Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member (5 page)

In early October we began offensive operations again. Georg’s division moved forward into a marshy area that was impracticable for motorized vehicles. The autumn, which was warm, hampered the armies’ advance: the freeze was late in coming. It rained constantly, obstinately. The roads turned into sewers. Trucks, bogged down in the mud, ran out of fuel, and food supplies could not get through. At times Georg and his horses were almost a hundred kilometers ahead of the rest of their division. The month of October practically decided the fate of the war. It was soon clear that we could not take Moscow before December, when the terrible Russian winter would set in. The officers thought about the ill-fated French episode in 1812. The autumn had stalled our forward momentum, and winter would prevent any further advance.

In any case, the Sixth Infantry succeeded in fulfilling its assignment. At the end of October, it descended the Volga, passed to the north of the capital, and reached Kalinin (now the city of Tver). Georg and his men crossed over to the east bank of the Volga in a sector infested with enemies. They pushed as far as the Tma, one of the great river’s tributaries. In a few hours, without
losing a single man or being observed, they explored dozens of square kilometers, wrote reports, and sent to their headquarters all the information that might be useful for a prospective penetration. By November 15, they had an impressive record in the field: they had covered more than 1,300 kilometers, and taken prizes that were considerable for a unit of 200 men: 700 prisoners, 175 horses, 60 horse-drawn vehicles, 10 trucks, and a tank! This record was transmitted with get-well wishes to all the squadron’s wounded, who were scattered in various military hospitals.

The campaign had been just as brilliant for the division to which I belonged. As far as Smolensk, our losses had been minimal. The fighting around Smolensk lasted from July 10 to September 10. About three hundred thousand Soviet troops and three thousand tanks were surrounded; the Soviets were not about to get themselves killed for Joseph Stalin. We gave them back their churches, which had been closed or transformed into storage buildings years earlier. The sinister Commissar Order, which called for the execution of Soviet political commissars who had been taken prisoner, never reached my unit and was not applied in my area: under these conditions, whole battalions of Russians were surrendering without a fight. One day, I sent Second Lieutenant Nagel on patrol a little to the east of Vilnius, and he came back in the evening with about two thousand prisoners. They were still fully equipped, because the fifteen men in
Nagel’s detachment were not numerous enough to disarm them. His men were riding alongside the prisoners like shepherds amid a peaceful flock. It was an incredible sight, unparalleled so far as I know in recent military history.

A few weeks after the fighting ended around Smolensk, the general in command of the division ordered me to scout out the possibilities for crossing the Volga at a ford. Because of the mud, horse-drawn vehicles could not be used, and all the motor vehicles had prudently been taken back to the main road to Moscow. Only horsemen could reconnoiter the area ahead. We started out toward Kalinin with provisions for a few days. Using a compass, and guided by the information provided by scouts, we rode for four or five hours and then stopped in a village to bake bread in a farm, surrounded by Russians, because the field canteen had remained with the vehicles. The days went by without any contact with our division. It was as if we had suddenly been transported to the age of the Thirty Years’ War. Our squadron encountered neither Russian nor German soldiers. When we arrived in Kalinin, the Volga was completely frozen over, and our search for a ford was no longer relevant. Moreover, armored divisions had just taken up positions nearby.

Three days later, the division’s chaplains arrived in Kalinin. Like the missionaries in the time of Saints Boniface and Patrick, they had crossed the deserted expanse of the Russian plain without encountering a living soul.
They hadn’t eaten for several days. We immediately gave them some bread baked in the hearth of a peasant home.

Then we went to find quarters in a village southwest of Kalinin. We first tried to gather a supply of oats for the winter, a share of which was taken from each of the surrounding villages. I made the acquaintance of a man who had been a gamekeeper under the czars, and who had, some years earlier, also participated in a hunt organized by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov himself. On many occasions we went hunting together on a sleigh, wrapped in the same fur blanket, through the vast zone of marshland and peat bogs southeast of the village. Lulled by the peaceful rhythm of this new life in a frozen countryside, somewhat enervated by long sessions in the sauna and by lengthy card parties around the gigantic brick stoves that formed the center of the Russian cottages, we allowed ourselves to be overcome by the conviction that the war would soon be over. When in early December, I saw my gamekeeper for what turned out to be the last time, he greeted me and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow; we’re going to meet for our little ducks! Agreed?” So convinced were we that the war was over and that we had no reason to be concerned about our new life. Our awakening was brutal.

On November 20, 1941, Major Hirsch, who had been assigned to another command, left the Sixth Reconnaissance Battalion, and my brother succeeded him as commandant. Projects were arranged to make intelligent use of the winter. Georg thought of giving Latin courses, and procured grammar books and dictionaries, and the staff launched literary and culinary competitions. Four officers, eighteen noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and some enlisted men were sent to Germany for training. Planning for leave was begun, because many soldiers had not seen their families all year.

At the end of November, the temperature fell below –10°C (14°F) during the night. On November 16, it fell to –16°C (3°F) in the evening. We saw the first cases of frostbite, and the doctors, assisted by Russian women, taught
the men how to treat them: with delicate massage, applications of talcum powder, warming the affected limb. By mid-December, the daytime temperature had fallen to below –20°C (-4°F). The soldiers had still not received any winter clothing and equipment.

Georg’s battalion had been promised four hundred pairs of skis, which finally arrived in the middle of the winter. But the men had only their thin uniform jackets. In December the whole of the Sixth Division received just a few dozen pairs of fur-lined boots and overcoats. The doctors advised the men to wear all their available underclothes. But this was not sufficient. The smallest gaps in the clothing were stuffed with newspaper, packaging materials, and rags; newspaper in one’s shorts, newspaper around one’s legs and torso. Since they were receiving nothing in the way of official supplies, Georg decided to do something. He sent our friend Karl von Wendt to Westphalia, accompanied by a small team of men and trucks, intending to bring back furs and warm garments.

So there was the battalion in the snow, like a marmot ready to hibernate, thinking more about holing up in a comfortable bivouac than about the possibility of exposure to the cold, and more about celebrating Christmas than about fighting. However, December marked the beginning of the Russian counteroffensive to relieve Moscow. This strategic maneuver, which coincided with the entry of the United States into the conflict, clearly represented a change in the course of the war. It signaled
the end of the German advance into Russian territory in 1941, even if, we thought, that development was not yet decisive for the outcome of the conflict. The war would be long; German troops would turn out to be dangerously exposed and their immune systems fragile, particularly under such inhuman meteorological conditions.

In mid-December, the situation no longer allowed the Ninth Army to maintain its bridgehead at Kalinin. Soviet divisions, perfectly equipped, crossed the frozen Volga without difficulty, and some units were able to make impressive inroads, penetrating far beyond the front lines. Several German divisions were in real danger of being surrounded and destroyed. A Siberian cold had set in: the temperature fell to –30° and –40°C (–22° and –40°F). The wind blew in gusts that almost toppled the men. And even when the skies cleared and a pale sun made the white desert shine with a crystalline brilliance, the beauty of the countryside could not make us forget the cold, which became even more lacerating.

On December 15, the battalion commanded by Franz-Josef von Kageneck had held, virtually alone, the road to Kalinin against forces ten times larger, and thus allowed almost a whole army to escape being surrounded. In the early morning of December 16, Georg’s reconnaissance battalion, which was under the command of the Sixth Army, was ordered to begin withdrawing to the east bank of the Volga. More unfavorable conditions could not be imagined. The storm was howling. The snow was
already impressively deep when the men awoke and a terrible, biting wind was raising great spumes of white powder. Drifts blocked the roads. The heavy squadron was struggling: the bad weather was tripling fuel consumption. In the early afternoon, headquarters was informed that the motorized vehicles could not continue farther than twenty-five kilometers without additional fuel. Once again, horses constituted the only reliable mobility in a winter setting. The superior officers were on the brink of despair, but young officers like Georg and Kageneck yielded less to somber reflections. It was a matter of survival. Galvanized by the danger, they often took the initiative.

