AH Vignette - From the Atlantic to the Urals
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TheLoneAmigo
Donor
It seems a little beyond belief that the Nazi model of corporatism tainted by absurd ideological constraints could produce such prosperity. German scientific education was in ruins by the end of the war. But it's possible we're seeing the most prosperous tip of a vast iceberg, like Moscow, the Baltics and Leningrad were for the Soviets...
It's a fair critique. It's hard to show the poverty of this Germany when your narrator is riding a first class train, but I'll try and expand on that as I go. (It hasn't come up yet, but the average annual income in this Reich is 1/3 what it is in OTL Germany.)
Dinner aboard the Breitspurbahn is a regimented affair. KdF cruises and resorts still valiantly try to homogenize vacationers, putting old Prussian and Austrian aristocrats in the same cabins and canteens as Pomeranian and Alsatian factory workers. (Curiously and coincidentally, Prussian and Austrian aristocrats tend to stay far away from KdF cruises and resorts.) The super-train makes no such effort. You get what you pay for, ranging from cheap (if comfortable) seats with meat and potato meals to private suites and three course meals with your own private server.
Despite unassailable logic on my part, my employers refused to subsidize me into the first class carriages. I did get a respectable meal budget and spent the first portion on sauerbraten and some very fine Vienna lager. Mostly I watched my fellow diners, none of whom said much at all during their meals.
The German condition. It’s never really safe to have conversations in a public space.
Later, around midnight, as the train is certainly over the old Dutch-German border, I rouse myself from my room and wander to the lounge car for a nightcap.
The university girls are there, playing cards and drinking cheap beer.
After a little while, I work myself into their circle by offering to teach them – well, we’ll call it Egyptian Ratscrew instead of the name I learned it by.
Sonja, it turns out, is from Groß Neukirch in Upper Silesia.
I tell them where I’m from. Neither one has heard of it, which doesn’t surprise me. Not many people back home know where Harford Abbey is, either.
“And you?” I ask Guðrún.
“Hafnir.” I know the place. It’s in southwest Iceland, right near a major joint USAF-RAF base. “I grew up under your bombers and cargo planes coming and going.”
“That’s why you’re hard of hearing,” Sonja says with a sad shake of her head.
“Better to have hard hearing than a hard head.”
“I’m paying for the hard drinks with hard money.”
After a little whoile, Sonja disappears to find the toilet and I start asking the questions I really want to ask.
“What do you think about going to university in Germany?”
Guðrún understands what I’m really asking. She gives the car the German glance. No one is within earshot, no one else is even in the car except an obviously drunk man near the far door. “I like it. No, of course I don’t love the politics. I mean, all the time the politics,” she says, quickly and firmly, just in case the walls have ears. “But Wewelsburg is the center for saga research.”
If you’re looking for the silver lining in a very dark cloud, I suppose that’s a start. The pure research carried out at RUW is impressive, even if some die-hard adherents to the Himmler School still lurk in prominent places. And besides, after the Ahnenerbe was done plundering the collections in Copenhagen and Oslo, a serious researcher has no choice but to go to Wewelsburg (or rather Paderborn – the SS cult center is in Wewelsburg, but the university itself is in Paderborn.)
Well, there’s Iceland, but I suppose Guðrún already tapped that well.
“I keep my head down.”
“Have you ever been to Wewelsburg itself?”
Guðrún cringes. “No! That’s all so weird. Their marches and midnight ceremonies with the torches, in the SS crypts, all of that, insane, insane, but the Germans take it seriously. I have a Professor who still believes in the World Ice Teaching. They know nothing! And all the strange things on the computer, the Auspo.” She shakes her head. “They believe all of it, the Germans. Not all of them, Sonja isn’t stupid like that, but so many. So many strange ideas. Wunderwaffe. And – you know. The racial thinking.” She shakes her head again and I wish she could go on for an hour. I’ve been in Germany so many times I sometimes forget how strange it is.
