Pictures From Our Honeymoon in Germany: Wannsee

This villa sits at 56-58 Am Grossen Wannsee in the Wannsee suburb of southwest Berlin. It was here, on 20 January 1942, that SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitsauptsamt (Reich Main Security Office), chaired the Wannsee Conference. The conference gathered together the administrative heads of various government departments to ensure their cooperation in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. By the end of the 90 minute meeting, the plans had been developed to transport the Jewish populations of East Europe to extermination camps as well as reduce the populations in occupied territories by 30 million people through forced starvation. A transcript of the proceedings survived, despite orders that all notes from the conference were to be destroyed, and provided considerable evidence against the defendants at the Nuremburg Trials. It's horrifying to read because these men discuss the elimination of millions of men, women, and children with the same emotional detachment as if they were talking about logistics for a corporation (puts what I write into perspective). Today the villa serves as a Holocaust memorial.

This is the main conference room in the villa where the discussions occurred. This was also the location where Kenneth Branagh's film Conspiracy was filmed.

Me standing the in the Wannsee Conference room.

After leaving the villa, we stopped at McDonald's to detox and lighten the mood.  The beer they serve at McDonald's helped.

Next stop: Dachau.

Pictures From Our Honeymoon in Germany: Berlin

The first stop on our trip to Germany was Berlin. Behind me is the Brandenburg Gate. The last time I was in Berlin (1984), the gate was behind the Iron Curtain and the only way to get this close to it was to travel into East Berlin. Now it's a thriving center of activity. They even have a Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks one hundred feet from me. 

Alison and I stayed not too far from Potsdamer Platz, the old government center of Berlin. Just around the corner from our hotel was the remains of the Anhof Railway Station, once the second largest train station in all of Europe. The below pictures are what the station looked like before World War II and in 1945 after having enduring the Allied air offensive against Berlin.

The Reichstag, the old parliament building in Berlin, only a few minutes walk from the Brandenburg Gate. Stalin gave the task of taking Berlin to two of his best generals, Marshal Georgi Zhukov commanding the 1st Belorussian Front and Marshal Ivan Koniev commanding the 1st Ukrainian Front. The victor would be the first front to storm and capture the Reichstag.

This view of the Reichstag was taken from Moltke Bridge that the 1st Belorussian Front's 3rd Shock Army used to cross the Spree River as it stormed the Reichstag. You can still see bullet holes on the bridge. The 3rd Shock Army captured the Reichstag on 30 April, shortly before Hitler committed suicide.

























Hermann Goering's Ministry of Aviation, one of the few Nazi-era structures to survive the war intact.  This structure used to reside in East Berlin and was used by the Soviets as an administrative building. Today it's used as a backdrop for movies, including Tom Cruise's Valkyrie. The wall in the foreground is a remnant of the Berlin Wall. The railing in the very forefront denotes the location of Heinrich Himmler's SS Headquarters. All that remains of SS Headquarters is the foundation and a few of the basement rooms, which are visible in the second photo. 

The Reich Chancellery, which was just down the street from the Ministry of Aviation, was the seat of government and Hitler's office. The Reich Chancellery, and the Fuhrer Bunker behind it, were heavily damaged by Allied bombing. After the war, the Chancellery was torn down (with the red marble used in the subway station across the street), the Fuhrer Bunker was covered over, and the entire are remained isolated in the no man's land between the Berlin Wall for decades. This is what the Chancellery looked like in 1940.

 This is the area today. 

Underneath the grounds behind the Chancellery sat the infamous Fuhrer Bunker where Adolf Hitler lived underground for the last six months of his life as the Reich crumbled around him. After the war, the Soviets buried the Bunker so it would not become a shrine to Nazism. When they erected the Berlin Wall, the Bunker existed as a mound of dirt inside no man's land. With the collapse of East Berlin and the tearing down of the Wall, the Bunker was dug up, completely destroyed, and a residential area built on the site. Below is a photograph taken after the war showing the exit stairwell for the bunker (the box-like concrete structure on the left) and the air vent for the complex (the conical tower in the center). The bodies of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were unsuccessfully cremated in the darkened area to the right of the tower.

Below is the same view today.  The stairwell would be in the center of the photo.

Me standing at the spot where Hitler and Eva were partially cremated.

Last but not least, the Berlin Flak Towers. After the British RAF first bombed Berlin in 1940, Hitler ordered three flak towers to be built to defend the city. Each had walls over ten feet thick and enough room inside to serve as air raid shelters for up to 10,000 people (during the Battle of Berlin, close to 30,000 lived inside each tower). After the war, the tower at the Berliner Zoo was completely destroyed, and the tower in the Friedrichshain district was mostly destroyed. Only the flak tower in Humboldthain remains partially intact.

