58

DECEMBER 2, 1943

SILKEBORG, DENMARK

EVENING

Erwin Rommel builds the new resistance.

The Nazi resistance.

The field marshal’s personal train stops for the night on a rather mundane siding in this simple rural station. The Spartan stopover on Denmark’s Skanderborg–Skjern line offers no reason for Rommel and his generals to venture outside their luxury transport into the brisk Danish air. Dinner is to be followed by a few relaxing hours in the car reserved for maps and planning.

Thus, the true beauty of Silkeborg is lost on the field marshal in the early darkness of this northern latitude. Were it daylight, Rommel and his staff might be gazing out upon one of the most picturesque cities in central Denmark, surrounded by lakes and woodland, triggering that lobe of the field marshal’s brain that sees topography as a puzzle, calculating the best places to position an army and ensure battlefield victory.

For Rommel has literally come to Denmark to study the lay of the land—and how he can alter Europe’s hills and folds from pastoral paradise into impenetrable death zone.

The field marshal is healthy, jovial, and revived for the first time in years. He just spent ten days at home with Lucia, where they celebrated twenty-seven years of marriage. It offered the field marshal a chance to spend time with Manfred, soon to turn fifteen and be conscripted. Now Rommel is surrounded by handpicked officers with whom he can speak his mind, not a member of the SS or Gestapo among them. Most of these men served under him in Africa. They know that Rommel is falling out of favor with the Führer. Yet they do not care. Their loyalty remains stalwart.

But every man knows this is Rommel’s last chance.

Hitler is tasking Field Marshal Rommel with construction of the Atlantic Wall, a 4,000-mile coastal defense from Norway down to the Spanish Pyrenees. Hitler originally ordered construction to begin in 1941 as a response to British commando raids. This was followed up by a second directive in 1942 stating that the entire Atlantic coast be turned into a series of 15,000 defensive positions.

But progress has been dismal. With Allied invasion of the French coastline likely imminent for 1944, the Führer revitalizes the project by putting his best man in charge. The clock is ticking. Winter weather makes an invasion impossible right now, but that will change come spring. Erwin Rommel has six months to accomplish what has not taken place in three years.

Rommel is a pariah. The people of Germany still worship the Desert Fox, but his failure to win in North Africa is a stain on his military record. Enemies among the Nazi high command chortle at his downfall, long jealous of Rommel’s fame and all too happy to see the field marshal relegated to a posting more suited to a construction engineer than a master tactician.

Even Adolf Hitler is sensitive to Rommel’s plight. For Africa might have been won if only the Führer had listened to Rommel. And Hitler knows this. He has belatedly apologized for his failure to heed the field marshal’s warnings. It is also coming to light that the Italian high command was complicit in Rommel’s downfall, concealing enormous quantities of fuel from the Afrika Korps in a fit of pique because the Desert Fox was loath to take orders from Mussolini’s generals.

But what is done is done. Hitler considered sending Rommel into the Italian or Greek theaters but had a change of heart. And ordering Rommel east to fight the Soviets—still 1,000 miles from Berlin but advancing every day—would meet stiff political resistance from commanders in that theater.

Hitler’s diplomatic and ingenious solution is the Atlantic Wall. No general has waged war longer against the British, French, and Americans. Rommel knows not just Allied tactics but those of individual generals. This gives him prescience in figuring when and where an invasion will take place and how it will proceed once troops are ashore.

Thus, this unlikely journey. Rommel and his staff are now assessing the current state of the Atlantic Wall, from the Danish coast down to Brittany. Landing an army south of the Breton coast would be an act of enormous stupidity, so Rommel keeps his focus narrow.

The origins of this plush luxury train are unknown, but a clue can be found in the Cyrillic writing in the parlor car, with its two sleeping chambers. There is also a dining car, conference car, and elaborate cabin for the field marshal with a large master suite. The bathroom features an unusual bell for those using the toilet, which greatly amuses the field marshal and his staff.

Rommel has only just begun planning but he imagines a “death barrier” six miles deep up and down the coast. Mines, anti-invasion barriers at low tide, sharpened stakes, and flooded fields to thwart gliders and paratroopers. He will pay the French well to build these defenses, guaranteeing construction crews enough francs that they will put financial happiness before patriotism.

Hitler believes the Allies will attack at Calais, the shortest distance from Britain to France.

Rommel agrees.

And the strength of the Atlantic Wall will reflect that certainty.