The Last Battle

1

MARCH 22 dawned misty and cold. South of the city, Reichsstrasse 96 stretched away through the dripping pine forests, patches of frost gleaming dimly on the broad asphalt. Early on this chill second day of spring the road was crowded with traffic—traffic that even for wartime Germany had an unreal quality.

Some of the heavy lorries that came down the road carried bulky filing cabinets, document cases, office equipment and cartons. Others were piled high with works of art—fine furniture, crated pictures, brasses, ceramics and statuary. Atop one open truck a sightless bust of Julius Caesar rocked gently back and forth.

Scattered among the trucks were heavy passenger cars of every kind—Horchs, Wanderers, Mercedes limousines. All bore the silvered swastika medallion that marked them as official vehicles of the Nazi Party. And all were traveling along Reichsstrasse 96 in one direction: south. In the cars were the party bureaucrats of the Third Reich—the “Golden Pheasants,” those privileged to wear the gilded swastika of the Nazi elite. Together with their wives, children and belongings, the Golden Pheasants were emigrating. Hardfaced and somber in their brown uniforms, the men gazed fixedly ahead, as though haunted by the possibility that they might be halted and sent back to the one place where they did not want to be: Berlin.

Speeding northward on the opposite side of the road came a Wehrmacht staff car, a big Mercedes with the checkerboard black, red and white metal flag of a Heeresgruppe commander on its left mudguard. Hunched in an ancient sheepskin coat, a muffler at his throat, Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici sat beside his driver, and looked out bleakly at the road. He knew this highway, as did all of the Reich’s general officers. Heinrici’s cousin, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, had once caustically called it “der Weg zur Ewigkeit”—the road to eternity. It had carried many a senior officer to military oblivion, for Reichsstrasse 96 was the direct route to the German General Staff headquarters eighteen miles from Berlin. Outside high-ranking military circles, few Germans knew the location of this headquarters. Not even local inhabitants were aware that, heavily camouflaged and hidden deep in the woods, the military nerve center of Hitler’s Germany lay just outside their 15th-century town of Zossen. Zossen was Heinrici’s destination.

If the oncoming traffic, with its disquieting evidence of government departments on the move, made any impression on the General, he did not communicate it to his 36-year-old aide, Captain Heinrich von Bila, sitting in back with Heinrici’s batman, Balzen. There had been little conversation during the long hours of their 500-mile journey. They had left before dawn from northern Hungary, where Heinrici had commanded the First Panzer and Hungarian First armies. They had flown to Bautzen, near the Czecho-German border, and from there had continued by car. And now each hour that passed was bringing the 58-year-old Heinrici, one of the Wehrmacht’s masters of defense, closer to the greatest test of his forty-year military career.

Heinrici would learn the full details of his new post at Zossen—but he knew already that his concern would not be with the Western Allies, but with his old enemies, the Russians. It was a bitter and, for Heinrici, a classic assignment: he was to take command of Army Group Vistula with orders to hold the Russians on the Oder and save Berlin.

Suddenly an air raid siren blared. Heinrici, startled, swung around to look back at the cluster of half-timbered houses they had just passed. There was no sign of bombing or Allied planes. The wailing continued, the warbling sound fading now in the distance. It was not the sound that had startled him. He was no stranger to bombing attacks. What had surprised him was the realization that this deep inside Germany, even little villages were having air raid alerts. Slowly Heinrici turned back. Although he had commanded units from the very beginning of the war in 1939, first on the western front, then after 1941 in Russia, he had not been in Germany for more than two years and he had little idea of the impact of total war on the home front. He realized that he was a stranger in his own country. He was depressed; he had not expected anything like this.

Yet few German generals had experienced more of the war—and, conversely, few of such high rank had achieved less prominence. He was no dashing Rommel, lionized by the Germans for his successes and then honored by a propaganda-wise Hitler with a field marshal’s baton. Outside of battle orders, Heinrici’s name had scarcely appeared in print. The fame and glory that every soldier seeks had eluded him, for in his long years as a combat commander on the eastern front, he had fought the Russians in a role that by its very nature relegated him to obscurity. His operations had dealt not with the glories of blitzkrieg advance, but with the desperation of grinding retreat. His specialty was defense, and at that he had few peers. A thoughtful, precise strategist, a deceptively mild-mannered commander, Heinrici was nevertheless a tough general of the old aristocratic school who had long ago learned to hold the line with the minimum of men and at the lowest possible cost. “Heinrici,” one of his staff officers once remarked, “retreats only when the air is turned to lead—and then only after considerable deliberation.”

In a war that for him had been a slow and painful withdrawal all the way from the Moscow suburbs to the Carpathian Mountains, Heinrici had held out again and again in near-hopeless positions. Stubborn, defiant and demanding, he had grabbed every chance—even when it was just a matter of holding one more mile for one more hour. He fought with such ferocity that his officers and men proudly nicknamed him “Unser Giftzwerg”—our tough little bastard.[4] Those meeting him for the first time were often nonplussed by the description “tough.” Short, slightly built, with quiet blue eyes, fair hair and a neat moustache, Heinrici seemed at first glance more schoolmaster than general—and a shabby schoolmaster at that.

It was a matter of great concern to his aide, Von Bila, that Heinrici cared little about looking the part of a colonel general. Von Bila constantly fretted about Heinrici’s appearance—particularly his boots and overcoat. Heinrici hated the highly polished, knee-high jackboot so popular with German officers. He preferred ordinary low-cut boots, worn with old-fashioned, World War I leather leggings that buckled at the side. As for his overcoats, he had several, but he liked his somewhat ratty sheepskin coat, and despite all of Von Bila’s efforts he refused to part with it. Similarly, Heinrici wore his uniforms until they were threadbare. And, as he believed in traveling light, Heinrici rarely had more than one uniform with him—the one on his back.

It was Von Bila who had to take the initiative when Heinrici needed new clothes—and Von Bila dreaded these encounters, for he usually came out the loser. When Von Bila last ventured to bring up the subject he adopted a cautious approach. Tentatively, he inquired of Heinrici, “Herr Generaloberst, shouldn’t we perhaps try to find a moment to be measured for a new uniform?” Heinrici had looked at Von Bila over the top of his reading glasses and had asked mildly, “Do you really think so, Bila?” For just a moment Von Bila thought he had succeeded. Then the Giftzwerg asked icily, “What for?” Von Bila had not raised the question since.

But if Heinrici did not look the part of a general, he acted like one. He was every inch the soldier, and to the troops he commanded, particularly after his stand at Moscow, he was a legendary one.

In December, 1941, Hitler’s massive blitzkrieg offensive into Russia had finally ground to a frozen halt before the very approaches to Moscow. All along the German front more than 1,250,000 lightly clad troops had been trapped by an early and bitter winter. As the Germans floundered through ice and snow, the Russian armies that Hitler and his experts had virtually written off appeared as if from nowhere. In an all-out attack, the Soviets threw one hundred divisions of winter-hardened soldiers against the invaders. The German armies were thrown back with staggering losses, and for a time it seemed as if the terrible retreat of Napoleon’s armies in 1812 would be repeated—on an even greater and bloodier scale.

