Suddenly a formation of warplanes roared overhead—Russian and American P-39s escorting General Marshall’s C-47 Skytrain back to Alaska.
“I think I missed my flight,” Karen said with a smile.
Petr beamed at her and reached out his hand. Karen grasped it, and he pulled her up into the boxcar. A whistle blew, and the boxcar lurched, knocking Petr and Karen into each other’s arms. They kissed as the train pulled out of the station, destined for a city Karen had never heard of.
Its name was Stalingrad.
HISTORICAL NOTE
“Stalingrad is no longer a town,” wrote one German officer involved in the fighting there. “By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.”
The Battle of Stalingrad is believed by many historians to have been the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. That means it was more horrible than Gettysburg, than Gallipoli, even than D-Day. It is into this nightmare that Petr and Karen will be thrust, with slim chance of survival. Karen’s dim awareness that her commitment to Petr will lead to her death is, most likely, an accurate prognostication.
Meanwhile, the Siege of Leningrad would last for two more years. By the time the siege was lifted in 1944, more than 1.5 million residents had died. The human losses in Leningrad exceeded those of the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most of the events I’ve described in Leningrad actually occurred. The corruption of city government officials, their dishonesty, and their profiteering from the misery of the people they were supposed to govern is documented, as is the appearance of antigovernment pamphlets calling for revolution.
But it took until the fall of the Soviet Union and the declassification of those documents in the mid-1990s for anyone to discover the truth about what had really gone on in that city. The plight of Leningrad wasn’t just a result of reprehensible Nazi policies; it was also a result of shameful Soviet ones.
Although Petr is fictional, the battle he fought in the second chapter is not. There is some disagreement among historians about the importance of the Siberian divisions to Soviet military successes in the winter of 1941–1942. According to legend, Stalin received information from a Japanese spy that Japan would not attack Russia’s Siberian border. That information allowed the Red Army to transfer all its Siberian military assets from Asia to Moscow.
Those Siberian soldiers, veterans of recent battles against the Japanese defending the border with Manchuria, are usually credited with the defeat of the Germans at the very gates of Moscow. Not all the Siberian divisions defended Moscow, however. Three of them were sent to the Northern Front, where they successfully drove the Germans back far enough to secure the railroad lines from Moscow to Lake Ladoga. Had that military adventure also failed, even more innocents would have died in Leningrad.
The ill-fated attack by the Second Shock Army also occurred, and it failed spectacularly. Most of the Russian soldiers who took part in the attack were either killed or taken prisoner. The Russian commander of the Second Shock Army, General Vlasov, later betrayed his country by fighting alongside the Germans. Petr would have been one of the lucky few who escaped this disastrous defeat.
The description of Bobby’s mission from Eritrea to Iran is entirely fictional. But the transfer of trucks and planes from America to Russia using that route is not.
The Lend-Lease route from Alaska to Siberia was also real, as were the female Russian pilots who flew the planes to the front lines. Although the Airacobra was a failed aircraft design for the US Army Air Forces, it proved quite successful for the Soviet air force, owing to the different combat conditions on the Russian front. In fact, Russian fighter ace Grigoriy Rechkalov scored more victories in his Lend-Lease P-39 Airacobra than any American airman did in any other plane during the war.
Although a number of real summits took place between American and Soviet officials in Siberia during the war, the specific summit described between General George Marshall and Josef Stalin is fictional. So, too, is the proposed strategy of bombing the Soviet Union if it surrendered. It is not hard to imagine, however, that such a strategy might have been debated, especially considering what Winston Churchill had already done to the French navy.
The Leningrad symphony is generally considered to have been Shostakovich’s crowning achievement. It is certainly his most famous work. His collaboration with an American—Karen’s father—is fictional. The microfilm of the score was flown to Tehran and smuggled to the West in April of 1942, however.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chad Thumann, a Los Angeles native, has written for the stage, theater, and television. While earning a master’s degree in colonial Latin American history, he wrote plays that premiered at the Substation Theater and New Playwrights’ Arena. In film and television, he has had a long and fruitful writing partnership with Laurence Malkin; together they have developed screenplays for US studios and independent production companies, including Sony Pictures Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Lionsgate, Bold Films, and Pathé. In television, they have created shows for NBC, FX, Syfy, and AMC. The Undesirables is Thumann’s first novel.
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Charles Thumann
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
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ISBN-13: 9781503939967
ISBN-10: 1503939960