490 Emblems of Panzer divisions, 1941-42—Haupt, p, 178. When I write that “we disguised the X of our divisional emblem with a V overhung by a horizontal bar,” I am actually describing the disguise of Fifth Panzer.
490 Number of Tiger tanks assigned to Ninth Army at Kursk—Nik Cornish, Images of Kursk: History’s Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943 (London: Brown Partworks Ltd. / Brassey’s, Inc., 2002), p. 135.
493 Sergeant Gunther: “Slavs drink from the skulls of their enemies”—Loosely based on Tsvetaeva, p. 114 (“Bus,” 1934-35: “Inside me, warmth and birdsong./You could drink both of them from/the two halves of my skull/[Slavs did that with enemies]”).
493 Volker: “There’s nothing we can do…”—Nibelungenlied, p. 215 (“‘The things we have been told of will happen irremediably,’ said bold Volker the Fiddler. ‘Let us ride to court and see what can happen to us fearless men in Hungary.’”)
493 “Beware of being too wise, it’s said”—Very loosely after the Poetic Edda, p. 22 (stanza 54, “Hávamál”).
496 “Maybe they expected me to scratch runes on the back of my hand”—“Operation Citadel” has a number of references to the Poetic Edda, of which this is a representative example. Brynhild (here known as Sigrdrífa) advises Siegfried, who has just awoken her from her magic sleep, to make his way through life with the help of runes. “On thy beer horn scratch it [the ale rune], and the back of thy hand, and the Need rune on thy nails” (p. 235, “The Lay of Sigrdrífa,” stanza 8, interpolated with fn.).
499 “Doom never dies, said the old man”—Poetic Edda, p. 25 (“Hávamál,” stanza 25, very loosely “retranslated” by WTV).
500 Hitler on Russian tank production figures: “The Russians are dead.”—Fest, p. 94.
501 Narrator: “Well, to be sure, they have good reason… what they had will never come back”—After the Nibelungenlied, p. 215 (“She has good reason for her long mourning,” answered Hagen, “but he was killed many years past. She ought to love the King of the Huns now, for Siegfried will never come back—he was buried long ago”).
503 Von Manstein: “A clear focal point of effort at the decisive spot”—Von Manstein, p. 547 (italics in original, excepting the “a”).
504 Significance of the Reds’ thrust against Twenty-third Panzer Corps—Described in Glantz and House, p. 161.
507 “First, get the command tank”—Information from Cornish, p. 186.
507 Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana: “I see you shining, my beloved, chaotic, all-knowing, heartless Russia”—Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla John-son McMillan (New York: Avon Books [Discus], 1967), p. 132 (letter 11).
510 Von Manstein: “And so the final German offensive in the East ended in fiasco…” —Op. cit., p. 449, “retranslated” by WTV. The translator notes (p. 549) that the chapter on Operation Citadel, from which I’ve drawn this quotation, is actually an article by von Manstein for the U.S. Marine Corps Gazette, which in this English edition has been substituted for the original text’s much longer chapter on Citadel, “in order to shorten these memoirs to a size suitable for publication in Britain and the U.S.A.”
511 Stalin: “If the Battle of Stalingrad signalled the twilight of the German-Fascist Army…”—Quoted in Cornish, p. 216.
512 Epigraph—Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Principles of Orchestration, with Musical Examples Drawn from His Own Work, in Two Volumes Bound as One, ed. Maximilian Sternberg [Shostakovich’s teacher], trans. Edward Agate (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1964 repr. of 1922 Edition Russe de Musique ed.; R-K’s draft unfinished in 1891), p. 141 (“Voices related in fifths and fourths”). In these stories I have preferred the orthography “Rimsky-Korsakoff.”
512 “Everyone should do his own work from all the way to the end”—After Wilson, p. 288 (testimony of Evgeny Chukovsky: Shostakovich to his son Maxim). The original reads “from beginning to end.”
517 Epigraph—Anna Akhmatova, My Half-Century: Selected Prose, trans. Ronald Meyer (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997 repr. of 1992 Ardis Press ed.), p. 135 (second letter, Komarovo, August 26, 1861).
521, 523, 524 The three boldfaced letters in the book—I am sorry that these seem obscure to some readers. They are E, E and a, and they mark the book’s beginning, midpoint and ending thus: “Elena E. Konstantinovskaya.” (Her name is sometimes more correctly transliterated “Yelena,” as in Fay’s biography of Shostakovich, but out of deference to people who may be unfamiliar with the letter ye, I have remained loyal to the more traditional transliteration.)
525 Epigraph—“I gave her my oath that I’d not wrong her anymore…”—Nibelungenlied, p. 148 (ch. 19, “How the Nibelung Treasure Was Brought to Worms”), “retranslated” by WTV.
526 Details about reupholstering the chairs at Kranzler’s with Swiss packing twine and the “Negress” at the Golden Horseshoe—Samuel Hynes et al, Reporting World War II: Part One: American Journalism 1938-1944 (New York: Library of America, 1995), pp. 213, 219 (Howard K. Smith, “Valhalla in Transition: Berlin After the Invasion of Russia: Autumn 1941”).
527 Günther: “Complain not to me, but to Hagen; he’s the cursed boar who slew this hero!”—Libretto booklet to the Solti version of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” (Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen et al performing; Wiener Staatsopernchor, Wiener Philharmoniker, 1985), p. 206 (Act III, Scene 3, my trans. and alteration of the German libretto, which would literally read: “Complain not to me; complain to Hagen; he is the accursed boar who gored this hero!”).
528 General Nikitchenko: “The record is filled with his own admissions of complicity. There is nothing to be said in mitigation”—Uncovered Editions, ed. (“the series has been created directly from the archive of The Stationery Office in London”), The Judgment of Nuremberg, 1946 (Guildford, Surrey: TSO Publishing; printed by Biddles Ltd., Crown copyright, 1999 abr. repr. of 1946 ed.), pp. 183, 185 (Justice Jackson, judgment of Göring).
528 “The President”: “Defendant Hagen, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted…”—Ibid., p. 297 (pro forma sentence for each capitally convicted war criminal).
529 Epigraph—Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, trans. and ed. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich / Harvest, 1975 repr. of 1942 ed.; original Russian ed. ca 1942; date not given), p. 183 (“Form and Content: Practice,” ca. 1942).
529 Affair of the Remagen bridge—Speer, p. 562.
529 Plan to flood the Ruhr mines—Ibid., p. 564 (the actual procedure was described by Hörner, assistant to the Gauleiter, and might not have come specifically from Hitler although it conformed to Hitler’s general order).
529 Destruction planned for Düsseldorf and Baden—Ibid., pp. 566-67. Again, there is no evidence that Hitler was involved on this minute level.
530 Conversation between Hitler and Speer—Condensed from Ibid., pp. 570-73, with alterations and additions.
530 Hitler to “the officer”: “The nature of this struggle permits no consideration for the populace to be taken”—Ibid., p. 577 (this was actually a general order to the commanders-in-chief).