There is a pause. The eyes of those seated around the airman are glued to the pale face that’s now looking through the bunker walls and fixing on somewhere out in the far distance.
‘…more’s the pity,’ the young man quietly continues. ‘That’s not good for me, see. Now I’m a prisoner, I’m lost to my compatriots. My life’s at an end. I’ll cheerfully starve or freeze to death with all of you here, or be killed by your desperate soldiers, just in the hope that, tomorrow, all of you will get your comeuppance. That’s how I see things.’
The silence grows ever more oppressive.
‘Ha ha ha!’ The silence is suddenly broken by Fröhlich’s forced laughter. ‘You’re very much mistaken there, my friend! You obviously think because we’re in a bit of a fix right now that we’re finished?’ He purses his lips contemptuously. ‘Well, we’ve beaten you so far and we’ll go on beating you, yes sir! Till there’s nothing left of your wonderful Soviet Union! You clearly don’t know us Germans, friend!’
The Russian prisoner gives Fröhlich an almost pitying look.
‘On the contrary, I know the Germans only too well,’ he says. ‘There’s peace between our countries and then suddenly you invade us. You go on a rampage of pillage and murder. You began by killing the Jews, now you’re murdering Soviet citizens. You hang people on gallows. And for what, exactly?’ He casts a look round the assembled faces. When he gets no reply, he goes on: ‘When I was younger I read Heine, and Goethe and Hegel. But now I know that Germans are criminals.’
Someone awkwardly clears their throat.
‘But the people of the Soviet Union will take a dreadful revenge on the German occupiers. Our war is in a just cause. Every man, every woman, the entire populace is engaged in fighting the Great Patriotic War. We’re defending freedom, the Rights of Man and the achievements of the great Socialist Revolution. And that’s why we’ll win.’
The young airman’s voice is calm and measured and so uncannily matter-of-fact that it holds everyone in the room spellbound.
‘You see, the German Sixth Army, which planned to capture Stalin’s city, is on the brink of defeat. Not one of its troops will escape… and that’s just the beginning. Before long, our sacred Soviet soil will be swept clear of the German Fascist aggressor.’
No one says a word. Breuer can feel the blood pumping in his temples. Forcibly suppressing his agitation, he pushes the plate of bread and lard over to the Russian.
‘Better keep your strength up first,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow you’ll be sent to a POW camp, and hopefully you’ll come to think better of the Germans before the war’s over.’
While the Russian was eating, the first lieutenant arranged with Captain Endrigkeit that the prisoner should spend the night at the military police headquarters and be transferred to the Corps’ POW collection point in the morning. Presently, Endrigkeit set off with the Russian airman. Breuer gave the captain a note addressed to the camp commandant, entrusting the prisoner to his special care.
He then sat around for some time chatting with Wiese and Dierk. Their sole topic of conversation was this unexpected event.
‘Strange thing is,’ Breuer told them, ‘I’ve interrogated any number of Russian officers in my time. You name it, staff officers of all ranks, even generals, but I’ve never had an experience like that before. Nor have you, Wiese, I’ll wager, right? A completely different caste of person. Truly inscrutable!’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Lieutenant Wiese. ‘The others before, they were just – prisoners. But this guy was one of those we only normally find dead on the battlefields. He stood in front of us like… well, almost like a victor. Maybe that explains the oddness.’
Fröhlich, meanwhile, had looked through the papers and letters the airman had been carrying. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look here: in Civvy Street, he was a literary critic on some kind of international journal. Means he must have been a full-blown card-carrying commie. That explains everything.’
‘Still, hats off to the man, I say.’
Dierk could contain himself no longer.
‘I just don’t get what you all find so fascinating about this bloke! He’s a cheap little agitator, stuffed with Bolshevik propaganda slogans!’
‘I really think you’re doing him a disservice there,’ Breuer replied. ‘He knew full well he wasn’t going to make communists of us. What we witnessed was the simple and rational settling of accounts by someone who’d drawn a line under his life. Sure, he sees things through the filter of Soviet propaganda, like he’s been taught to, but even so, some of what he said… In my opinion, we’d do well to take heed of it. In any event, meeting someone like him puts a fair few things into perspective. For one thing, it makes you disinclined to believe that old one about commissars having to drive men into battle at the point of a gun.’
‘And all that about a just and an unjust war,’ Wiese chipped in. ‘I wouldn’t have expected a Bolshevik of all people to come out with that.’
‘That’s just typical of you, Wiese!’ Dierk pounced on the lieutenant. ‘You and your Christianity – that stuff was guaranteed to play well with you! Let me tell you, there’s no such thing as justice in politics. There, might is right and that’s that!’
‘You don’t say, my dear Dierk,’ countered Wiese with gentle irony. ‘Well, just for a moment, let’s try applying that marvellous little principle of yours to the personal relationships between people. The logical consequence of that is that you could beat out the brains of your weaker neighbour and steal his possessions any time you liked. I presume even you would think that was naked barbarism! We’ve got beyond that stage since we stopped being cavemen. Yet your law of the jungle is supposed to be the governing principle in the relations between peoples and states? God forbid that the German people should ever be on the receiving end of what you’re proposing… but I’m sure you can’t really mean it, Dierk. I’ve always taken you to be an idealist. But if you truly believe what you just said, that makes you nothing but a mean little egotist… how shall I put it, a nationalist egotist.’
Dierk’s face reddened.
‘Yes – that’s exactly what I am!’ he shouted. ‘Guilty as charged, a nationalist egotist! And that’s what we should all be! The superiority of our race gives us the right to – indeed, it obliges us to be just that. Our people are a chosen people! I believe implicitly in that; it’s what I live for and what I’m prepared to lay my life on the line for at any time. The magnificent qualities of the German people, their honesty and diligence, their talent for organization, their creativity… it’s our duty to liberate that from all constraints, from all external coercion… and to open up the world as a place where our people can live and work. That kind of egotism – I’m telling you this, Wiese, as you set so much store by religion – is nothing short of sacred! That’s right, it’s holy, God-ordained! And a holy egotism like that will ultimately be the salvation of mankind too! And… and if our nation isn’t strong enough to assert this egotism, then – well, it might just as well go under. It deserves nothing better!
‘It almost seems to me, Dierk,’ said Wiese with a faint smile, ‘that you’re the cheap agitator now. “The salvation of mankind”, you say? As you can see with your own eyes, the Russians don’t consider what you’re bringing them as salvation, but damnation. And they’re right to see the kind of “salvation” that you’re proposing as “ultimately” being just crumbs off the master’s table… Just let people find their own salvation in their own way, Dierk! What you’re advocating here is a morality of naked, brutal force, a law of the jungle. But man was put on Earth to raise himself up from the depths of bestiality… (No, they’re not my words, it’s a quotation from Fichte.) “Love They Neighbour as Thy Self”, that’s the secret of humanity. Take a look inside yourself just for once, Dierk, into your heart of hearts. Can’t you feel that I’m right? Sure, the war’s brutalized a lot of things in us. But hidden somewhere deep inside us all is this miraculous treasure. Dig it out, Dierk, so you can become a human being again!’