Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  No, he thought, as he rose himself. I belong with her.

  Chapter Forty

  Berlin, Germany Prime

  29 November 1985

  It was bitterly cold in the cemetery.

  Gudrun wrapped her arms around herself as she looked down at the grave, silently grateful that Horst had agreed to wait by the gate. The funeral had been too large for her to relax and say goodbye properly, not when everyone who was anyone - or thought they were anyone - had insisted on attending. Herman Wieland - paratrooper, policeman, father - had been given a funeral fit for a king.

  She felt a bitter stab of guilt as she looked down at the grave. Her father had insisted, in his will, on nothing more than a simple headstone, even though sculptors from all over Berlin had offered to craft elegant memorials for him. They’d been disappointed, she thought, after their services had been rejected, but it wasn't what her father had wanted. He’d insisted on the simple grave and he’d got it.

  And he'd died in her defence.

  She dropped to her knees, feeling tears brimming in her eyes. Her father was hardly the first or last to die, but he was the one whose death had hit her the hardest. He’d been part of her life since the very moment she’d been born, a firm but fair figure looming over her as she grew up. Konrad had been her boyfriend, but he’d represented the future - a future. Perhaps she would have been happy as his wife, perhaps not ... she knew she wouldn't have been happy without her father.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.

  She’d broken down the moment she’d seen the body, despite all that Kurt and Horst could do to stop her from looking. It had been quick, Kurt had said. Three bullets in the chest had killed him so quickly, they’d assured him, that there wouldn’t have been much pain. And yet ... how did they know? No one had ever come back from the dead to report on the final moments of life. Her father had died ...

  He’d been a good father. She’d seen worse fathers - fathers who were permissive, fathers who were abusive - in her life. And yet, she couldn't help blaming herself for his death. If she hadn't been captured, if she hadn’t started the protest movement ... would he still be alive? Or would something else have killed him? He’d been a policeman on the streets for years, sometimes coming home with bruises covering his face. He might have been killed by a drunkard or a thug or ...

  “I’m sorry,” she said, again.

  They’d fought, more than once. He’d had an impression of the role played by daughters as they grew older, a role that Gudrun hadn't cared to assume. She’d rebelled against him, seeking out higher education and an eventual place at the university ... it still surprised her, at times, that he’d actually let her go. A woman’s place was in the home, he’d said; a daughter’s place was to do what her father said, until she married and left his house. And yet, he’d let her study, even knowing it would make it harder for her to find a suitable husband ...

  He had been strict and he’d been fair and he’d been firm and he’d been kind ... she remembered him bringing her soup and talking to her when she’d caught the flu, just as clearly as she recalled him telling her off after her teacher had sent home a note about her behaviour. And he’d protected her, more than she’d realised at the time. How much worse would her time in the BDM have been if she hadn't had a policeman for a father? Or even her time in school?

  The question ran through her head, time and time again. Her father hadn't been perfect, but he’d tried. Yes, he’d tried. Maybe he had been reluctant to change, maybe he hadn't quite understood the new world ... yet he’d let his children - and his wife - go. Gudrun knew there were men who would have seen it as a sign of weakness, but she knew better. It had been a sign of kindness from a man who’d never really understood his children.

  And now he was dead.

  She wished, bitterly, that she could talk to him one last time. She couldn't recall if she’d told him she loved him, the last time they’d spoken face to face. And when had he told her that he’d loved her? But he hadn't had to tell her, not after he’d flown all the way to Germanica to rescue her. And everything else he’d done ...

  He loved me, she thought. And he died for me.

  She reached down and gently touched her abdomen. Her period was late, at least four days overdue. Katherine had warned her that the combination of near-starvation and constant stress might have delayed her period, but Gudrun had always been regular before. It was possible, just possible, that she was pregnant. Horst and she had certainly spent a lot of time in bed after Holliston’s death, waiting to see what would happen in Germanica. If she was pregnant ...

  ... Her father would never know his grandchild.

  She closed her eyes in pain. She’d always assumed that she would have children of her own, one day. She’d been told so often - by her parents, by her teachers, by her potential boyfriends - that she would be a mother that she’d internalised it. And she was a married woman, even if she did have a career of her own. There was nothing stopping her from having a child ...

  ... But her father would never see the baby. Never see him - or her - learn to crawl or take the first baby steps. Never watch his grandchild while his parents took a rest; never go to school to watch plays or recitations from Mein Kampf ... never know the grandchild who would never have existed, if he hadn't given his life for his daughter.

  “I’ll name him for you,” she promised, quietly. “If it’s a boy I’ll name him after you.”

