PREMIOS, HONORES Y TÍTULOS

A crack Soviet Army in the swamp—The wooden road across the clearing Erika-A merciless battle—Engineers Battalion 158—Break-out from hell—The disaster to the Soviet Second Striking Army—"Don't shoot; I am General Vlasov"—Maps buried under a river.

WHAT had happened in the meantime on the Volkhov, where Vlasov's Second Striking Army had been cut off in the forests? Here, too, spring had come. The snow had melted away, and the ice on rivers and swamps had thawed. In the dug-outs and trenches the water stood waist-high. In the dead forests thousands of millions of midges woke to new life. Where columns on sledges and skis had darted swiftly only a short while before there were now water-courses and throbbing swamps. And in the very midst of this hell was General Vlasov with

his fourteen Soviet rifle divisions, his three cavalry divisions, his seven rifle brigades and one armoured brigade—an Army in the swamp. Vlasov was an energetic general. On 27th March he had burst open the German: barrier in the clearing Erika by striking at it with Siberian assault brigades and tanks from the west. Admittedly, the gap they punched was only a mile wide, but nevertheless it was a gap through which the encircled units could be supplied. In vain did the battalions of the German 58th Infantry Division and the SS Police Division try to drive Vlasov's Siberians out of the clearing. They did not succeed. They were too weak themselves, and the swampy and wooded ground

on both sides of the clearing Erika was too difficult to allow the bringing up of sufficiently strong formations to seal off the Soviet pocket completely. As a result, the 58th Infantry Division and the group holding the area north of it had to stand up to continuous Soviet attacks

throughout six difficult weeks.

At last, at the beginning of May 1942, a second, carefully prepared attack by the 58th Infantry Division, which had by then been reinforced, resulted in success—i.e., in a solid linkup with the Police Division employed to the north of the clearing Erika.

But by then his regiments were no longer able to cross frozen marshes or make their way through the thick forests. The marshy forest floor and the swamps forced them to keep to roads and paths. And there was only one path open to them —the wooden causeway across the

clearing Erika.

On 20th May General of Cavalry Lindemann issued an Order of the Day to his Eighteenth Army. It opened with the words: "The Russians are pulling out of the Volkhov pocket." It was like a signal for the German men fighting on the Volkhov. On that 20th May they once more sealed the gap across the clearing Erika, Throughout the heavy fighting of these months the infantrymen, the gunners, and Panzerjägers were helped by the sappers of Engineers Battalion 158 under Captain Heinz. Day and night, under the most difficult conditions, the men were in action. Their casualties were heavy. At the end of the battle, when the gallant battalion was pulled out, the combat strength of its three sapper companies was down to three officers, three NCOs, and thirty-three men. The commander of the 2nd Company Engineers

Battalion 158, Second Lieutenant Duncker, a parish priest in civilian life, was awarded the Knights Cross in recognition of the part he played in the successful fighting at the clearing Erika.

By the end of May 1942 the savage battle on the Volkhov had been won by the German troops. Those units of Vlasov's Army which had not succeeded in slipping out were now irretrievably caught in the trap. They were nine rifle divisions, six rifle brigades, and units of an

armoured brigade. The end of the Soviet Second Striking Army was at hand.

That end was frightful. Only 32,000 men survived the battle, and they were taken prisoner. Several tens of thousands were lying in the forests and swamps—drowned, starved to death, bled to death. It was an appalling field of slaughter. Huge swarms of flies buzzed over the

marshes and over the corpses which were sticking out of the swamp. A terrible stench hung over the clearing. It was hell itself. Through that hell roamed General Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov with his staff. The Germans were after him. Suddenly the general had

vanished. Where was he? Had he been killed? Had he shot himself? Or was he hiding out?

Vlasov's description, complete with photograph, was dropped by German aircraft in many thousands of leaflets over the villages of the Volkhov pocket. High rewards and special leave were promised for his capture. Naturally, from that moment onward reports were coming

in every day: Vlasov has been seen; Vlasov has been found dead; Vlasov has been taken prisoner. On being followed up the reports invariably proved to be based on mistakes, empty boasts, and misunderstandings.

On llth July yet another report arrived at XXVIII Corps to the effect that Vlasov had been found dead. Captain von Schwerdtner, the Intelligence Officer, set out at once. He found a dead officer covered with a general's greatcoat. He was about six foot two tall—about

Vlasov's height.

But it was no longer possible to identify the body or to establish any similarity. Schwerdtner gave orders for the body to be taken to Corps and himself drove back.

In the next village the Russian headman stopped him and reported, "I've got a man locked up in my shed who looks like a partisan. There's a woman with him too, maybe an agent. Would you like to see them?"

Schwerdtner told him to lead him to the shed. The village headman unlocked it. Schwerdtner's interpreter and escort party held their machine pistols at the ready. "Vykhodi!" the Russian shouted. "Come out!" Out of the dark into the blinding light of day stepped a giant of

a man, covered in dirt, with a beard, in an officer's tunic with leather shoulder-strap and muddy leather boots. He blinked his eyes behind the thick black horn-rimmed glasses. He saw the machine pistols, raised his hands, and said in broken German, "Don't shoot; I am General

Vlasov." The sun was high in the sky. The flies were buzzing; otherwise there was complete silence.

