Das Fallbeil
Time for a short story!
I was thinking back in September about other forms of execution, and the guillotine (or das Fallbeil in German) came to mind along with some reading I had been doing about the failed 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and the frenzied rush in the aftermath to find and execute any and all believed to be connected to the plot.
I was further inspired by a manip Madiosi did for me:
So I started writing, and as I wrote Madi came up with more manips.
I also attempted something new ... something I have never done here on CF before ... writing in the third person and from someone's point of view other than Barb's.
So here it is in two parts. Enjoy!
PART 1.
Plötzensee Prison, 31 July 1944
SS Untersturmführer Dieter Horn took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and watched the smoke drift to the ceiling. Placing the half-finished cigarette on an ashtray he returned to the paperwork stacked before him on the desk he occupied in the corner of the small building that housed the prison's guillotine.
It was a Monday, and it was Dieter's job to oversee the morning's executions. He was expecting quite a number that day. The thick pile of dossiers on his desk was proof of that!
Ever since the failed 20 July attempt on the Führer’s life, now just a little over a week ago, there had been a steady stream. The Gestapo and SD had wasted no time in rounding up thousands. Anyone evenly remotely suspected of having been involved, or even of having knowledge that might lead to the arrest of the cowardly plotters, had been brought in, interrogated, and duly executed.
Dieter hated his job although he would have been the first to admit it was certainly preferable to the Eastern Front. And he was thankful that it was only his duty to oversee the beheading of the condemned. It was the job of underlings, and especially the official executioner, Gunther, to do the dirty work ... the strapping of the naked victims to the bascule, the release of the blade, and the unsavory tasks of disposing of the decapitated body, as well as hosing down the instrument of execution to clear it of blood and bodily waste and ready it for the next soul condemned to its tender mercies.
Dieter picked up the top dossier from the pile in front of him, knowing that the first prisoner was already on his or her way from a cell somewhere in the depths of the main building. They’d soon be escorted across the prison courtyard to his building and presented to him. He needed to review the case and be ready.
He reached for and took another long drag on his cigarette. Ach, if only I could be somewhere else today, he mused. He laid the cigarette aside and looked at the cover of the folder in his hand. Near the top was typed the prisoner's name: Barbara Mohr.
Dieter's jaw dropped. Nein! Gott im Himmel! Not Barbara? ... he thought to himself. It couldn't be. Impossible! Hands shaking, he opened the dossier.
Yes, it was her! Unmistakably her! There she was in the photo clipped to the inside cover.
It was a service photo of her wearing a woman's Wehrmacht uniform. The sleeve of her uniform jacket bore a thunderbolt, which meant she was a news-service assistant. That made sense. Dieter had recently heard from a mutual friend that Barbara was working as an assistant to some Generalleutnant in the Replacement Army.
He reached for his cigarette, and took another drag. How could this be? Sweet Barbara, his Bärbel ... the very girl he had once courted and to whom he had offered his hand in marriage.
They were nineteen then ... good Nazis ... group leaders ... he in the Hitler Jugend, she in the League of German Girls. He opened his wallet and removed a well-worn photo of her posing in her League sports uniform, perky breasts and nipples barely concealed beneath the light flimsy cotton fabric of her vest, a look of proud determination on her face.
It was true that she had, at the time, refused his marriage proposal. The refusal had come as a devastating blow to him. Yet he continued to see her, as often as possible, hoping for a change of heart.
And then the war intervened and they parted ways. He campaigned in Poland, France and then Greece. He wrote to her more than once, but she never replied. Nonetheless Dieter always dreamed that once the war was over he would find her and rekindle the romance.
And now he was about to oversee her execution? The irony chilled him to the bone.
He turned the page and began reading. She had been brought in on 27 July, a mere four days ago, caught up in the general sweep of the Bendlerblock, the large Wehrmacht and Abwehr headquarters complex in Berlin that was believed to be a hotbed of traitorous assassination plotters.
She was thrown in a cell at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the notorious Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo. There she underwent interrogation. The record showed that her interrogation lasted three days. She had been transferred yesterday to Plötzensee for execution.
The record chronicled her interrogation. Several glossy black and white photos of her under torture were included in the dossier.
Dieter picked up the first. It showed her hanging, arms over head, from the ceiling of an interrogation room, completely naked, feet barely touching the floor. She was flanked on either side by a pair of jack-booted interrogators ... one a hard-faced officer, the other his youthful-looking assistant. Barbara's discarded clothing were nowhere to be seen.
