Storm Front

Chapter Thirty-Five

Berlin, Germany

20 August 1985

“We need to make budget cuts,” Hans said, flatly. “Now.”

“And there I was under the impression that making concessions would save us from having to make budget cuts,” Holliston sneered. “Haven’t we already tolerated far too much?”

Hans eyed him dubiously. The Reichsführer-SS sounded oddly unfocused, as if he was concentrating on some greater thought. Watching the spread of political activity across the Reich, from student debate clubs to industrial unions, hadn’t been easy for any of them, but the SS had been surprisingly muted about the whole affair. Hans had wondered if Holliston’s position was under threat, yet his sources within the RSHA hadn’t heard the slightest hint of dissent within the SS. He couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t a good sign.

“The problem is that the bills are finally coming due,” he said, pushing the thought aside for later consideration. The civilians and the military were, for the moment, united. It would take the SS weeks, perhaps months, to break the alliance and reassert their power. “The Americans are not helping. Their newspapers have been covering the protest movements in the Reich with great interest.”

“It isn’t as if they haven’t had riots of their own,” Voss pointed out. “What does their displeasure mean for us?”

“It means we can no longer buy anything on credit, if we can find anyone in America willing to sell to us,” Engelhard Rubarth said. The Foreign Minister looked tired. He’d been talking to his American and British counterparts non-stop over the last week. “Their corporations have to listen to their customers – and the American population. We’ve been told that several corporations will not be selling anything to us, even if we do pay up front.”

“They have agreements,” Holliston said. Oddly, it sounded more as though he was protesting because he thought he was supposed to protest. “Americans worship money. They signed contracts!”

“They may be willing to pay the penalties, if – of course – we can get an American court to rule in our favour,” Rubarth said. “Politically, Herr Reichsführer, their business with us is only a small fraction of their total sales. They cannot afford a boycott from their other customers.”

Hans tapped the table. “The Americans are not the only problem,” he said. “Thanks to the French, thanks to the protest movements, thanks to the strikes, we’re looking at a major cash shortage over the next month. There is no way the cracks can be papered over any longer.”

“Seize cash from the major corporations,” Holliston suggested. “They have reserves, do they not?”

“That would destroy our economy,” Hans said. It didn’t help that many corporations kept their money in Swiss banks, rather than the Reich. “Their reserves are simply not great enough to cover the holes in our budget. We have to stop the cash outflow.”

“The military budget cannot be cut while we have a war on,” Voss insisted. “We need new equipment and weapons for South Africa.”

“And we shouldn’t stop paying our fighting men now,” Holliston added, darkly. “Who knows which way they’ll jump?”

Hans silently cursed his predecessors under his breath. The Reich’s economy had been a hodgepodge of competing factions ever since Adolf Hitler had risen to power, so weak that a single military defeat would probably have started a cascade reaction of failures that brought the entire system down. Even after the war had been won, even after the Reich had settled down to stripping Europe bare of everything from manpower to raw materials, the system was a mess. Cutting the budget in one place would have nasty effects in another.

And if we cancel the new aircraft carrier, he thought, we’ll put thousands of trained workers out of work.

It wasn’t the only problem, of course. He had never anticipated – none of them had ever anticipated – dissent within the military, the police and perhaps even the SS itself. The rot had spread far – endless anticorruption campaigns had produced no solid results – but he’d always believed that corruption was manageable. He’d never suspected the police would be reluctant to do their jobs, just because their wives and children were on the streets. In hindsight, it had been a major oversight. And cutting the wages of the men who kept the Reich in order would be cutting their throats.

“I don’t propose to cut the military budget,” he said, “although we are going to have to make some adjustments over the next two years. I have planners working on the best way to make those adjustments without causing an economic crisis. However, right now, we need to cut support payments.”

“There will be trouble,” Voss predicted.

“Not if we do it carefully,” Holliston said. “Cut the payments for families living within Germany Prime, but offer to keep paying for families who are willing to move to Germany East within five years.”

Hans blinked in surprise. Had Holliston ever supported him? The SS liked the idea of paying mothers to have as many children as possible, even though it was a growing drain on the economy. No matter how he looked at it, cutting the payments was going to be painful. God alone knew how many families would no longer be able to afford their children if their state payments were cancelled. Soldiers, in particular, would be hit hard. They were encouraged to get their wives pregnant every time they went home on leave.

It makes sense, he told himself. Holliston and the SS had been trying to urge more Germans to move to Germany East, despite its bad reputation. They want to use cuts in the payments to encourage immigration.

