The Gods of Atlantis

PART 2
12

Berlin, the Zoo flak tower, 0930 hours, 1 May 1945

Oberstleutnant Ernst Hoffman put down his pencil and clapped his hands over his ears, waiting for the terrible vibration to pass. Each time the flak guns on the roof fired a salvo they sent a titanic groan through the structure, and then an aftershock that seemed to set on edge every iron bar in the thousands of tons of ferroconcrete that made up the walls. It had been just about bearable while the guns were doing the job for which they had been designed, firing up at the waves of enemy bombers that had pounded Berlin for months, but now that the barrels were depressed to aim into the city at the advancing Russians they were straining the tolerance level of the gun platforms. The engineers who had built the tower could never have imagined that the defence of Berlin would come to this. The tower itself might survive the onslaught, a gargantuan five-storey structure like a medieval keep, but for the thousands of desperate people cowering inside, survival could only mean a matter of hours, a day or two at most. Here in this chamber on the second floor, Hoffman was insulated from the worst of the vibration, but the noise in the open stairways was appalling, shattering eardrums and shaking the fillings from teeth. To those trapped below it must have seemed like the final act of the apocalypse, a ghastly orchestral denouement to the Third Reich.

They called it the Zoo tower because it stood in the grounds of the Berlin Zoo, now a scorched battleground on the edge of the Tiergarten, the huge park in the centre of Berlin. On the other side of the Tiergarten lay the Reich Chancellery, with the Fuhrerbunker beneath it, and north of that the Reichstag and Gestapo headquarters. Together they formed the last bastions of the Third Reich. The Zoo tower even had its own water reservoir, dug deep into the bedrock, and secret tunnels leading out under the Tiergarten. The garrison commander had told him that the tower could last for weeks, even months. But his calculation had been based on the normal garrison of 350: the Luftwaffe flak gunners and the medical staff in the eighty-bed hospital on the floor above Hoffman. The hospital now held more than a thousand wounded and sick, and the lower floor and stairwells were crammed with more than thirty thousand civilians. Hoffman shook his head. Thirty thousand men, women and children.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the polished metal of the crate beside him. His face looked long, angular, distorted by a dent in the metal, almost as if he had taken on the features of the Stuka dive-bomber that had been his home for almost five years, from his first missions over England in 1940 to the flaming wreck in Poland six months before, from Blitzkrieg to Gotterdammerung. He had grown from youth to man in that machine, from innocent to killer. A man becomes one with his weapon. He shifted slightly, wondering if that reflection could really be him. His skin was pale beneath his swept-back hair, ghostly in this light. Ever since being grounded and arriving in Berlin five months ago, he had felt as if the blood had been sucked from him. He flexed his fingers, feeling their strength. At least he had not gone to pieces like so many of his comrades in his Stuka squadron. And there was still one final task to carry out.

He watched the shadows cast by the candle tremble on the walls. The room was large, sepulchral, the walls of stark concrete, in places flaked with paint that had been shaken loose by the vibrations. Directly in front of him a closed door opened on to a spiral staircase that led up to the gun platform on the roof and down to the seething mass of humanity below. When the order had reached him two days ago from Gestapo headquarters to report to the tower, they had offered him Goebbels’ rooms next door, where the propaganda minister had briefly held court as Reich Commissar for the Defence of Berlin before running to hide in the Fuhrerbunker. Hoffman had refused, on the grounds that Goebbels might return, but in truth he could not bear to have his command post where that monster had been. And he had all he needed here: a couple of crates and a few planks to make a desk, a box of candles, ledger books to write in, a folding army cot against the wall, a bucket in the far corner with a makeshift wooden cover over it.

The breakdown in sanitation had been frightful. Diehard Nazis had used the lavatories as places to commit suicide, barricading themselves inside and blowing their brains out amidst the squalor, their bloated corpses still there. And the food supply had dwindled to virtually nothing. Hoffman’s orderly had brought him his last meal the night before: a bowl of Wassersuppe made from potato peelings and beetroot, along with half a bottle of schnapps. He looked at the bottle on his desk, still untouched. He needed a clear head for what was to come. And alcohol had been part of the scourge of Nazism. They were all drunk, the architects of this monstrosity, the gods of National Socialism, cowering in the Fuhrerbunker. Alcohol had fuelled the self-pity, the rage, the fantasies of victory that had brought Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich to this frenzied climax of self-destruction and horror.

He heard the dull thud of a pistol shot through the wall, then another. He closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself. He knew what was happening. Half an hour before, on his way down the stairs from the gun platform, he had stood back as two Feldgendarmen had appeared, the hated military police. They were dragging a man between them, his jacket painted crudely with the letter H for Hungary. The man was one of the foreign labourers who had been used to clear refuse from the tower, before that job became futile. The Feldgendarm colonel called them the wily Greeks, the warriors of the Trojan Horse, a concealed enemy who would reveal themselves as the Russians moved in. Some of the labourers had removed the clothing with the painted letters and disappeared into the mass of people below, but others had kept their identity, imagining that the liberating Russians would treat them as heroes. Now they were paying the price for letting the Feldgendarmen see that too. The door to Goebbels’ office complex had been open, and Hoffman had seen the drawn pistols. He wanted to go in and scream at them: The Fuhrer is dead. Why more killing? It is over. But to intervene would have been suicidal. And in truth it was not over, not yet. He had to keep his nerve for what lay ahead.

Another pulverizing shudder coursed through the tower. Hoffman pressed his elbows against the planks that formed his desk, trying to stop the vibrations from shaking them off the crates at either end. He peered again at the crate to his left, where he had seen his reflection in the metal. It was covered with stamps and inspection marks, with an inventory of the contents, all the usual evidence of Reich bureaucracy. He knew that this had been an official storage room for works of art, waiting for the time when Hitler’s grand scheme for a Fuhrermuseum in his home town of Linz in Austria would be realized. The room had been used since 1941 to house treasures from the Berlin museums, in one of the few places thought to be impregnable to Allied bombing. Several months ago, Reichsleiter Bormann and his henchmen had removed most of the treasures to a salt mine in Austria. Hoffman had snorted when he heard that. During his posting in Berlin over the last few months, he had got to know these people close-up. Bormann knew that Hitler’s days were numbered and was undoubtedly securing his own loot. The three crates that remained had apparently been left on the express instructions of Reichsfuhrer Himmler, who had ordered a museum official, a Dr Unverzagt, to watch over them. Hoffman had found the man camped out here with the crates when he had arrived forty-eight hours before. Unverzagt had been one of Himmler’s stooges, a member of the Ahnenerbe – Himmler’s absurd ‘Department of Cultural Heritage’ – and Hoffman had instantly disliked him. But the man had left with no protest and had disappeared into the throng of desperate civilians below. Hoffman could not imagine any treasure valuable enough to induce someone to linger in that hellhole, and he was sure that Unverzagt would have bolted from the tower while there was still a chance before the Russians closed in.

Hoffman had inspected the markings on the crates when he first entered the room. They contained the treasures from ancient Troy given by Heinrich Schliemann to the people of Berlin more than sixty years before. Hoffman himself had seen them as a schoolboy, in the Museum of Pre- and Proto-History. Exactly why these crates should have remained here was unclear. But Hoffman knew Himmler personally, and he knew enough of Himmler’s psychology to guess at the reason. Himmler was obsessed with ancient artefacts, with mythical kings and heroes, with Ubermenschen – supposed races of supermen – and with those he identified as Aryan forebears, and above all with lost civilizations. Perhaps these artefacts had some kind of mystical power for him. Perhaps they were meant to stay in Berlin in her hour of greatest need. Hoffman shook his head derisively. The artefacts had not saved Troy, and they would not save Berlin. It was irrelevant now; within a day, the Zoo tower and those crates would be in Soviet hands. Meanwhile they served as good bench-ends to rest the planks of his desk against the incessant vibrations.

Hoffman realized that the flak guns had stopped firing, and he took his hands from his ears. Another sound was missing, the screech and rattle of the electric ammunition winch that brought shells up from the magazine. The generators must have failed yet again. The electricity had worked in fits and starts all night, and he had relied on candles for his writing. He watched the last one now, the flame still flickering and shuddering from the vibrations, barely casting enough light for him to read the open pages of his diary. Candles had served another purpose in the tower. Since the Soviet artillery had come within range, the thick metal shutters on the windows had been closed and the ventilation tubes sealed. Down below, the people crammed together in the stairwells used candles like underground miners to tell how much oxygen was left. When the candles on the floor went out, they lit them at waist level. When those went out, they held their children on their shoulders for as long as they could, hoping that someone above would take them. Already the bodies were piling up, and the hospital orderlies could no longer go outside to use the makeshift cemetery in the Tiergarten. The stench of decay was beginning to permeate the tower, along with the putrid odour from the hospital on the third floor above him, a charnel house where the wounded lay among piles of amputated limbs and shrouded corpses.

Hoffman closed his eyes, and rehearsed the plan he had devised with the flak-battery commander. At least he would not have to endure another night in this place, even if this day were to be his last. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to go. At ten o’clock he would leave to find the battery commander. The evening before, two German soldiers captured by the Russians had arrived at the tower under a white flag with a peace offer from the commander of the Soviet division confronting them. The garrison commander had vacillated, terrified of the Feldgendarmerie, who had orders to shoot anyone who showed the slightest sign of surrendering, even the commanding officer. Hoffman and the battery commander had secretly decided to act on their own volition if the garrison commander still had not delivered his surrender to the Russians by this morning. They would muster men in the battery loyal to them, kill the Feldgendarmen and go out under a white flag. It was a desperate scheme, almost guaranteeing civilian deaths, but not on the scale there would be if no surrender were forthcoming. The Feldgendarmen knew they would be shown no mercy by the Russians, so would never surrender. Hoffman and the battery commander had decided to wait overnight for the garrison commander to change his mind, but the man had been intractable, shut in his room and probably drunk, and now the Feldgendarmen were preventing anyone from getting near him.

There were two guards outside Hoffman’s door now, there to ensure that he did his duty as well. He clenched his fists and took a deep breath, almost choking on the acrid air. His duty. He was the newly appointed commander of the 9th Luftwaffe Parachute Division Lebelstar. The division was a phantasm dreamed up by the drunkards and madmen in the Chancellery, another gloriously named spearhead unit that would save the Reich, another ragtag band of old men, boys, the walking wounded and shell-shocked veterans who had somehow survived the carnage on the Eastern Front to die in this theatre of the absurd. When Hoffman shut his eyes in this place he sometimes glimpsed stark images from the plays he had seen in Paris before the war, existentialist dramas by Beckett and Brecht that had so fascinated and disturbed him, on the border between theatre and reality. It was as if he had been seeing a premonition of his own final act, here where the stage setting also seemed surreal, on another level of consciousness, yet awash with real blood and real anguish and horror.

