-surgeon said that several dozen men had developed frostbite gangrene in the folds of the eyelids.—Thank you, said Paulus. You may go.—He summoned all his staff officers to analyze the dispositions of the enemy’s strike groups. After that, they pored over the perfect black glossiness of Paulus’s formations superimposed on the half-real grey map, which never depicted enemy troops. First defense, then preparations for breakout; that was how it had to be done. The outer line was to be forward of Kotel’niko. As soon as it became clear what he must do next, he’d have to exert himself to the utmost. His fingertips felt very cold within the white gloves, and his mouth was dry. He needed to save himself for the moment of decision, but when would that moment come? For the sake of his own evenness of mind, on which the outcome depended, he tried to repel all recollections of our Führer’s criticism, but then it came back, the filthy shame, as if he were a boy again and his father the bookkeeper had caught him masturbating; all he could do was try to convince himself that very likely the Führer hadn’t given his own accusations any further thought; everybody knew that the Führer’s temper had been growing worse ever since Moscow.
Paulus felt unsure of himself. But Sixth Army was still conditionally fit. The air stank of cigarettes.
After all, said Major-General Schmidt, it was the Romanians who let the enemy break through. What can you expect from that Slavicized trash? The Führer’s expecting us Germans to step in and do our duty.—In fact, there was not much to do but wait for our Führer and Field-Marshal von Manstein, and they all knew it.
Never mind, they kept telling each other, trying to maintain the correct attitude. Every cadet knows that defense is the strongest form of fighting.
Our will—
But where did all those operational groupings come from?
What do you mean, where did they come from? Russia’s infinite, you idiot!
If we only harden ourselves enough—
… Or else the enemy will break through to Europe!
… Struggle as the precondition of higher development…
As soon as von Manstein—
He doesn’t care about us.
Who doesn’t?
You know.
On the contrary, I can assure you that he cares almost too much. Mein Kampf proves it beyond any doubt. It’s because he has a horror of witnessing your suffering—
They sincerely tried to be brave, in much the same way that a meager-faced -man awaits his capture and murder at the hands of cigarette-smoking Kazakh horsemen.
Reddish clouds of sunset dirt settled over the frozen ruins. He served the champagne all around. This was now Fortress Stalingrad, our Führer said. It would be their destiny to recapitulate the suffering of the Russians at Leningrad. They invoked the German cornfields, coal mines and refineries which would soon rise out of this barrenness, all bunkered behind a massive Ostwall, in the service of which he raised the matter of village-based strong pockets. Now, the bubbles going to their heads, they cried that they wanted to break out at once, but Lieutenant-General Paulus made it clear that he accepted the Führer’s decision.—I can’t give up, he said in one of his rare, gentle jests. You see, I’m as stubborn as a Westphalian!—The Führer had doubted his bravery, and so he could never break out now. If we want to understand the sort of person he was, we might compare him to Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, who in Field-Marshal von Manstein’s opinion was not belonging to quite the same class as Baron von Fritsch, Beck, von Rundstedt, von Bock and Ritter von Leeb.
At 2215 hours that same dreary night, a radio transmission came from our Führer: Sixth Army is temporarily surrounded by Russian forces. I know Sixth Army and your Commander-in-Chief, so I have no doubt that in this difficult situation you will stand bravely fast. You must know I am doing everything possible to relieve you. I will issue my instructions at the proper time. ADOLF HITLER.
Then he was happy again. Our Führer still believed in him. Our Führer’s confidence was as vital to him as is gasoline to our troops at Stalingrad.
They asked him what they should do.
The left side of his face twitched.
They looked at him.
We must convince each soldier of his superiority, said white-gloved Lieutenant-General Paulus.
Another Ju-52, black cross visible on the canted wing, came hurtling downward, wheels already extended, black smoke spreading crazily from the cockpit; then came the crash, the explosion, the red flames in the snow. His soldiers groaned.
Standing fast is all very well, he remarked to no one, but not for inadequate forces deployed on excessively wide sectors.
Yes, sir, said Major-General Schmidt. Did you see this dispatch? The Führer’s just come back to Wolf’s Lair. He says he’s confident about our situation.
They preserved themselves quite well and cheerfully until Christmas, each of their Nebelwerfer shells as heavy as a half-grown child. Comrade Stalin is said to have been quite astonished at the effectiveness of their defense. For this we must credit Paulus, at least in part, for it was he who kept studying the situation maps, drawing up defensive concentration points for each subsector. Eleventh Corps and Fourteenth Panzer would be drawn in here and here, on the east bank of the Don. The west bank he’d relinquish, for now. The men believed in him; they trusted that he would get them out. He who had always been cursed by his ability to foresee the murkiest potentialities of every move on the chessboard now found himself not yet checkmated but checked, to be sure; he was a white king thinly screened by pawns. He told his officers: Don’t worry. I’ll assume full responsibility.—Truth to tell, he still thought that he could hold, given sufficient exertion. Soon he’d be granted permission to initiate Operation Winter Storm, followed by Operation Thunderclap. (He longed for the privilege of one last conference at Headquarters Werewolf or Headquarters Wolf’s Lair; he longed to fall down on his knees, upraise his arms, and cry out: Without you, my Führer, there’s no hope.) His triumph at Kharkov last spring now seemed to him to have been the result of fanatical steadfastness pure and simple: He’d said no to Twenty-eighth Soviet Army, and Twenty-eighth Soviet Army had stopped dead. It was then that he’d injected his tanks into the bleeding enemy wound at Balakleya. Why hadn’t he been made Field-Marshal after that? (Superior will, he’d once been instructed by Field-Marshal von Reichenau, is as effective as a pistol held to an R-girl’s head!) And now the enemy concluded Operation Saturn against Rostov and Millerovo.
First the maps, then a cigarette, then Coca. He wrote her another of his rare letters, saying: At the moment I’ve got a really difficult problem on my hands, but I hope to solve it soon.
Just then he heard a melody. On the icy street, a soldier was playing Beethoven on a grand piano which someone had trundled out of a destroyed house. He played quite well; it was the Fifth Piano Concerto, the dear old “Emperor.” A hundred soldiers stood around the pianist listening, with blankets wrapped around their heads against the cold. They were his young girl-faced boys whose belts of creaking leather had frozen to their uniforms. Some were smiling. The chords echoed like a fusillade, then flew away into the snow-choked ravines of Stalingrad, and as they flew they became even lovelier than the multicolored fireworks of the enemy rockets. Paulus could hear them three blocks away. He longed to come and stand in the crowd with the others, but feared to destroy their pleasure. The field telephone was already whispering like Ukrainian cornfields; there’d been an incursion on his southeast perimeter.