Death on the Rhine

by Charles Whiting

  ‘I say, you can’t do that,’ the General breathed, shocked. ‘After all she’s a lady.’

  ‘She’s no lady – and I’ve done it,’ McIntyre gasped.

  Then he felt all his energy drain out of him, as if someone had opened a tap. The case was closed. He had done it. He leaned against the wall, as the General quavered into the phone down to the guardhouse below, from which came the sound of heavy boots running, ‘I say, would you send someone up? There’s been a bit of an accident…’

  Ten

  The sky hung grey and leaden above Munich. It was bitterly cold and snow was forecast. But despite the cold, the streets of the Bavarian capital were packed with people: civilians, soldiers, police and Party members in their brown uniforms. Tension was in the air. For all of them knew, whatever side they were on, that on this day the issue would be settled one way or another.

  In the unheated hotel room in the Odeonplatz, the four men, clad in their overcoats, waited, peering through the tall French windows for the first sign of the marchers. Far off they could hear the muted brass of a military band, the crowd down below already craning their necks in anticipation.

  C broke the heavy silence. He said drily, ‘It won’t be long now, Herr von Stein, I don’t suppose. Will your police fire now?’

  Herr von Stein, bearded, old, sunk into the fur collar of his coat, said a little wearily, ‘Hope so, Herr Admiral. I fervently hope so. We have had too many of these—’ he clicked his gloved fingers impatiently at not being able to find the word in English.

  ‘Uprisings, sir,’ Smith volunteered the word.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Uprisings. Yes, we have had too many of them since the war. Let us pray that this will be the last one and then we shall have peace.’

  Down below a scuffle had broken out in the waiting crowd. ‘Jude,’ half a dozen men in the Party’s brown uniform were crying angrily, punching a small man, while a woman, screaming violently, was trying to pull them off him.

  ‘A Jew,’ the man from Berlin explained in that same weary manner he had displayed ever since they had met him two days before. ‘These Nazis, as we call the National Socialists, hate the Jews – and us, too.’ He gave the three Englishmen a tired smile.

  The capture of Kati von Duckwitz and her confession had done the trick. The British ambassador had made an immediate protest to the German government in Berlin. C had supplied him with the fullest documentation: how the attempted assassination of the General Officer Commanding the British Army of the Rhine was to be the signal for a right-wing revolt in Munich under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, which would, in the end, topple the government in Berlin. The socialist government had decided to act. But as von Stein had said at their first meeting in his Reichstag office, ‘Can we trust the army – the police?’

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’ C had asked sharply.

  ‘The officers of both the army and the police are mostly right-wing. Will they fire on their own kind, even to defend the Constitution?’ And again he had shrugged in that weary manner of his, as if the whole world was simply too much for him to bear.

  Now, positioned in this cold, upper-storey hotel room, with a thin cordon of police blocking the street further up the road and another line down at the bottom, they waited to see what would happen. Would the ‘Austrian rabble-rouser’, as von Stein had called him, both contempt and fear in his voice, succeed after all?

  The sound of the march music came closer and closer. Down at the cordons, the green-uniformed police started to shuffle their feet awkwardly and the watchers could see the looks of doubt and confusion on their faces, as they awaited the first sign from the marchers.

  ‘There they are!’ Dickie cried.

  Eight abreast, packing the narrow street from side to side, the brown-clad marchers came surging up the Residenzstrasse, singing and cheering, periodically throwing up their arms in the new Nazi greeting and shouting ‘Heil Hitler’ to well-wishers hanging out of the windows on both sides of the street.

  Von Stein lifted the glasses he had brought with him and focused them on the front-rankers of the marchers, arms linked together as they bellowed, ‘O Deutschland hoch in Ehren.’ O Germany high in honour.

  ‘Verdammt!’ he exclaimed, ‘they’ve got General Ludendorff marching with them. God, what will the police do now?’

  All of them knew who Ludendorff was. He had been virtually the military dictator of Imperial Germany for the last years of the war. If he had thrown in his lot with the Nazis, they had to be taken seriously. Now Smith could see where von Horn had got his backing from: Ludendorff, the most senior and important ex-imperial Army officer.

