“Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen.”
There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people. Generaloberst Heinz Guderian,
Der Schnelle Heinz
(Hurrying Heinz) or sometimes
Heinz Brausewetter
(Hurricane Heinz), currently commanding officer of the Sixth Panzer Army, was fond of aphorisms and used them frequently.
Guderian was the sort of man referred to as a “natural leader.” Handsome, with a warm, inviting smile and eyes that saw everything around him, he was popular with his men and always confident of himself and his mission. His weakness was his hot temper and his frequent and flagrant disregard of orders. It was the latter weakness that had ultimately led to his removal from command and appointment as
Generalinspekteur der Panzertruppen
. Rommel, with whom he had an ongoing rivalry of sorts—for Guderian, not Rommel, was the supreme theoretician of panzer operations—had pulled him back into the game with control of Sixth Panzers. And to his utter and complete frustration, he’d been stopped cold at the Meuse, unable to force an opposed river crossing.
It was that bastard Montgomery, who used British and U.S. troops to establish a solid line on the north side of the Meuse from Namur through Liège. With a force superior in numbers (but not, Guderian reflected with some satisfaction, superior generalship) and time to destroy the bridges and build a strong defensive position, Monty had been able to block every thrust Guderian had made along a fifty-mile front. But Guderian was still thrusting, still probing, and was confident of an eventual breakthrough … as long as Manteuffel could hold up his end with Fifth Panzer Army. Manteuffel was lucky enough to find undestroyed bridges at Dinant, and so had leading elements across the river already. Eventually, Manteuffel’s advance would force Montgomery to respond, and then Guderian would show everyone what a real panzer offensive looked like.
Finally, however, it had all come down to this: the bridges of Dinant destroyed, his forces blocked … and a transcribed message from Rommel himself at Armeegruppe B headquarters. Surrender.
Scheisse!
he thought as he clenched his fist in helpless rage.
Scheisse!
The mere thought of surrender made him want to vomit. Even when it was a necessary act, it was shameful, disgusting—not to be borne.
At least he could take some small satisfaction that Montgomery was dead, according to intelligence. That smirking little English bastard could rot in hell. And as for Rommel—arrogant Hitler’s boy, the shameless self-promoter, the jumped-up corps commander acting the role of baby field marshal, the comfortable bastard who’d only faced a clean (and warm) enemy in North Africa and never seen a Russian winter … or muddy springtime—well, Guderian knew that if their positions had been reversed he would have done better.
There was only one problem. He agreed with Rommel that surrendering was the right thing to do. Better the Allies than the Soviet bastards. Now that the real führer was dead, the imitation führer didn’t have what it took to win the war anymore. That
arschloch
Himmler strutting around in his SS uniform couldn’t survive as a junior lieutenant in any real army.
Because of all this, though the battle was not yet lost the war was over. Guderian well knew that the Soviet “peace” would last not a second longer than the moment either side found itself with an advantage. Besides, he knew that the Soviets advanced in a wave, then stopped for resupply. Certainly Stalin would have made “peace” only during the period his forces needed rest and refurbishment, then start rolling forward. And no one knew better than Heinz Guderian that the Soviets were now unstoppable. Western Allies or Soviets. The only choice was which side—and that decision was easy.
His forces were in cease-fire status for the moment. In a few minutes he would start his command meeting to handle the business of surrender. He looked at the sheaf of papers on his desk, started to pick them up, then dropped them again. He could do this job off the top of his head.
Straightening his cap and drawing in a deep breath, Guderian walked out of his office, closing the door behind him.
Obersturmbannführer Jochen Peiper was awakened by his orderly. It was still dark on the cold and dreary late December morning. For a moment he was disoriented, back in the depths of the Russian campaign, before he realized where and when he was. Then he was fully awake. “Time to start the day again already?” he had asked his orderly in a pleasant, if sleepy, voice.
