Europe Central (140 page)

258 Burt Lancaster: Karmen’s “passionate love for life and people . . .”—
Roman Karmen: Retrospektive,
p. 78 (Sergej Drobaschenko, “Roman Karmen”), trans. WTV.

259
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
on “Far and Wide My Country Stretches”—Vol. 19, p. 214.
The New York Times
ridicules this movie for its excess of high-speed automobile driving and the stiffness of the alternating male and female narrators (the former is Karmen himself; the latter is E. Dolmatovsky). All the same, the
Times
enjoys the steel mills of Magnitogorsk, the oil fields of the Caspian and the log raft in the Carpathians. “Far and Wide” seems to be almost all travelogue (
The New York Times Film Reviews 1913-1968,
vol. 5 [1970], p. 3134 [Bosley Crowther, “Great Is My Country,” July 1, 1959; 26:1]).

259 Castro: “In the name of our people we thank you . . .”—
Roman Karmen: Retrospektive,
p. 69, trans. WTV.

259 Allende: “My friend Roman Karmen”—Ibid., p. 70, trans. WTV.

259 Moscow
Kinoslovar
on the character of Karmen’s films—After S. I. Yutkevich et al., p. 674, trans. WTV. I have somewhat reordered and abridged the items on the original eye-glazing list. In spite of my italics, this is not a direct quote at all, but a second-generation paraphrase.

BREAKOUT

260 Epigraph: “With few, but courageous allies . . .”—Victor Klemperer,
I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945,
trans. Martin Chalmers (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 287 (entry for 8 January 1944).

262 Footnote: Vlasov’s wife: “Andrei, can you really live like that?”—Catherine Andreyev,
Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 39. Vlasov’s wife was actually not the allegorical Moscow figurine of my conception, but a doctor from a tiny village in the province of Nizhni Novgorod. She was indeed arrested and executed after his defection. They had a small son, whose fate I don’t know.

261 Vlasov’s recommendations to Stalin—Not much is known about them, although the two men did have some such conference. Given that Vlasov was in good odor after the Battle of Moscow, I decided to put into his mouth the strategy which actually got followed.

261 Stalin: “Anybody can defend Moscow with reserves”—Harold Shukman, ed.,
Stalin’s Generals
(New York: Grove Press, 1993), p. 304 (Catherine Andreyev, “Vlasov”).

261 Number of Twentieth Army’s tanks during the Battle of Moscow—Erickson, p. 534.

265 “What the enemy called
Kesselschlacht,
cauldron-slaughter.” Mr. Thomas Melle notes (letter to author, September 2003): “A little semantic confusion crept in here: ‘to slaughter’ means ‘schlachten’ (animals,
Slaughterhouse-Five,
etc.); ‘Schlacht’ means ‘battle’ or ‘fight’ and the plural of ‘Schlacht’ is “Schlachten’—‘to slaughter’ and ‘battles’ being the same word in German. I think ‘cauldron battle’ would be more appropriate. In a dictionary it says ‘battle of encirclement and annhilation.’” I myself rest my artistic and semantic case.

265 General K. A. Meretskov: “If nothing is done then a catastrophe is inevitable.” —Shukman, p. 305.

266 Guderian: “These men remain essentially unable to break free . . .”—Heinz Guderian,
Achtung-Panzer! The Development of Tank Warfare,
trans. Christopher Duffy (Reading, Berkshire, U.K.: Cassell Military Paperbacks; orig. German ed. 1937), p. 24 (“retranslated”).

266 Vlasov’s commissar: “Everything you say may be correct from the military viewpoint . . .”—Roughly after Sewern Bialer, ed.,
Stalin and His Generals: Soviet Military Memoirs of World War II
(New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 252 (memoir of Marshal I. Kh. Bagramian).

271 Vlasov’s capture—Accurately told, except that he was captured with a woman named Maria Voronova, who was the family servant in Nizhni Novgorod and whom Vlasov’s wife actually dispatched to him to take care of him. Since her presence raises several issues not relevant to the parable, I decided to leave her out.

272 Vlasov to General Lindemann and Lindemann’s reply: “Would a German officer in my place have shot himself?”—“Capture’s no disgrace for someone like you, who’s fought with his unit up to the very last instant . . .”—Loosely after an exchange between Vlasov and the German intelligence officer who captured him, Captain von Schwerdtner, indirectly quoted in Sven Steenberg,
Vlasov,
trans. Abe Farbstein (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970 trans. of 1968 German ed.), p. 28.

275 The German policeman-poet: Vinnitsa, where “we saw two worlds, and will permit only one to rule”—Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess,
“The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders,
trans. Deborah Burnstone (Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky and Konecky, 1991, repr. of 1988 German ed.), p. 123 (my trans.; the English given on the following page differs slightly).

277 Jewish casualties at Babi Yar—Most Western sources estimate that about thirty-three thousand people were murdered. Soviet sources sometimes say seventy thousand. The eyewitness A. Anatoli Kuzentsov gives the figure of one hundred thousand in his “documentary novel”
Babi Yar.

277 Boyarsky: “When the Jews saw how easy it was to be executed, they ran to the pits of their own free will.”—Slightly rephrased from the statement of a German customs official who saw the Jews being machine-gunned in Vinnitsa. The eyewitness estimated that “some thousands” were shot “over the total period” (Klee et al, p. 119).

279 Tukhachevsky: “It is necessary to observe the promise of privileged treatment to those who surrender voluntarily with their arms.”—Chaliand, p. 916 (“Counterinsurgency”).

281 Strik-Strikfeldt: “Vlasov spoke openly, and I did also, insofar as my oath of service permitted me”—Op. cit., p. 73 (slightly reworded).

281 Vlasov: “Only if I put human values before nationalist values . . .”—Ibid., p. 75 (a little altered).

281 Vlasov: “The Soviet regime has brought me no personal disadvantages,” “At Przemysl . . . my proposals were rejected,” “Two factors must entail . . . interference from the commissars.”—Ibid., pp. 253-54 (Appendix II: “General Vlasov’s Open Letter: Why I Took Up Arms Against Bolshevism”; somewhat abridged and altered).

283 Strik-Strikfeldt: “It’s an admirable document, but, as drafted, too Russian”—Ibid., p. 76 (slightly altered).

285 Strik-Strikfeldt: “I grant that thousands of Russian prisoners have died . . .” —Loosely after the argument advanced by General Jodl at his war crimes trial in Nuremberg; see Gilbert, p. 253 (10 April 1946).

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 Hell: 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.