Capt. Jack Gerrie hasn't slept in two days. He has just spent another endless night atop Fort Driant, and now presses his body flat against the curve of a sh.e.l.l crater as the constant rip of the German Bone Saw cuts through the morning air.

It seems impossible to escape that lightning-fast death spray. And Captain Gerrie has had enough of it. With many of his men dead, Gerrie finds a piece of paper and prepares to scratch out a letter to none other than Gen. George S. Patton.

There isn't a man on the battlefield who would consider Gerrie a coward. Just last month, he single-handedly changed the course of a battle by paddling a canoe across the Seine River under heavy fire to better observe enemy positions. Once ash.o.r.e, he shot the first German he encountered, did his reconnaissance while under further enemy fire, and then, staying underwater as much as possible, swam the two hundred yards back across the river to direct the U.S. attack.

And one week ago, Gerrie and his men of Company G were with Easy Company on that first ill-fated probe into Driant. He was pinned down for four hours with MG-42 bullets whizzing over his head, waiting for night to fall before he and his men could retreat.

So Capt. Jack Gerrie knows something about hopelessness. But this is different. He and his men are now completely stuck. His faith in Patton's attack has vanished. Meanwhile, the majority of the German soldiers concealed within Fort Driant are completely safe. They have taken almost no casualties. As a company commander, Gerrie feels it is his duty to get the word about this dire situation back to General Patton.

He thinks carefully about what he is about to write. There is so much to tell. Only those with him on the battlefield can truly appreciate the futility of the U.S. position.

Gerrie has fought in the tunnels and on the roof over the past two days. He knows firsthand that the pa.s.sages below Driant are a warren of steel doors, rubble, and other obstacles that will take weeks to get through. The tunnels are three feet wide and seven feet tall, and the Germans can block the American advance simply by throwing up new barriers of debris along their lengths. The fighting is accomplished through machine-gun fire and lobbed grenades. The acoustics amplify even the slightest explosion, rendering each man deaf for the length of any firefight. And of course there's the odor. Soldiers fighting inside the fort on both sides have no choice but to relieve themselves in the tunnels. The foul aroma mixes with the smell of gunpowder, the thick haze of TNT, and the many pools of blood to form a horrific bouquet that Captain Gerrie will never forget.

The rooftop is equally terrifying. The German snipers are selective, focusing their bullets on Americans carrying flamethrowers or Bangalore torpedoes. When Gerrie and Company G moved in to reinforce Baker Company two days ago, a column of tanks followed them. Those Shermans are now just rusting hulks. The Germans knocked them out, one after the other, with precision firing from a Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyer.

Now the American forces atop Fort Driant are in a state of chaos. The soldiers hide from snipers anywhere they can-in abandoned pillboxes, sh.e.l.l craters, empty bunkers. Any movement outside these shelters during daylight is pure folly. Many of these men are brand-new soldiers, rushed from a replacement depot and into the front lines. Most are no more than boys, eighteen to twenty years old, with no combat experience. They don't understand military tactics, and until now they have never heard a shot fired in battle. These bewildered young men do the only things they can to stay alive: take cover, hug the earth, and pray.

But that only gets them through the day. The nights atop Fort Driant are far deadlier. The Germans sneak out of their holes in the ground and silently prowl the battlefield. The Wehrmacht soldiers have the advantage of surprise and know this terrain far better than their enemies do. They slaughter the men of the Third Army where they lie hiding, killing them one by one. The last words many of the Americans will ever hear are spoken in German, in the quiet whisper of an a.s.sa.s.sin.

Last night, Gerrie tried to turn the tables by venturing into the killing zone to locate the men of Company G and organize them into a cohesive fighting unit. But he could find only half his soldiers. The rest are either missing or dead; the rooftop is not a place for taking prisoners. The time has come for Jack Gerrie to dispel once and for all any delusions that this battle is winnable.

