by Leo Kessler
All that snowy afternoon, the sweating kerchieved peasant women cooked the traditional twelve vegetable dishes which symbolized the twelve apostles; while their straw-haired, freckled children, already seated at the festively decorated table, with the traditional bundle of straw beneath it, gazed longingly out of the steamed-up little windows to catch a glimpse of the first star — the signal for the great feast to commence.
But on January 5th, 1943, the children of the Ukrainian village of Vinnitsa, close to the German dictator’s HQ, were treated to a sight more exciting than that of the first star; a sight which would remain in the memories of those who survived the occupation and war as long as they lived.
It was that of three very drunken Germans staggering crazily down the shabby main street, seemingly looking for a place to spend the night. One was an enormous man with the black-and-white ribbon of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross around his neck. In one hand he clutched a magnum-bottle of champagne; in his other he gripped the great dug of a woman, not much smaller than himself, who also had a medal pinned to her tremendous bosom. Behind the two giants trotted a little wizened runt of a fellow, bottle in both hands, his open blouse stuffed with half a dozen more, trying to keep up with them the best he could.
Wide-eyed and awed the children followed their progress, as singing drunkenly in their own impossible tongue, they hammered at doors which remained stubbornly closed to them, until finally in an outburst of temper, the giant with the Knight’s Cross, kicked open the door to Farmer Bolkov’s barn to disappear inside, still clutching the woman’s enormous breast, and crying in broken Russian for all to hear: ‘The Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic... I’ve shat it!... They can’t even get the date of Christmas shittingly well right...’
*
Thus Sergeant Schulze, the newest holder of the Knight’s Cross, vanished from the awed gaze of the young watchers, to celebrate his decoration and his second Christmas of that year in his usual riotous and reprehensible fashion, which culminated with the barn falling down on top of the snoring celebrators in the middle of the night. They snored on.
Schulze would live to celebrate many more Christmases in the same unpraiseworthy manner when all the others — Matzi, his running-mate, the Butcher, his enemy, the Vulture, and his beloved CO von Dodenburg — were long dead. SS Schulze, as he became known after the war in the working class districts of his native Hamburg, seemed indestructible, in spite of twenty half-litres of good Holsten beer and a similar number of Korn chasers a-day and his habit of chewing razor-blades when he was drunk — which was most of the time.
Indeed SS Schulze lived on for another thirty-odd years after the war, to be feared and loved in the red-light district of Hamburg’s notorious St Pauli in which he lived. Even at the age of seventy, a pensioner from the docks where he had worked ever since he had deserted from the Foreign Legion, the pros, the ponces, the pimps and the pushers who inhabit that part of the great port treated him with well-deserved respect. When he came staggering into one of the dingy bars of the district, accompanied by his ugly boxer bitch Gerda, the pimps would slide out quickly and the pushers would cease their little games. For even at that age SS Schulze was a man to be feared. When he was roused, which was often, it did not take long for his Hamburger Equalizer, as he called his brass-knuckles, to appear, accompanied by his usual challenge of: ‘One word from you lot and you’ll be lacking a set of ears in no seconds flat!’
Yet he was loved too. He gave freely to drop-outs, children and, naturally — how could it be otherwise? — to ageing whores. He loved animals and he had risked his life to dive into a freezingly cold Alster to rescue his dog, which someone had been trying to drown because it was so ugly. Gerda — ‘God knows where I got the name? I think it comes from a piece of gash I once slipped a link of salami to’ — was the idol of his declining years. And indeed it was an emaciated, dying Gerda — she had refused to leave the body for food for nearly seven days— who finally alerted the neighbours in that dingy tenement house that her master was dead.
Half St Pauli turned out for the funeral. The other half would have come too, in spite of the torrential rain, but the generous wake of the previous evening, provided by the dead man’s savings, had made Bierleichen of them all. They stayed in bed, with vinegar bandages pressed to aching heads, listening to the thump-thump of the Hofbrauhaus brass band, risking a stiff fine for illegally playing that bold marching song that the young men of SS Assault Battalion Wotan had sung so lustily so long before:
Blow the bugle, beat the drum
Clear the street, here comes Wo-tan
Steel is our weapon
To hew through bone
Blood our purpose
Wotan hold close!
