Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (23 page)

Heydrich, however was deeply amused, and listened in high good humour. The old man was a failed artist, a bum living rough in Vienna before the Great War. No doubt some
analytical
Jews had rejected the Führer’s
creative
artwork at some point.

Hitler shook his head sadly. “England is a great model – THE great model – and as such, was targeted and poisoned by the Jews. Nowhere else in the great nations is the Jewish menace more profoundly seen and felt as in Whitehall. Parliament – what a system! The dignity with which the Lower House fulfilled its task for the people… could a people have a more exalted form of government than this classical democracy? It showed the Austrian parliament as the unGermanic embarrassment that it was! Polluted by Slavs, a bastard mongrel of languages and peoples; a
total
failure that was utterly unworthy of the great example of England.”

Hitler paused again for effect. It
was
a speech, Heydrich thought.
The old man’s table talk, government meetings, party rallies, probably his bedtime chat with the little laughing blonde bitch – all just a big fucking monologue
.

Yet contained within was the direction of Europe’s future, Heydrich knew, and much like his dissection of Werner Best’s intellectual ideas and learnings during Best’s time deputising for Heydrich in the SD, he knew it was practical to absorb the Führer’s words.

“This model must continue,” Hitler pronounced, “… But first, with people whose synergies to the new order reflect ours, as opposed to an embarrassing rabble led by the anti-fascist, Anglo-American Zionist clique of Churchillian warmongers. Moseley and his fascists are less agreeable than you might think. Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Halifax and the old king are much more promising with regards to a strong junta of Heads of Government and State.”

“Halifax was identified on the
Sonderfahndungsliste G.B
,” Heydrich interjected quietly.

That was the Special Arrests List he’d commissioned SD-Major Schellenberg to compile for Great Britain. Most of those listed were prominent politicians, writers, intellectuals, homosexuals and Jews. Heydrich had personally added Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the list, though he suspected the former was in California. He included Putzi Hanfstaengl; purely as a sop to the Führer, who no doubt would love to be reunited with his old friend who had defected in 1937 after falling victim to a Goebbels practical joke.

Hitler nodded, calculating. “I understand, Heydrich. Halifax beat the drum of war. A time of reckoning will come for this paladin of the Chamberlain-Churchill regimes. For now, it is expedient to use the man who offered armistice. We must
adapt
, to
advance
. The world is changing, and we must impose our new order before fate turns its hand against the Reich,” Hitler declared, stepping out toward the great window and the mountains beyond. “Japan is reconquering Asia, an
honorary Aryan
people, though completely without any creativity of their own. Yes, Japan…”

The Führer faced down Himmler and Heydrich, in stern solemnity.

“There are two possibilities. When their war escalates, and they suffer from sanctions, faced with economic hardships, they will be forced to take on the Slavs, or America in the Pacific. This is unavoidable. It is in the Reich’s favour that when they attack, that it is to the north and west. If Stalin has to fight Japan’s armies in Siberia, it leaves fewer men to defend European Russia and the heart of the Jewish-Bolshevik beast.”

The SS men murmured assent.

“I have arranged for you, my dear Himmler and Gruppenführer…
Reichsprotektor
Heydrich, to be flown to one of our bases there. You will enter London as conquerors.”

Heydrich was delighted. This was more than he could have asked for. To enter in triumph like a warrior Viceroy of Alexander the Great, the perfect way to cap his personal power coup.

The Führer concluded his invective; hands clenching, pointing and gesticulating as was customary in his speeches to thousands. “With regards to Russia, Japan and America, we need to be in a position of overwhelming power, backed by an ally of overwhelming reach. England’s air force, navy and the strategic positions of its empire will ensure that none, not even the Jews in Washington will stand before the Reich. Only then can we ensure that the Aryan civilisation remains the dominant power in the world. You must find the political and racial undesirables, my chiefs, and remove them as combatants in the war against our civilisation. Do that, and a Greater German Reich and the Aryan World Empire will last for a thousand,
thousand
years!”

Heydrich leapt to his feet, seizing the chance, followed closely by the Reichsführer-SS, anxious not to be outdone by the man he’d first brought into the SS only nine years ago. Together, they now de facto ruled a police empire from the Soviet border to the south of Spain, and back up to the northern tip of Scandinavia spanning northwest to Glasgow. Under the Führer, they ruled a European empire without parallel, with absolute power of life and death over its peoples. Heydrich smiled.
Godlike
.

