Four years to the day since he had become Fuhrer, Hermann Goering stood upon the platform and received the adulation of the massed ranks before him. The heils went on and on, swelling to a roar which seemed to enveloped the whole of the arena. Goering, resplendent in the pilot's leathers he had adopted as his uniform in the latter part of the war, stood and received the acclamation, a slight smile on his handsome visage.
It was of course also four years to the day since the American nuclear bomb had taken out Berlin; the two anniversaries were inextricably linked. President Byrnes had thought to chop the head off Nazi Germany and render it helpless, but he had badly miscalculated, an error for which he had paid for two years later with his impeachment and dishonourable expulsion from office. His Vice President had had but a couple of months in his turn before being similarly ejected, this time by the electorate in a landslide for the Republican opposition.
Almost two years later, and President Taft's United States hovered on the brink of renewing formal diplomatic relations with the Greater German Reich, something which had seemed unthinkable, outrageous even at one stage, but which the exigencies of Fate, and of a world now made more dangerous by their respective growing arsenals of nuclear weapons made necessary. As part of that process, Ambassador Vandegrift had been welcomed as a Guest of Honour here at the new German National Day, and even he could not avoid the irony of the situation.
His own war had been fought in the Pacific, from commander of the first Marine division to take to the field against the Japanese in the US counter-attack to leader of the assault on Bougainville. After that, President Roosevelt had recalled him to Washington to give him command of the entire Marine Corps, but he had fallen out of favour, like so many others, with Roosevelt's successor and had languished in occupation duty in Tokyo, replacing MacArthur who had been summoned to Europe for the Final Push. Vandegrift could sneer at that now, but back then he had felt snubbed and angered by being pushed aside. Now, he saw it for the blessing it had been - the one place to be to escape the fall out from the debacle of 1947 had been Japan. Unlike many of his contemporaries he had come out of the war with his reputation intact and had retired a four-star general at the end of his duties in Tokyo.
Now he was back in action, albeit of a different sort, appointed Ambassador to Nuremburg as much for his military credentials as for his lack of any direct combat experience against the Germans. It was a sometimes uneasy path to tread, but the dichotomy so far was playing well, both back home in the US, and here in Germany. But he still wished he did not have to endure this ceremony, knowing from his briefing just how long it was planned to be, as Nazi Germany congratulated itself in its annual ritual of martial festivities.
The Ambassador was not the only one feeling less than fully enthused about the prospect of the day's entertainment. Walter Schellenberg, Head of Reich Intelligence stared on impassively as Goering began the annual address to the faithful, and they did not get any more faithful than the serried ranks out there, sweating in the sun this hot August day. Set back on the platform, Schellenberg at least had a degree of shade, though the prospect of standing for hours hardly thrilled him. Still, there was always something to learn by watching, so he watched...just not the ceremonies; he watched his fellow leaders of the New Germany
After the nuclear bomb had decapitated the national leadership, so much had come down to whether the shadow organisations established by the Party and by the SS were able to pick up the ball and run with it. Ribbentrop, who had been in Budapest, meeting with a recalitrant Horthy, had had no trouble simply supplanting the now extinct Foreign Office, as von Neurath and his staff had been reduced to little more than civil servants working in his shadow by years of Nazi rule.
It had been momentarily touch and go with the Armed Forces High Command. The shadow OKW had been created in early 1942 to 'advise' the Wehrmacht, Jans Juttner as Head of SS Main Leadership Office being promoted to control it. Already having had responsibility for the organisation and administrative leadership of the Waffen SS, Juttner had been ideally placed to take on this role. Instructed by Himmler to get the best deal for the Waffen SS, and to make sure the other services took their needs seriously in strategic planning, the shadow OKW had been accredited with liaisons from the army, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and from Signals.
Schellenberg now watched the man who had emerged from the chaos of those days in 1946 as head of the new SS-controlled OKW. Joachim Hartmann was a relatively non-descript fellow, six foot tall, average build, thinning and greying hair though he was scarcely older than Schellenberg himself was. He had been a medium-ranking Luftwaffe official, something of an administrative genius but disposable enough for Goering to have assigned him to the role of liaison. His advice and recommendations had proven astute, and had worked both ways, his reports back to Goering managing to create a change in strategic policy that was at once useful to the Luftwaffe and to the long-term goals of the SS, and thus the Reich.
