Gold From Crete (18 page)

‘What a nerve you must have!’ said the lieutenant-commander admiringly. Then he looked at the Dutchman’s face again, and it was as white as paper, and the big hands were trembling violently.

‘Thank God you camel’ said Schuylenboeck. His lips were trembling, too, and all his big solid face seemed as though it was melting, collapsing, and there was sweat pouring down the heavy cheeks.

‘Thank God you came!’ repeated Schuylenboeck, and the lieutenant-commander was inclined ignorantly to revise his estimate.

Introduction

The title tells you what this story is about. So often it has been said, if Hitler had made the attempt to invade Britain after the evacuation of Dunkirk, he would have won the war, that it is worth analysing his chances. He must be given in this narrative every possible chance, but none of the impossible ones. Before war began he had made no plans, and certainly no preparations, for the invasion of Britain; if he had, history would have taken a different course from that moment. If he had begun to build a fleet of landing craft in 1938, for instance, the British attitude at Munich might well have been different, and certainly British re-armament would have been more rapid. And it must be remembered that with the German economy at full stretch for war production, such a fleet could only have been built at the cost of a diminished output of planes or guns or tanks or submarines.

With the outbreak of war, and even after the destruction of Poland, the same arguments apply. A life-and-death campaign awaited him in France and the Low Countries; until the defeat of France was certain, he could spare nothing for any other venture. Even Hitler’s optimistic intuition did not envisage a victory as cheap and as rapid as the one he actually achieved, and we know now that even after Dunkirk every available man and machine was earmarked for the final assault upon France. A more brilliant general, or one gifted with even more acute intuition than Hitler’s, might nevertheless have realized that it was not necessary to let loose all his forces to complete the overthrow of France, and might have held back some divisions and squadrons to prepare the earliest possible attack upon England.

As Hitler himself pointed out, time was on England’s side. Every day that went by afforded the British troops that had been brought back from the Continent a greater chance to recover, to reorganize and, at least to some extent, to re-arm. The evacuation from Dunkirk continued until June 4th, 1940. The end of September would bring weather conditions that would make invasion impossible; but by the end of September England already had a garrison large enough and well enough trained to make invasion utterly disastrous in any case.

Hitler’s best chance was to strike at the earliest possible moment, to start his preparations, the instant Dunkirk fell. He could not await the result of the Battle of Britain, for he was defeated in that battle, nor was it decided until September. He had to do everything at once; he had to hurl a minimum force against France; he had to scrape together the means of transporting the remainder across the Channel; and that meant that he had to think quickly enough to stop the remains of his navy, already weakened by its losses in the Norwegian campaign, from sailing on its luckless second excursion to Narvik - it actually sailed on that fatal June 4th. He had to plan, train and execute. He had to make the best use of every possible moment. And if he had done so? Let us see.

I

The smoke was still lying along the edge of the sea, obscuring the beaches and the harbour, as the German troops came cautiously forward, past the burning buildings, among the littered dead, to receive the surrender of the last few British troops, of the last few thousand French troops, who had covered the miraculous withdrawal. The wrecks still smouldered in the shallows; the wounded still lay beside the sea wall blanched and dying. And the prisoners had fought a ten-day battle without rest. They were spiritless not only because defeat had taken the heart out of them but also because they had reached the limit of fatigue. Weariness made them shamble rather than march; weariness bowed their heads and bent their shoulders.

It was a German major-general commanding panzer troops who wrote the report that changed the course of history. Brilliant soldier though he was, quick-witted, brave, thrusting, fearless of responsibility, he nevertheless had that cold military mind which could not understand the working of other minds. He stood up in his command car and looked, analytically and yet without sympathy, at the spiritless column, and he felt only contempt. When he sat down an hour later to write his report, that contempt still persisted and was evident in every word he wrote.

It was late in the morning, as was Hitler’s custom, that he emerged from his sleeping room. At his appearance the staff officers in the operations room ceased their work on the maps where they were marking the present situation and sprang stiffly to attention. Hitler briefly acknowledged their salutes and hurried to the central table with its huge map.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

Von Brauchitsch was at his side in a flash.

‘The last resistance has ceased at Dunkirk,
mein Führer’
he said. ‘The only British soldiers left are prisoners.’

‘The Battle of Belgium has ended in total victory,
mein Führer
,’ said Keitel.

‘Sieg heil!’
someone cried, and the cry was instantly taken up by the others.
‘Sieg heil! Sieg heil!’

Hitler stood bathing in the enthusiasm as a man might bathe in sunshine; as the cheering died away Keitel, the toady, added a further contribution to the congratulations.

‘The last report describes the British Army as utterly demoralized,’ he said, and turned and snapped at an officer behind him. ‘Where’s that final report from Dunkirk?’

The officer hastened out to find it, while Hitler glanced down at the map again, to look up at once with a question. ‘Any activity on the part of the French Army?’

‘None,
mein Führer
,’ answered Von Brauchitsch. ‘Kluge and Hoth and Manstein are ready to attack.’

‘And the French are ready to collapse,’ replied Hitler meditatively.

At this moment the staff officer re-entered the room and handed the report to Keitel; Hitler observed the action and gave an inquiring glance.

‘This is the relevant paragraph of the report,
mein Führer
said Keitel. ‘ “The appearance of the prisoners confirmed the impression that the greatest demoralization exists in the enemy forces. Preliminary questioning indicates that they are convinced the war is lost.” ‘

‘So?’ said Hitler, meditatively still. ‘The British capitalists are feeling the impact of war at last. And now?’ Suddenly he reached a decision; his extended hand clenched into a fist, and the fist struck the table a blow which echoed in the quiet room. ‘We will move against England this moment,’ he said. ‘What’s the need of a hundred and thirty divisions to conquer France? We can spare a dozen. We can spare twenty to follow up a beaten enemy. Mark them off, Von Brauchitsch. That one - that one - that one. Eleven infantry divisions. Those two panzer corps.’

‘Two panzer corps,
mein Führer
?’ questioned Von Brauchitsch deprecatingly.

‘We can spare them. Take Von Rundstedt out of the line to command them. Give the rest of his army group to List. Von Rundstedt can begin to make his plans for the invasion of England from this moment. I want those divisions to start moving to the coast today. Assign Sperrle and the Third Air Fleet--’

‘A whole air fleet,
mein Führer
?’

‘You heard what I said! I want plans from Sperrle instantly. Tell Göring. Send for Raeder - he must go to work at once. Keitel, Jodi, I want a Fuhrer Order drawn up for my signature. I want my army to enter London within three weeks.’

‘London!’ echoed a voice. The whole staff was standing transfixed and silent, staring at the man whose intuition had brought him to a decision which might change the fate of all mankind. It was a scene that would never fade from their memory.

NEW ATTACK LAUNCHED UPON FRANCE, said the headline for anxious Englishmen to read, but in Wilhelmshaven Admiral Lutjens on the bridge of the
Gneisenau
received a message brought him by his breathless chief of staff. It took him only a moment to read, and only a moment longer to decide what to do about it.

‘Make this signal,’ he ordered. ‘Cancel all preparations for sailing.’

‘So the second Narvik expedition ends before it has begun, sir?’ asked the chief of staff.

‘Apparently so.’

‘What are they going to do with us instead, do you think, sir?’

‘We are not sailing north. Perhaps we’ll be sailing south,’ answered Lutjens.

GERMAN ONSLAUGHT WITH MASSES OF TANKS, said the headline, but in the river harbour in Magdeburg a fat and elderly barge captain came stumping out of the barge company’s office back to the
Fritz Reuter
, where his mate and the other hand were at work opening the hatches.

‘You can start putting those back, my boys,’ he said, tapping one hand with the folded instructions he held in the other. ‘Berlin’s not for us. We go empty to Dusseldorf.’

‘Empty to Dusseldorf?’ repeated the mate stupidly.

‘That’s the word. And it’s goodbye to Gretchen for a month or two. Further orders at Dusseldorf.’

FRESH GERMAN MASSES FLUNG IN, said the headline.

But that day a German infantry division came marching into Ostend, with bands playing and the commanding general standing on the corner of the place receiving the salute of the units as they tramped by him. They were well disciplined troops, and as they marched at attention they kept their eyes to the front; it was only when they began to disperse to their billets that the chatter burst out uncontrolled.

‘Ostend! I always said that was where we were going to.’

‘Little Klein who always know everything.’

’But what the devil are we doing here?’ demanded another, ‘We ought to be moving on Paris.’

‘Oh, to hell with it.’

Lacklustre eyes had watched the division marching in. Small interest had been displayed by the inhabitants at this new incursion of the grey-uniformed conquerors. Nevertheless, one inconspicuous old man had stood at the roadside watching idly, his glance straying casually enough from uniform to uniform, from badge to badge. He was just an old man, too feeble apparently to be of any danger to anyone, but his feeble fingers could still tap a key, just for a few brief seconds, a code word and a number, word and number repeated once to make sure. It was the shortest message possible, far too brief to be picked up by the German counter-espionage, which was only now settling down to its duties. The air was crowded with a thousand messages as the battle went on that laid a great nation in the dust; this one reached its destination.

GERMANS REACH THE SEINE! said the headline, and the British public began to foresee that the conquest of Belgium would be followed by the conquest of France.

While that headline was being read, an acrimonious meeting was being conducted between two staffs, half a dozen German naval officers arguing with half a dozen officers of the Luftwaffe.

‘This is the line,’ said the naval captain. ‘Cherbourg to Worthing.’

A map of the English Channel lay before them, and over the water surface of it were ruled two thick black lines, inclining steeply towards each other. The other ran from Hook of Holland to Deal.

‘A hundred and sixty kilometres,’ said the Luftwaffe colonel. ‘Preposterous. To mine that line means two thousand sorties. In two thousand sorties we can bomb England into surrender. I have to inform you, sir, officially, that my chief thinks this whole plan not only costly and dangerous but quite unnecessary.’

‘And I must remind you, sir,’ said the captain, ‘that these plans are being made as a result of a direct Fuhrer Order. Your chief can carry his protests to the Fuhrer, but you and I, sir, must plan the invasion of England.’

THE BATTLE FOR PARIS, said the headline. This was the day when the British public began to lose hope that 1940 would repeat the events of 1914 and produce another Miracle of the Marne. This was the day when one Englishman would say to another, ‘It looks as if we’ll have to go it alone.’ But this was also the day when many Englishmen, looking back on the fiasco of Narvik, on the overrunning of Holland, on the collapse of Belgium and the evacuation from Dunkirk, could not contemplate the approaching fall of France - which would leave England absolutely alone and with neither responsibilities nor friends in Europe - and yet could answer, ‘Well, I can’t say I’m sorry.’

Then came the speeches of the prime minister, trumpet calls that gave guidance to the passionate and voiceless patriots who peopled England, unifying their determination and giving shape and frame to their hope.

Yet it was not to be expected that the staff officers in Brussels, hard-working and painstaking though they were, could spare a moment to listen to those trumpet calls. On the wall in that headquarters in Brussels hung an immense map, the large-scale ordnance maps of the southern counties of England, reproduced from the examples stored away in the files of Military Intelligence in Berlin and joined together so that the whole wall - one of the long walls of a Belgian army gymnasium - was hardly big enough to hold the complete map. Looking at the map, each with a pointer in his hand, were a major-general and a colonel. They were chiefs of staff, the one to an army, the other to the parachute troops. At their elbows stood half a dozen junior officers, with notebooks and fountains pens in hand, ready to record decisions reached by their superiors.

‘You’ve studied the trend of the ground,’ said the major-general, with a sweep of his pointer.

‘Yes,’ said the colonel doubtfully. Beyond that he would not express his feelings in words, lest he be suspected of a lack of resolution in the shedding of blood - German blood, not that of the enemy, naturally. But the major-general was sensitive to the implications of the tone in which the word was uttered.