Europe Central (144 page)

461
Signal
magazine: “‘I’ll have the second from the right,’” says Hilde . . .”—Mayer, op. cit. The following sentence, “I don’t care how many bombs they drop . . .” is my invention. The repaired shop window through which Hilde is bravely peering was damaged by an Allied air raid.

462 Gerstein to Hochstrasser: “If Hitler should lose, he’ll slam the door . . .”—Loosely after Gerstein to Nieuwenhuisen, to whom Gerstein was in fact speaking; in Friedländer, p. 163.

462 “They” at Oranienburg: “What you see here makes you either brutal or sentimental” —Klee et al, p. 163 (letter from S.S.-Obersturmführer Karl Kretchmer, Sonderkommando 4a, 27 September 1942).

463 Details on Ravensbrück concentration camp—Based on Germaine Tillion,
Ravensbrück: An Eyewitness Account of a Women’s Concentration Camp,
trans. by Gerald Satter-white (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975).

464 Gerstein’s father: “Hard times demand hard methods”—Friedländer, p. 203.

466 Dr. Pfannenstiel to Gerstein: “You’re the man who invented the gas chamber”—An allegation (not made specifically by Dr. Pfannenstiel or anyone) quoted by Balfour.

466 Dr. Pfannenstiel: “I noticed nothing special about the corpses . . .”—Friedländer, p. 118 (Pfannenstiel’s testimony before the Darmstadt Court, 1950, slightly abridged).

466 Gerstein on the pink color of the corpses killed by Zyklon B—Described in The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, p. 168 (Franciszek Piper, “The Mass Extermination of Jews”).

466 Dr. Pfannenstiel: “Can science devise a way to render this process of exterminating human beings devoid of cruelty?”—In his postwar testimony before the Darmstadt Court, Pfannenstiel actually said: “I wanted to know in particular if this process of exterminating human beings was accompanied by any acts of cruelty” (Friedländer, p. 118). I would think that my alteration does perfect justice to his thought processes during the days when he could participate in the Holocaust with impunity.

466 Gerstein and Helmut Franz on Kollwitz’s “Volunteers”—Imagined by me. Helmut Franz’s views on the need to respect evil and leave it alone are based in part on the argument in von Franz’s
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales.

466 The same conversation, on voluntarism and willing Hitler to be good—Somewhat based on Rudolf Hess’s notion of loyalty to Hitler, as quoted in Krebs, pp. 206-07. Hess actually does compare himself to Hagen.

468 “Let gape the gates!”—
Poetic Edda,
p. 151 (“Svipdagsmál,” stanza 43).

470 “Clever Hans” Günther’s victims: two hundred thousand Jews in Bohemia and Moravia—Richard Overy,
Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945
(New York: Viking, 2001), p. 369 (HQ BAOR, interrogation reports from No. 1 Sub-Centre, 3-10 December 1945).

470 Gerstein to his father: “You are wrong about one thing . . .”—Levin, p. 310; Friedländer, p. 208 (“retranslated” a little).

470 Gerstein to his wife: “People will hear about me . . .”—Friedländer, p. 211.

471 “It may be that the mere fact of making such efforts . . .”—Friedländer, pp. 198-99 (Frankfurt court document, 1955).

471 Göring: “Anybody can make an atrocity film . . .”—G. M. Gilbert, Ph.D.,
Nuremberg Diary
(New York: Da Capo, 1995, repr. of 1947 ed.), p. 152 (15 February 1946). Göring was of course sentenced to death. It may be worth noting here that his wife told him: “I shall think you died for Germany!” and “then all suffering vanished from his face.” Her verdict: “He was devotion and goodness incarnate.”—Emmy Goering,
My Life with Goering
(London: Bruce and Watson Ltd., 1972), pp. 157, 159.

THE SECOND FRONT

472 Epigraph—Vladimir Karpov, ed. [photos; with text by Georgii Drozdov and Evgenii Ryabko, trans. Lydia Kmetyuk],
Russia at War: 1941-45
(London: Stanley Paul, 1987), p. 17.

472 Chuikov’s decorations—He also received eight Orders of Lenin and one order of the Red Star. He was not promoted to Field-Marshal until 1955.

472 Assessment of Chuikov’s military prowess—After the brief biography by Richard Woff, in Shukman, pp. 67-74. I forgot to mention that during the Nazi-Soviet Pact he’d participated in the heroic liberation of East Poland from the Poles.

