On 31 January Paulus had finally received an answer: the announcement of his promotion to the rank of Field- Marshal. He had made one more attempt to prove his point – and been awarded the highest decoration of the Reich: the Knight's Cross with oak leaves.
It gradually dawned on him that Hitler was treating him as a dead man: it had been a posthumous promotion, a posthumous award of the Knight's Cross. His existence now served only one purpose: to create a heroic image of the defender of Stalingrad. The official propaganda had made saints and martyrs of the hundreds of thousands of men under his command. They were alive, boiling their horsemeat, hunting down the last Stalingrad dogs, catching magpies in the steppes, crushing lice, smoking cigarettes made from nothing but twists of paper; meanwhile the State radio stations played solemn funeral music in honour of these still living heroes.
They were alive, blowing on their red fingers, wiping the snot from their noses, thinking about the chances of stealing something to eat, shamming illness, surrendering to the enemy or warming themselves on a Russian woman in a cellar; meanwhile, over the airwaves, choirs of little boys and girls were singing, 'They died so that Germany could live.' Only if the State should perish could these men be reborn to the sins and wonders of everyday life.
Everything had happened precisely as Paulus had predicted. This sense of his own rightness, confirmed by the absolute destruction of his army, was painful to live with. At the same time, in spite of himself, it gave him a kind of tired satisfaction, a reinforced sense of his own worth.
Thoughts he had suppressed during his days of glory now came back to him.
Keitel and Jodl had called Hitler the divine Fuhrer. Goebbels had declared that Hitler's tragedy was that the war offered him no opponent worthy of his own genius. Zeitzler, on the other hand, had told him how Hitler had once asked him to straighten the line of the front on the grounds that its curves offended his aesthetic sensibilities. And what about his mad, neurotic, refusal to advance on Moscow? And the sudden failure of will that had led him to call a halt to the advance on Leningrad? It was only a fear of losing face that made him insist so fanatically on the defence of Stalingrad.
Now everything was as clear as daylight.
But clarity can be very terrifying. He could have refused to obey the order. Hitler would have had him executed, but he would have saved the lives of his men. Yes, he had seen many people look at him with reproach.
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 tinned food and loaves of bread. A few of them also brought some vodka or an accordion.
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 gunners, army tailors, mechanics and electricians. Together with old men wrapped in shawls, old women wearing soldiers' trousers and little boys and girls dragging sledges laden with bundles and blankets, they crossed the Volga and scrambled up the slopes of the right bank.
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, creches, 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
