100. Victory On All Fronts
Begleitsgruppe Rommel
Northwest of Baku, Ottoman Empire
25 May 1944
The halftrack jolted on the bad Soviet road, and Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel sat bolt upright, half-expecting a Soviet ambush. They were theoretically behind friendly lines, but the lines were incredibly porous in the mountains. No, the halftrack kept going, no ambush, just an apologetic look from the driver and a badly paved road. It was unlikely to improve, he thought, once the Turks took this land. He grunted and heaved himself up to grab the rim of the troop compartment. "Where are we?" he yelled down at the driver, who turned back, yelling, "Ismaili? Somewhere 'round there, sir. All these Azeri names look the same time."
They were here because of Rommel's personal interest in grabbing Tblisi and, more important, Guri. The problem was that the forces under his command were epically unsuited to this ground: the German-hosted armored forces had all received Panthers, but his troops and Guderian's were both fighting with Panzer IVs, and the Panzer IV was never meant to be a mountain weapon. Thank God for Busch's "Africans," without whom he would have had essentially no infantry, but Busch couldn't keep pace with the armor, and Busch was already concerned as they advanced on Mount Elbrus that the foot soldiers, in shorts and cotton tunics, were going to freeze. Personally Rommel thought that Busch was being premature, but he had a point - the "Africans" were dressed to garrison the Sinai, not fight their way over a mountain range. At the very least, the terrain here was going to be hell on their exposed legs.
Ahead, he saw a K-wagen pulled off the track, and ducked into the halftrack to complete his public look, with peaked cap, goggles, scarf, and a long black motorcycle messenger's leather coat. It was beastly hot in this weather, but everyone expected it of him, and if there was one thing that soldiers responded to, he thought with a quirked mouth, it was symbols. The halftrack rumbled to a halt alongside the K-wagen, and he dismounted, waving aside the shorts-clad Hauptmann on the ground's salute with his baton. "Well now, lads, how're things up here?" he asked cheerfully.
He heard muttering, saw a dark-jawed Feldwebel with his pith helmet on his knee. "Great, just what we need, more shoulderboards to get in the way." Rommel grinned as he saw the NCO's look of horror as he comprehended who the shoulderboards in question belonged to. "I agree completely, Feldwebel," he replied, squatting down beside the soldier. "This isn't my first war, and I wasn't always a general. So... Feldwebel... what's your name?"
"Remark, sir." The man had stiffened into a surprising caricature of attention given that he was staying close to the ground. Rommel grunted in amusement. "Like the author?" Remark nodded, swallowing before replying, "Yes, sir. Some sort of cousin, sir."
"Heh. Must make it hard to get ahead in this army. So what do you think of the Reds, Feldwebel Remark?" Remark swigged from his canteen, swishing and spitting to rinse the dust from his mouth before drinking properly. It allowed him to think about his answer, which pleased Rommel to some degree. Too many soldiers... himself included, if he was strictly honest... would have rushed into that answer.
"Great soldiers. Shit officers. And their trenchcoats..." Remark shivered expressively. "Saw one of 'em set up a Maxim and gun down his own men when they couldn't take our position. Some of them... probably Russians... aren't shit in mountains, but the locals, when Comrade Stalin sees fit to give them rifles... sir, they're murder, especially at night. We lost a sentry couple nights ago, wasn't any cover within six hundred meters of our position. I swear they're part goat."
Rommel grinned. "Part goat? Marshal Bock will be happy." The Marshal had not completely recovered from his upset over Student's nickname, and any pun possible on his name was a running joke in the Reichsheer. "Sir," the Feldwebel said, ignoring his own Hauptmann to speak directly to Rommel, "we need mountaineers out here. We can fight anyone anywhere, but we just don't have the equipment for going up a ridge, down a ridge, up a ridge, down a ridge. And we don't have enough marksmen, either. We're good out to, say, six hundred meters if we can just see them, but past that?" He shrugged expressively. "Tell the truth, sir, I miss the Mauser 98 sometimes."
Rommel nodded, lost in thought. In the last war, soldiers had clamored for something more useful in the trenches and at close range, leading to the MP18 and its heirs, most recently the MKb 43. To hear someone asking for a return of a fifty-year-old bolt-action rifle seemed somewhat incongruous. "Mmm. 'The War of the Mountain Goats,'" he muttered to himself, shaking his head to clear it and looking back at Remark. "I understand your complaint, but to be honest, there's very little that can be done quickly to fix it. My advice is to scrounge off the enemy." Remark for the first time since noticing it was Rommel looked savagely bitter. "Of course, sir," he replied, biting off any further retort, though Rommel could practically read his mind: Thank you very much, sir, now quit wasting my time. It was a conversation that broke out every time Rommel and his nominal superior, Kluge, butted heads; the difference was that a Pour le Merite winner with a baton was near-invincible to career criticism, while a Feldwebel in a trench was not. It was a difference Rommel appreciated, and he chose to ignore the dark, mutinous look on Remark's face just as surely as he had ignored the fact that the man had last shaved some time in April by the looks of it.
