Chuikov was less sanguine, remembering an old Russian military proverb, ‘It was all smooth on the map, but they forgot the ravines.’ He had an army to command - officially - but he could scrape barely a division’s worth with enough ammunition and equipment to accomplish his task. These were the survivors of dozens of divisions and brigades smashed, depleted, replaced, the lucky survivors of the months of the Rattenkrieg. Now they streamed out of the ruins of the outer suburbs of Stalingrad, denizens of cellars, broken buildings, all the dark and claustrophobic shelters of city fighting and into the open, snow-covered country. Chuikov himself did not realize what effect such a sudden change would have until it struck him himself. There was an unnerving feeling of vulnerability in the empty expanse of the fields, with barely a bit of stubble or steppe grass showing out of the thin layer of snow.
It was not quite empty. Hoth had placed his 29th Motorized Division to hold the wide-open right flank of the two German armies. Its victory over the 13th Tank Corps two days before had proved the wisdom of that move. Now it hovered over a broad stretch of open country as befitting its epithet, the Falcon Division. It did not take long for its reconnaissance elements to discover Chuikov’s infantry trudging over the snow to the southwest. They would have been safer had they clung to their broken city. Leyser had taken the risk of pulling his division up to within 10 miles of Lyapichev in case 1st Tank Corps broke through. It would also allow him to counter any threat to 4th Panzer Army’s flank.
Chuikov was just such a threat. Ever since his men had left the psychological protection of the last of the suburbs, he had wondered when the Germans would discover they were there. He had fought them too long to believe they would leave such a flank wide open. His question was answered all too soon as Leyser’s artillery laced down his column, spewing men in every direction. Before they could recover from the shock, the panzers were cutting through them, followed by the German infantry firing from their halftracks. An hour later a German bayonet prodded Chuikov’s chest. He groaned. ‘Hey, Herr Leutnant, this one’s alive, and he’s a general!’1
Sarpinsky Lakes, 4 November 1942
Yeremenko did not have time to worry about the defeat of 2nd Guards Army. The Germans were outside his own bunker. Smoke from the burning headquarters was drifting down into the small space, choking everyone. He spun the cylinder of his revolver. Wounded three times in the war so far, he concluded that he had already used up all his luck and more. He would not survive this defeat one way or another. Stalin would have less mercy than the Germans. No surrender.
The German 11th Army’s infantry corps had broken through between the Sarpinsky Lakes the day before as its panzer corps had finished off the last of his tank brigades. Stalingrad Front had simply disintegrated. The Germans were rounding up 80,000 prisoners as their infantry columns were marching north through the night towards the city. At last Manstein ordered the panzer corps west. He now had his operational reserve. And not a moment too soon.
Verkhne-Tsaritsynski, 5 November 1942
At first light Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps burst out of its concentration at Lyapichev and headed east. Behind it rifle divisions widened the breakthrough. The tanks swept over the thin German antitank defences of what was left of V Corps. Twenty-five miles in the other direction Rokossovky’s 16th Tank Corps had skirted through the outer Stalingrad suburbs and was heading southwest. Each tank corps had only slightly more than 12 miles to go to trap both German armies to the north. All that stood between their 300 tanks and the objective was 29th Motorized Division.
Zhukov drew all the resources of the three northern fronts together to ensure that nothing would stand in the way of the union of the two tank corps. Wave after wave of Sturmoviks, the premier ground-attack aircraft of the Red Air Force, were concentrated from the 16th and 17th Air Armies. Low on fuel, outnumbered eight to one, and tormented from the sky by swarms of Red Falcons,2 the Falcon Division was broken and brushed aside as the two tank corps closed the distance between them. At 10.37, their lead elements met a few miles outside the little town of Verkhne-Tsaritsynski, the site of the mauling of the 13th Tank Corps three days before. The area was littered with wrecked Soviet tanks. That did not lessen the joy of the men in both corps. The Germans were surrounded! The commanders met and hugged, tears streaming down their faces as all along the front where the corps met, men climbed down from their tanks to embrace and celebrate. Vodka appeared everywhere. The closing of the ring happened so quickly that the propaganda units were not able to film it properly. So next day it was carefully restaged for them.
