I suppose you think that after I got selected as a Hitler Youth leader that I spent the summer marching around in khaki shorts, all tanned and muscled. Not at all true. I spent the summer pretty much as usual - reading "Batman" comic books with my best neighborhood friend, Teddy Novatny, and the two of us biked all over western St. Paul - as far north as Monkey Wards on University Avenue, as far south as Fort Snelling on the Mississippi River. It was a lazy, sleepy summer, my May visions half-forgotten. I suppose only one thing had changed. I found myself with even greater courage in my dealings with brother Sonny's girlfriend Peggy. Once in late June when she was visiting our home, I boldly suggested, "You should start up that song group again, the one you were in at Central."

"Our Boswell Sisters act? Why should I do that? Who'd want to listen to my crow-cawing?" Despite her words, her eyes twinkled as if my suggestion pleased her.

"You sing real good, Peggy. You should be on radio or even the movies."

"Hey, Sonny, why don't you give me pep talks like your kid brother does? He appreciates my talent."

My brother had disappeared into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. "So do I, but it's not your singing I'm talking about."

"Letch! I mean it, Sonny, how come you don't have confidence in me the way the kid does?"

Sonny came to the dining room door, made several limp jokes, teased her, and I saw she was getting mad.

---Good. Maybe she'll give Sonny hell---

Well, she didn't really blow up at him, but that day did have a powerful significance. She got in touch with the two friends with whom she sang in high school, Nona and Louise, and she also followed another suggestion I made. I said, "Instead of the Boswells, why don't you try to sound more like the Andrews Sisters? They're more up-to-date."

Then Sonny left town for two weeks to attend ROTC camp at Camp Ripley in central Minnesota. The first Monday when he was gone, the day Peggy had set for her first rehearsal with Nona and Louise, I decided to be bold. Without waiting to be invited, I looked up Peggy's address in the phone book - a house on Saratoga, four blocks away - and, on a sticky, sweaty afternoon in July, I biked over there. I tapped at the locked porch screen door. Peggy's battleship mother loomed into sight, slowly sailed through the porch toward me.

"Hi, I'm Bill Haller, Sonny's brother. I came to see Peggy."

"Is she expecting you?" the lady sniffed.

"I don't think so."

"Wait. I'll tell her you're here." She glided back into the house, leaving me on the porch.

---She looks like she's the only person in Minnesota who isn't sweating this day. Oh, Peggy won't want me here. This probably was a bad idea---

"Billy! Come in." Peggy smiled at me as if I'd brought her the biggest present in the world, even though all I had with me was me. "Nona and Louise are coming over this afternoon, did you know that?" I nodded. "Oh boy! I'm so nervous, the ants in my pants have ants in their pants. Did I do something awful dumb to start up all this junk again? Oh boy! Who do I think I am? Anyhow? I couldn't sleep last night. My sheets kept twisting around me like boa constrictors, and you probably noticed, kid, when I get nervous I cant stop talking."

"They must be awful small."

"Who? What?"

"The pants on your ants."

"Say, kid, if you think they're small, you oughta see the ants in the pants on my ants."

"Why are you so nervous?"

"Heck if I know. You see, if I'm just goofing around and I sing, it comes out fine, but if I do it for serious, I'm afraid I'll lay an egg."

"What kind?"

She looked at me surprised, "What kind of egg, you mean?"

"Ya."

She laughed. "I guess a big ostrich egg, color brown."

That made me laugh.

"Hey, kid, I feel better. Maybe it's okay to resume the careers of Nona, Peggy and Louise."

"That's what you call yourselves?"

"Ya, back at Central High, that was us."

"You should be first. Make it OPeggy, Nona and Louise.' It was your idea to start up again."

"Well, really your idea, kid, but maybe you're right. I guess we could make it Peggy, Nona and Louise."

"And your first number should be OBeer Barrel Polka' Ocause that's getting real popular."

"Not a bad idea."

