Herr Reichsführer, I’m informed that you’ve already mustered 
-brigades of Baltics and even Balkan Muslims—
Quite so, but their blood isn’t quite as alien as yours. One has to calculate frightfully coolly in these matters. You see, in the context of the overall military situation—
What we could do with a hundred Panther tanks! Vlasov burst out.
Himmler fell silent. He was anxious. The Anglo-Americans were about to breach German soil.
Vlasov tried to hearten him: Don’t you remember when Guderian broke out from the Meuse and surrounded French and British divisions from the rear? We can still do it even now!
Himmler didn’t care. Himmler didn’t believe.
Vlasov tried to reason with him then, saying: Everyone says that Germany is preparing secret weapons: flying bombs, V-weapons, rockets and I don’t know what else. So why not build up a few Slav armies?
Shaking his head, the Reichsführer replied: If we lose the war against you Russians, it must be because our blood has been poisoned by the Jewish virus.
Heidi’s tanned face hardened when he told her. (Frauke was out with her little comrades, gathering metal for the war effort.) They sat down at the kitchen table and started drinking schnapps. Pretty soon she was sobbing and drooling on his shoulder. They drank themselves quite sober. He muttered: Well, it wasn’t as if I expected him to offer me bread and salt…
Is that what they do to welcome guests in your country?
Only for Germans, he replied bitterly. He added: And now not even for them!
They sat in silence, both afraid to say anything, until finally Vlasov, striving to help them withdraw from the isolated position in which they’d found themselves, cleared his throat, traced his forefinger around the rim of the glass and murmured: Don’t worry about anything. If we’re fated to die, we’ll die. Otherwise we’ll survive no matter what.
Fate is everything, his wife agreed solemnly. I’m going to be sick.
I’m still convinced I can counterattack, if I’m deeply echeloned in both wings—
Andrei, I’ll come back in a minute, and then we can—
But Himmler—
This isn’t healthy!
Of course it isn’t, he laughed. But how can you expect anything from an Untermensch?
Himmler received him again on 16.9.44. (The rumor that the meeting was arranged by Heidi through the mediation of an -man she’d once slept with may not be entirely without foundation.) Vlasov requested ten divisions. Himmler had only two to give him, and they weren’t ready.
In the interest of Reich security, Himmler had already decided to table Operation Skorpion. As he remarked to -Colonel Gunter d’Alquen: Who compels us to keep the promises we make?
Of course in politics one must gild the truth to the most practical (I mean reasonable) sheen, and so in those autumn days of 1944, when even Vlasov could hardly deny the concentration camps, the hostages shot in batches, the ice-grained women’s corpses frozen to their hanging-ropes (hadn’t he once seen the ice on Zoya’s eyelids, everything grey on grey?), our reasonable Russian was compelled in his latest manifesto to define the war as a fight to the finish of opposing political systems: the powers of imperialism, led by the plutocrats of England and the USA, the powers of internationalism, led by the Stalin clique, and freedom-loving nations, who thirst to live their own way of life, determined by their historical and national development. Who could those freedom-loving nations be? No, some things he couldn’t deny. And so, like a troop train occluding all the rearmost station platforms in its coming, one question he had asked and asked again now stopped before his eyes, momentarily blocking any view of Russia’s future.
And what about the Jews? he asked for the very last time.
Sorrowfully clapping him on the shoulder, Strik-Strikfeldt replied: All German-held territories are being cleansed of Jews on political rather than economic grounds.
On political grounds? What exactly does that mean?
My dear fellow, you know very well that everybody in the East is anti-Semitic. And these, well, let’s call them pogroms, they’re a cheap way to win the trusting obedience of your White Russians.
But the Jews—
They’re better off, said his friend. After all, they’re unreliable elements. Where could we permit them to go? It’s better to release them from the situation.
Vlasov gazed at him gently.—How does that make you feel about yourself, Wilfried Karlovich?
Never mind that. No, don’t leave just yet. I still have some pretty good cognac here, and now that the Americans control Paris I don’t suppose we’ll be getting any more, so we might as well—here. I seemed to know that you’d ask that question sometime, but…
Yes, said Vlasov breathlessly. I know what you’re thinking. You want to know why I didn’t ask you a long time before now.
You did.
I did, but I…
Well, I thought of that, to be sure. He’ll ask me, I thought. And then… From the very first I tried to protect you, because I knew that you were decent, and as long as you didn’t know too much, you could save yourself, which no matter how one looks at it is a benefit. (Do you think I’ve saved myself? In fact, I… ) I mean, if a single Russian prisoner of war is saved, that’s a net good, isn’t it? Unofficial sources have told me that three or four million have already died in captivity—
Don’t worry, Vlasov said. You’re still my friend. I just… But let me ask you something. What you told me about the Katyń massacre, that was—confirmed?
Ha, ha! I can see your fingers moving in your pocket. You must be playing with that Geco shell. Yes, I swear it!
That’s all right then, said Vlasov warmly. Then I don’t care. We’re all murderers. And maybe if I don’t surrender to despair I can still do something good. But what about Heidi? Were you—
Forgive me, my dear fellow. I only wanted to bring you security and perhaps divert you a little. Don’t you care for her? If not, I can—
The radio was shouting: To freshen our German blood…—He went away to stroke the fair and silky hair of his Aryan wife.
I know, said Heidi. Of course it’s difficult to know how to feel. I went through that stage with my first husband. You need to harden yourself, Andrei.
The bombing of Berlin was growing heavier now.
In 10.44, the Russians captured their first German town. Smashing in the heads of babies, nailing naked women to barn doors, they took their joyous revenge. Heidi, who was now wiring ignition systems for Messerschmitt fighter planes, heard on the radio that the men had been made to hold lamps and watch as their womenfolk were raped by hordes of Red Army soldiers. Men who resisted were castrated; women who resisted were disemboweled. When the Germans recaptured the place, they found lines of women and children laid out in a field, with cartridges glittering beside them. So Goebbels made a speech. He warned that we were all going to have to strengthen our wills and harden our hearts…
In the month of 11.44 the Nazis sponsored a conference in Prague. (Where were the Jews who’d lived there?—Gone away.) At the railroad station, a long line of German soldiers accorded Vlasov their best Nazi salutes. He stared back, scratching vaguely at the general’s stripes on his trousers. He’d been almost-promised a command over the criminal remnants of the -Kaminski Brigade (for Kaminski was shot for excessive ruthlessness against the Warsaw rebels). He’d nearly been given authority over a misplaced light-armed detachment; he had a fair chance of becoming Führer of three shattered, demoralized Russian units recalled from the collapsing Westfront. It was up to him to show what he could do. Could he only help the Reich to break out of the Bolshevik trap, why, then, he’d get rewarded exactly as he deserved! Cleaning his glasses, he waited for Kroeger to bring the schnapps. And now, in the citadel, dignitaries gave speeches in commemoration of the new Prague Manifesto, which the