Helter Skelter by Arun D Ellis - book 7 in the Corpalism series

Descent 2

Goering has two but very small....

The days since what Louis now referred to as 'The Great Revelation' had passed in a haze.

He was distraught. He wasn't eating or sleeping, his head was filled with mush. The man he'd admired and trusted above even his own father, was a Nazi. So much of what had made Louis who he was had been based on a lie.

In their oft-repeated discussions about military matters the question of sides had always been skirted round, in a 'don't mention the war' kind of way. Gampy had been a German soldier. Nothing wrong with that, he was the right age; it was to be expected.

But not SS, not a Nazi, that was not to be expected, that was horrific.

He needed an explanation; how could such a benevolent man have been involved in something so heinous?

As a budding military historian with a special interest in 20th Century wars Louis had a considerable number of DVDs and books on the subject but it was to his video library he turned first, stored on his YouTube site, hundreds of videos, easy to access and meticulously (some would say, obsessively) catalogued.

He found one he'd watched many times before and clicked the play button. As expected, Hitler appeared on the screen, gesticulating wildly, addressing row upon row of Germans, all of them saluting. It made him feel sick.

He pressed pause and stared at the frozen image, wishing he could arrest the turmoil in his brain as easily. He pressed play and watched shot after shot of fanatical people, all seemingly mesmerised by their demonic Führer.

He stood up abruptly, leaving the video playing, and went in search of his books on Hitler; an extensive collection gathered over several years, some having been gifts from his great-grandfather, they sat alongside his Churchill and Stalin books. He flicked through one after the other impatiently then threw himself onto the sofa and buried his head in his hands.

Distraught, he grabbed his phone and texted Jenna.

They'd spoken the night before and she'd seemed to take it better than he'd expected, yet he was worried that he hadn't been able to see her expression, had been forced to trust the tone of her voice. She'd said it was so long ago, that it wasn't anything to do with him and who he was, but it hadn't helped. He felt the terrible guilt that he knew every German must carry with them. He needed to see her. He waited tensely for a reply and then gave up. Either her phone was off or she'd had second thoughts and was now ignoring him.

Left to himself he went online in search of books not on his shelves.

He found and downloaded five 'revisionist' books he felt might help him better understand his great grandfather and the 'other side' of the Hitler phenomenon.

He continued his search finding; 'Young Hitler' by August Kubizek[2]. He'd heard of it but never read it, had been told it was a romanticised view of the tyrant written by a latent homosexual. He checked the reviews. They recommended another translation; he found it and downloaded a copy to his Kindle. Then he ordered the hard copy version of the first translation. He would read both and get to the bottom of this if it killed him.

∞



Louis had always found Hitler's rise fascinating, and admired German military prowess. He had always been certain in the rightness of the Allied position and the wrongness of the German one. However, having spent two days reading what he would previously have called revisionist propaganda, he was feeling muddled; he needed to talk it over.

Much as he hated to admit it, the only person who could help him was Gampy Jaggs. To make matters worse, according to Louis' mother, Gampy was in hospital, apparently at death's door, following a fall. He phoned his mother, saying as soon as she answered, "I need to speak with great grandfather."

"Louis?" She sounded troubled; Louis had never called him by his formal title, not since he was a little boy who had trouble with the mouthful of words and ended up with Gampy.

"I want to talk to him," said Louis.

"He's not well, Louis. We agreed to tell you only because he thinks he's in the end stage."

"Well, you told me, and now I need to ask him some questions."

"He's not up to anything painful, Louis."

"He wanted me told and if he's going to die then I need to talk to him right now." The callousness shocked him as he spoke but he realised he meant every word.

"Louis!" There was a long silence then she spoke, quietly, "I need to check with your father."

"What's it to do with him? It's not his blood, is it?"

She sighed, "He has the right to an opinion, Louis."

"It's not like he's just had the shock of his life, either. He already knew, didn't he?"

