The Losing Role (29 page)

“Listen, I know of a hideout,” Max said. “It’s on
your way west. In a remote valley, not far from here. The very
villa I told you of. I’m sure the American intelligence men are
long gone. I can mark it on my map.”

“You need your map.”

“Not anymore. Not where I’m going. Just be careful,
all right? Make sure everyone’s gone. Take the cellar. There’s a
working oven down there. A friend of mine died there. You might
have to bury him.” Max folded his GI gear in a pile and placed it
before the two. “Now. Here. Take what you like. There’s a compass
in there. The map.”

“Much obliged,” the small one said, “much
obliged.”

The big one nodded along, with difficulty, as if
trying to swallow.

Max pulled on the denim jacket. It smelled like
grimy chicken feathers, and chicken shit.

Max swore that if he survived this, he’d never take a
nature hike as long as he lived. He trudged along another forest
road lined with snow banks and stayed in the open, always out on
the roads, alone. Let everyone see him. No soldier on the run or
undercover would try such a stunt, only a sad and confused farmer.
Soldiers hidden in foxholes and machine gun nests were probably
watching him the whole way.

An American armored car sat to one side of the road,
firing into the woods at random. GIs stood around the armored car,
laughing and passing a canteen. Max kept to the middle of the road,
in full view, slogging through the mud that disguised his GI-issue
boots, the only American item left on him. A couple GIs glanced his
way. He kept his head down.

“Hey straggler,” one of them said.

Max cracked a submissive smile, threw up his hands.
“I no Engleesch, Joe,” he babbled in his thickest Hollywood-German
accent. He shuffled past and they let him.

The distant thunder of battle—of the fierce American
counterattacks—roared on as it had for hours. The trees were behind
Max and he hit open plain, snowy white with bulges that were
wrecked tanks, jeeps, bodies. He passed through one last small
Belgian town and reached an American checkpoint, at a river. Young
GIs in new gear were manning a temporary pontoon bridge. Beyond
loomed the open frontier, still void of trees. Rising billows of
black smoke lined the farthest horizon, rising up like so many
clawed fingers and intertwining high in the sky to create one
dense, heavy cloud of blackness. A city. It might be Cologne, Max
thought.

He approached with his shoulders sagging, a sick
frown on his face. A man in a black overcoat stood with the GIs—a
town official, Max guessed. “Kind sir, might you please let me
pass?” he said, imitating Old Henry’s Belgian German. “Look at me.
All I have is gone. Destroyed. I hope to find my kin. They’re that
way, across that very river, far to the east.”

The town official matched Max’s frown. The man
smelled sweet, like a cheap hair tonic. He translated in Queen’s
English for the lead GI, a pale corporal chewing gum. The official
added:

“He wants to go into Germany. He’s mad, I say.”

“Poor SOB wants to head straight into hell, fine
with me,” the GI said. He patted Max down, showed him a smile, and
pushed him out onto the wobbly floating bridge.

Author’s Note

The false flag special mission depicted in
The
Losing Role
is based on an actual operation Hitler devised for
his surprise Ardennes Offensive of late 1944 that launched the
Battle of the Bulge. Under the code name
Greif
, German
soldiers who could speak English were trained and equipped to
impersonate American units behind the enemy lines, where they would
wreak havoc and secure depots and bridges in support of the main
offensive. The German offensive caught American troops resting in
Belgium’s forested Ardennes region completely off guard, and in the
bloody chaos the rumor spread that the American impersonators were
crack enemy terrorists out to kidnap or kill US General Eisenhower,
commander of the Allied Forces. The lore of German agents
impersonating American soldiers reemerged in films, fiction, and
even history books as a frightening and deadly ploy carried out
with skill and cunning. The commander, SS Lieutenant Colonel Otto
Skorzeny (who has a brief cameo in
The Losing Role
), already
had a daredevil’s reputation that didn’t temper the legend.

