When the fighting was done, the Commandos gathered around the central flagpole of the camp.
"Nasty looking thing, isn't it?" Dugan commented as he squinted at the red Nazi flag.
" What do you say we replace it with something that stands for freedom?" Bucky asked as he dug a folded American flag out of a bag, and offered it to Steve. "You want to do the honors?"
Steve took the folded banner and tucked it under his arm. Quickly, he untied the rope holding the German flag aloft, and pulled it down. He unhooked the red standard and replaced it with the star-spangled banner, which he hoisted to the top of the pole.
"Let's get a picture of the group holding the flag!" An army photographer said.
The Commandos posed with the captured flag in their hands, and the Stars and Stripes flying proudly behind them.
"So what do we do with this piece of junk?" Dugan asked Steve.
The captain shrugged. "Stick it in a pile with the rest of the trash."
A soldier from the one-hundred and seventh approached them. "Excuse me, Captain." He said, setting a wheelbarrow full of German armbands and other Swastika-bedecked items. "Could we burn that flag with the rest of these?"
"Uh, I don't see why not." Steve said. "What's your name, son?"
"Sergeant Richard Grey Jr, sir." He said with a salute. "I'm Navajo. The swastika is an ancient symbol of good fortune to my people, and to see it perverted as the Germans have done makes my blood boil."
"Hey, you guys, too?" Morita asked Grey. "Us, too. It's a Buddhist symbol."
"To my people it represents wind and lightning." Diana said.
"Funny, last time I heard about that was from a Greek guy in the last war." Logan mused.
Diana eyed Logan uneasily.
By the time air-support had arrived, the camp was already secured. The prisoners, though clad in dirty, thin rags, and malnourished, had joined with the One-Hundred and Seventh, and struck down their captors with whatever they could find, and eventually joined in the fighting with captured firearms. The battle was over, and by the time the British Special Air Service had touched down, the Red Army was already inside. By the time the Americans and British knew what was happening, the Soviets had taken large chunks of the camp for themselves.
All across the camp, swastikas and other symbols of the German government were torn from their mounts, and in their place, the former prisoners painted a white star or yellow double-you with whatever they could find.
After the battle, after all of the German soldiers not killed in combat had been rounded up and restrained, a medical team numbering in the dozens was brought in to care for any wounded soldiers, and for the many ill prisoners, with further medical support en-route.
Once their adrenaline had subsided, The Howling Commandos walked through the camp, observing its many horrors. The cramped barracks, the execution wall near Block Eleven, torture racks, posts with manacles, gas chambers disguised as showers, a single latrine for the thousands of prisoners in the camp, the floor of which was covered in a deep layer of human waste. Chemical plants, coal mines, smelting facilities, a rubber plant, all dramatically unsafe. A building where ghastly experiments took place. Forced prostitution. And five crematoria.
"How many people were they killing that they needed this many places to burn bodies?" Diana asked, aghast at the sight.
Steve clenched his jaw and his fists. His entire body practically quivered in rage.
"I don't know... Let's find out." He snarled.
Steve pulled Bucky and Dugan off to the side. "Bucky, I want you to bring me Doctor Maru. Dum-Dum, you round up all of the surviving officers and enlisted prisoners. Get them in restraints, and bring them to the center yard."
Diana shot him a puzzled look. "For what purpose?" She asked.
Anger burned behind Steve's eyes. "I want to know who's running this place."
Steve paced the assembled line of German soldiers with his arms behind his back. Bucky stormed towards Steve with Maru slung over his shoulder. He dumped the mad scientist in front of his friend, where she stared up at the captain in defiance. Her arms were bound behind her back, but her feet were free. Her face would have been beautiful if not for half of it being covered by a skin-toned plastic mask.
"What do you want?" She asked as she struggled to her knees. Her accent was clearly not German, but Spanish.
"I want to know who's in charge here." Steve commanded, and gestured to the camp around them. "I want to know who's responsible for all of this."
She spat on his boots. "I'll say nothing."
Steve drew his pistol in the blink of an eye, and held the barrel to her forehead. "WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?" He roared into her face. "POINT THEM OUT TO ME!"
"Steve!" Diana shouted. He snapped out of his rage, and took a deep breath. Diana stepped forward, lasso in hand, and lashed it around Maru's waist.
Steve stepped back, holstered his pistol, and put his hands to his head. He didn't really know what came over him, other than righteous fury. Steve wasn't exactly prone to emotional outbursts, but the situation was far beyond even his imagined extremes.
"Who is in charge of this complex?" Diana asked, calmly.
Maru struggled, gasped, and fell to the ground, writhing. "Rrr... Rudolph Hoess!" She exclaimed. Diana yanked Maru to her feet.
"Find him." She instructed.
Diana led Maru down the line of captured soldiers, until she stopped. "Him." She said, indicating an average-looking middle-aged man in a German sergeant's uniform.
"Fraulein, zere must be zome mistake." The man protested. "I am not-"
Diana detached the lasso from Maru and whipped it around the man. "...Yes, I am Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess!" He gasped the words out in disbelief. "I am in charge of zis place."
"How are you doing zis?" He asked.
"The lasso of Hestia compels the truth." She stated, simply.
