Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  They think they are good enough to bring me down, he thought with satisfaction, but the world underestimates the genius of Heinrich Himmler.

  RAIL CROSSING, ETTERSBURGER STRASSE, BETWEEN WEIMAR AND ETTERSBURG, 0912 HOURS GMT

  The field marshal stoically examined the battlefield. A raging bonfire sent light and smoke high into the sky; people sat huddled around it, dwarfed by the conflagration. Corpses littered the narrow path alongside the tracks. Medics circulated around the living as arriving soldiers unloaded trucks of emergency supplies.

  The locomotive and a few empty cars had been pulled to the other side of Ettersburger Strasse; soldiers were demolishing the other railcars to add the wood to the pyre. The smoke, flame, and scattered dead reminded Rommel of the aftermath of the many battles he’d witnessed. The scene was appropriate for a major battle; but this had been only a minor skirmish. Yet it looked and felt far worse.

  The American captain, Smiggs, was looking at him with hate-filled eyes, as if he were personally responsible for this horror. He could tell that Sanger was softening the translation of the captain’s situation report; the sound of the captain’s voice carried the true meaning quite clearly. He could not blame the captain for his reaction, but neither could he afford to recognize it officially.

  Captain Smiggs had meant for Rommel to come upon this scene as a complete surprise, but a secret of this nature could not be kept long. His urgent requests for help had roused large portions of Rommel’s headquarters. Rommel knew the outline of the situation even before he got in his staff car. The plans of the day had been overtaken by events, as was frequently the case in war.

  “After he radioed in his need for support, the captain pulled his company in, secured the perimeter, and offered what aid and comfort he could to the survivors until the trucks began to arrive,” Sanger finished translating.

  “Please tell the captain that he acted with commendable dispatch and creativity under extremely difficult circumstances,” Rommel replied.

  In response, Smiggs turned his head and spat on the ground; then his eyes fastened back on the field marshal with undimmed rage. Sanger did not translate his next remark, nor did Rommel need him to.

  Rommel was no sentimentalist. War was hard and people suffered, even innocent people. The necessity of the state must trump concerns for the individual, and though necessary acts might sometimes be deplorable, yet they must be done with efficiency and dispatch. Even so, honor must be maintained, and there were always rules, even under the most extreme of circumstances. From what he had learned, mostly from Hans Speidel, once his chief of staff, now the defense minister of the new provisional government, the Nazis had gone far beyond what was acceptable.

  “Mass murder.” The words did not sound right, even in his head. He knew the führer—both of them—and did not believe that especially Adolf Hitler was capable of this, although he had been told emphatically that he was mistaken. Himmler’s role, on the other hand, was far easier for Rommel to believe. The man was a barbarian. Evidently thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocents had been sent to their death at the hands of the SS. That was why he had forbidden his son Manfred to join the Waffen-SS, even though the SS divisions normally got the best equipment and the most challenging assignments.

  But this train had come from somewhere. “Colonel Sanger, please ask the captain if he has had time to trace back the rail line to its origins.”

  No, the captain had been otherwise occupied, came the reply. But the question had clearly piqued his interest, and he excused himself momentarily to fetch a map. This was the way to deal with such anger, Rommel knew. Focus attention on the next step, on the next action, and change anger into forward motion. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be channeled and it can be transformed.

  The American terrain maps used a different coordinate grid, but Rommel was an old hand at reading maps of any sort. Captain Smiggs spread the map out on the hood of his jeep and the field marshal looked down at it, quickly locating their current position. He ran his finger backward along the rail line, and thumped his finger on the map.

  “Here, in the woods,” Rommel said. “This is the logical place to look. See where a road enters the forest? It’s known as the Buchenwald, the Beech Forest. There are tracks here as well. Where the track and this road intersect, I believe we’ll find the origin of this train.”

  The captain started issuing orders, but Rommel called a halt. “I suspect we’ll need a larger attack force than we have here. And the force should be German. Honor demands it.”

