Third Reich Victorious (48 page)

*
2
. The fate of the death camp staffs is treated well in Eva von Bartelsmann,
A Reckoning With Shame: Germany’s Hideous Secret
(Collins, London, 1963), 132-50.

*
3
. Peter G. Tsouras,
Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944.
The definitive work on the Allied defeat in Normandy and the roles of Rommel and Speidel in Hitler’s assassination.

*
4
. By July 1944 there were 173,980 German prisoners interned in the continental United States. Most of these were men captured in North Africa. See Lewis and Mewha,
History of the Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army 1776-1945
, 90-91. Large numbers of prisoners were also kept in the United Kingdom. They were quickly returned in response to the immediate release of British prisoners by the Germans. The most useful of these were the several thousand air crew captured mostly in the Battle of Britain.

*
5
. Quoted in Zhukov, Georgi,
The Great Patriotic War
(Progress, Moscow, 1958) 477.

6
. Hubert P. van Tuyll,
Feeding the Bear
, 63, 69.

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7
. Quoted in Zhukov,
op. cit.
, 491.

8
. There had been barely forty operational Luftwaffe fighters supporting Army Group Center when Operation Bagration had begun. In his flight to the front, Rommel’s escort comprised a high proportion of surviving operational aircraft.

9
. Mueller-Hillebrand,
Das Heer 1939-1945
, vol. 3, Table 62.

10
. Seaton,
The Russo-German War 1941-1945
, 547. See also Seaton,
The German Army 1933-1945
, 223.

11
. Ziemke,
Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East
, 369-70. The Southeastern Theater forces in the Balkans “had a ration strength of 900,000, including naval and air contingents and what the Germans called ‘
Wehrmachtsgefolge
,’ the technicians, bureaucrats, police, and mere hangers-on who followed the armed forces into occupied countries. The ground combat strength was, roughly, 600,000 …” There were 300,000 men, mostly German, in Army Group E in Greece. Subtracting Bulgarian troops leaves a figure of approximately 500,000 German troops for the entire theater.

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12
. Jon F. Collins,
General of the Fighters: The Rise of Adolf Galland
(Military Publishing Co., Richmond VA, 1963), 236. The meteoric rise of Adolf Galland, who began World War II as a captain and ended it as field marshal commanding the Luftwaffe, is well-documented in this book. As the brilliant innovator of fighter operations, he was just the man Rommel needed to lead the Luftwaffe in the final battle in the East against the overwhelming numbers of the Red Air Force.

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13
. It was only after the war that Reich Chancellor Rommel officially informed the German people and the world of the Final Solution. A full accounting, was made of the four million put to death in the camps up to their closure in July 1944. Unfortunately, as critics charged, the Rommel government was all too quick to emphasize the restoration of German honor in this matter rather than the original loss of it. Nevertheless, it was the Rommel government that sponsored the creation of the state of Israel in 1952 and provided the military support that was critical in defeating the initial Arab attempts to destroy the Jewish state. “I can never forget what I saw,” Rommel was reported to have said on a number of occasions.

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14
. Dr. General Lothar Rendulic,
The German-Finnish Cobelligerency, 1941-44
(Amesbury House, London, 1956), 322.

15
. Loki was the Germanic-Norse trickster god.

16
. Chant,
Warfare and the Third Reich
, 413-14.

17
. Rommel,
The Rommel Papers
, 451-53.

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18
. Quoted in Zhukov, op. cit., 509.

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19
. Dean Acheson,
German Diplomacy under the Rommel Government
(Courtland Press, NY, 1956), 63-66. Alger Hiss,
Soviet Foreign Policy in World War II
(Bellmont Books, NY, 1953), 334-39.

20
. Ziemke,
ibid.
, 416-18.

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21
. Von Manteuffel’s rise to Panzer army commander had been meteoric. An early protégé of Guderian, he was a brilliant and aggressive tactician and leader, known as the “Lion of Zhitomir” for his destruction of the Soviet 16th Army in 1943. It was at the urging of Guderian and Hoth, under whom he served in the XLVIII Panzer Corps, that he was jumped to command the newly formed 5th Panzer Army, made up largely of divisions that had served in the Normandy campaign. He served after the war in his mentor’s wartime position of Inspector of Panzer Forces 1949-52.

*
22
. Rommel,
Decision in the East
(Greenhill Books, London, 1960), 364. Rommel’s self-control did have its limits, however. In this first English translation of his bestselling memoir written after his retirement as chancellor, he relates with obvious glee of his visits with the troops, from Romania to East Prussia, in these hectic months of desperate preparation. The image of Rommel among the troops before and during the great battles of 1944-45 became the leitmotif of the final campaign. Privately, von Manstein was chagrined to have Rommel steal the limelight, but he did admit that if he had to choose between the limelight and the substance, he would still choose the latter.

*
23
. Fritz Bayerlein,
Panzer Sieg
(Allstein Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1954), 244. A brilliant Bavarian, Bayerlein, served as Chief of the German Army General Staff 1950-56, personally selected by Rommel.

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24
. II SS Panzer Corps’ two divisions had been the 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” and 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich.” The former had originated, as its name indicated, as Hitler’s bodyguard detail. Hitler’s assassination made the honorific somewhat indelicate. It was renamed 1st SS Panzer Division “Deutschland,” and as such accompanied the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” into the meeting engagement at Szrensk. However, its men still wore their old AH armbands into battle. After the war, Rommel demobilized the SS fighting arm and incorporated its most distinguished units into the army in 1947. With that act the last element of the SS and its infamous twin runes passed into history. Nigel Bromfield,
History of the Waffen SS
(Caulfield and Michaels Ltd, London, 1969), 290-95.

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25
. Hasso von Manteuffel, “Meeting Engagement at Szrensk,”
Armor
, March 1963, 34. Although von Manteuffel characterized the engagement as a tactical victory, Soviet accounts were more correct in depicting it as a drawn fight. It was an operational and strategic victory of the first order, however, in that it stopped Zhukov’s last chance to rescue his tank armies in what history has called the great “Rommel Pocket,” to the intense annoyance of von Manstein whose brainchild it was. Rommel could not help dominating the public’s impression of the war in the East as he had in North Africa and France, and the name “Rommel Pocket,” coined by a soldier at the front, stuck. Although heaped with honors by Rommel after the war, von Manstein retired immediately.

*
26
. Oskar von Blutfeld,
Casualties of the Second World War
(Greenhill Books, London, 1989), 737. Citing German and Soviet sources, this German military historian asserts that the Soviets lost over 4,000 tanks, 3,000 aircraft, and 536,000 men in the fighting west of the Vistula alone, including 253,000 prisoners. German losses amounted to 102,000. For all of Operation Suvorov, Soviet losses exceeded 1.4 million, and German losses were 339,000, including 47,000 prisoners.

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27
. Zhukov was Stalin’s scapegoat for the disaster of Operation Suvorov. He spent the next eight years in a concentration camp near Magadan until Stalin’s death. He was rehabilitated in 1956 under the De-Stalinization Campaign and has taken his proper place in Soviet military history, his defeat in Poland balanced against his numerous earlier victories, which drove the Germans out of the Soviet Union. He died quietly in retirement in 1960, his health broken by his treatment in the camps.

September 12, 1939: Force H sorties against Lütjens’s Carrier Group III. Note the antiquated Swordfish torpedo bomber circling over the fleet—Lütjens called them “death traps.”

Author’s collection

Before the battle of Scapa Flow, 1830 hours, August 31, 1939: Little did the crews of these British warships suspect that within twelve hours thick smoke would hide the horror of dying ships and dead men from watching eyes—the first of many harsh blows for the British Home Fleet.

Author’s collection

Kriegsmarine torpedo-boats, such as these of the 7th Flotilla, escorted the SS invasion forces across the Channel in 1940.

U.S. Army Art Collection

General Erich von Manstein, whose plans led to the defeat of both France and Britain. Author’s collection

Major General Bernard Montgomery, wearing his famous black beret with the two cap badges. Author’s collection