Persecution by an Evil Empire

Collapse of the Reich and Rise of the Red Curtain!

Chapter 2: Collapse of the Reich, and Rise of the Red Curtain!

Author's Notes: This chapter will deal with events involving the final assault on Berlin, the trapping of the German 9th Army, and the Soviet invasion of the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Please do read, review/comment, and enjoy.

Setting: roughly a year afterward of the Battle of Berlin and the Nuclear Bombing of Japan; this will be Anni Sonnenblume's recollections of the events thereof.

As Anni stood in the line to shop for food that cold November afternoon, almost evening after work and waited for her boyfriend, Felix, she recollected on the End of Nazi Germany- what for many Germans was literally an "End of their World", except it wasn't. As it turned out: it was the end of a nightmare- Germany was waking up, and for those who wound up under Soviet rule, they woke up in an even worse nightmare! The Lies of the Nazi Party of what the Soviets would do to them were literally coming true for many Germans.

Anni was unfortunate enough to have been forced to work for both extremely evil governments, as a typewriter operator in their offices; she was coming to realize that she was merely a slave. A fortunate one, but a slave nonetheless- and that scared her. Even more frightening were the rumors of the conditions of having to meet with the fellow who was rapidly becoming known as the "Red Lord Comrade Stalin", for few who met that human monster came back alive, or lived for long thereafter!

Word on the street was often whispered in back hallways with what amounted to "the German Look" and commonly was said that Stalin was deeply paranoid. Even now, few of Anni's old friends wanted anything to do with her, and that hurt her, as she loved them, but they often distanced themselves from her because she was dating a Soviet Commissar. However, that gave her access to better products, without having to forego her religious belief system... as he genuenly was her boyfriend. Anni had become a Practicing Catholic after dealing with Claus von Staffenberg, and his impact on her in the war lead to her staying in the office job she had gotten, and using it to foul up the Final Solution in any ways she could! That was his final directive to her, he had been her boss and a good friend of hers as well, but in no way could he have been a boyfriend of hers.

The reason why Anni had gotten into government work was that that was the only branch of work left- really. The Nazis had effectively demolished the private sector to such a degree that there were no openings for her to really get a job in. This frustrated her but it also gave her an opportunity: to use the functions available to her to foul up the machine of the Final Solution to almost no end compared to what she could do as a civilian, even a Slayer.

As the minutes ticked away into hours and she stood in line to go grocery shopping, Anni's mind drifted into the history of the war, and how it had gone in its final days. Oh, there had been many heroics, such as the rescue of the remnants of the Ninth Army by the Twelth Army in forests South of Berlin when they were surrounded by elements of Konev's 3rd Ukrainian Front and Zhukov's 1st Beilorussian Front. The Soviets didn't bother with any kind of assault, they just encircled the Germans in the forests and bombarded them. As all co-ordination of German forces fell apart, the survivors of the Ninth Army stumbled about in the woods, desperately avoiding Soviet patrols. Anyhow, word spread around the time of the Battle of Berlin that "Keitel doesn't know what he's talking about, follow General Wenk's orders instead." Field Marshal Keitel wanted the 12th Army to follow Hitler's battleplan and both break through to relieve Berlin as well as swing around and cut off the Soviets attacking Berlin. This would have been a tremendous German victory, but it was not to be; if General Wenk had tried it, he'd have been cut off and captured as well as all the German forces in what became East Germany.