by Ward Wagher
The United States Navy had ships, submarines and aircraft patrolling as much of the west coast as practical. The goal was to locate the Japanese task force and meet it with whatever the Navy could scrape up, hopefully blunting the next attack that was surely coming. President Roosevelt had appointed Nimitz Commander-in-chief of the American Pacific Fleet shortly after Hawaii fell. So far all he had accomplished was reacting to repeated Japanese attacks on the west coast.
“Admiral, we have most of the inventory at sea right now,” said the rear admiral who served as the fleet intelligence officer. “If the Japs are out there, we will find them.”
“Not acceptable,” Nimitz snapped. “We had good intelligence when the task force left Japan. We should have found them long ago. I’m not blaming you, Admiral. But I am frustrated that the Nips are not cooperating. They have not cooperated since they started this lousy war.”
“Sooner or later we will catch them in a mistake, Sir.”
Nimitz shook his head. “When? In 1950? They are chopping us up piecemeal. I am amazed they have not invaded Australia. There is certainly nothing to stop them.”
The fleet G2 patiently watched Nimitz. When the CINCPAC became frustrated, he blew off steam by yelling a lot. The trick was to learn when Nimitz expected action on the part of the team, or otherwise wait for the storm clouds to clear.
“Ah, shoot, Dick!” Nimitz said. “I know we’re doing the best we can. I’m not yelling at you. But, the Nips are getting ready to hit us, and I am as sure as anything we will have to ride it out again. Lord, I would like to take the war to them for a change. Even the submarines have come up empty. I will be ever so glad when those U-Boats get here.”
The door to the room banged open and a Lieutenant-Commander staggered into the room, breathing hard.
“Sirs! Something big just blew up in the canal – the eastern locks. No details yet.”
Nimitz closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay, Commander. Thank you for coming in. That was the right thing to do. Please message General Stone and tell him I suggest going to full alert, if he hasn’t already done so. Suggest to him the Japs may be off his coast.”
“And that’s where they are, sure as God made little green apples,” the G2 said. “Crap!”
“What’s the most southerly of our task forces right now?” Nimitz asked.
“Seventy-One Zebra, Sir.”
“Hold them in place for now. But salvo all the subs in that direction.”
Nimitz looked over at Admiral Kerrigan, who commanded the submarine forces in the Pacific. “Sam, I’ll let you handle the dispositions, but this may be the only opportunity we have for a while. I think the canal is probably closed. And our U-Boats are still in the Med.”
“I understand, Sir. By your leave?”
Nimitz nodded. “By my leave. Get moving, Sam.”
CINCPAC turned and sat down at the table heavily. “All right, Gentlemen. Time to start hammering together our contingency plans. I don’t think Tojo has enough manpower to invade California, but for darn sure he has us locked out of the Pacific for the foreseeable future.”
§ § §
March 18, 1942; 9AM
Hotel Romano
Riva del Garda, Italy
The Captain from the Kriegsmarine, or German Navy, saluted sharply when he met Schloss. They stood in the hallway of the fourth floor of the hotel.
“Herr Reichschancellor, I am Captain Philipp Essen. I have with me fifty officers and ranks to provide protection.”
“And how did you manage to get here so quickly, Captain?”
“I am the second in command for the U-Boat operations in La Spezia. Admiral Becker ordered me here in response to a communication from the High Command.”
“Very good,” Schloss said. “They were quick off the mark in Berlin. I suppose you traveled all night, then, Captain?”
“We did, however it was on the train, so all of us got at least a bit of rest.”
“Very well. We are glad to see you. Please liaise with my remaining guards and with the Italian security. Do you need a briefing on the situation?”
“Excuse me one moment, Herr Reichschancellor.” He turned and pointed to a Lieutenant-Commander. “Introduce yourself to the senior guards and get yourselves integrated. I’m sure they will need some rest.”
“At once, Herr Captain.”
Essen turned back to Schloss. “Forgive me. Yes, I think I need a briefing. But I thought it was important to get our people in place.”
“Just so,” Schloss said. “I am working out of one of the guest rooms down the hall. Please make sure this door is guarded,” he said, pointing to the door he was standing next. “My wife is still sleeping.”
“Understood.” He pointed to two sailors. They quickly moved over next to the door.
Schloss walked down the hall to the second room and went in. Essen followed.
“Sir…. What happened?” Essen asked.
“How much do you know?”
“The communiqué from Berlin was maddeningly brief. Just that your party had been attacked and Mussolini was dead.”
“From what we can tell, and what the OVRA, uh the Italian secret service think, a group of Communist partisans thought this was a good opportunity to eliminate Mussolini. I was part of the bargain, I guess. We were dining when they came in to the hotel. The guards outside the room managed to whittle them down quite a bit. Apparently, they were a suicide group because they kept pushing. They managed to kill the guards in the dining room while losing most of the rest of their group. I shot the last attacker.”
“And they killed Il Duce?”
“Il Duce was on his feet with his pistol. I was under the table with my wife. He certainly saved our lives.”
