Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

On the drive back, Unold kept glancing across at the taciturn von Hermann, who seemed not to have noticed the smug look of ‘told-you-so!’ satisfaction on the lieutenant colonel’s face. The colonel hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory at the meeting. On the other hand, he, Unold, had earned himself some brownie points. Despite everything, the top brass had ultimately accepted his suggestion and opted for the designation ‘fortress battalions’.

Colonel von Hermann, though, wasn’t a man to duck an assignment just because it displeased him. He duly set about assembling the fortress battalions with his customary diligence. He found himself constantly on the move and the telephone was forever ringing off the hook in Unold’s office. Their prime concern was to try to exploit the manpower resources of the signals sections. They were then to be joined by the numerous logistics units who were holed up in remote balkas somewhere, leading a nomadic existence. The disbandment of all the artillery formations that could no longer be supplied with munitions was also authorized, while the sole rocket regiment was subsumed almost in its entirety, including its staff officers, into the organizational structure of the fortress battalions.

Yet it took some time for all these measures to take effect. In order to put something in place immediately, however, their own division was scoured once more for infantry reinforcements. Unold was in a hurry to get this done. It seemed as if he couldn’t expedite the breakup of the division quickly enough. In the first instance the ‘Eichert Battalion’ was revived, with the addition of drivers and artillerymen, and rechristened ‘Fortress Battalion I’. This unit, to which Lieutenant Dierk was also assigned, with his two quadruple flak guns, cut a very sorry figure where its leadership and equipment were concerned. As early as the first days of January, it was dispatched to the western front of the Cauldron. Almost simultaneously, Fortress Battalion II was formed from elements of the tank division’s signals section.

This restructuring of the Staff HQ condemned the Intelligence Section to complete inactivity. Breuer felt sure that Unold would wind up the section, but nothing of the sort occurred. Ultimately, Breuer was forced to go and see the lieutenant colonel to request a transfer to one of the new battalions. He was driven not by ambition or a sense of duty; rather, it was an act of sheer desperation. Since his discussions with Wiese he had become scared of his own thoughts. He found all this sitting around, this grinding monotony, intolerable. He had to do something! Work, slave away till he dropped from exhaustion, fight, shoot, freeze and fall in battle – it was all the same to him. Just so long as he didn’t have to think any more!

Unold received him with uncommon friendliness.

‘No, Breuer,’ he said, clapping him on the shoulder, ‘it’s not going to happen. You can forget that right now! The division’s pretty much on its last legs, I know, but the few of us left here on the staff should at least stick together for as long as we can. We’ve always got along well, I think, so we shouldn’t just scatter to the four winds like a pack of dogs!’

He smiled but avoided Breuer’s gaze.

‘The thing is, when we’ve finished assembling the fortress battalions here – and that’ll be the case in about a fortnight – we’ll be surplus to requirements. A complete divisional staff full of valuable professionals – just think what that means! The 384th have already shipped out, and the 94th, and there are rumours that the 79th will soon be on its way too… so we’d better stick together, old boy!

A roll call of all the remaining members of the Staff HQ took place on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve outside the chief of operations’ bunker. The little band of men formed up in line, with the officers on the right. A bitter northeasterly wind was blowing. It cut through the men’s clothes and gnawed through the frozen flesh right down to their bones. Most of them were wearing balaclavas or earmuffs. Shivering, Breuer stamped his feet to try to stave off the cold. ‘Hope this doesn’t take long,’ he thought to himself, ‘otherwise I can kiss my ears and nose goodbye!’ After a few minutes, Colonel von Hermann appeared. Captain Engelhard stepped forward and saluted. With his woollen balaclava, which also had a section protecting his nose, he looked like a knight of old in chain mail. The colonel had no coat or cap, but seemed oblivious to the cold. He told the men to stand at ease and then addressed them. The wind tore the words from his mouth, making them sound curt and jerky.

‘Comrades! The new year is almost upon us. We’ve no idea what it holds in store for us – liberation or defeat. We stand alone here, far from home, fighting what seems like a losing battle. The worst is yet to come. We’re facing a dark future. But there’s one thing we do know: there’s a Western Front in this war too, and it’s keeping the war at bay from Germany. And the fact that it’s there and holding firm is due in no small part to our efforts. We’re tying down powerful enemy forces here in Stalingrad. If not for that, the enemy might already have broken through the hard-pressed Eastern Front. If we’re fated to die, then our sacrifice will not have been for nothing… we have to believe that this sacrifice has not been in vain. Firm in that belief, let’s go forward into the new year. Long live Germany!’

Fated to die? Our sacrifice not in vain?

The men looked at one another. What was up with the colonel today? It wasn’t like him to talk in such an illogical way! After all, Hitler had sent the men at Stalingrad a New Year’s greeting (it had just been announced that same afternoon) in which he said: ‘You can rely on me with rock-like confidence!’ The Führer had given his word, loud and clear. There was no room for doubt or interpretation there!

At twenty-two-hundred hours, a protracted rumbling noise drove the men out of their bunkers. A ghostly yet magnificent spectacle was unfolding against the night sky. Flares of all colours, pearl strings of tracer bullets and the brief flashes of artillery rounds, Stalin organs and mortars engulfed the whole area in a ring of fire. Never before had the limits of the Cauldron been so graphically demonstrated to them, and never before had they felt the reality of this prison they were trapped in so keenly.

‘So, there are the borders of our little domain!’ said Breuer to Lieutenant Wiese. ‘The Russians are welcoming the new year. They have good reason to celebrate.’

‘What were the names of those two Roman consuls who were defeated at the Battle of Cannae that time?’ asked Wiese. The question was so odd that Breuer could only turn and look at him in astonishment.

‘Wasn’t one of them called Aemilius Paulus?’ said Wiese, then quite out of the blue he asked, ‘Do you really think we saved the Eastern Front?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the reports you get from the Corps every day have been consistently telling us since mid-December that the Russians are withdrawing significant forces from the Cauldron front. They’ve hardly any tanks left here! And it’s clear that, for the time being at least, they can afford to throw everything they’ve got against Rostov and the Don elbow. Or do you think the Russian top brass hasn’t been kept closely informed of Hitler’s order banning us from attempting a breakout? And that we couldn’t break out any longer even if we wanted to? Even if there wasn’t a single Russian soldier facing us any more, we couldn’t move an inch!’

Breuer gave a deep sigh. ‘Dear God, Wiese, you’re truly abominable!’ he said in an agonized voice. ‘The colonel told us that we have to believe! And he’s right. How can you even bear to go on if you’ve lost all faith?’