  She wondered, as she stood, just how many of the other headstones in the graveyard marked someone who’d died in the war, the war she’d started. Konrad wasn't buried too far away, she knew; there were countless others who had been buried after the fighting had finally come to an end. Would they have lived if she’d just turned her gaze away? Would their friends and families have been relieved if they’d lived? If Gudrun had chosen to forget what she’d learned?

  But the Reich had been dying for years.

  If it hadn't been me, she thought, it would have been someone else.

  But it had been her. And she was the one who would have to live with the guilt.

  She turned, striding back towards the gate. There were people who loved her, who called her their saviour - and people who hated her for what she’d done. And, in truth, she couldn't blame them. She’d turned the entire world upside down, revealing truths the world would have preferred to forget ...

  ... And unleashing a civil war that had nearly killed everyone.

  Horst was waiting by the gate, but he wasn't alone. Kurt and Katherine stood beside him, standing just a little closer than she’d expected. She concealed her amusement with an effort as she approached, wondering what her father would have made of that relationship. There was no way he would have approved of Katherine, at least at first. And yet, perhaps he would have accepted her.

  She wondered, absently, just what would happen in the future. Kurt wasn't the typical German male, but he might have different ideas about his wife. And yet, Katherine wasn't the typical female either. Gudrun had seen her slaughter men without the slightest hint of remorse. God alone knew what would happen if Kurt and Katherine fought in the future ...

  But she helped save my life, Gudrun thought. She deserves some happiness.

  “Gudrun,” Kurt said. “I spoke to mother.”

  Gudrun winced. Their mother had taken to her room shortly after the funeral and refused to emerge, even for dinner. Gudrun couldn't help feeling as though her mother blamed her for everything - and, if she did, she would have been right. Her mother had lost a husband in the war, like so many other women, yet her daughter had played a role in starting the war. It would take her a very long time to come to terms with it.

  “She’s a little better,” Kurt added. “But she’s still in a poor state.”

  “I know,” Gudrun said. She was her mother’s only daughter. She should go to her. But she didn't quite dare. “Did she say anything ...?”

  “Nothing,” Kurt said. “She’s upset.”

&
nbsp; Gudrun nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go to her,” Katherine said. “If she’s angry with you, let her get it out of her system.”

  “I can try,” Gudrun said. She looked at Horst. She hadn't told him she might be pregnant yet, although he might have noticed something. “Was there any update from the Reichstag?”

  “Not over the radio,” Horst said. “But you’re not going to be needed until tomorrow.”

  Gudrun nodded. She’d won the post of Education Minister in the Provisional Government, although it would be several days before she actually started her new job. But she was looking forward to it. A number of truly awful teachers would be heading east within the month or she’d know the reason why. And with stricter regulations on corporal punishment - and the disbanding of the BDM - a number of sadistic bastards would follow them.

  And if the east puts them to work on the farms, she thought, I won’t care at all.

  “Then we’d better go home,” she said. She’d have to tell him that she might be pregnant in a few weeks, unless her period genuinely was delayed. “We have work to do.”

  Epilogue

  Dover, United Kingdom

  29 November 1985

  Dover had once been a thriving seaside town, Margaret Thatcher had been told, but most of the population had moved further inland after the Third Reich started building a vast array of air and naval bases on the far side of the channel. The British Army had practically taken over the whole region, turning Dover and the Channel Ports into a series of fortresses intended to intercept and crush any German invasion. And the defences - and the threat of nuclear war - had been more than enough to deter the Germans from trying.

  She watched, from her vantage point, as the long line of Frenchmen and women walked towards the ship. Most of them were old, either Free French fighters who’d refused to abandon the war or refugees from Occupied France. Britain had given them a home, but now they were trying to get back to France. Margaret wished them well, although she suspected that none of them would find a warm welcome on the other side of the English Channel. It had been years since any of them had set foot in France and far too much would have changed.

  “They have hope,” President Anderson said.

  Margaret shrugged. Hope was not a strategy.

  “They will have a chance,” she said. “But they will be lucky to get home.”

  She looked up at her American counterpart. It had barely been two weeks since the end of the Reich Civil War, but the Americans were already talking about pulling out of their bases and heading home. Hell, Parliament too was talking about sweeping cuts to the military’s budget, no matter how hard she fought to keep the matter from a formal debate. She had no doubt that half of Britain’s most famous regiments would be cut from the books if some of her political enemies had their way ...

  “This isn't the end,” she said. “There’s a whole new world in front of us.”

  “I know,” Anderson said. “But Congress thinks otherwise.”

  Margaret nodded in sympathy. Polish voters in the United States had protested, strongly, the lack of freedom for Poland. She understood their feelings, but Poland no longer existed. The Nazis had destroyed it as thoroughly as they’d destroyed every other nation they’d occupied directly. Even Norway and Denmark, both under relatively light rule, had been changed beyond recognition.

