Doenitz Blows Cool When Giant, Uber-secret Flying Boats Show Up in Flensburg

Rather than drive directly back to the Marineschule, Cremer drove to a hillside overlooking the tiny harbor. There must have been a hundred ships and boats crammed in there; U-boats, destroyers, freighters and tankers, along with dozens of tugs, gunboats, patrol craft and minesweepers. None flew flags. Floating on the glistening water, in the bright morning light, they looked colorless, except for streaks of red oxide and rust.

“Let me show you something,” said Cremer, pointing to the far corner of the harbor. Ziggy looked and to his utter shock, saw that there was a scattering of seaplanes and behind them, three monstrous four-engine flying boats bobbing in the water. He couldn’t believe it. Until now, the only flying boats he’d ever seen had been much smaller British Catalinas. Early in the war, there had been a lot of enthusiastic talk about some getting built for the German Navy. But since, as the saying went, everything that flew belonged to fat Hermann Goering, a man with a pronounced antagonism towards naval affairs, the matter was apparently shelved. But now, here, a few hundred meters from him, three of them floated like a fact of life.

“My God,” exclaimed Ziggy, “I didn’t even know we had any!”

“Neither did the Grand Admiral,” said Cremer giving a bitter smirk. “Needless to say he flew into a rage when they suddenly appeared the other day. They’re special operations stuff. Flew in two days ago from Bornholm, right when the Russians were moving in. They’re part of something called KG200, a top secret unit no one has ever heard of, not Jodl, not Keitel, not even anyone from the Luftwaffe High Command. Officially they’re Luftwaffe, but under SS command. Of course your friend Westerby seemed to know all about them. Apparently he believes Himmler ordered them here for his getaway.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“It could be. It’s just that the SS has vanished once they found out that the British were looking for them. Nobody has seen neither hide nor hair of Himmler in days. We heard he was up at Field Marshall Busch’s headquarters for a while, but then Busch withdrew his hospitality and no one knows where he is now.

“So why are the flying boats here?”

“That is the big mystery,” mused Cremer. They just showed up here one morning, like a flock of snow geese. Doenitz had the pilots brought in and demanded they tell him who ordered them to come here. They say they don’t know, that it all comes from a secret source.”

“So what did they claim they’d been using those boats for?”

“Supplying weather stations in Spitzbergen and Greenland.”

“What a waste!” sighed Ziggy. “Think how many U-boat crews we might have saved if we’d had access to them.”

“That’s what the Old Man said."

For a minute, neither of them said anything as they continued to stare at the huge, floating aircraft.

“So how is everything here?” asked Ziggy. “Are things calming down at all?”

“Oh sure, a little,” answered Cremer. “The night the surrender got announced, there was a lot of howling. A mob of U-boat officers stormed into the Old Man’s offices demanding to speak to him. It was about three in the morning. Ludde Neurath sent them all away. He told them the Grand Admiral was sleeping, that they had their orders and they were to follow them and keep their mouths shut. It was really quite a performance. I never imagined Ludde Neurath had it in him. Half of those guys were senior to him. But at the moment, yeah, things are quiet. I don’t know how long that will last. Anything could set it off.”
(An abbreviated version of this chapter appears in Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008; Kindle download available here).

German Navy Faces Off SS in Ploen

It was midnight when they finally drove into the Ploen naval base. In the darkness all that stirred was a single petty officer who pointed a flashlight to where they should park. The men got out of their vehicles, weapons at the ready, and assembled into a tight cordon with Himmler, Macher, Grothmann and Franzi in its center. “Keep your eyes open,” Macher told them. “Anybody sees anything, sing out. If any of these Navy clowns try anything funny, we’ll let them have it. Let’s move.”

The petty officer pointed them to a small cluster of buildings at the end of a walkway flanked on either side by groves of trees. They started down the path, moving slowly and deliberately. “There’s men behind those trees,” reported one of the troopers in a loud whisper. Franzi peered into the shadows between the moon-lit tree trunks and tried to make out the shapes of men hiding among them, but could see nothing. “More behind that row of dustbins,” said another. Macher nodded but kept the group moving closer to the buildings.

