Riptide

§ 89

‘Imagine,’ Stahl began, ‘a German settlement as a series of concentric circles, like the rings on a target-but each ring is a layer in a racial hierarchy. At the centre, the pure Nordic stock-not just Germans, but Dutch and Danes and Norwegians. English too-the maddest of plans has planned for the eventual surrender of the English. As the circles fan out, ripples around a stone in water, the lesser races. Perhaps a circle of Estonians or Byelorussians, until you get to the perimeter, and beyond the perimeter are the races condemned to barbarism. The Slavs.’

‘And the Jews?’ Cal asked.

‘No. Not the Jews.’

‘Then where are they?’

‘Nowhere. The Jews are no more. Imagine a series of such settlements strung out from the Bug River to the Urals, from the Baltic to the Caspian, linked by new roads, roads made straight for soldiers and Panzers, or made high along every ridge to keep them clear of snow. And what you have is a map of the moon or Mars in some scientific romance. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist. It is occupied by the higher races as though in some atmosphere unbreathable by man; the colony is a bubble-the bubble civilisation. Enough barbarians have been left this side of the Urals to labour for us all-they sow and reap the Ukrainian wheat fields, they drill and pump the Caucasian oil – they are taught to sign their names but expressly forbidden literacy, and if they prove too fecund they are sterilised. But, being inferior they are happy in their inferiority. Does any of this sound familiar? Because this is what those madmen are going to do.’

‘It’s part Brave New World-“gee, I’m so glad I’m not an alpha”-but it’s Roman in its model,’ said Cal. ‘It reminds me of all those Roman forts scattered across Britain, linked by military roads. But the Romans at least absorbed the local populace eventually-they made Romans of some of them.’

‘The Germans won’t. Russia will know a new slavery beyond the bounds of the serfdom they shook off less than a hundred years ago. Beyond the fort, a new dark age. Within a new civilisation.’

‘They make a wilderness and call it peace. That’s what Tacitus wrote of the Romans’ first century in Britain.’

‘Exactly,’ said Stahl. ‘The Pax Germanica-a bubble of civilisation in a vast wilderness of their own making.’

‘And the Jews. They’re going to exterminate the Jews?’

‘Eventually. They have no scheme I know of as yet other than sticking them up against a wall and shooting them. Thousands of Polish Jews have died that way. But Heydrich will think of something. The Jewish Question long ago became the Jewish Problem. A problem requires a solution. Heydrich’s good at that sort of thing. And east of the current front line, the entire territory is already regarded as an SS fiefdom. The only law will be death’s-head’s law. Himmler sees himself as an Emperor for the East-but Heydrich is the smarter man. If they succeed, it will be Heydrich who rules this wilderness.’