by Scott Palter
Fermi had come to this quaint college town to see Albert Einstein. Einstein was not precisely at Princeton. He was a bit too Jewish for that storied school’s taste. Instead he was employed at the ‘Institute for Advanced Study’, which for the nonce was co-located in the Princeton Physics Department building.
Princeton was part of something called the ‘Ivy League’. It was in part an athletic union, mostly for upper-class sports like rowing. It was in equal part a grouping of the most venerable American universities, all except Cornell dating from pre-colonial days. Mostly, it was where old money East Coast white Protestants (and those of the upper middle classes seeking to ape them) sent their sons. Here these young men could spend four years getting inculcated with the proper manners and making lifetime social contacts. Yet this ‘Ivy League’ did not include a second group of schools, such as Amherst and Williams, who would seem to fit the profile; but included Columbia, which clearly did not.
Fermi had chosen Columbia because of this. It was nestled in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. By Ivy League standards it was too cosmopolitan, too Jewish, too Italian, too Marxist, too avant garde. It was everything Fermi and his Jewish wife wished to preserve of their Europe when Il Duce’s race laws drove them into exile. Why Einstein had chosen to isolate himself in the exact opposite way, to Princeton, was an abiding mystery to Fermi and his set of Euro expats. But Einstein had the name known to the power brokers in the US Government. He was the man that was needed for this crisis.
After the usual pleasantries at the station, and again on reaching the Institute offices, the two men found themselves politely left alone in a well-appointed conference room. Fermi got right to the point. “I’ve had a visitation from Italy. It’s official now. The Nazis are going for the atomic bomb.”
“Might you be so kind as to humor me with details, before pronouncing the conclusion?” Einstein had already sent one letter to FDR on this matter. Advocating for a weapon injured Einstein’s pacifist conscience. He needed real data, to consider involving himself again.
Fermi was already out of his chair pacing. “They tried to recruit me to come back. They are creating a new institute to study nuclear physics. It’s to be at Salo up in the lake country, near the Alps. Named CERN or some such bureaucratic drivel. The recruiters made big promises on revoking the race laws where applicable. Obviously the revocation applies to Italy and Switzerland, not the German Reich. They are offering Swiss passports for those that haven’t gotten US ones. So consular protection. Swore up and down that it’s not a weapons program. Some idiocy about electrical power generation. But a big research institute in Italy and a second under Heisenberg in Germany. Near unlimited budgets. What else could it be except a bomb project? You saw what they did to London. Imagine an atomic bomb used instead. The only way to defend against this is to have a bomb and threaten Berlin.”
“So they admit nuclear, and you intuit bomb. Why not power plants?”
“How would you justify such grand expenditures in wartime except for a bomb? Why wouldn’t they just build more coal plants? Europe has enough coal. It has to be a bomb.”
Einstein didn’t know the economics of coal plants, coal mining, the transportation of coal. He did know Europe lacked oil to run power plants based on that. It also seemed not to have the hydroelectric possibilities of the US West. It would take discussion long into the night, but Fermi left with the great man’s signature on a letter to circulate.
0800 local; 0600 CET
5 October 1940
Train from Palestine to Egypt
The train had arrived in Palestine packed like a sardine tin. The two Palestinian Jews had been waiting on the platform for the unloading. The ticket seller had warned them that, as almost no one was going to Egypt given the current situation, the train reversed course back almost as soon as it emptied out. They were no longer even cleaning it before the return to Egypt.
The middle-aged woman was in charge. Golda Wittson, or Meir as she preferred to be called, was a rising official in the Palestinian Jewish Labor Zionist political hierarchy. As this trip needed her to use her American passport in the manner of a magic talisman, she was temporarily back to being Wittson. She resented having this young man attached to her as an aide. The implication was that a woman needed a bodyguard of some kind. She regarded herself as quite capable on her own. She was also aware that the young man was under suspicion of collaboration during his British captivity. He had been regarded as promising before that, so this in a sense marked his first step towards possible rehabilitation. She saw no reason why she should carry that burden. She was a modern, liberated woman. What need had she of either a male protector or a political black sheep?
