Armageddon (106 page)
“We were still pretty good”: AI Max Wind.
“They’re coming out!”: NA, RG492–332, box 2.
“I think that the”: NA, RG492–332, box 6.
“If one gets hit”: Ibid.
“I wonder if it would”: AIs Field-Marshal Lord Bramall, General Sir David Fraser, Field-Marshal Lord Carver.
“Major-General Gerald Templer”: Norman Craig,
The Broken Plume: A Platoon Commander’s Story
(IWM: 1982), p. 33.
“A few guys carry your”: Captain Willie Knowlton, 12.31.44, quoted Dan Bied,
Hell on Earth
(privately published: 1979).
“The average man”: William E. DuPuy oral history interview, USAMHI.
“Too much cannot be said”: USAMHI, D769AZ, no. 15, c.4.
“The colonel’s the only real soldier”: Charles Felix,
Crossing the Sauer
(Burford Books: 2000), p. 138.
“An infantry assault”: William L. Devitt,
Shavetail
(Northstar Press: 2001), p. 125.
“The first advice”: AI “Red” Thompson.
“Lieutenant William Devitt”: Devitt, op. cit., p. 126.
“Nobody had time to”: AI “Red” Thompson.
“If the men can be”: NA, RG492–332, box 12, report of 4.11.45.
“A U.S. officer described an action”: USAMHI, oral history interviews quoted Robert Sterling Rush,
Hell in Huertgen Forest
(Kansas University Press: 2001), p. 323.
“Two British divisions”: PRO, WO106/4348.
“I never failed to be”: “Report of U.S. Board on Organization Equipment & Tactical Employment of Infantry Divisions,” USAMHI, D769AZ, no. 15, c.4.
“Enlisted personnel”: NA, RG492–332, box 12.
“Riflemen, Patton told”: USAMHI, D769AZ no. 15 c.4—Patton at Bad Nauheim, 11.20.45.
“Many Allied commanders”: Pogue, op. cit., pp. 328, 333.
“Reliance on fire superiority”: NA, RG492–332 box 3, report of 9.13.44.
“Von Rundstedt asserted”: PRO, WO205/1020, vol. i.
“That [British] infantry”: Timothy Harrison Place,
Military Training in the British Army, 1940–44
(Frank Cass: 1997), p. 170.
“artillery-dominated tactics”: Ibid.
“The director of military”: PRO, WO231/8, 12.18.43.
“The American soldier”: NA, RG492–332 box 10, report of 5.7.45.
“There has been considerable”: Ibid.
“The British army’s reliance”: David French,
Raising Churchill’s Army
(Oxford University Press: 2000), p. 285.
“As an infantryman”: DuPuy Papers, op. cit.
“We walked over the hill”: Trotter unpublished MS, quoted Sterling Rush, op. cit., p. 80.
“We seldom knew what”: AI Wally Aux.
“The great story used to be”: AI Roy Dixon.
“I thought our tactics”: AI Field-Marshal Lord Bramall.
“The British Army was”: AI General Sir David Fraser.
“men walk when they should”: PRO, WO208/3111.
“The Americans seemed to us”: AI Walter Schaefer-Kuhnert.
“With the Allies it was always”: AI Rolf-Helmut Schröder.
“Yet Sergeant Helmut”: AI Helmut Günther.
“The tank’s inherent”: Harrison Place, op. cit., p. 130.
“Teach the men to work”: NA, RG492–332 box 12.
“If you won’t get in front”: AI Patrick Hennessy.
“During the advance to Metz”: NA, RG492–322 box 12, report of 2.22.45.
“The infantry always thought”: AI Major-General Roy Dixon.
“One always felt that”: AI Captain “Dim” Robbins.
“The infantry commander sees”: Quoted
Panzertruppen,
vol. ii, ed. Thomas L. Jentz (Schiffer: 1996).
“In defence, they took pieces”: DuPuy Papers, op. cit.
“The qualitative superiority”: For a full discussion of this issue see the author’s
Overlord.
“Before we went into Normandy”: Belton Cooper,
Death Traps
(Presidio: 1998), p. viii.
“The Sherman was a very”: AI David Fraser.
“I thought: ‘To hell’ ”: AI Patrick Hennessy.
“A deluge of field reports”: NA, RG492–322 box 6.
“Had they been Russians”: Henry Metelmann,
Through Hell for Hitler
(Spellmount: 2001), p. 285.
“I’ll take him behind”: AI Captain “Dim” Robbins.
“Wehrmacht Sergeant Otto Cranz’s”: AI Otto Cranz.
“considered it bad psychology”: NA, RG492–322 box 12, report of 2.16.45.
“Front line troops deplore”: Second Army MD.
“finally we said ‘to hell’ ”: NA, RG492–322 box 11.
“some unfortunate incidents in”: d’Este,
Patton,
op. cit., p. 700.
“because they think they will”: NA, RG 492–322 box 12, report of 1.21.45.
“the Germans had a pretty good record”: AI David Tibbs, 13 Para war diary in possession of Dr. David Tibbs, cited in manuscript memoir loaned to author.
“There were body parts”: AI Tony Carullo.
“You were not afraid of being”: AI Helmut Schmidt.
“The whole experience”: AI Iolo Lewis.
“I cannot say that”: AI Henry Kissinger.
“For my generation”: Arthur Schlesinger,
A Life in the Twentieth Century
(Hough-ton Mifflin: 2000), p. 353.
“Gee, I’ll have something”: AI Rueben Cohen.
“Very few of us were”: AI Roy Ferlazzo.
“in indescribably cold”: Hansen Diary, op. cit., 1.22.45.
“I remember wondering what”: Michael Carver,
Out of Step
(Hutchinson: 1989), p. 196.
“We were absolutely certain”: AI Lord Carrington.
“Hate them?”: AI Tony Carullo.
“The Germans were just”: AI Roy Ferlazzo.
“I never hated the Germans”: AI Captain “Dim” Robbins.
“I let him go”: Sergeant Reg Romain MS, IWM.
“ ‘General,’ said the hapless”: James K. Woolnough Oral History Interview, 1971, Woolnough Papers box 1, USAMHI.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE RUSSIANS AT THE VISTULA
“Is there still a Tsar?”: WSC, “The Dream” published in the
Sunday Telegraph,
12.30.66.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find you”: She was finally shot in 1941. Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Stalin
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 2003), p. 283.
“He was of small stature”: Djilas, op. cit., p. 386.
“Our benefactor thinks”: Quoted Figes, op. cit., p. 496.
“Stalin loses”: Sebag Montefiore, op. cit., p. 476.
“They died in the hundreds”: The former figure is a reliable minimum, but even the best modern researchers agree that all estimates are wildly speculative; see Anne Applebaum,
Gulag
(Penguin: 2003), passim.
“Who but us could have”: Quoted Senyavshaya, op. cit., p. 20.
“A quarter of all deportees”: Applebaum, op. cit., p. 525.
“Beria reported to Stalin”: RSA, 9401 om.2 g.66 1–1 430, 1–1 427.
“It was nauseating”:
The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay
(Heinemann: 1960), p. 233.
“Three months earlier”: F. H. Hinsley and others,
British Intelligence in the Second World War,
vol. iii, part 2 (HMSO, 1988), p. 283.
“On 31 July”: Ibid.
“Lieutenant-General Wladyslaw Anders”: Letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Marian Dortycz-Malewicz, 8.31.44, quoted Norman Davies,
Rising ’44
(Macmillan: 2003), pp. 348–50.
“Army Krajowa considers”: RMDA, vol. xv 3(1), pp. 433, 436–7.
“Sceptical civilians”: Ibid.
“A Western correspondent quizzed”: Werth, op. cit., p. 877.
“In November, Alexander felt”: See British official history
The Mediterranean and the Middle East,
vol. vi, part III (HMSO: 1988), passim and appendix 7, and private information Professor Sir Michael Howard, MC.
“We don’t want British”: Werth, op. cit., p. 878.
“Why die for Stalin”: Leaflet found by the Algonquin Regiment 10.27.44, quoted Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker,
The Battle of the Scheldt
(Souvenir Press: 1984), pp. 208–9.
“Within a very short space”: Senyavshaya, op. cit., p. 115.
“Even the most distinguished”: Norman Davies,
Rising ’44
(Macmillan: 2003), passim. I am much indebted to Professor Davies for the opportunity to read his book in manuscript.
“George Orwell, almost alone”:
Tribune,
9.1.44.
“I am informed by my officers”: Werth, op. cit., p. 878.
“the clown in the circus”: Konstantin Rokossovsky,
A Soldier’s Duty
(Moscow: Progress, 1968).
“He also cherished”: The absence of such sentiment fuelled his animosity towards the Poles, and did not prevent the Soviet Union from asserting in its standard school history text on the Second World War which continued to be used as late as 1985 that “The Polish people, who had groaned for five years under the Fascist yoke, joyfully greeted their liberators. The Polish patriots set up a Polish National Liberation Committee. The forces of internal reaction, in order to prevent the patriotic NLC from being established, decided to mount an uprising in Warsaw” (I. V. Bekhin and others,
Istoriya SSSR,
trans. and ed. Graham Lyons [Leo Cooper: 1976], p. 71).
“The British and Americans are”: RMDA, vol. xv 5/4, p. 269.
“The interview was not”: Ibid., p. 283.
“An officer of the Army Krajowa”: AI Major Kazimierz Sztermal.
“We have been treated”: Quoted Davies, op. cit., p. 383.
“These people [the Home Army]”: Quoted in Churchill telegram to Roosevelt, 8.22.44, quoted Martin Gilbert,
Road to Victory
(Heinemann: 1986), p. 925.
“Nazi and Soviet repressions”: Davies, op. cit., p. 420.
“Is this the road”: Djilas, op. cit., p. 416.
“We knew that Warsaw”: AI Alexandr Markov.
“I felt terrible about”: AI Yelena Kogan.
“When you look at them”: Quoted Senyavshaya, op. cit., p. 121.
“It never looked easy”: AI Anna Nikyunas.
“It was a great thing”: AI Yury Ryakhovsky.
“It was a wonderful life”: AI Pavel Nikiforov.
“It was good to be out”: AI Anatoly Osminov.
“We were different people”: AI Nikolai Timoshenko.
“Where are we”: AI Gennady Klimenko.
“We were so used to living”: AI Nikolai Timoshenko.
“Higher commands were”: See RMDA, vol. xv 5/4, passim and documents collected in
The Great Patriotic War,
Book 3:
Liberation
(Nauka: 1999), Report of the State Defence Committee, Moscow.
“I’ve been waiting four”: AI Vasily Kudryashov.
“Here in the east”: Quoted Bartov, op. cit., pp. 130–1.
“Increasingly during the last two”: Ibid., p. 168.
“The rule of war is”: AI Nikolai Timoshenko.
“We killed prisoners just”: AI Vasily Krylov.
“There was no serious”: AI Pavel Nikiforov.
“Vitold Kubashevsky hated”: AI Vitold Kubashevsky.
“They are completely shameless”: Quoted Senyavshaya, op. cit., p. 22.
“Political officers held”: Ibid., p. 28.
“Lieutenant Vasily Kudryashov’s orderly”: AI Vasily Kudryashov.
“long periods of humility”: Figes, op. cit., p. 167.
“A German doctor”: Hans von Lehndorff,
East Prussian Diary
(Oswald Woolf: 1963), pp. 114–15.
“I always felt that I knew”: Report of 1/24 Panzer Regiment, quoted Jentz,
Pan-zertruppen,
op. cit., p. 223.
“this incredible wall of fire”: AI Valentin Krulik.
“Of course the Red Army”: AI Vladimir Gormin.
“The Russians didn’t think”: AI Tony Saurma.
“The Russians were not good soldiers”: AI Rolf-Helmut Schröder.
“The Russian—that pig—has”: Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz eds.,
Hitler and His Generals
(military conference records), (Greenhill: 2002), military conference, 1.9.45, p. 590.
“Private Vitold Kubashevsky”: AI Vitold Kubashevsky.