Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (30 page)
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Authors: Peter Tsouras
‘Danke Sehr, Herr Roosevelt!’
Stalingrad,
1 October 1942
Zaitsev snatched a pistol from a wounded soldier and took cover behind a smashed locomotive’s wheelhouse. In the building just ahead the Germans were firing from a second storey window and had just wounded his friend Misha. He took aim and dropped one of the Germans with a single shot. In the window above was another German rifleman. Zaitsev checked his pistol - only one round left. Wounded, he dragged himself through the rubble to underneath the window. The Russian’s injured leg would not support his weight so he rolled onto his back to aim the pistol:
I could see the arms of the enemy rifleman jerking with every shot, and he was cursing as he missed. Then he leaned forward to get a better angle. That was when I pointed the pistol at the base of his chin and pulled the trigger . . . The slug went through the top of his skull and hit his helmet with a clang. The Fritz tumbled out of the window, his nose smashing against the concrete.
1
A few days later, Zaitsev and his friends were pinned down in a bomb crater by a German heavy machine gun firing from 600 yards. One friend spotted the gun with a trench periscope and handed it to Zaitsev who also spotted it. Then he jumped up and almost without aiming fired his rifle. The German machine-gunner dropped. Another man took his place, and another quick shot killed him, followed by a third. The machine gun ceased to torment the Russians.
Zaitsev’s regimental commander, ‘Bulletproof Batyuk’, happened to be watching through his binoculars. He asked and was told it was Vassili Zaitsev. Batyuk grunted and said, ‘Get him a sniper’s rifle.’
2
Stauffenberg took his visitor for an after-dinner stroll through the towering pinewoods outside the Führer Headquarters. Their aides followed respectfully out of earshot:
I tell you, Tresckow, I am in the very good graces of the
GroFaZ
[
Grosster Feldheer aller Zeit–
the greatest warlord of all time]. I have replaced a number of our more stodgy staff with ‘young fire eaters from the front’, as he calls them. ‘Just what I wanted!
Front Soldaten
[front soldiers].’ You can’t swing a cat without hitting a Knight’s Cross, a German Cross in Gold, and a wounds badge. And they have breathed a new energy and inventive positive attitude. He has come out of his seclusion to dine with the new crew. Your recommendations have been very helpful in my selection of new men.
Standing there in the moonlight, his handsome features were eerily silhouetted - clean, honest, and determined. Tresckow commented, ‘Every one of them vetted on his honour to end this regime.’
Stauffenberg said, ‘Kluge is with us. But Manstein continues to deflect my appeals.’
Tresckow kicked some of the old pine needles aside with his boot. Their breath was already frosting in the air. You could feel the autumn coming and the Russian winter behind it, a thought that made every veteran of the war on the Ostfront shudder. ‘You know, Stauffenberg, there is an old saying that if you strike at a king, you must kill him. We cannot risk merely arresting Hitler as some of our more foolish generals and those civilians in Berlin advise. They want to put him on trial.’
‘No!’ hissed Stauffenberg. ‘One does not put the Devil through the criminal justice system. Then we would have civil war as the Nazis and the SS rallied to free him.’
‘What then of Goring and Himmler? Both of them are salivating to be his successor.’
The other man said, ‘We must decapitate the entire hydra or set them upon each other. It is the Army that must come out of this as the saviour of Germany.’
Tresckow took him by the hand, gripped it hard as he looked him full in the face. ‘Then we must be sure to place our trust in the true Saviour.’
Like raptors, Rudel’s Stukas fell screaming on the attacking line of Soviet tanks outside Baku. They were American M4 Shermans fresh out of the Baku Tank Training School, manned by the instructors and students. They died just like T-34s when a Stuka dropped its bomb with pinpoint accuracy. In fact, they died faster because the petrol engine ignited quickly.
The tank attack fell apart as the survivors tried to flee. Kleist had fixed the Soviet 53rd Army and the Indian XXI Corps in the plain outside Baku with his infantry now fairly mobile with all the American trucks captured at Ordzhonikidze. The Soviet tank attack had come close to breaking through when Rudel’s Stukas responded to the call for air support. With the Soviet and British attention on their front, Kleist enveloped the Soviets from the north with 3rd Panzer Division slicing down the coast. At the same time, 13th Panzer attacked along the join between the Soviets and British. Fierce counterattacks by the Indian 5th Division cut them off. They formed a hedgehog formation fighting off Soviet and Indian attacks.
