Stalingrad
Page 30
Major General Ivan Dmitrievich Burmakov (Commander of the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): How did we take prisoners? My orders were that they shouldn’t wait until all of them started laying down their weapons. If a hundred men put down their weapons, then they’re off to the rear. And just one man to go with them. It’s a shame to waste manpower. At that time I had around eight hundred prisoners, and by the 30th it was around two thousand. I was already sick of them. I had to use an antiaircraft division, but what you can you do?
Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Petrovich Karpov (Executive secretary for the Komsomol, 3rd Battalion): By then we were attacking during the day. We’d take a building with only ten men, and we’d drag out three or four hundred prisoners. The thing was, all the Germans were in the basements, though they’d keep half a dozen snipers on the roof shooting with submachine guns.
Captain Ivan Zakharovich Bukharov (Political section instructor, 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): Urban combat is very difficult. Every rock is out to get you. The Germans would set up machine guns, camouflage them, and shoot. And to top that off they put snipers on the rooftops. We’d have to run across streets, squares, alleys. We were taking casualties, but not like they were.
Here’s what they’d do: They’d settle down in a building, place their machine guns, their sniper-submachine gunners, their mortar men. The rest would stay in the basement to keep down their losses.
And we in turn would place our own submachine gunners and antitank riflemen, who did a good job of destroying those firing points. All of them had grenades. As soon as there was enemy fire, we’d hit that location and take it out. Our men advanced whenever the shooting died down. We were throwing a lot of grenades into basements.
Senior Lieutenant Fyodor Ivanovich Fyodorov (Commander of the 6th Battery, 65th Guards Artillery Regiment, 36th Guards Rifle Division): We started smoking them out of their bunkers. One time we pulled out fifteen Germans and took one aside. We gave him a smoke and sent him back into the bunker to bring out whoever else was there. He went and brought out more people. We didn’t do anything to them, but when the others poked their heads out of the bunker, we shot at them.
Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Abovich Vinokur (Deputy commander for political affairs): How were we fighting? We’d shoot five or six times with the big guns and then send an envoy. If they didn’t surrender, we’d shoot another five or six times, send the envoy. If that didn’t do it, we shot at them again. Then they’d start to line up and beg to be taken prisoner.
Major General Ivan Dmitrievich Burmakov (Commander of the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): By the evening of the 29th we’d taken around eight hundred prisoners. That evening we captured a German hospital. There were wounded officers, including a regimental commander, a major. This got reported to me. I went right away to ask him where the German group headquarters was located.
There were rumors that Paulus had been flown out.
I asked the major where Paulus was.
He said that Paulus wasn’t there.
Somehow that major was dead by morning. Apparently he’d been strangled by our men.
The fighting continued at night. At dawn on the 30th we started to approach and surround the Regional Party Committee building, the building of the Regional Executive Committee, the City Theater, and the buildings to the east. We fought during the day, we fought at night.
Shumilov called me: “Why have you taken so little?” Denisenko has just called to say that he’d taken the theater and the gardens.
“Comrade General, how can Denisenko have just taken the theater? I was in the gardens by the theater and took eight hundred prisoners.”
Sure, maybe Denisenko wasn’t to blame. It’s not easy to know where you are if you don’t know the city.
I knew the city, and most of my men knew the city, but these new people didn’t.
The fighting continued. We’d take a building and capture 150–200 men. The enemy offered fierce resistance. There were two hundred men defending this building while I was attacking with four hundred. We were all firing away at one another. Their resistance on the 30th was unbelievable. I said: “We’re going to need to take every last building.”
But we had some tricks up our sleeves. We started sending back prisoners. I telephoned all the battalion commanders, the deputies for political affairs.
I told them if they captured small groups of Germans, twenty or so, then they had to send them back. If the Germans in a building won’t surrender, and you’ve already captured a hundred of them, then take twenty or thirty and send them back. That helped.
