103
The Deutscher Hof hotel
Nuremberg
In anticipation, Hitler’s elite security team, the Führerbegleitkommando, in concert with other units of the SS, cordoned off the street outside the Deutscher Hof and the park directly across from it, creating a one-block perimeter.
SS officers stopped civilians in the area, demanding their papers and inquiring about their purpose.
If anything remotely suspicious arose, orders were to arrest first, ask questions later.
Thomas Bauer, for one, was counting on it. Because he’d rather kill Hitler alone than in front of a thousand young men marching in the street.
Bauer, now more than eighteen months removed from nearly dying at Hitler’s mountainside retreat, had spent countless weeks in recovery.
Thank God Erich von der Haas had been able to bring him to trusted medical attention in time.
Bauer’s recovery had been slow and painful, but he continued to gain strength.
And his dedication to targeting Hitler never wavered.
World War II had taken decisive turns in the past year and a half.
Hitler had swept through Europe, invading Yugoslavia and Greece, and continuing to shell England by air.
Over eight months of bombing by the Luftwaffe, London had suffered damage to more than a million buildings, and had lost over forty thousand civilians.
Though Hitler had signed a nonaggression pact with Russia’s Stalin, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of Russia—in June 1941.
“With Russia smashed,” Hitler had told his generals, “Britain’s last hope would be shattered.
Germany will then be master of Europe and the Balkans.
” And in December, Japan, Hitler’s Axis partner, had bombed Pearl Harbor, now drawing the United States of America into the war.
Tonight, Bauer was positioned in an administrative building across the street from the opera house.
He was over a block away from his target and did not have a great angle.
Bauer had been in the building since last night, hiding inside an industrial closet behind an old exhaust fan, until the SS had declared the building vacant and secured.
Bauer edged the window open, cool air rushing in, and looked through his binoculars. It was coming up on 3:30 p.m., half an hour before the young men of the Hitler Youth would begin their march. “Your choice, mein Führer,” he mumbled. “I kill you by yourself or in front of a bunch of kids.”
He grabbed his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. “Berta, this is Anton. What’s your status?”
“I thought I got to be Anton this time,” squawked Erich von der Haas.
“You want to handle the dirty work while I sit in a getaway truck, you can be Anton.”
“Being the intelligence guy is boring. I should’ve been a pilot.”
“You wanted to fly?”
“Oh, yeah, I went through aviation training and everything. Then someone saw my score on some aptitude test and forced me into signals intelligence.”
“I didn’t know that. You can fly a plane?”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me. You want my life story, or do you want to know if the exit plan is ready?”
“Your life story can wait.”
“The exit plan is ready. What’s your status?”
“Nothing. Not even the FBK.”
The Führerbegleitkommando, Bauer meant. Before Hitler would step out on the balcony, Bauer would expect the FBK to walk out first and inspect the surroundings.
“Well, they’re not on the street anymore,” said von der Haas. “So they’re probably up in the apartment with him.”
Just then, Bauer twitched at the sight of one of the FBK guards, with his gray coat and Walther pistol, walking onto the balcony. He was followed by two other guards, who reached the edge of the balcony and looked around, two of them with binoculars.
“FBK on the balcony. Going dark.” Bauer pulled back, his heart pounding, removing the barrel of his sniper rifle from sight. It would all be timing now. Count to five, give them a chance to sweep across his position and find nothing.
No, ten. Count to ten. He steeled himself, forced himself to hold back. If he jumped out with the rifle too quickly, he could reveal himself.
He rose again, slid the barrel of his sniper rifle out the window, and looked through his scope. Just the same three FBK guards, though one of them was turning—
And then he appeared, the trademark slicked black hair with the single bang falling over his forehead, the toothbrush mustache.
Bauer had him. His target was in his sights.
It felt like slow motion now, as the man he’d so longed to assassinate walked to the railing of the balcony and rested on it.
“Look at me, you fascist pig,” Bauer whispered. “I’ll blow that stupid mustache off your face.”
As if summoned, Hitler did, in fact, turn in Bauer’s direction. Bauer squeezed the trigger.
It felt like an eternity. He relived all those years separated from his family in that one instant, as he locked eyes with his sworn enemy and watched the top of his head explode from the impact of the bullet.