  When Sanger translated the final part, the American captain exploded with more language that Sanger did not need to translate. Rommel stood under the verbal onslaught for a moment, then added, “I will need a reconnaissance force as well. I believe the captain has earned that right if he wishes.” He paused to get Smiggs’ acceptance of the assignment.

  When the captain nodded okay, Rommel then added in a firm tone of voice, “Listen to me, Captain Smiggs. On this mission, you will behave in a soldierly way, you will control your emotions, and you will follow orders. Is that clear?” He locked eyes with the captain and held him in his gaze as Sanger translated.

  At first, the captain attempted to stare him down, but even with Rommel’s one damaged eye, the field marshal’s force of will was superior. Captain Smiggs broke first. “Yes, sir,” he replied sullenly.

  “Good. Turn over your duties here and then come back for your new assignment. I will order the remaining forces to meet us at once.”

  As Rommel turned back to his staff car, the first flakes of snow began to fall.

  KONZENTRATIONSLAGER BUCHENWALD, THÜRINGEN, GERMANY, 1640 HOURS GMT

  A couple of the guards liked to throw the dinner bread into the mud so they could beat the prisoners as they scrambled for their food. With Digger’s bum leg and Clausen farther gone by the minute, it wasn’t worth it. Digger had managed to keep hidden most of the day, but he knew that both their time was running out.

  The snow had interrupted some of the daily guard routine, which was one good thing about it. It also kept down some of the smell and covered up the corpsicles, and you could eat it. It was the cleanest water he’d had in weeks.

  There was something going on, and Digger wanted to know what it was. The early-morning train had taken away thousands of Jews, and it looked like they were loading a second one. Why transport them somewhere else when they were certainly going to die here soon enough? Only one explanation made sense to Digger—the cavalry was coming—but he didn’t want to get his hopes up too much. If it was coming, it better get here soon, because he didn’t have much time left.

  SS-Oberführer Hermann Pister glanced briefly out his office window and noticed that the snow was beginning to stick. This was both good and bad news. The good was that it would likely slow up the Allied advance; the bad was that it would hamper his own escape. He was ready to leave; it was quite clear that falling into Allied hands would be a disaster. But he had his duties to perform. Operation Wolkenbrand required him to eliminate certain pieces of evidence, and afterward, he and his Waffen-SS soldiers would depart.

  The first trainload of Jews had been shipped out; another was loading. Information on the camps to which they were being sent was to remain completely secret. He had hoped that the backlog of bodies to be cremated would have been reduced, but the poor weather had not only slowed down cremation, but increased the number of dead.

  He stopped for a minute and looked out the window again, longer this time. The snow was coming down steadily. His work here was futile; he knew that. Whatever information he could successfully eliminate would be nothing compared with all the evidence that remained. Some of his men were already deserting, hoping to blend back into the civilian population.

  Pister could not see his camp any longer in the dark and the snow. There had been over sixty-eight thousand people crowded into this camp and its subcamps, far more than it was designed to hold. He had gotten rid
of nearly twenty thousand Jews. There were still Allied soldiers here. Should he have them disposed of? Would finding them add to the expected Allied anger? So many decisions. He had thought himself far too professional to share the fate of Karl Koch, his predecessor, whose criminality (not to mention his wife Ilse’s sadism) got him executed by the SS at Auschwitz. But he didn’t think the Allies would consider his administration of the camp ultimately that much different.

  He turned to look back over his office. Piles of paper were stacked, ready to go into the furnace along with some more bodies. To hell with it, he thought. He had devoted his life to the Nazi cause, and he had more than done his duty to his führer and his fatherland. Now there was nothing left. It was time to go. He left the papers where they were, grabbed his greatcoat from the rack, and headed for his quarters to pack.

  NORTH OF ETTERSBURG MOUNTAIN, 1717 HOURS GMT

  Americans tend to think of football when they think of teamwork. Germans think instead of a symphony orchestra. From the orchestra you can extract and organize teams of any combination depending on the immediate goal.

