War: A Love Story

by Jason argo

Part 4

 

That night the university auditorium was full to capacity. Three hundred chairs had been set out and all of them were occupied, the front rows taken by a variety of regional dignitaries and the faculty of the university. Behind them sat senior representatives of the local National Socialist Party and Youth Leaders of the Jungmadel, and behind them students and assorted individuals from the town.

In the centre of a stage a sombre podium had been set, flanked with huge red banners bearing swastika emblems together with flags of the SS – two white runic figures on a solid black background.

As the seconds ticked towards the full hour the central lights dimmed until only the stage was bathed in white light, and the Rector of the University then stood up briefly to introduce the guest speaker.

A slightly built, unassuming figure appeared in the wings and walked slowly towards the podium. It was Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Nazi Propaganda.

He gripped the lectern in front of him with both hands and offered a faint smile. "Damen und Herren - Students of the University - Burgers of this beautiful historic town. Thank you for inviting me here. Those of you who know something about me will know I passed through these hallowed halls twenty years ago as a young man, so I am not an anonymous stranger. I am a traveller coming home."

He continued speaking in a courteous and unruffled manner. The audience listened, hushed in awe. His enunciation was crisp and clear. They were mesmerised. This man was a trusted friend of Hitler. They knew that every word he said was a reflection of the thoughts of the great Leader and it was like listening to the Fuehrer speaking himself.

"My friends. Good Germans. I am here to tell you about the future. The bad times, the unemployment, the despair and poverty are behind us now and we are victorious everywhere. We must now think what we wish our descendents to inherit from us in a thousand years from now, and of course we wish them to inherit a virile nation, a healthy nation free of racial ambiguities and a nation that is the foremost power in the world. We will not tolerate carrying forward the petty rivalries and divisions and the failures to unite that have plagued us in the past, and we don't have to, because we are blessed with a wise and faultless leadership.

"There may be those among you who are puzzled as to why, having conquered most of Europe so easily, we have not stamped on the stubborn English in their island before taking on a new crusade with Stalin's Russia. Well, I can tell you they will not escape our attention, but first we must seek to impose our priorities. We can crush the British at our leisure, but we must not allow them to deflect us at this moment from our urgent desire for expansion in the east and the eradication of the vile disease of bolshevism.

"You will know from the news bulletins that our armies in Russia are rapidly destroying the savage Slavic hordes opposed to them and ultimate victory is assured. This success is only made possible because we have a resolute leader who has correctly grasped the political and military situation and acted in accordance with his own understanding.

Not since the Roman Empire as the world known such greatness. Charlemagne and Napoleon almost achieved it, and great opportunities were missed by those men. Instead Europe was cursed with discord and waste as kings and princes continued to fight each other for supremacy. Now we have a chance to arrive at a final peace through war. We are blessed with a man with the intellect, the nerve and the will to bring all of Europe together under the leadership of a single beneficent master.

"Adolph Hitler will outshine all who have gone before him. He is an agency of history destined to resurrect Germany's national greatness. Believe in him and it will be attained. Our Fuehrer does not make mistakes.

"Some individuals with rotten minds will not admit that of course. They remain blind to the crisis of unemployment that was previously our despair, and they resent the money spent on armaments that are the key to our future prosperity. That is not good enough. The future can not be entrusted to foolish wishes, anger and lies; it can only be attained through hard work, honesty and obligation to the Fuehrer.

Show yourself worthy of his trust and a new golden age of Germanic-Aryan culture can commence.

"This cannot be achieved without effort, of course. The scale of things are awesome, the battles now and in the future will be intensely fierce, and our courageous soldiers must have the support of every man, woman and child in the Reich in order to achieve their aims. We must have Wehrwille – the will – the desire – the courage to make war, and total war must be waged if we are to ensure success against the animal Slavs. We must ignore the restraints of morality, customs and international law. We must do what is best for ourselves, for we are fighting in a righteous cause, and we are fighting for an ideology."

His voice rose in a final dramatic crescendo, showing his skill for charismatic oratory as his hands began to bang on the lectern.

"The Fuehrer promises certain victory. He only requires his followers share the faith he as in himself as he guides them along the path of national unity and racial purity.

