Fox On The Rhine

by Douglas Niles

  “So what can we do about it?”

  “Watch and see,” Reinhardt said. “And wait for an opportunity.”

  The sharp-eyed officer closed his eyes, and nothing Müller said could get him to reopen them. He looked fretfully out of the window at the fighter escort, but he mostly saw his own and Reinhardt’s reflections in the thick glass. Müller’s stomach rumbled. He longed for pastry.

  The Ju-52 began to descend, the fighter escort following. Müller got a brief glimpse of a bleak military field as the plane banked to align itself for final approach. As the aircraft descended through the gray sky, he noticed tanks lining the runway, their barrels trained inward. Perhaps they’ll shoot each other instead of us, he thought, but he would never be so lucky.

  After a smooth landing, the plane taxied to a stop before a large hangar. Soviet troops hauled the huge metal doors open. A tractor chugged and the transport was slowly eased into the hangar. In the dim light Müller could see hundreds of Soviet troops. They were all armed, rifles pointing at the aircraft. The doors rumbled shut behind them. They were trapped.

  “Ah, the honor guard,” said Reinhardt, leaning forward. Müller saw his face in the reflection from the window.

  “Is that what you call it,” said Müller dryly.

  Müller could hear the clanking of the rear passenger door opening, and then loud, angry shouts in Russian as the enemy troops pushed into the transport. Although Müller didn’t understand Russian, the meaning was clear. At gunpoint the guard relieved the Germans of their weapons, pulling them away angrily, threatening them. A huge, red-eyed giant of a man pulled Müller up from his seat. He was in a spitting, nearly homicidal rage, shouting angrily in Müller’s face with what seemed to be beet breath. Müller was too overpowered to be scared, though none of his muscles responded to his command.

  All the Germans--military officers and diplomats alike--were hauled off the plane, their weapons confiscated roughly with threats and shouting. Personal belongings were pulled away... including a few chocolates Müller had stashed in his pocket for a dietary emergency. The Russian who grabbed the chocolate immediately devoured them, wrapper and all, chewed them up, then spit out the waxed paper onto the dirt floor.

  Müller noticed Ribbentrop, still dazed and seemingly unaware of his surroundings, being manhandled by the guards. So this is how we die, he thought, expecting bullets any moment, hoping that would be all, that he wouldn’t be tortured first.

  “Halt!” The shout echoed in the hangar. With a few remaining shoves and pushes, the guards backed off, although their weapons remained trained on the small German delegation. Müller turned to see a short, stocky man with a square face, thinning white hair and a white mustache, thin glasses under heavy eyebrows. He wore a civilian suit. Viachislav Molotov,

  Commissar for Foreign Affairs, thought Müller. He recognized him from newspaper photographs as well as from the briefing materials before the flight. I’d bet a dozen strudels he planned this, and now he’ll act as if nothing bad has happened.

  “Joachim, my good friend!” he said, heading for the German foreign minister who had fallen to the dirt floor. “How very good to see you!” He reached down to help the fallen Ribbentrop to his feet. Müller noticed a lack of surprise or concern on the Commissar’s smiling face.

  Ribbentrop looked up through dirt-smeared eyes. “Vi-achislav,” he murmured. “Viachislav. He’s dead, you know.” Molotov looked puzzled. “Who’s dead?”

  “The führer. The führer’s dead.” Ribbentrop’s voice was wandering again.

  Molotov seemed taken aback at von Ribbentrop’s condition. This, obviously, had not been part of his briefing. Ribbentrop’s deputy, State Secretary Baron Adolf Steengracht von Moyland, stepped up to present papers and to begin the diplomatic rituals. Müller tuned out most of the ceremonial portion, standing at attention and feeling like the guest of honor at a firing squad, surrounded by Russian troops. Finally, it was over, and he and the others were escorted from the hangar onto a waiting bus. Molotov, Ribbentrop, and Steengracht entered a long black staff car.