The line had to be stabilized. It was Heinrici who was given the toughest sector to hold. On January 26, 1942, he was placed in command of the remnants of the Fourth Army, which, holding the ground directly facing Moscow, was the kingpin of the German line. Any major withdrawal on its part would jeopardize the armies on either flank and might trigger a rout.

Heinrici took over on a bitterly cold day; the temperature stood at minus 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Water froze inside the boilers of locomotives; machine guns would not fire; trenches and foxholes could not be dug because the ground was like iron. Heinrici’s ill-equipped soldiers were fighting in waist-deep snow, with icicles hanging from their nostrils and eyelashes. “I was told to hold out until the big attack that this time would surely take Moscow,” he later recalled. “Yet all around me my men were dying—and not only from Russian bullets. Many of them froze to death.”

They held out for almost ten weeks. Heinrici used every method available to him, orthodox and unorthodox. He exhorted his men, goaded them, promoted, dismissed—and again and again defied Hitler’s long-standing and inflexible order, “Starre Verteidigung”—stand fast. That spring it was estimated by the staff of the Fourth Army that during the long winter the Giftzwerg had at times been outnumbered by at least twelve to one.

Outside Moscow Heinrici had developed a technique for which he became famous. When he knew a Russian attack was imminent in a particular sector, he would order his troops to retreat the night before to new positions one or two miles back. The Russian artillery barrages would land on a deserted front line. As Heinrici put it: “It was like hitting an empty bag. The Russian attack would lose its speed because my men, unharmed, would be ready. Then my troops on sectors that had not been attacked would close in and reoccupy the original front lines.” The trick was to know when the Russians were preparing for an attack. From intelligence reports, patrols and the interrogation of prisoners, plus an extraordinary sixth sense, Heinrici was able to pinpoint the time and place with almost mathematical precision.

It was not always possible to employ these methods, and when he did, Heinrici had to use great caution—Hitler had imprisoned and even shot generals for defying his no-withdrawal order. “While we could hardly move a sentry from the window to the door without his permission,” Heinrici was later to record, “some of us, where we could, found ways to evade his more suicidal orders.”

For obvious reasons Heinrici had never been a favorite of Hitler or his court. His aristocratic and conservative military background demanded that he faithfully observe his oath of allegiance to Hitler, but the call of a higher dictatorship had always come first. Early in the war Heinrici had fallen afoul of the Führer because of his religious views.

The son of a Protestant minister, Heinrici read a Bible tract daily, attended services on Sundays and insisted on church parades for his troops. These practices did not sit well with Hitler. Several broad hints were dropped to Heinrici that Hitler thought it unwise for a general to be seen publicly going to church. On his last trip to Germany, while on leave in the town of Münster, Westphalia, Heinrici was visited by a high-ranking Nazi Party official sent from Berlin specifically to talk with him. Heinrici, who had never been a member of the Nazi Party, was informed that “the Führer considers your religious activities incompatible with the aims of National Socialism.” Stonily Heinrici listened to the warning. The following Sunday he, his wife, son and daughter attended church as usual.

Thereafter, he was promoted slowly and reluctantly. Promotion might have been denied him entirely except for his undeniably brilliant leadership, and the fact that the various commanders under whom he served—particularly Field Marshal Günther von Kluge—kept insisting on his promotion.

Late in 1943, Heinrici incurred the enmity of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, once again on religious grounds. Goering vehemently complained to Hitler that during the retreat of the Fourth Army in Russia Heinrici had failed to carry out the Führer’s scorched-earth policy. Specifically he charged that the General had deliberately defied the orders “to burn and lay waste every habitable building” in Smolensk; among other buildings left standing had been the town’s great cathedral. Heinrici explained solemnly that “had Smolensk been fired I could not have withdrawn my forces through it.” The answer failed to satisfy either Hitler or Goering, but there was just sufficient military logic in it to prevent a court-martial.

Hitler, however, did not forget. Heinrici, a victim of poison gas in World War I, had suffered ever since from various stomach disorders. Some months after the incident with Goering, Hitler, citing these ailments, placed Heinrici on the non-active list because of “ill health.” He was retired to a convalescent home in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, and there, in Heinrici’s words, “they simply let me sit.” A few weeks after his dismissal, the Russians for the first time broke through his old command, the Fourth Army.

During the opening months of 1944, Heinrici remained in Karlsbad, a remote spectator to the apocalyptic events that were slowly bringing Hitler’s empire down in ruins: the invasion of Normandy by the Western Allies in June; the Anglo-American advance up the boot of Italy and the capture of Rome; the abortive plot to assassinate Hitler on the twentieth of July; the overwhelming offensives of the Russians as they drove across eastern Europe. As the situation grew increasingly critical, Heinrici found his inaction unbearably frustrating. He might have had a command by entreating the Führer, but that he refused to do.

At last, in the late summer of ’44, after eight months of enforced retirement, Heinrici was ordered back to duty—this time to Hungary and command of the hard-pressed First Panzer and Hungarian First armies.

In Hungary Heinrici resumed his old ways. At the height of the battle there, Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner, Hitler’s protégé, and Heinrici’s superior in Hungary, issued a directive that any soldier found behind the front without orders was to be “executed immediately and his body exhibited as a warning.” Heinrici, disgusted by the command, angrily retorted: “Such methods have never been used under my command, and never shall be.”

Although he was forced to retreat from northern Hungary into Czechoslovakia, he contested the ground so tenaciously that on March 3, 1945, he was informed that he had been decorated with the Swords to the Oak Leaves of his Knight’s Cross—a remarkable accomplishment for a man who was disliked so intensely by Hitler. And now, just two weeks later, he was rushing to Zossen, with orders in his pocket to take over the command of Army Group Vistula.

As he watched Reichsstrasse 96 rushing away beneath the wheels of his speeding Mercedes, Heinrici wondered where it would ultimately lead him. He remembered the reaction of his staff in Hungary when his appointment became known and he was ordered to report to General Heinz Guderian, Chief of the General Staff of OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres)—the Army High Command. They were shocked. “Do you really want the job?” asked his chief of staff.

To his worried subordinates, the outspoken Heinrici seemed headed for certain trouble. As the commander of the Oder front, the last major line of defense between the Russians and Berlin, he would be constantly under the supervision of Hitler and the “court jesters,” as one of Heinrici’s officers called them. Heinrici had never been a sycophant, had never learned to varnish the facts; how could he avoid clashing with the men around the Führer? And everyone knew what happened to those who disagreed with Hitler.

As delicately as they could, officers close to Heinrici had suggested that he find some excuse to turn the command down—perhaps for “health reasons.” Surprised, Heinrici replied simply that he would follow his orders—“just like Private Schultz or Schmidt.”

Now as he approached the outskirts of Zossen, Heinrici could not help remembering that at his departure his staff had looked at him “as though I was a lamb being led to the slaughter.”

