“I guess not,” he agreed- After a brief pause he added, “If you decide to surrender, Hans, just let me have a gun and a couple of grenades. I will find my way home.”
“You won’t be alone.”
I gave him a reassuring tap. “I don’t feel like hanging in the main square of Liberec, either.”
“I don’t feel like submitting myself to what comes between the surrender and the hanging,” he added with a sarcastic chuckle.
Early in the afternoon the PO-2’s returned, but we did not fire on the flimsy canvas planes which carried no weapons. The Russians had sent us another load of leaflets, among them newspaper cuttings announcing the armistice, and photocopies of the protocol bearing the signature of General Field Marshal Keitel. Again we were requested to lay down our weapons and evacuate into the valley under the flag of truce.
“This is it!” Colonel Steinmetz spoke quietly as he crumpled the Soviet leaflet between his fingers. “This is it!” And as though providing an example, he unbuckled the belt which supported his holster, swung it once, and tossed the belt on a flat slab of stone. I expected nothing else from Colonel Steinmetz. He was a meticulously correct officer, a cavalier of the old school who would always keep to the letter of the service code. He could see no other solution but to comply with that last order of the German High Command, or what was left of it. Moving like automatons, his three hundred officers and men began to file past our sullen group, the troops casting their rifles and sidearms onto the mounting pile. But the artillery, the small panzer detachment, and the Alpenjaegers kept their weapons, and, with a skill born of habit, the SS took over the vacated positions.
“I am sorry,” Colonel Steinmetz said quietly, and I noticed that his eyes were filled. “I cannot do anything else.”
“There is no longer a high command, Herr Oberst, and the Fuehrer is dead. You are no longer bound by your oath of allegiance,” I reminded him.
He smiled tiredly. “If we wanted to disobey orders we should have done it a long time ago,” he said. “Right after Stalingrad. And not on the front but in Berlin.”
“You mean a successful twentieth of July, Herr Oberst?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I think what Stauffenberg did was the gravest act of cowardice. If he was so sure of doing the right thing, he should have stood up, pulled his gun, shot Hitler, and taken the consequences. But I don’t believe in murdering superior officers. The Fuehrer should have been declared unfit to lead the nation and, removed. Had Rommel or Guderian taken command of the Reich, we might have won—if not the war, at least an honorable peace.”
“It is either too late or still too early to discuss the Fuehrer’s leadership, don’t you think, Colonel Steinmetz?”
“You are right. Now all we can do is hoist the white flag.”
“We have no white flags, Herr Oberst,” Captain Ruell remarked with sarcasm. “White flags were never standard equipment in the Wehrmacht.”
The colonel nodded understandingly. “I know it is painful, Herr Hauptmann, but if we refuse to surrender, the Russians may treat us like we treated their guerrillas.”
“Are you expecting anything else from the Soviet, Herr Oberst?” Eisner asked.
“The war is over. There is no reason for more brutalities,” said the colonel. He turned toward me. “What do you intend to do?” I suggested that we should try to reach Bavaria, two hundred miles away, but the colonel only smiled at my idea. “By now, the Russian divisions are probably streaming toward the line of demarcation,” he said. “All the roads and bridges will be occupied by the Russians and precisely opposite the American lines you will find most of their troops. Stalin does not trust either Churchill or Truman. He has exterminated his own general staff. Do you think he would trust Eisenhower or Montgomery? The days of “our heroic Western Allies” are over for Stalin. In a few weeks” time the Western Allies will be called bourgeois, decadent, imperialist, and Stalin will deploy a million troops on the western frontiers of his conquest. Besides,” he added after a pause, “you should not expect much from the Americans, Herr Obersturmführer. I have heard many of their broadcasts.”
“So have we,” Eisner remarked.
“Then you should know about their intentions. A prisoner is always a prisoner. The conqueror is always right and the vanquished is always wrong!”
“We have no intention of surrendering, Herr Oberst, neither here nor in Bavaria,” I said softly.
“Are you planning to go on fighting?”
“If necessary… and until we arrive at some safe place.”
“Where, for instance?”
“Spain, South America… the devil knows.”
“You should not count on Franco. Franco is all alone now and they might put pressure on him soon. With Hitler and Mussolini dead, Stalin will never tolerate the existence of Franco, the last strong leader in western Europe. Stalin knows that he will be able to push around everyone but Franco. He will regard Spain as a potential birthplace, or rather a place of resurrection, for the Nazi phoenix. And to reach South America you will need good papers and plenty of money. But, to speak of more immediate problems, do you have enough food to reach Bavaria? I know you have enough weapons but your trip might take two months over the mountains, and I presume that is the way you intend to go. Man cannot live on bullets.”
“We have enough food for two weeks. One can always find something to eat. It is getting on to summer now,” I said. “There are villages and farms even in the mountains.”
He shook his head disapprovingly. “Are you planning to raid the farms and villages? Will you shoot people if they refuse to accommodate you?”
“If it is a matter of survival, Colonel Steinmetz…”
Eisner said before I could answer. He left the sentence unfinished for a moment, then added, “Have you ever seen a humane war?”
“It will no longer be an act of war but common banditry,” the colonel stated frankly. “Of course you still have the power to do it but you won’t be able to do it in silence. The Czechs will know about you. The Russians will know about you and your destination. The news of your coming might reach Bavaria before you do.”
“And we might have an American reception committee waiting for us at the frontier. This is what you wanted to say, Herr Oberst?” I interposed.
“Precisely!” said he. “And if up ’til now you haven’t committed something the Allies may call a war crime, you had better not furnish them with any evidence now!”
“Herr Oberst,” I spoke to him softly but firmly, “if we do reach Bavaria, nothing will stop us from getting further. Neither the Americans, nor the devil himself. We have given up many things a man would never willingly part with, and we are ready to give up more, even our lives. But not our right to return home. On that single item we will never compromise.”
“I wish I was as young as you are,” Colonel Steinmetz spoke resignedly. “But I am tired, Herr Obersturmführer… so very tired.”
Despite the old soldier’s pessimism I felt that somehow we had a fair chance of getting through, saving at least our bare lives. The prospect of being hanged by the guerrillas, or at best carted off to a Siberian death camp, did not appeal to me at all. The colonel might survive. He might even return home one day. The SS could entertain no illusions about the future. No Soviet commander would lift a finger to protect us. Should their Czech allies decide to get even with us, the Russians would quickly forget about their Geneva Convention pledge for humane treatment. For seven years the Czechs had been waiting for this day, and I could not blame them either. In 1944 alone we had killed over three thousand of their guerrillas.
“We should travel high up in the mountains, avoiding contact with the enemy. We have excellent maps of the areas involved, and if necessary we can fight our way through a Soviet brigade.”