Himmler was almost impressed. Manstein had taken what was, to all intents and purposes, a defeat and turned it into something that Hitler, while far from happy, could live with. It wasn't the easy victories of 1939 and 1940, but then, Hitler had been just as nervous as the rest of them during that period when they had taken a new and almost untried army into battle against the dreaded French Army and their British allies. Hitler, too, had feared them; Himmler sometimes wondered if the light treatment of the French under the New Order was a remnant of that fear.
“I see,” Hitler said, his eyes darkening. His face was returning to normal, much to Himmler’s relief; he didn’t want Hitler to have a heart attack in public. It would be harder to conceal the Führer’s death until he had his own plans underway for taking complete power in the Reich. “When will Rommel go on the offensive again?”
“He believes that he will be reinforced sufficiently within two weeks and, by then, he hopes to have consolidated his gains and wipe out or capture most of the pockets of resistance,” Manstein said. “We will be focusing on delivering as much in the way of supplies as Rommel needs, as well as regenerating the air force units that took part in the battle, including the ones that were weakened by the British.”
His voice droned on. Himmler listened thoughtfully, considering the private report he’d received on the side; the losses had been much heavier than anyone had predicted. The pessimists had predicted that Rommel’s forces could get brutally hurt – would be – but they’d never suggested just how bad it actually was. Rommel had lost well over ten thousand men and hundreds of vehicles; the scale of the defeat would have been disastrous under any previous regime. The British had been hurt too…but how badly?
“This is beside the point,” Himmler said suddenly. Everyone in the room, even Hitler, looked at him with some surprise. It wasn't like him to take control of the meeting, at least not when military matters were involved. “Our priority is defeating the British and ensuring that their country enters the New Order on our terms. Can we hold the lodgement if the British counter-attack before the reinforcements are in place?”
Manstein nodded. “The British would meet our own infantry, dug in and positioned for defeating any armoured thrusts of theirs,” he said firmly. “Our antitank weapons are actually better than theirs and our infantry more experienced, so I believe that we could hold the lodgement itself for much longer, if necessary.”
“Good,” Himmler said. “That leaves us with one question. What are we going to do about the British Navy?”
All eyes turned to Generaladmiral Erich Raeder, who looked unhappy. “I wanted to attempt to block the Panama Canal, but I was forbidden from doing so or engaging the British Navy anywhere near American units,” he said. “The net result of that is that the British Far Eastern Fleet has passed through the Panama Canal, met up with troop transports from Canada, and is proceeding to Britain at high speed. This force is accompanied by three older American battleships, officially to prevent the British from getting any ideas of invading Panama, but effectively preventing us from engaging them as well.”
“They’re lying,” Himmler said flatly. “The British have quite enough problems without adding the United States to their list of enemies. This is daring us to open fire on American ships.”
Admiral Canaris smiled thinly. “The American Government’s official position is that the United States is not involved in the fighting and expects to remain that way,” he said. “Unofficially, they are definitely providing a high degree of support to the British, including several shipments of weapons and a few thousand volunteer soldiers. Their ships are providing additional convoy escorts for any convoy that happens to include an American ship, and, as you can imagine, that is all of them.
“I don’t know if the American Government can push this much further without some assistance from us,” he continued, “but President Taft has clearly decided to use the conflict to his advantage, at least in some ways. Dewey left Taft with a series of problems, but he has shown himself able to use the war to his advantage. How it will work out in the long run remains to be seen, but at the moment, we must reckon the Americans to be actively supporting the British, and to all intents and purposes, to be at war with us.”
“They will pay for this,” Hitler thundered, his face darkening again. “A mere command could send hundreds of bombers to flatten New York, and our submarines will sweep their ships from the sea!”
Himmler found himself, for once, trying to talk the Fuhrer out of something. “Mein Fuhrer, the priority for the moment is the British,” he said. “The task of confronting the United States and bringing it into the New Order will have to wait until we have defeated the British. Then expand our own armed forces to the point where we could launch a major offensive against the United States.”
Hitler rounded on him. “And could they stand against our might if we dealt them a mighty blow?”
Himmler scowled. “We could not make the first blow fatal,” he said very calmly. “If we failed to make the blow shattering, the Americans would build up and crush us under the sheer weight of their industrial production.”
He found an ally in Speer. “In ten years, our industry will expand to the point where we can break the Americans,” the industrialist said. “Until then, we can ignore the Americans and watch as the British fume in helpless rage, aware of what they could do with American support, but helpless to get it and bend it to their use.”
“America will one day fall,” Hitler said, promising the room. “And so, what are we going to do about the British fleet?”
