by Scott Palter
This day, the amorphous mass was flexing its muscles. It wanted support for the new Chinese government in Shanghai, and for Christ’s servants in China. Eleanor had just spent an hour extolling her husband’s commitment to the crusade. Now Willkie must perforce match or exceed it.
On one hand this was just pushing Willkie where he wished to go. While not as vocal about it, he was as much an internationalist as Franklin. More so in the Far East. The new alliance structure removed the danger of a US-Japanese War. The Navy’s Plan Orange would continue to gather dust. This in turn would leave more strength to keep the Atlantic sea lanes open. The US Pacific Fleet had recently sent a major squadron to Norfolk, with more expected to follow. Doubtless the Atlantic fleet staff was giving Plan Black, the one for a sea war with Germany, a reworking as it became ever clearer that Germany meant Europe, which meant the French and Italian fleets.
But there was another hand. Eleanor had just promised an air contingent. An ‘American Volunteer Group’, a version of the Lafayette Escadrille for China. All volunteers, but the US would ‘lend’ the Chinese the planes and other supplies. Would ‘lend’ the British a division’s kit to rebuild their China forces. Still more weapons would be ‘lent’ to the new Chinese forces. Lindy would have a fit at planes and pilots being stolen to fight someone else’s war in Asia. Father Coughlin would scream about wasting the taxes of his hardscrabble flock on far shores for dubious purpose. Willkie’s country club followers would bemoan deficits and high taxes.
All true, and none of it relevant. The key components of the China Lobby owned the national Republican Party and thus by extension him. If “Time” and “Life” magazines turned against him, his campaign was over. It had been so nice to once have had a soul, an independent conscience. A serious candidate could afford neither. Maybe he’d up Eleanor and offer an American training mission for this new Chinese Army. It would give some of the younger officers combat experience. Better they spent Asian blood learning the basics, rather than dead American conscripts.
0630 hours local; 16 September 1940
2330 hours CET; 15 September 1940
Comintern headquarters, Kunming, Yunnan, Republic of China/KMT
The promised arms had finally been delivered. They were a near-random mix of British, German, and Japanese rifles and light machine-guns; plus two quite ancient Italian mortars. The available ammunition was limited, and much of it of dubious quality. None of that mattered. There were arms for the three hundred-odd assembled men. They were predominantly Viets and southern Chinese, but included Laotians, Thais, Cambodians, border hill peoples both from the nearby hills and from as far away as the Assam-Tibet frontier, Eurasians … and even two Frenchwomen, of all things.
The leader had been serving the Comintern in China for the best part of a decade. Now he was tasked with returning home, with raising Indochina in revolt against its colonial masters. Nominally this action would lack support from both Moscow and Chiang. Both were hoping to maintain the friendly neutrality of the French viceroy in Hanoi. So the theory would be that this column was Vietnamese Nationalist, not Indochinese Communist. A fig leaf, but for now a necessary one if one were to expect more arms and money at intervals later. The man who had been born Nguyen Sinh Cung and as of yesterday had been Nguyen Ai Quoc, noted Communist international, was now just a humble Vietnamese patriot, Ho Chi Minh. An invented name was a blank slate on which to inscribe the future.
1100 hours CET
15 September 1940
A conference room, Gerbini aerodrome, Sicily
The summer heat had finally broken. The room was merely hot as opposed to ovenlike. Oberst Hans Maurice was surprised to see Generalleutnant Gerhardt Ramcke at a scheduled meeting with General Jodl. Maurice had met Ramcke on Malta. What had brought this paratroop officer to Kampfgruppe Jodl? Maurice was generally aware that what had been the Ramcke Brigade on Malta had been redesignated Second Fallschirmjäger Division. Precisely what that entailed Maurice didn’t know. He’d been too busy whipping his new battalions into shape.
“Hans, our friend Gerhard has a problem. We have decided that you are the solution.” Maurice looked puzzled. What precisely was Jodl saying?
