The Leader And The Damned (2 page)

'You understand, von Kluge,' Hitler repeated, 'one giant hammer-blow with massed tanks and men. With the huge force under your command - larger than any general has directed in this war - you will drive on and on! Non-stop until you reach Moscow! Not one chance for the enemy to recover from the initial shock! Ignore taking prisoners...' His hypnotic eyes fixed von Kluge. 'As in France in 1940 you keep up the momentum - roll over the swine! On and on until you have the domes of St Basil in your artillery sights!'

'I understand,
mein Führer
! With the new forces you are sending it shall be done..

Deliberately lingering in the terrible cold as an example, Hitler gripped von Kluge's arm and softened his voice. 'You are about to make history, my friend. A hundred years from now the historians will still be writing about the Second Battle of Moscow which finally destroyed Stalin and burned the Communist plague from the face of the globe!'

He turned away and behind him von Kluge, one of the shrewdest and most experienced of Hitler's commanders, felt a sensation of excitement rising inside him. The unique power of Hitler to inspire men was working again. He saluted as the Führer walked slowly towards the waiting Condor.

Reiter's heavily armed SS guard was ready for his departure, drawn up in two lines as Hitler walked very slowly between them, staring into each face. The cold seemed not to affect him at all; long ago as a pauper during his youth in Vienna he had learned to ignore the elements, to summon up his unique willpower to withstand all discomfort. Then, at the foot of the staircase leading up to the aircraft he paused. Something was wrong.

His intuitive Sixth sense told him something was wrong. What could it be? As the snow fell softly he looked round for a clue. Von Kluge's GS01, General von Tresckow, had been absent from the war council. Something to do with suffering a bout of influenza. Why had that thought come into his mind? He remained motionless, indifferent to the insidious wind from the East freezing his face. The double column of SS guards stood equally motionless, their right arms raised in the Hitler salute. In the far distance the Führer could hear a sound like muted thunder, the rumble of gunfire at the front carried all the way to Smolensk by the wind.

Inside his quarters General von Tresckow watched the scene through the de-frosted shape of his palm- print which was rapidly misting up. He dared not apply his frozen hand again; the movement might be seen - even by the Führer who seemed to miss nothing.

'He's hesitating - he's suspicious...'

In the tension of the moment Schlabrendorff found himself whispering with fear. His legs felt like jelly and he was cursing inwardly. How could they have performed such an insane act?

'Yes,' von Tresckow agreed sombrely, 'that blasted sixth sense is at work. It's uncanny.'

Already he could picture himself standing in front of a firing squad; erect, stripped of all his medals; the order given; the line of rifle barrels levelled at him; the brief command. 'Fire!' Then oblivion. With an effort of will, worthy of the Führer himself, he maintained an outward air of composure and waited.

Hitler had still not boarded the plane. The raised arms of the SS guard were almost frozen rigid in their posture. Field Marshal von Kluge and his staff stood a few yards away at attention. Von Kluge was still experiencing a sensation of exhilaration. Before Hitler's arrival he had been despondent; the more Russians you killed the more of them appeared. It had been a nightmare.

Now he was turning over in his mind the new plan. The more he thought about it the more sure he was it would work. It had done so in Poland and in Russia it would succeed. But this time the victory would be colossal, earth-shaking. The whole Red Army would be annihilated in one shattering onslaught. Only a man with Hitler's mesmeric powers could have changed the mind of so calculating a commander as von Kluge in one short conference.

Suddenly Hitler raised his own arm and the cry '
Heil Hitler
' echoed round the bleak, snowbound encampment of broken buildings. Without a word the Führer turned, mounted the steps to the plane, disappeared inside. The door was closed as the pilot fired his engines, the steps were hauled away and the machine began to move bumpily over the freshly cleared airstrip.

Inside the plane Hitler took off his cap and coat, handed them to an aide who shook them free from snow, and walked rapidly along the corridor. He chose the seat in front of the one under which von Tresckow had placed the time-bomb and called for his briefcase. He needed something to occupy his mind: he detested flying as much as he loved being driven at high speed in a car.

The stern expression he had adopted when facing the SS guard disappeared. Despite his dislike of planes his face relaxed into a smile, the smile which had charmed - and disarmed - so many Western leaders. As he extracted a folded map of France and the Low Countries showing the locations of the dummy encampments, the plane left the ground.

Von Kluge and his staff still stood in the cold, watching the machine disappear into the murky overcast, the machine carrying the greatest political and military genius since Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Evil he might be in many of his methods, but his predecessors had not been saints. And he had not had any of their advantages in upbringing and professional training.

He had risen from the gutter, his only weapons his extraordinary powers of speech and supreme willpower and belief in his own destiny. Alone he had done it: had dragged a nation of eighty million from the depths of degradation and despair to become the most feared and mighty power in the world.

But two other hidden men also watched the tiny blur of the plane disappear into the sky. Von Tresckow and Schlabrendorff turned away from the window and the latter wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Even the strong-willed von Tresckow sank on to a chair.

'We've done it!' Schlabrendorff said jubilantly.

'The bomb still has to detonate,' his superior reminded him. He roused himself from the feeling of torpor which was a reaction to the strain they had undergone. 'And I must send the signal to Berlin to warn Olbricht...'

