The Proteus Operation Read online

  "Yes . . . that is exactly how it happened, Eden said slowly. He thought over the things he had been told already. "So when Muller resigned the chancellorship and was succeeded by Bruening in 1930, Hitler joined Hugenberg to prevent the Bruening-Hugenberg coalition that had led to stability in the Europe that Kurt came from. After that, Bruening couldn't hold a workable majority, could he?"

  "There were interminable elections," Bannering said. "The Nazis gained ground by selling the Army on visions of restored greatness and terrifying the business community with specters of what would happen if the Communists got in."

  "They must have had inside help with the Army, though," Eden said.

  "They did," Bannering confirmed. "Overlord had been busy in Berlin, too, looking for manipulable contacts on Hindenburg's staff. Their collaborator was Defense Minister Groener's right-hand man, Schleicher."

  "Ah, so Schleicher was in it with them, was he?" Eden nodded slowly to himself, as if that had told him a lot. General von Schleicher had been in control of all press and publicity matters concerning the military. He was a born political intriguer, and in the early twenties had circumvented the Versailles restrictions by arranging for German tank and air officers to train secretly in Russia.

  Bannering explained, "Overlord agents put Schleicher up to the idea of ditching Bruening and Groener, incorporating the Storm Troopers into the regular Army and using their combined force to subdue the Nazis, and then seizing control himself. Schleicher fixed things with Hindenburg, and after Bruening and Groener had gone, he had Papen wheeled in as a temporary stooge-Chancellor while the last vestiges of constitutional government were done away with. Then Papen was ditched, too."

  "Making way for Schleicher, who in turn was just to clear the road for Hitler," Eden completed. "My word, what a tangle!" He exhaled a long breath and shook his head wonderingly.

  "Oh, it gets worse,' Bannering promised. "Schleicher assured Hindenburg that he'd be able to form a stable majority in conjunction with a section of the Nazis that Schleicher had been told would follow Strasser in a breakaway from Hitler. But that whole business with Strasser was a charade to set Schleicher up. The Nazis didn't split, and the situation that Overlord had been engineering all along came to fruition with double-crosses sprouting all over Berlin and enemies pouring out of the woodwork to pull Schleicher down from all sides. He resigned at the end of January '33, and Hindenburg gave Hitler the job after Blomberg confirmed the Army's support. But Blomberg had been duped, too. He thought the Nazis would only be used as a temporary expedient to achieve unity by exploiting popular nationalist feelings."

  Eden sat back and sighed as he recalled what had happened after Hitler became Chancellor, and the machine that had been waiting in the wings was wheeled out and unveiled. All the apparatus of state—press, radio, police—was immediately commandeered and pressed into the service of the Party; all opposition to the Nazis was declared illegal, and those who refused to surrender docilely were subdued by terror. Reich Governors were put in charge of the states, centralizing German power for the first time in history and achieving in two weeks what neither Bismarck, the Kaiser, nor the Weimar Republic had ever dared attempt. In the Reichstag, a guaranteed majority was created by the simple device of arresting potential opponents; then that majority was used to pass an act conferring exclusive powers on Hitler's cabinet. Thus, the dictatorship was established legally, by consent of Parliament. The first concentration camp opened at Dachau in the same month.

  Eden nodded slowly to himself as a lot of things fell suddenly into place—Hitler's great blood purge in 1934, for example, which had supposedly been to reassure the generals by getting rid of the extremists who were turning the Storm Troopers into a rival private army. Obviously, its real purpose had been to eliminate Schleicher, Strasser, and no doubt many others whose usefulness had ended and who knew too much.

  Thus, the domestic decks had been cleared for the opening shots of Nazi foreign policy. This had begun with a series of provocations to test the resolve of the Allies; and sure enough, the Allies had protested and blustered, but done nothing. Only Italy had stood by its word when Hitler risked his first foreign gamble. "What about Austria in 1934?" Eden asked. "I take it that was to find out who could be pushed around and who couldn't. People like Winston and I kept trying to tell everybody, but they wouldn't listen."

