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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.
315 Himmler to Gunter d’Alquen: “Who compels us to keep the promises we make?” —Clark, p. 408.
315 Vlasov’s manifesto: “A fight to the finish of opposing political systems . . .”—Severely abridged from Daniels, p. 230.
318 Vlasov: “Washington and Franklin were traitors in the eyes of the British crown.” —Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 229.
318 Vlasov: “God give me strength! . . . And one day you’ll tell everybody at Valhalla that I wasn’t
a traitor . . .”—Ibid., p. 230, considerably altered (the original reads: “God give me strength to hold out to the end. But you, Wilfried Karlovich, you will go with Malyshkin and help him. That I know. And one day you will tell the others that Vlasov and his friends loved their country and were not traitors.”
319 Great Soviet Encyclopedia: “In this long and bitter struggle . . .”—Vol. 4, p. 351 (entry on the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45).
319 Guderian’s opinion of Himmler: “An inconspicuous man with all the marks of racial inferiority”—Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon, abr. (New York: Ballantine Books, n.d.), p. 30.
320 General Guderian: “Vlasov wanted to make some statement,” and replies of Hitler and Göring—Warlimont, p. 503 (fragment 24/25, briefing conference on 27 January 1945).
320 War diary of the British Thirty-sixth Infantry Brigade: “In glittering uniforms” —Carol Mather, Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home (London: Brassey’s [U.K.] Ltd., 1992), p. 70 (embellished a little).
321 Vlasov: “Kroeger keeps filling up my glass . . .”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 230.
322 Vlasov to his two quarreling soldiers: “We can’t beat Stalin with open fingers . . .” —Loosely after Steenberg, p. 155.
323 Heidi’s mother: “The Führer won’t allow the Russians to get us. He’ll gas us instead” —Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), p. 762 (the speaker was an anonymous old woman).
324 Strik-Strikfeldt: “Definition of cowardice: Leaving Berlin to volunteer for the Ostfront!” —After Klemperer, p. 313 (entry for 8 May 1944).
324 Vlasov: “Germany has collapsed sooner than I expected.”—Strik-Strikfeldt, p. 227.
326 Footnote: Vlasov: “I know that, and I’m extremely afraid . . .”—Andreyev, p. 78 (“retranslated” a little).
326 Same footnote: Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: “Communist morality is the noblest and most just morality . . .”—The Soviet Way of Life, p. 316.
327 Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Definition of cosmopolitanism—Vol. 13, p. 190 (entry on same).
THE LAST FIELD-MARSHAL
328 Epigraph: “That man should have shot himself . . .”—Alan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Harper Colophon Books, 1964), pp. 690-91 (Hitler to his staff officers, 1 February 1943).
328 Guderian on Paulus: “He was the finest type . . .”—Panzer Leader, p. 30.
328 Military orders: “Kriegsgliederung ‘Barbarossa’”—Mehner, vol. 3, end matter. Untranslated phrases: “War plan ‘Barbarossa.’ B-Day.”
329 Information on enemy strength, dispositions, etc., available to Paulus from Fremde Heere Ost—I have built up much of my imaginary picture from details in David Thomas, “Foreign Armies East and German Military Intelligence in Russia 1941-45,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 22, no. 22 (April 1987).
329 “Fourth Army Chief of Staff in the Polish campaign”—The biographies of Paulus are all in wild disagreement on this as on other issues. (For instance, even the careful Erickson calls him “von Paulus,” although Goerlitz makes it clear that our hero was a bookkeeper’s son.) Samuel W. Mitcham, for instance, claims in Hitler’s Field Marshals and Their Battles (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001; p. 226), that he was actually in Tenth Army then, and that Tenth Army was renamed to Sixth Army.
329 Hitler: “The ultimate objective is the cordoning off of Asiatic Russia . . .”—Directive No. 2 for Barbarossa, as quoted in Walter Goerlitz, Paulus and Stalingrad: A Life of Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus with Notes, Sources and Documents from His Papers, trans. Col. R. H. Stevens (New York: Citadel Press, 1963, trans of 1960 German ed.), p. 96.
329 Kesselring on Paulus: “He made a specially good impression . . .”—Kesselring: A Soldier’s Record (title page cut away in library binding; published shortly after 1953), p. 52.
330 Paulus’s children—Mitcham (p. 224) gives him three: Olga, Friedrich (killed in action in the Anzio campaign) and Alexander. Craig (p. 408) gives him an unnamed daughter, I assume Olga, Alexander (killed at Anzio) and Ernst, and has Ernst commit suicide in 1970. Beevor (p. 427) does not mention Olga, has Friedrich killed at Anzio, and calls the third child Ernst Alexander. So I’ve settled on Olga, Friedrich and Ernst. Since the circumstances and nature of Ernst’s wound have not been specified, I gave him a serious thigh wound which required his evacuation from Stalingrad. Had he not been evacuated, it seems unlikely to me that he and his father would both have survived the Stalingrad campaign. I further imagine that his wounding occurred before the German position at Stalingrad had reached a very desperate stage, since (a) it would have been less likely that he’d be evacuated then and (b) he might have been more inclined to stick it out like his father. All this is the flimsiest speculation, which is God’s gift to historical fictioneers.
