The idea sent Ritter’s senses reeling. Who in the military had even heard of such names as Dachau or Auschwitz… Sachsenhausen or Belsen? Yet this man claimed six million Jews and others would be murdered in these places within just the next five years.
Six million! The number was incomprehensible in real terms, but the ramifications were clear nevertheless: Germany — his country and his people — were responsible… would be responsible.
“You okay…?” Thorne asked with genuine concern as he sat in the chair beside Ritter’s. “You don’t look too crash hot.”
“I think I will not be sick,” Ritter grimaced, “but it is a close thing!”
“Yeah, I guess that show is a bit heavy when it’s your country they’re talking about.”
“That really happened, didn’t it…?” Ritter began. “Will happen…” he added, trying to get his head around the complexity of it all. Thorne knew there was no need for an answer: the rhetoric question was the final plea of a man who’d already seen the truth but didn’t want to accept it. “Could I have a drink, please?” The pilot added as an involuntary shudder rippled through his body.
“No worries,” Thorne nodded, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and producing a hip flask he’d for the first time brought along purely for the benefit of someone else. “Scotch okay?”
“Please…” There was a pause as Thorne handed the flask over before he added: “Thank you…”
“One slug of ‘Ye Olde’ White Horse coming right up…!” Thorne tried to lighten the mood a little, sensing that perhaps a little detachment would now serve them better. “Sorry there’s no ice… these shortages are pissing everyone off… there’s a war on, I think…”
“It will be fine as it is, thank you,” Ritter replied, smiling very weakly at the attempted humour, and after a fortifying swig of straight whiskey, he offered it back to Thorne, who quickly shook his head and refused to take it. “You’re not drinking?”
“No,” Thorne said slowly, faltering a little. “I don’t feel like a drink right now.” He felt like one quite a bit in fact, but he now possessed the resolve to refrain.
“How could this happen?” Ritter demanded, as much to himself as anyone else. “This vile travesty against our culture and heritage… how could The Führer allow this to happen?” Ritter was so consumed by shock and disgust that he momentarily forgot where he was as he asked that question.
“Far be it for me to be the bearer of bad tidings,” Thorne tried not to show too much of a wry grin as he attempted to answer, “but your Führer’s as mad as a cut snake!” As Ritter frowned at the unfamiliar saying, Thorne explained with a more recognisable colloquialism as he tapped a finger to his head in emphasis. “He’s a fuckin’ mental case! Although there’s no concrete evidence, there are theories about him suffering from a range of illnesses that include syphilis, Parkinson’s disease, Asperger Syndrome, skin lesions and irritable bloody bowels… and that’s not including other rumours of involvement in occultism, and quack doctors pumping him full of Christ knows what…” he shrugged in resignation “…whatever the real reasons, you’ve got a fella that history proves had quite a few problems.”
“That’s not to say he wasn’t a brilliant tactician on occasion,” he added quickly, recognising the defensive ‘knee-jerk’ reaction on Ritter’s face he’d expected after that last remark… one video wasn’t going to wipe away thirty-odd years of environmental conditioning at one stroke after all. “He was a brilliant and gifted leader at times… his direction of the runaway victories at the beginning of the war is one example of that. Much as it galls me to say it, the man had huge potential despite some seriously unethical and unorthodox methods, however Hitler’s planning of the Realtime war also carried with it some significant flaws. One of his greatest mistakes was a failure to truly recognise the importance and danger of the United States, both for its untapped manpower and incredible industrial potential… something the Japanese also underestimated.
“More importantly, he also failed to capitalise on strategic opportunities in a military sense. The cancellation of the planned invasion of Great Britain is an example… a good one. Another is the failure to neutralise Malta during the North African campaigns of 1941 and ‘42. In both cases, those unconquered territories later caused damage to the German war machine out of all proportion to their relative value at the time, although perhaps his greatest blunder of all was invading the Soviet Union.”
“The whole concept seems ridiculous to me,” Ritter admitted, starting to feel better as he developed a liking for the unusual ‘history’ lecture and a taste for the scotch, taking another fortifying swig. “We… Germany… attack the Russians next year? That is what that… moving picture said?” He used the term ‘moving picture’ simply because he didn’t know what else to call the documentary he’d just seen. “Why would we do this? We have a non-aggression pact with the USSR, signed just two years ago… I saw newsreels of Molotov and Von Ribbentrop signing it!”
“As I said,” Thorne reminded with a thin, knowing smile “Hitler was… is quite mad. To be fair, the USSR was always his real target… the almost limitless plains and resources to the east that would form the basis for that ‘Lebensraum’ you spoke of yourself in your diary. The invasion of Poland was the first step toward conquering Russia, and he was caught completely by surprise when the Western Powers declared war on Germany as a result. Hitler never expected Britain or France to care enough about the fate of the Poles to fight for them, and he was suddenly left with a war in Western Europe he hadn’t planned for. His own arrogance and megalomania however ensured he still attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 nevertheless, and in one stroke he was fighting a world war on three fronts: against the RAF and (later) the United States Army Air Corps over the Channel; the Commonwealth, the Free French and Americans in North Africa and the Mediterranean; and then against the might of the Soviet Union to the east. Anyone with even a limited experience in battle would understand how dangerous a three-front war is… the Wehrmacht’s substantial initial technical superiority notwithstanding.”
“A dangerous game indeed,” Ritter mused thoughtfully, sipping again at the whisky. “Given the choice, I shouldn’t like to face three different opponents at once in even the best of fighters. So America enters the war…?”
“At the end of 1941, yes… Japanese carriers carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December Seventh that devastates the US Navy’s battleship fleet at anchor and draws the Americans into the war… although that may not happen now.”
“What do you mean? History can be changed?”
“Not ‘can be’, mate,” Thorne corrected with a grimace. “History has been changed already. As I said, our unit’s returned from seventy years in your future, and we’ve only returned to your time to combat a group that’s already here and changing history to allow Germany to win the Second World War. There are already many things that have occurred in the first year of this war — particularly lately — that are in direct conflict with the ‘history’ of the war that I know… the history that should have occurred. Reuters knows that we’re here, and he also knows we’ll prepare the Americans for Pearl Harbor. In turn, they’ll no doubt counsel their ambassador to advise Japan on a different course of action. That’s the trouble with what’s happening in the world now… we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen any more.”