Pursuit by Robert L. Fish Page B

people.”
    â€œBut even if we lost twenty-five divisions—”
    â€œ Even if we lost twenty-five divisions? Where are the replacements to come from?” The colonel almost sounded savage. “The war is lost! Reconcile yourself to that fact. To fight on when there is no hope of winning—that, to me, is treason. It is treason to a country and a people who have supported our efforts in every way. It is treason to the soldiers who will be killed needlessly and the civilians who will starve, if they aren’t wiped out in the increased bombings. The war was lost long ago, with the Allied invasion in Normandy; and now with the present Russian advance, I should think the blindest optimist could see it!”
    There were several minutes of silence as the doctor sat in stunned consideration of the colonel’s words. The truth was that the war itself had never really interested him; as a good German and a good Nazi he supported it fully, but his own work was of such paramount interest that the war was only the background against which his art was played, first at the Laukhammer Hospital with war wounds, and then at Maidanek with prisoners. Now he was being told his background was to be taken away from him. He looked up, his slightly horse-like face almost pitiable, a child deprived of a favorite toy.
    â€œDo you think we will surrender, then?”
    â€œAs long as Hitler is alive, no.”
    â€œAs long as Hitler is alive ?” Now the doctor was really shocked.
    â€œThat’s right. As long as Hitler is alive, we will not surrender. We will fight to the last living thing in Germany, to the last brick in the last factory, to the last shingle on the last shed, to the last tree and the last blade of grass. We will waste everything. But,” von Schraeder added grimly, “they will not waste me!”
    â€œI see.”
    The doctor didn’t see at all, nor did he sound as if he did. His mind was whirling. He only knew that the man who had just spoken was a far different person than the stiff colonel he had known in the camp. A chameleon, this Colonel von Schraeder! But the doctor somehow knew instinctively that regardless of the spurious logic with which von Schraeder was attempting to disguise the fact, what he spoke was arrant treason. And to even suggest that the Fuehrer’s death could alleviate Germany’s problems—that was total treason! What of their oaths as Germans? What of their pledges as officers of the Schutzstaffel, personally, to Adolf Hitler? And even if the war was lost—which was far from a demonstrable truth—anyone who would refuse to fight for the Fuehrer and the Fatherland, especially under those conditions, was the most despicable of traitors!
    On the other hand, it could well be that the colonel was merely testing his own loyalty, waiting for him to agree to his monstrous propositions in order to denounce him to the authorities. But why would the colonel do that? Why, in that case, would he have offered his friendship? Offered? Almost forced it, first with the girl the night before, then with the transfer, which, if the Russians were really all that close, might well have been a lifesaver. And even Mittendorf had acknowledged that the enemy was closing in.
    No, the colonel was quite serious in his treasonous statements.
    But, then, a big question. Why would a man as sophisticated as the colonel, as smart as he was rumored to be in the camp, why would a man like that make statements that left him at the mercy of the person he was speaking to? Why would the sharp and normally taciturn Colonel Helmut von Schraeder volubly place himself at the mercy of ordinary Dr. Franz Schlossberg for possible denunciation to the authorities and almost certain death by hanging?
    The colonel was watching the play of expression across the doctor’s face as each succeeding thought registered, one after the other, almost as if they were being projected on a