As his limousine motored slowly down Unter den Linden the last fuhrer imagined the city occupied by enemy troops. It was all too easy to envision on the dark canvas of a blackout, punctured by the eldritch light of an incendiary blaze a few blocks away. The streets here, once teeming with life, were empty save for a few fire crews rushing to their work. He could not help but see them filled with Slavic berserkers mad with plunder and rape.

His feelings surged between despair and a sort of frenetic psychosis, a desire to throw himself into the last lines of defense, even while knowing that the only hope was that Berlin would fall to Montgomery or Patton before the arrival of the Red Army.

He looked at the small scrap of paper crumpled in his left hand. A piece of history, no less. His order to the high command-issued at the end of the dismal meeting an hour ago, and effective immediately-to cease all hostilities in the west and to allow the Americans and their allies unimpeded access to the Fatherland.

Churchill and Roosevelt might not have accepted his offer of an alliance, but they would not be able to ignore an unconditional surrender.

He smiled wanly.

It was a masterstroke really. He was going to make them responsible for the defense of Germany, and beyond that of civilization itself. If he weren’t so exhausted he could have laughed. When one stared defeat and annihilation in the face and accepted them, it clarified everything.

He could not win, but he could save his Volk.

Not that he would be around to see it, of course. Would he spend the rest of his life in hiding? Or would he be dragged before some sham court to…

The question was redundant.

At eighteen minutes past the hour three spheres of brilliant white light bloomed overhead, and Heinrich Himmler, Berlin, and the Third Reich all passed into history.

35

D-DAY + 42. 14 JUNE 1944. 0800 HOURS.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Before speaking into the microphone on his desk, the president of the United States of America coughed lightly to clear his throat. The Oval Office was crowded. His press people had tried to convince him to do this broadcast from the dedicated studio that had been built in the previous year, but Roosevelt had insisted. There were three cameras in the office, recording the event for posterity, and when Americans watched this speech hundreds of years from now, he didn’t want them to see him hunched into a sound booth in the basement of the building.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were seated in the lounge chairs looking somewhat uncomfortable, as were the secretary of war, the secretary of state, the Speaker of the House, and the British ambassador. His wife was perched on another chair near the door. The cameras were all twenty-first technology, and it would be at least a day before the images they captured would be tele-recorded onto film for national distribution to the various news services. The microphone in front of him, however, was the same one he had been speaking into for years. He’d never been comfortable with the teeny-weeny clip-on things the uptimers made him wear.

A producer counted down for him. “Mr. President, we’re on in three, two, one…”

Roosevelt leaned forward just fractionally and addressed himself to the millions of his fellow citizens who would be gathered around their radios, listening at home, in their workplaces, in coffee shops or train stations, on ships, and in the field around the world.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. “At eighteen minutes after eleven o’clock local time last night, our planes dropped three atomic bombs on the capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin has been destroyed, and the heart of our enemy torn out. All organized German forces in Western Europe have laid down their arms. They continue to fight in the east, and on our best information to date they will do so until the Red Army observes a cease-fire. I call on our allies in Moscow to do just that and to avoid any further wasteful destruction.”

He paused for a full second, emphasizing the import of his last statement-and the next.

“The three bombs detonated over Germany last night were not the only atomic weapons in our arsenal. We have many more and we now have the means to deliver them anywhere on earth. I say to the Japanese war cabinet, you have only two choices. Surrender immediately and unconditionally or I will order the United States Army Air Force to begin reducing your cities, until there is nothing left of your nation and its ancient culture.”

Roosevelt turned the page of his speech. A technical person had offered him an electronic version on one of those teleprompter things, but he felt much more comfortable reading from a real document. And of course, it would become part of the national archive in a way that an electrical document never could. Not in his mind, anyway.