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Introduction Title: Top Secret Tales of World War II Author: William B. Breuer ISBN: 0-471-35382-5 Introduction THE HALL OF MIRRORS in the magnificent Palace of Versailles, a mammoth edifice built by Louis XIV in 1661, was bustling with formally garbed delegates from many countries on the beautiful day of June 28, 1919. They had gathered outside Paris for the signing of the peace treaty that concluded what euphoric Allied politicians labeled “the war to end all wars.” It was one of German history’s blackest hours, for the victors—mainly Great Britain, France, and the United States—had inflicted harsh terms on the vanquished, including forcing Germany to acknowledge responsibility for start- ing the four years of bloodshed and carnage known then as the Great War. With hostile neighbors on all sides, Germany had been virtually disarmed by the Treaty of Versailles. Her six-million-man force had to be slashed to a Reichswehr (army) of only a hundred thousand civilian volunteers, and this caretaker force was prohibited from having airplanes or tanks. Almost before the ink had dried on the peace treaty, a cagey, monocled Old Prussian, General Hans von Seeckt, set in motion a series of clandestine events designed to lead to the rebirth of German military and industrial might. As commander of the Reichswehr, Seeckt, known as the “Sphinx” because of his enigmatic personality, began conspiring to use the authorized hundred- thousand-man force as a cadre for future rapid expansion. Only the best- educated officers and sergeants who had proven themselves to be dynamic leaders and courageous in battle were allowed to remain in the service. General von Seeckt and his coconspirators in the Reichswehr had to pro- ceed with extreme caution and utilize ingenious deceptions to mask what was really taking place. Many British, French, and American military officers were stationed throughout Germany to make certain that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were enforced. Once Seeckt had selected the members of his private club, he made cer- tain that their living conditions were vastly improved, that they had food items not available to civilians, and that their pay was hiked. The general then estab- lished a strict routine of sports and other recreational activities that developed strong, healthy soldiers. Seeckt next created a series of military schools whose “civilian” instruc- tors—in reality high-ranking officers from the Great War—taught sergeants and lieutenants the techniques of commanding entire divisions, in preparation for some future war. Among the eager students was young Erwin Rommel, a 1 2 Introduction platoon leader in the war who was regarded by a superior as “the perfect fight- ing animal, cold, cunning, ruthless, untiring, incredibly brave.” In 1921, the Old Prussian, without informing the German government, negotiated a clandestine mutual military assistance pact with a highly unlikely ally, the Soviet Union, against whom Germany had fought bitterly during the Great War. The alliance had been instigated by Nikolai Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Back in March 1917, news of the downfall of Czar Nicholas II had reached Lenin in exile in Switzerland, where he had been trying to foment a revolution. In his impatience to return home, he accepted for himself and his friends the offer by the German Kaiser Wilhelm of a private railroad car to travel to Russia across Germany. Kaiser Bill, as he was called by the Allies, was confident that Lenin would aid his cause by taking Russia out of the war against Germany. But Lenin’s own aim was to make not only Russia but the entire world, Germany included, Communist countries. Arriving in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then called) in April, Lenin called on the Russian masses to join him in overthrowing the moderate gov- ernment and replacing it with a Communist one. Most of the peasants joined his Bolsheviks, and in October 1917 the government was ousted. Lenin became absolute dictator. As Kaiser Bill had hoped, he took the huge but ineptly led Russian army out of the war. Now, three years later, with both the Soviet and German economies in dire straits and inflation galloping out of control, Nikolai Lenin had instructed the Soviet ambassador to Germany, Nucolai Krestinski, to make a discreet approach to General von Seeckt. The result was the secret alliance between the two nations. If it was not a shotgun marriage, it was certainly one of necessity. The Red Army lacked both professional leadership skills, and military schools for that training. Germany had no airplanes, tanks, or heavy guns, or an air force or a navy. Under the terms of the pact, German military advisers would secretly assist the Soviet Union in modernizing its army. In return, the Reichswehr would receive periodic clandestine shipments of Soviet-built heavy weapons. At the same time, the cream of the Reichswehr would be sent to the Soviet Union (in civilian clothes) to be trained on the airplanes and tanks being developed there by German armaments experts. Each year, a third of the annual budget of the Reichswehr went into a curious cartel: the Gesellschaft zur Förderung gewerblichen Unternehmen (the Industrial Enterprises Development Corporation). From its offices, one in Berlin and one in Moscow, it dealt directly with the Soviet government and had several subcontracting branches throughout the Soviet Union. Introduction 3 Men of the hundred-thousand-member Reichswehr trained with dummy tanks constructed of canvas around an ordinary automobile. (National Archives) The seemingly commercial corporation was a cover for the Reichswehr. Under the direction of the phony firm, aircraft shells, submarines, and poison gas were produced in the Soviet Union and shipped clandestinely to Germany. At his headquarters in Berlin in September 1921, General von Seeckt set up Sondergruppe R (Special Group R), the cover name for an operation run by selected officers to coordinate the numerous secret German manufacturing and military assistance programs taking place in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Old Prussian dispatched one of his key officers, Colonel Oskar von Niedermayer, to the Soviet Union to open the Zentrale Moskau (Moscow Central). Niedermayer immediately began dashing about the immense Soviet Union, wearing civilian clothes and carrying out his function of coordinating all secret German activities in that country. Colonel von Niedermayer gave special attention to the three immense training bases in remote locales of the Soviet Union that were prepared for the “Black Reichswehr,” twenty thousand strong, to conduct extensive and realistic field exercises. 4 Introduction These soldiers were the best and the brightest, destined for eventual high command in some German army of the future. Before leaving for the Soviet Union, each of these soldiers’ names was “erased” from the rolls. Theoretically, none of them now existed. Sent from Germany to the training camps in the Soviet Union under the most stringent secrecy, the men of the “Black Reichswehr” learned the art of war side by side with young Soviet officers, also selected for future high com- mand, from high-ranking German officers. Hermetically sealed zinc containers were used to bring back the remains of German soldiers killed in the rigorous training exercises in which live ammunition was sometimes used. Another area in which Germany rearmed was her air force. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had directed that Germany destroy all of its combat aircraft and prohibited building more of them, the document made no men- tion of the use of gliders. So almost as soon as the treaty was signed, scores of active glider-flying clubs sprang up throughout Germany. Glider flying developed into almost a craze in Germany during the first few years after the Great War. Although the young pilots looked upon their sport as an enjoyable pastime, many others envisioned the clubs as excellent training grounds for power-airplane pilots when the day came that Germany again had an air force. One of the latter was Hermann Goering, who was work- ing in odd jobs as a salesman. Goering had been a highly decorated fighter ace with twenty-two kills, and he had succeeded Manfred von Richthofen—the famed Red Baron—as a squadron leader after he was shot down. Now, as a civilian in an intolerable postwar Germany, he was bitter about the Treaty of Versailles, and he vowed revenge. Early in 1922, Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker, America’s top fighter ace in the Great War and now an executive with an aviation corporation, was in Berlin on business. Four former German pilots, who had engaged in duels with Rickenbacker’s squadron over France, played host to him. One of the four was Hermann Goering. During a conversation at dinner, Goering told the American, “Our whole future is in the air. And it is by airpower that we are going to recapture the Ger- man Empire.” Rickenbacker masked his shock. Only four years after the greatest butch- ery in history to that time had ended, here was a famous German advocating rebuilding the nation’s armed might and going to war once more. Goering explained precisely how Germany would circumvent the restric- tions in the Treaty of Versailles. “First, we will teach gliding as a sport to all our young men,” he said. “Then we will build up commercial aviation. Finally we will create the skeletons of a military air force. When the time comes, we will put all three together, and the German Empire will be reborn.” Introduction 5 A year later, in 1923, the Allied Control Commission that had been mon- itoring all German activities since Versailles relaxed some constraints in the treaty to allow the nation to expand its industry, including permission to build a “limited number” of civilian airplanes.
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