Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

Major Kallweit, who had managed to get his tank squadron to the Don after all, fought alongside the other armoured formations at the bridgehead to ensure that the route remained open for the evacuation of the remaining units of the Sixth Army. By rapidly withdrawing the divisions fighting around Beketovka and with the aid of forces that had been quickly pulled back from elsewhere, it had been possible to establish a new southern front utilizing the old Russian positions in the Karpovka Valley. Despite their lack of strength in numbers, the German forces proved themselves capable of holding this defensive line – at least initially. The future boundaries of the ‘Stalingrad Cauldron’ began to take shape.

Accompanied by Unold and Breuer, Colonel von Hermann went in search of the Corps HQ in Peskovatka in order to receive new orders. Bombproof and extremely comfortable, this headquarters was situated in a series of sumptuous living and office quarters excavated by the Pioneer Corps at the foot of a steep hillside. During the meeting in the holy of holies of the headquarters’ commanding officer, Breuer sat in a wicker chair in the anteroom and flicked through a pile of illustrated magazines on a side table. Oh, look – a photo report from Russia, with the headline ‘A Young Lady Out and About in Kiev’! There she is in her smart outfit, gloves in hand, and holding her head with its pretty tumbling locks high as she strolls through ‘the ruined capital’, while a young ‘native Ukrainian’ pulls her large suitcase along beside her in a handcart. And in another shot, she’s shown wearing a chic bathing costume for ‘a spot of sunbathing on the banks of the Dnieper’ and flashing the photographer a friendly and carefree smile. In the background, people can be seen playing with a beach ball…

Breuer put the magazine down. What a picnic this war was for some people, he thought. He wondered if they had any idea how many sacrifices or deaths it took to enable starlets like Lilo Schulze or Jutta Mayer to swan around cities in Eastern Europe playing the role of a squeaky-clean figurehead of the new ‘master race’? He wasn’t at all bitter about it; he just felt a world apart from these people, from their lifestyles and way of thinking – decades ahead of them, in fact. So, was that what they were fighting for – for those kinds of people and their superficial world of selfish indulgence? No, it damn well wasn’t! For what, then? Maybe in the end they were all just fighting for themselves, in order that this trial by war might make them more mature, more rounded and better individuals. He for one knew he could never pick up from where he had left off and resume his former life, would never be able to lie on the beach in the sun like he had before, devoid of all thoughts and desires and without a care in the world. He’d never be able to rid himself of memories of this war. It had got under his skin and become an indissoluble, unforgettable part of his very being.

The elegantly dressed officers who briskly went about their business, passing through the anteroom, cast astonished and rather worried glances at the pallid, unshaven stranger in the mud-spattered greatcoat sitting there and staring vacantly into space.

Towards the end of the serious discussion that took place between colonels Hermann and Unold and the ageing general who was the Corps HQ commandant, the latter asked:

‘By the by, didn’t your division used to be part of Heinz’s Tank Corps?’

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ replied Unold, ‘until quite recently, in fact. General Heinz is our former divisional CO.’

‘Ah yes, that’s quite right, as I recall. Then it might well interest you to learn that Heinz and his chief of staff have just been placed under arrest.’

Hermann and Unold looked at the commandant in sheer disbelief.

‘Things have been happening thick and fast, gentlemen!’ the general went on. ‘The Russians, who pushed forward not just from Kletskaya but also further west, from Serafimovich, caught Heinz and his two Panzer divisions in a pincer movement. So Heinz took the perfectly natural decision to break out to the west, with the result that he brought the two divisions through virtually without loss. But apparently that went down very badly at High Command. They evidently took the view that he should have tried to break out to the east and join us in the Cauldron!’ Here, he gave a hollow laugh. ‘As if a man with orthodox general staff training should have anticipated the utterly brilliant plan of voluntarily allowing an entire army to become encircled! Well… In any event, he’s been arrested and demoted.’

Unold, deeply upset by this news, made as if to speak, but words failed him. Heinz had been one of the few men whose military skills he admired without envy or reserve, and it was shameful that this first-rate soldier should have been treated in such a disgraceful manner – he simply couldn’t fathom it. Colonel von Hermann, meanwhile, seemed to have turned even paler than usual, though his face betrayed no emotion.

‘You’re a divisional commander too now, Hermann,’ said the general, his eyes twinkling at the colonel from behind his spectacles. ‘Take care not to get yourself promoted to general too soon. It’s no fun at all these days!’

The vehicles of the divisional Staff HQ were parked up, far apart from one another, on a treeless expanse not far from the Don. Whereas on the other side of the river they’d had to struggle through thick drifts of winter snow, here there was only a light dusting that barely covered the short steppe grass. First Lieutenant Breuer stood alone, away from the vehicles, and looked out over the river to the west. The sharp wind cut into his face, ballooned out his capacious greatcoat and piled up the dry, powdery snow around his feet. Atop the bluffs on the far side of the Don, the launch rails of an enemy rocket battery that had taken up position there were silhouetted against the evening sky like a grille. Through his field glasses he could make out on the road that ran along the top of the cliffs long columns of Russian cavalry arriving from the north. Breuer looked at the dying sunset. The sun would still be shining down on his home town, but here it had already set… Yet along with this setting sun, the spectre of the twenty-fourth had also faded, for another month at least. A great feeling of calm washed over him. He recalled the day when he’d crossed the river down there heading from east to west, confident that he’d never have to return here again. When had that been? Just a few days ago? No, surely some years had passed since then… You won’t ever let us leave, will you, you terrible city on the Volga? No pangs of sentimental self-pity accompanied this thought, just a sober acknowledgement of reality. Stalingrad – you are our destiny!

It was the beginning of December. A keen east wind blew across the frozen white surface of the Volga. It whipped lacerating ice crystals into the frost-reddened faces of the soldiers up on the bluffs and got caught up in the ruins of the devastated city, where it rattled furiously at exposed rafters and sheets of corrugated iron. Suddenly breaking free, it raced on, out into the steppe, with even greater violence than before. Clouds of powdery snow hissed through the leaves of the wormwood growing there, piled up against the ice-bound vehicles and formed lines of drifts against the humped roofs of bunkers. The blizzard tore down the bare ravines, whipping its long white streamers over the soldiers who were cowering under tarpaulins in their shallow foxholes, defending the western front of the Stalingrad Cauldron. Nothing had resulted from General von Seydlitz’s letter of protest, not even a reprimand. In all likelihood, at the army group that High Command forwarded it to, without adding any comment of its own, it had simply found its way into the waste bin. General Paulus had withdrawn the encircled German forces to the line ordered by Hitler and, effective from the first of December, had been promoted to the rank of four-star general. Since the end of November, the Stalingrad Cauldron had assumed the definitive form it would take thereafter until its anticipated relief – ‘definitive’, that is, only in so far as the Russians were prepared to collude in this state of affairs. Thus far, that did indeed pretty much appear to be the case. In the various military commands, officers huddled round to study the map showing the current positions of forces.