Himmler had rewarded him with the offer of an SS commission, which Hartmann had taken, much to Goering's muted disgust, but in 1944 nobody had taken the shadow body seriously, and the dichotomy of the Luftwaffe liaison also holding rank in the SS had not been of great concern. Indeed, many of Hartmann's contemporaries had viewed it as being a blight on his career, a final curtain to his ambitions. But August 24th 1946 had changed that...
The nuclear bomb which had killed the Fuhrer, and also taken out Reichsministers Goebbels and Speer and Reichsleiter Bormann, had also wiped out the top echelons of OKW and OKH. The Americans had chosen their moment well, but had gambled without taking into consideration an organisation of which they knew little, and which they cared about equally little. But two years previously, Schellenberg himself had played a role which ought to have told US intelligence what might happen. It was Summer 1944, a hard fought Summer, especially in North Africa, and Abwehr reports were proving not only infuriatingly vague but often as not plain wrong. Himmler had ordered close surveillance of the main figures in Military Intelligence, and the suspicious behaviour of one had been all it took.
As second only to Canaris, Hans Oster was a significant figure in his own right, and as his superior's chief of staff. Himmler had reported to the Fuhrer, and Hitler had approved the taking out of the Abwehr leadership and the impressing of its rank and file into the organisation now headed by Schellenberg. It had been as ruthless as the Night of the Long Knives, which had incidentally seen Canaris' predecessor as head of the Abwehr purged, and it had been a surprisingly easy success. Canaris and Oster had been shot, and Schellenberg had almost seemlessly taken over the running of military intelligence, a position his office was already well-placed to take on.
He smiled to himself at the memory, and continued to observe Hartmann. He had emerged as a favourite of Himmler during the Cyprus Offensive, when he had argued Goering into releasing the gigantic flying boats he had co-opted from Blohm & Voss. The success of that operation, and especially of the SS Paratroop Division, operating for the first time at this greater size of force, had helped Hartmann to cement his position as very much the number two person in the organisation behind Juttner.
Schellenberg recalled being only vaguely aware of the fellow throughout 1944 and 1945, Hartmann being a name on intelligence dossiers, word of mouth reports, nothing really to concern himself as if he were anything, then Hartmann was a committed and loyal Nazi. Only as 1946 wore on had Schellenberg begun to wonder at Hartmann's successes, seeing a sharper mind than he had previously given credit for, and a man who was personally received by Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels with glowing praise thereafter, a man nevertheless still in daily contact with then-Reichsmarschal Goering, as if to square the circle.
Schellenberg remembered where he himself had been when news of the nuclear bomb upon Berlin had come in. He could not but recall that moment without a shiver down his spine, as if someone had taken the world he had known and shaken it up, like bubbles of froth within a bottle of beer. He had been in Hamburg, almost laughably now for a meeting about ex-Abwehr agents believed still to be operating in the USA. The radio operator had come in, ashen-faced and weak-kneed, no doubt a performance that had been mirrored up and down the Reich. Berlin was gone, the Fuhrer was dead, the US President was being broadcast over British radio...
Even he himself had worried, and if he were honest with himself, had doubted, but Schellenberg had known his duty. He had flashed the news to Karinhall, had telephoned Wawelsburg and been put straight through to Himmler. The Reichsfuhrer had been calmness and serenity itself - Goering would accede as fuhrer, he had said, and Juttner's organisation would take over from OKW with immediate effect. Schellenberg had kept in minute-by-minute contact with Kaltenbruner's SS security command, ever prepared for an uprising, a sudden desperate throw by the anti-Nazi opposition, but nothing had happened. Instead had come the word that Goering would broadcast at Midday, from an undisclosed location, and that the shadow OKW had taken full control of the armed forces of the Reich
Schellenberg suppressed a wry grin. He was still here, Himmler, Goering, Klammer were still here, but Juttner was but a forgotten memory. The new Fuhrer had indeed broadcast to the nation, on the hour, on the second of Midday - later it would be revealled that he was at Party HQ in Nuremburg, but at the time it was beyond a state secret to know that, even Schellenberg had had to ask Himmler and wait for the Reichsfuhrer to learn from the mouth of Goering himself. With Bormann and Goebbels dead, Party HQ was running itself, no one in command, all systems operative, the chicken without its head, but in perfect running order
It had taken just a week for it to happen, Schellenberg again remembered as he viewed the still and static figure of Hartmann across the platform. Juttner had been appointed Acting Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Command, but never fully confirmed in the role. Goering and Himmler had met - at Berchtesgaden, it would later be revealed, but at the time that was another deadly secret. Afterwards, Juttner had been eased sideways, and would later enjoy the role of Co-ordinator with Germany's Axis allies, and Hartmann had been promoted to head the new SS version of OKW. From there they had gone on to win the war...
