Origins: The Reich (11 page)

Tomal sat comfortably
in his plush leather chair, which was a significant upgrade from his seating arrangement a month earlier.  Joining him at the head of the large and very full gathering hall were the other Nazi party executive committee members.  The ten party leaders all sat facing the bustling crowd behind a long rectangular table with a speakers lectern positioned in the center.  At the moment, Anton Drexler commanded the lectern, but he was wrapping things up.

“Now let us hear a report on party membership from our acting head of propaganda,” Drexler said and took his seat while Tomal stepped up to the lectern with a broad smile of satisfaction lighting up his face.

Hitler was the official head of propaganda but was only a month into serving his three-month prison sentence for orchestrating their assault on the Bavarian League gathering.  This gave him something of a martyred status within the party and throughout the nationalist leaning political community in general for taking the bold and productive action.  The attack had been a boon for the Nazi party membership, one that Tomal was now proud to report on during Hitler’s absence.

Tomal raised his arms out wide and rotated from side to side at the waist while gesturing toward the standing room only gathering hall.  “Need I state the obvious; membership is flourishing.”

Applause and cheers rose up from those gathered but quieted again as Tomal continued speaking.  “Thirty days ago our membership stood at one hundred and two.  Tonight we have two thousand three hundred and twelve card carrying brothers.”

The crowd cheered once more, which prompted Tomal to shout over the din, “And looking upon this crowd I dare say that number will grow much higher after tonight.”  This induced a wave of pride and achievement that rolled over the crowd and their collective voice drowned out Tomal.  He fell silent, looked upon the frothy gathering of German nationalists and nodded his approval.  These were the kind of members he and Hitler needed.

These new initiates joined the party after the violent action had been taken because they too wanted an outlet for their rage.  They joined a political party they knew would finally take action on their behalf, and they were chomping at the bit to participate.

The cheers began dying down at last.  Tomal was about to speak further, but noticed a disturbance among the crowd.  Like a curtain drawing open to begin a play, the crowd parted down the middle to reveal Adolf Hitler standing tall and proud with a contingent of ten Brownshirts in tow.

Shock and alarm raced across the crowd, which prompted Drexler to brush Tomal away from the lectern and begin banging his gavel in a call for order.  It was no use.  Some among the crowd were scared by the interruption, while most others stood energized and cheered the sudden appearance of their hero.  In the end, the only one with the power to silence the bubbling masses was Hitler, and he proceeded to use that power to its fullest.

Still standing among the jubilant crowd, Adolf Hitler produced a pistol from his pocket and fired a round into the ceiling.  While a collective gasp sucked all sound out of the packed chamber, Hitler took the opportunity to rush the executive committee table and jumped up onto Tomal’s vacant seat.

“Our national revolution has broken out! Tonight we rebel against the Berlin government and the November criminals of 1918,” Hitler declared at the top of his lungs and by doing so, indicted those in the government who signed the Treaty of Versailles.

The crowd exchanged nervous glances of both fear and excitement among themselves.  Soon an uneasy murmur came brewing from the crowd with a recurring theme that seemed to ask, ‘Is he for real?’

Drexler seized upon the moment of hesitation from the collective Nazi membership.  “Rebel?  How?  With what?  We have swelled in numbers, yes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  A few thousand unarmed protesters do not make a revolution.  In fact, it barely makes the papers.”

“Let Mussolini’s march on Rome with a mere thirty-thousand men serve as our road map.  He took over all of Italy without a shot fired,” Hitler began, but was shouted down by Drexler’s microphone enhanced voice.

“Benito Mussolini had twenty times our number, and they were armed,” Drexler countered.

“Members of our Storm Detachment working inside the Munich police force have secured a barracks full of guns and ammunition,” Hitler announced.  “We will take the Defense Ministry, and arrest the governor and his cabinet.  We all know more will join us when that happens; the German people have been oppressed for too long by this puppet government and their foreign allies. True Germans want, no, they demand rebellion and we shall give it to them, tonight.  Enough talk; now we march!”

“Who are you to issue such an order?” Drexler demanded.

Hitler had no microphone yet his voice boomed between the walls of the gathering hall many times louder than Drexler’s.  “Who am I?  I am the man who went to prison in support of this movement.  I am the one who, even during my confinement, drew thousands into this political party.  These are all men who demand action, and action they shall have because what motivates us is neither self-conceit nor self-interest, but rather a burning desire to join the battle in this grave eleventh hour for our German Fatherland.”

Hitler was bellowing his words with unrivaled intensity at that moment, and yet still managed to find a whole other level of intensity to declare, “Either the German revolution begins tonight or I take these members and form a new party that
will
take action!”

Anton Drexler placed his hands on either side of the lectern, leaned toward Hitler, and said in a calm and quiet tone, “If you wish to renounce your membership, there is the door.”

“Those who would act, follow me,” Hitler responded without hesitation and began marching through the crowd toward the exit.

Not since Hastelloy and he traded speeches at Caesar’s funeral had Tomal witnessed such a rapid and complete transformation of a crowd by a speaker.  Hitler had turned them inside out with just a few sentences. It had somewhat of a hocus-pocus, or magical effect about it.

Tomal did not have a prayer of suppressing a broad grin as he watched all but one of the executive committee members rise from their seats to join Hitler on his way out the door.  Those in the crowd followed their lead almost to a man.

Realizing his lost position, Drexler put his arms up into the air and shouted, “Wait, wait!  Let the executive committee confer on this and come to an arrangement that does not splinter our Nazi party.”

Hitler stopped midstride and executed a military style about face while displaying a strength of will far greater than that of Tomal.  Not even a hint of self-satisfaction or gloating touched his features.  He marched the executive committee members back to the table and Tomal joined them in a tight circle with Hitler and Drexler in the middle.  “Let’s talk then.”

“Aren’t you supposed to still be in prison for the ruckus you caused?” Drexler began.

“They let me out for good behavior,” Hitler deadpanned back.  “Now to the issue at hand, I and all of my supporters will remain members of this party if I am named president right here, right now.  Otherwise we move without you.”

Anton Drexler looked mad enough to spit nails, but he was smart enough to detach his emotions from the moment to concede his position of power.  Just like that, Hitler had executed a coup of the Nazi party without any bloodshed, and he moved the membership to do the same among the streets of Munich.

An hour later Hitler led a contingent of three thousand Nazis out of the meeting hall to the occupied barracks.  There they armed themselves with weapons of war and marched on the Defense Ministry to seize control of the capital grounds and governor’s mansion.  When they arrived at the walled compound, they encountered a fortified contingent of a hundred well-trained soldiers.

“We will march to the gates and pry them open as if they are not even there,” Hitler declared.  “They will not fire on their own, especially when we outnumber them by so many.”

Adolf Hitler then boldly took position in the center of the front line and led the hundred-yard march down the middle of the deserted street.  When they drew within fifty feet of the white stone walls flanking the locked wrought iron front gates, a hundred rifles were leveled at the crowd of three thousand marchers.

Tomal felt a collective flinch from the determined crowd, but they pressed on with Hitler now enveloped within the lines of protesters; all of them that is except for Tomal.  He stopped in his tracks allowing a few rows of men to progress between him and the enemy rifles.  He then raised his own bolt-action rifle, took aim, and fired at the nearest soldier.  A few more shots rang out from the marching Nazis before one fateful word was shouted from behind the white walls.

“Fire!” and they did.

Dozens of protesters in the front row were hit and dropped to the ground amid a torrent of desperate screams.  Despite their group bravado, the Nazis were an untrained mass and ran for their lives at the first sign of carnage. 

Tomal slowly walked backwards away from the scene until the mass of fleeing bodies parted to reveal Adolf Hitler lying on the ground.  He was propped up on one elbow while holding a bullet wound in the left leg with his free hand.  Tomal prepared to run and help his friend, but a dismissive wave from the man made him stop.

