by Scott Palter
Pirates? What stupid public relations. The damned Reds had every right to be pissed about how the ‘pirate’ tripe had been used as a fig leaf in the Spanish War, for what everyone knew were Italian subs. But taking that pique out on the US flag had real-world consequences. He had three Reds that he knew of in his inner circle. His new would-be Vice-President Wallace was their creature. Hoover was supplying him with all the stupid details. If there was a quiet way to do so, Franklin would have dumped the clown. Pity Hoover had held the evidence back until after the announcement. Hoover was a snake. The only thing keeping him vaguely loyal was his feud with Tom Dewey. Dewey was trying to steal Hoover’s gangbuster laurels.
No one owned his estranged wife Eleanor. But her whole circle was full of Party members and fellow travelers. It amazed him that Eleanor had managed to avoid the formal, public taint. Hoover had certainly leaked enough hints.
Hopkins. Poor, overworked, never-healthy Harry. The man was a godsend. He’d been right about how much Farley was missed. Franklin never admitted errors in public. Didn’t suit his image. Damn, but Farley was the man who had kept the city bosses, the county court house gangs, and all the other petty oligarchs of the Democratic Party on board. Hopkins was trying, but it was a man-killing kind of job, more so for Hopkins than Farley. Farley socially fit in with the hard-drinking local crooks. Hopkins was far too goody-two-shoes. Not so high-minded as to break it off with his Communist mistress, though. She was his courier to Moscow. That was why Harry was in the room for this. He’d call the maybe-ex-lover and pass along the demand to respect the US flag. Hoover kept FDR appraised of every meeting. The nasty little man was extremely competent that way. He may have been an odious toad, as well as one of those kind of pantywaists, but he did his job well. He ferreted out secrets and, as long as allowed to run his little empire, kept secret the secrets each President needed hidden.
Back to Stark. He’d given the man his say, and more. It was time for orders. The Asiatic Fleet was to sail for Shanghai. It was to be responsible for moving the American volunteers to China. No ifs, ands, or buts. Fifty-five destroyers from the reserve fleet were to be made ready for sea duty. Stark had whined these WW1 relics couldn’t fight with the battle line. So be it. That meant they were available to convoy ships from the West Coast to China.
FDR had China connections back to his Delano ancestors and the old clipper ship tea trade. He wasn’t letting Willkie steal this issue. Willkie himself wasn’t a bad apple. He was a decent liberal at heart. Lindy was pro-Nazi scum. FDR loathed the Nazis. Adolph had been a gutter-scum populist, a European Huey Long, not a true progressive like Stalin or Mussolini. And the Nazis just overdid it on the Jews. The Hebrews were a nuisance and not really white men, but Franklin had known decent ones back to his old mentor Bernard Baruch. Didn’t mean he was going to let the millions of European Jews come here. Wasn’t going to let the smart ones overrun Harvard Yard, either. It was enough that he had forced the British to break the blockade so their own charities could feed them. He had Wallace out campaigning in corn and cheese country about how many millions of dollars they were getting from the European relief programs … and not one cent of it out of their precious tax dollars.
USN was also to build escort vessels. Dedicated ones like the British Flower-class corvettes. FDR had full blueprints from the British. Handed them to CNO Stark and ordered him to let contracts for a few dozen as a trial order. FDR knew there wasn’t a prayer in hell that the US Navy would build these ships. They had always had a severe case of not-made-here disease. But it would force them to come up with another design. Something that small shipyards could make. US still had large numbers of unemployed men, and little local shipyards too small even for regular-size fleet destroyers. Franklin saw all this war spending in political terms. He needed contracts let, and men to be hired, before election day.
0700 hours local; 0130 hours CET
25 September 1940
GHQ India, New Delhi, India
Dawn had been an hour and change ago. The Congress mobs had been rampaging all night, with the police needing army backup to maintain some level of order. Congress would not accept that anyone other than themselves could interact with the British. Churchill as Viceroy would not tolerate being dictated to. Congress had chosen rebellion instead of negotiation. The Muslim League last night, and a delegation of princes later today, were exercising their option to talk, to have their voice heard on the issues of independence and partition. General Claude Auchinleck was now addressing a joint meeting of senior British and Indian officers and other officials from the Army, police, and civil service, including the railways. He was relaying the message he and Churchill had refined on that endless flight from London. Britain would leave once the war ended. That was no longer subject to debate. The issue was how and on what terms. India had not been a whole when the British arrived. Thus the British were under no obligation to leave it as a unified state. One man, one vote clearly wasn’t going to work. A block rural Hindu vote would just hand everything to Gandhi and Nehru. Mr. Jinnah had already made clear that this was not acceptable to the Muslims. He and Churchill jointly doubted that this was acceptable to the princes. Now it was possible that a unitary India could be created, with autonomy for Muslim areas, various princely states, the linguistic minorities, British interests in a few port cities, and the like.
