Europe Central (58 page)

But what will become of us all?

What do you mean?

Who’s going to live to see the end of this?

Oh, he said, there’s quite a good chance that we’ll achieve victory this year.

He personally considered the Middle Eastern theater to be far more important to the ultimate outcome. Only there could the British be defeated.

Pulling on fresh white gloves, he bent over the desk and studied the snowy sheet of symbols:
Lage 4.6.41.abds mit Feindbild,
situation map with enemy dispositions. The summer maples, oaks and lindens rode Berlin like witches.

2

On 5.8.42, Lieutenant-General Paulus, now in command of Sixth Army, approached Stalingrad in obedience to the directives of Operation Blue, or Blau as I should say, for blue is merely any blue, but the German
blau
signifies to me a greyish blue like the Caspian Sea on an overcast day. The primary goal of Operation Blau was to seize Russia’s oil fields in the Caucasus. Stalingrad, the sleepwalker’s afterthought, could hardly yet be seen on the eastward horizon. The tanks droned on. August burned down upon the brown steppes.

Fresh from the victory in Kharkov, his face taut with youth even now at fifty-two, with a new Knight’s Cross pinned to his left breast pocket, and high on the right an airplane-straight eagle clutching a swastika, Paulus sat in his tent, listening to Beethoven.

He’d last been privileged to see the Führer two months earlier, on 1.6.42. (Von Manstein, the hero of Operation Sturgeon, was smashing the defenses of Sebastopol, a feat for which the Führer would make him Field-Marshal; the
were detailing a punitive action against the village of Lidice; Rommel had the British on the run in Africa.) The Führer flew in to Poltava, which was the current headquarters of Army Group South. As for Paulus, he changed his grey field-overcoat for parade dress, his riding boots shined, his spurs gleaming, the golden eagle on his chest, gold braid, gold buttons. The Focke-Wulf touched down by military huts in the forest shadows. Beyond the treetops he spied what must have been the cathedral of the Krestovozdvizhenskii Monastery, which Coca, who was Orthodox, had once told him he really ought to try to see, but unsurprisingly the black Mercedes-Benz carried him in the opposite direction. He sat in the back, and the S.D. police-lieutenant, who was tanned and young and had honeycolored hair sat in front beside the driver, with a pistol in his lap. Poltava did not seem to be either as hot or as white as Zhitomir had been last summer, that summer of apples and cherries, but it was equally silent; these Eastern cities always are, once they’ve been absorbed into our new territories. Paulus never ceased to find this rather eerie. Coca had reminded him, perhaps more frequently than she needed to (he particularly remembered one discussion they’d had when she was brushing her hair, a discussion which only the most immense efforts had saved from becoming an argument) that in the Civil War days these peasants hid machine-guns in haystacks, resisting the exactions of Soviet power. Although he’d pointed out to her as tactfully as he could that their resistance had been vain, and that the coercive power of our Reich was infinitely superior to that of the Russians with their disorderliness, bad leadership and poor communications, still, it was habitual with him not merely to consider the other point of view, but to elevate Coca’s opinions a trifle, to lay them on the mantelpiece, as it were. So he inquired whether there had been any difficulties here with partisans.—By no means, Herr Lieutenant-General! returned the S.D. man, smiling at him in the mirror even as he continued to watch the road; he was a very well-trained youth, and Paulus approved of him, so he continued the conversation: I’m glad to hear that these people are loyal to us.—Herr Lieutenant-General, you can ask anything of them, just like horses. They work until they drop and make no demands.

First there was the road and the river, the Vorskla River he knew it was (Paulus never forgot a map). Then came walls of barbed wire with the red-and-black-striped barrier pole at each gate, the happily vigilant, blue-eyed young sentries with their machine-guns. The closer he came to our Führer, the more perfect everything seemed. Next there were the railroad tracks, and on the tracks the windowless train cars guarded by Waffen-
Here the car left him, the S.D. man saluting, then bidding farewell with a hearty
Heil Hitler.
At the next gate he surrendered his Mauser pistol for the duration (no offense intended, Herr Lieutenant-General!) Two
-men escorted him through the inner gate, and he found himself in an enclosed yard of gravel, not unlike a prison’s exercise yard; and here in the strongish sunlight, which enriched the familiar railroad smell of creosote and of something else, too, probably the river, all the principals of Operation Blau awaited our Führer’s call. General Warlimont, who was Deputy Chief of Operations, greeted Paulus with pleasure, and they shook hands.—And when will we ever be prepared to act in the West? he murmured, to which Paulus did not reply. Now he must bow and click his heels, for his commander, Field-Marshal von Bock, who’d received his baton at the end of the French campaign, came to join them, remarking with a smile that our Führer had been astounded at the number of Aryan-looking females here. Since the tall Field-Marshal was not ordinarily known for his sense of humor, Paulus once again found himself at a loss, but General Warlimont for his part laughed loudly, perhaps because he wished to distract Paulus from his previous, rather unfortunate question. He was known to be gradually losing his access to the Führer.