Behind the celebrations the rifle divisions of Rokossovky’s 66th Army were force-marching south to strengthen the ring around the Germans. Vatutin’s 8th Cavalry Corps had crossed the Don 20 miles south of Lyapichev and its units were fanning out in the German rear. Stalin was visibly relieved when the news arrived that the ring had been closed. That night every Soviet radio station interrupted its programming to announce to the Soviet peoples that their glorious sons in the Red Army had closed a death trap on the enemy who had strained and struggled for months to take Stalin’s city on the Volga. Stalin was only momentarily relieved. After all, he could not conjure up the fuel that was running out for his tanks. Current operations, especially around Stalingrad, had badly depleted fuel stocks. The consequences of the loss of 90 per cent of the Soviet oilfields at Maikop, Grozny and Baku were finally being felt on the battlefield. Like a knife twisting in the Soviet belly, the refineries at Maikop were already producing refined fuels for the Germans. Fuel trains were already reaching Kotelnikovo and their loads were then immediately being hurried north by truck.3
Kalach Pocket, 5 November 1942
For Seydlitz the crisis of the battle was at hand. His army and Hoth’s were now fully encircled. Manstein had just appointed him to command both armies in the pocket.4 As well as enemies on the ground, the Red Air Force was savaging the overcrowded pocket, now called the Kalach Kessel. To the west Vatutin had pushed him away from the Don. To the north and east Rokossovsky’s infantry were pressing. To the south the enemy’s two tank corps had barred the way for relief. And those were only the problems caused directly by the enemy. His men had had no shelter since they had abandoned Stalingrad; fuel, food and ammunition were fast running out. The two panzer corps were down to fewer than fifty tanks each with almost no fuel to run them. The wounded were dying of exposure, and there was little the doctors could do without supplies and field hospitals.
From Werewolf came the stirring command:
MAP № 10 THE ENCIRCLEMENT AT KALACH 5 NOVEMBER 1942
Stand and fight it out; not one step back. The world will see the resolve of the 4th Panzer and 6th Armies wie hart wie Kruppstahl [as hard as Krupp steel]! Already vast resources are concentrating to break through to you.
‘How reassuring,’ thought Seydlitz. ‘If adamantine resolve were all it took, then Hitler would already be ruling the world.’ As it was, he would put his faith in Manstein. The word quickly spread through the trapped armies. ‘Manstein is coming!’ It worked like a jolt of adrenalin to reanimate the sagging morale of the troops.
The Soviets were rushing troops into the ring around the two trapped armies. Manstein would have to come soon. Seydlitz would not have enough strength to attempt to break out while Manstein was breaking in. He concentrated all his remaining panzer and motorized forces into a single battle group, Kampfgruppe Hoth, putting that general in charge of the break-out. With them were his veterans of the Hoch- und Deutschmeister. He mused that having broken open the Demyansk Pocket earlier that year, they would see the irony of breaking out of another pocket now. More than that, despite what they had gone through, they were still tough veterans who got things done.
Now Hitler actually came to his aid. Goring, elated with his success at resupplying 1st Panzer Army by air, pledged to resupply the armies in the Kalach Pocket to which Hitler assented. Unfortunately, there was no airfield left in the pocket. Instead a steady stream of Ju 52s flew o
ver the pocket dropping supplies by parachute. The Red Falcons had a field day, falling on them as if they were flocks of pigeons. To the horror of the Germans on the ground, transport after transport blew up in the air or spiralled down in flames to crash among them. Yet amid the carnage raining down on them, thousands of parachutes also landed with desperately needed food, ammunition and medical supplies. The men who rushed to retrieve one parachute were taken aback, though, to discover that the entire canister was full of condoms. Another group found a canister packed with Iron Crosses.
