Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943 Read online

  The most insanitary conditions tended to occur in those units which had been forced by the Soviet attacks to take up new positions in the open steppe at the western end of the newly formed Kessel. ‘Miserably frozen at night,’ the artillery officer who had withdrawn across the Don wrote in his diary. ‘How long are we expected to sleep in the open? The body won’t stand it much more. On top of that the filth and the lice!!!’ In such conditions, troops had not yet had a chance to dig communications trenches and latrines. Soldiers were sleeping, packed together like sardines, in holes in the ground covered by a tarpaulin. Infections spread rapidly. Dysentery soon had a debilitating and demoralizing effect, as weakened soldiers squatted over shovels in their trenches, then threw the contents out over the parapet.

  Letter writers generally spared their relatives the full squalor of their lives. ‘We squat together’, wrote Kurt Reuber, ‘in a hole dug out of the side of a gully in the steppe. The most meagre and badly equipped dugout. Dirt and clay. Nothing can be made of it. Scarcely any wood for bunkers. We’re surrounded by a sad landscape, monotonous and melancholic. Winter weather of varying degrees of cold. Snow, heavy rain, frost then sudden thaw. At night you get mice running over your face.’

  The progressive infestation of clothes really started during the chaotic days of the encirclement, with constant movement. ‘The plague of lice was frightful,’ wrote a corporal in a panzer regiment, ‘because we had no opportunity to wash, change clothes or hunt them down. In my helmet, I found about 200 of these faithful little beasts.’ An unknown soldier was prompted to write a new version of a favourite song:

  Underneath the lantern

  in a little house

  I sit every evening

  searching for a louse…

  During the long nights of the Russian winter, there was ample opportunity for conversations about home and how much better life had been before coming to Russia. In the 376th Infantry Division, they bemoaned their departure from Angoulême for the Ostfront, leaving behind cafés, cheap wine, and French girls. Other thoughts went further back, to the triumphant welcome home in the summer of 1940. The waving crowds, the kisses and the adulation had been largely inspired by the idea that the fighting was as good as over. The vast majority of the country had cheered Hitler for having brought them through a short victorious war with so few casualties.

  Often, when thoughts turned to home, harmonicas played sentimental tunes in the bunker. After such a dramatic reversal of fortune, men grasped at rumours more than ever before, with constant questions and ill-informed speculation. Even their officers had little idea of the true situation. Another subject, linked to the chances of getting out, was the perfect wound which would not cripple, or be too painful, yet would still qualify its recipient for evacuation by air. Comrades who had gone on leave just before the encirclement were viewed with admiring envy, while those who had returned just before faced good-natured, but no doubt deeply provoking, jokes. One person who never complained of his bad luck was Kurt Reuber. He had returned to his unit just two days before the Kessel was closed. It would soon be hard to tell whose services would be more needed, those of the doctor or those of the priest.

  Besieged Germans imagined that the Red Army soldiers opposite them lacked for little, in either rations or warm clothing, but this image was often inaccurate. ‘Because of bad communications, food is not brought forward in time for soldiers at the front,’ ran one Don Front report. ‘The failure of officers and commissars to use bunkers to warm up soldiers’, said another, ‘has led to many men having to be sent to hospital with frostbite, mostly in the feet.’

  The best-equipped Soviet soldiers were the snipers. Little was denied them. Out in the snowfields of the steppe in their white camouflage suits, they operated in pairs, one with a telescope and the other with the long-range rifle. They crawled forward at night into no man’s land, where they dug snow-holes and hides from which to watch and shoot. Their casualty rates were much higher than in the city, because they had fewer choices for concealment and lines of escape. But the ‘sniper movement’ still attracted more volunteers than it could train or use.

  Any lingering problems with morale usually reflected the Soviet authorities’ indifference to the individual soldier. The obsession with secrecy meant that men not directly involved in Operation Uranus had not been told about it until up to five days after the start. At first sight, the most surprising aspect of this time of triumph is the number of deserters from the Red Army who continued to cross the lines to the surrounded German Army, thus entering a trap, but this paradox seems to be explicable mainly through a mixture of ignorance and mistrust. Colonel Tulpanov, the sophisticated NKVD officer in charge of recruiting German officers, admitted quite openly to one of his star prisoners, the fighter pilot Count Heinrich von Einsiedl, that: ‘These Russians were most astonished to hear from the Germans the same story that had been put out by their own propaganda. They had not believed that the Germans were encircled.’

  Zhukov was characteristically to the point when he described the encirclement of the Sixth Army as ‘a tremendous education for victory for our troops’. Grossman was also right when he wrote: ‘The morale of the soldiers has never been so high.’ (Interestingly, neither of these observations exactly confirmed the official Soviet propaganda line that ‘the morale of an army depends on the socially just and progressive order of the society it defends’.)

  Red Army soldiers now took a predictable pleasure in taunting the enemy who had so recently taunted them. Some companies sent out a patrol at night with a scarecrow dressed up as Hitler. They then erected it in no man’s land, and hung a placard inviting Landsers to shoot at it. The scarecrow would be booby-trapped with a couple of grenades, in case a German officer sent out a patrol to remove it the next night. On a more organized basis, NKVD propaganda companies set up their loudspeakers. For hours on end, the loudspeakers blasted out tango music, which was judged to convey a suitably sinister mood, interspersed by messages prepared on gramophone records to remind the beleaguered troops of their hopeless position. At first, these activities had little influence, but later, when German hopes began to fade, the effect became cumulative.

  The Red Army, realizing that the Germans had to economize on artillery shells, because they were so heavy to fly in, went in for probing attacks, trying to provoke a reply. The most overworked troops at this time were the divisional reconnaissance companies that acted as pathfinders for these raids. ‘We were like gypsies, here today gone tomorrow,’ remembered an officer who was one of five survivors from the original company of 114 men. Patrols, usually of five or six men, would penetrate the Kessel and hide up near roads in white snowsuits to observe traffic and troop movements. On their return, they would seize a ‘tongue’ for interrogation.

  Patrolling activity was particularly intense on the south-western flanks of the Kessel. Soviet commanders were certain that the Germans would make an attempt to break out, and they wanted to be forewarned. The flat, snow-covered steppe was dangerous for reconnaissance patrols, with the machine-gun posts enjoying good fields of fire. On one occasion, early in December, however, a reconnaissance party, backed by a raiding group, slipped up to the trenches opposite only to find them empty. The Germans had pulled back to warmer bunkers behind. After the first Russian infantrymen had explored the trenches and fire bunkers undisturbed, the commander of the reconnaissance party inspected the booty, including a long sheepskin coat. Then, next to the field telephone, he spotted ‘a white mug with a rose’ on it. It seemed incomparably beautiful because he had not seen a completely civilian object for so long. But his company commander then arrived, and decided, rather over-ambitiously for such a small force, to try to seize more ground. Once they advanced, everything quickly went wrong. The Germans countered with tanks, and their own artillery refused to fire in support because they had not received an order through the proper chain of command. A very messy fight ensued, and while the reconnaissance party was pulling back, the yo
ung commander received a serious wound in the leg from a shell burst. As he lay in the snow looking at the blood on his white camouflage suit, he thought of the mug with the rose.

  Sometimes when Russian and German recce groups passed each other at night in no man’s land, they pretended not to see each other. Each had specific orders not to be deflected from their task by a firefight. If, however, small groups met head on, then the struggle was often conducted in deadly silence with knives or sharpened bayonets. ‘When I killed a German with a knife for the first time,’ a Russian recce platoon commander from the marine infantry remembered, ‘I saw him in my dreams for three weeks afterwards.’ One of the biggest dangers, however, was returning to your own lines away from where you were expected.

  Fortunately for the Russian troops, the deficiencies in winter clothing, which had been serious, were made up after the successful completion of Operation Uranus. Almost all soldiers received rabbit-fur gloves, quilted jackets, sheepskin jerkins and a grey fur ushanka to which they transferred the red star from their summer cap.

  A constant trickle of new arrivals brought divisions up to strength. For the ingénu, to join a platoon of battle-hardened soldiers was always daunting, but profiting from their experience offered a better chance of survival than joining an untested formation. Once the new soldier had accepted that survival was relative rather than absolute, and he learned to live minute by minute, the strain eased.

  For a young Soviet citizen, the most shocking experience was not soldierly coarseness, but the frank speaking of frontoviki on political subjects. Many expressed themselves in a way that prompted new arrivals to glance over their shoulders in alarm. They declared that life after the war should be different. The terrible existence for those who worked on collective farms and in factories must be improved, and the privileges of the nomenklatura restricted.

  At this stage of the war, the risk of being denounced at the front was really quite small. As one veteran put it: ‘A soldier felt that, having paid with his blood, he had the right to free speech.’ He had to be far more careful if evacuated to a field hospital, where informants and political officers were vigilant for any criticism of the regime. (Danger returned at the front towards the end of the war during the advance into Germany. The army’s task was almost over, and the NKVD Special Departments, by then SMERSH, wasted no time in reimposing the Stalinist terror.)

  Soldiers tantalized themselves with talk of food at home, as well as daydreaming. Some platoons were fortunate enough to have a gifted storyteller inventing modern fairy tales. They played cards (although it was officially forbidden) and chess. Now that they were in fixed positions for a little time, it was worth carving proper pieces and fashioning a board. Most of all they reminisced. Muscovites talked constantly of their home city, not so much to impress comrades from the provinces, but out of a genuine homesickness in the emptiness of the steppe.

  Writing home was ‘very difficult’, confessed the lieutenant of marine infantry. It was ‘impossible’ to tell the truth. ‘Soldiers at the front never sent bad news home.’ His parents kept all his letters, and when he reread them after the war, he found that they contained no information whatsoever. In general, a letter home usually started as an exercise in reassuring mothers – ‘I am alive and healthy, and we eat well’ – but the effect was rather dissipated by subsequent remarks to the effect that they were all ready to sacrifice their lives for the Motherland.

  Within platoons, there were anecdotes and jokes and teasing, but this, apparently, was seldom cruel among those of equal rank. There was also a surprising lack of crudeness. They talked of girls ‘only when in a special mood’, which usually meant when sentimentality was stimulated by the vodka ration or certain songs. Each company was supposed to have at least one concertina for purposes of morale. The Red Army’s favourite song around Stalingrad in those last few weeks of 1942 was Zemlyanka(‘The Dugout’), a Russian counterpart to Lili Marlene, with a similar lilting melody. This haunting song by Aleksey Surkov, written the previous winter – sometimes also known from its most famous line as ‘The Four Steps to Death’ – was initially condemned as ideologically unsound because of its mood of ‘excessive pessimism’. But Zemlyanka proved so popular with front-line troops that commissars had to look the other way.

  The fire is flickering in the narrow stove

  Resin oozes from the log like a tear

  And the concertina in the bunker

  Sings to me of your smile and eyes.

  The bushes whispered to me about you

  In a snow-white field near Moscow

  I want you above all to hear

  How sad my living voice is.

  You are now very far away

  Expanses of snow lie between us

  It is so hard for me to come to you,

  And here there are four steps to death.

  Sing concertina, in defiance of the snowstorm

  Call out to that happiness which has lost its way

  I’m warm in the cold bunker

  Because of your inextinguishable love.

  Within the Kessel, Sixth Army discipline was maintained rigidly. Hitler, meanwhile, in a typical attempt to secure loyalty, started to become generous with promotions and medals. Paulus was raised to Colonel-General.

  For soldiers, the main source of consolation was the Führer’s promise that he would do everything to secure their release. In fact, General Strecker was convinced that soldiers complained remarkably little about the drastic reduction in their rations because they were convinced that they would soon be saved. During one of his visits to the front line, a sentry held up a hand on hearing artillery fire in the distance. ‘Listen, Herr General,’ he said. ‘Those must be our rescuers approaching.’ Strecker was deeply affected. ‘This faith of an ordinary German soldier is heart-warming,’ he noted.

  Even anti-Nazi officers could not believe that Hitler would dare to abandon the Sixth Army. The blow to the regime and morale at home in Germany would be far too great, they reasoned. Also the approach of Christmas and the New Year stimulated the notion that things were bound to change for the better. Even the sceptical Groscurth was more optimistic. ‘Things seem to be slightly less bleak’, he wrote, ‘and one can now hope that we’ll be got off the hook.’ But he still referred to Stalingrad as the ‘Schicksalsstadt’ – ‘the city of fate’.

  18

  ‘Der Manstein Kommt!’

  Snow began to fall heavily at the end of the first week of December. Drifts filled balkas, forcing those who lived in caves excavated from their sides to dig their way out. There was little fuel for any vehicles, and the horses pulling ration carts were so starved that their strength had to be spared on the smallest hills. Chaplain Altmann of the 113th Infantry Division, after hitching a ride on one, recorded: ‘I can’t remain seated, because the horse is so ill-nourished that he cannot stand the slightest strain.’

  Altmann was above all struck by the pathetic youth of soldiers in the regiment he was visiting. Their first question was utterly predictable: ‘When are we going to get more to eat?’ He also noted that although it was only the second week of December, ‘already their wretched bunkers in the middle of this treeless steppe have Christmas decorations’. At battalion headquarters, he received a telephone call warning him of an unChristmas-like duty. ‘Tomorrow morning at dawn, execution of a German soldier (nineteen-year-old, self-inflicted wound).’

  Although all soldiers suffered badly from hunger, most still had no idea of the size of the supply problem facing the Sixth Army. Hitler, when ordering Paulus to stay in place, had promised that more than one hundred Junkers 52 transport aircraft would be delivering supplies, yet during the air-bridge’s first week of operations from 23 November the airlift did not even average thirty flights a day. Twenty-two transport planes were lost through enemy action and crashes on 24 November, and another nine were shot down the following day. Heinkel 11 is had to be taken off bombing missions in a desperate attempt to make up the losses.
Richthofen rang Jeschonnek three times in an attempt to convince him that they lacked the aircraft to supply the Sixth Army by air. Goering could not be contacted. He had left for Paris.

  The airlift did not provide anything like the bare minimum of 300 tons a day promised. Just 350 tons arrived during the course of the whole week. Out of this 350 tons, there were only 14 tons of food for a ration strength by then reduced to 275,000. Three-quarters of the total load consisted of fuel, of which part was for the Luftwaffe’s own aircraft based at Pitomnik to protect the transport aircraft from Russian fighters. The Pitomnik-based Messerschmitts, however, were now facing fearsome odds as well as often appalling flying conditions. One captured pilot told his NKVD interrogator how, flying out of Pitomnik as escort, his Me-109 had been cut off and attacked by six Russian fighters.

  In the second week up to 6 December, 512 tons (still less than a quarter of the minimum) arrived, delivered by an average of 44 transport aircraft a day. Only 24 tons were food supplies. More and more draught animals had to be slaughtered to make up the shortage. Soldiers saw their rations diminishing rapidly, but they convinced themselves that the situation would not last. They admired the bravery of the Luftwaffe crews and developed a great affection for ‘Tante Ju’ – the Junkers trimotors flying out wounded comrades and taking their letters home to Germany. ‘I’m well and healthy,’ they wrote in December, reassuring their families at home. ‘Nothing worse can happen,’ was another constant refrain. ‘Don’t be worried for me, I’ll soon be home safe and sound.’ They still hoped for a Christmas miracle.