  Müller stuck close to Reinhardt. If he was going to hell, he wanted company.

  Replacement Army Headquarters, Berlin, Germany, 29 July 1944, 1600 hours GMT

  A major of the SS, wearing a black leather trenchcoat with a swastika armband, leading a uniformed squad of six men with Schmeissers at the ready, marched down the narrow corridor. The rhythmic clatter of boots on the polished floor echoed in the confines of the building. Soldiers stopped their work as the armed patrol marched past. People moved out of the way, drew back with fear at the passing of the grim-faced troops.

  The one-armed man at the map table looked up as the room around him fell silent.

  “Colonel Count von Stauffenberg?” the major demanded.

  The colonel drew himself stiffly to his full height. “You know I am von Stauffenberg” he confirmed.

  “Very well. I place you under arrest for the assassination of Adolf Hitler.”

  Stauffenberg looked calmly at the SS squad. Slowly, deliberately, he stared around the room. Officer after officer dropped his eyes rather than make contact with him. Bermel held his gaze for a minute, then looked away.

  “I have made no secret of my work. I am proud to have committed not murder, not assassination, but tyrannicide.” His voice rang out clearly in the suddenly silent room.

  The major’s eyes narrowed in contempt. The soldiers were watching Stauffenberg, fingers tense at their triggers.

  “Follow me,” the major barked. Stauffenberg fell in line behind him. The SS troops formed an escort around the count.

  The moment had finally come. Stauffenberg was ready to pay the price for his actions. He had imagined this scene many times since he’d first joined the conspiracy in the fall of 1943.

  In his own mind and in the minds of his coconspirators, Stauffenberg represented the best of the old Germany. For nearly all of his career he had been a loyal servant of his country’s government--indeed, his sacrifices had gone beyond what could have been asked of any man.

  On the seventh of April, 1943, while commanding units of the German Tenth Armored Division in North Africa, he fought hard to cover Rommel’s retreat. On that day his panzer column was strafed by a U.S. fighter plane, and von Stauffenberg lost his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers of his left hand in the attack. For months he worked to relearn how to dress himself, to write with his left hand, to function again as an officer. He wanted to return to the front lines, but instead he was assigned to the General Army Office under General Friedrich Olbricht, who was one of the conspirators.

  It was Stauffenberg’s uncle, Count Nikolaus von Uxkull, who had first recruited him into the conspiracy. Stauffenberg quickly became the pillar of strength that the conspirators so desperately needed. The brilliant but disfigured officer’s natural leadership skills elevated him to the top of the plotters’ ranks, but after the Allied landings at Normandy, he began to question whether it was still worthwhile to kill Hitler with the end of the war so obviously looming.

  His mentor, General Henning von Tresckow, had given him a forceful argument that the assassination was still necessary. “What matters now is not the practical purpose of the coup,” Tresckow had said, and Stauffenberg could still hear his voice clearly, “but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance movement dared to take the decisive step.”

  And so he had. Although the Nazis had retained control, although Germany had not changed, Stauffenberg could stand tall. He had pronounced the sentence of death on Adolf Hitler, and no one could undo his work. Now it was time for the end.

  The count slid the fingers of his one remaining hand up his folded and pinned sleeve to pull out the thin knife hidden there. His death would come quickly, honorably, at his own hand, not through degrading tortures at the hands of the SS butchers.

  Then there was a sudden yell, and the sharp explosive report of a Walther firing, followed by th
e soft thud of a bullet impacting flesh, and a scream of pain and shock from one of the guards. “Long live free Germany!” came a triumphant cry--it was Lieutenant Haeften. Bursting from his office, a Walther in each hand, looking like a caricature of the American cowboys whose images were as well known in Germany as in America itself, Haeften was firing rapidly at the assembled guards.

  For a moment Stauffenberg watched his young protégé. It was clear that this was a hopeless attack, but then Stauffenberg remembered his own statement: “We have demonstrated that there is some honor left in Germany.”

