resembled a giant army encampment, and Erwin Buback became more and more ashamed of his nighttime funk.
The faces of officers and soldiers on the truck beds and the seats of the official jeeps were not shining with enthusiasm, but that is how members of any army look when they have been practicing the dreary art of war for years on end. On the other hand, there was no faintheartedness in their faces or even fatigue; they looked rested, radiating a calm resolve and certainty that they would succeed and survive.
He had noticed this phenomenon before. Despite the retreats on all European theaters, a single successful strike was enough to change the soldiers’ mood overnight. A step forward, Buback knew, was a cure, even if only for a couple of days; it gave the German soldiers a reserve of moral and physical strength for another month on the defensive.
This broken terrain, its southern slopes covered with vineyards, would be suitable for a new main line of defense. However, treadmarks in the wet soil indicated that a large number of tanks had recently passed by. That suggested this might be the very place where the long-awaited counteroffensive would begin.
Colonel Meckerle, who had excellent connections in the Furhrer’s main council, had recently made it known that the retreat was part of the most magnificent trap in military history. This was no fairy tale, no rumor, gentlemen! Not just one but two Bolshevik army divisions—one and a half million troops—would be flung into a gigantic cauldron and boiled into borscht. Meckerle had the Gestapo officers’ cafeteria serve the dish, and its dark red color had a very vivid and encouraging effect.
During his short walk around the village green, a massive artillery column rolled by that they had not seen on the way there; it had evidently joined the main road from a side track. The heavy cabs with their long trailers were a dead giveaway: they had to be transporting howitzers beneath their camouflaged canvasses. And it was the howitzer’s percussive fire that launched every major offensive. Buback reproached himself again for his weakness the day before.
Maybe it wasn’t wrong for him and Hilde to be so suspicious of Germany’s highest leader, however awful it sounded. What difference did it make, in the end? This bloody war would decide the fate of the German people for generations to come—and perhaps even their right to exist. Even if Buback had been right to think that Hitler had failed his country, shouldn’t Germans keep trying to avert a total defeat and at least achieve an honorable peace?
Only a year ago he and everyone else had condemned the assassination attempt on the Fuhrer as a monstrous act, carried out by traitors in the pay of the enemy. But maybe the conspirators were simply patriots who had given in to their doubts, just as he and Hilde had. If so, they were not alone. And if Buback was right, there would be more brave men to come who would risk the punishment Meckerle had supposedly described to his closest advisers: being hanged from a butcher hook on a thin string, to die a slow, shameful death.
Buback did not believe there were any altruists of that sort in the Gestapo. There weren’t even any real detectives among his own men. They all came straight from SS schools with a political mission, loosely interpreted as knocking out the teeth of true or imagined Resistance workers. After all, they had stopped investigating their fellow Germans’ minor offenses a long time ago. But one scenario was probable enough to be vexing. There were many who would be interested in Buback’s inner thoughts, because that was their job: to neutralize anyone harboring harmful opinions.
There was only one solution: to support anyone who could promise Germany would not be trampled underfoot, and then wait until they could finally carry out what they’d failed at the year before. And that meant supporting the very army he was now watching and admiring, as it
The faces of officers and soldiers on the truck beds and the seats of the official jeeps were not shining with enthusiasm, but that is how members of any army look when they have been practicing the dreary art of war for years on end. On the other hand, there was no faintheartedness in their faces or even fatigue; they looked rested, radiating a calm resolve and certainty that they would succeed and survive.
He had noticed this phenomenon before. Despite the retreats on all European theaters, a single successful strike was enough to change the soldiers’ mood overnight. A step forward, Buback knew, was a cure, even if only for a couple of days; it gave the German soldiers a reserve of moral and physical strength for another month on the defensive.
This broken terrain, its southern slopes covered with vineyards, would be suitable for a new main line of defense. However, treadmarks in the wet soil indicated that a large number of tanks had recently passed by. That suggested this might be the very place where the long-awaited counteroffensive would begin.
Colonel Meckerle, who had excellent connections in the Furhrer’s main council, had recently made it known that the retreat was part of the most magnificent trap in military history. This was no fairy tale, no rumor, gentlemen! Not just one but two Bolshevik army divisions—one and a half million troops—would be flung into a gigantic cauldron and boiled into borscht. Meckerle had the Gestapo officers’ cafeteria serve the dish, and its dark red color had a very vivid and encouraging effect.
During his short walk around the village green, a massive artillery column rolled by that they had not seen on the way there; it had evidently joined the main road from a side track. The heavy cabs with their long trailers were a dead giveaway: they had to be transporting howitzers beneath their camouflaged canvasses. And it was the howitzer’s percussive fire that launched every major offensive. Buback reproached himself again for his weakness the day before.
Maybe it wasn’t wrong for him and Hilde to be so suspicious of Germany’s highest leader, however awful it sounded. What difference did it make, in the end? This bloody war would decide the fate of the German people for generations to come—and perhaps even their right to exist. Even if Buback had been right to think that Hitler had failed his country, shouldn’t Germans keep trying to avert a total defeat and at least achieve an honorable peace?
Only a year ago he and everyone else had condemned the assassination attempt on the Fuhrer as a monstrous act, carried out by traitors in the pay of the enemy. But maybe the conspirators were simply patriots who had given in to their doubts, just as he and Hilde had. If so, they were not alone. And if Buback was right, there would be more brave men to come who would risk the punishment Meckerle had supposedly described to his closest advisers: being hanged from a butcher hook on a thin string, to die a slow, shameful death.
Buback did not believe there were any altruists of that sort in the Gestapo. There weren’t even any real detectives among his own men. They all came straight from SS schools with a political mission, loosely interpreted as knocking out the teeth of true or imagined Resistance workers. After all, they had stopped investigating their fellow Germans’ minor offenses a long time ago. But one scenario was probable enough to be vexing. There were many who would be interested in Buback’s inner thoughts, because that was their job: to neutralize anyone harboring harmful opinions.
There was only one solution: to support anyone who could promise Germany would not be trampled underfoot, and then wait until they could finally carry out what they’d failed at the year before. And that meant supporting the very army he was now watching and admiring, as it
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