The Leader And The Damned

Chapter Three

Martin Bormann sat at the nerve centre of the huge power apparatus which controlled the movement of millions of armed men, vast fleets of planes and columns of tanks and guns – one of the greatest war machines assembled in history.

He sat inside the Lagebaracke, a single-storey wooden building which housed the room where Hitler held his twice-daily military conferences at noon and midnight; the telephone system which relayed the Fuhrer's orders throughout his huge empire; a cloakroom, a washroom and an entrance hall.

The Lagebaracke was located at the heart of Security Ring A, the heavily cordoned-off Wolf's Lair protected by three separate barbed wire fences and a minefield. Elite SS troops patrolled the area and admittance through three checkpoints was strictly controlled by special passes issued by Himmler's chief of security.

Bormann sat alone with the telephone on the table, thinking carefully before he picked up the receiver and gave the orders on which the fate of Germany hung. So far his precautions had concealed the catastrophe. Kempner, Vogel's second-in-command, had arrived earlier and spread the story that the Fuhrer's plane – delayed by bad weather – had landed at another airfield.

Returning to the Wolf's Lair, Bormann had met Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, the Fuhrer's Chief of Operations. Jodl had helpfully supplied his own explanation for the delay.

'I suppose this is another of his sudden changes of schedule – to foil any assassination attempt?' 'Possibly,' Bormann had replied.

'And the next conference with the Fuhrer will be noon tomorrow?'

'That is the present intention,' Bormann agreed cautiously.

'Now, alone in the Lagebaracke, the meticulous Bormann studied the list of names he had written down on a scratch pad. Timing was everything if he was to pull off this coup – timing and the sequence of events which must be fitted together like a cleverly designed jigsaw. He studied the list of names afresh.

Commandant, Berghof

Kuby

Reiter, SS, Smolensk

Schulz, SS, Berlin

Vogel, SS, Wolf's Lair

His decision taken, he picked up the phone and asked to be put through immediately to the Commandant at the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden on what had once been the frontier between Austria and Germany before the Anschluss incorporated Austria into the Greater German Reich. His conversation with the Commandant was terse and to the point. . so you have understood your instructions perfectly? Kuby is to be flown here tomorrow in a Condor – it must be a Condor – and the markings on the plane, are to be exactly as I have specified. Now, put me on to Kuby himself…'

His instructions to Heinz Kuby were equally curt and brief.

'I will meet you personally at the airfield and brief you before we proceed to the Wolf's Lair. You know exactly what you have to do?'

'I have no doubt at all in my mind,' the familiar voice replied. 'The fate of Germany is in my hands.

'Don't overdo it,' Bormann interjected coldly. 'Everything depends on my briefing when you arrive here at the airfield.'

He put down the phone. Despite the rebuke Bormann, felt relieved, suddenly realized that for the first time he himself was convinced that it could work. God in heaven, it had to work or he would be dead within days. His next call was the really dangerous one, the call to Otto Reiter, chief of the SS guard at Smolensk. The trick, he decided, was to let Reiter do most of the talking. He ticked off from his list Commandant, the Berghof, and Kuby while he waited for the Smolensk call to come through.

'Bormann here,' he announced when Reiter came on the phone, 'I am calling by order of the Fuhrer. You were in charge of the guard which watched over his plane while he conferred with Field Marshal von Kluge?'

'Yes, Reichsleiter. I personally supervised all checks while the machine was on the ground.' There was a hint of pride verging on arrogance in Reiter's voice. Bormann smiled thinly; the idiot was obviously hoping for promotion or even decoration.

'While the plane was waiting did anything unusual happen? Did anyone at all approach or go aboard the aircraft?'

'Reichsleiter, is there something wrong?' The arrogance had been replaced by anxiety.

'Yes – you have not answered my question.'

