Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

Germany Awake! Torchlight processions… ‘Hail to our Leader!’ The National Awakening!

‘Give me four years!’ The Reichstag fire. ‘The SA is on the march…’ Book burnings, Certificate of Aryan descent, ‘When Jewish blood flows under the knife…’ ‘Germany Has Become More Beautiful.’

Nuremberg, the rallies: flags, sunshine, the Badenweiler March, Coca-Cola, the fairground in Fürth… ‘We will tear up the shameful treaty!’ … ‘Hitler weather’…

Rearmament! Cannon instead of butter! … ‘not in order to deprive other peoples of their liberty…’ The Winter Aid Programme, ‘One-Pot Meal Sunday’, Marriage loans, the Cross of Honour of the German Mother, occupation of the Rhineland… Military service! ‘I swear… unconditional loyalty to the Führer’ – ‘People – To Arms!’

The Anti-Comintern Pact – the Spanish Civil War… ‘a training ground for our troops – with live rounds!’ – ‘Back home to the Reich!’ ‘The Saar is German…’ The annexation of Austria: ‘I proclaim before history…’ The Sudetenland, Munich… ‘ no further territorial demands… from now on things will get better and better…’ Protectorate – A thousand years of Greater Germany – ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!’

‘…and tomorrow, the whole world!’ Lebensraum! Lebensraum! Blood and Soil! ‘Hoist the flags in the east wind…’ ‘… for me, the war has not ended since 1914…’ Danzig. Poland: ‘I trust some swine won’t come running to me suggesting mediation…’ War!! ‘Since five forty-five this morning, we have been returning fire… with a joyous heart… I am your conscience!’

Denmark, Norway: ‘Aryan blood shall never perish!’ – Holland, Belgium – Fanfares – ‘We march triumphantly into France!’ Fanfares, fanfares!

‘… only one enemy remaining…’ ‘For we sail to take on the English, the English!’ Eight hundred thousand tons, a million tons! ‘If Mr Churchill thinks… Rest assured, he is coming! … we will wipe out their cities!’ ‘Even if everything shatters…’

Yugoslavia, Greece: ‘German retribution in the Balkans! – ‘The New European Order!

Twenty-second of June 1941… against Russia? Against Russia! ‘… I have signed a Non-Aggression and consultative pact … scrap of paper … Where I have placed my signature…’ ‘Command us, Führer – and we will follow you!’

‘Animals… Asiatic hordes’ Crusade against Bolshevism! ‘…we will switch to the land policy of the future…’ Commissar decree… ‘Take weakness and bestiality equally into account! …language that only he understands. Kill, kill, kill! Have no conscience. I am your conscience!’

Smolensk, Odessa, Kiev, Vyasma-Bryansk… ‘already broken and will never rise again! … for the final mighty blow … before the onset of winter.’

Rommel the Desert Fox… Bombs on Berlin! … ‘you can call me Meier’ … War against America! … ‘Mr Roosevelt without ships… all just nobodies…’

Winter battle outside Moscow – Retreat from Moscow! ‘… gave his life for the cause of Greater Germany… With faith in the Führer…’ ‘I’d hold you tight, We’d kiss goodnight, My Lili of the lamplight…’ The Cross of Honour of the German Mother! ‘Never again will my actions cause a German mother to weep.’ ‘We give thanks to our Führer!’

‘We have managed to avert the looming catastrophe… worse cannot and will not follow.’

Summer 1942: Voronezh, the Caucasus – ‘Our work in the east is paying dividends… for oil and iron, for waving fields of wheat! That’s what motivates our soldiers and gives them a cause to die for!’

Stalingrad – ‘a few small combat patrols… no second Verdun … Let’s just wait and see whether that was a strategic mistake…’

Stalingrad! ‘You can be sure that no one will ever dislodge us from this place!’ And that is what they are dying for, dying… Never again will a German mother… ‘There’s an end to it all, There’s an end to it okaaay…’

Stalingrad! To the last bullet… ‘You can rely on me with rock-like confidence!’… ‘No sacrifice too great… everything shattered…’

The thirtieth of January 1943 – ten years of the ‘Third Reich’… ‘We give thanks to our Führer!’

The officers were still asleep. The first pink-tinged reflections of the morning sun were just glinting through the ruins opposite onto the cellar window when the moaning of wounded men in the adjoining room was interrupted by the slamming of doors, running steps, and a loud, staccato voice. They could hear snatches like ‘divisional staff’ and ‘deployment’. Someone answered lethargically.

Breuer woke from his slumbers with a violent start. He knew that voice. Before he had time to think, the door was flung open and in stumbled a figure clutching a machine-pistol.

‘Fröhlich!’ cried Breuer, getting to his feet. ‘Good God, man, where on earth did you get to? I’m amazed you’re still alive!’

The Sonderführer’s face underneath his fur-trimmed cap looked frightful. Dark shadows had appeared beneath his angular cheekbones, and a pair of jaundiced-looking eyes goggled glassily from black sockets. His pupils stared hard past the rims of weak eyelids. His mouth stood open in a gesture of dumb expectation, and wisps of straggly beard hung down from his protruding chin.

‘Like Don Quixote,’ thought Breuer in shock. ‘He looks just like Don Quixote!’

‘Where have you been? What about the others? Sit down, tell us what’s happened!’

The Sonderführer opened his eyes wide and furrowed his brow.

‘Today,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘the thirtieth… ten years! He waited till today…’

He paused, cowered slightly, hunched up his shoulders and held up his left forefinger. He seemed to be listening for something.

‘We have to go,’ he hissed, ‘right now… a counter-attack… if they come! German planes, three of them – just spotted ’em! Quite high up… It’s a sign!’

Breuer put his hand on Fröhlich’s shoulder. ‘Come on, why don’t you start by putting down your gun… that’s it. Now take your coat off and get comfortable! There’s coffee on the go and we’ve still got something to eat.’

Meanwhile, the others had perked up at the news.

‘Hey, that’s right, lads! Today’s the thirtieth of January – the ten-year anniversary!’

‘Do you remember how it was back then?’

‘Yeah, it was a right old shindig… A torchlight procession through the Brandenburg Gate… and the Reich Chancellery… Hitler and Hindenburg at the window… everyone thinking things were going to be rosy from then on.’

‘I couldn’t have imagined then that in ten years’ time I’d be up to my neck in this shit here…’

‘Anyhow, I’m all ears to hear what they’re planning to celebrate back there today. Is Adolf going to speak?’

‘I think Göring’s meant to give a speech,’ said Captain Eichert. ‘We should listen to it. Maybe he’ll sort this mess out for us, eh?’

As Breuer tried to pump the Sonderführer for information on the fate of Fackelmann’s task force, Jankuhn took a look at the radio set. Over the last few days, they’d had sporadic reception on it. When the customary mortar-round reveille had passed, the paymaster crawled out of the cellar. A new antenna was rigged up, a still-usable battery cannibalized from a shot-up car, and after a bit of tinkering they managed to find some music, quite clearly, on the short wave. Anticipation rose. ‘What’s he going to talk about? Wonder if he’ll mention Stalingrad?’ Hitherto, the regular army bulletin had never mentioned Stalingrad by name and had only spoken in vague terms about ‘heroic defensive actions in the east.’