Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (35 page)

The elation in Stavka at the seizure of the enemy’s main rail hub was matched by shock at Army Group B headquarters. Even Manstein’s famous iron nerve wavered for a moment, then righted itself as more information came in. The rest of V Corps was detraining outside Lyapichev and throwing up defences to contain the enemy’s tanks as was the 9th Infantry Division to the north. The problem was that the V Corps was meant to stabilize Seydlitz’s and Hoth’s hard-pressed armies. His counterstroke force was still engaged with Stalingrad Front. The race against time was on, and it looked like the crisis would burst before 11th Army could accomplish its mission and rescue 4th Panzer and 6th Armies.

As the Soviets were rampaging in the railyards,
Grossdeutschland
and 6th Panzer had penetrated past the northernmost of the Sarpinsky Lakes and struck deep into Stalingrad Front’s assembly areas. Their black cross T-34s sowed endless confusion among the Russians. Unit after unit was taken unawares as the Soviet-made tanks approached only to discover that they were German-manned. One by one the second-echelon tank brigades of 65th and 57th Armies were encountered and destroyed before they could be properly deployed.

To the south, 11th Army’s two infantry corps engaged the Soviet rifle divisions that had followed the initial breakthrough. Here the Germans had a clear advantage of seven fresh full-strength divisions against three Soviet rifle divisions. In three hours of intense fighting, the Germans drove the Russians back into their defences between the lakes. Continuing the attack, they broke through, taking thousands of prisoners, and pursued the enemy north where they expected to meet up with the two panzer divisions.

The infantry corps would soon have to finish off Southwest Front on their own. Manstein had been keeping a close watch on the progress of the two panzer divisions. They were desperately needed in the fighting to the west, but to pull them out too soon would allow Southwest Front to survive and threaten the German rear with another attempt at encirclement. Not yet. Not yet.

Major General Rodion Malinovsky was under the oppressive cloud of Stalin’s suspicion. As with Rokossovsky, his future rode on the attack of 2nd Guards Army to stem Kleist’s advance. His sin in Stalin’s eyes was to have possible foreign connections, a fact that had already sent countless men to the
gulag.
At the age of fifteen the young Malinovsky had joined the Imperial Army to fight the Germans. His courage and stout heart earned him a St George Cross. Sent to France with the Russian expeditionary corps, he rose to sergeant and was badly wounded. When the corps was disbanded after the October Revolution, he stayed on to fight the Germans as a recruit of the French Foreign Legion with which he won the Croix de Guerre. In 1919 he returned home, joined the Red Army, and distinguished himself in the Civil War. In this current war, he had proved himself again and again to be a skilful and successful leader. He was so able that Stalin, despite his suspicions, gave him command of his finest army. Now that army was all that stood between Stalingrad and the enemy.

It was a formidable obstacle. Its 2nd Mechanized Corps held 17,000 men and was 220 tanks strong, almost all of them new-model T-34s. The armour of the German-manned Shermans was a bit thicker than the T-34’s, and its turret basket allowed the crew to fight the tank more effectively. Balancing that was the fact that the T-34’s high-velocity 76mm gun had a penetrating advantage over the Sherman’s 75mm weapon. The corps’ three infantry brigades were all motorized. Malinovsky’s six infantry divisions were tough, experienced, and well-equipped. Every formation was commanded by a veteran officer who had done well in previous assignments. The oncoming battle would be for the first time between evenly matched mechanized forces, each with strong air support, and each commanded by a talented and tough commander.

Perhaps because they were so evenly matched they took the same mirror-imaging approach. Fix the enemy in the front with infantry and wheel a massive tank attack around a flank and into the rear. Ominously they both picked the same flank. Fifteen miles east of Leninsk, the infantry corps of both armies collided in a great bruising fight over the low mounds that were all that was left of the ruins of the 13th-century capital of the Golden Horde, Shed-Berke. Both wanted to use the mounds as a defensive line to hold the other until their tanks could fall on the enemy’s rear. To the north over 600 tanks of both sides were converging on the same point - on the German right and the Soviet left - in the greatest meeting engagement in history.

