French Betrayal (Reich Triumphant Book 1)

by Vincent Dugan

  “Can we attack them?” Beria had been staring hard at the maps and the placement of the blue pins representing German troops. “They were part of Russia since Peter; they can be part of the Soviet Union again.”

  Timoshenko’s bare head reddened at the question. “As foreign minister Molotov may recall, the three states have signed mutual defense pacts with Germany, an attack on either of the three would unleash the German armies on ours.”

  “No attack.” The voice at the end of the table ended the debate. Stalin had filled his pipe and was puffing on it. “The Germans will not attack.” The certitude of his tone set the generals looking at each other. “We have economic agreements with them, they have aided our military efforts.” A swirl of smoke rose into the air.

  Amidst the generals, a burly, stone faced man interrupted. “Should we not prepare?” He asked. “The German build up is real, so our forces should be put on alert.”

  “For what?” The pipe was pointed at him. Stalin glanced about the room. “Zhukov believes in preparation; I believe the Germans will not attack.”

  Zhukov. Alexei stared hard at the face and mentally recited the name to store it permanently in his memory. He had heard of him. He was one of the planners, a dedicated communist unlike many in the military under Tukachevsky, who had attempted to overthrow the Soviet government.

  Timoshenko waited for more comments but Stalin had spoken his peace and waited for the general to continue. “We have fifteen tank divisions in the Minsk region another fifteen around Kiev. We have built up our forces in Ukraine as Comrade Stalin suggested.”

  “Suggested,” the general secretary said with a wry smile. “Only a suggestion. The generals are in control of the army.”

  Beria interjected. “We have reliable information an attack will come in the mid May.” Alexei watched the man, the fear he generated in others was redirected toward Stalin when the NKVD chief was in his presence.

  “It is a trap,” Stalin declared. “The German generals want war, they seek a cassus belli to attack.”

  “We should attack the Baltics,” Beria continued. “The Germans are not prepared.”

  Timoshenko sputtered. “We cannot attack because we need our forces facing the Germans.”

  Stymied by the generals, Beria turned his ire on Molotov. “We could have split them.” He motioned to the foreign minister. “We could have taken Estonia and Latvia to protect Leningrad. The Germans would have taken Lithuania for a slice of Poland.”

  The foreign minister sputtered. “Hitler would not talk.” Alexei recalled the meeting between Molotov and Hitler in December; the results convincing everyone except the general secretary that the Nazis would attack the Soviet Union.”

  “What about the French,” Beria offered.

  Molotov shook his head. “Laval and Petain will not speak of it and Deladier is a puppet. They are determined to move the Germans east. Their corporate interests will supply German industry with munitions.”

  A glum silence followed, the generals stifled from discussing strategy, the Politburo members devoid of ideas. It was left to the general secretary to dismiss the meeting. “There will be no war,” he said, words drawing only silence from the table. “It will take two years for the army to be prepared for the Germans. We must speed our preparations.” He eyed those standing around the table. “Failure is not acceptable.” He turned toward the window, ending the meeting.

  The generals were the first to leave, then the Politburo members as the adjutants collected the maps and scurried from the room. Alexei remained in place as the moments passed, Stalin seemingly deep in thought before he turned to face his assistant, palms flat on the conference table.

  “Alexei Dmitrievich,” he rumbled. “You saw that they wished for war. I am surrounded by warmongers, those who would allow Hitler to destroy the revolution.”

  Alexei did not recall those exact words but knew better than to contradict. “Yes, Comrade.”

  Stalin waved his pipe in Alexei’s direction. “Do you believe the Germans will attack, Alexei Dmitrievich?”

  Alexei swallowed. “I do not,” he said. “Their generals know they cannot conquer the Soviet Union.”

  “You have great faith in the wisdom of the Germans.”

