Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK!

by Daniel S. Fletcher

  They strolled on for a while longer, nearing the Euston Road area close to Regent’s Park and the London Zoo. He’d noticed that they’d already passed an underground stop en route, and Maisie had continued walking up the length of Tottenham Court Road in its entirety. He knew too, that the road’s eponymous tube station was nearby to her shop, less than a minute’s walk in the other direction. He chose not to pass comment.

  “Is it really so bad for Jews over there?” Maisie blurted. It was the burning question on her lips. She’d had Jewish friends herself, as had her older brother. Until their mid-teens and the rise of Hitler in Germany, Jewishness had not been something she or it seemed, anyone else she knew gave any thought to. It was just there, or not there; like trees in a street, or leaves on the ground. Their apparent importance, influence and evil had baffled her, as she was sure it had the Jewish shopkeepers, students and assorted others she’d known. One was a librarian.

  Hans sighed. Sweet girl – she had it all to come; the grim realities of life under Hitler, the realisation that life was cruel… or rather, just how cruel it could be, when viewed through the lens used by his country’s rulers. It would be a rude awakening.

  “Germany is bad for everyone but Aryan Germans who believe in Nazism. Even the racially pure who do not have to speak through a rose at all times.”

  “Is there no real opposition? Music, politics, literature?” She asked as though the very idea was utterly ludicrous. Even after weeks, months of occupation here, Jewish authors could be read in libraries. The wireless radio had been playing Mendelssohn the night before.

  But Hans shook his head. “They burned subversive literature. Goebbels organised fires in the State Opera Square and made speeches about Jewish intellectuals. Un-German books were burned.”

  “Music?” She was incredulous; a touch of anger bit her deep. Artistry was expression of the soul… censoring it was the ugliest, stupidest thing Maisie could imagine.

  She shared that opinion with Hans, who enthusiastically agreed.

  “So they even censor music?”

  Hans answered, warming even more to her. So few girls in Germany had their own ideas now. So few had independent spirit, opinions… passion. Real passion. Anger and hatred is only pseudo-passion.

  “Banned,” he affirmed. “Some kinder listen to, ah… negro jazz.”

  Despite herself, Maisie gave a great snort of laughter at that. Hans looked bemused, and then shrugged good-naturedly.

  “Sorry about my English.”

  “No, it’s fantastic,” she sniggered, sobering. “Where did you learn?”

  “Un-German literature was not always banned. I like police detective stories. I read Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  Maisie was delighted, a blush appearing in her pale, smooth cheek. “Sherlock Holmes!”

  “Ja. I like him. It’s why I kept coming back to speak to you; I saw your reading Hound of the Baskervilles. There were books in English with German translations, too.”

  She flushed, slightly. Apart from her brother and his near-fanatical friends, she’d never met a boy who liked to read; who actively enjoyed reading, for fun, and to learn.

  Whatever it is that I do, Hans thought, they react to it. He recognised a similar reaction to when he’d first gotten to know Sarah. Some kind of positive quality. Perhaps honesty. Or simplicity. Something they seem to respond to.

  “Anyway…” he continued, “Germany is not good for opinions. We too are occupied in a certain way, although with the Kaiser we had a similar system that nobody could criticise. I feel we had the same ideas about different peoples then, too. I hear stories of the African colonies. Killings, forced starvations… Now though, it is far worse; even at home people are afraid of being denounced to the SS and the Gestapo. Nobody…” he spread his hands wide, and let them fall, as though world-weary. Hans shook his head in exasperation, blond hair swinging in short tufts on the crown of his head. How to explain the madness?

  “Nobody is willing to share their opinions freely,” he said finally. “They all fear internment, questioning, torture. Even before we were at war, many people disappeared. All the time. Especially in Berlin. I think police can kill with impunity, as long as it is not a party member.”

  “Scary,” Maisie shuddered. “Psychotic policeman with the legal right to kill you.”

  Hans winced, nodding in agreement with the stark remark.

  “It is terrible to live in fear.”

  Never before had he spoken with such bleak frankness. Not even with Isidor, steeped as their rebellion was in humour, Semitism and love. Neither boy had ever expressed much in the way of weakness or insecurity. But with this English girl, and her compassionate eyes? It is terrible to live in fear.