He undid the leather flap of the holster on his waist, took out his Luger, ejected the magazine and checked that it was full, then pushed the magazine in again and cocked the pistol, shoving it back in the holster but leaving the flap open. He thought for a moment, then snapped the flap shut. The Feldgendarmen must see no hint of his intentions. He felt for the two extra magazines in the pouch on his belt, then straightened his jacket and peaked cap, passing his hand over the Luftwaffe badges on his tunic and the Knight’s Cross at his neck. He prayed that he and the battery commander had got the timing right. All radio communication with the Chancellery had ceased the day before. There had been rumours that the Fuhrer had killed himself, and then a Chancellery secretary who had fled across the Tiergarten had confirmed it. A Soviet red banner had been seen flying over the Reichstag, glimpsed in the light of a flare during the night, and the barrage of shells and rockets had diminished. There had clearly been some kind of ceasefire, but Hoffman knew it could not last. The Chancellery and Gestapo headquarters were defended by battle-hardened remnants of the SS-Nordland and SS-Charlemagne divisions, fascist sympathizers from occupied Europe who had volunteered for the force. It was the final ghastly irony, that the last-ditch defenders of Germany should be foreigners fighting in the name of an Austrian psychopath because the army he had created to defend his adopted homeland was an army of ghosts. With daylight now, it could only be a matter of time before the Soviets realized that the SS would not surrender, and unleashed hell. As soon as that happened, any hope of surrendering the flak tower and saving the thousands of lives inside would surely be lost.

A drop of condensation splatted on the open diary in front of him. He quickly blotted it out with his sleeve, smearing the pencil writing of the final paragraph. He tore three blank sheets from the back of the book, folded them and put them with the pencil in his tunic pocket, then closed the book, resting his hand on the embossed gold swastika and eagle symbol on the front. He had written his diary in a foolscap army order book so that prying eyes might think he was drafting a plan of battle for his phantom division. Instead he had written down everything. Everything. It was an eyewitness account of the last weeks and days of the Reich, by one who had been close to the monsters who had created it. Hoffman had been a Luftwaffe ace, had chalked up enough missions to win the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and swords, but after being wounded and grounded he had become one of Hitler’s strutting peacocks, a Nazi war hero. He had been promoted, showered with honours, feted. He had been inches from Hitler, from that chalk-like face, those eyes like a snake’s, the foul breath. He had played with Goebbels’ children, their names all beginning with H in honour of Hitler, their lives inextricably bound up with the fate of their Fuhrer; he remembered the oldest girl, Heine, with her sad eyes, last seen in the Fuhrerbunker when he had left it two days before. He had attended parties and celebrations, his face preserved for all time in the newsreels and propaganda photographs, waving and smiling as the Fuhrer bestowed yet another award, inspected yet another doomed Hitler Youth regiment. And as the final months had passed, as the Red Army had closed in, it had become even more grotesque. Only ten days before, he had attended the final concert of the Berlin Philharmonic to hear the last act of Wagner’s Ring Cycle so beloved of the Nazis, the Gotterdammerung. On the way out, uniformed boys of the Hitler Youth had offered them trays of cyanide tablets to keep ready for the last curtain in Hitler’s own opera. Then Hoffman had been obliged to join the inner circle on a trip to the circus, and had watched the performers on horses go round and round, swirling like some vortex in his mind, amongst SS officers with plump frouleins on their knees, laughing and crying, maudlin and self-pitying, the champagne flowing. And meanwhile the killing had gone on all round them: the Feldgendarmen stringing up deserters from lamp posts, summary executions of slave labourers in the streets, bodies left in pools of blood to join those killed by the Allied bombing and the relentless Soviet advance.

