SECRET MISSION

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dr. Hendrickson has Questions Page 61

CHAPTER TWELVE

Goodbye Page 64

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Why So Many Partisans Page 69

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Final Review Page 72

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Attack! Commence Firing! Page 78

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mission Accomplished Page 86

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Iron Crosses are Awarded Page 92

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At the Elbe River Page 99

CHAPTER NINETEEN

General Bradley Hears the News Page 103

CHAPTER TWENTY

Omar Talks With Ike Page 116

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Nurse Tanya Page 112

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Wagner Meets Wilson Page 115

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

John Lester Says Hello Page 134

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

We Meet Trudy Page 141

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Surrender or Celebration Page 150

EPILOGUE Page 172

“Secret Mission”

The Guns of Task Force One

INTRODUCTION

Every student of World War II history knows that Adolph Hitler and his newly wed bride, Eva Braun, committed suicide in the Fuhrer Bunker, 50 feet below the Chancellery in Berlin on April 30, 1945, as the Russian army was closing in on the bunker and would capture all of Berlin within 48 hours.

So why another book about Adolph Hitler, and his gang of misfits, when there are over 50 in and out of print right now? Bear with me, please.

The author served as Communications Officer of the 56th Armored Infantry Battalion, Combat Command B, 12th Armored Division.

The Division was moved around frequently for reasons never clear to the troops. We started with the U.S. Seventh Army, under Lt. General Alexander Patch. Our first battle was in Alsace-Lorraine, France, in December 1944. We saw five months of continuous combat and then the war was over. At that time, we were coming into Linz, Austria (near the area where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889).

Our orders were to advance no further and to mop up the few remaining small pockets of enemy around us. We missed capturing Reich Marshall Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, by 30 minutes. That honor went to the 36th “Texas” Infantry Division, a great fighting unit that I would match against the best Hitler and the Wermacht had to offer.

During our five months of front line activity, we were assigned to whatever General talked last to General Eisenhower. At one point, we were transferred out of the U.S. Army and assigned for combat duty with the First French Army, coming up southern France after landing on the French Riviera and giving Hitler and his General Staff another front to worry about, along with Normandy, Italy, and the vast, crumbling Eastern front in Russia. The Red Army was having great success beating the hell out of out-manned and out-classed German forces, which had taken on more than it could handle, led by an amateur Austrian Corporal.

While we were in the French Army, the 12th Armored Division was ordered to attack, with other American forces, the “Colmar Pocket,” filled with 70,000 German troops in the Vosges Mountains, south of Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine, France.

This campaign was short and very successful.

And it was exciting to have our armored columns parade through the streets of the beautiful town of Colmar and accept the many flowers and pitchers of red wine given us by the pretty young ladies of the town. I remember one instance where one beautiful girl was trying to pass a large pitcher of red wine to me, as the Commander of the Communications section armored half-track personnel carrier. Her reach and mine were about six inches apart. She then saw a dead German soldier lying in the gutter. She stood on the German’s body and gave me the pitcher of wine. Even at this date, I can remember how good that wine tasted as we filled everyone’s canteen cup.

The excitement of parading through a newly captured city of some size with great defensive areas was somewhat offset by my knowing that other American combat units had done the hard fighting. We were there to mop up, take prisoners, and kill hidden snipers left to harass us, and we could take a lot of credit.

While we were enjoying that great victory and glory, we received word from SHAEF (Eisenhower’s headquarters) that we were transferred to General George Patton’s Third Army for the race to the Rhine River and the capture of any bridge remaining open in our assigned area. Not being a hero, I wasn’t looking forward to capturing and holding a huge bridge over the Rhine River.

I was saying a happy prayer when news came that the Ninth Armored Division had captured an undestroyed railroad bridge at nearby Remagen, and troops were fast being pushed over to the German side to hold the important bridgehead. And General Patton could fulfill one of his most cherished ambitions: to take a leak in the middle of the Rhine River-as several photographers snapped pictures of the great event for posterity and the “Stars and Stripes” Army newspaper.

