“There is no need to import Americanisms,” Holliston sneered. “We have always been at our strongest when we go back to basics.”
“There’s nothing basic about a Panzer tank,” Hans snapped. “There’s nothing basic about a radio, or vaccinations, or man-portable antiaircraft missiles. And the Americans are already ahead of us! How long will it be before they come up with something that gives them an unbeatable advantage?”
“You don’t know that will happen,” Holliston said.
“I doubt Fredrick the Great could have predicted the arrival of panzers,” Hans pointed out, sharply. “And even if he had, could he have stopped a dozen panzers from ripping his army into little pieces?”
“We need to vote,” Field Marshal Stoffregen said, before Holliston could come up with a biting retort. “All those in favour?”
It was, Karl Holliston conceded afterwards, a bitter victory.
He was not fool enough to believe, despite the prospects for winning the endless struggle for power in the Reich, that Hans Krueger was responsible for the leaflets, or for aiding and abetting their producers. Krueger, whatever his faults, wouldn’t risk the fundamental balance of power that controlled the Reich. And that, Karl was sure, was true of everyone else who had a seat on the Reich Council. They simply had far too much to lose if social upheaval swept through the Reich.
But they were soft. And that softness was going to get them killed.
It had to be the university, he was sure. The SS, the military, even the party bureaucracy… none of them would tolerate the kind of free-thinkers it would take to gather the evidence, produce the leaflets and then distribute them to the masses. They’d have problems even recognising that the masses could be politically important. Hell, they weren’t politically important. What did it matter if some workers wanted to form an independent union, or some housewives started demanding more rights, or schoolchildren wanted an end to the harsh discipline and relentless tutoring? There was nothing they could do about it, was there?
Karl had studied universities in America, back when he’d been mustering his objections to the whole concept. Yes, they did encourage the development of new technological ideas – he’d never tried to deny that – but they also encouraged the spread of political ideas. And some of those ideas could be very dangerous. The current racial melange that made up the United States was partly the work of American students, who’d fought to embrace Untermenschen to their bosom. Good German girls wouldn’t even think of allowing themselves to be sullied by an Untermensch; American girls didn’t think twice about dating and even marrying Untermenschen men. The Americans didn’t even seem to realise just how badly they were damaging their own society…
And Japan is the worst of America, Karl thought. It still made him shudder, every time he thought about just how deeply the races had blended together, just how the once-proud white stock that had tamed America had been diluted by the intrusion of Japanese blood. They will not be allowed to spread their perversions over here.
But it had to be the university students, he told himself. No other group in Germany could combine an awareness of their surroundings with a political naivety that would urge them to try to spread the word. There was simply no one else so foolish, so free of the ever-present listening ears – and besides, if students could cause long-term political damage in America, perhaps they would think they could do the same in the Third Reich.
He kept his face expressionless as the meeting finally came to an end, giving him the chance to hurry back to his office. The Gestapo and the Order Police, for once, would have to take orders from the SS, orders that would lead them right to the rebels. And if the rebels proved harder to find than he expected…
It might be time to start coming up with some contingency plans, he thought. Silently, he started drawing up some possible concepts. Plans that will stamp on the rebels once and for all.
Chapter Seventeen
Berlin
29 July 1985
“Do you all understand your objectives?”
Leutnant der Polizei Herman Wieland nodded hastily. He’d gone into the station after the acrimonious family dinner, only to be told to bed down in the barracks and wait for orders, along with the rest of his squad. By the time they’d been awoken and told to shower, shave and get into fresh uniforms, it was the following morning; oddly, he was almost relieved that he wouldn’t be going home until he’d had a chance to find out what was actually going on and, perhaps, find out if he should hand over the cursed leaflet to his superiors. But the briefing hadn’t been very detailed and, according to rumour, the one policeman who’d made the mistake of admitting receipt of one of the leaflets had been hauled out of the station and interrogated by the SS. Herman had quietly promised himself that he’d dump the leaflet he’d left at home as soon as he returned from work.
“Get into your vans,” the captain ordered, curtly. “Go.”
Herman hurried out of the station and clambered into the van, followed by a dozen other Order Policemen who were checking their pistols, truncheons, handcuffs and radios as they readied themselves for the operation. There was no talking in the rear of the vehicle as the engine roared to life; they knew, all too well, that they might be running straight into an ambush. Herman was old enough to remember the Gastarbeiter riots and the last gasps of the French Resistance, when thousands of people – the innocent along with the guilty – had been rounded up and marched to the camps. The leaflet-writers knew they couldn’t expect mercy from the Reich. They’d be more likely to try to kill as many policemen as possible before being gunned down themselves.
He shuddered, inwardly, as he checked his own weapons. The briefing had asserted that the leaflets had been spread by Gastarbeiters, men and women who had come to Germany to work. It was unlikely a Gastarbeiter had actually written the leaflet – for once, Herman was inclined to agree with the SS officer who’d briefed them – but that didn’t absolve the Gastarbeiters of their role in the scheme. They should know better than to cross the authorities, he reminded himself; they had no rights, no legal protections, if a pureblood German swore out a complaint against them. A Gastarbeiter who ran into trouble with the law would be lucky if he was only dispatched to the east and put to work building the giant autobahns that were slowly opening up eastern Russia to German settlements.
The vehicle lurched violently as the driver turned on the siren, clearing civilian traffic out of their way as they drove into the suburbs. Herman gritted his teeth – he preferred driving to sitting in the back of the van – and tried not to think about what might be lying in wait for them. But his thoughts kept straying to Gudrun, to the beautiful and clever daughter he didn’t really understand. Marlene and Hanne – his sisters – had been content to marry well and become housewives, tending the house and bringing up a small flock of children, but Gudrun? She wanted to be something more, something masculine. Herman would have forbidden her from attending the university, he knew now, if he’d realised just what it would do to her. She was trying to slip away from becoming a wife and mother and…