“Listen carefully,” the leader hissed in accented German. “We know you’re a powerful German and we don’t care. Shout for help, scream… make any noise at all, and we will kill you, understand?”
Deininger nodded. “Good,” the leader said. Deininger struggled to place his accent, but couldn’t, which added to the theory that they were British. “When we ask you questions, answer them quietly and completely, or we will hurt you, understand?”
“Yes,” Deininger said softly. Terror was making it harder to speak, but as he started to understand what was going on, it became easier to focus his mind and concentrate on limiting what he told them. “I understand.”
“Good,” the leader said. He held a knife to Deininger’s throat. “What time is your driver due back here?”
Deininger wanted to lie, but knew that if they had been watching the house, they would have a good idea of his routine. They didn’t look sloppy, and so they might have asked the question, just so they could find out if he was lying or not. If he lied, they would hurt him and… Deininger had watched enough torture to doubt that he could hold out when — if — they went to work on him.
“He’s due back at eight tomorrow morning,” he said, in English. The leader didn’t seem surprised by the sudden switch in language. “What are you going to do with Janine?”
“Your wife will be fine as long as you cooperate,” the leader said. Deininger almost laughed; only the certainty that laughing at the wrong time could get him killed kept the smile from his face. Janine had been hired to play the role of his wife for the weekend, not to actually be his wife… and if that got out, he would be a laughingstock. “How many SS men have you moved into Britain?”
Deininger considered the question for a long moment. If he knew for sure how much his opponent knew, he would have risked trying to provide them with false information, but it would be too dangerous without any clear idea of where he would be caught. Torture worked, he knew, when the information could be verified… and the SS were masters of torture. He’d seen nightmarish tricks used to make Russians and even Frenchmen talk against their will, from a combination of powerful drugs, beatings and precisely modulated pain. He had no illusions as to how long he could hold out under such pressure; unlike the men of the Waffen-SS, he couldn’t embrace pain or tolerate it for a long period.
“We shipped in ten thousand,” he risked, finally. It wasn’t entirely truthful, but it wasn’t that inaccurate. It would have to do. “They’ll find you and take you prisoner, and you will suffer.”
“If they come here, you’ll be killed as well,” the leader said flatly. Deininger smiled inwardly as he realised another truth about his captor. He didn’t have quite the right mindset for torture. The SS torturers were men who gave Deininger the creeps. They cared nothing for the pain and humiliation they heaped their victims, they didn’t even take a sick pleasure in it. They had no feelings at all… and his captor had them in spades. “What happened to the Davidson girls?”
Deininger nodded inwardly. The leader would come from nearby, either in Felixstowe or somewhere close, maybe one of the farms. If he cared about a family that had been swept up in a sweep, then maybe he was even related to the family, or even just friendly to the family. That was information the SS could use to track him down.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t…”
One hand covered his mouth while the other broke three of his fingers. Deininger felt pain welling through his body and wanted to scream. Only the pressure on his mouth kept the scream inside, where it could never be heard. His entire body shook in desperation, but the bonds refused to break and the leader held him down without much effort.
“You have five fingers and two thumbs left,” the leader said, his voice cold, but not perfectly dispassionate. Somewhere in there, there was a man who cared and was shocked at what he was doing. “I can break them all, and then we can get started on your other bones, or…”
He leaned closer. “Is it really such a state secret?”
“They took them to the continent,” Deininger said, through his gasps. Tears were streaming down his face. He was ashamed of himself for his weakness, but knew that the information wasn’t that important, really wasn’t worth fighting to hide… the self-justification kept rolling through his mind, reminding him that he had broken. “They took them… good Aryan stock… they weren’t going to waste them just because of their parents.”
The leader squeezed his hand around Deininger’s jaw. “What’s going to happen to them?”
Deininger fought for breath. “They’re going to become Germans,” he gasped. “They’ll be found a new family, taught German and raised German, to the point where their origins will be forgotten, even by them. They’ll marry Germans, have German children; their foster parents won’t even know the truth.”
“How can they not know when all the girls speak is English?”
Deininger shook his head. “It’s been done before, time and time again,” he said. “The foster parents don’t really know much and are generally told that the children were orphaned or that their parents sent them into the Reich in search of a better life and…”
“Well, they got that part right, didn’t they?” The leader asked. “You orphaned them.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that decision,” Deininger said. He forced himself to relax, despite the growing pain from his hand. “What are you going to do now?”
The leader asked a question. “How many soldiers have been landed on British soil?”
“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Deininger said. “I handled over two hundred thousand soldiers myself, but Felixstowe is no longer the only port and I don’t have any authority at Harwich or…”
“I don’t believe you,” the leader said. His voice darkened, suggesting violence and mortal danger. “You’re a high-ranking SS officer, and you don’t know?”
“I could find out for you if you let me go,” Deininger suggested. “I would swear on the honour of an SS officer…”
The leader belted him across the face. “Do you think we’re stupid?”