“We could simply stop paying for new mothers,” Rubarth said, nervously. Economic policy was outside his bailiwick. “The mothers who have been drawing support payments for years need them.”

“It is something we’ll have to do, but it won’t help us with the current problem,” Hans said, producing a paper from his briefcase. “Assuming we manage to cut support payments by fifty percent over the next two months, we should be able to re-stabilise the economy – if, of course, the Americans don’t make any major new deployments. We are already spending far too much money producing new missiles to overwhelm the American ABM system.”

“Which we need,” Voss said. “If the Americans successfully shield themselves against nuclear missiles, they can simply dictate terms to us at will.”

That was true, Hans knew. If the Reich had such an advantage, the Reich Council would not hesitate to use it to force America to disarm and submit to German rule. The Yankees were cowards, certainly when compared to the Reich, but even cowards could pluck up the nerve to fight, if they thought they had an overwhelming advantage. Being able to turn the Reich into a pile of radioactive ashes, without fear of major retaliation, would be enough to convince even a coward to strike. It would be unfortunate for Britain, too close to the Reich to be shielded properly, but he doubted the American planners would care. The Reich wouldn’t give a damn if Vichy France were to be turned into rubble, if it gave the Reich dominance over the entire world.

“So we make the cuts,” he said, out loud. “We do our best to present them to the people as necessary cuts, cuts we have to make.”

“And offer incentives for people to move east,” Holliston added. “There’s plenty of unclaimed land for farmers in Germany East.”

But most of the people who’ll move are not farmers, Hans thought. They don’t want to spend the rest of their lives staring at the back end of a mule.

He pushed the thought aside. For once, he had the cooperation of the SS. That wouldn’t last, but he needed to take advantage of it. No matter how the cuts were spun, it would be impossible to avoid pain. The sooner it was over, the better.

“We can put the question to the Reichstag,” Holliston added. “Let the protesters try to rationalise their opposition after the Reichstag votes in favour.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” Voss commented. “We haven’t held free elections yet.”

Hans shrugged. A freely-elected Reichstag, dependent on the whim of the population, wouldn’t agree to pass any spending cuts, let alone a cut as deep as cutting support payments to German mothers. Holliston had a point, he had to admit; a democratic nation simply couldn’t make the hard choices that would secure its future, once and for all. Who knew what would have happened if the Americans had joined the British in war against the Reich, back in 1945? The Reich’s control over Europe had been so tenuous, in places, that it might have come apart at the seams, giving the world to the Americans.

No, he thought. This isn’t a decision we can trust to the people.

He smiled, rather thinly. “Shall we vote?”

It was a weakness of civilians, Karl Holliston had often felt, was that they thought in terms of money and power, rather than the racial imperatives that had driven the Reich from the very first day Adolf Hitler had become the ruler of Germany. A civilian would compromise on issues that an SS officer would know could never be compromised. The world was red in tooth and claw; those who failed to be strong, those who failed to dominate, would be dominated themselves. There was no way the Reich could tolerate weakness in its ranks.

And weakness there was, he knew. He’d done nothing to purge the student activists, the female protesters, the unionists… giving them time to stand up and be countered. It didn’t seem to have occurred to any of them that going public, no matter what the laws said was legal now, turned them into marked men. Karl’s agents had been compiling a long list of men and women, ranging from old unionists to students barely old enough to marry, who would be ruthlessly purged once the old order reasserted itself. And it would, he knew. The civilians might delude themselves that the population would accept cuts in their support payments, but Karl knew better. He had no illusions about the leaders of the protest groups, male or female. They wanted power…

…And, like himself, they would do whatever it took to grab hold and keep it for themselves.

He’d played his cards carefully, as much as it galled him not to oppose the civilians in their madcap schemes. Let them think he would support their cuts, at least in Germany Prime; it was, in many ways, a defensible position. God knew Germany East needed a major population boom and encouraging young families to immigrate was a means to that end. But it would also lure the civilians into a false sense of security. They would assume he had no intention of stepping outside the normal rules of political dispute, within the Reich.

But the Reich itself is at risk, he thought, as the vote was taken. Only two junior ministers voted against the cuts, although the military officers looked dubious. They were probably relieved they’d been spared painful budget cuts of their own. And I must do whatever it takes to save it.

Word would spread, long before the official announcement. He’d make sure of it. His agents would even make the cuts seem worse than they actually were, although in truth they were probably painful enough already to cause a major protest in the streets. And then, the SS would be waiting. Blood would flow on the streets of Germany and the Reich would be saved.

