Download Your Copy Breakout At Stalingrad Imagined By Heinrich Gerlach Available In Audiobook
“The lieutenant looked wideeyed at the colonel, who in the meantime had stood up and was slowly pacing up and down the room,
No one will want to hear the truth about Stalingrad, he went on, but I honestly believe Germany needs to know about it, There must be men over there with the courage to report what really happened, And that oughtnt to be just a soldier, it needs to be someone who can well, who can tell the story from a human perspective, if you catch my drift”
The Author
Heinrich Gerlachgrew up in Königsberg, Germany.
After studying at Freiburg he became a teacher before being drafted in the army in, Eventually he became a Lieutenant in theth Panzer Division as an Intelligence Officer at Stalingrad, The Stalingrad offensive had started in Augustby November of that year the Germans were encircled by the Russians, The Germans persevered with attempts to break through, but by the beginning of Februarythey were in a sorry state and of the,soldiers only,had survived the battles and the Russian winter.
Gerlach was one of the survivors who was imprisoned by the Russians, During his captivity he wrote this novel, He had access to a typewriter and paper, Unfortunately his manuscript was confiscated at the Russian border when an acquaintance tried to take the manuscript to Germany for him, Not fazed by this misfortune, Gerlach underwent hypnosis in order to recall what he had written, and inhis recollection of the novel was published as The Forsaken Army.
However, inCarston Gansell, a professor at Giessen University, discovered the complete original manuscript of Gerlachs novel in an archive in Moscow, This is the novel.
The Novel
The story focuses on the plight of the German army during the period in which they were surrounded by the Russians until Field Marshall Paulus surrendered on the second of February,.
The surrender happened minutes after receiving his promotion to Field Marshall,
German soldiers in Stalingrad
Russian Defense
As quoted above, a character in the novel is told to have the courage to report what really happened.
But it is the author, Gerlach, who does this unflinchingly, He was there, he experienced it, According to the Afterword, although most characters are fictional, ”Yet at the same time, nothing in this book is fabricated, All the incidents recounted in the action of the novel actually took place sometime and somewhere, either on the snowbound fields outside Stalingrad or in the ruins of the city itself.
”. There is a large cast of characters: some good, some not, some real General Paulus and various other officers, others fictional, But they are all human with human frailties, and any pretention is stripped away by their circumstances, Over time these few months were like a lifetime their hope fades and many change their views about their Führer, As their situation deteriorates, it is almost a case of rather the enemy who surely cant be as bad as painted by propaganda, than more broken promises by a government which they felt had betrayed them.
At least
there would be more food in captivity than the tiny rations on which they had tried to survive through the bitterly cold winter,
Stalingrad after liberation
It is historical fiction at its very best, The translation is excellent, and it is well worth reading the various addenda to the novel which include details of how the manuscript was found, as well as biographical information about Heinrich Gerlach who became involved in antifascist work in the concentration camp.
It also provides details of the writing of the novel, how it was possible to do so and the loss and rewrite of the novel based on hypnosis therapy.
There was also a subsequent lawsuit filed by the hypnotist, Among many things, this excellent autobiographical novel serves as a warning from the past for those who still believe in 'genius' leaders who get it right by dismissing expert advice.
In Stalingrad, Hitler and his bootlicker Göring sacrificedof their own rather than acknowledge their own mistakes, Gerlach describes finely how the scales gradually fall from the eyes of German soldiers, some of whom come to realize not only the criminal stupidity of their leaders but also the moral monstrousness of their campaign in the East while many others, plausibly, die in the cold while still believing in the big lie.
Geprägt durch das selbst erlebte Grauen in der aussichtslosen Schlacht um Stalingrad, schreibt der Autor sehr eindrucksvoll und erschütternd über das Ende der, Armee der deutschen Wehrmacht. Jedem der todgeweihten Soldaten und Offiziere wird klar, dass sie hier nicht für die Heimat geopfert und verraten wurden, sondern allein für die Rechthaberei und dem Prestige Hitlers.
Von einstSoldaten werdenTotenopfer eines Wahnsinnigen,gehen in Gefangenschaft und nurvon ihnen sehen ihre Heimat wieder, Diese Tatsache beweist, welche Notwendigkeit den Autor Heinrich Gerlach zum Schreiben gezwungen hat, This novel was written by a German survivor from the battle of Stalingrad, The manuscript was lost for a number of years after it was confiscated by the Soviet authorities during the author's imprisonment, It was then rediscovered by Carsten Gansel in a Moscow archive in, It is a harrowing depiction of the brutal Battle of Stalingrad which is to date the worst military disaster of the German Army and the largest confrontation of the second world war.
It is estimated that German casualties were over half a million and Soviet over one million, The novel concerns the appalling conditions of the Germans trapped in the Cauldron during the winter of/, As the Soviets squeeze the Germans further in to the town of Stalingrad they suffer unimaginable deprivations, There is no food, scant shelter and little ammunition or medical facilities and a constant, vicious cold for which the Germans are wholly unequipped, Large numbers of soldiers literally froze to death, The novel is excellently translated from the German by Peter Lewis and is only occasionally noticeable as a translation, It is sometimes hard to follow all the paths of the various characters but the despair, futility and inevitability of the outcome is constant and shocking, Hitler, who as the book makes clear was entirely responsible for the disaster, is quoted at the end as saying 'The duty of those who fought at Stalingrad is to be dead!' Het overdadige gebruik van bijvoeglijke naamwoorden werkte erg storend.
Afgezien daarvan is het boek zo geschreven, dat er een afstand blijft tussen lezer en hoofdpersonen, Ik had er meer van verwacht door diverse lyrische beschrijvingen, Stalingrad war immer eine kleine Wissenslücke bei mir, Ganz früher habe ich mal einen Konsalik über das Thema gelesen, aber das war es auch schon,
Das wirklich interessante an diesem Buch ist seine Geschichte, Erst deshalb bin ich überhaupt darauf gekommen, Der Autor ist Stalingrad Überlebender und hat das Buch während seiner Gefangenschaft geschrieben, Jedoch konnte er das Manuskript nicht hinüberretten, sondern es verschwand in den Tiefen russischer Archive, Aufgrund der langen Gefangenschaft waren weite Teile des Buches aus dem Gedächtnis verschwunden und der Autor versuchte unter Mithilfe von Hypnose diese Teile wieder herzustellen,
Vor kurzem wurde dann das Manuskript im russischen Archiv entdeckt und darauf basiert dann dieses Buch, Diese Geschichte ist im lesenswerten und sehr langen Anhang beschrieben, Sehr spannend.
Ein wirklich aufrüttelnder AntiKriegsRoman über die verratene Armee von einem Zeitzeugen, Ich bin froh, dass ich das Buch entdeckt habe, Excellent story about the battle of Stalingrad,
This book really captures the desperation, hunger and fear of the soldiers trapped within the Stalingrad 'cauldron, '
It should do. The author Heinrich Gerlach was a German soldier taken prisoner there,
As much as anything it's a study of the mental disintegration of the men who are trapped, Their plans to 'breakout' and escape, defect to the Russians and surrender, and their contempt for their superiors when the realization hits that they won't be rescued and they've been abandoned by the senior officers of theth Army and their leaders and politicians at home.
Reading this book made me feel claustrophobic, I could feel the fear of entrapment and desperation growing, Impending catastrophe. Really well written!
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Military History, Years ago I read Anthony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' and enjoyed it, but have to say I probably learnt more from this book! You buy into the struggles of the characters and that makes the story so believable and readable.
Indrukwekkend, gruwelijk. what a find a thank you to the reddit comment that suggested this one, . . although fiction, it is from the german perspective re: stalingrad which i found fascinating and horrifying, . . after reading a lot of western europe/pacific work it was nice to get this perspective although "nice" may not be the right word re: stalingrad, . . story behind the author is fascinating and i think important to read/know about for this book,
Their brains start working again, and to a man they all have just the one thought: Wed already put all of that behind us, our homeland was already beckoning! And now, right at the very last, were supposed to die a miserable death for these puffedup swastika lovers
Back then, in, when he returned home still feeling the artillery barrage at SaintMihiel in his bones, helike everyone else at the timehad only one thought in his head: Never again.
No more war. And now, despite themselves, theyd slipped back into fighting another one,
Beside the vehicle lay the body of the driver, burned to a cinder, Its teeth and glazed eyeballs shone out ghastly white against the shrunken skin of the face, Its black, shrivelled arms were stretched up to heaven, A group of Russian POWs loitered around the scene of the conflagration, holding their mess tins over the guttering flames, One of them had propped his foot on the chest of the dead man, They were chatting and laughing, pleased to have found this little oasis of warmth,
Hed never be able to rid himself of memories of this war, It had got under his skin and become an indissoluble, unforgettable part of his very being,
No, we wont get out of here I know it, Even if were relieved one dayand I really believe it might happenwe wont be the same people, Well never bring our best side home with us, Thats fallen victim to this war, Its lying dead and buried under the snowy fields of Stalingrad,
Manstein, now, hes the one who Manstein, nothing but Manstein! None of the troops had ever seen the field marshal in person, and hardly anyone even recognized his photograph.
The besieged men of Stalingrad were investing all their heartfelt hopes in a name,
The army needed six hundred tons of supplies every day to live and fight effectively, not the three hundred theyd all so glibly taken to be the bottom line.
The bodies of Sergeant Major Harras and Private Seliger, formerly a mess orderly at divisional HQ, are not found,
But man was put on Earth to raise himself up from the depths of bestiality No, theyre not my words, its a quotation from Fichte.
“Love They Neighbour as Thy Self”, thats the secret of humanity, Take a look inside yourself just for once, Dierk, into your heart of hearts, Cant you feel that Im right Sure, the wars brutalized a lot of things in us, But hidden somewhere deep inside us all is this miraculous treasure, Dig it out, Dierk, so you can become a human being again!
The crucifix of Stalingrad! In time, the wooden crosses will rot to nothing, and new life will blossom once more on the neglected graves.
But the invisible crucifix of Stalingrad will go on looming over space and time, standing for ever as an admonishment and a warning,
In years to come, if anyone asks me if I was one of those who came back from Stalingrad, I can say: “Yes, in part! When I went there I weighed a hundred and ninetythree pounds, now Im only a hundred and thirty.
The rest of me stayed there, ”
This cruel play of nature seemed positively to encourage that selfdeception, that mystical faith in miracles to which the men abandoned themselves ever more freely the more hopeless and desperate their situation became.
He had to do something! Work, slave away till he dropped from exhaustion, fight, shoot, freeze and fall in battleit was all the same to him.
Just so long as he didnt have to think any more
Theyre expected to lie here with no end in sight, even if thats being wounded or killed This just cant be right! Its sheer madness! This isnt war any more its nothing but murder: futile mass murder!
Theres no shouting, no questions, no noise at all.
That kind of deathly hush can only come from people who have given up on everything,
But this terrible silence rises up to the heavens like a single painfully pressing question, to which no answer comes: What is the point of these sacrifices, what are they for
Now just hold your horses a minute! Unold interrupted the hubbub.
I think youre labouring under some kind of misapprehension, To put it bluntly: weve had it! There arent any other tasks any more, Were under orders to die here, and thats that! Youre aware that the Corps commander is here with his staff, too, Well, hes already chosen the foxhole where hes going to fight till the very last bullet, Thats how things stand!
What do we do the colonel repeated in astonishment, Youre asking me that Youre a soldier yourself, man! Well follow orders, thats what!
Stalingrad, the graveyard of the German Army,
And so it was that they kept quiet again when they were expected to understand that this warm bunker hadnt been prepared for the likes of them, but for the othersthose who had the power to decide over life and deathand that they were destined to die.
And even if they didnt understand that, they still said Yes, sir! to it, albeit not in as many words, So, slowly and exhaustedly, they shuffled backwards towards the door, casting a last stolen glance at the wonderful pleasures of this room as they went,
Weve sacrificed the best years of our lives to that criminal shit, and now hes letting us go to the dogs Come on, lets drink! Its the only thing that makes any sense any more!
And every thought and every deed that was not aimed at overcoming that ludicrous, destructive spirit that insisted upon the mass slaughter of Stalingrad as some ghastly ritual of a barbarian cult of idolatry would be repudiated.
As yet, Breuer only has a faint inkling of all this, And he struggles to fight back this thought and summon up his strength for the fight that still awaits him,
The very idea of a general or General Staff officer standing in the trenches with his rifle like Private Dogsbody is quite preposterous! hed said, for instance.
We didnt undergo our training at the military academy to do that sort of thing!
A few men on the upper floor had saved themselves by climbing out of the windows onto trees.
But the flames from below steadily licked up to where they were perched, The men in the trees started screaming, Shoot us, shoot us! And the soldiers below opened fire, and one after the other the trapped men plunged into the flames That had all been undignified, shameless and criminal.
Stalingrad began as an assault, became a defensive action, and ended up as a crime! he had written in a letter to his wife, The German Wehrmacht, he claimed, had lost face,
A city was gradually being levelled, It was as if the decay of all manmade objects, a process normally concealed from mortal eyes by the slow passage of the years, was here being made visible by some merciless timelapse camera.
Theres a babel of slurring, whimpering, gurgling and moaning, One mans laughing crazily to himself, Another has stood up. Two burning irises, framed in white, blaze at Fröhlich, and a skeletons hand reaches out to him,
Colonel Lunitz was pleased with himself, The building was saved and at the same time hed be able to carry out his orders from High Command, The chiefs of staff could sleep safe in their beds that evening, Hed like to see someone do any better! What happened afterwards was no concern of his, Orders were orders!
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