The Night of the Long Knives had barely ended when the whole of Germany—and most of Europe—erupted in noise.
Britain and France howled that it was the kind of barbarism that couldn’t happen in a rule-of-law state, spitting venom at me nonstop, but the reaction at home was different.
Yes, there was shock and outrage that SA leaders had been butchered without so much as a court procedure, but the general public’s response was, more or less, “Good job.”
Sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. That’s how it went in real history too.
Why would ordinary people cheer and clap instead of condemning such a brutal act? Simple.
Because even in their eyes, the SA were a bunch of assholes.
The army despised them, but so did the common citizen.
If they didn’t like the look on your face, they’d beat you bloody in the street, no hesitation. And their leadership? A bunch of gays chasing men around.
Even in the 21st century, dripping with PC culture, society isn’t exactly warm toward homosexuals. Imagine the 20th.
Hatred of gays back then was stronger than hatred of racial minorities. So of course everyone loathed the SA.
And now the leadership—this nest of queers and thugs—gets itself executed on charges of treason (manufactured ones, sure, but still). The people applauded. The government did well, they said, throwing themselves into enthusiastic support.
When even Hindenburg stood up and gave a speech praising it as a bold and admirable decision, whatever voices of criticism remained just shriveled and died.
But that was only at home. Abroad, the reaction stayed ice cold.
Britain, self-appointed guardian of European democracy and peace, blasted me daily. France—suddenly painted as the “coup’s puppet master”—poured out denunciations even louder.
Italy joined the chorus, barking that such things were fit only for savages.
The Soviet Union? Just a perfunctory statement of disapproval, nothing more.
Why? Because Stalin liked me.
In real history too, when he heard of the Night of the Long Knives, he reportedly told his aide Anastas Mikoyan: “What a guy! Pulled it off beautifully!”
Different ideologies, sure, but dictators recognize each other.
As time passed, even the criticism faded, but the world’s eyes on Germany still weren’t kind.
And then, by chance, something happened that would blow all of that away.
***
What’s the worst crime Nazi Germany committed?
Destroying democracy, establishing a dictatorship? Wars of aggression?
No. The undisputed number one is the Holocaust.
History is littered with nations that discriminated against other races—it’s more common than cobblestones in a street. Harder, in fact, to find a country that didn’t.
Maybe you’ve wondered this yourself:
If plenty of nations committed racism and massacres, why does Nazi Germany alone stand as the byword for such evil?
By sheer body count, China ranks first, the Soviet Union second.
Hell, Britain, France, the U.S.—even little Belgium butchered over three million in the Congo.
But Nazi Germany was different.
They didn’t just kill; they industrialized extermination. Genocide itself became a state-run enterprise.
They marshaled all their science, bureaucracy, and industry to make mass killing efficient, erecting slaughter factories called extermination camps—Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor.
Even in wartime, when resources were desperately short, they never stopped the killing.
Think about it.
The front is screaming for supplies and manpower, and the leadership knowingly diverts those resources to run murder plants in the rear. What kind of mind comes up with that?
If they had redirected the staff, the trains, the building materials, even the food for inmates to the front, the shortages would have eased. The leaders knew it.
But they didn’t.
Because extermination was the priority.
No other country in history was that obsessed with killing.
Especially Jews. The hatred was pathological. No matter how loyal, useful, or decorated a Jew might be, it didn’t matter. They had to die for being Jewish.
Even more shocking: the ordinary people approved.
When the war ended and the massacres were exposed, they were horrified, yes—but at the killings, not at the persecution itself. The persecution, they had accepted as normal.
And me? Yes, I’m in Hitler’s body, walking his path more or less, but I’ve got zero intention of repeating the mass killings he carried out.
I’ve said this before. That conviction hasn’t changed.
Unfortunately, my German “friends” don’t seem to see it that way.
***
“What did you just say, Himmler?”
“Exactly what you heard, my Führer.”
Himmler, straight-backed, was proposing full-scale persecution of the Jews.
Bright and early, he storms into my office and this is what he comes out with. More useless crap.
“My Führer, Jews are the cancer of German society. They ruin our economy, siphon wealth abroad, and corrupt even our racial purity. If we let these vermin be, the purity of the German Volk will vanish from history. Therefore we must—”
“Himmler. I don’t have time. Keep it short and listen closely.”
I could feel my blood pressure spiking. My voice came out sharp, fast.
“Why the hell are you throwing your life into petty, trivial bullshit like this? We’ve got mountains of problems more important, more urgent than your so-called Jewish Question. I told you before—I don’t give a damn about Jews.”
“That is exactly why you must start caring, my Führer.”
My tone made him flinch, but the bastard still wouldn’t let go.
“Many of the Communists you’ve sworn to eradicate are Jews. If you truly mean to wipe out Communism, how can you ignore the Jews who spawn them? I simply cannot understand.”
