A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  A steely resolve, cold as the snow falling around them, was taking shape within Karl.

  “I’ve been entrusted with a warning,” he said softly. “I’m not going to ignore it.”

  “What are you going to do? Flee the country?”

  “No. I’m going to stop Adolf Hitler.”

  “How?”

  “By any means necessary.”

  * * * *

  Germany is having a nervous breakdown. There is nothing sane to report.

  —Ben Hecht, 1923

  The rest of the night was a fearful phantasm, filled with shouts, shots, and conflicting rumors—yes, there was a national revolution; no, there were no uprisings in Nuremberg or the other cities.

  One thing was clear to Karl: A revolution was indeed in progress in Munich. All through the night, as he and Ernst wandered the city, they crossed paths again and again with detachments of brown-shirted men marching under the swastika banner. And lining the sidewalks were men and women of all ages, cheering them on.

  Karl wanted to grab and shake each one of them and scream into their faces, You don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t know what they’re planning!

  No one was moving to stop the putsch. The Blue Police, the Green Police, the Reichswehr troops were nowhere in sight. Ernst led Karl across the river to the Reichswehr headquarters where they watched members of the Reichskriegsflagge segment of the Kampfbund strutting in and out of the entrance.

  “It’s true!” Karl said. “The Reichswehr troops are with them!”

  Karl tried to call Berlin to see what was happening there but could not get a phone connection. They went to the offices of the Munchener Post, a newspaper critical of Hitler in the past, but found its offices ransacked, every typewriter gone, every piece of printing equipment destroyed.

  “The putsch is not even a day old and they’ve started already!” Karl said, standing on the glass-littered sidewalk in the wan dawn light and surveying the damage. “Crush anyone who disagrees with you.”

  “Yes!” a voice cried behind them. “Crush them! Grind them under your heel!”

  They turned to see a bearded middle-aged man waving a bottle of Champagne as he joined them before the Post offices. He wore a swastika armband over a tattered army coat.

  “It’s our time now!” The man guzzled some of the Champagne and held it aloft. “A toast! Germany for the Germans, and damn the Jews to hell!” He thrust the bottle at Karl. “Here! Donated by a Jew down the street.”

  Icy spikes scored the inner walls of Karl’s chest.

  “Really?” he said, taking the half-full bottle. “Donated?”

  “Requisitioned, actually.” He barked a laugh. “Along with his watch and his wife’s jewelry . . . after they were arrested!”

  Uncontrollable fury, fueled by the growing unease of the past two weeks and the horror of his vision in the beer hall, exploded in Karl. He reversed his grip on the bottle and smashed it against the side of the man’s head.

  “Karl!” Ernst cried.

  The man stiffened and fell flat on his back in the slush, coat open, arms and legs akimbo.

  Karl stared down at him, shocked by what he’d done. He’d never struck another man in his life. He knelt over him.

  “He’s still breathing.”

  Then he saw the pistol in the man’s belt. He gripped the handle and pulled it free. He straightened and cradled the weapon in his trembling hands as he turned toward Ernst.

  “You asked me before how I was going to stop Hitler. Here is the answer.”

  “Have you gone mad?”

  “You don’t have to come along. Safer for you if you return to the hotel while I search out Herr Hitler.”

  “Don’t insult me. I’ll be beside you all the way.”

  Karl stared at Ernst, surprised and warmed by the reply.

  “Thank you, Ernst.”

  Ernst grinned, his eyes bright with excitement. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  Throughout the morning, conflicting rumors traveled up and down the Munich streets with the regularity of the city trolleys.

  The triumvirate has thrown in with Hitler . . . the triumvirate is free and planning countermoves against the putsch . . . the Reichswehr has revolted and is ready to march on Berlin behind Hitler . . . the Reichswehr is marching on Munich to crush this putsch just as it crushed the communist attempt in Hamburg last month . . . Hitler is in complete control of Munich and its armed forces . . . support for the putsch is eroding among some police units and the young army officers . . .