For Death is our Destiny....
Thus SS Schulze went to his grave, cocking a snout at authority to the very last, as he had done throughout his life....
If you enjoyed Cauldron of Blood you might be interested in Guns at Cassino by Leo Kessler, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Guns at Cassino by Leo Kessler
One
The Leader turned to the sombre-eyed valet, waiting attentively at the door of his bedroom.
`You may go, Linge. I won't need you any further tonight.'
Linge, who was also a colonel in the SS, bowed. He knew the formula. His chief wanted to be alone with his mistress. The long boring evening at Obersalzberg was over. He would be glad to climb into his bed and sleep without interruption, leaving the Leader to enjoy the plump favours of the red-cheeked, ex-photographer's assistant.
`Good-night,' Linge said softly, omitting the usual, 'sleep well, my Leader.' Under the circumstances, it would seem an impertinence. As he closed the door of the bedroom behind him, he heard his chief call, ‘Tschapperl’, that slightly contemptuous Bavarian pet name he had for his young mistress.
Eva was waiting for him in her absurd frilly bedroom which was a clear proof of the essential triviality of her mind - just as her conversation had been the whole evening in front of the big log fire. But then, the middle-aged Leader told himself, he could not afford to keep a clever woman as his mistress. As he often remarked to his cronies of the inner circle - Speer, Hoffmann, and the like - an intelligent man should always take a primitive and stupid woman to satisfy his sexual needs.
He dismissed the thought from his mind. Tonight he must concentrate on his pleasure; after all that is why he had flown from his headquarters at the 'Wolf's Lair'. To enjoy a couple of days' leisure on the 'Mountain', forgetting the war, even the terrible mess on the Italian front. He let his gaze fall on her body, displayed as ordered, her ample breasts clearly visible through the silk nightdress, bought expressly for the purpose by Bormann in Paris. Eva's legs were already spread.
`Are you ready?' he asked, a slight catch in his guttural voice.
`Yes, Adolf,' Eva said on the bed and lowered her eyes. Even after all these years she could not get used to the strange forms of sexual pleasure enjoyed by the greatest man in Europe. She was naive - another Gerdi Raubal. But Gerdi, his niece, was long dead: a suicide.
`Good,' he said, beginning to take off his tunic. 'Then take up your nightdress, please.'
She blushed and did as he commanded. She could hear him breathing a little harder now and out of the corner of her eyes, she could see how his fingers trembled as they fumbled with his tie. Finally he was naked and ready, his body pale and plump, so unlike the hard muscular firmness of that Italian officer so long ago.
`Open them - wider,' he ordered, his voice suddenly thick with lust, `wider, I said.'
Hastily she obeyed. For an instant she looked down at his black shock of hair, now lightly flecked with silver, as he slid his head the length of her white body. The Leader found what he sought. She gave a shudder of pleasure and disgust. Then she raised her gaze to the ceiling and let her body go limp so that he could have his way. Now the man, who commanded the destinies of two hundred and eighty million European
s, crouched animal-like, with his head between her thighs. Adolf Hitler was taking his pleasure.
Eva Braun stiffled a yawn and reached for another chocolate. The Führer was still not tired. But the restless flickering of his dark eyes was gone. She had succeeded in satisfying him - thank God! Now she would have to entertain him until he felt it was time to retire to his own room. But the Führer was often like this, unable to sleep unless his personal physician Dr Morell, who kept injecting extracts from sheep testicles and Bulgarian peasant blood into the Führer, gave him yet more pills.
Now he sat there on one of her armchairs, clad in his pyjamas, his hair a little tousled still, brooding, it seemed. There was no sound save for that of the wind howling around the 'Mountain' and the steady stamp of the sentries from the `Bodyguard' on the hard snow below. (1)
`What are you thinking about, Adolf?' she asked softly, savouring the name she never dare use save when they were alone in the privacy of her bedroom.
Hitler rose and stared out of the window at the Northern Lights, which were bathing the legendary Untersberg across the valley a dramatic crimson.