Major Alexander Georgievich Yegorov (Chief of the political section): We took 1,500 prisoners, picked out twenty of them, talked with them a bit and then sent them back. Generally, if we captured a single soldier—or two or three—we sent them back, saying that we weren’t going to take them one by one. If you want us to take you prisoner, then get your comrades and come on back. I’ve got to say, this strategy got some fairly good results. [ . . . ] There was a directive from the army political section that called on us to speed up our shipments of prisoners. It was in connection with this that we launched an assault on the night of January 29–30, at midnight. I left the command post with Colonel Vinokur, the deputy brigade commander, and we arrived just as they had finished occupying the basement of the Univermag department store, which was their hospital. There were about fifty men there: wounded, sick, frostbitten. There were majors, captains. One major asked for my revolver so he could shoot himself—obviously a true believer.
Our men were in high spirits. On January 30 we took the train station. When we were inspecting our units before the attack, we knew for sure that they’d had the right training. These men were ready to fight, they were burning with desire. There was perfect certainty that the task they’d been given the day before would be completed.
But there was still no word on Paulus. We heard he’d flown out. Then, when we started getting large groups of prisoners, the officers told us that Paulus was in some basement with his staff. This of course had its effect on our men and officers. It would be something to capture him. We dragged out a group of two thousand prisoners and brought them to where our command post was. There we carried out a search, sorted them, and pulled out the officers. We got confirmation from this group. Paulus was here in Stalingrad.
Major General Ivan Dmitrievich Burmakov (Commander of the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): The long and short of it was this: we fought, and we fought, and we fought. In the evening [of January 30] I was told that the building of the Regional Committee, the City Theater, and the adjacent buildings—which we had already surrounded—had agreed to negotiate their surrender, but they asked to wait until 6:00 A.M. Ilchenko reported this to me. I said: “We’ve got to start immediately!” We sent another messenger. They wouldn’t agree. I wondered what the problem was. They asked to hold off until 4:00 A.M.
“Let’s give them until 4:00 A.M.”
I thought this would be a good chance to lie down, seeing as I didn’t get any sleep the night of the 28th–29th. We’d fought all the 29th and all the night of the 29th–30th. We had to get a little rest. After all, there’s a limit to a man’s strength.
General Shumlilov called: “Sector 101 has been taken.”—This was where Paulus was—“Denisenko is there!”
I couldn’t take it. I said: “Comrade General, allow me to send my representatives.”
I went to check for myself.
Denisenko’s men were one and two hundred meters to my left and rear. How could they have taken Sector 101? The unit on my right was occupying Sector 100. I think to myself, it’s not possible that they took Sector 101. But if they did, then it’s all the more important we attack these buildings.
Major General Mikhail Ivanovich Denisenko (Commander of the 36th Guards Rifle Division): Then the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade was sent to our area. [ . . . ] It’s hard to know who it was exactly that surrounded Paulus’s headquarters, but the 38th Brigade got the credit.
; Guards Colonel Ivan Vasilievich Kudryavtsev (Deputy commander for political affairs, 36th Guards Rifle Division): Our division captured about six thousand men. Paulus was captured by some new reserve unit that had only just entered combat.
Captain Yakov Mironovich Golovchiner (Chief of the political section’s 7th Section, 64th Army): On the night of January 31 the 29th Division entered negotiations with Colonel Ludwig, the commander of the enemy’s 14th Panzer Division. At first we spoke via radio, and then he came to our headquarters. We agreed that at 6:00 A.M. on January 31, 1943, the remnants of the 14th Panzer Division would be lined up on the square by the theater, where they would surrender to us. During the negotiations he mentioned that he could mediate negotiations with Field Marshal Paulus, who was in the department store. Now it was clear where Paulus was. Until then this was not confirmed. When this was reported up the chain of command, orders were issued to find Paulus’s headquarters right away and to send our people there.
