The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  That feeling—that Germany had been betrayed and that the German people had been shit on for centuries—is what opened the door for Hitler.

  Adolf Hitler arrived in Vienna in the spring of 1910, a typical twentysomething. Rootless. Passionate. Unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. His parents were dead, and he got by with the help of a meager orphan’s stipend that came monthly from the state. That, and whatever money he could make with his watercolor paintings of buildings and landscapes (most of them sold to Jewish art dealers). Vienna was a bohemian city in those days. A mecca for the arts. It also happened to be a hotbed of anti-Semitism. The papers carried almost daily treatises on the looming threat of an “invasion of Jews” from the East.

  Unable to afford his own apartment, Hitler lived, along with some five hundred other residents, in a men’s dormitory, where he rented a room by the week. It was a sparse, almost prison-like building, but it was an improvement over the homeless shelter he’d been staying in before that. He took his meals in its mess hall, where, amid the clatter of silverware and the clinking of plates and coffee cups, Hitler first heard others speak out against the Jews. There’s no evidence that he shared those views at the time. In fact, even in his carefully worded piece of autobiographical propaganda, Mein Kampf,9 Hitler admitted that he found the views of the anti-Semites “radical” during his days in Vienna. As late as 1913, Hitler counted Jews among his friends. Even at the height of his power in Nazi Germany, he remained grateful to the Jewish family doctor who had stayed by his mother’s side, caring for her to the end.

  Yet by 1920, just seven years after leaving the men’s dormitory in Vienna, Hitler was giving fiery speeches in Munich, rallying thousands around anti-Semitic principles. It seemed as if he’d become completely consumed with hatred for the Jewish people. For decades, questions have persisted regarding the timeline of his radicalization. When did this shy, quiet drifter adopt his virulent views? How did he transition from a quiet bohemian artist to an impassioned, captivating speaker, with an almost mystical hold over an entire nation, in just a few short years?10

  Abe and Henry arrived in Berlin on Thursday, April 22nd, 1937, after crossing on the French ocean liner SS Normandie—then the fastest, most luxurious passenger ship afloat. Abe traveled under the name Joshua F. Speed, a nod to his old friend from Springfield. Upon checking into their hotel, they opened their steamer trunks and began dismantling the various radios, cameras, and typewriters inside—all of which had been modified to include the necessary parts to build a compact, powerful bomb.

  If the experience of killing Rasputin had taught Henry anything, it was this: the simpler the plan, the better. There would be no electrical death rays this time. No overly complex plots or reliance on untested coconspirators. This time, they would get as close as they could and, in FDR’s words, “kill the son of a bitch.” Getting close to Hitler was going to be a challenge, even for two men as fast and powerful as Abe and Henry. The Reich chancellor was surrounded by heavily armed, highly trained guards, at least some of whom, it was suspected, were vampires.

  It was tempting to just say, “Fine, we’ll just wait for a rally or a parade. We’ll wait for him to get close enough and then rush him with our claws and fangs flying.” But even if we got to him—no doubt through a hail of machine-gun fire—we’d still have to escape, with every Nazi within a country mile on our tail, emptying clips into our backs. Vampires are resilient, but we’re not bulletproof. Shoot us often enough, and we die.

  It had to be a plan that could be carried out by Abe and me alone, and one that would leave no trace of American involvement. We knew there were Germans who wanted Hitler dead, but FDR was adamant that we recruit no one. He couldn’t have the front pages of the world’s newspapers carrying headlines of a failed American plot. Not only would it embolden Hitler, but it would almost certainly draw America into the war, which is exactly what he was trying to avoid.

  Abe and Henry had considered every option, assisted by a small, handpicked group of analysts and officers from the War Department, who were told only that they were assisting two American operatives in planning the assassination of a high-level target. Abe and Henry never met with them in person—so critical was the protection of their identities and the ability of the United States to deny involvement.

  Nothing was off-limits for discussion: Slipping into Hitler’s residence under cover of darkness and killing him in bed. Perching ourselves on a roof opposite the Reichstag and taking him with a sniper rifle. Posing as members of a foreign delegation and getting a face-to-face meeting with him. But these came with too many variables and little or no chance of escape.

  In the end, it was decided that a bomb would be the most effective and least traceable means. It was given the name Operation Sunshine—a play on one of the passages from Mein Kampf:

  If you want to shine like the sun, first you have to burn like it.

  Rather than sticks of dynamite, they were given the then state-of-the-art compound known as RDX, or Research Department explosive—a white, crystalline powder, the primary ingredient in future moldable explosives like C-4.

  We had eight ounces of this stuff, hidden in four separate film canisters—enough to turn a man into a cloud of blood and brain from twenty feet away. We’d been given instructions on how to handle it and had been assured and reassured that it was perfectly stable, that there was no way it would explode unless we wanted it to. Naturally, it scared the shit out of us.

  Abe and Henry completed the bomb on the twenty-fifth, five days before Hitler was scheduled to speak at a rally at Berlin’s Sportpalast (Sports Palace). That left the issue of getting into the venue undetected, and planting the bomb close enough to do its work.

  They took in the warm spring evening, strolling past busy biergartens, where Nazi officers drank toasts to their führer and bounced pretty girls in their laps. Abe and Henry soaked up the old city. Henry was relieved to be a safe distance from their potentially explosive hotel room, though he couldn’t escape a certain level of background anxiety. Henry didn’t care for Berlin. He hadn’t felt quite like himself since their arrival.

  I’d been dogged by an indefinable sense of dread since we’d arrived. I felt foggy and forgetful. I had trouble sleeping. I chalked it up to the anxiety of our mission and being surrounded by so much hatred.

  Still, for vampires who fed only on wicked blood, Nazi Germany was an all-you-can-eat buffet. And Abe and Henry were hungry.

  There were SS officers everywhere you turned, some on duty, some drunkenly walking in the streets, singing and pissing in dark alleys. It was just a matter of finding two with the right jacket sizes.

  As the Olympic Stadium Bell Tower11 chimed two a.m., Abe and Henry followed a pair of officers—one of average height and build, the other uncommonly tall. They took care to keep from being noticed, both vampires having become adept at following prey on their own, but neither accustomed to killing in pairs. The Nazis walked arm in arm, both exceedingly drunk, but the taller of the two a shade drunker, and therefore leaning on his shorter friend for balance.

  They were laughing and stumbling along. The taller one was wearing a woman’s scarf around his neck—violet, I remember—clutching one end of it in his hand, using it as a prop in a story he was telling the other. Something about a woman named Liesl, whom he’d fallen hideously in love with, despite having met her at a beer garden two hours earlier. Whether this was Liesl’s scarf or not, I have no idea.

  The two officers stepped into an alley between two brick apartment buildings—all but one of the windows above dark, the tenants long asleep. Abe and Henry waited on the sidewalk while the Germans relieved themselves against the trash cans that lined the walls.

  It was important that their bladders be empty. We didn’t want to go through the trouble of laundering their uniforms, you see. When we heard them finish, we stepped into the alley, our arms around each other, putting on a pretty good show of being shitfaced ourselves.

  �
�Tut mir leid,” said the shorter of the officers, a blissful grin on his face. “Das bad ist leider besetzt.” Sorry, the bathroom is occupied.

  The four men shared a laugh as the Nazis zipped up their trousers. Abe reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette holder.

  “Haben sie feuer?” asked Abe. Do you have a light?

  Both of the Nazis reached into their jacket pockets. It’s doubtful they ever saw the fists coming, moving with dive-bomber speed and striking their skulls with savage force. They were cows in a slaughterhouse, rendered instantly and forever unconscious, with not the slightest hint of suffering or the faintest hope of reprieve. Abe and Henry caught the officers before they could fall all the way to the pavement (where their uniforms might come into contact with dirt or grime or recently expelled bodily fluids). They drained the men of their blood through careful bites on the wrists and neck, taking care not to spill a drop. When they were finished feeding, they stripped the men of their uniforms and dragged the bodies to the far end of the alley, below the darkened windows of dreaming apartment dwellers.

  I found a cigarette lighter in the smaller officer’s jacket pocket. Usually I dispensed with personal items, but this was an intriguing piece—a silver Zippo lighter, emblazed with a gold swastika. Given that we were there to kill Adolf Hitler, I thought it might make for an interesting souvenir. Besides, you never knew when someone might need a light.

  I did, however, leave the purple scarf.

  On Friday, April 30th, Abe and Henry, resplendent in their unsullied uniforms, joined thousands of soldiers and citizens in the Sportpalast. A stage had been constructed at one end of the arena, adorned with hanging garland and framed by a pair of floor-to-ceiling red swastika flags. Center stage, directly behind the podium, a giant golden eagle—the Reichsadler—sat with its wings outstretched, its head forever turned to the right. The symbol of Nazi Germany.

  Here we were, at the biggest Klan rally of them all. Tasked with killing the grandest of the grand wizards. This was no remote wooded clearing, mind you. This was a public place, with thousands of screaming Germans, each of them willing to lay down his life to protect the führer. I’d seen astonishing public speakers before. Frederick Douglass was mesmerizing, and of course Abe could move people to tears—and to war—with his words. But this crowd was different. They were whipped into cabalistic frenzy, wild-eyed fury. Red-faced, they screamed, flecks of spit flying from their mouths. These men had surrendered all pretense of humanity.

  By the time the opening acts had finished their speeches, the standing-room-only crowd was vibrating like excited molecules in boiling water. A party official rose to introduce the man everyone was waiting for. Standing behind the gleaming-white podium, he lifted his hands in an attempt to silence the crowd, which by then had risen to a chant of “Heil! Heil! Heil!” in deafening unison. Stomping their feet on the wooden rafters, making the whole building shake.

  “Tonight,” the official yelled into the microphones. But the crowd was relentless.

  “Heil! Heil!”

  Hitler speaks to the crowd at Berlin’s Sportpalast, unaware that a powerful bomb is only a few inches below him. Note the glass of water on the podium, replenished after being spilled earlier.

  Abe and Henry checked their watches. Hitler’s speech was scheduled to begin at ten o’clock. It was already five minutes past.

  “Tonight,” the official continued, his voice booming from the public address system and echoing through the room, “let not only the German people but the entire world hear us chant!”

  “Heil! Heil!”

  “Tonight, let us speak with one voice!”

  A large glass of water had been placed atop the podium for Hitler, who was known to scream himself hoarse during speeches. The party official (perhaps imitating his beloved führer) built to his own screaming crescendo: “The voice of a man who speaks for all of Germany!” He jerked his hands outward in a chopping motion on the word “Deutschland,” emphasizing the first syllable and knocking the water glass over—spilling its contents across the top of the podium and over a typed copy of Hitler’s speech. The crowd might not have noticed, had the official not jumped back, fearful of getting his khaki-colored uniform wet. He recovered and set about rescuing the typed pages.

  The crowd went silent for a fraction of a second, then broke into laughter, more at his cowardice than at his clumsiness. The laughter turned to boos and jeers. Distant shouts of “Asshole!” “Give us the führer!” and “Get off the stage!” But not from Abe and me. Our jaws were hanging off their hinges. We were horrified.

  Horrified, because inside that podium, where rivulets of water were now beginning to seep through the cracks, was the bomb they’d so meticulously constructed and carefully planted—getting to the Sportpalast at dawn with the riggers and electricians, hauling bundles of wire and stringing garland wherever they were instructed to. And while the sound system was being tested, planting the bomb and setting its timer for ten minutes after ten that night. When the timer went off, an electrical charge would ignite the white crystalline RDX powder inside the bomb, turning the wooden podium into a trillion supersonic splinters and liquefying anyone standing by it. That is, as long as the powder didn’t get wet.

  Hitler stepped to the podium and began to speak. We waited, fists clenched, unable to breathe. Ten past ten came and went. Ten fifteen… ten twenty… ten thirty…

  After forty minutes of screaming and gesturing, Hitler ended his speech to thunderous applause, shouts, and stomps. He stood at the podium, a deity before the pious. Abe and Henry had failed.

  “Let’s go,” said Abe.

  “And do what?” asked Henry.

  But Abe was already on his way. Henry followed him to the rear of the balcony, down the stairs to the main level. He followed as Abe ran down a wide, mostly empty corridor, the bulk of the crowd still chanting and stomping in the arena—hurrying through doors marked Verboten! and twisting through the dark, staff-only innards through which they’d lugged bundles of cable and garland hours earlier. Hurrying to intercept Hitler before his entourage led him out of the arena.

  “Abe!” yelled Henry, running after him. “We can’t! We have to let him go!”

  Abe kept running.

  Here I was, following a vampire through the recesses of a packed theater. A vampire who was determined to assassinate a world leader. And I had a thought. A ridiculous thought:

  Abraham Lincoln had become John Wilkes Booth.

  The dark recesses led them back to the light of the arena. They emerged just in time to see the führer himself step off the stage, trailed by advisers and surrounded by SS guards—the latter wearing helmets and compact machine guns, a curtain of protection through which nothing had much hope of penetrating. They led Hitler toward the exit, beside which the two vampires now stood, looking no different from any of the other thousands of Nazis in attendance.

  “Abe!” said Henry again, tugging at the sleeve of his jacket. But Abe didn’t acknowledge. He stood, tense and tall, staring at Hitler as the guards led him toward the exit.

  I was afraid. I don’t mind admitting it. But I didn’t show it. To show fear would’ve tipped the guards off that something was wrong. I stood there, willing calmness onto my face and shouting out the side of my mouth.

  “Goddammit, Abe, our orders!”

  If Abe decided to pounce, we were both as good as dead. We might get to Hitler, and we might take a few of them with us, but we would never leave the arena alive. Not with that many machine guns tearing us to pieces. Not with thousands of Nazis chasing us down and exacting their vengeance. These would be our last moments. Abe knew it as well as I did.

  Hitler grew close, gliding along in the middle of that machine-gun ring. Chants of “Heil!” blustering behind him, the wind in his invisible sails. Flashbulbs popping with strobe-light frequency as he neared the two officers standing to the side of his exit—one smiling awkwardly; the other, an uncommonly tall fellow, staring a
t him intensely.

  We were face-to-face with him for a moment. I mean, this close [reaches out an arm’s length]. Just a fleeting moment. He and I were the same height, same build—though his face was older and more severe. He had striking blue eyes. Most people don’t know that. Intense, sunken eyes, which reminded me of Rasputin’s. That hair, with its obsessively perfect part. And the mustache. I was close enough to see the pores of his skin. To feel the heat coming off him. It was just an instant, but it was long enough for me to know—he was no vampire.

  There was no mystic spell being cast on the innocent people of Germany. No supernatural darkness taking them unaware. He was just a man, and the shouting masses were willing participants in his madness.

  Hitler considered Abe and Henry in that slow-motion second, time itself seeming to grow weak, as if the Great Clock of the Universe was in need of winding. The flashbulbs popped with less frequency, their light seeming to grow fainter, the shouts of “Heil!” more distant as all else fell away but the choice.

  Only a few feet away from them…

  “The hell with it,” muttered Abe.

  His claws shot out over the tops of his fingernails. His fangs broke through his gums as if fired from tiny mortars. All of this in a single beat of a fly’s wings. He lunged at Hitler, so fast that the guards didn’t have time to close ranks or level their guns. He dove over the top of the ring of men, extending his long arms out in front of him, swinging his claws with absurd strength, just as he once swung an ax, dragging the bony blades across Hitler’s throat. There was no blood. No wound. Just a startled look in Hitler’s sunken eyes. He brought his hands up to his throat, up to the boiling pain that was just now coming across the Teletype machines in his brain, warning him, This just in: something—we’re not sure what it is yet—but something is terribly wrong.