Himmler's War

CHAPTER 8

Looking down, Morgan thought the Seine resembled a twisting winding blue-gray ribbon. It began in the Alps, flowed to Paris, and from there north past Rouen and on to Le Havre, where it entered the English Channel. Even from a distance, the gouges in the earth on the eastern side betrayed the location of enemy positions.

“They just don’t give a shit if we see them or not,” Jeb Carter said. At Jack’s suggestion, several other officers had begun riding as copilot with him. It gave them an opportunity to see what he and his little plane could see and do and, equally important, not see and do. Several officers had found the Piper’s capabilities and limitations to be real eye openers. Snyder, his normal copilot didn’t mind at all staying on the ground where it was safer.

“You gonna get closer, Jack?”

“Nope. Just ’cause I look crazy doesn’t mean I am. We already know that a ton of antitank and antiaircraft guns are dug in there, so there’s no reason to push our luck just to prove it.”

To emphasize the statement, a few black puffs of flak erupted to their front. Jack turned the Piper to the north. They would turn back to base in a moment. “Warning shot,” he said. “They’re saying don’t piss us off by getting nosy and we won’t shoot at you either.”

“Sounds fair,” said Carter. He pulled a pack of letters from his jacket pocket, glanced at them and put them back.

“Your girlfriend?”

“She’s my cousin, and more important, a really good friend. So don’t give me any crappy comments about being surprised that I have relatives who can write. Literacy is not all that unusual in Georgia.”

“It ever crossed my mind. Is she married?”

“Naw, she’s single, cute, and actually she’s from up north in Pennsylvania. I’ve forgiven her for being a northerner. She’s here in France working on some Red Cross project trying to reunite refugee families.”

“Christ, that’ll keep her busy for centuries. Did you say she was cute and here in France?”

“Yes to both, although she’s always putting herself down about her looks. Doesn’t think she’s as pretty as she is. We’ve been friends since we were little kids.”

Jeb recalled a time when he’d thought she was both beautiful and desirable. After they’d both had a few illegal drinks, he’d managed to get her blouse and bra off before she’d stopped him and he’d never done anything like that to her again. Nor had they ever spoken of it, although he had a hard time forgetting just how lovely her breasts were. She had been seventeen and he’d just turned twenty.

Jeb pulled a couple of pictures from the envelopes and handed them to Jack. A young lady smiled at the camera. She was sitting on the ground and wearing shorts. Her legs were tucked underneath her and she had a bottle of Coke in her hand. Other people were in the area. It looked like a family picnic. A second picture showed the same woman playing tennis. Jack thought she had a great figure and outstanding legs. She was laughing and he wanted to laugh with her.

“Perhaps you can introduce me? Maybe you can arrange a blind date?”

Jeb Carter roared with laughter. “Sure thing, Jack-off. There’s nothing easier than arranging a blind date in the middle of a continent at war. I’ll call Ike and have him set up dinner and a movie. Maybe you can get Ike’s girlfriend as a chauffeur.”

Actually Jack thought the idea sounded great. But when did people start calling him Jack-off? Wasn’t Bomber Morgan bad enough? Damn Carter. And who the hell was Ike’s girlfriend?

Monique Fleury was a local Rennes woman in her mid-thirties. Plump, wide-eyed and still pretty, and, most important, she spoke fluent English. She’d found work with the Red Cross where her ability to translate the patois of the area into something Jessica could understand was helpful beyond words.

Monique said her husband was somewhere under German control. That is, if he was alive at all. When he’d first been taken prisoner in 1940, she said she’d gotten a terse postcard allegedly signed by him saying that all was well. The prearranged signal that all was not well was contained in the fact that he’d misspelled his own first name. He was an officer, which meant that the Nazis would be even more loath to release him as they had done with some enlisted men. Rumors said that the Nazis had massacred all the French officers. Monique thought it was likely, and said that this left her with a small child who had never seen his father. He was being cared for by an elderly aunt while Monique went to work.

