Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (51 page)

On the second floor, Jost and Schöngarth stomped past the shrieking figures being violently beaten and hauled from the other rooms, their jackboots thumping on the polished wood as they marched to the furthest door back from the stairs. There, sat bolt upright in the four-poster bed with three machine guns trained on him, in a tastefully decorated room, they found their man.

“Eric Blair,” Jost demanded, almost triumphantly.

The man sighed, his neatly-parted hair dishevelled but the pencil-moustache and almost schoolmasterly features identified him to his thrilled captors. He saw the hopelessness in his situation, instead lighting a cigarette in response, sucking in the smoke with rueful gusto as though it was his last. “Viva libertad…” he intoned wistfully, as though to himself.

“Take the swine,” Jost told the men in German.

Four hands seized hold of George Orwell, and dragged him, still in his nightgown, out to the street, peppering him with vicious shots and cruel blows all the way. The writer refused to cry out in pain; until the multitude of painful blows rendered him all-but senseless, and a series of more methodical, calculated strikes from his tormentors elicited agonised moans through gritted teeth.

Jost took one last, lingering look at the great Minster, framed against the starry sky over England, before unconsciously letting out a small noise of amused triumph, and stepping back into the Mercedes with Schöngarth. They grinned at each other on the backseat, glowing, thrilled with success. Heydrich would be delighted.

~

In Manchester, Nebe’s other commando rolled up on a quiet Denton terrace, and field grey stormtroopers quietly disembarked the cross marked trucks to the cobbles. Doors were kicked off hinges at houses 2, 6, 10 and 11, and several inhabitants were hauled out kicking and screaming. One man spat at his SD tormentor; a brute drafted from the Hamburg Gestapo into the Action Groups, who responded by firing into both kneecaps of the Mancunian. The gunshots and resulting screams of pain saw the rest of the street’s curtain open, and the shocked and horrified eyes of the estate looked out, watching the grim spectacle as their neighbours were hauled away.

A lieutenant approached the enlisted Gestapo thug, and slapped his face.

“Idiot! This isn’t Poland! Put him in the truck, Fritz.”

The surly Gestapo man complied, hauling the bleeding man up and into captivity. All resistance, however, had been knocked out of his fellow arrestees on the loud reports from the Walther PP, and his thrashing anguish.

With business concluded at all four addresses, the men of
EK1 Manchester
rolled westwards to the next street on their list, in Moss Side, south of the centre. Further west, the men of EK3M were on a silent prowl of intent in a hunt through Salford and Trafford.

Close to headquarters, one truck deposited a group of frightened women in the building, where office staff took charge of them and led the terrified, pleading group down to the holding cells. Bloodstained floors and chains only heightened the abject terror they felt.

Elsewhere, designated anti-tank ditches were located in the usual places – fields on the city outskirts and beyond – and machine gun fire spelled the end of hundreds more Enemies of the Reich; resistance real, false and imagined alike. Men, women and children, cut from the prime of their youth and sent crashing to the cold earth, spilling crimson as the blood freely flowed.

“Halt,” Amon Goeth shouted, in a field near the northern outskirts of Leeds. His men lowered their weapons, wondering what crazed impulse had taken the lieutenant now. Denied his favourite part of the job, the recently demoted Unterscharführer Beckenbaur scowled.

“It is a pleasure, and a privilege,” Goeth called out smoothly, his jaw bunching as he stepped over the boggy ground to the edge of the ditch, “… to personally deal with such filth, in the name of the Führer.”

He peered at the first of twelve people, stood shivering at the pit edge, glancing fearfully between the cold mud of their soon-to-be resting place and the cold faces of the men who would put them there. She was a girl of perhaps 21, not long since removed from teenage years. Black hair cascaded untidily down her shoulders, and some was stuck to her tear-streaked face. Her bright eyes were now relatively clear of water, but their piercing energy, and pleading entreaty had no effect whatsoever on the Austrian man who now jutted his brutal face to within inches of hers.

Even through her paralysing terror, she could smell whiskey, and something else unidentifable on his breath; something bitter, yet tinged with a chemical sweetness.

“Say…” Goeth breathed lustily, raising his Luger, “Heil Hitler.”

