metal to alert his crew, which burst out of the hut. Two tanks had not yet crossed the bridge. The .88-millimeter gun fired at a three-hundred-yard range, and the T-34s ignited. The second in line teetered for a moment, then somersaulted directly onto the frozen surface of the Don below.
When the first tanks went over, cameraman Schroter had been even closer to the bridge. A lieutenant suddenly ran past him, yelling unintelligibly, and Schroter thought he had gone berserk. The officer was waving a pistol until a machine gun stuttered and he pitched to the ground.
Schroter grabbed his equipment and ran. So did most of the Germans in the immediate vicinity. In the underbrush on the east bank, Col. Grigor Fillipov radioed frantically back to the Soviet 26th Armored Brigade for help. He had won the bridge by sheer luck but he expected the Germans to react viciously.
While Colonel Fillipov dug in at Kalach, the phone rang in General Schmidt’s office at Chir, fifteen miles to the south. It was Luftwaffe commander Martin Fiebig calling, and he again warned about the folly of an airlift, “Both the weather and the enemy are completely incalculable factors….” But the conversation was interrupted by a group of German generals, who suddenly swept into the headquarters.
“Papa” Hoth had arrived from Businovka, where the southern flank had totally evaporated. At a loss to give a clear picture of the nightmare, Hoth listened intently while Schmidt and an old friend and school classmate, Gen. Wolfgang Pickert, debated a solution. Mimicking a former professor’s manner, Schmidt said, “Pickert, decision with brief statement of reasons!”
Pickert’s answer was incisive. “Get the hell out of here!”
Schmidt agreed but went on, “We cannot do that. For one thing, we don’t have enough gas.”
Pickert offered to help with his antiaircraft troops, who could manhandle guns across the flat land and carry ammunition by hand.
Schmidt continued, “We have, of course, considered breaking out, but to reach the Don means thirty miles of steppe without any cover…. No, Pickett, it could only have a Napoleonic ending…. The army has been ordered to hold its ground at Stalingrad. Consequently we shall fortify our positions and expect supplies from the air.”
Pickert could not believe what he heard. “… From the air? In this weather? It’s quite out of the question. You must get out, I say. Get started now!”
But Sixth Army did not get started. Even though General Paulus was convinced it should, he continued to wait for Hitler’s approval. In the meantime, he put his army on alert to move quickly in case permission came.
At 2:00 P.M., after Hoth had flown west to gather together he remnants of his shattered Fourth Army, Paulus and Schmidt went back to Gumrak at the edge of Stalingrad. Flying over the bulk of their army, hemmed in between the Don and Volga, the generals saw bright fires on both sides of the aircraft as men of the Sixth Army began to burn unneeded equipment.
Warehouses filled with food and clothing were being put to the torch. At one of them, Lt. Gerhard Dietzel tried to salvage something from the flames. Seeing a cache of champagne and wine about to be consumed, he raced back and forth between the inferno and his Volkswagen with armfuls of bottles. When the car was filled, Dietzel jumped in and started the motor. A supply officer blocked his way:
“Can you pay for it?” he demanded.
Dietzel began to laugh uproariously. Pointing at the raging fires, he replied, “But, don’t you see, money doesn’t mean anything anymore!” He gunned the motor and raced off with his treasure.
At Kalach, Russian Colonel Fillipov unexpectedly received reinforcements when tanks of the 26th Armored Brigade charged across the bridge and joined him at the eastern edge of town. It was incredible, but with German resistance only sporadic and ineffective, the 26th Brigade then wheeled southeast out of Kalach and headed toward the village of Sovetsky, thirty miles away. And somewhere beyond Sovetsky, General Yeremenko’s southern-front troops were driving up toward a junction with their comrades.
German soldiers inside the rapidly developing pocket learned of their plight in different ways.
At a field hospital, a pharmacist named Wendt was passing out morphine and bandages to medics when a soldier ran in and announced: “The Russians have closed the bridge at Karach!” Wendt thought he was joking, but when a friend phoned headquarters and confirmed the story, Wendt refused to panic. He thought the mess would be cleaned up quickly.
A veteran sergeant, Eugen Steinhilber, learned the bitter truth when several of his comrades left by bus to go to Chir, and from there back to Germany for furlough. They were back in a few hours, saying: “We can’t get over the Don. The Russians have the bridge.” Since Steinhilber had been in a pocket once before and gotten out safely, the news failed to faze him. He had just written to his wife, “By December I’ll be home. I’ll go back to school… and finish my training as electrical engineer….”
From his new Gumrak command post, Paulus sent another urgent cable. In it, he begged for the chance to save his Army:
HQ Sixth Army
G3 Section
22 November 42, 1900 hours
To Army Group B
The Army is encircled…. South front still open east of the Don. Don frozen over and crossable….There is little fuel left; once that is used up, tanks and heavy weapons will be immobile
Ammunition is short, provisions will last for six more days…. Request freedom of action…. Situation might compel abandonment of Stalingrad and northern front….
Three hours later he received a vague answer from the Fuhrer, “Sixth Army must know that I am doing everything to help and to relieve it…. I shall issue my orders in good time.”
Hitler was still puzzled about how to save Paulus, but until he decided on the best course of action he intended to keep Sixth Army in position. Most of that afternoon was spent with Kurt Zeitzler and Albert Jeschonnek. Both officers had come to the
Though Zeitzler felt Jeschonnek was not forceful enough in making his case, Hermann Goering thought otherwise when he heard details of the conference. He called Jeschonnek and warned him not to “put the Fuhrer out of sorts.”
That night, Hitler came down from his mountain and went by train to Leipzig, where a plane waited to fly him to Rastenburg, East Prussia. He would issue orders later.
In an earthen bunker just west of Gumrak Airfield, an impatient Friedrich von Paulus waited for the Fuhrer to allow him to quit the Volga. To reinforce his argument, Paulus again reminded his immediate superiors of the perils Sixth Army faced:
23 November, 1145 hours
To Army Group B:
Murderous attacks on all fronts….Arrival of sufficient air supplies is not believed possible, even if weather should improve. The ammunition and fuel situation will render the troops defenseless in the very near future….
Once again Army Group B forwarded the message on to Hitler at Rastenburg, along with the comment by
