PART THREE Chapter 1

The Winds Rise Barbarossa (from WORLD EMPIRE LOST) TRANSLATOR'S NOTE! The world still wonders, a quarter of a century later, why Adolf Hitler turned east in June 1941, when he had England hanging on the ropes from disastrous defects in Africa and the Balkans, and from losses to U-boats, and when the United States was impotent to stop the knockout. It appeared then that Hitler had the Second World War all but won. With England mopped up, he could have proceeded to take on the Soviet union in a one-front war, after digesting his amazing gains. Instead, sparing England, he turned east, unloosed the biggest and longest bloodbath in history, left his rear open to the Normandy landing, and destroyed himself and Germany. Why? On this question, it seems to me that General von Roon, from the other side of the hill, sheds a lot of light. Since the American reader is more interested in operations in the west, I have greatly abridged this material. But i have tried to preserve the main thread of Roon's analysis.
V.H. The Turn EastHitler's invasion of the Soviet union is widely regarded as his great blunder, perhaps the greatest blunder in world history. For this view, there are two reasons. The first is, that people are as yet unable to think clearly about Adolf Hitler, an enigmatic and fearsome personality. The second and more important reason is that, in judging a military situation, laymen (and too many military men as well) seldom bother to get at the facts. Such judgment always begins by looking at a map. People are bored and confused by maps. Yet the key to Hitler's turn east in June 1941 lies in cartography. One has to look at a mop of Europe, preferably a terrain map that clearly shows rivers and the raised areas of mountains. And one has to bear in mind certain simple unchanging facts about war. War is a violent clash of energies. The energies are of three kinds: animal, mechanical, and chemical, as in the destructive process of fire. Until the seventeenth century, the animal energies of horses and men were decisive, although machines like catapults and crossbows were of some use. With the chemical energy of exploding gunpowder, a new factor was added. The American Civil War first reflected the industrial revolution, chiefly in the massive gain of troop mobility through railroads exploiting the chemical energies of a fossil fuel, coal; and also in guns with new ranges and accuracy, thanks to advanced metallurgy and design. Industrial war came fully into its own in 1914-18. The German people, operating on interior lines, on a grid of railroads brilliantly designed by Moltke for the swift shuttling of armies, with an industrial plant planned and built for war, all but beat a coalition that included nearly the whole world. In 1918, the revolutionary possibilities of a new use of fossil energy, the petroleum engine, were disclosed by the British tanks at Amiens, and by air combat among flimsy scout planes. A few military men grasped these possibilities; but only one postwar politician really understood them, and that man was an obscure ex-foot soldier, Adolf Hitler. Hitler saw that the British and French, the supposed victors, were so exhausted that world empire lay open to their successor; and that even a small nation, with massive bold use of the petroleum engine, especially in combined operations on the ground and in the air, could gain the prize. The Situation on the Map The drawback of horses in war is that they must have hay; Napoleon faltered at Borodino partly from a shortage of fodder. Similarly, a petroleum engine must have petroleum to burn. Adolf Hitler could never forget this simple fact, no matter how many armchair strategists and shallow-clever journalists did. There was only one filling station available for the German war effort on the European continent, and that was the oil under Rumania. We could get no oil by sea. All of Hitler's Balkan maneuvers and campaigns of 1940-41 therefore revolved around the Ploesti oil field.
The war could not be won in the Balkans, but Germany might have lost it there. A glance at the map shows that Ploesti, in the great plain drained by the Danube, lies dangerously near the Soviet border. Ploesti is a clear flat march from the Prut River of less than a hundred miles. But it is six hundred miles from Germany, and the Carpathian Mountains bar the way. For this reason, when war between Hungary and Rumania threatened in July of 1940, Hitler acted fast to force a settlement. The Soviet union did not like this. Russia, whether Czarist or Communist, has always stretched its becir claws toward the Balkan peninsula, and at the time Russia was sending vague threatening notes to Rumania. Hitler could not worry about Russian sensibilities, however, where his supply of petroleum was concerned. Without oil, the entire German war machine was but a mountain of dead iron. But Russia's conduct gave him pause. His pact with Stalin was just a truce. He so regarded it, and he had to assume that a ruthless butcher like Stalin so regarded it. The question was, when would Russia move? This, Hitler could only guess from Russia's actions. In the Balkans, in the summer of 1940, while we were completing our brilliant campaign in France, the Soviet union moved into Besscrabla, bringing the Red Army to the banks of the Prut, an advance averaging one hundred miles along a broad front toward our oil. Bulgaria, with a border only fifty miles from Ploesti, began at the same time to make territorial demands and military threats. In these gestures of Bulgaria against Rumania, we possessed hard intelligence that Russian intrigue was at work. These ominous moves took place during the so-called "Battle of Britain." Western newspapers and broadcasters virtually ignored them. Western historians still ignore them. Balkan politics have always confused and bored Westerners, especially Americans. Yet this tense obscure maneuvering around Rumanian petroleum was much more crucial than all the romantically headlined dogfights in the English skies. Authors who chew over and over the Battle of Britain invariably wonder at Adolf Hitler's marked lack of interest in it. None of them seem to know enough military chronology and cartography to appreciate that the Fuhrer had his eye, all during that inconclusive air skirmish, on the vital lowlands of the Danube. Late in July, with the "Battle of Britain" barely started, Hitler ordered General Jodl to begin staff work on an invasion of the Soviet union, to be set for late 1940 or the spring of 1941. Western writers often cite this move as conclusive proof of the German leader's "perfidy." But this comes of not looking at maps or studying chronology. Had Hitler not taken this precauflon after Russia's tightening squeeze play on Ploesti, he would have been guilty of criminal neglect of his nation's interests.
The Grand Strategy Picture Hitler's world view was Hegelian. Nations, empires, cultures, all have their season in history, the great Hegel taught us. They come, and they go. Not one is permanent, but in each age one dominates and gives the theme. In this succession of world dominions, we recognize the evolving will of the God of history, the World Spirit. God therefore expresses and reveals himself in the will of those world-historical individuals, like Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon, who lead their states to world empire. Conventional morality cannot apply to the deeds of such men, for it is they who create the new modes and themes of morality in each age. This Hegelian world view is, of course, at the other pole from the petit bourgeois morality which expects great nations to behave like well-brought-up young ladies in a finishing school, and would hold a mighty armed people no different, in the rules applicable to its conduct, than some pale shoe clerk. The big bourgeois powers like France, England, and America built their strength and expanded their territory by actions indistinguishable from armed robbery. Having achieved their "manifest destiny," they found it easy, of course, to scold a young vigorous Germany seeking to play its world role in turn. Adolf Hitler was not, however, a personality much impressed by such preachments. In his program, the attack on Russia was the doorway through which Germany would enter world dominion. Russia was our India, to be conquered and exploited in British style. Germany had the will, the strength, the sense of destiny. She lacked only the food, the living space, and the petroleum. These things she had to take. Hitler's view was that once rule of the European continent was firmly in Germany'grasp, the Anglo-Saxon sea powers would perforce change their governments, choosing (s) politicians who could get along with the new German world imperium. The Center of Gravity Clausewitz says, "We may... establish it as a principle that if we conquer all our enemies by conquering one of them, the defeat of that one must be the aim of the war, because in that one we hit the common center of gravity of the whole war." The attack on Russia, which aimed for control of the central land moss of the earth with its limitless manpower and natural resources, was the true strike at the center of gravity. Much specious argument is offered that England was "really" the center of gravity, because she could raise another coalition to combat Germany. This is the writing of men obsessed by Napoleonic analogies. England was neutralized, and virtually out of the war, in the spring of 1941, except for the minor nuisance of her air raids. She no longer ruled the seas. Japan and America both surpassed her. They presented no immediate problem to Germany, though a reckoning with the United States always lay in the future.
If militarily England was through, why was she not surrendering? Obviously, because she hoped for deliverance from the Soviet union, or the United States, or both. America was far off and almost unarmed. Russia, on the other hand, was rapidly rearming, at our very borders, and openly threatening the lifeblood of Germany at Ploesti. True, she was attempting to mollify us, in the usual crude fashion of Russian diplomacy, by sending wheat and oil; but in return she was receiving machinery for arming herself against us. To be dependent for long in this fashion on a Stalin was intolerable. Our bid for world empire was always a race against time. Germany was much smaller than its two great rivals, the Soviet union and the United States of America. Its advantage lay only in its unity of purpose, its discipline, and the forceful leadership of Hitler. By 1941 it was clear that Franklin Roosevelt intended to get into the battle as soon as he could convert his industries to war, and delude his unwilling countrymen into following him; and it was equally clear that Stalin was only seeking a safe cowardly way to cut Germany's throat at Ploesti. Hitler put the case plainly in a frank and eloquent letter to Mussolini, on the eve of June 22: "Soviet Russia and England are equally interested in a Europe... rendered prostrate by a long war.... Behind these two countries stands the North American union, goading them on.... I have therefore, after constantly racking my brains, finally reached the conclusion to cut the noose before it can be drawn tight." Was Barbarossa Sound? The argument that Hitler should have finished off England first has no realistic basis. Hitler resembled Caesar in his determination to take, wherever it could be found, the lands and the resources his nation wanted. He was like Alexander in his broad vision of a new peaceful world order. But in his strategy he was Napoleonic, for like Napoleon his central problem was that he was surrounded by enemies. The Napoleonic solution was to use speed, energy, surprise, and extreme concentration of his forces at the attack point, in order to knock off his foes one at a time. This was what Hitler did. He always had a brilliant if somewhat adventurous sense of grand strategy; only his dilettantish interference in tactical operations, and his inability to be soldierly in the clutch, were ruinous. In May of 1940 he had allotted a mere two dozen divisions in the east to confront the more than two hundred divisions of the Red Army, while he finished France and drove the disarmed British remnant off the continent. it was a fantastic gamble, but a perspicacious one. Stalin, who might have taken Berlin, proved only to happy to let Germany destroy France, while he grabbed lond in the Baltic and the Balkans. In 1941 the Soviet union had grown much stronger. It had moved within a hundred miles of Ploesti. It had gained control of the Baltic Sea. It had massed on its borders, confrontingGermany and its conquered Polish territory, more than three million soldiers. And it was demanding a free hand in the Dardanelles, Bulgaria, and Finland. These demands, brought by Molotov in November 1940, were the last straw. Hitler felt he really had only three choices. He could shoot himself, leaving the German people to negotiate a surrender; he could attempt the inconclusive task of subjugating England with the carnage of a Channel crossing, opening himself meantime to a treacherous assault from the east; or he could ignore neutralized, prostrate England, and attempt to realize his entire historic aim, in the hour of his greatest strength, in one devastating blow. Barbarossa was the solution: a one-front Napoleonic thrust, not the opening of a true two-front war. Unprejudiced military historians of the future will never be able/ to fault Hitler for turning east. From the start he was playing against odds. He lost his well-calculated risk through a combination of operational errors and misfortunes, and the historic accident that at this hour he was opposed by a ruthless, spidery genius of the same metal-Franklin Roosevelt. The Role of Roosevelt Roosevelt's essential problem in 1941 was timing. He was playing from temporary weakness against an opponent playing from top strength. The weakness of the American President was both internal and external. Where the German people were united behind their leader, the American people, confused and nonplussed by Roosevelt's supercilious and untrustworthy personality, were divided. Where Hitler disposed of the greatest armed forces on earth, at their peak of strength and fighting trim, Roosevelt had no Army, no Air Force, and a dispersed, ill-trained Navy. How then could the American President bring any weight to bear? Yet he did it. He was well trained in the devices of impotence, having won the presidency in a wheelchair. The first thing he had to do was strengthen Churchill's hand. Only Churchill, the amateur military adventurer with his obsessive hatred of Hitler, could keep England in the war. Churchill was having a wonderful time playing general and admiral, as his memoirs relate. However, under his leadership the Empire was going down the drain. England's one chance to save it lay in getting rid of its grand-talking Prime Minister, and electing a responsible politician to make peace with Germany. Had this occurred, the present world map would look unguessably different, but the pink areas of the British Empire would still stretch around the globe. Roosevelt's masterstroke of Lend-Lease kept Churchill in power. The Americans sent the British precious little in 1941. But Lend-Lease gave this brave, beaten people hope, and wars are fought with hope.
Hope was also the main commodity Franklin Roosevelt sent the Soviet union in 1941, though supplies started to trickle through in November and December. Stalin knew the gargantuan industrial potential of America. That knowledge, and Roosevelt's pledges of help, stiffened him to fight. He sensed that while Roosev would never sacrifice much American blood to save the Soviet union, he would probably send the Russians all kinds of arms, so that Slav bravery and selfsacrifice could fight the American battle for world hegemony. The Convoy Decision Roosevelt's instinct for subtle and breathtaking chicanery on a world scale was never better displayed than in his conduct on the question of the Atlantic convoys. Most Americans were indifferent to the European war in May 1941. The soundest people were against intervening. Roosevelt Managed to find an unpleasant name for them: "isolationists." However, in the circles around him, his sycophants kept urging him to initiate convoying of American ships to England. Indeed, it made very little sense to keep loading up English ships, only to have America's food and arms go to the ocean bottom. Roosevelt obstinately refused to convoy. He had already received intelligence of the coming attack on Russia. In fact the whole world seemed to know it was coming, except Stalin. The last thing he wanted to do was interfere. He saw in it the inevitable slaughter of vast numbers of Germans. This prospect wormed his heart. But an outbreak of war in the Atlantic could have halted Barbarosso. Hitler could have countermanded the orders until dawn on June 22. An order to stand down from Barbarossa would have been obeyed with great relief by the German General Staff. Franklin Roosevelt understood what not too many other politicians of the time could grasthat even Hitler in the last analysis depended on public opinion. The German people were united behind him and ready for any sacrifice, but they were not ready to commit plain suicide. News of war with the United States would have taken all the spiritual steam out of the drive on Russia. The German public had no understanding of America's military weakness. Despite Goebbels's propaganda, they remembered only that America's entry into the last war had spelled defeat. Roosevelt was ready for war with Germany, he ardently desired it, but not until we were embroiled with the tough gigantic hordes of Stalin. So he kept his own counsel, put off his advisers, and kept twisting and turning under the probes of the press about convoying. His one course to ensure war between Germany and Russia was to hold off the convoying decision. That was what he did. He baffled and dismayed everybody around him, includinghis own wife. But he gained his grisly aim on June 22, when Hitler turned east. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Roon's defense of Barbarossa is unusual; most other German military writers do condemn it as the fatal opening of a two-front war. it seems Roon either played a part in designing the operation, or that the plan submitted by the Army Staff agreed with his own study made at Supreme Headquarters. Every man cherishes his own ideas, particularly military men. The argument about the key role of the Ploesti oil fields is not emphasized in many other military histories. Hitler began planning to attack Russia as far back as July 1940. The nonaggression pact was then less than a year old, and Stalin was punctiliously delivering vast quantities of war materials, including oil, to Germany. Hitler's act does look a bit like bad faith, if faith can be said to exist between two master criminals. The usual extenuation in German writings is that the Soviet troop buildups showed Stalin's intent to attack, and that Hitter merely forestalled him. But most German historians now concede that the Russian buildup was defensive. Hitler always regarded the attack on Russia to gain Lebensroum as his chief policy. it was natural for him to start planning it in July 1940, when his huge land armies were at maximum strength, with no other place to go. This was the big picture, and the oil supply problem may have been a detail. Nevertheless, Roon's discussion illuminates Hitter's problems.-V.H. NE 22, 1941JU The players in our drama were now scattered around the earth. Their stage had become the planet, turning in the solar spotlight that illumined half the scene at a time, and that moved always from east to west. At the first paling of dawn, six hundred miles to the west of Moscow, at exactly 3:15A.m. by myriads of German wristwatches, German cannon began to flash and roar along a line a thousand miles long, from the icy Baltic to the warm Black Sea. At the same moment fleets of German Planes, which had taken off some time earlier, crossed the borders and started bombing Soviet airfields, smashing up aircraft on the ground by the hundreds. The morning stars still twinkled over the roads, the rail lines, and the fragrant fields, when the armored columns and infantry divwons-multitudes upon multitudes of young healthy helmeted Teutons in gray battle rigme rolling or walking toward the orangestreaked dark east, on the flat Polish plains that stretched toward Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. A sad and shaken German ambassador told Foreign Minister Molotov in Moscow, shortly after sunrise, that since Russia was obviously about to attack Germany, the Leader had wisely ordered the Wehrmacht to strike first in self-defense. The oval gray slab of Molotov's face, we are told, showed a very rare emotion-surprise. History also records that Molotov said, "Did we deserve this?" The GERMAN ambassador, his message delivered, slunk out of the room. He had worked all his life to restore the spirit of Rapallo, the firm alliance of Russia and Germany. Eventually Hitler had him shot. Molotov's surprise at the invasion was not unique. Stalin was surprised. Since his was theonly word or attitude in Russia that mattered, the Red Army and the entire nation were surprised. The attack was an unprecedented tactical success, on a scale never approached before or since. Three and a half million armed men surprised four and a half million armed men. The Pearl Harbor surprise attack six months later involved, by contrast, only some thousands of combatants on each side. Communist historians use events to prove their dogmas. Ts makes for good propaganda but bad record-keeping. Facts that are hard to fit into the Party theories tend to slide into oblivion. Many facts of this most gigantic of land wars, which the Russians call Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voina, 'The Great Patriotic War"-'Second World War" is not a phrase they favor-may never be known. The Communist historians assert that Stalin was to blame for neglecting intelligence warnings, and that is why the German surprise attack was successful. It is a very simple way to look at the amazing occurrence. So far as it goes, it is true. Sunlight touched the red Krembn towers, visible from the windows of Leslie Slote's flat, and fell on an opened letter from Natalie Henry in Rome, lying on his desk by the window. Slote had gone to bed very late and he was still asleep. Natalie had sent him a joyous screed, for suddenly Aaron Jastrow had received his passport! He actually had it in hand and they were getting ready to leave on a Finnish freighter sailing early in July; and going by ship would even enable Aaron to retrieve much of his library. Knowing nothing of Byron's action at the White House, Natalie had written to thank Slote in effervescent pages. The news astonished the Foreign Service man, for in Italy he had felt he was encountering the cotton-padded stone wau that was a State Department specialty. In his answer, which lay unfinished beside her letter, he took modest credit for the success, and then explained at length why he thought the rumored impending invasion of Russia was a false alarm, and why he was sure the Red Army would crush a German attack if by chance one came. Trying to find gracious words about Natalie's pregnancy, he had given up and gone to bed. By the time his alarm clock woke him, his letter was out of date; but he did not yet know it. Peering out of the window, he -,aw the usual morning sights of Moscow: a hazy blue sky, men in caps and young women in shawls walking to work, a crowded rusty bus wobbling up a hill, old women standing in line at the milk store, more old women queueing at a bread store. The Kremlin loomed across the river, huge, massive, still, the walls dark red in the morning sun, the multiple gold domes gleaming on the cathedrals. There were no air raid alarms. There were as yet no loudspeaker or radio reports. It was a scene of tranquil peace. Stalin and Molotov were waiting a while before sharing their astonishment with the people they had led into this catastrophe. But at the front, several million Red Army men were already sharing it and trying to recover from it before the Germans could kill them all. Knowing nothing of this, Slote went to the embassy with a light heart, hoping to dispose of some overdue work on this quiet Sunday. He found the building in a most un-sabbathlike turmoil; and there he learned, with a qualm in his gut, that once again the Germans werecoming. The sunrise slid westward to Minsk. Its first rays along a broad silent street fell on a cleanshaven workingman in a cloth cap and a loose worn suit dusted all over with flour Had Natalie Henry been walking this street, she could not possibly have recognized her relative, Berel Jastrow. Shorn of a beard, the broad flat Slavic face with its knobby peasant nose gave him a nondescript East European look, as did the shoddy clothing. He might have been a Pole, a Hungarian, or a Russian, and he knew the three languages well enough to pass as any of these. Though over fifty, Berel always walked fast, and this morning he walked faster. At the bakery, on a German shortwave radio he kept behind flour sacks, he had heard Dr. Goebbels from Berlin announce the attack, and in the distance, just after leaving work, he had heard a familiar noise: the thump of bombs. He was concerned, but not frightened. Natalie Henry had encountered Berel as a devout prosperous merchant, the happy father of a bridegroom. Berel had another side. He had served on the eastern front in the Austrian army in the last war. He had been captured by the Russians, had escaped from a prison camp, and had made his way back through the forests to Austrian lines. In the turmoils of 1916 he had landed in a mixed German and Austrian unit. Early in his army service he had learned to bake and to cook, so as to avoid eating forbidden foods. He had lived for months on bread, or roasted potatoes, or boiled cabbage, while cooking savory soups and stews which he would not touch. He knew army life, he could survive in a forest, and he knwe how to get along with Germans, Russians, and a dozen minor Danubian nationalities, Anti-Semitism was the normal state of things to Berel Jastrow. It frightened him no more than war and he was just as practiced in dealing with it. He turned off the main paved avenue, and walked a crooked way through dirt streets and alleys, past one-story wooden houses, to a courtyard where chickens strutted clucking in the mire, amid smells of breakfast, woodsmoke, and barnyard. 