Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (16 page)
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Authors: Peter Tsouras
Hitler was in a row with his methodical and colourless Chief of the Army General Staff, Generaloberst Franz Halder. He was a master of military logic, which was why Hitler was in such a foul mood, that and the heat of a Ukrainian summer. ‘The Russians are conducting a planned withdrawal,
mein Führer.’
‘Nonsense,’ Hitler shot back, ‘they’re fleeing, they’re finished, they’re at the end after the blows we’ve inflicted on them in the past months.’ Hitler did not know that the Stavka was committing new and inexperienced armies, such as the 62nd and 64th Armies, to the front rather than its high quality reserves.
Halder would not back down. ‘We haven’t caught Timoshenko’s main body,
mein Führer.
Our encircling operations were failures. Timoshenko has directed the bulk of his army group . . . to the east across the Don and into the Stalingrad area, other elements to the south into the Caucasus. We don’t know what reserves are there.’
Oh, you and your reserves. I tell you we didn’t catch Timoshenko’s fleeing rabble in the Stary Oskol area . . . because Bock spent too much time at Voronezh. Then we were unable to catch the southern group, which was fleeing in panic, north of Rostov because we turned south with the mobile units too late and forced 17th Army to the east too soon. But that’s not going to happen to me again.
He waved Halder aside when the general attempted to interject.
It’s imperative that we disentangle the massing of our mobile units in the Rostov area and deploy 17th Army as well as the 1st and 4th Panzer Armies to quickly catch and encircle the Russians south of Rostov, in the approaches to the Caucasus. At the same time the 6th Army must deliver the death blow to the remaining Russian forces which have fled to the Volga in the Stalingrad area. On neither of these two fronts can we allow the reeling enemy to regain his composure. But the emphasis must be on Army Group A’s attack against the Caucasus.
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Halder implored Hitler not to split his forces on such divergent missions and to maintain his own original plan that the objectives be consecutive and not concurrent. ‘We must take Stalingrad before we advance into the Caucasus.’ Halder was even more upset that Hitler was so convinced of the disintegration of the Red Army that he had changed his mind and decided to send Manstein’s 11th Army to help take Leningrad and had directed that a number of first-class divisions be pulled out of the line. For example, he was sending the
Grossdeutschland
to France as an OKW reserve. His favourite 1st SS Division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,
his own bodyguard, he was also sending to France to be converted to a panzer division as part of a new SS panzer corps.
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Hitler was about to lose his temper completely when his aide announced Manstein’s arrival. He cooled down quickly. The victor of Sevastopol rode high in his favour, and he had summoned him for the ceremony of presenting him with his field marshal’s baton. ‘Welcome, welcome,
Herr Generalfeldmarschall,’
he said emphasizing the new rank. ‘I want your opinion. Halder tells me that we cannot split our resources by two main efforts - the Caucasus and Stalingrad. What do you think?’ Hitler was fishing for the answer he wanted to beat down Halder even more.
‘Mein Führer,
General Halder is correct in that the risk is great.’ Hitler’s face fell. He was not happy with that response:
But I believe that we can pad the margin of risk enough to execute two divergent objectives. Keep the 11th Army here as a reserve to be committed either to the Caucasus or Stalingrad as future needs dictate, send the Italian and Romanian mountain divisions to the Caucasus, and keep the
Grossdeutschland
and
Leibstandarte
divisions here where they will be needed to finish off the Red Army.
He could see Hitler’s objection and preempted it.
‘Mein Führer,
if you leave these reserves here, I promise you I will crack open Leningrad like a rotten egg after we have taken Stalingrad.’ Hitler was convinced. He then cancelled 11th Army and
Grossdeutschland’
s transfer.
Leibstandarte’
s orders were not changed; he had great plans for his new SS panzer corps. Besides, it was not in him to accede completely to anyone’s recommendations.
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On that same day he ordered Paulus to make Stalingrad his primary objective.
It looked as if 6th Army’s momentum would overrun the Soviet forces backing into the Big Bend of the Don. They had cleared the west bank except for two large pockets, one across from the east-bank town of Kalach and the other to the north across from Akimovka. Both 62nd and 64th Armies were in the Kalach pocket. Now Hitler came to the rescue of the Red Army. Sixth Army simply stopped. It had outrun its supplies and worse because Hitler had diverted half of Army Group B’s motor transport to support Army Group A’s attack into the Caucasus. Sixth Army would have to rely on its 25,000 horses. Seemingly, it was 1914 again, in the age before motor transport had become ubiquitous. Worse yet:
Sixth Army stopped dead in its tracks while swarms of vehicles and men from the 4th Panzer Army cut left to right across its line of advance on their way to join Army Group A. Enormous traffic jams developed. Tanks of one army mingled with those of the other; supply trucks got lost in a maze of contradictory signposts and directions handed out by military policemen.
As a result Paulus watched the Soviet rearguards disappear into the limitless distances of the steppe.
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Ironically, had 4th Panzer Army been sent directly against Stalingrad at this time, it could have easily bounced into the city, but the fleeting moment had been lost. Only after the army had extricated itself from the traffic nightmare, did Hitler once again change his mind. He detached XL Panzer Corps to Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army and sent the rest of Hoth’s 4th Panzer to cover 6th Army’s southern flank in the drive on Stalingrad.
At this now crimped rate of supply 6th Army would not be able to wipe out the Soviet bridgeheads for another two weeks. Paulus’s forces were also so spread out that a concentrated attack was not possible; he could not bring up two of his corps before the Italian 8th Army arrived to take their place.
The Soviets were perplexed at the sudden German halt. It never occurred to them that the Germans had simply run out of fuel or were confused. Nevertheless, it was a welcome breathing spell. It was more than welcome. When it came the senior staff of the 62nd Army had been standing machine pistols in hand on the bridge over the Don at Kalach threatening to shoot the panic-stricken men fleeing to the east bank. Now the rearguards reported, ‘No more enemy contact.’ Front commander Timoshenko asked his chief of staff, ‘What does this mean? Have the Germans changed their plans?’ Whatever the reason, there was an opportunity to be seized. ‘If the Germans are not following up there is time to organize the defence on the western bank of the Don.’
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He brought up the newly formed 1st and 4th Tank Armies to reinforce the bridgeheads.
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He was going to attack, but was relieved on 23 July, and replaced by Gordov. The new front commander was to bring those same qualities of leadership to his command of the Stalingrad Front as had made Chuikov’s life so difficult.
On 24 July the Germans introduced the green 64th Army to war as they attacked through howling dust storms. They were quickly to learn that one has not known war until one has fought the Germans. Now back in command, Chuikov found the forward elements of his army driven back by Seydlitz’s LI Corps with strong air support. The Germans then struck his main line of resistance, which had just been filled with units that had not had time to prepare their positions properly, were understrength and lacked their proper logistical support, much of which was still back in Tula. Still, Chuikov held off strong German attacks and was on the point of closing a gap between his divisions:
It looked as though we would succeed after all in halting the enemy and closing the gap, but panic appeared among our troops. It broke out not at the front but in the rear. Among the medical ambulance battalions, artillery park and transport units on the right bank of the Don, someone reported that German tanks were a mile or two away. This report was certainly an act of provocation and at this time it was enough to make the rear units rush for the crossing in disorder. Though channels unknown to me the panic was communicated to the troops at the front.
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Chuikov sent his personal staff and his artillery commander to stop the rout at the bridge. German reconnaissance had spotted the mass of vehicles funnelling over the bridge and summoned the Stukas. With their sirens screaming they fell upon the terrified Russians and bombed and strafed them. Four of Chuikov’s senior staff were among the dead. That evening the Luftwaffe came back and broke the bridge.
In a sense the Germans should have been flattered by the arrival of these new Soviet tank armies. The Soviets had simply copied the Germans in the organization of their tank forces. The irony was that they had had a very advanced organization of their tank and mechanized forces until 1938 when Stalin ordered them disbanded because they were the creations of Marshal Tukhachevsky whom Stalin had just shot at the beginning of the great purge that was to decimate the leadership of the Red Army. This military genius had put into practice what Western advocates of armoured warfare such as Basil Liddell-Hart and J. F. C. Fuller in Britain and Charles de Gaulle in France had only advocated. All this Stalin had undone. Thus, when the Germans attacked in 1941, Soviet tank forces had been penny-packeted in brigades to support infantry forces. Tukhachevsky’s mailed fist had become nothing more than a feeble, open-fingered slap. The Germans were able to make a great slaughter in the first six months of the war because of this.
Amid the slaughter, though, came several nasty surprises for the Germans. They encountered heavier and better-armed tanks than anything in their army - the huge KV-1 and KV-2 heavy tanks, and the superb T-34 medium tank, all with the deadly 76mm gun. Luckily for the Germans, the destruction of the Soviet senior officer corps and the break up of the armoured formations in the 1937-8 purges made the Soviet tanks vulnerable to being destroyed piecemeal. Now the new tank armies were increasingly equipped with the T-34 which represented half of all tank production by the middle of 1942.
Other reforms of an institutional nature, based on the realization that the traditional military principles, feudal and reactionary as they might be, gave armies staying power in the field. Suddenly the Red Army began to assume all the old, long-despised trappings of military authority: sharp and rigid rank differentiation as the basis for discipline, strict observance of military etiquette, class status for officers, including special privileges and distinctive uniforms and insignia, the recognition of the Russian as opposed to the revolutionary military tradition, and the awarding of medals and decorations. Indeed, one of the urgent requests for aid to the British, who were more than a little surprised, was for a huge amount of gold braid.
As if the bitter cup of the convoy disaster was not enough for the British, Churchill now had a message from Stalin that added insult to injury:
Of course, I do not think steady deliveries to northern Soviet ports are possible without risk or loss. But then no major task can be carried out in wartime without risk or losses. You know, of course, that the Soviet Union is suffering far greater losses.
Even after the loss of the convoy and the savaging of the Home Fleet, Stalin was demanding a resumption of the Arctic convoys.
Be that as it may, I never imagined that the British Government would deny us delivery of war materials precisely now, when the Soviet Union is badly in need of them in view of the grave situation on the Soviet-German front. It should be obvious that deliveries via Persian ports can in no way make up for the loss in the event of deliveries via the northern route being discontinued.
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The brutal Allied losses at sea combined with the constant daylight of the Arctic summer to prevent any further convoys until the autumn when the long night would begin to limit German air attacks The problem was not the availability of ships, nor the threat from the German surface fleet, which now hardly existed. The British and American merchant crews simply refused to sign on for any Arctic convoy. When the government had threatened to impress them, they struck. Churchill’s bluff had been called.
Now there were only two remaining routes for Allied aid to reach the Soviet Union: the Persian Corridor and across the Pacific to Vladivostok, the latter of which was an American problem. The British problem then was to send the cargoes that would have gone north all the way around Africa and through the Persian Gulf to Iran. Delivery time would be greatly slowed because of the immense distance involved. But it was the best Churchill and Roosevelt could do.
With or without gold braid, General Gordov was preparing to attack with all his forces to cut off the German units that had broken through. The plan was good, but Gordov’s execution was incompetent. Beginning on 26 July his forces attacked piecemeal over three days. With his army resupplied Paulus counterattacked with a major pincer operation against the Kalach bridgehead. The Germans sliced through both flanks of 62nd Army. The two panzer corps attacked from the north and south as the Stukas raced ahead to strike the enemy, while Seydlitz’s LI Corps advanced between them. The Soviets resisted bitterly as Gordov threw his tank armies at the Germans in the hilly ground at the north end of the pocket. The battle swirled over the heat-baked steppe.
Like destroyers and cruisers at sea, the tank units manoeuvred in the sandy ocean of the steppe, fighting for favourable firing positions, cornering the enemy, clinging to villages for a few hours or days, bursting out again, turning back, and again pursuing the enemy.
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Above them the Luftwaffe and Red Air Force duelled in the sky to send burning planes to crash among the tank battles or sought out each other’s supply columns. But time and time again, German superiority in communications, manoeuvre and air-ground coordination made the difference. The Soviets suffered huge losses.
As the fighting raged along the Don, Chuikov was making shrewd observations of enemy capabilities, just as he had during the Finnish War. He was watching the Germans through fresh eyes for this was the first time he had seen them in action. He noted how much of the German battle drill depended on the Luftwaffe’s effective close air support. He interrogated a German pilot and asked him how he thought the war would go. The man replied, ‘The Luftwaffe is the big fist in battle. Both the airmen themselves and the ground forces have faith in it. If we hadn’t had the Luftwaffe we would not have had such successes in the West or the East.’
He also observed that the German artillery, instead of ranging deep into the Soviet rear, methodically crushed the forward positions, a technique right out of the First War. Chuikov was also critical of the panzers whom he said did not go into combat without infantry or air support and were hesitant when they did.
One more question he asked the captured pilot. How did he think the war would go? The German shrugged and said, ‘The Führer made a big mistake about Russia. He and many other Germans did not expect the Russians to have such staying power, so it’s hard to say about the end of the war.’
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