  What a treasure trove of information he was, Maisie thought, with his knowledge, and beautiful ease with the complexities of the English tongue. Smoothly crafting sentences, conveying emotion; fear, sorrow, regret – perhaps hope? She felt a vague guilt at her selfish motives in questioning him, and a distinct unease at the looks that bypassers were casting her way for being seen with a German soldier. The glances were brief and furtive – none dared direct opposition, with Hans in uniform – but she recognised the quick stab of hate in their eyes. Collaborator, they spat, silently seething. Whore. Wench. Vixen.

  “People are afraid,” Hans added, himself once more oblivious to the negative attention. Perhaps he is used to it, in a conqueror’s uniform, Maisie mused.

  “Christ. An awful way to live.”

  “The Hitler way. Heil Hitler!”

  Hans grinned again; dimples spreading under the soft flesh of his cheek, a wide smile splitting his face and the perfect form of white teeth ringed by red lips. Maisie liked his sudden expressions of… amusement? Happiness? She sensed his mischievous side; the schoolboy, constantly in trouble for unlawful consorting and a refusal to cowtow. An impish side, lurking dormant beneath his adult, soldierly surface.

  “Of course, Maisie, you could report me for saying this…” the grin faded. “and men in SS field grey would haul me away, discipline me, throw me in prison and then, send me out east to wait in an East Prussian forest for the signal to cross the temporary Soviet border…” Hans held his hands up, in a parody of wonder, “And I’d be lucky enough to receive the ultimate German honour, freezing in the snow for lebensraum; crazy Bolsheviks shooting bullets at me… explosions, gunshots, massacres…”

  Hans considered, all semblance of humour gone. “Or performing my heroic, historic German tasks such as rounding Jews up into ghettoes… or in some punishment battalion, clearing mines… either that, or just Dachau. They have my D-11 after all…”

  He had no real fear of that happening, but part of him had wanted the vindication of her verbalising their bond. He regretted his transparent subterfuge of a joke, but Maisie was wide-eyed, and did not disappoint.

  “Never, Hans.” As he looked at her, surprised at her earnestness, she winked.

  “It’s been a while since I spoke this unpatriotically,” he confessed, suddenly embarrassed.

  He couldn’t express it, but while the raging nationalism of the present system was abhorrent to him, he did love Germany. He loved Berlin, and the cynical, sardonic, mocking people of his beautiful city, and happy summer days on the nearby lake at Plötzensee. He just couldn’t express love without hate. He couldn’t verbalise the juxtaposition of the things that he, and others like him, loved, without justifications and recriminations and explanations and focus on all that was bad. It was a confusing position to be in; ideology, he’d realised, was the easy way out for the majority. It did your thinking for you. Life was made easy. Enemies were provided. Solutions were offered. Questions discouraged. Advancement described. Greatness narrated.

  Frowning in concentration, Hans tried to explain it to her, knowing that her mind was unsullied and fertile, and she listened – still as wide-eyed as she had been during the description of an imagined Russia – and when he’d finished, she reassured him tha
t he was a credit to his family. He had nothing to worry about. He was a thoroughly decent person. His soul was untarnished.

  Maisie’s kindness almost overwhelmed him. She had such soft skin. This clean, wholesome girl who thought, and cared. This beautiful, funny, gentle English girl.

  They’d reached the end of the great, wide Tottenham Court Road, at the junction where the main Euston Road thoroughfare sent the tube commuters north and east, into Bloomsbury. Hans stopped. The second tube station was now unavoidable. He looked over at Warren Street station, and back at Maisie expectantly; she merely smiled, coyly.

  “Actually I walk up this way because… I like the park. After work I like to reconnect with the actual world, not just… stone. Buildings, and metal, and brick. To hear birds and see water and flowers. Regent’s Park is just over that way.”

  She pointed over Hans’ shoulder, past a slovenly, unshaven man in an overcoat bearing the distinguishing hallmarks of Great War trauma, to where the next Tube station was situated on Marylebone Road and beyond it, the lush park.

