The Doomsday Decree Page 3

  Soon after their meeting in March of 1943, Rudi had confessed to Paul that he was ‘on the run’ from the Gestapo. During the previous month the Gauleiter of Bavaria, Paul Giesley, had convoked the student body after learning of the anti-Nazi dissident movement in the university. Giesley had announced that all male students would be put to some kind of more useful war work and that all females would bear a child for the good of the Fatherland. ‘If some girls lack sufficient charm to find a male, I will assign each of them one of my adjutants,’ the leering Giesley told the young girls, ‘and I can promise them a thoroughly enjoyable experience.’

  The students were enraged. They howled down the Gauleiter and threw out the SS and Gestapo men who accompanied him. That afternoon there were anti-Nazi student demonstrations in the streets of Munich, the first that had ever occurred in the Third Reich. Student leaders distributed leaflets calling on German youth to rise against the Führer and his Party thugs.

  On 19 February, one of the student leaders, a 25-year-old fellow medical student whom Rudi knew well, Hans Scholl, and his 21-year-old sister Sophie, were betrayed to the Gestapo. According to Rudi, their end was quick and barbaric. They were taken before Roland Friesler’s notorious People’s Court, where Sophie was so roughly handled that her leg was broken. Both students were sentenced to death. Many other students, together with their professor Kurt Huber, were executed a few days later. Rudi himself had escaped and entered the German army medical corps as an orderly, abandoning his medical studies.

  To Paul Horder the fact that there were Germans risking their lives in trying to awaken their fellow countrymen’s conscience and persuade them to resist Hitler and the Nazis came as an astonishing piece of information. But Rudi told him something even more surprising: there were many dissident groups, co-ordinated by a loose-knit organization known as the Widerstand — the Resistance — which had existed since the inception of the Third Reich. With Rudi’s help, Paul obtained some of the resistance literature and soon became aware of the dreadful extent of the corruption of the Third Reich. He learnt of the camps, the slave labour and the policies of extermination of entire ethnic groups. Very soon Paul, too, became committed to fighting the tyranny of the Nazis.

  Rudi was able to introduce Paul to other Widerstand contacts, and he soon realized that it was a broadly-based movement which included many people in high positions throughout the state. The movement’s leaders were already in touch with the Allies, through contacts in neutral Sweden and Switzerland, and were trying to negotiate a favourable peace settlement if Hitler and his cronies were overthrown from within the German state. The Allies were insisting on the unconditional surrender of Germany, nothing less, and this was a matter of fierce debate within the movement. Many believed that if an armistice were offered instead of surrender then the resistance to Hitler would become more popular amongst the German people. Some felt that this should be agreed with the Allies before there was any attempt to overthrow Hitler; others felt that he should be overthrown whatever the Allies’ terms. The Widerstand made half a dozen assassination attempts on the Führer between September 1943 and June 1944, but Hitler seemed to lead a charmed life, even though many of his highest-ranking generals, admirals and civilian officials were involved in the attempts.

  Paul had already moved to Münster when the attempt of 20 July 1944 took place. He had been on the fringe of the affair, which brought the Widerstand closer than ever before to the elimination of the Führer. But close was not good enough. Hitler lived, and his vengeance against the Widerstand was swift and terrible. Some 7,000 members of the resistance were rounded up and 4,980 were executed following rigged trials before the Volksgerichtshof, or People’s Court, presided over by Friesler. As the leading members of the Widerstand were paraded before the maniacal, vituperative Friesler — field marshals, generals, admirals, counts, barons, former government ministers, ambassadors, lawyers, doctors, priests and pastors — Hitler decreed that ‘they must all be hanged like cattle.’

  The executions started in earnest during August, 1944. At Ploetzensee Prison the condemned were herded into a cellar and hanged by piano wire from meathooks. A movie camera whirred as the victims strangled, their beltless trousers dropping off to leave them struggling naked in their death agony. The film was specially made and edited by Goebbels for Hitler’s private viewing.

  Hitler placed the sum of one million marks on the head of Carl Goerdeler, a former mayor of the city of Leipzig, who would have been the new acting-Chancellor of Germany if Hitler had been deposed. Goerdeler was a leading member of the Widerstand and had been in personal contact with the Allies in Sweden. He was finally betrayed by an acquaintance while hiding in the Konradswalde forest in Marienwerder, East Prussia. In September he was dragged before the People’s Court to hear his death sentence.

  The surviving Widerstand cells were regrouped and the remaining members were more determined than ever to continue their struggle. Yet Paul was among the first to admit that the purge had rendered the Widerstand powerless. Very few of its members or sympathizers in high state positions had survived. Hitler had become a virtual recluse; any further attempt at assassination seemed impossible. The Widerstand drifted, an organization without a clear purpose, now almost leaderless. Yet those who remained were determined to at least demonstrate to the world that not all Germans had sold out to the corruption of the Third Reich.

  Ulrich, the man seated opposite Paul at the cafe table, was exactly what his appearance proclaimed him to be, a minor official at the city hall. He was Paul’s immediate Widerstand contact in the city. In fact, since July, secrecy had assumed almost paranoid proportions. Paul knew no one higher in the movement than Ulrich. Ulrich was his link with the remaining leadership in Berlin.

  ‘What is the latest, then?’ Paul prompted.

  ‘Count von Moltke was executed a few days ago.’

  Count Helmuth von Moltke, a great-nephew of the famous Field Marshal, had been one of the foremost intellectual leaders of the Widerstand.

  Paul compressed his lips. ‘Are there any orders to be passed on?’ he asked after a moment.

  Ulrich shook his head. ‘At the moment the leadership are unsure what to do. The end is almost certainly in sight. Before the year is out the Soviets and the Allies will be controlling Germany. Time and again the Allies have rejected our overtures. Those in Berlin feel that the demand for an “unconditional surrender” has left the ordinary German people with no alternative but to fight on in support of the Nazis, even though they are opposed to them. The Allies offer no alternative … Either the Nazi German state survives or there is no German state whatsoever.

  ‘Had the Allies encouraged the German people to depose the Nazis by accepting an armistice with an alternative German government, then more Germans would risk disgrace, torture and death to overthrow the Party. The demand for total surrender has stopped any popular uprising against Hitler. Our movement has nothing to sustain it.’

  Paul said nothing for a moment. There was a lot of truth in Ulrich’s bitter words.

  ‘Is that how Berlin feels?’

  Ulrich nodded.

  An air raid siren began to wail in the distance.

  The proprietor of the cafe started shouting. ‘To the shelter! At once!’

  The young men from the Luftwaffe flak battery grabbed their caps and began to move hurriedly out of the cafe. In a few moments the place was deserted. Only Paul and Ulrich remained; they stood at the door and gazed up toward the still icy-blue January sky.

  The mournful wail of the siren died in the distance. Then, from black specks high in the sky, target smoke markers came trailing down across the city. The markers were known and feared by the people; Leichenfinger, a corpse’s finger, they were called, for they pointed the way for the bombers. In the clear midday sky Paul saw the first groups of bombers approaching the city. Heavy machines. Americans in their Flying Fortresses. He could see the burst of anti-aircraft fire from far away. Then guns closer to the city
centre began to thunder. There was a wild cheer from a group of nearby people as one of the aircraft, belching black smoke, slid out of line and then burst into flames, cartwheeling to the west of the city.

  ‘They are going for the railway station again,’ cried Ulrich. ‘Let’s get down to the shelter.’

  Already from the distance came the whistling of bombs plummeting down, followed by ear-splitting explosions. The ground began to shake as the explosions were echoed by the deafening detonations of the flak guns, which seemed to be firing in unison. Around the cafe some of the bombs threw up gigantic smokepalls and dust clouds.

  Paul allowed Ulrich to push him down into the cellar below the cafe. There were many people crouched there, their faces tense masks made grotesque by the light of a couple of flickering candles. There was nothing to do but wait it out.

  After an hour the more cheerful wail of the ‘all clear’ sounded and they emerged from the claustrophobic confines of the cellar into a world coated with thick masonry dust and choking smoke. Teams from the specialist organization Technische Nothilfe were preparing to tunnel and claw their way through piles of fallen masonry and tons of brick rubble and assorted debris in search of people. Candles and torches were being produced to help light their way through the twilight world to reach the trapped and injured.

  ‘I must get to the hospital,’ Paul muttered. ‘I’ll be needed.’

  Ulrich nodded. ‘We’ll meet on the steps of the Labour Exchange the day after tomorrow. I might have fresh word from Berlin.’

  He raised his hand in a casual salute and left, picking his way carefully through the rubble.

  Chapter Four

  The Frederick the Great Hospital was half a mile from the city centre. To reach it Paul had to traverse the piles of rubble which lay, charred and smouldering, in the wake of the air raid. Ulrich had been right. It seemed that the Allied bombers had made another attempt to destroy Münster’s busy rail junction and the great railroad yards, just south of the station. Most of the bombs seemed to have gone wide of their mark and fallen to the west of the station, among what had once been busy commercial premises.

  Paul made his way to the hospital, trying to close his mind to the scenes of devastation and death. He had to stop himself being affected emotionally; otherwise the sights one had to endure would destroy any degree of equilibrium. He passed down Gutenbergstrasse, half hoping that the Allies had scored a direct hit on the tall, sinister looking building there which was the headquarters of the Münster Geheime Staats Polizei. When it was founded in 1933, a harassed clerk at the Berlin post office, seeking a simple abbreviation for one more Government department, devised the word ‘Gestapo’. The name invented by the clerk had become synonymous with terror. But, as after every previous air raid, the grim brick building still remained. While other buildings along Gutenbergstrasse were destroyed or made uninhabitable, the Gestapo headquarters seemed to lead a charmed existence.

  The journey to the hospital did not take long. In the entrance hall old man Weiss, the Wachter or chief caretaker, who always wore his Great War campaign medals and his Iron Cross (Second Class) on his hospital uniform, greeted Paul with a punctilious salute.

  ‘A bad morning, Herr Doctor,’ he commented, gesturing to the waiting lines of stretchers containing some of the victims of the raid.

  Paul acknowledged the old man’s greeting and hurried on to his office. He always needed a moment to get used to the pungent smell of Lysol disinfectant which pervaded the whitewashed corridors, the wards and offices. He entered the small cubicle which passed for his office and changed into his white coat. The ward matron had already placed a list of his patients for the day on his desk top.

  Paul worked on one of the male surgical wards. Several of the casualties on his list were air-raid victims, while several others were soldiers brought from the front in Holland. He also noticed that an unusually high number of casualties were soldiers with bone fractures. He smiled grimly. In his experience many soldiers, especially recently, had avoided front-line duties by sustaining minor self-inflicted injuries.

  He took the list and left the office for the ward. As he stepped into the corridor he bumped into a short young man in a doctor’s green operating gown who apparently had been too preoccupied to notice him.

  The young doctor recovered from the impact and blinked bewilderedly.

  ‘Hey,’ Paul protested with a smile, ‘it can’t be that early in the morning.’

  Gottfried Klaus smiled thinly. ‘Sorry, Paul, I was miles away.’

  Gottfried Klaus and his wife Anna had become Paul’s closest friends in Münster. They were the happiest couple Paul had ever known, totally in love with each other. Gottfried had three passions in life, Anna, his five-year-old twin daughters and his work. He was a doctor of unusual talent, specializing in the diseases that had become prevalent in Germany these days, the ones originating from malnutrition and lack of sanitation and shelter. A first-rate doctor, acknowledged as such by staff and administration alike, Gottfried’s only fault, if fault it could be called, was his guilelessness — an almost completely unworldly attitude to life which Paul found refreshing but which was the reason why Paul had never attempted to recruit him to the Widerstand. Gottfried was honest, honourable and plain-spoken. He was ingenuous at a time when deceit and stealth were valuable assets.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ asked Paul, seeing the pensiveness still remaining in his friend’s gaze. ‘It’s not Anna or the kids, surely?’

