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

by Daniel S. Fletcher

  As they reached the approach to York on the A64 at Askham Bryan, two of the trucks peeled away, heading northwards to the upper districts. The first truck rolled on, smoothly hurtling forwards on its grim mission.

  Behind it, a Mercedes Benz followed in the first truck’s wake.

  “Not far now, Oberführer,” Heinz Jost remarked.

  “We will arrive in less than five minutes. Guy Fawkes Inn is right next to the York Minster, would you believe, Brigadeführer.”

  Jost smirked. “Perhaps Heydrich will attach some quasi-religious sentiment to the occasion. Part of the Reich’s spiritual crusade against the godless forces that oppose it.”

  Schöngarth grinned at that. “After all these years attacking the Church, even with its support of fascism throughout Europe… and the meeting tomorrow with Göring and the Tommies! General Hangman will have a smirk on his face tonight like a Cheshire cat that just got the cream.”

  “Won’t he just, Oberführer.”

  “Well anyway, our friend Eric, or ‘George’ obviously attached some symbolic significance to it, Brigadeführer,” Schöngarth observed. Jost murmured an affirmation, pondering the man they were after.

  Due to orders from on high, the two men found themselves at the back of an SS Mercedes together, driven by an enlisted trooper from Nebe’s outfit, collaborating in a mission as part of the overall crackdown Heydrich announced that day in London, a major clearing up operation for the Einsatzkommandos before personnel could be sent east. Heydrich tasked Nebe, who passed it to his deputy commander Jost, humiliating both with the reminder of their positions, and to add to the ignominy, demanded that SD Chief Northern Zone Schöngarth participate in ‘a mission of vital significance.’ Jost had to swallow his pride.

  While the Brigadier-General and the Senior-Colonel Schöngarth got along well enough, it was another typical Heydrich move, in that while Kripo chief Nebe was stuck in the role of Gruppe Manchester commander while the lesser ranked Dr Six ran London and was chief coordinator for Britain, Jost – who shared Six’s rank, and held a senior position in the SD – was stuck as a mere deputy-commander of a Gruppe under Nebe, a humiliation befitting the long-time associate of Heydrich’s estranged former deputy, Werner Best.

  Schöngarth was outranked just one notch lower in the SS-SD hierarchy; a senior colonel, having been promoted thrice from major in only fifteen months, but he was Acting SD Chief of the Northern Zone. The same hand that held Jost down, pushed up the ruthless, clever man sat beside him. And be it one rank inferior, or three; Schöngarth’s favoured position was humiliating for the Brigadier nonetheless. Jost had been a Brigadeführer when SD Kommandant Nord Schöngarth was a mere lieutenant. At least, Jost conceded, the man is educated and bearable, like Nebe. Had Heydrich placed one of the more thuggish types from Gestapo or Kripo as their nominal northern overseer, or a foolish INTERPOL bureaucrat, Jost may have been compelled to risk conspiring against the all-powerful policeman.

  The small convoy reached the inner city districts, and passed by the ancient city wall.

  “Jorvik, Brigadeführer,” Schöngarth noted. Jost nodded, thoughtfully.

  “The Saxons… the Vikings… and now the SD continues the Germanic legacy of Yorkshire.”

  Schöngarth laughed at that, his voice granular, contrasting with an occasional eloquence. “I’ll have to base myself nearer to your commando, Herr Brigadeführer. Outside of Dr Lange and a few assorted SD in Leeds, most of the SS around here would have no idea who the Saxons were. Typical slack-jawed Orpo bulls and Kripo sniffers. Even in Gestapo back in ’35, I never heard so many banal conversations about fucking this woman, torturing that Jew. Not that persecuting Hebrews or catching hold of a schnuckiputzi lacks merit but Christ… some intelligent conversation should not be too much to expect, no?”

  “Quite.”

  “With Dissident #1 in custody, we’ll have earned a drink anyway, Brigadeführer, perhaps you could show me the little after hours drinking hole you boys have got set up in Manchester? I’m in no rush to get back to Leeds and the likes of that Amon Goeth character. Christ, some of these bastards should be in Poland policing the Jew ghettos, the way they are… they’re not fit to be in society.”

