Chapter 537: Dead of Night
The naval port of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, had been under martial law for several days. Every day, soldiers would enter, and every day, thousands of soldiers would leave. This was an important transport hub between Germany and southern Britain, responsible for some missions that had to be carried out in secret.
“Careful! Careful!” a longshoreman shouted a warning to his comrades. They were cautiously hoisting a massive piece of cargo, padded with canvas and various other materials. The steel cables were taut; the object being lifted weighed at least several dozen tons.
As the behemoth landed safely, everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. But in the distance, another similar giant was just being lifted by a crane. Under the dark night sky, such equipment was being unloaded from the ships onto the shore, one after another at various docks.
On a destroyer in the distance, columns of German soldiers were walking down the gangway. They were not carrying heavy luggage. On the contrary, most of them were very relaxed, dressed in black SS uniforms, talking and laughing as they assembled on the shore.
“Lieutenant Wittmann, congratulations on setting your terrifying record of destroying 110 tanks in Britain,” a colleague said, coming up to Wittmann, who was looking for his unit, and extending a hand to congratulate him.
Wittmann also extended his hand and shook the other’s. “Thank you. Our entire battalion performed well in Britain. Didn’t you also destroy 39 tanks and receive many commendations?”
As they were speaking, their respective tank crews had gathered. Some were even carrying champagne. This was the German panzer force, returning in triumph from Britain, the elite of the elite of the Western Front.
These armored units were being secretly transferred back to the homeland, to be sent to the Eastern Front after a period of rest and refitting to make up for the shortage of panzer forces there. And the armored forces in the German-occupied zone of Britain would, according to the plan, eventually be reduced to one corps of three divisions.
In other words, of the five panzer divisions and one armored battalion under General von Rundstedt’s command, two divisions and one battalion were to return to the homeland. This battalion was the heavy tank destroyer battalion equipped with Tiger tanks, to which Wittmann belonged. And the other two divisions were also mainline units, heavily equipped with Panther tanks. So Rundstedt’s armored strength was being weakened by almost two-thirds.
Of course, all of this was being carried out secretly at night, so as not to alert the enemy to the transfer and deployment of the German forces. Replacing the armored units were infantry and some armored car units. Their main tasks were to suppress the uncooperative attitude of the local population and to strengthen the anti-landing defenses of the British coastline.
In fact, as long as the German Navy’s Atlantic Fleet was not annihilated, an American landing across the Atlantic was unlikely to succeed. After all, to seize absolute control of a section of the enemy’s coastline while under interference from the opponent’s aircraft carriers, and then to maintain the safety of the shipping lanes for a long time to come to expand the beachhead, was an extremely difficult military operation.
So as long as Germany did not lose Britain, this unsinkable super aircraft carrier, its Atlantic Wall would be at least ten times safer. And as long as the carrier fleet existed, it made no essential difference whether the Atlantic Wall was garrisoned by elite armored forces or second-rate infantry. As long as they could hold out for a few days, the enemy landing force would collapse on its own.
“Do you really think this trick can fool the enemy’s spies? Your intelligence department doesn’t really think so, does it?” a general asked Gascoigne, who was standing behind him by the floor-to-ceiling window in an office building at the naval port.
“General Dönitz, in fact, we do not hope to deceive the enemy’s intelligence services in this way,” Gascoigne said with a smile to the commander of the wolf packs. “This is a complex and systematic long-term work, not something that can be done overnight. Sometimes, intelligence work is just that helpless; there’s nothing anyone can do.”
He pointed to the German panzer forces disembarking in the distance. “Such a large-scale military movement cannot possibly fail to alert the enemy’s spy agencies. You don’t need any complex reconnaissance methods. Just ask the women near our troop barracks on the British mainland, and you can find the answers you’re looking for.”
“There will always be some big mouths among tens of thousands of soldiers, and there are no soldiers who don’t go looking for women,” he sighed and continued. “Somehow, some soldiers will tell those women that they are about to leave. Finding out about our army’s movements doesn’t even require any preliminary work. As long as you’re handsome enough, you can find out what you want to know by just taking a stroll down the street. Those British women will tell anyone that a German officer hasn’t been to see her for a few days.”
“Then why are you going to such great lengths? Who are you putting on this show for?” Dönitz was even more puzzled after hearing this. If the intelligence department thought that this kind of cover-up had any practical meaning and was worth the effort, that would be one thing. But to know that it would have no effect and still put in the effort, wasn’t that just deceiving oneself?
