Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [250]
* General Doctor Renoldi took more interest later. From his railway carriage, he rather chillingly described the collapse of soldiers’ health in the Kessel as ‘a large-scale experiment into the effects of hunger’.
* Paulus later claimed that he had never issued an order to open fire on any Russian flag of truce, but Schmidt might well have done.
* The examples published in an anonymous collection entitled Last Letters from Stalingrad, which had a powerful emotional effect when published in 1954, are now considered forgeries.
* Winrich Behr, who knew Schmidt well, thinks this use of du highly unlikely although he considered that ‘there is no doubt that General Schmidt built up a strong influence over Paulus’.
* Karmen’s photograph was doctored in Moscow. General Telegin was removed from the print because Stalin considered him insufficiently important for such a historic occasion. (Even Dyatlenko’s promotion to major was accelerated for the release of the photograph.) This incident developed into one of those grotesque farces of the Stalinist era. When the photograph appeared across the front of Pravda, with his face removed, Telegin was terrified that someone had denounced him for a chance remark. Nothing happened, however, so he thought he was safe, but then, in 1948, he was suddenly arrested on the orders of Abakumov (the head of SMERSH) for no apparent reason.
* German guards were also used in other camps. The worst were some two hundred Germans (most appear to have been Saxons for some reason) who had deserted from punishment battalions. Armed with wooden clubs, and granted the designation of ‘Fighters against Fascism’, they refused to allow soldiers to fall out to relieve themselves during roll-call, even though the overwhelming majority were suffering from dysentery.
* It is, of course, possible that General von Seydlitz secretly saw this operation as a chance of tricking the Soviets into sending him and thousands of Sixth Army prisoners home. But if this had been the case, one would have expected him to mention the episode after the war when he faced such heavy condemnation from former colleagues for having collaborated with Stalin’s regime.
* This collection is listed under fiction as the authenticity of the letters is very much in doubt.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface
STALINGRAD
Part One: ‘THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH!’
1 The Double-Edged Sword of Barbarossa
2 ‘Nothing is Impossible for the German Soldier!’
3 ‘Smash in the Door and the Whole Rotten Structure Will Come Crashing Down!’
4 Hitler’s Hubris: The Delayed Battle for Moscow
Part Two: BARBAROSSA RELAUNCHED
5 General Paulus’s First Battle
6 ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’
7 ‘Not One Step Backwards’
8 ‘The Volga is Reached!’
Part Three: ‘THE FATEFUL CITY’
9 ‘Time is Blood’: The September Battles
10 Rattenkrieg
11 Traitors and Allies
12 Fortresses of Rubble and Iron
13 Paulus’s Final Assault
14 ‘All For the Front!’
Part Four: ZHUKOV’S TRAP
15 Operation Uranus
16 Hitler’s Obsession
17 ‘The Fortress Without a Roof’
18 ‘Der Manstein Kommt!’
19 ‘Christmas in the German Way’
Part Five: THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SIXTH ARMY
20 The Air-Bridge
21 ‘Surrender Out of the Question’
22 ‘A German Field Marshal Does Not Commit Suicide with a Pair of Nail Scissors!’
23 ‘Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen’
24 The City of the Dead
25 The Sword of Stalingrad
Illustrations
APPENDIX A: German and Soviet Orders of Battle, 19 November 1942
APPENDIX B: The Statistical Debate: Sixth Army Strength in the Kessel
References
Source Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Footnotes
Chapter 01
Page 6
Chapter 04
Page 46
Chapter 08
Page 106
Page 108
Chapter 09
Page 125
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