Hitler's War Read online

  “Fuck, I would, too,” Szulc said. “Picking between Hitler and Stalin’s gotta be worse’n the devil and the deep blue sea.”

  “Shut up already, if you want to listen to the news,” somebody told him.

  That supercivilized-sounding BBC announcer was continuing: “—another day of fierce air raids against Prague. Civilian casualties are said to be very heavy. The Czechoslovak government has condemned what it calls ‘the barbarous German onslaught against defenseless non-combatants.’”

  “Nice war,” McGill muttered. Blasting the crap out of anything that got in your way wasn’t anything the Marines hadn’t heard about and seen before. The Japs did it all the time here, now that their war against China had heated up. But you expected better from Europeans, somehow. Then again, the difference between what you expected and what you got made a pretty good measure of how fucked up the world was.

  “Czechoslovakia insists that reports of unrest in Slovakia are greatly exaggerated. Uprisings by the so-called Hlinka Guard”—the announcer read the name with fastidious distaste—“are being suppressed in Bratislava, Radio Prague declares, and elsewhere in that area.”

  “C’mon—put the ballgame back on,” said a big, burly PFC named Puccinelli and inevitably called Pooch.

  “In a second,” Szulc said. “He’ll get to the rest of the shit, and then we’ll go back.” Pooch muttered to himself, but didn’t reach for the tuning dial himself.

  “France continues its advance into Germany. German resistance is termed light,” the BBC newsman said. “France has occupied the Warndt Forest, and seized the towns of Lauterwald and Bübingen.”

  “Wherever the hell those are,” McGill put in. He’d never heard of either one of them before. That probably meant you could piss across them.

  The limey’s voice grew stern. “For the second night in a row, air pirates from Spain bombed Hendaye and Biarritz in southwestern France. It is not yet known whether the bombers were flown by native Spanish Fascists of the Sanjurjo junta or by Nazis of the Condor Legion mercenary group. In any case, French aid to the rival Spanish Republican government, including men, munitions, aircraft, and tanks, continues to flood across the Pyrenees.”

  “Yeah, it floods now, after the frogs and the limeys spent years keeping it out.” Max Weinstein was a rare duck: a pink, almost Red, Marine. He wasn’t real big, but he was tough. With politics like his, he had to be. He got into more than his share of brawls, and won more than his share, too.

  “Prime Minister Chamberlain was in Manchester today, reassuring anxious citizens that, despite the long, difficult road ahead, victory will inevitably—”

  Herman Szulc turned back to the World Series. The Cubs had one out in the seventh. They were going down the drain, all right, the same way the Giants had in ‘36 or ‘37.

  “Wonder whether the Japs are listening to the Series or the BBC,” McGill said. It wasn’t obvious. Japan was crazy for baseball. On the Fourth of July in ‘37—three days before the fighting between Japan and China broke out for real—a Marine team had played a doubleheader against a squad from the Japanese garrison. They’d split two games rougher than any John McGraw’s Orioles played back in the ‘90s.

  “Wonder whether Japan will go after Russia like she means it if the Russians start going at it hot and heavy with Hitler,” Szulc said.

  “That would be just like the damn Japs,” Max said, and for once nobody wanted to argue with him. Japan and Russia had been banging heads for a couple of years now, up on the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia. Most of the official bulletins talked about Manchukuan and Mongolian soldiers, but anybody who knew anything knew better. The puppets wouldn’t dance that way without their masters pulling the strings.

  “Hey, I hope the Japs do go north,” Pete said. Weinstein gave him a furious look. Before the champion of the Soviet workers and peasants could start screaming, McGill went on, “If they don’t, they’ll hit the USA, and everybody here is fucking dead meat if they do.”

  Max opened his mouth. A moment later, he closed it again. Nobody could say Pete was wrong there. Japan occupied northern China these days. She occupied all of Peking except the Legation Quarter. If she went to war with the United States, the few hundred Marines in the garrison wouldn’t last long.

  Japanese soldiers were little and scrawny. Their equipment was nothing to write home about. But they were rugged sons of bitches, and there were swarms of them. Oh, America would eventually kick the snot out of them. Eventually, though, was way too late to do anybody here any good.