As for Wewelsburg and the SS-cult there, for once, the movies are, if anything, underestimating how strange it all is.
I want to ask if Guðrún risks using the Auspo to talk to her relatives and friends back home, if she has some kind of clever system to avoid the censors at the RPM, what she thinks of German TV and movies, if she’s allowed to read papers from back home, what it’s like being a Pure Nordic who rejects the racial thinking, but I don’t get a chance.
Sonja returns and we’re talking about the restaurants in Paderborn when she reaches the table.
We play a little more Ratscrew and then I take my leave, no doubt to their relief.
* * *
I fall asleep as we pass a long line of factories working into the night, belching smoke that glows weirdly in the bright lights of the industrial complex. They’re probably churning out Göringmobils by the thousands. It’s a far cry from the Midlands Miracle back home, to say nothing of what’s taking shape in China these days.
I have the nightmare about Klaus Kinski again.
I need to stop drinking before bed.
Despite unassailable logic on my part, my employers refused to subsidize me into the first class carriages. I did get a respectable meal budget and spent the first portion on sauerbraten and some very fine Vienna lager. Mostly I watched my fellow diners, none of whom said much at all during their meals.
The German condition. It’s never really safe to have conversations in a public space.
Later, around midnight, as the train is certainly over the old Dutch-German border, I rouse myself from my room and wander to the lounge car for a nightcap.
The university girls are there, playing cards and drinking cheap beer.
After a little while, I work myself into their circle by offering to teach them – well, we’ll call it Egyptian Ratscrew instead of the name I learned it by.
Sonja, it turns out, is from Groß Neukirch in Upper Silesia.
I tell them where I’m from. Neither one has heard of it, which doesn’t surprise me. Not many people back home know where Harford Abbey is, either.
“And you?” I ask Guðrún.
“Hafnir.” I know the place. It’s in southwest Iceland, right near a major joint USAF-RAF base. “I grew up under your bombers and cargo planes coming and going.”
“That’s why you’re hard of hearing,” Sonja says with a sad shake of her head.
“Better to have hard hearing than a hard head.”
“I’m paying for the hard drinks with hard money.”
After a little whoile, Sonja disappears to find the toilet and I start asking the questions I really want to ask.
“What do you think about going to university in Germany?”
Guðrún understands what I’m really asking. She gives the car the German glance. No one is within earshot, no one else is even in the car except an obviously drunk man near the far door. “I like it. No, of course I don’t love the politics. I mean, all the time the politics,” she says, quickly and firmly, just in case the walls have ears. “But Wewelsburg is the center for saga research.”
If you’re looking for the silver lining in a very dark cloud, I suppose that’s a start. The pure research carried out at RUW is impressive, even if some die-hard adherents to the Himmler School still lurk in prominent places. And besides, after the Ahnenerbe was done plundering the collections in Copenhagen and Oslo, a serious researcher has no choice but to go to Wewelsburg (or rather Paderborn – the SS cult center is in Wewelsburg, but the university itself is in Paderborn.)
Well, there’s Iceland, but I suppose Guðrún already tapped that well.
“I keep my head down.”
“Have you ever been to Wewelsburg itself?”
Guðrún cringes. “No! That’s all so weird. Their marches and midnight ceremonies with the torches, in the SS crypts, all of that, insane, insane, but the Germans take it seriously. I have a Professor who still believes in the World Ice Teaching. They know nothing! And all the strange things on the computer, the Auspo.” She shakes her head. “They believe all of it, the Germans. Not all of them, Sonja isn’t stupid like that, but so many. So many strange ideas. Wunderwaffe. And – you know. The racial thinking.” She shakes her head again and I wish she could go on for an hour. I’ve been in Germany so many times I sometimes forget how strange it is.
As for Wewelsburg and the SS-cult there, for once, the movies are, if anything, underestimating how strange it all is.