At this moment, Kleist unleashed LVII Panzer Corps against the Indian left flank. The British 5th Division found 5th SS
Wiking’s
tanks in its rear as the Slovaks cut the road to Persia.
It was an awesome sight for the men of 3rd Panzer to be driving through a forest of oil derricks that extended out into the Caspian Sea. Many of the derricks were on fire, like immense trees in the agony of a fiery death. Thick black smoke darkened the sky. Though it was a scene from hell, the Germans saw it in Wagnerian terms as the fiery death of Siegfried’s dragon.
3
Roosevelt and the chiefs had studied Stalin’s letter carefully. After the loss of the Persian Corridor, Stalin was begging for a resumption of the convoys and an increased effort through Vladivostok. The tone of desperation was palpable.
The difficulties of delivery are reported to be due primarily to shortage of shipping. To remedy the shipping situation the Soviet Government would be prepared to agree to a certain curtailment of US arms deliveries to the Soviet Union. We should be prepared temporarily fully to renounce deliveries of tanks, guns, ammunition, pistols, etc. At the same time, however, we are badly in need of increased deliveries of modern fighter aircraft - such as Airacobras - and certain other supplies. It should be borne in mind that the Kittyhawk is no match for the modern German fighter.
It would be very good if the USA could ensure the monthly delivery of at least the following items: 500 fighters, 8,000 to 10,000 trucks, 5,000 tons of aluminium, and 4,000 to 5,000 tons of explosives. Besides, we need, within 12 months, two million tons of grain (wheat) and as much as we can have of fats, concentrated foods and canned meat. We could bring in a considerable part of the food supplies in Soviet ships via Vladivostok if the USA consented to turn over to the USSR twenty to thirty ships at the least to replenish our fleet.
As regards the situation at the front, you are undoubtedly aware that in recent months our position in the south, particularly in the Stalingrad area, has deteriorated due to shortage of aircraft, mostly fighters. The Germans have bigger stocks of aircraft than we anticipated. In the south they have at least a twofold superiority in the air, which makes it impossible for us to protect our troops. War experience has shown that the bravest troops are helpless unless protected against air attack.
4
Admiral King was adamant against the resumption of the convoys:
Even if we wanted to, the disaster of PQ-17 has made it impossible for us to recruit the merchant seamen for the convoy, here or in Britain. Face it, Mr President, the only route left is across the Pacific in Soviet-flagged ships. And even that is in doubt. Our cipher boys have been picking up from the Jap diplomatic code that the Germans are twisting their arms to renounce their non-aggression treaty with the Russians and declare war.
Roosevelt and Churchill had been desperate to keep the Soviet Union in the war, but their ability to do so seemed to be slipping away. It was General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, who said what everyone had been thinking. For once, King was in full agreement with the Army:
Mr President, with the loss of the Persian Corridor, our last serious means to deliver decisive aid is gone. Add to that the loss to the Soviets of most of their oil production. The handwriting on the wall is clear. The Russians must sink or swim on their own. I recommend that all aid intended for the Persian Corridor be suspended and diverted instead to the build-up in Britain for the assault on Europe.
Roosevelt seemed to sag in his wheelchair:
We will honour our commitment to the Soviets by continuing to provide as much aid as we can across the Pacific. I just don’t see how we can do more. If the Japanese attack the Russians, there is not much we can do about it.
King had the last brutal word. ‘The diversion of Japanese naval and army forces in such an attack would only make our job in the Pacific that much easier.’
5
This Russian rail station, 73 miles southwest of Stalingrad, was throbbing with activity as one train after another delivered the seven infantry divisions of Manstein’s old 11th Army, veterans of Sevastopol. Interspersed among the troop trains, supply trains were feeding a number of growing depots. Railway engineers were busily extending spurs. Next to arrive were
Grossdeutschland
and 6th Panzer Divisions (LX Corps) with their 400 T-34s, an amazing sight to the infantry. Eleventh Army now numbered close to 200,000 men. Marching out of the Caucasus to join the army were the four infantry divisions of 17th Army’s V Corps.