2

AT THE MAIN GATES of the base, Heinrici’s car was quickly cleared. The inner red-and-black guardrail swung up, and in a flurry of salutes the car passed into the Zossen headquarters. It was almost as though they had driven into another world. In a way it was just that—a hidden, camouflaged, orderly, military world, known only to a few and identified by the code words “Maybach I” and “Maybach II.”

The complex through which they drove was Maybach I—the headquarters of OKH, the Army High Command, headed by General Guderian. From here he directed the armies on the eastern front. A mile farther in was another completely separate encampment: Maybach II, the headquarters of OKW, Armed Forces High Command. Despite its secondary designation Maybach II was the higher authority—the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, Hitler.

Unlike General Guderian, who operated directly from his OKH headquarters, the top echelon of OKW—its Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and Chief of Operations, Colonel General Alfred Jodl—stayed close to Hitler wherever he chose to be. Only the operational machinery of OKW remained at Zossen. Through it Keitel and Jodl commanded the armies on the western front, besides using it as a clearinghouse for all of Hitler’s directives to the entire German armed forces.

Thus Maybach II was the holy of holies, so cut off from Guderian’s headquarters that few of his officers had even been permitted inside it. The sealing was so complete that the two headquarters were physically separated by high barbed-wire fences constantly patrolled by sentries. No one, Hitler had declared in 1941, was to know more than was necessary for the carrying out of his duties. In Guderian’s headquarters it was said that “if the enemy ever captures OKW we’ll go right on working as usual: we won’t know anything about it.”

Beneath the protective canopy of the forest, Heinrici’s car followed one of the many narrow dirt roads that crisscrossed the complex. Spotted among the trees in irregular rows were low concrete buildings. They were so spaced that they got maximum protection from the trees, but just to be sure, they had been painted in drab camouflage colors of green, brown and black. Vehicles were off the roads—parked by the sides of the barracks-like buildings beneath camouflaged netting. Sentries stood everywhere, and at strategic points around the camp the low humps of manned bunkers rose above the ground.

These were part of a warren of underground installations extending beneath the entire encampment, for there was more of Maybach I and Maybach II below ground than above. Each building had three floors underground and was connected to the next by passageways. The largest of these subterranean installations was “Exchange 500”—the biggest telephone, teletype and military radio communications exchange in Germany. It was completely self-contained, with its own air conditioning (including a special filtration system against enemy gas attacks), water supply, kitchens and living quarters. It was almost seventy feet beneath the surface—the equivalent of a seven-story building below ground.

Exchange 500 was the only facility shared by OKH and OKW. Besides connecting all the distant senior military, naval and Luftwaffe commands with the two headquarters and Berlin, it was the main exchange for the Reich government and its various administrative bodies. It had been completed in 1939, designed to serve a far-flung empire. In the main trunk or long-lines room, scores of operators sat before boards with blinking lights; above each was a small card bearing the name of a city—Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Copenhagen, Oslo and so on. But the lights had gone out on some consoles—boards that still carried labels such as Athens, Warsaw, Budapest, Rome and Paris.

Despite all the camouflaging precautions, the Zossen complex had been bombed—Heinrici could see the evidence plainly as his car rolled to a stop outside Guderian’s command building. The area was pitted with craters, trees had been uprooted, and some buildings were badly damaged. But the effect of the bombing had been minimized by the heavy construction of the buildings—some of which had walls up to three feet thick.[5]

There was more evidence of the attack inside the main building. The first person Heinrici and Von Bila saw was Lieutenant General Hans Krebs, Guderian’s Chief of Staff, who had been injured in the raid. Monocle rammed in his right eye, he sat behind a desk in an office close to Guderian’s, his head wrapped in a large white turban of bandages. Heinrici did not care much for Krebs. Though the Chief of Staff was extremely intelligent, Heinrici saw him as “a man who refused to believe the truth, who could change black to white so as to minimize the true situation for Hitler.”

Heinrici looked at him. Foregoing the niceties, he asked abruptly, “What happened to you?”

Krebs shrugged. “Oh, it was nothing,” he replied. “Nothing.” Krebs had always been unperturbable. Before the war he had been military attaché at the German Embassy in Moscow, and he spoke near-perfect Russian. After the signing of the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact in 1941, Stalin had embraced Krebs, saying, “We shall always be friends.” Now, chatting casually with Heinrici, Krebs mentioned that he was still learning Russian. “Every morning,” he said, “I place a dictionary on a shelf beneath the mirror and while shaving, learn a few more words.” Heinrici nodded. Krebs might find his Russian useful soon.

Major Freytag von Loringhoven, Guderian’s aide, joined them at that moment. With him was Captain Gerhard Boldt, another member of Guderian’s personal staff. They formally greeted Heinrici and Von Bila, then escorted them to the General’s offices. To Von Bila, everyone seemed immaculately dressed in shining, high boots, well-cut, well-pressed field-gray uniforms with the red tabs of staff rank at the collar. Heinrici, walking ahead with Von Loringhoven, seemed, as usual, sartorially out of place—especially from behind. The fur-collared sheepskin coat made Von Bila wince.

Von Loringhoven disappeared into Guderian’s office, returned a few moments later and held the door open for Heinrici. “Herr Generaloberst Heinrici,” he announced as Heinrici passed through. Von Loringhoven closed the door and then joined Boldt and Von Bila in the anteroom.

Guderian was sitting behind a large, paper-strewn desk. As Heinrici entered, he rose, warmly greeted the visitor, offered him a chair and for a few moments talked about Heinrici’s trip. Heinrici saw that Guderian was tense and edgy. Broad-shouldered, of medium height, with thinning gray hair and a straggling moustache, Guderian seemed much older than his fifty-six years. Although it was not generally known, he was a sick man, suffering from high blood pressure and a weak heart—a condition that was not alleviated by his constant frustrations. These days the creator of Hitler’s massive panzer forces—the General whose armored techniques had brought about the capture of France in 1940 in just twenty-seven days and who had nearly succeeded in accomplishing as much in Russia—found himself almost completely powerless. Even as Chief of the General Staff he had virtually no influence with Hitler. A hot-tempered officer at the best of times, Guderian was now so thwarted, Heinrici had heard, that he was subject to violent rages.

As they talked Heinrici looked about him. The office was spartan: a large map table, several straight-backed chairs, two phones, a green-shaded lamp on the desk, and nothing on the yellow-beige walls except the usual framed picture of Hitler, which hung over the map table. The Chief of the General Staff did not even have an easy chair.

Though Guderian and Heinrici were not intimate friends, they had known each other for years, respected each other’s professional competence and were close enough to converse freely and informally. As soon as they got down to business, Heinrici spoke frankly. “General,” he said, “I’ve been in the wilds of Hungary. I know almost nothing about Army Group Vistula, what it’s composed of or what the situation is on the Oder.”

Guderian was equally blunt. Briskly he replied, “I should tell you, Heinrici, that Hitler didn’t want to give you this command. He had somebody else in mind.”