Dieter examined the photo more closely. He studied her proud upturned breasts, paying particular attention to the round areolae and pert nipples he had, until then, never seen before. He had managed, one night when they were kissing, to at least touch them for a fleeting moment by slipping his fingers up under her bra. He recalled how she had sucked in her breath and kissed him harder when he did that, but had then pulled quickly away. She had always been passionate about kissing and embracing but, having been brought up quite properly in the old-fashioned way, had never been willing to allow his advances to go very far. She would always stop him, arguing that she wanted to wait until she was married.
His gaze wandered down the photo to the triangular tangle of hair that covered her mound. The sight of it aroused him. He held the photo closer and peered closely at the enticing place where that triangle of hair and her white creamy thighs came together, and he became even more aroused. An apprehensive glance across the room reassured him that Gunther, and the soldiers assigned to assist him, were busy smoking and chatting among themselves and paying no attention to him.
The dossier also contained a pair of photos showing poor Barbara seated on a chair, wrists bound behind the upright back and ankles bound to the legs of the chair. Attached to her nipples was a pair of nasty looking alligator clamps from which electrical wires led to an electrical box with switches and dials. Between her spread thighs, a pool of piss had darkened the seat of the chair. To the left of the photo an interrogator stood over her, an electrical control switch in his hand.
In the first of this pair of photos, Barbara appeared to be apprehensively eyeing the electrical box, no doubt in terror of the next excruciating jolt of pain she knew was about to be inflicted.
In the second photo, her interrogator ... presumably taken moments later ... had switched on the current. Her face was contorted and her teeth gritted.
And then there was a fourth photo, in which her interrogators had suspended her upside down from the ceiling. Dieter guessed that they had been ducking her head under water. Her hair was hanging down from her head in a sodden mass, and her eyes were shut. Snot and drool was running from her nose and mouth. She looked as though she had had enough at that point ... broken and ready to talk! There were no further photos of her being tortured.
Dieter hastily returned this last photo to the dossier. Feeling a little green around the gills, he turned the page and began reading the interrogation transcripts which had been neatly typed by the secretarial pool and duly stamped with the familiar eagle clutching a swastika.
The text confirmed that Barbara had broken under torture. Indeed, she had apparently sung like a canary. The typed page contained a list of more than eighty names she had “given up”, many of them high ranking officers and officials ... others mere acquaintances, neighbors and friends, most of whom were probably innocent.
A sudden terrifying thought occurred to him and Dieter hastened to re-scan the list to make sure his own name wasn’t on it. It wasn't. Reassured, he turned to the last page which was the document, signed by his superior, ordering her “liquidation” that very morning. At the bottom was the place where he, Dieter, was to sign off as the attending official.
He closed the file and reached again for his cigarette just as the outer door to the building opened and slammed. Footsteps approached in the outer corridor. Dieter stubbed out the last of his smoke, took a deep breath and looked up expectantly.
The double doors to the execution chamber flew open. She entered the room flanked on either side by two soldiers. Wehrmacht men, thought Dieter, most probably invalided from the Eastern front, judging by the pronounced limp of one and the gaunt, tired countenances of both. He pushed back his chair and came out from behind his desk. The soldiers snapped to attention and clicked their heels at the sight of his black SS uniform. They both nodded in her direction, presenting her to him.
She was wearing the remains of her uniform .. a tattered and torn woolen skirt, and a blouse that was missing several buttons and hung revealingly open in front. Her hair was down on her shoulders, and her legs bare. She wore no shoes or hat. Her wrists were cuffed behind her back.
Dieter stared, momentarily entranced. He thought she was as beautiful as ever, despite what had happened to her.
She looked at him. He saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She pursed her lips, hesitated and then said softly, “Dieter, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“Fräulein Mohr,” he intoned officiously, bowing slightly and hating himself for the coldness of his greeting. Best to keep up appearances, nonetheless, he sternly reminded himself.
“Are you my executioner?” She asked, cocking her head in that familiar manner he always found so endearing.
“No,” he replied, turning toward his grim-faced colleague, standing arms akimbo on the far side of the room next to the guillotine, “That’s Gunther’s job. He’s paid to do it. I’m only here in an official capacity.”
“I see,” she murmured, casting her eyes toward Gunther and the dreaded guillotine, and then to the floor at her feet.
A long silence followed. Everyone in the room ... the executioner and the four soldiers ... were looking at Dieter expectantly ... awaiting his orders. But he stood frozen in place, eyes riveted to the place where her open blouse revealed the soft curve of a breast.
“Your orders, Untersturmführer?” whispered one of the soldiers flanking her.
Dieter started. “Ummm, yes. Proceed. Strip the prisoner!”
“Jawohl” the two responded in unison, stomping their feet.
