The First 100 Days of Hope
Berlin, Spring 1933
Chapter 2: The First 100 Days of Hope
The same employment office. The same wooden chairs. But on this March morning in 1933, Ernst Müller noticed something different the moment he stepped through the door—the clerk behind the desk was smiling.
The notice in Ernst's hand trembled. "Employment opportunity—report Tuesday 8 AM." After 1,127 days of unemployment, hope felt sharp, dangerous.
Near the back of the room, he spotted Hans Fischer, his old union representative. Fischer caught his eye and moved closer, speaking quietly.
"Ernst, before you sign anything, you should know—they're dissolving the unions. All of them. The Metalworkers' Federation, the Transport Workers, everything. The Labor Front will replace us all."
Ernst's stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"
"It means no collective bargaining. No independent representation. You work on their terms or you don't work at all." Fischer's face was a ruin. "Wilhelm Brandt tried to organize a protest vote. They arrested him yesterday. His wife doesn't know where he is."
The kitchen wall. The pencil marks for every hungry day. Greta's eyes.
"What choice do we have?" Ernst said quietly.
Fischer nodded slowly, defeat in his eyes. "That's exactly what they're counting on."
When Ernst's turn came, the clerk's enthusiasm was genuine. "Ernst Müller, metalworker. You're in luck. The new government is launching the greatest infrastructure project in German history—the autobahn network. We need skilled men immediately."
The clerk pushed a form across the desk. At the top, an eagle and a swastika. "Wages are set—no negotiation, but they're fair. Work rules are strict—no complaints, no organizing, no disruptions. In exchange, you get steady employment on a project that will make Germany great again."
Ernst looked at the signature line. Below the eagle, a blank space waited. A job for his voice.
He picked up the pen and signed.
Behind him, Hans Fischer watched silently, then turned and walked out into the morning light. Three days later, Ernst would hear that Fischer had been arrested for "political agitation." His family would receive no benefits, no support. The price of the old world dying was written in the lives of men like Fischer—men who had fought for workers when fighting mattered, now crushed to make room for the new order.
But on this March morning, Ernst folded his employment notice and walked home through streets that suddenly seemed brighter, his first thought for Greta and the words he'd been unable to say for so long: "I have work."
Greta Müller was counting pfennigs at the market on Schönhauser Allee when she heard the shopkeeper's wife mention it—"They say Hitler's putting men back to work. Real jobs, not temporary."
Her hands froze over the turnips she couldn't afford. She made herself finish counting before she allowed herself to hope. But walking home, she noticed it—conversations on stoops, faces less gray, the subtle shift in how people carried themselves. Something was changing.
When Ernst came through the door that afternoon, she knew before he spoke. It was in how he stood, how he met her eyes.
"I have work. I start Monday."
Greta pressed her hand to her mouth. Little Hans looked up from his schoolbooks, not quite understanding but reading his mother's reaction. She crossed to Ernst and he pulled her into an embrace, and for the first time in three years, it felt solid.
That evening, as Hans slept, Ernst told her everything. The autobahn. The wages. The dissolved unions.
"They arrested Wilhelm Brandt," he finished.
"And you signed." It wasn't a question.
"Greta..."
Her eyes went to the kitchen wall, to the faint pencil marks. She pulled the employment notice across the table, her finger tracing the wage numbers. Meat. More than once a month.
She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears he couldn't read. "Then God forgive us," she whispered.
"For what?" Ernst asked.
"For being grateful."
Three districts away, Otto Brenner sat in Café Einstein reading the Völkischer Beobachter with the careful attention of a man who understood that political promises meant nothing without economic reality. But the details in today's announcement were specific—four thousand kilometers of autobahn, hundreds of thousands of workers, massive contracts for construction materials.
"Steel," he murmured to himself. "They'll need steel."
His metalworking shop had been silent for three years, equipment rusting, his skilled workers scattered to whatever odd jobs they could find. But road building on this scale would require reinforcement bars, supports, machinery parts—exactly what his shop had produced before the depression destroyed everything.
His colleague Wilhelm Stern dropped into the chair across from him, breathless. "Have you seen it? Have you read the specifications?"
"I'm reading them now."
"Otto, this is real. These aren't vague promises—they have engineering plans, material requirements, construction timelines. If even half of this happens—"
"If," Otto interrupted. But his mind was already calculating. To reopen the shop, he'd need capital. The banks wouldn't lend without a contract, and the contracts were flowing from one place.
Six months ago, the thought would have been unthinkable. Otto had voted for the Center Party his entire adult life, had no patience for extremism. But six months ago, his wife Liesel hadn't been talking about whether they could afford to stay in their apartment.
"There's a meeting tonight," Wilhelm continued. "Local business owners. They're explaining how to qualify for contracts." He paused. "Party membership is required."
Otto folded the newspaper carefully. "What time?"
That evening, he walked through streets that were themselves transforming—shop windows beginning to show merchandise again, fewer shuttered storefronts, the subtle signs of money starting to flow. At the meeting, forty business owners sat in folding chairs while a party official in a crisp brown shirt explained the new economy.
"Contracts will go to reliable German businesses operated by party members in good standing. This isn't politics—it's common sense. The government needs to know its partners share the national vision." The official smiled, holding up a stack of papers. "Fortunately, membership applications are simple."
That night, Otto filled out the form at his kitchen table.
"It's just business," he told Liesel, not looking at her.
She was silent for a long moment. "Of course it is," she said.
Heinrich Weber stood in his farmyard south of Berlin, reading a letter from his son Klaus. The words carried an excitement absent for years: "Father, they say there will be work programs starting soon. Real work. I've put my name on three lists."
Heinrich looked across his empty fields. Spring planting should have begun, but without money for seed or certainty he could harvest what he planted, the earth lay fallow. The bank notices on his kitchen table grew more urgent each week.
A bicycle bell broke his thoughts. A young man in a brown shirt and swastika armband pedaled up the road.
"Herr Weber? I'm Hans Richter, regional agricultural coordinator. I hear you're facing difficulties."
Heinrich's jaw tightened. He didn't need Nazi party officials telling him what he already knew. "My family has farmed this land for three generations."
"And you'll farm it for three more—if you accept the help we're offering." Richter pulled out a folder. "Agricultural support programs. Guaranteed prices for crops. Low-interest loans for seed and equipment. And work on the autobahn projects during winter months, so your family has income year-round."
Despite himself, Heinrich felt his pulse quicken. "What's the cost?"
"Registration with the Reich Food Estate. Coordination with our agricultural efficiency programs. And—" Richter pulled out a membership card "—support for the political movement that supports German farmers."
Heinrich stared at the Nazi party membership card. Three years ago, he would have shown this young man the road. But three years ago, he'd believed his farm would survive.
"I'll need to discuss this with my wife."
"Don't wait too long. Programs start soon, and we can only help those willing to help themselves."
After Richter left, Heinrich found his wife Margarete in their kitchen, stirring soup that was mostly water and garden vegetables. He showed her the papers.
"What choice do we have?" she asked, echoing what thousands of Germans were asking themselves in those early weeks of 1933.
Heinrich had no answer. That evening, he filled out the membership application, and as he signed his name, he thought of Klaus in Berlin, hoping for work. Of his three daughters, growing thin on their meager meals. Of the land his grandfather had broken.
The Nazis were offering survival. The price was everything else.
Greta Müller first heard about it at the market two weeks after Ernst started work. Anna Schreiber, who had worked as a typist at the Siemens office, was there in the middle of a weekday, her face drawn.
"Why aren't you at work?" Greta asked.
"There is no work. They let six of us go last week—all women. They said returning soldiers need the positions." Anna's voice was bitter. "I've been there four years. I'm faster than half the men in the office. Doesn't matter."
Greta felt a chill despite the spring warmth. "But you need the money."
"They're offering us a loan to get married," Anna said, her voice brittle. "A thousand marks if you quit your job for good."
"A thousand marks?"
"And they forgive a quarter of it for every baby." Anna looked away. "My fiancé's been out of work for two years. What choice do I have?"
Over the following weeks, Greta heard the same story repeated. Her neighbor Frieda, who had worked at the textile mill—let go, replaced by a man. Her friend Elisabeth from church, who had kept the books at her family's grocery—told that family businesses should be run by men. Even the school where Hans studied announced that women teachers would be "gradually transitioned" to make room for male educators.
The party newspapers celebrated each change. "German Women Return Home!" proclaimed one headline over a photo of smiling women in traditional dress, surrounded by children. The subtext was clear—women who wanted to work were betraying their nature, taking jobs from men who deserved them.
At a neighborhood meeting Greta was required to attend, a party official explained the new system: "For too long, German women were forced into factories and offices, doing men's work, neglecting their sacred duty. We are restoring natural order. Women belong at the hearth, raising the next generation of Germans. Men belong at work, supporting their families."
The women in the audience applauded dutifully. What else could they do? Their husbands and fathers were finally finding work after years of desperation. If the price was women stepping aside, who were they to complain?
But Greta noticed the faces of the younger women, the ones who had dreamed of careers, of independence, of choices. She saw the same calculation she'd made herself when Ernst signed away his union rights—survival now, at the cost of freedom later.
Walking home, she passed a new poster: a radiant blonde woman surrounded by four children, her face glowing with contentment. "The Most Beautiful Work of Women: The Family!" it proclaimed.
Greta thought of Anna Schreiber's skilled typist hands, now only good for changing diapers.
That evening, she mentioned it carefully to Ernst. "Anna Schreiber lost her position at Siemens."
"I heard they're hiring more men," Ernst said, not quite meeting her eyes. "It's good—families need fathers working."
"And what about families that needed Anna working?"
Ernst was quiet. Finally: "What choice does anyone have?"
It was becoming the refrain of their new Germany—what choice, what choice, what choice. The answer, Greta was learning, was always the same: whatever choice put food on the table today, and let tomorrow's costs pile up unseen.
May 23, 1933, dawned clear and bright near Frankfurt. Ernst stood among thousands of workers gathered for the autobahn groundbreaking ceremony, and the scale overwhelmed him. Newsreel cameras. Flags rippling in perfect formation. Officials in crisp uniforms arranging workers in precise blocks. The scent of fresh earth mixed with oil from idling machinery, and above it all, the sharp smell of anticipation—thousands of men on the edge of transformation.
"Look at all this," murmured the worker next to Ernst, his voice full of wonder. "When did you last see organization like this?"
Never, Ernst thought. The Weimar government had made promises but delivered chaos. This was different—military precision applied to civilian life, every detail calculated for maximum effect.
When the motorcade arrived, the roar was a physical shock. Ernst found himself applauding, the sound of his own hands lost in the thunder. The man in the car had promised work. He had delivered.
Hitler's voice boomed from loudspeakers: "Today we begin to connect Germany not just with roads, but with purpose. These highways will carry German goods built by German workers for German families."
The crowd erupted. Ernst found himself swept up in the sound, despite everything. After three years of being told there was no work, no money, no future, here was a leader who spoke directly to his deepest needs.
"Four thousand kilometers of the finest roads in the world," Hitler continued. "Work for hundreds of thousands. Pride for millions. Germany on the move again."
A shovel broke the earth for the cameras. Ernst's eyes drifted past them, to the perimeter. Armed guards. And beyond them, a separate crew in gray uniforms, already digging.
Tomorrow he would be here with actual tools, doing actual work, earning actual wages. The pageantry was impressive, but the paycheck would be real.
That night, walking back to the workers' quarters, Ernst calculated his first week's wages against the cost of meat, real coffee, maybe even new shoes for Hans.
Ernst held his first paycheck like it might evaporate—crisp bills that represented more money than he'd seen in three years. The foreman had paid them at the work site, counting out wages in front of the entire crew, making a ceremony of it.
"Good work earns good wages," the foreman announced. "The new Germany rewards those who contribute to national greatness."
Walking home through Frankfurt's streets, Ernst kept touching his pocket to confirm the money was real. At a shop window, he stopped. A hand-crank coffee grinder, gleaming chrome and dark wood. Greta had been grinding ersatz coffee with a hammer wrapped in cloth for so long, she'd forgotten what fresh-ground real coffee tasted like.
He bought the grinder. Then, on impulse, real coffee beans—extravagant, wasteful, absolutely necessary. At the butcher, he bought sausages. At the baker, fresh rolls. His weekly wages wouldn't stretch to such excess regularly, but this first time, he needed Greta to understand that the world had truly changed.
He laid it all on the kitchen table. The coffee grinder gleamed under the bare bulb. Greta picked it up as if it were an artifact from another life.
"Ernst..."
"We can." He spread the bills on the table. "More next week."
That evening, their small apartment filled with the smell of real coffee and frying sausages. Hans watched his parents with wide eyes as they ate food he'd barely remembered existed.
"We're rich!" Hans exclaimed.
Ernst caught Greta's eye. Fed, her look said. Secure. After three years of desperation, it felt the same.
Otto Brenner's first contract payment came as a bank draft—payment for three tons of reinforcement steel delivered to the autobahn project near Dortmund. He stood in his workshop holding the draft, calculating what it meant.
He could rehire Klaus and Wilhelm. He could buy the sheet steel he needed for the next order. He could pay his workshop rent three months in advance. He could take Liesel to a proper restaurant.
That evening, he did all of it.
At the restaurant—the first time they'd eaten out in three years—Liesel wore the dress she'd saved for occasions that never came. They ordered without checking prices, and when the wine arrived, Otto poured with a steady hand.
"To survival," Liesel said, raising her glass.
"To prosperity," Otto corrected.
They drank, and for a moment, everything was perfect. Then Liesel spoke quietly: "Wilhelm told me his family is celebrating too. They're grateful to be working again."
"As they should be."
"He also told me about the new rules in your workshop. The party meetings during lunch. The political education sessions."
Otto set down his wine. "It's required for government contractors."
"I know. I'm not criticizing." She reached across the table. "I'm just saying—we should remember what we paid for this meal."
Otto wanted to argue that they'd paid with good work and quality steel. But he knew what she meant. The party membership card in his wallet. The workers who now attended mandatory meetings. The suppliers he could no longer use because they weren't "politically reliable." The small moral compromises that made prosperity possible.
