New British Glory
05-04-2005, 02:48
I have been having a go at writing an alternative history novel. In this, the Russians would loss at Stalingrad, the Germans would take Moscow etc etc. This is what it looks like so far. Any critical advice or comments would be well received. Essentially it will be told in a first person format, like a diary. The first bit is Stalin's Order 227 and that is the order from which I derive my working title, Not One Step Back.
NOT ONE STEP BACK
ORDER #227 BY THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR OF DEFENCE OF THE USSR
Moscow, 28 July1942
The enemy feeds more and more resources to the front, and, paying no attention to losses, moves on, penetrates deeper into the Soviet Union, captures new areas, devastates and plunders our cities and villages, rapes, kills and robs the Soviet people. The fighting goes on in Voronezh area, at Don, in the Southern Russia, at the gates of the North Caucasus. The German invaders are driving towards Stalingrad, towards Volga, and want to capture Kuban and the North Caucasus with their oil and bread riches at any price. The enemy has already captured Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuiki, Novocherkassk, Rostov on Don, half of Voronezh. Some units of the South front, following the panic-mongers, have abandoned Rostov and Novocherkassk without serious resistance and without order from Moscow, thus covering their banners with shame.
The people of our country, who treat the Red Army with love and respect, are now starting to be disappointed with it, lose faith in the Red Army, and many of them curse the Army for its fleeing to the east and leaving the population under German yoke.
Some unwise people at the front comfort themselves with arguments that we can continue the retreat to the east, as we have vast territories, a lot of soil, many people, and that we will always have abundance of bread. By these arguments they try to justify their shameful behaviour at the front. But all these arguments are fully false, faked and working for our enemies.
Every commander, every soldier and political officer have to realise that our resources are not infinite. The territory of the Soviet Union is not a wilderness, but people – workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers and mothers, wives, brothers, children. Territory of USSR that has been captured by the enemy and which enemy is longing to capture is bread and other resources for the army and the civilians, iron and fuel for the industries, factories and plants that supply the military with hardware and ammo; this is also railroads. With loss of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltics, Donetsk basin and other areas we have lost vast territories, that means that we have lost many people, bread, metals, factories, and plants. We no longer have superiority over enemy in human resources and in bread supply. Continuation of retreat means to destroy us and also our Motherland. Every new piece of territory that we leave to the enemy will strengthen our enemy and weaken us, our defences, our Motherland.
This is why we have to eradicate the conversations that we can retreat without ending, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that we have a lot of population and we will always have enough bread. These conversations are false and harmful, as they weaken us and strengthen the enemy, for if we do not stop retreating, we will be left without bread, without fuel, without metals, without raw materials, without factories and plants, without railways.
The conclusion is that it is time to stop the retreat. Not a single step back! This should be our slogan from now.
We need to protect every strongpoint, every metre of Soviet soil stubbornly, till the last droplet of blood, grab every piece of our soil and defend it as long as it is possible. Our Motherland is going through hard times. We have to stop, and then throw back and destroy the enemy, whatever it might cost us. The Germans are not as strong as the panic-mongers say. They are stretching their strength to the limit. To withstand their blow now means to ensure victory in the future.
Can we stand and throw the enemy back toward west? Yes, we can, as our plants and factories in the rear areas are working perfectly and are supplying our army with more and more tanks, planes, artillery and mortars.
So what do we lack? We lack order and discipline in companies, regiments and divisions, in tank units, in the Air Force squadrons. This is our major drawback. We have to introduce the strictest order and strong discipline in our army, if we want to save the situation and defend our Motherland.
We can no longer tolerate commanders, commissars, and political officers, whose units leave their defences at will. We can no longer tolerate the fact that the commanders, commissars and political officers allow several cowards to run the show at the battlefield, that the panic-mongers carry away other soldiers in their retreat and open the way to the enemy. Panic-mongers and cowards are to be exterminated at the site.
