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p Their battalion was put on the train in Paris and sent east. They had with them the things they had looted in France, French wines and French cars.

p For lack of petrol their cars had to be left behind in Minsk, and from there to the front they were marched on foot. Intoxicated with the victory of German arms and with French wine, they moved along the dusty roads of Byelorussia with the sleeves of their tunics rolled up to the elbow and the collars unbuttoned. Their helmets were strapped to their belts, and their uncovered, sweaty heads were opened to the gentle sunlight and the warm wind of this alien country. With a little wine still swilling in their flasks they walked at a brisk step through the charred skeletons of Soviet villages and hollered a dirty song about Jeanne, the beautiful French girl, who had her first look at real soldiers and her first experience of real men only when the Germans entered Paris.

And then life became less rosy. Day and night, on the march and at halts, they were harassed by partisans. Within six days the battalion lost close on forty men—killed and wounded. The messenger sent to headquarters on a motorcycle vanished into thin air. So did six privates and one lance corporal. These seven had gone to the nearest village to procure some food for the battalion and never came back. The song about the beautiful French girl who was left well-pleased with the Germans sounded less and less often now. People here were not wellpleased with the Germans. As the battalion entered the ravaged 60 villages, the inhabitants took to the forests, and those who had tarried in their dwellings morosely stared at their feet not to betray to the Germans the hatred smouldering in their eyes. There was more hatred than fear in the eyes of these men and women.

p Lance Corporal Fritz Berkmann, if he was to be believed, had never taken part in any punitive operations against the civilian population. He thought himself a cultured, decent person who was, naturally, against all unnecessary cruelty. And so, when his tipsy soldiers cracking dirty jokes and laughing, dragged a young peasant woman into the barn, he left the yard so as not to hear her screams. The woman was young and strong. She put up a mighty resistance, and as a result one of the soldiers lost an eye. Still, the remainder had their way with her. After they had raped her, the one-eyed soldier killed her. Lance Corporal Berkmann was terribly angry when he heard about it. He would never have done anything so vile himself. He had a wife and two children at home in Nuremberg, and he wouldn’t like to have anything like this happen to his wife. Oh well, he could not answer for the actions of beasts who, unfortunately, did exist in the Reich army. When he reported on the happening to his lieutenant, the man shrugged—c’est la guerre!—and told Berkmann not to bother him with trifles.

The battalion was hurled into battle straight from the march. They did not leave the trenches for 26 days. Only 38 men survived from Berkmann’s company of 170. The soldiers were discouraged by such enormous losses. That wasn’t how they pictured the war with the Russians when they rode in the train from France, hollering their songs. Their officers had told them that they’d run through Russia as a knife runs through butter. As easily as that. All this turned out to be plain, boastful rubbish, and many of the officers who told them those things would never tell them anything again: the bullets of Russian snipers and the fragments of Russian shells had passed through their bodies really as easily as a knife passes through butter.

p Berkmann was taken prisoner this morning during our attack. Our soldiers blindfolded him with metres of gauze before bringing him into our dugout.

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p “Are you going to shoot me?" Berkmann asked in a quavering voice.

p The soldiers did not know German, and so they did not reply.

p Berkmann entered the dugout weak-kneed from fear. When the blindfold was removed and he saw before him several people sitting calmly round a table, he drew a wheezy sigh of such profound relief that I felt quite ill at ease.

p “I thought they were going to shoot me,” he mumbled in explanation of his involuntary sigh, and instantly stood at attention.

p He was invited to take a seat. He sank onto a chair, placing his hands on his knees.

p There he sat before us, this mercenary of nazi Germany, giving detailed answers to all our questions.

p He still could not recover from his fear. His cheek twitched, and the hands trembled on his knees. With all his might he tried to master his nervousness and not let us see how he was shaking, but with little success. It was only after he had greedily smoked the cigarette he was offered that he recovered his balance.

p He had curly hair and stupid blue eyes, set wide apart. He was very hungry, this unquestionable Aryan, and the war had left him very much the worse for wear. Their daily ration consisted of three cigarettes, a little bread and a half-messtin of hot soup. It was not always possible to deliver hot food to the trenches, and the Germans had to go hungry.

p What did he think about the outcome of the war with Soviet Russia? He thought it a hopeless venture. The Fiihrer had made a mistake to attack Russia. It was a very big bite, too much for Germany to swallow. Here, the prisoner said, he had a chance to freely speak his mind, which he could never do in his company as members of the nazi party spied on the men. Every thoughtlessly spoken word might spell death by shooting. His own personal opinion was that the thing to do was to defeat England, take away her colonies, and be finished with the war.

p His impressions of occupied Soviet territory boiled down to the following: there was not much food. The advanced detachments of the German army had devoured everything the population had. It was a stroke of luck finding a chicken anywhere now. He spoke almost with hatred of their tank divisions and motorised units. “They simply clean out the villages, the pigs. Coming behind them is like marching across a desert.”

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p Talking with Lance Corporal Bcrkmann was very trying indeed. The air in the stuffy dugout felt even more oppressive Irom the eynical utterances of this marauder in soldier’s uniform, a hysterically garrulous, stupid fool. We wanted to go out into the fresh air, and so we cut the conversation short.

In conclusion, he rose to his feet and, standing at attention, said that at the interrogation two hours ago he had honestly told the Soviet commander of the position and strength of his battalion, also the location of the staff and the ammunition dump. He told all he knew as he was a convinced enemy of war against Russia. When checked, his information would certainly be confirmed, and so he begged to be given a chance to let his wife know that he was a prisoner-of-war, and also, if at all possible, to be fed once more since the last meal he had was a full seven hours ago.

p And now we had before us a youth of twenty with sleek hair, blue pimples on his face, and thievishly darting eyes. He was a member of the German National-Socialist Party. A tank officer. He had fought in France, Yugoslavia and Greece. The day before a Soviet soldier had blasted his tank with a bunch of hand grenades. He had jumped out of the tank and fired back. Four Soviet bullets hit him, but the wounds were not grave. Now and then he winced from pain, but on the whole he behaved with brazen, put-on courage. He answered our questions without raising his eyes. He ilatly refused to reply to some questions, but then he held forth with great readiness and in well-memorised sentences on the supremacy of the German nation and the inferiority of the French, British and Slavs. No, this was not a human being speaking, this was an underdone pie with a stinking stuffing. Not a thought to call his own, not a hint of any spiritual interests. We asked him if he knew Pushkin and Shakespeare. He wrinkled his forehead in thought.

p “Who are they?" he asked, and when we told him he replied with a thin-lipped contemptuous smirk: “I don’t know them, and I don’t want to know them. I have no need of them.”

p He was certain that Germany would win the war. With dumb, idiotic doggedness he reiterated:

p “Before winter our army will finish with you and then it 63 will descend on England with all its might. England must perish.”

p “But what if Russia and England defeat Germany?”

p “Impossible. The Fiihrer has told us that we shall win,” he replied, staring stonily at his toes. His answers were those of a dull pupil who has learnt the words by heart but will not trouble himself with unnecessary reflections. There was something false, unbelievably ugly in this youth, and the only really sincere thing he said was: “I”m sorry my military career has been cut short.”

p This young wretch, hopelessly corrupted by Hitler’s propaganda, was not tired of killing people. He has just developed a taste for murder, he has not yet smelt enough of his victims’ blood, and here he was—a prisoner. He stood before us, a killer forever rendered harmless, watching us with the hunted look of a trapped, bloodthirsty polecat, and his nostrils dilated from blind hatred for us.

p Six German privates emerged from the tent under guard of one Soviet soldier, and squatted on the ground, carpeted with pine needles. These prisoners had just been captured. Their uniform coats were dirty and roughly mended; one of them had a length of wire wound round his instep to hold the flapping sole of his boot. They had not washed for six days. Our artillery had not given them the chance. Their glum faces were covered with a crust of dried dirt. They had become inlested with lice in the trenches, and unashamedly scratched their heads with grimy fingers.

p Only one of the six—a handsome dark chap—wore a pleased smile and, turning to me, said:

p “The war’s well over for me. I’m glad that I was so fortunately taken prisoner.”

p Messtins filled with steaming cabbage soup were brought. The prisoners pounced on the food like hungry beasts and, champing noisily, gulped down the soup greedily, hardly chewing the meat, and burning their mouths. They were two spoons short. Without waiting for the spoons to come the two Germans fished the cabbage and potatoes out of the messtins with their dirty hands, stuffed the food into their mouths and, throwing back their heads, screwed up their eyes from sheer bliss.

p Their hunger appeased, they got up, feeling heavy and sleepy.

p “Thanks,” said a stocky lance corporal, suppressing a burp. “Thanks a lot. I don’t remember when we last had such a filling meal.”

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p The interpreter told us that the seventh prisoner had remained in the tent, refusing to eat. We went into the tent. A middle-aged, very skinny and long-unshaven German soldier rose to his feet at our entrance, and dropped his big, calloused hands down the sides of his body. We asked him why he was refusing to eat.

p “I’m a peasant, I was mobilised in July,” he replied in a nervously quavering voice. “In these two months of war, I’ve seen all I want of the destruction caused by our army, I’ve seen abandoned fields, and all that we have done on our drive east.. .. I’ve lost sleep, I can’t eat. I know that practically the whole of Europe has also been ravaged like this, and I know that Hitler will have to pay terrible retribution for everything. And not Hitler alone, the damned cur, but the whole German nation will have to pay. D’you see what I mean?”

p He turned away and remained silent for a long time. Oh well, this was a welcome sort of brooding. The sooner the German soldiers became aware of the full weight of their responsibility and the inevitable retribution, the sooner would democracy triumph over nazism that has gone mad.

1941