1945

  Newt Gingrich

  1945

  William R. Forstchen

  Technical Editor,

  Albert S. Hanser

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises PO Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-87739-9

  Cover art by Gary Ruddell

  First mass-market printing, September 1996

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Number: 95-14080

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication:

  To the generation that fought the Nazis in the real world, especially our parents:

  Bob and Kitt Gingrich, and

  John and Dorothy Forstchen

  Acknowledgments:

  Many people have been most helpful in making this novel a reality, but particular thanks are due to Joseph Hanser, Bill Fawcett, and especially David Drake, who in more than one instance corrected our nomenclature, and for whom we stretched a point.

  PROLOG

  September 1,1945 Washington, D.C.

  "But darling, Germany and the United States are not at war. What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of... gossip? Surely you don't think that I, a loyal Swede . . The question trailed off in a lethal pout as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly, mock-innocent appeal in her eyes.

  Still, he mustn't let her see just how much she moved him. A relationship had to have some balance. He stretched in turn, reached over for his cigarettes and gold-plated Ronson on the art deco nightstand with its Tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure what to say he made a production out of lighting up and enjoying that first luxurious after-bout inhalation.

  His continued silence earned him a small punishment.

  "Darling... isn't it time for you to leave?"

  Playfully, to drive home the potential loss, she bit his shoulder, then kissed it better.

  "Aw, hell, I don't want to ... I wish I could just divorce Mrs. Little Goodie Two-Shoes!"

  "I like this arrangement." She laughed softly. "Mistress to the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States. Nice title, don't you think? Such a book I could write."

  Mayhew shuddered at the thought. "Don't even joke about it." But he could trust her to be discreet.... He was sure he could trust her.

  More to cover his moment of doubt than for any other reason, he harked back to her initial gambit. "One thing we really don't have to worry about is a war between Germany and the United States. It just isn't in the cards. There's no way it could happen within the next year or so, and after that—well, just take it from me, nobody is going to dream of messing with the United States, not even Adolf Hitler."

  "I don't think there is going to be a war either, but you seem so sure. What is your big secret? You were so excited about it when you came in here, and now you won't tell me." Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress. "Tell me," she hissed.

  Mayhew looked at his delicious interrogator. For a moment her intensity almost frightened him. Then he was overcome by it, by her. His had been a strict and starchy upbringing, and his marriage had not been born of love but of political opportunity, though his wife didn't know that. So he capitulated. Besides, he wanted to tell. What good were secrets if you couldn't share?

  "Okay. I surrender."

  "Lucky for you," she purred, then laughed. "Such games we have," she whispered in his ear. "You play wonderfully. Now tell!"

  Having given in, characteristically he stalled. "Sure you're not looking for a story for your Swedish newspaper?"

  She just looked at him. He could tell she was tiring of the delay.

  "Our interests are different," he announced as if he were the first to have that particular insight. "Germany won its war in Europe and will be busy consolidating its gains for years. Our situation in the Pacific is much the same: We've won; now it's time to consolidate. There just isn't any significant conflict of interest between us, and there won't be for a long time.

  "Hell, by the time they've consolidated their hold on Western Russia and the Ukraine and practically all of Europe, we'll be looking at the next century. Same for us, especially now that we have this China mess to worry about. We have no reason to interact with each other. Our paths don't cross. It's that simple."

  "What about the death camps we're hearing about?"

  "What about them? It's a shame what's happening there, but it's not something to start a war over." Personally he couldn't care less about the camps, but he wasn't about to admit that aloud to anybody—not when his President felt about it the way he did. Continuing with that line of thought he added, "Even my boss isn't about to throw away millions of American lives over it, and even if he wanted to Congress would never allow it. Victory in a war with Germany would not be a sure thing. Remember 1918? Germans are tough. Right now the only thing that could move us would be an invasion of England. That might do it."

  "Really?"

  "I know it for a fact. I heard my boss talking about it with the House Minority Leader and the Speaker. They agreed. We don't dare lose England."

  "This is so exciting. You really do hear about everything, don't you?" Her fingers twined the fur on his chest.

  John maintained a smug silence.

  "But there's something more. I know there is. that nobody else knows. Now you must tell. Or..."

  "Okay! Okay! There is something more," he said hurriedly, laughing with just a hint of nervousness. He stirred at the movement of her fingers, which were no longer on his chest.

  "Can't it wait just a little while?" he panted, suddenly wanting her very much.

  "If you promise faithfully..."

  "I promise. Everything!" She was truly an artist....

  His next coherent words were:

  "We're making this new kind of bomb..."

  Something

  CHAPTER ONE

  October 3 Berlin

  "The Nazis may be crazy, but they sure can throw a parade."

  Lieutenant Commander James Mannheim Martel, head of Naval Intelligence at the American Embassy in Berlin, nodded silendy in grudging agreement to Major Wayne Mason, his Army counterpart, then turned back to the spectacle.

