“Our next objective is Weimar,” Rommel announced, snapping his pointer against the large wall map. Weimar, home of Goethe and Schiller, as well as home to the Weimar Republic that had preceded the rise of National Socialism, was an important cultural location. Accordingly, Rommel was eager that no additional damage be done during the “liberation” of the city.
Ballard spoke up. “Field Marshal, our reconnaissance company has been screening ahead. As of the last radio check at five hundred hours this morning, it looks as if we won’t be facing any military opposition, except for snipers and normal hazards.” Even that was a matter of some concern; a sniper bullet had passed less than two feet from Rommel’s head just a few days ago.
“Thank you, Oberst Ballard,” Rommel replied. “I have some confirmations from our own scouting forces as well. Therefore, we will not be expecting military resistance as we move. We should plan on motoring through Weimar officially tomorrow, which means we need forces in there today. I suggest that Panzer Lehr take care of today’s work, and I would like the U.S. Nineteenth Armored to lead tomorrow morning’s official parade. General Wakefield, will you do me the honor of riding with me? My staff car is a little larger than a jeep, but we can take your jeep if you prefer.” Rommel’s smile seemed genuine and unforced.
Sanger thought he was probably the only man in the room who knew that this was not exactly a spontaneous gesture. Then he looked over at Wakefield, who, he suddenly realized, was an old friend of Bradley’s, and then he wasn’t nearly so sure.
“Okay by me,” said Wakefield in his usual gruff voice. “I don’t care which car we use.”
“Very well,” smiled Rommel. “Gentlemen, we have another long day ahead of us, and it is slipping away even as we speak. Let us adjourn until this evening.”
As the meeting began to break up, Sanger struggled through the crowd of officers in the direction of Rommel. Rommel nodded at his approach. “Ah, Sanger. Will you accompany us today?”
Riding with Rommel was an honor, but it was also a chore calling for a cast-iron butt. Rommel might cover a hundred miles or more in a day, making multiple stops often not long enough to take a piss, with meals uncertain. “Of course, sir,” Sanger replied. “Thank you, sir.”
There were a variety of necessary conversations that took place at the meeting’s end, and today they dragged out for about half an hour. Sanger’s pen flew over his notepad as he made a list of the hundred and one details he would have to handle today. The paperwork part of this job was a nutbuster, and driving around with Rommel would take the whole day. What the hell, that’s what the night shift was for, he thought. At least he slept in a bed and not in a hole.
His sergeant slipped into the room to tap him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Colonel. There’s a call for you. Captain Smiggs of the CCA recon battalion. Says it’s urgent.”
“All right, Wilson. I’m coming.”
Rommel was deep in another conversation, so Sanger slipped away. The call was being patched through from a radio, so the reception was filled with static. “Hello, Smiggy. Reid Sanger here. What can I do for you?”
The distorted, crackle-filled voice was filled with anger. “Pardon my French, Sanger, but you can get that goddamned Nazi you work for down here on the double.”
“Say again?” replied Sanger.
“Rommel. You’d better get him down here, and fast. We’re near Ettersburg.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sanger, you’ve got to see this for yourself. And I’ve got to see the look on Rommel’s face when he sees it. Trust me. Get down here, and fast.”
“I need more information.”
“God damn it, I’m not fucking kidding,” Smiggy said with unusual rage. “This is important. If you think I’m bullshitting after you see this, then you can have my ass. Okay?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll get him there. Near Ettersburg?”
“Yeah. Railroad tracks crossing the Ettersburg road coming up from Weimar.” He read out some map coordinates and Sanger noted them down. “And listen, Sanger,” Smiggy added.
“Yeah, Smiggy?”
“This is big shit, understand?”
“I understand, Smiggy. See you soon. Sanger out,” the intelligence officer replied, shaking his head silently. He had no idea what the short captain was up to. However, Rommel would be spending all day in the car anyway, so they might as well head to Ettersburg.
NEAR ETTERSBURG, THÜRINGEN, GERMANY, 0609 HOURS GMT
Only a few minutes after Rommel’s staff meeting began, Smiggy’s radio had crackled. “There’s a train just departing from Ettersburg.”
The reconnaissance captain acknowledged the transmission. This was good news. Although the Allied strategic-bombing campaign had done its best to destroy German rail capacity, some links and routes remained in operation, especially at night and in the early-morning hours. Working rail was essential to moving huge forces across the map, so the mission had now changed from destroying rail to capturing rolling stock and preserving track from further destruction.
Smiggy liked hijacking trains. It made him feel like a member of the old Hole in the Wall Gang. He loved Westerns. He spread his map across his lap, folding and refolding the worn paper, and ran his finger along the rail line looking for a suitable crossroads … there! He picked up the mike again and read out the necessary coordinates. “Let’s go, Jack!” he said to his driver. “It’s time to head ’em off at the pass!”
He had about ten minutes to set up the ambush. It was fairly simple. A small satchel charge to twist about thirty feet of track into a modern-art sculpture, a few jeeps mounting .50-caliber machine guns to pick off any hostiles, and all his riflemen behind good cover. Even if this were a troop transport, which was unlikely based on the lack of forces in the area, it would be hard as hell for them to get into position to fight back. Hurling grenades into tightly packed passenger cars took care of opposition before it got started.
