The Road to Berlin (5 page)

While Col.-Gen. Vasilevskii probed the German build-up at Tormosin, Col.-Gen. Yeremenko suspected that there was a big German armoured claw at Kotelnikovo; he had advanced two cavalry divisions from 4th Corps towards Kotelnikovo at the end of November, and both were severely mauled early in December. But at least he had discovered that 6th
Panzer
Division was moving into the area, its armour unloading at Morozovsk. All these ominous signs were duly reported to Stalin, from whom Yeremenko requested armoured reinforcement. Stalin replied that, ‘circumstances permitting’, the reinforcement would be sent (a sign to Yeremenko that Stalin was hedging against a German attack from the Tormosin area). Vasilevskii, still on the outer encirclement line, held a special conference on 11 December at Rotmistrov’s command centre (7th Tank Corps) with Popov of 5th Shock and Pliev, commander of 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps. The commanders decided on a fresh attack designed to split the ‘Kotelnikovo’ and ‘Nozhne-Chirskaya’ enemy groups, using 7th Tank with two rifle divisions in a surprise attack on the German bridgehead at Rychkovskii. Yeremenko, after consultation with his chief of staff Varennikov and his intelligence officers, decided to pull 4th and 13th Mechanized Corps into reserve, at the same time issuing orders to Tolbukhin at 58th Army to hold his positions on the inner encirclement, in the event of a break-out by Sixth Army to meet any relief force. Trufanov’s 51st Army covered Kotelnikovo, though both Yeremenko and Vasilevskii knew it was a relatively weak and scattered formation.

On the morning of 12 December, after a short artillery bombardment, LVII
Panzer
Corps of
Armeegruppe Hoth
opened its attack from the Kotelnikovo area, aimed north-eastwards to cover the sixty miles and so to burst through the Soviet encirclement to link up with Sixth Army. General Rauss’s 6th
Panzer
Division,
transhipped from France, made a highly successful start: 23rd
Panzer
Division took a bridgehead on the southern bank of the Aksai. To stiffen the punch of this armoured fist was a battalion of the new Tiger-I 56-ton tanks equipped with an 88mm gun, a few of which had already been tested on the Eastern Front. Hitler entertained great hopes for his Tigers. Yeremenko feared at once for the rear of 57th Army which could quickly be exposed by Hoth’s armoured thrust. Once it was confirmed that here was a major German attack, Yeremenko telephoned Stalin to outline the position and to underline the dangers. Stalin’s response was terse enough—‘Hold on, we will be sending you reinforcements’—but meanwhile Yeremenko had to do something fast with the forces he had on the spot and what he could move out of reserve. His first response was to put General Zakharov (his deputy commander) in charge of an improvised battle group out on the steppe, moving up 13th Tank Corps to 51st Army to block 23rd
Panzer
and 4th Mechanized Corps from 5th Shock Army to check 6th
Panzer
which was already astride the Aksai. During the night of 12–13 December, Volskii’s 4th Mechanized, reduced now to 5,600 men with 70 tanks (32 T-34s and 38 T-70s), took up its main positions north of the Aksai at Verkhne–Kumskii. Vasilevskii had been on the Aksai during the first day of the German attack, hurrying there from 57th Army
HQ
at Verkhne-Tsartsynskii with Khrushchev of the Stalingrad Front Military Soviet; from the Aksai Vasilevskii raced back to Don Front
HQ
, having first informed Rokossovskii and Malinovskii of the situation produced by Hoth’s attack. In particular, he advised Malinovskii to start organizing a move to the Stalingrad Front, using Tolbukhin’s 57th Army
HQ
as a forward base from which to operate—but unable to contact Stalin, Vasilevskii had no authority to order 2nd Guards to move. All these were precautionary moves.

Finally, late on 12 December, Vasilevskii was in radio contact with Stalin. He requested permission to move 2nd Guards under Stalingrad Front command and suggested that Operation
Koltso
be postponed (which was inevitable if Malinovskii moved). Stalin was furious. Stalin laced into Vasilevskii, accusing him of ‘extortion’ in bringing reserves from the
Stavka
, above all to a sector for which Vasilevskii was personally responsible. (Since Stalin had on the night of 27 November specifically charged Vasilevskii with responsibility for the inner encirclement, his present accusations were extremely wild.) Over the proposal to swing 2nd Guards to block Manstein, Stalin refused any immediate reply. All the satisfaction Vasilevskii obtained was that the question would have to be thrashed out in a session of the State Defence Committee
(GKO)
, of which Stalin himself was chairman.

That night, when Vasilevskii at Zavarykin sweated out the hours to Stalin’s eventual reply and while the rain swept down out in the steppe on Soviet and German tankmen, each concentrating their efforts on the high ground to the north of the Aksai, Soviet plans for the next stage of the Stalingrad–Rostov operations passed through the storm stirred by Hoth’s attack to relieve Sixth Army—thirty-six hours of reformulating strategic plans which vitally affected
both
Koltso
and
Saturn
. At 5 am on the morning of 13 December Stalin passed Vasilevskii an authorization to move 2nd Guards from the Don to the Stalingrad Front, effective as from 15 December, when Vasilevskii himself would assume the direction of operations on ‘the Kotelnikovo axis’. An operational plan was to be submitted to the
Stavka
without delay. The formal order on the postponement of
Koltso
duly went out to Yeremenko and Rokossovskii at 2250 hours on 14 December:

Dontsov [Rokossovskii] and Ivanov [Yeremenko] are ordered to continue the systematic harassment of the encircled enemy troops by air and ground attacks, denying the enemy any breathing space by night or by day, pulling the encirclement ring ever tighter and nipping off any attempt by the encircled troops to break out of the ring.… The main task of our southern forces is to defeat the enemy group at Kotelnikovo, using the troops of Trufanov [51st Army] and Yakovlev [Malinovskii and 2nd Guards], to capture Kotelnikovo in the immediate future and to dig in there. [
VIZ
, 1966 (3), pp. 28–9.]

Trufanov had already been ordered to hold Hoth’s advance with his rifle divisions while the armour went for the flanks; 5th Shock Army was straightway to attack the German bridgehead at Nizhne-Chirskaya, and on the morning of 14 December Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps opened this assault. The next day German troops were finally forced out of this vital bridgehead and fell back, blowing up the bridge over the Don behind them.

During the night of 14 December, the Voronezh and South-Western Front commanders, Golikov and Vatutin (under the control of
Stavka
‘co-ordinator’ Voronov), had received Stalin’s new orders relating to
Saturn:
by shifting the direction of the attack south-eastwards rather than southwards,
Bol’shoi Saturn
(‘Big Saturn’) was transformed into
Malyi Saturn
(‘Small Saturn’), aimed at the rear of Manstein’s forces trying to fight their way into Stalingrad. The new directive (dated 13 December) laid out the basis of the revised decision
(VIZ
, 1966 (3), pp. 29–30):

[To: Comrades Voronov, Golikov and Vatutin.]

First:
Operation ‘Saturn’ aimed at Kamensk–Rostov was conceived when the overall situation was in our favour, when the Germans had no more reserves in the Bokovsk–Morozovsk–Nizhne Chirskaya area, when the tank army [5th Tank] had made successful attacks in the direction of Morozovsk and when it appeared that an attack from the north would be supported at the same time by an offensive from the east aimed at Likhaya. Under these circumstances it was proposed that 2nd Guards Army should be swung into the area of Kalach and used to develop a successful advance in the direction of Rostov–Taganrog.

Second:
Recently, however, the situation has not developed in our favour. Romanenko [5th Tank] and Lelyushenko [3rd Guards Army] are on the defensive and cannot advance, from the west a number of infantry divisions and tank formations, which are containing the Soviet forces. Consequently, an attack from the north would not meet with direct support from the east by Romanenko, as a consequence of which an offensive
in the direction of Kamensk-Rostov would meet with no success. I have to say that 2nd Guards Army can no longer be used for Operation ‘Saturn’ since it is operating on another front.

Third:
In view of all this, it is essential to revise Operation ‘Saturn’. The revision lies in the fact that the main blow will be aimed not at the south, but towards the south-east in the direction of Nizhnyi Astakhov, to exit at Morozovsk in order to take the enemy grouping at Bokovsk-Morozovsk in a pincer movement, to break into his rear and to destroy these forces with a simultaneous blow from the east with the forces of Romanenko and Lelyushenko and from the north-west with the forces of Kuznetsov and mobile formations subordinated to his command. Filippov [Golikov: Voronezh Front] has as his assignment to help Kuznetsov to liquidate the Italians [8th Army], get to the river Boguchat in the area of Kramenkov to set up a major covering force against possible enemy attacks from the west.

Fourth:
The breakthrough will proceed in those sectors which were projected under Operation ‘Saturn’. After the breakthrough, the blow will be turned to the south-east in the direction of Nizhnii Astaskhov-Mozorovsk, breaking into the rear of the enemy forces facing Romanenko and Lelyushenko. The operation will begin December 16. The operation has the codename ‘Small Saturn’.

