They all looked away, for an order like that was an insult to him, a vote of no confidence. He was thinking: Poor Coca must never know of this.
Good, he quietly said. I’d like you to send a message to General Heim…
By your order, Herr Lieutenant-General!
Where’s Seventh Romanian Corps right now?
At Pronin, Herr Lieutenant-General.
So if they link up with Twenty-second Panzer—
Sir, Perelazovskii has fallen!
I don’t understand why we failed to hold Perelazovskii, said Paulus. Try again to reach General Heim.
Herr Lieutenant-General, Twenty-second Panzer’s falling back—
But Seventh Romanian should have—
Excuse me, Herr Lieutenant-General, but here’s a message from Army Group B Headquarters…
Well, well, said Paulus, putting his glasses on. Evidently we’re expected to take radical measures.
Herr Lieutenant-General, Sixth Romanian Corps has surrendered.
All of them?
Herr Lieutenant-General, I—
Herr Lieutenant-General, we’ve positively identified Thirteenth Soviet Tank Corps coming north—
They weren’t supposed to be in our sector at all, he lectured them, and they fell silent.
Where’s our Twenty-ninth Motorized? Not far from Nariman, I suppose…
We’ve lost contact, Herr Lieutenant-General.
Herr Lieutenant-General, the Romanians refuse to—
Herr Lieutenant-General, what should—
Where’s Schmidt?
Sir, he’s—
Herr Lieutenant-General, contact broken with—
Herr Lieutenant-General, Sixty-fifth Soviet Army has sliced open our flank!
He opened his silver cigarette-case and told them: Keep calm, please.
But, Herr Lieutenant-General, we’re being pushed back over here!
Said Paulus: Against all your objections I speak two words: Adolf Hitler.
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, whose thirty-one volumes contain the entire sum of useful knowledge, encirclement is most often achieved when the enemy defense is broken through in two or more sectors of the front and the attack develops along converging axes. As a result, a solid internal front and an active external front are created, cutting the surrounded grouping off from the remainder of its forces. The Soviet tank brigades, shock armies, cavalry corps and ski battalions had accomplished this, and now the ring was hardening just as ice does: a delicate skin at first, as easy to crack as sugar-glazing. Paulus, his eyes now sunken deep behind the thick, almost Slavic brows, realized that the enemy spearheads would probably meet at Kalach. He possessed no reserves to stop them. On the other hand, they’d already lost a hundred tanks. Perhaps they were finished.
On 21.11.42 the encirclement of Stalingrad was complete. He calmly requested two Fiesler-Storch airplanes to convey himself and Major-General Schmidt to Nizhne-Chirskaya, where General Hoth would be instructed to meet them. He instructed his aides to begin burning documents. Then he ordered Eleventh Army Corps to retreat across the Don into the center of the pocket, which they did, using Russian prisoners to pull the ammunition-carts and shooting them when they could pull no more. According to his reports, more Russians, white-clad Russians, were already running across the black-smeared snow, five armies of them; and they had linked up at Sovietsky and were digging in. Soon it would be too late. A bluish-jawed Russian with a star on his cap opened his mouth in a scream of joyous hatred as the Katyushas went off…
As the plane became airborne, he gazed out the window and saw Russian troops attempting with laughable fanaticism to bring him down with small arms. Their muzzle-flashes winked like mica. Major-General Schmidt shook a finger at them and winked. Then a zone of yellowish cloud took Stalingrad away, and Paulus closed his eyes, pretending to sleep so that he would not need to look at Schmidt. He could not help remembering that June day in Poltava when he’d promised the Führer that Sixth Army would carry out its assignment. He’d never become a Field-Marshal now.
At Nizhne-Chirskaya, pensive R-maidens, whose hair was as delicious as the Ukraine’s flax and buckwheat, took his spare uniform away to be pressed, and when he had finished his bath they brought freshly laundered white gloves for him to wear for when he bent over the conference table, overgazing the most recent aerial reconnaissance photographs from Fremde Heere Ost Gruppe I, Army Group B. After awhile, he realized that the photographs were old and out of date. There was no indication at all of the enemy troop movements, not even any prefiguration of it, although that might have been due to their excellent winter camouflage. At the far end of the room, Major-General Schmidt was on the telephone to Eighth Air Corps, demanding resupply. And now Paulus rose to exchange greetings with General Hoth, wrinkled, shaveheaded General Hoth whose oakleaf collar was always buttoned up tight.
Our main task, instructed Paulus, must now be to destroy the opposing tanks.
But that was already long past possible, due to the Russians’ superior capacity for tank production.
He asked General Hoth what he could do, but General Hoth could do nothing.
What about Sixteenth Motorized?
Didn’t you hear? They buried their tanks for warmth, and fieldmice ate all the wires!
Everyone advised him to recommend a breakout to the Führer, before it was too late.
In that case, he said to them, more than ten thousand wounded and most of our heavy weapons would have to be written off. And then what? First we give up Stalingrad; then we recapitulate Napoleon’s retreat. Surely you remember your history, gentlemen. He started with four hundred thousand men. When he left Moscow he had a hundred thousand. That’s attrition for you. Then the retreat. He got to Poland with ten thousand…
We’re supposed to counterattack, they insisted.
Who told you that?
I heard that our Führer himself—
But Major-General Schmidt was on the telephone again. Army Group B no longer possessed any force for counterattack.
General Hoth wondered aloud whether Army Group A could relieve them, at which Paulus was compelled to indicate in a single sweep of his map-hand the breadth of the Kalmyk Steppes.
The bitter facts which were pressing in on him from all sides could not be gainsaid, although he’d spoken against retreat, partly because so drastic a decision must first be considered at length and partly in order to express his confidence in our Führer, who was already accusing him of cowardice for flying out, so he’d heard. His immediate return to Sixth Army was demanded. He was to organize a hedgehog defense and await further orders. Field-Marshal von Manstein was to command the new Army Group Don. (Coca rather liked his wife Jutta-Sibylle.) For now, any breakout was forbidden. Voronezh and Stalingrad were our two strongpoints in this zone. Both of them must be held to the death. They said to Paulus: The Führer’s instructed the Ministry of Aviation to supply you with all resources…—General Heim, who’d done no wrong, was arrested and condemned to death, although his colleagues later saved him. Incensed and shamed by these imputations—in fact he felt like one of those medieval criminals who’d been condemned to being pulled apart by four horses; which way could he go? what could he do?—but betraying nothing, if we exclude the twitching of his face, Paulus strapped himself into the Fiesler-Storch, accompanied by a present from General Hoth: red Romanian wine and a case of Veuve Clicquot from Paris. He was too good for these people.—Are you ready, Herr Lieutenant-General? Evasive action time! It may be a bit bumpy…—These Luftwaffe pilots certainly deserved the green ribbon for bravery! He wished that he could decorate them all. Seeing into the future as effortlessly as ever, he worried about Sixth Army’s long-term fuel situation: Petrol gives us not only warmth, but mobility. Schmidt was staring at him; he turned away. Now here came the river Aksay’s long, narrow valley-lips, the river itself frozen over, then the four-meter snowdrifts he knew so well, the yellow-grey sky, the lengthy black lines of frozen trucks in the whiteness of Gumrak’s runway, grey tents in the snow, the railroad station which was now Stalingrad HQ (for Golubinskaya, the headquarters he’d flown out of yesterday, was now in enemy hands), the encircled army frozen in time like silver-armored knights in a museum, all knight-flesh long since rotted away from inside the armor. The