Deininger was careful to keep his face blank. As long as the British insurgents were being distracted, there would be a chance to prevent himself from giving away any really important secrets, or… a distant rumble of thunder in the air caught his ears. The leader glanced around, one hand reaching down to clutch his gun, but he didn’t know what the noise was. It certainly wasn’t a group of armed SS men creeping up to free Deininger from his clutches.
“I need the answer to one final question,” the leader said, as a second rumble of thunder echoed through the air. Deininger looked up, into the blue eyes and black mask, and silently promised himself that there would be a reckoning. They certainly wouldn’t be too kind to Janine. “When does the attack against the British lines begin?”
Deininger couldn’t help himself; he burst out laughing. “You don’t understand,” he said, fully expecting the leader to shoot him at any moment. It was worth it; he only wished that he could see the look on the man’s face. “Do you hear that noise in the distance, carried by the wind? The attack has already begun!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Near Colchester, England
“Heil Hitler,” the assembled men roared. “Heil Hitler!”
Hauptmann Johann Bothe watched as Rommel, standing on the back of a small vehicle, returned their salute. The men of the 7th Panzer acclaimed him with their voices, each one holding himself ramrod straight, arm out-thrust in the Hitler salute, chanting their devotion into the air. It made him proud to be one of them, watching as the Panzer division prepared to attack the English in their positions; they would have lived and fought for the Fuhrer, but they would have died for Rommel. It wasn’t something that could be explained to a civilian, or perhaps to an SS officer, but it was something that all soldiers would understand. A good officer was worth his weight in gold.
Or maybe the SS men did understand.
Rommel had been given most of the oversized SS Panzer Division Das Reich and its men were cheering him with the same enthusiasm. The regulars didn’t always get on well with the SS, who were regarded either as glorified firemen or overpaid soldiers, but he was forced to admit that most of the Waffen-SS units were tough and capable fighters. They also provided a surprisingly high degree of social mobility for their soldiers, although that too was changing in the regular army as the Nazi regime dug deeper into the foundations of the German state; the class warfare that had plagued the Germans would soon be a thing of the past. It barely existed in the 7th Panzer anyway, mainly due to Rommel’s influence; everyone knew that his subordinates had been chosen personally for their abilities and competence, not for their families. Hitler’s favourite General, and later Field Marshal, had taken what he’d been given and forged a mighty weapon from rough clay.
“Tonight, we march against the foe,” Rommel said, his voice ringing out over the lines of gathered men, watching as they relaxed and stood at ease. He wouldn’t have made them hold the salute for his speech, even though some SS commanders had been known to do just that; Rommel was a soldier who respected and trusted his men. “Tonight, we will assault the enemy and punch through their lines, heading to London and allowing no man to stop us.”
His voice echoed in the air for a long moment. Rommel tended to treat an entire army as a storm division, something that had worked out well in France and the Western Desert, but less well in Russia and England. He’d been everywhere at once during the advance against Ipswich and beyond, flying around in his own personal autogyro and landing wherever there was a problem. It had almost killed him or gotten him captured twice, but it had worked; he had driven the soldiers on relentlessly, extending German control as much as possible.
Bothe scowled to himself. One lesson they’d learned from Russia was that an area that had been charged through by the Panzers wasn’t actually pacified, something that the British seemed determined to remind them of at every opportunity. The isolated British Army units, Home Guard soldiers who had refused to leave their homes, isolated British civilians with weapons and the will to use them — the haunting memory of the teenage boy hanging from the tree danced in front of his eyes for a long moment — all of them had fought to delay or stop the German advance.
The Panzers had waited for infantrymen to clear the encircled British forces, but there was really no such thing as a peaceful border between British and German territory. It had been haemorrhaging men and machines for days as small units of British soldiers attempted to delay the Germans from building up their offensive and the Germans had sought to harass the British defence lines and force them to keep their heads down. The British probably had vast quantities of tanks now, hidden in the distance in the direction of London; Bothe was quite looking forward to such a major clash. The best efforts of the Luftwaffe notwithstanding, it was unlikely in the extreme that the British would have failed to reinforce to the greatest possible extent.
“We will comport ourselves within the limits of the finest tradition of the German Army,” Rommel concluded. He’d had four men hung for rape and three others sent to a penal unit for looting; no one thought for a moment that he was bluffing and unwilling to carry out sentences on his own soldiers. It was something that endeared him to them; Rommel’s view of war was something that had infected the entire army. Even the SS men understood; Britain, a country that had been defined as Aryan, wasn’t a place for them to play their games. “I expect each and every one of you to do his duty. Fur das Reich!”
“Fur Das Reich,” they shouted back.
Rommel stepped off the vehicle, signalling the end of the formal speech, and most of the crowd dispersed. Others clustered around Rommel, taking advantage of the opportunity to shake the famous man’s hand. Still others saw it as a chance to get a final few moments of rest before the advance began. Bothe smiled to himself and walked back towards the massive parking area where the division’s vehicles were waiting, and ordered the final checks. They were to take part in the first major armoured thrust into English territory… and he didn’t want to leave a single Panzer behind. They were all going to be needed and coordinating them all was going to be a bitch. They’d practised at the training schools and then in endless exercises, but no training exercise, even the live fire ones, could come close to matching the experience of battle. There were soldiers who had faced nothing but exercises and done well in them who had come apart when they had seen the face of battle.