That night the 97th Brigade of the 7th Corps did the following: they got a group of captured German officers and told them to go with our man to Paulus’s headquarters and begin negotiations. It was a long time before they agreed. But after the meeting with the officers, two men were chosen: Plate and Lange. They and Lieutenant Vasiliev, chief of intelligence for the 97th Brigade, set off for Paulus’s headquarters. They got there, negotiated, and agreed that at 10:00 A.M. they would try to make all the legal arrangements. So he could prove that he’d been there, they gave Vasiliev and pistol and a Nazi banner.
That same night, representatives of the 29th Division (they have a training battalion and a training regiment) were also negotiating with Paulus’s staff.153 At that time I was at the 20th Division’s headquarters. When they told me that these negotiations were going on, I went over there. I arrived at the department store building by morning. When I arrived, the building was already surrounded by elements of the 38th Brigade. The sentries outside were from the 38th Brigade, and the ones inside were Germans. As it happened, the 106th Regiment of the 29th Division had gone around the department store and kept going. The 38th Brigade came up and, in orderly fashion, surrounded the building where the headquarters was.
Major General Ivan Dmitrievich Burmakov (Commander of the 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): So, by 4:00 A.M. on January 31, 1943, I’d taken 1,800 prisoners. There were about two hundred officers among them. Then Ilchenko called to say that three of them were battalion commanders. I said: “Question them immediately and find out where their Stalingrad group headquarters is.”
Ilchenko called back: “They’ve confirmed that von Paulus and his headquarters are in the center of the city, in a basement on the other side of Red Square.154
I said: “Sector 101.”
Right then I called the battalion commanders and deputies and had them get this message to every soldier: locate and encircle this building. I knew that the department store and the hotel were around there somewhere. I told them there was a square. The Square of the Fallen Warriors. Surround this building immediately. It won’t be easy getting in there. Bring in the mortars, open fire, and let’s make quick work of it.
Captain Lukyan Petrovich Morozov (Deputy commander for political affairs, 1st Battalion): We destroyed their last stronghold on the approach to the department store and captured forty-eight men, including one translator. I was where the barricade had been built. When our men had occupied the building and started moving the prisoners, I went straight to the battalion and followed the left flank toward the department store. Everything around the gateway was mined. We brought in a heavy machine gun, antitank rifles, submachine gunners. 3rd Battalion and another battalion were advancing on our right. We’d basically surrounded the entire block. Artillery was firing from behind the Volga. When we got to the theater the artillery stopped because we were close enough to the enemy that we might get hit too.
I stayed with the 2nd Platoon. The commander of 1st Company, Captain Savchuk, ran up to me and said an officer was requesting a senior officer for negotiations. “I told them I was an officer, but they said, ‘No, we need someone from the high command, go find them, talk to them!’” I went straight to that translator we’d taken with that group of forty-eight and then went to the officer. I said I was the brigade’s deputy chief of staff. The translator relayed this to him. He said they needed someone higher up. I told him that I was authorized by our high command. He said there were generals there. Well, all right if that’s how things stand! That’s when Ilchenko arrived: a senior lieutenant, deputy chief of staff for operations. The brigade commander was having him lead the battle. He was always with us at the battalion, and he gave instructions to our battalion and some others as well. I said: “Well then, comrade Ilchenko, shall we negotiate?” Then Ryabov, an agent from the Special Department, arrived. We set off. We were warned: this area is mined, don’t stop. We walked right up to the entrance of the department store basement. There were lieutenants with rifles and submachine guns, and also some machine guns. Someone came out, a duty officer or something. They announced the visitors, saying that we were here for negotiations. We didn’t have a white flag, nothing like that. Then Captain Bukharov appeared out of nowhere. He’d already gone in when we were in the courtyard. The Special Department agent left two men in the courtyard. Then Captain Rybak came. Three people went inside: me, Lieutenant Ilchenko, and Captain Rybak, and I suppose Ryabov too.
