The Valkyrie Option

by Markus Reichardt

  November 9th

  Rommel’s HQ

  Rastenburg, East Prussia November 10th

  They had lost Riga and with it any hope of holding onto Latvia. For five days PanzerLehr and the remnants of six infantry divisions, together with what remained of the Latvian light infantry units had beaten back one attack after another. Twice the Red Army had come across the Duena, twice it had been beaten back. But when on November 7th, Kriegsmarine units had failed to support the defenders with their heavy guns, the tide began to turn. Units of the 3rd Baltic Front once again surged across the Duena at night and forced two of the land bridges between the lakes around Riga. In fierce hand-to-hand combat they had clawed their way into central Riga. With heavy Russian artillery now in place on Syrve peninsula of Saarema or Osel island the Kriegsmarine units that had normally ventured into the Gulf of Riga and close to the coast to support the defenders had become more cautious. Pounding the Red Army areas of attack became less important than securing their line of retreat. Although the Tirpitz, supported by two cruisers, reduced the Russian positions on the Syrve peninsula to rubble the next day, the defenders lacked the strength to crush the bridgehead across the Duena and into Riga’s southern suburbs. By late afternoon on the 9th the central city area surrounded by the ancient moat fell and with it the last significant Latvian units perished. Safe from the pounding of the German guns, Russian engineers threw two pontoon bridges across the Duena and by nightfall of the 10th the first dozen tanks were across. Further inland another two bridges were thrown across the river outside of the range of even the Tirpitz big guns and so by midday of the 10th the Wehrmacht had to inform the remnant Latvian administration that their capital would have to be abandoned. While the remnants of PanzerLehr provided a covering screen, thousands of Latvian refugees who had hoped against hope streamed southward towards the illusion of safety behind the new defensive line that Rommel hoped to hold for the next few weeks. Running from Libau or Liepaja on the Latvian coast to Schaulen (Siauliai) and then southward to Kaunas it meant the abandonment of all of Latvia and most of Lithuania. “Next stop,” an exhausted von Treskow informed the staff meeting that evening “will be the Reich’s border.”

  While the loss of Riga was psychologically important, Rommel could take heart in the success of the flexible defence that Dietrich’s SS Panzer divisions were mounting in the Kaunas sector. Twice the 3rd Byelorussian front had surged forward in massive infantry attacks supported by heavy tank units. Twice Sepp had given ground only to crush the Russian spearheads in pincer movements with limited costs to himself. And with the withdrawal of the northern sector towards the new Libau-Schaulen line Dietrich’s battlegroup now would be able turn its attentions northward.

  The news from the Polish sector was also not too bad, in that the brief raid on Lvov and its rail yards had distracted the operations of Marshall Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian and General Petrov’s 4th Ukrainian fronts for two weeks. As their tanks armies surged against the massed 88mm guns deployed for just this purpose they suffered terribly. But to Koniev’s and Petrov’s dismay Stalin intervened. Stalin had never been influenced by losses or casualty numbers when it came to particular objectives. And this time his intervention proved costly. Rather than allowing his marshals to force a general German retreat along this sector, they were redirected to focus their efforts on retaking the town and its shattered transport infrastructure. When after six days of heavy fighting both sides returned to roughly the positions before, the Russians had lost nearly 400 tanks while the Germans had suffered the loss of a just under 120 88mm guns. For the Germans however, the battle was a defeat in that the Luftwaffe had spent itself protecting the 88s from the tender mercies of the Red Air Force, loosing most of its jet fighters in the process. But as the 4th Ukrainian Front pursued the retreating Germans westward into northern Hungary, it did so with considerable more caution and fewer tanks.

  November 15th, 2pm

  San Sebastian de los Reyes

  North of Madrid Spain

  Ex-General Walter Schellenberg was not sure what to think. He had not managed to get any rest of the flight that had brought him back from Bern Switzerland where he had met with some of his agents and more importantly one of the few doctors he really trusted. He was dying. The doctor’s diagnosis, coming on top of a few previous sessions with Spanish doctors had been unqualified and delivered with the customary directness which Schellenberg appreciated in the small bald specialist. He had a year maybe two to live because of some malignant growth in his liver. The most likely culprit were the cigarettes, but there was were also opportunistic infections spreading through his body, and right now they were affecting his lungs. He had always been an athletic type, now he looked gaunt and prematurely aged. The doctor had recommended urgent surgery but had also been explicit about the risks of such a step. Schellenberg had delayed. He feared death from this creeping killer inside him. Right now there were things he still needed to do. The doctor had just shrugged.

  Already on the flight he had struggled, his breath coming in increasingly short bursts as the dry air in the cabin irritated the weakened tissue of his lungs. The air at Madrid airport had been no better, in fact the smell of the aircraft emissions had set off a coughing fit more than once before reaching the sedan where his driver waited.

