Crossfires, a French AAR for HoI2 Doomsday

CHAPTER 97 : VOYAGERS​

Approaching the Faroe Islands, January the 15th, 1939


"The moment of truth" muttered Kapitänleutnant Glattes, as he pressed his face against the periscope.

Though the risks were minimal, Konteradmiral Genscher, when he had summoned Glattes in his Bremerhaven offices, had been quite clear : Glattes' U-39 was to proceed to the north-eastern tip of the Faroes with extreme caution and under absolute discretion. The route he had devised scrupulously reflected these priorities : the submarine had criss-crossed the North Sea, steering clear from fishing zones and commercial sea lanes, only surfacing at night to spare the electric motors. Now that it finally reached its objective, U-39 lied motionless under the dark waters of the North Sea, the lens of its periscope barely emerging from the calm waters. As Glattes expected, little was in sight. The night was moonless and cloudy - it had been chosen carefully by the Operations bureau of the Marineoberkommando-Nordsee to give the U-39 maximum camouflage, and for once the weather reports had been right. Through the navigation periscope, Glattes couldn't see anything except the darker mass of Svinoy Island, at starboard, and the smaller Fugloy Island, straight ahead. From a coastal village on Svinoy, a few specks of light bore testimony of mankind's stubbornness - even in the face of a hostile nature and harsh living conditions, it defiantly clung to its settlements. For a second, Glattes almost envied the sleeping islanders, their simple desires and their uncomplicated lives. And then, the moment passed. Leaning against the periscope's steel tubes, he felt a pang of anger well up. In Genscher's office, the shroud of secrecy that surrounded this mission had been intriguing, exciting even. Though the Faroes was a sector Glattes knew like the back of his hand, having patrolled it many times, there had been something in the Counter Admiral's conspirational tone that had got him hoping against all logic that there would be something - anything, actually - worth seeing. But the Faroes islands just stood there, a handful of hilly pebbles that cold winds and dark waves slowly eroded.

"Take note, Otto. New entry on the boat's log" Glattes said, adressing his second in command. "January the fifteenth. Reached Waypoint Four at, lemme see, ten hours and twenty-one minutes. Went to periscope depth for situation assessment. Calm seas, skies overcast, no stars visible. No surface activity. Nothing to report."

Otto Auer, U-39's second-in-command, looked so comically crestfallen that Glattes felt his own anger abate. Biting back a chuckle, he pushed the navigation periscope back up and turned to the second one - this one, the attack periscope, would allow him a better look at what lied nearby. Glattes didn't expect to find anything. He and Auer had carefully brought the boat out of the lanes used by the tramps and ferries that were the Faroes' lifeline to Denmark and Britain, and the hydrophones confirmed the absence of any discernible surface activity. Still, now that his final objective was at hand Glattes refused to take any unnecessary chances. There might be a fishing boat lifting its nets over there, or a Danish patrol cutter picketing the Faroes' northeastern approaches for some reason. Not that Glattes didn't trust his boat – quite the contrary, he believed it to be the best of the Reich’s navy. While most of its sister-ships had been built in Bremen by the AG Weser shipyards, his brand-new U-39 had been assembled in Holland by IvS, a front company the Kriegsmarine used to further implement its Z-Plan, and rumor had it that the Dutch-built Type IXs were not only more comfortable, but also a little faster than the rest of their class. Naturally, Glattes also trusted himself, and his crew, to outwit the best the Royal Danish Navy could throw at them. The men of the U-bootwaffe unanimously regarded themselves as an élite within the Kriegsmarine, if only because they were the only sailors who could pit their wits and skills against Germany's potential enemies on a daily basis, trailing freighters and shadowing capital ships leaving their bases. If this has been an ordinary patrol in the North Sea, like Glattes had so often done, he would have delighted at the prospect of playing cat-and-mouse with a Danish destroyer, but tonight's mission wasn't ordinary, something the crew tacitly understood.

In this respect, the mood aboard U-39 was in touch with that of the rest of the nation. Somehow, things had gotten more serious than before - the officers were tenser, the orders stricter, the general atmosphere a shade darker. After the euphoria which had followed Germany's diplomatic triumph at the Münich conference, the general mood across the country was oddly subdued. People felt vaguely worried, as if Münich was not so much the conclusion of a diplomatic crisis but the prologue of another. This was attested by the phone conversations tapped by the Gestapo's Berlin offices, and conveyed by the soldiers' letters that went through the censorship officers. The entire Reich was restless, expectant. Many Germans felt that after Münich a shoe had been dropped, and they now wondered when and where the other would come, with mixed feelings of anxiety and arrogance. After the reoccupation of the Rhineland, after the union of the Sudetenland with the Reich, was it time to press Germany's luck and throw away the shackles of Versailles for good, or was it wiser to leave the gambling table with the impressive gains of Münich? Glattes personally leaned towards a last gamble - it would be nothing harsh nor unreasonable, actually, just the physical reunification of East Prussia with the Vaterland. After that, Germany would be able to revert to a more reserved policy, centered around the peaceful reorganization of Europe within a Pax Germanica that France and Britain would find themselves compelled to accept.

