Nikolay Dyatlenko

Nikolay Dmitriyevich Dyatlenko (; ; 26 November 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Ukrainian Soviet 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 a few weeks later.

Early life and military service Dyatlenko was born in 1914 to a peasant family in the village of Kulichka in present-day Sumy Raion, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine. He graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Railway Transport Tekhnikum in 1935, then studied philology at the University of Kyiv. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Dyatlenko joined the Red Army as an ordinary soldier in June 1941. On account of his knowledge of German, Dyatlenko was assigned to the 7th Department of the Political Directorate of the Southwestern Front, engaged in agitation attempting to persuade German soldiers to surrender and cooperate with Soviet forces. He served as a writer and translator for a newspaper produced by the front political directorate targeting German soldiers. In August he became a senior instructor of the 7th Department for work among enemy troops and population with the rank of captain. Dyatlenko held this position for the rest of the war, and continued serving with the department when the Southwestern Front was renamed the Stalingrad Front in mid-1942.

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. Antony Beevor claims that he was a member of the NKVD, but this is not supported by his military records. There is no mention of this in Dyatlenko's account of the ultimatum delivery, and the index in John Erickson's Road to Berlin lists him as a Red Army officer.

Together with Major Aleksandr Mikhailovich Smyslov from Red Army 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, 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, about the French invasion of Russia in 1812. 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")

Second attempt According to one account, the Stavka was keen to call off any further attempts to initiate a truce 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. 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. 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'", 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". |title=|source= 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." General Edler von Daniels and Colonel Wilhelm Adam. Adam told him that it was in fact General Schmidt, 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: So, Captain [...] You no doubt remember the time the old man didn't want to receive you. Well, now he's visiting us himself. And you're going to receive him.| He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for showing bravery under German fire during the two truce attempts, and received a promotion to the rank of major. Major Nikolay Dmitriyevich Dyatlenko, during the preparation and conduct of the battles on the Oryol–Kursk axis conducted significant work for the strengthening of the work of the 7th Department of the Army Political Department. He organized the work of a powerful loudspeaker, ensuing the nonstop broadcast of the crew under enemy artillery and mortar fire. In the sector of loudspeaker broadcasts, several German soldiers went over to our side, giving valuable information to the command about the forthcoming offensive of German troops on the Oryol–Kursk and Balgorod axes. In March 1944, leading a group of German antifascists, he parachuted into the German rear to join the Logoysk "Bolshevik" Partisan Brigade, tasked with conducting agitation, on a special mission directed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. The group was assessed by his superiors as having conducted significant work to demoralize German garrisons in the rear. In battle with German troops, attempting to encircle the partisans, Dyatlenko was seriously wounded, returning to Soviet lines in July. He was awarded a second Order of the Red Banner on 4 August in recognition of his performance in the operation. Dyatlenko spent the remainder of the war in the political department of the Karelian Front's 32nd Army and in the Political Directorate of that front. Among Dyatlenko's translations from German were The Visions of Simone Machard and Three Comrades. Dyatlenko died in Kyiv on 11 October 1996.