Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (36 page)
Read Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History Online
Authors: Peter Tsouras
Raus could see the village of Verkhne-Tsaritsynski a few miles to the north. Here and there knocked-out tanks were the only bumps on the otherwise flat expanse of farmland beyond which were over 200,000 trapped German soldiers. To the west of the town, Hörnlein was also conducting his own personal reconnaissance. The corps’ northward march had been rapid; they had arrived yesterday, but Manstein was determined not to dissipate their combat power with a hasty attack.
Instead ammunition, fuel and food had been funnelling into their assembly areas. The crews worked quickly to replenish their ammunition, top off their fuel and get as many hot meals as they could. Then, most importantly, they slept. Just as they were about to curl up in whatever shelter they could find, men began running from vehicle to vehicle with the news that Stalingrad had fallen to 1st Panzer Army. Of course, the announcement did not say that only a few hundred men had been able to cross the river. There were a few cheers for the victory that had been hanging in the balance for so long, but sleep was more alluring to bone-tired men than victory’s sweet song.
As they slept, the two infantry corps of 11th Army marched to take up the right flank of the panzer corps. The infantry corps on the right would enter the city from the south while that on the left would prevent any Soviet counterthrust from striking the flank of the relief force.
The Soviets picked up the news of the fall of the city from the German intercepts. Stalin was enraged. No one mentioned that he had personally directed that Chuikov’s army join the encirclement of the Germans. Now he ordered that Rokossovsky’s 66th Army be thrown into the city instead of strengthening the encircling ring. Zhukov called from the front to argue against it. ‘Comrade Stalin, the 66th Army is vital to this operation. We can retake the city once we have destroyed the trapped enemy.’
But Stalin was having none of it. The impossible had happened. The city that bore his name had fallen after he had made its successful defence the pivot of the war for the Soviet peoples. ‘You are thinking only in military terms, but I must balance that with the political cost. How will the morale of your armies be affected if they find out the city had fallen?’
Zhukov replied, ‘They will simply get on with it.’
Stalin was getting angry. ‘The will to fight will be gone. No, you must retake the city immediately, and no one will be the wiser. We can pass it off that the enemy just infiltrated a few saboteurs.’
One last time Zhukov tried to argue, but Stalin cut him off. ‘Just do it.’
As he hung up the phone, he was thinking ahead. The battle could go either way. Should Zhukov win and destroy the trapped Germans, then it would be a disaster for Hitler. Would he sue for peace? Stalin thought, ‘I certainly wouldn’t. There is still a lot of war in the Germans even if they lose this battle.’
But if the battle went the other way, the game was up for the Soviet Union. Lenin’s legacy would be in danger. His spies in OKW had told him that Hitler had talked of a negotiated peace in the spring. How attractive would that be if he were victorious? Stalin put himself in Hitler’s place and knew that such a peace would be a punitive one. Yet what other choice was there? With the loss of the oilfields and Allied aid, there was not a lot of war left in the Russians. He expected that the Soviet Union’s name would become inaccurate as such a peace was likely to shear it of almost all its non-Russian territories. It would be reduced to a Russian core with its centre of gravity moving east. The communist state could survive in this core. The Russians had proved to him that they were a state-minded people, willing to defend Lenin’s legacy.
All well and good, in theory, he thought, but what is to happen to Stalin? He had left a blood-stained path to power. How the knives would sharpen. It would require the iron control of the NKVD if he were to survive. He was pleased in his appointment of Abakumov to replace Beria. The man was pitiless and relentless in his sniffing out of disloyalty, even before the thought had occurred.
Abakumov was indeed pitiless and relentless, but even he could smell a disaster in the wind. The existential question then became, ‘How will Abakumov fare?’ Already members of the Politburo were putting out certain feelers and if Stalin knew about them . . . Loyalty had its limits. Kill for Stalin? Of course. Die for Stalin? Now that was a different matter.
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‘Mein treuer Reinhard,’
Hitler exclaimed, as Heydrich entered and gave him the stiff-armed salute, the
Hitler Gruss.
He came over and took Heydrich’s hands in his own he was so delighted to see him. ‘I am surrounded by generals with their red-striped trousers. They always tell me what cannot be done. With you I know I have a man who just does the impossible. The only one here like you is this young Stauffenberg. You must meet him.’
‘We have already met,
mein Führer.
He greeted me personally at the entrance to your compound.’ Hitler was pleased. He had developed the utmost confidence in his new OKW Deputy Chief of Operations. Stauffenberg was not so pleased. He had already known enough of Heydrich to despise him before they had even met. But after shaking his damp, soft hand, he had viscerally recoiled from the man, though he had enough self-control not to show it.
That reaction only added urgency to his plan to pry military intelligence out of Heydrich’s grasp. As they walked the long path through the pinewoods to Hitler’s bunker, Stauffenberg commented that the SS Panzer Corps being created in France was a juicy plum for any able man willing to throw his fate onto the scales of the battlefield. ‘You would understand, I am sure. The urge to test oneself in battle is irresistible, as you showed when you took part in the air battles against the English.’
Heydrich smiled a bit. It had been a delicious experience, and he chafed to do more than cow Czechs and kill Jews. Of course, getting control of all intelligence functions of the Reich was one thing, but his future would require more combat distinction than a few air brawls with the British.
Stauffenberg went on:
The Führer has not transferred the SS back to the Eastern Front because he is convinced that the
Amis
will land shortly in France. We all bow, of course, to his strategic insight. Think what glory would shower down on the man who drove them into the sea. This time, I wager, they will not be allowed to get away. Ah, here we are!