Schellenberg snorted, silently and unobtrusively, but to his own mental faculties it was a snort indeed. Popular legend held Hartmann responsible for victory, but popular legend did not know it all. When the time came for the history of the the twelve months from Summer 1946 to 1947 to be written, history would have other names to cast into the frame. His own would be foremost amongst them, but of course Goering and Himmler would have great parts to play, but historians would nevertheless never be really sure what was their doing, and what was that of those beneath them. Schellenberg aimed to make certain that his own role was never done down, that was for sure.
And of the others ? Doenitz, Dietrich, Guderian, Rommel, Galland, Porsche, Heinkel... All had been named as Heroes of the Reich the previous year, the third anniversary, the third National Day, with him alongside them of course. Schellenberg would not have had it otherwise. To be too elevated whilst still in his prime would have been dangerous, and was a role only for the failing health of old age, like the last World War One Field Marshal Mackensen had been awarded a year ago too - a state funeral, despite the problems his support for the church had given the Nazis. It was the legend that spoke in the end, and it was the legend that had been remembered at the memorial service, no mention of the embarrassing incident of the so-called Moelders Letter. No, the old Field Marshal had been fully rehabilitated by death, and those who remembered otherwise now officially misremembered. That was the way to go.
Hartmann had not moved in all the time that Schellenberg had been watching him. He was good at waiting, marking his time, that he had to give him. What would happen in the years ahead ? With the Fuhrer in rude health, he could last decades, but there would be manoevrings for power beneath him, and in the final analysis there would be the question of the succession. In a meritocracy that could go to anyone. Hartmann had proved that at OKW, Schellenberg himself had proved it at Intelligence...
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
It was of course also four years to the day since the American nuclear bomb had taken out Berlin; the two anniversaries were inextricably linked. President Byrnes had thought to chop the head off Nazi Germany and render it helpless, but he had badly miscalculated, an error for which he had paid for two years later with his impeachment and dishonourable expulsion from office. His Vice President had had but a couple of months in his turn before being similarly ejected, this time by the electorate in a landslide for the Republican opposition.
Almost two years later, and President Taft's United States hovered on the brink of renewing formal diplomatic relations with the Greater German Reich, something which had seemed unthinkable, outrageous even at one stage, but which the exigencies of Fate, and of a world now made more dangerous by their respective growing arsenals of nuclear weapons made necessary. As part of that process, Ambassador Vandegrift had been welcomed as a Guest of Honour here at the new German National Day, and even he could not avoid the irony of the situation.
His own war had been fought in the Pacific, from commander of the first Marine division to take to the field against the Japanese in the US counter-attack to leader of the assault on Bougainville. After that, President Roosevelt had recalled him to Washington to give him command of the entire Marine Corps, but he had fallen out of favour, like so many others, with Roosevelt's successor and had languished in occupation duty in Tokyo, replacing MacArthur who had been summoned to Europe for the Final Push. Vandegrift could sneer at that now, but back then he had felt snubbed and angered by being pushed aside. Now, he saw it for the blessing it had been - the one place to be to escape the fall out from the debacle of 1947 had been Japan. Unlike many of his contemporaries he had come out of the war with his reputation intact and had retired a four-star general at the end of his duties in Tokyo.
Now he was back in action, albeit of a different sort, appointed Ambassador to Nuremburg as much for his military credentials as for his lack of any direct combat experience against the Germans. It was a sometimes uneasy path to tread, but the dichotomy so far was playing well, both back home in the US, and here in Germany. But he still wished he did not have to endure this ceremony, knowing from his briefing just how long it was planned to be, as Nazi Germany congratulated itself in its annual ritual of martial festivities.