Fifth:
You must now operate without 6 Mechanized Corps, meanwhile tank regiments are on their way to you. This is because the 6th Mechanized Corps has been handed to the Stalingrad Front for use against the Kotelnikovo enemy concentration. In place of 6th Mechanized Corps you can get a tank corps from Filippov, 25th or 17th [Tank Corps].

VASILIEV [Stalin]

Golikov accepted these new orders without argument. Vatutin of the South-Western Front refused to take them lying down and tried every argument to save ‘Big Saturn’—the drive to the sea of Azov. Vatutin insisted that 6th Army should attack towards Markovka-Chetkova as he expected, and 17th Tank Corps should go for Voloshino to the west of Millerovo; Vatutin therefore pressed for the subordination of 17th Tank to his Front command. During the night of 14 December, Voronov, Golikov and Vatutin met to try and get an agreed course of operations, but Vatutin stuck out for the bigger drive. Throughout that day, 14 December, the two staffs fired signals at each other, whereupon the General Staff intervened and ‘in the name of the
Stavka
’ ordered compliance with the orders for ‘Small Saturn’.

As these arguments raged over the projected attack on the junction between Army Groups B and Don, Malinovskii’s 2nd Guards (of which 1st Guards Rifle Corps was fully assembled) began its movement to the Stalingrad Front, 125 miles to be covered in forced marches of up to thirty miles a day down through the steppe amidst raging blizzards, in the van riflemen with anti-tank rifles on their shoulders ready to go straight into action. But that left a full four days before 2nd Guards could be pulled in behind the Myshkova, the last barrier before Stalingrad. Although the 4th Mechanized and 13th Tank Corps put in furious counter-attacks near Kumskii, Yeremenko was gravely concerned over the
outlook beyond the Aksai as Hoth’s
blitz
column—and behind it lorries piled with fuel and ammunition, buses for wounded and tractors, all to supply the armoured striking force which was to burst out from Sixth Army itself—crunched forward past the half-way mark. Yeremenko’s telegram to the
Stavka
on the morning of 15 December heavily underscored the danger:

… since all Front reserves (300, 315, 87 RDs [rifle divisions]), despatched earlier to the south-west and concentrated in the area of Plodovitoe, Zety, received different assignments … it is considered impossible to guarantee in any effective sense the axis running along the Kotelnikovo-Abganerovo railway. It follows that this must be reinforced. [Yeremenko,
Stalingrad
, p. 403.]

Since Front reserves had already been committed, the situation was critical:

East of the line Ivanovka [on the Myshkova]-Aksai there is not a single man. If the enemy unleashed a blow along the railway line to Abganerovo and from the Tsybenko area to Zety, that will put the forces of the Front in a severely critical situation. [
Ibid
.]

Both armoured formations (4th Mechanized and 13th Tank Corps) had inflicted, but also suffered, heavy losses; 4th Cavalry Corps was badly battered. For forty-eight hours Volskii’s 4th Mechanized and VI
Panzer
Corps grappled in the biting frost and snow. The modernized Soviet 57mm and 76mm anti-tank guns proved extremely effective, while 65th
Panzer
Battalion deployed the new German weapon, the Tiger-1 tanks. Both sides raced for the Myshkova river line. On 17 December 17th
Panzer
Division succeeded at last in reaching the battle area and was engaged the next day, but two rifle divisions and 2nd Guards Mechanized Corps of 2nd Guards Army (its forward
HQ
at Kolpachki) had also reached the Myshkova. At 2400 hours, 17 December, Yeremenko subordinated 87th Rifle Division, 4th Cavalry and 4th Mechanized Corps to Malinovskii’s command, and set the boundaries between 2nd Guards, 51st and 5th Shock Armies.

Slowly, in the midst of its own sweat, the Soviet command pulled itself out of the highly dangerous situation south-west of Stalingrad; but the race with time was not yet fully run. On 19 December, 6th
Panzer
succeeded in forcing its way up to (and, by night, across) the Myshkova, to just under fifty kilometres from the line held by Paulus’s Sixth Army. In theory, on receipt of codeword
Donnerschlag
, Sixth Army was to make its own fighting break-out. The critical 96-hour phase now set in. As 2nd Guards Army deployed its units for action behind the Myshkova straight off the march, Vasilevskii despatched as instructed a new operational plan that reached Moscow at 1530 hours on 18 December
(VIZ
, 1966 (3), pp. 32–3):