Hitler Has Won

by Frederic Mullally

  The first faint glimmer of hope had come when Colonel Orlando yelled to him over the throng of soldiers crowding around the corpses of Hitler and Donati, then turned to point toward the Basilica. A detachment of the Colonel’s troops were emerging from the portico, prodding ahead of them the dozen or so Nazis who had been spared the blood bath in the piazza. Hurrying to catch up with Orlando, now striding purposefully across the corpse-littered square, Kurt’s stomach contracted at the sight of Werner Voegler, limping on the fringe of the group of captives; and a moment later the glimmer of hope took on the outlines of a possible solution. He paused in his stride to stoop and snatch a Luger P.08 from the holster of a dead SS man, and thrust it into his belt. A minute later he was standing face-to-face with Werner Voegler.

  “Glad to see you alive, Voegler. We still have a score to settle, you and I.”

  Voegler stared back at him, tight-lipped. The vein at the side of his brow was pulsing, and it might have been from hatred but it could also have been from fear. Kurt took Orlando aside and spoke urgently into his ear.

  “Va bene, va bene!” the Colonel nodded. Then briskly, in Italian, to a squad of riflemen standing by: “Accompany the Major and his prisoner—that SS pig there!—to the telephone exchange, wherever it is. You are under the Major’s orders.”

  Slowed down by Voegler, it took them ten minutes to reach the Vatican’s telecommunications center. Otto Dietrich had beaten them to it, presumably through one of the side doors of the Basilica. He had elbowed one of the male SS operators off his stool at the long switchboard and was shouting hoarsely into the mouthpiece as Kurt strode across the room, snatched the earphones from the press chief’s head and ripped the live line from its plug.

  “Armbrecht!” A spray of spittle hit Kurt as Dietrich kicked back the stool and whirled on him, his ashen features agape. “What the bloody hell do you think—!”

  “Take him!” Kurt snapped at the Italian troopers. “If he opens his mouth again—” he backed the command with an eloquent gesture—“shoot him!”

  Two minutes later, with all but one of the SS telephonists staring into the muzzles of Italian carbines, Kurt motioned Voegler forward and ordered the remaining operator to give up his stool. “Sit down there, Voegler!” Kurt took out the Luger and put the muzzle to the Obersturmfuehrer’s ear. “We’re through to the Berghof exchange. I want you to identify yourself and to ask for Major Waldheim to come on the line. Then I’ll tell you what to say. Try anything clever, and it’ll give me a great deal of pleasure to blow your brains out.”

  Voegler gave his calling code to the Berghof operator and asked for Waldheim. A few seconds later, he leaned back to glare coldly up at Kurt.

  “He’s not on the mountain.”

  “Then find out,” Kurt grated, “where he is right now—the location and the telephone number.”

  Another few seconds and, “He’s at his sister’s home in Nuremberg. The number is 2512.”

  “Right!” Kurt pulled out the lead and ordered Voegler back across the room. “Get me that number,” he told the operator.

  If he could now talk personally to Peter in Nuremberg—only a hundred miles north of Dachau—it was working out even better than he had hoped. But how much time was left before the main Roman exchange came to its senses and blocked all lines to Germany? Peter’s voice, loud and clear, cut into his silent prayer.

  “Kurt? Is that you on the line?”

  “That’s right, Peter, I’m calling from the Vatican City. Now, hold it—just listen carefully to what I have to say. Hitler is dead. . . . Yes, yes, I’ve seen the body and it’s lying right now in St. Peter’s Square. ... I can’t go into all that now. Just tell me quickly: what’s the situation back there?”

  “Confused. Chaotic, in fact. I’m staying right out of it till the picture clears. But I gather Himmler has sent Brandt to parley with the Military Council.”

  “I’m worried about my father, Peter. I—I guess you know where I stand now?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Peter, you still there?”

  “I am with you, Kurt.” The words came, each one separately stressed, quietly over the line. “What do you want me to do?”

  The young Luftwaffe adjutant had been weighing the odds during his breakneck drive from Nuremberg to Dachau; by the time he presented himself at the main gates of the concentration camp he had decided there was a good fifty-fifty chance of getting away with it.