The key was the attitude of four pillars. The army, the police, the civil service, and the railroads. They were what made India a nation instead of a geographic concept. They could truly say they stood above religion, caste, regional language, and the like. Right now, these pillars were all run by white Britishers. Come independence those would depart. Not all on the same day. A proper handover of responsibility might take a few years. But in the end Indian generals of the army and police, heads of the railroad, cabinet and bureau chiefs, were the pillars of a united India. Or they weren’t, and the services would be divided. The viceroy wished these four new service castes to conduct their own internal discussions, and appoint committees to speak for them as collegial entities. The Viceroy and GHQ saw this as the correct form of democracy for India. The four pillars plus the princes and the chambers of commerce. Mr. Jinnah had accepted this for the purposes of negotiation. Congress could join the talks, but only on these terms. No, this was not a state secret. How would each pillar secretly contact its scattered members? The viceroy asked for discretion, but wished serious dialog. It was a new day for India.
0900 hours local; 0800 hours CET
25 September 1940
Brigade Strauss Headquarters, behind the Alamein lines
It could have been worse. Di Salo had put together a nominal battalion in under a month and actually gotten it to the ‘front’. One company of Italian Jews or part-Jews eager to prove their loyalty … and to get their families removed from the 1938 Race Laws. A company of Young Fascists hypnotized by the glory of joining such a prestige unit. A company of Transylvanian Magyar refugees fleeing Romanian oppression, who wished full residence and work permits in Italy for themselves and their relatives. A company of Hungarian Horthyite exiles. The Young Fascists and Horthyites for infantry. The Transylvanians for a heavy weapons company. The Jews for an oversized headquarters and services battalion. There was a third infantry company in transit from Spain. Middle-class Catalans who had been conscripted for the Reds … against their will per their families, but then that was the line to take to get release from the prisoner camps. Their service would buy redemption for their families.
Also eventually to arrive was a second Horthyite company and a battery of the multipurpose 76mm guns that had done so well serving with Rommel. Equipment was proving to be a problem. Everything was in short supply, and despite his family’s excellent web of connections, he was simply not able to jump enough lines. His infantry had motorcycles. Civilian ones of a variety of makes and models. His heavy weapons relied on being dragged in trailers behind touring cars and light civilian trucks. His mortars and machine-g
uns would have been considered obsolete by the end of the Great War. Even the uniforms were old and still stank of preservatives.
Thankfully, his officer cadets had again been heroes. A dozen more were up for various decorations thanks to their patron General Rommel, including four posthumous Knight’s Crosses. He’d been given authority to make the survivors Second Lieutenants in the Fascist Militia. One of Marshal Balbo’s aides had assured him personally that this unit was in favor at the highest levels of the state.
Strauss had a present for him as well. Three repaired British cruiser tanks as his personal reserve. This Hauptmann Bats seemed a true miracle-worker. Now Di Salo just needed a few weeks to train up his ragtag unit into something like a combat edge. He’d done the same with worse in Spain. So had his little dove Coxita.
……….
A welcome lunch from the ladies. How disgustingly bourgeois. Fascist Jewish Nationalists, a colored cook somehow allowed to sit in with her employers, and the one Party comrade was ideologically unsound. Nothing Comrade Stalin did could be wrong. Even the disasters in Spain were the work of Francoite Wreckers undermining the Republic. Stalin’s line had been correct on Germany – the Hitlerites would in due course lose their hold on the masses.
In the meantime she let these bitches try to make friends. Coxita may have sold herself to a class enemy but at least her man was rich and powerful, with an excellent body. If Soviet Russia could do a tactical alliance of convenience with the Nazis, then what Coxita had done was similarly valid. She could not allow herself to believe otherwise. In her own eyes, she was a valiant Joan of Arc of the permanent revolution.
……….
No wonder we lost in Spain. If the Party had promoted the likes of this shallow, materialistic slut, it had lost its roots. Clara felt she could see through the façade of this Catalan ex-commissar bitch to the spoiled little daughter of privilege she was. Class origins could not be hidden. They had both whored themselves. Clara was clear-eyed on what she had done and why. Her man was proletariat to the core, even if the Nazis had given him officer’s rank tabs. This silly cow had spread her legs for an aristocrat and financier. Communist? Clara kept the sarcastic laughter out of her voice, but she had made up her mind.
1700 hours local; 1600 hours CET
25 September 1940
Railway siding high in the Transylvanian Alps
It was starting to get chilly. Again. The same as the past two nights. Obersturmbannführer Hermann Fegelein had had enough of this discomfort. The Hungarians and Romanians seemed to delight in causing difficulties for each other on this rail line. It was a form of slow-motion warfare.
Fegelein had been a devout Himmler toady. This had gotten him command of the Death’s Head Cavalry Regiment. Despite its fancy name, it was a field security unit, its ranks padded out with Polish and other East Volksdeutsche. It had been part of the Warsaw garrison until the brief Soviet War. The regiment had then been shuttled off to Romania to ‘guard’ the Ploiesti oil fields. Guard? The command there consisted of an SS Security division, a Luftwaffe flak division, his regiment, and some other miscellaneous troops. It was a corps-sized command, when all that was needed was a battalion of nightwatchmen. Beyond the usual petty pilferage and vandalism that any spread-out industrial enterprise attracts, the oil fields were not menaced in any way. The Romanians were more than content to avoid Soviet occupation by being subservient German lackeys. Romania’s oil and food were sent on to the Reich by the Antonescu regime, less a certain amount of probably unavoidable theft and corruption. All ex-Ottoman lands seemed to have inherited a Turkish fondness for minor graft.