  "That was when Overlord decided that Mussolini had to be induced to switch sides," Bannering said.

  "Overlord was behind that, too?"

  "Of course. They put Mussolini up to the idea of invading Abyssinia and becoming another Caesar. In reality they were sending him up as a trial balloon to see how Britain and the League would respond to unprovoked aggression. The results told them a lot."

  "And then the Rhineland, eh?" Eden said.

  Bannering snorted contemptuously. "Hitler was terrified. He issued secret orders for the troops to come scurrying back over the bridges at the first sign of trouble from the French. He only went through with it because Overlord threatened to get rid of him and start all over again with someone else if he didn't. All that talk afterward about his iron willpower and how he kept the generals in line was so much stuff and nonsense."

  Then Austria had been seized, followed by the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia after the deal at Munich. And now Ribbentrop had opened the by now familiar diplomatic offensive against Poland for the port of Danzig, and against Lithuania for Memel.

  Suddenly, Eden felt daunted by the task ahead of them. For years now, this hideous juggernaut had been rumbling onward along its chosen course, guided by evil genius and perverted science from an age that Eden was unable even to imagine. How could they, a mere handful, hope to deflect it even for a moment, let alone stop it? Even with the New York machine operating in July, what would be the use of aid from 1975 when the Nazis had access to the technology of 2025?

  In any case, there was so little time. Eden and his colleagues now knew that the conflagration which had led to the collapse of France and Britain and the end of civilized Europe had begun that very year, 1939, with a German assault on Poland in the last week of August. That was why Winslade's group had come straight on to England without waiting for the New York machine to be finished.

  Bannering saw the bleak look creeping into Eden's eyes and guessed what he was thinking. He drained his glass and set it down. "Come on, Tony," he said quietly. "We'd better be on our way."

  Churchill, too, seemed despondent when they met him and Winslade fifteen minutes later at the Athenaeum. Eden asked how the meeting with Chamberlain had gone. "I really don't know if the man is sincere, or if he's simply keeping up a loyal front for those who still think Hitler will protect them," Churchill said. "But in any case, I wasn't getting through. He still insists he has a personal rapport with the dictators that makes the notion of going to war unthinkable. He's certain of his ability to judge character, and he thinks Hitler is basically trustworthy."

  "And when you reminded him of Hitler's record?" Winslade asked.

  Churchill sighed and shook his head wearily as he began eating. "I was met by a wall of defensive myopia. He doesn't see things in the same terms."

  There was a short, heavy silence. "And then?" Bannering prompted.

  Churchill finished chewing and took a sip of wine. "I ventured a display of prognostication, which I hope will not show my trust in you gentlemen to have been misguided. I prophesied that Hitler will take the rest of Czechoslovakia within a month and expose all the pious words of Munich as worthless twaddle." That, of course, was what had happened in the Proteus world's history.

  "Good," Winslade said, nodding. "And what was his reaction?"

  "He said," Churchill replied, "that such a thing was out of the question because Hitler had given him his personal word on it. Danzig and Memel are Germany's final territorial claims in Europe."

  * * *

  It happened within the month as Churchill had predicted to Chamberlain.

  The Nazis stepped
up pressure on the tottering remains of Czechoslovakia, and in the early weeks of March coerced Slovakia into proclaiming independence. Its aging president, Dr. Hacha, was summoned to Berlin and bullied into issuing a public request for protection by the German Reich. German troops already massed on the borders promptly marched in to do the protecting. On March 15, after making the triumphal entry into Prague that he had always felt cheated out of by Munich, Hitler added Bohemia and Moravia to the Reich's Protectorate. Nothing was left but tiny Ruthenia, formerly Czechoslovakia's eastern tip, which proclaimed itself independent as the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. It lasted twenty-four hours before being seized and annexed by Hungary, to which Hitler had already "awarded" it.

