After pro forma introductions, Field Marshal von Witzleben sat back down, “In truth, I suspect you know who we are, or at least you know the sort of people we represent. It is time to end this, and it seems only fair for you to play your part.”
An intelligence officer named Oster continued, “They are trumpeting about a victory in the East, but in truth we do not have the oil we need to continue the fight for even another two months. The Luftwaffe is all but grounded, the Army is shattered. We have indications of coordinated British attacks in the north and American ones in the south. We cannot meet them with any hope of success.”
Hermann nodded, “I knew it would come to this point; now the Russians are destroyed and we ourselves must cut the head off the our own beast here. There is one thing I never told anyone about.”
Chapter 22 Two Different Things
The Eighty-second Airborne Division was older than its twin, the One-oh-First. To it went the honor of taking the furthest landing zone, Charlie, less than thirty kilometers from Paris itself. The British First Airborne drew the closest to the line of departure, Alfa. The Screaming Eagles went into dropped onto edge of the Central Mastiff at a place marked Bravo.
The C-13 cargo planes took off with their ramps removed. The paratroopers enjoyed a wide view of the wintry landscape. The master navigator was really a bomber crewman dragooned into the Air Transport Service. He watched the delicate equipment that kept his plane on an invisible radio beam. He fired a yellow flare.
“Three minutes!” The jumpmasters yelled. The men were attached to an overhead wire by a static line.
The overloaded soldiers used their other hand to keep their balance. In the distance German antiaircraft fire was blasting away at decoys making lazy circle over a nearby town. The light turned green.
The stick of thirty paratroopers waddled to and the through the opening in the back of the transport.
After the noise and confinement of the aircraft, being free of it in the open sky was a relief. Patches of snow reflected the gentle moonlight. Just like a Christmas card, Robinson thought as he took one very long step. His chute opened with a crack he felt as much as heard.
Robinson hit hard. Like a sack of coal. He popped the release of the confining harness and stretched.
Even with the belts fully extended, it was slightly too small for comfort.
“Com’on!” a voice whispered. It seemed like good advice. Robinson followed a shadow in camouflage to a stone wall along what must have been a dirt road.
“Who’s here?” the lieutenant sounded scared.
The men replied by name. “OK, Sergeant McDonald snapped an ankle. Robbie, you take over.”
“Yes sir.” Robinson whispered. The sharp crack of automatic weapons fire came from the other far away, on the other side of the low wall.
The officer continued, “Checkpoint Three is that a-way, so we go this a-way, besides someone shooting at someone. Follow me.”
Robinson waited for the platoon to form a loose line and fell in as the last man, the Platoon Sergeant’s spot.
More planes came overhead. The gliders were especially startling, fast silent shapes that seemed to pass inches over their helmets. The soldiers moved south through the woods at a quiet dogtrot. They passed what must have been a village, a lightless jumble of sheds and stables. Before they got to the next habitation the sound of ripping linen came from their right. A stream of tracers from a German MG42
ripped through the air. The bullets arced off away from them. The little formation stopped.
“OK, that up there is Objective Six, I think,” the lieutenant sounded calmer. “We need to get closer and take out that machine gun and secure the town square. We need to keep Route Green open. Form up as skirmishers and kept quiet.”
The twenty men advanced at a walk in a line abreast, Robinson was on the right and a few steps behind. His men appeared and disappeared in the shadows of the trees. They came to the end of the forest and took cover. The machine gun opened up again, this time in their general direction.
“Can you see it?” the Lieutenant was suddenly beside the new platoon sergeant.
“In the top of that barn. There’s a window or something on the long side, about in the center.”
“OK, here’s what we’ll do. You collect a couple of SAWs and take them to the left. First squad is there. Fire them up and distract them. I’ll move the rest down the slope on the right, try to keep on their blind side. When we get in range we’ll hit them with rifle grenades. You open up for real and we’ll enter the building.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Robinson moved to the left, picking up two of the automatic weapons teams to add to the one from first squad. He placed the six men just inside the tree line and pointed out the target.
He stared at the structure to his front, he estimated the range to be a hundred or so yards. Calling out instructions in a loud voice, he had the guns open up one by one. The return fire smacked into the dirt ahead of him which kicked up dirt and rocks. A second burst went high and threw leaves and branches down on them. Without orders all three guns opened up at once. Someone screamed to his left.
“So much for short, controlled bursts,” Robinson thought. The German gun went silent. He rolled to the wounded man. No idea who it was. Blood coming from the meaty part of his arm. The platoon sergeant pulled off the bandage sewn inside the man’s battle tunic and applied it. No need for morphine.
He looked up as the grenades splattered on and around the barn. Daylight was starting.
“Open up, fry the barrels,” He screamed. He took his place next to the nearest gun and began to pass ammo to the gunner. “Sweep the attic.” The building began to burn.
In the distance a whistle sounded. The guns ceased fire. In the gathering light he could see the green-and-brown coats of the platoon as the began to exit the barn and collect themselves on the short side.
