Fuhrerbunker: The Novella Range

by Ian Shimwell

  Schlecht considered for a moment. “Have you discussed your suspicions with Goebbels?”

  The smile twisted slightly. “Not yet. Sometimes I do forget things…”

  “And what would help you have one of your… memory lapses?”

  Waltz leaned closer. “All your money for starters – and more. There are rumours of a secret route out of here. You could use your influence to find out.”

  “I could, but the plan has changed. Your information is out of date. The new plan is to assassinate Hitler. I am the man who will do it because I, Karl Schlecht, will be the new Führer and will lead the Nazis to victory.”

  “I thought you were deluded, but now know you are completely insane. Forget my demands, I will tell Goebbels now.” He stood up sharply and began walking out of the garden.

  Schlecht shot his friend in the back. Waltz fell down the steps, which descended to the Führerbunker. Schlecht slowly put his smoking gun away and calmly walked past the crumpled body.

  As he was about to slam the door shut, Schlecht heard an explosion and the unmistakeable clatter of machine-gun fire. The Bolsheviks were almost upon them, he realised. There wasn’t much time left. If he hurried, maybe he could still order the launch of the V3 rockets – as the Führer.

  He rushed through a passage. He stopped; his eyes were drawn to Goebbels’ office. The door was left uncharacteristically ajar. The silence unnerved him slightly and he crept inside. Goebbels was slumped forward on his desk, his wife and six children were beside him. Schlecht knew the signs. All had died of cyanide poisoning. He leaned forward and – for the first time – noticed that Goebbels had a club foot. For a moment, he looked at Magda’s deathly beauty. “Eva,” Schlecht shouted as he suddenly thought about her, worriedly. He barged into Eva’s room. She lay gracefully on the bed. Cyanide had claimed her too. He saw that she was now wearing her wedding ring. So she did marry her beloved Adolf after all.

  There was no time for this. He held his gun aloft and stormed into Hitler’s office. It was empty, but coming from the adjoining Study a faint, mocking laughter could be heard. His hand gripped the gun more tightly as he entered the Study.

  The room was in semi-darkness but behind a small desk, shadowed by a wall lined with books, sat the source of the unnerving laughter. He could only make out a darkened outline of the man but he was sure this was the leader of the Nazis.

  Schlecht pointed the gun at the figure and trembling said, “I am truly sorry, but in order for the Reich to survive, you must die. Heil Hitler!” His fingers tightened on the trigger.

  The lights were switched on. A grinning, sardonic Bormann faced Schlecht. “That’s the second time you’ve made that mistake. I mean, I don’t even look like Adolf Hitler. My figure is much stockier than his, even if I do say so myself.”

  “Where is he?” cried Schlecht, now panicking.

  “Not here,” replied Bormann coolly.

  Schlecht looked towards the door of Hitler’s bedroom and rushed inside. Discovering it to be empty, he nevertheless took a moment to look at the two framed photographs by the bed. Leaving, he pointed his revolver at Bormann and repeated urgently: “Where is he?” They could hear distant thuds and bangs. The Russians must have invaded the Chancellery, the Führerbunker would be next. “Hurry man. I must kill Hitler. There may still be time for the V3 rockets.”

  “Your lust for The Führer’s sacred blood does you no credit.” And then Bormann spoke slowly as if addressing a backward child. “Hitler is not here.”

  “Has he escaped – the secret route?”

  “A myth,” dismissed Bormann. “It does not exist. Hitler has never been here. The Führer has never even set foot inside the Führerbunker.”

  Schlecht stared long and hard. He was getting that sinking feeling. It was him that was losing the plot. “I don’t understand,” he stammered.

  “The question of the Führerbunker will prove to be one of the great deceptions of history. Everybody naturally believed that Hitler resided here. Everyone except the architects of the plan: The Führer, myself and yes, my good friend Dr Goebbels. The Führer also confided in his mistress Eva Braun.”

  “The V3 rockets,” Schlecht suddenly thought. “Can they still be launched?” Strangely, he noticed that Bormann was wearing a Soviet Army Officer’s uniform.

