Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

In the end, in view of the poor state of his health, the army had relieved him of command of the division. However, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was to remain with the unit, to avoid unsettling the men.

‘Pretty soon we won’t have any more need of firewood, General, sir,’ said the colonel. ‘The western front has been overrun by the Russians. In a few days, our fate here will be decided too.’

Any semblance of composure vanished from the general’s face. His hands dabbed ineffectually at the fur lapels of his coat.

‘Overrun, you say? So, what’s going to happen now? My God, it’s a catastrophe!’

The major general’s expression froze, his mouth gaped and his lower lip trembled slightly. He swung around and ran down the slope, taking short steps as he went. The colonel watched him depart and shook his head. So that was a German officer, one like thousands of others, an educated, refined, cultivated person, a man of spirit, who up till now had in times of both war and peace been the very model of a good soldier. And now a man like him was simply collapsing here, and whining like some old woman. Had Stalingrad changed people so radically? Or was it that they were being revealed in their true colours here, stripped bare of all pretence and fripperies?

Colonel von Hermann mused on all this without any arrogance. After all, what made him any better than this general? A modicum of composure and self-control, that was all. And what lurked behind that façade? Uncertainty, inner turmoil and tortured anguish…

The colonel slowly made his way down the steep path leading to the gorge. He had been weaned on the notions of ‘duty’ and ‘honour’. At the military academy he had taught courses on the honour of an officer and a soldier’s duty. These consisted in obedience, courage and being prepared to lay down your life at any time for the Fatherland. That was clear-cut. No open-ended questions, no complications there. The fact that soldiers fell in battle, that units suffered losses or were wiped out, these were painful but self-evident necessities. And the fact that this death often looked so very different from the heroes’ deaths celebrated in soldiers’ songs and books about war should not… no, really ought not to be allowed to override this necessity. The colonel clenched his teeth, and the muscles in his face tensed. He made a conscious effort to suppress that horrific image he had strenuously succeeded in banishing forever from his waking consciousness, but which haunted him every night in his sleep. And this image was always the same: flames, blood-curdling shrieks, the fresh face of a young man twisted in the most ghastly agonies and ultimately a head, small, black, and with bared teeth… No, any individual, personal concerns should not play any role here! Colonel von Hermann was too much of a soldier to cast doubt on things that he had taught countless times and demanded of others when they happened to hit him with full force.

But there was also something else that was eating him up and it was growing stronger with every day that passed. That was the situation here on the Volga, the death of huge numbers of men, hundreds of thousands in fact, with only a small fraction killed as a direct result of enemy action and by far the greater part dying from hunger and the cold. It could all be ended with just a word, a brief command… yet this command was never issued. Instead, a whole army was being ordered to starve and freeze to death! This was completely beyond the normal bounds of a soldier’s experience, and nothing to do any more with duty or honour. And that in turn prompted the otherwise strictly taboo question for any military man, namely why they were fighting? The colonel had tormented himself with this question, and after a thorough investigation of all the available documents he needed to come to a judgement on the current military situation, he had become convinced that there was no longer any military necessity for maintaining the siege of Stalingrad that could possibly justify such a huge sacrifice. Hitler had promised that they’d be relieved, but he hadn’t been able to keep his promise. Now he needed to take a hands-off approach towards the army, and allow it to act as it saw fit and on its own authority. Yet he wasn’t doing so. Why was that? Could it be that three hundred thousand men were dying here just because one man did not want to admit that he was… No, he must stop himself from thinking! It only opened up a yawning abyss.

Colonel von Hermann was walking along the narrow path that ran for a stretch along the face of the escarpment just above the valley bottom, and led to his quarters. The location was quiet and peaceful, and everything was laid out like they were going to live here for all eternity. At the entrance to the well-entrenched bunker, which was built into the cliff side, stood colourful signs decorated with witty slogans and caricatures of the occupants. It was a regular knights’ fortress here: drawings of Iron Crosses all around – that was the chief adjutant’s section; a picture of a pair of compasses and a ruler – the cartographic unit; while the greyhounds there surely denoted the dispatch riders’ unit. At that moment, two soldiers were busy taking down a sign bearing the inscription ‘Wholesale Warehouse’ and a row of horses’ skulls hung above it.

‘What’s all this, then, Stegen?’ said the colonel in passing to the officer who was overseeing the work. ‘On the move again?’

‘Yes indeed, Colonel, more’s the pity! Though pretty soon there’ll be nowhere left to go. First it’s the quartermaster and all his stores we have to make room for, and now the Eighth Corps comes creeping round here, looking for space. Even their C-in-C was here in person. So now we’ve got to give over five of our best bunkers to them. Couldn’t you lay down the law, Colonel? After all, this is meant to be our area here!’

‘Sorry, Stegen, no can do,’ replied the colonel, moving on. ‘I dare say we’ll all be having to bunk up a bit more in the few days we’ve got left here.’ The captain gave him a puzzled look as he went on his way.

The chief of operation’s bunker had all the creature comforts of a cosy living room: carpets, a battery-powered desk lamp and separate sleeping alcoves. On the small stove built of red bricks with white pointing stood a set of cast-iron stove tools. It was much the same story with the forward companies, too. They were at a stable front here and had got themselves settled in for the winter as comfortably as possible. The chief of staff was stretched over the map, drawing in troop positions. He straightened up when the colonel walked in. The C-in-C was small and slender, with neatly parted, glossy black hair above a round face. He had a fleshy nose and a somewhat glazed expression in his eyes. This look of his was a legacy of a time-fuse explosion in Kiev, which the lieutenant colonel had been the only person in his unit to survive.

‘Colonel Steffen reports that he has just beaten back another attempted breakthrough at his sector, under his personal command,’ announced the colonel. ‘We’ll have to put in for another Knight’s Cross for him. And then we’re supposed to take over the defence of this group of houses here from the 305th as well. They can’t squeeze any more men out of our unit, so now they’re just making the sector we have to cover bigger. It’s outrageous!’

The colonel had come to a halt by the desk without taking off his coat. ‘Listen, Dannemeister,’ he said, ‘the western front of the Cauldron has collapsed. It’s all over! Hube’s come back from the Führer’s HQ with the suggestion that, as a last resort, we should make a kind of Alcazar in the ruins of Stalingrad.’

The lieutenant colonel flung his pencil down on the table.