  The thundering engines of the Tiger and Panther tanks, the cheering of the crowds and the insistent beat of the "Horst Wessel," theme song of the Nazi party washed over him in waves. Martel hoped it wasn't his German heritage that set his pulse to pounding in response. The thought was deeply distasteful.

  After a while the Waffen SS division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler passed in review, flowed around the sides of the Brandenburg Gate and down the broad Unter den Linden thoroughfare in a dark gray torrent. These were the heroes of the Russian front, the victors of Stalingrad, Astrakhan, and Baku. On this, the second anniversary of final victory in Russia, they were still heroes of the present rather than aging icons of former glory. Now more tarda, rank after rank, three abreast, roared by. Dark clouds of exhaust fumes spewed heavenward. The thunder nearly drowned the roar of the multitude.

  Across the boulevard a thin line of black-clad SS guards, arms interlocked, swayed back and forth in response to the pressure of the ecstatic mob. The SS men were friendly enough, but they were also beginning to look a little desperate; it would never do to have some of the most enthusiastic patriots
of the Third Reich pulped beneath the treads of a Panther—especially in front of the Führer and the international press — something that could well happen if the crowd broke through. The scene brought to Martel's mind the absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby.

  The last of the tanks passed by. Next came half-tracked APCs, armored personnel carriers. Their squads of camouflage-clad infantry sat at rigid attention, immobile as statues, until they turned as one to salute the Führer, who stood on the reviewing stand, right arm outstretched. "Sieg heil!" roared the crowd. "Deutschland! Führer!"

  Hitler was surrounded by his entourage — Göring, slightly ridiculous in his robins-egg blue uniform, Goebbels, the gnomelike master of propaganda, Himmler, bloodless hps pulled back in a sardonic grin as his elite armored division rolled past, the ever-present Bormann, dressed in the brown uniform of the Party. In a wider circle around them were the field marshals, generals, industrialists, and Party hangers-on. Victory Day was the holiest day of the Nazi liturgical calendar, and the high priests of darkness reveled in their celebration of all that they had done to the world.

  Again Martel became uneasily aware of how his own blood was set racing by the sense of power and glory that drenched the entire artificial drama. It was like being aroused by a woman one despised. No matter the revulsion, despite the inner certainty that never would one yield, beneath all moral rectitude there lurked a dark, compelling attraction. Again he wondered: was it his maternal heritage that made him feel this way? He very much hoped the attraction was at a more universal level, and not something peculiar to his personal history.

  But how his mother would have cheered. German pride, German discipline, the Germany nation itself reborn in victory, marching in perfect unison toward its true and glorious destiny.

  Martel shuddered slightly and interrupted his dark musings to thank his God that he was an American like his father before him and, again like his father, an officer in his country's navy.

  It had been when traveling as part of a US Naval delegation to the German Imperial Navy that Captain Jefferson Lee Martel had met Katerina von Mannheim, he an attache to the legendary Admiral Sims, she the daughter of a German rear admiral. After a whirlwind courtship too romantic to be quite real, they had married. Not long after had been born unto them a son, their only child, James Mannheim Martel.

  Martel had always been fascinated by the two so similar and yet so different traditions that he was heir to. Had his father been the German and his mother American he might well have been part of the crowd roaring beneath him rather than a foreign military observer.

  As things had actually transpired, in 1917 his American father had sailed into the North Sea, where he might have been killed by Rear Admiral von Mannheim in battle. Instead his father had returned home safe from his passage through harm's way—while not long after taking part in the "mutinous" scuttling of the German fleet rather than transfer it to the Allies, his grandfather had died a suicide.

  Little Jimmy Martel had been three years old at the time of America's entry into the Great War. Yet he would never forget how, when he walked down the street holding his mother's hand, people he had first met in his very own house would turn their backs on him and his mother rather than acknowledge the existence of the Hun amongst them. His mother had not taken it well. Among her class and nation the accordance of dignity and consideration to a forlorn female "enemy national"—to say nothing of the wife of an officer of the host nation! —would have been so automatic as not to bear comment. The naively close-minded patriotism of the American middle class did not charm her aristocratic soul.

  Initially, Katerina had been determined to become the American wife of an American naval officer. After America entered the fray her attitude quickly became that of an enemy alien, a prisoner of war trapped by the existence of her son. And while she loved him and fulfilled her duty to him as she saw it, she did not hide her feelings. This small continuation of the Great War lasted until 1921 when she died of diphtheria, and the boy was sent to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to live with his American grandparents. During the years that followed his father spent as much time as he could with his only child, but he was much at sea.

  For the sake of her memory Jim clung fiercely to his mothers heritage, even retaining German as his second language through constant private reiteration and practice. His grandfather had encouraged him in this. Being the son of a defeated Confederate naval officer, he understood how precious lost causes could be. There was nothing disloyal in it—quite the contrary! —and Jim's father and grandparents had even agreed to Jim's spending 1932, his last year of high school, in Berlin with his mother's family. That had been the happiest year of his life, even though he had lived it against the backdrop of the gathering Nazi darkness that had culminated in Hitler's final grab for power.

