by Scott Palter
“Please wait outside. I must confer with the Oberführer for a few minutes.” Ohlendorf gave a proper salute and marched himself back to the waiting room, carefully closing the door behind him while reviewing whether he was really as prepared for death as he liked to pretend he was. Heydrich saw him go and turned to Schellenberg. “So my alter ego, how do we find some excuse for his dismissal that doesn’t shine a light on the entire mess?”
“It’s really simple, Reichsführer. Never explain. Tell him he seems not suited for oil fields. That he will be given a chance to redeem himself in the manner that Müller has with the General Government.”
“Italy. Send him to Obergruppenführer Wolff. Wolff can show him around Rome and then take him to someplace in the north. Have Standartenfueher Ohlendorf head an Italo-German industrial council to coordinate production.”
“Where? Milan? Turin?”
“Verona. That English playwright did a famous work on that one. It must have some culture, which will make our visiting industrial people happy. In reverse, a smaller city will welcome the added business from conferences and offices.”
0600 hours local and CET
13 October 1940
Skies over Kano, British Northern Nigeria
At twelve hundred meters the air was bracingly cold as the French parachutists jumped out the door of the Potez 540 and hit the silk. The heat would come as they floated down towards the dusty plains around the city. In the low to mid 20’s so close to dawn, rising to the mid to high 30’s by early afternoon.
Sous Lieutenant Marcel Bigeard had been first out of his plane. Officers led the way. It was how the Germans had trained them during their abbreviated cycle. It was how French elite units behaved even without Boche instructors. The newly minted Sixth Colonial Parachute Battalion saw itself as an elite unit, and was about to demonstrate this to a wider world.
That said, there were only enough planes to drop two companies of the battalion today. Three hundred men to take a medium-sized city with a garrison of unknown size. The French had surprise, and the British at best had a garrison of colonial police. That contingent had supposedly mostly been sent to Kenya. After the campaign in France, Bigeard did not have a high opinion of French intelligence analysis. Right now he just reveled in the feeling of power that came with landing from the air like gods.
1500 hours local; 1400 hours CET
13 October 1940
Port of Monrovia, Liberia
Pursuant to a US declaration of protectorate status for the Republic of Liberia, the destroyer USS Hatfield landed a small party of Fleet Marines and sailors who paraded through the streets to the US embassy. From Washington, General George Marshal announced that a provisional brigade consisting of the US 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments, two historic Buffalo Soldier units, would be sent as shipping became available. The Navy Department announced that mixed battalions of US Marines and locally trained forces from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, and Cuba would do likewise. The US consulates in those nations were besieged by volunteers as word spread that the men would be paid as if they were US forces, rather than at prevailing local wages.
0800 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 1400 hours CET
14 October 1940
Oval Office, White House, Washington DC
FDR was briefly back in town. Supposedly to sign legislation. In fact to rest up after a medical incident on the campaign trail. His personal physician had assured everyone in the President’s political family that it hadn’t actually been a heart attack. It was just an ‘incident’. An ‘incident’ of extreme chest pain and loss of consciousness. The traveling staff had hushed this up. The official excuse was food poisoning.
Franklin didn’t take orders well. Bed rest had been brushed aside. Hopkins had him on a light schedule of glad-handing from his desk. That left time for the two to chat. Hopkins was using that time to bring the legal chief executive up to date on what the acting President had been doing in his absence.
“Why did we do this thing in Liberia?”
“Because Willkie was about to demand it. Without Negro votes you will lose New York and New Jersey.”
“What about Illinois?” Roosevelt knew Chicago had a huge Bronze Town.
Hopkins wearily shook his head. “Franklin, Illinois is gone. I’ve got Truman whistle-stopping down by Cairo, to hide our hand. Maybe we can save a few House seats. Maybe the Republicans will waste money seriously campaigning there. I keep telling you, this is going to be as close as Wilson in 1916.” Wilson had been FDR’s patron to higher office. He went to sleep on election night defeated, and woke up reelected as California had switched sides while the East Coast slept. The newspapers had had endless fun lambasting the Republican ‘President -elect’ who in fact wasn’t elected anything. “You are living in a dream world and your wife, while an excellent campaigner, is adding to the fantasy. By all means keep her beating the drum on the left. It minimizes your losses there. The election will be decided in the center. By the people who don’t like Nazis but don’t want war. By people who hate the Republicans for Hoover’s Depression, but whose fingers are still burned by yours. The NAACP and the Negro press got it in their heads that this new Franco-British war menaced the last independent African state. Forget that 98% of their readers couldn’t find Liberia on a map. It became a symbol of white men screwing Colored men. The whole ‘nation of freed slaves’ myth. So we send a few black soldiers, establish an air base, and keep those votes.”
Franklin grumbled a bit, then went on to his real peeve. “Truman. Yes, yes, the little bankrupt haberdasher can campaign in cow towns. But I had him to dinner one night in St. Louis. He’s a provincial boor. He’s Babbitt come to life. Couldn’t you find me a Truman with an Ivy League education, who can converse like a gentleman?”
“You found Wallace. He would have sunk you.”
“Yes, but wasn’t there a better compromise?”
“Had you given us two years to canvas, probably. You danced on whether you were running at all. Made a game out of it. Then committed at the last second and threw Wallace at us. Even then it would have worked, had that little fairy Hoover just kept his mouth shut.”
“Can’t we just fire him?”
Hopkins felt as weary as FDR looked, only his ailments were in the gut, not heart. His felt like the molten core of the planet. “You know you can. And you know what it will cost. He has enough dirt to make you wish you really had retired with one of your lady friends to write detective novels. If you want to be really modern, you can have him killed. Frank Hague has the right gangster connections. I’m sure a few others do as well. Of course, whoever we give the job to will then be a bigger threat. Plus we don’t know who he’s hidden copies of the worst stuff with. All it takes is one set of copies reaching the Chicago Tribune. They will publish every word without fact checking a thing. You are stuck with the odious little toad.” Hopkins was ready to die for the ideals of Progress. Why did Franklin have to make it so hard?
Hopkins’ digestive tract was saved by an aide announcing the next appointment. Joe Kennedy, come to kiss the ring and try to get some plum assignment for one of his sons.
1300 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 1900 hours CET
14 October 1940
Executive Office Building, Washington DC
It had once housed the departments of War, Navy and State. Now it had various offshoots of the ever-growing office of the President. Harry Hopkins kept a suite there for meetings that were best not on the front page of the Washington dailies. Tom Dewey was down from New York to see him. Nominally, Manhattan District Attorney Tom Dewey was in town to meet Harry Hopkins about matters connected to the campaign against the US Communist Party and its many fronts and affiliates. These were especially strong in New York City, a longstanding hotbed of radicalism based in the various immigrant communities. Their aides had prepared a press release that was both accurate and nebulous. Accurate in that the listed things had been agreed to. Nebulous because it
was not what today’s meeting was about.
Dewey was representative today for the established moneyed interests who in fact ran the national Republican Party. Willkie was not precisely their creature, but he had been a convenient foil against the mid-American isolationist reactionaries under Taft. Events now required cooperation that Willkie could not be seen giving less than a month before a Presidential election.
“Nice of you to see me on short notice, Harry. Kudos on getting ahead of us on Liberia, but … ”
“But now we have to regularize this ad hoc mess?”
“Yes. I’ve made the calls. The resolutions our staffs discussed will get the majority of the Republican votes in the House and Senate. They’ve talked to your leadership. Joint whip counts will give comfortable margins.” Dewey was his usual confident self.
Hopkins looked over the documents. Joint resolutions of both Houses retroactively approving policy in China and Liberia. The President was authorized to spend money, raise troops, and construct installations subject to a one-house veto. A second resolution proclaimed that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans constituted the defense borders of the United States, authorizing the President to take such actions as were necessary to bar access to either body of water by forces hostile to the United States. There were three statehood bills, making Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico states on New Year’s Day. Quite soon, but avoiding the chaos of interjecting them into the ongoing elections. The Virgin Islands were linked to Puerto Rico, and the various US Pacific islands out to Guam and Samoa made part of Hawaii. A quite detailed statute barred the use of selective service draftees outside the United States and its defense oceans without express prior Congressional approval. The Immigration Act of 1924 was suspended in its provisions as regards Ireland. The US Communists, Nazis, and their allies were all made illegal. Hopkins saw one thing was missing. “Tom?”
“They couldn’t jam Lend-Lease through as part of this package. It’s just too raw. They’ll start hearings, but that one is for the lame duck session.” He saw Hopkins give him a withering look. “We tried. Had bankers and brokers doing calls to key people threatening credit lines, loan rollovers, and the like. You and I are going to need a lot of mineral oil to sooth a lot of very bruised assholes. I promised magic, and this is all pretty magical.”
Hopkins outright laughed at him. “You are running an interventionist liberal stooge who is pretending to be a braindead isolationist to get elected. You want as much of this done before he takes office as possible. That’s why you threw me the bone on the Irish. Unlimited entry of Papist Irish helps me, not you.”
Dewey was an excellent attorney and a professional negotiator. “So just between us, you are conceding that my man Willkie has this?”
“I’ll tell you what I have been telling Franklin. It’s too damned close to call.” Hopkins took a deep breath. Dewey needed him to take the heat on this, but the reverse was true as well. All this done bipartisan wouldn’t move the voters who thought the Chicago Tribune and its ilk had a direct line to Jesus. It would matter to the swing voters who would decide this election. They loved the prosperity of the war boom, but didn’t want their sons dead defending the British Empire. “Can your Wall Street people deliver the British on this? If they trumpet to the London press that this is all back door intervention, it could sink us all.”