“Pathetic,” muttered Grothmann. “If this is their idea of an ambush, they’ve got another thing coming.” Someone else chuckled quietly. Franzi could hear guns being cocked and safeties clicked off. “This is going to be more fun than killing Russians,” someone cracked.

Halfway there, Macher gave the order to halt. “Everyone pick a target.” Then he shouted into the darkness, “Whichever one of you is in charge I suggest you come out right now.”

A naval officer in a long leather coat emerged from behind a tree as casually as if he had his desk there. Even in the dark they could make out the iron cross around his neck. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly enough. “I am Korvettenkapitän Cremer, head of the Doenitz Guard Battalion. You are here to see the Grand Admiral?”

“What the hell were you doing back there?” demanded Macher.

“Just a routine security precaution,” answered Cremer.

“You tell your men to come out right now,” said Macher.

Without turning, Cremer raised his right hand and called out. “First squad, come forward. Everyone else, stay where you are.” A dozen sailors stepped out from the trees with rifles pointed, and advanced across the grass toward them. When they were about twenty feet away, Cremer put up his hand again and they halted.

“Tell your men to lower their weapons,” said Macher.

“You’re on our base, so you should lower yours first,” countered Cremer.

“Forget it,” said Macher.

“Have it your way,” said Cremer.

A minute passed and nobody moved. The SS troopers maintained their steely determination as they faced off against Cremer and his sailors, who didn’t waver either. Himmler seemed distracted, as if none of it particularly concerned him. Franzi wondered how much longer before someone started shooting. Then a light came on outside the operations hut. The door opened and a naval officer stepped out. “If you’ll come this way, Reichsfuhrer, the Grand Admiral is waiting for you,” he called out. Without a word, Himmler walked the rest of the way by himself. The naval officer held open the door and followed him inside.

After that, both sides relaxed a little. They partially lowered their weapons and settled in to wait. Cremer walked around them, looking at their weapons and into their faces. When he came to Franzi, he stopped and stared at him with a puzzled look. “Loerber?” he whispered, like he thought it was altogether amazing.

“Is there a problem?” growled Macher.

“I’m not sure,” answered Cremer. Then he turned and waved toward the bushes. “Captain, come here,” he called out.

A figure stepped out of the darkness. A naval officer in the same long leather coat and a glint of an iron cross at his throat. It was Ziggy!

He began walking across the lawn toward them.

“You stop right there!” said Macher.

Ziggy ignored him.

“I’m not going to say it again,” said Macher. “Captain Cremer, keep your man back.”

The naval guard raised their weapons again. The SS raised theirs.

Cremer kept signaling Ziggy to come forward. Ziggy was now close enough that even in the darkness, Franzi could tell that he recognized him.

“Franzi?”

“Ziggy?”

“Colonel, do you mind?” said Cremer. “These guys are brothers. They haven’t seen each other for a long time.”

“Both of you, step away! Now!” said Macher.

Ziggy stopped, giving Cremer a worried look.

“Colonel Macher, you want to start something, go ahead, but I guarantee you, we’ll finish it. Second squad, lock and load.”

“Troopers, wait for my word,” said Macher.

Franzi looked at Ziggy. Ziggy smiled.

What is he thinking? wondered Franzi. It was like the old days, standing in the wings just before going onstage, none of them talking, primed to act as a single unit. The orchestra would strike up Harlem Rhapsody, and they’d wait five bars and then run out on stage.

Harlem Rhapsody. Suddenly the memory was on him, so incredibly vivid, he could almost hear its lilting sadness; the song, he imagined, of a black man on a street corner, gazing up to the window of the woman his heart cries for as packed streetcars clatter by. They all loved that song. He could hear it now, crisp and sweet.

Wait a minute, he was hearing it! Someone was whistling Harlem Rhapsody from one of the other buildings! Ziggy heard it too. They both looked over to see where it was coming from and saw a figure leaning casually against the railing in front of the entrance, cigarette in hand, looking away up into the sky as the blue notes curled up like smoke from his lips.

Manni.

Everyone stood in spellbound silence; Cremer, Macher, Ziggy, everyone, as the melody drifted to them through the cold night air.

Then the light came back on and the door flung open as Himmler bolted out alone. He made his way quickly as he could toward them. Two of the troopers stepped aside to let him into the cordon. Even in the darkness, he looked livid.

“Reichsfuhrer, is everything all right?” asked Macher.

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” snapped Himmler.

Franzi looked back at the building and saw that Manni was gone.

(Excerpt from Germania, by Brendan McNally, Simon & Schuster 2008).

Battle of Hamburg: U-boat Men Turned Naval Infantry

Ziggy Loerber’s assumption had always been that he’d die at sea. He was a U-Boatman, after all, and that was how U-Boatmen inevitably died. By now the war had gone on for nearly six years and except for Cremer and Luth and a small handful of others, everyone he’d ever known or served with had already found watery graves. They died from enemy depth charges, from bombs and cannon fire. They bled to death, drowned or asphyxiated from acid battery fumes or too much carbon dioxide when the air inside their submarines became unbreathable. They died when their boats sank or when they dived too deep and the water pressure crushed their iron hulls like eggshells.

More recently he’d embraced the idea of dying alongside his shipmates in one massive, glorious, final battle. He’d been given command of U-2514, one of the new ‘miracle’ U-Boats which promised to be everything the old boats were not. Underwater they were extremely fast and yet so quiet that they could run circles around the British and American warships without sonar picking them up. Once they were unleashed, they would sow terror all over the north Atlantic, torpedoing every destroyer, cruiser, frigate and flattop they could find. Of course they’d get killed in the process, but to get to show those British and American bastards what for just one last time would, in their minds, definitely be worth it.

But it didn’t work out that way. Instead, a week after it had been launched, his boat was blown up in an air raid at the shipyard where it sat waiting for its special binary fuel to arrive. Suddenly, without benefit of dying at sea, Ziggy’s career as a sea captain and U-Boat sailor was over. Instead, he and his crew were issued helmets and rifles, put into a Naval Infantry brigade, and sent to defend Hamburg against the British.

For the last two weeks they’d been footsloggers in the vast no man’s land of the outer suburbs, lurking among ruined buildings and burned-out vehicles, waiting for British tanks, trucks, and armored vehicles to pass through and then attacking them with grenades and Panzerfaust rockets.

This morning they had situated themselves in a wide field of bombed-out factories near what had been the marshalling yards for the city’s western train station. Tanks frequently passed through, exploring, but once they ventured just a short distance up any of the side streets, they were lost in a jagged wilderness of wrecked buildings, chunks of walls, and collapsed floors, any of which were perfect places to stage an ambush.

It was nothing like going after enemy ships, Ziggy told himself. A U-Boat is like a wolf, pursuing its prey over long distances. But now Ziggy was more like a crocodile, waiting for its prey to come to it. As a wolf, Ziggy Loerber had been fantastic, but as a crocodile, he was not so good. Ambushes required patience and timing and even under the best circumstances, they easily backfired. In the last two weeks, he’d lost more than half of his men.

Even so, it occured to Ziggy that with a little luck, he might be captured by the Tommies, and then who knows? In a couple of months, weeks, or even days, if he didn’t die of starvation or cholera, they would let him out and send him back to his loved ones. Except of course that Ziggy didn’t have any loved ones, unless you counted his family, which he didn’t. All Korvettenkapitän Zigmund Loerber had was the Navy and it frightened him to think what his life would be like without it.

It was a foregone conclusion that the defense of Hamburg wouldn’t be successful. They had none of the men, the weapons, ammunition, vehicles nor petrol to push the British Army back. They could only hope to fend them off for another day or two. There was a massive seaborne evacuation underway in the Eastern Baltic and each day dozens of freighters, warships and fishing boats arrived with refugees and soldiers escaping from the last German outposts in Latvia and Russia. It was imperative that the Navy keep Hamburg’s port open for them to put in.