Well, Paulus, said von Bock, not at all unkindly, have the Russians been keeping you up at night?

Not in the least, Herr Field-Marshal, returned Paulus with quiet pride. Opening his silver cigarette case (a birthday gift from Coca), he offered smokes all around.

Field-Marshal List was there (not quite as well turned out as Paulus), and so were Generals Halder, Hoth, von Kleist (who was not yet a Field-Marshal), Ruoff and all the rest. His own chief of staff, Major-General Schmidt, had been there for several hours already; he’d arrived by a separate Fiesler-Storch. General von Richtofen of Air Fleet Four was there, pacing and biting his lip impatiently, while a hapless little Luftwaffe man with a large briefcase tried to keep up with him. Generals von Greiffenberg and von Mackenson were whispering cliquishly by the perimeter fence, until an
-man strolled over to fix an eye on them. The gong rang. Braving the gaunt, brooding glance of Hitler’s adjutant, the generals entered the conference car, set down their briefcases, and sat attentive while the Führer painted them a picture of the wondrous crops which someday would be harvested from the experimental fields of the East. Then it was time to prepare our great drive upon the Volga River. The Führer himself led the way into the map room. Now the generals all stood deferentially around the long table which shimmered so whitely with maps that Russian winter seemed to dwell there; but the Führer strode right up to it and sat down on the edge, frowning down at Maikop, Rostov, Stalingrad, a little whiplike pointer in his right hand as the generals all waited on him, their Iron Crosses and Oak Leaves marking them as ornamentally important personages; and Field-Marshal Keitel, whom everyone referred to behind his back as “the nodding ass,” stood in the corner, grinning anxiously as the pointer began to descend, while Field-Marshal von Bock suddenly grimaced; he suffered from ulcers. General von Sodenstern, his chief of staff, already had a pill ready.—Keitel, is this line ready? the Führer asked sharply.—Yes, my Führer.—All the way to here?—Without a doubt, my Führer, said the poor mediocrity, unable even to see what Hitler might be pointing at; and Paulus stared at the map, so embarrassed on the nodding ass’s behalf that he felt unclean. What would the mission be? In the Führer’s treasurehouse the many triangular flags of the OKH reserves waited black and white on the grey pages of the secret files, ready to be activated and expended; but too many of them were already gone; mistakes had been made last year, which was why Moscow and Leningrad remained uncaptured. No one except the Führer knew for certain how many men had died in the Russian winter; that information was secret. But Warlimont had whispered outside just now that our total losses thus far on the Ostfront were six hundred and twenty-five thousand. Paulus had lost seven hundred men to frostbite alone. The OKH reserves were half spent now. Someday, nobody knew when, the Anglo-Americans would strike on the Westfront, and then the last reserves must be rushed to the point of penetration in France or Italy or maybe Yugoslavia, to halt them without fail. Would the Russian campaign finally be wrapped up by then? Operation Blau
must
succeed. And now the Führer began to speak. He told them that this area where the Don and Volga rivers kissed was the strategic hinge upon which the entire Eastern campaign might depend. Army Group South, he announced, was to be split forthwith into Army Groups A and B, in order to execute an immense pincer action
here
and
here
(two more strokes of the little toy flail). Field-Marshal von Bock, whose balding forehead imperturbably shone above everyone else’s head, would retain command of Army Group B, which consisted of four armies, including Paulus’s Sixth; while Field-Marshal List would lead Seventeenth and First Panzer Armies through Rostov to the oil fields. It was a grand enough goal; but that grandness could scarcely disguise the fact that von Bock had been deprived of part of his command.

To Paulus, who sometimes fell victim to a sensitivity to slights which others received, the announcement was simply agonizing, not only because von Bock was a friend, but also because he was a Field-Marshal—the highest rank to which any German soldier could aspire: second only to the Führer himself! To Paulus, therefore, this capricious alteration of authority seemed demeaning and worse; for a moment he felt positively indignant at the Führer. (To be sure, List was a Field-Marshal, too; doubtless he was also deserving.) Moreover, Paulus believed that once the Supreme Command had set a goal for an Army Group, the Army Group ought to be allowed to achieve that goal in its own fashion. But this was not the Führer’s way, at least not since Operation Barbarossa had begun to go wrong. Von Bock, pale and thin, did not change expression, and Paulus admired him for this. Nor did his chief of staff appear to be at all offended, but then, he was known to be a friend of Keitel’s. Calmly, the tall, skeletal Field-Marshal requested a brief delay in the commencement of Operation Blau in order to finish liquidating some Russian elements around Kharkov . . .