Doctor Todt: Revised Edition

By Carlos Wiggen

"Doctor Todt" is the first historical fiction novel in a series of 8, with the collective title After the Flood. "The Flood" is not a Noah's ark thing but the increasingly obvious fact that the human race is less and less capable to manage its habitat: Earth. As for a reversal, experts determined that the point of no return was passed in 1981 then, typically, classified. Few were prepared to listen anyway. The greatest enemy of man is man himself.

I wrote about that in "The Spine of Western Culture" then, started on this epic account of capable and well-informed people who work on ultra-deep level, preparing to survive and be ready to resurface and rebuild the post-deluvian remains, in a way that makes a repetition of what caused the catastrophe impossible to repeat.

The storyline stretches from the last fugitives leaving flaming Berlin in 1945 to survival stations orbiting somewhere in the northern hemisphere around 2050.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665598606

Carlos Wiggen

Carlos Wiggen also wrote: “Kant and the Barbarians” “Philosophy at Gunpoint” “The Nazil Grail” “The Spine of Western Culture”

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© 2022 Carlos Wiggen. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 05/12/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9861-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9860-6 (e)

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CONTENTS

PART 1: GREAT IDEA, WRONG CROWD

Chapter 1 The End of the End

Chapter 2 The Man Apparently without Qualities

Chapter 3 Stupor Mundi

Chapter 4 Twilight of the Mock-Ups

Chapter 5 Kind of Screwball

PART 2: MOLOCH’S DAUGHTER

Chapter 6 It Only Takes a Little Girl

Chapter 7 La Donna è Mobile

Chapter 8 Against the Wall

Chapter 9 Ghost Station

Chapter 10 Rat

PART 3: ALL IS VANITY

Chapter 11 Back in the USSR

Chapter 12 Next Time, in Ystad

Chapter 13 The Dark Wheel

Bibliography

Man sings songs in his youth.

In his mature age, he pronounces words of wisdom.

In his old age, he cries, All is vanity!

—Ancient Jewish saying

PART I

GREAT IDEA,

WRONG CROWD

1

THE END OF THE END

S urprisingly, the plane waiting for them on Hohenzollerndamm Avenue south of the Reich Chancellery was a Junkers Ju 288. That was the first piece of interesting news Eric had received since the death of President Roosevelt about two weeks earlier. The Ju 288 was a high-speed, long-range bomber that had never been produced in series; only half a dozen had seen the light of day. How this one had survived until April 28, 1945, was a mystery to him and the others. The glass-nosed, twin-engine predator was painted in neutral gray and had Swiss insignia plus a broad yellow stripe with POST written on it. No armament.

Eric patted Raspe on the shoulder. Sure that thing flies?

Certainly, Dr. Todt. This is the only one in flying condition. Friend of mine at a Junkers test ground kept it locked up since 1942. Cared for it like his own child. Could not bear to scrap that wonderful machine.

No one at Junkers gave him trouble for that?

He forged some documents and told them the plane belonged to the Fuehrer’s private air fleet as a backup. Put in an electric intercom—can you believe that?

It’s a medium-size bomber; can it take all of us?

The bomb bay is converted to passenger area. It’s a V-9 with a four-crew cockpit and pressure cabin. Seats five plus baggage.

Is it possible to fly it singlehanded?

A copilot would come in handy.

Eric glanced at the others walking along with them. And who would that be? Bormann, the Fuehrer, his wife, her sister?

How about yourself, Doctor? Bormann told me you took flying lessons back in the thirties.

Ten years ago, that was.

Piece of cake, then.

This particular plane had an extra belly under the bomb bay where the cargo went. The gold crates were already stowed away. The wardrobes of Eva Braun-Hitler and her sister took up most of the remaining storage space, and Bormann’s voluminous briefcases also fit in, just about. The men had stuffed their pockets with spare clips and strapped handguns to their waists. The gunner’s seat in the cockpit, facing backward, had been turned into a small pantry with a fridge. The five passenger seats rested on the bottom of the converted bomb bay.

The plane was never intended for passengers and was of Junkers typical flying pencil design. It had good sitting headroom though and a serpentine gangway to the toilet and bathroom facilities in the back.

