Harry Turtledove: The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century

The kind of hatred motivating this Burgundian leader was no stranger to me. Never in my worst nightmares did it occur to me that I could be a victim of this kind of thinking.

Kaufmann gestured to men on the ramp and they placed Hitler’s body on top of the pyre. “It is time,” mourned Helmuth’s voice in my ear. Other young SS men surrounded me, Helmuth holding my arm. We began to walk.

Other SS men had appeared around the dry pyramid of kindling wood and straw. They were holding burning torches. Kaufmann gestured and they set the pyre aflame. The crackling and popping sounds plucked at my nerves as whitish smoke slowly rose. It would take a few minutes before the flame reached the apex to consume Hitler’s body… and whatever else was near. My only consolation was that they had not used lighter fluid—dreadful modern stuff—to hasten the inferno.

Somewhere in that blazing doom Odin and Thor and Freyja were waiting. I was in no hurry to greet them.

I wondered at how the SA must have felt when the SS burst in on them, barking guns ripping out their lives in bloody ruins. Perhaps I should have thought of Magda, but I did not. Instead all my whimsies were directed to miracles and last-minute salvations. How I had preached hope in the final hours of the war before our luck had turned. I had fed Hitler on stories of Frederick the Great’s diplomatic coup in the face of a military debacle. I had compared the atom bomb—when we got it—to the remarkable change in fortunes in the House of Brandenburg. Now I found myself pleading with the cruel fates for a personal victory of the same sort.

I was at the top of the ramp. Helmuth’s hands were set firmly against my back. To him had fallen the task of consigning his father’s living body to the flames. They must have considered him an adept pupil to be trusted with so severe a task.

So completely absorbed was I in thoughts of a sudden reprieve that I barely noticed the distant explosion. Someone behind me said, “What was that?” I heard Kaufmann calling from the ground but his words were lost in a louder explosion that occurred nearby.

A manic voice called out: “We must finish the rite!” It was Helmuth. He pushed me into empty space. I fell on Hitler’s corpse, and grabbed at the torso to keep from falling into an opening, beneath which raged the personal executioner.

“Too soon,” one of my son’s comrades was saying. “The fire isn’t high enough. You’ll have to shoot him or…”

Already I was rolling onto the other side of Hitler’s body as I heard a gunshot. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Helmuth clutching his stomach as he fell into the red flames.

Shouts. Gunfire. More explosions. An army was climbing over the wall of the courtyard. A helicopter was zooming in overhead. My first thought was that it must be the German army come to save me. I was too delighted to care how that was possible.

The conflagration below was growing hotly near. Smoke filling my eyes and lungs was about to choke me to death. I was contemplating a jump from the top—a risky proposition at best—when I was given a better chance by a break in the billowing fumes. The men had cleared the ramp for being ill protected against artillery.

Once again I threw myself over Hitler’s body and hit the metal ramp with a thud. What kept me from falling off was the body of a dead SS man, whose leg I was able to grasp as I started to bounce back. Then I lifted myself and ran as swiftly as I could, tripping a quarter of the way from the ground and rolling bruisedly the rest of the way. The whizzing bullets missed me. I lay hugging the dirt, for fear of being shot if I rose.

Even from that limited position I could evaluate certain aspects of the encounter. The Burgundians had temporarily given up their penchant for fighting with swords and were making do with machine guns instead. (The one exception was Thor, who ran forward in a berserker rage, wielding an ax. The bullets tore him to ribbons.) The battle seemed to be going badly for them.

Then I heard the greatest explosion of my life. It was as if the castle had been converted into one of Von Braun’s rockets as a sheet of flame erupted from underneath it and the whole building quaked with the vibrations. The laboratory must have been destroyed instantly.

“It’s Goebbels,” a voice sang out. “Is he alive?”

“If he is, we’ll soon remedy that.”

“No,” said the first voice. “Let’s find out.”

Rough hands turned me over… and I expected to look once more into faces of SS men. These were young men, all right, but there was something disturbingly familiar about them. I realized that they might be Jews! The thought, even then, that my life had been saved by Jews was too much to bear. But those faces, like the faces that I’ve thought about too many times to count.

“Blindfold him,” one said. It was done, and I was being pushed through the courtyard blind, the noises of battle echoing all around. Once we stopped and crouched behind something. There was an exchange of shots. Then we were running and I was pulled into a conveyance of some sort. The whirring sound identified it instantly as a helicopter revving up; and we were off the ground, and we were flying away from that damned castle. A thin, high whistling sound went by—someone must have still been firing at us. And then the fight faded away in the distance.

AN HOUR LATER we had landed. I was still blindfolded. Low voices were speaking in German. Suddenly I heard a scrap of Russian. This in turn was followed by a comment in Yiddish; and there was a sentence in what I took to be Hebrew. The different conversations were interrupted by a deep voice speaking in French announcing the arrival of an important person. After a few more whisperings—in German again—my blindfold was removed.

Standing in front of me was Hilda, dressed in battle fatigues. “Tell me what has happened,” I said, adding as an afterthought—“if you will.”

“Father, you have been rescued from Burgundy by a military operation of combined forces.”

“You were only incidental,” added a lean, dark-haired man by her side.

“Allow me to introduce this officer,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “We won’t use names, but this man is with the Zionist Liberation Army. My involvement was sponsored by the guerrilla arm of the German Freedom League. Since your abduction the rest of the organization has gone underground. We are also receiving an influx of Russians into our ranks.”

If everything else that had happened seemed improbable, this was sufficient to convince me that I had finally lost my sanity and was enmeshed in the impossible. “There is no Zionist Liberation Army,” I said. “I would have heard of it.”

“You’re not the only one privy to secrets,” was her smug reply.

“Are you a Zionist now?” I asked my daughter, thinking that nothing else would astound me. I was wrong again.

“No,” she answered. “I don’t support statism of any kind. I’m an anarchist.”

What next? Her admission stunned me to the core. A large Negro with a beard spoke: “There is only one requirement to be in this army, Nazi. You must oppose National Socialism, German or Burgundian.”

“We have communists as well, Father,” my daughter went on. “The small wars Hitler kept waging well into the 1950s, always pushing deeper into Russia, made more converts to Marx than you realize.”

“But you hate communism, daughter. You’ve told me so over and over.” In retrospect it was not prudent for me to say this in such a company, but I no longer cared. I was emotionally exhausted, numb, empty.

She took the bait. “I hate all dictatorships. In the battle of the moment I must take what comrades I can get. You taught me that.”