Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (37 page)

“
Heil Hitler
!” Hoffman shouted, raising his arm. The Inspector-General had nodded in austere approval as Hoffman clicked his heel.

“Heil Hitler. Take a seat, Hoffman.” The voice was as Bavarian as Hoffman’s was, though not Munich. Still, the accent was so strong, every syllable was dripping with malt beer and clad in lederhosen.

Hoffman did so, and Eicke sat perched on the edge of the commandant’s desk in front of him. Commandant SS-Oberführer Hans Loritz was not present.

“Untersturmführer Hoffman… you wish to join the SS-Totenkopf armed unit, and serve your fatherland. We know war with the Poles is coming. You wish to fight for Germany. That is good. You are a good candidate.”

Eicke surveyed him, like a stern old schoolmaster. Hoffman had seen him on previous visits, but had never spoken to him. He’d noted the former commandant had a good rapport with the rank and file guards there, remembering names and details with a quick familiarity. The man was a huge figure in their world. A hefty frame, great hams for fists and a wide, flat nose in the middle of a lined and fleshy face, slick black hair neatly parted at the side and clad in an SS-General’s uniform; Theodor Eicke had a large physical presence. It was said even Heydrich could not dislodge him from his position as SS-
Gruppenführer und
Inspector der Konzentrationslager,
and that Himmler personally protected his rule over the Reich’s vast internment system, successfully preventing an SD-Gestapo coup.

Eicke fixed his gaze on Hoffman; one eye was slightly larger than the other, which gave him the discomfiting appearance of intensely peering at the younger man with some kind of stern, inexplicable anger.

“So,
Hoffman
, as I look to gather good, young, committed officers for the formation of this division in a new armed force of Germany, bearers of the Führer’s political will, it is to people of your calibre I must turn.”

Hoffman accepted the plaudits patiently. Already he began to sense where this was headed.

Eicke folded his arms, settling a lengthy gaze on the young officer.

“You are a committed National Socialist. Model Aryan, perfect German, young, strong. This is an ideal candidacy, I thought to myself. Then I checked your file.”

Eicke briskly rounded the wooden counter, and sat down behind his old desk. He did not seem to notice the curious position he was occupying. A worried Hoffman tried appealing to the SS camaraderie he’d seen Eicke freely display with the guards.

“Back in the old chair, mein Gruppenführer. Good memories I hope.” Eicke looked up from the sheaf of papers, and Hoffman quickly added “Sir.”

The general grinned. “Dachau is still mine. Not even the Prinz-Albrecht Palais could take the camps from me.”

The Prinz-Albrecht Palais was headquarters of Heydrich’s
Sicherheitdienst
, the SS Security Service and party intelligence agency. A garden at the back of the SD offices connected them to their sister organisation the Gestapo, housed in the old art college on Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. Heydrich had monopolised all security and police branches of the Reich into his SS Security Main Office, with the sole exception of the Totenkopfverbände. The concentration camps were the one area that ‘The Hangman’ in Berlin had not somehow managed to gain administrative control over, constantly pressuring Himmler to add it to his personal empire as per Heydrich’s rulership of all manner of policing and suppression in the Reich. Hoffman had no strong feelings about the Reichsführer-SS, but he’d heard many jokes from the rank and file about ‘Heini der Wimmler’ and how he should watch his back, as Heydrich would one day outgrow him, or tire of using the Reichsführer as a battering ram to power one of these days. If Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s two chief party rivals weren’t safe from Heydrich, they said, then nor was Himmler. Nor anyone else who got in his way.

The powerful general grinning across the desk at Hoffman did not seem an opponent to take lightly, however, nor one easily rolled over. Even by ‘The Blond Beast’.

“Things were different when
I
started,” that man boomed. “The TV didn’t exist. We were not even a separate branch of the SS. And I didn’t wear the Death’s Head on my collar tab, when I was here, nor did any of the others.”

“The TV wore SS runes?”

“No. A small ‘D’ for Dachau. I was Commandant – most of the rank and file had blank tabs. ’34 I left here to become Reich Inspector, the SA cancer was cut from the National Socialist body, and the SS-TV became its own beast.”

Eicke’s grin widened as he spoke, lighting himself a cigarette carelessly. Hoffman silently noted the absence of an ashtray.