Hitler, wearing round, steel-rimmed glasses, sporting his toothbrush moustache, his toupee tucked away in a waist pocket, was grumpy. I don’t speak Swiss-German.

"Just say gruetzi," Eva’s sister said with a comforting smile.

He tried a couple of times but could not manage the pleasant, singing Swiss way of saying it.

Russian shelling of the capital had stopped for the night, but the interminable Allied bomb raids were still on like clockwork. One was due in about twenty minutes. The Hohenzollerndamm Avenue had three sections of takeoff and landing strip, each more than a mile long, but two were hopelessly cluttered with debris. They all had craters, but this last stretch was filled with dirt and gravel.

Tiny blue lights lit up along the sides as Raspe started warming up the engines and showing Eric, next to him, what levers to use and instruments to watch.

An air raid siren started wailing. Raspe scoffed. Shit, they’re early.

Hurry please! Eva shouted from the rear.

Raspe, swearing silently, concentrated on synchronizing the two engines. Eric gave him an is there a problem? glance.

Tricky, these Jumo engines. Raspe growled over the noise. Compact, advanced, but nervy as racehorses.

Flashes from bomb blasts appeared around them. Raspe hesitated for another couple of seconds and then released the brakes. The plane darted forward, unsteady as it rolled over the filled crater holes. Eric, reading the instruments, noticed that the port engine was losing power. They began veering to port.

Full power on that one! Raspe shouted, working the aft twin-side rudders.

Eric pushed the lever to the maximum. That kept them from careening out over the tarmac but also reduced takeoff speed. Theoretically, the Ju 288 could lift at around 750 yards, and again theoretically, they had almost twice that length to run on. Still, the end lights were coming up ahead and growing in size awfully fast. Another bomb blast rocked the plane. The women screamed. Then the blue lights went out.

What now? Eric shouted.

Pray! Raspe sneered, drawing the stick toward him.

The Ju 288 slowly lifted its nose and front wheels, but the hind wheel hugged the ground for what seemed like a minute. Then they were airborne. All three wheels slid into their compartments. The women and Bormann applauded.

Raspe glanced at Eric, grinning. The gods are taking off!

"Dies ater," Eric replied, nodding.

Raspe gave him another glance, mystified. That some kind of ancient lingo?

Greek. It refers to a day when the gods are not present—except for Dionysus, who is having a great time.

Raspe chuckled and then picked up the intercom. "Please excuse the bumpy start, meine Herrschaften. We are climbing and achieving cruising speed as we speak. From here, we will make a wide turn to the south and then proceed in the direction of Luxembourg. At 370 miles per hour, the estimated flying time is about sixty minutes—"

The plane jerked; flames shot out of the port engine.

Raspe pointed at a lever. Shut it off!

Eric instantly pushed it forward. The flames disappeared as the propeller stopped. Raspe boosted the starboard engine.

We okay? Eric asked.

Raspe shook his head. Got to find a place to land outside the Russian lines. Take over.

Eric grabbed his own stick, steadying the plane as well as he could.

Raspe studied a map in the shine of a pocket flashlight, grumbling.

Anything I can do? Eric asked.

Raspe sneered. Got another ancient Greek comment, wiseass?

Eric thought for a moment and nodded. "Tharseite."

Take sides or something?

It means ‘have no fear.’

Bormann entered the cockpit, cool as always. What does it look like?

Raspe showed him the map. Do you know the position of the American lines, Mr. Secretary?

Bormann indicated a line with his finger. About here, according to the last radio report some hours ago.

Okay, Raspe said, drawing a circle around the Berlin area. The Russians have encircled the capital; that’s all they have on their minds right now. It gives us a slice of land between them and the Americans—let’s see, now. Magdeburg, that’s a good one. I used a Luftwaffe airstrip there before, good maintenance capability. They do Junkers. It’s around eighty miles from here. We throttle down to 160 for a controlled descent. Half an hour; we can do it.

Bormann returned to the passenger section, relaying the change of plans. Hitler and the ladies remained calm, but that, Eric thought, was the effect of the sturdy Party secretary’s voice and demeanor. Without him, the entire Nazi movement would have disintegrated a decade ago. Its pillars were Bormann, Albert Speer, and, maybe in the future, himself. Few knew about him—very few. Hopefully that would change if the Nazi movement, or what was left of it, cared listening to him.

