Cold Peace

“You can’t just annul an election!” Jakob Liebherr protested indignantly. As an elected official, even if only a city councilman from the borough of Kreuzberg in the American Sector of Berlin, he felt strongly about elections. “You can’t ignore the will of the people and then pretend to represent them!”

“The elections were manipulated,” his son answered dismissively. 

The two men, one in his mid-fifties and the other half as old, faced each other across the kitchen table of an apartment in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The elder Liebherr was going bald, and his fringe of hair was mostly grey. His son, in contrast, had thick, dark, wavy hair over a strong, handsome face. Only those who had known the elder Liebherr in his youth would have recognised the resemblance. Two years in a concentration camp had sucked the good looks out of Jakob’s face, leaving it gouged with lines that made the bones unpleasantly prominent. 

Yet while those years had aged him, they had not broken him. His voice was strong and decisive. “Manipulated?” He challenged. “Indeed — by your friends the Soviets! Your friends knocked on doors and warned that anyone who voted against the merger of the KPD and SPD might disappear in Siberia for the rest of their lives. Your friends told women that they might not get milk for their children if they voted the ‘wrong’ way! Yet even then they feared the voice of the people. So, policemen obeying Soviet Military Government orders dispersed the people standing in line to vote, and Red Army soldiers barged into polling places to steal the ballot boxes. So, yes, very definitely there was massive voter intimidation and suppression — in the Soviet Sector. If the KPD needs Red Army soldiers to force people to vote for it, they — and you — are in trouble.”

“The German people cannot be trusted to vote in their best interests. They elected Hitler, remember!” Karl shot back, changing his argument altogether and glancing towards his mother for support.

Trude Liebherr was in her fifties and wore her grey hair combed severely into a bun at the back of her head. Sitting between her son and her husband, she had so far followed the argument intently but without comment. In answer to her son’s look, however, she spoke sharply. “That’s not true, Karl, and you know it. Hitler never received a majority of the vote in a free and fair election.” 

Karl exploded, throwing up his hands in a dramatic gesture of frustration. “That’s not the point! Hitler was controlled by capital. He was a puppet of the bankers and monopoly industrialists. We represent the People!”

“How can you represent “the people” if only 10% of the population votes for you?” His father brought the conversation back to the elections.

“Because we are on the side of progress!”