Doenitz Blows Cool When Giant, Uber-secret Flying Boats Show Up in Flensburg

Rather than drive directly back to the Marineschule, Cremer drove to a hillside overlooking the tiny harbor. There must have been a hundred ships and boats crammed in there; U-boats, destroyers, freighters and tankers, along with dozens of tugs, gunboats, patrol craft and minesweepers. None flew flags. Floating on the glistening water, in the bright morning light, they looked colorless, except for streaks of red oxide and rust.

“Let me show you something,” said Cremer, pointing to the far corner of the harbor. Ziggy looked and to his utter shock, saw that there was a scattering of seaplanes and behind them, three monstrous four-engine flying boats bobbing in the water. He couldn’t believe it. Until now, the only flying boats he’d ever seen had been much smaller British Catalinas. Early in the war, there had been a lot of enthusiastic talk about some getting built for the German Navy. But since, as the saying went, everything that flew belonged to fat Hermann Goering, a man with a pronounced antagonism towards naval affairs, the matter was apparently shelved. But now, here, a few hundred meters from him, three of them floated like a fact of life.

“My God,” exclaimed Ziggy, “I didn’t even know we had any!”

“Neither did the Grand Admiral,” said Cremer giving a bitter smirk. “Needless to say he flew into a rage when they suddenly appeared the other day. They’re special operations stuff. Flew in two days ago from Bornholm, right when the Russians were moving in. They’re part of something called KG200, a top secret unit no one has ever heard of, not Jodl, not Keitel, not even anyone from the Luftwaffe High Command. Officially they’re Luftwaffe, but under SS command. Of course your friend Westerby seemed to know all about them. Apparently he believes Himmler ordered them here for his getaway.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“It could be. It’s just that the SS has vanished once they found out that the British were looking for them. Nobody has seen neither hide nor hair of Himmler in days. We heard he was up at Field Marshall Busch’s headquarters for a while, but then Busch withdrew his hospitality and no one knows where he is now.

“So why are the flying boats here?”

“That is the big mystery,” mused Cremer. They just showed up here one morning, like a flock of snow geese. Doenitz had the pilots brought in and demanded they tell him who ordered them to come here. They say they don’t know, that it all comes from a secret source.”

“So what did they claim they’d been using those boats for?”

“Supplying weather stations in Spitzbergen and Greenland.”

“What a waste!” sighed Ziggy. “Think how many U-boat crews we might have saved if we’d had access to them.”

“That’s what the Old Man said."

For a minute, neither of them said anything as they continued to stare at the huge, floating aircraft.

“So how is everything here?” asked Ziggy. “Are things calming down at all?”

“Oh sure, a little,” answered Cremer. “The night the surrender got announced, there was a lot of howling. A mob of U-boat officers stormed into the Old Man’s offices demanding to speak to him. It was about three in the morning. Ludde Neurath sent them all away. He told them the Grand Admiral was sleeping, that they had their orders and they were to follow them and keep their mouths shut. It was really quite a performance. I never imagined Ludde Neurath had it in him. Half of those guys were senior to him. But at the moment, yeah, things are quiet. I don’t know how long that will last. Anything could set it off.”
(An abbreviated version of this chapter appears in Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008; Kindle download available here).

The Legend of Werner Baumbach: Karl Hanke's Mysterious Escape to Prague from Breslau

To fans of the Third Reich and its vaunted war machine, few characters get venerated quite as rabidly as Werner Baumbach, the Luftwaffe’s top bomber pilot. He ranks right up there alongside fighter aces like Adolf Galland, Ernst Rudel, Erich Hartmann, and a handful of others who somehow survived the war and then wrote books about it. But Baumbach is different. While everyone else’s fame rests on combat exploits which are more or less documented, Baumbach’s legend is fed by shadows. Around him whirl a host of stories, of rumors and innuendo, none which can ever be proven or disproven, of secret missions, of the daredevil helicopter rescue of one particularly loathsome individual, and reports that he might have flown out possibly hundreds of top Nazis to safe havens abroad during the final days of the war.

It turned out that in addition to having flown Ju-88 dive-bombers in nearly every front of the war, Werner Baumbach also flew for a shadowy Luftwaffe special operations command known as Kamphgeschwader 200, or KG200. Very little has ever been found out about them other than that they were organized into different squadrons, or Staffeln, which were all kept far apart and mostly ignorant of each other. There was a special unit that flew long-range agent insertion missions, and another that flew shorter-range ones. There were units that flew captured B-17s, B-24s, Mustangs, Spitfires and Soviet aircraft. There were units that did electronic warfare and others with massive flying boats officially used to service distant weather stations, including robotic ones set up in Labrador. There was even a squadron being developed to fly suicide missions using manned versions of the rocket-powered V-1 buzz bomb.

Baumbach’smemoir, titled variously, The Life and Death of the Luftwaffe, or Broken Swastika, made no mention of any of it, not surprisingly, since it largely avoids mentioning the end of the war in the first place. It is mainly about flying Ju-88s and the art of dive bombing ships and bridges. But if Baumbach’s book fails to mention what he did at the end of the war, other memoirs do. Mostly it’s just fragments, but added up, they paint a picture of a man moving at incredible speed, in and out of a multitude of places.

In November, 1944, Baumbach was put in command of KG200. He apparently already knew something about it, having flown missions for them from time to time and also having advised actively on one of their weapons development programs. This time he was surprised to learn that a new staffel was being organized made up of suicide pilots. Baumbach didn’t like the idea to begin with and after talking to some of them, he quickly concluded they didn’t really understand what they’d gotten signed up for and had the unit disbanded. Almost nothing is known about what else Baumbach did during his time running KG200. But since its job was running operatives in and out of places behind enemy lines, one can only assume that was what they did during this period. It is known that one of its B-17s crashed while transporting a group of agents into France. Other missions, presumably, were more successful.

Sometime during March, all or part of KG200 morphed into a “Special Escape Section,” whose primary purpose was to fly Nazi bigwigs out of Germany to Spain and other neutral countries. They used whatever aircraft they had, including captured B-17s, B-24s, British Wellingtons and other Allied aircraft. How many got out? Dozens? Hundreds? No one knows. But apparently none of it rested well with Baumbach, who was himself a bit of a diehard. At one point he discussed with his old friend Albert Speer possible ways Hitler might be tricked into boarding one of his airplanes, whereupon they would fly him to where he could be handed over to the British or Americans. The enterprise apparently never went beyond the talking stage and the SS-run charter airlines seem to have continued its operations through April. At one point earlier in that month, they began using a Ju-390, a massive six-engine bomber/transport which was said to have taken several planeloads of passengers out of Prague’s Ruzyne airport to Spain. Baumbach was said to have flown at least one of these missions.

Then a very odd thing happened. Hitler found out from the news that Heinrich Himmler, his ever-loyal head of the SS, was secretly negotiating a peace deal with the Western Allies. Hitler went into a rage and fired Himmler from all his posts, though not his Nazi party membership, and then sent messages to Grand Admiral Doenitz informing him of Himmler’s treachery and ordering Doenitz to move against him. Doenitz promised to do something. He went and confronted Himmler, but Himmler thinly assured him the news reports weren’t true, all the while positively primping himself with the anticipation of becoming the next Fuhrer. Not long after returning to his headquarters, Doenitz received another cable from Hitler, this time telling him he was the new Fuhrer. Some time after that Hitler shot himself, but not before sending out another message; this time to Karl Hanke, Gauleiter of Breslau. Hitler decided to reward Hanke for his steadfast defense of the city, surrounded and under Russian siege since February, by making him the new Reichsfuhrer SS.

Since KG200 took its orders from the SS and not the Luftwaffe, it meant that Baumbach was no longer obliged to take orders from Himmler or answerable to him. At the time of Hitler’s death, Baumbach was in Hamburg alongside its gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann, who wasn’t sure what he should do. His orders had been to fight to the death, something the British Army, now fighting its way through the city’s western suburbs, was more than willing to accommodate them on. But Baumbach advised Kaufmann to just put up white flags and save what was left of the city. He did and after that a cease fire was called.

