The ragged group were left to their own devices as the outer perimeter gates swung shut, and Naomi turned back to see her SS persecutors slowly walking back into the bowels of the Konzentrationslager. The women – all Jews – held hands, hardly daring to believe that they were truly free, and still wary of being riddled with machine gun fire as they left. Shot While Attempting To Escape had been the fate of many men since their internment began, and in particular, the memory of the poor, scared writer who had been openly murdered all those months prior was still burned onto their memories like a scar.
But no gunshots came.
As the camp began to recede into the distance, Naomi turned back one final time, to see the guards in each tower scurrying along; tiny, the size of ants. And right there, in front of the ragged group of malnourished Jewish internees, was the outer checkpoint, beyond which they saw familiar faces and family waiting for them.
Joy flooded their weakened bodies, almost paralysing them. Completely ignoring the surly SS guards at the checkpoint, the twenty women abandoned all care and ran screaming into the arms of their loved ones. Within seconds, the tearful embraces took on a more concerned, tender nature, as the extent of their physical weakness became all-too apparent; the brief physical contact being enough to demonstrate that their bodies had been reduced to skin and bones. But joyful elation overcame worry, and the ecstasy that lit those twenty gaunt, haggard faces had a magical quality of regeneration to it. One of the younger SS guards had to look away, as he noted an unpleasant, all-too human emotional reaction to the touching scene.
Naomi alone held back. Her haunted eyes met Paul’s, and she let him absorb the full visage of her emaciated, skeletal, battered body.
“Let me guess… I’ve got something on my face,” she grinned, her gaunt face suddenly lighting up. She was struggling to contain her emotions.
Paul stared at her, his eyes filmed with hot, burning tears.
“I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry.”
His hands flailed, as he failed to verbalise the multitude of thoughts he wished to convey to the broken shell of his lover. She smiled; a genuine gesture of concern. “There is nothing to be sorry about.”
And almost as though the younger man had been imprisoned in the cruel camp, Naomi gently stepped into him and laid a gentle hand on his cheek, whispering sweet words to him as her thin arms wrapped around his body, holding him to her with a maternal tenderness as they sobbed the bittersweet tears of regret and joy.
Major Jochen Wolf entered the office room, halting before the commanding figure that stood expectantly in the centre of it, whose stern scrutiny was silently fixed on the junior officer. Wolf saluted. The man he faced was SS-Oberstgruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.
“Heil Hitler!” Wolf snapped.
Heydrich cursorily raised his own paw skywards; imitating the Führer’s own straight-wristed version of the salute, as though he, too, was above the usual sacrosanct ritual. He did not verbally respond; the wily Wolf was amused, though equally, impressed by the display of authority shown by this conceited, dangerous man at the height of his powers.
“Excellent work, Wolf. Very well done. Walk with me.”
They marched purposefully through the building, saluted on all sides. To the junior officer’s surprise, Heydrich lit a cigarette upon exiting out into the Prussian sunlight.
“I’m celebrating the fact that jobs are being well done across the board,” Heydrich cheerily informed the inquisitive Wolf. He witheld the answer to the younger man’s silent query, and smirked. “Come, Sturmbannführer.”
And he marched on, forcing Wolf to meet his stride. The major kept pace, his senses alert to the nuances of the capricious Heydrich, trying to second-guess any tricks or tests that the general might throw in his way. Heading out past the parade grounds and to the surrounding grass fields, Heydrich led them to a small table nestled up the slightly rising slope that afforded a good view of the academy grounds. Courteously gesturing Wolf to take a seat, Heydrich reclined at ease, sucking happily at his cigarette with evident enjoyment. It was a Dunhill, Wolf noted, from England.
“Now…” the SS and Police general began. “To begin.”
“I am here to report as you ordered, Reichsprotektor und Oberstgrupp–”
“No, no,” Heydrich interjected breezily. “General will do.”