Ramcke picked up the discussion from Jodl. “I’ve rebuilt my old brigade into a two-regiment division. Ministry has used Student’s First Fallschirmjäger as a depot unit for me. The problem is the heavy weapons components. The battalions have been given machine-gun companies but no mortars. The weapons battalion of each regiment has more machine-guns, and a company each of those worthless 50mm mortars. So instead of four battalions I have six; but when it is all said and done, it’s a light infantry force. It would be blown over by a 1918 British division with real artillery and armored cars. I need some sort of firepower for counterbattery and some antitank capability. That’s where you come in.”
Thinking furiously about how many men he was about to lose and what it would do to his training schedule, Maurice asked the obvious, “How many men? What weapons? It will ruin my training scheme but you seem to have priority.” Shit. This was the chaos before the Malta drop all over again. Germany’s forte was supposed to be planning …
“You have it backwards. Two battalion-sized Kampfgruppes. A true Artillery Regiment. You will of course command. You choose the men, the weapons and such. I will procure the needed gliders.”
“I am SA and NL, not Luftwaffe.”
“I was originally Navy. Then naval infantry, then Army, and finally Luftwaffe. We Germans need to be flexible. Keep your SA uniform. The whole theater is doing mixed units since Malta. General Felix Steiner’s new Division is having all its artillery in Navy uniforms. The issue is the right weapons and the proper commander. You are the commander and you know the weapons.”
Jodl chuckled. “It gets more complex than you’ve realized. Ramcke’s six battalions and your two make eight. Which will be split into two battlegroups. He will take one and you the other. The mission is the bridge over the Suez Canal here.” Jodl unrolled a map.
Maurice’s head was reeling. “When?” He needed to know how long he had to make this abortion work.
“Sometime in November. You will be shifted to air bases in Africa in late October.” Jodl looked to Ramcke, who took over the discussion. “This time we’ll have enough trained pilots to actually find our target; and this time, no idiot night landings. We take off in the dark but we drop half an hour after dawn, when the pilots can see, when the pathfinder bombers can drop colored smoke bombs to mark the two drop zones.”
“This is a lot to take in. Why me?”
“I saw you work on Malta. It was brief but you made a good impression. I don’t trust relying on who Student or the Ministry would send me.” Ramcke then recounted the sad history of the mutiny that had given him command. “So you see why I want to rely on comrades who have been through the same battle I have. We Malta hands need to stick together!”
Jodl got technical. Ramcke was content to let them argue weapons characteristics versus weights. He was out of his depth, and needed an expert. He also hoped to acquire a senior General as a patron, even if that officer was presently somewhat in disgrace.
1000 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 1600 hours CET
15 September 1940
Director’s Office, FBI Headquarters, Department of Justice Building, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC
The Director had a decision to make. Given the political and media connections the Bureau possessed, J. Edgar Hoover was as aware as Harry Hopkins that the race had tightened, and probably more aware than Wendell Willkie was. Hoover did not especially like Franklin. He loathed his red dyke wife and the little pansy Hopkins who ran the machine. But they were a familiar thorn in his shoe. A modus vivendi existed between them. They didn’t interfere with the Bureau, and he didn’t turn his fabulous treasure trove of scandalous information against them. Hopkins had at least been careful with his Commie lover. Franklin and Eleanor both had numerous lovers. In her case lovers of both sexe
s. The Bureau had still pictures, movie footage, audio recordings, phone taps. Had this all and never used it.
Overthrow of a President could motivate the new President to remove the Director. Technically, any president had such power. Willkie was from a different wing of the Republicans than that ambitious little toad Dewey. Still, a presidential administration usually doled out the jobs between the different party wings. Dewey as Attorney General put him over the Bureau, over Hoover. The little bastard would seize the files in the blink of an eye.
So the one to be smeared was Willkie. The weapon would be the married mistress, Irita Van Doren. Just the sort of Manhattan literary parasite who wouldn’t play well to the Babbits of small town America who were the Republican bedrock. The problem would be getting past the press blockade. Everyone who was anyone knew who the mistresses, gigolos, and lovers were. Everyone had them, and nothing was printed. He needed someone far enough outside the mainstream to break the wall of silence, but with enough of a following to matter.
