Of course Morgan had to be right, there was no possible way Adolf Hitler could really be in Brentford in the nineteen nineties, looking just like he did in the nineteen forties. Especially with him being dead and everything.
No possible way.
It’s a big statement though, “no possible way”, isn’t it?
There’s always some possible way. It might be an improbable way, or a way considered impossible, or implausible, or something else beginning with im.
For instance, one possible way springs immediately to mind and “immediately” begins with im. If we return once more to the contents of box 23. And had we been given access to the one on the chief constable’s high shelf in Brentford police station in May, nineteen fifty-five, we would have been able to read a statement placed there by a certain constable Adonis Doveston, which read thus:
I was proceeding in an easterly direction along Mafeking Avenue at eleven p.m. (2300 hours) on the 12th inst at a regulation 4.5 mph when I was caused to accelerate my pace due to cries of distress emanating from an alleyway to the side of number sixteen. I gained entry to said alleyway and from thence to the rear garden of number sixteen. And there I came upon Miss J. Turton in a state of undress. This state consisting of a brassiere with a broken left shoulder strap, a pair of camiknickers and one silk stocking. She was carrying on something awful and when I questioned her as to why this might be, she answered, “Why lor’ bless you, constable, but wasn’t I just whipped up out of me bloomin’ garden by a bloomin’ spaceship and ravished by the crew and when they’d had their evil way with me, then didn’t they just dump me back here without a by your leave or kiss my elbow.”
I later ascertained that this statement was not entirely accurate, in that Miss Turton had in fact had her elbow kissed, also her eyeballs licked and the lobes of her ears gently nibbled. I accompanied the lady into her back parlour, took off my jacket to put about her shoulders and was comforting her, prior to putting the kettle on, when her father returned, somewhat the worse for drink.
Would it be possible for me to have the Saturday after next off, as I am to be married?
A straightforward enough statement by any reckoning, a simple case of alien abduction, no doubt.
Or was it?
Behind this statement was stapled another statement and on this was scrawled a few lines, these being Miss Turton’s description of the alien crew:
Tall and blond, wearing grey uniforms with a double lightning-flash insignia and black jack-boots.
A description that would fit the dreaded storm troopers of Hitler’s Waffen SS. Those known as The Last Battalion.
Significant?
Not significant?
Well, it’s bloody significant when viewed in the light of a certain scenario I am about to put forward, concerning how Adolf Hitler could turn up in Brentford in the nineteen nineties looking exactly the same as he did in World War Two.
You’ll kick yourself afterwards for not seeing how obvious it is.
It is a fact well known to those who know it well, that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis had all sorts of secret experimental research laboratories, working on all manner of advanced weaponry. And had they been able to hold out for a few more months they would have completed certain dreadful devices to wreak utter havoc upon the Allies.
One of these was the sound-cannon. A sonic energy gun constructed to project a low frequency vibrational wave that could literally shake apart anything within its path. Another was the Flügelrad (literally flying saucer), a discoid aircraft designed by Viktor Schauberger, powered by electromagnetic energy and capable of speeds in excess of 2000 km/hr.[13]
Let us take a trip back to one of those secret establishments, New Schwabenland in Antarctica, “somewhere due south of Africa”. The year is 1945 and a fleet of U-boats has just arrived, having come by way of Argentina. On board are crack troops known as The Last Battalion, a number of the highest ranking Nazi party members and a certain Mr A. Hitler esquire.
They enter a vast hangar affair where several Flügelrads and other state-of-the-then-art craft are in various stages of completion.
It is a little after tea-time.
Adolf Hitler enters first, he is limping slightly, due to chilblains acquired on the long voyage, allied to his verrucas and athlete’s foot. He speaks.
HITLER: Someone get us a bleeding armchair, me Admirals[14] are killing me.
GOERING: And some sarnies, my belly’s emptier than a Führer’s promise. (Laughter from the officer ranks.)
HITLER: (Adjusting his hearing aid.) What was that?
GOERING: I said, praise the fatherland, my Führer. (Further laughter.)
HITLER: You fat bastard.
Now before we go any further with this particular drama, it might be well worth identifying the principal players, explaining a little bit about them and a few things that are not generally known about the German language.
Firstly Hitler. Well, we all know about him, don’t we? Sold his soul to the devil at an early age, the rest is history.
Hermann Goering. One of Hitler’s original henchmen, drinking buddy from their old bierkeller bird-pulling days. In charge of something or other pretty big, it might have been the airforce. What is known is that although he was a fat bastard, a really fat bastard, he was also a fop who used to change his clothes as many as five times a day. He probably sweated a lot and this was before the invention of underarm deodorants.
Heinrich Himmler. He was the little sod with the pince-nez specs who masterminded the extermination camps. Described as looking “like a school teacher”. Sexual pervert and sadist. He’d have fitted in quite nicely at any of our public schools really.
Joseph Goebbels. Well, we all know him, he was the “poison dwarf”, in charge of propaganda, looked like Himmler only shorter.
Albert Speer. He was the architect who was designing the new Germany. Didn’t seem to have much in the way of imagination, as the new Germany was going to look just like Old Rome. Curiously enough, Prince Charles’ designs for a “new London” mirror almost exactly Speer’s vision of the new Berlin. I wonder if perhaps they are related.[15]
Regarding the German language, what most people don’t realize is that it, like other languages, has regional accents. If we were to equate the German language with the English language and consider the way it was spoken by the players listed above, we would find: that Hitler spoke the German equivalent of broad Cockney; Goering, Yorkshire; Himmler, Eton and Albert Speer, Dublin!
Well, they speak English in Dublin (and for the most part better than we do).
So, if there’s anyone left who hasn’t been offended and is still prepared to read on, we rejoin the action back in the big hangar. Armchairs have been brought and sandwiches and Viktor Schauberger (who nobody knows anything about, but who a great deal of costly personal research on my part has revealed spoke very much like a Welshman) is getting down to business.
SCHAUBERGER: Indeed to goodness, yacky-dah and leaks, isn’t it?
HITLER: What’s this Zurich[16] on about?
HIMMLER: If I might interpret for you, my Führer, he is trying to explain the major breakthrough that he and his colleagues have precipitated, using the advanced technology supplied by our off-world allies.
HITLER: Our bleeding what?
HIMMLER: The chaps from outer space, my Führer.
HITLER: Foreigners? I hate bleeding foreigners.
GOERING: That’s reet good, coming from an Austrian. (Laughter.)
SCHAUBERGER: “Reet good’s” Geordie, isn’t it? Like “away the lads”.
GOERING: Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. How’s that?
SCHAUBERGER: More like it.
HITLER: Can we get this over with? I want to get me Aryans[17] off and rub some lard on me Yiddishers.[18]
HIMMLER: I will explain everything, my Führer. As you may or may not know, Mr Schauberger here has been working on the Flügelrad project.
HITLER: Yeah. Yeah. Disc-shaped aircraft, they’ve got as much chance of getting in the air as the allies have of winning the bloody war. (No laughter.)
HIMMLER: Well, my Führer, far be it from me to disagree with a man who is virtually a living god, but the craft have already been test flown, and with the aid of the technology given to us from certain “allies” of our own, the craft not only flies faster than sound, but also faster than light, which is to say, faster than time.
HITLER: Do what?
HIMMLER: The fatherland has conquered time travel, my Führer.
HITLER: Well, bugger me backwards.
HIMMLER: Later, my Führer, but please allow Mr Speer to explain the details.
SPEER: My Führer, as you might have noticed, we have not got underway quite as rapidly as we might have liked regarding the building of the new Germany. It does have to be said that the knocking down of the old one is well ahead of schedule, thanks to the Allies (some laughter, a soldier is taken away and shot). But the actual rebuilding is reckoned to take, oh, about mmmm years.
HITLER: Speak up, how many years?
SPEER: mmmmm years.
HITLER: How many?
SPEER: About seventy-five years, my Führer. Sir.
HITLER: How bloody many?
SPEER: Say sixty. Sixty years, no problem. As long as –
HITLER: As long as what?
SPEER: As long as we win the war.
HITLER: Of course we’ll win the war.
HIMMLER: Of course we will, my Führer. In fact we definitely will, have no fear of that. You see we can’t lose now. Might I explain?
HITLER: Grunt.
HIMMLER: Thank you, my Führer. The plan is this. Two Flügelrads have been completed. One designed to travel back in time and the other forward. The one going back will take details of how we, ahem, lost all our previous military campaigns and deliver them to the generals in question before they actually fight the battles, so they’ll win, see?
HITLER: (stroking chin) Nice one. I like that.
HIMMLER: The other will carry you forward one hundred years, so you can arrive at a predestined time and place to step from the craft into the glorious rebuilt Reich of the future.
GOEBBELS: You will appear according to predictions prophesied, as the new messiah, my Führer, stepping from the craft to rule the entire world.
HITLER: All right!
HIMMLER: We’ll have an ambulance waiting.
HITLER: What?
HIMMLER: Medical science will have advanced one hundred years, my Führer. All your little aches and pains, we’ll have them immediately sorted out for you.
HITLER: Even my piles?
HIMMLER: Even those.
HITLER: And my flatulence?
HIMMLER: Especially your flatulence.
HITLER: Well, let’s not sit about here like a bunch of Russians[19]. Let’s get in them old Flügelrads, I’ve a future world needs ruling.
HIMMLER: We’re right with you, my Führer.
HITLER: No you bloody well aren’t. You lot go back and sort out all the cock-ups.
HIMMLER/GOEBBELS/SPEER/GOERING: Aaawwww!
HITLER: That’s show biz!
And so it came to pass. Or rather, it almost came to pass. If history is notable for at least one thing, then that one thing would be that the Germans did not win the Second World War. They came second, but they didn’t win it. It must be supposed that the reason for this was that something went wrong with the Flügelrad that travelled back into the past. Himmler, Goering and Co. came to well deserved sticky ends and Speer never got a chance to oversee the building of the thousand-year reich. Tough shit!
But it all does fall into place rather neatly, if you think about it. There is no real proof that they ever found Hitler’s body and for years rumours abounded that he escaped.
Where to?
Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Into the future, that’s where. Off one hundred years into the future, to step from his craft as the new messiah into a reich-dominated world.
Except there isn’t going to be one.
So what if, just if, his craft broke down on the way into the future? What if it crash landed in the nineteen nineties? And not in Germany? After all, the world spins around and if his coordinates were set for Germany and he landed too early, he could have ended up in England by mistake. In Brentford, in fact.
Well he could! It’s possible.
So the close (very close) encounter Miss Turton had in nineteen fifty-five could have been with a Nazi Flügelrad pilot and an engineer, or someone, stopping off on the way to the future for a bit of “how’s-your-Führer” and Russell might really have seen Mr Hitler looking just like he did back in the nineteen forties.
I told you it was possible.
And I did tell you you’d kick yourself afterwards for not seeing how obvious it was.
Well, I did.