A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos Read Free Book Online Page A

of “With Burning Concern,” the Vatican’s secretly composed message to all of Germany’s Catholics. On Palm Sunday, 1937, the letter had been read by every priest, bishop, and cardinal across Germany to their congregations and three hundred thousand copies had been disseminated. Drafted by Munich’s Cardinal von Faulhaber and Pope Pius XI, it told German Catholics in carefully veiled terms that National Socialism was an evil religion based on racism that stood contrary to the church’s teachings and every man’s right to equality. It made reference to “an insane and arrogant prophet” without naming Hitler. When Hitler found out about the letter, he and The Party roared in backlash, outlawing the letter and seizing monks, priests, and any press shops that had printed it.
    Franz’s mind raced as he set down the letter. Franz wanted to burnit and the others. He wanted to run. Instead, he waited on the front steps for August to return home. Franz suspected the letters really belonged to August’s fiancée, the cardinal’s niece. The Catholic clergy of Germany were known enemies of The Party, thanks to their sermons that reviled Hitler, his Gestapo secret police, and the early crimes of the Third Reich. Franz was certain that his brother’s fiancée, via her uncle, was dragging his brother into something dangerous: opposition.
    When August returned, Franz confronted him, asking him what he was doing with such dangerous literature. August brushed Franz off and said he had found the letters and kept them as a curiosity. Franz reminded August that the letters were dangerous.
    “Do you want to wind up in Dachau?” Franz asked him. August scowled. They both knew of Dachau and the concentration camps that existed to “concentrate” in one place any Germans who had angered The Party.
    The camps were common knowledge in most German households. The Party wanted the camps to be known, as a deterrent, and had publicized Dachau as their “model camp.” The Party had built Dachau in 1933. Any German, regardless of religion or background, could be labeled a “political enemy” and imprisoned there. A year after seizing power, in 1934, The Party had passed a law that made a person’s private or public criticism of The Party a crime worthy of a camp sentence.
    The Party went to great lengths to show their fellow Germans, and the world, that Dachau was a “civilized” camp. The Party’s private security force, the SS, ran the camps and even invited Red Cross representatives and American prison wardens to tour Dachau. The international visitors walked away impressed with what they saw: well-fed prisoners who whistled as they marched to work details, tidy barracks, flower beds, and even a store where the prisoners could purchase tinned food. When the prisoners were released, the SS gave them back their possessions. This was the image of a concentration camp that The Party had fed Franz, August, their fellow Germans, and the world, during the 1930s. The camps were so well publicized that German mothersused to tell their children that if they were bad, they would be taken away to Dachau. *
    Seeing Franz’s turmoil, August promised to dispose of the letters. Franz did not fault August for opposing Hitler. Franz knew their parents opposed Hitler, too. They always said that Hitler was not their leader. In 1933 they had voted for the BVP (the Bavarian People’s Party), the Catholic party that had won a million votes but still fell far short of the National Socialists’ 44 percent. As a teenager, Franz had paid little attention to the 1933 election. He was apathetic about politics and not initially alarmed by the National Socialists’ victory. † But now, as a twenty-four-year-old man in spring 1939, Franz had come to think of The Party differently than he had as a boy in 1933. He had come to realize that The Party had turned Germany itself into a concentration camp. There were no elections. No freedom of press. No freedom