In the basement shelter of the Savoy, sat drinking whiskey with a ragtag mob of cheery cockneys, singing songs in the dingy cell of their enforced troglodytism – hope in humanity is exactly what the writer felt.
“Pretty bubbles in the air,” he burst out loudly into the general buzz of conversation, having refrained from prior participation. “They fly so high, they reach the sky…” and then warping the clear elocution of his cultured tone into a self-parodying East End London accent, “and like those krauts they’ll fade, and die, the Führer’s always ’iding… RAF looked everywhere… We’re Forever Blowin’ Bubbles, pretty bubbles, in the air!”
With delight, the laughing group took up the chorus from their basement mate, who mused that perhaps without the transcendental perspective changes that cannabis had brought him, he would not have experienced the connection of that moment with people that in all likelihood, he would not have deigned to converse with.
German bombs strafed the bricks and concrete of England’s primary proud, sprawling settlement, with terrible fire and light and noise burning demonically in the London night. Safe in the Savoy shelter, cocooned from the world’s malice, it was with a warm glow that the writer took his rest that night, moved as he was by goodwill and his sense of amity, shared in solidarity by circumstance with a group of people whom he had never met, and quite possibly, would never lay eyes on again.
The next day, upon leaving the Savoy and heading east, his naked eyes witnessed true carnage for the first time. Hope seemed obscene, and was dashed in his heart as the spiteful carnage that others had inflicted on the world as they lay insulated beneath the ground revealed itself to him with as bleak a visage as was imaginable.
It was that nightmare image of Guernica; the new face of war and indiscriminate suffering. England jolted out of its peace by the screaming ‘Jericho siren’ of bombs. Human warfare no longer required the personal application of violence; passionless murder meted out from afar, from the skies, undiscerning in its application of thoughtless evil. Whole streets turned to rubble; houses demolished, corpses stricken and inanimate with the pulsing life force extinguished… a shell of human habitat, and a shadow of life.
Dusty, grime-covered cockneys stared at Simon through hollow eyes, and at the hordes of curious West Enders who’d travelled to see Göring’s destruction of the capital.
Is this is what things have come to? Is this western civilisation?
“You seen this?” A Jewish East Ender shouted at him, covered in brick dust. Simon had been quietly asking the locals to share their feelings with him, as they all silently gazed upon the debris.
Dumbstruck, he nodded. The journalist felt any consolation offered would sound hollow to this man, whose grief was more palpable than those around him, his bloodshot eyes already carrying the haunted look of a survivor. The acrid stench of a chemical smoke and the hot dust of the ruined street hung heavy in the air; poisonous toxicity merged with destructive inferno, blackened and burned. Simon could taste its noxious bitterness in his dry mouth. The visual consequences equalled the olfactory assault; a settlement razed, yet ruined scientifically, with chemical malice. It assaulted every sense possessed by the body and mind with more awful power than he could have ever imagined.
The angry Jewish cockney lumbered over, his eyes red and wild.
“Well, you tell the world this,” the middle aged East Ender had snarled at him, his shaking finger pointed at Simon’s face. “That Mr ’itler can drop as many bombs as ’e bleedin’ well likes, the people of Britain won’t submit to a bunch of German ponces. Tell that fat bastard Göring what a Jew in London says to ’im. German cunt. Even if you come here yourselves, we aint done by a long chalk.”
Simon heard similar defiance from others that day. It had been heart-warming.
But the awful power of bombing raids was seared into his memory.
“My friend George fought in Spain,” he would later tell his mother, “… and he wrote in a Time & Tide piece; “the horror we feel of these things has led to this conclusion: if someone drops a bomb on your mother, go and drop two bombs on his mother. The only apparent alternatives are to smash dwelling houses to powder, blow out human entrails and burn holes in children with lumps of thermite, or to be enslaved by people who are more ready to do these things than you are yourself; as yet no-one has suggested a practicable way out…” and now I know what he meant.” Shaking his head helplessly, the journalist struggled to add anything further, and as his mother tried to embrace him, the agitated writer turned and quickly left the room.
Remembering the awful day, Simon quickly recorded a cliffnotes version of the tale, and continued with his narrative.
Hitler correctly predicted though, by dropping the civilian raids and not causing further damage, the anger simmering elsewhere under the occupation was manageable. They focused on knocking Fighter Command out; it worked. Goebbels dropped his hysterics for once, to magnanimously conclude that the diplomatic moves towards peace following Germany’s incredible triumphs in all fields, and the refusal to follow orders of ‘the criminal government’ to sink the French fleet and use mustard gas on the landing German troops, showed England’s ‘civilised Aryan spirit.’
