Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Beketovka Bulge, 2 November 1942

  South of Stalingrad Soviet engineers had carefully cleared the minefields in front of narrow sectors of the overstretched 4th Romanian Army. One day after the Don Front’s attack to the north, Soviet guns roared in the early morning to smash into the defences of the 1st and 18th Romanian divisions guarding the southern flank of 6th Army. The targets of the guns shifted inland after only a few hours as the Stalingrad Front unleashed its 13th Tank Corps (57th Army) 4th Cavalry and 4th Mechanized Corps (51st Army) to overrun the thin Romanian positions and plunge deep into the enemy rear. With 350 tanks these three corps were the equivalent of a tank army. Their objective was Kalach towards which 5th Tank Army was aiming from the northwest. A German observer noted that the Soviet attack ground forward methodically ‘as if on a training ground: fire - move - fire - move’.8 In Stalingrad, the men of 62nd Army heard the noises of battle and realized that the offensive was true after all. ‘It was an incredible feeling. We were no longer alone.’

  By the end of the first day, 4th Mechanized Corps had advanced 27 miles to Verkhne-Tsaritsynski, half-way to their objective. The 13th Tank Corps had penetrated even closer to Kalach in a running battle with 6th Army’s withdrawing divisions. The 4th Cavalry Corps, guarding 4th Mechanized Corps’ southern flank, reached Abganerovo. Behind them came a wave of rifle divisions. The Soviet attack was aided just as that in the north by an icy mist that blinded the defenders and grounded German air reconnaissance.

  The successes of the day hid a dangerous lack of supplies and trucks. The build-up for the attack had been grossly hindered by the difficulty of getting material and supplies over the ice-choked Volga. The river was not yet fully frozen over but filled with huge chunks of ice rushing downstream. Leading formations had only enough food for one more day. Nevertheless, the morale of the attacking troops was sky-high. They knew they were turning the tables on the ravagers of the Motherland. They shot hundreds of Romanian prisoners out of hand.

  Raus and Hörnlein’s reconnaissance battalions had heard the thunder of Yeremenko’s attack to the north. It was not long before they encountered the fleeing rear-echelon troops of the 4th Romanian Army.9

  Yeriko-Krepinski, 2 November 1942

  Generalmajor Leyser, commanding 29th Motorized Division, had put his men on alert ready to move off at a moment’s notice that morning as the rest of the XLVIII Panzer Corps took off for Kalach. He did not have long to wait as the radio filled with frantic calls from the Romanians holding the line to the east. Out of communication with army group, Hoth ordered Leyser east.

  The 29th roared off to meet the enemy. Leading the way was the 129th Panzer Battalion, deployed in a wedge formation with fifty-five Panzer III and IV tanks in front. On the flanks were the self-propelled antitank guns. Behind in their half-tracked armoured personnel carriers came the grenadiers, followed by the artillery. The commanders stood in their open turret hatches. Visibility was less than 100 yards. Then the fog lifted.

  At the same moment the tank commanders stood up straight: before them, not 400 yards away, approached the tank armada of the 13th Tank Corps. The cupola hatches slammed shut. The familiar commands rang out: ‘Turret 12 o’clock!’ - ‘Armour-piercing’ - Range 400’ - ‘Many enemy tanks’ - ‘Open fire!’10

  It was the classic meeting engagement which goes to the side which reacts quickest and most aggressively. Today it was Leyser’s panzers. To that response was added the advantage of more effective communication. Every German tank had a radio and could respond immediately to a changing situation. Only the company commander in Soviet tank units had a radio, which put a premium on follow the leader and preplanned actions. The difference was lethal. The panzers killed and killed. Tank after tank blew up or collided with others. Within half an hour the remnants of 13th Tank Corps were retreating eastward.

  Amazingly a train suddenly appeared from the east and stopped to disgorge masses of Soviet infantry. The Soviets had actually driven a train full of troops into their breakthrough. The cleverness of the idea died right there as the 29th’s artillery got the range and smashed one wagon after another.

  Hardly had the 13th Tank Corps been routed than word came over the radio to Leyser that another Soviet corps had penetrated 24 miles south. This was 4th Mechanized Corps with about ninety tanks. Leyser’s division had taken few casualties and now resumed its wedge formation driving south across the hard, snow-covered ground. The Soviet corps should have been much farther to the west when Leyser’s panzers found it at a place called Verkhne-Tsaritsynski. Its commander, Major General Vassili Volsky, had handled his unit poorly during its advance causing so many delays that it brought the Stalingrad Front commander to a state of incandescent rage. Yeremenko was already in a foul mood because Volsky had had the unheard-of temerity to write to Stalin personally, stating that Uranus was too risky. Clearly his timidity was a direct response to his lack of faith in the operation. He had already morally defeated himself when Leyser caught up with him and finished the job. Dozens of burning pyres, the remnants of his tanks, sent their smoke into the air as the survivors fled eastward.

  Abganerovo Station, 2 November 1942

  The scouts of the Soviet 4th Cavalry Corps relayed the oddest reports to their commander, which he passed up the chain of command, sowing confusion at each level. Large columns of T-34s were coming north towards the corps’ penetration at Abganerovo Station. The 61st, 63rd, and 81st Cavalry Divisions of the corps were all raised in Turkestan and had never seen combat. The Central Asian cavalrymen were mounted on hardy steppe ponies. One brigade was even mounted on camels.

  By the time it was clear from their markings that these were not Soviet tanks, Grossdeutschland and 6th Panzer Divisions were closing on Abganerovo Station from both sides. By then the Russian corps commander, General Shapkin, realized he had to break out and threw an entire cavalry division at the closing arm of 6th Panzer while another tried to escape through a gap between two dry river beds.

  The Turkmen cavalry swept forward, spurring their little steppe horses. With a resounding ‘Urrah!’ thousands of sabres came out. The Germans were openmouthed, amazed, at the spectacle of 5,000 horsemen surging towards them. They thought they had slipped back in time to the wars of Frederick the Great or Napoleon. All it took was fingers depressing triggers to send streams of machine-gun bullets into the packed ranks for the spectacle to turn into carnage. Then the tanks and artillery fired high explosive and shrapnel. Whole ranks went down in the storm, those behind piling up on the dead and wounded heaps of men and screaming horses.

  The Germans covering the gap between the dry riverbeds now noticed:

  ... something that was neither men, horses, or tanks. It was only when it had surged over the crest of the range and was preparing to storm forward . . . that it was identified as a camel brigade. The enemy was received with such a burst of fire that his leading elements broke down at once and those following behind ran back wildly.

  The German tanks pursued firing at the frenzied camel cavalry. The mass of surviving camel riders turned and ran through an area that was still marshy despite the snow. ‘The camels proved quicker and better able to move across the country and consequently won the race.’ Also in the race was Shapkin, lashing his horse to the rear while two of his division commanders lay dead among their men.“11

  As Raus’s tanks stopped at the marshy ground, Grossdeutschland was chasing the surviving cavalry division in their direction. They came streaming into a trap as 6th Panzer’s tanks turned about and its panzergrenadiers deployed on the flanks of the oncoming Turkmen horsemen. In moments the dense ranks of cavalry disintegrated into an abattoir of dying and wounded men and horses. Here and there groups of horsemen tried to break through only to be cut down. At last the survivors leapt off their horses to surrender.

  Raus radioed Hörnlein thanking him for beating the enemy into the killing zone, ‘just like a safari!’ Hörnlein took it well, though it annoyed him that his fine division had o
nly played the role of beaters for 6th Panzer. At this point LX Panzer Corps wheeled west followed by 11th Army’s two corps, its new mission: destroy Soviet forces as far as the Volga.

  The Bridge at Akimovka, 3 November 1942

  In the darkness of the early morning, strong elements of 3rd Cavalry Corps crossed the Don just west of 6th Army’s western flank and rode for the bridge at Akimovka over the Don, 20 miles north of Kalach. They were to slice right behind the German XI Corps. These were mostly Cossacks, raised to the saddle and combat-hardened, not unblooded Turkmen. Nine miles north of the bridge the Red Army’s 16th Tank Corps (24th Army) was cutting through the 76th Division (VIII Corps) aiming to cut off any Germans west of the Don.

  MAP №9 THE DESTRUCTION OF STALINGRAD FRONT 2–4 NOVEMBER 1942

  At the bridge there was chaos as mobs of Germans and Romanians fled the disasters to the west. Many of the Germans had been separated from their units or were the few survivors. Here and there small units and guncrews hung together during the unrolling disaster. Among them were Soviet prisoners harnessed to carts to replace fallen horses. Any man who dropped was shot.

  Some of the ugliest scenes developed at the approaches to the bridge . . . with soldiers shouting, jostling and even fighting to get across to the eastern bank. The weak and the wounded were trampled underfoot. Sometimes, officers threatened each other for not letting their men pass first. Event the Feldgendarmerie detachment with sub-machine guns was unable to restore a semblance of order.

  Men tried to cross the Don itself trusting to the ice which was strongest along the banks but treacherously thin in the centre where many fell through to their deaths. No one came to help. For a people steeped in war, comparisons to the Beresina were uppermost in most people’s minds.12

  Now the innate ability of the German Army to pull itself together appeared. Officers, pistol in hand, stopped the rout, sorted out the men, put them into ad hoc combat units to defend the crossing and wait for the Russians to attack. Through all of this the core of Hoch- und Deutschmeister hung together, crossed the bridge, and headed south. On its way it was joined by the retreating columns of the 113th Infantry Division, all that was left of VIII Corps since the Russians tank corps had rolled over 76th Infantry Division. Two weak divisions were now all that was left of two of 6th Army’s corps.

  Sovietski, 3 November 1942

  Seydlitz felt as if a primeval force was blasting out of the radio at him. Hitler was in a rage, that state that had overawed and terrified countless men. He could picture Hitler frothing at the mouth that his orders had not been obeyed to the letter. ‘What is going on? How dare you not obey your orders?’ the voice demanded. He then looked at the radio operator, drew his finger across his throat. The sergeant’s eyes dilated to saucer size as he realized the general had ordered him to cut off the Führer. The general just winked at the sergeant. ‘Damned ionosphere.’13

  The ionosphere was acting up all over the place from the perspective of OKW. It was amazing how a conspiracy could affect the weather so conveniently. The patient efforts of Stauffenberg and Tresckow to place reliable men in critical positions were paying off. However, the need to win the battle had subsumed but not replaced the plot against Hitler. The plotters were patriots who did not see a catastrophic German defeat on the edge of Asia to be a necessary precursor to removing Hitler. The hecatomb of disaster was a price they were not willing to pay. They would win the battle and get rid of Hitler, but winning the battle required disregarding the Führer orders.

  Kalach, 3 November 1942

  In truth Seydlitz did not need the distraction of a madman at that moment when the fate of a quarter of a million German soldiers hung in the balance. The corps attempting to withdraw from the northern Don had met with disaster. The Russians were pouring across the crossing at Kalach and pushing back his weak XIV Panzer Corps. Even the commitment of the two divisions of XLVIII Panzer Corps had not stemmed their advance. At the same time the divisions pulling out of Stalingrad were in danger of being cut off. Behind them Soviet rifle divisions were filling the roads to join the battle.

  At last the weather had cleared enough for the Luftwaffe to support the fight. The Red Air Force filled the skies to contest every German air mission, especially over the fighting at Kalach. Soviet antiaircraft units lined both banks of the river. Both sides watched the air battles, with burning aircraft plummeting to the ground again and again. Richthofen’s Stukas repeatedly struck at the bridge. The Soviet fighters were waiting in swarms and fought their way through the Me 109 escorts to down the dive-bombers. The Germans had never seen such suicidal determination on the part of the Russians to close for the kill. Although they lost two planes for every German, it was a price they willingly paid. The bridge remained intact and packed with units crossing to join the battle.

  What struck both Seydlitz and Manstein was the size of the Soviet reserves, which the enemy had hidden so well. They would have been even more disconcerted had they known the size of the force that would have been available if the Soviet timetable had not been disrupted and advanced three weeks. It was not simply a question of numbers. The Soviet reserves were rested, well-fed, well-armed, and clothed for winter fighting. The men of 6th Army in contrast were exhausted after months of brutal fighting, their units shells of their former selves. Despite the horrific lessons of the previous winter, they had not even received their cold-weather clothing.

  Manstein realized that the crisis of the battle was approaching. Sixth Army could shatter at any moment. Retreating while in contact with an aggressive enemy is probably the least attractive situation a soldier can find himself in. He’s liable to be infected with panic and be cut down by the enemy on his heels. To pull off a successful retreat takes hardened men under tight control.

  As bad as the situation was, Manstein took a moment to imagine what the situation looked like to the enemy. His perceptions were remarkably accurate. Stavka at that very moment was optimistic over the developing battle at Kalach. Stalin on the other hand was shrewdly concentrating on the defeat of Stalingrad Front’s pincer by the LX Panzer Corps. That paled, however, at his apprehension over 1st Panzer Army’s rapid drive up the Volga’s eastern shore heading straight for Stalingrad. Powerful German forces were about to assail Yeremenko’s armies from both sides of the Volga. He dispatched Vasilevsky to oversee the battle there. He also parted with the pearl of the Stavka reserve, the 2nd Guards Army, telling Yeremenko of this by phone. ‘You will hold out - we are getting reserves down to you,’ he commanded menacingly. ‘I’m sending you the 2nd Guards Army - the best unit I have left.’14

  Stalin was fulfilling the primary role of the commander - the allocation of the reserve. Manstein was about to do that same thing. His remaining front reserves were the four divisions of V Corps (9th, 73rd, 125th, 198th Infantry Divisions) that had been transferred from the semi-tropical coast of the Black Sea to the snowy steppe, and the four Gebirgsjäger divisions that had scaled the Caucasus. The mountain divisions had not even arrived yet and were still entraining at Rostov. ‘Seydlitz, I’m sending you V Corps. It’s my last reserve. But I intend to constitute a new reserve in a few days. You must contain the enemy at Kalach in the meantime.’15

  The Sarpinsky Lakes, 3 November 1942

  That reserve was 11th Army and its panzer corps, but now it had another vital mission - to destroy Stalingrad Front. With that mission accomplished and all threat from southeast of Stalingrad eliminated, the 11th Army would then be able to countermarch to be thrown into the battle for Kalach. It was a logical plan. It reminded the field marshal of the German victory at Tannenberg in August 1914. He was also reminded of the great Moltke’s aphorism that no plan survives the first shot. The danger in his plan was that Southwest Front could be a tougher nut to crack than he anticipated. Timing here was everything. It did not matter if he destroyed Yeremenko’s command if it took so long that 6th Army collapsed in the meantime. Everything now depended on the panzers and on the men of the army he had le
d to victory at Sevastopol. He had been able to ensure that they were rested and equipped to fight in the winter.

  Yeremenko’s front had just lost its first-echelon tank, mechanized and cavalry corps. Behind them were his rifle divisions pursuing the fleeing Romanians. They had emerged from their defences between the Sarpinsky Lakes, a chain of elongated lakes stretching for about 25 miles south of the Beketovka Bulge. The panzer corps now ploughed on northwest to round the northernmost Lake Sarpa. The two infantry corps were to penetrate the defences between the lakes as the whole 11th Army wheeled east. The speed of the two panzer divisions, however, would put them in combat again before the infantry could arrive along the line of lakes. Manstein calculated that this would work to his advantage. Yeremenko would concentrate on the threat from the panzers and commit his own tank reserves against them. He still had four tank brigades and the survivors of his decimated first-echelon corps. Russian tenacity would now be at a premium.

  By the time Grossdeutschland was approaching the Beketovka Bulge, the short autumn night had come, but Hörnlein pressed his men on. The reconnaissance battalion was far ahead of his leading panzer battalion when, out of a side road, a Soviet tank column appeared heading west. The wind was blowing snow again, and the Soviet tank commanders were buttoned up. Soon both columns were on the same road but heading in opposite directions. One Soviet tank commander, though, did brave the elements to stand in his turret, the price of leadership. He could make out the T-34s heading east, but it was too dark to see their German markings. He yelled across to the men in the turrets and shouted with some annoyance, ‘Na frontu, tovarishche! Na frontu! [To the front, comrades! To the front!]’ as he waved west, baffled that so many tanks could be leaving the battlefield.