Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  Don’t worry, Vlasov said. You’re still my friend. I just . . . But let me ask you something. What you told me about the Katymassacre, that was—confirmed?

  Ha, ha! I can see your fingers moving in your pocket. You must be playing with that Geco shell. Yes, I swear it!

  That’s all right then, said Vlasov warmly. Then I don’t care. We’re all murderers. And maybe if I don’t surrender to despair I can still do something good. But what about Heidi? Were you—

  Forgive me, my dear fellow. I only wanted to bring you security and perhaps divert you a little. Don’t you care for her? If not, I can—

  The radio was shouting: To freshen our German blood . . .—He went away to stroke the fair and silky hair of his Aryan wife.

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  I know, said Heidi. Of course it’s difficult to know how to feel. I went through that stage with my first husband. You need to harden yourself, Andrei.

  The bombing of Berlin was growing heavier now.

  In 10.44, the Russians captured their first German town. Smashing in the heads of babies, nailing naked women to barn doors, they took their joyous revenge. Heidi, who was now wiring ignition systems for Messerschmitt fighter planes, heard on the radio that the men had been made to hold lamps and watch as their womenfolk were raped by hordes of Red Army soldiers. Men who resisted were castrated; women who resisted were disemboweled. When the Germans recaptured the place, they found lines of women and children laid out in a field, with cartridges glittering beside them. So Goebbels made a speech. He warned that we were all going to have to strengthen our wills and harden our hearts . . .

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  In the month of 11.44 the Nazis sponsored a conference in Prague. (Where were the Jews who’d lived there?—Gone away.) At the railroad station, a long line of German soldiers accorded Vlasov their best Nazi salutes. He stared back, scratching vaguely at the general’s stripes on his trousers. He’d been almost-promised a command over the criminal remnants of theKaminski Brigade (for Kaminski was shot for excessive ruthlessness against the Warsaw rebels). He’d nearly been given authority over a misplaced light-armed detachment; he had a fair chance of becoming Führer of three shattered, demoralized Russian units recalled from the collapsing Westfront. It was up to him to show what he could do. Could he only help the Reich to break out of the Bolshevik trap, why, then, he’d get rewarded exactly as he deserved! Cleaning his glasses, he waited for Kroeger to bring the schnapps. And now, in the citadel, dignitaries gave speeches in commemoration of the new Prague Manifesto, which thehad prepared over Vlasov’s signature. The only part he’d objected to was an anti-Semitic passage. Strik-Strikfeldt, who’d begun to worry about his own postwar career, refused to interpret Vlasov’s remarks at the triumphal banquet, but it seemed that this odd tall Russian didn’t hold it against him, for just after midnight he staggered over to say: Wilfried Karlovich, Washington and Franklin were traitors in the eyes of the British crown. As for me . . .

  You need to lie down, my dear fellow. Go back to your table. Where’s your wife? She must be very proud of you . . .

  God give me strength! But you’re a god, aren’t you, Wilfried Karlovich?

  I beg your pardon? (Excuse me, gentlemen. They get like this when they drink, you know. It’s a racial characteristic.)

  Wilfried Karlovich, you’ll escape with the Führer and help him, because you’re a god. You’re Loki. And one day you’ll tell everybody at Valhalla that I wasn’t a traitor . . .

  This man led the Fourth Mechanized against us at Lvov! Strik-Strikfeldt said hastily. He also . . .

  I’ll explain how we Russians do it, said Vlasov, and as he said we Russians he could not forbear his own pride. It’s not only rational; it’s as smooth as an execution of Jews! First, we break through the enemy’s defenses—

  That insect is talking about our defenses, said an-man in disgust.

  In at least one sector, more if possible. (Kroeger keeps filling up my glass. I suppose he thinks that’s funny.) Second, we launch offensives into the breakthrough areas. Third, we continue these offensives to the enemy flanks. Fourth, we encircle the enemy’s units which have been isolated by the previous measures—

  It’s true; he really is the Houdini of breakouts, interrupted Strik-Strikfeldt, looking at the ceiling.

  And if you want an example of what I’m talking about, continued Vlasov with a defiant smile, I refer you to the Byelorussian operation of this year, whereby the Soviet army successfully—

  This is too much!

  Shoot that Slav in the back of the head!

  But in the end they decided that “when the time was right” Vlasov would be permitted to fight on Czech soil.

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  Why not now? The front line was approaching like a tidal wave. All our Russian conquests had long since been submerged. As the Great Soviet Encyclopedia explains, in this long and bitter struggle, the USSR armed forces proved to be mightier than the mightiest war machine in the capitalist world. Now the wave curled over the dismembered corpse of Poland: In the former Reichskommissariat Ostland, the former Reichskommissariat Ukraine and even the eastern regions of our General Government, artillery barrages, infantry beachheads and hordes of T-34 tanks roiled, comprising discrete aspects of a sentient metallic liquid. The defenders fell back. When Vlasov read that the Red Army had recaptured Lvov, he could not forbear to think of his own long lost battle there, and he remembered something else, too—namely, that on the day before Lvov fell to the Germans, the NKVD had butchered Ukrainian political prisoners by the hundreds, shooting them right there in their cells . . . And now Russians in their Studebaker trucks came to run over the carcasses of horses in the burnt streets, looted the last stale bread from shops, then passed on, vanishing in the smoky air. Warsaw wouldn’t detain them long, it seemed. Soon the General Government would be completely un-Germanized. Then they’d drown the last territories of what had once been Poland—Katowice, Zichenau, Reichsgau Wartheland and Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia—under a sea of steel which would mask itself as Poland-renewed. (It wouldn’t be Poland at all. It would be a Soviet vassal state.)

  Vlasov understood this much better than Himmler, who has been characterized by Guderian as an inconspicuous man with all the marks of racial inferiority. Whenever they hid his schnapps, Vlasov sat poring over maps, with sullen destiny circling overhead like an enemy bomber. There he was, condemned to positional warfare again! (Well, even a non-German like you would be eligible for the War Merit Cross, they said, slapping his shoulder encouragingly.)

  His men were digging antitank ditches. When he asked them how they were holding up, they said with weary smiles: Never mind, General. It’s not much worse than working on the collective farm . . .

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  On 20.1.45, the Russians crossed the borders of the Old Reich and entered our heartland. On 25.1.45, the despairing, raging Führer appointed Himmler to take command of Army Group Vistula. On 27.1.45, General Guderian (long since in bad odor for having told too many truths about the military situation) was saying at the briefing conference: Vlasov wanted to make some statement.

  Vlasov doesn’t mean a thing, snapped Hitler.

  And the idea is that they should go around in German uniform! Göring put in, as if to himself. That only annoys people. If you want to lay hands on them, you find they’re Vlasov’s people . . .

  I was always against putting them into our uniform, said Hitler, scratching at the red spots on his cheeks. But who was for it? It was our beloved Army which always has its own ideas—

  The very next day, Vlasov was at last given command of two divisions. Once again he found himself on the front line of a lost war, in possession of a low density of artillery and tanks. At best he could achieve some localized breakthrough into death.

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  And now, when it was once again too late for anything, his troops became ever more various, even fabulous: Great Russians, Ukrainians, Mensheviks, monarchists, murderers, martyrs, lunatics, perverts, democrats, escaped sl
aves from the underground chemical factories, racists, dreamers, patriots, Italians, Serbian Chetniks, turncoat Partisans who’d realized that Comrade Stalin might not reward them after all, peasants who’d naively welcomed the German troops in 1941, and now rightly feared that the returning Communists might remember this against them, dispossessed Tartars, Hiwis from Stalingrad, pickpockets from Kiev, brigands from the Caucasus who raped every woman they could catch, militant monks, groping skeletons, Polish Army men whose cousins had been murdered by the NKVD in 1940, NKVD infiltrators recording names in preparation for the postwar reckoning (they themselves would get arrested first), men from Smolensk who’d never read the Smolensk Declaration and accordingly believed that Vlasov was fighting especially for them, men who knew nothing of Vlasov except his name, and used that name as an excuse—a primal horde, in short, gathered concentrically like trembling distorted ripples around its ostensible leader, breaking outward in expanding, disintegrating circles across the map of war. When the British Thirty-sixth Infantry Brigade entered Forni Avoltri at the Austro-Italian border, they accepted the surrender of a flock of Georgian officers, no less than ten of whom were hereditary princes “in glittering uniforms,” runs the brigade’s war diary. Suddenly pistol-shots were heard. The Englishmen suspected ambush, but it turned out to be two of the princes duelling over an affair of honor. The victors’ bemusement was increased by the arrival of the commander, a beautiful, high-cheeked lady in buckskin leggings who came galloping up to berate her men for having yielded to the enemy without permission. Leaping from the saddle, she introduced herself as the daughter of the King of Georgia. (Needless to say, no kings remain in our Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, which happens to be the birthplace of Comrade Stalin.) All these worthies considered themselves to be members in good standing of Vlasov’s army. Vlasov, the Princess explained, had guaranteed the independence of Georgia . . .

  By now the Red Army had occupied Silesia, the Americans were about to cross the Rhine; and Vlasov stood regarding the horizon with a twisted old face, heavily burdened by the horn-rimmed spectacles. His Russians nudged each other when they saw him, proudly infecting one another with the hope they craved more than hot soup: There goes our general! They say he often gets the Führer’s ear . . .—Munitions, maps, impossible orders, devoted counter-attackers silhouetted against snowy fields, these wouldn’t help him much. No matter what, he’d be compelled to withdraw into a shortened line.

  He requested a copy of Guderian’s famous Panzer manual, but they told him that they wouldn’t be giving him any tanks, so . . . He said to them: Even under Bolshevism I was permitted to keep this book! and they shrugged.

  From behind two machine-guns implanted in a heap of snowy mud, a Waffen--lieutenant wandered up to Vlasov’s men and said in hearing of Vlasov himself: Ha, ha! Now I’m glad we didn’t finish you off! It’s an honor, you know, to be permitted to fight for Germany.

  On the night of 13-14.2.45, the British and the Americans burned thirty-five thousand people, mainly civilians, in an incendiary bombing raid in Dresden. This slightly bettered the Nazi achievement at Babi Yar, where only thirty-three thousand Jews had been machine-gunned. Goebbels proposed shooting one Allied prisoner for each victim. When somebody told Vlasov, he replied: Kroeger keeps filling up my glass and perhaps he thinks that’s how to manage me. He’s wrong. I can see and hear . . .

  Not long after that he got his marching orders at last and set off, leading his ill-equipped men into the snow, while a tank-gun pointed overhead. He’d do what he could. They reminded him of his doomed Siberians in the Volkhov pocket, fighting Fascists with antitank rifles. (He came across two of his hungry men fighting over a rotten potato, and said to them: We can’t beat Stalin with open fingers, only with a clenched fist. Stick together, boys!—and they made up at once, gazing at him with awed faces.) Could he repeat his bygone achievement at the Battle of Moscow? Again and again he told thehandlers how his breakthrough echelon had thrown back the Fascist Army Group Center. They smirked nervously, warming their hands in their pockets; for even they could see that he was addressing the ghost of his integrity, who, pale and brown-eyed, had taught him how to feel.

  Another Katyusha rocket illuminated the night with shards of terror, but this Vlasov was saying: Once Comrade Stalin himself gave me a division on its last legs. Well, when I got through with it, it won a competition!

  (Where was it now? Hands and rags dangled down from the smoking pyre.)

  They sent him to a zone of murderous impossibility. If he “used up” all his men, he could only have delayed the enemy for a few hours. He might as well have marched everybody to Auschwitz to get worked to death! From the girls’ school which was now his headquarters (Kroeger had already pinned up a poster of HITLER—THE LIBERATOR), he radioed the new commander of Army Group Vistula.

  Frankly, Vlasov, I can’t understand why you Russians even want to fight. With the front going to hell, how can two divisions make any difference?

  With all respect, that’s not the issue. We urgently require artillery support to—

  The artillery’s not available. Why don’t you just attack in waves? You Russians are famous for, you know, overrunning positions through sheer—

  Herr Colonel-General, the German cadets who tried that were all wiped out yesterday. Moreover, the river’s flooded, so our offensive front is limited to a hundred meters. Naturally, the enemy have trained their guns on that spot—

  I really have to say that after all we’ve done for you, a bit more enthusiasm might . . . Do you have any proposal whatsoever?

  Air support—

  Out of the question. You’re living in the past, Vlasov. I order you to neutralize that bridgehead without further delay.

  Colonel-General Heinrici, I’m not under your command.

  Oho! Now it comes out! You see, I knew you were an unreliable element! Don’t think I won’t report this! So you refuse to acknowledge German authority?

  According to the Prague Manifesto, we’re your formal allies. Our status is—

  Toilet paper! The important thing is, will you do something about that Russian position or not?

  No longer caring how this would end, Vlasov demanded: Could you at least supply us with ammunition?

  Capture it from the enemy.

  Without adequate support the operation is pointless. I request permission to withdraw my men to another front.

  I’ll be obliged to speak to Himmler about this, Heinrici said curtly.

  As you wish. Good day, Herr Colonel-General.

  Heil Hitler!

  The conversation terminated. Vlasov lit a cigarette. His deputy Zherebkov, whom he’d already ordered to seek an understanding with the Western Powers, exchanged with him a salvo of knowing bitter smiles.

  Well, sir, what else can we expect?

  Vlasov frowned.—Send in the regimental commanders. We’ll hear their assessment.

  You don’t mean—

  I’m going to telephone Himmler and tell him we’ll attack, but under protest. That’s the only way to save ourselves. You and Bunyachenko will take command. I’ll go to Berlin for a few days. When the attack fails, break it off and tell Himmler you can’t act again without my authority.

  I understand.

  Before the action, instruct the commanders privately to save as many of our men’s lives as possible. That can’t come from me, because I’m . . .

  Yes, sir. And in Berlin will it still be possible to—

  Actually, I’m not going to Berlin at all. I’ll be in Karlsbad visiting my wife.

  On 13.4.45, the Russians conquered Vienna. Shortly after that, thanks to the convenient contraction of the front, he was able to see Heidi for the last time. She’d become even thinner, and much more dependent. In honor of his coming, she’d painted her lips as bright a red as the service colors of the Luftwaffe flak division, and her mother brought out hot water which was seasoned with real coffee. The two women kept praising him, for they believed that he’d pe
rformed another miracle of breaking out of Russian encirclement. He sat there stiffly, unwilling to pain them with the true case; fortunately they weren’t suspicious at all; they’d never read an untrue line in Signal magazine.—Don’t worry, her mother was saying. The Führer won’t allow the Russians to get us. He’ll gas us instead.—They drank schnapps together. Heidi’s mother wanted to know whether he had passed through Reichenhall when he came, for that was a very pretty, very German little town. When they raised glasses for the toast, Heidi’s hand began shaking. Vlasov cried out: Here’s to disappointed hopes! and then they drank in silence.

  I suppose you lovebirds want to be alone, said his mother-in-law, while Heidi smiled mechanically, plucking at her wasted face. A concussion sounded far away. Vlasov gazed at the blackout curtain. The stuffy, shabby little kitchen constricted him so much that he could hardly breathe.

  (Yes exactly—disappointed hopes! Just as the Führer himself, enslaved by positional illusions, had consistently refused to allow the Ostfront to contract under enemy pressure, and thereby permitted the Russians first to break through, then encircle many of his most crucial units, so Vlasov for his part had withheld from his various hopes the power of mobility. Faith masqueraded as reason; spearheads of circumstance isolated those static hopes of his, and the hopes perished.)

  As soon as little Frauke fell asleep, his wife drew him into the bedroom. The love and need in her eyes made him feel ashamed. She’d remained as steadfast as the stars on his collar. Weeping softly, she begged him to impregnate her. She said: This may be my final chance to receive the Honor Cross of the German Mother.

  (They heard her mother coughing on the other side of the wall.)

  Five days later, Vlasov’s scouts found the little house in the Allgäu where his best friend’s family lay hiding. Peeking through the almost-curtained window, Frau Strik-Strikfeldt clapped a hand over her open mouth. She had thought them all safe-settled here at the heart of this last isle of German summer, where steep yellow-green meadows were shaded by evergreen forests. For years she’d vainly tried to persuade her husband not to mix himself up with Slavs. And now this. Smiling, our jolly old Balt emerged in the doorway. Fruitlessly he outstretched his hand. He swallowed. With a pettish laugh, he cried: How changeable fortune is! Sometimes a man can hardly catch his breath! Don’t think I’m indifferent to all you’ve suffered. (By the way, you need a shave.) What can we do when—speaking of which, I heard a splendid joke the other day. Definition of cowardice: Leaving Berlin to volunteer for the Ostfront! Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha!