Enemy at the Gates

General von Weichs who agreed totally with Paulus’s analysis of the situation.

On the steppe beyond the Don, General Heim’s 48th Panzer Corps continued its swirling series of tank battles with marauding Soviet columns. As a result, it was impossible to link up with any Rumanian forces still fighting on the vast plain. Russian radiojammers even managed to convey bogus signals to any units seeking General Heim.

Between the Chir and Kletskaya at the Don, the last Rumanian outposts were about to fall. Gen. Mihail Lascar, a mustachioed strongman, had collected elements of four divisions in the midst of “burning houses and Rumanian corpses.” The Russians called on him to surrender and he wired German Army Group B for authority to break out. By the time permission arrived, he was trapped. Instead of surrendering, Lascar released four thousand men and sent them to seek union, if they could do so, with Heim’s 48th Panzer Corps, somewhere on the steppe. Then Lascar walked into captivity, his reputation unsullied by defeat. The battlefield he left “was a fantastic sight… full of dead horses…some horses were only half dead, standing on three frozen legs, shaking the remaining broken one….”

The soldiers he had released wandered dazedly, begging food, freezing to death beside the road. A trail of bodies marked each highway, down which roared lengthening columns of Russian tanks and trucks; only a few Rumanians reached Heim, who shepherded them and his ill-fated panzers south toward freedom. Miraculously, his forces made it to the bank of the river Chir. But within hours, German military police arrested him. Hitler had accused him of dereliction of duty in not stopping the Soviet offensive with his mobile reserves. The Fuhrer insisted that Heim had disobeyed Army High Command instructions radioed to him in the field and thus had failed to attack the enemy at crucial times in the first hours of conflict. Stunned by the charges against him, Heim went home to Germany to face a military tribunal.

During a tense, gloomy conference at Rostov, General Steflea, the Rumanian Army chief of staff, met with a German liaison Qfficer and read field reports of Lascar’s surrender. Appalled at what had happened to his Third and Fourth armies, Steflea berated his ally: “All the warnings which for weeks I have been giving to the German authorities have passed unheeded…. Of the four divisions of the Fourth Rumanian Army there are only three battalions left… German Army Headquarters failed to meet our requirements. And that is why two Rumanian armies have been destroyed.”

The German liaison officer could not rebut the charges. Instead, he promised to pass on General Steflea’s statements to higher authority.

At roadblocks outside the town of Sovetsky, fifteen miles southeast of the bridge at Kalach, Soviet T-34 tanks dueled at ten-yard range with German rear guards trying to hold the village. The din of this battle reached Russian tankers of Gen. Viktor Volsky’s 4th Mechanized Corps as they cautiously probed the fields south and west of the town. Nervous because they were close to lead elements of the Russian spearheads from the northern Don offensive, they kept shooting green recognition flares to announce their own presence. Just before 4:00 P.M. on November 23, another series of green flares soared upward from the northwest and Volsky’s T-34s roared ahead. Hundreds of white-clad Russians surged toward them and the two forces came together in a frenzy of shouts, embraces, and tears.

Almost hysterical with joy, the Russian soldiers danced about in the snow to celebrate an incredible triumph. In less than ninetysix hours, they had sprung a trap around the German Sixth Army. Inside that “pocket” were more than 250 thousand German troops —prisoners, isolated on a vast plain of snow.

All over Russia, radio announcers were hailing the Red Army’s incredible victories. The names Kalach and Sovetsky rang through the airwaves as the Soviet people heard for the first time of the encirclement at Stalingrad.

But in Moscow, Stalin did not celebrate. The premier had “gotten his blood up” as he sensed an even greater opportunity for his armies in the south. Looking at the maps, he saw the possibility of creating an even larger pocket. Several hundred miles below the encirclement at the Volga, German Army Group A stood immobile in the Caucasus. If the Red Army could capture the city of Rostov on the Sea of Azov, the Stalingrad trap would become just a minor phase of a greater triumph. Thus Stalin urged his generals on:

23 November 1942

1940 hours

To Comrade Dontsov [Rokossovsky]

Copy for Comrade Mikhailov [Vasilevsky]

According to Mikhailov’s report, the 3rd Motorized and the 16th Armored Division of the enemy are either wholly or in part transferred from your front….This circumstance makes the situation favorable for all armies of your front to step up actions. Galinin is too slow….

Also tell Zhadov to start more active operations and try to tie down the enemy.

Give Batov a push; he could be much more forceful in the present situation.

General Paulus was ready to break out of the newly formed pocket, a situation the Germans called “Der Kessel” (“The Cauldron”). In the past twenty-four hours he had assembled a battering ram of armor, artillery, and mounted infantry that would force a path to the southwest. The special group had massed around Gumrak Airfield. Lt. Hans Oettl was there; like everyone else, he was in an expectant mood. Pleased that something positive was about to happen, he watched tanks being painted white and troops receiving special white camouflage parkas.

Lt. Emil Metzger also was there, radiating enthusiasm. Since his nebelwerfer battery was attached to Sixth Army Headquarters, he would supply part of the firepower needed to blast a corridor through the thin Russian lines near Sovetsky. Metzger was convinced the operation would succeed.

Hours passed and Paulus did not give the order to attack. Hitler still had not given his blessing to the maneuver. Paulus cabled Hitler again.

23 November 1942

Mein Fuhrer,

Since receipt of your wireless signal of 22 November, the situation has developed with extreme rapidity….

Ammunition and fuel are running short…. A timely and adequate replenishment is not possible….

…I must forthwith withdraw all the divisions from Stalingrad itself and further considerable forces from the northern perimeter….

In view of the situation, I request you to grant me complete freedom of action.

Heil, mein Fuhrer!

Paulus

2130 hours, 23 November 1942

While this message was being transmitted, one of Paulus’s generals, Seydlitz-Kurzbach, tried to trigger an unauthorized retreat from the Volga. He ordered the 94th Infantry Division to vacate its sector at the northeastern corner of the pocket. The purpose of his plan was to stampede neighboring German units into similar withdrawals which, in turn, would force Paulus to order an exodus from the Kessel.

Thus, on the night of November 23, Russian sentries saw giant fires blazing inside the 94th’s perimeter and alerted Vassili Chuikov’s command post. The flames flared again and again as ammunition dumps exploded into the black sky. In the balkas, German soldiers stuffed belongings into knapsacks and shouldered rifles before blowing up their bunkers with hand grenades. Important documents went into stoves. Senior officers wearing the distinctively red-striped trousers of the German General Staff took them off and burned