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

by Daniel S. Fletcher

  Taking refuge behind Nelson’s Column, Bill settled himself with the statue as his impediment from the massing Werhmacht at the Arch; firing off to his right as the several soldiers whose roadblock faced The Strand took position thirty metres south of him, the aged veteran sent one man scrambling away, hit his comrade in the leg and in doing so, he managed to clear his unprotected flank of enemies. The main bulk, he knew, were further south down the road and would be there soon.

  Nelson’s Column stood in the middle of Trafalgar Square, with no additional cover nearby, and exposed on all sides in a wide public space. Bill had not chosen a spot that he could hold indefinitely; indefensible, at best, it offered a brief haven for a shoot-out.

  Bill thought of his dead father, his dead brother and his dead friend, smiling genially as their faces swam before him, before at last settling his mind’s eye on sweet Maureen’s memory.

  I’m Forever Blowin’ Bubbles, he crooned to himself, pretty bubbles in the air…

  They fly so high, they reach the sky,

  And like our dreams, they fade and die…

  Fortune’s always hiding, I looked everywhere,

  I’ll be blowing bubbles, soon,

  And I’m sure I’ll see you there…

  Bill’s piercing eyes crinkled, and a single tear leaked down either cheek to the curved lips of his wide smile. He glanced up to the sun, calmly enjoying the gentle touch of its last kiss on his handsome face as he grinned, silently thanking whatever energy it was that created the cosmos. Drawing the pistol with the cavalier dash of a buccaneer, Bill Wilson yelled out a piercing war cry and sprinted out, firing bullets over to the German positions, too many of them, his wildly inaccurate shots bursting four times from the gun before he was brought down in a hail of bullets, and he crashed hard to the ground, dead, in the shadow of Nelson’s Column.

  By now the high speed chase was over. A frantic Alan roared out of the boundaries of human settlement and into the kind of tree-lined country road that looks like it migrated to the London area from another part of the country; foreign, alien, natural. The motorbike spluttered at its maximum speed, willed on by its frantic rider. He knew there would be army checkpoints on the road ahead; SS-Gestapo, and likely soldiers at his back. Escape had proven difficult; he had reached his bike, using the chaos of the crowds, but not without pursuers. The subsequent mad dash had drained the bike of much of its remaining petrol, and it was a bittersweet moment when he finally broke free of his dogged German followers. His fuel was low, and while he’d escaped the city and the soldiers, it was painfully clear that the ensnarement operation would now be in effect. The enormity of what they’d tried to do, and what they’d done, was too great. Bikes, cars and trucks. Guns, and evil intent.

  Tears streaking his face – half from the wind whipping unforgivingly into his eyes as the bike screamed away through the streets –Alan raced further out of the city, pushing deeper into the countryside, and he put one final burst into the engine until he saw water. There, down an embankment to his left, some distance from the road and beyond the trees that lined it, he caught a glimpse of water. Oh God, there’s water. Trees, leaves grass… water.

  Veering away off the asphalt, Alan knew he was in contact with the man-made world for the last time.

  Good, he thought. Thank God. Or whatever force there is.

  The bike shuddered down the grass embankment, through a gap in the trees that opened up before him. He rolled down the unspoiled turf of the bank to a clearing of undisturbed grassland that surprisingly, given the relative lateness of the year, had seemingly retained all its green splendour. Adrenaline coursed through blood that had run thin in his veins, and he paused, panting on the bike. Trees overlapped above his head, forming a natural enclosure and offering a strange protection from the sky; an enclosed world. His eyes blearily, feverishly, appreciatively absorbed every visual.

  Those fucking bastards. Those fucking fascist bastards.

  Sunlight pierced the branches with a scattered array of thin beams, almost mockingly bright. After a while, still not hearing the sound of any pursuing vehicles, Alan patted the bike, and shuffled over to the water’s edge, beyond the leafy ceiling. The open sky, with nothing human or man-made in sight. Alan stared hungrily around the little lake, before gazing up. The sky, he noticed for the first time, was a lovely blue; somewhere between a deep azure and, in part, a light periwinkle; dotted and specked with clouds. It belied the time of year.