Heinrici remained silent.

Guderian continued: “I was responsible. I told Hitler that you were the one man needed. At first he wouldn’t consider you at all. Finally, I got him to agree.”

Guderian spoke in a businesslike, matter-of-fact fashion, but as he warmed to his subject the tone of his voice changed. Even twenty years later Heinrici would remember in detail the tirade that followed.

“Himmler,” Guderian snapped. “That was the biggest problem. Getting rid of the man you’re to replace—Himmler!”

Abruptly he got up from his chair, walked around the desk and began pacing the room. Heinrici had only recently learned that Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was commander of the Army Group Vistula. The news had so astonished him that at first he did not believe it. He knew of Himmler as a member of Hitler’s inner cabinet—probably the most powerful man in Germany next to the Führer. He did not know that Himmler had any experience commanding troops in the field—let alone directing the activities of a group of armies.

Bitterly Guderian recounted how in January, as the Polish front began to collapse before the tidal wave of the Red Army, he had desperately urged the formation of Army Group Vistula. At that time it was envisioned as a northern complex of armies holding a major defense line between the Oder and the Vistula, roughly from East Prussia to a point farther south where it would link with another army group. If the line held it would prevent the Russian avalanche from driving directly into the very heart of Germany, through lower Pomerania and Upper Silesia, then into Brandenburg and finally—Berlin.

To command the group Guderian had suggested Field Marshal Freiherr von Weichs. “At the time he was just the man for this situation,” Guderian said. “What happened? Hitler said Von Weichs was too old. Jodl was present at the conference and I expected him to support me. But he made some remark about Von Weichs’s religious feelings. That ended the matter.

“Then,” thundered Guderian, “whom did we get? Hitler appointed Himmler! Of all people—Himmler!”

Guderian had, in his own words, “argued and pleaded against the appalling and preposterous appointment” of this man who had no military knowledge. But Hitler remained adamant. Under Himmler the front had all but collapsed. The Red Army had moved exactly as Guderian had predicted. Once the Russians were across the Vistula, part of their forces swung north and reached the Baltic at Danzig, cutting off and encircling some twenty to twenty-five divisions in East Prussia alone. The remaining Soviet armies sliced through Pomerania and upper Silesia, and reached the Oder and Neisse rivers. Everywhere along the eastern front the German line was overwhelmed. But no sector had collapsed so fast as Himmler’s. His failure had opened the gates to the main drive across Germany and the link-up with the Western Allies. Above all, it had placed Berlin in jeopardy.

Guderian told Heinrici that, just forty-eight hours before, he had driven to the Army Group Vistula headquarters at Birkenhain, roughly fifty miles north of Berlin, to try to persuade Himmler to give up the command. There, he was informed that Himmler was ill. He had finally located the SS commander twenty miles away, near the town of Lychen, “cowering in a sanatorium with nothing more than a head cold.”

Guderian quickly saw that Himmler’s “illness” could be used to advantage. He expressed sympathy with the Reichsführer, and suggested that perhaps he had been overworking, that the number of posts he held would “tax the strength of any man.” Besides being the commander of Army Group Vistula, the ambitious Himmler was also Minister of the Interior; Chief of the Gestapo, the German police forces and security services; head of the SS, and Commander of the Training Army. Why not relinquish one of these posts, Guderian suggested—say, the Army Group Vistula?

Himmler grasped at the proposal. It was all too true, he told Guderian; his many jobs did, indeed, call for enormous endurance. “But,” Himmler asked, “how can I possibly suggest to the Führer that I give up Vistula?” Guderian quickly told Himmler that, given the authorization, he would suggest it. Himmler quickly agreed. That night, added Guderian, “Hitler relieved the overworked, overburdened Reichsführer, but only after a lot of grumbling and with obvious reluctance.”

Guderian paused, but only for a moment. His acrimonious recital of disaster had been punctuated by bursts of anger. Now he flared again. His voice choking with rage, he said: “The mess we’re in is fantastic. The way the war is being run is unbelievable. Unbelievable!”

Through the previous months, Guderian recalled, he had tried to get Hitler to understand that “the real danger lay on the eastern front,” and that “drastic measures were necessary.” He urged a series of strategic withdrawals from the Baltic States—particularly from Courland in Latvia—and from the Balkans, and even suggested abandoning Norway and Italy. Everywhere lines needed shortening; each division relieved could be sped to the Russian front. According to intelligence, the Russians had twice as many divisions as the Western Allies—yet there were fewer German divisions fighting in the east than the west. Furthermore, the best German divisions were facing Eisenhower. But Hitler refused to go on the defensive; he would not believe the facts and figures that were placed before him.

Then, Guderian declared, “Hitler made possibly his greatest error.” In December, 1944, he unleashed his massive, last-throw-of-the-dice offensive against the Western Allies through the rolling forests of the Ardennes in Belgium and northern Luxembourg. The attack, Hitler boasted, would split the Allies and change the whole course of the war. Against the center of the Allied line he hurled three fully equipped armies—a total of twenty divisions of which twelve were armored. Their objective: to break through, reach the Meuse, and then swing north to capture the vital supply port of Antwerp. Caught off balance, the Allies reeled under the blow and fell back with heavy losses. But the offensive soon petered out. Swiftly recovering, Allied troops drove Hitler’s shattered armies back behind Germany’s borders in just five weeks.

“When it became obvious that the offensive had failed,” Guderian said, “I begged Hitler to get our troops out of the Ardennes and put them on the eastern front, where we expected the Russian offensive at any moment. It was no use—he refused to believe our estimates of their strength.”

On January 9 Guderian told Hitler that the Russians could be expected to launch their attack from the Baltic to the Balkans with a massive force totaling some 225 divisions and 22 armored corps. The situation estimate had been prepared by General Reinhard Gehlen, Guderian’s Chief of Intelligence. It indicated that the Russians would outnumber the Germans in infantry by eleven to one, in armor by seven to one, in both artillery and aircraft by at least twenty to one. Hitler pounded the table and in a frenzy denounced the author of the report. “Who prepared this rubbish?” he roared. “Whoever he is, he should be committed to a lunatic asylum!” Three days later the Russians attacked, and Gehlen was proved right.

“The front virtually collapsed,” Guderian told Heinrici, “simply because most of our panzer forces were tied down in the west. Finally Hitler agreed to shift some of the armor, but he would not let me use the tanks to attack the Russian spearheads east of Berlin. Where did he send them? To Hungary, where they were thrown into a perfectly useless attack to recapture the oilfields.

“Why, even now,” he fumed, “there are eighteen divisions sitting in Courland—tied down, doing nothing. They are needed here—not in the Baltic States! If we’re going to survive, everything has got to be on the Oder front.”

Guderian paused and, with an effort, calmed himself. Then he said: “The Russians are looking down our throats. They’ve halted their offensive to reorganize and regroup. We estimate that you’ll have three to four weeks—until the floods go down—to prepare. In that time the Russians will try to establish new bridgeheads on the western bank and broaden those they already have. These have to be thrown back. No matter what happens elsewhere, the Russians must be stopped on the Oder. It’s our only hope.”

