“Then who will have overall military command of the redoubt?” asked Goebbels. He was clearly annoyed that he didn’t have this information in the first place.
“The Fuhrer will be getting recommendations from Field Marshal Keitel. It is obvious that military exigencies will play a large part in making that decision. Generals Schoerner, von Vietinghoff, and Rendulic are strong possibilities. They too have the advantage of being in the south, which means they could be appointed safely.”
“Yes,” said Goebbels drily. “It wouldn’t do for the new leader of the Alpine Redoubt to be killed en route to his new assignment.” Quietly, he approved of Schoerner commanding the armies in the Redoubt. Schoerner was a friend and a supporter.
The irony was lost on Bormann. He didn’t change expression while Speer turned away. “Schoerner will probably be selected. Hitler likes him and Schoerner is slavishly devoted to him. I believe he will soon be promoted to field marshal. Whoever it is, Herr Speer, it will be up to you to provide for a very large army.”
“Not too large,” said Speer.
“What do you mean?” asked a surprised Bormann.
“Any army that goes to an Alpine Redoubt will have to confront various realities. That army will need food, shelter, clothing, weapons, and ammunition, and the Alps will have none of those. Right now, that area imports much of its food from Austria, which is about to be overrun by either Devers’ Sixth Army Group or the Soviets. If we send too many men to the redoubt, they might just starve to death. Similarly, I have identified a number of areas where large amounts of weapons and ammunition can be stored, but nothing that could sustain a large army in combat for more than a year or two.”
“How large an army could be sustained?” asked Goebbels.
Speer shrugged. “Perhaps a quarter of a million, and don’t forget that there will be thousands of Party elite sent to the Redoubt along with their families.”
Goebbels was shaken while Bormann paled. A quarter of a million soldiers was a drop in the bucket. The Russians and Americans, along with their French and British allies, each had more than ten times that number.
“Then we will make do with what we have,” Bormann said softly. “But it must be done and done quickly. And painful though it will be, we must limit the number of civilians and party functionaries no matter how loyal they have been. So too with very high-ranking military officers. We cannot have a rump state that is top-heavy with generals.”
Goebbels nodded. The last time he had seen his beloved Fuhrer, the great man had been pale and sickly. His arm had shaken uncontrollably and Goebbels had wondered if Hitler was dying. He was only in his mid-fifties but looked decades older. Clearly, the stress of running the nation and the war had overwhelmed him. Goebbels had urged Hitler to rest for a few days, but had been waved off. He had faith in his personal doctor, Theodor Morrell, a man whom Goebbels considered a quack. Morrell treated Hitler with concoctions containing narcotics. If Hitler died, Goebbels would try to have Morrell prosecuted for murder. Or perhaps he would just have him shot.
But that was for the future. Now he and Magda and the children would have to get out of Berlin and south to the Alpine Redoubt. There they would set up a bastion that would ensure the survival of Nazism. If they were forced out of the mountains, they would cross into neutral Switzerland and wait for the proper time to go elsewhere, probably South America.
“One last thing,” said Bormann. “The Fuhrer is adamant that at least a couple of his wonder weapons programs be shipped to the Alps. Of primary importance is the nuclear bomb being designed by Doctor Werner Heisenberg. He and a number of his fellow physicists will travel south as well, along with what equipment can be moved. He has assured me that he is on the brink of a major breakthrough.”
Of course he would say that, Goebbels thought. To tell Bormann anything else would guarantee a trip to Dachau. Well, we shall see what comes of his nuclear bomb.
* * *
When Lena Bobekova looked in a mirror in her small room in the Schneider house, she did not see the attractive and vivacious young woman who once had dreams of being a ballerina. That Lena Bobekova died several years earlier when German tanks and troops rolled through her native Czechoslovakia and ended her life. The Germans had taken her parents, her brother, her first and so far only lover, and her home.
She was a slave.
Physically there was little difference between the Lena of today and the previous young woman. She was a little thinner perhaps, but food rationing had put everyone in Germany on a diet. Even though she’d been assigned to work in the house of a Nazi functionary, there was still only so much food to go around. Gustav and Gudrun Schneider and their two children, Astrid and Anton, did not care that Lena was always hungry. Why should they? Lena was a slave because her grandmother had been a Jew. Lena’s light brown, almost blond, hair was still attractive. She washed and bathed as often as she could. Water was one thing that was not in short supply.
Lena knew she was lucky to have been assigned to the Schneiders. She could be in a factory in the process of being worked to death, or, worse, shipped off to Poland to those places of death that not even the Schneiders were certain existed. They talked of them in hushed voices, forgetting that even slaves have ears. Instead of dying in Poland, she was in a large house in a small village about fifty miles north of Innsbruck in what once had been Austria.
Nor was there any serious sexual burden imposed on her. Herr Schneider had entered her room on the first night at their house. He’d ordered her to strip and lie down on her bed. She’d complied without hesitation. He had fondled her in a perfunctory manner to arouse himself, placed her on her hands and knees and then mounted her. He muttered that he did it that way so he didn’t have to look in the face of a Jewess while he was fucking her. He’d hurt her and she’d whimpered. Schroeder had misunderstood and thought that her moans meant she was being pleasured.
After finishing, he’d been emphatic that a good Nazi would never lower himself to fuck a Jew, even one who was only fractionally Jewish and who had never practiced her religion. Before the Nazis arrived, Lena had never even known that her grandmother was Jewish. Herr Schneider said that he’d forced her to have sex with him to prove to her that her life was entirely in his hands. He’d even worn a condom. He said that he didn’t want to take the chance of her getting pregnant and bringing another Jew, if only a fractional one, into the world.
Herr Schneider coldly assured her that he had no intentions of requiring her to take him in her mouth.
When he left, the Schneider’s housekeeper, a nearly toothless old Pole named Olga came and helped her. “They are pigs,” she said. “But you will survive. You don’t have a choice.”
For several nights after that she’d slept on the floor, unable to sleep in the bed where she’d been humiliated and violated. After those few days, common sense returned and she realized that the only person she was hurting was herself. The senior Schneiders simply didn’t give a damn about her or where she slept. She returned to the bed.
This was not the case with the Schneider’s two children.
Astrid Schneider was a chubby and unlovely sixteen years old and wondering whether she liked boys or girls. On a couple of occasions, she had climbed into Lena’s bed and insisted that they play what Astrid called “games.” Lena went along. A bad word from Astrid might send her to a long slow death in a factory. And besides, it wasn’t all that much different than the games she and one of her girlfriends had played during sleepovers during happier times. It was endurable. And it made Astrid happy.
The problem was going to be Anton. He was fourteen and getting bigger and stronger. He was also getting very curious. She’d caught him looking at her smallish breasts and watching how she moved her body. On occasions, he’d contrived to pass her closely in a hallway and brushed up against her. Once, his hand had strayed across her bottom. She’d stopped him with a glare, but she was certain he would try something again. She was reasonably certain that his father had told him that he could not profane his pure Aryan Nazi body by copulating with a Jew, but what else might his father permit? And would an oversexed Anton pay any attention to his father’s rules? She tried to dress and behave in a manner that was sexless, but that was not practical. Anton was at the age where everything was sexual.