  “Oh… beautiful. I often walk in the Tiergarten. We have a zoo. This is the park where your zoo is, yes?” He gestured up the road.

  “Yes.”

  They held each other’s gaze, uncommonly comfortable.

  “May I walk with you in the park, until you decide to leave?” he asked finally. She smiled for the umpteenth time at him and, registered the distaste of yet another disgruntled passer-by, took his arm and with a burst of self-assuredness that comes with an unalterable impulse backed by will, steered him towards the lovely green that rose pleasantly in the distance, past the man-made stone and brick.

  “There are rose gardens there,” she purred happily. The words took a split-second to register, as Hans internally translated them into German, before almost shouting in laughter. It startled her, and she laughed along.

  “Rose gardens,” he repeated happily. “In such times, there are still rose gardens.”

  He felt her squeeze his arm, almost imperceptibly but a pressure nonetheless, between her linked arm and the flank of her torso. His nostrils caught another waft of her fresh, clean smell; wholesome, and innocent. He wondered if he deserved her.

  She led him into the park, and they found a spot by the water where a foliage overhand formed a tunnel of the waterside path. Water lilies swayed slightly in the still pond. To their right was a green bush; the opposite bank was covered in rhododendron bushes of bright purple loderi and bell-shaped flowers of pink and blue. The smell was not of cloying water, but fresh, of grass and flowers, drifting lightly, unobtrusively, into their nostrils. Hans marvelled quietly at the scenery. This, too, was a great city, to foster nature and not forget it in the massive drive to erect monuments to humanity’s self-awareness and changing of environment and destiny, apotheosis, visible everywhere.

  Daisy sat shoulder to shoulder with the young man lost in his thoughts. This time, she squeezed him to her hard enough for there to be no doubt. He was almost stiffened with surprise, and his heart-rate quickened. Her soft voice rose sweetly, in a world of green:

  “There’ll be rose gardens after Hitler too, you know. And Göring, and all your nasty politicians and generals and policemen… There’ll still be rose gardens to sit in and read Sherlock Holmes by the lakeside.”

  The thought made him dizzy.

  Armed SS units fought ferociously alongside the Wehrmacht during the war in Poland, later becoming the “Waffen-SS”. One section of it bore the Death’s Head symbol on their collar tabs, as well as their caps, as they were formed from the Totenkopfverbände organisation of SS camp personnel, the perfect breeding ground of brutality. What was officially named the Waffen-SS Totenkopf “Death’s Head” division in October 1939 fought as three regiments in Poland, consisting of voluntary enlistments of concentration camp guards drafted from the SS-Totenkopfverbände, proudly sporting the sinister skull and crossbones insignia they had made their own.

  The morning after his application to join the armed SS military unit being formed, Walther Hoffman, Untersturmführer of the SS-Totenkopfverbände had been summoned to the Dachau Commandant’s office to meet the camp’s first real commander, now Chief Inspector of The Concentration Camps and SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke.

  “Heil Hitler!” Hoffman shouted, raising his arm. The Inspector-General had nodded in austere approval as Hoffman clicked his heel.

  “Heil Hitler. Take a seat, Hoffman.” The voice was as Bavarian as Hoffman’s was, though not Munich. Still, the accent was so strong, every syllable was dripping with malt beer and clad in lederhosen.

  Hoffman did so, and Eicke sat perched on the edge of the commandant’s desk in front of him. Commandant SS-Oberführer Hans Loritz was not present.

  “Untersturmführer Hoffman… you wish to join the SS-Totenkopf armed unit, and serve your fatherland. We know war with the Poles is coming. You wish to fight for Germany. That is good. You are a good candidate.”

  Eicke surveyed him, like a stern old schoolmaster. Hoffman had seen him on previous visits, but had never spoken to him. He’d noted the former commandant had a good rapport with the rank and file guards there, remembering names and details with a quick familiarity. The man was a huge figure in their world. A hefty frame, great hams for fists and a wide, flat nose in the middle of a lined and fleshy face, slick black hair neatly parted at the side and clad in an SS-General’s uniform; Theodor Eicke had a large physical presence. It was said even Heydrich could not dislodge him from his position as SS-Gruppenführer und Inspector der Konzentrationslager, and that Himmler personally protected his rule over the Reich’s vast internment system, successfully preventing an SD-Gestapo coup.

  Eicke fixed his gaze on Hoffman; one eye was slightly larger than the other, which gave him the discomfiting appearance of intensely peering at the younger man with some kind of stern, inexplicable anger.

  “So, Hoffman, as I look to gather good, young, committed officers for the formation of this division in a new armed force of Germany, bearers of the Führer’s political will, it is to people of your calibre I must turn.”

  Hoffman accepted the plaudits patiently. Already he began to sense where this was headed.

  Eicke folded his arms, settling a lengthy gaze on the young officer.

  “You are a committed National Socialist. Model Aryan, perfect German, young, strong. This is an ideal candidacy, I thought to myself. Then I checked your file.”

  Eicke briskly rounded the wooden counter, and sat down behind his old desk. He did not seem to notice the curious position he was occupying. A worried Hoffman tried appealing to the SS camaraderie he’d seen Eicke freely display with the guards.

  “Back in the old chair, mein Gruppenführer. Good memories I hope.” Eicke looked up from the sheaf of papers, and Hoffman quickly added “Sir.”

  The general grinned. “Dachau is still mine. Not even the Prinz-Albrecht Palais could take the camps from me.”

  The Prinz-Albrecht Palais was headquarters of Heydrich’s Sicherheitdienst, the SS Security Service and party intelligence agency. A garden at the back of the SD offices connected them to their sister organisation the Gestapo, housed in the old art college on Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. Heydrich had monopolised all security and police branches of the Reich into his SS Security Main Office, with the sole exception of the Totenkopfverbände. The concentration camps were the one area that ‘The Hangman’ in Berlin had not somehow managed to gain administrative control over, constantly pressuring Himmler to add it to his personal empire as per Heydrich’s rulership of all manner of policing and suppression in the Reich. Hoffman had no strong feelings about the Reichsführer-SS, but he’d heard many jokes from the rank and file about ‘Heini der Wimmler’ and how he should watch his back, as Heydrich would one day outgrow him, or tire of using the Reichsführer as a battering ram to power one of these days. If Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s two chief party rivals weren’t safe from Heydrich, they said, then nor was Himmler. Nor anyone e
lse who got in his way.

  The powerful general grinning across the desk at Hoffman did not seem an opponent to take lightly, however, nor one easily rolled over. Even by ‘The Blond Beast’.

  “Things were different when I started,” that man boomed. “The TV didn’t exist. We were not even a separate branch of the SS. And I didn’t wear the Death’s Head on my collar tab, when I was here, nor did any of the others.”

  “The TV wore SS runes?”

  “No. A small ‘D’ for Dachau. I was Commandant – most of the rank and file had blank tabs. ’34 I left here to become Reich Inspector, the SA cancer was cut from the National Socialist body, and the SS-TV became its own beast.”

  Eicke’s grin widened as he spoke, lighting himself a cigarette carelessly. Hoffman silently noted the absence of an ashtray.

  “Now, your file, Hoffman. Joined the party, 1930. The year I joined the SS, Untersturmführer,” he said, adding slight emphasis to the rank as though to question the disparity between his considerable seniority and the 2nd class lieutenant’s far lowlier status. Then he seemed mollified. “Ah, took three years to join the SS. However, excellent record with regards to your political reliability and upholding of German honour. Married 1935, Claudia Hoffman née von Kahr.”

  Eicke’s eyes widened in alarm, and shot up to Hoffman questioningly. Hostile.

  “No, different family,” Hoffman reassured him firmly.

  Gustav Ritter von Kahr had been Bavarian Minister-President, and a ‘traitor’ in the failed 1923 putsch that led to Hitler’s arrest and imprisonment. Revenge had been savage. It came eleven years later, during the Night of the Long Knives purge of ’34, masterminded by Heydrich and with Göring and Himmler’s unholy alliance to sway the Führer. Gustav von Kahr had been hacked to death with axes by SS men, even as the SA leadership was being murdered en masse. And as Hoffman was well aware, Ernst Röhm had been shot by none other than Theodor Eicke.