"Of course he did, Louis, love, I could hardly have married him and him not knowing. It might have come out and then where would we have been?"

"Oh yeah, where would you have been?" Sarcasm dripping, Louis was angrier than he'd ever thought it possible to be, "You'd be right where I am now...up shit street. I don't understand so I need Gampy Jaggs to tell me. I need to ask him why."

"Ah Louis," she said, her tone unbearably soft and pitying.

"Don't 'ah Louis' me, just make sure I can visit."




Descent 3

Himmler has something similar...

The nurse finished puffing Gampy Jaggs' pillow, then she eased him back, "Are you okay there, Fred?" The Irish lilt made the soft words even softer.

"Yes, thank you, Shelagh," said the old man, face sallow against the whiteness of the pillows.

Louis pulled a face, his irritation with his great grandfather difficult to suppress.

"Now, don't you go over exerting yourself, with your visitor and all." She shot a meaningful glance at Louis, sensing his antagonism.

Louis waited until the door closed before launching into his interrogation, "Well?" he asked.

The old man looked fondly at his great grandson and sighed deeply.

"Mum's told me," said Louis, looking round nervously, "you were SS."

There was a slight nod of the head, the simple act seeming to tire the old man.

"What the fuck! How could you be one of those murderers? You said you were just a grunt, you said you were just doing as you were told, like everyone else."

"Everyone was a National Socialist back then," said the old man, imperturbably.

"They weren't all SS, though, were they?" pressed Louis, "The SS were the true believers."

"Everyone was a believer, both before and after the war."

"Don't give me that," said Louis, "decent Germans were against Hitler and his lunatic clique."

The old man closed his eyes against the loudness of Louis' voice, but his own voice came back strongly, "That's what they said after the war, it's what they say now because the world is so anti Germany."

"You started two world wars. You murdered millions and instigated the Holocaust...what did you expect?"

"We started neither war. Germany was the victim of prejudice and racial hatred."

Louis collapsed into the chair next to the bed. This was not how he'd thought it would go. He'd expected some bravado but not outright denial of the facts.

His great-grandfather sought for words, then expelled them in a rush, "The greatest lesson I have learned is that no-one can defeat the power of the Jews."

"Oh my god," said Louis, raising his hands to his mouth, "you're a racist."

"Louis, Louis, for all your studying, you know nothing."

There was a silence, broken by the old man's breathing, coming with difficulty through a rattling chest. Then he spoke again, "Germany stood against the greed of Jewish financiers. She tried to introduce a social structure that enabled the people to benefit from their labours....."

"What are you on?"

"No, no, Louis, listen to me...."

"No, you listen, you're so far out of order I can't begin to describe where you're going wrong."

"Louis, please, you must let me explain."

"Explain?" Louis' voice was high with indignation, "How can you possibly explain the Holocaust? The mass murders and rapes? The slaughter of millions?"

"And what of our losses?" demanded the old man, eyes flashing. "What about the murder of our civilians in brutal bombing raids? What of the immolation of Dresden? What of the millions of German women gang raped by the Russians?" He broke off, coughing, then resumed, "What about thousands of German soldiers left to die in the fields after the war, and the thousands of illegal executions by your own troops?"

Louis looked troubled momentarily then shook his head in negation.

His great-grandfather continued, remorselessly, his voice thick with emotion, "And all this crashed down on our heads because Hitler brought into being social reform that was alien to the Jews and the Liberal economy of the democracies."

"Rubbish! You were the greatest evil in history."

"Tch! What would the Indians and Africans of your Empire think about that statement? What about the Chinese and the Arabs? What of all the aboriginal peoples you conquered?"

"That was for trading purposes, and very different," said Louis, stoutly, "anyway, we were already looking to run the Empire down."

"Louis, read your books again...both wars were fought because Germany was proving to be economically more effective than any other European country."

"I don't care about all that, all I care about is you were SS."

