Armageddon - Leon Uris

“We have more complaints than we can keep track of.”

“Why hell, they’re just celebrating a little. Don’t take very much to liquor them up. We’ll sweep them off the streets at curfew.”

“And what do you intend to do about the looting and the beatings?”

“Well, so they broke into some German shops and homes. They’ve got a lot to get out of their systems,” Blessing pleaded.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

The celebration had been particularly rowdy today. A large, untapped wine cellar had been stumbled upon. A monumental binge followed. The streets were empty of terrified Germans.

“It’s not that I have any desire to protect Germans,” Sean said, “but our own authority will break down if we let the Poles go unchallenged.”

“They’re good people,” Bolinski said. “They are what is left out of maybe a hundred thousand who passed through Schwabenwald. Less than a thousand of them left, Major. Every morning they were awakened at five o’clock, given a bowl of watery broth, and marched from the camp to the Machine Works. Six miles, two hundred and thirty yards, sixteen feet and nine inches. Anyone who fell down was jumped on by the dogs. The last men pulled carts to pick up the dead piled up along the roadside. They worked fourteen hours, chained to their benches in those underground hell holes, and they were marched back, six miles, two hundred and thirty yards, sixteen feet and nine inches. They were given the fine reward of fifteen hundred calories a day ...”

“I’ve read all your reports,” Sean interrupted.

“I say to hell with it. Let them celebrate! Let them knock in a few faces!”

Sean blew a long breath and slumped into his chair. “Bolinski ... you and Blessing get these Poles to work. Get them signed up for guard duty. Give them any choice jobs open. How about their leaders? Can we trust them?”

“They carry authority,” Bolinski answered.

“Here’s the deal. We’re not going to be too technical on loot or roughing up a few Germans. We draw the line at rape and murder. I won’t be crossed on it.”

Bolinski and Blessing left to sweep up the streets.

Maurice Duquesne, who had followed the conversation with detached boredom, finally spoke up. “Putting them to work is an unrealistic solution. For these first few days they are content to drink their freedom under, but soon they will want to find out if they are still men.”

“I’ve already thought about that. We’re going to use some of Blessing’s Kentucky windage.”

A few moments later Baron Sigmund Von Romstein, still acting mayor, answered a summons to Sean’s office. The sight of Duquesne made him doubly nervous. Each time he came he was certain it would be for his head to roll.

“One of the streets running off the square, Princess Allee, had a reputation for gaiety, did it not, Baron?”

“Oh yes! Many beer halls. Many night clubs. During the festivals it was one of the most raucous streets in all of Schwaben ... and Bavaria, too, for that matter.”

“I’m talking specifically about whorehouses.”

The baron threw up his hands in innocence. “The Nazis closed down all the brothels. You know how Hitler was.”

“According to our information Princess Allee was never entirely or really closed. Is it not a fact that you always had women working as prostitutes for the overnight stops of the river-barge pilots? Their numbers could be augmented from Munich on paydays and during festival times.”

“Well, you know how these things are. Not even Hitler could stop prostitution entirely.”

“What is more,” Sean said, “you were mayor and your brother Nazi Gauleiter. Weren’t there a number of unwritten agreements, a number of things overlooked for sake of the economy of the district?”

Sean was correct. The American was always correct. He and that abominable Dante Arosa knew everything.

“Is it not further correct,” Sean pressed, “that you secretly have a registration of all the women who worked as prostitutes in Rombaden?”

The baron stalled.

“Well?”

“You must understand,” Sigmund whined, “there was never graft connected with this. Of course, some consideration to the police now and then. However, the registration was only to keep the situation under control. To keep out undesirable elements ... what I mean ... to keep the girls protected ...”

“Strictly nonpolitical,” Sean said to Duquesne, who was forced to crack a smile. “How many of them are still around?”

“Perhaps thirty or forty.”

“Jolly place,” Sean said. “They’re going to be needed.”

“For your troops?” the baron asked, hoping that the nonfraternization ruling had been rescinded.

“For the Poles.”

“Oh ...”

“Nonpolitical, Baron. I don’t want to know who these women are. Furthermore, they are not to know this is coming from the Allied authority. You may be their benefactor. Beginning tomorrow the Poles will be paid in occupation currency. Any girl voluntarily going back to her chosen profession will be given triple ration.”

The deflated baron mumbled that it would not be too difficult to find women, even for Poles, with triple ration.

“The alternative may be the rape of your women in the streets.”

“I understand, Herr Major.”

The baron was dismissed.

Maurice Duquesne laughed at the poetic justice in making Baron Von Romstein pimp for the Poles he and his brothers had used as slaves. “A clever solution, Sean, but one which will lower you in the eyes of the Germans. They will say ... look what the American does to protect us.”

“I am doing it for the sake of law and order.”

“Ah, but Sean, a conqueror is not expected to be benevolent. Don’t you think the women here are expecting to get raped? Don’t you think the German soldiers raped the women of my province and the Polish women and the Russian women?”

“More of your centuries-old traditions, Maurice?”

“More of your American naiveté, Sean. We Europeans are not dreamers, but realists. The husbands, sons, and lovers will take their women back, tainted or not.”

“I don’t understand you people!” Sean snapped in anger.

“And I don’t understand you. How long do you think you Americans are going to be able to keep up with this idiotic nonfraternization? How long will it be before your clean-living American boys go frantic for the touch of a woman?” And then, Duquesne laughed heartily. “By God, you are missing out on one of the true rewards for winning the war.”

Chapter Twenty-two

ROMBADEN GASPED FOR LIFE amidst its devastation. The full impact of defeat drove deeper with each passing day. No water, no food ... ashes. Frightened movement stirred behind the charred walls as the armed Poles patrolled the streets.

The coming of Ulrich Falkenstein disturbed them deeply. The tyrannical but paternal rule of the Von Romstein dynasty was over for the first time in history. Although Count Ludwig and his brothers had governed with an iron fist, they had worked for the solid status quo of traditional life. The Von Romsteins were the father. The Von Romsteins would take care of them.

Now, Falkenstein, enemy of the Reich, scorned for two decades, sat at the right hand of the Allied governor.

Sean’s first doubts about the meaning of Falkenstein’s Germanness faded. Falkenstein would have no truck with the Nazis. Moreover, he could smell them. A few people from the whitelist and a few political survivors of Schwabenwald were placed in key civic positions. The Nazis were routed.

It became clear that every person in Rombaden and the Landkreis was going to have to account for his past activities. Rumor had it that the military government was preparing a questionnaire with hundreds of questions which every man and woman had to answer. Imprisonments grew daily.