The girl whimpered in fear. Tears trickled down the dirty, streaked flesh of her cheek.

Goeth shrugged, and lowering his officer-issue pistol, he instead drew a knife with an ostentatious flourish, and before she could react, the SS lieutenant began stabbing her repeatedly in the stomach. The cruel blade penetrated her with a sickening sound of metallic blade meeting, and smiting, flesh and bone. As her uncomprehending, terrorised family sank to their knees in a mortified paralysis, utterly gripped by the evil horror, Goeth grinned at them, his teeth bared with churlish, cannibalistic contempt.

“You have the chance for redemption… ‘Heil Hitler’… or
that
.”

Of the eleven remaining people, four managed to overcome their terror long enough to invoke the name of Germany’s leader. Wired on his standard methamphetamine ration, a wired Goeth paced back and forth, revelling in his role as executioner. Having acquiesced to a Hitler salute, the savage Austrian officer shot them; individual bullets administered between the eyes. Compared to the barbarism suffered by the unfortunate eight, these gunshots were merciful. Even Beckenbaur was relieved each time a shivering, doomed captive managed to blurt out the German salute, instead of simply babbling in fear or mouthing wordlessly in paralysed shock.

In a cold, empty house in Bloomsbury, the former Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police John Thomas was sat dumbly in his drab, unclean living room, morosely swigging from a bottle of whiskey that dangled precariously from his swaying right hand.

The rapidly ageing policeman had not been to the Royal Oak in several weeks, leaving the house only to replenish his meagre food supplies, having been in possession of a not-inconsiderable haul of alcoholic liquors and spirits amassed in the days before rationing, in the days before war, in the days of peace. It showed. Two weeks without shaving had seen his stubble grow out into an unkempt mass of straggly hair. The once dashing mop that adorned his head was now a similarly wild, tangled mess that sat without shape above his haggard face and its sunken eyes, the waxy complexion of a vampire. The striking comparison to Bill Wilson was unavoidable, he noted mirthlessly on the sole occasion he had bothered checked a mirror in those empty, long days and weeks.

Almighty was the crash of the door, as a gang of uniformed German thugs tore into the room, but John Thomas did not react. It was a moment he had lived out in his dreams and imagination for as long as he cared to remember, and as the Germans began to discuss the grim spectacle of his ruined, high-smelling home amongst themselves, the Scotland Yard man merely raised the whiskey bottle to his lips to down the last of its pungent contents. He did not even look at them.

In the depths of his drunken stupor, Thomas reflected that he had been a policeman all his life, yet the new form of this role was utterly perplexing. Despite himself, he allowed a sense of gratitude to seep through that while the police of the New Order were here to arrest him, at least he did not have to be part of their system. As a lifelong policeman, he denied them that much.

So weak and malnourished was he – once a strong, powerful man of action – that when the troops grabbed him to haul him away to his fate, the overzealous seizure saw the right arm of John Thomas snap cleanly in the hand of his SS tormentor. The German, youthful in his early twenties, had to hide his disgust from his amused kameraden as they dragged their pitiful prey to the truck.

Any flagged names; any suspected beyond reasonable doubt; all those whom had survived the initial purge, before the Wehrmacht’s relative peaceful occupation… all were seized, in the blackness of that evening, vanished from their lives, under
Night and Fog
.

In the French barracks of St George no.5 that night, the men were sat smoking, some tenderly inspecting their wounds from the escape attempt, others merely nursing injured pride. James Wilkinson sat alone, chain-smoking on his bunk in the corner, brooding quietly.

The door opened, and Lieutenant Hoffman entered, with slight hesitance.

Usually, the man’s likeable charm had thus far been enough to encourage some kind of good-natured banter being sent his way on arrival, men choosing to overlook his SS uniform. Providing alcohol and cigarettes – good ones – in copious quantities did little to lessen the esteem he was held in. But not on this day. The impotence of the men and their resentment of the day’s events repressed all prevailing goodwill they had towards the Obersturmführer from Munich.

The big Bavarian looked to his immediate right at the nearest bunks to him, where the Sergeant, James Fletcher, Brian and Tommy were all propped against the back wall, reading quietly on their bunks. For an hour, none had been inclined to speak.

