“Listen, I know of a hideout,” Max said. “It’s on your way west. In a remote valley, not far from here. The very villa I told you of. I’m sure the American intelligence men are long gone. I can mark it on my map.”
“You need your map.”
“Not anymore. Not where I’m going. Just be careful, all right? Make sure everyone’s gone. Take the cellar. There’s a working oven down there. A friend of mine died there. You might have to bury him.” Max folded his GI gear in a pile and placed it before the two. “Now. Here. Take what you like. There’s a compass in there. The map.”
“Much obliged,” the small one said, “much obliged.”
The big one nodded along, with difficulty, as if trying to swallow.
Max pulled on the denim jacket. It smelled like grimy chicken feathers, and chicken shit.
Max swore that if he survived this, he’d never take a nature hike as long as he lived. He trudged along another forest road lined with snow banks and stayed in the open, always out on the roads, alone. Let everyone see him. No soldier on the run or undercover would try such a stunt, only a sad and confused farmer. Soldiers hidden in foxholes and machine gun nests were probably watching him the whole way.
An American armored car sat to one side of the road, firing into the woods at random. GIs stood around the armored car, laughing and passing a canteen. Max kept to the middle of the road, in full view, slogging through the mud that disguised his GI-issue boots, the only American item left on him. A couple GIs glanced his way. He kept his head down.
“Hey straggler,” one of them said.
Max cracked a submissive smile, threw up his hands. “I no Engleesch, Joe,” he babbled in his thickest Hollywood-German accent. He shuffled past and they let him.
The distant thunder of battle—of the fierce American counterattacks—roared on as it had for hours. The trees were behind Max and he hit open plain, snowy white with bulges that were wrecked tanks, jeeps, bodies. He passed through one last small Belgian town and reached an American checkpoint, at a river. Young GIs in new gear were manning a temporary pontoon bridge. Beyond loomed the open frontier, still void of trees. Rising billows of black smoke lined the farthest horizon, rising up like so many clawed fingers and intertwining high in the sky to create one dense, heavy cloud of blackness. A city. It might be Cologne, Max thought.
He approached with his shoulders sagging, a sick frown on his face. A man in a black overcoat stood with the GIs—a town official, Max guessed. “Kind sir, might you please let me pass?” he said, imitating Old Henry’s Belgian German. “Look at me. All I have is gone. Destroyed. I hope to find my kin. They’re that way, across that very river, far to the east.”
The town official matched Max’s frown. The man smelled sweet, like a cheap hair tonic. He translated in Queen’s English for the lead GI, a pale corporal chewing gum. The official added:
“He wants to go into Germany. He’s mad, I say.”
“Poor SOB wants to head straight into hell, fine with me,” the GI said. He patted Max down, showed him a smile, and pushed him out onto the wobbly floating bridge.
Author’s Note
The false flag special mission depicted in The Losing Role is based on an actual operation Hitler devised for his surprise Ardennes Offensive of late 1944 that launched the Battle of the Bulge. Under the code name Greif, German soldiers who could speak English were trained and equipped to impersonate American units behind the enemy lines, where they would wreak havoc and secure depots and bridges in support of the main offensive. The German offensive caught American troops resting in Belgium’s forested Ardennes region completely off guard, and in the bloody chaos the rumor spread that the American impersonators were crack enemy terrorists out to kidnap or kill US General Eisenhower, commander of the Allied Forces. The lore of German agents impersonating American soldiers reemerged in films, fiction, and even history books as a frightening and deadly ploy carried out with skill and cunning. The commander, SS Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny (who has a brief cameo in The Losing Role), already had a daredevil’s reputation that didn’t temper the legend.
The reality was altogether different. The Germans hastily put together units of English-speaking soldiers using whatever troops and materiel they could gather. The men came from all branches of the German military and possibly included civilians. The ones who spoke English best had lived in America or Britain, but these numbered very few. Many of the English speakers had been sailors and naive students before conscription and were far from ideal soldiers let alone crack terrorists. One, Otto Struller, had been a professional ballet dancer, and it can be supposed that some had occupations such as waiter or writer. Some appear to have been misled about the mission and couldn’t back out. At least one was shot for a breach of secrecy. The planning and training were slapdash, the mission desperate, its chances slim.
As part of Operation Greif, Skorzeny and his officers placed the better English speakers into a special commando unit, Einheit Stielau. They were sent out in captured American jeeps to infiltrate the American lines, and managed to confuse (already bewildered) American troops by switching signs, passing along bogus information and committing sabotage. The Americans captured some of the Stielau men and promptly shot them by firing squad, including Struller. As the main German offensive sputtered, Skorzeny called off Operation Greif and the false flag infiltrators fell back to join regular units. If anything, the commando mission helped the Americans, since the wild rumors about cutthroat Germans in GI uniform gunning for Eisenhower only served to keep American counterintelligence alert and strengthen the troops’ rattled resolve.
In 1947, the Allies’ Dachau Trials were to make an example of the infamous Skorzeny and his officers for running a villainous ruse that ran counter to the so-called rules of war, but the defense brought in Allied officers who had to admit they’d been running similar special missions all along. Skorzeny and all defendants were acquitted.
