The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Thirty-Five

Near Colchester, England

“Heil Hitler,” the assembled men roared. “Heil Hitler!”

Hauptmann Johann Bothe watched as Rommel, standing on the back of a small vehicle, returned their salute. The men of the 7th Panzer acclaimed him with their voices, each one holding himself ramrod straight, arm out-thrust in the Hitler salute, chanting their devotion into the air. It made him proud to be one of them, watching as the Panzer division prepared to attack the English in their positions; they would have lived and fought for the Fuhrer, but they would have died for Rommel. It wasn’t something that could be explained to a civilian, or perhaps to an SS officer, but it was something that all soldiers would understand. A good officer was worth his weight in gold.

Or maybe the SS men did understand. Rommel had been given most of the oversized SS Panzer Division Das Reich and its men were cheering him with the same enthusiasm. The regulars didn’t always get on well with the SS, who were regarded either as glorified firemen or overpaid soldiers, but he was forced to admit that most of the Waffen-SS units were tough and capable fighters. They also provided a surprisingly high degree of social mobility for their soldiers, although that too was changing in the regular army as the Nazi regime dug deeper into the foundations of the German state; the class warfare that had plagued the Germans would soon be a thing of the past. It barely existed in the 7th Panzer anyway, mainly due to Rommel’s influence; everyone knew that his subordinates had been chosen personally for their abilities and competence, not for their families. Hitler’s favourite General, and later Field Marshal, had taken what he’d been given and forged a mighty weapon from rough clay.

“Tonight, we march against the foe,” Rommel said, his voice ringing out over the lines of gathered men, watching as they relaxed and stood at ease. He wouldn’t have made them hold the salute for his speech, even though some SS commanders had been known to do just that; Rommel was a soldier who respected and trusted his men. “Tonight, we will assault the enemy and punch through their lines, heading to London and allowing no man to stop us.”

His voice echoed in the air for a long moment. Rommel tended to treat an entire army as a storm division, something that had worked out well in France and the Western Desert, but less well in Russia and England. He’d been everywhere at once during the advance against Ipswich and beyond, flying around in his own personal autogyro and landing wherever there was a problem. It had almost killed him or gotten him captured twice, but it had worked; he had driven the soldiers on relentlessly, extending German control as much as possible.

Bothe scowled to himself. One lesson they’d learned from Russia was that an area that had been charged through by the Panzers wasn’t actually pacified, something that the British seemed determined to remind them of at every opportunity. The isolated British Army units, Home Guard soldiers who had refused to leave their homes, isolated British civilians with weapons and the will to use them — the haunting memory of the teenage boy hanging from the tree danced in front of his eyes for a long moment — all of them had fought to delay or stop the German advance.

The Panzers had waited for infantrymen to clear the encircled British forces, but there was really no such thing as a peaceful border between British and German territory. It had been haemorrhaging men and machines for days as small units of British soldiers attempted to delay the Germans from building up their offensive and the Germans had sought to harass the British defence lines and force them to keep their heads down. The British probably had vast quantities of tanks now, hidden in the distance in the direction of London; Bothe was quite looking forward to such a major clash. The best efforts of the Luftwaffe notwithstanding, it was unlikely in the extreme that the British would have failed to reinforce to the greatest possible extent.

“We will comport ourselves within the limits of the finest tradition of the German Army,” Rommel concluded. He’d had four men hung for rape and three others sent to a penal unit for looting; no one thought for a moment that he was bluffing and unwilling to carry out sentences on his own soldiers. It was something that endeared him to them; Rommel’s view of war was something that had infected the entire army. Even the SS men understood; Britain, a country that had been defined as Aryan, wasn’t a place for them to play their games. “I expect each and every one of you to do his duty. Fur das Reich!”

“Fur Das Reich,” they shouted back.

Rommel stepped off the vehicle, signalling the end of the formal speech, and most of the crowd dispersed. Others clustered around Rommel, taking advantage of the opportunity to shake the famous man’s hand. Still others saw it as a chance to get a final few moments of rest before the advance began. Bothe smiled to himself and walked back towards the massive parking area where the division’s vehicles were waiting, and ordered the final checks. They were to take part in the first major armoured thrust into English territory… and he didn’t want to leave a single Panzer behind. They were all going to be needed and coordinating them all was going to be a bitch. They’d practised at the training schools and then in endless exercises, but no training exercise, even the live fire ones, could come close to matching the experience of battle. There were soldiers who had faced nothing but exercises and done well in them who had come apart when they had seen the face of battle.