  His jaw bunching in a rush of nervous energy, Alan pulled the Star 7.65mm pistol out of his lined black leather jacket; every inch the anti-fascist freedom fighter. The gun had been procured in Barcelona from a member of the CNT anarchist’s brigades, not long after their arrival, while the group of friends were all still members of the POUM. Those were the happy days of ’36, when all anti-fascists – regardless of party or theorist loyalties – were undisputed comrades in arms, united against fascist tyranny, embracing indiscriminately and singing through the streets. That died, as had, he realised now, the idealistic egalitarian dream itself.

  In a moment of quiet regret, Alan conceded that their hopes and dreams had been purely quixotic. If right-wing tyranny had not engulfed them, combined with religion, then the murderous left they had naively believed in would have inflicted a Stalinist hell on the west. If both extremes failed; the ruling classes and financial masters would impose corporatocracy, and perpetuate serfdom. Whatever the form and label, rulers would rule, and the powerful would wield power.

  It would never end.

  The left extreme had proven as ruthless and obnoxiously, foolishly cruel as that of the right. One had triumphed, the other failed, but the ruling class and corporate plutocrats still sat atop the pyramid either way. All the bloodshed of young men, ultimately fighting for nothing. Musing on the cruelties of their lives, the Geordie was suddenly weary, tired of it all. Let them struggle on in their pretentious, blind ostentation. Let them bow and salute, or fight and fall. Oddly enough, the cold, clammy metal of his tried and trusted pistol was comforting. Alan’s hand shook, but his body was still, a lonely silhouette by the waterside.

  The grassy clearing; its wet, fresh smells overpowering the lingering stink of the bike exhaust and of London; damp leaves, the strong smell of grass and of fresh water…. This is a dream world, he thought. The pleasant sight calmed the sorrowful agitation of his tortured soul. His eyes wide with wonder, Alan pulled out a cigarette – one left in his pack – and then decided against it, throwing the rolled stick to the ground. He filled his lungs with the clean air, refreshing himself. They could not take this from him. His life and liberty, perhaps, but while he breathed, they could not take the oxygen from him.

  Alan had fought against the rising tide of Europe since he’d been eighteen years of age, but he’d always slipped the net, or been under it. Underground, or in the shadows, or faceless in the crowd of dissent. For the first time – and the last, he realised sombrely – he was abolished. Blacklisted. The enemy had finally turned its malevolent gaze onto him. His very existence was a Crime Against People. They’d stripped him of his right to live.

  A dissident revolutionary for years of his life, Alan was finally, officially, ‘Life Unworthy of Life.’

  Amidst birdsong, he remembered the American folk song they’d sung in the trenches to keep their spirits up on winter nights. It had been brought over by their comrades from the New World. The song had been reworded; I Will Overcome, Some Day. Alan chuckled as he hummed the words to himself, with tears spilling at their ultimate failure; an adult lifetime of fighting against fascist tyranny only to die failing to remove its chief scourge; the Crown Prince of Terror in the horrible Heydrich.

  They may well have taken out his only ranked superior in the black order, but Alan could see now that it had been a mistake, even if they’d managed to kill Himmler. What good did removing the lunatic do when a cold, calculating monster like the Reichsprotektor was there to take his place? And if Himmler was indeed dead, the r
eprisals would be horrible.

  How many British people had they condemned to death with their actions?

  We Will Overcome… we will overcome… we shall overcome, some day.

  If in my heart… I do not yield…

  We will overcome, some… day.

  The words almost choked him with their grim, forlorn irony.

  Alan hoped his friends had escaped. He bent to pick up a stone, skimming it gently across the smooth, shimmering surface of the water… and now he noticed birds, swans and others he did not know, sat serenely in the lake, other smaller types of bird gliding here and there, to and fro.

  This is a dream world, he thought furiously, blinking through his tears. This is a dream world. What a beautiful dream world.