TO BE CONTINUED
Time for a short story!
I was thinking back in September about other forms of execution, and the guillotine (or das Fallbeil in German) came to mind along with some reading I had been doing about the failed 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and the frenzied rush in the aftermath to find and execute any and all believed to be connected to the plot.
I was further inspired by a manip Madiosi did for me:
So I started writing, and as I wrote Madi came up with more manips.
I also attempted something new ... something I have never done here on CF before ... writing in the third person and from someone's point of view other than Barb's.
So here it is in two parts. Enjoy!
PART 1.
Plötzensee Prison, 31 July 1944
SS Untersturmführer Dieter Horn took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and watched the smoke drift to the ceiling. Placing the half-finished cigarette on an ashtray he returned to the paperwork stacked before him on the desk he occupied in the corner of the small building that housed the prison's guillotine.
It was a Monday, and it was Dieter's job to oversee the morning's executions. He was expecting quite a number that day. The thick pile of dossiers on his desk was proof of that!
Ever since the failed 20 July attempt on the Führer’s life, now just a little over a week ago, there had been a steady stream. The Gestapo and SD had wasted no time in rounding up thousands. Anyone evenly remotely suspected of having been involved, or even of having knowledge that might lead to the arrest of the cowardly plotters, had been brought in, interrogated, and duly executed.
Dieter hated his job although he would have been the first to admit it was certainly preferable to the Eastern Front. And he was thankful that it was only his duty to oversee the beheading of the condemned. It was the job of underlings, and especially the official executioner, Gunther, to do the dirty work ... the strapping of the naked victims to the bascule, the release of the blade, and the unsavory tasks of disposing of the decapitated body, as well as hosing down the instrument of execution to clear it of blood and bodily waste and ready it for the next soul condemned to its tender mercies.
Dieter picked up the top dossier from the pile in front of him, knowing that the first prisoner was already on his or her way from a cell somewhere in the depths of the main building. They’d soon be escorted across the prison courtyard to his building and presented to him. He needed to review the case and be ready.
He reached for and took another long drag on his cigarette. Ach, if only I could be somewhere else today, he mused. He laid the cigarette aside and looked at the cover of the folder in his hand. Near the top was typed the prisoner's name: Barbara Mohr.
Dieter's jaw dropped. Nein! Gott im Himmel! Not Barbara? ... he thought to himself. It couldn't be. Impossible! Hands shaking, he opened the dossier.
Yes, it was her! Unmistakably her! There she was in the photo clipped to the inside cover.
It was a service photo of her wearing a woman's Wehrmacht uniform. The sleeve of her uniform jacket bore a thunderbolt, which meant she was a news-service assistant. That made sense. Dieter had recently heard from a mutual friend that Barbara was working as an assistant to some Generalleutnant in the Replacement Army.
He reached for his cigarette, and took another drag. How could this be? Sweet Barbara, his Bärbel ... the very girl he had once courted and to whom he had offered his hand in marriage.
They were nineteen then ... good Nazis ... group leaders ... he in the Hitler Jugend, she in the League of German Girls. He opened his wallet and removed a well-worn photo of her posing in her League sports uniform, perky breasts and nipples barely concealed beneath the light flimsy cotton fabric of her vest, a look of proud determination on her face.
It was true that she had, at the time, refused his marriage proposal. The refusal had come as a devastating blow to him. Yet he continued to see her, as often as possible, hoping for a change of heart.
And then the war intervened and they parted ways. He campaigned in Poland, France and then Greece. He wrote to her more than once, but she never replied. Nonetheless Dieter always dreamed that once the war was over he would find her and rekindle the romance.
And now he was about to oversee her execution? The irony chilled him to the bone.
He turned the page and began reading. She had been brought in on 27 July, a mere four days ago, caught up in the general sweep of the Bendlerblock, the large Wehrmacht and Abwehr headquarters complex in Berlin that was believed to be a hotbed of traitorous assassination plotters.
She was thrown in a cell at 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the notorious Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo. There she underwent interrogation. The record showed that her interrogation lasted three days. She had been transferred yesterday to Plötzensee for execution.
The record chronicled her interrogation. Several glossy black and white photos of her under torture were included in the dossier.
Dieter picked up the first. It showed her hanging, arms over head, from the ceiling of an interrogation room, completely naked, feet barely touching the floor. She was flanked on either side by a pair of jack-booted interrogators ... one a hard-faced officer, the other his youthful-looking assistant. Barbara's discarded clothing were nowhere to be seen.