It was a titanic crash of iron cavalry. There was no manoeuvre, no long-range duelling, as the masses of tanks flew at each other and fired at almost point-blank range. Tanks rammed each other like ancient galleys. The ranges were so close there were hardly any misses except where panic or excitement threw off the aim. Every hit at such ranges on hull or turret penetrated whether it was an American 75mm or Soviet 76mm gun. The Shermans lived up to their American nickname of Ronsons by lighting up after a single hit as their fuel caught fire, while the T-34s exploded because too much ammunition was vulnerably stored. Whether it was a Sherman gushing fire from its hatches or a T-34 with its turret twisting in the air, blown off by exploding ammunition, men died horribly. ‘In modern mechanized war men do not die in fields of flowers with shouts of
Urrah
on their lips.’
¹⁶

Imperceptibly the tide shifted in the German favour. The electrically powered turret baskets in the American and German tanks allowed each crew to fight more effectively even in the point-blank mêlée. Rudel’s Stuka squadron more than did its part. Overcast skies with cloud at 300 to 600 feet, execrable flying weather, kept most of the Red Air Force and Luftwaffe grounded - except Rudel who only looked at it as a dare from the weather god. Rudel led his squadron in sortie after sortie that killed tank after tank.

On his seventh sortie as dusk was settling he flew over the fighting to the enemy’s rear to find tempting fuel targets. He dropped down low and flew over a village into heavy flak, but flying just over rooftop level protected him. He looked down a long gulley behind the village and found Malinovsky’s tank reserve.

He realized that the force was preparing to strike deep into the army’s rear and did not want to be dependent on fuel convoys. He alerted the squadron.

Rudel led the way, dropped his bombs, and then attacked with his 20mm cannon. Normally those guns would have been ineffective against tanks, but the fuel drums were another matter. With the first bombs, the column stopped abruptly and then in a few minutes resumed its orderly exit from the gulley. But by now Rudel’s squadron was swarming over them, and the Russians scattered in panic out of the gulley and across the steppe.

Only night finally grounded the Stukas, which had accounted for almost forty tanks and dozens of trucks. By his quick thinking and aggressiveness, Rudel had wrecked Malinovsky’s reserve tank brigade and his motorized brigade which he had been preparing for the killing stroke against 1st Panzer Army. Unknown to Rudel, there was a vital bonus amid the burning tanks and trucks scattered though the gulley and the surrounding steppe. Malinovsky was among the dead.

As night fell the loss of the army commander and much of his senior staff was not known yet. The great meeting engagement had cost them over a hundred tanks to the Germans’ sixty. The fighting between the infantry of both armies flared and rumbled all day. As Rudel was riding the dusk into his last attack, SS
Wiking
broke through the Soviet 13th Rifle Corps and rampaged through the enemy’s rear. Late that night, after the fighting had stopped, the Germans could hear the noise of tank engines revving up and stood to their own vehicles lest the Russians come in the night. It was only the remnants of 2nd Guards Army pulling out in defeat. The Germans would immortalize the tank battle as
Der Tottenritt bei Leninsk
(‘The Death Ride of Leninsk’).

The area around Vatutin’s command post in the town was littered with shattered tanks, bodies, and the debris from the large number of German supply and maintenance units that 5th Tank Army had overrun. Hundreds of German prisoners were being escorted back across the bridge to the west bank of the Don. To the east was the smoke and noise of battle. As long as he held the Germans close they could not disengage and escape. Stalin had called him personally to congratulate him on the success of Southwest Front and to explain that it was still possible to trap the enemy between his own 1st Tank Corps at Lyapichev and Rokossovsky’s 16th Tank Corps.

Chuikov was less sanguine, remembering an old Russian military proverb, ‘It was all smooth on the map, but they forgot the ravines.’ He had an army to command - officially - but he could scrape barely a division’s worth with enough ammunition and equipment to accomplish his task. These were the survivors of dozens of divisions and brigades smashed, depleted, replaced, the lucky survivors of the months of the
Rattenkrieg.
Now they streamed out of the ruins of the outer suburbs of Stalingrad, denizens of cellars, broken buildings, all the dark and claustrophobic shelters of city fighting and into the open, snow-covered country. Chuikov himself did not realize what effect such a sudden change would have until it struck him himself. There was an unnerving feeling of vulnerability in the empty expanse of the fields, with barely a bit of stubble or steppe grass showing out of the thin layer of snow.

It was not quite empty. Hoth had placed his 29th Motorized Division to hold the wide-open right flank of the two German armies. Its victory over the 13th Tank Corps two days before had proved the wisdom of that move. Now it hovered over a broad stretch of open country as befitting its epithet, the Falcon Division. It did not take long for its reconnaissance elements to discover Chuikov’s infantry trudging over the snow to the southwest. They would have been safer had they clung to their broken city. Leyser had taken the risk of pulling his division up to within 10 miles of Lyapichev in case 1st Tank Corps broke through. It would also allow him to counter any threat to 4th Panzer Army’s flank.

Chuikov was just such a threat. Ever since his men had left the psychological protection of the last of the suburbs, he had wondered when the Germans would discover they were there. He had fought them too long to believe they would leave such a flank wide open. His question was answered all too soon as Leyser’s artillery laced down his column, spewing men in every direction. Before they could recover from the shock, the panzers were cutting through them, followed by the German infantry firing from their halftracks. An hour later a German bayonet prodded Chuikov’s chest. He groaned. ‘Hey,
Herr Leutnant,
this one’s alive, and he’s a general!’
¹

Yeremenko did not have time to worry about the defeat of 2nd Guards Army. The Germans were outside his own bunker. Smoke from the burning headquarters was drifting down into the small space, choking everyone. He spun the cylinder of his revolver. Wounded three times in the war so far, he concluded that he had already used up all his luck and more. He would not survive this defeat one way or another. Stalin would have less mercy than the Germans. No surrender.

The German 11th Army’s infantry corps had broken through between the Sarpinsky Lakes the day before as its panzer corps had finished off the last of his tank brigades. Stalingrad Front had simply disintegrated. The Germans were rounding up 80,000 prisoners as their infantry columns were marching north through the night towards the city. At last Manstein ordered the panzer corps west. He now had his operational reserve. And not a moment too soon.

At first light Butkov’s 1st Tank Corps burst out of its concentration at Lyapichev and headed east. Behind it rifle divisions widened the breakthrough. The tanks swept over the thin German antitank defences of what was left of V Corps. Twenty-five miles in the other direction Rokossovky’s 16th Tank Corps had skirted through the outer Stalingrad suburbs and was heading southwest. Each tank corps had only slightly more than 12 miles to go to trap both German armies to the north. All that stood between their 300 tanks and the objective was 29th Motorized Division.

Zhukov drew all the resources of the three northern fronts together to ensure that nothing would stand in the way of the union of the two tank corps. Wave after wave of Sturmoviks, the premier ground-attack aircraft of the Red Air Force, were concentrated from the 16th and 17th Air Armies. Low on fuel, outnumbered eight to one, and tormented from the sky by swarms of Red Falcons,
²
the Falcon Division was broken and brushed aside as the two tank corps closed the distance between them. At 10.37, their lead elements met a few miles outside the little town of Verkhne-Tsaritsynski, the site of the mauling of the 13th Tank Corps three days before. The area was littered with wrecked Soviet tanks. That did not lessen the joy of the men in both corps. The Germans were surrounded! The commanders met and hugged, tears streaming down their faces as all along the front where the corps met, men climbed down from their tanks to embrace and celebrate. Vodka appeared everywhere. The closing of the ring happened so quickly that the propaganda units were not able to film it properly. So next day it was carefully restaged for them.

Behind the celebrations the rifle divisions of Rokossovky’s 66th Army were force-marching south to strengthen the ring around the Germans. Vatutin’s 8th Cavalry Corps had crossed the Don 20 miles south of Lyapichev and its units were fanning out in the German rear. Stalin was visibly relieved when the news arrived that the ring had been closed. That night every Soviet radio station interrupted its programming to announce to the Soviet peoples that their glorious sons in the Red Army had closed a death trap on the enemy who had strained and struggled for months to take Stalin’s city on the Volga. Stalin was only momentarily relieved. After all, he could not conjure up the fuel that was running out for his tanks. Current operations, especially around Stalingrad, had badly depleted fuel stocks. The consequences of the loss of 90 per cent of the Soviet oilfields at Maikop, Grozny and Baku were finally being felt on the battlefield. Like a knife twisting in the Soviet belly, the refineries at Maikop were already producing refined fuels for the Germans. Fuel trains were already reaching Kotelnikovo and their loads were then immediately being hurried north by truck.
³

For Seydlitz the crisis of the battle was at hand. His army and Hoth’s were now fully encircled. Manstein had just appointed him to command both armies in the pocket.
⁴
As well as enemies on the ground, the Red Air Force was savaging the overcrowded pocket, now called the Kalach
Kessel.
To the west Vatutin had pushed him away from the Don. To the north and east Rokossovsky’s infantry were pressing. To the south the enemy’s two tank corps had barred the way for relief. And those were only the problems caused directly by the enemy. His men had had no shelter since they had abandoned Stalingrad; fuel, food and ammunition were fast running out. The two panzer corps were down to fewer than fifty tanks each with almost no fuel to run them. The wounded were dying of exposure, and there was little the doctors could do without supplies and field hospitals.

From Werewolf came the stirring command:

MAP № 10 THE ENCIRCLEMENT AT KALACH 5 NOVEMBER 1942

‘How reassuring,’ thought Seydlitz. ‘If adamantine resolve were all it took, then Hitler would already be ruling the world.’ As it was, he would put his faith in Manstein. The word quickly spread through the trapped armies. ‘Manstein is coming!’ It worked like a jolt of adrenalin to reanimate the sagging morale of the troops.

The Soviets were rushing troops into the ring around the two trapped armies. Manstein would have to come soon. Seydlitz would not have enough strength to attempt to break out while Manstein was breaking in. He concentrated all his remaining panzer and motorized forces into a single battle group, Kampfgruppe
Hoth,
putting that general in charge of the break-out. With them were his veterans of the
Hoch- und Deutschmeister.
He mused that having broken open the Demyansk Pocket earlier that year, they would see the irony of breaking out of another pocket now. More than that, despite what they had gone through, they were still tough veterans who got things done.

Now Hitler actually came to his aid. Goring, elated with his success at resupplying 1st Panzer Army by air, pledged to resupply the armies in the Kalach Pocket to which Hitler assented. Unfortunately, there was no airfield left in the pocket. Instead a steady stream of Ju 52s flew over the pocket dropping supplies by parachute. The Red Falcons had a field day, falling on them as if they were flocks of pigeons. To the horror of the Germans on the ground, transport after transport blew up in the air or spiralled down in flames to crash among them. Yet amid the carnage raining down on them, thousands of parachutes also landed with desperately needed food, ammunition and medical supplies. The men who rushed to retrieve one parachute were taken aback, though, to discover that the entire canister was full of condoms. Another group found a canister packed with Iron Crosses.

Richthofen’s fighters flew escort but found they had their hands full as the Red Air Force put everything it had into the air battle to keep the pocket from being resupplied. In truth, Luftflotte 4, despite its high kill-ratio, was being flown into the ground. Its losses were mounting with few replacements in aircraft or pilots. The Red Air Force was also paying far too much attention to its airfields. Richthofen urged Manstein, ‘There are too many Russians, and they keep getting better. Hurry, or I won’t be able to support you.’

The remnants of 2nd Guards Army retreating into the town were given no rest and less hope by Kleist’s pursuing panzers. A German reconnaissance battalion cut Stalin’s secret railway a dozen miles to the north. Already artillery fire was falling amid the supply dumps and rail sidings. Fire and smoke seemed everywhere, as did large numbers of terror-stricken rear-echelon troops and deserters.

There was even more reason to panic had they known that SS
Wiking
had swung south to the Volga and raced up the river road to play havoc among the supply units and the masses of equipment, food, and ammunition that had built up as the floating river ice had cut off almost all traffic to the west. On the east bank were numerous boats and barges immobilized by the ice. Many of the Scandinavians in the Nordland Regiment had been fishermen and small-boat operators. Ice was nothing new to them, and a few managed to dodge the floes and get to the other side. The first soldier of the Wehrmacht to plant his boots on the landing zone in the city was a Norwegian. He looked around and walked up the beach past wrecked boats and equipment of every type. A few more followed him, spread out in a skirmish line. He was met by a man with a white flag and a red cross on his armband. Stalingrad had fallen to a squad.

Zaitsev was resting on a pallet in a basement hospital when the word spread that the Germans were back in the city. At first there was stunned silence, then men began to weep. All for nothing! Rumours are often just rumours, he thought. Then a silhouette filled the doorway, that same silhouette he had had scores of times in his sights. Instinctively, he grabbed his sniper’s rifle from where it was propped up against the wall. One shot, and the German, or more accurately a Swede, fell forward onto the floor. As fast as a hunted hare, Zaitsev slipped out the door and up the basement steps. In moments he was lost to sight among the ruins.