“No, Herr Obersturmbannführer. It’s Berlin. They’re on the radio for you.”
“On my way.” Peiper was instantly out of bed, pulling on his pants and grabbing a jacket. He had his personal headquarters in a commandeered farmhouse, and the radio room was in the dining room, just downstairs from the bedroom where he had been sleeping on a thin and worn mattress.
“Here he is, Berlin,” the radio operator said into the microphone, then pulled off his headset and handed it to Peiper.
The crackling and hiss of the radio blared into his ears, a sudden attack of sound that made him wince slightly. “This is Obersturmbannführer Peiper. Go ahead.”
“One moment, Obersturmbannführer,” he heard, and then the next voice was one he recognized.
“Peiper?”
“Ja, mein Führer!”
Peiper came to attention as he heard the instantly recognizable voice of Heinrich Himmler. The SS colonel was every bit as loyal to the second Führer of the Third Reich as he had been to the first.
Peiper knew him well. He had been a member of Himmler’s personal staff before the war, rising to be Himmler’s first adjutant. He had even married one of Himmler’s staff secretaries. Few people knew Himmler well on a personal level, but Jochen Peiper was one of those few. Although like most Germans of his generation he had admired and even revered Adolf Hitler, and was devastated by his assassination, his opinion of Heinrich Himmler was nearly as high, and he had instantly transferred his total loyalty to the new führer.
“I have had extremely disturbing news from Armeegruppe B headquarters,” announced the Führer of the Third Reich. “It seems that our Desert Fox has lost his taste for war.”
“I beg your pardon,
mein Führer?
” Peiper answered, puzzled.
“SS-Brigadeführer Bücher told me that Rommel has decided to surrender his army group.” Bücher was an SS general placed on Rommel’s staff by Himmler’s direct order. Peiper understood that Bücher’s responsibility included watching Rommel for political unreliability, and that if necessary Bücher’s role would be to stop him by any means necessary.
“
What?
Surrender? Rommel? Not possible. There must have been a mistake.” Only in the depth of shock could Peiper argue with his führer for even a moment.
“Peiper, it is true. Absolutely true and confirmed. Another radio message has informed me that Bücher is now dead.”
“But
why?
” Peiper said, his voice revealing his anguish at this betrayal. Bücher’s death was the proof, for Bücher would have fought such a move with every breath in his body.
“Rommel has gone weak in the heart, I’m afraid. He was never the same after his wounds.” Rommel had spent most of the previous summer hospitalized after being strafed by Allied
Jabos
. “Right now, it makes no difference. What is important is that Rommel’s weakness must not infect the rest of Armeegruppe B. I know I can depend on you to ensure that your own officers are reliable … or at least in a position to do no harm. Do you understand me, Peiper?”
“Jawohl, mein Führer!”
Peiper understood completely. He was a ruthless man, one that others looked toward when difficult jobs had to be done.
“Report as soon as you have any new information. Make sure that you keep in touch with my headquarters at all times. And take decisive and final action when it is necessary.”
“Jawohl, mein Führer,”
Peiper said again. “I am heading to the command staff meeting shortly. I will report instantly as soon as I have additional information.”
“Berlin out” was the radio answer.
Peiper put down the microphone and pulled the earphones off his head. “Lay out my uniform,” he told his orderly, who had followed him downstairs. The orderly nodded as he handed Peiper a cup of much needed, if ersatz, coffee.
Shortly, he was on his way. His driver paid close attention to the unlit road in the dark, his headlights carving a path through the early morning fog as he drove along with reckless speed. The unrelieved blackness was beginning to lighten into a deep gray as the car arrived at Guderian’s command post in an abandoned school building near Namur.
Emerging, Peiper stretched and looked around. Other cars were pulling up, and he spotted several other officers emerging. Those from the Wehrmacht marched straight into the building, but a number of the SS men stood around quietly, looking to each other with narrowed eyes and unspoken questions.
