Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (42 page)

An absence of hope was a minor death in life. Paul had the vague sense that he was superficially keeping it together, balancing his emotions with his responsibilities with difficulty while merely smiling through the disturbing days. Individual occurrences, too many to name, had privately disquieted the humorous Paul and he suspected that beyond the superficial, he was barely hanging on to his control and poise, an underlying rising sensation of suppressed tension building to fever pitch.

Sarcasm, the Yorkshireman’s great ally and weapon, helped him and countless others to mask the gamut of concurrent feelings that as-yet, he could not properly label or name.

He did not share with Naomi the savage beating he’d witnessed that day. Three soldiers, filing out of a restaurant in a manner that suggested to Paul that obnoxiousness combined with a refusal to pay was most likely their modus operandi – the arrogance of a conqueror – had momentarily paused for thought as they passed an older black man.

No Jew, perhaps, but somehow Paul doubted the streets of Berlin and Hamburg were awash with too many dark-skinned faces. Or arms, legs, torsos, heads, feet and hands either, for that matter. This man looked like one of the hell-enduring slaves of the 19
^th
century, and it was not hard to imagine his great or great-great-grandfather’s arrival in the west being the conclusion of a forced and torturous journey.

“You insult Deutschland?” Paul remembered a red-faced army soldier screaming at the man, using his country’s endonymic name in the tentative dual-communication style that was already nicknamed ‘Krautglish’.

Utterly exposed, and unable to avoid their attention, it was clear the black man had known that once the initial surprise wore off, the Germans would react to his appearance with hostility; the pack mentality of wild animals. Quicker to regain his wits, the local man preempted their introduction, but it was not placatory. “Shalom,” Paul heard him say, barely able to register it himself. That’s when the gigantic Jerry began to bawl.

Was it black humour? Paul wondered, before further registering the double entendre. Why would the man aggravate them; a nationalistic people ruled and governed by institutional racism. Did he hope to shock them into non-action? Or does he simply not care about the consequences of provocation anymore?

Either way, the man’s choice of words had a very distinct effect. The soldiers were snapped back to life, reanimated by the Jewish greeting. And they crowded him, visibly bristling. Shock and composed disdain transfigured instantly into naked aggression and loathing.

“Answer me! Did you just insult the Fatherland!”

“You insult us? You insult the Führer?” this voice came from a smaller, calmer soldier, with the dangerous air of a clinical sadist. Such men deliver persecution and punishment with a lethal precision, protracted; club-wielding thugs had given way to the new breed of Nazi. Those who as adolescents or adults had no experience of a world not run by Hitler. Those unaware of the crimes committed for his system. And those who thrilled in creating it.

Paul knew the man was in trouble. Invoking the name of Hitler justified any and all actions in the eyes of his believers – just like God. A religious devotion to either celestial dictators or living, breathing men was a warrant for wickedness; claiming attack on the unchallengeable was the common denominator for all.

“I greeted you,” the man said calmly, a hint of West African patois in his leodensian voice. “That’s no insult.”

Yelling in German, the large, blond man brought the back of his hand up from his bulging waist with considerable force, smacking across the face of the black unfortunate and sending him reeling back into the smaller, wiry soldier. That man wasted no time in redirecting their victim’s momentum, using the loss of equilibrium to hip-toss the unresisting figure, using the man’s own shirt lapels to twist and slam the back of his head into the concrete cobbles.

A sickening beating had taken place; Paul had to turn and leave, nauseated, by the sight of the martial artist-cum-sadist methodically breaking the now-stricken African fellow’s fingers, snapping them like brittle biscuits covered in chocolate, and attacking with the insatiable hunger of a fat child; malevolent in their violence. The third German, a large pudding of a man but less in size and stature than the huge pig that was his
kameraden
, had his gun trained on Paul and the other bystanders who, by chance, happened to be in that particular part of Headingley at the time. The message was clear; interfere, and you die.