3

NOW GUDERIAN CALLED FOR MAPS. In the anteroom outside, one of the aides peeled several from the top of the prepared pile, brought them into the office and spread them on the map table before the two Generals.

This was Heinrici’s first look at the overall situation. More than one third of Germany was gone—swallowed by the advancing Allies from the west and east. All that remained lay between two great water barriers: on the west, the Rhine; on the east, the Oder and its linking river, the Neisse. And Heinrici knew the great industrial areas of the Reich that had not yet been captured were being bombed night and day.

In the west, Eisenhower’s armies, as Heinrici had heard, were indeed on the Rhine, Germany’s great natural defense line. The Anglo-American forces stretched for nearly five hundred miles along the western bank—roughly from the North Sea to the Swiss border. At one point the Rhine had even been breached. On March 7, the Americans had seized a bridge at Remagen, south of Bonn, before it could be completely destroyed. Now a bridgehead twenty miles wide and five miles deep sprawled along the eastern bank. Other crossings were expected momentarily.

In the east the Soviets had swarmed across eastern Europe and held a front of more than eight hundred miles—from the Baltic to the Adriatic. In Germany itself they stood along the Oder-Neisse river lines all the way to the Czechoslovakian border. Now, Guderian told Heinrici, they were feverishly preparing to resume their offensive. Reconnaissance planes had spotted reinforcements pouring toward the front. Every railhead was disgorging guns and equipment. Every road was clogged with tanks, motor- and horse-drawn convoys, and marching troops. What the Red Army’s strength might be at the time of attack nobody could even estimate, but three army groups had been identified in Germany—concentrated for the most part directly opposite Army Group Vistula’s positions.

Looking at the front he had inherited, Heinrici saw for the first time what he would later describe as “the whole shocking truth.”

On the map the thin wavering red line marking the Vistula’s positions ran for 175 miles—from the Baltic coast to the juncture of the Oder and Neisse in Silesia, where it linked with the forces of Colonel General Schörner. Most of the front lay on the western bank of the Oder, but there were three major bridgeheads still on the eastern bank: in the north, Stettin, the 13th-century capital of Pomerania; in the south, the town of Küstrin and the old university city of Frankfurt-on-Oder—both in the vital sector directly opposite Berlin.

To prevent the Russians from capturing the capital and driving into the very heart of Germany, he had only two armies, Heinrici discovered. Holding the front’s northern wing was the Third Panzer Army under the command of the diminutive General Hasso von Manteuffel—after Guderian and Rommel probably the greatest panzer tactician in the Wehrmacht. He held positions extending about 95 miles—from north of Stettin to the juncture of the Hohenzollern Canal and the Oder, roughly 28 miles northeast of Berlin. Below that, to the confluence of the Neisse 80 miles away, the defense was in the hands of the bespectacled 47-year-old General Theodor Busse and his Ninth Army.

Depressed as he was by the overall picture, Heinrici was not unduly surprised by the huge forces arrayed against him. On the eastern front it was customary to fight without air cover, with a minimum of tanks, and while outnumbered by at least nine or ten to one. But everything, Heinrici knew, depended on the caliber of the troops. What alarmed him now was the makeup of these two armies.

To the experienced Heinrici the name of a division and its commander usually served as an indication of its history and fighting abilities. Now, examining the map, he found that there were few regular divisions in the east that he even recognized. Instead of the usual identifying numbers, most of them had odd names such as “Gruppe Kassen,” “Döberitz,” “Nederland,” “Kurmark,” “Berlin” and “Müncheberg.” Heinrici wondered about the composition of these units. Were they splinter troops—the remnants of divisions simply thrown together? Guderian’s map did not give him a very clear picture. He would have to see for himself, but he had a dawning suspicion that these were divisions in name only. Heinrici did not comment on his suspicions, for Guderian had other, more immediate problems to discuss—in particular, Küstrin.

Heinrici’s biggest army was Busse’s Ninth, the defense shield directly before Berlin. From the rash of red marks on the map it was clear that Busse faced pressing problems. The Russians, Guderian said, were concentrating opposite the Ninth Army. They were making a mighty effort to wipe out the two German-held bridgeheads on the eastern banks at Küstrin and in the area of Frankfurt. The situation at Küstrin was the more dangerous.

In that sector during the preceding weeks, the Red Army had succeeded in crossing the Oder several times and gaining footholds on the western bank. Most of these attempts had been thrown back, but despite every defense effort the Russians still held on around Küstrin. They had secured sizable bridgeheads on either side of the town. Between these pincer-like lodgments, a single corridor remained, linking the defenders of Küstrin with the Ninth Army. Once these pincers snapped shut, Küstrin would fall and the linking of the two bridgeheads would provide the Russians with a major springboard on the western bank for their drive on Berlin.

And now Guderian tossed Heinrici another bombshell. “Hitler,” he said, “has decided to launch an attack to wipe out the bridgehead south of Küstrin, and General Busse has been preparing. I believe it’s to take place within forty-eight hours.”

The plan, as Guderian outlined it, called for the attack to be launched from Frankfurt, thirteen miles below Küstrin. Five Panzer Grenadier divisions were to cross the river into the German bridgehead and from there attack along the eastern bank and hit the Russian bridgehead south of Küstrin from the rear.

Heinrici studied the map. Frankfurt-on-Oder straddles the river, with its greatest bulk on the western bank. A single bridge connects the two sections of the city. To the new commander of the Army Group Vistula two facts were starkly clear: the hilly terrain on the eastern bank offered ideal conditions for Russian artillery—from the heights they could stop the Germans dead in their tracks. But worse, the bridgehead across the river was too small for the assembly of five motorized divisions.

For a long moment Heinrici pored over the map. There was no doubt in his mind that the assembling German divisions would be instantly detected, and first pulverized by artillery, then hit by planes. Looking at Guderian, he said simply, “It’s quite impossible.”

Guderian agreed. Angrily he told Heinrici that the only way the divisions could assemble was “to roll over the bridge, one after the other—making a column of men and tanks about fifteen miles long.” But Hitler had insisted on the attack. “It will succeed,” he had told Guderian, “because the Russians won’t expect such a daring and unorthodox operation.”

Heinrici, still examining the map, saw that the sector between Küstrin and Frankfurt was jammed with Russian troops. Even if the attack could be launched from the bridgehead, the Russians were so strong that the German divisions would never reach Küstrin. Solemnly Heinrici warned: “Our troops will be pinned with their backs to the Oder. It will be a disaster.”

Guderian made no comment—there was nothing to say. Suddenly he glanced at his watch, and said irritably, “Oh, God, I’ve got to get back to Berlin for the Führer’s conference at three.” The mere thought of it set off another furious outburst. “It’s impossible to work,” Guderian spluttered. “Twice a day I stand for hours listening to that group around Hitler talking nonsense—discussing nothing! I can’t get anything done! I spend all of my time either on the road or in Berlin listening to drivel!”

