The Ten Thousand (40 page)
“I can tell you, General Lange, what the Americans’ intentions are!” Ruff screamed. “They intend to embarrass this nation and its people.”
Lange ignored Ruff’s outburst. “Once we have a grasp of what their objectives and routes of march will be, we then have to look at where best to stop them. Given that, deployment plans, along with the march tables to shift units in accordance with those plans in an intelligent and orderly fashion, must be developed and disseminated in the form of orders at every level. Equally important to the movement of the combat elements is that of the combat service support commands. The necessary support facilities, all of which are now moving or established in the east, must be shifted back west, one hundred and eighty degrees, to support our operations.”
Rooks, seeing that Ruff was losing his patience, leaned forward toward Lange. “This is no time, Herr General, for a lecture on operational tactics. To the point, man, to the point. What do you recommend?”
Taking in a deep breath, Lange realized that both Ruff and Rooks were interested in pinning him to a definite course of action when he hadn’t even decided in his own mind what an appropriate response for the Bundeswehr should be. He needed time. Time to resolve matters of conscience, and time to determine how well the German Army would do in a fight with the Americans, if it came to that. Time was needed to bring under control those Army and Luftwaffe commanders who had already decided and were taking unilateral action that ranged from the simple refusal to answer messages from higher headquarters to the actual sabotage of aircraft. “We must, Hen-Chancellor, given the advantage that they have and the problems we face in redeploying our own forces, allow the Americans free passage through Bavaria. We are in no position to resist them there, and any effort to offer even token resistance would jeopardize our ability to stop the Americans further north.”
Lange’s statement, given in such a calm, almost casual manner, hit every man in the room like a slap in the face. Lammers, the Minister of Defense, almost jumped out of his seat. “We _can’t _ do that! We simply can’t! Do you realize what you are saying?”
Looking at Lammers, Lange’s voice was quite defiant, almost arrogant. “I know _exactly _ what I’m saying. Do [_you?” _]
The point that Lange was making, using Lammers, was not lost on the others, especially Ruff and Rooks. For the first time they realized they were no longer in command of the situation that they had so carefully created. None of them had the background or knowledge to challenge Lange, who after all was
“ein _General.” _ For, despite years of demilitarization in Germany, the opinion of a senior member of the General Staff was something that demanded respect, especially among this particular group of men.
Therefore, even though they found Lange’s pronouncement distasteful, everyone in the room realized that none of them could alter the basic laws of time, space, and terrain that governed military operations.
Lange, who had spent a lifetime dealing with such problems, would set the pace and tone of German reactions for the next few days. Rooks, looking first at Ruff and Lammers, turned to Lange. “Please, Herr General, proceed.”
“From southern Germany, the Americans have the ability to move west through Stuttgart and into France, which may allow them to enter northwest through Mainz and into Belgium, or due north from Würzburg through Kassel to Bremen, where their Navy will be able to intervene. Though I personally believe that the Americans will strike north for the sea, we cannot disallow the other possibilities.
Therefore, I recommend that we commence redeploying our forces in such a manner as will create in central Germany a huge cauldron, with the 5th and 10th Panzer divisions remaining in the west, the 2nd Panzer and 4th Panzergrenadier deploying to form the eastern side of the cauldron, and the 1st and 7th Panzer throwing themselves across the Americans’ line of advance to the sea in the north. The 1st Mountain Division, with the 26th Parachute Brigade attached, will follow the Americans, threatening their rear.”
“Where,” Ruff asked impatiently, “do you intend to stop the Americans?”
_”If, _ Herr Chancellor,” Lange responded with great emphasis on “if,” “it comes to a fight, I expect it to be in the area south of Kassel. That, however, will not be certain for several days. In the meantime, both our forces and the Americans will be racing to see who completes their redeployments first and can get moving first. If we can unsnarl the massive tangle that our own divisions are in due to the need to turn around, we will be in place and ready. If the Americans, however, succeed in moving their forces out of the Czech Republic, gathering up loose units left in Germany, and get moving first, we will find ourselves fighting a series of meeting engagements with our forces which may still be in the process of deploying throughout central Germany. Either way, we still have several days in which the military will be unable to do anything, leaving Herr Lammers free to seek a peaceful solution to this crisis.”
