Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member Read Online Free PDF

yet begun. A feeling of indifference was pervasive. One had to get along, and customs inspired by mutual tolerance were quickly established. 1
    Georg’s stay in Vienne was soon over. His division was called upon to participate in the top-secret preparations for the invasion of England. In September 1940, it started moving toward the English Channel. The soldiers took up their position within the Cotentin, the Calvados, and the Orne. Georg was very active in training his men.
    But it was not toward England that the Sixth Infantry Division was finally to direct its forces. Despite intense bombardments and peace offers followed by threats, Britain, isolated and bled dry, did not falter. Above all, it did not give up hope of victory. So in March 1941, the Sixth Infantry Division was transferred to the far reaches of East Prussia and Poland, very near the USSR’s border. No information regarding the high command’s intentions filtered down. However, even the less lucid among us noticed the growing concentration of troops, the acceleration of training, and the energy expended by the battalion’s new commandant, Major Hirsch, on exploring the border area. All this was merely the prelude to an invasion of the Soviet Union. The attack began in the early hours of June 22, 1941. The Eighty-sixth InfantryDivision, in which I was an officer, was brought in from France only a few weeks later. We were thus less exposed to the first clashes with the enemy.
    At the beginning of a battle, the role of a reconnaissance battalion was crucial. Reconnoitering the terrain, making raids to take prisoners or equipment (munitions and maps), harassing the enemy to demoralize him without investing great human resources, dislodging hidden snipers, making sure that columns advancing at very different speeds joined up where they were supposed to: such were, in their diversity, the scouts’ missions. On May 18, in preparation for the offensive, the command of the Ninth Army decided to split the elite unit constituted by the Sixth Reconnaissance Battalion into two parts. The first, called the advance battalion, still under Hirsch’s orders, was placed directly under the command of the Ninth Army. Georg, who was about to be promoted to the rank of captain, was given the leadership of a reconnaissance battalion that consisted only of a cavalry squadron and a cycle squadron, reinforced by an intelligence detachment, and especially by a mortar battery, a heavy machine gun, and an antiaircraft battery. The battalion played a very active role in the first hours of the offensive. By the evening of June 22, Georg’s forces had reached their objective. They were asked to establish a bridgehead on the Memel River. After crossing ten kilometers of marshes and forests, Georg encountered stiff resistance from the enemy. On June 25, the reconnaissanceforces were joined together again, but during this short interval the mounted cavalry, used for the first time in a relatively isolated manner, had shown its flexibility in all sorts of situations.
    Around the middle of July, it was again the reconnaissance work carried out by Georg’s men that allowed the Sixth Division to take, almost without losses, the citadel of Polozk on the Dvina. On July 27, barely a month after the offensive had started, the Sixth Battalion had covered a thousand kilometers by forced march. The exhausted infantrymen’s feet were bleeding, despite the efforts of the physicians, who distributed large quantities of talcum powder and ointment. The vehicles were dented and covered with dust; logs were being used as bumpers. They advanced laboriously on rutted dirt roads and sank up to their axles on sandy tracks. Their oil pans scraped the ground, their engines coughed, sputtered, spat out oil, and left a trail of nuts and bolts. And when, by some miracle, the convoys were able to get up some speed on solid roads, each vehicle raised a long cloud of dust that spread over a hundred meters,