Stalingrad

During the first week of December, the Russians made determined attacks to split the Sixth Army. In heavy defensive fighting, its panzer divisions lost almost half of their remaining 140 tanks. They were badly handicapped by the shortage of fuel and ammunition. On 6 December, a battle group from the 16th Panzer Division was sent into a counter-attack on foot because they had no fuel for their half-tracks. Lieutenant von Mutius, the young officer who had been so proud to be the last member of the Wehrmacht to withdraw across the Don, was the second-in- command.

Their objective was a hill north of Baburkin which they managed to seize, but suddenly Russian tanks appeared out of a balka supported by infantry. The battle-group commander gave the order to pull back. ‘A systematic withdrawal was impossible,’ reported a sergeant-major later. ‘Each man ran for his life. The enemy fired after us with all their weapons. Half of the battle group was wiped out. Lieutenant von Mutius was badly wounded. In order to prevent worse casualties, he kept shouting “Spread out!’” The sergeant-major was convinced he had saved many lives, as he lay there helplessly waiting for the Russians. The survivors thought him ‘a real hero’.

After numerous attacks, Soviet commanders realized that the besieged were far from beaten. The 57th Army of the crucial southwestern sector had suffered heavy casualties. Explanations for Soviet failure were interesting. One report — ‘artillery and infantry did not interact very well when storming the enemy defence line’ — sounds like a circumlocution for heavy casualties from friendly fire. ‘Soldiers are not well enough instructed on the need to dig trenches,’ was another unhelpful observation. Their failure to do so led to ‘irreparable losses from German tanks and aeroplanes’. No mention was made of the fact that the ground was frozen hard, and that entrenching tools were in very short supply.

Behind the lines, NKVD officers and interpreters worked late into the night interrogating German prisoners, including the first deserters, as well as ‘tongues’ captured by reconnaissance companies. ‘The bolsheviks often seized prisoners from us,’ reported a lieutenant from the Austrian 44th Hoch- und Deutschmeister Infantry Division. Don Front intelligence was trying to identify demoralized divisions, on which attacks should be concentrated. It soon observed that the 44th and the 376th Infantry Divisions, both of which had retreated from across the Don, had not been able to dig proper bunkers. Most of their men, during this period when the weather changed from hard frost to rain and back to hard frost again, were existing in holes in the ground covered by tarpaulins. The NKVD was particularly interested in any signs of national resentment. ‘It is said of Austrian soldiers that they don’t fight well,’ replied a Lieutenant Heinrich Boberg, when interrogated by Captain Dyatlenko on 10 December. ‘There is an element of truth in this, but I would not say it is true of the 44th Infantry Division. Austrians have historical reasons for not being as rigid as Prussians. And because Austrians are used to getting on with other nationalities, they don’t have the same sort of national pride as Prussians do.’ The Nazi designation of ‘Ostmark’ for Austria seemed to disappear remarkably quickly from an Austrian’s vocabulary when captured.

Once the major attacks of early December ceased, Don Front continued to maintain pressure on the 44th Infantry Division with raids, using Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft. Yet Sixth Army morale remained, on the whole, remarkably robust. Another senior lieutenant from the 16th Panzer Division later reported that, at that stage, ‘doubts about a positive outcome to the battle simply did not arise’. Landsers, especially those out in the snow-covered steppe, joked about ‘the fortress without a roof. Most of the younger ones, educated under a totalitarian system, did not expect to be told the reasons for their plight. The Fuhrer’s assurance was, for them, a promise that would never be broken.

Rations were soon reduced drastically, but officers and NCOs assured them that this situation would not last. The Luftwaffe would bring in what they needed, and then a great relief force, led by Field Marshal von Manstein, would advance from the south-west to break the encirclement. Many soldiers convinced themselves, or perhaps were told by less imaginative officers, that they would be out by Christmas. ‘Since the 22nd of November we’ve been surrounded,’ a soldier in the 376th Infantry Division wrote home. ‘The worst is past. We all hope that we’ll be out of the Kessel before Christmas… Once this battle of encirclement is over, then the war in Russia will be finished.’ Some were persuaded that they would immediately be given leave, and actually spend Christmas at home with their families.

