Doppelganger (23 page)

So then I roll the dice, just as Hitler does, and gamble that this war will not last through those long murderous years of 1942 and 1943. We must make a quick end of things, and link up with the Germans in the south as soon as possible. Kirov was very clever, and he saw the danger easily enough. That is why he launched his Caucasus campaign well before the planned date of the German attack—to gain some breathing space and push that southern frontier away from the Germans, as much as to get his hands on the oil at Maykop.

Yes, that is the one trump card I hold, the oil. The Soviets have stockpiles for six months, a year at best, but if they do not find new sources, then it won’t matter how many tanks Sergei Kirov builds. He won’t have the fuel to run them!

So on that front, I must send the Khazak Armies from reserve as soon as they are fully mobilized. We’ll launch a strong counterattack aimed at Rostov from the south, because the Germans will be pushing for the lower Dnieper in due course.

Volkov smiled, watching the precise movement of the men in the square below. Off you go, he thought. How many will live out the remainder of this year? These are the best troops I have, and I must use these divisions as a strong shock force and cause some serious trouble here. The Guard will lead the way, and then I will mass all the armored formations I can come up with, and plan one good offensive to stick a nice iron rod up Sergei Kirov’s ass. After that?

He did not wish to think further, on what might happen if these tall strong men were not enough to get the job done. The horror of the Great Patriotic war was too much to contemplate, yet how could they fail? How could the Red Army possibly weather the hammering it is now about to receive?

We shall see…

Chapter 20

The
footsteps in the hallway sounded hollow, a mocking echo against the stark walls and high ceiling. Up ahead two guards stood in stony silence, suddenly animating as Rommel approached, and then stiffening to a frozen posture of attention. He proffered a perfunctory salute, and the door was opened from within by a young adjutant, who turned to announce him as he entered.

“Ah, Rommel,” said Keitel. “I hope you have had time to get the sand out of your boots.”

Rommel ignored the remark, his attention transfixed on only one man at the table, leaning over a map, head down, and an air of ominous silence about him—Adolf Hitler. He waited, until the Führer slowly raised his head, his dark eyes enveloping him with unwavering attention. There was, in that moment, a sense of emptiness deeper and more profound than any Rommel had ever known in his life. There he stood, twice defeated in the deserts of North Africa, and this by a nation that would field little more than 30 divisions throughout the entire war. The shame in Hitler’s dark regard was a palpable thing, and Rommel felt its crushing power, an agony that weighed ever more with each passing second. Several other men stood in the shadows behind the Führer, the harsh overhead light only falling on their gilded uniforms. Rommel knew one man immediately—Eric von Manstein. The others were in civilian clothing, and unknown to him. Then Hitler took his hands off the table, straightening himself, a movement of shadow and coal black ire.

“So you have taken back all of Cyrenaica… Again…” said Hitler. “Yet what good are your hard-earned gains if you immediately lose them?”

Rommel said nothing, knowing he would have to endure this, and most likely find himself removed from his position before this meeting concluded. Is that why Manstein was here, he wondered? Were they sending him in my place? So be it. The medals on my chest eclipse anything that man has ever done, but face it, Herr Rommel, he chided himself. That is all past glory.

Hitler spoke again, just one word. “Explain.”

Rommel swallowed, his pride long gone, his throat still dry with the desert heat he had recently left behind. Then he mustered his inner strength and spoke.

“My Führer, the enemy is now fielding a heavy tank that is completely impervious to any weapon our ground troops possess. As a breakthrough weapon on the attack, it is unstoppable, and it fields a gun that can destroy my best tanks with a single shot. In fact, there were instances where the enemy fire not only penetrated the frontal armor of my Panzer IIIs, but also blew completely through the tank and out the other side. Against such a weapon, offensive operations involving my Panzer divisions are impossible. Almost all the gains delivered in my last offensive against Tobruk were achieved by the infantry.”

“You were inside the perimeter of the Tobruk defenses?”

“We were.”

“And you ordered a retreat?” Hitler’s voice raised in volume, his eyes beginning to smolder.

