by Scott Palter
Schellenberg had received him in the vast office that had belonged to the deceased traitor Himmler. Von Stauffenberg found this peculiar. Why did the junior have the much larger, more prestigious office?
Schellenberg was not telepathic. However, this was not the first ‘visitor’ to experience this disjunction. “Reichsführer-SS Heydrich chose to keep his own office. He was making a point. Think. It should be obvious.” Schellenberg gave the Graf a chance, but no light of recognition dawned. “My boss doesn’t need a big office to show his importance. He could receive visitors in a broom closet for all it matters. On a day-to-day level, he rules Germany. The power speaks for itself. You were there for the prior conference. His three co-rulers simply refuse to sully their hands with the day-to-day grind. Führer Göring does the traditional duties as chief of state. Speeches, rallies, banquets. Think of him as Kaiser. To the public he is the face of the State, the regime, and the Party. That role interests him and he’s quite good at it. He’s equally adept with aristocracy in formal settings and with the masses at rallies in beer gardens. That leaves the two generals, whose interest in anything beyond the institutional independence of the Army and the social perquisites of their class is nil. We have one active campaign, and they cannot even be bothered with THAT.”
Von Stauffenberg tried to defend the two generals and the officer corps. Schellenberg let him talk himself out, saying nothing beyond a sardonic expression. When Claus finally ran out of words, the Oberführer quietly asked, “Are you done?”
Von Stauffenberg nodded, curious at what came next. “The officer corps made its choices. They think we National Socialists are a collection of gutter-trash gangsters.” Schellenberg shrugged. “So what? We can debate fine points of etiquette after the final victory. Right now we need to defeat the British and prepare for the Soviets. We hope Stalin won’t attack us, but look what he did in Manchuria. If them, why not us when he thinks he can win? Any pact with Communism is always tactical and transitory. Their allegiance to Marxism is religious. Stalin and Lenin are gods that walk. Trotsky is Satan. Silly people with an absurd set of theories, but they have a huge army and vast resources. So you gentlemen of the Army must work with the gangsters who can deliver the masses. It’s been the same bargain back to 1932, even before we took formal power. Hence it is best you and I get better acquainted. We will be working together frequently. Besides, there are a few things that need settling at our level.” Von Stauffenberg looked attentive as Schellenberg went on. “First is your resistance contacts.”
Von Stauffenberg needed iron discipline not to twitch in his chair at this. Was he being threatened? “Relax. We know you have refused to join. Besides, they are harmless enough. So far … But there are limits. I have been tasked to use you as a liaison to them, to remind them that there are boundaries that should not be crossed. We know names, we know details. We will tolerate their gatherings and musings, but if it goes operational there will be consequences. Those consequences will include entire families. Rank and connections won’t protect people. Tell them to look at Adenauer’s circle for where the bright lines are that will force the Gestapo to act. We have no wish for a Stalinist state. It stifles thought and would weaken Germany. At heart, despite our differences, we are all German patriots.”
Von Stauffenberg nodded acceptance. This whole meeting was distasteful, but so far not dishonorable. Schellenberg went on, “Now some of your circle will find these limits frustrating. We have a proposition for them, and you are to be the messenger. Palestine is to be partitioned on conquest. Germany will get the port of Haifa, the pipeline to the Kirkuk oil fields, and the adjacent territories in Galilee. That’s where we will dump the Grmanized Jews and part-Jews. Italy gets the rest of Palestine, but for their own reasons they are creating a Papal state with Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Hebron, and the adjacent counties. His Holiness will need cadres to police and administer these lands. The Hospitallers, the Knights of St John of Malta, will be revived as a working aristocratic order to do this. We have obtained a Papal bull, secret for now, allowing a companion revival of the Teutonic Order. You have the contacts among the Catholic aristocracy to begin recruitment.”
“So you seek to subvert the Vatican?”
Schellenberg gave Claus a most patronizing look. “Subvert? By openly negotiating to recreate the Teutonic Order? By asking you to recruit oppositional Catholics who will honor their oaths to the Pope and Church? You aren’t that stupid and neither are we. We seek to establish a German link between this new Papal Kingdom of Jerusalem and our colonies-to-be in the Near East. Cultural and blood ties. No subversion. No espionage. The thousand-year Reich will have its source of petroleum in the region. Linkages of family, of language, of culture will ease the inevitable frictions over the decades. In reverse, a bolthole for well-born Catholics who find the Movement abhorrent will minimize discord here. Learn to think long-term. Your class and mine don’t like each other. Why not reduce the strife?”
The Graf sat sipping his coffee, trying to find some way that this was insulting to his class and church. The National Socialist was content to let him puzzle it through. Schellenberg knew the key was von Stauffenberg’s willing cooperation, and that required that he examine the proposal carefully. As there were no hidden traps, letting Claus figure this out himself was just another step in the process.
1800 hours local time; 1700 hours CET
1 September 1940
6th Commando Division sector of El Alamein lines, Egypt
The screaming session had been going on since a dawn breakfast. The colonel from Wavell’s HQ engineering section hated everything Fleming’s brigade engineering officer was doing. They had argued theory. They had debated their prior CV’s. By now they were questioning each other’s paternity and membership in the human species.
“This is NOT what our plans call for. You are one brigade in a larger force. It simply won’t do to create your own whimsical defense plans.” The colonel had started choleric. By this time he was near apoplectic. He had the fine-bred face planes of a British squire, and the fine bloodshot lines around the nose and eyes of a career alcoholic.
“I was trained by Germans. They are better at this than you idiot Brits are. We showed you that in Palestine for years in the Great War. You had numbers, firepower, everything. We held you back for three years. Held you back with troops as untrained as most of these are.” The brigade engineer was an ex-Ottoman, and had been a soldier of fortune in China for over a decade after Ataturk’s victory. He was a slender Eurasian man with almost effeminate features. However, he had strong hands and sharp eyes, even though well into middle age. “You’ve never faced an enemy with air superiority. You need positions you can camouflage from above. You need multiple firing positions for every heavy weapon. You need strong positions for those near-useless antitank rifles of yours to survive long enough. You’ll have to be within 100 meters to take out a German tank, and even then you’ll need to knock a track off. Pity you didn’t steal some French 75’s. Those could work at maybe 300 meters.” The Eurasian paused. He seemed to debate going over (yet again) what was obvious to him. He even gave an almost Gallic shrug before continuing. “It is all meaningless anyway. You have no plans for passage of the lines when your professionals get blown out of Mersa Matruh. You refuse to admit that you will get blown out of these lines, and so have no plan for a retreat to the Nile or Suez. You remind me of the Young Turk leadership in the Great War. Each major retreat was unthinkable because of morale, because of internal politics, because the results were too awful to contemplate. So we barely managed each time, and fell apart the last time, retiring on Damascus and Beirut. Fell apart and the war was lost. So was the Caliphate.” The HQ officer was now screaming at the top of his lungs. The smaller man ignored it and plowed on. “A real army prepares for the worst, whether it is palatable to seniors or not. You are a farce, a paper tiger. You will lose your Empire in this region from blockheaded arrogance. Egypt can at best be a delaying action for
you. Plan for it and you may save Palestine. You would then have a chance to hold Iraq, to keep Iran’s oil as well. MY front will hold if you let me do it my way. If not, please write my discharge so I may quit Egypt. I’m only fighting beside you because however poorly you do so, you rule Egypt. My second wife’s family has property here. I’ll risk my life to save those estates. If you make it hopeless, then let me leave; and we’ll see if she values her marriage vows over her family ties.”
Fleming cut in yet again, tried to defuse this. He hadn’t a clue as to who was right. He was trusting Money-Penny, who had found him this man. Commander Ian Fleming preferred running the headquarters of his new brigade to managing on a day-to-day basis. He and his brother Peter were official heroes of the Maltese debacle. Peter was a Grenadier Guards officer originally. So Ian made him his number two, allowing him active command of what had been a large battalion on Malta and was now a five-battalion brigade in Egypt. Using Money-Penny as a recruiting officer, he had three oversize infantry battalions, a heavy weapons battalion, a large labor battalion, an ample sized headquarters command, and Money-Penny’s personal company. Officially they were the brigade’s grenadier company. Lieutenant Commander James Money-Penny still thought like the soldier of fortune he had been. He referred to these men alternately as his villains, or just his gang. They seemed a nasty lot, but Ian had learned to depend on Money-Penny’s judgment in these matters.
Peter knew how to actually train and command soldiers. The Eurasian civil engineer James had found knew trenches and construction, apparently from prior service with both the Ottoman and postwar Kemalist Turks, followed by some Chinese adventures involving various warlords. He was ignoring the plans provided by higher headquarters. Peter assured him the man knew his job. Convincing the higher muckety-mucks back in Cairo was Ian’s job. Ian was a wizard at the sort of elite networking, that made the Empire work in spite of London and the Ambassador in Cairo.
Money-Penny had gotten his recruits via field-expedient use of his contacts to get the recruits’ families passage. To India, to Ceylon, to Java, to where ever Money-Penny could find ships leaving Suez for. The accommodations were less than perfect, often jammed in with cargo on vessels who did not normally carry passengers. How Money-Penny was paying for all this was something Fleming chose not to know. Odds said it involved black marketeering, currency manipulations, and a host of illegalities. Money-Penny seemed to have neither scruples nor limits. He also seemed to know similarly bent operators all over the British sphere of influence. Fleming was sure James was forging his name on all sorts of questionable documents. It was worth it. Ian had seen the other two brigade sectors of his division and the frontages of the other two divisions. Only the Palestinian Jews had done as well, and no one else had done better. The fate of Egypt would turn on this line. He had been sending private reports back to Churchill outside the chain of command. Churchill was far from his only patron in London, but he was the highest placed … for now. Fleming had kept contact with half a dozen other senior Tory and Liberal office holders and power brokers. It was a game he well knew how to play. Those connections had led to his current rank and position.
0700 hours
2 September 1940 local time
2300 hours, 1 September CET
Yan’an, Chinese People’s Democratic Republic
Yan’an was hot and dusty. This was nothing unusual for late summer in that region. Wang Ming didn’t care. The wind could have been blowing straight out of Hell with temperatures to melt steel, and he would still have been in ecstasy. He’d won. The Soviet Union had entered the anti-Japanese War. They had dispatched a parachute battalion here. A large cavalry corps was coming. Also arriving had been minders from Moscow with peremptory orders. Mao and his clique were removed from power. Loaded onto planes and packed off to Moscow for ‘consultations’. Wang’s clique was back in power, his line validated. A new Chinese People’s Democratic Republic was decreed. No more of Mao’s peasant deviationism. This would be an exemplary proletarian state, advancing to the better future under the Lenin-Stalin Red Banner.
Wang had been forced to keep Deng Xiaoping and a large group of second-level cadres on. He could live with that. The key was establishing a rail link, paralleled by an all-weather modernized road, back to the Soviet railhead in Mongolia. Connections over which could flow the bounty of a modern industrial society, that would enable Democratic China to have a modernized Red Army, industry and an urban proletariat. He was Moscow-trained, and Moscow’s line was the road to revolutionary utopia. Mao had been grinding him into dust before this gift from Stalin. Now sanity had returned. Internationalism as guided by Moscow was the only correct line to take. Stalin’s will was law to any good Communist. Stalin's wisdom is like a lighthouse showing the right way to Communism to all humankind !