  Jost laughed himself, a deep rumble that began in his chest, spilling out through his oesophagus and escaping his long, set mouth. “Sounds like you need the break. Come over, there’s no shortage of wine and women in our neck of the woods. And with old Arthur in command, only the most civilised coppers in Kripo and the SS are hanging around our Manchester drinking holes…”

  Schöngarth joined in the laughter; his own harsh and guttural, utterly belying his background and education. Outside, it was a familiar picture of nocturnal German operation; the northern English countryside had been a tranquil sea of black, and the human settlements dozing in peaceful slumber. Crickets chirped, in an otherwise eerie still. The convoy stole on through the night.

  As they penetrated deeper into the small city, well within the city limits of the old settlement, appreciative murmurs escaped German lips at the sight of the walls. History, in particular that of the ‘Aryan’ blood groups in northwestern Europe was of course exalted beyond all else in the new German Reich. It was that history that demanded a Germanic present.

  The group rounded the narrow corner of St Leonard’s Square, which was entirely deserted with the curfew in effect, beyond the fluttering of some pigeons in the shadows. Had there been human life present, it would have disappeared at the approach of motorised vehicles; the sound of vehicles being driven at night meant Germans, or at the outside best, the unfortunate local police, instructed to prowl by their foreign overlords. Special permits were granted to designated drivers on logistical jobs that were deemed necessary, allowing for night travel within set parameters. Beyond that, only the occupiers were to be found in the dark.

  Cruising past the square, the SS turned at High Petergate, barely squeezing through the narrow opening in the ancient Roman wall and down the narrow street. Fifty metres along, the road widened into a square, with the great York Minster cathedral planted majestically to their left, its great west front towering over them, a huge colossus of magnesium limestone; gothic spires and grand architectural design drawing appreciative stares from the two SD officers.

  A small grass square and Great War memorial stood to their right; and two narrow streets forked out alongside the famed cathedral’s southern flank, separated by a small church building in its shadow. They slowed to a halt, adjacent to the smaller building on the open area at the Minster’s base.

  Jost got out of the car, quick to take lead in the operation.

  “Out, boys look lively! This way”

  The troops purposefully disembarked, forming something like a phalanx. Schöngarth, watching, mused that the young men had not seen active combat, merely clean-up jobs, and this was their playing warrior in the dark square of the York Minster. He resolved to tell Heydrich, perhaps draw an approving smile from that pale, mocking face.

  Jost marched past the small church building to the second street squeezed between the minster’s southern base and the War Memorial Square, to what was almost the first doorway of the long terrace row. Number 27, High Petergate. A plaque on the window helpfully proclaimed ‘Guy Fawkes, Born Here 1570.”

  Jost went to hammer the door, and then, thinking better of it, stepped aside. One small gesture with his head, and the stormtrooper behind him kicked the door through, the SS men swarming into the building, yelling loud enough to wake the dead.

  Jost and Schöngarth, grinning ear-to-ear, entered the building after them, listening as the troops emptied rooms of the lesser dissident’s not fitting the description of their great prize.

  In one room they found a typewriter, and stacks of dissident leaflets, some of which they had seen before, having been distributed far and wide across the northern zone, ruminating on German atrocities and extolling the populace to rebel. Worse still, in another room they found communist paraphern
alia, a Star gun as used by the anti-fascist International Brigades in Spain, and even a CPGB card.

  On the second floor, Jost and Schöngarth stomped past the shrieking figures being violently beaten and hauled from the other rooms, their jackboots thumping on the polished wood as they marched to the furthest door back from the stairs. There, sat bolt upright in the four-poster bed with three machine guns trained on him, in a tastefully decorated room, they found their man.

  “Eric Blair,” Jost demanded, almost triumphantly.

  The man sighed, his neatly-parted hair dishevelled but the pencil-moustache and almost schoolmasterly features identified him to his thrilled captors. He saw the hopelessness in his situation, instead lighting a cigarette in response, sucking in the smoke with rueful gusto as though it was his last. “Viva libertad…” he intoned wistfully, as though to himself.

  “Take the swine,” Jost told the men in German.