“You have done well,” a voice said, from behind him. Bothe turned to see Rommel and snapped to attention automatically. “I need a report on your unit.”

“Herr Feldmarschall,” Bothe said, suddenly finding his mind blank. Rommel was too much of a presence to disappoint, but he found himself struggling for words. “The Panzers are completely ready for action, along with the rocket launchers and the supporting elements. The men are fit, healthy, and ready for action.”

“Good,” Rommel said, as he inspected a selection of units and soldiers. He contented himself with a handful of minor comments, some of them more important than others, but there were no major problems with the unit. The 7th Panzer was an elite unit and perfectly prepared to execute a major assault, as Rommel had ordered; Bothe felt himself swell with pride as Rommel finally pronounced himself satisfied.

“I expect you to be through the lines within hours and challenging the British tanks,” he said, after a moment. “Our intelligence” — they shared a look of wry amusement at the thought of the intelligence officers actually being correct — “suggests that you will be facing the 1st Armoured Division with perhaps Montgomery in command, although Churchill seems to have boosted him up to a higher rank. Still, whoever is in command probably has experience from the Desert and some of the smaller campaigns the British have fought to maintain their empire.”

In other words, don’t get cocky, Bothe thought coldly. The last war had been marked by stubborn British resistance, but not by experienced and adaptable British Generals. Those who had shown a surprising amount of innovation had often fallen prey to internal politics rather than German fire, while others had proven themselves to be unprepared for the face of modern war. That would have changed; the commanding officers, now, would understand modern war — they might even have drilled to the same extent as their German counterparts. The coming battle was going to be on a scale not seen since the headlong rush into Russia, nine years ago.

“I understand, Herr Feldmarschall,” he said, softly. Rommel was probably feeling his age; as a younger man, he could have taken personal command of the division and led it in combat against the British. He’d always tried to lead from the front, and that, too, had endeared him to his men. “We won’t fail you.”

Oberst Frank-Michael Baeck watched dispassionately as Rommel and the Panzer Division officer discussed the precise role of 7th Panzer in the coming offensive, and tried to keep the worry off his face. Rommel didn’t really understand the magnitude of what the Reich had accomplished, and because of that lack of understanding, it was all-too-possible that he would push the Reich’s forces beyond their limits. He’d studied Rommel’s campaigns in the Western Desert, as well as his later fighting in Russia, and knew what Rommel was like; his concern for his logistics was minimal.

Baeck looked down at the map and glowered. It didn’t look that big on the map, but they had taken a reasonable bite out of Britain. The British themselves had formed defence lines to the south and west of the German position, but they’d taken care to ensure that the Germans were always bleeding. The Reich was used to insurgent attacks from Russia and sullen non-cooperation from Frenchmen, but the British were sitting right on top of the most important — and most fragile — supply line in the Reich’s history. Their attacks, often launched with a degree of local knowledge that far surpassed anything the Reich possessed, had struck at the supply lines time and time again, and Rommel didn’t understand that. In the Western Desert, it had barely mattered; in Britain, it could be disastrous.

He kept his face totally blank as he mulled over what he knew. They had strained every sinew to reinforce Rommel, and they had done a magnificent job. Thousands upon thousands of Germans had landed in boats or transport aircraft and had been dispatched to the front lines, each one making the conquest of Britain that little bit easier. As new units had arrived, they had been quickly worked up and slotted into their position on the order of battle, but there was no way that they could match the British numbers. They required a stunning success, one caused by breaking through the British lines and marching to London, and that wasn’t going to be easy.

Their intelligence sources had been surprisingly quiet on the subject of the British defences, but Baeck had seen enough of them from recon pictures and the reports of probing German commandos to know that the defences were tough. The British Army was dug in and waiting for them, with hundreds of guns and aircraft in support… and, behind them, thousands, of tanks.

