The only good Nazi is one kicking in a death throe.
He treads the distance in his ill-fitting prison uniform, step by heavy step. It was not always thus. For a few years, a few glorious years, his life was one of ease and power. His pen killed as easily as any Mauser; his pen could eradicate a village as well as a Panzer. What happened? Where did the thousand years go? Where was the New Europe? Cleansed of decadence, rejuvenated? A fit home for a new people? Never, never, never. But he knew nothing; he told them nothing. What was there to tell? He knew what fate befell him: the same he had exacted so many thousands of times. As he trod down the passage he only thought of what words he would say: defiance thrown back in the faces of these mongrels. Oh, yes. They would know what he was made of. He would ring out with a loud, clear voice, he would spit the truth down their throats, he would show he was not a small man, shackled though he was. And then there it was: the platform. The beam. The rope. How many times had he seen the rope placed around a neck, body hoisted, kicking in death, life pouring out painfully, and either sat unmoved, or, sometimes, grinned grimacing? Dozens? Hundreds? One death as countless as the sand? The rope as much a part of his tools as Stukas. But now there was nothing for it. He was done, and the dream he had of a villa on the Baltic coast after his service was done was done, here, in this airless room. The guard nudged him, and he ascended the stairs, step by step, positioned, finally, over the trap door. Last words? He paused. Thought. “Ich glaube in Deutschland!” Did he? Did the words die in his throat? Then the sack over his head, then the noose around his neck, then the drop, that drop, which ended a thousand years, fantasies like a Grimm’s fairytale.