  It was honorable to go down fighting, and quickly the old combat veteran joined the fight. With one rapid move he pulled out the knife he was saving for himself and stabbed it through the neck of the SS major, twisting the blade hard and feeling it slide between the vertebrae, killing the Nazi instantly. Gushes of red spurted from an opened artery, and the major’s scream died in his throat, a gurgle of blood flooding the trachea. He looked over at the young lieutenant, who looked back.

  Then the thunderclap of submachine guns echoed with ferocity in the confined room. The two members of the German aristocracy were no match for a squad of SS troops armed with Schmeissers. There were just too many to take out all at once. Screaming, men dove for cover as an avalanche of bullets ravaged the body of von Haeften. Ricochets blazed off metal desks and walls. Haeften collapsed backward, the last two shots from his pistols going wild. Stauffenberg tried to wrest the weapon from the hand of the dead major, then he, too, heard the noise and felt the impact of the machine gun slugs in his flesh. He recognized them; he’d felt them before.

  The SS troops continued their fire long after both von Stauffenberg’s and von Haeften’s helpless bloody bodies stopped twitching, but finally the crashing din came to a stop, echoes dying like the end of an artillery bombardment. The soldiers watched the blood oozing from the two broken, shattered bodies. In the sudden silence, time seemed to stop for all the living.

  Then the ranking enlisted man spoke up. “Get this mess cleaned up. We must file a report.”

  Even so, for a long time nobody moved.

  Wehrmacht Hospital, Vesinet, France, 30 July 1944,1520 hours GMT

  ‘The Americans are hammering on the left flank... bombers, artillery, tanks. There’s no question that they’ll be through in a matter of days--if they’re not already.”

  General Speidel’s voice through the telephone was tinny and distant, but there was no mistaking the glum reality of the tones. Rommel knew his former chief of staff, now von Kluge’s right hand man, was telling him the truth.

  Normandy was lost.

  “Thanks, my friend,” he replied. “I have one favor to ask--can you patch me through to von Kluge?”

  “I’ll try--you know what the connections are like, even before the Allies started bombing everything in sight.”

  The Desert Fox hung up the phone in his hospital room while he waited for word of the connection. Stiffly, he pushed himself to his feet and limped to the window. Though he moved much more easily than he had even a few days earlier, he still chafed against the limitations caused by his sore leg. And the impairment of his vision was equally troubling--his left eye was covered by a thick patch, and as a result his eyesight had a flat quality, a lack of real depth or texture. A thick, almost stupefying, headache throbbed through his skull, the background of pain that was always simmering near the surface of his consciousness. Angrily he rubbed his neck and grimaced, knowing that these were things he could not control.

  But where was there something, in truth, where he did have control? Think, Rommel, think! His mind had become a stuck tank, digging deeper and deeper ruts around the same dark pit.

  He grimaced in frustration as he stared over the expanse of lawn and grove. As always, he found his attention drawn to the splintered oak, the blackened spire of trunk that had been shattered by some not-too-distant lightning strike.

  “I know how you feel,” he growled, aware that it was strange for him to be talking to a tree. “Both of us blasted from the sky … “

  His bitter musings were interrupted by the jangling of the phone, and he ignored the pain to move to the instrument with a trace of his old alacrity. Snatching the receiver out of the cradle, he barked into the mouthpiece. “Rommel here.”

  “Herr Feldmarschall? I have Field Marshal von Kluge for you.”

  He waited for a few seconds, then heard the greeting in the clipped tones of the famed commander, widely known as the master of defensive warfare--a reputation he had earned on the eastern front.

  Rommel remembered von Kluge’s arrival in France, shortly after the invasion. Spurred by reports from Hitler’s headquarters about Rommel’s defeatist reports, the veteran of the Russian campaign had peremptorily informed the Desert Fox that “now you’ll have to start following orders.” It had taken exactly one day of touring the front for von Kluge to realize that Rommel’s reports, regarded by the führer as almost treasonous, were nothing less than the truth.

