Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (25 page)

But no horror can equate to the spectacle seen at the Savoy.

Göring.

That corpulent beast, swollen, having eaten Europe whole. His air force bombs barbecuing cities in their entirety, in preparation for his monstrous appetite to come along and gobble them up, like the fairytale villain of a Brothers Grimm story.

The man himself, in framed pictures, television broadcasts to his adoring German public, those left alive, who see him as a happy, fat figure of fun.

The WEASEL next to him, grinning ear to ear. Shyster! Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England!

“This man,” cried Göring, “more than any other fought to protect the Aryan peoples from economic enslavement from world Jewry and the odious financiers spawned from Europe’s Court Jews.”

The rest of his speech beggars belief. Turns out old ‘Monty’ signed away the wealth of Czecho-Slovakia, and literally transferred their gold to the Reichsbank after Hitler’s armies absorbed the rest of their country – so much for his sole aim to rescue the Sudeten Germans, mind you!

Simon paused, his hand shaking. Göring, fluent in English, a monster apparition in the room. A handful of well-to-do friends and acquaintances having flocked to him – ambassadors, diplomats, lords, men who had visited Carinhall and hunted with Göring in the days before war. He basked in the limelight; a fat, perfumed, strutting Nero, a deputy-Caesar.

Simon could see why he’d been advised to ‘dress formally’ – nothing but a sea of morning coats, top hats, sleek American businessmen with neatly parted hair and older, aristocratic and upper class British toffs clad in their dapper best. Most were laughing. Every table, including Simon’s, had been laden with wines, champagne, cheese and meats, and assorted cakes, pastries and delicacies. Rationing was still in effect. Simon wrote about what he’d realised at that very moment, gazing across a sea of smiling, flushed faces.

This class of people
will never go without. They’ll never be affected by war. They’ll always prosper, regardless of what happens at the political and social levels. They are above everything and everyone. The world is run on money, and money runs the world.

After thirty minutes of singing plaudits and platitudes to the assembled, the Reichsmarschall called, “and now, dear friends, leaders in our western world – this shall not be a usual night of German speeches and bombast! Let us enjoy a night in the company of friends and associates!”

“Hear hear!” cried dozens of British and American gentlemen in response.

The journalists’ pool was summoned to him back in the River Suite, in between the conference and the buffet. The lights of cameras flashed; all taken by Germans in some kind of uniform or other. Journalists crowded around with pens and notepads.

Reichsmarschall, what have you… what do you… does Herr Hitler… economic partnerships between… who instigated…
the questions reigned in, and Göring, his large belly stretching at the sleek fabric of an all-white uniform obscenely bedecked with medals, roared his answers back jovially, the huge, glowing moon of a face beaming, the very epitome of conviviality. He
radiated
power, like a great, benevolent authority.

“The reorganisation of a world freed from economic and cultural slavery is a matter for the governments of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, the British Empire and the leaders in each field,” he’d declared, with gusto. “With such men as Montagu Norman, and a new system of cooperation, the great Aryan nations will continue to grow from strength-to-strength! And perhaps even our American friends across the sea will come to see the advantage of a great union of the world’s leading nations and cultures.”

The cunning instinct of a fox, the body of a pig, and the empathy of a pure sociopath. Not to mention, the understanding of human judgement and emotion. He watched us all drink in his words and his jovial nature and attitude and smile, yet no one seemed to identify the small light of triumph that shone in his eyes through the good-natured posturing.

Unbelievably, the banker had been worse. Simon had longed to ask Göring about the violent SA purge – an organisation he set up – the concentration camps, and the Kristallnacht pogrom. Of course, he couldn’t. But Simon, let alone ask questions, found himself unable to so much as look at Montagu Norman without feeling queasy. His vicious, rat-like smirk. The glint of triumph in his eyes when Göring sang his plaudits. His almost knowing amusement when the titanic figure in world politics draped his arm lazily around the little man’s shoulders.

They told us to expect pictures, that we only had to provide written copy and yes, the assured of us the importance of the occasion. The news would only be released two days from then, with the Reichsmarschall safe and sound back in Germany. In the meantime, it’s time you gentlemen enjoyed the buffet! Eat and drink your fill, esteemed guests!

Simon stopped. There was little need to go on.

In the event, he’d not touched the sumptuous buffet laid on for them, nor had he sought the company of any of the guests. One journalist he knew tried to engage him in discussion, affecting an air of secrecy as he pontificated in low mutterings as to where this could lead. Simon, though, had detected the underlying excitement of the man, and had rudely turned away, making an abrupt exit to the Savoy’s American bar; unusually quiet, for nine in the evening, with plenty of free tables. The glitzy bar gleamed white and yellow, its brightness reflected and magnified by the mirrors, sleek and flashy. There, several cocktails at the bar and then smoke in a far corner of the seated area calmed him, as he absorbed what he’d witnessed elsewhere in the grand settings of the hotel. Neither the tuxedoed pianist playing Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde
, nor the other guests in the bar interrupted his rumination.

The sound of classic German artistry was an almost unbearable assault on the senses. But this was not the night to complain.

Eventually, when enough time had passed, Simon rose to his feet, slowly made his way down through the high domed ground floor back to the main foyer, footsteps echoing horribly in his imagination. He briskly stepped through the great halls, down to the river entrance, and faced with the frosty night air, the journalist grudgingly accepted his ride home.

It had been an uneasy decision, but with the horrible feeling of isolation and gloom setting in around them – even in the comparatively nice surroundings of Bloomsbury, with its quiet garden squares and leafy, tree-lined lanes – the comrades-in-arms had settled on trying to enlist the help of old fighters and with it, all being well, the concurrent support network that had proven so reliable.

The trip was not taken lightly.

It was a dangerous risk to take, travelling across the occupied city together and as such, they insisted that Mary stay in Bloomsbury, taking care to reassure her it was common practise leave a soldier behind should the excursion lead to disaster. Either way, the Barceloniña had not been happy; unleashing the first Latin rage and tantrum at her William in two years; eyes burning as she babbled a relentless stream of perfect English interlaced with Catalan curses, vehement, spat at speed.

They understood her frustration; the old war had been equal rights combat, and before communist cannibalism, many female fighters had signed up to the anarchists and Marxist militias. Mary, caution abandoned, released a torrent of furious passion at her friends. But, the context was extreme, and they all loved the girl with a fervour they were once hesitant to admit. It was quite impossible to retain any anger towards her, and even enraged, she found it difficult to maintain her rage for long. Mary embraced them all before they left, squeezing each of them tightly and blessing their journey.

“Go time,” Alan muttered quietly as at long last, they stepped out into the cool, dark London evening.

William snorted. “We’re not going to face anything scarier than
that
, anyway… perfect motivation.”

Jack and Alan guffawed at the resentful, sulky tone of the chastised lover, and the Scot soon joined in the group laughter.

Stealthily, the group rolled through the city with exaggerated care. They circumvented the very centre of the city, where they knew that German patrols were likely to accost them, to check identification as standard procedure, if nothing else. Their papers would be of no help to the discerning eye, they knew; three men in their early and mid-twenties, of military age, travelling after dusk across a watchful London ruled by wary conquerors. A straight easterly route for several miles before heading south would take them through the East End and on to where they suspected they’d find their old comrade.

An old fighter… Alter Kampfer, the fascists would call him. But he was a veteran of the left, and had vanished from their radars; consumed as they were by the irresistable Germans,
victorious everywhere
.

