by Scott Palter
Balbo nodded. This would need thought. Berlin was taking an interest in purely Italian matters now. It was a dangerous precedent being set.
1350 hours CET
3 September 1940
War Ministry, Berlin
War Minister and Generaloberst Beck had originally felt Heydrich’s plan to add a French army to his order of battle, to be the sort of absurdity one would expect from giving a cashiered naval Leutnant a senior post in government. Beck could not allow himself to see that he and Halder had brought this on themselves by refusing to deal with the French situation. The two senior Army officers had simply gotten used to Heydrich dealing with all the messy issues of day-to-day governance.
Beck had been dismissive of Heydrich’s choice of the French 9th Army and its commander General André Corap for this project. Ninth Army had been the first unit to collapse along the Meuse in May, and Corap had been the man who was responsible for that debacle.
After a morning spent with Corap and his senior command staff, Beck now had a very different view of what had occurred. Instead of meeting an aged imbecile, which was how the French had portrayed Corap in their initial postmortems at Vichy, the man in Beck’s office had been a lively man in his 60’s. A bit of an older man’s belly, but still a vital presence making his report. His prior record included key staff jobs in the Great War, and many brilliant combat exploits in colonial service in Morocco. What was more important was his lucid explanation of his army’s failure. Corap had begun with the numerous faults of French interwar training, and the mobilization system. It had simply not created an army capable of maneuver warfare. He then went into the unforced errors made by senior French command on communications (lack thereof, to be more precise) – they refused to use radio for fear of interception, while choosing locations for higher headquarters without regard to available phone exchanges. The supreme headquarters fed through one rural exchange, that was not manned in the evening because the Army had not bothered to take over manning from the civilian phone service. And deployment. The deployment plan gave 9th Army, a formation mostly of second- and third-line divisions, a mission that required a major advance to contact followed by entrenchment while in contact with the enemy. Movement was only allowed at night for fear of air attack, yet too many armies were slated to move forward on too few roads. His army had been shorted on roads and trucks because, ex cathedra, an attack through the Ardennes was dismissed. Despite the German advance through the Ardennes creating the greatest traffic jam in European history, and being recorded by Allied reconnaissance planes, no one saw fit to alert Ninth Army.
Corap and his staff were scathing on their own errors in getting settled in in time. They had totally mishandled their cavalry/motorized screening force, and failed to properly supervise the emplacement of their regiments and battalions. Too much confidence was placed in newly-mobilized division and corps headquarters, instead of 9th Army command sending liaison officers to make sure orders were implemented fully and on a timely basis.
However, the after-action reports savaged them to protect the reputation of Second Army commander General Huntziger, a man with prominent sponsors in the senior officer corps. That Army had been in the same positions from mobilization until Guderian’s attack. Yet it came apart the same way as Corap’s, despite being given massive allocations of reserves.
Corap’s staff people had been clear: think of 9th Army as a typical French Army of the second half of the Great War. Its divisions could hold a certain length of trench. The officers had provided estimates of how many kilometers of front a division could hold, with that frontage broken into a series of battalion strongpoints, each with 75mm guns that could be used in an anti-armor role. The divisions also needed to be reorganized. The battalions in the strongpoints could be reduced in strength. The number of machine-guns and mortars mattered more than the number of riflemen. This had been the French, and eventually German, pattern after Verdun. However, Corap’s staff now proposed a change from the French 1917 model of a lesser number of attack or storm divisions. They proposed instead an echeloned series of smaller units of reserves, in the manner of the original WW1 storm units. These would be younger men kept in good physical condition. Their scheme was a company of such attack reserves per regiment, a battalion per division, and a brigade per corps. The brigades should have some armored vehicles. These could be obsolete types. The troops needed to see vehicles, even ancient Renault 17’s, to feel that command cared if they lived or died. The other two major changes were plentiful telephone connections, with specialist troops to maintain the network, and on-call artillery support. Such barrages were the core of interwar French doctrine. It was all based on Petain’s counterattacks at Verdun and after. Again, it was what the troops expected. Corap stressed that changing these mentalities in his rank and file would take years, if indeed it could be done at all.