Hoover decide to approach this from a different compass heading. There were half a dozen movie tattler gossip sheets which shared dirt with the LA office. If two or three were offered pictures, one would bite. The Bureau could then spread it. Willkie was for race equality. Enough Dixie papers would run with a story that he was a degenerate as well as a race traitor, as long as they could claim they were reporting a story already public.
No need to tell the Roosevelts. The one to relay with through-out, was Hopkins. The tool would be his Comintern courier. Give it a few weeks for the story to ripen. Pick the bitch up leaving the White House, on a material-witness warrant to compel appearance before a grand jury. Leave her inside for a few days, so Hopkins would have to call about it. Arrange a meeting and lay out how the administration owed him big.
Big enough to cover a new Bureau project. The FBI had done nothing to hinder people heading off to Mexico to join the Aztecs and fight in Manchuria. Indeed, his agents had ‘aided’ some people. Picked them up, driven them to El Paso and pushed them across the bridge. Communists, anarchists, race mixers, Jews, troublemakers. Let them fight for Stalin and never come home. Every sheriff in Dixie had half a dozen hard cases he’d be happy to unload.
0900 hours local; 0800 hours CET
16 September 1940
Joey’s new workshop behind Axis Alamein lines
Getting the men and equipment up from the Three Crosses Camp had been a nightmare. One that Paul Schwabe had been forced to handle largely on his own. Papa Isaac and Brother Peter were off playing soldier. Uncle Ivan was as well, but he always wanted to return to being a soldier. Papa and Brother would rather have been back in equipment repair and use, the real family business before all this idiocy with Nazis, Soviets, and Africa.
Brother Luke was still back in Bari with mother and his sisters. His cousin Greta was back at the original Camp Gorlov, organizing the transport of the food stocks. The SS had gotten most of the loot from this new battle. Pity, but war was like that. Joey was out gathering loot in terms of fixable vehicles. He had ‘liberated’ dozens of trucks and autos, plus three Matilda tanks. Paul had grown up around machine workers all his life. He understood the lure of making workable the wrecks idiots could create from perfectly good metal constructs. Everyone had their reasons to be elsewhere, but that left him managing the truck convoy and the new base setup.
The SS engineering officer Seela and the three on-loan Italians were supervising the hundred-plus new Betar ‘recruits’ as construction labor. Three had already deserted. The SS had returned two dead bodies, so one was still at large. Uncle Ivan had sensibly tattooed the ‘volunteers’ with the word ‘Betar’ and the Afrika Korps palm tree. The SS had a battalion sweeping up stray British wandering the battlefield. They were ordered to check the left arm for the marking. Two fools had not believed this, and paid accordingly.
That left Gunter’s gift to the repair shops, SA officer and former blacksmith Lothar Engels. The fool had gotten run out of Klaus’s unit. Sent back to Gunter, the fool had refused to calm down, to ‘face certain facts’. He and Gunter adjourned to the repair yard, to continue the discussion ‘outside the boundaries of rank’. Gunter had taken the charge of the enraged Nazi, lifted him over his head and smashed him to the ground. When the fool refused to sensibly stay down, Gunter had simply cold-cocked him.
As is, the fool was lucky. Had the instructor in manners been his brother Peter, he’d have been dead. Peter had killed people in street fights back home. Peter didn’t go looking for trouble. He also didn’t back off from trouble that found him. He saw himself as the family’s protector, especially mother and his sisters. People who harassed them in the streets were apt to be paid a visit by Peter and a few of his cronies from the roughneck crew Peter bossed for Papa. Work wasn’t easy to find in those lean years in Romania. Papa paid well and treated laboring people decently. Said it was the way to get and keep good people. Papa’s attorney had had to have words with the local police a few times over these ‘fair fights’. Twice senior foreigners from the oil field management had had to intervene. The local tough guys, even the lunatics from the Iron Guard, had learned that this firm, this family, were out of bounds.
Lothar was a decent blacksmith and metal worker. The twin problems were his sour attitude and acid tongue. Paul was not as large as his huge brother Peter. He had a watchmaker’s almost feminine hands and amazing eye-hand coordination, enabling him to do fine machining. However, he was still 1.9 meters tall and 120 kilos of young muscle. He had considered just beating the fool into sullen submission, but that wasn’t the sort of workplace he wanted to run … unless there was no other choice. His way was to try talking, one more time. Thank God Papa had made him learn basic German and English back in Romania. Papa’s excuse was that too many machine spec’s were in those tongues. Explaining to a young lad why studying languages wasn’t too girly needed finesse.