0600 hours local; 0400 hours CET
2 September 1940
Beirut Harbor, Lebanon, French Syrian Mandate
The nine French warships, led by the battleship Lorraine, had reached the harbor from Alexandria just before dawn broke. The French authorities were surprised to see them. This squadron had been in British captivity since the armistice with Germany. Now the British had returned the vessels. The RN had said this was a matter of honor. It seemed to be a confused tale involving homage by the surviving senior officers of the British Mediterranean Fleet to their fallen comrade, the late Andrew Cunningham. The guns on these ships were still inoperable, and their fuel bunkers were so near to empty that Lorraine arrived towing one destroyer where the margin had been cut too fine.
The ships were packed with ‘French’ refugees. Many lacked French passports, but thanks to the Alliance Française were culturally French. French had been made into one of Alexandria’s major languages, and many residents were fluent in the tongue. The admiral’s staff had seen how broadly the British had applied the concept of “imperial subject” in their successive evacuations of Malta and Alexandria. They made the decision to do the same here, and let Vichy sort the mess out later. The odds said there wouldn’t be a second chance to leave the city. The rail line still ran through Palestine to Syria … for now. The Germans were coming, and would bomb it.
It was all of a piece with other intelligence. The British were evacuating the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean. British and allied merchant shipping, including much of the Greek merchant marine, were all heading to Suez and through there to the wider oceans where Britannia still ruled the waves. The British were also evacuating their civilians from the Balkans and Cyprus.
The naval attaches had been alerted by their usual local helpers when the tugs were sent out to help the war fleet in. They were grouped at the sea wall by alliances. The Germans, Italians, Soviets, Romanians, and the other lesser Axis allies occupied one section. The British, their lesser helpers such as the Greeks, the Japanese and the nominally neutral Americans, were a good hundred meters off in a similar pack. In between were the neutrals such as the Turks and Spanish. The French authorities had already sent a coded radio message to Vichy. All would send ciphered telegrams to their respective capitals. These would be varying mixes of observation and speculation. The core common content was that the Axis was on the march, and the British were not sanguine about stopping them.
0800 hours local; 0700 hours CET
2 September 1940
Three thousands meters altitude on a holding pattern a kilometer out to sea from the British base camp at Mesa Matruh
Hauptmann Bruno Dilley was leading his squadron in an oblong racetrack pattern off the coast. Their mission was ‘targets of opportunity’. Mostly that meant waiting for the British flak guns to fire on the other bombers, and then doing dive-bomb attacks on the exposed anti-aircraft positions. His planes had taken off just after dawn for the morning sortie. They followed the coast here, and the daily dance began.
Bruno was aware that much of the squadron saw him as a vain fashionplate, obsessed with his good looks and silk scarves like some companion of the Red Baron
in the Great War. He just felt they were jealous of his Aryan manly physique and chiseled features. What did his personal affectation, projecting an image of a hero airman, matter? He was a good commander and an excellent pilot.
He’d been happy when the posting in Sardinia had ended. Anti-ship patrol meant tricky long-distance missions involving navigation over water. Seas lacked geographic features for reference. It was so easy to get lost, and when you did there was no place for an emergency landing. His wing had managed. They had sunk a British carrier, the Argus. The fools at higher staff dismissed the feat, saying it was a training ship. Training ships stayed home to train. The British had sent it into battle and his guys had sunk it. Mission accomplished. The ground crews had painted a white carrier outline where an air-air kill credit would go.
Still, he’d rather bomb ground targets. They didn’t zig-zag. Made aim easier. Ju-87’s were designed for this. Bruno might affect the fashions of a fighter ace, but he was a dive-bomber expert, proud of his hard-won skills.
Two squadrons of He-111’s passed over the British positions. The AAA started to fire, exposing themselves. The damned Limeys were getting better at camouflage day by day, but firing revealed the location of any weapon. He chose one battery, alerted his companions to follow him, and began his attack.
0900 Hours CET
2 September 1940
SS HQ, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany
