by Scott Palter
1500 hours CET
4 September 1940
Schellenberg’s office (originally Himmler’s), SS HQ, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany
The aged German Monsignor was a long-habituated denizen of the corridors of power, first as a liaison between the German hierarchy and the Catholic Center Party of Weimar Days, and currently as a special assistant to the Papal Nuncio. He was a frequent negotiator for the Vatican with the SS. All parties found discussions on this level more rewarding than the Nuncio attempting to do serious business with head of state Göring. The Nuncio was often a guest at various functions the Führer graced with his presence. There was a good personal relationship between them, but never any attempt at serious negotiation.
Today’s meeting was on the ever-vexing problem of the Polish clergy. Week by week, the occupation forces were sweeping up church people. So far, senior clergy were exempt. The SS was starting at the bottom – parish priests, monks, nuns, lay servants of the church, young people who had expressed a vocation and were in training. This would provoke a revolt if not dealt with. A revolt that could only fail, and possibly could lead to the Church being abolished in Poland.
Schellenberg heard the complaints, and again offered the same answers. “The issue is their politics, their loyalty, not their faith. Assign new people from Spain. It is overflowing with clergy. Bring them from Portugal. Use the refugee Lithuanians. But the entire Polish hierarchy is linked to their exile government in London. They nurture the parallel underground state these London Poles have blessed us with. Don’t bother denying it. Neither of us is talking in public. So let us deal in facts.”
“How am I to run Polish parishes with Spanish priests?”
“Your problem, not mine. Will you order your priests to obey, to render unto Caesar?” He waited for the sad shake of the churchman’s head. They both knew such an order would not be obeyed. “So accept reality. However, I’ll make you a counteroffer. Let the parishioners leave with the priests. Vichy will need settlers in West Africa. You can set up a new Poland there. We’ll fill in the vacated land with other people willing to bend the knee.”
The prelate filed this away for future reference, but for now it was stalemate. Time to raise the other issue. “Euthanasia. Your police general Eicke in Warsaw has revived the program. We will be forced to make a public condemnation … ”
Now it was Schellenberg’s turn to shake his head. “The idiot acted without orders. I’ll summon him to Berlin and give him a proper dressing-down.” Schellenberg kept to himself that he’d ask the Boss to let him simply disappear Eicke. Take him down in the cellar, put a bullet or two behind his ear, and appoint a new commander. “Give him a noodle”, in SS parlance. Eicke was an old Himmler loyalist and an impossible person. Yet Heydrich had kept him on. There must be reasons. Reasons above Schellenberg’s pay grade, beyond the need-to-know of the second in command of the entire SS apparatus? So, best to say nothing to the Nuncio’s man about that part. Never show weakness. “I cannot bring the dead to life, but how about this: send us Spanish clergy for a few of the Polish monasteries we cleaned out. I’ll let you set up church homes for all these unfortunates. Surely you can get your American bishops to send food to support religious orders.”
“Why monks and not nuns?”
“Either or both. We don’t care. I’ll even let you keep some Poles on, as long as the abbots and prioresses are Spanish. They will still have to avoid resistance activities, but surely your Spanish can watch their fellows?”
The monsignor saw an opening here. He let the discussion wind down. This must be reported to Rome. There were religious Poles to protect, good works to do and souls to be saved. Schellenberg was always very careful with his words. He said unfortunates, not Catholic unfortunates. He was dangling bait. The Church could acquire a new social mission and a permanent presence in what had once been Poland. Souls could be saved via conversions.
2000 hours Central Daylight Time, 4 September 1940
0400 CET, 5 September 1940
Soldier Field, Chicago
The roar of the crowd in Soldier Field swelled to an oceanic roar as Charles Lindbergh, the legendary aviator Lucky Lindy, took the stage. There were a hundred and fifty thousand souls packed into the stadium, with at least two hundred thousand more in the spillover crowd clogging every street and lot for blocks around, listening from loudspeakers strung up to every light pole. Millions more were in the radio audience.
