by Donald Hunt
Heidi Brendler received the news the following day with great sadness. It was a stark reminder that what she was doing was very dangerous business…that a mistake could cost her life. It also gave her a new determination. Her weekly dinner with Sarah was to be the following Friday. Heidi could not wait. She was more convinced than ever that the sure way for evil to triumph was for good people to do nothing.
Chapter 15
Normandy Invasion
By the fall of 1943, Werner Schmidt had finished English language school. He had provided valuable information to British Intelligence about the German resistance and had successfully convinced British officials of his zeal to help defeat Hitler and return to his homeland. He had applied for and received political asylum as a German National and refugee. But Werner Schmidt had done much more. He had requested to join the British Army as a special advisor on German geography and topography for preparation of the invasion of Europe, which was planned for the spring of 1944. He spent countless hours poring over detailed maps of central Germany and France. He made suggestions about bridges and places to ford rivers. After spending two months with invasion planners, he was accepted as a special advisor.
In November, 1943, Schmidt was sent to Scotland to be trained as an agent of British Special Operations Executive (SOE) - a British commando. His instruction lasted two months and included physical training, weapons use, silent killing, parachuting, demolition and field communication. Werner was intense in his training and desire to excel. He returned to London the first week in January for assignment, having received a ‘superior’ evaluation.
The defection of Werner Schmidt was just one of hundreds of factors important for planning a European invasion. One of the first was provided by the German Fuhrer himself. He had miscalculated that the United States would focus on the Pacific War and cast the war in Europe as a second priority. In fact, the opposite occurred. The U.S. adopted a strategy of waging war on ‘Germany first’. When he finally faced the reality of America’s industrial capabilities for mass production of arms, aviation fuel, aluminum, trucks, electronic equipment, and advanced radar, he was in essence, a man poking a large bee hive with a stick – up close and personal.
The impact of U.S. industry would be felt almost immediately. Millions of gallons of high octane aviation fuel went to Russia, along with 400,000 vehicles, 2,000 locomotives, and 11,000 freight cars. Russia could not have repelled the German invasion at Stalingrad, without these supplies.
A second factor was the battle of El Alamein in Egypt, which secured the Suez Canal for the Allies. The picture had been bleak for the Allies in August 1942. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was highly respected by the Allies and had already become a legend in the ranks of his own troops. His counterpart was British General Claude Auchinleck, who had little respect as a Commander and less ability. Churchill knew that British morale was low in England and also in the field. His solution was a new Commander, General Bernard Montgomery.
Montgomery was highly organized and brought confidence back to his troops. He also was aided by something his troops called ‘swallows’ - 300 American Sherman tanks, each with 75 mm cannon capable of penetrating the Panzer armor at 2,000 meters. These new tanks provided a significant advantage for the allies in the battle for North Africa.
Perhaps even more important to the Allied cause was the work at the decoding center at Bletchley Park, 40 miles north of London. It was an old estate turned code breaking center for the Allies. The team working in the code breaking center was a select group of scholars and mathematicians, including the reigning British Grand Chess Champion. Their mission was to crack the Nazi communication codes. The Germans had an encoding machine called Enigma, developed in the early 1930s. But Polish intelligence groups had broken the early cipher, which was altered every few months. The Poles shared this information with British intelligence in 1939. By that time the Germans were changing the cipher once a day, giving 150 million possible settings from which to choose. But British code breakers were up to the task. The British Navy had captured a U-boat with a new Enigma machine which aided the cause.
There was great secrecy about the breaking of the Enigma codes. In an attempt to hide the information, the reports about Enigma were given the appearance of coming from a British spy whose code name was Boniface. He had a network of imaginary agents inside Germany. In reality, there was a chain of wireless intercept stations across Britain that tracked enemy radio messages. Code breakers were now working around the clock to log and send the intelligence they were gathering straight to London. Special liaison units were set up to feed the Bletchley Park information to commanders in the field.
One of the first commanders to benefit was Montgomery. Workers at Bletchley got hold of Rommel’s battle plan and successfully deciphered it. They also furnished Montgomery the location of Rommel’s supply lines. When these lines were knocked out, the famous German Field Marshall was severely crippled for lack of fuel and supplies. Meanwhile the Allies were being supplied from the sea.
The Allies had placed a large number of land mines south of El Alamein at a place called Alam Halfa. The approaching Panzer tanks were severely damaged or destroyed in this mine field. Many other tanks became sitting targets for Allied fighter planes. The defeat of Rommel in Egypt was preceded by an order from Hitler not to fall back but to throw every gun and every man into the battle. In his years as Supreme Military Commander and Fuhrer, Hitler had never allowed a retreat for any reason. But on November 4th, at risk of being court-marshaled, Rommel saved what army he had left and began to retreat. In all, the Axis forces lost 59,000 troops due to death, injury or capture, and 450 tanks. To date, this was the most significant German defeat from a strategic standpoint. But many others were to follow.
On the same day that news of Rommel’s collapse spread, German intelligence reported a large British-American armada in the Mediterranean Sea off Gibraltar. For several reasons, Hitler did not grasp the implications of the report. He was preoccupied with his failures on the Russian front and was also scheduled to deliver his annual speech to his old Nazi party cronies in celebration of the anniversary of the famous 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi attempt to overthrow the Munich government.
On November 8, 1942, at 1:30 a.m., General Eisenhower’s forces landed on the North African beaches of Morocco and Algeria. Within a matter of months, they defeated the Axis forces and secured all of North Africa including Tunisia. They would now turn their full attention to Italy, where the corrupt fascist Mussolini regime was fast crumbling.
There was great unrest among the Italian working class, and multiple strikes being waged. Benito Mussolini, who had become Prime Minister in 1922, and who formed his fascist totalitarian government in 1925, decided to leave the country. His attempt to escape with his mistress failed when he was captured near Lake Como. The following day, April 28, 1943, they were executed by firing squad in the small village of Giulinodi Mezzegra. Their bodies were hung upside-down in Milan. Six weeks later on July 10th, the Allies landed in Sicily with almost no resistance. The Italians had little stomach for a fight. Thus ended the corrupt and egregious reign of the man who called himself ‘IL Duce’…supreme leader.
During the summer of 1943, the air war was significantly intensified by British and American forces. British bombing runs were generally made by night and the Americans took the day shift. The air raids were especially important in slowing the testing and production of the V-1 and V-2 rockets. These unmanned jet-propelled aircraft were named after the German word Vergeltungswaffen - weapon of reprisal. The Allied target was the V-1 production installation at Paenemunde and it was severely damaged in multiple bombing runs. While the German munitions and armament plants were progressively being damaged, the greatest casualty was the morale of the German people, as their homes and work places were systematically being destroyed.
About midnight on July 28th, a soft knock on the door awakened Hei
di Brendler. Given the late hour, she stood at the door for a moment. She didn’t move. Finally, she recognized the voice of Max from the resistance group and quickly unlocked the door. “Wait, Max. I have to get something on.”
Max, unmarried, respectfully looked down at the floor. It startled him to see the body of a woman, his colleague, standing naked beneath a sheer nightgown. Heidi made no sound and moved quickly to the bedroom. She returned, tying the sash of her house coat.
“Max! It’s so late. Why are you here? Do we have a problem? Do you want some coffee?”
“There’s no time. We’ve located a downed airman and he’s badly injured. We have him in a barn about 20 kilometers from Dresden. If we hurry we can reach him and you can take a look and see what you can do for him. Then we have to get him to a safer place. They’re looking for him already. His ‘chute was seen when he bailed out last evening.”
“I’ll get dressed. I’m not scheduled to work today.”
In the waiting truck was 30 year old Franz Schwartz. He had met Landis at the ball-bearing factory. He was the only remaining son in his family. His two older brothers had been killed in combat and Franz had been released from the military removing him from harm’s way. Heidi did not like meeting strangers in the resistance. She knew she was vulnerable to the Gestapo. The more people who could connect her to the underground, the less safe she felt. But these were risks she had to take.
She got into the truck and greeted Franz briefly. As they sped off into the night, she noticed that he had a semi-automatic weapon with the barrel pointing to the floor. He also had a large knife strapped to his left lower leg. There was no small talk. Max left the main road south out of Leipzig.
As they rode in silence, Heidi felt the reality of what she was doing. She was putting her life on the line, her own small effort to work toward the defeat of Hitler. She thought back to the time he had confronted her at the University Hospital. Now she felt even more strongly that this was a cause for which she was willing to die. Tonight, she knew she might actually have to.
Max turned west, taking small back roads to the village of Tanneberg, then due south for three kilometers. They turned back east onto a dirt road leading to the farm that housed the downed airman. The farm consisted of some 100 acres of oats and grain and the owners also ran 80 head of sheep and a few hogs. Max pulled behind the barn and parked the truck. Then he and Heidi slipped out and into the barn while Franz kept watch. Inside, an elderly woman sat beside the airman with a coal-oil lamp. The man appeared to be about 25 years old. He was dressed in a green flight suit. He had been flying fighter cover for a group of B-29’s heading for Berlin. Heavy anti-aircraft flack over the Frankfurt area had damaged his wing tanks and he began to lose fuel. He realized he did not have the fuel to complete the mission so he aborted and bailed out near Dresden.
His eyes closed but he was not asleep, just struggling to deal with the pain. He had learned a limited amount of German but had never expected to use it. He opened his eyes and looked up at Heidi.
“Schmerzen haben?” she asked.
“My shoulder and ankle,” he whispered.
He simultaneously moved his left hand to his right shoulder and then his right ankle. Heidi unzipped his flight suit and carefully slipped his left arm out, then gently pulled his right arm out of the sleeve. His right shoulder appeared to be out of socket.
“Posterior dislocation,” she whispered to herself.
Heidi removed her shoes and sat down on his right side. Then she took hold of his right hand with both of her hands and placed her right foot into his armpit. She pulled on his arm and pushed with her foot. As the bone slipped back into the socket, the man muffled a scream.
“Better!” he managed to say.
Heidi asked for some rags and made him a makeshift sling. She took his hand and pushed it against his abdomen. “Don’t move it.”
He nodded.
Heidi then removed his right boot and examined his swollen ankle. She though it was probably a sprain but there was no way to know without x-rays. “Let’s go,” she said, replacing the boot.
They made their way to the truck. Heidi had bought it for the resistance. It had a flat bed with side rails and a back drop. Now they would see how well it would work in their efforts. German patrols were actively looking for the downed pilot. Heidi and her team would have to move him to a farm closer to Leipzig for a week or so and then get him to France.
“Help him on to the truck,” Max said to Franz. “You both can lie down under the tarp. We will be traveling about an hour. If we run into trouble you know what to do.”
A blanket was folded on the truck bed. Franz spread it out and helped the airman lie down. Then he lay down beside him and pulled the tarp over them. It was about 4:00 a.m. They back-tracked along the same route they had taken, staying off of the main roads. The countryside was a mix of farmland and pine forests, a soothing picture even in the dark. Heidi began to relax. She believed they were safe. They would not encounter a patrol, but then she saw the headlights. A vehicle was approaching from the west. It happened so fast they could not turn off the road or avoid the oncoming vehicle. As it got closer Max could see that it was a military truck with two occupants in the cab and two soldiers sitting on the truck bed. The truck slowed and then turned to block theircpath. The two soldiers in the back got down with their weapons. The sergeant in command climbed out of the cab leaving the driver. Max slowed to a stop and simultaneously reached under the seat and brought up a pistol. Heidi had not known it was there.
“What are you doing out at this time of the morning?” the sergeant asked. He had walked to the driver’s side of the truck and placed one foot on the running board.
“We are returning from seeing our sister,” Max said calmly. Then he grinned. “She just had a baby.”
“Really? Well, someone around here just had an enemy pilot drop down from the sky,” the sergeant replied, his grin matching Max’s. “We’ll need to take a look in the truck.”
“Have a look,” said Max waiving his left hand toward the truck bed. He simultaneously brought the pistol to the door with his right hand, holding it just below the window.
The two soldiers walked to the back of the truck. They lowered the tailgate just as Franz threw off the tarp. He sat up and fired the semi-automatic, hitting both men in the chest. The impact knocked them back 10 feet and to the ground. Simultaneously, Max raised his pistol and shot the sergeant at close range. The bullet entered his brain just above his left ear. The private driving the truck jumped out. Having left his weapon in the back of the truck, he started to run. Franz jumped down and ran after him. Within seconds there was another burst from the semi-automatic. Franz returned from the darkness.
“You okay?” he asked Max.
“Yes. Let’s go!”
* * *
Heidi spent the next few weeks trying to forget the violence she had witnessed. As a surgeon she had seen firsthand the result of the violence of warfare – but always after the fact. Now she had seen a man literally blown into eternity by another man. She knew that if not for the actions of Franz and Max, she and the others would be the corpses. Hatred had turned the farmlands and pine forests, the fields of hay and oats, into killing fields, and all because of a single mad man, an Austrian no less, who had gained control of an entire nation that was not his own. Man’s inhumanity to man was as old as civilization, yet still incomprehensible.
Two months to the day after she had helped the airman, Heidi was introduced to another wounded soldier, this time a German. Klaus von Stauffenberg had come to the hospital in Leipzig from the war zone in Tunisia, where he was the operations officer for the 10th Panzer Division. He was a man of astonishing gifts who had served with distinction in France and on the Russian front. In Tunisia he had driven over a land mine and suffered grave injuries including the loss of his right hand, two fingers on his left hand,
his left eye and ear. He was initially seen and treated by Professor Sauarbruch in Munich then transferred to the Leipzig University Hospital for further convalescence.
Heidi was assigned to his ward, but was reluctant to get involved with a Nazi officer. She was working the evening shift and served his evening meal tray. As she approached, he smiled.
“You’re very kind,” he said. “I appreciate your service.”
Heidi returned the smile and said, “Thank you.”
Curious about his injuries, she turned to his chart and began reading. She glanced at the man. He was handsome. His facial trauma was healing well. She looked closely at his face and the patch over his left eye. The word ‘dashing’ came to mind.
Later that evening she made her medication rounds, leaving him as her last patient. “Good evening,” she said softly as she entered his room.
He smiled. “Good evening.”
As they began to talk, Heidi learned more about this war hero. It was soon clear that he had strong feelings against the war and Nazi anti-Semitism. He was not the usual military officer. He had a passion for horses, art and literature. He was an admirer of the work of German poet, Stefan George, whom he had met. Even with his negative feelings about the Nazi Reich, he had thrown himself into battle, the consummate professional.
One evening Heidi met his wife. She was from aristocracy. The Countess Nina strongly supported her husband’s views on the war and shared her thoughts with Heidi. “He feels he must do something to save Germany,” she said.
By September 1943, the wounded officer had finished his convalescence. He was assigned the position of chief of staff to General Olbricht at the General Army Office in Berlin. He had been promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel. The first evening of his time at his new post, Olbricht asked him to dinner. Berlin was full of out of the way places, none crowded because of the bombing curfew. The two men settled into a corner table and ordered wine.