So they hung on with whatever weapons and vehicles they could get their hands on. This morning they managed to commandeer some three-wheeled bread trucks and, with a couple crates of Panzerfausts in hand, drove out to the western suburbs. Their war chariots were noisy, underpowered vehicles with engines too small even for most motorcycles. Still, each could carry three people; a driver and two others kneeling on the back bed, with machine guns at the ready. Everyone else followed on foot, rifles slung over their shoulders, keeping a wary eye open as much for townspeople eager to stop the fighting as the British themselves.

As Ziggy sat with his back against a shattered wall, he closed his eyes and let his ears search out among the loose fabric of battlefield noise for the sound of approaching armor. He could hear a metallic clattering in the distance and as he listened closer, he began to make out the rumble and squealing grind of caterpillar treads against broken concrete.

He looked up from the wall to see the high rounded turret of a British Sherman emerging from behind the remains of a factory. He got his binoculars out to get a better look. It was a single tank, painted a brownish green with sandbags piled everywhere along the front below the turret, giving it the appearance of a moving pillbox.

The tank veered slightly to the left, giving him a full view of its side. There was an image painted on the hull. Ziggy tightened the focus on his binoculars. It was a nearly naked girl, busty, with big eyes, short bobbed hair and a garter prominently gracing her thigh. He almost had to laugh. Betty Boop!

For a moment, he was a teenager again, watching American cartoons and serial movies at the Titania Palace or the Cinema Universum. Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Bosko, and Betty Boop; how he’d loved them all. His brothers despised him for it. To them, his unabashed love of cartoon characters was all the proof they needed that he was brain damaged.

As the tank lumbered forward, Betty Boop seemed to bounce giddily to a rumba rhythm. The tank continued coming closer, and to calm himself, Ziggy started humming, “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Big Bad Wolf? Big Bad Wolf?” He tried to remember whether he’d thought about cartoons at all during his years aboard U-Boats. It sure didn’t seem like it. But now that they were back, it seemed like they’d never been gone. What he’d give for the chance to talk with someone about cartoons. Who knows, Ziggy thought hopefully, staring at the tank. If anyone got out alive, maybe he’d get to.

Betty, Betty, Betty. The real love of his life and in the last ten years, she hadn’t aged a bit. Except now she was adorning a British Sherman and Ziggy wasn’t in a position to play favorites.

He gripped the rocket’s launching tube, holding it like a lance, and stared a hole into his target. That’s it, closer, come closer, a little bit more, a little bit more. He watched it climb over a mound of rubble, pitching its prow upward and, for a brief second, exposing its soft, lightly armored underbelly. Ziggy stood up, pointed the rocket, pulled the trigger and in a hot burst of propellant smoke watched it slam into the flat plate just below the driver’s hatch. There was a rumble, the tank shuddered, and bright plumes of red flame erupted from its different openings. Nobody climbed out. For nearly a minute he stared at Betty Boop burning. Then, turning away, Ziggy signaled his men to move to fresh positions.

Half an hour later, they were hidden along the remnant of a wall, when they heard a familiar rumbling coming from the east. They looked up and to their surprise, saw a lone German tank lurching its way across the moonscape. Something about its movements seemed stalwart almost to the point of being comical, like some self-important businessman trundling through an African jungle with his satchel and umbrella, determined not to let anything stop him from his appointed mission. It had been days since Ziggy had seen any German tanks moving around and he wondered what this single tank’s presence could possibly mean.

But almost as soon as he thought it, the air filled with a ragged, tearing noise that descended down from the sky. Artillery! “Everyone take cover!” Ziggy yelled. The men dropped to the ground just as the shells began exploding. It went on for nearly a minute and then stopped. Ziggy looked up and saw nothing but a dense cloud of dust that hung in the air. The tank was gone, not leaving behind even a smoking, burning carcass. Suddenly Ziggy imagined old Gustav, gloved hand to his top hat and giving a gracious bow, "Thank you, thank you, and now for my next magic trick...”
(Excerpt from Germania, Simon & Schuster, 2008, now also available on Kindle here).