Following the half-track was a line of battle scarred Sturmgeschütze. They were loaded down with every type of equipment and supply item. This far behind the lines, the crews were in relaxed mode. Only the drivers were in their positions. Despite the clouds of dust, the others rode along on top of the vehicles, enjoying the hot summer sun.
As the first of the StuGs approached the prisoners, the driver picked out Korsak from the chastened group at the road side.
“Hey, Knispel, it’s your white devil!”
There was no time for Knispel to do more than make a dismissive gesture. “I hope you rot in hell!” was his passing shout as the StuG rumbled past.
The truth was that Korsak was already in hell. Defeated, exhausted, tortured by thirst and suffering pangs of hunger, he and his comrades were driven along dust-choked roads towards some distant prisoner of war camp.
Hans von Schroif and the remainder of the battalion were headed south, towards the railhead. Away to the distant south, the old division waited, and there were new battles to be joined. As the Steppe unfurled itself out in front of him, he could not help but remember the Führer’s words. “The world will hold its breath.” Well, now Germany had exhaled, the might and power of this giant breath rolling across hundreds of miles of Soviet territory, sweeping all before it.
Hans von Schroif drew in a deep breath of sweet early-morning summer air, but at precisely the moment it began to fill his lungs, he was overcome by a sense of foreboding. Had they committed the cardinal sin of underestimating the enemy? What gargantuan tasks lay ahead of them in this huge land? What kind of foe were they preparing to meet?
The grim battle they had just encountered at Brest-Litovsk had contradicted the essential message of every briefing he had ever attended. This was not some unbalanced, rotten civilization, which, once the door had been kicked down, would fall at their feet. These men, women and children were a brave, stubborn and resolute adversary. This was no last gasp of a rotten regime, but a people who would fight to their own last dying breath…
As the Sturmgeschütze drove into the distance, the occasional sound of small-arms fire continued to resound from tiny centres of resistance in individual sectors of the citadel and the Kobrin fortification. They continued from late June until the very end of July. Even then, rifle fire and short bursts of machine-gun fire continued to ring out from basements and half-destroyed casemates as small groups of soldiers continued their lonely struggle. When the groups were all gone, solitary fighters still battled bravely on. Even though they were starving and covered with wounds, they asked no mercy, nor sought to give themselves up. No one knows when the very last shot was fired in the fortress, who the last defenders were, or how they died.
Appendices
RITTER VON Krauss is the pen name of a former German army officer who was the author of a large number of manuscripts for novels based on his experiences as a tank man in the first and second world wars. Although von Krauss is not his real name, the literal translation, Knight of the Cross, has been widely interpreted as an indicator that the author is a Knight’s Cross holder, gained as a result of his service in either the Wehrmacht Heer or the Waffen SS. There are at least forty surviving von Krauss novels in manuscript form, all of which are thought to have been written between 1954 and 1968, during the time when the author is believed to have lived and worked in Argentina. They range from fully-fledged novellas to story outlines a few thousand words long.
In 1990’s, during the negotiations for the sale of the rights to the novels, the manuscripts and the supporting documentation, as part of an extensive legal due diligence exercise, were studied and verified by a number of experts. This allowed the sale to proceed, but with the strict stipulation that the author should not be identified and that no publication could take place during the lifetime of any of the author’s children. In consequence of this condition, the manuscripts went unpublished in the 20th century.
The main barrier to publication during the author’s life time was a legal challenge by the author’s estranged children, based on the legitimate fear that the family might be identified and associated with von Krauss, who is reputed to have been active behind the scenes in the movement which became the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS, the campaign to restore pension and other legal rights to Waffen SS veterans. His work in this sphere was strongly disapproved off by his family and, as a consequence, the publishing contracts contain strong non-disclosure clauses, preventing the publishers from identifying the author or commenting on his identity.
Following the death of the last of von Krauss’ children, the way for publication was finally cleared and Tiger Command!, the first published Ritter von Krauss novel, appeared in e-book form in 2011. The film Steel Tempest, which was based on von Krauss’ experiences in the Ardennes offensive, also appeared in 2011, with the author properly credited for the first time.
Ritter von Krauss was thought to have served in the Great War, where he was rumoured to have briefly been part of the unit which drove the A7V, the first of the German tanks, into battle. During the early years of the war, von Krauss is believed to have served as a motorcycle despatch rider and to have been an associate of Kurt Ludecke, who was later to emerge as a member of Hitler’s inner circle. It has also been widely speculated that he was on good terms with Sepp Dietrich.
He is known to have been descended from an aristocratic family and suffered the humiliation of being reduced to poverty in the 1920’s, when hyper-inflation wiped out the fortunes of both von Krauss personally, and the entire family. Following the Great War, von Krauss is thought to have served in the Freikorps and to have spent time in Russia, working on tank development at KAMA.
It is thought that his failure to find a place in the 100,000 man army of the Weimar Republic was the spur which led to his joining the Nazi party. It is also understood that von Krauss spent time in the SA, where he knew Ernst Röhm, as a result of an introduction by Ludecke. This is borne out by the fact that both Ludecke and Röhm appear in fictionalised form in the von Krauss manuscript Freikorps!
There are many references which are interpreted as being autobiographical and it is conjectured that, as a result of his experiences in the hungry twenties, von Krauss may have become a committed National Socialist and, in any event, undoubtedly harboured lifelong Nationalist aspirations. He was obviously a strong supporter of the Grossdeutschland vision that led to the creation of The Third Reich. He may therefore have been an obvious and easy convert to National Socialism, however, von Krauss was clearly not an anti-Semite and his novels display no trace of this aspect of National Socialist policy. In common with Ludecke and many others, von Krauss appears to assume that the anti-Semitic aspects of the party manifesto were a sideshow to the main event, which was the unification of the German speaking peoples into a Socialist state.
During the 1920’s, von Krauss is thought to have come to a breach with Ludecke when a number of business ventures designed to revive the von Krauss family fortunes also came to grief, leaving von Krauss penniless. It is thought that this was the event which drove von Krauss to seek employment by joining the fledgling SS, although he was initially highly disparaging of this outfit, describing himself as nothing more than “a glorified advertising salesman.”