`The war,' he replied gruffly, 'what else but the war!'
`But you are on leave,' she protested gently and helped herself to another of the chocolates he had brought her. 'You must forget the war for a while.'
`I am never on leave. The Leader of the German people can never rest, day or night. When one controls the destinies of a great people there are two - '
`Possibilities,' she interrupted him cheekily, using his favourite opening gambit.
His harsh face broke into a slight grin.
‘Tschapperl!’ he said, his voice heavy with mock menace, `what do you know of such things. But, perhaps you are right.' He returned to his chair again. 'Good, then Eva, you will amuse me – take my mind off the war. Talk.' He barked the word out like a military command.
Eva Braun was not offended. She was glad that she had been able to drag his mind away from the terrible conflict which had now been going on for over four years.
`Well,' she began, 'the last time I went on leave, I drove to Italy. That was just before the war.'
`Don't mention Italy to me. Those damned traitors!' he exclaimed.
She overheard the objection.
`But it was beautiful, Adolf,' she enthused. 'The sea, the buildings, the countryside! Now I can understand why Goethe said that every German desires to go south to Italy ...’
Adolf Hitler sighed at such naivety, but he let her talk his mind already wandering to the situation in Italy which had deteriorated rapidly ever since that traitor King Emmanuel had deposed his friend Mussolini and invited the Allies to invade his country. Things had been bad enough already, with the Bolsheviks steadily pushing his armies back towards Poland with no indication they could be stopped before they reached the frontiers of the Reich itself. But now the Allies were on his very doorstep too. If it had not been for the fact that their generals were too cautious, he might well have been battling with them now on the borders of the East Mark itself. (2) And the Wehrmacht simply did not have the men to spare to fight on two major fronts. What in devil's name was he going to do?
`We spent a day at Cassino,' Eva rambled on. Her mind was on that beautiful Italian Air Force officer who had ditched her Gestapo bodyguard and driven up to the great monastery on Route Six which snaked down the coast from Rome. 'It was beautiful. It was built by Saint Benedict – he's buried there. Then there is the high altar screen. It is supposed to have been done by Michelangelo - '
`That rank homosexual!' Hitler interrupted coarsely, tearing his mind from the miserable situation on the Italian front. 'If he had lived today, I would have had him placed in a concentration camp with the rest of those warm brothers!'
`But he was a really great artist,' she protested mildly. 'And Monte Cassino is a cultural treasure.'
Hitler held up his hand imperiously, suddenly very wide awake.
`What did you say?' he barked.
She looked at him,. puzzled and alarmed at the sudden change in his mood.
`A cultural treasure, Adolf’
Hitler sprang to his feet. He walked over to the massive picture window.
`A cultural treasure,' he echoed, staring out at the Northern Lights, shimmering now in all colours of the rainbow like the last act of the Goetterdaemmerung, staged by the young Wagner at Bayreuth. 'A cultural treasure,' he repeated with more emphasis, the great idea slowly beginning to take shape in his fertile mind. 'Monte Cassino and the monastery dominating the major western coastal route to the Italian capital.'
Eva, sprawled out on the rumpled bed, chocolate in her plump hand, her mouth opened stupidly, stared at him in amazement, as Adolf Hitler strode to the door of her room, flung it open and yelled at the top of his tremendous voice:
‘Linge ... Linge! Linge! ... Wake up General Jodi and my military staff ... Tell them I want Kesselring on the phone at once.'
Two
The stocky ex-artilleryman who was now in command in Italy rose to his feet hastily as Hitler entered the salon followed by Jodl and his adjutants.
The Führer seized the Field Marshal's right hand in both of his warmly.
`It is good of you to come immediately, Kesselring. I know how difficult it is to get away from the front, especially under present circumstances.'
`It is a great honour to be called here, my Führer,' Kesselring answered, a little embarrassed by the German Leader's hypnotic gaze.
Finally Hitler released his grip.
‘But let us sit down.' He waved his hand round the salon.
`Thank you, my Führer.'
