Final impact

Himmler’s vision swirled as he bore down with all his weight. The air in the tiny underground room was hot and stale. It had probably been breathed over and over again. He told himself that the feeble, thrashing form beneath him was not the man he had followed for so long. That man was gone, and had been for days, a victim of this war as surely as any front-line combatant. All that was left of him was this husk, lying on an army cot.

The struggle, such as it was, began to taper off. Gradually, terribly, life ceased. Himmler endured one last weak surge of resistance before he felt the body sag beneath him. It was done.

Hoping for numbness, he instead felt a powerful boiling of conflicted sensation: horror at what he had done, torment at the unknown consequences, relief that he would no longer have to fear exposure concerning his last days in the Other Time. He slumped to the cold concrete floor beside Hitler’s body. Breathing heavily, his heart pounding, he turned his head and stared at his surroundings, wondering how so momentous an event could transpire in such a dingy setting. The malarial yellow brickwork. The sagging cot. The chipped ceramic jug into which Himmler had dipped a handkerchief an hour earlier, moistening one corner to dab against the fuhrer’s dry, cracked lips.

It was an ignominious end.

There was a furtive tapping at the door. “Herr Reichsfuhrer?”

Himmler removed the pillow. His dead leader’s eyeballs had bulged obscenely in their sockets, and he shuddered at the confronting image. Brushing them closed with one hand, he called out. “Enter.”

Colonel Skorzeny pushed open the heavy metal door with a screeching of poorly oiled hinges. Himmler came up off the floor slowly and awkwardly. His knees hurt, and he had suffered from a stiff and painful back for a couple of weeks. It was all this cramped underground living.

“He is gone,” the SS leader said to the newcomer. “He passed away peacefully, without regaining consciousness. We are all alone now.”

Skorzeny nodded, staring at the body. Whatever he thought of the situation, it remained hidden behind a heavily scarred face on which nothing seemed to move until he spoke.

“The men are in place.”

“Have someone see to the burial detail. It will not be possible to provide full honors because of the bombing, but we must mark this tragedy with all appropriate ceremony. And tell Gцbbels to finish his statement for the radio. I will speak to the general staff now.”

Skorzeny clicked his heels and nodded, snapping his fingers and calling a couple of storm troopers into the room. Their shocked expressions registered the awful truth when they saw Hitler’s corpse on the bed. Himmler admonished them to treat the fuhrer’s remains with due respect.

Then, fitting his hat firmly down over his head, he gathered himself and marched out of the room. His bodyguards fell in beside him as he turned into the passage where naked electric bulbs hung at ten-meter intervals and exposed wiring and pipes ran along the ceiling. A detachment of twelve more SS Sonderaktiontruppen waited for him at the end of the corridor. They all wore field uniforms and carried submachine guns. Their commander ripped out a salute as Himmler approached, barking at his men to fall in behind their new fuhrer. The crashing of their hobnailed boots sounded incredibly loud in the confined space as they set off after him.

The main operations room was on the next level down. As they approached, officers from all three armed services scrambled to get out of the way. Himmler could see that the two Wehrmacht guards at the entrance to the room had been replaced by his own men. He swept past them, flicking an acknowledgment of their salute back over his shoulder. The atmosphere was already subdued when he entered. SS men had discreetly taken up positions around the room. The assembled generals and admirals hovered over the battle-realm display, where hundreds of little wooden blocks and flags brought imagined order to the chaos of the Western Front.

Himmler pulled up at the edge of the giant map table.

“I am afraid the fuhrer has passed away,” he announced solemnly. A few of the women who were present cried out.

“He drew his last breath at thirteen twenty-nine hours. He regained consciousness for a few minutes before the end, and exhorted us all to do our utmost in the defense of the Reich. To that end, and in line with his final wishes, I have assumed the office of chancellor and supreme commander of the armed forces.”

He paused, just briefly, in case somebody should wish to chance their luck against him, but the entire room was cowed. Whether it was due to his armed escort or simply by the magnitude of the disaster they faced, he could not tell. It was of no consequence.

All that mattered was decisive action to save his people and their civilization from the peril of Bolshevism. Himmler knew that every soul in this room cried out for strong leadership. It was vital that he provide it, and quickly.