Next stop: Wannsee.

Pictures from Our Honeymoon in Germany: Wewelsburg

Over the next few weeks I'll post some of the pictures Alison Beightol and I took while on our honeymoon to Germany in mid-November.  However, let me explain in advance for anyone who notices a preponderance of Nazi-related photographs.  Alison and I are avid World War II/Cold War history buffs, and this period of history figures prominently in our books (see Alison's portrayal of Reinhard Heydrich as a vampire in Blood Beginnings and my upcoming series of novels detailing officers from the OSS battling Nazi occultism).  So it was only natural that on this trip we saw many locations linked to the people and events associated with Nazi Germany. 

One of the places we visited was Wewelsburg Castle in Westphalia in the northwest, the location chosen by Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to be the center of the SS occult activities.  The castle was constructed in the early 17th century but eventually fell into disrepair in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In 1924, Wewelsburg became the property of the local district, which turned it into a cultural center and began renovations that fell off after a few years.  Himmler leased the castle in 1934 with the intention of converting into a center of SS ideology and research.  One of the fields of research that was followed was the occult. 

The focal point of the castle's occult studies was the North Tower.  On the ground level (just inside the doorway) is the Obergruppenfuhrersall, which referred to the original twelve highest ranking SS officers (obergruppenfuhrers). The Obergruppenfuhrersall contains the Black Sun, a dark green sun wheel built into the marble floor.  Himmler envisioned this tower as the center of his SS and Germanic empire. This room also gave credence to the unsubstantiated legend that Himmler was hoping to develop his a Grail castle with his own dark version of the Knights of the Round Table.   In the basement is the Vault, a former cistern that was converted into some type of commemoration room with a sunken center; twelve pedestals, each with its own wall niche, placed around the perimeter wall; and the Black Sun centered in the ceiling.  Himmler never divulged what the Vault would be used for (which is great, because now I can make up what I want for my novels).

This is the Vault.  You can see the sunken floor and some of the pedestals between the paintings (the paintings were added by the museum to detract from the eerie aspects of the room).  The reason this picture is so poor is because I had to take it covertly because photography is not allowed in this portion of the castle.

 This is one of the original twelve chairs emblazoned with SS runes from the Obergruppenfuhrersall.

 And this is a close-up of the SS runes.

 Next stop: Berlin.

Rotter World II and III To Be Published; The Vampire Hunters Trilogy Will Be Republished

I have signed a contract with Permuted Press to publish the second and third books in the Rotter World trilogy. Rotter World II should be published the summer of 2014, with Rotter World III being published in early 2015.

Also, I have signed a contract with Emby Press to re-publish The Vampire Hunters. The first book will be published in January 2014, with each other edition following at approximately six-month intervals. To accompany the publication of each book, Emby Press will be running in their Monster Hunting Quarterly new short stories featuring Drake and Alison that will flesh out the hunters trilogy.

Raus! Untoten! Is Available

The anthology Raus! Untoten! is now available as a trade paperback (the Kindle version should be available in a few days).  Below is the Amazon description:

Raus! Untoten! is a truly unique collection of stories. The Nazi Zombie trope, genre even, has become firmly entrenched in the public's mind. Films and books have saturated the market to the extent that Nazis are synonymous with Zombies. Vampires have also come to the fore in recent years and have, to the stunned horror of horror fans, become sexy in a faintly necrophiliac manner. But Zombies and Vampires are just two of a myriad of undead horrors waiting to come lunging out of the shadows to slash out throats, suck our eyes from their sockets and scoop our warm brains into their gaping, fang-lined maws. Raus! Untoten! addresses this imbalance. Naturally we have zombies, but we also have vampires, French grey puppets, Jewish golems and even vengeful spirits. So, make yourself comfortable, pour yourself a glass of your favourite tipple and let yourself be taken away to worlds of horror.

You can order your copy of Raus! Untoten! here.

Like my stepdaughter Maddy says, "The only thing worse than Nazis are zombie Nazis."

Happy Halloween

The bride and groom who slay together, stay together.

Halloween Bash with M.R. Gott

When M.R. asked me to write a posting about what Halloween means to me, at first I was stymied. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a certified Monster Kid, and have been as far back as I can remember. I live, eat, and sleep this stuff. Most people wake up from a nightmare and turn on a light to drive the demons away; I wake up and jot down the details for my next short story. However, this year Halloween means something more to me.

Read the entire posting at M.R. Gott's Where the Dead Fear to Tread.