At the sound of shouts and screams, the two women rushed outside. A local gendarme was herding six distraught young women in their late teens and early twenties, and only half protecting them from a larger group of outraged and mainly older village women. The six younger women had been stripped to their underwear, were bruised about the head and shoulders, and their hair had been roughly hacked or shaved off. Blood from cuts and slashes was beginning to scab on their scalps. Their faces were bruised, apparently from being punched. The young women might have been pretty once, but the looks of terror, the bruises, and the blood denied that.

“Whores!” women in the crowd screamed and chanted, shoveling and jostling the six. The gendarme pushed one villager aside when it looked like she was going to hit one of the prisoners with an umbrella. Slaps and kicks were all right, but no umbrellas. A hand reached out and tore at a woman’s slip, exposing her breasts to the jeers of the crowd. The gendarme shrugged and grinned.

“Collaborators, aren’t they?” Jessica asked.

“They slept with the German soldiers and now they pay for it. The losers always pay, don’t they?”

Jessica hadn’t quite thought of it that way. “Why would they ever want to sleep with the Germans?”

Monique shrugged. “For the young ones, perhaps it was for love and adventure. There were very few young men left here thanks to the war, so a German soldier might have seemed attractive to a lonely young woman. After all, hadn’t the Germans won? And weren’t they going to be in charge here for a thousand years? For others, perhaps they screwed for the food that the German soldier had access to. There was never enough food provided by the Vichy government. Who knows? Maybe they really are whores and they did it for the money. Regardless, their side lost and they must now pay for being on the wrong side.”

Monique spat on the ground to emphasize her point. One of the young women had fallen and the crowd began kicking and jabbing at her while she crawled on bloody knees. It reminded Jessica of a scene from the Crucifixion. But these were French women condemned of whoring with the enemy, not Jesus.

“But this is awful.”

“Don’t judge. What do you think will happen to me if the Boche come back and the villagers suddenly decide that the Germans are their saviors?”

Jessica blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Jessica, I have a little boy and what I make working with you isn’t enough. Meanwhile there are vast mountains of supplies that well-meaning and helpful American soldiers can get to those willing to pay the old fashioned price.”

Jessica was shocked. “What are you telling me, Monique?”

“I have an American master sergeant who takes care of me and my son. I found him a couple of days after the Americans arrived. His name is Boyle and he has a wife and two children back in Oklahoma, wherever that is, but I’m here and she’s not.”

“And when your husband comes back?”

“Don’t you mean if? I haven’t heard from him in three years. I don’t think he’s alive and, if he is and does return, we will work it out. I will do what I need to for my child, and my husband will understand that or he will move on.”

“Did you ever sleep with a German for food?” Jessica asked, not quite wanting to hear the answer.

“I was never that hungry, although I came close on a few occasions.” She shook her head sadly. “I did have sex with the grocer a few times, though. He’s an old man and, except for him, it wasn’t very satisfying, but my son and I did have food.”

The mob had pushed the six women towards the city limits. “Now what will happen to them?” Jessica asked.

“They will be turned loose outside the city to fend for themselves.”

“How?”

Monique laughed. “Well, they are whores, aren’t they?”

Below the slow-flying Piper Cub, a German rear guard detachment was pulling out after once more stalling and mauling the 74th’s advance. The key position had been a two-story stone farmhouse. Artillery called in by Morgan had eventually obliterated it. The French had built well, and it had taken numerous hits before the burning roof had collapsed on the defenders.

A small column of German vehicles, several towing antitank guns, had then quickly limbered up and moved down the dirt road towards the west and the safety of another prepared position. They left behind two more burning Sherman tanks, along with dead and wounded crewmen. The continuing insolence and the success of the Germans infuriated the Americans and there had been a couple more incidents where Nazi prisoners had been shot. Morgan couldn’t blame the men on the ground. Like the sniper, it was hard to let a man who’d just shot and killed your friends get away with it by saying, “I surrender and would like now to go to a camp where I’ll be fed and warm while you go and try not to get killed by my buddies.”

Prisoner shooting, he concluded was an ugly but understandable fact of war, and one of those things nobody ever talked about.

Jack had called in artillery fire that had, as usual, missed the fleeing column by a wide margin. He’d then been informed that, as usual, no fighter-bombers were in the area. He’d sworn at the Germans’ good luck, and been willing to let the krauts depart until a machine gun in the tail-end truck opened fire on him, spitting a column of tracers in the air.

