The Winds of War (The Henry Family, #1)

by Herman Wouk

The Attack Concept

This menacing disposition of Stalin’s forces nevertheless pleased us, because he was giving up the great Russian advantage of maneuvering space, and crowding the Red Army within reach of a quick knockout blow. Stalin was superior both in numbers and equipment. Our best information was that we would be marching with about one hundred fifty divisions against perhaps two hundred, with about thirty-two hundred tanks against as many as ten thousand, and with an unknown disadvantage in aircraft. Obviously, then, our hope lay in superior training, leadership, soldiers, and machines, and in the swift decisive exploitation of surprise. After Finland, this seemed a reasonable risk.

Operationally, we expected to break through the thick crust at the western border with three huge simultaneous lightning attacks—two to the north of the marshland, one to the south—and encircle and mop up the broken forces within a couple of weeks. Thus, the main bulk of the Red Army would cease to exist almost at the outset.

This was not terrain suited for blitzkrieg. In fact, the very inefficiency and low standards of Communist Russia proved a formidable defensive factor. They had not troubled to build decent highways, and their railroad beds were defective and—deliberately, of course—of a different gauge than ours.

The Soviets were frightened to death of the Germans, and did everything possible, to the last moment, to appease them and keep them from attacking.—V.H.

Cutting the Pie

The Luftwaffe caught the enormous frontline Red air force on the ground and wiped it out in a few hours. In the center and in the north our armored pincers advanced by timetable, with the infantry roiling forward in their support. Six days saw us in Minsk and at the Dvina, bagging nearly half a million prisoners and thousands of guns and tanks. Only in the south did Rundstedt encounter some real resistance. Elsewhere, the Red Army was like a huge thrashing body without a head. Stalin was invisible and silent, paralyzed in the throes of melancholia.

“Essentially, the point now is to slice up this gigantic pie for our purposes, in order to be able: First, to dominate it, Second, to administer it, and Third, to exploit it!”

The Critiques

It is alleged:

First, that our invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed to fail, no matter how many military victories were won, because a small patch of Europe like Germany, with eighty million inhabitants, could not hope to hold down vast Russia with close to two hundred millions;

Second, that Hitler’s harsh treatment of the Russian inhabitants was fatuous, because they would otherwise have welcomed us with open arms and helped to overthrow the hated Communist regime. In this connection, the old story of village women coming to greet the German i...

Third, that the plan made the classic error of seeking territorial or economic objectives, instead of concentrating on de...

In short, these critics know nothing of the history of conquest, or the techniques of military administration, especially with modern communications and equipment. Had we conquered the Soviet Union, we would have administered it. We did quite well in the provinces we held for years.

This was, in the strictest sense, a war to the death.

If Bolshevism were to triumph, Germany as we knew it had to die. If German National Socialism prevailed, there was no room on this heartland for an independent, armed, menacing Bolshevik nation far bigger than the Reich.

The Green Folder

At the Nuremberg trials, I established that I had no part in drawing up this administrative plan, since my responsibilities were operational.

They meant the death by starvation of tens of millions of Russians. Göring admitted as much, and the documents are spread on the record, so denying this is absurd. Nor would there be either sense or profit in attempting to prove the “morality” of the Green Folder.

The plan was to feed the southern Slavs a minimum caloric intake, so that they could keep up production. But Germany’s need for so much of Russia’s produce would naturally create a food shortage on a large scale. A serious wastage of the northern Russian population had to be accepted as a result.

Perhaps our administrative plan for Russia was less “moral” than the Americans’ extirpation of the red race and the seizure from them of the richest lands on earth. Perhaps it lacked the religious high-mindedness with which the Spaniards sacked Mexico and South America and destroyed the fascinating Inca and Aztec civilizations. And possibly, in some way not very clear to this writer, the British subjugation of India, or the commercial spoliation of China by all the European colonialists plus the United States, were nicer and more moral programs than the proposals in the Green Folder. But the unprejudiced reader must never forget that, in the German world-philosophical view, Russia was our India.

In the light of these ideas, the argument that we should have treated the Ukrainians and other Slavs nicely, so that they would help us overthrow their Communist rulers, becomes clearly ridiculous. Germany, a nation as poor as it was powerful, could not continue the war without confiscating the food of southern Russia. Was it to be expected that the Slavs would accept impoverishment, forced labor, and the death of millions by starvation, without a really serious revolt, unless their spirit had been broken from the start, and unless they had seen nothing in prospect but an iron fist and the firing squad if they did not labor and obey?

Finally, it must be pointed out that the Green Folder administration scheme never became a reality, since we failed to conquer the Soviet Union. It was a hypothetical plan that could not be put into practice. The stress placed on it at the Nuremberg trials therefore seems highly excessive and distorted.

The Turn South

First of all, the closing of the Kiev pocket east of the Dnieper was the greatest military land victory in the history of mankind. At a blow, Germany killed or captured armed forces and equipment equal to almost half the entire Wehrmacht force with which she began the invasion of the Soviet Union!

We secured the breadbasket, the industrial basin, and the fuel reserve, which Germany had sought for so long, and which was the whole pivot of Adolf Hitler’s politics.

