Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  Oberstleutnant Peter Sommer got out of the staff car not exactly knowing what to expect. As a half-Jewish officer in the German Army, what he was and wasn’t allowed to do was complicated – and subject to revocation at whim by any politically conscious official who took a mind to do so. The Army had allowed him to be ‘detached for overseas service’ at the ‘request’ of the Reichsführer SS. Usually the officer corps protected their own. But was a half-Jew exactly ‘one of their own’? Not this time.

  His new orders were, shall one say, a trifle vague. He was to report to Brigadier Strauss as his Ia. When he’d asked his SS briefing officer what a Brigadier was, the answer had been an NL rank equal to Oberführer. So he was a senior Oberst or very junior General. Whoever this Gunter Strauss was, he ran a Brigade of NL and was in need of a proper staff officer. Sommer was an April graduate of the staff course, and for reasons of state a part-Jew was considered suitable for this post by the head of the SS and thus overall head of the Gestapo.

  Stranger still was a cover letter he’d been given, stating that his ancestry was known to those at the highest levels of command. Anyone having a problem with dealing professionally with Oberstleutnant Sommer was to forward such complaints to the signatories below for further action. The letter was doubly signed, Herman Göring as Führer and Chancellor; and Reinhard Heydrich as Reichsführer SS and Deputy Head of the National Socialist Workers Party. Sommer had never heard of such a blanket grant of authority. He chuckled to himself. Even the most 110% Nazi might think twice about arousing the attention of these two senior officials. The Reich was on an efficiency campaign. There were new public executions weekly. The message seemed to be getting across. The Reich was at war, and what mattered was productivity and loyalty.

  His new commander welcomed him in and gave him a quick capsule history of the unit. Light bulbs began to shine in Sommer’s head. “Sir, so we have a mostly Jewish unit in German uniform by orders of the Reichsführer SS?”

  “Probably why he wanted the staff officer to be someone who didn’t loathe Yids. We already had an incident with an SA officer over that. We’ve got the man stashed in the metals shop till I can find General Steiner’s headquarters to try a transfer. A duty that is now yours.” The two men shared a laugh. Sommer was a Lower Saxon, and found having a Rhenish commander an easy situation. The two dialects weren’t that far apart. Neither were the cities. His birthplace of Hildesheim and Strauss’s home city of Solingen, were some 275 kilometers apart.

  The welcome in from his ‘staff’ was more amusing. Leutnant von Kleist-Konitz was happy to have a proper superior. He was less happy at being told he’d been permanently assigned here as assistant Ia. Made clear that he was a combat officer, not a rear headquarters swine. The subtext said, he would use his family contacts to try to work for a transfer. Sommer had no problem with this. Young men from the military caste all knew the ladder of success. Combat commands and decorations. Let von Kleist-Konitz’s high-ranking relatives work the favor bank at OKH and the War Ministry on his behalf. In the meantime, Sommer expected to use him as an ‘eyes and ears’ forward observer. The rest of the ‘staff’ seemed disappointed that the half-Jew spoke no Yiddish. That said, they all spoke adequate German. The only problem was that their procedures, while undoubtedly effective, were not Wehrmacht-standard. Sommer had no doubts as to his ability to retrain them.

  ……….

  Gregor Voss took the assignment of this new staff expert the same way he took his recent promotion. Both were marks that their patron in Berlin was always watching. Gregor had lived his whole life as one of the masses. He was just a good German who did his duty, went to the beer hall, and still showed up at work sober and punctual six days a week. The important people were an enemy, ‘them’. Now here he was a field officer. In his head he was still the same Feldwebel he’d been. He was slowly accepting that the world no longer saw him that way. Gregor had thought this whole adventure was madness. Adolph and Wanda had talked him into saying yes to Gunter’s telegram. Now he was a new man with a new place in the world.

  The truly strange part was that this new higher status rubbed off on Hans. This Mary Collins had taken Hans under her wing. He ran messages, did deliveries the way he had for the grocery in Solingen. But he was no longer treated as a halfwit. He was the ‘nephew’ of an important man. Mary, Greta, Naiomi all treated him that way. The damned Arab boy even saluted Hans. If everything went the way Gunter and Isaac kept telling him it would, Hans would have a future even after Gregor passed on. The thought made him smile, and few things did.

