In Moscow, tens of thousands of survivors were slowly finding their way away from the ruins of the city. The German bomb had exploded above the exact center of the Kremlin, crushing the ancient walls into rubble and evaporating centuries of history. Those traveling on Moscow’s metro were mostly lucky enough to survive but were now facing the sealing of the entrances at the city center and were in the dark, stumbling in for an open way to the surface. For those who made it, fires and poisoning awaited, and no leaders were left to tell them what had hit Moscow and what dangers they faced now. In a single, cataclysmic stroke the Soviet political leadership, the central hub of rail transportation, and the top level government communications systems were completely gone.
Hitler was the happiest anyone remembered seeing him. The new atomic weapons had done even better than he’d been assured they would. His enemies had been dealt crushing blows, unrecoverable blows! Photos taken at first light over London and Moscow were already on the table in front of him and his staff. They were confirmation of the devastation the superbombs had caused. Little remained in the way of recognizable landmarks, except for the layout of the rivers, and it was obvious that the points Hitler had specified had been obliterated. The Kremlin and Buckingham Palace did not exist anymore, and in their places were huge, shallow debris-filled craters. Now, he was sure, the Allies would have to end their war against him. With these weapons, the world would be his again.
In London and Moscow, the silence began to give way to the cries of the victims and then the sounds of rescue personnel digging through the rubble. Tens of thousands had died in a single moment, and many more tens of thousands were yet to die of their injuries. A wave of horror and disbelief swept through Britain, the Soviet Union, and then all of the Allied and the occupied countries. Then, as the full scope of the atrocity became apparent, bitter resolve replaced fear.
In Britain, Winston Churchill and most of the political and military leadership and command and control facilities survived. The Royal Family did not. They were in Buckingham Palace directly under the fireball, and their country grieved for them as they tried to account for their own loved ones in London. The American forces in Britain assisted the British authorities in every way they could, providing troops, facilities, equipment, food, and power generators for the recovery efforts. For a while the war came to a stop. The bombing of Germany continued but at a reduced pace while leadership and coordination were reestablished.
In the Soviet Union, the situation was even worse: Stalin had ordered that Moscow’s citizens stay in the city, to the point that the NKVD shot people who tried to leave. When the bomb exploded, the tall concrete apartment buildings built quickly for housing the maximum number of people had crumbled onto them when the shock waves had hit. The casualties were enormous, and there were no significant supplies of food, clean water, or medicines to help them. Even with the catastrophes that had occurred throughout this war for the Soviet people, this was a monstrous blow.
Stalin and much of the Politburo had disappeared since the explosion, as had the NKVD headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. For the many political organs of the Soviet government there was no leadership, no direction, no help. The help there was, feeble as it was, came from individuals and small groups and, soon after, from the Red Army. Where the all-present Communist party had been, a vacuum replaced it and the Soviet nation reeled. Moscow was also the hub of the state rail system, and its destruction crippled deliveries of weapons, ammunition and supplies to the front. The Soviet people needed a hero, and they got one: Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov gathered his military leaders and the surviving members of the party leadership and began rebuilding the essential mechanisms of control lost in the atomic bombing of Moscow.
Heisenberg had feared success almost as much as he’d feared the consequences of failure. He and the other members of the “Uranium Club” knew how horrific an atomic weapon would be and did not want Hitler to have one. But at his back at all times was the cool insistence of Himmler and his SS. Everywhere Heisenberg went, every conversation, every moment, he was attended. They were supportive, coolly friendly and ran to get whatever he wanted them to get, yet in fact were waiting in the wings, like killer animals, for the chance to torture and kill whomever they were told to torture or kill. As the scientific barriers to the working atomic bomb were overcome one by one, Himmler was congratulatory and additional honors and awards flowed. When there were difficulties, Himmler would appear unannounced to inspect the work with startling attention to detail. Hitler himself visited once, and Heisenberg felt a surprising spurt of pride, replaced quickly by shame as he once again realized that he and his physicists would be parties to the mass extinction of thousands. He and his family had lost many friends and relatives to the Allied bombing campaign, which came close to getting him several times. Sometimes the anger at these near misses and personal losses spurred him on, but most of the time the rapid pace of progress toward an unthinkable weapon filled him with desperate anguish.
Now that day had come. The propaganda mills were churning out radio announcements and newspaper articles and newsreels trumpeting a “magnificent victory.” Pictures of the stark landscapes that had been ancient and beautiful cities were posted everywhere, and from what he could see, people on the streets of Germany were cheerful. They believed the announcements that the war was almost over and that the Reich had won. Heisenberg hoped that the next bomb from the next Allied bomber would get him. Looking at the pictures of the horrors he and his team had created, he wished that they had gotten him a lot earlier. He looked upward reflexively when the evening air raid sirens and the booming of distant flak batteries announced the arrival of British bombers again. Maybe now, he thought, it would be his time.
At Southwick, the British emergency government and the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, met to discuss the immediate requirements caused by the German attacks. The most pressing concern was if there would be another atomic attack. The most critical potential targets were the industrial cities of England and the bases with massed troops assembled for the invasion of Europe. The first priority was to reduce the vulnerable populations of the likes of Birmingham, Manchester, Southampton, and Coventry and disperse the large military camps and staging areas into smaller, less lucrative targets. The invasion initially planned for May/June as Operation Overlord had to be suspended indefinitely until this powerful German threat was overcome or eliminated. The struggling landing at Anzio in Italy was the only hopeful operation in progress for the western Allies, but it was also vulnerable: no matter how carefully planned, an amphibious operation must necessarily concentrate its forces into relatively small areas of beach, supported by closely clustered vessels. This concentration of forces was perfectly suited for an effective atomic attack. For now at least, Europe would stay in Nazi hands. The big question on Allied planner’s minds was, how many of those things did the Nazis have—and where would they strike again?
For the Soviets under Zhukov, there were the same questions, with the added burden of many more casualties than they could help. To the east and south of Moscow, radioactive fallout had spread for tens of thousands of hectares downwind and sickness had spread. Refugees from all of the areas around Moscow had crowded the available trains, trucks, and roads as they sought some relief, somewhere. It was a wet and cold April, with shelter hard to find, and many families struggled to survive in the fields and forests of central Russia. Zhukov still had a war to fight and his forces were massed and coiled to hit the Germans in Byelorussia. He could either wait for the Germans to use another atomic bomb on the Red Army or could order them into the attack. An attack had another advantage—his troops would be in close proximity with the fascists, and if they wanted to use the atomic bomb on them, they would kill Germans too. His forces were ready and fueled by an unquenchable hatred for the German enemy. At his command, the Red Army drove straight into the Germans.
In Washington and throughout the United States, the German atomic attacks filled Americans with astonishment and fear. Could the Nazis hit our cities yet? Congress met to discuss emergency measures for the evacuation of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and other major potential targets, and called on the military leadership to increase the air defenses of East Coast cities. President Roosevelt, though visibly more ill, met with Gen. George Marshall and Gen. Hap Arnold to plan for the one thing that would stop Germany—an atomic counterstrike against Berlin. The director of the Manhattan Project, Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, assured the planners that they would have at least one, maybe two, working weapons of roughly the same power and characteristics as the German weapons by late October or early November, with more available shortly thereafter. The B-29s capable of carrying the atomic bomb could be sent to England immediately, and the crews, already in training, would accompany them there. Communications with Churchill confirmed the British leader’s desire to annihilate. Berlin, with Hitler in it, as soon as possible. Roosevelt ordered the preparations to move the bombing team to England and then sent Churchill the message, “Operation Counterstroke has begun.”
The Nazis did not have any more atomic bombs, yet. The scientists and technicians were working hard to assemble enough material for the next bombs, but the painstaking, infinitesimally slow process of separating the fissionable isotopes from the large mass of nonfissionable material took time. All of the available fissionable material had been expended on the bombs for London and Moscow, and Hitler would have to wait a while longer for more. The Allied air forces were attacking around the clock, with special emphasis on any likely location for atomic manufacturing, weapons storage, or scientific research, which slowed the process. Roads, rail junctions, and, where they could be found, underground factories, received a rain of high explosives around the clock. The Allied air forces’ efforts took a more desperate cast, higher rates of loss of aircraft and crews accepted in order to ensure that the critical nuclear-related targets were neutralized.
4
Hitler was surprised that the Allies had not capitulated yet. He fully expected calls for an armistice from the West, and for the Soviet Bolsheviks to collapse. Neither happened. Instead, the British and Americans had increased the day and night bombing attacks, and the Russians were pounding his armies in the East. Apparently, they needed more lessons. He directed Himmler to hurry up and get more atomic bombs ready.
The German Army continued to hold off the Americans and British in Italy on the “Gustav Line” through the wet Italian spring. Fortress Europe kept its defenses honed under Field Marshal Rommel’s leadership, and starting in June, the first of the V-weapons, the V-1 flying bomb, was fired at British targets. The main direction for concern for the Nazis was the east, as the Soviets seized Sevastopol, and to the north drove the Germans out of Byelorussia and into eastern Poland. The Red Army was unstoppable and, as the German combat units on the front found out, not in the mood to take prisoners. The Soviet supply system had been quickly rebuilt, and as powerful barrages of massed artillery and Katyusha rocket fire rained on German defensive positions, the Nazis learned how effectively that new system worked.
Goebbels and his Ministry of Propaganda had kept up the momentum of encouragement that the atomic attacks had given the German public and trumpeted the terror that would soon result if the Allies did not stop bombing the Reich. As time wore on through the summer and fall, it was clear to everyone in Germany that the Allies had stepped up attacks from the air and the Russians were getting closer. No matter how artfully crafted, the propaganda could not disguise the danger of the situation and the continuing losses to the east and south. Germany’s allies were collapsing, and more troops had to be sent into Hungary and the Balkans to solidify the defenses there. The worst blow came with the Soviet seizure of the Romanian oil fields. With that loss, the German war machine lost its main source of fuel, and without a lot of fuel, the Nazis could not hope to win the war through offensive combat.
Despite these significant losses, Hitler believed that his “wonder weapons” would save the Reich. The V-2 ballistic rocket had begun attacks on Britain, and jet-propelled fighters and bombers were entering service in large numbers. Any day now the next of his series of atomic bombs would be ready, and the world had better beware. As he had ordered, plans were being completed for a long-range strike against the United States. New York City would be the next to go.
Heisenberg worked at what appeared to the SS as a feverish pace. He spent nearly all of his time in the underground facilities, tens of meters below the surface where there was neither day nor night. Living in the tunnels full time he did not have time to go home and see his family, so he sent them to join his sister in Bavaria until he could take some time off. Subtly, undiscernibly, he ordered more of the difficult-to-obtain materials and directed his team to work on related, yet non-essential areas. He was carefully delaying the completion of the next series of atomic weapons by obstructing the critical processes and concentrating on the less critical.
Heisenberg saw the pictures of the heaps of dead civilians and the rubble his bombs had created and he saw and heard the suffering of the slave laborers in the tunnels. Every night was torture as his dreams filled with the horrors he had created. The SS around him were as brutal and remorseless as ever and no day went by without seeing someone, usually one of the starving workers from the concentration camps, clubbed or shot or death near him.