Chapter Eight Hundred Twenty-Four
3rd May 1950
Jena
It was with wry amusement that Lang read the latest headlines. Germany had a new Chancellor and it was one of Lang’s own people, Rudi Maurer. One of the many members of the Reichstag who had come in during that election after the bombing. The gambit played by Theodor Heuss to put Lang out of play hadn’t worked in the way that Lang suspected that he had intended. Lang going to the League of Nations had elevated those whose careers he had nurtured. That was probably the good thing about all of this.
While Lang found the work on an international stage fascinating he was noticing that he was hearing the same things over and over. India was a mess, the Dutch East Indies were a mess, Palestine was a mess along with much of the Near East. He was detecting a theme here. In all those places there were people who wanted things and the people who had the nerve to live there first tended to object. It was apparently Lang’s new job in mediating those conflicted before they turned into wars, it sounded good as an ideal, but he’d heard about the preliminary study that had been done on the South African Campaign the OKW had produced. They had concluded that the German Military was reaching the limits of the strategy that had been employed since the end of the Great War. Future conflicts were more likely to be fought in places where there would be less interest in development as a means of defusing potential conflict for cultural and geographic reasons. That was a fancy way of saying that the High Command was expecting the next war to be fought in a place full of proudly illiterate savages and religious zealots. Lang wondered if they were referring to the Near East or the Americas.
Zossen
“Then she said she wasn’t the best person to ask for advice” Stefan said as he recounted the events of the prior afternoon for the umpteenth time to Dirks who was only half listening to him.
Dirks was looking into a hand mirror trying to tell if the latest acne cream was working, he couldn’t tell.
“It was at that point that Ilse comes walking in and…”
“Is she hot?” Dirks asked.
“What?” Stefan asked, bewildered.
“This woman, your sister, is she hot?” Dirks asked.
“In a don’t mess with me sort way, I guess” Stefan replied, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“If I have to hear you talk I might as well know what you are talking about” Dirks said.
“She’s also married” Stefan said, “That’s why I asked her, I figured that she might understand these things.”
“What about the other one?”
“You mean Ilse?”
“Yeah”
“She’s nice, but delicate” Stefan said, “Like spun glass.”
“Think I would have a chance with her?” Dirks asked.
“Ilse?”
“Who else?”
Stefan looked at his friend. How did he tell his friend that Ilse was completely out of his league? Ilse was educated, well-read and sophisticated. Dirks had probably never read a book all the way through and, not to put too fine a point on it, was sort of ugly. Short and squat, at nineteen his face was covered in pimples and his hairline was already in rapid retreat.
“I don’t know if you would have a chance with Ilse” Stefan replied. That seemed safe enough.
Munich, Germany
It was depressing, all funerals were but this one seemed particularly so. Only Peter, Doctor Rosen and Herman Goering were present. The two of the Doctors who had cared for this man and Goering who was a volunteer in the hospital, he came to all these things. Two days prior, Adolf “Stumpy” Hitler had succumbed to his various illnesses, Doctor Rosen said that it was a miracle, he would have assumed that someone would have smothered him years earlier. This was a military funeral but the Heer was less than inclined to go all out, apparently there was an understanding of just how unpleasant this man had been in life. They listened to an elderly retired Army Chaplin finish giving the litany, there was no one to give a eulogy, so they watched as the casket, a pine box really, was lowered into the earth.
“Did they really need a full-sized casket?” Goering asked.
Both Peter and Doctor Rosen were staring at Goering after he said that.
“That was a perfectly terrible thing to say Herman” Doctor Rosen replied, “Disrespectful.”
“Don’t tell me that you weren’t thinking it” Goering said.
“You did make some, well, interesting staffing choices in this case” Peter said to Doctor Rosen.
“I also made some interesting dietary choices as well” Doctor Rosen said, “A Kosher diet has some very beneficial aspects to it, that’s hardly unique to this particular patient.”
“It had nothing to do with this man being an obnoxious anti-Semite?” Peter asked.
“Old Stumpy didn’t like Slavs or Gypsies either” Goering said, “He was really pissed when the Soviet Union went away, he said that Augie Lang was Jew loving Communist who only pretended to hate the Bolsheviks because he was one.”
“Such a delightful man” Doctor Rosen said.
“That makes no sense” Peter said, “Lang worked on creating a competitive business environment during his time in office.”
“Not a whole lot of what Stumpy said made much sense” Goering said.
