News that Army Group ‘A’ had taken the oil wells at Maikop reached Wolfram von Richthofen’s headquarters the same day. When the Generaloberst called for maps, Messner obliged within minutes. Richthofen was on the phone to Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff. He was at the Führer headquarters at Vinnitsa with Goering and Hitler. When Hitler was especially pleased, he had a habit of performing a little impromptu jig. This afternoon, according to the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff, the jig was in danger of becoming a full-blown waltz.
Only yesterday, General Paulus – still ambling far too slowly towards Stalingrad – had managed to encircle major Soviet formations at Kalach. Army Group ‘B’ had seized 50,000 prisoners and more than a thousand tanks, and Richthofen had only just returned in his tiny Storch. From two thousand metres, he said, he’d had a perfect view of Fliegerkorps VIII’s Stukas and other close-support aircraft cleaning out the pocket. This news, too, had made the Führer dance.
Now, Messner had spread the campaign map on the big conference table that dominated Richthofen’s office. Maikop and the oil wells lay in the foothills of the northern Causcusus. The news from Army Group ‘A’, on the face of it, was very good indeed, but Richthofen counselled caution. His respect for the Soviets was growing by the day. Barely a week ago, Stalin had issued an order – No. 227 according to German intelligence sources – that had chilled senior German staff officers on the southern front. The Vodzh, the great Leader, was still at his modest desk in Moscow. Ni shagu nazad!, he’d said. Not a step back!
The warning to both sides in this cut-throat war couldn’t have been clearer. The notion of retreat no longer applied anywhere on the front line. Every square inch of territory still in Soviet hands was to be defended at all costs. Deserters would be shot on sight. Mother Russia, in short, would prevail.
Messner left the campaign map with Richthofen and returned to his own office. In the early evening, he was summoned back. A long phone conversation with an officer on the spot at Maikop had confirmed Richthofen’s worst fears. Soviet troops had destroyed hundreds of wells, wrecked oil storage facilities and crippled the refineries around Maikop by removing key components. Most of the oil wells had been set ablaze and would burn for days. Concrete had been poured down other boreholes, setting solid within hours.
‘You want to know Goering’s solution?’ Richthofen glanced up. ‘He wants someone to come up with a gigantic corkscrew. What’s good for a bottle is good for an oil well. I’d love to say we’re working on it, but the engineers are in despair. Most of them want to lock Goering in that cellar of his. What the rest are saying is unprintable.’
Richthofen waved Messner into the chair in front of his desk. He rarely smoked in his office, but tonight was clearly an exception.
Messner enquired whether the Generaloberst wanted him to fly down to Maikop and file a report.
‘Not yet.’ Richthofen shook his head. ‘Maikop is a disaster but it might pay to look on the bright side. The Soviets down in the Caucasus are still falling back. In my judgement, whatever Stalin had to say, they’re finished. By the end of the month we could be on the Black Sea. The other oil wells are in Grozny, and the Ivans will wreck those, too, but if we ever get that far it’ll be time to stop. We’re at the end of the line here, as you know. Resupply is already a nightmare. In my view we only have one option, which might serve us very well. Tomorrow morning, I shall conference with Jeschonnek. The time has come to concentrate our forces, Messner, and I’m sure he’ll agree. That slowcoach Paulus has finally sprung a trap on the Ivans at Kalach. He should be over the Don and driving hard for Stalingrad within days. I want you to fly up there. By the time you arrive, God willing, we’ll have declared a new transport region. It will extend as far as Stalingrad and receive our full attention. The Ivans got a taste of the Schwerpunkt at Kalach. Stalingrad should be the real thing.’
He waved his hand in the direction of the map on the table, an unvoiced gesture that spoke volumes about command decisions at the very top of the Reich. Hitler and Goering, he seemed to be saying, should get their heads out of their arses and understand the brutal mathematics of a supply chain that reached back thousands of kilometres. Infantry needed food in their bellies. Guns needed ammunition. Tanks needed fuel. And the big Ju-52s, most important of all, needed luck and good weather, as well as full tanks, to bridge the gap between the end of the single railway line and the slow advance of Paulus’s Sixth Army.
‘How many tons a day, Messner? Take a guess.’ Richthofen was looking at a series of pencilled calculations on his desk.
Messner did a rapid calculation. Over a quarter of a million men. Hundreds of tanks. Thousands of guns.
‘Fifteen hundred tons,’ he said.
‘Double it.’
‘Three thousand?’ Messner shook his head. ‘Impossible.’
