Hitler had dealt a juddering blow to the Soviet armed forces, and Kharkov stayed in the hands of the enemy. Hitler continued to think in grandiose terms. The war was going well for German forces in north Africa and it was not unreasonable to suppose that the Wehrmacht, coming from the south and the north, would soon overrun the entire Middle East and take possession of its oil. The Japanese, Hitler’s allies, were moving fast down the western rim of the Pacific Ocean. No country could hold out against Japan; the European imperial powers — Britain, France and Holland — were being worsted in the Asian struggle. Hitler confidently chose Stalingrad (formerly known as Tsaritsyn) as his next target.
Stalin ordered the city to be held at all costs. There is much unwarranted commentary that both he and Hitler exaggerated Stalingrad’s strategic significance. Stalin had been based there for some months in 1918 and his propagandists had treated the Tsaritsyn campaign as crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. Hitler, it is said, was drawn to attacking Stalingrad because the city bore Stalin’s name. Sentiment and symbolism may well have contributed to the German determination to take Stalingrad and the Soviet will to resist. But the primary reason for Hitler’s decision was strategic. Stalingrad lay in an area vital for the logistics of the USSR’s war effort. German control over the mid-Volga region would cut the USSR off from its oil supplies in Baku and Grozny. Its possession would also permit the Germans to break across the Volga to south-eastern Russia and dangerously reduce Moscow’s access to grain and potatoes. The alternative would have been to concentrate on the capture of Moscow so as to dominate the centre of transport and administration for the entire USSR. But Hitler’s decision was sound even if it was not the sole option available to him.
Germany and its allies started the Stalingrad campaign on 28 June 1942. Quickly they reached and took Voronezh. Then Rostov fell. Stalingrad seemed doomed and a confident Hitler split the attacking forces so as to seize the oil of the north and south Caucasus. The reports to Moscow made painful reading for Stavka. Panic gripped the inhabitants of Russia’s south. To prevent any repetition of the kind of panic which had disrupted the capital in July 1941, Stalin issued Order No. 227, ‘Not a Step Backward!’, on 28 July 1942. Its terms, read out to troops in the field but withheld from the Soviet media, demanded obedience on pain of severe punishment. Retreat, unless it had clear sanction from the Kremlin, was to be treated as treason. Soviet-held territory was to be defended at all costs. ‘Panickers’ and ‘cowards’ were to expect summary treatment: they would either be shot on the spot or transferred to the so-called penal battalions (where they stood little chance of survival). Order No. 227 had been edited and signed by Stalin. No serving soldier was left in doubt of his determination to compel the Red Army to fight without giving an inch.
Yet when Stalin refused to send reinforcements to Stalingrad, he was not relying on Order No. 227. He was fearful about diverting his reserves from Moscow and Leningrad. German commander Friedrich Paulus’s forces moved unrelentingly on Stalingrad. Stalin turned again to Zhukov. Implicitly he recognised that he had been making misjudgements in Ukraine and southern Russia which at last he called upon his most dynamic officer to rectify. As a reward for his achievements Zhukov was made Deputy Supreme Commander. After a swift visit to the front, Zhukov stood out for a changed set of military dispositions. In particular he called for the dispatch of reserves to Stalingrad. This plan was agreed in September 1942, and Zhukov and the new Chief of Staff Alexander Vasilevski worked out the details with Stalin. Gradually the Supreme Commander was learning how to work with fellow Stavka members. The plan for a wide counter-offensive — Operation Uranus — was elaborated. Reserves were assembled and the defenders of Stalingrad, cut off by the Germans, were ordered to hold out for the duration. Whole districts of the city were reduced to rubble by the constant bombing raids of the Luftwaffe. Vasili Chuikov was appointed the new Soviet commander, but Hitler believed that Paulus would soon have possession of Stalingrad.
Zhukov and Vasilevski conferred with Stalin and other commanders at each stage of their planning. This was the outcome of Stalin’s growing respect for their professional expertise. Zhukov reported to Stalin on his direct observations near the front. When he made recommendations about operational defects, he had to put up with Stalin expatiating on contemporary warfare.4 Yet generally Stalin behaved himself. He proposed that Operation Uranus should be postponed if preparations were not fully in place.5 This was not a Stalin seen earlier in the war.