  Alexei could not speak, worried his words had offended the general secretary. He waited for Stalin, who remained at the conference table for several moments seemingly hours for Alexei then brightened. “I also have faith,” he said. “There will be no war.” He turned toward the corner office, Alexei following at a discreet distance, releasing his breath. This would not be his last day on earth.

  III

  March 15, 1940

  “It is unfair.” Tersten Holbricht held in a sigh as he adjusted the collar on his shirt. He wriggled his shoulders and realized once again he was growing beyond his clothes.

  “Calculus is beyond the scope of my studies.” Poldi Junger had little difficult fitting into his clothes though they struggled to remain on him. “This summer solstice I will be driving a PZWIII, destroying the Slavs as they retreat from our forces.”

  Still wriggling beneath his shirt, Tersten slowed his pace through the small park at the end of University Strasse. It ran parallel to the main building at the University of Leipzig. This time his troubles were centered lower, slacks tight around the inseam. Straightening them might bring unwelcome female attention. He required an adjustment that could also get him a public morals charge.

  Poldi noted his friend’s struggles, stopped and waited for Tersten to dash into the woods where he would not be seen. Several moments passed, Poldi building up steam over the latest posting of grades in Professor van Stridle’s course. They were a threat to his completion of two years study and freedom to join the panzer forces he had followed in the newspapers as they tore through Poland.

  His father, a man of Prussian rigidity who accepted nothing less than absolute adherence to his wishes, had demanded Poldi attend the university. His son rebelled, his Hitler Youth training instilling national pride over personal pleasure in his soul. The university would only delay his introduction into the panzer corps he dreamt of every day of his youth.

  The arguments had flared, Poldi demanded to follow his father’s career, the elder having earned an Iron Cross First Class while engaged in the final attack on the French lines in 1918. By his eighteenth birthday, Poldi had begun to wear down his father. He moaned daily about the opportunities missed at the university. The captain had been adamant that his only son receive some university training, an advantage the eldest Junger had never enjoyed. His disdain for the Nazis, who be believed were ideological dilettantes, bubbled below the surface during the battle. Eventually the son’s Germanic pride overcame the father’s distrust of the Hitlerian military and a compromise was woven. Poldi would complete two years at Leipzig then his life would be his.

  Tersten emerged from the woods, adjusted but not entirely comfortable. His next letter home would request larger clothes. Fortunately his mother worked at a textile mill, her sole means of support. His father had barely survived the gas attacks at Ypres during the Great War and never recovered. A sparse burial followed his last desperate act, hanging himself from one of the lampposts he was paid to paint in Saarbrucken. The shame of a suicide in the family was quickly forgotten after a burst of inflation wiped out the remains of his life insurance policy. Mrs. Holbricht was forced into labor, her son earning his keep in the summer baling hay, calving and mending fences in the farms around their home. The work had built a stout Tersten, some ten summers making him the largest of the pair even as Poldi was a few months older.

  “You are too concerned,” Tersten returned to the paved path. “I will help.” It was an open secret that Tersten had pulled his friend through his first year. The aid explained Poldi’s interest in maintaining a close friendship. No one understood why Tersten remained close to Poldi.

  “You can be my gunner,” Poldi declared, brightening whenever he mentioned his future
plans. “The PZW III’s use gunners, I drive, you kill.”

  His laughter descended into a nervous giggling and drew a crooked smile from Tersten. His father’s suicide had made him mentally unreliable in the Nazi world of Aryan perfection. The rigid views saved Tersten from being drafted while Poldi was denied the military service he desperately wanted.

  Poldi stopped at a banner flapping on one of the light poles marking the road. “The Entartet Kunst.” Poldi raised up on his toes. “You will be attending this afternoon?”