  Alan looked across the glimmering, shimmering water, its greens and ripples, the lush environ surrounding it, leafy trees with yellowing leaves and the beauty of nature; he thought of the world entrusted to humans – with their endless ingratitude, the wicked malice displayed to each other, the savagery of their deeds – and his heart broke. Then he thought of Jack, and William, and dear, sweet Mary, and – not of the pain – but of their love for each other, the bond they had shared. Blinking back tears of affection, he hoped with all his heart that they had escaped. He thought of his mother, and of his comrades, and a great warm weariness descended upon him. The gleaming, sunlit water and his tree-enclosed vista. Birdsong. Alan breathed in the sweet, grassy lakeside fragrance that was lightly dusting his nostrils, savouring it, raising his left hand – the one that wasn’t grasping the cold metal of Star 7.65mm and he held it aloft; one last anti-fascist salute as the light faded. He was so, so tired.

  This is a dream world. It is a dream world… oh, what a beautiful dream world…

  The gunshot sliced through the silent tranquillity like an evil knife, sending a gaggle of panicked birds screeching skyward to the clouds.

  Naomi watched with wide eyes through the chain-link fence topped with barbed wire hooks that enclosed her crude barracks, as the sad spectacle played its course.

  A group of pathetic prisoners had been brought out for their first roll call; being so new to the Germans’ internment system, Naomi watched with understanding sorrow as the hopes of the newest unfortunates were visibly dashed to pieces with each cruel jibe from the foul Austrian bear in command.

  One man had been singled out for special treatment. Those who had spent months at the camp already looked on with a resigned air of expectation, having seen such status awarded to earlier transgressors who had spectacularly offended the Nazi leadership. The result was always bloody and vengeful.

  This man, it was announced gleefully by the commandant’s chief lieutenant, was a writer, guilty of some of the most heinous literary atrocities ever committed, some of the most offensive materials ever seen by the German authorities, and a kinsman to known Enemies of the Reich who had actually taken up arms and fought against the European fascist revolution. This degenerate was one of the most notable names amongst the underground collective of subversive writing perverts, like George Orwell, who had also been captured and was to be executed publicly in London as a lesson. Unlike Simon, Orwell was destined to be hung with piano wire, along with several resistance members who had attempted to execute the Reichsprotektor, and killed a decoy doppleganger of Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS.

  In stark contrast, this writer would die here; killed in the camp; no spectacle, no martyrdom, just brutally dispatched as an unmourned dissident. His body would be incinerated, and his ashes thrown into sewage. It was the complete extermination of a human life; body and soul.

  This foolish, disgusting man was another outspoken and outdated thinker; spouting redundant ideas of social equality and democracy – laughable, they were told. How ridiculous and toxic, when the de-brutalisation of British society had proven so weak and ineffective, floundering against not only the strength of the Greater Reich, but the insidious poison of Jewry that had eaten Britain alive from within. With the likes of this writer gone, they announced, the British Empire could finally adjust and adapt to regain its pride, and carve out its legacy and authority in the New Order in the World, as befits a great power and its people.

  Simon was to die in the camp.

  He was young, Naomi could determine, and sported not inconsiderable sideburns. Dirty blond hair swept across a bloodied face in curled waves, and a somewhat unfortunate, almost Jewish nose stuck out from an otherwise charmingly boyish face. His forehead was stained with blood, however, and the right side of his face was slightly lopsided due to an obviously injured jaw. The bone was visibly broken, and he nursed it tenderly at intervals, several times every minute. Black bruising adorned a misaligned side profile. He looked neither proud, nor defiant, and the body language of this doomed man quite clearly betrayed the depths of his fear.

  In high good humour, Commandant Globocnik circled his prey.

  “You’re a cunt,” he told the Englishman, using one of the only insulting phrases in that tongue that he knew.

  “If you didn’t think that, I would be a cunt,” Simon replied, trying to sound defiant but a stammer in his voice countered his intentions horribly. It betrayed his terror, like the frantic flight of a herbivore, bolting before a predator’s wrath.

  Globocnik paused, considering him. “Whatever you say. You are a swine.”