  1300 hours CET

  20 September 1940

  Polish offices, American Special Zone, Danzig

  The exchange went exactly as planned. Police General Eicke arrived with six high-ranking prisoners for the two representatives of the London Poles. They had been knocked around a bit, but had no serious damage beyond a new tattoo. This was the arrangement. Exchanged personnel were marked with a red GG. They were to be exited on the next freighter out. If caught again on European territory, they would be hanged. The Polish Resistance had paid the price – four captured German officials were returned, plus two high-ranking cadres of the Polish Communist Party. The Nationalist Resistance were quite willing to shop Reds to the Germans. To true Poles, both were the enemy.

  This whole process was the result of a visit Eicke had made to Berlin, to Prinz-Albrecht-Straße to be precise. The discussion was a trifle one-sided. The new Reichsführer had made clear that the next time Eicke was summoned to Berlin, it would be for a date with Frau Guillotine. Heydrich started with a simple fact for Eicke to bear in mind. The living could be easily made dead. Bringing corpses back to life was more than a trifle more difficult.

  It was a whole new frame of reference for Eicke. His supposedly secret program to build an informer net, turned out to have been shopped to Berlin already. By subordinates? Rivals? The Poles? Schellenberg brushed aside the implied question when Eicke tried to raise it. Told Eicke bluntly that everyone reports on everyone. That said, the idea was good. Please continue with it, c/c’ing Berlin by confidential courier.

  Learn to think of the entire Danzig arrangement from the proper prospective. Yes the Poles, Jews, defectives were in many ways useless eaters. Except the Reich wasn’t feeding them. Their rich cousins in America were doing that. Germany actually made a ‘profit’. There was an approved ‘wastage’ rate of 10%. This included not only staple foods, but also luxuries and medicines. The Reich was not rich in resources, compared to its current and future enemies. The Reich must be efficient and frugal. This was the only path to final victory.

  Approach the Polish and Jewish Questions from that standpoint. The Poles would have a Resistance. They were as stubborn as the Irish that way. Plotting endlessly, and periodic rebellion, were national traditions. Better to have known representatives that could be talked to. The General Government was not going to be colonized anytime soon. Look at the annexed border regions. The Jews and Poles were cleaned out by the former Gauleiters. Yet it had proven impossible to find enough German colonists. The Volksdeutsche ingathered preferred to be industrial workers to becoming peasants. The Reich needed factory output more than what horse-drawn plows could bring forth from sandy eastern soils. So the new farmers were Balts. Germanizable, but not yet Germans.

  Someday the war would end. Some Poles would remain and be Germanized. At the peace, the rest would be parceled out to America, Canada, England, and France. For now, keep them quiet and keep them producing.

  Eichmann had his Jews producing. When the war ended Italy would get most of them. Germany would retain the best educated, the most productive, to work the new oil fields. Eicke was a hard man but blanched at the description of the summer heat in the new oil province. There would be some German overlords, such as the new Romeo and Juliet pair from Malta. Those two would be celebrity heroes, propaganda models of defenders of Germany’s new riches. The girl would also have a huge brood of children. That could be publicized, to
start to resurrect a fashion for large families. A continent-spanning Germany needed more Germans. This Volksdeutsche young lady from Romania would be a model New Aryan Woman.

  Eicke had taken this all in. Perhaps nursing his loyalty to the dead Himmler was unwise. The new masters were offering him a career in this new eastern marchland. In the meantime, his slowly expanding cadre of informers had brought him some delicious news. This supposed mistress of Müller’s was not just a cosmopolite intellectual. She had dangerous taste in friends. Communists. Communists who seemed to have connections back across the partition line to Moscow. This he wasn’t telling Berlin yet. He’d need MUCH better proof. Patience. That was the key. Turning informers was ever so easy … if one knew how and had a bit of patience.

  0900 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 1500 hours CET

  20 September 1940

  Bolling Field, Washington DC

  “God damn all Nigger officers to Hell!” Retired Captain Claire Chennault was having a fit. Fortunately for him he was doing so in private. The public expression of his tantrum could ruin his plans to become a Colonel or perhaps a Brigadier General in the new American Volunteer Group. He’d been a mercenary adviser to Chiang’s Air Force. The Generalissimo had been the darling of the China Lobby and the Missionaries. They had ignored Chiang’s past left turns and current Soviet ties … until he’d turned on the missionaries. Now he was the exemplar of both Godless Bolshevism and the Yellow Peril. “Fuck the Holy Joes! Screw that rug-chewing Commie cunt of a First Lady. God Damn Frankie Cripple!” Chennault had been negotiating leaving his Chiang connections behind for the new Bible Thumper darling, Wang Jingwei. Then this mother-humping Nigger officer came out of nowhere with his ‘Tuskeegee Airmen’. Suddenly there was competition for the role of Air Corps savior of the Far East. The best he’d been able to scrape together was that his project wasn’t shelved altogether. The Volunteers were on, but at Army pay, not mercenary wages.

  It was still a white man’s world, especially among the service brass. His men would get P-40’s. The Coon would have to make do with P-36’s and Brewster Buffaloes. USN would ferry him. The Nigger would have to book tramp freighters. Chennault wasn’t a young man. This was his last shot at Dame Fortune.

  0730 hours local; 0630 hours CET

  21 September 1940

  GHQ, Nairobi, Kenya

  The South Africans were still tidying up for final departure. They were off for Sudan, some by road march and the rest by ship through Mombasa. There was a Second Division of them forming back to home. It was expected real soon now.

  Major General Arthur Percival, newly arrived, was taking up his duties as GOC Kenya. GOC? Of a few brigades of militarized African police and a militia of sorts from among the Kenyan settlers. The local settlers knew the bush and shooting. They had no concept of discipline, and little inclination to learn. Churchill’s usual nostalgia for a bygone age had added half a dozen battalions of Ethiopian and Somali ‘patriots’, officered by the usual mix of soldiers of fortune, refugees, and wild-man volunteers from the Dominions. ‘Patriots’! Glorified bandit gangs enlisted from the promise of regular wages plus loot. They could be used to harass the Italian rear, but wouldn’t do standup fights. If the British position seemed to falter, likely as not they would shoot their officers and switch sides. At least his colonial black brigades were regulars. Percival had served with their fathers in Nigeria. They had the habit of discipline, and the skill of marksmanship.

  As a trained staff officer he quite understood the gamble London was taking. Push came to shove, Kenya was expendable. All of East Africa was. Sudan wasn’t, because the Army in Egypt was precious. Britain couldn’t afford to throw away whole armies. Interwar penny-pinching on the military had left the Empire scrambling for resources. Pity the various cabinets had seen fit to not adjust Britain’s overseas commitments to the small forces they were willing to fund.

  1000 hours CET

  21 September 1940

  Forest bridle path outside Metz, Lorraine (claimed by both France and Germany)

  It was a fine autumn day. Crisp but not cold. An excellent day for General Juin to go riding with the colonel courier up this morning by train from Vichy. The formal meeting in Juin’s office on base had been nothing the Germans couldn’t hear. The order was for shipping two battalions de marche south by rail to Toulon the following day. The War Ministry would try to make good deficiencies, drawing from the post-armistice stocks in North Africa, but the need was urgent. There was no way to hide a troop movement from German eyes.

  The why’s of the movement could best be done verbally. Hence the ride the two officers were taking now. “It is bad.” The colonel worked directly under the Minister of War, General Weygand. “That traitor de Gaulle is making his move at West Africa.” He held a hand up before Juin could reply. He was an excellent horseman. Truth be told, he didn’t need the reins at all. He could certainly handle a riding horse on a path with one hand while the beast ambled along. “His agents have been contacting important people seeking support. Enough play both sides and reported the conversations. Our German friends confirmed this. Condor flights out of Brittany with French observers. It is funny. They don’t expect us to take them on faith.”

  Lovely, Juin thought. Two larger powers using France as a cat’s-paw. “Germany is aiding us?”

  “Near to all their submarine fleet has been deployed to screen the routes south from Gibraltar to Dakar. They have allowed French volunteers to join the crews. They are being scrupulously honest. Frightening, in its own way.”

  “How is our brigade doing in Egypt?”

  “Kicking the British in their gonads. The British are making a minor diplomatic fuss, but we keep replying with Chad, and now Congo and Cameroun. They are trying to steal our empire one piece at a time. Alliance with Germany may be poison in the long term, but for now our problem is Britain.”

  “So when do I leave?”