This left Fegelein free to keep recruiting. His regiment was on its way to becoming a brigade, even if the new Volksdeutsche were of extremely dubious Aryan ancestry. In Poland he recruited men who knew 500 words of German and could show at least a definite German grandparent. Here, he was swearing in men who knew 100 words of German and claimed a German traveling salesman may once have fucked their great-grandmother.
Berlin had proven indifferent to just how good the blood lines were. The recruiters checked for cut dicks. A full foreskin, enough German to be taught simple commands, and physical health were all he was required to demand. The new enlistees were learning basic German fast enough and their military skills almost as fast. They were extremely willing, and healthy as horses.
The lack of threat to the oil installations left time for the regiment to be assigned other security activities. One of these was Jew transport. Which left him here on this siding with six hundred forty-two Jewish oldsters and children. Two nights with no heat, no engine, no resupply of food or water, nothing. He’d sent men into the next town to telegraph his complaints. All he received in reply were excuses and evasions.
Why the damned Kikes needed guards was beyond the Obersturmbannführer. They never ran away. The locals would just kill them, if the weather and steep mountain trails adjacent to the tracks didn’t. They were all happy to go to Italy. Berlin had deeded these useless eaters to the equally worthless comic-opera Italians.
Fegelein was not about to spend a third night on this siding. He got the Yids off the train, neatly lined up by the ditch that ran adjacent to the road that followed the rail line. He posted guards at each end of the line with rifles, and then led the rest of his men in with bayonets and rifle butts. Some of the children ran. His riflemen picked off most, but a few made it into the mountains where they would die. The old folks and most of the children just accepted their fate and waited quietly while the SS moved down the line methodically crushing skulls and slashing open organs. They mainly prayed in their revolting language to their invisible deity. They tried to shield the eyes of the terrorized children to what was happening. Disgusting. Real humans would have fought even if it was hopeless.
It took the better part of an hour to kill them all. Or at least enough of them. Many were still howling in pain or whimpering. A few doubtless faked death and would sneak off later. Screw them and fuck this worthless assignment. He got his men into column and started off for the mountain village with the telegraph office. It must have an inn and something strong to drink. He’d run out of palinka, the local rotgut brandy, the first night. He was unused to being without strong drink even for one night. It left him sweaty and achy, worse hour by hour.
1400 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 2000 hours CET
25 September 1940
Football Stadium, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
Not being a huge school, Morehouse lacked the huge stadium of a football powerhouse like Notre Dame. However, every square inch of the stands and field was jammed with people, with thousands more listening by the exits to hastily mounted loudspeakers. The Georgia rally for the Freedom Brigade was in full swing.
Patton had proposed a Negro battalion for his Sixth Armored Cavalry Regiment. That had lasted less than a day, as in the neighborhood of forty percent of the four historic black regiments attempted to volunteer. Chief of Staff General George Marshall refused to allow his regiments to be gutted. Each regiment was limited to supplying one hundred cadres, with the actual choices being by lottery. The First Lady had then taken charge. The active duty Army could not prevent retired members of the four regiments from enlisting, or bar the recruitment of men not yet drafted, particularly those under the nineteen years of age that was the minimum for conscription.
The intent had been to recruit seventeen- and eighteen-year-old’s, who in peacetime had often been allowed to enlist. Intention vanished in a wave of popular enthusiasm. The Baby Buffaloes had coped with ceaseless lies by changing the standard to height, weight, and some vague growth of facial hair. Even that rule quickly became more a guideline than a rigid law.
Similarly, the battalion was now the Freedom Brigade of Patton’s hastily renamed 6th Armored Cavalry Division. The crowd roared encouragement as each little farm town’s party of young volunteers marched themselves to the podium to be sworn in. They were going to fight for Jesus in China and fo
r liberty, for freedom. No white officers for them. General Davis, Senior would lead the brigade. Negro officers from the reserves, and young Negro college men from places such as Morehouse, would command. In Lincoln’s war of freedom, the officers had learned with the men. It would be the same with the new legions of emancipation.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Senior of the Ebenezer Church preached the sermon and led the crowd in gospel song. He proudly said he would go as head chaplain. Accompanying him would be his eleven-year-old son Martin, Junior – who already felt a calling to the word of God.
……….
Harry Hopkins had had his hands full with Eleanor’s Freedom Crusade. He had managed to sell it to Dixie’s governors and sheriffs as a safety valve. Let the dissatisfied go off to China. As his minions kept reminding the elected heads of Jim Crow Dixie, no one ever promised to bring these Freedom Negroes home.
0600 hours local; 0400 hours CET
26 September 1940
A sealed freight car somewhere east of Moscow
It was hot. The freight cars the Aztecs were transported in had poor air circulation. Their Soviet hosts provided not much food, too little water, dirty straw, and, to use as chamber-pots, barrels that had probably not been really cleaned since the days of the Czars.