Guderian’s rage was so violent that it alarmed Heinrici. The Chief of Staff’s face had turned beet red, and for a moment Heinrici feared Guderian would drop dead on the spot from a heart attack. There was an anxious silence as Guderian fought for control. Then he said: “Hitler is going to discuss the Küstrin attack. Perhaps you’d better come with me.”

Heinrici declined. “If I’m supposed to launch this insane attack the day after tomorrow,” he said, “I’d better get to my headquarters as soon as possible.” Then stubbornly he added: “Hitler can wait a few days to see me.”

In the anteroom, Heinrich von Bila was timing the meeting by the diminishing pile of maps and charts as they were taken into Guderian’s office. There were only one or two left, so the briefing, he thought, must be almost over. He wandered over to the table and looked idly at the top map. It showed the whole of Germany but the lines on it seemed somehow different. Von Bila was about to turn away when something caught his eye. He looked closer. The map was different from all the others. It was the lettering that now caught his attention—it was in English. He bent down and began to study it carefully.

4

IT WAS ALMOST SIX when the weary Heinrici reached his headquarters at Birkenhain, near Prenzlau. During the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Zossen, he had remained silent. At one point Von Bila tried to open a conversation by asking the General if he had seen the map. Von Bila assumed that Guderian had shown a separate copy to Heinrici and explained its contents. Heinrici, in fact, knew nothing about it, and Von Bila got no answer. The General simply sat tight-lipped and worried. Von Bila had never seen him so dejected.

Heinrici’s first glimpse of his new headquarters depressed him even more. The Army Group Vistula command post consisted of a large, imposing mansion flanked on either side by wooden barracks. The main building was an architectural monstrosity—a massive, ornate affair with a row of oversized columns along its front. Years before, Himmler had built the place as his own personal refuge. On a nearby siding stood his luxuriously appointed private train, the “Steiermark.”

Like Zossen, this headquarters was hidden in the woods, but there the comparison ended. There was none of the military bustle Heinrici had come to expect of an active army group headquarters. Except for an SS corporal in the foyer of the main building, the place seemed deserted. The corporal asked their names, ushered them to a hard bench and disappeared.

Some minutes passed, then a tall, immaculately dressed SS lieutenant general appeared. He introduced himself as Himmler’s Chief of Staff, Heinz Lammerding, and smoothly explained that the Reichsführer was “engaged in a most important discussion” and “could not be disturbed right now.” Polite but cool, Lammerding did not invite Heinrici to wait in his office, nor did zhe make any of the usual gestures of hospitality. Turning on his heel, he left Heinrici and Von Bila to wait in the foyer. In all his years as a senior officer Heinrici had never been treated in such a cavalier fashion.

He waited patiently for fifteen minutes, then spoke quietly to Von Bila. “Go tell that Lammerding,” he said, “that I have no intention of sitting out here one minute longer. I demand to see Himmler immediately.” Seconds later Heinrici was escorted down a corridor and into Himmler’s office.

Himmler was standing by the side of his desk. He was of medium build, his torso longer than his legs—which one of Heinrici’s staff remembers as being like “the hind legs of a bull.” He had a narrow face, a receding chin, squinting eyes behind plain wire spectacles, a small moustache and a thin mouth. His hands were small, soft and effeminate, the fingers long. Heinrici noted the texture of his skin, which was “pale, sagging and somewhat spongy.”

Himmler came forward, exchanged greetings, and immediately launched into a long explanation. “You must understand,” he said, taking Heinrici’s arm, “that it is a most difficult decision for me to leave the Army Group Vistula.” Still talking, he showed Heinrici to a chair. “But as you must know, I have so many posts, so much work to do—and also, I’m not in very good health.”

Seating himself behind the desk, Himmler leaned back and said: “Now, I’m going to tell you all that has happened. I’ve asked for all the maps, all the reports.” Two SS men came into the room; one was a stenographer, the other carried a large stack of maps. Behind them came two staff officers. Heinrici was happy to see that the officers wore Wehrmacht, not SS, uniforms. One of them was Lieutenant General Eberhard Kinzel, the Deputy Chief of Staff; the other, Colonel Hans Georg Eismann, the Chief of Operations. Heinrici was particularly glad to see Eismann, whom he knew as an exceptionally efficient staff officer. Lammerding was not present.

Himmler waited until all had taken seats. Then he launched into a dramatic speech of personal justification. It seemed afterward to Heinrici that “he began with Adam and Eve,” and then went into such laborious explanatory details that “nothing he said made sense.”

Both Kinzel and Eismann knew that Himmler could talk like this for hours. Kinzel after a few minutes took his leave because of “pressing business.” Eismann sat watching Himmler and Heinrici, mentally comparing them. He saw Heinrici, a “persevering, graying old soldier—a serious, silent, taut little man for whom courtesy was a thing taken for granted,” being subjected to the flamboyant ranting of an unsoldierly upstart “who could not read the scale on a map.” Looking at the wildly gesturing Himmler “repeating over and over the most unimportant facts in a theatrical tirade,” he knew that Heinrici must be both shocked and disgusted.

Eismann waited as long as he could, then he, too, asked to be excused because “there was much to do.” A few minutes later, Heinrici noticed that the stenographer, unable to keep abreast of Himmler’s verbal torrent, had put down his pencil. Heinrici, bored beyond belief, sat silently, letting the words flow over him.

Suddenly the phone on Himmler’s desk rang. Himmler picked it up and listened for a moment. He looked startled. He handed the phone to Heinrici. “You’re the new commander,” he said. “You’d better take this call.”

Heinrici picked up the phone. He said: “Heinrici here, who is this?”

It was General Busse, commander of the Ninth Army. Heinrici froze as he listened. Disaster had already befallen his new command. The Russians had spotted Busse’s preparations for the Küstrin attack. The 25th Panzer Division, one of Busse’s best, which for months had held the corridor open between the Russian bridgeheads on either side of Küstrin, had been quietly pulling out of its positions in preparation for the offensive. Another division, the 20th Panzer, had been moving into the 25th’s positions. The Russians had seen the exchange and attacked from the north and south. The pincers had snapped shut, just as Guderian had feared. The 20th Panzer Division was cut off, Küstrin was isolated—and the Russians now had a major bridgehead for the assault on Berlin.

Heinrici cupped the phone and grimly told Himmler the news. The Reichsführer looked nervous and shrugged his shoulders. “Well,” he said, “you are commander of Army Group Vistula.”

Heinrici stared. “Now look here,” he said sharply. “I don’t know a damn thing about the army group. I don’t even know what soldiers I have, or who’s supposed to be where.”

Himmler looked blankly at Heinrici and Heinrici saw that he could expect no help. He turned back to the phone and immediately authorized Busse to counterattack, at the same time promising the Ninth Army commander that he would get to the front as soon as possible. As he replaced the receiver, Himmler began his rambling discourse again as though nothing had happened.

