In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove

Jew’s prayers these days? If He did, why had He let the Nazis do what they’d done? What did we do—what could we have done—to deserve that ? The question had haunted Lise ever since she learned she was a Jew. She’d never come close to finding an answer that satisfied her.
    And how long till Alicia asked the same thing? Not very, not if Lise was any judge. Alicia was too clever—tooclever by half—not to wonder about that. There were times when Lise wished her eldest daughter were a little less clever, or at least had a little more in the way of sense to go with her precocious intelligence. She laughed. As well wish for the moon while I’m at it .
    She went back to getting supper ready. And then, in a couple of years, we’ll have to tell Francesca, and after that Roxane. How long can we hope to get away with it? How long can we keep being what we are? She was chopping an onion. She told herself the tears in her eyes came from that. Maybe she was right. Maybe.
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    Heinrich Gimpel poked a button on the remote control. The televisor in the living room came to life. It was seven o’clock, time for the evening news. The news reader, Horst Witzleben, looked like a cross between an SS man and a film star. “Come on, Lise,” Heinrich called. “Let’s see what’s gone on today.”
    â€œI’ll be there in a second,” she answered from the kitchen. “Dishes are nearly done. Turn up the sound so I can hear it.”
    â€œAll right.” He did.
    That made Witzleben’s booming greeting—“Good day, Volk of the Greater German Reich ”—sound even more impressive than it would have otherwise. He owned an almost operatic baritone. Heinrich wouldn’t have been surprised if technicians in the studio pumped it up electronically to make it sound more impressive, more believable, still. The Ministry of Propaganda didn’t miss a trick. “And now the news.”
    And now what they want people to hear, Heinrich thought. He had excellent good reasons not to rely completely on the Propaganda Ministry’s trained seal. It wasn’t just that he was a Jew and the Nazis had been thundering lies about his kind since before they came to power. He also worked in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; things he found out about professionally sometimes showed up on the news. When they did, they were often distorted past recognition.
    Ordinary people, though—butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers, goyim —had no way to know that, no reason to believe it. As far as they were concerned, Witzleben might have been spouting Holy Writ. I heard it from Horst was a synonym for You can take it to the bank . Heinrich had a sneaking suspicion the Ministry of Propaganda had set out to make it one.
    â€œOur beloved Leader, Kurt Haldweim, is reported to be resting comfortably in the Führer ’s palace, recovering from what his physicians describe as a stubborn cold,” Horst Witzleben intoned. “Routine matters proceed normally. Should anything extraordinary arise, the Führer is fully capable of attending to it on the instant.”
    The picture of the Führer on the screen behind Witzleben had to be at least fifteen years old. Like Hitler himself, Kurt Haldweim had been born in the Ostmark when it was still Austria, and separate from Germany. He’d been a young officer in the Second World War. He was perhaps the last of that generation still in the saddle—if he was still in the saddle. Over the past few years, he’d had a long series of “stubborn colds” and “minor illnesses” that kept him out of the public eye for weeks at a time. Everything went on in his name. How much that meant…was not the sort of thing Horst Witzleben discussed on the air.
    Even working where he did, Heinrich didn’t know the full answer there. Along with everyone else in the Germanic Empire, he could only wait and see if