  And the world outside Europe was very different.

  She shook her head, bitterly, as a cold gust of wind swept in from the sea. Some of her political enemies were already sharpening their knives, whispering - quietly - that the Iron Lady was starting to rust. She’d been a great war leader, they acknowledged, but now the Cold War was over. It was time for someone else to take the helm and steer Britain into a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and freedom.

  And unlimited rice pudding too, she thought dryly.

  But it wasn't time to leave, not yet. The chaos in Europe had yet to subside, while the chaos in Africa and the Middle East was growing steadily worse. Britain needed a strong hand at the helm as she navigated her way through suddenly-choppy seas and she, Margaret Thatcher, was that strong hand. None of her enemies had been tested, not like her. They had never sailed the ship of state, even in calm waters.

  “Change is never easy,” she said. The Reich, for all of its horror, had been a predictable menace. Whatever rose from the ashes of history would be very different. “But we have to be ready.”

  “This is not the end,” Anderson agreed. “History never ends.”

  The End

  Afterword

  After the uprising of the 17th of June,

  The Secretary of the Writers' Union,

  Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee,

  Stating that the people,

  Had forfeited the confidence of the government,

  And could win it back only,

  By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier,

  In that case for the government,

  To dissolve the people,

  And elect another?

  - Bertolt Brecht

  In his stand-alone novel, In The Presence of Mine Enemies, Harry Turtledove postulated that the Third Reich would eventually face a Soviet-style crisis: economic collapse, a crisis of legitimacy and, eventually, a decline into near-irrelevance. This would, as it did in the Original TimeLine (OTL), spur a demand for political reform, a re-examination of the founding principles of the Third Reich and the abandonment of its principles. There would neither be a Third World War nor a civil war.

  I was not so optimistic.

  We were amazingly lucky that Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the Soviet Union did not lead to a civil war. Hard-liners within the Communist Party and the KGB could not have welcomed the changes, even if they understood that something had to change. The levels of stored hatred they’d built up ever since the Communist Party took a firm grip on power could easily have led to a bloody slaughter. Indeed, they did try to mount a coup - only to lose when it became clear just how little support they really had. And it was their coup attempt that led to the inevitable breakup of the USSR.

  Gorbachev simply did not - could not - control the pace of change. The first signs of weakness led to other challenges to Moscow’s authority. Indeed, there was a strong feeling in many places - Poland, in particular - that the time had come to stand up or lose everything. Each successive problem led to more as Gorbachev veered between appeasement and repression, each failure weakening his own position. Once the ice began to melt, the changes were utterly unpredictable. There was no way to slow the pace of change.

  The Third Reich, assuming it survived, might not cope anything like as well. It would have faced many of the same problems, yet it might have reached for very different solutions. And yet, no matter what happened to the protesters, they would be unable to hide from the underlying problems pervading the Reich. The coup plotters in Moscow, even if they had succeeded in turning the clock back by shooting everyone who assembled to stop them, would still have had to deal with a collapsing economy. It had simply fallen too far to be stopped.

  But a different decision, at a different time, might have changed the course of history.

  ***

  The problem facing repressive regimes - Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia (and the USSR after Stalin), Mao’s China, Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, Kim’s North Korea, etc - is that they tend to be very bad at coping with change. Power is organised in a pyramid structure, with the dictator and his cronies at the very top and everyone else in successive levels working their way down towards the common people at the bottom. It can be very hard for the dictator to truly understand what is going on at the bottom, even if he doesn’t have to deal with his subordinates constantly lying to him.

  It doesn't take long for the rot to set in. Each of the dictator’s cronies will try to gather as much power to himself as he can, relying on a patronage network to both protect him from the other cronies and set the stage for eventually usurping
the dictator. Even if there are pre-dictatorship power structures - the military, for example - they will eventually be corrupted and folded into the dictatorship. The dictator will become corrupted by the unlimited power at his disposal, while his cronies will eventually become outright criminals.

  If the state is based on ideology - Nazi Germany and the USSR, in particular - and it has avoided the trap of being led by a single family, it may be possible to mask this reality for decades. But the blunt truth is that the tools used to impose the ideology eventually create the dictatorship, if it wasn't already present. In order to impose communism on Russia, Lenin created a system - spearheaded by the NKVD - that allowed Stalin to take control and gather all the levers of power into his hands.

  [This should not have surprised anyone. Attempts to impose ideologies - anything from Communism to Radical Islam - will always meet opposition. The proponents will then have to decide if they want to abandon their plans or start forcing people to comply. Inevitably, they always choose the latter - and open the doors to a Stalin.]