Operation Unthinkable, Churchill’s plan to start World War III
In the final weeks of the war Army Group South had a heavy
duty laid upon it. Its terrible task was to hold the Eastern Front while behind
the defensive shield which it constituted the mass of Army Group E retreated
out of Yugoslavia. Let us consider why Army Group South was called upon to make
such a sacrifice.
At that late stage of the war there was no cohesive battle
front in northern or central Germany. Red Armies from the 1st White Russian
Front were fighting inside Berlin while the 1st Ukrainian Front had swept past
the dying capital and had reached the River Elbe where its troops had linked up
with the Americans. Where German Army Group North had once stood, a few
shattered corps sought to contain the assaults of the Soviet Baltic Fronts and
to maintain bridgeheads around the principal ports of Prussia and Kurland from
which refugees were being evacuated to the western Baltic or Denmark.
Held distant from and, therefore, unable to influence the
fighting in central Germany, Field Marshal Schoerner’s powerful Army Group held
the western regions of Czechoslovakia. To his south stood another major German
military force holding a line in eastern Austria from the Semmering mountains
to Radkersburg. That force was the remnants of Army Group South which had been
driven back out of Russia, across Hungary and into Austria. Neither Army Group
Schoerner nor Rendulic’s Army Group South could support the other, for a
salient created by Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front held them apart. Nor were
those German groups strong enough, individually or collectively, to destroy the
Russian salient.
In Yugoslavia, to the south of Rendulic’s Army Group, was
Loehr’s Army Group E. This force, which had held the Balkans, was conducting a
fighting withdrawal out of Yugoslavia, a task made difficult through a
combination of factors. First, there was now such close co-operation between
the Soviet armies and JANL, the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, that they
struck Army Group E with co-ordinated, rapid and crushing blows. Secondly,
Loehr felt a moral obligation to the Croat and Slovene peoples through whose
lands he was retreating. His withdrawal would leave those populations
undefended and at the mercy of the JANL which would exact a terrible revenge
when it re-occupied Croatia and Slovenia. Not only were the peoples of those
nations racial enemies of the Serbs who dominated the JANL, but they had
demonstrated this racial hostility by fighting as Germany’s allies. In addition
both nations had declared themselves to be free states and independent of
Yugoslavia. Tito was determined to bring them back into the federation and
would use the standard brutal, Bolshevik methods to achieve that goal.
For fear of the wrath to come, the mass of the Croat and
Slovene peoples joined Loehr’s Army Group in its retreat. The great trek sought
to reach and to cross the River Mur which marked the frontier between Austria
and Yugoslavia. The Germans and their allies shared a naïve belief that once
inside Austrian territory they would be safe. That Tito would cross the Mur in
pursuit of his enemies seems, somehow, to have gone unconsidered.
The third factor working against Loehr was that Army Group C
in Italy had signed an armistice with the Americans and the British. Through
the gap which now yawned on Army Group E’s right flank poured crack units of
the British Eighth Army heading towards Trieste and the Austrian province of
Carinthia.
From the situation maps in his headquarters, Field Marshal
Kesselring, Supreme Commander South, could appreciate the situation facing the
armies of his command. Army Group E was isolated, but the gap on the right
flank, although serious, was not critical. The British were not yet in
sufficient strength to affect the withdrawal of Loehr’s right wing, but seemed
to be content to hold a containing line behind which the bulk of their forces
advanced into Austria.
Viewing the situation facing Army Group South, Kesselring
could see that in the Semmering mountains in northern Styria the 6th Army was
withstanding the Soviet assaults. In its sector the 2nd Panzer Army, forming
the extreme right wing of Army Group South, was containing the Red Army along a
line from Bad Gleichenberg to Radkersburg. The eastern wall was still holding,
but Kesselring asked himself for how long? Intelligence had forecast that
Tolbhukin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front would open an offensive strongly supported by a
major effort by the JANL. Were the 6th Army and 2nd Panzer to collapse under
those combined assaults, nothing could halt the enemy’s sweep across southern
Sytria and Loehr’s armies would be trapped between Tolbhukin in the north and
the JANL to the south.
If Army Group E was to be saved, the eastern wall in Styria
had to be held until the formations at present in Yugoslavia were safe inside
Austria. The task for the German commanders was to ensure that the troops
manning the line between the Semmering and Radkersburg did hold fast. This
would be difficult for it was obvious to the humblest private soldier that the
end of the war could only be a matter of days. At that low military level the
signs of dissolution were becoming more apparent. Food supplies were no longer
reaching the front-line units. Rations had been cut and were cut again. Very
little ammunition was coming forward. There were no new men to replace those
who had been killed, who had been wounded, who had been taken prisoner – or who
had deserted to the Reds. High Command was keenly aware of the unbearable
pressures upon the soldiers to desert and to make an end to their sufferings.
The commanders knew of the depression brought about by battle losses, short
rations, the lack of news from home, the bitterly cold wet spring in the mountains,
the unremitting strain of combat and the general hopelessness of the situation.
Against all these negative factors could only be set the soldiers’ traditional
loyalties to Fatherland, Führer, the regiment and their comrades.
Rumour, ever-present on the battlefield, has the power to
affect morale for good or for bad. The bitter rumours which swept through the
embattled battalions in the first days of May were soon confirmed. The Führer
was dead. He had fallen in battle. Berlin, the Reichs capital, was in Russian
hands. The Reds and the ‘Amis’ had joined forces on the Elbe and US armies were
overrunning southern Germany. These were days of mental anguish.
Clearly the war was ending and at this time of fear and
doubt many must have asked themselves what was the point in their holding on?
Where was the sense in staying wet through, hungry and cold in a slit trench
facing certain death when, in the darkness of the night, a short walk into the
Soviet lines could bring release? With any luck the first Ivans would not be
too trigger-happy. Old soldiers said that if you survived the first five
minutes, if the Red Army infantry didn’t kill you on the spot, you were safe
and then there would be warmth, food, rest and the certainty of surviving the
war.
The senior military commanders, aware of the physical and
emotional problems which beset their men, pondered whether they could keep
their troops fighting until Loehr and his men had been brought out of the land
of Yugoslavia. Suddenly, new rumours ensured that the soldiers would stand
fast; firm as rocks against all the assaults of the enemy. The euphoria
produced by the new rumour reached the trenches and the depression caused by
the bad news of the first days of May was lifted immediately. The rumour was
that the Anglo-Americans had formed an alliance with Germany. Hitler was dead
and the Western Allies had made peace with the new German government. That
these wild stories circulated and were believed as strongly at senior Army
Group level as at the level of the ordinary grenadier shows that they were not
the product of the military but that they had come from a source very close to
the centre of power. ‘The evil that men do lives after them,’ declared Mark
Antony. Even after Goebbels’ half-incinerated body had been removed from the
Reichskanzlei for autopsy, one of his most successful propaganda ploys, based
upon a political conviction which he shared with Hitler, was circulating and
was being believed. The Goebbels propaganda story was nothing less than that
America and Britain would break their alliance with Russia and would then ally
themselves with Germany. The three nations would then turn against the Soviet
Union.
Earlier chapters of this book have shown the reasoning
behind the confidence on the part of Germany’s political leaders that such a
clash must occur. It was, they declared, politically inevitable and lo,
according to rumour, it had come to pass. As early as 28 April, OKW had ordered
the number of German units to be reduced in those areas where US troops were no
longer advancing or in which the Americans had given ground. The supernumerary
German formations were then to be dispatched to the Eastern Front. Two days
later, on 30 April, the orders from OKW were that the war was to be continued
until the outcome of political moves had been resolved. Germany was playing for
time. The understood inference was that hostilities would continue until the
inevitable conflict between Russia and the Western Allies broke out.
The conviction of Hitler and Goebbels had been accepted at
the most senior command level and repeated by the normally cautious OKW. Small
wonder then that its words were more optimistically interpreted as they reached
each subordinate echelon in the military hierarchy. The German armies had only
to hold on and soon the Americans would be in the line beside them. The next
step, that of driving back the Soviet forces, would be easy. The field
commanders were supremely confident of that. They were aware of the terrible
war-weariness that infected the Red Army. The German generals knew that the Red
Army’s battle line was made up of tired, exhausted and dispirited soldiers at
the end of a poor and unreliable supply line. Soon the German forces would be
properly equipped from the abundant resources of their Anglo-American allies.
Then, together with those forces, the revitalized German armies would go over
to a general attack, would thrust aside the low-moraled Soviets and would set
out, once again, and this time would achieve the ambition of carving out an empire
in the east.
Following on from that basic rumour came others each more
bizarre than the preceding one. One that was believed to the end was that in
the west of Austria – in the high Alps – had been constructed an Alpine
Fortress system inside which the German Army would gather new strength and
would hold out until new secret weapons could be deployed. Underground
factories within that Alpine Redoubt would construct aircraft and rockets to
equip the men who would form the garrison. Other factories would turn out
standard weapons, such as tanks and guns.
We all hoped that the Alpine Fortress would be more
substantial that the Reichsschützstellung [the national defence system] which
was little more than an anti-tank ditch topped with barbed wire. It was
well-known that at some places in Austria the Ivans had crossed the
Reichsschützstellung before work on it had been completed.
From my reading after the war I have learned that there was
a conference in Graz in the first week of May. Kesselring realized that the
East Front had to be held and so, although the capitulation was about to be
signed in Reims, he issued orders that we in Austria were to carry on fighting.
The imminent capitulation was to apply only to the armies fighting in the west.
Thus, up in the hills and mountains of northern Styria,
fighting was carried on by soldiers unaware that the war was about to end.
Their warrior spirit was bolstered by the belief that the ‘Amis’ were coming.
