Stuka Pilot

“From a military point of view I see it differently,” I reply. “Once the battle for Berlin is joined after the Oder front is broken I think it is absolutely impossible that Berlin can be held. I would remind you that the comparison between the two cities is not admissible. Leningrad has the advantage of being protected on the west by the Gulf of Finland and on the east by Lake Ladoga. There was only a weak and narrow Finnish front to the north of it. The only real chance of capturing it was from the south, but on that side Leningrad was strongly fortified and could make use of an excellent system of prepared positions; also it was never entirely cut off from its supply line. Lighters could cross Lake Ladoga in the summer and in winter they laid railway lines over the ice and so were able to feed the city from the north.” My arguments fail to convince him.

In a fortnight I am up for a short while for the first time and am able to enjoy a little fresh air. During the allied air attacks

I am up on the platform with the A.A. guns and see from below what is probably very unpleasant up above. I am never bored; Fridolin brings me papers which require my signature or other additional problems, sometimes accompanied by one or other of my colleagues. Field Marshal Greim, Skorzeny or Hanna Reitsch look in for an hour’s chat; something is always doing, only my inner restlessness at acing out of it torments me. When I came into the Zoo bunker I “solemnly” declared that I would walk again in six week’s time, and fly. The doctors know that their veto is anyhow useless and would only anger me. At the beginning of March I go out for a walk in the fresh air for the first time—on crutches.

During my convalescence I am invited by one of my nurses to her home, and so am the guest of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. A real soldier is seldom likely to make a good diplomat, and this meeting with von Ribbentrop is rather intriguing. It is an opportunity for conversations which shed light on the other side of the war which is being conducted without weapons. He is greatly interested in my opinion of the strength of the east front and our military potential at this particular moment. I make it clear to him that we at the front hope he is doing something through diplomatic channels to loosen the stranglehold in which we are caught on every side.

“Cannot the Western Powers be made to see that Bolshevism is their greatest enemy and that after an eventual victory over Germany it will be the same menace to them as to us, and that alone they will no longer be able to get rid of it?”

He takes my remarks as a gentle personal reproof; no doubt I am only playing over a record he has had to listen to many times. He at once explains to me that he has already made a number of attempts which have failed, because every time the necessity for a fresh military retirement on one or other sector of the front shortly after he had opened negotiations has encouraged the enemy to continue the war in any case and to leave the conference table. He cites instances and says somewhat reproachfully that the treaties which he had brought off before the war, among other things those with England and Russia, were surely no mean achievement if not a triumph. But nobody mentions them any longer; today people see only the negative aspects, the responsibility for which is not his. Naturally even now negotiations were still going on, but whether with the general situation such as it was the success he wished for would still be possible was problematical. This peep behind the scenes of diplomacy sates my curiosity and I am not anxious to learn more.