“You are suggesting we devise a similar plan to disarm the Turkish Army and occupy that country? Turkey has an army of 45 divisions! They are scattered all over the country, and the terrain is murderous.”
“Yes, but it would not be necessary to occupy and control the entire country. Taking Istanbul; perhaps Ankara, and then positioning strong troops along the rail line to Baghdad would be sufficient. What would that take?”
Zeitzler thought for a time. “No less than two full corps, mostly infantry, but with enough mechanization to have some clout if needed, perhaps one or two Panzer brigades. There are presently four Turkish divisions along the Syrian border, and those would have to be confronted and disarmed. The same for eight to ten divisions around Istanbul and the Dardanelles Fortified Area.”
“Ridiculous,” said Manstein. “Then we will get a guerilla war all along that border, and the rail line as well. It would take very little to disrupt traffic on that rail line, and if we do this, do not count on getting long lines of volatile oil cars through Turkey. That will all have to go by sea, which means we must rebuild the pipeline from Maykop to Novorossiysk, and from Groznyy to Rostov. That will take months. As for Baba Gurgur, all the pipelines from those fields flow to Tripoli and Haifa on the Mediterranean coast. In my mind, that field is useless to us. We certainly cannot use the existing pipelines, and we would have to build a new line north from Kirkuk to Mosul and then ship the oil through Turkey to Istanbul, a rail journey of a thousand miles, which could be interdicted by a single determined squad with a few demolitions. Don’t forget Lawrence of Arabia! He gave the Ottoman Turks fits by tearing up their rail lines through Syria in the First War. Frankly, this problem might have been avoided if we had chosen to negotiate with Ivan Volkov instead of making him an enemy. Now we are talking about making another enemy of Turkey. The end of this will be disaster. Where do we even get two infantry korps for such consideration? I cannot spare a single division.”
Hitler considered all this, his eyes shifting over the map, as if the answer was there, some solution that would finally allow him to reap the harvest of all his campaigns—operations Phoenix, Eisenfall, and Edelweiss. What were the merits of keeping so many divisions in Iraq and Syria? Rommel’s old command was still a threat to Palestine and Egypt, even if the loss of the Wiking Division meant those forces had lost a good deal of their offensive power.
“We can go over to the defense in Syria,” he said. “General Kübler can stand on defense there now, which will free up 2nd and 16th Panzer Divisions. I will leave the 101st Panzer Brigade with Kübler, and send those panzers to Ankara and Istanbul—or Italy.”
“Send them to Italy, if you must,” said Manstein. “But I beg you, do not make an enemy of Turkey, by any means. As for Volkov—Make peace! Offer him the return of all his provinces in the Caucasus in exchange for an agreement that the Todt Organizations can rebuild that pipeline to Rostov. Then I can pull Hansen’s Army out of there, and use it to make certain the Russians never get to Rostov, because if they do, then the whole affair would be lost.”
“Make peace with that conniving slackard, Volkov?” Hitler seemed aghast.
“Why not? And do so before he thaws things out with Sergei Kirov. When that happens, and it will, then the Soviets can pull another three or four Armies off their Volga Front, and I do not have to tell you where they will go. They will come to the lower Don and Donets Basin.”
“Do you honestly think Volkov would agree to peace with Germany now?”
“You have showed him what the consequences of war are,” said Manstein. “Unless he makes peace with Sergei Kirov, he will sit on his oil fields at Astrakhan and Baku, and do little more. At least if he returns to the Axis, we can make some use of him. And you must do nothing to convince Turkey they may be in danger from us. The minute they see troop movements into Bulgaria, they will get very nervous, and do what you fear—they will join the Allies. I have already shown you how useless Baba Gurgur is to us. Kübler will not go to Suez, and Guderian will not go to Basra. That is the fact of the matter. So why keep ten divisions tied up in Iraq and Syria?”
“To keep ten British Commonwealth Divisions there,” said Hitler. “If we go, then they have all those troops available to put against us somewhere else.”
“Not so. They had other fish to fry. Many of the divisions now in southern Iraq will return to Burma, or be used to carry out plans they must surely have to retake Ceylon from the Japanese. So do not worry about those forces. As for what they have in Palestine, they took most of the armor from O’Connor’s 8th Army, and one good infantry division, and we have worn them down in the fighting in Syria. Most of the infantry will probably just stay in Palestine as a garrison, as it was before. I know how inimical the loss of hard won terrain is to you, but I state now that neither Iraq nor Syria will be in any way useful to our war effort. On the contrary, the ten or twelve divisions there will be very useful—elsewhere.”
Hitler frowned, his eyes on the map. Manstein was telling him that all his aspirations in these spring operations were folly. “Do you think I have sent my Generals and troops into these places for mere sport? Now you suggest I simply give Iraq and Syria back to the British—I will not! What we have taken, we will hold. The pipelines will be built! The oil must come to the Reich, and all those troops must stay where they are to make certain that happens. There will be no peace with Ivan Volkov either. In fact, if I must postpone Operation Untergang, and then send all those troops to Astrakhan and Baku to destroy his little empire, so be it!” He pounded the map over Astrakhan, and silence fell heavily on the room.
“As for Sergei Kirov, wait until he sees Operation Zitadelle unhinge all his plans for another offensive. I have made my decision. Launch that operation as soon as possible! Make some good use of yourself, General Manstein. These notions of handing the enemy Iraq and Syria will addle your mind. Go and take Kursk!”
That final decision was the deep reverberating echo of the real history—Operation Zitadelle. Yet it would be a much different battle. Kluge would be much weaker with his thrust from the north, yet the Soviets would not be as well prepared, still contemplating offensive action of their own.
“What might they do next?” Asked Sergei Kirov. “Surely they have plans for an offensive.”
“Frankly,” said Zhukov, “I was surprised they stopped where they did in April. I expected them to continue to try and push us off the upper Donets.”
“Perhaps they did not have the strength. Steiner had only three divisions this time in their main attack.”
“But they could have reorganized and continued, particularly after they relieved Belgorod.”
“Yet they did not do so,” said Kirov. The question is, what will they do now?”
“Their aim will be to try and upstage any further offensive plans we have for the early summer, and dissipate our offensive strength. They could confront us directly again in the south, or move their assault divisions elsewhere—perhaps to the Orel sector.”
“Yet we have seen no sign of that kind of movement,” said Intelligence Chief Berzin. “In fact, the latest reports show Steiner consolidating at Kharkov, and we have learned there are orders for him to move to the Donets near Volchansk.”
“Volchansk? Then they mean to force a crossing there?”