“You are fortunate.”
Schloss shook his head. “We lost a lot of good people. And, unfortunately, the political situation here is going to be messy.”
“We should immediately begin planning your return to Berlin,” Essen said.
Schloss chewed on his lower lip. He tsked. “Ben Gurion is arriving today. I am not sure when I will have another opportunity to speak with him. I think we need to meet.”
“Very well,” the captain said. “I do not think we will be prepared to travel until tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.”
“We may very well want to remain until Rainer can get reinforcements down here. You must have stripped your garrison in La Spezia bare.”
Essen nodded. “They will be watch and watch until we return, but the coverage is adequate. The Admiral felt that it was much more important to make sure you were adequately covered.”
Schloss rolled his tongue around in his cheek. “I am not disposed to complain, Captain.”
Essen spun around when there was a knock at the door. The corporal, who manned the radio stuck his head in.
“I am very sorry to interrupt, Herr Reichschancellor, but I have an urgent military bulletin.”
“Now what?” Schloss said as he held out his hand.
He quickly scanned the typed message, turned, and walked over where he sat on the corner of the table he used as a desk.
“Is it something I need to know, Herr Reichschancellor?” Essen asked.
Schloss shook his head. “Not immediately regarding our situation here. However, it does affect your operations in La Spezia. It seems an ammunition ship blew up in the Panama Canal. The canal is closed indefinitely.”
“And we have the American crews at La Spezia training to take the U-Boats to the Pacific.”
“Right. This is going to change a lot of peoples’ plans, I think,” Schloss said.
He turned to the radio operator. “Do you have your notebook?”
“Of course, Sir.”
“Please reply with the following message: I acknowledge the message. Secondly, Captain Essen has arrived and the situation here is under control. I will plan to send further messages as the day goes on. Ask Rainer if the daily courier is on his way down here. And that sh
ould do it. Please put the message together and let me look at it before you send it.”
The operator quickly scribbled his notes on the clipboard. “At once, Herr Reichschancellor.”
After the man left, Schloss turned to the Captain.
“Captain Essen, thank you again for getting here so quickly. Please plan on meeting again with me before dinner tonight. Tell me your opinions on what you observed today. I am not asking you to conduct the investigation. OVRA is doing that. And I’m sure Rainer’s people will get involved. But I would appreciate anything the Italians pass along to you, as well as your observations.”
“Of course, Herr Reichschancellor,” Essen said. “With your permission?”
Schloss nodded. “Thank you again for coming, Captain.”
Essen came to attention and clicked his heels together. After that he marched out of the room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
March 18, 1942; 8AM
Hotel Romano
Riva del Garda, Italy
“So good of you to travel all this way so we could meet,” Heinrich Schloss said.
“No, Sir. I was honored to receive the invitation,” David Ben Gurion said. “I am just sorry for the events of the past few days here. I am surprised you wanted to continue your schedule.”
Schloss and Gisela sat across the table from the Jewish man and his wife. They were in the hotel room that Schloss used as an office during their stay in Riva del Garda. Before them on the table was a generous, if kosher breakfast. The hotel was accustomed to Jewish guests and the staff had quickly accommodated Ben Gurion’s needs.
“I felt it was important to meet with you,” Schloss said. “We have received reports that Menachem Begin is getting increasingly uncooperative. I wanted to gain your insight into the man.”
Ben Gurion shook his head sadly. “Ach. Menachem and I do not differ in our goals, only in our methods. The Moslems are increasingly militant and he thinks the only way to solve that problem is to completely break their will.”
“And that means many of them will die.”
“I agree,” Ben Gurion said. “I do not believe we will be able to formally establish our nation without a war with the surrounding peoples. However, having seen attempted genocide up close, I do not want to be guilty of something like that.” He paused. “No offense.”
Schloss smiled. “And none taken. I have myself wondered how we can help the Jews to build a nation without involving ourselves in a general war in the Middle East. Let me correct that. Another general war in the Middle East.”
“And that is the conundrum, is it not?”
Gisela tapped her index finger on the table. “I wonder if we might look at this from another perspective. What is your strategy for achieving statehood?”
He looked over at his wife, and then back to Gisela. “My sources in the British group in Palestine have told me the British are pulling out.”
Schloss felt his eyebrows raising. “Is that so? How reliable is that information, David?”
Ben Gurion pursed his lips in thought. He prolonged the moment with a sip of tea. “The question, I assume, is whether the British are really planning to leave. The people I have in their offices are reliable sources of information. I talk to the local Moslem leaders regularly. We had hoped for a mutual accommodation, although the large influx of my people is straining that.”
“Can the land support the addition of hundreds of thousands of Jews?” Gisela asked.
“I believe it can,” he replied. “We have set up many collective farms, our kibbutzim, and are making the desert bloom. It will not be easy, but I believe we can live in harmony with our Moslem neighbors. It is the outsiders who come in to stir up trouble.”
“But you have your own insiders who want to stir up trouble as well,” Schloss said.