The reality was altogether different. The Germans
hastily put together units of English-speaking soldiers using
whatever troops and materiel they could gather. The men came from
all branches of the German military and possibly included
civilians. The ones who spoke English best had lived in America or
Britain, but these numbered very few. Many of the English speakers
had been sailors and naive students before conscription and were
far from ideal soldiers let alone crack terrorists. One, Otto
Struller, had been a professional ballet dancer, and it can be
supposed that some had occupations such as waiter or writer. Some
appear to have been misled about the mission and couldn’t back out.
At least one was shot for a breach of secrecy. The planning and
training were slapdash, the mission desperate, its chances
slim.

As part of Operation
Greif
, Skorzeny and his
officers placed the better English speakers into a special commando
unit,
Einheit Stielau
. They were sent out in captured
American jeeps to infiltrate the American lines, and managed to
confuse (already bewildered) American troops by switching signs,
passing along bogus information and committing sabotage. The
Americans captured some of the
Stielau
men and promptly shot
them by firing squad, including Struller. As the main German
offensive sputtered, Skorzeny called off Operation
Greif
and
the false flag infiltrators fell back to join regular units. If
anything, the commando mission helped the Americans, since the wild
rumors about cutthroat Germans in GI uniform gunning for Eisenhower
only served to keep American counterintelligence alert and
strengthen the troops’ rattled resolve.

In 1947, the Allies’ Dachau Trials were to make an
example of the infamous Skorzeny and his officers for running a
villainous ruse that ran counter to the so-called rules of war, but
the defense brought in Allied officers who had to admit they’d been
running similar special missions all along. Skorzeny and all
defendants were acquitted.

My research included solid sources in English and
German, but I left details about military strategy, top leaders’
decisions and so forth to historians. My version of this story
remains true to overall events, though I changed or invented some
aspects for fiction’s sake. Max Kaspar is a fictitious character,
after all, part of a fictional commando team that infiltrated
American lines in a US jeep disguised as American soldiers. Whether
in fiction or reality, surely not all the false flag infiltrators
like Max were accounted for. One imagines a good smart one or two
disappeared into the night and got as far away from war and tyranny
as they dared. I attempted, with respect for the history and with
some dark humor, to tell the story of one of these inspired and
probably doomed dreamers.

—Steve Anderson, September 2011 (revised)

Suggested Reading

Those looking to find out more about the actual
events fictionalized in
The Losing Role
will find a scarce
but insightful mix of personal and historical accounts.

Heinz Rohde, a young Luftwaffe sergeant in 1944, was
given the identity of US Army Sergeant Morris Woodahl and sent over
the front lines as an Operation
Greif
commando. Soon after
the war he dared speak about his experiences in the German news
magazine
Der Spiegel
(“Mit Shakespeare-Englisch,” January
10, 1951). The article is in German but parts of it later appear
translated in English-language histories, including those of
Schadewitz and Pallud below.

In 1950, Otto Skorzeny wrote about leading Operation
Greif
in
Skorzeny’s Secret Missions
. Other memoirs
followed. Writers of history have found Skorzeny’s accounts useful
for their first-hand view, while recognizing cases where he
attempts to aggrandize or displace blame.

Greif
commando Fritz Christ infiltrated the
American lines as US First Lieutenant Charlie Smith, but a German
fighter plane soon strafed his commando team’s American vehicle and
he barely escaped. He finally spoke about it sixty years later in
Stern
magazine (“Operation Eisenhower,” April 20, 2004). The
Stern
article is also in German, but a condensed English
version in
The Daily Telegraph
(“Revealed: Farce of Plot to
Kidnap Eisenhower,” May 2, 2004) captures the absurdity.

Among the history books, the most in-depth account
remains Michael Schadewitz’s
The Meuse First and Then Antwerp:
Some Aspects of Hitler’s Offensive in the Ardennes
(1999).
Originally published in German and expanded for the English
version, it includes interviews from intelligence reports and other
sources, including Heinz Rohde. Schadewitz’s effort easily eclipses
others in its thoroughness.

