your chart.’ said the colonel in aircraft two.
The headings were given. The formation grouped and, as it descended into
safe altitude with cloud cover above, sped toward the North Sea.
The rrdnutes reached five, then seven, then twelve. Finally twenty. There
was relatively little cloud cover below; the coast of England should have
come into sighting range at least two
34
minutes ago. A number of pilots were concerned. Several said so. ‘Did you give
accurate headings, aircraft threeT asked the now squadron commander.
‘Affirmative, colonel,’ was the radioed answer.
‘Any of you chart men disagree?’
A variety of negatives was heard from the remaining aircraft.
‘No sweat on the headings, colonel,’ came the voice of the captain of
aircraft five. ‘I fault your execution, though.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You pointed two-three-niner by my reading. I figured my equipment was shot
up. . . .’
Suddenly there were interruptions from every pilot in the decimated
squadron.
‘I read one-seven. . .
‘My heading was a goddamned two-niner-two. We took a direct hit on.’. . .’
‘Jesusl I had sixer-four. . .
‘Most of our middle took a load. I discounted my reading& totally V
And then there was silence. All understood.
Or understood what they could not comprehend.
‘Stay off all frequencies,’ said the squadron commander, TI1 try to reach
base.’
The cloud cover above broke; not for long, but long enough. The voice over
the radio was the captain of aircraft three.
‘A quick judgment, colonel, says we’re heading due northwest.’
Silence again.
After a few moments, the commander spoke. TH reach somebody. Do all your
gauges read as mine? Fuel for roughly ten to fifteen minutes?’
‘It’s been a long haul, colonel,’ said aircraft seven. ‘No more than that,
it’s for sure.’
‘I figured we’d be circling, if we had to, five minutes ago,’ said aircraft
eight.
‘We’re not,’ said aircraft four.
The colonel in aircraft two raised Lakenheath on an emergency frequency.
‘As near as we can determine,’ came the strained, agitated, yet controlled
English voice, ‘and by that I mean open lines throughout the coastal
defense areas – water and land – you’re approach-
35
ing the Dunbar sector. That’s the Scottish border, colonel. What in blazes
are you doing there?’
‘For Christ’s sake, I don’t know! Are there any fields?’
‘Not for your aircraft. Certainly not a formation; perhaps, one or two. .
. .’
‘I don’t want to hear that, you son of a bitch! Give me emergency
instructions!’
‘We’re really quite unprepared. . .
‘Do you read me?l I have what’s left of a very chopped-up squadron! We have
less than six minutes’ fuel! Now you give I’
The silence lasted precisely four seconds. Lakenheath conferred swiftly.
With finality.
‘We believe you’ll sight the coast, probably Scotland. Put your aircraft
down at sea…. We’ll do our best, lads.’
‘We’re eleven bombers, Lakenheathl We’re not a bunch of ducks!’
‘There isn’t time, squadron Leader. . . . The logistics are insurmountable.
After all, we didn’t guide you there. Put down at sea. We’ll do our best
… Godspeed.’
36
Part One
SEPTEMBER 10, 1943
BERLIN, GERMANY
Reichsminister of Armaments Albert Speer raced up the steps of the Air
Ministry on the Tiergarten. He did not feel the harsh, diagonal sheets of
rain that plummeted down from the grey sky; he did not notice that his
raincoat – unbuttoned – had fallen away, exposing his tunic and shirt to the
inundation of the September storm. The pitch of his fury swept everything
but the immediate crisis out of his mind.
Insanityl Sheer, unmitigated, unforgivable insanityl
The industrial reserves of all Germany were about exhausted; but he could
handle that immense problem. Handle it by properly utilizing the
manufacturing potential of the occupied countries; reverse the unmanageable
practices of importing the labor forces. Labor forces? Slaves!
Productivity disastrous; sabotage continuous, unending.
What did they expect?
it was a time for sacrifice I Hitler could not continue to be all things to
all people! He could not provide outsized Duesenbergs and grand operas and
populated restaurants; he had to provide, instead, tanks, munitions, ships,
aircraft! These were the priorities I
But, the Fahrer could never erase the memory of the 1918 revolution.
How totally inconsistent! The sole man whose will was shaping history, who
was close to the preposterous dream of a
37
thousand-year Reich, was petrified of a long-ago memory of unruly mobs, of
unsatisfied masses.
Speer wondered if future historians would record the fact. If they would
comprehend just how weak Hitler really was when it came to his own
countrymen. How he buckled in fear when consumer production fell below
anticipated schedules.
Insanity I
But still he, the Reichsminister of Armaments, could control this
calamitous inconsistency as long as he was convinced it was Just a question
of time. A few months; perhaps six at the outside.
For there was PeenemUnde.
The rockets.
Everything reduced itself to PeenemOnde!
PeenemUnde was irresistible. PeenemUnde would cause the collapse of London
and Washington. Both governments would see the futility of continuing the
exercise of wholesale annihilation.
Reasonable men could then sit down and create reasonable treaties.
Even if it meant the silencing of unreasonable men. Silencing Hitler.
Speer knew there were others who thought that way, too. The Fahrer was
manifestly beginning to show unhealthy signs of pressure – fatigue. He now
surrounded himself with mediocrity – an ill-disguised desire to remain in
the comfortable company of his intellectual equals. But it went too far
when the Reich itself was affected. A wine merchant, the foreign minister
I A third-rate party propagandizer, the n-dnister of eastern affairs I An
erstwhile fighter pilot, the overseer of the entire economyl
Even himself. Even the quiet, shy architect; now the minister of armaments.
All that would change with PeenemUnde.
Even himself, Thank God!
But first there had to be PeenemUnde. There could be no question of its
operational success. For without PeenemUnde, the war was lost.
And now they were telling him there was a question. A flaw that might well
be the precursor of Germany’s defeat.
A vacuous-looking corporal opened the door of the cabinet room. Speer
walked in and saw that the long conference table was about two-thirds
filled, the chairs in cliquish separation, as
if the groups were suspect of one another. As, indeed, they were in these
times of progressively sharpened rivalries within the Reich.
He walked to the head of the table, where – to his right – sat the only man
in the room he could trust. Franz AltmUller.
Altmaller was a forty-two-year-old cynic. Tall, blond, aristocratic; the
vision of the Third Reich Aryan who did not, for a minute, subscribe to the
racial nonsense proclaimed by the Third Reich. He did, however, subscribe
to the theory of acquiring whatever benefits came his way by pretending to
agree with anyone who might do him some good.
In public.
In private, among his very close associates, he told the truth.
When that truth might also benefit him.
Speer was not only Altrafiller’s associate, he was his friend. Their
families had been more than neighbors; the two fathers had often gone into
joint merchandising ventures; the mothers had been school chums.
Altmflller had taken after his father. He was an extremely capable
businessman; his expertise was in production administration.
‘Good morning,’ said Altmfiller, fficking an imaginary thread off his tunic
lapel. He wore his party uniform far more often than was necessary,
preferring to err on the side of the archangel.
‘That seems unlikely,’ replied Speer, sitting down rapidly. The groups –
and they were groups – around the table kept talking among themselves but
the voices were perceptibly quieter. Eyes kept darting over in Speer’s
direction, then swiftly away; everyone was prepared for immediate silence
yet none wished to appear apprehensive, guilty.
Silence would come when either Altmiiller or Speer himself rose from his
chair to address the gathering. That would be the signal. Not before. To
render attention before that movement might give the appearance of fear.
Fear was equivalent to an admission of error. No one at the conference
table could afford that.
Altmillier opened a brown manila folder and placed it in front of Speer. It
was a list of those summoned to the meeting. There were essentially three
distinct factions with subdivisions within each, and each with its
spokesman. Speer read the names and unobtrusively – he thought – looked up
to ascertain the presence
39
and the location of the three leaders.
At the far end of the table, resplendent in his general’s uniform, his
tunic a field of decorations going back thirty years, sat Ernst Leeb, Chief
of the Army Ordnance Office. He was of medium height but excessively
muscular, a condition he maintained well into his sixties. He smoked his
cigarette through an ivory holder which he used to cut off his various
subordinates’ conversations at will. In some ways Leeb was a caricature,