“We believe that the American ships will escort them until they reach Ireland,” Raeder said. “The Americans took over the former British bases in Eire and expanded them during 1942, as part of Roosevelt’s increasingly desperate attempts to convince the American public to join the war. The Irish Government, despite maintaining an official neutrality, has reluctantly agreed to serve as a transhipment point and, we fear, should also be considered an enemy nation by now. The British reinforcements will unload on Ireland, ship or fly over to Britain, and march up to join the front-line”
He paused.
“The British Navy will then move to destroy the Kriegsmarine, and it is there that we must defeat them,” he said. “The British fleet will be numerically superior to ours, but we have advanced technology and the support of land-based aircraft. Our capability to use tankers to support our aircraft will present the British with a series of technological surprises such as they have never imagined.”
Hitler, always keenly interested in new technology, listened with the greatest of attention.
“This will stun the British as our forces attack their fleet directly,” Raeder assured him. “As soon as they realise that their aircraft have been caught out of position, they will be forced to react to us, at which point we will launch our carrier aircraft to join the strike and complete the destruction of the British carriers and their battleships. Once that is completed, the seas will be completely under our control, and we will reinforce at will before taking London and ending the war.”
“Excellent,” Hitler said. His voice seemed much happier now. “I will, of course, examine the plans and maybe add my own refinements, but on the whole, I approve of your plans. The invasion of England is in good hands.”
“Thank you, Mein Fuhrer,” Raeder said. “I will ensure that the pilots are aware that you are thinking of them when they go into battle.”
“Regardless, I am disturbed by Churchill’s success at rallying the British to continue their resistance,” Hitler said, changing the subject without missing a beat. “Why does he continue to embrace opposition when it is so futile?”
Himmler knew the expected answer.
“Because Churchill is an old reactionary dog who doesn't understand that his time is past and his teeth have fallen out,” he said, remembering some of the jokes that were told about Churchill on Radio Berlin. The British leader was frequently caricatured in G
erman newspapers, sometimes to hilarious effect, sometimes in mockery that irritated even Himmler. “He feels that as long as he can hold the hope of American assistance, he can save the remains of his crumbling empire.”
Hitler rounded on Joachim von Ribbentrop. “And how have the Iranians responded to our proposal that they invade Iraq and India at once?”
Ribbentrop hesitated. He had just come back from a series of diplomatic missions to German allies looked tired. His competence, too limited to be trusted with anything too serious, was curtailed to making nice with people, although Philby had reported, much to Himmler’s private delight, that Lord Halifax had regarded Ribbentrop as a fool, a moron, and a babbling lunatic. The very idea of sharing anything with Lord Halifax made Himmler smile. He wouldn’t have expected that they had any points in common.
“They are on the verge of moving into Iraq,” he said finally, foregoing the fact that they had been on the verge of moving ever since the war began. It wasn't really a coincidence that most of their army units were kept in the north of Iran. “They are waiting for the British to be soundly defeated before they advance.”
“Then they will only have to wait two weeks,” Hitler said thoughtfully. “And so, how can we strike at Churchill himself?”
“My reports from London suggest that Churchill is a very isolated figure,” Himmler said smiling. “If he were to be removed, then the British Government would be in disarray, maybe even willing to consider a compromise peace.”
Hitler looked thoughtful. His whims reshaped the face of Europe. He had had Stalin crawling on the ground in front of him and kept Mussolini in power, rather than having him replaced with a more competent pro-German Italian, and there were thousands of those. He tolerated Franco rather than sending in the Panzers to avenge the occasional insult; he encouraged the French to settle in North Africa, just to alter the demographics of France. Deep inside, Himmler wondered if Hitler respected Churchill, at least on some level, or maybe it was just the desire to have Churchill grovelling in front of him as well. Atlee wouldn’t really have made a good substitute.
“He may have to be removed,” Hitler agreed finally. “How do you intend to accomplish this miracle?”
“I think that had best be kept between you and me,” Himmler said after a long moment. Someone had been passing on information to Britain, and when that person was caught, his fate would serve as a warning for a thousand years. “Churchill will die, and his successor will make peace with us.”
Chapter Forty-Three
London, England
“We have won a great victory,” Winston Churchill proclaimed, as he took his seat at the head of the table. Like the other aides and assistants, Alex DeRiemer sat at the back of the room, listening, but not allowed to speak unless called upon by one of the principles. His former boss had once remarked that aides were there to be seen but never heard in public, lest they embarrass their boss. DeRiemer suspected that very little embarrassed Churchill; he certainly hadn’t been shy about asking for DeRiemer’s opinion when he had wanted it.
He watched as Churchill spoke to the room, uniting them once again under his sway. Monty had told him that Churchill was a very clever man, but had a problem with understanding that the world was changing around him; it wasn’t so much that he was stupid – he wasn’t – but that he was often too stubborn to realise the facts of life and respond quickly. It was both an advantage and a disadvantage; an advantage because he kept his nerve when others would have lost it, and a disadvantage because he either underestimated or overestimated the forces at his command. Churchill had learnt – finally – to leave command to the Generals and Admirals, but he still had the urge to stick his nose in and offer advice and suggestions that were almost orders. It would be a brave commanding officer who defied them.
“The German assault on our cities and the very core of our existence has been broken,” Churchill said, his voice rising as he spoke. “We must now take advantage of this opportunity to crush the Hun and drive him out of our green and pleasant land before he tries to regain control of the situation.”
He paused. “Field Marshal Alexander, how long will it be until our forces can go on the offensive?”
Alexander, at least, had no problems telling Churchill when he was wrong. Monty had commented, bitterly, that if Wavell hadn’t had that problem, the British Empire would have taken Libya before the Germans could have gotten involved, securing North Africa, maybe bringing France back into the war, and preventing the fall of Egypt. DeRiemer suspected that Monty was wrong – there would have been major logistics issues – but even so, the defence of Greece had been a waste of time. Churchill’s books had proclaimed it a just and necessary attempt to save at least one of Hitler’s victims, but between the Italians and the Germans, Greece had been almost impossible to defend. It was further irony that the Greeks had beaten the Italians with ease; the Italian-occupied sections of Greece had the most violent and determined resistance group in Europe.
“At least two weeks,” Alexander said after a long moment. Churchill glowered at him, clearly expecting the army to advance at once, but waited to allow him to finish. “As you know, Prime Minister, the advance elements of the Canadian and Australian contributions to our defence are only a week away, along with a handful of units from the Indian Army, and we now have a torrent of supplies from the Americans. It will require time to integrate the newcomers with our own soldiers, arrange a joint command structure, and prepare for the advance.”
He paused. “What we don’t have is a guaranteed supply line from the Americans; our allies over there are merely getting American war stocks sent to us, rather than expanding American production lines,” he continued. “This means that there will be a finite limit on what the Americans can send unless they agree to expand, and it is uncertain what President Taft will be able to do, even assuming that he jumps in completely on our side. Ambassador Truman and our other friends over there have been doing a grand job, but the Americans don’t have a sense of urgency. That will change – that may change – if we lose the next series of battles and fall to German occupation, but by then it will be too late.”
Churchill’s face darkened. “I will have no talk of defeatism here,” he ordered. “We beat the Germans.”
“We beat them in an environment that we had designed to minimise their advantages and maximise our advantages,” Alexander said. He stood up and strode over to the massive wall map of the war zone. It was large enough to give a real sense of the scale of the battlefield. “The German Panzers, for example, were able to punch through our defence lines, but we were, in most cases, able to harass their advancing infantry and even force them to burn off fuel and ammunition fighting to prevent us from sealing the hole again. They managed to tear open several major gaps in our line regardless, but by that point we had our own reserves moving to seal up the hole and intercept their advance forces.
“In the meantime, we withdrew into the towns and cities, Colchester in particular, and dug in,” Alexander continued. “We had evacuated most of the civilian population over the last few weeks and were able, therefore, to defend the city without regard for the feelings of its inhabitants, of whom several thousand stayed behind to aid in the defence. The Germans have some experience at taking stoutly-held towns, but we were able to force them back out of the cities and then handle them roughly whenever they sought to break back in while using the cities as a permanent threat to their flanks. They were allowed to discover that we had tanks in the cities and therefore…we maintained the ever-present threat of an armoured thrust coming out of the city and forced them to tie down their forces to prevent us from breaking out…”
“And Monty mounted his armoured counter-attack right into their teeth,” Churchill said. “Why can’t he push onwards at once?”
“We didn’t retake all of the ground we lost,” Alexander said calmly. “We planned it so that we would maul the German forces and crush them on grounds of our choosing. The plan didn’t
work perfectly, but we broke one of their major Panzer Divisions and smashed a second force that would otherwise have broken through and imperilled London itself. However, the Germans mounted a series of counter-attacks of their own” – his hand traced out lines on the map – “with the net result that the siege of Colchester was not lifted and indeed there is a giant area that belongs to neither side, but is being torn apart by constant fighting.
“And our losses were very heavy,” he continued. “1st Armoured took a major beating during the second half of the counter-attack and lost several hundred tanks, while a large percentage of our infantry were either broken or trapped in towns and cities, hardly helpless, hardly prisoners, but still useless for the moment. That leaves us holding the line…and the supply situation is very dangerous. It will take time to resupply all of the units and reinforce them to the point where we can go on the offensive.”
Churchill looked at him for a long moment. “And what if the Germans go on the offensive themselves?”
“Our friend in Berlin has confirmed that the Germans took too much of a battering to be able to consider offensive action for the moment,” Menzies said. The Director of MI6 smiled grimly. “The Germans took a beating as well, gentlemen, and they will have to reinforce as well before Rommel can consider taking the offensive again.”
The Invasion of 1950 Page 39
