Origins: The Reich (15 page)

Gallono stood on
the observation deck of the command bunker built into a prominent hillside along the border between Germany and Poland.  He glanced down at his standard issue military wristwatch and noted the assault would begin in thirty seconds.

He took an extra moment to look around the concrete bunker at the distinguished company around him.  Chancellor Hitler, Herr Göring and Tomal were all visiting from Berlin along with General Hoth and his support staff.  Despite the presence of Nazi royalty in the room, Gallono could feel that all eyes were on him as the clock ticked down.

The attack on Poland began two days earlier and was yielding results almost too good to believe by those in central command.  This prompted the top brass to pay a personal visit to the front lines and witness the effectiveness of the new tactics first hand. 

Gallono never harbored a doubt that the military doctrine of combined arms he had been teaching at the War Academy for the last five years would be anything other than a resounding success.  Everyone still thought about tactics like it was still the Great War: dig a trench, lay obstacles in front of it, and mow the enemy down as they tried to cross.  No one fully grasped the potential for speed that aircraft and tanks now provided, but they were beginning to with Poland serving as a live test case to prove out Gallono’s theories.

He raised a set of binoculars to his eyes, magnifying the enemy lines.  He saw four successive rows of trenches anchored with machine gun nests and concrete reinforced cannon emplacements stretching across the horizon for miles and miles in all directions.  In between was a nasty mire of razor wire and wooden fencing.  By the standards of the Great War, the Polish defenses looked robust and almost impossible to overcome without massive loss of life for the attackers.

Overhead an annoying buzzing sound similar to a mosquito approached from the west.  It was faint at first, but soon ramped up in volume to a deafening roar.  The air all around them came alive with the rumble of aircraft flying low overhead to attack the Polish trenches.  From his binoculars, Gallono could tell the pilots were aware of their target priority.  A few heavy aircraft carpet-bombed the trenches to keep the soldiers in place while the dive bomb fighters swooped down on the heavy gun emplacements, sending plumes of dirt, concrete, and bodies into the air. 

For ten minutes, the three-foot thick walls of their command bunker shook from the concussions of explosions raking the Polish lines a mere five miles away.

When the planes withdrew, the noise pollution did not abate.  The hum of aircraft engines was replaced by the roar and rumble of an entire tank division rolling into action.  Four hundred panzer tanks bore down on the Pols still attempting to dig out from the bombing runs, lining up in ten single file columns as they went.

The heavily armored machines laughed at the rifle and machine gun rounds that plinked harmlessly off their hulls without leaving so much as a dent.  The lead tanks in each column were equipped with bulldozer blades in front and they made quick work of flattening out the trench lines in front of them; burying alive countless Polish soldiers in the process.

The razor wire and obstacles placed in no man’s land did nothing to slow down the treaded vehicles.  The panzers shot up the enemy lines with their heavy cannons and turret mounted machine guns on their way through.  Gallono could hear a low murmur building among his audience upon seeing that the tanks did not stop amid the trenches to continue firing at the enemy.  To do that was to invite disaster, as they would serve as stationary targets for the Polish troops to focus their grenades upon and inflict heavy damage.  No, the panzer’s mobility was its greatest asset.

With the tanks still rolling through and drawing most of the defensive efforts of the Polish army, the German infantry moved in.  Wave upon wave of grey uniformed soldiers fell upon the trenched lines.  They poured into one row, then overflowed and spilled over into the next, and the next.

The Polish soldiers saw the futility in their efforts and attempted to retreat, but found themselves wedged between a hammer strike of infantry and the solid anvil presence of tanks at their rear blocking any retreat.  The only option left to them at that point was death or surrender.  Naturally, they chose surrender, and the German infantry shifted from assault mode to prisoner processing.

“Outstanding,” Hitler exclaimed in a rare moment of praise heaped upon a subordinate.  “Reading a battlefield report, no matter how descriptive, of such assaults taking place across the front does not do it justice.  I served in the front long enough during the Great War to recognize a well-defended position, and our forces just smashed through one to take thirty thousand captives in under an hour.  We are unstoppable!”

“Blitzkrieg is the term we’ve coined,” Gallono said with great pride.  “We are unleashing ‘Lighting War’ upon our enemies in the open field of battle.”

“Your innovative tactics are a marvel to behold,” Hitler commended and offered Gallono a congratulatory handshake.  He was tempted to refuse the offer for a moment, given that the German leader struck him as a very creepy individual, but to reach the upper echelons within the German military he needed to play the game. 

Gallono took the offered hand and felt a solid grip intent on being the stronger of the two.  Gallono let him win, inclined his head in deference and said, “Thank you, my Führer.”

“I’m more spellbound by the machines our researchers and factories have produced,” Tomal chimed in to make sure some of the credit fell upon him as well.

“Indeed,” Gallono acknowledged.  “Without the forethought of research and your forward planning over the last five years to build the tools we employ, all of this would be impossible.”

“True,” Hitler arrogantly replied and broke off the handshake to point his arm back toward the main command room of the bunker.  “Now that this little affair has been won, let us turn our attention back to the greater picture.”

Hitler led the way with Tomal in lockstep behind him like a puppy dog chained to its master out on a walk.  The site caused Gallono a moment of uneasy flashbacks to the attachment Tomal forged with Julius Caesar back in Rome.  The Novan engineer had a weakness for power and those who afforded it to him.  This relationship would bear close watch in the future.

In the center of the twenty-foot by twenty-foot room stood a large topographical map of Poland with red and blue arrows placed about depicting the position of friendly and enemy forces and the direction they were heading.  Gallono watched as a skinny, blond attaché repositioned a set of arrows to account for the victory that took place outside.

Hitler clapped his hands with delight upon seeing most of the blue arrows pointing toward retreat with red arrows moving in from positions on the Western and Southern fronts.  German forces even managed to push out from the northern Baltic territories that stood isolated from the rest of the Reich by a narrow swath of Polish territory that served as justification for the war in the public’s eyes.  “They’re on the run along every front and the assault has just begun.  With your lightning attacks we will have the entire country in just a few days, and there’ll be no need to involve the Soviets.”

“Whether they participate or not, Stalin will insist upon the terms of the agreement.  We’ll get the western third and the Soviet Union will deal with the remaining eastern territories,” Tomal cautioned.

Hitler clearly did not like hearing this truth given the way he glared at Tomal.  After a brief moment, the Chancellor allowed his lips to reveal a sly smile, “For now perhaps.”

Gallono took in the topography of the map and the direction the enemy forces were retreating toward and decided to speak his mind as he pointed to a mountainous region along the Romanian border.  “I believe they are pulling back to the Romanian Bridgehead.  They plan to use the Stryj and Dniester rivers and hilly terrain as a natural line of defense.  Plus, they can still receive supplies through Romania using their nearby port.”

Hitler regarded the map with a focused eye.  “Smash them here or crush them there with your assault tactics, does not matter to me.”

“Blitzkrieg doesn’t work over impassable terrain,” Gallono cautioned.  “If they manage to reach that point, it will be a long struggle through the winter.”

“You know where they are headed.  You must move our forces quickly to cut them off then,” Hitler instructed in a curt tone that allowed for nothing but compliance.

“If we fully employ my blitz tactics and allow the panzers to move untethered to the infantry, it can be done,” Gallono offered.

“No,” General Hoth snapped in no uncertain terms and leveled an accusing finger at Gallono.  “Moving the panzers without infantry exposes our flank and risks their fuel supply lines.  You know my feelings on this matter and you have no business suggesting such recklessness to our Führer.”

“It can be done, and it’s what the Führer now asks to be done,” Gallono countered, afraid that he had overplayed his hand.

Before General Hoth could launch into a formal dressing down of Gallono, Tomal spoke up with his own thoughts.  “Let them pull back.  That defensible territory is in the future Soviet side of things.  Let Stalin deal with it when they join in the attack next week.  The Pols will either throw their hands up in surrender, or give the reds a bloody nose before meeting their end.  Either way, the Reich gets what it wanted from the bargain.”

“Very sensible.  Drive them to this Romanian Bridgehead and let our dear Comrade Stalin figure out what to do with them,” Hitler concluded.

Hitler looked ready to elaborate further, but had his train of thought interrupted by an urgent message from a courier who looked so honored to meet his Führer in person that he was on the verge of passing out.  Hitler dismissed the wide-eyed boy with a hasty salute and proceeded to unfold the note.  After a moment spent reading it, Hitler read aloud the letter’s contents.  “The United Kingdom and its colonies, along with France, have officially declared war on Germany and pledge to come to the aid and defense of Poland.”

“Shall I give the order to send up the white flags now or should I wait a few days?” General Hoth joked.

Tomal spoke up immediately.  “Hardly.  Chamberlin and de Gaulle just saved me the trouble of convincing the public that a war with France and the UK is in their best interest.  The east will be secure within the month.  Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Spain are all counted as allies or have signed non-aggression pacts with us.  That only leaves France and England to bear the brunt of our revenge for decades of oppression.”

“A task not so easily undertaken,” General Hoth protested.  “The French have built up their ‘Maginot Line’ along the German-French border to the point that the ground nearly sinks beneath the weight of their fortifications and armaments.  There is no possible way through and the same is true about their Alpine Line along the border with Italy. There is simply no way through.”

“Then we will have to devise a way to go around it,” Gallono said as he fetched a map of Western Europe to explain to the others what he had in mind.

The first thing
Hastelloy did in the morning when he reached his office inside the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. was sort through his mail.  Every morning, without exception, his secretary arranged his mail in a cascading row of unopened letters right next to a tall stack of newspapers from across the globe.  It was his way of making sure that no matter what distractions the day brought, he was always abreast of the latest events around the world.  There was nothing more embarrassing than those rare moments when he, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was surprised by news from others.

He opened, read, and discarded five envelopes in rapid succession, but paused when he reached the sixth.  It was a thick letter from his counterpart in England’s Secret Service Bureau, better known as MI5.  Inside he found a folded newspaper with a handwritten note stapled to the front.  It read: ‘Take a look on page six; sums up this whole mess about right don’t you think?’

Hastelloy tore off the stapled page to find a London publication called
The Evening Standard
, dated September 20, 1939.  He turned to page six and found a political cartoon circled in red ink that brought out a sardonic laugh.

The picture portrayed three men.  On the left stood Hitler tipping his hat to Stalin who was doing the same from the right side.  The callout above Hitler read ‘The scum of the earth, I believe,’ to which Stalin was responding, ‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume’.  On the ground between the two bowing men lay a dead body with the name Poland scrawled across it.

Hastelloy could only nod his head in agreement.  The cartoonist, David Low, nailed it right on the head.  Hitler and Stalin, the Germans and Soviets, could not stand one another, yet they put up with each other long enough to conquer Poland.  Two days earlier, Hastelloy got word from his informants that Poland had sent its remaining troops across the border into neutral Romania, effectively surrendering the country to the Germans and Soviets.

The pace of conquest was unheard of and had everyone around the world talking.  The Soviets came in at the end of it all, but the conquest was almost exclusively Germany’s doing, and it only took a little over a month.  In fact, the major fighting was over after a week and a half.

As it turned out, the German military was far larger and better equipped than anyone had imagined.  Their use of modern aircraft and tanks was frighteningly effective, more so when used in concert with one another.  Gallono most definitely knew what he was about on the modern battlefield.  What’s more, every source Hastelloy had around Germany’s advanced weapons research departments indicated far more effective weapons of war were on the way; in particular the fields of rocketry and jet engines. 

When Hastelloy issued his orders to the crew to speed along development of the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States, he assumed his would be the easier task.  The territory and resources of the United States were vast, but as of yet untapped. 

Valnor clearly had the Soviets progressing under Stalin’s ruthless, yet effective rule.  That vast nation was being transformed from a backwater farming economy into a manufacturing juggernaut almost overnight.

Tomal and Gallono were well on their way toward the goal of uniting all of Europe’s resources under one banner.  Germany now controlled half the continent and enjoyed treaties with nearly all the rest except France and England, and the writing was on the wall for those two nations as well.

He had to hand it to his crew.  They came into situations with fractured governments, crippled economies and a fraction of the manpower and resources as the United States.  Despite all that, they were getting the job done with their assignments.

Hastelloy, on the other hand, found his efforts mired in failure.  He had all the dirt and leverage in the world over prominent politicians.  He was instrumental in getting President Roosevelt elected and had enough leverage to make him dance to Hastelloy’s tune, but none of it mattered in the end.  In this American Democracy, the power to act rested with the people.  If the public did not support an action, and they definitely did not support sticking their nose into another European war, then it was a non-starter.

He had initiatives underway to turn that public opinion to support going to war, but those tools were slow working, in all probability too slow.  For right now, the best he could do was to pressure Roosevelt into sending materials and supplies to France and England to keep their war efforts going.  Without that, the war would end in the blink of an eye with Germany the unchallenged victor.  That would make Tomal and Gallono’s job of keeping Germany’s military research going at full speed nearly impossible to justify in lieu of other, more pressing social programs.

Hastelloy was loath to do it, but the time had come once again to get his hands dirty with the blood of innocent men for the greater good of all concerned.  He tried to do it cleanly this time, but yet again the timing and circumstances demanded draconian steps be taken.

He put down the newspaper he held, brushed aside the other reading material on his desk and reached for his phone and rolodex.  He thumbed through his almost infinite list of contacts until reaching his most trusted man in the Foreign Trade Office. 

It was time for the United States to withdraw from the 1911 Treaty of Commerce signed with the Empire of Japan.  The Japanese had grown dependent on American imports of oil and steel to sustain their war efforts on mainland China.  Such a move was bound to evoke the kind of response he needed.

What Hastelloy would ask his contact to do was no small thing, in fact, it was sure to end his career, but he had pictures of the man purchasing illegal drugs and snorting them off the bare breast of a high-end prostitute.  It was safe to say he would do whatever Hastelloy asked, being that the man was still ‘happily’ married.