What counts is will, and if our will is strong and ruthless enough, we can do anything."

Rising in one spontaneous mass, the audience clapped until the room was awash with applause. An arm swung up in the midst of them, followed by a dozen others, followed by everyone's arm

"Seig Heil!" a voice bellowed.

"Seig Heil!" responded Viktor Schacht.

"Seig Heil, Seig Heil!" chorused three hundred other voices.

 

 

There was a knock on the door. It was a demanding thump. It banged, and then banged again and again until the door shook.

It was still only early morning but the banging became so urgent that Felix Haushofer hurriedly pulled on his trousers and went down the stairs. Willy, still half asleep and rubbing his eyes and thinking there must be a fire, went with him with only the fabric of an ankle-long shift clinging to his body.

"What on earth can be so urgent on a Sunday morning?" rumbled the old man.

The noise continued. A relentless din. This time a voice accompanied it. "Open up! Open the door!"

"Who is it? What do you want?" Felix called hoarsely.

"Police! Open the door or we'll break it down."

"Okay, okay! There's no need for that. Just give me a moment." Felix unbolted the door and swung it wide to be confronted by a policeman in uniform. Behind him were several other men, some of them in civilian clothes.

"Step outside." the uniformed man told him, "And the girl. Bring out the girl too."

"Can we put on some proper clothes first?" the old man asked.

"You heard what was said. Out!" one of the other men growled threateningly. He grabbed Felix by an arm and yanked him into the street. Dismayed, Willy followed him.

A number of anonymous looking black cars were lined up along the curb. A uniformed policeman was ushering pedestrians to the other side of the street, while others took up post as sentinels at their side.

Some men went into the shop and there was the noise of callous searching; things falling over, books showering onto the floor. Another man went in with a crowbar.

A short distance away a small knot of men in plain civilian clothes hung together in a group. Viktor Schacht was standing with a dumpy man who wore a long coat and a Tyrolean hat who was being consulted by someone who had just come out from the shop with a pile of magazines.

Fearful and confused, and astonished at seeing Viktor there, Willy looked up at Felix. "What is this all about? Why are they treating us like this?"

The man tried to smile reassurance, but couldn't manage it. He had forgotten how dramatic Willy could look, her cheeks pale and delicate, emphasising the gentleness of her lips and brows, the sparkling blue of her eyes. He could only hope that such sweetness would warrant a little mercy.

"Willy, I fear I have dragged you into something very bad. Some of the people here are not regular police. Some of them are Geheime Staatspolizei – they are Gestapo."

"Stop talking!" a voice demanded. It was the man in the long coat. He had the face of a frog suffering from dyspepsia. With a curt swing of his hand he signalled to his henchmen.

"Take them away and keep them separate. I don't want them cooking up stories between them as they go."

"Do you have a coat for the girl? She should have a coat." put in Viktor Schacht with an ionic touch of thoughtfulness.

A blanket was found and wrapped around Willy's shoulders, but through the rough wool his frame looked no less frail.

"I found it impossible to keep my promise, and I regret that you are involved in this." Viktor remarked stonily as Willy was led past him.

Willy, stunned by the man's apparent betrayal, merely gazed at the ground and didn't answer even whilst disappointment raked him with burning claws. His words hurt more than if he had turned and walked away – more than if he had physically attacked him. Every breath he took drew in the rank bitterness of his poison.

The man in the long coat and alpine hat rubbed his hands together as the mornings catch were loaded into two of the cars. Nobody important, just a couple of minnows, but they were a rescue from a day that had promised boredom.

"Do not allow your personal feelings to cloud your judgement in this matter, Herr Schacht. You did the right thing by reporting this mealy-mouthed scum."

Viktor bridled. "With due respect, sir, my personal feelings do not enter into the matter. I did only what any good German should do."

"Naturally." the frog-faced man said genially, "Good Germans know the difference between right and wrong, and they have faith in their decisions. The greatest weakness of power is self-doubt. We must expect people to obey."

"And if they do not obey?"

The man's tone became iron-hard. "If they do not, we must be absolutely merciless. The second weakness of power is pity; we can have none of that."