“I did, and if I had not done so, those troops would still be sitting there—but surrounded by British and Australian troops and simply waiting for the next ship to come in before they were sent off to the prison camps. The enemy heavy armored brigade had already broken through our lines to the south—through the entire front of my 15th Panzer Division. I could not afford to leave my hard fighting ground troops to be cut off in Tobruk. They were already down to their last rounds. Without those men, all that remained in the north were the Italians.”

“My Führer,” said Manstein. “I concur with Herr Rommel on this matter. To leave those troops in a cauldron would have been most unwise. Given the circumstances, his actions were correct, and I would have done the very same thing.”

“Oh? Well I suppose it matters very little now,” said Hitler. “It is obvious we will get nowhere in that filthy desert against the British. Very well, Herr General, we have read your reports concerning these new British tanks. When this matter was first reported to me during your initial offensive, I did not take sufficient notice. Now you have my complete attention, and I will not be as hard on you here as I might. Steiner reported the very same thing in the Middle East—tanks! Huge tanks that could not be stopped. Have we no artillery? Do we not lay minefields and dig hard defensive positions?”

There was a slight quaver in Hitler’s voice now, and Rommel could see, by the tremor in his hand, that he was struggling to contain the inner rage he must be feeling. “We stopped them in the first war when they came, by simply standing our ground! And that was with artillery falling on us the like of which you have never seen, and the men choking with the gas. Yet we held the line! We stayed in our trenches and fought to the last man, and you must learn to do the same!” He composed himself, taking a deep breath and running a hand through the hair falling on his pale forehead.

“My Führer,” said Rommel. “I placed the best troops at my disposal on the southern flank—the Grossdeutschland Regiment you were gracious enough to send me. They were dug in with good positions on difficult ground, and yes, they held that ground. The enemy 7th Armored Division attempted a flanking maneuver in that sector, but they could not get through.”

“You see! All it takes is the same iron in the will that we put in the tanks.”

“Agreed,” said Rommel. “Yet at the moment I would be happy for just a little more armor in the tanks.”

It was a bold remark, but Rommel had spent many hours with the Führer in the past, and knew the limits of what he might say here. He had not yet explained that the enemy’s new heavy brigade had not attacked Grossdeutschland, but further north. Instead he returned to the matter that he believed was his real undoing in the desert, the lack of adequate fighting power in his all important panzer forces.

“I will put it very simply,” he said, gaining resolve and determined not to be made a scapegoat here. “Grossdeutschland was tough that day, but the tanks they faced were not the heavy brigade. If those monsters had fallen upon Hörnlein and his boys, there would have been nothing they could have done to stop them. Yes, they would have stood their ground as ordered, and yes they would have died to the last man. The iron in the will is there, My Führer, unquestionably. But they would have died in place, because we could not put that same iron into the tanks and guns they were fighting with. I will tell you once more—this new enemy tank cannot be stopped! Oh, we did get one that threw a track and was left behind. The
Stukas
managed to put a couple 500 pound bombs on it. If Goering would be so kind as to lend me a few hundred planes, then perhaps I might be making a better report here today. That said, of the thirty
Stukas
we had at our disposal, half were shot out of the sky by these damnable enemy rockets.”

“Rockets? The British ground forces have them as well?”

“They do, my Führer, and they were concentrated to protect this new heavy armored brigade—and thank god that is all it is for the moment—a single brigade.”

“You are certain of this?”

“The Americans have a little fellow in Cairo,” said Rommel, “an American liaison officer who has been making regular reports to Roosevelt using their so called Black Code. Fortunately for us, an Italian spy managed to filch the key to that code from the American embassy in Italy, so we can read it. This man sends his reports by radio, and my signals intelligence is very good. We have been intercepting every report this man has made to Roosevelt.”

The man Rommel was referring to was none other than Colonel Bonner Fellers, who came to be called “the good source” by the Germans, who now knew everything Roosevelt did concerning operations in that theatre.

“A single brigade…” Hitler seemed even more frustrated now. “I gave you five divisions, and you could not crush a single brigade?”

“Unfortunately, my Führer, that brigade was not fighting alone. I was also facing three or four commonwealth divisions, including two armored divisions. The British have been recently reinforced with new tanks arriving at Alexandria.”

“More of these heavy tanks?”

“Strangely, no. From what we were able to ascertain, they received more of their Matildas, and a new light cruiser tank. We faced them in this last battle, and did well against them. Yet that hardly matters, the heavy brigade could not be stopped. Oh, I suppose if I could put ten divisions in the field, I could simply smother this brigade, and the rest of the British Army with it. But General Manstein knows, as I do now, that we simply cannot support a force of that size in the desert. We are barely able to sustain the divisions I already have.”

“Well do not fret over that, Rommel,” said Hitler, a biting edge to his voice now. “I am recalling the Grossdeutschland Regiment for Operation Barbarossa. It will form the nucleus of a new division. Don’t look so sad. I am also pulling Steiner’s SS division out of the Middle East. I was a fool to be distracted by these sideshows, and for the very same reason you just pointed out—logistics. Yes, we intimidated the Turks into allowing us right of passage through Turkey, but on what? The railways are a shambles. There is no rolling stock available. It took Steiner weeks to get his single division down into Lebanon, and now it will take him just as long to send it back. Face it. The British are of no concern to me at the moment. I will win this war by crushing Sergei Kirov. So unfortunately for you, I must recall these troops at once, and put them to better use.”

“Yet the matter of these tanks is still of some concern,” said Manstein. “Operations are already underway in Russia, and the campaign is off to a very good start. Yet we have also found that the Russians have new tanks as well. They are not the monsters you report in Egypt, Herr Rommel, but they are better than anything we presently have.”

“Which brings us to the real reason for this meeting,” said Hitler. “I did not summon you here to get your bad news and deliver my own. No. It is this matter of the heavy tanks we must now set our minds on.”

Hitler turned to the men waiting quietly at the edge of the table. “General Rommel, these gentlemen have been ordered to get us back in the game. They will put the iron in the tanks to match the will of our soldiers. Here we have Mister Porsche from Stuttgart, and Mister Henschel from Kassel. And you will be pleased to learn that they have been feverishly working on new and better tank designs ever since you first reported this new heavy British tank last February. In fact, they have been working on this even longer than that, but I had not given it my full attention. That has all changed. We already have new designs, 45 to 60 tons, and with twice the armor on your best Panzer IIIs. We are calling this one the Tiger, and there are already two models under development. I have put every resource we have at their disposal, and we are now converting all our tank production to make ready for these new designs—the big cats.”

“I am very glad to hear this,” said Rommel.

“This is not all,” Hitler continued. “There will be others, a new medium tank called the Panther, and another model we are calling the Lion, which looks to be very promising. And I am considering even bigger tanks, as powerful as a battlecruiser at sea, and with guns right from the naval shipyards I will take from Admiral Raeder. If the British want to place heavy artillery on their new heavy tanks, so be it. I will show them what heavy artillery is. Beyond that, we are committing ourselves to a crash development program for this new rocket technology. Unfortunately, the early results have produced exactly that—one crash after another, but we will be diligent, and I have been promised a working weapon before my next birthday. In this regard, Ivan Volkov has been most helpful.”

“Ivan Volkov?” Rommel knew who the man was, but could not see how he figured in the matter.

“It is clear that the Russians have been working on new tanks as well,” said Hitler. “This new T-34 has been quite a shock to us. And our existing 50mm anti-tank guns cannot defeat the enemy heavy KV tank either. These are not as advanced as this tank you describe in the desert, but they are better than anything we have at the moment, which is an outrage. Volkov has sent me intelligence on these new Russian designs, and we may take a leaf from their book as we build our own tanks in answer. Now then, I would like you to meet with these gentlemen and tell them everything you have learned about this new British tank. Give them a soldier’s eye view of what our new tanks should be able to do, and how they must fight. General Guderian would be a good man to include in this meeting, but he is otherwise occupied for Operation Barbarossa. I can see now that everything you have warned about, and all you have said about the inadequacy of our own tanks, is painfully true. I should have listened to you earlier, Rommel. I should have known you could not fail on your own merits.”