The unexpected reference to an effort to resolve the crisis through other than force of arms caught Lammers off guard. He could not, however, easily pass this off. If for no other reason than to keep Interior Minister Thomas Fellner, the voice of reason and the only figure respected by all political factions in Ruff’s cabinet, satisfied and in line, Lammers had to respond in a positive manner. “Why, yes, that is a very, very sound course of action. I will, of course, continue to appeal to the Americans while the Bundeswehr prepares. But I must warn you, I hold little hope for that.”
“And I, Herr Lammers, must warn you and everyone else that the Bundeswehr may not be able to deliver on the threats that you have been hurling at the Americans. In the first place, every brigade deployed has for the most part only two combat battalions with it. There has been insufficient response by the reservists needed in the two reserve battalions of each brigade to bring those units up to strength.
In effect, each of our six panzer and panzergrenadier divisions has only six, maybe seven, tank or infantry battalions with it. Instead of a three-to-one advantage, as the number of divisions deployed by the Bundeswehr and the Americans would suggest, we have less than a two-to-one advantage when counting the critical ground combat battalions.
“But even here,” Lange continued after a slight pause, “our advantage in numbers is illusory. We have not fought since 1945. We have never in our existence moved the entire Bundeswehr at the same time.
And the operation which we are engaged in is to say the least quite unusual and sensitive, politically as well as militarily. Regardless of what we say and do here, regardless of how much we talk and debate, the final military outcome, gentlemen, will be determined by the commanders and soldiers out there in units spread all over Germany. And right now those units are, without exaggerating, choking on their own supply lines, lines that run throughout Germany like a plate of spilled noodles. Added to all of this military movement is the mass migration of civilians, some seeking to get out of harm’s way and some simply trying to carry on with their lives as if nothing has changed. It will be days before we know for sure if we can pull off the great plans which we so easily toss about here in the warmth of this building.”
Unable to effectively counter Lange’s argument, Ruff, Rooks, and Lammers let the meeting limp to an unsettling close. Lange for the moment had succeeded in buying the time he wanted. He had no idea what could happen to change what he was convinced Ruff saw as an inevitable confrontation. Until the first blood was drawn, there was always the chance of a negotiated settlement. The longer the conflict was postponed the better. Still, Lange could not delay forever. He knew that he could only buy so much time with which to allow the political situation to clarify itself by walking the fine line between performing his duty as a soldier and doing what his conscience dictated. At some point, and he had no idea where or when that would happen, time would run out.
The effect of shifting of forces from one place to another was a very real concern to Captain Friedrich Seydlitz as his column of Leopard II tanks rumbled back to the west down Autobahn E40 just outside of Dresden. The orders to move the two panzer, or tank, battalions of the brigade 230 kilometers by road to Erfurt, after having completed a 270-kilometer road march from the south, were greeted with little joy.
Every officer took great pains to point out that the wear and tear on the machines as well as the men would leave the combat effectiveness of their units questionable at best. “One does not simply hop into a tank and go driving about Germany in the dead of winter,” Seydlitz’s battalion commander warned the brigade commander, “without paying a price.”
As they moved along the westbound lane of the autobahn, Seydlitz could see that the price which his commander had warned about was already being paid. At regular intervals on both sides of the autobahn Army trucks of every description, Leopard tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled artillery pieces sat idle, either broken down or out of fuel. In some instances armored vehicles had seized up in mid-stride, coming to a sudden stop in the center of the road. Left by the losing commander for the overwhelmed maintenance teams to recover, the rest of the unit, fighting civilian traffic as well as a tight timetable, would attempt to flow around the derelict vehicle. When road conditions did not permit vehicles following to pass on a paved surface, the other vehicles in the column and dozens of columns following would maneuver off the road, onto the shoulder, and then back onto the autobahn, dragging great trails of mud onto the road surface already made slick by freezing rain or wet snow. During the day, when the temperature rose above freezing, this mud made driving dangerous to any wheeled vehicles.