I want to ask if Guðrún risks using the Auspo to talk to her relatives and friends back home, if she has some kind of clever system to avoid the censors at the RPM, what she thinks of German TV and movies, if she’s allowed to read papers from back home, what it’s like being a Pure Nordic who rejects the racial thinking, but I don’t get a chance.
Sonja returns and we’re talking about the restaurants in Paderborn when she reaches the table.
We play a little more Ratscrew and then I take my leave, no doubt to their relief.
* * *
I fall asleep as we pass a long line of factories working into the night, belching smoke that glows weirdly in the bright lights of the industrial complex. They’re probably churning out Göringmobils by the thousands. It’s a far cry from the Midlands Miracle back home, to say nothing of what’s taking shape in China these days.
I have the nightmare about Klaus Kinski again.
I need to stop drinking before bed.
Faeelin
Banned
You know, I don't think this is quite the point, but I love the idea of there being a prosperous, liberalish China offscreen. I wonder how the Reich deals with that.
I'm also assuming that Japan has been firmly dealt with by the Allies.
Faeelin
Banned
I really toyed, in my Sun Yat-sen TL, being an ending where East Asia recovered and ended up doing pretty well, and lots of arrogant professors talked about Nazism as the end product of European colonialism.
A combination of brown-pants terror, denial of the facts, and taking all the credit for it, sometimes in the same speech.
Yes, and long since re-entered the world economy as a major player much as in OTL. It's also long since overshadowed by China on the economic (to say nothing of military) front, but they get along a little better than in OTL. China is much more focused on the Reich than Japan.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Thanks!
IV – The Altreich
Breakfast is warm and edible, if nothing else.
I miss bacon and might be permanently put off sausage by the time this journey is over.
* * *
The lounge car is becoming my home. The berth in my cabin might be more comfortable, but I wouldn’t respect myself if I didn’t mingle with my fellow passengers – as much as that’s possible in the Reich.
There was a stoppage in the middle of the night, and I feel pathetic that I didn’t even wake up. We should be well past Essen by now, but we’re still in Venlo. Venlo! That only adds salt to the wounds – everyone in my old line of work remembers Venlo even after almost 80 years. A first-class cock up.
The students appear not long after I settle down, both of them carrying their backpacks with them. We’re only an hour out of Essen, where the Breitspurbahn diverges from the rail route to Paderborn.
We play cards and we talk a little.
As is required of an older man speaking to younger women, I ask them what their plans for the future are.
Guðrún says she’d like to move to America, at which point Sonja looks jealous. I don’t blame her. It’s incredibly hard for a German to emigrate to any country that isn’t even worse off than the Reich, and even then, you better have some very useful technical skills to make the locals overlook the racial problem (yes, it is ironic, isn’t it?). German immigrants in the States are neither common nor particular popular.
The conversation whimpers to a halt and after some half-hearted farewells, the girls head down to wait for their stop.
* * *
Dortmund. Coal stacks, coking plants and black smoke. The least healthy city in the Reich for six years running, if I’m not mistaken. I feel sick just passing it by at a safe (?) distance.
Soon enough, we stop at Dortmund Hauptbahnhof and from my perch in the lounge car, I can see Guðrún and Sonja heading up the platform to wherever the trains to Paderborn depart from.
A little while later, the train leaves the filthy city behind and continues east towards Berlin.
Beckum. It’s only later in the day that I realize why the name strikes a chord with me. One of Liesl and Hanne’s fellow nurses, Erna Riehl, the only one who was too suspicious (and probably too smart) to talk to me, was from Kirchspiel Beckum. I wonder if she’s still in the East, and how the others, Meijer and Krämer, are. Do they blame me for Hanne’s death? Or at least her arrest?
Bielefeld. I was asleep at that point, but I assume it’s still there.
Hanover. A charming sight greets the train as it approaches the city – an ugly blotch of obsolete factories. We pass a Göringmobil assembly plant, an HGW steel mill, an huge Henschel complex pairing two factories, one making trains and the other tanks, and finally a Krupp plant that, I later discover, produces the barrels for German self-propelled artillery. And, of course, a huge black cloud hanging over it all.
* * *
Brunswick. A factory city that churns out trucks, cars, automotive parts, and, most importantly, junior Nazis leaders thanks to the Hitler Youth and SS leadership schools there.
Magdeburg. A chemical research centre, at least by Reich standards.
Hitlerstadt.
Breakfast is warm and edible, if nothing else.
I miss bacon and might be permanently put off sausage by the time this journey is over.
* * *
The lounge car is becoming my home. The berth in my cabin might be more comfortable, but I wouldn’t respect myself if I didn’t mingle with my fellow passengers – as much as that’s possible in the Reich.
There was a stoppage in the middle of the night, and I feel pathetic that I didn’t even wake up. We should be well past Essen by now, but we’re still in Venlo. Venlo! That only adds salt to the wounds – everyone in my old line of work remembers Venlo even after almost 80 years. A first-class cock up.
The students appear not long after I settle down, both of them carrying their backpacks with them. We’re only an hour out of Essen, where the Breitspurbahn diverges from the rail route to Paderborn.
We play cards and we talk a little.
As is required of an older man speaking to younger women, I ask them what their plans for the future are.
Guðrún says she’d like to move to America, at which point Sonja looks jealous. I don’t blame her. It’s incredibly hard for a German to emigrate to any country that isn’t even worse off than the Reich, and even then, you better have some very useful technical skills to make the locals overlook the racial problem (yes, it is ironic, isn’t it?). German immigrants in the States are neither common nor particular popular.
The conversation whimpers to a halt and after some half-hearted farewells, the girls head down to wait for their stop.
* * *
Dortmund. Coal stacks, coking plants and black smoke. The least healthy city in the Reich for six years running, if I’m not mistaken. I feel sick just passing it by at a safe (?) distance.
Soon enough, we stop at Dortmund Hauptbahnhof and from my perch in the lounge car, I can see Guðrún and Sonja heading up the platform to wherever the trains to Paderborn depart from.
A little while later, the train leaves the filthy city behind and continues east towards Berlin.
Beckum. It’s only later in the day that I realize why the name strikes a chord with me. One of Liesl and Hanne’s fellow nurses, Erna Riehl, the only one who was too suspicious (and probably too smart) to talk to me, was from Kirchspiel Beckum. I wonder if she’s still in the East, and how the others, Meijer and Krämer, are. Do they blame me for Hanne’s death? Or at least her arrest?
Bielefeld. I was asleep at that point, but I assume it’s still there.
Hanover. A charming sight greets the train as it approaches the city – an ugly blotch of obsolete factories. We pass a Göringmobil assembly plant, an HGW steel mill, an huge Henschel complex pairing two factories, one making trains and the other tanks, and finally a Krupp plant that, I later discover, produces the barrels for German self-propelled artillery. And, of course, a huge black cloud hanging over it all.
* * *
Brunswick. A factory city that churns out trucks, cars, automotive parts, and, most importantly, junior Nazis leaders thanks to the Hitler Youth and SS leadership schools there.
Magdeburg. A chemical research centre, at least by Reich standards.
Hitlerstadt.
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It roughly matches this map, although with a few more zigs and zags. Our narrator will be taking the Breslau-Kasan route.
This is both lovely and ghastly...
One would think the Nazis would have more stringent environmental regulations, but probably they don't think they can afford the loss of production or Hitler's (alleged?) animalism has been forgotten.
One would think the Nazis would have more stringent environmental regulations, but probably they don't think they can afford the loss of production or Hitler's (alleged?) animalism has been forgotten.
Thanks!
As far as environmental protection goes, that takes a back seat to keeping up with the West and China. (Or at least making an effort at competing.)
I think Army Intelligence Corps (I made a reference to it in the first one), even if that wasn't the organization involved in Venlo.