 

 

SS-Standartenfuhrer Albert Naujocks gazed out from his second storey office window along the Unter den Linden, allowing his gaze to follow the line of trees along the wide boulevard to the palace and university. To his left, beyond the Pariser Platz, the Brandenburg Gate, martially equipped with horses and chariots, stood on guard.

He was thinking about what had recently happened to Rudolph Hess.

For many years Hess had been one of Hitler's most intimate and slavish devotees and had been given the status of Deputy Fuehrer, but some time ago he had begun to feel himself being sidelined by other people in the Fuehrer's inner circle.

In order to make his star shine bright again he had recently flown to Scotland – his own idea - with the notion of instigating a treaty of peace with the British by way of a relative of King George. Foolishly, naively, he believed that the differences between two warring nations could be sorted-out over a cup of tea with a well-heeled aristocrat.

Of course he was unsuccessful and he would now be incarcerated by the enemy for the duration of hostilities. But Hess's silly escapade had aroused in Naujocks an idea that there were more ways to skin a cat other than with a blunt knife.

Earlier he had glanced at the latest pile of dispatches lying on his desk. Lists and more lists. Most were grainy and of poor quality, third copies 'for information only', and usually he didn't bother even reading them. But on that particular day, a name on the topmost sheet of paper caught his eye and had started him on a train of thought.

Mechanically he walked across the room. On the far wall was pinned a large map of Europe and western Asia depicting the current extent of Hitler's conquests. Almost the entire European land mass lay under his dominance, and the parts that clung to independence were either servile allies or nervous neutrals. Since the surprise assault on Russia in June German arms had swept relentlessly eastwards and overrun the most populous areas of the USSR, and it seemed certain that before winter set in Moscow and the prize of the Caucus oilfields would be in the fuehrer's grasp.

The Leader of Germany had engineered a masterly concept that outshone the best of his generals, and to Naujocks only one element of it rankled with untidiness.

To the side of the map hung a framed copy of the Hymn of Hate that his father had retained from the First Great War.

'French and Russians they matter not

A blow for blow and a shot for shot

We love them not, we hate them not

We hold the Vistula and the Vosges-gate

We have but one and only hate

We love as one, we hate as one

We have one foe and one alone,

ENGLAND!'

 

Yes, he thought, the continuing hostility of the British was an untidy element in what was otherwise a faultless plan.

He knew his history and he recalled his father's great disappointment and the hatred that had obsessed him at that time. During that war the British sea blockade had pushed the population of Germany to the verge of starvation, and although huge French armies had blocked German success on land for years, it was mainly the British who had broken the Alberich offensive in 1918. That had been Germany's final frantic gamble to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion before the Americans arrived in any great strength to assist the allies, and it had failed. Thereafter his father had blamed the English more than anyone else for Germany's eventual defeat.

He remembered the last few months of that war, when every letter from him had been postmarked 'God Punish England'.

He thought things over for perhaps half an hour, then feeling suddenly inspired he strode out of the door into the outer office where an aide immediately leapt to his feet.

"Is SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Strasser in town, Kleist?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." said the aide, "He'll be sauntering along the Kurfurstendamm at this moment I expect." a small smile flitted across the young officers mouth. "Major Strasser particularly enjoys the cabarets when he's in Berlin."

Naujocks glanced at his watch. "It's still only early evening. Have someone go and find him. Tell him I want to see him here right away."

 

 

Princess Ingrid had a lean face with a strong, wide mouth. Except for her fair skin and large expressive eyes her beauty was almost masculine. That was not alarming, since the princess was a man. His real name was Walther Holldobler, and Princess Ingrid was only his stage name, but everyone called him Ingrid. He was till wearing theatrical base and eyeliner from the cabaret, but that was all he was wearing. Beneath the bedcovers he was completely naked.

He was expecting a guest, but when he heard a key turn in the lock of his bedroom door, he nonetheless clutched the heavy Federdecke to his chin.

Hermann Strasser leaned his head through the doorway and presented a lurid grin.

"Ingrid, meine Schatze, meine kleine Edelweiss. I've missed you."

Ingrid moved his legs slowly back and forth beneath the bedcovers. "I've missed you too, Hermann. Have you brought me a nice present?"

