Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (68 page)

So ended the forgettable tenure of an unexceptional student, whose frustrated yearnings lent bitterness to his view of the world. Wolf was equally arrogant and lethargic; confused by his impulses and fruitlessly searching for his path to progression.

But Jochen Wolf possessed a cunning that many of his fellow students lacked; correctly predicting the rise of Hitler after the 1932 elections, in which thirteen million people voted for the National Socialist demagogue, Wolf – with a cynical pragmatism that astounded his bourgeois parents – embraced the new regime with open enthusiasm, and he signed up for the Party in December of that year. Little more than one month later, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.

The grim realisation that he would never be a new Nietzsche or Goethe in modern Germany had initially plagued him, and an underlying self-doubt from frustrated ambitions had lingering during the course of his Heidelburg studies. But Wolf realised, joyously, that while lacking in original thought and a natural flair, he
did
possess many of the qualities that Nietzsche himself had written were instrumental in the attainment and accumulation of power. Autodidactic and cunning; plots began to form in the shadows of his mind.

The respect and vindication Wolf craved would not, he calculated, come from professional critique or acclaim, but rather as a natural byproduct of the wielding of real, tangible power. He felt reborn. Intoxicated by the limitless possibilities of his aspirations, Wolf felt emancipated from his bourgeois upbringing and the moral constraints placed on him as a child; limitless and fledgling, under the eyes of no creator, bound by no celestial law or earthly sense of morality. He had shed everything, and thus gained everything. He was free.

With joy in his heart, Jochen Wolf joined the SA.

“Lick the pavement,” he had screamed at the old, frightened Jew on his first experience of public persecution. “Clean it with your tongue! How
dare
you presume to share the same cobbles as a racially pure German!”

Having alluded to the flimsy pretence of some kind of social sacrilege, Wolf began mercilessly beating the old man, a red mist descending over his frenzied eyes, and he only stopped when he realised the frail old man was lifeless, and the body he was still beating no longer breathed. Blood pooled black beneath him, spreading around the battered animal carcase that only moments before had contained a human life and soul. Yet to his delight, the vigour of his methods met with fierce approval from his fellow thugs in the gang, and Wolf was intoxicated; addicted to this outlet for violent release. He was utterly overjoyed with his new life; a heady combination of conformity with the system and a simultaneous licence to commit violence, meted out with impunity.

The days passed like sweet and gentle dreams, and the literati academic-turned-stormtrooper felt spiritually liberated.

Within one calendar year, Jochen Wolf had casually murdered seven people in the course of the ongoing pogroms conducted by the SA against Jews, which were officially unsanctioned but, it was known, strongly condoned. Wolf’s gleeful participation led to seven deaths, all by truncheon. His natural bullying streak found a home in the
Sturmabteilung
, and the more violent urges of his personality were given an avenue of release, legitimised by the endorsements of the state.

Violence had long been a part of the national character – Germany’s history dictated it – but for the first time, the forces that glorified military heroism and Germanic racial superiority also happened to be the forces holding political power over the country. In this climate of military mythology and rampant masculinity, Wolf freely abandoned his intellect and acquitted himself with the evil panache matched only by the most brutal of savage, nationalistic anti-Semites who embraced the swastika and marched in jackboots. And in the process, seven lifes were snuffed out by his hand, amongst the multitude of lost souls in the maelstrom of blood.

Jochen Wolf felt himself growing with quiet confidence.

Wily as a fox, he defected to the SS only two months before the murderous purge that the Party launched to castrate the SA’s boisterous leadership; hundreds died, and the pendulum of power swung in the Reich. Soon after, Wolf managed to attract the attention of the mastermind of the purge himself; an ambitious, ruthless young general of the SS named Reinhard Heydrich. Yet to his chagrin, Wolf found that his earlier affiliations to the discredited SA and in particular, its leadership, proved hard to shake off. It took years of dedication, and a Machiavellian usage of the powers afforded to those Hugo Boss-clad defenders of Hitler’s will -
The Black Angels
of the SS – before Wolf came into his own, freed from the shackles of prejudice and with the influence to manouevre unimpeded through the ranks, as he sought to advance along the complex hierarchy of the SS. He won over most of his detractors, and discredited the sole grudge-bearing enemy that he couldn’t; the man’s inability to forgive a drunken bar brawl during inter-party SA and SS tensions led Wolf to falsely implicate him as a Mischling. Buying his witnesses and falsifying the testimonies, Wolf dared to visit an approving Heydrich with the information, and within days his path to advancement had been freed of impediment.

