In an earthen bunker just west of Gumrak Airfield, an impatient Friedrich von Paulus waited for the Führer 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.…
Paulus
Once again Army Group B forwarded the message on to Hitler at Rastenburg, along with the comment by 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 radio-jammers 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 Führer 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 officer 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 ninety-six 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:
To Comrade Dontsov [Rokossovsky] 23 November 1942 Copy for Comrade Mikhailov [Vasilevsky] 1940 hours
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 Führer,
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 Führer!
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 them. At a regimental command post, where orders were given to pull back from entrenched positions, the briefing officer coldly remarked that the “planned retreat” meant the loss of one-third of “our people.”
But as the 94th Division left its positions, the Soviet Sixty-second Army fell upon it. Lt. Gunter Toepke heard the Russians coming, screaming “Urrah! Urrah!” over and over and over. As he plunged blindly for cover, the Russians took a fearful toll. Caught in the open, and defenseless against the “steamroller” waves of Red Army attackers, the Germans died by the hundreds.
By dawn, the 94th Division “ceased to exist.” Worse, General Seydlitz-Kurzbach’s plan backfired. Other German units held their ground and the anticipated mass stampede to the west never took place. But the general was unrepentant. Arrogant, mulish, he insisted that his strategy was the only correct one, and that the loss of several thousand men was a small price to pay for the greater goal he had sought, the salvation of Sixth Army.
Seydlitz-Kurzbach’s unilateral action reaped other unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. From inside Stalingrad, a Luftwaffe radioman wired news of the unauthorized withdrawal and destruction of the 94th Division directly to Hitler at Rastenburg. But no one bothered to tell Paulus, only a scant twenty miles away from the tragedy.
The news sent Hitler into a frenzy. Ranting at Paulus for disobeying his instructions to hold fast, he resolved to end any future insubordination once and for all. At 0838 hours on the morning of November 24, he sent a drastic message to the Sixth Army. Under the heading, “Führerbefehl,” the highest priority Führer Decree, it set down precise defense lines for a new fortress, or Festung. Warning Paulus to maintain these lines because relief was at hand, Hitler declared, “Sixth Army will adopt hedgehog defense.… Present Volga front and northern front to be held at all costs.… Supplies coming by air.”
After two tense days of frantic communications, the Führer had delivered an incredible verdict. He denied Paulus any freedom of movement or decision. Further, he robbed Sixth Army of its chance to escape while the Russians were trying to strengthen their hold around the pocket.
In issuing his orders, Hitler assumed that Paulus would remain subservient to higher authority in such a grave moment. He guessed correctly. Temperamentally unsuited to reject a command from the Führer, Paulus canceled the breakout, and put his trust in the promise of an airlift.
Yet the airlift was only a topic of discussion in East Prussia. Hitler still did not know whether the Luftwaffe could support Sixth Army, and he was waiting for authoritative word on the matter. A short time later, a special train passed through concentric rings of SS watchtowers and pillboxes outside the Wolf’s Lair, and the grossly overweight, bemedalled Reichmarshal of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, huffed down to pay obeisance. His failure to deliver England, his failure to prevent massive bombings of the Fatherland, had eroded Goering’s position in the tenuous hierarchy of the Nazi regime. Nominally he was still heir to the mantle worn by Hitler, but now he was ignored by his leader and jeered at by men such as Martin Bormann. Recently he had been living in isolation in Karinhall, his magnificent estate south of Berlin. From there he directed a hunt for art treasures through the museums of occupied Europe, and indulged in drugs which eased his sense of failure.
When the question of an airlift arose, the deflated Goering seized the opportunity to ingratiate himself with Hitler and to reverse his ebbing fortunes. He brushed aside General Jeschonnek’s reservations about the inadequate airfields and bad weather in Russia, and rushed to Rastenburg, arriving in the middle of an argument. Gen. Kurt Zeitzler was warning against an extended airlift, “The Luftwaffe should muster every available aircraft and fly in fuel and ammunition only. That way the breakout can succeed.”
When Goering appeared, Hitler asked his opinion.
Goering had his answer ready. “My Führer, I announce that the Luftwaffe will supply the Sixth Army from the air.”
Zeitzler was furious. “The Luftwaffe just can’t do it. Are you aware, Herr Reichsmarshal, how many daily sorties the army in Stalingrad will need?”
Goering flushed. “Not personally, but my staff knows.”
“Seven hundred tons! Every day! Even assuming that every horse in the encirclement area is slaughtered, it would still leave five hundred tons.” Zeitzler would not relent. “Every day five hundred tons landed from the air.”
The Reichsmarshal recovered his composure. Grandly, he boasted, “I can manage that.”
“It’s a lie!” Zeitzler screamed.
In the sudden silence that enveloped the table, Goering turned beet red. His fists knotted as if to strike the army’s chief of staff.
Hitler let his aides argue heatedly. Finally he broke in, his voice hard, devoid of sympathy for the impassioned Zeitzler, “The Reichsmarshal has made his announcement, and I am obliged to believe him. The decision is up to me.”
Waiting outside the room, General Adolf Heusinger saw a beaming Goering emerge with an equally happy Hitler. To Heusinger it was apparent that an entire German Army wandering the snowfields of the Russian steppe now had to depend on Goering’s promises. Heusinger felt a sense of doom.
From Rastenburg, orders flashed to Luftflotte 4 in Russia to fly three hundreds tons a day into Stalingrad. As soon as more planes were made available, the Luftwaffe was expected to meet Paulus’s minimum demands of five hundred tons to keep his men alive. Hitler had Goering’s word on it.
