Fox On The Rhine (66 page)

“I am countermanding any other orders you have. Take this report to the chairman; it has precedence over everything!” Stamovitch knew there was no way out. “Yes, sir,” he said morosely. He saluted and left, the message almost burning in his hand.

Feeling like a man on his way to the gallows, he walked slowly, steadily, methodically through the corridors of the Kremlin. Then he brightened, for he saw a victim of his own, Lieutenant Krigoff, junior to him, but handsome and strong and destined for great things. Stamovitch hated him.

“Ah, Krigoff,” he said with a nasty smile. “Just the man I was looking for. Here. Take this message to the chairman, at once. It’s top priority from the radio room. Critical intelligence from the front.”

Krigoff looked at Stamovitch. But instead of the expected reaction as the hot potato was passed, Krigoff smiled back. “At once, sir!” he said, saluted smartly, and swiveled on one foot to march briskly in the direction of the chairman’s office. Stamovitch was left with the feeling that, somehow, he had been outmaneuvered.

“Yes?” said the chairman. “What is it?”

“We have just received word that confirms the brilliance of your diplomatic strategies, Comrade Stalin!” the lieutenant said brightly.

“What is it?”

“Rommel has surrendered Army Group B to the Americans!”

“What?” roared Stalin. “Let me see that!” He tore the report from the young lieutenant’s hand, and skimmed it. Then he looked up at Aschev, eyes blazing in anger. “What do you mean, confirms my strategy?”

“Certainly you foresaw that there would be a collapse of the German initiative in the West, as well as increasing conflict between the German military and Himmler’s SS. Himmler will have little option but to further strip his eastern front troops to shore up the Westwall, and you have the option either to scoop up Germany like the inside of a soft-boiled egg, leaving only the western shell to frustrate the Americans and British, or help Himmler stalemate the west, tying up the forces on either side so that the Soviet Union is free to operate.”

“Hmm, yes,” replied Stalin thoughtfully. “That is what I had planned. Very astute of you to realize it so clearly. It is, I must admit, somewhat more rapid and more total than I had expected, but with rapid response it will all play out in accordance with our objectives. Historical inevitability is a great thing, is it not, Major Krigoff?”

“Yes, sir!” he replied. “Although it is not so good for capitalists and facists.”

The great man laughed. “You’ll make a fine addition to the planning staff, major.”

Roxboro, North Carolina, United States, 30 December 1944, 1521 hours GMT

She tore open the telegram with trembling fingers. She already knew what it said.

THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR SON, STAFF SERGEANT FRANKLIN O’DELL, HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE DECEMBER 26, OVER BELGIUM.
IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED, YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED.

Missing in action
. She clung to the small hope remaining, but in her heart, she knew her son was dead.

Givet, France, 1620 hours GMT

Chuck Porter pulled the last sheet of paper from his Underwood portable and gave it to the Teletype operator he’d managed to scrounge from the military. This is Pulitzer stuff for sure, he thought. For an over-the-hill editor, he had been given an opportunity to have a front-row seat at the defining moment of the Second World War, and it was an exclusive AP story. It might even mean a raise. He smiled.

FLASH/BULLETIN
PARIS BUREAU. 30 DECEMBER, 1030 EST
COPY 01 ROMMEL SURRENDERS
DISTRIBUTION: ALL STATIONS

GIVET. FRANCE. 30 DECEMBER 1944 (AP) BY CHUCK PORTER

FACED WITH THE FAILURE OF A DESPERATE PLAN TO BREAK THE ALLIED ADVANCE AND COUNTERATTACK, GERMAN FIELD MARSHAL ERWIN ROMMEL, ALSO KNOWN AS THE DESERT FOX, SURRENDERED THE ENTIRE GERMAN ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONT TODAY.

THE SURRENDER ATTEMPT NEARLY FAILED ON THE GERMAN SIDE WHEN A DISSIDENT SS GENERAL ATTEMPTED TO ASSASSINATE ROMMEL AS WELL AS GENERAL GEORGE PATTON. WHO HAD COME PERSONALLY TO DISCUSS SURRENDER TERMS.

