Stalin's General (26 page)

The German advance in the south—designated Operation Blau (Blue)—began on June 28, 1942. The plan was to occupy the Donets Basin (the Donbas) and all the territory west of the River Don. Soviet forces in these areas would be encircled and destroyed and a defensive line established along the Don itself. With the Red Army in the bag the Germans would then cross the Don south of Rostov and head for the Kuban, the Caucasus, and Baku. Capturing Stalingrad was not a primary goal, but the city would be brought under fire in order to disrupt the flow of oil up the Volga from Astrakhan to northern Russia. The Germans would also build a defensive land bridge from the great bend in the Don to the western banks of the Volga in the vicinity of Stalingrad to provide further cover for their advance southward.

The operation was to be executed by Army Group South, consisting of the 6th and 17th Armies and the 1st and 4th Panzer Armies, as well as the 11th Army based in the Crimea. Supporting the German armies were a large number of divisions from Hitler's Axis allies including the Hungarian 2nd, Italian 8th, and Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies. In total there were eighty-nine divisions, including nine armored, in the nearly two-million-strong force.

Blau made rapid progress. By the end of July the Germans occupied the whole of the Donbas and much of Don country with Stalingrad
and the Caucasus in sight. By the end of August the Germans were on the Volga and Stalingrad was under siege. Further south they reached the foothills of the Caucasus, occupied the Maikop oilfield, and threatened the oilfields at Grozny in Chechnya. On August 21, 1942, the German flag flew atop of Mount Elbruz, the highest peak of the Caucasus. (See
Map 14
: The German Advance in the South, Summer 1942
.)

During July and August the Germans took 625,000 prisoners and captured or destroyed 7,000 tanks, 6,000 artillery pieces, and more than 400 aircraft. German casualties were high, too; some 200,000 in August alone. The Red Army's losses were significant but not on the scale of summer 1941. However, the relative ease of the German advance convinced Hitler that victory was within his grasp.

In its original conception Blau was a unitary operation whose goals would be achieved on a phased and coordinated basis. First would come control of the Don and Volga, to be followed by a major push south to the Caucasus. On July 9, however, Army Group South was split into separate commands of Army Groups A and B. Fedor von Bock, the commander of Army Group South, took charge of Army Group B, consisting of the 6th Army, 4th Panzer Army, and the various Axis armies. His given task was to strike east from Kursk and Kharkov in the direction of Voronezh and then southeast toward the Don bend. Army Group A, headed by Field Marshal Wilhelm List, controlled the 17th Army and the 1st Panzer Army and was to capture Rostov-on-Don and then march toward Baku. On July 13 von Bock was dismissed by Hitler because of operational disagreements and replaced by Field Marshal Baron von Weichs. That same day the 4th Panzer was detached from Army Group B and directed to join Army Group A's campaign in the south.

On July 23 Hitler issued Directive No. 45. This stated “in a campaign which has lasted little more than three weeks, the broad objectives outlined by me for the southern flank of the Eastern front have been largely achieved.” Supported by the 11th Army in the Crimea, Army Group A was now ordered to destroy the enemy south of Rostov and then “to occupy the entire Eastern coastline of the Black Sea” and to reach Baku. Meanwhile Army Group B would “thrust forward to Stalingrad to smash the enemy forces concentrating there, to occupy
the town, and to block the land communications between the Don and Volga.”
⁴
In other words, Hitler had decided to pursue two strategic goals simultaneously—the occupation of Baku and the capture of Stalingrad.

Hitler's decision to split his southern offensive was a fateful one. The Wehrmacht was not capable of achieving such ambitious goals and it gave the Soviets an opportunity to consolidate their defenses and prepare a riposte.

Stalin's reaction to Operation Blau was colored by his continuing belief that Moscow was the Germans' main target in 1942—a belief confirmed by the initial weight of the German attack, aimed at Voronezh, which was closer to Moscow than to Stalingrad. Voronezh fell to the Germans on July 7 but for weeks the Red Army mounted counterattack after counterattack in the surrounding area. The importance that Stavka attached to these operations was signaled by its decision to establish a Voronezh Front and to appoint one of the General Staff's most talented officers, General Nikolai Vatutin, as commander.
⁵

Further south the possibilities for offensive action were constrained by the weakness of Timoshenko's Southwestern Front following the Kharkov disaster of May 1942. When the German attack swung south in early July Timoshenko's defenses crumbled and Stavka was forced to order a withdrawal toward the Don. The imminent threat to Stalingrad was undeniable and on July 12 Stavka ordered the establishment of a Stalingrad Front. This was a rebranding of Timoshenko's Southwestern Front with the addition of three reserve armies—the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th. Timoshenko now had thirty-eight divisions at his disposal, a force of more than half a million, including a thousand tanks and nearly 750 aircraft. Timoshenko's tenure at the Stalingrad Front did not last long, however; on July 22 he was replaced by General V. N. Gordov. Then, in early August, it was decided to split the Stalingrad Front into two—a Stalingrad Front and a Southeastern Front. On August 9 General A. I. Yeremenko was made overall commander of the two fronts.
⁶

