Ireland 1963: What might have been?

Balaclava1991 · 25-11-2013 9:07pm #1

The immense four engine Lufthansa Junkers airliner touched down at Dublin's Sean Russell International Airport before taxing into the glass and steel cathedral like terminal designed by Albert Speer. The immense building was draped with tricolor banners with the Celtic cross of Ailtirí na hAiséirighe in the centre of the white section between the green and orange.
Sturmbannführer Heinz Barth of the SD dressed in his impeccably tailored field grey uniform with a leather coat draped over his broad shoulders descended the steps as he put his peaked officer cap with its black band, white piping and silver Death's Head badge on his head and donned his black leather gloves.
Major Séan South, hollow cheeked with glasses and dressed in the blue uniform of the National Guard at the foot of the steps snapped to attention and gave him a raised arm salute.
"Heil Hitler!"
Barth returned the salute and grinned.
"Fáilte Romhat Sturmbannführer Barth."
"Go raibh maith agat Major South. Is that how you say it? Delighted to be back."
"This way sir."
The two men strolled toward the entrance to the terminal which was flanked by two immense bronze sculptures of Celtic warriors and passed a queue of new arrivals. There were Wehrmacht soldiers in field grey arm in arm with new brides with plaited hair and wearing ankle length dirndls on their honeymoons before they were sent to the East for perhaps the last time, youngsters of the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls, the boys wearing blue jackets, brown shirts and lederhosen and the girls wearing white blouses and blue skirts and groups of war veterans with big waxed mustaches wore iron crosses on the breasts of their suits arm in arm with their plump wives buried in Russian furs.
As their jackboots echoed on the marble floor Barth looked up and took in the interior.
The ceiling was decorated with images of battle - Wehrmacht soldiers with their brothers in the National Guard smashing hordes of Jewish-Bolsheviks on the Russian steppes while a soaring Seán Ó Riada symphony boomed over the loudspeakers.
There was an immense statue of Sean Russell, dressed in an overcoat and clutching a hat surrounded by four burning torches representing the four provinces of Ireland or Éire.
A group of workers in striped uniforms were being supervised by armed National Guardsmen in blue uniforms as they hung a giant banner decorated with the profiles of the gaunt but stern white haired Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, Taoiseach Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin and the U.S. President Richard Nixon under the slogan PEACE, FRIENDSHIP AND PROSPERITY 1963.
One of skeletal figures struggled to climb his ladder and got a boot in the behind.
"Go tapa! Go tapa!" his tormentor shouted.
Barth and South both smirked.
They emerged through the automatic doors where the Mercedes Benz 600 was waiting with its engine running and the driver, a corporal held the door open.
Barth eased his big frame in the back seat while South sat next to the driver.
"Your flight was pleasant sir?" asked South.
"Yes. Take me to Dublin Castle please."
The big automobile swept out the airport entrance and sped south passing ugly grey tower blocks and rows of shabby red brick houses with turf smoke streaming from the chimneys due to the coal shortages.
The people on the streets were bundled up against the cold looking sickly and downcast. They passed a group of urchins foraging in a bin who were chased away by blue uniformed Catholic Boy Scouts waving hurleys.
An unhappy looking young man with one leg and balanced on wooden crutches waited at a bus stop.
More skeletal figures dressed in stripes were bent digging with shovels on roadworks watched by blue uniformed men with rifles slung over their shoulders and holding barking dogs on leashes.
There were very few motor cars or trucks on the streets.
A horse pulled a four wheeled wagon laden with bags of potatoes.
As the car passed down O'Connell Street Barth saw an immense Ogham stone monument surmounted by an eternal flame in the centre of the boulevard opposite the General Post Office where President Eamon De Valera and the Taoiseach Taoiseach Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin would be joined by the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and President Nixon to review a march of victorious National Guard troops returned from the Eastern steppes. A German Tiger tank was parked at the intersection where the black uniformed crew were giving school kids each a turn to sit in the turret and get their photo taken.
A poster showed astronaut Hans Guido Mutke, the first human being in space, posing with his helmet and clad in his pressure suit in front of a giant rocket designed by Werner Von Braun.
The street and the rest of the city centre were adorned with bunting and red swastika flags, Irish tricolours with Celtic crosses in the center and Star Spangled Banners.
The Mercedes Benz crossed O'Connell Bridge, passed through College Green where the facades of Sean Russell University and the Reichsbank were also adorned with flags.
A pair of SS sentries wearing steel helmets and greatcoats snapped to attention their MP 44 automatic rifles topped with bayonets at port arms and as the car swept through the arched entrance into the yard of Dublin Castle.
A swastika flag fluttered in the wind from a pole on top of the green dome.
Barth and South left the car and crossed the yard entered the cylindrical stone Record Tower passing another SS sentry who snapped to attention. Behind the bullet proof glass a corporal checked their passes at the hatch and buzzed them through, before the man took Barth's coat and the two visitors climbed the stone spiral stair case to the top floor of the tower. The walls were decorated with pictures of Rhinemaidens, Celtic princesses, warriors of the Fianna and Wagnerian opera.
The office of the Higher SS Police Leader and Reich Protector was exquisitely decorated with carved mahogany and oil paintings of Italian masters and period French furniture. SS-Gruppenfuhrer Otto Skorzeny, an immense man with grey hair swept back, a neat mustache and glittering blue eyes towered over them. The Austrian's face broke into a wide smile which threatened to burst open the gruesome dueling scar that extended from his right ear to the corner of his mouth and down the side of his chin.
The men saluted each other with raised arms.
"Sturmbannführer Barth. Major South. Good of you to come. We have no time to waste. Tom Barry and their merrymen are making trouble for us once again."