Churchill's Ace (Epic War Series Book 1) (11 page)

Winston saw the pain in Madeline’s eyes.
Old men who plot to make war, for their gratification and justification of their existence, would think twice after looking at Madeline, and the innocent and young at heart. Alas, that probably isn’t true; who can you trust less than men who are set in their ways, and who desire power for its own sake. Pity the world.

“Madeline the war, when it comes, will not last forever. These things pass as most things do in time. But love, ah that does not pass. Love burns forever; I guess it is one of the many mysteries of life.” Winston made a big gesture with his hands, “I’m sorry; don’t mind me. Underneath this cantankerous old man is a romantic at heart. Perhaps I spent too much time in Paris as a young man. I was young once you know… But cheers to you and Captain Owen Cline, a luckier man there is not in merry old England.”

“Thank you, Sir Winston.”

Zigfried Bockler passed two checkpoints to gain access to the Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biology and Race Hygiene. He was known to the guards and was treated like royalty. He was the son of Doctor Bockler, and that was more than a calling card. That was something that any good Nazi would be jealous of. Not only was Doctor Bockler one of the leading Nazi medical researchers, but he was well connected to those close to Hitler. That was a select group of self-declared geniuses.

Zigfried struck an impressive figure in his cadet uniform. He added a Nazi armband to the traditional uniform. He left the barracks with it on, and no one said a thing about it. It technically wasn’t part of the cadet uniform, but who in the world was going to say anything about that, much less write him up.

Even Major Van Bruen, the old school minded Prussian commandant of the Luftwaffe Flight School, wasn’t stupid or stubborn enough to make Zigfried remove the Nazi armband. That would be tantamount to placing a Luger to one’s head and pulling the trigger.

A tree lined plot of land hid the so-called Institute from public view. There were no signs or markings on the stone building. That was the modus operandi. The structure could have housed many things, perhaps an insurance company or a fashion design studio, that the populace of Berlin would marvel at its latest fall or spring line of clothes. Maybe hemlines were up; maybe they were down. Maybe nobody with a conscience or a brain would be willing to step inside the stone building.

Oh, there were subjects in the stone building. Most had forced heavenly thoughts, as they were temporarily pushed down the halls on hospital gurneys, whose wheels squeaked. It was when the gurney came to a stop, and the wheels fell silent that the Frankensteinian work began.

The work, if you could call it that, carried out inside its evil walls, were hard to fathom for their total lack of humanity and absolute depravity of the spirit of mankind. It was something out of a horror show. But this wasn’t a cheap Friday night movie that could be laughed away, as everyone left and went to their cozy and heated homes.

The Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biology and Race Hygiene instead housed the evilest of intentions and actions in the entire world. It was all true and unbelievable.

It was terrible enough that those deemed social misfits by the Nazi’s were handled in a very particular way. They were either marked for compulsory sterilization, euthanasia or sent to concentration camps to be worked to death.

The medical research center in Frankfurt did research in a much different way than other institutions across the world. They didn’t use mice or other lower subjects for their macabre “experiments.” Instead, they used live human beings.

Doctor Bockler was part of that process. In fact, he was a proponent of such activities. A Nazi to the core, he believed in the master race as a sort of German manifest destiny. So why not take shortcuts to get desired results?

Say you wanted to test how long a downed pilot could live in freezing conditions. You simply get someone you didn’t care about, a POW, a Jew, anyone that was determined to be an enemy of the state, and emerge them in a tub of snow. They would freeze to death, and you would record their vital signs as they suffered and died. An autopsy would be performed, and Nazis in white smocks would study the body and agree. “More testing is needed...”

Doctor Bockler greeted Zigfried in his office which for all intent purposes looked like a normal medical office you might see in Berlin. However, if one rifled through the drawers, a simple folder about experiments to be soon performed on identical twins would be found. It went the gambit from injecting dyes into one twin’s eye to see what would happen to try to conjoin twins in a ghastly medical procedure.