To the Towers of the Kremlin

In the north all our objectives were achieved except the actual taking of Leningrad. The city was laid under siege which lasted nine hundred days, in which it withered into helplessness and almost perished. The Baltic coast was ours, so that we could supply our northern forces by sea. We were in operational touch with our Finnish allies. In the south we invested the Crimea and were racing for the Caucasus oil fields. And in the center, giant armored pincers closed on Moscow from north and south, actually penetrating the suburbs.

Our advance patrols saw the towers of the Kremlin. World empire at last lay within the German grasp.

Other historians contend that the armies caught in the Kiev pocket were rabble. The hard nut of Russian resistance lay around Moscow, they say, and destruction of these forces in October would have ended the war. The land campaigns in the Soviet Union are not in my field of competence, though I spent time there. The full truth about that front may never be known.—V.H.

50

This debut of a major new radio program at the naval base had been stirring the somnolent territory for days. The island’s good white families, a bored lotus-eating little clique, had been vying to entertain Hugh Cleveland, and people had flown in from other islands to Oahu just to attend the parties. The Navy had even postponed a fleet drill simulating an enemy surprise attack, since it conflicted with the broadcast time. Front-page headlines in Honolulu papers about the show quite overshadowed the news of the German encirclement of several Russian armies around Kiev.

“Maybe I ought to just let Madeline Henry keep going. I’ve got the job, but she’s sure got the lines.” He wagged his eyebrows, and the audience laughed. “I’d better introduce her brothers, so you’ll see just how big and strong they are. The naval aviator is Lieutenant Warren Henry of the Enterprise. Where are you, Warren?”

Warren got grimly to his feet, a long lean figure in white, and dropped at once, sinking far down. “Welcome, Warren. And now here’s Byron Henry, of the Devilfish.” Byron half rose, then sat down with an unpleasant mutter. “Hi, Byron! Their father’s a battleship man, folks, so the family’s pretty well got the sea covered—the surface, the air, and the deeps. That’s the Henry family, and one reason our country remains strong and safe is that we have plenty of Henry families.”

“Look, Warren, I was shanghaied aboard the Devilfish. I had orders to new construction, the Tuna, but my exec and Hoban pulled a fast one at ComSubPac. Moreover, it wasn’t my idea to go to submarine school in the first place. Dad shoved me in, mostly to keep me from marrying Natalie. That’s why she went to Italy. That’s why she’s still stuck there. My life is snafued beyond all measure because I went to sub school. God knows when I’ll see my wife again. And my baby, if I’ve got one. She’s having it on the other side of the world. That’s what’s on my mind, not dolphins.” “You’re in the Navy now. Do you want to get beached?” “Why not? The hours are better and the mail is more reliable.” “Oh, horseshit. Pardon me, Mad.”

“Branch is no phony,” said Warren. “He has a remarkable record, Briny. And you’d better make up your mind that he’s boss man on that submarine.” “Sure he’s boss man, and sure he’s got a great record, and sure I’m in hack, but hell will freeze over before he gets another sketch of that air compressor. When I found out that Natalie had gone back to Italy to have her baby, I put in a request for transfer to the Atlantic. Our subs operate in and out of the Med, and I might have a chance to see her, and maybe even to get her out. I told him all this. He lectured me about subordinating my personal life to the Navy! Well, I said I was putting the request in anyhow. He forwarded it—he had to forward it—‘not recommending approval.’ ”

Byron took Madeline’s lei and put it around his neck. “Boy, these are strong frangipani. God knows when we three will ever be together again like this. I’m in a rotten mood, but I love you both. How’s the booze situation at your house, Warren?” “Ninety-seven percent. We just topped off.” “Great. I intend to burn you down to fifty percent.” “By all means.”

According to Time, the Germans were rolling through Russia exactly as they had through Poland two years before. It was the same month, September. The cheery German claims, backed by combat photographs, were most convincing. The pictures showed villages afire, skies aswarm with Luftwaffe, roads through cornfields jammed with refugees, and unshaven Russian prisoners behind barbed wire in sullen hordes. The scenes brought vividly back to Byron’s mind the days when he and Natalie had drawn together: the flight in the old automobile from Cracow to Warsaw, his wound, the child on the road crying over her mother’s smashed face, the orange flares, the whistling bombs, Natalie in the malodorous jammed hospital, the song of grasshoppers in no-man’s-land.

Returning with a big purple bottle, Warren said, “Well, there’s one good thing. If Hitler does take Moscow, the Japs will jump north to grab their end of Siberia. That’ll give us a breather. Otherwise they’re a cinch to come south soon. Every day they’re getting lower on oil. We’re sure as hell not ready for them. We need a year just to harden the Philippines to where we can hold.”

Warren slowly turned his bronzed face at his brother. An embarrassed smile played on his thin lips. “Even the Germans aren’t shooting their Jews, guy. I think their policy is disgusting, but—” “You don’t know what they’re doing. I run into a stone wall when I try to tell people here what the Germans are like. Branch Hoban thinks this war is Saxon civilization against the rising tide of Asia, and the Russians count as Asia, and we and the British should wise up and make common cause with the Nazis in a hurry, because they’re fighting our battle, and it’s the white race’s last chance. He gets all this out of books by a nut called Homer Lea. He reads those books to pieces. The Valor of Ignorance is the main one, and The Day of the Saxon.”

“Blazes,” Byron said, sitting up, a stale taste of wine in his mouth, “I was supposed to report in at three, wasn’t I? Are you here to take me back in irons?” “Amnesty. You’re out of hack,” Aster grinned, “and you’ve got twenty-four hours’ leave. This just came in on the harbor circuit from Rome, forwarded via Lisbon, Washington, and San Francisco.” He handed a dispatch to Byron, who read it sitting cross-legged on the grass. ENSIGN BYRON HENRY, USS DEVILFISH X CAN YOU THINK OF A GOOD NAME FOR A SEVEN-POUND BOY X BOTH FINE BOTH LOVE YOU X NATALIE AND WHOSIS HENRY

“How about that, Lady?” “Congratulations, Briny.”

He went into the house after Madeline. He wanted to be the first to tell her. The telephone lay in its rack on a table in the hall. He heard a chuckle, and glancing down the zigzagging halls to the side porch where the baby lay asleep, he saw Hugh Cleveland embracing Madeline, out of sight of the lawn. Cleveland was holding Byron’s sister with both hands by the rump. Her pink skirt was pulled up in back, exposing her thighs and underwear. She was clinging to him with obscene intimacy. Byron walked out of the house into the sunlight. “I guess I’ll get back to the Devilfish,” he said to Warren. “Why? I thought Branch gave you a twenty-four.” “I want to write Natalie and the folks. Maybe shoot off a cable or two.” “Briny, the governor’s just invited the whole crowd over to Washington Place for cocktails with Cleveland.” “Cleveland’s in the house there kissing Madeline. I mean kissing her, and she’s going right along with it.” “Is she?” the aviator said with a crooked grin. “I guess their sponsor liked the broadcast.”

“Look, Briny,” his brother said, “you’re not going to make trouble, are you? You’ll embarrass Janice.” “The grinning son of a bitch,” muttered Byron. “Come off it. She’s over twenty-one.” “He’s a married man. I’ll talk to Madeline, if you won’t. Depending on what she says, I may tell the bastard to keep his distance from her, if he doesn’t want the shit beaten out of him.” Warren sized up his brother with amusement. “He’s got the weight on you, and he looks in good shape.” “That’s just fine,” Byron said.

The radio began blaring the news signal. It was four o’clock, and the governor had turned up the volume of the little portable sitting on the outdoor bar. “Berlin. German Supreme Headquarters announces the capture of Kiev and claims the greatest victory in the war, and perhaps in the history of the world. According to German sources, four entire Russian armies, numbering almost a million men, have been surrounded and cut to pieces, and with the fall of Kiev all organized resistance in the vast pocket has come to an end. Radio Berlin proclaimed at midnight that, quote, ‘The Soviet Union no longer has a military capability, and the end of hostilities on the eastern front is in sight.’ More news in a moment. Now a word about Pepsi-Cola.”

“We interrupt this newscast for an urgent announcement by the Joint Army-Navy Command of the Hawaiian Islands. SURPRISE ENEMY ATTACK ON HAWAII! This is a DRILL. A hostile fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers has been located approximately four hundred and fifty miles northwest of Oahu. This is a DRILL.”

“All leaves and liberties are cancelled, and all military personnel will return to their units at once. This is a DRILL. We repeat, this is a DRILL. Surprise enemy attack on Hawaii! All military personnel return to their units at once. Special permission is granted to the players of the baseball game between the Air Command and the Battleship Force to complete the ninth inning, and for spectators to remain at the game until then. Restrictions on civilian travel are not, repeat, not in force.”

“All ships in the area will report to force commanders readiness to sortie, but will not, repeat not, leave anchorages or moorings unless ordered. At 1830 target planes towing sleeves will simulate attack on Pearl Harbor. All ships and shore batteries will conduct tracking and aiming exercises but will not, repeat not, fire ammunition. Vessels in dry dock or alongside for repairs will proceed with maintenance work and are excused from this exercise. We repeat. Surprise attack on Hawaii. This is a DRILL. This announcement will be repeated.”

Byron said, looking straight ahead at the road, “I went into the house before, looking for you. I saw you and Cleveland.” After a pause filled with engine noise he glanced at her. Her brows were contracted over wide dark eyes in a scowl, and she looked lovely, but tough. She very much resembled their father. “Is this why you offered to drive me to the governor’s place? To lecture me? Thanks, dear.” “That’s a married man, Madeline. Mom and Dad would be damned upset at what I saw.” “Don’t talk to me about upsetting Mom and Dad. I have yet to marry a Jew.”

“I’m sorry, Briny. That was nasty. But didn’t you deserve it, accusing me of God knows what? I have nothing against Natalie. I like her.” Byron reached across her legs and slammed the door shut. The glare on his white face was frightening. “One minute. You tell Hugh Cleveland—you be sure to tell him, Madeline—that if I ever find out he’s done anything to you, I’ll come after him and I’ll put him in a hospital.”