In Russian and Soviet historiography July 17, 1942, is deemed the “official” date of the beginning of the “200 days of fire” that constituted the battle of Stalingrad.
⁷
On that day forward units of the German 6th Army clashed with the 62nd and 64th Armies at the River
Chir. Within a few days the Germans pushed across the southern Don in great numbers and were advancing rapidly toward the Caucasus and Stalingrad. At the end of July the Soviets lost Rostov to the Germans, an event of symbolic as well as strategic importance. The city guarded the gateway to the Caucasus and opened the way for the Germans to occupy the Kuban, a rich agricultural zone between the Don and the mountains of Transcaucasia. The psychological impact of the loss of Rostov was considerable. Rostov had first been occupied by the Germans in November 1941 and its recapture by the Red Army a few days later had been the object of great celebrations since it was the first major city recaptured by the Soviets. Now Rostov had fallen to the enemy again.

On July 28, 1942, Stalin issued his renowned Order No. 227—
Ni Shagu Nazad!
(Not a Step Back!). The order frankly set out the grave situation facing the USSR:

But the Red Army, said Stalin, was failing in its duty to the country:

Underlining the extent of the losses so far, Stalin emphasized that “to retreat further would mean the ruination of our country and ourselves. Every new scrap of territory we lose will significantly strengthen the enemy and severely weaken our defence, our motherland.” Stalin's solution was to stop the retreat and he used the same slogan Zhukov deployed during the defense of Moscow—
Ni Shagu Nazad!

There was nothing new in Order No. 227. Iron discipline, harsh punishment, and no retreat without authorization had been Stalin's (and Zhukov's) main theme since the beginning of the war. But its urgent tone revealed Stalin's anxiety about mounting defeats and losses that summer.

As during the battle of Moscow, the threat of punishment was combined with an appeal to patriotism. The call to patriotic duty had been central to Soviet political mobilization—both civilian and military—since the war began but it became even more marked in what Alexander Werth called the “black summer of 1942,” when catastrophic defeat beckoned once again.
⁹
The rapid German advance in the south came out of the blue for most Soviet citizens and its disillusioning effect contributed to the intense
patrie en danger
atmosphere of that summer. Soviet propaganda quickly changed tack and began emphasizing the grave dangers of the situation. On July 19 an editorial in
Krasnaya Zvezda
compared the situation in the south with the battles of Moscow and Leningrad in 1941.
¹⁰

The most important target group of the appeal to patriotic sacrifice was the Soviet officer corps. On July 30, 1942, Stalin introduced new decorations for officers only: the Orders of Kutuzov, Nevsky, and Suvorov. The pages of the Soviet press also began to be filled with articles promoting both the special role of officers in maintaining discipline
and the importance of their technical expertise and professionalism. Later that year officers were issued new uniforms, complete with epaulettes and gold braid (especially imported from Britain). On October 9, 1942—at the height of the battle for Stalingrad—a decree was issued abolishing the Institution of Commissars, ending the system under which political commissars had a veto over command decisions.
¹¹
The power of the commissars had been restored following the German invasion in summer 1941, a move designed to strengthen the discipline and loyalty of the armed forces. A year later Stalin wanted to send a different message: that he trusted the Red Army to do its patriotic duty unencumbered by political interference from commissars.

Stalin's sense that a decisive battle was approaching at Stalingrad was evident during conversations with British prime minister Winston Churchill, who flew to Moscow in August to discuss the military and political situation. When they first met on August 12 Stalin told Churchill:

When Churchill asked if the Germans would be able to mount a fresh offensive at Voronezh or in the north, Stalin replied, “I don't know. But in view of the length of the front, it is quite possible to take 20 divisions to create a striking force, thus creating a threat to Moscow or elsewhere.” The discussion then turned to the issue of a Second Front. The Soviets had been demanding for nearly a year that their British and American allies invade northern France in order to draw German forces away from the Eastern Front. A few weeks earlier Foreign Commissar Molotov had traveled to London and then Washington to discuss the issue with Churchill and President Roosevelt. The result of Molotov's discussions was a joint communiqué stating that
“full understanding had been reached on the urgent task of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.” But the British had warned that they would only open a Second Front if they could and now Churchill told Stalin that it would not be possible because there were not enough landing craft available to undertake such an operation. Churchill's news was not unexpected but Stalin reacted angrily, saying that the British and Americans “should not be so afraid of the Germans.” He was happier with Churchill's news about Operation Torch—an Anglo-American invasion of North Africa in the autumn—but the next day he presented the British prime minister with a memorandum that claimed Soviet military plans for summer and autumn operations had been calculated on the basis of the opening of a Second Front in Europe in 1942.

On August 15 Stalin and Churchill met again and this encounter spilled over into a private dinner in Stalin's Kremlin apartment, where Stalin briefed Churchill about the military situation on the Soviet-German front. The Germans, said Stalin, were invading in two streams—one toward the Caucasus and another toward Voronezh and Stalingrad: