General der Fallschirmtruppe Kurt Student, famous for his actions during the Low Countries campaign, was one of the masterminds behind the Gatell Villa Raid.
Serra d'en Gatell, Outskirts of Barcelona, May 13th, 1941, 22:45PM
Despite the clear weather and the large, beautiful windows of the villa, the room smelled of cigars and spilled wine. Valentín González, also known in former times as "El Campesino", the peasant, frantically searched through the stack of papers delivered to his office in the last few days. Last night he thought he saw it, but there was too much wine to cloud his head... But it couldn't be. Comrade Stalin himself assured him it was impossible. Yet there it was, an intelligence debrief gathered from a captured fascist pigs from Madrid, a synchronized offensive. East and West, no, no... Moscow had to be warned, now.
He paused, telephone in hand. He thought he saw something through the window; The moon was bright tonight, and before she was covered by the clouds, he saw a shadow towards the villa's rear, near the small airfield. Better safe than sorry, he thought. He called his chief o security, Felipe. The man, though already asleep, quickly woke up and immediately rounded 5 men up to investigate, and bade another 3 to stand at the office's windows to watch over the Secretary General. Momentarily distracted as he watched Enrique and his man cross the patio, he turned back to his papers, and remembered the call to Moscow. As he picked up the fone, it gave no signal. It took a moment for realization to dawn upon him, the fascist pigs were actually doing something. Shit, he had been too lax.
He had to think fast. Enrique and his men might not come back. He ran up the stairs to wake up his wife and his chidlren, escorted by his guards. Hearing the urgency in his voice, they rapidly packed some clothes and made a run for the entrance, while shouting for his driver, Arnau. The driver was already awake, and as he ran forward to start the car, Valentín froze as he heard the shots. He watched in horror as Arnau dropped suddenly, striking the car at a run, his left arm and leg pierced by bullets, while a single one had pierced the head from temple to temple, killing him instantly. He saw men in black uniforms spread out to secure the perimeter, taking his own guards by surprise. Shortly after, a man in black SS uniform slowly walked towards them.
-"Herr González?" Asked the man, curtly.
-"Cerdo fascista!" Shouted Valentín, as he tried to tackle the man to the ground. From the side, quickly came the buttstock of a carbine, and his head exploded with pain.
-"Herr González, do not resist. You are to be confined to your quarters. Obey, and your family won't be harmed."
Bleeding and dizzy from the wound on his head, he slowly nodded in agreement. The german soldiers quickly took all their weapons, and escorted the seven of them to his bedroom on the third floor, a paratrooper locking the door behind him. He was ready to die, but there had to be a way to escape. He quickly ordered the guards to help him make a rope from the bedsheets, and smiled as he took his hunting knife and a small pistol from a loose tile on the floor. In a matter of minutes the rope was ready, but then a thick pall of smoke started invading the room, and once again, despair dawned on him. When he opened the window, the entire villa was already on fire, a fire he had never seen, that seemed to burn even through the marble columns beneath. He want desperately to save his children, and took his Enrique, his son, in his arms as he dove towards the patio, hoping there was still time. He felt his legs break on the landing, but the Enrique was safe, and he told the boy to run, and run he did. His eyes welled up from the pain, and his last sight was his wife and baby falling, like burning angels, as the world around him was consumed in flames.
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The Gatell Villa Raid would become one of the most famous covert operations of the whole war. Jointly masterminded by General Kurt Student and recently promoted Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny, a promising officer rapidly raising through the ranks with the patronage of Heydrich himself, the operation was a resounding success. 39 men, including Skorzeny, dropped in 4 modified gliders under the cover of night, departing from a prepared airfield south of Perpignan. While one of the gliders experienced a slight malfunction, the landing was succesful, with only two men suffering minor injuries. The soldiers then spotted an armed group coming from the house, and set up an ambush, killing all six without firing a shot. They then moved to surround the house, eliminating the remaining guards, while securing First Secretary Valentín, his family and three guards up on the master bedroom. The soldiers then proceeded to drench various rooms with gasoline and depositing a 10kg canister of so-called "N-Stoff" with a small detonator attached, before leaving. The soldiers then stole all the vehicles of the household and proceeded to the rendezvous point, where they used a pattern of signal flares to confirm success, and were rescued by a modified Ju-90, which flew back to Perpignan at very low altitudes. Furthermore, the whole operation had to be moved up two days, when the capture of a Spanish Royal Army captain in Madrid by Communist militias represented a leak of very sensitive information, and it became a race against time.
