Field Marshal Walter Model now had overall command of the forces confronting Ike. He replaced von Rundstedt, who now ran the entire German military from Berlin. Von Manteuffel and Kesselring, the latter recently brought from Italy, were Model’s subordinate army group commanders in France, and both were getting everything they could and then some from their troops. The days of Hitler’s erratic and sometimes stupidly incompetent behavior were over. Hitler, the bitter joke now ran, was no longer on the Allies’ side. At least Rommel was out of the picture. He’d been badly wounded in a strafing incident.
On the American side, Ike’s army was also divided into two army groups. In the north, the Twenty-first was commanded by Montgomery, while the Twelfth, farther south, was commanded by Bradley. The Sixth, under Devers, was scheduled to land in southern France in a couple of weeks. That invasion, however, now looked redundant. The Germans were doing a masterful job of pulling their troops out of that area of southern France as well. Devers might well land in a military vacuum. At least, Ike thought, it would liberate the much needed port of Marseilles.
If the Nazis weren’t so goddamned evil, Ike thought, it wouldn’t be difficult at all to admire the way the German Army fought. But they were evil, he reminded himself. And however long it took, the Allies would continue to press them and wear them down. That is, if he could ever get Montgomery off his ass and back into the war.
Magda and Margarete Varner had first assumed that they would go west by train towards Hachenburg. However, cold reality changed that. The trains were subject to attacks from American fighter-bombers that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, differentiate between a civilian train and one carrying military supplies. The women grudgingly accepted the fact that any train had the potential for military use and was a legitimate military target. There was also the fact that multitudes of troop and other military trains had taken over the German rail system. Passenger trains carrying useless civilians would have to wait.
Thus, they went by car. Magda frequently let a delighted Margarete get some experience behind the wheel, which Magda found occasionally traumatic as her daughter tried to break land speed records. Even though they were clearly civilians, they had papers signed by von Rundstedt himself authorizing their move west. The Gestapo’s supporters and informers had been very active stopping those whose apparent flight from Berlin they considered disloyal. After what some still believed was Hitler’s assassination, the Gestapo’s diligence, along with overzealous local administrators, sometimes crossed the line into belligerence and abuse. There’d been summary executions of those who couldn’t satisfy the Gestapo.
Magda had mixed emotions about these efforts. It was one thing, she thought, for the Gestapo to attack Jews and other enemies of the Reich, but there was no reason to assault German civilians for simply wanting to get away from the Allied bombers. She’d commented to Ernst that Berlin would be a better place with fewer useless civilians and he’d laughingly concurred.
Along their route, there was ample evidence of bombings. Even though they avoided the badly cratered Autobahn, they found the roads west were damaged in many places. Their vehicle was a large 1939 Maybach sedan. There was enough room for the two women and a half dozen trunks and suitcases carrying the essentials for life on a farm.
All went reasonably well until they were about ten miles from their destination. They’d been stopped several times by local police and the Gestapo, but, after only a few moments, they’d been allowed to go on their way. Only once was it intimated by a local Hitler Youth acting as a traffic cop that perhaps they were cowards for abandoning Berlin. As befits the wife of a colonel in the OKW, Magda had then given the boy a severe dressing down. Margarete thought his arrogance reminded her of Volkmar Detloff, the boy who’d fondled her and then slandered her.
The road they were on roughly paralleled the rail lines and they were puzzled to see a crowd of people by a row of boxcars sitting on a siding. Magda thought it might be an accident and stopped the car. She’d had nurse’s training and thought she might be useful. As the two women approached the boxcars, they were assailed by an almost intolerable stench. Civilians from a nearby village, their mouths covered by cloths, were pulling bodies out of the train and laying them into neat macabre rows. Dear God, Magda thought, the poor souls had been strafed by the Yanks, but when? The corpses were clearly in a state of decomposition. But then she realized that the train was undamaged.
She walked up to a policeman, a local officer and not the SS or Gestapo. Margarete walked behind; her face was pale and her mouth open in an expression of dismay while her eyes took in everything. She’d seen some carnage in Berlin, but here were several hundred bodies, all civilians, including women and small children, and all dressed in rags. Small and pathetic suitcases littered the ground. Some were open and clothing fluttered and blew about in the wind.
“What has happened?” Magda asked civilly but firmly. She showed her travel papers endorsed by von Rundstedt and the officer was dutifully impressed.
“They are dead and we are removing the bodies for cremation. The stench has become unbearable and we could not get any guidance regarding what to do with the train once the locomotive was driven away.”
“How long has it been sitting here?”
“A week.”
Magda shook her head and she heard Margarete gasp. “Weren’t some of them alive a week ago?” her daughter asked.
The policeman nodded briskly. “Yes, we all heard them moaning and crying, but we could do nothing. They were the SS’s problem and we were told to stay away from the Jew trains. The noise stopped a few days ago, thank God, but we still had no orders.” He laughed harshly, “However, we could finally get some sleep.”
Sadly, Magda recalled Ernst telling her that von Rundstedt had convinced Himmler to stop using trains to resettle Jews in Poland because the trains were needed for military purposes. But what sort of fool would have simply taken the locomotive and driven away, abandoning his human cargo? And what sort of fools in the area would have left a train full of Jews to die and rot just a few yards from German homes, simply because no one had given them orders to follow?
Magda looked at the number of bodies and the number of cars and concluded that the Jews must have been jammed inside. She walked to a boxcar and looked in. The floor was covered with urine, vomit, and feces. She saw what looked like a doll and realized it was an infant who’d been crushed in the press of bodies.
She gagged, vomiting on the ground beside the death car while Margarete wept. Like all Germans, she understood that Jews were being treated harshly and being forced to emigrate to resettlement camps in Poland and elsewhere, but this told a different story. It strongly hinted that the terrible rumors swirling around the ultimate fate of the Jews were true. They weren’t being sent to new homes. They were being murdered. Even if the horror train hadn’t been stalled, how many would have survived the summer’s heat in boxcars designed for freight and not for human cargo? Not many, she surmised, and concluded that having so many Jews arrive dead solved much of the resettlement problem.
The policeman stood beside her. “Stinking, filthy people these Jews, aren’t they?”
Behind her, Margarete was still half sobbing, half gagging. “Does that justify leaving them to die?” Magda snapped.
The policeman stiffened. “I would think, madam, that the wife of a senior officer in the army would fully understand that Jews are the mortal enemy of the Reich and that they must be removed from here so their cancer cannot spread. And if a few of them die in the process, what is that when so many of our young men are dying fighting the Russians and the Americans? You are a woman and I understand women are instinctively maternal and therefore more foolishly sympathetic than men, so I will not press the point. I suggest you and the girl leave here now before I have to make a report.”