Heinrich Gerlach

World War II

On 17 August 1939 he was drafted as a reservist to the Wehrmacht. He was promoted to sergeant and appointed leader of a telephone-construction crews. From February to April he was in Halle an der Saale on an officer cadet course. From April to August 1940 he was with the 1st signals department in Königsberg. From August to December 1940 Gerlach served in the 228th signals department in Westphalia. There he was promoted to lieutenant on 1 September 1940. From December 1940 to April 1941 he was a platoon leader of the 228th Signals Division deployed in France. In April 1941 he was with his department during the Balkan campaign in Yugoslavia. From June 1941 he was deployed in the 16th Infantry Division. With this division he took part from 22 June 1941 in the attack on the Soviet Union. From 24 July 1942 he was on the staff of XXXXVIII Panzer Corps deployed with the Panzer Corps he took part in various battles such as the Battle of Kiev, the double battle at Vyazma and Bryansk and the Case Blue. Gerlach was promoted to first lieutenant on 1 July 1942 . From the end of July, the corps belonged to the 6th Army and advanced against Stalingrad . On October 24, 1942, the transfer to the staff of the 14th Panzer Division , which belonged to the panzer corps., he was subordinate to the enemy intelligence department with responsibility for enemy situation, deployment of subordinate units of the defense, letter censorship of subordinate units of the secret field police and imputed units of the Propaganda company . The 14th panzer division had lost almost all tanks at that time during the heavy fighting in the city center and stood in the section between Brotfabrik and Wolgaufer in the fight. Gerlach was severely wounded in the head and was a prisoner of war by the end of January 1943.^[3]

He was brought to the Stalingrad city prison Beketowka. On February 24, 1943 he was transported to the camp 27 Lunjowo under the control of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) to Krasnogorsk . Shortly afterwards, on February 28, he was taken to the Lefortovskaya Military Prison in Moscow and put in solitary confinement. He was interrogated by the NKVD for four months because of his position as a Third General Staff Officer and the associated responsibility for the enemy intelligence department . In June he was sent to Suzdaltaken to the NKVD prison camp 160. There were only officers, including the generals captured in Stalingrad. On July 22, 1943 he came again to camp 27 near Lunjowo. There he belonged to the 14-member initiative group for the founding of the Association of German Officers (BDO). On September 11, he was co-founder of the BDO and co-signer of the Call to the German generals and officers! To people and Wehrmacht! from September 12, 1943. From July 1943 to November 1945 he wrote 21 articles for the newspaper of the NKFD, Free Germany.

By order of the Oberkommando des Heeres on 23 December 1944, Gerlach was released in absentia, together with 19 other officers in Soviet captivity, for carrying out a case before the People's Court "provisionally" from active military service.^[4] Shortly thereafter, he was appointed by the Reichskriegsgericht and sentenced to death. His family was taken to Sippenhaft on July 1944.

Postwar

When Gerlach was no longer politically needed in 1949, he was sent to various Soviet labor camps and to prison. In the course of a mass sentencing threatened him 25 years of forced labor due to alleged war crimes . Against this background, he agreed to a conspiratorial cooperation with the Soviet intelligence, which he had previously denied. So he was repatriated in April 1950 . By accident, on his arrival in Berlin, he was able to escape the Soviet authorities. He then lived with his wife and three children in West Berlin where he worked as a primary school teacher. In 1951 Gerlach was forced to leave West Berlin after being put under pressure by Soviet agents. He moved with his family to ppBrakel]], where he got a job as a secondary school teacher and died on 27 March 1991.^[5]

Breakthrough at Stalingrad

In captivity, Gerlach began to write diary notes about his experiences during the Battle of the Kettle. At the end of 1943 he decided on the novel. In addition to personal experiences Gerlach could also fall back on the stories of his fellow prisoners, which allows him to describe the battle from many perspectives. The original manuscript for the novel Breakthrough at Stalingrad, which Gerlach claims to have completed on May 8, 1945, and was confiscated by the Soviets in 1949.

Upon returning to Germany, Gerlach, in a copy of Quick magazine, happened to discover the possibility of hypnotizing memories from the subconscious. In the hope of being able to reconstruct his novel in this way, he contacted the Munich doctor and psychologist Dr. Karl Schmitz. This was just before the publication of his book What is - what can - what good is hypnosis? and saw in Gerlach an opportunity to distinguish himself as a luminary in the field of hypnosis, which at that time was rather unpopular in Germany. Since Gerlach could not afford the treatment, he sat down on the advice of Schmitz Quickin connection. He asked for the funding of the hypnosis experiment and promised the paper in return a sensational story. Quick referred Schmitz 1750 Mark and reported under the title I know again what was ... about the highlights and the result of the 23 Hypnosesitzungen that had taken place in the summer of 1951 in Munich practice. Although it is actually able to reconstruct significant parts of the novel, Gerlach needed several more years for the completion of the second version, in 1957 under the title The Betrayed Army appeared. In 1959 he was awarded the Premio Bancarella. In the following years, the work became a bestseller and experienced until 1988 a total circulation of more than 1 million copies. It has also been translated into many languages.

The original manuscript to Gerlach's novel Breakthrough at Stalingrad was found on 14 February 2012 by Carsten Gansel in the State Military Archives in Moscow and published in 2016 provided with a comprehensive epilogue. The original version Breakthrough at Stalingrad distinguishes itself from The Betrayed Army through an increased confrontation with their own guilt, conflicts of conscience and self-reflection.^[6] According to Gansel, the original version questions and comments less, The presentation is much more authentic. Gansel sees an unvarnished and identification look.^[7] Jochen Hellbeck assumes that Breakthrough at Stalingrad was heavily influenced by concepts of Soviet re-education, with which Gerlach had come into contact as a prisoner of war. These were in the betrayed army strongly into the background.

Odyssey in Red: Report of a Random Walk

In 1966, the novel Odyssey in Red, in which Gerlach his long-term prisoner of war and the commitment to the NKFD and the BDO as the theme. In 1970, based on the book, a docudrama for television was shot with the title The House Lunjowo. In 2017, the novel was reissued. In an epilogue, the editor Carsten Gansel explains the results of extensive research on Heinrich Gerlach, which had taken place in the run-up to the new publication.