Jean-Paul Pallud’s
Battle of the Bulge: Then and
Now
(1999) includes substantial description of Operation
Greif
and
Einheit Stielau
and has photographs
comparing wartime photos with those of their current-day locations.
Heinz Rohde also appears here.

Many overall histories of the Battle of the Bulge
include brief mention of Operation
Greif
. Two that explore
the details are Charles Whiting’s
The Ghost Front
(2002),
and Gerald Astor’s
A Blood-Dimmed Tide
(1993).

I also tell this fragmented true story in the brief
e-book,
Sitting Ducks
(2011).

About the Author

Steve Anderson is the author of the Kaspar Brothers
series,
Under False Flags: A Novel,
and other works centered
on WWII and its aftermath. In
The Other Oregon: A Thriller
,
he writes about his home state. Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in
Munich, Germany, and has written narrative nonfiction, short
stories and screenplays. He is also a literary translator of
German. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

www.stephenfanderson.com

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Also by Steve Anderson

Lost Kin: A Novel
(Kaspar
Brothers #3)

Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945
(
Kaspar Brothers #2)

Under False Flags: A Novel

The Other Oregon: A Thriller

Double-Edged Sword

Sitting Ducks

About
Liberated: A Novel of
Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2)
:

Can a lone American captain rescue justice in
war-torn Germany?

It’s May 1945, the war’s just over, and Harry Kaspar,
an American captain in Germany, is about to take a new posting in
the US occupation—running a Bavarian town named Heimgau. When Harry
loses the command to Major Membre, he’ll do almost anything to win
the job back.

When Harry discovers a horrific scene—three German
men tortured and murdered—he reckons that solving the crime could
teach the conquered townspeople about American justice, as well as
help him reclaim that better posting. The only problem is that
Harry’s quest for the real killer will lead him straight back to
his commander, Membre, and eventually to his mentor, a can-do rebel
US colonel named Spanner. Spanner is a gangster run rampant,
plundering the war-torn land for all its grim worth.

Harry’s lover, Katarina, a gutsy German actress,
helps him realize he must fight back. Recognizing that absolute
power corrupted and then destroyed Major Membre and Colonel
Spanner, Harry takes it upon himself to overcome any obstacle that
gets in his way and set a new American example by which a
terrorized town and a mix of battered peoples can rise up from the
ashes of a brutal, demoralizing war.

Excerpt from
Liberated:
A Novel of Germany, 1945:

ONE

I should’ve been more scared, but the truth was
I had never felt more ready and raring to go. I was heading deeper
into the heartland of our bitter enemy. I drove this country route
all alone, my jeep so new I could smell the tires. The sun rose
above the birch trees lining the road, so I dropped the canvas top.
I blitzed on past farms and villages. On the way I saw no German
locals, no stray soldiers looking to surrender. They would see me
soon enough. Within minutes, I’d be running a whole Bavarian town
on my own.

I passed through a valley with fields of young green
wheat. I’d never seen a sky so blue, like some vast, upside-down
ceramic bowl of flawless azure all around me. The road smoothed
out. I knew I was close. I slid on my helmet for effect and
unclasped my holster, though I wouldn’t need a weapon. My olive
green American uniform would do the work. I might even be the
first 
Ami
 most of these people ever saw
(
Ami
 meant Amerikaner, the German version of Yank). We
were something new, all right. We called it US Military Government,
MG for short. I was MG for a burg called Heimgau. I didn’t have a
staff yet, but Munich MG had told me to get in there, make contact
and get the place running again.

In Heimgau, the US Occupation was going to be yours
truly. As I drove on, the thought of me as liberator and likely
mentor gave me a surge of warmth that not even this early May sun
could match. Self-support was our goal for these people, and I’d
get them off rations even if the 
Bürgermeister
 had
to work the fields himself. One day I could stage an American-style
mock election, show them the ropes of a working democracy. This was
going to be the Germans’ New Deal and I would bring it to them.
Call it idealistic, quixotic even. I didn’t care. Not after so many
had died.