Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [174]
Paulus had an obvious candidate for this mission in the form of Captain Winrich Behr, whose black panzer uniform with the Knight’s Cross was likely to produce the right effect on the Führer. And Behr, responsible for updating not only the situation map, but also all the facts and figures in reports, was one of the best-briefed officers at Sixth Army headquarters.
Behr received so little warning of his mission on the morning of 12 January, two days after the start of the Soviet offensive, that he did not have time to offer to take letters home from his colleagues. He bundled up the Sixth Army war diary in his belongings to take it to safety, then hurried to Pitomnik. The runway was already under fire from heavy mortars as well as artillery. As Behr ran to the Heinkel III, filling with wounded, the Feldgendarmerie armed with sub-machine-guns had to hold back hundreds of others trying to rush, or even crawl, to the plane.
The flight to Taganrog took one and a half hours. To his surprise, it was even colder down by the Sea of Azov than at Stalingrad. A staff car was waiting for him and he was taken to Field Marshal von Manstein’s headquarters. Manstein assembled some of his officers and asked Behr to report on the situation. Behr described everything: the famine; the casualty rates; the exhaustion of the soldiers; the wounded lying in the snow, waiting for evacuation, their blood frozen; the pitiful shortage of food, fuel and ammunition. When Behr had finished, Manstein told him: ‘Give Hitler exactly the same description as you gave me.’ An aeroplane had been ordered for the next morning to take him to Rastenburg. The Führer was expecting him.
The following morning was just as cold, even though the bright sun gave a deceptive impression of warmth. At the airfield the Luftwaffe officer assigned to fly Behr to East Prussia did not bother to take his gloves with him when he went out to warm up the motors. When he returned to the building he had no skin left on his hands from touching frozen metal. Another pilot had to be found.
Behr finally reached the Wolfsschanze in the early evening. His belt and pistol were taken from him at the guardroom. From there, he was escorted to the operations room, where eighteen months later Stauffenberg brought his briefcase filled with explosives. There were between twenty and twenty-five senior officers present. After ten minutes, the doors opened and Hitler appeared. He greeted the young panzer captain.
‘Heil Herr Hauptmann!’
‘Heil mein Führer!’ replied Behr, rigidly at attention in his black uniform, with the Knight’s Cross at the neck. Behr already knew from his brother-in-law, Nicolaus von Below, who was Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, what the Führer’s tactics were when a ‘Cassandra’ brought bad news. He always tried to control the conversation, imposing his version of events, and overwhelming his interlocutor, who knew only about a single sector of the front, with a powerful impression of the overall situation. This was exactly what happened.
When Hitler had finished recounting his plans for Operation Dietrich, a great counter-attack with SS panzer divisions turning defeat into victory, he said to Behr: ‘Herr Hauptmann, when you return to General Paulus, tell him this and that all my heart and my hopes are with him and his Army.’ But Behr, well aware that this was Hitler’s ‘trick’, knew that he must not allow himself to be silenced.
‘Mein Führer,’ he answered. ‘My commander-in-chief gave me the order to inform you of the situation. Please now give me permission to deliver my report.’ Hitler, in front of so many witnesses, could not refuse.
Behr began to speak, and Hitler, rather to his surprise, made no attempt to interrupt him. He did not spare