The Steel Wave - Jeff Shaara [28]
“We just got a note from the European Advisory Council.”
“Who?”
“Hell, I don’t know, sir. A group that’s working on treaties and stuff. This just came from Ambassador Winant. They insist you be informed that they’ve come up with the list of terms for Germany’s unconditional surrender: occupation and subjugation, changes to German laws, boundaries, all that kind of stuff.”
Eisenhower blinked and looked again at Bradley, felt no energy, his strength drained away.
“Leave it to the damned civilians. They put it on paper, and I guess that means the war’s over. What the hell do they think this will accomplish? Does anyone believe the Germans are ready to agree to this stupidity?”
“That’s what Beetle said, sir. Thinks they’re counting chickens before they hatch.”
“Does Beetle have any thoughts on what we should say in response to Ambassador Winant?”
“Not really, Chief.”
Eisenhower saw a smile on Butcher’s face. Yep, he can read my mind too, he thought.
“Maybe give Patton a call. Tell him I have someone he can shoot.”
* * *
5. ROMMEL
* * *
HEADQUARTERS, ARMY GROUP WEST, SAINT-GERMAIN, NEAR PARIS
FEBRUARY 17, 1944
“I was promised that we would have two thousand tanks per month, seven thousand aircraft. I was promised all the concrete and steel I required. In the past two weeks, I have not been given enough barbed wire to encircle this château.”
Von Rundstedt looked up at him with tired eyes, shrugged his shoulders. “So the little corporal tells you everything you want to hear, and you believe him. Whose fault is that?”
Little corporal. Rommel had heard that insult before; von Rundstedt never referred to Hitler with any respect. Rommel could not help feeling uncomfortable, no matter how little regard he had for Hitler’s strategies. The man was after all still the Führer and still very much in control of his officers and his army. Since he had come home from North Africa, Rommel had tried to guard his comments, to keep his lack of respect for Hitler hidden. It was the great value of a man like Ruge, a confidant Rommel knew he could trust. But von Rundstedt seemed not to care about any of that. He was growing old, sixty-eight now, seemed to have no fear of Hitler’s dangerous tentacles, seemed not to care what might happen if word of his insulting arrogance reached the ears of any Gestapo officer.
The command structure in France and the Low Countries was a symptom, just one more hint of the great disease that had infected the army. Von Rundstedt suffered from it as much as any other officer in the Wehrmacht. No matter how much authority any senior commander was given, he still had to answer to Hitler’s whims and erratic strategies. In France, the command structure was as fractured and illogical as any theater of the war. Army Group West was von Rundstedt’s command, which included all of France, Belgium, and Holland. Rommel was his immediate subordinate, commanding Army Group B, which included the northern half of von Rundstedt’s theater of the war, from Denmark to as far south as the Loire River. Farther south, von Rundstedt also held rein over Army Group G, under the command of General Johannes Blaskowitz, who controlled all of southern France. Blaskowitz was an old friend to Rommel and had commanded an army in the Polish campaign in 1939. But he had been outspoken about the severe butchery of the Polish people, so Blaskowitz had made enemies. To Hitler’s staff, Army Group G seemed as far from the war as any German commander could find himself, far from any glory that would come from the great victory that the Propaganda Ministry continued to trumpet. Rommel knew that to many of those same detractors, his own Army Group B was not much closer.
To make matters worse, Rommel did not have authority over the troops stationed in his sphere of command. The SS troops were under separate authority, those more fanatical units that were thoroughly loyal to Hitler, men whose indoctrination made them feared not only by the enemy but by many in the German