To Lyger 0: We can always hope.
To Butterfly: New characters are fun to develop!
To armadas: Glad you got caught up! Although you didn't review "SLD Case Reports: The Interviews"; that actually gives the next step in the missing girls plotline. This story is a lot of fun, especially fleshing out characters like Marc and Ondine who have only appeared in passing before now! Hopefully my take on Marc is good! Juleka and Rose are going to eventually get a whole story to themselves (maybe); Juleka is a POV character for the first story in "The Colossus Saga," and she and Rose play a pretty big role in 2 of the first three stories.
To yellow 14: My bad. I meant that he's German in the same way that I am – German heritage. It's amazing: every so often Lila really does tell the truth, but no one believes her for some reason!
Nath stared up at the enormous poster on the wall, showing row upon row in Nazi uniforms, marching in perfect lock-step. Helmets emblazoned with the swastika. Marching down a red street lined in black and white. Followed by tanks with their hatches open and tank commanders' heads poking out. The streets lined with a stencil outline of poorly-drawn faces to give the impression of a large crowd watching the procession. Nazi salutes on full display.
"That… that's brilliant," Marc whispered next to him, jaw hanging open. "Certainly takes 'goose-stepping' to a whole different level…"
Nath nodded slowly, blinking. Every single figure in the entire poster was a goose. Goose-stepping geese marching down the street toward a giant chopping block, one wing held up in salute. Geese driving tanks whose turrets were overturned fry baskets. The only non-goose in the entire scene was a drooling wolf with crossed eyes and its tongue sticking out, its whiskers drawn together into a thin moustache, standing directly behind the chopping block. Nath shook his head ruefully. "Whoever drew this was either very brave, very foolish, or very not in Germany at the time!"
Greta leaned over to read the tag underneath the poster. "It says here that the artist was Eugen Panofsky, a German Jew who fled to Switzerland in 1936."
"So I guess all three," Nath noted wryly. "Or at least the first and the last," the amended. "Lucky of him to escape so early…"
"He watched the war's progress from Geneva but did not participate beyond publishing these types of political drawings," Greta continued. "His style was to take Nazi propaganda posters and change them in some way to highlight the absurdities of the Nazi Party."
"Not exactly a difficult thing to do," observed Marc, raising an eyebrow and nodding to the next poster in line, this one showing a trio of ducks – one with a thin mustache on its top bill, one with its bill sticking out of a medieval helmet, and one wearing a robe that covered most of its face with only the edge of the bill remaining visible – standing in front of an enormous swastika-stamped cooked turkey, all beneath the caption "A Fowl Affair." The original of the poster hung below it for comparison. Marc glanced over at Nath. "Didn't your Opa mention a poster like this one?"
Nath nodded. "According to him, they were all over the city for a few years. But I think he mentioned Panofsky once as an inspiration for his cartoon."
"Your Opa fled from the Nazis?" asked Dietrich curiously.
"Yeah… not too long after Kristallnacht," Nath explained. "He drew and published a political cartoon similar to these and escaped across the border to avoid arrest. Then he joined a Maquis cell to fight the Nazi occupation."
Greta's eyes lit up eagerly. "That's so cool! You must have heard so many stories about it."
Nath nodded hesitantly. "I did grow up on his stories," he agreed. "Opa used to tell them all the time, though when I was younger his stories were more about life in Germany before the War – not as many were about the war itself. His memory hasn't been all that great for the last few years, though; his stories have started getting weirder."
Greta hummed. "One of my great-grandfathers was in the regular German Army during the war – I think he fought on the Eastern Front. My Opa's older brother was actually killed in Poland. Opa himself manned an anti-aircraft gun at the end, even though he was barely 13 by the time the war ended."
Marc cocked his head, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. "They were Nazis?"
"No." Greta shook her head adamantly, but hesitated, a troubled look in her eyes. She frowned, her mouth twisting in a sour expression. "Or at least that's not what my Oma says. She also said once that her father was connected to the Resistance somehow. But I don't know… that might just have been her way of trying to rewrite our family's history, to distance herself from the Nazis." Her shoulders slumped. "All I really know is that they were in the Army; they might have just been loyal Germans who loved their country. Not everyone in Germany was a member of the Nazi Party."
Dietrich clenched his jaw, his mouth set in a thin line. "No, they weren't. They just went along with whatever Hitler and his people said. Like a bunch of chattering geese."
Nath nodded slowly, his mouth set in a thin line. From everything Opa had told him, even his closest friends had distanced themselves from him after Kristallnacht.
"So what about your family?" Marc asked Dietrich, raising an eyebrow.
Dietrich scoffed darkly. "Oh, my Opa was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party from 1938 until the end of the war."
Nath's eyes rose in surprise, examining Dietrich more closely. He tensed involuntarily. "Your grandfather was a Nazi?"
Dietrich turned to stare at the "Fowl Affair" poster, grimacing, his shoulders tense, his hand in his pocket. Hanging his head, he confirmed, "That's the story. He was supposed to be one of Hitler's most powerful supporters," he added, making a disgusted face.
"Are you serious?"
Dietrich nodded, looking away. His shoulders slumped, and he let out a heavy breath. "He even got a whole month dedicated to him at Nuremberg…"
"But, from what you've said, that's not the whole story, is it?" asked Greta, hesitantly putting a hand on his forearm.
Dietrich raised an eyebrow at her, frowning. "It's not like they generally sent them to Spandau for no reason."
"But still," she persisted, "that's not who you are."
Dietrich's eyes widened. "God, no!"
Marc looked back and forth between them before laughing awkwardly. "Well, um, my great-grandfather wasn't involved in the war at all," he told them. "He only took notice of the war when Panzers started using his field for artillery practice!"
Nath chuckled halfheartedly, eyeing their two German companions' reactions. Greta giggled lightly. Dietrich let out a humorless snort before turning away from them to follow the rest of the crowd into a large room containing various pieces of equipment covered with images – some drawn by the German soldiers who had used them, others clearly graffiti done by the Allies. Mme Hartung waved for the students to gather together.
The German teacher, M. Hauerfels, stopped beside a display case containing an armband with the insignia of the "SS" on it and cleared his throat for attention. "As you have observed already, symbolism holds great significance. In the parody works we have seen, the parody is only possible because the symbolism because used has a significance by itself, something to be exploited by the parodist. That symbolic meaning held great importance for the Nazis, as evidenced by their use of the symbols in their regalia. The Schutzstaffel, for example – the 'SS' – used the duplicated runic 'Sig' as their sigil in order to create a connection between themselves to the Aryan history symbolized by those runes. The swastika likewise was an older symbol, in use throughout Asia and Europe, before it had ever been claimed and repurposed by the Nazis. They believed that they could thereby claim a part of the so-called 'Aryan heritage'. As you look through the exhibit, you will find other examples of runic symbols repurposed by the Nazis into symbols of their own ideology."
In front of Nath, Mireille stared at the armband, an uncomfortable look on her face. "I'm not disappointed that these symbols are illegal," she muttered. The German boy next to her nodded in agreement.
Mme Hartung hummed. "The use of these symbols, both during the War and since then, has created problems," she agreed, "but it is still important for us to recognize the symbols and understand the meaning given to them by the Nazis."
"And it is of further importance for us to learn the true heritage, not just of the symbols themselves, but of our own Germany," added M. Hauerfels. "Symbols retain their meaning, even when they are misused."
"Of course, sometimes the symbol can take on a completely new meaning," Marc observed to Nath as the group dispersed through the hall. He nodded to the next exhibit, showing articles of clothing bearing various forms of graffiti.
Dietrich had stopped in front of a helmet with a swastika on it which some American soldier had converted into a well-endowed woman. In the display case next to it was a flak jacket with "Judenmördertrupp" written across the back. A plaque beneath explained that it had been removed from the body of a guard on an Auschwitz train that had been destroyed by a bomb.
"They really thought that, didn't they?" Marc wondered, looking over his shoulder and shaking his head.
"That's what they thought," Dietrich agreed, staring at the word with narrowed eyes.
"And today?" prompted Marc.
Dietrich pursed his lips. "There are some who still do," he admitted bitterly. Nath's fist clenched. "Some people are still so stuck in the past that they can't get over it."
"Not everyone views the past with those rose-tinted glasses," Greta pointed out. "Most of us just want to put it behind us and fix the damage it did."
Dietrich hummed and moved down, freezing in front of a large metal panel. Following him, Nath stopped to look at that same panel: dark green-grey but almost entirely covered with a black cross set inside a white box. He cocked his head in confusion, examining it more closely. Something about it stirred a memory. Perhaps from one of Opa's stories…
"It says this is a front armor panel removed from a Panzer III," Marc read off the plaque next to it. "Though why they would draw a giant target on the front of their tank is beyond me…"
Dietrich let out a chuckle. "I suppose that is what the Cross looks like in this context," he agreed, pursing his lips.
Nath hummed contemplatively. "I noticed this image in a couple of the posters we passed," he began slowly. "Were there a lot of German tanks that used the Iron Cross on their armor?"
Greta frowned. "It depends on what you mean by that," she answered. "The Iron Cross was everywhere in Nazi iconography." Dietrich's lips set together in a thin line. "All German tanks had the symbol of the Wehrmacht on the side of their turret – that includes the Iron Cross. But that was small image. Not a big one like this."
"So why are there so many images of tanks with a giant Iron Cross on the front?" Marc wondered.
"Like Herr Hauerfels said, Hitler was very interested in anything that could demonstrate a unified 'Aryan cultural heritage', as he called it," Greta replied. "He grabbed anything he could with any sort of connection to German history, and the Teutonic Order is a good example of German military history. Their Iron Cross emblem was just one more symbol he claimed as his own – evidence of German martial strength which he could apply to his own military."
"Because if there's one thing Hitler was good at, it was taking other people's things and turning them to his own use," muttered Dietrich.
"That probably explains this knight image that keeps showing up with the Iron Cross," Nath observed, nodding. The "Magier" character Opa had described bore a striking resemblance to one of the figures in the posters, as well. Perhaps this artwork – the posters, the parodies, even the tanks – could explain some of the more fantastical elements of Opa's war stories, too.
Further down the aisle, Marc gasped.
"What is it?" Nath asked.
Marc shifted to block his view. "It's nothing," he replied quickly. Nath gave him a look, and he reluctantly moved aside, revealing a display case full of yellow badges of different varieties – armbands, squares of cloth, patches – all with variations of the same symbol on them: the Star of David. Nath's jaw clenched on seeing one constructed of a pink triangle superimposed over a yellow one. "Sorry," Marc apologized, grimacing.
"Jewish?" Greta asked curiously. Mutely Nath nodded, not taking his eyes off the display. Her eyes widened. "O–oh."
"Opa was one of the lucky ones," Nath finally told her, sighing heavily, tearing his eyes away. "But he knew many who weren't. When he escaped, his parents stayed behind in Stuttgart – they thought he would have a better chance on his own. He never saw them again, though after the War he heard they had been sent to Dachau within a month of his escape."
"I'm sorry," she whispered, looking away.
Nath shrugged. "I grew up with his stories – that really drove it all home for me," he admitted. "Opa actually kept the armband they forced him to wear – even after making it to France he wasn't safe from being branded." He chuckled. "It's funny: whenever he talks about it, half the time it's a symbol of oppression and humiliation, but the other half it's a symbol of protection and resistance."
"The yellow badge? A symbol of protection and resistance?" Dietrich cocked his head curiously.
Nath nodded. "At least that's what it means for him."
"What about for you?" asked Greta.
He furrowed his brows. "I'm not really sure."