  After Germany had come four years at Annapolis, where he graduated third in his class. Perhaps for that reason he was chosen to spend a further two years as a junior instructor. His senior thesis on the development of German naval air reconnaissance during the First World War (a field his grandfather had helped launch) also may have been a factor. Despite his expertise in aviation however, because he could so easily pass for a native German, his advisors at Annapolis had tried to push him into naval intelligence—but it was naval aviation that drew him. Perhaps that was inevitable; his father too was a pioneer in the new discipline, having been converted to air power as a result of the 1929 Panama fleet war games in which the new carrier Saratoga slipped through the covering lines of battlewagons and "destroyed" the locks. The umpires of the game were later pressured into reversing their decision but some observers, including the Japanese naval attaches, had paid attention.

  His old man, as Jim fondly recalled, would lecture by the hour to anyone willing to listen about the revolution to come, even after — especially after — his forcible retirement due to a heart attack. Whatever his successes at converting the rest of the Navy, his son was hooked. After flight school came Jim's assignment to the Enterprise as a fighter pilot. His tour began on December 5, 1941, two days before Pearl Harbor. When compression fractures to two vertebrae, the result of trying to bring in a shot-up Corsair that quit a hundred yards short of the deck, ended his flying career, he was America's number-seven ace of the Great Pacific War.

  After several months in traction, Jim emerged to find that the war in the Pacific was all but over, and now that fighter aces were a drug on the market some old dark spots on his personnel folder had come back to life. Like Billy Mitchell and his own father, Jim believed that the US military, including the Navy, was paying far too little attention to the next war. By the time Jim was at Annapolis, no one had any doubt as to the magnitude of air power's role, but to him it was obvious that far too little attention was being paid to advanced technology. In his superiors' view to merely vocalize such opinions was bad enough — and Jim had published.

  The fact that he had published under his father's name in obscure professional journals had kept him out of the hottest water, but the true authorship was an open secret —his dad's iconoclasm had not extended to airborne radar vectoring (science fiction!) nor the accelerated reaction times carriers would require when confronted by jet-powered aircraft. So while his discretion had left the brass merely irritated rather than wildly outraged, still there were some in positions of power who thought him another loudmouthed maverick in the Mitchell vein who was badly in need of a lesson in patience, and why it was a good idea to keep superiors happy.

  Besides, the Navy quite validly felt that Jim was uniquely well positioned to understand just exacdy what lurked in the dark underside of Nazi conquest: Europe enslaved, concentration camps, labor camps still teeming with Russian POWs, the blood-spattered basements of Gestapo headquarters, and, still only whispered about, a nightmare called "the Final Solution." Let him spend a few years out of the way, fixed so he can learn to keep his mouth shut good and proper, the thinking had gone. And so had come the pos
ting to Berlin. To Jim's way of thinking, the worst part of it was that he couldn't keep up with the details of cutting-edge research in the USA. On the other hand there was some pretty damned cutting-edge stuff going on right here in—

  As the last SS battalion passed by, Jim was pulled from his reverie by a sudden high-pitched whine that quickly rose in volume to a wailing shriek as a group of Me-262 jet fighters grouped in the shape of a swastika came roaring in, their shadows racing them down the boulevard. Mason, who was also a pilot, looked up at them with hostile envy. Jim shared Mason's envy, but was more phlegmatic about it, perhaps because he knew the plane fairly well.

  Behind the 262s came a formation of less familiar shapes, and Jim abandoned his camera for his binoculars to get a closer look. He hoped his companion, who was snapping away, was doing his job right. The Germans were building three carriers, and American intelligence was still trying to figure out which planes would be adopted for seaborne operations.

  As he watched, the flight of Arado 234 twin-engine jet bombers swept by, breaking from their swastika formation to climb almost vertically up through the scattering of clouds. Compared to the 262s, they did not seem all that agile, but as torpedo attack planes they would be formidable, far different from the lumbering Avengers the Americans had flown during three years of combat in the Pacific.

  Jim still kept as a souvenir a picture of a young American pilot, Lieutenant George Bush, standing on the wing of a splashed Avenger. He'd flown cover for the kid while he waited for rescue. Martel smiled as he thought about him. He had been one of the youngest flight leaders in the fleet, but by God if you needed someone to lead a group straight into enemy flak like they were on rails, he was your man.

  After the 234s came the twin-engine Me-510s, prop-driven ground-attack bombers, their fifty-millimeter antitank guns looking like long ugly stingers slung under the nose. Either plane would be well suited for carrier-based operations, but the Germans were keeping that part of their hand close to the chest; none of the planes flown today had the necessary arresting gear for carrier landings.