  Four hands seized hold of George Orwell, and dragged him, still in his nightgown, out to the street, peppering him with vicious shots and cruel blows all the way. The writer refused to cry out in pain; until the multitude of painful blows rendered him all-but senseless, and a series of more methodical, calculated strikes from his tormentors elicited agonised moans through gritted teeth.

  Jost took one last, lingering look at the great Minster, framed against the starry sky over England, before unconsciously letting out a small noise of amused triumph, and stepping back into the Mercedes with Schöngarth. They grinned at each other on the backseat, glowing, thrilled with success. Heydrich would be delighted.

  ~

  In Manchester, Nebe’s other commando rolled up on a quiet Denton terrace, and field grey stormtroopers quietly disembarked the cross marked trucks to the cobbles. Doors were kicked off hinges at houses 2, 6, 10 and 11, and several inhabitants were hauled out kicking and screaming. One man spat at his SD tormentor; a brute drafted from the Hamburg Gestapo into the Action Groups, who responded by firing into both kneecaps of the Mancunian. The gunshots and resulting screams of pain saw the rest of the street’s curtain open, and the shocked and horrified eyes of the estate looked out, watching the grim spectacle as their neighbours were hauled away.

  A lieutenant approached the enlisted Gestapo thug, and slapped his face.

  “Idiot! This isn’t Poland! Put him in the truck, Fritz.”

  The surly Gestapo man complied, hauling the bleeding man up and into captivity. All resistance, however, had been knocked out of his fellow arrestees on the loud reports from the Walther PP, and his thrashing anguish.

  With business concluded at all four addresses, the men of EK1 Manchester rolled westwards to the next street on their list, in Moss Side, south of the centre. Further west, the men of EK3M were on a silent prowl of intent in a hunt through Salford and Trafford.

  Close to headquarters, one truck deposited a group of frightened women in the building, where office staff took charge of them and led the terrified, pleading group down to the holding cells. Bloodstained floors and chains only heightened the abject terror they felt.

  Elsewhere, designated anti-tank ditches were located in the usual places – fields on the city outskirts and beyond – and machine gun fire spelled the end of hundreds more Enemies of the Reich; resistance real, false and imagined alike. Men, women and children, cut from the prime of their youth and sent crashing to the cold earth, spilling crimson as the blood freely flowed.

  “Halt,” Amon Goeth shouted, in a field near the northern outskirts of Leeds. His men lowered their weapons, wondering what crazed impulse had taken the lieutenant now. Denied his favourite part of the job, the recently demoted Unterscharführer Beckenbaur scowled.

  “It is a pleasure, and a privilege,” Goeth called out smoothly, his jaw bunching as he stepped over the boggy ground to the edge of the ditch, “… to personally deal with such filth, in the name of the Führer.”

  He peered at the first of twelve people, stood shivering at the pit edge, glancing fearfully between the cold mud of their soon-to-be resting place and the cold faces of the men who would put them there. She was a girl of perhaps 21, not long since removed from teenage years. Black hair cascaded untidily down her shoulders, and some was stuck to her tear-streaked face. Her bright eyes were now relatively clear of water, but their piercing energy, and pleading entreaty had no effect whatsoever on the Austrian man who now jutted his brutal face to within inches of hers.

  Even through her paralysing terror, she could smell whiskey, and something else unidentifable on his breath; something bitter, yet tinged with a chemical sweetness.

  “Say…” Goeth breathed lustily, raising his Luger, “Heil Hitler.”

  The girl whimpered in fear. Tears trickled down the dirty, streaked flesh of her cheek.

  Goeth shrugged, and lowering his officer-issue pistol, he instead drew a knife with an ostentatious flourish, and before she could react, the SS lieutenant began stabbing her repeatedly in the stomach. The cruel blade penetrated her with a sickening sound of metallic blade meeting, and smiting, flesh and bone. As her uncomprehending, terrorised family sank to their knees in a mortified paralysis, utterly gripped by the evil horror, Goeth grinned at them, his teeth bared with churlish, cannibalistic contempt.

  “You have the chance for redemption… ‘Heil Hitler’… or that.”