  ‘That’s Captain Goering,’ von Stein continued, ‘and there’s that chap with the moustache, that’s the Austrian – Hitler.’

  Both Smith and Dickie Bird raised their glasses. A dark, flushed, angry face came sliding into the gleaming circle of calibrated glass. They saw the ugly toothbrush moustache and the lock of lank black hair hanging down over the Austrian’s brow. ‘Not exactly the face to set the world on fire,’ Dickie Bird commented airily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Smith said thoughtfully and slowly, lowering his glasses. ‘There’s something about that man’s face – I can’t exactly put my finger on it – something evil, infinitely evil, perhaps.’

  At the first police cordon, at the entrance to the Odeonplatz, the harassed policemen were ordering the marchers to stop. But they had no success. The cheering, booing crowd swept them to one side and surged onwards, yelling ‘Heil Hitler… Heil Hitler’ with fanatical fervour.

  Von Stein lowered his glasses. ‘Himmelherrje, they didn’t even attempt to unsling their rifles and fire a few warning shots over the mob’s head. We’re lost… we’re lost!’ He started to wring his skinny hands and looking at him, C told himself he knew why the Berlin Government was a failure. It was made up of too many weaklings like von Stein. He cleared his throat angrily.

  Now the marching mob was approaching the last police cordon. Behind it lay the great Felderrnhalle, where it was expected that Hitler would declare the state of Bavaria was now in National Socialist hands, the first step in his takeover of the whole of Germany. Then the Republic would be finished.

  All four of the watchers concentrated their attention on the pale-faced young police officer who had stepped out into the middle of the street. Alone, he faced the advancing mob. In a loud voice, he called, ‘The march is illegal! In the name of the Free State of Bavaria I order you to disperse!’

  The mob faltered, such was the look of grim determination on the young officer’s pale, aristocratic face. Hitler shouted something and slashed his calf angrily with the dog whip he was carrying. The mob surged forwards again.

  The police officer turned. ‘Second company, double time, march!’

  Hurriedly, the green-uniformed policemen, carrying their rifles at the slope, doubled forwards.

  Now the leaders of the mob were almost up to the lone officer. He brought his own rifle down to his hip, standing there ready for anything, it seemed.

  Someone in the mob lunged at him with a bayonet. He parried the thrust easily. Nazis started firing their pistols. At first in the air. But as the police officer brought one of their number down to his knees with a blow from his rifle butt, they started to fire at the police company. A shot howled off the wall next to the lone officer, showering him with brick splinters. Another whizzed over his head. Behind him, the leading police sergeant clutched his chest. A sudden stain coloured his tunic a bright scarlet. Wordlessly, without even a moan, he fell to the cobbles.

  The death of their sergeant acted like a signal to the harassed policemen. They fired a salvo into the mob. Nazis went down everywhere, screaming, shrieking, clutching their wounded limbs. Frantically the mob started to scramble for safety.

  Suddenly, Smith was willing the Austrian Hitler to be hit and killed. Somehow he knew, with the one hundred per cent certainty of a vision, that that world would be a safer and better place if Hitler
died now.

  That wasn’t to be. A small man leapt in front of the Party leader. Smith could see the bullets thwacking into the unknown protector’s body. He went down, dragging Hitler with him, his body still acting as a shield for the prostrate leader.

  Now the dead and dying lay everywhere on the bloodstained cobbles, with a man who had been hit in both legs trying to crawl away, as the back of the mob hesitated, wavered, wondered if they were hearing small-arms fire or the explosions of fireworks which were going to be used to celebrate their take-over of power in Munich.

  Smith and the rest watched, fascinated, as the police, rifles still at their hips, started to move forwards to where the dead and wounded lay. ‘Take him!’ von Stein exclaimed suddenly with angry fervour, ‘take that Austrian swine into custody!’

  But already the Austrian had struggled to his feet, cradling one arm in his other hand, as if he had hurt the limb. A giant rushed to his assistance. The man, who towered a head higher than Hitler, moved away from the police more quickly, dragging the injured leader with him. Moments later they had disappeared round a corner, the mob vanishing with them, leaving the narrow street to the police and the dead sprawled out in the extravagant angles and poses of those done violently to death.

