Barbarossa (46 page)

[To eliminate "command difficulties and obstructions"
the Rumanian headquarters staff had been dispersed and Army
Detachment Hollidt enlarged and made responsible for the Chir River
front.]

In spite of the strength he was accumulating below the Chir, and
the fact that the bridgehead at Nizhne-Chirskaya was only twenty-five
miles from the western tip of the Stalingrad siege front, Manstein
formed the view that it would be dangerous to rely on the forces
there for a relief thrust. He considered that the Russians would
regard this as the obvious direction from which to expect such a
move, and that they had the ability to double or treble their forces
on the left bank of the Don at a few hours' notice. In addition there
was the potential threat from the long northern flank, stretching
along the upper Chir and up to the junction with the 2nd Hungarian
Army and Weichs's boundary.

Manstein therefore decided that, if it was possible from an
operational point of view, the main thrust should be delivered by
Hoth with an invigorated 4th Panzer Army, and that the 48th Panzer
Corps and the Hollidt detachment should restrict their activities to
a show of force designed to draw off Zhukov's mobile reserve once
Hoth began his approach march. If and when Hoth's columns drew level
with the bridgehead at Nizhne-Chirskaya, the 48th Panzer Corps would
attempt to cross the Don. Ideally this would result in Paulus' being
offered two alternative routes for the extrication of his garrison,
and the possibility of dividing his forces between them.

To reinforce Hoth, Manstein decided to bring the 6th Panzer
Division down through Rostov and to use the whole of the 57th Panzer
Corps, which (after a considerable back and forth of telegrams
between Rastenburg, Novocherkassk, and the headquarters of the
headless Army Group A, in whose command they had been) was sanctioned
by OKW. While he was waiting for these forces to get into position, a
reconnaissance group was sent out of Elista by the commander of the
16th Motorised Division in a wide sweep across the steppe to the
southwest of the Volga. This force was relatively small, consisting
of two motorcycle companies, a few half-tracks with towed 50-mm.
antitank guns, and eleven Mark Ill's. But after a three-day sortie
they were able to confirm that Hoth's open right flank was safe and,
even more important, that there was no immediate danger of a Russian
drive to cut off the forces in the Caucasus.

While waiting for the 4th Panzer Army to gather strength, Manstein
found things beginning to go wrong on the Chir. Zhukov had, as has
been seen, taken his tanks out of the line within three days of
completing the encirclement at Kalach, but after less than a week of
rest and refit elements of the 5th Guards Tank Army began to be
identified between Nizhne Kalinovski and Nizhne-Chirskaya. On 7th
December two armoured brigades got across the river still farther
west, and penetrated nearly twenty miles before nightfall, placing
themselves deep on the flank of the new 336th Infantry Division,
which had itself just moved into position.

[From the 1st Armoured Corps of the 5th Guards Tank Army.]

Fortunately for the Germans, Balck's 11 th Panzer was driving up
from Rostov during the day at almost the same speed as the Russian
tanks (fewer in number) were moving south. That evening the heads of
the two columns collided at the huge "State Farm No. 79,"
just north of Verkhne-Solonovski, and exchanged fire until darkness
fell. The Russians then went into leaguer among the farm buildings,
but Balck, with characteristic energy, led the mass of his tanks
around in a wide arc to the west and north, leaving only his engineer
battalion and a few 88-mm. guns to mask the Russian position. This
feat, over snow-covered unmapped ground and coming after a two-day
forced march, brought its reward. Ten hours later the Panzers were
astride the Russian approach route. At first light they could see a
long column of Russian trucks, infantry sent down to reinforce the
armoured breakthrough, driving senerely along, nose to tail. They
charged down and ran parallel with the column, destroying it with
machine-gun fire at ranges of about twenty yards, in order to
conserve their armour-piercing ammunition. After the destruction of
the infantry, Balck's tanks continued to drive south on the road the
Russian motorised column had been following and arrived at the state
farm just as the T 34's were moving off (also in a southerly
direction) to attack what they mistakenly believed to be the weak
left flank of the 336th Infantry Division. The Russian tanks faltered
as they caught the first shells from Balck's screen of 88's, and at
that moment they were set upon by the Panzers in their rear. Their
two brigades kept up the fight throughout the day, but by its end
were practically annihilated, losing fifty-three tanks. Only a few
managed to slink away under cover of darkness. They lay low in the
frozen gullies which intersected the area, and were to emerge and
cause some trouble in the days that followed.