Dewey wasn’t stupid enough to make promises he had no power to keep. “We’ll do our best. Bevin isn’t exactly from the circles they move in. I’ve got a dozen people over on the Pan Am clipper to Dublin tomorrow. We didn’t send telegrams. Remember Zimmermann’s in 1917? Any telegram can be stolen, decoded. Face to face, and quiet talks over drinks. The majority in Commons is still Tory. My guys’ contacts in the City of London still have a lot of power.”
The meeting had fewer ending pleasantries than usual. Both men were busy. Congress was doing an emergency late-night session to debate the ‘national defense emergency’. The House approved the package just before midnight by a vote of 230-200. The Senate kept talking till near dawn before voting likewise 50-46. The banner headline on the next morning’s Chicago Tribune had one word: TREASON!
0800 hours local; 0100 hours CET
15 October 1940
100 meters in front of Aztec trenches. 2km from the Chinese Eastern RR and 150 km from the original Soviet border
They had marched three days to arrive here. The Aztecs, Spanish Republicans, and a force of German comrades. They had driven the mules carrying the machine-guns and mortars while carrying their own food and ammunition. General Kleber, one of the heroes of the Battle of Madrid against the Fascists, was leading them. The commissars had promised that they were behind the main Japanese defenses.
Sadly, that was wrong. They arrived to see a double line of Japanese trenches with pill-box strong points as far as the eye could see. The orders were to attack here. Orders could not be contradicted by facts. They had spent the night digging a pitiful support trench, emplacing their heavy weapons there. The commissars had them up before dawn. Ignoring the fierce freezing winds of this plain, at what to Alexander Ruz from the tropics was the chilly gates of Hell, they got a cold breakfast plus some bad coffee. Alexander thought these Soviet comrades had no idea of how to brew coffee. That task should have been left to Cubans, or even Mexicans.
The general attacked first with the Spanish. His NKVD minders stayed in the trench, probably to direct the mortars. Revolver in hand, screaming revolutionary slogans, Kleber ran forward at the head of his men. Half never even made it out of the trench before being blown back by Japanese automatic weapons fire. The general himself lasted a good sixty meters before getting nearly cut in half by a Japanese heavy machine-gun.
Alexander charged with the second wave, the Aztecs. They managed to get further than the Spaniards. Some of them reached a hundred and twenty meters, nearly halfway to the enemy. Alexander was waving the Cuban flag as he ran. Massed Japanese fire destroyed the flag pole, spinning him to the ground. He lay there, hiding behind a mostly dead body, panting and trying not to cry.
The German comrades came last. They came in short rushes. None got close enough to the Japanese positions to use their grenades. A German lad went to ground beside him. He bandaged the wound Alexander hadn’t realized he had. This companion had kind eyes, and held Alexander while he wept. There was nothing else to do but lie there, chatting, till darkness came and they could crawl back to their trench. The German was seventeen, almost a man. Said his name was Markus Wolf. Alexander felt the bond growing between them allowed for sharing his real name, Fidel Castro.
After dark they crawled back to the trench. Fidel had the remains of the Cuban flag. Markus had retrieved the general’s revolver. New comrades had arrived. French and Jewish. The commissars said they would attack again in the morning. The two boys slept what few hours of dark remained, together under a blanket. Fidel felt secure in Markus’s arms.
0800 hours local; 0600 hours CET
15 October 1940
Baghdad, Iraq
The smoke from last night’s pogrom still hung heavy over the city. David Baghdadi was safe at the villa of a prominent Sunni. So was his extended family, and clients of his blood and linked business affairs. The world was in a modern age, but Mesopotamia still ran on feudal logic.
David had paid off several prominent Sunni men of business and politics, as well as a few dozen Army and police officials. There had been reliable guards on his properties. The dead, the maimed, the raped had been mostly those without protectors. Mostly Jews, but some Christians and British; even a few Sunni Arabs who had been too friendly to the crown. The royal family had escaped with its retainers to the nearby RAF base. The officers of the Golden Square ruled, with one Rashid Ali at its head.
Ruled … for now. The British had troops in Kuwait, and more coming from Palestine. Rashid Ali had tried to ally with Italy and Germany. Neither had forces currently placed to aid him. The Italian ambassador had been cordial. The German had been indifferent. T
his did not bode well for the new regime. Strange stories were coming out of Palestine. It was the Germans who were coming here to Iraq, not the Italians. His host had even heard rumors that the Germans were bringing some Jewish mercenaries. Something called Betar. His host wished David to have coffee with him to discuss this possible turn of events. David knew nothing, but being enigmatic in a negotiation was second nature to a mercantile family head.
1300 Hours CET
15 October 1940
Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Reich Air Ministry), Berlin
