Robert Conroy - Germanica

* * *

“Magda!” Josef Goebbels yelled happily as he entered their apartment near the Fuhrer Bunker. Until it became too dangerous to travel, she and the children had been estranged and living separately from Josef. “It has been officially decided and I have the orders signed by Hitler himself,” he exulted. “We are all to leave Berlin while we can and get to the Redoubt. When we arrive, I will be in charge until Bormann gets there. He is to leave Berlin at a later time.”

Goebbels’ wife smiled grimly. “Perhaps we and the Reich will have good fortune and he won’t make it.”

They embraced almost formally, even coldly, and separated. By conventional standards theirs was a unique marriage. She had an adult child by a first marriage and the two had six more children, the oldest of whom was a girl of twelve. While they might love each other in their own way, neither had been a particularly loyal spouse. Josef Goebbels was a notorious womanizer and Magda had taken a number of lovers. Both were proud that they’d produced six young Nazis to serve the Reich and Adolf Hitler.

Josef’s most recent infidelities had become public and almost destroyed the remnants of their marriage. For most of the time, they lived apart with Josef only visiting his children with permission. Now, however, the war had forced them to resume living together.

“Now both we and Germany have a chance,” the Propaganda Minister said proudly and Magda nodded her agreement.

In the distance bombs were falling, but nothing near the heart of Berlin at this time. They would be ignored. The work of government went on regardless of the enemy attacks. After each bombing, thousands of Berliners would come out of their shelters and holes and begin the process of clearing the streets, moving the rubble, and searching for the dead, the wounded and other survivors. Dust clouds covered portions of the city and the stench of death was pervasive. The inhabitants of Berlin looked gaunt and filthy. Food was rationed and bathing was an unheard-of luxury, except, of course, for the party and military hierarchy, and that did include the Goebbels’ family.

Goebbels had the unenviable job of telling the people of Berlin and the rest of Germany that all was well and that victory was just around the corner. He considered himself the most loyal servant Adolf Hitler had, but even he no longer believed that they could hold out against the Red Army’s hordes pressing them from the east. Nor were there any more super weapons to launch at the enemy, unless, of course, Heisenberg’s bomb worked. All had been used and the results had been negligible. Defeat was inevitable.

The two had discussed their options and, until recently, had seen death as the only viable option. It was inevitable that the Russians would take Berlin and the fate of the Goebbels family at the hands of the Red Army was almost too terrible to contemplate. Although in her early forties, the blond Joanna Magdalena Maria Goebbels was still an extremely attractive woman and, since Hitler was a bachelor, she was considered the First Lady of the Reich. She had served as a hostess at a number of events and was a celebrity in her own right. She would be a prized prisoner, ripe for humiliation and degradation.

If she were captured by the Reds, it was presumed that many vengeful Red Army soldiers would stand in line and take turns raping her and her children before killing them. Perhaps their ordeal would be filmed and viewed by posterity. Or worse, after being abused by the Slavic subhumans, they would be shipped to the Kremlin and put on display in cages where they would exist as starving naked animals living in their own filth and driven mad by the abuse. Their oldest, Helga, was only twelve and that fate for her and the others was too terrible to contemplate. No, they already had the cyanide tablets needed to bring all to a quick death. Death by poison would not be painless but they had seen it as their only option. As captors, the Americans might treat them more decently, but the Americans were far away.

But now there was a glimmer of hope. Both were torn. Their adoration of Hitler knew no bounds. But they were human and they wanted the two of them and their children to have a chance at survival. They would obey orders and go to the Redoubt. The cyanide pills were always there, always present. Death was inevitable, but now it could be deferred.

* * *

Ernie Janek, late of Chicago, swung his muscular legs out of his bed and thought that war was not always hell. He was twenty-three and a captain in the U.S. Army Air Force, and the mighty Eighth Air Force to boot.

So what the hell was he doing in a cheap hotel in Bern, the capital of Switzerland? Well, he reminded himself, it was because his P51 fighter had a little engine trouble while escorting a flight of B17 bombers. This caused him to drop out of the formation and become easy prey for a pair of German ME109 fighters. He’d fought and danced in the skies and managed to shoot one of them down, but then his engine seized up and the surviving Kraut had poured bullets into Ernie’s plane. Almost miraculously, he hadn’t been scratched while he cowered and whimpered helplessly and waited for the end. He’d been praying for the first time in years when he realized that the remaining German plane had pulled back and was flying away. Ernie had no firm idea where he was, but he decided that south was best since the German plane was headed to the north.

Ernie had nursed the plane along until the engine started to smoke and flames erupted. He’d then climbed out of his cockpit and launched himself down to the mist-covered ground. He first hoped for a clean landing with no broken bones, and then that the Germans wouldn’t kill him. German civilians had begun taking bloody vengeance on the downed airmen who’d rained death on their homes. He’d been told in lectures that the hardest part of surrendering was getting somebody to accept it instead of shooting you first.

He’d landed safely after only a couple of bumps and bruises resulting from being scraped along the ground and was getting out of his parachute harness when a truckload of soldiers arrived. He immediately held up his hands and hoped they would take his surrender. One took his pistol and pushed him into the back of the truck.

“Where am I?” he asked, hoping that someone understood him.

One of them laughed. “You are afraid that you are in Germany, aren’t you? Well congratulations, you’ve had the good luck to land in Switzerland.”

And good luck it was, he thought. Switzerland was neutral and felt compelled to treat combatants from both sides as internees and not prisoners. American internees were treated more as unexpected and somewhat unwelcome guests and their confinement was extremely light. Ernie had been put up at an unused ski lodge for a couple of weeks until being moved to his current abode, an inexpensive but clean hotel in Bern. Of course it would be clean. The Swiss were always clean. Here he would be safe until the war ended. He was encouraged to wear civilian clothes, which was fine since his one and only uniform had been shredded by his parachute landing. The American embassy in Bern even made sure he was paid and that he got his mail.

Problem was, he didn’t want to spend the war sitting on his ass in Bern. Not only was he supposed to be fighting Nazis, but Bern had to be one of the dullest places in the world. Admittedly, it was a pretty little town of about a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and the medieval city center was a joy to look at. Like his hotel, the place was also immaculately clean, making him think that hordes of cleaning ladies emerged each night and scrubbed down the entire town. It was nice, but it wasn’t the U.S. Army Air Force and he wasn’t fighting the Nazis. Someday, when the war was over, his grandchildren would ask him what he did in the war. He didn’t want to say he spent some or most of it sitting on his ass in a hotel in Switzerland.