The Munich Faction - 1: Courier, page 1
The Munich Faction – 1:
Courier
A Parallel Nazi Novel
Ward Wagher
The Munich Faction – 1:
Courier
A Parallel Nazi Novel
Ward Wagher
Cover Picture from German Archives
Copyright © 2022 Paris Mountain Press
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To the Jewish People who suffered such atrocity during World War 2.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Bob and Walter who edited the text and offered suggestions which could only improve the book. Thanks to Ric for reading and commenting on the story. And thanks to the readers who make this all worth while
.
CHAPTER ONE
November 9, 1938; 10 PM
Munich, Germany
This was the most exciting night of his life, thought Gerhard Wicklein. Upon finishing school, the teachers made it clear that he was not a good candidate for further education. An uncle had arranged for him to be apprenticed to an accountant. So during the day, he worked for Klaus Wolcke, tabulating endless columns of numbers. He spent the evenings with his friends in one Bierkeller or another.
Gerhard made enough money to cover his rent, food, and a couple of beers in the evening, but there was not a lot left over. So when a couple of people in his group of friends joined the Sturmabteilung, otherwise known as the Brownshirts, he thought things over carefully.
He would receive a couple of uniforms and a monthly stipend by joining the group. Plus, it would involve him in the Nazi government. He was convinced that Hitler had saved Germany. He wanted to do his part to help the Reich.
Tonight they were going to teach the verdammte Jews a lesson. The blood-sucking parasites were about to realize that their free ride was over. As Hitler had explained, the Jews were responsible for Germany’s loss in the first World War. And they were waiting for the opportunity to stab Germany in the back once again.
The head of their unit, Merten Burkhart, walked the line of young men, inspecting the tools they would use this evening. Gerhard was at the head of the line and held up the ax handle he had appropriated for tonight’s work. Several carried clubs, and he saw a few crowbars. The more enterprising SA members had attachéd a bicycle chain to a wooden handle. The result made for a wicked weapon in the street skirmishes.
“Now remember, hey, men,” Merten instructed. “We must not harm any Aryans, and we must be careful not to damage Aryan businesses downtown. Any Jew business is fair game; hey, what? And if you encounter any Jews on the street, it would be a good opportunity to remind them of who is in charge in Germany.”
This generated an enthusiastic growl from the assembled men. Not only were they serving the Reich, but they thought it would be fun.
The group marched along the street towards the downtown, laughing and singing patriotic songs. At this time of night, very few people were out and about. Those who happened along the sidewalk stopped to watch them march past, and many gave a clenched fist salute. They were doing the Führer’s work and were proud of it.
Burkart pointed out a clothing store owned by a Jew. Two of the young men trotted over and used their clubs to break the windows out of the shop. They jumped through the now open window and into the store. Gerhard could see them as they dumped racks of clothing on the floor, and one of the two struck a match. As they came out of the building, it was easy to see flames dancing inside. On the way to rejoin the group, Burkart got them marching again.
Upon marching into a downtown section heavily populated by Jewish businesses, Burkart called a halt. He turned to face the group.
“All right, men, this is it. Some of our people came through earlier today and identified the businesses that we need to encourage, hey. Look for an orange dot or an orange Star of David somewhere on the front of the store. Now let’s get busy.”
The group split up and began moving towards the businesses. Gerhard swung his ax handle, and a plate glass window shattered satisfyingly. It was yet another clothing store, and he rushed in and began upending all of the racks. A glass case held jewelry such as cuff links and tie clips. He smashed the case with the ax handle and scattered the contents around the room.
A cash register sat at one end of the counter, and Gerhard attacked it enthusiastically. It took several hard impacts to smash in the top of the machine. He then dumped it on the floor. Curtains hid the entrance to the dressing rooms, and he yanked them off the wall. He kicked over manikins and swept folded garments off the table and onto the floor. This was fun. Having fun while serving Herr Hitler was a good thing, in his mind.
“Are you done in there yet, Gerhard?” Burkhart shouted.
“I’m just getting started,” he shouted back.
“We have a lot of ground to cover tonight. So don’t tarry.”
Gerhard leaned over, struck a match, and carefully used it to start a fire in the pile of clothing that he had dumped on the floor. The fire caught quickly, so he trotted towards the front and jumped out through the window onto the sidewalk. The broken glass crunched under his feet and glittered in the glow of the streetlights.
He moved to the next shop, which was a shoe store. It had an orange dot painted on the window. Once again, he swung his ax handle and brought the glass window crashing down. He was at a loss how to handle the shop. After thinking for a few moments, he began sweeping all of the shoes from the racks into a pile in the middle of the store. These looked like well-made shoes to him, and he wondered if anyone would say anything if he collected a new pair for himself but remembered that Burkhart had been hurrying them along.
He found a small office at the rear of the store and scattered the papers and ledgers around, and dumped over a file cabinet. He studied it for a moment and decided it would work for his purposes, so he struck another match and got the paper burning. He trotted back to the front of the store and stepped out onto the street. He could hear the sound of breaking glass and his people hooting all around him.
The work continued through the night, and it was about five in the morning when he came to a small delicatessen. The orange dot on the glass was unmistakable. There were lights on in this shop, and Gerhard thought he might have an opportunity actually to encounter a Jew. He intended to teach them a lesson about stealing from the Reich.
The window shattered with a satisfying crash, and Gerhard leaped into the store. The fresh foods were neatly arranged in a long row of glass cases. He worked his way along the cases, smashing them and scattering the kosher meats around the room. Shelves contained prepared foods, such as jars of pickles and sauerkraut. The jars shattered when he knocked them off of the shelves. The contents splattered themselves nicely around the store. He was proud of the way he had worked to destroy the store.
He walked towards the back, looking for an office. The darkling activities had used up all his matches, so he was limited to simply scattering the papers and destroying what he could in the office. He walked around the corner, and sitting in a chair in the office was a young man about his age. The terrified look on the man’s face did not bother Gerhard, but the little girl the proprietor held in his lap brought him to a complete halt. She did not look frightened but only wide-eyed.
“Are you going to hurt us?” she asked in her little girl voice.
What am I doing? he asked himself. The little girl was not guilty of actions against the Reich. Her only mistake was getting up early to come to the store with her Vater. The young man looked a lot like one of Gerhard’s cousins. And if he were married and had a little girl, this one would likely resemble his daughter.
“I will not hurt you,” he heard himself say. “Leave this place so that you do not get arrested.”
Gerhard somehow managed to stumble out of the store and look around. His group of brownshirts congregated in the center of the street. It looked as though they had completed the night’s tasks. The men were boisterously laughing and shouting.
He walked over to the group as they bragged about their various exploits of the night. Merten Burkhart walked up, and the brownshirts fell into order.
“All right, men. Good work tonight, hey, or maybe we should say good work this morning.”
Everyone laughed, and Gerhard smiled.
“Form up, and let’s get back to the offices, hey. Those of you with jobs are going to have a long day.”
There was more laughter as they slipped into two columns and followed Burkart as he marched off.
Gerhard hurried back to his one-room apartment, hoping to get at least an hour of sleep before leaving for work. He lay down on his bed, but he would see the little Jewish girl whenever he closed his eyes. Finally, he rose again and went down the hall to the bathroom. At least it was early enough that he could take his time getting cleaned up and shaven.
Frau Kassel, the landlady, had breakfast ready when he walked downstairs. When he sat down at the dining table, she slid a plate of sausage, eggs, and potatoes in front of him. The coffee was already poured.
“This looks wonderful, Frau Kassel. I didn’t think breakfast would be ready this early.”
“What time did you come in, Herr Wicklein?”
“I don’t know. I think it was about 5 o’clock.”
“And did you get any sleep?”
He shook his head. He was still preoccupied with the little Jewish girl.
“Then, you should eat. You will need the protein today. Accidents happen when you get tired and careless. You will want to be careful as you walk to work today.”
“I plan to be very careful today, Frau Kassel,” he said.
“And was your evening satisfactory?” the old lady asked.
He looked at the stocky form and wondered why she was quizzing him. She usually said little, and he doubted she had spoken to him three times since he moved in.
“I guess we did what we set out to do.”
“And are you proud of the work you did?” She pressed.
He stared at her and wondered why she was pressing him so hard.
“We did what needed to be done, Frau Kassel.”
She glared at him for a few moments and then pointed to his plate. “Eat your breakfast, Herr Wicklein. You have a long day ahead of you.”
Without another word, she turned and marched back to the kitchen. The dishes in the cabinet along one wall rattled as she walked past. He gazed curiously at the door to the kitchen and then returned to his breakfast. Frau Kassel’s cooking was almost magical. It really was excellent.
The other renters in the building were terrified of Frau Kassel. But she did not bother Gerhard much. He had grown up with a formidable mother. He was not terrified of his mother, but he certainly was respectful.
He felt his eyelids growing heavy as he worked on the meal. Yes, it was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER TWO
November 10, 1938; 5:30 PM
Munich, Germany
Gerhard finally escaped Klaus Wolcke’s attention at five-thirty that afternoon. Merten Burkhart had been correct. It was a long day. Staying awake was tough, especially when most of the work involved totaling long rows of numbers. The bookkeeper had a mechanical adding machine which he used extensively, but since Gerhard was the apprentice, Wolcke made him do all the calculations by hand.
He suspected the small accounting business owner did not entirely approve of his nocturnal activities, but the middle-aged man had never said anything about it. Wolcke also said nothing about the deep circles around Gerhard’s eyes or of his struggles to remain awake. However, the accountant did pay attention to Gerhard and would pile on more work if he suspected the young man was flagging.
The streets of downtown Munich were not very busy for a midweek evening. A pall of smoke hung in the air. Gerhard thought this was the result of the previous night’s activities. The citizens of Munich moved about in an almost tentative manner. It seems no one wanted an encounter with the brown-shirted hooligans who had, in a single night, destroyed much of the city’s Jewish business.
Time to stop woolgathering, Gerhard, he said to himself. If you don’t get home, you will miss supper. Frau Kassel always closed the doors to the dining room promptly at 6 PM. Any of the rooming house tenants who failed to arrive home by that time would then face either going without supper or having to buy the meal somewhere. Klaus had kept him working late several times on one project or the other, and he had then walked back to the delicatessen to buy a sandwich for supper when he arrived to find the doors closed. And Klaus did not pay him extra when he required him to work late.
When walking the streets of downtown Munich, one often saw interesting sights. Munich was the birthplace and the heart of the German Nazi party. Party members and other government officials went about their business in full view of the populace. It was not unusual to see Martin Bormann, the Parteileiter, or Reinhard Heydrich, one of Himmler’s assistants in town.
Tonight, as he walked, he heard the sound of tromping feet behind him. He initially thought it was a group of brownshirts marching on one errand or another, but the cadence seemed sloppy to him. He turned to see a column of men being marched along the street by a group of brownshirts. The marchers were dressed in suits or ordinary workingmen’s clothes. It looked as though most if not all of them had the six-sided Star of David pinned to their lapels.
It looked to Gerhard like about 40 to 50 Jewish men were in the column. The brownshirts were swinging sticks at them to keep them motivated. As they marched along, the brownshirts shouted insults and slurs at them. Twenty-four hours earlier, he would have cheered them on. Tonight, though, the face of the little Jewish girl was still before him. He stopped and stared as they marched past him. Then remembering his urgency, he hastened to get home. He slipped through the door and into his chair in the dining room with three minutes to spare but was breathing heavily.
“Cutting it a bit late, are we, Gerhard?” Anson Toffler asked.
Gerhard shook his head. “Old man Wolcke kept me working late as usual. I almost didn’t make it.”
“The shop owners have no respect for the proletariat,” the slight, bald man commented with a smile. “You should go on strike.”
Gerhard shook his head. “They’re not so many jobs out there that I can afford to do that, Anson. And if I landed on the street, I would be pulled into the Army in short order.”
“And that is no place for dedicated Communists,” he grinned.
“I don’t know about that,” Gerhard laughed, “but it is no place for this boy.”
The door from the kitchen banged open, and Frau Kassel carried a pot of pork stew which she placed in the center of the table with a clunk. She returned a few moments later with a basket of bread which she also set on the table. The six people sitting around the table passed a pitcher of lager among themselves to fill their glasses.
The rooming house hosted six middle-aged and younger men as tenants and no women. The younger people waited for the older ones to ladle the stew into their bowls. After passing the bread around, they dug in to eat. As always, the food was tasty and plentiful.
The conversation around the table was usually lively, but tonight Gerhard brooded over the previous night’s experiences. Plus, he was tired. After a few noncommittal answers, the others left him alone to his meal. That was fine with him.
He finished his stew and bread and thought perhaps he would sit there for a few moments to relax. He blinked and raised his head, and the others had disappeared from the room, and the table seemed magically cleaned up. Frau Kassel stood in the room with her arms folded across her chest and glowered at him.
“Perhaps you should go upstairs to bed, Herr Wicklein.”
“I believe I dozed off there for just a minute,” he replied.
“You have been asleep for a half-hour. Considering what you were doing last night, I have no sympathy for you.”
“There was a little girl,” he said suddenly.
“A little Jewish girl,” the old lady said softly. “Yes, I know.”
“She asked if I was going to hurt her.”
“You were not able to do anything to her or her father,” Frau Kassel stated.
“They are people, too, aren’t they, Frau Kassel?”
“And how many people’s livelihoods did you destroy last night?” she asked, still speaking softly.
“It’s got to be thousands,” he whispered. “I have done a terrible thing.”
“That is beyond dispute, Herr Wicklein. We seem intent on destroying people who want nothing more but to go about their business.”
He stared at the old woman and took a shuddering breath.
“Whatever am I going to do?” was his anguished cry.
“That is something you must face. But you won’t solve it here. Now return to your room. Your mind will be clear in the morning.”
Gerhard struggled up the stairs to his tiny room and flopped down on the bed. He did not think he would be able to sleep again, but he did. He slept the entire night, but every time he turned in his dreams, the face of the little Jewish girl haunted him.
November 11, 1938; 6:00 PM
Gasthaus Bavaria
Munich, Germany
“Lager tonight, meine Herren?”
Karl Rainer looked up at Alois Mittner, the proprietor of Gasthaus Bavaria. “Yes, and I think we would like to eat as well.”