Captain Ivan Zakharovich Bukharov (Political section instructor, 38th Motor Rifle Brigade): We knew that Paulus was there, we knew that he hadn’t been flown out. We’d heard that they had a plane circling all the time, we heard all kinds of things. Paulus’s headquarters was in this district. We knew that much, but I wasn’t sure which basement he was in. Then this German officer comes out and asks which one of us is the ranking officer. We say we’ve got captains and a senior lieutenant. We told them they should surrender. We said they were surrounded, and that if they didn’t give up we’d throw everything we had at them, that we’d eliminate them down to the last man. He said that he wasn’t the one to decide such things, that there were men higher up than him. And then he tells us that Field Marshal Paulus is here. We went up to the main entrance. It was me, Morozov, Ilchenko, and Ryabov, the representative from the Special Department. We went in. The courtyard was packed full of Germans. When we entered the courtyard, we were stopped near the entrance to the basement. The chief of staff came out with a captain who spoke excellent Russian, even knew Russian sayings: “God only knows,” “my darling,” things like that.155 He said that Paulus required that we report to higher authorities, officials who could carry out negotiations. We discussed this. We agreed that Ilchenko and I would go and the others would stay. We went to call our battalion command post and the brigade. They told us to leave and report this to the higher authorities. Then I went back to the building. They already knew me there. There were only five of us, not too hard to remember. So I was there, but our men were attacking all around. We were ready for anything. To tell you the truth, it was dangerous being there with them. Any bastard could get you. But at the time it didn’t even occur to me to be worried.
Captain Lukyan Petrovich Morozov (Deputy commander for political affairs, 1st Battalion): General Schmidt, the chief of staff, said that they were concerned for the life of the general, that someone might run in and throw a grenade, so he asked if someone would remain at the entrance. Ryabov went. Bukharov was sent to get in touch with brigade headquarters. Now it was just Ilchenko, Captain Rybak—the deputy commander of 3rd Battalion—and me. We started negotiations with Schmidt in a colonel’s office that was next to Paulus’s room. The general and a translator came in. The translator spoke good Russian. Schmidt asked for Ilchenko’s ID. Schmidt said: “May I see your papers?” Ilchenko had said that he was the brigade’s chief of staff. But the position listed on his papers didn’t correspond with what he’d said. They said they had to have a representative of Rokossovsky, the army commander. Ilchenko said: “I’m the ch
ief of staff now. You’re all worried about this small detail, but what matters is the larger picture: what you now have at your disposal, the position you are now in and the position we are now in.” But they still demanded a more senior representative. Then Ilchenko said: “I’ll go radio for a colonel.” He left with Rybak. I stayed in the room with the general and the translator. The general would ask the translator a question, and then the translator would ask me: “Is it true that since they introduced new rank insignia, the Red Army will be known not as the Red Army, but as the Russian Army?” I said: “No, that’s not right—the Red Army is not being renamed the Russian Army.” I asked him if he knew whether the Red Army was having success on all fronts. “Yes, we’ve heard that on the radio lately.” He asked, among other things, about my rank and position. Then he said: “Do not think that our German army is weak. We are still strong, still very powerful, and we are equipped with first-rate weaponry.” I said that, if we were defeating such first-rate weaponry, this was all the more a credit to the Red Army. He said: “You have probably also had the experience of being surrounded.” I said that my division had never been encircled. I hadn’t personally been in such a situation. He said that they were getting a hundred grams of bread, that they had no other food. Then he asked how long our winter would last. I told him there would be severe frosts until mid-March or so. Then I asked him a question: “You think the German army is so civilized, especially your army staff, but why do you live in such filth?” He replied: “We’ve been stuck inside lately because of your Katyushas and airplanes. That is the explanation for everything.”
They had something like fifty kilos of sausage in there. They pounced on those sausages like jackals: officers pushing soldiers out of the way, soldiers pushing officers.
General Schmidt said through his translator that they were concerned for General Paulus’s safety. “We’ll give you a captain and ask that you remain by the doors.” I said: “Certainly.” And I left.