  Bormann caught the extra puzzlement in Schlecht’s expression so he said, “Oh don’t worry about this.” He touched the uniform admiringly. “This is my escape plan.” Schlecht was pointing the gun but it was Bormann who was in control. “The V3 rockets cannot be launched because, I’m afraid, they too are a fiction. They do not exist.”

  The gun clattered on the floor. Schlecht’s hand outstretched in bewilderment. “I still don’t understand. Why the deceptions? Why me?” he said pleadingly.

  “Our enemies will be lured to the Führerbunker because they believe Hitler will be here, when they seek revenge – you will help to confirm what they suspect.”

  “How?”

  “It is likely that your mother has been captured by the Russians. Under interrogation she will say that you have been recruited to be Hitler’s bodyguard – inside the Führerbunker.” Bormann paused. From Schlecht’s glazed expression, he wasn’t sure if he was taking it all in, but he decided to press on anyway. He enjoyed seeing Schlecht suffer. “You asked, ‘why me?’ In the Hitler Youth you were top of the class so to speak. Outstanding and totally loyal. You were an experiment – nothing more. It was one of The Führer’s pet ideas. To see if the most loyal of the rising Nazi subjects could be corrupted by power. You failed miserably. The V3 rockets were, of course, just one of the carrots.”

  “Anything else?” His core beliefs had been stripped away from him and stamped upon ruthlessly. Schlecht was a broken man. He wondered whether Eva’s seduction was also part of the twisted plan.

  Bormann smiled. “There is another reason. The question of your father.”

  “I never knew of my father, never seen him. My mother never spoke of him.”

  “Do you want to know which one of us it is?” Bormann’s lips twisted cruelly. “Do you think that your father could be The Führer himself?”

  “Is he?” said a staggered Schlecht.

  “Here’s your answer.” Bormann whipped a gun out from nowhere and shot Schlecht just below his left shoulder. He quickly put on a large Russian overcoat and left the Study.

  Schlecht had slumped to the ground. The pain in his left shoulder was searing but he was still conscious. He heard gunshots and a door being crashed open. He saw three Russians walking towards him. They thought he was dead, but he could still hear everything.

  Wiltskoff was walking aimlessly around the Study. “Keep still,” shouted General Zhukov. He turned to the Commander. “Search the remaining rooms.”

  “Yes sir.” Sinsky made a thorough search. Ending up in Hitler’s private bedroom, he reflected that it was simply and sparsely furnished for a leader. Even Stalin would reside in grander surroundings than this. Communism was supposed to mean that everyone was equal – but some were more equal than others, he thought wryly. There were two framed photographs by his bed. One was of an inconsequential young girl; the other of a blonde haired woman sat by a happy, healthy-looking dog. After the briefest of moments, Sinsky swept the frames aside, smashing them.

  A few minutes later, Sinsky approached his General in the Study. “There is no sign of the accursed German Führer, but I did find this.” Folded neatly on his arms was one of Hitler’s plain old uniforms.

  Zhukov stood centre stage between Sinsky and Wiltskoff. “Adolf Hitler is nowhere to be seen. History demands retribution – and history will not be disappointed. Believe it or not, I was hoping that this would not be necessary. Ever noticed Sinsky, that Wiltskoff is not only a similar height to Hitler but exactly the same height? Wiltskoff has short dark hair and the bone structure of his face is remarkably alike to the Nazi leader. In fact from now on, not only does he look like The Führer, he is The Führ
er!” Zhukov blew half of Wiltskoff’s head off. He instructed Sinsky to dress the corpse in Hitler’s clothes. “Commander Sinsky, this is a secret that must never be spoken of.”

  “Of course General. This will follow me to my grave,” Sinsky said perhaps unwisely.

  “How right you are.” General Zhukov smiled as he shot down Sinsky. He knelt by Wiltskoff’s shattered body, uncurled his right hand and placed the gun from the floor there. Zhukov then left the scene.

  The pain was becoming unbearable but Schlecht clung on to his last moments of life. His Aryan life blood ebbing away. He tried to choke an ironic laugh. As darkness began to claim him, he knew that he was going to die knowing of history’s greatest secret.

  Adolf Hitler survives. The Führer lives.

  The Thousand Year Reich will go on.

  THE END

  NEXT IN THE NOVELLA RANGE:

  The Prime

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