THE ROMMEL ATTACK HAD BEEN AIMED AT THE KEY ALLIED SUPPLY DEPOT OF ANTWERP IN BELGIUM. WHERE ROMMEL HAD HOPED TO CUT ALLIED SUPPLIES. PRIMARILY FUEL. THE ATTACK WAS STOPPED IN THE TOWN OF DINANT, BELGIUM, BY FORWARD ELEMENTS OF THE US NINETEENTH ARMORED DIVISION. WHICH WERE NEARLY WIPED OUT IN THE PROCESS.

THE DIFFICULT AND DANGEROUS LIAISON BETWEEN GERMAN AND ALLIED COMMANDERS WAS HANDLED BY A CAPTURED AP REPORTER, CHUCK PORTER....

MORE
AP-PAR-387199-WQ/123044

Excerpt from
War’s Final Fury
, by Professor Jared Gruenwald

The ultimate collapse of Nazi Germany came quickly on the heels of Eisenhower’s great victory at Dinant. Although Rommel’s audacious attack had come close to reversing the tide of war, the bold offensive could not survive the fatal severing of its supply line. Indeed, the gamble had required the use of every available scrap of Nazi power, and the final result was an end to all the Third Reich’s prospects for victory.

When Dinant was retaken by U.S. troops, Operation Fuchs Am Rhein was over. From there, Rommel’s decisions were pragmatic. He was confronted with a clear choice, though he was rare among high-ranking Germans in that he saw the choice for what it was: In truth, his country had lost the war. Now, should postwar Germany be dominated by the Soviets, or by the Western Allies?

There were immediate difficulties following Rommel’s surrender. His key generals, seeing the situation as the Desert Fox saw it, followed his surrender. Individual units, however, especially those commanded by the SS, often continued their resistance. A few withdrew into Germany; a small percentage actually fought and died continuing the battle their commander had given up.

The Americans and British were quick to seize upon the opportunity, accepting the wholesale surrender of German divisions. Led by the fiery Patton, American and British armored columns rushed to the Rhine and crossed with the full assistance of defeated Germany. From there the autobahns to the country’s heartland stretched wide, inviting, and undefended.

Hailed as a hero and the savior of Germany by some, reviled as an unparalleled traitor by others, Rommel is indisputably the man who redefined the European landscape permanently. The repercussions of his bold decision to surrender are still with us.

Dinant, Belgium, 1 January 1945, 0930 hours GMT

A dusting of snow attempted to render the battle-scarred city a uniform white, but the lingering heat of warfare defied the wintry blanket in too many places. Flames licked upward from the hulk of a Tiger tank, the wreck angled sideways in the street between two burned out buildings. The fire consuming the panzer was hot enough to melt a surrounding circle of snow-covered ground. Everywhere sprawled the bodies of men killed violently, though somehow this grotesque proof of war was gentled by the fresh white powder.

Wakefield walked alone, leaving the division HQ which had been set up in the building that had served as Rommel’s own command post. Patton had taken control there, sending out word of the surrender while that newsman worked on his report. A Big Story, the general admitted, allowing himself a little flush of pleasure. The biggest in... God only knew how long.

At last, out of breath and sweating in the chill air, the burly general reached the plaza overlooking the Meuse. Less than a kilometer to the west stretched the river, and he could clearly see the broken remains of two bridges.

He also saw blackened tanks and twisted truck frames, dozens of them--more than he could easily count. This was only part of the cost--the toll in machines--exacted by the severing of Rommel’s lifeline.

Now the place seemed insignificant, no more than a small, cluttered square in a city that happened to have arisen on a long river. Before him he saw the road into the Ardennes, the route of approach for the Panzer Lehr division’s counterattack. That was the highway leading eastward, to Bastogne and to Germany beyond. And right here was the square, a convergence of that highway, city streets, and the river below that had for a few hours mattered more than anyplace else in the world. Armored monsters, Shermans and Panthers, had roared at each other here. And in the end the Americans had died and the Germans had been stopped.

