Bridge Too Far Read Online Free PDF

and from there to the Carpathian Mountains in Rumania and Yugoslavia.  In fact, Russian armor had reached the borders of East Prussia, barely a hundred miles from the F@uhrer’s headquarters.
    In the west Von Rundstedt saw that his worst fears had been realized.  Division after division was now destroyed, the entire German line thrown helplessly back.  Rear-guard units, although surrounded and cut off, still clung to vital ports such as Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre, Brest, Lorient and St.  Nazaire, forcing the Allies to continue bringing supplies in from the distant invasion beaches.  But now, with the sudden, stunning capture of Antwerp, one of Europe’s greatest deep seaports, the Allies might well have solved their supply problem.  Von Rundstedt noted, too, that the tactic of Blitzkrieg, perfected by himself and others, was being borrowed with devastating effect by Eisenhower’s armies.  And Field Marshal Walter Model, the fifty-four-year-old new Commander in Chief, West (he took over on August 17), was clearly unable to bring order out of the chaos.  His front had been ripped apart, slashed in the north by tanks of the British Second Army and the U.s. First Army driving through Belgium toward Holland; and, south of the Ardennes, armored columns of the U.s.  Third Army under General George S. Patton were heading for Metz and the Saar.  To Von Rundstedt the situation was no longer merely ominous.  It was cataclysmic.
    He had time to dwell on the inevitability of the end.  Almost four days elapsed before Hitler allowed Von Rundstedt a private audience.  During his wait the Field Marshal stayed in the former country inn reserved for senior officers in the center of the vast headquarters—a barbed-wire-enclosed enclave of wooden huts and concrete bunkers built over a catacomb of underground installations.  Von Rundstedt vented his impatience at the delay on Keitel, the chief of staff.  “Why have I been sent for?”  he demanded.  “What sort of game is going on?”  Keitel was unable to tell him.  Hitler had given Keitel no particular reason, short of an innocuous mention of the Field Marshal’s health.  Hitler seemed to have convinced himself of his own manufactured version for Von Rundstedt’s dismissal on “health grounds” back in July.  To Keitel, Hitler had merely said, “I want to see if the old man’s health has improved.”
    Twice Keitel reminded the F@uhrer that the Field Marshal was waiting.  Finally, on the afternoon of September 4, Von Rundstedt was summoned to Hitler’s presence, and, uncharacteristically, the F@uhrer came to the point immediately.  “I would like to entrust you once more with the western front.”
    Stiffly erect, both hands on his gold baton, Von Rundstedt merely nodded.  Despite his knowledge and experience, his distaste for Hitler and the Nazis, Von Rundstedt, in whom the Prussian military tradition of devotion to service was ingrained, did not decline the appointment.  As he was later to recall, “it would have been useless to protest anyway.”  * * According to Walter Goerlitz, editor of The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel (chapter 10, p. 347), Von Rundstedt said to Hitler, “My F@uhrer, whatever you may command, I will do my duty to my last breath.”  My version of Von Rundstedt’s reaction is based on the recollections of his former chief of staff, Major General Blumentritt.  “I said nothing,” Von Rundstedt told him.  “If I’d opened my mouth, Hitler would have talked “at me” for three hours.”
    Almost cursorily, Hitler outlined Von Rundstedt’s task.  Once more Hitler was improvising.  Before D Day he had insisted that the Atlantic Wall was invulnerable.  Now, to Von Rundstedt’s dismay, the F@uhrer stressed the impregnability of the Westwall—the long-neglected, unmanned but still formidable frontier fortifications better known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line.
    Von Rundstedt, Hitler ordered, was not only to stop