The Ju 288 performed well on one engine, half-gliding over whatever was down there in the dark. From time to time Raspe boosted the engine in order to get the bomber-turned-Swiss-postal plane up about a hundred feet and then let her slowly sink again.

Dawn was breaking behind them as Eric worked the controls while Raspe scanned the terrain with a telescope. Now and then he grunted uh-huh, identifying a landmark like a church steeple or a bridge, adjusting the course a few degrees. Finally, he lowered the telescope and sat back.

That skyline is Magdeburg, dead ahead. I’ll take over. Landing gear out, lights on, so they don’t think we are the enemy sneaking up on them.

Landing on the town’s main airfield was out of the question. Although the enemy ground forces had not yet started their offensive, Allied fighters were probably all over the area, stalking planes that took off or landed at dawn even before they could see the identification marks. The military strip was in the eastern outskirts of town and was hard to spot for someone who didn’t know it already. The place looked deserted. Flak batteries were trained on them though.

Raspe put the plane down gently and then taxied toward a well-concealed hangar. Through a side window they saw a half-track driving on a converging course.

Raspe and Bormann went down the steps and walked over to the troops in the vehicle. From the change in their attitude, it was clear to Eric that they got the message; this was not the Swiss Post.

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Repairing the Junkers Jumo 222 engine turned out to be a complicated operation. Although the damage from the fire was mostly a case of burned ducts and insulation, in the Magdeburg area the Jumo 222 was about as common as the Australian platypus. This was a Type E. The good news was that this version was the most accomplished and successful of the series—an awesome plane engine, and just about everything in it was special. The Junkers works in Dessau had been flattened by Allied bombing a good while ago and were in Soviet hands now. Just taking the thing apart took hours. Putting in another engine that looked a bit similar was like saying, Please crash me!, and there were no comparable aircraft available. There was a Heinkel 111 inside the hangar, but that was military. Besides, it needed a couple of days’ service to come to life again. The mechanics had to redraw the scorched engine material and make new pieces. With the Americans preparing an all-out assault on Magdeburg, German defenses had more than enough to do. Only the presence of Mr. Wolff, who, according to Dr. Todt, was en route to a new secret wonder weapon base from where he would direct the final offensive, made the staff treat the repairs as highest priority. An SS presence on the airfield also helped.

Eric and the passengers got some sleep in the first half of the day, while Raspe personally supervised the repairs. There would be no takeoff until nightfall anyway.

In the afternoon, Hitler, his old self again—1945 self, that was—summoned them all to a situation review where he basically announced a new change of plans. Luxembourg was not the destination anymore; that had hinged on a direct flight. Plan B was to head north, over the border to Denmark, land at the Toender Airport, and proceed from there to the nearby island of Sylt, where floaters and submarines were available at Hornum on the southern tip.

His confidence in the detailed plan was convincing. What other option did they have, anyway?

At six o’clock, as daylight was fading, the engine came to life again. It was secured to a bracket, and they ran it for fifteen minutes. It worked perfectly. An hour later, it was mounted. Bormann produced a handful of Iron Crosses, and Hitler decorated the staff. The destination was not far away, even with a detour to the west in order to stay away from the Russian lines, and, crawling up roughly from Cologne, passing Bremen and Cuxhaven.

With a top speed of four hundred mph, the 288 could have done it in less than an hour as the crow flies. Now, adding an hour because of the detour, they also had to fly at low speed and close to the ground in order to identify rivers, roads, and landmarks on the way. From a navigation point of view, the pilots were back in the nineteenth century and needed the light of dawn to locate and land on the airfield.

They took off shortly after midnight. Again, Eric was copilot and map reader. Raspe, with only a few hours’ rest since Berlin, was on Dextrose tablets.

A full moon would have helped, but the sky was heavily overcast.

Eric did dead reckoning by speed and compass; downward sight was nil. What if we overshoot? he asked.

Raspe said, Then we continue straight north until we find some coastline that we can identify. If things get too complicated with enemy fighters and stuff, we simply stay on course, climb, and outrun them. The tanks are topped. This bird can reach Narvik in Norway, or Greenland. Ever been to Greenland?