The Ambassador was not the only one feeling less than fully enthused about the prospect of the day's entertainment. Walter Schellenberg, Head of Reich Intelligence stared on impassively as Goering began the annual address to the faithful, and they did not get any more faithful than the serried ranks out there, sweating in the sun this hot August day. Set back on the platform, Schellenberg at least had a degree of shade, though the prospect of standing for hours hardly thrilled him. Still, there was always something to learn by watching, so he watched...just not the ceremonies; he watched his fellow leaders of the New Germany
After the nuclear bomb had decapitated the national leadership, so much had come down to whether the shadow organisations established by the Party and by the SS were able to pick up the ball and run with it. Ribbentrop, who had been in Budapest, meeting with a recalitrant Horthy, had had no trouble simply supplanting the now extinct Foreign Office, as von Neurath and his staff had been reduced to little more than civil servants working in his shadow by years of Nazi rule.
It had been momentarily touch and go with the Armed Forces High Command. The shadow OKW had been created in early 1942 to 'advise' the Wehrmacht, Jans Juttner as Head of SS Main Leadership Office being promoted to control it. Already having had responsibility for the organisation and administrative leadership of the Waffen SS, Juttner had been ideally placed to take on this role. Instructed by Himmler to get the best deal for the Waffen SS, and to make sure the other services took their needs seriously in strategic planning, the shadow OKW had been accredited with liaisons from the army, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and from Signals.
Schellenberg now watched the man who had emerged from the chaos of those days in 1946 as head of the new SS-controlled OKW. Joachim Hartmann was a relatively non-descript fellow, six foot tall, average build, thinning and greying hair though he was scarcely older than Schellenberg himself was. He had been a medium-ranking Luftwaffe official, something of an administrative genius but disposable enough for Goering to have assigned him to the role of liaison. His advice and recommendations had proven astute, and had worked both ways, his reports back to Goering managing to create a change in strategic policy that was at once useful to the Luftwaffe and to the long-term goals of the SS, and thus the Reich.
Himmler had rewarded him with the offer of an SS commission, which Hartmann had taken, much to Goering's muted disgust, but in 1944 nobody had taken the shadow body seriously, and the dichotomy of the Luftwaffe liaison also holding rank in the SS had not been of great concern. Indeed, many of Hartmann's contemporaries had viewed it as being a blight on his career, a final curtain to his ambitions. But August 24th 1946 had changed that...
The nuclear bomb which had killed the Fuhrer, and also taken out Reichsministers Goebbels and Speer and Reichsleiter Bormann, had also wiped out the top echelons of OKW and OKH. The Americans had chosen their moment well, but had gambled without taking into consideration an organisation of which they knew little, and which they cared about equally little. But two years previously, Schellenberg himself had played a role which ought to have told US intelligence what might happen. It was Summer 1944, a hard fought Summer, especially in North Africa, and Abwehr reports were proving not only infuriatingly vague but often as not plain wrong. Himmler had ordered close surveillance of the main figures in Military Intelligence, and the suspicious behaviour of one had been all it took.
As second only to Canaris, Hans Oster was a significant figure in his own right, and as his superior's chief of staff. Himmler had reported to the Fuhrer, and Hitler had approved the taking out of the Abwehr leadership and the impressing of its rank and file into the organisation now headed by Schellenberg. It had been as ruthless as the Night of the Long Knives, which had incidentally seen Canaris' predecessor as head of the Abwehr purged, and it had been a surprisingly easy success. Canaris and Oster had been shot, and Schellenberg had almost seemlessly taken over the running of military intelligence, a position his office was already well-placed to take on.
He smiled to himself at the memory, and continued to observe Hartmann. He had emerged as a favourite of Himmler during the Cyprus Offensive, when he had argued Goering into releasing the gigantic flying boats he had co-opted from Blohm & Voss. The success of that operation, and especially of the SS Paratroop Division, operating for the first time at this greater size of force, had helped Hartmann to cement his position as very much the number two person in the organisation behind Juttner.
