by Roy Jacobsen
“From this – no.”
Beber was still bewildered. He looked at the letter for a long time, held it up to the pale winter light once more, moving his lips as he read.
“Do you think I should believe all this?” he said finally with a cautious smile, “instead of imagining all sorts of other things?”
Markus shrugged.
“One or the other,” he said. “You can’t do both.”
Beber’s smile broadened and Markus turned his back on him, almost in repulsion, and went to get some coffee and an update on Hoth’s situation.
It turned out that yet another concentration of Russian forces had been registered north-west of Kotelnikovo, near the tiny village of Poklebin on the Steppes, which Markus had to take out a map to locate. Hoth was expecting an attack at any time, but also assured them he was ready! And Transportchef Fiebig was delighted to report that they “had finally got good flying conditions” over Stalingrad, even though he had to add laconically: “Unfortunately so have the Ivans.”
That day Manstein had ordered the trapped General Paulus to move two motorised divisions and a panzer division to the south-west front in the cauldron. In addition, there were a number of technical details attached to the deployment of a supply convoy to follow in Hoth’s wake, an armada of lorries with food, medicine and fuel …And Markus counted all this as pluses in the calculus of probability which God subjects us to. But still he had no tenable idea as to what to write to his son or whether he should write at all; on the one hand, he clung to the hope that the wounded Weber would recover and give an oracular response – Your son Peter, yes I know him, he is well-fed and active and in the best of health; on the other hand, he was waiting for Hitler’s sudden enlightenment, intoxicated by the idea of being able to signal to his son – and all the others in Stalingrad – that an order to break out would be given at any moment.
But Leutnant Weber did not come round and Hitler did not answer, an unmistakable sign that the Führer was either at a complete loss, extremely angry or about to announce a decision he knew would hit granite with Manstein.
Furthermore, Markus had begun to wonder why his son – and it was him, there was no doubt about it! – had signed the telegram “Radio Volga”, that was the propaganda station in Stalingrad which, via Berlin, spread lies and misinformation with frenetic energy throughout the Reich about the great conquests being made here in the east; could it be a cynical sign that his son still shared the official German conception of reality? Or was he trying to tell his father that a channel could be opened up via the radio station?
Markus wanted to believe the latter, but didn’t know how to reply. Only late in the afternoon did a solution occur to him, a single sentence:
“Alethe’s white dog, I will come to visit you in Strasbourg and are you coming home with me this time? Reply! Don.”
But he didn’t send it.
He sat looking at it, at his refined and effete scribblings, how insignificant can a man become? He walked around with it in his pocket and slept on it, until Stahlberg started to ask about progress in the “white dog” project at dawn on December 1. Markus shamefully pulled out the crumpled paper again and Stahlberg peered over, read it and demanded to know what the visit to Strasbourg was all about. At first he refused to allow him to send such “an unambiguous message” – what if it were to fall into enemy hands?
Markus doubted it would come as much of a surprise to the “enemy” that Paulus wanted to break out or that Command H.Q. would have no objections at all to him doing so. Stahlberg, however, did not agree, assuming that the Russians listened to German radio and there they would hear that Stalingrad was to be held at all costs.
But half an hour later Markus was given the all-clear, without any explanation, maybe someone – Busse? – had seen that the very unambiguity of the message could either help to confuse the enemy or make no difference at all; unfortunately, Markus suspected it was the latter that was the reason for permission to be given.
He sent the message himself, with his eyes closed, and throughout the day he maintained contact with Hoth, who was extremely satisfied with his reinforcements, the 6th Panzer Division under the command of an exceptionally competent Austrian, Generaloberst Erhard Raus, who was familiar with winter conditions in Russia from the battles around Moscow the year before; his men were taking up positions north of Kotelnikovo, and Markus began to realise that it was also Raus who had been assigned the role of spearhead in the attack on the encirclement around Stalingrad.
Then the reply from the cauldron arrived:
“Alethe’s white dog. Can I bring my friends along? Malachy.”
Markus began to tremble.
