War and Remembrance (169 page)

In their gory winter campaign to relieve Leningrad, and in their slogging rout of Manstein’s forces from the Ukraine and the Crimea in the spring, we had seen their frightening resilience, and Stalin’s brute resolve to go on squandering lives. But here in White Russia was something new: our own best tactical concepts, skillfully turned against us. To make the mirror image complete, Adolf Hitler would repeat the wooden-headed orders of Stalin in 1941 — “Stand where you are, no retreat, no maneuvers, hold or die” — with the identical catastrophic results, in the opposite direction.

The Soviets even achieved the same kind of surprise.

In 1941, expecting Hitler to strike for the Ukrainian breadbasket and the Caucasus oil fields, they had weighted their forces to the south. Thus our main thrust through White Russia had quickly shattered their central front. This time, despite the big Red buildup in the center, the infallible Hitler “knew” that the Russians would exploit their salient in the south to drive at the Rumanian oil fields and the Balkans. The central buildup he dismissed, in his usual airy-fairy way, as a feint, and he concentrated our forces to face the Soviet front in the Ukraine.

The anxious intelligence warnings by Busch, the commanding general of Army Group Center, and his pleas for reinforcements, went unheeded. When the Russian blow fell and the front caved in, Hitler of course fired Busch for his own pigheaded miscalculation; but the new commander, General Model, was just as hamstrung by Hitler’s meddling, especially by his insistence that our divisions hole up in “strong points,” towns left behind by the swift Russian onslaught — Vitebsk, Bobruisk, Orsha, Mogilev — instead of fighting their way out. This folly wrecked the front. The “strong points” fell in days, and all the divisions were lost. Gaping holes opened in our line, through which the Soviets came roaring like Tatars, on their limitless Lend-Lease wheels.

My operational analysis of Bagration, called “The Battle of White Russia,” is very detailed, for I consider this little-studied event the pivot of Germany’s final collapse in World War II, even more than the much-touted Normandy landings. If there was a true “second Stalingrad” in the war, it was Bagration. In less than two weeks the Russians advanced some two hundred miles. Sweeping pincer thrusts closing on Minsk trapped a hundred thousand German soldiers, and in the fighting we lost perhaps a hundred fifty thousand more. The remnants of Army Group Center reeled westward beyond Minsk, its formations sliced and skewered by Soviet armored spear points. By the middle of July Army Group Center had virtually ceased to exist. Melancholy ragged columns of German prisoners were
again parading in Red Square. The Red Army had recaptured White Russia and marched into Poland and Lithuania. It was threatening the east Prussia frontier, and Army Group North faced being cut off by a Red thrust to the sea. All this time, the Anglo-Americans were still struggling to break out of Normandy.

And all this time Adolf Hitler kept his eyes obsessively on the west! The swelling eastern crisis he brushed off, at our briefing conferences, with short-tempered snap judgments. Our controlled press and radio drew a veil over the catastrophe. As for the Americans and the British, they were preoccupied then, and their historians still are, with operations in France. The Soviets put out little more than the bald facts of their advances; and after the war, during Stalin’s decline into bloodthirsty lunacy, their military historians were gagged by fear. Not much useful writing about the war emerged from that wretched land for a long time.

So it happens that Bagration has slipped into obscurity. But it was this battle that irretrievably broke our front in the east, toppled Finland out of the war, and set the Balkan politicians plotting the treachery that led to our even larger disaster the following month in Rumania. And Bagration was the real fuse that, on July 20, set off the bomb in Supreme Headquarters.

TRANSLATOR
’
S NOTE:
In recent years the Soviets have been putting out more and better books on the war. Marshal Zhukov’s memoirs treat Bagration at length. These books, while informative, are not necessarily truthful by our standards. The communist government owns all the printing presses in Russia, and nothing sees the light that does not extol the Party; which, like Hitler, never makes mistakes.
—
V.H.

At the first gray light on June 23, Natalie gets up and dresses for the Red Cross visit, in a bedchamber befitting a good European hotel: blond wood furniture, a small Oriental carpet, gay flowered wallpaper, armchair, lampshades; even vases of fresh flowers, delivered last night by the gardening crew. The Jastrow flat will be a stop in the tour. The noted author will show the visitors through the rooms, offer them cognac, and take them to the synagogue and the Judaica library. So Natalie tidies the place as for military inspection before hurrying off. There is much yet to do at the children’s pavilion. Rahm has ordered a last-minute rearrangement of the furniture and many more animal cutouts for the walls.

It is just sunrise. Squads of women are out on the streets already, scrubbing the pavements on their hands and knees in the slant yellow light. The stench of these tattered scarecrows from the overcrowded lofts fouls the
morning breeze. Their work done, they will vanish, and the perfumed pretty ones in fancy clothes will come out. Natalie’s senses are too blunted to register such Beautification ironies. A recurring nightmare has been destroying her sleep for a month — Haindl, swinging Louis by the legs and smashing his skull on the cement floor. By now the picture of the child’s head splitting apart, the blood spurting, the white brains spattering, is as real to her as her memory of the SS cellar; in a way even more familiar, because that short horror came and went in a blur of shock, whereas she has seen this ghastly vision a score of times. Natalie is a reduced creature, scarcely normal in the head. One thing keeps her going, and that is the hope of getting Louis out of the ghetto.