Only after leaving did Paul realise that such moments demonstrated exactly
why
fascism had triumphed. ‘Enemies of The State’ are obscenely punished, yet everyone else walks free; the classic case of divide and rule.
Self-preservation
. Even as one
individual
instance of capricious, callous behaviour and abuse-of-power from a gang of possibly uneducated, socially inept soldiers, Paul knew the awful battering that was meted out to the ethnically-exposed unfortunate represented the new world
whole
. The idea snowballed, until Paul began to contemplate if he now bore some of the collective guilt, and it was with some difficulty that he finally repressed it.

If we all resisted, totalitarianism would never succeed.

In the present, that cruel beating seemed like a distant dream as he strolled in the open air with Naomi. They used the parkside road that ran alongside Woodhouse Moor to reach the pub. As they stepped in, Naomi attracted the same stares as ever from the pub’s patrons. Paul wondered if she genuinely did not notice, or if she simply didn’t care.

They took a seat in the far corner, and clinked glasses.

“Cheers!”

“Cheers, Paul.”

Both enjoyed the taste of the Tetley’s ale, smacking their lips, exaggerating a little in the style that both their grandparents’ did. It amused them that both of their families seemed to share the same silly quirks.

“Right, Paul. You didn’t come yesterday. I’m kicking my heels. I want to know what’s going on. School, everything. What’s up with thee?” she began, sweetening it by mocking the ultra-Yorkshireism he sometimes used.

He looked away, sipping his Tetley’s, but as his gaze drifted back her eyes were still firmly boring into him. Paul sighed.

“Well…”

Almost one week prior, it had been announced – on notices, billboards, and on radio by both Goebbels and William Joyce, in their usual sensitive manner – that all Jews must register with the authorities, and bring their passports to get stamped. That was a quarter of a million people in Britain. Naomi had felt weak with the news. All non-registered Jews would be subject to severe penalties, they were warned. An unregistered Jew is an enemy alien, parasite,
partisan of assimilation
.

Trips out had therefore been limited to the local pub. Naomi found herself longing for these moments of normality, and her heart burst with love for Paul every time they stepped out together into the fresh, clean air.

“Please.”

“You sure you want to hear it?” he asked her, scratching his chin.

“A
minute
, Paul. Christ. Then neither of us have to mention the Boche and the Quislings again today.”

“Christ? There you are now, see…” Paul sat forwards, wagging his finger at her. “That’s it. If you lot hadn’t bloody killed ’im, we wouldn’t be in this predicament would we?”

He cast her a look of deep disapproval, and sipped his pint again, snorting some of it back out as they both erupted in laughter.

“That, and stabbing Germany in the back during the Great War,” she reminded him primly, turning her nose up in the air as though superior. “We planned it all.”

“Oh, aye. Forgot about that. You pissed off the Spanish, too. And it’s not like the Catholics to pursue violent crusades against other peoples. Your lot
must
be wicked.”

“You’re awful, you are,” she laughed.

“I know.”

“We also control your banks, press and Parliament too, why do you think Hitler had invaded all these countries? Liberation, Paul.”

“I knew I liked ’im, deep down.” He took a deep swig of his pint. “To ’itler!”

“At least I can rely on you for some gallows humour when they finally make it illegal for me to be alive.”

At that, he sobered. “Well, that’s it. Since this registration business… now they’re
enforcing
the teaching of the Protocols in schools.”

She gave in to her genuine horror, momentarily, and then shrugged, unnecessarily rearranging her hair, which was more-than effectively wrapped, while trying to disguise how deeply shook she was.

“Well, that’s a turn up. Bloody vicious bastards.”

Despite himself, Paul suppressed a little smile. He liked it when she swore. Naomi Rosenberg was the only girl – woman – he knew that used profanity, as well as frequenting pubs to drink pints. But it never sounded ugly from her; she was too sweet-natured, with too nice a temperament. And God knows, he thought, she has every reason to swear with these buggers here.

“Don’t worry. No one is too inspired. And cops –
our
cops – will hardly be breaking down doors to check passports will they? People aren’t buying it. That screaming Austrian charisma just doesn’t translate into English. As for the Protocols, it will bore the kids to death.”

She was only slightly mollified. He pressed on, trying to cheer her up.

“It won’t catch on, lass. ‘Germany Awake’ and ‘Hail Victory’ aren’t exactly ‘
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
’ are they? You reckon we’ll go Nazi mad? Have you
seen
the goons coming out of the woodwork in BUF clobber?”

