Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (48 page)

Heydrich agreed; he rather admired the devious planning of the British.

“Indeed. And if the opportunity presented itself, they would have attacked and coordinated attacks through direct assault or incidents of sabotage behind what would be called the front line if indeed, a frontline had been established in our rapid advance to London.”

The men banged the table again.

Heydrich added. “Of course, in the period afterwards this resistance did rear its head, as you gentlemen well know. But your work has been phenomenal.”

“I had no idea a sophisticated network was in place…” Himmler began, before trailing off.

Heydrich mused, sitting back down.

“All across the south and southeast; there were sufficient sniper rifles, pistols and grenades, radios, partisan units and by all accounts,
fire
in their Anglo-Saxon bellies to make life difficult for we invaders and to keep this sort of guerrilla campaign going for a while, complete with assassinations and total disregard for German reprisals against the populace. These English are so
feisty
… I don’t quite understand how it is they cannot see the reality of the Jew and this cabal of aristocratic and masonic Jewry that controls them when they could be a proud ally of the German Reich and retain the largest Empire in the world – a world run by Saxon blood, triumphant over Jewish printing presses and the Slavic Jewish contagion of communism.”

More murmured agreements.

“Gruppenführer Nebe, perhaps you’d like to report on the results of these actions in the north.”

Nebe cleared his throat, before his calm assessment. “Cellars were destroyed with grenades, whole groups of men and women alike were quietly liquidated, radio equipment was sabotaged with a quite remarkable 70% estimated success rate, Gestapo agents were able to,
extract
, information from a great deal of the by all accounts very courageous would-be partisans that led to the almost total collapse of the whole resistance movement as a concerted, organised and coordinated effort… at least, in the wake of Army Group Centre, Group C, and as far north as Manchester.”

Himmler nodded in approval. Schellenberg wondered if his neck was capable of soreness.

“And
Einsatzgruppe Leeds
, Major Lange?” Heydrich inquired.

“Much the same report as the Gruppenführer,” the newly promoted Sturmbannführer Dr Rudolf Lange reported. “Complete subjugation and liquidation; all the way up Army Group B of AG Centre; as far north as Leeds and right up to the line of occupation.”

Heydrich began to question them in turn.

“
Einsatzgruppe Liverpool
?”

A bleary-eyed Standartenführer Paul Blobel answered, knowing better than to lie.

“All cleared up to Liverpool; a truly horrible state of affairs in the city but things have quietened down. We had our own sick murderer; like that fellow in France, Pettiot… he was killing Jews and hideaways in his basement. We got him, though, and then blocked the story. For the most part, all arrests assigned to us as per the
Sonderfahndungsliste G.B
in our sphere of operations have been carried out, although I report that some known dissidents still remain at large.”

“See to it that they’re carried out in the coming days, and pull yourself together,” Heydrich snapped.

“Yes sir, Herr Reichsprotektor,” Blobel mumbled.

Heydrich scowled at him, and then turned away.

“
Einsatzgruppe Birmingham
?”

“Thoroughly covered, no resistance remaining whatsoever,” Sturmbannführer Martin Sandberger reported, his enormously wide-head and square jaw having pride of place as the most menacing visage in the room. In a room that contained Gestapo Müller and Dr Rudolf Lange, who had tortured more people to death than Tomas de Torquemada, that was some accomplishment.

Sandberger though, much like Lange, was an educated man, and as the son of an IG Farben director he had provided Heydrich, and thus Himmler and Hitler, with excellent links to that company. Large projects were in the offing, between the SS and the giant corporation. Himmler nodded his approval of Sandberger.

“
Einsatzkommando
2 of my
Einsatzgruppe
operated in Birmingham during our journey along the west coast, which likely helped placate the city,” Blobel offered, and Sandberger looked at him with open distaste. Nebe wrinkled his nose up at the crude attempt to win back favour.

Heydrich simply ignored him. “
Einsatzgruppe Bristol
?”

“Not a shot fired in anger for some time,” Standartenführer Otto Ohlendorf replied, in his quiet, agreeable manner. “Every arrest on Herr Schellenberg’s lists in my operational area carried out, only seventy-four executions following the initial Wehrmacht entry, and the surrounding zone entirely secure.”

