The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [292]
“What follows is a confession. To murder. To fanaticism. To invention. I hope you will excuse my English.
“In 1939 I was a young surgeon at Berlin University. Optimistic and perhaps arrogant, I was approached by a representative of the Reich chancellor and asked to become a member of an advisory council on advanced surgical practices. Later, as a member of the Nazi party and a group leader in the Schutzstaffel, the SS, I was promoted to the office of commissioner for public health. Some of this you may be aware of because it is public record. More detailed information can be found in the Federal Archives at Koblenz.”
Salettl paused and reached for a glass of water. Taking a sip, he put the glass down and turned back to the camera.
“In 1946,1 was put on trial at Nuremberg, charged with the crime of having prepared and carried out aggressive warfare. I was acquitted of those charges and soon after located to Austria, where I practiced internal medicine until my retirement at age seventy. Or, so it appeared. In truth, I continued to be a minister of the Reich, even though it had officially ceased to exist.
“In 1938, under the direction of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, and later deputy Führer, a man who believed as Hitler believed that God will only help a nation that does not give up, set about doing just that—preserving the Third Reich. To that end he both created a program and a means to carry it out.
“It began with a costly, elaborate, and highly detailed socioeconomic and political projection of the future. Commissioning a wide range of experts who were told little or nothing about what they were working on or toward, Bormann was able, within two years, to make a highly speculative, yet, in hindsight, remarkably accurate forecast of the world situation from 1940 until the year 2000.
“Without going into detail, I will say, simply, that the work predicted the defeat of the Reich by the Allied armies, followed by the partition of Germany. The rise of the superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, and the inevitable ‘Cold War’ and arms race that ensued. The development of Japan as an economic might, powered by a worldwide demand for superior automobiles and advanced technology. Included in this were four extremely important elements that would take place over nearly five decades: the ascent from the ashes of war of a West Germany that would become an industrial and economic bulwark with perhaps the most solid economy in the Western Hemisphere; a realized necessity of economic cooperation between the European states; the reunification of Germany, and lastly, that the arms race would bankrupt the Soviet Union and cause not only it, but the entire Soviet Bloc built in its wake, to crumble. In those studied assumptions, vastly oversimplified here, the seeds for the secret preservation of the Third Reich were sown.
“A clandestine organization—that always remained unnamed and is peopled by members in countries all over the world—was formed by a handful of wealthy and powerful German businesspersons, patriots and expatriates alike, who were resolutely dedicated to the Nazi cause but who had never been exposed. Over the years the Organization grew, its members carefully screened.
“The movement was to emerge slowly at first, as a small trickle within the German political right. Nationalism was its key word. The terms Reich, Aryan, Nazi were never used. It was to be done quietly and with careful calculation, driven by enormous wealth and popular influence across the broadest spectrum of German society, from left to right, from the elderly to the vibrant youth, from the successful businessperson to the intellectual to the displaced, to the uneducated and the unemployed. Then, as Germany reunited, the beat would become louder, a little more distinct, exploiting the confusion of reunification, the haves of the West against the have-nots of the former Communist East. A growing atmosphere of mistrust and anger would be fueled by a vast wave of immigrants pouring