Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (32 page)

Rudel’s Stukas hung over the city, diving again and again to strike its oil tanks and shipping. Huge clouds of smoke from the burning oil roiled into the sky. The flames were consuming the last of the oil shipped by sea from the Baku fields. Kleist’s panzers were fewer than 20 miles from the city. It was a rich prize, a combination of rail hub and river- and sea-port. Its loss would cripple much of the ability of the Soviets to draw on the resources of Central Asia and western Siberia. Yet nature had provided a defence for the city. It was not located on the Caspian shore but rather many miles inland amid the vast Volga delta, surrounded by the numerous channels of that mighty river. Defending the city was 28th Army with almost 35,000 men and 60 tanks. Originally scheduled to reinforce Stalingrad Front, this army was going to have its hands full defending Astrakhan.

Hitler had been beside himself with self-righteous delight at the fall of the Caucasus - a victory that his generals had done their best to persuade him not to attempt. Once again, he told the OKW staff, it was his understanding of the economic aspects of war that had guided the road to this splendid victory. Once again, his intuition and will had trumped all the arid professionalism of his generals. Now that Astrakhan was on the point of falling, he began to count all the economic resources and military booty.

Manstein encouraged him in this distraction because it gave him the cover to concentrate German theatre resources in the decisive battle. He shook his head when he thought how lucky Army Group A had been to subdue the Caucasus and Transcaucasus. He had certainly thought it would be a mountain pass too far. By all the rules of war, the campaign should have bogged down and thus dissipated German forces too much to concentrate decisively anywhere. The field marshal had to conclude that it was only some sort of miracle of the sort the devil seemed to favour Hitler with that had brought such a victory. But just when he had thought that he could count on Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army in the final showdown on the Volga, Hitler had insisted that it seize Astrakhan instead.

He would throw a sop to the Führer but still concentrate most of 1st Panzer Army for the counterstroke to the Soviet offensive he knew was coming. Gehlen kept insisting that the heavier blow was aimed at Army Group Centre. Be that as it may, Manstein was certain that Kluge was not nearly in so dangerous a situation as Army Group B.

He had sent a staff officer by aircraft with his oral order to Kleist to leave the Turkish corps of former Soviet POWs to invest Astrakhan. It was an act of supreme ruthlessness. He knew they stood little chance against the Soviet 28th Army, but all he needed them to do was divert the enemy and buy him time. The remaining panzer, infantry and Gebirgsjäger corps were to cross the Volga north of Astrakhan and strike northwest parallel to the river in the direction of Stalingrad.

Manstein knew that his callous treatment of the former Soviet POWs fighting for the Germans would appeal to Hitler and smooth the way for what he wanted to do in any case. He might not have been as forthcoming had he not needed Hitler’s approval of supporting 1st Panzer Army by air in its long dash from Astrakhan to Stalingrad. He needed Goring’s Ju 52 transports. To his relief, Hitler jumped at the idea of taking Stalingrad from the rear, and to his surprise Goring was eager to throw the resources of the Luftwaffe into the effort. He realized this was the opportunity for him to make a decisive contribution to the victory.

The patrol dragged in the German prisoner with a potato sack over his head. He could not wait to talk. The news that had run through the 6th Army was that the greatest sniper in the Wehrmacht, Major König, head of the sniper school itself, had been summoned to kill the Soviet ‘head rabbit’, a play on Zaitsev’s name, which meant hare. Colonel Batyuk took Zaitsev aside, ‘So now you’ve got to eliminate this super-sniper. But be careful and use your head.’

It did not take Zaitsev long to realize he was, indeed, up against a super-sniper. Reports began to come in of one Soviet sniper after another being shot. These were experienced men, not beginners. The deaths surged along the entire front. This Major König was ranging wide, giving no indication of where he might show up. Zaitsev was truly puzzled:

Ironically Pohl was thinking almost exactly the same thing about Zaitsev. The army’s propaganda unit had begun to copy the Soviet practice of showing how many of the enemy the major had shot by prominently displaying a hammer and sickle with an x drawn over it for each kill. It had a great effect along the firing line. Germans were now shouting over to the Soviets about how long it would be before König bagged Zaitsev. That was punctuated by the four or five Red Army men that the major was picking off each day, usually officers and forward observers. Even Chuikov became concerned and urged Zaitsev on.

That morning Manstein received the news of the death in combat of his older son, Gero, who had fallen while assigned to his father’s old division. It was as if someone had struck him in his soul. His grief was intense, of the kind that Herodotus had written of two and a half thousand years before. In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war it is the fathers who bury their sons.

As men stricken with such a numbing loss do, he spoke of Gero the boy in his sweet innocence. He spoke of how frail Gero had been as a child and the efforts his wife had made to build his strength. ‘We made no attempt to influence his choice of profession, but he was drawn to the calling of his ancestors. It was simply in his blood to become a regular officer.’ The most poignant lines of Manstein’s later war memoirs were of his son.

As soon as the word spread through the headquarters, Tresckow flew down from Stalingrad immediately and called on his old master to offer his condolences:

Manstein was shaken from his grief by Tresckow’s linking of his son and Hitler. The younger man went on:

Manstein was getting angry, but Tresckow did not relent:

It was a discouraged Tresckow who returned to 6th Army headquarters that night. The signals NCO brought him a message and said, ‘This arrived from the army group commander while you were in the air, sir.’

Tresckow signed. What now, he thought? He read and at first could not believe. It said, ‘Count me among the righteous.
Manstein.’

The Romanian 3rd Army was strung out thinly along the northern arm of the Don River and huddled in the morning cold. It was badly armed and worse commanded by officers who thought bullying and screaming were the sum of leadership. Then a short but crushing artillery strike hit them. Almost immediately 500 tanks of 5th Tank and 21st Armies of General N. F. Vatutin’s Southwest Front hit. They came out of the morning mist followed by waves of infantry. The Romanians had already been half-beaten men. The first blow from Operation Uranus finished the job. Their army quickly came apart surviving as little more than a flag on a map at OKW. The Italian 8th Army to the west was being fixed in place by the 1st Guards Army. The Italians would be of no help to their fellow Latins.

To the east Colonel General K. K. Rokossovsky’s 65th, 24th and 66th Armies of the Don Front attacked 6th Army’s I and XI Corps. Understrength and spread thinly along terrain difficult to defend, they were soon fighting for their lives. Stalin had a special regard for this general of whom he said, ‘I have no Suvorov, but Rokossovsky is my Bagration’, alluding to one of the great Suvorov’s exemplary disciples.

Zhukov was everywhere, urging the commanders forward. He was optimistic because there were no German units, especially panzers, to corset up the Romanians. That would have held things up, a special worry since the attack was not as strong as had been hoped. Zhukov would have given anything for another three weeks to prepare. Already the reequipment of Soviet tank units with T-34s had slowed because of the shortage of aluminium for their engines. The Red Air Force was also feeling the same problem. As it was, the ground forces employed for the overall operation included only 71 per cent of the men and 79 per cent of the tanks originally planned. Zhukov had also warned his commanders that fuel was in short supply and that enemy fuel dumps were critical objectives.
¹

As soon as the seriousness of the Soviet attack had been confirmed, Seydlitz ordered Operation Quicksilver executed. It would be the most difficult of all manoeuvres, to retreat while still in contact with the enemy. He thanked God that Manstein had ordered the concentration of his XIV Panzer Corps in his rear near Kalach.
²

That was not doing the Germans west of the Don crossing at Kalach any good. Fifth Tank Army’s spearheads knifed down through 6th Army’s line of communications. T-34s surged over the tracks of the single rail line supporting 6th Army, savaged truck convoys and overran supply dumps and maintenance yards. The tank crews delighted in blowing up trains as they passed. For sheer spectacle, it is hard to beat an exploding locomotive and a long line of rail cars thundering off the tracks into wreckage and ruin. Nothing seemed able to stop the Red Army spearheads as they drove east towards Kalach. They came so fast that the panicked Germans made them a gift of the precious fuel dumps. The icy mists and snow were working for the Red Army as Richthofen’s reconnaissance aircraft were kept grounded. He recorded in his diary then, ‘Once again the Russians have masterfully exploited a bad weather situation. Rain, snow, ice and fog are preventing any action by the Luftwaffe at the Don.’
³

Generalleutnant Karl Strecher’s XI Corps with three divisions (44th, 376th, 384th Infantry) found itself attempting to disengage while being strongly assailed by Soviet 65th Army in its front even as it was struck in the rear by the 21st Army’s 3rd Cavalry Corps. The 44th
Hoch- und Deutschmeister
Division, Seydlitz’s old division of tough Austrians, led the way to the bridges over the Don that would unite them with the rest of 6th Army, wiping out the flank regiment of the enemy’s cavalry corps. It was slow going because of a fuel shortage afflicting the entire army. They still had their horses, though, and that meant their artillery and wounded came out with them. Luckily they had been bypassed by the Soviet tank corps heading for Kalach. But the cavalry hung on to the German flank, striking suddenly and without warning out of the snow, while masses of infantry from 65th Army pressed hard on their heels. One officer opined it was like the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the last time German soldiers were so threatened by cavalry in the open field. His companion replied, ‘No, Heinz, Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812 comes closer. Pray God we do not find our Beresina.’
⁴

The Soviet attack had hit the 376th Division which had already been reduced to barely 4,200 men. Being farthest west it fought as the rearguard and quickly began to come apart. Its survivors, accompanied by terrified Romanian stragglers fleeing eastward, merged with the more resolute Austrians who pressed on through the blowing snow.