Göring, on the other hand, bragged nastily that even if the British army had been able to withdraw back to England, and the focus not shifted to the aerial dogfights, his Luftwaffe could have bombed Britain’s capital flat.
Recording that statement, Simon fervently hoped that he would live to see Göring fall. Even if Hitler lived to a ripe old age, dying as President-Chancellor, the writer had a sudden hunger to see Fat Hermann torn down from his pedestal and put face first into the dust. Perhaps an opportunity will present itself to Heydrich, he mused.
Clearing his head of anger, the scribe resumed his journal:
The people were divided. With the north of England still, so the rumours had it, embroiled in savage guerrilla fighting and the random chaos of sabotage, the southern section of Britain and London itself in German control was comparatively closeted from the madness of occupation which had prior been a purely continental concern. Rationing on certain foods had been upheld and enforced, but fruit had been scarce from the onset of the war anyway, and with the Reich’s carrot and stick policies, much of the male populace had sunk into a sort of resigned slump. Those veterans of the Great War and the filth of Flanders Field and the Somme, the men of Passchendaele and Ypres, could not comprehend the apparent quiet with which the rest of the men left in the cities apparently accepted their fate. These can always be spotted, still; the ones who thus far have avoided the surprisingly well-informed forced recruitment policies of the Germans to send able-bodied workers to the factories and Organisation Todt – well-recompensed, they assured the public –they’re conspicuous at a glance. To a man they carry the unmistakeable, haunted look of inconsolable misery and heavy-hearted widespread dejection felt since the first Germans in feldgrau landed on British soil.
Simon stopped. That was enough for today. He knew that the spirit remained, even here, deep in occupied territory; peace pacts and nominal sovereignty be damned. Even those not actively resisting, out with the rebels and hiding in shelters, made do with mocking remarks about ‘Jerry’ – actual pleasure of the foreign victory was rare; even a conflicted Oswald Moseley’s fascist interests had supposedly waned. British pride still lived. But with forced factory conscription, prisoners-of-war overseas and the awful uncertainty of the future, the jokes rang hollow; less the bleak cynicism of Britain, and closer in essence to the gallows humour of the condemned. No matter how reassuring the radio broadcasts were, fear remained. Even those with sons, husbands and brothers in factories, captivity or shallow graves soon came to be shaken from their apathy with a real and pronounced trepidation of what might happen to them too, and to Britain entire.
About to finish, the word ‘apathy’ triggered him, and he penned a conclusion in the hope that he could properly capture the zeitgeist of the moment, wryly not
ing even as he did so the German origin of ‘der geist seiner zeit.’ The pen scribbled assuredly; words flowing with rediscovered confidence.
All men, women and children can fall prey to war’s capricious, indiscriminate evil. The inimitable George Orwell – dear Eric, of course – penned a marvellous account of the war in Spain (non-fictional, unlike the American Hemingway), a tragic prelude to Europe’s wider suffering, and victory for the fascist forces of Franco. Sadly, I believe that to date, it has sold only several hundred copies, overshadowed as the Spanish conflict was by the growing menace of Franco’s foreign allies. But had this country bothered to pay attention to that epic clash, and read this book, the warning at its conclusion might have resonated; “… all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs…”
London, much like Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, and just about every other city and town within four hours’ drive of the capital have certainly been jerked out of that slumber; explosions, gunfire, artillery; the ominous stuttering of distant guns drawing closer, all the nasty apparatus of war and destruction, and the panicked anguish of the dying as war’s hell finally reached them and shattered their gentle peace.
Fearful, darting eyes could be seen blinking behind curtained windows; despite the weather, there was a repressed tension in the air that was brutally palpable, almost electric. Everyone knew – soldiers and civilians alike – that someone, anyone, could strike sparks anywhere. In Leeds, Wehrmacht soldiers who were billeted in the centre and at Armley Palace to the west patrolled cautiously through the central districts that still bore the marks of what had first been defence, and then frenzied, desperate rebellion. It had collapsed in impotent fury and defiance, much like the rival ideologies and social paradigms that had proven weak in the face of the insurmountable jackbooted beast that was international fascism; Mussolini’s lovechild had grown to an irrepressible, unruly and violent shyster; far outstripping the limits of power, murder and empire than even he could have foreseen in his halcyon days of the March on Rome.
Could Mussolini have possibly dreamed that his movement would snowball into a continental revolution; aided and abetted by the world’s oldest, largest and most powerful religious institution? Ten years later; Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain rising up at his heels, the re-emergent German titan; teeth bared at the world that opposed them.
Everywhere Victorious. Gods on Earth.