Richthofen looked up, a thin smile on his face.
‘My thoughts entirely,’ he growled. ‘You take off at first light. One way or another, we have to make this happen.’
*
Messner retired early, telling his orderly to rouse him before dawn. He enjoyed a dreamless sleep and was up and shaving by the time the orderly appeared at his door. He’d organised transport out to the airfield where he found himself looking at a spare Fieseler Storch that Richthofen had acquired from Kyiv. Messner’s usual Me-110, it turned out, consumed far too much fuel. As a portent of things to come, thought Messner, the message couldn’t have been clearer.
It was years since he’d last flown an aircraft this light and this responsive. He turned it into the wind and nursed it into the air after barely a hundred metres, glad to spare the fragile undercarriage any more punishment, and shaded his eyes against the orange spill of the rising sun as he climbed into a cloudless sky. To his right, the blueness of the Sea of Azov as it began to narrow. Beyond, the silver gleam of the River Don as it wound beyond Rostov towards Kalach.
Half an hour’s flying time from the landing strip, he banked to the west and lost height, uncertain about the weight of enemy air activity. The Russians were flying Lend Lease aircraft now, English Hurricanes, American Tomahawks, and even their own fighters – mass-produced by the hundreds in factories beyond the Urals – would feast on a little insect like the Fieseler Storch. With Kalach at last in sight, he stole a look towards the east. Stalingrad lay less than a hundred kilometres away across the interminable flatness of the steppe. With Sixth Army at full throttle, thought Messner, and the whole of Richthofen’s 4th Air Fleet at Paulus’s disposal, the city should fall within weeks.
He dropped a wing to find the airfield and, as he did so, a square packed with tiny black dots swam into sight. At first, he mistook them for livestock of some kind, then he realised he was looking at thousands of uniforms, dark brown, huddled together. Soviet prisoners, he thought. The fruits of Paulus’s labour, now disarmed and penned in behind strands of barbed wire to await the long march westwards. Beyond the caged prisoners lay the debris of the battlefield, dozens of burned-out tanks scattered at random like a child’s discarded toys. The bareness of the steppe was pocked by thousands of craters, each one with its signature ring of charred grass.
Messner began to lose height. Kalach itself, like so many Ukrainian towns, was nothing to look at: a scattering of small workshops, rusting tractors, a railway station that seemed to be falling apart, and dozens of shacks, each with its scrap of tended garden. The airfield was rudimentary, a flattish space that seemed to double as a meadow for a handful of bony cattle. On landing, Messner did his best to avoid the deeper potholes, finally coming to rest beside a battered army command vehicle. The driver who helped him out of the Storch was to drive him to a command facility where a briefing had been hastily organised. The driver was an older man, a Rhinelander, companionable, friendly. Unlike most strangers, he paid no attention to the state of this newcomer’s face and when Messner asked him how he was coping with the campaign, he said his wife would never believe it.
‘Just over seventy kilograms.’ He patted the flatness of his stomach under the grey serge tunic. ‘She’ll think she’s married a stranger.’
They drove through the town. Wherever he looked, Messner saw more debris, more abandoned tanks, more evidence of the recent battle. Half a dozen prisoners, stripped to the waist, were hauling heavy wooden boxes towards a line of waiting trucks. When Messner enquired about the supply situation, and evacuation flights for the wounded, the driver admitted it was tricky. Most of the army were regrouping for the final push across the Don. Closing the Kalach pocket hadn’t been easy. Whatever the odds, the Ivans fought like lions.
‘Our guys are tough, though,’ he added. ‘If you can get through last winter, you can get through anything. Stalingrad should give us everything we need. When it gets below minus thirty, it pays to be in a city.’
Messner said he understood. Luftwaffe boys, he was the first to admit, had a sweet time of it. A proper bed for the night. Decent food. And the prospect of playing God from two thousand metres.
‘Sounds wonderful.’ The driver was smiling again. ‘Me? I like to keep my feet on the ground.’
*
They’d arrived at a sizeable tent, pitched beside the dirt road. This was where the briefing was to take place. Messner pushed aside the tent flap and stepped into the gloom. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, harsh, acrid, and the fuggy heat under the canvas was close to unbearable. Half a dozen faces looked up from a makeshift table. Messner, who could smell paraffin from the single lamp, didn’t recognise any of them. No one got up. Not a hint of a welcome.
‘And you are…?’
‘Oberstleutnant Messner. From 4th Air Fleet HQ. And you gentlemen?’