My research included solid sources in English and German, but I left details about military strategy, top leaders’ decisions and so forth to historians. My version of this story remains true to overall events, though I changed or invented some aspects for fiction’s sake. Max Kaspar is a fictitious character, after all, part of a fictional commando team that infiltrated American lines in a US jeep disguised as American soldiers. Whether in fiction or reality, surely not all the false flag infiltrators like Max were accounted for. One imagines a good smart one or two disappeared into the night and got as far away from war and tyranny as they dared. I attempted, with respect for the history and with some dark humor, to tell the story of one of these inspired and probably doomed dreamers.
—Steve Anderson, September 2011 (revised)
Suggested Reading
Those looking to find out more about the actual events fictionalized in The Losing Role will find a scarce but insightful mix of personal and historical accounts.
Heinz Rohde, a young Luftwaffe sergeant in 1944, was given the identity of US Army Sergeant Morris Woodahl and sent over the front lines as an Operation Greif commando. Soon after the war he dared speak about his experiences in the German news magazine Der Spiegel (“Mit Shakespeare-Englisch,” January 10, 1951). The article is in German but parts of it later appear translated in English-language histories, including those of Schadewitz and Pallud below.
In 1950, Otto Skorzeny wrote about leading Operation Greif in Skorzeny’s Secret Missions. Other memoirs followed. Writers of history have found Skorzeny’s accounts useful for their first-hand view, while recognizing cases where he attempts to aggrandize or displace blame.
Greif commando Fritz Christ infiltrated the American lines as US First Lieutenant Charlie Smith, but a German fighter plane soon strafed his commando team’s American vehicle and he barely escaped. He finally spoke about it sixty years later in Stern magazine (“Operation Eisenhower,” April 20, 2004). The Stern article is also in German, but a condensed English version in The Daily Telegraph (“Revealed:
Farce of Plot to Kidnap Eisenhower,” May 2, 2004) captures the absurdity.
Among the history books, the most in-depth account remains Michael Schadewitz’s The Meuse First and Then Antwerp: Some Aspects of Hitler’s Offensive in the Ardennes (1999). Originally published in German and expanded for the English version, it includes interviews from intelligence reports and other sources, including Heinz Rohde. Schadewitz’s effort easily eclipses others in its thoroughness.
Jean-Paul Pallud’s Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now (1999) includes substantial description of Operation Greif and Einheit Stielau and has photographs comparing wartime photos with those of their current-day locations. Heinz Rohde also appears here.
Many overall histories of the Battle of the Bulge include brief mention of Operation Greif. Two that explore the details are Charles Whiting’s The Ghost Front (2002), and Gerald Astor’s A Blood-Dimmed Tide (1993).
I also tell this fragmented true story in the brief e-book, Sitting Ducks (2011).
About the Author
Steve Anderson is the author of the Kaspar Brothers series, Under False Flags: A Novel, and other works centered on WWII and its aftermath. In The Other Oregon: A Thriller, he writes about his home state. Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in Munich, Germany, and has written narrative nonfiction, short stories and screenplays. He is also a literary translator of German. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
www.stephenfanderson.com
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Also by Steve Anderson
Lost Kin: A Novel (Kaspar Brothers #3)
Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2)
Under False Flags: A Novel
The Other Oregon: A Thriller
Double-Edged Sword
Sitting Ducks
About Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2):
Can a lone American captain rescue justice in war-torn Germany?
It’s May 1945, the war’s just over, and Harry Kaspar, an American captain in Germany, is about to take a new posting in the US occupation—running a Bavarian town named Heimgau. When Harry loses the command to Major Membre, he’ll do almost anything to win the job back.
When Harry discovers a horrific scene—three German men tortured and murdered—he reckons that solving the crime could teach the conquered townspeople about American justice, as well as help him reclaim that better posting. The only problem is that Harry’s quest for the real killer will lead him straight back to his commander, Membre, and eventually to his mentor, a can-do rebel US colonel named Spanner. Spanner is a gangster run rampant, plundering the war-torn land for all its grim worth.
Harry’s lover, Katarina, a gutsy German actress, helps him realize he must fight back. Recognizing that absolute power corrupted and then destroyed Major Membre and Colonel Spanner, Harry takes it upon himself to overcome any obstacle that gets in his way and set a new American example by which a terrorized town and a mix of battered peoples can rise up from the ashes of a brutal, demoralizing war.
Excerpt from Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945:
ONE
I should’ve been more scared, but the truth was I had never felt more ready and raring to go. I was heading deeper into the heartland of our bitter enemy. I drove this country route all alone, my jeep so new I could smell the tires. The sun rose above the birch trees lining the road, so I dropped the canvas top. I blitzed on past farms and villages. On the way I saw no German locals, no stray soldiers looking to surrender. They would see me soon enough. Within minutes, I’d be running a whole Bavarian town on my own.