V – The Gauleiter’s Daughter
HITLERSTADT (formerly Germania (1947-1964), previously Berlin) – capital of the GREATER GERMANIC REICH, conterminous with REICHSGAU Hitlerstadt. The old city was heavily transformed by ALBERT SPEER during the 1940s. The primary air and rail transport hub of the Greater Germanic Reich. An important industrial center. Population (2000) - 5,275,000
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)
Hitlerstadt Südbahnhof, the larger of the city’s two principal railway stations, is the largest station in Europe (but not the busiest – Hamburg Hauptbahnhof takes the prize there). It is the iron heart of Europe’s rail network, with lines stretching from Nordstern to Naples and from the Atlantic to the Urals, just as Hitlerstadt is the iron heart of the Reich, of the Berlin Pact, of Europe.
When I was born, the great reconstruction of Hitlerstadt was just about complete. (Never mind how much of Hitler and Speer’s original plans had to be cancelled or ‘refined’ owing to their sheer physical impossibility.) The north-south Prachtallee had been finished at the expense of the center of the old city. The Triumphbogen (only twice the size of the Arc de Triomph in Paris) was done. The Volkshalle, the Führerpalast, the Reichstag and the Reich Chancellery had all been completed, even if all of the new buildings (esp. the Volkshalle) were much smaller than initially planned.
By all accounts, old Berlin (or, briefly, Germania) was a more charming city. The gross gigantism of Nazi architecture might have its appeal to some people, but it has a cyclopean character that H.P. Lovecraft and Kao Hsing-han would envy.
* * *
There’s an hour before the train leaves again. Not much time, but enough that I can wander around the station. The scale and details are different, and there are obviously trains instead of planes, but in the essentials, Südbahnhof is just a gigantic version of Brest Guipavas.
Germans in uniforms, all looking the same no matter what the color and cut of their particular outfit is. Railway workers. Railway police. Ordinary police. Wehrmacht. Waffen-SS. Hitler Youth. I start getting cross-eyed.
German newspapers, repeating the same stories with slightly different wording under the decrees of Tröger and the rest of the Propaganda Ministry. All the headlines are SCREAMING AT YOU in very large fonts.
German television shows, regurgitating whatever the Party line is this year. Sci-fi schlock with doe-eyed Fräuleins menaced by sinister space warriors with exaggeratedly ‘slanted eyes’ seem to be the order of the day. I suppose someone in Hitlerstadt is especially angry at China.
Guest workers, recognizable by their cheap overalls prominently labeled G. Mostly Latin, with a few Finns and southeast Europeans sprinkled in. Nazi racial thinking was conveniently revised in the 1950s to elevate Croats, Slovaks, Hungarians and other Balkan people, the so-called Dinaric race, to ‘Partially Germanic’ status. Even so, they’re barely second class residents (not citizens) forced to live in cheap, isolated dormitories and restricted from social contact with Aryans. Fraternization results in both punishing fines and deportation.
I get back on the train before I get sick to my stomach.
* * *
Later, not long after we leave Hitlerstadt behind, I make an expedition to the forward lounge car, that outer fortress of the first class carriages beyond. I want to see how the other half lives.
The people here are definitely of the smart set. Kreisleiters, Heer colonels (or their equivalents in the other services), industrial middle management, and so on. Most (but not all) of them are a bit doughy and a far cry from the ideal set in stone by Arno Breker and his disciples.
Most, but not all.
Among the exceptions is an exceptionally beautiful young brunette in a stylish outfit.
The first thing I notice is a simple one – she’s wearing lipstick.
This may seem like the ultimate in banal observations, but in the Reich (despite what Western films depict), you really don’t find many women who wear make-up. Eighty years of ‘Natürliche Frau’ propaganda have done their part. Only the rich and the radical wear obvious make-up.
I don’t know many radicals who wear five thousand RM dresses, so I’m going to take a guess she’s one of the rich.
Then, as I drift closer on instinct, it hits me. I’ve seen her before. You have, too, probably.
Have you seen Eisenherz or Kapitän Blut? If you have, then you know Sibylle Schreiber, the latest UFA starlet.
I know her.
I know her family history, too. Professional requirement in the old days. I can, or could, tell you where every one of the Reich’s ministers, gauleiters and service chiefs went to school, and their C.V.s as well as those of their spouses and children.
Case in point, Sibylle Schreiber.
Her grandfather Günther fought in the war, was SS Police Chief of Jarmen and then Generalkommisar of Alexanderstadt. Like most of the Eastern chieftains, he got a large, handsome estate near Reval from Hitler and plundered enough to afford an Austrian castle, a Pomeranian hunting lodge and a yacht in Königsberg. Her father Adolf served in a Luftwaffe parachute division and then went moved up the Party ranks until he was appointed Gauleiter of Oberdanpar (roughly the old Soviet Smolensk Oblast) in 2003. Today, the family owns the estate, the castle, the lodge, the yacht, a private jet and three hotels, and has residential use of Engelhardt House in Bockburg. All told, the family's net worth is probably around 2 billion RM.
This fact is concealed from the average German worker, who makes 50,000 RM a year and hears only about the brave military service of grandfather and father in taming the East, the honest hard work of the son (Friedrich, age 27, already leader of a district in Moselland) and the glamour of the daughter. She was an equestrian champion in university, then plunged right into the arms of UFA. Her first role was also her first big role.
I reach her, she looks up, and I offer a glass of champagne I plucked off a waiter’s tray en route.
“May I join you?”
She smiles. “By all means.”
* * *
DORPAT (formerly Tartu, Estonia) – capital of Reichsgau LIVLAND. Site of OSTLAND-UNIVERSITÄT DORPAT, a major center of legal, medical, RACIAL HYGIENE and computer research, as well as a LUFTWAFFE fighter base south of the city in Uellenorm. Population (2000): 51,350.
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)
HITLERSTADT (formerly Germania (1947-1964), previously Berlin) – capital of the GREATER GERMANIC REICH, conterminous with REICHSGAU Hitlerstadt. The old city was heavily transformed by ALBERT SPEER during the 1940s. The primary air and rail transport hub of the Greater Germanic Reich. An important industrial center. Population (2000) - 5,275,000
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)
Hitlerstadt Südbahnhof, the larger of the city’s two principal railway stations, is the largest station in Europe (but not the busiest – Hamburg Hauptbahnhof takes the prize there). It is the iron heart of Europe’s rail network, with lines stretching from Nordstern to Naples and from the Atlantic to the Urals, just as Hitlerstadt is the iron heart of the Reich, of the Berlin Pact, of Europe.
When I was born, the great reconstruction of Hitlerstadt was just about complete. (Never mind how much of Hitler and Speer’s original plans had to be cancelled or ‘refined’ owing to their sheer physical impossibility.) The north-south Prachtallee had been finished at the expense of the center of the old city. The Triumphbogen (only twice the size of the Arc de Triomph in Paris) was done. The Volkshalle, the Führerpalast, the Reichstag and the Reich Chancellery had all been completed, even if all of the new buildings (esp. the Volkshalle) were much smaller than initially planned.
By all accounts, old Berlin (or, briefly, Germania) was a more charming city. The gross gigantism of Nazi architecture might have its appeal to some people, but it has a cyclopean character that H.P. Lovecraft and Kao Hsing-han would envy.
* * *
There’s an hour before the train leaves again. Not much time, but enough that I can wander around the station. The scale and details are different, and there are obviously trains instead of planes, but in the essentials, Südbahnhof is just a gigantic version of Brest Guipavas.
Germans in uniforms, all looking the same no matter what the color and cut of their particular outfit is. Railway workers. Railway police. Ordinary police. Wehrmacht. Waffen-SS. Hitler Youth. I start getting cross-eyed.