But Heinrici was now thoroughly exasperated. Bluntly he interrupted. It was necessary, he told Himmler, that he get the Reichsführer’s considered opinion of the overall situation as far as Germany and her future were concerned. The question, he later remembered, “was visibly disagreeable” to Himmler. The Reichsführer rose from his chair, came around the desk and, taking Heinrici’s arm, ushered him across to a sofa on the far side of the room, out of earshot of the stenographer. Then in a quiet voice Himmler dropped a bombshell. “Through a neutral country,” he confided, “I have taken the necessary steps to start negotiations with the West.” He paused, and added: “I’m telling you this in absolute confidence, you understand.”

There was a long silence. Himmler looked at Heinrici expectantly—presumably awaiting some comment. Heinrici was stunned. This was treason—betrayal of Germany, its armies and its leaders. He struggled to control his thoughts. Was Himmler telling the truth? Or was it a ruse to trick him into an indiscretion? The ambitious Himmler, Heinrici believed, was capable of anything—even of treason in order to grab power for himself. The experienced front-line General sat speechless, revolted by Himmler’s very presence.

Suddenly the door opened and an SS officer appeared. Himmler seemed relieved at the interruption. “Herr Reichsführer,” the officer announced, “the staff has assembled to say good-bye.” Himmler rose and, without uttering another word, left the room.

By 8 P.M. Himmler, his SS officers and bodyguard were gone. They took everything with them, including, as Balzen, Heinrici’s batman, soon discovered, the mansion’s flatware, plates, even cups and saucers. Their departure was so complete that it was almost as though Himmler had never set foot inside the headquarters. Aboard his luxurious private train, Himmler headed swiftly into the night away from the Oder front, toward the west.

Behind him he left a furious Heinrici. The new commander’s anger and disgust mounted as he looked about his headquarters; one of his officers remembers that “Heinrici’s temper rose several degrees” as he examined the effeminate decor of Himmler’s mansion. The enormous office and everything in it was white. The bedroom was decorated in soft green—drapes, carpeting, upholstery, even the quilts and coverlets. Heinrici acidly remarked that the place was more “appropriate for an elegant woman than a soldier trying to direct an army.”

Later that night Heinrici telephoned his former Chief of Staff in Silesia, as he had promised, and told him what had occurred. He had regained control of his emotions, and could think of the encounter more coolly. Himmler’s disclosures, he had decided, were too fantastic to believe. Heinrici decided to forget about it. On the phone to his old colleague in Silesia, Heinrici said, “Himmler was only too happy to leave. He couldn’t get out of here fast enough. He didn’t want to be in charge when the collapse comes. No. He wanted just a simple general for that—and I’m the goat.”

In the room assigned him, Heinrici’s aide, Captain Heinrich von Bila, paced restlessly up and down. He was unable to get his mind off the map he had seen at Guderian’s headquarters at Zossen. It was odd, he thought, that no one had objected when he studied it—yet the map was obviously a confidential command document. Guderian must have shown it to him, but Heinrici had made no comment. Was it possible therefore that the map was less important than he believed? Maybe it had even been prepared at Guderian’s headquarters—as a German estimate of Allied intentions. Still, Von Bila found that hard to accept—why print it in English, not German? There was only one other explanation: that it was an Allied map, captured somehow by German Intelligence. Where else could it have come from? If this was true—and Von Bila could think of no other answer—then somehow he had to warn his wife and three children. According to that map, if Germany was defeated, his home in Bernberg would lie in the zone controlled by the Russians. For unless Von Bila was imagining things, he had actually seen a top-secret plan showing how the Allies proposed to occupy and partition Germany.

5

FIFTY MILES AWAY, the original of the map and its supporting papers lay in a safe at Auf dem Grat 1, Dahlem, Berlin—the emergency headquarters of Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations of OKW (Armed Forces High Command). And of all the fantastic secrets that had come into the hands of German Intelligence during the war, this red-covered dossier was the most brutally revealing document Jodl had ever read.

The file contained a letter and a seventy-page background memorandum; stitched into the back cover were two pull-out maps, each approximately twenty by eighteen inches and drawn to a scale of one inch to twenty-nine miles. Jodl wondered if the Allies had yet discovered that a copy of the preamble to one of their top-secret war directives was missing. It had been captured from the British in late January, in the closing days of the Ardennes offensive.

The Allied plan was considered so explosive by Hitler that only a few at OKW headquarters were permitted to see it. In the first week of February, the Führer, after spending one entire evening studying the dossier, classified the papers as “State Top Secret.” His military advisers and their staffs could study the plan, but no one else. Not even the members of his own cabinet were informed. But, despite these restrictions, one civilian saw the documents and maps: Frau Luise Jodl, the General’s bride of only a few weeks.

One evening, just before their marriage, General Jodl decided to show the papers to his fiancée. She was, after all, the recipient of many military secrets: she had been a confidential secretary to the German High Command. Placing the entire file in his briefcase. General Jodl took it to her apartment, a block away from his headquarters. Almost as soon as the front door was safely closed behind him, he produced the papers and said to his fiancée: “That’s what the Allies intend to do with Germany.”

Luise took the red-covered file over to a table and began looking through the pages. She had long ago learned to read military documents and maps, but in this instance that ability was hardly necessary—the papers were crystal clear. Her heart sank. What she held in her hands was the Allied blueprint for the occupation of the Fatherland after Germany’s defeat. Someone at Eisenhower’s headquarters, she thought, had a vindictive bent in choosing code words. Across the cover of the file was the chilling title, “Operation Eclipse.”

Taking the dossier from her, General Jodl unfolded the maps and spread them flat on the table. “Look,” he said bitterly, “look at the frontiers.”

In silence Luise studied the heavy boundary lines drawn across the face of the map. The north and northwest area bore the inch-high initials “U.K.” The southern, Bavarian zone carried the letters “U.S.A.,” and the remainder of the Reich, roughly the entire central region and from there due east, was labeled “U.S.S.R.” Even Berlin, she noted with dismay, was sliced up among the “Big Three.” Lying in the center of the Russian zone, it was circled separately and trisected among the Allies: the Americans had the south; the British part of the north and all of the northwest; and the Soviets the northeast and east. So this was to be the price of defeat, she thought. Luise looked at her future husband. “It’s like a nightmare,” she said.

Even though she knew the map must be genuine, Luise found the evidence difficult to accept. Where, she asked, had the Eclipse file come from? Although she had known General Jodl for years, she knew that about some things he could be very closemouthed. She had always thought Alfred “withdrawn, hiding behind a mask, even from me.” Now his answer was evasive. Although confirming that the maps and documents were genuine, he did not reveal how they were obtained, except to remark that “we got them from a British headquarters.”

It was only much later, after Jodl had returned to his headquarters, that another fearful aspect of Operation Eclipse occurred to Luise. If Germany was defeated, her relatives in the Harz Mountains would be living in the Russian-occupied zone. Although she loved Alfred Jodl and was completely loyal to her country, Luise made a very human decision. On this occasion she would disregard his warnings never to reveal anything she saw, read or heard. She could not allow her sister-in-law and four small children to fall into Russian hands.

Luise decided to take a chance. She knew the General’s priority telephone code number. Picking up the phone, she spoke to the operator and called her relatives. Within minutes she got through. After a brief and innocuous conversation with her surprised sister-in-law, Luise casually remarked in closing, “You know the east wind is very strong these days. I really think you and the children should move west beyond the river.”

Slowly she put down the receiver—hoping that her clumsily coded message had been understood. At the other end of the line, her sister-in-law heard the click as the receiver was replaced. She wondered why Luise had called so late at night. It was good to hear from her, but she had no idea what Luise was talking about. She thought no more about it.

The General and Luise were married on March 6. Since then Frau Jodl had worried that somehow her husband might find out about the call. She need not have been concerned. The overburdened General had more pressing problems.

By now Jodl and his staff officers had studied and analyzed Operation Eclipse so thoroughly that they knew every paragraph almost by heart. Although it was not a strategic document—that is, it did not warn of imminent enemy moves that called for corresponding German countermoves—the Eclipse plan was almost as important. For one thing, it helped answer a series of questions that had bedeviled Jodl and the OKW for years: How strong, they had wondered, was the alliance between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union? Would it fall asunder when they sat down to divide the spoils? Now that Russian forces held most of Central Europe, did the “unconditional surrender” declaration made by Churchill and Roosevelt after the 1943 Casablanca Conference still stand? And did the Allies seriously intend to impose such terms on a defeated Germany? As Jodl and the German High Command studied the Eclipse file, all such questions about Allied intentions disappeared. The Allied document spelled out the answers in unmistakable terms.

Not until the second week in February, however, did Jodl realize the full importance of the file—in particular, of its maps. On February 9 and for the next three days, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in secret conclave at Yalta. In spite of intelligence efforts to find out exactly what had transpired at the meeting, about all Jodl learned was contained in the official communiqué issued to the world’s press on February 12—but that was enough Vague and guarded as the announcement was, it left no doubt that the Eclipse papers and maps were the key to the announced Allied intentions.

One paragraph in the official communiqué stated: “We have agreed on common policies and plans for enforcing the unconditional surrender terms which we shall impose together… These terms will not be made known until the final defeat of Germany.… Under the agreed plan, the forces of the Three Powers will each occupy a separate zone of Germany….” It was not necessary for the Allies to state the “terms”—Jodl had already read them in the Eclipse file. And though the Yalta communiqué did not reveal the proposed zones of occupation, Jodl knew them, too. The position and precise boundaries of each zone were shown on the Eclipse maps.

There were many other conclusions that could be deduced, but one was particularly bitter for Jodl. It was clear that whatever else had occurred at Yalta, the Allied plans for Germany had been merely ratified at the meeting of the Big Three. While the Yalta communiqué gave the impression that the partitioning and occupation blueprint had originated at the meeting, the dates on the Eclipse documents and maps proved beyond doubt that the basic decisions had been reached months before. The covering letter attached to the Eclipse background memorandum was signed in January. The maps had been prepared before that: they had been printed in late ’44 and carried a November date. Plainly, Operation Eclipse, which was defined as “planning and operations for the occupation of Germany,” could never have been produced at all unless there was complete unity among the Allies—a sobering fact that withered one of Germany’s last hopes.

From the moment the Red Army crossed the Reich’s eastern frontiers, Hitler and his military advisers had waited for the first cracks of disunity to appear among the Allies. It would surely happen, they believed, because the West would never allow Soviet Russia to dominate Central Europe. Jodl shared these views. He was banking especially on the British, for he felt that they would never tolerate such a situation.[6] But that was before he set eyes on Operation Eclipse. Eclipse indicated clearly that the alliance was still intact and Yalta had confirmed it.

Beyond that, the very first paragraph of the covering letter—a foreword to the entire file—showed the complete agreement among the Allies. It read: “In order to carry out the surrender terms imposed on Germany, the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom (the latter also in the name of the Dominions) have agreed that Germany is to be occupied by the Armed Forces of the three powers.[7] And there was no disputing the authority of the letter. It had been signed in January, 1945, at the British Twenty-first Army Group Headquarters, then in Belgium, by no less a personage than Major General Sir Francis de Guingand, Field Marshal Montgomery’s Chief of Staff.

The most crushing blow of all for Jodl was the repeated emphasis on unconditional surrender; it was mentioned again and again. From the beginning the Germans had felt sure the unconditional surrender declaration had been intended much as morale-building propaganda for the Allied home fronts. Now they knew better: the Allies had obviously meant every word of it. “The only possible answer to the trumpets of total war,” Eclipse said, “is total defeat and total occupation…. It must be made clear that the Germans will not be able to negotiate in our sense of that word.”

The Allied intent promised no hope, no future for Germany. It was clear that even if the Reich wished to capitulate, there was no way she could do so short of unconditional surrender. To Jodl, this meant that there was nothing left for Germany but to fight to the bitter end.[8]

It was during the last week of March—the exact day no one could later remember—that General Reinhard Gehlen, Guderian’s Chief of Intelligence, drove to Prenzlau for a meeting with the new commander of Army Group Vistula. In his briefcase was a copy of Operation Eclipse. Gehlen outlined for Heinrici the latest known dispositions of the Russian troops on the Oder, then he produced the Eclipse file and explained what it was. Heinrici slowly looked through the pages. Then he pored over the maps. For a long time he studied them. Finally, Heinrici looked at Gehlen and in one line summarized what everyone in the High Command really knew the document to mean. “Das ist ein Todesurteil”—This is a death sentence—he said.

A few days later—on Palm Sunday, March 25—Colonel General Jodl examined the Eclipse maps again. He had good reason to do so. Units of General George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army had crossed the Rhine on Thursday night at the farming village of Oppenheim, near Mainz, and were now heading for Frankfurt. The following day, in the north, Field Marshal Montgomery’s forces swept across the river in a massive assault on a 25-mile front. Despite everything, the Rhine line was crumbling—and the Western Allies were driving fast. Now Jodl, anxiously reexamining the Eclipse maps, wondered how deeply the Allies intended to drive into Germany. That was one question the Eclipse background memorandum did not answer. Jodl wished he had the other sections of the plan—particularly the part covering military operations.

Still, the maps provided a clue. He had even mentioned the matter to his wife. It was only a hunch, but Jodl thought he was right. The maps showed that the line of demarcation between the Anglo-Americans and the Russians ran roughly along the river Elbe from Lübeck to Wittenberge, and from there coiled south to the vicinity of Eisenach, then swung due east to the Czech border. Was that line, besides being a zonal boundary, also the terminating point of the Anglo-American advance? Jodl was nearly certain that it was. He told his wife he did not think the Americans and British were driving for Berlin; he believed they had decided to leave the capture of the capital to the Red Army. Unless the Eclipse maps had been changed, it looked to Jodl as though Eisenhower’s forces would grind to a halt on the Eclipse boundary line.

THE DEFENDERS