Life And Fate

He could have saved his army!

But he was afraid of Hitler, afraid for his own skin!

Chalb, the chief of the SD at Headquarters, had flown to Berlin the other day. He had made some confused remark to the effect that the Fiihrer had revealed himself to be too great even for the German people. Yes… Yes… Of course…

Demagogy, nothing but demagogy…

Adam turned on the radio. The initial crackle of interference was succeeded by music: Germany was lamenting the dead of Stalingrad. The music had a strange power. Maybe the myth created by the Fiihrer would mean more for the people and for battles to come than the lives of the lice-ridden, frostbitten wrecks that had once been his men? Maybe the Fuhrer's logic was not a logic that could be understood merely from reading orders, poring over maps and drawing up schedules?

Perhaps the aura of martyrdom to which Hitler had condemned the 6th Army would bestow a new existence on Paulus and his soldiers, allowing them to participate in the future of Germany?

It wasn't a matter of pencils, calculating-machines and slide-rules. This Quartermaster-General worked according to a different logic, different criteria.

Adam, dear, faithful Adam: the purest souls are constantly and inevitably a prey to doubt. The world is always dominated by limited men, men with an unshakeable conviction of their own Tightness. The purest souls never take great decisions or hold sway over States.

'They're coming!' shouted Adam. He ordered Ritter to put the open suitcase out of the way and then straightened his uniform.

There were holes in the heels of the socks Ritter had just thrown into the case. What troubled Ritter was not that a careless and anxious Paulus might wear these socks, but that the holes might be glimpsed by hostile Russian eyes.

Adam adopted what he considered to be the correct pose for an adjutant to a field-marshal: he stood quite still, his hands resting on the back of a chair, his back turned to the door that any moment now would be flung open, his eyes gazing calmly, attentively and affectionately at Paulus himself.

Paulus leant back, away from the table, compressing his lips. If the Fuhrer wanted play-acting, then he was ready to comply.

Any minute now the door would open; this room in a dark cellar would be scrutinized by men who lived on the earth's surface. The pain and bitterness had passed, what remained was fear: fear that the door would be opened, not by representatives of the Soviet High Command who had prepared their role in this solemn scene, but by wild, trigger-happy soldiers. And fear of the unknown: once this final scene had been played out, life would begin again. But what kind of life and where? Siberia, a Moscow prison, a barrack-hut in a labour camp?

45

That night the people on the left bank had seen multi-coloured flares light up the sky over Stalingrad. The German army had surrendered.

People had immediately begun crossing the Volga into the city itself. They had heard that the remaining inhabitants of Stalingrad had endured terrible hunger during these last weeks; the officers, soldiers and sailors from the Volga fleet all carried little bundles of ti

These unarmed soldiers who entered Stalingrad during the night, who handed out bread and kissed and embraced the inhabitants, seemed almost sad; there was little singing or rejoicing.

The morning of z February, 1943, was very misty. The mist rose up from the holes pierced in the ice and from the few patches of unfrozen water. The sun rose, as harsh now in the winter winds as during the blazing heat of August. The dry snow drifted about over the level ground, forming milky spirals and columns, then suddenly lost its will and settled again. Everywhere you could see traces of the east wind: collars of snow round the stems of thorn-bushes, congealed ripples on the slopes of the gullies, small mounds and patches of bare clay…

From the Stalingrad bank it looked as though the people crossing the Volga were being formed out of the mist itself, as though they had been sculpted by the wind and frost. They had no mission to accomplish in Stalingrad; the war here was over and no one had sent them. They came spontaneously, of their own accord – soldiers and road-layers, drivers and gu

Something very strange had happened to the city. You could hear the sound of car-horns and tractor engines; people were playing harmonicas, soldiers were shouting and laughing, dancers were stamping down the snow with their felt boots. But, for all this, the city felt dead.

The normal life of Stalingrad had come to an end several months before: schools, factories, women's dressmakers, amateur choirs and theatre groups, crèches, cinemas, the city police had all ceased to function. A new city – wartime Stalingrad – had been born out of the flames. This city had its own layout of streets and squares, its own underground buildings, its own traffic laws, its own commerce, factories and artisans, its own cemeteries, concerts and drinking parties.

Every epoch has its own capital city, a city that embodies its will and soul. For several months of the Second World War this city was Stalingrad. The thoughts and passions of humanity were centred on Stalingrad. Factories and printing presses functioned for the sake of Stalingrad. Parliamentary leaders rose to their feet to speak of Stalingrad. But when thousands of people poured in from the steppes to fill the empty streets, when the first car engines started up, this world capital ceased to exist.

On that day newspapers all over the world reported the details of the German surrender. People in Europe, America and India were able to read how Field-Marshal Paulus had left his underground headquarters, how the German generals had undergone a preliminary interrogation at the headquarters of Shumilov's 64th Army, and about what General Schmidt, Paulus's chief of staff, had been wearing.

By then Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill were looking for new crisis points in the war. Stalin was tapping the table with his finger and asking the Chief of the General Staff if arrangements had been completed to transfer the troops from Stalingrad to other Fronts. The capital of the world war, full as it was of generals, experts in street-fighting, strategic maps, armaments and well-kept communication trenches, had ceased to exist. Or rather, it had begun a new existence, similar to that of present-day Athens or Rome. Historians, museum guides, teachers and eternally bored schoolchildren, though not yet visible, had become its new masters.

At the same time, an everyday, working city was coming into being – with schools, factories, maternity homes, police, an opera and a prison.

A light dusting of snow had fallen on the paths along which men had carried shells, loaves of bread and pots of kasha to gun emplacements, along which they had dragged machine-guns, along which snipers and artillery observers had crept to their stone hiding-places.

Snow had fallen on the paths along which messengers had run between companies and battalions, the paths leading from Batyuk's division to Ba