The British did have a major problem — once their lines were broken, they would have real problems putting them back together — but they had enough reserves to move them up to any threatened section and close the gap. 7th Panzer would have to be very good, and very lucky, to make a breakthrough… and that worried Baeck. There was much more to logistics than merely moving Panzers and guns around. They transported shells, bullets, food, and many more items just to keep the army going. If the link was broken for any length of time, they would lose… and Rommel’s reputation for infallibility would come crashing down.

He grimaced as Rommel moved on to a small storm-trooper detachment and shared a few moments with their commanding officer. Rommel should have waited for longer, until he had more supplies in place, but Berlin had been pushing at him. Someone had seen the red area on the map, marked with a little Nazi flag, compared it to the much larger area held by the British, and demanded an offensive. Rumour had it that the Fuhrer was fading fast, his every breath expected to be his last, and that he wanted to walk into London as a conqueror before he finally died. He was confident that the Reich could beat the British, but if the battle went badly, Rommel might not be able to recover in time to save the invasion force.

Finally, Rommel separated himself from the admiring soldiers and led the way over to the command building. It was a school before the Germans had arrived to discover that almost all of the population had fled before them. They had taken it over, using the school as a makeshift command post. Rommel had set up his maps, communications equipment and a cot in the basement; his personal autogyro was parked under one of the bike sheds, hidden from the sight of any prowling British aircraft. The Luftwaffe swore that any British aircraft that stuck it’s nose into occupied airspace would have it shot off, but Rommel tended to assume that there would be British recon missions that might succeed. He’d seen the value of the Luftwaffe’s promises before, and that hadn’t always ended well.

He scrutinized the map for a long moment before looking up. The task was daunting for him. The further south they probed, the more built up the area became. Street-fighting on such a scale would decimate the German infantry as well as level most of the buildings, and Rommel didn’t want that. He wanted to present the country to Hitler as intact as possible, and if there was a war through British streets, it would cause untold devastation. It was another worry for Baeck as well; the British would regret the damage to their cities, but they would certainly want to lure the Germans into brutal house-to-house fighting in order to slaughter as many young German soldiers as possible.

“So,” Rommel said, finally. “What do you think of the preparations?”

Baeck forced himself to compose his words carefully. “I think that the different units are as ready as they will ever be,” he said after a moment. He wanted to express himself, but given all the pressure on Rommel, he might not understand or be able to share Baeck’s own feelings. “I think, however, that we will have significant problems with our logistics.”

Rommel frowned. “That depends,” he said. “If we crush the British Army here, and part of the reason for this battle is to lure them onto grounds of our choosing, the long-term supply situation won’t matter. If we destroy their ability to take the offensive, we will win once we have repaired our own damage and push on. If we fail to do so, we will fall back into the lodgement and hold until we are reinforced.”

It sounded good, Baeck admitted, but he still had his doubts. “What happens if our own armoured spearheads are broken?”

“If it’s like Tobruk, we’ll seal off the enemy positions and carry on around them,” he said. Baeck remembered Tobruk and grimaced. The tough Australians there had held on to the fortress for nearly three years before it had finally fallen and surrendered. It was the largest black mark on Rommel’s record. “If not, we’ll have to adapt and improvise, which is our advantage over the British or the Russians.”

Baeck wondered, grimly, just how long that advantage would last. He’d seen the SS training methods and not all of them encouraged initiative. The SS much preferred robotic obedience to orders, something that was fine in a rear-area unit, but downright dangerous in a front-line unit facing the enemy. The commander on the ground knew much more about what was happening than the commander at the rear; it hadn’t been unknown, during the Russian campaign, for Russian tanks to just keep charging at the German lines despite the fact it was suicide. The handful of prisoners had known that, but they’d been more frightened of their own leaders than they had been of the Germans. Would that happen to Germany?

Night fell slowly, broken only by the sound of hundreds of muffled engines and barked orders; the armoured columns were preparing to advance. The engineers were already out, clearing minefields and traps they’d laid only a few days ago, and ensuring that the Panzers could move up to their jump points in time for the offensive. There was a pregnant moment of anticipation… and then the guns opened fire, this time augmented by rocket launchers in an attempt to hammer the British and clear the way for the Panzer units.

Baeck stared into the distance as the horizon began to glow and said a silent prayer under his breath. The noise of shellfire and explosions was growing louder as more and more guns opened fire. The decisive battle was about to begin.