“The weather is growing rapidly worse,” Voss said. “They would be foolish to try before the spring. I do not expect to see anything more than a few raiding parties.”
Wilhelm nodded in agreement. He wasn’t an infantryman or a panzer driver, but he understood the dangers of launching an offensive during winter. They’d hashed them out, time and again, while planning the thrust against Warsaw. And that thrust had failed spectacularly. It was unlikely, he assured himself, that Karl Holliston would repeat the same mistake.
“We will also continue evacuating the towns and settlements that may come under long-range fire,” Volker Schulze said, changing the subject. “The population wants to flee. We cannot stop them, but we can try to manage the flow.”
Wilhelm shuddered, cursing Gudrun and her Valkyries under his breath. Evacuating millions of people would put an immense strain on the nation’s resources at the worst possible time, but there was no choice. The thought of those people freezing to death as the weather got colder — or being forced to struggle to find food and shelter — was appalling. And yet, Volker Schulze was right. There was no way the population would stay still with the threat of nuclear war looming over their heads.
And we don’t have the manpower to keep them in place, he thought, sourly. It isn’t going to be easy to stop them.
“We will be very short on food, even with the… emergency shipments,” Kruger said. “But we will do our best to keep them alive.”
Wilhelm kept his face impassive with an effort. The fact that those shipments came from Britain and America was an open secret. Indeed, he doubted that Holliston had needed him to tell him that the Americans were aiding the rebels. And why not? The Reich would happily have aided any American faction intent on tearing the United States apart, knowing that crushing the victor would be a great deal easier. Hell, the Americans might be satisfied merely to pry France, Italy, Spain and Turkey out of the Reich’s orbit. It would give them a chance to establish a powerful armoured force in Europe for the first time since 1919.
And cut us off from all sorts of resources, he thought, darkly. They have to be stopped.
The meeting seemed to take forever. It was a relief when Volker Schulze finally called it to a halt, noting that they all had to go home to their wives. Wilhelm rose and hurried out of the room, heading to the tunnels that would take him back to the Abwehr’s headquarters, right next to the OKW. Holliston would be delighted to know, he was sure, that there would be no further offences until spring. It would give him time to prepare his own counterstroke.
He nodded to his secretary as he reached his office, then poured himself a stiff drink. The Provisional Government’s counter-intelligence services were woefully lacking, but betraying them was still a risk. Someone might figure out that there was a mole at the very highest levels and it wouldn’t take them long to start looking at men known for their loyalty to the Third Reich. But the risk had to be borne. Germany demanded it…
And if we win, we may still lose, he thought, sourly. Holliston will ensure that we are no longer an independent service.
But that, too, had to be borne.
“You believe this to be true?”
“I’m not privy to all of their high-level discussions,” Andrew Barton said, as he sipped his coffee gratefully. He’d only just returned from the front and his bones still felt cold as ice. “But I don’t believe they are planning an offensive in the next few days.”
“That’s… awkward,” Ambassador Turtledove said.
“For us, perhaps,” Andrew agreed. “But the logistics of waging war as winter falls over the Reich are… are very poor.”
He scowled at the thought. The Germans had been happy to detail the horrors of waging war in winter, ranging from vehicles refusing to start to guns refusing to fire because the oil had frozen solid. They did have plenty of experience in waging war in the winter, he knew, but most of it involved small-unit operations. Moving an entire army through the winter snows was appallingly risky, even if the enemy didn’t put up a fight.
And they would, he thought. Everything we’re hearing from Germany East makes it clear that they’re preparing to fight.
“So the war will literally freeze until spring,” Ambassador Turtledove said.
“It looks that way,” Andrew said. “I would expect a number of skirmishes up and down the defence lines, Mr. Ambassador, but nothing more serious. Both sides are going to need to replenish their losses after the recent battles.”
“If they can afford to keep fighting,” Ambassador Turtledove said. “The Provisional Government has already requested a loan.”
“They could do with it,” Andrew said. “What did Washington say?”
“They’re still arguing,” Ambassador Turtledove told him. “The President seems to be in favour of propping up the Provisional Government, but factions in Congress want to insist on some ironclad guarantees before releasing the purse strings. And none of them seem to agree on what they want from the Reich.”
Andrew sighed. “They can’t agree on anything?”
“The Polish vote wants a free Poland,” Ambassador Turtledove said. “Jewish voters want some kind of apology and recompense for the Holocaust. Others want to ensure that the Reich surrenders political control over the subject nations…”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Andrew said. “The Germans are a prideful people. They’re not going to bend the knee to us so easily.”
“I understand that,” Ambassador Turtledove said. “But the average congressman does not.”
Andrew nodded, crossly. Once again, domestic politics in America were interfering with foreign policy. He had no illusions about the Reich — nor about the Provisional Government — but they had to deal with the world they had, not the one they wanted. Pushing the Provisional Government too hard might cause it to tumble — or come to terms with Germanica, rather than surrender to the United States. And, in either case, the US would end up with a far worse problem on the other side of the Atlantic.
“They see it as a chance to make speeches and look good,” Turtledove added. “It isn’t them who will bear the blame for any failures.”
“There’s no way we can re-establish the world of 1938,” Andrew said, quietly. “Poland is gone; Czechoslovakia is gone; Greece is gone; France, Italy, Hungary and Romania are shadows of their former selves… nothing can restore the destroyed nations or bring the countless dead back to life. The President cannot sign some papers and reshape the world.”
He shook his head. “All the mistakes Chamberlain and Roosevelt made cannot be undone,” he added. “The Reich is gravely weakened, but it isn’t dead. And while they may be grateful to us for our help, they won’t forget their own interests. Trying to push them may undo everything we’ve done over the last few months.”
He’d studied history extensively. There had been plenty of opportunities, in hindsight, to stop the Reich long before it built a colossal empire, but most of those opportunities had been missed. What would have happened if Churchill had been Prime Minister in 1938? Or Truman President in 1941? Might the Reich have been stopped? The thought of a war on such a horrific scale was terrifying, but would it really have been worse than the Reich’s unchallenged dominance over Europe?