The man's gorilla frame almost filled the door. He was carrying a bottle, and he surveyed the room carefully before entering.

"A fat little purse and a bottle of real champagne."

"How sweet of you."

"How sweet indeed." he rejoined, letting his eyes linger on the princess's pretty white throat. He sat on the edge of the bed, bent forward, and gently kissed him.

"How was Düsseldorf?" Ingrid asked.

Hermann lifted his nose as if he'd just detected a bad smell. "I never go to Düsseldorf. I work in Breslau."

"Oh, yes, of course." Ingrid sat up, realising he was confusing his guest with someone else. "Come and warm me up." he invited.

Hermann found it easy to adapt to the mood when he knew there was a naked body involved. He slipped off his jacket and trousers and rolled onto him, his erection already protruding through the gap in his underpants. He was a jaded man in many respects, and Ingrid was so youthful and ripe, and so effeminate. And he fully understood the need for distraction with a war raging. It was his duty to service those in need.

He leaned forward and gave her an enormous wet kiss. Ingrid received it with vengeance, pulling at his tongue with his own.

"Wait!" Hermann said. "I do believe…why yes, I swear I saw a public notice. Let me check." he threw the covers over his head and began nibbling down the transvestite's body as Ingrid laughed. He loved that laugh – the ring of fine crystal. He began kissing his belly just below the navel, ultimately seeking his thighs.

Licking lightly just once, he raised his head. "I knew it." he said. "It says 'verboten,' here."

He rolled him over and gripped his buttocks which were of a tender hue the French would call 'rose de dessous'. "Just as I suspected. Here too."

Ingrid giggled. "And what about my titties?"

Hermann rolled Ingrid back over and buried his face in his chest. "Same story. Both of them." he licked each of them, then sucked each nipple in turn while Ingrid stroked his head.

"What fine boobs you have," he said, gathering them into a firm grasp. "The trouble is, I'm Bavarian, and whenever I see 'verboten' I read it as 'opportunity.'

"And what will become of this opportunity?" Ingrid murmured.

Hermann clucked joyfully. "Why, quite definitely it will lead to the fucking of your lovely round arse, my poppet."

There was an abrupt knock on the bedroom door that interrupted negotiations, and Ingrid barked, "Fuck off! Go away and come back in the morning."

Hermann approved enthusiastically. "What an excellent idea! My sweetheart, your grasp of language is a godsend!"

Far from departing, the person outside lingered and spoken words came through the woodwork. "I have an urgent message for Sturmbannfuhrer Strasser." it called.

"What's the message?" rumbled Hermann, making no attempt to go near the door.

"Major Strasser is immediately required to attend Colonel Naujocks at SS Headquarters, sir." the voice answered.

Hermann's expression drooped, and his ardour immediately began to droop too. "Damn this bloody war!"

 

 

"I hope I didn't interrupt anything of vital importance by insisting you come here, Hermann." Albert Naujocks said when Herr Strasser joined him.

"No, no, sir. I was merely about to have dinner with a lady. It was nothing that cannot be done another time."

"That's good, because I'm going to need your assistance for the next few days. I've been thinking rather deeply about some things, and one of them is the British. The Fuehrer as become fixated with the war on Russia without first completing the subjugation of the English pest."

Hermann threw up his hands. "The English are on the defensive everywhere, surely there is no urgency to finish them off."

The senior officer's jaw set firm. "Of course there is urgency. The Fuehrer would have had them tucked on the shelve last year had he not been served by incompetent fools. Goering's airforce failed to obliterate their army when it was cornered on the beaches at Dunkirk, and afterwards it failed to clear the way for a seaborne invasion of the British island.

"They are a thorn in our backside, Hermann. Their continuing defiance compels us to maintain a separate army just to hold them in check, and it is an army that could be thrown into the struggle with the Russians if England could be coaxed into making peace. At the moment the Fuehrer is torn between making a dash to seize the oilfields of Baku and taking Moscow before Christmas. Given the help of those formations sitting on their backsides along the North Sea coast he could do both."

Naujocks reached for a sheet of paper. "Does the name Wilhelm Froehlich mean anything to you?"