Leaving his quarters, he strode briskly through the snow to the signals building which housed the direct line to Berlin. Inside he told the operator to leave him alone. 'I am sending a highly confidential message,' he remarked curtly. Waiting until the door was closed, he rang Berlin and asked to be put through at once to General Olbricht, Chief of the Home Army who commanded the troops in the capital.

'Von Tresckow here,' he informed Olbricht when the General came on the line. 'The present I promised you has been delivered...'

He cut the connection the moment he had spoken the key words; these days no one knew when the bloody Gestapo was monitoring calls Now everything was ready: as soon as the news of Hitler's death reached Berlin, Olbricht would move, using his garrison troops to seize all major control points in Berlin - the War Ministry, the radio stations, the Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment and so on.

He walked out of the signals building and stared briefly in the direction where Hitler's plane had disappeared on its long flight to the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. Everything now hung on one thing. The explosion of the bomb.

Chapter Two

13 March 1943
. At the airfield several kilometres from the Wolfsschanze - the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's secret headquarters in East Prussia - Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancery, stood outside the control tower waiting for his master's plane to arrive.

By his side stood Alois Vogel, chief of the SS security guard. A tall man with a thin face and a tight mouth, Vogel was clad in his black uniform with the SS lightning flashes on his collar. While he stamped his frozen feet, crunching the rutted snow, Vogel glanced impatiently at his watch. He used his gloved thumb to remove the film of ice which had formed on the glass casing.

'He should arrive soon now,' he remarked. 'I wish this accursed fog would lift..

'It is normal,' Bormann replied calmly, 'and the Führer's pilot is an expert.'

It was indeed normal. For half the year this dreary part of Germany was smothered in a white mist and covered with snow. It was an eery, hushed atmosphere. The mist rolled in drifts like a sea-fog, occasionally parting to expose vague silhouettes of the stands of endless pine forest. Unlike the SS officer, Bormann stood quite motionless, always patient, his hands clasped behind his back.

One of the most puzzling figures in recent history, Bormann was a short, heavily-built man with a Slav face. He had a strong nose, a mole-like head and rarely showed any emotion. It was impossible ever to know what he was thinking: on the surface he appeared to be no more than Hitler's faithful secretary who transmitted the Führer's orders and ensured their immediate execution. But to more perceptive observers there was something sinister in his chameleon-like personality. 'He is Hitler's shadow,' one general had observed. 'And the shadow is darker than the man who casts it.'

'Here he comes,' said Vogel.

He left Bormann's side and issued orders to the twenty armed SS men who formed the Führer's personal bodyguard. Bormann turned his head slightly. Vogel was right: the sound of an approaching plane's engines had broken the silence of the rolling mist. Still no more than a distant mutter, the sound was growing louder. Bormann went inside a building and emerged with an Alsatian he held on a chain. After his long flight from Smolensk the Fuhrer would be pleased to see Blondi, the dog Bormann himself had found for Hitler to comfort him after the defeat at Stalingrad.

It was by little considerate acts such as this that Bormann had cemented his position as Hitler's personal secretary; the man who passed on most of the Führer's orders to everyone. Bormann had even changed his sleep pattern to accord with the Führer's. In this way he was never absent from Hitler's side at the Wolf's Lair. The fact that he was hated by Goering, Himmler and all the other Nazi chiefs disturbed him not at all. Bormann's ambition was to be what he was, Hitler's shadow, ever present when decisions were made.

'He's coming in to land,' Vogel called out. 'Shall I inform headquarters?'

'No. Leave that to me.'

Bormann remained where he was, scanning the heavy overcast for his first sight of the plane which was very close now. Luckily the mist was briefly dissolving as a light wind blew up, exposing the runway on which the machine would land.

Hitler's luck again, Bormann said to himself wryly. For the whole day the airfield had been blotted out and now it was going to be an easy task for the pilot to bring his plane down safely. As though sensing the arrival of his master, the Alsatian tugged at his lead. 'Stay still!' Bormann snapped, his cold eyes searching for the machine.

Aboard the Condor Adolf Hitler had donned his military greatcoat and peaked cap. His expression was severe and arrogant, the face of a world-conqueror ready to be greeted by the waiting SS guard. Yet only half an hour earlier he had reduced his small group of aides to hysterical laughter as he paraded up and down the corridor mimicking Prime Minister Chamberlain when the Englishman had visited him at the pre-war Munich conference. He peered out of the window for his first sight of the ground.

No one with him inside the plane could have guessed that he was a bundle of nerves at this moment. He hated landing just as much as he hated take-off. I shall never fly again, he promised himself. But he knew that, if he had to, he would do the same thing all over again. His blue glaucous eyes flickered. He had caught sight of a glimpse of pine trees.

On the airfield below Bormann had seen the machine descending. It appeared and then disappeared again as the pilot turned for the final run-in. Glancing round the airfield where Vogel had drawn up his troops ready for the Fuhrer's arrival, Bormann sensed the normal atmosphere of tension and excitement which always surrounded these occasions.

What news would Hitler bring back from the Eastern front? A few minutes before his departure he had taken the Chancery Leader aside and hinted at his plans - which was most unusual. It was Hitler's invariable rule to keep to himself all major strategic decisions until the moment of announcement.

'Bormann,' he had confided, 'we are on the eve of a massive manoeuvre which will tip the whole balance of the war in our favour - a manoeuvre so audacious it is worthy of Napoleon or Frederick the Great...'