Ultimately, the determined young man rose to the rank of Sturmbannführer by the tender age of 29 – though he privately preferred ‘Major’, the army and Anglo-Saxon version of the rank– thus reaching a position of relative authority only two years before the outbreak of war.

Wolf
yearned
for war. He possessed tremendous physical courage, tempered though it was by a moral cowardice; not so much a lack of scruples, as an ability to shelve the scruples he had, and relentlessly justify his various excesses and crimes. Under his own critical gaze, naked before his own ruthless scrutiny, Wolf knew that despite his physical courage, he ultimately lacked the courage of his convictions, due to not having any at all. He was philosophically and morally opportunistic, slippery, and nothing more; Wolf had been forced to accept that at heart, he had become a charlatan, and a chameleon by nature. All that mattered, ultimately, was advancement.

Each time he tried to reassess his life’s direction, Jochen Wolf reached the conclusion that any critical acclaim he could have received had he tried to promote himself with some thin veneer of literati pretence would ultimately mean far less to him than would seizing some real, tangible
power
.

And now, Wolf had waged war successfully, thrice, and defeated multiple great European nations on the battlefield. Obscured by the fog of war, he could kill with impunity, and he led men to battle. Under Reinhard Heydrich’s unsentimental patronage, he was destined to be a general of the Waffen-SS.

Gazing into the mirror in his bathroom, Jochen Wolf surveyed himself with an uncritical eye, and he felt like a god. He could taste the power that years of dedication, strategy and violence had awarded him, and greater still, that which was yet to come.

“So let me get this straight,” a heated Tommy snapped, blinking in the Prussian summer sun, “… you’re not happy about this but you’re only here because of us? And we’re traitors?”

The cockney shook his head in disbelief, even as James’ mouth opened with typical belligerence.

“Traitors is a tad strong. But yeah, I’m ’ere because o’ you.”

Tommy shook his head exasperatedly, as the Yorkshireman gave the same pokerfaced explanation that he had repeated relentlessly since the day they signed up for Operation Barbarossa; as usual, sans additional details.

Stanley sighed, casting his gaze around the uncertain men who were lounging around the grass, smoking cigarettes to pass the time. They had free reign in the SS complex, or at least, the parts of the academy that enlisted troopers of any race were permitted to enter.

“Well chaps, you can’t very well say we’re not fighting for a
cause
. Church burning peasants led by a murderous villain who has caused–”

“Led by a murderous villain, like Hitler,” James interjected, snorting derisively.

“
A murderous villain who has caused countless
millions of deaths,” Stanley continued doggedly, his tone plaintive. “Starvations, secret police–”

“Like the Gestapo.”

“Give it a rest, mate,” Tommy asked him wearily. Surprised by the relative pleasantry, the use of ‘mate’ as opposed to the usual ‘twat’ or other such derogatory insult, James paid heed and abandoned his sardonic scorn, listening quietly to Stanley’s remonstrations.

“Secret police arrests, thousands tortured in the NKVD Moscow HQ every week… collectivisation, killings, minor despots in charge all over the country… no one is safe, not a soul on Russian soil is beyond arrest, and for what, dear chaps?” Stanley gestured to James, bemused. “For absolutely
nothing
… can you imagine the madness…” he shook his own head in disbelief at the wonder of it. “Look, I tell you, the Soviet regime is beastly. They’ve launched invasions all over the Baltic States and Eastern Europe; they are brutally occupying other countries, and to top it all off they have
millions
of soldiers massing on the border with… with…”

“Germany,” James said, quietly. Stanley hesitated.

“Ah… yes. With Germany, in what was Poland. You’ve got to admit though, my dear fellow, that Europe is under
threat
.”

