Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Nice of them to let us know, eh?’ said Corporal Görz, pointing at a large sign by the side of the road. On it was the warning: ‘Attention! Road under enemy surveillance! Don’t drive in groups!’ The road into Stalingrad they were on was situated on high ground. In clear conditions it must have been visible from the far bank of the Volga. Now only the odd shell whistled aimlessly overhead. The few small houses on the city outskirts here that still offered any kind of shelter were crammed with people, while thousands of others still roamed the streets, leaderless and milling about in all directions. If the Russians had been in a position to send over a squadron of bombers…

The three of them found themselves standing on the lip of the Zariza Gorge. In among the snow and the debris and rubbish scattered about, the entrances to caves yawned blackly in its steep slopes. Crowds of men had gathered there too. Where could they find some shelter? Or were they fated to die out in the open, like so many before them? Clambering over the ruins of a wooden shack that had been knocked down, Breuer came across a flight of steps leading underground. A murmur of voices was coming from below. They descended the winding steps cut into the earth to a barricaded plank door. The corporal started kicking it.

‘Open up!’ he bellowed. ‘German officers!’

The voices fell silent within. Then they heard, clearly and unmistakably, someone respond with the infamous line from Götz von Berlichingen . [1] ‘the infamous line from Götz von Berlichingen ’ – the line in question comes from Act 3 of Goethe’s 1773 debut play, when the eponymous hero says: ‘ Er aber, sag’s ihm er kann mich im Arsche lecken !’ (‘As for him, tell him he can kiss my arse!’) This stung Görz into a fit of fury.

‘You bunch of fuckers!’ he yelled. ‘Open up right now or I’ll—’

Breuer restrained him.

‘Come on!’ he said. ‘Just leave it. None of that stuff cuts any ice any more.’

Weary and despondent, they dragged themselves back to the main road that led to the city centre. As the day had progressed, more and more people had joined the throng there. Now, in between the wooden houses, the odd tall stone building had begun to appear. Yet on closer inspection these turned out to be nothing more than the façades of houses, behind which stood huge piles of rubble. And the specimens of humanity wandering about there over the bomb debris, through the tangles of barbed wire and past burned-out tramcars – they, too, were nothing but ghostly reflections of people: masks, façades hiding piles of wreckage…

‘Where… where’s the ho-… ho-… hospital, then?’ said a beaky figure, thrusting his bird-like face at Breuer. He was hobbling along, propping himself up on a home-made cudgel, and with huge bundles of rags tied round his feet. A greatcoat that was far too large for him hung off him like a sack. Hunched over, with twisted limbs and convulsed by an uncontrollable shaking, he looked like a witch from a fairy tale.

‘A hospital? Sorry, I don’t know if there is such a thing round here,’ Breuer answered.

And while he was still mulling over this strange encounter, someone in the crowd said something about the ‘District Commander’s Office’. Of course. How could he have forgotten? The headquarters of the commander of the Central Stalingrad district! The phrase, which immediately conjured up images of German order and efficiency, had a magic effect on those who heard it. Their faces lit up. Of course, the Stalingrad DCO was the responsible authority here. It’d do something to help them, surely!

As a lorry towing a flak-gun limber passed, Breuer and Görz hoisted the lieutenant onto it and swung themselves up after him. No one shooed them off. The truck trundled down the street into the city. When it halted briefly at a road junction, they hopped off. A sign with the letters DCO on it pointed them to the left. Yes indeed, order evidently still prevailed here, thank goodness! From a way off they could make out an imposing building, which must have been about five storeys tall, standing out from the ruins around it and looking remarkably intact.

Two soldiers were walking towards them. Their eyes were shining.

‘Have you heard, Lieutenant, sir?’ one of them called. ‘The advance guard of our tank divisions has entered Karpovka!’

‘Yes, yes, we heard about that!’ replied Breuer, waving them aside.

There was no point trying to reason with madmen. But that went against the grain with the corporal. ‘Hey, you two, hold it right there!’ he ordered, beckoning them to approach. ‘You blokes lost your tiny minds or something? Don’t you dare go spreading rumours like that around, d’you hear?’

‘But it’s true!’ wailed the man who’d spoken, incensed by the corporal’s harsh tone and lack of faith. ‘We just heard about it at the District Commander’s Office, ain’t that right, Georgie boy? Straight from the captain’s mouth! The news just came through!’

In no time at all, a circle of stupid, credulous faces had formed round the little group. The second soldier nodded in affirmation.

‘Two SS Panzer divisions have broken through!’ he went on, waving his hands about in excitement.

‘It’ll only be a matter of hours before they get here! We ought to spread the news round town!’

For a few moments, Breuer felt his heart beating faster. Could it be true? They hadn’t heard anything from the front for days… But then he laughed inwardly at his own foolishness. What did he care?

A crowd of hundreds was gathered outside the commander’s office. The rumour was doing the rounds there too. Groups of men began peeling off in all directions. Over the entrance to the courtyard hung neatly painted signs with instructions for men going on leave and men looking for their quarters. Oh yes, order still reigned here, all right! The three men squeezed their way into the overcrowded inner courtyard. The entrance to the building proper was cordoned off with wooden barriers, and guarded by military police with steel helmets, gorgets and rifles. Breuer pushed his way through to ask one of the policemen if they were taking in wounded men.

‘Not now – come back in about two hours!’ came the brisk, indifferent answer. ‘We’re just in the process of, ah… reorganizing.’

‘Reorganizing, eh?’ Breuer glanced up at the windows of the building.

‘There’s word that tanks have reached Karpovka. You heard anything about that?’

The man looked askance at the lieutenant.

‘Yeah, rumour has it!’ he growled.

‘From what I hear, that rumour started right here!’

‘Well, don’t go looking at us, mate! We don’t know anything about it!’

Breuer turned away in disgust. So that was how it was, was it? Some people were being fobbed off with talk of ‘reorganization’ while others were being fed the line about ‘tanks in Karpovka’. Their sole concern was to get people off their backs by telling them what they wanted to hear. No, there really was nothing to beat German efficiency!

The multistorey stone edifice of the Central Stalingrad District Commander’s Office, a modern apartment and office block with central heating and toilets that was visible for miles around, had in all probability once been intended to be the proud seat of a powerful regional administration. But that had never come to pass.

The institution of the District Commander’s Office, which in fact consisted of nothing more than a handful of military police, a general heading the outfit who was no longer fit for any other duties, and a few officers, had set up operations in the basement of the building, safe from bombardment. The far less secure storeys above ground, however, had been swamped – long before the great flood of troops retreating to the city had begun – by wounded, sick and displaced soldiers seeking a final refuge there.