Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (108 page)

Along the western front the battalions of the divisions employed there were resisting like islands in a sea. One of these divisions was the Austrian 44th Infantry Division, holding the approaches to the vital airfield of Pitomnik. And anyone seeing Stalingrad merely in terms of human suffering, misery, errors, overweening pride, and folly should cast a glance at these battalions. One of these, one among many, was the 1st Battalion, 134th Infantry Regiment.

With its shrunken companies it had dug in its heels outside Baburkin. Its commander, Major Pohl, had received the Knights Cross as recently as mid-December. With it General Paulus had sent him a little package. "Best wishes," it had

written on it in Paulus's hand. Inside was a loaf of army bread and a tin of herrings in tomato sauce—a precious prize in Stalingrad at that time, commensurate with the highest decoration for gallantry.

Pohl was in his firing-pit, like all his men, armed with a carbine. Over to the north their last heavy machine-gun was firing belt after belt. "No one's going to shift me from here, Herr Major," the sergeant had said to Pohl a few days before. There was one more burst—and then the machine-gun was silent. The men could see the Russians jumping into the machine-gun party's position. A brief mêlée with rifle-butt and trenching-tool—then it was all over. All through the night the battalion held its position, stiffened by Panzer Jäger Battalion 46 with a few 2-cm. flak guns and three captured Soviet 7 • 62-cm. guns.

When they had to withdraw on the following morning they had to leave the guns behind: there was no fuel for the captured jeeps to haul them away. Thus each move backward became a Waterloo for the gunners: they had to blow up one gun after another. And even if laboriously they hauled one back with them they would no longer find any shells for it.

The following night Major Pohl drove to Pitomnik to acquaint himself with the situation from his friend Major Freudenfeld, Chief of Luftwaffe Signals in the pocket. It was an eerie journey. In order to mark out the road through the snowy wastes the frozen legs of horses, which had been hacked off the dead animals, had been stuck into the snow, hooves upward—appalling signposts of an appalling battle.

At the airfield itself things looked grim. The Army's vital supply centre was a heap of wreckage. The field was covered with shot-up and damaged aircraft. The two dressing-station tents were crammed full with wounded men. And into this chaos new machines were still being sent, talked down, unloaded, reloaded, and sent off again.

Two days later, on 14th January, Pitomnik fell. That was the end of aerial supplies and the evacuation of the wounded. From that moment onward everything went rapidly downhill. From the pocket fronts the last combat groups were falling back towards the city of Stalingrad. Major Pohl with his men also made this journey through hell. Along the road lay a group of German soldiers who had been hit by a bomb. Those who were still alive had lost some limbs.

Their blood had frozen into red ice; no one had bandaged them; no one had moved them off the road. All the columns had moved past them, trudging along in dull apathy, concerned only with themselves. Pohl had the wounded men bandaged and laid alongside each other. He left a medical orderly with them to wait for a lorry to pick up the unfortunate wretches. No lorry came.

That was how tens of thousands experienced the last days of Stalingrad. The fierce hunger and utter defencelessness in the face of the full-scale Soviet offensive led to a rapid decline of fighting strength and morale. Spirits sagged.

Casualty figures soared. The crowds at first-aid and dressing stations were colossal. Medical supplies and bandages ran out. Marauders roamed the countryside.

On 24th January at 1645 hours the Sixth Army's chief of operations sent a signal to Manstein, a signal shocking in its unemotional language:

Attacks in undiminished violence against the entire western front which has been fighting its way back eastward in the Gorodische area since the morning of 24th in order to form hedgehog in the tractor works. In the southern part of Stalingrad the western front along the city outskirts held on to the western and southern edge of Minina until 1600 hours. Local penetrations in that sector. Volga and north-eastern fronts unchanged.

Frightful conditions in the city area proper, where about 20,000 unattended wounded are seeking shelter among the ruins. With them are about the same number of starved and frost-bitten men, and stragglers, mostly without weapons which they lost in the fighting. Heavy artillery pounding the whole city area. Last resistance along the city outskirts in the southern part of Stalingrad will be offered on 25.1 under the leadership of energetic generals fighting in the line and of gallant officers around whom a few men still capable of fighting have rallied. Tractor works may possibly hold out a little longer. Chief of operations, Sixth Army Headquarters.

Energetic generals. Gallant officers. A few men still capable of fighting. That was the picture.

On the railway embankment south of the Tsaritsa gorge Lieutenant-General von Hartmann, the commander of the

Lower Saxon 71st Infantry Division, fired his carbine at the attacking Russians, standing upright, until mown down by a burst of machine-gun fire.

When Field-Marshal von Manstein read the signal from Sixth Army's chief of operations he realized that there could be no question any longer about any military task being performed by Sixth Army. "Since the Army was no longer able to tie down any appreciable enemy forces," the Field-Marshal reports, "I tried in a long telephone conversation with Hitler on 24th January to obtain his order for surrender—unfortunately in vain. At that moment, but not until that moment, the Army's task of tying down enemy forces was finished. It had saved five German Armies."

What Manstein attempted by telephone Major von Zitze-witz tried to achieve by a personal interview with Hitler.

Zitzewitz had flown out of the pocket at the orders of Army High Command on 20th January. On 23rd January General Zeitzler took him to see Hitler. The meeting was profoundly significant. Here is Zitzewitz's own account of it:

"When we arrived at the Fuehrer's Headquarters General Zeitzler was admitted at once, while I was made to wait in the anteroom. A little while later the door was opened, and I was called in. I reported present. Hitler came to meet me and with both his hands gripped my right hand. 'You've come from a deplorable situation,' he said. The spacious room was only dimly lit. In front of the fireplace was a large circular table, with club chairs round it, and on the right stood a long table, lit from above, with a huge situation map of the entire Eastern Front. In the background sat two stenographers taking down every word. Apart from General Zeitzler only General Schmundt and two personal Army and Luftwaffe ADCs were present. Hitler gestured to me to sit down on a stool by the situation map, and himself sat down facing me. The other gentlemen sat down in the chairs in the dark part of the room. Only the Army ADC stood on the far side of the map table. Hitler was speaking. Time and again he pointed to the map. He spoke of a tentative idea of making a battalion of entirely new tanks, the Panther, attack straight through the enemy towards Stalingrad in order to ferry supplies through in this way and to reinforce Sixth Army by tanks. I was flabbergasted. A single Panzer battalion was to launch a successful attack across several hundred miles of strongly held enemy territory when an entire Panzer Army had been unable to accomplish this feat. I used the first pause which Hitler made in his exposé to describe the hardships of Sixth Army; I quoted examples, I read off figures from a slip of paper I had prepared. I spoke about the hunger, the frost-bite, the inadequate supplies, and the sense of having been written off; I spoke of wounded men and lack of medical supplies. I concluded with the words: 'My Fuehrer, permit me to state that the troops at Stalingrad can no longer be ordered to fight to their last round because they are no longer physically capable of fighting and because they no longer have a last round.' Hitler regarded me in surprise, but I felt that he was looking straight through me. Then he said, 'Man recovers very quickly.' With these words I was dismissed."

But to Stalingrad Hitler radioed: "Surrender out of the question. Troops will resist to the end."

Bombastic words, however, no longer had any effect. Even the most gallant officers were drained of fighting spirit and of all hope. In the cellar of the OGPU prison regimental commanders, company commanders, and staff officers were lying —filthy, wounded, feverish with ulcérations and dysentery, not knowing what to do. They no longer had any regiments, or battalions, or weapons; they had no bread and often only one round in their pistols—one last round, against the final contingency.

Some of them fired these bullets into their own heads. Headquarters and smaller units blew themselves up with dynamite among the wreckage of their last positions. A few staff officers, airmen and signals troops and a handful of indestructible NCOs took a chance on breaking out and set off into a great uncertain adventure. But most of them simply waited for the end to come—one way or another. The much decorated commander of a famous and frequently cited regiment, Colonel Boje, on 27th January stepped before his men in the OGPU cellar and said, "We've no bread left and no weapons. I propose we surrender." The men nodded. And the colonel, feverish and wounded, led them out of the ruins of the OGPU prison.

The distance to the foremost line along the railway embankment was 50 yards. At the Tsaritsa gorge crossing stood the remnants of Lieutenant-General Edler von Daniels's division. Their commander was with them. None of them had any weapons. They too were ready to surrender. It was a sad procession. Along both sides of the road stood Red Army men, sub-machine-guns at the ready. The men were filmed and photographed, loaded on to lorries, and driven off. The steppe swallowed them up.

Meanwhile units of XI Corps under General Strecker held on to their last positions in the cut-off northern pocket.

And over the air came the worst signal from Stalingrad: "To Army Group Don. Food situation compels suspension of issue of rations to wounded and sick, in order to keep alive fighting personnel. Chief of operations, Sixth Army Headquarters."

In spite of all this, Hitler on 31st January at 0130 hours instructed his Chief of General Staff to send one more signal to Stalingrad: "The Fuehrer asks me to point out that each day the fortress of Stalingrad can continue to hold out is of importance."

Five hours later, in the basement of the department store on Stalingrad's Red Square, a lieutenant of the Headquarters Guard entered the small room of the Commander-in-Chief and reported: The Russians are outside.

During the preceding night Paulus had been appointed a Field-Marshal by a radioed order from Hitler. He had been up and about since 6 A.M., talking to Lieutenant-Colonel von Below, his chief of operations. Paulus was tired and disillusioned, but determined to put an end to it. But he wanted to do it, as he put it, "without fuss"—
i.e.,
without documents of surrender and official ceremonies.

That, presumably, was the reason for the much-discussed and frequently misinterpreted way in which Paulus went into captivity. He stuck to the order not to surrender on behalf of his Army. He went into captivity only with his headquarters staff. The various commanders of the separate sectors made their own arrangements with the Russians about the cessation of hostilities. In Stalingrad Centre everything was over on 31st January.

In the northern pocket, in the notorious tractor works and in the "Red Barricade" ordnance factory, at the very spot where the first shots in the battle of Stalingrad had rung out during the summer, strong-points of XI Corps were still resisting on 1st February. The battle ended where it had begun.

Although this fighting among the ruins no longer had any strategic significance, Hitler insisted on it in a signal with a threadbare justification. He radioed to General Strecker: "I expect the northern pocket of Stalingrad to hold out to the finish. Every day, every hour, thus gained decisively benefits the remainder of the front."

But XI Corps also died a slow death. During the night of lst/2nd February Strecker was sitting at the command post of Lieutenant-Colonel Julius Müller's combat group. At daybreak Strecker said, "I must go now." Müller understood. "I shall do my duty," he said. There were no great words. When daylight came the fighting ended also in the northern pocket.

At 0840 hours Strecker radioed to the Fuehrer's Headquarters: "XI Army Corps with its six divisions has done its duty."

Here, too, the starved, hollow-eyed men from famous and much-cited divisions climbed out of their trenches and from among the wreckage, and formed into grey columns. They were led off into the steppe—still an unending procession. How many of them?

The number is being disputed to this day, and a strange juggling with figures is often practised. As if numbers could make any difference to suffering, death, and gallantry. Nevertheless, for the sake of the record, these are the facts.