There was no resting on the field of victory for the 11th Panzer.
Almost simultaneously with their crossing of the Chir in the north,
the Russians had started up a succession of attacks against the
Nizhne-Chirskaya bridgehead, and the division turned west to restore
the situation there. During the two days that followed a sequence of
small bridgeheads and crossings were made against the position of the
336th Division and it became plain that the Russians were now
mounting their strength in earnest against the Chir position, both as
a spoiling move against any concentration of a relief army and with
the more ambitious purpose of capturing the airfields at Tatsinskaya
and Moravichin, which were the Ju 52 bases for the "airlift"
to Stalingrad.

The German strength was inadequate to maintain a static defence
along the whole length of the Chir, whose sinuous course almost
doubled the apparent front. Yet the infantry, although fresh, had
neither the equipment nor the weapons for a flexible and mobile
defence. Only the 11th Panzer had the means for "
Klotzen,
nicht Kleckern
." The Chief of Staff of the 48th Panzer Corps
wrote an appreciation of Russian bridgehead technique at that time:

Bridgeheads in the hands of the Russians are a grave danger
indeed.
It is quite wrong not to worry about bridgeheads and to
postpone their elimination
. Russian bridgeheads, however small
and harmless they may appear, are bound to grow into formidable
danger-points in a very brief time and soon become insuperable
strong-points. A Russian bridgehead, occupied by a company in the
evening, is sure to be occupied by at least a regiment on the
following morning and during the night will become a formidable
fortress, well equipped with heavy weapons and everything necessary
to make it almost impregnable. No artillery fire, however violent and
well concentrated, will wipe out a Russian bridgehead which has grown
overnight. Nothing less than a well-planned attack will avail.

The Russian principle of "bridgeheads everywhere"
constitutes a most serious danger, and cannot be overrated. There is
again only one sure remedy which must become a principle: If a
bridgehead is forming, or an advanced position is being established
by the Russians, attack, attack at once, attack strongly. Hesitation
will always be fatal. A delay of an hour may mean frustration, a
delay of a few hours does mean frustration, a delay of a day may mean
a major catastrophe. Even if there is no more than one infantry
platoon and a single tank available, attack! Attack when the Russians
are still above ground, when they can be seen and tackled, when they
have had no time as yet to organise their defence, when there are no
heavy weapons available. A few hours later will be too late. Delay
means disaster; resolute, energetic and immediate action means
success.

However, Knobelsdorff, the new commander of the 48th Panzer Corps,
decided that the most important task was to preserve his own
bridgehead at Nizhne-Chirskaya. At the evening conference of 10th
December he restrained Balck from setting off once again with his
"fire brigade," and that night the 11th Panzer occupied
itself with moving into position for a counterattack against the
Russians who had broken the defence perimeter. On the following
morning the German bombardment started, and carried extra weight from
the whole of the 336th Division's artillery and some heavy mortars
which had been brought from the west to help in breaking up the
Russian positions in Stalingrad and had been discovered in the
railway sidings there. The tanks were to go in during the afternoon,
and it was intended to pull them out as the light failed and leave
the infantry to mop up during the night. Balck himself was not
sanguine about the prospects of a frontal attack, and understandably
reluctant to allow his division to get bogged down in the maze of
small islets, frozen creeks, and fire-swept
balkas
that
interlaced the area where the two rivers joined. Then, just as the
leading regiment was about to leave its starting line, a message came
up from General Lucht [Commanding the 336th Division.] that his front
had been penetrated at Nizhne Kalinovski, and also at Lissinski
(about midway between there and Balck's present position).

