The Moscow Option (33 page)

Others disputed this view. They argued that the Germans would never run out of wars, that they would drag the whole of humanity back to the stone age. In the process they would of course destroy the material basis of the socialism to which we had all dedicated our lives.

Fortunately we never did learn which of these cafe-schools of thought was correct. But in that summer of 1942 they did seem real alternatives, it did seem, in Berlier’s melodramatic but apt phrase, as if ‘the insane would inherit the earth’. It was not until the German armies were halted in September of that year that we began once more to believe that sanity would prevail.”

Victor Serge
, Ten Years in Exile

As dawn broke over Tokyo Admiral Nagumo’s fleet was still, courtesy of the International Date Line’s irrefutable logic, sailing through yesterday. The remnants of
Kido Butai
had travelled nearly six thousand miles since their traumatic encounter with fate off Panama, and were now fifteen hundred miles due north of Tahiti, more than halfway to the Truk naval base in the Carolines.

Despite the relative proximity of Gauguin’s island, Admiral Nagumo was not thinking of grass-skirts and sun-kissed palm beaches. He was still wondering how he was going to apologise to Yamamoto for his disgraceful defeat. Four carriers, two hundred and fifty planes and almost as many airmen had gone to a watery grave in those agonising hours on 28 September, and Nagumo knew as well as anyone that they could not be replaced. And who was responsible? He was. The more pragmatic Admiral Kusaka had argued him out of committing hara-kiri but now, as the Equatorial Current eased his shrunken fleet homewards, Chuichi Nagumo could not escape the feeling that pragmatism had its limits.

Isoruku Yamamoto, aboard
Yamato
in Hiroshima Bay, had other things to think about than Nagumo’s responsibility for the new situation. He was trying, with no little difficulty, to convince himself that the loss of the Combined Fleet’s four largest carriers, though a great blow, need not necessarily prove a decisive one.
Hiyo
,
Ryujo
and
Junyo
were already on their way to the south-west Pacific to take part in the Samoa and Fiji operations.
Hiryu
would be ocean-worthy again in December. Could Japan retain her ascendancy in the Pacific against a resurgent America? Yamamoto fervently hoped so. It was only the facile optimism of his staff officers that the great admiral found truly unbearable.

Five thousand miles to the west on that same September morning Mordechai Givoni, a nineteen year-old member of the Irgun Zvi Leumi, lay face-down on the flat roof of a two-storey house on the outskirts of Hebron. He was dressed in a white Arab burnous. Below him the road from Beersheba ran left into the centre of the city. To his right the hills of Judaea shifted in the early-morning haze. In the distance he could see a German staff car winding slowly up the incline towards him. The accompanying motorcyclists were wearing black uniforms.

In the car itself SS ObersturmFührer Eichmann stared bad humouredly out at the parched landscape. At least the flies kept off when one was moving. He hoped he would see Rommel that day, finish his business in this accursed Jew-ridden country, and get back to the comfort of his desk in Vienna. He watched the first houses of Hebron looming to greet him.

Mordechai Givoni’s eyes did not leave the car. He cradled the rifle against his shoulder, took careful aim at the head of the SS officer in the back seat, and pulled the trigger. He had been a crack-shot since he was ten.

In Ankara Marshal Cakmak was reporting to President Inönü. ‘Our troops have reached the new frontier in the Caucasus,’ he told Inönü. ‘All resistance has been crushed.’

‘All resistance?’ asked Inönü, raising his eyebrows. ‘That doesn’t sound like the Armenians.’

‘All
organised
resistance. It is true that there is still the occasional incident. But these have no importance. The population is not yet fully resigned to its new status. As you say, the Armenians have always been a stubborn people. A few local leaders have refused to co-operate, a few renegades have taken to the mountains. But we have taken hostages, made an example of a few hotheads. It is only a matter of time.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Inönü, in a tone that implied the opposite. ‘And the Tigris offensive - are the preparations proceeding according to schedule?’

‘There are difficulties,’ Cakmak conceded with obvious reluctance. ‘The British have mastery in the air. They have tanks and we do not. We are waiting for the German deliveries. They were expected to begin this week, but apparently there have been unavoidable delays.’

‘Yes, I thought there might be,’ Inönü muttered to himself.

The same subject was under discussion in a well-known restaurant on the Potsdammerstrasse in Berlin, where Albert Speer and Franz Todt were sharing a working lunch. They were having a depressing conversation. Speer’s paper napkin was covered in calculations, and none of the answers looked very promising.

‘You will have to tell the Führer that it cannot be done,’ he told Todt. ‘There is no way it can be done. We are producing barely enough tanks and planes to cover our losses. At the present rate of production increase, if we can get Goering’s agreement and SS approval, both of which are extremely unlikely, we can supply the Army with two thousand new tanks, mostly Panzer IIIs and IVs, in 1943. The enemy will be producing ten times as many. Something has to be done, and quickly. You must make the Führer understand this. As for the Turks, they will have to fight with their bare hands.’

‘I hope that is the only bad news I have for him,’ said Todt. ‘But I doubt if it will be. There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss the exploitation of the Caucasian oilfields. My experts tell me that it will be nine months before we are taking any decent quantity of oil out of the ground. That would be bad enough. But, it seems, even if we get it out of the ground there is no way to transport the wretched stuff. The pipelines have all been destroyed, the railways are already working at full capacity, and all the available tankers are carrying Rumanian oil up the Danube. The Führer is not going to be pleased with whoever has to tell him all this!’

In Kuybyshev General Zhukov sat in the back of the black limousine that was taking him from the airport to the Governor’s Palace. He had just returned from a visit to the Vologda Front HQ, and General Yeremenko had assured him that his armies would hold the German advance. Zhukov was pleased to be bringing such good news.

He skipped through the thin pages of the Pravda he had picked up at the airport. More good news from the Japanese front intermixed with more dire promises of retribution for the small reactionary cliques which had betrayed Georgia and Azerbaijan to the enemy. But not, Zhukov reminded himself, the oilfields. It would take the Germans months to repair the damage, and by then . . .

An hour later he was reporting to the assembled Stavka on the Vologda situation. It was not the only good news the Soviet leaders heard that evening. Six divisions had been extricated from the Caucasus across the Caspian, and units of another two were fighting with the British in northern Persia. The Meshed-Ashkabad road was near completion - supplies would be rolling in from the south once the Persian situation was stabilised. Most encouraging of all was Voroshilov’s report on armament production. The factories evacuated to the Urals and elsewhere were again working at peak capacity. From now onwards they would be producing two thousand planes and two thousand tanks per month.

The meeting lasted until dawn on the following day. The reason for its unusual length was simple. For the first time since the Germans crossed their frontier the Soviet leaders had a growing operational reserve. Attack was now one of the options. Stavka, unused to such military luxury, argued long and hard as to how they should use their newfound riches.

General Walther Model had recently succeeded General Hoth as Commander of Third Panzer Army. That morning he was moodily drinking a cup of coffee in his Danilov headquarters. The telephone rang on the other side of the room, and a few seconds later an orderly approached Model.

‘It is Field-Marshal Brauchitsch from Lotzen, Herr General.’

Model grimaced, and walked slowly over to the telephone. ‘Good morning, Herr Feldmarschall,’ he said. ‘What can we do for you this morning?’

Brauchitsch affected not to notice Model’s insubordinate tone. ‘The Führer would like your appreciation of the situation on the Vologda front, Herr General. He is particularly perturbed at the apparent lack of progress in this sector and . . .’

Model cut him off. ‘I submitted a full report to General von Küchler only yesterday.’

‘Naturally General von Küchler’s views are being ascertained,’ Brauchitsch continued smoothly, ‘but the Führer is also eager to know the views of the army commanders in this particular sector. General von Küchler, as you know, has other responsibilities to take care of.’ ‘Yes, yes . . . my view, as outlined in my report, is that the situation here is quite disastrous. The reinforcements we have received are quite inadequate. The new tank engines promised for early August have still not arrived. No one seems to know where they are. Fuel stocks are low, and deliveries are not keeping pace with consumption. The Russians are contesting every square yard of land as if it were their last and, according to our intelligence reports, the number of their formations in this sector is growing at an alarming rate. I could be more precise . . .’

‘No, that will suffice Herr General. What the Führer particularly wishes to hear from you is an estimated date for the capture of Vologda.’

‘I have failed to make myself clear,’ Model said, in a tone heavily laced with sarcasm. ‘As the situation stands at this moment there is every possibility that we shall not capture Vologda.’

‘The Führer will not be pleased to hear such a pessimistic evaluation!’

‘I am sure the Führer would prefer to know the truth of our situation here. An underestimation of the difficulties facing Army Group North can only hinder him in the exercise of his judgement.’

‘Of course,’ Brauchitsch replied rather stiffly. ‘But I feel he may not be completely satisfied that Army Group North is doing its utmost to overcome these difficulties. In any case, I shall report your opinions to him. Good day, Herr General.’

Model replaced the telephone, a look of disgust on his face. ‘Office-boy!’ he muttered under his breath.

That afternoon Hans Fischer was brewing tea in the small concrete blockhouse by the railway line. Twenty metres away the tracks crossed a tributary of the Tsna river in an area of dense pine forest. Fischer and his three companions had been detailed to guard this bridge, one of several hundred between Germany and the Volga front, and so safeguard the passage of the trains carrying essential supplies from one to the other. It was a boring job.

Ten minutes earlier Fischer had sent Cullmann to fetch Dietz and Haller. The tea was now ready. Where were they? Fischer went outside. No one was in sight. ‘Heinz!’ he called out, fighting back a rising sensation of panic. It was his last word, as an arm grasped him round the waist and a knife bit into his throat.

Lev Susaikov dropped the dead German, wiped his knife on his trousers, and waited. After a few minutes he was sure that there were no others. He beckoned his three comrades out of the pines. Across the railway bridge he could see the others also emerging from their cover.

The partisans fixed and wired the explosives. It took fifteen minutes. Then they scrambled down the embankment to the river’s edge and waited. Half an hour later a train appeared. At the centre of the bridge the front wheels of the locomotive hit the detonators. The wooden trellis exploded in a dozen places. The locomotive, and twenty flat-cars loaded with Panzer IVs, slid gracefully down through a cloud of smoke into the river.

In Baghdad two representatives of an older world were sipping their pre-dinner cocktails on Casey’s veranda.

‘We’ve been distributing Arabic translations of some of Hitler’s more telling utterances,’ the Minister of State was saying. ‘The Arabs are finding out that according to old Adolf they come just above the Jews and the monkeys in the Nazi pecking order. That should make them think twice about the beneficence of the Third Reich.’

‘Only the ones that can read,’ joked Alexander.

The easy-going nature of this conversation was not being echoed at the Second Panzer Army HQ in Tabriz. Guderian had arrived at midday, having flown back from Shinak Pass in his Storch. There was no time for cocktails. The German situation in northern Persia seemed to be coming apart at the seams. First the failure to take the Pass the previous morning, then the debacle at Miandowab, and now news of British attacks on the main road south of Tabriz. The bridges on the frontier were still down, the Luftwaffe was still conspicuous by its absence. No supplies were getting through. No fuel, no ammunition, no reinforcements. All Guderian found waiting for him in Tabriz were fresh exhortations from OKH in Lotzen. ‘Fast-moving formations should advance to Kermanshah and cut the main Baghdad-Tehran highway.’ Did these people understand what was happening here? Had they seen these ‘highways’, or the state of the ‘fast-moving formations’? Had they any idea how this order was supposed to be carried out?

Rommel would have understood Guderian’s rage. He also received orders from OKH. But that particular evening he had other matters to concern him. His eminent SS guest had apparently been assassinated in Hebron.

The Field-Marshal arrived back in the city late that evening. The building reserved for his staff was surrounded by SS personnel, and the dead body of Adolf Eichmann was resting, as if in state, on the dining-room table.

Bayerlein was waiting for Rommel. He pulled him into the operations room and shut the door. ‘They’ve gone berserk,’ he half-shouted, ‘They rounded up about four hundred Arabs, took them out of the town, and mowed them down with machine-guns. What are we going to do?’ Rommel sat down, took off his cap, rubbed his eyes. ‘Did they catch the assassin?’