There was more, but Beck was sure he could leave the details in the hands of OKH’s expert staff officers. The main point was that French units could form solid blocks that German reserves could maneuver off of or behind. The Reichswehr had trained for maneuver warfare. Beck felt comfortable with these French allies, more so than he did with the Italians. Malta aside, what of consequence had the Italian Army ever done? Let them prove themselves in Egypt, and he would consider accepting Italians as anything beyond helpless cannon fodder. If they could beat the British, good soldiers Beck had spent most of his Great War service fighting, that would prove something.
1700 hours British Double Summer Time and CET
3 September 1940
A seedy hotel near Westminster, London
For once Kim Philby arrived early for a meeting with his Soviet handler. Which turned out not to matter, because this rare time the Comintern illegal operative had been late. There had been two air-raid scares that day in London. One was a drill, but announced to the wardens as real, with sirens blasting. The other came on the heels of the all-clear. It took the better part of an hour for the misidentification of a squadron of Coastal Command bombers, being ferried south from Scotland to patrol the Bay of Biscay, to be corrected. Radar kept showing planes, and Fighter Command kept failing to intercept owing to heavy cloud cover. Philby used the extra 95 minutes of otherwise wasted time to get mildly drunk on a pint of aged Scotch whiskey.
Kim had had a most trying two days. The Japanese were attempting to revive their former British alliance. The Cabinet was dubious, in part because Churchill argued in favor. The Americans had gotten wind of the discussions and were vigorously opposing everything. The normally ill-bred American ambassador, the Irishman Kennedy, had been even less proper than usual. The man was pro-Axis, anti-British, and socially over his head. That he was an Irish Catholic former stock-swindler and bootlegger, was just an added touch of social inappropriateness. Yet America was offering nothing in terms of aid, pleading their neutrality laws, public opinion, the coming November election.
The British Empire would need the US in the long term, but right now it was Japan that was offering aid. Even if the formal alliance was not resurrected in deference to US opinion, Japan could offer protection to British Far Eastern possessions, allowing their garrisons to be drawn down for use in the Middle East. The Japanese had advised that Britain strengthen her forces in Hong Kong and Shanghai, but otherwise Japan could protect British interests. Japan would need every battalion and squadron of aircraft for this Sino-Soviet War, but could offer sizable naval forces for use in the Indian Ocean. As proof of good intentions, the Japanese were offering a battle squadron to sail to Aden and be placed under British command. Also a large submarine force. The British would have to allocate the merchant shipping to supply this force. Japan was deficient in merchant ships, dependent on Dutch and US ships to supply their Home Islands. A battle fleet had ceased to be a major need, beyond a fleet-in-being sufficient to defeat the small Soviet squadron in Vladivostok. This would all have been very tempting, if anything with Churchill’s approval was not suspect from contagion
with him.
His handler took in all that news but seemed less than really interested. Philby had long ago learned that predicting Moscow’s interests was a fruitless game. He still took guesses for his own amusement. His guess was a good source in Tokyo.
What Moscow Centre wanted was details on the projected expedition to Dakar. Were the rumors that the War Cabinet had added more British army formations true? Also they had word that the ground forces commander, General Irwin, had been injured in an automotive mishap. Who was this General Montgomery who had replaced him?
2100 hours, 3 September 1940 Eastern Daylight Time
0300 hours, 4 September 1940 CET
White House, Washington DC
The District of Columbia was built in a badly-filled-in tidal swamp along the Potomac River. Before air conditioning, it had been nearly unlivable in the summer months. For this among many reasons, US government had mostly ceased to function during those months, except in wartime. Then came the New Deal, and the vast expansion of government activity. This had changed the city into a twelve-month-a-year operation. Pity there was no way to relocate to someplace with a better climate, but the US was extremely emotionally invested in their traditional constitutional order. The more the modern world forced changes, the more the public clung to their myths and familiar symbolisms.