The America First Committee had been formally unveiled earlier in the day by the nominal founders, a set of blue bloods at Yale Law School. Gerald Ford, absent on duty with Hoover’s European Relief program, had sent a fulsome telegram of support. Wendell Willkie, the Republican Presidential nominee, shrugged and grimaced. The high-born law students at Yale and their Ivy League friends who would come aboard, like Joe Kennedy’s brat Jack at Harvard, were fluff for the picture magazines. What was happening in Chicago was what mattered.
The Chicago Tribune hated FDR with a fiery passion. The Trib was backed by a coalition of big Midwest money. Money that had organized all this on a day’s notice, including a nationwide radio hookup with over a hundred major papers and magazines up in the press boxes to trumpet the event. A cabal that could tell both members of the Republican ticket to bark like trained seals. His potential Vice President, Senator McNary, had done just that forty minutes ago. Barked for his supper and would now be thrown some half-rancid fish in the form of campaign cash and jobs for relatives. Charlie was clean as politicians ran, but that much financial power could turn men’s heads. Besides, they were only steering him someplace he felt comfortable to go. McNary was an old progressive and a sincere isolationist of the Fortress America mold.
Willkie himself didn’t hate the New Deal or FDR. He just felt Franklin had been pushed by his wife and a circle of White House radicals to positions not suitable for America. Socialism was for Europe, same as Bolshevism and Fascism. And yet, here was Lindy going into his oration against the Bombers for Bases Deal, and already he’d gotten to the Jews. Not with the fire of a Hitler, but there it was. Warning the Jews not to push America into England’s war. Lindbergh was honest in his accusations. The Jews were pushing, but so were the others he named – the old East Coast elites, Wall Street, the perpetual anti-fascists on the Left still whining about Spain. Lindbergh’s warnings were sharp. Warmonger Jews, Wall Street Jews, Red Jews. Hell, Willkie knew enough US Poles as hopped to fight the Nazis as the Jews were.
Willkie was due on when Lindbergh was done. He could support much of what the man said. The bases were useful, but not at the price of gutting our air forces. Both men could support a Fortress America, well armed to keep the Old World’s wars at bay. They could both see merit in this new rumor out of DC to let the war hawks leave and go fight for whoever they chose. Willkie wasn’t socially fond of the Jews, but his circle included a few decent ones. Maybe over time he could moderate Lindy on all this. Maybe. Willkie was aware he was lying to himself, but didn’t see a way out. Running for President had seemed a good idea at the time. Keep the party out of the hands of the paleolithic heartland isolationists like Taft, who would gladly have cut New York off and floated it out into the Atlantic. Come to office after Franklin, and curb the New Deal’s excesses without returning to the errors of the Roaring 20’s. That was then. This was now. He was committed. The crowd roared again as Lindy pounded on his theme about dual loyalties, about a foreign people who never really wanted to be true Americans. Shit!
1130 hours local time; 0430 hours CET
5 September 1940
Gates of the Imperial Palace, Tokyo
Very recently promoted Field Marshal Tomoyuki Yamashita marveled at the workings of fate. He’d been exiled to command of the Fourth Infantry Division in Manchuria because of his unfashionable views as regards the China War, relations with the Anglo powers, and Army politics. Now the Soviets had attacked, retroactively validating much of what his Imperial Way colleagues had advocated. Yamashita has been too busy t
o gloat. His division was blocking the western arm of the Chinese Eastern Railway, locked in blood-drenched combat with vastly superior Soviet forces backed by endless numbers of tanks and seemingly infinite artillery and air support. All that was left to do was trade blood for time. Yamashita had lost over half his division in four days of furious round-the-clock action. Yamashita did the only things that were possible. Suicide infiltration platoons sent into the Soviet rear to create chaos. Frantic digging of company and battalion strongpoints, each of which was then defended to the death. The junior officers under his command were ready to die for the Emperor. Yamashita just placed them in the best places to kill while they sacrificed themselves.
