The car ran past a huge bomb site, a couple of acres of old rubble and tumbledown buildings. Trash blew around in the ruins, and it took very little for Eisenhower to imagine the whole city reduced to the same state.
“I think we may have to look at plans for evacuating the population,” said Churchill. “There’ll be no fighting the enemy on the beaches if the beaches have burned to glass.”
D-DAY + 36. 8 JUNE 1944. 1322 HOURS.
“I am sorry, Mein Fьhrer. So sorry,” the SS leader whispered as he placed the heavy pillow on the gray, lifeless face of Adolf Hitler. He wasn’t dead yet, even though he looked it. But the doctors said that was simply a function of the stroke, which had obliterated the part of his brain controlling the multitude of tiny muscles that gave form to a man’s features, even when he was asleep. Now there was just slackness, and a terrible vacancy where once one of the great minds of human history had animated this expression. The Reichsfьhrer trembled to his very core at the magnitude of the crime he was about to commit. But as a true national socialist, he also understood that sometimes it was necessary to kill for the greater good. And the white light that had bloomed over Lodz only threw that into starker relief.
“I am sorry,” Himmler whispered again as he pressed down on the cushion. He thought he felt some resistance, a weak pushing back, and perhaps he heard a muffled whimper, too. One of the fьhrer’s legs twitched on the rough camp bed, and he worried that the cot might collapse beneath them. That would somehow have made it all the worse.
One unshod foot thumped against the sweating brick wall with a sick, soft thudding, and he felt a limp hand batting obscenely at his groin, but still he pressed on. It was for the good of the Fatherland, and for the good of the fьhrer himself. The doctors had assured the Reichsfьhrer that there was no chance their beloved leader would recover. His mind was most definitely gone, and Himmler knew that under such circumstances Adolf Hitler would not want to be maintained as a living vegetable.
Reich policies on these matters were quite clear. The T4 program applied in this case, as in all others.
Himmler’s vision swirled as he bore down with all his weight. The air in the tiny underground room was hot and stale. It had probably been breathed over and over again. He told himself that the feeble, thrashing form beneath him was not the man he had followed for so long. That man was gone, and had been for days, a victim of this war as surely as any front-line combatant. All that was left of him was this husk, lying on an army cot.
The struggle, such as it was, began to taper off. Gradually, terribly, life ceased. Himmler endured one last weak surge of resistance before he felt the body sag beneath him. It was done.
Hoping for numbness, he instead felt a powerful boiling of conflicted sensation: horror at what he had done, torment at the unknown consequences, relief that he would no longer have to fear exposure concerning his last days in the Other Time. He slumped to the cold concrete floor beside Hitler’s body. Breathing heavily, his heart pounding, he turned his head and stared at his surroundings, wondering how so momentous an event could transpire in such a dingy setting. The malarial yellow brickwork. The sagging cot. The chipped ceramic jug into which Himmler had dipped a handkerchief an hour earlier, moistening one corner to dab against the fьhrer’s dry, cracked lips.
It was an ignominious end.
There was a furtive tapping at the door. “Herr Reichsfьhrer?”
Himmler removed the pillow. His dead leader’s eyeballs had bulged obscenely in their sockets, and he shuddered at the confronting image. Brushing them closed with one hand, he called out. “Enter.”
Colonel Skorzeny pushed open the heavy metal door with a screeching of poorly oiled hinges. Himmler came up off the floor slowly and awkwardly. His knees hurt, and he had suffered from a stiff and painful back for a couple of weeks. It was all this cramped underground living.
“He is gone,” the SS leader said to the newcomer. “He passed away peacefully, without regaining consciousness. We are all alone now.”
Skorzeny nodded, staring at the body. Whatever he thought of the situation, it remained hidden behind a heavily scarred face on which nothing seemed to move until he spoke.
“The men are in place.”
“Have someone see to the burial detail. It will not be possible to provide full honors because of the bombing, but we must mark this tragedy with all appropriate ceremony. And tell Gцbbels to finish his statement for the radio. I will speak to the general staff now.”
Skorzeny clicked his heels and nodded, snapping his fingers and calling a couple of storm troopers into the room. Their shocked expressions registered the awful truth when they saw Hitler’s corpse on the bed. Himmler admonished them to treat the fьhrer’s remains with due respect.
Then, fitting his hat firmly down over his head, he gathered himself and marched out of the room. His bodyguards fell in beside him as he turned into the passage where naked electric bulbs hung at ten-meter intervals and exposed wiring and pipes ran along the ceiling. A detachment of twelve more SS Sonderaktiontruppen waited for him at the end of the corridor. They all wore field uniforms and carried submachine guns. Their commander ripped out a salute as Himmler approached, barking at his men to fall in behind their new fьhrer. The crashing of their hobnailed boots sounded incredibly loud in the confined space as they set off after him.
The main operations room was on the next level down. As they approached, officers from all three armed services scrambled to get out of the way. Himmler could see that the two Wehrmacht guards at the entrance to the room had been replaced by his own men. He swept past them, flicking an acknowledgment of their salute back over his shoulder. The atmosphere was already subdued when he entered. SS men had discreetly taken up positions around the room. The assembled generals and admirals hovered over the battle-realm display, where hundreds of little wooden blocks and flags brought imagined order to the chaos of the Western Front.
Himmler pulled up at the edge of the giant map table.
“I am afraid the fьhrer has passed away,” he announced solemnly. A few of the women who were present cried out.
“He drew his last breath at thirteen twenty-nine hours. He regained consciousness for a few minutes before the end, and exhorted us all to do our utmost in the defense of the Reich. To that end, and in line with his final wishes, I have assumed the office of chancellor and supreme commander of the armed forces.”
He paused, just briefly, in case somebody should wish to chance their luck against him, but the entire room was cowed. Whether it was due to his armed escort or simply by the magnitude of the disaster they faced, he could not tell. It was of no consequence.
All that mattered was decisive action to save his people and their civilization from the peril of Bolshevism. Himmler knew that every soul in this room cried out for strong leadership. It was vital that he provide it, and quickly.
“General Zeitzler,” he said, turning his gaze on the army chief of staff. “How stand the armies in the west?”
Zeitzler was holding a single sheaf of paper, and he gave the impression of trying to hide behind it when he replied.
“The Northern Front is in collapse…Mein Fьhrer,” he replied, somewhat weakly. “Patton’s Third Army threatens to break through our final line of resistance. Army Group South is attempting to disengage, but…it is difficult. The fьhrer…the late fьhrer…his instructions to hold France…”