From now on the iron law of discipline for every officer, soldier, political officer should be – not a single step back without order from higher command. Company, battalion, regiment and division commanders, as well as the commissars and political officers of corresponding ranks who retreat without order from above, are traitors of the Motherland. They should be treated as traitors of the Motherland. This is the call of our Motherland.
To fulfil this order means to defend our country, to save our Motherland, to destroy and overcome the hated enemy.
After their winter retreat under pressure of the Red Army, when morale and discipline fell in the German troops, the Germans took some strict measures that led to pretty good results. They have formed 100 penal companies that were comprised of soldiers who broke discipline due to cowardice or instability; they have deployed them at the most dangerous sections of the front and have ordered them to redeem their sins by blood. Further on, they have formed around ten penal battalions comprised of officers who had broken discipline due to cowardice and instability, deprived them of their decorations and put them at even more dangerous sections of the front and ordered them to redeem their sins by blood. And finally, the Germans have formed special guards units and deployed them behind unstable divisions and ordered them to execute panic-mongers at the site if they tried to leave their defensive positions without order or if they tried to surrender. As we know, these measures were effective, and now the German troops fight better than they fought in winter. What we have here is that the German troops have good discipline, although they do not have an uplifted mission of protection of the Motherland, and only have one goal – to conquer a strange land. Our troops, having defence of defiled Motherland as their mission, do not have this discipline and thus suffer defeat.
Shouldn’t we learn this lesson from our enemy, as our ancestors learned from their enemies in the past and overcame their enemies? I think that we should.
This order is to be read aloud in all companies, troops, batteries, squadrons, teams and staffs.
The People’s Commissar for Defence
JOSEPH STALIN
PART ONE – STALINGRAD
Can you hear it? Can you? That awful impending hum, buzzing through the air like an electric current, bristling with power and energy? I can hear it. I have always heard it. Or at least it seems like always. For nearly two years now, that sound has been my constant companion. With it comes death, the soldier’s ever-present friend. But you can always hear the humming, even through the screams of the dying and the bitter, resentful silence of the dead. Can you hear it? No. Of course you can’t. You’re not here with me as I write this. You’re sitting there, reading my story, desperately trying to decipher the indistinct scribbles of my blunt pencil as it vainly trys to keep up with my thoughts. You might hear the hum if you are a German. But why would a German be reading this, the work of a Slav? If you’re not German, then God help you. Alas that’s not likely to happen. God sides with the Germans now. As they cleanse the world of us ungodly Slavs.
Maybe we shouldn’t have killed all the priests. Well I say we. Stalin and Lenin signed the death warrants with their poisoned pens. Party officials pulled the triggers or brought down the whips. But we all killed them in the end. Our complicity killed them. Our silence killed them. They were Enemies of the People, we thought. Why complain at their execution? Good riddance to bad rubbish, we muttered as Pravda triumphantly announced their execution. Perhaps we were too stupid to see the truth behind the propaganda. Or just too afraid to embrace that truth, so choosing to ignore it instead. We never complained. Not until that dreadful, complicit silence came for us too. Came for our friends, our families. And still no one hollered for us. No priests prayed for us because we had killed all of them. Just God’s merry laughter as he pushed us further into the hangman’s noose, waiting only for Hitler to pull the floor from beneath our feet.
Sorry. You don’t want to hear a dead man’s ramblings. You want to read an adventure, don’t you? An adventure of daring. Danger and sacrifice. Well, I don’t have one of those. My tale is one of death. And how five men tired to out run it. And failed.
Do you hear it now? It’s closer. The sickle is sweeping and we, stalks in the breeze, wait haplessly for it to swoop. Stuka’s do a lot of swooping. It’s what they do. I remember the first time I heard the hum of a Stuka. On the banks of the River Volga, two years ago….