“Thank you, General,” Wolf purred obsequiously. Heydrich’s smile glinted at him, as their pale blue eyes clashed. The Major resumed: “I am glad my work in the re-education and conscription of a whole battalion of British soldiers for the Reich meets with your approval…”
His eyes lingered on Heydrich’s, just long enough for distaste to register through the coolness. Wolf’s own Machiavellian nature was valued by Heydrich, he knew, though he wondered if his age – even younger than the youthful general, at 32 – and his comparative good looks bothered the Reichsprotektor. Heydrich hated equals, loathed rivalry and despised losing. They were of similar height, and of similar build, but the general had a slightly androgynous quality to his looks, and even the dash of an occassionally effete, effeminate manner; slightly off-putting even to those who were blissfully unaware of his foibles. Of course, the slightest awareness of his professional life was enough to cow even the wildest spirits in Berlin in the general’s presence. But was it enough? Widely considered to be good-looking, Heydrich’s face had strong features but to Wolf, it was somewhat overlong and horsey. The eyes – usually narrowed in suspicion or with the malignant preoccupation of some scheming thought – were slightly too close together, and only on Heydrich’s musical performances did their shine appear to be anything other than a superficial mask over an endless frozen tundra of ice.
Wolf, on the other hand, was classically handsome in any sense of the word, and the almost symmetrical shape of his slim face, with its strong jaw and high cheekbones, was perfectly proportioned. Immaculately clad in his SS regalia, Major Wolf embodied the new German male; the high watermark of Aryan masculinity.
He probably could not care less, Wolf surmised, correctly. Heydrich can take what, and who, he wants, whenever he wants. Outside of Eva Braun and Edda Goebbels, there is not a woman in Europe out of bounds to the Blond Beast.
That man held Wolf’s persistent gaze, and after several seconds, he smiled thinly.
“All right, Wolf. Cut the shit. Your value directly correlates to how well I think you do your job. That is your life.” Heydrich dropped the smile, staring daggers through the quiet, watchful Wolf. “Stop sizing me up, Jochen, and never think about doing it again or I’ll make your life so terrible you will think it’s a nightmare you can’t wake up from, beyond the limits of your imagination. Regarding your job… you did well.”
Heydrich spared Wolf his death stare, casting his gaze out to the green hills beyond the academy, his mouth billowing smoke. “Your results – almost a 70% success rate – are significantly higher than camps 1-4, and 6-9 alike. One full battalion. For propaganda purposes alone, your work will be instrumental in the eventual deployment of multiple British divisions, along with the volunteer units from France and Spain. I am impressed. Make your final report before Barbarossa.”
Their eyes met again, with the hint of a mocking smile playing at Heydrich’s lips and one of genuine amusement at Wolf’s, before the former St. George no.5 camp commandant detailed in full the year-long operation. Much of what was said, the general had already heard, but Wolf knew better than to omit even the smallest details, lest the predator ever have something to use against him. Heydrich listened keenly, occasionally interjecting to demand clarifications, and as the major laid out his findings in as pedantic a manner as he could, the general absorbed all that he heard.
“Outstanding,” Heydrich breathed quietly at the conclusion of his underling’s report. “Truly remarkable…”
Abruptly dismissing Wolf, who departed with an impeccably unctuous air, Heydrich remained where he was, the avid athlete and sportsman permitting himself to smoke cigar
ettes there on the outdoors table, as he surveyed the grounds of the SS Academy at Pretzsch in excellent humour. Such indulgence was rare, but he felt it was merited. As the afternoon breeze gently drifted across his pale, long face, the Reichsprotektor’s thick lips curved into their trademark cruel, mocking smile. The encounter with a wily, cunning junior officer had bolstered the fabulous mood he had felt since leaving Britain to finalise the plans to launch the Waffen-SS and the Einsatzgruppen deep into Russia, alongside the all-conquering Wehrmacht that now bowed to his decrees.
Having masterminded the initial eastern push into Poland with Operation Himmler, Heydrich had actively served in the Luftwaffe, earned the Iron Cross and then employed an historic strategem against the British. Then he’d been named Germany’s viceroy over the occupied nation home of the world’s largest empire. Now, he was a warlord, entrusted with Generalplan Ost; measures that would directly affect the lives of seventy million human beings in Soviet territory – most of whom were to be slaughtered – resulting in the complete Germanisation of Polish, Baltic and Russian territories, and forever changing the course of history.
