Major Nikolay Dmitrevich Dyatlenko ( ukr, Микола Дмитрович Дятленко; russian: Николай Дмитриевич Дятленко; 26 November 1914 – 1996) was a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
officer, interrogator and translator who was part of a team that attempted to deliver a message of truce (sometimes referred to as an "ultimatum") to the German
Sixth Army at the
Battle of Stalingrad in January 1943. He also acted as the translator at the interrogation of Field Marshal
Friedrich Paulus
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (23 September 1890 – 1 February 1957) was a German field marshal during World War II who is best known for commanding the 6th Army during the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle ende ...
a few weeks later.
Life
Dyatlenko was born in 1914 in the village of Kulichka in the
Lebedin region, in present-day
Sumy Oblast,
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
. He studied
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
at the
University of Kyiv
Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...
before
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, and after the war he became an author.
Stalingrad truce
First attempt
A fluent German speaker, Captain Dyatlenko was transferred to the 7th Department of the
Stalingrad Front in the autumn of 1942 to help with the interrogations of German prisoners of war. The historian
Antony Beevor
Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works on the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War.
Early life
Born in Kensington, Beevor was educated at tw ...
claims that he was a member of the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
,
[Beevor (1999), p 388] but there is no mention of this in Dyatlenko's account of the ultimatum delivery, and the
index in
Erickson's ''Road to Berlin'' lists him as a
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
officer.
Together with Major Aleksandr Mikhailovich Smyslov from
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
Intelligence, Dyatlenko was chosen by NKVD and Red Army officers to deliver notice of truce to the beleaguered German forces in the ''Kessel'' at the
Battle of Stalingrad. Smyslov was to be the truce envoy and carried the truce papers in an oilskin packet,
[Beevor (1999), p. 326] whilst Dyatlenko was his interpreter.
Dyatlenko had no idea of the sort of behaviour that was expected of a truce envoy, later admitting that all he knew of the necessary protocols came from
Solovyov's play ''Field Marshal Kutuzov''.
[Beevor (1999), p. 323] On 7 January 1943 the two envoys were dressed in the finest uniforms available (the Russian quartermaster assured them that they would be "dressed like bridegrooms")
[ and were driven with Colonel Vinogradov in a ]Willys jeep
The Willys MB and the Ford GPW, both formally called the U.S. Army Truck, -ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance, commonly known as the Willys Jeep, Jeep, or jeep, and sometimes referred to by its supply catalogue designation G503,According to i ...
to the edge of 24th Army's sector at Kotluban. All shooting ceased during the night and on 8 January 1943, Dyatlenko and Smyslov, accompanied by a Red Army trumpeter armed with a three-note trumpet and a white flag, approached the German lines. On their first approach they were driven back by German fire.[ On a second approach they had no better luck; the fire was not aimed directly at them, but, as on the previous day, was meant to drive them back.
]
Second attempt
According to one account, the '' Stavka'' was keen to call off any further attempts to initiate a truce[Erickson (1983), p. 35] but on the evening of 8–9 January Soviet planes overflew the ''Kessel'', dropping leaflets signed by Voronov and Rokossovsky addressed to "''Deutsche Offiziere, Unteroffiziere und Mannschaften"'' and printed with an ultimatum to Paulus; they also dropped bombs.[Beevor (1999), p. 324] German soldiers later admitted that they had picked up these leaflets and read them, so the ultimatum was known about in the defending German army.[ Dyatlenko and Smyslov were driven to the HQ of the 96th Rifle Division near Marinovka, then a staff car drove them to the front line, from where they proceeded on foot.
On their second attempt, the envoys forgot their white flag, so a new one had to be made from a sheet belonging to the divisional commander; this was nailed to a branch from an acacia.][Beevor (1999), pp. 325] They were again accompanied by a trumpeter, this time a warrant officer named Siderov, whose call "Attention! Attention", although sounding to Dyatlenko more like ' The Last Post'",[ had the effect of attracting the attention of a German warrant officer. He asked their business.
Blindfolded with the shirt from Siderov's snowsuit (as well as forgetting their white flag, the envoys had forgotten to bring the blindfolds they had carried on their attempt the day before) the three Soviets were led behind German lines, at one point slipping on the ice and creating "an unplanned diversion".][Beevor (1999), p. 327] The German soldiers who came to their aid themselves slipped and fell over, reminding Dyatlenko of the Ukrainian children's game "A little heap is too little: someone is needed on top".[ Once they had reached the German trenches and had their blindfolds removed, Dyatlenklo realised to his embarrassment that he was carrying his pistol, against international convention.][ A senior German officer came in, then left to confer with his superiors; he soon returned and told the Soviet envoys to return, without their oilskin packet having had even a cursory inspection.
Erickson wrote of the incident: "Paulus refused to meet the emissaries, who were informed that the Sixth Army's commander already knew the contents of the message from Soviet radio transmission."][
]
Interrogations of captured German officers
After the capitulation of Axis forces at Stalingrad in January–February 1943, Dyatlenko interrogated many senior captured German military officers, including a battalion commander of the German 295th Infantry Division, General Edler von Daniels and Colonel Wilhelm Adam
Wilhelm Adam (28 March 1893 – 24 November 1978) was an officer in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. Following the German surrender after the Battle of Stalingrad, he became a member of the National Committee for a Free German ...
. Adam told him that it was in fact General Schmidt
Schmidt may refer to:
* Schmidt (surname), including list of people with the surname
* Schmidt (singer) (born 1990), German pop and jazz singer
* Schmidt (lunar crater), a small lunar impact crater
* Schmidt (Martian crater), a List of craters on ...
, rather than Paulus, who had ordered the truce envoys away without reading their message (Dyatlenko did not reveal to Adam that he himself had been one of the envoys).
He acted as translator at the interview by General Rokossovsky and Marshal Voronov of Field Marshal Paulus, the commander of the encircled Sixth Army, at Don Front HQ in Zavarykin. As Voronov said to Dyatlenko just before the interrogation, referring to the failed envoy mission:
Following the Paulus interrogation, Dyatlenko was assigned to interrogate a number of other captured German generals, such as the commander of XIV Panzerkorps, General Helmuth Schlömer __NOTOC__
Helmuth Schlömer (20 May 1893 – 18 August 1995) was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II and commanded the XIV Panzer Corps in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.
Helmuth Schlömer joint the army in March 1913 and was ...
, and General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach.[Beevor (1999), p. 396]
Bibliography
*Zhilin, V. А. (2002). ''Сталинградская битва: хроника, факты, люди'', Book 2. (contains Dyatlenko's account of the delivery of the ultimatum). Olma Media Group. .
Footnotes
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dyatlenko, Nikolay
1914 births
1996 deaths
Soviet military personnel of World War II
Translators from German
Translators from Russian
Ukrainian non-fiction writers
20th-century translators