The Tempering of Russia

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Text originally published in 1944 under the same title.

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THE TEMPERING OF RUSSIA

Ilya Ehrenburg

Translated from the Russian by

ALEXANDER KAUN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

IN PLACE OF A FOREWORD 4

AUTHOR’S PREFACE 5

JULY 1941 7

AUGUST 1941 15

SEPTEMBER 1941 23

OCTOBER 1941 39

NOVEMBER 1941 53

DECEMBER 1941 68

JANUARY 1942 77

FEBRUARY 1942 92

MARCH 1942 103

APRIL 1942 130

MAY 1942 157

JUNE 1942 180

JULY 1942 224

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 247

IN PLACE OF A FOREWORD

I HAVE COLLECTED several of my articles that have appeared in English and American newspapers, also in Red Star—such as reveal our true aspect, our feelings. I have added a few letters from among those I have received, not because they have been addressed to me, but because they have been written by our fighters in the front line and are typical of the period we are living through. This is not a book in the strict sense of the word. It is more a journal of thirteen months of war. Books will appear later on. There is nothing worse for me than ersatz literature, martial music performed by a chamber soloist. On the first day of the War I forgot that I had previously written novels and poems. I became a journalist, only a journalist, whose place is on the firing line. I breathe the air of battle. I believe that this air is felt in the pages of the lumbering and motley volume for which I am now writing this foreword. Many of these articles were written at the front, others at night amid the turmoil of the editorial room. I was not thinking about style, I was not thinking about the objective truth when I was writing these papers. I was thinking of one thing only: of victory. Some of the articles were written for distant America and for England, others for our army. You will discern the difference of the addressees, but the author is the same, and the goal the same: victory. I am spelling out this word on a bright day in August. We are still alone. We are repelling the attacks of Germany. Great is the tempering of Russia. Her today can already be seen as a lesson of heroism for our grandchildren. But we must save the grandchildren, save Russia. I do not wish to despair about the concepts of loyalty and friendship—I am dedicating these lines to the tempering of great nations, to the valor of the common soldiers of the pending second front, to our meeting them on the soil of the enemy and in our common immortality.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Events move quicker than a snail. The translator and the publisher can never keep up with the swift flight of these stern months. In this book the American reader will find notes referring to the first year of the Soviet-German war. So much has happened since then, so much has been experienced, thought over, and written, that to me the pages of this book seem infinitely remote. But I think they will interest our friends. If today the newspapers as a whole are discussing how many miles separate the Red Army from Warsaw, if politicians and lovers of politics discuss how many months separate us from the defeat of Germany, it is because Russia held out in 1941 and ‘42. My book is dedicated to the bitterest days, and is dedicated to the most significant days: it was precisely then that victory was being born—in the fortitude of our people, in the rebirth of hearts, in the defense of Moscow.

The second wartime summer was more bitter than the first. After the winter successes, the swift progress of the Germans toward the Volga and the Caucasus seemed unendurable. And we lived through the second summer too. It culminated in that defense of Stalingrad which will move our descendants by its deeply human heroism, free of all histrionics. Stalingrad was a mighty mountain crossed in this war.

The new book about our offensive is a book about conscience indignant. Yes, the conscience of the people and the conscience of the world have risen against Hitler. Last summer and fall I did much traveling in the liberated territory. I saw destroyed cities and fire-razed villages, felled apple trees, and herds of cattle killed by machine-gun fire. I saw graves in which the Germans had buried the innocent victims they had butchered. I saw many children who had been shot, and next to their bodies lay kiddies’ toys. Europe curses the Hitlerites with fearful words, but I think the words of an old peasant woman in a burned-down village put it best of all when she said, They have no conscience.

I know how far it is from us to America. I know how hard it is to convey sorrow and wrath through words. And still, I am a writer, and I believe in the power of words. Maybe my book will help the American reader understand the soul of this war. For us it is not in the dispute about territories, about raw materials, about borders. It is a war of man, his destiny, his freedom against the benightedness of the racial theory, against soulless German sub-machine-gunners who have invented gas trucks for the mechanical murder of whole nations, against total tyranny.

Russia’s grit, her sacrifices, her blood, have helped the world to overcome its fearful inactivity. If England and the United States can calmly prepare for the coming battles, if France has regained her state, conscience, and army, if all the enslaved peoples have gained hope, it is because in October 1941 Russia—already buried by Hitler and lamented by many gullible friends—did not surrender; it is because Stalingrad was the personification of the Russian and Soviet soul.

Now we stand on the threshold of victory. I once wrote that for me victory is neither marble nor granite nor verses, but an army nurse in a trench coat, her feet sore and bleeding, her eyes inflamed from sleepless nights. Our victories will tend to make all be human: conscience wins. We all have longed so for justice, we all have so often seen evil triumph, we are so accustomed to laud beautiful but invariably defiled virtue that maybe the triumph of justice will change the climate of humankind. If only to see, to reach, to breathe, to live till that hour!

THE TEMPERING OF RUSSIA

JULY 1941

JULY 3, 1941

Unbearably hot days. People are wearing summer clothes, and Moscow seems like a big summer resort. During the day one may forget about the war. On Pushkin Square they are selling flowers, as ever. Across the street from the Kremlin there is a café with an open terrace: soldiers, girls, clerks in sports jackets with briefcases are eating ice cream.

Housewives have many new cares: they dim out their houses, they glue strips of cloth on their window-panes. Instruction in anti-air defense goes on everywhere. Respectable mothers are learning how to put out incendiary bombs, which the youthful instructors contemptuously abbreviate into sab’s (insb’s).

In the evening people sit or stand on side-streets by their houses; they discuss all sorts of rumors. There are many rumors, both bad and good. One tells you that the Red Army has reached Warsaw, another that the Germans are near Moscow.

Many Muscovites rise with the roosters: they are eager to hear the first war summary, broadcast at six a.m.

In the schools, now recruiting-points, you see silent, grave people. Around the schools are crowds of women: mothers, wives. Those who go off to war show neither bravado nor fear. You are struck by the severity of the young, not yet hardened faces.

A commanding officer who has come for a few hours from the front tells about the drama the frontier garrisons have lived through. The Germans attacked like thieves. It was on a Saturday night.

Our forces are showing fierce resistance, but the Germans are forging ahead. All the roads are blocked by fugitives. Inexperienced soldiers speak about the German tanks with anguish.

A huge map of the war front is put up near the office of Izvestia. People stand about it, they look, they say nothing. Where are the Germans now? The communiqué speaks of the superior forces of the enemy.

Moscow does not yet realize the danger. There is a confusion here of confidence in victory and of unconcern, of strength and weakness.

The telephone woke me at four a.m. It’s the office: Listen to the radio. I realized who was going to speak. Stalin’s speech moved us all. It was profoundly human. Each citizen felt that Stalin was addressing him personally, from the very first phrase: I am speaking to you, my friends, Stalin told the country of the danger: there is need of great sacrifices and great courage.

JULY 13

The street loudspeaker startled everybody: Extra news! and a minute later: Agreement between the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain. These words spread over Moscow as if on wings.

A meeting at a war plant. An old swarthy steel-welder speaks: Hitler wanted to encircle us, but we have encircled him. England—that’s no sauerkraut for you. Sure enough, Hitler will smash many pots yet, no question about that. But in the end we’ll break him to bits.

The aviator Slepnev said to me: Together with the English and Americans we’ll hurl on Hitler’s head some two million steel melons.

Echelons are leaving day after day for the west. The front is coming closer. The Germans are fighting theatrically: psychological attacks, crackling motorcycles, fighter planes chasing a single truck. Hitler’s soldiers are certain of a quick victory. A captured corporal was brought to headquarters. He glanced around with disdain and said: Surrender, and I promise you the Führer’s pardon.

Short white nights glimmer over Moscow. Evening and morning twilight merge into one. The war has not become a reality as yet; the war is an oppressive nightmare. Everybody counts the days.

Yesterday I visited the wounded in a hospital. Pansies shimmer in the flowerbeds. I listen to long stories: Minsk...tanks...Vasilyev killed, Petrenko too, Schwarz too...One young chap, thin and transparent, said to me: Still we will finish them!"

I was passing by a church. They were praying for the victory of the Red Army. A policeman was urging a woman: Go, go inside and say a prayer. The woman snapped back: "I am an unbeliever.

I am just going for a bit of information."

At night the pavements are still hot, and inside the dimmed-out houses it is stifling; reminds me of Madrid.

JULY 18

I met the commander of a partisan detachment.

There are among the partisans some peasants who had fought in such squads twenty-three years ago. These are regarded as professors. There are also mere kids. An army of grandfathers and grandchildren.

An old forester leaped from a tree on a German motorcyclist, gripped his throat, and made him drive to our forces.

Three German parachutists landed on a hilly field near a pioneers’ camp. A group of children teased them and made them fire all their bullets while they kept hiding behind little mounds. When the Germans had no more bullets, the children jumped at them with threshing-flails and drove them to the nearest town.

Soviet boy scouts:

Here is an order of the German command:

BURGHERS AND VILLAGERS!

Should partisans be discovered on the territory of your town or village about whom you have failed to report to the German command, all of you, without exception, will be put down as spies of an enemy state and as such will be hanged.

The burghers and villagers read the order, but they fail to report; they are Soviet people.

In one village the Germans beat little children before their mothers’ eyes in order to force information about the whereabouts of the partisans. The mothers keep silent.

An old man with a withered right arm offered himself to the partisans. I am a lefty, he claimed. He did prove that he was capable of fighting the Germans with his left hand.

Battles are going on in the deep rear of the enemy, west of Vitebsk and Smolensk. Everywhere the Germans are surrounded by enemies—the Red Army as well as the partisans. The Soviet night is alive with men who are armed with rifles and grenades. Bottles with gasoline are hurled at tanks. Stores of provision and arms, fields, villages, are aflame. The Germans are moving through scorched earth.

One partisan said to me: I hit them and never miss—my bullet flies out of the heart.

The Germans captured a partisan. A battle was going on. They took the partisan to a loading-platform, on which lay heavily wounded Red soldiers—about twenty men. Near by were German machine-guns. The German office said in Russian: One can see at once that you are a partisan and a communist. Right? The man kept silent. All right, I will make you talk. The officer addressed the wounded: There are no guards. If anything should happen, our machine-gunners will mow you down. You are all responsible for this bandit. If he should run away, I shall shoot you all. Is that clear? When the officer left, the Red soldiers said to the partisan: Run. The man said: No. I don’t want to cause you trouble. Run. You can still fight. We are through. Some of us are wounded in the head, others in the legs, and in any case he will kill us. Run. No. Then one of the wounded said severely: I too am a Communist, and I command you: run. You must fight. They sheltered him from the machine-gunners. He said: Farewell, my friends. He reached our forces.

JULY 19

Our troops gave up Vitebsk. The military equipment was evacuated. The storehouses were set on fire—we did not have enough rolling-stock. The cloth burned for a long time.

In its last days Vitebsk was defended by the militia. About six miles from the city the Germans parachuted forty tanks and a squad of motorcycles. The militia repulsed the first attack against the city. The tanks found shelter in the anti-tank trenches, and thus used them as pillboxes from which the guns shelled the city.

There was a brewery in Vitebsk. For twenty-four hours they filled bottles with inflammatory liquid. Volunteers crept up to the tanks. Nineteen tanks were destroyed.

