“We could have saved a few of the girls,” one of his men muttered. “And had some real fun.”
Hennecke frowned. Raping Slavic girls was strictly forbidden, even if the girls were killed afterwards. Quite apart from the simple fact it was bad for discipline – and it was – it ran the very real risk of introducing Germanic blood to the Slavs. But here… he doubted there was a single girl in the town who had a trace of non-German ancestry in her blood. Most half-castes had been removed or killed a very long time ago. His superiors wouldn’t be able to object on racial grounds.
But it was still a disciplinary issue.
“No,” he said, firmly. “If we have to kill them, we have to kill them. But we are not going to abuse good German girls.”
He turned and marched towards the edge of the town. As tired as they were, they would have to do it again and again until they reached Berlin, where things would get harder. His superiors had insisted that Berlin would fall without a fight, but Hennecke wasn’t so sure.
Grandfather fought in Stalingrad, he reminded himself. And he had nightmares for the rest of his life.
It was a bitter thought. His father had often rebuked Hennecke’s grandfather – his father-in-law – for telling Hennecke stories of the war. And yet, he’d been a soldier too, fighting and eventually dying to protect Germany East. Hennecke had never really understood the man, or the odd admiration his grandfather had had for the Slavs. It wasn’t as if he’d ever treated the servants any better than the rest of the family.
It probably made sense to him, he thought. And now we have to proceed onwards.
“This is confirmed?”
“Yes, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Sturmbannfuehrer Friedemann Weineck said. “It was reported through the network and confirmed by the MPs.”
Oberstgruppenfuehrer Alfred Ruengeler sucked in a breath. He’d known that anger and frustration was burning through the ranks – his men were hardly used to encountering foes that could slow them down, let alone stop them – but this was a nightmare. Slaughtering vast numbers of Untermenschen was one thing; killing over a hundred men, women and children from Germany Prime was quite another. There would be no peace if this went on.
He looked up. “We know who did it?”
“Obersturmfuehrer Hennecke Schwerk,” Weineck said. “He’s actually in line for promotion to Hauptsturmfuehrer, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer; his former commanding officer was killed on the first day of the war and since then Schwerk has been holding down his responsibilities. Before then… he had a honourable reputation as an infantryman in the east.”
“Where he picked up a few bad habits,” Alfred growled.
He looked at the map, thinking hard. There had been quite a few incidents as the advancing stormtroopers mingled with the civilians – a number of civilians killed for being on the roads, several more killed in the crossfire, a couple of young women raped – but this was by far the worst. And yet it wouldn’t be the last. Alfred knew his men were getting frustrated, both with their slow progress and with the German civilians. Far from being welcomed as liberators, they were being ignored or defied when they weren’t being attacked.
But the Fuhrer will approve, Alfred thought. He won’t give a damn about the dead civilians, will he?
He groaned, inwardly. It would be easy to send a pair of MPs to arrest Schwerk and transport him back to the CP for a quick court martial, followed by execution, but the Führer would not like it. He’d see Schwerk as a hero, as the man who taught a bunch of cowardly fence-sitters the cost of defying the SS. And he wouldn’t give a damn about just how badly it would cost them, in the long run. Hell, killing more westerners – even ones of good blood – would make it easier for him to reshape the west in his own image.
And I can’t even put a ban on future atrocities, he told himself. The Fuhrer wouldn’t like that either.
Weineck leaned forward. “Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer, how do you wish to proceed?”
Alfred scowled. Punishing Schwerk was out of the question. The Fuhrer was already breathing down his neck, insisting that he relieve a number of officers for being inadequately aggressive. Karl Holliston simply didn’t realise that charging forward, firing madly, was not a good tactic, not when it meant getting panzers impaled on antitank guns and blown into flaming debris. The logistics were already a nightmare; he dreaded to think what would happen if they started to run short on panzers too. And then there was the puzzle over just what the enemy was doing with their air force…
“Promote him to Hauptsturmfuehrer,” he ordered, curtly. “And make sure he has a chance to practice his skills – put him at the tip of the spear.”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Weineck said.
And hope the bastard gets killed on the front lines, Alfred added, silently. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. There’s nothing else I can do to him.
He turned back to the map. “Are the enemy trying to stiffen their resistance at any point?”
“It looks as through their main units are still retreating towards Berlin,” Weineck said. He seemed relieved that the subject had changed. “They just won’t stand and fight.”
“Of course not,” Alfred said, tiredly. They’d been over it before, time and time again, as the frustration started to bite. “They know they will lose in a straight fight.”
He shrugged. The Fuhrer would want an update soon, he was sure. And if he didn’t, it was only because the Fuhrer was getting his updates from someone else…
And if that happens, he thought grimly, I’m going to be the next officer to be relieved.
Generalmajor Gunter Gath cursed under his breath as he read the report. A pair of snipers near an insignificant town, waiting for a chance to put a bullet through an SS officer’s head, had watched helplessly as the population was herded into the church and burned to death. It would have been unbelievable, Gunter was sure, if there hadn’t been so many other reports of SS atrocities as their advancing spearheads began to cross paths with innocent civilians.
And I believe it, he thought. He would have liked to deny it, but he’d seen too much to do anything of the sort. Now what?
He cursed under his breath. The laws of war, insofar as the Third Reich admitted they existed, allowed retaliation, an eye for an eye. But against what? Bombing a random town in Germany East wouldn’t upset the SS, let alone deter them from carrying out more atrocities of their own. Shooting prisoners was likely to be more effective, but they just hadn’t taken enough prisoners to make the effort worthwhile. And besides, if they did start shooting prisoners, the SS would probably do the same.
And they have far too many of my men prisoner, he thought.
He glared at the map, noting the arrows denoting the advancing spearheads. Hundreds of his men had died – or been captured – after being overrun by the panzers. They’d been marched off into captivity, transported eastwards across the river and out of his ken. Even the orbital photographs someone in Berlin had managed to coax out of the satellites hadn’t shown him where the prisoners had been taken. Gunter hoped – desperately – that they hadn’t simply been killed, but he had to admit it was possible. The SS had machine-gunned prisoners in South Africa, after all…