Schellenberg recalled being only vaguely aware of the fellow throughout 1944 and 1945, Hartmann being a name on intelligence dossiers, word of mouth reports, nothing really to concern himself as if he were anything, then Hartmann was a committed and loyal Nazi. Only as 1946 wore on had Schellenberg begun to wonder at Hartmann's successes, seeing a sharper mind than he had previously given credit for, and a man who was personally received by Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels with glowing praise thereafter, a man nevertheless still in daily contact with then-Reichsmarschal Goering, as if to square the circle.
Schellenberg remembered where he himself had been when news of the nuclear bomb upon Berlin had come in. He could not but recall that moment without a shiver down his spine, as if someone had taken the world he had known and shaken it up, like bubbles of froth within a bottle of beer. He had been in Hamburg, almost laughably now for a meeting about ex-Abwehr agents believed still to be operating in the USA. The radio operator had come in, ashen-faced and weak-kneed, no doubt a performance that had been mirrored up and down the Reich. Berlin was gone, the Fuhrer was dead, the US President was being broadcast over British radio...
Even he himself had worried, and if he were honest with himself, had doubted, but Schellenberg had known his duty. He had flashed the news to Karinhall, had telephoned Wawelsburg and been put straight through to Himmler. The Reichsfuhrer had been calmness and serenity itself - Goering would accede as fuhrer, he had said, and Juttner's organisation would take over from OKW with immediate effect. Schellenberg had kept in minute-by-minute contact with Kaltenbruner's SS security command, ever prepared for an uprising, a sudden desperate throw by the anti-Nazi opposition, but nothing had happened. Instead had come the word that Goering would broadcast at Midday, from an undisclosed location, and that the shadow OKW had taken full control of the armed forces of the Reich
Schellenberg suppressed a wry grin. He was still here, Himmler, Goering, Klammer were still here, but Juttner was but a forgotten memory. The new Fuhrer had indeed broadcast to the nation, on the hour, on the second of Midday - later it would be revealled that he was at Party HQ in Nuremburg, but at the time it was beyond a state secret to know that, even Schellenberg had had to ask Himmler and wait for the Reichsfuhrer to learn from the mouth of Goering himself. With Bormann and Goebbels dead, Party HQ was running itself, no one in command, all systems operative, the chicken without its head, but in perfect running order
It had taken just a week for it to happen, Schellenberg again remembered as he viewed the still and static figure of Hartmann across the platform. Juttner had been appointed Acting Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Command, but never fully confirmed in the role. Goering and Himmler had met - at Berchtesgaden, it would later be revealed, but at the time that was another deadly secret. Afterwards, Juttner had been eased sideways, and would later enjoy the role of Co-ordinator with Germany's Axis allies, and Hartmann had been promoted to head the new SS version of OKW. From there they had gone on to win the war...
Schellenberg snorted, silently and unobtrusively, but to his own mental faculties it was a snort indeed. Popular legend held Hartmann responsible for victory, but popular legend did not know it all. When the time came for the history of the the twelve months from Summer 1946 to 1947 to be written, history would have other names to cast into the frame. His own would be foremost amongst them, but of course Goering and Himmler would have great parts to play, but historians would nevertheless never be really sure what was their doing, and what was that of those beneath them. Schellenberg aimed to make certain that his own role was never done down, that was for sure.
And of the others ? Doenitz, Dietrich, Guderian, Rommel, Galland, Porsche, Heinkel... All had been named as Heroes of the Reich the previous year, the third anniversary, the third National Day, with him alongside them of course. Schellenberg would not have had it otherwise. To be too elevated whilst still in his prime would have been dangerous, and was a role only for the failing health of old age, like the last World War One Field Marshal Mackensen had been awarded a year ago too - a state funeral, despite the problems his support for the church had given the Nazis. It was the legend that spoke in the end, and it was the legend that had been remembered at the memorial service, no mention of the embarrassing incident of the so-called Moelders Letter. No, the old Field Marshal had been fully rehabilitated by death, and those who remembered otherwise now officially misremembered. That was the way to go.
Hartmann had not moved in all the time that Schellenberg had been watching him. He was good at waiting, marking his time, that he had to give him. What would happen in the years ahead ? With the Fuhrer in rude health, he could last decades, but there would be manoevrings for power beneath him, and in the final analysis there would be the question of the succession. In a meritocracy that could go to anyone. Hartmann had proved that at OKW, Schellenberg himself had proved it at Intelligence...
Best Regards
Grey Wolf