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the Allies as far west as possible, but to counterattack for, as the F@uhrer saw it, the most dangerous Allied threats were no more than “armored spearheads.” Clearly, however, Hitler was shaken by the capture of Antwerp.  Its vital port was to be denied the Allies at all costs.  Thus, since the other ports were still in German hands, Hitler said, he fully expected the Allied drive to come to a halt because of overextended supply lines.  He was confident that the western front could be stabilized and, with the coming of winter, the initiative regained.  Hitler assured Von Rundstedt that he was “not unduly worried about the situation in the west.”
    It was a variation of a monologue Von Rundstedt had heard many times in the past.  The Westwall, to Hitler, had now become an id@ee fixe, and Von Rundstedt once again was being ordered “not to give an inch,” and “to hold under all conditions.”
    By ordering Von Rundstedt to replace Field Marshal Model, Hitler was making his third change of command of OB West within two months—from Von Rundstedt to Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, to Model, and now once again to Von Rundstedt.  Model, in the job just eighteen days, would now command only Army Group B under Von Rundstedt, Hitler said.  Von Rundstedt had long regarded Model with less than enthusiasm.  Model, he felt, had not earned his promotion the hard way; he had been elevated to the rank of field marshal too quickly by Hitler.  Von Rundstedt thought him better suited to the job of a “good regimental sergeant major.”  Still, the Field Marshal felt that Model’s position made little difference now.  The situation was all but hopeless, defeat inevitable.  On the afternoon of September 4, as he set out for his headquarters near Koblenz, Von Rundstedt saw nothing to stop the Allies from invading Germany, crossing the Rhine and ending the war in a matter of weeks.
    On this same day in Wannsee, Berlin, Colonel General Kurt Student,
    fifty-four-year-old founder of Germany’s airborne forces,
    emerged from the backwater to which he had been relegated for three long years.  For him, the war had begun with great promise.  His paratroops, Student felt, had been chiefly responsible for the capture of Holland in 1940, when some 4,000 of them dropped on the bridges of Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Moerdijk, holding the vital spans open for the main German invasion force.  Student’s losses had been incredibly low—only 180 men.  But the situation was different in the 1941 airborne assault of Crete.  There, losses were so high—more than a third of the 22,000-man force—that Hitler forbade all future airborne operations.  “The day of parachute troops is over,” the F@uhrer said, and the future had dimmed for Student.  Ever since, the ambitious officer had been tied to a desk job as commander of an airborne-training establishment, while his elite troopers were used strictly as infantry.  With shattering abruptness, at precisely 3 P.m.  on this critical September 4, Student emerged into the mainstream once again.  In a brief telephone call, Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s operations chief, ordered him to immediately organize an army, which the F@uhrer had designated as the “First Parachute Army.”  As the astounded Student listened, it occurred to him that “it was a rather high-sounding title for a force that didn’t exist.”
    Student’s troopers were scattered all over Germany, and apart from a few seasoned, fully equipped units, they were green recruits armed only with training weapons.  His force of about ten thousand had almost no transportation, armor or artillery.  Student didn’t even have a chief of staff.
    Nevertheless, Student’s men, Jodl explained, were urgently needed in the west.  They were to “close a gigantic hole” between Antwerp and the area of Li@ege-Maastricht by “holding a line along the Albert Canal.”
    With all possible speed, Student was ordered to