  In his address to the House, Chamberlain expressed his regrets, but maintained that the guarantee given to Czechoslovakia at Munich was no longer valid since it had been given against external aggression, whereas the state that it had been given to had ceased to exist through its own internal processes. The world sneered its derision.

  The Churchill-Winslade group accepted gloomily that they weren't about to see any changes in Chamberlain's attitude. They braced themselves with anticipatory contempt for the speech that Chamberlain was due to give at Birmingham on March 17. But something unexpected happened. A very different man spoke at Birmingham, a man whose wishful thinking and delusions had exploded sometime in the forty-eight hours since his words to the House, and who didn't like what he was seeing plainly for the first time. Throwing aside the prepared speech on domestic issues that he had delivered in the Proteus world, Chamberlain roundly condemned the latest outrages, castigated Hitler personally for his violations of solemn promises, and concluded by accusing him openly of aiming at nothing short of world domination. Two days previously, in Parliament, Chamberlain had said, "Do not let us be deflected from our course." This was a right-about-face!

  So the Proteus team could now point to one change at the level of international affairs that was due to their intervention.

  But viewed against the enormity of all the other things that hadn't been changed and the events marching relentlessly onward toward August, the return on the effort expended seemed pitiably small.

  Later in March, German troops occupied Memel.

  At the end of the month, Britain and France announced a guarantee for Poland.

  CHAPTER 9

  ONE OF THE REASONS why Cassidy enjoyed being in 1939 was that he had a fiancee in his own future era. Her name was Gwendolen. She was ravishingly beautiful, slender in body, noble in bearing, virtuous in character and mind, cultured, sophisticated, sensitive, and charming—the perfect combination of lover, companion, confidante, and partner for life. Cassidy couldn't stand the sight of her: the "partner for life" bit worried him, and he found the thought of having to conform one day to the image of respectability that went with the package terrifying. But her family had made millions from chemical fertilizers, a sizable share of which would become hers with the maturing of a trust fund due on the first day of the following year. In the meantime, a pre-Nazi world seemed a good place for staying out of the way.

  "You see, Harry, it's all a question of learning to think analytically and being objective," Cassidy said. Ferracini was positioning another section of former for the compensator windings. Cassidy stooped to inspect the fit, chewed infuriatingly at his ragged mustache while he squinted along an edge to check the alignment, then nodded and reached for the box of fixing pins. "You have to be scientific about things. So when we get through with the job here and go back home, FDR and JFK will have figured out a way to change history, Hitler won't have happened, and we'll all be let go because there won't even be any Army anymore. Then there'll be the wedding bells and stuff, and I'll send you guys some pictures of the yacht from the Bahamas." He chuckled gloatingly.

  Ferracini tapped the fit tight with a soft-head hammer. "Oh, yeah? If you think so much is going to be changed when we get back, then what makes you so sure it'll all stop right there just to suit you? For all you know, she mightn't even have heard of you when we get back. So what does scientific objectivity say about that?"

  "That's no problem," Cassidy said, shrugging nonchalantly. "I still know about her, don't I? I just track her down, give her my inimitable, irresistible routine, same as before, and it all works out. What is it with you, Harry? You know, sometimes I think you just go around looking for problems to invent."

  "But at least I'm consistent," Ferracini retorted. "A month ago you were telling me it couldn't all just change that easily— maybe this would be a better place to stay. Now it's all the other way around. You see, that's another problem with you, Cassidy—you're inconsistent. How's anybody supposed to talk to someone who's always being inconsistent?"

  "But you have to admit that I'm consistently inconsistent," Cassidy said. Ferracini sighed and turned to pick up the next section of former.

  Paddy Ryan, the oldest of the three sergeants with the mission, looked down over his shoulder from the ladder on which he was standing. He was attaching piping to the growing framework overhead. He was short and broad, with a round, reddish, gnarled-looking face and straight, light brown hair, which he combed conventionally and parted on the left. "Ah, with Cassidy's luck, anything could happen. Even if we get back and find nothing's changed, and the big war breaks out, anyhow, he'd still make it through and find some way to use the assets. What about the other night—two full houses and a straight flush in three hands—who ever heard of luck like that?"