I’m afraid not, Raspe; the thought has occurred to me though.

How come?

I discussed options with Albert Speer a few weeks ago. He thought it might be a good idea to collect a ton of interesting documents, get up to the naval base at Muerwik, grab a Heinkel 115 floater, and drive up there to sit it out. Then we could turn ourselves over to the Americans.

Why didn’t you?

Speer chickened out. I know for a fact that General Gehlen is doing the same with a convoy of trucks into the Alps. They carry the bulk of army intelligence, including all the Abwehr agents still embedded on Soviet territory.

Respect.

At three thousand feet the overcast disintegrated, and dawn was already in progress.

Anything visible on the ground? Eric asked.

A silver band, probably a river or moon reflection. I’ll go down to one thousand. Raspe throttled back and watched the waterway out of the bottom portside of the glass dome as the plane slowly descended.

Nods turned to grunts. Yes, I believe I know her. It’s the Eiter.

Eric checked the map. You want the Eider, not the Eiter.

I know; the Eider is on the Danish side. The Eiter runs north-south and joins the Weser—

The landscape below suddenly flared up in hundreds of flashes.

Someone firing at us, Raspe?

No, that is a heavy artillery barrage, ground level. There’s a battle in progress down there.

A massive object passed them, sounding like a giant bumble bee.

What the hell was that? Eric asked.

Howitzer shell, steep arc. This is downright inconsiderate of the Yanks. Raspe took the plane a few hundred feet up while Eric checked the map.

Could be Bremerhaven down there.

That fits. Like I said, the Eiter flows into the Weser. We go due north from there, past Cuxhaven and up to the Danish border.

It worked. At sunrise, they landed on a largely intact concrete airstrip with old Zeppelin hangars in a row. An SS squad presented arms as Hitler, toothbrush moustache and toupee back in place, got out of the plane. He returned the salute with one arm raised and hand bent backward and then turned and motioned to Bormann, who was coming down the ladder.

Crosses!

Bormann opened a box and grabbed about a dozen Iron Crosses First Class.

Hitler walked down the file and put one on each soldier without comments. At the end, he spotted rows of wounded soldiers on stretchers at the side of the tarmac.

Bormann!

Yes, Mein Fuehrer.

Give me the rest of those.

Bormann emptied the box and gave Hitler the last ones, about twenty. Hitler counted the casualties and then turned to Bormann again. We have more?

At our final destination, Mein Fuehrer, plenty.

Hitler nodded sternly and indicated Bormann bend down and pin the last crosses on the soldiers, some of whom could not see him as they had bandages over their eyes. Bormann squatted and moved in a duck-like fashion from one stretcher to the next, pinning crosses.

Eva and her sister suddenly got into an argument. They had moved away a bit, and only the sound of their angry voices could be heard. The sister made a definitely not gesture and ran away toward some Red Cross transports.

Eva ran up to Hitler. Don’t let her do it, Wolfie!

Don’t use that name in public!

Sorry. Please stop her, Mein Fuehrer!

Why is she running away?

She says she will try her luck in the ruins of the fatherland!

Well, let her.

But it is not safe, and it is only because she is upset because you shot her husband!

I didn’t shoot her husband, and he deserved it.

You gave the order.

Enough!

Eva gave a start and hurried over to a canvassed army truck where soldiers placed the gold crates and other baggage from the plane. Bormann, having finished his duck walk, rose and went in the same direction.

Hitler came over to Raspe and Eric. Good flying, men; here.

He gave Raspe a check, shook hands with Eric, and then moved toward the truck.

Raspe looked at the check, chuckling. Reichsbank, Berlin.

How much is it good for?

Good for toilet paper, right now.

The truck disappeared westward to the island of Sylt. Bormann had not gone with them and returned to the two others. Eric gave him a what now? look.

Ever been to Spain, Todt?

No, Mr. Secretary.

Well—

He indicated a three-engine Junkers 52 that was coming in for landing.

I was getting to like our 288, Eric said, mock-disappointed.

Raspe nodded. We could certainly outrun that old timer.

Bormann shrugged. "That old bird has something we