Höss regarded Brasche closely. No, there was no hint on the boy’s stiff face of anything but a profound sense of duty. The commander nodded. “Very well, Brasche. I understand the call of the front completely. It will take a day or two to prepare the orders. But I will send you back to your division. Good lad. You’re a credit to the SS.”
Dieter Schultz was no fanatic. No more so was his friend Harz. But when they saw their commander fall to a treacherous, underhanded attack, even the hated and despised Krueger became not too vile a man to follow into the fray.
The boys waded in, an unstoppable mass of swinging clubs, smashing fists, and stomping boots. Those who fell before them were given no quarter, but kicked senseless, in some cases to death. Singing among the first groups stopped to be replaced quickly by sobbing, shrieking and begging Reds and Greens.
“No mercy, boys!” shouted Krueger, exultantly if unnecessarily. “Break their bones!”
“Mein Gott,” exclaimed a wide-eyed Schüler at the scene of carnage spreading before him. Already the disordered mass of protesters was fleeing in panic. Already the soldiers were reforming to pursue, while formations to the rear helped their own battered comrades to aid while taking time to further kick and pound the fallen protesters.
A young woman — trampled by the panicking crowd — staggered by, her face half covered in a sheet of blood. Schüler approached to lend what aid he could. As he did so he heard the girl mutter, over and over, “This is impossible. Unbelievable. Impossible.”
He draped her arm over his shoulder and began half carrying her to the presumed safety of the nearby town of Paderborn. Still the girl continued to repeat, “Impossible.”
Although willing, and more than willing, to help, at length Schüler grew weary of the refrain.
“What is your name, Fräulein?” he asked.
She paused, as if trying to remember, before answering, “Liesel. Liesel Koehler.”
“What is ‘unbelievable,’ ‘impossible’ about this?”
Her arm still draped over his shoulder, Liesel stopped, bringing them both to a halt. She seemed to struggle for the words and concepts.
At length, when he had forced her back to movement to escape the rampaging soldiers, she continued. “It is impossible for people to act like those men did. They just can’t have. It is impossible that our good intentions did not prevail here today. It is impossible that we are about to be invaded. What intelligent species could possibly act the way they say these ‘Posleen’ do? The universe simply cannot be set up that way. It is impossible.”
Schüler said nothing. Yet he thought, “Impossible,” you say… and still the soldiers acted as they did. Impossible for good intentions to be for naught. And yet they were. Why then is it impossible for these aliens to act as we are told they will? Because you insist on denying it? Is it that you cannot see the world or the universe as it is? How much else are you wrong about, Liesel, you and all your sort?
Dieter Schultz and Rudi Harz, leading their men to and through the town, came upon a young man, half carrying a young woman. Their instincts and orders, heightened by the days events, were to crush these two. Yet they seemed harmless, the man burdened and the woman bloody.
“What happened to you two?” asked a suspicious Harz.
The young man held up one open-palmed hand in a sign of peace. “She was trampled by a panicked crowd,” he lied.
Harz and Schultz exchanged glances and lowered their clubs. Harz said, “It is not safe for you two here. You should go.”
Schüler nodded but then asked, “Where is the nearest recruiting station? And what unit is this?”
Schultz considered briefly and then gave directions. He answered, simply, “Forty-seventh Panzer Korps. Why?”
Schüler answered, “Because I think I have been wrong about some important things. ‘Impossibly’ wrong.”
Neither Harz nor Schultz queried any deeper. Schüler continued on his way, carrying Liesel. He deposited her at the first medical aid station he came upon. Then he continued on.
In a few minutes he had come to the Bundeswehr recruiting station for the town of Paderborn. The window was cracked, not smashed. Over the cracked glass, silver paint dripped from a crude set of twin lightning bolts. A sergeant stood inside, bearing a club.
“My name is Andreas Schüler. I wish to join the 47th Panzer Korps.”
Sennelager, Germany, 21 July 2005
Mühlenkampf sat alone behind a massive desk dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, his division and brigade commanders standing before him. To their rear, at the conference room’s double-wide entrance, likewise stood two sets of complete, but unmatched, armor from the mid-fifteenth century. The walls were hung with battle flags going back to the late eighteenth century. On the floor and lining the walls rested standards, eagles atop wreaths atop hanging red, white and black, gold-fringed, banners.
The banners were newly made. Each bore double lightning flashes. Within each eagle-bearing wreath was some other unique symbol, a curved sun wheel here, there a key with a lightning bolt through it, here a clenched and mailed fist. One standard bore a stylized letter H; another a stylized letter F.
No unvetted civilians were ever permitted to see the banners.
“Frundsberg?” began Mühlenkampf, conversationally, naming the division rather than its commander, Generalmajor von Ribbentrop. Mühlenkampf considered Ribbontrop an absolute weenie, a posturer, a knave and a fool.[28] Only the man’s seniority as an SS officer, and his modern political connections, had seen him in command of a division. “Frundsberg, why do you suppose that we were allowed to be assaulted here in our camp? Why were riot police not available in sufficient strength to counter such an obvious and massive move?”
The questions were rhetorical. Mühlenkampf didn’t wait for an answer. “Hohenstauffen, what is wrong with our country? Jugend, why has every Korps in the armed forces except for ours been sabotaged? G von B, why are so many young men exempted from the call to duty? Wiking, why have some elements of the government attempted to sabotage both us and the Kriegseconomie?”[29]
Finally resting his eyes on the only battalion commander present, Mühlenkampf asked, “What is the problem here, Hansi?”
“I do not know, Herr Generalleutnant,” admitted Brasche.
“I know,” said Ribbentrop, confidently. “It is the Jews.”
Mühlenkampf snorted his derision. “Nonsense, Ribbentrop, you pansy. There aren’t enough Jews in Germany anymore to make a corporal’s guard. They are the least influential group we have. I wish we had some more. The Israelis at least can fight.”
Shaking his head, Mühlenkampf continued, “Forget the Jews, gentlemen. Our problems are home grown. The chancellor is… all right… I think. But beneath him? A Christmas cabal of red and green and some other color I cannot quite make out at this distance. It might be black as deepest midnight, as black as the outer reaches of space.”
28
The wife of a German Army friend of one of the authors, who was once Ribbentrop’s secretary, describes him as a “weenie.”