  For the first twenty minutes these coughing fits which left him in some pain had been serious enough to distract both him and his bodyguard-driver. Neither had noticed the white Mercedes that had picked up their trail from the airport exit and followed them along Madrid’s roads northwards towards San Sebastian de los Reyes a small town north of Madrid where the reconstruction from the devastation of Spain’s own civil war had still not been completed and thus no-one paid particular attention to a group of foreigners who had taken up residence in a modest, restored villa on the south-facing slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama. One of Schellenberg’s men had rented the house in early August and the General, mindful that after his threat against the currencies of both the British Empire and the United States, his popularity might have plummeted had decided to drop out of sight for a few weeks here.

  Traffic, both horse-drawn and motor vehicle was reasonably heavy causing multiple stops. But Schellenberg’s mind drifted inwards into that inner sanctum where a person goes when he knows death is approaching and there is no escape. Schellenberg did not consider himself a coward but he feared death, feared that the conflict in Europe might end after his life. He hated the uncertainty. He just had to know how it turned out. In the days since meeting up with the British envoy he had put pen to paper drafting about 200 pages of what could form the basis for an autobiography. One day he hoped, his side of the story could be told. If history was kind it would not be obsessed with the details of his role at the heart of Hitler’s SS state and balance that against his role in finishing off the last remnant of possible opposition to Stauffenberg’s coup. Well if was lucky they would speak of him in the same way that they would of the crippled Wehrmacht Colonel. Funny, he mused we were both of the younger generation. It’s the younger ones, those that have something to live for that act, not the old fossils that carp from their secure positions. Schellenberg had a file in which detailed just how much the Field Marshalls of Hitler’s Army had received in cash and land from their Fuehrer during the days when things were good and how those gifts had continued and bought the acquiescence of many of them when things started going against Germany. The details of that file were going into his autobiography. These were beans worth spilling. And here he was now living rather handsomely with some associates on the fruits of the forgeries of Operation Bernard. Anyway it was all history now.

  He looked out at the countryside, much of it cold and somewhat desolate in the grip of an early winter. It was history that he was now suddenly concerned with, his role in it. Had he done the right thing?

  Schellenberg’s driver saw the accident as they crawled up the sloped north of town towards the house. A wagon overloaded with straw had lo
st a wheel and the axle had gone trapping the horse in its harness before it. The driver and an assistant were alternating trying to free the horse and direct traffic around the wagon whose load had partially spilled onto the road. On the step incline up the mountain there was little room around the obstacle and Schellenberg’s vehicle slowed down. As they reached the wagon one of the men looked up and noticing the impressive chrome ornaments on the sedan, glanced over his shoulder up the road and waved them through, before returning his efforts to finally pulling the horse out from underneath the broken harness.

  It is in the nature of drivers to respond to hand signals regarding traffic and Schellenberg’s driver simply put the car into gear and moved, accelerating to gain some momentum on the upward incline. His attention was also briefly diverted by a glance in the rear view mirror which revealed a vehicle he thought he recognised from the airport. And for a few seconds his concentration wavered.

  Just at that moment a 3 ton truck came around the bend at a speed rather higher than road safety suggested prudent. The driver carrying a load of bricks had underestimated the momentum that the heavy load would add to his vehicle and barely avoided losing control in the hairpin curve as he roared down the hill. In seconds he was face to face with Schellenberg’s. the distance was less than 50 meters and with both driver’s attention slightly diverted, it took another 15 meters before either could begin to respond. The big truck crashed into the sedan pushing it off the road and over the edge. It was not a steep drop but just enough to make the sedan tumble and capsize. It rolled three times before coming to a stop. When the driver of the horse-drawn cart had reached he found the driver badly injured, his legs crushed by the retreating motor block. On the backseat, the passenger, lay sprawled across the bent seat, his neck broken. Walter Schellenberg was dead.

  Two minutes later the occupants of the car that had been following Schellenberg’s sedan surveyed the accident scene and helped with the recovery of the body. While one applied first aid to the badly injured driver, the other professionally went through the dead man’s pockets.

  Two days later, the head of SIS met very briefly with the PM who was en route to Italy to report that although the mission had failed, the job had been done. By then his agents had raided the villa and captured some of the General’s associates. Churchill and his spymaster agreed that for the moment the threat to the British pound had receded.

  November 18th

  Villa del Contessa

  On the northern outskirts of Trieste

  The choice of venue was not auspicious but dictated by geography and the wishes of Marshall Tito. By meeting the British in the Italian town he coveted for inclusion in his Yugoslavia, he was sending a signal. Despite objections from his cabinet, Churchill had in the end agreed. The setback in Greece made an arrangement with the Partisan leader all the more important. The British delegation, Churchill, Eden and the CIGS arrived in the coastal city of Trieste aboard the Royal Navy cruiser Ajax escorted by three destroyers a supply ship and half a dozen smaller auxiliary vessels. The aircraft carrier Royal Oak which was to have accompanied them from the Italian port of Venice where they had embarked the night before, was still furiously steaming up into the Adriatic. Weeks before its planes were to have made a difference in Greece, now it passed by the Greek peninsula without even stopping.

  Rankovic, Tito’s spy chief and head of security had thrown a massive security cordon around the little double-story, free-standing villa two days before any of the delegates arrived. Now partisans and British MPs prowled the gardens and the neighbourhood. For the Yugoslavs there were Marshall Tito and his two closest lieutenants, Kardelj and Djilas. When Churchill had asked for the meeting at short notice, Tito had been cautious. British and American troops had by now occupied key points in the northern third of Yugoslavia, effectively all of Slovenia and Croatia. They had also landed at key points along his coast, at Pula on the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula, at Zadar, at Dubrovnik and Split. Tito expected they would run into the Red Army units advancing across southern Hungary and into southern Austria any day now. The Marshall had already encountered the Red Army as it moved into eastern Serbia and entered Belgrade. That had been after he had proclaimed an independent Republic from the stairs of the old Parliament, a day after the Germans had left with their collaborationist allies and a full eight days before the Red Army ground forces reached the Yugoslav capital.

  Yugoslavia was his, he had beaten the Chetniks who had collapsed without British support, even before the Germans were fully gone. That the Americans had decided to back the Chetnik commander for a few more weeks thereafter had infuriated him but Randolph Churchill, the Premier’s son, who still remained with the Marshall roving headquarters had convinced him to see this as the by-product of American ignorance and Anglo-American rivalry rather than anything sinister. In the end it did not matter, the defeat of the Chetniks had robbed the British of any leverage in the forthcoming negotiations. London had backed the Yugoslav monarchy until late 1943 but now even the pretence was gone. The Ustasha, the murderous fascist fanatics who had ruled in Zagreb as Hitler’s puppets while carrying out a war of genocide against Serb minorities, had melted away. Some he knew were being harboured by the British and there were rumours of the Vatican having taken in a few of them as well. It was of no consequence, it could be dealt with later. These negotiations, Tito concluded could only be about formal recognition Churchill hoping to negotiate some role for himself in a country where the west and Russia would jostle for influence. From his room on the second floor, he looked out over Trieste’s harbour illuminated by a cloudless sky. A busy port despite the ravages of war. The city itself was an anomaly, Italian as an urban centre, surrounded on land by non-Italian people and territory. By geography it should be his, Italy had been on Hitler’s side until 1943 and should bleed for that; in part by losing Triest.

  When both sides sat down in the morning on the villa’s sunny but sheltered terrace with a view onto the sea and the harbour, the scene was rather curious; the Yugoslavs, former guerrillas, in full military regalia. Tito once again wearing his made-up, somewhat garish Marshall’s uniform, a few more medals dangling from it than had been when he last met Churchill. Djilas and Kardelj, his lieutenants, dressed up slightly less colourful but nonetheless looking very military. On the British side only Alanbrooke was in uniform which by comparison to the Yugoslavs looked rather understated; definitely in terms of shiny bits. The Yugoslavs took their time arranging a set of new national emblems on the tables to signify the bilateral nature of the debate, something the British discreetly ignored.

  Churchill waxed lyrically about their previous meeting and how far relations between their two nations had come, how much Europe had changed. Tito let it all wash over him until the Premier’s need for a drink created a gap. Then he got straight to the point.

  “I assume that we are here today to arrange the mutual recognition of our Governments.” Now that we have liberated our country from the fascists, we will be taking our rightful place in Europe as a progressive, independent republic. You will naturally wish to clarify certain administrative matters before extending formal recognition and we would like to know what these are.” There, Tito thought he had said it, not aggressively because the Russians were in the East of Yugoslavia, but the British would need to respond.

  “Formal recognition is one of the matters we would wish to discuss. However our concern is not only for your Government but also for the future of Yugoslavia and the ability of all her people to exercise their newly-won freedoms.” Eden cut in before Churchill built up momentum and listed a number of ‘issues of concern to His Majesty’s Government in respect to Yugoslav democracy.’

  Tito remained impassive but inwardly he was fuming. Yugoslav democracy! Less than a year ago Britain had still backed a monarchist option with a limp parliament packed by exiles for his country! If realised it would have brought a Nazi collaborator into power. Now they sought to dictate the form of political
system. “This will be a progressive people’s republic and its institutions will be shaped by the Party of the soldiers and peasants who won this country’s freedom.” If the British wanted to play hardball, so could he. The Russians might be in his backyard, but negotiating with them was not an option. His recent visit to Stalin had made it clear that the Russian did not take him too serious, and completely underestimated the nationalist factor in his struggle. The Soviets would simply seek to extend their system and their institutions but staff it with Yugoslav cadres who would be given Russian handlers. Tito hoped he would be able to deal with that scenario, but that was predictable. So far he had convinced Stalin, mainly by not talking back, that he would that loyal Yugoslav cadre. Russian troops therefore had shown no urgency in advancing, but rather co-ordinated most of their movement with his forces. Unfortunately the Russian soldiers were behaving like conquerors and there had been many incidents between the partisans and the red Army. More, he admitted to himself, than could be put down to simple misunderstandings and thuggery of individuals. On his strict orders his men were holding back for the moment until he could get a better sense of his options.