“Now, your file, Hoffman. Joined the party, 1930. The year I joined the SS,
Untersturmführer
,” he said, adding slight emphasis to the rank as though to question the disparity between his considerable seniority and the 2
^nd
class lieutenant’s far lowlier status. Then he seemed mollified. “Ah, took three years to join the SS. However, excellent record with regards to your political reliability and upholding of German honour. Married 1935, Claudia Hoffman née von Kahr.”

Eicke’s eyes widened in alarm, and shot up to Hoffman questioningly. Hostile.

“No, different family,” Hoffman reassured him firmly.

Gustav Ritter von Kahr had been Bavarian Minister-President, and a ‘traitor’ in the failed 1923
putsch
that led to Hitler’s arrest and imprisonment. Revenge had been savage. It came eleven years later, during the Night of the Long Knives purge of ’34, masterminded by Heydrich and with Göring and Himmler’s unholy alliance to sway the Führer. Gustav von Kahr had been hacked to death with axes by SS men, even as the SA leadership was being murdered en masse. And as Hoffman was well aware, Ernst Röhm had been shot by none other than Theodor Eicke.

Röhm’s executioner continued reading, mollified from his brief apprehension. “Transferred to Totenkopfverbände under Gruppenführer
Eicke
, 1936; began duties at Dachau September of that year. Promoted Untersturmführer September ’38. Of course, superiors and comrades have offered their assessments, for the file. Allow me to read.”

He cleared his throat. Hoffman watched, apprehensive.

“Untersturmführer Hoffman is dedicated National Socialist, boasting excellent recollection of key passages from the Führer’s book, and a readiness to extoll the Party virtues. He is a diligent administrator, an ideal representative of the SS and one of the more reliable of Konzentrationslager personnel. He is hardworking, efficient, capable… sparing with punishment… humane… stern without cruelty.” Eicke’s nose wrinkled with distaste. He reeled off the latter observations like one would identify particularly insidious forms of a disgusting breed of parasitic insect.

Hoffman was quiet. Eicke leaned forwards.

“That all sounds well and good,” he said, with barely concealed disdain, “but only the
best
of our young generation may represent the Fatherland in the Führer’s personal guard. You want to be a member of the elite order? You have to show it, through loyalty and action. SS man;
your honour is loyalty
.”

Eicke stood, casting a shadow over Hoffman as his frame blocked the light streaming through an exposed gap in the cheap curtains. He cast a brief look of frustration at the junior officer, and he turned to look out of the single-paned window at pyjama-clad prisoners circling the yard.

“Here behind the barbed-wire lurks the enemy of National Socialism and the German people, Hoffman. He watches everything you do. Your diligence and administrative capabilities are all well and good. But we need men of iron. Words must be supported by actions. Do you follow?”

Hoffman nodded, mute. Eicke turned to look at him, and the Untersturmführer nodded again.

“Your enemy will try to help himself by using all your weaknesses. Don't leave yourself open in any way. Show these 'Enemies of the State' your teeth. Anyone who shows even the smallest sign of compassion for the enemies of the state must disappear from our ranks. I can only use hard men who are determined to do anything to purge the enemies of the Fatherland. We have no use for weaklings."

He leaned in, a fierce look in his eyes. “I hope you see things as I do, Untersturmführer Hoffman.”

“
Jawohl
, mein Gruppenführer!” the young officer barked back. For the second time, Eicke grinned; this one a little churlish, even menacing.

“Good. Follow me. Let’s see if you can
truly
serve in the SS order against Germany’s
enemies
…”

Baring his chest proudly, apeing the body language of an alpha male mountain gorilla, the big officer briskly walked out of the office, Hoffman in hurried pursuit. The young officer’s stomach lurched. He knew that if push came to shove, he would be equal to performing whatever task General Eicke had in mind for him, for Führer and Fatherland, but Hoffman could not entirely suppress the small, internal voice that suggested his conscience may not be completely clean after it.

Hoffman tried in vain to suppress the bourgeois value system that had been instilled in him, and he focused on Germany’s troubled past, the pride of the present and the promise of its future.

