3 Epigraph—Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Brilliant General, ed. and trans. Anthony C. Powell (Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1994 repr. of 1958 abridged trans.; original German ed. 1955), p. 22.
3 A German generaclass="underline" Moscow as “the core of the enemy’s whole being.”—Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, Against Stalin and Hitler: A Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement 1941-5, trans. David Footman (London: Macmillan, 1970 trans. of 1970 German ed.), p. 39.
3 “Italy” (actually, Mussolini): “We cannot change our policy now…”—Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938-1939 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p. 200.
3 The sleepwalker (Hitler): “This will strike like a bomb!”—Ibid., p. 462.
4 Marshal Tukhachevsky: “Operations in a future war…”—Comrade Stalin: “Modern war will be a war of engines.”—John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany: Volume One (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1999 repr. of 1975 ed.), p. 5.
5 The telephone: “It was and is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland.” —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971; orig. German ed. 1925-26), p. 325.
5 The telephone: “That is precisely why the Party affirms…”—J. V. Stalin, On the Opposition (1927-27) (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1974).
6 Hitler to Paulus: “One has to be on the watch like a spider in its web…”—See source-notes to “The Last Field-Marshal” (in that story, an amplified version appears).
8 Telephoned order “Under no circumstances will we agree to artillery preparation,” etc. —Gérard Chaliand, ed., The Art of War in World History from Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 954-55 (Guderian on firepower).
A note on Krupskaya’s final years, when I describe her as “writing in support of Stalin’s show trials that many of her own former comrades-in-arms deserved to be shot like mad dogs,” may be in order. According to one eminent historian of the period, she should undoubtedly be credited with having vainly tried to save a few of her colleagues such as the Old Bolshevik Pyatinsky. Apparently I. D. Chigurin was indebted to her for being permitted to die a natural if wretched death. (See Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 repr. of 1990 ed.], pp. 238, 437-38). In this account, and several others, Krupskaya receives passing mentions, tinctured by sympathy or pity. On the other hand, Solzhenitsyn in his trilogy on the prison system demands to know: “Why didn’t Lenin’s faithful companion, Krupskaya, fight back? Why didn’t she speak out even once with a public exposé, like the old worker in the Rostov Flax Works? Was she really so afraid of losing her old woman’s life?” (The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Thomas P. Whitney [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1973, 1975, 1978; orig. Russian samizdat mss. 1960s], vol. 2, p. 333.)
32 Epigraph—Quoted in Erich Eyck, Bismarck and the German Empire (New York: Norton, 1968 repr. of 1950 ed.), p. 239.
32 Bismarck (the Iron Chancellor): “I have always found the word ‘Europe’…”—Ibid., p. 246.
36 Epigraph: “A new bride cries until sunrise…”—Russian proverb, quoted to me by a prostitute in Moscow.
Some of my understanding of this artist’s character has been informed by Elizabeth Prelinger (with contributions by Alessandra Comini and Hildegard Bachert), Käthe Kollwitz (Washington: National Gallery of Art / Yale University Press, 1992).
36 Letter from Kollwitz: “My only hope is in world socialism”—Closely after a letter in The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz, ed. Hans Kollwitz, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press), p. 184 (21 February 1944).
36 “…she stood before a woman whom she’d made out of stone,… and stroked the granite woman’s cheeks”—Closely after Diary and Letters, p. 122 (entry for August 14, 1932: “I stood before the woman, looked at her—my own face—and I wept and stroked her cheeks”).
37 The tale of Frau Becker and her children—After Käthe Kollwitz, Die Tagebücher, ed. Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), p. 49, entry for 30 August 1909, trans. by WTV.
37 “Peter would have joined them”—Tagebücher, p. 379 (9 November 1918, trans. WTV).
37 Kollwitz’s family showing the Imperial flag for the first time ever—Large, p. 127.
37 Rumpelstilzchen—Known to Anglo-American fairytale readers as Rumpelstiltskin.
38 “Peter’s flag hanging from the balcony”—Described in the Tagebücher, p. 170 (10 October 1914, trans. WTV).
38 “Vile, outrageous murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg”—Tagebücher, p. 400 (16 January 1919, trans. WTV).
38 “For Rosa Luxemburg an empty coffin near Liebknecht.”—Tagebücher, p. 403 (entry for 25 January 1919, trans. WTV).
39 Kollwitz in the morgue: “Oh, what a dismal, dismal place this is…”—Large, p. 166, slightly altered.
41 Karl to his wife: “You have strength only for sacrifice and letting go…”—Tagebücher, p. 176 (27 November 1914, trans. WTV).
41 Käthe’s recurring dreams of Peter—Tagebücher, p. 193 (end of July 1915, trans. WTV).
Various details on Peter’s argument with his parents over volunteering, his death, the condition of his grave and Käthe and Karl’s trip to the Soviet Union in 1927 (“Russia intoxicated me”) come from the Tagebücher, p. 400 (16 January 1919, trans. WTV), pp. 745-47 (Appendix: “Die Jahre 1914-1933 zum Umbruch [1943]”. One woman who apparently met Kollwitz claims to have been told by her that “she persuaded him to volunteer for the fighting.” But this same woman says that Peter the grandson died “in the Polish campaign.” This Peter died in 1942, long after the Polish campaign had ended. (Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich [New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1999 3rd paperback repr. of 1993 ed.], p. 311 [testimony of Frau Emmi Heinrich].)
42 “IHR SOHN IST GEFALLEN”—“Your son has fallen.”
44 Kollwitz: “Today started work on the sculpture ‘Woman with Dead Child’—Tagebücher, p. 85 (entry for 9 September 1910, trans. WTV). (Originaclass="underline" Heut den Beginn gemacht zu der plastischen Gruppe: Frau mit totem Kind.)
44 Kollwitz on her Russenhilfe image: “It’s good, thank God”—Tagebücher, p. 508 (entry for 12 September 1921, trans. WTV).
45 Kollwitz to her son Hans: “There are other problems that interest me now…”—Christoph Meckel et al, Käthe Kollwitz (Bad Godesberg, West Germany: Inter Nationes, 1967), p. 16 (Ulrich Weisner, “On the Art of Käthe Kollwitz”), somewhat altered.
45 “An elegy of the people.”—Martha Kearns, Käthe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist (Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press, 1976), p. 162.