by Scott Palter
1400 hours local time; 1300 hours CET
31 August 1940
The desert east of the international frontier between Italian Libya and British Egypt, southwest of the British fortified camp at Bagush
Peiper had had misgivings on this excursion from the beginning. His armored reconnaissance vehicles were back at Camp Gorlov awaiting the promised new parts. He had been sent off with his motorcyclists under the command of this hero, Major Steiner. Steiner had two platoons of his own in Type 82 Kübelwagen, plus a battery of captured British 81mm mortars in vans the Kübelwagen towed. Steiner admitted his troops had no training on these weapons. A few had a bit of experience serving Italian 45mm mortars, the Brixia Model 35, in the fighting on Malta. “A bit” had turned out to be a few hours of using such weapons supporting Rommel. A dozen of his people had gotten sent as reinforcements to Rommel, and were the only ones who had even that much familiarity with any mortars, much less with the new British ones.
Strauss wanted Steiner’s people to fire off some rounds and get used to servicing the weapons. As no practice rounds had been sent, Strauss as commander had deemed it prudent to fire at an enemy. The British had a thin screen of armored cars forward of their position. The ‘plan’ was an exercise in desert navigation, fire a dozen rounds from each weapon, and perhaps pick up a prisoner or two. Peiper had been asked if he wanted to go along. To refuse would seem the act of a coward, so here he was.
Desert navigation seemed impossible. There were essentially no terrain features inland to steer by. This Major Steiner seemed unperturbed, but Peiper was getting seriously nervous. Oberst Strauss was a veteran of the Great War, as was Major Schwabe. Major Gorlov was a decorated combat veteran from the Russian Civil War, and an aristocrat to boot. This Major Steiner had the two Iron Crosses, but had the affect of a clueless juvenile. He also couldn’t possibly be as young as he looked. Veteran officers seemed to accept him as a field officer, and veteran troops reacted to him as though he were a respected combat leader. The SS officer kept seeing a short young man with a breaking voice. It made him nervous, and Peiper was not a good actor. Knowing that his discomfort was showing, made the Hauptsturmführer more uncomfortable still.
………………………………..
Major Klaus Steiner was happy to be given something to do. He had a compass and a vague map to guide himself by. He had a manual on land navigation he had studied with his Greta the night before. It seemed simply enough in theory. You marked directions and time. The time would be multiplied by approximate speed, and this should produce a rough location. From anyplace, the coast with its highway was always north. How lost could he get? Klaus had managed on Malta with no maps at all, only a vague clue as to where he was starting from, and woods to block sight lines.
Peiper seemed nervous. This disconcerted Klaus. The SS man was an experienced officer. What did he know that Klaus didn’t? Klaus was tempted to ask him, but felt awkward querying a lesser rank from another service who was both older and more knowledgeable as a commander. Klaus was only a few months removed from being a rear rank HJ. The HJ had taught the superiority of the Aryan German race, with the SS as the pinnacle of that racial hierarchy. The Hauptsturmführer was formally his junior, a Hauptmann to Klaus’s Major. Peiper was an elite Waffen SS officer, the elite of the elite. He had been in real combat in a real war against the French. This man had been a special assistant to the former Reichsführer-SS Himmler. Himmler was a traitor, but he’d still been the founder of that exalted institution. Peiper was things, had done things, beyond Klaus’s capacities.
Klaus needed his status as a hero officer. His Greta depended on him. Klaus knew his brilliant reputation from Malta was a fraud, a set of lucky accident. He knew that he’d only seen skirmishes, not real battles. Everyone said that the new campaign would be against the best the British had, would be a real battle with tanks and artillery. Peiper clearly was finding fault with him, even if he didn’t say anything. Klaus could read it on his face, in his gestures. Klaus told himself he must be stronger, braver, more decisive. He must earn this man’s respect.
The combined force had found the British. They were several kilometers distant to the east. Ineffective fire had been exchanged, but neither side showed any inclination to close the range. The mortar crews proved they could service their pieces. They showed no talent at estimating ranges, or any form of accuracy. Klaus foresaw the need to get a few SA or Stahlhelm trainers. He knew he had a long way to go to be worthy of his promotion to Major. The two paramilitary services had men who had been gunners in the First War.
As the crews were breaking down the mortars for transport, the sentries reported the arrival of three Arabs on donkeys. Klaus had brought along Mary’s thirteen-year-old son Bain in part because he spoke a bit of their language. The briefing had passed along Italian reports of desert Arabs wandering in the area, around and between the armies. They were bandits and thieves.
Bain’s dialect was different enough from these three that communication was slow and hesitant. It took twenty minutes to arrive at the point. They had two British captives they wished to sell to him. They wanted a dozen rifles and ammunition. Bain countered by offering two. Thirty more minutes of bargaining was needed to reach a final price of four. Klaus had let Bain do the bargaining. He had no idea of how to haggle this way. Yet he felt this had lost him status with Peiper, that the experienced officer would have taken charge.
The Arabs called out, and seven of their fellows led in two white men in British uniform with hands tied and lead ropes around their necks. Apparently one of the new Arabs was the leader. He rejected the agreed price, and wanted to bargain again. Seemed quite arrogant about it. Klaus felt he could not let this go unpunished. He had Bain tell the man that he could take the four rifles or the price would drop, not rise. The Arab kept arguing. He also spoke too fast for Bain to follow. Bain had to keep asking him to slow down and repeat himself. Finally the new Arab leader became angry enough to raise a knife to one captive’s throat. Threatened to kill the man unless the price was raised. He wanted five rifles for each.
Klaus had had enough. The Führer Göring had decreed proper treatment for British prisoners. If Germans were ordered to do this, then surely the same applied to barbarous Arabs. This was feeling like Romania and the mob. He unholstered his pistol and shot the man. Clearly this had surprised him. The Arab’s eyes got huge just before the bullet went into his thigh. He fell over from that.
Two other Arabs went for their weapons, but Klaus’s Betar were prepared. They gunned the two down, while keeping weapons leveled against the others. Bain quickly cut the bonds of the two prisoners. Turned out they were South African Dutch. What they spoke wasn’t German but it was a cousin, especially if spoken slowly and using simple words.
One of the Dutchmen, or Boers as they called themselves, walked over to the wounded Arab, took the knife from his hands and cut the man’s throat after first spitting in his face. He was screaming something about a third prisoner this man and his band had apparently first mistreated and then killed. Klaus sent out two of his Betar with one prisoner and a donkey. In ten or so minutes they came back with the dead third man tied down to the donkey.
That left the matter of the Arab prisoners. Klaus could feel Peiper’s eyes on him, weighing and judging. He chose one Arab who seemed scarcely more than a boy. Had him stripped of his boots and tied onto another donkey. There seemed no need for the rest. One Arab and the two Boers would have whatever little information there was to be gathered. With Peiper watching, Klaus ordered his troops to kill the rest. Peiper seemed to nod approval. Klaus spent the time returning to base, weighing the lesson this SS officer had given him. Klaus knew he had so much to learn to be a proper German field officer.
1800 hours CET
31 August 1940
Conference Room, SS Headquarters, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany
The French delegation of three (Laval, Darlan, and Weygand) had made their presenta
tion. Their African Empire was in danger of falling to the British via their cat’s-paw de Gaulle. France would need restrictions lifted on troop strength in the Empire. They would need to restart arms production. They would need at least cadres back from the German prisoner camps.
Heydrich let them finish. He allowed a silence of nearly a minute for the proper dramatic effect. “I’ll let you bring back to active duty two surrendered divisions. General Busse of OKW proposes 15th Motorized Division under your General Juin, followed by the 1st Moroccan Division under whoever you choose. They both did well against us, and thus should do equally so against the British and Gaullists. We are also prepared to let you recruit eighteen battalions of airborne soldiers out of young French, Polish, and Walloon prisoners in combination with young men from the Occupied Zone that you will call to the colors early. They will go through our training center in battalion increments. They are more deployable as battalion-sized battle groups, but net that’s two divisions. If you wish to form the brigade and division organizations for these airborne battalions, we will aid that. We will allow production of arms and munitions, including German designs, with an equal sharing of the results. We will provide some help on airlift for these deployments.” Heydrich paused again to let them absorb this. They were men of the world. They knew that things had prices. “You will also remobilize from the prisoners ten divisions, three corps headquarters, and Ninth Army headquarters, all with proper support units. This formation will be placed under German command for the defense of Europe in the east.”
Laval was allowed by the two military men to speak for France. “So you wish us as formal belligerents and allies?”
“Not exactly; and not yet. That would give the British the excuse to swallow your entire Empire, seize your merchant marine, et cetera. Your actions against the British will be defensive and reactive. You will tell your own public and the world such, starting with the Americans. You will ask the American government for permission to recruit new Lafayette Escadrilles and a Lafayette Legion. The Americans have fond memories of you from their Revolution, from that idiot statue you sent to New York, from the last war. Let us use these fantasies to our mutual benefit. You will try to involve Roosevelt in convoying reinforcements to Indochina. Perhaps he will be stupid enough to oblige. Either way, we do useful propaganda. Your Ninth Army will be part of a European non-aggression alliance between the New Europe and Stalin. You helped defend Warsaw from the Red Army in 1921. You are just doing so again. You will also ostentatiously protect some Poles in that army’s zone from the evil Germans. Perhaps you will offer unhappy Poles a settlement area in West Africa?”
“So we will be invading the Soviets?”
“No. There is a mutual nonaggression pact under negotiation. France will sign third, after Germany and Italy but ahead of the rest of Europe. I know your national pride would prefer second place. That’s something to work for, but at the moment you are third. I also have another offer for you to take back to the Marshal and the cabinet at Vichy. For each new army you form in the East, I’ll allow one ministry back in Paris and return one arrondissement to French policing. As a gesture of good faith, I’ll give you a ministry now. Which do you want, war or navy?”
It took the two squabbling General officers twenty minutes to take the colonial ministry as a compromise. Heydrich saved his last point till they were ready to leave. Germany would be making changes in primary and secondary education in the Occupied Zone. German was now the designated second language. Some other cultural matters were also being harmonized across Europe. There was to be a conference in October in Berlin. Please be sure the relevant ministries had delegations ready, and empowered to sign agreements.
2300 hours CET
31 August 1940
Skies over Europe
The RNZAF Vickers Wellington IC was lost. It had separated from its squadron over an hour ago. It had lost navigation lock over eastern Belgium. By flying time, it was now over Germany somewhere. It was also nowhere near its primary target of Berlin; and while it could intermittently see a river that probably was the Rhine, it was clueless as to where on the river it was, making finding its secondary target of Aachen unlikely. Right now there was a city somewhat lit up, a lake, and a fuel gauge that was nearing bingo. The lead pilot and bombardier agreed that they would write this up as Aachen. They aimed near the river, trying for a warehouse district. Clouds interfered with observation, but the mission report would state that they destroyed docks and six warehouses.
……….
The Zurich, Switzerland, fire department spent an hour putting out a fire in an elementary school. Their national government would lodge protests with both combatants, who would in turn blame each other. The rest of the squadron managed to bomb random points in Germany between Magdeburg and Essen. In all the two squadrons flying this night managed to kill a cow, two dogs, a herd of deer, and an aging spinster. Five buildings sustained damage, and two small forest fires were started. At this stage of the war British Bomber Command was an annoyance, whatever lies the mission reports told.
Chapter 3
0640 hours Mongolian Time, 1 September 1940
2340 hours CET, 31 August, 1940
Road south from Ulaanbaator, Mongolia
Recently promoted Major General Lev Donatov was supervising the start of the march of his Second Far Eastern Cavalry Corps to a projected linkup in two or three weeks with the Chinese Soviet forces in Yan’an. The vanguard was a motorcycle battalion followed by a Siberian cavalry division. This was followed by a battalion each of light tanks, multipurpose 76mm guns, engineers, and NKVD. Then came a Mongolian cavalry division with the corps support troops bringing up the rear. All told he commanded some twenty thousand men, including a parachute battalion that would be flying in later today. That battalion would secure Yan’an and see to certain command arrangements that had been decreed from Moscow. A police general and NKVD company would land with them. General Donatov was quite happy to not be involved in all that. These Chinese had tens of thousands of men, maybe more. If their commanders did not take well to being relieved, this could all get very messy. Moscow tended not to accept explanations for failure.
2300 hours California time, 31 August 1940
0800 hours CET, 1 September 1940
SOCAL docks, Los Angeles harbor
The SOCAL tanker was burning at its dock in Los Angeles harbor. It had been doing so for hours and would probably continue to do so for at least another day. Harry Bridges, head of the West Coast dockworkers and senior official in the Congress of Industrial Organizations, was watching from a safe distance. He was sure the Party’s illegal section had done this. He’d received no official notice of this. A prominent above-ground union official such as himself needed to be kept carefully segregated from what the illegals and their activist allies did. Bridges was followed day and night by Hoover’s FBI. His current minders were some ten yards away, and making no attempt to hide their presence. By both physical type and clothing they were as easy to distinguish as Nazi SS. They were tall, well built, well if cheaply dressed, and of old American stock. Few immigrants, still fewer ethnics, and certainly no non-whites.
Formally, Bridges had never been a Party member. That too was part of his camouflage. The masquerade necessary to burrow into the capitalist beast was part of the class war. The Workers’ State had gone to open war with the reactionary Japanese militarists. The Japanese military was supplied by oil, gasoline, steel, scrap, and other things that passed through the Pacific ports whose docks Bridges mostly controlled. There had been no courier from Moscow alerting him to this change in the world order. It was safer that way. Bridges had eyes and could see the obvious.
Hoover could also see the same game board. So Bridges would not demand his men boycott shipments to Japan. He would agitate against the Japanese, but his formal actions would all be within the bounds of lawful labor strife as currently practiced in the US. He could pass the word to go work-to-rule on any dock that dealt wi
th the enemies of the Soviet Union. His war would be slowdowns, ceaseless wildcat strikes over any grievance however petty, and support from the top for any union local who boycotted on their own. He could use these tactics to paralyze most shipments to Japan ... unless the capitalists used the National Guard. Even then, he could probably bring the docks to a virtual standstill for a period of months. As a devout Soviet patriot, Bridges knew his duty to the World Revolution.
1300 hours CET
1 September 1940
Schellenberg’s office (formerly Himmler’s), SS HQ, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany
Berlin’s oppressive summer heat had been broken this morning by a heavy rainstorm, a possible harbinger of autumn. Now the returning heat was turning the morning’s deluge into even higher humidity than Berlin’s summer norm. Major Graf Claus von Stauffenberg, OKW liaison to von Manstein’s Afrika Korps, was in the lair of the Army’s SS enemies. He had been summoned to a conference with Oberführer Schellenberg, Vice-Chancellor Heydrich’s #2. Claus felt it a sad situation when the Army was at the beck and call of a glorified police clerk.
