THE GERMAN PEACE
PREFACE
The Second World War never happened!
The allied army trapped at Dunkirk in Northern France was resoundingly defeated by the German forces in May 1940 after its planned evacuation proved to be a costly failure. The German Army continued its sweep into France and by mid-June Paris was occupied and an armistice agreed by the French.
A vast swathe of Europe was now under German rule. In the west, only Britain stood alone against a triumphant Germany. A Britain that had lost the bulk of its army and equipment at Dunkirk. Invasion is inevitable.
A worried British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said, “It is my considered opinion that it is highly unlikely Britain could resist a German invasion as things stand right now.”
But an event of world shattering importance impacted on everybody’s perception of the situation in Europe, and indeed, the world.
THE GERMAN PEACE
An alternative history of World War II with a twist. What if the Germans turned out to be the good guys? This is a gripping story that cleverly entwines the fortunes of nations with those of a family brought together in war and striving to make good in a strange peace.
Deborah Mellor, OBE.
Copyright © 2017 Derek Pennington
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form, or by any means,
without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction, portions of which are based
on actual events and real historical figures
Derek Pennington
[email protected]
THE GERMAN PEACE
BY
DEREK PENNINGTON
This book is dedicated to
my beautiful daughter Kathy,
the best daughter in the world,
and
my lovely wife Natalia,
the best wife in the world
CHAPTER ONE - CONFLAGRATION
1940
MAY
Alongside a rubble-strewn road, littered with many bombed out vehicles and innumerable discarded weapons, in the war-ruined town of Dunkirk on the northern French coast, the group of senior German officers standing on a mound of sand and soil, embedded with pieces of shell blasted concrete, looked on in awe.
A seemingly endless line of Allied prisoners of war wound its way past them, marching into captivity. Some four hundred thousand British, French and Belgian soldiers. Exhausted and dejected.
At the head of the British troops strode their commander, General Lord Gort, a winner in the Great War of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry. The previous day he had deliberately disobeyed orders from his superiors in England recalling him back to England before the actual surrender of the allied troops. The General was adamant that he would not desert his men. As Gort drew level with the German officers, to a man they came to attention and saluted their brave opponent.
One of the officers, General Erwin Rommel, turned his head to the young colonel next to him. “Remember this day well, von Altendorf. We will never see anything like this again. This will be written about in all future history books. And it is we who made it happen.” He turned his attention back to the British troops.
Klaus von Altendorf was a recently promoted colonel in Rommel’s panzer corps. He felt impossibly proud and exhilarated to be here today. The might of the British, French, Belgian and Dutch armies had been humbled in the incredibly short space of time of less than three weeks. The world had never seen such a devastatingly successful military campaign.
But von Altendorf was troubled. He found it hard to understand why they were fighting the British. ‘They are not our natural enemies,’ he said to himself. He fervently hoped this mess could be sorted out quickly. He did not believe any sane person in the German army wanted to fight a long war against Great Britain. ‘It will not be easy to conquer their island,’ he thought. ‘They are a proud nation with the greatest empire the world has ever seen. And a long history of winning wars.’
Unbeknown to him, Rommel was having similar dark thoughts. But Rommel, along with certain of the other generals present that day, harboured a terrible secret. A secret that would profoundly affect the course of the war - and Germany’s future - once it became known!
Adolf Hitler had effectively been dictator of Germany for the past seven years. In that time he had brought unity, stability, prosperity and pride to his people. He had also, in the end, brought war.
The sheer scale of his territorial ambitions was frightening. And through a combination of audacity and good planning, combined with a measure of luck and weak foreign political opposition, his armed forces had made him the master of Western Europe.
Hitler’s acquisitiveness had begun a little over two years earlier, in March 1938, when, with the connivance of one of Austria’s prominent politicians, the traitorous Arthur Seyss-Urquart, Germany had annexed that country. Austria had been reduced to the status of a province of Germany. This action had, however, generally met with the approval of a majority of the Austrian population. For this reason the German swallowing of Austria provoked only tepid political reaction from the weak or timid governments of the rest of Europe.
Five months later, in October 1938, the same thing happened to the Sudetenland, those portions of Czechoslovakia which had historic German speaking majorities and shared a common border with Germany. Hitler soon found an excuse to annex them. A few months later, what was left of Czechoslovakia was also occupied by German troops. There was no Czechoslovakian resistance.
These were peaceful acquisitions.
War had started in September 1939 with Germany’s unprovoked attack on Poland. As a result of this, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Those two countries were, however, in no position to provide any assistance whatsoever to the Poles. Britain’s army had been neglected for many years before this, as most of the country’s politicians chose to ignore the signs of impending war. France also suffered from weak and divided political leadership. In the 1930s the average duration of a French government was only nine months. The politicians of both of these countries let their people down.
After only four weeks of fighting against vastly superior forces, the brave Poles had no option but to surrender. They had taken a further blow when the Soviet Union attacked and occupied the Eastern part of their country, with the connivance of Hitler.
Britain and France now prepared for war. The British despatched an army, the British Expeditionary Force, to France under the command of one of their most able generals, Lord Gort. The French also acted, and mobilised their troops.
For the next seven months or so, nothing of great significance happened! This was a period that came to be called ‘the phoney war’.
On 9 April 1940 things changed dramatically. Germany attacked Denmark and Norway.
Denmark capitulated after only one day.
In Norway, all important points of control, as well as the capital, Oslo, were in German hands by the end of the first day. The British, stunned and surprised by these lightning moves, attempted to intervene and landed units of their own forces at several locations in Norway. They met with no real lasting success. They were still fighting there at the end of May, but it was expected that it was only a matter of a days before they withdrew whatever forces they had left in that country.
A triumphant and confident Germany kept up the momentum. On 10 May they attacked Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France by way of the Ardennes forest.
Little Luxembourg fell within a few hours. Holland surrendered after five days, but only after a German threat to level the city of Rotterdam by bombin
g. Belgium put up more of a fight but on 28 May they also admitted defeat and asked for an armistice.
The astonishing rapidity – some thought bordering on recklessness – of the advance of the German panzers through Belgium and into France, had caught the Allies completely by surprise. Their major force, including the BEF, was surrounded and trapped in a narrow pocket of land at the small northern French port of Dunkirk. It quickly became obvious that these British, French and Belgian troops were in an untenable situation.
In England, the newly appointed Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, told a grave and silent House of Commons, “We are facing a colossal military disaster. The whole root, core and brain of the British Army is in danger of being lost.”
Churchill was sixty five years old. He had been born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. After an early and distinguished career in the army in many different parts of the world, he had followed in his father’s footsteps and entered politics. That was in 1900. He had been appointed Prime Minister on 10 May, only days before the retreat to Dunkirk.
For years he had been the most outspoken and relentless critic of Adolf Hitler and continually warned of the dangers posed by the rise of Nazi Germany. He had watched his predecessor’s policy of appeasement in dismay. ‘Now the chickens are coming home to roost,’ he thought. But the knowledge that he had been right all along, gave him no satisfaction whatsoever.
The British Government and the army Chief of Staff jointly decided that there was no realistic alternative other than to bring the army home from Dunkirk. Otherwise it faced annihilation. A hastily improvised evacuation plan was drawn up under the code name ‘Operation Dynamo’. This was to be handled by the Royal Navy under the direction of Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey. His orders were simple. He was to embark ‘as many as possible, as quickly as possible’.
Commencement date was to be 26 May.
Around Dunkirk and on its beaches the allied soldiers dug in and put up fierce resistance as the German forces relentlessly pushed them back. The German pressure was enormous and unending. The British had only rifles and a few machine guns with which to face enemy mortars, artillery, armour and air power. Fighting was often at close quarters and there were many unbelievable acts of bravery on both sides.
In one case, Captain Marcus Ervine-Edwards of the East Lancashire Regiment was holding a line of defence in the face of vastly superior enemy forces. When part of his position was threatened, he and a few volunteers went forward and climbed onto the top of a straw roofed barn. They were armed only with rifles and one light machine gun. Ervine-Edwards personally accounted for seventeen of the enemy with his rifle and quite a few more with the machine gun. Only when the barn was on fire and they were out of ammunition did he lead his men back into the lines and take up their position again.
Captain Ervine-Edwards was awarded the VC for this action.
Treatment for the many wounded among the besieged quickly became a very serious burden. It was far less of a problem for the besiegers who could simply send their own wounded to the rear for treatment and hospitalisation.
The evacuation also had its problems.
It was proving difficult to take men off the beaches. It was a slow process and it soon became obvious that it was not going to work due to the huge number of troops involved. After two days fewer than twenty thousand of the more than four hundred thousand troops had been lifted off.
The boats and ships of the evacuation fleet were continuously strafed and bombed in dogged and ferocious attacks by Luftwaffe aircraft, despite the best efforts of the Royal Air Force to defend them. There were daring and near suicidal attacks by German E-boats and U-boats. Enemy mines were also taking their toll. Losses were rising.
The men stranded on the open beaches were machine gunned and bombed throughout the day by enemy aircraft, and bombarded by artillery non-stop, including during the night. Casualties were horrific.
On 28 May it all came to a head.
The Navy lost more ship that morning, including two destroyers in the space of an hour. Ship losses over the last few days now totalled thirty five merchantmen and nine destroyers.
The RAF was also taking unacceptable losses. Neither did they have an unlimited supply of fighter aircraft and pilots. Repeated pleas from Winston Churchill for more aircraft over Dunkirk and France, fell on deaf ears. The commander of RAF Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding, defied his Prime Minister and reluctantly gave the order to curtail aircraft patrols outside of the home country. He had made the hard and bitter decision that the number of fighters and fighter pilots the RAF still had operational, would be barely sufficient to defend Britain once the shambles of Dunkirk was over.
Churchill was most displeased.
The soldiers on the beaches, desperately waiting for deliverance, continued to be subjected to a non-stop bombardment from which they had no defence or protection. They were being slaughtered. The cost in lives of holding out at Dunkirk had become unacceptably high.
Finally, about midday, the Germans broke through the defence perimeter in two places.
Lord Gort had watched the situation rapidly deteriorate. After consulting with his own, and the French senior officers, as well as the senior naval officer present, he radioed his headquarters in Britain and advised that the cost in men and ships did not warrant continuing the evacuation operation. He requested instructions.
Two hours later new orders were received. He was authorised to arrange the immediate surrender of all troops under his command. Lord Gort himself, and all other senior officers were to be brought back to England immediately, and all British ships were to leave the area.
When told of this, Lord Gort wasted no time in getting his officers together and issued instructions for surrender. He also thanked the navy for their offer of a ‘ride home,’ but he was staying where he was. In Dunkirk with his men!
The British fleet of ships headed home. White flags were hoisted on land. The guns fell silent. The Battle for Dunkirk was over.
At a meeting of his War Cabinet in London that evening Churchill was morose. He told them, “We and our allies were completely unprepared for the rapid mobile operations of the Germans. This is the biggest military disaster Great Britain has suffered since the loss of the American colonies, over one hundred and fifty years ago.”
He shook his head as if in disbelief. “We have been outfought at every turn. The BEF have had to abandon at Dunkirk, 2500 guns, 69 000 vehicles, and over 600 000 tons of ammunition, stores and fuel”. He paused. “I have to tell you gentlemen, it is my considered opinion that it is highly unlikely Britain could resist a German invasion as things stand right now.”
He sighed, poured himself a small whisky, and gathered his thoughts. He straightened in his seat, “Now. To business….”
The following day, 29 May, as Lord Gort marched at the head of his men into captivity, he observed a group of German officers, which included at least six generals, snap to attention and salute as he marched past. He noted curiously that none of them used the Nazi salute. Courteous as always, he returned their salute. And carried on marching.
JUNE
Early on the morning of 2 June, after allowing his exhausted men a much needed four day rest and recuperation, except for the poor engineering and supply support troops, who had to work like demons, the Commander in Chief of the German forces, General Walther von Brauchitsch, launched his forces deep into France in the second phase of the operation to subdue their traditional enemy.
Following the allied defeat at Dunkirk, the French were now completely demoralised and in disarray. They were also suffering from poor leadership, both military and political.
With their now familiar combination of air superiority, amour mobility, and sheer aggression, the German forces quickly overwhelmed what was left of the French forces. They entered Paris unopposed on 11 June. A stunning victory for German arms!
The same day, Germany’s supposed ally, Italy, now that t
heir dictator, Benito Mussolini, was sure the war was being resolved in Germany’s favour, also declared war on Britain and France. The Italian forces attacked across the common border with France but were initially repulsed. Eventually the Italians managed to occupy a small area of French territory at a cost to them of four thousand casualties. The French suffered only two hundred killed.
Mussolini was pleased with this meagre result. He had earlier declared that, ‘I need a few thousand dead Italian soldiers to give me a seat at the peace conference as a man who has fought.’ A sad example of politician’s callous disregard for the lives of their own soldiers.
A week earlier, in a desperate attempt to keep the French fighting, Winston Churchill had flown to France for a meeting of the Anglo-French War Council, which was still pretending to function. Here he made the bizarre suggestion of a Franco-British Union. One unified nation to carry on the war against Germany.
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