Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Well, things’ll be different from now on!’ he says.

Attached to a board on the wall is a radio receiver. The daily army bulletin is being broadcast on it, sounding distant and fuzzy – bland reports of successful defensive actions somewhere or other. From time to time the programme is drowned out by the mocking voice of a jamming station repeating over and over again the same intrusive message, uttered in drawling tones:

‘Death to Hitler! What’s – going on – at Stalingrad? – German Army High Command – is lying – to the people!’

‘How many bunkers are there in this sector, as a matter of fact?’ asks the captain.

‘Four in all. Old Russian bunkers,’ replies the lieutenant. Giving an irritated grunt, he turns off the radio, puts its cover back on and puts the field-grey-coloured box with his other possessions, which he’s already gathered together ready to leave. Eichert shakes his head pensively.

‘We can’t build anything here, see?’ the lieutenant continues. ‘There’s no wood. Plus you daren’t show yourself above ground in daylight. One of those men you just saw on the sled there got hit straight after stepping out of the bunker. They got the corporal who went out to try to retrieve him as well. It’s sheer bloody hell here!’

‘Is that really all?’ Eichert asks, playing with a hand grenade he’s picked up from the floor. ‘I mean, the four bunkers…’

‘Yes, that’s it. Otherwise we’ve only got foxholes in the snow, with tarpaulins over them.’

In parting, the captain does a tour of inspection around the sector with the first lieutenant. Cautiously, sometimes crawling on their stomachs for long sections, they pick their way from one foxhole to the next, and are often forced by the glare of flares or machine-gun fire to press themselves flat to the ground for minutes on end. The Russians are very lively; they seem to sense that a changeover is happening. From somewhere comes a flickering reddish glow. In a small dip, four men are sitting round an open fire, including the sentry from the B-position, code name ‘Erich’.

‘What the devil?’ Eichert hisses at them indignantly. ‘Are you out of your tiny minds? You’ve lit a fire out here, where the enemy can hear every word? The Russians’ll pick you off in the blink of an eye!’

The soldiers stare at the captain uncomprehendingly and reproachfully. Surprise, surprise – it’s a bunch of greenhorns!

‘But there’s another sentry up front, Captain, sir! Surely nothing can happen if he’s there?’

Eichert soon whips them into shape with some short, sharp commands. It is with very mixed feelings that he returns to the bunker. The first lieutenant, on the other hand, is extremely animated.

‘It’s really great to see all the foxholes occupied again!’ he exclaims. Momentarily overcome by sad memories, he quietly adds: ‘You know, just three days ago it looked the same, exactly the same…’

But his melancholy passes. He nervously rummages in all corners of the bunker to check he hasn’t left anything behind. He no longer even bothers to conceal his delight at being able to get away from this place at last.

‘Break a leg, then, as they say, Captain!’ he says in parting, shaking Eichert’s hand repeatedly like he’s thanking him for something. ‘I hope you have better luck than we did!’

The captain and his adjutant look at one another in silence. The inevitable, the inescapable envelops them in its eerie embrace.

Lieutenant Dierk personally marshals the men of his company into their foxholes, which have been lined with some mouldy straw and old rags. As a flak officer, he’s unused to infantry combat, but in comparison with these poor little wretches with their helpless questions he sounds to himself like an old hand at trench warfare. The men cannot grasp what’s being asked of them. It was bad enough beforehand, but at least then they had a roof over their heads and a bit of warmth. And now they’re supposed to crawl into these holes in the ground, in their half-starved and weak condition, with no winter clothing, and lie here throughout the freezing nights and the days without budging, and not even able to lift their heads? They’re expected to lie here with no end in sight, even if that’s being wounded or killed? This just can’t be right! It’s sheer madness! This isn’t war any more; it’s nothing but murder: futile mass murder!

A short and slight artilleryman clutches at the company leader’s arm in a very unmilitary fashion and whispers: ‘Lieutenant, Hitler wouldn’t leave us in the lurch here, would he, sir? Does he even know what it’s like here? Someone really ought to let him know, Lieutenant! He wouldn’t allow this, surely, Lieutenant!’

Lieutenant Dierk feels like there’s a lump in his throat stifling his words. Back in the day, when he’d still been a Hitler Youth leader, rousing pep talks had tripped off his lips so easily. But now he finds himself tongue-tied. Inform the Führer – yeah, if only it were that easy! Not long ago that commanding general, the one with only one arm [1] ‘only one arm’ – an allusion to General Hans-Valentin Hube, who had lost his right arm at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Hube commanded the 16th Panzer Division during Operation Barbarossa and Fall Blau (‘Case Blue’), the German army’s summer offensive in southern Russia in the summer of 1942. He was later given command of the XIV Panzer Corps. Hube, an extremely able and widely respected commander among both fellow officers and men, was ordered by Hitler to fly out of the Stalingrad Cauldron in January 1943 but refused; in response, Hitler ordered members of the SS to fly in and force him to leave at gunpoint. who’d fought his way to the banks of the Volga north of Stalingrad the previous autumn, had flown to the Führer’s headquarters in a towering rage, determined to tell Hitler some home truths for once. The man was fearless when confronting the enemy, no question. But when he came face-to-face with Hitler, his courage failed him. Meekly he let himself be decorated with swords to add to his Knight’s Cross and was granted special leave to attend his daughter’s wedding.

What has become of the ideal of speaking truth to power? wonders the lieutenant. Frederick the Great’s officers had thrown their daggers down at the king’s feet. How come their modern counterparts were so craven? How had that happened?

He finds no answer to this puzzle.

The artilleryman is still lying right beside him, seemingly waiting for an answer. Should he tell him what he’s just been thinking? It wouldn’t exactly be consoling.

‘Chin up, man!’ he forces himself to respond. ‘We just need to hold out here for a couple of days. Then things’ll get better, for sure! The division’s promised us some winter togs… and the Führer’s thinking of us; he won’t forget us. What was that he told us? “You can rely on me with rock-like confidence!” Well, you can bet your life on that!’

Captain Eichert lies on an earth bench cut out of the back wall of the bunker. Someone has thrown a coat over him; he’s asleep. The dim glow of the flickering candle flits across his grey face, casting a sharp profile of his backward-sloping head onto the clay wall. From his open mouth, in fits and starts, comes a stertorous snore, which changes now and then into a deep moan that seems to emanate from his chest. The captain is dreaming. He’s standing alone on a dead- straight road receding to a vanishing point in the far distance. This road is lined on both sides with dead soldiers sticking rigidly out of the ground like telegraph poles, their heads buried in snow. It’s Victory Boulevard, and the Führer is due to drive down it. Captain Eichert takes a sighting down the row of soldiers to check that they’re all correctly aligned. Suddenly he feels invisible hands take hold of him and try to shove his head down into the snow. ‘Stop!’ he cries out in horror. ‘The war isn’t over yet! I’m not dead yet!’ He struggles in vain to free himself, but the strange arms grasping him are impossible to shake off. ‘Not dead yet?’ a voice laughs. ‘Ha ha ha! The whole army has to form a guard of honour! You too, Captain!’