“Captain, that silly bastard’s shooting at us.”

“I can tell, Snyder.” He banked and twisted the Cub until the German gave up.

Enough of this shit, he thought. The tail vehicle was a Horch heavy all-terrain standard personnel vehicle. This one looked like it carried half a dozen German soldiers and was towing an antitank gun, although not one of the hated 88’s.

As he drew closer, the machine gun erupted again, but the Cub’s agility enabled Jack to evade the stream of bullets.

“Sir, what the hell are you doing?” Snyder yelled as Jack dropped even lower and lined up behind the Horch.

“I’m pissed off, Snyder.”

“Aw shit, Captain.”

“I had this little plane armed for a reason and this is it. Hang on.”

He dropped the plane to mere feet above the road, closing at more than twenty miles an hour faster than the big truck. Again, he juked and jigged while the gunner, in the front of the truck, futilely tried to swivel and find him.

At two hundred yards, he pulled the trigger and the twin thirties erupted, hitting the ground behind the Horch. He walked the bullets up to the truck and raked it. The truck swerved off the road and rolled down a ditch. Several men tumbled out and ran off. Jack was elated to see that not all the Germans had left the truck. He was about to make a second pass when the truck’s gas tank exploded. The other German vehicles had halted to protect their comrade and began to shoot at him. Jack decided it was time to go home.

“Jesus, sir, that was one helluva trick. Do me a favor though, and please don’t do it again. Mama Snyder wants me back home again.”

“Don’t worry, I think I’ve got it all out of my system. I like to think I’m brave, not suicidal. When we land, you’ve got one job to do?”

Snyder grinned. “Let me guess, sir. You want a silhouette of a truck painted on the side of the plane, don’t you?”

That evening, Levin and Carter went looking for Morgan and found him sitting against a tree. The expression on his face told them everything.

“So now you know what it’s like,” Carter said quietly. “You just went and killed your first man and it’s eating at you.”

“It could have been worse,” said Levin. “What if you were close enough to see their faces. I haven’t done either and I’m not looking forward to the experience. I just hope to hell I don’t flinch.”

“But I didn’t have to do it,” Jack protested. “I could’ve turned and flown away. I just got pissed off because they’d killed more of our people and they were shooting at me.”

Carter handed him a canteen. It contained a cheap cognac. “That’s right. They were shooting at you and they had killed some of our buddies. And don’t forget we’re in the army of a nation that’s at war with the most monstrous regime in the history of mankind. This isn’t a game, Jack. It ain’t football like you played at Michigan State. We were brought here to kill them, and that’s the plain and simple truth. If you had let them go, they would’ve set up shop and done it again and again. Look on the bright side, Bomber Morgan, Captain Jack-Off, you may have saved some lives in the future.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier to face, and I wish to hell you’d stop calling me ‘Bomber’ or that other thing. If anybody was alive in that truck, they burned to death. I can’t think of anything worse than burning to death.”

Carter sat beside him and lit a cigarette while Jack took another pull of the cognac. “Somebody once said that it isn’t that killing’s so awful, rather it’s so easy. I like to think it was Robert E. Lee because it’s such a worthwhile statement, but I don’t know.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Levin. “I’ve seen enough dead bodies to qualify as a wholesale funeral director. But Jack’s right, it’s different when you’re responsible for making them that way.”

Carter took a swallow. “Know what I did back at that last farmhouse? I stuck the barrel of my main gun into a basement window and fired. Anything in that house was obliterated, Jack, and I don’t give a shit who or what it was. I didn’t care if they were soldiers trying to kill me, wounded waiting to surrender, or civilians, or some nuns drinking beer and playing poker. There were Nazis in there and they were trying to kill me. Kill or be killed and fuck the rules of war, the Geneva Convention, and anybody else who thinks you can teach soldiers to play nice-nice in a game when the loser gets a decent funeral if they can find enough of him to bury.”

Jack looked at Carter and smiled. “Where’s your southern accent? You lost it again.”

“I’m bilingual” Carter said and burped. “I like to turn it on for the home folks and those officers here who think I’m just a dumb-ass cracker. When this war is over, I’m going into politics and sounding like a down home boy is just a good idea.”

