Outside, the air was dry, sharp, biting. I breathed in deeply and felt the cold burning the inside of my lungs. Everything looked frozen, silent. Von Gilsa got into his car with the Oberst from the AOK, offering me the front seat. We exchanged a few more words and then little by little everyone fell silent. I thought about the conference: Bierkamp’s anger was understandable. Köstring had played a dirty trick on us. Everyone in that room knew perfectly well that there was no chance the Wehrmacht would ever reach Daghestan. Some even suspected—but perhaps not Korsemann or Bierkamp—that Army Group A would, on the contrary, soon have to evacuate the Caucasus. Even if Hoth managed to link up with Paulus, it would only be to allow the Sixth Army to fall back to the Chir, or even the lower Don. One just had to look at a map to understand that the position of Army Group A was becoming untenable. Köstring must have had some certainty about that. Thus, it was out of the question to set the mountain people against us over an issue as unimportant as that of the Bergjuden: as it was, when they understood that the Red Army was returning, there would be troubles—even if only to prove, a little late of course, their loyalty and their patriotism—and we had, at all costs, to prevent things from going further. A retreat through a completely hostile environment, in terrain favorable to guerilla warfare, could become catastrophic. So some goodwill had to be shown to the friendly populations. I didn’t think Bierkamp could understand that; his police mentality, exacerbated by his obsession with numbers and reports, made him shortsighted. Recently, one of the Einsatzkommandos had liquidated a sanatorium for tubercular children, in a remote zone in the Krasnodar region. Most of the children were natives; the National Councils had vigorously protested, there had been skirmishes that had cost the lives of several soldiers. Bairamukov, the Karachai leader, had threatened von Kleist with a general insurrection if it happened again; and von Kleist had sent a furious letter to Bierkamp, who, according to what I had heard, had received it with a strange indifference: he didn’t see what the problem was. Korsemann, more sensitive to the influence of the military, had had to intervene and force him to send new instructions to the Kommandos. So Köstring hadn’t had a choice. When he arrived at the conference, Bierkamp thought the game wasn’t over yet; but Köstring, along with Bräutigam, no doubt, had already loaded the dice, and the exchange of opinions was only theater, a representation for the benefit of the uninitiated. Even if Weseloh had been present, or if I had stuck to a completely one-sided argumentation, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The Daghestan trick was brilliant, irrefutable: it flowed naturally from what had been said, and Bierkamp could make no reasonable objection to it; as to saying the truth, that there would be no occupation of Daghestan, that was quite simply unthinkable; Köstring would have had an easy time, then, having Bierkamp dismissed for defeatism. It wasn’t for nothing that the soldiers also called Köstring “the old fox”: it had been, I said to myself with bitter pleasure, a masterstroke. I knew it was going to create enemies for me: Bierkamp would try to offload the blame for his defeat on someone, and I was the most likely person. I had carried out my work with energy and rigor, though; but as during my mission in Paris, I hadn’t understood the rules of the game, I had looked for the truth when what was wanted was not the truth but political advantage. Prill and Turek would now have an easy time of it to slander me. At least Voss would not have disapproved of my presentation. Alas, Voss was dead, and I was alone again.