fourteen
| THE ADVENT OF GENERAL VON
MANSTEIN
When the tanks of the Russian 26th Armoured Corps captured Kalach
and joined the infantry that had driven up from the south, they
achieved something greater even than the spectacular victory which
was promised by the isolation of the 6th Army. For this brilliant
stroke marked, in its every aspect—its timing, its
concentration, and the manner in which it exploited the enemy's own
disposition—-a complete and final shift in the strategic
balance between the two contestants. From this time on the Red Army
held the initiative, and although the Germans were to try on many
occasions (and to succeed on some) to reverse this balance, their
efforts turned out to be no more than tactically significant. From
November 1942 on, the posture of the Wehrmacht in the East was
fundamentally a defensive one.
This reversal can be attributed to a number of interlocking
factors. First, unwarranted German overconfidence. It was this that
lay behind the idiotic dispositions, with the weakest formations at
the front responsible for the most vital sectors. (The most vital,
that is, if the main battle should alter character and become
defensive.) Second, erratic leadership, chiefly but by no means
entirely the product of Hitler's interference. This led to a
confusion of objectives and their priority. And finally (as a
function of this), the emotional obsession with Stalingrad which
caused the
Schwerpunkt
to become fatally entangled in a web of
street fighting, imposing on the whole army a static process of
attrition which was severer than that suffered by its enemies—and
to which it was less suited.
In essence, though, the miscalculation of the Germans went deeper
than this. The hard fact was that they were attempting too much. They
were relying entirely on superior leadership and training to
compensate them for material deficiencies. Having failed to destroy
the Red Army in 1941—and having experienced its recuperative
powers that winter—they had embarked on a campaign that
stretched their own resources to the uttermost, ignoring at their
peril the inexorable laws of time and distance, of numbers and
firepower.
The defeat at Stalingrad shocked the whole nation, and its
tremors, echoing back from the mass of the people, were registered at
OKW. The concept of ultimate defeat, though still having no
substance, lengthened as a shadow. The effect of this shock is most
marked in the character of the leadership. This is what gives a
peculiar interest to 1943.
For the first six months of that year the conduct of the war in
the East enjoyed a greater degree of professional direction than at
any other time before or afterward. It is almost as if Paulus, by his
sacrifice, had bought for his colleagues on the General Staff a final
chance to redeem their fortunes.
The two men Hitler selected as architects of recovery were
Manstein and Guderian. These brilliant soldiers had conceived,
independently of each other, the principles on which the campaign
must be fought—a reversion to the mobile defence, a war of
manoeuvre, luring the enemy forward to entrap and destroy him in the
manner of Tannenberg or Galicia-Tarnow. Only thus (they believed)
could Germany redress the balance of material which tilted against
her and recover the strategic ascendancy. On their early successes
and subsequent frustrations—owing as much to the jealousy and
intransigence of their professional colleagues as to Hitler's
interference—the history of this period hangs.
As this break in the continuity of the campaign in the East is
more a matter of change in the strategic balance and in the character
of the German leadership than the ending of a particular battle or
calendar period, the easiest point at which to take up the narrative
is on 20th November, when Manstein was ordered to travel to the
headquarters of Army Group B at Starobelsk.
Manstein had been more or less inactive during October,
establishing his headquarters at Vitebsk, in preparation for playing
a "special role" against the Russian offensive which was
expected against Army Group Centre.
[For Manstein's career after his promotion to Field Marshal, and
his relations with Hitler, see Ch. 16.]
Now the order from OKH, "for the purpose of stricter
coordination of the armies involved in the arduous defensive battles
to the south and west of Stalingrad," directed Manstein to form
a new army group in the Don bend, at the junction of Army Groups A
and B. Under command he would take the 4th Panzer Army, 6th Army, and
the 3rd Rumanian Army. The task of the new group was somewhat
optimistically framed as "to bring the enemy attacks to a
standstill and recapture the positions occupied by us."
Owing to the bad weather which had spread over the whole of
central Russia—low ceiling, snow blizzards, and temperatures
around 20 below zero—Manstein and his staff had to make the
journey by train. Leaving Vitebsk at seven o'clock on the morning of
21st November, they made their first stop that evening at Orsha. Here
they found Kluge waiting on the platform with his Chief of Staff,
General Wohler. The commander of Army Group Centre radiated gloom.
The latest information from OKH, he told Manstein, was that there
were two Soviet tank armies involved, "in addition to a great
deal of cavalry—in all, some thirty formations."
[In fact, this was a serious underestimate. By 25th November, OKH
had identified 143 "formations." This term included
divisions referring to infantry (the Russian infantry division was,
of course, smaller than the German; see Ch. 2), and brigades when
referring to armour and cavalry. Kluge's gloomy reference to cavalry
is further evidence of the impression made on the Germany Army by the
skilful way in which the Russians used this anachronism on their home
ground.]
As to the possibilities of restoring the situation, "You will
find it impossible to move any formation larger than a battalion
without first referring back to the Führer."
Whatever Manstein may have thought of Kluge's foreboding, he can
have derived little comfort from a detailed scrutiny of the units
which were to compose the strength of his new responsibility. The 6th
Army, being surrounded, was unusable in an operational sense.
Moreover, Paulus' divisions, representing as they did the head of the
Schwerpunkt
, had been under the closest supervision and
direction of OKW, and Hitler maintained direct control of operations
through a liaison officer who was attached to Paulus' headquarters
with his own signals section. Of the remainder, their real strength
belied the grandiose "corps" and "Army" titles
the situation map attributed to them. The 3rd Rumanian Army had taken
the full shock of the Russian attack from Kremenskaya and, with the
exception of two divisions in the west, had been annihilated. The
48th Panzer Corps, the mobile reserve in the Don bend, had, after
some hesitation, been committed to a counterattack.
[The corps consisted of two divisions. One, a Rumanian armoured
division equipped mainly with captured French tanks, and largely
untrained. The German component, the 22nd Panzer, was understrength,
and many of its tanks had been immobilised by mice eating the
electric insulation. (This very odd excuse is confirmed by two
independent sources: Mellenthin 166, and Leyderrey 94.) Rather than
pose the many questions of maintenance and service which this curious
statement leaves unanswered, Manstein confines himself to admitting
that the division "was obviously not up to standard from a
technical point of view." Nor is the affair illuminated by its
sequel. The corps commander, General Heim, was immediately
court-martialled by a tribunal presided over by Goering, and
sentenced to death. But he was later rehabilitated on the ground that
"his forces had indeed been too weak for the task confronting
them."]
It had run head on into a renewed advance by the 2nd Guards Tank
Army and been cut to pieces. Finally, the 4th Panzer Army, on the
southern wing, had itself been severed by the southern arc of the
Russian pincer. The bulk of its tank strength had been swept up into
the Stalingrad pocket, and the remainder, concentrated in the
Kotelnikovo area, consisted mainly of service and communication
troops, with one intact Rumanian division. The only full-strength
German unit, the 16th Motorised Division, was based at Elista, 150
miles from the Don, and carried the critical responsibility of
guarding the junction between Army Group A and the right wing of the
main front.
These forces were manifestly incapable of serious resistance if
the Russian effort should change direction and turn westward—or,
still more perilous, southward to the Sea of Azov and across the
communications of the extended Army Group A. And the notion of their
"recapturing positions previously held by us" was an
absurdity. Army Group Don had, excluding the 6th Army, little more
than the fighting strength of a corps—and was spread over two
hundred miles. Manstein's first task, therefore, was to collect
sufficient strength under his own hand to give him, at least, certain
tactical options. From his railway coach he had teleprinted OKH that
". . . in view of the magnitude of the enemy effort, our task at
Stalingrad could not be merely a matter of regaining a fortified
stretch of front. What we should need to restore the situation would
be forces amounting to an army in strength—none of which, if
possible, should be used for a counteroffensive until their assembly
was fully complete." The disorganised state of the railway
system and the fact that Partisan activity had made large stretches
of line unusable prolonged the journey to Starobelsk over three days
and two nights. On the morning of 24th November, while his train was
waiting in Dnepropetrovsk for the last stage, Manstein was handed a
teleprint from Zeitzler which promised "an armoured division and
two or three infantry divisions." But by this time the situation
had worsened to a degree that made reinforcements on that scale of
small account.
In the three days following their penetration of the Rumanian
corps, the Russians had moved thirty-four divisions across the Don,
twelve from Beketonskaya bridgehead and twenty-two from Kremenskaya.
Their tanks had turned westward, defeating the 48th Panzer Corps and
probing dangerously into the confusion of stragglers, service and
training units, and mutinous satellites who milled about in the
German rear. Their infantry had turned east, digging with feverish
energy to build an iron ring around the 6th Army. Zhukov kept the
whole of the Stalingrad pocket under bombardment from heavy guns
sited on the far bank of the Volga, but for the first few days he had
exerted only a gentle pressure upon the surrounded Germans. The
Soviets' intention was to probe in sufficient strength to be able to
detect the first signs of their enemy's actually striking camp, but
to avoid any action which might precipitate this. For them, as for
Paulus, these first hours were vital. All night on the 23rd and
during the morning of 24th November, men and tractors hauled and
struggled with battery after battery of 76-mm. guns across the frozen
earth.
By that evening, when Manstein finally arrived at Army Group B,
Russian firepower on the west side of the pocket had trebled. Over a
thousand antitank guns were in position in an arc from Vertyatchi,
in the north, around to Kalach, then eastward below Marinovka, and to
join the Volga at the old Beketonskaya bridgehead. The extrication of
the 6th Army could no longer be an extempore affair—undignified
and costly, perhaps, but conducted under conditions of confusion and
mobility. It would have to be a set-piece and one, according to
Clausewitz, which "habitually presents exceptional difficulty,"
that of "Sortie to Relief."
Thus when Manstein finally descended from his train at Starobelsk,
he found that the situation, which had been unpromising when he had
started out from Vitebsk, was now highly critical.
At Army Group B a certain atrophy was apparent. Weichs and his
Chief of Staff, General von Sodenstern, were responsible for seven
armies, of which three were "allied" and a fourth had a
high non-German content.
[Prior to the formation of Army Group Don, Weichs's command
included, from north to south, the 2nd Army, 1st Hungarian, 8th
Italian, Army Detachment Hollidt, 3rd Rumanian, 6th Army, and 4th
Panzer.]
Their front extended for more than 250 miles. Sodenstern's
pessimism seems also to have affected the accuracy of his estimates
because he told Manstein that the 6th Army had, "at most,"
two days' supply of ammunition and six days' rations. Although
Manstein had expressly telegraphed before leaving from Vitebsk that
the ". . . Sixth Army be instructed to withdraw forces quite
ruthlessly from its defence fronts in order to keep its rear free at
the Don crossing at Kalach," professional etiquette had obliged
him to send this message down the cumbersome chain of command that
stretched through Army Group B. He was "unable to discover"
whether these instructions were ever passed on to Paulus.
Whether it was that he found the atmosphere at Army Group B
unsatisfactory, or for whatever reason, Manstein remained there only
a few hours. He had brought with him the majority of his old 11th
Army staff, and was allocated the quartermaster organisation
originally set up for Marshal Antonescu.
[Just before the Russian counteroffensive broke, it had been
mooted that the Marshal might be given an army group. Colonel
Eberhard Finkh, one of the ablest transport officers in the German
Army (executed in 1944 for his suspected complicity in the 20th July
plot; he was Deputy Chief of Staff to Kluge), had been placed in
charge of the quartermaster general's branch.]
On the evening of the 24th, therefore, the Field Marshal and all
his attendant personnel climbed back again into their train and set
off on a further twenty-four-hour journey to Novocherkassk, the site
selected for the headquarters of Army Group Don.