Final decisions on Operation Uranus were taken on 13 November. Zhukov and Vasilevski took comfort from the fact that Romanian rather than German troops would stand across the line of the Soviet advance; they also had numerical superiority in men and armaments. Stalin listened attentively, slowly puffing on his pipe and stroking his mous-tache.6 Members of the State Defence Committee and the Politburo came in and out. The general plan was gone over several times so that all leaders might understand their responsibilities. Zhukov and Vasilevski, while advocating this counter-offensive, reminded Stalin that the Germans would almost certainly transfer troops from Vyazma to strengthen Paulus’s forces. They therefore suggested a synchronised counter- offensive by the Red Army to the north of Vyazma. Stalin gave his consent: ‘This would be good. But who of you is going to take up this matter?’ Zhukov and Vasilevski divided the responsibilities between them, and Stalin ordered Zhukov to leave next day for Stalingrad to oversee the last arrangements before Operation Uranus. Stalin left the date for the start of the campaign to Zhukov.7 Zhukov and Stalin were almost as confident as they were determined. This time the Germans would be beaten.
Operation Uranus had initial success on 19 November but then got held up by the German defence. Stalin, according to Zhukov, sent dozens of telegrams hysterically urging his commanders to crush the enemy.8 This was his old way with subordinates: they had to be kept functioning at a frantic pace or Stalin would get angry. Hitler meantime transferred Erich von Manstein, one of his best generals, to break through the Soviet lines around Stalingrad. But Stalin had also learned patience. It helped that the geography of the region was well known to him. This made it less likely that he would impose manifestly impractical ideas. But still Stalin displayed ‘excessive nervousness’ in Stavka.9
In December 1942 he decided in the State Defence Committee to put Konstantin Rokossovski in sole command of the front. Stalin had until then been exercising a degree of self-restraint at planning sessions, and the surprised Zhukov fell silent. Stalin exclaimed: ‘Why are you keeping quiet? Or is it that you don’t have your own opinion?’ Zhukov, who had spent weeks assembling a command group at Stalingrad, pointed out that these commanders, especially Andrei Yeremenko, would take offence. But Stalin had made up his mind: ‘Now is not the time to be offended. Ring up Yeremenko and tell him the State Defence Committee’s decision.’10 Yeremenko indeed took it badly, but Stalin refused to speak to him. The plan and the personnel were at last in place. The fighting around Stalingrad had reached a peak of intensity. The city had been turned into a lunar landscape; hardly a building remained intact. Ammunition and food were running out. The icy Volga winter made conditions hardly bearable for soldiers on both sides: frostbite and malnutrition affected many of them. Soviet forces, however, were somewhat better supplied than the Germans and their allies. Hitler had failed to remedy the problem of stretched lines of communication. Unmistakably the Red Army had the edge.
Hitler was altogether too casual about the difficulties in Stalingrad until Paulus had been cut off by Konstantin Rokossovski’s Don Front and Nikolai Vatutin’s South-Western Front. Paulus’s only option was to attempt a break-out; but Hitler, who thought that the Luftwaffe would keep German forces supplied until such time as Manstein could make a crushing advance, overruled him. Zhukov and Vasilevski had anticipated all this. They filled the gap between Paulus and Manstein with a mass of armoured divisions. From this position they intended to deliver two strategic blows. Operation Saturn aimed to retake Rostov-on-Don while Operation Circle would complete the closure of Stalingrad and the destruction of Paulus’s forces. This dual scheme was too ambitious. It allowed Manstein to stabilise his front and threaten the Soviet besiegers of Stalingrad. By themselves Zhukov and Vasilevski might have reacted more flexibly. But they had Stalin looking over their shoulders. Once he had the scent of victory, he could not contain himself. The result was that the Reds were needlessly fighting to the point of exhaustion — and the Germans were given a second chance.
Yet Soviet forces regrouped. Manstein failed to smash down their defences, and Rokossovski was able to turn his divisions on Paulus. The Wehrmacht experienced the fate it had customarily meted out to its enemies. German soldiers had been convinced by Nazi propaganda that they were going to fight a rabble of
Other war leaders might have gone down to witness some of the action. Stalin resolutely stayed put in Moscow. The reality of war for him was his conversations with Zhukov, his inspection of maps and the orders he shouted down the telephone line at frightened politicians and commanders. He neither witnessed nor read about the degradation among Paulus’s forces. They froze and starved and caught rats and chewed grass and tree bark for food. The end was approaching, and Paulus was invited to surrender. The street fighting pinned him deep into the
