Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (98 page)

If Hoth, coming from the Kalmyk steppe, were to succeed in gaining the Volga bend with the commanding high ground of Krasnoarmeysk and Beketovka, Stalingrad's doom would be sealed and the Volga would be severed as the main supply artery for American deliveries through the Persian Gulf.

On 19th August Hoth reached the southernmost line of defence of the Soviet Sixty-fourth Army, and at the first attempt achieved a penetration at Abganerovo. Kempf's Panzer Corps pushed through with 24th and 14th Panzer Divisions as well as with 29th Motorized Infantry Division, followed on the left by Schwedler's infantrymen.

Twenty-four hours later Hoth's tanks and grenadiers were attacking the high ground of Tundutovo, the southern cornerstone of Stalingrad's inner ring of defences.

Colonel-General Yeremenko had concentrated all his available forces in this favourable and vital position. Armoured units of the Soviet First Tank Army, regiments of the Soviet Sixty-fourth Army, militia, and workers' formations were holding the line of hills with their wire obstacles, blockhouses, and earthworks established in deep echelon.

Krasnoarmeysk in the Volga bend was only 9 miles away.

The companies of 24th Panzer Division attacked again and again, swept forward by their experienced commanders and combat-group leaders. But success continued to be denied to them. Colonel Riebel, commanding 24th Panzer Regiment, and for many years Guderian's ADC, was killed in action. Colonel von Lengerke, commanding 21st Panzer Grenadier Regiment, was mortally wounded in an attack against the railway to Krasnoarmeysk. Battalion commanders, company commanders, and the old and experienced NCOs were killed in the infernal defensive fire of the Soviets.

At that stage Hoth called a halt. He was a cool strategist, not a gambler. He realized that his attacking strength was inadequate.

At his battle headquarters at Plotovitoye Hoth sat bent over his maps. His chief of staff, Colonel Fangohr, was entering the latest situation reports. Only two hours before, Hoth had visited General Kempf at his Corps Headquarters and had driven with him to General Ritter von Hauenschild to hear about the situation at 24th Panzer Division. He had also called on Major-General Heim at the railway station of Tin-guta. In a balka, one of those typical deep ravines of Southern Russia, Heim had explained the difficult situation in which 14th Panzer Division found itself. Here, too, further advance seemed impossible.

"We've got to tackle this thing differently, Fangohr," Hoth was thinking aloud. "We are merely bleeding ourselves white in front of these damned hills: that's no ground for armour. We must regroup and mount our attack somewhere else, somewhere a long way from here. Now, listen carefully. . . ."

The colonel-general was developing his idea. Fangohr was busily drawing on his map, checking reconnaissance reports

and measuring distances. "That should be possible," he would mumble to himself now and again. But he was not entirely happy about Hoth's plan, mainly because time would again be lost with regrouping. Besides, a lot of fuel would be needed for all this driving around. And fuel was very short. And ultimately those "damned hills" in front of Krasnoarmeysk and Beketovka would have to be tackled one way or another, for they dominated the entire southern part of the city and its approaches. Exactly the same arguments against regrouping were advanced also by General Kempf. But in the end both Fangohr and Kempf let themselves be persuaded by their commander-in-chief.

Hoth rang up Army Group. He had a half-hour conversation with Weichs. Weichs agreed and promised to come round in person to discuss the operational problems, and especially fuel supplies.

Everything sprang into action: orderlies raced off with orders; telephone wires buzzed ceaselessly. The entire headquarters personnel were moving in top gear. A regrouping operation was being carried out.

Unnoticed by the enemy, Hoth pulled out his Panzer and motorized formations from the front during the night and replaced them by infantry of the Saxon 94th Division. In a bold move, rather like a castling in chess, he moved his mobile formations past the rear of IV Corps in the course of two nights and reassembled them 30 miles behind the front in the Abganerovo area to form them into a broad wedge of attack.

On 29th August this armada struck northward at the flank of the Soviet Sixty-fourth Army, to the complete surprise of the enemy. Instead of fighting his way frontally towards the Volga bend, across the heavily fortified hills of Beketovka and Krasnoarmeysk, which were studded with tanks and artillery, Hoth intended to bypass these positions and enemy forces hard to the west of Stalingrad, in order then to wheel round and attack the entire high ground south of the town with an outflanking attack which would simultaneously trap the left wing of the Soviet Sixty-fourth Army.

