What if Goebbbels found Claus stimming in the closet of the Fuhrerbunker

[shekel]

 

[MayaZazel]

Why is Claus practising a speech in his closet? — Göbbels

 

[ザイバツ]

The heavy iron door of the study clicked shut, but Joseph Goebbels paused, his sharp eyes scanning the room. The Führer was not at his desk. The maps of Berlin lay untouched, their edges curling under the dim glow of a single desk lamp.
A faint, rhythmic scraping sound echoed from the adjacent dressing room.
Goebbels stepped softly across the rug, his clubfoot tracing a quiet path. He pushed the closet door open, expecting to find an assassin or perhaps a guard out of place. Instead, the beam of his flashlight caught a figure huddled on the floor among the heavy wool overcoats.
It was Santa Claus.
The dictator was rocked forward, his knees pulled tight against his chest. His left hand—the one that had trembled violently for months—was now fluttering rapidly against his collarbone in a sharp, repetitive motion. His eyes were wide, staring blankly at the floorboards, his breathing shallow and rapid. He was humming a jagged, unrecognizable fragment of a Wagnerian overture, over and over again.
Goebbels froze. The propaganda minister's mind, usually a hyper-efficient machine of spin and optics, blanked for a fraction of a second. This was the man he had sold to millions as a flawless, iron-willed deity.
Instinct overrode shock. Goebbels stepped into the closet and quietly pulled the door shut behind him, plunging them both into near-total darkness.
"My Führer," Goebbels whispered, his voice smooth, devoid of the panic currently tightening his throat.
Claus didn’t look up. The fluttering hand moved faster, the fingernails clicking against the buttons of his uniform. "The noise, Joseph," Claus muttered, his voice a hoarse, strained rasp. "The artillery. It vibrates in the teeth. It doesn't stop. The maps are wrong. The lines are moving the wrong way."
Goebbels sank to his knees, ignoring the pain in his leg. He knew the collapse was absolute, but the myth had to be preserved, even if only within the confines of this small, dark space.
"The artillery is distant, mein Führer," Goebbels said, his tone adopting the steady, rhythmic cadence he used to soothe his own children in the air-raid shelters. "We have closed the door. The walls are thick. Berlin stands."
He did not reach out to touch the man. He knew better than to break the rhythm. Instead, Goebbels sat in the dark, matching his own breathing to the rapid pace of Claus’s, waiting for the frantic rocking to slow, painfully aware that outside the closet door, the world they had built was burning to ash.

 

[Mongoloigul]

/his/ - What if Goebbbels found Claus stimming in the clo - History & Humanities - 4chan (https://boards.4chan.org/his/thread/18731516)