Comrade Nagulin! Don't you see what your orders lead to?! If according to your own words the Germans are preparing an attack, then why did you arrange this overnight move? Instead of running the troops, the staffs get in their cars and go somewhere. Until they arrive at the new locations and get the wired connection up again, the troops will be without proper control. This is sabotage, to say the least!
And you tell it like it is, Comrade Army Commissar 1st Rank, I turned to Mekhlis and looked intently into his eyes. Why be shy? We are not in the Institute for Noble Maidens. Here is the front, and having said "A," one should also say "B." Are you accusing me of treason? Of deliberately disorganizing the control of the troops on the eve of the German offensive? Do I understand you correctly?
Mekhlis was obviously not yet ready to accuse me of crimes for which I was to be shot, but it was not in his character to retreat either. The Commissar looked at me with hatred, and the generals and colonels beside us quietly diverged, not wanting to be drawn into the conflict of the plenipotentiary representatives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. I did not wait for Mekhlis to find the right words and spoke again myself:
It was possible, of course, to leave everything as it was, and the headquarters would continue to work quietly for another day, maybe even two days. Except then the Richthofen pilots and heavy howitzer shells will fly in, and there will be no one to control the troops. Knowing about the threat of a strike on the headquarters and doing nothing isn't it a treason?
You should not confuse "knowing" and "assuming," Major General, said Mekhlis in a lower tone. Maybe you have a captured German general who told you about the Luftwaffe's plans during interrogation? Or did some front-line intelligence hero sneak into Manstein's headquarters and steal a secret directive? Well, no! You only have your speculations about how you would act if you were the German commander, and, on the basis of these visions inspired by your own inflamed imagination, you disrupt the execution of the order to put the front on the defensive, which you yourself gave, recklessly breaking the entire front control structure for many hours!
Mekhlis was not a stupid idiot. He was overly harsh, unbalanced, capable of "swinging his sword" without really understanding the problem, he was even, sometimes, inadequate, but not stupid. There was certainly logic in what he was saying. And, most hurtful of all, he genuinely cared about the situation and thought his actions were the only right thing to do under the circumstances. Nervousness, agitation, and bigotry are a scary mix. Why did Stalin send him to the front? This type could come in handy on the home front, somewhere where one has to "hold and not let go". His strong point is to criticize, break down, destroy what someone else has done, but he is not able to create something of his own. Such people should not be allowed to work in the army, in complex production, in science However, no one offered me a choice, and I had to work with what I had, that is, with Lev Zakharovitch.
I could be wrong, Comrade Army Commissar 1st Rank, but at least I have a clear plan of action, and what do you suggest? I'm not talking about personnel reshuffles now, but about a specific case.
The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command have set us a clear and precise task, Comrade Nagulin, and this task is an offensive, a breakthrough deep into Crimea and the unblocking of Sevastopol. The front should be doing just that, not frantically relocating headquarters, digging trenches, and deepening anti-tank ditches! I reported your arbitrariness to the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. I'm sure we'll get an answer from Moscow soon, and then it will become clear, which of us understands the orders correctly!
Примечания
1
Henning von Tresckow; January 10, 1901 July 21, 1944 Major General of the German Army, one of the most active participants of the conspiracy against Hitler. Beginning in 1942, he was preparing an assassination attempt on Hitler. It was then that he came into contact with the members of the conspiracy in Berlin. Von Tresckow became the organizer of the assassination attempt on Hitler in Smolensk on March 13, 1943. He tricked one of the officers accompanying the Führer into sneaking a bomb on his plane. Tresckow asked an officer in Hitler's entourage to deliver a small parcel to Colonel Stiff of the Upper Command of the Armed forces in Berlin. According to the legend, the package contained two bottles of French Quantro liquor. The officer agreed, and the package was handed to him at the airplane ramp. However, the fuse did not go off and Hitler survived. That time von Tresckow was able to avoid exposure, once again resorting to deception and making sure that the "package" did not reach the addressee. Later von Tresckow tried to arrange his transfer to Hitler's Headquarters, to have more opportunities to organize an assassination attempt, but was unsuccessful in doing so. In 1944, after learning of the failure of Stauffenberg's attempt to blow up Hitler, von Tresckow told his aide-de-camp: They will soon find out about me and try to get the names of our comrades out of me. In order to warn them, I must sacrifice my life.
To deflect suspicion from his comrades and relatives, he attempted to fake his death in battle. Once on the neutral strip, von Tresckow opened fire with a pistol and then blew himself up with a grenade. This helped for a while, but later investigations revealed his involvement in the conspiracy, and von Tresckow's relatives were subjected to reprisals. Von Tresckow's words about Germany's loss of honor quoted in the book were indeed said by him to a fellow officer.
2
In real history, Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis was appointed as the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command 's representative on the Crimean Front; he was not actually a military man, but informally subordinated the front's command.
General Kozlov was unable or unwilling to resist the onslaught of the representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and, in fact, withdrew from his duties. Л. Z. Mekhlis wasted frontline forces in frontal offensives, unprepared and badly organized. The result was the depletion of the front and a heavy defeat during the German counteroffensive, which ended with the Red Army abandoning the Kerch Peninsula and, consequently, the fall of Sevastopol.