Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

Wiese glanced back and forth between the two officers. He estimated they were around the same age. And yet what a difference! On the one hand the thin, pallid intelligence officer in his threadbare uniform, tired, stooped and with a grey, drained-looking face. And on the other, the fresh-faced artilleryman, bursting with vigour and with the fresh air of home still clinging to him.

‘So, you’re flying out?’ Tausend enquired with a disparaging look.

‘That’s right, as an army messenger,’ replied Wiese.

‘Aha, I see. Still, not a very enviable task, eh?’

Wiese shrugged his shoulders and swiftly took his leave. Captain Stegen shook his head sadly as he left. There was a group of staff officers (made up of those who secretly envied Wiese) who expected him to act outraged or at least feign regret at the task he had been assigned. It was only seemly for him to do so. When all was said and done, he was a German officer, after all! Equally, there were many others who would have been delighted if he’d been openly overjoyed at the prospect. But no one could understand the profound, detached indifference that Wiese displayed. This indifference was not put on, it was quite genuine. It arose from the feeling that he would never be able to escape Stalingrad come what may, however long he lived. The terrible events here in the Cauldron, condensed for him in that gruesome experience in Dubininsky (the full horror of which a kind providence had still kept hidden from him), would follow him wherever his path might lead him. And this same indifference was also no doubt to blame for the fact that Lieutenant Wiese, official army messenger, never reached the airfield at Pitomnik – that gateway to the outside world that was the focus of so many fevered fantasies of the dying and so many secret hopes and yearnings of the living. On a road in Gumrak pitted with reddish-brown bomb craters, he failed to heed the alarmed warning shouts of bystanders and the ominous drone overhead and drove straight into the path of a stick of bombs dropped by a Russian plane. The third explosion blew his Kübelwagen off the road, hurling it on to the verge and peppering it full of holes like a sieve.

The young first lieutenant, the man by the name of Tausend, is sitting in front of Colonel von Hermann and explaining his circumstances. News reached him of the encirclement of the Sixth Army while he was on an artillery training course in France. He immediately announces his withdrawal; he wants to get back to his regiment. On the return journey, he leaves himself barely any time to visit his young wife. The military authorities in Millerovo order him to take command of a new operational company assembled from soldiers back from leave. However, he refuses to give up his quest, writes countless transfer requests and keeps badgering his superiors. Finally, with a bewildered shrug, he’s granted leave to fly back into the Cauldron. So now here he is! His eyes twinkle, and he’s laughing like he’s just pulled off a schoolboy prank.

The colonel stares earnestly at Tausend’s carefree face.

‘You do know the predicament we’re in here, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir, Colonel!’ the lieutenant smiles. ‘But things could be worse. Everyone back home’s full of confidence. Tanks in their droves are underway here. It’s an awesome sight! Give it four or five weeks and we’ll be liberated. There’s no other possible outcome, Colonel!’

The colonel says nothing. Looking into the eyes of the young man, he catches a glimpse of the old world of soldiering in which he was raised. Parades, flags flying, sparkling uniforms, the crunch of marching boots. A lot of this was superficial and hollow, nothing but ossified ritual. But how much genuine enthusiasm and honest belief there was too, and how much pride in German military might and readiness on the part of the country’s youth to make sacrifices! Like a reflection of his own earlier life, this all comes shining over to the colonel from the dim and distant past, across an abyss over which hangs a banner with the name ‘Stalingrad’ – Stalingrad, the graveyard of the German Army. Here it had met its end, dishonoured in body and soul, abused and trampled in the mud by scoundrels. This is how the colonel sees things right now, and it’s quite an epiphany for an old soldier. And he continues to hold his peace. He gets up and accompanies the lieutenant to the door.

And the young soldier who does everything by the book is disconcerted to feel the divisional commander put his arm gently around his shoulders.

A clear, bitterly cold January. Across the crackling expanse of snowy wasteland west of Gumrak, shimmering in the glow of the yellowish winter sun, a four-wheel-drive Kübelwagen made its laborious way to a distant line of snow ramparts, topped with radio masts. This location was home to the Sixth Army’s General Staff.

On the back seat of the car, two officers sat freezing under layers of blankets and coats. First Lieutenant Breuer and Siebel; two days before, aged just twenty-seven, Siebel had been promoted to major.

‘What do you think Unold has got us here for, then?’ asked Breuer through his woollen balaclava, on which a thick beard of icicles had formed. The major looked bored and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Haven’t the foggiest! He ordered all the rest of his stuff to be brought over too. Perhaps he’s planning to fly out and take us with him.’

Breuer shot Siebel a sideways glance through the balaclava.

‘Do you really think so, Major?’

Siebel gave a mirthless laugh.

‘Honestly, you’re so naive!’

The car came to a halt in a circular parking area surrounded by high snow banks. Breuer struggled free of his blankets and then turned to help the major, who was hampered by his false arm. Siebel was always very reluctant to accept such offers of assistance. An officer in a white fur coat came rushing up.

‘Quick, hurry it up!’ he began calling from some way away. ‘Could you get a move on, please! Get that car clear!’

He cast a worried look up to the clear blue vault of the sky, which was filled with the faint drone of engines. The two newly arrived officers hurried past a blackish bomb crater towards the bunker entrance, on which hung a board with the inscription ‘Id’.

In the Army’s High Command post, the course of those anxious days of the Russians’ major offensive – the speed of which made a mockery of any notion of central command – were almost always the same. The mornings were filled with a sense of confidence shot through with nervous tension. Then, towards midday, a series of alarming reports would begin to come in. An overwhelming assault by the enemy in one place. A serious breakthrough at another. At yet another, two battalions wiped out. Send reserves, urgently! There ensued feverish, nerve-jangling activity by the staff of the chief of operation’s division. Pencils dashed across maps and communiqués, telephones jangled, a hubbub of shouting voices arose, and officers clutching papers scurried to and fro. Nonetheless, this bustling activity failed to keep pace with the growing avalanche of the unfolding catastrophe. Orders to lay down curtain fire were issued to artillery batteries whose guns had already been blown up or fallen into enemy hands; fuel that had already been consumed was earmarked for dispatch by transport units that no longer had any trucks, to units that had already abandoned their last-reported positions. Detachments that no longer existed were sent to plug gaps where breakthroughs had occurred, which in the interim had become massive, gaping holes in the line. By the evening, the situation had been brought under control – at least on paper. And the general mood calmed down until the next day, when the cries for help from fronts that had been smashed found their way once more to High Command through official channels or via the roster of regular reporting deadlines.