Inferno - Max Hastings [388]
Near Toruń, in Poland, one such man, Semyon Pozdnyakov, glimpsed a German soldier in no-man’s-land between the armies, shuffling towards his own lines, head bent low, wounded right arm held close to his body, his left arm limply dragging a machine pistol. Pozdnyakov challenged him, shouting, “Fritz, halt!” The German dropped his weapon and raised his left hand in a feeble gesture of surrender. As a group of Russians approached him, they saw blood on the man’s face, and empty, despairing eyes. “Hitler kaput,” he said mechanically. The Russians laughed at the words they now heard so often, and an officer told them to take the man to the rear. “Nein! nein!” said the German, thinking he was to be shot. Pozdnyakov roared at him angrily, “Why are you shouting, you half-dead fascist? You’re afraid of death? Didn’t you treat our people the same way? We should finish you off, and be done with you.” Such was indeed the fate of many Germans, who sought mercy in vain.
Reckless abuse of weapons caused significant numbers of Russians to kill one another in rage or carelessness; they pulled triggers as readily as their Western counterparts might spit or blaspheme. For all its commanders’ military sophistication, this was a barbarian army, which had achieved things such as only barbarians could. Paradoxically, its educated elements were driven by a sense of righteousness greater than any that stirred American or British soldiers. They cared nothing for Stalin’s 1939 devil’s bargain with Hitler, nor for Soviet aggression against Poland, Finland and Romania. They recognised only that Russia had been invaded and devastated, and now they were approaching a reckoning with the nation responsible.
Vyacheslav Eisymont, a former history teacher who served as an artillery observer, wrote from East Prussia on 19 February: “We stay in all sorts of places: sometimes in a shed, sometimes a bunker, and right now a house. It is spring weather, wet, sometimes raining. There are civilians who failed to escape, now being sent to the rear … We saw them as we advanced on Königsberg: old men, women and children with shouldered bundles, in long crocodiles trudging along the roadsides—the road itself was occupied by our column. That night, we saw terrible things. But our battery commander spoke for many when he said: ‘Sure, you look, and you feel saddened by the sight of old people and children on foot and dying. But then you remember what they did in our land, and you feel no pity!’ ”
In February Konev advanced across the Oder towards Dresden, before halting at the Neisse; in the weeks that followed, his principal achievement was to secure Pomerania and Upper Silesia. Early in March a half-hearted SS panzer counteroffensive in Hungary, undertaken in pursuit of Hitler’s fixation with recovering lost oilfields, was easily repulsed. On 16 March, two Soviet fronts began to push for Vienna. Even that dedicated Nazi field marshal Ferdinand Schörner told Hitler on 20 March: “I must report that the military worthlessness of troops in [Upper Silesia] exceeds my worst expectations. Almost without exception, they are exhausted. Formations have been broken up, mingled with alarm and Volkssturm units. Their military value is shockingly low. North of Leobschutz there is no one deserving of the name of a German soldier. My impression is that the Russians can do anything they choose, without great exertion or expenditure of strength.” The Second Panzer Army in Hungary reported to the