The railway carriage was deserted. This made quiet conversation in Hebrew fairly safe as it was unlikely the Arab conductor spoke it fluently, should he return. “Boy, I may be stuck with you but stay out of my way. You don’t talk in meetings. You don’t know enough and what’s worse, no one knows you.”
Moishe Dayan was 25, scarcely a boy. “So why have me along at all?” Dayan knew more than he would let on to this apparatchik. The stories of how the British at the top had banned Jewish escape across Iraq, and how the New Zealanders had leaked the decision while announcing they would refuse to enforce it, were spreading rapidly. The New Zealand general had Jewish friends in Palestine. Enough of his men had acquired Jewish girlfriends. Dayan was sure there was more, and was equally sure this office wallah wouldn’t tell him. “Forget what Tel Aviv ordered. When we reach Egypt, let’s split up. You do the political business and keep whatever deep secrets you would prefer I didn’t hear. I’ll try to find Wingate and our two brigades, attempt to get a realistic appraisal of the current military situation.” Even if he couldn’t find Wingate, there would be staff officers of his who knew Dayan from their campaigning days together in Palestine in the 30’s.
Meir argued for form’s sake but didn’t try very hard. Explaining what had been learned from the meeting in Istanbul would be hard enough without this Haganah officer’s presence. Ben Gurion believed the tale of Axis partition of Palestine. He’d sent a delegation to Rome to try to make contact with the new overlords. Meir was less sure that trusting Fascists, much less Nazis, was wise. She gave her attention to how to convey the needed decisions to the Egyptian Jewish community without quite admitting to collaboration with Britain’s enemies, with people who until now were also the sworn enemies of all Jews. Dayan was content to leave her alone. He was studying the terrain along the rail line. If a political deal wasn’t reached, he might be leading troops here.
1300 hours local; 1200 hours CET
5 October 1940
Kampfgruppe Jodl artillery positions to the rear of Steiner’s division, southwest of Ruweisat Ridge
The artillery duel was in full-throated concert. Felix Steiner’s artillery was working over the British front lines. A few British guns were replying. The British were short of field guns, and reticent on using them in daylight for fear of air attack. Jodl’s second 10.5 cm Battalion was doing counter-battery. It had only recently arrived. The General was putting the Battalion through its paces to see the training level. He had been assured it was a first-rate unit. He had no trust in OKH. Too much bad blood from when he had been at OKW.
Observing Jodl’s actions was his Corps Commander, von Manstein. “General Jodl, are you satisfied with this Battalion?”
Jodl chose his words carefully. “Corps Commander, it seems adequate. On par with the original one that was sent. As ammunition resupply via Mersa Matruh is more than sufficient, I can alternate them in action, allowing a workup to my standards by the time we jump off. I’m holding the 17 cm battalion in Italy, to prioritize ammunition shipments instead. The big guns are not very useful offroad, so best to leave those for Palestine. This battlefield only has one real road. It is at the wrong end of the line for our attack plan.”
“What do you propose to do with your Malta regiment?” Von Manstein had been gifted with thes
e two Battalions. He couldn’t see the function of motorized machine-guns or light mortars. Jodl was the artillerist.
“I had presumed I would gift this regiment to Steiner. Other than the weapons being airtransportable, it’s a marginal formation. Steiner has a grab bag of a division. This just adds to his firepower.” Jodl mentally thanked God he had gotten the abysmal 50mm mortars replaced with French 60mm ones. The German 50mm was near useless. The French 60mm was quite good, and had proven so on Malta. “The attack date is still 30 October?”
“Take that date as indicative rather than firm. We won’t do a final plan until later in the month. We see no reason we cannot breach this British line at any time of our choosing. Issue is what happens next. We anticipate needing a few more weeks of reinforcement.” Von Manstein was mentally congratulating himself on his decision to salvage Jodl from the First Mountain Division debacle in the runup to the Malta Operation.
