A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany

by Joseph T Major

  After quieting down the Reichswehr Minister, thanking the Italian foreign minister, and having the ringing in his ears die down, Manfred got a complete report. General Messe of the Italian Army was in Berlin, having been dispatched as a liason officer, along with Vittorio Mussolini, the Duce's son. ("The brave Richthofen has sent his own flesh and blood to the front line to make war upon Communism!" Mussolini the elder had said. "I can do no other!")

  More seriously, several thousand Italian troops of their regular army and air force were already in Hungary, and Messe boasted of a dozen divisions going to the front. Beneš would be extremely agitated, particularly if they asked to pass through Slovakia on their way. Or if they didn't bother to ask. Someone ought to give Horthy a reminder of what had happened to Haile Selassie and Zog.

  At the end of the day, Hugenberg stormed into the office, brushing past the watchdogs, and threw a stack of pictures on the table. "This, Herr Reichskanzler, is an example of the fine allies we have! These pictures will be on the front page of L'Humanité on Monday, just you wait and see," he said, disgust patent in every word and gesture.

  The media titan had been given the shots as a "professional courtesy" by the people from the French newsreel company Pathé. Manfred studied them. One set was of a small battlefield encounter, and he looked at the dead Landsers with a sad sympathy. Too many Germans had died in the War and now this one.

  Then he looked at the other set, showing a grieving family. "This is tragic, Herr Hugenberg, and I grieve with them and with you. But why will they be on the front page of their Communist newspaper?"

  Then he glanced at the third one in the set of family pictures. That was not a movie of the summer vacation in the Alps they were watching. "They showed these people the deaths of their own sons!?" he said, white-lipped. It was a pathetic performance, a stomach-turner of an presentation.

  Dinner was spoiled, too, by Admiral Raeder. "The survivors of SMS Leipzig will arrive in Rostock in the morning," he said. "One of the torpedo boats picked up some and radioed a report."

  When the fleet commander had arrived so late Manfred wondered how urgent it was. Surely his never-ending pleas for newer and bigger warships could be put on hold until at least the fighting ended! (A proposal for an aircraft carrier had been on his desk before the dissolution, but that was one of the issues he had intended to pass on to his successor.) He held out his hand. "Let me have it. Will you join me for dinner?"

  While the admiral sat and ate, his superior turned over the message flimsies. The Leipzig had been sailing to join the blockading squadron. Now that the heavy ships of the Soviet Baltic Fleet had been sunk, there was little need to keep a substantial force there. So the light cruiser was heading thence to be the flagship of a force of British destroyers, German torpedo boats, and various Polish ships.

  The only vessel in sight had been a Swedish fishing trawler, the Annie Lingstad. The boat had hove-to while most of the crew had been preparing the tackle and the only man on deck had been the ship's cook, dumping trash over the lee side. He had seen the German ship sailing past and then it had exploded. Unfortunately, he had some sort of speech defect and could not at first make himself clear to the other crewmen.

  Once he understood and came up on deck, Captain Ulvaeus had steered for the site of the sinking and began hauling in a different sort of catch. One thing that the old cook had said, as clearly as he could get it out, was that there had not been any torpedo tracks or other signs of a Red submarine.

  "Not that there could be any from Kronstadt," the Admiral ended by saying. "The Finns have people observing it, of course, and there are no signs of any ships putting out to sea. And the Gulf of Bothnia is closed. We were concerned that they might have sent submarines out from Murmansk and around Scandanavia, but they would be more likely to operate in the North Sea."

  Tomorrow's church service would be a comfort.

  It was midnight, a hot sultry smoggy midnight of a Sunday. Inside the Cabinet Room, that was to say. The band of disreputable beachcombers that sprawled wearily under the fans that attempted to stir the smoky, humid, shut-in air looked like the washed-up flotsam of the Reich. And if someone had been listening to the Doktor's squawks, he might have characterized them that way.

  Sleep had been short among the Cabinet for the past two weeks as the war had crept ever closer, and Manfred had spent that two weeks, ever since getting back from Königsberg, tied to his desk and reading the dispatches with increasing despair, or going somewhere for a few hours to undo a particularly stubborn block, to return and find more crises piled on his desk. They all had been rushing from one crisis to another as the days crept on.

