Chapter Twelve - Resistance

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Chapter Twelve
Resistance
June 1942
Hotel Metropole (Gestapo Headquarters)
 
 In this chapter, the girls are sent to work at the headquarters of the Vienna Gestapo, the largest branch in the Greater Reich, and Bekka is emancipated, going to live with Hilda in a women's boarding house that serves government and SS employees. Hilda's boss in the Detective Branch is very personable, but Bekka's - the Commandant of the Headquarters - dislikes her on sight. Bekka is charged with programming the Lorenz machine, the encryption device used by the Reich high command, several categories of complexity above the Enigma, which was generally used. In reading through recent messages, she finds a reference to Otto in Washington DC in the United States. Sending him a message, she receives in return the charge to send him all information and is given contacts in the resistance in Vienna. We discover the only row Otto ever had with his mother was over whether to charge into Vienna and take over the reins of government by force. Now, he is working from abroad to subvert the Nazi regime in his country, and is friendly with Roosevelt. Bekka also discovers a rather exotic and dangerous Habsburg cousin living in Vienna and is warned off him. We meet some of the members of various groups of the resistance in Vienna, and learn of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work in Sweden to effect a plan to destroy the regime, while working for the Abwehr. Claus von Stauffenberg is promoted to Major and is in charge of the organisational section of the Wehrmacht, and while stationed in the Ukraine, he shunts 150,000 Russian prisoners of war into his own care as 'Cossacks'. Himmler continues his efforts to make a separate peace with the Allies, with himself as Fürher, and has secret meetings with the OSS in Switzerland.
 
The former Hotel Metropole (Gestapo Headquarters), the most feared building in the Reich:

 

The girls at this time:


 Bekka's boss, Franz Josef Huber:

 
Hilda's boss, Dr. Karl Ebner:

 
Otto in Washington:




Robert and Felix, Otto's brothers, in Washington:


Wilhelm von Habsburg, 'the Red Prince':

 Dietrich in the Abwehr:

Claus with his children:


 The Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, where one of Himmler's peace meetings took place:

The Lorenz Machine and its tape. The last photo is the desktop teleprinter (an early form of fax): 





The Himmler Solution - Secret Peace Talks With Roosevelt & Churchill- Dr. Mark Felton reveals it all for you. Himmler's involvement with the Resistance.
Heinrich Himmler:Inside the Mind of the Architect of the Holocaust - an extremely detailed and chillingly accurate look at Himmler's beliefs, plans, and motivations. 
The TRAGIC Execution Of Heinrich Maier - Hitler's Last Victim In Vienna - Bekka's contact with the CASSIA reisistance group, a Roman Catholic priest. 
The Nazi meaning behind Auschwitz’s “Work sets you free”  - Excellent discussion by TIKHistory of what 'work' meant to the Reich and with respect to the Jews (and camps)
Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) - All the daily files of the Vienna Gestapo are here. 

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