120. At War's End
State Arsenal
Vienna, German Empire
7 May 1946
It was a beautiful spring day in Vienna - clear skies, sunny weather, even birdsong. One man noticed none of it, instead staring up at a marble statue in the inner courtyard of the Arsenal. He wore a faded, mottled jump smock open at the throat, an equally faded field blouse under it, and a dark-green beret, and an expression of near-collapse. "It should have been me, Otto," Wilhelm Volkmann muttered at the statue, unable to take his eyes away.
Otto Skorzeny would have been proud of his memorial - four meters and a pedestal of marble, sculpted to commemorate the man who had died, in the Kaiser's words, "with the last shot of the last battle of the last war." That it was here, in the military heart of Austria, was perhaps fitting; some had proposed putting it at Kyffhäuser with the other memorial statues, but Otto von Habsburg had intervened. Otto Ritter von Skorzeny would be commemorated in his homeland. Here he was as Hercules, clad in a lion skin, foot astride the neck of a bear. It was incredibly pompous, and it captured the dead man perfectly for that very reason. Despite his black mood, Wilhelm smiled at that fact. It was not much of a smile, but today was a year to the day since he had sent Skorzeny's company east to their fates. Of that company, a dozen had come back fit for duty. Perhaps another twenty would eventually recover enough to serve again. He had seen the look on their faces before - he thought of it as "the Reims look." He could not ask men who had been through that fire to serve further, and at war's end, what need was there?
A gendarme approached, tapping him on the shoulder with a baton. "Excuse me, there is no loitering here," the guard said stiffly. Wilhelm half-turned, taking him in with a glance. Stiff posture, clean white gloves, polished helmet and gorget. Chain dog, NCO candidate by his sleeve... so not a first-year conscript. No war on his chest, just the usual "I was in uniform when..." ribbons. This man had spent the past few years comfortably "fighting" from Vienna, doubtless. The man's face paled slightly when he saw the subdued rank on Volkmann's own sleeve and the blue enamel cross at his throat. When he registered the expression on Wilhelm's face, he turned bone-white. "Er, excuse me, sir, I thought..."
"Why, corporal, would a vagrant be in the inner courtyard of the Arsenal?" Volkmann asked quietly. The corporal had come to rigid attention now, the parade soldier's instinctive response to challenge. Wilhelm shook his head in disgust. "Go away," he grunted, waving at the courtyard portico. The man gratefully spun on his heel and marched, bandbox-perfect, out of the courtyard. Wilhelm returned to his consideration of the Skorzeny statue. "I'm so sorry, Otto," he murmured once more, extending his hand to rest it on the head-level top of the pedestal. "I thought you'd outlive all of us."
---
Main Cadet Center Lichterfelde
Berlin, German Empire
28 May 1946
Johann Volkmann was back in Berlin, after what seemed like forever in increasingly dismal quarters in Russia. He would have loved to stretch gloriously, spend the day tinkering with his motorcycle, or just lazing about, but instead, duty had called him here. He was a Lichterfelde man, a bona-fide war hero, and an example of what luck and a couple of wars could do for one's career, so when he returned in time for the Lichterfelde graduation, he had been dragooned onto the stage, handing out officers' swords and commissions, smiling, and doing his best impression of Manstein. That Kleist had been barely suppressing a grin the whole time did not help at all. When new-minted Leutnant Zimmern finally left the stage and the band played them out, he took a deep breath, flexed his right hand, and erupted, "Thank God! I was afraid my arm would fall off from all that saluting!"
Kleist responded with a deep laugh, the stress of the last few years uncoiling and sliding off of them, it seemed. "Yes. Another few of them, and we'd have been able to qualify as loaders again. Arm feels like it's England all over again!" He realized what he had said, and a quick look of horror crossed his face. Johann shook his head. "Relax, it only hurts when I use the arm," he said, waving with his right arm both to dismiss the reminder of his wound, and to show that the arm still worked properly. "So what shall we do now?" Kleist asked, gesturing toward the parade ground exit. Johann shook his head, smiling. "Not we, I'm afraid. I have someone I need to visit, just me." Kleist grinned, slow and sly. "Is it that Ilse girl, the one you wrote all those letters?" Volkmann blushed slowly, his tanned features turning pink, then red, and he spluttered for a moment. Kleist clapped him on the shoulder. "Good luck, Hans."
From Lichterfelde to the Institute was a short journey for someone who had just come from Siberia. The journey from the world of cadets to the world of Ilse Klein was infinitely longer. She had returned here and was, wonder of wonders, teaching physics at the Technicsche Hochschule. She was not expecting him, and it showed when he stepped into her office after a very perfunctory knock. She was lovely, he thought, blonde hair catching the sun, piled on the back of her head and emphasizing her glasses, but then, he was hardly fit to judge - the few women he had seen in the past year had been in occupied Russia. Still, when she saw him, she lit up. "Hans! I didn't know you had come back!" She rose to meet him, but there was surprisingly little passion in her embrace, a quick, tight hug followed by a step back while she considered him. "You're looking well, the war apparently agreed with you." The smile was still genuine, at least. "Thank God it's over."
"Ah, Ilse..." He took her hand, clearing his throat, nervous. "I came to see you to ask..." He fumbled for a moment, beginning to drop to his knee, encumbered by his dress sword.
"Of course I will, since you asked," she said, voice calm and matter-of-fact. "Now get up, you silly man. That nonsense is for romances and operas." She turned away once more, slipping behind her desk. It was, he realized, a very small, crowded office. "Now you will just have to get a post in Berlin, because I'll be damned if I'm going to chase you garrison to garrison." He realized that his mouth was hanging open, and she smiled, covering it with a hand. "Oh, Hans. It's very sweet of you, and yes, of course I will marry you. You're adorable, you know."
"'Adorable' is hardly the word one usually uses to describe an Oberst of the Totenkopfdivision!" he protested, stuffy even to his own ears. She smiled sweetly. "Of course not. But I'm not marrying an Oberst of the Totenkopfdivision, Johann Volkmann, I'm marrying you, and if you can't figure out the difference, I can certainly change my mind." He had no response to that, and she showed mercy on him. She rose from behind the desk, coming around and taking his hands. He followed her from the office, still dumbstruck, and barely remembered to grab his shako as they went. "Come on, I'm starving, the faculty club suit you?" she asked over her shoulder. "That's... that's fine," he replied in a daze.
---
Building 1
Bad Schlema, German Empire
6 June 1946
Generalleutnant Ernst Baron von Volkmann sat behind a desk that would have been the envy of any engineer he had known in the '20s and '30s, in an office overlooking a vast industrial plant. He had come as far as it was likely for an engineer to come in the Reichsheer, had rubbed elbows with Nobel winners, and had been instrumental in winning the war. The question was... now what? The Bad Schlema laboratories were running more or less on their own now; no new construction was planned for the foreseeable future. The civil applications and power generation systems were slowly progressing, despite the obvious ineptitude of Professor Einstein as an administrator. Most of that work was handled now by Professor Diebner, who had more interest in the day-to-day work than any of the theoreticians and, at this point, more than Ernst himself. After five years of administering this project, after the test and Valkyrie, he was ready for a change.
He swiveled in his chair to look out the great windows behind him. The windows here looked out over the plant to the mountains and the mines. On the other side of the building, he could have seen the river, but the plant was why he was here, so he had chosen to watch it instead. He stared out over the long, marching ranks of whitewashed wood and fogged-over glass, brooding to himself. The buzzer on his desk went off, interrupting his reverie, followed by the intercom. The new secretary was a Reichsheer man, one of Becker's star pupils, a Hauptmann Wenger from Berlin. He was a poor substitute for Ilse Klein, but Ilse had drifted out of his office and into the laboratory years ago, and no one quite made up for her. He sighed as Wenger reported. "Sir, a special courier from the Bendlerblock. Generalmajor von Stauffenberg, to see you."
"Send him in."
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a perfect soldier - upright, handsome, and decorated with the Pour le Merite and the Red Eagle, atop other awards. When he raised his right hand in salute, Ernst saw that it was missing the last two fingers, and that the others were unusually stiff. "Herr General," he said, voice crisp, and Ernst returned the salute before standing himself. Ernst gestured at a chair before speaking. "Please, sit, we're a touch more informal here than in Berlin. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Coffee? A bit early for much more than that, I'm afraid." Stauffenberg nodded and sank into the chair. "Tea, please." Ernst jabbed the intercom, speaking sharply into it. "Wenger. Two cups of tea please. Now, General, what brings you to Bad Schlema?"
Stauffenberg reached inside his blouse, drawing out an envelope. "Orders for you, sir. I am to deliver them personally and ensure that you understand them." He fumbled for a moment with his mangled hand before handing the buff envelope across. Seeing Ernst's involuntary look at his hand, he shrugged. "Caucasus. I tried to catch a bullet." A smile crept across his face, almost involuntarily. "It didn't want to be caught." Ernst felt himself smiling despite himself at this young man, scarcely older than his own sons. He decided that he liked the messenger from the Bendlerblock.
The orders, though... whether he would like them was another question. He broke the seal, untwined the thread holding the envelope shut, and signed the distribution list on the back side before sliding the thin sheaf of papers out of the envelope. Stauffenberg sat and stirred his tea while Ernst sank back into his chair, chin on his chest and eyes on the cover page. He finally glanced up. "Let me see if I understand this. If I'm reading this correctly, General Thomas wants me to leave here to become... a railroad president?" he asked in incredulity. Stauffenberg shrugged. "Not exactly a railroad president. Do you have a map?" Ernst gestured at a pull cord on one wall, and Stauffenberg pulled down a transparency screen, followed by a map of Europe to the Urals. Red stickers marked it, showing the location of Europe's uranium deposits. Stauffenberg ignored those and instead gestured at the northern half of Germany. "A line from Berlin to St. Petersburg, and from Berlin to Moscow along the line Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow, and a line from St. Petersburg to Moscow... and here, in the south, Vienna to Kiev. These northern and southern lines to converge at Volgograd, here, then east, and the old Moscow-Chelyabinsk line of the Trans-Siberian rail. All of that to rebuild the Trans-Siberian line to Vladivostok in standard gauge." Stauffenberg smiled. "For the man who built the Berlin-Baghdad line and the works here, it's hardly a challenge, is it?"
Three major trunk lines from the Reich into the Soviet successors, and the longest rail line in the world to be rebuilt under primitive conditions to the Reich standard gauge... it was certainly a challenge, but... he finally nodded in acceptance. "All right. I'll come up to Berlin and we'll talk about it, see what we can lay out. Do you have a car?" Stauffenberg's face split in a grin when he replied. "Drache." Apparently the man had pull at the Bendlerblock, Ernst mused. He stood, grabbing his coat. "Well, let's not waste any time then, lead the way."
---
Chateau Lassan
Outside Rouen, Kingdom of France
28 June 1946
Annelise de Lassan was the only foreigner in the house, unless a Flemish veteran who spoke fluent French counted as a foreigner. She and the children stayed out of sight, the children asleep, her post unobtrusively sitting in a salon next to the drawing room where a half-dozen men had gathered. They were a curious collection of men: monarchist to a fault, military officers almost all of them, the types who should have been bound to the House of Bourbon by both tradition and personal inclination, but the Bourbons were now tainted. They also tended to be tall, moustached, and frowning, and almost to a man, the soldiers among them were tankers - save, again, for the Flemish veteran in his white kepi, who looked uncomfortable and nervous.
Some of these men she knew on sight: her husband, her father-in-law, General de Hautecloque, General de Gaulle. The Flemish Legionnaire, she did not. Nor did she recognize the thin, severe man in white naval uniform, though his rank was apparently some sort of flag officer - his driver was lounging in the servants' quarters. She also had no clue who the full-faced man in a business suit was, only that he spoke with an American accent and was equally amiable with her, his valet, and the assembled officers. The six of them sat around the great table dating back to the Sun King, and, befitting his position as the host, the Vicomte spoke first. "Gentlemen. Thank you for joining me here, I am sorry that you had to make such roundabout travel arrangements. Most of you are acquainted, I believe. For those of you who are not - well, perhaps introductions should wait on your own discretion, as this is, I am afraid, treason in the legal sense of the word."
De Gaulle tilted his head back and looked down his nose, a feat he seemed tailor-made to perform. "And why should we trust a man with a German daughter-in-law?" he asked, glancing at the door - the wrong door, as it happened. "Because," the Vicomte replied, "I have a French son, and the Germans have seen fit to place Rouen practically upon the border, and I have given my life to the same army as you."
"So it is to be the army you are rushing to save?" the admiral sneered. "It is not to be France, as I had hoped? The army did a fine job of preserving us from where we are now, non?" His voice was as sharp as his features, and she could almost feel de Gaulle prickling at the remarks. "That was not the army's fault, but the high command's failure to understand that times had changed, and Belgium could not be relied upon as a shield!"
"Gentlemen," Hautecloque said, voice soft, hand raised as if to separate the two men, "we are not here about the past. We are here to deal with the present, and the future. We are here for the future of France, not the fleet, not the army. France."
"To France." The others lifted their glasses, and Hautecloque stood before concluding the toast. "To France, and the Third Empire."