He stared out across an open field, yellow with wheat, could see the farmhouse, a thick decaying grass roof. That was a surprise, the German farms almost all perfect and clean. Now the fences were uneven and sagging, the roads mostly weed-choked trails that ran out across the tracks. There was none of the neat grooming, the flower beds and tightly rowed gardens. Around the farmhouses were clusters of weeds, unkempt, crooked barns, a broken windmill. The change was strange and obvious and he searched the small roads, saw a carriage, an ox pulling an old man in a wagon filled with dirt. He saw a road sign, the name of a town, and now he understood. They were not in Germany anymore. They were in France.
Benson sat at the edge of the doorway, his legs curled under him, the sun gloriously warm. He tried to see every sight, logging it away, remembering. He began to nod off, the clack-clack rhythm of the train lulling him to a nap, but Mitchell was there suddenly, sat down heavily beside him. Benson was wide awake now, glad for Mitchell’s company. He had felt a growing sadness that Mitchell had drifted far away already, leaving him behind. Benson had never had a friend he felt as close to as this eerily dangerous man who seemed eager to put himself at risk.
“How ya doing, Kenny?”
Mitchell shrugged, stared out at the passing farms, kept his thoughts quiet. After a long while, he said, “You think we’ll go to the Pacific?”
“I don’t know. No. The army wouldn’t tell us we’re going home, that we’re going to be discharged, and then just … lie. I don’t care what some of these guys are saying.”
“What you gonna do?”
“School, maybe. Maybe Saint Louis or Kansas City. Find a good job. I’m kind of excited about that.” He paused, Mitchell still staring far away. “What about you?”
Mitchell shrugged.
“My old man wants me to come to work in his mill.” He motioned out to the golden fields moving past. “He buys grain from the farmers, makes pretty good money.”
“Sounds pretty good.” Mitchell kept his stare, said nothing. Benson felt a nervousness, looked at Mitchell’s eyes, had seen the look so many times. “You’re not gonna do that, are you?”
Mitchell shook his head.
“Can’t. Not anymore. Can’t. We’re supposed to muster out, but I’m gonna talk to somebody, see what they’ll let me do.”
“Like what? You wanna go to the Pacific? You nuts?”
Mitchell shrugged again.
“Not sure. We’ll see.”
“You gotta find something to do, Kenny. You can’t be a soldier forever.”
Mitchell looked at him, the cold clear eyes.
“Why not?”
Benson had nothing else to say, felt a hard sadness, thought, I knew he would do this. I knew he couldn’t just … go home. He misses it.
The train climbed a slight rise, then rolled around a curve, the car leaning, the wheels beneath them squealing. The hill gave way to another open field, more wheat, more farmers, a horse dragging a plow, another horse pulling a small wagon, men with shovels and pitchforks. Benson watched them, no one looking at the train, no one seeing the soldiers as they passed, the farmers already busy with their own lives, as though the soldiers had never been there at all, the war had never happened. Out beyond, in the vast golden field, Benson saw flecks of red, the wheat field dotted with thousand of flowers. They were poppies.
… This was a holy war, more than any other in history, this war has been an array of the forces of evil against those of righteousness. It had to have its leaders, and it had to be won—no matter what the sacrifices, no matter what the suffering to populations, to materials, to our wealth—oil, steel, industry—no matter what the cost was, the war had to be won. In Europe, it has been won.
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Peace is going to be a hell of a letdown.
—GEORGE PATTON
THE GERMANS
A thousand years shall pass and this guilt of Germany shall not have been erased.
—HANS FRANK, HITLER’S GOVERNOR OF POLAND
KARL RUDOLF GERD VON RUNDSTEDT
Captured by American troops near his home at Bad Tölz, Germany, on May 1, 1945. Through the last year of the war, his health slowly fails, and shortly after his capture he suffers a heart attack. But the Allies show little mercy, and he is held for trial as a war criminal. He is first sent to the holding facility for high-ranking German commanders at Spa, Belgium, and then relocated to various prisoner-of-war camps in England. He doggedly endures delays in his trial, and reluctantly Allied prosecutors concede that they cannot bring formal charges against him that have any merit. He is released in 1949. Roundly criticized by other surviving German commanders, he is an obvious scapegoat for those Germans who insist on believing that their failings came on the battlefield, and not from the madness of their leadership. Nevertheless, von Rundstedt receives considerable respect from his former enemies, if not from those he served.
He contributes to and supports an exaggeratedly positive biography of himself, which is never published in German, and dies in Hannover, Germany, in 1953, at age seventy-seven.
ALBERT SPEER
Hitler’s architect, and one of his most trusted subordinates, is captured on May 23, 1945, at Glücksburg Castle, near Flensburg, Denmark. In the days following Hitler’s suicide, Speer actively consults with Admiral Dönitz to seek some preservation of the German nation, though Speer agrees with Dönitz’s orders that the German military should engage in no further hostile acts against its enemies.