The operation started astonishingly well. Jointly with the assault infantry of IV Corps the fast formations on 30th August burst through Stalingrad's inner belt of fortifications at Gavrilovka and over-ran the rearward Soviet artillery positions. By the evening of 31st August Hauenschild with his 24th Panzer Division had reached the Stalingrad- Karpovka railway-line—an unexpected penetration 20 miles deep.

The entire picture, as a result, was changed. A great opportunity was offering itself. The prize was no longer merely the capture of the high ground of Beketovka and Krasnoarmeysk, but the encirclement of the two Soviet Armies west of Stalingrad, the Sixty-second and Sixty-fourth. This prize was suddenly within arm's reach, provided only Sixth Army could now drive southward with its fast formations, towards Hoth's units, in order to close the trap. Hoth's bold operation had created an opportunity for annihilating the two enemy Armies covering Stalingrad.

Army Group headquarters instantly realized this opportunity. In an order to General Paulus, transmitted by radio at noon on 30th August, it was stated:

In view of the fact that Fourth Panzer Army gained a bridgehead at Gavrilovka at 1000 hours to-day, everything now depends on Sixth Army concentrating the strongest possible forces, in spite of its exceedingly tense defensive situation ... on its launching an attack in a general southerly direction ... in order to destroy the enemy forces west of Stalingrad in co-operation with Fourth Panzer Army. This decision requires the ruthless denuding of secondary fronts.

When Army Group, moreover, received information on 31st August of the deep penetration made by 24th Panzer Division west of Voroponovo, Weichs sent another order to Paulus on 1st September, couched in considerable detail and no doubt intended as a reminder. Under Figure 1 it said: "The decisive success scored by Fourth Panzer Army on

31.8 offers an opportunity for inflicting a decisive defeat on the enemy south and west of the Stalingrad-Voroponovo- Gumrak line. It is important that a link-up should be established quickly between the two Armies, to be followed by a penetration Into the city centre."

The Fourth Panzer Army reacted swiftly. On the same day, 1st September, General Kempf led the 14th Panzer Division and the 29th Motorized Infantry Division in the direction of Pitomnik, having quite ruthlessly denuded the sectors hitherto held by 24th Panzer Division.

But the Sixth Army did not come. General Paulus found himself unable just then to release his fast forces for a drive to the south, in view of the strong Soviet attacks being made against his northern front. He considered it impossible to hold the northern barrier successfully with his Panzer lagers and a few tanks and assault guns, even if supported by ground-attack aircraft of VIII Air Corps, while hiving off an armoured group to be formed from the five Panzer battalions of XIV Panzer Corps for a drive to the south. He was afraid that, if he did so, his northern front would collapse.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps any other decision would have been a gamble. In any event, a great opportunity was missed. Twenty-four hours later, in the morning of 2nd September, operational reconnaissance by 24th Panzer Division established that there was no enemy left in front of the German lines. The Russians had pulled out of the southern defensive position, just as on the same day they had abandoned a defensive position facing Seydlitz's Corps in the western sector. What had induced the Russians to take this surprising step?

General Chuykov, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Sixty-fourth Army, had realized the dangerous situation which had arisen as a result of Hoth's advance. He gave the alarm to Colonel-General Yeremenko. Yeremenko not only saw the danger, but also acted in a flash, in complete contrast to the former ponderous way in which the Soviet Commands used to react to such situations. Yeremenko took the difficult and dangerous decision—but the only correct one—of abandoning the well-prepared inner belt of defences. He sacrificed strong-points, wire obstacles, anti-tank barriers, and infantry trenches in order to save his divisions from the threatening encirclement, and retreated with his two Armies to a new, improvised defensive line close by the edge of the city.

This operation showed once more how consistently the Soviets were implementing the new tactics adopted by the Soviet High Command early in the summer. In no circumstances again were major formations to allow themselves to be encircled. For the sake of this new principle they were prepared to risk the loss of the city of Stalingrad.

In the afternoon of 2nd September General Paulus decided after all to dispatch fast units of his XIV Panzer Corps to the south, and on 3rd September the infantrymen of Seydlitz's Corps linked up with Hoth's armoured spearheads. Thus the pocket envisaged by Army Group on 30th August was, in fact, formed and closed, but no enemy was trapped inside it. The manœuvre had been accomplished forty-eight hours too late. This delay was to cost Stalingrad. But as yet nobody suspected this.

Army Group thereupon issued orders to Paulus and Hoth to exploit the situation and to penetrate into the city as fast as possible.

General Lopatin wants to abandon Stalingrad—General Chuykov is sworn in by Khrushchev—The regiments of 71st Infantry Division storm Stalingrad Centre-Grenadiers of 24th Panzer Division at the main railway station—Chuykov's last brigade-Ten crucial hours—Rodimtsev's Guards.

RIGHT through the middle of Stalingrad runs the river Tsaritsa. Its deep gorge divides the city into a northern and a southern half. The Tsaritsa kept its name when Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad, and it still bears its name to-day now Stalingrad has become Volgograd. In 1942 the famous or notorious gorge of the Tsaritsa formed the junction between Hoth's and Paulus's Armies. Along it the inner wings of the two Armies were to advance swiftly through the city as far as the Volga. Everything seemed to suggest that the enemy was fighting rearguard actions only and was about to abandon the city.

Marshal Chuykov's memoirs reveal the disastrous situation in which the two Soviet Armies in Stalingrad found themselves following the surrender of the approaches to the city. Even experienced commanders did not rate Stalingrad's chances high. General Lopatin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Sixty-second Army, was of the opinion that the city could not be held. He therefore decided to abandon it. But when he tried to give effect to his decision the Chief of Staff, General Krylenko, refused his consent and sent an urgent message to Khrushchev and Yeremenko.

Lopatin was relieved of his command, although he was anything but a coward.

Lopatin's decision is not hard to understand if one reads Chuykov's account of the situation before Stalingrad. Chuykov writes: "It was bitter to have to surrender these last few kilometres and metres outside Stalingrad, and to have to watch the enemy's superiority in numbers, in military skill, and in initiative."

The Marshal describes how the machine operators of the State farms, where the various headquarters of Sixty-fourth Army had been set up, were sneaking off to safety. "The roads to Stalingrad and to the Volga were jammed. The families of collective farmers and State farm workers were on the move, complete with their livestock. They were all making for the Volga crossings, driving their animals in front of them and carrying their chattels on their backs.

Stalingrad was in flames. Rumours that the Germans were in the city already added to the panic."
_%

That then was the situation. But Stalin was not prepared to surrender his city without bitter struggle. He had sent one of his most reliable supporters, an ardent Bolshevik, to the front as the Political Member of the Military Council, with orders to inspire the Armies and the civilian population to fight to the end—Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. For the sake of Stalin's city he made self-sacrifice a point of honour for every Communist.

Lieutenant-General Platanov's three-volume documentary history of the Second World War contains several figures illustrating the situation: 50,000 civilian volunteers were incorporated in the "People's Guard"; 75,000 inhabitants were assigned to Sixty-second Army; 3000 young girls were mobilized for service as nurses and as telephone and radio operators; 7000 Komsomol members between thirteen and sixteen were armed and absorbed in the fighting formations. Everybody became a soldier. Workers were ordered to the battlefield with the weapons they had just produced in their factories. The guns made in the Red Barricade ordnance factory went into position in the factory grounds straight from the assembly line and opened fire on the enemy. The guns were manned by the factory workers.

On 12th September Yeremenko and Khrushchev entrusted General Chuykov with the command of Sixty-second Army, which had been led since Lopatin's dismissal by the Chief of Staff, Krylenko, and charged him with the defence of the fortress on the Volga. It was an excellent choice. Chuykov was the best man available—hard, ambitious, strategically gifted, personally brave, and incredibly tough. He had no share in the Red Army's disasters of 1941 because at that time he had still been in the Far East. He was an unspent force, and he was not haunted by past calamities, as were so many of his comrades.

On 12th September, at 1000 hours sharp, Chuykov reported to Khrushchev and Yeremenko at Army Group headquarters in Yamy, a small village on the far, left bank of the Volga. It is interesting that the talking was done by Khrushchev and not by Yeremenko, the military boss.

According to Chuykov's memoirs, Khrushchev said: "General Lopatin, the former C-in-C Sixty-second Army, believes that his Army cannot hold Stalingrad. But there can be no more retreat. That is why he has been relieved of his post. In agreement with the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Military Council of the Front invites you, Comrade Chuykov, to assume command of Sixty-second Army. How do you see your task?"

"The question took me by surprise," Chuykov records, "but I had no time to consider my reply. So I said, 'The surrender of Stalingrad would wreck the morale of our people. I swear not to abandon the city. We shall hold Stalingrad or die there.' N. S. Khrushchev and A. I. Yeremenko looked at me and said that I had correctly understood my task."

Ten hours later Seydlitz's Corps launched its attack against Stalingrad Centre. Chuykov's Army headquarters on Hill 102 was shattered by bombs, and the general had to withdraw to a dug-out in the Tsaritsa gorge, close by the Volga, complete with his staff, cook, and serving-girl.

On the following day, 14th September, General von Hart-mann's men of 71st Infantry Division were already inside the city. In a surprise drive they pushed through to the city centre and even gained a narrow corridor to the Volga bank.

At the same hour the Panzer Grenadiers of 24th Panzer Division stormed south of the Tsaritsa gorge through the streets of the old city, of ancient Tsaritsyn, captured the main railway station, and on 16th September likewise reached the Volga with von Heyden's battalion. Between Beketovka and Stalingrad, in the suburb of Kuporoznoye, units of 14th Panzer Division and 29th Motorized Infantry Division had been established since 10th September, cutting off the city

and the river from the south. Only in the northern part of the city was Chuykov still able to hold on. "We've got to gain time," he said to his commanders. "Time to bring up reserves, and time to wear out the Germans."

"Time is blood," he remarked, thus modifying the American motto "Time is money." Indeed, time was blood. The battle of Stalingrad was epitomized in this phrase.

Glinka, Chuykov's cook, heaved a sigh of relief when he got to his kitchen in the new dug-out. Above him was thirty feet of undisturbed earth. Happily he observed to the general's serving-girl, "Tasya, my little dove, we shan't get any shell-splinters dropping into our soup down here. There's no shell that will go through this ceiling."

"But there is," replied Tasya, who knew Glinka's fears. "A one-ton bomb would crash through all right—the general said so himself."

"A one-ton bomb—are there many of those?" the cook asked anxiously.

Tasya reassured him. "It would be a chance in a million; it would have to drop directly on our dug-out. That's what the general said."

The noise of the front came only as a distant rumble into the deep galleries. Ceiling and walls were neatly clad with boards. There were dozens of underground rooms for the personnel of Army headquarters. Right in the centre was a big room for the general and his chief of staff. One exit of this so-called Tsaritsyn dug-out, built during the preceding summer as a headquarters for the Army Group, led into the Tsaritsa gorge, closed by the steep bank of the Volga, while the other opened into Pushkin Street.

Nailed to the boarded wall of Chuykov's office was a hand-drawn city plan of Stalingrad, nearly ten feet high and six feet wide—the General Staff map of the battle. These were no longer fronts in the hinterland; the scale of the battle maps was no longer in kilometres but in metres. It was a matter of street corners, blocks, and individual buildings.

General Krylov, Chuykov's chief of staff, was entering the latest situation reports—the German attacks in blue, the Russian defensive positions in red. The blue arrows were getting closer and closer to the battle headquarters.

"Battalions of the 71st and 295th Infantry Divisions are furiously attacking Mamayev Kurgan and the main railway station. They are being supported by 204th Panzer Regiment, which belongs to 22nd Panzer Division. The 24th Panzer Division is fighting outside the southern railway station," Krylov reported.

Chuykov stared at the plan of the city. "What has become of our counter-attacks?"

"They petered out. German aircraft have been over the city again since daybreak. They are pinning down our forces everywhere."

A runner came in with a situation sketch from the commander of 42nd Rifle Brigade, Colonel Batrakov. Krylov picked up his pencil and drew a semicircle around the battle headquarters. "The front is still half a mile away from us, Comrade Commander-in-Chief," he announced in a deliberately official manner.

Only half a mile. The time was 1200 hours on 14th September. Chuykov knew what Krylov was implying. They had one tank brigade left as a last reserve, with nineteen T-34s. Should it be sent into action?

"What's the situation like on the left wing of the southern city?" Chuykov asked.

Krylov extended the blue arrow indicating the German 29th Motorized Infantry Division beyond Kuporoznoye. The suburb had fallen. General Fremerey's Thuringians were pushing on, in the direction of the grain elevator. The sawmills and the food cannery were already inside the German lines. Only from the southern landing-stage of the ferry to the tall grain elevator was there still a Soviet defensive line. Chuykov picked up the telephone and rang up Army Group. He described the situation to Yeremenko. Yeremenko implored him: "You must hold the central river port and the landing-stage at all costs. The High Command is sending you the 13th Guards Rifle Division. This is 10,000 men

strong and a crack unit. Hold the bridgehead open for another twenty-four hours, and try also to defend the landing- stage of the ferry in the southern part of the city."

Beads of sweat stood on Chuykov's forehead. The air in the gallery was suffocating. "All right then, Krylov, scrape together anything you can find; turn the staff officers into combat-group commanders. We've got to hold the crossing open for Rodimtsev's Guards."

The last brigade with its nineteen tanks was thrown into the fighting—one battalion in front of the Army headquarters, from where the central railway station and main river port could also be covered, and another into the line between the grain elevator and the southern landing-stage.

At 1400 hours Major-General Rodimtsev, a legendary commander in the field arid Hero of the Soviet Union, turned up at headquarters, bleeding and covered in dirt. He had been chased by German fighter-bombers. He reported that his division was standing by on the far bank and would cross the Volga at night. Frowning, he gazed at the blue and red lines on the town plan.

At 1600 hours Chuykov again spoke to Yeremenko on the telephone. There were five hours to go before nightfall. In his memoirs Chuykov describes his feelings during those five hours: "Would our shattered and battered units and fragments of units in the central sector be able to hold out for another ten or twelve hours? That was my main worry at the time. If the men and their officers were to prove unequal to this well-nigh superhuman task the 13th Guards Rifle Division would not be able to cross over, and would merely witness a bitter tragedy."

Shortly before dusk Major Khopka, commander of the last reserves employed in the river port area, appeared at headquarters. He reported: "One single T-34 is still capable of firing, but no longer of moving. The brigade is down to 100 men." Chuykov regarded him coldly: "Rally your men around the tank and hold the approaches to the port. If you don't hold out I'll have you shot."

Khopka was killed in action; so were half his men. But the remainder held out.

Night came at last. All the staff officers were in the port. As the companies of Rodimtsev's Guards Division came across the Volga they immediately went into action at the main points of defence in order to check the advance of 71st Infantry Division and to hold the 295th Infantry Division on the Mamayev Kurgan, the dominating Hill 102. Those were crucial hours. Rodimtsev's Guards prevented Stalingrad Centre from being taken by the Germans on 15th September.

Their sacrifice saved Stalingrad. Twenty-four hours later the 13th Guards Rifle Division had been smashed, bombed to smithereens by Stukas and mown down by shells and machine-gun fire.

In the southern city, too, a Guards division was fighting— the 35th under Colonel Dubyanskiy. Its reserve battalions were brought across by ferry from the left bank of the Volga to the southern landing-stage and immediately employed against spearheads of 29th Motorized Infantry Division in order to hold the line between the landing-stage and the grain elevator.

But the Stukas of Lieutenant-General Fiebig's VIII Air Corps pounded the battalions with bombs, and the remainder were crushed between the jaws of 94th Infantry Division and 29th Motorized Infantry Division. Only in the grain elevator, which was full of wheat, did fierce fighting continue for some time: it was a huge concrete block, as solid as a fortress, and every floor was furiously contested. It was there that assault parties and engineers of 71st Infantry Regiment were in action against the remnants of the Soviet 35th Guards Rifle Division amid the smoke and stench of the smouldering grain.