  Sturmbannfuehrer Helmut Brunner was hunched at his desk, fiddling with the dials of a portable radio, when Waldheim was ushered in. He glanced sourly at his visitor’s credentials before tossing them back across the desk.

  “You were lucky not to be shot on sight by my guards. Your brave pilots won’t do as well, once this army treachery has been taken care of.”

  “Don’t be deceived by the uniform, Sturmbannfuehrer. I’m on the Fuehrer’s personal staff, remember. My first loyalty—” Waldheim hesitated, then finished the statement in a lowered voice—“has always been to him.”

  “Then maybe you can throw some light on this rubbish being put out over the British radio.” Brunner’s shifty eyes stayed level just long enough for Waldheim to read the fear in them; and his spirits rose.

  “If you mean about the Fuehrer—?”

  “Precisely. This cock-and-bull story about him being killed by the Italians.”

  “It’s true. It’s why I’m here.”

  ‘‘My God!” Brunner sprang up from his desk, rushed to the window as if to seek confirmation in the night sky, then spun around to face his visitor. His face was the color of pale putty. “There’s no hope for us then! We’re finished!”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Sturmbannfuehrer. The word was coming in, when I left the Berghof, that Reichsfuehrer Himmler is meeting with the army and Luftwaffe generals. There’s still time to restore order here in the Reich and stabilize the eastern front.”

  Brunner was stalking about the room, shaking his head vigorously. “Finished!” he reiterated. “Without our Fuehrer—our people divided—the SS disarmed—!” He stopped abruptly, to blink across the room at Waldheim. “You say the Fuehrer’s bodyguard were all wiped out?”

  “I didn’t say that. For example, Obersturmbannfuehrer Voegler—” Waldheim broke off to take an anxious look at his wrist watch.

  “Voegler—what about Voegler?”

  “He managed to get a call through to the Berghof from somewhere in Rome. He asked for me, then put me on to Kurt Armbrecht, who said he met you here with Voegler earlier this year. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, yes! Go on!”

  “Armbrecht has defected to the Italians. He’s going to have Voegler shot if I don’t fly his father, Professor Armbrecht, to Ciampino airport by dawn tomorrow.”

  Brunner was gaping at him, incredulously. “Are you mad? What guarantee have you got, once you hand over this professor—”

  “Armbrecht and I,” Waldheim cut in, “were close friends and colleagues. I know the man, and I have his word that Voegler will board my plane and that we can take off again as soon as his father is safely delivered.” He took another impatient look at his watch. “I have a plane and crew standing by, fueled up, at Munich airport. We might just make Rome by dawn.”

  “It’s out of the question!” Brunner had slumped into his chair and was pounding his brow slowly with one clenched fist. “I’m only second in command here. My chief’s touring the camps in the East. I’d need written authorization from Berlin—”

  “And while we wait for that, Voegler dies. Are you ready to explain to Reichsfuehrer Himmler, when all this trouble is over, how you could allow that to happen to a personal favorite of his rather than part with an insignificant old professor?”

  There followed a long silence, broken at last by the scraping of chair legs as Brunner lurched to his feet. “I’ll need a receipt!” he shouted. “A personal receipt from you as adjutant at the Fuehrerhauptquartier! Plus a signed statement,
putting all this in writing!”

  The rising sun was curtained by rain clouds and the wind out on the tarmac at Ciampino was cold and damp. As the converted Heinkel taxied toward them, Kurt raised the collar of his borrowed raincoat and snatched a glance at Voegler, standing between two Italian militiamen, his arms folded, his head arrogantly erect.

  He thinks he has won. His god is dead, his Party a shambles, his regiment decimated, his nation torn asunder. But his demigod, Himmler, still lives, which means that the power and mystique of the Schutzstaffel will eventually triumph over all adversaries. . . I could kill him now, and no one would stop me or punish me. But if I did that, breaking my word to Peter, then the things that Voegler stands for would indeed have won.

  His father came off the plane first, helped down the steps by Waldheim. His uncovered hair was snow white, and the suit they had taken him away in hung in folds from his wasted body. Behind him came Margit Armbrecht, her eyes lighting up at the sight of Kurt, then streaming with tears. As the three of them stood there, united in a silent embrace, Kurt heard Voegler’s voice, brittle and peremptory.

  “Let’s get going then, Waldheim! Or do we have to wait for the violin serenade?”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Voegler. Not in this plane, anyway.”

  Gently disengaging himself from his parents, Kurt went to join Waldheim at the foot of the steps. “You can’t do this, Peter,” he muttered quietly. “I gave my word.”

  “Sure, you gave me your word. But I didn’t give my word, either to you or to Brunner, that I’d take that swine anywhere. If you want to fly him back yourself, the plane’s all yours.” He turned away to call up to the flight deck. “All right, men! Welcome to sunny Italy!”

  They stood by, watching in silence, as Voegler rushed limping for the stairs, dived into the plane and floundered about inside the fuselage. He reappeared in the hatchway, waving his arms and shouting for Waldheim. They stayed there watching him as the shouted demands turned to protests, then appeals, then into a stream of broken abuse. At a signal from Kurt, the militiamen went up the steps and dragged the SS officer, sobbing, from the plane.

  II

  IN THE spring of 1945, Kurt and Walter Armbrecht made their pilgrimage to Manostrana, by rail via Innsbruck and Bolzano to Venice, thence to Pescara, where Colonel Orlando, now on the headquarters staff of Marshal Badoglio, had arranged for an army jeep to be put at their disposal.

  More than five months had passed since Kurt, airlifted with Waldheim from Rome to London for prolonged interrogation at Eisenhower’s SHAEF, had finally been permitted to rejoin his parents in Munich. In the meantime, in Paris and Warsaw, the representatives of Germany’s Supreme Military Council had been presented with, and had accepted, the Allied Powers’ terms for surrender.

  Most of the weight Walter Armbrecht had lost during the months of incarceration at Dachau had now been recovered, but the snow-white hair, the lagging gait, remained as legacies of his ordeal. And the light that had gone out inside him when Waldheim told him how Sophie had died would never be rekindled.

  They had not spoken about Giovanni Donati during the long and wearisome train journey to Pescara. The professor had slept, fitfully, between train changes. Over snacks from the hamper prepared for them by Margit, they had talked mostly about Germany and the prospects of redemption for its people. But now, as they motored across the coastal plain from Pescara toward the towering granite peaks of the Sasso, Walter Armbrecht spoke the priest’s name softly.

  “Giovanni Donati . . . how I wish I could have met that man.”

  Kurt remained silent. His own thoughts were on that final meeting with the priest, inside the papal apartments, and on the last words he had heard Donati utter: “Go now, my son. When we meet again the storm will have passed.”

  And so it had, although only he and Donati had known it as they faced each other eight days later across the great piazza of St. Peter’s.

  He was assembling other memories of the priest. Berlin . . . Obersalzburg . . . Madrid . . . And he was thinking aloud now.

  “You know, Father, it might take America a year—maybe more—to bring Japan to her knees in the Pacific, but as far as I’m concerned the Pact of Steel was doomed from the moment, just about a year ago now, when I watched Donati mutter those few words in Hitler’s ear at the reception in the Retiro Park. The Hitler I gunned down in St. Peter’s Square was a preposterous fiction. The real Fuehrer of the Reich died that evening in Madrid, from a lethal overdose of megalomania.”

  “And his executioner,” the professor sighed, “lies unhonored and unsung. They say that even Roosevelt, right up to his death last month, still had his doubts about Donati’s real motives. He inclined to the view that the story Donati gave to dear Sophie was intended as a device for bailing himself out if anything went wrong with his real plan, which was to have himself appointed Pope under the New Order.”

  They had reached the foothills of the Forca di Penne and were traversing the valley, toward the town of Corfinio. With sudden bitterness, Kurt said, “Roosevelt never met him. Even if he had, what would a politician know about integrity!” A moment later, in a softer voice, “It was I who brought him the news of Sophie’s death, remember? What I saw in his face—” he broke off, biting at his lip. “There was one other person,” he went on, “who could have silenced the skeptics, and that was Admiral Canaris—if that swine Himmler hadn’t included him in his Black Friday massacre.”

