Goebbels sometimes vented his anger at opponents of the regime—particularly if he saw them as “intellectuals”—in face-to-face confrontations… He frequently summoned opponents of the regime to his office in order to degrade and humiliate them.

— Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography, Random House, 2015, page 409.

Berlin, April 1945

Until now, Reichminister Goebbels could still hope.

The Führer retired to his study with his bride of one day, directing the onlookers to wait ten minutes, clicking the door shut. From that moment, reality ceased to be something Goebbels could accept or comprehend. He stared at the door, numb, the room silent except for artillery rumbles somewhere overhead… until the shot banged.

A secretary gasped. Goebbels shuddered, collapsing inside, like Hitler’s own body. For all intents and purposes, he had died with his idol of the past nineteen years.

Because all other feeling had ceased, he became aware of something large and flat in the inner breast pocket of his suit. Absently, he reached in and drew it out:

Drei Geschichten der— a head floating in a jar—

What? Snapped back to awareness, he squinted at the magazine in his hand. The final word of the title, after der, was missing, a charred hole in its place.

Where had he gotten this? Think…

Goebbels welcomed the distraction. Retreating into the passageway that smelled of damp concrete and faintly of sewage, he sank into one of the chairs. He flipped through the pages and saw the story titles. Iron Sky. They Saved Hitler’s Brain. The Frozen Dead.

Yes. It was coming back to him now…

Berlin, 1933

The Propaganda Minister fidgeted at his desk, waiting for noon. Known as the Mouse-General behind his back, but second only to Hitler in hypnotizing crowds, he kept his nails immaculate, emphasizing his prominent head with dark hair combed tightly back, hard eyes, and a mouth he used like a club. (Speaking of which, he and Magda had fought again last night, and he wanted to get the bad taste out of his mouth.)

One of his secretaries appeared in the office doorway, eyes magnified behind her glasses, wringing her hands. “He’s here.”

The minister’s ears pricked up. “He” could only be one person, and early, thank God! This was one offender Goebbels wanted to deal with personally.

He hurried back around his desk, half-dragging his club foot, and pulled a drawer open. Out came a modest-sized magazine. Its cover featured a head floating in a jar, and the title Drei Geschichten der Zukunft blazed in yellow across the top. Goebbels placed it face-up on the desktop.

“Send him in.”

A bespectacled man with long legs strode in. Too long; he reminded Goebbels of an entertainer on stilts. In three steps, the visitor reached the center of the office, where he stopped. He wore a gray suit a little cheaper, a little shabbier than the Propaganda Minister’s, and held his hat before him with both hands like a shield. His dark hair was thinning and he needed a shave.

Goebbels sat with arms folded on his desk, sizing the fellow up. So this was Steiger, the publisher, calm on the outside, but with a blanched face and twitching fingers betraying his true feelings. Perhaps he had heard of that youngster who’d boasted of how he would assassinate the Führer? Goebbels had summoned the brat, had torn him up one side and down the other, and had then turned him over to the Gestapo to determine what other mischief he was up to.

Rising from his chair, Goebbels limped around his desk, picking up the little magazine, and shoved it in the man’s face.

“What is the meaning of this?”

The visitor flinched for an instant. “Short stories, Herr Reich Minister.” Then, as if it might help: “Science fiction stories.”

Goebbels saw the reaction and felt taller, but not tall enough. That this man stood a good five centimeters above him did not help, but never mind.

“You’ve published Christoff Bowes, Zeitpiraten-Abenteurer since 1926. I’ve had the last several issues reviewed, and I see you’ve resisted calls to more accurately reflect the times and our national way of life. And now I hear you’re about to print these ‘Three Stories of the Future?’” He held up the publication and shook it. “We’re fortunate someone brought this to our attention before you dumped it on the public. Did you write them all yourself?”

Steiger paused before answering. “To be frank, sir, neither I nor my writers came up with any of them.”

Goebbels made a show of flipping through the magazine. Fifty-three pages, ads for Coca Cola and pulp paper, even the cheap kind the Americans used. “Is that why they’re all by ‘an unknown storyteller’, as you note in the introduction?” He waited till a bead of sweat trickled down Steiger’s brow, then said: “You understand, of course, that you will have to give me all three names.”