Harry Hopkins was wishing for the thousandth time that FDR had not broken with Farley. Farley had done the political nuts-and-bolts work for the first two terms. FDR had dangled the presidency in front of the man, then pulled a bait and switch without bothering to do the personal politicking to smooth over the hurt feelings. Exit Farley, leaving Hopkins with still more work, as FDR simply didn’t do details.
The latest example had happened yesterday. Franklin had done a deal for British colonial bases. Originally it was to have been a swap for old destroyers in the reserve fleet. The British had been sure they needed more escort vessels for the U-boat war … which had all but vanished in the past few months. The only two areas of major U-boat activity currently were the Mediterranean, and the Central Atlantic off the Azores, shading south to Dakar. Instead the pressing need was for bombers. So by executive order, the US had swapped existing bombers and near-term production, for the needed advance bases located in the South Pacific, Caribbean, and Western Atlantic.
The President had then departed last night for a late summer rest at his Hyde Park estate. Congress and the press were in an uproar that the agreement had stripped the US of desperately needed aircraft. It was impolitic to admit that these were largely obsolescent and obsolete designs, traded for extremely useful real estate. That would have opened the door to why the US had inferior planes. Congress would not accept that their own penny-pinching and anti-militarism had stalled developments.
In the midst of that rolling public relations debacle, came this Soviet war. The Communist Party’s activist wing was running wild with street riots and sabotage against economic links with the Japanese militarists. The public face of the Party was organizing a recruiting drive, based on the veterans of the two International Brigades that had fought in Spain. Eleanor had abandoned prudence to address an emergency ‘aid to China’ rally in Madison Square Garden last night. The Neutrality Acts were being openly flouted, with organized convoys of internationalist volunteers boarding trains for Mexico City. Trotsky, still recovering from a nearly successful Stalinist assassination attempt, had blessed this, as had outgoing Mexican president Cardenas. Moscow had also thrown in their support, most unusual in any case that their demon Trotsky supported. Hoover and the Chicago Tribune were going wild in response.
So Hopkins had not been at all surprised when his Comintern liaison officer had requested an immediate meeting. She was a still-somewhat-attractive graduate of a prestigious eastern women’s school and had a master’s from a second such, with impeccable New England social connections. Nominally she was a political operative for a Prisoners’ Aid Committee spun off from the American Civil Liberties Union. The excuse for this meeting was the pending execution date of some poor black sharecropper in Georgia. The man’s trial had been a farce, but Dixie did not regard justice for the colored as especially important.
She and Hopkins had established a backstory for Hoover. The G-man had her pegged as an ex-mistress and occasional lover. Her youthful blond good looks had faded some years back in her late thirties, but an intellectual such as Hopkins might well prefer brains and breeding to nubile beauty. So there she sat in her sensible shoes and plain if well-made dress, trying to put a good face on the Party’s latest reversal of policy. They had gone from militant anti-fascism, to justifying a de facto alliance with Hitler against ‘the plutocrats war’, to this new crusade against reactionary Japanese militarism. Yet somehow they were still allied to Hitler. Or if not fully allied, at least de facto cooperation. “We had to save China. Chiang may be linked to reactionary and feudalist elements, but he originally was allied with the forces of progress. The West was doing nothing.”
Hopkins wearily shook his head. He’d dealt with politicians and their selfserving lies far too long to be conned this easily. “Save the propaganda speeches for Eleanor. I’m not a starry-eyed dreamer. I’m the one who has to keep Hoover from forcing Franklin to outlaw the Party and all its front groups. In case your masters haven’t noticed, we are knee-deep in an election campaign, one we could lose. Third term is new. Intervention is unpopular. Our tilt towards the British rubs too many people wrong. It is necessary, but could cost Franklin another term. Now you’ve just flouted the Neutrality Act. No one will believe the fig leaf that these Internationals are off to join an Aztec force of Mexican-led Latinos to do ‘humanitarian work’ in liberated China. Could you have been any more transparent? No one will swallow that.”
