Heinrich Gerlach: Breakout at Stalingrad

‘German Cross’ (German: Deutsches Kreuz in Gold ) – the German Cross in Gold was a Nazi Party decoration showing a black swastika on a large white disc and surrounding golden sunburst design. Its size and gaudiness prompted its nicknames Spiegelei (‘fried egg’) and Ochsenauge (‘bullseye’).

‘picture-story by Wilhelm Busch’ – the cautionary tale ‘Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of Corinth’ ( Diogenes und die bösen Buben von Korinth ) by the nineteenth-century German illustrator Wilhelm Busch. In it, the boys decide to play a joke on Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who was famous for living in a barrel, by setting his home rolling down a hill. They get their comeuppance when they are flattened by it.

‘that famous painting by Spitzweg’ – The Poor Poet ( Der arme Poet ; 1839), by the nineteenth-century German painter Carl Spitzweg, is one of the most famous examples of the Biedermeier period of art, characterized by its choice of homely, sentimental themes. It shows a struggling poet living in a rundown garret and composing his works under an umbrella to protect himself from a leaking roof.

‘You can’t mock God’s justice’ – quotation from St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, chapter 6 verse 7.

Stalino – former name of the city of Donetsk, Ukraine.

ushankas – Russian army hat with fur-lined earflaps.

Christos voskresty! – ‘Christ is risen!’

Ya svyashchennik! – ‘I’m a priest!’

‘this ingenious rebus’ – the German word for a fir tree is Tanne ; replacing the first letter with an ‘S’ gives ‘Sanne’, the commander’s name.

‘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!’)

Organisation Todt – a civil and military engineering organization in Nazi Germany. It was responsible for large-scale civil engineering projects in pre-war Germany, such as the construction of the early autobahns. It became notorious for the use of slave labour during the Second World War. When it is mentioned later in this chapter with the comment in parenthesis ‘the name says it all!’, this is a pun on the name of the organization; it was named after its founder Fritz Todt, but Tod in German also means ‘death’.

The Alcazar – in a speech on 30 January 1943 in the Sports Palace in Berlin, Hitler made the following statement on Stalingrad: ‘Every German will one day speak in solemn awe of this battle, and will recall that, in spite of everything, the foundation of Germany’s victory was laid here. They will speak of a Langemarck of daring, an Alcazar of tenacity , a Narvik of courage, and a Stalingrad of sacrifice.’ The allusion was to the defence of the Alcazar in Toledo by Franco’s Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Hube and Jaenecke – for Hube, see note on page 265; General Erwin Jaenecke was, like Hube, one of the last high-ranking officers to be flown out Stalingrad before the final German defeat.

‘Pliquet’ – a thinly disguised allusion by Gerlach to General Wolfgang Pickert, commander of the Ninth Flak Division, who flew out of the Stalingrad Cauldron on 13 January 1943.

‘Beck, Fritsch, Blaskowitz, etc. – the names of German Wehrmacht generals who were openly critical of the Nazi leadership, and in some cases of atrocities carried out by the SS, but who were sidelined, killed or forced to recant their position.

‘He who sets the direction, course and path of the clouds…’ – a line from the hymn ‘ Befiehl du deine Wege …’ (1653) by Paul Gebhardt.

The following list comprises a mixture of Nazi slogans and names of policy initiatives, snatches of nationalistic and popular songs of the period, and excerpts from speeches predominantly by Adolf Hitler but also by Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring. Where Gerlach has quoted a line of the popular wartime song ‘Lili Marleen’ – as performed by the German singer Lale Andersen (‘ aus der Erde Grund – grüßt dich im Traume …’) – rather than offer a literal translation, I have taken the liberty of substituting a line from Vera Lynn’s contemporaneous version of the song, which will be more familiar to English readers.

Nu shto? – ‘What do you think?’