The Führer next turned his attention to Paulus. Still ignorant of the insubordination committed by General Seydlitz-Kurzbach, he sent another curt signal to Gumrak:
Radio message (urgent) from Army Group B
Number 1422 to HQ Sixth Army
TOP SECRET
The Führer wishes that, because of its decisive importance for the Sixth Army, the north part of the fortified area Stalingrad, … be placed under the command of one military commander. This commander will be responsible to the Führer that this fortified area is held at any price. The Führer, therefore, has charged General of the Artillery von Seydlitz … with this responsibility. This does not affect the overall responsibility of the Commander in Chief of the Sixth Army.…
By order of the Führer
By now, Paulus knew the disaster Seydlitz-Kurzbach had perpetrated, but for some inexplicable reason Paulus refused to tell Hitler that the man he trusted actually had defied him. Instead, Paulus took the Führer’s latest order to Seydlitz-Kurzbach’s bunker and handed the document to the silver-haired officer.
When Seydlitz-Kurzbach finished reading it, Paulus asked, “And what are you going to do now?”
Seydlitz-Kurzbach laconically replied, “I suppose there is nothing I can do but obey.”
Many German soldiers accepted the news of the canceled breakout with resignation.
Cpl. Heinz Neist could not imagine that such a large army would be left to rot. Though briefly nagged by the thought that nobody would be able to help, the thirty-one-year-old Neist refused to let his spirits sag. In his cellar west of the Barrikady Gun Factory, he stayed by his radio and waited complacently for someone to come and rescue him.
Josef Metzler’s commanding officer personally told him about the aborted maneuver. When the major hastened to add that he doubted the Russians would be able to keep Sixth Army encircled, Metzler believed him. He was more concerned with acquiring fur boots. Too scrupulous to steal them from Russian prisoners or to loot them from dead bodies, he waited impatiently for the lucky moment when he could own a pair. His feet were like ice.
Sgt. Albert Pflüger, a pugnacious veteran of the 297th Division on the southern edge of the pocket, was not upset by the news either. At a briefing, when an officer read an official report telling of the Russian offensive and “temporary” encirclement, Pflüger listened halfheartedly. It struck him as very funny that the words in the report seemed to rhyme.
After the meeting broke up, the sergeant waded through heavy snow toward his unit, but he lost his 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 Führer 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 twenty-one-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 Führer’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 soft-spoken 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 Führer orders, forms up forces in order, if necessary, to clear a supply channel toward the southwest.
Manstein
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 Kessel. He was only to “give it assistance,” while working closely with both Army Groups A and B to protect the right and left flanks of the Wehrmacht in southern Russia.
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 Führer 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 for battle.
Nagged by these distressing messages, Manstein plunged immediately into his primary task: reaching Sixth Army. Assuming Goering’s airlift could keep Paulus’s troops alive, Manstein hoped to carve a corridor to the fortress by mounting a two-pronged attack. One would be a diversion from the west, aimed at Kalach. Hopefully, this diversion would draw Russian units away from the second drive which would start from Kotelnikovo, seventy-three miles southwest of the pocket.
The Kotelnikovo offensive had the advantage of avoiding any crossing of the Don. Only two of its tributaries, the Aksai and Mishkova rivers, would hinder progress, and beyond the Mishkova were thirty miles of open steppe, reaching all the way to the southern perimeter of the Kessel. When the German relief troops reached the Mishkova River, Manstein then expected Paulus to burst out with his army and link up with them.
But first, Manstein needed more troops and armor. Having completed a long trip from France, the first elements of the 6th Panzer Division were unloading from trains at Kotelnikovo. The 6th Panzers boasted 160 tanks operated by elite crews. Coming a few days later behind the 6th was the 17th Panzer Division, at nearly full strength. For extra support, Manstein had called for the 16th Motorized Division, which was thirty miles east of his headquarters and presently filling the gap left by the demise of the Fourth Rumanian Army. Manstein also requested the 23rd Panzer Division. It had been reduced to twenty-five tanks, but he was not aware of its dilapidated condition.
To protect the flanks of the relief expedition, the field marshal had what was left of the Rumanian forces, hastily thrown together into two under-strength corps. But all his projections were doomed—unless the airlift nourished the Sixth Army, and an improvised defense force led by Col. Walter Wenck could stall the Russians on the steppe south of the Don.
Only a few days earlier, Wenck had received urgent orders to leave his post in the Caucasus and assume command of the “screening” line in front of the Russians pushing southward toward Rostov from Serafimovich and Kletskaya.
Needing troops and equipment, the colonel instituted his own set of rules. He rode the highways and dragooned stragglers into ad hoc units. He played movies at intersections and when exhausted soldiers stopped to watch, Wenck brusquely marched them back to war. One of his noncommissioned officers found an abandoned fuel dump and put up signs reading: “To the Fuel-Issuing Point.” Hundreds of cars, trucks, and tanks drove into this oasis only to become part of Wenck’s new army.
On November 27, when Wenck had met Manstein at Novocherkassk to discuss the situation, the field marshal bluntly reminded the colonel of his awesome responsibility:
“Wenck, you’ll answer to me with your head that the Russians won’t break through to Rostov. The Don-Chir front must hold. Otherwise not only the Sixth Army in Stalingrad, but the whole of Army Group A in the Caucasus will be lost.”
Wenck did not need a lecture. He needed extraordinary luck.