Hi, everyone

The Flight Of Werner Von Braun is a stand-alone alternate history novel. It forms part of the backstory for The Twilight Of The Gods series, otherwise known as the Nazi Civil War, but is intended to be more or less completely stand-alone. All you really need to know is that Hitler did not declare war on the United States in 1941, leading to America staying out of the European War, a German victory over the USSR and now an uneasy Cold War between the Third Reich and a British/American alliance. It is now 1949, and Adolf Hitler is dying. His cronies are now positioning themselves for the inevitable struggle that will follow his death.

The novel is set within Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, and represents my attempt to depict the horrors of a victorious Third Reich. If this offends you, please don’t read.

(It also needs a better title – any suggestions?)

You can borrow the first book in The Twilight Of The Gods series from the Amazon Kindle Unlimited link below:

https://www.azonlinks.com/B019A86KLU

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https://chrishanger.net/How%20To%20Follow.html

Thank you

Chris

PS – if you want to write yourself, please check out the post here – https://chrishanger.wordpress.com/2024/02/11/oh-no-more-updates-3/. We are looking for more submissions.

CGN

Prologue

Werner Von Braun was drunk.

He did not, normally, indulge. He was a celebrity within Nazi Germany, high in the favour of  Adolf Hitler, and yet he was all too aware that allowing himself to get drunk, to lose control of himself, raised the risk of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong set of ears. He liked to think he was apolitical, that the ebb and flow of politics in the Third Reich meant nothing to him as long as the government kept funding the space program, but even he understood the dangers. Good men – loyal men – had vanished from the site, and even the world itself, because their enemies had pounced on the slightest hint of disloyalty and used it to ensure their disappearance. Werner was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and even he couldn’t find out what had happened to the disappeared. He knew better than to ask.

And now Korolev was dead.

Werner ground his teeth in silent frustration, cursing himself for a fool. Korolev and his men had been spared, in the wake of the Reich’s conquest of the Soviet Union, to lend their considerable talents to the growing rocket and missile program. Werner had had to argue hard, back in 1942, to convince the SS to take the Russian scientists alive, even going to the Führer himself to override Himmler’s conviction that Slavic Untermenschen could not possibly have anything of value to contribute. Werner knew better. He was a scientist and engineer above all else and he was almost painfully aware that the Reich’s decision to drive Jewish scientists out of the country had been a dangerous mistake. No one was quite sure if the Americans had managed to produce an atomic bomb, but they certainly had a lead on the Reich’s nuclear program. He supposed that explained the sense of urgency pervading the Reich’s government. They knew what they would do, if they had a superweapon, and they assumed the Americans would do the same. And yet …

He took another sip of his drink, the fancy alcohol tasting sour in his throat. He was an engineer as well as a scientist, he knew things could go wrong. The rockets were put together using labour from the nearest concentration camp, by workers who were underfed and demotivated, following designs that were pushing the limits of human technology to breaking point. The process needed to be extensively tested before being streamlined, but the Reich was desperate. The Americans could not be allowed to develop intercontinental missiles first. They could not. It was bad enough that they had massive airbases in Britain, with heavy bombers that could carry atomic weapons into the heart of the Reich, but missiles would let them strike the industrial complexes in the ruins of Poland or even destroy Berlin itself. And the push for a success – any success – had led to disaster.

Werner felt sick, as helpless as he’d been when the SS led Korolev away to be executed. They’d blamed the disaster on the Russian, as if the Russian’s work hadn’t been checked by a dozen German scientists with impeccable bloodlines, and on a multitude of concentration camp workers. Werner had tried to close his mind to the suffering, only a few short miles from the missile complex, but even he knew what was happening now. Hundreds of workers, most innocent of any real crime, were being executed, pour encourager les autres. And there would be more soon, if the next test launch failed …

He shuddered, cursing himself for a fool. He had dreamed of space for his entire adult life and he had thought the Nazis, the sole party devoted to the renewal of Germany, would be able to put the human race in space. To stay. It had worked, at first – Werner knew his team had made magnificent advances – but the demands of war had slowly pushed space exploration back, time and time again, until it was no longer important. Werner had tried, hard, to argue the military importance of control of space, yet … the government wanted missiles to strike London or Washington, or rocket planes capable of flying across the United States, or …

Himmler needs something he can use to climb into Hitler’s place, when he is gone, Werner thought. It felt wrong to even consider a Reich without Adolf Hitler – and anyone who voiced the suggestion out loud would be on a short trip to the nearest concentration camp – but the Führer was dying. He hadn’t been seen in public for the last year, as far as Werner knew, and if he hadn’t had a private meeting with Hitler only two months ago, before the disaster, Werner would have wondered if the Führer was already dead. He needs proof he can steer the ship of state.

He shivered, helplessly. He was a brave man – he had put himself in danger time and time again, just by being on site when prototype rockets were tested – and yet Himmler scared him. The Reichsführer-SS  was cold and calm, a bureaucrat who was also a fanatic; a man who had no qualms about rounding up workers and putting them to work, forcing them to work until they dropped. Himmler had few emotions, if Werner was any judge, and no sense of human decency. He wasn’t an outright sadist, unlike some of the other Nazis Werner tried to forget existed, but that almost made him worse.  It was distressingly easy to convince himself that Himmler would calculate a nuclear war was winnable, as long as the Reich preserved a tiny fraction of its population, and push the button to launch the missiles. And he had thousands upon thousands of loyalists who would set the world ablaze for him.

And if Himmler becomes the Führer, Werner asked himself what happens then?

He took another sip, the alcohol burning through all the evasions and justifications he had used – over the last two decades – to convince himself he was doing the right thing. He had turned a blind eye to so much, in the name of science and simple self-preservation, but it was clear – now – that he had been cheated of the reward he had been promised, when he sold his soul. His rockets would be used for war, not space exploration; atomic science would be used for war, not lighting and heating the Reich … even the half-baked plan one of his subordinates had devised, to use nukes to launch a spacecraft into orbit, would be better than Himmler’s plans for the future. He tried to tell himself that Hermann Göring or Albert Speer would win the coming struggle for power, but he could no longer convince himself of anything. Himmler had the edge, and even if he lost his bid for the title he would still have immense power. And that meant …

It was hard not to laugh, bitterly. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

You didn’t, his conscience answered. How many are dead, because of you? How many will die, because of you?

Werner stared at his glass, then forced himself to stand and walk to the window, looking over the vast complex. He was proud of the missile and rocketry site he’d designed and built over the years, proud enough to hide from the grim truth that it had been built by slave labour and turned into a vital part of the Reich’s war machine. The younger men didn’t see it – they’d been raised in the Reich, taught only what the government wanted them to know – but Werner could no longer hide from himself. His complex was producing weapons of war, from small antiaircraft rockets to much larger antishipping or even city-busting missiles, and once the latter were mated with atomic bombs … Werner wanted to believe atomic weapons were a dream, or a nightmare, but he knew better. The science was sound. All that was left was engineering, and – given time – there was no engineering problem that couldn’t be cracked. The Reich would have the bomb and throw the world into the fire.

He took a long breath, his mind spinning in circles. Retirement was not an option. He knew too much for Himmler to let him go. Suicide was a possibility, but it would be the coward’s way out. He knew better than to think he could damage or destroy the complex himself … and even if he did, the damage would be repairable. The Reich would rebuild and carry on and … he swallowed, hard. There was only one choice left, one that might let him make up for his foolishness, and for the horror he’d helped unleash on the world.

Werner Von Braun was going to defect.

Chapter One: Berlin, 1949

“And to think,” Sir Cuthbert Dudley said quietly, “this used to be a great city.”

Kathleen O’Brian said nothing as the ambassadorial car carried them through the streets of Berlin, their driver steering neatly between the rows of government and military vehicles that dominated the roads. Her mother had left Germany when she’d been a teenager, well before the Nazis had been anything more than a minor threat, but Kathleen had grown up hearing her stories about how peaceful and tolerant Berlin had been, before Hitler. Now … she could feel a shadow in the air, a fear that was all the more dangerous for never being openly acknowledged. The Reich was feared by all, even the Germans themselves. Kathleen understood, all too well. To say the wrong thing in the wrong place was to sign your death warrant.