"Anything out there?" asked Auer, hope in his voice. While participating to a secret mission was exciting, being used as a simple transport was not.

Glattes squinted to try to see through the darkness - what the attack periscope gave you in depth, it took away in width, making it a strenuous exercise for a submarine commander to get an idea of his immediate surroundings. But for all his efforts, there was little to see. With no moon to pierce through the thick clouds, and a sea as black as Chinese ink, it looked like U-39 was floating through space, the lights from Svinoy like the glitter of a distant star.


"Not a single thing. It's as black as Jenssen's muck out there", grumbled Glattes, referring to the cook's notoriously bad roasted grains coffee. That veil of darkness was a protection, but also a danger of its own – a fishing ship could appear from nowhere, and accidentally ram U-39 before the submarine’s crew could react. Glattes pushed the thought aside – that always was the risk when a submarine surfaced, after all, and there was little he could do if that happened. Better, he thought, to focus on the things he did have some control over. Glattes kept searching the dark night for a few minutes, and as usual he felt a little migraine develop in the back of his skull as he fumbled with the periscope's settings. Finally he straightened back and turned toward Auer.

"Write in the log, Otto, same entry : have raised attack periscope. No ship visible. No light on Fugloy. Will proceed to our destination."

"Nothing, then?" asked Auer, bringing the attack periscope down.

"Nothing, Otto. Tell you what, let's drop our passengers and forget about it all. As soon as they're on their god-forsaken pebble, this boat reverts to being a submarine, not a goddamn ferry!"

Leaving the conning tower to his second-in-command, Glattes strode towards the officer's bunks. The disappointment about this "special" mission almost paled before the prospect of getting back his cabin.

Almost.

Off Mindelo harbor, Cape Verde Islands, January the 15th, 1939

Leaning against the rail, the German Captain enjoyed a last puff from his cigarette, watching the lights from the nearby town of Mindelo. The night breeze tasted of salt and grease - the smell of ports all over the world, of course, though the spring-like temperature was more than welcome after the shivers of Kiel and, of course, the weather he'd get on the site of his “real” mission.

Oh yes, this little Portuguese escapade is just what I need. In two months, I'll have forgotten what warmth even feels like.

Stopped just outside the dyke that protected the harbor from the Atlantic's gales, as did ships waiting for the port's pilot, the German freighter rolled lightly under the tide. Through his marine binoculars, the German officers could see the wharfs of Mindelo. A dozen ships were docked at this hour, most of them dark masses barely outlined by position signals. Only three ships were brightly lit, denoting activity : an American yacht, from which the breeze brought the echoes of a noisome party, a Portuguese tugboat stoking its boilers, and the "Ville de Bayonne", a French freighter. These last two ships annoyed the German captain, for they represented a danger. Had everything gone according to plan, the freighter and its service tugboat wouldn't have been there. When he had first talked with the man from Hamburg-Amerika line - whose task was to keep track of foreign shipping moving into and out of Mindelo – the man had promised the French ship wouldn't be there. Ritscher hadn’t been too surprised, when a few hours later the commercial agent had come back with preoccupying news. Apparently the Cherbourg-chartered freighter, normally inbound for Caracas with a hold full of coal and truck parts, had been seriously delayed by a faulty crane. After all attempts to repair it had failed, the French captain and his company agent had got hold of every docker they could use, promising them twice the normal fees if the freighter left before midnight. Training his binoculars on the "Ville de Bayonne", the German officer could see the dockers and sailors, working feverishly to complete the loading operations. He grunted, hoping it would take the French ship at least another hour, because if not, he could bid a fond adieu to discretion. And the German captain didn't need any lecture on how important discretion was, given the already high-profile of his ship.

"Sir?" said a man behind him. "The tug's arriving."

"Already?" replied Kapitan zur See Alfred Ritscher. With the wind carrying the ruckus from the harbor, and his own crew working diligently on the deck, he hadn’t noticed the noise of the approaching tug. Chiding himself for his inattention, Ritscher checked his watch and saw with some surprise it was not even eleven. The rendezvous ship was ten minutes early.

"So! Maybe we're in luck after all, Goerner. Get the men ready to unload the cargo."

If it hadn't been for the seaplane crane and catapult installed on its stern, the Schwabenland would have looked like an ordinary freighter, or one of the tenders which delivered overseas mail. And without the cumbersome Blohm und Voss, which Ritscher had sent away before approaching Mindelo, it still could - at night. But even at this hour, Ritscher had no doubt that the Schwabenland, immobilized near the entrance of the harbor, would be instantly identified by any ship heading towards the open sea. There had been too many articles, and too many newsreels about what the Propaganda Ministry had called "Germany's greatest scientific mission so far", not to mention "a just claim in the name of German scientific preeminence". The fact was, Ritscher was even more excited by his main mission than he had been when he had been summoned at the offices of the newly-established Submarine Command of the Kriegsmarine, the Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote. There, in an office that reeked of fresh paint and dusty files, Kommodore Karl Dönitz had explained to Ritscher what the Vaterland expected of him. Ritscher had been selected by the top brass to lead Germany's Third Antarctic expedition, the first in over twenty-five years, and the first whose goal was as economical as it was scientific. For over a month, he and his thirty companions would cruise the Antarctic shores near the Queen Maud's Land, establishing a series of temporary research bases and, more importantly, a semi-permanent whaling station that would help reduce the Reich's dependence on foreign markets for the production of soap and the all-important butter ersatz. All that was public knowledge, of course, made all the more public by Reichsminister Goebbels' tireless drum-beating in the German press. Some even said was that the Propaganda Minister had signed a very profitable deal with an American company to sell real video footage of the expedition, to be used in a future adventure movie. Yes, all that was public knowledge but, Dönitz had said, a few things never would, because Kapitän Ritscher's first responsibility would be to see to it that they remained secret. First, the Schwabenland would leave Kiel with more fuel than necessary, along with some spare parts meant for a different kind of vessels. On its way to Queen Maud's Land, the ship would make what would appear as a routine stop at the Portuguese port of Mindelo, in the Cape Verde islands. There, Ritscher was to discreetly unload the extra supplies, along with three of its passengers that would travel isolated from the rest of the expedition. The Schwabenland being temporarily versed in the Kriegsmarine as a "Baltic Sea auxiliary cruiser", the military code of justice's provisions about the protection of state secrets already applied to the ship's crew and officers.



As an active naval officer, and a German patriot, Ritscher had uttered no objection to this change of plans. The Schwabenland’s hold was big enough to accommodate some extra cargo, and a second tender ship was slated to resupply the expedition in the first week of February anyway. This little subterfuge, Dönitz had said, was a military necessity. The port of Mindelo was teeming with British spies, who kept a watchful eye on German shipping along the Atlantic sea lanes. Any German freighter dropping anchor at Mindelo was therefore bound to be closely scrutinized, however discreet its arrival may be. With all the propaganda fanfare surrounding Ritscher’s polar expedition, and every newspaper in the world heralding its mission, the Abwehr therefore believed that the Schwabenland would be the best way to replenish a discreet supply depot, right under everybody's nose. All Ritscher had to do was to stop at a certain time, at a certain point near the harbor's entrance, as did captains waiting for a pilot boat to guide them out of, or into port. A small tugboat would stop next to the German ship, and the two crews would rapidly transfer the extra cargo. As for the passengers, Ritscher would disembark them in Boa Vista island before reaching Mindelo – the Schwabenland’s floatplane would come in handy. Where the tugboat would come, and where it would take the fuel and crates, Ritscher didn't need to know - and he hadn't asked. He knew full well, without having to be told, what use a clandestine fuel depot could be to Kommodore Dönitz, Germany’s “Unter See Admiral” as some jokingly called him. And in these dire times of high international tension, the Reich’s navy needed every bolt, screw and drop of diesel fuel it could smuggle in the Atlantic, before the British and French navies cordoned the ocean off. The Party's papers, for once, were in unison with the international press corps: once again, the prospect of a European war was looming. Ritscher nevertheless felt reasonably optimistic: surely, Britain and France would come to their senses and realize that all they had to do to was to scrap what was left of the Versailles Diktat for good, and to treat Germany with the respect the Reich was due. Then, a general peace conference would definitely settle the last issues that were troubling Europe, ensuring peace for the coming generations. But of course Germany couldn't rely on the sole common sense of its neighbors. History showed, as Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop had said, that it was better for a nation surrounded by jealous neighbors to brandish a sword than an olive branch. And, Ritscher reasoned, should France and Britain once again impose war on Germany, then it was his duty to help make it a short one. Only then could the Reich achieve in a victorious war what the hostility of its neighbors had prevented it to accomplish through peaceful means.

