The muted roar of heavy traffic could be heard for kilometers around — a steady rumble of powerful diesel engines and the squeaking, grinding, clanking of tank treads on pavement. Thousands of tanks, APCs, and trucks were wending their way through the gathering darkness. With the 19th Panzer-grenadier Brigade still in the lead, the 7th Panzer was pushing deeper into Poland.
Inside the dimly lit interior of his M577, Willi von Seelow braced himself against the APC’s motion with one hand and marked his map with the other. Led by Bremer in person, the brigade’s advance guard was already thirty-two kilometers beyond the Neisse River. Strong patrols from the division’s own recon battalion were probing even deeper — cutting telephone lines and setting up roadblocks to keep the news of their breakthrough from spreading. Although the 19th’s losses at Olszyna had been heavier than he’d hoped, they were making good progress. Since the morning battle, opposition had been light, almost nonexistent.
So far, at least, Summer Lightning was going according to plan.
Early that morning, III Corps had attacked far to the south, near Gorlitz, where the terrain was more open — better tank country. It was also the sector where the Poles had massed most of their defending forces. Reports indicated that the Polish troops — the 11th Mechanized Division and most of the 4th — were holding their ground in very heavy fighting.
And that was just what the EurCon high command wanted.
While III Corps pinned the enemy in place, the 7th Panzer and the rest of II Corps were pouring across the Neisse, plunging southeast through Poland’s western forests toward Legnica. Once there they would wheel south, trapping and annihilating the better part of two Polish mechanized divisions.
The Confederation’s political leaders were confident that a defeat of that magnitude would be enough to bring Poland to its knees and to the bargaining table. Then, with their larger ally humbled, the Czech and Slovak republics and rebel Hungary would be forced to do the same. All of Europe, from the Russian border west to the Atlantic, would be under the effective control of a single alliance. And once their Eastern European allies switched sides, America and Great Britain would surely see reason. Robbed of any continental foothold, they would face only the prospect of a long, bloody, uncertain war for uncertain aims. Isolationist sentiment was still strong in both countries. Pressure from their own people, weary of war for no conceivable gain, would force Washington and London to sign their own peace with Europe’s new superpower.
Willi von Seelow wasn’t so sure about that. Too much of the EurCon war plan depended on their enemies reacting slowly and predictably to the military moves already under way — dancing to the Franco-German tune. But what if the men in Warsaw and Washington had another melody in mind?
General Wieslaw Staron, Poland’s Minister of Defense, leaned over a map showing western Poland, studying the road net and terrain. Staron knew the map as well as he knew his own face in the mirror. Thirty years in uniform had given him a fine appreciation of the uses of terrain, and he now saw it not just as roads and rivers and forests, but in terms of movement rates, defensive strengths and weaknesses, and communications centers.
He’d moved troops around the Polish landscape for twenty-five of those years, starting with a platoon and working his way up to a full corps. While few in the Polish Army had engaged in combat, no one was better qualified to send it into battle.
Bushy brown eyebrows knitted together. He looked up and shook his head slowly. “I don’t like it, Ignacy.”
“No, sir.” Lieutenant General Ignacy Zdanski, the chief of the general staff, kept his face carefully impassive.
“Not at all.” Staron looked down at the map again. He tapped the river line near Gorlitz. “Two enemy divisions here — with a third in reserve. Yes?”
His younger, leaner subordinate nodded. “The 5th Panzer, 4th Panzergrenadier, and the French 3rd Armored. They’re across the river in several places, but not very far.”
The Defense Minister frowned. “And why not?”
“The force ratio isn’t in their favor.”
True enough, Staron thought, focusing on the map — trying to see the terrain as though he were a young tank commander again, and not a middle-aged military bureaucrat penned in a Warsaw office in the middle of the night. With only three divisions attacking against nearly two defending, the French and Germans couldn’t possibly hope to achieve a breakthrough in the south. According to the latest satellite and signals intelligence provided by the Americans, EurCon still had at least three uncommitted divisions on the border. Possibly more. So what were they playing at? Then he saw it. The EurCon commanders didn’t want to punch a hole in his lines there. They were playing a different game entirely.
He’d once heard inspiration described as “a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.” This wasn’t like that at all. It was more like watching a curtain rise slowly, revealing a suddenly familiar stage. “The Ardennes!”
“Sir?”
Staron stabbed a thick finger down on the map. “The damned Ardennes! That’s what they’re trying to do to us. Here.” He traced the highway running from Olszyna to Legnica. “They’re coming this way. Through the forests. Cutting behind us.”
He thumped the table for emphasis. “Look at it, Ignacy! It all adds up.”
“Mother of God.” Zdanski turned pale. It did make sense. The communications failures plaguing that region since early yesterday morning weren’t random chance or the work of isolated raiding parties. They were the first warning signs of an oncoming tidal wave.
Staron put both fists on the table. He’d let misguided political considerations sway him into deploying half the Polish Army along the frontier in a show of force. But he’d be damned if he’d repeat all the mistakes of 1939 by allowing his units to be surrounded and rolled up by another German-led blitzkrieg.
The Defense Minister fired out directions. “Order the 4th and 11th Mechanized to withdraw. Immediately. Tell them to break contact and fall back to… here.” He circled a position near Wroclaw itself — seventy-five kilometers back from the Neisse. If his commanders moved fast enough, they should still be able to escape the closing jaws of the EurCon trap.
“But what about the President and Prime Minister? Will they agree to abandon so much of our country to the enemy?”
“They’ll agree,” Staron growled. “Land can always be retaken. Soldiers are harder to come by. And Poland lives so long as she has a fighting army in the field!”
While his subordinate hurried away to issue the necessary orders, the Defense Minister returned to his study of the situation map. Even a successful withdrawal would only delay the inevitable. Matching two Polish divisions against two full enemy corps was a prescription for certain defeat. He needed to put more men on the battle line. But where could he pull them from?
Not from the east. Not yet. Russia’s declared neutrality in this conflict meant nothing. Marshal Kaminov and his cronies had already stabbed Poland in the back once for French gold. Who could say that he wouldn’t make the same kind of bargain again?
Staron’s eyes moved north, tracing the line of the Oder as it flowed toward the Baltic Sea. EurCon forces had made only a few scattered thrusts across the river there — small-scale battalion and company-sized raids that went nowhere. But were they trying to lull him into complacency before launching a bigger offensive later? No, he judged. France and Germany wanted a quick, uncomplicated war and a quick, decisive victory. They were making their main effort in the south.
He nodded to himself. He would gamble in the north.