Those responsible for administering the air-supply operation were far less optimistic. The Sixth Army’s chief quartermaster signalled on 7 December: ‘Rations cut to between a third and a half so that the army can hold out until 18 December. The lack of fodder means that the bulk of the horses will have to be slaughtered by the middle of January.’

The Luftwaffe officers in charge of Pitomnik airfield, drawn from the 9th Flak Division, had no illusions. They knew that a minimum of 300 flights a day would be needed to restore the Sixth Army’s fighting capacity, and that was out of the question. In any case, the greatly strengthened and bolder Red Army aviation, as well as anti- aircraft fire round the edge of the Kessel, represented a formidable challenge to the lumbering Junkers 52 trimotors. Jeschonnek and Goering did not consider that the airfields might lie within range of Soviet heavy artillery. Worst of all, they made no allowance for the weather, even after the experiences of the previous winter. There would be many days with zero visibility, and many when the temperature would be so low that it would be almost impossible to start aircraft engines, even with fires lit underneath them. Apart from Richthofen, however, Luftwaffe officers, either within the Kessel or outside, did not dare speak out. ‘It was defeatism if you voiced doubts,’ said one of them.

As well as bringing in fuel, ammunition and food — in theory two tons per Junkers 52, and rather less for a Heinkel 111 — the aircraft would fly out the wounded from the general field hospital next to Pitomnik airfield. Perhaps the best indication of officer pessimism was the secret decision to send out all German nurses, even before most of the wounded, to ensure that they never fell into Russian hands. Although great efforts were made to keep this secret, officers from the 369th Croat Infantry Regiment heard and lobbied the Luftwaffe to fly out their mistresses, disguised as nurses. The lieutenant whom they approached rather admired the Croats as soldiers and promised to help. His colonel, however, took a high moral line. ‘But surely it doesn’t matter’, the lieutenant replied, ‘whether they’re Croat whores, nursing sisters or whatever. They must be got out to save them from the Russians.’ The colonel still refused. The lieutenant later suspected that the Croats managed to smuggle their women on to planes.

Encampments, bunkers and tents spread to the side of the airfield. There were numerous headquarters and signals detachments with radio masts and vehicles, as well as the general field hospital. Pitomnik rapidly became the main focus for Soviet fighter and bomber regiments. During the course of 10, 11 and 12 December, Soviet aircraft carried out forty-two air raids.

The Russians, despite all their air activity over the Kessel, still did not realize how large a force they had surrounded. Colonel Vinogradov, the chief of Red Army intelligence at Don Front headquarters, estimated that Operation Uranus had trapped around 86,000 men. The probable figure, including allies and Hiwis, was nearly three and a half times greater: close to 290,000 men. The allies included the remnants of two Romanian divisions, the Croat regiment with 100th Jager Division and a motor-transport column of Italians who had picked a bad moment to come to find wood in the ruins of Stalingrad. [15]

In the fighting west of the Don and on the northern flank, Strecker’s XI Corps had suffered most. The Austrian 44th Infantry Division lost nearly 2,000 men, the 376th 1,600, and the 384th over 900. Officers throughout the Sixth Army sat down at makeshift tables in earth bunkers under the snow to write by candlelight to next of kin: ‘I have the sad duty to have to inform you that…’

With the Sixth Army reduced to conditions very similar to those in the First World War, older soldiers found themselves remembering the existence of the Western Front and its gallows humour. After the cold of mid- November, a wet period of thaw had set in, with ‘General Mud’ reappearing briefly before ‘General Winter’. Some returned to the old practices of trench life, such as resorting to the only certain source of warm liquid, when relieving themselves, to rinse the caked mud from their hands.

The construction of trenches and bunkers varied according to the circumstances of each division. Those who had been forced to withdraw or take up new positions faced heavy labour, although much of the work was given to Hiwis and other Russian prisoners. The Germans had learned from the street fighting in Stalingrad. They dug bunkers under knocked-out tanks and made better use of existing features. But in the first days after the encirclement, the ground had still been frozen, and even fires did little to soften the earth before digging. Out in the steppe, the greatest shortage was wood both for fires and for beams to cover the earth bunkers. Peasant houses