“I have received word from one of my agents in Berlin,” he said, once the door was firmly closed. It wasn’t something he would have said out loud, not normally, but he needed to remind his officers that he had access to sources they didn’t have. The Waffen-SS had good reason to be annoyed with him. “The enemy is planning an early offensive.”
Oberstgruppenführer Alfred Ruengeler frowned. “How early?”
“As in the next two weeks,” Karl said, flatly. “They’re planning to pocket our forces and destroy them.”
Ruengeler turned his attention to the map. “They’ll find it hard to get enough forces into position to pocket ours,” he said. “We blew all the bridges and mined most of the roads…”
His voice trailed off. “They’d have to erect pontoon bridges as they went along,” he mused, slowly. “But if they were determined… and they had enough air cover.”
Karl nodded, impatiently. The Waffen-SS had concentrated on close support aircraft for the troops, not jet fighters. Normally, the Luftwaffe would have provided top cover, but now the remainder of the Luftwaffe was on the wrong side. And losses during the Battle of Berlin had been staggering. His few remaining aircraft had been pulled back from the front lines to airbases where they would be held in reserve, implicitly conceding the skies to the rebels…
And if they bring in help from the Americans, he thought, we will never regain air superiority.
“We will have to pull back our forces,” Ruengeler said. “If we lose the remaining divisions, Mein Führer, we will lose the war along with them.”
“No,” Karl said. “We cannot let the enemy gain a foothold in Germany East.”
Ruengeler looked unconvinced. “Mein Führer,” he said, “if they destroy those divisions, they will gain that foothold anyway.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Karl said.
He scowled at the map. Ruengeler was a military man. He didn’t understand the political issue — or the looming disaster threatening the entire Reich. If the rebels gained control of a substantial section of Germany East, they could use it to undermine his support and encourage his subordinates to overthrow him. The collective loyalty of the senior Gauleiters couldn’t have filled a thimble. If they saw their power under threat, they would try to find ways to come to terms with the rebels.
And while they will probably fail, he thought savagely, they will probably bring me down with them.
The thought made him clench his fists in rage. If he’d assumed supreme power earlier… but he hadn’t. There were too many high-ranking officers and party leaders who owed nothing to him, who feared that he would promote his favourites above their heads. Karl couldn’t risk alienating them, not yet. But by keeping them around, he was giving them a chance to stick a knife in his back…
The entire edifice is unstable, he reminded himself. We haven’t had a proper Führer for far too long.
Ruengeler coughed. “Mein Führer?”
Karl almost jumped. Ruengeler had been speaking and he hadn’t been listening. But he didn’t dare ask what the younger man had said. He couldn’t show weakness, not now.
“We cannot abandon Warsaw,” he said, instead. “The rebels would be able to use it to funnel their troops further east.”
“Yes, Mein Führer,” Ruengeler said. “But we cannot defend Warsaw either.”
Karl looked up at him. “We have deployable nuclear bombs,” he said. “Perhaps it’s time we used them.”
Ruengeler hesitated. “Mein Führer,” he said slowly, “they have warheads too.”
“Yes, they do,” Karl agreed. “But will they be willing to use them on their fellow Germans?”
He pointed a finger at the map. “If they push forward and fight a conventional battle,” he said, “they will have a good chance of crushing us. Correct?”
“Correct, Mein Führer,” Ruengeler said.
“And if we retreat eastwards, we concede too much territory to them,” Karl added. “We need a third option.”
He studied the map for a long moment. “We let them thrust their spearheads forward, then hit them with the nuclear weapons,” he said. “That will send them stumbling back in disarray.”
“I would need to study the issue,” Ruengeler said, slowly. “We have never deployed nuclear weapons on the battlefield.”
“Then do so, quickly,” Ruengeler ordered. “We have to make it clear that we will not be crushed and broken!”
“Yes, Mein Führer,” Ruengeler said.
Karl nodded, then turned and headed for the door. He’d be back later, but right now there was too much else to do. His subordinates needed to be watched, carefully, as they carried out his orders. He needed to nip any problems in the bud before they brought him down…
…Or before someone decided to take advantage of the planned enemy offensive for themselves.
It was an open secret that many of the direct links between Germany Prime and Germany East were still usable. The telephone network had been designed to survive an American attack. He’d closed off some of the exchanges, of course, but many of his powerful subordinates would have little trouble using the network to make contact with friends and allies on the other side of the line. Karl had no trouble imagining a particularly ambitious official planning an assassination, even as the Heer marched eastwards. Someone who took the rebels Karl’s head would be assured of a warm welcome.
But he won’t be able to take it easily, he thought, darkly. And that’s all that matters.
How the hell, Oberstgruppenführer Alfred Ruengeler asked himself in the privacy of his own mind, did it come to this?
He knew better than to say it out loud. The Reichstag was not a friendly place. There were eyes and ears everywhere, just watching and waiting for someone to slip up so that they could be reported. The merest hint of treachery would be enough to land someone in the camps, if they opened their mouth at the wrong time. There was no one Alfred could talk to, even if he’d trusted anyone with his concerns. His closest friends might betray him if they thought their lives — and those of their families — were at risk.
Alfred had been in the Waffen-SS for decades. His father had marched him down to the recruiting officer the day he’d turned sixteen, using his contacts to make sure his son didn’t have to wait an extra year before being shipped off to the nearest training centre. He’d never considered himself anything other than a soldier; he’d certainly never embraced the attitudes of those charged with monitoring the Volk. And yet…
He’d never seen the test sites in Siberia, where the first German atomic bombs had been detonated, but he’d seen photographs from the Middle East. Four cities had been destroyed, their survivors poisoned… they’d been lucky, in a way, that they’d been shot down almost as soon as they’d been discovered. At least they’d been spared a lingering death. And yet, the thought of unleashing such horrors on German soil chilled him to the bone.
But what choice was there?
Alfred had fought for the Reich in a dozen different countries, climbing up the ranks as he gained more and more experience. And it had shaped his worldview more than he cared to admit. The Reich was not perfect — it had many flaws — but it was still stronger than America or Britain. Their enemies embraced a chaotic lifestyle that would eventually bring them down, he was sure.