331 Olga’s son Robert—In fact I don’t know whether she had any children.
331 Conversation between Paulus and Coca: “That’s a matter for political decision . . . a good chance that we’ll achieve victory this year”—Somewhat loosely after Goerlitz, p. 28.
334 The S.D. police-lieutenant to Paulus: “You can ask anything of them, just like horses. They work until they drop and make no demands”—Klee, Dressen and Riess, p. 158 (letter from Gendarmerie chief Fritz Jacob, in Kamanets Podolsky, 21 June 1942).
335 Hitler: “Keitel, is this line ready? . . . All the way to here?”—Warlimont, p. 522 (Appendix A: Staff Conference Fragment No. 8, 12 December 1942; actually Hitler and Zeitzler speaking).
336 Warlimont: Total German losses thus far on the Ostfront, 625,000—Ibid., p. 239 (“War Potential 1942,” figures as of 1 May 1942). The reserve situation was actually worse than Paulus might have known. Warlimont writes (p. 240): “At present there are no further reserves available in Germany.”
337 Hitler: “The fuel situation . . . liquidate this war”—Kershaw, p. 514 (slightly altered).
337 Hitler and Paulus at von Reichenau’s funeral—This never happened. Hitler sent a proxy to the ceremony.
337 Paulus’s assessment of Russian troops: “Incapable of operational initiative”—Actually, the assessment of them by Fremde Heere Ost, on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. See Thomas, “Foreign Armies East,” p. 274.
339 General Halder: “One of the sacrifices which commanders have to make . . .” —Warlimont, p. 162 (actually, written by Halder in his diary).
343 Fremde Heere Ost: “Special formations: Numbers unknown”—Loosely after the tabulation in Thomas, p. 276.
343 Ditto: “The clumsiness, schematism, avoidance of decision and responsibility has not changed since the Finnish campaign”—Ibid., p. 274. I have added “since the Finnish campaign.”
347 Great Soviet Encyclopedia on Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn): “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . .”—Vol. 5, p. 566, entry on Volgograd.
348 “Field-Marshal von Reichenau’s order of 10.10.41 to proceed with extreme measures against subhumans”—There were a number of variations of the infamous “commissar order,” whose provisions got rescinded at different times and different degrees by different commanders. Regarding commissars, many of the German generals seem to have actually believed, as for instance did von Manstein (p. 179), that since they weren’t exactly soldiers, chaplains or doctors; and since their purpose was to encourage “vicious resistance” in the enemy formations, then they didn’t qualify as privileged non-combatants; this view, however self-serving, may be faintly arguable. Most of the “commissar” order, however, is sickeningly murderous. In the very first of the numbered “Instructions for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia” we read: “Bolshevism is the deadly enemy of the National Socialist Folk. This subversive world-view and its carriers validate Germany’s struggle.” The second instruction warns that “this war must be prosecuted ruthlessly against” (and here in the orders the following categories were underlined) “headmen, fifth columnists, Jews, and o
thers who stand actively or passively against us.”—Mehner. (The German word for “instructions,” Richtlinien, really means “guidelines,” but a more rigid substitution seemed appropriate here. I wanted to literalize it into the cognate Right Line, with its even stronger moral tone, but regretfully decided that this had too Stalinist a sound. The excerpts in this note have been slightly abridged.)
348 Some of the military arrows, vectors, etc. for Kharkov and Stalingrad derive from the maps in Günter Wegmann, ed., “Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt . . .”: Der deutsche Wehrmachtsbericht (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1982).
349 Colonel Metz to Paulus: “Let me congratulate you on your Knight’s Cross . . .” —Slightly abridged from Goerlitz, p. 167. This message bears the date of 5 June 1942 and therefore probably reached Paulus much sooner than I have allowed it to.
351 Field-Marshal von Manstein: “The safety of a tank formation operating in the enemy’s rear . . .”—Von Manstein, p. 185.
351 Coca to her husband, on Africa: “Keep your fingers out of that pie.”—Ibid., p. 32.
353 The Führer: “There is not going to be a winter campaign!”—Ibid., p. 35.
353 The architecture of Werewolf, Wolf’s Lair, Wolf’s Gorge, and for that matter many of the structural details of Hitler’s trains, cars, military headquarters, etcetera, referred to in this story and in “Clean Hands”—Peter Hoffmann, Hitler’s Personal Security (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1979). Hitler was at Wolf’s Lair, with many interruptions, from 24 June 1941 through 20 November 1944. Meanwhile came two spells at Werewolf: 16 July to 1 November 1942 (this is the period of greatest relevance here), and 17 February through 13 March 1943. Paulus’s final visit to Wolf’s Lair, when Paulus goes “whiter than a German tank,” is my fabrication.
354 Hitler: “The Ukrainians, yes, a thin Germanic layer . . .”—Kershaw, p. 244 (recollection of A. Rosenberg); somewhat altered; the original was about the Poles rather than the Ukrainians.
356 Hitler: “Once we’ve erased Leningrad and Moscow from the map . . .”—Warlimont, p. 242, quoting Goebbels, March 1942.