Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Even as the fate of Stalingrad hung in the balance, the Soviets in mid-September had begun tentative planning for a possible counteroffensive. Although in his memoirs Zhukov outlined a dramatic scene at Stalin’s headquarters, where he and Vasilevsky on 12–13 September—at the same time Rodimtsev’s Thirteenth Guards were about to be sent across the Volga to prevent the fall of Stalingrad—allegedly outlined plans for a bold, war-turning attack, the truth seems both more pedestrian and more ambitious. Almost certainly, initial ideas of a counterstrike at Stalingrad revolved around merely saving the beleaguered city itself from falling to the Germans. When it became obvious that the forces were lacking for any immediate relief action, thoughts turned to the possibility of building the necessary strength for a more decisive counterstroke. Any chance of success, in turn, depended on a rapid buildup of Soviet forces as well as the continued pinning down of enemy troops in Stalingrad. Although Zhukov claimed later that the plan all along was to feed just enough Soviet troops into the Stalingrad meat grinder to keep the battle going, this is likely an overstatement of the Stavka’s control of events. At least as important as the stubborn resistance put up by Chuikov’s men was the fact of insufficient German strength as well as Paulus’s uninspired direction of the battle. Without the Germans’ failure to take advantage of their early September opportunities, Zhukov would have had no chance to reverse the situation.1

  In the event, however, and to Stalin’s surprise, the Red Army held at Stalingrad, even as troops were ruthlessly stripped from the front lines and sent into the reserve, to be rebuilt and reequipped for the coming offensive. By mid-October, too, Soviet plans had grown in scale and ambition. Operation Uranus, the plan to encircle the Sixth Army, had a companion, Operation Mars, that was, in fact, regarded as at least its equal in importance, not least because the Stavka allocated it forces equal to the southern operation and Zhukov was personally involved in its planning. Directed at the encirclement of German forces in the Rzhev salient, Mars was, if successful, to be followed up by an even more ambitious operation, Jupiter, which aimed at nothing less than the destruction of Army Group Center. By the same token, Uranus was to set the stage for Saturn, an operation aimed at recapturing Rostov and trapping Army Group A in the Caucasus. Where Uranus seemed a high-risk venture that depended for its success not only on Stalingrad holding out until it could be launched, but also on the Germans not then breaking out of the encirclement, Mars appeared a more certain proposition. Soviet troop dispositions certainly pointed to the initially greater importance of Mars. The Stavka deployed 1.9 million men, nearly 3,500 tanks, 25,000 artillery pieces, and more than 1,000 aircraft against Army Group Center, the target of Mars, while it massed 1.1 million troops, 1,500 tanks, 15,500 artillery pieces, and fewer than 1,000 aircraft in the south. The only problem with Operation Mars, as Geoffrey Roberts has noted, was that it failed, at a loss of some 350,000 total casualties, because the Germans expected the major counteroffensive to come in the center. What they had not expected, however, was that the Soviets could simultaneously launch another large offensive in the south. In any case, in both these offensives, relatively small assaults (Mars, Uranus) were to be followed by large encirclement operations (Jupiter, Saturn) that, if successful, would have shattered the entire German eastern front. In effect, the Soviets intended nothing less than to win the war in 1943.2

  Anyone at Hitler’s headquarters who could read a map, including the Führer, understood the potential threat along the understaffed Don front. Still, despite Hitler’s fears and increasing indications of Soviet preparations, Uranus caught the Germans by surprise. Although Foreign Armies East had been warning since late August of an enemy ability to launch an offensive, it had consistently pinpointed the sector of Army Group Center as the most likely area of Russian activity. This failure resulted not only from a chronic underestimation of enemy capabilities but also from elaborate Soviet concealment and deception measures. Learning from earlier German actions, the Soviets kept knowledge of the upcoming attack on a strictly need-to-know basis, troop and supply movements took place at night, and the assault forces were brought forward only at the last moment. They also employed false signals to convince the Germans that they were preparing defenses in the south, thus reinforcing the German belief that any enemy offensive would be on the central sector. They also effectively fed the Germans’ illusion that Soviet strength was just as exhausted as their own. On the eve of the offensive, General Zeitzler stated categorically, “The Russians no longer have any resources worth mentioning and are not capable of launching a large scale offensive.”3