“If we don’t do this, then wouldn’t the enemy not even have to bother to find out the news?” Gascoigne asked with a smile. “In any case, the soldiers have to be rotated. There’s no difference between rotating them during the day and at night, and it doesn’t waste anything. As long as we can cause the enemy even one hour of trouble, our intelligence department must do its best. This is the war of the intelligence department.”
Dönitz nodded and looked at Gascoigne with admiration. “Your war, I don’t understand it. But my wolf packs can use your victories to expand our own.”
His words were not just a casual remark, but a genuine compliment. Gascoigne’s men in New York and Washington had provided strong support for the entire German Navy. These German intelligence officers had also paid a heavy price for the entire battle for the Atlantic.
“Poison,” who was undercover in Britain, had died in the line of duty. “Gray Wolf” had also given his life in a naval battle to turn the tide for the German Navy. In America, German spies were arrested almost every day, and almost every hour, important intelligence was sent from the west coast of the Atlantic to Europe.
A female spy had accompanied a high-ranking American naval official for a full seven years and had sent back only one telegram a year ago. This telegram had clearly stated that the U.S. Navy had no intention of committing forces to the Atlantic to engage the German Navy. This intelligence had led Dönitz to make the decision to begin unrestricted submarine warfare, and German submarines had begun to attack American merchant ships with impunity.
The result was clear to everyone. The United States had indeed not fallen out with Germany over the loss of its ships. The two sides had just begun an endless round of diplomatic wrangling, and the German army had successfully used this intelligence to cut off Britain’s maritime lifeline.
Unfortunately, this young and beautiful German female spy had contracted pneumonia in the United States and had died in Washington in 1938. She had never had the chance to return to her longed-for motherland, nor would she ever see again the young Führer who had personally sent her off on the ship to America.
Another spy network worked for the German Navy in the port cities. They had employees of shipping companies, longshoremen on the docks. These spies were responsible for providing the departure times of the American merchant ships, to roughly estimate the general location of the American convoys. With this intelligence, Dönitz could estimate the position of the American convoys in the vast Atlantic, allowing the underwater wolf packs to conserve fuel and always appear in positions that could threaten the British transport lines.
These were the intelligence personnel who had infiltrated the enemy. Although they were in the enemy’s camp and faced the danger of being exposed every day, their lives were full of excitement and luxury. In comparison, the intelligence personnel who were supporting the mission from their own country had some jobs that were even more tiring and tedious.
For example, to obtain intelligence such as the exact location of the transport ships at sea, apart from the coverage of the carrier’s reconnaissance planes, the monitoring of most of the sea areas was actually completed by the reconnaissance planes of the German intelligence department. And these reconnaissance planes were modified versions of the “Butcher” strategic bomber.
They had to carry more fuel and be equipped with more cameras and detection equipment. These reconnaissance planes often had to fly for dozens of hours, and the pilots’ eating, drinking, and defecating all had to be done inside the cramped bomber.
This kind of long-distance mission was tedious and boring. Apart from the instrument panel and the positioning on the charts, there was no way to determine one’s own position at sea. Looking out of the plane’s window, all one could see was the cold seawater. After flying like this for a dozen hours, most of the time they would find nothing. But everyone had to continue to search with binoculars from the plane’s observation window, because they never knew when they would find a massive British transport convoy.
Once they discovered these convoys, they had to use a high-power radio to contact the submarine command in their home country and the submarines operating nearby, providing accurate position parameters to direct the submarines to encircle and attack these poor, discovered convoys.
Even more tedious were other espionage tasks. The post offices in various places had inspectors from the German intelligence department stationed there. They would check the incoming and outgoing mail, and open and inspect any suspicious letters. To face tens of thousands of different letters every day and to check for possible problems was a job done by tens of thousands of patriotic women. The workload was so large it was almost unbelievable, and it was accompanied by endless, repetitive boredom.
“You have all worked hard. The Reich will not forget everything you have done,” Dönitz said with emotion once again. “You have made your own contributions to the victory of the Reich. Someone will remember you.”
Gascoigne laughed again. “The Reich will not acknowledge everything we have done either. At least in the publicly available archives of the Reich, our contributions have never existed. Who will remember us? We can’t even remember the names of our dead colleagues… ‘Poison’s’ name in Britain was Greve. You don’t really think that’s his real name, do you? Greve? What an ugly name…”
Published: 2025-09-03T02:41:08.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-16T17:13:12.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c537-dead-of-137999900
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