The Street Had No Name

Chapter 4

BERLIN, 1942

The corridor was as tall as it was long. The architecture grand and of a scale that was Speer. Everything about the Reich was such, everything new that was. The polished stone floor and walls gave off a chill that only made the amplified footsteps of the three men all that more foreboding.

They walked with an urgency that was not disguised, past the doors that ran from floor to ceiling some twenty feet above, past solitary SS Verfügungstruppen guards in their black uniforms and death head insignia.

Past the offices of the ministers of the various departments that were the ruling elite, towards the end, towards the inner sanctum of their world. Called immediately, they responded as such and now, as the hour approached 01:00 they were soon to be with their leader. The Führer himself made the calls to the men and they all know that, for this to happen, important things were afoot.

They were three, all doctors of various disciplines in obscure social sciences; at least that would be how they would appear in any documentation that would ever be referred to. “Advisors to the leadership of the modern world’s warrior princes” Goebbels’s words always seemed to make such magnificent images from such poor foundations.

They arrived at the door, a guard stood alone in the most immaculate black uniform of Hitler’s most trusted and innermost sentinels; standing over six-foot, blond haired and blue-eyed, this modern day Adonis typified all that was “grand” in the grand plan.

The guard did not say a word. He stood in the doorway with his machine gun at Port Arms and studied each man’s papers in turn and then, when completely happy they were as was to be expected, knocked twice on the door and waited for it to be opened.

Von Triffel opened the door of the outer office; a tall thin man, middle aged and severe in all aspects of his presentation. In an immaculately tailored dark blue double breasted suit, hair slicked back and held in place with brilliant hair oil, he looked like a Shakespearean actor rather than the leader of the Führer’s Force Five group.

And leader he was there was no doubt; the only hint of his affiliations with the machinations of this regime was the small party badge on the lapel of his jacket.

He did not say a word, stood to one side and allowed the other three men to enter. They looked bedraggled in comparison to their leader and he adjusted Schroeder’s tie and ordered Grossman to straighten his belt before making his way to the inner office doors with the trio in tow.

The four men entered the large room, dark, and lit only by a single green shaded reading lamp on the desk at the far end of the room. The windows behind the desk ran across the wall that was the back of the room and Berlin shone and twinkled in the cold night air. Hitler was sitting at the desk. Dressed in his uniform and looking as tired as any man had ever seen him.

They walked towards the desk and he looked up, nodded at them all, and Von Triffel indicated that they should all take a straight-backed chair at the large boardroom table to one side.

This room was not the Führer’s normal day office, it was Von Triffel’s and it was the place that Force Five met to discuss things that needed discussing. It was not where Force Five undertook what they did to facilitate what was discussed that needed facilitating, that was done away from the veneer of civility that was the Reichschancellery. Here, they met like any committee would have met in the modern world of the Thousand-Year Reich.

Von Triffel motioned them to sit and moved to Hitler’s side. He whispered to the man and he stood, each man noting his demeanour, shoulders slumped and gate like that of an old man; Von Triffel along-side, guiding him to his place at the table.