  Zeitzler’s assurances might have comforted some, but they hardly corresponded to reality. Their ambitious plans for a dual offensive, in fact, revealed just how successfully the Soviets had again absorbed the German blows while continuing to expand their economic output. By November 1942, half of European Russia, an area of some 80 million people that contained nearly half the cultivated land and the bulk of the industrial resources of the Soviet Union, had been lost. In addition, the Red Army had suffered frightful casualties, with the dead, wounded, and missing totaling well over 8 million, with millions more Soviet civilians perishing under German occupation. Losses in weapons, tanks, and artillery had been equally calamitous. Yet, by the end of 1942, the Soviets vastly outproduced the Germans in every category of weapons. Already a highly militarized society with a centrally directed economy, the Soviets managed through ruthless mobilization measures to better convert their remaining resources into the weapons of war than did the Germans. Nor did it hurt that they had increasing access to Lend-Lease supplies. Although the bulk of the considerable American contribution to the Soviet war effort arrived after Stalingrad, the fact remained, as Mark Harrison has emphasized, that a Soviet economy always on the edge of collapse benefited even from the limited quantities of Western aid made available to it in 1942. As it turned out, Zeitzler was only half right: the Germans had exhausted their immediately available resources, while the Soviets were soon to deploy a combined attack force of 3 million men on the central and southern sectors.4

  Despite Hitler’s flash of insight and mid-August prediction that Stalin would repeat the “Russian attack of 1920” with a thrust across the Don aimed at Rostov, not until late October, amid increasing signs of an enemy buildup, did the focus of German attention shift to the Don front. Despite his concern over the steadfastness of his Rumanian and Italian allies, however, there was little Hitler could do other than urge the rapid seizure of Stalingrad, which would free German troops for defensive operations. The Führer also directed that the Don front be “fortified as strongly as possible and mined,” but this was of little value given the paucity of construction materials and the near-complete absence of antitank weapons on the part of the Rumanians. In the event, some Luftwaffe field divisions were shifted into defensive positions, even though the army command had grave doubts about their battleworthiness. Despite his public assertions to the contrary, then, Hitler’s attitude and actions betrayed a deep fear at the prospect of powerful Soviet attacks directed at the weakest part of the Axis line.5

  On 2 November, alarmed by growing signs of a Soviet buildup along the vulnerable Don front, Hitler ordered the bombing of bridges erected by the Soviets to funnel troops into bridgeheads south of the river, while, the next day, he directed the transfer from the west of the Sixth Panzer Division and two infantry divisions. With the situation growing more threatening by the moment, Army Group B on the ninth shifted the Forty-eighth Panzer Corps into the Don bend as a mobile reserve in order to brace the Rumanian position. On paper a formidable force, in reality it had been badly depleted by the fighting at Stalingrad, with the Twenty-second Panzer Division possessing only forty-two operational tanks, the Fourteenth Panzer Division lacking its infantry regiments, and the Rumanian First Armored Division barely combat ready. At the same time, anticipating the possibility of deep enemy penetrations, the army group command directed that the cities of Karpovka and Kalach be
made into “fortified areas” and ordered that a number of “alarm battalions” be created for rapid deployment in the rear. Far from being overconfident, both Hitler and much of the German command appeared to be profoundly disquieted by the prospect of an imminent enemy attack and fully aware of the limited German ability to respond.6

  Yet neither the Führer nor the OKH could summon the courage to do anything really decisive, such as suspend the fighting in Stalingrad, pull the Sixth Army out to defensive positions, or shorten other sectors of the front. In reality, given the exhaustion of German reserves, there was little the Führer could do. He could hardly denude the central sector of troops in the face of strong indications of a major enemy operation, while giving up the Caucasus would negate the whole purpose of the summer campaign. At the same time, he so misjudged the urgency of the situation that he left his military headquarters to give his traditional speech in Munich marking the anniversary of the failed putsch, at which he assured the Old Fighters that Stalingrad would soon fall, then decamped to the Berghof, where he planned a long holiday. Instead, events in North Africa demanded his immediate attention. Preoccupied with the need to secure the Mediterranean flank, and troubled by the necessity of dispersing his already inadequate forces, Hitler could only hope for “no new surprises” in the east. The Führer’s fabled luck, however, was about to run out. Ironically, during a roughly two-week span while he was away from the military nerve centers of the Reich, the most dramatic events of the year, and perhaps of the war, unfolded: Rommel’s retreat from El Alamein, followed by the Allied invasion of North Africa and the Soviet counterattack at Stalingrad.7

  The offensive that Zeitzler believed the Russians incapable of launching began just before dawn on 19 November in thick fog and driving snow following an eighty-minute artillery barrage. Although facing an equal number of Axis troops, which admittedly were supported by far fewer tanks and artillery, the Soviets, again emulating the Germans, had skillfully massed their forces, creating points of main effort at which they enjoyed a marked superiority in strength. Moreover, they had carefully aimed their assault at the poorly trained, equipped, and motivated Rumanian divisions, rather than tangle with frontline German units. Attacking out of the Kletskaya and Bolshaya bridgeheads, the Soviets planned for troops from the Don front to strike southeast toward Kalach, while the next day Red Army forces from the Stalingrad Front would attack south of the city and advance northwest toward the same objective. At the same time, an outer defense line would be established along the Chir and Krivaya Rivers so that, if all went as planned, the double encirclement would net not only the Sixth Army in Stalingrad but also Axis forces in the Don bend as well.8

  Advancing in white camouflage suits and in a thick mist “as white as milk,” Soviet units soon overwhelmed the outmatched Rumanian defenders. Although in many areas the Rumanians put up stout resistance against the waves of Soviet infantry, their complete lack of tanks and deficiencies in heavy antitank guns doomed their efforts. By midday, Soviet armored formations had pushed through the inadequate defense line, with increasing numbers of Rumanian units giving way to “tank fright.” General Ferdinand Heim’s Forty-eighth Panzer Corps swung into action almost immediately in an attempt to stem the Red tide, but a series of misadventures robbed it of any chance to make a decisive impact on the battle. The crews of the Twenty-second Panzer Division, for example, which formed the nucleus of Heim’s forces, had dug their tanks into pits and covered them with straw in an attempt to protect them from the cold. When they hurriedly moved to aid the Rumanians, however, they found, much to their distress, that mice had eaten through the electrical wiring, with the result that only 42 of the division’s 102 tanks could be sent forward to meet the enemy. This problem was compounded by disagreement in the German command as to the key Soviet threat. While Army Group B ordered General Heim’s forces to seal off the enemy breakthrough at Kletskaya, Zeitzler, after consulting with Hitler, redirected the corps to the northwest to blunt the Soviet thrust at Bolshaya. With fewer than a hundred serviceable tanks, and so short of fuel that they had to borrow it from the Rumanians, Heim’s units were sent from sector to sector “on a wild goose chase” that merely dissipated their already insufficient strength. When they did engage the Soviets, they performed well, destroying large numbers of enemy T-34s, but, with any hope of a concentrated counterthrust lost in the confusing welter of orders, the Forty-eighth Panzer Corps was itself soon forced on the defensive.9

  As it became apparent during the course of the day that the usual German strengths of tactical skill, coordination of forces, mobility, and air power were all negated by fuel shortages and poor weather, the command of Army Group B began to consider seriously the possibility that the Soviet penetrations could not be halted and that German forces in Stalingrad might be in danger of encirclement. By nightfall, Soviet armored spearheads had ripped a hole nearly fifty miles wide in the Rumanian front and were halfway to Kalach. Amazingly, the Sixth Army command itself seemed unaware of the full import of events to the west, continuing its attacks in the city. Although word had been sent from Army Group B at 6:00 P.M. that some units might need to be shifted from Stalingrad, not until 10:00 that evening did Weichs make the seriousness of the situation clear, ordering the Sixth Army to suspend offensive operations in the city and send strong mobile forces westward for the protection of its left flank as quickly as possible. Paulus immediately complied, pulling three armored units, the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty-fourth Panzer Divisions, and an infantry division from the line to form the relief force. Since there was a lack of fuel in Stalingrad and some of the units had first to extricate themselves from heavy fighting in the city, they could not be employed en masse on the west bank of the Don for several days, making any immediate halt to the Soviet attack unlikely.10

