Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History by Peter Tsouras Read Free Book Online Page A

to the comforts of soft French billets.
    It was then that their captain was shocked out of his good mood when his signals officer handed him the latest Enigma decryption from OKM. The man was ashen-faced even under the normal pallor of a submariner denied sunlight. Schultze read, sucked in his breath, and muttered, ‘Lieber Gott!’ Then to the signals officer, ‘Müller, ask that the message be confirmed.’
    ‘I have, Herr Kapitän. It is confirmed.’
    Schultze called over his executive officer and showed him the message. The younger man almost whispered the word ‘Loki’. The captain turned back to the signals officer. ‘You know what we must do with all outgoing transmissions now.’
    The captain went to his cabin to think. Loki. The codename had been given to the captain, his executive officer and signals officer only orally. It was never to be printed or written down. It was the fail-safe code from OKM telling every U-boat that Enigma had been compromised, that the enemy was reading their mail. He had not thought much about the possibility so adamantly sure was the Navy that Enigma was unbreakable. Then he laughed to himself. The full import of the codename truly struck home. Loki in Norse and Germanic mythology was the trickster god brimming with deceit and betrayal.
    The Wolfssehanze, Rastenburg, East Prussia, 25 May 1942
    Dönitz and Heydrich had jointly requested this meeting with Hitler at his headquarters in the pine forests of East Prussia. Dönitz thought it was fitting that he was accompanied into Hitler’s wolfs lair by a human wolf.
    Neither was surprised when Hitler flew into a towering rage. It was as if his own child had been struck down. He raved that the plans for the entire 1942 campaign which would win the war had now been dashed. Dönitz had never seen him in such a fury. But when that rage subsided, he seemed to reach out to Heydrich for some consolation in a way Dönitz had never seen him act towards anyone else.
    Dönitz was surprised then at how Hitler acted the role of proud father. He was even more impressed at how Heydrich played his part for all it was worth. He knew how to manage Hitler. He knew that you either had to bring good news, or if forced to bring bad news to sweeten it with solutions. Preferably you brought both.
    In this case the sweetener to the bad news was that it was Heydrich’s own Sicherheitsdienst that had discovered the compromise of Enigma. By implication it was more than just patting himself on the back but an assertion that Hitler’s own SS had succeeded where the Luftwaffe and Army had let him down, and since Hitler was the personification of the German people they had by extension let the Reich down. It allowed Hitler to play the aggrieved father figure to every common German soldier who had died unnecessarily because of the failure of the generals.
    True to his agreement with Dönitz, Heydrich cast his protection over the Navy, pointing out without any real evidence that had the other services implemented the advanced security fixes to their Enigmas that the Navy had, there would have been no compromises. The failure had been with their simpler systems. They had been broken, which gave the British the key to the more secure naval Enigma. Heydrich should have been a lawyer hypnotizing a jury he was so skilful at weaving truth, innuendo and outright fabrication into a story Hitler wanted to believe.
    Dönitz shrewdly let Heydrich do all the talking. He was further amazed at the man’s ruthless backstabbing of Goring, the great rival to his own boss, Himmler. He was playing a deadly hand, undermining Goring. Having heard of Hitler’s comment about Heydrich being the ideal of the son he never had, the SS man obviously had the son’s role of heir apparent in mind. 12
    Finally Hitler asked the obvious question. ‘How fast can we change the codes?’
    Heydrich was ready with the answer.
    Immediately, mein Führer. We have The Lorenz SZ40 Schlüsselzusatz [cipher