Manstein. After assigning the 53rd Mortar Regiment the dangerous job of leading the breakthrough, he moved armored combat groups to the southwestern corner of the pocket. But he could find only eighty tanks fit for action.
He also called on Maj. Josef Linden, whose engineer battalions had been decimated at the Barrikady Gun Factory a few weeks before, for two special assignments. The first was plowing clear the road network around the
The second task was equally vital: Two road construction battalions and a bridge company were needed to deactivate the minefields so that the German tanks and trucks could break out quickly when Paulus gave the word.
After four days of fighting, Manstein’s soldiers were still on the way to Stalingrad, but the attack had slowed to a snail’s pace. Combat Group Hunersdorff of the 6th Panzer Division had not yet captured Verkhne-Kumski and, supported by part of the battered 23rd Panzer Division, the replenished tankers went back to the village.
The drive bogged down again so the 6th slipped off to the west to out-flank the enemy. Around the village of Sogotskot, the Russians had prepared a vast network of rifle pits that made it impossible for tanks to advance. Nor would any of the Russians surrender. From distances of ten feet or less, the Germans shot into the trenches. “The tanks stood… like elephants with fully extended trunks,” and when the Russians raised their heads, the “trunks” recoiled and blasted them with point-blank fire. Still the Russians held. Finally, when Soviet armor came up to help, Combat Group Hunersdorff again had to back away as the twilight of December 16 obscured the land between the Aksai and Mishkova rivers.
In Stalingrad, every Russian along the Volga shore heard a tremendous crashing noise and Vassili Chuikov bolted from his cave to witness a glorious sight: An enormous wave of ice was pushing down past Zaitsevski Island. “Smashing everything in its path, it crushed and pulverized small and large ice floes alike, and broke logs like matchwood,” was how he described it later. And while the general held his breath, the monstrous ice pack slowed and, just opposite Chuikov’s fortress bunker, shuddered to a halt. For minutes it groaned and heaved. Behind it, thousands more chunks of ice slammed into the jam with terrific violence. The “bridge” held.
A short time later Chuikov sent sappers across the ice to see whether it would support traffic. By 9:00 P.M. they had returned safely, and he ordered planks to build a highway to the far side.
His supply problems were over.
Just a few hundred yards west of Chuikov’s jubilant cliffside headquarters, Capt. Gerhard Meunch was faced with his first case of insubordination. It had been triggered by the Fuhrer’s “Christmas Drive,” the annual fund- raising campaign for the Nazi party that reached even into the
One platoon from Meunch’s companies refused to make any donations. When he asked the reason, an officer said: “Captain, you will have to see for yourself what is wrong.”
Meunch went to visit the platoon, reduced to six men, and inquired about the trouble. The men told him they were no longer prepared to fight. One trooper added: “Captain, I will no longer play the game. We are fed up!”
Stunned by their attitude, Meunch wisely decided to say nothing. He sent the men to the rear and waited beside their machine gun until replacements came to fill the gap. Then he went to his command post, called for the rebels and told them they could sleep at his quarters that night.
In the morning, he shared breakfast with them, and as the group sat on the floor sipping hot coffee, Meunch watched them carefully and noticed they seemed a bit more relaxed. Gingerly he brought up the previous night’s difficulty. The rebels answered without hesitation.
The underlying cause of their mutiny was a letter from one of the soldier’s wives, who had asked why he was at the front while several of his friends stayed at home. The soldier had been so upset that he had read the letter to his friends. It had driven them into a state of rebellion as they, too, began to wonder why they had to fight the war for malingerers in Germany.
Meunch let them talk out their bitterness, then brought them back to reality. “According to martial law, you are liable to punishment,” he told them. “You know how refusal to obey an order will be punished. Are you prepared to return to your positions, and not desert or do foolish things? Can you promise that?”
They answered with a spontaneous chorus of yesses. One soldier went further, “We will fight for you as long as you command the battalion. But if you are wounded or killed, we wish to be free to make our decisions.”
Meunch considered the offer briefly, then chose to compromise. “All right, confirm it by handshake,” he replied. “As long as I command the battalion you will have to fight. Thereafter you may do what you want.”
The men shook hands with him on the bargain.
Later that day, December 17, 150 miles to the southwest at Novocherkassk, Erich von Manstein dined with Freiherr von Richthofen. While the two men sipped wine, they ranged over their mutual problems in trying to save the Sixth Army. Richthofen had just lost two of his bomber squadrons, which OKW had transferred without notice to another sector. To Richthofen, the move was tantamount to “abandoning Sixth Army to its fate….” He minced no words when he exclaimed that it was “plain murder!”
He had phoned Gen. Albert Jeschonnek back in East Prussia to make that charge. But Jeschonnek “formally disclaimed all responsibility” for the order. Now Richthofen confided this conversation to Manstein. Both men were appalled by the decisions being made from the safety of the Wolf’s Lair, more than a thousand miles away.
By the time dinner ended, the two were in agreement; they were “like a couple of attendants in a lunatic asylum.”
After dinner, OKW’s decision to transfer the Stukas back to the upper Don suddenly became clear. Another Russian attack had routed two Italian divisions from their positions fifty miles west of Serafimovich. No one yet realized that this was the opening of Stalin’s second great attack, aimed at seizing the port city of Rostov and trapping the entire German army in Southern Russia. Reports so far were sketchy, but Manstein added what fragmentary information he possessed to his pessimistic appraisal of the future. He was well aware of the disaster the news implied. If the Italian Army failed to hold, his German divisions would have to go to their rescue. The result: Sixth Army at Stalingrad would be lost. Overwhelmed by a sense of onrushing catastrophe, the field marshal fixed his attention on the men in the
For days, Manstein had bombarded Hitler and Gen. Kurt Zeitzler about the need to issue a Fuhrer Order for Operation
No matter how bloody the outcome of this retreat might be, at this stage of the battle, Manstein considered Operation Thunderclap the only practical solution. The airlift had obviously failed: Hoth’s rescue force could only channel a few days’ worth of supplies into the pocket.
To date, however, Hitler had agreed only to Operation Winter Storm, the physical linkup by Hoth’s forces to resupply the Sixth Army. The Fuhrer still forbade Paulus to withdraw from the
When General Zeitzler agreed with Manstein on the need for Thunderclap, and promised to get approval from Hitler within a matter of hours, Manstein regarded Hitler’s agreement as a foregone conclusion. Thus, on December 17, he briefed his intelligence chief, Major Eismann, on the situation and ordered him to fly into the
The next afternoon Paulus made an inspection tour of the front. It left him extremely depressed, for he saw multiplying evidence of his troops’ physical decline. The men moved slowly and were indifferent to commands. Their faces had become pinched. With eyes sunken behind protruding cheekbones, many just stared into space.
Returning to Gumrak, he found Major Eismann and greeted him cordially, as did Arthur Schmidt, who had campaigned with Eismann in France in 1940. Eismann quickly made it clear that Hoth’s relief column could only
