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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lund, Gerald N., author.
The storm descends / Gerald N. Lund.
pages cm — (Fire and steel ; volume 2)
ISBN 978-1-62972-106-4 (hardbound : alk. paper)
1. Families—Germany—Fiction. 2. Families—Utah—Fiction. 3. Mormon families—Fiction. 4. Germany, setting. 5. Utah, setting. 6. Christian fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Lund, Gerald N. Fire and steel ; v. 2.
PS3562.U485S76 2015
813'.54—dc232015028563
Printed in the United States of America
Publishers Printing, Salt Lake City, UT
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Art direction: Richard Erickson
Design: Sheryl Dickert Smith
Statue gate: © Christian Mueller/Shutterstock.com
Clouds: SJ Travel Photo and Video/Shutterstock
Newspaper: Public domain
Decorative pattern: © leaks/Shutterstock.com
Steel is tempered through three dynamic forces:
The fire of the forge.
The hammer and the anvil.
Being thrust into the fire and then plunged into cold water.
—Preface, A Generation Rising, xi–xii
Let them beware . . .
[lest they] stumble and fall when the storms descend,
and the winds blow, and the rains descend,
and beat upon their house.
—Doctrine and Covenants 90:5
Yea, they shall not be beaten down by the storm at the last day;
yea, neither shall they be harrowed up by the whirlwinds;
but when the storm cometh
they shall be gathered together in their place,
that the storm cannot penetrate to them;
yea, neither shall they be driven with fierce winds.
—Alma 26:6
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part 2
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Part 3
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
About the Author
This section is not part of the novel. It is an introduction to the novel. Readers may be tempted to skip over it, but I would encourage you not to because I believe it will greatly enrich your reading experience. It will help you better appreciate the setting and circumstances in which the characters of the novel find themselves.
The end of World War I was a time of great instability, political upheaval, social disintegration, and personal privation. The impact on individuals and families was profound and prolonged. I don’t know how many times over the years I have heard people ask, “How could a man like Hitler ever come to power in a state as civilized and advanced as Germany?”
I believe context is the key to understanding. If we better understand the historical and cultural context of that day, it will no longer surprise us that an unknown Austrian corporal with a funny little mustache was able to step onto the stage of history greeted by the thunderous applause of a desperate and grateful people.
While there were many underlying causes for Germany’s difficulties, three converging forces came together as World War I ended. They created a perfect storm of political, social, and cultural crises that would plunge Germany and her people into chaos.
The October Revolution in Russia, 1917
Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848. In terms of its impact on history, it was and is a pivotal document. His call for the revolution of the proletariat (the working classes) against the bourgeoisie (the middle and upper classes and their materialistic values) struck a responsive chord in nations where the various monarchies and noble families of Europe flaunted their wealth on every side and maintained their power and wealth through crushing exploitation of the poor. Filled with corruption, inefficiency, and lavish extravagances, various royal families had gradually turned their worshipful subjects into serfs seething with anger and resentment.
This spawned a new political and economic ideology called socialism. Socialism advocated that the institutions of production, distribution, and exchange of goods should be owned, controlled, and regulated by the community as a whole; in short, by the people. And usually, that term meant the working classes.
In Russia, the Romanov Dynasty, which had ruled for 300 years, had become particularly corrupt and was therefore especially vulnerable to this rising resentment. Talk of overthrow and devastating defeats and catastrophic losses to the Germans in World War I so demoralized the people that revolution became commonplace. In October 1917, it became reality.
That month, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik political party overthrew the monarchy and nationalized all land, businesses, and property. Eventually, he had the last of the Romanovs assassinated.
The revolution created a shock wave that reverberated through Europe like a massive tsunami, particularly in countries under the sphere and influence of Mother Russia. People’s and workers’ parties began springing up everywhere, finding particular success among the labor unions and other working poor. Russia secretly offered financial aid to these revolutions and sent in their agents to train, motivate, and radicalize local socialist movements.
Three things made Germany a particularly ripe target. First, they were now one of Europe’s leading national powers. Second, Germany was only 200 miles away from Russia’s borders. Third, and most important, as World War I
finally came to an end, Germany was reeling. What had been the most powerful and feared military power on the continent was in shambles. The German people were dazed and disillusioned, blaming their government for the debacle and the loss of about two million of their youngest and finest men. The harsh terms imposed upon them by the Allied forces were humiliating, and they seethed with resentment.
Barely a year had passed since Lenin had triggered the Russian tsunami in Moscow, but Germany’s defenses were down. And a flood of revolution smashed its way across the Fatherland. In a matter of weeks, royal dynasties all across Europe began falling like ninepins. Fourteen of the twenty-five states in the German Empire, including all four kingdoms, were already securely in the hands of revolutionaries by December of 1918. Red flags waved over numerous royal palaces. Soldier and worker “councils” ruled many cities.
Hunger and cold stalked the land. The old, the young, and the poor—as always—were the ones hardest hit by food and fuel shortages. Starvation stalked the land. People were freezing to death in their own homes. There was social upheaval on every side, and cultural chaos was the order of the day.
And there was no end in sight.
World War I and the Armistice of Compiègne
By late summer of 1918, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Germany was going to lose the war they had started in 1914. They agreed to an armistice with the Allied Forces that led to a cessation of hostilities without having to accept a full surrender.
The victorious Allies, determined to make the Second Reich pay for their military aggressions, were in no mood for negotiation. When the German delegation arrived at Compiègne, France, to sign the newly drafted armistice, harsh terms were handed to them and they were given little choice but to sign.
There were thirty-five conditions laid down, including the occupation of significant areas of German territory; the surrender of vast amounts of military equipment; the surrender of large amounts of Germany’s railway stock; and huge war reparation bills. One American economist predicted it would take Germany more than sixty years to pay them off. One of the most painful of the conditions was that hundreds of thousands of German prisoners-of-war being held by the Allies would not be returned until a formal peace treaty was signed. That did not happen until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the summer of 1919.
In addition, the military and civilian bureaucrats responsible for the implementation of the armistice often imposed additional restrictions on the people. For example, in addition to the food shortages and rationing caused by the war, a new “hunger blockade” descended on Germany. The confiscation of large amounts of German railway equipment under the guise of reducing Germany’s power to wage war meant that even where food was available, there was not the means to transport it to cities.
German fishermen were forbidden to fish in their own territorial waters, further reducing the availability of meat to a starving people. Even with ration coupons, the people could only get fish once every three or four weeks.
To add further insult to injury, vast stores of German food and other goods still in France were either destroyed or sold to locals at greatly reduced prices instead of being shipped back to Germany where they were so badly needed (191).
This all came as a devastating blow to the German people, who had been led to believe that their willingness to stop fighting would lead to significant concessions from the Allies. In a matter of weeks, the whole country was suffering from physical, mental, moral, and spiritual shock and exhaustion. As one historian noted, “A wave of stupefied indignation and resentment followed the publication of its [the Armistice’s] terms, and this feeling was increased by the general realization of Germany’s helplessness” (189).
In the long view, the harshness of the Allied conditions would come back to haunt them. The combination of socialist revolution sweeping across Europe and utter demoralization of the German people created a perfect tinderbox for those waiting in the wings. Even Socialists, Communists, Bolsheviks, and anarchists had trouble believing the opportunity that had been dropped in their laps. Joyously, they rushed in to fill the vacuum.
Die Neue Freiheit
As Socialists and Communists toppled one government after another—in municipalities, towns, cities, states, and even nations—their rallying cry became, “Die neue Freiheit” (the New Freedom). Throw off the shackles of the bourgeoisie’s laws and institutions of authority; experience the liberating freedom of the new order—that was the cry. And hundreds of thousands embraced it with wild enthusiasm. The results were devastating.
Leftist-leaning sailors mutinied and seized a government building in Berlin. In the army, while most frontline soldiers remained steadfast in the final days of the war, many rear echelon units, which were filled with men sympathetic to the socialist cause, threw order and discipline to the wind. They deserted their posts, leaving huge stores and munitions behind. They looted, raped, and terrified the villages where they were posted and then straggled back to the homeland to be welcomed as heroes by the revolutionists (194). They seized palaces and castles and government buildings and then looted them of their treasures and urinated on whatever was left.
Army deserters took whatever motor vehicles were at hand and raced through the city streets at breakneck speed, deliberately breaking the speed limits, with the helpless police unable to stop them. In Berlin, cabmen drove unwashed and unshaven hooligans up the wrong side of major thoroughfares to show just how free they had become. Gambling sprang up on street corners. Other army deserters set up improvised booths and sold cigarettes, soap, and other materials they had looted from army storehouses (196).