  “Degenerate Art” had been a term unknown by Tersten until attending Professor Schulz’s art history course. Calling Ari Schulz a “professor” was a complete obliteration of the word. He resembled a house painter, shabby clothes flecked with pain and ragged across the joints. His knowledge of art seemed bare, his pronunciations drawing ridicule among his students as Van Gogh became Vr Gog while his Marc Chagall sounded more like jackal. His lectures on the masters were marked by a wriggling nose and reddened face, signaling his distaste for the Semitic artists, who he loosely defined as any artist opposed by the Nazi party. While Tersten was bored, his friend reveled in the “new art”, taking copious notes and even reading the second greatest selling book in Germany, Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century.

  Poldi had forced the turgid work onto Tersten, who struggled through half a dozen pages then feigned knowledge with nods and unswerving agreement when Poldi raised the topic. Art history would be the one course where the academic tables were turned with Poldi tugging his friend through the semester.

  Tersten’s interest in the Entartet Kunst was unconnected to the displays but attached to the face of the display. Propaganda was nothing new to Tersten or any other German. Strong men and wholesome women were the Aryan ideals. A few days earlier, Tersten had come across a poster for the Entartet Kunst, the picture splayed across it suggested something quite unwholesome.

  Frida Essert, her photo the main drawing card for male students, accompanied the display of degenerate art. The name rolled through Tersten’s mind as did the memory of the blond hair, diminutive nose and a gaze that seemed to follow him even in the blotchy, poorly focused posters. Far more beautiful than the girls of Leipzig, Frida Essert had penetrated Tersten’s dreams in the three nights since he had first seen her. With the date approaching, he went in search of his art history notes, seeking an intelligent question about degenerate art to snatch her attention. Unfortunately his notes were too spotty and Tersten would have to rely on his familiar charm to attract her.

  Poldi had halted, having rattled on about degenerate art then asked his friend an easy question. Tersten had responded as always, “Yes, uh, yes,” showing little interest. His friend, though, was energized by his friend’s agreement and continued, paying little attention to Tersten’s bored expression.

  While Poldi’s words passed through Tersten’s mind without effect he could not remove Frida Essert’s face from his memory. For the next days he would lock into a daydream, mind creating an image from her face which became a figure then a personality, one much different from the women he had met at the university. The women he knew were interested in little more than finding a husband and supporting the Reich with their wombs.

  Tersten’s version of Frida would not be a passive participant in the building of a new Germany but a leader, moving the world with her mind rather than her hips. She would be the rare one who saw beyond Tersten’s physical image and his family history. She would recognize him as a stable man who could also help the Reich rather than the son of a man who could not silence the voices in his head and was forced to hang himself for a little peace.

  As the meeting approached, Poldi grew more excited, not only to learn about degenerate art from an expert but also his friend’s sudden interest in the subject. Poldi consumed each moment educating his friend while Tersten remained locked in his daydream. He had moved beyond his first meeting with Frida to their subsequent dates and his courting though halting before they were married. That part of his fantasy would come after meeting her.

  The day came but unknown to Tersten, the confident, capable woman he had created from a single picture was suffering her own doubts. During the train ride from Berlin to Leipzig Frida Essert was contemplating her assignment at Leipzig.

  Degenerate art was not Frida’s expertise. Five years removed from the University of Frankfurt. She had first attracted attention when defying the center of European Marxism and launched a Militant League of German Culture within its halls. Unaffected by the “social constructs” and “realism” of her professors, Frida was determined to redirect students from communist inspired treason toward a revived respect of German culture. Frida tortured the remaining fragments of the movement that had not been chased away by the arrival of the Nazis. She had silenced them with denunciations, even interrupting their courses to argue Marxist logic against fascist logic.

  Frida, though, had become bored with political activism, her economics degree taught taught her little on how the Fuhrer revived the German economy. Leaving the university she had married. It was a sudden act to please her mother who saw men as the beginning, middle and end of a woman’s life, a fact that saw her marry three men, including Frida’s father, her second husband. Unfortunately Frida also followed in her mother’s footsteps, her divorce coming nineteenth months after her wedding day, her husband able to claim she lacked the requisite abilities to be a proper German wife.

