Harry Turtledove - West and East

He nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. If Somebody Important starts talking in Berlin or Dresden or Breslau, the Western democracies can’t do anything about it-even if the Russians might. But here? Once they know a big Bonz is talking, they can put planes in the air and drop their bombs before he’s finished.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “That’s what you get for letting your speeches run long. An abrupt way to edit, but no doubt sincere.”

Sarah kissed him on his stubbly cheek. “You’re quite mad,” she said affectionately.

“Well, I do try.” Father looked pleased with himself.

He turned on the radio. The music that poured out of it would have needed to be more interesting to sound boring. Sarah thought the orchestra must have been dripped in treacle. When the tune ended, an announcer spoke in awed tones: “Tonight, the Fuhrer addresses the German Volk and the German Reich from Munster!”

Father looked even more pleased with himself, almost indecently so. He’d not only figured out what was going on, he’d had the timing down to a T. Even a clever man, which Samuel Goldman was, didn’t get to seem so clever very often. Sarah imagined airmen in flight suits jumping into airplanes with roundels of blue-white-red or red-white-blue and roaring off into the night toward her home town.

Stormy applause greeted the Fuhrer. She wondered where exactly he was. Did Nazi bigwigs fill the concert hall? Or was he speaking at the stadium? Sudden tears stung her eyes. Saul had played there. He’d won cheers for his skill, if not cheers like these. What good did it do him? She only hoped he was still alive.

“People of Germany!” That hot, familiar, hatefully exciting voice roared out of the radio. “People of Germany, I came here to tell you that the Reich can never be defeated!” More applause: waves of sound climbing up and falling back. Hitler went on, “Foreign foes cannot beat us! And neither can our own traitors! They tried their best to stab us in the back again, the way the Jews stabbed us at the end of the last war, but their best was not good enough.”

Samuel Goldman made a rude noise. If the Gestapo did have a microphone hidden in the house, their technicians might take it for a burst of static. What they’d make of Sarah’s giggle right afterwards…

Hitler, of course, wasn’t finished. “We will hang the traitors!” he thundered. “We will hang them all, small and great together. For we have no right to hang the small ones while leaving the great ones fat and safe at home!” Oh, the listening Nazis cheered! Sarah wondered how they, or anyone, could take him seriously. Those savage sentiments mixed with that sticky-sweet Austrian accent!

“Year ago, the Socialists told me, ‘Turn back, Adolf Hitler!’ I was only a newly discharged veteran, a nobody, but I never turned back once,” the Fuhrer declared. “I never have. I never will. The Reich goes forward-forward to victory!”

“Sieg heil!” the Party faithful cried.

“Sieg heil!” Hitler echoed. “And we must go on to victory, for one year of Bolshevism would ruin Germany. The richest, most beautiful civilization in the history of the world would fall into madness and destruction. The Reds would spare nothing, not even our morals and our faith. And I tell you this, Volk of the Reich: I shall not spare their backers inside Germany, and I shall not spare the godless Jewish masters in Moscow!”

“Sieg heil!” the audience shouted again. “Heil Hitler!”

“There will be no peace in our country until we smash Bolshevism and treason of every kind,” Hitler said. “I put my whole life into this struggle every day, and so must everyone who has joined me in it. I have attacked the traitors and murderers here. With my own hand I have shot them dead. And now the Wehrmacht, at last purified from the stupid struggles of internal politics, will show its thanks through devotion and loyalty and victory. For Germany is pledged to victory: to victory over our foolish Western foes, and to a final solution for the Bolshevik-Jewish Russian monster! We shall not falter. We shall not fail. Like St. George, we will slay the dragon, and he will never rise again!”

“Sieg heil! Heil Hitler!” the listening Nazis roared. Hitler thumped a fist down on the lectern to show he’d finished. They cheered and cheered.

Two and a half hours later, Munster’s air-raid sirens wailed a warning. Flak guns bellowed. Bombs whistled down out of the heartless sky. Banned from any proper shelter, Sarah and her parents huddled under the dining-room table and hoped the house wouldn’t come down on top of it.

“I knew they’d show up late.” Her father might have been talking about a student who hadn’t turned his paper in on time. “They might have nailed him if only they’d hustled, but he’s bound to be gone by now.”

“He’s bound to be gone,” Sarah agreed, “and the war’s bound to go on.” Right that minute, she could think of nothing worse to say.