“Go, I’ll be fine,” Hitler shouted to Tomal, and he obeyed the man’s command without hesitation.

Under the escort
of a prison guard, Tomal carried a stack of four books with a plate holding a single piece of chocolate cake resting on top.  His visitor’s badge clanked off the porcelain plate in time with the metal brace on his leg tapping on the tile floor as they walked to a ‘prison cell’ at the far end of the of the building’s southeast wing.

It was a relatively new prison constructed ten years earlier and served as a Festunshaft, fortress confinement, a facility that housed minimum security threats.  The inmates were excluded from hard labor requirements and were allowed visitors on a daily basis for long hours at a time.  If one had to serve a prison sentence, then Landsberg Prison was the best possible institution they could hope for.

Today, Tomal made the hour drive west from Munich to visit his dear friend, Adolf Hitler, for the first time after his sentencing.  The prison guard ushered him into Adolf’s cell much like a butler might have years ago in a high society estate.  There Tomal found Hitler seated at a desk with a small vase of flowers brightening the room.

As the guard made his way back down the hallway, Tomal looked around the ‘prison cell’.  In addition to the desk, the small but not cramped cell featured a cot in the far corner with a nightstand positioned next to it with a reading lamp on top.  Two sets of double windows filled the entire back wall and gave a very nice view of the Lech River as the fifth story view overlooked three rows of houses on the way to the shoreline.  There was even an olive branch wreath hanging on the wall above the man’s writing desk.

The thought occurred to Tomal that Hitler’s prison cell was larger and more opulent than his dorm room while studying at the University of Heidelberg.  “If this is what incarceration means to them, Herr Hitler, then they can chain me to the wall any day,” Tomal announced to his friend while placing his literary cargo onto the desk.

Hitler looked up from his writing, rose to his feet with a broad smile and enveloped Tomal in a warm, brotherly hug.  “The presiding judge was most lenient in his sentencing, wasn’t he?”

Tomal pushed back from the embrace after a moment to look at Adolf and assess his condition.  “Tell me, how’s your leg?”

“It’s fine, my friend.  The prison doctor may never be a seamstress with the haggard stitch job he performed, but there was no permanent damage from the bullet wound.”

“Thank God, I would have never forgiven myself if you wound up with a permanent limp like me,” Tomal responded with a great sigh of relief.  “When I fired that shot to provoke their volley, I thought for sure you were far enough back in the crowd to escape harm.  It was bad enough knowing the shot wound up getting sixteen of our men killed and dozens more wounded.  Seeing you on the ground, wounded, just made my world stop for that moment.”

Seeing the grief in his eyes, Hitler placed an assuring hand on Tomal’s shoulder.  “War is unpredictable.  I knew the risks when we hatched our plan to draw their fire and accepted them willingly.  Our members who got hurt or died that day may not have knowingly assumed the risk, but I know for certain they were honored to do it.  There is no greater privilege in life than to have the opportunity to make a sacrifice in the name of our cause.  Now think nothing further of it.”

The man always had the right words Tomal marveled and then opted to change the conversation to a lighter subject.  “I brought you some cake to keep your strength up in here, but I don’t think it’s needed.  I see you’ve managed to gain a few pounds since arriving here.  They must be feeding you quite well.”

Hitler ran a hand down his relatively flat stomach and feigned insult.  “Five more years of this and I might not fit out the front door to rejoin our cause.”

“The sentence handed down may have been for five years, but if you serve even one full year of it I will be amazed,” Tomal reassured his friend.  He looked down at Hitler’s desk and was pleased to see a tall stack of pages with writing scribbled across them.  “So, how is your book coming along?”

“Since there is nothing better to do with my time in here, the pages come easy,” Hitler said while taking his seat at the desk and invited Tomal to sit on the bed.  “The autobiography of my struggles will be ready for publication in perhaps a month or two.”

