Hitler ascended the steps to where Borman, Speer and Goebbels stood waiting in the doorway. The alpine air was refreshing and he stopped to admire the Alps. Removing his fedora, he closed his pale blue eyes, enjoying the sensation of sunlight on his face. He breathed deeply, his throat tingling from the crisp tang of the air. As he started toward the reception, a wave of vertigo swept over him. He steadied himself, inwardly furious that his followers could see this.
Once inside, the Fuhrer marvelled at its craftsmanship. They walked as Speer explained its construction in detail. ‘As you can see, mein Fuhrer, from the two windows here in the main dining area you can observe the Watzman and Hochkalter mountains.’ They paused to admire the peaks. Speer then guided Hitler through each room, some panelled in rare cembra pine or sand-blasted oak. Hitler was impressed; nodding quietly, stopping, examining, and inquiring, with hands clasped firmly behind his back when he wasn't shaking the hands of each of his household staff, beaming and joking awkwardly in the main reception area.
Then he was ushered to his private chamber off the main dining room. Speer's scaled model of New Berlin, moulded according to Hitler’s vision, almost filled the entire room. Hitler leaned into it closely, holding his breath in wonder.
Das Museum von gebesiegt — The Museum of the Vanquished — caught his eye and made him smile. He envisioned the British Crown Jewels, French Impressionist works, Faberge eggs and Mozart’s manuscripts. And in pride of place, Lenin’s mausoleum.
‘Perhaps,’ Goebbels suggested, ‘Stalin’s head in a jar of formaldehyde or mounted like a hunter’s trophy?’ They all roared with laughter.
The rest of the guests arrived and the four men left the room to attend Hitler’s 50th birthday party. Goebbels paused, looking back at the model citadel. Eradicating Communism was a personal crusade for Hitler; what if they managed to snatch Lenin's body sooner rather than later? It would be a sensational bargaining chip. He began to hatch a plot, an idea so brazen that, if it was pulled off, it would change the world. But before that could happen, there would have to be a war.
The following morning, Himmler drove directly to his new headquarters in Berlin, SS Hauptampt. The city had a freshness to it he hadn’t noticed before. The population moved about their business around the thriving Potsdamer Platz, the facades gleaming and the skies a cloudless blue. Everywhere around the capital gave the sense of success and order. He nestled himself deeper into the leather depths of his seat.
Across from him were two Waffen SS: General Rolf Metzger and a young impossibly beautiful Aryan Captain, Thor Schenker. All three were perusing a manila folder stamped at the highest level of confidentiality.
Metzger’s grey-steel eyes twinkled as he completed his review. ‘If this goes wrong, Reichsfuhrer …. ’
Himmler’s eyes narrowed behind his wire frame glasses, a faint smile danced around his lips, making his moustache twitch.
‘This is why we selected you, General. It won’t go wrong,’
Schenker’s head snapped up. It reminded Himmler of an obedient Doberman. He found he was unable to look away from this Adonis. Hitler was right; this boy was a prime specimen.
‘I can’t foresee any problems.’ His cultured accent and his refined sense of dress confirmed he was born to wear the uniform. Himmler felt himself dumpy in this beautiful boy’s presence. He tried to concentrate on the dossier. He tried not to blush.
Metzger lit a cigarette. Himmler tried to wave the smoke away with a tailored leather glove.
'My concern is that we get a local policeman who just happens to be thorough.'
Himmler afforded himself a small smile as the limousine turned off Prince Albrecht Strasse down into a cavernous parking lot below the SS Hauptamt building.
‘The nature of this will be so heinous that the Gestapo, Waffen SS and Diplomatic corps will want it. It is imperative that we execute this plan efficiently to forward the Fuhrer’s plan.’
The limousine pulled up alongside an army truck painted in a gun-metal grey, the number plates and registration erased. Metzger and Schenker alighted and, with Himmler, strode to the rear of the truck. Pulling the tarpaulin window aside, a group of soldiers acknowledged the three of them with the briefest of nods. All looked like hardened street fighters, Metzger’s personal detail.
‘Excellent,’ said Metzger.
Himmler touched his elbow and whispered into his ear, ‘If you pull this off, General, I can promise you a most excellent theatre of operations,’
Schenker whistled slowly, and began to follow the General’s lead. His smile almost stretched his jaw.
It was the dogs barking in the yard that woke farmer Rupert Lowe. He reached for his glasses and sat upright in the bed. The vast bulk of his wife Gertrude shifted and groaned as she tried to settle into a more comfortable position. He stared into the darkness, the window shutters rattling slightly again, the barking, then a shrill cry from one of the hounds. A quick succession of whinnies, shrill barks and cries rang out, then silence.
Lowe slipped out of the bed, his feet dancing on the cold floor. His stomach churned in fear. He could hear movement outside. The farm was two miles away from the Polish border and there had been reports of strange occurrences over the past few days. In two nearby farms, machinery had been vandalised in the night, some buildings had also been subjected to arson. The tension between the two countries was beginning to spill into the countryside. At the market last weekend a row had broken out between two German and Polish families who for years had traded amicably. The Gestapo had appeared out of nowhere, broken it up, and forcibly beaten the Polish family across the border.
Lowe loaded his shotgun quietly. His daughters Lottie, Dorothy and Anna peeked out at their father from their loft bed. Lowe raised his finger to shush them and went down the staircase he had built and installed a month after his wedding, fifty years ago. He opened the front door and spread his still broad form across the threshold, gun raised. He kept all the lights off, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom quickly.
Two figures scampered across between the barn and his tool shed.
‘Who’s there?’ he shouted out into the darkness. He was met with silence.
Then a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him turn. He fired the shotgun’s double-barrels into the night, the report booming. His dogs should have been raising hell by now.
Then he heard automatic machine gun fire. His legs buckled beneath him, white hot light flashed, consuming his vision, and a sweat drenched his nightshirt, mingling with his blood. He tried to rise up but was kicked back by a man in army fatigues whose design he didn’t recognise. The man looked mature, grey haired with cold grey eyes. He pointed a pistol into Lowe's forehead. The last thing Lowe saw was the man smiling. It was a warm smile as he pulled the trigger. Faintly in the distance, Lowe could hear his daughters screaming.
Metzger made his way up into the loft where the three women huddled. Wiping his brow, he smiled at his incredible good fortune. How did the saying go? ‘Country girls, country appetites’. He vaulted into the bed, brandishing a bayonet. ‘Now ladies, who’s first?’
Schenker moved through the house while Metzger and the other ten SS entertained themselves up in the girls' loft. His heart was racing with the excitement; the hapless farmer having been his second ever kill. He moved through the kitchen and came suddenly upon the crouching form of the dead farmer’s wife. Gertrude launched herself at him, a vast nightgown swooping toward him with a banshee howl. She flattened him onto the cold floor, his head striking the stone tiles making him see stars. She straddled him, he couldn’t breathe, she produced a huge carving knife from her sleeve and, deftly changing hands, flipped the blade toward him.
He wrestled his Luger free from its holster and fired point blank. Gertrude’s head flipped back, spraying blood all over him, the walls and the ceiling before she collapsed forward, her dead weight pressing like a vice on his lungs.
He lay there for minutes, his breath coming in sh
ort gasps. He thought about his strict catholic upbringing in Bavaria, the nuns, the mystery of the sacraments and his gift, his trick. As a child he liked to maim little animals. Starting with insects, he quickly moved onto feral kittens, birds and mice in the privacy of his room. He’d derived exquisite pleasure in baiting and torturing the neighbour’s dachshund that had annoyed him. He had tricked the noisy little bastard into his family’s barn and fixed a leash to its neck, the other end wrapped around the steel leg of his father’s work bench. He set to work on it with the knives from the cook’s pantry. He found it hard not to rush to the finale and learned over the years how to drag out the exquisite torture.
After each of these animals had been slain, little Thor would extend out his arms like the saviour and pray for these poor animals' souls and he would bury them guiltily under his mother’s rose bushes when left alone with his aged nanny.
This gift he brought to the SA, then the SS. His rigorous attention to detail during the Kristallnacht brought him to Himmler’s attention. He believed from an early age he had the power to grant life or death, that he was in effect the hand of God.
This gift he had bestowed on the elderly shopkeeper who had come out protecting his shop front from Schenker’s charges. Schenker had shot him in the head, citing self-defence. The man was armed only with a sweeping brush hurling insults in Yiddish. That night Schenker had found his calling, inspired by the words of Hitler, taking Goebbels propaganda as Gospel, an avenging angel of death for the Reich. The people rounded up that night were handed over for him and his cohorts to interrogate. In the police cells in the wee hours of the morning, Schenker’s skills were honed. These thoughts floated around as the vast expanse of Gertrude expired, slumping and pushing him harder against the floor.
Her blood was flowing in thick bursts onto him. He was going to be found dead under this woman. He started to scream for help. His voice was lost in the screams of the girls above. Eventually Metzger’s head appeared amid the woman’s blood-matted hair. Looking at Schenker he called back to the troop behind him, ‘Looks like he’s finally popped his cherry.’ Amid the laughter, Gertrude was hauled off him and he gasped the air around him.
An army radio barked into life on the kitchen table. For a radius of two miles, Metzger’s forces were attacking local German farms. Somewhere in the distance a farm was being torched, the horizon beginning to glow from the blaze. Schenker rose unsteadily to his feet, smelling like a butcher’s block.
Metzger was covered in blood, his men also. They had a sweaty high coming off them; they were all panting like hounds. Schenker retched onto the floor and onto his highly polished boots.
Metzger looked at him in disdain. ‘Christ, Schenker, pull yourself together.’
He picked up Schenker’s Luger and handed it to one of the younger men. The soldier looked at it in puzzlement until Metzger, reaching down, picked up the carving knife on the floor and plunged it to the hilt into the soldier’s chest. Pulling the stunned man closer onto the blade, he twisted it repeatedly, then threw the soldier onto the floor. The rest of the men stood stunned.
Metzger turned to them. ‘He will receive a funeral you could only dream of. He will join the great fallen German soldiers who are about the shed their life’s blood for the Reich. Remember him well, gentlemen. He is a hero.’
He then pulled documentation from his tunic, drenched in blood, and checked the photograph on it. Satisfied that it matched the man he had just stabbed, he placed the documents into the dying soldier’s tunic.
They headed out into the courtyard.
Metzger turned to Schenker. ‘Torch the outbuildings, leave the farmhouse standing.’ Schenker, recovering his composure, saluted straight-armed. Metzger spoke slowly, ‘Leave the farmhouse standing.’ Metzger prayed this idiot wouldn’t be drafted to his units when the battles proper started.
The following morning, the local constabulary made their way between the ravaged farms. Lowe’s farm was the worst the district investigator had ever had to deal with. His men were traumatised and stood in huddles in the courtyard smoking and whispering.
The dogs had had their throats cut and had been eviscerated with some kind of large knife. Their entrails were strewn around the yard. The farmer’s body had been dumped in the well; he was like a rag doll as they hoisted him up onto the ground. The outer buildings had been burnt down, the livestock slaughtered with automatic weapons. Spent casings lay scattered everywhere.
The girls loft though was nothing like anything they had ever seen. The pathologist arrived with his team from Berlin, then the Gestapo, police and representatives of the Fuhrer, followed by the press. Cars began to block up the roadway, interfering with the investigation.
Then officials from the Propaganda Ministry arrived.
Whatever evidence was around was now utterly contaminated as film cameras were set up and mounted, and Gestapo operatives took photographs.
The investigator saluted the Gestapo plain clothes officers smartly. It was an honour to have these men come all the way from Berlin. He led the two men into the kitchen. Tables and chairs lay overturned and there, in the middle of the room, the immense bulk of Gertrude lay. Beside her lay a man with a carving knife buried up to its hilt in his chest. The man was wearing a Polish Officer’s uniform. Documentation showed he was Polish Army.
‘Looks like the old bird got one,’ said the investigator, lighting up a cigarette. It killed the smell, but only just.
The Gestapo men looked around, taking everything in. Two SS stepped in and stood alongside them, summoning the investigator over. He stood, slightly stooped, fidgeting with his hat, clearly out of his depth.
‘Thank you for your assistance and prompt request for us. We will handle this awful incident from here on. Please submit all your findings directly to me,’
The investigator was handed a card listing the address as Himmler’s headquarters in Berlin. They saluted and the investigator responded after a pause. He hadn’t contacted any Gestapo; he'd only got the call himself a few hours earlier.
The Polish Ambassador to Germany, Jozeph Lipski, re-read Von Ribbentrop’s communique. After initial diplomatic success and high level discussions with the Axis powers, Lipski was now completely isolated. For months he had been trying to meet Von Ribbentrop face-to-face, only to be rebuffed at every diplomatic level, the same with Molotov in Moscow. Both nations were behaving as if his country didn’t even exist. The Italians had promised to assist, but so far nothing from them either. The British and French were making enquiries on Poland’s behalf with equally limited success. Every newspaper, newsreel and radio broadcast reported on Molotov, Von Ribbentropp, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Hitler ad nauseum. Lipski occasionally appeared in newsreels, receiving column inches in the newspapers, but was never mentioned in the film commentaries.
The Polish government, fearful of Germany regaining territories ceded after Versailles, had despatched cavalry columns to the disputed regions. Horse cavalry and bicycle-mounted troops, bows and arrows against the coming lightening.
The country was put on a war footing and had its embassies in friendly countries discreetly looking for assurances of support. The communique in Lipski’s hand was stamped ‘strictly confidential’. Polish Special Forces had been caught slipping over the border and attacking peaceful neighbouring German farms. He skimmed through the rhetoric to the final sentence which stated, ‘Any further attacks will be considered a hostile act of a nation state and will be dealt with accordingly.’ Attached were facsimiles of identity documents found on a dead Polish officer, killed during an attack on a farm. With the communiques was a package containing film footage and forensic photographs taken at the Lowe farm by the Propaganda Ministry,
Lipski watched them in revulsion. As a footnote, the ammunition retrieved was from British-issue machine guns. Were British commandos operating with these men? Was Poland deliberately precipitating a crisis in the hope of dragging England into an avoidable conflict? Lipski began maki
ng a series of phone calls. The first was to the Polish Army Command. Who the hell was this man whose the identity papers had were being cited?
In London, Chainbridge, Liddell and Kell reviewed the recent dispatches with a sense of impending doom. The Polish army attacking peaceful German villagers with British supplied weapons, Thompson M1928s to be precise, according to the dispatch lying on the table in front of them. Also, a communications tower in Germany had been attacked by Polish special Special Forces, though verification was sketchy.
The German High Command was preparing a dossier. According to the embassy in Warsaw, German tanks and heavy Panzer divisions had been spotted moving toward the Polish border. The German war machine was now springing into life despite reassurances to the contrary from Von Ribbbentropp and Hitler. They were being deployed to specific regions to protect the Germans living close to the Polish border, Berlin was now telling the world.
‘Panzers, motorised divisions and Luftwaffe support to protect a couple of dairy farmers, that doesn't quite add up,’ observed Kell dryly.
The room was heavy with cigarette smoke and, beyond, a beautiful summer’s day tried vainly to get through the window pane. There was nothing from the Moscow bureau about any evacuation plan, though armament production was shifting up a gear.
Lipski had sent several ‘eyes only’ level messages concerning the German accusations to the governments of England and France. There had been absolutely no Polish forces anywhere near the German border, but now they were mobilising army and cavalry units in response to Germany’s manoeuvres. The German’s weren’t responding at all, a wall of silence descending around Berlin.
Chainbridge peered over the edge of his glasses. ‘It appears, Gentlemen, we are on the brink of war.’
‘Hitler’s a master of brinkmanship,’ countered Kell, the unease carrying through his voice as if he didn’t really believe what he was saying.
Get Lenin Page 8