In a generous mood, Dietrich then made the grenadiers into SS-Oberschützen, effectively bumping up all the privates to PFC, and the remaining oberschützen into the SS corporal grade of sturmmann.
Lukas had completely forgotten about the satchel of cash, but Dietrich pulled him aside for a confidential chat on the other side of the truck. “It’s a tough time, a real tough time,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “You’re a brave lad, and I hope you do well. You and your friends are Germany’s future, no matter what happens. So I’m going to give you a private order, son. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!” Lukas snapped back, and nearly went into another heil-Hitler until a slight shake of Dietrich’s head made him stop. “Officers are like fathers, and so you’re the father of those boys of yours now. Understand? Some of them will get other fathers as they get assigned, but your first job is to take care of them. Here …” To Lukas’ utter shock, Dietrich unsnapped the satchel, and took several wads of bills and threw them up into the driver’s seat through the open truck window.
“Sir, you don’t need to—”
“Never argue with a general, son,” smiled Dietrich. “It’ll take you a few days to get in with the HJ panzers, and I’m not that sure how your truck will hold up. I used to work in a garage, you know, and I understand these things.” He patted the truck side as if it were a horse. “You’ll need some money if you need to get it fixed. You need new insignia and the boys need some new warm clothes. And all of you need to eat. Eat well and eat often. You’re an officer now, and that’s your payroll. Take care of these boys for me, and take care of them well. I want you all to report for duty well fed, well rested, and warm. Do you understand me, Untersturmführer Vogel?”
This time Lukas did snap to attention and salute,
“Jawohl, mein Obergruppenführer!,”
Dietrich returned it with equal gravity.
The innocuous little one-story house with a gabled roof, surrounded by woods, had thus far escaped the fury of the Allied bombing campaigns. More and more of the German industrial and military capabilities had been moved underground, and the military command structure was no exception. The house was known as Maybach I, and beneath it could be found an extensive bunker network that served as the German Armed Forces High Command, known as OKW.
Deep beneath the ground, the boots of Field Marshal Walther Mödel echoed in the halls of OKW headquarters as he walked to his next meeting.
Even after dark, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Germany’s supreme military command, was active. The planning and operations teams worked around the clock.
Mödel opened an office door, and a male secretary looked up. “Heil Himmler, Generalfeldmarschall. The Generalfeldmarschall is in his office; please go right in. He’s expecting you.”
Mödel nodded to the secretary and opened the door to the inner office.
“Walther, come in. Have a seat. How is the planning going?” said Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of OKW. Keitel was a gray-haired, mustached man of distinguished features. His prominent eyes gave him an appearance of depth, though in fact he was known primarily as a tireless desk worker whose lack of imagination and personal drive had shackled him to a thankless job that no one else wanted. His nickname, “Laikaitel,” was testament to his role as a lackey, to the well-known fact that it was Jodl who did all the real work.
Generaloberst Alfred Jodl was technically Keitel’s subordinate, but it was he who had given concrete military shape to many of Adolf Hitler’s strategic decisions. A balding man with a long, sharp nose, Jodl was the one most deeply and personally affected by Hitler’s assassination. He had not been able to develop quite the same rapport with Himmler that he had enjoyed with the first führer, but he still possessed significant power and influence.
Restoring broken fronts was the military specialty of Walther Mödel, a little man with a pleasantly ugly face who had become known as the “Führer’s Fireman” after stabilizing the Belorussian and Polish sectors during the destruction of Army Group Center. Mödel had been one of the German Reich’s wartime discoveries, a creative and skilled man who climbed the ladder of advancement rapidly as a result of his accomplishments.
More and more, however, Mödel’s work seemed futile, plugging gaps, restoring disaster into some semblance of order, moving hither and yon in support of the varied missions he was assigned. And now he had to make sense of out of one the most surprising situations he had yet encountered: Rommel’s sudden surrender.
He looked at Keitel and at Jodl. Old Laikaitel was reliable for the paperwork and administrative functions, but had no vision. Jodl had vision and skill, but was pulled in multiple directions by the needs of the west and the east.
