![]() ![]() "Don't try to be kind – this is regarded as weakness. Nevertheless, with British resolve, Rachael accepts the situation, so long as the Germans remain in their part of the house and don't "fraternise" – a word that puzzles her surviving son Edmund when he reads a guidebook on how to deal with the population. They are still pulling bodies from the rubble – on one occasion, Pompeii-like, two embracing skeletons are discovered. Perhaps because she has witnessed her son's death she is more deeply affected than her husband by the sufferings of the local people. She arrives later, still deep in grief for the loss of her eldest son, killed by a stray bomb that had "hurled her across the floor of the sitting room like a rag doll". It is a decision that baffles most and shocks some, not least Lewis's wife Rachael. When he requisitions a fine home on the banks of the Elbe, he allows its owner, former architect Herr Lubert, and his daughter to remain in residence. He has an idealistic, forgiving nature, seeing the Germans as a people crushed first by Hitler, then by the allied pounding of their cities. The stereotypes no longer apply and deeply held assumptions are constantly challenged.Ĭolonel Lewis Morgan arrives in this world of shattered buildings and broken spirits charged with overseeing the reconstruction in the British zone. ![]() In a delightful vignette towards the end of this novel, set in a certification office, a cold, sinister gentleman turning the pages of a novel with gloved hands is given his papers, while a nervous young woman is told to come back for further interrogation. "From this they were categorised into three colour-coded groups – black, grey or white, with intermediate shades for clarity – and despatched accordingly." As a means of probing into the souls of its subjects, the questionnaire was a blunt instrument, and there was endless suspicion about the true colour of the German citizenry. The denazification process carried out by the occupying powers entailed the filling in of a 133-question fragebogen that would determine the degree of a German citizen's collaboration with the regime. In Hamburg just after the war, the crucial question, if you were German, was whether you were white or black. ![]()
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