On the far side of the square, underneath the shot-scarred turret of a half-ruined house, he found the wreck of a half-track. The body of the truck was canted at an odd angle from the chassis. The death wound was a gaping hole in the port-side door. The vehicle had burned, but the colonel’s eagle and the CCA’s crimson badge and white star were still visible on the twisted steel plate.

He turned his back to the half-track, reconstructing Pulaski’s final moments on earth. He saw tracks through the rubble where the Panthers, desperate to reach the bridge, had come around the side of the plaza, driving through a once-walled garden. One of the panzers must have come upon Pulaski’s half-track from the flank, probably unnoticed by the Americans--after all, Pulaski had been intent on the radio message to his division commander. A single well-aimed high-explosive shell had removed this impediment, and the Panther had rolled on.

Wakefield stayed beside the vehicle long enough to smoke a cigarette, lingering over the butt until the acrid taste stung his lips. He dropped the smoking stub next to the half-track, pausing for a last look at the wreck.

When he finally started toward his headquarters he noticed that it had once again begun to snow.

Wehrmacht Field Hospital, Trier, Germany, 1030 hours GMT

Staff Sgt. Frank “Digger” O’Dell
Trier, Germany
January 1, 1945

Mrs. Lucy O’Dell
Roxboro, North Carolina

Dear Mama,

By the time you get this, you should already have learned that I’m alive. I’m in a German hospital, and I’m going to be okay. I’ll be coming home very soon, they tell me, now that the war is over.

As they probably told you, Ford’s Folly got shot down over Dinant, and only Tony Hutt and I made it. I got hit again, this time in the leg, so I had to crawl to the camera hatch and bail out.

I bailed out kind of low, which is generally not a good idea, but this time it meant that I got out below the flak, which may have saved my life. I got captured by farmers pretty much as soon as I landed, and now here I am.

It’s kind of noisy here in the hospital right now. We had a visit from Rommel himself. He was here to visit his driver, who got wounded, and then made the rounds. He even came to visit us Americans, and I got to shake his hand. He even speaks American. Funny thing, though. You know, he’s the only general I ever met, and he’s on the other side.

I’ll write more real soon.
Love...

He paused, wondering if he should add on a P.S. He remembered the moment a few days previous, after his shoot-down and capture, when the senior Allied POW came by for a visit. “Friend, you’re the luckiest bastard that ever walked the face of the earth,” he said.

Digger O’Dell looked down at his bandaged body. “How do you figure, Captain?” he said.

“Why, haven’t you heard? No, I guess you haven’t, not speaking German and all. But the war’s over, at least here!” Digger could hardly believe it. “Over?”

“Yep. We knocked out the bridges in Dinant, stopped Rommel’s spearhead, and the Desert Fox surrendered.”

“Son of a bitch!” breathed Digger.

“No kidding. Son, looks like you’ll be going home. How’s that for a happy new year?”

The aviator put his hands behind his head and smiled. Now if he could only find a smoke ... “

Ami
German slang for “American.”

AP
Armor-piercing ammunition, fired by tanks, as opposed to HE, or high explosive ammunition,

biergarten
A bar.

blitzkrieg
“Lightning war,” a German-developed technique for rapid offensive warfare using armored forces with air support; first used against Poland in 1939.

bocage
Thick foliage or woodland, often used to describe the Normandy countryside before the breakout in August 1944.

CCA (CCB)
A U.S. armored division’s primary aggressive forces were organized into combat commands. They were normally called Combat Command A (CCA) and Combat Command B (CCB). There was also a Combat Command Reserve (CCR), not addressed in this book. (For more detail, see the Appendix, Nineteenth Armored Division.)

CP
Command post.