He stood, brushing dust from his coat and opening his mouth to speak. Before he could, there was a low ruffling noise, the only warning he was likely to have under the circumstances. Instincts not used in thirty years kicked in and he flung himself flat just before the explosion. Like Remark, he was twisting around, yelling "INCOMING!" for anyone who had both survived the mortar attack and not noticed it. The halftrack pinged and popped as fragments bounced off its sides, and seconds later another round, then a third, fell on their position. Remark raised his voice to be heard over the ringing in both their ears. "AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING, SIR. THE REDS APPARENTLY EAT ROCKS AND SHIT MORTARS." He gestured as he dusted himself off, voice slowly returning to normal. "It's always the same. Three rounds, then they move before we can even guess where they are." Rommel nodded, then an incongruous sound struck them both. The Hauptmann, still somewhat distressed at Rommel's unexpected visit to his company, was holding a red-leaking arm, and joined them to look behind a rock outcropping where an uncanny mewling was pouring out.
In a hollow behind a rock, previously unnoticed by the German soldiers, was a bed of leaves and grass, hollowed out by a wolf bitch that had littered perhaps a week prior. Bad luck for her that pregnancy had caught her essentially on the front line, and worse luck still that a mortar fragment had done what no German soldier had yet, opening her side. She was dying, they saw, a loop of intestine lying over the pups under her, and the keening was her unwilling response. She raised her head feebly and bared her teeth, snarling at the three soldiers, before the effort cost her what little time she had left. Her head lay back and her eyes glazed, leaving them staring down at the five pups half-hidden by her body. They mewled helplessly, and unthinking, Rommel leaned forward and scooped one up by the scruff of its neck, tucking it in the front of his coat. The other two were subdued in reaction to a battlefield death outside of those they had seen so many of, and eventually Rommel cleared his throat. "Hauptmann Weiss, Feldwebel Remark... see that the poor little bastards are taken care of." He smiled bleakly. "We're not the only orphans out here."
Remark nodded, surprisingly tender as he knelt beside the pups, and Rommel retreated back to his halftrack, shaken at the experience. He remained like that, wolf pup half-poking from the neck of his coat, when he arrived back at Baku, and before he could do anything about it, the
Signal photographer attached to his headquarters had already taken a picture, one more piece of the growing legend around him. Remark's statements proved eerily prophetic regarding the Caucasian mountaineers, with the Germans seesawing constantly against them, the Soviets unable to dislodge Rommel and Busch from Baku, but Rommel, Busch, and Kluge unable to pry the Reds from the approaches to Tblisi easily. It was a bloody, expensively stalemated front, with neither side able to move forward easily.
---
Maybach-1
Zossen, German Empire
26 May 1944
In Generalfeldmarschall von Bock's absence, most of the daily briefing tasks in Berlin were handled by General der Artillerie Wilhelm Keitel, one of a seemingly infinite number of interchangeable Berlin General Staffers. Keitel's last command held had been a battery of field guns in the Great War, and he had safely ensconced himself here in Berlin throughout both the Weimar period and the Restoration. Bock viewed him with something bordering on amused contempt, but saw his uses as a staff officer. Wilhelm generally deferred to him as a professional soldier. Today, Keitel had arranged a briefing in the Maybach-1 grand maproom, with markers positioned across a map of Europe and silent aides shuttling to and fro with dispatches to update every unit in the Reichsheer's status and rods to push them into position to reflect those updates.
Wilhelm was in Foot Guards black, looking as haggard as might be expected of a man whose empire was at war with the world's largest country. His hair was immaculately combed, and his uniform perfect, but the dark rings under his eyes were a dead giveaway of the stress he felt in this new war. Keitel, in comparison, looked sleek, well-fed, and complacent. He nodded in thanks to another of the General Staffers - Jodl, Wilhelm's memory prodded - as he delivered another missive. Keitel's already satisfied expression did not materially changed, but took on an extra sheen, and he glanced over at the map officers as they updated the map.
"Ah. All-Highest. Welcome to Maybach-1," he began as always, saluting and clicking his heels. Wilhelm raised a hand in silent acknowledgement, blinking twice, then Keitel continued. "I am General der Infanterie Wilhelm Keitel, and this briefing is classified Top Secret - All-Highest." Having completed the formalities, Keitel's momentary posture of military impersonality dropped and he returned to his apparent happiness. Wilhelm found it slightly tiresome, even for a man who always preferred smiling faces around him. "As you know, Majesty, General von Salmuth accepted the Bolsheviks' surrender at Minsk on the nineteenth. We are still attempting to get a proper prisoner count, but we currently have in our possession twenty-two divisional standards, or what passes for one in Stalin's army. We believe total prisoners taken to be somewhere in the neighborhood of..." Keitel glanced down at his briefing cards before replying, eyes widening involuntarily. "Two hundred and fifty thousand combatant prisoners."
