The heart of the 6th Army
The Heart of the 6th Army is a war , doctor and romance novel by Heinz G. Konsalik from 1964 , which is set against the backdrop of the Battle of Stalingrad . In addition to his best-known work The Doctor of Stalingrad , this is his second book, which deals with the dramatic fate of members of the 6th Army in one of the greatest material battles of the Second World War .
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"They fought lost in the rubble mountains of Stalingrad: suffering, starving soldiers, sacrificed by a fanatic for an idea of" heroism "that had decayed to madness."
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The novel begins on October 31, 1942. The military situation in the battle of Stalingrad has become fatally deadlocked, and the living conditions of both the soldiers and the Russian civilians held in the rubble city are terrible. Life and survival in the most primitive conditions takes place mainly in cellars and in the blind spots of the artillery. While the 62nd Army with its command posts , radio stations , accommodations and medical bunkers can only hold its own on a very small strip on the western steep bank of the Volga , the 6th Army is no longer able to continue its attack . The fights are incredibly tough and dogged and are often decided in close combat with hand grenades , folding spades and flamethrowers .
Operation Uranus is underway on the Soviet side in the background , and the Russians are hoping for an early onset of winter, combined with the freezing over of the Volga, so that large numbers of armored reserves can be relocated to the western bank and the outcome of the battle can be influenced.
The last German attack on resistance pockets in the Stalingrad industrial complex collapsed. Five storm pioneer battalions were destroyed. The Red Army, under the leadership of Major Kubowski, was ordered to hold the “tennis racket” railroad loop between Mamayev Hill and the Volga at all costs. They are locked in a water tower by German pioneer and tank grenadier companies .
To the west of the Stalingrad main station and not far from the "tennis racket", medical officer Dr. Portner in indescribable conditions in a bombed-out cellar. The sankeller is hopelessly robbed, operations are carried out as if on an assembly line and people die. The removed organs and limbs are disposed of like the dead in the surrounding grenade funnels. Portner's assistant doctor Dr. Körner is ordered to have a long distance wedding at the Pitomnik airport in order to marry his fiancée Marianne Bader in a ceremony, which is being carried out at a registry office in Cologne at the same time. But to get there it is a very dangerous way from the "tennis racket", Gorodishte over the "Tatar Wall", on the constant flight from artillery attacks, to the Pitomnik field airfield. It is a march from the life-threatening hell of house-to-house fighting in Stalingrad into the " milk and honey " of the rear army services and well-stocked supply stores. While the combat troops suffer, there is an almost decadent oversupply at the stage. The bizarre marriage is abused by Colonel von der Haagen as a propaganda tool for the heroic struggle for Stalingrad. He misjudges the desolate situation of the German units in Stalingrad and fantasizes on the situation map of a bold advance operation through the almost deserted Kazakh steppe to Siberia .
Major Kubowski can only free himself from the German grip on the "tennis racket" by attacking a tank. The old situation has been restored. Together with the tanks, he receives support from field doctor Olga Pannarewskaja, with whom he immediately falls in love. But the commander in their sector sends them back accompanied by Kaljonin. Major Kubowski is injured in the head in the following fights, which enables him to stay in the "tennis racket" field hospital. He and Olga kiss.
The OKW is now planning the supply situation and, above all, the winter equipment of the fighting troops on the Eastern Front . For the 6th Army 750 tons of supplies are estimated per day. There is a blatant mismatch between the reports of need from the companies and the actual provision of supplies. The OKW assumes and also announces it in the Wehrmacht report that Stalingrad has long been in German hands and, as a complete distortion of the reality in the fighting, only a few raids on tiny point targets, which, however, in no way corresponds to the hard reality of war. In the end, the winter equipment is piled up in the warehouses and never arrives at the troops.
Dr. Before his home flight in Pitomnik, Körner stayed with General Doctor Prof. Dr. Afterglow, which is supposed to turn Stalingrad into a hospital town, and experiences a staff intendant (Wehrmacht official) who arrogantly complains that the troops do not have the guts and the energy to overthrow Stalingrad.
Dr. Körner has started the flight to the west and has arrived at the hotel "Ostland" in Warsaw . He telegraphed Marianne his arrival time and that he wasn't expecting her in Cologne but in Poland. He bought her a present from a Jewish goldsmith. But it is not Marianne who appears at the train station, but another helpless woman named Monika Baltus who is not picked up. There had been air raids on the Cologne- Berlin railway line , so Marianne probably did not come. Hans takes Monika with him to his hotel, where the receptionist automatically assumes that the German just wants to have a nap with the single girl. But Hans is absolutely decent and is very worried about his wife.
On November 16, 1942, cold steppe winds accompanied the first snowfall, and the temperature fell abruptly to -10 ° C for the first time. The situation in the cellar hospital of Dr. Portner has improved slightly and relaxed. Many seriously injured people were relocated to the main first aid stations at Pitomnik and Kalatsch . There is cautious optimism at the front. Corporal Hans Schmidtke (called "Knösel"), the paramedic's factotum, observes the kissing couple Yevgeny and Olga and is surprised to see something like that in the middle of the worst battle in world history. The lieutenant of a raiding party opens fire on the two of them and threatens Knösel with disciplinary action for failing to fight the enemy.
In Warsaw, Dr. Körner received the news that his wife Marianne was killed in a bomb attack on the night of October 31st to November 1st, 1942. According to his marriage certificate of November 1, 1942, he would have married a dead person and the marriage would be invalid.
November 19, 1942 begins with a snow storm . The people in the Donbogen, from Stalingrad to Beketowka, go to the cellars so as not to freeze to death. The living conditions for the Italian and Romanian armed forces of Army Group South on the open steppe are even more difficult than those of the soldiers in Stalingrad. At four o'clock sharp, the Soviet artillery's cylinder of fire begins , and the winter offensive begins with Operation Uranus. Then, four hours later, the tank attack on the Don front begins , crushing the German lines on the Don , Kalatsch and Tschir .
Dr. Körner lost his wife. Nothing keeps him in the west anymore, so he flies back to his comrades in Pitomnik, where he arrives on November 23rd. He returns because a doctor is urgently needed in the hell of Stalingrad. At the end of November the cauldron is already closed and you are starting to fly out only the specialists. This does not apply to over 17,000 seriously wounded people. There are chaotic scenes at the airfield.
On November 25th, assistant doctor Dr. Körner back in its old position. There one prepares for breaking out of the cauldron. Then comes the Führer order , which strictly forbids an outbreak. The supply should come from the air. It is now rumored that an Indian elephant that has escaped from the Stalingrad Zoo is walking through the rubble landscape. Then Knösel actually meets this elephant, but nobody believes him.
Dr. Portner brings the wounded to the large field hospital of the 6th Army in Gumrak. Many of them are delivered in an adventurous way.
In December 1942, the radio operator Sigbert Wallritz dragged himself through a snowstorm to the army hospital, where Dr. Portner and Dr. Operate on grains. He is the brother of medical sergeant Horst Wallritz. Sigbert deserted after he learned in a letter from his mother in the field that her father had been taken to the concentration camp by the SS . He demands of his brother, once a "staunch National Socialist", that he be flown out on the last flights of the wounded so that he can take care of affairs in their homeland. With the assistance of Dr. Körner play an injury to Sigbert so that he can climb one of the last Ju 52s . It's all about bare survival, and brutal battles over the so-called “life tickets” have broken out over these flights, some of which are fought with guns. Sigbert is lucky and is allowed to fly out. But then the machine has to make an emergency landing. Sigbert is captured by partisans .
Major Kubowski continues to defend the "tennis racket," and Kaljonin's raiding party at the canning factory leads to four wounded men who are hiding in a cellar that is filled in by a shell hit.
Private Knösel is looking for food in Stalingrad City. He has identified the position of a drawn baggage train from an artillery unit. Where there is artillery, there are edible horses. With the universal slogan “Lick my ass!” He comes through the dangerous “island landscape” of sections held by the Wehrmacht and Soviet soldiers. He kills a badly wounded horse and stores a large supply of horse meat in a self-made refrigerator.
On December 18, 1942, Field Hospital III is to be relocated from Gumrak to Stalingrad City, including the team around Dr. Portner and Dr. Körner, who are moving back to their old operating room basement below a cinema . General physician Prof. Dr. Abendroth inspects the extremely desperate situation in Stalingrad, which is turning into a gigantic humanitarian catastrophe after the outbreak ban. There is hardly any food left. Soups are made from horses' hooves, which must be enough for many soldiers.
The 6th Army, trapped and on the run from the deadly cold steppe winds and snowstorms from Kazakhstan , huddled up in the ruins of the city and was literally “assigned to their grave”. The officers are instructed to shoot themselves as a last resort.
The partisan group around Major Babkow in the woods of Bolshoi Ternowskij has the order to supply the XXXXVIII. To disrupt armored corps . Sigbert Wallritz is held prisoner by them in a hole in the ground made of rotten cabbage and is afraid of being tortured. But the fact that he is a deserter is accepted and even given him the opportunity to take him to the anti-fasc school in Moscow , where Ulbricht and Weinert are already teaching. But first Wallritz is supposed to lure a German supply column into an ambush with the uniform of a field policeman . The ambush succeeds, degenerates into cruel slaughter, and Wallritz is shot by the partisans.
While the supply almost completely collapses, Field Hospital III is celebrating the run-up to Christmas. On December 21, 1942 Kaljonin, believed dead, returned to the "tennis racket". He and Vera want to father a child together. A little later he meets Knösel. After the initial fraternization, the German has to assert himself and takes the weapon and food from him.
It's Christmas Eve in Stalingrad. In addition to a poignant ceremony, many dramatic fates occur, especially in the area around the Univermag department store, which is ruled by Soviet snipers. The Protestant pastor Sanders is wounded, but refuses to be flown out. His place is with his men. Just after Christmas, morale hit rock bottom. A Soviet jammer demoralizes the German soldiers:
“A German soldier dies every seven seconds in Russia. Stalingrad - mass grave ... "
The mysterious deaths of "sudden spontaneous death" without any recognizable influence, which affect many front-line soldiers in and around Stalingrad, become a "secret matter of command" and even ensure that a pathologist is flown in from Berlin to investigate. The pathologist dissects a number of the dead and comes to the conclusion that it must be "overstretching of the right heart valve due to complete malnutrition". The soldiers call this phenomenon "the heart of Stalingrad".
Feldgendarm Emil Rottmann observed that a Wallitz was allowed to fly out without authorization. He therefore blackmailed Dr. Körner that he does the same for him, because he does not want to die with the others in Stalingrad. Rottmann was a witness and wants to blow everything up. With this threat he disappears.
Major Kubowski is supposed to supervise the ferry operation, respectively the translation, of the wheel and chain parts of the Red Army, which are supposed to reinforce the city fighters in Stalingrad. He is killed in a German artillery attack. His lover Olga Pannarewskaja breaks and swears bloody vengeance on all Germans.
Horst Wallritz is to be flown out. Therefore, Dr. Körner shot him in the lungs so that the likelihood of the planes taking him away is higher. Police officers appear. You want Dr. Arrest Körner and send to a court martial . Dr. Portner protests vigorously that no doctor is available in her desperate situation, and causes her to be put under house arrest . An appeal to the division at General Gebhardt's also not fruitful.
On January 2, 1943, Dr. Körner picked up and handed over to a judge- martial in Gumrak. Rottmann testifies as an incriminating witness. The evidence is clear and the court ruled: death by shooting. Colonel von Haagen wants to enforce the sentence immediately, but this is overturned by General Gebhardt. The situation in Stalingrad is so critical, and the decisive offensive by the Red Army is imminent, that there is no way they can afford to lose trained doctors.
Colonel Haagen was given command of an orphaned Panzer Grenadier Regiment , and the two doctors, Dr. Portmann and Dr. Grains can operate again. However, Rottmann is turned off, Dr. Guard grains. He made the plan to defer to the Russians at the next opportunity.
Olga Pannarewskaja is now fighting in the rubble for the "tennis racket". It's shock troops battle area where many Siberian sniper lurking on the roof of the department store Uniwermag on German victims. In her mad rage, Olga shoots many Germans. With a very young soldier who is roasting a rat over the fire, she doesn't have the heart. Instead, he is killed by the Kyrgyz sniper Piotr Kulubaj. Kaljonin sits down with his men in German tank wrecks on an arterial road. Tanks that are still operational but can no longer drive. After learning that Vera has been captured, he deserted.
January 7, 1943: There has been no food for three days. In the hospital cellar they wait for the downfall. A raiding party brings Soviet prisoners, including Olga and chief surgeon Dr. Sukow. They help immediately with the medical care of the many wounded. Contrary to all medical common sense, they operate on Colonel Subotkin, the “hero of the nation”, who suffers from a shot in the lung and stomach and is bleeding to death inside . Under adventurous conditions, the Russian-German surgical team succeeds in suturing the abdominal artery. As a thank you, Dr. Portner and Dr. Grains badly needed anesthetic by the Russians. At the same time, however, other German wounded who were not receiving emergency medical care die at the same time .
On January 8, 1943, Knösel and Rottmann lay out a cloth to move a Soviet aircraft to drop supplies. The ruse succeeds, but the box only contains propaganda material , such as a larger than life sheet with a Stalin face, with which the wounded are now being bandaged. At the same time, Soviet parliamentarians are negotiating with Field Marshal Paulus . In it, Rokossovsky presented an extremely generous ultimatum for the laying down of arms and the end of the fighting. However, the Führer Headquarters coldly refuses this. The 230,000 trapped soldiers of the 6th Army must die.
The ultimatum expired on January 10, 1943, and the last assault on Stalingrad began with heavy artillery barrages and collapsing tank wedges. Olga and Dr. Grains become lovers. Pitomnik falls on January 16th . In the field hospital, the anesthetics have run out completely after excessive use, and it is being used according to Dr. Sukow operated with the mallet method. The population of Stalingrad is also poorly supplied. People discover a chicken feed store and greedily eat the salted fish it contains, causing terrible thirst and chaotic scenes. Knösel meets Kaljonin in the rubble landscape, because he is attracted to his Machorka, and a raid party brings the wounded Vera to the field hospital. In the meantime the ring has become much narrower and the command post of the 71st Infantry Division has to give way to that of the 6th Army. Things in the cauldron are getting more and more absurd. The last aircraft do not drop urgently needed food, but rather condoms . Knösel meets Kaljonin again, this time in a German uniform. He absolutely wants to go to his "Veraschka", which is in custody of the Germans. Knösel accepts it for a ration of Machorkat tobacco. Kaljonin is supposed to pretend to be a Silesian .
On January 23, 1943, the boiler was split open. Gumrak fell the day before. Even the highest staff are now officially speaking of treason against the 6th Army. Paul announced on January 24th that uniform command management was no longer possible. There are only 150,000 German soldiers left alive. The XI. Corps under Colonel General Strecker fights in the tractor factory, the 305th Infantry Division goes down in the metallurgical plant, and the last German artillery at level 102 is destroyed.
Colonel von der Haagen fights his way to the cinema basement. He reports of terrible events, that his regiment was wiped out by flamethrower tanks and that he himself ran away cowardly. But Dr. Portner has not forgotten that it was because of him that Dr. Grains almost fusilated. Colonel von der Haagen asks for protection from the Red Cross, but he is just a scattered man who has to be picked up again by the troops.
Wounded people are randomly selected who can still be flown out with the last machine. The five trucks do not arrive, however, because they run out of gas halfway through at -40 ° C and the associated additional fuel consumption. Then they are set on fire by Soviet tanks.
Rottmann shoots Olga and is killed by Knösel at the same time.
Dr. Portner and Dr. Sukow become good friends, and Dr. Körner and Olga can be married.
The end has come. General Gebhardt gives his men the option to break out on their own, to go into Soviet captivity or to commit suicide . He takes Colonel von der Haagen with him on a tank destruction squad, a suicide mission that kills both of them. Dr. Portner, who wants to save his general, is killed.
Another airdrop reveals hundreds of iron crosses, close combat clasps, etc., as if to mockery. Paul and his staff capitulate and are taken prisoner by the Soviets. Kaljonin is shot by his own people with a submachine gun because he still wears a German uniform. Olga is led by Dr. Korn separated because he has to be taken prisoner of war. They should never see each other again. The prisoners face an uncertain fate.
main characters
- Lieutenant Dr. Hans Körner: Assistant doctor and protagonist of the novel.
- † Marianne Erika Lieselotte Bader: his 19-year-old wife from Cologne. Curly black and of a "sweet appearance" .
- † Medical officer Dr. Hans Portner: superior with a humanistic-anthroposophical attitude
- † General Friedrich Gebhardt: fictional general during the Battle of Stalingrad
- † Feldwebel Horst Wallritz: Medical Sergeant, belongs to the operating group of Körner and Portner
- Major Yevgeny Alexandrowitsch Kubowski: Troop leader of the Red Army from Tbilisi , should claim the "tennis racket" at any cost
- Vera Cherkanova Kaljonina: Paramedic and former worker in the tractor factory
- Mladschij-Sergeant (NCO) Ivan Ivanovich Kaljonin: Vera's bridegroom
- Corporal Hans Schmidtke called "Knösel": the factotum of the paramedics
- † Colonel von der Haagen: ideologically fanatical officer
- Oberleutnant Olga Pannarewskaja: Field doctor from Stalino , who is deployed in the section “tennis racket”.
- Major physician Andrej Wassilijewitsch Sukow: well-known war surgeon and Olga's superior
- Paul Webern: Catholic chaplain
linguistic style
“Pavel Nikolayevich Abranov looked up at the sky and then over the tips of his boots down to the Volga and chewed hard bread on one edge. The sky was pale, gray, unfathomable, heavy, and the Volga seemed black, a broad river full of ink. Abranov sighed and rubbed the hard-edged bread with saliva so that it softened and could be bitten. Next to him lay a tall man in uniform with broad shoulder pieces, unshaven, dirty, smeared with clay. He too looked across the Volga to Krasnaya Sloboda, but he didn't sigh, he chewed on a cigarette. It was a good, fat cigarette from Machorka, rolled out of part of the Pravda management report the day before yesterday. "What is it, father?" Asked the uniformed man. “Why are you sighing?” “It should be winter, Comrade Major. It's time for it! A quick winter, hui - like horsemen from the steppe of Kazakhstan! It should freeze over overnight ... then they can come to us from below over the Volga, our little tanks ... 'Abranov laughed softly. It was an almost whimpering laugh, because Pavel Nikolayevich was seventy-two years old. He was a real old man, just like you imagine an old man, with white hair that arched at the back of the neck, with a thick nose, with wrinkled eyes whose pupils were still shiny, even if the eyeballs were already yellow tobacco-pickled fingertips. "
Historical context
"... The situation of your encircled troops is difficult. They suffer from hunger, illness and cold. The grim Russian winter has barely begun. Strong frosts, cold winds and blizzards are still ahead. Their soldiers, however, are not provided with winter clothing and are in serious unsanitary conditions. As commanders and all officers of the encircled troops, you understand perfectly that you have no real means of breaking through the containment ring. Your situation is hopeless and further resistance is pointless. "
Konsalik is working intensively on the second phase of the Stalingrad battle, after the end of the attack phase and the inclusion of the 6th Army in Operation Uranus. Stalingrad is supposed to be more than just a simple battle of the Second World War, but rather the decision over all of Russia and Paul is symbolically represented as the heart of the 6th Army.
“The 6th Army is temporarily enclosed by Russian forces. I intend to concentrate the army in the Stalingrad North area [...]. The army can be convinced that I will do everything possible to supply them appropriately and to relieve them in good time. I know the brave 6th Army and their commander in chief and know that they are doing their duty. "
The Fiihrer's orders to supply Stalingrad from the air had very quickly turned out to be an illusion. The German soldier, who is given a large share by Konsalik, not only has to fight against the Red Army as an overpowering enemy, but also against the hostile winter climate of southern Russia. In addition, there are inhuman orders from above, cadaver obedience and typically German bureaucratism , which leads to fatal wrong decisions and the demise of an entire army. Konsalik devotes a lot of space to this topic.
Reviews
Konsalik dedicates the first sentence of the book to the "simple soldier":
"Dedicated to the simple soldier, on whose back the sins of politicians have always been carried out, as a warning and constant appeal."
As in many of his other books, his core theme is the "horror of war" and the victory of humanity in his main characters. The author tears down all German ideals and reports on "Wars are always a mass delusion", "Urtriebe" and "Mass death of reason".
The heart of the 6th Army is considered a trivial text in a publication by the German National Library, which, however, was printed with more than 30 editions. Overall, the book is described as "terrifying" and "depressing". The story of the Battle of Stalingrad is told from the perspective of an authoritative narrator who equates the fronts. Stereotypical images of doctors and compatriots as well as their own language / jargon are characterized. A totalitarianism thesis is raised as the message of the novel .
In the book Konsalik has processed, among other things, his own experiences at the front (the author was not a participant in the Stalingrad Battle), which he had learned during his time on the Eastern Front in a propaganda company. The overall tenor is his commitment to peace and humanity. A warning example written in dramatic text form, against the blind obedience of the Führer, as well as any other form of totalitarianism, so that such an irresponsible tragedy as that of Stalingrad may never repeat itself.
Text output
- Heinz G. Konsalik: The heart of the 6th Army. Original edition. Lichtenberg Verlag, Munich 1964.
- Heinz G. Konsalik: The heart of the 6th Army. Anniversary edition. Heynes general series 01/8503. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-00067-6 ( epdf.pub PDF).
Web links
- Sonja Waltraud: Thoughts on Konsalik: The doctor from Stalingrad as housework. 2002
- The heart of the 6th Army in the catalog of the German National Library
Notes and individual references
- ↑ the "tennis racket" was one of the tracks at the Stalingrad train station and was so called by pilots because of its characteristic shape; in Rainer Müller: The Battle of Stalingrad. Skilled work school. 1997
- ^ "Tennis racket" was in the combat section of the Lower Saxony 295th Infantry Division and 284th Siberian Rifle Division, which was dominated by snipers for a long time
- ↑ the "tennis racket", in the middle of which was the chemical plant "Lazur", was in reality, however, northeast of the main station, between Mamayev Hill , Banyi Gorge and the Volga steep bank. The tennis racket lay in a kind of " no man's land " between Stalingrad center and industrial complexes.
- ↑ so z. B. Oranges as a special supply
- ↑ Beketowka later became a prisoner of war camp of the Red Army, see Hans Michael Kloth: "It was only died". Why only 5,000 of the more than 90,000 captured soldiers of the 6th Army returned home. In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 2002 ( online - December 16, 2002 ).
- ^ Johann Althaus: Stalingrad 1943: Why 95 percent of prisoners of war died . In: Die Welt Online . February 9, 2018 ( welt.de ).
- ↑ also Stalingrad Strategic Offensive Operation or Soviet major offensive for the liberation of Stalingrad
- ↑ medical permission to be flown out
- ^ In the southern part of Stalingrad
- ↑ The heart of the 6th Army. Anniversary edition. Heynes general series 01/8503. 1980. p. 158 Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich.
- ↑ Konsalik is wrong here. Uniwermag is not near the "tennis racket"
- ↑ probably meant is steelworks "Red October"
- ↑ Andreas Kilb: Can the battle of Stalingrad be represented “realistically”? And what is an "anti-war film"? A look at Alexander Kluge's "description of the battle", a review of Joseph Vilsmaier's film "Stalingrad" "and a reference to the television series" The Damned War ": New Comrades . In: Die Zeit Online . January 22, 1993 ( zeit.de ).
- ↑ Herbert Selle : Code name "Uranus" ". The Germans at the gates - A description of the battle from America. In: Die Zeit. 15/1974. April 5, 1974 ( zeit.de ).
- ↑ The swastika flag is still blowing over Stalingrad on MDR.
- ↑ a b c The heart of the 6th Army . Anniversary edition. Heynes general series 01/8503. 1980. p. 108 Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich.
- ↑ Literature on the Stalingrad Battle. War in the text. The novels about the battle for Stalingrad such as Theodor Plievier : Stalingrad (1945), Heinrich Gerlach: The betrayed army (1957), Fritz Wöss : Dogs, do you want to live forever? (1958), Heinz G. Konsalik: The Heart of the 6th Army (1964), Helmut Welz : Betrayed Grenadiers (1964), Alexander Kluge : Description of the battle (1964/1978), Helmut Karschkes : Eiswind aus Kasakstan (1966) and Christoph Fromm : Stalingrad (1993)
- ↑ The jungle goddess is not allowed to cry . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1976 ( online - Dec. 6, 1976 ).