Kesselring sat down beneath the picturesque reclining nude which was said to be by Titian himself while Hitler lowered himself into one of the red upholstered chairs near the fireplace so that the light from the picture window fell over his shoulder and he would not need to wear the gold-rimmed spectacles he abhorred.
`Good, Kesselring, if you are ready?' Hitler threw a glance at his pale-faced clever Chief-of-Staff Colonel-General Jodl to ascertain if he were also ready. He was. 'Would you please fill us in quickly on the Italian situation?'
Kesselring, known by his staff behind his back as 'smiling Albert', was optimistic as always:
`The Tenth Army is well positioned, sir. We are blocking both the American Fifth Army and the Tommies' Eighth on both coastal routes leading to the capital and the north. I think we can safely say that General von Senger, the commander of the Tenth, has got the situation well in hand. Our positions are easily defensible - at least until the enemy can outnumber us three to one. Which is not the case at the moment. The only victory that they had been able to achieve is the capture of Peak 555 last week by the French.'
`Peak 555?' Hitler asked quickly. He prided himself on his intimate knowledge of all fronts; it annoyed him that he did not know immediately where the Peak was.
`It is to the south-east of Cassino, my Führer,' Kesselring explained. 'The French threw in a whole Algerian division to capture it from a handful of our men. It cost them a great number of dead - and equipment.'
`But it does cover the Cassino position, does it not, Field Marshal?' Jodi remarked quietly, speaking for the first time.
`One might say that,' Kesselring mumbled. 'But Cassino will hold even with Peak 555 lost. It is the lynch-pin of our line, and virtually impregnable,' his voice rose proudly, as if he personally were responsible for the creation of the mountain chain, which barred the Allies' progress north.
`Even if the Allies landed on the coast behind it?' Jodl persisted, playing the gadfly as usual, eager to provoke the self-important field commanders who came to the Führer's HQ full of themselves and the infallibility of their plans. Hitler held up his hand for peace.
`Please, gentlemen, let us not go into that now. We shall face that possibility when it occurs. For the time being, let us look at the Cassino situation. Kesselring tell me a little more about it, please.'
Glad to have had Jo
dl silenced, Kesselring continued: `It rises to five hundred and nineteen metres, my Führer, and commands the Liri valley to the south, the town of Cassino to the east and the Rapido valley running northwards towards S. Elia. It must be taken if the Allies are to use Route Six. On and around the Cassino position, we have the best troops available, the paratroop division - Heilmann's - and the Hermann Goering Panzer Grenadier Division, plus Colonel Geier's SS Battle Group Wotan in reserve.'
Hitler's face lit up.
`Did you hear that, Jodl? Geier's roughnecks from the SS are there too!'
Jodi pulled a long face.
'Yes, I heard, my Führer,' he said sourly. He knew the small ex-cavalryman Geier - the 'Vulture' as he was nick-named behind his back - well enough. Since 1939 he had had his battalion decimated time and time again on every battlefront in the ambitious drive for promotion. Admittedly Geier's SS Battlegroup was probably the best fighting unit on any front this winter of 1943 when the steam was running out of even the most elite outfits. But that quality had been purchased at a terrible price in blood and human suffering.
Neither the Führer nor 'Smiling Albert' noticed his look, however. Kesselring eagerly hurried on with his exposé:
`Our people are exceedingly well dug in, my Führer, and the Ami bombardment is largely ineffective. Their shelters are reinforced with steel and concrete so that they can get on with their business without interference from the enemy. Even when the bombers come in, they can safely sit there and play Skat.' (1)
Hitler smiled.
`We did the same in the Bavarian infantry in the trenches in the first war against the Tommies,' he remarked. 'Good, Kesselring. You seem to have everything very well under control. Now, I should like to make a suggestion. I want some of your paratroopers out of the bunkers and into the area of the monastery itself.'
Kesselring's mouth dropped open with shock, as Hitler had expected it would. The German Leader flashed a look at Jodl. Jodl was watching the Field Marshal, his eyes full of undisguised cynical pleasure. As a devout Roman Catholic, Kesselring had consistently leaned over backwards not to offend the Italian Church; Jodl knew what he must be thinking at this moment.
