Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

However, these finer points of narrative construction were as yet of no concern to Gerlach when he embarked on his novel project at Lunyovo in the summer of 1943. Other, more practical, concerns preoccupied him then. He was in need of paper, a commodity in short supply in a prison camp, and above all a typewriter. Alfred Kurella and the émigré actor and writer Fritz Erpenbeck, whose novel Emigrants (1939) was a favourite book among the inmates of Lunyovo, not only came to the rescue with paper, but also gave this literary novice the benefit of their experience. Eventually, Gerlach also acquired an old Remington typewriter, which he used on an almost daily basis. He would sit typing in the conference room until late at night.

At the same time as Gerlach was writing, another occupant of Lunyovo was also busy assembling material for a novel, with the provisional title Hitler’s Soldier . This was the exiled German author Theodor Plievier, who was known both in Germany and beyond for his anti-war novel of 1930, Des Kaisers Kuli ( The Kaiser’s Coolies ). Most of the officers held at Lunyovo had read it. Plievier had gone into exile in 1933, journeying to Moscow via Prague, Zurich, Paris and Oslo. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and threatened to capture Moscow, he had been evacuated to Tashkent along with other German writers like Johannes R. Becher, Gustav von Wangenheim, Adam Scharrer and Anton Gábor. Plievier returned to Moscow in 1942, where he was active on the NKFD. He used his visits to Lunyovo to find out how the military campaign was proceeding. Having neither served in the Wehrmacht nor experienced the Cauldron of Stalingrad at first hand, he would invite some of the surviving officers who had served there to come over for evenings and tell him about the battle. An added inducement for the officers were the cigars that Plievier handed out, and in this way he got to learn of the day-to-day progress of the war. He took notes at these meetings and would reappear a few days later with his first attempts at fictionalizing them. This time, roles were reversed and it was Plievier reading to the officers and enquiring after the factual accuracy of his account.

Gerlach did not want to have his confidence shaken, especially not by such a successful author, and so avoided participating in these soirées with Plievier. He felt more at ease among his fellow newspaper editors and chose this forum instead to present some completed excerpts from his novel. These included an episode depicting the desperate situation facing the encircled troops in the Zybenko sector. This piece was praised by Alfred Kurella and discussed in approving terms by the editorial board. It duly appeared in the 16 January 1944 edition of Free Germany , under the heading ‘What For?’ By this stage – only six months had passed since Gerlach embarked on his novel – he was already working on the second part and had completed 300 pages. It was an astonishing work rate. The published excerpt recounts how the central character, First Lieutenant Breuer, and his fellow officer Captain Gedig, who had returned voluntarily to the Stalingrad Cauldron, witness the sacrifice of two hundred men, who, acting on superior orders, make a futile attempt to defend a piece of high ground. Gradually the fate that awaits them dawns on the two men. The piece printed in Free Germany ends thus:

The commander makes a vague forward motion with his hand. There’s the hill, the position they’ve got to defend. The men’s faces, haggard from sickness and hunger, stare into the distant blackness, which is lit only by the muzzle-flare of the Russian artillery. But there are no trenches or pillboxes up there! The white expanse stretches out endlessly all around them, with clouds of powdery snow gusting across it. There’s no retreating that way. Anyone who isn’t struck by an enemy bullet will simply die of the bitter cold this icy January night. The unit fans out and disperses across the open ground. One by one, the men take up a prone position and are slowly enveloped by the white death shroud, as tracer bullets from Russian machine gun positions whistle overhead. No one calls out or asks a question, there’s not a sound. Only those who have given up all hope can be that dreadfully still. But this appalling silence ascends to heaven like one great painfully pressing question to which there is no answer from any quarter: What is this sacrifice for, in God’s name, for what?

At Kurella’s suggestion, though, Gerlach cut something from the excerpt. Originally, we learn that even the commanding general cannot contain himself when he receives the senseless order to hold the hill. At first, in the face of objections from his officers, he angrily implements the order while at the same time imploring them with tears in his eyes to appreciate his position. That was too much for Kurella. One of Hitler’s generals crying, he told Gerlach, struck him as too much of a cliché and as something that readers would find implausible. Even so, the author retained the emotional depiction in the novel itself. The full passage read: ‘He [i.e. the general] comes up to the silent captain and takes both of his hands in his. There are tears in his eyes again. He whispers, “It’s dreadful, I know. But there’s nothing I can do to help you!”’ The episode is also significant for the later plot progression and for Gerlach’s work on the manuscript in so far as it is at this point that the officers begin to realize how hopeless the Sixth Army’s predicament is:

In a blinding insight born of all that he has experienced over the past few days, the truth now dawns on Captain Gedig: the High Command… Army Group Manstein… No, these two hundred sacrificial lambs won’t save the Sixth Army. No one can save it now. It too is going to be put to the sword, pointlessly, senselessly… It’s all over!

Gerlach has the figure of Colonel von Hermann express what Breuer and Gerlach are feeling about the loss of the two hundred men:

‘It’s nothing short of criminal!’

The two officers sitting at the back of the bunker give a start. What was that? Did someone speak? Or are some thoughts so distressing and urgent that they can miraculously express themselves? The colonel up front there can’t possibly have said anything so outrageous. It’s just not possible! But then the two of them hear quite clearly what Colonel von Hermann says next:

‘And the worst thing is, there’s no way out… and woe betide anyone who tries to save his own skin after he’s had to demand this of his men!’

‘So, there’s no escape from here?’ thinks Breuer desperately. ‘Is there such a thing as a “must”? Is there really and truly no way out?’

Three months later, by Easter 1944, Gerlach had made significant progress on the manuscript. Conditions in the camp allowed him to write late into the night. Alfred Kurella supplied him with more paper and enquired every so often how the novel was proceeding. Gerlach, though, remained tight-lipped and read the pages he produced to just a small group of trusted officers, whom he encouraged to offer criticism. An authentic portrayal of what had occurred at Stalingrad was his top priority, and for that he needed feedback from other veterans of the battle.

While he was writing the novel, certain events took place that impinged particularly on Gerlach. A conspiracy against the National Committee in April 1944 unfairly made him the target of suspicion on the part of Walter Ulbricht. Ulbricht took Gerlach to task for waiting too long before informing General Lattmann about the plot. His criticism culminated in the accusation: ‘You’re not a good anti-fascist yet.’ A few weeks later, Ulbricht analysed what had happened in front of the executive council of the committee and summed up the situation thus, as Gerlach recalled: