Rhinelander (Kirov Series Book 40)

by Schettler, John

  “Do not lose heart so easily,” said Guderian, defending his plan as much as anything else. “Steiner has never let us down. He will get through.”

  “Hitler certainly believed that sort of talk, but as we saw, he did not get through at Kursk. There are two other considerations that we must look at seriously here. First, we have 30,000 men trapped at Aachen. Are we going to leave them there?”

  “You said as much yesterday,” said Guderian.

  “That was yesterday,” Manstein replied quickly. “Yesterday Steiner had just broken through their 2nd Infantry Division, and yesterday Collins did not have his VII Corps east of the Meuse. Things have clearly changed. Now I begin to look at the situation at Aachen with new eyes. We have great strength on the field, but is it enough to fulfill the planned objective? To prevail here, we must isolate Patton. That is without question. To do that, we must therefore defeat all the forces he has put against us in the last 48 hours. There are now three American armored divisions deployed against each of our two pincers. Are we going to be able to decisively defeat them? Even if we could, at what cost? What will we have left when that fight is over? Will it be enough to hold all the rest of Patton’s trapped forces in check, while simultaneously fending off continual enemy counterattacks aimed at relieving the trapped forces? We will have ten of their infantry divisions and the assets of three of their Army Corps cut off east of the Meuse—a quarter million men. Do either of you think they will just leave them there and admit defeat?”

  “What do they still have in reserve?” asked Jodl. “I believe that will determine the outcome.”

  “One more infantry division was spotted coming up from Dinant, and another armored division as well, their tenth. Farther back, intelligence has identified two more infantry divisions and yet another armored division. So to begin with, there are five divisions they will certainly throw at us if we do isolate Patton’s 3rd Army. We also know that they have a full airborne corps of three divisions available, and then, let us not forget General O’Connor. The Luftwaffe reported tonight that the two armored divisions he withdrew from the Goch sector have turned about, and they will be heading south to join yet another American infantry division being sent down from Venlo, of that I have no doubt. So that makes eleven Allied divisions available for a potential relief operation, and we consider those airborne divisions to be some of their finest infantry by all reports.”

  Both Guderian and Jodl were silent, for the grim reality of what Manstein was saying could not be disputed. “Gentlemen,” Manstein continued. “We have just put six months of tank production into rebuilding these Panzer divisions, and at this moment they remain a strong and potent force. That said, I believe we have clearly bitten off more than we can chew, and if we try, we will have no teeth left when this is over. Therefore, I look to Aachen now with new eyes. What we could do, is break through to those men and get them safely back to our lines. Aachen itself means nothing now. We deluded ourselves with this talk of the first German city, the birthplace of Charlemagne and the First Reich. That nonsense is talk I might have expected from Hitler. However, we will need every last soldier we have to stand a watch on the Rhine. That does matter.”

  “Guderian leaned heavily on the map table and took a long breath. “Wacht Am Rhein ,” he said quietly, stating the name of the operation the Führer had conceived long ago, and the irony of that was not lost on any of them. That operation was clearly doomed to fail, as it did in the original history. Here, after scaling it back to what the Generals believed was a more realistic undertaking, they realized now that they had clearly underestimated the strength and resiliency of Patton’s 3rd Army. They might have surprised the two front line divisions they attacked 48 hours earlier, but in that time Patton worked another miracle, deploying no less than seven armored divisions against the attacking pincers and setting another tidal wave of reserves rushing east.

  “Herr Feld Marshal,” he said. “You are correct. They will not leave their 3rd Army to its fate if we do isolate Patton. They will fight. Nor will they entertain any further overtures we might make for a separate peace. They will not relent. This is clear to me now. They will do exactly what you have said, and mass all those reserve divisions to attack us, and if they are not enough to relieve Patton, then another eight or ten will come in their wake. Therefore, now that we have broken in to Patton’s house, we should get the jewels and make our escape before the police get here.”

