Europe Central (141 page)

315 Himmler to Gunter d’Alquen: “Who compels us to keep the promises we make?” —Clark, p. 408.

315 Vlasov’s manifesto: “A fight to the finish of opposing political systems . . .”—Severely abridged from Daniels, p. 230.

318 Vlasov: “Washington and Franklin were traitors in the eyes of the British crown.” —Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 229.

318 Vlasov: “God give me strength! . . . And one day you’ll tell everybody at Valhalla that I wasn’t a traitor . . .”—Ibid., p. 230, considerably altered (the original reads: “God give me strength to hold out to the end. But you, Wilfried Karlovich, you will go with Malyshkin and help him. That I know. And one day you will tell the others that Vlasov and his friends loved their country and were not traitors.”

319
Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
“In this long and bitter struggle . . .”—Vol. 4, p. 351 (entry on the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45).

319 Guderian’s opinion of Himmler: “An inconspicuous man with all the marks of racial inferiority”—Heinz Guderian,
Panzer Leader,
trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon, abr. (New York: Ballantine Books, n.d.), p. 30.

320 General Guderian: “Vlasov wanted to make some statement,” and replies of Hitler and Göring—Warlimont, p. 503 (fragment 24/25, briefing conference on 27 January 1945).

320 War diary of the British Thirty-sixth Infantry Brigade: “In glittering uniforms” —Carol Mather,
Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home
(London: Brassey’s [U.K.] Ltd., 1992), p. 70 (embellished a little).

321 Vlasov: “Kroeger keeps filling up my glass . . .”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 230.

322 Vlasov to his two quarreling soldiers: “We can’t beat Stalin with open fingers . . .” —Loosely after Steenberg, p. 155.

323 Heidi’s mother: “The Führer won’t allow the Russians to get us. He’ll gas us instead” —Ian Kershaw,
Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), p. 762 (the speaker was an anonymous old woman).

324 Strik-Strikfeldt: “Definition of cowardice: Leaving Berlin to volunteer for the Ostfront!” —After Klemperer, p. 313 (entry for 8 May 1944).

324 Vlasov: “Germany has collapsed sooner than I expected.”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 227.

326 Footnote: Vlasov: “I know that, and I’m extremely afraid . . .”—Andreyev, p. 78 (“retranslated” a little).

326 Same footnote: Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: “Communist morality is the noblest and most just morality . . .”—
The Soviet Way of Life,
p. 316.

327
Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
Definition of cosmopolitanism—Vol. 13, p. 190 (entry on same).

THE LAST FIELD-MARSHAL

328 Epigraph: “That man should have shot himself . . .”—Alan Bullock,
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny,
rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Harper Colophon Books, 1964), pp. 690-91 (Hitler to his staff officers, 1 February 1943).

328 Guderian on Paulus: “He was the finest type . . .”—
Panzer Leader,
p. 30.

328 Military orders: “Kriegsgliederung ‘Barbarossa’”—Mehner, vol. 3, end matter. Untranslated phrases: “War plan ‘Barbarossa.’ B-Day.”

329 Information on enemy strength, dispositions, etc., available to Paulus from Fremde Heere Ost—I have built up much of my imaginary picture from details in David Thomas, “Foreign Armies East and German Military Intelligence in Russia 1941-45,”
Journal of Contemporary History,
vol. 22, no. 22 (April 1987).

329 “Fourth Army Chief of Staff in the Polish campaign”—The biographies of Paulus are all in wild disagreement on this as on other issues. (For instance, even the careful Erickson calls him “von Paulus,” although Goerlitz makes it clear that our hero was a bookkeeper’s son.) Samuel W. Mitcham, for instance, claims in
Hitler’s Field Marshals and Their Battles
(New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001; p. 226), that he was actually in Tenth Army then, and that Tenth Army was renamed to Sixth Army.

329 Hitler: “The ultimate objective is the cordoning off of Asiatic Russia . . .”—Directive No. 2 for Barbarossa, as quoted in Walter Goerlitz,
Paulus and Stalingrad: A Life of Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus with Notes, Sources and Documents from His Papers,
trans. Col. R. H. Stevens (New York: Citadel Press, 1963, trans of 1960 German ed.), p. 96.

329 Kesselring on Paulus: “He made a specially good impression . . .”—
Kesselring: A Soldier’s Record
(title page cut away in library binding; published shortly after 1953), p. 52.

