Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (20 page)

Col. Gen. Walter von Seydlitz-Kurbach, hero of the Demyansk Pocket, commander of LI Corps and later of 6th Army, a man of decisive initiative.

Maj. Gen. Erhard Raus, Austrian commander of 6th Panzer Division, beloved by his men for being able to get them out of any scrape.

Reinhard Heydrich, the second man in the SS, organizer of the Final Solution, and self-styled heir to Adolf Hitler.

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence, and early mentor of Heydrich in the Navy.

General Georgi Zhukov, Stalin’s best general, who had saved Leningrad and Moscow. Could he now save Stalingrad?

Maj. Gen. Vasili Chuikov, the fiercely tenacious commander of the 62nd Army in the defence of Stalingrad.

Some of the hundreds of Soviet tanks destroyed in the fighting in the great bend of the Don.

British poster emphasizing the importance of the Arctic convoys in keeping the Soviet Union in the war. Red Air Force support was much exaggerated.

The nightmare of the British and the heart of the German fleet in being, the battleship
Admiral Tirpitz,
in Altenfjord, Norway (
above
); and in a US Navy recognition drawing (
left
).

The heavy cruiser
Admiral Hipper,
seen here in a US Navy recognition chart, was the flagship of the greatest fleet action in German naval history.

HMS
London
followed by USS
Wichita,
two of the ships of the Cruiser Covering Force for Convoy PQ-17. Both carried eight 8-inch guns, but the
Wichita
was better armoured.

Flagship of the Allied naval force protecting PQ-17, the battleship HMS
King George V.

The USS
George Washington
finally finished off the German battleship
Tirpitz.