Amara too crouches down and tries to read by pushing her head over his shoulder. It is clear the book was printed quite recently on wartime paper, coarse and fragile, and it is shabby.
‘Dear Magda, Miraculously I’m still alive, I can’t think how,’ translates Hans aloud into refined and precise Italian. ‘All my mates are dead. The Russians surrounded us and began firing from all sides. I lost my shoes, but I took a pair from a soldier who died at my side. Out of the five hundred Hungarians with me, only three are still alive. I never saw such fierce crossfire. I was hit too. I fell and lost consciousness. I thought I was dead but then, with the coming of night and silence, I found I was still alive, still breathing. But I couldn’t move. I must be completely shattered, I thought, even if I couldn’t feel any pain. Then I realised that though still alive I was crushed under two dead bodies. I didn’t even know where my companions had gone. Then I found them by chance, behind a group of Finns and Romanians pulling a cart full of wounded. I don’t know if you’ll ever get this letter. It’ll be best if I bring it to you myself in my pocket if I manage to get home, if we manage to overcome the Russians who are wearing us down. Or it may reach you with my corpse, though that’s not likely since no one collects the dead here. There’s no time to bury them. The wounded are barely rescued, and even then often die in the field hospitals because there are no more dressings or medicines, or even doctors: they are dead too. Goodbye darling sister, I really hope to see you again not in paradise but in our own lovely Budapest, your brother Oskar Horvath.’
‘What was a Hungarian doing with the Germans?’
‘It was the famous Operation Barbarossa, haven’t you heard of that?’
Amara admits she knows nothing, and asks Hans to tell her about it. She likes it when he reconstructs history for her. It excites her and her eyes light up.
‘Operation Barbarossa was invented by Hitler. Having swallowed at a single gulp Poland, Denmark and Norway, not to mention the Netherlands, the whole of Belgium and half of France, and after signing a non-aggression pact with Russia, he decided, scoundrel that he was, to attack his Russian ally without warning so as to disarm him and grab his oil and mineral resources.’
‘So the soldier Horvath would have been with Hitler in Russia as an invader even though he didn’t want to be?’
‘Naturally. Horthy’s Hungary had allied itself with Hitler who forced it to join his tripartite alliance with Italy and Japan. The Führer called up the various Horvaths and placed them under the command of his colonels. So they had no alternative but to follow him when he treacherously decided to invade the USSR, forcing his unwilling allies to go with him, as well as the willing ones like Italy, who of course wasn’t doing it for nothing, but was looking forward to her own share of the oil. That was the origin of the Italian Army in Russia or ARMIR, which was sent in with the worst possible equipment and arms. Hitler was desperate to get everything done before the winter, which had been so disastrous for other invaders of Russia; remember Napoleon.’
‘So the soldier Horvath would have followed the Nazis to Russia and written from there to his sister?’
‘On the night of 21 June 1941 Hitler’s troops crossed the border into Russia and after only thirteen days had arrived within twenty-two kilometres of Moscow. They besieged Leningrad and took Kiev and Odessa. Out of 128 Soviet divisions they immediately immobilised twenty-eight, treacherously, without so much as a declaration of war. Hitler cared nothing about pacts and didn’t believe in subtlety, he was a predator and acted accordingly. Among other things, he ordered his soldiers to ignore the rules of war. Prisoners were to be killed with a bullet to the head, even generals. He didn’t give a damn for the Geneva Convention. He just wanted to spread terror and make it clear who was in charge. The Red Army chiefs who until a few days before had been his allies were all killed, shot without trial. Meanwhile he pushed his remaining divisions towards Stalingrad, the gateway to the Caucasus where the Russian oil was to be found.’
‘But the Russians fought back, both in Leningrad and in Stalingrad, I do know that. But how did the Nazis manage to lose when they were so much better prepared and armed, stronger and utterly unscrupulous?’
‘The Krauts advanced into Soviet territory with a boldness and presumption that took the wind out of the sails of those facing them. Hitler was used to winning by gambling, tricks and violence; he had the mentality of a bandit and cared nothing for his own soldiers who were dying in thousands, or his generals who were advising him to stop and change tactics; all he understood was murderous fury.’