“Ah. Well, you see, sir… that would be… ” Steiger tugged his collar. “Difficult. No, impossible.”

Goebbels looked up. “And why is that?”

“It’s true that we wrote the words ourselves, but—”

“Herr Steiger, you have five seconds to start making sense.”

“We received them from an unknown sender, and not as print stories. They were films.”

Goebbels kept the man pinned under his gaze. “Go on.”

“Someone left them on my doorstep, wrapped in a package. Reels of celluloid. Curiously, when we were able to rent a projector and run them, they were quite short. Evidently parts had been edited out that we weren’t meant to see. Only the bare stories.”

“And this filmmaker included no name, no return address?”

“There was only a typewritten note from a ‘representative of future generations.’ We wondered what to make of it. In one of the films—if you could have seen it—the way the moon appeared, the future Earth, the realism—”

“You fool!” Goebbels shouted in Steiger’s face. Steiger grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t you realize why he sent them to you? It was so you would answer for them instead of he himself. He’s probably somewhere laughing at you as we speak. Where are these films now?”

“We don’t have them anymore; they were confiscated.”

“When?”

“I can tell you the exact day. May, the tenth.”

Goebbels knew that day, of course: the day of the book burning. “Are you saying—”

“One of my writers… His son is in the Sturmabteilung. He unfortunately let the boy hear him say too much. The whole detachment of brownshirts stormed the apartment, and the box was sitting open in a corner. They took it, every reel, the box itself, and the paper it had been wrapped in, and they ran to the Opernplatz and took turns throwing reels into the flames. The son had the honor of burning the last item, the box. Or so he informed his father afterwards.”

Goebbels frowned. He himself had spoken to the crowd that night, whipping them up as they put books to the torch: No to decadence and moral corruption! “That should tell you something about those kinds of stories, Herr Steiger.”

“We had written them down by that time. You must admit, sir, they are imaginative.”

The minister’s frown hardened into a scowl. “Imaginative? I have read them, and that is not the word they brought to mind.” He flipped through the magazine. “For example, this…” He looked up. “‘They Saved Hitler’s Brain?’”

Steiger only waited, keeping his face blank. Goebbels sauntered up and around him, speaking over his shoulder.

“From 1968?”

“That… that was when the film is supposed to have been made.”

“Is that so? Set in South America? Our soldiers living in a cave, and our Führer reduced to…” He shuddered. He wasn’t sure he could go on. “To a head? Kept alive in a jar?”

Steiger merely said, “Yes.”

“And as if that weren’t indignity enough, he goes up in flames at the end.”

Steiger kept his eyes fixed on the wall and said nothing.

Goebbels slapped the magazine against his palm, slap, slap, slap. “For this alone,” he said in a low voice, “for this alone, I could have you sent to Sachsenhausen. But it seems this is only the start. ‘The Frozen Dead’, from 1966?” Slap went the magazine against his palm. “Once again, you take pains to remind us of our defeat in war.”

“Herr Reich Minister, if you’ve read the story—”

“Every word of it, I assure you.”

“—we have been on a war footing since this new regime began. Everyone sees it. From school on up, everyone’s given uniforms, ranks, badges. It is a concern. I think the story is about where it could lead—”

Goebbels threw down the magazine. “I told you I read every word. The scientists’ plan, which might I add is disgusting, is thwarted at the end. I was even glad to see it!”

“So is it not wiser to pursue peace? Germany can rise again, without any need for retribution…”

“Germany has risen again, and I would expect you to remember that. And… My God, man! Arms hanging from a wall? And another disembodied head? What accounts for this apparent fixation you have with heads in jars?”

“It’s what was in the films, sir.”

“The films, the films.” Goebbels paced the floor. “So help me I will have that man found, whoever sent them to you, if it’s my final act on Earth.”

“The British, the Americans, they have such tales. Should we not surpass them in all things, including such imagination?”

Goebbels stroked his chin. Perhaps… perhaps. He had one more story to address, though. Without taking his eyes from Steiger, he bent down, picked up the offending publication, found the page he was looking for and held it open before him.

“And what am I to make of this ‘Iron Sky’ from the year 2012? We quit this world altogether, and retreat all the way… to the moon?”

“I rather liked that, being the first nation to colonize it.”

“We build a gigantic space-warship? We convert a negro into a stormtrooper, and dress him in the uniform like a doll? What the devil, man? Do you think those races can somehow be redeemed?”

Steiger knitted his brow, mouth tight, no doubt pondering how far he should stick his neck out. He cleared his throat. “Sir, before this regime, no one talked of race like they do now. Perhaps it’s because, well, no one really needs to be redeemed. In the story they try to change the man, but it doesn’t work so well. He was clearly meant to be the way he was and it was a mistake to try to force it, so I believe the idea’s fitting.”

Goebbels tossed the magazine aside. “I’m not sure I would want to see inside your head, Herr Steiger, or everything you think is ‘fitting.’”

For a long moment, he appraised his prisoner, standing and watching. Inside, his heart raced. His cylinders were all firing now, and the monotony of the day was far away. When it came time to write in his diary this evening, he might well give this fellow a whole page. When Steiger had squirmed enough, Goebbels spoke.

“Steiger, understand one thing. Any chance you have depends on what you tell me now. You must answer, and answer quickly. You mentioned that a note came with these films?”

“Oh yes. From—”

“I remember who the sender claimed to be. But what else did it say?”

Steiger glanced out the window, down at his shoes.

Goebbels stepped in front of the man, cigarette in hand. He blew a long exhale of blue smoke. “What are you not telling me?”

“Well—”

“Did it also mention the Führer?”

Steiger’s face told all. The man’s lower lip quivered, he tightened his mouth and nodded. “It also mentioned—”

“Himmler? Goering?”

“It mentioned you, Herr Reichminister.”

Goebbels took another drag, exhaled. “Did it now. And what did it say about me?”

A long pause. “It said only that… you would do your part to burn out our future. Those exact words. You would burn out our future.”

The Reichminister stood with one hand in his pocket. “The event of May tenth, is that what he meant? Steiger, look around you. Think. You can see the state of our nation for yourself. Are we not the prouder, the stronger for it? The very purpose of burning all that trash was for our future.”

“I’m only relating what the note said.”

Goebbels positioned himself in front of the publisher, the tall man who seemed to shrink smaller every minute. “From the moment you started talking,” he said, “I knew the Jews had set you up.” He limped to his desk, dropped the magazine on his desktop, and ground out his cigarette on it. “What do they hope to gain with this? Are they getting desperate, perhaps?”

Steiger shrugged.

The Reichminister did not stop. He continued to the door, took hold of the knob and pulled it open. Two men in black uniforms waited on the other side. The color drained from Steiger’s face.

“When you get to the camp at Sachsenhausen,” Goebbels said, “you can tell your Jewish bosses I won’t be tricked so easily.”

Steiger did not move, but hung his head, biting his lip. The men came in, each taking an arm, and led him out. The door clicked shut behind them.

Goebbels edged around his desk and sank into the chair. Reaching for the publication, he saw its cover and, for an instant, stiffened. Then he followed through with seizing and dropping it into his wastebasket, clunk. He sat back as his eyes found the wall clock. Five minutes till noon.

Well. Curious now, what he had just seen. The magazine’s title. Drei Geschichten der Zukunft, Three Stories of the Future, except Zukunft, the word for Future, was gone, burned through by his cigarette.

Goebbels looked up in his chair. Bormann and the SS men were hauling the corpses into the passageway, toward the emergency exit. He rose and followed, still holding the magazine. In a few minutes he stood in the Chancellery garden with Hitler’s SS adjutant Günsche, the valet Linge, and Bormann. They faced an artillery crater brimming with petrol, two dark shapes lying with the stillness of death in that oily pool. When Günsche lit the fire and jumped back, it wooshed up in a yellow fireball, the heat stinging Goebbels’ skin, and the magazine slipped from the former Reichminister’s fingers.