“Make way! Make way! Wounded man coming through!” The panzer crew carried the officer into the makeshift field hospital. Quickly, hospital orderlies provided a stretcher onto which the wounded man was placed, and he was wheeled into the triage area. Because the fighting had died down, there were few other injuries waiting for medical attention.
“And what do we have here,” said the doctor in charge, who appeared at the stretcher side almost at once. He wore Wehrmacht major insignia alongside his caduceus. “Hmm.” Carefully, he peeled away the bandages to look at the raw and seeping flesh beneath. “Painful, but not life-threatening. Looks
like the shell fragment missed the eye, but bleeding and surrounding damage to the muscle are not so good. We should be able to restore sight, however. For the rest—I’m sorry to inform you, Herr Obersturmbannführer, that our field hospital is virtually out of anesthetics. Only the most serious cases get any at all, and those not enough. We have had to revert to more barbaric practices here. I apologize to you in advance. This is likely to be rather painful.”
He turned to the panzer crewmen. “I am Major Doktor Hans Schlüter. I will be working on your officer personally. This will not be an easy experience. He must be strapped to the operating table, because otherwise he will jerk free and harm himself. I will have a nurse clean the wound area, and then I will suture the damage. You have all seen blood before, no doubt.”
The soldiers nodded their agreement. “We have all been on the Russian front.”
“Then you have seen such things before. You may find the atmosphere of an operating room somewhat different. I will not have fainting or vomiting. If you cannot refrain from these behaviors, you are to leave at once and get me a replacement. Do you understand?”
“Jawohl, Herr Major Doktor,”
the soldiers said in unison.
“Very well. We will begin shortly.”
The shrieks of human agony echoed down the hospital corridors and into the wards. Feldwebel Carl-Heinz Clausen looked up. “It looks as though someone else is enjoying the finest medical care available,” he said mildly.
The soldiers around him laughed meaningfully. Most of them had enjoyed the same experience within the last few days. The fact that they were here in the open ward meant they had come through the operation in good shape, or that they had not been severely wounded.
Carl-Heinz looked at the long, skinny man in the next bed. He had a leg wound and had evidently also taken a piece of flak between his eyes. He’d worn an American jacket when he was brought in, but now he wore only a hospital robe, like the other patients. Most of the American wounded had been transferred to American field hospitals earlier in the day; because this patient was a downed aviator, he’d simply been overlooked, because he was no one’s direct responsibility. Probably the Americans would come for him in the morning. Another night made little difference, especially now with the war nearly over.
“American—yes, you. How are you doing?” he asked.
The American pointed to himself. “Staff Sergeant Franklin O’Dell, Three Hundred and Ninety-second Bomb Group. Serial number T-zero-zero-one-nine-two-one-six-five.”
Clausen knew he was receiving the obligatory “name, rank, serial number.” He knew that “sergeant” meant
Feldwebel
. He pointed to himself.
“Feldwebel
—
‘Saarjint.’ Carl-Heinz Clausen. Verstehen Sie?”
The American replied, “Carl-Heinz,” and pointed at the German. Then “Digger. American. Feldwaybul,” and pointed back at himself.
“Dig-ger,”
replied Clausen.
“Sehr gut. Willkommen in Deutschland.”
The American thought about it for a second, then replied, “Danke shone.” His accent was terrible, but at least he was trying.
Another scream. The wounded in the ward took up other activities or started loud conversations to drown out the noise. It was about all they could do. Anything beat sitting still and listening to the sounds of agony.
Clausen kept up his conversation with the American aviator, in part to keep himself distracted, in part because he was genuinely curious. This was the first American he’d actually met in person. And even though he was a
terrorflieger,
he seemed like a nice enough fellow.
Finally the screaming ceased. The poor bastard in the operating room was done. Slowly the room returned to normal. Conversations that had been started only to drown out the sound ceased.
But suddenly there was a new type of noise: the noise of marching boots.
“Danke schön, Herr Major Doktor,”
Obersturmbannführer Peiper said. His face was now stitched together, and although the agony was still intense, nothing would ever equal the sensation of being held still while a needle and thread was stuck through the skin of his face over and over again. With fresh hospital bandages covering the wounds, he could only imagine what his ruined face now looked like. Peiper had been a handsome man, but would be considered handsome no more.
“Bitte schön, Herr Obersturmbannführer,”
replied Schlüter. “I recommend you rest here a day or two, but technically, you’re all right. Have your bandages changed regularly and keep clean. Within a few weeks those stitches will be able to come out. I’m pretty sure I saved your eye, though you may have some difficulties with it. Too early to tell.”
“I would take you up on your kind hospitality,” said Peiper, “but as this field hospital is about to move, I don’t think there will be much rest for anyone.”
