Fatherland

On the flight back, March obsesses over the events, recording them on pieces of paper and shuffling them around. He knows that the three men were all high-ranking officials in 1942. They began smuggling art and then retired in the early 1950s, all quite wealthy and powerful.

Sometime during the last week, the three men began to panic that they the Gestapo was investigating them. Thursday, Stuckart got the phone number for the payphone outside Charlie’s apartment. Because they couldn’t use the embassy for fear of being discovered, they sought to contact the US through Charlie. On Friday, April 11, the three men met to discuss their options. On Saturday, Stuckart called Charlie, asking her to meet him on Sunday, but she found him dead. Luther flew to Zürich to get something out of the bank but returned to find Stuckart and Buhler dead; he fled Berlin with the item.

In the end, March is frustrated that he can’t figure out the missing pieces. Because it’s Friday, he only has the weekend to figure it out, as the Führertag is Monday.

Charlie sleeps for most of the flight, her head resting on March’s shoulder. When she wakes up, March asks her if she’s certain that Stuckart contacted her on Thursday—before his meeting with the other two men. He wonders if Luther knew about the phone call. If he did, he may try to contact Charlie himself.

When they arrive at the airport, Charlie and March part ways to go through customs. He assures her that he’ll let her know if he discovers anything else. After an awkward moment, she kisses him on the cheek.

Back at home, March writes a report to Nebe. He hesitates and then writes that he found nothing in the box in Zürich. He then takes the report to Nebe.

Nebe tells March that he doesn’t believe the recent events could be a coincidence. He considers whether the deaths of the two men could be tied to Kennedy’s visit to Berlin. He hints at the precariousness of Germany’s position, as they’re fighting a war for land using soldiers who are increasingly less interested in fighting. He worries about the country’s future.

March visits Halder at the Reichsarchiv, telling him that he needs help and giving Halder the opportunity to decline. However, Halder insists that he wants to help him. March explains that he’s looking for a connection between the three men. Halder notes that they all worked for different government agencies in the 1940s; he only has access to records related to the Ministry (Stuckart’s department).

Halder leads March into the archives. It contains thousands of boxes, so March suggests that they start with 1942, around the time that Stuckart opened the bank box. As they search through the files, March finds a letter from Heydrich, mentioning that an interdepartmental meeting is being postponed from December to January. However, when they go to the date of the meeting, they find that a file has been removed and that Heydrich himself signed it out just 11 days ago.

March is disappointed, believing that the information he wants occurred at the meeting and that he now has no way of finding it. On the verge of giving up, Halder decides to check back to December, when the meeting was first scheduled. To his surprise, he finds the original invitation from Heydrich.

As March goes outside, Berlin has begun to celebrate Hiter’s birthday. Fireworks go off overhead as people dance in the street.

March returns to the office with copies of the invitation from Heydrich. He sits at his desk to read it more closely. In it, Heydrich invited 14 men to an interdepartmental meeting to discuss the “Endlösung”: a “complete solution of the Jewish question in Europe” (221). He asked for an open discussion on what to do with the Jewish people that had been transported east.

March then looks over the list of invited members. Over the next few hours, he uses police files and obituaries to track the men down. He learns that 13 of them are dead, all under suspicious circumstances like car accidents, terrorist attacks, and suicide. Only Stuckart is still alive.

When March finishes, he notices a note attached to his phone to call the Duty Office.

March goes to the Gotenland train station. He finds Globus there with several other officers. The officers received a report of a man matching Stuckart’s description and then arrived to find a dead body on the tracks that had been run over by a train.

Globus shows March the body. The face is smashed in, and two limbs are missing. Globus produces Stuckart’s passport and a pile of money that was found on the body. He mocks March, informing him that he’ll now be taken off the case.

At around two o’clock in the morning, March reaches Charlie’s apartment. He hears music playing loudly from within. Charlie greets him at the door, and then he sees a man standing behind her who was with her at the bar the first time they met. Charlie introduces him as Henry Nightingale and says he works at the US Embassy.

Charlie takes the two men into the bathroom, where they turn up the music and turn on the water. She insists that her apartment is likely bugged. She then plays two recordings of phone conversations with Luther. In the first, he asks Charlie to go to the phone booth outside her apartment. In the second, he tells her that he needs help getting to the Embassy in exchange for information. He insists that she meet him the next morning with someone who works there, which is why she included Henry.

When Charlie finishes, March asks when the calls happened. She confirms that they occurred just after Luther’s body was allegedly discovered. March speculates that Luther found someone to die in his place, faking his own death.

March shows Charlie and Henry the documents about the Final Solution. He thinks that Luther will likely show the US proof of what happened to Jewish people during World War II, something that has always been hidden from the public after Germany’s victory.

Henry is uncertain about everything. He insists that the Embassy will need more proof than a letter or Luther’s words. He’ll likely be unable to get Luther into the Embassy at all, especially as it could disrupt the United States’ recent efforts at peace through their state visit.

March argues that Luther intentionally involved Charlie. If the US fails to act and she publishes the story, it would be even more embarrassing for them not to have acted. In the end, they agree to pick Luther up, hear his story, and then decide whether to take him to the Embassy.

Later, March and Charlie lay in bed together. She shows him a book of famous art that she bought. Within is the portrait from the bank box. It’s Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci and is said to have been lost in 1932 in Krakau.

After Charlie falls asleep, March sits in the bathroom drinking instant coffee. He considers whether he could go to the US to live. All he knows of the country are the negative things that the German media and government publish.

When Charlie wakes up, she and March quietly prepare to go to the meeting. March decides to continue not to wear his uniform, instead putting on a large coat to conceal his gun underneath. On the way out the door, he turns the radio all the way up as it replays Hitler’s famous speeches.

March sits in his car near the Great Hall, while Charlie and Henry meet on the steps. As March watches, Luther descends the steps toward them. Just as he reaches out to touch Charlie, he’s shot in the head. The square erupts into chaos as March starts his vehicle and quickly drives to them. Charlie and Henry jump in, and March drives away.

When March finally stops, he confronts Henry about who he told about their meeting. He insists that he didn’t tell anyone, but in March’s mind, it’s the only logical reason for how their meeting could have been discovered. Henry pleads with Charlie to return to the Embassy with him and leave the country. When she refuses, he angrily gets out of the car.

Alone, Charlie asks March if she can go take pictures. He hesitates and then realizes that he has nothing else to do except wait for his arrest now that they lost Luther.

March takes Charlie to Lake Havel. Although not much is left of where Buhler’s body was found, she takes pictures anyway.

March and Charlie sit overlooking the lake. March wonders aloud why Luther arrived at the Great Hall with nothing. He assumed that Luther would have whatever he took from the bank box. He reasons that Luther likely wanted to hold it back in case he couldn’t trust Charlie or the people at the Embassy. He decides that his next step should be to find it.

March and Charlie drive to the morgue. March learns that Luther’s body is there along with the body from the Great Hall shooting. March goes through the clothes Luther died in but finds nothing, leaving him angry and disappointed.

As they leave the morgue, Charlie speculates that Luther might not have brought anything back from Zürich. March initially argues, but Charlie points out how difficult it would have been for him to get it through the security checks at the airport.

March goes to the airport. The head of security is a corrupt man who willingly helps March to improve his standing with the police. His men search the things left in the airport over the last week, eventually returning with a locked briefcase that was left after a flight from Zürich.

Unsure where to go to examine the case, March and Charlie return to the hotel where March first had breakfast with Halder. Although all the hotels throughout the city are booked for the holiday, the manager allows them access to a maid’s room for privacy as a favor to March.

After several minutes of struggle, March succeeds in breaking the case open with a knife.

Inside the case is a typed affidavit from Stuckart dated June 4, 1942, and witnessed by Buhler. In this affidavit, Stuckart recounts a conversation in December 1941 with an adviser on Jewish affairs, Dr. Bernhard Losener. He informed Stuckart that he learned from an informant that 1,000 Jewish people taken from Berlin were executed in Poland.

To follow up on the information, Stuckart met with Heydrich the next day. Instead of denying the accusations, Heydrich told Stuckart that Hitler had asked him to begin the execution of Jewish people to finally answer “the Jewish Question once and for all” (268). According to Heydrich, Hitler insisted that, when they won the war, no one would be concerned about how they did it. When Stuckart asked for a written record of Hitler’s order, Heydrich insisted that it couldn’t be recorded. He then asked Stuckart to find the informant who spoke to Losener to ensure secrecy.

Another document is a record of a conversation between a German Ambassador and Joseph Kennedy, a US Ambassador. In it, Kennedy addresses the trouble that the “loud clamor” that the removal of Jewish people caused, rather than the act of doing so. The writer notes that he “believe[s] [Kennedy] would get on very well with the Führer” (271).

Charlie begs March to take the documents to the embassy. However, he’s adamant that he must review them, especially since they implicate the US government.

Another document from the Central Construction Office discusses the size and construction of “crematories” at Auschwitz. Another is a handwritten list Buhler made in July 1943 of concentration camp locations.

March assures Charlie that he has a plan. At a pharmacy nearby, they buy bottles, brown paper, gift wrapping paper, and tape. They then go to the Tempelhof Airport, where Charlie rents a car, using the identification of a recently deceased woman that March got from work. He knows it’s a risk, as the Orpo will find the rental agreement, but he hopes that this won’t happen until after the holiday.

Back in the room, March reviews the documents more systematically. He finds schedules of trains from Berlin to different camps, tracking the dates and times over several years. March is shocked when the math reveals that more than 1 million Jewish people were likely moved each year.

Meanwhile, Charlie colors her hair in the bathroom to disguise herself.

On July 15, 1943, Luther wrote notes from his first visit to Auschwitz. A man named Weidemann showed him the camp. Luther noted its sheer size and its smell. He saw a train of Jewish people arrive from France. They were separated into men, who could work, and women and children. Weidemann told him that there were about 2,000 women and children. They were taken to a gas chamber and executed, and then their bodies were incinerated.

March puts together a timeline. Just a month after visiting Auschwitz, on August 9, Luther made a deposit into the bank box for the last time. He sees the name “Kritzinger” on many of the documents and deduces that this was the fourth man who got a key to the box.

Afterward, March takes a bath. He repeatedly plunges himself into the water, holding his breath. He wonders if he’ll “ever be clean again” (285).