The Princess of Berlin

Adolf Hitler, hope & leader of Germany snaps out of his reverie. His pressing need for illicit sex has diminished with age & authority. He has a steady consort, available & compliant women, & a reputation to refurbish – as political leader of Germanys rebirth.

In his uncertain roles as Fuerher & Chancellor, rumours have reached him, filtered through the network of Gestapo, that the right wing of Germany is restive to replace an ailing, exiled Kaiser with a younger prince. Louis Hohenzollern, self-exiled to America- has e dash, the charisma, the intelligence that skipped a generation of Kaisers.

Reinhardt Heydrich has been his new mainstay. Ruthless, far ranging, he is the ‘confidant ‘to the new warfare preparations.

Heydrich, blonde-haired person, imposing, the heir apparent. The danger to any succession by blood. Master of the new secret projects, the broken protocols.

Heydrich, who now reposes his lean, alert frame before him ...”

“Good morning my Fuehrer.”

“Good morning, Reinhardt. Adolf Hitler takes a long, significant pause, choosing his words .carefully.

Heydrich- for six years, we have adhered to diplomacy- externally. We renounced Versailles, & succeeded. We negotiated a naval pact with Britain. The time for caution is now over. In eight months we are risking war.”

We need resources, stockpiles. Starting with fats, oil, grains- the basis of a garrison under siege. This spring, I dispatched the first of our Antarctic whaling fleets- under your covert control. I placed them under your control, since we need the oils, the flesh, and the produce of the high seas while we can get it. Stored, processed, and used to feed the masses and the detainment camps. The Antarctic winter is now upon us.

I want the ships to return crammed- all the oils, all the flesh every vessel can hold. We will deny breaking treaty- but we will store & stockpile.”

Heydrich nods.” I took the precaution, my Feurhrer, of placing trusted observers; as well as bribable observers form the League of Nations. With the days shortening, we can ‘boost the catch ‘by harvesting the giant blues well over quota...

Transport ships have offloaded the factory ships processing the whaling catch. Coded signals have gone out to the fleet- catch & process until the winter storms make the catch impossible. Then run for Germany under radio silence.”

“Good, all good” replies Adolph Hitler, striding nervously across his quiet office.

“He’s up early, strangely enough. Determined, yet agitated.”

“Reinhardt, - you are the future of the State. The rest of us are aging. Himmler- and you will share power when I am gone. I want you to understand this. Yet I have a family – a bloodline. I want them protected, to flourish. Himmler cannot lead the Reich – too many clouds in his past. The new man who leads the Reich must be purely Aryan –no doubts of appearance

Fritz, my nephew- limited. A loyal Nazi, but no more than a functionary. Woodrow, - the half-British offspring of Alois- he is not, I repeat, not a threat to you. There are things about my past he knows at best, vaguely. It stays that way”

“Understood, my Furher”.

Your relatives are doomed as are you, thought Heydrich. Give me enough time, enough allies, and your line vanishes in favour of my offspring. Time is on my side, Adolf. You are the blooded past, the incest bringer. You are the symbol of the bloody rebirth. That makes you both expendable- a flight accident, an attack by assassins. Then the Reich starts clean. The blood oath I swore means nothing.

Your Mein Kampf is flawed. My new Germany will be the technological powerhouse, the financial centre. Not some bizarre dream of vast estates to the East.

“How soon do we meet again?”

“I will see you once a week, 8.00 am, as long as I am in Munich. As my security chief you are the conduit.”

Heydrich smiles his broad, warm smile, and stands to take his leave. Alone again with his thoughts, Adolf Hitler feels a foreboding, but shrugs & puts it out of his mind. He has prepared the ground to play Himmler off against Heydrich. At the high echelons of the news Third Reich, all routes to power lead through the Fuerher. He trusts no man.

“He is my man of the iron heart” though Adolph. “Instinctively loyal. And now he can be played off- against Erich Koch, against Himmler, & against Goring.”



Seventeen thousand kilometres south, the German whaling fleet prepares to retire north against the building southern winter. Ole Wegger & Pelagos & their Norwegian crewed catcher ships, under contract, have left for Simons town. Repairs for the long voyage home to Bremen.

Only the new German processor ship Unitas & its inexperienced, eager new harpoon boat crews remain. Ernst Raeder, commodore, is called to the radio rooms. A coded message, eyes only.

He translates the code, & swears.

‘Remain on station until oil & meal tanks completely full’.

Ernst feels Unitas shudder as the grey green waves, building, roaring, wash across his decks. The whale catchers huddled in his lee, pitch & turn, holding station in the shelter of the processor ship.

“Impossible ‘He codes back. Seas building to force five gales. Cannot risk crews.

“Compliance insisted on or stand down for your replacement. Heydrich”.

Raeder signals his harpoon boats. “One last whale.”

The boats scatter, searching in the short Antarctic gloom. Blown rain , snow flurries. Battling the rising winds on a suicide quest. They find the pod of Blues, a nursery group, feeding on the krill before the migration north to the Indian Ocean warmth, the millennia old travel path for wise, newly wary giant roquals.

The whales dive while the boats circle, waiting for a chance, a lucky shot in the pitching, impossible swells. Unitas, the mother ship, follows its chaser boats, plunging, shedding water, ponderously wallowing. The bridge crew peers through scopes.

“Enough, says Raeder’ I’m calling them back’.

The rogue wave, travelling with the storm, slams into the Unitas, burying its heavy bows under tons of Water. The great ship pitches, rolls, shakes off the seas. The smallest whale catcher, caught on the quarter beam, appears before the factory ship’s’ wind quarter. Caught in its turn, following the pod, it broached before the wind. The Catcher’s stern raises, propeller-churning air.



The catcher rolls on beam-ends, showing the stoked boiler fire glowing red to the Unitas, then begins to slowly rise...

“He will make it, he has to make the turn, come on... Shouts Raeder .But the seas are on the small catcher craft & the `bow buries deep, one last plunge & the small ship, caught in the deep twist of sea, overturns. Its keel splits , cracking, severing rivets & plating. The hull plating tears as the seas rush in, drowning the struggling crew.

Unitas recovers two of twenty men on drift lines. When the blue whales surface, they see the German fleet, defeated, plodding North. They continue their migration, on the tangent, for the warmth of tropical winter seas.

Silent, shaking, buried under blankets in the infirmary, the two seamen warily watch the fleet commodore. His anger & his sadness are buried deep; He hands out rum, hot chocolate, gratefully accepted. From that moment Reinhardt Heydrich, basking in the Munich spring, has a lifetime foe.