Michael Wenberg - The Last Eagle

As the driver negotiated the mid-afternoon traffic in Berlin, Dönitz chuckled silently under his breath. Those damn Poles. The sailor in him couldn’t help but admire the resiliency of the Eagle’s crew. Hutter and the rest of them had underestimated their tenacity as much as they had overestimated the capabilities of the Estonians to keep them under control.

After a five-minute drive, Dönitz was quickly ushered into Hitler’s office. He was surprised to find Göring there, filling a chair in front of Hitler’s massive desk like a huge, bloated toad.

It was a strange sight, the admiral thought: not one, but two Hitlers watched his approach across the shiny marble floor. There was the slick-haired Hitler sitting motionless at his desk, flanked on either side by flags of the Third Reich. And then there was his twin: a huge, full-length portrait hung on the wall behind him.

Both Hitlers stared ominously at Dönitz.

As Dönitz took a seat , Göring acknowledged his presence with a condescending smile. Hitler waited a moment and that got right to the point, his blue eyes flashing. “What now, admiral?” he asked sharply. “You have made the Reich a laughingstock, not to mention the U-Bootwaffe .”

“ Mein, Führer ,” Dönitz began. “My apologies at this terrible misfortune. We assumed our Estonian friends were more competent then they turned out to be. This sudden turn of events is completely unexpected.”

“And so, now we have a Polish submarine on the loose in the Baltic?” Göring interrupted. “That is no small problem, not with our attentions turned elsewhere. Think of the devastation it can wreak on our shipping.”

Hitler gazed at Dönitz, waiting for an explanation. At times, there was something unnatural about him, the German admiral had always thought. It was apparent now. Hitler could perform with the best of them, crackling with energy, voice resounding through a room, or a building, or a stadium, with terrible authority. But now, he seemed shrunken, smaller. He held himself still as a reptile on a rock, eyes barely blinking, just watching. Will you eat me, too, Dönitz wondered, remembering a few of the officers who had dared challenge Hitler, or had failed at a given plan . He was too visible to disappear. No, the worst he could expect was retirement. The Alps in the fall. Dönitz could imagine worse places.

Dönitz had never been very good at subterfuge. He wasn’t about to begin now. “Threat?” he replied evenly, glancing at Göring . “I think that overstates it. The Eagle has but two torpedoes, and, more importantly, she has no charts and little food and water. If she doesn’t run aground, or blunder into a mine field, her crew will be forced to give up.”

“And if not?” Hitler said, eyes sharp as flint.

“Then we will destroy her. No one can escape from the German Navy’s relentless pursuit. To resist is to die. That is the message that we will leave with our enemies.”

Göring couldn’t surpress a cackle of laughter. “Bravo,” he mocked, clapping his hands. “Your speech writers should be commended.

Hitler, however, did nothing. He stared another moment at Dönitz, and then stood “It was a wonderful plan,” he said. “I like it when my officers take risks for the glory of the Fatherland.” As he ended his words, his eyes fell on Göring , who immediately grew silent.

“Thank you, sir,” Dönitz said, cautiously.

“I’ve ordered the Generalfeldmarschall to help out as much as possible, just in case, of course, your navy is unable to capture or destroy that submarine crewed by those Polish mongrels. Amazing how resourceful animals can be when cornered, don’t you think? I can’t imagine it will be a problem, but they’ve already surprised you once. I hope they don’t do it again. I expect you to keep me informed.”

Dönitz stood, bowed and clicked his heels subserviently in response. “Yes, mein Führer .”

As Dönitz left, he paused at the door, glanced back at Göring . The fat air marshal was now leaning over the German leader’s right shoulder, eyeing maps spread out across the Führer ’s desk. Göring looked up and winked. Dönitz marched out.

A half an hour later, Dönitz was reading a message from Ritter. He was suggesting something that Dönitz was already considering. Eventually, the Eagle had only way to go and still remain part of the war: out the Baltic and west to England. Ritter was asking for a picket of ships to guard the escape from the Baltic along with a personal request to be assigned to one of them. Dönitz knew the Kriegsmarine didn’t have that many to spare, but he could probably get enough cruisers, destroyers and minelayers and then fill in any gaps by temporarily swallowing his pride and asking for Göring’s help with reconnaissance flights. Between the two of them, they should be able to spot the Eagle and sink her, if it came to that.

Dönitz glanced down at his hand, the one holding the message. It was shaking slightly. He watched it, willing it to stop, but it was no good. He set the paper down on his desk top. They had come so very close to success. He had a nagging sense that their chance was gone, and her escape would come back to haunt them in some fashion or another. And now he would never know what difference she might have made in the conflict with England.

A few hundred kilometers to the west, Churchill sat in his basement office, listening to rumble of detonating German bombs overhead. Hitler hadn’t wasted any time, he thought.

Churchill was nearly finished with a letter to the American president, Franklin Roosevelt. Of course, direct contact such as this, bypassing the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister, and other, normal channels of communication, was fraught with its own risks, especially with American interests divided about intervening in the war against the Germans. In fact, the current American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, was decidedly pro-German. Given the choice, Churchill didn’t doubt that Kennedy would prefer to see England lose to Germany. Most people dismissed this as simply the usual Irish antipathy toward anything British. Churchill suspected it was more complicated than that, but he had no intentions of sitting down with Kennedy and attempt to discover his true feelings. Thank God for one thing: the man wasn’t president of the United States. Not yet, anyway.

Churchill finished his last paragraph, and then signed the letter with a signature he would continue using in all future correspondence, even after being elevated to prime minister: “Naval Person.”

That done, he puffed his cigar back to life, and then returned to the note that he had just set aside. It was from the British Naval Attaché in Tallinn, Estonia. Churchill shook his head as he read the note again, grunting with pleasure. “God bless them,” he thought. There was little chance the submarine, the Eagle , would survive, but at least they would not rot in prison, and the Eagle would fight the way, and for whom she was intended.

Churchill expected Poland to fall within the week. Gdynia and the other Polish coastal cities had already been taken by the Germans. Soon Eagle would have nowhere to go. If a miracle happened, and she survived, Churchill hoped she sailed for England and not Sweden or France. The British Fleet could use her services.

He reread the note’s last line, shook his head with wonder. He couldn’t imagine a woman aboard a submarine. But leave it to an American. Curious, he wondered how she had gotten involved . The note didn’t say, but that was a story he would like to hear some day. When McBride, the naval attaché, arrived in England, he was going to make it a point to ask him about it.