It was a different story in Breslau. For the three months that the siege had gone on, Hanke had brooked no discussion about what they should do. They would fight to the death and anyone who thought otherwise ended up hanging from a lamppost with a placard around his neck offering a suitable warning to anyone else whose resolve might be wanting. But now, suddenly, Hanke had pressing business elsewhere. His orders for KG200 were quite simple; ‘Get me out!’ Luckily, Baumbach was an old friend of Hanke’s, having been introduced by their mutual friend Albert Speer before the war.

Truth be told, no one actually knows how Karl Hanke got out of Breslau and showed up at Prague Ruzyne airport just as it was about to fall to Czech partisans. The accepted explanation is that Hanke probably already had a Fieseler Storch or some other light airplane waiting for him under a tarp on the airstrip in Breslau and that he flew off in that. It’s a commonsensical explanation, especially compared with the incredible story Albert Speer tells in his ‘Spandau Diaries.’ In that account, Baumbach flew into Breslau in a helicopter, picked up Hanke and then flew him all the way to Prague.

All that is known is that Hanke did arrive at Ruzyne and that the 18th volunteer SS Panzergrenadier Division, or what was left of it, was there at the airport to take him back to Prague. But once in Prague, the fighting going on there had gotten to the point where Hanke’s rescuers didn’t see the point in sticking around. They tried heading back to Ruzyne, but the partisans had taken the area. They changed direction and headed west, up the Karlsbad Road, trying to get back to Germany. A day later they were all taken prisoner and put into a stockade near Nova Ves. Hanke was in the uniform of a private and not recognized. A few weeks later he was reportedly killed trying to escape.

As for Baumbach, nothing at all is known about how he got out of Ruzyne. Perhaps there was something there waiting there for him, a Ju-88 or some other longer-range aircraft. Perhaps he flew the helicopter to another location where he got flown out. All that is known is that five or six days later, Baumbach flies into Flensburg, the little port city on the Danish border that was the Reich’s new capital city, with a flight of four or five gigantic, six-engine B&V-222 flying boats.

It doesn’t take much to assume the aircraft had been flown into Flensburg with the purpose of taking out a very large number of well-heeled Nazis on a one-way flight to someplace friendly and that might have been what was intended, but once Baumbach had landed, it seemed he decided to call it a day and just kick back and start getting very drunk. Luckily, Albert Speer was there as well and from the look of him, looked like he could use cheering up.

By this point Speer was third man in the governing troika set up by Hitler’s successor, Grand Admiral Doenitz. He was in charge of economic issues while Doenitz acted as “Reich President” and an aristocratic non-entity named Schwerin von Krosigk served as Chancellor and Foreign Minister. It was obvious from the beginning it was going to be a thankless task. The only thing they could do that actually mattered was end the war, which was accomplished via three different unconditional surrenders which took nearly a week.

Each day, parts of the Reich got cut away. One day it was Denmark, then Norway, then the Channel Islands, and the French Biscay ports, followed by Crete, Rhodes, and Dunkirk. Soon the only remaining piece of sovereign German territory was the Marineschule where the Doenitz government had its offices. At the same time their government grew. Ministers were added, along with assistants, secretaries, clerks and typists. And each morning at eight, Doenitz would convene his government, during which time they would methodically attend to the affairs of state. It was the first time a Nazi government had met. In the twelve years Hitler had been in power, he hadn’t allowed it to convene even once.

For ten whole days, Speer stood by stoically as the Reich got dismembered and attended the government meetings, as if the business being discussed actually meant something. But then the day came when the advance team of Allied representatives arrived; about thirty, mostly British, mostly junior officers, and thoroughly unpleasant to a man. Almost the first thing they did upon showing up was taking over the Patria, the large, rusting Hamburg-Amerika liner docked just below the Marineschule, and ordering everyone currently living aboard it to immediately gather their things and clear out.

Speer was livid. Patria had been a kind of haven for him, a tiny piece of order and stability after being on the move non-stop for almost two months. Now he and three hundred others were being kicked off it so that a handful of Brits could rub their noses in the dirt!

Speer was still shaking with anger as he walked down the gangplank, bags in each hand. That was when he ran into Baumbach, who laughed long and loud when Speer described his misfortune.

“Kicked off the ship? No place to stay? Well, I guess you’ll just have to move into the castle with me, Speer,” said Baumbach. It turned out he was ensconced in Schloss Glucksburg, the stately castle just outside town, which his friend, the Duke of Mecklenburg, had lent him. At Baumbach’s invitation, Speer moved into the castle and almost immediately, the two of them started getting drunk.

Speer’s memoir reveals little of what the two talked about during the next two weeks, except that at one point during their drunken ramblings, Baumbach proposed the two of them fly off to Greenland in one of the flying boats, to spend the summer hunting, fishing, kayaking and writing their memoirs together. Speer never found out if Baumbach was joking. A day or two later, Speer had some surprise visitors; a group of American bankers, lawyers, and economists from something called the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, eager to pick Speer’s brain on the effectiveness of the American daylight bombing campaign on the German war economy.

For the next ten days, Speer held court with the Americans at the castle, while Baumbach just mostly stayed drunk. One night, somebody blew up the four flying boats, as they sat moored in the harbor. A few days later, Eisenhower and the Western overlords decided they’d had enough of Doenitz and his government and rolled it all up.

Speer and Baumbach were both arrested. Speer was tried at Nuremberg as a major war criminal and served twenty years in Spandau Prison. Baumbach spent three years as a British prisoner, during which time he was repeatedly interrogated. What he might have told them about KG200 and his end-of-the-war exploits has never been learned. He did testify during later war crimes trials. Finally Baumbach was freed, whereupon he moved to Argentina and became a test pilot and flight instructor for the air force. He settled easily into the German émigré community, painting himself as an unreconstructed Nazi.

One day in October, 1953, he test flew a British Lancaster bomber, which the Argentinean air force had just acquired. Some time after taking off, something exploded on the bomber. Baumbach managed to bring it down to a watery landing in the Rio de la Plata, but drowned before he could be rescued.

Baumbach's role in the three-week Flensburg period is explored heavily in my novel Germania (2008, Simon & Schuster, and now also available as an ebook). Baumbach's earlier activities, including his activities with the Special Escape Section, his rescue of Hanke and subsequent escape from Prague and arrival in Flensburg with the BV-222 flying boats will be the subject of my upcoming novel, tentatively titled Baumbach and Speer.

KG200 Flying Boats Explode in Flensburg Harbor

The four flying boats were being kept in a remote corner of Flensburg harbor in a cove nestled among the broken hills which descended like steps from the side of the fjord.

It was where utility boats, small barges and other shallow-draft harbor craft docked and where the harbor patrol had one of its auxiliary stations. Shortly after the aircraft’s unannounced appearance, Doenitz ordered them towed there, in order to keep them inaccessible and out of public view. Their crews were ordered off them, except for a handful that stayed to look after the aircraft. In addition, a guard was placed there around-the-clock to prevent any unauthorized tampering.

But when Cremer and his men drove in through the compound’s back gates, they were surprised to find that everything was dark and none of the buildings showed any indication that anyone was inside. Then, hearing a low whistle, Cremer peered into the dark and saw one of his petty officers crouched among some stacked pipe, furtively waving at them. He and the others had been hiding there all day, he told them. Several hours earlier, a detachment of kettenhunde, Naval guardsmen, drove up from town and ordered everyone out, after which all the lights were shut down. All but one of the lights, he told Cremer, insisting he come up and see for himself what was going on underneath it.

They quietly made their way down the hillside to an equipment-strewn storage yard built onto the bluff overlooking the cove. Looking toward the harbor, Cremer could see the light of the streetlamp blazing into the blackness. On the way they came to a row of small metal storage sheds, in whose shadow four more of his men were hiding, including Manni Loerber, dressed in navy coveralls and trying hard not to look like a lifetime civilian. One look at his face and it was plain that he had no idea what had happened to the British either.

Leaving the others there, Cremer and the petty officer continued crawling up to the edge of the bluff. Cremer looked down and saw the lamp, standing at the foot of a small boat dock which extended out into the water like a long, narrow finger pointing at the spot out in the water where, half-hidden in the shadows, the four mammoth aircraft were moored.

But that wasn’t all. Clustered underneath the lamp stood a large group of people, easily thirty of them, mostly men, but a few women as well, all of them dressed for travel, in raincoats and heavy hats. They stood with baggage at their feet, as if waiting for a bus. Most of the men were heavyset in a way that suggested their girth was commensurate to their importance, men used to living well and eating amply. Gauleiters, thought Cremer. The handful of women were, on the other hand, nearly all tall and slim, and probably quite young. Only one or two looked like they might be wives.

There were others as well, Luftwaffe personnel, some in utility coveralls and flying suits, others in combat gear, clutching submachine guns. They moved about, attending busily to this and that, talking with each other, checking their watches, occasionally staring out speculatively into the darkness, keeping purposefully apart from the passengers.

The travelers started arriving an hour earlier, the petty officer whispered to Cremer. They’d come in their own cars, which the Luftwaffe men then took and drove away to a far corner of the yard. It had been forty minutes since the last one had arrived. They seemed to be still waiting for somebody.

Out on the water, one of the flying boats was starting to come to life. A row of circular lights blinked on along its fuselage, from below the cockpit to amidships. A moment later, another line snapped on, this one slightly lower than the other, going from amidships all the way to the tail. They weren’t running lights, Cremer realized, but portholes. Someone inside was turning on the interior cabin lights. Red lights filled the cockpit as the silhouettes of two men moved into the compartment and settled into their seats. They’re going through their primary instrument checks, Cremer thought. It’s still going to take a few minutes.

Cremer and the petty officer crawled back. Gathering everyone around him, Cremer laid out his ambush plan and showed everybody their positions. They’d wait till his signal before starting anything. The idea was to get them out in the open, away from their cars, hopefully up on the pier where their escape would be cut off. They would wait until Himmler’s group got clear of their cars but before they reached the dock and could join up with the milling group. Cremer would blow his whistle and the petty officer would use the bullhorn to announce they were all under arrest and unless they wanted to be shot they would immediately toss away their weapons and get down on the ground.

If shooting started, which he expected, they were to concentrate on the muscle, the guys with the machine guns. They’d prefer to capture Himmler alive, but if he made things difficult, then too bad for him! But mainly they wanted to pull Franzi Loerber away from the group. He was the one who looked like Captain Loerber and his brother Manfred here. Take a good look at them in case you don’t already know what they look like, gentlemen. Good luck to us all!

Everyone went to their positions. Suddenly everything was quiet again. Cremer looked at Ziggy, crouched in the shadows. He was looking strange again. What was with him, Cremer wondered. He’d known him most of his adult life and that whole time he was the straightest, calmest, most unimaginatively reliable man he’d ever met. But once back in the bosom of his weird family, he’d become a different person, someone given to trances and psychic pronouncements. And Manni, what the hell was he? When Ziggy had introduced them the day before, Cremer’s immediate impression was that the guy was a total freak.

Staring out past the flying boats into the harbor, seeing the buoy lights swaying with the waves, he thought of all the U-boat patrols he and Ziggy had been on, back before Ziggy had gotten his own command. He wondered if his friend’s famous luck only held at sea or if it would extend to land operations. He prayed it would, since without it, this misbegotten adventure would likely end up in a complete massacre. Their only real chance was to get Himmler’s group off-guard and bluff them into believing there was something more formidable coming at them than a bunch of U-boat sailors armed with pistols and Tommy-guns.

Out in the harbor, all of the anchored warships kept their lights burning, if for no other reason than to not be obstacles to navigation. It made Flensburg harbor look alive and bustling. But the sad fact was that by this point, except for the minesweepers, few ships had anything more than skeleton crews aboard them. Their crews were all permanently ashore now, either massed in some British-run prisoner of war enclosure or waiting to be put in one, or already demobilized and sent home. As for the ships, unless the allies chose to use them for something, they were all lifeless things.

A few small patrol boats combed the waters, searchlights blazing back and forth, happily oblivious to what was going on nearby on land. That’s it, thought Cremer, keep the tension up, but nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t spook them, don’t let them think any of this is the slightest bit different.

The Luftwaffe man in charge stepped out on the dock where the people on the flying boat could see him and held his hands out to show he didn’t know where whoever-it-was, was. Then he turned to the passengers and told them something which didn’t seem to allay their growing impatience. Cremer looked at his watch and realized twenty minutes had gone by. Where were they? What were they supposed to do if Himmler’s group didn’t show? Could it be that they were actually escaping some other way. This whole thing was definitely a massive cock-up.

“Headlights!” someone whispered.

“It’s them!” hissed someone else from the other side of the rise. “Two Horches!”

From where he was, Cremer couldn’t see anything, except scattered illuminations of the headlights on some of the moored boats. But he could hear the approaching cars’ engines coming up the harbor road.

But the Luftwaffe men could see them. One of them began walking up the dock, signaling the pilot. Immediately the flying boat’s six engines sputtered and whined as the large, three-bladed propellers began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the engines’ metallic whine turned into a loud roar. At the same time another Luftwaffe man stepped forward and waved for the Horches to come up close. But instead, the cars halted nearly a hundred yards away. After a quick, heated exchange of words with the man on the dock, he and two others started towards the cars to see what the deal was.

“Shit!” hissed Cremer. “We need to move over, where we can see what’s going on. Quick!”

They stepped back to keep out of view, then, silently as they could, made their way over to the side of the bluff overlooking the harbor road. It turned out they couldn’t see anything from there either. Cremer turned and saw Ziggy, looking more lost and desperate than ever before.

“What is it?” they heard one of the Luftwaffe men yell at the Himmler party. “You’re supposed to drive up. We’re not running a porter service here.”

“I want you to put out that light!” Macher’s voice yelled back. “Now!”

“We need it on! We’re still loading!” the Luftwaffe man shouted back angrily.

“That’s your problem,” barked Macher. “Kill it now!”

A moment later someone hit a switch and everything was back in darkness. “All right, then,” said Macher. “Keep coming.”

Then there was silence. Cremer started moving to another position. Finally he found a spot where he could see the cars. But in the darkness it was hard to make out anything. There were people moving around, bending over and picking up things. He tried to figure out who was who, but there was so much commotion, he got confused.

Four of them started walking toward the dock in a tight group. Then he recognized the trilby hat he’d seen Himmler wearing back at the farmhouse. Here we go, he thought, slipping the police whistle between his lips. He just needed to get them a little further from the cars, a little closer to the dock and then he’d give the signal.

Then, suddenly, a siren ripped through the stillness and at the same time searchlights flashed on, striking the group with their blinding beams. There was shouting as hands shot up to shield faces from the searing light. Then shooting broke out and the group that had momentary been frozen, broke into scattered, frenzied flight. Two of the figures began running toward the dock, ripping off their overcoats as they did, shouting and waving desperately not to shoot them. But the other two ran back, to the cars, all the while returning submachine-gun fire. More fire was coming from the cars as their engines roared back to life. As the sirens continued to howl, some of their fire hit the searchlights, several of which instantly faded out. One of the men running toward the docks screamed as he collapsed, writhing to the ground. The other clutched his arm before the side of his head exploded.

Cremer stood up. “Everyone hold your fire!” he shouted at his men.

Meanwhile on the dock the passengers were scattering any direction they could, some running into each other, some jumping into the water, others getting hit by bullets, bleeding, screaming with the outrage, the injustice of it all.

And then, just as suddenly, the flying boat exploded in a huge burst of flame.

As the explosion thundered, blotting out even the wailing siren, there was a screeching of tires and a roar of engines as the two Horches turned and tore back down the way they came, still firing at their ambushers as they did.

Frantically, Cremer started gathering his dazed group. “Pull back!” he shouted. “Quickly! We’re getting out of here! Now! Move!”

But Ziggy wasn’t moving. He looked blankly at Cremer, who, seeing his disorientation, grabbed his arm and, with the help of one of his men, pulled him along as they withdrew back up the hillside.

By the time they reached their cars, the huge aircraft was being consumed in flames that lit up the sky. There was a continual cracking of smaller explosions as ammunition inside the aircraft cooked off. Cremer wondered how he was ever going to explain any of this to Doenitz. But at the moment his main urge was to get his men out of there.

“Everyone into the cars,” he ordered in a calm voice.

But Manni stepped in front of him, resolute and serious. “We’ve got to go back and get Franzi!” he shouted.

“How the hell are we going to do that?” Cremer shouted back. “We don’t even know where they’ve gone.”

“I bet Ziggy knows,” said Manni. He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and gave him a slight shake. “Where are they going, Ziggy?” he asked softly, as one might question a child. “Where are they taking Franzi?”

Ziggy looked at Manni like he didn’t recognize him. “Franzi?” he asked. “Franzi?” He turned and stared down the harbor road, like he was waiting for a reply. Then he looked at Manni and then at Cremer, his eyes alert and clear.

“They’re on their way to Schloss Glucksburg,” he told them. “They’re going to make Speer pay for this!”

(A different version of this story, told from Himmler party's point of view, appears in Germania, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle here.)

Flensburg: Beers with British Spies

When Ziggy returned to the offices, Ludde Neurath was sitting at his desk. He looked worried. “Some British officers came looking for you,” he said.

“For me?” asked Ziggy, wondering what Westerby wanted this time.

Ludde Neurath nodded. “Two of them. They wanted to bring you over to the Patria for questioning.” He searched Ziggy’s eyes while he spoke. “The Old Man thought there was something dodgy about them and told them they couldn’t. He told them it wasn’t part of the deal. He said if they wanted to talk to you they would have to either do it here or they could arrest you, in which case their request would have to be in writing.”

“Oh,” said Ziggy, relishing the thought of Westerby getting turned away. “So what was dodgy about them?”

“The way they wouldn’t identify themselves,” said Ludde Neurath. “They didn’t have any papers authorizing them. Usually we get some notification first. They also weren’t interested in talking to you here. When I told them you’d be back, they said they didn’t want to wait.” He waited a moment, then asked solemnly: “Is there something you should perhaps be telling me about?”

Ziggy shrugged dismissively. “There was a British officer who hounded me a little when I was at Montgomery’s headquarters,” he said. “And he was waiting for me at the airport when we came back from Berlin. He knows that my brother was with Himmler’s party that night in Ploen. He thinks I might know where they are now.”

“Do you?” asked Ludde Neurath.

“No,” answered Ziggy.

“That’s good,” said Ludde Neurath. “We were thinking, maybe you shouldn’t be here from now on. We can have you doing something less visible until things quiet down.”

“Let me think about it,” Ziggy told him.

Ludde Neurath nodded and went back to the inner suite. The afternoon wore on. The flow of supplicants and other visitors petered out. At six o’clock Ludde Neurath told Ziggy he could leave. Ziggy fetched his leather overcoat and left. On his way down the stairs he saw a British officer waiting at the landing below, leaning against the window chatting with a janitor. It was Westerby. Seeing Ziggy approach, he straightened up, and, smoothing down his jacket with a quick sweep of his hands, broke off his conversation with the janitor and stepped forward into Ziggy’s path.

“Ahh, Capitan Loerber!” he said, feigning surprise and delight. “How nice to see you.”

“Good afternoon, Major Westerby,” answered Ziggy.

“So how are things?” Westerby asked.

“Oh, everything seems to be going just fine. How is it for your group?”

“Oh, busy, busy,” said Westerby. “You know how it is. There are never enough hours in the day. They have us running around from one place to the next. Half our orders are contradictory.” He fumed agreeably to show they were both essentially in the same boat.

Ziggy nodded.

Westerby widened his eyes. “Come for a drink,” he said. “I know a little place just around the corner.” He pointed behind him with his thumb. “What do you say? Beer and a chin wag among colleagues. Besides, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

At least it was a different tack from the strong-arming they’d evidently tried upstairs, thought Ziggy. He’d appreciated how Doenitz had stood up to them, but he also doubted there was much point in trying to resist. If they wanted to interrogate him, they’d easily find a way.

“A beer would be nice,” agreed Ziggy.

“That’s the ticket,” said Westerby. “Right, come along.”

They walked quickly out the gates and downhill toward the waterfront, their boots marking a crisp tattoo against the cobblestones. They passed milling groups of forlorn, resentful-looking soldiers, Westerby nodding to them while keeping up his jaunty pace, like this was a fine day and he was glad to be strolling around, enjoying the air. Up ahead the Patria loomed gray and ugly in the dimming, early evening light. Ziggy noticed it had a Union Jack fluttering atop its mast.

Once underway, Westerby no longer seemed compelled to make small talk. Ziggy could sense an alertness and intensity to him he hadn’t noticed previously. As they made their way along the quayside past the tied-up tugs and minesweepers, Ziggy wondered what the interrogation would be like. Westerby’s cordiality didn’t fool him. He already knew that for all their outward manners the British were real bastards whenever there was something they really wanted. Once they’d have him aboard the ship, he’d effectively be in British territory and they could do what they liked.

Standing at the foot of the gangway were two British troopers in full battle gear, their Enfield rifles fixed with bayonets. Menacingly they eyed Ziggy as he and Westerby approached. This is where it ends, thought Ziggy dismally. Oh well, he told himself, at least he’d had a decent run. Sixteen patrols, one hundred sixty thousand tons, two destroyers, and he’d always brought his crew home. That was something. But to his surprise, instead of turning to go up the gangway onto the ship, Westerby walked past it like the Patria wasn’t even there.

“We’re not going aboard?” asked Ziggy.

“Heavens no,” said Westerby with a shudder. “This is a social call.”

They kept walking. The town of Flensburg stood at the far end of the quay. They went past several ancient brick warehouses, and then turned onto a side street, walking past rows of shuttered shop-fronts. Halfway up an alley they came to the back entrance of an old hotel. The door opened and some Wehrmacht officers came out, laughing among themselves, obviously drunk. The sight of Westerby and Ziggy failed to evince any interest from them. One of them even held open the door for them. Going through a small vestibule lined with dustbins and mops, they entered a narrow corridor painted an ugly green, with more soldiers making their way out, buttoning their coats and putting on their caps as they did. They also paid scant attention to Westerby as if the presence of British soldiers was no longer anything exceptional. At the end of the corridor a beefy-looking petty officer guarded a door. He coldly eyed them both, but then, recognizing Westerby, nodded, and ushered them inside.

It was a pub, all right, dark and smoky and smelling of spilled beer, with soldiers and sailors of all ranks sitting clustered in groups at long, battered wooden tables. They weren’t all German, either. More than a few were British. There were even a few Americans. There wasn’t much mixing, but at the same time, nobody seemed particularly bothered by the others’ presence.

“I thought there wasn’t supposed to be any fraternization,” said Ziggy.

“There isn’t,” answered Westerby. “That’s why it’s going on here.”

They went to an empty table in the back of the pub and sat down at one end across from each other. A waiter came, set down three steins of beer, put down a paper chit on the table, put down three marks and moved on.

Ziggy took his beer, sliding it closer to him. Westerby did the same, but then folded his hands on the table like he was waiting patiently.

Ziggy eyed the third beer. “So where’s your colleague?” he asked.

Westerby nodded over to the corner of the room. Ziggy turned to look and noticed a trim figure heading towards them. He recognized him at once. It was his brother Manni, grinning at him like the Cheshire cat. He sat down next to Westerby. “Hello Ziggy,” he said, barely able to contain his effervescence. He pointed to the beer. “Is this for me?”

Ziggy was stunned. He stared at his brother, unable to speak. Westerby gave a slight smirk. “I’d like to introduce you to a colleague of mine,” he said. “But as I can see, you’re already acquainted.”

“What do you mean ‘colleague?’” Ziggy managed to ask.

“What I mean,” answered Westerby unblinkingly, “is that your brother Manfred has been my prize agent for the last ten years.”

Manni flashed out his hands. “Surprise!” he giggled. “You’re not mad, are you?” he asked, with fake anxiousness.

“You’re a British spy?” asked Ziggy, still thoroughly taken aback.

"That’s nothing,” Manni whispered, his eyebrows raised as he leaned forward, “Franzi’s a Russian one.”

Ziggy stared at him for a long time, like he couldn’t be sure any of it was real. Then Westerby cleared his throat. Ziggy saw the exasperated expression on his face. He was obviously irritated by the way Manni was treating what was to him still a deadly serious subject. Looking at Westerby, Ziggy realized for the first time the man was deeply worried.

“Which is why I’ve asked you both here tonight,” said Westerby. “Franzi is in a perilous situation right now, and it’s important we get him out.”

“Come on, Ziggy,” cooed Manni. “Say you’re glad to see me!”

Ziggy ignored him and continued to look at Westerby. Something had gone extremely wrong, that was why he had brought him here. This time he wasn’t just fishing for information. He was in a deep fix and Manni, being Manni, was not being any help.

