285 Khrushchev: “Temporary people”—Kershaw and Lewin, p. 51 (Suny).
285 Second Lieutenant Dirksen: “A democracy of the best”—Very loosely based on the views of an S.S. officer in 1937, as remembered by his interlocutor, Eugen Kogon, in The Theory and Practice of Helclass="underline" The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Berkley Publishing: Berkley Windhover, 1975 repr. of 1950 ed.), pp. 8-9.
286 Vlasov: “As a soldier, I cannot ask other soldiers to stop doing their duty”—Andreyev, p. 44.
286 The song of Vlasov’s Russian troops at Moscow: “I’m warm in this freezing bunker / thanks to your love’s eternal flame!”—After Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 (New York: 1999 repr. of 1998 Penguin U.K. ed.), p. 290 (from the last stanza of zemlyanka [“The Dugout”], “retranslated”). Slightly anachronistic here, since this song was sung in Stalingrad, probably not the previous year at Moscow.
287 Vlasov’s Smolensk Declaration: “Friends and brothers! BOLSHEVISM IS THE ENEMY OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE”—Andreyev, p. 206 (slightly “retranslated”).
287 Strik-Strikfeldt: “One could come across grey wraiths who subsisted on corpses and tree-bark”—Op. cit., p. 49 (which actually reads: “One could come across ghostlike figures, ashen gray, starving, half naked, living perhaps for days on end on corpses and the bark of trees”).
288 Guderian: “A fortress of unlimited breadth and depth”—Guderian, p. 42 (slightly altered).
288 Strik-Strikfeldt: “Since the Slavic-Asiatic character only understands the absolute…” —B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (New York: Quill, repr. of 1948 ed., 1979), p. 226 (actually not Strik-Strikfeldt at all but the testimony of General Blumentritt; much altered and expanded).
289 German inspection report: “Discipline: Slack…”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 256 (Appendix III: “Extracts from Report of Captain Peterson on His Inspection of the Dabendorf Camp, 13 and 14 September 1943”).
289 Vlasov on the new flag: “I’d really like to leave it that way…”—After Steenberg, p. 85.
290 Vlasov to Strik-Strikfeldt: “You can’t even give a suit that fits, and you want to conquer the world!”—“Retranslated” from Steenberg, p. 53.
291 Strik-Strikfeldt’s memoirs: “In German concentration camps there had been bestialities…” and “The world still does not believe that these thugs…”—Strik-Strikfeldt, pp. 242-43.
292 Great Soviet Encyclopedia: “It is well known that the structure of emotional life…” —Vol. 15, p. 155 (entry on love).
293 Vlasov at Smolensk: “A foreign coat never fits a Russian.”—Andreyev, pp. 47-48 (slightly altered).
293 Vlasov at Smolensk: “The Germans have begun to acknowledge their mistakes. And, after all, it’s just not realistic to hope to enslave almost two hundred million people…” —Loosely after the paraphrase in Steenberg, p. 71.
293 Death rate of Russian prisoners at Smolensk—Strik-Strikfeldt, pp. 49-50.
294 General Lindemann: “The East and the West are two worlds…”—Liddell Hart, p. 226 (testimony of General Blumentritt).
294 Vlasov’s memoradum to the Reich government: “The mass of the Russian population now look upon this conflict as a German war of conquest”—Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Octagon, 1980), p. 567 (slightly reworded and abridged).
295 Strik-Strikfeldt: “Too much propaganda is merely propaganda”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 25.
295 “A colleague’s literary production” (actually an S.S. pamphlet about the Untermensch): “And this underworld of the Untermensch…”—Joachim Remak, ed., The Nazi Years: A Documentary History (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), p. 37 (S.S. Hauptamt-Schulungsamt, Der Untermensch, 1942; “retranslated” by WTV).
298 Wise Nazi adage: “The javelin and the springboard are more useful than lipstick for the promotion of health.”—George L. Mosse, comp., Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966), p. 43 (Frankfurter zeitung, 1937, “The Blond Craze”).
298 Heidi Bielenberg: “The healthy is a heroic commandment.”—Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Ace Books, 1970), p. 392 (“German Wife and Mother,” quoting Hans Johnst).
299 Himmler, speaking about Heydrich: “Cold, rational criticism.”—Fest, p. 137 (“Reinhard Heydrich—The Successor”).
302 Goebbels: “A hundred-percent victory for German propaganda…”—Allen Paul, Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin’s Polish Massacre (New York: Scribner’s, 1991), p. 224 (diary entry of 28 April 1943).
305 The man in the lavatory, quoting the Reich Commissioner of the Ukraine: “Some people are disturbed that the population…”—Remak, p. 124 (report of Quartermaster Fähndrich, Kiev, 5 March 1943; somewhat altered).
306 Vlasov at Riga: “A Russian can bear much which would kill a German”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 192, slightly changed.
306 The Waffen-S.S. captain: “If one gave Vlasov’s army a flag…”—Dallin, p. 576 (Erich Koch; verbatim).
306 Vlasov: “The problem of developing a tactical breakthrough into an operational breakthrough…”—Partially derived from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 21, p. 21 (entry: breakthrough).
307 Vlasov: “If we can help the Reich resist…”—Loosely after his expressed view as recorded in Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 215.
308 Re: “Mozart’s ever so healthy German melodies,” Thomas Melle remarks: “You know, of course, that Mozart was Austrian.” I do.
308 Moltke’s maxim from 1869: “The stronger our frontal position becomes…” —Count Helmuth von Moltke, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, ed. Daniel J. Hughes, trans. Harry Bell and Daniel J. Hughes (San Francisco: Presidio Press, 1993), p. 203 (1869 Instructions for Large Unit Commanders,” X., “Tactical Considerations,” A., “Infantry and Jäger,” slightly “retranslated”).
311 Hitler: “I don’t need this General Vlasov at all in our rear areas,” “No German agency must take seriously the bait contained in the Vlasov program,” and “That’s a phantom of the first order”—Dallin, p. 574 (slightly rearranged).
311 Himmler: “That Russian swine Herr General Wlassow”—Paul Padfield, Himmler, Reichsführer SS (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990), p. 476 (Padfield spells it “Vlassov”).
312 Hitler: “We won’t be able to save anything…”—Abridged from Warlimont, p. 390 (fragment no. 7, discussion with Colonel-General Zeitzler, 27 December 1943).
312 Lines from “Herbsttag”—Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 14 (facing German text, trans. by WTV).
313 Vlasov: “I don’t know them. You see, I have been through Stalin’s school”—Slightly altered from Strik-Strikfeldt, pp. 202-03.
314 Himmler: “We guarantee that at the end of the war you’ll be granted the pension of a Russian lieutenant-general,” “And in the immediate future, you will continue to have schnapps, cigarettes and women,” and “One has to calculate frightfully coolly in these matters”—After Padfield, p. 467.
315 Himmler to Gunter d’Alquen: “Who compels us to keep the promises we make?” —Clark, p. 408.