My Division pushed on very fast along the territory assigned to us in the so-called “Rhineland.” We went so fast and captured so many towns that war correspondents covering Patton’s rapidly moving headquarters asked the General the identity of the Armored Division that was moving so fast and tearing up the German defenses. The General winked and told the correspondents, “The Krauts don’t know anything about my new secret division, and I want to keep it that way. Just say it’s my ‘Mystery Division.” And to this day, the survivors who fought under its banner refer to the 12th Armored Division as “The Mystery Division”. I doubt if anyone else referred to the 12th Armored as the “Mystery Division,” but the phrase made the home folks proud. And even today, when children and grandchildren read the history books detailing the 12th Armored, grandfather seems to gain a little respect from his kin when they read about the “Mystery.”

After the Division captured the beautiful resort city of Speyer on the Rhine. We spent a few days mopping up and directing thousands of captured German soldiers to POW cages. The flood of prisoners was so great that, after stripping the prisoners of all weapons, knives, swords and any other military related items, we merely pointed in a westerly direction and told the POW’s to go to the POW center and get something to eat. Ninety-nine percent were glad the war was over for them and that they were still alive. I don’t recall a single instance where we mistreated a POW.

At Speyer, we received supplies, ammunition, and replacements for our casualties and were told to be ready to cross the Rhine River on newly built pontoon bridges on short notice. All movement would be done at night. We crossed at Worms with no opposition and headed for the beautiful university town of Heidelberg.

However, Heidelberg had been partially destroyed by American artillery fire. While our columns were stopped inside the city awaiting new orders, 1 noticed a small perfume store that was still open. I went inside and asked the lady owner if she had a bottle of Channel Number Five for sale. She pulled a small bottle in a mailing box down from the shelf. I knew my wife loved Channel Number Five, but it was too expensive for a Captain’s budget in the States.

As did most soldiers, I had a huge stack of Army issued German Marks and an even larger amount taken from German prisoners. I asked the owner the price and took out a large bunch of paper Marks. Her face showed her disappointment, and I learned right away that any type of German paper money would be acceptable only if a large pistol was pointed at the seller. I had no intention of obtaining the perfume under such conditions. Then the lady said the magic words. “Chocolate? Have you any chocolate?” My musket bag had several bars of chocolate, cigarettes, pipe tobacco, food, etc. I gave the lady five pieces of Hershey’s chocolate the kind that was selling in the U.S. for penny each. The lady was so happy. I thought she was going to cry. She told me in broken English that her family had had no chocolate for several years. She had two small children and they would each have a Hershey bar for dessert that night. I mailed the perfume home, and it arrived in perfect condition.

After a short assignment with General Patton and his fast moving Third Army, we were transferred back to General Patch and his Seventh Army, with orders to go like hell through Southern Bavaria, which was mostly lightly defended. At this point, the German Wermacht was simply out-manned, out-classed, and especially out-gunned.

The firepower of an armored division’s fast moving column can be devastating and awe-inspiring. We roared through most small towns and villages and noted nearly every house and building was showing a white sheet as a white flag of surrender.

But there were times when the enemy was dug in and ready to defend their homeland. And on these occasions, we called in the artillery battalions to pave the way for the infantry. By this time, we had enough frontline combat experience to use all our fighting units and our weapons in a manner to blow the enemy out of entrenched positions and to lower the casualty rate of our infantry. We learned in our first battle that little is decided until the infantry fights its way into the enemy stronghold and captures and holds it against the inevitable enemy counter attack.

German snipers were always a cause for concern. Snipers would be assigned to stay in a village or city, kill as many Americans as possible, and then try to escape back to their lines at night. On one occasion, the battalion commander, the S-3. The captain of ”A” Company (Rifle). and myself were standing as a group on a small hill overlooking a picturesque German village. so far untouched by war. As we watched our infantry enter the main street of the village by a single line on each side of the street, we heard a loud “pop.”

The “A” Company commander, standing next to me, slumped slowly to the ground, shot through the neck by a sniper and killed instantly.

The rest of us quickly took cover, and the battalion commander radioed Headquarters Company to send a Sherman tank to him immediately, The tank arrived within minutes, and the battalion commander conferred with the tank commander, ordering him to put a 75 millimeter high explosive shell in the church tower, where we knew the sniper was hiding. With one shot, the tank blew the church tower to pieces, and we watched as the sniper’s body was blown high into the air and was coming down for a hard fast landing on the village street. He never knew what hit him. One of our riflemen picked up the sniper’s rifle where it had fallen on the street. He took off the undamaged and very valuable sniper-telescopic sighting device and kept it for his own use. The sniper’s special rifle itself was damaged beyond repair.

And so my unit went through our assigned area and maintained a strong, sure combat pace as we neared the large city of Munich, which I knew we would have to bypass because of its huge size. As we conducted a “blitzkrieg” through the beautiful Bavarian countryside, meeting feeble opposition, which we simply blew apart, or bypassed, all of us suddenly began to realize that we were facing the remains of a great German army.

An army that had lost all hopes of winning the war and was often eager to agree to our demand to surrender. Prisoners often asked when they could be fed.

As our fast moving columns neared the city of Landsberg. We noticed a huge group of wooden buildings entirely surrounded with high barbed wire fences and large metal entry gates. This project was not on any of our maps or intelligence reports. We pulled up in front of the locked main gate and ordered the tanks in Headquarters Company to knock the gates and fencing down so the project could be entered, inspected and occupied. Whatever the hell it was.

It turned out to be Landsberg Prison, where Hitler was imprisoned in 1923 for civil disobedience and where he wrote his famous manifesto of things to come - “Mein Kampf” The prison had been enlarged and was now a full-fledged concentration camp filled to overflowing with 10,000 occupants, mainly Jews from all parts of Germany and the Balkans. And a few Allied prisoners of war, including a few Americans, mostly bomber crews shot down on raids over Germany.

We asked all of the POW’s if they had been mistreated in any way. Most said “no”- just not enough to eat, miserable housing conditions, and intense boredom.

We then asked the entire group if they wanted any pistols or rifles in case they wanted to settle any grievance with the staff or guards. The airmen, both U.S. and English, said all they wanted was to get back to their units, eat some warm meals, get some sleep, and get on with their lives. Two Australians asked for M-l rifles and clips of ammo. We gave them everything they asked for, and they went back into the far reaches of the camp. We didn’t hear any shots fired, and we never saw the Aussies again.

As we examined the camp, we saw for the first time the incredible brutality of the Nazi regime. Bodies - people dead from cold and starvation, were everywhere. Hundreds of prisoners were in the streets looking like skeletons and crying out for food. Our medics cautioned us about giving food of any type because their stomachs would be unable to handle anything except thin soup or gruel. We set up soup lines to try to save as many prisoners as we could with what limited food we were carrying in our own kitchens.

We lined up the camp guards, who had new uniforms and looked like they had never missed a meal. We went among the lined up guards standing at attention, and took all pistols, mostly beautiful Lugers, and all daggers, swords, etc.

While the guards were lined up at attention, their camp commander insisted on giving me the honor of a salute, since I seemed to be in charge of collecting their weapons.

My jeep driver, who could speak passable German, explained that American officers do not shake hands with or salute officers of any SS Waffen German army unit. The camp commander’s face stiffened, and he took two steps backwards and was still. And his new Luger pistol was the newest and best of all collected.

We had to face the problem of what to do with the dead bodies lying all over the place. Our battalion commander ordered the German camp commander to go with my driver into the city of Landsberg, already awash with white sheets of surrender everywhere. “Bring the mayor to me immediately. I want to talk to the bastard.” The mayor arrived shortly, and our commanding officer gave him a quick tour of the concentration camp. The mayor claimed he had never been inside and had no knowledge of what the camp was used for. He explained that SS troops ran the camp, and no one was allowed inside unless it was on SS orders. He further claimed the citizens of Landsberg knew nothing about the camp. They had never been permitted inside the camp, he said.