Steve gently placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to him, and they exchanged a nod. She handed him the lasso. They led Hoess into a building, where Jones had already set up a tape recorder. They sat the Colonel down at a table, and Jones started the recording.
"State your name and rank for the record." Steve said.
"Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess."
"And you're the person in charge of this camp, Auschwitz, correct?"
"These camps, yes."
"How many people have died here?"
"At least three million and five-hundred thousand."
Steve's eye and cheek twitched. "How many people have you killed deliberately? Executions, experiments, anything like that."
"Around two and one-half million, probably more. We haven't kept exact records."
Steve lashed out and socked Hoess in the jaw from across the small table.
Hoess chuckled, and spat out blood. "The remaining million were from disease or starvation."
Steve freed one of Hoess's arms, and Dugan handed the man a crayon and pad of paper.
"Write down everything you can remember." Steve commanded. "Dates, numbers, ages, demographics. I want you to write down everything. Every detail you can remember of the people who have died here. Names if you remember any. When you run out of paper or crayon, we'll give you more." He said, and tossed the end of the lasso to Diana as he left the room.
"Vat happens ven I finish, Captain?" Hoess asked. "Vill you kill me?"
Steve stopped and turned on his heel as he was about to exit the room. "Death is a mercy you haven't earned." He said venomously. "It'd be too easy. When you're out on trial, I'm going to suggest that you spend the rest of your natural life carving the names of everyone killed under your command into the bricks of this compound by hand." Steve turned to leave, and slammed the door behind him.
Steve immediately knew there would be nowhere to go to clear the horrors of the place from his mind. Even if he could, the sights would still linger, perhaps for as long as he lived.
"Captain!" Falsworth exclaimed as he jogged towards Steve. "We have a problem."
Steve shook his head. "What's wrong?" He asked.
"The Soviets all but emptied Doctor Maru's office before we had a chance to go through it. We managed to recover a few documents, but they're refusing to give us access to the rest."
Just what we needed, more conflict. Steve thought. He sighed. "I'll get on the horn to Fury, maybe he can get in contact with their commander and work it out."
Falsworth was visibly taken aback. "Sir, you don't wish to speak with them yourself?"
Steve shook his head. "Not right now, I don't think I have the patience."
As night fell, Steve climbed to the top of the tallest building in the camp, and took off his helmet. He observed the scene with a melancholic heart. For every person who'd been freed that day, there were who knows how many more still imprisoned elsewhere, and countless more dead.
Despite his earlier words, Steve had never wanted to kill a man more than he wanted to kill Rudolf Hoess. Steve had killed before, but he'd always felt a sense of horrible duty in it. The soldiers he fought weren't all true believers in the cause of the German government. He felt nothing but pity for most of his foes up to that point. But this day? This was the day that Captain America truly learned how to hate.
"I had a feeling you'd be up here." Steve broke from his trance, and turned to find Diana standing behind him. She moved to sit beside him.
"Yeah." Steve said. "I just wanted to clear my head. I didn't want them to see me like this." He rubbed his brow, and shook his head. "I don't know what to say to anyone right now. I've heard about it, but I've never seen anything like this before."
Diana put a hand on Steve's shoulder. "I never expected this." She admitted, and withdrew her hand. "Even when you told us, I could scarcely believe what you said." Her gaze was as far away from their location as he was. "I didn't think that even with the influence of a god of war that men could be capable of such cruelty."
Steve made a movement with his head somewhere between a nod and a shake. "Sometimes... Sometimes people don't need a lot of help to be cruel." He said. "I don't know. I'd really like to believe that you're right. Maybe when Hitler's dead or captured, all of this will just stop."
Diana said nothing for a moment, then broke the silence. "Even if people only need a little help to be cruel..." She said. "They only need a little help to be good."
Steve turned to her with a questioning look on his face.
She gave him a small, but warm smile in return. "I saw what they did the moment they caught sight of you." She said. "One look at you and you gave them life. You gave them strength. But most importantly, you gave them hope." She pointed to a crude drawing of him on the wall of one of the buildings below. Red, white, and blue pigments depicted Captain America with his shield held high in the air, triumphant, contrasting vividly with the drab gray concrete. "They really do love you. Few speak your language, and even fewer are from your nation... But every single one of them knew you by sight." She stared out at the setting sun wistfully. "It reminded me of the stories my father told about the age of heroes."
Steve chuckled, and shot her a glance. "You're no slouch yourself." He said. "I heard what they were calling you."
Diana raised an eyebrow at him. "I must admit, I didn't hear a thing over all the racket. What did they call me?"
Steve gave her a grin. "Die Wunderfrau." He said in a shoddy attempt at a German accent.
"The Wonder Woman?" Diana asked. "Are you sure?"
"You don't like it?" Steve asked.
Diana shook her head. "No, that's not it. My parents used to call me their little wonder."
Steve smiled, and gave her a light slap on the back. "I knew it fit. You've got that double-u on your armor. It had to stand for something."
Diana glanced down to her armor with a chuckle. "It's not supposed to be a letter of any kind. It's an eagle, flying high through the sky. A symbol of freedom."
"Something they needed a lot today."