Disclaimer: In the following chapter I'm describing a character who is called Kurt Zeitzler. As far as I know, I don't think he has any common features with the real Generaloberst Zeitzler. Alàs! I needed someone to do the dirty work and, as he offered me the chance to make the trick, well, he was selected for the role. My sincere apologies to anyone who may feel outraged by this.
Chapter 2.
Second set - The Failure of a Republic.
Berlin, 16th November, 2003
Katherine was busy writting...
July 2th, 1944 was a Sunday. It began as a beautiful summer day but ended with autumn storms and cloudbursts. It was as if, for a brief moment, summer turned into autumn before returning to normality. For Germany was the day when the political weather changed for good without any hope of coming back to its original form. It was the day of the sudden and unheralded decisions which led to the end of the Second World War and the end of the Kaiserreich.
July 2th, 1944 is one of the most important dates in German history, but, unlike other comparable dates –say October 24th, 1648 or January 18th, 1871- it has never ranked as a landmark in German history books. To some extent this may be due to the fact that nothing of what happened that day was reported in the next day’s papers. Even when they were finally made public, they remainded in the void, as if shrouded in the fog of secrecy.
July 2th, 1944 was October 24th, 1648 and January 18th, 1871 in one: Destruction and Reconstruction of the State. It was the work of one man – a man who had no authority whatsoever for such a far-reaching deeds: Generaloberst Kurt Zeitzler. July 2th, 1944 still preserves the enigma of Zeitzler: the enigma of his power, of his personality and of his reasons.
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First set - The Failure of a Revolution.
Berlin, July 2th, 1944
Kurt Zeitzler was exhausted. He had returned from the meeting with Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, who was in command of the
Oberbefehlshaber West, and, he had to admit the truth, the situation was worse than he thought. The Western Front was going to collapse in any moment, and the Kaiser refused to acknowledge it. And he, Zeitzler, was to be blamed for that. The Kaiser, the Supreme Warlord under the terms of the Constitution, had got into the habit of executing, as if it were and order, every wish of the High Command, in the political as well as in the military sphere, as his father and done in the war of 1914. And he, Zeitzler, had kept the Kaiser in darkness, while he pursuing a victory that, in the last months, has been proved to be impossible. He had persisted in his belief that if the Syndie scum dared to invade France , they would be throughly defeated. Achieved that, it would be just a matter of time before they were expelled from Italy and Greece. However, this was not to be.
With the eyes closed he went over again the impeding doom that was coming down on Germany since June 6th, 1944, when the damned Syndies landed at Normandy. Since that awful day -the "
Schwarzer Tag des deutschen Heeres" ("
the black day of the German Army"), as he called it-, the German Imperial Armed Forces had been utterly unable to stop the enemy advance. He did not want to recognize the truth until the last moment: that the impeding doom that the Abwehr had foretold and that was grimly looming over them for weeks and months and had been visibly approaching had finally come. In a single day his faith in vicotry had turned into pessimism and defeatism.
He opened his eyes in anguish. General Dollman, the Seventh Army Commander, had commited suicide. General Geyr von Schweppenburg and von Rundstedt had told him that there were no hope to defeat the invasion, that they had to withdraw at once. In that they were supported by no one else that the greatest living heroe of Germany, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel. Then the agony of Zeitzler knew no end. Von Rundstedt had even dared to suggest that they should ask the Syndies for peace! Zeitzler had him replaced by von Kluge at once.
And now he had to recognize that von Rundstedt was right, that damned old fool! The war was lost. “
Here you are –Zeitzler thought with bitterness-,
the same general that, at the Imperial Council of May 14th had still held that it would be possible to paralyse any enemy invasion and his will to fight by prolonged resistance”. Now, less than a month later, he was going to demand a request for an armistice within 24 hours, otherwise the military catastrophe on the Western Front could not be avoided. There was no other way out.
Second set - The Failure of a Republic.
...but this man was just one General among many, by no means the highest in rank, only number two in the High Command and without any political office or mandate. What gave him his inmense power.
To the man on the street Zeitzler meant nothing at all: he was no popular heroe. There were plenty of heroes in Germany, and to them Zeitzler freely yelded all the popularity and glory. Free from vanity, he was not interested in the appareance of power, but in power itself. He was no leader of men, no winner of hearts. He had neither charm nor magnetism; he was unable to convince or mesmerize. However, he was beyond doubt a highly competent Staff Officer. He was, since 1942, the man who undertook not only to win the war for Germany, but to win it totally. He went on doing that, playing va banque in a colossal escale with iron composure. He made the “all or nothing” the motto of his staff.
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First set - The Failure of a Revolution.
He was going to be marked with the stygma of defeat. He felt the sting of pain going through his soul time after time and he closed his eyes again, as if he were to find a solution in the surrounding darkness. Then the shock came. The war was lost, true, but it was still a battle to fight: to save the Army. He opened his eyes and looked at the empty sky. That was it! He had to do it, to save the Army, its existence and its honour. Then the request for peace could not come from the High Command, but from the Government. It would have to be based on political, not on military grounds. Who could do that?
Zeitzler smiled after a few moments of thought. Those who had asked for peace and agreement before and during the war would do it, those peace-lovers would carry the burden of the same. Were not they willing to assume the government under such dreadful conditions? Indeed, that would mean to change the Constituion, to give them the parliamentary government they had been asking for ages. Let’s gave them that? What all that fuss mean, after all? Let’s put the bait. Were not the Syndies proclaiming that they were fighting for freedom and democracy? Then let’s give them that! A German Democratic government asking for an armistice. To make it even harder for them to refuse, their peace proposal would be accepted for a basis for peace negotiations.
But... what if the Syndies refused? Or if they came up with new, dishonourable conditions? Well, one would take care of that when that took place, if it did it at all. Perhaps the government would decree a levée en masse, Zeitzler thought. An honorauble last stand, but he doubted that those cowards would do that. They had no honour. However, if they do then what he expected, that is, to submit instead, that would be
their submission. In any case, the Army would be safe. With his existence intact and his honour unstained, it could later, after the War, send packing a parlimentary Government disgraced by defeat.
Now he had a plan. It was time to laid the trap.
"Dear Duckie" began the email.
Oh, oh, this is going to hurt...
""I've read your summary of your idea for your next AAR. I'm not going to bother to mention that, instead of starting a new one, you should try to end any of the ongoing ones. Ouch! I've mentioned it. Sorry, Duckie."
She had to write it, indeed...
"But I find this idea absolutely preposterous! Even your invincible Ethiopian general (what's the name? Von Shaka?) going on his World Conquest Tour made sense, in comparison with that idea of yours! It's madness!
Don't even think about making the joke. This is not Sparta, I'm not Leonidas, but I can make you bleed, remember."
Here you have it... She is in love with me
"However, I see potential in your idea. But, for Jove's sake! Use a more credible character! Adolf Hitler, for God's sake?! That mad painter that was unable of finding his own ass using his two hands and a map, going to become Germany's leader? Really?
I hope you're not going to try another World Conquest Tour with Adolf "Demi God" Hitler...
PS: I'm not angry with you. I was angry with you when I found your webcam in my bathroom, remember? That WAS anger."
He remembered indeed. Ashexee's booted foot incoming at high speed towards him... The pain in his most sensitive part of his body... Disgraceful event, indeed.
"As I know it was just a joke, I'm not really upset at that, but... let's return to the present. Please, Duckie, this idea of yours doesn't make sense! Faure and Snowden would shoot him, not make their world conquest pal!!!"
Duckie shifted from the email to the page of the Wikipedia and, while looking at Hitler's face (and hairstyle, of course!) and bitting his lower lip, he couldn't but to think...
How he would have dared to event think about it? To turn a megalomaniac crazy painter who created in Vienna the infamous "The Family", a quasi-commune of beggars and fools which were to be blamed for most of the excess and sex crimes in the capital of Austria during the 1940s, into a world conqueror? Event turning Charles Manson into a beatnik pacifist would make more sense than making Adolf ruler of the world. And, on top of that, nothing else but a Syndie Warlord!
Perhaps Ashexee wasn't so wrong this time. Then he looked again to the Wikipedia page. And he saw it...
But Duckie loved to play the devil's advocate...
"My Gosh, this is going to be a hard one..."
Then he smiled.