Then suddenly he had been pulled out, ordered back to Tokyo. He had considered ritual suicide. He had been forcibly restrained from such action. Yamashita just saw that as one more indignity inflicted by Tojo’s dominant Control Group on him as a defeated follower of Imperial Way/Strike North. Yet his arrival in Tokyo at dawn had been a shock. The city reeked of high explosive smells. There were Imperial Guards and Kenpeitai all over, guarding installations that had clearly seen recent damage.
His minders now asserted they were not, in fact, his jailors. He was given a fresh uniform and a chance to properly bathe, and then ushered into the Imperial Presence. The Son of Heaven had been cryptic. Yamashita was now the sword of the empire and a field marshal. His command was the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. His duty was to lose slowly. Losses didn’t matter, time did. The Empire must mobilize against this new threat. The survival of the Yamato race was at stake. The Throne expected to lose Manchuria, but every day this could be delayed was a victory. Japan was now in alliance again with the British. The ill-advised Strike South to the East Indies was being ignored, but would not be allowed to go further.
With this, Yamashita was ushered out of the Imperial presence to a cabinet meeting. His guards now became talkative. Elements in the Navy had not reacted well to the changes. The Army had been forced to occupy naval bases to ‘enforce the Imperial Will’. The new Navy minister was a septuagenarian relative of the Emperor’s recalled from retirement and promoted three grades at the Imperial hand. Tojo was Army Minister. Many dozens of senior military officers in both services had been invited by the Kenpeitai to rejoin their ancestors. A massive Communist spy ring centered on the Nazi German embassy had been uncovered. Reservists were being recalled to the colors. Divisions would be formed of surplus naval personnel, as the Soviets lacked a major fleet to fight. The entire air strength of the Navy would be fed into the Manchurian meat grinder. For now, the new theater commander must meet the cabinet so that his extraordinary powers in Manchuria and North China could be properly defined. Holding the Chinese conquests was no longer a priority. The issue was, would the Imperial state survive in the Home Islands? If possible in Korea and Taiwan as well, but anything beyond that might not prove possible. Yamashita reflected on these days of wonder. If the game was to die in your tracks, it was a game his poor outgunned army could play. It emphasized courage and basic military skills which they had, instead of equipment, which they lacked.
0800 hours local time; 0700 hours CET
5 September 1940
Italo-German Panzer Army HQ outside Derna, Italian colony of Libya
Oberst Gunter Strauss was not used to being included in such rarefied circles. The corps commanders conference had been yesterday. Today’s meeting was for the German commanders: von Manstein as head of Afrika Korps, Hausser as commander of SS Reich Panzer Grenadier Division, Rommel as commander of 7th Panzer Division, Major von Stauffenberg from OKW in Berlin, the former deputy head of OKW Jodl as the man in charge of a special-purpose division cobbled together from spare units and reassigned ones, and then himself. Himself who had been a Leutnant by self-promotion two and a half months previously. Two aristocratic von’s, four general officers, and him. This was not his world … except now it was, and he’d best adjust fast.
The meeting room was stifling hot. Whoever had done construction, had done an abysmal job on locating and installing fine-mesh window screens compared to Gorlov’s efforts. The hot air was full of the perpetual flies of Libya. Still, the lighting was good, the wall maps were excellent, and the chairs comfortable. The coffee wasn’t up to what his headquarters had, but then he and his boys were living on captured British stocks from Malta. Fräulein Greta had done good work ‘liberating’ food stocks from British dumps, while he and the guys were preoccupied with saleable loot like unit flags and British pistols. The garrison people rotating into Malta, and now the rear area clowns flooding into Libya, all wanted to impress the folks back home with trophies.
Gunter had been trying to tune out the running fight between Rommel, and essentially everyone else, on the order of march. Rommel was the spearhead. He wanted to march first and then drive around the British. The Italian general’s plan was for him to follow Strauss and something called First Libyan. Then the bits and pieces from Jodl and SS General Steiner, followed by the corps troops, and finally Hausser. If Gunter thought platoons instead of big units he could mostly follow. Rommel was a storm officer and simply didn’t think in traditional terms. Strauss had made sergeant in a storm battalion, and sympathized. What’s worse, he saw too large a role being assigned to his supposed brigade. This led to certain conclusions. Gunter raised his hand, asking von Manstein’s permission to speak. The aristocratic General ignored him for almost ten minutes before allowing this. Finally, he deigned to notice that a mere Oberst was alive. The general’s tone made clear his lack of interest in anything a militia Oberst might say. “Yes Oberst Strauss. What could you possibly have to add to this?” Von Manstein’s staff had included this brigade commander as a courtesy, but never expected the uncouth fool would show such idiot bad manners as to actually speak.
