November 24th 1939
Wehrmacht Commander-in –Chief General Walter von Brauchitisch looked down as a dark pool of blood formed behind the Fuehrer’s dead blue eyes. Staring in disbelief at his smoking Luger in his own grasp he thought, “I did it. I really did it.” Promptly the office door was knocked off it hinges as a rifle butt crashed into the back of his skull.
He awoke to his own screaming as one of his front teeth were wrenched out by pliers. Raising his hand, he tried to block the rays of the sun lamp burning his face but found both wrists handcuffed tightly to his chair. He opened his mouth stirring the blood filling his top gum with his tongue. Pleas of leniency were ignored as he suffered another bone shuddering punch to the kidneys. Looking back at his assailer, he found a brutish Aryan clothed in a white SS vest.
A silhouette of a head wearing an officer’s cap momentarily blocked the blinding rays of light. The voice spoke without pity in a steady Prussian accent, “Who else?” the officer inquired. “I, I, n-nein, nein…” stuttered Brauchitisch. This time the brute behind throttled his neck for a full two minutes.
Returning him to an upright position, the officer waited for his gasping to settle before slowly throwing pictures of his family onto the table in front of him. Tears welled up in his eyes as the officer again spoke, “I will let one of them live for every two co-conspirator you give to me.”
Later Brauchitisch tore another strip from his uniform jamming it hard into the painful crevice left by his untreated front tooth. He then heard the shouts and screams of a familiar voice outside in the prison yard. Craning his neck up towards a small barbed window in his basement cell, he could just make out his former Chief of Staff : Franz Hauser being dragged to the corner of a bullet ridden wall, his hands bound tightly behind his back.