330 Paulus’s children—Mitcham (p. 224) gives him three: Olga, Friedrich (killed in action in the Anzio campaign) and Alexander. Craig (p. 408) gives him an unnamed daughter, I assume Olga, Alexander (killed at Anzio) and Ernst, and has Ernst commit suicide in 1970. Beevor (p. 427) does not mention Olga, has Friedrich killed at Anzio, and calls the third child Ernst Alexander. So I’ve settled on Olga, Friedrich and Ernst. Since the circumstances and nature of Ernst’s wound have not been specified, I gave him a serious thigh wound which required his evacuation from Stalingrad. Had he not been evacuated, it seems unlikely to me that he and his father would both have survived the Stalingrad campaign. I further imagine that his wounding occurred before the German position at Stalingrad had reached a very desperate stage, since (a) it would have been less likely that he’d be evacuated then and (b) he might have been more inclined to stick it out like his father. All this is the flimsiest speculation, which is God’s gift to historical fictioneers.

331 Olga’s son Robert—In fact I don’t know whether she had any children.

331 Conversation between Paulus and Coca: “That’s a matter for political decision . . . a good chance that we’ll achieve victory this year”—Somewhat loosely after Goerlitz, p. 28.

334 The S.D. police-lieutenant to Paulus: “You can ask anything of them, just like horses. They work until they drop and make no demands”—Klee, Dressen and Riess, p. 158 (letter from Gendarmerie chief Fritz Jacob, in Kamanets Podolsky, 21 June 1942).

335 Hitler: “Keitel, is this line ready? . . . All the way to here?”—Warlimont, p. 522 (Appendix A: Staff Conference Fragment No. 8, 12 December 1942; actually Hitler and Zeitzler speaking).

336 Warlimont: Total German losses thus far on the Ostfront, 625,000—Ibid., p. 239 (“War Potential 1942,” figures as of 1 May 1942). The reserve situation was actually worse than Paulus might have known. Warlimont writes (p. 240): “At present there are no further reserves available in Germany.”

337 Hitler: “The fuel situation . . . liquidate this war”—Kershaw, p. 514 (slightly altered).

337 Hitler and Paulus at von Reichenau’s funeral—This never happened. Hitler sent a proxy to the ceremony.

337 Paulus’s assessment of Russian troops: “Incapable of operational initiative”—Actually, the assessment of them by Fremde Heere Ost, on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. See Thomas, “Foreign Armies East,” p. 274.

339 General Halder: “One of the sacrifices which commanders have to make . . .” —Warlimont, p. 162 (actually, written by Halder in his diary).

343 Fremde Heere Ost: “Special formations: Numbers unknown”—Loosely after the tabulation in Thomas, p. 276.

343 Ditto: “The clumsiness, schematism, avoidance of decision and responsibility has not changed since the Finnish campaign”—Ibid., p. 274. I have added “since the Finnish campaign.”

347
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
on Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn): “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . .”—Vol. 5, p. 566, entry on Volgograd.

348 “Field-Marshal von Reichenau’s order of 10.10.41 to proceed with extreme measures against subhumans”—There were a number of variations of the infamous “commissar order,” whose provisions got rescinded at different times and different degrees by different commanders. Regarding commissars, many of the German generals seem to have actually believed, as for instance did von Manstein (p. 179), that since they weren’t exactly soldiers, chaplains or doctors; and since their purpose was to encourage “vicious resistance” in the enemy formations, then they didn’t qualify as privileged non-combatants; this view, however self-serving, may be faintly arguable. Most of the “commissar” order, however, is sickeningly murderous. In the very first of the numbered “Instructions for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia” we read: “Bolshevism is the deadly enemy of the National Socialist Folk. This subversive world-view and its carriers validate Germany’s struggle.” The second instruction warns that “this war must be prosecuted ruthlessly against” (and here in the orders the following categories were underlined) “
headmen, fifth columnists, Jews
, and others who stand actively or passively against us.”—Mehner. (The German word for “instructions,”
Richtlinien,
really means “guidelines,” but a more rigid substitution seemed appropriate here. I wanted to literalize it into the cognate
Right Line,
with its even stronger moral tone, but regretfully decided that this had too Stalinist a sound. The excerpts in this note have been slightly abridged.)

348 Some of the military arrows, vectors, etc. for Kharkov and Stalingrad derive from the maps in Günter Wegmann, ed.,
“Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt . . .”: Der deutsche Wehrmachtsbericht
(Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1982).

349 Colonel Metz to Paulus: “Let me congratulate you on your Knight’s Cross . . .” —Slightly abridged from Goerlitz, p. 167. This message bears the date of 5 June 1942 and therefore probably reached Paulus much sooner than I have allowed it to.

351 Field-Marshal von Manstein: “The safety of a tank formation operating in the enemy’s rear . . .”—Von Manstein, p. 185.

351 Coca to her husband, on Africa: “Keep your fingers out of that pie.”—Ibid., p. 32.

353 The Führer: “There is not going to be a winter campaign!”—Ibid., p. 35.

353 The architecture of Werewolf, Wolf’s Lair, Wolf’s Gorge, and for that matter many of the structural details of Hitler’s trains, cars, military headquarters, etcetera, referred to in this story and in “Clean Hands”—Peter Hoffmann,
Hitler’s Personal Security
(London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1979). Hitler was at Wolf’s Lair, with many interruptions, from 24 June 1941 through 20 November 1944. Meanwhile came two spells at Werewolf: 16 July to 1 November 1942 (this is the period of greatest relevance here), and 17 February through 13 March 1943. Paulus’s final visit to Wolf’s Lair, when Paulus goes “whiter than a German tank,” is my fabrication.

354 Hitler: “The Ukrainians, yes, a thin Germanic layer . . .”—Kershaw, p. 244 (recollection of A. Rosenberg); somewhat altered; the original was about the Poles rather than the Ukrainians.

356 Hitler: “Once we’ve erased Leningrad and Moscow from the map . . .”—Warlimont, p. 242, quoting Goebbels, March 1942.

356 Major-General Schmidt: “The greatest happiness any of our contemporaries can experience . . .”—Warlimont; quoting Goebbels’s diary, entry for 21 March 1942.

361 Paulus to Lutz: “The great thing now is to hit the Russian so hard a crack . . .” —Goerlitz, p. 169.

363 Colonel Heim on Paulus: “A slender, rather over-tall figure . . .”—Goerlitz, p. 48.

363 “They”: “This defensive mission is contrary to the German soldier’s nature”—After Newton, p. 63 (Otto Schellert, “Winter Fighting of the 253rd Infantry Division in the Rzhev Area 1941-1942”).

364 “A German general who survived the war”: “Practically every Russian attack . . .” —Major-General F. W. von Mellenthin,
Panzer Battles: A Story of the Employment of Armour in the Second World War,
trans. H. Betzler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, repr. of 1955 English ed.), p. 185.

366 Field-Marshal von Manstein: “This policy of covering everything . . .”—Walimont, quoting Goebbels’s diary entry for 21 March 1942, p. 40.

366 Unnamed officer at Wolf’s Lair: “Any caliber smaller than a hundred and fifty millimeters is ineffective . . .”—Loosely after Newton, p. 117 (Gustav Höhne, “In Snow and Mud: 31 Days of Attack Under Seydlitz During Early Spring of 1942”).

366 Hitler: “I made it clear to my Brownshirts . . . rip off his armband”—Loosely after
Mein Kampf,
p. 504 (“An Attempted Disruption”).

367 “Manstein’s high regard for the march discipline of the S.S. Death’s Head Division” —Op. cit., p. 187.

369 Fremde Heere Ost, Gruppe I, Army Group report on the Red Army’s new Don Front: “Defensive enemy behavior”—Thomas, p. 269. (The source for this erroneous information was actually not the Leitstelle für Nachrichtenaufklärung, however.)

370 Enemy signal of 18.11.42: “Send a messenger to pick up the fur gloves”—Erickson, p. 464.

371 “Übersicht über sowjetrussischen Kräfteeinsatz” and description of the map’s colors —
The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen,
trans. David Irving (New York: Times Mirror, World Publishing, 1972, trans. of 1971 German ed.), frontispiece.

372
Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
“Encirclement is most often achieved . . .”—Vol. 18, p. 78 (entry on encirclement).

374 Paulus, on a possible breakout: “More than ten thousand wounded and most of our heavy weapons would have to be written off”—Loosely after the sentiment expressed by General Schmidt in Beevor, p. 268. On this same page Beevor writes that Paulus was “haunted” by comparisons with Napoleon’s retreat, so I supplied the standard figures on that disaster.

376 Field-Marshal von Manstein on Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch: “Not belonging to quite the same class as Baron von Fritsch . . .”—Manstein, p. 75. About Paulus, Manstein was actually more charitable than this, concluding (p. 303) that “he can hardly have had a sufficiently clear picture of the overall situation.”

376 Radio transmission came from our Führer: “Sixth Army is temporarily surrounded by Russian forces . . .”—Moderately altered from the version in Beevor, pp. 269-70.

378 Paulus to Coca: “At the moment I’ve got a really difficult problem on my hands . . .” —Goerlitz, p. 72 (letter of 7 December 1942).

378 Episode of the grand piano in the street, the ammunition-box altar for Christmas, and a few other miscellaneous details—Loosely based on Franz Schneider and Charles Gullans, trans.,
Last Letters from Stalingrad
(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1962).