Without thought Gunter was out of his chair and at the position of attention. This was reflex to him. It was the tone of voice and the rank of the speaker, rather than the words, that provoked the instant snap to attention. Someone of von Manstein’s rank noticing he was alive in that manner of speech, triggered a parade-ground reflex that required this reaction. Reflex he would have to work on modifying … sometime in the future. Now was now. “Herr General Corps Commander, your organization chart has a bunch of battalions being allocated from Herr General Hausser’s SS division to Herr General Rommel’s Seventh Panzer. Three reconnaissance battalions, two motorcycle battalions, and three anti-tank battalions. 7th Panzer already has one of each of these. Added all together, that’s an eleven-battalion force. My brigade is quite small, but until today was nominally attached to 7th Panzer.” Gunter could see the seniors losing patience, but knew he needed to make his points in the proper order. “Without violating what the Army Commander ordered, surely Herr General Rommel could lead these eleven battalions up with his former attached brigade. He lets his Ia, Oberst von Thoma, bring up the balance of the division in the proper place in the line of march. In the meantime, Herr General Rommel’s advance force keeps sliding south and then east as the First Libyan Division deploys. Herr General Rommel is never out all alone in case something goes wrong, but he is already in position to be turned loose should the battle develop into a mobile phase. Herr General Rommel’s training was as a mountain Jäger. His specialty is fast forces and fluid situations. I had such commands at much lower level in the Great War, and was trained in the thought patterns.”
Von Manstein stared hard at Strauss and considered the possibly sensible proposition. He had been given a précis of this militia fool’s service, but hadn’t paid much attention. All he recalled was “jumped-up SA thug”. The bored tone switched to a senior officer’s command voice. “You don’t have any real officer training, do you, NL Oberst Strauss?”
“No, Herr Corps Commander General. It is been all field promotions from recruit to here. Riga and Michael in the last War. Iron Division in the Baltic. SA. NL. But I’ve watched Leutnant’s and Hauptmann’s work around the official orders to get something
done. Herr General Rommel wants to be up front. He is quick to seize initiative, but good at what he does. I saw it on Malta. This sort of agrees with the big plan and lets us all get back to our units, to start getting ready to move in a few days. No complicated plan survives contact with the enemy anyway. We’ll start this and then the British will do something that makes no sense. After that it is all improvisation anyway.” Von Manstein had to use his careful breeding not to laugh at this impolitic truth, ‘quick to seize initiative’. Rommel was a prima donna, headstrong and never followed orders when his own battle sense conflicted. A wonderful feature in a storm Major. Less so in the divisional General spearheading an army.
Rommel started to interject ,and got glared down by von Manstein. Von Manstein was recalling the briefing on the vastly-oversized monster that Heydrich had made of Hausser’s ‘division’. Division? It was a corps in all but name, and overstrength for that. Von Manstein’s voice went to a field command tone. Harsh and assured. “You, Oberst Strauss, how many real battalions does your so-called brigade have?”
“Two, Herr Corps Commander von Manstein. The rest is make-believe.”
Von Manstein thought for a moment. He knew what size force he could justify as a brigade. Thirteen battalions was an overstrength division, not a brigade. Six battalions was the maximum, and this Strauss already had two. “General Rommel, pick four battalions as this advance force. Only one can be Panzers. You assign them to Oberst Strauss’s command. If you choose, you may, as his superior officer, march with him in a supervisory capacity given his level of training; and take command of the four added battalions back under your personal direction, should circumstances dictate when you are in contact with the British. The four, but not the original two – who have their own mission dictated by Army Command.”