The Germans entered an empty, dead city. They did not enter at once; they were afraid, and waited two days. And for two days seven volunteers awaited them near the bridge. A detachment of the militia hid in the woods, east of Vitebsk. They kept in touch with the seven men to the last minute. The seven reported from time to time: We are waiting.

When the German tanks and artillery rolled on the bridge, an explosion was heard. Everything was hurtled into the air. The seven heroes perished.

Meanwhile on the highways German fliers machine-gunned Vitebsk women and children. The militiamen joined the partisans.

JULY 20

Battles are raging around Pskov. The Germans are trying to depress the spirit of our fighters: motorcycles whirl about with crackling noise, tommy-guns fire wildly, in an effort to create the appearance of encirclement. To overcome such an opponent one must possess calm and grit.

The Germans are scattering leaflets. One of them was written in a pseudo-folk style, in bad Russian. It begins with the words: What the deuce do we want the war for? and ends with rev’lutionary greetings. Near Porkhov our fighters learned the meaning of Hitler’s rev’lutionary greetings: a Red soldier crept up to them, after the Germans had cut off his nose with a razor.

The population aids the army. Recently Porkhov schoolboys caught three parachutists. A bearded old villager, armed with a stake, brought in a diversionist, disguised in the green uniform of a pre-revolutionary forester. The peasants drive off the cattle. Grain fields are burning. This year the stalks are almost as tall as an average man. There was not enough time to harvest the grain.

Attacks and counterattacks continue. On both sides the losses are heavy.

Yesterday one of our tanks caught fire. The driver rushed his burning tank at a German machine.

Corpses of women and children along the highways: German fliers have mowed them down.

July 22

Ration cards were introduced today. Muscovites are familiar with these: the civil war, then the first Five-Year Plan. A key, perhaps, to the soul of Moscow: this city has lived through much, it is hard to surprise her. Old ladies, at the slightest alarm, fill the buckets with water and hide a bagful of groats under the mattress. The young people grin.

Militiamen are marching through the streets. They do not look like soldiers: they differ in size and in age. They march poorly: no military bearing. But they sing well: Give us machine-guns, to make things merrier.

Squads are removing wooden fences, sheds, chicken-coops. In the courtyards they are digging makeshift shelters.

Sixteen-year-old boys and girls have gone off to Vyazma; under a shower of German bombs they are digging anti-tank trenches.

Fewer children in the streets, and for that reason Moscow seems unusual. It is hard to picture Moscow side-streets without playing tots and without sparrows. The sparrows have stayed.

Communiqué: Heavy losses on both sides.

During the first air bombing of Smolensk the Germans threw down on the city thousands of incendiary bombs. The population did not lose their heads. Women, old men, children cast the bombs into water or covered them with sand. The Germans then threw down fuse-bombs, but the people continued to fight the fires. For one week the Germans raided Smolensk daily. They appeared at sunset time; since they are coming from the west, it was hard to detect them. The city became used to bomb raids. One streetcar conductor, a young girl, refused to go into a shelter: We must show them our strength.

Now Moscow too has experienced an air raid. This happened last night at ten. An incendiary bomb fell in our courtyard. In the nick of time a youngster threw it into a barrel of water. It was the first time he had seen a bomb, but he kept his poise. An old woman wanted to sprinkle the bomb with sand, but they drove her into the shelter.

At five in the morning—there had been a very long alarm—Moscow streets were animated as in the daytime: people emerged from shelters, inspected the damage done. One hour later panes were being put into windows and craters filled in. In peace-time you had to wait long for the glazier, but now he came immediately, looking important, like a commander. If the Germans thought they would arouse a panic, they were mistaken.

JULY 23

At dawn I was walking through the entire city: the air raid found me far from home. Distorted façades, smashed panes, burning odors. A woman’s corpse is being carried out the gates. Ambulance aids leaning over a wounded little girl.

Citizens burned out of their homes, some with bundles. An old woman curses Hitler in Biblical style.

