The Valkyrie Option

by Markus Reichardt

  Claus had toured a camp with Adam von Trott but had left quickly, unable to confront it all. Some of the camp guards who the Poles had identified had been jailed to await justice at the hands of the new German or polish administrators. But sending the rest to disappear into the meat grinder of the eastern front had created the need to deploy thousands of caregivers to nurse the camp survivors and other victims back to a state resembling normal.

  Before Stauffenberg could respond Adam leaned forward and softy sidestepped the issue. “General I thought we agreed that for the moment the principle of their eventual handing over after the cessation of hostilities had been agreed. As you know we are still fighting the Russians and most probably will be doing so for some time. Unless there are specific and easy cases where we can identify and arrest specific high-profile individuals we must direct all our resources towards holding back the Russians.”

  Okulicki smiled at Adam’s diplomacy but he too had not come here to talk politics. From the moment the truce had been signed between the Wehrmacht and the Home Army, he and Bor had rediscovered that the old saying that where there 3 Poles there are four political opinions, still held. The handover of Frank was a first and significant step. But he and Bor valued it as much for its symbolism as for the fact that it got the bickering politicians off their backs. “General, I agree, and even though I am just a simple soldier I think we need to talk more about the military situation. I’m sure, “he grinned gesturing towards the door to where the handover had taken place,” that the politicians out there are doing enough politicking for all of us.

  ‘Fine, for the moment let’s talk about the military situation but please note that my government will not let the other matter rest.’ Bor almost smiled as he spoke. Now he could formally report back that the matter had been raised forcefully and he could return to more significant matters like the future survival of his nation.

  Stauffenberg signalled to von Haeften who pushed a map across the table and gestured with his crippled hand. These are the front lines as of yesterday. It confirms what you most probably already know we bought some space in Lithuania, and southern Latvia. We held them in southern Poland and on the Hungarian border. In that sense Wintererwachen served its purpose. We have retaken some Polish ground which, as I am sure you already know was immediately handed over to your liaison officers to take over civilian administration.

  ‘Yes’ Okulicki, interrupted, ‘the big picture, but what now. How significant are your strategic reserves. Did you hurt the Soviets badly enough to stop them for a while? I would be really interested in your intelligence assessment.’

  ‘And that’ Stauffenberg nodded ‘is why we are here. I have brought two of the recent intelligence reports along. These are copies for your use, even though our people would have be very unhappy if they knew I had handed these over. So please be discreet.’ With clenched fingers he manoeuvred the flimsy pages from his own briefcase and pushed them across the table. This was not something he had burdened Werner von Haeften with. “You will see that one is just a summary of information from various sources. The other is the one I was more interested in as it summarizes the debriefings of the most recent batch of Soviet prisoners.’

  Okulicki’s hand was across the table before Stauffenberg was finished. He eagerly leafed through the pages before realizing that his German was insufficient to get him through.

  “How would you then summarize the situation? Did you achieve your strategic objective? “

  “You mean other than buying time for a miracle?” Stauffenberg was sarcastic.

  ‘Look, in a nutshell we broke the momentum of their advance, bought some breathing space for our troops and allies in the Baltic states, and ripped up many of their advance units, but…’he sighed’ we did not inflict a massive defeat on them. Basically the units at the front were those that had chased the Wehrmacht out of Byelorussia and some of your eastern provinces. These units were spent and that was the reason they did not make an effort to come to your aid in any way. They were in the process of being re-supplied and got caught with their pants down. Some of our new weaponry helped us destroy some larger tank units from their strategic reserves but overall there is nothing like the great victories of the Blitzkrieg campaigns of 41 and 42. All in all we threw nearly 15 of our best division at them and chewed up about 20 of theirs. In addition, Stalin did us a favour by deciding he could no longer trust any Poles in his ranks. We are still counting but we think he had good reason to because so far we know of at least 12 000 of his Poles that came over to our side to join your forces. What’s left of the rest including General Berling seem to be heading for guard duty in Manchuria, which means there are another 20-30 000 men out of the line. As per our agreement we will do our utmost to see that those that came over to our side, receive, supplies and equipment to give more substance to your military. So perhaps the Russians lost quarter of a million men. However, these losses are symbolic when compared against the reality of virtually all our reserves spent on that offensive. Everything that became available from the withdrawals in France, Scandinavia and Italy went east. The advance of the western allies has deprived us of key raw materials and some major production lines in France and Italy which will be sorely missed. No, the cupboard is bare and from now on we are scraping the bottom of the barrel and re-using salvaged and old material. From here on we will have to concede the strategic initiative. “

  There was a stunned silence, neither Okulicki nor Bor had expected such candour. For a fleeting moment Bor had a sinking feeling that he had bet on the wrong horse. If Germany was going down anyway and Stalin would take Eastern Europe then he had just made Poland’s plight worse. But the Okulicki spoke up: Just how empty is your cupboard. I mean did you lose all your tanks and airplanes … . Because from where my men are sitting there is still a lot of German hardware wandering around Poland. I mean I see Panzers on trains heading east almost daily … they have to be coming from somewhere.’

  ‘They are’ Stauffenberg’s voice was neutral. ‘There is no doubt that the de facto cessation of the Allied bomber offensive at night has given our industries a chance to increase production; it’s not that. It’s our access to raw materials. There are some strategic metals that we can no longer buy or take because we are out of western Europe. So the re-supply of what was spent in Wintererwachen is going to be downright impossible if we cannot scavenge the stuff from destroyed units. In the field of aircraft, it’s going to be even more difficult. Everything we are making is going east.

  The good news about the end of the terror bombers against our civilian population is that we were able to redeploy our anti-aircraft units as anti-tank units and that has consolidated our southern fronts. Sadly it seems that we did almost as much damage to the Soviets attacking as we did just letting them just run up against our massed guns.’

  ‘Why are you telling us this’ Bor’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “Because you need to know where we are at and the limits of our ability to hold the line. I think it’s likely that within two or three months we will be back in our starting blocks. That will mean the abandonment of the Baltic countries and of the recently liberated eastern provinces. I think you need to prepare your people for such a reality. If we do not find a way to stop the Soviets politically then it will be only a matter of time. ‘Contrary to Hitler, ‘he forced a grin’ I have no more miracle weapons to offer. ‘

  ‘Strategically however you should know that it is the intention of our government not to resist the advance of the Anglo-American forces across our western border. We expect this to happen in early spring 1945. We will obviously delay them to the extent that we can get the most out of our industry to support the eastern front but that will not delay them much. I assume they will be occupying our soil from late February onwards.” Trott cut in.

  ‘Which means they would be at your eastern borders around when?’ Bor’s curiosity had been raised.

  ‘Hard to say, April, May, perhaps?’ Trott s
hrugged. It is a subject not without controversy in our own administration. There are still some that think we can hold them at the border and the Russian in the East.”

  ‘But you do not!’ Bor leaned forward. He liked Stauffenberg more and more. Either this young man was a complete lunatic or he was a smart leader. Bor’s instincts told him the latter.

  That evening Bor held an impromptu meeting with his senior advisors and showed them Stauffenberg’s reports, whose contents one of them translated. There was silence when he finished his report. One of the younger men, someone with a greater stake in the future, Bor noted, asked the pertinent question. Now ‘What do we do?’ To Bor’s surprise it was the old war horse Okulicki who answered, ‘Look for more allies’.

  On the flight back from Warsaw Trott leaned over to Stauffenberg. ‘You are right, about not having any more miracle weapons ready for service, but would you be open to an idea that made the ones not yet operational useful to us? It’s an idea I got from the intellectuals from Helmuth Molkte’s circle’ Claus, rubbing the itchy stump of his arm cocked a curious eyebrow and leaned forward.

  October 27th

  The Baltic See

  As if to reinforce the temporary stalemate in the northern sector of the eastern front, the Kriegsmarine ventured out again less than two weeks after its first major encounter in the Gulf of Finland. The Tirpitz rangefinder had been repaired and the commanders had been told in no uncertain terms by the OKM (Naval High Command) that they were to worry more about destroying their opponent than their supply of shells. Uncharacteristically von Witzleben had brought along a civilian minister, Leber, to back up his point.

  This time the Baltic Fleet was slower to put in an appearance, this time morale told. None of the Soviet commanders had come away from the previous battle with a sense of confidence and when once again the Red Air Force failed to gain air supremacy the tide turned slowly against them. German flying boats spotted six Soviet submarines trying to ambush the German battlegroup and drove them off despite losing eight Arado seaplanes to Soviet fighters during the day. The Baltic was just too shallow a pond for decent submarine ambushes.

  When the capital ships clashed it was in open waters but this time the Germans kept their distance, manoeuvring constantly to keep just outside the range of the hastily patched Maxim Gorky’s 18cm guns. 30 kilometers east of the site of the first encounter the Baltic fleet lost its last major ship and the flotilla leader Leningrad to the concentric fire of the Prinz Eugen, the Admiral Scheer and the Tirpitz. Two gallant dashes by Soviet destroyers ended in disaster for the Soviets as the German capital ships speed easily matched that of their supposedly faster opponents, outmanoeuvring the torpedoes except for one which struck the Tirpitz amidships but destroyed only her anti-torpedo belt. Three destroyers, the Minsk, the Stalin and the Karl Liebknecht suffered severe damage and did not make it back to base.

  Emboldened the German ships pursued their stricken opponents, narrowly missing disaster at the hands of another Soviet submarine ambush which cost them a destroyer and a damaged rudder on the Prinz Eugen. But another two Soviet Izhorets class mine sweepers did not return to base.

  With its major units destroyed and its destroyer force a shadow of its former self, the Baltic Fleet slunk back to its Kronstadt base ceding the Baltic See as far as the Baltic islands to the Kriegsmarine whose major guns now became a regular supporting cast for the defending Wehrmacht units along the coast. Four weeks later the ice locked the Soviet ships into their base leaving the Kriegsmarine effectively in control of the unfrozen parts of the Sea. By then Kusnetsov was heading for a prison camp in Siberia.

  5pm October 27th

  Office of the President

  Berlin

  They were hardly acting as democratically as he had hoped they might, Goerdeler thought as he surveyed the familiar cast of men around the table. Leber, Beck, himself and Stauffenberg. The two others, Speer and von Trott were in danger of becoming part of the inner circle as well. It seemed all difficult decisions were being made by this small group. Leuschner he knew was ready to blow his top over this development.

  Once again it had been Leber and Stauffenberg who had brought a proposal to the table. The younger men, he thought resentful, they have all the ideas these days. Before he let them grab the initiative, he forced a brief review of the international response to the Munich trial. All around the table there was agreement that it had been mixed. Von Trott, however, pointed out that no western European Government had dismissed it out of hand. That to his mind, counted for more than any lukewarm comments in the newspapers of neutral countries, or the ridicule received from the Soviet Bloc and their puppets. What it signalled was another example in what was gradually becoming a pattern of divergence between the western allies and Stalin.

  Goerdeler could not argue with von Trott; he could not. Everyone, it seemed still relied on this soft-spoken foreign policy expert with the incredibly high forehead.

  Leber and Stauffenberg then leaned forward and outlined their proposal and in horror Goerdeler realised that his diversion onto the topic of the Munich trial had backfired. Instead of putting the two men on the back foot, it formed supporting evidence for their next scheme. A scheme so audacious it would test the new Government’s relationship with the Wehrmacht to its core. What was being proposed was to use German science and technology to drive another wedge between the allies,.

  Stauffenberg began by reminding everyone that the strategy of the new Government was to hold off the Red Army until the western allies had reached the Reich’s border and established themselves in the Balkans where their new interests would come into conflict with the Russians. Now that Wintererwachen had more or less run its course, the role of the Wehrmacht would be reduced to holding the line in the East and southeast. In the West, they had all agreed, they would make a token effort to hold the Reich’s borders for as long as the snow hampered any real allied advance. By this time they would hopefully be engaged in full-scale formal negotiations for a ceasefire. When the snow disappeared, most probably in late February, they would open the western border and let the western allies enter Germany, irrespective of whether a ceasefire had been achieved. Hopefully the British and Americans would occupy most of Germany before the Eastern Front crumbled. Everyone hoped that this would happen while the frontline was still in Poland.

  In short we are not looking at a timeframe much beyond March/April next year, at most two months beyond that. Then the immediate value of our weaponry will have gone, our resources will have run out and we must hope that whatever friends we have made by then will have mercy on this nation. Minister Leber and I have put together a proposal to make some friends.” With that Leber took over.

  ‘All of you have in the past few months acquired a sense of the wide range of cutting-edge weapons research that our scientists have engaged in. The most significant fruit of that were the V 1 and V 2. We know the British were very impressed by them and in respect of the latter had absolutely no means of countering them. There are many areas of research where the prototypes exist but a frontline model is two years away, and Speer cancelled all research for the moment anyway. In short that research is for all practical purposes useless to us. But it may yet become useful. We propose that as a gesture of our future intentions in a post-war Germany we share it with some of the western allies, notably the British….

  28th October

  Northeast of Riga, Latvia

  Stalin had once called the artillery the god of battle. That morning the god spoke with a thunderous voice as elements of the First and Second Baltic Front strategic artillery units pummelled the German positions along most of the front north of Riga for 3 hours. And it caught the Germans completely by surprise. After having relinquished the initiative for nearly three weeks and losing nearly a hundred thousand men in the process, the Red Army, whipped into line by Stalin’s anger came back fighting. In just a few days over 4000 pieces of artillery had been pulled together along the northern flank of t
he German-held area in Latvia.

  The Latvian town of Sigulda, 40 kilometers northeast of Riga and the anchor of the German position in the area was at the center of the Russian attack. After three hours of bombardment, the dazed defenders, mostly Latvian troops supported by some German infantry units gave way. Two Shock Armies of the 3rd Baltic Front supported by over 300 tanks surged forward crushing most resistance in their wake. Once through the frontlines only the heavy snow that fell in the afternoon slowed their advance. By nightfall a 15 kilometer gap had been ripped into the frontline and even a hastily organized counterattack the next morning by a small battlegroup scratched together from second echelon units near Vangazi, only 20 kilometers northeast of Riga, made no difference. By the next evening Russian units had reached the outskirts of Riga and were halted only by the bombardment of some hastily deployed Kriegsmarine units and the determined resistance of the remnants of Latvian units along the series of lake and estuaries that ringed the Latvian capital to the northeast.

  That evening the Red Army launched its next attack. This time equally unexpected for the Germans it was amphibious landings on the German-held islands of Dago, Osel and Moon which dominated the entrance to the gulf of Riga. German and Estonian opposition collapsed within hours and by the next day Russian troops were within sight of the western end of the islands. 12 000 German and Estonian soldiers were captured and a major support base and secure flank for Kriegsmarine operations in the Gulf of Finland was gone.