Fox On The Rhine (34 page)

Next Krueger looked down into a long pit, where waves of heat rose up to wash across his face in a physical caress. He saw many of the slave workers tending the fires of a massive furnace, while others were spraying a thin film over the inside of the engine housing. Raising his eyebrows, he looked at Friedrich in silent question.

“This is a layer of aluminum that is placed over the base metal,” the manager explained. “It is designed to prevent oxidation.”

“Here, too, it seems as though your laborers are easily distracted,” he suggested, as several hollow-eyed workers turned to look up at him, numb faces giving no hint as to the unabashed hatred that most certainly lurked in each heart.

‘Those two--bring them up here!” he instructed, fixing his gaze upon a pair--a man and a woman--who were near to his end of the long pit.

In moments the workers were sent up the ladder, prodded by the clubs of several brutish overseers.

“You must work faster!” cried the pilot, in a voice that rang even through the din of the bustling factory. “Allow no distractions--take time for no delays!”

He gestured at the Gestapo guards who were following behind the manager. At his command, the man and woman were quickly lashed to one of the steel supports. He unsnapped his briefcase. It contained a very few papers--and a braided leather whip.

The Gestapo guards ripped the shirts from the victims, and to the horror of the plant manager, Krueger began to lash them. Their screams could be heard even over the loud machine sounds. The workers below paused, looked up. “Back to work!” Krueger shouted. “The next shirker will get twice as many!” Again and again he lashed, sweat beading on his forehead, the fire of the furnace reflecting in his skin. Soon the two were slumping in their bonds, nearly unconscious.

“Untie them. Throw some water on them and send them back to work,” he ordered loudly. “If they can’t keep up with production, have them shot.” Wilhelm Friedrich’s face had gone a pasty white, and he mopped at the sweat that was beading on his brow.
He will pay attention, that one
. Krueger had the thought with satisfaction as he followed the nervous manager back into his office.

In his tour of the factory, the pilot made note of a number of areas where he believed the production of the turbine engines could be streamlined. He wasted little time in addressing these issues to Friedrich, who remained awed and frightened by the presence of this horrible man, this decorated combat ace.

“The daily shift must be lengthened by an hour,” he began. “The Reich cannot afford to let this plant remain idle for twelve hours a day.”

Friedrich opened his mouth as if to protest, but then thought better of his reaction and clamped his jaw shut.

“I shall speak to General Galland and Minister Speer, and we will see that all available stockpiles of nickel and chrome are devoted to this program. You must understand, Herr Friedrich, that there is nothing--nothing--more important to the future of the Fatherland than the production of these engines!”

“I do, Herr Oberst--indeed I do!”

Krueger outlined several other areas where he had observed inefficient processes. Some workers had seemed exceptionally lethargic, and once he had seen a part dropped, precision components dented on the hard floor.

“But, Herr Oberst” Friedrich complained, after Krueger had presented his list. “The central problem is not procedures, it is the labor itself. My workers are conscripted from the camps, as you know, and there is an inevitable lack of proficiency and enthusiasm that attends such a source of recruitment.”

“Surely working here is better than the alternative?” Krueger said calmly.

“Yes... but it is a universal problem. And in truth, some of these fools would rather die than help our great nation.”

“Have them gathered in ranks at the train station tonight. I shall address them before they return to their camps. And I will need to speak to your captain of overseers before then... he is with the Gestapo, I presume?”

“Yes, Herr Oberst” declared Friedrich, breaking out in a fresh layer of sweat.

With a feeling of accomplishment, Krueger went into the sunny afternoon. He stopped at the Rathskeller, but the old Bohemian tending bar curtly informed him that Gerti hadn’t come in to work that day. He had a beer anyway, but the brew seemed flat and tasteless. He could feel the bartender’s eyes on him. He left an extra few marks for the girl.

Hours later, as Krueger was waiting to board his own train for the ride back to Augsburg, he faced more than a thousand frail-looking, cadaverous wrecks of human beings. He felt like a god, an Aryan god, as he stalked about on the platform, looking down at the sea of pathetic faces. The laborers were gathered in company-size blocks before each of the cattle cars that was awaiting, doors agape, on the siding.

