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.After he had been discovered throwing dirt instead of coalinto the tubs, he was beaten and threatened with death.This hadmeant little to him. Many of us, he said, had reached the pointat which one no longer cares whether one lives or dies. After it was found that he was a qualified engineer, Erhardt hadbeen taken out of the mines but he had already developed waterswelling in his feet through starvation and was sent to a hospitalon the Volga.The patients here were all Germans and they wereas badly starved as before.Sometimes they received no bread for amonth and existed entirely on spoonfuls of gruel given them morn-ing and evening and a midday bowl of watery soup.When theycomplained to the woman doctor in charge she told them to go toHitler for food.Finally, in November 1945, when his weight hadsunk to 92 pounds and he could not stand upright Erhardt hadbeen sent home to die.But he had gradually recovered under hismother s care.When I met him he was still terribly emaciated, withdeep sunken eyes, still a young man but one who smiled rarelyand talked very little.When I asked him what had sustained himthrough his terrible experiences, he said simply that it was the hopeof coming home.He had fought through the whole war, been atDunkirk and in occupied France, marched thousands of miles andrefused a commission because he hated the army, but he had donehis duty as a man and a German and felt the ruin of his countryas deeply as his family s personal losses.Margarita had meanwhile married her René, who had been senthome by the Germans after he became useless as a slave laborer,but had rushed back to Siegen from France to find his love, imme-diately the war ended.René Devilliers was slim and elegant, witty, intellectual, and so-phisticated.Margarita was like a little girl in a fairy tale, simplydressed, without make-up, gay and sweet, with her heart on hersleeve.I have rarely seen two young people so much in love and sodevoted to one another.Margarita had a kidney ailment as thelegacy of her ill treatment in prison, and René was tubercular, butthey were both radiantly happy, and when they visited the Weberhouse the sad atmosphere gave way to gaiety. 114 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCEErhardt and René, so different in temperament, one so veryFrench and the other so very German, were good friends betterfriends than Erhardt and his brother Otto who was the black sheepof the family, and earned his living by his wits rather than by hardwork.René and Erhardt had both fought and suffered and enduredthe horrors of forced labor and hunger as prisoners of war, and al-though they had been on opposite sides they understood and re-spected each other while Margarita adored them both.Each repre-sented in his own way the best qualities of their two nations.Er-hardt complained that René, being a Frenchman, did not knowhow to work hard, while René said Erhardt was married to his fac-tory and had never learned to enjoy life.I used to think, while staying with the Webers, that I had thewhole picture of Germany and France in that household.If onlythe two nations could get together and combine their virtues andtheir talents, the Germans putting diligence and endurance intothe French, and the French teaching the Germans the graces oflife, Europe could be made peaceful and strong.In fact, there isnot really so wide a gap between the South Germans and theNorthern French.René came from the Vosges district on the otherside of the Rhine and in ages past his ancestors and Erhardt s wereone people.As soon as he was able to walk and work, Erhardt had started todig out the machinery from under the debris of the Weber Works,and repair it with the aid of the skilled workers who from genera-tion to generation had worked for the Weber family.By 1947 thefactory was working again producing welding torches, gas cutting ma-chines, and other badly needed reconstruction machinery, and em-ploying a hundred workers.Frau Weber now had German refugeesfrom the East to feed and care for instead of Russian and Frenchprisoners.Otto was married and had a child.The vegetable andflower gardens which were Frau Weber s pride were both bloom-ing.New red brick walls were rising where the original bombed-outbuildings had stood.For a few months it had seemed that theWebers troubles were ended, although Frau Weber s dearest son,Günther, would never come home and Helmuth was slowly dying.Then the British ordered the Weber works dismantled.All Er-hardt s gallant labors had gone for nothing.He and his family wereto be ruined.Margarita and René would also be destitute, for Renéhaving married a German had to give up the career of an officer TRAGEDY IN SIEGERLAND 115in the French Army, which his father had followed before him, andwas also working for Webers.The residual value of the Weber Works was calculated at only36,000 marks, but the cost of replacing the machinery to be sentto the scrap heap was 750,000, a sum way beyond the reach of thefamily, for they had not hoarded before currency reform, but soldall the product of their factory.The annual production of theirworks, according to the orders on their books, was five times itsdismantled value.The planned destruction of the Weber Works could affect manyother firms, since Webers supplied the welding and cutting equip-ment and sheet-metal-working machinery required to start up pro-duction again after dismantlement
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