‘Comrades! The new year is almost upon us. We’ve no idea what it holds in store for us – liberation or defeat. We stand alone here, far from home, fighting what seems like a losing battle. The worst is yet to come. We’re facing a dark future. But there’s one thing we do know: there’s a Western Front in this war too, and it’s keeping the war at bay from Germany. And the fact that it’s there and holding firm is due in no small part to our efforts. We’re tying down powerful enemy forces here in Stalingrad. If not for that, the enemy might already have broken through the hard-pressed Eastern Front. If we’re fated to die, then our sacrifice will not have been for nothing… we have to believe that this sacrifice has not been in vain. Firm in that belief, let’s go forward into the new year. Long live Germany!’
Fated to die? Our sacrifice not in vain?
The men looked at one another. What was up with the colonel today? It wasn’t like him to talk in such an illogical way! After all, Hitler had sent the men at Stalingrad a New Year’s greeting (it had just been announced that same afternoon) in which he said: ‘You can rely on me with rock-like confidence!’ The Führer had given his word, loud and clear. There was no room for doubt or interpretation there!
At twenty-two-hundred hours, a protracted rumbling noise drove the men out of their bunkers. A ghostly yet magnificent spectacle was unfolding against the night sky. Flares of all colours, pearl strings of tracer bullets and the brief flashes of artillery rounds, Stalin organs and mortars engulfed the whole area in a ring of fire. Never before had the limits of the Cauldron been so graphically demonstrated to them, and never before had they felt the reality of this prison they were trapped in so keenly.
‘So, there are the borders of our little domain!’ said Breuer to Lieutenant Wiese. ‘The Russians are welcoming the new year. They have good reason to celebrate.’
‘What were the names of those two Roman consuls who were defeated at the Battle of Cannae that time?’ asked Wiese. The question was so odd that Breuer could only turn and look at him in astonishment.
‘Wasn’t one of them called Aemilius Paulus?’ said Wiese, then quite out of the blue he asked, ‘Do you really think we saved the Eastern Front?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, the reports you get from the Corps every day have been consistently telling us since mid-December that the Russians are withdrawing significant forces from the Cauldron front. They’ve hardly any tanks left here! And it’s clear that, for the time being at least, they can afford to throw everything they’ve got against Rostov and the Don elbow. Or do you think the Russian top brass hasn’t been kept closely informed of Hitler’s order banning us from attempting a breakout? And that we couldn’t break out any longer even if we wanted to? Even if there wasn’t a single Russian soldier facing us any more, we couldn’t move an inch!’
Breuer gave a deep sigh. ‘Dear God, Wiese, you’re truly abominable!’ he said in an agonized voice. ‘The colonel told us that we have to believe! And he’s right. How can you even bear to go on if you’ve lost all faith?’
Lakosch couldn’t get the encounter with Seliger out of his head. A thick curtain, which Nazi propaganda kept painting with lurid images of horror, stood between him and the mysterious ‘opposing side’. The little driver had been granted a fleeting glimpse behind this curtain just the once, that time when they’d interrogated the Russian airman. Ever since, Lakosch had been longing for the curtain to drop. He wanted clarity, and the truth. There wasn’t a scintilla of doubt in his mind any longer that everything that Harras and the private had reported about their time behind the Russian lines was a pack of lies.
One morning he went over to see the former mess orderly again. Seliger was sullen and stand-offish. He appeared to have bad memories of the driver’s first visit and its aftermath. Only when Lakosch openly threatened to report the whole incident did Seliger start to talk, though not before swearing Lakosch to absolute secrecy. What Lakosch ultimately managed to extract from the orderly was basically this: Seliger and Harras, who’d been knocked out for several minutes by a clod of earth thrown up by the explosion, had been surprised by the Russians (‘This is it, now they’re going to kill us!’). In the event, all they suffered were a few blows from rifle butts to force them to their feet. They were taken to a staff headquarters in a village further behind the Russian lines, where they were subjected to a thorough interrogation on conditions in the Cauldron. Their treatment there was remarkably friendly and they were given plenty to eat.
Seliger waxed lyrical on this last point: ‘Oh, mate, I’m telling you – we had lovely white bread with butter and bacon and sausage! And fags and chocolate that they’d filched from the Junkers! That perked up old Lissnup pretty sharpish.’
Lakosch wasn’t interested in all that, so he urged Seliger to tell him more. The following day, it seems, they were left alone with two men who, to their amazement, turned out to be German. These men, writers who had emigrated to the Soviet Union, engaged them in very earnest conversation.
They described the hopeless position the encircled army was in and painted a terrifying picture of the consequences of the massive Russian assault that would soon be unleashed. It would undoubtedly mean the death of the three hundred thousand men unless they surrendered in time. One of the men then touched on the subject of the war being Hitler’s fault, which prompted Harras to claim that he’d always been opposed to Hitler. But Harras turned down the invitation to address their German comrades over the tannoy from the Russian trenches by saying that no one would believe him, and suggested instead that he and Seliger should be sent back into the Cauldron so that they could argue there for a cessation of hostilities. At first, they didn’t receive an answer on this score. But after a few days, they were given sheaves of propaganda material and taken back to the front, where they were spirited through the lines under cover of darkness. Harras was extremely worked up on the return journey. He told Seliger that this was a really big opportunity for them. If they played their cards right, they might not just be in line for a promotion and decorations, but could even get out of the Cauldron. Seliger let Harras talk him round, and Harras then discussed with him in the minutest detail the report that they duly submitted on their return. This account of their escapade, which Seliger divulged only very reluctantly, threw Lakosch into a state of great agitation. He kept on pressing for more details. ‘So, they didn’t shoot you?’
‘No, Karl, see for yourself! Never crossed their minds.’
‘And they were German communists, the people you spoke to?’
‘Yeah, one was a lanky bloke with a grey quiff, and the other one was short, really twitchy and on edge all the time, came from Hamburg I think… Their names? Wait a mo… No, it’s gone, sorry. But they’d already written loads of pamphlets. Lissnup knew them all right. And get this: there are officers over there too! German officers, fighting against Hitler… and all the German POWs have come out against Hitler as well!’
Lakosch found it hard taking this all in.