Wireless reports seemed to confirm the rumour, for these told of an advance by
troops of Patton’s Third Army into Sudetenland, the western provinces of
Czechoslovakia. It was known that other US armies, pouring through Germany, had
altered the direction of their advance from east to south-eastward. Obviously,
those formations were hurrying to the eastern wall in Styria. It was only a
matter of holding on for a few more days and then the advance guard of the
‘Ami’ army would roar up. As if to confirm these rumours the Red Army began a
strong offensive on the Semmering. The truth was that the Soviets intended to
break through the Muerz valley and to reach the River Enns, the halt line
between the American and the Russian forces. If the Red Army could be in
strength on that river line it would have trapped both German Army Groups,
Loehr’s and Reundulic’s. More than that the Russians would have gained vast and
important economic resources. Under the terms on which they intended to insist
in their surrender document, it was not only the soldiers, their weapons and equipment
which must be surrendered, but also all the factories and machines which had
worked for the Third Reich. That was the true perspective.
The ordinary German soldiers, shivering in their sodden slit
trenches on the Semmering, had a different perspective. They saw in the furious
assaults of the Red Army proof that the Ivans were hoping to smash Army Group
South before the Americans could arrive. The fiercer the assaults by the
Russian infantry, cavalry and tank units, the more strong was the conviction of
the German Landser that the ‘Amis’ were getting close. The rank and file of an
army – of any army – are not privy to the details of military plans. Little
information and few details are given to them. Their lives, their mental
attitudes are determined not so much by accurate information imparted by their
officers as by wild rumour and subjective reasoning. Thus, it was all too easy
for them to accept without reserve the rumours which swept through the
battalions and companies like wildfire and it is easy for us to see and to
understand the hopes that were entertained by these lowly men.
It is less easy for us to comprehend how OKW could have so
misread the situation or have been so duped by propaganda as to accept the myth
of an American–British–German alliance as if it were a fact. It was the
conviction of many senior commanders that a common hatred of the Nazi
leadership was the only bond that held the Allies together. When that bond
broke, as it must do with the Führer’s death, there would be no impediment to
an alliance with the conservative elements of the German nation. That the
Allied hatred was not confined to Hitlerism but extended to include those
conservative elements – to the Army in particular – was just not understood by
the generals. Such a concept was unthinkable.
The wish is father to the deed and the wishes of the
military commanders of Army Group South were expressed in deeds of such naïvety
as to be almost unbelievable. Major-General Gaedke, Chief of Staff of the Sixth
Army, was directed by his commander to open discussions with General Patton,
GOC Third US Army. The purpose of these discussions was to obtain passage for
German troops through the Third Army front and across Austria. There, those
newly arrived reinforcements would thicken the Sixth Army’s battle line. When
that offer was rejected by Patton’s staff – the general refused to meet the
German officer – Gaedke then requested medical supplies for the German units on
the Eastern Front. That request, too, was turned down and the Chief of Staff
returned to the Sixth Army, obviously baffled by the, to him, incomprehensible
attitude of the Americans.
Certainly the senior officers of the 1st Panzer Division,
holding the ground at Army Group’s southern end, were of the opinion that some
arrangement existed. Their conviction was based on the fact that reinforcements
to the division had arrived from Germany, had been allowed to pass freely
through the American lines and had not been taken prisoner. That unusual fact,
taken in conjunction with the orders then issued by General Balck, commanding
the Sixth Army, for his units to head westward, fuelled the belief that the 1st
Panzer Division was to make for the Alpine Redoubt where, obviously, it would
meet up with the Americans.
On just a slightly less absurd level was the attempt by
General Ringel to influence the speed of the American advance through Austria.
Ringel set out for the Enns under orders to offer the US Command an unopposed
advance through the German-held areas of central and eastern Austria, in order
that they would form a bulwark against the Red Army. Presumably, in view of the
anticipated Allied–German alliance, behind that American wall the mass of
German forces in eastern Austria would be able to withdraw into the Alpine
Redoubt.
The efforts of Balck’s Chief of Staff, Gaedke, to allow
reinforcements to stiffen the eastern wall, Ringel’s attempt to speed the
American advance and 1st Panzer’s belief of a regrouping in the Redoubt, seen
from our perspective, were ludicrous projects; the unrealizable dreams of men
unwilling to face facts. The German perspective was, as we have seen, based on
the certainty that Capitalism and Communism are incompatible; that the
voracious Russian Empire must fight against the Imperial commitments of Great
Britain and the interests of the neo-Colonial Empire of America. Within days of
the war’s end, Soviet acts in Europe, her increasingly threatening attitude and
her support of Yugoslavia’s territorial demands for the Austrian province of
Carinthia were the first signs of things to come. The reactions of the
Anglo-Americans was not long in coming: a telegram to the Eighth Army contained
the dire order that with immediate effect the Soviet military forces were to be
considered as hostile.
Within two years of the end of hostilities the nations of
Eastern Europe were under Soviet domination. Within three years the Berlin
airlift had to be mounted to keep the population of that city free of Soviet
control. Within five years the Anglo-Americans were at war with Korean and
Chinese Communist forces in Korea.
It was an historical inevitability, Goebbels had declared,
that the two opposed political systems must clash. Events had shown that the
prophecy born of his perspective had not been false – merely premature.
