Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

Over the next few days, Lakosch didn’t utter a word. His jollity and his penchant for tricks and practical jokes had vanished. An alien, angry flicker now inhabited the depths of his once-gentle eyes. Geibel, puzzled by this sudden and inexplicable change of character – for obvious reasons, the kitchen orderlies had kept quiet about the incident – gave his comrade a wide berth whenever he could. Breuer felt sorry for the little driver. He supposed Lakosch had heard something about the deterioration of their situation, and so made some futile attempts to cheer him up.

On the sixteenth of December, a few days after Army Group Don had begun its push towards the Cauldron, the Red Army resumed its attack on the middle section of the Don in numbers. This time, the fighting took place west of the sector from Kletskaya to Serafimovich. Mobile units broke through the positions held by the Eighth Italian and Third Romanian armies, and within just a few days had formed a salient of up to two hundred kilometres in depth. They penetrated as far forward as the gates of the important supply centre at Millerovo and, after taking control of the airfield at Tazinskaya, two hundred and fifty kilometres west of Stalingrad, once again severed the crucial supply line to the Cauldron. This breakthrough had disastrous consequences for the German military leadership. Six German, six Italian and two Romanian divisions had been smashed. They had to be replaced by forces that had been earmarked for the siege of Stalingrad. With the help of such contingents and of new units hastily assembled from troops who had either been due to go on leave or who’d been assigned to the baggage train, the Germans finally managed to fight the Russian shock armies to a standstill in the depression of the great Don elbow.

While these operations were still going on, the Russians, unhampered by any attempts to break out of the Cauldron, suddenly launched a surprise and well-supported attack on the flanks of the wedge that Colonel General Hoth had driven forward. Hoth found himself in danger of being cut off. Shortly before Christmas, he was forced to turn back. His detachments were driven back beyond Kotelnikovo, the point from which they had begun their thrust, incurring heavy losses in the process.

Colonel von Hermann had just returned from a discussion of the situation at the Corps. He sat in front of the campaign map, which showed broad red lines slicing through the black arrows that pointed in the direction of the Cauldron. His fingers drummed on the tabletop.

Then he looked up at Unold, who was leaning against the wall opposite him, staring at the ceiling.

‘So, Unold,’ he said, ‘that’s the end of the dream, I’m afraid. High Command has told us that we’re in it now potentially for the long haul… Nice Christmas present, eh? Plus they’ve also let it be known that under no circumstances should we tell the men about the business with Hoth.’

‘Very wise move, too, I should say!’ replied the lieutenant colonel. ‘Your average foot soldier exists on a diet of food and booze and illusions. If we start coming clean with them, the whole house of cards would come crashing down within a fortnight.’

‘I don’t share your jaded view of the German soldier,’ the colonel rejoined after a moment’s thought. ‘The prerequisite for any military success is trust. How can we expect our troops to put their trust in us if we don’t reciprocate? I’ve been through thick and thin alongside my men, even when we’ve been in some really tight spots, and I’ve never had cause to regret that. Nowadays, smoke and mirrors seems to be the thing, but it’s a dangerous game. When the scales drop from people’s eyes, deception can come back to bite you big time. But really there’s no point in discussing it. Orders are orders.’

The colonel’s gaze came to rest, pensively, on the photograph of his son in front of him on his desk. Ferdinand lived in a world of illusions, too. But he was allowed to; he was still young, after all. You needed such things at that age. He’d learn soon enough that the soldiering profession was a bit like the life of a monk – a constant state of renunciation, even to the point of renouncing one’s better judgement.

‘Yes, Unold,’ he said, picking up the thread of their conversation, ‘that puts paid to any idea of a breakout. Shame, I’d have really relished that! Now we have to sit around here twiddling our thumbs and wait for better weather, while the others are fighting… I’m not stuck on the title of “Tank Commander” – it’s only a rank on paper, when all’s said and done. I put in a request today to be transferred to a front-line division.’

Unold became animated. ‘I completely understand and sympathize with your position, Colonel, sir! It’s just the same for me. I feel like a spare part here. Right now, the German people can’t afford to let people with my kind of education stagnate in a posting like this. And so I’ve taken the liberty’ – here, he handed the colonel a piece of paper – ‘of putting down in writing a formal request for my own transfer.’

Colonel von Hermann cast his eye over the sheet, which was covered in large letters, then looked up. ‘What’s the meaning of this, Unold?’ he enquired, visibly taken aback. ‘You’re asking to join the SS? There aren’t any SS units here in the Cauldron. Does that mean you want to leave the Cauldron?’

The lieutenant colonel bit his lip. His cheekbones, which always looked like they had thin parchment stretched over them, appeared even more prominent than usual. He avoided the colonel’s searching look and didn’t reply. Von Hermann passed the letter back to him. ‘I strongly advise you,’ he said icily, ‘not to submit this request. At the very least, you’d be laying yourself open to – hmm, how shall I put it? – misunderstandings regarding your motives.’

Unold screwed up the piece of paper in his hand. Red flushes appeared on his face. He seemed to be searching for a suitable rejoinder. But when none came, he turned on his heel and left the room.

Christmas was drawing near. But no guiding star appeared to the men fighting in the Stalingrad Cauldron. The firmament of their hopes and yearnings was overcast with a dense veil of gloom. Battle, frost and hunger came riding over the remote foreign wasteland that was now their home like three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and found ever richer pickings among anything living. In the graveyards at Karpovskaya and Pestshanka, and at Gorodishche and Gumrak, where those who had fallen in the bloody fighting during the autumn lay buried, the rows of hummocks of brown earth multiplied, mercifully cloaked overnight by a mantle of snow, while the bare coppice of wooden crosses with names and dates written on them in black kept growing by the day. The Place of the Skull – the Golgotha of the three hundred thousand! The crucifix of Stalingrad! In time, the wooden crosses will rot to nothing, and new life will blossom once more on the neglected graves. But the invisible crucifix of Stalingrad will go on looming over space and time, standing for ever as an admonishment and a warning.

Lakosch, too, had his own cross to bear. Increasingly he would lapse into dark brooding, for which the endless days of aimless waiting afforded him ample time. For one thing, there was the demise of his Senta, which upset him more than the death of many a comrade; and for another, the military situation, which – this much he had gathered from the telephone conversations he’d overheard in the bunker – was pretty dire; and last, but by no means least, the business with the captured pilot. All that stuff the bloke had said about revolution and socialism – that was all one big con, of course. He for one wasn’t taken in by it for a moment! After all, he’d seen a thing or two with his own eyes in the Soviets’ ‘Promised Land’. The peasants’ hovels with their straw roofs and earth floors, and so much filth and squalor inside that you’d rather sleep out in the open. The Russian peasants didn’t even own a hammer and nails, let alone a spanner. Was that supposed to be socialism’s great ‘achievement’, then?