The immediate danger apparently past, Reich Chancellor Hitler stood up from behind his heavy desk to survey the wreckage of his office and the sole standing combatant. His personal guards lay dead not far from the ruined door to the main hall, their bodies broken by mighty smashing blows from his unknown assailant. Most of the furniture was destroyed beyond recognition. Only a bookcase in the far corner from the wall where his unknown rescuer had come crashing into the melee and his armored desk remained only lightly damaged.
He looked warily at the ten foot... man? contraption? ...that remained standing, still but emitting mechanical noises, whirs and clicks and the occasional gurgle. It was like nothing he'd ever seen, a vaguely humanoid construct of brass and steel with flashes of gold in places, but he did recognize the proud Swastikas on its chest and shoulders. After seeing it fight in his defense, the Chancellor was confident that it presented no danger to him.
The remains of the other combatant, while likewise strange, had struck him as somehow familiar. When his door had splintered open, he'd looked up in alarm to see an impossibly massive man bound in iron that seemed to conjoin directly to his body. Gunshots from his bodyguard either ricocheted off the iron bindings or found their mark in the invader's flesh without apparent harm.
Although slow, the thing had been strong beyond comprehension. Only the time taken to crush the life from his guards had saved the Chancellor from its titanic fists. Just as it had turned to face him, the wall behind it very nearly exploded with the machine's entrance. What followed had been a fist fight the likes of which could not have been seen since giants walked the Earth.
His attacker had been the faster of the two, despite its ponderous pace, for the defender had paused between each maneuver as though in careful consideration. But when it had moved, it was with swift power, and in the end, the outcome had never been in doubt. Although it had lost some external features in the melee, each blow had hit like irresistible thunder. Entire parts of the attacker's body had been torn away, and an arm had landed in the Chancellor's view from his shelter under the desk. In front of his eyes, the flesh of the arm had transformed into unliving, crumbling clay, though the iron bands at the wrist and along the fingers had remained.
Hitler now saw that the fallen body had suffered the same fate, laying in a heap of iron and crumbling clay. Knowing what to look for, he bent to the remnants and sifted through the pieces. When he found what he was looking for, it puzzled him only more.
A sharp whistle quickly fading to a harsh hiss of escaping steam brought him up in alarm, a large chunk of clay clenched in his hand, breaking off a piece in his panicked grip. The torso of the mechanical warrior was opening like a clamshell. In the steaming mist, a young man, Aryan of cast and soldierly of mein, extricated himself from a harness of some sort. When his arms were free, he saluted with his right arm outstretched.
"Heil Hitler! Are you unharmed, mein Fuhrer?"
"I am unharmed, thanks to you," Hitler replied. "Why do you call me that? My title is Reich Chancellor."
"Forgive me, Chancellor," the soldier said with a cheerful grin. "But not for long."
To hide his confusion, Hitler returned his attention to the clay shard in his hand. On it were arrays of Hebrew letters, arranged in forms similar to those he'd learned in his studies of the Kabbalah, but in unheard of complexity.
He looked back to the strange soldier and said, "This was a golem you've saved me from, but like nothing I would have expected."
"No, Chancellor, this golem was from the future, in a way."
"The future?"
"Yes, Chancellor, 51 years."
"51 years?" He was beginning to feel a trifle ridiculous, parroting words back to the man. "You need to explain yourself."
"Yes, mein Fuhrer. In 1984, Jewish sorcerers in America will send the mind and soul of their most knowledgeable crafter of golems back in time to possess his grandfather and create the mightiest and most thoroughly instructed golem possible. Although our agents will capture his co-conspirators, they will be unable to stop his ritual slaying and banishment into the mists of time. But they will obtain copies of the golem formulae, including the instructions to be inscribed in the clay of its forging. They will be very specific about the day of the attack, so we will know when to prepare your defense."
Hitler thought about the orders on his desk that he'd been preparing to sign and knew why this day had been... would be chosen. How did the man speak so consistently about times in the future but his own past?
"You will order an unsuccessful research project funded and restarted to create a time machine," the soldier continued, only to be interrupted.
"I am alive in 1984?"
Clearly uncomfortable and suddenly hesitant, the man replied, "You will order me not to give you any details, mein Fuhrer, but I am allowed to tell you that you will be ruling all of Europe, Western Asia, Northern Africa, and the Atlantic Coast of South America in 1984."
"I will trust for now in the wisdom of my future self."
"Thank you, mein Fuhrer. May I continue?" And at Hitler's nod, he did so.
"We will race to break the time barrier, build the actual conveyance mechanism, and create this specialized fighting machine, but it will take us twelve years to create a working prototype, and in the meantime you will repeatedly inform us that changes in our world spontaneously appear, although we will not notice them as we will be products of the altered timeline. Only you know, with your powerful mind, and much of your concentration will be consumed keeping yourself in existence."
Seeing the obvious question in Hitler's eyes, the soldier turned to his fighting machine.
"I do not have the words to explain that last, mein Fuhrer, but I will be given something to give you that does."
Opening a panel inside the machine, behind the harness he'd occupied, he withdrew several large notebooks.
"These are for this era's engineers. They are detailed technical diagrams and instructions to create this machine and larger, mightier machines. Sending me back will destroy the time machine, and our physicists in 1996 will believe that each method of time travel can only work once. That's part of why it will take twelve years to complete the project. Experimental results will never replicate."
He reached back into the compartment, retrieved a book and handed it to Hitler. It was a leather bound copy of Mein Kampf, stamped in gold with the title and the German eagle seal atop the Swastika. Hitler opened it to find every margin filled with his own handwriting. Some pages had writing between the lines of the text.
"You will order me to give you this, mein Fuhrer, your most favored possession. I know of no one ever allowed to read your personal notes of your voyage to conquer nearly half the world."
Absently realizing he didn't even know the man's name, Hitler was already entirely focused on the book in his hands. He had some very important reading to do.
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