The sound of the locomotive could be heard in the distance, quiet at first and then growing louder. Smiggy grinned with nervous anticipation. He didn’t get a lot of direct combat opportunities; his role was mostly to run away from any potential fights and call in the big guns. But this little incident belonged completely to him.
The tracks curved left just about fifty yards from where the satchel charge was wired to the tracks, something Smiggy had considered when picking the spot. No sense giving the enemy a lot of advance warning. There was the beginning of a glimmer of dawn, and as the chugging grew louder he could see a billow of whitish smoke from the locomotive. “Heads up, boys,” he called out. “It’s showtime!”
A yellow glow began to illuminate the curve, growing brighter, and then became a stabbing light as the locomotive rounded the final curve. Smiggy’s dark-adapted eyes took a few seconds to clear, and then he saw the huge locomotive. It had a silvered circular plate on front rather than the traditional matte black iron, and at the two-o’clock and ten-o’clock positions swastika flags protruded. It was a military train, no doubt about it. It let out a long whistle as the engineer neared the intersection, and Smiggy could hear the growing chugging sound of the locomotive.
“Now!” Smiggy called, and the satchel charge exploded, shredding the metal rails into splintered wreckage. The engineer had enough time to blow his whistle again and pull his steam brakes, but not enough time to slow his train. The locomotive hit the twisted track, lurched over on its right side, then crashed down, its weight flattening the rails underneath it. But the front wheels had already left the track and the engine was yawing around. The coal tender pushed into the locomotive’s side, tipping it sideways, but the lighter tender, not the massive locomotive, flipped on its side. Behind it, the first of the cars crashed into the obstacle created by engine and tender. Made of lighter wood, the boxcar splintered, shattered, and fell on its side, its doors bursting open. Behind it the other cars folded, accordion-style, tipping and collapsing, crashing and tearing themselves apart.
He signaled to his men to move up. Taking a train was a little bit like taking a house. Some men provided cover while others inched forward. You never knew what the house or train would contain. There might be a heavily armed squad or maybe just one lone wounded guy firing out of desperation, so you were always careful opening the Crackerjack box. Smiggy didn’t like getting any of his men killed.
As the first men moved closer to the train, still nothing. No sign of defenders; no return fire, however weak. Two of his men reached the engineer’s cab; one covered while the other clambered up the ladder and disappeared into the compartment. A moment later, his hand stuck out the open window, waving. All secure. A hand held up with one finger, then turning to thumbs-down. One dead man, no one else.
But there was movement from the first.
As the men worked their way forward, the “all clear” signal came through, and Smiggy approached the train. Following the engine, the coal tender had scattered its contents across the snow. Then came an empty passenger car that should have been full of soldiers. There were signs of recent habitation: a few empty coffee cups, a left-behind single glove. These must have been the shapes Smiggy had seen fleeing in the dim light. They might not have been able to put up a great resistance, but they should have fought back, Smiggy mused. “What’s going on?” he wondered aloud.
Suddenly a loud voice began shouting, “Cap’n! Cap’n! Jesus Christ, you’ve got to see this. There are thousands of ’em! Thousands!”
Smiggy quickly clambered out of the passenger car and looked in the direction of the yelling soldier. At first, he couldn’t quite make sense of the scene.
The doors of the first shattered boxcar had been torn off by the crash, and what appeared to be mannequins, stiff and blue, dressed in black and white striped prison garb, began spilling out. It took a few seconds for Smiggy to realize they were corpses, and a few seconds more to see that in the mounds of dead bodies there were a few still alive. And then he began to notice that many of the dead and those struggling to their feet were women and even children who had been stuffed into the cars like cattle, crowded together with no room to move.
Then came shouts from the next boxcar, and the next, and all semblance of military discipline came apart suddenly as Smiggy’s small unit was utterly overwhelmed by masses of dead and dying.
It was still freezing outside, a fact that had momentarily escaped Smiggy in his heavy winter-issue jacket. He realized that there was no heat in the boxcars. While that mattered no longer to the dead, Smiggy realized that the living needed heat, and needed it now.
“Awright!” he shouted. “Attention!”
His men slowly stopped what they were doing long enough to look at him. “These people need heat and they need it now. We got coal and we got boxcars made of wood. Tear ’em down, use satchel charges if you have to, and set ’em on fire. Now!”
As his men began to shift their attention from the immense and overwhelming scene to the immediate task of building a fire, Smiggy turned to his corporal. “McConnell—get on the horn to Lieutenant Bucklin and tell him to light a fire under the rest of the division. We need medics and we need food and we need blankets and we need them ten minutes ago. If you get any shit, tell him I said so and if he doesn’t get those fuckers moving inside of ten minutes I’ll rip his balls off and feed them to him.”
A skeletal woman, resembling a zombie more than a human, moved toward Smiggy, hands reaching for him, clutching him. He pulled off his jacket and gave it to her, then found that ten more of the barely living were clustering around, grasping for his jacket. One tore his coat away from the woman he’d given it to. He nearly punched the thief, but realized that the needs were equally great. “What have we got? Any food? Blankets? Cloth? Check your vehicles. Everything they can use, give it to them.” He pulled one set of grasping hands off his arm. It was easy; they had no strength.
Herding the prisoners away from the boxcar was difficult; it was terrible but it was the only shelter they had from the steadily increasing wind. He spoke no German, other than a little GI pidgin, and “Raus! Nein! Schokolade!” didn’t go very far. The satchel charge that demolished the car terrified the survivors; a few fled into the woods and he never saw them again. But then the wrecked lumber was dragged into a growing bonfire hot enough to allow the coal to burn as well, and slowly the terrified prisoners drew closer to the warmth.
Smiggy was not by nature a violent man. He liked speed and he liked adventure, but combat and blood were not his thing. But this made him angry in a way he’d never felt before. He wanted to kill someone—anyone—who was responsible for this.
Then he thought of Rommel. Smiggy wanted to rub his Kraut face right in the mess. “Those fucking Nazis did this,” he thought aloud, “and they are by god going to pay.” He would call Sanger, get the Desert Fox down here. Smiggy was sure he could look into Rommel’s eyes and know if that Kraut bastard knew about this. And if he did, Smiggy planned to shoot the son of a bitch dead on the spot.
NEUE REICHSKANZLEI, BERLIN, 0644 HOURS GMT
Heinrich Himmler also started work early in the morning. The telephone calls normally did not begin until after 0600 Berlin time, and the earlier time allowed him to focus on planning and organization. His large office—it had been Hitler’s—was completely dark except for the single banker’s lamp on his desk. Inside the small pool of yellowish light, the small round-faced man with a weak chin slowly shuffled the papers that represented the world at war.
Although he had reached an agreement with Rommel through the intermediary von Reinhardt—he hoped he lived long enough to wipe the supercilious smile off the face of that smug know-it-all bastard—Heinrich Himmler had lived his life so far by keeping all his options open. And, after all, the strength of his negotiating position was affected by how good his other options looked.
Alas, the documents in front of him did not look promising. The war in the east had fully restarted, and he agreed with the recommendation of his generals to concentrate forces on that front, essentially abandoning the west. The west was lost anyway, between the traitors Rommel and now Student. The Allied advance was inevitable, but there were ways to slow it down somewhat.
Rommel’s infantile and unrealistic desire to spare the lives of German soldiers and civilians was a weakness that could be exploited. Such bourgeois concerns were a sign of decadence, in his judgment. Himmler’s intelligence sources—not to mention his personal knowledge of the man—informed him that Rommel’s slow pace on the unopposed front, combined with his evident inability to resist the news camera, was sowing some discord among his erstwhile allies. This was good.
Of course, part of Rommel’s slow pace had to do with their secret agreement. Rommel was giving Himmler time to get organized for his agreed-to escape from Berlin. Himmler would not decide until the very last minute what he would do, but he planned to have everything in readiness for an instant departure. Certain key officials and aides had been briefed into the escape plan as well; still others would not be told until the last minute so as to lower the likelihood of leaks.
The next report was an update on Operation Wolkenbrand. He adjusted the thin-rimmed glasses to read the report in detail. This was an important operation, and nothing must go wrong with it.
While it was necessary to rid the Fatherland of the sniveling, conspiring Jews, sentimentalists often balked at the necessary actions. Himmler was not a sentimentalist. He had taken action, and although the great work was not yet finished, it was well begun
. The Reich would not fall back into the hands of Jewish bankers and degenerate Jewish entertainers and all those who would weaken the German soul, even if a few Jews escaped his grasp. But the work must be kept secret from those who could not or would not understand, and so Operation Wolkenbrand.
The first part of the operation was to transport Jews still in the labor camps to the east, where the manufacturing and processing facilities were in place to dispose of them neatly and finally, and with a minimum of force or personal involvement. Then it would be necessary to dismantle and hide the structures of the extermination camps, covering up all direct evidence. Afterward, it would only be necessary to deny. Others would take up the false story for their own purposes, reading the record for the smallest ambiguities and using those to argue that the entire structure was rotten. Even those offering the true story would have motives to achieve thereby, allowing their testimony to be attacked as biased. In the midst of argument, the objective truth would forever remain controversial. The art of propaganda had been forever advanced by the Nazi leadership, and truth—whatever that was—would have to look out for itself.
He inspected the map showing the progress of the enemy in the west. They were approaching Ettersburg, somewhat more quickly than expected. But he had a report that the last major shipment of Jews from that facility had taken place. Now it was a normal labor camp; there might be Jews left, but not in such numbers as to raise unusual suspicions. He was glad that the camp commander had been so efficient, and made another note on the report that he was to be commended.
With the west under control for now, he turned his attention to the east. There were still ways to sow additional confusion, to hamper the inevitable Soviet advance somewhat, and to move ahead with his new plan—a plan that would turn the tables on von Reinhardt, Rommel, and all his enemies, and give him yet another option and avenue to exploit.
Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Page 36