“You’re deeper than I thought,” Jack said.

“Indeed I am that. And, by the way, I thought you might be lonely, so I took the liberty of giving my cousin your name and how to contact you. If you’re luckier than you deserve, she might write you a letter.”

Jack thought he’d like to hear from Jeb’s cousin. “Thanks.”

Levin grinned wickedly. “Jeb, you don’t have any Jewish cracker cousins do you?”

Varner was exhausted. He fell asleep in the staff car that took him to the outskirts of Berlin and the laboratory of the physicist, Werner Heisenberg. He had barely landed in Berlin after flying from the Seine in a ridiculous little plane called a Fieseler Storch.

The Storch’s pilot, a complete lunatic, was in his sixties and said he’d flown with von Richthofen in the First World War. He’d insisted on flying at treetop level to avoid being seen by American planes. When Varner wondered out loud if the Americans didn’t have better things to do than attack a plane as small as the Storch, the pilot had cackled and said planes like the Storch were the only German planes flying; therefore, they were a likely target. Varner thought that the comment did not bode well for the status of the Luftwaffe.

The Storch had a rearward facing machine gun which the pilot said would be used if they were attacked from the rear. If they were attacked from the front or side, the pilot said they were fucked. He also said it was Varner’s job to fire the machine gun if an American plane tried to climb up their tail.

When he’d finally gotten to the OKW, he was informed that Werner Heisenberg wished to see him and that Rundstedt also wished him to see Heisenberg. Immediately.

Before falling asleep, Varner had a chance to read the short letters sent him by Magda, detailing their journey and safe arrival at the farm. He was distressed at her telling of the death train, not only because Margarete had to see it, but because it was happening at all. Such stupidities should not be occurring in Germany.

He was appalled to find that the two women had been conscripted to help build the Rhine fortifications. Soon, those construction sites would be bombed by the Allies, if they weren’t already. He didn’t like to do it, but he would see if he could pull some strings and get his family out of danger.

Then he had dozed off while his driver dodged fallen buildings and bomb craters. It was just another afternoon drive in Berlin.

Heisenberg greeted him effusively in his cluttered office. “I’ve heard about your journeys to the west. I trust you found our defenses capable of stopping the Americans.”

“Just barely possible,” Varner said. “However, you did not bring me here to discuss Festung Seine or the Rhine Wall. Do you have more information regarding your nuclear bomb? Is it possible?”

Heisenberg smiled tentatively. “Indeed it is possible. However there are other practical matters you must discuss with Reichsfuhrer Himmler and others.”

“Understood, but why is it now possible when a few days ago it wasn’t?”

“Because one of my brilliant assistants suggested that I had made a significant miscalculation in my estimate of the amount of uranium that would be needed. Whereas I thought we would require tons, a revisit of the research indicates we will only need a few pounds. We could never have produced tons, but several pounds is well within our capabilities.”

“Excellent, but when will the bomb be ready?”

“If all goes well, a year. Can the Reich hold out that long?”

Varner laughed harshly. “We’ll know in a year, won’t we? Now, what are the other practical matters?”

“The sheer size of the bomb that must be built. It will weigh at least several tons, which precludes it from being part of a warhead on a V2 rocket even if we wanted it to be. A V2 is an unstable platform and many have exploded while being launched. Should that happen with an armed nuclear bomb on board, the results would be catastrophic to the Reich.”

Varner winced. He’d seen films of rockets exploding while launching.

“A bomber could possibly carry it, but, again, how likely is it that a German bomber would be able to penetrate Allied airspace and drop it on an important target, like London? More likely it would be shot from the sky and then the bomb would disappear in a relatively harmless poof. Perhaps I did not mention, but the bomb must be armed before it can detonate, and that should occur only when quite near the target and it is time to be used. For the same reasons, U-boats are not practicable and neither are the few surface ships we have remaining. There is a very high probability that they all would be caught and sunk.”

“What about the idea of building small bombs, Doctor?”

“Alas, it is for the future. The mechanism needed to detonate a nuclear bomb cannot be shrunk at this time.”

“Then we must build the bomb, plant it, and wait for the enemy to come to it,” Varner said thoughtfully. “And that means it will have to be detonated in Germany. Dear God,” he said.

Varner had a thought. “Tell me, Doctor, could the bomb be moved at all?”

Heisenberg was puzzled. “Of course, Colonel. Push hard enough and anything can be moved.”

Colonel Hans Schurmer arrived at the headquarters of General Courtney Hodges blindfolded, a tradition when crossing enemy lines under a flag of truce. Both men thought it was a ridiculous custom and Hodges thought it would be nice if the German actually saw the firepower arrayed against him and the vast quantities of supplies available to the American army. However, he was overruled.

Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group consisted of Hodges’ First Army, which was north of Paris, and Patton’s Third, which was to the south. How and if the Germans would defend Paris had been a source of speculation for some time as the American advance inexorably drew closer. What would the Nazis do about defending the City of Lights, the home of Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre, and so much else that the cultured world held dear? There was the more prosaic fact that the U.S. Army did not want a bloody fight in a major city, forcing them to take the place street by street and building by building. Ike, Bradley, and Hodges had all read about the horrific fighting in Stalingrad and Leningrad and did not wish to waste American lives on a gutted and burned trophy. Their choice would be to bypass the city.

Charles de Gaulle agreed up to a point. Paris would be liberated sooner or later and he preferred both sooner and that French troops be the liberators. However, if the Germans fought for the city, the French didn’t have enough men in the one undersized armored division they had in the area. Other French units were well to the south and out of reach.

Nor did de Gaulle want the city destroyed as part of its liberation. Thus, the Americans were eager to hear what Schurmer wanted to say.

Hodges spoke first. “May I presume you represent the commander of the German forces in Paris?”

“I represent Field Marshal von Manteuffel and General von Choltitz, yes.”

“And you are here to negotiate terms for the surrender of the city?”

“Ah, not quite, General. I am here to discuss the possibility of Paris not being a part of the conflict.”

Hodges leaned back in his chair. “Are you proposing that Paris be declared an open city?”

“If that is the phrase you wish, then yes. Field Marshal Von Monteuffel desires that the city be spared the ravages of war. A bloody and destructive street fight for the city would serve no one. We propose that boundaries be laid out and that neither side initiate hostilities within those boundaries. We do not want a repeat of the mistake that occurred at Chartres.”

Hodges winced. The magnificent cathedral of Chartres had been shelled by American artillery when it was believed that a German unit was fortifying it, when only a handful of wounded had taken refuge. Damage had been extensive, but it was thought the cathedral could be repaired. Fortunately, the historic and magnificent stained glass windows had already been removed for safekeeping.

“But the German army now garrisons Paris. What of them?”

“Under General von Choltitz, the garrison will remain to maintain order. As you are aware, the population of Paris is ready to rise up once your armies approach. Therefore, you must make it clear to all concerned that you will not be entering the city and that the citizens of Paris must remain calm. Von Choltitz is a reasonable and even humane man, but he will not allow his men to be attacked and killed. The French resistance movement must be held in check.”

Hodges nodded thoughtfully. He could see much merit in Schurmer’s suggestion. He could also see where any delay in liberating Paris would raise holy hell in SHAEF and with de Gaulle.

“And when will you actually evacuate Paris, Colonel?”

Schurmer smiled wryly. “In the unlikely event that your army does cross the Seine and appears to be capable of outflanking or surrounding Paris, you have my word that von Choltitz will evacuate the garrison and not harm the city.”

When Hodges said nothing, Schurmer continued. “I assume that you will have to discuss this sensitive matter with your superiors. In that case, I suggest that you either return me to my people or hold me here as a guest until decisions are made.”

Hodges agreed that Schurmer should stay. He would be fed and made comfortable and allowed to glimpse American might. Hodges liked the idea of Paris being an open city and not fought over as much as the German did. Hodges thanked Schurmer for his proposal and they parted company. The German was informed that some officers from SHAEF would like to talk with him and would he mind? Schurmer allowed that he really didn’t have a choice if he was going to accept American hospitality. Hodges nodded and left Schurmer alone.

They did not shake hands.