Wüstenrose

Thea Sommer hadn’t always wanted to be a Nazi.

Her dedication to the great German cause, in fact, had been entirely accidental in nature – a father who had spent his entire working life rubbing shoulders with the greats such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler had led to a very select arsenal of highly sought-after skills, skills that he had passed onto his only child. Thea hadn’t been given a choice in how she had been schooled. Before her fifth birthday, she had been eating worms and throwing mud-pies at the boy in the house across the street. Only after a rigorous training regime, at the tender age of seventeen, had she executed her first Semite with a gun that she had stripped bare and rebuilt with her own two hands.

As she had made her way through the corridors to her office that morning, most of the other high-ranking officials had been gossiping about the latest rebel attacks in the capital. Thea, however, had been thinking about that first kill. The young boy had stood in front of her silently, shivering in fear. She had never learned the boy’s name, nor his age – although she would have guessed that he had been no older than her at the time. Only his eyes seemed to suggest he was still nothing more than a child; wide and fearful as he stared down the black hole at the end of Thea’s rifle. She had taken in his appearance for only a moment, noting his bloodstained shirt and tattered trousers, and had felt nothing other than a slight pang of sadness as she watched the bullet bury itself between the boy’s eyes.

It had gotten easier, of course. Over the course of the past eight years, she had been forced to think about her actions that day, and of the initial guilt that had started to eat away at the very edges of her soul. However, with each and every execution coming more and more swiftly as the Semites were weaseled out of society and into the concentration camps that littered central Poland, Thea had learned to live with the constant death that plagued her life. In fact, sometimes she even enjoyed the rush that came with a pull on the trigger. Had her father and his influential friends not been as insistent in her involvement in the execution that day, Thea had no idea what she would have made of her life. In a way, she owed her very being to the small, disheveled Semite that had been killed that day.

“Gruppenführer Sommer?”

Thea looked up at the mention of her name. So engrossed had she been in her own thoughts, she had barely noticed the baby-faced man enter the room. Dressed in full officer regalia, he grimaced slightly as he nodded in her direction, awaiting further orders. Thea stood, and at her movement the man snapped his feet together, throwing his right hand high into the air and barking a regimented Heil Hitler in her direction. Thea mimicked the man’s actions.

“Heil Hitler, Oberführer Dreher. What do you bring me?”

Dreher nodded curtly, stepping forward without invitation to close the gap between the pair. He produced a thin file from underneath his left arm, holding it out in the remaining space between himself and Thea. The sleek, matte folder was embossed with the familiar Schutzstaffe logo – official business. Perhaps the rumour of insurgency along the border with the Netherlands was not simply lobby-friendly gossip.

Outstretching her own arm, Thea took possession of the file, a little surprised at the weight the tiny folder held. A quick glimpse inside showed Thea reams upon reams of paperwork, doubtlessly detailing a series of Schatpläne that her superiors would want her to put in place as quickly as possible. It was always the same when the Semites attempted to overthrow the government – they killed the insurgents, and buried their remains underneath a seemingly never-ending pile of red tape and paperwork that would sap the energy of even the strongest-willed humanitarian. No publicity, no press. Thea liked it that way; at the very least, it meant that she spent as little time in the spotlight as possible, which suited her just fine. There were other officers that liked to steal the spotlight. The less that the general public knew about Thea Sommer, the better.

“From Obergruppenführer Bretz, ma’am. Urgent content. He asks that you call him as soon as possible to arrange a face-to-face meeting.”

Dreher was uncomfortable in Thea’s presence, much like he always was. Every few seconds, he would shift his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, a subtle movement that he probably didn’t expect the eagle-eyed Thea to pick up on. She knew exactly why he was uncomfortable, though, and didn’t exactly blame him – she was the first woman to hold any rank higher than Hauptsturmführer within the SS since the Germans had won the war. German men, Dreher included, had been brought up to simply expect women to marry and have children. Girls like Thea weren’t supposed to be barking the orders. Instead, they were supposed to sit and wait patiently on their husbands, brothers and sons coming back from running both the country and the greater Nazi empire. No, Thea didn’t blame Dreher, not really – but he was still entirely responsible for the terse atmosphere that was filling the room, despite being assigned to Thea’s direct supervision for almost three years.

Thea returned to her seat with little gusto. She threw the folder onto the already-mounting pile of paperwork on her desk with perhaps a little more force than she had intended, sending a few stray pieces of blueprints – doubtlessly some form of blueprint for the mass restoration of the Frankfurt Nazi Party headquarters that was due to begin in a few days – scattering to the edges. She shot them a withering look, before returning her attention to Dreher once again. He seemed to be sucking all of the joy out of the room as he stood there with a grimace pasted across his face. Gesturing toward the door, she calmly gave him his orders in her clipped, Dresden-accented German.

“Very well, Oberführer. Restrict all calls to my office and tell the Obergruppenführer that I will contact him shortly. Be ready to leave within the next hour. Heil Hitler”

“Heil Hitler, ma’am.” Another salute, accented by the sharp crack as the leather of Dreher’s boots connected. He turned swiftly on his heel, marching double-time from her office. As soon as he had closed the heavy oak door behind himself, Thea let out an audible groan and sunk further into her chair. The last thing she needed was more work – she was already way behind in the last set of plans to thwart the insurgents. She didn’t need more coming her way, but orders were orders. Reaching wearily for the receiver perched upon her desk, she glanced across the pile of blueprints, forms and official memos that scattered across her desk, and allowed herself a momentary loss of control.

“Scheiße!”