But they were Untermenschen, he thought. They deserved to die.
His own thoughts mocked him. And what were the men, women and children who were burned to death in the church?
He shook his head, slowly. Dealing with SS atrocities would have to be a political decision, but he couldn’t see many good options. Deploying anything from poison gas to tactical nuclear weapons would only encourage further retaliation, while slaughtering prisoners would only lead to the SS doing the same. Hell, they might even be relieved. The bastards had far more prisoners, all of whom needed to be fed, than he did. And they’d even have an excuse for mass slaughter.
We did it to them, he thought, so they can now do it to us.
Cursing, he reached for the phone. He’d never liked being micromanaged, but this was one hot potato he was happy to drop into someone else’s life. Let the provisional government decide what to do. They could have the responsibility…
…And the blame, if it only made the bloodshed far worse.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Berlin, Germany Prime
22 September 1985
“I cannot believe they’d do this,” Gudrun protested, honestly shocked.
“Don’t be naive,” Horst said. He sounded irritated – and exhausted. She would have been annoyed at his tone if she hadn’t known he’d been up for most of the night, working with her father and his handpicked team to try to track down the SS spy. “They wouldn’t hesitate to kill whoever got in their way, if it suited them.”
Gudrun shook her head, slowly. She’d known – intellectually – that the SS had carried out thousands, perhaps millions, of atrocities. Grandpa Frank had even admitted to having served in the Einsatzgruppen. But to casually burn over a hundred men, women and children, all of good German blood, to death, just because a sniper had used a house in the town… it was appalling.
She looked at the photographs, cursing under her breath. She’d never been particularly religious – religion was officially discouraged at school, although the Reich had never tried to stamp it out completely – but even she knew a church was supposed to be holy. And yet, the SS had herded up the townsfolk, crammed them into the building and set it on fire. Over a hundred people were dead… and it was all her fault.
The guilt struck her like a physical blow. She’d started the ball rolling, but she hadn’t realised – not really – just how high a price the Reich would pay for what she’d done. Overthrowing the Reich Council couldn’t have brought matters to a conclusion, could it? This wasn’t a neat little story where every single plot thread was tied up in the final chapter. The villain had escaped to the east and started a counterattack. God alone knew how many people had died in the fighting, the fighting she’d started…
“My fault,” she muttered, bitterly.
She closed her eyes in pain. She’d thought she’d known the risks when she started, she thought she’d known – and accepted – what would happen to her if she was caught. And she’d done her best to make sure that her friends knew too, even though they’d been compromised just by listening to her. They’d all known the risks…
…But the townsfolk hadn’t. They hadn’t been involved in the protest movement, as it grew and diversified; she would have been surprised if they’d even heard of the protest movement before the Reich Council crumbled into dust. And yet, they’d paid a steep price for her decisions. The town was dead, save perhaps for a handful of young men who’d joined the military and left before the advancing SS stormtroopers captured the town. She knew, deep inside, that they would never forgive her for what she’d brought upon their families.
Horst wrapped an arm around her, gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Gudrun pushed him away. She didn’t feel like being cuddled, not now.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Horst repeated. “You heard Kruger, didn’t you? The Reich was heading for a fall long before you were born. You may have started the protest movement, Gudrun, but it would have happened with or without you.”
Gudrun snorted. Even in the university, political debate had been almost non-existent. She knew – now – that thousands of people had seen the cracks in the state, the hundreds of tiny problems that spelt looming disaster, but very few had dared to speak out and prove to the others that they were not alone. It had been her who had worked up the nerve, her who had made those people see that there were hundreds of thousands of others who felt the same way too. And if it hadn’t been her, who would it have been? She still found it hard to believe that she had had the nerve to do it.
She sighed, bitterly. If Konrad had been unharmed – or even if she and his family had known what had happened to him – she would never have dared to start the protest movement. She would have married Konrad, after graduating from the university, and done her best to balance her career with life as a married woman. If, of course, he allowed her to have a career. Her husband could have forbidden her from working, if he’d wished. It had been one thing she’d sought to change at once, as soon as she’d taken her seat on the council, but the demands of war had pushed social reform aside.
And if I hadn’t started the movement, she thought, what would have become of me?
Horst tapped her shoulder, firmly. “Gudrun, you can’t blame yourself for this,” he said. “The war is bringing out all the old nightmares.”
“I can blame myself,” Gudrun said, tartly. “I do blame myself.”
“Blame Holliston,” Horst said. He scowled. “If the so-called Fuhrer was angry about what happened to the poor bastards, he would have made his feelings clear by now. Or blame Voss and Gath for failing to evacuate the town, even though it would have clogged up the roads with even more refugees. Or blame the swinehund who ordered the people killed. You cannot be blamed for what they chose to do, of their own free will.”
He paused. “And Holliston was willing to kill hundreds of his fellow Germans before the Reich Council fell,” he added. “You didn’t make him do that, did you?”
Gudrun shook her head, then looked up at him. “Did you do anything like that? In the east, I mean?”
Horst met her eyes, evenly. “No,” he said. “But the war out there is merciless. We all knew it happened and we all applauded it.”
“Monsters,” Gudrun said.
“What would you have them do?” Horst asked. “You can’t live and let live with Untermenschen who want to kill you. And you can’t move millions of people out of their homes in the hopes of keeping them safe. What would you have them do?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have turned Russia into Germany East,” Gudrun snapped.
Horst cocked his head. “Maybe not. So what?”