Hitler Has Won Read online

  “I will let you into a secret, Lieutenant, that you will be sharing with the whole world tomorrow. At this moment, as we speak, our Wehrmacht in Bulgaria is poised to strike into Salonika, liquidate the British forces there and drive on to Athens. While this is happening, the Yugoslavs will be attacked simultaneously from the Ostmark*, Hungary, Rumania and Albania. Yes, yes, I can see that soldierly gleam in your eyes and can well understand your excitement. But that’s not all! Over the past month I have been ferrying men and material, around the clock, to Field Marshal Rommel in Libya. When Rommel takes Alexandria, as he will, the British Mediterranean fleet will have to put to sea for its final rendezvous with our U-boat packs! After that—the Nile, Cairo, the Suez Canal! Have you any conception, Armbrecht, of the geopolitical significance of a German-controlled Suez Canal?”

  * Official name for Austria under National Socialist rule, 1938-45.

  This time, the question seemed more than rhetorical. After a moment’s hesitation, Kurt plunged swiftly in.

  “The Middle East will be ours, mein Fuehrer. Gaullist Syria will be isolated. The British, and their Empire troops, will fall back on the Persian Gulf, hoping to be evacuated by their navy. The Gulf will then be ours, together with all the oil supplies of the Middle East. When our Japanese ally completes the conquest of India, the Pact of Steel will extend unbroken from Tokyo to the Straits of Gibraltar.”

  Hitler had nodded his approval of each point made. Now he raised a silencing hand. “Not too fast, Lieutenant, not too fast! We have yet to take Gibraltar, and I have a few problems to settle with Generalisimo Franco. The question of India still troubles me. But these are details. The general picture is how you’ve sketched it. The master touches—” his smile was almost apologetic—“will be added as the major events unfold. You will not expect me to—” He broke off, his smile dissolving, as Martin Bormann entered quickly through the massive double doors and paused a few paces inside the salon, respectfully awaiting the Fuehrer’s signal to advance. When it came, Bormann hurried across to murmur a few words in Hitler’s ear.

  “Very well,” Hitler grunted, one hand gently pressing into the gray cloth over his stomach. “I shall see him in the Map Room in five minutes. Lieutenant Armbrecht—” he glanced toward Kurt, who was already halfway to his feet—“it has been a pleasure meeting you.” And acknowledging Kurt’s rigid salute with a dismissive half-salute of his own raised palm, Hitler pivoted on his heel and strode toward the green-baize door in the far corner of the room.

  There were two anterooms between the salon and the busy hive of offices that comprised Bormann’s communications center on this floor of the Chancellery. Once again, as he passed quickly through the first room close on Bormann’s heels, Kurt’s eyes met those of the two SS officers watchfully at ease in the immaculate but sinister black uniform of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and once again he bore the cold scrutiny of those blond blue-eyed giants with an inner calm, aware that the Ritterkreuz at the neck of his own undistinguished gray uniform more than compensated for the absence of silver facings. As they passed on into the second anteroom, the reason for Bormann’s interruption of Kurt’s interview with the Fuehrer manifested itself in the form of a short gray-bearded figure draped in a black djellaba and topped by a neat white “flowerpot” turban.

  Easily recognizable from the photographs that had been appearing in the German press since November 1941, when he had first arrived in Berlin to launch his holy war against Britain, was Haj Amin el Husseini, the forty-nine-year-old Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Fanatically anti-Jewish and pro-Axis, the Mufti had for months now, over the German radio, been urging his Muslim followers of the Middle East to sabotage pipelines, blow up bridges and ammunition dumps and kill British soldiers in the name of the Koran and for the honor of Islam. It was said that his influence over the Arabs in Egypt, Jerusalem, Transjordan, the Lebanon, Syria and Iraq would be worth a whole Army Corps to Feldmarschall Rommel once he had taken Alexandria.

  He was seated on a sofa to the left of the room, listening with a fixed, almost cherubic smile to one of Bormann’s fast-talking adjutants. Now the beady blue eyes fastened on the advancing couple and the neat feet came together, ready to push their owner to his feet. Gesturing Kurt to stand by, Bormann strode briskly across to the Mufti and his companion and engaged them in a brief low-voiced exchange of words that ended with the Mufti nodding contentedly and easing himself back in the sofa. As Bormann swung around and headed for the door on the right-hand side of the room, smartly opened for him by an SS guard, Kurt hurried after him.