Richthofen’s fighters flew escort but found they had their hands full as the Red Air Force put everything it had into the air battle to keep the pocket from being resupplied. In truth, Luftflotte 4, despite its high kill-ratio, was being flown into the ground. Its losses were mounting with few replacements in aircraft or pilots. The Red Air Force was also paying far too much attention to its airfields. Richthofen urged Manstein, ‘There are too many Russians, and they keep getting better. Hurry, or I won’t be able to support you.’
Leninsk, 6 November 1942
The remnants of 2nd Guards Army retreating into the town were given no rest and less hope by Kleist’s pursuing panzers. A German reconnaissance battalion cut Stalin’s secret railway a dozen miles to the north. Already artillery fire was falling amid the supply dumps and rail sidings. Fire and smoke seemed everywhere, as did large numbers of terror-stricken rear-echelon troops and deserters.
There was even more reason to panic had they known that SS Wiking had swung south to the Volga and raced up the river road to play havoc among the supply units and the masses of equipment, food, and ammunition that had built up as the floating river ice had cut off almost all traffic to the west. On the east bank were numerous boats and barges immobilized by the ice. Many of the Scandinavians in the Nordland Regiment had been fishermen and small-boat operators. Ice was nothing new to them, and a few managed to dodge the floes and get to the other side. The first soldier of the Wehrmacht to plant his boots on the landing zone in the city was a Norwegian. He looked around and walked up the beach past wrecked boats and equipment of every type. A few more followed him, spread out in a skirmish line. He was met by a man with a white flag and a red cross on his armband. Stalingrad had fallen to a squad.
Zaitsev was resting on a pallet in a basement hospital when the word spread that the Germans were back in the city. At first there was stunned silence, then men began to weep. All for nothing! Rumours are often just rumours, he thought. Then a silhouette filled the doorway, that same silhouette he had had scores of times in his sights. Instinctively, he grabbed his sniper’s rifle from where it was propped up against the wall. One shot, and the German, or more accurately a Swede, fell forward onto the floor. As fast as a hunted hare, Zaitsev slipped out the door and up the basement steps. In moments he was lost to sight among the ruins.
LX Panzer Corps assembly area, north of Abganerovo, 6 November 1942
Raus could see the village of Verkhne-Tsaritsynski a few miles to the north. Here and there knocked-out tanks were the only bumps on the otherwise flat expanse of farmland beyond which were over 200,000 trapped German soldiers. To the west of the town, Hörnlein was also conducting his own personal reconnaissance. The corps’ northward march had been rapid; they had arrived yesterday, but Manstein was determined not to dissipate their combat power with a hasty attack.
Instead ammunition, fuel and food had been funnelling into their assembly areas. The crews worked quickly to replenish their ammunition, top off their fuel and get as many hot meals as they could. Then, most importantly, they slept. Just as they were about to curl up in whatever shelter they could find, men began running from vehicle to vehicle with the news that Stalingrad had fallen to 1st Panzer Army. Of course, the announcement did not say that only a few hundred men had been able to cross the river. There were a few cheers for the victory that had been hanging in the balance for so long, but sleep was more alluring to bone-tired men than victory’s sweet song.
As they slept, the two infantry corps of 11th Army marched to take up the right flank of the panzer corps. The infantry corps on the right would enter the city from the south while that on the left would prevent any Soviet counterthrust from striking the flank of the relief force.
Stavka, 6 November 1942
The Soviets picked up the news of the fall of the city from the German intercepts. Stalin was enraged. No one mentioned that he had personally directed that Chuikov’s army join the encirclement of the Germans. Now he ordered that Rokossovsky’s 66th Army be thrown into the city instead of strengthening the encircling ring. Zhukov called from the front to argue against it. ‘Comrade Stalin, the 66th Army is vital to this operation. We can retake the city once we have destroyed the trapped enemy.’
But Stalin was having none of it. The impossible had happened. The city that bore his name had fallen after he had made its successful defence the pivot of the war for the Soviet peoples. ‘You are thinking only in military terms, but I must balance that with the political cost. How will the morale of your armies be affected if they find out the city had fallen?’
Zhukov replied, ‘They will simply get on with it.’