To make sure his passengers would see as little as possible of tonight’s operations, Ritscher had organized two fire drills and one evacuation drill that afternoon, and at supper had instructed the sailors on mess duty to be more generous than usual with alcohol. Suitably wined, and still exhausted from all the running through the ship's extensive corridors and the hauling of heavy fire hoses from stern to bow, the expedition’s scientists and technicians hadn't been long in crashing to bed. Just in case exhaustion and drunkenness wouldn’t be enough, Ritscher had posted a few men at every corridor to turn away any adventurous passenger wanting to go outside for a stroll on the bridge. The official excuse the sailors would present was that after the drills there was a maintenance operation going on, and that the bridge was not safe for unskilled hands. So far, Ritscher could see, schnapps and aching muscles had done the trick. Reaching the stern, he caught sight of the small boat that had dropped anchor next to the Schwabenland. It was an improvised tugboat, long as a fishing trawler, with used truck tires attached to its flanks. On the cleared bridge, half a dozen men stood silently. To Ritscher it all conjured up images of bootleggers in a gangster movies, and for one second he felt like he was James Cagney. Or maybe Emil Jannings.

The Schwabenland prepares to launch its floatplane as it approaches Sao Vicente island​

On a nod, the Schwabenland’s sailors started to work. One by one, the barrels of fuel descended onto the tugboat.

Off Fugloy, the Faroes Islands, the same night

Pointing the search projector towards the island, Glattes ordered a sailor to send the arranged signal – three short flashes, in rapid succession, followed by a longer one. After a few tense seconds – had they gone here only to find out that nobody was expecting them? – a torchlight flickered twice, somewhere on the coastline. Glattes let a sigh of relief – at least his journey, as disappointing as it had been, had not been in vain.

“Repeat the signal for confirmation” he ordered, turning towards the small group of men who until now had been anxiously waiting, huddled near the submarine’s conning tower. The watchers kept their binoculars trained at the pitch-black horizon, just in case a Danish ship paid the small island a surprise visit. But there was nothing to see, and the only noise was that of the waves washing over the submarine’s narrow “deck”. An inflatable boat had already been put to sea by the u-boot crewmembers, and Glattes’ passengers stood ready to embark on the small skiff. They were an odd lot, Glattes thought – definitely not the kind he had expected. When, at Bremerhaven, he had been told his passengers would all be Luftwaffe personnel, he had somehow foolishly supposed they would be paratroopers, commandos, off to a daring raid. But the four men who had boarded his submarine barely fitted that description. They were rather of the bookish persuasion, and their commanding officer, a Lieutenant named Premke, had looked so scrawny that Glattes had wondered how the man, with his pencil neck and thick glasses, hadn’t been turned away by the Luftwaffe recruiting station. During meals, in an officers mess that was so small that half the table had to stand up to make room for the passing sailors, the four “guests” had eaten in silence, trading only small talk. They had opposed mute and apologetic smiles to each and every question about their Faroese mission, however oblique. But of course, there was only so much that one could hide from the boat’s captain, particularly when said captain’s curiosity had been aroused by stony silence. So on the first night, as U-39 ventured into Norwegian waters, Glattes had paid the submarine’s hold a little visit. The four aviators, if that was what they really were, had embarked along with two small crates of equipment that had been stored there. Glattes had inspected the crates closely, half-tempted to pry one open. The first one had been the most revealing – on its sides, along with “Fragile / Handle with care”, was painted the logo of a company Glattes knew well enough – Siemens AG. The old radio equipment he had trained at the naval school, and the more modern one equipping his boat both came from that company’s Münich-based production lines. One didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what that crate contained. As for the other one, it bore no mark other than “Fragile / Precision instruments” and the Luftwaffe eagle and laurels.

So, Glattes had thought. No daring raid. No explosives and machine-guns. Instead, a radio transmitter and precision instruments. If we were closer to Scapa Flow, that would make sense, but the Faroes? There’s nothing to observe up there…

Glattes hadn’t questioned the airmen any further – it was not his role, after all, and he didn’t want to place his guests in a difficult position. But he had tried to recollect what he knew of Fugloy. It was one of the smallest pebbles of the group of islands, and probably the most inhospitable to man. The middle of the island was occupied by a large hilltop, whose slopes fell steeply into the sea, forming a wall of forbidding cliffs. Along the coastline, there was barely enough arable land to support a handful of families, regrouped in two coastal villages near the island’s natural port. From what Glattes knew, U-39’s meager crew outnumbered Fugloy’s entire population, which meant that though the island was barely bigger than his late father’s Pomeranian farm, four men could probably remain hidden from view practically forever on the island, particularly if some of the locals did lend a hand. He did not envied the Lutwaffe men, though – living in Fugloy looked bleak enough, but being holed up on the island with only a radio and a safehouse to communicate with the outside world, that was beyond Glattes’ comprehension, used as he may be to isolation.

