The Third Reich at War

by Richard J. Evans

  German aircraft and artillery continued to attack the Soviet-occupied part of Stalingrad, but the bombed-out ruins of the city provided the Soviet troops with ideal conditions for defence. Digging in behind heaps of rubble, living in cellars and posting snipers in the upper floors of half-demolished apartment blocks, they were able to ambush the advancing German troops, break up their mass assaults, or channel the enemy advance into avenues where they could be disposed of by concealed anti-tank guns and heavy weaponry. They laid thousands of mines under cover of darkness, bombed German positions at night and set up booby-traps to kill German soldiers as they entered houses. Chuikov formed machine-gun squads and arranged for supplies of hand-grenades to be shipped into the city.244 Often the fighting was hand-to-hand, using bayonets and daggers. The struggle rapidly became a battle of attrition. Constant, unremitting combat increasingly took its toll and many soldiers fell sick. Their letters home are full of bitter disappointment at being told they were having to spend a second consecutive Christmas in the field. Despite the danger of being discovered by the military censor, many were quite frank. ‘I’ve only got one big wish left,’ wrote another on 4 December 1942, ‘and that is: that this shit soon comes to an end . . . We’re all so depressed.’245 Yet it was in the rear of Paulus’s forces, rather than in the city itself, that the Soviet breakthrough would come. Zhukov and Vasilevskii persuaded Stalin to bring in and train large quantities of fresh troops, fully equipped with tanks and artillery, to try to mount a huge encirclement operation. The Soviet Union was already producing over 2,000 tanks a month to Germany’s 500. By October the Red Army had created five new tank armies and fifteen tank corps for the operation. Over a million men were assembled ready for a massive assault on Paulus’s lines by early November 1942.246

  Zhukov and Vasilevskii saw their chance when Paulus’s superior, General Maximilian von Weichs, in command of Army Group B, decided to help Paulus concentrate his forces on taking the city itself. Romanian forces would take over about half the German positions to the west of Stalingrad, freeing up German forces for the assault on the city itself. He thought of them as more than a rearguard. But Zhukov knew that the Romanians had a poor military record, as did the Italians who were stationed alongside them in the north-west. He moved two armoured corps and four field armies to confront the Romanians and Italians to the north-west of Hoth’s armoured forces, and another two tank corps to face the Romanians in the south-east, on the other side of the German armour. Strict secrecy was maintained, radio traffic reduced to a minimum, troops and armour moved up at night and camouflaged during the day. Paulus failed to strengthen his defences, preferring to keep his tanks close to the city, where they were of little use. On 19 November 1942, their preparations finally complete, and with favourable weather conditions, the new Soviet forces attacked at a weak point in the Romanian lines almost 100 miles west of the city. 3,500 guns and heavy mortars opened fire in the early morning mist, blasting a way through for the tanks and infantry. The Romanian armies were unprepared, lacking in anti-tank weapons, and were overwhelmed. After putting up an initial fight, they began to flee in panic and confusion. Paulus reacted too slowly, and when he eventually sent tanks to try to shore up the Romanian lines, it was too late. They were no match for the massed columns of T-34 tanks now pouring through the gap.247

  Soon the rapid Soviet advance was pushing back the German lines as well, driving back Paulus’s men towards the city. None of the German generals had reckoned with a Soviet attack in such strength, and it was some time before they realized that what was in progress was a classic encirclement manoeuvre. So they failed to move troops up to prevent the Soviet tank thrusts from meeting up with one another. On 23 November 1942 the two tank columns met up at Kalach, completely cutting off Paulus and his forces from the rear and leaving Hoth’s armour marooned outside the encircled area. With twenty divisions, six of them motorized, and nearly a quarter of a million men in total, Paulus’s first thought was to try to break out to the west. But he had no clear plan, and once more he hesitated. The idea of a breakout would have meant a retreat, abandoning the much-trumpeted attempt to capture Stalingrad, and Hitler was unwilling to sanction a withdrawal because he had already announced in public that Stalingrad would be taken.248 Speer reported him at the Berghof in November 1942 complaining privately that the generals consistently overestimated the strength of the Russians, who he thought were using up their last reserves and would soon be overcome.249 Acting on this belief, Hitler organized a relief force under Field Marshal von Manstein and General Hoth. Manstein’s belief that he could succeed in breaking the encirclement strengthened Hitler in his refusal to allow Paulus to withdraw. On 28 November 1942 Manstein sent a telegram to the beleaguered forces: ‘Hold on - I’m going to hack you out of there - Manstein.’ ‘That made an impression on us!’ exclaimed one German lieutenant in the Stalingrad pocket. ‘That’s worth more than a trainload of ammunition and a Ju[nkers] full of food supplies!’250

  III

  Manstein’s forces, two infantry divisions, together with three panzer divisions, all under Hoth’s command, advanced on the Red Army from the south on 12 December 1942. To counter this, Zhukov attacked the Italian Eighth Army in the north-west, overrunning it and driving south to cut off Manstein’s forces from the rear. By 19 December 1942 the German relief armour had been stopped in its tracks, 35 miles away from Paulus’s rear lines. Nine days later it was virtually surrounded, and Manstein was forced to allow Hoth to retreat. The relief operation had failed. There was nothing left for Paulus but to attempt a breakout, as Manstein told Hitler on 23 December. But this still looked like abandoning the entire attempt to take the city, and so, once again, Hitler refused. But Paulus told him that the Sixth Army had only enough fuel for its armour and transport to go for 12 miles before it ran out. G̈ring had promised to airlift 300 tons of supplies into the pocket every day to keep Paulus’s men going, but in practice he had managed little more than 90, and even Hitler’s personal intervention failed to boost it to anything more than 120, and that only for about three weeks. Planes found it difficult to land and take off in the heavy snow, and airfields were under constant attack from the Russians.251 Supplies were getting low, and the situation of the German troops in the city was becoming increasingly desperate. By now, they were doing little except trying to stay alive. Most of them were living in cellars or underground bunkers or in foxholes in the open, which they tried to line and cover with brick and wood as best they could. Often they furnished and decorated them to try to re-create a homely atmosphere. As one soldier reported to his wife on 20 December 1942:

  We’re squatting here with 15 men in a bunker, i.e. in a hole in the ground roughly the size of the kitchen in Widdershausen [his home in Germany], everyone with his clobber. You can well picture for yourself the terrible overcrowding. Now the following picture. One man is washing himself (insofar as water is available), a second is delousing himself, a third is eating, a fourth is cooking a fry-up, another is asleep, etc. That’s roughly the milieu here.252

  15. The Eastern Front, 1942

  In underground holes like these, they waited for the regular Soviet attacks, conserving their ammunition and supplies as best they could.253

  By the time the festive season arrived, Paulus’s army was effectively doomed. Christmas provided the occasion for an enormous outpouring of emotion in the troops’ letters home, as they contrasted their desperate situation with the peace and calm they had known in their family circle in past years. They lit candles and used broken-off branches to make Christmas trees. Not untypical was the letter of one young officer to his mother on 27 December 1942:

  Despite everything, the little tree had so much Christmas magic and homely atmosphere about it that at first I couldn’t bear the sight of the lighted candles. I was really affected, to such an extent that I cracked up and had to turn my back for a minute before I could sit down with the others and sing carols in the wonderful sight of the candlelit tree.254
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br />   The troops took comfort from radio broadcasts from home, especially when they played sentimental songs, which they sometimes learned by heart and sang themselves. ‘There’s a song we often sing here,’ one soldier wrote to his family on 17 December 1942. ‘The refrain goes: “It’ll all soon be over - it’ll end one day - after every December will come a May” etc.’255 Writing letters home became a way of keeping human emotions going; the thought of getting back to Germany and to their families held despair at bay. Nearly 3 million letters made their way from the encircled army to Germany during the months of the conflict, or were found, unposted, on troops killed in action or taken into captivity.256

  The troops did not freeze to death as they had the previous winter. ‘By the way,’ wrote Hans Michel from Stalingrad on 5 November 1942,

  ‘we’re well supplied with winter things; I’ve also got hold of 1 pair of socks, a fine woollen scarf, a second pullover, fur, warm underwear etc. They are all things from the wool collection. You have to laugh when you see one or other of the men wearing a ladies’ jumper or something similar.’ Those on watch were supplied with felt boots and fur coats in addition. The veterans of the Moscow campaign also noted that the winter was initially much milder in 1942- 3 than it had been the previous year.257 But the warmth created by layers of clothing was an ideal breeding-ground for lice. ‘Your red pullover,’ wrote one soldier to his wife on 5 November 1942, ‘is a proper louse-trap; I’ve caught quite a few there already (excuse the jump in my thoughts, but one bit me just now).’ Another wrote that although he was not the worst affected, ‘I’ve already snapped a few thousand.’ Some tried to make light of the problem in letters home (‘one can genuinely say “everyone has his own zoo”,’ quipped one), but in the long run the physical irritation and discomfort they caused added to the growing demoralization of the German troops. ‘They can drive you mad,’ wrote one infantryman on 28 December 1942. ‘You can’t sleep properly any more . . . You gradually get filled with disgust for yourself. You don’t have any opportunity to wash yourself properly and change your underwear.’ ‘The damned lice,’ complained another on 2 January 1943, ‘they totally eat you up. The body is totally consumed.’258

  Far worse, however, was the growing shortage of food, which weakened the men’s resistance to the cold, however warmly dressed they might have been. ‘We’re mainly feeding ourselves just with horsemeat,’ wrote one German soldier on 31 December 1942, ‘and I myself have eaten even raw horsemeat because I was so hungry.’259 ‘All the horses have been eaten in a few days,’ reported the staff officer Helmuth Groscurth on 14 January 1943, adding bitterly: ‘In the tenth year of our glorious epoch we are standing before one of the greatest catastrophes in history.’260 ‘Although I am exhausted,’ wrote another soldier on the same day, ‘I cannot sleep at night but dream with open eyes again and again of cakes, cakes, cakes. Sometimes I pray and sometimes I curse my fate. In any case, everything has no meaning or point.’261 ‘I only weigh 92 pounds. Nothing more than skin and bones, the living dead,’ wrote another on 10 January 1943.262 By this time, the weather had deteriorated sharply, and the weakened troops were unable to resist the cold. Fighting in such circumstances was virtually impossible, and the troops became steadily more depressed. ‘You’re nothing more than a wreck any more . . . We’re all completely desperate.’263 ‘The body is gradually losing its capacity for resistance as well,’ was the observation in another letter, written on 15 January 1943, ‘because it can’t go on for long without fat or proper food. It’s now lasted 8 weeks and our situation, our sad predicament, is still unchanged. At no point in my life up to now has fate been so hard on me, nor has hunger ever tormented me so much as now.’264 One young soldier reported that his company had been given only a single loaf for six men to last three days. ‘Dear Mummy . . . I can’t move my legs any more, and it’s the same with others, because of hunger, one of our comrades died, he had nothing left in his body and went on a march, and he collapsed from hunger on the way and died of cold, the cold was the last straw for him.’265 On 28 January 1943 the order was issued that the sick and wounded should be left to starve to death. The German troops were in effect suffering the same fate that Hitler had planned for the Slavs.266

  Even faith in Hitler now began to fade. ‘None of us is yet abandoning his belief or his hope,’ wrote Count Heino Vitztbum, an aristocratic officer, on 20 January 1943, ‘that the Leader will find a way to preserve the many thousands in here, but unfortunately we have already been bitterly disappointed many times.’267 Not only was food running out, so too was ammunition. ‘The Russians,’ complained one soldier on 17 January 1943, ‘have built their weapons properly for winter; you can take a look at whatever you like: artillery, grenade-throwers, Stalin organs and airplanes. They are attacking without a break day and night, and we’ve got to save every shot because the situation doesn’t allow it. How much we wish we could really shoot properly once again.’268 Men began to wonder if it would be better to be taken prisoner than to continue the hopeless struggle, although, as one remarked on 20 January 1943, it would not be so bad, ‘if it was Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, but with the Russians you don’t really know whether it would be better to shoot yourself.’ ‘If it all goes wrong, my love,’ wrote another to his wife, ‘then don’t expect me to be taken prisoner.’ Like others, he began to use his letters to say his farewells to his loved ones.269 Enough letters of this kind were opened by the SS Security Services back in Germany to provide a realistic picture of their effect on morale. Already in mid-January, the confidential reports of the SS Security Service on morale on the home front noted that people did not believe the propaganda emanating from Berlin. Field-post letters from the front were seen as the only reliable source of information. ‘If the situation in the east is currently regarded by large parts of the population with a disproportionately greater concern than it was a week ago, this is to be explained by the fact that the field-post letters that are now arriving at home overwhelmingly sound very serious and to some extent extremely gloomy.’270

  By this time, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii, an experienced officer who had been purged and imprisoned by Stalin in the 1930s but reinstated in 1940 and given command of the Red Army troops to the west of Stalingrad, had begun advancing across the pocket from west to east, capturing the last airfield on 16 January 1942. Aerial bombardment, artillery fire and tanks, backed by massed infantry, overwhelmed the weakened German defences. In the southern sector, the Romanian troops simply ran away, leaving a huge hole in the defensive line through which the Red Army poured its T-34 tanks. The weather had turned cold, and many German soldiers collapsed from exhaustion and froze to death on the ground as they retreated. Others pulled the wounded along on sledges, passing along icy roads littered with abandoned or shattered military equipment. In a few sectors the German forces put up a fight, but very soon they were all driven back into the ruins of the city, where 20,000 wounded were crowded into makeshift underground hospitals and cellars which had to be entered past piles of frozen corpses. Bandages and medication ran out, and there was no chance of ridding the patients of the lice that crawled over them. Even those who were not hospitalized were sick, starving, frostbitten and exhausted.271

  Eight days before, the Soviet High Command had made Paulus an offer of honourable surrender. 100,000 German troops had been killed in the battle by this point. The situation of the rest had clearly been hopeless since the failure of Manstein’s breakthrough attempt. Senior officers were beginning to surrender to the enemy. But once more, Hitler ordered Paulus to fight on. The general ordered that in future all Soviet approaches should be met with gunfire. On 22 January 1943 Paulus suggested all the same that surrender was the only way of saving the remainder of the troops. Once more, Hitler rejected his request. Meanwhile, Rokossovskii’s advance drove further forward, splitting the pocket into two and forcing the remaining 100,000 German troops into two small areas of the city.272 Goebbels’s propaganda machine was now abandoning
its earlier talk of victory. Increasingly, newspaper and newsreel stories emphasized the heroism of the encircled soldiers, a lesson for all in the glory of continuing to fight, never giving in even when the situation seemed hopeless. The telegram sent by Paulus the night before the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933 was grist to the propaganda mill: ‘On the anniversary of your seizure of power, the Sixth Army greets its Leader. The swastika flag is still flying over Stalingrad. May our struggle be an example for the present and coming generations that we should never capitulate even when we have lost hope. Then Germany will win. Hail my Leader. Paulus, Colonel-General.’273 The same day, Hermann G̈ring gave a speech, broadcast over the radio, in which he compared the Sixth Army to the Spartans who died defending the pass at Thermopylae against the invading Persian hordes. This, he said, ‘will remain the greatest heroic struggle in our history’. It did not escape the attention of many of the troops crouching round their radios in bunkers scattered around Stalingrad and its outskirts that the Spartans at Thermopylae were all killed. To underline the message, Hitler promoted Paulus to Field Marshal on 30 January 1943, a measure intended - and understood clearly enough by its recipient - as an invitation to commit suicide.274