Stalin was getting angry. ‘The will to fight will be gone. No, you must retake the city immediately, and no one will be the wiser. We can pass it off that the enemy just infiltrated a few saboteurs.’
One last time Zhukov tried to argue, but Stalin cut him off. ‘Just do it.’
As he hung up the phone, he was thinking ahead. The battle could go either way. Should Zhukov win and destroy the trapped Germans, then it would be a disaster for Hitler. Would he sue for peace? Stalin thought, ‘I certainly wouldn’t. There is still a lot of war in the Germans even if they lose this battle.’
But if the battle went the other way, the game was up for the Soviet Union. Lenin’s legacy would be in danger. His spies in OKW had told him that Hitler had talked of a negotiated peace in the spring. How attractive would that be if he were victorious? Stalin put himself in Hitler’s place and knew that such a peace would be a punitive one. Yet what other choice was there? With the loss of the oilfields and Allied aid, there was not a lot of war left in the Russians. He expected that the Soviet Union’s name would become inaccurate as such a peace was likely to shear it of almost all its non-Russian territories. It would be reduced to a Russian core with its centre of gravity moving east. The communist state could survive in this core. The Russians had proved to him that they were a state-minded people, willing to defend Lenin’s legacy.
All well and good, in theory, he thought, but what is to happen to Stalin? He had left a blood-stained path to power. How the knives would sharpen. It would require the iron control of the NKVD if he were to survive. He was pleased in his appointment of Abakumov to replace Beria. The man was pitiless and relentless in his sniffing out of disloyalty, even before the thought had occurred.
Abakumov was indeed pitiless and relentless, but even he could smell a disaster in the wind. The existential question then became, ‘How will Abakumov fare?’ Already members of the Politburo were putting out certain feelers and if Stalin knew about them . . . Loyalty had its limits. Kill for Stalin? Of course. Die for Stalin? Now that was a different matter.5
Werewolf, 6 November 1942
‘Mein treuer Reinhard,’ Hitler exclaimed, as Heydrich entered and gave him the stiff-armed salute, the Hitler Gruss. He came over and took Heydrich’s hands in his own he was so delighted to see him. ‘I am surrounded by generals with their red-striped trousers. They always tell me what cannot be done. With you I know I have a man who just does the impossible. The only one here like you is this young Stauffenberg. You must meet him.’
‘We have already met, mein Führer. He greeted me personally at the entrance to your compound.’ Hitler was pleased. He had developed the utmost confidence in his new OKW Deputy Chief of Operations. Stauffenberg was not so pleased. He had already known enough of Heydrich to despise him before they had even met. But after s
haking his damp, soft hand, he had viscerally recoiled from the man, though he had enough self-control not to show it.
That reaction only added urgency to his plan to pry military intelligence out of Heydrich’s grasp. As they walked the long path through the pinewoods to Hitler’s bunker, Stauffenberg commented that the SS Panzer Corps being created in France was a juicy plum for any able man willing to throw his fate onto the scales of the battlefield. ‘You would understand, I am sure. The urge to test oneself in battle is irresistible, as you showed when you took part in the air battles against the English.’
Heydrich smiled a bit. It had been a delicious experience, and he chafed to do more than cow Czechs and kill Jews. Of course, getting control of all intelligence functions of the Reich was one thing, but his future would require more combat distinction than a few air brawls with the British.
Stauffenberg went on:
The Führer has not transferred the SS back to the Eastern Front because he is convinced that the Amis will land shortly in France. We all bow, of course, to his strategic insight. Think what glory would shower down on the man who drove them into the sea. This time, I wager, they will not be allowed to get away. Ah, here we are!
He was not foolish enough actually to suggest to Hitler that he appoint Heydrich to command the SS Panzer Corps. He knew that Hitler would not take it well for an Army officer, even one as favoured as he was, to make any suggestions about command appointments within the SS. It was Hitler’s private army aglow with a fire for National Socialism that he felt the Army did not show enough. He was confident that Heydrich would bring up the matter but only in private with Hitler.
Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History Page 29