  Of the eleven remaining people, four managed to overcome their terror long enough to invoke the name of Germany’s leader. Wired on his standard methamphetamine ration, a wired Goeth paced back and forth, revelling in his role as executioner. Having acquiesced to a Hitler salute, the savage Austrian officer shot them; individual bullets administered between the eyes. Compared to the barbarism suffered by the unfortunate eight, these gunshots were merciful. Even Beckenbaur was relieved each time a shivering, doomed captive managed to blurt out the German salute, instead of simply babbling in fear or mouthing wordlessly in paralysed shock.

  In a cold, empty house in Bloomsbury, the former Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police John Thomas was sat dumbly in his drab, unclean living room, morosely swigging from a bottle of whiskey that dangled precariously from his swaying right hand.

  The rapidly ageing policeman had not been to the Royal Oak in several weeks, leaving the house only to replenish his meagre food supplies, having been in possession of a not-inconsiderable haul of alcoholic liquors and spirits amassed in the days before rationing, in the days before war, in the days of peace. It showed. Two weeks without shaving had seen his stubble grow out into an unkempt mass of straggly hair. The once dashing mop that adorned his head was now a similarly wild, tangled mess that sat without shape above his haggard face and its sunken eyes, the waxy complexion of a vampire. The striking comparison to Bill Wilson was unavoidable, he noted mirthlessly on the sole occasion he had bothered checked a mirror in those empty, long days and weeks.

  Almighty was the crash of the door, as a gang of uniformed German thugs tore into the room, but John Thomas did not react. It was a moment he had lived out in his dreams and imagination for as long as he cared to remember, and as the Germans began to discuss the grim spectacle of his ruined, high-smelling home amongst themselves, the Scotland Yard man merely raised the whiskey bottle to his lips to down the last of its pungent contents. He did not even look at them.

  In the depths of his drunken stupor, Thomas reflected that he had been a policeman all his life, yet the new form of this role was utterly perplexing. Despite himself, he allowed a sense of gratitude to seep through that while the police of the New Order were here to arrest him, at least he did not have to be part of their system. As a lifelong policeman, he denied them that much.

  So weak and malnourished was he – once a strong, powerful man of action – that when the troops grabbed him to haul him away to his fate, the overzealous seizure saw the right arm of John Thomas snap cleanly in the hand of his SS tormentor. The German, youthful in his early twenties, had to hide his disgust from his amused kameraden as they dragged their pitiful prey
to the truck.

  Any flagged names; any suspected beyond reasonable doubt; all those whom had survived the initial purge, before the Wehrmacht’s relative peaceful occupation… all were seized, in the blackness of that evening, vanished from their lives, under Night and Fog.

  In the French barracks of St George no.5 that night, the men were sat smoking, some tenderly inspecting their wounds from the escape attempt, others merely nursing injured pride. James Wilkinson sat alone, chain-smoking on his bunk in the corner, brooding quietly.

  The door opened, and Lieutenant Hoffman entered, with slight hesitance.

  Usually, the man’s likeable charm had thus far been enough to encourage some kind of good-natured banter being sent his way on arrival, men choosing to overlook his SS uniform. Providing alcohol and cigarettes – good ones – in copious quantities did little to lessen the esteem he was held in. But not on this day. The impotence of the men and their resentment of the day’s events repressed all prevailing goodwill they had towards the Obersturmführer from Munich.

  The big Bavarian looked to his immediate right at the nearest bunks to him, where the Sergeant, James Fletcher, Brian and Tommy were all propped against the back wall, reading quietly on their bunks. For an hour, none had been inclined to speak.

  “Sarge,” Hoffman began, using the English phrase. “The major would like to see you, with your permission.”

  “With his permission,” Tommy echoed sarcastically, though his voice was hollow. “Sarge? You want to turn him down, Stan. Bollocks to his games.”

  But Hitchman nodded. “Very well, Lieutenant. Very well.”

  Without further ado, he rose to his feet, and marched proudly outside, straight-backed, where two enlisted SS men escorted him away. Hoffman, however, remained behind.

  “Tommy…”

  The cockney resented being singled out for an entreaty. His eyes did not rise from the book, but he could feel an almost accusatory stare coming from some of the other men in the bunk, whose anti-German feelings were running particularly high after the incident with the escapees, Stanley and Major Wolf.