He was not foolish enough actually to suggest to Hitler that he appoint Heydrich to command the SS Panzer Corps. He knew that Hitler would not take it well for an Army officer, even one as favoured as he was, to make any suggestions about command appointments within the SS. It was Hitler’s private army aglow with a fire for National Socialism that he felt the Army did not show enough. He was confident that Heydrich would bring up the matter but only in private with Hitler.
And he was right. Hitler made the announcement at the next OKW staff meeting. ‘I have decided to entrust command of the new SS panzer corps to my faithful Heydrich. Until the corps is deployed, he will retain control of all intelligence functions already under his purview.’
Stauffenberg was aghast. He had overplayed his hand badly. He had wanted to reassert Wehrmacht control of the Abwehr and had been willing to buy it with a potentially dangerous assignment. Stauffenberg had weighed the importance of the Abwehr against putting a very sharp sword in Heydrich’s hand. The plotters needed the Abwehr to open channels for a negotiated peace after Hitler’s removal. Now Heydrich had the sword and the Abwehr.
At least he would be in France and not on the Eastern Front when it came time to remove Hitler. Hopefully Canaris could continue to deceive Heydrich as to his feelers to the
Amis.
Suddenly things had become a lot more dicey.
6
Admiral Canaris had just returned from a clandestine meeting in Switzerland with a representative of the British MI6. The man had borne Churchill’s answer to the admiral’s question of what terms Germany could expect to end the war. ‘His Majesty’s Government will make no peace with Hitler or his regime.’ What it left unsaid was even more important than what it did say. Churchill was implying that peace was possible if Hitler were removed and the Nazis suppressed.
He was interrupted by the arrival of a courier from Stauffenberg, a reliable young officer. The dispatch he delivered informed him of Hitler’s decision to subordinate the Abwehr to the Sicherheitsdienst and Heydrich as well as the latter’s appointment to command the SS Panzer Corps organizing around Toulon in southern France. It was clear that if Hitler and his entourage were eliminated it would leave enormous power in his former protégé’s hands. If anyone could keep the Nazis in power after Hitler, it was Heydrich.
Canaris went over to the window to watch a cold rain beat down. Something would have to be done to make sure Heydrich did not step into Hitler’s shoes. He called for his aide. ‘Order Major von Fölkersam to report to me immediately.’
Before dawn
Crrossdeutschland
and 6th Panzer Division had assembled without incident. Raus observed that,
The officers looked at their watches. They and their men were fully conscious of the significance of the approaching hour. Suddenly the silence was disrupted by the sounds of explosions. All the guns of the division fired, and it almost seemed as if the shells were going to hit the assembling German troops. Involuntarily, everyone flinched and stopped, but the first salvo had already screamed over the heads of the men and was coming down on the hastily prepared forward positions of the Soviet rifle division that had just arrived the day before. The earth quivered from the explosion of the heavy shells. Stones, planks and rails were hurled into the air. The salvo had hit the centre of the enemy’s chief strongpoint. This was the signal for the Witches’ Sabbath which followed.
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As the artillery kept up its rapid fire, the tank engines turned over. In a deep wedge formation Raus sent over a hundred tanks through the snowy steppe. The blow was so powerful that the Russians of the 343rd Rifle Division were stunned:
His light and heavy batteries stood intact in their firing positions. They had been enveloped and caught in the rear by German tanks before they had been able to fire an accurate round. The limbers which the Russians had moved up quickly had not reached the guns. The horse teams drawing them had fallen under the machine-gun fire. Horse-drawn limbers and ammunition carriers, which had overturned, continued to lie about for hours afterward. Horses which had survived were nibbling at the frozen steppe grass while standing in teams together with the bodies of those which had bled to death in the fire. Here and there, horse teams dragged a dead horse along. Blood on the snow marked their paths. The remnants of the Russian infantry had been scattered and had disappeared in the tall steppe grass as if they had been whisked away by a gust of wind . . . The numbers of captured Russian guns and other heavy weapons, as well as of horses and vehicles of all kinds, including field kitchens, increased by the hour.
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Raus was amazed that the Soviet 16th Tank Corps had not sought to counter his attack on the rifle division in the Soviet first-line defence. He had no idea that Stalin’s order to redirect that division as part of the 66th Army to retake Stalingrad had sown confusion in the enemy command. The 66th Army had just begun moving its rifle divisions into the belt of encirclement to give defence in depth against any German attack so that the tank corps could mass to counterattack. The 343rd Rifle Division had just arrived when it received the order to move back to retake Stalingrad. It was preparing to move when Raus fell upon it.
As night fell, Raus saw to the resupply and refuelling of his division. LX Panzer Corps kept him informed of
Grossdeutschland’
s similar success. It too had gutted an enemy rifle division and not suffered any tank counterattacks. That luck could not last. Tomorrow the Soviet tank corps could be expected to come out fighting.
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His right flank would be secured by the 11th Army’s XXX Corps’ three divisions marching west after the defeat of Southwest Front. On its right LIV Corps’s four divisions would drive up through Stalingrad, make contact with the SS
Wiking
elements in the city, and then strike west against Vatutin’s armies.
That night, as the German panzer divisions rested, Zhukov was again on the phone to Stalin, begging him to rescind the order to redirect 66th Army east to drive the Germans out of Stalingrad. Reconnaissance stated that, because crossing the Volga in the face of so much floating ice was so dangerous, only a battalion or so of Germans had been able to cross, out of the entire 1st Panzer Army waiting on the east bank after its victory at Leninsk.
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This time Stalin relented. The loss of two rifle divisions to Raus and Hörnlein’s panzers underlined how serious their threat was. But Stalin sought to have it both ways. Two of 66th Army’s four rifle divisions could reinforce the two tank corps, but the other two would have to retake Stalingrad. The grand old man of the Prussian Army, the late Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke had had a phrase for this back and forthing: ‘Order, counterorder, disorder.’
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