by Roy Jacobsen
The advance was not only very difficult to comprehend, seen through Markus’ eyes – even today he asserts he has no idea what Hitler was trying to do in the Volga Basin, even though he is well aware of the official explanations, about the oilfields in the Caucasus, the cornfields in the Ukraine, the waterways north and south, etc. – it was also fraught with considerable risk, and now the Russians had broken through on both flanks of the German spearhead, which were held by Romanian divisions, and had closed the ring around Paulus. The Sixth Army was encircled! Twenty-two divisions, between 250,000 and 300,000 men, the majority of the German artillery, more than a hundred tanks, 10,000 half-tracks and lorries, 10,000 army horses, engineer units, 600 doctors, planes, trains …The Wehrmacht’s largest army by far, the one Hitler had plans to conquer heaven and earth with.
It was up to Manstein now to play the role of a modern William of Orange, to open a supply corridor through to Paulus, either from Kalach in the west or from the south, the flat land between the two rivers, where his subordinate Generaloberst Hermann Hoth and his Fourth Panzer Army held their position, while von Richthofen’s Luftwaffe supplied the encircled army from the air in the meantime as best it could.
For the time being, no-one talked aloud about the possibility of – as a plan B, if nothing else – securing a controlled retreat for the Sixth Army, over to the west bank of the Don, except for Paulus himself, who had already asked three times to be allowed to break out, only to receive a flat rejection each time from Hitler; Stalingrad had not only tactical but symbolic importance. “All eyes are on Stalingrad,” including those of the Allies, since the Russians here had managed to make effective use of the Wehrmacht’s own weapon, the armoured pincer movement, and had sown the seeds of hope all over the world that finally it would be possible to put an end to this madness.
“…In the circumstances,” Manstein summed up, “with this in mind, have you got a problem serving here?”
“A problem, Herr General?” Markus stuttered, confused at his concerns being taken so seriously. “What kind of problems were you thinking about?”
The General looked at him with bright, candid eyes.
“We live close to the truth here, Hebel. Does that worry you?”
“No, no, of course not…”
“Good. Then you will report to Stahlberg, Oberst Busse or directly to me. Can you write?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you have some Russian, I’ve heard, so I suppose you can write in German, can’t you?”
“Of course, Herr General.”
“Look at this,” Manstein said, holding a dispatch under the glare of the desk lamp.
A letter from the Romanian Supreme Commander, Marshal Antonescu, who launched a scathing attack on the German army leadership, that is on Hitler personally, who had not listened to the countless warnings issued by the Romanians, informing him that the Russians had quietly concentrated huge forces north of the Don, where they had crossed about a week ago, demolished the Romanian Third Army and closed the ring around Paulus.
Antonescu also felt it appropriate to remind them that of all Germany’s allies Romania was the most loyal, self-sacrificing and reliable. Now nine of his twenty-two divisions had been crushed, nine put to flight or “missing”, while only the remaining four could be termed “still battle fit”. This depressing analysis was concluded with a laconic hope that, building on these “ruins”, it might be possible to set up a new force.
“I’ve passed on the criticism to Hitler,” Manstein said. “But without comment, even though I share Antonescu’s view on all points, as the question of mutual trust between heads of state is a political matter. The Feldmarschall’s main concern, however, is relevant to us…”
He put his finger on the final paragraph: “It is apparent here that some German units, both officers and soldiers, have made disrespectful remarks about the Romanians’ performance at the Don and south of Stalingrad. This is not acceptable, even though it is understandable …Please remedy this, and look at these notes, they have to be sent to all the General Commands, including Paulus’, since he still has two Romanian divisions under his wing…”
Markus staggered out into the biting night air, dumbstruck, this was not what he had bargained for, this wasn’t why he was here, he needed time, the way every dreamer comes down to earth with the greatest reluctance. But a banal altercation with his superior was after all no great sacrifice, compared with young Peter’s fate in the “Kessel”, the cauldron, the son with whom he had lost an emotional connection when the boy left to study physics in Strasbourg three years ago, after which he had not been home to Clervaux one single time. But he had written letters, evasive and impersonal and platitude-filled letters, so Markus had visited him the autumn afterwards – in 1940 – and in a cramped and shabby room decorated with the new era’s regalia he encountered the same evasive attitude that was evident in his letters, the boy who was trying to keep something hidden from his father, it was written all over his face, that awful adolescent mixture of guilt and defiance.