“Watch the other buildings. When I give the word we’ll cross the open area by teams.” Robison wished he had a cigarette.
Moving across Berlin had become a gamble. The chance of an American flying bomb striking you were quite low. It was a long-odds game played for very high stakes. Someone described the effect of the Anglo-American bombing as being like the long all-day headache from a hangover. The city looked shabby with boarded-over windows and collapsed buildings spread randomly.
The Party limousine carried Hermann to an estate on the Tiergarten, the government buildings downtown were too much of a target for a major conference.
He knew the higher-ranking marshals of course, but the rest of the crowd was mass of senior generals who seemed as common as captains in such august company. White-uniformed waiters moved from one knot of celebrants to the other dispensing French champagne on silver platters. A one-armed general in an Army uniform was assigned to keep the professor company. He did not know exactly what to do in such a situation, but common sense dictated he keep the man sober and away from those not involved.
They walked into the garden and ended up by the lake.
“I was born in Dresden, more than twenty years from now.”
His companion let him talk, “It was destroyed in the war, in my war. Allied bombers dumped tons on incendiaries on the city, it went up like a tinderbox. Two of my grandparents died in the basements of Dresden.”
“Dresden is fine this time around. I was there two nights ago,” the general shut up. Let him talk.
“The British wanted to impress the Russians. They came a few weeks later. My mother, well my mother she was raped. Even as a child I could tell she always seemed sad. The Russians set up a puppet government, split Germany in two. They built a wall. When I was forty years old, in the 1990s, my son could no longer stand living in the cage of a Communist Germany. He tried to escape and died in prison.”
“Is that why you have done this?”
Hermann shrugged, “For the first few months I tried to convince myself I was in a dream,” he swept his arm to a bloodred ba
nner with a swastika on a security boat, “in a nightmare. Then I thought I had simply gone mad. Only later did I have a plan. I set out to ensure these things would not happen again.”
“So you helped Hitler?”
“No, Hitler was inevitable. He is the product of too many forces of history. He could not be stopped.
But ideally he could be used to stamp out Stalin and prevent Dresden and all the rest.”
There was a change in the sound of the crowd, a mummer of excited anticipation. “It is time, I think,”
the general said.
“The one thing I never told him about was this,” he patted the belt under his coat, “I always knew it would come to this.” The men turned and walked back up to the house.
The back of the house had been extended with a low stage, perhaps a hundred chairs on it faced a raised dais that held less than a dozen chairs and a simple podium decorated with a gold eagle clasping a swastika. Hermann worked his way up to the steps like a sleepwalker. He noticed his vision had become narrower, as if he was looking though a paper tube. The crowd sound became muted.
A drunken Luftwaffe general slapped Hermann on the back, his escort moved him away. Hermann climbed the steps.
Himmler walked up beside him, already his SS officers had formed cliques away from the men in grey uniforms. “A great day, Herr Doctor.”
“Much remains to be done,” Hermann felt oddly calm and gave a thin smile. The higher-ranking officers merited seats on the stage closer to the podium. At some unspoken signal, the crowd began to arrange itself.
“First the Italians, it will be just like France. Then we return to the British and Americans. This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end.”
Goering, in a pale-blue uniform, Speer and all the rest pulled themselves from their admirers and joined them up on the stage. A roar went up from the front of the house. Hitler had arrived. Hermann noticed for the first time two newsreel cameras on raised platforms in the sea of standlings.
Hitler came through the house, his perfectly-tailored pale grey uniform in sharp contrast to his red armband. He wore the ribbon of the iron cross, third class.
Hermann stood in front of his chair between Speer and Himmler and assumed something like a civilian position of attention. Hitler came down the line one by one shaking hands with a practiced motion.
“Doctor, you look like you have seen a ghost!” Hitler leaned a little too close to Hermann’s face. He sniffed, checking for excess drinking.
“An exciting day, mien Fuher.”
Hitler finished his greetings, turned on his heel and took his position to Herrman’s right front. With formality he grasped both sides of the podium.
“I am pleased to announce the Russian Provisional Committee has accepted our demands for a truce.
The fighting in the East shall stop at midnight tonight, Berlin time,” the crowd roared its approval. Stalin and his henchmen are dead! The stain of the Bolsheviks is finally expunged from the Earth. The people of the world owe us a great debt.”
Again, the crowd broke into thunderous applause. Hermann clapped his hands with all the rest. They felt tingly, as if they were shot full of some painkiller.
Hitler basked in the sound of the crowd, he let it sweep over him like the waves of an ocean. He looked serene and very pleased. His life’s work was done. “There is still work ahead,” he began again.
Hermann reached into his pants pocket and closed the contact that detonated his bomb.
Chapter 23
“How can we be sure?” Winston asked.
“We can’t be sure, not for a few days at least.” Roosevelt replied. “The situation is very confused. I still think one of our bombs got him.”
“In the long run, it doesn’t matter. The Germans are portraying it as a coup attempt by the SS. The Army has a firm hand on the radio stations and all the rest,” Tom replied.
