Ralph Peters - Red Army

Romilinsky hurried out from under the canvas wall of the control post, visibly excited.

"Comrade Commander," he shouted, absolutely exuberant, almost dancing out of his controlled staff-officer persona, "Comrade Commander, the West Germans have requested a cease-fire."

324

EPILOGUE

Chibisov emerged from the bunker into the light of day. The sight of the splintered forest, with its ashen wounds, shocked him. Throughout the period of hostilities, he had heard and felt the impacts of the enemy's weaponry hunting over the surface. Yet unseen was somehow unimagined. Beyond the pockmarked outer door, large bomb craters and black scars marked the landscape, and the acridity of explosives lingered in the air. Yet a blue sky blessed the living and the dead, and even this pungent air tasted gorgeously fresh after the staleness of the bunker.

Soon, he would need to visit a good doctor, perhaps even take a cure at the sanatorium. His breathing never came normally to him anymore, and despite his determination, Chibisov had begun to doubt that he could continue to shoulder serious responsibilities much longer.

Aircraft still cut the heavens, and vehicular traffic continued on the roads. But the volume, the noise of it all, was far less than it had been.

The sounds of combat had stopped.

Shtein, the revolting creature from the General Staff with his little movies, had been right in the end, as had Dudorov. The Germans caved in. Chibisov remained unpersuaded that Shtein's unpleasant films and broadcasts had played as grand a role as Shtein himself readily declared.

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time for the chroniclers to argue about whose contributions had been the most important. For Chibisov, it was all part of an indivisible whole in the end. Examined in detail, one saw appalling failures and incompetence. Yet the sum of the Soviet way of war had proved greater than its individual parts. Finally, the result was what mattered.

Assailed militarily, politically, emotionally . . . the West German government had broken down over the issue of nuclear release. The Americans and British had demanded it, and the French made their own unilateral preparations. But the West Germans had experienced a failure of the will, of nerve. Paralyzed by the speed of their apparent collapse and the unanticipated level of destruction, they had refused to turn their country into a nuclear battlefield. The Germans had decreed NATO's military policy in peacetime, and they reaped their harvest in war.

Chibisov realized, as did only a few of the privileged, how close the battlefield outcome had been. The American counterattack, really the centerpiece of a counteroffensive, had nearly broken them. Perhaps the follow-on forces would have contained them, but the Americans and the surprisingly resilient forces of the Northern Army Group had hit hard. Not even Dudorov had correctly estimated how much fight the battered NATO corps had left in them. The counterblow had stormed to within a dozen kilometers of the Weser crossing site at Bad Oeynhausen when the German plea for a cease-fire halted them.

The West German government had declared a unilateral cease-fire and had demanded that all NATO forces halt offensive actions on German soil in a bid to conciliate the Soviets. All NATO combat forces were to withdraw west of the Rhine within ninety-six hours, and to leave German soil entirely within fifteen days. Intact Bundeswehr units would also withdraw west of the Rhine. Numerous Bundeswehr commanders had resisted the cease-fire, but their rank and file had proved unwilling to follow them. And as the NATO armies withdrew, Soviet tanks closed the rest of the distance to the Rhine without firing a shot.

And that was it, Chibisov believed. There was no point in going any further. The Rhine was the natural Soviet western frontier, and the control of Germany meant the control of the rest of Europe. The French would ultimately accommodate themselves to the new order. An occupation of France would have been far more trouble than it was worth. And the British could remain an American outpost, for all the effect that would have on the new Europe.

Some high-ranking officers within the Soviet military wanted to drive on. Most of them had not experienced the war firsthand, and they spoke 326

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more blithely of resuming the offensive than did those who had gotten a good taste of the battlefield. The most worrisome estimate making the rounds prophesied that the Americans did not regard the war as finished but were preparing to strike elsewhere. And there were clouds on the eastern horizon. Would the war enter an Asian or Pacific phase?

Personally, Chibisov hoped it was over. He hoped the Americans would have the good sense to turn their backs on a Europe that took their lives and money and gave them nothing in return. He could not quite believe the Americans would find any of this worth fighting over any more. But he wondered. The Americans remained an enigma.

Intellectually, Chibisov appreciated that the Soviet way of war was scientifically correct, integrating the military and political elements into one overwhelming program. Unity of effort at the highest levels. But in the end, it was not so much the Soviet tanks that had defeated NATO, but NATO's own foolishness. Watching the progress of the war from his unique perspective convinced Chibisov that the issue could very easily have gone the other way. For instance, the surrounded German operational grouping northeast of Hannover was currently being disarmed, with its soldiers and limited support equipment allowed to move west of the Rhine. But the Germans might easily have been the captors. NATO

had the combat power but lacked unity of purpose and strength of will.

On a practical level, their lack of a cogent and unified military doctrine had destroyed them. The tools and the workers had been available, but everyone had insisted on using his own blueprint. Chibisov was grateful.

A black bird settled into a splintered tree, and Chibisov thought of Malinsky's son. The remnants of his brigade reported that Guards Colonel Malinsky had been killed by an air strike. But no body had been recovered, and the old man refused to accept his son's death. The general went forward in person to conduct the search.

Chibisov felt deeply sorry for his protector and comrade. It seemed stupidly ironic that he, of all men, should lose so much at such an hour.

Chibisov did not know the young colonel well enough to feel much sorrow for the fallen officer. The elder Malinsky drew all of his emotion.

In a way, he knew, the loss of his son would be harder for Malinsky to bear than defeat on the battlefield would have been.

Of course, plenty of sons had died. Chibisov tried to rationalize the old man's misfortune away. But the image of Malinsky would not leave him.

He pictured the old man stepping over the blackened waste that had once been a forest, peering into the gutted shells of command vehicles.

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Chibisov realized, helplessly, how much he loved the old man. How much better if an asthmatic renegade Jew, who could not find a home in any camp, had died in place of the cherished son.

Chibisov remembered his mother. His father, a determined communist, had tolerated no mention of religion in their home. But his mother had wrapped her child in the wonder of fairy tales and remembrances.

Chibisov had not realized until much later that some of the fairy tales had been stories from the Old Testament. He smiled the smile of middle age at this bit of maternal deviousness, recalling how he had been terrified by the story of Abraham and Isaac. As a boy, Chibisov had had no doubt that his father would have sacrificed him, had the modern gods demanded it.