Markus had taken him to a pub and poured schnapps and beer down him and elicited a depressing network of “comrades” and “exercises” and “studies”, which he had to take the gloss off if he were to have any hope of winning back his son. In the following months he had sent him pleading and threatening letters, literature of both a religious and humanistic nature, suggested a variety of places where he could emigrate to, England, Switzerland …and even dug up a few old medical certificates documenting that the boy suffered from bad eyesight and was unsuitable for military adventures of any kind.
But compared to the magnificent invasion of France, which at that very time was being trumpeted through the propaganda machinery, a lapsed father’s circuitous, imploring letters were no more than a creak in the fly-rigging system of a theatre. The last Markus saw of the boy was a photograph he sent his mother just before he went to war and which she – at her son’s request – made a half-hearted attempt to conceal from his father but which Markus discovered all the same, and there he was, young Peter, in German uniform, with a decidedly unsure expression of triumph behind the thick lenses of his glasses, my God what a sad sight, this lad who had given Markus such joy, their shared interest in radio transmitters and languages and Catholic saints, especially the Irish St Malachy who on his travels to Rome to learn about continental monastery life had also stopped at Clairvaux where, before his death in 1148, he had related his fantastic life to his friend Bernard, Vita Malachiae, the first Latin script Markus had forced his son to plough through – what had he not done to widen the understanding and tolerance in this boy; and then this, his son, dressed in the immaculate uniform of tyranny, so probably it was not inappropriate that he should have the pride beaten out of him in the cauldron, a deep catharsis, together with all the other crackpots on this campaign – and probably on any other – who allowed themselves to be led by the most despicable psychological defect of them all: youthful arrogance!
Markus, the radio technician, got nowhere with writing to all the Commands in defence of the Romanians. After all, what could he write to Generaloberst Hermann Hoth, “Papa Hoth”, as he was called, the stalwart Commander of the Fourth Panzer Army which had been under continuous fire for months and was at that very moment struggling to keep the Russian “circle” around Paulus’ doomed Stalingrad as narrow as possible, in the south? Or to the head of the Army Detachment Hollidt – General de Infanterie Karl Adolf Hollidt –who with inexhaustible gallantry and appalling losses was trying to contain the “circle” in the west?
This was actually Markus’ speciality, tolerance and outstretched arms, gentleness; in his youth he’d even had plans to study theology and serve the Lord, if only that had been compatible with his carnal interest in Nella, whom he met and whose spell he fell under during the Catholic festivities in Trier in the autumn of the great peace in 1918, when he himself and all of Europe crawled out of the gutter with expectations of all that
is good: work and peace and starting a family, children being born and baptised and brought up to be well-behaved through example and kindly admonition, since the best qualities, as we know, are passed on while the worst have to be duly forgotten, buried and mourned! But what use was God’s wisdom out here in the borderlands, it was enough to make you blush with shame; the fighting at Stalingrad had been going on for three months, more or less continuously, and before that the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzers had already been in action for three months, a war in the Steppes across six hundred kilometres, this too virtually without a pause, was there even a remote chance that his son could be alive?
Markus pushed Manstein’s notes aside, got up and went to the radio room and was enveloped by the hot, sweaty smell of fat Erich Beber, who was leaning back on a folding chair with his headphones hanging round his neck like a rope ladder and his mouth wide open, snoring heavily, his hands hanging on the end of long arms like boiled pig’s trotters a centimetre or two above the scrubbed wooden floor. On a divan in one corner half sat, half lay the telegraph and radio operator, Hans Kuntnagel, flicking absent-mindedly through what looked like a bible, both men old front-line comrades of Markus. “Fatty Beber” had been wounded in the Crimea in an embarrassing civilian accident, but not seriously enough to be sent home. Kuntnagel had been with Beber during the Poland campaign, in France and throughout Operation Barbarossa, where Markus got to know him; two ordinary Germans, from Pomerania, a self-taught car mechanic, Kuntnagel, who actually was a farmer and smelt of potatoes and soil to the bitter end, even though he carried around a forlorn dream of being an art historian, with the Italian Renaissance as his area of expertise. And a radio operator, Beber, also a farmer, with few interests other than food and unfunny, vapid jokes. The two of them were inseparable, although Markus had never seen them exchange any signs of friendship.
He made an impatient gesture with his arm, Kuntnagel jumped up and thumped Beber in the chest with the bible. The big man woke up with a snort and both left the room, while Markus sank into the warm chair, perused the latest telegrams and Beber’s illegible notes; he had asked Beber to write in capitals but the man could hardly spell and did his utmost to hide it. There were the “cauldron figures”, the numbers of Stalingrad casualties, a report by Paulus’ General Staff about “enemy activity in the northern part of the cauldron”, near the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory, the Red October steelworks, the Barrykady munitions factory …the same impregnable bastions, in this city which had housed more than half a million inhabitants when the Luftwaffe embarked on its deadly August offensive, insignificant civilian ants of Markus’ modest proportions which the Lord had thrown into the arena between these two new creations of His: Hitler, who wanted “to reach the Volga”, and Stalin, who in turn refused to evacuate because “a living town is easier to defend than a dead one”.
If his son Peter were sitting at the teleprinter now, in the cauldron, how could he contact him, personally? Markus never found any real answer to this, it was no more than a futile dream, like the carrier pigeons William of Orange sent to Leiden to keep up the population’s spirits. He wrote the name of the saint, “Malachy”, on a scrap of paper and sat doodling, embellishing the letters, crossing them out and writing them again. The Irish saint whose life story his son had once known inside out – would he understand from the signature “Malachy” that the message came from his father? Or what about his own name, Markus, Mark the Evangelist, who turned back on his first pilgrimage, disillusioned and downcast, and later acted as Peter’s interpreter in Rome …Or perhaps a tale from his home district would be more likely to strike a chord in his son, Henri le Long and Hervé le Bref? But would his son connect him, his father, with these names? And if he did, would he really want to know that Markus was here, at the Army Group H.Q., and that his father was stationed at the Command which was now regarded in Stalingrad as its sole hope of salvation.
Markus hesitated.
His vacillation begins here, in this first act of stupidity, in this sick dream, for nothing makes man smaller and more pathetic than war. Nothing makes him greater either, he thought in horror.
2
Markus stumbled out of his austere sleeping quarters at just after six in the morning, having had only a couple of hours’ sleep, he couldn’t allow himself more if this was to be anything like the reality he was trying to find, out into a new snowstorm, or was it the old one which had set in over the area?
He strode along the icy planks and into the Command H.Q. to present the General with the final written response about the Romanians – and it was approved without any changes. As mentioned, he had turned his back on his Catholic leanings, in favour of the army’s usual phrasing: “To maintain troop morale at the front in the south and east and to maintain the bonds of brotherhood that bind our two nations, it is of the utmost importance that no incidents occur between our soldiers and the Romanians, who are fighting on our side for the same high ideals…”
The General was in the map room with Oberst Busse, a telegraphist who had arrived the day before, two lower-ranking officers and the cartographer, Jakob Spitz, a man of Markus’ age from Berlin, who in the establishment phase of Army Group Don had supplied the place’s only civilised entertainment, chess and discussions about the existence of God, perhaps what the Lord must have intended with recent events. Jakob Spitz had red, bristly hair, ruddy cheeks and small, blinking eyes, which were also red, he was a geographer by training, but he had also worked as a railway engineer in the years before the outbreak of war. On one occasion Markus had heard him utter a critical comment about the new Germany’s ambitions and expansive plans; it concerned the Luftwaffe’s – or more precisely Göring’s – claim that it was possible to provide supplies to Paulus’ army from the air. Apart from this, Jakob did not complain about the enemy, Hitler, the food or the climate: “We officers live in heaven,” he said, “compared with the poor wretches in the field.”
The sombre atmosphere of fate and eternity had already settled over the Command like heavy, falling metal dust, the absence of any noise from the terrible things going on only some kilometres north-east of Novocherkassk; nature’s eternal voice against the flimsy wooden walls, driving snow and the human pulse, the heartbeat which will quicken from day to day until it finds the rhythm of the battlefield, which Markus knew so well from Kerch and the Crimea, the stubborn, electrifying buzz which pushes the days forward, one by one, creating a hallucinatory anaesthesia that can be maintained forever.
Jakob Spitz was hanging up a new map-sketch of Paulus’ famous “Kessel”, a cauldron, a red flattened circle between the Don and the Volga, an ellipse, a lopsided jewel, about fifty kilometres from west to east, and forty kilometres from north to south, which gave the impression that the figure was moving, or trying to stretch, westwards, homewards.
To Markus’ consternation, the General took the dispatch about the Romanians from him and signed it without reading the contents, whereupon the telegraphist sped off with it. Markus made a move to fall out, but was stopped by Oberst Busse, who handed him a cup of coffee and sent him a faint smile with that broad baby-face of his.
“Did you sleep well, Leutnant?”
“No, Herr Oberst.”
“A negative gent, this Hebel,” Manstein mumbled with his nose buried in a pile of documents. “Don’t let him ruin your mood, Oberst.”
“No danger of that.”
“What have you got on Hoth here, Hebel?” the General continued, still engrossed in the documents. “His lines, his supplies…?”
“They’re open, Herr General, as far as I know,” Markus said, keen to display his knowledge, have it approved and if possible also appreciated. “Right down to the Caucasus, he’s got his back covered…”
“We know that already. But what has he had this last week? It doesn’t say anything about that here.”
Markus realised that the staff were correlating the information they had received during the night from the Commands in the field
with the information that had come in since the Soviet counter-offensive started on November 19. It was not unusual for front lines to report “home” a greater need for supplies than was actually the case, to allow for the time factor and possibly any idiots at Supreme Command.
He walked over to a filing cabinet he’d had put in against one wall and took out the Fourth Panzer Army’s transport and supply documents, flicked through them, but gave the whole stack to Busse without comment. The Oberst glanced at the last pages, made a quick calculation and said over his shoulder:
“Fifty-six to sixty per cent? Isn’t that on the low side?”
“That’s the same figure we got from Finkh last night,” Manstein said. “So it is too low…”
“These papers are from Finkh too, Herr General,” Markus interrupted, uneasy about this discussion of percentages which was intended to lead to a realistic assessment of the strength of Hoth’s army; all hope was invested in Hoth here, the line that had to be kept supplied to the hilt if there was to be any chance of breaking the Russian encirclement, history’s most barbaric and portentous siege.
“Plus five or ten per cent?” Manstein ventured.
“Given Hoth’s confidence in the new army leadership,” Markus insisted, “I would not go higher than five, Herr General.”
“Is that supposed to be flattery?”
“No, Herr General. It’s a mere observation.”
Busse whinnied, and Markus was on the point of turning his head in triumph.
“What do we need with Germans, Oberst,” the General said drily, “when we’ve got Belgians?”
“Agreed. Pity there are so few of them. What about settling for sixty-five?”
Manstein nodded and then appeared to forget the whole issue. He got up and stood in front of the map like a Prussian statue. Markus wondered whether this meant he should fall out, but he was still unsure what codes of behaviour the Command had put in place.