SS General (18 page)

"That's a risk that has to be run. One accepts it."

"Sooner you than me."

They trotted on in silence for a while, then Heydrich leaned across to the admiral and lightly flicked his horse's neck. "Admiral Canaris, I congratulate you! You're a lively old fox and you never miss a trick. But one word of warning: every fox has his day! They all come to a sticky end sooner or later."

He pulled his horse around and cantered off toward the large black Mercedes that was waiting for him. Admiral Canaris trotted on by himself.

Summary Executions

In the middle of the night, an HE-111 landed in a field near Stalingrad. No one in the Sixth Army knew of its arrival, no one would have guessed the identity of the passenger it had brought. The only men who were present when it landed were a few selected NCOs from the paratroop regiment MATUK. The aircraft was camouflaged the minute it came down, and the paratroopers standing guard had orders to shoot on sight.

The first to leave the plane was Theodor Eicke, the man chiefly responsible for the running of the concentration camps and commander of the Third Panzer Division, the "murder" squad. The savage brutality of Eicke, and, indeed, of the men under him, had been known to shake even the Fuhrer, and the whole of the division had been deprived of leave for the duration of the war. Keep the animals behind bars and make good use of their particularly revolting talents, but never let them loose among the civilian population!

Behind Eicke came a group of SS men, all specialists in the Nazi art of liquidation. A motorized sled was waiting for them, provided by the paratroop regiment, but the regular driver was forced to cede his place to Oberscharfuhrer Henzel, known affectionately at Dachau as "Killer" Henzel.

In a flurry of snow the sled and its sinister travelers set off toward Stalingrad and the Sixth Army HQ. The Air Force markings had been removed from the sled and replaced by the letters "SS," on the orders of the ever-watchful Eicke. He was a man who paid an almost psychopathic attention to detail and left nothing to chance, as many of his Dachau detainees could testify, from the Austrian Chancellor, von Schuschnigg, one of the "specials," down to the least and most wretched of the Jews dug out of their hiding places in the slums of Berlin.

The Sixth Army had made its headquarters in an underground bunker which had been previously occupied by the NKVD. Eicke's unexpected arrival caused an immediate bustle and hubbub. Panic spread rapidly throughout the bunker, even to General Paulus himself. He stood up as Eicke entered his room, and held out a hand that shook very slightly. Eicke ignored it. He stood at the entrance, legs straddled, eyes flickering with cold contempt as he looked General Paulus up and down. Paulus cut a poor figure of a general at that moment, huddled into two misshapen greatcoats like a small gray creature dragged prematurely out of hibernation. Eicke was wearing the obligatory leather coat, well cut and stylish. He took his time lighting a cigar and spoke only when he was ready.

"Who are you?" he then said arrogantly. "I'm General Paulus." The general smiled nervously and dropped his hand. "May I ask to whom I have the honor of speaking?"

"Honor?" Eicke laughed, savoring the word. "Yes, that's good. I like it." He strolled into the room, looking disdainfully from side to side. "You have the honor to be speaking to SS Obergruppenfuhrer Theodor Eicke. I am here on the Fuhrer's behalf. He wishes to know what is going on." "What's going . . ."

"In particular," Eicke cut across him, "whether you're fighting a war or taking a winter sports vacation?"

Paulus began anxiously massaging the fingers of one hand with those of the other. They were long, fine, tapering fingers, made for better things than war. The fingers of a pianist or a surgeon. They had been made to create, never to destroy.

"When I came in just now," said Eicke mercilessly, "I quite thought I had been brought to the wrong place. You seemed to me more like a-an elderly Bolshevik prisoner warming himself inside a German greatcoat than the commander in chief of the Sixth Army! You don't look very much like a general, do you?"

"It's been very hard out here, for all of us," began Paulus, but Eicke again interrupted him.

"I'm not surprised there's no discipline among your troops, General! There's a spirit of defeat in the air--and it conies straight from the top! It seems I shall have to tell the Fuhrer that one of his generals has given up the fight."

"That's not true!"

The finely molded hands began to tremble. The general's protest was that of a man hurt rather than a man insulted, but his chief of staff sprang forward in his defense. General Schmidt was the very opposite of Paulus: hard, quick, and very sure of himself. "SS Obergruppenfuhrer, you have no business speaking like that! I shall put in a complaint!"

"That is your right," allowed Eicke. "By all means do so--to whom should you wish to address it? To the Fuhrer? Because if so, I can save you the trouble; I am his official representative at Stalingrad."

He pulled a document from his inside pocket and tossed it onto the table. The document gave full powers to Obergruppenfuhrer Theodor Eicke, in the name of the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, to hold courts-martial and to pass whatever judgments he thought fit.

Paulus pressed his fingers to his forehead in a gesture of despair. "What does the Fuhrer wish to know? Has he not received my reports on the situation? I've outlined my proposals to him--General Schmidt had an excellent plan which could be put into operation almost immediately. The Fuhrer has only to approve it, and I believe we shall still be able to salvage at least a part of the Sixth Army."

"Salvage!" Eicke spat it out scornfully. "The Fuhrer is not interested in salvage operations--only in victory. God knows, he's given you enough time out here! And all you can do is whine to him for more men, more food, more ammunition . . . what have you done with all the men you've already had? Where's all your ammunition gone? Have you been giving firework displays with it?"

"This is preposterous--" began Schmidt, very loudly.

Eicke swung around on him. "All this talk of plans and proposals! Nothing but an attempt to cover up your failure! The Fuhrer instructs me to remind you that the German Army does not turn and ran before a horde of Soviet apes! I am told to remind you yet again that what he wants is victory!"

"How?" asked Schmidt dryly.

"How?" screamed Eicke. "That is not my concern, nor is it the Fuhrer's! How you win the fight is up to you-- that's what you were made a general for." He moved closer to Schmidt, pointing a finger at him. "But you're asking me! How? All right, I'll tell you how. Chase the Bolsheviks out of Europe, that's how! Good God almighty, you've got twenty-five divisions in this army of yours--six hundred thousand men and eight hundred tanks--what more do you want? You could win five world wars with that, never mind flushing out a few primitive Soviet peasants!"

General Huber, who had been sitting silent throughout the exchange, nursing his empty right sleeve, could take Eicke's insolent tones no longer. He rose to his feet, his face white with anger. "Who do you think you're talking to? You're not in your concentration camp now, you know; you're in Stalingrad! And we're not your prisoners, we're officers and soldiers!"

"Ah, yes," said Eicke, turning to him. "You're General Huber, are you not? I have a message here for you. From General Burghof."

He handed Huber a slip of paper from the head of Army Personnel. It was an order for Huber to return to Germany and present himself at the Fuhrer's headquarters. Huber crumpled up the paper and pushed it into his pocket. He felt instinctively that such an order presaged some ill. It could mean promotion, but he doubted it. A summons to the Fuhrer had always been a doubtful honor at the best of times. His thoughts flew at once to the possibility of his own execution--the firing squad--the liquidation of his family. He stared across at Eicke, gloatingly watching him through a cloud of cigar smoke, and he spoke with an effort. "Thank you," he said.

He sat down at the table and took no more part in the conversation. It seemed to him now that whatever happened, whether he stayed in Stalingrad and waited for the Russians, or whether he flew back to Germany in answer to the Fuhrer's summons, he was probably a dead man.

General Paulus also remained silent. He was not fitted for war. He wished only to live among his books and his art treasures, to read and to think, to be on cordial terms with his neighbors, to interfere with no one and to be left alone to lead a life of peace.

Only Schmidt, still hostile, took any notice as Eicke bowed a slight, ironic bow toward the three generals, then said, "My travels, for the moment, take me elsewhere, but I shall be back very shortly."

His next call was on the 71st Division at Tsaritsa. He strode vigorously into the staff bunker, banging on the desk with his baton, a magnificent gold rod bearing the death's head emblem, which had been a personal present from the Fuhrer. Everyone looked up in alarm at his flamboyant entrance, and the commanding officer, General von Hartmann, rose at once and walked across to him. Eicke and von Hart-mann were known to each other of old. There had once been a time when Eicke was an unimportant clerk in the orderly room and von Hartmann had been his superior officer. It was von Hartmann who had discovered Eicke changing entries in the account books to suit himself and had subsequently had him transferred to a mine-disposal squad. He now faced Eicke in his new role of SS officer, but he gave no obvious signs of apprehension.

"It's a long time since we last met," he said coolly. "Indeed, yes," agreed Eicke, tucking his gold baton under his arm. "But I haven't forgotten the bad turn you did me!"

He smiled encouragingly at von Hartmann and undid the buttons of his coat, which fell open to reveal a chestful of medals and ribbons. "Well, General, the Fuhrer's sent me over here to find out exactly what's going on. He's not at all pleased with the progress you've been making. He can't understand why a horde of half-civilized heathens should be giving the German Army so much trouble."

The general bowed his head and remained silent. Eicke pulled off his gloves and wrapped them around his baton, which he tapped briskly against his calf. "I should like to inspect your division, if you please."

"By all means," agreed von Hartmann, only too anxious to be rid of the man.

He sent him off to look at the 191st, under the command of Captain Weinkopf. Eicke expressed a desire to travel by motor sled, but the ordnance officer shook his head. "I don't advise it, sir. It's not the safest way of going."

Eicke turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. "Are you scared, Lieutenant? Perhaps I'm already beginning to discover why it is that victory still eludes the Sixth Army."

The lieutenant held his tongue. If Eicke had no regard for his safety, that was his problem; as for himself, he had long since given up all hope of emerging alive and sane from the horrors of Stalingrad, and whether he died today or tomorrow was no longer a matter of the slightest importance. His entire family had been killed in an air raid on Cologne, and since that time he had ceased to care for his own future.

The sled had gone no farther than a few yards when the snow all around them began flying in great divots into the air. Despite himself, Eicke started.

"Russian mortars," said the lieutenant casually. "Take no notice, they're only small fry. It'll be the field guns next."

As if in response, the Russian artillery started up the moment he finished speaking. The lieutenant glanced at Eicke and smiled.

Eicke shivered. "It's certainly very cold," he muttered, by way of explaining his involuntary tremors.

"Do you find it so?" asked the lieutenant, beginning to enjoy himself. "I was just thinking how mild it was. We even saw some bullfinches this morning. They're the most fickle of visitors, you never catch a glimpse of them when the weather's bad."

Eicke looked at him suspiciously, but the lieutenant turned blandly away and pointed ahead toward some hills. "We have to go through a gorge pretty soon. I thought I ought to warn you--the Russians have a habit of going wild whenever we appear at the far end of it. It can get rather noisy."

"That's quite all right," said Eicke, who was beginning to sweat in spite of the low temperature. "Carry straight on."

The sled disappeared into the hills. It had scarcely put its nose out the other side when the ground beneath it seemed to open, a shower of snow enveloped both sled and occupants, and Eicke flung himself in a panic headfirst over the side, followed by his fellow SS men.

The sled bucketed to a halt and the lieutenant stepped calmly off and stood looking at Eicke. "This is it," he said simply.

Eicke picked himself up and brushed the snow off his uniform. "This is what?" he demanded.

"We're here. We can continue on foot."

They set off together to find Captain Weinkopf, the Russians harassing them all the way. Eicke looked around, irritated. "What's the matter with them? Do they always carry on like this?"

"Oh, this is nothing!" the lieutenant smilingly assured him. "A few days ago they wiped out an entire battalion in two minutes flat. This way, sir. Captain Weinkopf is expecting us."

"I'm surprised you have a captain in charge of a regiment," said Eicke, disapproving.

The lieutenant shrugged. "Needs must--and he was the most experienced officer left. The Russians had bagged all the others."

"All of them? You mean . . ."

"I mean," said the lieutenant, "that officers don't last very long in this part of the world. Here we are, sir."

They found Captain Weinkopf playing cards with some enlisted men. They were all huddled together beneath three greatcoats, squatting on piles of Russian rifles. They had a couple of gasoline cans for a table.

"This is Obergruppenfuhrer Eicke," said the lieutenant with something less than the required respect.

The soldiers looked up. Captain Weinkopf selected a card, placed it on a gasoline can, closed up his hand and nodded offhand.