MAP №7 OPERATION URANUS

Chuikov had only been told of the offensive a few days before. For him it must have lifted an enormous burden. ‘We all clambered out of our dugouts to listen for the sounds of our counter-attack. It wasn’t possible - it was too far north.’ one soldier wrote later.
⁵
It was not long before Chuikov’s scouts were reporting that the Germans were breaking contact all along the fighting lines, slipping away like quicksilver disappearing through a crack in the floor.

Along with the scouts came the snipers desperate not to let their prey out of their sights. Those unwary enough to rush too far forward were dropped by a single sniper who seemed to be covering the German withdrawal from the area of the Barrikady Factory.

Chuikov quickly linked up his isolated elements and pushed them forward to keep after the Germans. In a matter of minutes, his men were passing the famous factories and other buildings that had become the graves of countless Russians and Germans, past ground over which the armies had shoved and pushed against each for the gain of blood-soaked yards. Only the cold had smothered the stench of countless rotting bodies as the snow blanketed their remains and softened the broken outlines of the city’s buildings. By day’s end they were on the outskirts of the city where the Germans had abandoned an endless number of derelict vehicles, tanks, guns, and every other assorted piece of equipment armies possess.

One of the last German soldiers out of the city turned to take one last look at the desolation. Then he spat in its direction, turned, and marched west.

The small collection of villages known as Akhtubinsk served as a railway, road and river hub, 180 miles north of Astrakhan and 80 miles southeast of Stalingrad. Some thought had been given to its importance. At dawn the engines of the Soviet fighter-bomber squadrons were just being turned over when the Me 109s swooped out of the sky in their strafing runs. Hardly an aircraft got off the ground before it was shot up.

Within a few hours the small town fell to the 3rd Panzer Division. An hour later the first squadrons of Ju 52s began to arrive at the military airfield. It was a first-rate airfield as befitted the R&D Institute of the Air Force of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. It had also been the airfield from which Soviet fighters had been attacking 1st Panzer Army for days. Now Me 109 squadrons circled, flying top cover. On the runways tanks had pushed the blackened hulks of Soviet aircraft off into the grass to let the transports land.

They brought fuel, ammunition, and everything else. The fuel came directly from the refineries captured intact at Maikop. And they brought mail, to the joy of men who had not had a mail delivery since they had reached Tiflis weeks before. As important, they brought in Luftwaffe ground crews and their equipment to sustain the Stuka, Ju 88 and Me 109 squadrons supporting the panzer army’s final drive on Stalingrad.

By early morning three Soviet tank corps were converging from the west on the bridge over the Don at Kalach. On the east bank, XIV Panzer Corps was echeloned behind the town. Their arrival had stopped a panic that was spreading through the supply, maintenance and medical echelons. Seydlitz had placed them there to defend the major river crossing and to support his infantry divisions converging on the line Kalach-Sovietski-Verkhne-Tsaritsynski. Manstein had assured him that 11th Army would be committed to tie in to the right of 6th Army.

The Soviet 26th Tank Corps was winning the race to the river, running down and scattering the last of the frantic rear-echelon troops rushing to safety. Its commander, Major General Rodin, was determined to take the bridge by
coup de main,
a painful German speciality so far in the war, one that he hoped to turn on them. Lieutenant Colonel Grigor N. Filippov, commanding the lead 19th Tank Brigade, was just the man to administer the lesson.

At the head of his column were two captured German tanks and a reconnaissance vehicle, driving with their lights on to alleviate any suspicion. Incredibly they drove past hundreds of Germans in the dark who simply waved at them. It was six in the morning with just an edge of light on the horizon when Filippov came upon two Germans with an old Russian peasant. A word to his men, and the two Germans were shot dead. Filippov climbed down from his tank to talk to the trembling old man. ‘Uncle Vanya, which way to the bridge?’ As soon as he heard Russian, the man’s shaking ceased. He immediately climbed into the first tank and pointed the way.

Not long afterwards his column reached the high west bank of the Don with Kalach at the other end of the bridge. They barrelled down the steep road and charged right onto the bridge, scattering the guards. From the bluff above sixteen T-34s fired down into the town in support. The head of the column broke into the town right into the guns of an understrength tank company of 16th Panzer Division.
⁶
The first Soviet tanks were quickly knocked out, but now the bridge was filled with Soviet tanks. Enough were getting across to widen the bridgehead.

On the bluffs above the river Soviet artillery had arrived and began to fire into the town to support Filippov’s tanks. Motorized infantry were descending the road to the bridge and behind them more tanks. The German support troops were fleeing eastward from the town as more of 16th Panzer’s weak units were thrown into the fight to retake the bridge. One by one the weakened units of XIV Panzer Corps were committed to eliminate the Soviet bridgehead over the river. But Soviet strength flowed in faster than German, and the corps was slowly pushed back. A desperate call from Seydlitz to Hoth released most of XLVIII Panzer Corps, concentrated at Yeriko-Krepinski, to the battle for Kalach, but Hoth kept back the 29th Motorized Division as an operational reserve.

MAP №8 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 6TH ARMY’S VIII AND XI CORPS 3–4 NOVEMBER 1942