Peggy let me stay when Nona and Louise arrived and when Nona referred to the group as ONona, Peggy and Louise,' Peggy looked at me and I frowned and she suggested the change of names which Nona didn't like but they put it to a vote and Louise sided with Peggy. And then Peggy suggest they start with "Beer Barrel Polka," which Nona agreed to as long as they also did "Well, All Right."

Peggy let me visit every day during the next two weeks during the trio's rehearsals, and when Sonny came home from Camp Ripley, he was furious. I heard him telling our mother, "I don't want Bill going over to Peggy's any more."

"Shouldn't Peggy decide about that?" I heard my mother ask softly.

"No! She's my girlfriend. I'll decided who can visit her."

I didn't visit Peggy's again, but I was delighted, later in the summer, when the three women appeared on station WDGY's amateur hour and won. They did a great rendition of "South American Way," first singing it like the Andrews Sisters and then Peggy singing a version in which she sounded just like Carmen Miranda.

* * *

Toward the end of August, I dreaded that soon school would resume. The news of the world grew exciting. Throughout spring and summer, recurrently we heard rumors of war. Hitler demanded the city of Danzig and part of the Polish Corridor, and Poland persisted in refusing him. Then late in August came amazing news: Germany and Russia, always assumed to be undying enemies, signed a friendship treaty. They agreed not to fight each other. Just about everyone recognized that nothing now stood in the way of a German invasion of Poland.

"Darn, I should have ordered more ice. I didn't reckon right on this weather. Bill, would you go down to the ice house and get me a ten-pound chunk? Here's the money." My mother handed me a quarter. "He'll give you the change."

Ordinarily the ice man delivered our ice, my mother putting a card in the rear window of the kitchen to show him how big a piece to deliver to our back door from his truck parked in the alley. But a half-block away, on the corner of St. Clair and Albert, a small ice house stood at the front of a vacant lot. We could always buy extra pieces of ice there during hot weather. Carrying an empty canvas bag, I padded down our ally, my feet bare. The alley had been tarred one week earlier and so gave forth that petroleum perfume I loved and always associated with summer vacation. Fortunately the tar was no longer sticky so my feet wouldn't track any into the house when I returned.

The ice house boy, a simple, skinny 17-year-old, put down his half-smoked Camel and sawed off a chunk of ice for me, weighed it. "I think somebody in the back room wants to talk to you."

"The back room? You gotta back room in the ice house?"

He nodded solemnly. I stepped inside the windowless shed, feeling the coolness of the sawdust-strewn ice blocks as I side-stepped past them. Dimly, I saw a door, but I found no room, just a wooden stairway leading down to the basement.

---I didn't know that the ice house had a basement. When it's taken down each fall, I only see bare ground here---

A large, solid-looking, secure door stood only inches away from the bottom step. A faint, perhaps ten-watt, bulb above the door made it possible for me to see it. There was no one to talk with, and I saw no point in knocking on the door, but then suddenly the door opened inward, and a young man in a Nazi uniform grabbed my arm and without a word pulled me inside. I was too startled to call out.

"You're expected. Go through that door." He pointed to another large door about six feet away. I opened the second door, discovered a large, light and airy, although windowless, room, in the center of which stood a circular table, around which sat my acquaintances from May - Bernard Vorster, Rudi Miller, Jamie Wood and Otto Schwartz. They smiled to see me.

"Have you been here long?" I asked.

"Just got here," Rudi answered.

"Have you guys been meeting since we met last May?"

Again Rudi replied. "No, this is the first time in three months. It's only our second meeting."

"Why are we here?" I asked.

Rudi shrugged. Otto commented, "I suppose it has to do with the war."

"What war?" I thought maybe I'd missed something.

"The war which is about to break out any day now. World War Two."

"What's that got to do with us?"

Rudi answered, "Everything." Rudi, the tallest of the five of us, seemed a bit bossy in his manner. An average-looking kid with a hard-looking face, a suggestion he could be cruel, he clearly acted as if he were the most confident of the five of us. "Seeing the war is coming and seeing I'm the only one here with war experience, I should be this group's leader."

Bernard, the most soft-spoken and gentle of the group, quietly asked, "Do we need a leader?" Bernard had a pleasant face. He smiled readily, and he appeared to want to be liked.