No one said a word. At first Messner put this seeming truculence down to poor morale and worse leadership but then it occurred to him that these men were probably exhausted. Springing a trap that had netted tens of thousands of Soviet troops didn’t happen by accident and it was obvious that any euphoria that accompanied a victory such as this had quickly vanished. At ground level, the stone-hard steppe would be endless. Another day of bouncing into nowhere. Another week of heat and dust. Yet more Ivans offering themselves for slaughter.
Messner tried to put some of this into words in a bid to break the ice but the Oberst in charge dismissed his clumsy sympathy with a wave of his hand.
‘Our boys love it round here.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘Some of them dream of coming back as farmers once the war is over. Can you believe that?’
There was a ripple of laughter around the table. The Oberst wanted to know whether Sixth Army could rely on the Stukas again.
‘When? Exactly?’ Messner queried.
‘Next week. We’ll be crossing the Don and the Ivans will jump us the moment we move. The Katyushas are the worst and those T-34s deserve a bit of respect. Stukas, Herr Oberst. The Ivans hate them.’
Messner said he understood. The Russians fired Katyusha rockets from the back of flatbed trucks. Like the T-34s, their equipment was rugged and rarely broke down. If intelligence reports were accurate, they also seemed to have more and more of them, inexhaustible supplies that appeared from nowhere and could make life on the steppe extremely difficult.
‘We have well over a thousand aircraft, gentlemen, and you’ll be pleased to know they’ll all be available on your behalf.’
There was an exchange of nods around the table. One officer even permitted himself a brief smile. Messner sat back, wondering just how much more he should reveal. The total of serviceable aircraft had come from Richthofen last night. He’d also said that most of them would be overflying Sixth Army to bomb Stalingrad. Of the Don River crossings, he’d made no mention.
‘And resupply?’ The Oberst again. ‘You have good news on that front as well?’
‘I do.’ Messner paused, looking round, taking his time. ‘Three thousand tons a day. How does that sound?’
The officer nodded. He made a rapid calculation on the pad at his elbow, crossed out a line of figures, arrived at a new total, showed it to his neighbour, then looked across at Messner.
‘This assumes a fighting advance? Until we get to Stalingrad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then three thousand tons might suffice. Assuming, of course, that we can rely on a figure like that. You’re offering us a guarantee?’
Messner shook his head. He could recognise a trap when he saw one.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘We can’t predict the weather. We might have mechanical problems with some of the aircraft.’
‘And the Ivans? Up in the air?’
‘We have fighters of our own. And some excellent pilots.’
‘So still three thousand tons a day? Or thereabouts?’
‘We’ll do our best.’
The officer nodded, seemingly satisfied. For a brief moment there was silence. A truck ground past on the dirt road outside. Then another of the figures around the table stirred. For the first time, through the fog of cigarette smoke, Messner realised that he didn’t belong to Sixth Army. Instead, he was wearing the Feldgrau uniform and lightning flashes of an SS Standartenführer. His cap, with its unmistakeable death’s head symbol, lay on the table in front of him. His hair was beginning to recede over a bony forehead, and he had a cast in one eye.
‘You’re here on behalf of Generaloberst Richthofen? Is that what we are to understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘So when will he pay us the honour of a personal visit?’
‘Very soon. I suspect.’
‘Before we move out of here? Before we cross the river?’
‘I imagine so. You have a question for him? Can I help at all?’
‘Maybe yes. Maybe no. You have plans to bomb Stalingrad?’
‘Of course.’
‘And do you know when?’
‘Soon. Very soon. Maybe you saw what we did to Sevastopol. Stalingrad isn’t a place you’d want to be just now.’
‘Good.’ The Standartenführer produced a handkerchief and mopped his face. ‘Very good. How many aircraft?’
‘As many as necessary. If we can smash the city before you get there, I imagine it will save you gentlemen a great of time and effort.’
Messner paused. He’d no idea where these questions were leading, and he suspected the rest of the officers around the table were equally mystified.
The Standartenführer returned the handkerchief to his pocket and reached for his cap before checking his watch and getting to his feet. He had a face, Messner later realised, that was bred for madness: the cast in his eye, the tightness of his mouth, the thin sprout of unrazored hair beneath his nose that appeared to serve as a moustache.
‘One aircraft, Messner.’ He tried to force a smile. ‘That’s all we’d need.’
‘We?’
‘Myself. And my Gruppenführer. It will be a pleasure to do business with your Generaloberst.’