They knew Duncan McGrath of old; he had been an older head who greatly helped ease the teenage Jack’s transition into the communist party and thence, along with William, into Spain. Both had torn up their CPGB Party membership cards as soon as was safe in the aftermath of betrayal in Barcelona, when thousands of Marxist militia members of the POUM returned on leave from fighting fascism at the front to find themselves labelled ‘Trotskyite Fascists’ and criminal traitors. Their own status as communists and the helpful usage of a veritable thesaurus of Lenin jargon likely saved their lives, but the affair destroyed their belief in the international communist cause. When Franco’s tanks rolled into Barcelona, the group barely escaped north and into France, after which they vowed to never support that ideological extreme again. To their shock and bewilderment, even as they returned to fight the last eighteen months of a doomed war as part of the organised communist army – the PSUC proper, suspecting that their preferred ideological comrades the Catalan Anarchists would be next in line to be outlawed and cannibalised – they realised then and later that General Franco’s secret police squadrons were merely
continuing
the ignoble work of the Russian security police services and their seemingly subordinate Spanish Communist Party allies. Night arrests, imprisonments and executions were not a consequence of fascist rule; only the persecutors changed.

Indeed, unlike the chillingly efficient NKVD of Russia, Franco’s civil guard militias – now referred to as the
Brigada Político-Social –
shared the Gestapo’s zeal, but wholly lacked their ruthless competence and the savagery of their clinical slaughter.

“Where do you think the big bastard was?” Alan wondered.

“Who cares,” Jack intoned bitterly. “Doesn’t matter. The war was lost, and we got out. Don’t ever get sucked in to caring about the communist collective again–”

“D’ye think that’s fuckin’ likely, man?” Alan demanded, bristling.

“No. But remember those days, mate. Don’t bother worrying who did what.”

Duncan had not been in the POUM, and after escaping back to England in ‘39, none had yet found it in themselves to seek out their former comrades and allies. Some of their light and optimism had died in the dust of Spain, along with their friends and comrades who subscribed to slightly different socialist beliefs, fought fascism under a different banner and as a result, many of whom were killed by their own side.

But England was occupied now, and the swastika flew over London. That was all that mattered now, regardless of whose slogans a solider spouted.

Duncan was a mountain-sized man, with an equally large-sized heart. He looked like a circus strongman; built like Primo Carnera, the Spanish had named him ‘Basajuan’, and he became an unofficial mascot to the few Basques they encountered fighting in Catalonia, outside their own embattled land in the north. He had been – and still was, they assumed – a dock worker, inhabiting one of the narrow terraced streets that edged the quays; the dockland factories and machinations of heavy industry casting an inescapable shadow across their private lives. It was hardly a surprise that the communist party had flourished here. The U-bend of the River Thames that housed the Docklands was cockney workers’ territory, and flashing the party cards they’d left in tens of torn pieces on the floor of what was an unnaturally pleasant little hotel room in Perpignan – Mary had torn hers up in Barcelona, thoroughly unconcerned – would have been sure to get them instant solidarity. Half the docks had claimed pre-war to have took part in the demonstrations against Oswald Mosley’s British fascists, a feat which they were careful to keep quiet now. Nor did the Jewish population of East London greatly help the anti-fascists’ cause; the smaller groups of SS Security Police in the city were focused primarily on perceived Jewish and communist strongholds; the East End and the Thames U-bend Docklands were areas that were sure to be patrolled.

“All quiet on the Western Front,” Jack stated bitterly, as they worked their way through the old, familiar East End streets of Whitechapel. They knew what he meant.

“Too bloody quiet,” Alan mused. “No patrols as yet, but hardly any bloody people for miles. It’s only eight o’clock?”

“Thought the krauts would be all over the East End,” Jack mused.

“Threatened it enough,” William snorted. “All the Jews will suffer, and all that.”

Alan turned to glance at him, concern etched into his features. “They’re goin’ about all this in a pretty daft way, like?”

“Is it?” Jack considered, as the Scot nodded in bemused agreement. “They’re keeping us guessing, and it seems to be working.”

“Yeah well, we’ll keep them guessing with a few sticks up dynamite up the arse,” Alan chuntered, sick of second-guessing German tactics and intent. “I’ve got one Jewish friend, just one, and it’s your bird you lucky bastard,” he said quickly, gesturing at William, who grinned. “But I tell you what,” Alan continued. “I’m painting the Star of David on any bastard bomb I throw at these fuckers.”

Jack encouraged the Geordie to grumble for several minutes longer. Much of it was hot air and bluster, but their clever, rough northern friend certainly knew how to cheer them up.