Out of that shed in a Volkhov village history pushed a man—one of the best produced by Bolshevik Russia—a man whom the carnage and the corpses on the. Volkhov had turned into a mortal enemy of Stalin. Vlasov was Russia. If anyone could defeat Stalin it was he. The battle in the forests by the Volkhov was one of the most frightful battles ever. The mere fact that one of the best and politically most

reliable Soviet generals emerged from it as an opponent of Stalin and Bolshevism merely confirms the horror of the hell through which Vlasov's Second Striking Army had passed. From that date onward Vlasov remained a political factor of considerable importance in the

background of the duel between Hitler and Stalin.

But the battle also yielded another prize of supreme military importance, even though perhaps less spectacular and known at the time only to a few experts. Preliminary interrogation of captured staff officers had revealed that the Soviet offensive on the Volkhov was superbly equipped in every respect—and that included the map material of a large cartographic office specially set up for this offensive. But where

were the maps? The vast battlefield was closely searched, but no trace was found.

Eventually a second lieutenant was tracked down who had been on the staff of the cartographic office. The lieutenant talked. He led the German experts to a small river and told them to divert the water at a certain point. And there, buried in the river-bed, were the maps of the

Soviet cartographic office. Just as the Western Goths once buried their King Alaric under a river, so the Soviet head of the cartographic office had hidden three lorry-loads of exceedingly valuable maps in the river-bed and then ordered the waters to be led back to their original course again. It was the most important cartographic find made by the German forces in the whole war. The cache contained Russian maps from the western frontier of the Soviet Union to well beyond the Urals. The prize was sent to Berlin, and before long the

Hitler moves east 1941-1943 PART FIVE: The Ports on the Arctic Ocean 1. "Operation Platinum Fox"

The Murmansk railway-Offensive on the edge of the world-General Died reaches out for Murmansk—Across the Titovka and Litsa—No roads in the tundra—An error costs the Finns their victory-Mountain Jägers in the Litsa bridgehead.

THE very first drafts for "Operation Barbarossa" list a surprising objective—Murmansk. This little-known place was named alongside the great strategic objectives like Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Rostov. What was so important about Murmansk? It was a port and a railway station on the windswept roof-top of Europe, on the Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle, in the same latitude as the vast glaciers of

Greenland, some 600 miles away from civilization.

In the summer of 1941 Murmansk had 100,000 inhabitants. For three months of the year there was scorching summer, and for eight months there was deep winter and polar night. All around was desolate tundra, without a tree or a shrub. Why then was this godforsaken town listed alongside the great objectives in the secret drafts for "Operation Barbarossa"? Why was Murmansk named in the same breath as the capital of the Communist empire, or Leningrad, or the industrial Donets region, or the Ukrainian grain area, or the Caucasian oilfields—all

of them objectives aimed at by entire Army Groups, Air Fleets, and Panzer Armies, and considered worthy of the most savage battles in history?

"Under every sleeper of the Murmansk railway a German lies buried," the Lapps used to say. Like all legends, this one should not be 424d39e taken too literally—although it is not so very far from the truth.

Between 1915 and 1917 some 70,000 German and Austrian prisoners-of-war were employed in these virgin forests, swamps, and Arctic tundra between St Petersburg and Murmansk in the building of a railway originally started in 1914 with convict labour. The hardships of the prisoners-of-war defied description. During the short scorching summer they were mown down by typhoid, and during the eight months

of the Arctic winter they were killed by cold and hunger. Within twenty-four months 25,000 men died. Every mile of the 850-mile-long line cost twenty-nine dead.

When Adolf Hitler received General of Mountain Troops Eduard Dietl at the Reich Chancellory in Berlin on 21st April 1941 he did not show him the balance-sheet of the lives lost in the construction of the Murmansk railway, but calculations showing the number of freight

trains carrying goods, armaments, and troops along the Kirov railway—as the Soviets had named the line—between Moscow and the Arctic Ocean.

General Dietl, the hero of Narvik, the general commanding the "Mountain Corps Norway," had known about Directive No. 21, "Operation Barbarossa," since the end of December. Like most of the generals, he too had been taken aback when he first saw the secret paper. But

being an obedient soldier he had got down to work to prepare for his tasks for D-Day. These tasks, according to the directive, were as follows: "The 'Mountain Corps Norway' will firstly secure the Petsamo [Now Pechenga.] area with its ore-mines, as well as the Arctic Ocean road, and subsequently, in conjunction with Finnish forces, advance to the Murmansk railway and cut off overland supplies to the

Murmansk area."

For three and a half months Dietl and his four staff officers, whom he had taken into his confidence, had been working on these tasks. Now, on 21st April, one day after the celebration of his fifty-second birthday, Hitler was anxious to know how the plans for this part of the

operation were progressing. At that time neither he nor Dietl had any inkling of the importance the Murmansk railway was to gain for the Soviet war economy in later years. They did not suspect that American convoys would sail into the Arctic Ocean once Germany was at war

with Russia, to unload their supplies of military aid at Murmansk.

To Hitler at that time the railway was a line of communications along which Stalin was rapidly able to switch major contingents of troops, artillery, aircraft, and tanks from Central Russia to the Soviet-Finnish frontier on the Arctic Ocean in order to snatch from Germany the

vital nickel-mines of Pet-samo and the ores of Narvik.

That was Hitler's nightmare. That there was another, far greater, possibly decisive danger lurking behind the Murmansk railway he did not see at the time—or certainly not in its full implications. Yet he, or any of his strategists, should have been able to predict it. When the Tsar hurried the construction of the railway in the First World War he did so not in order to conquer Norway or seize the nickel of Petsamo, but in order to put to use the only ice-free port of his empire, the only port from which Russia had unrestricted contact with the

world's oceans. In the whole of the giant Russian empire Murmansk is the only ice-free port with free access to the Atlantic. True, Archangel on the White Sea also has a port which communicates with the open sea, but although it is situated farther south than Murmansk, it is closed by ice for three months in the year. And Vladivostok, the "ruler of the east," as its name suggests, is likewise subject

to freezing up for about a hundred days. Besides, it is situated at Russia's backdoor, and 4350 miles away by rail from European Russia. The ports on the Black Sea are blocked by the Bosphorus, and those on the Baltic by the strait between Denmark and Sweden. Murmansk therefore is Russia's only open gateway to the world. The remote town owes its importance to a freak of nature—the Gulf Stream. Some of

its warm waters wash through the 750-mile-wide gap between Greenland and Norway, where the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans meet. These warm water masses from the Gulf Stream prevent the Norwegian fjords from freezing up, and the very last scrap of warmth from the sun-

drenched Gulf of Mexico makes sure, before being swallowed up by the Arctic Ocean, that the Kola Bay does not freeze up even in the severest Arctic winters with temperatures of 40 or 50 degrees below zero Centigrade.

That was why the Tsar built a railway from St Petersburg to the fishing village of Murmansk. And in 1917, when America entered the war against Germany on the side of Russia, the Murmansk railway became the shortest and the most important all-the-year-round supply-line

between the USA and Russia.

The map-room at the Reich Chancellory was flooded with April sunshine. The large windows into the garden were open. From this very room the sovereigns of the old Europe had once gazed out on the greenery of the fine old trees. For Hitler's map-room in the old Reich

Chancellory was the same salon where in 1878 Bismarck's Congress of Berlin was sitting to curb Russia's hegemony in the Balkan Peninsula.

As General Dietl entered the room on 21st April General Jodl had just submitted to Hitler the draft of the High Command communiqué. Hitler was wearing his old-fashioned nickel-gilt glasses. He read through the text and made one or two alterations. Victories—everywhere

victories. In Greece the German divisions were in headlong advance to the south via Larissa; at Metsovon mountain troops were crossing the Pindus Mountains, chasing the retreating British. In North Africa Rommel's regiments had breached the Tobruk defences at Ras-el- Madaur and were now fighting at the Halfaya Pass, half-way to Cairo. Three days earlier the Yugoslav Army had surrendered. Yugoslavia

had been over-run in only eleven days. In Greece the end was imminent. Nothing was impossible for the German soldier! Hitler took off his spectacles and welcomed General Dietl. He was fond of this plain Bavarian hero of the Mountain Troops, the popular

conqueror of Narvik. Major Engel, the High Command ADC, spread out a 1:1,000,000 map of the Finnish-Norwegian area. "Have you made good progress with your preparations?" Hitler asked. "We haven't got much time left." Without waiting for a reply he walked over to the map-table, put his glasses on again, and bent over the map. With complete confidence, as though he had never done

anything else but plan major military operations, he began to lecture:

"Murmansk is the most dangerous deployment centre of the Russians in the extreme north. The harbour and railway have a considerable capacity, and the town and its airfields are probably held in strength. It would take Stalin only a very short time to dispatch a few additional

divisions to Murmansk and mount an attack against the West. Murmansk hasn't been extended for nothing. In 1920 it was a dump with 2600 inhabitants, and to-day it has 100,000. Our aerial reconnaissance has revealed gigantic railway installations, enormous quays, factories, exit roads—in short, a modern fortified centre, a dangerous strongpoint in the thinly populated territory along the Arctic Ocean." Hitler had warmed to his subject. He placed the index finger of his right hand at Murmansk and that of his left on Petsamo. "The distance to

the nickel-mines is only 60 miles."

He stabbed another point on the map. "And from Petsamo to Kirkenes on the Varanger Fjord is only another 30 miles. To have the Russians in this area would be disastrous. Not only should we lose the nickel ore which is indispensable to our steel manufacture, but it would also be a heavy strategic blow to the whole of our Eastern campaign. The Russians would be on the Arctic Ocean road, the transport

lifeline of Northern Finland. It leads deep into the rear of the Finnish front and right to Sweden's back-door. To have the Russians on the