The operation, succesful in spite of the great risk, was nevertheless not discovered or divulged immediately. The Free Spanish authorities, being called on the next day by a messenger, found the site little more than blackened rubble, apparently the result of some great conflagration. While experts were brought for a more complete analysis of the scene, rescue teams were dispatched along the region to look for survivors. It was only on the late afternoon of the next day that they found Valentín's son Enrique, wandering aimlessly through the fields of the Serra. The boy had small burns dotting his body, and was weak, so hungry and thirsty he could barely speak, and passed out a few minutes after rescue came. Thus, it was only on the 20th, after sufficient recovery, that Enrique mentioned "men in black", between sobs, as he remembered the death of his parents. At this point, the forensic chief had already argued a strong case for arson, and so a dossier was made, and Moscow was informed on the 23rd.
Now, as soon as Reich was informed and authorized the operation, they knew all it could accomplish, besides the momentous blow to the Free Spanish leadership on the eve of war, was to delay the knowledge of the invasion. Logistically and strategically speaking, the invasion was ready, so a move up of a few days shouldn't be a problem, if not for the spring rains in Russia. They were late to stop, and the roads were still muddy, which meant a considerable loss of effectiveness in one of the most crucial aspects of the Blitzkrieg: The Panzer arm. Thus, the offensive had, just a few days earlier, been moved to the second week of June, where, it was expected, the roads were sufficiently solid for armored advance. Now, the choice was to attack now, and risk bogging down in the mud enough to allow the Soviets a coordinated retreat and counter-attack, or stick to the plan, and allow them time to prepare. Thanks to local newspapers, it was soon a known fact that González's son had survived, and that a link, however tenuous, could be established, thus giving the Soviets anything from 10 days to three weeks of preparation, depending on the exact speed of the investigation. In the end, a compromise solution was decided upon: The invasion would begin a week early, on June 3rd, where it was estimated that only a few areas would have impassable roads, and that plans could be adapted to take them into account, as to put the timetables behind by just one or two days, at the cost of giving the Stavka probably a week to ten days of preparation.
What remains difficult to predict though, is the human element. The dossier reached the Kremlin on the 23rd, in a pile of documents. Despite being marked as "High Priority", documents from the Spanish were generally given less priority than internal political documents, of which there were a few, since Beria's NKVD was still regularly producing dossiers on purge-worthy candidates in the military. Although the whole batch was sent directly to Beria's office, as was the custom for important documents, the 23rd was a Friday, so it took him two days to sift through the latest batch of internal dossiers, before taking a look at the one from Barcelona, on early Wednesday. Beria was intrigued, but he didn't yet knew the connection or the discovery of the fascist plans, so, there was some back and forth communication for another two days until the matter was cleared up. So, it was late in the night of the 29th, Thursday, and as it was common, Stalin was working in his office, and Beria approached him with the document. Stalin's first reaction was expected, as he shouted in furious denial and blamed the incompetence of the Spanish in protecting their leader. Beria, knowing Stalin for a long time, decided to let the matter settle, and approach it with him again the next night. The second reaction was unexpected: Stalin abruptly left for his dacha at Kuntsevo, and not a word came from there until Sunday, June 1st. That day he invited Timoshenko and Beria, determined to try and correct such a massive miscalculation on his part, but, despite his anger at Goebbels and the Reich, he realized how precarious a position he was caught on, his army weakened, his foreign relations either strained or outright hostile. So, his orders were threefold: The Red Army was to stand their ground at all costs, the Air Force was to stand in maximum readiness, but on the ground, and diplomatic probes would be sent to try and defuse or delay the situation, or at the very least, buy the Stavka some time.
These orders too however, would prove disastrous. As soon as Berlin became aware of the tentative Soviet diplomacy, they knew they had, somehow, still caught them by surprise. Thus it was that, before
daybreak on June 4th, 1941, the big guns, like the war drums of old, heralded the march of nations to war...