Wehrmacht’s Tenth Army

The Wehrmacht’s Tenth Army is the German military formation recalled as it advanced into Poland in September 1939. Its remembered passage marks the opening of the novel’s wartime history, but the contrast between the cheering crowds and the later record of occupation and extermination makes that victory an emblem of a larger, obscured violence.

The 1939 Advance

As Xavier March and Max Jaeger cross the Oder, the river no longer marks a boundary with Poland: the country itself has disappeared from the political map. March looks straight ahead and remembers newsreels of horse-drawn artillery, tanks, and marching troops. The Wehrmacht’s Tenth Army had rolled down that road in September 1939, and victory had seemed easy enough to draw cheers. The recollection gives the army a specific place in the novel’s memory of conquest: it is not an abstract military name, but the force associated with the road into occupied Poland.

The scene’s present-day geography sharpens the memory. An exit points toward Gleiwitz, identified as the town where the war began. The route that once carried German troops eastward is now traveled by March and Jaeger, while the vanished frontier and March’s remembered newsreels bring the consequences of that advance into the journey’s immediate landscape.

Conquest and Its Material Rewards

The novel places the invasion within a system of occupation that brought German officials access to Polish land and wealth. The East Ministry advertised free farms and guaranteed income to settlers moving to the General Government, while information filtering back described poor soil, punishing work, and settlements exposed to partisan attacks. The contrast between public promises and conditions on the ground shows the civilian face of territorial expansion: colonization was promoted as a birthright even as its costs and dangers were concealed.

March’s colleague Rudolf Halder describes the luxury enjoyed by officials based at Wawel Castle in Krakau: paintings, tapestries, church treasures, jewelry, and bribes. Josef Buhler was based there as a state secretary, and Halder speculates that few officials escaped involvement in the corruption. March connects that account to Buhler’s house on Schwanenwerder. The invasion’s aftermath thus appears not only as territorial control, but as an opportunity for officials to turn occupied Poland’s resources into private privilege.

The Machinery Behind the Victory

A secret inventory compiled by Polish museum authorities in 1940 recorded 2,700 European paintings, 10,700 paintings by Polish artists, and 1,400 sculptures removed from Warsaw alone. Odilo Globocnik explains the documented transfer route: Buhler, with access to the material as state secretary, could send objects under escort to Wilhelm Stuckart at the Interior Ministry, where they could be stored or smuggled beyond the Reich in exchange for cash, jewels, or gold. The paperwork and official transport gave the looting an orderly appearance while concealing the gap between what had been taken and what was accounted for.

This economic exploitation sits beside the novel’s evidence of genocide. At the Wannsee meeting in Berlin on January 20, 1942, officials discussed the so-called final solution for about eleven million Jews across Europe. Draft minutes record discussion of mass shootings, gas trucks, and experiments using Zyklon B; the surviving final minutes reduced this discussion to a euphemistic phrase about dealing with those considered the toughest element. March’s examination of the records exposes how bureaucratic language and edited documentation obscured the actions carried out under German rule.

From Military Advance to Systematic Extermination

Martin Luther’s inspection notes record the later operation of Auschwitz: transports arrived by rail, prisoners were separated, and the camp’s killing and disposal facilities processed those selected for death. The same notes describe the recovery of belongings and valuables, while an SS circular dated August 6, 1942, ordered that hair cut in concentration camps be collected, reported monthly, and used for industrial felt and thread. These records place human beings and their possessions within administrative systems of transport, killing, and extraction.

Against that revealed history, the remembered advance of the Wehrmacht’s Tenth Army cannot remain a simple scene of military triumph. The cheering recalled by March belongs to the opening of a conquest whose occupation produced forced settlement, official enrichment, cultural plunder, and an organized campaign of murder. The army’s brief appearance therefore anchors a central contrast in the novel: the apparent ease of victory in public memory versus the extensive violence that the regime’s records had hidden.