  Even as Paulus’s Fourteenth Panzer Corps and other assorted units managed on the twentieth to form a thin defensive line and slow the Soviet advance in the north, disaster struck to the south. At 10:00 that morning, artillery and Katyusha rockets along the Stalingrad front south of the city had launched a thunderous barrage. Forty-five minutes later, when “masses of Soviet tanks and waves of infantry” assaulted Axis lines, the ill-equipped Rumanians, despite fighting bravely in many places, had no chance of resisting for long. As Rumanian troops again succumbed to tank fright and began fleeing to the rear, the only reserve of the Fourth Panzer Army, the Twenty-ninth Motorized Infantry Division, quickly moved to stanch the Red tide. Even though it inflicted a sharp reverse on advancing Soviet columns, it alone had insufficient strength to master the situation. By the end of the day, the Fourth Panzer Army had been split in two. As along the Don front, in the south, too, the Germans were now paying the price for having sent all available units into Stalingrad. Had they possessed a mobile reserve, as the success of the Twenty-ninth Motorized Infantry indicated, the Soviet attack in the south might well have been blunted. No such reserve existed, however, and, with the smashing of the Axis line in the south, the situation now assumed alarming proportions. Back in Berchtesgaden, Hitler reacted with two decisions that revealed his full understanding of the danger that the Sixth Army might be, at least temporarily, encircled: he ordered Field Marshal Manstein to assume command of the new Army Group Don, with the task of stabilizing the situation and recovering the lost position, and at the same time he directed that preparations be made for supplying the Sixth Army by air.11

  Until the twenty-first, Paulus’s staff at Sixth Army headquarters, just twelve miles north of Kalach at Golubinsky, had remained cautiously optimistic that the Soviet advance might yet be checked, early that morning sending “a not unfavorable description of the situation” to Army Group B. During the course of the day, however, the realization ripened that the southern breakthrough also had Kalach as its goal and that a double envelopment now loomed as a possibility. Paulus ordered the Fourteenth Panzer Corps to attack to the southwest in an attempt to safeguard the rail line from Kalach to Stalingrad, the vital a
rtery for maintaining the operational capability of the Sixth Army, but a lack of fuel that hampered operational mobility forced a growing recognition that the Soviets would likely win the race to Kalach and that, at the least, a temporary encirclement was probable. Shortly after noon, in fact, Soviet tanks on the way to Kalach appeared on the steppe to the west, forcing a precipitate evacuation of Sixth Army headquarters that quickly turned into panicked flight. As German command cars, trucks, and motorcycles raced away, they collided with each other, overturned, and blocked the road, while men on foot, rushing to save themselves, threw away weapons and abandoned ammunition carts, field kitchens, and supply vehicles. In their hurried departure, they also missed a midafternoon Führer directive that acknowledged the danger of encirclement but ordered that the rail line be held as long as possible. By that time, however, any hope of stopping the Soviet advance had evaporated. The defenses at Kalach were badly prepared and inadequately manned, with a few Luftwaffe flak emplacements supported by mainly supply troops and some units of the field police. Early on the twenty-second, against virtually no opposition, an advanced detachment of the Soviet Twenty-sixth Tank Corps seized the key rail bridge across the Don at Kalach. Lacking the fuel and troops for a counterattack to retake the bridge, the Germans were now reduced, despite the grave doubts of virtually all commanders on the spot about its feasibility, to dependence on an air bridge as the only way to maintain the Sixth Army’s fighting power. When the pincers finally slammed the pocket shut on the twenty-third, the Soviets had trapped, not the 85,000–95,000 men they had thought, but well over 250,000 Axis troops.12