THE FORESIGHT WAR (29 page)

The tension released suddenly.
 
The tired bridge crew, officers and men, grinned at each other.
 
The message could only mean success; the torpedo had found its target, completed its suicidal mission.
 
The Captain felt a quiet satisfaction, but at the same time, a feeling of anticlimax.
 
This was nothing like the war he had expected, of blazing guns and desperate attacks to depth-charge or ram
the enemy.
 
There was something cold and clinical about the destruction of the U-boat.
 
Fighting was becoming less human; the machines were taking over.
 
He pushed the thought from his mind and turned to broadcast the success to the crew.
 
The lift would keep them going, keep them alert, ready for the next time.
 
There would be plenty of next times.

CHAPTER 6 - BARBAROSSA

Summer 1941

The first light of dawn glinted through the canopy, bringing with it a perceptible rise in tension in the cramped cockpit.
 
The big Heinkel had been droning steadily eastwards for hours; the crew mostly silent, preoccupied with thoughts of the day ahead and its larger implications, or just dozing after their late night take-off.
 
Around them, the sun revealed the scattered shapes of more of the big bombers, beginning to close into formation after the long flight.

The terminator slowly moved towards them, revealing the featureless Russian landscape passing below.
 
From this height, few details of human activities could be seen, despite the clear air promised by the Truppenwetterdienst.
 
Ahead, a smudge of smoke gradually formed; their target moved steadily towards them as if they were suspended in mid-air while a huge map was rolled beneath them.

‘Watch out for fighters!’
 
The Hauptmann did not really expect to see any.
 
The Russians would have had no warning, and he doubted if they had any fighters capable of reaching the fast, high-flying bomber.
 
In any case, the Soviet Air Force would soon have troubles of its own.
 
He smiled at the thought of his comrades in the fast bombers and heavy fighters which would even now be launching the first of their carefully coordinated attacks on the Soviet airfields.

The task of his formation was very different.
 
Along with every other Heinkel and Dornier Kampfgeschwader which could be spared from the war of attrition against England, his Gruppe was to penetrate deep into enemy territory, to destroy strategic targets such as factories and communications centres.
 
In his case, it was a tank factory on the northern edge of the industrial city below.
 
The Heinkel banked slightly as the Gruppe formed up and commenced its bombing run.
 

Far below, the factory workers on their way to take over from the night shift looked up in puzzlement at the thin, straight clouds of the contrails approaching the city.
 
No engine noises could be heard.
 
The silence was not to last for long.

Silence was the last thing on the mind of the Scharführer as his Panzer III crashed through the scrubby woodland.
 
He snapped a command and the tank ground to a halt on the edge of the pastureland.
 
Before him, fields sloped down to a small village, clustered round a bridge over the winding river.
 
Beyond the village, on the other side of the river, small shapes were moving towards them.
 
He scanned them through his field glasses and identified them immediately: T26 light tanks, still out of effective range.
 
Around them were Soviet infantry, walking towards the village.
 

His radio crackled as the Sturmbannführer in command of the Waffen SS unit gave instructions.
 
His troop roared forwards, going flat out to reach the bridge before the Soviet tanks, while behind him he heard the first crash of covering fire from the supporting Panzers, firing high-explosive shells to pin down the enemy infantry and leave the tanks exposed.

The Scharführer reached the bridge and crossed first, holding his breath in case it had been mined.
 
Normally they would have sent in Pionieren to check, but the proximity of the Soviet forces compelled urgent measures.
 
The bridge had to be secured before the Soviets blew it, otherwise there would be a delay while bridging equipment was brought up to span the swollen river, and the instructions had been clear: no delays!

Safely across, his troop deployed at the edge of the settlement, ignoring the bewildered and terrified Polish villagers who rushed between the houses, still not realising what was about to happen.
 
The T26s were now only a kilometre away, in plain view as they rolled steadily towards the village, undeterred by the shellfire.
 
The
Scharführer
 
allowed
himself a brief moment of sympathy for the Soviet tank crews; they were hopelessly outclassed, their armour vulnerable to the Panzer’s powerful 7,5 cm gun, while the T26’s 45 mm was unable to penetrate the Pz III’s thick frontal armour.
 
They couldn’t even run away, being considerably slower.
 
However, there was a job to be done.
 

His tank shook as the gun fired with a deafening bang.
 
He watched the tracer curve swiftly towards the target and grunted in annoyance as it kicked up dirt ahead of the lead T26.
 
A second shot hit the tank full on and it lurched to a halt, smoke pouring from the blown-open hatches.
 
No-one got out.
 
Beside him his comrades were firing steadily and the remainder of the Soviet tanks were soon disposed of.
 
The Scharführer had not even noticed them returning fire; if they had, it had done no damage.

The action over, the Panzers stopped engines to conserve fuel and stood guard while the rest of their Kompanie moved to join them, together with motorized infantry and anti-tank troops to secure the village.
 
In the sudden silence, a sound like a fast-approaching express train could be heard.
 
The Scharführer had time to shout a warning before the first artillery shell crashed into the village.
 
The tanks ‘buttoned up’ rapidly, hatches slamming shut as they prepared for a grim wait.
 
They were safe from all but a direct hit on their thin upper armour – an unlikely chance – but the tension was nerve-racking as the big Panzers shook and rang with the detonations of the artillery barrage aimed at destroying the bridge.
 
In the brief pauses between explosions, the screaming of the helpless villagers could be heard.

At the edge of the wood, the Sturmbannführer was speaking urgently on the radio as he watched the destruction of the village.
 
So far, the bridge had not been hit, but it was only a matter of time.
 
The infantry and anti-tank troops in their more lightly armoured vehicles waited by the edge of the wood while the remaining tanks raced forwards to cross the bridge while they still could.
 
He watched, scarcely able to breathe, as they rumbled across in quick succession.
 
A sudden flash from the village and a shouted curse were enough to tell him that one of the Panzers had been hit.

A flicker in the sky caught his eye; a quick check through the glasses brought a sigh of relief as the Fieseler Storch spotter plane cruised over in the direction of the Soviet artillery unit.
 
The
Sturmbannführer
 
settled
back to watch.

Fifteen minutes later the bridge was, incredibly, still standing, but the village was totally wrecked.
 
The Sturmbannführer wondered idly what had happened to the villagers.
 
The twenty-one surviving Panzers of his Kompanie were through and deployed beyond the village, away from the artillery fire.
 
He was becoming nervous; it was not good to have the tanks separated from the infantry and anti-tank troops.
 
He looked up at the snarl of engines overhead and saw the deadly shapes of Fw 190s streaking towards the Soviet positions.
 
Through the glasses he could see the yellow identification stripe of all Luftwaffe Eastern Front aircraft and the rockets under the wings.
 
Minutes later, a pall of smoke rose in the distance and the shelling abruptly stopped.
 
Half an hour later, the entire Waffen SS force was across and the bridge secured against counter-attack.
 
By then, the leading tanks were already out of sight.

Herrman sat gazing out of the window, scarcely noticing the East Prussian landscape as it slid smoothly past the Führersonderzug.
 
It was the early morning of Tuesday the third of June and Barbarossa had been underway for forty-eight hours.
 
Hitler was on his way to the new eastern Führerhauptquartier near Rastenburg, from which he intended to oversee the conquest of the Soviet Union.

The train was buzzing with the news of the early breakthroughs by the Wehrmacht.
 
The leading Panzergruppen were already nearly 200 kilometres from the start lines, slicing through the stunned and confused Soviet troops with scarcely a pause.
 
Herrman felt remote from the celebrations, feeling an odd mixture of detachment and tension.
 
At last it had started, the war against the hated enemy towards which he had been guiding Hitler for the past seven years.
 
He should be delighted, but instead he felt anxious, even depressed.
 
The dice had been thrown in the greatest gamble of the war.

He thought back over the past few months of diplomacy and deception.
 
Until the attack started, every effort had been made to reassure Stalin about Hitler’s intentions.
 