“To the thousand year Reich!” three giant men of fate cried in unison.

London was yet to stir from its gloomy occupied slump, as the missing men of the resistance, prisoners of war and the conscripted factory workers – soon dubbed ‘The Pyramid Builders’ by the British public – cast a huge shadow over the postwar recovery.

Morale was flagging. Everybody knew somebody, or knew someone who knew a person that had broken down. The two variants of this were a sort of hysterical, shrieking grief through loss or the enforced separation from a loved one abroad, often resulting in total emotional breakdown, or equally bad; outright attacks made on Germans in a fit of full-blown diminished capacity, all thought of consequence and self-preservation flung to the wind. This one was ugly; there was no salvation for such fated men. In several Suffolk villages along the east coast, such incidents led to a mass-execution one bitterly cold day early into the occupation; assorted men, alternately wild-eyed with anguish or quietly defiant, were lined up in village greens, to coincide with the shooting of forty saboteurs in Ipswich, at Alexandra Park. At precisely eleven o’clock, watched by silent, still crowds, sombre Wehrmacht troops opened fire, and a combined ninety-four British civilians fell dead in ‘Suffolk’s Black Day’.

~

In the Far East, Japan was doing some significant sabre-rattling, and the eyes of the world had turned to the Land of the Rising Sun. Even with most of China still unconquered and vast armies opposing them, Japan’s trade agreements with the west were disintegrating, and the noises coming from Tokyo were of aggression and war. The political spectrum of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis had immediately changed, even as the pact was finalised; the seizure of London, with its key areas in Africa, the Middle East and most crucially of all, in East Asia, meant that what constituted Japan’s ‘sphere of influence’ was now in question. The British Empire abroad continued to function. Some even claimed that the forces there – regardless of what Berlin demanded – would continue to hold out, brush off ‘the little yellow men’ and ‘push them back into the sea’. If Japan had reacted to this provocation, if indeed it were true, then none in Britain had yet heard of it. Outwardly, Germany made positive noises about the three-way pact that Japan had signed to formally join the Rome-Berlin axis. But it mattered little. The Far East was a powder keg, waiting to explode.

“Tokyo is feeling threatened,” Arthur Speakman murmured to Jack as he collected pints for himself and the Scot. His caution, as Jack saw it, was quite pointless; the Royal Oak was entirely empty, save for old Bill Wilson in the public room, sat hunched in his usual state of torpor, reeking, and rendered senseless from hours of ale.

“What do you reckon, old boy?” Jack asked him.

The old publican shrugged.

“I don’t know. They attack Malaya for the port of Singapore, risk losing to our lot and having the Americans jump in, on top of pissing Hitler off. If they go for the Philippines, which they’d need to if they took any more of the mainland, the yanks would be forced to have to with ’em. Or… they ally for an attack on Russia which leaves Hitler with Moscow and an empire stretching from west Wales to the Urals, and Japan with the world’s largest snowfield… and direct control of the largest collection of forced labour camps on the planet.”

Jack grinned. “Decisions, decisions. Mainland Asia held by demoralised Brits, looking juicy, or Siberia. All those slaves with frostbite.”

He chuckled, lowly, but the joke rang hollow for a man who had once believed in socialism, and pledged his loyalty to the CPGB. The thought of old POUM comrades toiling in a godforsaken Siberian death trap in the wilderness, frozen, hauling logs of wood under the whip of some vodka-soaked Russian tyrant in minus-thirty conditions was almost too much to bear.

“What do you think, young fellow?” Arthur asked him.

“… I think… Japan doesn’t care much what anyone thinks.”

“And?”

Jack considered. “Well… depends what old Adolf offers. If in return for invading East Russia, they get some army or SS help heading down into Chiang Kai-Shek’s western stronghold in China, then Tokyo already intends to join Jerry. Japan is as good as there already. If not, the US Pacific fleet had better watch out, and so had our lot in the territories…”

Arthur nodded, to which Jack threw up his hands in exasperation.

“But who knows what all these godlike maniacs are up to, behind closed doors?”