I overheard a fragment of a conversation. A clerk in pince-nez and with a Chekhov-like beard was saying: In August we overfulfilled the plan at least forty per cent. His interlocutor: By the way, I have not carried out of the house even my case of drawing-instruments.

(I recall Albaceta: after a bomb raid an old potter sat among the ruins and molded jugs out of reddish clay.)

From our apartment one can see far around: ninth floor. Wooden houses burning in the outskirts. The smoke resembles a storm-cloud.

JULY 24

The alarm found me in the Foreign Office after a press conference. In the shelter I was surrounded by foreign correspondents. Among them was the American author Erskine Caldwell. I remember his stories—cruel and humane. There is much of the clay and of the master about him. At two a.m. he put on a helmet and went off to broadcast for America. Werth had been in Paris and in London, another Englishman had been in Spain; these are specialists on war and bombs. Some of them are in a skeptical mood: they fear a lightning denouement.

In the theaters the actors take turns as watchmen in anti-air defense. An air-alarm, and lo, Lope de Vega Spaniards run up the roof with a hose.

JULY 26

I met Nikolai Polikarpov, one of our best aviation-builders. A jolly robust fellow: of an American swing and of Russian good nature. He is about fifty. Born in central Russia, the son of a priest. Thirty years ago, when he first saw an airplane, he fell in love with aviation. He had worked under Sikorski—they were then building the first Russian Ilya Murometa planes.

Everybody knows Polikarpov’s children—the fighter planes that are defending Moscow. Muscovites have learned to recognize their characteristic breathing. Polikarpov says: We must have simple machines. Mass production. Instruction must be easy, in time of war we cannot spend years on the preparation of fliers. Stalin has always warned us: ‘Don’t be lured by records, take into account all the conditions of production and use.’

Polikarpov has a high opinion of English aviation: The English possess a culture of minutiae. And in an airplane little things decide everything.

This man is accustomed to overcoming difficulties, and he says to me calmly: The Germans have an advanced technique, and the fight will be hard. Nevertheless we shall have the upper hand.

JULY 28

Moscow’s idyllic environs—woods, a rivulet, little meadows with bright flowers, odors of resin and hay. No one would guess that here is the commanding post of our airport. Daring fliers are guarding the air of Moscow.

Toward evening it is quiet. Some aviators are asleep, others are reading newspapers or lolling on the grass. The hour of night activity is near. A telephone message: Over Byazma a group of bombing planes has been sighted. The fliers are ready. Powerful projectors are piercing the sky, their beams are searching, scouring, tossing about, grasping the unseen enemy. There he is! And at once a fighter is sent to catch up with him.

The aerial battle lasts twenty minutes. Machine-gun bullets rattle. Little flames in the sky. Suddenly a glare over the woods—the Junkers goes down.

The fighter asks for landing guidance. For a moment a flare illumines the earth. The victor lands. So simple and incomprehensible—the keen sight and determination of the fliers, their ability not to lose the enemy, to find the airport in pitch-dark, to land when a white fog rises from the ground and envelops everything. It seems as though these men have a second sight.

Two other fighters are up in the air; they wait, they search, they overtake. From below they get a signal; To the right, more to the right. Two German bombing planes turn west after the first round of machine-gun bullets. One hour later we learn that one of them has been knocked down seventy-five miles away.

A fairy-like picture opens in the east—a defensive ring of long-range anti-aircraft guns: Moscow is guarded not only from the air. Sheaves of projectors. The night, which recently seemed so quiet, with the peaceful croaking of frogs, is alive with stormy action. No one is asleep. In Moscow—in the subways, in shelters—the Muscovites await the All quiet signal. Meanwhile a battle rages above them and around the city. Men are fighting for Moscow, the city that has now become dearer and nearer to every Russian.

Strain? Fatigue? These words can hardly express the heroism of the fliers. It is sufficient to note that some of them have made their fifth flight in twenty-four hours. At an occasional interval they sleep in the dugout, to jump up fifty-five minutes later, swallow a bit of cold tea, and run to their machines.

At the airport I made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Konstantin Titenkov. He is thirty years old. The son of a locksmith, he was born at Yartsevo, province of Smolensk. He became infatuated with aviation, and now he is a flier. During the last two days he has knocked down two German bombers on their way to Moscow.

A modest man. Courageous in the air, he is shy, timid in conversation. He brings in his technician, a Komi of the Perm region, representative of a tiny nationality. Says Titenkov: Without him I could not have beaten the enemy.

Titenkov narrates in businesslike fashion how he destroyed the leader of a flying squadron on its way toward Moscow. He attacked the Heinkel from the left, while from the right came in pursuit a young flier, Bokach. Bokach proved a bit hasty—he opened fire too soon. Says Titenkov: I came up to the Heinkel at a distance of 220 yards, and unhurriedly began to spray him. This was the first battle in which Titenkov took part: Never before have I seen such a large target. Then the projectors lost the enemy. Titenkov nevertheless overtook him. He killed the rear gunner radioman. The Heinkel, failing to reach Moscow, turned to the left and dropped his bombs in the forest. I hit him hard on the right motor. Came up close to him. I was tossed up—got into a current. I wondered why he did not burst into flames—he should have. I was almost out of bullets and shells. Then I saw him go down, through the fog into the river. In the plane they found a lieutenant-colonel, a captain, some lieutenants. A choice crew. They had documents. Service record: London; Coventry; Crete. The plan of Moscow.

Three days later Titenkov knocked down a Junkers. For half an hour he chased him to the west. Titenkov narrates: After I killed the gunner, the Junkers began to maneuver. He crept into a cloud, only it was a tiny cloud, as big as an egg. He went there in despair. I pierced the cloud. He began to dive down. I followed him. Suddenly—a flame. The bomber started to wrestle with fir trees. He threw down the bombs on a meadow with cows. Finally he burst into flame."

A haughty German lieutenant-colonel. Decorations. Distinguished medal for the destruction of London. The face of a degenerate. His morals? To kill, it makes no difference whom to kill, provided you kill. And Lieutenant Titenkov, modest, quiet. He and I discuss Lev Tolstoy, Dickens. Truly, two worlds have clashed in the black sky of Moscow. One rejoices at the very concept of Man on beholding the skeleton of a Heinkel III, knocked down by the son of a Smolensk locksmith, Konstantin Titenkov.

Three fourths of the German planes turn back on seeing the fiery ring of anti-aircraft guns, or on hearing the first rattle of machine-guns. German fliers were far bolder when on the fields of Île de France and Touraine they mowed down helpless refugees. The forests are on fire—the Hitlerites have released their cargo.

I wonder whether they report to their superiors that their bombs fell not on the Kremlin but on forests and swamps.

Young aviator Vasilyev knocked down a Junkers yesterday. They could see the burning plane from the airport. Construction workmen have confirmed it: That is where he fell, into the forest. But they have not found the plane, and so our communiqué lists eight, not nine enemy planes. Says Vasilyev: That’s a pit, it will be a long time before they find it in the forest. Personally I don’t care. But it is a pity that they did not say nine. It’s more pleasant for everybody, isn’t it, to read of nine, not eight planes?

Village girls went to pick berries in the woods and came upon the remains of a charred German bomber. That was not the one that Vasilyev had knocked down, but another. No one knows who finished this one. It is not listed in any communiqué. Here is the flier’s silver cigarette-case. Inside is a note in German: The third bombardment of Crete. I wonder why the German flier had stuck this note in his cigarette-case.

The telephone rings again. And again a fighter flies out. And again a battle. The stars grow pale. The white fog is thicker. It is cold. Then a huge red sun emerges. The day’s work is done. The fliers wash; some go to sleep, others listen to the singing of the birds.

We are returning to Moscow. Smoke rises from chimneys. Busses are speeding. They are pouring asphalt into bomb craters. Moscow lives a hard but lofty life.

JULY 31

Today I saw a Russian heroine. Her story, the story of eighteen peasant women of a small village near Borisov, is the epos of our days.

The Germans had occupied the village. This took place on July 6. There were no men in the village, except for the fifty-six-year-old chairman of the collective farm, Pavlov, and the youngster Kolin. The Germans shot the two. Then they went through the houses and took everything.

There were eighteen women in the little village. One of them, Eudokia Mironova, was elected chairman in place of the slain Pavlov. The women felt anxious.

On July 12 things came to a head. A drunken German corporal annoyed the fifteen-year-old daughter of the peasant woman Soboleva. The mother struck the German with a chunk of wood. They tied the woman to a pillar. For two days, beneath the burning sun, she stood tied up. Then they hanged her.

The remaining peasant women took their children to the woods.

The evening was foggy. Under the command of Mironova the women crept up to the sentries that were guarding the staff quarters of the German battalion. They threw a sack over the head of one sentry and killed him with pitchforks; the other they finished with an ax. Inside, the officers were asleep. The women poured kerosene on the house and set it on fire.

The women went back to the forest, where they found their children. Armed with axes and pitchforks, they started out on their expedition—they decided to make their way to the Soviet forces. On the road they came upon a German truck that was being repaired. With their pitchforks they killed the chauffeur and two soldiers. The truck they burned.

They marched eleven days. The babies they carried in their arms. The elder children walked by their sides. They traversed more than ninety-three miles, lost their way in the woods, bypassed villages. At last they espied Red Army men. Their children could hardly stand on their feet; they were hungry and exhausted. They were fed and put to bed.

Eudokia Mironova tells the story about the headquarters set afire, about the destroyed truck, about the long and difficult trek, simply, calmly, as of a household matter. In the same way she would probably report: We have harvested the grain, or The cow has calved. Only she adds softly: One of them on a motorcycle has galloped by. It is a pity that we did not finish him."

Did the Hitlerites expect peasant women to trounce them with axes and pitchforks?

AUGUST 1941

AUGUST 4

Today I met Andrey Kostikov. He has invented a new kind of weapon. Kostikov is forty years old. A strenuous face. Shy. He is the son of a railroad employee. From his childhood he was interested in technical matters. All German correspondents have noted the intensity of Soviet artillery fire. Kostikov knows the role his invention has played in the destruction of many German divisions.

AUGUST 5

Article published in Red Star under the title Dreams and Reality:

The SS started out to the east in the rosiest state of mind. They were inspired by potato brandy and by tales of the zakuskahors d’œuvre in store for them. Their tanks seemed to them magic carpets, and Russia a magic tablecloth.

SS Willy wrote to his parents back in Elze: I will send you from Russia tea and other things. At the moment, while we are moving forward, this is, of course, impossible.

Yes, they dreamed of the counters of our Gastronome food-shops. They hastened to tie napkins around their necks and wiped away the saliva.

The mail of an SS regiment for June 29 fell into our hands. Here are some quotations:

Oberscharrführer Hermann Kurzbeck writes: Everything will end quickly. We shall beat Russia and the Red Army, just as our leadership has foreseen.

Oberscharrführer Wegner: We hope to be in Moscow soon.

SS Schweizer: We’ll be done with Russia quickly, as we were with other countries.

SS Walther Friedsmann: I hope to be in Moscow shortly.

Unterscharrführer Walther Ziege: In eight days we will be in Moscow.

SS Müller: We have just figured out that we will be in Moscow within one week.