"And proud to have been so," said Gampy Jaggs, defiantly, "proud to have fought for National Socialism and for the Führer and to have been there with him at the last."

The nurse came in, attracted by the old man's raised voice. Once she had satisfied herself that her charge was happy with the presence of this angry young man, she left, but not without giving Louis a hard stare from the door.

Louis deflated; this was far worse than he'd ever thought it could be. Surely his Gampy hadn't meant he was actually 'with him at the last'?

He forced out a question, hoping to catch the old man in a lie, "If you were in the bunker, how'd you escape from the Russians?"

The reply was terse, "Luck." Then he put everything he had into his voice, ignoring the pain in his chest, "Louis, you've studied history all these years, you think you know everything there is about the wars, but you know nothing of what we fought for or why we fought."

"To conquer the world," hissed Louis, mindful of the nurse, still within earshot no doubt.

"We fought to defend our way of life, to defend our social revolution."

"Social revolution? Oh yeah, where you're the master race and everyone else is subservient."

"Hitler never said that, that was allied propaganda."

"Ha, you're a right one to talk about propaganda, Goebbels invented it."

"Another lie from perfidious Albion; the Führer was proud to be German. He said the Germanic peoples were the most culturally advanced in the world. What leader doesn't say that about their people?"

"Bollocks," snapped Louis, "We had the biggest fucking empire."

"You're angry because you think he said that we Germans were better than the British, you don't really care about other people."

"I just meant that we were better than you."

"Don't you think that you English are related to we Germans? Aren't you Anglo Saxons?"

"Not the same thing at all," said Louis, "anyway that's off point, I want to know why you supported Hitler, why you were willing to compromise yourself to support that evil."

"I compromised myself when I lied about being in the SS, when I denounced the Führer."

"Well, if he was so great, why did you do that?"

"No choice," the old man sounded every one of his years, "the Jews had brought about our destruction. We had to denounce all the good National Socialism represented."

"The Jews did what?" Louis choked on the question. "And, did you say Nazis represented good?"

"Bah!" His great-grandfather waved his hand dismissively, "You will not listen to reason. I was wrong about you. I thought that now you were older you would understand."

"How can I understand?" said Louis, "Who could ever understand what you people did? Would the lovely Shelagh understand? Shall I call her in and tell her who she's nursing?"

"You must do as you think fit, Louis, I don't have the energy to fight. You have absorbed Jewish lies as gospel truths, without any academic challenge....."

"Jewish lies?" gasped Louis, "You gassed millions of innocent people, women and children."

"And how exactly did we do that?" The voice from the bed was unnervingly cold, not at all like the man Louis had been brought up to love, "I would be interested to know how we did this."

"You know how you did it," said Louis, "the entire fucking world knows how you did it."

"Ah, yes, of course, we converted shower rooms into gas chambers, that's right, isn't it?"

"This is nothing to joke about," said Louis.

"What were the mechanics of it? How does one convert a shower room into a gas chamber?"

"I don't know, Gampy," said Louis, aware he sounded childish and sullen.

"Why don't you know? Shouldn't you have made it your business to know? You're so willing to believe that's what we Germans did, shouldn't you at least find out how it's done?"

"No," said Louis, "not necessary."

"Not necessary? Not necessary? You think it is academically sound to make the accusation without any form of evidence? And you call yourself an historian."

"Evidence!" retorted Louis. "What about all the bodies? The film footage of the camps that the allies found? The bulldozers, the piles of starved and emaciated bodies."

"You mean the camps the British and Americans found? Those people died of typhus, you ignorant child, we didn't kill them, you did."

Louis was silent; appalled.

"The allies bombed our roads, our cities, destroyed our supply links. We couldn't get the insecticides to the camps to combat the diseases that were killing thousands...."

"Unintended consequences, you can't blame that on us..." began Louis.

"How many murder camps do you think there were?" demanded Gampy Jaggs, waving a finger at his grandson.

"Ha!" said Louis, "So you agree there were murder camps."

"And while you're on that question, where do you think they were situated?"

"I don't know," said Louis, uncomfortably aware of his lack of knowledge on this level of detail, "Germany, somewhere in Germany, and in Poland."

"It might interest you to know that real historians now agree that the only so-called 'murder camps' were those discovered by the Russians, in Poland."

"So what?" said Louis, smarting at the implied slur, "They were still murder camps."

"The Russians lied, just like when they accused us of killing the Poles in Katyn forest."

"Oh come on," Louis said, shaking his head.

"First it was said 4 million died in Auschwitz alone, then the figure was revised to just over 1 million. How long before it drops to half a million only?"

Gampy Jaggs reached a shaky hand out for his glass of water. He took a sip and then put the glass back, "You still haven't answered my question, how do you turn a shower room into a gas chamber?"

"I don't care," said Louis.

"Ha! And you want to be an historian."

Louis could see the disappointment in his eyes and responded, stung, "Someone will have worked out how they did it, otherwise it couldn't be history."

Gampy Jaggs continued to stare at him.

"Tell you what," said Louis, flourishing his tablet, "I'll look it up now and show you."

"And whilst you're doing that you might want to look at an American gas chamber, and compare the two. Also, give a thought to this question. If mass gassing is such an effective method of genocide, why is it that no-one else has attempted to copy the process?"

"What? You're trying to confuse me."

"Why didn't the Serbs gas the Croatians? Why didn't the Khmer Rouge gas their people? Why hasn't any other murderous dictatorship used gassing as a means of genocide?"

One hour later Louis gave up his research, tossing the tablet on his great-grandfather's bed. Gampy Jaggs woke with a start and moaned slightly.

"Okay," said Louis, grumpily, "but just 'cause gassing is complicated it doesn't mean the Germans didn't work out a way of doing it."

Gampy Jaggs moaned and pumped in more morphine.

"I'm going to look this up and find out more," said Louis, ignoring the old man's pain, "and I will prove to you how it was done."

"You'll never be able to work it out," said Gampy Jaggs, "the so called gas chambers were destroyed, they don't exist anymore."

"Of course they exist," said Louis, "I've seen them on TV."

"Reconstructions," said Gampy Jaggs, "More Russian lies."

"Bollocks," snapped Louis, "they were the real buildings."

"Reconstructions, look it up on your, your, thing....."

"Tablet," said Louis.

"Look it up," said Gampy Jaggs.

"I will if I want to," said Louis irritably, "anyway, I don't care about the mechanics, I just want to know why you were a Nazi, and a member of the SS."

"National Socialist, Louis. I believed in the Führer and his revolution."

"You were seduced by his lies, you mean," offered Louis, hopefully.

"Lies? The Führer never lied to us, he always told us the truth...."

"Oh, like he told you he wanted to conquer the world," said Louis.

"He never wanted that, he hated war, hated the sacrifice, he'd served in the trenches."

"He loved it," said Louis, "everyone knows he was obsessed with war."

"You're confusing him with Churchill, Louis. Besides the Führer did not start the war."

"Yes he did," hissed Louis, "he invaded Poland."

"Do your research, boy. The Poles were terrorising Germans who had lived for centuries on land that had been stolen from us and given to Poland after the first war. We had been forced to abandon the German people who lived there."

"Rubbish," said Louis, hoping desperately that it was.

"You call yourself an historian, yet you don't even know what happened in Europe between the wars, you have no idea how we Germans were treated by the rest of Europe."

"What did you expect?" said Louis, "You started the Great War."

"Louis, you are so woefully misinformed that this conversation is almost worthless."

"Oh, here we go again," said Louis, "you didn't start that war either. What? You got mugged off that time as well, did you?"

"We did not start either war and we most certainly did not declare war on Britain, ever."

Louis opened his mouth to argue but realised he couldn't because technically, on both occasions, Britain had declared war on Germany.

Hope you have a nice week

Cheers

Arun




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