He picked the brace of beers up, and started off towards the far booth, where William waited for him.

“At least we live in interesting times, Jack,” Arthur called to his retreating back.

“Yeah. We live in interesting times.”

~

London, outwardly disconsolate, was filled with the buzz of murmured conversations; behind closed doors; those with dampened spirits were awakened by the possibility of real developments in an outer world that they suddenly remembered with interest. Covent Garden’s pubs were awash with Gestapo spies and informants, it was now widely known – the area’s location in the heart of central London in close proximity to Soho, Trafalgar Square and the very heart of government in Whitehall made it inevitable. Many knew, and older hands adopted a policy of avoiding pubs from which the Embankment and Westminster Bridge could be reached on foot in ten minutes. But, the network of Heydrich’s pet spider Dr Six was proving most adept at spinning its webs; ensuring the news Berlin could or would not officially endorse would be cast far and wide, if it served their interests. From Covent Garden, across Soho, up north to Bloomsbury and Camden and beyond; in lieu of acknowledging the grim realities of what had happened – what
was happening
– in Britain, interest in the wider sphere of political tension suddenly exploded, and gossip spread like wildfire. Cartoonists got back to work – their fear of retribution having passed – and the satirical serials and newspaper cartoon strips were back in circulation.

With the swirling rumour mill, fires stoked by spies, they certainly had ample material.

The Soviet seizure of Lithuania as France fell, despite the Baltic state’s acceptance of the harsh terms dictated by Moscow had sent Hitler and Göring into apoplectic rage. Still, they restrained Goebbels, and quietly, smilingly accepted the pokerfaced Molotov’s rebuttals of the official complaints. Now with the heart of the British Empire in Hitler’s hands, and an increasingly belligerent Japan to their eastern border, Berlin knew that Moscow would be deeply regretting their ‘cynical Bolshevik imperialist aggressions.’ Stalin’s pact with Hitler was beginning to look like a piece of paper as worthless as Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement had been.

Fascism was the ascendant force, having swept across five of Europe’s great nations; four of which were aggressive. A continental ‘Rome-Berlin-Madrid-Paris’ axis was the latest pun from the cynics. All were hostile, even the late convert who only months before had fought
against
Germany. Vichy France, smarting over Britain’s intention to scuttle their fleet and all-too-quick to embrace any prevailing anti-Semitic sentiment, gladly bade au revoir to a ‘decadent, Jew-run decade of decline’, and promptly built up a huge force of Nazi auxiliaries, the ‘French Legion of Volunteers’ whose stated goal was to oppose Bolshevism; colloquially they were immediately christened the
SS-Charlemagne
division. Franco was growling about the return of Spain’s gold, half a billion dollars’ worth of which the ‘godless Judeo-masonic dogs and hypocrites’ at the helm of the Republic had sent to Moscow for safekeeping three years prior. Italy and Romania, too, had their hackles raised and fangs bared at Stalin. Goebbels deviated from official policy, sneeringly calling the dictator “a rabbit mesmerised by the fascist snakes”. Göring, it was said, playing on his famous ‘I decide who is a Jew!’ pronouncement, supposedly proclaimed to a packed Carinhall that Stalin was to be held as a Jew when Moscow crumbled. Soviet Russia was beginning to look vulnerable.

William Joyce a.k.a Lord Haw Haw’s Radio Berlin broadcast, which had eclipsed the BBC’s in popularity, had taken to casually listing various Soviet incidents in the Baltics and referring in glowing terms to the Japanese struggles in China where the densely populated east coast and thus, most of China’s major cities were completely subdued and under the tender care of the Imperial Japanese Army. Reichsmarschall Göring, it was relayed, praised the ‘tenacious’ Japanese; his usual jollity deserting him and Hitler’s ‘Iron Man’ of old resurfacing in his naked brutality. He even quoted
Mein Kampf
in his speech, shared with relish for English ears by Joyce, directed at the American condemnation of, and sanctions against Hirohito’s Empire:

‘The world Jewish press and insubordinate saboteurs that infest global politics are conspiring to turn their host nations against the great yellow Asiatic Empire, whose civilisation combined with that of the Aryans to become the undisputed
herrenvolk
of the Far East!”