  The Reds had driven on into Poland, and now Warsaw was within their artillery range. Général Weygand was bellowing for more troops, but Reynaud was blocked from sending them by a strike among Communist railwaymen. The English were sending another two divisions, but they couldn't arrive until the end of the month. The Czechs were having to watch their southern frontier and in Austria Dollfuss was dealing with pro-Fascist agitation, which some found ironic.

  So far the Navy had good news -- or at least no news -- and the Air Force was mixed. Udet's ebullience was damped; he had to report losses and bombing raids, hitting targets in East Prussia and Lithuania as well as Poland.

  General von Fritsch seemed weariest of all, yet he was not particularly despondent. "The Bock Army has actually advanced into Russian territory, though within the limits laid down by our general orders," he said, his good news hardly conveyed by his tired voice. "As for the other matter, the General of the Panzergruppe will present it personally."

  With that he sat down, burned out, and the one cheery man in the room bounced to his feet. Guderian stepped up to the map, pointer in hand, and tapped the map behind the long red arrows that showed where the Red Army had swallowed up half of Poland. "Herren, may I have the honor of presenting to you FALL STURM?" he said, his voice pulsing with eagerness.

  "We will attack with three corps up: The British on the right, then Manstein in the center and Hoepner on the left. Kleist and the Czechs will stay in reserve. Our axis of advance will be from Vilnius" -- the pointer whipped down the map, behind the advancing Red lines -- "to Brest. The Russian armies will be cut off and destroyed, the first triumph of the new Panzerwaffe."

  "Don't buy your victory cup until the kill is confirmed, Herr General," Manfred said. "Save your big plans for when we win this battle."

  Guderian shook his head. "I was surprised at the inadequacy of their tactics," he said. "Russia possesses the strongest army in the world, in numbers and equipment. And support: ample raw materials and a considerable arms industry. All that gone to waste, thrown away. We can't rely on this happening next time. We have to curb them, keep them in bounds, I can't imagine being able to invade and conquer them, the way Herr Goebbels does in his little flights of fancy."

  "For now we'll just have to defeat them. Why has the buildup taken so long?"

  Fritsch raised his head. "The Poles needed more air support and supplies, and we had to give some priority to what French trains got across the border. There's also some Communist agitation in the ranks -- theirs, I mean, not ours, thank God. Our liaison officers with Weygand's headquarters were appalled by their slovenliness. They may repeat the Nivelle mutinies. If only we had known . . ."

  "Their Air Service was aggressive enough," Manfred said. "Herr Guderian, if you please we shall present this briefing to His Majesty and then you can go back to Lithuania and prepare to launch the offensive."

  Guderian seemed almost bumptious. "I hope he doesn't mind staying up late. We attack at dawn."

  "TODAY!?" Fritsch and Noske bellowed in unison, followed by almost everyone there.

  "Sure. I can nap in the back of my plane and be there in time to see the lads off."

  Manfred looked over to the Cabinet. "Herren, I think military affairs have been taken out of our hands. Does anyone wish to stop Herr Guderian?"

  Treviranus
got to his feet (Hugenberg had gone to bed already, having been sent there by his doctor's orders and Manfred's insistence). He said, "Herr Guderian, in the east, in 1410 the Teutonic Knights sacrificed their lives to halt the Asiatic hosts. During the war, Field Marshal von Hindenburg crushed them there. Now, you stand on those immortal fields of battle, bearing the banner of Germany's salvation. We all take our stand behind you in this daring feat of arms."

  Noske growled, "Berlin in 1919; Warsaw today. Take them, Herr General."

  There was a deadly silence in the room. Then Manfred said, "You have your orders, Herr General."

  He knew that far off to the East, over the Masurian plains where a lifetime ago Samsonow and Rennenkampf had trudged into Prussia, only to be outmaneuvered by the patient Hindenburg and the venturesome Ludendorff, the Panzers were going into action on the first day of the offensive. There was nothing he could do for now until the reports came in.

