THE 1/3RD REICH

I remember the snow most of all.

It had buried the streets overnight, swallowing pavements, gardens and rooftops beneath a clean sheet of pure white. At that hour the town was almost silent. Everyone else was still asleep.

I wasn’t.

Snow meant no school. And no school meant we could play Find the Undesirables. This was our favourite game, one team played the Gestapo, and the other team played the undesirables. The goal was for the Gestapo team to find the undesirables and send them off to Britain.

We all knew about Britain.

Once, it had been one of the Reich’s greatest enemies. Our teachers told us that its people had refused to accept the inevitable, continuing to fight even after the rest of Europe had begun to fall beneath the Great Führer.

Then the Reich used its most powerful weapon.

Britain never threatened us again.

Now it was where the undesirables went. We were told they were sent there to be rehabilitated and to repay what they owed the Reich. I never really thought much more about it than that.

Why would I?

The snow also meant our teacher had dropped schoolwork off the night before, just as the first flakes were beginning to settle. Before I could meet my friends, I had to finish it – and worse, wait for my father to wake up and check it.

My father was never the best at waking up. The Americans could be knocking down our front door, and he’d have probably waved them away and asked for five more minutes. This made getting my schoolwork checked a nightmare.

Waking him myself was almost impossible, so all I could do was wait for him to eventually emerge from his deep, uninterrupted slumber.

I sat watching the clock, listening to each tick drag into the next. Minute after minute. I had already been awake for three hours and my schoolwork had been finished for half of that. Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

As the time I was supposed to meet my friends crept closer, I started running through my plan for the game.

I had heard about a recently vacated house not far from the park. Nobody lived there anymore, and if the rumours were true, nobody had been inside since the family left. It was perfect.

In my head, I traced the route from our usual starting point. Down the side street, through the first alleyway. Past the row of houses, then across to the empty one.

I went through every turn until I was certain I could get there before anyone realised where I had gone. I was ready. My father was not.

After what felt like hours of watching the clock, I finally heard footsteps upstairs. My father was awake. I sat at the kitchen table and listened as each heavy footstep grew louder. Across the landing. Down the stairs. Closer and closer.

Before I could even say a word, he let out a tired, grumpy sigh.

“Atlas, Atlas, calm down. The day isn’t going anywhere fast and neither are your friends.”

He was always like this. Always waking up late. Never seeming particularly bothered by anything happening around him. As far as I could tell, he was just content to wake up each morning and still be alive.

He dropped into the chair opposite me, and I slid my schoolwork across the table.

Usually, he barely looked at it. A quick flick through the pages to make sure I had answered everything was normally enough. Not today. He started at the first page and worked through every answer slowly and carefully. Page after page.

I watched him, confused.

He had never taken this much interest in my schoolwork before. There had never really been a need, I had always done well at school, and my teachers regularly told my parents that I was academically gifted. Still, I didn’t question him. Questioning my father meant getting a lecture, and getting a lecture meant being even later than I already was. So, I waited.

Finally, after fifteen minutes, he placed the papers back onto the table.

“You’ve completed everything correctly,” he said.

There was a pause.

“You can go and meet your friends but stay away from anything that looks dangerous.”

He looked at me for a moment longer than usual.

“And Atlas?”

I was already halfway out of my chair.

“Do not, under any circumstances, get too close to the Gestapo.”

I barely gave him an answer. Normally, that would have earned me another lecture, but I was far too excited to finally meet my friends. Besides, I didn’t think anything of his warning. I was playing the undesirable this round.

I had no intention of letting the Gestapo anywhere near me.

It didn’t take long before I was out the door tearing across town to meet my friends at the park square where we usually met. I pushed my legs as fast as they would carry me, weaving through the snow-covered streets as the cold air burned against my lungs. By the time the park finally came into view, I was breathless.

I could already see my friends sat under the tree waiting. Before I had even reached them, Franz shouted across the park.

“You said you would be on time this time!” I said that every time. It was never true.

“I know, I know,” I called back, still trying to catch my breath. “My father decided today was a good day to sleep in even longer than usual.”

Schulz shook his head.

“We’re going to start telling you to meet us a few hours earlier. Maybe then you’ll actually arrive on time.”

Then Emilia joined in, as sharp as ever.

“We’re going to turn grey with how long we spend waiting for you.”

These were my friends. I had known Emilia for as long as I could remember. Apparently, we had met when we were babies, although neither of us remembered any of that. We had grown up together, attended the same schools and rarely spent much time apart.

We were close. That didn’t stop us from constantly trying to prove which of us was better at almost everything.

Franz joined us when we were six. His family had arrived after being relocated from another town. Nobody ever really spoke about why. All I knew was that the Reich had ordered the residents to leave and Franz’s family had ended up here.

Then there was Schulz. His father was a high-ranking military officer, so his family had moved around a lot. Somehow, though, they had stayed in our town for the past six years. Long enough for him to become one of us.

We were all fifteen. Blond hair. Blue eyes. German blood.

Everything we had been taught an ideal citizen should be. Our families had served the Reich for generations. Our grandparents had lived through the war beneath the Great Führer, and some had even played their part in building the system that eventually sent the undesirables to Britain.

We had been told our entire lives that people like us were the future.

The perfect generation for the thousand-year Reich.

I barely caught my breath before the game was starting. Emilia gave us a quick reminder of the rules.

“Atlas, Franz. You’re the undesirables. Ten minutes to hide. Usual boundary.”

Franz and I answered almost perfectly in sync.

“Got it!”

We already knew where we were going. We had planned it out at school days ago.

The moment Emilia started counting, we took off towards the edge of the square, cutting alongside a row of houses before ducking into one of the side streets. The walls were covered in posters. They always were.

The largest reminded everyone about the state-mandated ancestry census being held to close out the twentieth century and welcome in the twenty-first. There was nothing particularly unusual about that. Censuses happened often enough, and every so often they uncovered someone who had managed to hide what they really were.

Beside it was another celebrating the war effort against the Americans.

ZERO GERMAN DEAD SINCE 1950.

VICTORY GROWS CLOSER EVERY DAY.

I barely looked at it. We had been winning for as long as I could remember. Further along was a poster advertising the millennium celebrations. Fireworks. A military parade. Music. Food. And, near the bottom of the list, the public outing of several newly discovered undesirables. Nothing unusual about that either.

Whenever they found some, the whole town usually came out to watch. People shouted at them as they were marched through the streets. Sometimes they threw things. Rocks. Rotten food. Whatever they could get their hands on.

I had heard the same insults dozens of times.

“Filthy Jews.”

“Rats”

“Parasites.”

Nobody ever seemed particularly bothered by it. Neither was I.

Franz and I kept running.

We left the posters behind and turned into the first alleyway. The empty house I had planned to use wasn’t far now. I had heard the family who lived there had moved to Berlin after the father had been given a government job.

It was supposed to be the perfect hiding place.

We hadn’t made it ten steps down the alley when a voice echoed from somewhere around the corner.

“We know you’re in there, you filthy rats!”

Franz and I stopped. For a moment, neither of us said anything. Then we looked at each other and smiled.

This was far more interesting than our game.

We ran towards the shouting.

The closer we got, the louder everything became. Orders being barked. Someone screaming. Dogs snarling and pulling against their leads. We rounded the corner. That was when I saw the uniform. Light grey. Gestapo.

I had only ever seen them in books and propaganda films before. At school, we were taught that they were the ones who kept the Reich clean. The people who found those who had lied about what they were. For a moment, I forgot all about the game.

One of the officers stood beside a large dog, holding tightly onto its lead. Then movement from the house caught my eye. People were being dragged through the doorway.

Two adults. Five children.

One after another, they were thrown onto the ground.

“Please,” one of the adults begged. “Please don’t hurt us. We’re only trying to live.”

An officer struck him across the face with the stock of his rifle. He collapsed onto one knee. Blood ran from his forehead and down the side of his face until it finally started to taint the white snow beneath.

Nobody around us seemed surprised. I wasn’t either. Everyone knew the Gestapo were ruthless with undesirables. That was what made them good at their job.

“Tie them up and put them in the truck,” the officer ordered.

His voice was almost casual.

As the others moved to obey, he crouched beside the dog and scratched behind its ears as though nothing unusual had happened. That was when I really looked at the family.

They looked like us. Blond hair. Blue eyes.

One of the boys couldn’t have been much younger than me. If I had seen him at school, I would have thought nothing of him. If anything, they looked like the people from the posters. But they weren’t.

They were undesirables. Someone nearby started clapping as the family were pulled towards the truck. Others joined in. Then came the shouting.

“Send them to Britain!”

“Make them repay what they stole!”

The family disappeared one by one into the back of the vehicle. They weren’t being sent there to die. That wasn’t what we had been taught. They were going to Britain to be rehabilitated. To work. To repay their debt to the Reich. That was what happened to people like them.

I watched the Gestapo officer straighten his uniform as the truck doors slammed shut. I remember thinking how calm he looked. How important. How powerful. That was the first time I ever saw the Gestapo at work. And for the first time, I knew what I wanted to become.