  Gottfried shook his head.

  ‘Then what? You can tell me. Is it money problems?’

  Again Gottfried shook his head. ‘No, it’s a patient. A young SS corporal. He was admitted this morning and I am in charge of his case.’

  ‘So? What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know.’

  Paul frowned. It was not like Gottfried to be so overtly worried because he was unable to make an immediate diagnosis.

  ‘What are the symptoms?’

  ‘Like nothing I’ve seen before. Nausea, diarrhoea, headaches, malaise and fever. His temperature is up to one hundred and six degrees.’

  ‘You’ve checked the obvious — typhus? Cholera?’

  ‘Of course. But the symptoms don’t fit. Besides — and this is what really worries me — the man has started to show signs of blood disorder … the gums are bleeding and petechiae have started to come up on the skin and mucous membranes.’

  Paul whistled softly. ‘That certainly is new to me. Has he been in action recently? Maybe it’s a poison gas.’

  Gottfried shook his head vigorously. ‘No. I’ve checked the respiratory tracts. At the moment, he’s up in isolation … ’

  A speculative look came into Gottfried’s eyes as he regarded Paul. Before he could articulate the thought, Paul guessed what was in his friend’s mind.

  ‘You want a second opinion?’

  ‘I’d be grateful.’

  Paul waved his work roster in front of Gottfried’s face. ‘It won’t be until this evening, I’m afraid. Matron has given me a formidable list.’

  Gottfried bit his lip impatiently and then shrugged. ‘I shall be off this afternoon. How about making it first thing tomorrow … say, at ten o’clock? I would like to be there when you examine him so I can point out a few odd symptoms to you.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Excellent. Ten o’clock tomorrow, then, in room seven of the isolation ward.’

  Paul smiled and waved an acknowledgement as he turned off down the corridor to the male surgical ward of which he had charge.

  *

  Paul had completely forgotten Victor Schoerner’s party. He had been so absorbed with the idea of taking Ilse out for a meal that evening to celebrate his birthday that all recollection of the party had vanished from his mind. He had not wanted to go, but when Ilse reminded him of it that evening he had decided it was politic to do so. After all, Schoerner was Ilse’s boss at the city hall and a leading

&n
bsp; Party official; he was deputy Gauleiter of Münster. A fat, sleek man, he had affectations which reminded Paul of the Reichsmarshal, Hermann Göring. In fact, Paul had often wondered whether Schoerner, who was not renowned for originality, had consciously copied his lifestyle from the Reichsmarshal. Schoerner himself was a former abattoir worker who had joined the Party in the 1920s and risen quickly in their ranks by a combination of unquestioning obedience and enthusiasm for using force to keep people in line. When all other political parties were banned in 1933, Schoerner had been quick to seize a key position in the city’s administration. Ilse was one of four secretaries employed by him.

  He had a palatial villa on the shores of Lake Aa, in the southern suburbs of the city. It had been requisitioned from a Social Democrat who had disappeared into the concentration camp system many years before the war. Here, in the superbly styled rooms, among art treasures sent to Schoerner from a wide variety of people hoping to benefit from his patronage, the Party boss was fond of throwing parties and receptions. Schoerner held absolute power of life and death in the city, so when Ilse reminded Paul of the party he accepted with resignation.

  In fact, Schoerner had sent one of his Mercedes-Benz saloons for them. Ilse had dressed for the occasion in a pre-war low-cut evening gown of royal blue and silver, so Paul had to change into his dress uniform. Although honourably discharged from the army, he was allowed to wear uniform on ceremonial occasions; he hated doing so but he possessed no other form of evening suit in which to attend Schoerner’s soiree.