Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Oh, no need to worry about that now! You can do a bit of poking around first thing tomorrow morning. We’re just a kind of holding position here, for all eventualities, you know. The front line’s up ahead of us, and the entire Forty-Fourth is dug in there. Apart from the odd spot of artillery fire, we’ve got it pretty cushy here – isn’t that right, Wilhelm?’

He winked at the corporal, stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and stretched contentedly. Captain Fackelmann decided to throw his lot in with the bulk of his men. He asked Breuer to stay put with the Number 1 platoon and to give the platoon leader – a corporal named Klucke from the quartermaster’s section, who was a bland pen-pusher – some support. Breuer nodded absent-mindedly. He was worn out by the day’s exertions. The breakout plan would have to wait. For the time being, the key thing was to gather his strength, physical and mental. Slowly he peeled off his overcoat and slumped down on the stool that the captain pushed over to him. The captain then reached for a plump smoked sausage, cut off a fat slice four fingers thick and handed it to Breuer.

‘First off, have something to eat! You must be famished!’

He shoved a hunk of bread and a knife towards Breuer and poured out some yellowish liquid from a half-empty bottle into a couple of long-stemmed tin goblets. Meanwhile, the corporal had wound up the blue Morocco-leather-covered chest gramophone and put on another record. The tinny sound of a shrill woman’s voice emerged, singing a cheesy hit from the Twenties to a ragtime accompaniment which, God alone knew how, had found its way here:

Breuer bit hungrily into the sausage.

‘So where did this come from?’ he asked. ‘It’s great!’

The captain chuckled smugly. ‘It’s literally manna from heaven round here, dear boy! The air crews chuck the stuff out when they can’t make it in to land. A whole crate of this stuff almost dropped on our heads early this morning. We picked up twenty-six salamis!’

‘Don’t you have to hand over things like that?’

‘Who to?’ asked the captain, blinking in astonishment. ‘Those morons over at the base, so they can eat it all? Since yesterday morning, when we took up position here, they haven’t sent us out a single crumb of food. All we need now is to start handing this stuff over! If they want some, they can come out with us and collect it!’

He raised his goblet and toasted with Breuer. The liquid turned out to be a sweet orange liqueur.

‘Did this fall from the sky too, then?’

‘Nah! We’ve got other sources for that. Tell you what, if you ever need a silk shirt or some pyjamas or a pair of boots or a new officer’s cap, just tip us the wink. We’ve got the lot here!’

He stretched his legs, resplendent in a pair of top boots, in expansive fashion, slapped his chest a couple of times and addressed the corporal again, chortling as he did so.

‘That was a hoot yesterday, wasn’t it, eh, Wilhelm? The way they all legged it, those idiots from the Pay Corps. Dear me, we laughed like drains! They skedaddled like a troop of monkeys when they heard the main front was going to run through here. That’s their vehicles they left behind out there – well, when we took a gander inside ’em, we were gobsmacked, let me tell you! The stuff they’d salted away! This old gramophone, for instance. It’s not without its risks, mind. The Ivans can just see the tops of the lorries poking out above the hill, so now and then they toss over a shell. They caught old Franz back there this morning while he was digging out a bottle of red wine.’

He nodded towards a wide set of bunk beds where some men lay snoring beneath furs and blankets. One of the men was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. He wasn’t snoring but struggling to catch his breath. His hands clutched convulsively at his chest.

‘Was he badly wounded?’ asked Breuer.

‘Shrapnel in his side. We don’t have a doctor here. The medical orderly’s given him till tomorrow morning. He’s dying from internal bleeding. Oh, well… Care for some cigars?’

He handed the lieutenant a little box of fine sand-leaf cigars decorated with elaborate banderoles. The song’s chorus squawked from the gramophone for the third time:

The encircled army’s situation had become hopeless. It was no secret any longer to anyone who had managed to retain even a modicum of common sense. In these critical days, many high-ranking officers attempted to gain access to the supreme commanders and bring their influence to bear. One of these was Colonel Kniffke. It was with very mixed feelings that Kniffke had flown into the Stalingrad Cauldron at the beginning of January.

His orders had been to ‘establish the communications groundwork for the Sixth Army to break out or for an external rescue mission’. Some assignment! Particularly when no one at Army High Command was making any bones about the fact that no more help would be forthcoming for the men trapped at Stalingrad – either inside the Cauldron or from outside. He was under no illusions, then: flying into Stalingrad was like being given a free pass to view the mortuary.

Up till now, the colonel had only seen the war from the perspective of a high-ranking staff officer. He was cock of the walk among the young women reservists who staffed the Wehrmacht’s signals network from the Bay of Biscay to the River Don. The outward sign of his key role glittered on his chest in the shape of the ‘German Cross’, a gaudy Nazi decoration that ordinary soldiers nicknamed the ‘Fried Egg’ or the ‘Party Insignia for the Shortsighted’. [1] ‘German Cross’ (German: Deutsches Kreuz in Gold ) – the German Cross in Gold was a Nazi Party decoration showing a black swastika on a large white disc and surrounding golden sunburst design. Its size and gaudiness prompted its nicknames Spiegelei (‘fried egg’) and Ochsenauge (‘bullseye’). Under these circumstances, however, he did not feel much inclination to die a heroic death for Hitler. And who could blame him? Even so, if the colonel had still embarked on his journey with any hope at all, then it was because he was flying to an army staff headquarters. They would surely find some way out before the worst happened. It was inconceivable that the country’s leaders would allow an entire staff of top brass simply to be snuffed out!

Yet what he subsequently saw and heard when he was with the Sixth Army shocked him to the core. People there were sticking their heads in the sand or seeing things through rose-tinted spectacles. ‘A breakout!’ they laughed when he told them about his assignment. ‘Surely someone’s coming to bail us out of here, aren’t they?’ But all his pleas and entreaties (He was sure a rescue mission was planned! He knew how things stood over there!) fell on deaf ears. No one took him seriously. And then came the collapse of the Cauldron from the tenth of January onwards. That was a fine mess, to be sure! Hadn’t he always predicted just that? But even now, nothing was happening, absolutely nothing. It almost seemed as though they were wanting to do Hitler a favour and fight to the very last man standing, including the last member of the armed forces staff.

Colonel Kniffke grew increasingly nervous. And that was the reason he was standing here now, having a private meeting with the C-in-C without the Führer’s knowledge. Overnight he had felt renewed hope when he thought about how persuasive a speaker he could be. And he was more than a little flattered by the thought that he might, setting aside all questions of personal vanity, become the saviour of the entire Sixth Army. The colonel had thought the whole matter through very carefully. He made no mention of ‘signals girls’ or of his mission (which had long since ceased to be realistic). Instead, he talked about all the things he’d experienced here, through speaking to commanders in the field on the ’phone: the troops’ hunger, the hopelessly unequal struggle in the absence of heavy weapons with dwindling supplies of ammunition and lacking properly fortified positions and adequate winter clothing. And about the abject failure of the Luftwaffe, which at the time was only managing to fly in around forty tons of supplies daily (barely one-seventh of what was needed); about the increasing signs of disintegration and the growing numbers of wounded and sick that could not be cared for. He spoke eloquently – perhaps too eloquently.