  “With your fourth battalion. Say mid-October.” The men resumed their ride, urging the horses to a moderately brisker pace. Juin was lost in thought. The colonel was content to let him puzzle the situation through. Weygand had tapped Juin as a man of whom great things might be expected. This rearranging of sides was a delicate process.

  2300 hours British Double Summer Time and CET

  21 September 1940

  Labor Caucus Room, Westminster, London

  Prime Minister Ernie Bevin knew he would expect crisis moments in Cabinet. He simply hadn’t expected them this quickly. The heavily cyphered message from Cairo had exposed multiple interlocking cans of worms. So had the most unhelpful attitude of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir John Dill. The man’s pig-headed duplicity was a shock even to an old Labor stalwart such as Bevin, who held the ruling class in contempt.

  Dill managed to simultaneously deny that Cairo had been ordered to keep making pointless attacks, and yet maintain that the ‘suggestions’ from Dill’s staff had been the proper course of action. The same old high-born toff shit about maintaining morale by making the poor bloody infantry leave their trenches and attack, to ‘keep a keen edge on their offensive spirit’. Bevin had known enough union lads who had paid the butcher bills in the last war. He was no pacifist, but lives were not to be wasted on medieval notions of warfare. The men would fight when they had to, but there was nothing glorious about it.

  What was worse was the two-faced way the report on the strength (or lack thereof) in Egypt, in the theater in general, was handled. Dill waved away complaints about the air strength. He wanted to refight old battles about the RAF as a separate independent service. The Army felt that the Air Force lived in a fantasy universe about an independent air war. Which at vast expense was producing jack shit. Some captured brigadier was sending air raid reports from Berlin – with the full knowledge and backing of the Abwehr, who saw to their delivery at the British Embassy in Madrid. The bombers were doing just enough to be annoying. The Germans had made that point repeatedly in the Lisbon t
alks. Had sweetly asked if they should set the East End of London ablaze in a tit for tat?

  Needless to say the Air Chief, Air Marshal Cyril Newall, was having none of this. Backed by the head of Bomber Command, Portal, he had resolutely defended strategic bombing, and pronounced direct support of the army useless. They even saw no use of air defense beyond the Home Islands. Idiots!

  Bevin had won the vote to dismiss the two air generals. They were out, and Hugh Dowding of Fighter Command was in. The same had proven impossible over Dill. Oh, Bevin had the votes in Commons. The 1922 Committee could deliver that on their own. Good old Clem would help Bevin deliver a majority of Labor as well. On a raw vote they had sixty percent or more of Commons that would back pretty much anything. But the entire concept of National Government was to avoid such public splits.

  The Liberals were hopelessly split. Two factions in theory, and three in practice. Combined they were only just over 10% of the voters in the last general election. So, at this moment, a remnant caucus with absurd pretensions. And yet … and yet Liberal was a storied name in British politics. They were also the only name that could contest near every seat in Commons. They were left-enough to fight for working-class seats against Labor, and still conventional enough to fight the leafy suburbs against the Tories. Getting this three-headed monster to accept anything new was like herding cats. It could be done, but not quickly.

  The Tory Party was easier and harder. As long as the 1922 Committee stayed loyal, the big names could be decapitated. The faceless grey men of the Tory benches were natural followers. They were not Big Capital. They were its servants. The country squire justices of the peace. The suburban solicitors, branch managers, spokespeople, and the like. They had next to no interest in policy – besides being against socialism and the income tax. Most would obey the whips out of habit, and the more ambitious could be bought off fairly cheaply with lesser offices, knighthoods, and small bits of patronage. Bevin had negotiated workplace disputes with these sort of men. He didn’t like them, but quite understood them. The Names were the problem. They had been aced out of the PM’s chair. Each saw himself as a potential successor, when the 1922 Committee came to their senses as it were. Each also wished to make sure that no blame attached to them for years of failed appeasement, for the string of truly dumb decisions that had led to a large fraction of the Empire being on the verge of being pissed away. Britain now had enough planes, tanks, field guns, trained men. All of this was in the UK, and while Winston was in charge these great Names had fought him hammer and tongs over NOT reinforcing Egypt. Dunkirk had panicked the lot of them. They wanted it all sitting in the Home Counties to defend London. Which is where it was. Leaving Egypt vulnerable. Now they wished to blame each other. To prepare briefs for the day when they leaked these polemics to rival newspapers in a bid for power.