Rudi almost barked, "We always need leaders. Hard tasks and hard times require hard leaders."

Jamie commented in his Australian accent, "I'm sure I don't want a hard leader, if indeed we need a leader at all, and if we do, shouldn't we put it to a vote? I nominate Bernard."

Rudi almost exploded: "Vote! Nominate! Are you trying to bring decadent western democratic practices into the Third Reich?"

Bernard softly inquired, "And how else do we made the decision unless Baldur von Schirach himself appoints one of us?"

Rudi retorted, "I proclaim my leadership."

"And I deny it!" Jamie responded. Jamie was half-a-head shorter than Rudi, so if they fought physically, he was likely to lose. However, he seemed cleverer than Rudi, and maybe that would help him somehow. Jamie had a wiry build, a somewhat wise-guy attitude. I wasn't sure I liked him.

Bernard added, "And I agree with Jamie."

Otto entered the conversation for the first time. Although from Latin America, he was the most Nordic looking of the five of us, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, muscular. "I think that means were forced to vote, and I vote for Rudi."

"I vote for my nominee - Bernard. What's your vote, mate?" Jamie looked at me.

I felt too frightened to vote against Rudi and yet, if this were the Third Reich, I must force myself to be courageous. "Bernard."

Rudi looked crestfallen. "I vote for myself but that means I still lose three to two."

Bernard disagreed. "You assume I'll vote for myself. No, I'll let this honor pass. I vote for you Rudi."

Rudi looked startled, almost stunned, and then he began beaming. I couldn't see what was so special or important in being the leader of our fivesome. Eventually I would learn.

Bernard asked, "You speak of war experience, Rudi. Are you talking about drills - learning to shoot with a rifle and pistol, that sort of thing?"

"It's true that I am probably the only one of the five of us that went to the pistol practice. Is that right? You'll find it a..." Rudi smiled slyly. "...rather unique experience. But no, I wasn't talking about all that. Living in Shanghai I've been right in the middle of the Japanese war in China. And of course, Nanking is just up river from us, and you've all heard of the Rape of Nanking?"

Even I had heard of the Rape of Nanking, although I didn't want to tell the others that the source of my information was from a bubble-gum "War" trading card some of my school mates were exchanging.

I heard Otto requesting, "Tell us about it."

Rudi began, "Tens of thousands of Chinese civilians in Nanking were raped, tortured and killed by the Japanese army over a period of many weeks during the winter of 1937-1938. What they did was..."

Rudi proceeded to recite very disturbing details of the atrocities. He reported all of it flatly, with no sign of pleasure, but, on the other hand, with no sign of distress. I saw no expression on Otto's or Jamie's faces, and I admired their steely strength. Bernard, however, looked as horrified as I felt. I thought I would throw up.

A Nazi soldier entered the room and interrupted his recital. "Rudi Miller, it is time for your interview." Rudi got up, left the room, following the soldier.

Bernard was the first to speak, "What Rudi described was horrible. I didn't want to hear any more."

Jamie narrowed his eyes. "War always produces horrors. One must be strong enough to face them and, if necessary, endure them."

Bernard protested, "But not perpetrate them."

Jamie turned to me, "What's your opinion, mate?"

"I don't know that word - perpet..."

"Perpetrate. To do them. To actually torture or kill someone."

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't torture. I couldn't kill," I answered.

"Sometimes it is necessary," our Nordic-looking friend from Argentina commented.

The door opened and the soldier asked for Otto Schwartz, the lad from Argentina. Otto said his goodbyes to us three remaining boys, very politely.

After the door shut, Jamie looked at Bernard. "I'm sorry you didn't vote for yourself. I think you would have been the best leader."

"What's a leader supposed to do?" I asked.

Jamie smiled at me, "I suppose that's for the leader to decide."

The leader or the leader?" Bernard asked.

"Of course, the Fuehrer as the principal leader, but within our group of five, it now is Rudi who will decide, and I'm not sure I entirely trust him."

"Why?"