  “So tell me,” Frank Ballard whispered to Reid Sanger, “how come it takes a German five-star field marshal to plan an operation involving maybe two companies?”

  “Because he happens to be here,” whispered Sanger with a shrug. There really wasn’t another reason, he thought, although Ballard certainly had a point. Here was the commander of the free Germans standing in a poorly heated tent, looking at unrolled maps under lantern light while giving orders to two colonels, one major, and a captain who was still scowling from his day with the captured train.

  Rommel was looking a little haggard, Sanger noted. His scarred eye was twitching and fluid was running from it. A doctor should look at it, and soon—if the field marshal would ever slow down. Rommel’s batman, Günther, tried to take care of him, but Rommel tended to ignore any information he didn’t want to hear. Sanger had never met the man called Mutti, Rommel’s vanished driver, but heard that Mutti was about the only person who could keep the man under control. As for Sanger, he was supposed to be a military liaison but frequently found himself drafted into an ADC role. Rommel had a tendency to coopt anybody in his orbit on behalf of whatever mission he was pursuing.

  “All right,” Rommel was saying in German. “Of the two approaches shown on the map, we can only use the northern approach for now. By tomorrow we will have secured Weimar and the southern approach would be workable, but tomorrow is longer than I want to wait. I want this camp liberated tonight.” The map of the area only showed a forest, but Rommel pointed to a spot right in its middle. “Here is a hill, about five hundred meters high. The camp is on the hilltop, and guard towers surround it. It will be difficult to approach with an element of surprise, but this snowstorm will be to our advantage.” Sanger stepped forward and translated, then Rommel began again.

  “The Smiggs Detachment, consisting of the reconnaissance company supplemented by an infantry company, establishes a perimeter around the camp and uses suppressive fire against the guard towers and against any breakout attempts.” Sanger watched the expression on Smiggy’s face. Still angry, but won over and ready to fight. “I have also designated the second battalion of Nine-hundred-and-second Panzergrenadiers as the Kranz Detachment.” Rommel had encountered this advance unit of Panzer Lehr division and simply coopted it for this new mission.

  Hauptmann Kranz of the 902nd, a short man with jet black hair grown thin on top, eyes distored through Coca-Cola-bottle glasses, clicked his heels in acknowledgment. “Jawohl, mein Generalfeldmarschall!”

  “Kranz Detachment advances in strength up the northern road, uses panzerfausts to destroy the entrance gate, and occupies the camp.” Sanger translated for the English-speaking Allied listeners.

  The tent flap opened, letting in a gust of wind that rattled the papers and nearly extinguished the lantern. Sanger looked up sharply, then noticed it was Müller, the supply officer.

  “Ex-Excuse me for being delayed, mein Generalfeldmarschall,” the pudgy colonel said. His round glasses had completely fogged over as he entered the somewhat warmer tent, and he fumbled with them, trying to wipe them clean, as he spoke. “I-I just received your message, and …”

  Rommel held up his hand and smiled. “I know you got here as fast as you could. Müller, I have a special need of you tonight. You know about the train that Captain Smiggs here discovered.”

  “Yes, of course, sir. Horrible! Simply horrible! I’ve been shifting first-aid and food supplies to them.” Müller shook his head in wonderment. “For once, there is no problem with quantities, only with transportation and speed.”

  “There may be thousands more, even tens of thousands, here in this area. It’s the camp from which the train came. We’re going to take it tonight, and I need food, medicine, and clothing coming as fast as possible.”

  Müller placed the glasses back on his nose and blinked. His eyes were a watery blue. “I thought it might be something like that, mein Generalfeldmarschall. I’ve started the planning already.” He held up a clipboard.

  “Good man,” Rommel said. “It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid, but this weather not only helps conceal our attack, it also poses a grave danger to those in the camp who are still alive.”

  “I’ll do my very best,” Müller replied, his eyes wide. Rommel had quickly discovered that in spite of the man’s nervousness around authority, if he was treated gently, he could produce fine results. Sanger had seen plenty of evidence of Rommel’s notorious temper, but with this supply officer who had saved the field marshal’s life, the Desert Fox had adjusted his style to get results. That made Sanger wonder how much of Rommel’s temper was an act.

  As Müller left, Rommel turned back to his soldiers in the tent. His gaze grew stern, his one good eye steely. “The watchword for this battle is safety for the prisoners. For that reason, we move with dispatch and silence, and we fire cleanly at targets we identify. Nighttime battles greatly increase the danger of friendly fire. Keep control of your units, especially when your soldiers see things that anger them.” Rommel paused, then added, “I promise you there will be a reckoning and an opportunity for justice—but after the prisoners have been saved.”

  “Now, Kranz,” the field marshal continued, “I have an idea how we can improve the stealthiness of our initial approach … .”

  KONZENTRATIONSLAGER BUCHENWALD, 1805 HOURS GMT

  “Fucking snowstorm,” groused the Totenkopf-SS guard as he swiveled his searchlight to scan the northern approach road. “I can’t see a damned thing. There could be ten thousand Americans fifty meters ahead, and they might as well be in Norway.”

  “Don’t even joke about ten thousand Americans, Jürgen,” the second tower guard said. He was pacing back and forth in the narrow space, periodically slapping his arms to his sides in an effort to get warm. “Those bastards will be here too fucking soon, and I don’t want to be here when they show up.”

  Jürgen swung the light around into the camp compound in a cursory fashion. In this weather, anyone caught outside would die of exposure before the tower’s machine gun could do its job. “You think it’s time to leave, Karl?”

  “It’s getting time. As soon as this weather clears up, I think we’ll all be pulled back. The führer can’t afford to throw away trained SS veterans. Besides, even if we walked away today, it’s not like these prisoners are going to live much longer. All we have to do is shut down the furnace and by the time the Americans get here, there will be nothing left but frozen stiffs.”

  “I suppose,” Karl replied in a skeptical tone of voice. “Fucking Jews. Trouble when they’re alive, and trouble even when they’re dead. It’ll be a better world when the Jews are all together in Hell.”

  “You’ve got that right,” agreed Jürgen. “I’ll be glad when we’re off tower duty. Maybe we’ll get the furnace room—at least it will be warm!”

  “As long as we don’t have early-morning roll-call duty, I’ll
be satisfied,” Karl replied. “Hey—what’s that?” He swiveled the searchlight again.

  “What? I don’t see anything,” said Jürgen, leaning over the side, staring into the snow. “Probably just your imagination. There’s nothing out there, believe me.”

  The sound of a truck motor could be heard in the distance, faintly at first, then louder. “Hey, hear that? That’s not just imagination, Jürgen.”

  Jürgen listened for a moment. “You’re right. Sounds like a truck. What kind of stupid fucker comes driving up here in the middle of a blizzard? Either it’s a very special prisoner drop, or—hey, maybe it’s a convoy to come take us back to Berlin!”

  “Yeah. Maybe it’s a limo driven by the führer himself,” said Karl sarcastically. “Not a chance. It’s just a prisoner drop-off.” Karl picked up the telephone. “Hey, Oberschütze Metzger,” he said loudly—the telephone was of low quality. “There’s a truck carrying prisoners coming up to the gate. Better open up!” He swiveled the searchlight onto the truck—SS markings; all in order. The great gates swung open and the truck revved its engine to push through the snow and into the gates.

  Before the gates could close, a new sound was heard. “Jesus Christ, Karl—that’s gunfire!” said Jürgen. Karl swung the light again, this time down inside the wide-open gates. The truck was disgorging soldiers armed with machine pistols, tearing into the SS camp guards. Quickly, Jürgen manned the machine gun, aimed it down, and fired a burst at the truck.

  Then there was more noise. “The fucking Americans—or maybe that arschloch traitor Rommel—they’re here!” shouted Karl. “I’ll call the commandant.”

  As he picked up the telephone again, he could see tanks and half-tracks approaching, far more than a single machine gun could handle. But at least he’d take some enemy with him, he thought.