Armageddon - Max Hastings [268]
AT THE SUMMIT of the Nazi leadership, fantasy still held sway. At one of Hitler’s conferences in February, Speer drew Dönitz aside and sought to persuade him that the military situation was now hopeless, that steps must be taken to mitigate the catastrophe facing Germany. “I am here to represent the Navy,” responded the Grand-Admiral curtly. “All the rest is not my business. The Führer knows what he is doing.” Even at a much humbler level in the nation’s hierarchy, fantastic delusions persisted. After Cologne fell, Sergeant Otto Cranz of the 190th Infantry was surprised to hear one of his comrades insist mechnically, yet with utter conviction: “My Führer must have a plan. Defeat is impossible!” Even as Königsberg stood besieged in February, Dr. Hans von Lehndorff wrote in his diary: “Most people are still convinced that the Führer’s present conduct of the war is in accordance with a pre-determined plan. And the fact that the Russians have already reached the Oder, and we are now living on a little remote island, is hardly realised.”
General von Thadden, commanding the ruins of the 1st Division in East Prussia, met a local artist who expressed his delight in the extraordinary scenes he was able to paint amid catastrophe. Von Thadden asked where the artist’s family was. They were still at home and quite well, said the man easily.
“But isn’t there too much shelling going on? The Russians are no more than a thousand yards away from you.”
“That’s true. The top storeys have had one or two hits. But we live on the ground floor.”
The general suggested that the artist should evacuate his family.
“Do you think that’s necessary, Herr General?”
“Necessary? That depends on . . . your feelings towards your family.”
To such a perversion of rationality had Nazism brought an entire generation of Germans.
REMAGEN AND WESEL
VANITY AS MUCH as military necessity caused Montgomery to lavish extra-ordinary care and resources upon his crossing of the Rhine. It was plain that this would be the last great setpiece operation of the campaign. Twenty-first Army Group’s commander intended it to be a fitting memorial to his own achievement. No fewer than 37,000 British and 22,000 American engineers were deployed to conduct the river crossing. For the assault, the British Second Army collected 118,000 tons of supplies, and the U.S. Ninth 138,000 tons. Landing craft, amphibious DUKWs and Buffaloes in profusion were trucked or driven to the crossing points at Wesel. One American and one British parachute division were to assist in securing the far bank, but here they would descend only two thousand yards beyond the front, rather than sixty miles as at Arnhem.
An operation on this scale, and of this complexity, required laborious preparation. A party of Intelligence Corps NCOs, drinking tea in their cosy farmhouse billet, were irked to receive a visit from a gunner officer, who told them that next day a battery of medium artillery would be digging in outside their door. “ ‘Mind you,’ said the gunner amiably, ‘you’re very welcome to stay, provided you don’t mind squeezing up a bit. The windows will fly out with the blast, of course, and we’ll probably lose a good deal of the roof.’ ”
Having reached the west bank of the river on 10 March, Twenty-first Army Group proposed to cross, together with the U.S. Ninth Army under command, on the 24th. For two weeks, Montgomery’s forces planned, briefed and amassed matériel. Perhaps this was unavoidable. But, with the Wehrmacht in ruins, it seemed to many Americans