  SERGEANT HIDEKI FUJITA HATED MANCHUKUO. He hated Mongolia even more. And getting sent to the border between the Japanese puppet state and the one the Russians propped up combined the worst of both worlds.

  Japan claimed the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia lay along the Halha River. The Mongolians and Russians insisted it belonged a good many kilometers farther east. Japan and Russia had banged heads along Manchukuo’s borders before: here, and along the Amur River, and near Korea, where Russian territory dipped down as far as Vladivostok.

  The Mongolians had found a new game to get on their neighbors’ nerves. They would light grass fires near the frontier—wherever the hell it was—and let the prevailing westerlies sweep the flames into Manchukuan territory. Naturally, that made the locals come running to the Japanese, screaming that they should do something. When you set up a puppet, you had to hold him upright or else he wasn’t worth anything.

  Not that Fujita thought the Manchukuans were worth anything. But their country—to give it the benefit of the doubt—had more timber than anybody knew what to do with. It raised lots of rice and wheat and millet, too. And it drew ever more Japanese colonists, people who wanted more land and a better chance than they’d ever get in the overcrowded home islands. Whether the Manchukuans did or not, real Japanese people needed protecting.

  Trouble was, even if the border lay on the Halha, the way Japan said it did, the Mongolians and Russians still had the better of it. The land west of the Halha, on the Mongolian side, stood fifty or sixty meters higher than it did over here. High ground counted, same as always.

  Only a couple of days earlier, on October 4, the Mongolians had fired from the high ground at two dozen Japanese surveyors riding through what was plainly Japanese territory…if you accepted the Japanese view of the frontier, anyhow. Sergeant Fujita did, of course.

  One of the other men in his little detachment, a corporal named Masanori Kawakami, asked, “Excuse me, Sergeant-san, but would the Mongolians harass us if the Russians didn’t want them to?”

  “Not bloody likely,” Fujita said with a snort. He was short and squat and tough—the kind of noncom whose men hated and feared him but couldn’t help respecting him, too. “The Mongols can’t wipe their raggedy asses unless some Russian commissar says they can.”

  “Hai.” Kawakami nodded. He was younger than Fujita, a conscript rather than a career soldier. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Funny they would do it with the war in Europe heating up,” Superior Private Shinjiro Hayashi said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Fujita rumbled ominously. He wanted to boot Hayashi around, but sometimes even a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army had to be careful. Yes, Hayashi was a conscript, with no rights or privileges to speak of. Yes, he was clumsy and four-eyed, and so deserved thumping more than most of the other soldiers.

  But he was also a university student. He talked like a damn professor. A guy like that was bound to have connections. If he complained, Sergeant Fujita was too likely never to see anything but the dusty Mongolian frontier for the rest of his days.

  Hayashi smiled now. He liked explaining things. “If the Russians really are fighting in Czechoslovakia”—a name that sounded very strange in Japanese—“why would they also want to fight us? A man with two enemies at the same time has trouble.”

  “Maybe,” Fujita said with a grudging nod. “You can see that—but you’re almost as smart as you
think you are.” He wouldn’t give any praise without putting a sting in its tail. “Are the dumb foreigners clever enough to see it, too?”

  “I think so, Sergeant-san.” Hayashi knew better than to piss Fujita off on purpose. “Lots of countries know the rules of diplomacy and war.”

  Corporal Kawakami pointed west. “I think I just saw something move, Sergeant.…There, about one o’clock.”

  “I’ll check it out.” Fujita wore binoculars on a leather strap around his neck. Japanese optics were some of the best in the world. He’d looked through captured Russian field glasses, and they were crap. Pure junk. He’d also seen fancy German binoculars—from Zeiss, no less. Those were okay, but not a sen’s worth better than his own pair.

  He scanned the plain on this side of the Halha. Yellow dirt, yellowish-green grass, the occasional bush—that was about it. The steppe rolled on for countless kilometers. Then he spotted the horseman.

  A Mongolian, he thought at once. He had trouble knowing how he was so sure. Manchukuan cavalrymen rode the same kind of shaggy little steppe ponies. They carried carbines slung on their backs, too, and wore the same mix of uniforms and native garb. Then Fujita realized why he knew. The horseman kept glancing back over his shoulder, toward the east. If he expected trouble, it was from this direction, yet he was the only man in sight.