472 Chuikov: “The black humped shapes, like camels on their knees, of dead enemy tanks.”—Op. cit., p. 18.

473 Chuikov: “The spring was with us, but behind the enemy’s lines it was autumn”—Ibid., p. 17.

473 Chuikov: “This long delay in the opening of the second front . . .”—Ibid., p. 20.

473 The stanza from Marina Tsvetaeva: “You can’t withstand me . . .”—Tsvetaeva, p. 43 (“Where you are I can reach you” [1923]), “retranslated” and slightly truncated by WTV.

476 “There were tears in the men’s eyes . . .”
—
Modern Art Museum catalogue, unnumbered p. 4.

476 Situation of Chuikov in March 1943—After Richard Woff, in Shukman, p. 72; John Erickson (“Malinovsky”), in the same work, p. 120; John Erickson,
The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany,
vol. 2 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 45-64;
Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
vol. 29, p. 195, which also gives information on Chuikov’s various decorations.

477 The trembling of Paulus’s hand when he lit a cigarette—
Erzählungen über mein Schaffen,
orig. p. 32; Hau-Bigelow, p. 5.

477 Karmen’s simile of the waterfall—After the same document, pp. 32-33, Hau-Bigelow, p. 5.

477 Soviet gratitude for Lend-Lease items—I quote the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
’s entry on this program: “The deliveries made under lend-lease spurred US production during the war and promoted the enrichment of the monopolies at the expense of the government.”

478 Karmen on remembering everything—After
Erzählungen über mein Schaffen,
p. 36, Hau-Bigelow, p. 7 (“Again the ruins of Berlin flash by . . . And again I try not to forget, as I [tried] two years earlier in Stalingrad, not the smallest, not a single detail of this historic event”).

479 “Dziga Vertov’s seven-reel declaration of love for the women of our Soviet military forces”—Made in 1938, but not widely distributed since by then this filmmaker was getting isolated for his “formalism.” As the saying goes, he died in obscurity. I wish I had found time to add a story about the rat-infested basement where the young Dziga Vertov edited
Kino-Pravda,
or the strange coincidence by which his “Three Songs of Lenin” was so well received by the Italian Fascists that it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival of 1935.

479 Karmen’s aerial bombing mission—After
Erzählungen über mein Schaffen
, pp. 24-28, Hau-Bigelow, pp. 2-4.

480 Photographs of Soviet prisons from the outside (mentioned occasionally in “The Second Front” and “Opus 110”)—Lubarsky, pp. 14-19.

481 Käthe Kollwitz: “I believe that bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production” —
Diary and Letters,
p. 23 (autobiography).

483 Comrade Stalin: “Feelings are women’s concern”—Enzo Biagi,
Svetlana: An Intimate Portrait,
trans. Timothy Wilson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), p. 25.

483 Karmen’s visit to Stalin’s dacha—Ibid, p. 19. According to this source, he and Simonov were present when Svetlana met her great love, the married filmmaker A. J. Kapler, who got
sent away
for five years for his pains.

484 “Their only reason for invading France at that late date was to deny us total victory in Germany”—An actual Communist argument. See Andeas Dorpalen,
German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach
(Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1985), p. 449.

484 Red Army’s rape of German women: “an incendiary shell usually brought them out of their cellars.”—Information from Clark, p. 417.

OPERATION CITADEL

485 First epigraph—Von Manstein, p. 383.

485 Second epigraph—Billinger, pp. 140-41.

486 Von Manstein: “Grave as the loss of Sixth Army certainly is . . .”—Von Manstein, pp. 289-90, slightly altered.

486 Statistics on troop and mine dispositions at Kursk—
Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
vol. 14, p. 134 (entry on the Battle of Kursk). This engagement is generally considered to have lasted two weeks. Soviet sources, however, concatenate it with other battles, so that it runs fifty days—all the more monumental.

486 Rüdiger’s admiration for Lisca Malbran in “Young Heart”—An anachronism. This film cleared the censorship in mid-September 1944 and premiered at the end of November. The Battle of Kursk had taken place in the summer of 1943. “Young Heart” disappeared rapidly because in its second month it had earned only 372 Reichsmarks, ten percent less than the authorities required. It was an E-film (“Erste Grundhaltung latente polit. Funktion”), in other words a “serious” drama with appropriate political nudges. H-films were comic with political nudges. There were also nP-films and P-films (non-political and manifestly political). After Stalingrad, E-films were preferred over H-films, “on account of the seriousness and greatness of our times”. Unlike many films, especially P-films, “Young Heart” received no subsidy. Information from Dr. Gerd Albrecht,
Nationalsozialistiche Filmpolitik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Drittes Reiches
(Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1969), summarized for WTV by the delicious Yolande Korb. “Young Heart” must have been dreadful.

487 Various details relative to the weaponry of the two sides at Kursk, especially regarding the numbers and capabilities of Tiger tanks—David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House,
The Battle of Kursk
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).

487 Some of my visual descriptions of German troops in this operation are based on photographs in the Ullstein archive.

488 Dancwart’s favorite proverb: “Keep riding until daybreak”—
Nibelungenlied,
p. 202 (“We cannot bivouc,” answered bold Dancwart. “You must all keep riding until daybreak.”)

489 The size of the salient: half the size of England—Erickson,
The Road to Berlin,
p. 64.

489 Ninth Panzer Division’s experiences at Kursk—Based in part on Haupt, 173-74 (battle diary of Ninth Panzer, Panzer-Grenadier Grosssdeutschland, 6 June 1943, Citadel/ Orel).

490 Ninth Panzer Division’s armor strength at Kursk—Glantz and House, p. 349.

490 Twenty-first Panzer Brigade’s armor strength at Kursk—Ibid., p. 284.

490 “Well, from the very beginning we’d known that it was no use; it was up to us as frontline soldiers simply to obey orders and bear the responsibility”—After
Hans von Luck, Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck
(New York: Random House / Dell, 1989 repr. of undated Praeger ed.), p. 238 (original reads, in another context: “It sounded to us rather too pathetic, but what was the use? We knew that from now on it was up to us, as frontline soldiers, to bear the responsibility and make the decisions”).

490 Emblems of Panzer divisions, 1941-42—Haupt, p, 178. When I write that “we disguised the X of our divisional emblem with a V overhung by a horizontal bar,” I am actually describing the disguise of Fifth Panzer.

490 Number of Tiger tanks assigned to Ninth Army at Kursk—Nik Cornish,
Images of Kursk: History’s Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943
(London: Brown Partworks Ltd. / Brassey’s, Inc., 2002), p. 135.

493 Sergeant Gunther: “Slavs drink from the skulls of their enemies”—Loosely based on Tsvetaeva, p. 114 (“Bus,” 1934-35: “Inside me, warmth and birdsong./You could drink both of them from/the two halves of my skull/[Slavs did that with enemies]”).

493 Volker: “There’s nothing we can do . . .”—
Nibelungenlied,
p. 215 (“‘The things we have been told of will happen irremediably,’ said bold Volker the Fiddler. ‘Let us ride to court and see what can happen to us fearless men in Hungary.’”)

493 “Beware of being too wise, it’s said”—Very loosely after the
Poetic Edda,
p. 22 (stanza 54, “Hávamál”).

496 “Maybe they expected me to scratch runes on the back of my hand”—“Operation Citadel” has a number of references to the
Poetic Edda,
of which this is a representative example. Brynhild (here known as Sigrdrífa) advises Siegfried, who has just awoken her from her magic sleep, to make his way through life with the help of runes. “On thy beer horn scratch it [the ale rune], and the back of thy hand, and the Need rune on thy nails” (p. 235, “The Lay of Sigrdrífa,” stanza 8, interpolated with fn.).

499 “Doom never dies, said the old man”—
Poetic Edda,
p. 25 (“Hávamál,” stanza 25, very loosely “retranslated” by WTV).

500 Hitler on Russian tank production figures: “The Russians are dead.”—Fest, p. 94.

501 Narrator: “Well, to be sure, they have good reason . . . what they had will never come back”—After the
Nibelungenlied,
p. 215 (“She has good reason for her long mourning,” answered Hagen, “but he was killed many years past. She ought to love the King of the Huns now, for Siegfried will never come back—he was buried long ago”).

503 Von Manstein:
“A clear focal point of effort at the decisive spot”
—Von Manstein, p. 547 (italics in original, excepting the “a”).

504 Significance of the Reds’ thrust against Twenty-third Panzer Corps—Described in Glantz and House, p. 161.

507 “First, get the command tank”—Information from Cornish, p. 186.

507 Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana: “I see you shining, my beloved, chaotic, all-knowing, heartless Russia”—Svetlana Alliluyeva,
Twenty Letters to a Friend,
trans. Priscilla John-son McMillan (New York: Avon Books [Discus], 1967), p. 132 (letter 11).

510 Von Manstein: “And so the final German offensive in the East ended in fiasco . . .” —Op. cit., p. 449, “retranslated” by WTV. The translator notes (p. 549) that the chapter on Operation Citadel, from which I’ve drawn this quotation, is actually an article by von Manstein for the U.S.
Marine Corps Gazette,
which in this English edition has been substituted for the original text’s much longer chapter on Citadel, “in order to shorten these memoirs to a size suitable for publication in Britain and the U.S.A.”