"The situation is critical," Gerrie tells Patton in writing. He uses a pencil, trying to be legible even as the fatigue and the need to remain battle-ready muddy his thoughts. This letter will become, quite possibly, one of the most brutally honest communiques ever posted from the field of battle. "A couple more barrages and a counterattack and we are sunk. We have no men, our equipment is shot, and we just can't go on. The troops in Company G are done. They are just there, what's left of them. Enemy has infiltrated and pinned what is here down. We cannot advance ... We cannot delay any longer in replacement. We may be able to hold till dark but if anything happens this afternoon I can make no predictions."

All around Gerrie's sh.e.l.l hole, American corpses sprawl where they died, the bodies already fleeced for additional ammunition and explosives by the surviving GIs.

Gerrie continues his letter: "There is only one answer, the way things stand. First, either to withdraw and saturate [the fort] with heavy bombers or reinforce with a h.e.l.l of a strong force. This strong force might hold here, but eventually they'll get it by artillery fire. They have all these places zeroed in by artillery. The forts have 56 feet walls inside and 15-foot roofs of reinforced concrete. All our charges have been useless against this stuff. The few leaders are trying to keep left what is intact and that's all they can do. The troops are just not sufficiently trained and what is more they have no training in even basic infantry. Everything is committed and we cannot follow attack plan. This is just a suggestion, but if we want this d.a.m.ned fort let's get the stuff required to take it and then go."

"Right now," Gerrie concludes, aiming his words directly at Third Army commander George S. Patton, "you haven't got it."

Patton ignores Captain Gerrie's letter-but only for a time. A week after the attack began, Patton admits that this battle cannot be won. He makes the decision to call off the a.s.sault on Fort Driant. On the night of October 12, American combat engineers b.o.o.by-trap an escape route that will successfully take American troops back out of Fort Driant. They lay three tons of explosives, with fuses timed to go off at irregular intervals, in order to discourage the Germans from following for up to six hours.

Capt. Jack Gerrie survives the battle, and receives the Distinguished Service Cross a week later for his exploits crossing the Seine in August.

Thanks to his quick action with the Bangalore torpedo, PFC Robert W. Holmlund is also awarded the army's second-highest award for valor-albeit posthumously.

After four days under fire, the men of Easy Company crawl out of their foxholes and make it back to the safety of the American lines. Of the 140 men who began the offensive, just 85 are physically unscathed.

The emotional toll of Easy's harrowing time under fire, however, will not be counted for many years to come.

George S. Patton walks the battlefields of his youth, even as the time has come to admit defeat at Fort Driant. Just hours before the retreat is to begin, he visits the World War I battlefields at Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne, where he fought as a young tank commander. Now these rolling fields are peaceful and still. Death seems so far away. But it was here, on the muddy pastures of eastern France, that the final Allied offensive began in the summer of 1918. Almost thirty thousand Americans died in a hail of German machine-gun bullets and deadly mustard gas, but the battle (and the war) was ultimately won.

That the Battle of Meuse-Argonne was launched on September 26, almost twenty-six years to the day that Patton ordered elements of the Third Army to take Fort Driant, is an irony not lost on a man who is deeply steeped in history, and the history of war in particular. Now, instead of launching the final drive into Germany that would end the Second World War, he commands an army that is going nowhere.

That irony is not lost on Patton, either.

In all, he has just suffered nearly 800 casualties. Almost half the men who took part in the Battle of Fort Driant are dead or wounded. Some 187 men are cla.s.sified as "missing," a vague euphemism that defines a prisoner of war, a deserter, or a man whose body has been completely obliterated by an artillery sh.e.l.l.

Patton studies the topography of Meuse-Argonne alongside a visiting political dignitary, J. F. Byrnes of South Carolina. Byrnes is a close confidant of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, so Patton must rein in his tongue at a time when he would most like to lash out. The two men, however, have become quick friends, and walking the battlefield with him is a form of solace for Patton.

But beneath his external calm, Patton is furious. He seethes about the politics that saw his army halted in its tracks, and that then deprived him of the manpower and firepower he needed to win at Driant. Field Marshal Montgomery, his British rival who was the recipient of the scarce fuel and ammunition, chose to call off his a.s.sault on Germany at the height of the Driant a.s.sault. If Patton and his men had the supplies Montgomery is now h.o.a.rding, there would have been no defeat. By the end of the Driant attack, Patton's big guns possess so little ammunition that they can fire only seven rounds per day. Patton believes his army is unbeatable if given enough gas, guns, and ammo.

Since arriving in France in early August, his army has killed more enemy, gained more ground, and lost fewer men than any command in Europe. The Third Army has been unstoppable, pressing the attack from one side of France to the other without losing a battle. But Patton has now failed miserably. The U.S. newsreel cameras that filmed Patton meeting with Eisenhower on the eve of the Metz offensive, sensing yet another great victory for America's best general, must now report back to the American public that the great George Patton is not invincible after all.

On October 13, Patton moves his headquarters south to the French city of Nancy, where he finally follows Eisenhower's order to stop his army and regroup. And so begins the "October Pause." The lull in the action is a foolish move on the part of Eisenhower. The American army might be using the lull to reinforce, but so are the Germans. Unbeknownst to the Americans, Adolf Hitler is planning a major attack of his own.

And while the Fhrer has a deep hatred for the Americans, he also fears and respects George S. Patton, who has laid waste to so many German soldiers. These plans are designed to make sure that Old Blood and Guts is kept off the battlefield at all costs.

2.

THE WOLF'S LAIR EAST PRUSSIA.

OCTOBER 21, 1944.

9:30 A.M.

The Wolf limps through the woods.

The autumn air is chill and damp. As he does each morning at just about this time, Adolf Hitler emerges from the artificial light of his concrete bunker into the morning sun. He holds his two-year-old German shepherd Blondi on a short leash for their daily walk through the thick birch forest. A fussy man of modest height and weight who is p.r.o.ne to emotional outbursts, Hitler wears his dark brown hair parted on the right and keeps his Charlie Chaplin mustache carefully combed and trimmed.

Hitler spends more time at the Wolf's Lair than in Berlin-some eight hundred days in the last three years alone. The Fhrer is fond of saying that his military planners chose the "most marshy, mosquito-ridden, and climatically unpleasant place possible" for this hidden headquarters. On humid summer days, the air is so heavy and thick with clouds of mosquitoes that Hitler remains in the cool confines of his bunker all day long.

But autumn is different. The forests of East Prussia have a charm all their own this time of year, and Hitler needs no convincing to venture outside for his daily walk. These long morning strolls offer him a chance to compose his thoughts before long afternoons of war strategizing and policy meetings. Sometimes he amuses himself by teaching Blondi tricks, such as climbing a ladder or balancing on a narrow pole. While frivolous on the surface, Hitler's time alone with his beloved Blondi is actually a vital part of his day. The Fhrer suffers from a condition known as meteorism, the primary symptom of which is uncontrollable flatulence. Time alone in the fresh air allows him to manage the discomfort without wrinkling the noses of his staff, which would be an acute embarra.s.sment to the exalted leader.

Adolf Hitler in 1944 The journey through the dictator's six-hundred-acre wooded hideaway takes. .h.i.tler and Blondi past concrete bunkers, personal residences, soldiers' barracks, a power plant, and even the demolished conference room where, just three short months ago, Hitler was almost killed by an a.s.sa.s.sin's bomb. But despite all these visible reminders that the Wolf's Lair is in fact a military headquarters, the fifty-five-year-old n.a.z.i dictator who likes the nickname Wolf strolls with an outward air of contentment, utterly lost in thought.

But Hitler is not tranquil. His right eardrum was ruptured in the bomb blast during the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt and has only recently stopped bleeding. That same blast hurled him to a concrete floor, bruising his b.u.t.tocks "as blue as a baboon's behind" and filling his legs with wooden splinters as it ripped his black uniform pants to shreds.

However, the failed a.s.sa.s.sination plot, engineered by members of the German military who no longer believed that Hitler was fit to rule Germany, did not cause all the Fhrer's health issues. His hands and left leg have long trembled from anxiety. He is p.r.o.ne to dizziness, high blood pressure, and stomach cramps. The skin beneath his uniform is the whitest white, thanks to his fondness for remaining indoors and keeping a nocturnal schedule. And his energy is often so low that his longtime personal physician, the extremely obese and medically unorthodox Dr. Theodor Morell, makes it a practice to inject Hitler each day with methamphetamines. A second doctor, Dr. Erwin Geising, also places drops containing cocaine in each of the Fhrer's dark blue eyes, in order to give the dictator a daily rush of euphoria.

Despite recent German setbacks on the battlefield, the Wolf still has hope that his plans for global domination will yet be realized. His greatest goal is the eradication of the Jewish people, with whom he is obsessed, despite not having had any intentional contact with a Jew in twenty years. "This war can end two ways," he said in a January 30, 1942, address to the German parliament. "Either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe."

Prior to the war, Hitler's anti-Semitic policies led hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens to emigrate from Germany, a number that includes 83 percent of all German Jews under the age of twenty-one. But no more were allowed to leave once the war began. Now, trapped within Germany and each of the countries that the n.a.z.is have conquered, the remaining Europeans of Jewish ancestry are being systematically rounded up and murdered.

Hitler fancies himself a military strategist, despite no formal training in field tactics. He takes full credit for Patton's defeat at Fort Driant, because it was his decision to send reinforcements to Metz rather than let the city fall. He is also cheered by the news that n.a.z.i scientists are developing a bomb with nuclear capacity, a weapon that would allow Hitler to wipe his enemies off the face of the earth. In addition, Hitler is quite sure that the audacious surprise attack he will unveil to his top commanders in a few hours will push the Allied armies back across France, and allow Germany to regain control of the European Theater.

And most encouraging of all, Adolf Hitler is finally rid of those top generals who have long despised him. SS death squads were relentless in discovering the ident.i.ties of each of the men who took part in the July 20 a.s.sa.s.sination plot, then hunting them down and taking them into custody. Some were shot immediately, which infuriated Hitler, because such a death was far too quick. On his orders, the others were hanged. The executions were done individually, with each man marched into a small room. They entered stripped to the waist, wearing handcuffs. The hangman's noose was then draped over the condemned man's shoulders and slowly pulled tight. The other end of the rope was thrown over a hook affixed high up on the wall and left to dangle. A cameraman filmed the event for Hitler's enjoyment. To ensure maximum embarra.s.sment when the graphic movie was shown, each man's pants were yanked down to his ankles.

Hitler originally suggested that the a.s.sa.s.sins be impaled on the hook, to be "hanged like cattle." But that sort of death would not have allowed the plotters to suffer sufficiently. Instead, the hangman picked up the loose end of the rope and pulled it taut, using the hook as a pulley to lift the condemned man slowly off the ground. The executioner was in no hurry, and very often the hangings lasted fifteen minutes or more, with the victim's airflow cut off and restored multiple times. Before dying, the accused had plenty of time to memorize the interior of the room: the whitewashed walls, the cognac bottle on the simple wooden table, the door through which he entered alive and would exit quite dead.

Each execution was brutal, but the suffering was not enough for Adolf Hitler. He wanted even more revenge. Hitler then ordered the conspirators' immediate families and other relatives rounded up. More than seven thousand innocent men, women, and children were arrested-and almost five thousand of them executed.

The most significant of these murders took place just seven days ago, and it means that Adolf Hitler will have to launch his major new offensive, code-named Operation Watch on the Rhine, without the only German general who can even remotely compare with George S. Patton.

The Wolf could have waited until after Operation Watch on the Rhine was completed to pa.s.s judgment on his favorite field marshal. From a tactical perspective, it would have been the smart thing to do. But Adolf Hitler needed his revenge. Nothing, not even winning the war, matters more.

Hitler and Blondi finish their walk and reenter the ma.s.sive concrete fortress that serves as the Fhrer's home away from Berlin. It is almost time for lunch-and the unveiling of his brilliant new campaign.

Or, as it will soon become known around the world, the Battle of the Bulge.

George S. Patton thinks so highly of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel that he keeps a copy of Rommel's book on infantry tactics near his bedside. Often at night, when he is unable to sleep, Patton opens it to reread a chapter or two. But while the armies of the two great generals collided in the North African desert two years ago, engaging in the sort of epic tank warfare that only the wide open desert s.p.a.ces can allow, they have not fought one another since. Patton's Third Army did not become active in Europe until early August, nearly three weeks after Rommel's skull was fractured in three places when a Royal Air Force Spitfire fighter plane strafed his car.

Now, as Patton's retreat from Fort Driant brings the attack to a bitter end, Rommel is just 230 miles away, convalescing from his wounds at home in Herrlingen. On the evening of October 13, a phone call from the Wolf's Lair informs Rommel that he will be visited by Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel the next morning. They will bring news from the Fhrer about Rommel's next a.s.signment.

This can mean only one of two things: a new command or a death sentence. Rommel knew of the a.s.sa.s.sination plot in advance, but said nothing. By proxy, this makes him as guilty as the men who concealed the bomb in the briefcase and hand-carried it into Hitler's conference room.

But Rommel is not sure whether Hitler knows of his betrayal. He is Germany's most famous general, a man who has shown his loyalty to the Fhrer through extraordinary service on the field of battle, and a man the Fhrer holds in high esteem. Until recently, that feeling was mutual. But Hitler will never sue for peace, and this could lead to the complete destruction of Germany. Rommel now has grave doubts about Hitler's ability to lead the war effort, and is in favor of negotiating with the Allies rather than continuing to fight. But he has never voiced this opinion publicly.

Rommel is restless as he tries to sleep through the night. If his awareness of the a.s.sa.s.sination plot has been made known to the SS interrogators who have tortured those implicated in the bombing, then General Burgdorf is most likely coming to take Rommel away to be publicly tried before a people's court; if not, there is a very good chance that Burgdorf is coming to offer him a new army.

Erwin Rommel outside Hitler's headquarters in Berlin Morning arrives. Rommel's fifteen-year-old son, Manfred, who serves as a soldier in a nearby antiaircraft battery, returns home for two days' leave. When he walks in the door, he finds the field marshal dressed in riding pants, a brown jacket, and a tie. Rommel asks Manfred to join him for breakfast.

"At twelve o'clock today two generals are coming to see me to discuss my future employment," Rommel tells his son. "So today will decide what is planned for me: whether a people's court or a new command in the east."

"Would you accept such a command?" Manfred asks.

"My dear boy," Rommel responds, grabbing his son by the arm. "Our enemy in the east is so terrible that every other thought has to give way before it. If he succeeds in overrunning Europe, it will be the end of everything that has made life worth living. Of course I would go."

Shortly before noon Rommel walks to his room on the first floor and changes into his favorite uniform, a tan tunic that he wore in the North African campaign. Soon a dark green Opel pulls up the gravel driveway. The driver wears the black uniform of the Waffen SS, Hitler's most feared and loyal fighters, who swear a personal oath of loyalty to the Fhrer. In the backseat sit the round-faced Burgdorf and the wiry Maisel, who themselves fear the SS.

The two men enter the home and treat Rommel with the utmost respect and courtesy. When they ask the field marshal if they might speak with him alone, their deference is so overwhelming that Manfred is sure his father will not be made to appear before a people's court. He calmly walks upstairs to look for a book to read.

