Authors: Sven Hassel
I don't give a damn how many Russian and Polish women have to die, those antitank trenches must be dug! Let them die in their thousands! What does it matter to me? Not a fig, except insofar as their deaths will hold up the completion of the trenches.
Heinrich Himmler, during a secret conversation with
SS officers at Posen
General Roske, commanding officer of the XlVth Armored Corps, confronted General Paulus in his office. General Paulus was pale and ill at ease. He was smoking one cigarette after another and his forehead was damp with perspiration. The left side of his face twitched constantly as a nervous tic took control of his muscles.
"Roske, my dear fellow!" he said expansively. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you! They told me you were dead . . ."
"Not yet," said Roske grimly
Paulus gave him an agitated smile. "The casualty rate among our generals is alarmingly high--did you know we've lost seven to date? No other army has had such misfortune. By the time the fighting comes to an end, I sometimes wonder if we shall have a single general left." He shook his head, the left side of his mouth twitching rapidly. "Errors have been made, in all honesty one is forced to admit it-- but the important thing is to learn from one's experience! Those same errors will not be made again."
"General, have you heard what's happening among the troops?" broke in Roske impatiently. "They're living more like wild beasts than human beings. They're having to eat corpses to keep themselves alive--men are dying of quite simple injuries because the doctors have nothing to treat them with--they don't have so much as an aspirin to give them! There's no order, no discipline, no food, no ammunition--what are we doing? What the hell are we doing? What are we supposed to be waiting for?"
"For a miracle, perhaps." Paulus crushed out a cigarette stub with one trembling hand and clawed up a fresh pack with the other. "It's no use asking me, my friend. I didn't give the order, it came from the Fuhrer. You and I are soldiers, we can only obey--fight to the last man, the last bullet." He shook his head again and hunched, tortoiselike, into his collar. "There can be no question of surrender."
"Then we shall die!" said Roske shortly.
Paulus slowly looked up, his eyes haggard. Almost imperceptibly, he shrugged his shoulders. "We have no choice. Give your men my warmest regards. Tell them we are all in this together. And if there is anything I can do for you, anything at all, you will of course let me know."
Two hours later, General Paulus sent a telegram to Berlin:
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HIS RISE TO POWER, THE SIXTH ARMY SALUTES ITS FUHRER. THE SWASTIKA STILL FLIES OVER STALINGRAD. MAY OUR FIGHT GIVE HEART TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. MAY IT EVER BE SAID THAT IN THEIR MOST DESPERATE HOUR THEY DID NOT GIVE IN. WE BELIEVE IN VICTORY AND IN OUR FUHRER. HEIL HITLER!
STALINGRAD, JANUARY 29, 1943.
Back in German Lines
We were taken to Kharkov in an amphicar and handed over to a battalion stationed in the Dzhinski barracks on the slopes of Nova Bavaria. A quartermaster sergeant sent us off straightaway to the stores to collect some new kit and some weapons, where the corporal in charge told us that anyone arriving from Stalingrad was automatically sent on to Dzhinski.
"Anyone?" queried Gregor, "You mean, there are quite a few?"
"A small trickle. One or two turn up each week."
We asked him about our own group, but either they had genuinely not passed through the barracks or else the man had been told to keep his mouth shut, for he denied all knowledge of them. Even had he seen them, the chances were he would not have talked, for immediately after our visit to the stores we had to report to the secret police for a detailed interrogation. It was like being with the NKVD all over again. No one seemed willing to believe that we could possibly be telling the truth.
"So! You say you came out of Stalingrad?" asked a young and cocksure captain, with a faintly sardonic smile on his lips.
"We did come out of Stalingrad," said Gregor.
"How?"
"An SS general took us out. There was a whole group of us, about eight hundred men."
"The name of this general?"
"Augsberg. General Augsberg."
The captain rustled importantly among some papers on his desk. "When was this? What was the date?"
Gregor and I looked at each other stupidly.
"About January 26 or 27," I guessed.
"I see." He looked up at us. "So the fighting was still going on at Stalingrad when General Augsberg led you out?"
"Yes--in one or two places," I said innocently. "The Russians were on the point of attacking our positions near the New Theater and the Place of the Dead."
The captain smiled at this. He made a note on a clean sheet of paper and then amiably offered us his cigarettes. "When the general led you out, did no one raise any objections? None of the officers?"
Gregor shook his head. "No. It was pointless staying in Stalingrad, the Russians were walking all over us. We couldn't possibly have held the place. The game was over, we just wanted to get out."
"And continue the fight elsewhere," I added, with a vague premonition of danger. "Somewhere more useful."
"Stalingrad was lost months ago," said Gregor contemptuously.
"Of course, of course," murmured the captain, leaning back in his chair and playing with his cigarette lighter. "So General Augsberg formed a combat group and led you out-- and none of your officers raised his voice in protest?"
"Not as far as I know," said Gregor vaguely.
"And yet General Augsberg was a stranger to you? He was not your commanding officer?"
"Well--yes and no," Gregor partly conceded. "It was all a bit of a mess. We were just the remnants, see. A few men from this division, a few men from that--nobody was properly in command until General Augsberg came along and took over."
"He was the sort of man," I said, "you did what he told you to do. You didn't stop and argue."
"But did you not realize he was ordering you to desert?" murmured the captain, very smooth. "Surely you must have? You had weapons, you had ammunition, there were eight hundred of you--quite a powerful group! Why did you not stay behind and fight the enemy?"
"Fight the enemy?" repeated Gregor, looking rather blank. "There wasn't any point, they were clobbering us from all directions--in any case, we just did what we were told."
"As always," I added.
The captain stood up. He walked around to the front of the desk, flexing his legs and creaking his high leather boots. He gazed at us sternly. "It was your duty to oppose this man! You should have spoken out against him."
"Sir," I protested, "have you ever heard of an ordinary soldier speaking out against a general?"
He obviously hadn't. He walked back around the desk, picked up his riding crop and began thoughtfully tapping himself with it. "You were up against the Russians at Gumrak, were you not?" He evidently knew the answer to the question already. "What happened when the fighting was over? What did you do?"
Gregor gave a short laugh. "Took off!"
"We made for the Don," I said quietly.
"It seems to me," remarked the captain, "that after deserting from Stalingrad, the whole of your march was one disordered flight westward."
"Toward the German front line," I said.
The captain ignored that. "Did the general never order you to attack the Russian positions? Did he never organize acts of sabotage against the enemy? Did you never blow up their arms dumps, sever their supply lines?"
"What with?" said Gregor. "We just pushed on as fast as we could."
"We were looking for the German front line," I repeated.
Again the captain ignored me and concentrated on Gregor. "You had a medical officer with you--what role did he play? Did he arrange transport for your sick and wounded? Did he perform any operations?"
Gregor laughed again. "In that weather?"
"We couldn't possibly arrange transport,". I explained. "We didn't have any. And it simply wasn't possible to operate in those conditions. In any case, we had no medical supplies."
"So you abandoned your wounded on the steppe?" The captain narrowed his eyes to slits, then opened them wide in accusation. "You left them to die? And no one spoke out against it? Not even your general?"
"There was nothing we could do! Men were dying like flies--we had no food, no winter clothing, no bandages--almost everyone had dysentery or frostbite or both together-- or typhoid, that was even worse, it was as much as we could do to drag ourselves along, let alone carry sick men with us."
"So you left them to die?"
"It was impossible to do anything else!"
The captain and I stood glaring at each other.
"Impossible, eh?" He savored the word, gently tapping the back of his legs with his crop. "Impossible--well, we shall let others be the judge of that. Let us press on with your story. During your flight from Stalingrad, did anyone ever speak out against the Party? Against the Fuhrer? Did anyone ever criticize the way the war was being fought?"
Gregor and I firmly shook our heads.
"No?" said the captain, with a faintly ironic smile.
"No," I said.
"You seem almost indecently sure of yourself?"
"I am sure. Very sure."
"Hm--" He turned back to his desk, gathered up the various sheets of paper and placed them neatly in a folder. "If you have any letters to deliver, any personal effects belonging to dead men, you can give them to me."
"We haven't," said Gregor. "The Russians took everything off us."
"How much did you tell the Russians?"
"Nothing. Only our names and our units."
"Oh? And the NKVD was content with that?" He smiled another of his ironic smiles, then gave us a nod of dismissal. "Speak to no one of this interview. Keep your mouths shut about Stalingrad. If anyone asks you any questions, they must be reported immediately to the GEFEPO."*
*Field Secret Police.
An hour later we were reunited with our own company, where our arrival caused a minor furor.
"Look who it is, damn my eyes!" yelled Tiny, lumbering across to us.
"We thought you must be dead!" declared the Old Man, trying to fling his arms around both of us at the same time.
"Where the hell did you get to?" grumbled Porta. "We waited two fucking hours on the edge of that wood. I said to the general, the mean bastards have stumbled on a pack of Russians and don't want to share the caviar with us."
They were all there, the Old Man, Porta, Tiny, the Legionnaire and Heide. Even Barcelona had turned up to greet us! Thrown out of the hospital and declared fit to die for his country, he had had the great good fortune to be sent back to his old company.
"They're reforming the Sixth Army," he told us. "Christ only knows where they're going to get the extra men--they must be combing the old men's homes by now."
"What's happened to Augsberg?" Gregor wanted to know.
"And the lieutenant and the doctor?" I added anxiously.
The Old Man shrugged. "Do you have to ask? Weren't you put through your paces by the secret police?"
"You mean they've arrested them?"
"What else could they do? An army's not an army without discipline. And Augsberg left Stalingrad against Hitler's orders. Technically, he's a deserter. And he knew what he was doing."
"But that's lunacy!" protested Gregor. "Anyone who stayed behind to die in Stalingrad when he could have got out needs his head examined! In any case, it wasn't desertion. We weren't running away from the front line, we were trying to find the goddamn thing!"
Life for the next few days was more bearable than it had been for quite a while. We were forbidden to speak of our exploits, but everyone knew where we had come from and we were regarded with some awe--to have survived the renowned hell of Stalingrad! To have crossed the Don! To have outwitted the Russians! We were feted and celebrated and looked on, in our apparent indestructibility, as minor deities.
One day, as Porta and I were strolling peaceably together, enjoying a sudden burst of sunshine, a gross quartermaster sergeant came tumbling out of a hut and made straight for us. He seized Porta by the shoulders and shook him. "Hauber! Where the hell have you been these past five hours? I've looked everywhere for you!"
Porta, admirably restraining his normal impulse to shout obscenities, stepped back a pace and considered the man. He was wearing spectacles with lenses about an inch thick, and it was plain that he was quite unable to see more than a yard in front of him.
"What do you want me for?" demanded Porta/Hauber, playing for time before deciding whether or not his new role was worth it.
"What do I want you for? Good God in heaven, there's a war on, man! There's work to be done, supplies to be fetched, men's bellies to be filled . . ."
I stood watching as he dragged Porta away with him.
For a while I leaned with my back against a tree trunk, drinking in the sun and wondering how long I should bother to wait, and then Porta reappeared, grinning, and waving a sheet of paper at me. "Come on!"
"What for?" I said, not willing to move from my tree trunk without good cause.
"Going to pick up a load of provisions for the fat fool in glasses."
"Why do him a good turn?" I grumbled, peeling myself away and joining Porta in the cab of a large truck.
"Why not?" said Porta, winking roguishly. "Might just do ourselves one at the same time."
We reached the depot and Porta handed in his requisition.
"Who are you?" demanded the sergeant in charge. "Where's Hauber?"
"Sick. He was taken bad very sudden in the night."
"Poor old Hauber! What is it, do you know?"
"Liver trouble," said Porta, without turning a hair.
The sergeant rubber-stamped and signed the requisition and asked no more questions, and we took the truck around to pick up the goods. For a start, we had a load of uniforms dumped on us. That was followed by five hundred rifles. My spirits began to fall, and Porta's face turned slowly red with rage.