But Kurt can’t see it…won’t see it. Schiller had come to realise that too, in the years since their return. We stuck to the ‘plan’… we developed industry and production… we improved and we advanced… but make Germany great? Is that really what we’ve done… or have we placed our nation so far beyond redemption there’s no hope for us now whatsoever? He snorted angrily over the concepts as he considered the same terrible truths that had filled his thoughts many times since their arrival in the past. We had the entire world at our feet… ours to command. We had enough technology and equipment to do anything we wanted, and be rich beyond our dreams into the bargain… we didn’t need the Nazis… we didn’t need Hitler or the Nazis or any of it. We could’ve been the true saviours of Germany, rather than one more tool of fascism — one more tool of murder and oppression. We could’ve shattered the NSDAP and instead created a truly great Germany of our own, more benevolent devising. And instead we did nothing… and through our own inaction, we’ve become are far worse, and carry far more blame than the Officer Corps or the weak, vacillating politicians of Weimar… for we knew what was coming… knew exactly what the Nazis would do… and we went along with it all the same…!
As he exorcised his lifelong nightmares, Kurt Reuters could rationalise all the horrors they knew were being committed… rationalise it all for the erasure of those decades of personal humiliation and hardship. And loyal, obedient Albert Schiller had supported his friend and CO with good humour as he went about his business, simply because it was his duty: Reuters had been his commanding officer for so long now, he’d really known no other life than working in that great man’s service. It was ultimately that military conditioning as an officer that proved most useful in justifying what they’d done… the so-called ‘honour’ of the Officer Corps, and the visceral need to follow orders.
What was that old joke? He wondered suddenly as the memory came to him. ‘What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean… a good start…’ He almost managed a genuine smile as he remembered, but the grin turned quite dark and malevolent a moment later. What do you call the assassination of Hess, Bormann, Göring and Zeigler…? I suspect the punchline would be something similar. He felt no guilt or remorse whatsoever over the killings in that stable at Amiens, three days before, although there was still the underlying fear that he’d be found out… something that worried him as much for what it’d do to Reuters’ position as Reichsmarschall as for how it might affect his own fate. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Reuters what had happened… couldn’t bring himself to lay that extra burden at the man’s feet… and so he carried what he’d done in cold silence.
All those years of rationalising what I’ve done in the name of Grossdeutschland… about time those ‘skills’ were put to good use, he reasoned, knowing there was at least some truth behind his justifications. If I can sublimate guilt over complicity in the deaths of millions of innocent Jews, why should I feel guilty about the extermination of four true blights upon the face of humanity? As he thought about all of this, Albert Schiller found it the greatest irony of all that what he’d done three days ago was something they should’ve done upon their arrival in 1933: had they simply rounded up all the high-ranking Nazi figureheads and shot them all out of hand, Hitler included, could there be any doubt now that the world would’ve been a far better place?
Unlike Carl Ritter, Schiller kept no diary… no journal… no repository for his private thoughts with the potential for incriminating evidence that an enemy might use against him. He smiled thinly — mirthlessly — as he recognised that the only enemy who could — and did — use his thoughts against him was the one enemy he could never avoid nor defeat: himself. There’d been no one he’d ever loved in his life before Rachael, and there’d certainly been no one after, and there was therefore no one else he could confide anything in, had he trusted anyone from that era sufficiently anyway, which he did not. Schiller’s own, personal demons were exactly that… personal… and he would deal with them alone, as he’d always done.
He’d visited England several times in his youth, both on holiday and as part of his military service with the Bundeswehr. He’d visited Dover and walked about the castle and the fortifications there of what at the time had then been a distant past… a bygone era when Churchill and ‘his’ Island had stood alone across forty kilometres of English Channel against the greatest power the world had ever seen. No one had cared that he was German in those days, or that he was a member of the military. West Germany was by that stage been a solid NATO ally, and a bulwark against communism and the danger of the Soviet Union. The British, American and French forces they’d served beside in Western Europe had regarded their German colleagues with pride, and shown respect for their Bundeswehr training and professionalism — they’d not felt fear at the sight of German troops, tanks and aircraft.
Will there ever be a time now when anyone looks on a German without fear? That thought stung him more than he’d have liked to admit. He gave another faint snort, this time in mild disgust. Will there ever be a time when I’ll walk down a European street without these feelings of guilt as my constant companions? Albert Schiller smoked his cigarette and stared down at the busy docks below, searching for resolve, and for answers that would never come.
Home Fleet Naval Anchorage at HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
As many had been feared, the night began in subdued fashion, what little conversation there was sparse and somewhat hollow between people stunned and left gutted by what was happening in the south. Some had relatives, or knew friends living in the areas now under German control, although of course there was always the hope that most had joined the streams of evacuees moving west. In any case, most present in the mess that night were in no mood to do more than sit and drink in sullen silence, barely aware of the music playing softly in the background.