The Germans have always been proud of the fact that their trains were never late: On the second. A punctual people, no denying. Now SS Müller has figured out that they must be in Moscow on July 6. But they failed to enter Moscow on July 6, nor did they arrive on August 6. Nor will they get there on January 6. They will not enter our Moscow. They figured well, but they bungled their figures. They forgot that brave and proud people live on the Soviet land. Their tanks have turned out to be no magic carpets; many of them are already wallowing, damaged, amid the marshes. And our country is for the enemy not a magic tablecloth, but a land of fire and death. In place of zakuska the SS have got lead.

Some of them are lying in the Russian ground. Others have drawn in their horns slightly.

SS Mathias Hass writes: All things point out that this won’t end in less than one year.

SS Willy Kurt: Only now we begin to see what war means.

SS Hans Neumann of the 16th Tank Division: "We all feel pretty low since we have to deal with an enemy of superior forces. We hope that our division will be soon replaced, as no one can endure such incessant fighting. Take my word for it, Hilde, many of us have lost their nerve for good, and only experienced soldiers still hold out somehow."

SS Pilzinger, instead of figuring out the day of his arrival in Moscow, betook himself to writing his will. He begins thus: Should I be killed in this damned war...

Still more outspoken are the letters which the SS receive from their kinsmen in Germany.

Liesl Behr from Karlsruhe: War, war, oh when will it end?

Friedl Gubner from Dresden: The crops are bad. They ripen too soon. The farmers are badly off....I should like to go away, but everybody must stay put these days—the trains are needed for war needs.

Edith Reichenberg from Dresden: They are trying to persuade us here that the war will end soon. Like many others, I do not share this optimism.

Anna Hoffmann from Ippendorf, western Germany: "With evening, fear always comes on. Should the war last another six months, I shall hardly survive. When will they let us have tranquillity at last? When will this war come to an end?"

Maria Christoff from Vienna: Crowds are standing in the street listening to the radio. They eagerly catch bits of news. It is commonly held that it is too early to draw conclusions.

Marie Kerk from Mecherich, western Germany: "I don’t go to bed till three o’clock, and at seven I have to be up. Baby is sick. I’d rather die! Is there a sorrow that this war has not brought us yet?"

If the bombs of English fliers have taught the inhabitants of western Germany a thing or two, the instruction of the SS is taking place on the eastern front.

To start out with drunken shouts: In one week we will be in Moscow, and two weeks later to whimper: My nerves won’t stand it—such is their courage!

AUGUST 6

The Germans are bombing Moscow methodically: they appear at five or ten minutes past ten.

What a pity they destroyed the Book Palace! It was one of the finest houses in Moscow: an old home, with columns.

On the streets you meet many women with bundles: they carry along their most precious possessions.

They have destroyed one of the Academy buildings, the Vakhtanhov Theater, the Astronomical Institute, several scores of houses. In my apartment an air wave produced some disorder, the ways of this wave are truly inscrutable: it has flattened a brass coffee-pot, but the clay Vyatka wenches are smiling as before. Our dogs, two poodles and a Scotch terrier, hide under the couch at the words of the announcer: Citizens, air alarm.

Some of our men have unexpectedly proved to be brave, others—cowardly. There are men who with the coming of evening think only of slinking away to the subway; but such are few. The majority bear the bombardment calmly. A good many willingly climb up on the roofs. Putting out incendiary bombs is the new favorite sport of the Muscovites. In plants work goes on during an alarm. You come upon linotypes in shelters, and you hear there the hammering of typewriters.

Yesterday was the fifteenth air raid on Moscow. I had a talk with the chief of anti-air-defense, Major-General Gromadin. He is a young man. A cot stands in his office; there are times when the general can snatch an hour or two hours’ sleep. His eyes are red: he has not had a good sleep for a long time. The general tells me how our artillerymen knock down the enemy rockets. Yesterday over one hundred planes flew toward Moscow; only a few reached the city. The early mass raids were formidable. The Germans flew low—thirteen to sixteen thousand feet—and they drew down heavy bombs, as much as half a ton in weight. Now they fly higher, and their bombs are lighter. Our fliers and artillerymen have already knocked down a hundred German machines on the