Behind him, his batman smoothed down a straw bedding sack on a rough earth bench and laid a brown army-issue blanket over it. He put another couple of logs into the field oven and then began fiddling with a metal implement in the corner.
‘So, Müller, another catch, eh?’ enquired the officer in passing, without glancing up from his work.
‘Three in one fell swoop this time, Colonel!’ replied the batman. His red-cheeked face cracked into a sly smile, as he proudly brandished a knapsack emitting a faint squeaking noise. ‘That’s seven all told in three days!’
‘Now we’re on half rations, the mice’ll be feeling the pinch pretty soon, too,’ grumbled the colonel, adding a new arrow to the map.
‘The little creatures even had a go at the general’s boots yesterday,’ said the batman as he was leaving the room. From the staircase outside came the sound of steps and a large figure eased through the narrow doorway, bringing with it a blast of cold air. It was General von Seydlitz, the commander of the Second Corps. Taking off his cap, he ran his hand over his grizzled white hair, cut short on the sides. Then he took off his camouflage jacket, revealing a tunic bearing a Knight’s Cross with oak leaves. To judge from his lined face, the general was about fifty, though his upright horseman’s bearing, the fruit of a long, binding family tradition of equestrianism, made him appear considerably younger.
‘The reply’s come back from the Führer’s HQ!’ he announced. ‘Paulus has just received it. It’s a flat refusal!’ The colonel put down his pencil and looked up. General von Seydlitz warmed his cold hands with the glow from the oven, his forehead lined with deep furrows.
‘You’re familiar with Paulus’s report, right?’ he continued. ‘You saw how he tried time and again to water it down and soften the blow and how we had to fight tooth and nail for any clear, decisive formulation to be included. But in general he didn’t shy away from presenting a vivid picture of the real situation – and now we get this reply! No cognizance of our deep misgivings, no acknowledgement of my suggestions. Nothing, absolutely nothing! Just the curt instruction: “The army is to take up a defensive position as ordered within the specified boundaries!”’
The colonel took a deep breath.
‘That’s rich!’ he said quietly. ‘I really wouldn’t have expected that. After all, the unanimous opinion of an army commander and five generals ought to carry more weight than that! You know, sir, that I’m not usually one to criticize the High Command, but this business, it’s… well, it can’t end well!’
‘It’s sheer madness!’ erupted the general, slamming his hand down on the table. ‘Complete and utter insanity! To voluntarily bottle up twenty-two divisions – who ever heard of such a thing? It’s the act of a total madman! And Hitler’s demanding an immediate explanation of why Paulus has already pulled back the right wing of the northern fortified position without his express permission. Can you imagine?’
Von Seydlitz strode across the room and stared blankly at the wall, where an old copy of Der Angriff[1] was pinned up. ‘Final Victory Looms in the East!’ read its banner headline. The colonel propped his head in his hands.
‘So what does the C-in-C have to say?’ he asked after a while. The general swung round to face him.
‘Just what you’d expect Paulus to say,’ he said in exasperation. ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, of course! He just made that usual gesture of his with his hands and shrugged his shoulders… An army commander letting himself be treated like some stupid schoolboy. It’s scandalous!’
The colonel shook his head. General von Seydlitz leaned on the table and looked at his chief of staff. A nervous twitch spasmed across his face.
‘I’ll tell you one thing for sure,’ he rasped, ‘I for one won’t take this lying down. Not me!’
He began pacing up and down the room once more.
‘Paulus must act independently,’ he began again at length, now calmer. ‘In extremis he’ll have to be compelled to do so.’
‘We’ve tried coaxing him along like a sick horse,’ said the chief of staff resignedly. ‘But nothing we said did any good. He’s like putty in the hands of his superior – and Schmidt is the army’s evil spirit.’
‘You know what we should do?’ the general said all of a sudden, stopping in his tracks. ‘We should send a written statement of our position to the High Command, with the express request it be passed on! I’ll set out my views to them again in it, plain and simple. Maybe it’ll do some good… Yes, I think that would be the right course of action. Let’s draft it right now!’
The colonel looked dubious. He knew these outbursts of anger and their often embarrassing consequences; even so, he said nothing and picked up a pencil and paper. The general had resumed his pacing. His clear eyes ranged restlessly around the room.
‘To the commander-in-chief of the Sixth Army and general of the tank divisions Paulus!’ he dictated. His voice vibrated like a tautened wire. Correcting himself frequently, he recounted his experiences on the Valdai Hills and in the successful breaking of the encirclement at Ternovaya near Kharkov, outlined the impossibility of the western line of defence that they had been ordered to hold (a line that ran right across the middle of the Russian steppe, lacking in any natural obstacles, let alone strongholds or trenches), explained the unfeasibility of being resupplied from the air, and gave an extensive résumé of the current state of the army on the Eastern Front, whose men were exhausted by the heavy fighting they’d endured. With the aid of the colonel, he searched for new and ever more trenchant ways to put across his point. He finally drew the letter to a close.
‘In the eventuality that the Führer nevertheless insists that his will be obeyed,’ he dictated succinctly, ‘I would emphatically urge the General to break out to the southwest on his own initiative in direct contravention of Hitler’s orders, and answer for his actions solely to the German people! Right, end of paragraph, full stop! Let’s get this typed out straight away. Then I can circulate it among the other commanders.’
The colonel skim-read the pages one more time.
‘Do you really think, sir,’ he asked apprehensively, ‘that we’ll achieve anything by this… and that the other generals will go along with it?’
‘God alone knows. But I sincerely hope so. Something’s got to be done, after all!’
The colonel gave the general a searching look. ‘If the C-in-C passes on this communiqué,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘you’ll be court-martialled, General. The Führer won’t tolerate being contradicted like that. It could end up costing you your head, General, sir!’
General von Seydlitz stopped pacing, seemingly unsettled for an instant.
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ he exclaimed, snapping out of it. ‘That’s not what’s at issue here, anyhow. It’s about the lives of three hundred thousand German soldiers.’
The moon shone down, huge and full, from the midnight sky. Its milky-white brightness obscured the stars and cast a cruel light on the bleeding Earth, which would rather have hidden under cover of darkness. The lorry moved swiftly along the ice-hard road. All around, the horizon was suffused with a red glow; there too, no doubt, things that had been vitally important yesterday were today being incinerated as worthless. Up above, red and green points moved across the sky, the navigation lights of Russian aircraft on the prowl, untroubled by German fighters. Now and then, the truck overtook lines of carts laden with belongings. The small shaggy ponies pulling them plodded their way wearily through the night. A grey mass of humanity was making its way eastward – Russian POWs from some camp that had been cleared, herded on at a leisurely pace by a handful of shabbily dressed guards; a sense of a shared fate seemed to render them more easy-going.
1