I passed through a valley with fields of young green wheat. I’d never seen a sky so blue, like some vast, upside-down ceramic bowl of flawless azure all around me. The road smoothed out. I knew I was close. I slid on my helmet for effect and unclasped my holster, though I wouldn’t need a weapon. My olive green American uniform would do the work. I might even be the first Ami most of these people ever saw (Ami meant Amerikaner, the German version of Yank). We were something new, all right. We called it US Military Government, MG for short. I was MG for a burg called Heimgau. I didn’t have a staff yet, but Munich MG had told me to get in there, make contact and get the place running again.
In Heimgau, the US Occupation was going to be yours truly. As I drove on, the thought of me as liberator and likely mentor gave me a surge of warmth that not even this early May sun could match. Self-support was our goal for these people, and I’d get them off rations even if the Bürgermeister had to work the fields himself. One day I could stage an American-style mock election, show them the ropes of a working democracy. This was going to be the Germans’ New Deal and I would bring it to them. Call it idealistic, quixotic even. I didn’t care. Not after so many had died.
A vista of red roofs appeared, a steeple shooting up from the middle of it. I passed timber-framed houses, then blocks of stone buildings appeared and I was turning corners, my tires thumping on cobblestone. Second stories still had white linens hanging out as flags of surrender for US combat troops that had never come. US Tenth Armored had bypassed this whole county as it headed south into Austria. Today was May 8. The Unconditional Surrender was now official, but the war’s long, unruly cessation had left remote areas like this hanging for days, weeks even.
I entered the old city gate and drove the Ludwigstrasse to the Domplatz—Cathedral Square. Still, I saw no people. What sort of square didn’t have locals? This place was like a ghost town. Were they really that spooked? Even the usual stern faces would do.
The streets narrowed. I gave the jeep taps of gas, coasting along. On the Stefansplatz I stopped before a rose-colored building with arches and high gables. Here was City Hall. I stood in the jeep, leaned on the windshield frame, and waited because someone had to be watching. And I had to shake my head at the irony—even disorder was orderly here.
I removed my helmet, slid on my flyboy sunglasses, and lit up a Lucky Strike. Then, the people started showing. Locals. Heimgauers. They kept their distance. Men crouched behind carts and barrels. Women stood behind a fountain, hugging baskets and purses. Boys and girls crammed back in an alley, the group tight like a spring ready to bolt. Others watched from windows, from behind barely parted curtains. Obedient was one thing, but why the meek act, folks? I fought the urge to smile, to pass out smokes and Hershey’s bars, and had to remind myself it was these very people who had helped cause so much horror in the world.
I dropped back down in my seat and steered the jeep into the City Hall courtyard.
A large sign stood propped against a wall:
US MILITARY GOVERNMENT HEADQUARTERS
What? How did that get there? But there it was, with MG-issue black-on-white stencil, ready to be hung front and center. A US Army command car and a jeep were parked here too.
My stomach had tightened up. I fought the shock with my head, with reason. Okay, so I wasn’t the first man in. No big deal. A few lieutenants and corporals were here sitting on their hands waiting for me, their commanding officer. I got out, pocketed my flyboys, brushed the road dust off my Ike jacket, and lit another Lucky but then stomped on it, deciding that smoking was too casual for a new CO.
I grabbed my brown leather briefcase and chromium thermos and marched on in. The hallways were vacant, silent. More signs stood waiting to be hung. Off Limits. Authorized MG Personnel Only. English is the Official Administrative Language of US Military Government. Was this some kind of prank? Some top-secret maneuver? The town mayor’s office was on the third floor. There I found a large white plaque on the door:
MAJOR ROBERTSON MEMBRE
MILITARY GOVERNMENT COMMANDER,
LK HEIMGAU
Who? I was CO. Munich sent me here. Surely, this was a case of misdirected orders. I’d heard of detachments landing in the wrong town, towns having the same name. That was it, I told myself. This was just a matter of two sensible MG Joes hashing it out. Taking a
deep breath, I moved to knock—
A booming voice sounded from behind the door: “Who’s there? Come in before I give you one merry wrath of hell!”
In I went. A major stood before a grand desk, this Major Robertson Membre no doubt. I remembered to salute though I hadn’t done it in a while, riding so close to the front.
“The signs out there. Did you see them? They’re important,” the major said. His voice lowered to a colorless Midwest tone. “The signs instruct, and signs clarify, and they leave no doubt.”
“Yes, sir.”
His face was handsome in a mild and sunny way—pink skin, plump cheeks, a mop of thick blond hair. Yet his tie was high and tight at his fleshy neck and his uniform working overtime to hold in heavy shoulders and a pronounced paunch, an imposing body but one that lacked muscle. This was a man of thirty-five in the body of a giant twelve-year-old. In this spacious mayor’s suite, he looked out of place as if he’d locked himself in his father’s office and refused to leave.
“At ease.” Membre peered at my trousers. That morning, for my big entrance, I’d made sure my pleats were crisp. “You always dress so spit-and-polish?” the major said.
“I try to, Major . . .” I wasn’t sure how to pronounce the man’s name, I realized. Maybe it was “Mombra,” or “Membree”? The last thing I needed was to sound un-American.
“It’s pronounced ‘Member.’ Major Robertson Membre.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Losing Role Page 22