by Roy Jacobsen
The war’s own dynamics would in other words present Hitler with a fait accompli: Stalingrad evacuated. While his generals – Manstein and Paulus – would not have to refuse to obey orders, they would follow them and thereafter merely deal rationally with the consequences.
Markus was impressed, the fact that Winter Storm in both its principal variants demanded a controlled dismantling of the fortress heartened him and in truth the expectant smile that spread across his face reflected the prevailing mood in the H.Q. at this time.
However, he also realised – with muted enthusiasm – that these last deliberations about the war’s own dynamics and the enemy’s contribution to a happy conclusion of the drama in Stalingrad had to be kept from Paulus’ ears. Hearing this would only cause him to radio Hitler, which would prompt immediate counter-orders; indeed, the Führer in one of his famous fits of fury might well go as far as to deny him a corridor. But before these fanciful notions could get out of hand, a telegram came in from the cauldron.
“Mother,” it said, followed by a question mark, then the names of Peter’s two sisters, Marion and Josephine, each also followed by a question mark.
It had not occurred to Markus that his son might be interested in how things were going at home, either because he assumed his new flawed thinking or the concentrated apathy which eventually afflicts every soldier on the front would preclude this. He sent a reply describing the family’s situation in enigmatic terms which he knew his son would understand (and which warmed his heart) and passed on his mother’s eternal prayer that “her boy” would return home alive. Finally, he wrote:
“Have you anything to say?”
An obviously ambiguous question, but he had to take the risk. If the son didn’t understand he would have to keep repeating it, for as long as his energy lasted. No answer came that day, none from Hitler either, and now it was four, almost five days since Manstein’s uncompromising analysis had been dispatched.
Pickert: “150 tons …arrived, mostly ammo…”
Paulus: “Massive enemy attack on cauldron ties up two motorised divisions and the panzer division which should have been moved to the southern sector…”
10
On December 2 there was a hard frost. The previous day’s thaw had been but a single breath, the autumn’s last, judging by the district’s past record. But when Markus stepped out into the frosty air to start a new shift of technical military studies, a little pony stood staring at him despondently, it was tethered to a telegraph pole and munching some straw as it exhaled white cloudlets into the clear air. In the snow at its side sat the Cossack woman from the “town hall” on her ever-present milking stool. She was looking down, immobile, but Markus knew it was him she was waiting for, who else, there was no-one here, so he went over and stared down at her imperiously, she didn’t react, she just went on with her embroidery and was no more present than he was himself.
“What are you doing here?” he asked brusquely.
Her face, which she now raised cautiously, resembled a dried fruit, her eyes were filled with a blank, naive expectation, a tame animal’s timorous plea, the same pleading expression that Markus wore when he turned his face to the stars: her wide mouth was open and toothless. He shook his head, turned for the canteen and started to walk, but halfway there was struck by a thought – from God? – and walked back.
“He’s dead,” he said in Russian. “Isn’t he?”
She nodded without raising her eyes from the snow. Markus’ thoughts dwelt for a moment on Leutnant Weber and his letters, which he hadn’t been able to send unopened. “What are you going to do?” he asked; he repeated the question and rephrased it, but still got no answer. Her grey mane of hair looked like the autumn’s last cotton grass, her wool-clad body a frosty snowball, her breath was invisible and her feet, like two gnarled tree roots, pointed outwards.
“You can’t stay here,” he determined. “They’ll be after you.”
But not even that appeared to worry her. “Are you dumb?” he asked, with growing annoyance.
“My son’s in there,” she said finally, and Markus couldn’t contain himself.
“Whose isn’t?!” he shouted. “There are three hundred thousand sons there! And what do you want me to do about it? Go in and fetch them!”
Her wizened face cracked into a broad smile, she nodded eagerly, the cotton grass danced, and Markus turned his back on her again, mainly to prevent himself from committing a more demonstrative act. But once again he stopped in his tracks and repeated curtly: “You can’t sit here. Have you nowhere to go? No family? No house? Which unit is your son in?”
“In the 297th Division,” she said quickly.
This was an artillery division in the southern part of the cauldron, under the command of Generalleutnant Pfeffer, a man Markus had only peripheral knowledge of, but who he remembered had reported heavy casualties after the Russians’ latest offensive.
“I can’t do anything for you then,” he said abruptly. And disappointment enveloped her wrinkled face, as it had done so often to his own. “What’s your name?” it occurred to him to ask, and these words too had to be repeated several times.
“Yadviga,” came the hushed reply.
“It’s the same name as our Hedwig,” he mumbled. “It’s originally Polish, isn’t it?”
“Yadviga,” she repeated. “His name’s Oleg …Kamenin.”
“I see, Yadviga. But there’s no-one here who can help you. Take your pony with you and go home. Ask the Lord for help, that’s what we have to do.”
He bumped into Jaromil in the canteen doorway and asked him if it was he who had let the old lady into the compound. The Cossack shrugged, and Markus was about to reprimand him, but was interrupted by wailing air-raid sirens coming from a device Markus himself had installed on the roof of the building.
He ran over to the Command H.Q., which was in a state of relative upheaval. The Russians had launched another massive attack on the cauldron, “concentric” as Manstein called it. And while Markus strove to digest the significance of this information, news came that the Panzerkorps that was supposed to join Hoth the day after from the Caucasus could not – because of heavy snowfall – be certain to arrive before about the 10th. After that Hollidt reported delays from his hard-pressed Chir Front; in addition his scouts had located an ominous concentration of forces behind the very lines he was to storm as soon as Manstein sounded his horn to begin Operation Winter Storm.
“It’s uncanny,” Hollidt said. “They seem to be able to read us like an open book.”
Quite a pertinent remark, Markus thought; all the signs were that the Allies had cracked the Enigma code long ago and passed it around.
In the midst of all this Hitler’s answer finally arrived, over five days late and with depressing news: Manstein overestimated the enemy’s strength, the Führer declared, the Russians would very soon be facing serious supply and organisational problems, as Stalin had wiped out his experienced corps of officers. Markus took particular note of the following: “They will have problems with their supply lines as a result of their own unexpected success.” And so he refused to give Paulus permission to weaken the northern front of the cauldron, which Manstein considered a must, not least in order to be able to open a corridor, and for which he had already given the orders, and which Paulus, as far as was known, was now struggling to implement.
Thus confusion began to spread through the upper echelons, both the lower and higher ranks, especially since everyone now realised that if Hitler really wanted to prevent an evacuation of the town then all he needed to do was ensure that the Luftwaffe provided Paulus with more food and weapons than fuel, without fuel he would, as has already been mentioned twice, be going nowhere!
Despite these sombre perspectives there was nothing to indicate that Manstein would shelve Operation Winter Storm. And Paulus himself offered another ray of light as darkness once again sank over the plaintive ruins of his: the army had once again resisted with “bravery,
discipline and endurance” this day’s “concentric” attacks, the losses had been considerable, but “the enemy had bled more”. Furthermore, he put the figures for his stocks up by quite a few notches and now estimated that they had reached such a level that he had food and supplies for twelve to sixteen days, though this calculation meant even shorter rations and a continued consumption of the poor army horses, it was water, salt and wood they needed most. However, this presupposed that the good weather would hold and the airlifts could continue as normal. Yesterday 140 tons came in, today 90…
11
Markus dived into bed late at night, but he hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours before he was hauled to his feet by air-raid sirens, aircraft could be heard in the distance and a low boom of thunder shook the earth to the marrow.
He ran over to Command H.Q. and was told by a flustered Beber, who stank of sweat, that in addition to launching fresh attacks on the cauldron the enemy had also unleashed massive bombardments on both Hollidt’s and Hoth’s fronts. Hoth had managed to regroup for Winter Storm and expected to be able to resist the “partial attack”, as he called it, a resolute and convincing tone from Hoth’s side, against a background of shelling and frenzied artillery fire, which Markus listened to attentively. Meanwhile Hollidt was on the receiving end of one pounding salvo after another across the River Chir, now also from an unknown number of tanks, the Russians’ Fifth Army under General Romanenko, he learned from Intelligence.
But then Markus witnessed a strange reaction on Manstein’s part: the majestic figure of the General stood amidst his spiralling cigarette smoke displaying signs of relief, an ever increasing relief as Jakob marked figures and details from the Chir Front on the maps under Manstein’s almost cheerful gaze.
Only later did Markus discover the cause of this singular reaction, when Busse, over a cup of Russian tea, slightly elated, revealed that the day’s attacks indicated that the Russians did not have sufficient wit or strength to initiate the famous pincer movement across the Upper Don, towards Rostov and the Sea of Azov, which would have created another Stalingrad of all the south-eastern front.
Today’s attacks were massive, although they were directed at Manstein’s shock troops and if these managed to hold out, the “enemy” could be weakened at these points, which would be so vital for the relief operation when the time came, if it ever did, because here, near the village of Nizhne Chirskaya, stood the only remaining bridge over the Don, the planned escape route for the Sixth Army.
Some time later Markus’ mood was further buoyed by the news that the attacks on Kotelnikovo had been repulsed with the help of General Raus’ newly arrived armoured division, who thus underwent their baptism of fire, which they sorely needed, as Raus had in fact been assigned the leading role in Operation Winter Storm. And Markus was just about to give the “all-clear” to his fatigued body and soul when news of the definitive collapse of Hollidt’s forces came through: Romanenko’s spearhead – fifty to seventy tanks – had broken through, advanced twenty kilometres southwards and was heading at full tilt for the vital airstrips of Tatsinskaya and Morosovsk, Stalingrad’s umbilical cords.
Markus realised that as a result Novocherkassk would probably also fall, the German nerve centre, where he himself was stationed – the Russians would obviously push across the Chir, the shortest route to Rostov, and not the Upper Don!
With heavy eyes and limbs, Markus watched Manstein as he, in a series of febrile improvisations, moved a panzer division from Rostov and had it speed northwards towards the Russian spearhead; Markus’ ears registered that the reconnaissance planes were landing at ever shorter intervals in the driving snow outside; frantic pilots ran in with reports and aerial photos which caused Eismann’s face to turn ashen and made Manstein urge on his panzer division with increasing fervour; the Feldherr spent most of the night in conversation with the command tank of the head of this new cavalry, a certain General Balck, who according to what Markus gathered from Stahlberg’s terse account had already attained legendary status in the France campaign. And Balck had been given all the numbers, frequencies and data concerning enemy positions when his tanks on the morning of December 8 made contact with the billeted Russian spearhead and immediately went on the attack.
It was a few minutes to six, and only after Markus saw that everyone around him was holding their breath, did he realise that his observations and fears had been well-grounded, everything now depended on this ad hoc night-time adventure only thirty or forty kilometres north of the H.Q., and when he said “everything” he meant everything, from a German perspective, Stalingrad, Kotelnikovo and after that the Caucasus, approximately one million men, the big pincer movement after all, in a different sector from the one Manstein had anticipated, and thereafter the whole Reich, for not even the world’s leading military power could sustain blood-letting of these proportions.
Kuntnagel was sitting with his head buried in his gnarled farmer’s hands, as always when there was a “radio signals ban” and nothing to do but lose oneself in prayers and fantasies, Fatty Beber was up and down on his chair moving his lips as though reading letters that lied about peace and false idylls at home in Pomerania, while Jakob Spitz was hunched over the maps talking in subdued code with Eismann and Busse.
As mentioned, it was now December 8, a portentous day, Markus thought, but the first aerial reconnaissance reports were nothing special, the crews couldn’t see anything in the dark, and there was no word from Balck. Balck was silent. It wasn’t until almost ten in the morning that some tersely worded snippets came in, which had to be studied closely and contextualised and queried before they could give any grounds for even the most cautious optimism; less ambiguous reports followed, about advances and more advances, and then unadulterated cries of joy from the telephone and radio lines; everything had gone according to plan for Balck, the Russian spearhead had been smashed to smithereens, sent packing, “annihilated”. And in the early evening came the confirmation from Hollidt himself – forty-six enemy tanks up in smoke, the rest in German hands, modest losses on our side, the gap in the line along the River Chir closed, well, in the process of being closed.
There were wild howls of joy among the rank and file at H.Q., cautious smiles above the higher-ranking officers’ coffee cups and a historic nonchalance about Manstein, who for the last couple of days had also been in constant touch with the Wolfschanze in east Prussia. But he no longer spoke to Hitler in person, only with Zeitzler, a point which Markus attached great importance to when he assessed the consequences of these calamities: the Führer was boycotting his own Feldherr on the Reich’s most crucial front, no less. However, Zeitzler seemed to accept the analyses coming from the front, at any rate he accepted without exception the operational moves which were made on the Chir and the Upper Don, and did what he could to convince them that the Führer gave his wholehearted blessing.
During Balck’s Chir mission Markus sent only one telegram to his son, to make sure he was alive.
“Bernard. Same as the first visit. Malachy,” his son replied, which meant that he was not even wounded.
Actually Markus probably ought to have used the opportunity to send him some even more encouraging words, such as that everyone in Clervaux was doing their utmost for the sole purpose of bringing him home, it was only a matter of days now, so hang on! But, imagining the paralysing joy these encouraging words might provoke in an army at the end of its tether, he desisted; messages from the cauldron told of panic on the airstrips, starving, desperate soldiers storming the runway in an attempt to leave, scenes which were made no less appalling by the fact that the German guards had been put under orders to shoot; the frosts no longer only brought death and destruction, but also caused havoc to their equipment: aircraft engines had to be kept running all the time they were on the ground or had to be warmed up over veritable bonfires when the heaters broke down; between ten and twenty Junkers were lost on bad days, planes loaded with the wounded or supplies were shot down ove
r enemy territory. And today Markus considers himself fortunate to have forgotten that more than one thousand planes would be lost in the operation, eleven hundred pilots and so many wounded that only God has a record of the number; Markus recorded all this like a blind machine, wearing headphones and with thoughts as far removed from the action as possible – he was in Manstein’s pocket for good, an extinguished civilian light with only one thing on his mind: iron resolve!
In darker moments he possessed a blessed irony that enabled him to put a gloss on the situation; in heaven’s borderless name the General was just as stateless – and rootless? – as Markus himself, he was at least half-Jewish, or a quarter, born Lewinski and also an adopted child, a background he didn’t hide either when he made fun of Hitler, this Manstein was a multilayered and adaptable personality inside his Prussian armour, split, complex, too intelligent to be morbidly loyal to an Austrian fantasist, but also too loyal – to the Wehrmacht and Germany presumably – to assume the full and total responsibility and do his duty before God and man, unless perhaps he was planning to combine all this in one single operation: Winter Storm?
This, at least, was the straw Markus clutched at, and he didn’t share it with his son, no, he didn’t, for it was nothing, at most a lethal contagion.
12
When Markus came out of Command H.Q. late on the evening of December 7 – that is while Balck’s tanks were rumbling north past Novocherkassk and the fighting by the River Chir was not yet over – he discovered that the old Cossack woman was still on military territory, hunched over the small milking stool like a silent winter monument beside the munching pony, and apparently unaffected by the cold, which had laid a shivering leaden mantle over the Steppes. Markus forgot for a few seconds both Balck and the Chir and strode angrily towards her to deliver a final warning, but before he got that far Jaromil had emerged from the shadows of the barracks and placed himself between them.