Logic and common sense went out the window as insanity swept in. Any hope that the new order would bring stability quickly faded as the new “freedom” became the new reality. Peoples’ Revolutionary Councils and Soldiers’ Revolutionary Councils stormed the halls of government, occupied railway stations and telegraph offices, and commandeered centers of distribution. In most cases the populace let them seize power without bloodshed and in some cases even cheered them on, desperate for anything that might change their wretched circumstances. But the euphoria was quickly dashed.
The new rulers paid themselves exorbitant salaries even though their incompetence was breathtaking. They squandered public funds at a rate that would have shocked even the most corrupt of previous governments. Public services ground to a halt. As kings and princes and kaisers and governors and chancellors fled for their safety, the new “rulers” took their place. A man who was an avowed atheist and who could neither read nor write was appointed director of schools and master of churches in Berlin (209). The new Republic of Brunswick appointed a tailor’s assistant as their president, and he chose a household servant who scrubbed floors as his secretary of education (222).
Inspired by the philosophy of the “Brotherhood of Man,” many of the new socialist governments opened the doors of the jails and prisons and flooded the country with criminals.
The working classes unquestionably had many legitimate reasons for hating the so-called “guardians of law and order” in previous governments. But their solution was to disarm and throw out the police and replace them with those who belonged to the new order, including some of the recently released criminals. Few of these new “officers of the law” were motivated to enforce law and order. But even if they had the inclination, they had no idea how to do it. Crime became rampant and, as usually happens, the poor were the most frequent victims. The result of this “liberated” philosophy was utter chaos (185).
To a nation already reeling from loss of loved ones, near economic collapse, widespread unemployment, food and fuel shortages, violence in the streets, and constant political upheaval, the revolution became one more burden to bear, one more crisis to deal with. As Bouton puts it, “The people, starving, their physical, mental and moral powers of resistance gone, were ready to follow the demagogue who made the most glowing promises” (184).
Chapter N
ote
Most of this information comes from S. Miles Bouton, And the Kaiser Abdicates: The German Revolution, November, 1918–August, 1919, Yale University Press, 1921. The page citations above all refer to this book.
December 1, 1918, 12:57 a.m.—Pasewalk Military Hospital, northeast of Berlin, Germany
Emilee Fromme stood by the window of the trauma ward, staring out into the near darkness. Though the war had officially ended over two weeks ago, the Pasewalk city fathers were still in the process of restoring power to the city’s street lamps. But there was enough light reflected off the low overcast that she could see that it was snowing quite heavily now.
She wrinkled her nose at the thought of walking home in just her nurse’s shoes and thin cotton stockings. It served her right.
Earlier she had checked the forecast in the newspaper. It predicted snow the next afternoon, but just overcast skies until then. But the forecasts were usually slower than the actual storms.
Turning around, Emilee leaned back against the windowsill and let her eyes move over to bed number nine, which was directly across the aisle from where she stood. Only two small lights in the ward were left on at night, one at each end. But in the dim light she could still see that patient #42350 was sleeping fitfully, one leg twitching spasmodically.
Normally at this time on her night shift, Sergeant Hans Otto Eckhardt was awake, waiting for her to come and read to him as she did every night after her one o’clock rounds. So it was surprising to see him still sleeping. It was disappointing in a way. She looked forward to their time nearly as much as he did. But she was relieved in a way, too, because this night was going to be different than usual.
The first difference was going to be that she had not brought the Berlin Morning Post with her tonight. That was the morning newspaper that came by train from Berlin each day. When she had first started reading to Hans, he hadn’t wanted to hear anything that reminded him of the war. Their first project had been Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. And for a while, they had stuck to novels. But on November 10th, she had brought the Berlin Morning Post with her and showed him the blazing headlines announcing the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the creation of a new German Republic. She read the other major article on the collapse of the Second German Reich, or German Empire. That was followed the next night with the details of the signing of the Armistice Agreement in France, which formally ended the Great War. It was that night she had begun to wonder if this was such a good idea. He was so incensed that the new government had given way to the Allies that he was still awake and fuming when she came by on her rounds an hour later. They had then had a long and passionate discussion about what this meant for the Fatherland in general and for their own lives and families in particular. It had been pretty depressing to them both.