The tanks had their engines running, and the fire of the barrage
had already slackened. After the briefest of consultations Balck and
Knobelsdorff decided that the attack should be called off and the
tanks sent north to deal with the new emergency. Both commanders
agreed that the strength of the Germans' artillery fire and their
evident preparations for a counterattack would be sufficient to deter
the Russians for a few days.

Once again, therefore, the 11th Panzer spent the night in marching
to a new battlefield, and once again it went into the attack,
unprepared and unreconnoitred, at dawn. The Russian force was a mixed
group of tanks, cavalry, and a few gun crews with 76-mm.'s. The
horses had slipped away into the steppe under a full moon, but many
of the tanks were still in leaguer when the Germans attacked and the
76-mm.'s had not yet been dug into the frozen earth. By midday the
bridgehead had been eliminated, and that afternoon the 11th Panzer
covered the fifteen miles to Nizhne Kalinovski, where the second
breach had been reported. As at Lissinski, it went straight into the
attack with its leading regiment ("Our engines have been warm,
and our gun barrels, too, ever since we arrived on the Chir,"
wrote a lieutenant of the 115th
Panzergrenadier
Regiment).

But this time the Russians were in greater strength. They had got
nearly sixty T 34's across the river, and two companies of these had
swung eastward during the morning toward the sound of firing from the
Lissinski battle. This screen took the first shock of the 11th
Panzer's thrust, and by the time the Germans had struck the main mass
the tanks were "hull down" and prepared. The 11th Panzer
made little impression that evening, and in the morning its first
attack was silhouetted against the rising of a wintry sun. Heavy
fighting all day took its toll of the exhausted Germans. Machines
broke down, crews had hardly the strength to lift shells into the
breech. When night fell, the division was reduced to half its
November strength, and compelled to do the one thing which Balck most
dreaded—to settle down and dig in, in a position of
containment. After moving by night and fighting by day for over a
week, the 11th Panzer had ground to a standstill.

As the precious days slipped past and the Russian build-up along
the Chir gathered weight, Hoth was suffering agonising delays in his
efforts to concentrate the main relief column at Kotelnikovo, in the
south.

The 57th Panzer Corps, so reluctantly ceded by Army Group A, had
set out two days behind schedule. But in the Caucasus a thaw had
begun, making the roads impassable. The corps struggled back to its
railhead at Maikop and entrained, but there were not enough flatcars
for carrying the tanks, and some of them had to be left behind. Nor
was any of the "heavy army artillery" which Zeitzler had
promised loaded—allegedly for the same reason. The 17th Panzer,
which Manstein had repeatedly requested from OKW reserve, was sent
first to Voronezh, then back to its original concentration area, and
did not entrain for Rostov until ten days after it had originally
been asked for. OKW was no more co-operative in allocating a division
from Army Group A to garrison Elista (this would have released the
16th Motorised, a full-strength division which had hardly fired its
guns since September, and was only forty-eight hours from the 4th
Panzer Army concentration area).

Manstein could see that the Russians' transfer of forces to the
west of the Don was accelerating, and knew that it must be a matter
of days before their tanks started to reappear in strength in the
south. He therefore decided to push Hoth forward the moment the
detrainment of the 57th Panzer Corps was completed. The planning of
the operation, which went under the name of "Winter Tempest,"
offered Hoth two alternatives. The first, or "large solution,"
was that of an independent thrust directly at the siege perimeter,
aimed at a point just west of Beketonskaya. The "small
solution," to be implemented if Russian strength below the Volga
bend became insuperable, was a thrust up the left bank of the Don
making junction with the 48th Panzer Corps at the Nizhne-Chirskaya
bridgehead and then swinging east to the "nose of Marinovka."
In either case, on receipt of the code signal
Donnerschlag
(Thunderclap), the 6th Army was to rupture the siege perimeter and
advance with its mobile elements to meet the approaching relief
force. Hitler had given express instructions to Paulus that, as well
as making the breakout in a particular section, the 6th Army must
continue to hold its existing positions in the pocket.