But unbeknownst to Manfred Rommel, Burgdorf and Maisel are giving his father the worst possible news: SS troopers have surrounded the house and have orders to kill everyone inside should Rommel attempt to flee.

Erwin Rommel, the famous Desert Fox, is being accused of high treason by Adolf Hitler. If only out of respect for the field marshal's bravery, and the devastating effects a public trial would have on the morale of German citizens, he is being offered the option of committing suicide.

Manfred Rommel hears his father walk upstairs and enter his wife's bedroom. Curious, the younger Rommel follows his father into the room.

Lucie Rommel is lying on the bed, the picture of utter sorrow. Erwin Rommel stands and leads his son back to his bedroom. When the field marshal finally speaks, his voice is pinched in grief.

"I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour," he tells Manfred in a level voice. "The house is surrounded, and Hitler is charging me with high treason."

Now Rommel's voice turns sarcastic. "In view of my services in Africa, I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It's fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family-that is, against you."

"Can't we defend ourselves?" Manfred asks, ready to die for his father.

Rommel cuts him off. "It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray.

"Anyway," Erwin Rommel adds, a soldier to the end, "we've practically no ammunition."

Rommel dons his long leather jacket and walks to the Opel with his son. His face is without emotion. Manfred will always remember that "the crunch of gravel seemed unusually loud." The two shake hands when it comes time to say farewell. There are no tears, no final orders, and no mention of the horrible event that will take place in just a few minutes. A crowd of local villagers has seen the Opel and now gathers to watch Rommel be driven away, not having any idea about his fate. The general reaches into his jacket pocket and discovers his house keys and wallet. "I don't need these anymore," he says, handing them to Manfred.

The SS driver salutes and stands stiffly at attention as Erwin Rommel steps toward the car, his field marshal's baton tucked precisely against his elbow. Rommel sits in back. Burgdorf and Maisel slide in beside him. The bodies of the three generals press snugly against one another on the very small seat.

The Opel drives away, leaving Manfred Rommel to watch the back of his father's head through the back window as the car disappears into the distance. His father does not turn for one last look.

After a few minutes, the car pulls off the road and into a forest clearing. A squad of SS troopers form a perimeter ring, with orders to shoot should the field marshal make a run for it.

Rommel has no such plans.

General Burgdorf tells the driver to go for a walk. Rommel never even gets out of the car. He is handed the suicide pill.

Fifteen minutes later, as predicted, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is dead.

The official cause of death is not the cyanide that he was forced to swallow, turning his mucous a dark brown as his body lost its ability to breathe. Instead, the good people of n.a.z.i Germany will be saddened to read that Rommel endured "death as a result of a heart attack suffered while in service of the Reich in the west."

One week later, on October 21, SS officer Otto Skorzeny snaps to attention in Adolf Hitler's Wolf's Lair bunker. At six foot four, the legendary commando stands a half foot taller than the Fhrer. His enormous hands dwarf Hitler's as he accepts the jewelry case containing his newest in a long line of decorations, the vaunted German Cross in Gold.

Otto Skorzeny British Intelligence considers Skorzeny the most dangerous man in Europe. He is thick across the chest like a heavyweight fighter, and the epaulets on his powerful shoulders display the rank of Sturmbannfhrer-or, in the American equivalence, major. He sports a stylish mustache that lends him a pa.s.sing resemblance to the swashbuckling American movie star Errol Flynn. And while Hitler's face is lined only by weariness, a scar creases Skorzeny's left cheek from ear to mouth, a memento from a saber duel he fought for the love of a ballerina back in his college days.

