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But the news from the front wasn’t good. In Stalingrad, despite the military bulletins that daily announced a decisive breakthrough, the Sixth Army, according to the Abwehr, had gotten completely bogged down in the center of town. The officers who came back from Vinnitsa affirmed that a deplorable atmosphere reigned at GHQ, and that the Führer had almost stopped talking to Generals Keitel and Jodl, whom he had banished from his table. Sinister rumors were rampant in military circles, which Voss reported to me sometimes: the Führer was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he regularly flew into mad rages and was making contradictory, incoherent decisions; the generals were starting to lose confidence. It was certainly exaggerated, but I found the fact that such rumors were spreading in the army worrisome, and I mentioned it in the section of my report on the Morale of the Wehrmacht. Hohenegg was back, but his conference was taking place in Kislovodsk, and I hadn’t seen him yet; after a few days he sent me a note inviting me to dinner. Voss had gone to join the Third Panzer Corps in Prokhladny; von Kleist was preparing another offensive toward Nalchik and Ordzhonikidze, and he wanted to be right behind the first units to protect the libraries and institutes.