Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Leave him be, Father! Not on Christmas Eve, of all days, please!’ Frau Helgers interjected.

‘So, what about the Russian girls?’ Eva teased him, sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘Come on, tell me how many hearts you’ve already broken, you rascal! Who’s prettier: the peasant girls in the Ukraine or Cherkessian girls? Or maybe the young Communist girls with their “free love”, hmm? Maybe they’re more to your taste?’

She playfully tugged the captain’s ear. He turned red, like a schoolboy.

‘Evi, please!’ he stammered, half-indignant and half in embarrassment. ‘I… I haven’t… that is, I didn’t… Besides, you’ve got quite the wrong impression. That stuff about “free love” is way off the mark! Russian girls are much shyer than German girls. They don’t even know how to bat their eyelashes at a man!’

‘Oho, so you tried it on, did you, you philanderer, and got the brush-off, eh?’

Saying this, she dug her sharp fingernails into the captain’s ear lobe. His future father-in-law smiled knowingly at the captain from over his pince-nez.

‘Come, come, my friend, that’s not quite true now, is it? This entry here on Bolshevism’s got some quite interesting things to say about love and marriage in the Soviet Union. I reckon I might have to chuck that particular volume away! Eva’ll be having sleepless nights if she reads that.’

‘Ach, that’s all a load of nonsense!’ muttered the captain indignantly. ‘Believe me, I know what I’m talking about! Besides, there are no girls left in Stalingrad anyhow.’

Eva removed her hand from her fiancé’s shoulder and sat up. A shadow flitted across her face.

‘In Stalingrad?’ she said in a flat tone of voice. ‘I thought you said you weren’t in Stalingrad any more!’ Captain Gedig bit his lip.

‘No, of course not,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘We left there ages ago. I was just using it as an example.’

‘When the war’s over, they’re going to have to rework the entry on Russia from top to bottom, in any event,’ said the old man, still fixated on his pet subject of the encyclopaedia. ‘It’ll look quite a bit different then. The regional party leader here gave a talk recently about the plans for a New Order in the east. That was really fascinating, I can tell you! They’re aiming to set up four great Imperial Commissariats. Ukraine and the Eastern Territories, they exist already, and in addition to those, there’ll be the Caucasus and Russia. Moscow will be razed to the ground. It’ll simply be wiped off the map.’

He’d stood up and walked over to the map on the wall, where a forest of little paper swastika flags marked the line of the front.

‘That’s probably the best way to go about things, too – cut out this running sore once and for all, root and branch! And then there’s the Crimea; that’s going to be made an integral part of the empire, a Reichsgau . Bet that surprised you, eh? Herr Ley’s got plans to site a huge “Strength Through Joy” camp there!’

The captain found himself becoming increasingly angry at the smug, presumptuous and clueless complacency of their bourgeois outlook.

‘I really wish,’ he said, more vehemently than he intended, ‘you could come to Russia one time and see things for yourself. Then you wouldn’t get such stupid ideas in your heads! There are a hundred and eighty million people there who know exactly what they want, so you can’t just go treating them like they’re some negro tribe! At the very least they’ve got the right to self-determination. You need to win people’s hearts and minds, not oppress them. But thus far we haven’t made the slightest effort to make any friends there. And what’s the upshot of that, I ask you? We’re hated wherever we go, and we’re forced to deal with passive resistance and a partisan movement that makes our lives more difficult by the day.’

‘So, do you think the Russians are even capable of governing themselves?’ the old man flared up. ‘We’ve had plenty of opportunity to see what happens when you let them do that!’

‘There you two go, at each other’s throats again!’ wailed Frau Helgers. ‘Always the same old song. Just let it lie for once – you’ll never agree.’

‘Very well, whatever you say,’ Bailiff Helgers mumbled appeasingly. ‘But just explain one thing for me if you would, Werner. I’m not sure where to put my flag down here around Stalingrad any more. Whereabouts does the front run now? One moment the Army High Command report mentions defensive battles in Stalingrad and then in the next breath talks about heavy fighting in the Don elbow… but that’s a long way west of the city! What’s going on?’

The captain shrugged his shoulders uneasily.

‘Well, I don’t know for certain myself,’ he said finally. ‘There appear to be some breaches in the front at places… you’d best leave this sector open until the situation becomes clearer.’

‘I do think,’ replied the old man, ‘that the Wehrmacht reports ought to be more accurate. Confusing statements like that just put people on edge. Why, just the day before yesterday, Mother came back all in a tizz from the baker’s, where someone had said that an entire army had been encircled at Stalingrad! People are very susceptible to such rubbish.’

‘Turn the wireless on, would you, Eva dear?’ Frau Helgers said. ‘Maybe there’s something sensible on by now. Goebbels will have stopped handing out Christmas presents to children.’

The radio was broadcasting the Christmas hook-up with German forces on various fronts. From the loudspeaker came the sounds of singing and accordion playing. Reporters at the fronts gave colourful accounts of how the troops were spending Christmas: on Crete, in Narvik and North Africa and on the high seas. The same happy festive mood came across from all these far-flung locations. But all of a sudden, the presenter announced in sombre tones:

‘Attention, attention – we’re now going over to Stalingrad!’

Then came the sound of someone talking. His voice sounded distant and muffled, like he was speaking from a cellar.

‘There’s no Christmas spirit or Christmas tree in evidence here. The only things lighting up the sky are the glow of flares and the flash of shell bursts. There’s no lull or relief for the men here, just relentless, intense fighting that places an enormous strain on our hard-pressed troops…’

‘That’s quite enough of that, thank you – Eva, turn it off, would you please?’ Frau Helgers said quietly. ‘It’s so awful. Those poor, poor men… Ah, this dreadful war! When will it ever end?’

Eva went up to her fiancé and took his head in her hands. Her eyes scanned his face intently.

‘Tell me honestly, my love,’ she implored him, ‘you’re not really going back to Stalingrad, are you?’

Captain Gedig gently removed her hands. He avoided looking directly at her.

‘Absolutely not, Eva,’ he replied tensely. ‘I’ve already told you. Whatever gave you that idea?’

Eva Helgers and Werner Gedig stood on the station platform under the dim bluish light cast by a few cowled blackout lamps. Dressed in his flowing greatcoat and officer’s peaked cap, he once more exuded the atmosphere of the front. The two of them remained silent. They still had much to talk about – so much, in fact, that words alone were not enough. Acting on a sudden whim, the captain felt in the inner pocket of his coat.

‘It’s just occurred to me… Here, Evi, take this cash. There’s eight hundred marks there. I was going to pay it into the bank, but I forgot.’

Eva hesitantly took the banknotes.

‘Why don’t you take them with you?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You can pay the money into your account from there.’