“Move? I’ve heard nothing about a move. In fact, with Armeegruppe B’s surrender, I can’t see us doing anything other than remaining here.”
At the word “surrender,” Peiper’s eyes narrowed. “There has not been a surrender. I spoke to the führer personally early this morning. It is true that some traitors have ceased their struggle for the Third Reich, but I am under direct orders of the führer to bring all units of Armeegruppe B back to the safety of the Westwall and the Fatherland. Please prepare your hospital for
immediate movement. You will be escorted east by Kampfgruppe Peiper of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.”
The doctor was obviously shocked, and equally obviously had embraced Rommel’s surrender. “But Obersturmbannführer—that’s impossible! We are a simple medical facility and we have wounded, both German and American.” Peiper’s cold glare shut him up.
“Americans? You will point out all American patients to me. The Third Reich does not have any medical supplies to spare. Horst!” he called to one of his soldiers. “Take one of the nurses to each ward. If there are any American patients, kill them. All patients who are able to move will get ready to move. Those who can be transported will be moved onto trucks and ambulances. We will leave only those who would die if moved. And Doctor—” His glare was piercing. “—I expect your best medical judgment in these matters.”
Peiper was pleased that Dr. Schlüter was too cowed to do anything but stammer his obedience. That was as it should be. More of Peiper’s troops moved into the building and began ordering medical staff around.
The tramping footsteps of soldiers was not lost on Clausen, and when shots rang out in another ward, his suspicions were confirmed. The ward’s male nurse entered with an armed Waffen-SS Sturmmann. “Are there any American patients here?”
The nurse looked around. “N-No, no, Sturmmann,” he stuttered, pointedly not looking at Digger.
“You will ready yourselves for immediate departure,” ordered the sturmmann in a harsh voice. “If you can walk, get dressed. The rest of you will be transported. Any shirkers will be disciplined.”
All hope ripped away, the patients sullenly began to slide out of bed if they were able. Digger looked questioningly at Clausen. The feldwebel put a finger to his lips and pointed meaningfully at the door where the SS soldier had gone. Digger nodded his head as if he understood. Clausen hoped he was getting the message across. His own clothes were under the bed. When he moved, the agony in his stomach made him stop. He could not walk. He pulled his jacket out and wrapped it around his shoulders, then threw his uniform shirt over to Digger and motioned that he should put it on.
Within about twenty minutes, he, Digger, and other non-ambulatory patients were being loaded onto a truck, one of many vehicles waiting with idling engines outside the hospital. When the truck was full, a Waffen-SS trooper banged hard on its side twice, the signal to pull away into the dark, cold night.
The unwilling passengers huddled in miserable silence, knowing only that they were being carried toward the Westwall, Germany, and the east.
EXCERPT FROM
WAR’S FINAL FURY
, BY PROFESSOR JARED GRUENWALD (ZURICH: UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH PRESS, 1955)
[NOTE:
War’s Final Fury
is well known to scholars as the definitive analysis of the final chapters of the Second World War following the assassination of Adolph Hitler. Dr. Jared Gruenwald is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His other books include
Rommel: A Study in Leadership and Transformation, Himmler’s Reich,
and
Stalin’s Time.
We are grateful to Professor Gruenwald and the University of Zurich Press for permission to reprint these excerpts concerning the overall strategic situation in Europe during this critical time. The Authors.]
The days following Rommel’s dramatic surrender of Army Group B to the Americans set the stage for following events. While the final defeat of Nazism was certain, there was a question as to who would deliver the coup de grâce: the Western Allies or the Soviet Union. Stalin’s essential perfidy in accepting a separate peace with Germany is well understood, and certainly his motives were no more dishonest than those of the Nazis in turn. Stalin had to stop his advances until January 1945 in any event because of supply difficulties, and the “separate peace” gave him control of two additional nations, Norway and Greece.
Himmler’s government, on the other hand, bought one last chance to defeat the West and recover in time to make it a one-front war against the Soviet Union. The failure of Operation Fuchs am Rhein meant the chance had been squandered, and that in turn would mean a renewed Soviet offensive beginning soon.
The German-Soviet armistice was, as we have shown, an exercise in mutual cynicism on the part of both parties. In one famous observation, Führer Heinrich Himmler compared the pact to throwing babies off the back of the sled to distract the pursuing wolves. The babies were, of course, the countries of Norway and Greece. Neither morsel was large enough to slow down the Soviet wolf for very long, but Himmler’s hope was that it would be long enough.
