by War
Very well, what of his strategy in fighting on: was it good, or bad? it was rigid, complacent, and dull-witted. He lost Normandy.
Only five divisions in the landing force I Had the panzers been freed and concentrated, then in spite of all - intelligence failure, enemy air superiority, naval bombardment-Rommel's able chief of staff, Speidel, could have unleashed them against the floundering gis and Tommies. The result would have been a historic bloodbath. At Omaha Beach, the Americans were almost thrown back into the sea by one attack infantry division, the 352nd, which happened to be operating there.
What would a planned concentrated counterattack in those first hours not have achieved?
Had we smashed those five divisions, that might well have been the turning point. The Anglo-Americans were not Russians; politically and militarily they could not take Such bloodletting. if all those fantastic preparations, all that outpouring of technology and treasure, could not prevent the slaughter of their landing force on that crucial first day, I believe Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and Churchill would have quailed and announced a face-saving withdrawal." The political results would have been spectacular: the fall of Churchill, Roosevelt's defeat in the election, charges of bad faith by Stalin; even some kind of endurable separate peace in the east, who can say? But Adolf Hitler wanted to control the panzers from Berchtesgaden.
As doom closed in, Hitler clung to, and interminably mouthed, three self-comforting fantasies: 1. The breakup of the Alliance against us; 2. The turning of the tide by miraculous new weapons; 3. A sudden outpouring from the factory caverns of new jet fighters that would sweep the enemy from the skies.
For seven fatal weeks he insisted on immobilizing the Fifteenth Army at the Pas de Calais awaiting the "main invasion," because the launching platforms for his precious V- 1 and V-2 rockets were there But the rockets, when they finally flew, were minor terror weapons, causing random death and damage in London without military effect. The fighter planes came trickling out of the caverns only in 1945, much too late. As for the only new weapon that mattered, the atom bomb, Hitler had frittered away our scientific lead in atom-splitting by failing to support the project, and he had driven out the Jewish scientists who produced it for our enemies.
The breakup of the enemy coalition had indeed been our one escape hatch; but Franklin Roosevelt's supreme political stroke at Tehran had slammed it shut and sealed it. And so there burst on us from the east on June 22, three years to the day after we invaded the Soviet Union, the worst catastrophe yet, the Battle of White Russia, Stalin's assigned role in the Tehran plan.
To this grim tale I now turn.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: In this much-abridged compilation of Roon's views, I have tried to highlight how the Germans saw the Normandy landing, omitting much operational detail familiar from popular history and movies. Stalin's telegram to Churchill remains as good a summary as any of the grandeur of Overlord: "The history of war knows no other like undertaking, from the point of view of its scale, its vast conception, and its masterly execution."
The blaming of Hitler can be overdone. Even if the panzers had been released to Rommel, our forces would probably have known it. Our intelligence-from air reconnaissance, the French Resistance, and code penetration -was superb. We might have battered up the panzers from the air before they ever went into action. This is not to say that the landing was not a close thing. It was an extreme risk calculated to a cat's whisker, and it succeeded.
As for Hitler "degenerating" into a pathological monster, he never was anything else, though he had a good run in his first flush of brigandage. Why his demagogic bunkum ever spurred the Germans to their wars and their crimes remains a vastly puzzling question.
The scales did not fall from Roon's eyes. They had to be shot off. - V. H.
JEDBURGH TEAM "MAURICE" U.S.A.: Leslie Slote, O.S.S French: Dr. Jean R. Latour, FFI British: Leading aircraftsmen Ira N. Thompson, R.A.F When Pamela saw Slote's name in the top-secret schedule of the Jedburgh air drops, she at once decided to go and see him. She was getting desperate for some word of Victor Henry. Since sending her letter of refusal, the thought of which was making her more and more miserable as time passed, she had heard nothing. Utter silence. She found an official reason to go to Milton Hall, the stately home some sixty miles north of London where the Jedburghs trained, and she went whizzing out there next day in a jeep. At Milton Hall she quickly attended to her official business. Leslie Slote, she was told, was off on a field exercise. She left a note for him with her telephone number, and was walking disconsolately back to her jeep, when she heard from behind her, "Pamela?"
Not a hail; an uncertain call. She turned. Heavy drooping blond mustache, closet-cropped hair, no insignia on the untidy. brown uniform; a very different LesliSlote, if the same man.
"Hello! It is Leslie, isn't it?"
The mustache spread in Slote's old frigid grin. He came and shook her hand. "I guess I'm a bit changed. What the devil are you doing at Milton Hall, Pam? Got time for a drink "I'd rather not, thanks. I have to drive forty miles. My jeep's just down in the lot."
"Is it Lady Burne-Wilke yet?"
"Well, no, he's still recuperating from an air crash in India.
I'm going to Stoneford now, that's his house in Coombe Hill." She glanced curiously up at him. "So you're a Jedburgh?"
His face stiffened. "What do you know about that?"
"Sweetie, I'm in the Air Ministry section that's arranging to drop you in."
He laughed, a coarse hearty guffaw. "How much time have you got?
