the Grossdeutschland Regiment for Operation Barbarossa. It will form the nucleus of a new division. Don’t look so sad. I am also pulling Steiner’s SS division out of the Middle East. I was a fool to be distracted by these sideshows, and for the very same reason you just pointed out—logistics. Yes, we intimidated the Turks into allowing us right of passage through Turkey, but on what? The railways are a shambles. There is no rolling stock available. It took Steiner weeks to get his single division down into Lebanon, and now it will take him just as long to send it back. Face it. The British are of no concern to me at the moment. I will win this war by crushing Sergei Kirov. So unfortunately for you, I must recall these troops at once, and put them to better use.”
“Yet the matter of these tanks is still of some concern,” said Manstein. “Operations are already underway in Russia, and the campaign is off to a very good start. Yet we have also found that the Russians have new tanks as well. They are not the monsters you report in Egypt, Herr Rommel, but they are better than anything we presently have.”
“Which brings us to the real reason for this meeting,” said Hitler. “I did not summon you here to get your bad news and deliver my own. No. It is this matter of the heavy tanks we must now set our minds on.”
Hitler turned to the men waiting quietly at the edge of the table. “General Rommel, these gentlemen have been ordered to get us back in the game. They will put the iron in the tanks to match the will of our soldiers. Here we have Mister Porsche from Stuttgart, and Mister Henschel from Kassel. And you will be pleased to learn that they have been feverishly working on new and better tank designs ever since you first reported this new heavy British tank last February. In fact, they have been working on this even longer than that, but I had not given it my full attention. That has all changed. We already have new designs, 45 to 60 tons, and with twice the armor on your best Panzer IIIs. We are calling this one the Tiger, and there are already two models under development. I have put every resource we have at their disposal, and we are now converting all our tank production to make ready for these new designs—the big cats.”
“I am very glad to hear this,” said Rommel.
“This is not all,” Hitler continued. “There will be others, a new medium tank called the Panther, and another model we are calling the Lion, which looks to be very promising. And I am considering even bigger tanks, as powerful as a battlecruiser at sea, and with guns right from the naval shipyards I will take from Admiral Raeder. If the British want to place heavy artillery on their new heavy tanks, so be it. I will show them what heavy artillery is. Beyond that, we are committing ourselves to a crash development program for this new rocket technology. Unfortunately, the early results have produced exactly that—one crash after another, but we will be diligent, and I have been promised a working weapon before my next birthday. In this regard, Ivan Volkov has been most helpful.”
“Ivan Volkov?” Rommel knew who the man was, but could not see how he figured in the matter.
“It is clear that the Russians have been working on new tanks as well,” said Hitler. “This new T-34 has been quite a shock to us. And our existing 50mm anti-tank guns cannot defeat the enemy heavy KV tank either. These are not as advanced as this tank you describe in the desert, but they are better than anything we have at the moment, which is an outrage. Volkov has sent me intelligence on these new Russian designs, and we may take a leaf from their book as we build our own tanks in answer. Now then, I would like you to meet with these gentlemen and tell them everything you have learned about this new British tank. Give them a soldier’s eye view of what our new tanks should be able to do, and how they must fight. General Guderian would be a good man to include in this meeting, but he is otherwise occupied for Operation Barbarossa. I can see now that everything you have warned about, and all you have said about