The Moscow mutual assistance treaties of August and September 1939 had been followed by Soviet-German Pact of February 1940, exchanging Soviet raw materials and foodstuffs for German military equipment and industrial machinery – the latter being unaccountably slow in arriving.
 
Relationships had remained good for the first half of 1940, Molotov even sending congratulations to Hitler on the success of the German invasion of Western Europe.
 
However, tensions had begun to arise from the two countries’ overlapping spheres of interest, particularly Finland and south-eastern Europe.
 
In June 1940 Stalin had demanded territory from Romania, which aroused Hitler’s concern about the vulnerability of the vital Ploesti oilfields.

No sooner was the conquest of France complete than Hitler had ordered OKH to begin detailed planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
 
His target date had been May 15th 1941; in fact, the assault had been delayed a fortnight by the consequences of a late spring thaw after a severe winter, exacerbated by exceptionally wet weather, which had combined to cause swollen rivers and flooded plains.
 
Even now some of OKH had argued for a further delay to ensure that conditions were suitable for the Panzers, but Hitler would wait no longer.

Herrman’s main concern had been whether Stalin would act on any warnings from the British.
 
In his time, the Soviet response to the invasion had proved ineffective for a variety of reasons.
 
Although the Soviets had vast quantities of equipment, most of it was obsolete and the Soviet army had been misled by their experience of the Spanish Civil War to discount the use of integrated armoured divisions, so their handling of armour at operational level was hopelessly inferior.
 
Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s had also deprived them of most of their able officers and left the rest too frightened to take any initiatives which were not sanctioned by their political commissars.
 
Last, but far from least, the disposition of the Soviet forces had been much too far forward to allow a flexible defensive response, since Stavka, the Soviet High Command, had assumed that operations would build up gradually with front-line forces acting to disrupt enemy attacks while protecting their own mobilisation in the rear areas.

As it was, he need not have worried.
 
The Soviets were faring no better now that he recalled from his studies; in fact, if possible rather worse because the German equipment was so much better.
 
The Wehrmacht’s armoured divisions had punched through the unprepared Soviet front in several places, with some forces turning back to encircle the trapped Soviet troops in a classic Kesselschlact, or cauldron battle, giving them no choice but surrender or annihilation.
 
Stavka had not previously prepared a plan for strategic defence so the Soviet forces’ response had been disorganised and chaotic.
 
The only question was, this
time,
could the Germans keep it up long enough to force the Soviet Union into defeat?

The mood in the War Room was sombre.
 
Churchill had convened a meeting of the Oversight Committee deep in the Whitehall bunker where they could examine the huge maps of central and
eastern
Europe fixed to the walls.
 
The stark, curving arrows showing the movement of armies spelled out the grim story of Soviet disaster.

‘Stalin didn’t take any notice, then.’
 
Dunning commented.

‘Evidently!’
 
Churchill was in a sour mood.
 
‘We told him everything we possibly could, except for the source of our information.’
 
This with a glance at Don.
 
‘I can’t understand why he left his troops so vulnerable.’

‘I can.
 
Stalin is suspicious beyond the point of paranoia.
 
I gather that there have been so many attempts by our diplomats to persuade the Soviet Union to join our side that he probably regards any anti-German information from us as just more propaganda.
 
Even in my time, Stalin ignored warnings from his own intelligence sources in Japan and Switzerland.
 
He just didn’t seem to want to believe it would happen.’

‘The attack has come earlier than in your time, has it not?’
 
Enquired
Taylor
.
 
Don nodded.
 

‘Hitler originally intended to attack in May, but was deflected until late June by the Balkans campaign, which in my time went on for much longer.
 
This time, he must have been anxious to start as soon as the weather
permitted,
knowing what was to come in the autumn.’
 
Don could still remember the haunting images from the Eastern Front, first of vehicles stuck in deep, sticky mud after the autumn rain had destroyed the unpaved roads, then the immobility of frozen men and machinery in the bitter winter to follow.
 
‘Hitler will want victory as quickly as possible.’