Doctor Bockler thought it normal and indeed heroic of what he did. After all, this research would be useful in furthering the cause of the master race. He smiled when Zigfried came through the door. “Zigfried, my boy. You wear your Luftwaffe uniform like it was always part of you. Your mother if she were alive would be so proud of you.”

“I miss her.”

“We all do.” Doctor Bockler looked at the picture of his late wife which was on his desk, next to a Nazi swastika flag. A sad look on his face suddenly faded to one of anger. “Encephalitis of the brain, no doubt caused by her work at the hospital, rubbing elbows with the lower masses. I tried to warn her to stay away. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Zigfried never forget what they did do her. It is my duty, our duty, to rid Germany of the weak, the malcontents and especially the Jews – that traitorous money grubbing lot who betrayed Germany during the Great War. They were the reason for our defeat. Thank God for Adolf Hitler.”

“The Fuhrer has saved our country. What are you working on, if you can tell me? Your work is so important to the Third Reich.”

“Yes, well we all do what we can to further the cause of our Fuhrer. There is much to be done. Many years of neglect to take care of. And the cleansing process has only begun. With time, Germany will be a pure country, devoid of the weak and the inferior races.”

“You are a great man.”

“Adolf Hitler is great. Now, my latest experiment that you may be interested in, my study of typhus was quite interesting. As you may know, the disease is spread by lice and fleas. If and when we go to war, our soldiers may contract the disease. This will be true if they rat out the enemy or the lower class inbreds in their filthy surroundings.

“I took two twin boys who were ten years old. I believe they were Gypsies. They were dumb of course, no better than functional illiterates. I infected one of the boys with the typhus bacteria. After it had thoroughly spread throughout his body, we took blood from the infected host as it were and transfused it into his twin brother.

“Since they have the same DNA and the infected lower class subject was well along with typhus, I expected that the second boy would perhaps receive some antibodies from his brother along with the typhus. Mind you this was only a theory that I have long held since my days at the university. The university and the education system has top priority in the weeding out process with the new order. That is a good place to start. For too long, our student’s young minds have been fed useless propaganda.”

At that moment, Zigfried thought of Wolf. Weren’t his parents academics at the university? Wolf’s smug attitude stuck in the back of Zigfried’s mind. No wonder Wolf was like he was. His parents were to blame for that. “Yes, the university. It is a wonder I was able to weather that storm.”

“My theory didn’t prove out. The second brother got typhus to the same degree as the first. We let them die in a lockdown ward. I performed an autopsy on both of their vital organs. They were the same. Even their brains, which had been ravaged by the disease, were identical. When we bagged up their frontal lobes, I almost mixed them up.”

Doctor Bockler and Zigfried laughed. “You must get more twins.”

“Ziggy, you seem to have put on some more meat. You’re filling out. Soon you will be bigger than the Nazi storm troopers I see walking the Kudamm shopping district with their blonde girlfriends. They are laden down with the things their girlfriends have bought. Zigfried, girlfriends are very expensive. Are you dating?”

“I’m much too busy at flight school. Besides, I’m waiting for that special person. She will be from good Aryan stock. Blonde hair, blue eyes. She is out there waiting for me.”

Doctor Bockler organized his desk and stood up. “I will keep my eyes open for you.”

“Father, I prefer to find her myself.”

Doctor Bockler nodded. “I realize that, but no harm in pushing the process along. There is a second cousin of Joseph Goebbels. She is lovely and dedicated to the cause.”

“Enough.”

Doctor Bockler laughed again. “Look at me playing matchmaker. Your mother was much better at that. Now are you ready for a weekend of wild boar hunting? Heinrich Himmler and his staff will be joining us.”

“Himmler?”

A look of pride came across Doctor Bockler’s face. “Much has changed. Your father’s faithful obedience to the Fuhrer has been noticed. And my research into the practical advancement of the Aryan Race has been rewarded.”

“Father, there is a pressing matter that I need to talk to you about.”

“What could that be?”

“It concerns a cadet’s parents.”

“What of them?”

Zigfried cracked his knuckles and placed his hands behind his back. “Father they are professors at the University of Berlin. I question their loyalty. There is no doubt they harbor ill will to the state.”

