On 22.6.41, the first ten thousand shells of Operation Barbarossa fulfilled themselves in explosions as golden as the victory angel in Berlin who outstretches her hand high over Moltke’s statue. And now the groups, armies, divisions and battalions at the grey-shaded border of Hitler’s white map began the next lightning-war, whiteness seized, footprinted with ensigns, pennants, flags, circles and semicircles, the sleepwalker’s wide-rooted, tapering arrows pointing east…
Lieutenant-General Friedrich Paulus was fifty-one years old. He had been a military man for the last thirty-one. In short, he was a member of the “Old Fighters.” Like our Führer, he’d served bravely in the previous world war, winning the Iron Cross, both first and second classes. He admired the way the Führer had recovered all the territories stripped away from us at the end of that conflict. Moreover, he was one of those handsome generals whom everybody needs; his moustache was as stylish as a German bayonet. Slightly attainted by cosmopolitanism (Coca was Romanian), Paulus nonetheless received increasingly important commands, since nobody could deny his loyal thoroughness: Chief of Staff of Panzer troops, then Fourth Army Chief of Staff in the Polish campaign (his progress on the white map curiously resembling one of those crude black spearpoints which our professors have unearthed from medieval Poland), Sixth Army Chief of Staff during the conquest of France… This same Sixth Army would soon be on the march to Stalingrad. As First Quartermaster of the General Staff, under circumstances of extreme secrecy, he’d drafted the war-plan for Barbarossa. The railroad stop was Bahnhof Görlitz. Then came the nested checkpoints, and two
-men escorted him into Wolf’s Lair with the isolated sub-perimeters of barbed wire within its saliented parallelogram. Here grew many trees between bunkers whose roofs had been camouflaged with artificial moss, and here wormed the shell-game tunnels in which we hid Wolf’s special train; in Wolf’s Lair everything was safe. Paulus accomplished much of his best work here. The ultimate objective, instructed our Führer, and everyone held his breath, is the cordoning off of Asiatic Russia along the general line Volga-Archangel. Requirements: Glycerine for cordite, coal gas for explosives, bauxite for aircraft parts… As slowly and perfectly as a silkworm spins, Paulus constructed our networks, schedules and dispositions. In the words of General Kesselring: He made a specially good impression on me by his levelheadedness and his sober estimate of the coming trial of strength. Coca was sad, of course. She’d never entirely overcome her leftist sympathies. Moreover, like most of her countrymen she held an exaggerated regard for Russian troops. Desiring to spare her any useless anxieties, her husband had encouraged her to believe that all movements east would cease at the Ribbentrop-Molotov Line; but even that had pained her; she’d considered Case White unjustified. At any rate, we’d neutralized the Polish threat; Case White was now closed. Our subsequent duty was to suspend operations, possibly for the next decade, during which time the French and the British weren’t supposed to declare war. Indeed, this was what he himself had been told by the High Command. Once we were faced with a full-scale European conflict, which necessarily unfolded into another world war, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Line lost its validity. (The Führer had explained in confidence that Operation Barbarossa must be launched no later than the spring of 1941.) And Coca found out.
Frequently he brought his work home in his briefcase, the alternative being to never come home at all, and on one occasion, his daughter Olga’s son, who at Coca’s wish was staying with them for three weeks while his parents wrapped up some business in Paris, had done the mischief; something about the boy reminded him of his son Ernst, who was actually twenty-three now and a soldier in Sixth Army; the boy’s twin brother Friedrich was also serving Germany, but in another unit. What exactly was it which brought Ernst to mind? He would have been stating the matter unkindly had he said that they were both weak, and it might not even have been weakness as much as that certain kind of grief which treasures up its own secrets. In fact, in our army it often happens that the most woebegone soldiers are the bravest, perhaps because death would release them from themselves. Hopefully the war would be over by the time Olga’s boy would be called up; he was very intelligent but delicate. Distressed about some misunderstanding or other with his comrades in the Hitler Youth (after all, this was a different branch), the child rushed into his study, which he had express instructions not to do, but since he was actually choking back tears, Paulus couldn’t find the heart to be strict with him. He remembered his own school days all too well. There on the beechwood table, unfortunately, lay four recent aerial reconnaissance photographs of Red Army concentrations, which he’d laid end to end, the comfortingly heavy, marvelously sharp Schneider loupe positioned on top of Minsk just then, with the lanyard trailing halfway across Belorussia; and although to civilian eyes any aerial view resembles any other, particularly when the topography is flat, and although the Soviet divisions had been identified only by Roman numbers, each photograph was most unfortunately emblazoned with the stamp of the Abteilung Fremde Luftwaffe Ost.—Ost! gasped the precocious boy. Grandfather, what’s there to worry about in the East?—With a gently reproving smile, Paulus told him to be silent.—You know that these topics are forbidden, Robert, and you also know the reason why they are forbidden. Isn’t that so? Now, what’s the reason?—Because—because we have enemies everywhere, Grandfather. That’s…—Exactly. Now what’s this I hear about Heinz and Pauli pulling a button off your uniform? You’re far too grown up to cry…—He’d assumed that Robert, who was ordinarily quite good about such things, would tell no one, not even his grandmother, whom he adored, and, come to think of it, it might not have been Robert’s fault at all that Coca discovered the secret, for on several occasions before and since he’d had large-scale maps of western Russia with him. As a rule, however, Coca didn’t enter his study uninvited. Moreover, when he didn’t actually need them, whatever secret papers he had to bring home were locked in his briefcase, and his briefcase was in the safe. Coca said nothing until Olga had come to take Robert away. Breathless and fidgety as always, Olga presented them with a case of Veuve Clicquot, his favorite, to reward them for taking care of Robert. He thought that excessive, but thanked her as graciously as he could. Peeping into his face, she said that an old French lady had given her a very good price; no doubt it had been to her advantage that she’d learned perfect French from her mother.—No doubt indeed, said her father, smiling.—She picked at her eyebrows and remarked that it was surprising how at home one felt in Paris nowadays; everything was becoming Germanized. Papa was a hero there to a lot of people, thanks to the part he’d played. Coca nodded mirthlessly; she wanted Olga to depart so that the quarrrel could begin; he understood that perfectly well, but Olga fortunately didn’t. Some shops had closed, of course, said Olga, and they’d melted down Victor Hugo’s statue for bullet-casings. Didn’t Mama think that was a pity? and Mama said that it was. It had been hot, a different sort of heat from Berlin’s, somehow, and Baroness Hoyningen-Huene, who unlike Mama was really starting to look her age, had complained about how difficult it was to open the windows at the chalet; by the way, had she made the correct decision in forbearing to buy Papa a replica of the double-headed Frankish battle-axe? Olga’s visits were ordinarily fun, not least because she’d always managed to keep herself just a little bit spoiled. And her father needed nothing more than to be amused right now, God knows; the left side of his mouth had already begun to smile as she dashed on: Count Zubov had encountered her on the Rue de Rivoli, quite by chance; he’d shown himself to be very impressed with her new dress, very impressed! Paulus could well imagine the poor Count, who was one of the most meekly polite noblemen ever raised, feeling himself obliged to praise Olga’s dress, which had been very expensive, ad infinitum, or until she was satisfied, whichever took longer.