The Invasion of 1950

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “Then is this not the perfect time to attack?” Churchill asked. “We could move now and take out their lodgement before they reinforce!”

  “They still have their infantry and antitank guns dug in to prevent us from doing just that,” Alexander said. “Montgomery is probing their lines with his own infantry and reconnaissance units, as well as using information from agents inside the occupied zone, and he has concluded that the Germans are digging in for the moment. They still have enough soldiers to make us pay a disproportionate price for retaking what we lost over the last few days, let alone punching through to Felixstowe and Harwich and ending the war.”

  “It won’t end the war,” Churchill said slowly. DeRiemer guessed that he was remembering Professor Anderson and the Omega Project. How far had the Germans advanced on such a project themselves? How much did they know about atomic science? “The Germans will still be out there, plotting revenge and their next step in dominating the world.”

  Alexander nodded once.

  “Prime Minister, we cannot throw the Germans into the sea at the cost of destroying the British Army,” he said. “Allow us the time to build up and prepare, and we will destroy their lodgement, but until then, we can only hold the line and hope that our reinforcements get into position before theirs do.”

  “Very well,” Churchill said with sour grace. “I expect the War Office to work on plans to evict the Germans as soon as possible.”

  He peered across at Christopher Parkinson. “What about the country?”

  Parkinson frowned.

  “The country could be a lot better off,” he said, ignoring the expression on Churchill’s face. “The Germans, fortunately, haven’t launched more than a few assaults against our factories, but the refugee crisis is growing to astonishingly high levels and has actually led to a series of riots. I am sorry to report that I have ordered the arrest of two scions of the aristocracy for refusing to allow their ancestral homes to be turned into refugee camps.”

  “Oh dear,” Churchill said. He didn't sound too worried about the imprisoned aristocrats. “What about food and logistics?”

  “That is more of a problem,” Parkinson admitted. “The refugee crisis means that some areas are consuming more food than others. We actually attempted to alter the rations for workers, as opposed to refugees, but that caused massive hardship and some unrest, so that was altered quickly. A unit of the reserve Home Guard actually went on strike until their families, evacuated from the conflict zone, received the same food ration as everyone else; frankly, the system is on the verge of collapse. We never expected a refugee crisis on such a scale, and that is making is much harder to feed everyone.”

  He paused. “The Germans have been more careful about interdicting our shipping, seeing as we tranship most of our purchases through Ireland, but internally it’s a different story. There are sections of the country that are almost completely cut off from others as far as mass transport of food is concerned, and others have an abundance of food. The food programs we started to feed the country in 1940 have been paying off to some extent, but we never developed it to the point where it could feed everyone, and consequently, we have major shortages. The matter isn’t helped by the black market; the farmers are just not cooperating.”

  Churchill thumped the table. “It’s their country as well!”

  “Yes,” Parkinson agreed dryly. “They also see us fixing prices for them, and they rebel. They are dependent upon a certain amount of profit or their farms will have to be sold, and that causes them to decide that it’s easier to sell some of their produce under the table. This problem developed under the last government, Prime Minister, but it is going to remain for years to come, unless we can stem it now. I have proposed a series of emergency bills to prevent the massive abuse of the system, but even so, it will still be a long time before there is any major effect.”

  “Thank you,” Churchill said. His voice became drier, almost sardonic. “How long will it be before the country collapses?”

  Parkinson thought about it.

  “It’s impossible to say, Prime Minister,” he said. “If the war was to stop tomorrow, we would still need years to repair all the damage and rebuild enough to get the country running smoothly. If the war carries on and the damage keeps increasing, then we might have much more internal unrest within a year and be on the verge of a major crisis – an even bigger crisis – within two years. Once people actually start starving to death, and they will far too soon, the entire situation will explode.”

  He met Churchill’s eyes.

  “My department is charged with monitoring the condition of the Home Front,” he said softly. “There is a great deal of anger directed at the previous government for allowing the Germans to land and invade the country, but there is also a great deal of anger at the current government, both for the increasingly intrusive control over the country and for the refugees. I don’t think we’re on the verge of a civil war, but unless something is done quickly, we may have real trouble on our hands.”

  Churchill turned to Admiral Cunningham. “And the fleet?”

  “Is due at Ireland within a fortnight,” said Cunningham. “We have attempted to confuse the Germans as to when the fleet is actually expected to arrive, but I suspect that we will be unable to surprise them much. They will almost certainly have a U-boat tailing both elements of the fleet by now. Once they meet up with the remainder of Home Fleet, we will either sink the German Navy or lose our remaining fleet elements. If we sink the German Navy, Britain will be safe from invasion, at least until the Germans build up again; if we lose, the war will be lost with the fleet.”

  On that note, the meeting ended.