“Your work here is important,” he declared. “Far more important than the life of any one of you, or even your collective survival.”

The pilot gestured, and a Gestapo man stepped up to each company. One person was pulled from the back rank of the group before each boxcar. The Gestapo repeated the flogging, ten hard lashes for each victim.

“You did not meet your quota today. As a mark of lenience, since this is the day those quotas are introduced, only one worker has been flogged from each car. Tomorrow, two will be flogged--unless your production improves. And if that doesn’t do it, then one per car will be shot and replaced with someone more willing to do his duty.”

Silent and sullen, the workers were marched onto the train. The Gestapo overseers were rough, willing to use their clubs and dogs, but even so the loading took a surprisingly long time. The pilot had thought that fear would compel even these subhuman slaves into some measure of haste.

“Surely, Herr Oberst, there is another way to get their attention!” Friedrich protested as the last cars were loaded at the doors slammed shut. The manager surprised Krueger with his boldness. “After all, these people--however pathetic--are needed in order to keep my plant functioning! If you start to kill them, I shall have to train replacements. This will inevitably cause delays “

“Delays are unacceptable,” Krueger replied curtly. “And it would do you well to remember, Herr Friedrich, that a German who fails the war effort is essentially a traitor. And what happens to traitors can be worse than what we did to the animals on that train “

An hour later he was seated in a comfortable berth on the Augsburg train, secure in the knowledge that he had solved several problems. The jet engines would be coming more rapidly, now.

The red flames from the factory smokestacks illuminated the evening and he smiled.

Western Germany, 12 September 1944, 1350 hours GMT

Rommel’s car trip from Herrlingen to Ulm was an uncomfortable affair, but nothing compared to the train ride from Ulm to Aachen. The journey was a nightmare of blinding headaches, throbbing pain in his left leg, and--most unsettling of all--deep-seated fear.

Would he be physically capable of handling a military command? Was his mind as clear as it needed to be, or would he show fatal hesitation at the moment of decision? Such flaws, he knew, would inevitably cost the lives of German soldiers, the very lives he was setting out to save.

The company of the SS general, Bücher, who looked so coldly at the world from his scarred face, was another unsettling aspect of the trip.

Of course, Rommel understood that, on some level, he owed this new appointment as western front commander to Bücher--the SS man’s visit to the hospital had been some kind of test, and the Desert Fox had apparently passed. And he could take some comfort from the fact that two of his decisions had already borne fruit in lives saved and Germany’s defensive position improved. Nineteenth Army had escaped from Southern France virtually intact, despite the Allied landings that had come only a few days after Rommel’s withdrawal orders. And the counterattack at Abbeville had been a brutal setback to the American advance, buying enough time for the remnants of the Seventh and Fifteenth Armies to get across the Somme and continue their withdrawal to the German border.

There had been some suggestions, strong indications from Berlin that the retreating troops should try to form a line at one of the great French rivers, but Rommel had been adamant. He knew that the fortifications of the Westwall were empty, but they existed at least in part. They would give his men a place to stand, to defend, and--perhaps most importantly--to have some shelter from the deadly presence of the enemy air force. So he had defied the “suggestions,” informing OKW and, indirectly, Himmler himself, that if the Desert Fox was to command, it would be under his own terms. Surprisingly enough, he had heard no more about making a stand in France.

They crossed the Rhine at Karlsruhe, traveling by day as much as possible. That industrial city had been smashed in many places by Allied bombers. Residences and factories had been reduced to ruins, and even a park had been smashed, a playground rendered into craters, a grove of trees reduced to skeletal sticks and splintered trunks. Traveling to Aachen first, they found another German city displaying many of the ravages of war. Here Rommel spoke to several division commanders, learned that the American First Army was drawing close.

“I need men, Herr Feldmarschall--and if you give them to me, I can hold here for a very long time!” reported the corps commander who was entrusted with the city’s defense.

