Note: J. Francis McComas (Webb Marlowe) was better known as an editor.
This story is odd mostly for its timing. This story is published in 1942, the time of Stalingrad and the North African allied landings, which meant it was written earlier. But it's a story about what happens after the Fascists loose and the world is trying to recover. Its a tale of a diehard unreconstructed-on-the-inside Fascist/Nazi manager/officer type employing secret high technology to carry on the fight by setting up some secret bastion.
It's impressive that this urban legend format was resonating so early in the Nazi lifecycle. This was years before the horrible conditions of the concentration camps were revealed by Allied invaders. The rounding up was known about, but not the terrible conditions after roundup. This means that many elements that became the Nazi urban legend predated Nazism and got sucked into it -- the strict Prussian disciplinarian being an example.
It's spooky in some ways, but looked at a different way it shows that Nazism was a "perfect storm" that pulled together many pre-existing themes for villain types into a cohesive, "comfortable" standard. I think Hitler and buddies would be as amazed at what Nazism has become in popular culture themes, as Jesus would be at what Christianity has become in religious themes.
In this particular story we have strong, militarist brother teamed up with crippled brilliant brother both looking to have a wonderful invention happen, but with different hopes for its use when it is perfected. The emotional theme behind the story is "Can we trust that these ex-enemies will get with the new program, or will they sabotage us in the hopes that 'The [X] will rise again!'?"
And this is another story where psychology is a powerful and precise science. It's the interesting converse to the blind spot for what computers and communications would become.
LoL! This villain is hard core! Even a meek coffee-serving secretary is too assertive. She should be at home raising master race children.
Ah... too bad. It now gets silly. Linkman, the herr general, meets with a co-conspirator, Major Falkayn, and all sorts of inconsistencies spout out of their conversation. Too bad, in the spirit of being Prussian, the writer slips into the "Because this is an engineering problem and I speak like a Prussian you will produce miracles! Ja! Sieg Heil!" trope. Sadly silly. Another variant is the Star Trek "Scotty Version" where the nice guy engineer produces the miracles when the nice guy captain orders it. Either way, I sigh. Like space and time issues, this is a story device average readers never seem to question. But I do. For me it cheapens engineers and the story.
Sillier and sillier. Spies killed with outlawed guns, blood and guts mopped up in seconds, more violence and bodies. One sop to this being the future: a telephone answering machine. Too much detective pulp fiction now, I'm losing interest.
There is an odd moral to this story. This story brings up one significant difference between how WWII was handled and how the Iraq War was handled. In WWII the war wasn't even close to ending before both leaders and average people were thinking about how the post-war reconstruction should be handled. This issue was never really faced by the Bush administration, or the Obama administration in Afghanistan. And facing it early on, head on, makes a big difference in the years following the war.
The inconsistencies in how manufacturing and space travel are handled are huge. We have traveling to Venus and Mars and stars all being talked about in a single breath. We have a space ship being manufactured in just months in a secret factory under a normal factory. We have gun emplacements being added to the ship's design in a few hours... huge, but classic, inconsistencies. Mixed in with these are some enduring personality types: The Prussian Lineage leader worshipping a Totalitarian near-mythical leader, a suspicious older soldier, a younger educated government type practicing tolerance. The final scenes of the space ship launching, then being brought down by a suicide ramming by the young tolerant hero are silly on the material level and cliched on the story level. But... I guess it worked for a lot of people.
What is impressive that this story format predates the decline of the Third Reich. This, and the whole Nazi/Cold War Soviet mythology of the late 20th century, must be based on pulp fiction mythologies/emotions that come from much earlier. I wonder what those are? A big mystery is what the "Our Totalitarian cult will hole up in the hills, grow strong, and come back to wreak vengeance."-myth is based on? What's a famous predecessor story based on this theme? It's so common when talking about 20th century evil Totalitarians that it must have a predecessor. Perhaps restoring monarchies after republicans take over? By the way, this legend was so strong and pervasive that it shaped WWII strategy. I've read General Omar Bradley's memoir and he talks about the US forces moving through Bavaria and into Prague specifically to foil the Nazis in setting up some sort of Southern Redoubt... something they made part of their late war propaganda. But this story predates that propaganda slant by about two years, so it's based on earlier mythology.