But as esteemed as the Cross in Gold might be-and to be sure, it is one of Germany's highest honors, awarded only to men exhibiting repeated bravery in battle-Hitler and Skorzeny both know that the strapping warrior is deserving of so much more. If Erwin Rommel was once Hitler's favorite general, then the "Long Jumper," as Skorzeny is nicknamed, is. .h.i.tler's favorite commando. Time and again, the gruff Austrian has shown his loyalty to the Fhrer by accepting missions that other men would have refused on the grounds that they were impossible or suicidal. Most famously, it was Skorzeny and his crack team of SS troopers who discovered where the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was being held prisoner by partisan forces loyal to the Allies in the summer and fall of 1943. After months of deceit and intrigue as Mussolini was ferried from hiding place to hiding place, Skorzeny learned that the Fascist leader was being held at the Campo Imperatore Hotel, high atop the tallest peak in the central Italian Apennine Mountains. Gran Sa.s.so, as the rugged and rocky summit is known, was accessible only by a single cable car.

Skorzeny was undeterred. He devised an ingenious plan that involved landing his commando team atop the peak in a glider. Not only did Skorzeny and his men rescue Mussolini, but they did so without firing a single shot.

And just last week, the great Skorzeny trumped even that bold raid.

Six days ago, antic.i.p.ating that the Hungarian government would switch its allegiance to Germany's enemy Russia, Hitler ordered Skorzeny to make sure this betrayal did not occur. In less than twenty-four hours, "Operation Mickey Mouse"1 netted the son of Hungarian regent Mikls Horthy. The thirty-seven-year-old was lured into a trap, beaten unconscious, rolled up in a carpet, and smuggled through the city streets to the airport, where he was flown to Vienna and placed under Gestapo detention.

There was no request for monetary ransom. Instead, Skorzeny demanded Hungary's enduring loyalty. When that pledge didn't materialize, he sent shock troops into the heart of Budapest to take control of the city. An armistice was soon secured, and Mikls hoped his son would be returned to him unharmed. This was not to be. Even now, as Skorzeny and Hitler exchange pleasantries, Mikls Horthy Jr. is on his way to the Dachau concentration camp, a prison from which few men, women, or children ever come back.

In the Wolf's Lair, Skorzeny and Hitler finish their small talk. The moment is warm. Hitler laughs frequently as Skorzeny recounts his escapades in Hungary. Skorzeny served as. .h.i.tler's personal bodyguard many years ago, and the two men are well acquainted. But Skorzeny knows his place, and he turns to leave before overstaying his welcome.

"Don't go, Skorzeny," Hitler orders him.

Skorzeny turns around, puzzled. Clearly, the Fhrer has something else he would like to discuss. From the sound of it, perhaps there is another pressing issue that requires Skorzeny's expertise.

"In December, Germany will start a great offensive which may well decide her fate," Hitler continues. "The world thinks Germany is finished, with only the day and the hour of the funeral to be named. I am going to show them how wrong they are. The corpse will rise and throw itself at the West."

The Fhrer has done away with those who might be disloyal to him and is building his battle plans around loyal worshippers such as Otto Skorzeny. So even without Erwin Rommel and his unmatched prowess as a battlefield commander, Hitler is confident of success. The goal of the offensive is to split the British and American armies. It helps that his tank commanders will not have to face George S. Patton and his Third Army, because the secret offensive is deliberately being launched too far north for Patton and his sharp tactical mind to reach the battlefield in time to engage.

Hitler then tells his fellow Austrian the details of the coming offensive. Skorzeny and his men are more than capable of playing a pivotal role in this surprise attack known as Operation Watch on the Rhine, but that is not how Hitler intends to use them.

The coup de grce will be another operation that will demonstrate to the world that the n.a.z.is have indeed regained the upper hand. That will take place far from the b.l.o.o.d.y battlefields. Hitler's orders are quite simple: "Operation Greif"2 will see Skorzeny and his men infiltrate enemy lines by dressing in American uniforms and pretending to be U.S. soldiers. They will speak English and will sow confusion by spreading false rumors, capturing vital bridges, and killing Americans caught by surprise. Chief among the rumors is one that is meant to cause fear and distraction at the highest levels of Allied leadership: that Skorzeny is en route to Paris to kidnap Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe.