Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  Fresh from the victory in Kharkov, his face taut with youth even now at fifty-two, with a new Knight’s Cross pinned to his left breast pocket, and high on the right an airplane-straight eagle clutching a swastika, Paulus sat in his tent, listening to Beethoven.

  He’d last been privileged to see the Führer two months earlier, on 1.6.42. (Von Manstein, the hero of Operation Sturgeon, was smashing the defenses of Sebastopol, a feat for which the Führer would make him Field-Marshal; thewere detailing a punitive action against the village of Lidice; Rommel had the British on the run in Africa.) The Führer flew in to Poltava, which was the current headquarters of Army Group South. As for Paulus, he changed his grey field-overcoat for parade dress, his riding boots shined, his spurs gleaming, the golden eagle on his chest, gold braid, gold buttons. The Focke-Wulf touched down by military huts in the forest shadows. Beyond the treetops he spied what must have been the cathedral of the Krestovozdvizhenskii Monastery, which Coca, who was Orthodox, had once told him he really ought to try to see, but unsurprisingly the black Mercedes-Benz carried him in the opposite direction. He sat in the back, and the S.D. police-lieutenant, who was tanned and young and had honeycolored hair sat in front beside the driver, with a pistol in his lap. Poltava did not seem to be either as hot or as white as Zhitomir had been last summer, that summer of apples and cherries, but it was equally silent; these Eastern cities always are, once they’ve been absorbed into our new territories. Paulus never ceased to find this rather eerie. Coca had reminded him, perhaps more frequently than she needed to (he particularly remembered one discussion they’d had when she was brushing her hair, a discussion which only the most immense efforts had saved from becoming an argument) that in the Civil War days these peasants hid machine-guns in haystacks, resisting the exactions of Soviet power. Although he’d pointed out to her as tactfully as he could that their resistance had been vain, and that the coercive power of our Reich was infinitely superior to that of the Russians with their disorderliness, bad leadership and poor communications, still, it was habitual with him not merely to consider the other point of view, but to elevate Coca’s opinions a trifle, to lay them on the mantelpiece, as it were. So he inquired whether there had been any difficulties here with partisans.—By no means, Herr Lieutenant-General! returned the S.D. man, smiling at him in the mirror even as he continued to watch the road; he was a very well-trained youth, and Paulus approved of him, so he continued the conversation: I’m glad to hear that these people are loyal to us.—Herr Lieutenant-General, you can ask anything of them, just like horses. They work until they drop and make no demands.

  First there was the road and the river, the Vorskla River he knew it was (Paulus never forgot a map). Then came walls of barbed wire with the red-and-black-striped barrier pole at each gate, the happily vigilant, blue-eyed young sentries with their machine-guns. The closer he came to our Führer, the more perfect everything seemed. Next there were the railroad tracks, and on the tracks the windowless train cars guarded by Waffen-Here the car left him, the S.D. man saluting, then bidding farewell with a hearty Heil Hitler. At the next gate he surrendered his Mauser pistol for the duration (no offense intended, Herr Lieutenant-General!) Two-men escorted him through the inner gate, and he found himself in an enclosed yard of gravel, not unlike a prison’s exercise yard; and here in the strongish sunlight, which enriched the familiar railroad smell of creosote and of something else, too, probably the river, all the principals of Operation Blau awaited our Führer’s call. General Warlimont, who was Deputy Chief of Operations, greeted Paulus with pleasure, and they shook hands.—And when will we ever be prepared to act in the West? he murmured, to which Paulus did not reply. Now he must bow and click his heels, for his commander, Field-Marshal von Bock, who’d received his baton at the end of the French campaign, came to join them, remarking with a smile that our Führer had been astounded at the number of Aryan-looking females here. Since the tall Field-Marshal was not ordinarily known for his sense of humor, Paulus once again found himself at a loss, but General Warlimont for his part laughed loudly, perhaps because he wished to distract Paulus from his previous, rather unfortunate question. He was known to be gradually losing his access to the Führer.

  Well, Paulus, said von Bock, not at all unkindly, have the Russians been keeping you up at night?

  Not in the least, Herr Field-Marshal, returned Paulus with quiet pride. Opening his silver cigarette case (a birthday gift from Coca), he offered smokes all around.

  Field-Marshal List was there (not quite as well turned out as Paulus), and so were Generals Halder, Hoth, von Kleist (who was not yet a Field-Marshal), Ruoff and all the rest. His own chief of staff, Major-General Schmidt, had been there for several hours already; he’d arrived by a separate Fiesler-Storch. General von Richtofen of Air Fleet Four was there, pacing and biting his lip impatiently, while a hapless little Luftwaffe man with a large briefcase tried to keep up with him. Generals von Greiffenberg and von Mackenson were whispering cliquishly by the perimeter fence, until an-man strolled over to fix an eye on them. The gong rang. Braving the gaunt, brooding glance of Hitler’s adjutant, the generals entered the conference car, set down their briefcases, and sat attentive while the Führer painted them a picture of the wondrous crops which someday would be harvested from the experimental fields of the East. Then it was time to prepare our great drive upon the Volga River. The Führer himself led the way into the map room. Now the generals all stood deferentially around the long table which shimmered so whitely with maps that Russian winter seemed to dwell there; but the Führer strode right up to it and sat down on the edge, frowning down at Maikop, Rostov, Stalingrad, a little whiplike pointer in his right hand as the generals all waited on him, their Iron Crosses and Oak Leaves marking them as ornamentally important personages; and Field-Marshal Keitel, whom everyone referred to behind his back as “the nodding ass,” stood in the corner, grinning anxiously as the pointer began to descend, while Field-Marshal von Bock suddenly grimaced; he suffered from ulcers. General von Sodenstern, his chief of staff, already had a pill ready.—Keitel, is this line ready? the Führer asked sharply.—Yes, my Führer.—All the way to here?—Without a doubt, my Führer, said the poor mediocrity, unable even to see what Hitler might be pointing at; and Paulus stared at the map, so embarrassed on the nodding ass’s behalf that he felt unclean. What would the mission be? In the Führer’s treasurehouse the many triangular flags of the OKH reserves waited black and white on the grey pages of the secret files, ready to be activated and expended; but too many of them were already gone; mistakes had been made last year, which was why Moscow and Leningrad remained uncaptured. No one except the Führer knew for certain how many men had died in the Russian winter; that information was secret. But Warlimont had whispered outside just now that our total losses thus far on the Ostfront were six hundred and twenty-five thousand. Paulus had lost seven hundred men to frostbite alone. The OKH reserves were half spent now. Someday, nobody knew when, the Anglo-Americans would strike on the Westfront, and then the last reserves must be rushed to the point of penetration in France or Italy or maybe Yugoslavia, to halt them without fail. Would the Russian campaign finally be wrapped up by then? Operation Blau must succeed. And now the Führer began to speak. He told them that this area where the Don and Volga rivers kissed was the strategic hinge upon which the entire Eastern campaign might depend. Army Group South, he announced, was to be split forthwith into Army Groups A and B, in order to execute an immense pincer action here and here (two more strokes of the little toy flail). Field-Marshal von Bock, whose balding forehead imperturbably shone above everyone else’s head, would retain command of Army Group B, which consisted of four armies, including Paulus’s Sixth; while Field-Marshal List would lead Seventeenth and First Panzer Armies through Rostov to the oil fields. It was a grand enough goal; but that grandness could scarcely disguise the fact that von Bock had been deprived of part of his command.

  To Paulus, who sometimes fell victim to a sensitivity to slights
which others received, the announcement was simply agonizing, not only because von Bock was a friend, but also because he was a Field-Marshal—the highest rank to which any German soldier could aspire: second only to the Führer himself! To Paulus, therefore, this capricious alteration of authority seemed demeaning and worse; for a moment he felt positively indignant at the Führer. (To be sure, List was a Field-Marshal, too; doubtless he was also deserving.) Moreover, Paulus believed that once the Supreme Command had set a goal for an Army Group, the Army Group ought to be allowed to achieve that goal in its own fashion. But this was not the Führer’s way, at least not since Operation Barbarossa had begun to go wrong. Von Bock, pale and thin, did not change expression, and Paulus admired him for this. Nor did his chief of staff appear to be at all offended, but then, he was known to be a friend of Keitel’s. Calmly, the tall, skeletal Field-Marshal requested a brief delay in the commencement of Operation Blau in order to finish liquidating some Russian elements around Kharkov . . .

  After the general conference ended, the Führer summoned each commander in turn. To the victor of Kharkov he said: My dear Paulus, I’ve given you an extremely important task. It’s not just a question of annihilating a few more Russian divisions. Any one of my generals could do that.

  Paulus experienced a feeling of intense pleasure. He bowed a little, not daring to speak.

  The fuel situation is becoming critical, the Führer went on. If I don’t get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, I’ll have to liquidate this war. The political generals don’t understand that.

  I understand, my Führer. Sixth Army will carry out its assignment.

  That is beyond doubt, said the Führer with a smile. Rising, he pressed Paulus’s hand.

  Comprehending that he’d been dismissed, Paulus murmured farewell and had already turned to leave the briefing car when the Führer said: Paulus.

  Yes, my Führer.

  Don’t worry about being slightly under strength. You know, the losses we suffered last winter had one positive aspect. All the weaklings died. As you go into action this summer, you’ll find that Sixth Army is the better for it. There’s hardly a man left on the whole Ostfront who’s not as hard as armor plate and as fanatical as ten Bolsheviks!

  Yes, my Führer.

  The Russians can barely stand up. You’ve seen the reports. We’re going to crush them all by the end of this summer. Moreover, we’ll soon have V-weapons in unlimited quantities.

  Paulus, still dazzled by the Führer’s praise, did not begin to wonder until later whether among those political generals his predecessor, Field-Marshal von Reichenau, might be included. At von Reichenau’s funeral, as they stood in the niche beneath the immense iron cross, the Führer had laid a hand upon Paulus’s shoulder, murmuring the phrase which daily appeared in the black-bordered section of every newspaper: Ordained by fate our proud sorrow.

  To be frank, Paulus shared many of Coca’s views about Operation Barbarossa. He had been against this entire war because it seemed unwinnable; of course our Führer’s genius had convinced him otherwise: First Poland, then France, Norway and all the rest. Operation Blau could be defined as a logical gamble, with an excellent chance of success; still, given the losses at Moscow, Paulus would have preferred that we go on the strategic defensive. Ever since last winter, the left side of his face kept twitching. So far, Russian troops had proved themselves incapable of operational initiative; nonetheless, as Coca never tired of pointing out, there were more of them than of us. (In confidence, General Beck had told him the following story: Last winter, a certain Communist saboteur named Zoya, who from her features must have been of Jewish extraction, had shouted out, just before receiving her punishment: You can’t hang all hundred and ninety million of us! This would not have been the right anecdote to pour into Coca’s ear.) Then there was this business of the Final Solution, although he certainly stood ready to do his part to overthrow the Jewish world dictatorship. In a nutshell, Lieutenant-General Paulus disapproved of several aspects of the new Germany. But . . .

  I would be unfair to Lieutenant-General Paulus were I to give you the impression that he was “ambitious” in the narrow sense of that word. Had he come of Gallic or southern Mediterranean stock, he doubtless would have been drawn to the fêtes which distinguish those junior peoples. Since he was German, his enthusiasm for spectacle—which is really all it was—expressed itself more soberly. He attended military celebrations of all kinds, even when the service branch involved wasn’t his; for instance, he’d been present when triple blue-black rows of naval men on the foredeck received their Iron Crosses. He lost his leisure for that after we broke up Czechoslovakia. But later still, on the Ostfront, he seemed to take pleasure in personally pinning decorations on the troops, even right down to distributing pleasantly colored shoulderpatches to our native Ost-volunteers: Cossack horsemen, Ukrainian police troops, and for that matter the occasional Russian “Hiwi,” whose pretenses the rest of us preferred not to encourage. This richly ceremonial giving and taking of honors seemed to nourish him. (Well, wasn’t that harmless? Coca liked to dress up for the opera.) When Field-Marshal von Reichenau had told him, with an almost brutal slap on the back, that the Führer had been persuaded (by von Reichenau, he understood) to give him command of Sixth Army, his sensations rushed far beyond happiness, into the realm of shock. This had not been prefigured. Most of us find it easy enough to believe that whatever benison fate grants us must be deserved; but to Paulus, who preferred real iron to dreams of gold, the great change felt almost unbearable. Sixth Army, you see, was not just any army; it was our Reich’s single greatest fighting force: twenty German divisions, two half-spent Romanian divisions, a Croat regiment, great numbers of Organization Todt people and other civilians—considerably more than a quarter of a million men. And it was his; he’d achieved everything that Coca had ever hoped for him. He could not rise higher than this, except to become a Field-Marshal. Who then was he to rebel against this opportunity?

  Colonel-General Halder at OKW had once remarked: One of the sacrifices which commanders have to make is to overcome any scruples they may have.

  That is beyond doubt, said Paulus.

  Then Halder, leaning unpleasantly forward, seemed to want to involve him in something, but what that was Paulus preferred not to know.

  3

  Operation Blau commenced on 28.6.42. On 30.6.42 he broke through the enemy’s Twenty-first Army and brushed aside the wreckage of the Twenty-eighth, cutting a deep gash in Stalin’s Southwestern Front. They halted for the evening on a meadow. His Panzer troops were singing “Erika, We Love You” in four-part harmony as they stacked their rifles on the railroad tracks; nobody feared the Russian stragglers. From his tent he immaculately came, smiling at the melody, and instantly a voice shouted: Achtung! Stillgestanden! so that they all leaped to attention for him, their faces tanned to the brownish-pink hue of the mineral called germanite, at which he smiled a little more, then retired, to give them peace for their singing. But now they remained self-consciously silent. He too felt not quite at ease; his Knight’s Cross from Kharkov wasn’t quite enough to prove him; it was almost as if he were a child again, allowed to eat supper with his parents only provisionally, under imminent threat of criticism for the way in which he cut up his meat. His father had never overlooked the slightest error, which might have been why it was so crucial for him to study every question until its solution lay beyond any doubt. At times he even felt nervous in front of Coca, whose ancestry could be traced to the Roman emperor Justinian. He still couldn’t quite believe that he’d been set over these three hundred thousand men outside. How ought he to treat them? This was his first large-scale command. Coca had warned that many would be jealous. He replied that he didn’t care about that. All he wanted was to do his duty. Laughing in loving disbelief, she ruffled his hair. She had already picked out a spot on the mantelpiece where his Field-Marshal’s baton would go. First Beethoven on the gramophone, then Bach. He bent over the daily enemy situation report fro
m Fremde Heere Ost Gruppe I, Army Group South section. The signals intelligence report was attached, and it contained the transcriptions of the pathetic radio entreaties of encircled Red Army formations, followed by the equally desperate threats of their commanders: No retreat will be tolerated . . . They certainly could not be considered first-rate troops. The orderly was ready with a clean pair of white gloves. He turned to the map of our own dispositions. Sixth Army was approaching Kalach, while Fourth Army was advancing northeast toward Stalingrad, a city he certainly intended to bypass unless the Führer instructed him to the contrary; like Moscow and Leningrad, it would fall of its own accord. (He still would have felt easier had the objective of Operation Blau been Moscow.) The main thing was to drive southeast toward the enemy’s oil supply, rolling over these wheat fields which were as bare as the heads of Ukrainian Cossacks. He was inclined to subdivide Sixth Army into northern and southern attack groups, but this was something he preferred to sleep on. Now to resume his study of the Volga. The western bank of that watercourse, proved the map, was higher than the eastern—convenient for him. The orderly, who happened to be very vain and whose dream was to have his photograph appear in Signal magazine, came to light the lantern on the field-desk.—And tell Major-General Schmidt that I need those supply dispositions tomorrow, he said.—By your order, sir, replied the orderly happily. And now Paulus was alone again with his maps. It had become incumbent on him to work even longer now than in the days of his attachment to Panzer HQ in Berlin; Coca would have been indignant had she seen how little rest he got. But he didn’t dare let up. He never stopped sincerely trying to get frontline information. He’d observed Lieutenant-General Rommel at Tobruk during the height of Operation Sunflower. To this day he remained shocked at the way that officer gambled with destiny and exceeded his authority. And yet he’d had good luck; the Führer had made him a Field-Marshal just this month. (To become a Field-Marshal is, in a sense, to live forever.) Paulus himself believed far less in luck than he did in application. So he sat there in his tent long after most of his soldiers were asleep, hovering over the map as if he were a fighter pilot in the Soviet sky; while in the hot darkness above, the moon shone like von Reichenau’s glass eye. Ordained by fate our proud sorrow.—Well, Paulus, tell me, what orders am I issuing now?—That was what the Field-Marshal always used to say! (Paulus had considered their policy in the occupied territories to be too ruthless, but von Reichenau admonished him: You’ve got no basis for making a problem out of the Slavic question.) He still believed that the Soviet command structure might well collapse in another four to six weeks; our Führer had said that Russia would then become the German India. Meanwhile, what orders was he to issue now? (The orderly came to see whether he needed any more cigarettes.) He knew for a fact that neither Rommel nor von Reichenau had ever studied maps as thoroughly as he did.—You’re too good for such people, Coca always said.