And so Hitler’s rant, my rant, went on, whipping the crowd up into a such a frenzy of hate and loathing for anything or anyone not German, not Aryan, that long before my speech ended some half-an- hour and five thousand words later later they would have torn limb from limb anyone who dared get in the way of the advance of the National Socialist Party and its glorious leader.
I hadn’t intended to arouse their passions with an attack on bolshevism of course. I hadn’t wanted to inflame them by telling them that democracy was the canal through which bolshevism let’s its poisons flow. I’d wanted to tell them to return home to their wives and children and live peacefully and peaceably and forget all about waging war on other countries to the greater glory of the mad little bastard now stood before ranting and raving and telling them to do exactly the opposite. In fact that’s what I’d urged them to do. “Go home, put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, calm down, then take the wife and kids and the dog out for a walk, feed the ducks in the park maybe” I’d said. But as with my first day back on earth and on every occasion since, what I said and what came out of my mouth were two different things.
Is it possible for anyone to imagine how I felt? A man who hated Hitler, hated all he stood for, trapped in Hitler’s body, and not only trapped in his body but behaving exactly as Hitler had behaved? Sanctioning torture, rubber-stamping mayhem, ordering murder, signing death warrants with the casual air of someone signing for a parcel delivered by the postman. If I thought I’d reached the depths of despair in having sex with a goat I was soon persuaded otherwise. If a goatherd had pitched up on my doorstep with a whole herd of goats I would gladly have had sex with every one of them rather than endure another second of what I was going through. The only good thing about being Hitler was that I no longer had a colostomy bag. I would have endured half-a-dozen colostomy bags and throw in a daily enema. The only thing I had to look forward to was my death in the Reich Chancellery bunker in Berlin in 1945. But then what? Where would I go then? Back to hell. For what other possible destination could there be for an evil despot responsible for the deaths of millions. What a prospect. What a bloody state to be in.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The exorcist was dressed in a surplus and a purple stole. He opened his mouth and said, “All-powerful God, pardon all the sins of your unworthy servant. Give me constant faith and power so that, armed with the power of Your holy strength, I can attack this cruel evil spirit in confidence and security.” While chanting these words, he sprinkled me with holy water.
*
It was quite by chance that I came up with the idea of getting a priest to try to exorcise the Devil from my body. Himmler and his sidekick Heydrich were constantly coming up with minority groups, sects, organisations, whatever - any band of people who didn’t fit into the Nazi ideal - to add to the list of perfectly innocent human beings they had already discriminated against, the majority of whom were now either in concentration camps or had only escaped them by fleeing the country in fear of their lives. I knew from my scholarship of the events leading up to the war that Hitler had more or less given the Gestapo bosses carte blanche to single out for persecution anyone they wished. Heydrich in particular seemed to take immense pleasure in his work. And I of course went along with his choices. I always objected strongly, even after I’d been in Hitler’s body for three months, even though I knew I’d be wasting my time, for the words that came out of my mouth were always words that sanctioned his choices, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” “Well done Heydrich I hadn’t thought of that one,” “Yes, do that, about time the buggers were taught a lesson.” The only time I said “Well done Heydrich I hadn’t thought of that one” and meant it was when he’d suggested Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“Exorcists,” he said, on this occasion, with a satisfied smile on his piggy-eyed wedge of a face.
I raised an eyebrow. “Exorcists?”
“Priests, religious maniacs who claim they can remove Satan from those who have been possessed by him.”
I glared at him. “I know what exorcists are, dumbkopf. I was doubting the wisdom of consigning them to a concentration camp. Personally I would have thought that a German with the Devil removed from him is a purer human being than a German with the Devil inside....” I suddenly stopped, struck speechless at the wonderful possibility underlying my words.
Heydrich waited patiently for me to continue. When he realised I wasn’t going to he said, “You are right of course, mein Fuehrer. As always.”
My mind was working overtime. “I don’t suppose you have by any chance already rounded up some of these exorcists?” My question was disingenuous, I already knew the answer; I was well aware of the way Heydrich worked - do things first and ask permission afterwards.
“Only a hundred or so as yet,” he said, treating me to one of his oily smiles. “My apologies, mein Fuehrer. I should of course have realised that exorcists are extremely useful members of the German race. I will have them all released immediately.”
“No!”
“You don’t want me to release them?”
“Bring them to me.”
“To you?”
“To me.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
Heydrich hesitated, intrigued. “Can I ask why?”
I searched my mind to come up with a good reason why I would want a hundred exorcists brought to my rooms in the Reichspalace. Then I realised I didn’t need a reason. I had forgotten who I was. Hitler.
“No you cannot ask why,” I snapped. “Now fuck off out of it and do as you’re told.”
*
Father Werner moved closer to me, made the sign of the cross and laid his palm on my forehead. I lay perfectly still while he recited the prayers of the exorcism ritual. He appealed to Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints to aid him in the endeavour to save my soul. I had been warned by Father Werner to remain silent throughout. I had done so. The one hundred and eight other exorcists that Heydrich had delivered to me looked on, to a man willing the Devil to depart my body. I had given myself every chance.
Father Werner spoke. “I exorcise you, Most Unclean Spirit! All Spirits! Every one of you! In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Be uprooted and expelled from this Creature of God....”
The rest of the exorcists joined in with him.
“Let the love of Jesus drive your evil presence the body of this unfortunate so that he may be pure in spirit once again.”
*
It was June 13, 1938. I had been Hitler for almost two years. A terrible, mortifying, two years. During that time I had witnessed wholesale acts of violence, presided over the worst atrocities of the Gestapo, overseen the building up of the three main branches of the Wehrmacht and the civilian munitions industry that would arm them, and put in position plans to invade Europe and Russia. And there was not a thing I could do to stop myself.
There had been no respite. I could not even find comfort in the arms of Eva Braun. Hitler may have liked her, loved her indeed, if such a man was capable of love; Eva was a very attractive woman, prettier in the flesh than in the photographs I’d seen of her, with a lissom body and a demure air about her. A German Rose in fact. But not an English Rose. Not Kristin. I tried to make love to her once, just once, not because I wanted sex with her but in an attempt to take my mind of my terrible burden. The attempt failed totally. I couldn’t get hard. She didn’t seem at all surprised by this, accepted it as though it were a regular occurrence. (I recalled that I had once read that Hitler may have been impotent. All I can say is that the Norman Smith inside Hitler’s body wasn’t impotent; just the thought of Kristin and our time together, a frequent thought, was enough to give me an erection up to my throat.)
I was rarely alone. If I sought respite in my study in the Berghof or one of my offices in Berlin or Munich it was never long before there would be a knock on the door - Goebbels with some new ideas on propaganda he wanted to discuss, the vain and incompetent Goering forever demanding
more funds for his beloved Luftwaffe , countless others with plans for this, that and the other, the list and the entreaties to add to it was endless.
It made no odds. On the rare occasion I was left to my own devices I had no devices to be left to. I was Norman Smith inside, not Hitler. I wanted to watch Manchester United, not Bayern Munich. I wanted to see a Robert de Niro or Jack Nicholson movie at the cinema not a Nazi propaganda film. When I went out for a meal I wanted steak and chips not dumplings and sauerkraut.
Not to be.
*
Father Werner made the sign of the cross and told me he would bring the exorcism to a conclusion. He placed a hand on my forehead, pressed a relic against his chest and said, “Go away, Seducer! The desert is your home. The serpent is your dwelling. Be humiliated and cast down. For even though you have deceived men, you cannot make a mockery of God....He has prepared Hell for you and your angels.” With that he lowered his arms and regarded me. The hundred and eight other exorcists looked on expectantly
Nothing happened. After a few moments the cleric said, “Do you feel nothing, my son?”
I shook my head. “Not a thing.”
Father Werner sighed. “The Devil is deep within you. He has penetrated your very soul.” He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I have tried my utmost, mightily have I tried, but....”
And then it happened. A stirring, deep within my bowels. I can only describe the feeling as one of being really desperate for the lavatory, but much, much more than that. It felt as though I would literally burst. Five seconds later it was all over. Its genesis was a sudden sharp, stabbing pain in my anus, not up my anus but down through it. When the Devil entered my body it had felt like a red hot knife being plunged into my heart; now, when he departed it, he left it just as quickly, and with a great ‘Whoosh’, through my arse.
Very fitting, I remember thinking, just before my body became limp, thoroughly spent, and I lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
I died on October 1 1980. A heart attack occasioned by a tram running me down in a Munich street. The Bauerstrasse, as I remember. The one newspaper that reported it - for by then my life had little interest for my fellow Germans - said that the multiple wounds I received to my chest and abdomen might have done for me anyway. Thankfully the heart attack saved me from a more painful death, for my demise was more or less immediate. One moment I was crossing the street to buy a newspaper - ironically the newspaper that reported my death - and the next moment I was dead.
Forty-two years had passed since the Devil had been driven from my body by the exorcists. The day after it happened I started putting plans into effect that would disband the German armed forces and the National Socialist Party. It proved to be an easier task than I had anticipated. There was little or no protest from the officers commanding the various arms of the Wehrmacht, still less from the men they commanded. They wished for war no more than did their counterparts in Russia and France and Great Britain. For the most part they were innocent souls, drawn into the situation, coerced into it by their warmongering governments.
The disbanding and banishment of the Nazi Party met with more resistance. Goering was aghast at the idea. He thought I was mad and said so. I think I replied, “So what’s new?” an expression both anachronistic and completely over Goering’s head, but true for all that. Himmler was beside himself at the thought of losing the SS, his dearly loved Gestapo along with it. Goebbels railed against it even more vociferously than his partners in crime. They were the three main opponents. There were others, von Ribbentrop and my deputy in the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, amongst them, but I was well aware that it was Goering, Goebbels and Himmler who were the main threat to my plans. I had them assassinated. Their seconds-in-command, automatically stepping into the shoes of their bosses, and no doubt surmising that a similar fate would befall them if they didn’t toe the line, offered only token resistance. There was not so much as a peep out of von Ribbentrop and Hess.
I had no qualms about having the three murdered. It was the only way; they were all powerful men in their own right, quite influential enough to persuade others to have me assassinated had I not struck first. Initially, when I realised what I must do, I thought I might not be able to go through with it. But not for long; only until I remembered how many men, women and children they had already sent to an early grave, the hundreds of thousands who would follow them in the coming wars, the millions more who would perish in the concentration camps. After that it was an easy decision to make. I consoled myself, if I needed consoling, by reminding myself that I was only bringing their demise forward a few years; if things remained the same they would all die anyway, by their own hand before they could be executed for their war crimes.
The respective leaders of the armed forces argued for a slimmed-down peacekeeping presence. I told them that if there were no such things as armed forces there would be no such thing as war and therefore no need to keep the peace. It made perfect sense to me and enough sense to them to be persuaded to go along with it. There were still pockets of resistance but it only required me to remind the dissenters of the fate that had befallen Goebbels, Goering and Himmler and they soon forgot their arguments and came round to my way of thinking.
Within a month all the concentration camps had been emptied, their former inmates to hopefully be re-united with their loved ones. Their terrible accommodations of the past few years had been demolished; razed to the ground, bulldozed into the earth they had stood on. The Wehrmacht was no more. Auschwitz, along with its infamous gas ovens, was never built.
Three months later, just long enough for a coalition of the other main political parties in Germany to be formed into a government, I retired from public life. I was granted a generous pension by the new government, enough to live comfortably on for the rest of my life.
I began to live the rest of my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Although far from comfortably. This was Germany and I was an Englishman trapped in a German body. I couldn’t settle. I didn’t try very hard. On September 22, 1938 I moved to England. On September 27, 1938 I moved back to Germany. I couldn’t speak English. I couldn’t communicate. The Devil, although now out of me, had left me with a legacy, for, as was the case in Germany, I spoke in English but it came out in German. Everywhere I went people spat at me. Taunted me. Ragged me. There was no escape from it. I was struck several times; bloodied, knocked to the ground on more occasions than I care to remember.
Although war had been averted there were many people living in England, Jews in particular, who had fled from Germany and Poland and other European countries. The vast majority of them had been forced to leave their possessions behind. Many of them had lost husbands, wives, parents, children, in the concentration camps. And of course, even if I’d been able to speak English, I was highly recognisable as Hitler, the man who had been responsible for the loss of their loved ones. I pleaded with them. “Please, have mercy on me, I am Adolf Hitler, the man who averted the Second World War,” but it came out as “Sei mir bitte gnaedig, Ich bin der Adolf Hitler, der Mann der den zweiten Weltkrieg verhindert hat.” I don’t know if any of them understood my words, probably some did, but the kindest reply I had was “Fuck off back to Germany you black-hearted twat.”
In an effort to disguise myself, to give myself some sort of chance, I bleached my hair blonde and shaved off my moustache. However no amount of tonsorial camouflage could stop me from speaking in German to the English, a race of people not renowned for their love of Germans since the First World War.
Back in Germany I settled in the small town of Neufahren, just outside Munich. And there I lived, uneventfully and on my own, for the rest of my days. No Eva Braun. She and I had soon drifted apart, not that we were ever ‘together’, and gone our separate ways; and I had no desire for any other woman to share my life. The one woman in the world I wanted hadn’t even been born and I was quite unable to settle for anything less. I had tasted the fi
nest truffled fois gras; I could not settle for potted meat or whatever its German equivalent was - probably potted pork.
On my return to Germany I let my hair grow back to its natural dark brown colour and re-grew my moustache. (Oddly, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I looked more ridiculous without the moustache than with it.) I had no ambition in life other than to grow as old as possible, even though the life I had was hardly filled with excitement; even though a life of poor quality it was better than what awaited me when I died. And which fiend would the Devil send me back as the next time I couldn’t take another moment of his hell and sold my soul to him again? Saddam Hussein, Id Amin, Colonel Gadaffi? It didn’t bear thinking about. I didn’t think about it.
I determined to keep myself as fit as possible. I was then aged forty-nine, and reasonably healthy; my excesses had been in the form of subjugation, not eating and drinking, so I was still fairly fit and only a little overweight. I vowed to follow a healthy diet. Five a day would do the trick. Not to be. It might do the trick in the Great Britain I left in the year 2011 but this was Germany 1946. (Although the same situation still applies to this day if a trip I made to Cologne in 2009 is anything to go.) Getting five a day presented no problem at all. The trouble was that the five in question were five potatoes. Or five dumplings. Or five portions of pork in various guises. Or a combination of all three. Germans are very big on potatoes and dumpling and pork but very small on anything else. Oh and sauerkraut. They’re big on that too. They don’t seem to be able to look at a cabbage without pickling it.
Faced with a diet of potatoes, dumplings, pork and sauerkraut, hardly a recipe for a long life and odds on for a short one, I dispensed with the small lawn in my back garden and commenced to grow my own vegetables. I grew carrots, turnips, sprouts, onions, leeks, salad leaves, runner beans, and in a small greenhouse, tomatoes and peppers. I only grew cabbages once. When they had reached maturity they disappeared overnight, probably to be made into sauerkraut, so I didn’t bother again. The produce I grew and ate helped me to live a long, if not very happy life.
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