He glanced at Adolf Bormann, sitting silently at the head of the table. Who knew what he was thinking? Karl would never have accepted such a title without the power that went with it, even though the Reich was determined to prevent another Hitler, another lone man wielding supreme power over Germany. But the civilians and the military would no longer be able to stand in his way, after the protest was brutally crushed. He would be Fuhrer, in fact as well as name, and he would lead Germany back to greatness…

…And the civilians, who had drained the Reich of the vitality it needed to survive, would be ruthlessly wiped from existence.

“So tell me,” Caius said, as they completed their shift and left the station. “How does it feel to have important relatives?”

Herman clenched his fists in rage – and helplessness. It was bad enough that everyone at the station knew his wife was one of the protesters – he wasn’t the only policeman whose wife had gone out onto the streets – but to have his daughter leading a student protest movement was unique. He didn’t know what to do about it. None of his sons had ever caused this much trouble. He’d remonstrated with her, pointing out the dangers of being arrested (again) or simply being expelled, then he’d beaten her and then he’d finally threatened to withdraw her from the university for good. But Adelinde had told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever wanted to see her naked again, he had to forget about removing Gudrun from the university. Herman didn’t know what to do about her either.

“Just you wait,” he said. Caius’s sons were in the military, if he recalled correctly; his daughters were still at school, too young to either marry or try to get into the university. “Your wife might be out on the streets too.”

“My wife has too much sense,” Caius said. He pulled a packet of cheap cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Herman, who took it with practiced ease. “And my daughters are too young to want to do anything more than keep their heads down and avoid the teachers.”

He sighed as he struck a match and lit the cigarettes. “But they’re already talking about quitting the BDM…”

Herman snorted, privately relieved that Gudrun had left the BDM last year. Kurt and Johan had both loved the Hitler Youth, but Siegfried hadn’t found it quite so enjoyable. He had a feeling that his youngest son, like many other teenagers, would start demanding to be allowed to quit soon enough – and if the BDM had been hard on a policeman’s daughter, he was sure it would have been worse for many other girls. How many teenagers would demand to be allowed to spend the time elsewhere, instead of being taught how to serve the Reich?

He breathed in the smoke as they walked past the front desk, through the armoured door and out onto the streets. Berlin felt different now, as if it were hanging on the knife edge between chaos and order, as if the population was no longer inclined to obey orders without asking questions and demanding answers first. It made him feel uneasy; he’d grown up in a world where saying the wrong thing could lead to jail or worse. Even spending most of his life in the military and police hadn’t cured him of the corrosive fear that he could say the wrong thing, in front of the wrong pair of ears, and wind up dead. And, even though children learned to be careful of what they said at school, his daughter was still standing up for the right to free speech.

She’s brave, he thought. And yet she’s naive.

It was a bitter thought. Gudrun had endured so much more than the lash of his belt, yet she had no conception of just how bad things could become. Herman knew; he’d been a paratrooper before leaving the military and joining the police. He knew the savage horrors of war – and the worse horrors unleashed by the SS, intent on keeping the government in power at all costs. If she was arrested a second time, after opening her mouth in front of hundreds of witnesses, there would be no mercy. She’d be lucky if the rest of her family wasn’t scooped up off the streets and marched into the concentration camps.

“I understand how they feel,” Caius said. “I had to beat the shit out of one of the matrons, after she hurt my daughter. None of them signed up for the BDM.”

And what happens, Herman asked himself again, to girls who don’t have powerful protectors?

It was easy to push Gastarbeiters around. He certainly didn’t feel any guilt about it. They were Untermenschen. No one in power would care if a handful got their skulls cracked, if they didn’t obey orders or merely looked at the policemen the wrong way. But it was different when the people on the streets were wives and children, ordinary Germans who had relatives in the police and the army. Herman would have cheered if an agitator was taken off the streets, until he’d discovered that his own daughter was one of them. He remembered feeling angry when Gudrun had come home sporting bruises, after playing games with the BDM; it would be worse, far worse, if she was beaten bloody by the police. And he was the police.

“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “Just be glad they’re not old enough to cause trouble yet.”

“Hah,” Caius said. He sounded bitter. “One of them is already suggesting a strike at school.”

Herman laughed, then sobered. It would take a brave child to stand up to the teachers at school – the teachers had little compunction about inflicting corporal punishment on their charges, if they misbehaved – but his son was brave. Poor Siegfried had two older brothers – and now one sister – to emulate. And Siegfried already knew the teachers weren’t particularly fair. Some of them lashed students because they enjoyed it, not because their victims deserved punishment.

He shuddered. His perfect family was gone. The world was changing. He no longer felt comfortable in the city he’d patrolled for the last fifteen years…

…And, in all honesty, he had no idea what was going to happen next.