472 Epigraph—Vladimir Karpov, ed. [photos; with text by Georgii Drozdov and Evgenii Ryabko, trans. Lydia Kmetyuk], Russia at War: 1941-45 (London: Stanley Paul, 1987), p. 17.
472 Chuikov’s decorations—He also received eight Orders of Lenin and one order of the Red Star. He was not promoted to Field-Marshal until 1955.
472 Assessment of Chuikov’s military prowess—After the brief biography by Richard Woff, in Shukman, pp. 67-74. I forgot to mention that during the Nazi-Soviet Pact he’d participated in the heroic liberation of East Poland from the Poles.
472 Chuikov: “The black humped shapes, like camels on their knees, of dead enemy tanks.”—Op. cit., p. 18.
473 Chuikov: “The spring was with us, but behind the enemy’s lines it was autumn”—Ibid., p. 17.
473 Chuikov: “This long delay in the opening of the second front…”—Ibid., p. 20.
473 The stanza from Marina Tsvetaeva: “You can’t withstand me…”—Tsvetaeva, p. 43 (“Where you are I can reach you” [1923]), “retranslated” and slightly truncated by WTV.
476 “There were tears in the men’s eyes…” —Modern Art Museum catalogue, unnumbered p. 4.
476 Situation of Chuikov in March 1943—After Richard Woff, in Shukman, p. 72; John Erickson (“Malinovsky”), in the same work, p. 120; John Erickson, The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany, vol. 2 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 45-64; Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 29, p. 195, which also gives information on Chuikov’s various decorations.
477 The trembling of Paulus’s hand when he lit a cigarette—Erzählungen über mein Schaffen, orig. p. 32; Hau-Bigelow, p. 5.
477 Karmen’s simile of the waterfall—After the same document, pp. 32-33, Hau-Bigelow, p. 5.
477 Soviet gratitude for Lend-Lease items—I quote the Great Soviet Encyclopedia’s entry on this program: “The deliveries made under lend-lease spurred US production during the war and promoted the enrichment of the monopolies at the expense of the government.”
478 Karmen on remembering everything—After Erzählungen über mein Schaffen, p. 36, Hau-Bigelow, p. 7 (“Again the ruins of Berlin flash by… And again I try not to forget, as I [tried] two years earlier in Stalingrad, not the smallest, not a single detail of this historic event”).
479 “Dziga Vertov’s seven-reel declaration of love for the women of our Soviet military forces”—Made in 1938, but not widely distributed since by then this filmmaker was getting isolated for his “formalism.” As the saying goes, he died in obscurity. I wish I had found time to add a story about the rat-infested basement where the young Dziga Vertov edited Kino-Pravda, or the strange coincidence by which his “Three Songs of Lenin” was so well received by the Italian Fascists that it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival of 1935.
479 Karmen’s aerial bombing mission—After Erzählungen über mein Schaffen, pp. 24-28, Hau-Bigelow, pp. 2-4.
480 Photographs of Soviet prisons from the outside (mentioned occasionally in “The Second Front” and “Opus 110”)—Lubarsky, pp. 14-19.
481 Käthe Kollwitz: “I believe that bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production” —Diary and Letters, p. 23 (autobiography).
483 Comrade Stalin: “Feelings are women’s concern”—Enzo Biagi, Svetlana: An Intimate Portrait, trans. Timothy Wilson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), p. 25.
483 Karmen’s visit to Stalin’s dacha—Ibid, p. 19. According to this source, he and Simonov were present when Svetlana met her great love, the married filmmaker A. J. Kapler, who got sent away for five years for his pains.
484 “Their only reason for invading France at that late date was to deny us total victory in Germany”—An actual Communist argument. See Andeas Dorpalen, German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1985), p. 449.
484 Red Army’s rape of German women: “an incendiary shell usually brought them out of their cellars.”—Information from Clark, p. 417.
485 First epigraph—Von Manstein, p. 383.
485 Second epigraph—Billinger, pp. 140-41.
486 Von Manstein: “Grave as the loss of Sixth Army certainly is…”—Von Manstein, pp. 289-90, slightly altered.
486 Statistics on troop and mine dispositions at Kursk—Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 14, p. 134 (entry on the Battle of Kursk). This engagement is generally considered to have lasted two weeks. Soviet sources, however, concatenate it with other battles, so that it runs fifty days—all the more monumental.
486 Rüdiger’s admiration for Lisca Malbran in “Young Heart”—An anachronism. This film cleared the censorship in mid-September 1944 and premiered at the end of November. The Battle of Kursk had taken place in the summer of 1943. “Young Heart” disappeared rapidly because in its second month it had earned only 372 Reichsmarks, ten percent less than the authorities required. It was an E-film (“Erste Grundhaltung latente polit. Funktion”), in other words a “serious” drama with appropriate political nudges. H-films were comic with political nudges. There were also nP-films and P-films (non-political and manifestly political). After Stalingrad, E-films were preferred over H-films, “on account of the seriousness and greatness of our times”. Unlike many films, especially P-films, “Young Heart” received no subsidy. Information from Dr. Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistiche Filmpolitik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Drittes Reiches (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1969), summarized for WTV by the delicious Yolande Korb. “Young Heart” must have been dreadful.
487 Various details relative to the weaponry of the two sides at Kursk, especially regarding the numbers and capabilities of Tiger tanks—David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
487 Some of my visual descriptions of German troops in this operation are based on photographs in the Ullstein archive.
488 Dancwart’s favorite proverb: “Keep riding until daybreak”—Nibelungenlied, p. 202 (“We cannot bivouc,” answered bold Dancwart. “You must all keep riding until daybreak.”)
489 The size of the salient: half the size of England—Erickson, The Road to Berlin, p. 64.
489 Ninth Panzer Division’s experiences at Kursk—Based in part on Haupt, 173-74 (battle diary of Ninth Panzer, Panzer-Grenadier Grosssdeutschland, 6 June 1943, Citadel/ Orel).
490 Ninth Panzer Division’s armor strength at Kursk—Glantz and House, p. 349.
490 Twenty-first Panzer Brigade’s armor strength at Kursk—Ibid., p. 284.
490 “Well, from the very beginning we’d known that it was no use; it was up to us as frontline soldiers simply to obey orders and bear the responsibility”—After Hans von Luck, Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck (New York: Random House / Dell, 1989 repr. of undated Praeger ed.), p. 238 (original reads, in another context: “It sounded to us rather too pathetic, but what was the use? We knew that from now on it was up to us, as frontline soldiers, to bear the responsibility and make the decisions”).