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| "The only way to true happiness to risk being completely cut open." - Chuck Pahlaniuk |
Chapter 1 – The Gathering
Storm, May 6, 1941
Oberst Karl Remer, 7th
Motorized Infanterie Divizione, Ostheer
It is a warm spring in Poland as
the Führer orders the mobilization of some four million troops to the Eastern
Front. Operation Barbarossa, he named it after the German Monarch Frederick I
Barbarossa, was the biggest invasion in the history of warfare. Six hundred
thousand motor vehicles are deployed.
The original date for the
invasion was 15 May, nine days from now. But it was moved to some day in June
because Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt insisted he finish with the Balkans
which needed an allocation of some fifty thousand troops. The advance would be
delayed for the next several weeks.
I am at my command tent, sorting
out incoming telegrams of urgent notice when a Private hands me a telegram from
my family in Wiesbaden. My wife had told me that the children have just begun
school, and they are wishing me a successful campaign against the Communists.
You see, me and my wife Anna, we have three children. Johann Gerhardt, seven
years old, Wilhelm Siegfried, eleven years old, and Karl Otto, thirteen years
old. They currently reside in the ancestral house of the Remers in Wiesbaden,
given by my parents before they died after World War I.
When the Great War broke out, I
was in the Academy, training to become an officer in the Wehrmacht of the Great
German Empire, but when I finished my academy and given the rank of Leutnant,
the Germans had signed the Armistice with the Allies. When Hitler rose to power
and named himself Oberkommando der Wermacht (OKW), I was put in charge of the
newly formed Motorized Infantry Division. My first assignment was to take over
Warsaw in 1939. After the successful invasion of Poland, I was tasked to watch
over the relocation of the Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto until 1940. Then I
became Marshall of the Judenrat, the council of Jews until 1941, where my
division was mobilized for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
When Barbarossa was authorized in
December 1940, plans were already given to me by the General der Infanterie
Hans Brumer in a briefing in the Wolf’s Lair in Eastern Prussia. The plan was
fairly straightforward. When the Artillery begins their shelling, the motorized
infantry will make a swift advance behind enemy lines to disrupt the line of
defense and reinforcements; effectively isolating the forward defensive line
and pushing the frontline behind the defenses. For the mission, we were
allocated ten Panzer IV’s, thirteen Panzer II’s, and twenty five Panzer I’s. We were also given fifteen Sdkfz 251
Halftrack Infantry troop transports for the Motorized infantry. I held two hundred
and fifty men in the operation.
I immediately called the private
to respond to the telegraph. I told him to copy the message I had written on
the paper and send it to my family. He responded accordingly, and left. In the
entrance of my tent, a Oberscharfuhrer Officer entered my tent.
“HEIL HITLER!” said the Oberscharfuhrer with full conviction. You
could tell that this guy was part of the SS by the way he zealously saluted me.
SS bastard. I wanted to shoot this guy so bad.
“What can I do for you,
Oberscharfuhrer…” I said.
“Witzleben, sir. Reinhard von Witzleben.” The officer said.
“Herr
Witzleben?“ I said.
“Sir,
Standartenfuhrer Heinrich Bruno is here for a discussion with you.“ said
Witzleben
“Very well, send him in.” I said
with a disdained look on my face.
The SS, or commonly known as the
Schutzstaffel is the military arm of
the Nazi Party. They were made up of former Sturmabteilung
or SA Members, Hitler’s Brownshirt army before he became the Fuhrer. These
SS scum have special roles, determined by the Allgemeine-SS, their central
command, headed by Heinrich Himmler. The Waffen-SS would be the Military per
se. They would mix with the Wehrmacht in the invasion of countries. They are
divided into separate divisions, the most notorious being the 3rd SS
Panzer Division, Totenkopfverbande.
These sick bastards organized what is known as the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi Death Squads. These death squads would
choose whether to round up Jews or shoot them on the spot, many die by summary
executions. The Wehrmacht have protested these actions, but Hitler all the more
threatened us with total dismissal if we were to protest again.
Heinrich Bruno was a Colonel for
the Einsatzgruppen. He was tall, brown-haired, green-eyed, with lopsided
shoulders and a tired look on his face. He was in his late thirties, with a
clean shaven face. He sat on the available chair in front of my desk and pulled
out whiskey and poured us a glass.
“A toast, Colonel,” he says, “to
the fall of the Communists in the east and for the expansion of the Lebensraum”. He clinks his glass with
mine and we swallow the liquor. It was horrible, like battery acid in my
throat. I manage to rasp a “Heil Hitler” before gagging.
“But before we get to Moscow,”
he says, “I need you to do something for me first.”
“With all due respect, Colonel,
I am not your subordinate.” I reply.
He pulls out a folder from his
leather satchel and pulls out a piece of paper. In the paper, it is written,
and signed, by the General Der Infanterie, that for the duration of this operation,
I am under Heinrich Bruno. Trying to keep my bile from rising up, I loosen my
collar, and straighten my seat.
I reply, “Very well, what is it
that needs to be done?”
He pulls out another paper from
the folder. This time, a picture of a woman is attached to the mission details.
“It has come to our attention
that there is a prominent resistance leader in Krakow, twenty miles south of
here” he says, “Amelie Przcyewzski escaped the relocation to the Warsaw Ghetto
and made her way to Krakow, forming a small, but considerable army of Polish
Partisans. So far, three of our Infantry outposts have been raided and pillaged
in the past three days.”
“So you want me to go there and
kill her?” I ask bluntly, because I know how these SS animals think. They crave
blood to spill, as long as it is not theirs.
“Heavens, no, Colonel, that
would be too brutal. We must show a lady proper respect and care.” Bruno says,
with a sarcastic mockery in his voice. The animal takes another swig at his
drink. “I want you to arrest her and bring her to Konzentrationslager Lubin in Majdanek.”
If I could puke, I would. This
animal just seriously asked me to capture a woman and have her burned in a
furnace in a concentration camp. But I couldn’t do anything, I was forced by
orders, and defying these orders would result in my execution. Funny how the SS
never get themselves under the firing squad for questioning orders, but the
Wehrmacht have their numbers depleted on a daily basis by the Einsatzgruppen because some officer or
some soldier is under suspicion for desertion.
I swallow my pride and grit my
teeth and say, “We’ll move right away.”
The officer says, “Very well, you
will need this to find her.” He motions at an SS Enlisted Man on the flap of the
tent. The soldier pulls a shriveled, dirty, and bloody kid inside. The kid was
about thirteen or fourteen years old, he had some bruises and a cut lip,
bloodshot eyes and appeared to be missing a couple of teeth. I yell, “WHO IS
THIS?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?!”
The animal, his noisy breath
resonating in the tent, rasps, “Relax, Colonel, this is Amelia’s son,
Wladislaw.” He laughs and says, “We found him during one of the unsuccessful
raids by the partisans. We captured him and gave him the old SS treatment.”
I was sick to the stomach, but I
was helpless. I motioned for the kid to stay as the Colonel bid me farewell.
I looked over the mission
details again. I knew that my troubles had just begun.
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