"Additionally, Generalfeldmarschall Hausser reports from Yamburg... Kingisepp on the map, Majesty... that the landing area there is fully secure and the Leningrad causeway open. The south shore of Lake Peipus is also fully in our hands, and he reports clearing operations along the east shore to be underway, with vanguard units in Porkhov, advancing on Novgorod. The goal, as you well know, is to cut the St. Petersburg-Moscow rail line, which will allow us to isolate St. Petersburg and reduce it. Generalfeldmarschall Student additionally requests," Keitel added offhand with a glance at his briefing cards, "that his airborne units be allowed to rest after two weeks of sustained Soviet attack. I have of course refused; there are no other troops in the line to replace them, and their experience will be useful in St. Petersburg." Wilhelm opened his mouth to protest, then closed it; Keitel was the professional here, after all.
"To the south, under Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt's orders, Prince Oskar has begun the requisite operations to link the Garde-armee with Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, the Marshal advancing on the Kiev-Moscow axis, the Prince on the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow route. We expect a fundamental link between the two to be established near Bryansk within the week, failing a massive increase in Bolshevik resistance before Moscow. Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt reports that his lead elements are approaching Vyazma in support of the planned Moscow offensive. Thus, the entire west bank of the Dnieper is in our hands. Additionally, Generalleutnant von Hindenburg wishes to report his particular success in the investiture and reduction of the Pripet Marsh." Keitel practically crowed this last; it was not like Wilhelm needed to hear Oskar von Hindenburg's praises sung, but he still smiled and nodded.
"Now." Keitel's face darkened; Manstein had made many enemies, and those he had surpassed were prime among them. "To the south, General von Manstein reports the success of his 'sickle cut;' Kherson is in our hands and the Bessarabian pocket fundamentally closed. We are again assessing prisoner count still, but it appears that, in addition to the capture of the Dnieper bend, the total number of prisoners captured in the pocket is... approximately fifteen hundred tanks, including two hundred of the new T-34 model... two thousand mobile artillery pieces and additional fixed... some thirty -" and Keitel paled at the figures - "Thirty divisional standards. Some seven hundred thousand prisoners. Additionally, General von Manstein -"
"Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein," the Kaiser interrupted quietly. A victory such as the Dnieper Bend was beyond imagining; in comparison, he thought, there had been a mere hundred thousand Frenchmen captured at Sedan! If this was how Manstein wished to show his worth, then at least let him be rewarded. "Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein, Pour le Merite," he said, gaining confidence. "As you were saying, General Keitel?"
"Ah. Yes. General... er. Generalfeldmarschall von Manstein," the name and rank having roughly the same effect on Keitel's face as an unexpected lemon in his mouth, "requests permission, Majesty, to extend his offensive. He wishes to drive on Rostov and extend the offensive to the Don Basin. His staff has submitted a full operational plan, which I have delayed acting upon pending consultation with the Marshal." Keitel looked as if he were going to continue, to outline the flaws in Manstein's plan, but Wilhelm shook his head. "Manstein is apparently addicted to victory, who am I to deny him?" he asked, gaining a dutiful chuckle from the staffer. "General von Manstein also wishes to detach General Höpner's army to wheel south and close out Sevastopol, then march to support the Caucasus operations. Given the rumored state of the Sevastopol defenses, it should be no more than a week's work.
"Finally, Majesty. The Turkish fronts." Again Keitel looked pained. "Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge reports that the Turks themselves are unable to advance in any strength on Batum, and therefore he has been forced to use the advisory troops under his command. He anticipates being in the city within the next few days, and reports that Red forces to his front have broken. Generalfeldmarschall Busch's lead elements have captured Elisabethpol - Kirovabad on the map, All-Highest - and are in continuous contact with Generalfeldmarschall Rommel along the Caspian coast. It seems that the two of them are working their way northward to envelop Tblisi from the east." Keitel looked surprisingly dour at this bit of news; it seemed that Manstein was not the only black sheep in the Reichsheer.
"The other Turkish front -" and Keitel maintained his look of censure and disapproval - "is Generalfeldmarschall Guderian's. He reports that he has entered Samarkand, and that Soviet resistance to his front is so sparse that he could advance to Vladivostok if we can just keep him in fuel. I have my doubts, All-Highest. For one thing," he said, gesturing to the map, "the Reds could be hiding Hannibal's own army of elephants in that desert and we would never know. Guderian has raced ahead of all support, and is likely to find himself Stalin's permanent guest somewhere in Siberia if he doesn't learn to watch his own tail. The papers, of course, love him. They call him the 'Steppe Fox' and 'Guderian Khan.' Madness, All-Highest, madness, I tell you."
Wilhelm blinked. "Excuse me, General," he said politely, "but what if Guderian is correct? What if the Soviets are so confused in the West they just can't respond to him?" To his surprise, Keitel had no answer at all. The General Staff's predictions for the Russian war had already been wildly outrun; no one expected to be fighting on the Don and possibly beyond, just a month into the campaign, and certainly no one seriously believed that an advance on Moscow itself was in the offing prior to the war. It was as if the generals had found themselves so successful that they were forced to look about and go "Well, what now?"
Wilhelm himself had no idea; the Crown Prince, of all people, did.