'You've finished work early," said his daughter-in-law, stirring a pot on a wood-burning oven while holding a crying baby on one arm. She was visibly pregnant again; and with a kerchief on her cropped hair, and her face pinched and irritable, the bride of a year and a half looked fifteen years older. In a corner, her husband in a cap and sheepskin jacket murmured over a battered Talmud volume. His beard too was gone, and his hair cut short. Three beds, a table, three chairs, and a crib filled the tiny hot room. All four dwelled there. Berel's wife and daughter had died in the winter of 1939 Of the spotted fever that had swept bombedout Warsaw. At that time the Germans had not gotten around to walling up the Jews; and using much of his stored money for bribes, Berel Jastrow had bought himself, his son, and his daughter-in-law out of the city, and had joined the trickle of refugees heading eastward to the Soviet union through back roads and forests. The Russians were taking in these people and treating them better than the Germans had,though most had to go to lonely camps beyond the Urals. With this remnant of his family Berel had made his way to Minsk, where some relatives lived. Nearly all of the city's bakers were off in the army, so the Minsk bureau for aliens had let him stay. "I'm home early because the Germans are coming again." Accepting a cup of tea from the daughter-in-law, Berel sank into a chair and smiled sadly at her stricken expression. "Didn't you hear the bombs?" "Bombs? What bombs?" His son closed the book and looked up with fright on his pale bony face. "We heard nothing. You mean they're fighting the Russians now?" "It just started. I heard it on the radio. The bombs must have come from airplanes. I suppose the Germans were bombing the railroad. The front is very far away." The woman said wearily, shushing the wailing baby as it pounded her with a little fist, "They won't beat the Red Army so fast." The son stood. "Let's leave in the clothes we're wearing." 'And go where?" his father said. "East. f Berel said, "Once we do, we may not be able to stop till we're in Siberia." "Then let it be Siberia." "Sibe God mighty, Mendel, I don't want to go to Siberia," said the wife, patting the peevish baby. "Do you remember how the Germans acted in Warsaw?" Mendel said. "They're wild animals." "That was the first few weeks. They calmed down. We kept out of the way and we were all right, weren't we?" the father said calmly. "Give me more tea, please. Everybody expected to be murdered. So? The typhus and the cold were worse than the Germans." "They killed a lot of people." "People who didn't follow the rules. With the Germans, you have to follow the rules. And keep out of their sight." "Let's leave today." "Let's wait a week," said the father. "They're three hundred kilometers away. Maybe the RedArmy will give them a good slap in the face. I know the manager in the railroad ticket office. If we want to, we can get out in a few hours. Siberia is far off, and it's no place for a Jew." "You don't think we should leave today?" said the son. "No." "All right." Mendel sat down and opened his book. "I'm putting food on the table," said his wife. "Give me a cup of tea," said her husband. "I'm not hungry. And make that baby stop crying, please." Clever though he was, Berel Jastrow was making a serious mistake. The Germans were jumping off nearer Minsk than any other Soviet city, bringing another surprise, compared with which even their invasion of Russia has since paled in the judgment of men. Bright morning sunshine bathed the columns of soldiers that crawled like long gray worms on the broad green earth of Soviet-occupied Poland. Behind the advancing soldiers, out of range of the fire Hashes and smoke of the cannonading, certain small squads travelled, in different uniforms and under different orders. They were called Einsatzgruppen, Special Action Units, and they were something unparalleled in the experience of the human race. To place and understand these Special Action Units, one needs a brief clear picture of the invasion. Much of the European continent in that area is a low-lying, soggy saucer almost like everglades, spreading over thousands of square miles. This big swamp, the Pripet Marshes, has always confronted western invaders of Russia. They have had to go south or north of it. Adolf Hitler's generals, intending to break the Soviet state with one sharp blow in a few summer weeks, were hitting north and south of the great swamp at the same time. But the Special Action Units had no military purpose. Their mission concerned the Jews. From the time of Catherine the Great, Russia had compelled its millions of Jews to live in the "Pale," a borderland to the west, made up of districts taken in war from Poland and Turkey. The revolution had ended the Pale, but most of the Jews, impoverished and used to their towns and villages, had stayed where they were. The border defense belt held by the Red Army, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, was therefore precisely where most of the Soviet union's Jews lived. The Special Action Units were travelling executioners, and their orders were to kill Russia's Jews without warnin and m,ithout regard to age or sex. These orders were unwritten; they came down from Adolf Hitler throughGoering and Heydrich to the "Security Service," Germany's federal police, which organized the units. These squads had collateral orders to shoot summarily all commissars-political officers-of the Red Army. But these latter orders were on paper. There were four Special Action Units in all, placed to follow close on the three giant prongs of the German assault. Army Group South, composed of Germans and Rumanians, was striking into the Ukraine, south of the marshes and along the Black Sea into the Crimea. With them came two Special Action Units, for here the Jewish settlement was dense. Army Group Center was setting forth on the straight short road Napoleon took-Minsk, Smolensk, Vyazma, Borodino, Moscow. This road points north of the great swamp like an arrow for the capital. It passes between the headwaters of two rivers, one flowing north and the other south, the Dvina and the Dnieper. Military men call it the dry route and greatly favor it. With this main central thrust travelled another Special Action Unit. Army Group North was driving up along the Baltic toward Leningrad, and a Special Action Unit followed close behind. Counting officers and men, there were about three thousand of these travelling executioners all told in the four units. They were setting out to kill between three and four million people, which figured out to more than ten thousand murders for each man. It was clearly beyond them. The plan was to start the process, and then recruit native anti-Semites and German soldiers to complete the gruesome, unheard-of, but entirely real job they were setting out to do. The Germans in the ranks of the Special Action Units were recruited mainly from the civil services: policemen, detectives, clerks, and the like. There were no lunatics or criminals among them. The officers were mostly lawyers, doctors, or businessmen, who through age or disability could not fight in the army. Many had high university degrees; one officer had been a theologian. Officers and men alike were good Germans, the sort of men who did not drive past red traffic lights, who liked opera and concerts, who read books, who wore ties and jackets, who had wives and children, who for the most part went to church and sang hymns, and who worked in little weekend gardens. Obedience was a German virtue. They had been recruited and ordered to kill these people. They had been told that the Jews were Germany's enemies, and that the only way to deal with them was to kill every last one of them, down to the babes in arms and their mothers. This word came from above. A prime German virtue was to accept such words from above and carry them out. Strangely, the Jews already in German hands, in the territories stretching west from the invasion line to the Atlantic Ocean, were not yet being killed en masse. Nor was a programeven under way to kill them. A mistaken idea exists that the Germans began killing Jews as soon as Hitler took power in 1933-That is untrue. They robbed the Jews, as they later robbed all the peoples they conquered, but the extortion was usually done under legal expropriation rules. Jews were often insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes tortured, sometimes done to death or worked to death. But as late as June 22, 1941, only a few concentration camps existed, and Most Of the inmates were German opponents of Hitler. The existence of the camps filled the Jews with terror, but the Germans themselves were terrorized, too. By June 1941 the European Jews were living a vile life and were yielding the last scraps of their property to the squeeze of German law. But they were living. "One can live under any law," a German Jewish newspaper put it. So it happened that a Jew was safer behind the German lines, just then, than ahead of them. The Warsaw Jews, for instance, had reorganized themselves under the draconic Nazi rules. Though overwork, starvation, and cusease were taking a toll, they were in the main managing to survive. At this point the Jastrows would have been somewhat better off not to have left Warsaw. But Berel Jastrow, astute as he was and schooled in living with anti Semitism, had not anticipated the Special Action Units. They were something new. Adolf Hitler had given the order for the Einsatzgruppen back in March, so they may not have been much in his mind on June 22. He was following the progress of the invasion in a map room, where the light remained cool and gray long after sunrise. Disliking sunshine, the Fuhrer had ordered his eastern campaign headquarters, which he dubbed Wolfsscre, to be built facing north. A rail spur in a forest of east Prussia, not far from the jump-off line of Army Group North, led to this 'Wolf's Lair," a compound of concrete bunkers and wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and minefields. Wolfsschanze, in fact, singularly resembled a concentration camp. At the elbow of General Jodl stood one of the youngest and newest of German generals, Armin von Roon. Hitler did not like Roon and showed his dislike by abruptness. Roon came from a titled family, and spoke a polished Berlin German that contrasted sharply with Hitler's folksy, coarse Bavarian speech. His uniform, faultlessly tailored, contrasted too with Hitler's oversize, baggy soldier's coat. Above all, Roon had a beaked nose that looked a bit Jewish. But as a colonel in Operations, he had taken part in three elaborate Barbarossa war games. His memory was unusual; he knew to the hour the projected advances and had the picture of the thousand-mile-wide battlefield by heart. The Soviet union was for Roon rather like a table model, spectacularly larger than the ones used in the games. The troops were men, instead of pinned and numbered flags, but the principles and the scenario were the same, at least to start with. (At the Nuremberg trials, Roon denied knowledge of the Special Action Units, until confronted with the order to kill the commissars, countersigned by him for the Operations Section. Then he recalled it, but pleaded ignorance of the Einsatzgruppe-n's other purpose. The tribunaljudged this farfetched, like some other points in Roon's defense.) Until three hours after sunup of the invasion day, Roon dodged the Leader's harsh nagging questions about the trend of ground operations. Then he gave his judgment that things were going better than planned in the north; much better in the center; worse in the south. It proved an accurate estimate, and for a long period thereafter Hitler warmed to the beak-nosed general. Here then was the laying down of the first cards in the giant poker hand. Hitler and his staff had guessed that the Russians would mass most strongly in the center, north of the Pripet River bogs, to shield their capi. But whoever had disposed of the Russian forces-Stalin, or the generals to whom he Jistened-had bet that the Germans would make their main drive south, to seize the Ukrainian farmlands and the Caucasus oil fields. Perhaps this judgment had come from reading Mein Kampf, in which Hitler openly called this seizure his life's aim. At any rate, the largest mass of Russian defenders lay south of the marsh. Thus the battle line was unbalanced. The Germans found themselves slowed in the south, but punching through with surprising ease toward Moscow. The first big Russian clity in their path was Minsk. When the sun rose in Rome, Aaron Jastrow was already working at his desk, in his suite in the Hotel Excelsior. By now Dr. Jastrow's book on Constantine needed only four or five more chapters, and he was very happy with it. At precisely eight as usual, the unchanging waiter brought the unchanging breakfast. Jastrow finished it and was settling back at his desk when a bedroom door opened noisily, and Natalie waddled in, wearing a pink bathrobe. Pregnancy, beside making her shapeless, had hollowed her cheeks and her eyes, and exaggerated her full mouth. "My God, have you heard the latest?" "Has something good happened?" "That depends. The Germans have invaded Russia." "What! Are you sure?" "It was just on the eight o'clock news." "Bless me." Jastrow took off his glasses and rubbed them with a handkerchief. "Why, when did it start?" "At davrn today." "Well, I declare! The villain with the mustache is really throwing himself into his part, isn't he? A two-front war again," Natalie walked to the serving table on wheels that bore the breakfast remnants. "Would this coffee still be hot?" "Yes, help yourself.""The doctor told me not to eat or drink before he examined me, but I can't help it. I'm ravenous." Natalie began to wolf a sweet roll with coffee. "You'd better call the ambassador." 'I suppose so. But Russia's very far off, and what difference can it make to us? It's pleasant, really, to think of Hitler dwindling off into Russia. Shades of Napoleon, let us hope." "If Finland gets dragged in, the Vaasa won't sail." "Dear me, yes. You're completely right. Any news about Finland'r" "Not that I heard." Dropping heavily into a chair, Natalie glanced around at the broad room, furnished with maroon plush chairs and sofas, gilt mirrors, and marble statues. "God, this suite is oppressive. just to get out of it will be so Marvelous!" "My dear, it's spacious, and we've got it for the price of two small rooms." "I know, I know, but why not? The hotel's empty, except for Germans. It's giving me the creeps." "I imagine they're in every hotel." Natalie said with a gloomy look, "No doubt. Yesterday I recognized a Gestapo man on the elevator. Byron and I saw him in Lisbon. I know he's the same one. He has an odd scar like this"-she made an L in the air with one finger-"on his forehead." 'Surely that's a coincidence. Did he recognize you?" "He gave me quite a stare." "I wouldn't worry about it. Those men stare for a living. What did the doctor say yesterday, by the way? Everything normal?" "Oh, yes." She sounded uncertain. "He just wanted to see me once more. I'm going to bed now for a while." "To bed again?" "He wants me to rest a lot. My appointment's not till noon." "Well, all right. I do have this chapter just about ready for smooth copy." "Aaron"-Natalie paused, chewing her underlip-"he doesn't want me to type for a while. It tires my back. Just until this fatigue clears up." 'I see." Jastrow sighed, and glanced around the room. agree, this place is not very cheerful. When I think of my lovely house standing empty... Natalie, do you suppose this Russian war changes things at all? I mean-" "Jesus Christ, Aaron," Natalie snapped most disagreeably, "are you going to suggest you might still remain on the same continent with the Germans?" "My dear"-Jastrow made a very Jewish gesture, a hunching of shoulders and an upward waveof both hands-"don't be impatient with me. You were a baby in the last war, but to me so little time has elapsed between them! It's just a continuation after a truce. Well, the talk we had then of the Huns spearing Belgian babies on bayonets and cutting off the breasts of nuns! And then I spent a year in Munich with some truly wonderful people. There are Germans, and Germans-oh, gracious, did I tell you that there's a letter from Byron?" What? Where?" 'the waiter left it in the hall, I think." She ran heavily out of the room, snatched the white envelope, took it to her bedroom, and read it panting. It was a dully written letter, with no news except that he had been detached from the S-45, to go to a new fleet submarine, the Tuna, in the Pacific, and that Lieutenant Aster had been ordered to an older boat, the Devilfish. But the words of love and loneliness were plentiful, if banal. She undressed, got into bed, and greedily read and reread the pages until the sentences lost meaning. The Italian doctor had told her that the blood stains, only two or three small ones, might mean nothing, but that she had to rest, to be sure of keeping the baby. Natalie intended to spend the next two weeks in bed. The line between night and day glided across the Atlantic Ocean, for the most part passing over fluffy cloud and empty wrinkling blue water; very rarely, over specks in orderly rows, and other s randomly scattered. The orderly specks were convoys; the random specks, German submarines trying to hunt them down or American ships trying to spot the submarines and warn the convoys. Bringing light and warmth indifferently to the hunters and the hunted in this far-flung three-way game, which the participants called the Battle of the Atlantic, the sunrise slid onto the next landmass, the New World. Soon the windows of the CBS building in New York flamed with morning sun, but in the tomblike broadcasting floors there was only the same timeless electric light. The corridors and cubicles of the CBS news section, despite the early hour, were swarming and bustling. Hugh Cleveland, badly in need of a shave, sat at his old desk, scrawling on a yellow pad and puffing at a long cigar. He had not quit the Who's in Town program, despite the popularity of the amateur hour. The news feature show would still be his bread and butter, he liked to say, when the amateur fad was forgotten. Out of the portable radio on his desk came the sonorous accents of Winston Churchill: No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I ave... I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades allay before the spectacle which is now unfolding.... I see the ten thousand villages of Russia, -wlwe maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught... the dull, drilled, docile, brutish mises of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling lo. His telephone began to ring. He tried to ignore it, then snatched it and snarled, 'Goddamn it, I'm listening to Churchill.... Oh!
Sorry, Chet. listen, if you're near a radio, Turn the guy on. He is sensational!" Leaning back in his swivel chair, he cocked one ear toward the radio, holding the phone to the other. 'Behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organize, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind. "Chet, of course I thought of it. The minute the news broke, I sent a wire to the Russian consulate here. Naturally, I cowdn't get through on the telephone. About an hour ago, they finally called me. Madeline Henry's gone over there, and they've promised they'll send somebody back with her. No, I don't know who, not yet. Hell, this morning their scrubwoman would be news!" "Can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We ari -resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us-nothing. ... Any man or state who fights against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who ches with Hitler is our foe... 'The Russian danger is our danger, and the danger of the United States..." Madeline scampered into the office, red-faced and shiny-eyed, and wildly pantomimed at her boss. "Hang on, Chet, she's here." Hand over the receiver, Cleveland said, "What luck?" "I got the ambassador. He's here in New York, and I got him." "Holy Jesus! Are you kidding? The ambassador? What's his name, Ouskinsky?" "Oumansky." She nodded excitedly. "He's coming here at ten to nine. The consul's bringing him." "Hey, Chet, listen, will you? That girl has got Ambassador Oumansky. I swear to Christ! Oumansky! Listen, I've got to get ready for him. Sure, sure. Thanks." He slammed down the receiver. "How'd you do that, Madeline? Why isn't he in Washington?" Churchill's voice was rising in peroration. Cleveland snapped off the radio. "Hugh, I asked to see the consul and told this beefy girl at the desk that I was from the Who's in Town program. That's all. Next thing I knew I was in this big office, with a huge picture of Lenin staring down at me, and there was Ambassador Oumansky, and he said he'd come on the show. He's a nice man, with wonderful manners." 'Fantastic! Terrific! Marry me!" Cleveland looked at his watch and passed a hand over hisbristly face. "Christ! The Bolshie ambassador himself! What luck!" He jumped up, pulled the small girl into his arms, and gave her a kiss. Madeline broke free, blushing darkly, glancing over her shoulder at the open door, and straightening her dress. "You're a doll, Madeline. Now listen. While I clean up, how about drafting an intro and some questions and bringing them to me in the dressing room?" The ambassador arrived promptly. Hugh Cleveland had not met a Russian Communist in his life, and he was amazed at Oumansky's excellent clothes, natural bearing, and smooth English. The consul was even smoother. The two Russians settled themselves, perfectly at ease, at the microphones. "Mr. Ambassador, it is a privilege for me, and for Who's in Town, to welcome you at this historic moment-" Cleveland began, and got no further. "Thank you very much. Since our two countries are now in a common struggle," Oumansky said, "I welcome the opportunity to give the American people the assurance of my country's fighting spirit on your popular program, "Who's in Town. Allow me to read from Mr. Molotov's broadcast." The consul handed Oumansky a typewritten document, to the horror of Cleveland, whose iron rule it was to cut off prepared statements. "Well, Mr. Ambassador, if I may simply say-" "thank you. For brevity I have abridged the speech, but here are significant portions of Foreign Minister Molotov's exact words: 'Without any Claim having been presented to the Soviet union, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country, and bombed from their airplanes our cities. Cleveland held up a hand and tried to speak, but the ambassador rolled right on: "This unheard-of attack on our country is perfidy unparald in the history of civilized nations. It was perpetrated despite a treaty on nonaggression between the USSR and Germany, which the Soviet government has just faithfully abided by. "Mr. Ambassador, about that treaty, if I may ask just one-" "Excuse me, I shall continue, and perhaps if time permits we can have a discussion too," Oumansky said with unruffled charm, and he went on reading sentences and paragraphs neatly underlined in purple ink. Cleveland made two more vain efforts to interrupt, which the ambassador Pleasantly ignored, proceeding to the last lines on the last page: 'The entire responsibility for this predatory attack on the Soviet union falls on the German Fascist rulers... "'The Soviet government ordered our troops to drive the German troops from the territory ofour country... "'Ours is a righteous cause. The enemy shall be defeated. Victory will be ours." "To these eloquent words," said Oumansky, "I have little to add. I must return to my many official duties, and I thank you for this opportunity. He passed the paper to the consul, smiled at Cleveland, and moved as though to rise. Desperately, Cleveland struck in, "Mr. Ambassador, I know how pressed you are in this tragic hour. I won't detain you. just tell me this. How will the American Communists react to the news? They've been violently advocating neutrality, you know. They campaig"d tooth and nail against Lend-Lease. Are they going to make a fast aboutface now?" Oumansky sat back placidly. "Most certainly not. As you know, the working class all over the world is in its nature peace-loving. It has nothing to gain from war, and everything to lose. The war began as a struggle between imperialistic powers, so the workers-as, for instance, the American Communist Party, as you just mentioned-opposed the war. But the Soviet union has no empire and no colonies. It is simply a country of peasants and workers who want peace. In attacking us, the German Fascists threw off their mask and revealed themselves as the brutish common enemy of mankind. Therefore all peoples will now unite in solidarity to crush the German Fascist beasts. The American people too are a peaceloving people. The Soviet people will count on their support of our righteous battle." "Mr. Ambassador-" "In this connection," said Oumansky, "the historic British pledge of full support, which Mr. Churchill has just given, will be of decisive influence, since Winston Churchill is so justly admired in the United States for his heroic stand against Hitlerism. Good morning, and thank you very much." As Madeline escorted the Russians out of the studio, Cleveland was saying, looking after them with exasperation, 'Who's in Town has just brought you the exclusive first broadcast of the Russian ambassador to the United States, Mr. Constantine Oumansky, on the German invasion of the Soviet union." His voice shifted from dramatic resonance to oleaginous good cheer. "Well, folks, it's sort of a big jump from invasions to the amazing new improved Fome-Brite, isn't it? But life does go on. If dirt invades your kitchen, the new improved Fome-Brite is the modern way to fight back-" The sunrise, coming to Chicago, was invisible; a thunderstorm was blanketing the city. Through dark pelting rain, Palmer Kirby was riding in a taxicab to a secret meeting of the President's Uranium Committee, which was the interviewing envineers from all over the country. The purpose of the committee was to find out, from the practical men who had to do it, whether enough U-z35 could be produced within the predictable time span of the war-which was set at four or five more years-to make atomic bombs or power plants. Dr. Lawrence's letter had asked him to bring a feasibility report on manufacturing certain giant electromagnets. The men were old friends; over the years Kirby had supplied the Nobel Prize winner withmuch specially built equipment for his cyclotron work. Palmer Kirby worked on the borderline where connnerce exploited science; he always referred to himself as a money-maker, but he had some scientific standing, because of his early work at the California Institute of Technology. Kirby knew what the giant electromagnets were for. His opinion on producing uranium for military purposes was definite. Not only could it be done; Kirby thought the Germans were well along to doing it. The invasion of Russia struck him as a scary corroboration of this. Ordinary uranium looks like nickel. Chemically it is lively, but nothing can make it blow up. its strange radioactivity will fog photographic plates; it may feel warmish; and very long exposure to it may give a human being slight burns. For better or worse" in the matter scattered through the universe, there is also a tiny trace of the stuff, chemically the same, but different in atomic structure: the explosive isotope U-235. We know all about this now, but in 1941 scientists only guessed that a U-235 bomb might work. It was all theory. The problem was first, to find out whether a controlled chain reaction of uranium fission was possible, or whether some unknown fact of nature would stop it; second-if the firft answer was yes-to get enough pure uranium 235 to try exploding it; and third, if that worked, to produce enough of the stuff to cow the world. When he heard the news of Hitler's attack on Russia, Kirby decided that the Germans must have succeeded at leastWith the first step. From his narrow vantage point, he saw the entire war as a race between Germans and Americans to make uranium 235 explode. Everything else-submarine sinkings, land campaigns, air battles-more and more looked to him like vain blood-spillings, inconclusive obsolete gestures before this one big showdown, Hitler's plunge into Russia, opening a second front and releasing England from near doom, struck him as a madman's mistake-unless the Germans had successfully created a controlled chain reaction. If Hitler had uranium bombs or could count on having them within a year or two, the war was decided, and the Germans were simply making a gigantic slave raid in Russia, preparatory to assuming the rule of the earth. From the information Kirby had, this appeared likely. It was the Germans who had discovered uranium fission. In 1939 they had set aside the whole Kaiser Wilhelm Institut to work on military use of the discovery. In conquered Norway, intelligence reported, they were making large amounts of heavy water. There was only one possible military use for heavy water, the queer substance with the doubled hydrogen nucleus-as a neutron slower in uranium fission. The United States had no nuclear reactors, no technique for building one, no scientist who was sure a chain reaction could be created. In the whole country there were not forty pounds of uranium suitable for experiments; there was no setup for producing ordinary uranium in quantity, let alone the very rare isotope 235 that might blow up; and for all the meetings of the Uranium Committee and the whisperings among scientists, the government had not yet spent on this project one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Kirby estimated that by now theGermans, in their massive try for world empire, might have already spent, in the same effort, something like a billion dollars. The Uranium Committee sat in a drab seminar room, warm and smoky despite the open windows and the continuing thunderstorm outside. Elementary equations from an undergraduate course were chalked on the small dusty blackboard. Kirby knew everybody who sat around the table except for two uniformed military visitors: an Army coloneland a Navy captain. The scientists were in shirt-sleeves, some with ties off and sleeves rolled up. Lyman Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, was still chairman, and this further depressed Kirby. Briggs was a pleasant gray-haired bureau head to whom a thousand dollars was a spectacular Federal expenditure. He wore his coat and tie. Dr. Lawrence gave Kirby a friendly wave and turned to the military men sitting beside him. "This is Dr. Kirby, president of Denver Electric Works-Colonel Thomas and Captain Kelleher." Kirby passed out copies of a mimeographed document and read the paper aloud, sometimes pausing for thunder crashes. The committee listened with narrow-eyed attention-all but Captain Kelleher, a bald chain smoker with a big double chin, who stared straight ahead in a slump, now and then scratching through his blue and gold uniform at one place on his chest. The Army colonel, a studious-looking small man with a bad cough, kept eating lozenges from a paper box, while he made shorthand notes on the margins of Kirby's paper. Kirby was replying to questions posed to him by Lawrence in the letter: could he manufacture these giant electric magnets, and if so, what would be the probable costs and production time? Lawrence's idea-which he was pusmng with the peculiar force and single-mindedness that made him loved or hated by other scientists-was to produce uranium 235 by separating a stream of ionized molecules of uranium in a magnetic field; a method Kirby had once described to Victor Henry. There already existed a laboratory tool, the mass spectrograph, that worked this way. Lawrence wanted to make giant mass spectrographs to get uranium in sufficient quantities for war use. Nothing like it had ever been done. The whole notion required-among other things-monster electromagnets which would keep an unwavering field. The slightest voltage change would wash out the infinitesimal difference in the molecule paths Of U-238 and U-235, on which the whole idea hung. When Kirby named a feasible date for delivering the first magnets, and the range of prices he would charge, the committeemen started glancing at each other. He finished with a warning about supply problems requiring high priorities, and sat down. Lawrence was beaming at himthrough his round glasses. "Well, that's encouraging," Lyman Briggs said mildly, fingering his tie. "Of course, the price figures are still in the realm of pure fantasy." The Navy captain put in, "Dr. Kirby, we've had fellows from General Electric and Westinghouse report on this. They project twice as much time, more than twice as much money, and they shade those performance characteristics considerably." Palmer Kirby shrugged. "Could well be." "Why should we take your word on feasibility against theirs?" Colonel Thomas said hoarsely, shaking a lozenge out of his box. Kirby said, "Colonel, I once worked at Westinghouse. They make everything that uses an electric current. I make custom-designed equipment, and I specialize in electromagnets. It's a narrow special , but it'sty mine. The Germans were way ahead of us at one POint. I went to Germany. I studied their components and imported their nickel alloy cores. Westinghouse and General Electric don't know that area of technology as I do. They don't have to. For special jobs in electromagnetics I can outperform them. At least I'm claiming that I can, and I'm prepared to bid in these terms." When Palmer Kirby mentioned Germany, the glances went again around the table. The Navy captain spoke up in a peevish voice. "Are the Germans still ahead of us?" "On what, sir?" '(On anything. On making these bombs, to get down to the short hairs." Kirby puffed at his pipe. "Well, the self-confidence they've just showed isn't encouraging." "I agree. Well, why don't we get going, then? All this committee seems to do is palaver." Kelleher sat up straight, glowering. "I'm not a scientist, and I can't say I've taken much stock in these futuristic weapons, but by Christ if there's anything in them let's get cracking. Let's go straight to the President and howl for money and action. I can assure you the Navy will back the committee." Holding up a thin hand in dismay, Briggs said, "The President has more immediate things, Captain, requiring money and action." 'I don't agree," Thomas said. "More immediate than these bombs?" Briggs retorted, 'It's all pure theory, Colonel, years away from any Possible practical result." Captain Kelleher slapped his hand on the table. "Look, let me ask a real dumb question. What's Kirby talking about here? Is it the diffusion business, or the spectrograph business? Maybe I ought to know, but I don't.""The spectrograph business , Lawrence said in a fatherly tone. "All right. Then, why don't you just shoot the works on that? You've got a Nobel Prize. Why don't you send the President a red-hot plainlanguage memo that he can grasp? Why do you keep fudging around on these other approaches?" "Because if we guess wrong on the basic approach," another scientist mildly observed, 'we may lose several years." Kirby could not resist saying, "Or lose the whole race to the Germans." The discussion halted. The heavy drumming of the rain for a moment or two was the only sound. Briggs said, "Well! These things are still very iffy, as the President likes to say. We can't be going off half-cocked in this business, that much is certain. In any case"-he turned to Kirby with an agreeable smile-"I don't think we need detain you. Your report has been very useful. Many thanks." Gathering up his papers, Kirby said, "Will you need me again, or do I go back to Denver?" "Don't rush off, Fred," Lawrence said. "Right. I'll be at the Stevens." Kirby passed the morning in his hotel suite, listening to the radio bulletins and special reports on the invasion of Russia, and growing gloomier and gloomier. The incessant rain, with the sporadic lightning and thunder, reinforced his dark mood. He had not drunk before lunch in a long time, but he sent for a bottle of Scotch, and had it almost a third emptied when Lawrence called in high spirits. "Fred, you shone this morning. I thought we might manage lunch, but the committee's sending out for coffee and sandwiches, and working straight on through. Meantime something has come up. Do you have a minute?" "I'm just sitting here, listening to CBS broadcast the end of the world." Lawrence laughed. "It won't end. We'll beat the Germans to U-235, and that's the key to this war. Their industrial base is far inferior to ours. But the committee will certainly have to change its ways. The procedure is incredibly cumbersome. This business right now, for instance. Intolerable! One interview at a time, for secrecy, tying all of us up for days on end! We need one knowledgeable man in constant liaison with business andindustry, and we need him right away."Lawrence paused, and added, "We've just been talking about you." "Me? No thanks." "Fred, you're an engineer, you know business, and your gra.p of theory is adequate. That's the desired combination, and it's rare. Unfortunately, no job in the world is more important right now, and you know that.""But ye gods, who would I work for? And report to? Not the National Bureau of Standards, for God's sake!" "That point is wide o For secrecy, you might just get a consulpe tant post in the Navy. Captain Kelleher is full of fire to get going, which rather amuses me. Years ago, Fermi came to the Navy with this entire project outlined. They turned him away as a crackpot. The Navy turned away Enrico Fermi! Well, Fred? Will you serve?" After a pause Kirby said, "Where would I be posted?" 'It would have to be in Washington." Kirby was silent so long that Lawrence added, "Something wrong With going to Washington?" "I didn't say that, but if you want those electromagnets built-I, "that's a year away, even assuming the approach is approved and the money appropriated. This must be done now. What do you say?" This was Lawrence in his urgent and imperious vein, which Kirby knew well. He considered Lawrence possibly the most brilliant man alive. Kirby was several years older than the Nobel Prize winner. He had given up a straight scientific career and gone into industry after getting his PhD largely because of his encounters with Lawrence and a few other men much younger than himself and unreachably more brilliant. They had made him feel outclassed and deflated. To be urged now by this man to take on a task of this importance was irresistible. "I hope to hell I'm not offered the job," he said. "If I am, I'll accept." By the time the sun rose over San Francisco, the line between night and day had travelled halfway around the earth, and the invasion of the Soviet union was half a day old. Masses of men had been killed, most of them Russians, and the Soviet air force had lost hundreds of airplanes-or Perhaps more than a thousand; the disaster was already beyond precise documenting. In the officers' club at the Mare Island Navy Yard, at a window tab], in the sunshine, several submarine skippers were chatting about the invasion Over ham and eggs. There was little dispute over the outcome. All agreed that the Soviet union would be crushed; some gave the Red Army as long as six weeks, others foresaw the end in three weeks or ten day,. s These young professional officers were not a narrow-minded or prejudiced handful; their view was held in the armed forces of the United States right to the top. The wretched showing of the Red Army against Finland had confirmed the judgment that Communism, and Stalin's bloody purges, had reduced Russia to a nation of no military account. Arne can war plans, in June1941, ignored the Soviet union in estimating the world strategic picture. The submariners at Mare Island, peacefwly gossiping at breakfast about the spread of the holocaust on the other side of the world, were expressing only what the service as a whole believed. The main topic of discussion was whether or not the Japanese would now strike; and if so, where. These few lieutenant commanders inclined to agree that so long as the President kept up his suicidal policy of letting them buy more and more oil and scrap iron, the japs would probably hold off. But the consensus lasted only until Branch Hoban of the Devilfish challenged it. No skipper in the squadron had more prestige. Hoban's high standing in his class, his chilling air of competence, his sharp bridge game, his golf shooting in the seventies, his ability to hold liquor, his beautiful wife, his own magazine-cover good looks, all added up to an almost suspiciously glamorous facade. But the facade was backed by performance. Under his command the Devilfish had earned three E's in engineering and gunnery, and in fleet maneuvers in May he had sneaked the Devilfish inside a destroyer screen and hypothetically sunk a battleship. He was clearly a corner beaded for flag rank. When Lieutenant Commander Hoban talked, others listened. Hoban argued that the world situation was like a football game, an d that in Asia, the Russian Siberian army was the player facing japan. With this latest move, Hitler had sucked the Russian man back toward the other wing, to be held as Stalin's last reserve. This was japan's big chance. The Nips now had a clear field to run the ball from China south to Singapore, the Celebes, and Java, cleaning up all the rich European possessions. If only they moved fast enough, they could go over the line before the United States could pull itself together and interfere. He broke off elaborating this favorite metaphor of servicemen and left the breakfast table when he saw his new executive officer motioning to him from the doorway. lieutenant Aster handed him a dispatch from Commander, Submarines Pacific: DEVILFISH OVERHAUL CANCELLED EXCEPTION P&PAMS VITAL OPERATIONAL READINESS X REPORT EARLIEST POSSIBLE DATE UNDIERWAY MANILA. "Well, well, back to base!" Hoban grinned, with a trace of high-strung eagerness. "Very well! So ComSubPac expects the kickoff too. Let's see, today's the twenty-second, eh? There's that compressor and number four torpedo tube that have to be buttoned up. Obviously we don't get the new motor generator, and all the job orders will have to wait till we get alongpenci side in Manila. But that's okay." Holding the dispatch againndsthtahnedwedall,t htoe lied in neat print, Underway twenty-fourth 0700, Aster. "Send that off operational priority." "Can we do it, sir?" "Make the Captain of the Yard an information addressee. He'll damn well get us out of here.""Aye aye, sir. We'll be short an officer. Ensign Bulottis hospitalized for two weeks." "Damnation. That I forgot. Well, we sail with four officers, then. Stand watch-and-watch till we get to Pearl, and try to hook us a fresh ensign out of the sub pool there.) 'Captain, do you know anybody in ComSubPac Personnel?" "Yes. Why?" "Well enough to spean ensign off new construction?" To Aster's saucy grin, Hoban returned a droll grimace. "Got someone in mind?" "'There is this ensign, a shipmate of mine off the S-45 who's just reported aboard the Tuna. It's two whole months away from shakedown." "Is he a good officer?" "Well, unfortunately he's a sack rat and goof-off." "Then what do we want him for?" "I can make him deliver. In a pinch he's resourceful and courageous. His father's a captain in War Plans, and his brother flies an SBD off the Enterprise.1 that doesn't sound too bad. What class is he?" "He's a r se e. k, Captain e rv Loo n," Aster exclaimed, at Hoban's wry expression, the officer Pool will be full of reserves. You're not going to keep a whole wardroom of regulars. Not on the Devilfish. Byron stands a good diving watch, and I know him." "Byron?" "His name's Byron Henry. Briny, they call him." "Okay, maybe I'll telephone Pearl. Kind of a dirty trick to play on this Briny, though, isn't it? New construction, based in Pearl, is a lot better duty than going to Manila in the Devilfish." "Tough titty." Hoban looked curiously at his executive officer. He did not yet have Aster sized up. "Don't you like him, Lady?" ASter shrugged. "We're short a watch gander." The Pacific showed no combative specks to the westward-moving sunrise. Early sunlight slanted into the hangar deck of the Enterprise, oored to buoys in Pearl Harbor, on disembowelled airplanes, halfassembled torpedoes, and all the vast clutter of the floating machine shop that this deck was in peacetime. Sailors in greasy dungarees and officers in khakis were at work everywhere. Through the steel hollow, smelling as all carriers do of gasoline, rubber, metal, and sea air, a boatswain's pipe reverberated above the workaday noise,followed by a Southern voice on the loudspeaker: 'Now hear this. Meeting of all oflicers in the wardroom in ten minutes." Warren Henry climbed out of the cockpit of an SBD, wiping his hands on a greasy cloth. He put on his khaki cap, saying to the sailors working with him, "noes me. Wish me luck." When he arrived in the wardroom, officers in khaki shirts and black ties already filled the chairs and lined the sides. AmidshiPs, against the forward bulkhead, stood the movie screen, and on the green baize of a nearby table a slide projector rested. The captain, a chubby man with thick prematurely gray hair, rose and strode before the screen as soon as he saw Warren. 'Gentlemen, I guess you've all heard the news. I've been keeping track on the shortwave, and it seems clear already that Der Fuhrer has caught Joe Stalin with his hammer and sickle down." The officers tittered fonnaby at the captain's pleasantry. 'Personally I feel sorry for the Russian people, saddled with such lousy leadership. The few times I've encountered their navy officers, I've found them friendly and quite professional, though somewhat odd in their ways. "The question is, how does this affect the mission of the Enterprise? "Now, as many of us know, lieutenant Henry of Scouter Squadron Six is something of a red-hot on military history. I've asked him to give us a short fin-in here, before we get on with the day's work, so that-attention on deck!" Rear Admiraral Colton appeared through a doorway, and with the noisy scrape of scores of chairs, all the officers stood up. He was a barrelchested man with a plump purplish face scarred by plane crashes, a naval captain conducted him to a leather armchair hastily vacated by his exec. aviator dating back to the Langley, now ComAirPac's chief of staff. The lighting an enormous black cigar, the admiral motioned at the officers to take their seats. Standing before the screen, Warren started in the modest monotone of most Navy instructors, hands on hips, legs slightly apart. He made the conventional deprecatory joke about his ignorance, then went straight at the topic. 'Okay. Now, naturally, our concern is the Japanese. In theory, there should be no battle problem here. We're so much stronger than japan in ilitary potential that any jap move to start a war looks suicidal. So you hear civilians say we'll blow the little yellow bastards off the map in two weeks, and all that Poppycock.-Some of the young officers were smiling; their smiles faded. Warren hooked a blue and yellow Hydrographic Office chart over the movie screen, and took up a pointer. "Here's a chart of the Pacific. People shouldn't talk about blowing anybody off the map without a map in front of them." Warren's pointer circled the French, Dutch, and British possessions in southeast Asia. "Oil, rubber, tin, rice-you name what japan needs to be a leading world power, and there it sits. With what's happened to the armed forces of the European empires since 1939, it's almost up for grabs. And the first thing to notice is that it's all in the jap back yard. We have to steam for days, far past japan, just to get there.