The untouchable nightly air dominance of the Russians… [has] increased beyond tolerance. The troops cannot rest, their strength is used to the hilt. [Our] personnel and material losses are too much in the long run. The Army asks
At the three main factories north of Mamaev Hill, the Germans attacked stubbornly, trying to crush the Russians. By October 20, they had seized all of the tractor plant’s shops and broken into the mammoth breastworks of the Barrikady. Further south, they occupied the western end of the Red October Plant.
In their frenzy to hurl every Russian into the Volga, the Germans even went after Jacob Pavlov’s stronghold in the relatively quiet central part of Stalingrad. Four tanks came into Lenin Square, stopped and fired pointblank into the building. But the wily Pavlov was ready for them. Because the tanks could neither elevate nor depress their cannon at such close range, he had moved some of his men to the fourth floor and others to the cellar. A single shot from his lone antitank gun put one enemy panzer out of action and machine-gun fire scattered the German infantry. As the foot soldiers bolted, the tanks skidded back to safety around the corner.
Pavlov and his group had a reunion shortly thereafter on the first floor. They had held the house now for three weeks.
The Barrikady Gun Factory was an awful place to see. In the morning sun, track rails girdling the plant shone with dampness. The dark, towering bulk of the shops was surrounded by shattered freight cars. Heaps of coral and red slag dotted the landscape. Over them hovered the smokestacks, what few were left standing, and everywhere there were shell holes, in the concrete buildings and in the ground.
Men lived in the holes, peeking out for a brief glimpse of the enemy. They had little hope of seeing their families again, of fathering sons, of embracing their parents. At the Barrikady, they just welcomed another dawn with the dew on the rails and the 1 sun blinding them with its malevolent intensity.
Ernst Wohlfahrt, a veteran of the French campaign, had been called up with other retired soldiers to replace losses in Russia, and the former artillery sergeant was now an infantryman with the 305th Division. Lugging a walkie-talkie, a rifle, and pistol, he picked his way through the rubble of a workers’ settlement. Russian
Wohlfahrt left the body and ran ahead with his company, as Russian snipers picked off single men diving in and out of cover. Exhausted, Wohlfahrt leaned against a wall to catch his breath and a Russian climbed out of a cellar to sneak up behind him. Just as he put his rifle to Wohlfahrt’s ear, a German soldier came along, shoved his gun in the assailant’s back, and led him away.
Wohlfahrt stopped for the night in a vacant cellar, where he carefully arranged several wooden crates around his sleeping bag and lay down. A Soviet biplane, dubbed the “sewing machine” by the Germans because of its motor pitch, droned overhead and dropped a bomb squarely on top of his hiding place. The room disintegrated and the sergeant found himself lying twenty feet away from his bed, but unhurt. The wooden crates had saved his life.
Heinz Neist had an equally sinister introduction to the factories. The thirty-one-year-old veteran had never expected to be fighting. He had plotted diligently to avoid duty in the Wehrmacht, and for years his plan had succeeded when a friendly employer placed him on the indispensable list, subject to call only in a dire emergency. But the call finally came with the invasion of Russia, and Neist went off to basic training. Until he went into action, however, he maintained a reputation as one of the least ambitious soldiers in the army.
In combat, Neist’s attitude changed. He fought hard all the way across the steppe, because it had become a matter of survival, and he won the Infantry Assault Badge. Promoted to radio specialist with Combat Group Engelke, he entered the maelstrom between the Barrikady and the tractor factory and ran through a bombed-out workers’ district. With ten men he plunged into the ground floor of what had once been an industrial shop. While setting up his wireless, word filtered in that some Russians had been trapped on an upper floor. The Germans threw satchel charges up the stairs but the Russians hurled them back down, wounding several Germans. Neist and his comrades were so exhausted they decided to leave the enemy alone for awhile. That night they slept two at a time, while the rest stood watch at windows, doors, and at the staircase. Upstairs, the Russians made no sound.
In the morning the battle began again. Two Russians crept down the stairs and fired bursts from tommy guns, then retreated. The Germans tried to figure out a way to retaliate; some thought of using a freight elevator in the corner, but ruled that out as too noisy. All were afraid to go up the stairway.
When Neist tried to radio headquarters, the iron girders in the room interfered with reception. Finally he managed to get through on a walkie-talkie: “This is Sea Rose,” he kept repeating, and the command post broke in to acknowledge. Neist told them, “We are in the third white house… and we need reinforcements urgently.”
The squad waited twenty-four hours before the new men came. In the meantime the Russians upstairs had been quiet. A runner brought hot coffee to Neist and his men and promised more food later in the day. From across the street, German snipers with telescopic sights tracked the Russians through the windows. Single shots rang out and Neist heard screams from above, then silence. After a few hours, the Germans cautiously moved up the dark stairwell. Outside the door, they paused. Their breath came heavily as they counted slowly and then smashed the door in. Seven Russians lay on the floor, shot to death.
Neist went down to the cellar and fell asleep. Around him the dreadful noise of battle continued without letup.
On October 24, Lt. Wilhelm Kreiser of the 100th Division celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday. While he sat in a chair, a Russian tank fired a shell that went between his legs and on into the next room. Unhurt, Kreiser stayed low the rest of the day.
The following morning, he went into action against the Barrikady where the main line of resistance was along a railway embankment. Kreiser directed his platoons into their jumping-off sections and waited for the Stukas to prepare the way. When they arrived, their bombs fell only two hundred yards ahead and Kreiser had to fire recognition flares several times to keep the Stukas from attacking his people. Despite the pinpoint bombing, the attack failed.
After dinner, Kreiser received orders for another attack and, at 10:00 A.M. on October 26, thousands of German guns laid down a drumfire on the Russian positions. Kreiser had never heard or seen anything like it. The shelling lasted for half an hour. When it stopped, silence prevailed and in the stillness German soldiers jumped up and ran across the railroad tracks and onto the cliff. Kreiser saw tracer bullets arching up from the shore and knew his men had reached their final destination, the Volga itself. The lieutenant felt the war was over, the Russians finished at last. He miscalculated badly.
Stunned by the bombardment, Soviet soldiers had burrowed into cellars and holes and waited for the enemy to pass by. The Germans, standing on the Volga cliff, now had Russians behind them.
Kreiser moved forward with several platoons to help his men trapped on the riverbank. He came to a battered schoolhouse, put his men around it on three sides and called for artillery. But the antipersonnel shells merely bounced off the thick walls. Highexplosive rounds were not available.
Assuming that headquarters would send more troops past him to the Volga, Kreiser dove into a potato cellar to set up a command post. No support came. Night fell and the Germans trapped at the Volga stood their ground, firing at shadowy figures closing in on them. Only a few lived to crawl back to their own lines.
The front froze, immobile; neither side had the strength left to win.
Quartermaster Karl Binder came to the Barrikady that day, too. He had just returned from the grain silo, where he had taken out some of the precious wheat for which so many had died in September. On his way back, he noticed how much of the city had been destroyed. Almost all the smaller houses and mud cottages had been smashed. He saw Russian civilians dragging bodies into shell holes and covering them over, and Binder sensed it
