Part One | Chapter I
April 20th, 1938
“Herr Oster, it will be the perfect birthday present for den Führer.”
“You realise if the leak, or worse, its source is found...”
“I do, but do you realise what will happen if we fail in convincing Chamberlain to grow a spine?”
Hans Oster winced at the sudden spiteful interruption. He did not reply.
Leaking military documents to the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. High treason. But against Germany? Or against Hitler?
“They did nothing in ’33, nothing in ’36, nothing during the Anschluss. The British and French want to avoid a second Great War at all cost, without understanding Hitler’s Germany is trying its hardest to start one. Your work in the Abwehr means you must understand that overestimation of Germany’s capabilities is shrouding judgement in London. The Sudeten German Party is beginning to make moves. You know as well as I that a crisis over the Sudetenland might provide an opportunity- just one, golden opportunity- to shoot down the dancing dervish.”
Oster got up from his desk and paced the small room.
“We must grow our list of contacts in the Army and in the Air Force. We can begin to collect military documents, carefully, slowly, but we must leak them only if absolutely necessary and at the most opportune time. Understand, Groscurth?”
“Understood.”
Despite the conversation having seemingly ended, Helmuth Groscurth remained in the office. The two men looked at each other in silence.
“The sacred Germany we know will be restored. I swear it, Hans.”
A pause.
“I pray you are correct, Helmuth.”
A military salute, and a defiant Heil Deutschland in place of the more common greeting in Hitler’s Germany, and Hans Oster found himself alone once more.
Privately, he thought the unspoken second part of his parting chant.
Gott schütze Deutschland.
September 30th, 1938
The documents collected over the months following that encounter now sat on the desk of a Neville Chamberlain tired and lost in thought, having just returned to London from a Munich Conference where the fate of the world had taken a sharp turn without her inhabitants even realising.
Then again, perhaps ignorance is bliss.