  “I want you to look into the search for the German agent,” Churchill said as soon as they were alone. DeRiemer nodded in understanding. “Whoever he is, he’s someone fairly close to the higher levels of power and has to be found quickly. Sir Percy has found nothing, but I want you to review it.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister,” DeRiemer said. He wasn’t hopeful of success, but knew that he had to try. He’d seen enough of the search for the mystery German agent to know that MI5 hadn’t actually done anything wrong. “I’ll get to work at once.”

  No one, not even Churchill’s aide, could take papers out of MI5’s offices without being stopped and arrested, so he found a small office in the building and read through the files carefully. The report that one of MI5’s best investigators had compiled was first, and he skimmed it quickly. He then re-read it carefully, but he couldn’t find any fault with the man’s procedure. There were several thousand people in Britain with known pro-Nazi leanings, people who would probably end up running the country if Hitler’s forces actually did crush the British Army, but all of them had been watched carefully, even during the Atlee Years. When war had come, most of them had been rounded up within hours of the signal. MI5 had simply sent out the orders, and all of them have been rounded up. The handful who had evaded arrest for the first few hours only lasted a couple days. Only one had escaped completely by fleeing to Ireland.

  This is futile, DeRiemer thought after a long period of reading the reports. The known pro-Nazis were all cooling their heels in an internment camp in Scotland where they were hardly likely to be able to give any help to Skorzeny. He’d run a handful of agents himself in Germany where security levels were much tighter, and he knew some of the problems involved from the operating end. It was easy, even in Germany, to establish an agent, but getting that agent closer to the centre of power was much harder. The Germans had a reputation for bureaucratic thoroughness and carefully investigated the past of everyone who tried to get into the higher ranks just in case there was a discrepancy. One British spy had been lost due to a simple oversight. His fictional biography had included a Jew in his ancestral line. Britain was much easier to penetrate…

  He considered it carefully, placing himself in Himmler’s shoes, and tried to work out what he would have done. Himmler knew that it would be easy
to get an agent into Britain, but, again, it was much harder to get someone into the corridors of power. Someone who was too pro-German wouldn’t have been permitted into any position of such responsibility. The risk would have been too great. That suggested that there were actually two German agents within the capital, and one of them was someone who didn’t sound any alarms. Not pro-German, not pro-Soviet, not pro-American…someone who kept his head down and remained unnoticed. Who?

  The files were open in front of him, and he went through them again. The agent couldn’t be someone who was directly part of the government; there was no way that Himmler would risk a prize like that on protecting anyone, even Skorzeny, but he would be someone with a high level of access. Who had known what the spy had passed on to Berlin which had in turn been passed on to London? The list grew longer, with nearly two hundred names, all of which would have to be checked carefully. It would also have to be discreet; the names included some of the most important analysts in Britain, and some very well-connected people. If they got wind of what was going on…

  Or maybe that’s what we want, DeRiemer thought. We want them to know we’re after them…

  There was a knock on the door. DeRiemer made sure that all the papers were covered and shouted for the knocker to come in. A young MI5 officer stuck his head in and frowned.

  “Mr DeRiemer, the boss wants to see you at once,” he said. The surprised excitement in his voice made DeRiemer smile; had he ever been that young? “Roger Hollis has been found dead; he killed himself!”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Felixstowe, England

  “Interesting,” Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl said as the SS investigative team went though the cottage carefully. “Very interesting indeed.”

  “Really,” Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger drawled. Technically, he outranked Stahl, but in occupied Felixstowe, Stahl was very definitely in command. The logistics and civil service sections of the SS took a back-seat to the security forces in wartime, particularly in occupied territory. “They broke three of my fingers and tried to force me to tell them information!”

  “Yes, interesting,” Stahl agreed. He wasn’t entirely convinced by Deininger’s story; the man had already shown a dubious amount of moral courage – if not common sense – by coming up to the cottage with a prostitute on the eve of the offensive. The French bitch might be pretty, but Deininger was clearly more than just a little infatuated with her, something that Stahl found disgusting. Who knew where she’d been? “What did they want you to tell them?”

  “They wanted to know about the offensive and when it was going to be launched,” Deininger said. “I held out until I heard the noise of guns and then laughed at them. They tried asking a few other questions, before they fled and left us tied up…”

  “And they didn’t kill you,” Stahl said. That point was odd. “Do you know why they didn’t kill you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Deininger thundered. “I want them hunted down and eradicated!”

  Stahl took a long breath. “It has been my experience that when most insurgents take prisoners, they very rarely keep them for long,” he said. He carefully kept his voice calm and free of accusation. “You should have had your throat cut, and your bitch should have either been killed or had her hair cut off. Why were you not killed?”

  “I have no idea,” Deininger snapped. The fury in his voice was unmistakable. “What are you going to do about finding them?”

  “I am going to carry out a proper examination of this place first, and then I will decide,” Stahl said pleasantly. “My men will escort you back to our compound where the medics will see to repairing your hand and hopefully returning you to duty as soon as possible. The fighting is being touted as a great success, but between you and me, I don’t think that it was as successful as the official broadcasts indicate.”

  He smiled at Hauptsturmfuehrer Grauer Wulfenbach as Deininger was escorted out of the cottage and back to Felixstowe. He wasn’t convinced that Deininger was an innocent in the affair or that he was being completely honest about why he was up at the cottage. There was something buried there that Stahl didn’t understand. A man like Deininger, with his rank and status, could have had practically any unattached woman he wanted, or he could indulge the darkest of tastes at an SS-run brothel, but he had chosen a French whore. Why?

  Wulfenbach snapped a salute as soon as they were alone. “I interrogated her and she knows nothing,” he said briskly. Stahl had given orders that the questioning was to be gentle, but ‘gentle’ was relative when it came to the SS. The whore would have been scared out of her life. “All she knows is that the attackers came in, tied her up, and dumped her on the bed. A few hours later, the Brigadefuhrer freed her and had her call for help.”

  “And yet, she wasn't molested in any way,” Stahl said. He scowled as he thought about it. “Did they try to take her or anything?”

  “No,” Wulfenbach said. “They just tied her up and left her out of the way.”

  “As if she was nothing to them, not even a woman,” Stahl said.

  Wulfenbach shrugged. “I can question her more thoroughly if you want…?”

  Stahl stroked his chin as he thought. There were generally two types of insurgents; the trained and experienced remains of various armies and, then, civilian insurgents who were often little better than bandits. The first type could be very dangerous but tended to be professionals, while the second type could often be more dangerous to their own people than they were to the Germans. They’d left Janine alone, and that was curious. Several girls who had slept with Germans had had their head shaved under cover of darkness. The entire action had been professional…and yet, there had been a certain kind of amateurish behaviour about the attackers. They should have killed Deininger and had, instead, left him alive.

  “Not yet, he said, finally. He looked over at the head of the forensic team. “Have you found anything?”

  “No, Herr Standartenfuhrer,” the man said. He pulled off a pair of gloves as he spoke. “We found a great many prints, but the only fresh ones correspond to the prints of Brigadefuhrer Deininger and his female companion. The insurgents wore gloves and didn’t leave any traces of their identities.”

  He smiled. He’d given orders, as soon as the attack began, for the British civilians to remain firmly in their homes, sheltering from any British attack and remaining out of the way of troop transports as they moved through Felixstowe and up towards the front-line Their mystery insurgents were probably still in the town, unless they had a hiding place out in the country, and that meant that they were vulnerable. He could find them, and if he found them, he could crush them like bugs…but doing so wasn't going to be easy.

  “Seal this cottage and have a guard remain here,” he ordered the forensic team and headed back out into the sunlight. His official car was waiting for them, and they climbed in and ordered the driver to take them back to the barracks. They passed through the empty streets of Felixstowe, the houses still blacked-out but with the occasional open curtain, and he felt his insides shake. He hated the town at that moment, hated it for interfering with his work and leaving a black mark on his record. They would all pay for daring to interfere with the triumph of the Reich.

  “Carola,” he barked as soon as he marched into his office. “Where are all the British men with military experience from this town?”

  Carola took one look at his face and wisely didn’t argue. “Half of them are in Detention Camp Seven,” she said. Stahl nodded; the Germans had set up ten detention camps, mainly for captured soldiers. They were packed as a result of the fighting. Several hundred prisoners had already been shipped over to France in order to prevent the British from recovering them. “The others are part of the dockworker force.”

  “I want those men permanently isolated and supervised at all times,” Stahl ordered curtly. He frowned as he ran through the logic. They couldn’t simply be added to one of the detention camps as it would slow down the unloading process. The Arm
y would have a number of sharp things to say about it, and Himmler would be furious. It would rapidly result in his recall and transfer to Russia. “They’re to be restricted to one of the barracks when they’re not working.”

  “I need something that will bring them out before something worse happens,” he said, thinking hard. He considered a major search of Felixstowe, but there was little point. The insurgents wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving weapons around, not after what had happened to Davidson and his family. That brought a smile to his face, and he made a decision. “I want hostages.”

  Carola stared at him. “Herr Standartenfuhrer…”

  Stahl ignored her. “I want to round up twenty wives,” he said, remembering how this tactic had been applied in Norway and Denmark. The Russians hadn’t been quite so easy to affect with the tactic; they didn’t seem to care that much about their women. “I want them held here and it to be announced that they will be executed for the crimes of the insurgents unless the insurgents come forward and surrender to us.”