“Good.  Following up the public spectacle you made of your trial with a detailed written account of our ideals and goals is the key to all of this,” Tomal said and shook his head in amazement.  “I must say, observing you at trial was like watching a Renaissance artist paint his masterpiece.  They put you on trial for treason and you twisted it back on the prosecution to put democracy and the Weimar Republic on trial as traitors to the German people.   Every word you spoke was reported in the newspapers the next day.  Your trial captivated the entire nation as if they themselves were on trial right beside you.”

“Precisely as we knew they would,” Hitler added.  “Now the question is did all that publicity translate to support?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Tomal beamed.  “There are now three hundred thousand card carrying members of the Nazi party with more signing up in droves every day.”

“I only wish I could have laid into the Jews who we all know control the government,” Hitler snapped, accompanying his words with a frustrated huff through his nose.

“Your words during the trial reached everyone; they needed to be purely patriotic,” Tomal offered.  “Very few know the full extent of the Jew conspiracy against us.  If you had attacked them in the open, then their powerful allies in the media would have branded you a bigot and savaged your name in the papers.”

“Yes, yes I know.  We talked about that too,” Hitler growled.  “Educating the German people of the Jew’s treachery will be a process.  We need to be careful while building up collective hatred for their kind one block at a time.”

“Then we will have a solid foundation on which to rid ourselves of their kind,” Tomal added.  He shared Hitler’s urge for action in the matter; the Jews were Hastelloy’s people after all. 

Though the captain had never admitted as much, he knew without a doubt that Hastelloy rescued them from slavery in Egypt so they would be indebted to him for all time.  Now they served his will to achieve global domination by manipulating the corporations and political leaders of the world with their stranglehold on the global banking system.  

Hastelloy preached so often to the crew that ‘we are not the Alpha; the Novi do not conquer worlds.’  The captain needlessly shot down numerous plans Tomal came up with to get off this planet singing that mantra, yet all the while Tomal knew the truth.  Hastelloy was working in the shadows to do precisely that; take over the planet to found his own empire. 

Tomal tried countless times over the years to find proof of Hastelloy’s conspiracy with the Jews, but his brilliant strategic mind was always three steps ahead of Tomal.  Since he could not secure proof to enlist help from the other crewmembers, it was up to Tomal to preserve their Novi ideals.  Tomal took all this upon himself while keeping an eye toward the ever-progressing Alpha colony on Mars.  Prodding these rustics along to create weapons capable of wiping the Alpha out while foiling Hastelloy and his Jewish plot would be Tomal’s greatest achievement.

“Make sure all these legions of new Nazi party members do not grow too anxious for armed insurrection.  We both know our true path to revolution lies through legal means, not guns,” Hitler cautioned.

“They stand ready to give political opponents a bloody nose and bash in the machinery of unfriendly presses,” Tomal said with pride.  “We have deep ties to most police precincts and access to weapons, but they all know confrontation with the army is out of the question.  We fight for votes from here on out.”

“Then go get them for me while I summon more to the cause with my writing,” Hitler ordered as he turned his back on Tomal and went back to his writing.

**********

“
Mein Kampf
,” Dr. Holmes blurted out as though it were the winning question on a game show.  “The book Hitler was working on, it was entitled
Mein Kampf
, or My Struggle.”

“The gold star goes to big brother,” Hastelloy commended while looking across the table at NSA agent Mark.  “It contained some pretty rancid stuff.  Hitler spouted off for nearly seven hundred pages about the need to destroy the parliamentary system, claiming it was corrupt in principle since those who reach power are inherently opportunists.  A bit ironic don’t you think?”

“Tragically so,” Mark added.  “I believe he also ventured into his favorite topic - hatred for the Jews.”

“Jewish Peril was the term Hitler coined in his writing,” Hastelloy elaborated.  “It went on about their ‘conspiracy’ to gain world power and the need to stop them, exterminate them if necessary,” Hastelloy went on but fell silent in regretful contemplation.

