regiment, and blocked the road south.
The beautiful stone church in the middle of town was the rallying point of the Soviet defense. Its thick walls defied destruction. In the darkness, thousands of Italians ran toward it, hollering their battle cry: “
With a clear field of fire, Bracci shot round after round at the building, but the Russian fire never slackened. In the unnatural light, the church’s basement glowed brightly from gunbursts and flames. But above the crescendo of combat, of orders being shouted and countermanded, Bracci also heard the moans and pitiful crying that marked the terrible cost Of the battle.
The price was too high. Italian commanders finally called back their troops, and the Bersaglieri reformed and trudged back to Kalmikoff.
There, at a tense meeting the next morning, Bracci was told to dig in with his guns until support troops arrived; his commanding officer promised that a German task force was on the way. It was wishful thinking on his part. Mortar fire suddenly descended from surrounding hills and induced immediate panic among most of the Bersaglieri, who stampeded. Bracci crouched beside a house, which exploded and showered him with debris. Dazed but unhurt, the lieutenant staggered out to the road and jumped on the running board of a passing car, which plunged into a drift and bogged down.
At that moment, Russian horsemen appeared on the brow of the hill. While mortar shells kept exploding, the trapped Italians raised their hands in surrender. A colonel beside Bracci looked at his watch. “This is the end for us,” he said mournfully. “We are prisoners.”
It was 9:30 A.M. on the morning of December 21.
That same morning, intelligence officers of Manstein’s Army Group Don were entertaining an important guest.
German troops had intercepted the commander of the Russian Third Guards Army, Maj. Gen. Ivan Pavlovitch Krupennikov, in an ambush the night before and, after a running gunfight, he had surrendered with most of his staff. Treating Krupennikov with the honor due his rank, the Germans fed him generously, then asked him pertinent questions about his army. In turn, he inquired about his son, Yuri, who was missing after the firefight. The Germans promised to find him, sent soldiers to bring the lieutenant to his father, and the grateful Krupennikov began to talk.
He said he was only the acting commander; his superior, General Lelyushenko, had been sick for ten days. Because he knew the Germans would soon learn it from documents captured in his briefcase, he also revealed other information: His troop strength was approximately ninety-seven thousand men. His army mustered 274 tanks and more than five hundred artillery pieces heavier than .75 caliber. But when his interrogators pressed him for other information, such as new units at the front, their makeup and purpose, he balked and cited his soldier’s honor.
The interrogators switched tactics, asking the general about conditions on the Russian home front. Krupennikov told them that food shortages did exist, due mostly to transportation problems. In parts of Siberia and Central Asia, he said, surplus crops had been harvested, but the government left them there in order to keep the railroads free to carry troops and heavy equipment to the fronts.
Gratuitously, Krupennikov offered the opinion that, at one point, he had thought Russia would lose the war. However, when he had seen the pitiful condition of German prisoners near Moscow, he no longer considered the Nazis to be “supermen.” Now he did not think much of German expectations of victory.
Meanwhile, his hosts had checked his son’s whereabouts. Soldiers who combed the surrounding fields reported no trace of the officer, and felt he must have succumbed to wounds somewhere on the snowfields. The interrogators went back and lied to Krupennikov, telling him that Yuri was wounded, could not be transported, but was not in danger of losing his life. Greatly relieved, the Russian general continued the question and answer period.
He was explicit about Russian plans. The main Soviet strategy was to thrust to Rostov and cut off the Germans in the Caucasus. Their first attacks on November 19 and 20, between Serafimovich and Kletskaya and south of Stalingrad, had served only a limited objective, trapping the Sixth Army at the Volga. The second phase, the current attack, was intended to “break through the front of the Italian Eighth Army west of Serafimovich at the Don and fall on the back of the German troops at Morozovskaya…”
The final order, to drive due south from the Don to Rostov, had not been issued as of the day Krupennikov was captured. But he believed that “due to slight losses in rolling up the Italian part of the front,” such an operation was possible. This final bit of information was important enough to rush to Field Marshal von Manstein at Novocherkassk, and a typist began to write up a statement on Krupennikov’s disclosures.
The interrogation room was filled with gloom. German intelligence officers could only assume that what they had learned was bound to produce an adverse effect on Army Group Don’s plan to reach the Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
That plan was already in jeopardy. While the Germans questioned Krupennikov, Russian soldiers were blocking further passage to the
So many wounded Germans lay unattended, officers wondered where they could put them in case an order came for retreat. While shells whined overhead, some of the less seriously hurt men suddenly stopped moaning and died. The subzero temperature had claimed them.
Teletype conversation General Schmidt—General Schulz:
+++ Here General Schmidt.
+++ Here Schulz.
[The general had vital questions for Sixth Army:] 1. What is your present fuel supply? Give the amounts of Diesel and Auto separately.
2. How many kilometers does that mean? Does this amount of fuel suffice to extend the pocket toward the south while still holding the remaining fronts?
3. If the fuel situation permits you to advance that far, can you do it in view of the available troops?
4. How much fuel is used up daily for the most urgent supply trips within the pocket? Can you answer these questions right away?
[Schmidt had the answers within minutes:] +++ 1. The presently available amount is about 130 cubic meters Auto and 10 Diesel, including today’s air supply and the amounts needed for supply trips during the next few days.
3. Even considering the troop situation we could make 20 km, but we cannot hold the breakthrough front [south] and the fortress for any length of time without the troops committed in the attack and, in particular, not without the armored vehicles. On the contrary, we need replacements in the fortress in the very near future, if we are supposed to hold it. Any sortie with the inevitable casualties involved will jeopardize the defense of the fortress itself.
4. The daily amount used for supply trips is 30 cubic meters.
[Schulz countered with bad news:] +++ The Supreme Command of the Army still has not given approval for
In view of the number of troops committed by the enemy