James threw the butt of his cigarette away, and rose to his feet, standing proud before the group of British soldiers. Planting his feet, he knew it would be his last effort to turn the tide and change the inevitable. But, bloodyminded Yorkshireman that he was, James tried one last time:

“Look lads. I’m not gonna deny that Russia’s a worthy enemy. Stalin’s a twat. But we’re fightin’ alongside
Germany
. Fucking…” and he hissed at them, keeping his voice down, “fucking
Germany
! Not against the bastards - with ’em! We’ve actually put our names down to go
fight alongside the fucking same set o’ bastards we fucking left to go fight in the first place
!” Behind James’ line of sight, Tommy rolled his eyes to Brian, who looked down at his feet. “Now… you all reckon Hoffman and the rest of those krauts at St George were all right, but these bastards are occupying us…
come
on lads…”

James beseeched them, to no avail. Several of the men who had heard his plaintive entreaties several times before simply got up and walked away without a word. James threw his hands up in irritation.

“OK look. You’d rather listen to that half-German prick Tommy
whatever-his-name-is
than me, that’s fair enough. But I only came along because we stick together, and I thought I could convince some of you to not do it. So
look
. If any of you lot are ’avin’ doubts about all this bollocks, say it now. We can still back out. But once we’re in Russia, freezing in that snow, it’s a fight to the death.”

The half-German was an English born and bred SS officer named Thomas Cooper, from Hammersmith, London. He’d been mingling with the British lads of all the combined St George camps, and many liked him. But James had overheard him speaking with an English anti-Semite from Grimsby, and Cooper had bragged about capriciously killing Jews during his duty as a concentration camp guard.

Having pleaded his case yet again, James looked around expectantly, but then lost his hope, correctly interpreting the pokerfaced expressions he faced. The silence spoke more eloquently than would any rebuttal and his head dropped, snorting derisively before sinking down on the grass besides Tommy and Brian, who both patted his shoulder sympathetically. Shaking his head, wincing slightly as a flock of birds flew overhead; James withdrew his packet of Dunhill and offered his friends a smoke, before inserting one into his own mouth. He lit it, and exhaled slowly.

“We’re about to fight a war alongside Hitler,” he mused morosely. “I wonder what the history books will say an ’undred years from now.” At that, several others rose to their feet and skipped away, quietly talking amongst themselves in the bright light of the Prussian sun.

~

Several days passed, in which the St. George Battalion mingled with other men of the SS. All were remarkably friendly to the British troops, under the strict orders of Heydrich, but much of the interaction was of so earnest and genuine a nature – perhaps by the shared fear and anticipation of the coming campaign – that the St. George boys could not help but feel their decision to fight was reinforced.

James Wilkinson alone remained aloof. Hoffman summoned him formally, within military parameters so that he could not refuse, even by his own country’s standard of etiquette.

“I wish you were not so upset about this,” he began, immediately abandoning formality.

Hoffman was sat perched on the very same table that Reinhard Heydrich had sat with Jochen Wolf, discussing at length the re-education of the British troops. If the setting, and his instant rejection of formality had wrongfooted the Yorkshireman in any way, Hoffman could not discern it.

James shrugged. “There isn’t much I can do, Walther.”

“Smoke?” the German asked, offering his pack. James nodded, and Hoffman simply dropped the packet on the table between them, carelessly. Scowling slightly, Private Wilkinson lowered himself onto the sun-tarnished wooden seat, and grudgingly helped himself to the pack. Waving aside the SS officer’s lighter, James struck a match, and moments later, with smoke wafting in curled twists over his lips as he gazed skywards, the young soldier looked as though he had already forgotten the German existed.

“We are going to fight Russia, and communism,” Hoffman told him frankly, rudely cutting through James’ cogitations. “Neither of us can change that now. And,” he added, sensing that the Yorkshireman had been on the verge of making one of his trademark dry, sarcastic quips, “… to be honest James, nor would I
wish
to. I’m
glad
we’re going to war with the right country and people, this time. I
hate
Stalin. I hate the Soviet Union. I hate communism, and fear it spreading. I even hate the Russian people… cold bastards.”