“You have done well,” a voice said, from behind him. Bothe turned to see Rommel and snapped to attention automatically. “I need a report on your unit.”
“Herr Feldmarschall,” Bothe said, suddenly finding his mind blank. Rommel was too much of a presence to disappoint, but he found himself struggling for words. “The Panzers are completely ready for action, along with the rocket launchers and the supporting elements. The men are fit, healthy, and ready for action.”
“Good,” Rommel said, as he inspected a selection of units and soldiers. He contented himself with a handful of minor comments, some of them more important than others, but there were no major problems with the unit. The 7th Panzer was an elite unit and perfectly prepared to execute a major assault, as Rommel had ordered; Bothe felt himself swell with pride as Rommel finally pronounced himself satisfied.
“I expect you to be through the lines within hours and challenging the British tanks,” he said, after a moment. “Our intelligence” — they shared a look of wry amusement at the thought of the intelligence officers actually being correct — “suggests that you will be facing the 1st Armoured Division with perhaps Montgomery in command, although Churchill seems to have boosted him up to a higher rank. Still, whoever is in command probably has experience from the Desert and some of the smaller campaigns the British have fought to maintain their empire.”
In other words, don’t get cocky, Bothe thought coldly. The last war had been marked by stubborn British resistance, but not by experienced and adaptable British Generals. Those who had shown a surprising amount of innovation had often fallen prey to internal politics rather than German fire, while others had proven themselves to be unprepared for the face of modern war. That would have changed; the commanding officers, now, would understand modern war — they might even have drilled to the same extent as their German counterparts. The coming battle was going to be on a scale not seen since the headlong rush into Russia, nine years ago.
“I understand, Herr Feldmarschall,” he said, softly. Rommel was probably feeling his age; as a younger man, he could have taken personal command of the division and led it in combat against the British. He’d always tried to lead from the front, and that, too, had endeared him to his men. “We won’t fail you.”
* * *
Oberst Frank-Michael Baeck watched dispassionately as Rommel and the Panzer Division officer discussed the precise role of 7th Panzer in the coming offensive, and tried to keep the worry off his face. Rommel didn’t really understand the magnitude of what the Reich had accomplished, and because of that lack of understanding, it was all-too-possible that he would push the Reich’s forces beyond their limits. He’d studied Rommel’s campaigns in the Western Desert, as well as his later fighting in Russia, and knew what Rommel was like; his concern for his logistics was minimal.
Baeck looked down at the map and glowered. It didn’t look that big on the map, but they had taken a reasonable bite out of Britain. The British themselves had formed defence lines to the south and west of the German position, but they’d taken care to ensure that the Germans were always bleeding. The Reich was used to insurgent attacks from Russia and sullen non-cooperation from Frenchmen, but the British were sitting right on top of the most important — and most fragile — supply line in the Reich’s history. Their attacks, often launched with a degree of local knowledge that far surpassed anything the Reich possessed, had struck at the supply lines time and time again, and Rommel didn’t understand that. In the Western
Desert, it had barely mattered; in Britain, it could be disastrous.
He kept his face totally blank as he mulled over what he knew. They had strained every sinew to reinforce Rommel, and they had done a magnificent job. Thousands upon thousands of Germans had landed in boats or transport aircraft and had been dispatched to the front lines, each one making the conquest of Britain that little bit easier. As new units had arrived, they had been quickly worked up and slotted into their position on the order of battle, but there was no way that they could match the British numbers. They required a stunning success, one caused by breaking through the British lines and marching to London, and that wasn’t going to be easy.
Their intelligence sources had been surprisingly quiet on the subject of the British defences, but Baeck had seen enough of them from recon pictures and the reports of probing German commandos to know that the defences were tough. The British Army was dug in and waiting for them, with hundreds of guns and aircraft in support… and, behind them, thousands, of tanks.
The British did have a major problem — once their lines were broken, they would have real problems putting them back together — but they had enough reserves to move them up to any threatened section and close the gap. 7th Panzer would have to be very good, and very lucky, to make a breakthrough… and that worried Baeck. There was much more to logistics than merely moving Panzers and guns around. They transported shells, bullets, food, and many more items just to keep the army going. If the link was broken for any length of time, they would lose… and Rommel’s reputation for infallibility would come crashing down.
He grimaced as Rommel moved on to a small storm-trooper detachment and shared a few moments with their commanding officer. Rommel should have waited for longer, until he had more supplies in place, but Berlin had been pushing at him. Someone had seen the red area on the map, marked with a little Nazi flag, compared it to the much larger area held by the British, and demanded an offensive. Rumour had it that the Fuhrer was fading fast, his every breath expected to be his last, and that he wanted to walk into London as a conqueror before he finally died. He was confident that the Reich could beat the British, but if the battle went badly, Rommel might not be able to recover in time to save the invasion force.
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