  “And the jewels, if I hear Manstein correctly,” said Jodl, “are the 30,000 troops we have at Aachen.” He summed it up rather succinctly. “Is that it then? Are we going to turn Rhinelander into a rescue operation? Then what?”

  “Then I think we will listen more to General von Rundstedt when he speaks,” said Manstein. “He knew we would not do well if we tried to cross the Meuse, and in that I agreed. We made the necessary adjustments, and I still believe Bittrich’s crossing in the north was tactically useful on the first day. The rest of the Rhinelander plan was entirely sound—a solid well organized operation that had every chance of success. But this Patton seems to have been a little prescient, and he was certainly very quick. He had the Provisional Armored Division down near Monschau. How did it get to Verviers so quickly? The same can be said for the other armored divisions he reacted with on the first day. All our estimates held that it would take them 48 to 72 hours for Patton to do what he actual did in 24. It is as if he was waiting and ready for Rhinelander to launch. His reaction was spot on, timely, decisive. I can come to no other conclusion—either he knew of our concentrations, and read those tea leaves correctly, or the existence of this plan came to him by some other means. Either way, we have seen the result.”

  “General Guderian,” said Jodl. “Are you willing to reorient the objectives of this operation?”

  Guderian had a vacant expression on his face, resigned. “Either that or we persist with what we have planned, in which case I believe this will be the final battle of the war in the West. Frankly, I do not think we will prevail. There is actually a part of me that wants that—to get it done and decided, one way or another, here and now. After all, we will never be stronger in the West than we are now. If we fail here, then we all know that Steiner must and will go east within two weeks. The Soviets are building up again, and that is another bear we cannot trap and kill. Having said that, if we can rescue the Aachen garrison, and preserve four or five of these good Panzer divisions for the defense of the Rhine, than Rhinelander should not be considered a failure as I see things.”

  “Certainly so,” said Manstein, wanting to give Guderian as much face as he could. “We hurt them, and they did not think we could. We taught them that their flanks are no longer safe from sudden attack. We showed them that we can still fight. Patton had his greedy fist around those men at Aachen, and we saw what he had planned for them. The entire southeast quadrant of the city has been virtually leveled to piles of rubble. So gentlemen, let us pry his fingers from that prize, and save our troops to fight another day. It may be as you say, that all this is futile. But I think this operation will set them back on their heels, and they will not recover as soon as they might wish. We will have a good deal of work ahead of us, in North Holland, and here on the Rhine. Winter is coming, and with four or five good Panzer divisions in reserve, I think our people will have a Christmas with the bulk of the enemy still west of the Rhine, and without fear of either the Western Allies or the Soviets coming down the chimney. It may the last Christmas we will have, at least for the Third Reich, but we can at least give that to them. Come New Year’s, however, things may be different.”

  “Very well,” said Jodl. “Himmler will likely weigh in on any decision we make here, and I do not think he will be happy to see this operation cancelled.”

  “It is not cancelled,” said Manstein, “only repurposed now that we take the true measure of our enemy and their real capabilities. When he realizes that we are out to rescue his own personal legion, the Reichsführer Division, then he w
ill support us. I suppose we might have come to these conclusions by other means, before this operation launched, but hindsight is always sharper. After all, they did chase us out of North Africa, across Sardinia, half of Italy, and all the way across France into Belgium and Holland before reaching our homeland itself. What did we really expect here from Rhinelander ? Now we must put our wounded pride aside and get down to business. How can we achieve this new goal, and relieve the Aachen pocket?”

  Guderian spoke at once. “Presently our strongest and best troops in the pocket are positioned along the southern perimeter,” he said. There we have Von der Heydt’s regiment, the regiment from 12th Volksgrenadiers, and the bulk of the Reichsführer Division. So when we are ready, the Aachen State Forest should be abandoned and the line redrawn right through the center of Aachen. The terrain in the forest and the city will prevent a quick advance there, and favor our rearguard action. Obviously, we must go up the chimney to get away here. The escape must be made from the north segment of the perimeter.”