She sucked in her breath as the car drove past the towering new buildings, heavy gothic architecture making a statement to the world that the regime was here to stay. The bombing in the later years of the war had done immense damage, but the regime had taken advantage of the devastation to redesign the city to suit itself, giant new buildings overshadowing the remnants of an earlier age. Speer had an unlimited budget and unlimited manpower – guest workers from the east, slaves in all but name – and it showed. The towering grandiosity of the state was all too clear. There was nothing elegant in the design, nothing that showed a sense of historical awareness, just a plain blunt statement that chilled her to the bone. She’d seen the figures. She knew how many guest workers had died to build even one of the monstrous buildings. She wondered, numbly, just how many of the locals on the streets knew who’d done the work and why. Not many, if she was any judge. Far too many Germans preferred to look the other way, rather than risk drawing the gaze of the state. It was almost always lethal.

Her heart twisted, painfully, as she spotted a sign on the walls, ordering the Germans to watch for Jews, Communists, Homosexuals and others the Nazi regime considered undesirable. Kathleen was all too aware that most of the undesirables in Berlin had already been slaughtered, if they hadn’t been smart enough to get out before it was too late, but the regime showed no sign of slowing down. They were still butchering their way across the eastern territories, what had once been the USSR, and poisoning the minds of the young. The only upside was that the propaganda was so bad the undesirables could probably remain unnoticed, as long as they kept their heads down. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save them if they were denounced…

“They’re still there,” Sir Cuthbert said, quietly.

Kathleen followed his gaze. A handful of women stood in front of the gates, bravely protesting the regime. They were about the only ones who dared, these days, and Kathleen suspected their cause was futile. The Nazis had had to make use of feminine labour in the later days of the war, when every able-bodied man was required to go east and fight, but the regime was steadily driving women out of the workforce and back into the home, turning them into second-class citizens at best and property of their menfolk at worst. Kathleen had seen the crude propaganda, ordering women to marry and produce children for the regime, and she knew it masked a far darker reality. The regime might be unwilling to openly crush the female protesters – it might spark a riot – but that didn’t mean it was powerless. Their menfolk would already be under immense pressure to bring the women in line, or else. She couldn’t help feeling the protest was doomed.

She kept her thoughts to herself as they passed a handful of civilian trucks, carrying guest workers to their workplace. The men would be worked to death. The women would be assigned to Germanic households as slaves, handling the chores so their mistress could have as many children as she wished without needing to worry about housework or childcare. It was a horrific system, a nightmare given shape and form … Kathleen thanked her lucky stars, every day, that her grandparents had been smart enough to get out of Germany before it was too late. She would be dead by now … no, she wouldn’t exist at all. Her parents would never have met, let alone married. And she would never have been given her father’s name.

Her blood ran cold. She’d been in Occupied France. She’d been in Vichy France. Berlin was worse.

The driver stopped outside the Reich Hall, a towering monstrosity that was as ugly as the rest of the rebuilt city. A red and black flag flapped in the evening breeze, a grim reminder that the Nazis had left their mark everywhere; a set of SS guards stood outside, snapping to attention as the driver opened the door to allow Sir Cuthbert and Kathleen to leave the vehicle. Kathleen couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear as the guards looked her up and down, then motioned for them to enter the hall. If they had known about her mother, they wouldn’t have been so welcome. But then, they couldn’t tell a Jew when they saw one.

Sir Cuthbert offered her his arm as they walked through the inner doors and down the steps to the ballroom floor. It was as oversized as everything else in the city, bigger than a football stadium, but the floor was teeming with people.  The walls were decorated with red and black banners, a large portrait of Adolf Hitler positioned neatly against the far wall. Kathleen kept her face under tight control as she spotted the uniforms, feeling as though she was walking into a lion’s den. The rival power blocs were taking shape and form – the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, the SS – all trying to position themselves to take advantage of the chaos that would inevitably follow Hitler’s death. Kathleen had wondered if Hitler was already dead – he hadn’t been seen in public for months – but their sources within the Reich’s government suggested he was still alive. Pity. She didn’t really believe the Reich would fall into civil war, upon his death, but she had hopes. There might be nothing else capable of stopping the Reich from taking the world.

“Ah, Sir Cuthbert,” a man said. Kathleen silently placed him as a diplomat, probably working directly for Ribbentrop. The man was a fool, but beloved by the Fuhrer. “I must say …”

Sir Cuthbert gave Kathleen a sharp glance, conveying a pre-planned message. Go mingle. Kathleen nodded and allowed herself to be swept away by the crowd, a handful of young officers – and others not so young – inviting her to dance. There weren’t many women in the room, apart from the serving girls, and they were under strict supervision. It said something about the sheer importance of the Reich Hall, she supposed, that the servants were all German girls, rather than guest workers. The young girls should be getting married and having children, according to the regime. But then, who knew who they would meet at the gathering?

And if half the stories about the elite are true, she thought coldly, the lucky girls will be the ones who go home without a mate.

She forced herself to listen as the dancers swept her around the hall, silently picking up information that might be useful later. Men liked to brag, particularly when they thought their dance partner was too ignorant to understand what they were saying. One officer talked about a redeployment to the eastern front, chasing partisans, and another talked about being sent to the Iron Wall in Occupied France. Kathleen filed both pieces of information away in her mind for later, when she could discuss them with the analysts at the embassy. The Nazis might be having problems in the east – it wasn’t as if they’d ever given the partisans any reason to believe they would be allowed to live, let alone any degree of freedom, if they gave up and went under the yoke – or they might be planning to invade England. It would be hellishly risky, and it would mean war with America as well as Britain, but it wasn’t 1940 any longer. The Kriegsmarine might be the junior service, as far as the Reich was concerned, yet it hadn’t wasted the six years of relative peace. They had – theoretically – the ability to land an invasion force on British soil. Would they try?

“My regiment is being rearmed with the latest Panzer X,” another officer said, bragging to his companion. Kathleen listened with interest. The latest tanks were supposed to incorporate all the lessons of the last war, with everything from better armour to heavier guns. “The latest guns are really something and …”

“We came back heroes, and all the girls are married to the boys in black,” a third officer moaned. He wouldn’t have talked so freely if he hadn’t been well on the way to being drunk. “Doing their duty by their men … pah!”

Kathleen memorised his face for later attention, if he survived the night. They’d heard rumours of discontent between the Wehrmacht and the SS before, but the disputes had largely been kept under wraps. After Hitler died … the SS received huge benefits from the regime, from increased living allowances to preferential treatment, and she wasn’t surprised it sparked resentment. She’d even heard rumours that racially pure SS officers had been encouraged to take multiple wives, to increase their chances of siring a small army of blond blue-eyed children. That had never been confirmed, but if it turned out to be true … there would be trouble. The regime had promised its fighting men loving wives. If those promises weren’t kept …

A fat man caught her arm and pulled her away from her current partner. Kathleen had to bit her lip to keep from kicking him in the groin, particularly as her former partner backed away without a fight. The newcomer was almost certainly much higher up the hierarchy. His uniform was laden with medals, half of which were only awarded to officers who had served on the front lines. This man … Kathleen let her eyes roam up and down his body. She’d never seen a combat soldier quite so overweight before.

“It is quite offensive that your government allowed the publication of Anne Frank’s book,” the officer said, instead of the sweet nothings mingled with titbits of useful information she’d heard from other dancers. “The Reich protests in the strongest possible terms.”

Kathleen gave him her most gormless smile. Her cover story suggested she was nothing more than a pretty face, with some typing skills. Sir Cuthbert might enjoy looking at her – they’d played that up, whenever they’d been in public – but the idea he’d actually take her seriously was unbelievable, as far as the regime was concerned. A flicker of paranoia ran through her … if her cover had been blown, she was deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Escape would be tricky …

“I’m afraid I know nothing about such matters,” she said, lying through her teeth. She knew a great deal about the whole affair. Anne Frank’s diary had exposed the true horror of being a Jew under Nazi occupation, and its publication had kicked off a major diplomatic incident. The Nazis seemed to want to hide what they’d done, and yet – at the same time – they wanted to glory in it. “I can pass your concerns to the ambassador, if you wish.”

“Such lies cannot be allowed to stand,” the officer said. He pressed closer to her, trying to make her uncomfortable. She had been in worse places, and she’d dealt with worse men. “It is nothing more than a conspiracy against the Reich.”

Kathleen gave him another gormless smile as he whirled her around the dance floor, his eyes leaving trails of slime over her body. He wasn’t a good dancer, not even trying to let her enjoy herself as he monopolised her attention. His chatter was crude and rude and largely pointless … she guessed, despite herself, that he was pointless too. It wasn’t uncommon in the modern day. The men who had built the Reich, or had served before the war, were being increasingly sidelined by the new elite. They weren’t taking it very well.