“Ahh yes. Menachem. He has collected a group of those likeminded into his organization, the Irgun. They are becoming more militant, rather than less.”
“This makes me very nervous,” Schloss said. The Begin of this world sounded very much like the one he knew about in the old reality. “I know I do not have a lot of leverage, but you must figure out a way to control him. I do not think the Middle East will ever settle down completely, but I could live with the current low level of strife.”
“What is it you wish, then?” Ben Gurion asked.
“Germany has two… let us call them strategic imperatives in the Middle East. The first is to ensure a safe homeland for the Jews. I’m not sure how much you are aware of this, but Hitler and Himmler were finalizing plans to build great factories dedicated to the destruction of the Jews in Europe. They would have killed millions. My interest, Germany’s interest, is to prevent something like that from happening.”
Ben Gurion toyed with the food on his plate. He tapped it with his fork. “One hears things. I know life was difficult in Germany. But it is hard to believe civilized people would do something like that.”
“I do not know how many people the Nazis murdered before we got this stopped, but it could well have been tens of thousands. You understand why your security in Palestine is important to me.”
Ben Gurion laid his fork on the plate. “I suppose you have convinced me, Herr Reichschancellor. I have lost my appetite.”
His wife reached over and put her hand on his arm.
“But, you understand the urgency of what we have done in organizing the sea lift? I could not stop the killing unless there was a viable alternative. The poison had spread too far into the body of the nation. The people are now convinced that they are doing the Jews a kindness by uprooting them and sending them to Palestine. You have no idea how much I regret the cruelty of that move.”
Ben Gurion leaned forward and laid his hand on Schloss’s. “Herr Reichschancellor… Herr Schloss. We will honor you as one of the fathers of our nation. Are you a Christian, Herr Schloss?”
“What? No. Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“I do not worship a god, either. But somehow, I believe fate, or maybe God placed you in a position to save our race and to establish our nation. If what you said was true, you indeed saved our people.”
Mein Gott! How can he know that? Schloss thought.
Schloss blushed. Gisela leaned against him and smiled at him. “You see, Hennie, people do have a high opinion of you.”
“I just seem to skate from one disaster to the next.”
Ben Gurion laughed. “And that is all any of us can do. Pardon me for asking, but what was your second strategic imperative?”
“Oil,” Schloss said. And thank God, he changed the subject.
“There is no oil to speak of in Palestine.”
“No, David. But there is an abundance of the stuff in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf. We are working to complete the last stretch of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway so that we can transport oil in the quantities our industry needs. We also want to build a road from Tel Aviv to Baghdad across the Trans-Jordan. That will give us a second route. It would also keep Palestine supplied with oil. You understand why we do not need to get the Moslems any more excited than necessary.”
“I understand,” the Jew said. “You are walking a tight rope.”
“Understand this,” Schloss said, “I view the welfare of the Jews in Palestine as our primary concern. The oil is important, even critical. If we cannot bring this war with the English to a quick conclusion, that oil will mean the difference between victory and defeat.”
“The British have even less oil than Germany,” he said.
Schloss shrugged. “The Americans are supplying them with as much as they can use. It doesn’t matter whether they have any or not.”
“Cannot the Americans also supply Germany?”
“Not too many months ago, we came within a hair’s breadth of getting into a shooting war with the Americans. Things have eased enough that they are purchasing U-Boats from us, but I would not want to depend upon that source for the long term. No, we need to develop resources that we can
control.”
“Will you march on Iraq, then?” Ben Gurion asked.
“Only if necessary. For the moment, the King of Iraq is being the soul of cooperation. I would prefer to keep things that way.”
“What can we do to help?”
“Just keep Begin and his minions under control. By any means necessary.”
“You would have us kill our fellow countrymen, Herr Schloss?”
“I will not say that,” Schloss said. “We will not do it. I refuse to allow Germany to be a party to killing more Jews. But you must find a way to keep him from those incendiary actions. It would benefit no one.”
“I understand, Herr Schloss,” Ben Gurion said quietly. “I will do everything possible to control him. You have my word.”
“That is all I can ask,” Schloss said. He stopped to take another bite of his breakfast. “And we have allowed our food to cool. Now. Tell me. How do you plan to organize things in Palestine? And with the English leaving, can you control things?”
The conversation continued for the morning as the two leaders worked on ways to maintain the uneasy equilibrium in Palestine. Gisela carried on a side-conversation with Paula Ben Gurion, and the two women charmed each other. It seemed to Schloss that she made friends wherever she went.
§ § §
March 18, 1942; 8AM
German U-Boat pens
La Spezia, Italy
Captain Simon Magruder of the United States Navy looked around the table at his assembled team.
“Gentleman, as of this morning we have completed the refurbishment and sea trials of the U-Boats. Let me take a moment to thank you for your hard work. We accomplished our job in record time and with a scratch crew. The fit reps will reflect your success. Not only have we helped our nation in a time of great need, but I think each of you will find your careers suitably enhanced.”
He briefly pondered how he would phrase the wording on the Fitness Reports to advance the careers of the officers and sailors under his command.