SCHLIEBEN: Merciful Heavens!
THOMA: If someone goes on defending the whole thing
SCHLIEBEN: Our
KÖHN: I should have some hope left if things weren’t in such a state on the Eastern Front.
HENNECKE: I haven’t the faintest hope left; on the contrary, I think it’d be wrong to be hopeful. It would only be self-deception. There is only the faint chance that at least less people will be killed… Just imagine it: everyone wants to get away and they will already be paying fantastic prices for any kind of small boats. They want to leave EAST PRUSSIA, LITHUANIA and all the places to which we sent our bombed-out evacuees; the same business is going on all the way down, in POLAND, LATVIA, POSEN and right down to CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Conditions will be similar to what they were in FRANCE.[55]
It would be far better for everyone to stay put, to end the struggle and to try and settle things peacefully. I don’t think the Russians would carry off the women and everything there; I don’t believe they would. Our stories are sure to have been exaggerated.
KÖHN: Do you think so?
HENNECKE: Of course. Everyone says that the Russians were
KÖHN: But no one has been there.
HENNECKE: No, but… they are well disciplined.
KÖHN: Nobody has ever seen that–If you think of the way they dragged children away in SPAIN;[56] that is surely an actual fact and they apparently do the same thing in ITALY.
HENNECKE: I don’t know whether that isn’t one of our exaggerated stories. We have exaggerated a great deal.
KÖHN: Well, it’s possible, of course.
HENNECKE: And those Spaniards we aided are well-off now. My God, something is certainly wrong somewhere. It’s obvious that TURKEY will go over in the near future too.[57]