  “Let’s reel him in,” Fujita said. “Hayashi! Fire two shots in the air.”

  “Two shots. Yes, Sergeant-san.” Superior Private Hayashi obeyed without question. Bang! Bang! The reports rolled across the steppe.

  Fujita kept the field glasses on the rider. When the fellow heard the gunshots, he jerked in the saddle, looked around wildly in all directions, and started to grab for his weapon. Then he checked himself. “Two more shots, Hayashi,” the sergeant said. “And we’ll show ourselves. If he comes in, fine. I think he will. But if he doesn’t, we just have to deal with him.”

  Bang! Bang! The sergeant and the men from his squad stood up. He waved. He hoped the shots wouldn’t draw artillery fire from the other side of the river. If the horseman was what Fujita thought he was, the bastards over there might want to see him dead even if he was on this side of the line…not that they admitted the Halha was the line, anyway.

  The Mongolian looked back toward the other side of the river again, too. He wore a fur cap with earflaps up right now—the day was mild. After reaching under it to scratch his head, he rode slowly toward the Japanese soldiers.

  As he got closer, he waved his hand to show he was friendly. Then he must have decided that wasn’t enough, because he threw down the carbine. He shouted something in his own language. It sounded like dogs barking to Fujita.

  “I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about,” the Japanese sergeant yelled back. “Come ahead anyhow, though.” He gestured emphatically.

  When the Mongolian called again, it was in a different tongue. “That’s Chinese, Sergeant,” Hayashi said.

  “You understand it?” Fujita asked. Maybe the four-eyed guy was good for something after all.

  And Hayashi nodded. “I studied it in school.”

  “All right. Talk to him. Find out what’s what.”

  Whatever Hayashi said was only singsong gibberish to Fujita. But the Mongolian understood it. He answered eagerly. He and Hayashi had to go back and forth and round and round—neither was exactly fluent. After a bit, the senior private turned back to Fujita. “About what we would have guessed, Sergeant. He thought they were going to purge him, and he figured he’d better bug out while he was still breathing.”

  Fujita grunted. “The Mongolians are crazy, and they caught it from the Russians.” Russia had been purging its officer corps for a couple of years now. People just disappeared. Captains, colonels, generals…It didn’t matter. And, since Marshal Choibalsan’s Mongolia imitated Stalin’s Russia in all things, Mongol officers started disappearing off the face of the earth, too. More and more of the ones who feared they might be next fled to Manchukuo instead—which made Choibalsan look for still more new traitors.

  This fellow said something else in his hesitant Chinese. Fujita looked a question to Hayashi. “He says—I think he says—he can tell us a lot about their dispositions on the far side of the Halha.”

  Hearing that improved Fujita’s disposition. “Can he? Well, he’ll get his chance. We’ll take him in, and he’d better sing like a cricket in a cage. Tell him so, Hayashi.”

  “I don’t know if I can say that in Chinese, Sergeant-san.”

  “Shit. Tell him we’ll cut his balls off if he doesn’t talk. That ought to do it.”

  Hayashi spoke slowly. The Mongolian officer’s face didn’t show much. He was darker than most Japanese, maybe because he was born that way, maybe just because he was weathered, which he certainly was. Left in the oven too long, Fujita thought scornfully. The Mongolian did gnaw on his lower lip for a moment before answering. “He says he’ll tell us whatever we want to know,” Hayashi reported. “He says he knew all along he’d have to do that.”

  “All right. Good. You and Kawakami take him back to our officers.” Fujita held up a hand. “Wait! Ask him one thing first. Ask him if the Russians and Mongols aim to jump us any time soon.”

  Hayashi put the question. The deserter shook his head. He said something. Hayashi translated: “No, Sergeant. He says they’re just hoping we leave them alone. The Russians are almost pissing themselves about what’s going on in Europe, he says.”

  “Ichi-ban!” Fujita said enthusiastically. “That’s good intelligence. If they’re afraid we’ll jump on them, maybe now’s the time to do it, neh?”

  Senior Private Hayashi shrugged. He wasn’t about to argue with a superior. He and Corporal Kawakami just took the Mongolian back toward battalion headquarters.