My commanding officer’s reply was to the effect that he had never heard so much bullshit in his life and that he didn’t believe a word the lying son-of-a-bitch said. Through our interpreter, the mayor was told to return to his city and come back to the camp within one hour with 300 men, each with a shovel~ when they returned, they were to start digging graves and burying the dead. Our commanding officer emphasized in no uncertain terms that the mayor had one hour to be at the camp with 300 men with shovels or else he would direct every tank in the battalion to start firing into the city of Landsberg. “We can totally destroy your entire beautiful city in fifteen minutes with just our tank fire. And if I think it necessary, I will call in our three armored artillery battalions to fire for effect on your city.”

The mayor was put in one of our jeeps with a driver who could speak German, and they took off in a hurry for the town. Fifty minutes later, we saw a long column of men, each with a shovel, on their way to the camp. They worked for three days burying dead Jews and slave laborers, while the battalion took a short rest and replenished supplies of food, ammo, and replacements for our dead and wounded.

After a short three-day rest, we received orders from Seventh Army to proceed as fast as possible to the Southeast area of Germany and capture the Danube River city of Dillingen. More importantly, we were to see if the bridge over the Danube was still standing, or if it had been blown. Our reconnaissance battalion, our fastest unit, sped toward Dillingen at top speed, crushing feeble opposition and crashing into Dillingen before the German forces knew we were anywhere near. And what did they find? The only bridge over the Danube was still intact¹Our engineers quickly killed or captured the German engineers who were frantically trying to set bombs on the bridge columns in order to blow it up in our faces and slow down, for days, our advance further into Southern Bavaria. We quickly put troops on the other side of the river and set up defenses to stop the counter attack that we knew would be coming at us as soon as Hitler heard the bad news. First, Remagen and the Rhine River and now Dillingen and the only bridge left standing over the Danube, which was not the “beautiful blue Danube” of song and verse, but a fast flowing dirty brown. The first thing the engineers did was put up a large sign at the bridge- “Cross the Danube River. Courtesy of the 12th Armored Division.”

With German defenses collapsing in Southern Bavaria and further huge losses expected in the very near future, Hitler called for help from one of his favorite military leaders— Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, from the Italian front, where he had made American forces pay heavily for the many incredibly stupid decisions of its leaders, especially the landings at Anzio where the Germans were dug in and waiting for this feast of targets. Many American soldiers thought U.S. General Mark Clark, 5th U.S. Army CO., was a military idiot. But he was a classmate and protégé of General Ike.

Kesselring looked over the existing situations in March of 1945 and realized immediately that the German forces were incapable of stopping the fast moving American armored tank forces. In his “Memoirs of Field Marshall Kesselring,” he commented on the loss of the Danube bridge at Dillingen: “Also the American 12th Armored Division’s dash for Dillingen showed genuine ‘élan’, which to my surprise seemed to flag after the passage of the Danube.”

That’s true. We got over the Danube and stayed three days to protect the bridge and our bridgehead, while the powers that be tried to decide what to do with us. Everyone knew the German army was a disaster—which German soldiers, knowing Germany was defeated, were surrendering at every opportunity. At one time, we had been told by Division to expect orders from Corps to head for Vienna, Austria.

We got as far as the city of Linz. Austria, where Hitler claimed to be born, and were then told to stop where we were, which was on the Austrian border, and await further orders. “Do not precede any further into Austria.” We later learned that the Allies had agreed to give the Russian army the pride and prestige of capturing and occupying the city of Vienna. At that point, our troops could not have cared less.

It was the first week in May 1945. We knew the war was over for all practical purposes. And nobody wanted to be a dead hero in the last week of the war. VE Day was May 8, and we broke out the wine, brandy, and champagne and drank to our survival and the end of the war. Two days later, we were assigned to occupational duty in areas of Southern Bavaria that had little or no damage but hundreds of thousands of released prisoners of many countries, Jews, slave laborers, and Russian peasants everywhere, captured in Russia and sent to Germany as slave labor. Most had been mistreated, were sick, and needed food. Invariably the slave laborers resisted vigorously being put in boxcars and returned to their home countries, fearing mistreatment or even death by their old masters, for reasons unknown.

