The World at War (41 page)

ANTHONY EDEN

British Foreign Minister

They were very difficult about it and there were endless discussions and arguments. Churchill went very boldly on that visit himself to
Moscow to try and explain matters to Stalin and had a very tough time of it and in October 1943, when we had our first Three Power Conference in Moscow, I asked Churchill to let me have [Chief Staff Officer to the Prime Minister General Sir Hastings] Ismay with me with the authority of the Chiefs of Staff to put the whole position to the Russians, because I was quite sure that the moment we got to Moscow they wouldn't want to discuss whatever thing we were supposed to discuss, but would say, 'What about the Second Front?' – which is exactly what happened. Ismay and his American colleague, US Military Attaché General Dean, did a great job and that, I think, did a great deal to disabuse the Russians of some of their suspicions. After all we were there several weeks and during that time the explanations were pretty well continuous, not only at the conference table but in private conversations and at meals. After that the Russians became more understanding, but they were always apprehensive if we were going to postpone the date a little and Molotov or Stalin would say, 'Let's not change the dates.' It was natural; they were sustaining pretty heavy casualties themselves. They were tough and difficult and there was a period when Winston stopped sending personal messages altogether because he thought that it wasn't any good. But you expect that sort of thing to happen. I think considering what one knows of the characteristics of the three countries, their forms of government, their way of life and everything about them, the fact that we managed to keep the alliance at all in reasonable shape was quite commendable.

MAJOR GORONWY REES

Combined Operations Staff Officer and D-Day planner

Curiously enough, and this was a thing that afterwards I really remember, I now remember with a kind of horror, one of my great friends of that time was [Soviet spy]
Guy Burgess, and I used to see him a great deal during the whole of this operation. And afterwards I wondered why on earth, you know, how absolutely terrible, I could quite easily have given him some indication as to what was going on.
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TOSHIKAZU KASE

Japanese diplomat

The success of Nazi Germany in the European theatre affected the younger officers until before
Stalingrad, which coincided with the first defeat the Japanese Army suffered. Many young officers became disillusioned with the German military efforts after Stalingrad.

PRIVATE WILHELM HOFFMAN

Sixth Army at Stalingrad, diary entries

11 September:
Our battalion is
fighting in the suburbs of Stalingrad. Firing is going on all the time. Wherever you look is fire and flames. Russian cannon and machine guns are firing out of the burning city – fanatics!
16 September:
Our battalion plus tanks is attacking the grain elevator. The battalion is suffering heavy losses. The elevator is occupied not by men but by devils no bullets or flames can destroy.
18 September:
Fighting is going on inside the elevator. If all the buildings of Stalingrad are defended like this none of our soldiers will get back to Germany.
22 September.
Russian resistance in the elevator has been broken. Our troops are advancing towards the Volga. We found only about forty Russians dead in the elevator.
26 October:
Who would have thought, three months ago, that instead of the joy of victory we would have to endure such sacrifices and torture, the end of which is nowhere in sight. The soldiers are calling Stalingrad the mass grave of the Wehrmacht.

PRIVATE ANTON BOSNIK

Russian defender at Stalingrad, extract from a letter

We moved back occupying one building after another, turning them to strongholds. A soldier would crawl out of an occupied position only when the ground was on fire beneath him and his clothes were smouldering.

ALBERT SPEER

My brother was in Stalingrad and personally I tried everything to bring him out by plane. The man in charge of the whole air forces around Stalingrad promised me to do his utmost to find him but he couldn't be found any more. Göring's assurance that he could supply the besieged city from the air was just one of this things which happened quite often in Hitler's surrounding. People were afraid telling the absolute truth and they wanted to please him with something which was cheering him up, and Goring saw Hitler in a desolate, depressive mood so he made his promise possibly without asking his generals before.

LIEUTENANT REINER

Fourth Panzer Army at Stalingrad, extract from a letter

Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke, a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those very hot, noisy, bloody nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee from this hell. The hardest stone cannot bear it for long. Only men endure.

ADOLF HITLER

After-dinner speech, Munich, 8 November 1943

I wanted to get to the Volga, at a particular
point where stands a certain town that bears the name of Stalin himself. I wanted to take the place and we've done it. We've got it, really, except for a few enemy positions still holding out. Now people say why don't they finish the job more quickly? Well, I prefer to do the job with quite small groups. Time is of no consequence at all.

GRAND ADMIRAL KARL DÖNITZ

Chief of the German Navy

The defeat of the
Battle of Stalingrad made to a high degree the whole of our situation much worse. It was clear that we still could not hope to win the war against Russia. By such a victory Hitler had hoped to make our possession upon the European continent so strong that British sea power could not see any advantage in pursuing the war against us. He hoped that in the circumstances we would get a good peace with our enemies in the West too.

COLONEL IVAN CHISTYAKOV

158th Guards Artillery Regiment

The special thing about
Kursk was the number of troops involved, more than two million people, fifty thousand tanks altogether, about ten thousand aeroplanes, weapons, mortars – everything was bring prepared for the battle of the third summer. We should congratulate our Party organisations, our political workers and our officers. They prepare the troops very thoroughly to resist the German attack, explaining the new techniques and equipment of the enemy and what our government had given us. At Kursk the Soviet troops displayed great heroism as you would never find in any other army. No capitalist army will find such heroism as our Soviet soldiers showed. The heroic advances of our troops were very great, it was mass heroism. Lenin said that Soviet people would produce not one hero but hundreds of thousands and this true. The people who we freed greeted us everywhere with salt and bread as their saviours from this Fascist slavery.