Dieter examined the photo more closely. He studied her proud upturned breasts, paying particular attention to the round areolae and pert nipples he had, until then, never seen before. He had managed, one night when they were kissing, to at least touch them for a fleeting moment by slipping his fingers up under her bra. He recalled how she had sucked in her breath and kissed him harder when he did that, but had then pulled quickly away. She had always been passionate about kissing and embracing but, having been brought up quite properly in the old-fashioned way, had never been willing to allow his advances to go very far. She would always stop him, arguing that she wanted to wait until she was married.
His gaze wandered down the photo to the triangular tangle of hair that covered her mound. The sight of it aroused him. He held the photo closer and peered closely at the enticing place where that triangle of hair and her white creamy thighs came together, and he became even more aroused. An apprehensive glance across the room reassured him that Gunther, and the soldiers assigned to assist him, were busy smoking and chatting among themselves and paying no attention to him.
The dossier also contained a pair of photos showing poor Barbara seated on a chair, wrists bound behind the upright back and ankles bound to the legs of the chair. Attached to her nipples was a pair of nasty looking alligator clamps from which electrical wires led to an electrical box with switches and dials. Between her spread thighs, a pool of piss had darkened the seat of the chair. To the left of the photo an interrogator stood over her, an electrical control switch in his hand.
In the first of this pair of photos, Barbara appeared to be apprehensively eyeing the electrical box, no doubt in terror of the next excruciating jolt of pain she knew was about to be inflicted.
In the second photo, her interrogator ... presumably taken moments later ... had switched on the current. Her face was contorted and her teeth gritted.
And then there was a fourth photo, in which her interrogators had suspended her upside down from the ceiling. Dieter guessed that they had been ducking her head under water. Her hair was hanging down from her head in a sodden mass, and her eyes were shut. Snot and drool was running from her nose and mouth. She looked as though she had had enough at that point ... broken and ready to talk! There were no further photos of her being tortured.
Dieter hastily returned this last photo to the dossier. Feeling a little green around the gills, he turned the page and began reading the interrogation transcripts which had been neatly typed by the secretarial pool and duly stamped with the familiar eagle clutching a swastika.
The text confirmed that Barbara had broken under torture. Indeed, she had apparently sung like a canary. The typed page contained a list of more than eighty names she had “given up”, many of them high ranking officers and officials ... others mere acquaintances, neighbors and friends, most of whom were probably innocent.
A sudden terrifying thought occurred to him and Dieter hastened to re-scan the list to make sure his own name wasn’t on it. It wasn't. Reassured, he turned to the last page which was the document, signed by his superior, ordering her “liquidation” that very morning. At the bottom was the place where he, Dieter, was to sign off as the attending official.
He closed the file and reached again for his cigarette just as the outer door to the building opened and slammed. Footsteps approached in the outer corridor. Dieter stubbed out the last of his smoke, took a deep breath and looked up expectantly.
The double doors to the execution chamber flew open. She entered the room flanked on either side by two soldiers. Wehrmacht men, thought Dieter, most probably invalided from the Eastern front, judging by the pronounced limp of one and the gaunt, tired countenances of both. He pushed back his chair and came out from behind his desk. The soldiers snapped to attention and clicked their heels at the sight of his black SS uniform. They both nodded in her direction, presenting her to him.
She was wearing the remains of her uniform .. a tattered and torn woolen skirt, and a blouse that was missing several buttons and hung revealingly open in front. Her hair was down on her shoulders, and her legs bare. She wore no shoes or hat. Her wrists were cuffed behind her back.
Dieter stared, momentarily entranced. He thought she was as beautiful as ever, despite what had happened to her.
She looked at him. He saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She pursed her lips, hesitated and then said softly, “Dieter, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“Fräulein Mohr,” he intoned officiously, bowing slightly and hating himself for the coldness of his greeting. Best to keep up appearances, nonetheless, he sternly reminded himself.
“Are you my executioner?” She asked, cocking her head in that familiar manner he always found so endearing.
“No,” he replied, turning toward his grim-faced colleague, standing arms akimbo on the far side of the room next to the guillotine, “That’s Gunther’s job. He’s paid to do it. I’m only here in an official capacity.”
“I see,” she murmured, casting her eyes toward Gunther and the dreaded guillotine, and then to the floor at her feet.
A long silence followed. Everyone in the room ... the executioner and the four soldiers ... were looking at Dieter expectantly ... awaiting his orders. But he stood frozen in place, eyes riveted to the place where her open blouse revealed the soft curve of a breast.
“Your orders, Untersturmführer?” whispered one of the soldiers flanking her.
Dieter started. “Ummm, yes. Proceed. Strip the prisoner!”
“Jawohl” the two responded in unison, stomping their feet.
TO BE CONTINUED
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