So Manni, the quintessentially silly person that he was, had been working for the British and despite all that, he’d apparently been successful enough to have survived doing it. Amazing, he thought. And now the war is over and here is Westerby finding out that his prize agent is first and foremost a prize loon!

"I thought you said Franzi was your friend, but here you’re telling me that Manni is your agent. What is going on?”

“Well, you can hardly expect me to reveal the identity of my agent to you while there was still a war on, old boy,” drawled Westerby. “But yes, what I told you was the truth. Franzi was my friend. He is also a brave soldier and spy and right now there are a lot of people after him. I’m going to need your help to get him out of Himmler’s clutches. There is an awful lot at stake here, Captain Loerber. If you’re interested, I’ll explain it to you. Otherwise you’re free to leave now. What is it?"

Ziggy decided to stay.

Once Westerby started speaking, it was as if a veil had dropped, revealing an aspect of him that until now had been hidden. Franzi was in deep trouble but then so was Westerby. In the ten days since Ziggy first met him, he’d found himself on the other side of the looking glass and now there was no longer anyone on his own side he could trust. That was why he’d come to Ziggy now. The situation was desperate and he needed help.

Yes, it was about SS gold, but it was also a lot of other things, other people, other sides, other interests. There wasn’t anything that he could put his finger on. All he really had were a lot of suspicions and definite bad feelings. But for someone in his business that was all he needed.

What was particularly telling, he said, was how much interest there was in Franzi from so many different quarters, but also from his own organization. It didn’t make sense. True, Franzi was now part of Himmler’s inner circle, but then so were a lot of other, more important people, people like Macher, Grothmann, and Gebhardt, except nobody in London was screaming for their hides like they were screaming for poor Franzi Loerber’s, who on the face of it wasn’t anything more than a crackpot homosexual masseur and fortuneteller! No one in London was supposed to know he was a spy. Westerby had gone out of his way to make sure no one did. Why then all the interest?

“You, Captain Loerber, happen to be the first person in creation whom I have informed of that fact. So why is everybody wanting him. I mean, even if they had figured out that he was our Joe, even that should not have excited the interest that it had. Not unless they’d figured out about the Russian connection. But how could that be?”

Westerby explained how it had started. He’d been in Berlin since the 1920s, operating under trade cover of a Swedish businessman. His real job of course had been as a talent spotter for British Intelligence. As a habitué of the Berlin cabaret scene, he’d gotten to know many performers including Franzi and Manni.

Manni hadn’t been Westerby‘s first choice. It had been Franzi and he’d spent more than a year getting to know him and feeling him out. But when he did finally make his pitch, Franzi to his shock and consternation told him he had already gone to work for the Russians. It was something he had already started having doubts about. But you know how it is, he told Westerby; once you’re in, you’re in. The important thing was that he’d at least be fighting fascism this way. Sadly Westerby had to agree and decided not to force the issue. He knew the Bolsheviks weren’t ones to countenance changes of heart. They shook hands and wished each other good luck, maybe we’ll meet again after the war.

Dutifully Westerby wired back ‘no sale!’ to London, without going into any interesting details. Then he proceeded to recruit Manni Loerber, who despite all his incipient silliness, turned out to be an outstanding agent.

By then it was the middle of summer and war was on the horizon. Germany and Russia had just surprised everyone with their sudden entente and their armies were already massing along Poland’s borders. As he was about to leave, Westerby instructed Manni to be ready for the opportunity where he might bring his brother into the fold, though were he to do so, he should under no circumstances reveal his identity to London.

Then, when halfway through the war, Manni began sending material that appeared to originate from SS Headquarters, Westerby surmised Franzi had been won over. Westerby’s bosses were at first delighted, but quickly grew curious, then suspicious. Who was this source? they demanded. Westerby professed ignorance. It was somebody, he told them, somebody Manni knows who’s decided to spill information. Manni can do that, he told them, he’s very charming, very manipulative.

It was nice stuff, but at the same time, it wasn’t anything that could be classified as ‘top drawer.’ The information it provided was more corroborative than anything else. Even so, the overlords remained unduly curious as to who it could be coming from.

He told them he didn’t know. Finally, after a lot of hemming and hawing and beating around the bush, they asked him point-blank if he thought it might be Franzi Loerber. He told them he didn’t think so and gave a number of reason why not. The two brothers had had a serious falling out and weren’t speaking. Being in the Annenherbe, an SS mystical research institute, Franzi was far from the SS mainstream. Besides, he was much more of a committed Nazi than he’d initially thought. To put them off track, Westerby described what a social butterfly Manni was and how he enjoyed a wide circle of acquaintance. It was much more likely that the material was coming from one of those sources. They tried to pick his explanation apart, but Westerby held firm until they seemed to lose interest.

It didn’t last, though. Shortly after that they were back under other pretenses, wanting to know what he knew about Franzi Loerber, what he remembered, what his impressions were of him, never saying why they were interested. He told them as little as he could without appearing like he was holding back on them. But something, he knew, was definitely up.

Westerby had that old-school fieldman’s near-pathological fear of ever letting his employers know too much about anything he felt they didn’t need to know.

Manni slapped his hand upon Westerby’s shoulder. “All this time, Westerby’s been looking out for Franzi, like a guardian angel. I mean this man is a complete prince!” he declared with a surprising gush of emotion.

“It’s true, Captain Loerber,” said Westerby. “There’s been hardly a night during the last three years when I wasn’t worrying about him. I’d thought that if I could come up with something either dull or clever enough I could kill their interest in him, but, I’m sorry to say, that’s not how it worked out. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been approached by people outside the Service asking about him, all kinds of people. I don’t know how it got out, but it did. Right now, he’s one of the most hunted men in Europe.”

“What kind of other people?” asked Ziggy.

“Germans, Swedes, people who act like they’re Brits or Americans, Russians, Jews. It was bad during the war, but now it’s a flood. Once they get him, they’re all going to tear him apart.”

“Honestly, I thought it would be easy once I got here. My guess was that with all the chaos going on, for a while at least, people would have other things on their minds and I could come in and spirit him away. But I was wrong about that too.”

Westerby ran his finger along the side of his beer glass, wiping off the moisture clinging to its surface. He stared at the glass in angry silence and even Manni didn’t seem to feel compelled to fill in the moment with one of his jokes.

“I figure this is our last chance,” Westerby said finally. “I can’t do this on my own. There’s nobody on my own side I can trust.” Then, to Ziggy’s utter shock, Westerby grabbed his hand and turned it so the palm faced upwards. “Look!” he implored. “Look, Captain Loerber, there must be something you can see! You have to find out where your brother is. You’re our only hope!”

Ziggy stared down helplessly at his palm, not having any idea what he was supposed to be seeing there. He looked back up at Westerby, lost.

“Look!” Westerby repeated, fairly shouting. “Find him!” He wasn’t imploring, he was giving orders, the same way Ziggy had ordered faltering crewmen back to their stations during the worst part of a depth charge attack. “What-do-you-see?”

Ziggy didn’t see anything. He didn’t do palm reading. There wasn’t anything there. It was just a goddamn palm for Christ’s sake, nothing but lines and creases and folds. He knew he had to deliver, had to give Westerby something, anything! He stared harder.

“You must get past your ill feelings,” said Westerby suddenly. “Do it for him, please! He told me about what happened that time. It’s not important, you know that. Do it for him. You’re the only one who can help him now. Without you he’s lost!”

Ziggy burned with embarrassment. He wished Westerby would go away. He wanted to run off away from Westerby, away from Manni. Go back to the calm and safety of Cremer’s Guard Battalion and let what happens happen.

Westerby’s grip tightened on his hand. He could tell Westerby was reading it all. He looked down on his palm. The web of lines on it was as dense and chaotic as the erratic routes of Himmler’s convoy crisscrossing the countryside ahead of their pursuers. Their paths had no apparent destination or goals, merely outrunning the dogs, but never managing to find a haven for very long.

Franzi, was he far or near? What were his eyes seeing? What was he thinking? What did his skin feel? Warmth or cold? Cold or warmth? Cold. Dry or damp? Dry. What was he smelling? Cooked cabbage and tinned beef, cold on a plate. Cigarette smoke, open window and a night breeze, smell of pine. Pine trees outside the window, the wind blowing through them. Ziggy felt his eyes glaze as his focus narrowed, looking past the lines.

They were in a farmhouse, a different one than earlier. They were inland, but still close enough to smell the sea. They’re keeping within reach of Flensburg. Forest nearby, men hiding inside it. A line of kubelwagens hidden under camouflaged tarps. They’re staying put, waiting for something to come. Everyone is tense. Arrangements for escape keep falling through.

“No one’s going anywhere until the gold comes,” Ziggy said aloud.

“Where are they?” asked Westerby.

Ziggy didn’t know.

“Find a landmark!”

He had to get Franzi to go outside and look around. But it was not allowed. Go outside Franzi! Make an excuse, tell him something. The stars! Tell them you have to look at the stars! He could feel Franzi getting up from the table and shuffling outside ignoring the voice, Macher’s, asking him what the hell he thinks he’s doing? But Franzi has already pushed the door open and has stepped outside into the farmyard. The pine trees are roaring in the wind. Franzi turned his head up to stare at the night sky, the broken clouds sailing overhead. Look around, Franzi! Find me a landmark! Something! Nearby was a small stand of pine trees and beyond were fields with a forest beyond it. He could sense Franzi turning around and walking to the front of the farmhouse. There was a lane leading up to a road a hundred yards ahead bordering the farm. Franzi’s eyes followed the road down into a shallow valley where he saw a town full of darkened houses and a church tower and just beyond that there was a castle, low with four stubby towers on the corners, topped with high cone-like roofs. He could see it stood against the shimmering black water of a lake. And then Macher came and grabbed Franzi and the connection was broken.

“That’s definitely Schloss Glucksburg,” Manni said confidently, after Ziggy described what he’d seen.

"Do you know how to get there?” asked Westerby.

Manni chuckled. “Well I should,” he told them. “That’s where I live now,” he announced with a pronounced touch of self-importance. “Me and Speer and General Baumbach.”

“Baumbach of KG200?” asked Westerby. “You’ve never mentioned him before.”

“Well I only met him yesterday,” Manni answered. “Speer wanted me there to help set up his office.”

“Do you think Himmler knows this?” asked Ziggy.

“As a rule of thumb, the Reichsfuhrer knows everything,” quipped Manni. “He still runs all three of Germany’s intelligence services. He should know who his next-door neighbors are.”

“Can you take us there?”

“Sure.”

Westerby turned to Ziggy. “We may need some more help on this. Do you think your friend Cremer would mind cooperating?”

“I could ask.”

Westerby folded his hands together. “I guess now we’re getting somewhere. Talk to Cremer, see what you can get from him. We have to make this work. Franzi has done more to defeat the Nazis than probably anyone in this whole war. And what’s going to happen is the victors will feast on him,” said Westerby.

“Of course Manni here is also a great unsung hero of the war,” he added, not a little sardonically.

Manni waved him off. “Just don’t go including me in any of this. You know me, I’m just a humble entertainer, an artist. I don’t concern myself with the political sphere. That was something Franzi was passionate about, not me!”

They got up to leave. Manni went his own way but Westerby decided to walk back with Ziggy to the Marineschule.

Once again, they slipped back into silence. Ziggy felt like he was now one very big step closer to getting Franzi. Westerby wasn’t such a bad sort, for an Englisher. He could work with him. He decided he should chat him a little about the earlier incident that day, when Westerby’s presence caused such a ruckus at the office.

"You know you managed to get the Grand Admiral riled quite a bit this afternoon,” he said.

"What are you talking about?” asked Westerby.

“Well you weren’t exactly very diplomatic about the way you demanded I go with you for questioning."

“What?”

“To the Patria,” continued Ziggy. “They’re actually still very bitter about the way you guys ejected them from it the other day.”

“I never did anything of the sort,” insisted Westerby.

“Well that’s what they told me you said when you came in with that other guy, acting like we were already your prisoners. The Grand Admiral is trying to be very ‘by the book’ about this, you know.”

“What other guy? I never came by your offices today.”

Ziggy looked at him in alarm.

“You mean some British officers came by today trying to take you to the Patria for questioning?”

“Yes, I was out. The way they described it, I assumed it was you.”

A worried look returned to Westerby’s face. “I’ve got a feeling the dogs are a lot closer on our trail than I’d thought. Be careful, Captain Loerber.”

When they reached the Patria, Westerby drew himself straight to attention and gave Ziggy a stiff salute. It was so far the only remotely military act which Ziggy had seen him perform. Ziggy returned the salute. “I’ll be in touch with you,” said Westerby. “Do talk to Cremer, see if he’s willing to help.”

“I want to thank you for looking out for my brother,” said Ziggy.

“If you’re speaking of Franzi, I’d tell you ‘not at all.’ But if you’re referring to Manfred, I’d tell you war is hell. Good night Captain Loerber.”

He turned and marched up the gangway onto the Patria’s main deck.
(This is a chapter deleted during the final cut of my novel Germania, first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle here).

Albert Speer, Magic, the Fall of Nazi Germany and the Story of the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers

Maybe my big problem as an author is that I don't properly grasp the concept of "Paranormal."

I just write novels about reality and if that reality happens to have what someone else considers "magic," that's kind of their problem.  I just consider it reality.  Reality is what exists and it has rules and, being reality, it's mostly gritty and messy and utterly, totally lacking in wonderfullness.  Okay, so people have visions, and can levitate and project ideas into other people's minds. They still have itchy feet and achey knees and if Franzi Loerber, one of my protaganists, has just managed to project enough psychic slippery onto a couple of stairsteps that an SS Major going down them has just flown ass-over-teakettles and broken his neck,   well Franzi is definitely going to be so wiped out from that feat, that all he's going to do is go find an empty chair and curl up into it and crash. To me, that's just reality.  But in book publishing, it's considered paranormal.

Both of my novels, Germania and Friend of the Devil, are full of encounters with the magical and the surreal and characters with abilities that are beyond their understanding. But I still think of it as realism rather than "Paranormal."

So you may wonder who the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers are and what all this happens to do with Albert Speer and the fall of Nazi Germany. Read on.

They were the toast of old Berlin. For ten years, during the raucous golden era before the Nazi takeover, the Magical Loerber Brothers were indisputably Berlin's most popular variety act.

What was it about the four young men that so completely captured the hearts of their audiences? Was it simply that they were identical? Or was it the way they somehow brought kitschy, lowbrow entertainment to a level which even the edgiest of the avant-garde found irresistible? No, it was something more than that. The brothers were magic. They were so magic, in fact, that even when the Nazis took over, none of them bothered noticing that they were Jewish.

But even magic has its limitations. In life, no one is ever truly exempt. What were they like ten years after their act had broken up, when they were pushing thirty and the Third Reich which had loved them so unconditionally was in its last bloody weeks?

Perhaps the best person to answer that question would be Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, armaments minister, and estranged only friend. At the time he ran into Manni Loerber, Speer was crisscrossing the industrial Ruhr in a lonely, fruitless rebellion against Hitler's orders to blow up everything before it fell into American hands. Manni was sneaking around the Ruhr, killing any Nazi Party official he could get his hands on. Speer needed help. Manni Loerber needed cover. And with Manni's uncanny ability to talk anyone into nearly anything, things suddenly began turning around for Speer. They were going so well, in fact, that Speer soon began believing that, like Manni, he could alter reality. Crazier still, he even started to think he had freed himself from Hitler.

What happened to Speer was not that different from what was also happening to SS spymaster Walter Schellenberg. After more than a year unsuccessfully trying to goad his powerful but hopelessly indecisive and superstitious boss, Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler, into deposing Hitler and ending the war, Schellenberg had just about given up hope. Then in walked Franzi Loerber, a low-level horoscope-jockey who'd spent the entire war buried in the bureaucratic depths of the Ahnenerbe, the SS mystical research institue. Franzi, it turned out, had an ability to calm Himmler and quickly turn his waffling into confidence and steely determination. Suddenly Schellenberg was back in business, or so he thought.

The normally crafty and suspicious Schellenberg should have easily figured out that Franzi Loerber was a Soviet mole, but he didn't, for the same reason Speer didn't really care that Manni Loerber was most certainly a British spy and assassin. They needed to believe in magic.

Then, of course, there are the other two Loerber brothers. There is Sebastian, whom everyone believes is long dead, only now he has turned up with the Blood of Israel, a Jewish underground group which is using his unique ability to project dreams to sow terror in their enemies' hearts. And then there is the normal one; Ziggy Loerber, the U-Boat ace, whose hatred of the Nazis runs nearly second to the aversion he feels toward his own nutball siblings and their carryings-on. Given the choice of a reunion or death, he would have gladly chosen the latter. But things don't always turn out the way people would like.

With Berlin falling and the war crashing towards its end, everything is thrown into chaos, and responsibility for continuing the fighting falls onto the shoulders of Grand Admiral Doenitz, head of the Navy and commander of the Northern Zone. With the war lost, all he wants is to die like a soldier. And he might have gotten to, had a telegram not arrived from Berlin, informing him that Hitler was dead and he was now the new Fuhrer.

In the midnight after Hitler's death, the remnants of Nazi Germany converge on Flensburg, a small port city on the Danish border where Doenitz has set up his capital. There they try to conjure up a rosy future in which their Nazi pasts do not matter. Some imagine glowing relationships with Eisenhower, the man they presume will now rule Europe like a Caesar. Others dream of escaping to Greenland to write their memoirs. Others try ingratiating themselves with the Allied Control Commission representatives wandering about. It's springtime and seeing Doenitz' government grow each day, people begin believing it might actually put down roots and last beyond the few days allotted to it through the world's inattention.

And into this world sail the four Magical Loerber Brothers. Though most have spent the war far from the spotlight, once in proximity of each other, their celebrity quickly catches up with them. Nobody cares that they are not the same people they were fifteen years earlier. In the public's memory, they are inseparable from the good old Weimar days and by extension, a portent of better times to come.

But to them, it is not so easy. While their reunion might be preordained by the stars, its tragic outcome is written in the war's lingering brutality and their divergent paths which can no longer be fully bridged by love, hope or magic.

Watch out, Czecho-Slovakia, Here Comes Germania!

Today, the Czech translation of my novel Germania has launched in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, under the title Germanie, from Nakladatelstvi XYZ. Here is a short synopsis of the story. If you'd like to check it out in English, here is the link Germania by Brendan McNally.

It's May 1945. Hitler is dead and the war is suddenly all but over. All the Nazi bigwigs who have managed to get out of Berlin now gather in Flensburg, a small port city in the north where Grand Admiral Doenitz, Hitler's successor, has set up a new "post-Nazi" government. Not knowing anything about politics, Doenitz mistakenly believes his new regime might be acceptable to the Western Allies, whom, he's been told, are now ready to begin fighting the Russians.

Despite the enormity of the defeat they've just suffered, Flensburg is alive with a strange atmosphere of optimism. With Hitler out of the way, the survivors are free to imagine whichever bright futures they fancy. Into this surreal place come Manni, Franzi, Ziggy, and Sebastian Loerber, the singing, dancing, acrobatic (and quite possibly magical) Flying Magical Loerber Brothers. Once the toast of Berlin's cabaret scene, they were so beloved, their Jewishness was conveniently overlooked by everyone, including Hitler. Now they're back, reunited, and out for revenge!

Although it is a fanciful work, in which the paranormal is normal, Germania is historically highly accurate and the product of many years of research and interviews.

About Germania's author

Brendan McNally had been a journalist at the Pentagon in Washington before coming to Prague in 1992. He was a reporter for the Prague Post, Defense News, and the New York Times and was part of an informal club of local reporters who often worked together to investigate arms sales and government corruption.

Brendan McNally divides his time between Dallas and the Czech Republic. He is currently working on a novel about Martha Dodd, the Cold War Soviet spy, whose 30-year exile in Prague ended shortly after the 1989 Revolution.

It's still not too late to learn Czech and buy this book

The Czech edition of Germania has just come out, a month early! If you'd like to check out the original English version (first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, now also available on Kindle), here is the link: Germania

When the Nazi Government finally convened

One of the strange things about going back to study and learn about Nazi Germany after a couple decades of doing other things (like, for instance, having a job) is finding out how much the field has changed while I was gone. Back when I was all obsessed with the subject in the late-1970s, the subject of  "Future Nazi weapons" AKA  "Luftwaffe 1946" was stuck at a really rudimentary level. There was interest, to be sure, but the nerds and geeks into it had no way of finding each other and sharing information, at least not on the scale necessary to really move the subject forward. Then the internet got invented and that allowed communities to form and information to fly back and forth.

A field similar to this is The Nazi Germany that was planned and designed, but never brought into existence. The best example of this is Germania, the future capital city dreamed up by Hitler and designed by Albert Speer. There was always a lot of interest in that, probably beginning the moment that the plans were found. For years and years all there was were some drawings and this film clip that the Nazis had made at some point before the war,  showing a tiny working fountain spewing water and expert use of lighting and shadow. It is particularly strange and almost sad to look at especially when compared to the sheer gross tonnage of  the geek-boy computer animations which in recent years have sprung up all over YouTube. Speer did all these designs for stuff that never existed, except in the minds of men who remain 12-year olds at heart. It takes that sort of adolescent imagination to jump into that world and dream about what it would have been like. The rest of us haven't got the attention span.

But Speer did design things that were actually built. He designed the new Reichschancellery building and a number of other impressive buildings, none of which survived the war.  About all there is left standing of his architectural legacy are a couple of street lamps.  But there are the drawings and photographs and they're all easily accessible.  Rather than go into an orgy of assessing how good or bad an architect Speer acually was, it is enough to say he was a highly competent designer.  He sold his soul for the opportunity to design a city that was supposed to last a thousand years.  He got to work on the big canvas and he wasn't shy about making the most of it. Of course, the joke ultimately was on him.

What I myself always found fascinating in Speer's designs was the degree to which he was willing to sweat the small details with the same attention and care that he put into the large, megalomanical stuff.  Look at the grand corridors of the Reich Chancellery,  how at one side was an immense bank of windows, while on the inside, there were a long line of couches, stuffed chairs and coffee tables. I could always imagine diplomats and ministers sitting and conferring on them.

There were also the drawings and photographs of Hitler's offices, but one of my favorites was the massive rectangular table where the government ministers would sit during government meetings. The photographs always noted that the table was never used since the Nazi government never actually convened a single session in their twelve years of existence. It tells a lot about Hitler's particular genius. More than one historian observed that the Nazis weren't truly totaliarian, because nothing about it was ever clearly enough delineated to actually be totaliarian. There was never an official Number Two after Hitler.  What it really was was a German version of an Oriental court.

Hitler didn't like order. Schedules were for other people to adhere to. Some of his old-school critics in the Army would secretly refer to him as the "Bohemian Corporal," because of his free-wheeling, non-organized ways.  He was at heart an artist, and he ran his Reich exactly that way. He liked keeping people off balance, rules and points of order went against his way of doing things.

The real funny thing is that ultimately the Nazi government only started convening after Hitler was dead. Hitler's successor, Grand Admiral Doenitz, ran his version of the Reich, for a little over three weeks and on every one of those days, the cabinet met and held meetings, with himself, the Reich's President, dutifully presiding over them.

He continued to do so even after it became clear that their juristiction only went as far as the gates of the Flensburg Marineschule, which served as the Third Reich's final capital. Since the Germans had by then already surrendered, Allied officers often sat in on the government meetings to observe the proceedings. When Eisenhower finally decided that enough was enough and directed the British Army to roll up the Flensburg Government and arrest everyone they could find,  they made a point of doing it in the middle of a morning cabinet meeting. The tommies burst in with bayonets on their rifles and helmets on their heads, shouting at everyone to put their hands up. They stripped the Germans, beat them up, relieved them of all their medals, watches, rings, pistols, and daggers, which they claimed as souvenirs. All a bit of fun on Jerry and a fitting way to end the last chapter of the Third Reich.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the bizarre, surreal, three-week "Flensburg Reich"  might want to read my bizarre, surreal novel GERMANIA, published by Simon & Schuster, available in hardcover, paperback, and as an ebook.

Person of Interest: Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg

von Friedeburg signs the surrender to Montgomery

One of the more shadowy characters that I encountered while researching my novel on the "Flensburg Reich" was Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg. At the time, remarkably little was known about him, even though he played a prominent role in the German Navy up to the time of his death on May 23, 1945. If you go to nearly any high school or courthouse in America today, you will find, framed on the walls, copies of many of the key documents of American History, provided to them by some organization called The Exchange Club. There, among copies of the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the Gadsen Purchase, and the Emancipation Proclamation, is a copy of the unconditional German Surrender signed at Rheims, France on May 7, 1945. And there, among all the signatures, is the neat signature of Grand Admiral Hans Georg von Friedenburg . His story is an extremely odd one and is worth telling.

There were three separate German surrenders that marked the end of World War II in Europe. The first was at Luneburg Heath in Northern Germany to British Field Marshal Montgomery. The second was in Rheims, France, to Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower. The third was in Berlin to Russian Field Marshal Konev. Von Friedeburg was the only individual to attend all three. And if not for this, he would be barely a footnote in history. But by being there, his image and face are something anyone who knows even a little about World War II is familiar with.

The main reason von Friedeburg was such a shadowy figure is simply because of who he was shadow to; Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz. Beginning sometime in the late 1930s, when Doenitz became head of U-boats, von Friedeburg was right there behind him. Then, when Doenitz became head of the Navy, following Grand Admiral Raeder's dismissal by Hitler, von Friedeburg became head of U-boats. Finally, when Hitler killed himself and Doenitz became head of state, von Friedenberg became the new head of the Navy.  Always a step behind Doenitz and for that reason, nearly indistinguishable from him.

A day or two after taking over from Hitler, Doenitz sent von Friedeburg to Montgomery to arrange an end to hostilities. Doenitz was under the impression that the grand alliance between the Soviets and the Western Allies was already at the point of breaking up and that we would be amenable to them joining us in a new entente against the Russians.  Von Friedeburg went to Montgomery also expecting he would be treated with a certain amount of gallantry and generosity of spirit as was customarily expected between victor and vanquished. But von Friedeburg was in for a big surprise.
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Montgomery was probably already known among his fellow Allied generals as being a bit of a prick. By this point in the war, Eisenhower was already sick of him, since Monty.had a way of taking the lion's share of resources while moving a little too cautiously against the enemy. His battles against the more audatious American General Patton were already well known to anyone in the West who could read a newspaper. But it is doubtful that von Friedeburg or anyone accompanying him knew this. It was enough to know that Monty was in charge of all military operations in northern Germany.  The Germans had a massive evacuation operation going on in the Baltic, comparable to what the British had done at Dunquerque in 1940, only much, much bigger.

When von Friedeburg arrived at Monty's TAC HQ, Montgomery went out of his way to be a total prick. Part of this was, of course, his own already-described nature, but the main reason was that, only a few days before, Monty's troops discovered Belsen, one of the Nazi's most notorious death camps. And what they'd seen there so shocked and disgusted them that there was very little gentility left to give to von Friedeburg. Within a very short time after meeting Montgomery, von Friedeburg suffered a nervous breakdown and was soon openly weeping. He briefly went back to confer with Doenitz at Levensau Bridge. Doenitz apparently harshly upbraided him and sent him back to Montgomery to try to negotiate. Montgomery would have none of it and curtly informed von Friedeburg that if he did not immediately sign an unconditional surrender, the truce would end, hostilities would be resumed and he would merrily kill as many fleeing German refugees as he could. He did, however, let von Friedeburg know that he would be willing to turn a blind eye on the German evacuation activities if they would agree to an unconditional surrender. A few minutes later, the surrender was signed and the war in northern Europe had ended.

Having done this, von Friedeburg assumed he would then be allowed to return to Doenitz's headquarters. But it was not the case. He was immediately flown to Rheims to sign another surrender, this time to General Eisenhower. Von Friedeburg had hoped that Eisenhower might be more amenable to his entreaties. After all, Eisenhower was a political general and a world leader and surely he must know what was going on. Besides, Eisenhower was of German origin. But as it turned out, Eisenhower wouldn't even meet with him. He, too, had recently visited German death camps and was at least as disgusted with what he saw as Montgomery. Instead, he sent in his Chief of Staff, General Walter Bedell Smith. For all Eisenhower's reputation as a smiling, likeable nice guy, the reason he could do this was because Bedell Smith, his right-hand man, was an out-and-out bastard, whom fearless warriors like Patton and Montgomery were both terrified of. Bedel Smith was an even bigger prick to von Friedeburg than Montgomery had been. He also demanded a complete and unconditional surrender, this time without any offers of off-the-books accommodations. Then, when von Friedeburg asked they were being treated so ungallantly, Bedel Smith let out a cruel laugh and promptly presented the German admiral with the latest copy of Stars and Stripes, which showed in ghastly detail the atrocities committed at Dachau, Belsen, Ravensbruck, and other newly liberated concentration camps. Von Friedeburg stared in horror at all the pictures of starved, beaten, and mass murdered Jews and he promptly had another nervous breakdown. Bedel Smith suspended the negotiations and sent the Germans off to a guesthouse to stew on it.

The next day, when Bedel Smith summoned them back, von Friedeburg was still so visibly unhinged that Bedel Smith demanded Doenitz send in someone else capable of surrendering. Ten hours later, Colonel General Alfred Jodl arrived. Cool and composed, Jodl also tried to convince the Allies to join up with them against the Soviets. But he was not successful. In the end, Jodl signed the unconditional surrender and von Friedeburg signed after him. Jodl was allowed to fly back to Flensburg to Doenitz's headquarters. Not so von Friedeburg. The Allies still had plans for him. He was taken to Berlin, where he signed a third surrender, this time to the Soviets. By this point, von Friedeburg was mostly in a daze. Finally he was allowed to fly back to Flensburg. For the next two weeks, he continued a kind of zombie existence in the land of the living, but no longer really alive.

The "Flensburg Reich" was often marked by extremely peculiar behavior of its occupants. Von Friedeburg's behavior during this period was mainly listless. Apparently the other Nazis mostly just avoided him. Then, finally, on May 23, the Allies rolled up the whole regime and arrested everyone. Doenitz, von Friedeburg and Jodl were all summoned to the Patria, an old Hamburg-Amerika liner, where the Allied Control Commission was headquartered. There they were tersely informed of their government's liquidation and they were all promptly placed under arrest. They were then escorted back to their quarters to pack their bags. Once there, von Friedeburg asked to go to the bathroom, where he promptly took some prussic acid and killed himself. One of the first people to find his body was the celebrated LIFE Magazine photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who had him taken off the toilet and laid down on a bed, where she photographed him. On the wall behind him, was a framed portrait of Doenitz. This photograph of von Friedeburg was the last entry in a grand LIFE photo essay showing a succession of various top Nazis who'd killed themselves with pictures of Hitler always in the background. It was always the same picture and perhaps through persistence of vision or some other bit of visual trickery, the photograph of Doenitz above von Friedeburg's unhappy corpse seems indistinguishable from them.

von Friedeburg as posed by Margaret Bourke-White

As I said, for years and years, I gathered research on the "Flensburg Reich," and though I gathered a lot of information on a lot of people and events, what I had on von Friedeburg never progressed beyond the barest of a barebones outline. I spent years of my life wondering about him and trying to figure out what had gone on in his head during those terrible, humiliating days of surrender. I never found out, but when the time finally came to write my book,  Germania, I simply did the best I could using my imagination. I used him as a sort of literary device. What if he were the one Nazi who through some defect in his personality could not engage in the infuriating denial that all the others did, where they claimed that they didn't know about it or that they were just following orders? What if he were the one who drank deeply of his own guilt so that he wallowed in it, admitted and embraced the implications of his and his nation's awful criminality? In a sense, von Friedeburg became the moral center of my novel, a stark contrast to all the other Nazi leaders who envisioned bright futures for themselves and spent their time in Flensburg trying to disassociate themselves from their unpleasant past.

Soon after I finished and sold the novel to Simon & Schuster, some very telling details of von Friedeburg's life began accreting onto the Internet. That before the war, he had spent a period serving as a naval liaison to Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Of all the admirals in the German Navy, he was among the staunchest Nazis. He had gotten quite close with both Hitler and Himmler. Then I learned he had a very dark secret. Hans Georg von Friedeburg had a Jewish grandmother. Hans Georg von Friedeburg was a Jew.

(Germania was first published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, and is now also available on Kindle here).