The Empire of Time (11 page)

Hitler was silent for a time. Then he stood and turned his head towards Seydlitz. His eyes, at that moment, were filled with a bitter hatred.

‘You were betrayed,’ Seydlitz said calmly. ‘The Jews, your generals, even some of those you trusted best – they betrayed you. What you have seen is the chronicle of their betrayal.’

Hitler narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Seydlitz took the list from his pocket and handed it across. It was detailed. Names, dates, arrangements. More than five hundred names in all. Not all the traitors – not Himmler, Goering, Rommel – but many who would surprise him. Hitler took the list and opened it, watching Seydlitz all the while. Then he looked down, studying it.

‘What is this?’

‘A list, Führer. Of traitors.’

Hitler looked up sharply, then back at the list, flicking through the pages, stopping now and then, his eyebrows going up, his face registering unfeigned surprise, even pain. Many of the leading figures of the Reich were listed. Abruptly he folded the sheaf. His hand was trembling now and his face was red with anger. His arm shot out to his left, holding the list.

‘Heinrich! Take this and copy it! Then act on it! At once!’

Himmler took it, then bowed in salute and clicked his heels. In an instant he was gone from the room. The repercussions would begin at once.

Seydlitz had been careful in selecting that list. None of those who would lead the Wehrmacht to the gates of Moscow were named. Nor were those whose treachery lay more in Hitler’s failings than their own. But in one single swoop he had rid the Reich of most of its major doubters and schemers. It was a beginning. But there was much more to be done. It was not enough to prune the tree of state, they had to stimulate new growth, and do what no one before Seydlitz had ever managed: to change the mind of Hitler.

Seydlitz faced him again.

‘Though I was born in another land, I am, before all, a German. And as a German I recognise that the destiny of my people is bound inextricably with the destiny of the Führer. My machine has seen much that is ill. But the illness lies not with destiny but with a betrayal of that destiny, in the poverty of others’ little lives.’

Seydlitz let that sink in a moment; saw how they all watched him, waiting to hear what he would say next.

‘How can a leader lead if those whom he must trust – must, because he is but one man, however great, and mortal in spite of all – how can he lead if they are false, if the information they provide him with is false, if their advice is false? How, in the face of such overwhelming falsity, can a leader lead?’

Hitler was nodding. The trembling in his left arm had almost gone. Seydlitz could see that his words were working, the spell drawing him in.

‘The policy of legality served us well in gaining power in Germany. It was a tactic born of genius. To use against our enemies that which they valued most. To see through the democratic sham and grab the reality of power.’ Hitler was nodding more strongly now, smiling at Seydlitz; his eyes, which only moments earlier had burned with anger, were now filled with fervour. Seydlitz had studied him well. Now his long hours of study reaped their dividend. He played him as Hitler had once played others, as indeed Seydlitz had played him once before, after the opera that time, weaving a spell of words about him, binding him fast to the Dream.

‘What was legality if not the pacification of our enemies until we were strong enough to strike at them? An exploitation of their intrinsic rottenness? What was legality if not the means to our necessary destiny?’

Hitler laughed. ‘Indeed, it was so!’

At his side the others joined his laughter. The mood had changed. It was time to strike.

‘What then will it be in the years to come, but a means by which the Führer will unite the continent of Europe in a single Reich, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Arctic circle to the Mediterranean!’

Goering spoke. ‘What then of Mussolini? What of the Italians, the Spaniards?’

Seydlitz looked directly at Hitler as he answered. ‘Are not the meetings at Hendaye, Montoire and Brenner eloquent enough? These southern Europeans are rotten through and through. There is something weak, something
corrupt
in their very nature. But while we need them we can use them. In time, however, our use will have ended and then we shall pay them for their rottenness.’

Seydlitz knew that Hitler would not be quite so pleased with this little speech, even as he nodded. Seydlitz knew that Franco had bested the Führer in the discussions at Hendaye and kept Spain out of the war. At Montoire, the Vichy-French had wriggled out of any real commitment to the Reich. And at Brenner Hitler had confronted Mussolini with his duplicity in attacking Greece without consultation. It was no secret that this trilogy of failings had irked Hitler all winter. Seydlitz’s reminder was the opening of an old wound, cruel but necessary.

‘You said you knew ways,’ Hitler said. ‘Ways of changing the future …’

There was suspicion in those vividly blue eyes. Suspicion and an element of pure dislike. He was a man who would have no rivals, and in all he did Seydlitz seemed to set himself up as rival to him. In this, as in so much, he needed to be devious. He needed to make these schemes – like Manstein’s for the invasion of France – seem Hitler’s own.

‘My role is simple, Führer. My task easy. I must help the leader lead. I must clear away the falsity in those surrounding him. I must pave the way for victory. For destiny.’

Hitler laughed, amused at Seydlitz despite his suspicion. ‘By killing traitors? Is that all of your mighty scheme?’

Seydlitz shook his head. ‘You have already shown us the path. It is already written, in
Mein Kampf.
Our enemy is Russia. We must crush the Russians at any cost. But to do so we must avoid a war on two fronts.’

Seydlitz took a breath, then said it. ‘We must pacify the Americans.’

He began a new routine. Each morning at six he would leave his chalet and walk the forty metres to the Wolfensschanze, past the armed SS guards and into the Map Room. There, Hitler and he would go through orders and consider the reports from the front. At first he suggested few strategic changes. Then slowly, taking care to make each change seem as though it had sprung from Hitler’s mind, he began to manipulate the war.

At first Hitler was loath to take up Seydlitz’s suggestion regarding America. Despite all the evidence, he continued to see them as a weak, divided nation.

‘So they are,’ Seydlitz would say. ‘But when Japan attacks, something will happen to them. Their pride will be hurt and they’ll respond. The challenge will make them strong.’

It was this argument, much more than the ‘fact’ – documented and presented long before – that eventually persuaded him. Ribbentrop was sacked as Foreign Minister and Admiral Raeder, a less abrasive, more honourable man, was sent to Washington to ensure the peace. Raeder’s appointment was a temporary move, but effective. He would be needed later, when the U-boat offensive began in earnest, but in July and August of 1941, as German troops drove the Russians back relentlessly, he successfully wooed the right-wing elements of American public opinion. The Tripartite Pact, less than a year old, was dramatically dropped. Without a word of explanation, Japan ceased to be an ally. The effect in Washington was considerable. Roosevelt summoned Raeder. Through an interpreter Raeder explained that Hitler did not want war with either the United States or Britain. Russia alone was his enemy. There were many Germans in America, he went on to say. It would be a tragedy if German should have to fight German. Roosevelt remained sceptical, but his certainty had been shaken. Hitler called off his U-boats and cut all derogatory references to Roosevelt from his speeches. It was an old game and he enjoyed it.

Dr Todt, the Armaments Minister, had been on the list of traitors. This was a fabrication and ended Todt’s life ten months earlier than otherwise. In his place Hitler appointed Albert Speer. From the first Speer’s influence was marked. New factories were opened in the conquered Russian territories. Fuel dumps were established. New tracked equipment was hastily manufactured to designs Seydlitz provided. Winter clothing was stockpiled in warehouses close to the front. When the snows came this time they would find the German army well prepared.

The fleet was moved south, from the Norwegian coast. Two divisions were spared to strengthen the Italian push on Egypt. Revolt was fermented in Iraq and in Egypt itself. The bombing of British cities stopped and all efforts returned to destroying their airfields. Each move strengthened Germany’s position and brought them one step closer to success.

And all the while Seydlitz had his men moving back and forth through Time, reporting back to him on the progress of their machinations. Up ahead – in the time to come – things were slowly changing in their favour, but still the major thing remained the same: when the snows came the Russians would halt the German advance and throw them back. From that moment the war would be lost. Their actions – small as they were – had extended the war into the early months of 1947. Even so, defeat was inevitable.

Early on Seydlitz had been forced to show them the ‘machine’. It was a fake, of course, primed with a few gobbets of information his men had prepared elsewhere, but its focus was real enough. Seydlitz told them there were two such machines, focusing on the future. The other was somewhere in Spain, hidden where they would never find it. That was not liked, but it was understood. Hitler even smiled when Seydlitz told him.

‘You are a cautious man,’ he said.

Seydlitz nodded. More cautious than he knew.

The big changes came in August. Instead of sending the Centre Army south, Hitler ordered General Bock to press on to Moscow. On the seventeenth there was a major engagement thirty kilometres south-west of the Russian capital, and two days later Guderian swept into the city. There followed a week of hand-to-hand and street-by-street fighting. But by 28 August Moscow had been taken. Bock dug in, then sent Guderian and Hoth, his two
Panzer
commanders, north to help the attack on Leningrad.

On 30 August Seydlitz accompanied Hitler on his first visit to Moscow. There, in the Kremlin, Hitler took a march past of his triumphant army, standing where Stalin himself had stood only four months earlier.

Stalin had fled, but he had not got far. Seydlitz’s men had traced him and found him, and in a small village eighty kilometres east of Moscow they ambushed him. On the morning of 2 September, they woke Hitler at five and presented him with the body.

What did the future look like after this? Moscow and Stalin had both fallen. They had cut the head from the Russian bear, but would the bear fall? Up ahead they saw the counter-attack, led by Zhukov. There was still the possibility of failure. But then, in mid-September, Leningrad fell and Zhukov himself was taken.

For Seydlitz these were heady days, and while they unfolded there was a kind of camaraderie between Hitler and himself. But in the aftermath of Leningrad, as in the north they dug in and looked to the south for further victories, a sour note slowly crept in.

Among the small but elite group surrounding Hitler – those who knew Seydlitz’s role in events – things had changed. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the power base had shifted. Goebbels was closest to Seydlitz, perhaps, but there were others who looked to him first and Hitler after for their lead. Goering was effusive in his praise, while Himmler, ever the follower and never an innovator, balanced precariously between obedience to the Führer and deference to Seydlitz.

For all that he did to defuse this situation – for all his humility, self-deprecation and pampering of Hitler’s monomaniacal ego – Seydlitz could not wholly deflect Hitler’s jealousy and suspicion. Memories of what Hitler had done to Strasser and Rohm in 1934 haunted him, not because he feared for his own life, but because his death might mean the failure of the whole scheme. Seydlitz had always been a rival, and though he might claim – and rightly – that such plans were Hitler’s alone, espoused as early as 1924 in
Mein Kampf
, Hitler only had to look about him to see what they truly thought. Even Bormann, the most loyal of his acolytes and his private secretary, looked on Seydlitz as a saviour.

Up ahead things had improved beyond recognition. The East was secure. Continental Europe was Hitler’s. Britain was a satellite. The Middle East was steadily being conquered. But in the present things were coming to a head. What if Hitler decided Seydlitz was dispensible?

On the evening that Kiev fell – the first evening of snow, in late October – he had his first argument with Hitler. They were in a field camp outside the city. News had just come of the surrender of a Russian army of almost one and a half million men. This, even more than Moscow, was the height of their success. This was victory – the capitulation of the last Russian forces west of the Urals. As Seydlitz heard the sober words of the report he felt both joy and sadness. The Russians had been beaten – the age-old threat finally defeated – but up ahead, in 2999, Berlin,
his
Berlin, had, he was certain, ceased to be. His exile was complete. This now was home.

He turned to Hitler and looked at him. Hitler was staring down at his hands, which were clenched one over the other. There was no sign of surprise, certainly nothing of the elation one might have expected him to feel at such a moment. Instead there was the merest nod of his head. Then he looked up.

‘So it’s done,’ he said. ‘Just as you said, Herr Seydlitz.’

Seydlitz did not move. Hitler’s eyes seemed to hold him there, intense, his anger and hatred suddenly so raw, so naked, that Seydlitz knew he had come to a decision.

‘You have done it all,’ Seydlitz said, letting nothing show in his face. ‘You have done more than any man has ever done. More than Frederick. More than Napoleon. More than Alexander or Caesar.’

But they were empty, fatuous words, for all their truth, and Hitler knew it as well as he.

Hitler turned away. ‘I am tired, Herr Seydlitz. You will excuse me?’

It was so odd a thing for him to say that Seydlitz knew he would need to be careful that night. Unless he acted he would be dead before morning.