Hermann scratched his slab of a chin and considered for a moment. "Well, yes. I recall that was the name of an effeminate queen that once lodged with Fraulein Dietz at Ravenskopf."

"Correct. He was memorable little thing, even I am willing to admit that. What do you know about his passions?"

Strasser put on a show of being affronted. "Practically nothing, sir. Gracious, I would never get involved with a queer. You know that."

The other man cocked an eyebrow and smiled faintly. He knew everything about Strasser, right down to the amount of toothpaste he put on his brush. He tapped the paper in his hand with a fingertip and passed it over.

"The creature is in trouble with the Gestapo. For subversion, of all things."

Strasser looked at the name. "It doesn't surprise me. He lost his homosexual lover in the war some time ago. He is a soft, emotional thing and a bit of a pacifist. He could easily be led astray."

"Having control of a pacifist can be useful to me at this time." said his chief. "I have come up with a rather cute idea that could cause some mischief for the British and may even help bring about their downfall. My idea involves this – um - person. It is quite inexpensive and simple to action, and I foresee no objection being raised by the Abwehr to trying it.

"I'd appreciate your help in arranging things, Hermann. If I can persuade Himmler's overeager hotheads to release him it will mean a little trip abroad for our young pansy friend."

"Abroad, sir?"

Herr Naujocks nodded. "Dead men and exiles, Hermann. Excellent company to be in. They don't argue or complain, and they find it hard to tell tales."

 

 

The room was small and austere, all four of its walls being lime-washed with their lower portions scarred by countless black scuff marks. There were no windows and there was no furniture either except for a chair and a narrow wooden trestle-table that served as a desk. On the table sat a notebook and a telephone.

There was a smell of disinfectant about the place, an antiseptic, fishy smell that made Willy Froehlich reluctant to breathe. It was like a hospital, but without promoting the good intensions of a hospital.

The floor was surfaced with old and stained tiles, and the tiles were cold to his bare feet. Two heavyset young men stood behind him by the door. He was completely naked, and utterly terrified.

"Your name is Wilhelm Froehlich and you are a girly-queer. Is that correct?" a spiteful voice demanded.

Willy blinked painfully. His chest and arms hurt as if they had been punched. He tried to focus on his words, but although his tongue attempted to move it seemed to stay glued to the roof of his mouth. Nodding dumbly, he gazed at his feet.

"Answer!" the voice yelled viciously. "When I ask a question, I require an answer."

"Yes, yes I am." muttered Willy, shocked into speech.

"Look at me." the voice then rasped. Willy lifted his head and peered through unkempt straggles of hair to view the wiry little man standing before him. His sinister eyes were hidden behind steel-rimmed glasses and he wasn't smiling.

"First, let me explain a couple of things, girly." the man said. "I'm going to demand co-operation from you, and my two colleagues are here to ensure I get it." he gestured towards the door where his assistants stood. "Karl enjoys knifework. He could make more of a woman of you in a few seconds than you've ever been in your life before, while Heinz prefers to use his fists. He hates queers, and you would end up a shapeless lump of snot and blood on the floor if I let him have his way with you. You would be unrecognisable as a member of the human race – which you probably don't belong to anyway."

Willy's blond hair was loose and matted and he had been crying; his eyes were red from it, and one of them was badly bruised. A cold feeling of sickness was crawling through him. Shock, anguish, despair – he could feel them all.

"Please… I don't know why you've brought me here. I don't know what I've done wrong."

The man's eyes flicked over Willy's unguarded face in scornful dismissal, the hard line of lips below his pug nose looking like a gash in his face. "You are a disgusting homosexual monstrosity, and you were found masquerading as a woman and co-habiting with a subversive."

"Herr Haushofer was a pacifist. He was my landlord. He gave me a room when I asked about work in his bookshop."

"He was distributing seditious pamphlets, subverting others with his lies and distorted ideas. He was preaching revolution and hate for the Fuehrer, and you were helping him."

"H-he wasn't a violent man, he just didn't agree with the war."

"The Fuehrer makes decisions about war and peace, no one else. Anyway, whatever your friend agreed or disagreed with doesn't matter any more. That man argued too much, and one of my associates lost patience with him in this room an hour ago and shot him in the head.

Willy's shoulders slumped. He was shocked at the cold blooded murder of the old man, but he couldn't help an overriding feeling of concern for himself too. He didn't wish to admit it, but he nevertheless suspected that he would share a similar fate once the men there had no more use for him.

"You were a fool to leave Ravenskopf." his interrogator continued. "Many senior officers favour taking their furlough in that place these days and degenerate pantywaist freaks such as you are protected there."

"I couldn't stay." Willy said, his words clipped and unwilling, "Not after…"

His explanation petered out, but with a cynical twist to his mouth the interrogator finished for him. "Not after the death of you boyfriend, is that what you were about to say?"

He was about to say that. He and Eduard had only snatched brief interludes together since the beginning of the war, but they had been joyous and happy times, the kind of times only young lovers can know about. Then one morning Fraulein Dietz had told him of his death. Killed in action. The news seemed to affect him more than it did her. She went about her daily routine as sharp and efficiently as usual, while he had wept for days on end.

"Eduard was brave and kind."

The man's lips curled up in a sneer. "Probably had a big dick too, eh?"

The two men at the door sniggered.

Willy's lips worked silently for a moment, then he said: "He had a noble and generous mind, and I loved him."

The man slapped his hand down on the table. "Enough of the sentimental crap. He was just an officer like many others who have died in the service of the Reich. Now, I want names from you. I want to know the names of everyone you and that traitorous turd Hausofer spoke regularly with in the past three months."

Willy shuddered unsteadily, momentarily stunned by the ferocity of the man's words. "We didn't always talk about the war. Germany is winning. The Wehrmacht is victorious everywhere. Most people we spoke with support what is happening."

The interrogator seated himself at the table and drew a pen from the inner lining of his jacket. In his drab civilian clothes he would have seemed insignificant and innocuous in the street, ignored by good looking women and scorned by more intelligent men, but in that squalid claustrophobic room he could take on the role of a tyrant king, and he relished playing the part.

"I will decide what is important, and I'll decide who is guilty or innocent of crime. Give me some names. Begin with someone who didn't support the war."

Willy couldn't stop shivering. He was cold and very frightened, and he was ashamed because he wasn't brave and knew he was going to tell the man whatever he wanted to know.

Before he could say a word the telephone on the table jangled softly, and with a curse of irritation the man lifted the handset. "Yes, what is it? I'm busy …What …But I protest. I'm in the middle of something…That's impossible…" He continued listening for a moment and his face flared with anger. "Yes damn it, yes. Very well."

He slammed the phone back onto its cradle, a look of fury predominant on his face. "Out, out!" he yelled at the men near the door. He rose up himself and as he passed Willy he glared malevolence. "We have been told to vacate the room for a few minutes to allow someone else to interview you. Don't move from this spot while we are away. If you move a millimetre I'll have Heinz to give you a reprimand when we return."

Soon after his three tormentors had departed two officers wearing the uniform of the SS entered the chamber where he stood, and like a dream from the past come back to haunt him he recognised the Rottwieller features of Herr Strasser and the more inscrutable face of the more senior officer who accompanied him. A man who had become known to him as Herr Naujocks.

"It stinks in here. Smells like a mortuary." remarked the senior man.

"This is a subterranean cellar." replied Hermann Strasser, "We're twenty metres underground and I guess the ventilation is not too good."

The senior officer glanced at Willy with disapproval. "Put some clothes on for goodness sake."

Willy flinched. "The man who was here before said he'd punish me if I moved."

"As long as you are agreeable to what I say, he won't be coming back. Cover yourself up."

Willy scampered swiftly across to the wall and retrieved the coarse grey smock that had been pull off him and thrown on the floor on his arrival. Naujock swung the chair round from behind the table and told him to sit on it. The man himself perched a single buttock on the edge of the table and stared down at him.

"Willy, that's your name, isn't it? We worked together a couple of years ago - a little escapade in a radio station. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember."

Naujocks eased into a more comfortable position. "It's a shame we have to meet again in such depressing circumstances. The Gestapo are not the most pleasant company, and the accommodation they provide is always appalling. And I think that in your heart you are a loyal German, aren't you, Willy?"