“Captain?” said Auer, lowering his binoculars. “Signal confirmed. We should hurry up.”

“Damn right, Otto” said Glattes, turning to Premke. “Leutnant, this is where we part. No second thoughts?”

“Lots, actually, Captain” replied Premke with a quiet chuckle. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

“Any time, Leutnant Premke. Now, tell me. What on earth did you do to get this shitty assignment? Stole Fat Hermann’s Cognac and crashed his favorite Benz?”

“Boy, now do I wish I had!” chuckled Premke. “We all volunteered, can you believe it? Not that there were too many potential candidates, mind you.”

“Never volunteer, Lieutenant. So, what is it you and your men are going to watch over there? Seagulls?”

“Just a little higher, Captain” said Premke, pointing a finger at the sky. ”Just a little higher.”

Glattes looked up as Premke’s men, one by one, boarded the small rubber boat where sailors had already fastened the crates. All there was, over the tower, was the submarine’s dripping wet flag, frozen solid by the icy breeze. And over the glistening flag mast, the only visible thing was the rolling black clouds that hid the stars.

Ah, yes, thought Glattes. Of course. Weathermen.


Game effects :

To simulate the establishment of clandestine supply depots in neutral-friendly nations, Germany gets military access to Portugal. Also, I added “Wolfpack Doctrine” to Germany’s naval technologies to reflect the Kriegsmarine’s enhanced operational capabilities.


Writer’s notes :

Less numerous and less known than the more widely celebrated Type VII, the Type IX submarines were the Kriegsmarine’s first ocean-going boats. The IX-A submarines had two periscopes, a navigation scope and an attack scope, both installed in the conning tower.

U-39 was a real OTL Type IX submarine, though one built by Weser AG and not by IvS. Captain Glattes was indeed the boat's commanding officer.

IvS was a Dutch front of a German company that built submarines (in direct violation of the Versailles treaty) for the Kriegsmarine in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Here, with Holland moving towards a policy of closer cooperation with the Third Reich, IvS pursues its work for Germany as part of Raeder’s accelerated Z-plan.

Weather conditions were of course a major factor in military planning at the time of WW2, even more so than today – just think of the Ardennes offensive, or D-Day for examples of the influence of weather on major operations. Setting up some well-positioned weather stations, from which major weather changes could be anticipated, could therefore make all the difference for both sides’ general headquarters. A few years ago, I read a short article about a group of German soldiers sent to the Spitzberg islands (IIRC) to establish a secret weather station there. With Norway still neutral in this TL, and the Spitzberg being more densely populated (and also more closely scrutinized by the British) for a clandestine mission, I settled for the Faroes.

This ATL’s description of Fugloy is bleaker than the island deserves in real life. In the 1940s, Fugloy’s population was in fact somewhere around 100, though it began to dwindle because of the island’s rather poor agricultural resources, and its difficult access through an unprotected port.

The Schwabenland was the ship used by the German Polar Expedition of 1938-1939. Kapitän zur See Alfred Ritscher really did command the expedition, which reconnoitered the Antarctic shores, dropping metallic Nazi crosses on the polar icecap in an area near Queen Maud’s Land that Germany claimed as “Neuschwabenland”. Part of the expedition’s motives was indeed to establish a whaling station to boost the production of margarine. The main effect of the expedition, apparently, has been to fuel fantasies about secret Nazi U-boot/UFO bases.

Here, a much-delayed German naval update, as the Kriegsmarine makes its final preparations in case of war.

Hopefully I didn't mangle the update too badly, having written, re-written, re-re-re-re-written it almost to the death!

Le Jones said:

Sneaky, sneaky stuff - all too credible. How much did you use this military access?

Click to expand...

So far, not that much, but it seemed to me that it would make German commerce raiders more efficient if they could (in game terms) rebase in Portuguese territories.

I'm still pondering what to do with Portugal itself. Salazar's sympathies would probably go with Germany, but there's also a traditional friendship with the UK, a traditional link to France as an emigration destination, and Portugal would be vulnerable to a Spanish offensive if it openly sided with Germany in times of war.

The next update might be a little tour of the neutral nations of Europe, where the UK, France and Germany vie for influence.