Naomi opted to not answer, taking a lengthy swig of her Tetley’s while brooding over the hated Protocols, the hated registration, the hated Nazis. Paul tried to catch her eye with a smile.

“I read it funny. In class, like… Make a real show of it, complete with theatrics. Act it like Fagin the Jew, with his gang of boy thieves…” Seeing how little impact the jokes had, Paul’s smile faded, and he sobered his tone. “Come on, lass; everyone knows it’s a load of old bollocks. The kids laugh.”

“And the younger kids, Paul? The next generation of kids? The ones that follow?”

He hesitated. “It won’t last that long.”

She forced a laugh. “Oh, that’s right, Mr Writer. Your novel explains exactly how we defeat the forces of evil. Like a Winston bloody Churchill speech.”

“Shh…”

Paul glanced around, nervously. There were only a few local drunks in the pub, sat smoking pipes in their Sunday best. Paul always wondered about them. They had the air of defeat, of suppression and melancholy, which he understood as most had fought in the Great War. But these forlorn figures wore their Sunday best to the pub. Their demeanour of being broken men was masked; misery clad with the outward appearance of respectability. It confused him.

Some hated him. One old man had approached him once at his table in the far corner, at the height of the Blitz, tottering over unsteadily as Paul sat reading quietly, drinking his fourth Tetley’s. “More like you, and we wouldn’t have held out even this long…” the man had said. “Bleedin’
coward
.”

“I’m a fireman,” Paul told him shortly. And when the man shouted at him again, he added a little less reservedly, “I’m a fireman, and a
conscientious objector
to war. I’ll
help
victims, not create them. I’ll do my bit for my country, but not by agreeing to what every other stupid bugger did, including those at the top who think war’s such a great pastime.
All right
? And I’ve not slept either, and I’m tired, and reading, so kindly piss off.”

“You’re a ruddy coward, you bastard
shirker
,” the old man told Paul, utterly impervious to his irate counter.

To his astonishment, the old man had spat on him, and then left. He’d never returned to the pub thereafter. Paul hoped he hadn’t killed himself in grief. He sometimes wondered.

Now, Paul leaned in to Naomi.

“Yeah. Well, about that… I figure it might help, it might not.”

“So what’s the deal?”

“Well, I write about England victorious.”

She shook her head. “Impossible.”

“Aha!” he cried. “That’s only
retrospect
convincing you of that. Really, things could, and probably
should
have gone differently.”

Now he had her attention. He leaned in, suddenly animated.

“The navy
repulse
an invasion. Obviously a few thousand Boche initially land, the Luftwaffe cause some mayhem,
yada
yada, but then the Navy,
our
lads, arrive in force. Churchill…” he leaned in closer, and his voice went even lower. Naomi could smell the cheap aftershave perfume he used on his neck. “… Churchill
never got deposed
. No armistice. No defeatism.
Tell Jerry to go stick it up his arse.
Fight to the last man. They know the SS won’t actually
harm
a single POW, or the yanks and maybe Stalin, the empire en masse;
every
other bugger will come in on our side… they call the bluff, hold their nerve. Whitehall stabilises. They rally together…”

He was speaking faster than she’d ever heard him, bubbling with enthusiasm.

“The Navy blocks further kraut supplies, support and troops sent from the coasts of France, Belgium and Holland. The air force didn’t overextend and get battered in May and early June, and the Germans delayed their planned invasion to mid-September at the earliest. By that time the RAF had recovered its losses. Then Jerry focuses only on bombing the cities, only uses the Messerschmitts for
guarding bombers
, instead of knocking out Spitfires faster than we can build new ’uns. They
can’t support the divisions that landed
. The rest of the Wehrmacht are stuck in France. The Boche navy can’t clear ours. The RAF holds out. The Jerries who landed run out of supplies.
The invasion collapses
.”

Speaking quickly at barely more than a whisper, Naomi allowed herself to be taken in by the passion of Paul and she pondered, musing on the possibility. It seemed an insane concept, yet something about it rang true.
Imagine
, she thought. The Germans beaten back from British shores.
Imagine
.