The British guns had ceased firing. The German howitzers had done likewise. Jodl waited for von Manstein to end his visit so the after-action critique could begin. Kampfgruppe Jodl would do its part in the coming victory.
2000 hours local; 1900 hours CET
5 October 1940
Joey’s workshop in Brigade Strauss area, to the rear of Italian lines near the coastal highway
Clara’s arranging a sit-down meal so the repair crews never had to leave the workshops, had evolved into a de facto second mess hall for dinners. Paul’s brother Peter took his meals there. Their father Isaak did as well. So did the adopted Uncle Ivan. This led their cousin Greta to do so. Greta meant Klaus. Klaus would bring along Peiper. Mohnke was still not well enough to take part.
Mary Collins was needed running the main mess tent, but didn’t want to lose the connection to her protector and future employer, Frau Steiner. So she arranged for her son Bain to help Clara’s girls bring dinner over each night, then remain to ‘assist’. Bain acted as server but also kept his ears open. The boy had a natural flair for languages. He hadn’t known one hundred words of German when the Betar girls had recruited his family. The initial communication had been in very basic Italian and even more primitive English. By now he was functional in German and Yiddish on a street level, and developing a bit of fluidity with Magyar.
Tonight Lieutenant Colonel Di Salo chose to attend. He had warned his mistress Coxita to be on best behavior. He enjoyed her fiery personality and reveled in dominating such a strong, difficult woman. He also knew her for the prime bitch she could be with other women, especially those she regarded as socially beneath her. Her dogmatic Stalinism was real, but was an outer layer to a condescending, spoiled, middle-class princess. Still, he enjoyed showing her off as a trophy to the other officers.
The heat was stifling even this late in the day. The flies were annoying, but the officers ‘table’ was in a screened office area that limited the profusion of flying bugs. Besides, at this point everyone was accustomed to the pests. The actual meal was a pleasant mild curry, with pasta instead of rice. Coxita started to make a cat comment about that being an absurd combination. Before he could stifle her, the German Communist woman, this Clara, politely put his companion in her place, without even acknowledging the original comment. Instead she told Bain to thank his mother for the intelligent mixture of what was available. She put this in Communist populist terms, making it an issue of working-class adaption to the idiot capitalist war. Coxita caught her retort, and instead seconded Clara. Di Salo marked this. These female politics were worth exploring at some point. Perhaps Coxita was finally starting to grow up a bit. Preoccupied with this, he realized he was missing the male conversation, picking up something Piper was saying in midsentence.
“ – doesn’t quite work. The idea is right. We could have used the flame option as close defense in the engagement at the Three Crosses. But – ”
Joey was clearly exasperated. “Yeah, boss, I hear you.” Joey’s German was neither especially grammatical nor really fluent, but he was able by now to get key points across. “It needs a better workshop and more time. I must redesign the parts, not just shove the infantry flamethrower into the – ” He caught himself for a minute. He was fishing for a word. “Damn it. The things you use are not really tank or armored car. What idiot French-ass pirate designed the damned thing? Cavalry tank? What the fuck is that?”
Di Salo put up a hand to get the men’s attention. “Are you trying to make a tank with a viable flame thrower as a weapon?” He paused to see the nods. “Gentleman, Italy has whole parking lots full of them. We built them. They work for trench war, but no one saw any use for them here. The range of the flame is too short by mobile battle standards. Would you like half a dozen?”
There followed a most pleasant half hour of detailed discussion on the technical aspects, after which Di Salo promised to get eight or so as soon as possible. He suggested that Brigade Commander Strauss be enlisted to make the request through German channels as well. These Germans had found Di Salo a few real tanks. Hospitality should flow both ways. Besides, the Tenente Colonello was a patriot. It would be good propaganda for German troops to be seen using Italian weapons.
0300 hours Pacific Daylight Time; 1100 CET
6 October 1940
A diner in Bakersfield, California
It had taken days to get here. With the Communist Party outlawed, Hoover’s FBI had had a field day rounding up Communist officials and big name sympathizers. The wide net had angered many leftist supporters of the New Deal, pleased many devoted followers of Lindbergh (who would never vote for FDR anyway) … and totally failed to bag Harry Bridges, the head of the dockworkers and the ringleader of the guerrilla attacks on trucks and railways bringing goods to the West Coast ports. This in turn brought escalating pressures on the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau’s LA field office to produce results or be transferred to North Dakota.
This malign possible fate in turn led to a senior minion of the LA office dressing down from the normal Hoover G-Man uniform. Some places, you didn’t wear a business suit and snappy fedora. Utilizing a movie-business intermediary, a meeting had been arranged with a particular Trotskyite man of the demimonde. The man was not precisely a criminal or a full-time revolutionary. He was a man of shadows, with a revolutionary past and particular sympathies. “Bridges. What is your boss offering?”
“I’m authorized to go ten thousand dollars. It can be cash.”
The Trotskyite laughed. It was a harsh, bitter laugh. This was a man who had seen prisons of the Czar, the commissars, and the state of California. Perhaps others. The FBI file on him was hazy and full of guesswork. Indeed, the name on it probably wasn’t the name he was born with. “Keep your money. Three men. Two are doing Federal time, and the third is a guest of this state.” He scribbled out a list on a stray piece of paper and pushed it across. “This gets you Bridges. You get the three to El Paso. One calls me. I take you to wherever Bridges is then. You bag him and call El Paso. Your guy there walks my three over the bridge to Mexico, gives them $100 each to get them to Mexico City.”
The FBI man knew the Boss wouldn’t like the price but would back his play. “Why wait? I’ll give you five people. Released for health reasons. Any charge that isn’t carrying a death sentence. But I need him today.”
The middle-aged ex-revolutionary – or maybe not so “ex” – gave a weary half-smile and looked to the movie guy, a second-rank producer and immigrant from Central Europe. “So, landsman, will you guarantee that this G-Man delivers? Him I cannot kill. Too much blowback. You have a life to lose. A wife, an ex-wife, a mistress. Several children. An aged aunt you brought over with you. Houses. A small movie studio. Should I go on?” The movie guy was getting paler and paler. He was starting to look like a corpse. “Doesn’t matter if your G-Man kills me, jails me. People know who I was taking this meeting with. You know the circles I move in. This isn’t some Hays Code movie. It will be bloody, messy. The Feds cannot protect you forever, and we are patient. We survived the Czar. Enough o
f us are surviving that swine Stalin and his Nazi lap dogs. On your life, on the lives of everyone you hold dear, do I trust this agent of Hoover Okhrana?”
The FBI official didn’t wait for the terrified movie guy to stammer a reply. “The word of the Bureau is good. You want me to get the big boss out of bed early to take a phone call? Normally he’d shitcan me for a stunt like that, but he wants Bridges that badly.” He watched his adversary weigh the words, shrug, and relax. “Just to satisfy a curiosity, why are you ratting Bridges out?”
“Because this isn’t about the class struggle. It’s about him being Stalin’s whore. That Georgian murdered Lenin’s revolution and is now buggering its rotting corpse. Real Communism died when Trotsky was exiled. The wheels of history often require tactical accommodation. Stalin and some of the other Old Bolsheviks informed for money. Stalin robbed banks and fenced loot as well. History will absolve them of that. The Party needed funds, and the moment for revolution was not then ripe. Tactical accommodation. The true sins came later. Revolution in one country, subordinating Leninism to Great Russian imperialism, gutting the Party into a gang of sycophants. You and I, we will never be friends – but right now we have a common enemy.” He took back his list of three names and added two more.
Four hours later, Bridges and his two top lieutenants were shot down while resisting arrest in a nondescript house a few miles from where the original meeting had taken place. It had been decided that a trial would just have given the Stalinists a platform to wage a propaganda war on the United States. There was nothing in writing to that effect. The important orders all came by courier from headquarters. Verbal orders left no trail.
0900 local time; 0700 CET
6 October 1940
Main port, Kuwait