  ARMORERS WHEELED BOMBS TOWARD LIEUTENANT Sergei Yaroslavsky’s Tupolev SB-2. The medium bomber would hold half a dozen 100kg bombs or one big, hefty 500kg firework. The big bombs were in short supply, though. Yaroslavsky was glad the armorers had enough of the smaller ones to fill up the bomb bay.

  He was a stolid, broad-faced blond, getting close to thirty. He’d had a tour against the Fascists in Spain. Now he was doing it again, flying out of a field near Poprad in eastern Slovakia. Officially, he was a volunteer, aiding the people of democratic Czechoslovakia against the Nazi invasion. And, in a way, he supposed he had volunteered. They would have shot him if he’d said no. They were shooting lots of officers these days. They were jumpy as cats in a rocking-chair factory. They’d shoot you without any excuse if they felt like it. If you gave them one, you were dead for sure.

  Of course, the Germans were liable to shoot him, too. Things were simpler and safer in Spain. Back in early 1937, the SB-2 could outrun anything the Spanish Nationalists, the Condor Legion, or the Italians put in the air.

  It wasn’t like that here. The Messerschmitt 109 was a very nasty piece of work. It was faster than both Russian flat-nosed Polikarpovs and biplane Czech Avias. It was a hell of a lot faster than an SB-2. The best recipe for not getting shot down was not getting seen.

  The armorers were Czechs. When they talked with one another, Sergei could almost understand them. He really could follow Ruthenian, which was just Ukrainian with another name. Slovak? He didn’t know about Slovak. Sentries around the airstrip kept Slovaks away. The squadron was flying out of Slovakia, but the place wasn’t exactly loyal to the country of which it was supposed to be a part.

  Clanging noises said the bombardier was closing the bomb bay. “We ready, Ivan?” Yaroslavsky called.

  “Da, Comrade Lieutenant,” Ivan Kuchkov replied. He was dark and stocky and muscular and hairy. People sometimes called him “Chimp.” Not very often, though, not after he broke a man’s jaw for doing it. He had the right slot—a bombardier needed muscle.

  “Start them up, Anastas,” Sergei told the copilot.

  Anastas Mouradian nodded. “I will do it.” His throaty Armenian accent grated on Yaroslavsky’s ears. Damned swarthy bastar
ds from the Caucasus…But you couldn’t say that, not when Comrade Stalin was a Georgian. Better not even to think it.

  At least the Georgians and Armenians were Christians, not Muslims like the Azerbaijanis and Chechens. In the officially atheist USSR, you weren’t supposed to think things like that, either. But, while Sergei might be a New Soviet Man, he was also and always a Russian.

  The two M-100A radial engines thundered to life. The props blurred into invisibility. Yaroslavsky checked the instruments, one after another. Everything looked good. The mechanics were Czechs, too. They were better than any Russian mechanics he’d ever had. They seemed to care more about the work they did.

  Five more bombers were also warming up on the airstrip. They were going to give the Nazis one right in the eye. Sergei hoped so, anyhow. More than a week into the war, and the Germans still hadn’t cut Czechoslovakia in half. Lots of the Czech army was pulling back into Slovakia to keep up the fight here—and to sit on the pro-Fascist Slovaks.

  Down the runway bounced the SB-2. It was made for taking off from grassy fields. Paved runways were as rare as capitalists inside the Soviet Union.

  Sergei pulled back on the stick. The bomber’s nose came up. No more bouncing—he was airborne. He’d shake again soon enough, when they started shooting at him. Best to enjoy the calm while he could.

  If running didn’t help, he could shoot back. Mouradian was in charge of two machine guns in the SB-2’s nose. Kuchkov had a machine-gun blister on the back of the airplane and another in its belly. Those looked like a good idea. Bombardiers were rapidly discovering, though, that you had to be lucky to hit anything with either gun. If you weren’t lucky, you might use the dorsal gun to shoot off your own tail. At least one intrepid bombardier had already done that.

  If he’d lived, they would have court-martialed him and then shot him. As things were, he saved them the trouble.

  “All good,” Mouradian shouted, pointing to the instruments. He wasn’t in the front glasshouse yet. With 840 horsepower roaring away to either side, you had to yell to make yourself heard.