Chapter 22
Chapter 22
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: Interwar Period - Anschluss (3)
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March 11, 1938
Regensburg, Nuremberg District, 13th Military District, Southern Germany (near the German-Austrian border)
After a sleepless night on a train packed to the gills, I’d dragged my exhausted body to Regensburg, only to find an even bigger mess waiting for me.
“30th Infantry Regiment! Where is the 30th Infantry Regiment!?”
“Out of the way! We need to unload the tanks!”
“Hey, how are we supposed to move here?!”
What is this... It’s worse than a marketplace.
The streets of Regensburg, a small, beautiful, and ancient city in southern Germany, were overrun with swarming German soldiers and all manner of equipment being hastily unloaded.
“By order of Lieutenant General Heinz Guderian, this vehicle is being requisitioned for the 1st Panzer Division!”
“Hey, you bastards! I just bought that car!”
“Sorry, old man, we’re just following orders! We’re not stealing it! You’ll get it back later, so take your complaints to the higher-ups!”
Meanwhile, every car in the city was being requisitioned. Hey, you can’t do that.
...A motorized unit requisitioning civilian vehicles. Is this for real?
I let out a hollow laugh and grabbed one of the soldiers shouting nearby.
“What’s your unit?”
“Ah, who in the middle of all this... Hah. My apologies, Captain! 46th Division, sir!”
The 46th Division... which corps was that? The 4th?
“Do you happen to know where the 11th Corps is?”
“S-sorry, sir! This is the 14th Corps area! I don’t know about the 11th! ...D-do you happen to know where the 4th Corps is?”
“Hmm... Sorry, I just got here myself. My apologies, Private First Class. Carry on.”
The operation starts tomorrow... Is this really okay?
A deep sigh escaped me as I contemplated the chaos that was already exhausting me.
“Hey, Captain! Do you know where the 11th Corps is?”
Just then, a lieutenant colonel grabbed me and asked.
Sir, I don’t know either.
General Staff insignia on his collar? I’m envious. Ah, wait. The 11th Corps?
I immediately saluted and answered him.
“My apologies, Lieutenant Colonel! I’m also with the 11th Corps but haven’t located it yet! Captain Dietrich Schacht!”
The lieutenant colonel gave a weary smile and returned my salute.
“Well, isn’t this a complete mess. Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow.”
Henning von Tresckow. I knew the name. It was impossible not to.
He was a key member of the anti-Hitler faction who had attempted to assassinate him several times before Colonel Stauffenberg!
“It’s an honor to meet you, Lieutenant Colonel. I’m assigned to the 18th Division, but...”
“Oh, good. I’m with the 18th as well. It’s been a while since I’ve had a field assignment after my time at the General Staff. I look forward to working with you, Captain Schacht.”
Ah, so he was part of Beck’s circle and got demoted too... I didn’t know that.
Then again, it wasn’t surprising, considering he conspired with Beck and Stauffenberg on Operation Valkyrie.
“The pleasure is all mine, Lieutenant Colonel! ...First, we need to find our unit.”
“That we do.”
Lieutenant Colonel Tresckow and I wandered through the streets of Regensburg for what felt like an eternity before finally locating the 11th Corps.
Along the way, we even picked up Second Lieutenant Winrich Behr, who was assigned to the same division. My God, what a state of affairs.
“Reporting for duty, General! Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow!”
“Captain Dietrich Schacht!”
“Second Lieutenant Winrich Behr!”
The major general receiving our salutes returned them with a half-hearted laugh.
“Welcome, gentlemen. Now... hmm. Thirteen more to go. I’m Major General Friedrich Karl Cranz. In my entire military career, I’ve never seen such a chaotic operation.”
We couldn’t help but share his hollow laughter.
Honestly, it would be hard to orchestrate a bigger mess than this.
“Tresckow, you’re the commanding officer of the 30th Infantry Regiment, correct? Head over immediately. Schacht, you’ll take command of the 3rd Company of the 30th Infantry. Behr, you’ll be the 3rd Company’s adjutant.”
Huh? The 3rd Company? That wasn’t what my orders said.
“With all due respect, General, the orders I received stated...”
The general cut me off with a snort.
“Hah! High command is screaming at us to move according to the offensive plan, but who knows when the other officers will arrive? We have to get the units we have up and running, one by one.”
“...Yes, sir!”
...So, sticking to the plan and deploying units for the offensive is already a lost cause. The new plan is to just throw together whoever shows up and charge forward.
It’s a good thing the German army has a tradition of mission-type tactics; otherwise, with this kind of seat-of-the-pants improvisation, launching an offensive in three days would have been impossible...
“Then get going, gentlemen. Well... you’ve probably gotten to know each other on the way here, so I’m sure you’ll manage somehow. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir!”
We left the tent serving as a temporary division headquarters and headed straight for the regiment. Before I could even properly introduce myself to the company members I’d never met, I was bombarded with a litany of problems.
“Captain! My platoon doesn’t even have standardized rifles!”
“The Gewehr 98 and Karabiner 98k are similar enough and use the same ammunition. Just give them whatever we have!”
“Captain! We don’t have enough tents for bivouacking!”
“Second Lieutenant Behr, send a runner to headquarters with a request. No, go yourself! Every other unit is bound to be a mess too, so go in person and get whatever you can!”
“Y-yes, sir!”
“Captain...!”
Ah, damn it all. I don’t know either! I just got here myself!
If I were in a position to conjure up supplies out of thin air, I wouldn’t be here!
I wanted to cry.
-
March 12, 1938
Regensburg, Nuremberg District, 13th Military District, Southern Germany (near the German-Austrian border)
Unable to tolerate the riots by the Austrian Nazi Party any longer, Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg had announced a referendum on unification with Germany to be held on March 13.
Furthermore, he had tried to skew the results by granting voting rights only to older citizens, excluding the 10- to early-20-year-olds who were the Nazi Party’s strongest supporters. Enraged, Hitler ordered the invasion of Austria by the 12th as soon as he heard the news.
The terrified Austrian government tried to appease Hitler, with Schuschnigg even resigning and broadcasting that he was essentially surrendering. But Hitler, having found his pretext, forced Austrian Minister of the Interior Arthur Seyss-Inquart to “request” the deployment of troops and ordered the advance into Austria to proceed.
That was why we were going through this hell. We had somehow managed to set out early in the morning with our cobbled-together units, but...
In the end, only Major General Karl Cranz’s 18th Division from my 11th Corps managed to depart on time.
The 19th Division, supposedly led by Lieutenant General Schwantes, wasn’t ready and was to set out as soon as it could. Meanwhile, the 18th Artillery Regiment, part of the 18th Division, couldn’t move because its equipment wasn’t fully unloaded.
To put it simply:
Most of the heavy equipment wasn’t ready, so the plan was for the infantry to just go and plant the flag.
Our objective was Linz, Hitler’s hometown. Fortunately, since it was north of the Danube River, we didn’t have any other corps with overlapping objectives.
After crossing the Danube over the historic Steinerne Brücke, a medieval stone bridge, we marched along the riverbank, and the utter chaos on the other side came into full view.
The roads were clogged with requisitioned civilian vehicles and tanks. Tanks that had broken down were blocking the way, causing massive traffic jams, while a long line of infantry stretched all the way back to Regensburg.
I wonder... will they all even be able to depart today? We’re the lucky ones.
Even in our company, some men had to be lodged in nearby homes after we begged the owners, and those who slept crammed into insufficient tents looked none too well.
Thank God it’s spring!
“Captain Schacht, how are things? Problems... I’m sure there are plenty, but is the march proceeding?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel. Well, we’ll manage somehow.”
I saluted and replied with a wry smile to the regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Tresckow, who was inspecting the regiment from his car.
Tresckow looked as if he had aged five years overnight. For a man who had spent a long time in the relative comfort of a rear-echelon staff office, yesterday’s pandemonium must have been utterly exhausting.
I only had to worry about my company, but I could only imagine the stress a newly appointed regimental commander was under in this mess.
“...The trench warfare of the Great War was a nightmare, but this is a nightmare of a different kind.”
“Hahahaha...”
“Well then, carry on.”
“Yes, sir!”
After Lieutenant Colonel Tresckow departed, I sighed, looking at my men who were walking in a disorganized mess, formation be damned.
Back in my modern life, I’d read that the Italian military attachés who witnessed the state of the Wehrmacht during the Anschluss had scoffed at its incompetence. I’d thought they had no room to talk, but...
I admit it, this is a total mess.
To think that this band of stragglers was the same German army that would write a legend of invincibility in the early days of World War II. My God!
At this point, I wondered if it would have been easier to overthrow the regime by launching a propaganda war to turn Austrian opinion against the Nazis and then losing a war against them, rather than plotting an anti-Hitler coup.
Of course, the Austrian Nazi Party was too strong for that to have been possible, and even if it had been, Germany would have collapsed into uncontrollable chaos and opened the gates of hell...
I found myself missing the Condor Legion.
-
March 15, 1938
Linz, on the Danube, Northern Austria
Contrary to the worries of our regimental commander, Tresckow, we entered Linz without firing a single shot.
The Austrian army, far from stopping us, cheered us on and cleared the way. In the streets of Linz, already adorned with swastikas, residents showered us with flowers in a fervent welcome.
The soldiers, exhausted from the chaotic march, dubbed this scene the *Blumenkrieg*—the War of Flowers—and their spirits lifted.
Even I, who knew the history, felt my mood brighten at such an enthusiastic welcome. It was no surprise how the other German soldiers felt.
These Austrians, so fervently welcoming the Nazi German army now, would later be dragged into World War II, get thoroughly burned, and then, in the modern era, engage in the mental gymnastics of blaming everything on Germany and the Nazis.
The welcome from the Austrian people was so passionate that even Hitler and Göring, who stopped by Linz on their way to Vienna, calling it Hitler’s hometown, were surprised, beaming at the enthusiastic reception before moving on.
From our garrison in Linz, we listened to Hitler’s speech being broadcast across all of Austria.
[As Führer of the German Nation and Reich, I now joyfully declare that my homeland has entered the German Reich! The oldest eastern province (*Österreich*) of the German people is, from this moment on, the newest bastion of the German Reich!]
As the ecstatic residents and we German soldiers listened intently to Hitler’s speech, the doors and windows of several houses in the city were visible, branded with the word *Jude* (Jew) scrawled in blood-red paint.
[Some in the foreign press might have thought that the Nazis would annex Austria through brutal means! But the Austrians would have said, even on pain of death, that reunification with Germany was their destiny!]
In an era where no one questioned such chilling words, instead praising the Führer’s decisiveness and greatness, my eyes met those of a family peering anxiously out from behind one of those branded windows.
[My political struggle has been won through the love of the people! The moment I crossed the border, I could feel that love firsthand! We have not come as conquerors, but as liberators!]
In front of that girl’s house, Nazi party members had paused to listen to the speech of their revered Führer.
[From now on, no one will dare deny that Austria is German! Germany will reign supreme over the world! (*Deutschland über Alles!*)]
“*Deutschland über Alles!*”
As the residents of Linz, the German soldiers, and all of Austria, now united, roared out their unshakeable belief that a united Germany would reign supreme, proclaiming Germany’s greatness, the Nazi party members—who shared that same belief—began to vandalize the houses branded as Jewish and assault the inhabitants.
While everyone cheered ecstatically, shouting "Heil Hitler" and "Long live Germany," I watched the regimental commander, Henning von Tresckow, who couldn't take his eyes off a Jewish family being dragged, bloodied, into the street by the party members. I quietly approached him.
“...Our great fatherland can be a catastrophe for some. Wouldn’t you agree, Lieutenant Colonel?”
Now, it was time to move.
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