“I’ve got a first roundup of the situation,” he announced. “Most of Sixth Panzer Army has been recovered. Some minor desertions appear to balance out by people who’ve left the surrendered units to join ones still loyal to the Fatherland. There has been an armed struggle for control in at least two divisions, one in Sixth Panzer Army, one in Fifth. We kept control of Sixth Panzer Army by the narrowest of margins. Guderian was about to surrender along with Rommel, but Jochen Peiper executed him on the führer’s orders.”
The entire subject of surrender was anathema to Keitel’s conservative
Prussian heart. “If he was a coward, then it is right that he died as one, at the hands of a true warrior,” Keitel pronounced.
Jodl let a small giggle escape. “I heard about that. Seems that Peiper wasn’t content to kill him. He hanged him in his own conference room as a warning to others.” A stern look from Keitel put an end to this indecorous line of conversation.
Mödel continued with his briefing. “The success to date of the Soviet armistice means that we have substantial reserves within Germany, though most of these have been deployed in the east against the expected Soviet treachery. We have a limited ability to move some of these divisions to the Rhine, but you both know the difficulties in such movements: the state of our railroads, the presence of Allied air power. In sum, it will be difficult to put a force on our great river barrier in less than ten days or two weeks. We will have to hope that enough of our loyal forces remain to establish resistance in the Westwall, and throughout the Rhineland. If the American advance to the Rhine can be delayed to more than ten days, we will be able to form a defensive line at the river. If not, I can make no promises.”
He paused. “I think we all know the difficulty here: how long before Stalin recommences offensive operations in the East. He would have paused at this time anyway to permit resupply; in addition, we threw the dog two juicy bones to distract him. But before long, the dog will grow hungry again, and when that is the case we will return to our former dilemma: a two-front war and gradual destruction of our resupply capabilities.”
Any hint of defeatism, no matter how realistic or how justified, tended to draw disapproving looks from Keitel. “The original goal we sought in the armistice was to buy us enough time to quiet one front so we could turn all our attention to the other. Stalin is not on the march again yet. With the failure of Fuchs am Rhein, the question becomes, can we slow down the advance in the West before the forces must be rushed East again? In other words, how much time do I have?”
That was a real question. It was the key question, on which all else needed to be built. The two OKW chiefs looked at each other. Mödel kept his attention on Jodl, for the opinion of the operations chief was the one that would inevitably become the opinion of Keitel as well.
The pause stretched for several seconds. Finally, Jodl punctured the silence. “Walther, I think your analysis is basically on target. I don’t expect our friends in the East to stay quiet much longer, and although I will hate to do it, when they begin to march once again, I will need to transfer forces back to the Eastern Front as quickly as possible. For you, speed is of the essence. I can’t tell you if you have weeks or months, but I would base my plan on days, if possible. The Westwall must be stabilized, the hole created by Rommel’s treason plugged, and the Allies delivered a sharp counterblow that will return them to
the slow campaign of the fall. Patton is no good when slowness and caution is called for. He’s somewhat like Rommel in that way. Give him the opportunity for speed and dash and he is dangerous; without that opportunity he is far less effective. Afterward, you need to plan how you can hold the line with an absolute minimum of forces. I imagine that we’ll be pulling away everything we can.”
“That’s about what I thought,” nodded Mödel. “We need an excellent defense, with enough teeth to make the hungry dogs to the West think twice about a push forward. Then the dogs of the East,
nicht wahr?
” Both generals laughed. “But I must bring up a very delicate point. In this room, being realistic about the enemy’s relative supply situation is not to be construed as pessimism, and we must be realistic to make the right decisions for the Fatherland. Correct?”
Keitel once again began to put on his disapproving face, but Jodl interjected. “It’s not pessimism if there’s a constructive and positive answer following.”
“Depending on Stalin’s speed, there must be a secondary plan in place. If you must take away too much of my force, what next?”
Jodl thought seriously for a moment. “I suppose then it will become time for Operation Werewolf.”
“I agree,” replied Mödel. Keitel also nodded after a moment.
