If you choose to reject our proposal for your capitulation, be warned that the forces of the Red Army and the Red Air Force will be compelled to take steps to destroy the encircled German troops, and that you will bear the responsibility for their annihilation.
Breuer’s hand holding the sheet fell limply to his side; it felt like a lump of lead. His glance met that of Lieutenant Wiese, who was staring intently at him.
‘We all bear the responsibility,’ Wiese murmured, ‘all of us!’
‘Well…,’ Corporal Herbert began. The feeling of anxiety that was now weighing down on them all made him very uneasy.
‘And what do you reckon to all this, Lieutenant Breuer, sir?’ enquired the cook presently. Before he could answer, Fröhlich erupted once more: ‘There’s no question of reckoning anything! Even if all that were true… a German soldier never surrenders, do you hear? It has never happened in the whole of German history!’
‘Nonsense!’ shouted Breuer. In his excitement, he completely forgot that, as an officer, he should not even have allowed a discussion of this sort to take place in front of the other ranks.
‘Even Blücher surrendered! He was forced to surrender at Radkau when he ran out of bread and ammunition. A capitulation in honourable circumstances, after putting up a brave fight, isn’t a disgrace – it can even be a soldier’s duty! And what do I think in general?’ he went on, more calmly. ‘I think that we don’t have a clear picture of the situation we’re in here, and don’t know whether the Russians are able or even willing to keep their promises. But I do believe that Army High Command is perfectly capable of evaluating these things. And if there’s even the faintest guarantee that the Russians mean what they say, then – well, I think that Paulus will accept their ultimatum. In a situation like this, he can’t take responsibility for what might happen if he refuses.’
‘Yessir, Lieutenant,’ the mess corporal agreed, ‘that’s just what I was thinking too while I was stirring my soup and the old horse bone kept floating up to the top. No one’s taking responsibility for this business any more!’
Breuer quickly read through the ultimatum one more time. What had Colonel von Hermann said? There’s no way out now? This, this was the way out! If only they could know what awaited them in Russian captivity, if only anyone knew anything, for that matter…
‘Well, I still reckon, Lieutenant,’ said Geibel timidly, ‘that the top brass – I don’t mean our colonel, of course, but the officers in the Corps and High Command – don’t think twice about us little foot soldiers when they’re drawing up their war plans. Their minds are on far bigger things, on honour and heroism and such like… but those generals have no idea of what that might cost us ordinary soldiers.’
‘You’re a stupid idiot, Geibel!’ Breuer replied angrily. ‘General Paulus thinks and cares just as much about the plight of the ordinary soldier here in the Cauldron as the rest of us, perhaps even more. And that’s why I’m convinced he’ll accept the ultimatum.’
‘Chuck that pamphlet away, Breuer!’ said Wiese, looking up from his book. ‘Paulus won’t accept it.’
‘Absolutely, quite right!’ cried Fröhlich. ‘The ultimatum must have been rejected already! What’s written there? Answer by the ninth of January at ten o’clock? Well, it’s the ninth today! If it had been accepted, they’d already have declared a ceasefire long since!’
‘What’s that, where…?’ Breuer snatched up the slip of paper again. ‘the ninth of the first, 10.00 hours, you’re right! I must go and speak to the chief of staff this instant!’
Over in the CO’s bunker he found Colonel von Hermann busy packing his things.
‘Good that you’ve dropped by, Breuer,’ von Hermann greeted him. ‘That means I can say my goodbyes right now. And please inform Lieutenant Wiese he should get ready to leave straight away! He’s coming with me to the new division as my adjutant.’
Breuer stood there, thunderstruck. The CO was leaving, and Wiese was going with him. Their little circle was breaking up. Everything was falling apart…
‘What have you got there for me?’ asked the colonel, reaching for the slip that Breuer still clutched in his hand. ‘Oh right, the leaflet with the Russian ultimatum! Yes, please destroy that! And make sure the men don’t get to learn about its contents.’
Von Hermann went over to his desk and started searching through some papers.
‘Here, this concerns the Intelligence Section.’ He handed Breuer a typewritten form, which read:
TO THE GENERAL COMMANDING, 14TH PANZER CORPS.
SECTION IC.
COMMUNIQUÉ TO BE READ TO THE RANKS.
On 8.1.43, at Makeyevka, Russian peace envoys delivered a sealed letter addressed to the Supreme Commander of the Sixth Army containing a call to surrender. German representatives refused to take delivery of the letter, and the Russian officers were immediately dismissed.
Now the enemy has realized that he cannot conquer the Cauldron by force of arms, he is trying to undermine our resistance with transparent propaganda tricks. He will not succeed! The Sixth Army will hold Stalingrad until the hour of liberation approaches.
In future, if any enemy peace negotiators attempt to approach our lines, they should be fired upon.
PART 3
The Moment of Truth
1
The Die is Cast
Breuer woke from sleep with a start. He looked about in confusion. His heart was thumping wildly and his chest felt like it was being held fast by bands of iron. What the hell was going on? Had he been having a bad dream? The room was filled with the steady breathing of other sleepers. From beneath the table he was sleeping on came the monotonous sawing sound of Fröhlich’s snoring. The first light of dawn was breaking through the small window. The lamp hanging from the ceiling, whose wick had been turned down to just a pinprick of flame, flickered gently and the grey half-shadows in the room were heavy with foreboding. And all of a sudden Breuer knew what had woken him from his slumbers.
‘Hey, Fröhlich!’
A reluctant grunt came from below.
‘Hey, wake up, will you man? Just listen!’
Fröhlich’s sleepy face appeared from beneath the tabletop, gazing up questioningly at the first lieutenant, who was listening intently. And now Fröhlich heard it too as it drifted over to them, a persistent dull rumble that sounded like a far-off drum roll.
‘Artillery fire!’
‘Yeah, that’s right, artillery fire,’ Breuer replied. Gingerly, the two of them picked their way over their sleeping comrades and emerged into the biting cold of the early morning. Out here, the noise, only faintly audible down in the bunker, filled the entire expanse of the landscape: an incessant rumbling punctuated with muffled thuds, which appeared to be bursting forth from the skies and the earth simultaneously and making the ground tremble like it was suffering a shivering fit. The western sky, though, where the shadows of the fast-vanishing night still hung, was bathed in a blood-red glow, into which tongues of yellow flame kept shooting all along the horizon. The two men stood and held their breath. Breuer placed a heavy hand on the shoulder of the Sonderführer.
‘It’s the main Russian offensive,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It’s beginning.’
A main field dressing station on the edge of the Rossoshka Valley, just one of many. It had been set up to deal with two hundred casualties at most, though now there were more than six hundred men lying there. They lay packed in like sardines in the semi-darkness of the old stable block, those torn, mutilated, frost-disfigured human bodies that still harboured a glimmer of life. And they sat in the long corridors, every man sitting between the legs of the man behind him, their ragged clothes teeming with lice as dense as a coating of mould. And when one of them moved, a ripple of pained groans ran through their ranks. The stench of a wild animal’s cage, rank enough to make you catch your breath, filled the building. Lumps of peat were burning in two empty petrol drums, sending clouds of acrid smoke billowing up to the wooden-boarded roof of the stables, which was holed in many places. But the cold also seeped into the room through the small glassless windows and the crumbling clay walls, creeping into the men’s faces and hands and freezing solid the contents of drug vials.