“Excellent work,” Heydrich boomed, his voice dropping several notches lower.

He turned to Karl Jäger. “I assume you have a full report on Edinburgh and Glasgow?”

“I do, Reichsprotektor. Four months of
Einsatzgruppe Edinburgh
operations.” He held his report aloft. Eichmann, sat beside him, took the file from him and began poring over it.

“Excellent.”

“Herr Reichsprotektor,” Jäger began, hesitantly, “… With respect, I would like to ask as to the plans to establish further action groups in Edinburgh and Glasgow to combat Scottish resistance? With respect.”

“With respect
indeed
, Herr Jäger. There has been a new development in Great British policy, in that to kill as many birds as possible with one stone, the Führer has deemed it acceptable to grant Scotland her independence from the Empire’s historical capital and power, London. As we incorporate England or rather, as England incorporates herself with our assistance into the new order in the world, Scotland’s people will be pacified by their longed for
freedom
, while we ensure that a government amenable to the Reich and with Scottish nationalist support is quietly installed there.”

Einsatzgruppe Leeds
commander Rudolf Lange banged the table, thrice.

“A very welcome development on the whole for the Reich and for our actions here, Herr Reichsprotektor. I’m sure we’re all appreciative of our Führer’s ability to secure peace as well as conquer.”

“Indeed, you should be pleased as your own tasks in the north will be made more logistically efficient,
Sturmbannführer
Lange… which I might add, is your new rank to which I am promoting you, in agreement with the Reichsführer. Regarding Scotland; SS action is best concentrated across the north of England where more people dwell, is part of England and in any case, is where the more aggressive Scottish rebels stupidly fighting for the old idea of Great Britain are to be found resisting and needlessly putting their necks in the noose.”

They banged the table again; Lange thanked Heydrich and then Himmler, almost as an afterthought.

“I was not made aware of SS involvement in commando actions on British soil…” Himmler interjected again, rather pointedly. Some men looked down in embarrassment; Heydrich stifled his irritation. They had long since moved on from that particular point.

“Reichsführer, you are referring to the aforementioned Fifth Columnist work in pacifying organised resistance, yes? As I understand it, you were not informed of the use of Waffen-SS commandos and this Gestapo/SiPo and SD operation as in light of your enormously far-ranging duties in the Reich and its territories; it was at a time when your personal direction of crucial continental and internal actions was required; bearing in mind your great cultural tasks and indeed, overseeing of SS matters in other newly acquired territories such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The details of execution were being worked out when you toured the lowlands and France, Herr Reichsführer.”

Now be quiet, you pedantic fool
, Heydrich thought venomously; his face a smiling mask.

Himmler smiled. “Of course, you have my complete and full authorisation with regards to security matters, Herr Obergruppenführer.”

“Excellent,” Heydrich sneered, smile still in place. “And on that note, gentlemen, there is to be a buffet; we shall be served with wine and some indigenous cuisine which I must say I’m surprisingly fond of…”

With that, he rose, as did the rest of the table, and they bustled in to the adjacent room, where the sight of a sumptuous buffet brought open gasps and delight from the collection of the hardest, cruellest men of the Reich.

~

“No, you bastard.”

Alan sprang into the gap where the door closed, holding it open with his foot. Jack grabbed the metal-plates that held the glass, and pulled with all his might, as Mary and William made an ungainly rush towards the door.

Behind them, two SS men came clattering down the stairs.

The Scot and his Barceloniña clattered through Alan and Jack, and they all collapsed in an undignified heap on the floor, seconds before the train started to take off. The SS men yelled at the train in German, but with all the authority of their foreign tongue, such screams were impotent to stop the train as it inexorably pulled away from the station and disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel.

Panting, exhilarated, the group disentangled themselves from the twisted pile of human limbs they had created on the ground, and registering the confused shock of their fellow passengers, they collapsed again in uproarious laughter, flooding with relief.

~

The train stopped at Tottenham Court Road, and the four friends disembarked, still chuckling, and out into the still-strong light of a day that harkened back to the strangest of those shared on Mary’s native soil.

Alan commented on it, for what William decided was the seventh time or so.