  The door closed, and they were back in the nerve center from which the dour Deputy Party Leader, with his locked insensitive face and thick peasant body, controlled virtually all traffic in information and human beings to and from the Fuehrer and the vast infrastructure of the Greater Reich. Half a dozen female staff members were busy at desks grouped at the far end of this long, high-ceilinged reception room, some typing, others talking into the telephone. Three male secretaries were bent over their work at the broader desks flanking the threshold of the room, one of them sifting through a deep wad of cablegrams. A fourth man, of about Kurt’s age and wearing, like himself, the noncombat uniform of an army lieutenant, was tearing a strip of paper from one of the clattering ticker machines ranged against the left-hand wall. At the open door to the right of the room, giving access to Bormann’s inner office, a tall gray-haired civilian, looking every inch-—save for the Party badge in his lapel—a Chancellery departmental chief of prewar, even Weimar Republic days, stood clasping a slender file to his chest. Bormann hesitated, as if uncertain whether to lead Kurt on into his own room, then turned to him with a distracted, almost impatient frown.

  “The post is yours, Armbrecht. I’ll have one of my men show you your quarters.”

  “Herr Reichsleiter, I am overwhelmed! The Fuehrer said nothing to me, that is about—”

  “The Fuehrer speaks to me without words,” Bormann grunted. “You will receive formal confirmation of your appointment in due course. Also, your promotion to Captain. Heiden!” He snapped his fingers at the bespectacled middle-aged occupant of the desk nearest the door, and the man popped to his feet as if propelled by an invisible spring. “Take Lieutenant Armbrecht to the Fuehrer’s office and introduce him to Fräulein Eppler. She will take over from there.” And without another word, the bull-necked Reichsleiter marched through to his office, ignoring the respectful heel click of the official standing by the door.

  “May I offer you my congratulations, Herr Captain.” The man called Heiden was smiling over his shoulder at Kurt as he led the way down the length of the room. “You have triumphed over some very formidable rivals, I can assure you of that.”

  “I still can’t believe it.” Kurt was fighting an idiotic impulse to laugh out loud as he followed Heiden down a long corridor terminating in the distance at a green-baize door, larger than the one in the salon through which Hitler had disappeared, and guarded by two armed SS Untersturmfuehrer. Halfway down the neon-lit corridor, Heiden stopped before a pair of glass-paneled swing doors. “Here’s where I hand you over to the shrews. A good-looking young hero like you . . .” He shook his head, mock-ruefully.

  “You’re overlooking something, Herr Heiden,” Kurt muttered, glancing down at his empty sleeve. “I’m only three quarters of a hero. I’ll be perfectly safe in there.”

  “Don’t count on it. Take it from me, Armbrecht, I’d give my own left arm for that decoration you’re wearing. Irresistible, my friend, to any hot-blooded female patriot of the Reich.” Glancing down the corridor toward the unconcerned SS guards, he moved a step nearer to Kurt, obviously in no great hurry to do Bormann’s bidding. Kurt’s nervousness was not lessened by the delay.

  “I almost made it myself—the western front, I mean. Think of it, Armbrecht!” Heiden turned one hand palm upwards and began ticking off his statements on the extended fingers. “Sturmbannfuehrer of the SA in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder in 1932. Chief of the Russian mo
nitoring staff in Reichsmarschall Goering’s Landespolizeigruppe from 1934 to 1936. Retained on the Reichsmarschall’s headquarters staff when Reichsfuehrer Himmler took over the police, and seconded to the Luftwaffe’s operations command for the invasion of Poland. Then what?” Heiden shook his head, sorrowfully. “The day after we struck in the west, on May the eleventh, 1940, I applied for a combat commission with Army Group A. The request was never forwarded to General von Manstein’s staff, although I had had the privilege of attending on the general more than once during my service with the Reichsmarschall. And why? All because of these two damned languages I have—Polish and Russian. ‘It’s the Chancellery for you, young man,’ they told me. ‘Big things are in the offing. You’re too valuable to use as cannon fodder against the French and British.’ ” Heiden gave a deep sigh, his pale eyes languishing on Kurt’s decoration. “Don’t misunderstand me, Armbrecht, I’ve not been chairbound in Berlin all this time. It wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, out there in the Fuehrer’s Russian headquarters last year. But to have given an arm, like you have . . .” His shoulders lifted, then dropped disconsolately.

  “I didn’t give it,” Kurt said quietly. “It was taken away from me by the track of a French tank.” He tilted his chin toward the swing doors. “Don’t you think we ought to—”

  “Of course, of course. Oh, and don’t be unnerved by Fräulein Eppler.” Heiden lowered his voice to a hiss. “I find it helps to stare at the wart on the right side of her neck.”

  Enthroned behind a large desk in a screened-off section of the Fuehrer’s office, Fräulein Eppler was a square-shouldered grayhaired woman of middle age with the brow of a headmistress and the jaw of a woman jailer. Heiden’s overly formal introduction of Kurt was cut off by her impatient “Yes, yes, I know all about it,” and he was dismissed as she waved Kurt into the one vacant chair. When they were alone, she leaned back, appraising him with her keen brown eyes.

  “An office has been set aside for you, Lieutenant, on the other side of the corridor. I cannot spare you a full-time typist as of now, but then I don’t suppose you’ll be in need of one quite yet?” Her pause indicated permission to speak.

  “I’m not certain about that, Fräulein Eppler. Perhaps I could—”

  “Let me know when the need arises,” she cut in, with a brisk nod. “In the meantime one of my girls, Fräulein Gruyten, will be available when not otherwise engaged. Ask for whatever you need in the way of writing materials, books et cetera. Now, I understand it is a condition of your appointment that you live in at the Chancellery or wherever the Fuehrer is residing.”

  Kurt nodded.

  “Fräulein Gruyten will take you to meet Sturmbannfuehrer Kremer who has arranged sleeping accommodation for you in the SS officers’ quarters. You will not mess with the SS however, but will take your meals in the Chancellery restaurant—executives’ section, of course. You will find in your office a booklet listing the internal telephone numbers of all Chancellery departmental chiefs, and it is the Fuehrer’s wish that you communicate with them directly and not with subordinates. In the same booklet you will find full guidance on Chancellery protocol, security and air-raid precautions. Your appointment formally begins the day after tomorrow, and your working hours are—” the flicker of a smile momentarily disturbed the solemn cast of her features—“entirely flexible, as you must already know.”

  Her fugitive smile loosened his strung nerves. He said, “I’m still in a daze, Fräulein Eppler. The day after tomorrow—that is, when I start work, how shall I know when I’m wanted?”

  “The Fuehrer’s summons will come through me, or through Fräulein Junge, who takes over from me at six p.m. If it is any help to you, the Fuehrer rises late in the morning and seldom descends from his private apartment before eleven. But he keeps late hours.” Again the spasm of a smile. “It would not be advisable for you to make private evening arrangements, outside the Chancellery, without specific clearance from myself or Fräulein Junge. However—” she broke off as a buzzer sounded on her desk, and stubbed a finger to the base of the intercom box. “Yes, Herr Reichsleiter?”

  “The Fuehrer’s last memorandum to the Grand Mufti,” Bormann’s voice crackled from the box, “wanted at once in the Map Room.”

  “At once, Herr Reichsleiter.” She was on her feet, vibrating urgency. “You must excuse me, Captain. I’ll send Fräulein Gruyten to take care of you.”

  Kurt rose from his chair and watched her, through the open frame of the partition wall, bustling along the aisle between the dozen-or-so desks of the general office. She called over to a girl seated behind a typewriter, then hurried on down toward a bank of steel filing cabinets. The girl got up and walked unhurriedly toward Fräulein Eppler’s enclave, straightening her dress as she came. Kurt had time to register her young oval face and ripe figure before turning away politely.

  “Lieutenant Armbrecht?” She had come to a halt a few paces short of where he was standing. He turned to her, answering her nervous smile with a playful click of his heels.

  “I’m Helga Gruyten. I’m to show you your office.” She was a near-miss at prettiness: flaxen hair plaited and coiled into “ear-muffs,” well-sculpted nose and cheekbones, but meagerly proportioned lips and small, deep-set eyes. From the neck downward, however, she scored impressively; and as she led the way out to the corridor Kurt had to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes off her undulous hips.

  “Here we are.” She had stopped in front of a plain unpaneled door inscribed with the number 14. “Your private kingdom, Herr Lieutenant, in the Reich Chancellery!” She turned the handle and waved him in ahead of her. As the overhead strip lights came on, he found himself in a room about four meters square, windowless, but newly carpeted in a deep green and furnished with a good desk, a comfortable looking swivel chair, broad leather-surfaced wall table, two visitors’ chairs and a couple of steel filing cabinets. A framed photograph of Adolf Hitler hung on the far wall, and a fan was high in the corner to the right of it. “By the time you start work—” the girl’s voice came from directly behind him—“I shall try to make it a bit more cheerful. A few posters of Bavarian landscapes perhaps?”

  She was smiling when he turned to her, showing a row of small white teeth. Her eyes flicked between his face and the empty sleeve pinned to his army jacket.

  He said, “How much more do you know about me, Fräulein Gruyten—apart from the fact that I’m a southerner?”

  “Well—” Her pale-blue eyes quizzed him, seeking reassurance.

  “It’s all right. I shan’t bite you.”

  “I know you are going to help our Fuehrer compile a history of the Greater Reich. And I know that the thesis you wrote for your degree from Munich University was published last year by the Eher Verlag, with a foreword by Doctor Goebbels.”

  “Do you remember the title?”

  “Of course I do!” Her small eyes flared as she tossed her head. “I’ve even read it, believe it or not. The Significance of Leadership in the German Ethos. I can quote from it, if you still doubt me.”

  “You’ve made your point, Fräulein Gruyten. One more question, before we go to see Sturmbannfuehrer Kremer. Are you engaged?”

  She wasn’t avoiding his steady, teasing gaze. It was simply that his sleeveless arm seemed to fascinate her. She said, a faint flush spreading up the modest V-neck of her austere cotton frock, “There are sixteen of us in the office and we are all already married—-to our beloved Fuehrer.” Her eyes flicked up, answering his theatrical sigh. “However, that isn’t to say, Lieutenant Armbrecht, that we don’t occasionally take lovers.”

  Kurt put in a call to his mother in Munich just after 1 p.m., timing it to catch his sister Sophie at home. The Chancellery operator was polite but officious.

  “Is this a personal call, Lieutenant, or on the Fuehrer’s business?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “You appreciate it will be charged to you, on a monthly account.”

  “Thank you for informing me
. I’d still like to make the call.”

  “At your service, Lieutenant.”

  His mother’s cry of joy when he gave her the news almost shattered his eardrum. He heard her shouting to Sophie, “It’s Kurt, darling! He’s got the appointment! And promotion!” Then her rapid breathless interrogation. “When do you start? Where will you be living? Have you actually met the Fuehrer yet? Oh, Kurt, this is wonderful! Your father—I shall call him at the University, soon as you’ve hung up.”

  “Give him my love, Mother, and tell him I’ll try to call him one evening soon. Now may I speak to Sophie?”

  He could imagine his sister collecting herself, shooshing their mother as she took the receiver. Her voice was almost calm, over the three hundred miles separating them. “Captain Armbrecht, I congratulate you. But I never doubted you’d be chosen.” Then it broke. “How are you, darling?”

  “Couldn’t be better. How are things at home?”

  “Just about as usual. Father’s up to his ears in exam papers, of course, and Mother’s started to grow tomatoes. When do you think we shall see you?”

  “With any luck, maybe pretty soon. We’re sure to be spending part of the summer at Berchtesgaden.”

  “And you’ll get time off, do you think?”

  “Time enough for me to muscle in on your boy friends,” he chuckled. “Who’s the hot favorite right now?”

  “No one. I get so tired, bashing Spanish into thick Bavarian skulls from morning to evening. I just want to flop when I get home.”

  Kurt remembered what the Fuehrer had told him about the Balkan operations, starting at dawn, and the thought of dropping a hint from the heart of the Reich Chancellery to his “kid sister” (as she would always be) out there in the Bavarian back-woods was tempting. But it would be folly of the worst kind. Every call, in and out of the Chancellery, would surely be monitored by the Sicherheitsdienst.