“Lothar. Shut down the forge and come here. We need to chat. Again.” The extremely muscular old man put aside his tools, made sure his fire wasn’t a hazard, and walked over. The man was a craftsman, even if he was a bull-headed Brownshirt asshole.
“What the beschissenes Schlamassel now?” Lothar paused. He wanted to call the boss-subhuman here a Kike Slavic animal, but was aware enough to know Kike and Slav were separate. “And which are you? Kike filth or filthy subhuman Slav?”
“ ‘What now’ is your attitude and your mouth. As for which thing you dislike, Slav by birth, Hebrew by rearing and conversion. They don’t do baptisms, but the equivalent.” Paul assumed a fighter’s stance. “Is this what you want, fool? To be beaten like a mad dog? We tried giving you away. SS won’t take you. Army doesn’t want you. There’s an NL division forming up. Got some French and Balt units, but the core is Germans. SA and HJ, same as Peiper had. We’ve got feelers out to their General. You’ve got combat experience, but you were also relieved for insubordination after making as ass of yourself on the battlefield.”
Lothar made a growling noise and rushed Paul. Paul straight-armed Lothar’s charge, used his momentum as leverage against him, and flipped him over on his back. Knocked the wind out of the fool. Paul left him gasping on the ground. Eventually the old blacksmith caught his breath and levered himself up. Paul just shook his head. “Fool. I’m younger and stronger than you are. You got more strength in your arms but I have the reach. If you just want a ticket home, say so. We can arrange a trip back to Prinz-Albrecht-Straße where you can explain to the Reichsführer why he is mismanaging Germany.”
Lothar shook his head a few times, trying to clear it. “So you Kikes bought Heydrich. He was always of tainted blood.” Lothar caught himself. Reminding Heydrich of the accusations against him was the road to death, not vindication. “So tell me, Slav Yid, what are you subhumans doing in German uniform?”
“The Romanians hate us worse than you Germans do. We did essential work at the oil fields. Strauss recruited us with Heydrich’s blessings. After the short Soviet war en
ded, the new SS master at Ploiesti wanted us out. So we got sent here, to help capture new oil fields.”
“There’s oil here in Egypt?”
“No. Which is why Italy gets Egypt. The oil is someplace called Iraq, four or five conquests from now. Geography was never my best subject in school. I preferred learning in our machine shop. I apprenticed to every master craftsman we had. I have the eye and the hands for machining.”
Lothar looked at this young giant strangely. He remembered some Karl May adventure novels that featured an Aryan hero and his Bedouin. “This where the Kurds come from?”
“Near there. Kurds are mountain folks. This is the plains beneath their mountains. Supposed to be hellish. Been told it hits 63 degrees in high summer. Imagine being in front of a forge’s fires in that heat.”
Lothar chuckled in spite of himself. “63? I used to bitch when it crept up near 40. Germany need the oil that badly?”
Paul smiled back. “Damned if I know. Ask the big bosses. Heydrich says so. Doesn’t trust Stalin and doesn’t want Germany depending on the Bolshies for keeping your planes flying and tanks running. So we take it, get it back to running, ship the oil back to Germany from some Jewish port called Haifa. That’s the plan. As for Klaus fucking my cousin Greta, why shouldn’t he? Your race laws don’t apply here. Ask that engineer from the SS. This side of the water even the SS can fuck who they choose. Heydrich wants to keep the brats they spawn for Germany. Something about what the British did in India. Reichsführer thinks long-term. Gets the people you Nazis hate out of Europe, sets them up being useful to your Thousand Year Reich. That’s how empires run. Could be a place for you if you could ever get a grip on your bullshit. Oil fields are always a kludge of machines. Mostly German, British, and American; but back home we had Italian, French, Belgian, Swedish and Swiss, and that only counts what I remember fast. There’s always a need for fast spares and never enough of some damned part. Good metalworkers earned well. It is dirty, but men’s work always is.”
