U.S. COMMERCE DEPARTMENT BOARD OF INQUIRY
HINDENBURG ACCIDENT HEARINGS
May 10, 1937
Naval Air Station, Main Hangar, Lakehurst, New Jersey
Please inform the Zeppelin company in Frankfurt that they should open and search all mail before it is put on board prior to every flight of the Zeppelin Hindenburg. The Zeppelin is going to be destroyed by a time bomb during its flight to another country.
—Letter from Kathie Rusch of Milwaukee to the German embassy in Washington, D.C., dated April 8, 1937
“This was not the first bomb threat, correct?” The man in the black glasses lifts the letter and waves it before the crowd. “Did anyone bother to count how many there were? Or, for God’s sake, to believe them?”
Max thinks the man’s last name is Schroeder, but he can’t remember, and in truth he doesn’t care. He’s a fool if he believes that crazy woman from Milwaukee and her letter. Not that anyone else in the room is concerned with Max’s quiet derision. People whisper and nod their heads like mindless puppets at the idea of sabotage. Search the mail, she said. There’s a bomb on board, she said. It’s a popular theory, especially now, with the wreckage still sprawled in the field outside. But no one cares about the truth. They prefer theatrics and conspiracy theories. And Schroeder is happy to provide them. He is ringmaster of this circus. He will make sure the mob is entertained.
Wilhelm Balla limps his way through the crowded hangar to stand next to Max. He escaped the crash with little more than a sprained ankle, but Max suspects he’s exaggerating even that. He leans a bit hard to the left with each step, showing off. Letting the world know he’s injured.
Balla searches Max’s face for clues to his emotional state. “Emilie?” he asks.
“What about her?”
“She’s prepared for the trip back to Germany?”
Max turns his attention to the spectacle at the front of the room. “I haven’t asked.”
“Let me know when she is. I’d like to say good-bye.” Balla clears his throat. “They have me booked on the Europa with Werner on the fifteenth. How is she going home?”
“On the Hamburg. With the others. It sails in three days.”
Wilhelm Balla is not a man who often displays emotion. It is up for debate whether he actually has a pulse. But this surprises him. “You aren’t traveling with her?”
Max leans his head against the window. The cool glass feels good against his throbbing temple. He hasn’t been able to shake this headache since the crash. No surprise, really, all things considered. “There are many things outside of my control, not the least of which is travel.” He taps the envelope in his pocket with the pad of one finger and then draws his hand away. “I don’t testify until the nineteenth. I’ll take the Bremen the following day.”
Balla gives him the long, appraising look that Max finds so aggravating. “How many times have you read Emilie’s letter?”
“Once was enough.” It’s a lie. But he has no interest in confiding in Balla. Not after the trouble he caused.
From his position beside the window, Max can see the airfield and the charred skeleton that lies crumpled beside the mooring mast. He closes his eyes and tries to push the sight away, but to no avail. The images are there—will be there, he is certain, for the rest of his life; a single tongue of blue flame licking the Hindenburg’s spine, a fluttering of silver skin followed by the shudder of metallic bone, a flash, barely visible to those on the ground below. Bedlam. He is certain that the passengers close enough to see the explosion never heard it. They were simply consumed as the backbone of the great floating beast snapped in half. Thirty-four seconds of catastrophic billowing flames, followed by total, profound destruction. In half a minute the airship went from flying luxury hotel to smoking rubble—a skeleton lying crumpled in this New Jersey field, blacked by smoke and flame. No, these are things he will never forget.
Already the hearings have begun. There will be testimony. Reporters and flashbulbs. A different sort of pandemonium and a desperate attempt to understand why. There will be political conflagration. Headlines screaming out their theories in bold print, punctuated for emphasis. ACCIDENT! SABOTAGE! Fingers pointing in all directions and, of course, the subtle, insinuating whispers. The quiet placing of blame. Max wonders if their names and faces will be forgotten when the headlines are replaced by some new tragedy. Will anyone remember the particulars of those who fell from the sky a few short days ago? The vaudeville acrobat. The cabin boy. The journalists. An American heiress. The German cotton broker and the Jewish food distributor. A young family of German expatriates living in Mexico City. Chefs and mechanics. Photographers and navigators. The commander and his crew. A small army of stewards and Emilie, the only stewardess. Old men and young boys. Women past their prime and a fourteen-year-old girl who loved her father above all else. Will anyone remember them?
Bureaucrats measure loss with dollar signs and damage control. Already they have begun. There is standing room only in this hangar. But Max knows that to him, the cost will always be measured by lives lost. He also knows that in nine days, when his time comes to sit in that chair and give testimony, he will not tell them the truth. Instead he will look over Schroeder’s shoulder at a point on the far wall and tell the lie he has already decided upon. It is the only way to protect Emilie. And the others. Max Zabel will swear before God and this committee that it was an uneventful flight.