Rundstedt continued. “Once Dietrich’s army begins to move and converge on the American landing site, they will be vulnerable and we will suffer heavy casualties even before they reach the battle. If they have to move a second time because we guessed wrong, the results could be catastrophic. Even now Dietrich’s soldiers are suffering from American planes as the Yanks either get smarter or luckier.”
Canaris was about to respond when an aide entered and handed him a slip of paper. He read it, smiled, and turned to Himmler who’d been quiet throughout the discussion.
“Reichsfuhrer, Field Marshal, we now have our answer. We have located two additional fields in Patton’s area with large numbers of these LCVPs camouflaged and parked in neat rows alongside railroad spurs.”
Himmler turned to Rundstedt. “Are you satisfied?”
“No, I am not,” he said grimly, “but it is the best information we have. I can only remind everyone that the Americans used Patton as a decoy to fool us regarding their intentions at Normandy and how well it worked. We spent weeks waiting for an attack at the Pas de Calais that never occurred and involving an army that didn’t exist.”
“Surely they wouldn’t do that again?” Himmler said, looking pained. “Patton is their best and most aggressive general. Would they be so insane as to hold him out a second time?”
Himmler stood and began pacing nervously. He fully understood that a wrong decision would be catastrophic for both him and the Reich. “No, we have to make a decision. Even though we all have doubts, I believe that the crossing attempt will come from Patton’s Third Army and not Hodges’ First and that it will be near Coblenz and not Bonn. Therefore, von Rundstedt, you can begin planning to move Dietrich’s army south and not north.”
Later, as Varner and von Rundstedt walked to their staff car, the field marshal said, “You’re not pleased, are you, Varner? And by the way, congratulations on your promotion. It is well earned and long overdue. However, you are out of uniform.”
Varner flushed. He’d received notice of his promotion to brigadier general earlier that morning and hadn’t had a chance to change his insignia.
“Thank you, Field Marshal, and no, I am not pleased. It seems to me that the Americans went to great effort to let us find those landing craft.”
Rundstedt snorted but seemed amused, not angry. “Go on.”
“American planes rule the skies, yet we were able to overfly those areas without too much interference. And, why then did they do such a poor job of hiding those landing craft? And they surely must know that many of the Germans remaining in the Rhineland are spies.”
Rundstedt paused. “Are you hinting that the Yanks will again use Patton, their best general, as a decoy?”
“I simply don’t know, Field Marshal. But finding the landing craft does seem too pat, too easy. I believe we’ve found what the Americans wish us to find.”
Rundstedt smiled grimly and tapped Varner on the shoulder with his field marshal’s baton. “That kind of thinking is why you got promoted. Go find what we’re not supposed to find, Varner, but do it soon.”
“This is utter insanity,” said Truman, now the thirty-third President of the United States. “Our soldiers are petitioning for us to negotiate a peace with the Germans?”
The President had a report saying more than half a million GI’s had so far signed the petitions, and hundreds of thousands more were expected to. Word had reached the news media and columnists were raising the question: would the U.S. and the world be better off if a peace was negotiated with the new Nazi regime? More and more, popular opinion was shifting towards a negotiated end to the war, even if it meant that Himmler and other monsters went unpunished for their crimes and atrocities against humanity. Let God be their judge, some were saying.
Also, nobody had forgotten that the war with Japan continued to rage with the Japanese military getting more and more fanatical in their resistance. The war in the Pacific was developing into a bloodbath. Could the American public handle two such wars?
The soldiers’ petition was his first domestic crisis, and he had to wonder whether there was merit to their proposal. He also had to wonder whether he had enough clout in Congress to continue with the war against Germany’s new regime. Nobody said the job would be easy, he mused.
And then there were the Russians.
“What the hell are they doing? Now, months after the Soviets abandon us they attack Japan?” He turned to Acheson. “And what did your good commie friend Gromyko have to say about this?”
Acheson shrugged. He had concluded his usual unsatisfactory meeting with the Russian ambassador only an hour earlier. “I would rather have a viper as a friend than Gromyko. I believe it was the usual pack of lies. He tried to say that they were responding to our needs by attacking our enemy, Japan. When I tried to tell him that invading Manchuria would do nothing to help Eisenhower, he simply shrugged. In my opinion, the invasion of Manchuria is another land grab by Stalin. I believe he feels that the Japanese army is so weakened that Soviet armor will punch through without much difficulty and they will wind up owning Manchuria and perhaps northern China. They will also be in a position to aid the Chinese communists if they so desire and simply crush Chiang Kai-shek’s corrupt and ripe-for-failure Nationalist armies.”
Truman turned to Marshall. “Can they do that?”
“Without too much difficulty,” Marshall said. “We believe the Japs have been pulling their best front line forces back to Japan in anticipation of our invading the Home Islands. Even though the weather at this time of year in Manchuria is terrible at best, the Soviets have already mauled Japanese armies in battles prior to this war’s beginning. The Japs cannot stand up to Russian armor and their other weaponry is really second rate at best.”
“On a marginally positive note,” Acheson said, “Gromyko insisted that rumors of a Russian invasion of Turkey are untrue, and that they simply moved some of their forces to the Turkish border to let them rest.”
“Do you believe him?” Truman asked.
“About as far as I can throw him,” Acheson said grimly. “Before you became President, sir, we did make the point that we considered both Turkey and Greece in our sphere of influence. We did so unofficially and without FDR’s knowledge. Given his state of health and his feelings that Stalin was an honest broker, we did not think he would concur with our initiatives.”
Truman nodded. “And how many secrets are you keeping from me now, Mister Acheson?”
The other man was unfazed and simply smiled frostily. “Well sir, if I told you then they wouldn’t be secrets, now would they?”
Otto Skorzeny enjoyed the flicker of fear on the face of Werner Heisenberg as he entered the physicist’s cluttered office. He did not consider himself to be a particularly cruel man, but it did give him a sense of power to see others cringe when he confronted them. Size, strength, and those wicked dueling scars on his face frequently came in useful.
“When can you move the bomb?” he asked.
“Not for a couple of months,” Heisenberg stammered. The stress of producing a true super-weapon was overwhelming and was beginning to affect his health. The scientist was pale and his hair was turning gray.
“You have two weeks,” Skorzeny said.
Heisenberg was shocked. “That’s too soon. The components might be ready, but the people who will detonate the bomb need to be trained in its assembly and the steps needed to detonate it.”
“You know what to do, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Heisenberg said and then his face fell. “Oh, no.”
Skorzeny laughed. “Oh yes, Professor Heisenberg. You and a small staff will accompany the bomb on its journey to the heart of Russia. And it will do you no good to protest. It’s been decided by Reichsfuhrer Himmler himself. If the bomb does as promised you will be a hero to the Reich. If it doesn’t, you won’t wish to be in or near Berlin.”