almost everyone in Germany was on short rations. He didn’t enquire further. If Speer said he could get more rations, then he could get more rations.
“Two last things,” said Rundstedt. He was clearly pleased at the concessions made by Himmler.
“Only two?” Himmler responded with resigned humor. The steps so far proposed were vile, but he could see their necessity.
“First, there are U-boats in the Mediterranean and elsewhere that are doing absolutely nothing. They should be attacking shipping in the Atlantic and even in the Channel.” Himmler nodded agreement. It had been Hitler’s decision to maintain submarines in the Mediterranean where they had been effectively neutralized.
“And lastly, the Jews. The shipments of Jews to Auschwitz and elsewhere is tying up many scores of trains that are and will be needed to transfer armies to defend the Reich. I wish you to suspend the collection of Jews until the crises is over.”
Himmler nodded again. “But not a moment longer.”
Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, called Beetle by his friends and general by everyone else, was Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff at SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, but was a position he’d ably held for several years. He was brusque and a taskmaster, and he was poring over reports when Colonel Tom Granville knocked and entered.
Smith glared at him. “I am too goddamned busy to give you even a second, Colonel, so get the hell out of here.”
“Hitler’s dead,” Granville said, stifling a grin.
Smith blinked and looked up; a smile split his face. “Sit down and take a load off, Tom. Let’s talk for a spell, perhaps have some tea. Now what the hell’s your source and I sincerely hope it’s good?”
“Berlin radio has commenced playing dirges and funeral marches.”
“That’s it? From sad music you extrapolate that the fucking little paper-hanger is dead?”
“That’s enough, General. The Nazis only do that when something sad and significant has happened. I believe the last time they played dirges was for their surrender at Stalingrad. And, since nothing in the way of military disasters is occurring, it can only be that someone important is dead.”
Smith was not convinced. “What about Goering? He’s been out of the picture for a while. And how about Himmler? Goebbels?”
“Possible but not likely. We’ve picked up nothing being wrong with Goering other than the usual drugs and booze and, barring assassination, we’ve heard nothing about his health. Himmler, of course, is just fine and so is Goebbels. Ergo, it’s Hitler who has just died from his injuries.”
Smith grinned wickedly. “Damn, it would be a terrible shame if Hitler died. Did any of this come from our British friends?”
“No sir.”
“What music are the Germans playing?”
“Mainly recorded symphonies of Wagner’s more somber music. He is, was, Hitler’s favorite composer. If the Nazis limited behavioral pattern holds, in about an hour or so, a deep voice will say that a major announcement will follow shortly. The whole process is designed by Goebbels to warn the German people that something bad has happened.”
“But the Brits know about this too, right?”
“They have to, sir. They’ve got their own people monitoring German radio stations and they have doubtless reached the same conclusion. I wouldn’t doubt that Churchill’s already been informed.”
Smith stood. Information about Hitler’s death would go to Washington and FDR, but would come from Ike and not Churchill. “Okay, that’s enough to interrupt Ike. The plans to move SHAEF to France and kick Montgomery out of his command chair will have to wait for a few minutes. If Ike concurs, and I think he will, we will be informing General Marshall pronto. He can take the info to Roosevelt.” He laughed wryly. “At least FDR won’t hear it first from Churchill if I can help it.”
Granville decided to take it one step farther. “Maybe it’ll help us decide what to do about Phips, the little man who killed him.”
Smith rolled his eyes. “If only all our problems were that simple.”
Fourteen-year-old Margarete Varner sat on her favorite chair in her bedroom. Her knees were tucked under her chin as she listened intently to what the man on the radio was saying. It was impossible. It could not be so. Adolf Hitler could not be dead. Yet, the strident voice of Josepf Goebbels cried out that it was indeed so.
Goebbels said that the Fuhrer had died of his massive wounds after fighting heroically for his life and for the Reich. Germany, he said, would mourn privately. There was a war to be won. The Fuhrer would be interred in secret so that Allied bombers could not desecrate either the ceremony or his final resting place. When the war was over and the enemies of the Reich had been defeated, then would be the time for a public ceremony and a mausoleum of epic proportions, a shrine to the life and dreams of Adolf Hitler.
According to Hitler’s will, Heinrich Himmler was the new Fuhrer and Gerd von Rundstedt now commanded the armed forces of the Reich. Nothing was said about Hermann Goering, which puzzled Margarete. Nor was anything said about Martin Bormann, a shadowy figure her father had mentioned was becoming the eminence grise behind Hitler.
She could not quite shake the feeling of profound shock. She was fourteen and Adolf Hitler had been the Fuhrer for twelve of those years. All her conscious life was wrapped around Hitler. His picture was everywhere and his salute was a normal way of greeting friends and associates. Her teachers in school praised him just as they condemned the Jews who conspired against Germany.
She imagined an American girl’s feelings if Roosevelt had died, or an English girl’s if either Churchill or King George was dead. She sometimes wished she didn’t imagine so much.
And Goebbels had said that it had been the Jews who had killed him. He said that Roosevelt, the Jew, had conspired with Morgenthau, the Jew who was in charge of America’s money, to kill him, murder him.
Yet, Margarete was puzzled. She was a very bright girl and understood that the war was going against Germany. After all, weren’t the Russians pushing into Poland and weren’t the Americans, assisted by the British, crossing France? Italy’s fascist government had surrendered and that pompous fool, Mussolini, was on the run. German soldiers were fighting the Americans and British in Italy and not the Italians who, her father said, were surrendering in droves to the Allies, and that was just so wrong.
She also knew that Roosevelt wasn’t a Jew. Her father had let that slip one night.
She understood that her parents said things they didn’t want her to hear and she understood they involved the conduct of the war and Germany’s future. They didn’t want her blurting out something to her schoolmates that might result in questioning by the Gestapo. She shuddered. People were arrested and turned over to the Gestapo and, so many times, were never heard from again. Or if they did somehow surface, they were never the same, either physically or emotionally. She knew better than to ask what had happened to them. A friend whose cousin had been arrested had whispered to her that the beatings were the easy part. It was terrible to contemplate, but what else should be done to enemies of the Reich? But if the Reich was so perfect, she asked herself, why did it have enemies?
So what would be her family’s future? She had positive emotions about moving to a farm near Hachenburg, even though it would mean leaving her friends. It would be a great adventure, and it would be safer for her and her mother. Her father wouldn’t have to worry about them during the bombings. No more cringing and hiding when the sirens went off and no more crying when the bombs fell. And better, no more staring sadly at empty desks at school the morning after the bombings.
That she would also escape the odious Volkmar Detloff was another benefit. She had first been flattered by his attentions. After all, she was a plump adolescent who considered herself far from being a beauty, and he was an older boy and a Hitler Youth to boot. She had ignored his pimples and his loud and pompous manner. He had brought to the surface her first stirring of womanhood.