All of this created a lot of questions in the minds of American troops.

How and why could Russia and Germany mistreat, murder, and displace so many millions of people? American troops in Europe had never been exposed to such organized cruelty. And our leaders never gave us any answers. I’m sure they didn’t have any answers themselves. It may sound questionable, but American troops got more news out of the U.S. produced Stars and Stripes Newspaper than from any other source.

When I left Germany in December of 1945 to return to the U.S. and discharge, I had little knowledge of the “big picture” of World War II and the various leaders. We all knew we were fighting Hitler and the German army and those were the bad guys and we Americans were the good guys. We knew nothing of the German government’s activities in establishing such hideous camps as Auschwitz-Birkenau, which through study I found to be the most murderous concentration camp in the German system, with its efficient killing gas chambers operated by Hitler’s own SS members and troops.

Racial fanatics in the Nazi hierarchy, as late as April 1945, were killing Jews systematically, and were prompted and prodded by Hitler. And you ask yourself, what kind of a civilization could produce such horror? And then you want to know why someone hadn’t assassinated Hitler long ago?

And you have to come to the conclusion that the German generals commanding the Wehrmacht just flat didn’t have the will or the guts to kill the jerk.

The introduction to this story was World War Two as the author remembered his short, busy five months of front line combat with the 12th Armored “Hellcat” Division in Alsace-Lorraine (France), Germany and Austria.

What comes now is all fiction—history that never happened, but should have—a sort of “could have, would have, and should have.” This is what should have happened to the Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler, and the many murdering thugs surrounding him—all parading as political and military experts, when they were just very sorry examples of human garbage who had convinced the average German civilian the Nazi Party was the answer to their every prayer and would shatter the onerous shackles of the World War One Versailles Treaty which had Germany by the throat.

However, as more and more German cities were destroyed by British and American bombing. Night and day, and Allied armies began to systematically defeat great German military forces, the average German, both military and civilian, knew the war was lost and that Hitler and his cronies were a bunch of tyrannical idiots who hadn’t the qualifications or ability to govern a chicken farm, much less a world power. By 1944, it was too late to change leaders through any normal political process. The SS and the Gestapo. Under Hitler’s control and orders, were governing the nation. Any opposition was either executed or put in concentration prison camps.

But there were forces planning to change all that—and this is their story.

Chapter One

The Field Marshall is Disturbed

Place: The Command Headquarters of Field Marshall Walther von Hausmann, Commander, German Army Forces in Eastern Russia, near Kharkov, 175 miles south of Kursk.

Date: Late July 1944.

Field Marshall von Hausmann went outside his office to get a breath of fresh air and to collect his thoughts. He was a much-disturbed officer. He looked beyond his headquarters complex and wondered to himself: “What in the hell are we doing here? We haven’t the slightest chance of beating a huge, well equipped, well trained, highly motivated Red Army.”

As he looked over the bleak landscape, he felt it was probably the saddest and most desolate place on the entire Eastern front. He saw a bare, naked dead steppe landscape with not a bush or tree, not a village of any size around. A singletree trunk without branches stuck up five kilometers away in a tiny hamlet where a few houses were still standing, and served as a signpost. Near the hamlet were a number of balkas, deeply eroded, steep banked rain gullies that gave some protection. Occasionally a gray mist from nearby streams drifted over this desolate piece of ground and the wind, which cut through everything with its biting edge, blew unmercifully over the dusty wasteland. The loneliness of the Eastern expanses was depressing and this eerie feeling was increased by the unmerciful sun and dust. The land, the weather, every day reminded everyone depressingly of the desolation of the endless steppes which stretched as far as the eye could see—endless reminders of the enormous distance that separated them from home.

General von Hausmann thought to himself: “Were we not all, the living and the dead, long buried in a gigantic mass grave? Thoughts like this befell the General when he returned from inspecting sectors of the front. He often went himself to gather urgently needed information. German troops in many front line units lay in a desperate conflict demanding bloody sacrifice. There in the trenches and fox holes, in the snow in winter, in heat killing winds in summer, the soldiers were dying from extreme weather conditions and because the steadily shrinking rations were no longer sufficient to provide the physical stamina needed for victory in intense combat. The General knew there was no way his forces could survive another Russian winter and he knew there was no chance what ever of victory over the Red Army as it existed today.

The General gave thought to Reich Marshall Hermann Goring’s recent radio speech to the German people, which he felt was full of empty phrases and lies that out did itself in hysterical glorifications and praises, the demeanor of the officers and men of the lost German Sixth Army and others listening on clandestine and forbidden radio links to the outside world. The attitude of both officers and men on the Eastern Front became more and more hostile towards Nazi leadership. The General could feel the unrest. The glances, gestures and words all around showed unmistakably the rage that was growing in people’s souls. The General thought that whoever might still have trusted in Hitler’s leadership to provide military victories now had to recognize with growing horror that at home, where relatives and loved ones still hoped for a reunion, many warriors of the Eastern Front felt their units had been written off. The General felt that he had heard his funeral oration before its time. And he decided he had enough of such nonsense. And he was going to do something about the problem.

Not a commander to make quick, knee-jerk, impulsive decisions, the General gave serious thought to the many problems facing his command and all others on the Eastern Front. Here on this, the Tenth Anniversary of the Third Reich, the men lost at Stalingrad and on other Eastern Fronts were supposed to offer a new epic of heroism as a sort of present to the Nazi leadership. Beyond any doubt, the General mused, the intention was simply to gain political capital from a catastrophic military blunder for which the German Supreme Command, and the major roles in the debacle played by Hitler, Goring and Himmler, was totally responsible.

The General felt the disgusting adulation of the torturous death of the German Sixth Army and many of the supporting units on the Eastern Front was against all laws of humanity. It filled von Hausmann with indignation and revulsion. It pointed out to the General that something drastic had to be done—and fast, before other units on the massive Eastern Front would suffer the same fate as the Sixth Army.

German military historians Joachim Wieder and Heinrich von Einsidel were later asked about the Stalingrad debacle: “Was there really a noble, high, holy objective in Stalingrad and in our battle, an ethically justified goal that could be served by the ultimate human test of giving one’s life?” The only answer was—no.

General von Hausmann had been giving the subject a lot of thought. “Did soldierly honor and obedience to orders,” he wondered, “really justify a demand so routinely made that we must hold out for any and all lost causes, no matter that such orders produced untold, excessive suffering and death?” The General said to himself: “Absolutely not!” At what point did Army Commanders say “No more?”

Our Nation and its military forces can no longer stand by and do nothing about horrible miscalculations on the part of amateur military leaders who hadn’t the slightest idea of what they were doing and refused to listen and accept the advice of trusted military leaders on the General Staff

These were the thoughts haunting General von Hausmanri as he wondered what he could do to save his homeland from further ruin. If anything was to be done he knew that it had to be done soon, or all would be lost. He returned to his office with its many telephones and maps. He put down his cigar and called for his aide in the next room, Captain Heinrich Krueger: ~’get me Colonel Wagner. I need to discuss several matters with him privately. When he gets here, I want you to hold all telephone calls, all radio calls, and all visitors. Just tell the callers I’m out inspecting troop positions and will be out for several hours.

Captain Krueger calls the nearby headquarters of Colonel Hans Paul von Wagner, Assistant Chief of Staff to Field Marshall von Hausmann.

“Sir, this is Krueger. The Field Marshall has asked that you come to his headquarters as soon as possible.”

“What’s up, Krueger? The Russians getting closer? Tell the Chief I’m on my way” Colonel von Wagner is shown into the office of the Commanding General, stands before his desk and salutes smartly.

“Reporting as directed, sir.”

“At ease. Sit down and relax. Smoke if you wish. There are fresh cigars in that box on the table in front of you. I want to have a talk with you. How long have we known each other?”

“All my life, sir. You served under my father in World War I, and our families lived near each other in Munich.”

“How old are you, Hans?”

“Twenty-eight, sir.”

“How long have you been in the Werhmacht?”

“About eight years, sir—ever since I entered the War College and Academy at age twenty.

You will recall that I was studying architecture and engineering in America for two years. Then dad called me home.”

“Refresh my memory—where have you served?” “My first action was when Germany absorbed and invaded Austria. Then 1 was with the 4th Panzer division in the Polish campaign. For a brief time I served under General Rommel in Africa. I served with the 227th Division when Germany attacked Holland and Belgium. After that. I served with the 97th Panzer Division when we fought in France.

From that time on, I’ve served with various units on the Eastern Front, including Sixth Army, and you had me transferred to your staff recently when I was flown out of the Stalingrad Pocket.”

“You’ve had a great amount of front line combat experience. What decorations have you received for bravery in combat?”

“Sir, I’m not in the habit of wearing any medals—too many snipers out there. and they love to take out an officer who is stupid and arrogant enough to wear a medal in front line combat. But to answer your question, for my Austrian service, I won the Second Class Iron Cross. In Poland, I was awarded the First Class Iron Cross. In France, I was awarded the Knights Cross to accompany the First and Second Classes of the Iron Cross previously won in combat action on the Russian front, I was presented the Oak Leaf to the Knight’s Cross.”

“Suffice to say, you’ve seen a lot of combat, and you’ve had plenty of command assignments. How many times have you been wounded?”

“Three, sir.”

“You’ve never married. How come?”

“Never had any free time to do any serious courting, sir.

It seems every time I’m gone on leave to Germany, I’m recalled before my leave is up to return immediately to my unit and help solve some crisis. I had a relationship with a lovely lady before 1 went into service, but I lost touch. I intend to look her up if circumstances permit later. Maybe when the war is over, I’ll welcome the opportunity to meet someone, get married, and start a family, and maybe get back to my chosen field of engineering and architecture. I love to build things.”

“You mentioned the end of the war. That’s why I called this meeting. Do you think we can win this war and everyone go home to their families?”

“Sir, you and I have discussed this subject on many an occasion.

You know, I know everyone with any knowledge of what’s going on, knows the war is lost. We knew that when we lost the 6th Army and 300,000 troops at Stalingrad. Hell, sir, defeatist talk can get you court martialed, demoted to private, or even executed by Hitler and his gang of idiot thugs, but the brutal fact is we haven’t a chance of beating Russia, England and the United States. The whole Russian campaign is a horrible mistake.”

“Well, the war situation is one hell of a lot worse than you described. Field Marshall Beckman met with me yesterday. He was in shock about the incredible damage the British and American Air Forces are causing our major cities in Germany.

Field Marshall Beckman lost his entire family due to a recent massive air raid on Berlin by 1200 Allied bombers. Wouldn’t we love to have 1200 bombers at our call in this campaign! The Field Marshall wanted to know when all this would end. We both knew the answer to that: when Hitler is dead. Hans, Hitler has had eight attempts on his life from 1930 to 1939. Every one was a clumsy effort by raw amateurs who had a grudge against Hitler, or the Nazi party, and National Socialism.

“Hans, I contacted General Paulus myself and asked him to have you flown out of the Stalingrad Pocket while it was still possible. I explained to him my great need to have you handle under my direction a mission, that if it was successful, could shorten the war and stop the constant bombing of German cities and the killing of hundreds of thousands of German civilians.”

‘General Paulus cooperated one hundred percent with me. He hated to lose your service on his headquarters staff and paid you many compliments on your performance as Assistant G-3 of Sixth Army. My congratulations also.”

“General, I know you will tell me the truth. Why was not something done to save the 6th Army⁹Why were 300,000 German officers and men left to die or be captured? It simply doesn’t make any sense. The 6th was one of the best trained we had.

I will admit General Paulus was lacking in many command abilities, but he had an excellent staff With help, especially emergency air flights bringing in gas for tanks, we could have broken out to the West and South and joined up with German units in place.”

“Well, Hans, Hitler issued direct orders to General Paulus not to retreat, not to give up an inch of captured ground—and no breakout. Paulus was a dedicated Nazi, as well as a German army general, and he was just flat afraid of Hitler and his SS gangs. He would not disobey Hitler’s idiotic orders and the result was the loss of the 6th Army.

The loss meant little to Herr Hitler, since he knows nothing about how large bodies of men and armor operate. Just one more reason a change in leadership must be made—and the sooner, the better.

“To kill Hitler will take a masterful plan; hopefully I have such a plan. I’ve discussed the idea with several high ranking Wermacht officers and everyone says, ‘Go for it. Do it now, before all is lost and our homeland is occupied by invading Russians and the Allies.

“Well, sir, I would be interested in hearing the details of any plan that would stop this insane war and save our homeland.” “Listen carefully, because I want your ideas and your opinion.

Hitler and his cronies, such as General Jodi and Keitel, have to be killed so the regular army can make an orderly defensive withdrawal to American and British lines. At that time, we surrender our forces unconditionally to the Allies, the bombings cease, and the war will be over. We must and can save millions of lives of our citizens in Germany and maybe as many as four to five million in our three military forces.”

“I propose a secret task force to go to Hitler’s command headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia—hell, you’ve been there with me on at least one occasion I can remember. So you know what and where I’m talking about.”

“Yes sir, I remember.”

“This secret task force, which I call Task Force – One travels to Hitler’s headquarters, surrounds the entire complex, and at a signal from the task force commander, literally blows the place apart, killing everyone there and destroying all communications systems so there can be no outgoing messages. With Hitler and his staff killed, the Wermacht will take over and complete plans to end the war.” “But, sir, won’t you have an impossible task lining up officers and men willing to kill Hitler and his staff? Didn’t they take an oath to obey the Fuhrer?”

“That will be the easy part. Within 10 miles of this headquarters is a penal camp filled with officers and men court-martialed and sentenced to years of imprisonment. Most are there for complaining publicly about Hitler and the Nazi party, for so-called defeatism and other very trivial charges. The penal camp is just one more example of Hitler’s mismanagement of our war effort. Those prisoners should be placed in our combat units where our need for manpower is most desperate. The Russians outnumber us from two to one, to ten to one. And it’s getting worse by the week.”

“Here is my plan, and it involves you in the most important role as the task force leader: and the only objective and purpose of the task force is to kill Hitler, his staff and close associates. I will not order you to accept this assignment. My hope is that you will volunteer. You’re the most reliable, experienced, and responsible member of my staff officers that I would trust with this extremely important action. I think the future of Germany depends on its success. I don’t need your answer today. Think it over, and let me know your thoughts as soon as possible.”

“What’s to think over, sir? Let’s put this force together and I’ll take it West to Hitler’s compound immediately. With the Russians gaining momentum by the day, this action needs to be taken now. My answer is yes. What is the next step?”

“Here are my thoughts on the makeup of a task force that can get the job done. All the enlisted men and maybe two former officers will be from the penal camp. Hans, as Task Force Commander, you will need at least two combat officers. You will need two cooks and two medics. My count is five Tiger Tanks, with four men in each tank; a tank commander, driver, gunner, and combination radio operator and gun loader. That’s a total of twenty men. You will need another twenty or more infantry loaded in armored personnel carriers, five to a car, so count on four personnel carriers, one two-and-a-half ton truck for a field kitchen, and one recon car for the medics. With that amount of force, I think the partisans out there will leave you alone because of your firepower. I want every officer and non-commissioned officer to carry a Luger equipped with a silencer. I can see a time when you may have to shoot someone, and you don’t want to make a lot of noise and stir up things. Surprise is critical.”

“I want all unit numbers and insignia painted over on all vehicles, so there is no indication of what military unit you are from. You are Task Force One, and that’s all anyone needs to know.

“I will order the Major in charge of the penal camp to have forty-five prisoners ready for duty within two days of my notice, and at least three are to have been of officer rank before they went to the Penal Battalion. You will want to interview and inspect all forty-five, I imagine, so give some thought to the process. You may want a larger force.”

Colonel Wagner, a robust, lean six foot two inches and 220 pounds, mostly muscle, stood before the Field Marshall.