“Bloody hell, man… that was a close one eh?”

“Yes, Alan.”

“German bastards.
As if
they chased us like that over a cheeky head-butt and stomp on the BUF? It’s an all-English affair.”

“Yes, Alan.”

He snorted. “Aye, bugger off, Jock, it’s not my fault you almost got bloody left behind you daft slow clumsy bastard like.”

William winced, still limping somewhat. “Thanks for your touching concern. I thought I’d had it there too, for a minute. Christ, I need to smoke less.”

Even as he said it, the reality of their situation dawned on him, and he could tell from the silence that ensued that the rest of them thought the same. Tomorrow. The mission. Their smoking habits were an irrelevance.

In conscious irony, William retrieved his cigarettes, lit one and passed them around, grateful of the others’ humorous treatment of the gesture.

They slowly progressed through the Bloomsbury Streets, reaching the final square nearest the Royal Oak. Two familiar old figures were sat smoking pipes on the bench. Alan nudged Jack, nodding over to them with a grin.

“Old boys are there.”

They cut through the square, and the cracked, slightly wheezing voices came into focus, drifting through the silence of the cold air of early evening.

“These
bloody
Germans.”

All four of them suppressed a snort of laughter.

“Aye… it’s a bloody joke, I tell you. No free speech anymore, I heard old Ted got arrested and a stern tellin’ off, I tell you, more than a slap on the wrist what our old Bobbies would give. Bleedin’ terrified, he was.”

“Aye, buggers the lot of ’em. Weren’t like this when we was kids, Jerries or no Jerries. Coppers gave you a tellin’ off, and if you played up again you got a clip, and that were bloody that. But I’m tellin’ you, you don’t threaten someone what don’t ’ave it comin’.”

“Aye. Buggers they are, buggers. Our coppers too, playing along with these bloody Jerries. Even enforcing the Jerries’ curfew! Enforcing the curfew! I tell you, did we fight in bloody France for four years, and our lads die, to
beat
those bastards, only for their bloody sons to enforce a Boche curfew in England twenty years later?”

“Aye… set of buggers.”

Jack and Alan were besides themselves. The near-escape with the German security police had put them both in high spirits, compounded by their underlying nerves, and they were in high humour. Mary was struggling to understand the heavily pronounced pseudo-cockney drawl of the old men, but she was giggling at her friends. William took it upon himself to speak.

“All right, old boys?”

They both looked around in surprise, although the group had been no further than twenty feet away for a fair while.

“Aye. All right son. How are you lot gettin’ on?”

“Just getting on with it, old bean, you know how it is,” Jack shrugged.

“Aye well, it weren’t like this in my bloody day I tell you…”

Jack and Alan half-turned away as a bubbling hiss of laughter escaped them. Their attempt to mask their amusement with bursts of coughing failed to convince the two older men, the oldest of whom glared with sudden spite.

“Well, in my day we all bloody
fought
, of course. That’s why these Jerries never came here when us lot were younger. Oh, we was too old to enlist, in proper terms, I were what, 41 in ’14, not in me early 20s.
That’s
the age they wanted, proper fighting age. Like you lot.”

“Aye,” his friend agreed darkly. “You lot are the right age to fight.”

“It’s a bleedin’ shame more of our lot didn’t go fight ’em this time ’round, i’n’it?”

“Aye, bunch of fucking ginger beers and nancies this time around, lost the fucking country to Jerries…”

The young men felt their good spirits evaporate in the toxic atmosphere of the scorn of the old, bitter men, whose nostalgic chuntering was no longer funny. On the contrary, they felt assaulted.

“We fought fascism, old man–” Alan began hotly.

“That’s enough. Take care, old boys.” Jack interrupted, nodding to the old men on the bench.

“–We fought fascists for
years
in the trenches and never quit.”

Jack grabbed Alan’s arm, and began steering him away towards the road, and thence the pub. William and Mary followed behind, sombrely. The Scot laced his arm around his lover’s shoulders, squeezing her to him.

“We fought you old bastard, and always will,” Alan shouted over his shoulder, at which Jack slapped across the back of his head, hard. It didn’t further rile the Geordie, but rather calmed him, as he knew he had gone too far.