“If you used nuclear weapons, Mein Führer,” she said, “the Provisional Government would certainly retaliate in kind.”
“Quite,” Holliston said. “This war will destroy both sides.”
He cocked his head. “What were you thinking when you took up arms against the Reich?”
Gudrun stared back at him, evenly. “I was thinking that the Reich had betrayed its soldiers,” she said, flatly. “I told you that… Mein Führer.”
Holliston ignored the implicit disrespect. “A young girl like you should be married and bringing up children by now,” he said. “What was your father thinking when he allowed you to go to the university?”
“I believe he was thinking I should follow my dreams and actually put my intelligence to some use,” Gudrun said. “I wanted to be more than just a housewife.”
“You appear to have succeeded,” Holliston said. He smirked, rather unpleasantly. “What would Konrad Schulze have thought of it?”
Gudrun flinched, then told herself not to be stupid. She’d mentioned Konrad’s name a lot, after the Reich Council had been broken. The SS wouldn’t have had any difficulty tracking him down, even if his father hadn’t become the Provisional Government’s leader. Hell, they’d probably made the connection between Konrad and herself a long time before they’d realised that she’d started the protest movement.
“Yes,” Holliston said. “What would he have thought of it?”
“I think he would have approved, Mein Führer,” Gudrun said.
She shrugged. In truth, she had no idea what Konrad would have thought of it. He’d been an SS stormtrooper, a loyalist… would he have joined her, like Horst, or would he have reported her to his superiors? Or would he have married her and then insisted on her remaining in the home, rather than getting involved with politics? He would probably have told himself that he was doing the right thing, keeping her from doing something that could get her killed…
“His file suggests otherwise,” Holliston said. “He was marked down for early promotion.”
Gudrun felt her temper flare. “Before or after he was wounded?”
“He would have been one of the youngest officers in the service,” Holliston said. “I think he would have gone on to great things.”
“You betrayed him,” Gudrun said. Her temper snapped. “You didn’t even let his family know he was injured.”
She fought back tears of rage and bitter helplessness as her voice rose. “And what does it matter now? He’d dead! I can’t change what I did, even if I wanted to! And you can’t change it either!”
Holliston rose. “Do you not regret what you did?”
Gudrun sensed — vaguely — that she had crossed a line, but she found it hard to care. “I hated it,” she said. “I hated growing up, knowing I had to watch my words all the time. I hated being scared of unexpected knocks on the door. I hated going to school, knowing that asking the wrong question would earn me a beating — or worse. I hated being told that I would bear the next generation of children while the boys had all the fun…”
She shook her head slowly, feeling her hair brushing against her bare shoulders. “This is no way to live,” she added. She knew he wouldn’t understand. “Your Reich is nothing more than a prison camp and a mass grave.”
“We did what was necessary,” Holliston said, stiffly. “You are the one who betrayed the Reich.”
He reached out and poked her in the chest, sharply. “You, a young girl of the highest of bloodlines, had a duty to the Reich,” he snapped. “And instead you forsook that duty and tore the Reich down.”
Gudrun stared back at him, defiantly. “The Reich does not deserve to live!”
Holliston slapped her, hard. She stumbled backwards and fell, landing on her bottom. He loomed over her, fists clenched; she braced herself, expecting it to end. Katherine wouldn’t save her from the Führer. Just for a second, it dawned on her that she’d finally managed to get Holliston to see her as a person. And then it struck her that that was no longer a good thing.
“You have no idea what it was like,” he hissed. “You… you child… you imprudent brat… you have no idea what it was like, back before the Reich. You…”
He made a visible attempt to calm himself down. “There were entire families starving because the French and the British had blockaded Germany,” he said. “Jewish-Communist subversives were worming their way into everything. The bankers were steadily bringing us under their control, weakening the Volk… we would have been crushed, eternally enslaved to the Jewish filth, if the Führer had not taken control. And you, you… you stand here and dare to tell me the Reich does not deserve to exist?”
“You murdered countless millions of innocent people,” Gudrun said. Uncle Frank had drunk, heavily, to forget what he’d done. As horrible as the old man had been, she thanked him now for showing her what lay behind the facade. “And you crushed hundreds of countries…”
“They would have destroyed us,” Holliston said. “They were the masters of the world…”
Gudrun met his eyes. “And if they were the masters of the world,” she said, “how come they were always the first to get the blame when everything went wrong?”
Holliston lifted his fist, then stopped himself. “The world is not genteel,” he told her, sharply. “It is red, red in tooth and claw, full of enemies who will drag you down and kill you if they scent weakness. We did what was necessary to establish the Reich, to prove that we were the strong, that we deserved to rule. And the weak have no choice, but to bow their heads.”
He reached down, caught hold of her hair and hauled her to her feet, then thrust her forward until she was bent over the table. “You are weak,” he snarled. He slapped her bare buttocks, hard. “I can take you right now and no one will stop me. Do you understand me? I can do anything to you, because I am strong and you are weak! The only thing that keeps you from being raped is my decision not to rape you!”
Gudrun grunted in pain. “How brave,” she managed. Perhaps he’d kill her for it, perhaps not. “Deciding not to rape a handcuffed and naked girl.”
Holliston thumped her back, hard. “Your safety was bought at a cost,” he snapped, as she gasped for breath. “The Reich protected you from the true nature of the world and all it asked, in return, was your loyalty. And you didn’t even bother to do that.
“I sent men like your boyfriend south to uphold civilisation,” he added, his fingers clawing at her flesh. “And you betray their sacrifice by turning on the Reich. His service served the Reich; you betrayed it. How could you?”
He let go of her, turning to stalk around the room. “I should never have agreed to let Krueger establish the university,” he snapped. He sounded as though he was talking to himself. “And it was a mistake to let women enter as students. Women…
“Krueger, the rat bastard, claimed we needed to make better use of female labour,” he added, darkly. “But what better use is there than turning out the next generation of Germans?”