Bernard didn't get to hear Jamie's answer because the soldier reentered, announced it was Bernard's turn.

After the door close I asked, "Who do you suppose we're meeting?"

"Baldur von Shirach, no doubt. You see, it sounds like it's someone high up which von Schirach is. In fact, he's the top leader for us kids. It wouldn't be any other high official because all of them would be far too busy with the war-planning to meet with our lot." I found myself admiring Jamie's cleverness.

"There's sure to be war?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, no doubt of that."

The soldier returned. Jamie left. I sat alone, waiting.

---How could all these rooms be located under the ice house? I wonder what time it is. Mom's going to be worried that I'm gone so long. What can I tell her? She''ll think I'm crazy if I tell her about all of this. Am I crazy? Is all this just my rich imagination?---

I struck my fist on the table hard. "Ow!"

---Imagination can't be that vivid. My hand really hurts---

I sat quietly for several minutes.

---I don't mind talking to von Schirach. He seemed nice enough when I met him last May---

The door opened. The soldier said, "Come." I followed him down a long, dimly-lit corridor. We came to an elevator. "Step inside, please." He pushed the top button and the elevator shot rapidly up several stories - six or eight.

---But where is this building? There's no building this tall in my neighborhood---

The elevator door opened onto an opulent marble corridor, flanked by Nazi flags and uniformed guards and burning wall torches. Two guards opened a pair of tall doors for me to enter. I was very aware of my bare, dirty feet as the marble floor gave way to a deep-pile carpet of blood red color. I was standing in a large palatial office, the marble of which reminded me of the lobby of the St. Paul Courthouse. I saw a huge desk on the side of the office opposite me. A man sat at the desk but he had turned in the swivel-chair so his back was toward me. However, I could tell it was not Shirach. Even the back of the man looked somewhat familiar, the shape of the head. I'd seen it somewhere before. The man turned. Adolf Hitler! Hitler was seated in the chair right across from me. He said softly, kindly, "William Haller, I believe."

"Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Fuehrer."

Hitler smiled slightly. He gestured to a chair, "Please sit."

I sat silently, stiffly, aware of the fact I was trembling noticeably. Hitler didn't appear to be paying attention to that.

"You are no doubt surprised to see me. And I'm sure you want to ask are we in Berlin or are we in America. The true answer is - that we are everywhere and no where. You may also be surprised to hear me speaking in perfect, unaccented English. You may have heard that I speak only German. Are we speaking English or are we speaking German? The answer, similarly, is we are speaking both and neither. The Third Reich has a magical dimension, only seen by a few of my followers, you being one such follower. We are now in that magical dimension. Although not everything is possible in this realm, still, many things not usually possible are possible here. You believe me?"

As he spoke my trembling ceased. That warm feeling I had first noticed in the shoemaker's shop, filled me and grew and with that feeling I felt greater and greater confidence. I found myself answering him in a calm, strong voice. "Of course, I believe you, my Fuehrer. I always have and I always will."

"A very good answer. I can see I made the right selection for North America."

---Is he suggesting that some of the other choices of boys aren't right?---

"I wanted this interview merely so we could meet one another. We will have other meetings and opportunities for longer chats. Before we exchange salutes, may I grasp your hand in the old-fashioned greeting?"

I stuck out my right hand and Hitler shook it, his hand being surprisingly soft, almost like a woman's. He held my hand for a long time and I felt even more warmth flowing from his hand than I had previously experienced from his eyes, from his voice. He drew his band back and almost barked, "Dismissed!"

I stuck my arm straight out and loudly proclaimed "Heil Hitler!"

He raised his bent arm upwards in desultory fashion, the expression on his face one of boredom or perhaps exhaustion.

Suddenly I was walking up my alley, carrying a piece of ice in the canvas bag my mother had provided. I opened the screen door leading into the kitchen, expecting to hear my mother's concern at my long absence. Instead she said, "Oh, you're back, Bill, good. Just put the ice in the top of the ice box, would you, please?"

"Sure, Mom." I looked at the kitchen clock. Only about ten minutes had elapsed since I had departed from this room on my errand.