Poland, that oft-contested plain, was labeled as a neutral zone in the armistice treaty, a mostly demilitarized buffer between the two great powers. The Nazis were able to keep control of the western part of the country, including the majority of the operating death camps; the machinery of the Holocaust required slight adjustment to cope with the change. The Balkan countries, meanwhile, had been subjected to heavy Soviet political pressure. By the end of 1944, Bulgaria and Rumania were prepared to change sides. The Gestapo had wind of these developments, however, so the Wehrmacht had been quietly evacuating their garrison units, as well
as the significant counterinsurgency forces they had maintained in Yugoslavia. These troops were deployed to the north, in Hungary, Poland, and East Prussia; they would form the first line of defense when hostilities were rejoined.
For Germany then, this Army Group Vistula fortified the area between the Oder and the Vistula, though was hampered by the demilitarized zone. Behind this formation, Army Group Center had been re-created from the ashes of the previous summer. These troops had spent the last four months of 1944 creating defensive positions behind the Oder River.
This left only a few Volksgrenadier divisions available as reinforcements in the West. Their mobility was severely hampered by the overwhelming Allied air superiority. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had often observed that commanders whose experience was primarily in the East had no conception of the meaning of such air superiority. Unless the weather was too bad for the Allies to fly (which created operational problems in its own right), troops were able to move only under cover of darkness, with significant logistical difficulties involved in concealing vehicles and supplies before daylight. German rail was mostly wrecked and unusable; those bridges that remained had been wired by the Germans themselves for demolition ahead of advancing Allied troops. It was for this reason that the Germans were not able to mass even a greater army in support of Operation Fuchs am Rhein. The forces were there, but the mobility was not.
In the bitter days of December and early January of 1944–1945, weather allowed the German forces greater mobility of operation, and a large force was available inside Germany itself. If those troops could be deployed along the difficult barrier of the Rhine River, they could make the allied crossing a dangerous and costly operation. But whose orders would these soldiers obey?
There were two competing German commands. One was Field Marshal Rommel’s Army Group B, renamed the German Republican Army on January 1. It claimed not only Rommel’s original command, but all German forces in the West. As a practical matter, it claimed only volunteers. The second command was the newly appointed Field Marshal Mödel’s Heeresgruppe West. It consisted of all German forces in the West, primarily the original Operation Fuchs am Rhein reserves as well as Westwall defensive units. Each of the two commands had all the codes, passwords, and command protocols for all German units in the West. Each issued orders to all units it could reach, not merely those that had acceded to its authority, with the result that commanders of individual companies were
receiving conflicting orders on a daily basis. Choosing one’s loyalties had to be done immediately—no one was able to remain neutral.
While the majority of Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army followed Rommel first into surrender and second into the newly created German Republican Army, the majority of Sixth Panzer Army (which was shortly thereafter renamed Sixth SS Panzer Army) remained under control of the Nazi government in Berlin. General Sepp Dietrich, whom Rommel had earlier replaced as head of Sixth Panzer Army with General Heinz Guderian, returned to his previous command and oversaw the extraction of Sixth Panzers.
The initial plan was to return to positions in the Westwall and defend, but the loss of two armies had torn such a hole in that line of fortifications that it became quickly clear that the barrier could no longer be held successfully. That meant the next defensive line was the Rhine itself. Field Marshal Mödel took command of two army groups that were stationed in western Germany, both for defensive purposes and for potential exploitation had Operation Fuchs am Rhein been successful. These were Army Groups G (Upper Rhine) and H (Ruhr). As both were understrength (like most German commands at that stage of the war), Mödel simply planned to incorporate all salvaged parts of Army Group B into one of the two remaining army groups. From there, he planned to fortify the Rhine against the imminent Allied advance. This was made difficult because the same cause that had torn such a large hole in the Westwall also meant that a portion of the Rhine defenses was now nonexistent, and renewed Allied strategic bombing made it daily more difficult to move troops and guns into position.
Of the Army Group B forces, reserves and slow-moving troops, ironically, were the easiest to recover, because they were already far behind the front at the time of the surrender and had the shortest distances to go in their withdrawal. The elite panzer forces at the leading edge of the Fuchs offensive were either trapped and cut off by the surrender or forced to fight their way through increasingly hostile and uncertain territory in which even other German units had to be considered suspect. In fact, German vs. German battles were some of the most savage and bloody of those terrible winter days, as neither side had any intention of taking prisoners.
Western Allied troops, especially Third Army units situated along the flanks of the surrendered Fifth Panzer Army and Seventh Army areas, suddenly had their opposition vanish, and were able to move ahead with astounding speed, rushing through what had been enemy-held areas with the cooperation of the enemy themselves! (A few regrettable incidents on
both sides were only to be expected, but by and large, the surrendered Germans seemed relieved and even proud in their new role supporting the newly created German provisional government.)
Because of this, it began to seem as though even the Rhine itself was no longer secure as a line of defense … .