Doctor Bockler closed his briefcase. “You can tell me about them on the ride out to the forest. The re-education of scholars and intellectuals at the universities is still under way. Many have seen the light and sworn an oath to the Fuhrer and the Third Reich. Others haven’t; we shall see which these professors are.”

“I’m happy to see that your work is progressing here at the institute.”

“The sooner Germany cleanses itself of the hordes of undesirables the better. A society cannot prosper without eliminating those deemed useless and who are just another mouth to feed. Better to make bullets for our army.”

“Of course, I agree...”

Doctor Bockler and Zigfried rode very comfortably in a limousine that was just another of the many perks provided by the cash-flushed Nazi Party. There was money and plenty of it. One of the first things Hitler and his thugs did when they assumed power was to gather all the major industrialists in a comfortable room.

The leading industrialists were told to get out their checkbooks and fork over huge sums of money to Hitler and the Nazi Party. In return, the economic titans were promised armament contracts and other public sector largess.

The industrialists thought they were clever and shrewd by getting into bed with the Nazi Party. They did indeed back the right horse, as far as German politics was concerned. The Communists and Democratic Center Party were swept away by the Nazi tidal wave. The industrialists got their rearmament contracts...and their man, Adolf Hitler, who in the end would bring Germany to total ruin.

The Bockler’s followed another limousine into the dark winter night. The caravan was heading toward the Black Forest. The Black Forest was the premiere hunting region of Germany. Behind the Bockler’s limousine was an army truck loaded with hunting gear. There were so many guns of various types in the army truck that the convoy was ready to put down a riot. The Nazis it seems were always prepared.

Heinrich Himmler was in the lead limousine. Himmler was Chief of the German Police and Ministry of the Interior. He was the architect of the burgeoning death camps, which were taking shape in Germany and Austria. Himmler’s views were born out of the Great Depression when he blamed the Jews for Germany’s failures. He soon followed Adolf Hitler and eventually worshiped him.

As the limousine followed Himmler’s vehicle, Zigfried explained the situation of Wolf Kruger and his intellectual parents to his father. Doctor Bockler nodded, and when Zigfried was done he said, “If Wolf Kruger’s parents are a threat to the Third Reich, then what of the cadet himself?”

Zigfried hadn’t thought of that coming up. He imagined that he now looked somewhat foolish to his father. “Father, Wolf Kruger isn’t a Nazi like myself. Shouldn’t positions in the government or Luftwaffe go to those who have an undying oath to the Fuhrer? Aren’t we deserving of power? In fact, it is our responsibility to lead. If not, then who?”

“I suppose you’re right. I will talk to Himmler about Professor Kruger and his wife. I have no doubt that they are on the watch list already. If they are subversives, they will be dealt with severely. So this may be a mute point. For all we know they are scheduled for deportation, indoctrination or execution. Time will tell.”

“Thank you, father.”

They reached the Black Forest hunting grounds just before midnight. Heinrich Himmler had a personal assistant and four heavily armed bodyguards with him. A dozen soldiers set up a bank of floodlights which were turned off. It was snowing lightly as Doctor Bockler and Zigfried took up positions in a blind that was camouflaged. Heinrich Himmler and his assistant were in a blind next to them. Zigfried warily said, “Shouldn’t we be up in the trees. No one hunts wild boars like this.”

“Himmler likes to be daring when he is in front of his bodyguards. Is your shotgun loaded?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, the hunting dogs will be taken two kilometers down the path. The will flush the boars this way. Don’t fire until the floodlights are switched on. Then kill every one of them.”

Zigfried checked his shotgun and waited. It was getting colder and the snow was coming down hard. The visibility was getting worse as a faint grunting sound echoed through the forest. It grew louder by the second and then reached a pitched peak.

The floodlights were switched on as a horde of wild boars ran in front of the two hunting blinds. Himmler and his assistant opened fire, and Doctor Bockler and Zigfried did the same with their shotguns. The boars were splattered with high powered shotgun shells and ran away from the blinds. The snow changed directions and blew hard into the face of the Himmler and his minions.