“A done deal,” Winston agreed, “but now what?”
“A peace conference I suppose. The Germans will have to disgorge what they have taken. Free elections in the occupied territories, return to prewar frontiers.” FDR was still in his pajamas, “in any case, it is almost done in Europe, thank God.”
“The Pacific remains wide open.” Larry said quietly, “Ike has Japs up to hip level on Luzon.”
The President waved with a smile to the navy man. Bob explained, “The Japs are goners. Their fleet is mostly rusting on the bottom and they cannot build another. The home islands are cut off from all trade, that is a nice way to say they are staring starvation in the face. Besides, the Olympic invasion is scheduled to go in two weeks from now.”
“It is only a matter of time for the Japanese now. We just have to find a way to get to them with minimal loss of life.”
It was a typical military operation, a mass of confusion and inefficiency. First Marine Division embarked on a little fleet of landing ships accompanied by a half-dozen LSDs. Then they waited in the harbor for three days while Second Division loaded into their flotilla. The port facilities at Juno and Dutch Harbor combined Alaska simply could not accommodate all the ships at once.
That done, the landing forces left port to meet with the convoy of supply ships already waiting there.
When the bombardment group arrived, over two hundred ships turned west and headed due west to the Kuril Islands.
In the predawn hours of 6 July, 1943 one division each came ashore on Inturup and Kunshir, the northern and southernmost of the island chain. Both islands were undefended, almost uninhabited. Within three days, the Seabees had set up primitive landing strips for the fighters flying in from advanced bases in Alaska.
“The Home Islands have been violated.” The Army Minister said with disgust. “No amount of talk will change it.”
The Navy Minister replied, “We cannot protect every island. The Combined Fleet was severely damaged in the southern campaign.”
The Prime Minister was an Army General, “And how badly damaged admiral, your reports have been too detailed for an old man like me to understand.”
“One carrier is still operational, but in truth we lack the pilots we need for her. We have retained several cruisers for the defense of the main islands.”
“Cruisers? What of our line of battle?”
“On the bottom gentlemen, they along with most of the rest of our fleet. Our merchant navy has fared no better. We can not supply our troops in Malaya, the Philippines or elsewhere. Only in the Inland Sea can we move supplies freely.” The admiral hung his head in an exaggerated display of shame.
“Can the shipyards, can they replace our losses?”
“I advanced the construction of major fleet units to attack the Americans. Now are yards are mostly empty. We also lack trained sailors to man new ships.”
The Army Minister spoke again, “Also we lack the oil to sail any new ships, or for any other purpose, is that correct?”
“In truth no. The Admiralty stockpiled a good supply of bunker fuel before the war. This was to supply the fleet. Since the fleet no longer requires the fuel it is available for other uses.”
The Prime Minster spoke in a voice full of kindness, “You have done all that was required of you. No blame can be attached to you for these events. Others made policy, you simply did your best to implement it. If anything, your actions have spared us from even further harm.” His tone was so polite as to be a condescending insult. When the meeting broke up the Minister returned to his office and ended his shame forever.
Four cruisers, one of them not quite whole from an American bomb taken north of Luzon sailed from various ports and headed toward the Kurils. They gathered an escort of destroyers from each harbor they passed. Sailing at night and at full speed, they were halfway to their targets by daylight. Opposing them was the American Pacific Fleet. Not that that mattered directly.
By stacking the B-17s nose-to-tail on the taxiways, the Americans were able to put ninety of the aircraft up in sort order. They circled an imaginary
point south of their bases, forming three huge self-defending box formations.
“Last one,” the raid commander said on the intercom, “Let’s go.”
His pilot made a slight turn to port and watched his compass spin. “Off to see the wizard.”
Already the first twin-tailed Lightning were coming up from their rear to overtake them. In an hour a swam of the huge fighters would be well above and ahead of them. An hour after that they would be over the Japanese fleet and well within range of the enemy’s land-based fighters.
The raid commander selected his frequency for the entire formation. “Circle here,” he released a single green flare. His modified bomber lumbered on at 30,000 feet. Less than twenty minutes later he saw the flickering blip on his sea-scanning radar. Then he sighted the little fleet itself with his binoculars.
“Four heavies, twenty tin cans.” He looked through the nearly-clear skies and made his decision,
“Snipers in pairs, now.” He listened for the acknowledgement and waited for their arrival.
The first pair of bombers arrived at about the same time as the Zeros. The B-17s released their huge guided bombs, the bombardiers tacking the bright flare in the tail as they guided the warheads in. Both planes flew straight and level.
“Bring me some fighter cover back over the target,” the commander spoke quietly as one of the huge aircraft began to spiral into the sea. He could also see one of the cruisers make a quick turn to starboard.
Perhaps a hit on her steering gear.
He ordered the next set of bombers to stay close, his own ship went in with them, a violation of doctrine. His guns contributed to the defense of the two snipers. On paper the Zero was much inferior to the American fighters, but he discovered the speed of the Japanese plane was frightening when seen close up. Black bursts of flack began to blossom around him.
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