  While the battle raged off there, here in Berlin it was a quiet morning. So he caught up on his reading. It was a release.

  This was a report from Paris; a translation of a long article on the theme of "The Myth of Germany's Military Power". The writer was quite generous with long explanations of how the advances in anti-tank guns had made the tank a veritable obstacle on the battlefield. Manfred felt less certain. He had been struck by one appalling passage where the author praised the Red Army's use of many different rifles, from old Czarist Nagants to this new submachinegun the Chekist units carried. The man had obviously never kept a unit in supply.

  Another newspaper article from America was by Major de Seversky himself, explaining how the Soviet air-transported troops could land in Warsaw and capture the country. There was another man who had never had to supply a unit in combat. An air bridge of transports . . . the fighter-pilot in him reveled in the thought of such a target-rich environment.

  There was a bit of fiction, too. Last month this new fellow had made some comments about utopians and labor problems he had repeated to Noske, and now he was talking about espionage, which surely would interest Papen . . . "All right, you can go in," he heard Bodenschatz, whose turn it was today to watch the door, say, and in a moment Rickenbacker came in.

  "Eddie," Manfred said, standing up. "How good to see you." Then he leaned forward and looked at Rickenbacker's collar. "A star? A promotion?"

  Rickenbacker's face creased in a spasm of pleasure combined with embarrassment. "Only temporary. The President called me in. 'Rick,' he said, 'I need a man who has the ear of the Red Baron to be my personal representative to him.' So here I am again. And promoted, too, for a while; 'Brigadier-General Rickenbacker' will look nice in the annual report, even if it goes away when the Fairy Godmother calls at midnight. I had to have comparable rank; the army's chief observer with your army just got promoted. Politics!

  "They sent me across in a Flying Fortress, one of the new bombers from Boeing. Ernst must have men swarming all over it at Tempelhof now."

  "Probably trying to figure out how to fit it with air brakes so it can dive bomb."

  Rickenbacker laughed.

  "Let me by, Carl," they heard outside and then Udet burst in. "Rittmeister, have you seen this new American bomber . . . I bet you flew it, Eddie. What's going on!" And the ebullient air chief threw his arms around Rickenbacker, making for a most humorous contrast. He had slept well and probably had had some good news from the Front, perhaps even a good friend to share it with . . .

  Rickenbacker sighed now. "I suppose you will have to see it."

  Manfred stood up. "As long as I'm back by noon."

  The American airplane was in a hangar, and somewhat to his surprise, there were a number of their marine infantry around it on guard. So much for their men swarming over it. The guards looked quite impressive in their blue uniforms, and for a moment Manfred wondered if they would honor Rickenbacker's rank, Udet's urgings, or his own position.

  As they walked to the front of the hanger, one or two of the guards saluted with some indifference; contempt for foreigners, he supposed. Then they got to the front and the sergeant -- he thought that was the rank -- snapped off a salute that would have been hard for a veteran Landser of the Foot Guard Regiment to outdo. "Welcome, sir!" he said.

  Manfred blinked. Were those flying wings on the man's uniform? Rickenbacker said, "Sergeant, I am bringing the Chancellor and General Udet here because they want to see the B-17. Has it been secured?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Eddie, can you excuse me for a moment? . . . Sergeant, you are a pilot, are you not?"

  He watched the man grow twenty or thirty centimeters taller. "Aye aye SIR! Krulak, N. P., Sergeant, U.S.M.C., naval aviation flying sergeant with one tour in Nicaragua, SIR! Grounded by the doctors for heart irregularities! Any questions, SIR!"

  He heard Ernst say, "See, they have flying sergeants, too. We had Willi Gabriel and . . ."

  "Marines!" Rickenbacker snorted. "Sergeant, I will escort these dangerous enemy aces and make sure they don't steal any secret equipment. Come on in and take a look."

  "It's noon!" Manfred observed, suddenly dragged with a shock out of the joyous world of the air. "There's a briefing! Noske will be having kittens!"

  "And we'll have to have them adopted," Udet said. They had taken turns sitting in the pilot's seat of the vast American plane. No doubt Udet was imagining himself dropping tons of explosives on the swarming Red hordes . .

  "Well, thank you, Eddie. We had better get back to the Chancellery."

  They proceeded to exit the bomber. Rickenbacker found the hatch a tough scramble to get through. "Better take it easy next time," he said as he unbent himself. On the way out there was an unusual encounter.

  The sergeant was expressing an opinion quite loudly. "You maggots aren't even fit to breathe the same air as them! General Rickenbacker and General Udet are among the greatest pilots who ever lived! DO YOU HEAR ME!"

  The departing security team was formed up, and looked to be trembling in their boots. "SIR YES SIR!" they shouted in chorus.

  "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

  "SIR YES SIR!" they shouted, even louder.

  The sergeant glared at the men before continuing. "And as for Richthofen, you pogues, he would be entirely justified in having you all busted to latrine orderly! DO YOU HEAR ME!!"

  "SIR YES SIR!!" the guards shouted back.

  Manfred began to rummage in his pockets. "Our Bodenschatz has left me equipped," he said. "We must reward this defender of our honor. To my esteemed fighting companion . . ."

  They walked around the line of American marines and the sergeant, catching a glimpse of motion, twitched his head a fraction, then bellowed, "TEN-SHUT!" The Marines braced to attention with an astounding rigidity. Prinz Eitel-Friedrich might consider them good raw material (after a little work) for the Foot Guard.

  Manfred now held out his signed picture, that currency that had opened wide the storehouses of so many parsimonious supply officers during the War. "It's always nice to find an admirer, Sergeant. Keep up the good work, but a wise old man once told me, 'The people around you are only people, from the most supreme to the lowest ranking, and all of them have basic human characteristics.' There've never been truer words spoken."

  "SIR YES SIR!" the sergeant said, throwing a crisp salute. Then he took the picture and smiled like a little boy at this gift from his Hero.

  CHAPTER 36

  Vilno, Poland/Vilnius, Lithuania, Saturday, September 14

  General der Panzertruppen Heinz Guderian, commanding officer of the Panzergruppe, imitated the example of his chancellor and flew. The British Commander, a less aerial sort, drove, and was waiting outside the former Lithuanian capital when Guderian's Storch plonked down in a convenient field. Enthused by the course of events, Guderian nevertheless let the prop spin to a halt before getting out of the cabin and striding over to the knot of khaki-clad officers by the side of the road. "So we meet again, behind our own lines this time!" he said.

  General Alexander
was rather diffident. "Just the way things fell out."

  But his superior was more exuberant. "Forty kilometers in the first two days! And it's only getting faster! You have to speed up!"

  Alexander looked around. "Slow and steady . . . But we seem to be doing not too badly." Then he looked at Guderian. "It might be well if we had a few words alone."

  "It's your staff."

  "Very well. Chaps, do step on down the road a piece, you too Randolph."

  The prime minister's son joined the exodus, leaving the two generals standing by the road. "Now what is so important you have to talk to me alone?" Guderian said.

  "We captured a few Bolsheviks. They raped every woman they found."

  Guderian nigh exploded. "Of course they would! They did it everywhere else! Even the Burgomaster of Vilnius! And he had hoped they would stick to women, he said!"

  "Oh that is a bad do! No, one of the men we captured is a high-ranking secret policeman. Seroff, his name is. They were giving orders to ah rape."

  Guderian scowled. "Will that be their defense! 'I was only following orders.'? No, I'm glad you told me privately. If it gets to the Herr Reichswehr Minister . . . well, the way I should put it is that we all thought he did the right thing to the Spartakists in 1919, but the Press just might not understand that sort of behavior now . . ."

  "Ah yes, like Dyer. It would not do to let this get out right away or we will have some retaliation -- Churchill, what the devil is it this time?"

  Randolph was running back, puffing and wheezing. He remembered to salute. "General, sir, there's a messenger from General Tallat-Kelpsa of the Lithuanian Cavalry Brigade. He says he's reasserting the sovereignty of Lithuania over its old capital, torn from the nation by Polish treachery. He's hoisting their flag over Vilnius!"