His own son. He steeled himself again. That was the only reason he had gone along with it all. The only reason. He knew what had happened to the families of those who had plotted against Hitler the year before. He had been on the Eastern Front then with his squadron, just trying to stay alive. But since being posted to Berlin and being sucked into the vipers’ nest, he knew that the eyes of the Gestapo and their informers had followed him everywhere, reporting his every move. Hitler the Fuhrer loved his war heroes, but Hitler the man loathed them because he could never be one himself. Himmler was even more mercurial, the slipperiest of them all. It was a terrible truth, but every day of suffering in Berlin, every day in which thousands more died, was another day of hope for Hoffman’s family. The longer the Soviets could be staved off, the more chance there was that his wife and son might escape. They lived near Elsholz, thirty kilometres south of Berlin. Hoffman could not go there because any attempt to leave the city would be met with instant retribution from the Feldgendarmerie. General Zhukov’s Third Army was sweeping in from the east, the Americans from the west. Terrible stories were reaching Berlin of mass rape by Red Army soldiers. He remembered, on his way back from that awful night at the circus, helping a limbless veteran of Stalingrad back into his wheelchair in a bombed-out S-Bahn station. The soldier had raised a stump in an ironic Heil Hitler salute. Don’t bother with me, he had said. If the Ivans do to us only half of what we did to them, then what you see of me now, this half of a man, this is nothing . There had been a chance, just a chance, that the Americans might get to Elsholz first, that the defence of Berlin might hold the Soviets off long enough for Hoffman’s family to fall into Western hands. But now there were reports of the Russians having passed west beyond the town and meeting the Americans on the Elbe. He could only pray that his wife Heidi and son Hans had escaped, and meanwhile try to save as many lives here as he could while there was still time.

He looked at his watch. Three minutes to ten. He stood up and placed the order book containing his diary on top of the left-hand crate, the embossed Nazi eagle and swastika on the cover facing up. He would tell the Feldgendarmen outside the door that the order books on his desk contained top-secret plans for a breakout from Berlin, that they were on no account to let anyone in, and that he would be returning shortly with the flak-battery commander to discuss tactics. In truth he had no intention of returning, but he needed to leave the diary where it might be found by a Red Army intelligence officer. He knew the savage punishment meted out by the NKVD to Russian soldiers who damaged anything of intelligence value, so any discovery like that would be likely to fall into the right hands. There was another book lying on the crate, an open copy of Schliemann’s Troy that had been there when he had arrived, evidently being read by the unpleasant Dr Unverzagt while he had guarded the crates. He moved the volume so that it partly concealed the diary. He noticed that the opened page showed drawings of ancient pottery with swastika decorations, and he remembered a tediously mystical lecture by Von Schoenberg, a student acquaintance of his at Heidelberg University and now one of Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, about the swastika, claiming that it had been the symbol of the first Aryans, even of Atlantis. Hoffman curled his lip in disdain. Atlantis. He shut the book. He hoped the Soviets would see these artefacts for what they were, as treasures for all mankind, and that their place in history would be shorn of all the twisted fiction that had been used to justify the appalling crimes committed by Himmler and the SS.

There was a sudden commotion at the door. It swung open, and one of the Feldgendarmen clicked his heels. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. This man insists on seeing you. He tried earlier, but you were on the roof with the flak gunners. I’ve checked his papers. He’s a member of the Nazi party.’

Hoffman strode irritably over. ‘Who the devil is it?’ Then he saw the unsavoury form of Dr Unverzagt trying to squeeze in, being held back by the other Feldgendarm. Hoffman waved his arm dismissively. ‘I have no time for this man.’

The Feldgendarm nodded and pushed Unverzagt roughly back, but he shouted out: ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. Listen to me. I have news of your family.’

Hoffman stared at him. Saying that was the easiest way to gain entrance. Everyone wanted news of their families. But it might be true . He gestured at the guard to release him. ‘All right. Two minutes, no more.’

Unverzagt sprang forward, and then pushed the door nearly shut. He turned back and hurried over to Hoffman, speaking urgently. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. When was the last time you saw Reichsfuhrer Himmler?’

Hoffman stared at him in contempt. He grabbed the man by the lapels and dragged him further in, then marched over and slammed the door. He took the man again and forced him towards his desk. ‘You fool,’ he snarled. ‘Keep your voice down. Don’t you know that Himmler is discredited? He tried to negotiate with the Americans, and Hitler found out. He’s been branded a traitor. The Feldgendarmen will kill you just for mentioning his name.’

Unverzagt tried to push him away, and Hoffman held him tight for a moment before relenting. The man straightened his lapels, then pulled something out of his coat pocket, keeping his fist closed around it. ‘The Reichsfuhrer has always had your best interests at heart, Hoffman. Do you remember as a boy it was he who directed you to join the Luftwaffe? And he has always looked after your family. I am to tell you they are safe from the Russians, in Plon on the Baltic Sea. They are being guarded by the SS. If all goes to plan, you will be joining them soon.’

Hoffman stared at the man. ‘What the devil are you talking about? How do you know this?’

‘Five months ago, Himmler took you to visit SS headquarters at Wewelsburg Castle. He took you to the vault below the SS Generals’ Room, and showed you something. Do you remember what it was?’

Hoffman kept staring. This was absurd, to dwell on Himmler’s nonsense at a time like this. He remembered the visit well enough, a tedious tour through all the rooms named after mythical Aryan heroes, before the lecture about the swastika by the Ahnenerbe man. But he especially remembered what Himmler had shown him, in a secret vault deep inside the castle. He had been sworn to utter secrecy.

Unverzagt peered at him. ‘Good. Your face betrays nothing. That is what the Reichsfuhrer saw in you as a boy. Utter reliability. You have kept your word. Your loyalty will be rewarded.’ He opened his hand, took Hoffman’s and put something in it, a folded piece of paper. Hoffman opened it and looked, then closed his hand over it. It was the same symbol he had seen in the vault in the castle. The reverse swastika. He stared at Unverzagt.

‘What do you want with me? Now of all times, for Christ’s sake? Haven’t you seen what’s going on outside?’

Unverzagt remained unmoved. ‘Five months ago, after you’d recovered from your wounds, the Reichsfuhrer saved you from certain death on the Eastern Front by having you posted to Berlin. It was essential that you were in the very heart of the Reich, a war hero feted by the Fuhrer. And then two days ago you were posted here, to the Zoo tower. There is something hidden here, something that will fulfil our destiny. Your role will soon be revealed to you. I am here to forewarn you. Remember your family, Herr Oberstleutnant. Remember little Hans. He awaits you.’

Unverzagt turned to leave. Hoffman remained rooted to the spot, his mind in a turmoil. The man strode to the door, then turned. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. I meant to check. You can still fly, after your wound?’

Hoffman stared at him, baffled. ‘Fly? Of course.’

‘Good. And you are an expert night navigator. You attended the training school last year. We saw to that. Until we meet again, Hoffman. For the new Reich. For the new Fuhrer. Sieg Heil.’

Unverzagt opened the door and was gone, pulling it shut behind him, leaving Hoffman rooted to the spot. What the hell was that all about? Was it yet another desperate scheme, another deluded fantasy of salvation? He opened his hand again and saw the symbol on the piece of paper, the reverse swastika inside a red roundel. He shook his head. It was all nonsense. Himmler would surely be dead by now. Unverzagt was unhinged, had dreamed up this fantasy in the oxygen-starved bedlam below. Hoffman’s visit to Wewelsburg would be well known among Ahnenerbe fanatics like Unverzagt, who had seen Himmler promise to induct him into the SS when the war was over. It had even made the front page of the SS newspaper. And Unverzagt would have known about Himmler’s special interest in him from all the hero propaganda feting his achievements as a Stuka ace, glorifying the wisdom of the Reichsfuhrer in encouraging him to fly at an early age. Hoffman crumpled the paper into his pocket and put the encounter from his mind. There was enough madness in here already. He picked up his binoculars, slung them round his neck and then turned round one last time to look at the place where he had spent these last hours, on very probably his final day alive. In the corner was a marble bust, lying broken and forgotten among the flecks of paint that had fallen off the wall in the vibrations. It was Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, the portrait bust that used to preside over the Troy exhibit in the Museum. Hoffman stared at the forlorn scene. What was it Bismarck had said? War with Russia must be avoided at all costs. On impulse, he came to attention and clicked his heels, then he turned and marched quickly towards the open door and the shrieking hell of the Soviet onslaught.