‘So it went badly for him …’
‘It went badly for him, but not immediately. He was able to cause terrible military disasters. He had prepared on the grand scale. Do you know how many men he sent to the Russian front? Three million, I mean three million soldiers, with three thousand tanks and three thousand planes. No small matter.’
‘And how many Italians were there in the ARMIR?’
‘Nearly sixty thousand, commanded by General Messe. At that time it was still known as the CSIR, or “Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia”. But Messe left because he disagreed with Mussolini’s decision to send in six more divisions. And I think he was right. He was replaced by General Italo Gariboldo and the Expeditionary Corps became the ARMIR, or Italian Army in Russia.’
‘“They were three hundred, Young and strong, And they are dead,”’ quoted Amara.
‘Many more than that, sadly. There are also some letters from Italian soldiers in this book. I’ll read you one if you like. Very few were saved. Nothing more was ever heard about most of the men, not even whether they lived or died.’
‘And then?’
‘In the first months Hitler’s method of aggression and burned earth, of running ahead of everything and everybody, of hitting hard and using surprise, brought success, as it had elsewhere. His orders were strict: keep captured soldiers alive only so long as they can be used as forced labour, otherwise kill them! Which was against all the rules of war. But Nazi thinking was basic and lethal: the Russian NCOs came from barbarous and inferior races, so they must be instantly eliminated, regardless of whether they fought or surrendered. This was the order. And show no respect for civilians: strip them of everything; feel free to plunder and kill anyone getting in the way, including women, children and the old. That was Hitler’s philosophy of war. And it clearly created panic. The population hid and fled; they were terrified. But with Moscow threatened and Leningrad on the point of collapse, something snapped in the Russian people and they decided to resist to the last drop of blood, regardless of the cost. And they were truly extraordinary. We must give them credit for that. If they’d let the Nazis occupy Moscow and destroy Leningrad and Stalingrad, I don’t believe you and I would be here talking like this in this peaceful library in Vienna.’
Amara watches him attentively. This man with his passion for history astonishes her. What lies behind his prodigious memory? And how does he manage to remember so many languages and read them as if each was his mother tongue?
Meanwhile the Old Testament prophet has come close and is regarding them with an air of disapproval. Why are they sitting on the floor with an open book in their hands? But he doesn’t question them or otherwise disturb them. Perhaps he too has been infected by Hans’s passion and Amara’s curiosity and eagerness to learn. He watches them and listens with increasing attention.
32
‘Well?’
Amara knows more or less how things went, but she loves listening as the excited yet serene voice of Hans explains, remembers and considers, extracting from his extraordinary memory dates, statistics and descriptions.
‘From the Russian point of view, by autumn 1941 the war seemed to have been lost. The Baltic states, Belarus, the northern Crimea and a good part of the Ukraine had been occupied by Hitler. One and a half million members of the Red Army ended up as prisoners in Nazi camps, or working in German factories.’
‘But what could have changed
the fortunes of war? How could Hitler’s method of speed and aggression, betrayal and murder, surprise and burned earth, ever fail when it had worked so well till then in Poland and Holland and even in France?’
‘There are probably many reasons. In July 1942 the Nazi Sixth Army attacked on the line of the Don, about a hundred kilometres from Stalingrad. The idea was that once the city had fallen, they would have free hands in the south of the Soviet Union, and from there could join up with the Japanese army which had meanwhile occupied Malaya, the Philippines, Singapore and Burma. The tactic was always the same: surprise, brutality, rapid aggression and the systematic assassination of enemies, particulary military ones, and particularly the most senior of them, without hesitation or pity. On the other hand the Red Army had a fine commander in Marshal Zhukov. And Zhukov decided the tactic of defence and waiting was mistaken, rather it was essential to attack and hit hard.’
‘But how was Zhukov able to pass from defence to attack, I mean, how was he able to convince Stalin who was controlling everything from above?’
‘The first thing was to stop leaving all choices of time and place to the Nazis. Zhukov knew his only chance of winning was to take the initiative himself, and for him to decide times and places and thus be able to work out manoeuvres of encirclement. It seemed impossible but in the end it worked. Meanwhile Hitler, aware that his troops were not advancing as he expected them to, sent in three more divisions: the Seventeenth and Eleventh Infantry, plus the Fourth Panzer Army. Zhukov, faced with such an array of forces, was forced to retreat. But slowly and methodically he continued the encirclement, preventing the Nazis from advancing more than two kilometres a day. In a month they only managed to gain sixty kilometres.’
‘But winter was approaching, as the history books tell us about Napoleon. Do you think Hitler was aware of that?’
‘He was certainly aware that Russia in autumn would be treacherous. He knew how it had been for Napoleon. So he began to press harder. But he got stuck, unable either to advance or retreat. The people of Stalingrad knew the outcome of the war now depended entirely on them and they fought to the last gasp. Boys, old men, women, everyone, made themselves available to help the soldiers against the Germans, joining the 62nd and 64th armies or helping as porters and postmen. It is said that more than sixty thousand civilians, including men over fifty and boys of thirteen and fourteen years of age, took up arms to defend the city.’
‘But meanwhile people were still dying.’
‘The Germans died in huge numbers. The situation took them by surprise, they were so used to winning. They lost twenty-four thousand men outside Stalingrad, and five hundred tanks as well.’
‘Then finally winter came.’
‘It was on 17 November 1942, according to reports, that it began to snow, making things even more difficult for the German armies. Facing them was a city up in arms on all sides. Snipers were firing on them from roofs and windows, while hand grenades were blowing up tanks. The first unit to yield was the Romanian Kletskaya Army, which enabled Zhukov to close the circle and imprison the Germans in a vice. General von Paulus had no idea what to do. He had repeatedly begged Hitler to let him withdraw from the quagmire so as to gain time and reorganise, but the only answer he received was “A German soldier must continue to stand where he has planted his foot.”’
‘Couldn’t he disobey Hitler?’
‘Of course. But he was too used to obedience. An honourable man who had given his word. In fact, a whole series of considerations made him powerless in the face of the Red Army which had caught him in a noose, squeezing his shoulders and sides.’
‘Was he killed?’
‘On 8 January 1943 the Russian command suggested to the Germans, by now surrounded and deprived of supplies, that they should surrender with honour. That meant leaving them in uniform, respecting the code of war and treating those they took prisoner, both officers and men, with consideration. They had two days to decide. Von Paulus communicated the terms to Hitler. Hitler, proud and stupid as always, turned them down, inflicting a terrible price on his forces. According to his twisted logic all that was left to them was to ‘conquer or die’, when it was already clear that victory was impossible so that he was in effect sending them all to be slaughtered.’
‘Did they all die?’
‘They were still a powerful force. But on 10 January Soviet artillery and planes began to bombard them incessantly day and night, while Soviet tanks advanced. The surrounded German soldiers, their supplies and munitions cut off and deprived of food and cover, surrendered en masse.’
‘If they had agreed to capitulate, would they have had better conditions and fewer losses?’
‘Between 27 and 29 January 1943 the Russians captured more than fifteen thousand German and allied soldiers. On 31 January Von Paulus was made a prisoner.’
‘Did they kill him?’
‘They asked him why he hadn’t escaped by air as he could have done and he answered that he had to remain with his men, and this earned him the esteem of the Russians who treated him with a certain respect.’
‘A gentleman of the old school.’
‘Probably, judging by his aristocratic name. Even so, the Battle of Stalingrad remains one of the biggest and most ferocious battles in human history. The Axis lost a million and a half men, three thousand five hundred tanks, twelve thousand cannon and mortars and three thousand planes. Who knows how the Normandy landings of June 1944 would have gone if the greater part of the German forces had not been encircled in Russia.’
‘And the Italian ARMIR?’
‘It suffered disastrously from the lunatic ambitions of Hitler and Mussolini. Yet the boys of the ARMIR fought with great courage. For a whole month the Vicenza division managed to make headway against the Russians who were ten times more numerous and hidden in frozen holes in the steppes. And the Julia division held its position north of Stalingrad. Even if on 26 January ’43 they were finally defeated and dispersed.’
‘You promised to read me an Italian letter.’
‘Of course, here’s one: “Dear Amelia. It’s thirty degrees below today. Many of our men have frozen feet. I keep mine moving, the way Grandpa taught me. It’s a great advantage to have been born and lived in the Friuli Mountains. Grandpa used to say: Never give way to the cold; fight back, jump, shout, leap about, but if you don’t keep moving you’re fucked. The trouble is our weapons freeze. They jam like a solid block of ice. How can we fire them? Yesterday we fought a battle for a place called Nikolayevka. We fought from twelve to three. I don’t know how many died. You couldn’t even walk there were so many bodies on the ground. I never stopped moving and this saved me from freezing to death. It was terrible seeing Giovanni crying because he could not walk any more and his tears turning to ice on his face. I hope I’ll get home again, love Giacomo …”’
‘Did Giacomo get home?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say here. But it’s been calculated that among the Italians there were twenty-six thousand dead, forty-three thousand wounded and nearly seventy thousand missing.’
‘How many did come home?’
‘After the war the Soviet Union repatriated ten thousand Italian prisoners of war. Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand had left Italy and what with those repatriated, wounded and frostbitten, twenty-nine thousand six hundred and ninety came back. Wholesale butchery. It has been said the only corps that can regard itself as having been undefeated on Russian soil is the Italian Alpine Army Corps. No one knows who said it. But they were certainly heroic.’
‘Which contributed more to the defeat of Hitler, Stalingrad or the Normandy landings?’
‘The one couldn’t have happened without the other. Remember Hitler had invaded the whole of Europe and had decided beforehand to occupy Britain, as well as Russia of course. Europe was at his feet and this made him ever more sure of himself and increasingly bold and irrational. I don’t know if he understood when he lost the Battle of Stalingrad, where he had been crushe
d as if by a boa constrictor, that he was on his way to total defeat. I’ve no idea. But he had been totally convinced he could conquer everything and everybody.’
‘But these letters from the front; did they reach their destinations? And who read them?’
‘Someone collected them to make a memorial volume.’
At that moment the Old Testament prophet, the elderly librarian with enormous feet and a halo of white hair, came up to them smiling.
‘I am the soldier called Horvath,’ he says in a small voice. He seems moved. ‘It was I who collected these letters from fellow soldiers to preserve the memory of the horror.’
The man with the gazelles looks at him with surprise and curiosity.
‘Were you actually at Stalingrad? Are you Hungarian?’
‘My father was from Pécs and my mother from Klagenfurt. I was born in Budapest.’
‘How old were you when you were called up?’
‘Forty-five. But by then everyone was involved. In my heart I was against the Hitler regime, but I couldn’t admit it. I was sent with many other reservists who like me had served in the First World War, to the Russian front. They needed fresh forces there. In those days I was still tough, not like now when a puff of wind could blow me away. I was young and strong and had a full head of dark hair. My hair went white in ’43 after forty-eight consecutive hours in the midst of a monstrous battle with shells whistling from all sides. People died without a cry or a word, our eyes blinded by fog. The sky rained down bombs. It was 28 January. I was oiling my rifle when the storm began; they fired at us from all sides. We no longer had any rearguard and even if we’d wanted to we couldn’t have retreated. All we could do was hold up our hands and surrender, hoping our enemies wouldn’t kill us. I grabbed a white rag and went up to a Soviet tank. I’d been wounded by a grenade which didn’t quite miss me but stripped off my clothes, singeing my hair and neck. A soldier stuck his head out of the tank and roared with laughter. He said something to his friends in a dialect I didn’t understand and pointed at me. I couldn’t see what was so funny, being almost naked, though I still had my socks round my ankles; I was singed black all over including my head and neck, with my few remaining hairs standing on end. The man must have felt sorry for me because he said ‘Get in,’ so I did. Among other things I told him I was a Hungarian who had been forced to fight with the Germans. I spoke to him in Russian but he just went on and on laughing. That’s how I survived. Then they put me in a camp for Axis prisoners. It wasn’t too bad. They gave us clothes and food. Shirts from dead men, but so what, better than nothing. They treated our wounds. And fed us once a day, potatoes boiled in broth. And powdered fish dissolved in the water that made a grey scum, but it was hot and we liked it. Like manna from heaven to us.’
Train to Budapest Page 21