  In the hotel room, after the noise and excitement of the last few minutes, there was a sudden brooding silence, as if each man was wrapped up in a cocoon of his own thoughts.

  ‘Well,’ C said finally, taking von Stein’s arm as if they were the oldest of friends, ‘I think we all deserve a strong drink.’

  ‘Einverstanden,’ von Stein agreed, suddenly smiling, as if a great weight had been taken off his mind. ‘Berlin has had a triumph this day.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ C said. ‘It looks as if you Germans have seen the back of that Austrian chap – what’s his name?’

  ‘Hitler.’

  ‘That’s right, Hitler. Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ Chatting happily together, as if they had both been members of C’s club, White’s, for ages, they went out and disappeared down the stairs to the bar below.

  Dickie looked at Smith. ‘A penny for them, old bean?’

  ‘I was just thinking.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hard for me to put it into words, Dickie. Come on, let’s sting old C for a free drink. It’s not that often that our dear leader pushes the boat out.’

  They followed the two older men down to the bar. Outside the police company was marching away, rifles slung, job done, leaving the street to the medics and their assistants. ‘Bloodhounds!’ the mob shrieked, shaking their fists at the police and spitting on them. ‘Pfui, Jew lovers… betrayers of the Fatherland… Heil Hitler!’

  Opposite, a fat man, who wore the medal of the Pour la Mérite around his neck and had been wounded in the firing, was asking to be admitted to a big house so that he could escape arrest. ‘But this is the house of Jews,’ the owner was protesting. ‘No matter,’ the wounded man was gasping frantically, ‘I’m the war hero, Captain Goering of the Richthofen Squadron. You must have heard of me? I can’t stand the shame of being arrested by the police. Please let me in… please.’

  ‘You asked me a minute ago, Dickie – a penny for my thoughts,’ Smith said as he turned into the bar, ‘Well, I’ll tell you. Frankly, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Mr Hitler – by a long chalk. Look at all that hate and feeling out there. It won’t just go away – like that. No, Dickie,’ Smith added, his handsome young face set and stern. ‘Mr Hitler’ll be back sooner or later, like a bad penny, I’ll be bound.’

  Smith’s words didn’t seem to worry Dickie Bird. He said happily enough, ‘Then, old bean, we’ll have to see him off again, won’t we. Now let’s see about getting that free drink out of old C…’

  Envoi

  ‘Splice the Mainbrace!’

  The Prime Minister wallowed in his bath. His false teeth gaped obscenely from a glass by his side. In one soap-covered hand he held a glass of whisky and soda. In the other, there was a fat, expensive double Corona cigar. He looked like a pink, hairless, glistening Buddha.

  Happily, he listened to the wireless blaring away in his bedroom next door. The BBC announcer was giving the details of the latest Allied victories in Germany. They were coming in fast and furiously. On every front the Allies were overwhelmingly, totally victorious. Montgomery’s armies had reached the German Baltic coast. Patton had swept right through Germany and was now marching towards Prague in Czechoslovakia. The Russians had completely surrounded Berlin and it was confidently expected that the German capital would fall within days, perhaps even hours.

  ‘John, my dear boy,’ the Prime Minister lisped to his secretary, young John Colville, sitting at the side of the big bath, ‘the Hun is absolutely, totally whipped – at last!’

  John Colville, clad in the uniform of a pilot in the RAF, looked down at the Prime Minister and told himself that Winston Churchill had never looked happier. After six years as the ‘King’s First Minister’, as he always called himself, the PM had brought the nation to victory.

  Suddenly, the wireless went dead for a moment. When the announcer came on the air again and spoke, his typical, well-modulated BBC tones could not quite conceal the excitement in his voice. ‘We have just heard from Berlin, the following message read out by the German naval commander Admiral Doenitz.’ He cleared his throat. ‘German men and woman, soldiers of the German Wehrmacht! Our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, has fallen. The German people bow in deepest mourning and veneration. He recognised beforehand the terrible danger of Bolshevism and devoted his life to fighting it. At the end of this, his battle, and of his unswerving path in life, he stands, in death, as a hero in the capital of the Reich… That is the end of the German message.’

  Churchill looked up at Colville, his eyes glowing with joy and pride. ‘We’ve done it, John! The beast is dead at last. Forget that guff about his heroic death etc. That’s been carefully invented with an eye to the future Hitler myth and legend. In all probability, he blew his own brains out.’ He took a deep drink of his whisky and soda.

  ‘John,’ Churchill continued, after draining the last drop of his drink, ‘you know nothing about this. Long ago, Hitler tried to have me killed. Obviously he didn’t succeed. But now I’ve seen him off. Now I want you to signal the Admiralty and have them contact Common Smith VC.’

  Colville looked up from his pad in bewilderment. ‘Common Smith VC?’

  ‘Long before your time, my boy. Just write what I say.’ He waved his cigar in the air as if it were a pen.

  ‘Yes, PM.’

  ‘To Common Smith VC, then. Tuesday May 1st, 1945… It has taken 22 years since that first encounter on the Rhine. At last he has met his just retribution. Hitler is dead!’ the PM looked up at Colville, ‘Sign it WSC. Oh yes, and add this postscript – splice the mainbrace.’

  Colville looked up from his pad. ‘Highly irregular, sir,’ he said. ‘Their Lordships won’t like that.’

  ‘Damn their Lordships,’ Churchill growled. He poked the big cigar in the direction of his own hairless white chest, ‘I’m in charge of the Royal Navy, Splice the mainbrace it is…’

  Four hours later, Captain de Vere Smith, VCDO, DSC sat back in his leather armchair in the flotilla captain’s cabin and read the signal from their Lordships once again. Outside, the convoy his flotilla was escorting from Boston to Greenock wallowed in the dark green sea, which sparkled in the May sunshine. But at that moment the hard-faced flotilla captain was thinking of the muddy brown water of the Rhine of that fateful year so long ago.

  They were all dead now, save Dickie Bird, who was somewhere in the Med. Poor Chiefie Ferguson had gone down with the Glorious in 1940. Ginger Kerrigan had not been one of the three survivors of the Hood when the Bismarck had sunk her a year later. Billy Bennett, still the barrel of lard he had been in the Twenties, had lasted till 1942 when the Japs had sunk the Prince of Wales, that brand-new battleship of which he had been so proud. One by one the old crew of the Swordfi
sh had been killed by that monster whom he had seen lying hurt in that Munich street…

  Tears welled up in his eyes at the thought and he hoped they would somehow know, wherever they were, in heaven or hell, that they had been finally avenged. He wiped the tears from his eyes. It wouldn’t do for a flotilla chief to be seen weeping, he told himself. He rang the bell on his desk. The chief steward came in immediately and stood to attention. ‘Chiefie,’ Smith barked in a voice thickened by years of pink gins and shouting orders in force twelve gales, ‘tell the bosun to splice the mainbrace.’

  ‘Splice the mainbrace, sir!’ the steward said in astonishment. ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes now,’ Smith answered, his face breaking into a wintry smile. ‘Don’t you know? We’ve got something to celebrate. HITLER IS DEAD!’

  Author’s Note

  When German Kati von Duckwitz died last year aged 90, her funeral in Bayreuth was attended by over 300 neo-Nazis. It is doubtful if many of the shaven-haired louts, who gave the forbidden Hitler salute at her graveside, watched by tense, expectant police in their leather riot gear, really knew who she was. All they probably knew is that in the early days of the Nazi Party she had tried to help Hitler to power, and that after she had returned from English imprisonment, Hitler had personally awarded her the ‘Order of the Blood’, which was awarded to those who had been imprisoned or shed their blood before the Party had come to power in 1933.

  But in the fragments and papers that Captain de Vere Smith, VC, had left behind on his death three years previously, Kati von Duckwitz is mentioned very frequently. ‘Scheming, pretty little minx’, is one of his descriptions of Fraulein von Duckwitz. ‘A would-be murderess who didn’t hesitate to use her undoubted sexual charms to achieve her purpose’, is another. All pretty strong stuff for ‘Common Smith VC’, as he was universally known in England in the Twenties. For Smith was a typical upper-class Englishman of his time. He was not given easily to displaying his emotions or feelings about other people, especially when those other people were women, or ‘the fair sex’, as he was wont to call them.