"The food is good," he said finally.
"Yes," Liesel agreed. "The food is very good."
They finished their meal in silence, prosperity and unease sharing the same table.
When the agricultural support payment reached Heinrich Weber's farm, he stood in his kitchen holding the envelope, hardly believing it. Margarete counted the bills twice, then looked up with tears in her eyes.
"We can plant," she whispered. "We can actually plant."
That afternoon, they went to town together—the first time they'd had money to spend in over a year. At the agricultural supply office, Heinrich bought seed for spring planting. Not just survival crops, but wheat—real wheat that he could sell for profit if the government's guaranteed prices held.
At the general store, Margarete bought flour, sugar, real butter. Their daughters needed feeding, and for the first time in memory, she could buy ingredients instead of just stretching what little they had.
"There's enough for Klaus too," Heinrich said. "We should send him something."
They assembled a package—sausage, cheese, fresh bread, and a letter explaining that things were improving, that the farm might survive after all, that he shouldn't worry so much about them.
Walking home, their bags full for the first time in years, Heinrich felt the weight of the Nazi party membership card in his pocket. It seemed like such a small thing compared to what it had bought—the survival of his family's farm, food for his daughters, hope for the first time since the depression had crushed them.
"Do you think Klaus found work?" Margarete asked.
"I think everyone's finding work now," Heinrich replied. "The government seems serious about putting Germany back to work."
What he didn't say—what he tried not to think about—was the growing list of requirements that came with the support payments. Participation in party agricultural meetings. Reporting on neighbors who hoarded crops. Quotas on what to plant and when. The freedom of farming was being replaced by directed efficiency, and the price of survival was accepting that direction without question.
But that evening, watching his daughters eat their first full meal in months, the price seemed bearable.
By July, Ernst had grown accustomed to the rhythm of construction work and the satisfaction of steady wages. So when he arrived at the work site to find guards escorting a new group of prisoners in gray uniforms to the far section, he pretended not to notice.
Wilhelm, the older worker on his crew, spat onto the ground. "More political prisoners. Communists, they say."
Ernst kept working, but watched from the corner of his eye. The prisoners moved earth like the paid workers, but their faces showed resignation. Men removed from their lives for crimes of opinion.
"Why are they here?" Ernst asked quietly.
"Same reason we are—to build roads. Difference is, we get paid and go home. They work for nothing and go back to camps." Wilhelm's voice was flat. "Economics, Ernst. Why pay full wages when prisoners cost nothing?"
The words settled into Ernst's stomach like stones. Every road he helped build was also built by forced labor. Every paycheck he earned was made possible partly by men who earned nothing at all.
At the end of shift, a party official addressed the workers: "Some of you have noticed our work rehabilitation program participants. These men made choices against Germany's interests. Now they contribute to Germany's renewal. This is justice—they work to repair what they damaged."
Ernst said nothing, but that night he lay awake thinking about Hans Fischer, about Wilhelm Brandt, about all the men who had been arrested for trying to preserve unions. Were they in camps now? Were they building roads for no wages while Ernst collected his paycheck?
When he mentioned it to Greta, she was quiet for a long time. Finally: "What would you have us do? Refuse your wages? Protest and join them?"
"No, but—"
"Then we accept it. We accept it because we have no choice, and we remember it so we know what it cost."
The prisoners became part of the landscape. Ernst's focus shifted to his own work, his own wages, his own family's improving situation.
By autumn, the Müller family had achieved stability that would have seemed miraculous a year earlier. Their apartment was warm, their pantry stocked, their conversations focused on possibilities rather than mere survival.
But Ernst was also noticing other changes. The party meetings at work had become mandatory, with attendance tracked. The Labor Front representative visited regularly, explaining that workers' loyalty was to Germany itself, not to narrow class interests. His foreman kept a list of who participated enthusiastically in patriotic activities and who merely went through the motions.
One evening, Hans came home from youth group singing a new song—the Horst Wessel anthem, about flags and marching and the SA. He sang it proudly, and Greta smiled at their son's enthusiasm while Ernst felt that familiar twist in his gut.
"They teach us about German greatness," Hans explained. "About how we're building a new Germany stronger than ever before. My teacher says children like me will help make Germany the greatest nation in the world."
Later, after Hans was in bed, they sat under their new electric lamp. The light felt clean, solid. Ernst polished the chrome coffee grinder with his thumb, watching the light play across its surface.
Greta was darning a sock, her hands moving with a steady rhythm that had returned to her.
Outside, the hammering from a construction site went on, long into the night. A second shift. A third. It was the sound of the city coming back to life. The sound of momentum.
Ernst looked from the gleaming grinder to his wife's hands, then to the closed door of his son's room. He was grateful. He was afraid. He fell asleep to the sound of them building the future, wondering what it would cost.
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