  Karl chased each rumor, trying to learn the truth, but truth seemed to be an elusive commodity in Munich. He shuttled back and forth across the river, between the putsch headquarters in the Burgerbraukeller on the east bank and the government offices around Marianplatz on the west, his right hand thrust into his coat pocket, clutching the pistol, searching for Hitler. He and Ernst had separated, figuring that two searchers could cover more ground apart than together.

  By noon Karl began to get the feeling that Hitler might not have as much control as he wished people to think. True, the putschists seemed to have an iron grip on the city east of the river, and a swastika flag still flew from a balcony of the New City Hall on the west side, but Karl had noticed the green uniforms of the Bavarian State Police gathering at the west ends of the bridges across the Isar. They weren’t blocking traffic, but they seemed to be on guard. And Reichswehr troops from the Seventh Division were moving through the city. Reichswehr headquarters on the west bank was still held by units of the Kampfbund, but the headquarters itself was now surrounded by two Reichswehr infantry battalions and a number of artillery units.

  The tide is turning, Karl thought with grim satisfaction.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to use the pistol after all.

  He was standing on the west side of the Ludwig bridge, keeping his back to the wind, when he saw Ernst hurrying toward him from the far side.

  “They’re coming this way!” he shouted, his cheeks red with the excitement and the cold.

  “Who?”

  “Everyone! All the putschists—thousands of them. They’ve begun a march through the city. And Hitler’s leading them.”

  No sooner had Ernst spoken than Karl spied the front ranks of the march—brown-shirted Nazis carrying the red and white flags that whipped and snapped in the wind. Behind them came the rest, walking twelve abreast, headed directly toward the Ludwig Bridge. He spotted Hitler in the front ranks wearing his tan trench coat and a felt hat. Beside him was General Ludendorf, one of the most respected war heroes in the nation.

  A crowd of putsch supporters and the merely curious gathered as the Green Police hurried across to the east side of the bridge to stop the marchers. Before they could set up, squads of storm troopers swarmed from the flanks of the march, surrounding and disarming them.

  The march surged across the bridge unimpeded.

  Karl tightened his grip on the pistol. He would end this here, now, personal consequences be damned. But he couldn’t get a clear view of Hitler through the throng surrounding him. To his dismay, many bystanders from the crowd joined the march as it passed, further swelling its ranks.

  The march streamed into the already crowded Marianplatz in front of City Hall where it was met with cheers and cries of adulation by the thousands mobbed there. A delirious rendition of “Deutschland Uber Alles” rattled the windows all around the plaza and ended with countless cries of “Heil Hitler!”

  At no time could Karl get within a hundred yards of his target.

  And now, its ranks doubled, the march was off again, this time northward up Wienstrasse.

  “They’re heading for Reichswehr headquarters,” Ernst said.

  “It’s surrounded. They’ll never get near it.”

  Ernst shrugged. “Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to fire with General Ludendorf at Hitler’s side and all those civilians with them?”

  Karl felt his jaw muscles bunch as the memory of the
vision surged through his brain, dragging with it the image of his elderly, withered, unclothed, bleeding mother.

  “I am.”

  He took off at a run along a course parallel to the march, easily outdistancing the slow-moving crowd. He calculated that the marchers would have to come up Residenzstrasse in order to reach the Reichswehr building. He ducked into a doorway of the Feldherrnhalle, near the top of the street and crouched there, panting from the unaccustomed exertion. Seconds later, Ernst joined him, barely breathing hard.

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  Ernst smiled. “Of course I did. We’re witnessing the making of history.”

  Karl pulled the pistol from his coat pocket. “But after today someone other than Adolf Hitler will be making it.”

  At the top of Residenzstrasse, where it opened into a plaza, Karl saw units of the Green Police setting up a barricade.

  Good. It would slow the march, and that would be his moment.

  “Here they come,” Ernst said.

  Karl’s palms began to sweat as he searched the front ranks for his target. The pistol grip was slippery in his hand by the time he identified Hitler. This was it. This was his moment in history, to turn it from the horrors the vision had shown him.

  Doubt gripped the base of his throat in a stranglehold. What if the vision was wrong? What if it had been the absinthe and nothing more? What if he was about to murder a man because of a drunken hallucination?

  He tore free of the questions. No. No doubts. No hesitation. Hitler has to die. Here. Now. By my hand.

  As he’d predicted, the march slowed when it neared the barricade and the storm troopers approached the Green Police shouting, “Don’t shoot! We are your comrades! We have General Ludendorf with us!”

  Karl raised the pistol, waiting for his chance.

  And then a passage opened between him and Hitler’s trench-coated form.

  Now! It has to be now!

  He took aim, cautiously, carefully. He wasn’t experienced with pistols. His father had taken him hunting with a rifle or a shotgun as a young man, but he’d never found much pleasure in it. He found no pleasure in this, only duty. But he knew how to aim, and he had the heart of this strutting little monster in his sights. He remembered his father’s words . . . “Squeeze, don’t pull . . . squeeze . . . be surprised by the shot . . .”

  And while Karl waited for his surprise, he imagined the tapered lead cylinder blasting from the muzzle, hurtling toward Hitler, plunging into his chest, tearing through lung and heart, ripping the life from him before he could destroy the lives of the hapless, helpless, innocent millions he so hated. He saw Hitler twist and fall, saw a brief, violent spasm of rage and confusion as the milling putschists fired wildly in all directions, rioting until the Green Police and the regular army units closed in to divide their ranks, arrest their leaders, and disperse the rest. Perhaps another Jew hater would rise, but he would not have this man’s unique combination of personal magnetism and oratory power. The future Karl had seen would never happen. His bullet would sever the link from this time and place to that future.

  And so he let his sweat-slick forefinger caress the curve of the trigger . . . squeezing . . .

  But just as the weapon fired, something brushed against his arm. The bullet coughed into the chill air, high, missing Hitler.

  Time stopped. The marchers stood frozen, some in midstride. All except Hitler. His head was turned Karl’s way, his pale blue eyes searching the doorways, the windows. And then those eyes fixed on Karl’s. The two men stared at each other for an instant, an eternity . . . then . . . Hitler smiled.

  And with that smile time resumed its course as Karl’s single shot precipitated a barrage of gunfire from the Green Police and the Kampfbund troops. Chaos erupted on Residenzstrasse. Karl watched in horror as people ran in all directions, screaming, bleeding, falling, and dying. The pavement became red and slick with blood. He saw Hitler go down and stay down. He prayed that someone else’s bullet had found him.

  Finally the shooting stopped. The guns were silent but the air remained filled with the cries of the wounded. To Karl’s shock he saw Hitler struggle to his feet and flee along the sidewalk, holding his arm. Before Karl could gather his wits and take aim again with his pistol, Hitler had jumped into a yellow Opel sedan and sped away.

  Karl added his own shouts to those of the wounded. He turned to Ernst.

  “It was you! Why did you hit my arm? I had him in my sights and you . . . you made me miss!”

  “Terribly sorry,” Ernst said, avidly scanning the carnage on the street before them. “It was an accident. I was leaning over for a look and lost my balance. Not to worry. I think you accomplished your goal: This putsch is over.”

  The Munich putsch definitely eliminates Hitler and his National Socialist followers.

  —The New York Times, November 9, 1923

  Karl was overjoyed when Adolf Hitler was captured by the Green Police two days later, charged with high treason, and thrown into jail. His National Socialist Party was disbanded and declared illegal. Adolf Hitler had lost his political firmament, his freedom, and because he was an Austrian, there even was a good possibility he would be deported after his trial.

  While waiting for the trial, Karl reopened his bookstore and tried to resume a normal routine in Berlin. But the vision, and the specter of Adolf Hitler, haunted him. Hitler was still alive, might still wreak the horrors Karl had seen. He hungered for the trial, to see Hitler humiliated, sentenced to a minimum of twenty years. Or deported. Or best yet: shot as a traitor.