On December 18, Georg and his men were supposed to secure a 7.5-square-kilometer zone to allow the infantry’s relatively orderly retreat from the area between the Tma and the Volga, which they had conquered at the end of October. The enemy pressure was strong, but thanks to their mobility, our troops were able to deceive the Soviets and confuse their scouts. The men had to deal not only with heavy fire but also with the cold. The gusts of wind, which were asphyxiating, burned the lungs. The cold was not only bitter, it was deadly: it could kill a man in a few minutes. If it didn’t kill the man whole, it killed his limbs—hands, arms, legs—and the most prominent parts of the face—the ears and the nose. The conditions of the retreat did not allow for the proper burial of the dead. It was impossible to dig graves; instead, the dead
were buried under huge piles of snow. On December 24, the temperature fell to –46°C (–50°F).

That day, Siberian troops staged a mass attack on the battalion’s cyclist squadron. After inflicting heavy losses among enemy forces that were still poorly equipped, it was possible to stabilize the situation. We had suffered a serious reversal. One thing reassured us: the enemy was losing on average ten to twenty times as many men as we were. But we were now certain that their numbers were immense, and that was their great potential. Beyond that one certitude, how many questions there were! How could the Russian generals let their men be mowed down in such numbers by machine-gun fire? Why didn’t they see that their counteroffensive, although it had resulted in clear successes, made no sense? In our opinion, it was a Pyrrhic victory.

When Christmas came, the Sixth Infantry was licking its wounds and counting its losses, which had been considerable over the past fortnight. In theory, Georg’s reconnaissance battalion numbered more than a thousand. But on December 27, it was no more than a shadow of its former self. Georg sent his superiors a report explaining that his combat potential had been reduced by 90 percent since June. The cavalry squadron now had only 1 officer, 32 men, and 4 light machine guns. The heavy squadron had only twenty-nine soldiers under the command of a single officer. Finally, the lieutenant who commanded the cyclist squadron had only twenty-two
fighters. It is true that several dozen men were on furlough or in training, but since June, the dead and wounded had not been replaced. The battalion as a whole now counted only half as many troops as the squadron that Georg had commanded up until the spring of 1941 … and the remaining forces were exhausted because the Soviets were attacking day and night.

On December 29, the enemy launched a new offensive between the Volga and the Tma. The front line was no longer tenable, and our troops had to retreat and take up positions more to the southwest, not far from Rzhev. That city, located where the Volga begins a vast, meandering curve to the north, was an industrial center of about fifty thousand inhabitants, and especially a major railway junction. It could not be left in Russian hands. The 110th, the 126th, and the Sixth Infantry divisions gathered in this sector, where our defense was organized around what was soon to be called the Königsberg position.

On January 1, Georg went to meet the Third Battalion of the Eighteenth Infantry Regiment, which formed the rear guard of the retreating Sixth Division. Its commandant, Kageneck, had died three days earlier. Georg found exhausted men, officers on the verge of a nervous breakdown after countless nights without sleep and weeks without rest. While the soldiers, who were not very close to the defensive line, continued their march, Georg took the officers to his command post to tell them
briefly how the Königsberg position was organized. “It is not an ideal front line, but it respects the tactical imperatives and has certain potentialities,” he said. “Now, that’s not all. Sit down for a moment. I’ve got a quart of nice hot bouillon for you,” he continued with his usual liveliness, even though the Russians were only a few kilometers away. One officer got up to serve. “No,” Georg said, shaking his head in protest, “I’ll serve today.” That was the way my brother was, mixing discipline, lucidity, and good-heartedness.

The front was being stabilized. Rzhev was finally lost only in March 1943, after very fierce fighting. But until the beginning of March 1942, the Russian harassments were incessant, while full-scale attacks came almost daily—dreadful butcheries, the unfurling waves of men drunk on vodka and the cold, cut down by machine-gun fire, but each time reducing our resistance a little. In February, a Russian cavalry division, with the help of partisans, managed to penetrate our rear and create a pocket of territory along the railway from Vyaz’ma to Moscow that was completely outside our control.