MAJOR GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT

Deputy Chief of Wehrmacht Operations

Hitler at that time used to speak of a large gap which had remained there – gradually there was more gap than front and eventually more front than gap but that took all the time until the end of September. Then the Russians followed this breakthrough into three large bridgeheads and particularly at Bryansk, which became the starting place for the winter offensive. On the northern part of the front the Russians penetrated into the Balkan states and approached the frontier of East Prussia where Hitler had his headquarters. Things developed in the south where the Russians had penetrated Romania, the main source of the German petrol supply, and opened the way further to the west into
Hungary and to Bulgaria thus endangering the whole of the German troops in the south-east – two hundred thousand men. In the fall of 1944 they followed into Hungary and came close to Budapest and on the main front they pursued their success further on to the German frontier. In the north the advance led to the German Army Group being enclosed leaving almost twenty-eight divisions in Poland and never could break out until the end of the war. The Russians' winter offensive penetrated deeply into Germany no more than about fifty kilometres east of Berlin and in the south approached Vienna.

COLONEL GENERAL LOMOV

The Soviet High Command was expecting to begin the attack in the second half of January and were making all the necessary preparations – equipment, supplies, troops. But, as is well known, in December 1944 the German Command made an attack against the Anglo-American forces in the Ardennes. In connection with this and related complications Churchill turned to Stalin with a request for help from Soviet forces in this difficult situation. The Soviet High Command replied that the attack would be speeded up and in fact the operation which has been prepared for later actually began on 12th of January. This had a very positive effect on the position of the Anglo-American troops and the Germans were forced to stop their attacks and in the Ardennes the situation stabilised. It was a successful operation in spite of the fact that the Soviet forces had to attack earlier than intended.

MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT

The effect on morale is hardly to be esteemed by me because at that time I was at the headquarters in East Prussia which General Jodl compared between a concentration camp and a monastery. The immediate strategic situation was much more important. Hitler had special inclination to save Hungary much more than our own country so he was inclined to send the few reserves he still had. We had to assemble them in Hungary. Another important consequence was that the Greek armies in the south-east were about to be separated from any possibility to retreat to Germany. At the beginning Hitler was prepared to give the permission to other retreating movements from there. These were endangered by warfare in Yugoslavia, which made it still more difficult to come through.

GENERAL ALEXEI ANTONOV

Red Army Chief of Staff

Our Red Army started in the direction of Berlin. Fifth Guards Army was commanded by me, very lucky, we were the main group that advanced to Berlin. Beginning in January, interesting events shows the good feelings of our Soviet government and of the English troops. In Ardennes, difficult situation for the English Army, Churchill asked Stalin to speed up the attack by the Red Army to help the English attack from the west. We received the order for a forced march, virtually running night and day, to prepare attack. We were lucky to be ready by 14th January to Warsaw and then onwards to the Oder attacks and counter-attacks south of Warsaw. But we overcame these blows. Twenty heroes of the Soviet Union, soldiers and officers.

MAJOR GENERAL WARLIMONT

The main reason for keeping the German Army in
Finland has been thrown away already in later 1943 when the
siege of Leningrad had to open up because we couldn't hold it any more. So the Russians had free access from that time. This retreat was much easier than on other fronts because it had already been prepared. Defence under Marshal Mannerheim remained friendly to the Germans and they support the retreat wherever they could. Hitler tried to impede the retreat by demanding that we had to keep up the occupation of the area. Speer came in and told Hitler that it wasn't necessary, that there were enough stores of nickel in Germany, and so this impediment was set aside also.

Z T BOKIEWICZ

Polish Home Army, Warsaw uprising of August–September 1944
The German troops were in completely chaotic retreat and when you went into one of the main streets of Warsaw, which ran from east to west, you could see the German Army retreating with all their belongings and the units were mixed. The soldiers had on their faces – they were afraid and they were completely dishevelled and in a terrible state. The Russian Army was approaching Warsaw and we could hear the gunfire in the distance and then they stopped and it was a great surprise to us because they were so near. In fact during the second part of the uprising they were just across the river and there was some contact with their units. They were the units of the Polish Army, which was part of the Russian Army, and General Zygmunt Berling of that Army sent some observers and one of the battalions was actually landed on our side and took part in the fighting, but because the soldiers were recruited in Poland a few weeks before they were inexperienced in street fighting and they were almost completely annihilated.

ALICJA IWANSKA

Student involved in the Warsaw uprising

I feel that Poland was betrayed by the Allies, that the Allies behaved in an opportunistic way towards Poland. Most of us feel that way, that they could have taken more chances themselves in order not to betray their Allies. So naturally we got extremely disappointed, but there is something in the Polish national character, you know, we're just optimistic and we do not give up friends so easily. So we feel that we still have friends among those Allies and that one day they would help us during some other peace negotiations, in some other situations where it may be easier for them to help us or maybe if they would decide to take more chances.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL HASSO-ECCARD FREIHERR VON MANTEUFFEL

Commander of Panzer Grenadier Division 'Grossdeutchland' February– September 1944

After the landing to north France and absolute Allied air supervision not only on the front line west of the Rhine but over the whole of Germany, there was no doubt that the fortress of Germany lay open. Lack of personnel, material replacement of all kinds, the lack of tanks – it was impossible to replace the heavy losses. There we have no operational reserves on the front of the battle theatres and no battle theatres. The weakness of the Italian alliance became public; my doubts were increased by the setback of the attack of my own Army [to break through to troops trapped in Kurland] in September 1944. In four days three tank brigades were wiped out because they were absolutely unprepared for such an attack. The defeat was catastrophic both on material terms and had an effect on morale. The losses could not be made up, so was unable to keep arms filled, to reinforce exhausted attacking forces. Before the beginning of the offensive the morale of the German attacking forces was as high as could be expected, and this compensated for comparative weakness in weapons and in armour and manpower. After the defeat, we could not go on fighting at all.