Authors: Sven Hassel
Blitzfreeze
Out of the red-black mist came an infantryman. He was laughing – madly – and then with a scream he threw away his carbine and crept close to the ground like a wounded animal. A steel rain of shells whipped up the earth around and he went on screaming. He was mad. No one could scream like that unless they were mad.
Then the MGs began to spit tracer fire and, rank by rank, the Russians fell to the ground. They fell in thousands, but there were more, always more behind them. They picked up the weapons of the dead and continued to advance, a hideous wave of death that rose from the corpse-strewn battlefield and surged towards the German lines . . .
This was Hitler’s glorious conquest of Russia
. . .
By Sven Hassel
The Commissar
OGPU Prison
Court Martial
The Bloody Road to Death
Blitzfreeze
Reign of Hell
SS General
March Battalion
Liquidate Paris
Monte Cassino
Assignment Gestapo
Comrades of War
Wheels of Terror
The Legion of the Damned
Translated from the Danish byTim Bowie
‘I am leading you towards wonderful times.’
Hitler in a speech on 3 June 1937.
The dead metallic crackle of machine-guns
Echoed in the cold silence.
The tramp of boots, sounding like shots,
The yelp of a dog,
Human screams.
Crying children, murdered women
In the last sunlight of a dying day.
Never forget it, the blood of the murdered,
It was war –
To Dorthe, my life’s companion.
2 Herr Niebelspang’s Via Dolorosa
Lenin to the Turkish Ambassador,‘Once the Germans have accepted the Bolshevik doctrines, I will move my headquarters from Moscow to Berlin, because in the coming world revolution the Germans will make much better cadre than the Russians
.’
Ali Fuad Pascha on 14 January 1921.
In the ’30s SS-Overgruppenführer Heydrich laid a crafty plan, designed to break the back of the Red Army. Using Gestapo agents, within the GPU, he filtered information through to Stalin naming traitors in the highest posts in Russian defence. Stalin’s sick suspicions were aroused and the results far exceeded Heydrich’s greatest expectations. Stalin and Police Minister Beria sent a wave of terror rolling across the giant Soviet state. Some of the most talented military leaders of the times were executed: Marshals Tuchatschewskij, Blücher and Iegorow, Army-commanders Uborewitsch and Jakir and the chiefs of the Red Fleet, Admirals Orlon and Wiktorow. With them went the commanders of every Military District and ninety-eight percent of the Corps and Divisional commanders. Almost every Regimental and Battalion commander was removed from his post and despatched to a forced labour camp as an enemy of the people. SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich rubbed his hands in satisfaction. Stalin himself had eliminated the brains of the Russian Army and replaced them with useless sycophants and hypocrites capable at most of leading a machine-gun section.
In the course of one night several thousand incompetent captains and majors were promoted to General rank. Some had not even attended an officer’s school and none had ever seen Frunse Academy. Countless frontier incidents took place before June 1941. German planes penetrated deeply into Russia on overt reconaissance, but Stalin had forbidden that they be shot
at. The slightest provocation on the part of Russian frontier regiments was punished by death. Quite simply, Stalin forbade the Russian soldier to defend himself. ‘Why?’ asks Major-General Grigorenko. Yes, why? Most of those who could have answered this question were executed in the first two months of the war. Stalin and Beria were busy. Busy silencing witnesses to the greatest blunder in history. ‘Or was it treason?’ asks Pjort Grigorenko.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ the lieutenant asks.
‘I can’t do it,’ says the girl sergeant.
‘You won’t!’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Tell me why you won’t,’ the lieutenant begs softly. He smooths her hair, and her forage cap falls to the ground.
‘You’re unreasonable. A girl can’t do it when she’s feeling down in the mouth.’
‘That’s a lot of nonsense. Even when you’re wounded you can do it. I once did it with both legs in plaster.’
‘When did
you
have both legs in plaster?’
‘When I was serving with the Soviet Laplanders. The time the Finns attacked us.’
‘Were
you
there? I didn’t know you’d been garrisoned in Leningrad. Stop it, Oleg! I can’t, I tell you!’
‘You mean you won’t! You don’t like doing it. I’m a holder of the
Krasnoe Znamja
,
1
you know.’
‘Do you think a girl flops into bed with a man, just because he’s got a
Krasnoe Znamja
? Where did you win it, anyway?’
‘Suomussalmi.’
‘Where’s that? Out east? There’s always war out there.’
‘No, Finland. It’s where we crushed the Finnish fascists and imperialists.’
‘Do you mean the big tank battle?’
‘Yes. They destroyed the division. But then the Commander-in-Chief sent in the whole army corps. We drove deep into their flanks, and got six decorations for bravery.’
‘And
you
got one of them?’
‘Yes!’ He tries to slip his hand up under her potato-brown army skirt.
She closes her legs. They roll about in the tall maize.
‘You mustn’t, she whispers hoarsely. ‘I tell you I can’t. I’m a soldier like you. All that filthy perversity’ll have to wait till we’ve crushed the occupation force.’
‘Oh, I understand you thoroughly,’ growls the lieutenant bitterly. ‘Hell!
how
I understand you. I understand you night and day, every hour, morning and evening. Especially evenings when I sit alone in that blasted battlewagon. I understand you the way the devil understands Karl Marx.
Job Tvojemadj!
’
2
‘Do you have to talk filth?’ she says quietly. She straightens her military skirt and shifts the belt supporting the Nagan
3
to a more comfortable position.
‘I’m a soldier,’ she repeats, ‘a tankman like yourself.’
‘You’re a soldier, yes, a telegraphist in a battlewagon, Jelena Vladimirovna.’ He catches her by the neck and throws her on her back in the golden maize.
She kicks out at him, resists violently. Her skirt slides up, and a pair of well-formed thighs in khaki stockings come to view. ‘Hell, stop it,’ she snarls savagely. ‘I’ll report you to the Sampolit!’
4
‘Do you think I’m afraid of those swine? If we don’t crush the Nazis before they get into Moscow, all the Sampolits will be swinging in the breeze. They’re shaking with fright, every one of them, and with reason. We’re not
going
to beat the fascists!’
‘Have you gone mad, Oleg Grigorjewitsch? Do you doubt the victory? That’ll cost you your head if I report you!’
‘Jelena Vladimirovna, can’t you be honest with me? You doubt the victory too! Hitler’s manhunters have been chasing us around like frightened chickens since June. Thousands upon thousands have fallen in just a few months. Countless others are behind barbed wire in Germany. Impregnable fortifications have gone down before we knew what was hunting us. We’re finished! Hitler and his generals will be in the Kremlin before Christmas. Where’s General Bagramja and his unbeatable Division of Guards? Crushed, Jelena! We stand on lost positions.
‘We’ve been at war three months and Hitler’s panzer divisions are little more than 200 miles from Moscow. If the weather holds, and it looks as if it will, fascist tanks will be in the Kremlin in less than a week. Did you hear the enemy radio the other day:
‘“Panzer, forward march! Let the tracks roll! Don’t stop till they’re striking sparks from the cobblestones of Moscow. Crush international Communism! Didn’t you hear it, Jelena? The Germans are devils. They’ve never been beaten. Anywhere! You’ve seen their yellow tanks crushing everything before them. For every one of their’s that went up in flames a hundred of ours went. Our own tank brigade has been destroyed and re-formed five times. Do you think
that
can go on? I heard this morning that they were packing up all ready to evacuate the Kremlin. Josef Stalin lets
us
be liquidated to save himself. He’s as brutal as Hitler. It’s a question which of the two is Russian’s greatest scourge. You know the order: He who retreats is a traitor and will be shot! If we surrender, they shoot our families.”’