She had in fact raised this exact line of debate with her handler. There was no time to consult Moscow, so they had to improvise. Hopefully Centre would approve. “You can make it believable. Tell the Chicago Tribune that the US remains neutral in word and deed. Internationalists can leave for Mexico and follow their conscience, join the Aztec Force. Anglophiles can go to Canada and do the same. Those enamored of the French can form a Lafayette Legion via Lisbon. The Italians can sail for Lisbon too, as Garibaldi volunteers. You can let whatever few fans Hitler has sail for Danzig under a von Steuben banner. You tell the Isolationists that you are ridding the US of interventionists, sending them off to their true homelands so the real patriotic America can remain pure in its continental fortress.”
Hopkins let her expound on in this vein for maybe ten minutes. She often came prepared this way. Best to let it run its course. He was mentally weighing the second- and third-order ramifications. It was novel. It was dangerous. He thought he might be able to sell this. The hardcore types like the Tribune would never buy this, but they hated FDR with such a fiery passion that they were not worth seriously wooing. By the time she finished her justifications and diversions, he was ready to begin serious bargaining on how many Party front groups she was willing to rally to this new program.
1030 hours local; 0330 hours CET
4 September, 1940
Governor General’s mansion, Batavia/Jakarta, Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia
The disturbances of the previous night had burned themselves out by dawn. Sukarno was on the balcony, addressing a crowd of Javan nationalists which his minions estimated at over one hundred thousand people. The Dutch authorities were arguing that, at most, only seventy thousand people were overflowing the square.
This was the climax of two days of clashes with the Dutch as the nationalists tried to march their followers from the countryside into the city. There had been scattered battles, massive pogroms against the local Chinese, and many thousands of people dead (mostly Indonesian and Chinese, but more than a few Europeans and Eurasians). However, not one Japanese had been as much as accosted – much less assaulted. Japanese houses and business had been surrounded by honor guards of nationalist youth, with clear instructions to ki
ll anyone who threatened or even inconvenienced any Japanese. Sukarno’s deputies had rigidly enforced this. The nationalists sought friendship with Japan. Their disputes were with the colonial order. Japanese persons and Japan’s economic interests were sacrosanct.
The cadres had begun the marches armed only with clubs and golok harvesting knives. Enough of them now had rifles taken from colonial soldiers, and pistols seized from the police. They also had a few thousand heads mounted on pikes in place of flags. The heads were a mix of races, ages, and genders. The governor-general was livid. Sukarno was exultant. The heads, the pall of smoke, the still raging fires in Chinatown, were all marks that the nationalist movement had come of age. The Japanese had recognized their power, and were prepared to negotiate for a guarantee of future peace. The dominion of the white race was beginning to ebb.
0600 hours CET
4 September 1940
German Army Terminal, Port of Naples, Italy
It would not be dawn yet for some minutes. Sturmbannführer Karl Siegel, Schellenberg’s trouble shooter for the Mediterranean Theater, was used to insanely long hours. He made up for this by naps on planes as he shuttled about from Italy to Sicily to Malta to Libya and back, seeing to his master’s business as Schellenberg saw to that of his patron, Reichsführer Heydrich. Karl had advanced himself by raw intelligence, plus a bottomless capacity for work. He knew he lacked charisma and family connections. So he compensated with drive.
He was accompanied for today by his new helper, an 18-year-old former HJ, named Johann Schmidt. Schmidt was an American-born youth whose parents had returned to the Reich in 1937. The lad’s German still needed polish, but his American English was supposedly perfect. As Siegel was meeting with Hauptmann Joe Bats of the NL, it was best to have a translator to his native American dialect. Notes from Malta had pegged Bats’s German as pathetic.