“By all means,” he wrote furiously, and added: “Do they want to? Bernard.”
Less than two minutes later the answer ticked in.
“They do. Are they welcome? Malachy.”
Markus got up and ran around gesticulating wildly. Kuntnagel, who had been sitting next to him, munching an apple, gawped in amazement. Markus stopped, put his hand to his head and burst out:
“He wants to know if an order has been issued! And I can’t confirm it – yet!”
“An order?” Kuntnagel said. “To break out?”
“Yes…”
It struck Markus that not even Kuntnagel was aware of the doubt and lack of coordination that existed between Manstein’s Army Group Don and Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolfschanze in eastern Prussia, and between both of these and Paulus, this lethal triangle which God or some other heavenly power would soon have to tear asunder.
“Has such an order been given?”
“Well, yes,” Markus said quickly. “But I can’t confirm it …yet. And of course I can’t state a time.”
The stocky farmer stared at him in disbelief. Markus sat down and wrote a few words on the back of the paper.
“Send this,” he said, embarrassed. “I can’t do it.”
“Malachy,” Kuntnagel read out in a loud, hoarse voice, “‘Health? As on your first or second visit to Clairvaux? Bernard’. What on earth is this?”
“I’m just asking how he is, that’s all.”
Kuntnagel looked at the sheet of paper dubiously, furrowed his brow but yielded to superior force, and Markus went to get some more coffee. When he returned, the answer had arrived.
“Bernard. Same as on the first visit. Repeat: Are they welcome? Malachy.”
“Thank the Lord – he is safe and sound, he can walk to Rome and back. Good God, I can’t believe it.”
“Congratulations,” Kuntnagel said drily. “You certainly can’t say that of the others in the cauldron. What are you going to answer? He’s asking about the order again.”
Markus was about to repeat that there wasn’t any plan – or order – yet, but then he realised that his son was not asking about orders, he got them direct from Hitler, but about what Manstein’s intentions were – his real intentions.
“They’re welcome,” he shouted in a eureka-like cheer, for what can humans not make out of even the slightest glimmer of hope. “They’re welcome – and sign it Nella or Marion …no, no, that’s nonsense. Use Clervaux, then he won’t be in any more doubt.”
Kuntnagel shook his head slowly, and Markus had to go out into the rain thinking that now he had given his son hope, passed on his wafer-thin, bone-dry straw of hope, it was contagious. And he had endowed it with Manstein’s pledge.
8
Along one of the outside walls of the old schoolhouse there was a shelf whose purpose Markus had never understood, perhaps the children had put their mittens or lunch boxes or books there when they were playing. Since he had arrived at the village Jaromil had arranged a row of stones on this shelf, stones which presumably he had picked up on his tedious patrols in the neighbourhood; grass and dirt and fallen leaves had gathered round them, later snow and ice, it was as though the Cossack just enjoyed collecting them, but not looking at them, so Markus had got into the habit of keeping this museum of so
rts tidy when he needed to find some peace; he swept away the frozen leaves, he cleared the snow and ice and wiped the stones, musing that he had managed to convince his son that Army Group Don really did intend to launch an offensive on the “ring” and that the Sixth Army would have to advance towards them from the opposite direction, but had his son Peter understood that this solution did not mean that they would open up a supply route – as Hitler had ordered – but in fact that the whole of the Stalingrad fortress would be abandoned?
Markus realised that if his son, a nonentity like himself, a telegraphist or a lower-ranking aide, were to have the slightest chance of convincing his commanders of the true nature of Manstein’s intentions then he would not only have to find himself some allies but also reveal his source, and what kind of credibility does a father have in such circumstances, in a position as he is to dish up the most blatant and sanctimonious lies – contagion?! So the channel to his son was blocked, impotent, a dead end and a sham, like everything else he had been doing these last few unreal years. He moved the Cossack’s stones about like pieces in a game of draughts with God. Now it was above all reliable information coming out of Stalingrad Manstein was interested in, but Markus couldn’t deliver this either, aside from details about his son and “his friends” wishing to get out, but with all respect this was just telling him the same as Paulus had written in his imploring letter of November 26.
“I hadn’t done a thing!” he usually explains at this point when reflecting on his life. “I had only learned – once again – that my contact with Peter was no more tangible than William of Orange’s carrier pigeons.”
But then his thoughts were interrupted by Jaromil:
“Barite,” the Cossack said in a deep voice. “It’s rare in these parts.”
He nodded towards the stone Markus was clutching like a rosary in his right hand, barite, rare and as beautiful as the stars in the sky. “Weber’s recovered, Leutnant. The doctor told me to say you could talk to him.”
Markus erased the musings from his mind and looked at his watch, jumped on board the jeep and got the Cossack to drive him to the “town hall”. It was silent there now, no cries of pain and only a few nurses shuffling about in grey woollen slippers, like the sound of prayers being mumbled, a calm of heavenly proportions streamed in on narrow shafts of pale winter light, down on Weber’s eyes, dark and watery in the blank face, resembling bomb craters in snow-covered terrain; he had been washed and shaved, an embalmed mummy, but he could move his hands and the old Cossack woman was still sitting at his side on her strange milking stool, busy with some needlework that to Markus looked like embroidery.
He asked her to leave, but she didn’t move. He repeated his order in both Russian and German, but she stayed put. Weber’s eyes met him at length.
“Leave her alone,” he mumbled. “She’s adopted me. Her son’s in Stalingrad.”
Markus nodded reluctantly, he knew that Paulus had not only Cossacks but tens of thousands of Russians under his command, so-called “Hiwis” – Hilfswillige, “voluntary helpers” – who apparently fought just as courageously as the true German soldiers in the Wehrmacht, presumably inspired by their poor chances of survival if they ended up in Russian captivity, Chechens and Ruthenians, Tartars and Ossetians, Cossacks and Ukrainians …the same stateless hordes which like the Belgians and Luxembourgers, Latvians and Norwegians, Finns, Frisians, Lorrainians, Italians, Croats, Catalans and Czechs had chosen the right side and thus the wrong one at a strained and chaotic moment in history which will never return with the small solace contrition offers. For Markus, “Hiwis” had become synonymous with the terrified, the foolhardy and the short-sighted, the homeless and the fanatical, for all those who neither wanted war nor were part of planning it but were dropped into it like fresh leaves from a tree in a storm and then were whirled around in the vortex, coping as best they could. Markus was nauseated by it, by this extreme lack of national logic, this Babylonian cacophony where you fought alongside your “enemies” and against your friends and cried “help” when you meant “attack”, or vice versa, Weber would be taking his hand next and lulling him to sleep like the child he was. No, Weber was talking in rolling dreamlike waves about his damnation in Stalingrad, spicing it with a feverish nonchalance which gave Markus the shivers; he had seen a double bass in there, and he had to talk about it, this the biggest and most easily damaged instrument had suddenly appeared from a hole in the ground in front of their positions, on the back of a terror-stricken civilian, and was carried in panic through the piles of ruins, this stout, sanguine negress of the orchestra, a cosmic sound enveloped in the thinnest of shells, a sight which had obviously aroused bewildered laughter in the soldiers and for a couple of seconds caused them to hold their fire, and the man escaped, with both his music and life intact, down into a sewer – and then I’ll have to tell you about the postal service, Weber added with a solemn cough, as though he were giving a speech at a funeral: there are more than 250 postal soldiers at work in Stalingrad, they creep around with letters and small parcels, two tons a day are flown in, and how many letters is that? The High Command knows of course what this means for the soldiers’ morale. And there are still civilians there, children too, they say they eat corpses …no, Weber didn’t know anyone by that name (Peter), he didn’t serve directly under Paulus, but he had been on Panzergeneral Schmidt’s staff, and the various headquarters were a few hundred metres apart, at Gumrak by the way, what, no, we should never have bombed the town, it’s easier to defend piles of rubble than houses, now we can’t move the tanks, everything is the same as before, the continuous bombardment by Katyushas and the Russian Air Force, it wears you down and what’s more you’re executed if you don’t stand up and fight…
It was in light of this moral flaw in the Offizierskorps, which Weber called summary justice, and what Weber related later, that Markus suddenly saw a kind of rationale behind Manstein’s antipathy towards Paulus: Paulus had in the critical days, around November 21–23, not only wavered with regard to breaking out, despite strong pressure from several of his generals, he was also hampered by his respect for authority, possibly by some subtle academic doubt, at any rate he seemed to lack the intelligent brutality that made people like Hoth, Guderian and Manstein the true masters on the battlefield, the leap must have been too great for him when barely a year ago he had been put in charge of a whole army, Hitler’s largest and proudest.
“Yes, what can you expect,” Weber added with weary disdain, “of a man who likes Beethoven and is married to a Romanian, heh-heh…”
Markus had nothing against Beethoven or Romanians even though he preferred Mozart and Luxembourgers, moreover he knew that Paulus in addition to the “weaknesses” referred to was also said to treat both prisoners and civilians with humanity, that he showed concern for his soldiers and that his noble and arrogant exterior might well be a cloak for a sincere humility before God the Almighty, all of them qualities which Markus valued, in all other situations except the one the General found himself in at the moment, but of course you can’t have it both ways. Then Weber said with the deep indignation of a doomed man that Paulus after his last personal meeting with Hoth – in Nizhne Chirskaya on the west bank of the Don on November 23 – had flown back to the cauldron with crates and crates of first-class wine, champagne, Veuve Cliquot, and a man planning to break out as soon as he can would hardly stock up like this, would he?
“So you think he’d already decided on the 22nd to dig in?” Markus asked, appalled. “Even before Hitler declared the town a fortress?”
Weber squeezed his eyes shut. Markus felt dizzy, he began to long for Command H.Q., that was where the answers were, but realised that the most difficult question still remained, which he could not evade this time either, although he had forgotten to ask the surgeon whether Weber realised he was going to die. Markus asked the Leutnant with a forced nonchalance if he had any letters or other things he wanted sent – home?
Yes, Weber had some lett
ers, from the four comrades he had been holed up with, a nineteen-year-old from Darmstadt, a farmer from Hunsrück and a locksmith from the Schwarzwald, three privates and a Feldwebel from Linz in Austria. He had also written down a few words himself, which were to be sent to his family in Hamburg. The letters were all sealed, and Markus decided to try to smuggle them out unopened, avoiding censorship, familiar as he was with what it meant to receive unopened letters from the front; an opened letter is a spent letter, it has been robbed of its significance and essence regarding the son’s, father’s, brother’s final sorrowful hours, the relatives feel the final clarifying words have gone and been trampled on – the only words which can give those at home peace; receiving an opened last letter from a dead son is like listening to the mute roar of mass graves.
“I’ll be back,” he said wearily, tucking the letters inside his belt and adding to the old woman in Russian: “Take good care of him.”
At which he left.
9
Important things had been happening at H.Q. while Markus was at the “town hall”. A rescue plan for the Sixth Army had seen the light of day on the drawing board. It was called “Operation Winter Storm”, and had been drawn up in great detail, though with a great wealth of provisos and alternatives.
Markus was informed that neither Hoth nor Hollidt could count on all the reinforcements that they had been promised. Nevertheless, the plan was not much different from the one he himself had worked out a couple of days previously: on the 8th at the earliest Hoth was to start the nightmare – “with all his might, a massive, frontal attack…” – while Hollidt was to “tie up the enemy forces on the western side of the ring” along the Chir Front by the “knee” of the Don.
But then Markus was also shown Manstein’s brief to his own staff, a text which was not to go beyond the walls of the dismal village of Novocherkassk, and here it said – categorically – that the Sixth Army’s envisaged mission in the Winter Storm could not in any way be reconciled with Hitler’s command to hold Stalingrad. The Sixth Army could only contribute to the task of creating a corridor if it concentrated its forces, which would inevitably mean that it would lose ground along the northern and eastern fronts of the cauldron – the enemy, if nothing else, would see to that.