The Czech gendarme who conveys Berel’s messages says the attempt is set for the week after the visit. Louis will sicken and disappear into the hospital. She will not see him again. She will be told only that he has died of typhus. Then she has to hope that she will one day hear he is safe. It is like sending him off to emergency surgery; no help for it, whatever the risk.

From a handcart parked outside the Danish barracks, gardeners are unloading rose bushes full of blooms, carrying them into the courtyard, and tamping them down into holes in the lawn. Heavy rose perfume deliciously sweetens the air as Natalie walks by. Clearly something special is going on with the Danish Jews. But that is not her concern. Her concern is to get through this day without a mistake, without angering Rahm and endangering Louis. The children’s pavilion is the last stop on the scheduled tour, the star attraction.

As it happens, the Danish Jews are the important ones today: a handful, four hundred fifty Jews amid thirty-five thousand, but a special handful.

The whole story of Danish Jewry is astonishing. All but these few are free and safe in neutral Sweden. The Danish government, getting wind of an impending roundup of Jews by the German occupying force, secretly alerted the population; and in an improvised fleet of small craft, in one night, Danish volunteers ferried some six thousand Jews across a narrow sound to neutral and hospitable Sweden. So only this tiny group was caught by the Germans and sent to Theresienstadt.

Ever since, the Danish Red Cross has been demanding to visit its Jewish citizens in the Paradise Ghetto. The Danish Foreign Ministry has been forcefully pressing this demand. The Germans, curiously enough, instead of shooting a few Danes and squelching the nuisance, have acted irresolute in the face of such unprecedented moral courage on behalf of Jews, displayed by this one small nation and by no other. Though postponing the visit time and again, they have, in fact, at last knuckled under.

Four men, dim in history, but their names still on record, make up the visiting party.

Frants Hvass,
the Danish diplomat who has been pressing Berlin about Theresienstadt.

Dr. Juel Henningsen,
of the Danish Red Cross.

Dr. M. Rossel,
of the German office of the International Red Cross in Berlin.

Eberhard von Thadden,
a German career diplomat. Thadden handles Jewish affairs in the Foreign Ministry. Eichmann transports Jews to their deaths; Thadden pries them out of the countries where they hold citizenship, and delivers them to Eichmann.

The tour begins at noon. It lasts eight hours. It is to impress these two Danes and these two Germans, in these eight hours, that the whole stupendous six-month Beautification has been carried out. It proves well worth it. The written reports of Hvass and the Red Cross man have survived. They glow with approbation of the splendid conditions in Theresienstadt. “More like an ideal suburban community,” one sums up, “than a concentration camp.”

And why not?

The four visitors, with a train of high Nazi officials from Berlin and Prague, traverse Rahm’s route by the timetable without a hitch. Their approach sets off one charming sight after another — pretty farm girls singing as they march with shouldered rakes to the truck gardens, masses of fragrant fresh vegetables unloading at the grocery store and Jews happily queueing up to buy, a robed chorus of eighty voices bursting forth with a breathtaking “Sanctus,” a soccer goal shot to the cheers of a joyous crowd, just as the visitors reach the sports field.

The hospital looks and smells Paradise-clean, the linen is snow-white, the patients are cheerful and comfortable, replying to all questions by praising the superb treatment and meals. Wherever the visitors go — the slaughterhouse, the laundry, the bank, the Jewish administration offices, the post office, the ground-floor apartments of the
Prominente,
the Danish barracks — they see order, brightness, cleanliness, charm, and contentment. The Danish Jews outdo each other in assuring Hvass and Henningsen that they are well off and handsomely treated.

And the outdoor scenes are so pleasant! The quaintly decorated street signs are a treat to the eye. Well-dressed Jews stroll at leisure in the sunshine, as few Europeans can do in the harsh wartime conditions. The café entertainment is first-class. The cream pastries are delicious. Of the coffee Herr von Thadden remarks, “Better than you can get in Berlin!”

And what a fine last impression the children’s pavilion makes! The lovely svelte Jewess in charge, the niece of the famous author, appears so
happy in her work, and is so quick with positive responses to questions! Clearly she is on the friendliest terms with Commander Rahm and Inspector Haindl. It is a beguiling close to the visit: healthy pretty children swinging, sliding, dancing in a circle, splashing in the pond, riding a roundabout, casting comic long shadows in the sunset light on the fresh grass of the playground, their laughter chiming like light music. Pretty young matrons watch them, but none half as handsome or cheerful as the one in the blue silk dress. With the commander’s permission, the Berlin Red Cross man takes photographs, including one of her holding her son in her arms, a lively imp with a heart-melting smile. In a burst of good feeling, Herr Rossel tells her that a print will be forwarded to her family in America.