Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (109 page)

According to the Sixth Army's operation diaries, now in American custody, and the daily reports of the different Corps, the ration strength as of 18th December 1942, given in a return of 22nd December, was 230,000 Germans and German-allied troops in the pocket, including 13,000 Rumanians. In addition, the report speaks 'Of 19,300 Russian prisoners and auxiliaries.

Of these 230,000 officers and men some 42,000 wounded, sick, and specialists were evacuated by air up to 24th January 1943. According to Soviet reports, 16,800 were taken prisoners by the Soviets between 10th and 29th January. During the capitulation between 31st January and 3rd February, 91,000 men surrendered.

Some 80,500 remained on the battlefield of Stalingrad— killed in action or, the greater part, gravely wounded and left without shelter, without attention, and without food during the final days, and not brought to safety after the surrender.

About 6000 men out of 107,800 have returned to their homeland to date.

On 3rd February 1943 Second Lieutenant Herbert Kuntz of 100th Bomber Group was the last German pilot to fly his HE-lll over Stalingrad.

"Have a look to see whether fighting still continues anywhere or whether escaping parties can be seen," Captain Batcher had said to them. "Then drop your load." The load was bread, chocolate, bandages, and a little ammunition.

Kuntz circled the city at about 6000 feet. Not one flak gun opened up. Dense fog hung over the steppe. Hans Annen, the observer, glanced across to Walter Krebs, the radio operator. Krebs shook his head: "Nothing anywhere."

Kuntz dropped to 300 feet—then to 250. Paske, the flight engineer, kept a sharp look-out. Suddenly the mist parted: they were skimming over the churned-up pitted battlefield, barely 200 feet up. Kuntz snatched the aircraft upward, to a safe altitude, and continued the search. Over there—were those not people behind those shreds of mist? "Load away!" he shouted. And their load dropped earthward. Loaves of bread fell into the snow of Stalingrad—among the dead, the frozen, and the few who were still waiting for death.

Perhaps it would be found by one of the small groups who were trying to fight their way out. Many had set out—staff officers with complete combat groups, such as those of IV Corps headquarters and the 71st Infantry Division. Second Lieutenants and sergeants had marched off with platoons through darkness and fog. Corporals, lance-corporals, riflemen, and gunners had sneaked out of the ruins of the city, in groups of three or four, or even singly. Individual parties were spotted by airmen in the steppe as late as mid-February. Then they were lost. Only one man—Sergeant Nieweg, a sergeant in a flak battery—is known to have got through. Twenty-four hours after his escape he was killed by an unlucky mortar bomb at a dressing station of llth'Panzer Division.

APPENDIX

Acknowledgment

TO describe the battles of a war which was lost and has gone down into history as a criminal act of aggression represents a difficult undertaking, almost too difficult for a chronicler in our decade. There is a great temptation to correct the decisions of the battlefield with the pen, or to wade about in the rnire of futility and guilt.

The author intended neither the one nor the other. He wanted to report the military events of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's campaign of conquest which ended at Stalingrad. He wanted to present a broad canvas for the general reader, a picture based on careful researches, documents, essays, war diaries, accounts of experiences, memoirs, and publications by both sides.

This has been possible only thanks to the help of nearly a thousand voluntary collaborators and a number of experienced advisers. To name them all would take up over twenty pages of print. The list extends from the Colonel- General in command of an Army down to the private soldier, from the Chief of the General Staff down to the signaller, from the divisional commander down to the lance-corporal, and from the chief of supplies down to the rank- and-file medical orderly and horsegroom. To all of these the author expresses his thanks—in particular for the historical documents, originals of orders, sketches, and situation reports which were often saved only with difficulty and at great personal risk from the chaos of the war and the immediate post-war period, and which were made available to the author.

In this way many a controversial question of the history of the war has been elucidated and a number of important new facts brought to light.

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