Paulus and Colonel Adam walked out to the front line, stepping over the grey tussocks of German corpses. It was all quiet.
On 4.1.43 the daily briefing to the Führer, which encompassed the entire world situation on a single page, allotted this paragraph to Stalingrad: 6 Armee, Heeresgruppe Don: Powerful enemy tank attack against N.W. front repelled after temporary break-in. On the army’s S.W. front, strengthening enemy artillery fire. Schmidt carried out that operation; he was the one who saved our northwestern front. Colonel-General Paulus was sitting in the basement, turning the leaves of a book he’d found in a shellhole, and he was still sitting there on the following day, which marked the first anniversary of his appointment to full command of Sixth Army; it was a very yellowed nineteenth-century volume, all in Cyrillic, of course, which he could transliterate but not interpret; and it opened naturally to an engraving of a sad-eyed bearded man who wore a squarish wool cap: ΠУҐАЧЄВь, which was to say Pugachev, the illiterate Don Cossack and pretender to the throne who abolished serfdom, attacked Orenburg, burned Kazan, took Saratov, and besieged Tsaritsyn, which is to say, Stalingrad, where Suvorov’s army defeated him; he was transported to Moscow and executed there in 1775. Paulus had studied his rebellion many years ago, back at Staff College. The Russian soldiers of Pugachev’s epoch had worn Iron Crosses as we do nowadays, although theirs sported striped ribbons, it seemed. They kept staring at him as he ranged at will through picturebook Russia, forgetting cowardice, “conscience,” Jewish trade unions, and all the other filth of so-called “civilization”; now he found himself on a single-sailed boat on a wide, calm river which could have been the Don or the Volga, low mountains all around, grasping trees, sunbeams gushing strangely through the aquatinted sky; and the pallid, moody immensity of Russia hypnotized him; aside from the fact that he couldn’t stop shivering, he might have been on holiday with Coca at Baden-Baden, sitting beside her in the sand, rereading War and Peace; he’d just reached the section about Napoleon’s retreat, which as a result of his own research he could confirm had been very accurately written; it was all foregone, deliciously perilous as Coca held his hand, sunning herself in the bathing-chair, while Ernst built a sand-castle with Friedrich and Olga went to try on her new swimming-suit, and he luxuriated in the German summer, lighting another cigarette. He turned the page, but the book sprang back open to Pugachev.
On 9.1.43, in accordance with our Führer’s instructions, he rejected the enemy’s demand for capitulation. (After all, said our Führer to Field-Marshal von Manstein, there’s no point in surrender. What do you think would happen to them? The Russians never keep any agreements.)
On 10.1.43, the Russians commenced Operation Ring. Our Marinovka salient began to collapse. Paulus awarded the Iron Cross for bravery to all his soldiers. He urged them to exert themselves toward the final victory.
On 13.1.43, Fortress Voronezh, which was our last remaining strongpoint in the vicinity of Stalingrad, came under attack; and it would fall soon; that was beyond any doubt. How could there be any relief now? Field-Marshal von Manstein had hinted to him that even if Sixth Army’s position might possibly be, in the long run, hopeless, Sixth Army still had a world-historical task: to tie up the Red Army as long as possible, which might buy Army Group South sufficient time to consolidate its defenses in southeast Russia. He was no longer optimistic about Operation Thunderclap.
On 15.1.43, when news came that the enemy had broken through our pincers at faraway Leningrad, Paulus fell silent. With his adjutant, Colonel Adam, he ventured out of his headquarters, and together they trod Red Square’s wide sweep of rubble, Paulus turning back from time to time to gaze at the place they’d just come from, where the swastika flag still flew from the charred balcony’s outcurve and the sentry on duty (One Hundred and Ninety-fourth Grenadiers) stood shivering.—Are you well, Herr Colonel-General? —Paulus did not reply. They clambered as high as it was safe to go within the skeleton of a certain half-shattered apartment building (had we or they destroyed it?), and here Paulus raised his field-glasses to his eyes, surveying his southwestern front, which was quiet. Three soldiers he didn’t recognize were shoveling snow on the runway.—So it’s over at Leningrad, after nine hundred days of sustained effort. You know, Adam, in a way that clears my mind.—Yes, Herr Colonel-General…—Paulus made an impatient gesture, and they returned unspeaking to the Univermag Department Store. That very same day in his own sector, the Russians utterly shattered Hungarian Second Army. His staff officers, as if for the first time, whispered that Sixth Army really ought to fight its way out…—Paulus rose, his face ghastly, and said to them alclass="underline" I expect you as soldiers to carry out the orders of your superior officers. In the same manner the Führer, as my superior, can and must expect that I shall obey his orders.
In retrospect we can’t really say that he was as brave and inspiring as Field-Marshal Model, nor that he stopped the Russians as had Field-Marshal von Küchler, that he enjoyed the combination of decisiveness and luck which Field-Marshal Rommel for a time possessed; that he was as cruel as Field-Marshal Schoerner, as zealously officious as fat old Field-Marshal Keitel, as effective as Field-Marshal von Reichenau (who was lucky to die before the Allies could hang him), as treasonously decent as Field-Marshal von Witzleben (whom our Führer hanged for being so), as aloof as Field-Marshal von Leeb, as competent in defensive operations as Field-Marshal von Kleist. What was he, then? I see him as the central figure of a parable, and therefore apathetic in spite of himself; in his long leather trenchcoat, his gloves and collar perfectly white even now, his loyalty gleaming, he was brought into the story of our Reich to illustrate a principle, to carry out a function, to think and suffer while things were done to him. (What’s your operational strength? he asked General von Hartmann, who replied: Sir, just count the crosses at Gumrak!) We National Socialists know that the best defense is counterattack; but Colonel-General Paulus was not allowed the forces and mobility to do that. He was nothing but a playing-card soldier, a character in a book. He sat very still in his tent and listened to Beethoven on the gramophone; his gloves were already soiled again. Did he have an inkling yet what he would be forced to suffer? Probably, since by then more than one man heard him say: History has already passed its verdict on me…—Stalingrad would be called “the turning point.” After Stalingrad, and as a result of Stalingrad, the mastery of central Europe would pass from Germany to Russia. And all because of him! If he had only…—or if the Red Army had accidentally…—The downfall of our Reich can therefore be blamed on Colonel-General Paulus. After all, it would never have happened, had everything been left up to the sunblown, tousleheaded, adorable Luftwaffe boys in Signal magazine.