God, how I wanted to put a bullet right between his brows. But who knew what chaos that’d unleash, so I held back.
What would shut this idiot up?
Think. Think…
I closed my eyes, and then—an idea. A nasty little twist.
“Himmler.”
“Yes, my Führer?”
“Do you know why I chose you?”
“What?”
The question blindsided him.
“Well… surely because you recognized my loyalty, my Führer—”
When I rotted in Landsberg Prison, Himmler had written me letters every damn day to prove his devotion. In real history, Hitler remembered and picked him up after release.
“That’s part of it. But I also thought you were sharp, competent. Men who can cut clean and think fast are rare. I believed you were one.”
Bullshit, of course.
But he lit up like a schoolboy getting praise from his teacher.
“Thank you, my Führer! That you think so highly of me—”
“But.”
“…But?”
“I may have been wrong.”
“…My Führer?”
“I thought you smart and capable, yet here you are swallowing ridiculous gossip. I am disappointed, Himmler. Deeply disappointed.”
I let out a long, dramatic sigh. He gaped, floundering, not knowing what to say.
“I… I don’t quite understand…”
“I know you never liked Jews. Fine. But to actually believe garbage like ‘all Communists are Jews’? That I didn’t expect.”
His bewilderment was delicious. I kept my grin tucked away, voice measured.
“That whole ‘Jews equal Communists’ line? Pure bullshit! A lie cooked up by vermin who want to sabotage Germany’s progress. Do you know why?”
“I… I do not, my Führer…”
“Yes, there are Jews among the Reds. But there are also plenty of so-called pure Aryans. If all Communists are Jews, then Aryans are Jews too, aren’t they?”
“What? N-no, that’s not what I meant, I—”
Shut it, asshole. I’m not done.
“Do you know what I’ve been hammering since 1919? Unity. Always unity. I’ve told the Volk again and again: we must stand as one.
But if we split ourselves—Jew, non-Jew, Aryan, whatever—how the hell do we unite? We won’t. We’ll rip each other apart until we destroy ourselves.
The idea that Jews equal Communists is a lie. A filthy rumor spread by those who want Germany ruined.
And yet you—yes, you, the head of the SS—believe it? Are you joking with me, Himmler?”
That day Himmler got chewed out worse than he ever had in his life.
He walked out of my office looking like some small-time investor who’d just watched his entire fortune evaporate. His shoulders shook like a leaf.
Finally. That felt good.
***
After that, Himmler never brought up Jews to my face again.
But anti-Semitism kept humming along in the streets.
Goebbels and Heydrich sometimes dropped little hints too, suggesting we should “do something” about the Jews, which pissed me off all over again.
Persistent bastards.
“Really, Doctor Goebbels. I didn’t know you hated Jews so much. Why is that?”
“Why? Because Jews only burden German society, they—”
“Hold it. Didn’t you once say many of your professors back in school were Jews?”
“What? I… how did you… well, yes, but—”
I cut him off and turned to Heydrich.
“And you, Heydrich. I heard your father had Jewish friends.”
“My Führer, how could you possibly—”
“Oh, come on. At the last party you told me yourself.”
“I… I did? I don’t recall—”
“Then what did I hear, hmm?”
“Uh… well…”
I had no patience to listen to another sanctimonious sermon on the “Jewish Question.” So I turned my knowledge of the future into ammunition and fired it back at them.
Every time, they panicked like schoolkids caught cheating on a test. And no wonder.
They knew they’d never said it, yet I had details down to the last crumb.
By now, they’re probably doubting their own memories.
As for Göring and Hess, once word spread that Himmler had been humiliated, they kept their mouths shut around me. But they didn’t show any disgust for anti-Semitism either.
That’s how baked-in it was in Germany.
And me? I didn’t want to poke it more than necessary.
Yes, anti-Semitism is a problem, but stomping it out head-on might blow up in my face.
My plan was simple: maintain the status quo. Smooth things over.
You don’t touch me, I won’t touch you. Stay behind the line, OK?
But then a letter arrived that made me reconsider.
***
“A letter?”
“Yes, my Führer. For you.”
I was at my desk when it came.
Letters weren’t unusual. Ninety-five percent were fan mail, five percent anonymous hate.
There were so many that I told Maurice to screen them, pass me only the important ones.
So normally, the envelopes I saw were from Party bigwigs or politicians.
But this one was different.
Because the sender’s name I could never forget.
“Einstein?!”
Albert Einstein. The scientist of scientists. Father of relativity.
That Einstein had written to me?
My pulse spiked. Whatever it said, I had to read it.
The reason he wrote became clear at once.
Einstein wanted me to do one thing: end the anti-Semitism running rampant in Germany.