“You must make the ambassador understand that the Reich will not take this lying down,” the officer continued. Kathleen wasn’t sure if he was passing on a message, or merely venting. Either was possible. It wouldn’t be the first time a message was passed onwards in a thoroughly deniable manner, just in case it led to a diplomatic incident. “And there will be consequences …”

“Excuse me,” a polite voice said, as the musicians paused. “Can I have this dance?”

The officer started to object, then went quiet. Kathleen looked up and saw … Werner Von Braun. It couldn’t be anyone else. Ice prickled down her back as the officer let her go, allowing Von Braun to take her hand. He might be one of the most famous people in the Reich, his picture regularly displayed in newspapers and textbooks, but she had been told Von Braun rarely made public appearances. And he was here in front of her … it was one hell of an opportunity, if she could take advantage of it. She could feel eyes lingering on them as they started to dance, her former partner heading off to harass the serving girls instead. Kathleen felt a stab of sympathy for them. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was supposed to protect the girls in its charge, even as it indoctrinated them with Nazi ideology, but she doubted any of the grim-faced matrons would dare stand in the way of a senior officer. The concentration camps took women too.

She found herself unsure what to say as they circled the dance floor. Von Braun was a surprisingly good dancer, but he was incredibly tense … Kathleen was good at reading people and Von Braun felt more like a teenage boy asking a girl to walk out with him than a middle-aged rocket scientist. She wondered why he was here, although … she supposed the rocket forces would want to stake a claim to power in the post-Hitler world too. British Intelligence had worked hard, trying to figure out how the rocket forces were actually funded and organised, but there was a great deal they didn’t know. The man in front of her could answer all those questions, if he wished. Would he? Everything they’d heard about Von Braun suggested he was a loyal German.

Her heart sank as she saw the eyes watching them. One man, so tall and blond and handsome he could have stepped off a recruiting poster; other men, wearing a number of different uniforms, eyeing them with calculating eyes. The first would be a minder, she was sure. The Nazis hadn’t taken power in Germany, and then kept it, through being overly trusting. Kathleen had heard rumours that senior officers, men who had risen before the Nazis and the war, were working against Hitler … she suspected, rather sourly, that those rumours were nothing more than lies. If the officer corps hadn’t moved against their Fuhrer when he had been on the verge of launching a seemingly-suicidal war, in 1939, they weren’t likely to do anything now, after the regime had conquered much of Europe and Russia.

Von Braun leaned close as they whirled around another couple, his hands suddenly too close … and dropping something into her pocket. It happened so quickly Kathleen had to fight to keep her expression under control, even as his hand darted back and they danced back into view of his minder. She leaned into him for a moment, her head spinning. It wasn’t the first time she’d been passed a secret message, but …

The music came to an end. Kathleen stepped back as the dangers started heading for the washrooms, hastily emptying their bladders before the speeches started. Kathleen didn’t blame them. British politicians could be pompous windbags at times, but the Nazis had them beat. The speeches would go on for hours, until the following day. And the locals had to pretend to pay attention to each and every one of them. Kathleen wondered, idly, if she could get away with hiding in the washroom.

She stepped into the washroom, silently relieved there weren’t many other women in the hall. The washroom was empty. The BDM girls would have their own washroom … probably. Kathleen hoped they did, for their sake. Their uniforms were incredibly awkward, designed to be difficult to remove in a hurry, and they wouldn’t have much time before the speeches started. She glanced around, trying not to roll her eyes at the décor as she carefully checked for peepholes and cameras. The Gestapo had a reputation for having eyes and ears everywhere, and at least some of those eyes and ears were mechanical. SOE was all too aware they were in an arms race, trying to circumvent ever-improving surveillance even as the Germans developed newer and better ways to spy on people. There was little freedom in the Reich, even for pureblood Germans, but even that would be curtailed, she was sure, as the regime found new ways to spy on its citizens.

The thought chilled her as she entered a stall, shut the door behind her, and checked her pocket. Von Braun had shoved a piece of folded paper into her pocket, folded time and time again … she kept her mouth firmly closed as she unfolded it and scanned the paper. It was a missile diagram, something she wasn’t qualified to evaluate, and a note.

Kathleen gasped, despite herself, as she read the handful of lines.

Werner Von Braun wanted to defect.

And he wanted to go quickly.