  "Like I said, you gotta be scientific about things," Cassidy said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Ryan asked.

  "He cheats," Ferracini answered.

  The sound of footsteps came from behind a capacitor bank to the rear, beyond which Floyd Lamson, the third sergeant, was welding more structural members amid showering sparks and intermittent flashes of light. A moment later the thin, gray-haired figure of Anna Kharkiovitch appeared, wearing a brown warehouse coat and carrying a box. She put the box down on a worktable standing by the wall and began taking out hydraulic valves, gauges, and other components. "Hey," Cassidy hissed. "That offer still stands. We could get out and hit the town tonight. Haven't you changed your mind yet?"

  Anna smiled down at what she was doing and replied without looking up. "Tch, tch, such impetuosity— and in a grown man, too. You should learn to control yourself better, Sergeant Cassidy. Then, perhaps, I might see if I can fit you in. But it is difficult with so many admirers, you understand."

  "I'll fight em all," Cassidy offered.

  "Oh, my word—such flattery!"

  "And then he'll run out on ya," Ryan said. "He's got another woman—lots of money, see? He cheats on everybody."

  "Surely not the gallant Sergeant Cassidy!"

  They worked on in silence for a while. Then Ryan said, "It's starting to look like maybe somebody else won't be getting away with so much cheating from now on. Claud and the guys in King are really lighting some fires under the tails of them English over there. First there was Chamberlain getting up on his hind legs at last and calling Hitler an out-and-out liar a couple of weeks back. Then them and the French face him up square and tell him they'll kick his ass if he messes with Poland. Now they're handing out guarantees left and right to anyone who'll take em. It ain't lookin' so bad."

  In the first week of April, while Churchill was protesting at the scattered disposition of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Italian forces had landed in Albania and quickly took over the tiny country. Anglo-French guarantees of protection for Greece and Rumania followed soon afterward.

  "You see, Harry, it's all changing already," Cassidy said. "There won't even be any war in August. Three months from now, we'll be shipping bombs through here from JFK to nuke the hell out of Hitler and all of them Fascists, and then we'll be on our way home." He tipped his cap to the back of his head and scratched the front of his shaggy, yellow hair while he surveyed his handiwork. "Leastways, that's how I'd do it if it was up to me." he told anyone
who was interested.

  Ferracini shook his head as he began attaching the terminal lugs. "You can't pretend that everything you see in the papers is due to Claud and his guys," he said. "Most of it happened the same way in our history, anyway."

  "Harry's right," Anna said. "The guarantees to Poland and so on were given in our world, also. They're not new—not something that we can claim to have instigated."

  Cassidy snorted, but remained silent for once. Ryan came down the ladder to study a drawing and collect some more pieces. "That doesn't make sense, he said. "If the rich people over there were happy to let Hitler take on the Russians, why would they wanna go giving out guarantees? Why would they want the hassle of commitments that said they had to get involved?"

  "Pressure of world opinion after Munich," Anna replied. "In our history, they were prepared to risk a sham war in order to be seen to have made a genuine attempt to stop Hitler. When it failed, they would be able to claim that they had tried. But, of course, it all backfired in their faces." She spoke the words bitterly, but at the same time with a hint of a grim satisfaction that she couldn't quite suppress. The country being set up, after all, had been her own.

  "You make it sound like they knew it was gonna fail," Ryan commented.

  "Of course they knew," Anna said. "It had all been agreed to secretly by some of the more powerful names among the Western aristocracies. What else do you think Ribbentrop's little jaunts to London and Paris were for—to be the darling of the Mayfair set?" She made a face as if she were experiencing a bad taste. "That was why Hitler could afford to be so cocksure about clearing the way between him and Russia. He knew he'd be up against token opposition only—a charade put on for appearance's sake."