More than ever, Heydrich found that these small moments of private triumph were necessary, as the roaring momentum of his own life careered further and further into the realm of the overwhelming. Even his analytical, devious mind had begun to question the limits, if there were any, on his headlong ascent in an inexorable rise to power.
~
Jochen Wolf, having met with Heydrich, retreated to his quarters, breathing a sigh of relief as he locked the door behind him. He shed the SS tunic and stood to attention in his full-length mirror, staring uncritically at the visage of National Socialist masculinity.
Wolf was an incredibly honest man with himself, and the revelations he produced no longer had the power to shock or surprise him. He was naked under the spotlight of his own introspection. Born into a middle-class family in Hamburg, the younger Joachim ‘Jochen’ Wolf had been too young to enjoy the decadence of the early 20s, but, initially wide-eyed and soon after, fired up into a fledgling, primal state of bloodlust, he had certainly witnessed the pitched battles and violent street brawls between left and right in the years that followed, with a growing excitement and thirst for action.
The Wolf family had literary aspirations for their son, and enrolled him at the Heidelburg University, Germany’s oldest and most prestigious institution for academic study. The boisterous Jochen, however, found his outlet in boxing and wrestling; his martial passions spilled out into street fights and bar brawls when the zest of his bloodlust became too great to contain.
Only in the shattering realisation of his literary limitations, and faced with the reality that he would never be a new Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was Wolf’s mind liberated from the limitations of his upbringing, now free to be anything he wanted.
Questioning his desires and needs, as all young men do, Wolf began to suspect that only in the abandonment of all he had known, and the willpower to make his mark in the world, would his hunger for vindication be sated. But writing, romantic though Wolf found the notion, was clearly not the means with which the younger Jochen was to accomplish this, as minimal practical experience quickly taught him. Adrenaline, danger and violence moved him, stirring his soul, and in that field alone did his quill produce prose filled with interesting or valid observations. In all else, Jochen’s written musings were uninspired; a mixture of cheap plagiarisms and half-hearted annotations of his own, that neither rang true with anything other than superficial honesty or substance, nor particularly entertained the dispirited Wolf when he perused them at leisure. Subsequently returning to Goethe was dispiriting. Jochen Wolf became listless with apathy; his academic laziness and newfound arrogance combined to disrupt his studies, and the young narcissist would ultimately leave Heidelburg with an average degree. Even that was achieved only through a last ditch, desperate effort in his final term.
So ended the forgettable tenure of an unexceptional student, whose frustrated yearnings lent bitterness to his view of the world. Wolf was equally arrogant and lethargic; confused by his impulses and fruitlessly searching for his path to progression.
But Jochen Wolf possessed a cunning that many of his fellow students lacked; correctly predicting the rise of Hitler after the 1932 elections, in which thirteen million people voted for the National Socialist demagogue, Wolf – with a cynical pragmatism that astounded his bourgeois parents – embraced the new regime with open enthusiasm, and he signed up for the Party in December of that year. Little more than one month later, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.
The grim realisation that he would never be a new Nietzsche or Goethe in modern Germany had initially plagued him, and an underlying self-doubt from frustrated ambitions had lingering during the course of his Heidelburg studies. But Wolf realised, joyously, that while lacking in original thought and a natural flair, he did possess many of the qualities that Nietzsche himself had written were instrumental in the attainment and accumulation of power. Autodidactic and cunning; plots began to form in the shadows of his mind.
The respect and vindication Wolf craved would not, he calculated, come from professional critique or acclaim, but rather as a natural byproduct of the wielding of real, tangible power. He felt reborn. Intoxicated by the limitless possibilities of his aspirations, Wolf felt emancipated from his bourgeois upbringing and the moral constraints placed on him as a child; limitless and fledgling, under the eyes of no creator, bound by no celestial law or earthly sense of morality. He had shed everything, and thus gained everything. He was free.
With joy in his heart, Jochen Wolf joined the SA.
“Lick the pavement,” he had screamed at the old, frightened Jew on his first experience of public persecution. “Clean it with your tongue! How dare you presume to share the same cobbles as a racially pure German!”
Having alluded to the flimsy pretence of some kind of social sacrilege, Wolf began mercilessly beating the old man, a red mist descending over his frenzied eyes, and he only stopped when he realised the frail old man was lifeless, and the body he was still beating no longer breathed. Blood pooled black beneath him, spreading around the battered animal carcase that only moments before had contained a human life and soul. Yet to his delight, the vigour of his methods met with fierce approval from his fellow thugs in the gang, and Wolf was intoxicated; addicted to this outlet for violent release. He was utterly overjoyed with his new life; a heady combination of conformity with the system and a simultaneous licence to commit violence, meted out with impunity.
The days passed like sweet and gentle dreams, and the literati academic-turned-stormtrooper felt spiritually liberated.
Within one calendar year, Jochen Wolf had casually murdered seven people in the course of the ongoing pogroms conducted by the SA against Jews, which were officially unsanctioned but, it was known, strongly condoned. Wolf’s gleeful participation led to seven deaths, all by truncheon. His natural bullying streak found a home in the Sturmabteilung, and the more violent urges of his personality were given an avenue of release, legitimised by the endorsements of the state.
Violence had long been a part of the national character – Germany’s history dictated it – but for the first time, the forces that glorified military heroism and Germanic racial superiority also happened to be the forces holding political power over the country. In this climate of military mythology and rampant masculinity, Wolf freely abandoned his intellect and acquitted himself with the evil panache matched only by the most brutal of savage, nationalistic anti-Semites who embraced the swastika and marched in jackboots. And in the process, seven lifes were snuffed out by his hand, amongst the multitude of lost souls in the maelstrom of blood.
Jochen Wolf felt himself growing with quiet confidence.
Wily as a fox, he defected to the SS only two months before the murderous purge that the Party launched to castrate the SA’s boisterous leadership; hundreds died, and the pendulum of power swung in the Rei
ch. Soon after, Wolf managed to attract the attention of the mastermind of the purge himself; an ambitious, ruthless young general of the SS named Reinhard Heydrich. Yet to his chagrin, Wolf found that his earlier affiliations to the discredited SA and in particular, its leadership, proved hard to shake off. It took years of dedication, and a Machiavellian usage of the powers afforded to those Hugo Boss-clad defenders of Hitler’s will - The Black Angels of the SS – before Wolf came into his own, freed from the shackles of prejudice and with the influence to manouevre unimpeded through the ranks, as he sought to advance along the complex hierarchy of the SS. He won over most of his detractors, and discredited the sole grudge-bearing enemy that he couldn’t; the man’s inability to forgive a drunken bar brawl during inter-party SA and SS tensions led Wolf to falsely implicate him as a Mischling. Buying his witnesses and falsifying the testimonies, Wolf dared to visit an approving Heydrich with the information, and within days his path to advancement had been freed of impediment.
Ultimately, the determined young man rose to the rank of Sturmbannführer by the tender age of 29 – though he privately preferred ‘Major’, the army and Anglo-Saxon version of the rank– thus reaching a position of relative authority only two years before the outbreak of war.
Wolf yearned for war. He possessed tremendous physical courage, tempered though it was by a moral cowardice; not so much a lack of scruples, as an ability to shelve the scruples he had, and relentlessly justify his various excesses and crimes. Under his own critical gaze, naked before his own ruthless scrutiny, Wolf knew that despite his physical courage, he ultimately lacked the courage of his convictions, due to not having any at all. He was philosophically and morally opportunistic, slippery, and nothing more; Wolf had been forced to accept that at heart, he had become a charlatan, and a chameleon by nature. All that mattered, ultimately, was advancement.
Each time he tried to reassess his life’s direction, Jochen Wolf reached the conclusion that any critical acclaim he could have received had he tried to promote himself with some thin veneer of literati pretence would ultimately mean far less to him than would seizing some real, tangible power.
Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! Page 52