"Yes, yes. I would never do anything to hurt Germany. I would never wish to do anything to hurt ANYONE."

"Quite so! And I am here to make you a proposition. It's an offer that can get you out of the trouble you find yourself in."

Gradually some of the panic drained from Willy's face, but the adrenaline was still pumping and making him shake, and he remained sceptical, not daring to believe a reprieve could so easily be given. "I can go free?"

"Certainly. If you prove agreeable to what I say, Herr Strasser and I will immediately escort you to safety. But of course there are some conditions attached to the deal."

Conditions! That sounded cryptic, almost ominous. Willy Froehlich was sickened by the prospect of returning to the bordello-like existence that would have permeated Ravenskopf since its refurbishment, or to life as a personal whore to some high-rank official.

Naujocks shuffled his broad thigh against the tabletop and his next comment referred to neither of those things.

"You've no doubt heard of Rudolph Hess."

Willy nodded. "Herr Hess was the Fuehrer's deputy. He recently flew himself to England to negotiate peace with the British. It was his own idea. Hitler insists he was demented."

Naujock nodded. "You understand the gist of it. And although his idea was fantastic, it was not without some merit, and I have the permission of the High Command to attempt something similar. I need your assistance to do it, Willy. You are known to be a person who hates war, and I wish you to take your passion to England."

Willy's pulse lurched wildly and he gaped. "England! But I've never been there in my life before."

Hermann Strasser shuffled his feet. "We know you can speak their language. It will take a little time to complete our arrangements, and while we wait I'll ensure you attend a course of tuition with an excellent coach to sharpen you up."

"And you should study the way of English politics too. That will be important." continued Naujocks.

"The Fuehrer as recently taken on the Bolsheviks, and he wants an end to the war in the West. The British have stood alone for the past year and cannot win. Our U-boat campaign in the Atlantic is slowly starving their population, but Herr Hitler is becoming impatient.

"The Fuehrer as no argument with them, nor as he ever wished them harm. He no longer considers how to win a war against them, but only how rapidly he can end a war that is already won. They are already defeated, but their administration as fallen into the hands of a gang of warmongers who refuse to acknowledge reality.

The Fuehrer is a kind man in victory and admires British pluck. He dislikes the relentless bombing of their cities and grieves at killing so many children and their mothers. You are a sensitive individual. You can sympathise with what I'm saying, can't you, Willy?"

Another nod from Willy Froehlich, but less perceptible than the first. "But I am not important. How can you expect me to succeed in something in which the Deputy Fuehrer has failed?"

The senior officer pursed his mouth. "Herr Hess went at this thing like a bull at a gate, but we won't make that mistake. Forget about approaches to their king and such nonsense, there is a significant anti-war faction in England that only needs encouragement to make itself known. A great many of the English upper-classes approved of Hitler's policies before the outbreak of war, and I have selected one of them for you to ingratiate yourself with. He is a Member of Parliament who regularly socialises with influential people, and you must convince him that there is a chance for honourable peace. It's as simple as that."

"It would be dangerous for me to go there." Willy exclaimed tremulously, "The British would consider me a spy, and spies are executed in times of war."

"Only if they're caught. You'll need to take that chance." he was told brusquely. "The war rages on more than one front, but this is your chance to alleviate the suffering of a great many people, and it is a chance to serve your country."

Naujocks looked around at the bare walls. "Look at it this way. Our beloved Geheime Staatspolizei are above the law and can do as they wish. The outlook for you in this place is bleak if you don't wish to agree."

 

Once outside in the street Willy was put into the back of a waiting car, and Hermann instructed the driver where to take him.

As the car pulled away from the curb he looked at his companion. "Well, the tart agrees to comply with our wishes. Do you think anything will come of it?"

Naujocks signalled his own car forward with a wave of his hand. "Probably not. But if he – she can make the British a little discomforted, it will be enough. If the pervert actually succeeds in bringing about a peace settlement, he'll be a hero and the Fuehrer will pin a medal on his tits.

"And if he fails – well, who cares? The bitch is expendable."

  

  

  

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