Chapter One
Eastern Europe autumn 1942
SS Colonel Jurgen Dietrich was not in a favourable frame of mind. Even with the help of his ordonnanz, getting into his uniform had left him fatigued. Standing before the washstand in his billet, he stared balefully at his sallow reflection in the mirror. Despite an indulgent quantity of schnapps before bedtime, he’d slept badly again; now his head felt muzzy, his tongue thick and furry, his stomach uncomfortably bilious. He’d probably feel better if he could have a cleansing vomit he reasoned but, to his annoyance, he was just shy of that impulse, no matter how much he gagged, being miserably afflicted instead by a persistent nausea. In retrospect, he should have eaten more at dinner, but his appetite wasn’t what it used to be, even though the cook was excellent. He sighed, drawing a hand slowly over his face, letting it linger to massage the spot on his right temple that throbbed with a nasty little headache where the vengeful imp of excess was hammering on the inside of his skull. Another retch saw him bring up a glob of bitter-tasting bile, which he spat into the basin with an involuntary shudder. He watched in disgust as the viscous yellow muck slithered down the white porcelain and disappeared into the drain. Much more of this and he’d end up with an ulcer or, worse, a seriously compromised liver. Coinciding with this worrisome thought he formed a fleeting mental image of his liver: a swollen, fatty, purplish mass about to explode like a hand grenade.
‘Fucking war!’ He slammed the corroded metal plug viciously into the drain and turned on the taps.
The colonel was deeply reluctant to face the day and what it promised to deliver: yet another ‘Aktion’, which would inevitably involve more tedious pleading, screaming, kids with snot smeared over their cheeks, hysterical mothers, and blood and brains flying everywhere. The men doing the shooting would get covered in the foul stuff, and it smelt bad. People might not believe that blood had a smell, but it did when it was spilled in large quantities: an earthy, pungent, cloying odour that made your guts feel queasy; like that meaty, sawdust-and-cleaver stench that causes your nostrils to twitch and excites the blunt, primeval area of your brain when you walk into a butcher’s shop. Swilling vodka during the whole operation didn’t help either, because it just resulted in poor marksmanship from the Hiwis and ever more ghastly scenes when the German officers present were required to administer coups de grace. Not him, of course. He left such details to his men.
But what he hated most was the submission on the part of the adult males. They were always shot first so they couldn’t become inflamed by seeing their families despatched in the second wave, and he despised them for not being able to protect their dearest ones. Any man worth the title would at least put up some semblance of a fight, he considered, even a futile one. Anyway, why should he even care, if it made his job easier?
The men were all becoming alcoholics, their eyes bright and manic, their souls erased by the grisly work they carried out day after day. They were ruined for life, but what could you do? They had their orders. Thank god for strong liquor. Without its anaesthesia they’d all go really mad – if they hadn’t already arrived at that particular crossroads.
There was a small amount of schnapps left in the bottle on the nightstand and he downed it quickly in a vain hair-of-the-dog kind of rationale before his ordonnanz, Brandt, returned with coffee. It was hideous ersatz stuff that made his tastebuds pucker, but he drank it anyway as a good Nazi should, to help the war effort.
‘Where are we today?’ he asked as he accepted his delicate bone china demitasse. ’These wretched shtetls all look the same to me.’
’Alida, Herr Standartenführer. Your car is ready when you are. Are you sure I can’t tempt you to a buttered roll? We have eggs this morning as well.’
‘Perhaps later. Put some in a luncheon basket.’
‘Eggs or a roll, sir.’
‘Dammit, man, I don’t know! Use your blasted initiative for once!’
‘Yes, sir. Anyway, it’s a nice day, sir. You should be able to have the top down.’
‘Nice day, you say. There’s no such thing as a nice day in this god forsaken country!’
Dietrich slammed his coffee cup down, still half full, rammed his cap on to his fastidiously pomaded thick, blond hair and headed for the door. He hadn’t done a doctorate in law to deal with this crap on a daily basis and now it was going badly in Russia anyway, troops bogged down before Moscow and Leningrad with another winter not far away. The first one had taken them by surprise with its ferocity; they hadn’t been prepared for it. Not like the damned Russians; they seemed impervious to the cold with their weird padded jackets and primitive felt boots. Even winters in Germany were more civilised. The Führer had lost interest in those other two cities anyway and was focusing everything on Stalingrad. Hopefully, the Sixth Army would do better there. The symbolism of the victory would do much to restore morale.
Dietrich was going to demand some leave as soon as this area was Judenfrei, cleansed of Jews, so he could go home to visit Lottie, whose letters sounded increasingly desperate over little Siegfried’s lungs playing up again. Factor in the relentless Allied bombing on Hamburg and the woman was quasi-hysterical all the time.
Standing on the top step, he paused for a moment, eyes closed, pulling on his grey lambskin gloves, a present from Gerda, (another reason he wanted leave – to catch up with his mistress) and enjoying the tender warmth on his good-looking face from the mellow, late autumn sun. He patted his chest as another hearty belch blew out his cheeks. At the foot of the steps, his driver sat patiently behind the wheel of the kubelwagen that Brandt euphemistically called a “car”. Its heavy suspension made for an uncomfortable ride. If Brandt had forgotten the cushion for his back, there would be hell to pay. Dietrich sighed deeply as he descended the steps. Duty called. Time to go to work.
The partisans had been ready since dawn. Their mole had given them a detailed description of Dietrich’s vehicle and the man himself as well as his destination of Alida, just another small Jewish hamlet unaware of its impending demise. They’d never seen Dietrich, but they knew his grim handiwork well.
Ever since the Germans had invaded Russia in June 1941, the specialist death squads known as the Einsatzgruppen followed in their wake like dark avenging angels with the sole purpose of carrying out Hitler’s vision of a Jew-free Europe. This was the first phase of what would become the Holocaust: Shoah by bullets. Far from being a gang of murderous thugs, the Einsatzgruppen were led by well-educated, professedly cultured men who had no qualms about their apocalyptic mission, indeed, embraced it willingly as a vital part of their illustrious leader’s vision for a new Europe. And when had he been wrong? Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, he’d blitzed them all. Bit of a hiccup with the Englanders in 1940, but he’d deal with them later, no doubt about that. And hadn’t they rolled over the Ivans in those heady days of summer ’41? Surrounded them in the thousands and marched them into captivity, sorry looking creatures, dirty and demoralised, many of them without even a decent weapon. Yes, the Führer had it right, unquestionably. He was infallible. A lot of those Russkis had eluded them just the same, and now many of them were formed into increasingly sophisticated and deadly partisan bands that harried the Germans relentlessly behind their lines. It was one such group that lay in wait for Dietrich that mild, sunny morning, waiting to send the golden-haired bastard to Valhalla once and for all.