“Sarge,” Hoffman began, using the English phrase. “The major would like to see you, with your permission.”

“With his permission,” Tommy echoed sarcastically, though his voice was hollow. “Sarge? You want to turn him down, Stan. Bollocks to his games.”

But Hitchman nodded. “Very well, Lieutenant. Very well.”

Without further ado, he rose to his feet, and marched proudly outside, straight-backed, where two enlisted SS men escorted him away. Hoffman, however, remained behind.

“Tommy…”

The cockney resented being singled out for an entreaty. His eyes did not rise from the book, but he could feel an almost accusatory stare coming from some of the other men in the bunk, whose anti-German feelings were running particularly high after the incident with the escapees, Stanley and Major Wolf.

“Tommy, Brian, James, and you, Wilkinson over there in that corner, and
all
of you, look; this morning was an unfortunate affair but it’s just the way things are.”

“Just the way things are,” Tommy intoned.

He finally looked up from his book, to see Hoffman standing passively with his hands raised. The SS officer looked so earnest that many of the men shelved their hostility towards the man who so constantly replenished their tobacco stores, and brought booze and music to their lives in camp. In hundreds and hundreds of hours spent together, as serving men, they also believed in his genuine nature. Hoffman, they had almost unanimously agreed, was a soldier of their ilk. His honesty was consistent.

Tommy sighed. “Sit on the fucking bed, Lieutenant Jerry.”

Hoffman sat down, grinning. “
I
give the orders around here, Private Tommy, or so they tell me. Lieutenant Nonsenseführer Hoffenbaden or whatever you swine say.”

That drew some low chortles. The SS-Obersturmführer took out his cigarette case, lighting one. He did not need to offer one to Tommy, nor any of the others present; their own supplies were plentiful enough.

“Stanley is a brave man,” he volunteered, exhaling smoke.

“Yeah, he is.”

Several of the others pitched in, in affirmation. Hoffman noted the pride in their voices.

“Do you Tommies have a code against cowardice in your army?”

James Fletcher opened and closed his mouth, deciding against his own answer. Several murmured answers contradicted each other, and Fletcher shrugged. He looked over to Tommy, who considered.

“I reckon so, yeah. I mean, they shot deserters in the Great War, which only ended twenty-something years ago. And I daresay they’d ’ave shot us lot if we’d bunked off in France.”

Hoffman frowned. “Bunked off?”

“Deserted. Had it on our toes. Done a runner. Ran away. Left the war like cowards, against our orders to fight.”

“Ah. Retreat without orders. Yes, that does make sense. You cannot conquer half the world if you are cowards.”

They all looked at him, uncertain. He had a glint in his eye.

“Meaning the British Empire. That spirit is needed now. Cowards cannot save us from the menace of this world. The terror that threatens western civilisation, and has done since 1917.”

James Wilkinson, who had not so much as acknowledged Hoffman’s presence in his far corner of the room, snorted at that. He could hear the conversation quite clearly, the room being otherwise completely silent.

Hoffman turned, looking over at the British soldier, his nose wrinkled with distaste. Reclined on his bunk reading Goethe’s
Faust
, his ever-lengthening hair now straddling his cheeks and with twirls of cigarette smoke drifting over his head, the Yorkshireman resembled a posing artist or aspiring writer rather than a
bread-and-butter
northern caveman, as he was painted.

“Do you disagree, Wilkinson?” Hoffman asked, with supreme disdain.

The Yorkshireman snuffed out his cigarette, and immediately lit another, all the keeping his eyes fixed on the book.

“Yeah.”

“
What
do you disagree
about
, exactly?”

“Communism. Only rich people and Nazis hate it.”

“Oh,” Hoffman snarled. “So with all the millions dead in Russia, the slaughter of anyone who happened to own something of value, Civil War, the unrest that spread to Germany, riots in our streets, the killing of National Socialists, poisoning Spain, infecting France, the slaughter of Christians, the burning of churches, the Jews at its head leading it, the corruption in Russia, the invasions of the Baltic States from Stalin and the millions of people he has killed…
millions
… and this is not something to hate?”

The German shook his head in genuine wonder. James looked up from the book at him, calmly.

“Yeah. They invaded Poland, too.
With you
.”