German newspapers, repeating the same stories with slightly different wording under the decrees of Tröger and the rest of the Propaganda Ministry. All the headlines are SCREAMING AT YOU in very large fonts.
German television shows, regurgitating whatever the Party line is this year. Sci-fi schlock with doe-eyed Fräuleins menaced by sinister space warriors with exaggeratedly ‘slanted eyes’ seem to be the order of the day. I suppose someone in Hitlerstadt is especially angry at China.
Guest workers, recognizable by their cheap overalls prominently labeled G. Mostly Latin, with a few Finns and southeast Europeans sprinkled in. Nazi racial thinking was conveniently revised in the 1950s to elevate Croats, Slovaks, Hungarians and other Balkan people, the so-called Dinaric race, to ‘Partially Germanic’ status. Even so, they’re barely second class residents (not citizens) forced to live in cheap, isolated dormitories and restricted from social contact with Aryans. Fraternization results in both punishing fines and deportation.
I get back on the train before I get sick to my stomach.
* * *
Later, not long after we leave Hitlerstadt behind, I make an expedition to the forward lounge car, that outer fortress of the first class carriages beyond. I want to see how the other half lives.
The people here are definitely of the smart set. Kreisleiters, Heer colonels (or their equivalents in the other services), industrial middle management, and so on. Most (but not all) of them are a bit doughy and a far cry from the ideal set in stone by Arno Breker and his disciples.
Most, but not all.
Among the exceptions is an exceptionally beautiful young brunette in a stylish outfit.
The first thing I notice is a simple one – she’s wearing lipstick.
This may seem like the ultimate in banal observations, but in the Reich (despite what Western films depict), you really don’t find many women who wear make-up. Eighty years of ‘Natürliche Frau’ propaganda have done their part. Only the rich and the radical wear obvious make-up.
I don’t know many radicals who wear five thousand RM dresses, so I’m going to take a guess she’s one of the rich.
Then, as I drift closer on instinct, it hits me. I’ve seen her before. You have, too, probably.
Have you seen Eisenherz or Kapitän Blut? If you have, then you know Sibylle Schreiber, the latest UFA starlet.
I know her.
I know her family history, too. Professional requirement in the old days. I can, or could, tell you where every one of the Reich’s ministers, gauleiters and service chiefs went to school, and their C.V.s as well as those of their spouses and children.
Case in point, Sibylle Schreiber.
Her grandfather Günther fought in the war, was SS Police Chief of Jarmen and then Generalkommisar of Alexanderstadt. Like most of the Eastern chieftains, he got a large, handsome estate near Reval from Hitler and plundered enough to afford an Austrian castle, a Pomeranian hunting lodge and a yacht in Königsberg. Her father Adolf served in a Luftwaffe parachute division and then went moved up the Party ranks until he was appointed Gauleiter of Oberdanpar (roughly the old Soviet Smolensk Oblast) in 2003. Today, the family owns the estate, the castle, the lodge, the yacht, a private jet and three hotels, and has residential use of Engelhardt House in Bockburg. All told, the family's net worth is probably around 2 billion RM.
This fact is concealed from the average German worker, who makes 50,000 RM a year and hears only about the brave military service of grandfather and father in taming the East, the honest hard work of the son (Friedrich, age 27, already leader of a district in Moselland) and the glamour of the daughter. She was an equestrian champion in university, then plunged right into the arms of UFA. Her first role was also her first big role.
I reach her, she looks up, and I offer a glass of champagne I plucked off a waiter’s tray en route.
“May I join you?”
She smiles. “By all means.”
* * *
DORPAT (formerly Tartu, Estonia) – capital of Reichsgau LIVLAND. Site of OSTLAND-UNIVERSITÄT DORPAT, a major center of legal, medical, RACIAL HYGIENE and computer research, as well as a LUFTWAFFE fighter base south of the city in Uellenorm. Population (2000): 51,350.
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)
Did India still have partition occur or did it achieve independence as a united nation?