Toe in the Water

General Heinrici

General Heinrici

I was thinking today that being old is like being General Gotthard Heinrici.

There was a time when I, like you, had never heard of General Heinrici. For me, his name first came up when someone I knew cited him as the best German general of World War II. As somewhat of a student of that conflict, I had to know more and proceeded to find out.

The story is quite surprising and somehow exemplary. Heinrici was a general who never won a battle. It’s in the investigating of the battles he was given to command that we discover his greatness. He was the man the Germans would call upon when battles were already lost. For much of the long retreat from Russia, Heinrici was put in charge and was the reason the Russians had such a hard time of it.

He invented what became known as the “empty bag technique.” With what seemed like a sixth sense, he would know where and when the next Russian attack would come. Heinrici would withdraw his forces from the relevant area during the night. When the Russians attacked, they would find no opposition and would hurtle through the gap, creating the bulge in the front line known as a salient. Then Heinrici’s forces would attack from the sides of the initial breakthrough, cutting off the Russian force and destroying it at leisure over time.

It was this feel for the exact time and place of the next assault that was essential to the technique. And only Heinrici had it. Time and again, he was removed for disobeying orders that he disagreed with, only to be brought back to patch up the disasters that resulted. His final disobedience was in withdrawing his armies to the west of Berlin, refusing to see them wasted in the futile protection of Hitler. Summoned to appear in Berlin for punishment, Heinrici took the advice of another German general and drove off in the opposite direction. He survived the war and died eventually in 1971, now celebrated in his homeland as a hero.

How is being old like being General Heinrici? Because being old is a matter of constant rearguard actions against an enemy that is going to win in the end. It’s all about saving a few faculties here, a few senses there, and keeping the wolf from the door a few more hours or days. There’s no possibility of gaining a victory, since the old enemy has all the cards, but you can make his job as difficult as possible. If you’re old, you’re General Heinrici.


Word count: 428