The number of accidents involving German civilians speeding down the autobahn in their cars who unexpectedly hit this mud multiplied as rapidly as the number of broken-down military vehicles increased.
At night or when the temperature dipped below freezing, the mud clods on the road froze hard as stone.
The effect of hitting a patch of road smeared with these frozen fields of mud in a Mercedes was just as dangerous as it was when the mud was wet and slick. The image of smashed cars and civilian tractor-trailers along the side of the road, with their angry owners shaking their fists and shouting at Seydlitz and his company as they rolled by, did nothing to cheer up his confused and tired command.
As bothersome as this was to Seydlitz, his mind was on other, more pressing military matters. The military police and local authorities would deal with the angry and injured civilians. No one, however, seemed to be too concerned about the welfare of his command. Though he considered himself lucky that he had yet to lose a single tank to a breakdown, Seydlitz knew at this point that it was simply a matter of time before his luck ran out. And if a mechanical failure didn’t stop them, lack of fuel would. For, although he had seen many fuel trucks moving about, all of them either belonged to another unit or were on the other side of the road headed in the opposite direction. The battalion’s own fuel trucks, drained days ago, had been unable to find a fuel depot where they could top off. Suggestions by several of the company commanders in the battalion that they draw on civilian gas stations or fuel depots were rejected.
They had, their battalion commander told them, no authority at that time to do so. That, and the desire to minimize the impact of military operations on the civilians, kept Seydlitz from topping off his tanks from a gas station that was less than one hundred meters from the assembly he had just left.
As if to mock the need to minimize their impact on civilians, Seydlitz’s tank rolled by the remains of a bright yellow Porsche. Left on the side of the road, the front left fender was chewed up as though some great metal-eating cat had grabbed the fender and gnawed on it. In an instant Seydlitz knew what had happened. The impatient driver of the Porsche had apparently been following an armored vehicle too closely. Without having seen it, Seydlitz knew that at some point the driver of the armored vehicle had slowed for some reason, causing the Porsche to run into the rotating treads of the armored vehicle.
Caught in the treads, the Porsche would be pulled up and into the drive sprocket of the armored vehicle to be ground up. If, like this Porsche, the civilian driver was lucky, the car would be thrown clear of the armored vehicle like a child’s toy.
Such accidents, in a country where heavy military equipment shared the roads with everyone else almost on a daily basis, were to be expected. What was new to Seydlitz was the casualness and lack of serious concern with which his superiors and even his own men now treated this rash of incidents. It seemed as if, in the 2nd Panzer Division’s rush to get at the Americans, all thought of maintaining the normally close and friendly civilian-military relationships that had highlighted every peacetime maneuver was forgotten. To Seydlitz, this didn’t make sense. For rather than doing everything to defend civilians and their property, the civilians were being viewed as a nuisance to military operations. He had actually watched units along the division’s route of march going out of their way to infuriate the very people they were supposed to be defending. When Seydlitz mentioned this to his friend Captain Buhle, the battalion supply officer, Buhle shrugged. “What, Friedrich, do you expect? We’re being told to go out and defend those bastards, putting our asses on the line for them. Yet despite the fact that we need every kind of support imaginable, from fuel to rations, we can’t requisition anything, not even toilet paper, from the civilians. ‘Military operations,’ the fools in Berlin tell us, ‘cannot be allowed to interfere with the normal daily intercourse of civilian affairs.’ Shit, Friedrich, just look at the mess that this division alone is creating and then tell me how in the hell we are going to keep from interfering with normal daily intercourse of civilian affairs. Fools, I tell you! We’re being led by fools in the service of ungrateful swine.”