Inferno - Max Hastings [117]
The last letter from Russia received by gunner lieutenant Jasper Monckeburg’s family in Hamburg was dated 21 January 1942: “Forty per cent of our men have got oozing eczema and boils all over their bodies, particularly on their legs … Our duty periods stretch over forty-eight hours, with two or three hours’ sleep, often interrupted. Our lines are so weak, twenty to thirty-five men per company over two kilometres, that we would be completely overrun if we, the artillery, did not stem the onslaught of the enemy, who are ten or twelve times stronger.” After repulsing one Russian attack, infantrymen carried the lieutenant into his bunker: “Since I had been lying for 4½ hours in the snow—35 degrees of frost—I could no longer feel hands or legs and was completely unable to stand … If it weren’t for this swinish cold!” Monckeburg was killed a few days later.
Gen. Gotthard Heinrici, visiting Berlin in February, was struck by Hitler’s indifference to eyewitness accounts of the enormous tragedy unfolding in the east. The Führer chose to discuss only technical issues such as the design of antitank defences. When once he spoke of the Russian winter, it was with flippancy: “Luckily nothing lasts for ever, and that is a consoling thought. If, at this present moment, men are being turned into blocks of ice, that won’t prevent the April sun from shining and restoring life to these desolate places.” A German soldier named Wolfgang Huff wrote on 10 February 1942, at Sinyavino, in Russia: “Dusk is falling. The crack of artillery fire—and white smoke rises above the forest. The harsh reality of war: gruff cries of command, struggling with ammunition through the snow. And then a surprising question—‘Did you see the sunset?’ Suddenly I thought: how grievously we have broken the peace and tranquillity of this land.”
Throughout February, at Stalin’s orders his armies threw themselves again and again at the German positions—and were repulsed with huge losses. The Soviet supply system tottered close to collapse, and many soldiers existed at the extremities of privation. Some 2.66 million Russians had already been killed in action. But the campaign had cost the German army almost a million casualties, together with 207,000 horses, 41,000 trucks and 13,600 guns. On 1 April, its high command judged only 8 of 162 divisions in Russia to be “attack ready.” Just 160 tanks were serviceable among 16 panzer formations. As Hitler anticipated, once spring came his armies would once more roll forward, and once more win victories. But the critical reality of the first year of war in the east was that Russia remained undefeated.
Near Tula, an old woman gave Vasily Grossman and his little party potatoes, salt and some firewood. Her son Vanya was fighting. She said to Grossman, “Oh, I used to be so healthy, like a stallion. The Devil came to me last night and gripped my palm with his fingernails. I began to pray: ‘May God rise again and may his enemies be scattered’ … My Vanya came to me last night. He sat down on a chair and looked at the window. I said to him, ‘Vanya, Vanya!’ but he didn’t reply.” Grossman wrote: “If we do win this terrible, cruel war, it will be because there are such noble hearts in our nation, such righteous people, souls of immense generosity, such old women, mothers of sons who, from their noble simplicity, are now losing their lives for the sake of their nation with the same generosity with which this old woman from Tula has given us all that she had. There is only a handful of them in our land, but they will win.