  He saw less and less of Ernst during the months leading to the trial. Ernst seemed bored with Berlin. New, gold-backed marks had brought inflation under control, the new government seemed stable, there were no new putsches in the works . . . life was far less “entertaining.”

  They met up again in Munich on the day of Hitler’s sentencing. Like the trial, the sentencing was being held in the main lecture hall of the old Infantry School because the city’s regular courtrooms could not accommodate the huge crowds. Karl had been unable to arrange a seat inside; nor, apparently, had Ernst. Both had to be content to stand outside under the bright midday sky and wait for the news along with the rest of their fellow citizens.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you here,” Ernst said as they shook hands.

  “Nor I you. I suppose you find all this amusing.”

  “Quite.” He pointed with his cane. “My, my. Look at all the people.”

  Karl had already studied them, and they upset him. Thousands of Germans from all over the country swarmed around the large brick building, trying in vain to get into the courtroom. Two battalions of Green Police were stationed behind barbed wire barriers to keep the crowds at bay. During the twenty-five days of the trial, Karl had moved among them and had been horrified at how many spoke of Hitler in the hushed tones of adoration reserved for royalty, or a god.

  Today the women had brought bouquets of flowers for their god, and almost everyone in the huge throng was wearing ribbons of red, white, and black—the Nazi colors.

  “He’s a national figure now,” Ernst said. “Before the putsch no one had ever heard of him. Now his name is known all over the world.”

  “And that name will soon be in jail,” Karl said vehemently.

  “Undoubtedly. But he’s made excellent use of the trial as a national soap box.”

  Karl shook his head. He could not understand why the judges had allowed Hitler to speak at such length from the witness box. For days—weeks—he went on, receiving standing ovations in the courtroom while reporters transcribed his words and published them for the whole country to read.

  “But today it comes to an end. Even as we speak, his sentence is being pronounced. Today Adolf Hitler goes to prison for a long, long time. Even better: Today he is deported to Austria.”

  “Jail, yes,” Ernst said. “But I wouldn’t count on deportation. He is, after all, a decorated veteran of the German army, and I d
o believe the judges are more than a little cowed by the show of support he has received here and in the rest of the country.”

  Suddenly shouts arose from those of the huge crowd nearest the building, followed by wild cheering as word of the sentencing was passed down: five years in Landau Prison . . . but eligible for parole in six months.

  “Six months!” Karl shouted. “No, this can’t be! He’s guilty of treason! He tried to overthrow the government!”

  “Hush, Karl,” Ernst said. “You’re attracting attention.”

  “I will not be silenced! The people have to know!”

  “Not these people, Karl.”

  Karl raised his arms to the circle of grim faces that had closed about him. “Listen to me! Adolf Hitler is a monster! They should lock him up in the deepest darkest hole and throw away the key! He—”

  Sudden agony convulsed through his back as someone behind him rammed a fist into his right kidney. As Karl staggered forward another man with wild, furious eyes and bared teeth punched him in the face. He slumped to the ground with cries of “Communist!” and “Jew!” filling his ears. The circle closed about him and the sky was shut out by enraged, merciless faces as heavy boots began to kick at his back and belly and head.

  Karl was losing his last grip on consciousness when the blows suddenly stopped and there was blue sky above him again.

  Through blurry eyes he saw Ernst leaning over him, shaking his head in dismay.

  “Good God, man! Do you have a death wish? You’d be a bloody pulp now if I hadn’t brought the police to your aid!”

  Painfully, Karl raised himself on one elbow and spit blood. Scenes from the dark vision began flashing before his eyes.

  “It’s going to happen!” he sobbed.

  He felt utterly alone, thoroughly defeated. Hitler had a national following now. He’d be back on the streets and in the beer halls in six months, spreading his hatred. This trial wasn’t the end of him—it was the beginning. It had catapulted him into the national spotlight. He was on his way. He was going to take over.

  And the vision would become reality.