Desert Fox
Famous nickname for Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, earned in Germany’s North Africa campaign,

dog robber
Slang term for a personal aide (to a high-ranking official) who is responsible for obtaining scarce supplies, from steaks to nylons, by “robbing dogs,” if necessary,

feldgrau
Field gray, the standard color for the German army, much as olive drab is for the U.S. military,

feldmarschall
German military rank of field marshal,

feldwebel
German military rank, equivalent to U.S. sergeant,

fuigerspitzengefühl
An intuition in one’s fingers; a kind of sixth sense. Often used to describe Rommel’s ability to carry out plans and operations that others would never have thought of in the first place.

Focke-Wulf Fw-190 A German military fighter,

gasthaus
Literally “guest house,” or inn, normally with a restaurant or bar as well as some guest rooms.

Gauleiters
The regional Nazi Party boss in each Gau (the main territorial unit of the Nazi Party; there were forty-two Gaue in all), responsible for all political and economic activity, as well as for the mobilization of labor and civil defense. There was constant tension between the Gauleiters and the central government and Nazi establishment, usually resolved by Hitler in favor of the Gauleiters.

Geschwader
A fighter air squadron consisting of three fighter Gruppe, each of three Staffeln, or approximately eighty aircraft total. Commanded by a kommodore.

Gestapo
Geheime Staatspolizei
, or State Secret Police. Originally created in 1933 under Hermann Göring, the Gestapo was slowly integrated into the SS and gained wider responsibility for criminal police and spy work. The Gestapo’s Section IV B4, headed by Adolf Eichmann, organized the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

Gruppe
A fighter air group consisting of three fighter Staffeln, or approximately twenty-six aircraft total,

hauptmann
German military rank, equivalent to a U.S. Army captain.

Hitlerjugend
The Hitler Youth was a perverse Nazi equivalent to the Boy Scouts, offering Scouting-type activities combined with military training and political indoctrination. Most German males were members during the Nazi years, up until the war’s end. In 1935, Rommel, then an instructor at the War Academy, was attached to the Hitlerjugend for the purpose of improving their discipline but had a falling-out with the head of the organization, Baldur von Schirach, because he felt von Schirach was focusing too much on sports and military training and not enough on education and character development. As a result, Rommel was removed from his position shortly thereafter.

Jabo
German military slang for single-engine fighters (Mustangs, Hurricanes, Thunderbolts, Typhoons, Spitfires, and the like) used by the Americans and British in ground-attack missions.

Jagdgruppe
A German fighter squadron.

Kettenkraftgrad
A small Luftwaffe tractor used to tow aircraft.

Kriegsmarine
The German navy, commanded by Admiral Karl Doenitz.

leutnant
German military rank, equivalent to a U.S. lieutenant.

Luftwaffe
The German air force, built up and commanded by Hermann Göring, with General Adolf Galland as commander of the Fighter Arm.

Messerschmidt Me-109
A German military fighter.

Messerschmidt Me-262 Schwalbe/Sturmvogel
This high-performance jet fighter was more than one hundred miles per hour faster than the fastest Allied fighter but was held back from full production by Hitler’s thirst for vengeance on the RAF rather than to fight on the Continent. Hitler did not finally approve mass production until January 1945. The military value of this aircraft might have been substantial. Of 1,433 Me-262s built, only about 200 were allowed into action, but in March 1945, six of them shot down fourteen B-17s in a single fight. The fighter version was known as the Schwalbe, or Swallow, the proposed bomber version was known as the Sturmvogel, or Stormbird.

Night of the Long Knives
A program of executions and liquidations carried out against the left-wing socialist elements of the Nazi Brownshirts, or Sturmabteilung (SA) in June 1934. This temporarily reassured the German middle class about Nazi “extremism” and also consolidated Hitler’s control over the party and Germany itself.

oberst
German military rank, equivalent to a U.S. colonel.

OKW
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
, the high command of the German armed forces.