They marched through to the prison block, a narrow corridor, poorly lit by flickering yellow light. The cell doors were narrow, with serving slits. Some of them were standing cells – offering only enough room for the unfortunate prisoner to stand, often for weeks on end with a six-hour sleep break on a wooden cot allowed once every three days. They were fed one single piece of bread during the break. Hoffman had witnessed its results. Emaciated skeletons with bloodshot eyes, unable to walk, pulled half-alive out of a pit of their own filth. It was uncommon, but not unheard of, and the broken men duly died ‘of natural causes’ in the course of their return to forced labour. The camp crematorium incinerated all evidence of their existence.

Eicke led down to the end, where a waiting guard opened the rusty steel door of the cell. As they drew level, a middle aged man came into sight that Hoffman had never seen before, clad in an inmates striped pyjama bottoms and grey-white top, stood at the far end of the room under the light streaming in through a tiny arch above his head. Hoffman blanched as he saw the man’s death sentence; a red triangle inverted within a yellow triangle. He was not only a Jew, which was not as yet legally criminal, per se, but he combined the hated race with political subversion. A
Jewish political
prisoner. Worse still, a pink triangle stood next to the red and yellow makeshift Star of David. The man was homosexual.

Eicke beckoned Hoffman to enter the cell. He did so, staring at the prisoner, and taking care to stay inexpressive as he took in the Jew’s haggard appearance; burn marks and cuts evident, a haunted, knowing look in his eyes. Hoffman hid his emotions behind The Cold Face. The general leaned in to his ear, and hissed:

“This degenerate piece of dog shit is a pink triangle, a
Jew
and a fucking
Kozi
. Doesn’t it boil your blood just to look at him,
SS-Untersturmführer
Hoffman? Or does it provoke
humane feelings
? Are you a National Socialist, and a true son of the Fatherland? You must decide, as you look at the Führer’s enemy; a Jew, and a communist pervert.
Deutschland Erwache
!”

Germany Awake.

The last line was all that was needed. Though the SA style Jew beatings and public persecutions held no appeal for the relatively mild-mannered Hoffman – despite his dislike of the parasitic people who had profited from the misery of honest, decent Germans – the sight of one such Jew stood before him as a
sodomite
, and a political criminal against the Führer assailed his senses. It was sickening to be around such vermin. Sickening.

‘Germany Awake’, the Führer had proclaimed, and piece by piece, it was reclaiming its own land and people from the scum like the one before him in this dingy, dank little cell. And now Hoffman, and people like him, could fight back, and contribute to the awakening. No longer would swinish filth like this disgusting man be free to persecute and mock them. To extort them, and corrupt their systems. No longer would degenerates like this piece of garbage be allowed to poison the Fatherland with such sick disease. They could purge their enemies together, led by the Führer, bound by their blood and destiny.

Hoffman unsheathed his truncheon, and slowly approached the trembling captive. Knowing that Eicke expected punishment as well as justice, he brought the club down in a vicious, curving arc into the side of the prisoner’s knee. Cries rang out, and he spat in response, releasing a contemptuous gobbet of mucus that spattered the stricken man’s neck. The young man circled his helpless prey. It was not the savagery of the natural world, but beyond animalistic; a lingering, spiteful pleasure in the act. Lightly tapping the doomed Jew’s head with the baton for a sadist’s touch, Hoffman heard an approving chuckle behind him, and even before the methodical blows reigned down, he knew he was going to Poland.

The silver cigarette holder gratefully accepted its seventeenth Dunhill of the day, and was quickly clamped between the teeth of its beleaguered owner.

Simon sat ill-at-ease, trying to relax, as he reclined in his smoking gown of burgundy velvet and silk; a favourite item, not inherited from his father, but one that he himself had procured at considerable expense, along with a large, curved wooden calabash. It was a favourite little eccentricity of his, and though he rejected high society almost as a whole, this was one private quirk of the well-to-do that he relished. Enjoying the leisurely smoke, the journalist considered switching the holder fastened-Dunhill for his calabash; an act that never failed to give him a thrilling sense of kinship with Arthur Conan Doyle as he wrote. He quickly abandoned the idea. Not yet. The calabash drew his attention, and sat heavy, cumbersome. Sherlock merely pondered with it. The beautiful, marvellous thing was utterly incompatible with writing.