William Craig - Enemy at the Gates

From interviews with Wilhelm Alter, Franz Deifel, Ottmar Kohler, Emil Metzger, Josef Metzler, Gerhard Meunch, Heinz Neist, Albert Pfliiger, Gottlieb Slotta, and Hubert Widmer. Also SeIle’s The Tragedy of Stalingrad; Joachim Wieder’s Stalingrad: How It Really Was. Sixth Army radio traffic (see Documents for appropriate dates).

The Luftwaffe lost 488 planes on the shuttle to the Kessel. A pilot named Wieser was the last to fly from the pocket (January 25).

In his book, Colonel Adam mentions the wide-spread rumor among Sixth Army officers that General Schmidt kept a light plane at the airport for an escape from the Kessel. In my conversations with Schmidt, he admits that he planned to fly out, but only long enough to plead for more help from Hitler.

Paulus refused to let him go.

From interviews with Wilhelm Alter, Helmut Bangert, Eugen Baumann, Ginter von Below, Karl Binder, Hans Braunlein, Friedrich Breining, Franz Brkider, Horst Caspari, Franz Deifel, Gregori Denisov, Pyotr Deriabin, Fritz Dieckmann, Gerhard Dietzel, Karl Englehardt, Paul Epple, Isabella Feige, Karl Floeck, George Frey, Karl Geist, Wilhelm Giebeler, Werner Gerlach, Heinz Giessel, Adolf Heusinger, Hans Mich, Dionys Kaiser, Anton Kappler, Hermann Kastle, Herbert Kreiner, Heinrich Klotz, Ottmar Kohler, Heinz Lieber, Josef Linden, Emil Metzger, Josef Metzler, Heinz Neist, Hans Oettl, Alexei Petrov, Ernst Paulus, Albert Pfliiger, Mesten Pover, Herbert Rentsch, Carl Rodenburg, Arthur Schmidt, Albert Schon, Kurt Siol, Gottlieb Slotta, Oscar Stange, Eugen Steinhilber, Friedrich Syndicus, Rudolf Taufer, Siegfried Wendt, Hubert Wirkner, Ernst Wohlfahrt, and Pyotr Zabavskikh. Also statements by Franz Brendgen, Berthold Englert, August Kronmiiller, Xaver Marx, Hans Schiller and unpublished monograph by Arthur Schmidt on last days. Also Professor Jay Baird’s “The Myth of Stalingrad” in Institute of Contemporary History, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1969.

German works dealing extensively with the end of the battle include: Wilhelm Adam’s The Hard Decision; Hans Dibold’s Doctor at Stalingrad; Philip Humbert’s article in Der Spiegel, no. 5, 1949; Theodor Plievier’s Stalingrad and Wieder’s Stalingrad. (see Ludwig affidavit). Among many Russian books and periodicals on the surrender are P. Batov’s In Campaigns and Battles; V. Grinevsky’s “The Last Days,” Krasnaya Zvezda, Feb. 2, 1963; I. Laskin’s “Once More on the Capture of General Field Marshal Paulus,” V.I.Z. 1961; I. Morozov’s The Fight for the Volga; K. K. Rokossovsky’s “The Morning of Our Victory,” Izvestia, Feb. 1, 1968: M. S. Shumilov in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Feb. 1, 1963; L. A. Vinokur’s “In Those Days,” Sovetskaya Rossiya, Feb. 2, 1958; P. Vladimirov’s “The Encounter,” Krasnaya Zvezda, Feb. 2, 1963. Also: Rokossovsky, Shumilov and Voronov in Samsonov’s Stalingrad Epopeya.

Others: Agapov’s After the Battle; Chuikov’s The Battle for Stalingrad; Druzhinin’s Two Hundred Fiery Days; A. Werth’s Russia At War, 1941–1945.

From interviews with Ignacy Changar, Tania Chemova, Hersch Gurewicz. Also A. S. Chuyanov’s Stalingrad Is Reviving, written in 1944; and A. M. Samsonov’s The Stalingrad Battle, the best analysis of destruction in the city.

From interviews with Germans listed in preceding chapter and with Felice Bracci and Cristoforo Capone. Also Bracci’s diary; Reginato’s Twelve Years of Prison in the USSR; Don Guido Tuna’s Seven Rubles to the Chaplain; and a report by Guiseppe Aleandri on the treatment accorded the Axis POWs in Russia.

In September 1955, Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the new West German government, flew to Moscow to meet the leaders of the USSR. During their discussions, Adenauer broached a sensitive topic:

“…Let me start with the question of the release of those Germans who are still imprisoned within the area or sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, or who are otherwise prevented from leaving this area. It is on purpose that I put this problem at the beginning, as this is a question that leaves no German family unconcerned. I wish with all my heart that you do understand in which spirit I want to treat this problem. For me only the human point is at stake. The thought is unbearable that—more than ten years after the end of the war—there are still men who are separated from their families, homeland, and their normal, peaceful work-men who were involved—in whatever way—in the maelstrom of war. You must not find any provocation in my saying: It is out of the question to establish ‘normal’ relations between our states as long as this question is unsolved. It is normalization itself of which I am talking. Let us make a clean break with a matter which is a daily source of remembrance of sorrowful and separating past.”

Mr. Bulganin answered:

“The Federal Chancellor, Mr. Adenauer, raised as first question that of the prisoners of war. In our opinion there is a definite misunderstanding. There are no German prisoners of war at all in the Soviet Union. All German prisoners of war were released and repatriated. In the Soviet Union there are only war criminals of the former Hitler armies—criminals that were convicted by a Soviet court for especially grave crimes against the Soviet people, against peace and against humanity. In fact, 9,626 men have been retained up to September 1. (Some 2,000 actually fought at Stalingrad.) But these are men who must be kept in prison as criminals, according to the most humane standards and rules. They are men who have lost the human countenance; they are men guilty of atrocity, of arson, of murder committed against women, children and old people. They were duly sentenced by a Soviet court and cannot be regarded as prisoners of war.

“The Soviet people cannot forget the capital crimes committed by these criminal elements, as, for instance, the shooting of 70,000 men in Kiev on the Babi Yar. We cannot forget these million people who were killed, gassed and burned to death. Can anyone ever forget the tons of hair that were cut off (and stapled) from women who were tortured to death. Those present on our side have witnessed all that happened in Maidanek. In the Maidanek and Auschwitz camps more than five and a half million people, all innocent, were murdered. The Ukrainian people will never forget those innocent people murdered in Kharkov, where thousands were shot or gassed. I could name the concentration camps in Smolensk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Lov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel, Rovno, Kaunas, Riga—and many others—where hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were tortured to death by the Hitler fascists. We cannot forget those innocent people, murdered, gassed and buried alive; we cannot forget the scorched towns and villages, the killed women, juveniles and children. And those 9,626 men I mentioned are criminals who committed these monstrous crimes…”

Adenauer was quick to respond:

“Then, Mr. Prime Minister, you talked about the prisoners of war. May I be permitted to draw your attention to the fact that in my yesterday’s statements the words ‘prisoners of war’ were not at all mentioned. I avoided this expression on purpose. If you closely examine my statements, you will find that I rather spoke of ‘persons who were retained.’ You talked of ‘war criminals’ and of sentences passed by Soviet courts. We have similar facts also in our relation to the U.S.A., Great Britain and France. But these states came to understand that the sentences passed by the courts of these countries in the first postwar period were not free from emotions, from the atmosphere of that specific time…