  “Hello, Hans,” Rommel replied. “I understand that our difficulties in Normandy continue.”

  “Indeed...” He pictured von Kluge’s reticence as the front commander considered how much he should communicate to the man he had replaced. Apparently he decided that Rommel deserved exactly what he had given--that is, the truth.

  “The Americans have broken out on the left... I don’t think we can stop this attack. We’ve identified no less than three armor divisions already through the breach--and as you know, once they pass the shell of our position, we have nothing in mobile reserve.”

  “It was inevitable, only a question of when,” the Desert Fox declared sadly. ‘Tell me, are you making plans for a withdrawal--to the Seine, or farther if necessary?”

  There was an awkward pause. “I have been given orders to stand for as long as possible,” von Kluge admitted. “Orders that come from the highest source in the Fatherland.”

  “Blast!” Rommel snapped his harshest expletive. “I had thought that some good might have come out of that madman’s death! Surely you can’t stand by and let the whole Army Group be encircled?”

  “Perhaps the situation is not so dire as that. After all, Montgomery still commands the British... as a result we have every reason to expect that they will move quite deliberately against our right flank. And Bradley is quite untested at this sort of warfare.”

  “But it won’t be Bradley who closes the trap--trust me, they’ll give Patton a command before much more time passes. And he is the one general over there who understands how to conduct armored operations!”

  “Our intelligence suggests that Patton is too unpopular with the high command,” von Kluge countered stubbornly. “And, in any event, I have my orders.”

  Rommel’s temper surged, but he forced himself to hold his tongue. There was nothing to be gained by angering von Kluge, the man who had control over the situation. All Rommel could do was offer advice.

  “The troops of General Wiese’s Nineteenth Army, around Marseilles and Toulon, also in the Rhone valley?” he asked in carefully modulated tones. “Can you bring them north, a precautionary withdrawal?” Even with his mind thick and dull, he was smart enough to understand the necessary next move. Both field marshals understood that the campaign would be decided in northern France. An entire army, including at least one good panzer division, the Eleventh, was garrisoning a part of the country that had no strategic significance any more.

  “It is a good idea,” von Kluge conceded. “But, alas, such a withdrawal runs counter to my orders.”

  “But surely you can see what will happen if the Americans get around behind you--or drive on Lorraine, and cut you off from the Nineteenth?” He knew he needed to be slower, more subtle, in talking von Kluge around, but his emotions were slipping out of control. He was being too blunt, too forceful. As dull as I feel right now, lean still see the obvious next step. Why can't he?

  “Of course!” von Kluge’s answer was curt, letting Rommel know
he’d pushed too far, too fast. “And do you know what has happened to officers, including generals, who have failed to carry out their orders?” Left unstated was von Kluge’s concern that he, too, might be implicated in the conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. Rommel knew that von Kluge, like himself, had been approached by the conspirators, had even considered their proposal seriously, and that could easily become fatal.

  “I see... well, I wish you the best of luck, Hans,” Rommel concluded.

  ‘Thank you... we both know that I’ll need it.”

  Placing the telephone back on the table, the Desert Fox turned back to the window and its vista of greenery against the lightning scar. He knew that the war was lost, and he grieved for the fact that he was powerless to save even a single one of his brave men.

  Sainte-la-Salle, Normandy, France, 1612 hours GMT

  “Where the hell is Third Armored?” Pulaski was standing atop the turret of a Sherman, his field glasses trained along the road running northwest out of the tiny hamlet. He next studied the vista to the south, where the equally empty road vanished over the crest of a low elevation. A small church, steeple and cross silhouetted against the sky, commanded the height. Avranches, gateway to the rest of France, lay in that direction and so far as he could tell there was nothing to stand in his combat command’s way.