  “And the Vatican?” his father asked. “Surely there was wisdom enough there? Charity at least?”

  Kurt shook his head. “Pope Pius will have made his own private judgment, but officially it could never favor Donati. Here was a priest—a prince of the Church—who had committed, or connived at, some of the worst heresies, blasphemies and sacrileges in the history of the Church. There can be no condoning this, however noble the motive. The Vatican’s attitude has to be that the Church would have survived without Donati and without those dreadful sacrileges. And who can contradict that, now?”

  He had to help his father down the steep pathway, little more than a goat track, leading from the outskirts of the village of Manostrana to the small and isolated plot of land set aside for the unconsecrated burial of those fallen from grace. Within this rubble-walled area the weeds had grown knee-deep around the few mounds of earth and weatherworn headstones marking the resting places of the village’s unrepentant atheists and apostates.

  One grave only, at the far end of the enclosure, wore the look of being cared for. No weeds grew from it or from the ground immediately around it. The spring rains, torrential in these mountains, had made no apparent impact on the neat hummock of yellowish-brown soil.

  The village stonecutter had carried out Kurt’s written instructions to the letter. The marble headstone, broad and stocky as the man it stood sentinel over, was engraved with his name, the dates bracketing his time on earth, and below this, the simple inscription :

  DO NOT JUDGE EVERYTHING YOU SEE.

  Kurt and Walter Armbrecht knelt down at the graveside. A few minutes later, as they got to their feet, the bell of the village church started to toll the Angelus.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  IT MIGHT have been of some value, in rewriting the story of Adolf Hitler’s last two years, to have been either an historian or a military strategist. But perhaps not all that much. The historians have made their judgments, and the facts upon which these were based are freely available to us all. As for the military strategists—and regardless of which side they were on—their record from the outbreak of World War II up until Hitler’s defeat at Stalingrad was, to put it generously, less than impressive.

  Hitler Has Won is a novelist’s blend of truth and fiction. It freezes the march of events inside Hitler’s Reich at the date in March 1941 when the Regent of Yugoslavia was first summoned to Hitler’s mountaintop retreat at Berchtesgaden. Most historians agree that it was from this date onward that the Fuehrer of Germany made the mistakes that were to shatt
er his dream of a Thousand-Year Reich, and that the first and perhaps the greatest of these blunders was his postponement by five fatal weeks of the Wehrmacht’s invasion of Russia.

  The Hitler of my novel has already smashed the Red Army west of Moscow and taken the Russian capital when the story opens. He has also persuaded his Japanese ally to strike at Vladivostok rather than at Pearl Harbor. From there on the reader is invited to join the author in an exercise of the imagination. To the historian and archivist this will have been a leap into pure fantasy. To those to whom the fascination of recorded history lies in the two shadows it casts— the grim reality and the dreadful ponderable—perhaps the fantasy has not seemed to be so farfetched.

  FREDERIC MULLALLY

  PEOPLE IN THE BOOK

  The capitalized names below belong to characters entirely fictitious but decidedly less strange than the real-life people who make up the bulk of the cast.

  ARIAS, ALBERTO - A Spanish army veteran

  ARMBRECHT, KURT - Hitler’s literary assistant

  ARMBRECHT, MARGIT - Kurt’s mother

  ARMBRECHT, SOPHIE - Kurt’s sister

  ARMBRECHT, WALTER - Kurt’s father

  Badoglio, Marshal - An Italian army commander

  Bevan, Aneurin - A British Member of Parliament

  Bormann, Martin - Chief of the Party Chancellery

  Braun, Eva - Hitler’s mistress

  BRUNNER, HELMUT - Deputy commander of Dachau

  Canaris, Wilhelm - Chief of the Abwehr (intelligence bureau)

  Cerejeira, Cardinal - Archbishop of Lisbon

  Churchill, Winston - Prime Minister of Britain