Words began tumbling across the wire as Reiter explained. 'I can think of nothing unusual. The most strict precautions were taken, I assure you. When General von Tresckow took a package on board I examined it personally. He was not pleased, I can tell you. But I know my duty, Reichsleiter. This package contained two bottles of brandy. I even noticed the make,' he continued. 'It was Courvoisier. No one else boarded the machine until the Fuhrer himself left Smolensk…'

'Obviously this has nothing to do with von Tresckow,' Bormann interjected smoothly. 'A map appears to be missing from the Fuhrer's briefcase – but now I am sure we shall find it here.'

'My story can be confirmed by Lieutenant Schlabrendorff who is coming to the Wolf's Lair via Berlin – he is von Tresckow's aide..

Bormann froze. He decided Schlabrendorff's visit must be postponed until after the plane from the Salzburg airstrip arrived.. What later happened was that Tresckow's aide was stopped from approaching the aircraft and – to cover his failure – returned to Berlin and reported to his chief he had removed the unexploded bomb, dismantling it on the train and throwing the pieces out of the window. Bormann resumed talking to Reiter.

'No confirmation is necessary. Put me on to Field Marshal von Kluge at once.'

When von Kluge came on the line Bormann explained that with his eye for even the smallest detail the Fuhrer had observed that Otto Reiter had performed sloppily while he was at Smolensk. 'Please arrange for him to be sent to the front to join an SS division today. By order of the Fuhrer!'

Von Kluge, puzzled and a little irritated that Hitler should bother himself with such details, was not entirely surprised. The Fuhrer seemed to miss nothing. He acted at once on the instruction. Reiter never reached the front. On his way a long-range Soviet shell burst within metres of the vehicle he was travelling in and he died instantly. When the news reached Bormann he crossed Reiter's name off the list.

His next call was to Rainer Schulz, commander of a special SS execution team then stationed in Berlin. Again the conversation was brief, but this time Bormann did most of the talking.

1.. you have been here once before, Schulz… we went for a drive in the Kubelwagen, so you know the spot… the lake which is little more than a large swamp… you remain hidden until they have sunk the trucks…'

'It seems an extreme measure,' Schulz ventured cautiously, 'the killing of twenty men…'

'One of whom, as I have already told you, is a spy. Since we cannot detect which one, all must go. Realize – this man, whoever he may be – has access to the Wolf's Lair Needless to say, you do not come with your men anywhere near Security Ring A. As soon as the job is done you return to Berlin under oath of secrecy. By order of the Fuhrer!'

' Heil Hitler, Reichsleiter..

'One more thing. We have uncovered another member of the underground – no less than the Commandant at the Berghof. As soon as you return to Berlin you will fly to Berchtesgaden alone and deal with him, too. It must be made to look like an accident. Understood?'

'I will begin my preparations' at once, Reichsleiter..

During the night of 13 March -14 March, Alois Vogel, commander of the Wolf's Lair SS guard, drove his men mercilessly in the bitter cold to remove every trace of the plane crash. With the aid of powerful mobile lamps mounted on trucks the area was scoured for every trace of the wrecked plane and the grisly remnants of bodies.

Vogel himself, whose maxim was 'thoroughness', spotted the machine's tail perched at a crazy angle in the fork of a huge pine. By some miracle almost intact, it was added to the human debris Piled aboard three trucks. It was close to dawn before he was satisfied they had removed every trace of the disaster.

'Now place the mine and detonate it,' he ordered one of his men as the three trucks rumbled off a safe distance down one of the tracks leading through the forest towards the lake. The mine was buried deep to muffle the explosion. The blast of the explosion smashed and scarred a few more trees – but now there was an explanation for the scene of destruction if anyone wandered into this part of the woods.

'To the lake!' he shouted, jumping aboard the last truck.

By four o'clock in the morning of 14 March Vogel and his twenty men had completed the first part of their task. The contents of the three trucks – the remains of the Condor and its passengers – had been shovelled into the snow by the edge of the swampy lake, petrol had been poured over them, ignited and the shrivelled remnants had been shovelled back inside one of the trucks.

'Now all we have to do is to sink the trucks,' Vogel told his exhausted men. 'The sooner the job is done the sooner we can get back to our warm beds…'

The driver of the first truck revved up his engine, pausing to make sure the door by his side was wide open. In the headlights he saw the mist rising from the dank waters of the muddy lake which was little more than a quagmire coated with ice – thin ice beneath which lay a mixture of mud and water. It was not a task he relished: he had to drive the truck forward at speed and jump clear at the last moment. Several of his comrades stood by the edge of the lake waiting to help him. Taking a deep breath, he released the brake and sped forward.

In his eagerness to complete the task properly – Vogel was a man who expected nothing less than perfection – he almost jumped out too late. The truck roared on past him as he landed and felt his legs sinking into the ooze just beneath the ice which crackled and gave way like glass. Two men grabbed his arms and hauled him clear, his boots covered with slime. From a safer distance Vogel watched the truck dive forward, its headlights vanish, followed by the rear light. The vehicle settled, sinking out of sight beneath the surface.

'Come on! Hurry it up!'

He waved the second truck forward which entered the lake a few metres away from the first. The driver, having seen what almost happened to the previous truck's driver, jumped earlier. Then the third truck was driven into the swamp. Now the only evidence of what had just taken place was the shattered ice and it was so cold a fresh film began forming almost at once. Vogel gathered his men round him.

'I think a little liquid refreshment is called for,' he announced and produced- a flask of vodka Bormann had given to him earlier. They were standing bunched together, passing round the flask when a dazzle of blinding lights illuminated them.

Earlier, Rainer Schulz, commander of the special ten-man execution team, recently returned from the Russian front, had flown his men to the airfield near the Wolf's Lair in a transport plane. Inside the machine his men huddled together for warmth a short distance from the five motorcycles with outrider cars they had loaded aboard the machine in Berlin.

The controller of the airfield had been told by Bormann himself to expect the new arrivals who would land in the early hours of the morning. He was given the special code signal the pilot of the plane would use when approaching the airfield: ' Dragon '. The macabre implications of the word totally escaped the controller.

'They have come to replace the present security guard,' Bormann had explained. 'Men grow stale after a while performing the same duties. I do not have to tell you how important it is that the security team remains constantly on the alert… by order of the Fuhrer!' he had ended.

By order of the Fuhrer! Time and again these five words, repeated with almost regular monotony, gave Bormann the immense power he wielded on Hitler's behalf. It had reached the pitch where no one throughout the whole of Germany dreamed of questioning such a command.

At three-thirty in the morning, aided by the landing lights briefly switched on, the transport plane landed and cruised to a halt on the runway. Everything went as smoothly as clockwork; Rainer Schulz was a meticulous organizer. Seated now in the side-car of the first motorbike, a Schmeisser machine pistol resting in his lap, he waited while the ramp was lowered before giving the order.

'Go! I will guide you..'

The motorbike and side-car cavalcade, led by Schulz, left the aircraft whose propellers were still spinning and headed for the exit gates which were already open. Turning right, away from the Wolf's Lair, the cavalcade plunged off the road onto a track leading into the forest.

Behind Schulz his other eight men also sat on their machines, and each man in the outrider car was armed with a machine-pistol and several spare magazines. The headlights of Schulz's motorbike shone on the deserted track, showed up a palisade of pines and the drifting mist.

They proceeded at a steady pace, guided by their leader who had a phenomenal memory for geography. He only had to follow a route once and it was engraved on his memory for ever. He had, as a precaution, brought a detailed map of the area, but he did not once refer to it as he led his column over the ice-rutted, bumpy track through the frozen forest, his only guide the beam of the motorbike's headlight.

'Halt! Dismount! We proceed from here on foot..

Schulz again led the way, holding his machine- pistol loosely. All the lights of the motorcycles and side-cars had been extinguished. From his neck a pair of night-glasses was slung, but his excellent vision in the dark took him down the broad track without their aid. The aroma of the drifting mist mingled with damp pine foliage scent in his nostrils as he moved silently forward.

Behind him, as previously ordered, six of his men – in three pairs – pushed their machines as the side-cars wobbled over the icy ruts. Their weapons were loaded in the side-cars. The only sound in the eery mist-bound forest was the occasional crunch of a wheel as it broke ice in a rut. Padded against the bitter cold in his leather greatcoat, Schulz paused.

'Get those machines off the track onto the grass,' he ordered. 'I want you to make less noise than a column of mice..

Having given the order, he moved ahead of the main body with only one man. They were nearing the lake. Turning a corner of the track, he stopped and raised his night-glasses. The lake was in view, mist like steam rising from its surface. At that moment one of Alois Vogel's men struck a match to light his cigarette, his stomach savouring the warmth of the vodka he had just swallowed. Vogel's team had only recently sent the third truck to its watery oblivion under the ice of the lake.

'Very convenient,' Schulz commented in a whisper to his subordinate. 'They are all bunched together. Place the bikes in position and await my order.'

The three motorbikes and side-cars were manhandled some distance apart, their headlights aimed to illuminate Vogel and his group of men from different angles. Schulz perched himself with his backside on the seat of one bike, =looped his machine-pistol and steadied the weapon for firing.

'Everyone is ready,' his subordinate reported to him.

'Proceed,' Schulz ordered.

Synchronization was perfect. The lights came on, their beams illuminating and blinding the targets. The forest silence was shattered briefly by the murderous crossfire of the machine-pistols.

Vogel and his men were slaughtered and so swiftly that not a single individual had time to reach for his weapon. In the glare of the headlight beams they crumpled like matchstick men, falling in grotesque attitudes, often one man toppling on top of his comrade. In less than a minute it was all over. Schulz rammed a fresh magazine into his weapon and walked slowly forward, his grey bleak eyes searching for any sign of survival.

He thought he saw one man twitch and emptied half the magazine into the heap the man lay atop of. He had no particular reaction to what had just happened, no thought as to which of the bodies had been the spy Bormann had spoken of. It was just an order to be carried out, an action his special SS team had accomplished against Soviet guerrillas time and again on the Russian front.

'Proceed to the next phase,' he told his second-in-command.

He waited while his team stripped the corpses of the SS men until they lay naked in the snow, their uniforms and the contents of their pockets neatly stacked in a separate pile. Schulz himself fetched a jerrican filled with petrol, poured it over the pile and set light to it.

By the illumination from the blaze he watched as his men completed their task systematically. A pair would take the body of one of the dead SS men by the shoulders and the ankles, swing the body back and forwards and then hurl it as far as possible out across the lake. The bodies disappeared beneath the freshly-forming ice, following the three trucks they had themselves consigned to the dark waters.

Schulz watched the macabre scene with an expressionless face. He knew the Masurian lakes. The bodies would sink deep into the foul ooze, would lie frozen there until spring. And even then they would not surface. It was never really warm in East Prussia. Embedded in the ooze, they would remain there until they disintegrated.

'Now, the uniforms and the clutter..

Two men with shovels carefully scooped up the red-hot embers of the fire Schulz had lit and cast them into one of the broken areas of the lake where the ice had cracked as a body went through it. There was a sizzle, a brief puff of steam. Only when he was, satisfied they had removed every trace did Schulz give his next order.

'Back to the Wolf's Lair airfield.- back to Berlin. And hurry it up – I have an appointment…'

Mentally to himself Schulz added the words, '.. with the Commandant of the Berghof at Berchtesgaden.'

14 March 1943. Almost eight hours later Reichsleiter Bormann was again waiting at the airfield which served the Wolf's Lair, watching a Condor land at the airstrip. As before, he waited alone except for the new team of SS guards which had been flown in earlier from Munich.

As he had mentioned to Colonel-General Jodl, 'The Fuhrer was warned that a spy had been infiltrated into the previous SS team. Which may explain certain mysterious happenings. So, the whole bodyguard has been flown to the Russian front and replaced by a group of fresh men.'

Certain mysterious happenings. Jodl had no need to enquire as to the meaning of the phrase. For some time the Russian High Command had always seemed to have advance warning of impending German attacks – as though someone at the Wolf's Lair was transmitting the Fuhrer's plans to Stalin as soon as he made his decisions.

'Rather drastic,' had been Jodl's only comment. 'Sending all the section for the sake of one man…'.

'It was the only way. By order of the Fuhrer,' Bormann had intoned.

The new Condor cruised to a stop between the landing lights which were immediately switched off. In the. gloom Bormann walked forward as the plane door opened, the flight of steps was lowered and the single passenger ran down them at a jaunty pace.

Exchanging a few words with the passenger, Bormann led him to a waiting six-seater Mercedes with a running-board and magnificent headlamps. Bormann opened the rear door, saluted and followed the passenger inside. He slammed the door and no time was wasted. The engine was running and the moment the two men had settled themselves the driver released the brake and headed away from the airfield in the direction of the Wolf's Lair. The Mercedes was preceded by a motorcycle escort of the fresh SS team while another escort brought up the rear. Bormann handed the new arrival a map marked with the walking-path through the minefields in the forest. 'For when you feel like a little exercise…'

During the drive Bormann talked at length with his passenger who merely nodded and stared ahead. This lack of reaction surprised Bormann and was the first time he sensed events were not going to take the course he had planned. A glass partition separated them from the driver who was not able to hear one word of the conversation. The car swept past Checkpoint One and then past Checkpoint Two, pulling up in front of Security Ring A.

Inside the Lagebaracke Hitler's military staff waited, poring over a large-scale map of Russia spread out over a table. A feeling of tension pervaded the large room, which was normal on such occasions. Jodl was irked by the fact that the lights were dim and flickered frequently, although he knew the reason. Bormann had explained earlier what was happening.

`There has been an interruption to the power supply – it is probably a technical fault although the possibility of sabotage is being investigated. But for the military conference we have to rely on the emergency generator..

Jodl was occupying himself by commenting on the disposition of the German forces on the Eastern Front to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, a stern-faced man whose immobile expression concealed the fact that he was an orthodox professional soldier of the old school. In other words, like most generals on both sides – with the exception of Guderian, Montgomery and McArthur – he had never had an original thought in his life. He simply did what Hitler told him to.

'He's coming..,'

Keitel had been the first to hear the car pull up outside. All conversation ceased. All eyes turned to the doorway. The sense of tension increased. What mood would he be in, everyone was wondering nervously. He was so unpredictable – and only the more intelligent Jodl suspected that this was how their chief kept everyone off balance. The door opened.

Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed Forces, strode into the room. He was wearing his military greatcoat, flecked with snowflakes collected during the short walk from the car to the building, and his peaked cap surmounted with the German eagle clutching the swastika in its claws.

He stood in the doorway, his face grim as he surveyed the gathering while Bormann helped him off with his greatcoat and cap. The famous forelock drooped on his forehead, his protuberant eyes stared hard at Keitel. 'Christ,' the Field Marshal thought, 'he's in a bad mood.'

Hitler strode to the head of the table and adopted a characteristic gesture, clasping his hands behind his back as he stood in the shadows and glared at the map on the table. For a whole minute he didn't speak and Bormann remained impassive, hiding his intense nervousness. The silence was suddenly broken.

'Give me a full report on the present situation – and in all details '

He had barked out the command, his accent still showing traces of his Austrian origins which he had never eradicated from his speech. He listened in silence as Jodl spoke. His expression still grim although in the dim lighting his figure was little more than a motionless silhouette. When the General completed his survey the familiar figure looked round the room. His tone was harsh.

'The flight back from Smolensk was tiring. Everyone will be here for the midday conference tomorrow. I will then announce the details of the new offensive to be launched against the Red Army without delay…'

As he marched out of the room Bormann prepared to follow him to his quarters but Hitler brushed him aside. Bormann preserved an impassive countenance but inwardly he was bewildered and disturbed.

To explain the phenomenon which took place at the Wolf's Lair on 14 March 1943 it is necessary to go back four days – and then five years to the golden days of 1938.