The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Forty-Three

London, England

“We have won a great victory,” Winston Churchill proclaimed, as he took his seat at the head of the table. Like the other aides and assistants, Alex DeRiemer sat at the back of the room, listening, but not allowed to speak unless called upon by one of the principles. His former boss had once remarked that aides were there to be seen but never heard in public, lest they embarrass their boss. DeRiemer suspected that very little embarrassed Churchill; he certainly hadn’t been shy about asking for DeRiemer’s opinion when he had wanted it.

He watched as Churchill spoke to the room, uniting them once again under his sway. Monty had told him that Churchill was a very clever man, but had a problem with understanding that the world was changing around him; it wasn’t so much that he was stupid — he wasn’t — but that he was often too stubborn to realise the facts of life and respond quickly. It was both an advantage and a disadvantage; an advantage because he kept his nerve when others would have lost it, and a disadvantage because he either underestimated or overestimated the forces at his command. Churchill had learnt — finally — to leave command to the Generals and Admirals, but he still had the urge to stick his nose in and offer advice and suggestions that were almost orders. It would be a brave commanding officer who defied them.

“The German assault on our cities and the very core of our existence has been broken,” Churchill said, his voice rising as he spoke. “We must now take advantage of this opportunity to crush the Hun and drive him out of our green and pleasant land before he tries to regain control of the situation.”

He paused. “Field Marshal Alexander, how long will it be until our forces can go on the offensive?”

Alexander, at least, had no problems telling Churchill when he was wrong. Monty had commented, bitterly, that if Wavell hadn’t had that problem, the British Empire would have taken Libya before the Germans could have gotten involved, securing North Africa, maybe bringing France back into the war, and preventing the fall of Egypt. DeRiemer suspected that Monty was wrong — there would have been major logistics issues — but even so, the defence of Greece had been a waste of time. Churchill’s books had proclaimed it a just and necessary attempt to save at least one of Hitler’s victims, but between the Italians and the Germans, Greece had been almost impossible to defend. It was further irony that the Greeks had beaten the Italians with ease; the Italian-occupied sections of Greece had the most violent and determined resistance group in Europe.

“At least two weeks,” Alexander said after a long moment. Churchill glowered at him, clearly expecting the army to advance at once, but waited to allow him to finish. “As you know, Prime Minister, the advance elements of the Canadian and Australian contributions to our defence are only a week away, along with a handful of units from the Indian Army, and we now have a torrent of supplies from the Americans. It will require time to integrate the newcomers with our own soldiers, arrange a joint command structure, and prepare for the advance.”

He paused. “What we don’t have is a guaranteed supply line from the Americans; our allies over there are merely getting American war stocks sent to us, rather than expanding American production lines,” he continued. “This means that there will be a finite limit on what the Americans can send unless they agree to expand, and it is uncertain what President Taft will be able to do, even assuming that he jumps in completely on our side. Ambassador Truman and our other friends over there have been doing a grand job, but the Americans don’t have a sense of urgency. That will change — that may change — if we lose the next series of battles and fall to German occupation, but by then it will be too late.”

Churchill’s face darkened. “I will have no talk of defeatism here,” he ordered. “We beat the Germans.”

“We beat them in an environment that we had designed to minimise their advantages and maximise our advantages,” Alexander said. He stood up and strode over to the massive wall map of the war zone. It was large enough to give a real sense of the scale of the battlefield. “The German Panzers, for example, were able to punch through our defence lines, but we were, in most cases, able to harass their advancing infantry and even force them to burn off fuel and ammunition fighting to prevent us from sealing the hole again. They managed to tear open several major gaps in our line regardless, but by that point we had our own reserves moving to seal up the hole and intercept their advance forces.

“In the meantime, we withdrew into the towns and cities, Colchester in particular, and dug in,” Alexander continued. “We had evacuated most of the civilian population over the last few weeks and were able, therefore, to defend the city without regard for the feelings of its inhabitants, of whom several thousand stayed behind to aid in the defence. The Germans have some experience at taking stoutly-held towns, but we were able to force them back out of the cities and then handle them roughly whenever they sought to break back in while using the cities as a permanent threat to their flanks. They were allowed to discover that we had tanks in the cities and therefore… we maintained the ever-present threat of an armoured thrust coming out of the city and forced them to tie down their forces to prevent us from breaking out…”

“And Monty mounted his armoured counter-attack right into their teeth,” Churchill said. “Why can’t he push onwards at once?”

“We didn’t retake all of the ground we lost,” Alexander said calmly. “We planned it so that we would maul the German forces and crush them on grounds of our choosing. The plan didn’t work perfectly, but we broke one of their major Panzer Divisions and smashed a second force that would otherwise have broken through and imperilled London itself. However, the Germans mounted a series of counter-attacks of their own” — his hand traced out lines on the map — “with the net result that the siege of Colchester was not lifted and indeed there is a giant area that belongs to neither side, but is being torn apart by constant fighting.

“And our losses were very heavy,” he continued. “1st Armoured took a major beating during the second half of the counter-attack and lost several hundred tanks, while a large percentage of our infantry were either broken or trapped in towns and cities, hardly helpless, hardly prisoners, but still useless for the moment. That leaves us holding the line… and the supply situation is very dangerous. It will take time to resupply all of the units and reinforce them to the point where we can go on the offensive.”

Churchill looked at him for a long moment. “And what if the Germans go on the offensive themselves?”

“Our friend in Berlin has confirmed that the Germans took too much of a battering to be able to consider offensive action for the moment,” Menzies said. The Director of MI6 smiled grimly. “The Germans took a beating as well, gentlemen, and they will have to reinforce as well before Rommel can consider taking the offensive again.”

“Then is this not the perfect time to attack?” Churchill asked. “We could move now and take out their lodgement before they reinforce!”

“They still have their infantry and antitank guns dug in to prevent us from doing just that,” Alexander said. “Montgomery is probing their lines with his own infantry and reconnaissance units, as well as using information from agents inside the occupied zone, and he has concluded that the Germans are digging in for the moment. They still have enough soldiers to make us pay a disproportionate price for retaking what we lost over the last few days, let alone punching through to Felixstowe and Harwich and ending the war.”

“It won’t end the war,” Churchill said slowly. DeRiemer guessed that he was remembering Professor Anderson and the Omega Project. How far had the Germans advanced on such a project themselves? How much did they know about atomic science? “The Germans will still be out there, plotting revenge and their next step in dominating the world.”

Alexander nodded once.

“Prime Minister, we cannot throw the Germans into the sea at the cost of destroying the British Army,” he said. “Allow us the time to build up and prepare, and we will destroy their lodgement, but until then, we can only hold the line and hope that our reinforcements get into position before theirs do.”

“Very well,” Churchill said with sour grace. “I expect the War Office to work on plans to evict the Germans as soon as possible.”

He peered across at Christopher Parkinson. “What about the country?”

Parkinson frowned.

“The country could be a lot better off,” he said, ignoring the expression on Churchill’s face. “The Germans, fortunately, haven’t launched more than a few assaults against our factories, but the refugee crisis is growing to astonishingly high levels and has actually led to a series of riots. I am sorry to report that I have ordered the arrest of two scions of the aristocracy for refusing to allow their ancestral homes to be turned into refugee camps.”

“Oh dear,” Churchill said. He didn’t sound too worried about the imprisoned aristocrats. “What about food and logistics?”

“That is more of a problem,” Parkinson admitted. “The refugee crisis means that some areas are consuming more food than others. We actually attempted to alter the rations for workers, as opposed to refugees, but that caused massive hardship and some unrest, so that was altered quickly. A unit of the reserve Home Guard actually went on strike until their families, evacuated from the conflict zone, received the same food ration as everyone else; frankly, the system is on the verge of collapse. We never expected a refugee crisis on such a scale, and that is making is much harder to feed everyone.”

He paused. “The Germans have been more careful about interdicting our shipping, seeing as we tranship most of our purchases through Ireland, but internally it’s a different story. There are sections of the country that are almost completely cut off from others as far as mass transport of food is concerned, and others have an abundance of food. The food programs we started to feed the country in 1940 have been paying off to some extent, but we never developed it to the point where it could feed everyone, and consequently, we have major shortages. The matter isn’t helped by the black market; the farmers are just not cooperating.”

Churchill thumped the table. “It’s their country as well!”

“Yes,” Parkinson agreed dryly. “They also see us fixing prices for them, and they rebel. They are dependent upon a certain amount of profit or their farms will have to be sold, and that causes them to decide that it’s easier to sell some of their produce under the table. This problem developed under the last government, Prime Minister, but it is going to remain for years to come, unless we can stem it now. I have proposed a series of emergency bills to prevent the massive abuse of the system, but even so, it will still be a long time before there is any major effect.”

“Thank you,” Churchill said. His voice became drier, almost sardonic. “How long will it be before the country collapses?”

Parkinson thought about it.

“It’s impossible to say, Prime Minister,” he said. “If the war was to stop tomorrow, we would still need years to repair all the damage and rebuild enough to get the country running smoothly. If the war carries on and the damage keeps increasing, then we might have much more internal unrest within a year and be on the verge of a major crisis — an even bigger crisis — within two years. Once people actually start starving to death, and they will far too soon, the entire situation will explode.”

He met Churchill’s eyes.

“My department is charged with monitoring the condition of the Home Front,” he said softly. “There is a great deal of anger directed at the previous government for allowing the Germans to land and invade the country, but there is also a great deal of anger at the current government, both for the increasingly intrusive control over the country and for the refugees. I don’t think we’re on the verge of a civil war, but unless something is done quickly, we may have real trouble on our hands.”

Churchill turned to Admiral Cunningham. “And the fleet?”

“Is due at Ireland within a fortnight,” said Cunningham. “We have attempted to confuse the Germans as to when the fleet is actually expected to arrive, but I suspect that we will be unable to surprise them much. They will almost certainly have a U-boat tailing both elements of the fleet by now. Once they meet up with the remainder of Home Fleet, we will either sink the German Navy or lose our remaining fleet elements. If we sink the German Navy, Britain will be safe from invasion, at least until the Germans build up again; if we lose, the war will be lost with the fleet.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

“I want you to look into the search for the German agent,” Churchill said as soon as they were alone. DeRiemer nodded in understanding. “Whoever he is, he’s someone fairly close to the higher levels of power and has to be found quickly. Sir Percy has found nothing, but I want you to review it.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” DeRiemer said. He wasn’t hopeful of success, but knew that he had to try. He’d seen enough of the search for the mystery German agent to know that MI5 hadn’t actually done anything wrong. “I’ll get to work at once.”

No one, not even Churchill’s aide, could take papers out of MI5’s offices without being stopped and arrested, so he found a small office in the building and read through the files carefully. The report that one of MI5’s best investigators had compiled was first, and he skimmed it quickly. He then re-read it carefully, but he couldn’t find any fault with the man’s procedure. There were several thousand people in Britain with known pro-Nazi leanings, people who would probably end up running the country if Hitler’s forces actually did crush the British Army, but all of them had been watched carefully, even during the Atlee Years. When war had come, most of them had been rounded up within hours of the signal. MI5 had simply sent out the orders, and all of them have been rounded up. The handful who had evaded arrest for the first few hours only lasted a couple days. Only one had escaped completely by fleeing to Ireland.

This is futile, DeRiemer thought after a long period of reading the reports. The known pro-Nazis were all cooling their heels in an internment camp in Scotland where they were hardly likely to be able to give any help to Skorzeny. He’d run a handful of agents himself in Germany where security levels were much tighter, and he knew some of the problems involved from the operating end. It was easy, even in Germany, to establish an agent, but getting that agent closer to the centre of power was much harder. The Germans had a reputation for bureaucratic thoroughness and carefully investigated the past of everyone who tried to get into the higher ranks just in case there was a discrepancy. One British spy had been lost due to a simple oversight. His fictional biography had included a Jew in his ancestral line. Britain was much easier to penetrate…

He considered it carefully, placing himself in Himmler’s shoes, and tried to work out what he would have done. Himmler knew that it would be easy to get an agent into Britain, but, again, it was much harder to get someone into the corridors of power. Someone who was too pro-German wouldn’t have been permitted into any position of such responsibility. The risk would have been too great. That suggested that there were actually two German agents within the capital, and one of them was someone who didn’t sound any alarms. Not pro-German, not pro-Soviet, not pro-American… someone who kept his head down and remained unnoticed. Who?

The files were open in front of him, and he went through them again. The agent couldn’t be someone who was directly part of the government; there was no way that Himmler would risk a prize like that on protecting anyone, even Skorzeny, but he would be someone with a high level of access. Who had known what the spy had passed on to Berlin which had in turn been passed on to London? The list grew longer, with nearly two hundred names, all of which would have to be checked carefully. It would also have to be discreet; the names included some of the most important analysts in Britain, and some very well-connected people. If they got wind of what was going on…

Or maybe that’s what we want, DeRiemer thought. We want them to know we’re after them…

There was a knock on the door. DeRiemer made sure that all the papers were covered and shouted for the knocker to come in. A young MI5 officer stuck his head in and frowned.

“Mr DeRiemer, the boss wants to see you at once,” he said. The surprised excitement in his voice made DeRiemer smile; had he ever been that young? “Roger Hollis has been found dead; he killed himself!”