Surviving Dresden

by James Kirby Martin, Robert Burris

Genres: World War II; War & Military; Military Thrillers

Synopsis

Surviving Dresden beautifully portrays the poignant and inspiring human struggle between good and evil in the search for peace during the last bloody days of World War II.
On the ground that horrific night is a courageous young Jewish woman, Gisela Kauffmann. Having just received orders to be herded off to a concentration camp, Gisela will do anything to save herself and her family. In the air, RAF bomber
Captain Wallace Campbell is torn between his sworn military duty to bomb an unarmed city crowded with refugees, and his growing conviction that total war is immoral.
Surviving Dresden is told through the eyes of Gisela, Wallace, and a compelling cast of characters—a story of personal pain and suffering amid the hope, even as the bombs are falling, of restoring human sanity to a world torn apart.
Masterfully sweeping, Surviving Dresden explores the depths of human courage in facing life and death, with human redemption triumphing.

Release date: August 17, 2021

Publisher: Permuted Press

Print pages: 240

Sample

Prologue

Munich, Germany

September 19, 1931

HER NAME WAS GELI RAUBAL. She was twenty-three years old. The time was close to 10 a.m. Knocking loudly on her locked bedroom door, two housemaids received no response. With one of their husbands helping them, they broke the door lock, rushed into her beautifully decorated room, and found what they feared the most. Geli was dead—her body sprawled on the floor, her nose broken, her face bruised, blood pooled around her midsection. On a sofa next to her putrefying body lay a Walther 6.35 pistol with one round fired. The weapon belonged to Geli’s half-uncle, Adolf Hitler, age forty-two.

Soon the Stadtpolizei and a doctor arrived at the death scene. The doctor examined Geli’s slender body. He estimated that she had been dead for several hours; possibly as many as twenty four. The bullet had torn into her body above her heart and traveled downward toward her left hip.

The local police and the doctor were joined by a group of officers from the newly formed Nazi party Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführer—the SS. Behind them came another uniformed man, an officer of undetermined rank who commanded the respect of the other Nazis present. He was of average height and had a scowled baby face. As the SS men meandered about the apartment, the local police stood back—gave them the space they so nonchalantly demanded. The doctor continued his work as the SS men intermittently conferred with their officer.

The ranking SS officer smiled, then introducing himself to the doctor: “My name is Rudolf Hess, a close associate and friend of Herr Hitler.”

The doctor acknowledged Hess, then replied with his assessment: “She may have struggled to stay alive for a few minutes or even an hour or two. Rigor mortis indicates that she’s been dead for several hours, maybe even a day. Let me add that she slowly drowned in her own blood that filled her lungs until she could not breathe. From the angle of the gunshot, the pistol was fired down through her chest, and from the bruises on her face and the trauma of her nasal fracture, it seems clear there must have been a horrific struggle.”

Hess nodded and politely responded, explaining to the doctor that he was mistaken. At the most, Geli could only have been dead for two or three hours. The evidence was clear, and he was not to dispute the findings of the “investigation.” The cause of Geli’s death was suicide.

“Write your report that way, sir. Case closed,” Hess stated, trying not to look too menacing. Ready to leave the room, Hess looked back at the doctor and mumbled, “I’m glad we understand each other.”

The story was soon all over the local newspapers. Geli was in a stressed condition, distraught about her singing lessons and an upcoming public concert. Overly anxious, she committed suicide. There was no mention that Geli’s room was directly connected to Uncle Alf’s bedroom. And there was no mention that the killing weapon was his.

Hitler, through his public rants and hyperventilating speeches, had become the best known of the dissident politicians vying for political power in the debt-ridden German nation. Over and over, he told the German people that their fractured economy and personal financial woes were the result of crushing reparation payments that the June 1919 Versailles peace settlement, officially ending World War I, had placed on them.

