Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

And once more he picks up the secret decree that came to him a few days ago. It is a list of the names of military chaplains who have violated the military code ‘regarding distributing books, writing to relatives, etc’. To deter others, notice is given of the severe punishments meted out to them for such transgressions.

‘No,’ the padre says out loud, ‘I won’t be banned from being a Christian or living my life in a Christian way! And if they punish me for it, that will be the cross I have to bear!’

Christmas 1942 . His pen glides over the paper. Peters’s hand shakes; the incredible stress of the day just past threatens to overwhelm him. He finds it hard to order his thoughts. He thinks of the doctors who have come to see their life-saving occupation as a mere manual skill in which their hearts play no part. And the thought fills him with a nightmarish dread. Is that happening to you now, as well? Faced with all this appalling suffering, are you growing a thicker skin? Fervently, from the bottom of his heart, he starts to pray:

‘Dear Lord, support me in my frailty! May Your spirit light my way and fortify me! God, give me strength!’

On the second day of Christmas, quite unexpectedly, the mail turned up after all. A handful of letters buried under a mountain of newspapers. Corporal Herbert, who was tasked with sorting through the pile, pushed over to Breuer an envelope the size of a cigarette packet, almost a quarter of which was covered with a blue airmail sticker. The lieutenant recognized the spidery child’s handwriting of his elder son, who had been attending school for a year now. With a smile, he unfolded the little sheet of children’s writing paper and read:

DEAR DADDY

Lots of happiness and blessings to you at Christmas. I like going to school. Our teacher’s name is Herr Kräkel. I haven’t been given the cane or the slipper. So that you can be happy too in Russia, I am sending you a picture. I painted it for you myself with love. Mummy says you are coming home on leave soon. Hannes is still too stupid to understand, but I get very scared sometimes. Hello from,

Breuer put down the letter and picked up the drawing, which had slipped out of the envelope on to the table. Drawn in crayon, it showed a collection of wonky little houses, green trees with crowns like balls of cotton wool and a brown path, and looming above all this a yellow church with barred windows and a huge tower. Above this church, a red sun with broad yellow beams radiating from it was just about to be swallowed by a thick grey cloud. But, as if by some miracle, a second, even larger sun still shone down on the small houses.

Breuer folded the drawing and placed it carefully inside his pay-book.

‘You’re quite right, my boy,’ he thought to himself, moved by what he’d seen. ‘One sun really isn’t enough to illuminate this gloomy old world of ours.’

Lakosch received a letter too. When he caught sight of the envelope, he turned as white as a sheet. The letter was from his mother. She was writing to him for the first time since that massive bust-up, years ago. He stood up and left the bunker. Out in the open, he tore open the envelope. The frost made his eyes water as he struggled to decipher the crooked lines painstakingly scrawled by an unpractised hand on a sheet of graph paper.

DEAR SON

I got your letters and your money safely. You wrote that you are in Stalingrad, and Frau Ebertsche told me that you’re encircled there and will probably all die, so now maybe you’ll see at last that your late father was right, and understand who’s really to blame for all of this. And now that you’re having to learn this at first hand, perhaps it’ll set you back on the right track. This is your mother telling you this, and I know that when you read it you’ll feel like murdering me like you did your father. But I don’t care, I’m an old woman, and so many young people are dying right now. The Müllers’ eldest has been killed in North Africa, and Frieda Kalubzig’s lost her right hand at the factory. Life’s just too hard and my back’s given up the ghost too. They came and took your old suit for the rag-and-bone collection yesterday. Erna says hello, she can’t write herself, she’s going out with a sergeant from a flak battery now. Try to make it back in one piece if you can. All the best, dear Karl, from your Mother.

Lakosch’s small hands were turning blue from the cold, and the wind was driving stinging ice crystals into his face, but he didn’t notice. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the lines on the paper, which brought back a powerful surge of past memories.

That afternoon, Breuer and Wiese found themselves alone in the bunker. Sonderführer Fröhlich had sought leave to go and visit the quartermaster, Captain Siebel, in one of the neighbouring gorges, and the men were off doing the rounds of their comrades in their foxholes nearby to wish them season’s greetings. Breuer was leafing through one of the newspapers that had just come, while Lieutenant Wiese was reading a small volume of poetry. The Christmas wreath was still hanging from the ceiling, though all the shine had faded from the candles.

‘That was a fine speech you gave on Christmas Eve, Breuer,’ Wiese said without warning. He put his book down and looked at the first lieutenant.

‘How on earth did you ever become a National Socialist?’

Breuer looked up at him, taken aback by his tone.

‘I mean,’ Wiese explained, ‘anyone who really believes in Christmas can’t possibly be a National Socialist.’

Breuer was visibly rattled by this ambush. To buy himself time, he deliberately made a meal out of cutting and lighting one of the Christmas cigars before replying.

‘I don’t understand you, Wiese. What’s National Socialism got to do with Christmas? Christmas, well… it’s the fixed point in the onward rush of time. It’s an opportunity for quiet contemplation and reflection. It’s precisely at Christmas that I’m reminded how much of a Christian I am, despite the fact that I don’t go to church every Sunday. That all has to do with faith, and with your outlook on the world, not with politics. The NSDAP is a political party. I don’t see how the two things can’t coexist.’ Wiese smiled sceptically at this; irritated, Breuer went on, now speaking even faster.

‘How did I become a National Socialist? Well, after the thirtieth of January 1933, when I realized Hitler wasn’t only a superb propagandist but a statesman of real stature too, I joined the party, as one of the “March hares”, [3] ‘March Hares’ – a disparaging term (German: Märzhasen ) used by old Nazis who had been in the party since its inception in the early 1920s to refer to new party members who rushed to join after Hitler’s accession to power in early 1933. so to speak. It seemed to me fate had brought us the NSDAP to free us from the shackles of the Versailles treaty and to create a Greater Germany once more. And it achieved that, too, without any bloodshed. So that’s why I’m a National Socialist, see – and a staunch one at that.’

‘No, you’re not, Breuer, not really,’ said Wiese, still training his unsettling gaze on the first lieutenant. ‘Not nowadays, anyhow. The thing is, National Socialism wasn’t content with being just a political party. It wanted to become a “movement”: a world view that reached into every aspect of the way people lived their lives. Are you really telling me that’s somehow passed you by, Breuer? Or saying that they haven’t come round to check on where you hang your portrait of Hitler… or “suggested” that you take out a subscription to the party newspaper? Haven’t you been lectured about “God” being simply the law of cause and effect, and urgently advised to turn your back on the Church? Has nobody ever interfered in your family’s private business or the way you bring up your children? Or tried to make you hate other peoples, or swallow that arrogant shit about the superiority of your own race, or preached you the gospel of brute force?