“I will do what I can,” Rommel promised, before getting back on the train and for another night of traveling.

The field marshal felt himself drifting off, weakened by fatigue, and even then he was aware of Bücher sitting next to him, wide awake. Rommel had always been a man who needed very little sleep, but it seemed to him that the implacable SS general never slept.

In fact, Horst Bücher hardly slept during that long trip. He was too busy thinking about this man, this leader of men. He’d read in
Das Reich
that Rommel had been a member of the Free Corps along with Göring, Hess, Roehm, and Bormann, that he was one of the first Nazi storm troopers, but from the first moment he met the man he could see that was just Goebbel’s propaganda machine at work.

It disturbed him that this fine man, an exemplar of the German spirit, was not a member of the Party, and that his loyalty was thus suspect. Although there was no evidence that Rommel had been involved in the assassination of Hitler and the planned coup, Bücher believed that the coup plotters had counted on Rommel’s eventual support--and believed that support would help carry them to victory among the German people.
It wasn’t a bad plan
, Bücher thought. Or, at least it wouldn’t have been had the plotters been smart.

Bücher was here to evaluate Rommel for loyalty as well as fitness, to be Führer Himmler’s eyes and ears, to take whatever action he deemed necessary. And he was deeply torn.

The fitness evaluation was only slightly troublesome. He could see the terrible wounds and even see some of the impact of those wounds on Rommel’s spirit. The physical wounds would heal; Rommel’s will was too strong for anyone to believe otherwise. The psychic wounds were tied up in Rommel’s concerns about whether victory was possible, and this Bücher found difficult to understand. Victory for the Reich was its destiny, and to question that faith was not merely unpatriotic, but almost blasphemous.

But Bücher understood something about Rommel that perhaps Rommel did not even understand about himself: he was a tool of the Reich’s eventual victory, and a tool must pass through fire and ice repeatedly to be tempered and strong. Rommel doubted the outcome now, but his temperament would force him to find a way to victory, for he could not bear to lose. This Bücher knew.

The political loyalty issue was far more troublesome, but Bücher believed he knew what to do there, as well. Rommel had little use for the Nazi Party and would likely have supported the coup, in Bücher’s opinion. It pained Bücher to believe this from a man he had grown to respect so much in such a short time, but it was so. Very well. Rommel was a tool, a tool of the Reich, a tool of German victory. Afterward, he might pose a danger to the Party, and if so, Bücher knew what he would have to do. With regret, surely, but without hesitation. Absently, he touched the hilt of his Luger.

Rommel’s scarred face leaned against the train window. Bücher reached up to touch his own scars. His were the evidence of dueling, but Rommel’s were the sign of injury suffered in war. Bücher’s father had a scar, too, a memento of the First World War. A bullet had shredded his cheek, barely missing his skull. Rommel’s battle scars reminded him of his father. His father had something of Rommel in him--the love of Germany but the rejection of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Young Bücher had had no choice but to inform on him.

When the Nazis presented his father with a paper to sign, stating that he now realized his political views were in error, he had refused to sign, to his young son’s shock and dismay. And three nights later the SA arrived, and he was taken away. His mother screamed and cried for a while, then grew silent and withdrawn, ignoring her son from that time on. Horst Bücher received a medal from the Hitler Youth for his bravery and courage, and he left his home for university the following year. He never went back.

If I can sacrifice my father to the good of the Party, I can certainly sacrifice this man if--no, when--the time comes
, he thought, and a deep chill of emptiness opened inside him.

Moving along the border, the two German officers found increasing numbers of soldiers ready to defend their fatherland. The Westwall was an incomplete barrier, unlike the Maginot Line with which France had presumed to hold the Nazis at bay, but everywhere industrious engineers were busy creating new strongpoints, pillboxes, and trenches.

At Monschau, gateway to the key dams on the Roer River, the Desert Fox spoke with one of these officers, the colonel commanding an engineer battalion. “What do you need most?” was Rommel’s key question.

“Concrete, Field Marshal. If you give me the material, I can build a line of fortifications that will hold up the Americans for years!”