Bloodstains remained as grim scars on the pavestones of wide Leeds streets; the city centre tram shuttled its silent passengers east down the dual-carriage York Road throughway, all eyes averted from the quiet scenes of recent hellish, thunderous shouts, booming explosions and screams. The meeker members of the northern populace began to feel – even hope, to themselves – that their husbands, sons, brothers, neighbours of whomever the men in the movement may be would perhaps, in retreating, have ensured that present and future violence be kept away from the city. Some were glad, though none dared voice that selfish, survivalist hope. A Trojan hope, ultimately; the forlorn pipedream of a spectator that a victorious Hector’s duel on some distant plain would keep the bloodshed away from Ilium’s sacred walls, and the families sheltered within.
Public sacrifice had been made; a notable scapegoat horribly executed in warning.
The Lord Mayor had voiced public support for the continued armed struggle and defiance of London’s armistice that had been widespread across the north, following the capital’s June designation as an ‘open city’. After encountering fierce resistance along the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Hull northern belt line, the Wehrmacht chose to exemplify the futility of opposing German arms. Leeds’ Lord Mayor Wythie’s fate was sealed. Under the express orders of Commander von Brauchitsch himself, the Wehrmacht had publicly hung the Lord Mayor with piano wire from the Leeds Town Hall, watched by silent, saddened crowds.
Almost comically inadequate, the most perfunctory of public announcements had informed the city’s inhabitants of the impending death of Willie Wythie, and the next day, hundreds of mostly soundless observers saw the spectacle of the old man jerking pitifully as he choked to death. Most claimed that a sense of decency and decorum prevented them from witnessing such a horrid event, while those few that did pointed out dryly that Hitler aside, the death penalty was still occasionally applied in Britain by the British themselves. Most, though, suffering losses of their own and in the immediate aftermath of recent conflict, declined to comment. Distress was widespread; at least one third of all families had lost one or more relatives, and many more still had sons, brothers, husbands and fathers with serious injuries, or who had been captured in battle, or conscripted to forced labour. Others fled for the hills, a disorganised rabble of resisters; well-armed, as each surprised rumour-monger had it, but up against it in every conceivable sense.
Lord Mayor Wythie, now thankfully still, was left hanging from the Town Hall turrets for the first month of occupation in its entirety, serving as a macabre reminder of the days of fighting, and a nasty warning against future dissent.
After initial hostility and a widespread attitude of what Wehrmacht chiefs deemed to be disrespectful, the watchful Germans were presented with another opportunity to instil fear through a single act of calculated callousness. Wythie’s target of the support that proved fatal was a known left-wing activist, who had been instrumental in drumming up support for the ‘people’s defence of Great Britain’ against its invaders, organising some structure to those in Yorkshire with arms, who were willing and capable. His name was Andrew Knaggs.
Quite by chance, the firebrand was snared during a clandestine meeting with members of a major trade union, whom he’d been passionately petitioning to rally round to the cause; an attempt to attract more men to the growing resistance. German troops were highly trained; the ambush had been performed clinically, with all potential belligerents eliminated with ease, save the target. The small, wiry figure, bearded and youthful, had tried to commit suicide upon capture, realising that escape was impossible, but was failed by the cyanide capsule he had bitten to no avail, its expired poison utterly useless. He was made an example of.
Spouting nothing but obscene curses and profane condemnations of the Germans, Knaggs refused to be cowed in the face of his tormentors as the Wehrmacht staged the most cursory of trials, quickly sentencing Knaggs to join Wythie on the gallows. It was with some regret that the soldiers assigned to the task sent the brave man to an excruciating, choking end, impressed as they were by his courage and the mesmerising vitality of his snarling defiance. However, every German who witnessed his fury was glad that such an enemy, one of revolutionary charisma and élan, had been eliminated from the fight.
“Andrew Knaggs, for crimes against the German Reich and serious contraventions of the Geneva Convention’s stipulated legal code of waging war; you are sentenced to death. Do you have anything to say?”
“Yes,” he sneered quietly, before raising his voice to the massing crowds at City Square. “Germany is a nation of fools! Fight, England, fight, and fight, and never quit, so that one day our children can live in peace–”
The executioner abruptly interrupted his exhortations, and the partisan leader slowly choked to death on the wire, blood bursting from his eyes and orifi.
To diminish the rebel’s continued legacy, Andrew Knaggs’ body was immediately taken down, and transported out of Leeds for discreet disposal. It was strongly rumoured the Gestapo tradition was to incinerate bodies and scatter the ashes in sewage. If this fate befell the rebel Knaggs, it is not known. The body of Leeds’ unfortunate Lord Mayor, by contrast, continued to dangle from the city’s symbolic administrative building, dangling eerily on the wire that killed him. Even in the weeks following his eventual removal, no children were to be seen for at least one mile in all directions from the great Hall.
Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! Page 8