I suppose he insisted on inspecting every button, didn’t he?—
Oh, Papa! cried darling Olga, with a little pout.
It does look very nice on you, without a doubt.
But Robert looked miserably at Coca, and Coca seemed to be holding back tears. He tried to convince himself that it was only because the boy would momentarily be going away. When they’d eaten up all of Coca’s little cakes, he rose to carry out Robert’s suitcase, although Olga protested that he was getting too famous and important to do that. The Baron, whose family name was von Kutzschenbach, and with whom Coca felt more at ease than he, had certainly bought Olga a splendid car, a Mercedes of the latest make. (Where was he this time? Olga hadn’t said.) The swastika pennant gazed out newly black-on-crimson from its nickel-plated holder. He stood admiring the car a little awkwardly until she and the boy came out. He wondered how well her husband was able to control her. It was not, strictly speaking, his place to worry about her anymore, but of course a father can never absolve himself of his responsibility. First he embraced her, then shook Robert’s hand; Coca kissed them both, and they drove away, rounding the corner rather too quickly in his opinion, although Olga was an excellent driver. After that, of course… One of the things he’d learned about his wife was that when she was unhappy or angry about something, she couldn’t help but express it; trying to persuade her into an exchange of views before she’d purged her feelings would have only made everything worse. It had always been very important for him to get on with Coca, not only because he hated personal confrontations; the real truth was that he sincerely loved his wife; and what hurt her made him miserable. Thus logic and affection together induced him to answer instead of merely scolding her, and he steadily said: That’s a matter for political decision, Coca. Anyhow, there are sufficient military grounds…
But what will become of us all?
What do you mean?
Who’s going to live to see the end of this?
Oh, he said, there’s quite a good chance that we’ll achieve victory this year.
He personally considered the Middle Eastern theater to be far more important to the ultimate outcome. Only there could the British be defeated.
Pulling on fresh white gloves, he bent over the desk and studied the snowy sheet of symbols: Lage 4.6.41.abds mit Feindbild, situation map with enemy dispositions. The summer maples, oaks and lindens rode Berlin like witches.
On 5.8.42, Lieutenant-General Paulus, now in command of Sixth Army, approached Stalingrad in obedience to the directives of Operation Blue, or Blau as I should say, for blue is merely any blue, but the German blau signifies to me a greyish blue like the Caspian Sea on an overcast day. The primary goal of Operation Blau was to seize Russia’s oil fields in the Caucasus. Stalingrad, the sleepwalker’s afterthought, could hardly yet be seen on the eastward horizon. The tanks droned on. August burned down upon the brown steppes.
Fresh from the victory in Kharkov, his face taut with youth even now at fifty-two, with a new Knight’s Cross pinned to his left breast pocket, and high on the right an airplane-straight eagle clutching a swastika, Paulus sat in his tent, listening to Beethoven.
He’d last been privileged to see the Führer two months earlier, on 1.6.42. (Von Manstein, the hero of Operation Sturgeon, was smashing the defenses of Sebastopol, a feat for which the Führer would make him Field-Marshal; the 
were detailing a punitive action against the village of Lidice; Rommel had the British on the run in Africa.) The Führer flew in to Poltava, which was the current headquarters of Army Group South. As for Paulus, he changed his grey field-overcoat for parade dress, his riding boots shined, his spurs gleaming, the golden eagle on his chest, gold braid, gold buttons. The Focke-Wulf touched down by military huts in the forest shadows. Beyond the treetops he spied what must have been the cathedral of the Krestovozdvizhenskii Monastery, which Coca, who was Orthodox, had once told him he really ought to try to see, but unsurprisingly the black Mercedes-Benz carried him in the opposite direction. He sat in the back, and the S.D. police-lieutenant, who was tanned and young and had honeycolored hair sat in front beside the driver, with a pistol in his lap. Poltava did not seem to be either as hot or as white as Zhitomir had been last summer, that summer of apples and cherries, but it was equally silent; these Eastern cities always are, once they’ve been absorbed into our new territories. Paulus never ceased to find this rather eerie. Coca had reminded him, perhaps more frequently than she needed to (he particularly remembered one discussion they’d had when she was brushing her hair, a discussion which only the most immense efforts had saved from becoming an argument) that in the Civil War days these peasants hid machine-guns in haystacks, resisting the exactions of Soviet power. Although he’d pointed out to her as tactfully as he could that their resistance had been vain, and that the coercive power of our Reich was infinitely superior to that of the Russians with their disorderliness, bad leadership and poor communications, still, it was habitual with him not merely to consider the other point of view, but to elevate Coca’s opinions a trifle, to lay them on the mantelpiece, as it were. So he inquired whether there had been any difficulties here with partisans.—By no means, Herr Lieutenant-General! returned the S.D. man, smiling at him in the mirror even as he continued to watch the road; he was a very well-trained youth, and Paulus approved of him, so he continued the conversation: I’m glad to hear that these people are loyal to us.—Herr Lieutenant-General, you can ask anything of them, just like horses. They work until they drop and make no demands.
First there was the road and the river, the Vorskla River he knew it was (Paulus never forgot a map). Then came walls of barbed wire with the red-and-black-striped barrier pole at each gate, the happily vigilant, blue-eyed young sentries with their machine-guns. The closer he came to our Führer, the more perfect everything seemed. Next there were the railroad tracks, and on the tracks the windowless train cars guarded by Waffen-. Here the car left him, the S.D. man saluting, then bidding farewell with a hearty Heil Hitler. At the next gate he surrendered his Mauser pistol for the duration (no offense intended, Herr Lieutenant-General!) Two