bearings and wandered in the freezing cold for a long time before he found his own bunker. It took him hours to get the chill from his bones.
For other German troops, the cancellation caused terrible hardship, creating disgust and doubt. These men had come from Gumrak and the southwest corner of the pocket to lead the breakout. Now they trudged back to bunkers built months before in anticipation of the Russian winter. But they found no shelter; the Russians had infiltrated during their absence and seized their shelters.
Thus, schoolteacher Friedrich Breining had to establish a series of shallow trenches in the open that were whipped by wind and drifting snow. In such exposed positions, Breining began to wonder whether he could survive for long.
Lt. Hans Oettl was in the same predicament. Disgusted with the turn of events, he raged inwardly at the German High Command. “Now we are sold out!” he muttered. But Oettl was almost alone in his opinion. Most of his men argued that the Fuhrer would not let them down. Oettl laughed sarcastically at them.
Lt. Wilhelm Kreiser heard the news in the very potato cellar that he had seized at the end of October. “It’s like a blow from a club,” he told his friends. Few in Kreiser’s company believed in the airlift.
The Russians in front of Kreiser were already more aggressive. While he had limited amounts of ammunition and food, the enemy lavished shells on his position. Every time Kreiser lit a fire, the Russians shot at the trail of smoke curling from the house.
To prepare for any eventuality, the lieutenant ordered a trench dug behind the command post. He wanted to be ready for the worst.
Sgt. Hubert Wirkner, a native of Upper Silesia, was too busy to analyze the future. Surrounded by smoldering vehicles, the twentyone- year-old veteran of campaigns in Poland, France, and Crete was running for his life. His 14th Panzer Division had just been ordered east, across the Don to Stalingrad. All secret matter was to be destroyed; all vehicles not needed for combat were to be burned.
Billowing fog enveloped Wirkner and his comrades as explosions shattered the air and flaming wreckage spewed into the fields. Wirkner rode through the chaos, over the frozen Don, and into the western perimeter of the pocket around Peskovatka. The Russians did not follow closely.
At Sixth Army Headquarters, a stranger introduced himself to Paulus. Maj. Coelestin von Zitzewitz had just arrived from Rastenburg.
On the previous evening, at the Fuhrer’s headquarters, Zitzewitz had spoken with Gen. Kurt Zeitzler, who gave him an unusual set of verbal orders, “Sixth Army has been encircled…. You will fly out to Stalingrad with a signals section of the Operations Communications Regiment. I want you to report directly to me, as fully as possible and as quickly as possible. You will have no operational duties. We are not worried: General Paulus is managing very nicely. Any questions?”
The bewildered Zitzewitz had none.
Zeitzler went on. “Tell General Paulus that everything is being done to restore contact….”
Coelestin von Zitzewitz told this to Paulus the next day. Paulus asked him how the German High Command intended to raise the siege. When Zitzewitz had no answer, Paulus spoke for a short time about the proposed airlift. He emphasized that he needed five hundred tons a day over the long run, and stressed the fact that such an amount had been promised him.
Before dismissing Zitzewitz, Paulus added that he thought Sixth Army would serve a more useful function if allowed to withdraw west from the Volga to a more defensible line near Rostov. He kept repeating that statement, saying that his generals supported this view. Zitzewitz felt a wave of sympathy for the softspoken general, plagued by an incessant tic which contorted his handsome face. To the major, Paulus seemed weighed down by an intolerable burden.
Zitzewitz’s arrival at Sixth Army headquarters sparked comments from the staff. A few officers, notably Arthur Schmidt, wondered openly whether the major had been sent to spy on Sixth Army’s leadership during the crisis’.
Meanwhile, Paulus received a cable that offered unexpected hope:
Manstein to Paulus
24 November 1300 hours
Will assume command on 26 November. Shall do everything in my power to relieve you…. In the meantime it is imperative that Sixth Army, while holding Volga and north front in compliance with Fuhrer orders, forms up forces in order, if necessary, to clear a supply channel toward the southwest.
Field Marshal Erich von Manstein had first learned of this plan on November 21 when OKW had reached him at Eleventh Army Headquarters in Vitebsk, 280 miles west of Moscow. He had been appointed commander of the newly formed Army Group Don, comprising the encircled Sixth Army, “Papa” Hoth’s battered Fourth Panzer Army, and the remnants of Rumanian divisions scattered on the steppe. OKW told Manstein his primary task was to carve a corridor to Sixth Army so that supplies could be sent the Germans fighting at the Volga. But at no time was the field marshal alerted to bring the Sixth Army out of the
Dubious about the practicality of holding on to Stalingrad, Manstein boarded a train which crossed the steppe toward Novocherkassk, just outside Rostov. As he gazed thoughtfully out the window at the unending sea of snow, he remembered that only ten years before he had traversed it as a guest of the Soviet government. That had been during the incredible era of secret cooperation between Stalin and the German Weimar Republic, when for several years, promising German officers had gone to school with their counterparts in the Red Army and, at the same time, German aviators practiced dive-bombing techniques on targets around the Don. The Western powers of World War I, sensitive to any German rearmament, had never learned of this clandestine arrangement until it was too late to stop it.
The irony of the situation struck Manstein as he stared at the forbidding hostility of the steppe. Again and again, his mind wandered to his comrades trapped at Stalingrad and he harbored few illusions about their fate. The field marshal was convinced that Paulus had already wasted any decent chance to leave safely.
On his arrival at Novocherkassk, two letters awaited him. One was from Paulus. Handwritten, plaintive, it sought to pinpoint the Sixth Army’s dilemma:
…Both my flanks were exposed in two days…the outcome is still uncertain.
In this difficult situation, I sent the Fuhrer a signal, asking for freedom….
I have received no direct reply to this signal….
In the very next few days the supply situation can lead to a crisis of the utmost gravity.
I still believe, however, that the Army can hold out for a time. On the other hand—even if anything like a corridor is cut through to me—it is still not possible to tell whether the daily increasing weakness of the Army will allow the area around Stalingrad to be held for any length of time….
…I should be grateful if I could be provided with more information than hitherto, in order to increase the confidence of my men….
At the bottom of the page, Paulus apologized for the poor quality of the paper and his scrawl.
The other letter was from Marshal Ion Antonescu, the Rumanian chief of state, who was complaining bitterly of the mistreatment of his soldiers by German officers and troops.
Manstein was furious to receive such a letter because he respected the Rumanians’ contribution to the war effort. Also, he already knew the shocking details of the destruction of Antonescu’s armies. Originally there had been twenty-two divisions. Nine had been destroyed in the field; nine others had broken and fled. Only four were fit