Peiper went over to a small knot of these, several Sturmbannführers who saluted him grimly. “I have spoken to the führer,” he began bluntly. “The reports of treason are accurate. He needs our loyalty, and our courage, now.”
“We are ready, Herr Obersturmbannführer!” replied one. Peiper nodded, watching as the men straightened, visibly donned a sense of purpose and pride. Among them were other, higher-ranking SS men in the group, he realized, but all of them seemed to be looking to him for leadership.
“Spread the word, quietly,” he commanded. “Station yourselves where you will be able to act.”
Seeing that his commands were understood, Peiper set his mouth in a thin line, lips tightly pressed together as he marched across the frozen yard to the command staff meeting. His clear blue eyes were also tight and focused, his dark, pencil-thin brows forming a single straight line across his brow.
He was a handsome and stylish man, freshly dressed and washed, wearing a ribbed white mock turtleneck under his trim and neat SS uniform. His Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oakleaves and Swords, awarded for achieving the bridgehead across the Mscha River on the Eastern Front in the recapture of Kharkov, was fastened tightly across the collar of the turtleneck on a black band. His brown hair was crisply parted and slicked down on his head.
How had it come to this? Victory had seemed so close, and then first stalemate at the Meuse, the loss of the final bridges of Dinant … and now news so stunning, so disturbing, he could hardly credit its truth.
Scant days ago, his own Kampfgruppe Peiper was unstoppable. Tearing through the Belgian countryside, he had one of the places of honor in the great Fuchs am Rhein offensive, as befitted the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the First
SS Panzer Division, which he had proudly served throughout the war, in battles both east and west. It was he and his kampfgruppe who had stumbled upon the fuel supplies at Malmédy, then again upon the great Allied fuel dump at Stavelot. His contempt for the Allies had increased as he saw the flagrant display of wealth that Stavelot represented. Anyone could win a war with unlimited supplies. It took military genius to win without them—and that was a quantity with which the Germans were well supplied.
Peiper hardly remembered the incident at Malmédy, when he forced Allied POWs to fuel the tanks of his kampfgruppe. He had had no time for prisoners, so after they had finished the job, he’d ordered them shot. It was a necessity of war—time was short and resources were short. War was not a business for the sentimental.
There was a loud buzz in the conference hall as Peiper entered to take his seat in the first row of the large, crowded room. He was sure a thousand rumors were making the rounds, each wilder than the next, many so amazingly incorrect that he wondered sometimes what on earth could have inspired them. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that the men he had spoken to were taking positions in the back corners of the room.
As Guderian entered the room, everyone stood at attention with a Nazi salute. The panzer general’s face was stern. His face was lined and leathery, his mustache trim and gray.
Guderian returned the salute casually. Peiper could see in his face that Guderian also knew about the surrender. He confidently sat down and leaned back, knowing that Guderian would have the correct response.
“I have received word from Field Marshal Rommel at Armeegruppe B headquarters,” he began without prelude. “The bridges of Dinant have been destroyed. The divisions that have crossed the Meuse are almost certainly lost to us. We are blocked at the Meuse, and Antwerp appears out of the question now.”
He paused and looked over the assembled senior commanders, generals and colonels all. “Feeling that the war in the West is now over, and convinced that our old friends the Soviets will shortly resume their offensive, Generalfeldmarschall Rommel believes the best hope for Germany lies in immediate surrender to the Allies.”
“What? No—you can’t be … Ridiculous! We aren’t beaten yet!” Military discipline temporarily evaporated at the stunning announcement, many officers voicing their gut-level objections. Peiper held his tongue, for he had already experienced his moment of surprise. He looked at the face of each person in the front of the room, searching for signs of weakness, futility, or betrayal. He saw some expressions worth noting for the future, but he was satisfied that most of the faces reflected the same sort of shock and anger that he had felt. Confidently, he turned back to face Guderian, still standing, facing his officers.