“It does have some compensations,” Horst admitted. What he’d said was true enough, but incomplete. “People are more… connected in the east, Gudrun. Everyone knows everyone else. You know who you can rely on in the settlements, who you can trust with a gun at your back. And the SS is much less overbearing in the east, even though it is far more numerous. But I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life there.”
He cleared his throat. “Why do you ask?”
“My father spoke to me yesterday,” Gudrun said, slowly. “He wants me to marry soon, to choose someone even though Konrad is still alive. I wanted to know if you faced the same pressure.”
“I do,” Horst admitted. “But it’s a little different for me.”
“They don’t seem to nag Kurt to marry,” Gudrun said. “It isn’t fair.”
“Kurt’s a young officer,” Horst pointed out. “He might be in position to marry a girl with excellent family connections.”
Gudrun shook her head. “I don’t know how long I can keep putting it off,” she said, reluctantly. “It could turn nasty if father finds someone for me…”
“Say you need at least six months to mourn Konrad,” Horst said. Part of him was tempted to push his luck, but it would only make her hate him. “As far as they know, you only just found out what happened to him. After that, you can start looking for someone suitable and promise to let your father offer suggestions if you don’t find someone within a year.”
Gudrun blinked. “A year?”
“We may be arrested and brutally executed tomorrow,” Horst said. Maybe, after six months had passed, he’d feel better about courting Gudrun himself. “Or we may win. Or the horse may even learn to sing.”
“My father’s singing is a deadly weapon,” Gudrun said, wryly.
“And if that isn’t enough, find someone willing to pretend to be your boyfriend,” Horst added, after a moment. “They’ll understand you rejecting someone after a few weeks of casual courting.”
He glanced at his watch, then rose. “I have a lecture in ten minutes,” he said. He watched as she rose and unplugged the jukebox. “I’ll see you later.”
“You too,” Gudrun said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Reichstag, Berlin
8 August 1985
Hans Krueger wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the council chamber and took his seat at one side of the table, facing the Reichsführer-SS. Several ministers and military officers were smoking, a sure sign of their agitation, while the Fuhrer was looking around as if he thought he was actually expected to direct the meeting. Hans gave Adolf Bormann a nasty look, then eyed the Reichsführer-SS. Karl Holliston had called the meeting and, judging by the papers in front of him, it was going to be a long one.
“The meeting is now called to order,” Holliston said, taking control as soon as the last councillor was in his seat. “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler,” the councillors said, in unison.
Holliston didn’t give anyone else a chance to override his control of the meeting. “It’s spreading,” he said, simply. “Our failure to put a stop to this right from the start” – he threw Hans a nasty look – “has encouraged others to defy the Reich.”
“You speak of the trade unions,” Hans said, calmly. Someone had to be the voice of reason at the table. “Or is there something I’ve missed?”
“The trade unions are not the only problem,” Holliston snapped. “There are hundreds of little groups springing up everywhere, discussing the leaflets and comparing notes. We have this piece of shit” – he took one of the papers from the table and waved it in the air – “to tell us just what imprudent demands these… these Valkyries demand!”
“The Choosers of the Slain,” Hans mused, as he took the sheet of paper. “Odd choice of name for a dissident group.”
“It’s a deliberate insult,” Holliston thundered. “Something must be done!”
“We know who the ringleaders are, at least in the factories,” Luther Stresemann said. The Head of the Economic Intelligence Service leaned forward. “We could round them up and arrest them – or simply order them fired.”
“The problem isn’t that simple,” Hans warned. “Each of these… ringleaders is a symptom, not the disease itself. We’re pushing our industrial base to the limit and our trained workers are finally pushing back.”
“Forming a union without government permission is flatly illegal,” Holliston sneered. Hans would have privately bet good money that Holliston was feeling the heat from industrialists who were closely connected to the SS. “Every member of each and every union should be thrown into the camps.”
Hans resisted, barely, the temptation to sneer back. “You are talking about arresting two-thirds of our trained workforce,” he said. “Good luck getting the damned Gastarbeiters to run a modern manufacturing plant!”
“The Gastarbeiters are not permitted to do more that dig ditches and plant crops,” Holliston pointed out. “Such jobs are reserved for good Germans!”
“Yes, the Germans you’re talking about throwing into the camps,” Hans said. Holliston was right; the training for industrial jobs was reserved solely for Germans, although a handful of non-German Aryans might be allowed to join if they showed promise. “You put even a tenth of our total workforce out of work and our economy will go straight into the shitter.”
Holliston took a moment to gather himself. “We cannot allow them to defy the government like this,” he said, in a markedly calmer tone. “And that set of demands” – he jabbed a finger at the paper in front of Hans – “is unthinkable.”
Hans looked at the paper and was tempted to agree. Some of the demands were reasonable – he would happily have agreed to end the war in South Africa if he could – while others… others were impossible to grant without undermining the Reich beyond hope of repair. The whole concept of free elections was absurd. It wouldn’t be long before the population started electing politicians based on who could make the best promises, not on practical matters like experience, understanding and common sense.
“And we cannot act against them openly, either,” he said. “If even the most optimistic report is accurate, Reichsführer, word is spreading too far too fast. The unions can bring the country to a halt just by going on strike.”
“Then we clobber them,” Holliston snapped.
“And who will run the industries afterwards?” Hans snapped back. “We’re going in circles!”
“This is all your fault,” Holliston said. “Bringing in American ideals…”
“We had an industry before the start of the war,” Hans pointed out, smoothly. “Those Panzer tanks that smashed Poland, Denmark, France and Russia didn’t just spring into existence, you know. And we had to do whatever we needed to do to keep up with the Americans. A Panzer III wouldn’t last two seconds on a battlefield facing the latest American tank!”
He took a breath. “This situation has gotten badly out of hand,” he said. “Right now, our falsehoods about the war have been exposed and so the population no longer trusts us. They are forming private groups and discussing discrepancies between our words and reality. It will not take them long to find other times when we lied to them.”
“For their own good,” Holliston said.
Hans met his eyes. “We tell ourselves that,” he said, although he doubted it was true in Holliston’s case. “But I don’t think they agree with us.”