  The great whip he carried lashed out, loudly smacking against the wet flesh of the perspiring English writer. Caught unawares, Simon took an open shot to the face and was dropped hard, gurgling a frenzied cry of pain. With only the sound of birds trilling and whistling as a backdrop to the torturous punishment, Globocnik silently watched the writer writhing in agony for several minutes, halting the methodical thrashing to let him recover. Soon after, Simon rose to his feet unsteadily, in the deathly silence of hundreds of observing eyes, and was whipped again, gritting his teeth against the sting as he unwillingly let out a long, whining whimper.

  “I would like,” Globocnik began, struggling to remember the correct English, “to throw you in a cell and use a submarine engine… to suffocate you like vermin… so you would die like a rat.”

  Implacable malevolence radiated from Globocnik, as he stared into Simon’s watering eyes, grinning as the prisoner proved incapable of holding his gaze. Still beaming toothily, his fleshy face lit with happiness, the big man kicked the writer’s legs out from under him and Simon collapsed heavily in a heap. The man’s giant fist ploughed into his face, repeatedly. Six subsequent lashes of the whip elicited awful yells; choking in the dust, the journalist screamed at the impact of each blow.

  “But killing you like a dog is fitting,” the Austrian sneered, oblivious to the wound on his own fist from the impact of knuckle on bone.

  Simon looked up; birds circled overhead, with his tormentor framed against them and the endless white and grey of the northern English sky. It seemed fitting, somehow, and through the pain he likened the moment to vultures circling symbolically.

  At that thought, his courage failed him and he began to sob.

  Globocnik thrilled to see the mental disintegration, as his prey slowly but surely broke. He took his truncheon, and lightly stepped in, agile for a man of such a large frame, to viciously club the stricken writer’s knees.

  “Nobody will care about you tomorrow,” he told the sobbing, agonised journalist triumphantly. “The German Reich will never end. Your life and legacy ends here.”

  With his neural activity heightened by the sharp waves of pain, Simon tried to respond by asking how ‘The Thousand Year Reich’ could last ‘for ever’ which was a failed enterprise by definition, though his effort proved impossible. The battered writer could only splutter through blood and the broken stumps of his teeth.

  Tiring of his pre-planned insults and mockery, Globocnik smirked before gesturing to one of his aides. They brought forth a prisoner’s cap; small and grey, woollen, in the same style of the standard-issue Konzentrationslager pyjamas worn b
y all internees in Protective Custody.

  “Hatred is by far the longest pleasure, men love in haste, but they detest at leisure,” Naomi murmured sadly, without averting her eyes from the grim, protracted spectacle of Simon’s death. The young girl who had been brought to Catterick in the same transport as Naomi, and had been terrified out of her wits, now glanced at the Jewish teacher stood beside her, registering the profound words of Lord Byron. Quietly, she slipped her hand into Naomi’s, softly stroking the palm of her hand, and the two young women interlocked their fingers gently, comforted by the human touch of solidarity and love.

  Clutching the cap, Globocnik briskly marched away, seemingly heading for an area marked by nothing but a stretch of perimeter fence. Half-carrying Simon, two guards led him over to a section of the fence that was thirty metres beyond the segregated barrack blocks, to where the inner perimetre wire alone separated the camp from the adjacent woodland. An outer perimeter existed further along, past the trees and beyond the line of sight, but from the inner confines of the lager, this particular stretch of fence looked misleadingly like the route to freedom, and the only impediment to the outside world.

  Globocnik paused by the chain-link fence. Turning, he held the cap aloft, sneeringly showed it to his tormented prey, and then turned to carelessly throw it up to the barbs lining the top of the enclosure.

  “That is yours, Prisoner 1984. Retrieve your hat.”

  Globocnik pointed menacingly from Simon to the cap, and then walked away without another word. The writer was left with his two grim-faced guards standing sentinel, submachine guns slung over their shoulders and an implacable will to do their duty etched firmly into the hard features of their cold, Teutonic faces. The writer stood still, breathing heavily. When he failed to move towards the hat, painfully aware of the obvious outcome, one guard nudged him in one of his injured kidneys with the butt of his gun. There was no way out. Tottering, utterly dejected, he accepted the inevitable and limped forwards to the fence.