Operation Valkyrie
The July 20, 1944, bomb plot to kill Adolf Hitler and the coup plans that were to have followed, involving the neutralization of all SS and Gestapo installations within the Third Reich, and the takeover of all communications facilities, particularly public radio stations.

Panzer
A German tank,

panzerarmee
A full German tank army,

panzerfaust
An antitank weapon similar to the American bazooka, with less range but able to be operated by a single soldier. It was a simpler weapon, launching a bigger bomb with greater penetrating power,

panzergrenadiers
Infantrymen who worked in close concert with German tanks,

rathskeller
A bar.

Reichsauftenminister
The Reich foreign minister.

Reichsminister
is simply Reich minister, or head of any state ministry, such as Finance or SS.
Außen
means “outside,” as opposed to, say, the Minister of the Interior. The ß, or “ess-zet,” is a combination of “s” and “z.” It is pronounced as “ss” and is often spelled that way in English transliteration of German (außen=aussen). Similarly, an “umlaut” vowel (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü) is spelled with an extra “e” (Göring=Goering).

Replacement Army
A reserve force of walking wounded, trainees, military school cadets, workers who could be taken from their jobs, and soldiers on sick leave. It was commanded by General Friedrich Fromm, who was a fence sitter with regard to the coup. Stauffenberg was the chief of staff to Fromm,

scheiss
German expletive “shit.”

schnell
German for “quickly.”

schwalbe
See Messerschmidt Me-262.

Schwerpunkt
The “decisive point,” a strategic concept identified by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz.

SHAEF
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, the coordinated United States/British military command headed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

SNAFU
Officially an acronym for “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up,” but another “F” word was more commonly used.

Special Transports
The transportation of Jews and others to the death camps as part of the “final solution.”

SS
The
Schutzstaffel
was the elite striking arm of the Nazi Party, a virtually separate armed force with wide-ranging and independent authority, from protection of Nazi leaders, antisubversion activities, political enforcement, certain military operations, and the administration of “race and population resettlement,” which included the concentration and death camps. SS troops had their own uniform and their own ranks. Heinrich Himmler was the
Reichsführer
SS, reporting only to Hitler, and a man of enormous power and evil,

staffel
A fighter group of approximately eight aircraft,

sturmvogel
See Messerschmidt Me-262.

Tommies
Slang term for the British,

universitat
German university.

Vengeance Weapons
The
Vergeltung
(“Reprisal”) weapons, popularly known as the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs, were developed by Dr. Werner von Braun’s engineering team at the Peenemünde plants. The V-1 offensive against London began six days after the Normandy invasion, followed by the V-2 in September. Eisenhower later observed that if the Germans had been able to use the V-1 and V-2 against the Allied landing points, they would have posed a formidable obstacle. The rockets were also used extensively against the port of Antwerp, both before and during the historical Battle of the Bulge, but were not successful in disrupting the Antwerp docks or the landing of Allied troops,

volksgrenadier
The “people’s soldiers,” units of the Replacement Army {q.v.).

volkssturm
The “people’s attack,” or
volkssturm
, involved the mobilization of every German between the ages of sixteen and sixty capable of bearing arms to defend the Fatherland “with all available means.”

Waffen SS
The military arm of the SS grew to parallel the regular army, with its own panzer units; it actually outnumbered the regular army in some military districts. At its height, there were thirty-eight SS divisions with nine hundred thousand men.

Wehrmacht
The German military establishment.

Weimar Republic
The German government between the fall of the kaiser at the end of World War I and the takeover of the Nazi Party in 1933. Best known for high inflation and social decadence, as illustrated in the movie
Cabaret
, based on the stories of Christopher Isherwood.

Westwall
A line of German fortifications along the France-Germany border. Incomplete at the time of the Normandy invasion, the fortifications were built up quickly to create a barrier between the advancing Allies and the German homeland.

Wolfschanze
“Wolf’s Lair,” Hitler’s command headquarters for the eastern front. It was located in East Prussia, far from any city, surrounded by woods, heavily guarded, and accessible by only a single road.