3 October 1942
Oberstleutnant Wilhelm von Stearner waited patiently just inside the closed office door until the tall, taciturn, fifty-two-year-old commander of the Sixth Army, General Friedrich von Paulus, raised his eyes from the documents on his desk and indicated without speaking that he was prepared to hear what von Stearner had on his mind. He then came to attention.
“Herr General, Brigadeführer von Neibermann asks for a moment of your time. He says it’s quite important.”
Waffen-SS Brigadeführer Luther von Neibermann was Political Adviser to the Sixth Army. Like many—perhaps most—military commanders, von Paulus did not like political advisers. They got in the way of military operations, for one thing. For another, they had their own lines of communication to Berlin, over which they offered their own opinions of the conduct of the operations they were involved in. Von Paulus did not consider himself above criticism, but criticism from someone who was not a professional soldier was hard to swallow.
Waffen-SS Brigadeführer Luther von Neibermann’s rank was honorary. Before the war he was in the Foreign Ministry, where he had early on been smart enough to align himself with the National Socialists. In von Paulus’s opinion, he had risen higher in the Foreign Ministry hierarchy than he had any right to, based on his intelligence and his suitability. He was a short, paunchy, bald man of forty-two, who looked ludicrous in his black uniform with the death’s-head insignia. Von Paulus loathed him, and what he stood for; but he was of course careful not to let his feelings show.
More than one senior officer’s military career had ended when unsupported and unjustified accusations of defeatism had been leveled by a political adviser. Von Paulus was determined that wasn’t going to happen to him.
“Did he say what’s on his mind?” von Paulus asked.
“He said it was a sensitive matter of importance.”
“Ask the Brigadeführer to come in, please.”
Von Stearner turned and opened the door.
“The General will see you now, Herr Brigadeführer,” he announced.
Von Neibermann marched in, crossed over to von Paulus’s desk, and clicked his heels, then gave the stiff-armed Nazi salute and the now ritual greeting, “Heil Hitler!”
Von Paulus touched his forehead with a gesture that might have been a salute, muttered something that might have been “Heil Hitler,” and then met von Neibermann’s eyes.
“How may I be of service, Herr Brigadeführer?”
“Herr General, it is with deep regret that I must inform you of the death in battle of Standartenführer von Zainer.”
Von Paulus was genuinely sorry to hear this. He knew von Zainer. He had never quite understood why a man of good family, with a strong military heritage, had elected to transfer to the Waffen-SS—even though that was the path to more rapid promotion than he would have found in the Panzertruppen. All the same, von Zainer had been a good, even outstanding soldier, first in Poland, then in France, and now here.
“I am very sorry to hear that,” von Paulus said. “Are you familiar with the circumstances?”
“The Standartenführer was making an aerial reconnaissance, Herr General. His Storch was shot down.” The Fieseler Storch was a single-engine, two-place observation aircraft, the German equivalent of the Piper Cub.
“The fortunes of war,” von Paulus said.
It was typical of von Zainer to personally conduct his own reconnaissance, with the risk that entailed, although such actions were officially frowned upon for senior officers (a Waffen-SS Standartenführer held a rank equivalent to an Oberst, or colonel). But von Zainer probably had his reasons, von Paulus decided. And now he was dead, so criticism was out of place.
“He had Captain Duarte with him, Herr General.”
Von Paulus’s raised eyebrows told von Neibermann that the name meant nothing to him.
“The Argentine, Herr General,” von Neibermann explained. “Hauptmann Jorge Alejandro Duarte.”
Von Paulus, now remembering, was genuinely sorry to hear this too. The young Argentine Cavalry captain had been an extraordinarily nice-looking young man; and during the few minutes of the Argentine’s courtesy call, von Paulus had realized that Duarte did not view his attachment as an observer as a vacation from his duties at his embassy in Berlin but as a learning experience for a professional officer.
“I don’t quite understand,” von Paulus said.
“Captain Duarte volunteered to fly the mission, Herr General.”
Von Paulus now remembered Hauptmann Duarte telling him—with the enthusiasm of a young, energetic officer—that he had asked for and been granted a detail to the Aviación Militar branch of the Argentinean Army. In his words: “Aircraft are the cavalry of the future.”
He was not supposed to do that, von Paulus thought. He was an Argentine. Argentina is neutral. Taking an active role was a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Not that the Russians would have paid any attention to his neutral status if they’d been able to lay their hands on him. That was probably his rationale for doing what he should not be doing.
“Have we recovered the bodies?” von Paulus asked.