As Hitler’s intimate, and since he holds the official title as Reichsminister for arms and munitions, Speer cannot avoid a trial for war crimes. He cooperates with prosecutors and offers lengthy testimony, providing a significant window into the workings of Hitler’s inner circle, but his conviction is a foregone conclusion. Speer is sentenced to twenty years in prison. He accepts the sentence as an act of justice, and does not appeal.
His testimony during his trial also provides a vivid illustration of a thinking man’s susceptibility to the seduction of Hitler’s aura, and Speer accepts complete responsibility for his role in the Nazi regime. He serves the full term of his sentence, and is released from Spandau Prison in Berlin in 1966.
His memoir is published in 1969, from notes Speer has smuggled out of prison throughout his incarceration. Titled Inside the Third Reich, it is widely considered the most accurate and unaffected memoir of anyone close to Hitler, and is thus an invaluable tool in understanding the inner workings of Hitler himself, as well as the swirl of intrigue that surrounded him.
Though Speer admits to having harbored his own plot to kill Hitler, a plot that was never carried out, he also admits to a loyalty and a devotion to service that even he cannot excuse. In a letter to his wife, Speer writes,
I am glad to accept my situation if by so doing I can still do something for the German people.
Describing his first awareness of Auschwitz, Speer says,
I did not investigate—for I did not want to know what was happening there…. As an important member of the leadership of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened. I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I had closed my eyes.
In 1981, he suffers a stroke in London, and dies at age seventy-six.
HERMANN GÖRING
He surrenders himself to the Americans near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria on May 7, 1945. Charged with war crimes, he is tried at Nuremberg. In October 1946, he is convicted and sentenced to death. Rather than allow his enemies to have their final revenge, Göring somehow secures a capsule of cyanide, and poisons himself the day before his scheduled hanging. He is fifty-three.
Göring’s body is taken to Dachau, where he is cremated, and his ashes are disposed of in a garbage can.
HEINRICH HIMMLER
The man who has stood beside Hitler since the earliest days of Hitler’s insatiable quest for power, Himmler is arguably the second most
powerful man in the Reich. As the founding force behind the SS, Gestapo, and the Waffen-SS, Himmler has acquired a well-deserved reputation for coldblooded viciousness. Like Hitler, Himmler bears no resemblance to the Aryan ideal of the strapping blue-eyed blond—those people who in Hitler’s eyes carry the genetic perfection that entitles them to rule the world. Himmler is short of stature, with a crippled foot and chronically poor health, but appearances are deceiving. The mouselike man has carried out Hitler’s orders for the imprisonment and execution of several million Jews and other ethnic Germans and non-Germans through the astonishing reign of terror that began with Hitler’s dictatorship.
As Germany’s defeat becomes increasingly apparent, Himmler seems to violate his own principles and seeks favor by offering an armistice with the West, which is flatly refused. On May 6, 1945, he is removed from all power in the German government by Hitler’s titular successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz. As early as February 1945, for reasons never adequately explained, Himmler begins releasing Jewish concentration camp prisoners to the Swedish Red Cross, thus preventing the extermination of tens of thousands whose names would otherwise have been added to those of the victims of the Holocaust.
Heavily disguised and seeking escape from Germany, Himmler is captured by the British near the German seaport of Bremen on May 22, 1945. He commits suicide by poison three days later, at age forty-five.
KARL DÖNITZ
Surrenders to the British on May 23, 1945. No one is more surprised than Dönitz that Hitler has named him successor in control of the German government, and he accepts that responsibility not by continuing the fight Hitler would have wanted, but by engineering the arrangements for the formal end of the war. He is convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg, but the death sentence that the court deems appropriate is negated after a stunning show of support for Dönitz from British and American naval officers, including American admiral Chester Nimitz. The Nuremberg court reluctantly reduces his sentence to ten years in prison, which he serves at Spandau. He is released in 1956 and retires to a small village in northern West Germany, where he writes his memoirs. He remains unapologetic for his service to Hitler, accepts that a military officer should, above all else, do his duty. It is a position that forces the German government to keep him out of any limelight, although Dönitz continues to garner respect from naval officers around the world. He dies of heart failure in 1980, at age eighty-nine.
MARTIN BORMANN
The man most despised by Albert Speer as a vicious master of intrigue, Bormann is regarded by most, Speer included, as little more than Hitler’s political buffoon. Officially, Bormann is designated Hitler’s chief of the Nazi Party and deputy Führer, though none of the German military ever accept his authority in military matters. In reality, his duties seem more like those of a doting private secretary, whose insecurities cause him to distrust and plot against anyone who gains Hitler’s favor.
Immediately after Hitler’s suicide, the forty-five-year-old Bormann attempts to slip through the Russian cordon surrounding Berlin. Rumors of his survival and escape abound for decades after, including speculation that he has reached either Argentina or Paraguay, which provides considerable fuel for conspiracy theorists, who suggest he has founded an underground colony of former Nazis. However, those sensational rumors have no foundation in fact, and are finally put to rest in December 1972, when, during an excavation in Berlin, a skeleton is unearthed that proves beyond all doubt to be Bormann.
ALFRED JODL
Hitler’s titular chief of staff, the man closest to Hitler in the execution of military decisions, surrenders himself on May 23, 1945, in Mürwik, Denmark. He is convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. Jodl is hanged in October 1946 at age fifty-six.
WILHELM KEITEL
The man best described as “Hitler’s office manager” is the signatory authorized by Admiral Dönitz to attend the ceremony in Berlin that the Russians demand in order to officially end the war. Thus, on May 9, 1945, it is Keitel who fulfills the same duty in Berlin that was performed by Alfred Jodl at Rheims two days prior. The Russians allow Keitel to return to his own headquarters at Flensburg, Denmark, where he now serves Admiral Dönitz. As Dönitz’s staff dismantles the last remnants of Nazi command, Keitel surrenders to the British on May 13, 1945. Convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg, he is sentenced to death, though in his defense he offers what has become a grotesquely infamous excuse: “I was only following orders.”
After his conviction, he denies any attempt by his supporters to appeal his sentence, requesting that he be allowed to “die like a soldier” and face a firing squad. His request is denied, and he is hanged the same day as Alfred Jodl. He is sixty-four.
ALBERT KESSELRING
The man cursed with the moniker Smiling Al is nonetheless regarded as one of Germany’s premier battlefield commanders. He turns himself and his staff over to the custody of American troops near Salzburg, Austria, on May 6, 1945. Treated with respect by General Maxwell Taylor, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Kesselring expects to be allowed to return home, a beaten warrior. Photographs are taken of Taylor hosting Kesselring in what appears to be a scene of social pleasantry, which causes some controversy for Taylor. Kesselring does not expect to be included among those minions of Hitler who are charged with war crimes at the Nuremberg trials, and the prosecutors at Nuremberg agree. But the British do not. Thus, Kesselring is surprised to be charged with war crimes that occurred under his command in Italy, and in May 1947 he is tried before a British tribunal. He is convicted and sentenced to death, but there is strong sentiment that Kesselring is not the villain the court says he is. Pressured by Winston Churchill and various British commanders, including Harold Alexander, the court commutes the sentence to life imprisonment.
He serves most of his sentence in Werl Prison, Westphalia, Germany. Like Albert Speer, Kesselring writes his memoir by smuggling scraps of paper out of the prison.
Diagnosed with throat cancer, Kesselring is released from prison in 1952, both for humanitarian reasons and because of a vigorous public relations campaign on his behalf by the West German government. His memoir is published in Germany in 1953, and translated into an English edition in 1954.
Though he actively supports organizations that seek to assist German veterans, it is not a cause that is politically popular, and Kesselring lives out his life unable to shed his connection to the Nazis. He dies in 1960, at Bad Nauheim, Germany, at age seventy-four.
HASSO MANTEUFFEL
Manteuffel is considered the most capable of the field commanders who carry out Hitler’s great assault in December 1944, and his reputation is justified. His troops achieve the greatest penetration of the American lines during the Battle of the Bulge. But as Manteuffel knows, it is not a fight that could have succeeded. Pulled away from the Western Front in March 1945, Manteuffel is assigned to command the German Third Army, in a futile attempt to hold the Russians away from the eastern German border. Beaten back, Manteuffel withdraws westward while making extensive efforts to allow German civilians to flee the Russian advance. He surrenders to the British on May 3, 1945. Never charged with war crimes, Manteuffel serves as a distinguished POW until Christmas 1946, when he is released.
Returning to civilian life, Manteuffel enters banking and becomes an industrialist; in the mid-1950s he serves as a member of the German Parliament. He retires with his wife to a quiet life at Lake Ammersee, Bavaria, and dies in 1978, at age eighty-one.
THE BRITISH
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
No single figure in the history of the Second World War deserves credit for inspiring his people to their cause as much as the British prime minister. With all of Britain still reeling from the horrific effects of World War One, during which they lost muc
h of a generation of young men, the Second World War has inflicted on that nation the same horror. Though the British military suffers extraordinary losses, especially among frontline officers, it is the British civilian population that has enabled the British government to carry on. Churchill is singly responsible for strengthening the morale of the people whose sons, husbands, and fathers are sacrificing their lives to keep Hitler at bay.
Many suggest that one of Hitler’s greatest errors was not following through with plans to invade England in 1940, once the British army suffered the catastrophic defeat that drove them into the sea at Dunkirk. But often overlooked is that Churchill actively prepared the British people for such an invasion, and despite what may have been Germany’s superiority in troop strength and accompanying airpower, Germany’s success in conquering the British Isles was never a foregone conclusion. Credit for that must go in large part to the inspiration Churchill provided to the British people, a show of resolve that contributed to the seeds of doubt planted in Hitler’s mind.
At the war’s end, Churchill’s leadership seems to fall into irrelevancy, and the world is amazed when, late in 1945, the British vote his party out of office, thus costing him the role of prime minister. He returns to power in 1951, and serves as prime minister until 1955 when he retires from that office, but continues to serve in Parliament until 1964.