  Cut loose, Frida had fallen back on her university training, taking a typist position at the Center of Educational Research under the leadership of Alfred Rosenberg. The chief theorist of Nazi Germany, Rosenberg was known for his book, Myth of the Twentieth Century, which Frida had read and liberally marked as she assumed her limited role in the Nazi government. Two years elapsed, Frida growing more bored with copying the ideas of others even as she composed her own ideas on how Nazi ideology could be reflected in culture. By 1939 she lamented continuing, her life settling into a desperate routine, her future surrounding her as she watched the middle aged women furiously typing, taking home their paychecks which were spent at local brauhauses by their husbands. Collecting her writings she had sent them to Alfred Rosenberg, a daring if not dangerous decision. Women were not expected to reveal their inner thoughts much less anything they believed about the Nazi Party.

  Three weeks after mailing the material Frida was summoned to the deputy minister’s office. Heinrich Meyer exuded the image of the perfect Nazi, eating, drinking and sleeping the party and if it disappeared Frida imagined Meyer putting a bullet in his head. Sitting at his desk, office piled high with newspapers and books, all as part of the effort to rework German education, the little man – barely 160 centimeters – eyed her behind the rimless glasses that only enhanced his image as a mindless fanatic.

  Never before summoned to Meyer’s office, Frida guessed her notes and interpretations had not been well received by Rosenberg and she was about to be released. Not for the first time in her life, Frida would misjudge the men around her.

  “This was sent to you.” Meyer held out a copy of the Myth of the Twentieth Century.

  Nearly dropping it as she took it from Meyer, she fumbled to open the front cover and there saw the first recognition of her ideas. It was a note from the director, a compliment of her words and an invitation to meet him with Alfred Rosenberg signed below it. Seeing the director’s name she did drop the book which landed with a thud on Meyer’s desk and made the little man hop.

  “The director enjoyed your comments,” he murmured with little joy. “He believes you would help the Reich as something more than a mere typist.” He scrambled to slide out a letterhead sheet from the office. “You have been assigned as my new deputy of ideological continuity.” The words rolled off his tongue, the meaning of her new position passing by the two, much like most of Rosenberg’s writings passed over the heads of his readers.

  The next sixth months Frida worked in her undefined position, mainly aiding Meyer with i
mproving his terse prose that he sent to schools all over the Reich. Her corrections earned her no praise, the little man convinced of the persuasiveness of his writing. With the war in Poland ended, Frida was again summoned to his office for an assignment.

  “I have something,” he said before greeting her. Frida was handed a packet and she was instantly transformed into an expert on the degenerate art exhibit which toured the country prior to the war. She was revive it at the University of Leipzig, acceding to the wishes of a Professor Schulz, art instructor at the university. He had also sent a well-marked copy of the Myth of the Twentieth Century to Alfred Rosenberg, requesting an autograph and a visit by the exhibition. Rosenberg requested Meyer make arrangements and Meyer immediately thought of his unwanted editor.

  Frida recognized it for what it was, an attempt to remove her from the center of power in Berlin but she silently accepted. It was rare for a woman to exercise authority within the Nazi regime and this slight acknowledgement of her abilities sent her spirit soaring. Frida approached it with the same vigor she had used to rise to her position. Records of the first tour in 1937 yielded the same boilerplate Nazi rhetoric on Jewish influence and Rosenberg’s efforts to define proper Nazi art, none of which clicked entirely in the mind of Frida, her economic training made art a mystery.

  Five months of study had made her an adequate expert. The public had shown little interest in the first exhibit and she doubted the nearly all male university would produce a significant crowd for it. Again Nazi men would prove her wrong. Frida’s first sign that her words would be heard by many came when she saw the poster with her face prominent, announcing Entartet Kunst the next day. She admitted the photo was flattering but the attention it drew – at least a half dozen college man pointing, laughing and making obscene gestures – frightened her. She was not the degenerate art. Frida worried all of her work would be ignored as men ogled her from afar.