Let's sit down and talk somewhere. Christ, it's wonderful to see an old face. Yes, I'm a Jed."
Here was an opening of sorts for Pamela.
"Victor Henry mentioned that you were in some branch of the O.S.S."
"Ah, yes. Seeing much of the admiral-these days?"
"I've had an occasional letter. Nothing lately."
"But Pamela, he's here."
"Here? In England?"
"Of course. Didn't you know that? He's been here quite a while."
"Really! Would we be out of the wind down at that lily pond? I see a stone bench. We can chat for a few minutes."
Slote well remembered Pamela's great urge to go to Moscow when Henry was there. Her nonchalance seemed overdone; he guessed that the news was a hell of a jolt. They strolled to the bench and sat down by the pond, where frogs croaked as the sun sank behind the trees.
Pamela was indeed silenced by pure shock, and Slote did all the talking. He foamed words. For months he had had nobody to talk to.
He told Pam, who sat listening with grave brilliant eyes, that he had joined the O.S.S because his knowledge of the German massacre of the Jews-which more and more each month was coming to public light, proving he hadn't been a monomaniac after all-and the callous inertness of the State Department had been driving him crazy. The drastic move had transformed his life. He had discovered to his surprise that most men were as full of fear as himself. He had done no worse in parachuting than anybody else, and better than some. As a boy he had loathed violence; bullies had discerned this, he said, picked on him, and fixed him in a timorousness which had fed on itself and became an obsession.
Other men concealed their fears even from themselves, for a hearty swagger was the American male way; but he had always been too self-analytical to pretend that he was anything but a coward.
"I've come a long way, Pam!"
On the first airplane jump, back in the States, the man ahead of him in line, a beefy Army captain who had done very well in training, had refused; had looked out at the landscape far below and had frozen, resisting the dispatcher's shove with hysterical obscene snarling.
Once he was pushed aside, Slote had jumped out into the roaring slipstream with, in his words, "imbecile joy"; the static line had opened his chute, and the shock had jerked him upright; he had yanked on his webs, floated down in proud ecstasy, and landed like a circus acrobat. Afterward he had shivered and sweated and gloried for days.
He had never made another jump half as good. To him, jumping was-a hideous business. He hated it.
Quite a few O.S.S men and Jeds felt as he did, and were ready to admit it, though others liked to jump.
"Passing the psychological tests really stunned me, Pamela.
I was having very shaky second thoughts about volunteering' I told the Jedburgh board straight out that I was a high-strung coward. They looked skeptical and asked why I had put in for theduty. I gave them my song and dance about the Jews.
They rated me 'questionable." After weeks of being observed by psychiatrists, fpassed. They must have been damned hard up for Jeds.
Physically I'm very fit, of course, and my French is dazzling, at least to Americans."
It was obvious to Pamela that he would go on and on in this vein and say no more about Victor Henry. "I've got to go LesIie. Walk me to my jeep." Over the whirring of the motor: as she turned the key, Pamela asked, "Where is Captain Henry, exactly? Do you know?"
"It's Admiral Henry, Pam," said Slote, suppressing a smile. "I told you that."
"I thought you were being facetious."
"No, no. Rear Admiral Henry, ablaze with gold braid, battle ribbons, and stars. I ran into him at our embassy. Try the U.S. Amphibious Base in Exeter. He said he was going there."
She reached out and clasped his hand. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "Till we meet again, Pam. Lord, isn't it a million years since Paris? I did some drinking with Phil Rule last month in London.
He's gotten. utterly gross."
"It's the liquor. I saw him in Moscow last year. He was all stout and tallowy then, and he got falling-down drunk. Victor wrote me that Natalie's waiting out the war in a Czech ghetto."
"Yes, so he told me." Slote nodded, his face falling. "Well, Pamela, we were young and gay in Paris, anyway."
"Were we? I think we labored awfully sweatily at being Ernest Hemingway characters. Too too raffish and mad. I remember how Phil would hold that black comb under his nose and do Hitler reciting Mother Goose, and we would roar." She ground the jeep into gear, and raised her voice.
"Very funny. Those were the days. Good luck on your mission, Leslie. I admire you."
"I had a time tracking you down." Pamela's voice over the telephone was affectionate and cheerful. Hearing those husky tones was very painful to Victor Henry. "Will you by some chance be in London on Thursday?"
"Yes, Pamela, I will be."
"Wonderful. Then come to dinner with us -with Duncan and me-at Stoneford. It's only half an hour from town."
Pug was sitting in the admiral's office in the Devonport dockyard.
Seen from the window, landing craft stretched out of sight in the gray drizzle, tied up in the estuary by the hundreds; an array of floating machinery so thick that no water was visible from shore to shore. Back home Pug had dealt in abstractions: production schedules, progress reports, inventories, projections. Here was the reality: multitudes on multitudes of ungainly metal vessels-LCIs, LCMS, LSTS, LCVPs-strange shapes, varying sizes, seemingly numberless as the wheat grains of an American harvest. But Pug knew the exact number of each type here, and at every other assembly point along the coast. He had been hard at work, -i F travelling from base to base, exerting willpower not to telephone Pamela Tudsbury; but she had found him.
"How do I get there?"
"Take one of the SHAEF buses to Bushey 'Park. I'll pick you up at four or so, and we can talk a bit. Duncan sleeps from four to six.
Doctor's orders."
"How is he?"
"Oh -not too well. There will be a few others for dinner, including General Eisenhower."
"Well! Exalted company for me, Pamela."
"I don't think so, Admiral Henry."
"That's two stars, and only temporary."
"Leigh-Mallory will be coming, too, Eisenhower's commander for air." A silence. Then Pam said jocularly, "Well, let's both get on with the war, shall we? See you Thursday at four, out at SHAEF."
Pug Could not guess what this invitation was really about.
Nor was Pamela free to tell him. She was dying to see him, of course, but bringing him into the high-brass dinner had a special purpose.
During these anxious last days before D-day, the planned airborne attack at "Utah Beach," the westernmost American landing area, was in hot controversy. A swampy lagoon behind the beach was passable only over narrow causeways.
These had to be seized by airborne troops before the Germans could block them or blow them up. Otherwise, the landing force could be stranded on the sands, unable to advance and vulnerable to quick destruction. Utah Beach was the closest landing area to Cherbourg. In Eisenhower's view it had to be captured for Overlord to succeed.
Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who had the responsibility for flying in the gliders and parachute troops, opposed the air operation. It would run into devastating flak over the Cotentin peninsula, he argued; the losses would exceed fifty percent; the remnant who got through would be overwhelmed on the ground; it would be a criminal waste of two crack divisions. Even if it meant cancelling the Utah Beach landing, he wanted the air assault dropped. The American generals would not hear of abandoning the Utah landing or its air operation. But Leigh-Mallory had been fighting the Germans in the air for five years.
His knowledge and his fortitude were beyond dispute. It was a deadlock.
In the history of coalition warfare such impasses have been common, and sometimes disastrous. Adolf Hitler could well hope to the last that his foes would fall out in some such way.
The Anglo-American invasion was riven by disagreements from start to finish, but Dwight Eisenhower held the grand assault together until his troops met the Russians at the Elbe.
So he won his place in military history. To wind this matter up-for the Utah Beach attack is no part of our narrativeEisenhower in the end took the responsibility and ordered Leigh-Mallory to do it.
With the air reinforcement, Utah was a swift smooth landing. The causeways were secured. The airborne casualties were lighter than the estimates. LeighMallory apologized to Eisenhower next day by phone "for adding to his burdens." Years later, Eisenhower said that his happiest moment in the whole war was the news that the two airborne divisions had gone into action at Utah Beach.
When Pamela called Pug, Leigh-Mallory was still :-esisting the Utah operation. Burne-Wilke had contrived the dinner with Eisenhower so that his old friend might urge his case.
Telegraph Cottage, Eisenhower's country place, was near Stoneford.
The ailing Burne-Wilke kept a good stable, and Eisenhower liked to ride; Burne-Wilke was a passable bridge player, and that was Eisenhower's game. They had hit it off as neighbors, having already worked together in North Africa.
Burne-Wilke too thought that the Utah Beach air drop was a calamitous idea. In general, Burne-Wilke was seeing the world and the war through a veil of invalid gloom. To him the torrent of American manpower and weaponry flooding England had an end-of-the-world feeling; he saw the pride of Empire crumbling before candy bars, chewing gum, Virginia cigarettes, and canned beer. Still, when Pamela suggested inviting Pug Henry he warmly approved. The bone of jealousy was either missing in Lord Burne-Wilkes makeup, or concealed beyond detection. He thought Rear Admiral Henry's presence might dilute the tension of the dinner.
Pug had briefly met Eisenhower once; on arriving in England, he had brought him an oral message from President Roosevelt about bombing the French railway yards, terminals, locomotives, and bridges. The political consequences of slaughtering Frenchmen, their former comrades-'in-arms, was troubling the British, and they were pressing Eisenhower to let up on the French. Roosevelt sent word by Victor Henry that he wanted the bombing to go on. (Later, since Churchill kept making trouble, the President had to put this hardboiled view in writing.) At their meeting Eisenhower received the grim message with a cold satisfied nod, and made no other comment. He said some genial words about Pug's football prowess a:against Army in the old days; then he queried h
ifti sharply on the close-support bombardments in the Pacific, and asked incisive questions about the Overlord naval fire-support plans. Pug left after half an hour feeling that this man had a trace of Roosevelt's leadership aura; that under a mild warm manner and a charming smile he was at least as tough a customer as Ernest -King; and that the invasion was going to succeed.
The prospect of dining with him gave Pug no thrill. He had had enough of the war's heavyweights. He was not sure how he would react to seeing Pamela again. Of one thing he was sure: that she would not inflict on him twice the pain of rejection; that by no word or gesture would he try to change her mind.
As she drove'Burne-Wilkes Bentley to Bushey Park Pamela was dreading, and at the same time yearning, to look on Pug Henry once more.