“It all worked didn’t it,” Mark said to fill the silent void.  “The Nazis rose to power, provoked World War II, and initiated the extermination of millions of Jews, homosexuals, Russians, and anyone else they didn’t like.  I can’t say any of this is endearing me to your noble intentions here on Earth, or that you are trustworthy enough to put in front of the President.”

“There had to be more to the Nazis’ rise to power,” Dr. Holmes interrupted on Hastelloy’s behalf.  “Tens of millions of people do not turn to fascism on account of one or two individuals.”

“Oh yes they did,” Hastelloy conceded.  “The advent of widespread video, radio and media outlets in the hands of a masterful propaganda artist and a charismatic speaker made it all too easy for the masses to be misled.”

“What about the Great Depression, the humiliation of losing the Great War?” Dr. Holmes asked.  “All of that contributed.”

“I would take that a step further and state with certainty that the Nazis could not have assumed power without that collective depression and humiliation of the German people,” Hastelloy agreed. 

“Think about it.  You lose everything you have and then it’s lorded over you by the ones who took it.  For two decades, you are told that you’re a loser.  No, not just told, you’re shown and have it beaten into you for twenty years that you are worthless and there is no hope.”

“I ask you, how open would you be to a message telling you to be proud?  You are of a superior race and heritage, and need to stand tall to fight for what is yours.  You see those people over there, the ones with big, long noses who wear the funny round hats?  It’s their fault.  They prevent you from reaching your true potential.  Look at them now; they’re vulnerable.  If we come together, we can take it all back from them and those who support them.”

“I’d like to think that I wouldn’t,” Dr. Holmes said into his chest, “but countless experiments conducted on school children ranging from elementary age all the way up to graduate levels show that ‘group think’ would take over.  Like everyone else, I would accept the group’s will over my own convictions.”

“It’s amazing what people will trade for the luxury of feeling superior, even their freedom,” Mark added.  “I use that basic human compulsion all the time in what I do to get my way.”

“I guarantee your use and understanding of the subject is elementary compared to Tomal,” Hastelloy said with a touch of admiration in his words.  “The election following Hitler’s incarceration yielded the Nazis a substantial voting bloc in the Reichstag.  When Hitler was released early again, for ‘good behavior’ after serving just nine months of his sentence, things really took off.”

“Street violence between the Brownshirts, now rebranded The Hitler Youth, and his political opponents spiraled out of control.  Bans were in effect on political uniforms, Tomal and Hitler were forbidden to speak in public, but none of it mattered.  Communists and Social Democrats were sometimes shot down in the middle of the street in broad daylight.  To get around the public appearance ban, Tomal and Hitler took to the airwaves with recorded speeches played to audiences in their absence.”

“Laws were passed making political violence a capital crime, but by that time it was too late.  The Nazis commanded the most seats in the Reichstag, not quite a voting majority, and they employed the new political violence laws against their opponents with devastating effect.”

“All this amounted to Hitler being named Chancellor in January 1933, not even ten years removed from his days as a nobody who joined a political party with fewer than fifty members.  That is Jedi level media manipulation right there, gentlemen,” Hastelloy concluded, which induced a soft chuckle from Mark.  “Does this light discussion topic amuse you?”

“The irony of an alien from outer space watching a Hollywood movie about aliens and outer space is certainly amusing.  The fact that you seem to take pride in your crewman’s role in Hitler’s rise to power and infamy is not,” Mark commented with an abrupt change of tone.

“Admiration,” Hastelloy corrected.  “The only saving grace at that point was the fact that Hitler was still subordinate to the German President, Paul von Hindenburg.  President von Hindenburg was a universally popular war hero and statesman who stood untouchable, even by Hitler and his Nazi party.  Everyone believed he would hold Hitler and the Nazis in check.”

“And did he?” Dr. Holmes asked.

“The second World War happened didn’t it?” Hastelloy answered.