get those bubbles out of your tummy.”
It always warmed Emilee to watch how much Hans enjoyed the baby. She had actually worried a little that his adoration of Alisa might lessen his love for his second daughter, or that a new baby might garner enough of his affections that Alisa would become a little jealous. But the baby only seemed to increase his affection for Lisa, too. And the only time Alisa seemed to show any jealousy was when her father wouldn’t let her hold the baby as much as he did.
“Hans, I’m not sure that I like Jo Jo as a nickname. It sounds like she’s a circus clown.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Though I am very pleased that we gave her my mother’s middle name and your mother’s first name, a name like Yolanda Elfriede is too much for such a little—”
At that moment, the baby let forth a tremendous burp, and they both laughed aloud. “Wow!” Hans cried. “She’s got the lungs of a drill sergeant.”
Alisa came running into the living room, her eyes wide. “What happened, Mama?”
Hans and Emilee laughed all the harder. “That was your baby sister, Lisa,” Hans chortled. “Pretty impressive burp, eh?”
“Can I hold her?”
Emilee shook her head. “Vati has to get another burp or two out of her, and then Yolanda has to go to bed. You can play with her when she wakes up.”
Alisa’s shoulders fell. She turned and left the room dejectedly. Emilee looked up at Hans. “Paula called while you were in the bath. She heard from the Westlands and Frau Reissner this morning.”
“Oh. And where are they now?”
“Füssen. They were just getting ready to leave for Neuschwanstein Castle. Then this afternoon they were going to the Hohenschwangau Castle. How far away is that from Füssen?’
“Both castles are just two or three miles away.”
“Oh. Then tomorrow, they catch the train for Oberammergau. They arrive there a little before noon, which works out well. Our train tomorrow arrives at ten-forty-five. So by noon, all of your family will be there to greet them.”
Hans frowned. “With the Passion Play, the station will be crowded. Maybe we ought to meet them somewhere else.”
Emilee laughed. “Oberammergau isn’t that big of a station. And with all your family there, I don’t think they’ll have a hard time finding us.”
He ignored the gibe. “Did Paula say when Jacob is arriving?”
“Yes. He called last night to confirm that he will be arriving on the train from Dresden at the main Munich Railway Station at four-fifty-five this afternoon. Paula wanted me to make sure you’re planning to pick him up.”
“I am. Then I bring him here for dinner, right?”
“Yes. And Paula and Wolfie will bring the kids and have dinner with us, then Jacob will go back and stay at their place tonight. Then we all go down to Oberammergau tomorrow.”
There was another sizeable burp, though much more subdued this time, and Hans smiled. “Think that’s enough?”
“Yes. Do you want me to put her down?”
He shot her a look of pure disbelief. “Does the moon want the sun to come up in the morning?”
Emilee hooted. “My goodness, I didn’t realize I married a poet.”
“Actually, a jealous poet. You get her most of the day, every day, so I get her now.”
Holding up her hands as if to defend herself, Emilee waved him out. “I just thought you had to get to the garage.”
Hans shook his head as he disappeared into the hallway. When he came out a few minutes later, he was donning his work cap. “Have you got a busy day today?” Emilee asked.
“Not really,” he grumbled. “We’re doing an oil change and a lube job for the green grocer, then Dimitri is bringing their light truck in. They had a flat tire
yesterday and want us to fix it.”
That surprised Emilee. “And that’s all?”
“So far.” Hans came over and kissed her on the cheek. “I won’t be home for lunch, but I’ll send Ernst home about one. We should be done with the first truck by then. I can change the tire by myself.”
“I’m getting worried, Hans. Are we going to be all right?”
He sighed but nodded. “Yes. With the cost of living rising so fast, people are making do with their truck problems for as long as possible, but we’re still all right. And there is one upside to this. If things were like they were last year, I wouldn’t be going with you to Oberammergau for the next five days. I’d be way too busy.”
“True, and I am so glad you are, Hans. Lisa is so excited to be with her cousins. And it’s been months since we’ve seen your parents.”
A frown quickly came and went. “I know, and the last I talked to Mama, I could tell she’s worried about Papa. She says his memory is starting to go and that he sometimes gets confused about where he is.”
“She told me that too. It is a little surprising. He’s only sixty-three. I think that bout he had with cancer took a heavier toll on him than we thought. But it means so much to your mother that you’re going down and spending time with him. You’ve always been the apple of his eye. You know that.”
“I do,” Hans said. “Is your mother going to be all right not going down with us?”
“Yes, she knows she doesn’t have the strength for it. And being out among strangers that much would really upset Heinz-Albert.”
“I know. I have to admit, I’m excited to see Jacob and Mitch again. It surprised me that Mitch and I have become such good friends. He’s got to be in his fifties, right?”
“Actually, Paula said that Adelia told her that Edie turned fifty-two in May. I’m guessing Mitch is a year or two older than she is, so mid-fifties.”
“Wow! He’s in pretty good physical shape for that age. Being a cowboy must pay off.”
“I’m really excited to meet their wives and the twins.”