Europe Central

by William T. Vollmann

  356 Major-General Schmidt: “The greatest happiness any of our contemporaries can experience . . .”—Warlimont; quoting Goebbels’s diary, entry for 21 March 1942.

  361 Paulus to Lutz: “The great thing now is to hit the Russian so hard a crack . . .” —Goerlitz, p. 169.

  363 Colonel Heim on Paulus: “A slender, rather over-tall figure . . .”—Goerlitz, p. 48.

  363 “They”: “This defensive mission is contrary to the German soldier’s nature”—After Newton, p. 63 (Otto Schellert, “Winter Fighting of the 253rd Infantry Division in the Rzhev Area 1941-1942”).

  364 “A German general who survived the war”: “Practically every Russian attack . . .” —Major-General F. W. von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles: A Story of the Employment of Armour in the Second World War, trans. H. Betzler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, repr. of 1955 English ed.), p. 185.

  366 Field-Marshal von Manstein: “This policy of covering everything . . .”—Walimont, quoting Goebbels’s diary entry for 21 March 1942, p. 40.

  366 Unnamed officer at Wolf’s Lair: “Any caliber smaller than a hundred and fifty millimeters is ineffective . . .”—Loosely after Newton, p. 117 (Gustav Höhne, “In Snow and Mud: 31 Days of Attack Under Seydlitz During Early Spring of 1942”).

  366 Hitler: “I made it clear to my Brownshirts . . . rip off his armband”—Loosely after Mein Kampf, p. 504 (“An Attempted Disruption”).

  367 “Manstein’s high regard for the march discipline of the S.S. Death’s Head Division” —Op. cit., p. 187.

  369 Fremde Heere Ost, Gruppe I, Army Group report on the Red Army’s new Don Front: “Defensive enemy behavior”—Thomas, p. 269. (The source for this erroneous information was actually not the Leitstelle für Nachrichtenaufklärung, however.)

  370 Enemy signal of 18.11.42: “Send a messenger to pick up the fur gloves”—Erickson, p. 464.

  371 “Übersicht über sowjetrussischen Kräfteeinsatz” and description of the map’s colors —The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, trans. David Irving (New York: Times Mirror, World Publishing, 1972, trans. of 1971 German ed.), frontispiece.

  372 Great Soviet Encyclopedia: “Encirclement is most often achieved . . .”—Vol. 18, p. 78 (entry on encirclement).

  374 Paulus, on a possible breakout: “More than ten thousand wounded and most of our heavy weapons would have to be written off”—Loosely after the sentiment expressed by General Schmidt in Beevor, p. 268. On this same page Beevor writes that Paulus was “haunted” by comparisons with Napoleon’s retreat, so I supplied the standard figures on that disaster.

  376 Field-Marshal von Manstein on Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch: “Not belonging to quite the same class as Baron von Fritsch . . .”—Manstein, p. 75. About Paulus, Manstein was actually more charitable than this, concluding (p. 303) that “he can hardly have had a sufficiently clear picture of the overall situation.”

  376 Radio transmission came from our Führer: “Sixth Army is temporarily surrounded by Russian forces . . .”—Moderately altered from the version in Beevor, pp. 269-70.

  378 Paulus to Coca: “At the moment I’ve got a really difficult problem on my hands . . .” —Goerlitz, p. 72 (letter of 7 December 1942).

  378 Episode of the grand piano in the street, the ammunition-box altar for Christmas, and a few other miscellaneous details—Loosely based on Franz Schneider and Charles Gullans, trans., Last Letters from Stalingrad (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1962).

  378 Gehlen’s assessment of von Manstein: “One of the finest soldiers of this century.” —Gehlen, pp. 153-54. This was actually a postwar evaluation of the man.

  379 Field-Marshal von Manstein: “The best chance for an independent breakout has already been missed.”—von Manstein, p. 306.

  380 Paulus’s letter to von Manstein, as dictated to Colonel Adam: Severely abridged, somewhat “retranslated” and slightly altered from the full version which von Manstein gives as Appendix I (pp. 551-54).

  381 Lieutenant-General Jaenecke: “We’ll go through the Russians like a hot knife through butter!”—Slightly altered from Mitcham, p. 235.

  383 Paulus: “Your airlift has failed us . . .”—Loosely after Craig, p. 234.

  384 Major-General Schmidt to Major Eismann: “Sixth Army will still be in position at Easter . . .”—Slightly “retranslated” from von Manstein, p. 334.

  384 Paulus to Eismann: “At any rate, under current conditions a breakout would be impossible . . .”—Very loosely after an indirect quotation in von Manstein.

  384 The remainder of this conversation with Eismann is fabricated. For evidence that von Manstein was in fact willing to take responsibility for having Paulus disobey Hitler, see his memoir, pp. 341-42.

  384 Hitler: “We must under no circumstances give Stalingrad up . . .”—Warlimont, p. 285.

  385 Teleprinter conversation between Paulus and von Manstein, 23 December 1942: “Good evening, Paulus . . . full authority today”—Abbreviated and slightly reworded from the original in Goerlitz, pp. 276-77 (“Documents and signals” section).

  386 Schmidt to the teleprinter clerk: “Can aircraft still take off safely from Tatsinskaya?” —Teleprinter conversation from Schmidt to his opposite number General Shulz, the Chief of Staff at Army Group Don, 24 December 1942 (Goerlitz, p. 278).

  387 Paulus to von Manstein: “Army can continue to beat off small-scale attacks . . .” —Abbreviated and slightly “retranslated” from von Manstein, p. 351.

  387 Paulus to Coca: “Christmas, naturally, was not very happy . . .”—Goerlitz, p. 80 (letter of 28 December 1942).

  388 Note on German national character: “To regard the fulfillment of duty rather than personal responsibility . . .”—Count Hermann Keyserling, Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1928; original German ed. n.d., Das Spektrum Europas), p. 121.

  390 Paulus to Zitzewitz: “Everything has occurred exactly as I foretold . . .”—Goerlitz, p. 43.

  390 Heim on Paulus: “The face of a martyr.”—Ibid., p. 48.

  391 General Warlimont on Hitler: “Strategically he does not comprehend . . .”—Warlimont, p. 244.

  391 Daily briefing of 4 January 1943: “6 Armee, Heeresgruppe Don: Powerful enemy tank attack . . .”—Mehner, vol. 6: 1 Dezember 1942—31 Mai 1943, p. 71; my translation and abridgment.

  392 Hitler to von Manstein: “The Russians never keep any agreements.”—Craig, p. 368.

  393 Paulus to his staff officers: “I expect you as soldiers . . .”—Slightly altered from F. W. von Mellenthin, German General Staff Officer. (I presume this is the same Major-General who wrote Panzer Battles: German Generals of World War II As I Saw Them [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977], p. 115. Paulus was actually addressing only one man, Colonel Dingler of the Fourteenth Panzer Corps.)

  394 Paulus: “History has already passed its verdict on me”—Goerlitz, p. 72.

  394 Daily briefing of 16 January 1943: “6 Armee, Heeresgruppe Don: On the W. and S. fronts . . .”—Mehner, vol. 6, p. 95; my. trans. and abr.

  394 16 January 1943 as “the day that we lost the airstrip at Pitomnik”—von Manstein, however, gives this date as the twelfth.

  394 Paulus: “Dead men are no longer interested in military history.”—Beevor, p. 370.

  394 Hitler: “You must stand fast to the last man and the last bullet.”—After Warlimont, p. 286; Kershaw, p. 549.

  395 “Now they’d split us into two mutually isolated sub-fortresses.”—von Manstein (p. 364) writes that there were actually three pockets formed on 24 January, a claim which I have not read anywhere else. Goerlitz asserts that Sixth Army was split into two on 26 January.

  395 Paulus to OKW, 24 January 1943: “No basis left on which to carry out mission . . .” —Abridged and “retranslated” from von Manstein, p. 358.

  395 General Heitz’s slogan: “We fight to the last bullet but one”—Beevor, p. 382.

  396 “The Jew Babel” on the Jews of Zhitomir—The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. N
athalie Babel, trans. Peter Constantine (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 380 (diary entry for June 3, 1920).

  396 Von Reichenau on the liquidation of the Jewish children: “I have ascertained in principle . . .”—Klee, Dressen and Riess, p. 153 (abridged and slightly altered).

  400 Signal of 29 January 1943: “To the Führer! . . .”—After Beevor, p. 379, abridged.

  400 Daily briefing of 30 January 1943: “6 Armee, Heeresgruppe Don: More Russian attacks . . .”—Mehner, vol. 6, p. 123; my trans. and abr.

  400 Paulus to General Pfieffer: “I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal”—Beevor, p. 381.

  400 The German surrender at Stalingrad—The Soviets are said to have captured 2,000 officers and 91,000 thousand men. Very few of those ever came home. In 1958 von Manstein wrote: “Of the 90,000 prisoners who finally fell into Soviet hands, not more than a few thousand can be alive today” (p. 360). The original strength of Sixth Army was about 300,000. Presumably the 200,000-odd men not captured had already been slain in the fighting. Mitcham (p. 239) cites “the commonly accepted figure” of 230,000 Germans killed or captured in the course of the siege, not counting the wounded who were lucky enough to get flown out. Von Manstein (p. 396) estimates that between 200,000 and 220,000 soldiers were in the pocket as of the beginning of the encirclement. “Altogether, the Axis must have lost over half a million men” (Beevor, p. 398). According to Beevor (p. 394), the Russians endured 1.1 million casualties at Stalingrad, 485,751 of which were deaths.

  400 Regarding the necessity for Sixth Army’s ordeal at Stalingrad, the words of von Manstein (op. cit., p. 354) deserve to be quoted: “Every extra day Sixth Army could continue to tie down enemy forces surrounding it was vital as far as the fate of the entire Eastern Front was concerned. It is idle to point out today that we still lost the war in the end and that its early termination would have spared us infinite misery. That is merely being wise after the event. In those days it was by no means certain that Germany was bound to lose the war in the military sense. A military stalemate . . . would have been entirely within the bounds of possibility if the situation on the southern wing of the German armies could in some way have been restored.”

  400 German eyewitness: “Sorrow and grief lined his face”—Craig, p. 372.

  400 Major-General Schmidt to Paulus: “Remember that you are a Field-Marshal of the German army.”—Beevor, p. 388. These words were actually uttered a few hours later, immediately before Paulus’s interrogation.

  401 Unnamed Russian general, to Paulus: “We now have great and priceless experience of defensive fighting here on the banks of the Volga”—Closely after Vasili I. Chuikov, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, The End of the Third Reich, trans. Ruth Kisch (Bristol, U.K.: Macgibbon and Kee, 1967; orig. Russian ed. ca 1964), p. 17. In the original, Chuikov was speaking neither to Paulus nor sarcastically.

  401 Paulus to his captors: “That would be unworthy of a soldier!” and following conversation —After Beevor, p. 390; with some parts verbatim and some parts invented.

  403 Paulus’s experiences in the USSR, 1943-53—Based on the occasional mentions of him in Bodo Scheurig, Free Germany: The National Committee and the League of German Officers, trans. Herbert Arnold (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan Press, 1969; original German ed. 1961).

  403 The London Sunday Times correspondent A. Werth: “Paulus looked pale and sick . . .” —Werth, Russia at War, p. 549.

  403 Hitler on Paulus’s surrender: “What hurts me the most personally . . .” and “So many men have to die . . .”—Warlimont, p. 306 (fragment no. 47: midday conference [transcript], 1 February 1943).

  404 Field-Marshal Keitel: “I always took his side with the Führer . . .”—Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, Back Bay Books, 1992), p. 310, slightly altered.

  404 Rudenko: “Have I rightly concluded from your testimony . . .” and Paulus’s reply—Ibid., p. 311.

  405 The defense attorney: “What about you, Field-Marshal Paulus?” and Paulus’s reply—Loc. cit., somewhat altered.

  405 Ribbentrop: “That man is finished . . .” and Jodl’s reply—Gilbert, p. 148 (12 February 1946).

  406 Colonel Heim’s characterization of Paulus: “Well groomed . . .”—Goerlitz, pp. 47-48.

  406 Ernst Paulus’s postwar relations with his father—The silver-framed photograph from Poltava is, of course, my fabrication. For what it is worth, Ernst Paulus inserted the following into Goerlitz’s compilation (p. xiii): “So, in all reverence, I dedicate this book to the memory of Sixth Army.”

  407 Hitler’s will: “: . . . and therefore to choose death of my own free will . . .” Tuviah Friedman, Director of the Documentation Center, Long Dark Nazi Years: A Record of Documents and Photographs of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution (Haifa, 1999), testament p. 4 (pages of this book not consistently numbered). This document was discovered in a secret compartment of a suitcase in possession of a Frau Irmgard Unterholzer in Tegernsee.

  407 Ditto: “May it be one day a part of the code of honor . . .”—Ibid.; testament p. 6.

  407 Hilde Benjamin, nicknamed the Red Guillotine—She makes a few cameo appearances in Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). There is no information available to me that she ever met Paulus in real life.

  407 Hitler to Paulus: “One has to be on the watch like a spider in its web . . .”—Slightly altered from Warlimont, pp. 326-27 (fragment no. 5; discussion with Sonderfuuhrer von Neurath concerning Italy on 20 May 1943).

  408 Field-Marshal von Manstein on closeness between officers and men as the “Prussian tradition”—Op. cit., p. 207.

  408 Paulus’s prewar service report (1920): “Modest, perhaps too modest . . .”—Quoted in von Mellenthin, German Generals, p. 104.

  408 Hilde Benjamin on Paulus: “An innocuous representative of the former military-professional caste . . .”—I have fabricated this.

  409 Paulus’s Dresden lecture: “At the same time, particular attention was invited to Sixth Army’s inadequate stock of supplies”—Goerlitz, p. 219 (memorandum: “The basic facts of Sixth Army’s operations at Stalingrad [Phase I],” by Paulus).

  409 Gehlen: “My department predicted ten days in advance precisely where the blow would fall at Stalingrad!”—After Gehlen, p. 56. In his memoirs, Gehlen is nearly always right. David Thomas paints a different picture.

  409 The show trial of the Gehlen Organization—On 11 November, two ringleaders were guillotined in Dresden between 4:18 and 4:22 A.M., for the crime of industrial espionage.

  409 “Five hundred and forty-six spies arrested!”—Number supplied by Gehlen, p. 174, who contemptuously adds: ‘A fantastic figure which should itself have sufficed to convince any neutral observer that this was pure propaganda; it reminded me of the RAF and Luftwaffe claims in the Battle of Britain.”

  ZOYA

  As transliterated in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (vol. 13, p. 433), her name is Zoia Anatol’evna (Tania) Kosmodem’ianskaia. In this story I have preferred the looser, less forbidding orthography of World War II Anglo-American accounts. The encyclopedia informs us, in typical fashion omitting any mention of the mundane stables, that “she was captured by the fascists . . . while fulfilling a combat mission.”

  411 Epigraph: “The essential thing about anti-guerrilla warfare . . .”—Warlimont, p. 289 (Hitler at staff conference, fragment no. 29, evening session, 1 December 1942 in Wolfschanze).

  412 Zoya: “You can’t hang all hundred and ninety million of us.”—Karpov, p. 150. The first two of the three photographs of Zoya are reproduced here.

  413 Number of Vlasov’s mortars and heavy guns—Erickson, p. 534.

  413 Marshal Tukhachevsky: “The next war will be won by tanks and aviation”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 100.

  413 The song of the two beardless boys: “Into battle for
our nation, into battle for our Stalin”—Alexander Werth, Leningrad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), p. 33. To follow the meter of the original Russian (which appears on the same page), I’ve added an “our” before “Stalin” (the original runs za Stalina) and accordingly rendered za rodinu, “for the nation,” as “for our nation.”

  415 Streets named after her—In addition to a number of Kosmodem’ianskaia Streets, there is a monument to her on the Minsk highway.

  CLEAN HANDS

  The tale of Gerstein has haunted me for a number of reasons. “At the beginning of Nazism in Germany,” writes Marie-Louise von Franz, “I was several times asked by Germans in what respect they were abnormal, for though they were unable to accept Nazism, not doing so made them doubt their own normality . . . misery fell upon people who had done the right thing.”—The Feminine in Fairy Tales, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), p. 36. Some of the remarks in “Clean Hands” about the conflicting necessities of parleying with evil and of respecting it by not investigating it are partially indebted to this book; likewise the notion that someone who continues to fight evil and gets victimized is from a psychological perspective complicit. Basically, what von Franz is arguing is that if we repress our own evil side, it will come out somewhere else. My motivation in placing such arguments into the mouths of the other characters is to deepen our sense of what Gerstein’s biographer has called “the ambiguity of good.” All the same, I firmly believe that there was nothing ambiguous about Gerstein’s good, unavailing though it proved to be. He is one of my heroes.

  417 Hans Günther: “This is one of the most secret matters, even the most secret . . .”—Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-45 (New York: Schocken, 1973), p. 311 (“retranslated” a little). However, in his own affidavit, which is presumably more accurate, Gerstein assigns these words not to Günther but to S.S. Brigade Chief Otto Globocnik; see Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, trans. Charles Fullman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf [Borzoi], 1969), p. 104. For narrative reasons I have employed Levin’s version.