The Berkut (15 page)

New political winds were blowing in Germany and new leadership was emerging to lead the country out of its depression. In 1932 von Hindenburg had been reelected president. A year later he appointed the National Socialist Party leader, Adolf Hitler-an Austrian-to the position of chancellor. Hitler quickly pulled Germany out of the League of Nations. Whatever else he might be, and Brumm had more than a few doubts, he thought thi
s strange Austrian had courage.

Whereas his fellow officers expressed an extreme view of Hitler as either exceptionally bad or exceptionally good for the country, Brumm did not share his opinion publicly; he preferred to observe the man in action first. In 1934 Hitler made military training mandatory for all German males; Brumm supported the action because he thought that the absence of military training tended to make German youth soft, and because most units were undermanned. The new law would ensure that future commands would be at full strength.

In 1936 Brumm's company was among three battalions sent into the Rhineland by Hitler. There they dug in and waited to see what the French response would be. A short distance away the French had more than a hundred divisions they could have sent against the small German force, but as Hitler had hoped, there was no action, only talk. Certain that the crisis had passed and the Rhineland was again safe in German hands, Hitler ordered thousands of engineers and workers into the area to fortify it, building what he called the West Wall.

From 1936 until late 1938 Brumm was posted to Berlin, serving in the Office of Plans and Operations of the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres, the Army High Command). Once again his keen analytical skills and deep intelligence impressed his superiors, but no further promotions came. In March 1939 he was an acting battalion commander in the takeover of Czechoslovakia. In November 1939 he requested posting to the newly created parachute training program; his request was granted and his skill during training duly noted by his superiors.

In June 1940 Brumm found himself in command of a parachute company. He led his troops in their first combat jumps, into France. One hundred and forty-three German divisions were spread across a four-hundred-mile front as Hitler, with the Netherlands and Belgium already conquered, threw his armies across the Somme. Brumm's unit was the first to reach Paris on June 13, a full day before the main German armies moved into the city. By the end of the month Brumm's company was taken off the line and returned to Germany for additional training. During this time Brumm requested and was granted a month's leave. Part of the leave was spent in Bad Harzburg with his mother and grandfather, part in Berlin with a young woman he'd met during his tour with the Plans and Operations branch.

Christmas, 1940, brought Brumm a new assignment, the command of a special reconnaissance company in the 258th Infantry Division. In late June 1941 he watched in awe as nearly one million German
soldiers flooded across the Russian border at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Where Napoleon had failed, Hitler was sure he could succeed. Brumm was not so certain; Russia was huge, its people were primitive. They might not be well equipped, but their ferocity was legendary, and, worst of all, the lethal and relentless Russian winter lay ahead. In Brumm's view, the invasion was beginning two months late; unless they were lucky they would be in serious trouble by November. With
his planning background and ac
umen, he noted that no allowance had been made for winter gear; it was a critical oversight and he felt compelled to say something. In a pre
-
invasion planning session Brumm raised the issue, but drew only icy s
tares from his superiors; the Fü
hrer had said it could be done and he had not yet been wrong about anything h
e'd ordered. Only an SS officer,
an Oberleutnant
-paid any attention to Brumm's
thorough and dispassionate analysis of the situation. This man, a Viennese named Otto Skorzeny, pulled Brumm aside after the meeting and spent more than two hours asking about his views on the invasion plan. Mostly Skorzeny listened-an unusual occurrence, since the few times Brumm had seen him, Skorzeny had made his presence known by the sheer volume of his voice. After asking several pointed questions, Skorzeny told Brumm that he believed the captain had raised valid issues, and that he was impressed with both the captain's sense of organization and his dear analysis. Brumm thought the junior officer impertinent; still, it was satisfying to know that somebody had listened to him, even if it was only a blowhard Austrian.

For the first few weeks after Barbarossa's launch, Brumm began to wonder if he had erred in his assessment. The Russians, who had been crying to the world for months about the possibility of invasion, seemed to be totally surprised by the attack. German combat divisions quickly pushed deep into Soviet territory, often outstripping their lines of supply and forcing them to halt their advance until the rear echelons could catch up with them. Brumm's unit was part of Army Group Center, which had been assigned the responsibility of subduing Moscow. Just as he had been among the first Germans in Prague, and again in Paris, now there was a good chance that Brumm's reconnaissance unit would be among the first in Moscow-quite a triplicate, he congratulated himself.

For the first few weeks after Barbarossa's launch, Brumm began to wonder if he had erred in his assessment. The Russians, who had been crying to the world for months about the possibility of invasion, seemed to be totally surprised by the attack. German combat divisions quickly pushed deep into Soviet territory, often outstripping their lines of supply and forcing them to halt their advance until the rear echelons could catch up with them. Brumm's unit was part of Army Group Center, which had been assigned the responsibility of subduing Moscow. Just as he had been among the first Germans in Prague, and again in Paris, now there was a good chance that Brumm's reconnaissance unit would be among the first in Moscow-quite a triplicate, he congratulated himself.

But he had been right after all; by early October the nightmare was realized. The Russian winter arrived earlier than usual. First came sheets of relentless icy rain that pelted bare flesh and created seas of
slime and muck that bogged down man and machine alike. It was the prewinter phenomenon the Russians called
Rasputita
.
In October snow fell and the temperature dropped to ten below. The German advance slowed but did not stop, and eventually, with the constant urging of their officers, the Germans fought their way through hordes of undisciplined Russian peasants, armed with century-old shotguns, sabers and shovels with sharpened edges, to reach Moscow.

On December 2, 1941, during a heavy ice storm, Brumm took his unit into the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The fighting was fierce, house to house and hand to hand. Russian women and children heaved grenades at tanks in the streets and sniped wildly from concealment. The temperature was thirty below, and many infantrymen were losing fingers and toes to frostbite. Brumm gave his men a break. They holed up temporarily in an abandoned warehouse and built fires on the dirt floors; for the first time in weeks they were warm.

At daybreak on the morning of December 3, Brumm led a small patrol of volunteers into Moscow proper, seeking to ascertain the enemy's strength. The next morning he pulled his company back closer to the main German salient and reported to his superiors that Moscow seemed to be almost undefended. Given the tenacity with which the Soviets had fought so far, he found this situation difficult to understand, and even more difficult to accept; his instincts told him that something was drastically wrong. He tried to express his concern to his superiors, but they refused to listen. Their explanation was simplistic: there were too few Russians left to fight and nothing left for them to fight with; Germany finally had virtually annihilated its historic enemy. The senior officers encouraged their men to take pride in their accomplishment.

Brumm knew they were wrong. Experience showed that even when the Russians were reduced to fighting with their bare hands, they would charge a solid wall of automatic weapon fire in order to strangle a single German. It was incomprehensible that such defenders would suddenly evaporate, especially in the Russian capital with the German army within artillery range of the Kremlin itself.

Brumm's fear was confirmed on December 6, 1941: the German invaders were stunned by a savage Russian counteroffensive launched across a two-hundred-mile front with one hundred well-armed and fresh divisions. Back in Vinnitsa, in the Ukraine, from where he now directed the war, Hitler refused to acknowledge the urgent communiques from his field commanders. After reading the reports from his
field commanders, the Fü
hrer calmly ordered them to continue the drive to Moscow and then went into seclusion to consider matters he considered to be of greater importance to the Reich. It was too late; the Russians had gained both the momentum and the advantage. Within days every German soldier fully understood that a dramatic shift had taken place.

By February I942 Brumm's small reconnaissance unit had been pushed back nearly sixty-five kilometers; in the process his company had been reduced from a full complement of one hundred to only thirty-five men. Intelligence was reporting that 3
1
percent of the entire German assault force had been killed or wounded in the Soviet counterattack. The army in Brumm's region had been reduced from I62 divisions to eight; their sixteen armored divisions had only
1
40 tanks in fighting condition. Seeing the danger and having been separated from his parent infantry battalion, Brumm threw in with a small panzer unit, using his men to perform reconnaissance ahead of the unit's six remaining Tiger tanks. In return, the panzermen transported his people when the path ahead was dear, which it seldom was. Despite the magnitude of the Russian onslaught, the disciplined and well-trained German infantrymen gave ground grudgingly; Hider had ordered them to fight to the last man and last bullet, and their commanders had no cho
ice but to comply with their Fü
hrer's explicit order.

In March, during heavy spring rains, Brumm's adopted tank unit was finally annihilated in a night attack by Soviet armor and rockets. He took his remaining men (now fewer than twenty) on alone, moving southeast toward the Don River and the southern armies of Hider, which had been assigned the task of taking Stal
ingrad and the Russian oil field
s in the Caucasus. Traveling by night and hiding by day, he led his men slowly through Russian territory for nearly six weeks, finally rejoining the main German units south of a river near the Ukrainian border. Along the way the young company commander took copious detailed notes on Russian units, their strengths and methods of battle. He reached safety with nine haggard survivors; they were received by the Germans with wonder. During a week-long debriefing by intelligence personnel, the young captain described the travels of his unit and their skirmishes as they worked their way back to the German lines. When he showed them his notes, the intelligence experts were stunned; they knew a treasure when they saw one. Brumm had a huge volume of information of exceptional quality, and senior intelligence officials on the Eastern front reasoned that he belonged in Berlin.

So it was that Brumm and his survivors were evacuated to Germany, and upon arrival he was again subjected to an intense debriefing. Later he was reassigned to the Office of Plans and Operations, his experience having elevated him to a new status, that of resident expert on Soviet tactics and strategy. He found himself immersed in all things Russian; his primary duty involved supervising interrogations of selected Soviet prisoners flown to Berlin by intelligence agents on the Eastern front. For particularly difficult prisoners, Gestapo personnel applied their special expertise. It was a brutal and abhorrent job, but Brumm reminded himself of what was occurring in the Ukraine, and this buffered the distaste he might otherwise have felt. A Russian life taken in Berlin might save hundreds of German lives in the east.

In June, German victories in the field began to mount once again.

Seeing the need for experienced officers, Brumm requested reassignment to another combat unit. For the first time in his career a request he had made was turned down; he was told bluntly that he was too valuable to be wasted as cannon fodder and could be of more use to the Reich where he was. Brumm felt betrayed; uncharacteristically, he began to spend much of his free time drinking and partaking in the social diversions the city offered.

In the fall the war again shifted against Germany, and Brumm continued his self-destructive ways, falling in with a group of senior Waffen
SS
officers who had access to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of French champagne and wine and legions of eager young females from the League of German Girls. On several occasions he accompanied his senior comrades to a secluded and well-guarded estate near the city where nearly three hundred young women, many of them in their mid-teens, were barracked. Controlled by the German Labor Front, the establishment was called "recreational," operating under the aegis of an organization called Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy). Brumm was told that his admittance to the establishment was a rarity; normally such places were reserved exclusively for members of the 55, but his fellow officers, who were all
SS
, said they considered him to be one of them and would ignore the fact that his uniform was the wrong color.

In April 1943 Brumm had a surprise visitor: Otto Skorzeny, the 55 Oberleutnant who had so thoroughly quizzed him about his views of Barbarossa. Skorzeny, who was now his equal in rank, swaggered into his office one afternoon, sat down and propped his high leather boots on Brumm's desk. "I have a new job," he told Brumm, "something you might be interested in."