“And while we’re on the subject of Werewolf, I think an excellent lesson would be learned by all if our old friend the baby field marshal received an appropriate punishment for his treason,” said Jodl, his face turning ugly. “The führer sent Gestapo to arrest his wife and son, but it seems they have already fled.”
“I’m sure the long arm of the Gestapo can reach even outside the borders of the Fatherland,” replied Mödel. “I agree. Rommel must be made an example to all. One surrender of this sort is one too many. There must not be a repeat. And this is disgraceful, completely disgraceful behavior on his part. Doesn’t he know that a field marshal above all else must never be captured alive?”
On that point all three men agreed.
Alyosha Krigoff came to the park in the evening, climbed to the overlook over the River Moskva, and admired the domed towers of the Kremlin rising from the city on the opposite side of the valley, three or four kilometers downstream. This was the place he came for reflection, for privacy, for contemplation. He would miss it, more than any other location, or person, in this great city.
His train ticket was in his pocket, and he would cross the bridge shortly, making the short walk so that he arrived at Kiev Station in the early hours of
the morning. The train would depart for the west before dawn. But for now, he was happy to take Marshal Bulganin’s advice, and relish one last look around the capital of his mighty nation.
Even in the darkness, with but a sliver of a moon, the view was spectacular. Though the city was still under a war-induced blackout, the Kremlin stood out in clear relief, and the white band of the river was a smooth, winding S through the heart of the city. He wondered about the illumination—how could it be so bright?
He was startled to hear a hushed sound nearby, a mechanical click emerging from beyond a nearby pine. His feet crunched on the snow as he stepped around the tree, drawing a startled gasp from a photographer who was bent over a tripod, camera pointed not at the city but at the northern skies.
“Comrade Officer! You startled me!” said the photographer, in a woman’s voice surprisingly devoid of fear. She lifted her head and he saw the patch over her eye. Immediately he felt a surge of unnatural delight.
“Comrade Koninin? Paulina Arkadyevna? It is I, Colonel Krigoff.”
“Comrade Major—er, Colonel?,” Paulina said, coming forward to shake his outstretched hand, noting the new insignia on his high-brimmed cap. “It would seem that your meeting with the chairman went well.”
He loved that slight smile that once again tightened across her full lips, and he shrugged modestly in reply, letting his new rank speak for itself. His masculine ego was quite gratified that she had come to this place, to seek him out again. “I see that you found this place. The view is splendid, is it not?”
“Indeed,” she replied. “Though I was not expecting such a treat.”
Her words seemed a bit too forward, and he must have looked puzzled, for she pointed past his shoulder, upward to the north. “The aurora is spectacular tonight.”
He spun about to see what she meant, and saw the green curtain of the northern lights sprawling and pulsing in the night sky. How could he have missed it? The brilliance faded and then surged back, tendrils of sparkling illumination spreading like a spiderweb from the far horizon into the cosmos directly overhead. That was why the city had been so brightly visible on this winter night, he realized. For a moment he stared in wonder, rapt at the fluorescent display of nature’s majesty. It was an omen, a splendid omen, as if Father Winter were displaying his pride over Mother Russia.
Ah,
he thought,
it was the photographer’s eye that brought her here
. She was not here for him. At least, he thought, not yet. He was a patient man where the chase was concerned; he felt no need to rush.
“A rare treat, indeed,” he agreed. “You are capturing it on pictures?”
“I have a roll of color film,” she said. “Only my second since the war began. It seemed like a good opportunity. And I remembered what you told me of the view from this place, and thought that I would come here. I have some
pictures that should show the Kremlin, as well as the brightness of the aurora borealis. Furthermore, the park is close to the train station, and I must be there in a few hours.”
“You, too?” Krigoff asked, delighted. “That is, I am departing from there, traveling to the west, before dawn.”
This is quite convenient,
he thought.
“Congratulations, Comrade Colonel,” she said with apparent sincerity. “I am going west, as well. Perhaps both of us will get to witness the end of this war.”
Krigoff smiled in the glow from the northern lights.