While the mountain troops were breaking through the high passes, 1st Panzer Army was to ‘advance parallel to the eastern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains to seize Nal’chik and Mozdok, cross the Terek River, and capture Grozny, the coast of the Caspian Sea near Makhachkala, and ultimately Baku’.14 To help his panzers get through the mountains of southern Chechnya, List assigned to 1st Panzer Army the new LV Mountain Corps.
Already Stalin was pouring reinforcements into the North Caucasus Front commanded by his old crony from the Civil War, Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Budenny. They were desperately needed; the front was burnt out and in a shambles. In a report of 13 August to the Stavka, Budenny wrote that of his seven armies four were no longer combat effective, three of them down to fewer than 7,000 bayonets each. Rifle divisions were reduced to 300 to 1,200 bayonets. He complained that the reasons for failing to defend the Kuban were:
the complete absence of tanks and motorized units… the weakness of aviation, the extreme exhaustion and paucity of the infantry, the absence of reserves, and the weak command and control of the forces and communication with them on the part of the weak newly formed front staff.
He concluded by saying that ‘The Front’s chief mission is to defend the axes to Tuapse and Novorossiysk resolutely. Therefore, it is necessary to resolve [this mission] by means of a solid defence of the mountain defiles that protect Tuapse and Novorossiysk.’15 Nowhere did he mention Sukhumi.
Adding to Budenny’s miseries, Lavrenti Beria descended on the region. The ghoulish head of the NKVD came to spread terror among the native peoples of the Caucasus. The Imperial yoke had been bad enough, but they had writhed under the crueller yoke of Soviet Power. For good reason, Stalin doubted their loyalty, and he sent Beria to use the only tool he knew — terror. Stalin, the Georgian, had no love for these peoples, many of whom were Muslim, especially the Chechens who had raided down into Georgia for centuries before the Russians finally subdued them. Of course Beria’s cruelties accomplished just the opposite of what he had intended. Everywhere the arrival of the Germans was met with rejoicing, gifts of food and cattle, and volunteers, many, many volunteers.
Beria’s ruthlessness had been a pillar of Stalin’s rule as the war threw defeat after defeat at the Red Army. Stalin trusted no one, but Beria’s usefulness had given him a certain protection from Stalin’s paranoia. That did not keep Stalin from keeping a dossier on Beria as a serial rapist and paedophile. You never knew when that might prove useful.16
These were heady days for the Germans; Hitler’s fantastical dreams infected the men of Army Group A as they rolled over the Kuban. The engineers were calculating how much bridging equipment they would need to cross the Nile, and ‘whenever a trooper was asked, “Where’s our next stop?” he would frivolously reply, “Ibn Saud’s palace”.’ The mountain troops joked as they marched over the hot, flat steppe, ‘Down the Caucasus, round the corner, slice the British through the rear, and say to Rommel, “Hello, general, here we are!”’17
Kharkov, 14 August 1942
Tank crews from Grossdeutschland Division took possession of 150 Soviet T-34 medium tanks at the Kharkov Tractor Repair Plant and loaded them onto flat cars. Their destination was the siding at a large former Soviet training centre outside of Rostov.
A week before Hitler had gone back on his decision not to transfer the division to France and convert it to a panzer division. He would send it to France after all. Again Manstein had had to plead with him not to do so and suggested an imaginative alternative. Grossdeutschland could be converted in a much shorter time if it were done in theatre and with the Soviet tanks being repaired in Kharkov. At first Hitler was dead set against it. ‘Das ist wanzig, Manstein, heller wanzig [This is madness, Manstein, sheer madness]! To reequip the iconic division of the German Army with the creations of these Untermenschen is completely unacceptable.’
Manstein was all honey and light:
Mein Führer, I appeal to you as a frontline soldier of the First War. Who else but the man who has to fight the battles can see what weapons he needs. You yourself have told us how the men in the trenches understood the war better than the General Staff. I have here a message from the commander of Grossdeutschland requesting these tanks.
‘No, Manstein, no. It is unacceptable.’
The field marshal had detected a lessening of his Führer’s anger. The appeal to him as a frontline soldier had some effect. Hitler had never hesitated to bring down the General Staff a peg or two by saying that he alone had been in the trenches the way most of them never had been. Only he understood what the average soldier, the Landser, was going through. Now for the clincher. ‘You know, mein Führer, it would be a delicious irony to use these tanks as nails in the coffin of the Bolsheviks.’ He got his way. To make up the earlier loss of Leibstandarte, Hitler agreed to transfer Raus’s 6th Panzer Division from France to be reequipped with Soviet tanks. They could turn over their complement of new German equipment to Leibstandarte.
As long as the Soviet tanks had not been burnt out or the turret ring damaged, they could be repaired. At the Kharkov plant the tanks had not only been repaired but improved. Each one had been outfitted with a radio as all German tanks were. Instead of just a crank to turn the turret, an electrical system was installed to make engaging a target faster. The German tankers loved the T-34; it was easier to maintain, more heavily armoured and better armed with its high-velocity 76mm gun than even the best of the German tanks, the Mark IV.18
Kluhkor Pass, 16 August 1942
The Gebirgsjäger were eager to pass through the Wiking and Slovak divisions to begin the ascent into the mountains after a long, hot march through the Kuban. The Alpini were no less eager. Their corps commander had moved from unit to unit addressing them:
Ragazzi [My boys], the eagles of our ancestors look proudly down upon you. You have marched farther than any legion of la cittá eterna. Now the great mountains of the Caucasus tower over us. You will conquer them! Roma will give you a triumph such as Caesar would have envied. Viva l‘Italia! Viva l’Alpini!
The elite troops of the Italian Army were excellent. The mass of the Italian Army, however, suffered from the deep incompetence of the officer corps compounded by the corruption and unrealities of the Fascist regime.19
The German and Italian objectives were the high mountain passes, the most important of which was the 9,230-foot Klukhor Pass and the beginning of the Sukhumi Military Highway. Defending a 275-mile stretch of mountains and passes was the 46th Army. It had largely neglected the defence of the passes, never believing the Germans would attempt to break through such forbidding terrain. At most the passes were defended by companies or battalions. The company at the mouth of the Klukhor Pass had no idea of the troops they were up against. The 1st Gebirgsjäger Division fixed the enemy’s attention to their front with a demonstration, climbed the flanking mountain, and fell upon their rear, collapsing the defence by the evening of the 17th. They were followed by the Austrians and Bavarians of the 4th Gebirgsjäger Division, and together they pushed on to overwhelm the strong Soviet defence of the pass exit.20
MAP №4 PENETRATING THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
It was a close-run thing. The attackers had expended the last of their ammunition just as the Soviet defenders broke and fled. Their margin had been filled by the mules of the Alpini. The Italians had developed special mule supply units that could navigate some of the harshest mountain trails. They had generously shared them with the Germans. The Alpini were at the same time clearing the high passes of the main range to the southwest and suddenly found themselves also in the forests on the southern side, with Sukhumi barely 12 miles away on the Ossetian Military Highway.21
Mules or not, neither the Germans nor Italians would have broken through the increasing Soviet resistance had not the Luftwaffe flown close air support. Flying through mountain valleys is tricky in peacetime. In wartime it adds a whole new dimension to risk. One man who positively relished the intensified risk was Major H
ans-Ulrich Rudel who had used every bit of influence and pull to bring his new squadron of Stukas to the fight. Rudel was the ideal new German — devoted to National Socialism and Hitler and as lethal as the plague. For him:
Fighting in the narrow valleys is a thrilling experience. It is easier after we have been into every valley a few times and know which valleys have exits, and behind which mountain it is possible to get out into open country. This is all guesswork in bad weather and with low lying clouds. When we make low level attacks on some valley road occasionally the defence fires down at us from above because the mountains on either side of us are also occupied by the Ivans.22
Particularly dangerous to the troops fighting their way down the rear slopes of the mountains was an armoured train whose artillery raked the Germans. Every time Rudel’s Stukas attempted to take it out, timely warnings of their approach caused it to flee for safety into a mountain tunnel. The train always won the cat and mouse game with the Stukas until the day Rudel changed the rules. While the train was hiding in its lair, Rudel’s Stukas hit the tunnel mouth with special bombs that collapsed the entrance, sealing the train inside.
Rudel tried to answer every call for close air support, but ‘battles in the mountain forests are particularly difficult; it is fighting blindfold’. Yet time and time again his Stukas delivered steel on the target, earning the praise of the troops on the ground.
With the Klukhor now cleared, the Wiking and Slovak divisions flowed down through the pass and onto the Sukhumi Military Highway as it led through the lush semi-tropical forests towards Sukhumi, only 25 miles away.
The German mountain troops could not resist the opportunity to climb Mt Elbrus itself, even as the attack on the passes began. The Italians heard of it and insisted on going along. The Germans had wanted the glory for themselves until the Italians asked how useful the mules were. A group of men from each of the German and Italian divisions then made the ascent and planted their division flags and the swastika and royal Italian flag on its summit. It made an enormous propaganda splash, but Hitler launched into one of his tirades at what he thought was a wasteful stunt. His architect, Albert Speer was there:
I often saw Hitler furious but seldom did his anger erupt from him as it did when this report came in. For hours he raged as if his entire plan of the campaign had been ruined by this bit of sport. Days later he went on railing to all and sundry about ‘those crazy mountain climbers’ who ‘belong before a court-martial’. They were pursuing their idiotic hobbies in the midst of a war, he exclaimed indignantly, occupying an idiotic peak even though he had commanded that all efforts must be concentrated upon Sukhumi.23
He need not have worried. Sukhumi was well in hand.
CHAPTER 9
The Terror Raid
Big Bend of the Don, 21 August 1942
The 62nd Army had been consumed in the fighting west of the river. All of its divisions had been destroyed, and only remnants and its headquarters had escaped over the river. The forces left to 1st Tank Army were transferred to the 62nd, and the tank army disappeared. It also picked up one division from 64th Army, most of which had been able to escape over the Don thanks to Chuikov’s leadership.1
In wiping out the Kalach pocket, the Germans had not been able to bounce across the river immediately because 6th Army by this time was both exhausted and its combat power badly depleted. There were only 163 tanks left in the army’s panzer corps. Despite the Soviet losses in the bridgehead, the Germans had been badly wounded as well. The combat power of a number of the infantry divisions had fallen dangerously, with severe losses since the offensive had begun. Many were reduced to companies of forty to fifty men, even before they had crossed the Don.2
It was not until 16 August that the main bridge over the Don at Kalach was seized in a daring attack by Leutnant Kleinjohan and men of the 16th Pioneer Battalion. Incredibly the Soviets had not destroyed the bridge after the remnants of the Kalach pocket had fled across it. The western bank of the Don was much higher than the eastern and gave the Germans a splendid view of the hasty defences the Soviets were throwing up. Five days later, at dawn, the infantry of Seydlitz’s LI Corps marched across the bridge and straight into combat against a violent Soviet defence.
Seydlitz’s infantry widened the bridgehead to a depth of over a mile and width of 3 miles. The next night XIV Panzer Corps assembled on the west bank and watched as burning vehicles lit the way for an endless Soviet air attack on the bridge. This failed, and with first light on 23 August, 16th Panzer Division began to cross. It assumed a wedge formation as it passed through the German lines to burst through the Soviet defences and head northeast to its objective of the Volga.
By afternoon, with dust trails billowing behind them, they could see the silhouette of Stalingrad to their right. Every tank commander stood in his turret to watch. As they passed the northern suburbs a mass of antiaircraft guns opened up on them, but at point-blank range the panzers smashed every position at almost no loss. The antiaircraft batteries had been manned by female volunteers from the Red Barricade gun factory in Stalingrad. The women had not been able to fire an effective shot in return, so poorly trained were they in the antitank capabilities of their guns.
In the late afternoon:
The first German tank drove past the northern suburb of Rynok onto the elevated western bank of the Volga. The bank towered almost 300 feet above the mile-wide stream. The water was dark. A chain of tugs and steamers sailed up and down the river. The Asiatic steppe glistened across from the other side: a melancholy greeting from the infinite space.3
That afternoon two German Messerschmitt Me 109 fighters flew over the division and were so overjoyed to see the advance made by their comrades on the ground that they did victory rolls over the tanks.
The White House, 23 August 1942
Roosevelt was not happy with the way the meeting was going. Stalin’s message had brought them all together to discuss its requests. The last sentence was the controversial one.
With reference to what you say about the despatch of tanks and other strategic materials from the United States in August, I should like to emphasise our special interest in receiving US aircraft and other weapons, as well as trucks in the greatest numbers possible. It is my hope that every step will be taken to ensure early delivery of the cargoes to the Soviet Union, particularly over the northern sea route.4
The President’s special assistant and trusted confidant, Harry Hopkins, was there as the administrator of Lend-Lease. Hopkins was so close to FDR that he lived in the White House. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White was present because all monetary Lend-Lease issues of coordination with the Soviets went through him. The State Department was represented by Alger Hiss. Admiral King was having a hard time not shaking the teeth out of the three of them. He would have done a lot more had he known that all three were communists and agents of the Soviet Union. Never before had treason wrapped its coils so closely around an American presidency. The chief NKVD officer in the United States described Hopkins as ‘the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States’.5 Even Roosevelt had said, ‘Harry and Uncle Joe got on like a house afire. They have become buddies.’6 Hiss was actually using Lend-Lease transport to send highly classified US Government documents to the Soviet Union.7
White was adamant. ‘Mr. President, we absolutely must, I repeat, must resume our convoys to the Soviet Union. If they go under, we cannot win the war against Germany.’
Hopkins added, ‘There is a good chance, given the German drive towards the Volga, that Stalin might make a separate peace with Hitler if he thinks we are stinting on aid.’
Roosevelt looked closely at him. ‘Did he ever mention that to you, Harry?’
‘Not in so many words, but some of his closest advisors were a lot more explicit.’
Turning to King, Roosevelt said, ‘Now just when can we resume the Arctic convoys, Admiral?’
King had had enough. ‘You will have to ask my succ
essor, Mr President, because if you order the resumption of the convoys I will offer you my resignation.’
Roosevelt straightened up in his wheelchair he was so surprised. He knew King was as blunt and salty a sea dog as ever ran the US Navy, but he was not used to such an ultimatum, anyway not since Douglas MacArthur had issued a similar threat back in 1934 over cutting the training budget for the National Guard. He had caved then, just as he was going to do now.8
Stalingrad, 23-25 August 1942
Units falling back into Stalingrad were amazed to find a veneer of normality after the relentless German pounding and constant retreating. The novelist Victor Nekrasov recorded his impressions:
Shabby old trams clattered along towards us. There were lines of snub-nosed Studebakers. On them were long boxes — shells for the ‘Katyusha’. On the empty squares, crossed with trenches, there were antiaircraft guns pointing upwards, and ready for action. In the market were great piles of tomatoes and cucumbers and huge bottles of amber-coloured baked milk. Here and there could be seen people in jackets, caps and even ties. It was a long time since I’d seen that. The women still wore lipstick.9
It was not to stay that way for long.
During their afternoon dash to the Volga the men of XIV Panzer Corps saw the massed might of Luftflotte 4 flying towards Stalingrad and greeted it with cheers and sirens. They were witnessing the preamble to one of the great aerial terror raids of the war. Its aim was to break the will of the population and defenders and it was directed against the dense downtown residential areas, factories and utilities. The antiaircraft batteries quickly ran out of ammunition because some officious fool had concentrated all their ammunition in one place. The Germans had identified it and specifically targeted it.
Disaster at Stalingrad Page 17