Hitler repeatedly propounded the two enemies of all true Aryan Germans—scheming, money-grubbing Jews and Russian communists, such as the likes of partially-Jewish Vladimir Lenin. Intolerance and bigotry directed toward these people and the constant refrain of defining an identifiable “other” on which to focus hatred and bring about political unity had long since served to rally pure-blooded Germans to support Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Geli had lived for more than two years in Hitler’s lavish, nine-room Munich apartment on fashionable Prinzregentenplatz. Her mother Angela was Uncle Alf’s older half-sister. She had started working for Hitler as a housekeeper a few years before he moved into his Munich apartment. During those years, teenager Geli had developed an affectionate relationship with her half-uncle. Hitler liked having her light-hearted disposition around him.

When Geli reached her early twenties, their relationship became oddly sexual. Uncle Alf enjoyed drawing nude pictures of Geli—his personal pornography.

By September 1931, Geli’s budding desire to get away from Hitler was primary on her mind. She had become his virtual prisoner, and he was relentless in dominating every facet of her life. If she wanted to go out for an evening and have some fun when he was too busy with his politics, his selected Nazi underlings escorted her to social events. At the same time, Hitler, whose relations with women were invariably strange, was losing interest in Geli. He had begun to date blonde, blue-eyed Eva Braun, age nineteen in 1931, a flirtatious young woman whom Geli despised.

Everything came to a head late on the morning of September 18. Hitler had given Geli permission to get away and spend some time with her friends in Vienna. She was writing a letter to one of them when Hitler walked into her room.

“No, no,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not allowing you to go to Vienna.”

Frustrated and disappointed, Geli raised her voice, “You promised! Why won’t you let me live my own life, at least once in a while? I love you, but I desperately need some freedom. I feel like a slave!”

Hitler’s eyes winced. His face began to tighten into an angry frown. He did not allow anyone to question his commands. He certainly would not stand to have this girl challenge his authority. In an instant, Hitler transformed from uncle to dictator. He shouted back: “I have it on good authority that you have told a few persons about our personal relations. I will not allow you to do that. I am the hope and the future of Germany and its people. I will not let you ruin my reputation!”

“That’s disgusting. It is not true!” Geli fired back at him as she began to cry. “Please permit me to go. Let me have my own life, at least now and then.”

Hitler composed himself, scoffed, and folded his arms in front of him. “I am told that you have been sleeping with a Jew, that you’ve talked about marrying him, and that you are pregnant by him. So, it is time to teach you a lesson.”

Geli felt hysterical. She noticed the whip under Hitler’s arm and that he was dressed in his uniform with his revolver. He now clasped his whip firmly in his hand.

“If I am pregnant, I know it is not your child,” she said. “You may have tried to mount me, but you never had the staying power to get inside…. I am going to Vienna!”

Turning beet red, Hitler’s arms lashed out. He struck her nose with his fist. He raised the whip and began to swipe at her face. Geli reached for his gun, but he snapped at her arm—forcing her to recoil.

With her nose bleeding, she leaped at him. Grabbing for the gun, she felt it in her hand. She wanted to shoot, even kill him. She tried to squeeze the trigger, but Hitler jerked the weapon upward, over her head. She tried to reach for his Luger as he held it over her, pointing down toward her chest. The gun erupted, and a bullet smashed into her body. He grabbed her, holding her body upright. He saw blood gushing from her chest. Geli’s eyes froze. Pulling back in disgust, he let her near lifeless body fall forward onto the floor.

Fuming, Hitler placed his gun on a couch next to Geli and retreated back into his bedroom, adjacent to hers. He paced a few times in the room as he collected his wits. He picked up the phone to call his driver, Julius Schreck.

“Get my Mercedes over here. I need to leave for Nuremberg now.”

“Yes sir. I can be there in forty-five minutes,” Schreck replied.

“I said now, Schreck!” Hitler shouted into the phone. “Urgent Party business has come up. I will meet you out front in no less than thirty minutes!”

Hitler pawed over the clothes he was wearing.