Breakout at Stalingrad

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First, a word about the novel’s title: although the German ‘Durchbruch’ most commonly translates into English as ‘Breakthrough’, I have instead chosen to render it as ‘Breakout’. Heinrich Gerlach tells his story almost exclusively from the perspective of the officers and men of a German Wehrmacht unit trapped in the ‘cauldron’ or ‘pocket’ of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–43, and much is made of the fear that the Red Army might ‘break through’ the German perimeter and annihilate them (a fear that is never actually borne out). It was to avoid any suggestion that this potential Russian breakthrough was the main focus of the novel that I opted for the less obvious translation; ‘Breakout’ alludes to a suicidal plan mooted by some of the Wehrmacht unit (but again, never realized) to try to burst out through the Russian encirclement and reach the safety of the main German front hundreds of kilometres to the west.

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