You could see Stalingrad from miles away. Or rather, see the baseless plumes of smoke billowing into the air, writhing black serpents coiling around the sunlight and the blue sky. I remember the horrible fear rising up inside my throat as we got closer and closer to the battle, a burgeoning, blossoming fear that could easily take the form of either vomit or complete and abject cowardice. But I couldn’t vomit. Not enough food inside me for that. The Red Army had millions to feed on the few scraps they had salvaged from the German pillage last year, I thought. I didn’t mind the hunger. I thought that love for the Motherland would keep me full and the few morsels that she could spare me would be like feasts because they were the morsels of the Motherland after all. But love of the Motherland couldn’t stop the flower of fear from blooming, its blossoms sickly green and rotten yellow. If sulphur had a colour, it would be that rotten yellow that fear put into our bellies that day. Of course love for the Motherland couldn’t keep me protected from the truth, no matter how much I might ignore it.
As we approach the looming wreckage of what was once a city, we passed several lorries coming the other way. We all peered into these retreating lorries, wondering why people were being allowed to leave the battleground. Stalin had said the city must be held to the last drop of blood. The Commissars and the NKVD officers hammered that message home.
“Death before retreat!”, they screamed into our ears back at the arms depot. “Cowards will die by the wroth of the Motherland! Remember comrades, not one step back. Or we’ll put a bullet through your fucking brains!”
So we were all surprised to see trucks retreating. A quiet, hoepful voice in me thought that maybe Stalingrad had been lost. Maybe we wouldn’t have to fight in that man made hell. But then our surprise turned to sour sickness when we saw the cargoes of these mysterious lorries. Piles of bodies, stacked on top of each other like lumber piles. Th lucky ones among us assumed that they were corpses off to be burned and so simply returned to their silent vomiting. But the sergeant sitting next to me and I didn’t turn round. We saw that everyone of those bodies was alive. Moaning softly they were, so softly you could barely hear it over the thrum of the truck engines or the distant bursts of sporadic shell fire. The sergeant and I shared a meaningful glance as we turned our faces back to the innards of the transport truck. Not a word, his gaze seemed to say. Not a word and maybe, just maybe, we won’t vomit.
I took a long gasp of clean air – well air anyway. Clean wasn’t really the word for the air air around Stalingrad. We were now about half a mile away from the Volga landing stage and dust from the constant bombardments cluttered the air. It even drowned out the sunlight, leaving me with a dusky dawn light that gave no sustenance to the eyes or heat to the soul. The air was like everything else in that city: bleak, barren , desolate and dead.
NOT ONE STEP BACK
ORDER #227 BY THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR OF DEFENCE OF THE USSR
Moscow, 28 July1942
The enemy feeds more and more resources to the front, and, paying no attention to losses, moves on, penetrates deeper into the Soviet Union, captures new areas, devastates and plunders our cities and villages, rapes, kills and robs the Soviet people. The fighting goes on in Voronezh area, at Don, in the Southern Russia, at the gates of the North Caucasus. The German invaders are driving towards Stalingrad, towards Volga, and want to capture Kuban and the North Caucasus with their oil and bread riches at any price. The enemy has already captured Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuiki, Novocherkassk, Rostov on Don, half of Voronezh. Some units of the South front, following the panic-mongers, have abandoned Rostov and Novocherkassk without serious resistance and without order from Moscow, thus covering their banners with shame.
The people of our country, who treat the Red Army with love and respect, are now starting to be disappointed with it, lose faith in the Red Army, and many of them curse the Army for its fleeing to the east and leaving the population under German yoke.
Some unwise people at the front comfort themselves with arguments that we can continue the retreat to the east, as we have vast territories, a lot of soil, many people, and that we will always have abundance of bread. By these arguments they try to justify their shameful behaviour at the front. But all these arguments are fully false, faked and working for our enemies.
Every commander, every soldier and political officer have to realise that our resources are not infinite. The territory of the Soviet Union is not a wilderness, but people – workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers and mothers, wives, brothers, children. Territory of USSR that has been captured by the enemy and which enemy is longing to capture is bread and other resources for the army and the civilians, iron and fuel for the industries, factories and plants that supply the military with hardware and ammo; this is also railroads. With loss of Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltics, Donetsk basin and other areas we have lost vast territories, that means that we have lost many people, bread, metals, factories, and plants. We no longer have superiority over enemy in human resources and in bread supply. Continuation of retreat means to destroy us and also our Motherland. Every new piece of territory that we leave to the enemy will strengthen our enemy and weaken us, our defences, our Motherland.
This is why we have to eradicate the conversations that we can retreat without ending, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is great and rich, that we have a lot of population and we will always have enough bread. These conversations are false and harmful, as they weaken us and strengthen the enemy, for if we do not stop retreating, we will be left without bread, without fuel, without metals, without raw materials, without factories and plants, without railways.
The conclusion is that it is time to stop the retreat. Not a single step back! This should be our slogan from now.
We need to protect every strongpoint, every metre of Soviet soil stubbornly, till the last droplet of blood, grab every piece of our soil and defend it as long as it is possible. Our Motherland is going through hard times. We have to stop, and then throw back and destroy the enemy, whatever it might cost us. The Germans are not as strong as the panic-mongers say. They are stretching their strength to the limit. To withstand their blow now means to ensure victory in the future.
Can we stand and throw the enemy back toward west? Yes, we can, as our plants and factories in the rear areas are working perfectly and are supplying our army with more and more tanks, planes, artillery and mortars.
So what do we lack? We lack order and discipline in companies, regiments and divisions, in tank units, in the Air Force squadrons. This is our major drawback. We have to introduce the strictest order and strong discipline in our army, if we want to save the situation and defend our Motherland.
We can no longer tolerate commanders, commissars, and political officers, whose units leave their defences at will. We can no longer tolerate the fact that the commanders, commissars and political officers allow several cowards to run the show at the battlefield, that the panic-mongers carry away other soldiers in their retreat and open the way to the enemy. Panic-mongers and cowards are to be exterminated at the site.
From now on the iron law of discipline for every officer, soldier, political officer should be – not a single step back without order from higher command. Company, battalion, regiment and division commanders, as well as the commissars and political officers of corresponding ranks who retreat without order from above, are traitors of the Motherland. They should be treated as traitors of the Motherland. This is the call of our Motherland.
To fulfil this order means to defend our country, to save our Motherland, to destroy and overcome the hated enemy.
After their winter retreat under pressure of the Red Army, when morale and discipline fell in the German troops, the Germans took some strict measures that led to pretty good results. They have formed 100 penal companies that were comprised of soldiers who broke discipline due to cowardice or instability; they have deployed them at the most dangerous sections of the front and have ordered them to redeem their sins by blood. Further on, they have formed around ten penal battalions comprised of officers who had broken discipline due to cowardice and instability, deprived them of their decorations and put them at even more dangerous sections of the front and ordered them to redeem their sins by blood. And finally, the Germans have formed special guards units and deployed them behind unstable divisions and ordered them to execute panic-mongers at the site if they tried to leave their defensive positions without order or if they tried to surrender. As we know, these measures were effective, and now the German troops fight better than they fought in winter. What we have here is that the German troops have good discipline, although they do not have an uplifted mission of protection of the Motherland, and only have one goal – to conquer a strange land. Our troops, having defence of defiled Motherland as their mission, do not have this discipline and thus suffer defeat.
Shouldn’t we learn this lesson from our enemy, as our ancestors learned from their enemies in the past and overcame their enemies? I think that we should.
This order is to be read aloud in all companies, troops, batteries, squadrons, teams and staffs.
The People’s Commissar for Defence
JOSEPH STALIN
PART ONE – STALINGRAD
Can you hear it? Can you? That awful impending hum, buzzing through the air like an electric current, bristling with power and energy? I can hear it. I have always heard it. Or at least it seems like always. For nearly two years now, that sound has been my constant companion. With it comes death, the soldier’s ever-present friend. But you can always hear the humming, even through the screams of the dying and the bitter, resentful silence of the dead. Can you hear it? No. Of course you can’t. You’re not here with me as I write this. You’re sitting there, reading my story, desperately trying to decipher the indistinct scribbles of my blunt pencil as it vainly trys to keep up with my thoughts. You might hear the hum if you are a German. But why would a German be reading this, the work of a Slav? If you’re not German, then God help you. Alas that’s not likely to happen. God sides with the Germans now. As they cleanse the world of us ungodly Slavs.
Maybe we shouldn’t have killed all the priests. Well I say we. Stalin and Lenin signed the death warrants with their poisoned pens. Party officials pulled the triggers or brought down the whips. But we all killed them in the end. Our complicity killed them. Our silence killed them. They were Enemies of the People, we thought. Why complain at their execution? Good riddance to bad rubbish, we muttered as Pravda triumphantly announced their execution. Perhaps we were too stupid to see the truth behind the propaganda. Or just too afraid to embrace that truth, so choosing to ignore it instead. We never complained. Not until that dreadful, complicit silence came for us too. Came for our friends, our families. And still no one hollered for us. No priests prayed for us because we had killed all of them. Just God’s merry laughter as he pushed us further into the hangman’s noose, waiting only for Hitler to pull the floor from beneath our feet.
Sorry. You don’t want to hear a dead man’s ramblings. You want to read an adventure, don’t you? An adventure of daring. Danger and sacrifice. Well, I don’t have one of those. My tale is one of death. And how five men tired to out run it. And failed.
Do you hear it now? It’s closer. The sickle is sweeping and we, stalks in the breeze, wait haplessly for it to swoop. Stuka’s do a lot of swooping. It’s what they do. I remember the first time I heard the hum of a Stuka. On the banks of the River Volga, two years ago….
You could see Stalingrad from miles away. Or rather, see the baseless plumes of smoke billowing into the air, writhing black serpents coiling around the sunlight and the blue sky. I remember the horrible fear rising up inside my throat as we got closer and closer to the battle, a burgeoning, blossoming fear that could easily take the form of either vomit or complete and abject cowardice. But I couldn’t vomit. Not enough food inside me for that. The Red Army had millions to feed on the few scraps they had salvaged from the German pillage last year, I thought. I didn’t mind the hunger. I thought that love for the Motherland would keep me full and the few morsels that she could spare me would be like feasts because they were the morsels of the Motherland after all. But love of the Motherland couldn’t stop the flower of fear from blooming, its blossoms sickly green and rotten yellow. If sulphur had a colour, it would be that rotten yellow that fear put into our bellies that day. Of course love for the Motherland couldn’t keep me protected from the truth, no matter how much I might ignore it.
As we approach the looming wreckage of what was once a city, we passed several lorries coming the other way. We all peered into these retreating lorries, wondering why people were being allowed to leave the battleground. Stalin had said the city must be held to the last drop of blood. The Commissars and the NKVD officers hammered that message home.
“Death before retreat!”, they screamed into our ears back at the arms depot. “Cowards will die by the wroth of the Motherland! Remember comrades, not one step back. Or we’ll put a bullet through your fucking brains!”
So we were all surprised to see trucks retreating. A quiet, hoepful voice in me thought that maybe Stalingrad had been lost. Maybe we wouldn’t have to fight in that man made hell. But then our surprise turned to sour sickness when we saw the cargoes of these mysterious lorries. Piles of bodies, stacked on top of each other like lumber piles. Th lucky ones among us assumed that they were corpses off to be burned and so simply returned to their silent vomiting. But the sergeant sitting next to me and I didn’t turn round. We saw that everyone of those bodies was alive. Moaning softly they were, so softly you could barely hear it over the thrum of the truck engines or the distant bursts of sporadic shell fire. The sergeant and I shared a meaningful glance as we turned our faces back to the innards of the transport truck. Not a word, his gaze seemed to say. Not a word and maybe, just maybe, we won’t vomit.
I took a long gasp of clean air – well air anyway. Clean wasn’t really the word for the air air around Stalingrad. We were now about half a mile away from the Volga landing stage and dust from the constant bombardments cluttered the air. It even drowned out the sunlight, leaving me with a dusky dawn light that gave no sustenance to the eyes or heat to the soul. The air was like everything else in that city: bleak, barren , desolate and dead.