“Sir,” Marshall responded, “Miller is the commander in the field and, as such, is given considerable latitude regarding decisions. The fact that he is surrounded and outnumbered by his enemies, and hundreds of miles from contact with the American armies, makes the situation both more complicated and more desperate. Besides”-he smiled slightly at the memory-“Miller as much as told me we would have to come and get him if we wanted to court-martial him for disobeying orders.”
Truman grunted. Sight unseen, he had to admire this General Miller. He must have a fine set of really brass balls. Not too many military men would have had the temerity to tell the army’s chief of staff where to get off. Truman had also been appalled to find that the Reds had drafted Germans to man the antiaircraft guns around Ploesti and other places. Worse, there appeared to be an effort to create a German Communist army out of the multitudes of prisoners of war the Russians held. Just how successful this would be remained to be seen. However, it was thought that many German prisoners would likely choose the opportunity to live as a soldier instead of starving in a POW camp or being worked to death in the gulag.
“And now, gentlemen, you’re telling me that Ike wants to do the same thing?”
Stimson sighed. They had already been over this. “That’s correct. Ike feels we are winning the air war, but that the Red air force is still a formidable adversary. Despite the fact that we are producing almost three times as many airplanes as the Reds, they still have a mighty host. We made a big mistake last year. Ike ordered the disbanding of a hundred battalions of antiaircraft guns because the Luftwaffe was such a weakened threat, and everyone concurred. Now these battalions have been reconstituted in light of the still dangerous strength of the Reds, and we need much more to protect our boys. Thus, Ike is proposing that we utilize German soldiers to man the antiaircraft guns and other weapons that we have captured in great abundance.”
Truman did not respond. His expression was stern. Marshall took over from Stimson. “Sir, if you are concerned about our boys serving with any war criminals, I do not consider that likely. The antiaircraft guns and gunners were part of the Luftwaffe, their air force, and not the SS or even their regular army. Even if they were so inclined, I doubt that the gunners and others in the Luftwaffe would have had the opportunity to commit many war crimes.”
Truman stood and looked out the window behind his desk. “And Churchill concurs after all the Germans did to England? Well, I suppose he would, considering the mess his army is in. Has it been confirmed that Montgomery has been replaced?”
“Yes, sir,” Marshall answered. “By Alexander.”
Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander had served with distinction in North Africa and Italy. Marshall had just received confirmation from the British chief of staff, Sir Alan Brooke. The choice did not displease the American high command. After first being almost insultingly critical of the American military, Alexander had proven quite easy to work with and had strengthened the alliance between Britain and the United States.
The public had been told that Montgomery had been a casualty of the battle and had been evacuated to a hospital near York. Only a handful knew that he had suffered a nervous breakdown.
Churchill had made the decision that the mauled remnants of the British Army would continue to remain in German-occupied lands and fight alongside their former enemies. Wounded were being picked up by the Royal Navy from a multitude of beaches and small fishing villages along the west coast of Denmark. The British had lost most of their armor and artillery and practically all of their supplies, which meant they would be relatively helpless for the foreseeable future.
Marshall continued. “In a small way, using Germans in any capacity will help resolve the problem of numbers. We are still badly outnumbered at the point of battle.”
“I know,” said Truman.
In the nearly two months since the start of the war, the United States had managed to scrape together only a few new army divisions to throw at the Reds. Two each from Okinawa and the Philippines were en route to Europe. This did not mean that the four American divisions from the Pacific were in any shape to fight the Soviets. They’d been worn down by battle and disease. Physically, the soldiers were suffering from a score of ailments, and their equipment was shot and needed replacing.
Then there was the problem of getting any of Clark’s already reduced Fifth Army across the Alps. The Swiss and their neutrality were a large roadblock. A trickle of Clark’s army had made it across from Italy into Austria, but the price had been high, too high. Others were wending their way around Switzerland by way of France, while a lucky few got to take ships from Italian ports and thence around Europe to Antwerp. Either way there was a dreadful delay and moving any of Clark’s troops meant ignoring the fact that they were in Italy to prevent a Communist-inspired civil war from breaking out there.
“And what are the Russians doing?” Truman asked.
Marshall stole a look at his notes. “Sir, our intelligence sources say that the Reds are stripping their other armies in Europe for the coming battles, which we all assume will be decisive. We have also confirmed that they are using Romanians and Bulgarians in some locations, although these cannot be the best soldiers in the world. We further believe they will be using those so-called German volunteers wherever they can as shock troops. That’s been their tradition. They’ve always utilized penal battalions and released prisoners for suicide attacks. The men actually do volunteer because they know they will definitely die as prisoners, while there is the small chance they will survive as soldiers.”
Truman looked puzzled. “Under those circumstances, I would think a great number of them would desert. God only knows, I would.”
It further boggled his mind that Stalin would take the Russian men released from German POW camps, hand them guns, and send them straight back to battle as poorly led, untrained, and half-starved mobs. He had to remind himself that Stalin, early in the war, had said that surrender was punishable by death. He was just enforcing his decree.
“They might desert,” said Marshall, “we just don’t know how they would manage it. They would be closely watched and not have very many chances under any circumstances. We aren’t certain the German volunteers will be used against us. I consider it more likely they will be used as a police force to maintain order in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. All of those countries are now in rebellion against the Russians. Thus, more armies can be taken from the forces occupying those countries and sent to the front. Further, the OSS reports that their operatives have sighted trainloads of soldiers coming back from the Far East.”
“Makes sense,” Truman said. “How many men are we talking about?”
Marshall again referred to his notes. “These are estimates, but at least half a million from Siberia and maybe another half million from other sources.”
Truman groaned. Counting both the reinforcements from the Pacific and Clark’s army, if either got there in time to help in the next battle, they would total less than a fraction of what the Russians were bringing up. There had been some talk about lowering the draft age to seventeen and raising the upper end from its current high of thirty-five years of age to forty. The potential for the greatest numbers would come from the lower end, but, like Roosevelt before him, he was already catching hell because eighteen-year-olds were in combat. If seventeen- year-olds went to war, the political effects might destroy the entire war effort.
At any rate, it wouldn’t work. First, as they had discussed before, there wasn’t enough time to draft and train large numbers of men. Second, the decision had been made to hold the size of the American military at a certain level in order to keep the economy going, and that made sense. What good did it do to put all these men in uniform if there were no weapons being produced for them to use? There were very real limits to what the Arsenal of Democracy could do.
“Damn,” Truman muttered. “We can shoot down their planes and make more aircraft than they do, and we can make more tanks than they, but their tanks are much better. That pretty well evens out, doesn’t it?” Stimson and Marshall nodded. “Therefore, until and if we can get that bomb of Groves’s working, the difference in this war is numbers, isn’t it?”
“That and supplies,” Marshall corrected. “If they take Antwerp, our resupply effort will be crippled.”
“Well,” said Truman, “we cannot speed up the ships bringing in the Pacific reinforcements and we cannot enlarge the army by changing the draft. If we could get at least some of the Fifth Army across the Alps, it might help take pressure off, wouldn’t it?”
“A little,” Marshall admitted.
There was a pause as a courier knocked and entered with a note from the secretary of state. Truman opened the envelope and read the one-page document quickly.
