Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

These suppositions continue to be disputed among historians even nowadays. They are, however, relatively unanimous regarding the situation facing the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1943. Despite the defeat of German forces at Stalingrad and Kursk, militarily the Soviet Union had still not achieved anything more than a stalemate with the Third Reich. Accordingly, the Germans still had a brief window in which to act. The circle of officers around Seydlitz in the BDO recognized that there was still a chance of averting total defeat for Germany, with all the consequences that would entail. In this respect, the contributions by the officers regarding Germany’s situation at the inaugural meeting of the BDO are very acute, sounding out the existing possibilities, making concrete suggestions, and anticipating what might happen if the war could not be brought to an end. Yet the calls to the army’s commanders, generals and other officers to act got no response. This had to do with the fact that the leadership of the Wehrmacht, though fully aware of the hopelessness of the war, was neither prepared nor in a position to think in political terms and banked on a diplomatic solution being found. The time window for action closed again with the Tehran Conference and the meeting of the Allied leaders from November to December 1943. Stalin was reassured by the imminent prospect of the Normandy invasions and the opening of a ‘Second Front’, while Churchill and Roosevelt accepted his plans for the postwar redrawing of borders. Henceforth, the sole aim was Germany’s unconditional capitulation, a decision that had major implications for the National Committee and the BDO. The proposed withdrawal to the borders of the Reich and the conclusion of a peace treaty was now supplanted by the defensive solution of ‘joining forces with the “Free Germany” movement’.

Von Seydlitz and the officers of the BDO fought tooth and nail against this new strategy, since at root it meant accepting precisely what they had tried to prevent by founding the BDO in the first place: namely the destruction and surrender of the Wehrmacht! But even when the situation of the German forces became even more hopeless, attempts by the National Committee and the League of Officers to persuade troops on the Ukrainian front who, at the beginning of February 1944, found themselves trapped in the Cherkassy Pocket to surrender likewise met with no success. The Soviet leadership had brought General von Seydlitz, General Korfes and Major Lewerenz right up to the front on this occasion. Yet their appeals via propaganda pamphlets, personal letters and tannoy announcements all fell on deaf ears. Instead, so great was their fear of Russian captivity that the encircled German troops tried on several occasions to break out, sustaining heavy losses in the process.

The ultimate failure of the BDO’s activities – in which, as a member of the editorial staff of the paper Free Germany , Heinrich Gerlach was also involved – did nothing to alter the fact that its founding had been an honourable attempt, in view of the worsening military situation, to save the German people from the worst losses and complete destruction of their country. In Scheurig’s estimation, ‘Seydlitz acted according to the same clear, irrefutable logic to which the German High Command was also party. He only acted “wrongly” insofar as the army and the people did nothing to liberate themselves from their corrupters.’ What was true of General von Seydlitz could also be said of most of the officers in the BDO and the National Committee. In the opinion of military historian Gerd R. Ueberschär: ‘The ranks of those who resisted National Socialism also included those members, officers and men alike, of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers. Despite being behind the barbed wire of POW camps and finding themselves in an extreme situation – not least in having to make common cause with Germany’s arch-enemy – they felt driven by a moral imperative, a sense of humanity and a love for their country and its people to join the fight against Hitler’s rule.’

Like most of his fellow captured officers, Heinrich Gerlach hoped that their founding of the BDO might allow them to intervene in the course of history. The traumatic after-effects of his experiences in the Cauldron at Stalingrad were still a vivid memory that gave him the impetus to do something. He could not rid his mind of terrible images of the battle. He remembered how divisional commanders had begged the commander-in-chief to ‘put an end to the senseless slaughter’. He knew that ‘twenty-two of the best German divisions and parts of other units’ had been wiped out. He’d learned that ‘the bodies of 147,200 dead German soldiers and officers were collected by the Russians and buried in mass graves on the battlefield’. And he’d heard about the judgement that Hitler would pass on the survivors of Stalingrad over the dining table: ‘The duty of those who fought at Stalingrad is to be dead!’ In his memoirs, written more than twenty years later, Gerlach would recall his feelings after General von Seydlitz’s closing address and the League’s rousing appeal to German officers (‘Calling all German generals and officers! Calling the people and the army!’):

Once again, images welled up of the sombre events on the Volga, in all their monstrous gravity and enormity. The appalling sacrifice ordered by a madman, unparalleled in its savagery. This was the answer. One by one, the delegates filed forward and added their signatures to the document.

The founding charter of the League of German Officers was also signed by captured soldiers and German exiles from the ‘National Committee for a Free Germany’. Even in the course of the inaugural meeting, there had been spontaneous fraternization between the BDO and the National Committee. Looking back, Count von Einsiedel took a very different view from Heinrich Gerlach, believing that with its incorporation into the National Committee the BDO had ‘fulfilled its task, so rendering its continued existence pointless’. Of course, this was not a view that the captive officers could take in 1943. The National Committee and the BDO, both of which were based in Lunyovo, were responsible for producing the paper Free Germany and running the radio station of the same name, which was headed by the communist Anton Ackermann. Alongside Heinrich Gerlach, the POWs from Lunyovo who made up the newspaper’s editorial staff were Major Homann, Major General von Lenski, First Lieutenant von Kügelgen and Corporal Kertzscher.

Gerlach already had experience of editorial work; prior to the founding of the BDO, as a member of the working party he was obligated to work on the Free Word , the forerunner of Free Germany . Unlike the Free Word , the aim of the newspaper of the National Committee was to win round officers and men to the anti-fascist cause through articles combining analysis with political argument. The large-format paper appeared weekly and was produced by the planographic process, which in this case meant that every single copy was printed by hand. The first edition of Free Germany had already appeared on 19 July 1943, containing the manifesto of the National Committee, which Rudolf Herrnstadt had played a principal part in drafting. Heinrich Gerlach was still in Susdal at that time. During his spell on the paper’s editorial staff, he was one of its most active contributors. Between 19 July 1943 and 3 November 1945, he would write twenty-one articles for the weekly paper, which ran for a total of 120 issues. This made the teacher from Elbing, as he styled himself several times in his pieces, one of the key shaping voices of the newspaper. From the executive committee of the BDO, only General von Seydlitz (with forty-two articles), Dr Korfes (twenty-seven) and Lattmann (twenty-five) were more frequent contributors. The involvement of Colonel Luitpold Steidle (twenty-one articles), Major Hetz (ditto) and First Lieutenant Bernt von Kügelgen (twenty-eight) was also decisive in giving the paper its particular character. Ultimately, however, final editorial control over the paper was wielded by another branch based in ‘Institute 99’ in Moscow.