  “Agreed,” said von Manstein. “Then Steiner will re-orient his attack towards that point. To do that, I think he will need at least three of his five divisions. So let us give them back the Roermond Bridgehead, and pull 10th SS out there. Then Bittrich will use his two divisions to cover Steiner’s right as he reorients to the southeast.”

  “What about Manteuffel?” asked Jodl. “Does he shift the axis of his attack to the northwest now?”

  “No,” said Guderian. “That would be foolish. No, I think he must simply reverse course and go back the way he came. I agree, Herr Manstein, his salient is far too narrow, and subject to too much attrition from their artillery. Let us get Manteuffel’s Army back, intact, but let him huff and roar the whole time he withdraws. Make it seem as if the lion is being tamed, while snarling and scratching the whole way. This is to keep as much of their reserves concentrated there as possible.”

  “Then does Steiner have enough to do this?”

  “He got through to Voronezh, did he not?”

  “Yes, but he failed to get through to 2nd Army at Moscow.” Jodl played the Devil’s Advocate.

  “He had but two divisions for that, here he has five, and he will not be alone in this.” Guderian pointed to the Rhine. “Now we move our last two pieces. Bring up Bayerlein and Goring’s divisions to Julich. Then they strike from the east, while Steiner drives from the northwest. We must time it right, but then the strongest elements of the pocket will attempt to break out to join them at the 11th Hour.”

  He laid down his pencil, and looked at them. “We may have been fools to think we could swallow Patton’s entire army. Trapping 16 divisions is one thing, and we might have done that, but killing them is quite another thing. That could have taken two months. This is my fault. I do not know what I was thinking. I should have listened to von Rundstedt.”

  “No, General Guderian. We supported your plan—even von Rundstedt did so in the end. But too many things went wrong too quickly. Before we could even realize it, the opportunity this plan offered had already escaped us. It is simply too late now to proceed with the original plan, and the goal we now set demonstrates our flexibility.”

  “How did it get so late so soon?” said Jodl.

  They would have a long night ahead of them, getting orders out to both Steiner and Manteuffel. Rhinelander was undeniably late, and that only because Patton was simply early, but the operation was still far from over.

  Chapter 17

  The Generals at OKW did not know just how close they were to two key supply depots that would have changed the calculus of this equation a good deal. Berg’s spearheads were just a little over 3 kilometers from a big depot in the eastern quarter of Maastricht. If he could have seen past the ragged edge of the city ahead, his tanks had the range now to actually fire and hit it. There the Americans had every loose service platoon in the city lugging and loading supplies onto trucks to try and get them out of harm’s way.

  In the north, the 12th SS was just 7 kilometers from 400,000 gallons of gasoline and mountains of munitions in the big rail yard, but the Germans did not know these depots even existed. They might have assumed as much, but Manstein’s logic had prevailed. To get to that depot, Steiner had to defeat the three armored divisions that had rushed to stop his advance. Yet that same math would now come into play as he received new orders to shift the main axis of his attack towards the north end of the Aachen Pocket.

  “Madness,” he said. “It seems that OKW has simply lost its nerve. Now they want me to go to Aachen!” In some ways, he might have been correct, but it may have been more accurate to say that OKW had finally seen the light, and it looked very dim. Yet Steiner was one of the best Korps commanders in the Army, and he knew what he now had to do. That night, he summoned Otto Baum of 2nd SS Panzer, Kurt Mayer from the 12th, Theo Wisch from the 1st.

  “We have a new mission,” he told them. “Aachen. We are to reorient the direction of our attack immediately, and the aim is to rescue the men now trapped in that pocket. You all know the drill, so let’s get about it. Otto, you should shift your division heavily against the American infantry on your left. There are two Tiger Battalions over there that Goring left with the 348th Infantry. They will help out. Kurt, you must swing up behind 2nd SS and exploit any opening they create, then run like hell for that pocket. Theo, first get Pieper on a leash. He’s been a bit headstrong. Then shift the bulk of your division here, against their 3rd Armored Division. You must heavily engage their armor, and try to prevent them from side stepping east to stop the Hitlerjugend Division. This will not be as easy as it may sound. They are very mobile, and we have to be quick.”

  “What about Bittrich?” asked Wisch.

  “He’s bringing 10th SS down from Roermond this morning, and then he will take over your job. When he does, follow 12th SS. We will also get some help from the east. Bayerlein is coming with the Lehr Division, and Goring’s division will join him. I’m told they will make their push from Julich. Then, when we get close, the troops in the pocket will make a big push to break out and join us, and that will be led by the Reichsführer Division, and Von der Heydt’s Regiment. Clear?”

  No one had any questions, and the meeting was quickly adjourned. So they were not going to Maastricht after all, thought Wisch. Someone finally took the time to count Patton’s divisions….

  * * *

  The Americans heard the sound of that SS Korps on the move before dawn, but their only thought was that the Germans were preparing to renew their drive south. So all along the lines of 6th and 7th Armored, MG belts were being fed into the guns and the troops were busy setting up defilade positions, laying mines, and stringing wire. Then the storm broke, with Das Reich and Hitlerjugend divisions smashing into the lines of 3rd Armored, further to the northeast. Reports also came in of heavy attacks beyond the town of Waldfeucht, into the positions of the 2nd Infantry Division.

  Two regiments of that divisions had been holding in an arc covering Heinsberg, largely fronted by the German 64th Division infantry. Then they got hit with SS Panzers on their left, and with two battalions of Tigers on their right, and all hell broke loose. Colonel Loveless, the acting division commander on the scene, knew his number was now up. He had two companies of tank destroyers, but that would not be enough to stop these heavy attacks. 3rd Armored on his immediate left was also heavily engaged, so he could expect no help. He asked for permission to pull his men out of what would certainly become a trap if he did not act quickly.

  “They took the full brunt of Steiner’s attack two days ago,” said Ike to Patton. “Let’s get them out of there.”

  “Looks like they’re widening the base of their northern attack,” said Patton. “The odd thing is that there was no renewed push towards Sittard and the rail yards. Something’s fishy. General, CCB of the Super Sixth is across the Meuse. I’d like to move it up north of Sittard, but then jog the 7th Armored east.” Patton would follow the sound of the guns, and it was clear the opening a
ction that morning had come in the east.

  2nd Infantry fell back, the companies marching in confused columns in the pre-dawn darkness. The growl of the Tigers in the dark was more than enough incentive to get moving, fast, and that withdrawal precipitated an avalanche. The line of the Roer between the Heinsberg area and southeast to Linnich was only lightly held by stray engineer and AT companies from V Corps. That whole segment of the front would now seem to dissolve, and as yet, no one had seen the other threat looming to the east beyond the Roer. Bayerlein was coming with his Lehr Division from Dusseldorf, and Schmaltz was bringing the Hermann Goring Division over from Koln. Patton had adjusted tactically, smelling trouble, but he had not yet seen the bigger operational shift the Germans were now making.

  Then, as daylight broke, a report came in from Colonel Stark, with the new 740th Tank Battalion fielding those M26 heavies south of Maastricht. They had jousted heavily with the Germans as the sun set the previous day, and lost 40 tanks, mostly Shermans, but all of his C-Company had been lost in that action too. They had fallen prey to Brigadier Berg and his Leopard IIs. The modern day warriors had been able to use their superior optics to identify the American tanks at long range, and fire that amazing 120mm main gun to take them out before they even saw what was engaging them.

  Stark still had 18 M26 tanks left, and he also expected the action to renew that morning. His men were locked and loaded, hearing the rumble of heavy engines in the dark, but the sounds slowly receded. A brave M8 Recon company was sent forward to scout things out, and then a company of M5 Stuarts. Both reported the enemy was gone. They were pulling out to the south.

  When that news came in to Lucky Forward, Patton’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s going on here? They’re on the five yard line, and with a first down. Now they’re pulling out?”