Manstein had prevailed upon Hitler to leave the cleaning up of the Caucasus and Transcaucasus to one German corps and the Romanians and Turks. The victories at Sukhumi and Ordzhonikidze had revitalized the Führer, who claimed the credit for the Soviet collapse since it had happened after he had relieved List and assumed personal command. Then Kleist’s brilliant crushing of the Soviet-British force at Baku had even prompted him to dine with his generals again. Though much of the vast oilfield had been sabotaged, Hitler practically wallowed in the self-justification. He gladly tossed a field marshal’s baton to Kleist.
The credit line he had promised Manstein seemed to shrink in inverse proportion to the good news he was receiving. At Hitler’s order to throw 11th Army into the Stalingrad fighting, Manstein flew directly to Werewolf and flatly refused the order. ‘What are you worried about? Reichsmarschall Goring is supplying a reinforcement to the front as great as 11th Army. The sheet balances.’ He was referring to the establishment of twenty-two Luftwaffe field divisions, Goring’s brainchild to transform surplus personnel into his own ground army; if Himmler could have one in the Waffen SS, so could Göring.
Manstein’s response was ‘Sheer nonsense! Where is the Luftwaffe going to find the necessary division, regimental, and battalion commanders?’ For once Hitler had met someone with a personality as forceful and unyielding as his own and one that was immune to his charismatic power. More than one observer noted that Manstein’s ego equalled Hitler’s, but without the irrationality. This battle had already been fought. Against the entire weight of his General Staff and even his favoured Stauffenberg, Hitler had declined to deny Goring, who had proclaimed that he was not going ‘to hand over “his” soldiers, reared in the spirit of National Socialism, to an Army which still had chaplains and was led by officers steeped in the traditions of the Kaiser’.
6
Hitler was clearly on the defensive but for once did not slip into a rage at being countered. Instead, he said, ‘There is Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army that will become available in a few weeks as well.’ It was all Manstein could do not to lecture the Führer of the German Reich like a green lieutenant. He summarized the deployment of forces:
Protecting most of the long northern arm of our salient from the Don to the Volga are the Romanian 3rd, Hungarian, and 8th Italian Armies. If the Soviets attack in great strength, these forces will collapse. On the southern arm of the salient is the Romanian 4th Army which will do exactly the same thing. None of these allies are reliable in such situations unless they are closely corseted with Germans, which they are not.
At the apex of the salient 6th Army is slowly wasting away. It has no more reserves while the Soviets keep feeding replacements into the battle. We merely play into his hands by sending more troops into that sausage grinder.
He said nothing about his secret order to Seydlitz to pull back from close contact with Chuikov’s troops once the inevitable Soviet offensive kicked off. The order, codenamed Operation Quicksilver, was to disengage 6th Army and pull its left flank all the way back to Kalach should the Soviets attack the Romanian 3rd Army in strength. At the same time Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army was also to pull back immediately to reinforce the Romanian 4th Army should the Soviets attack there in strength. 6th Army’s right flank would hook up with 4th Panzer Army’s left flank thus reestablishing a strong front to serve as a springboard for a counterattack once the Soviets had overextended themselves. It was the perfect example of an elastic strategy. Sadly, the panzer corps of both armies had been wasted away in the city fighting for which they had never been intended, and each was lucky to muster the strength of one panzer division.
The field marshal had also left Seydlitz broad initiative in interpreting orders coming out of OKW. For example, Hitler had ordered all of the horses of 6th Army to be sent westward to cut down on the logistics burden of their support which in bulk exceeded the requirements of the troops by several times. Seydlitz realized that if he was to have any ability to manoeuvre, he would need those horses, for much of the German artillery and logistics services still relied on them. Hitler had also ordered him to employ as infantry any tank troops without tanks. When he received that order, he leapt to his feet and shouted,
‘Wanzig, heller Wanzig!
[Madness, sheer madness!] Where does that man think I will find skilled
Panzertruppen
if and when new tanks arrive?’ The tankers were not used as infantry.
Manstein went on:
Across the Volga and north of the Don, the enemy keeps accumulating reserves for the very reason that he recognizes the vulnerability of our salient. If we continue to feed the Stalingrad battle, we do nothing but dissipate our own reserves and lay ourselves open to the obvious counterstroke that will trap everything in the salient in one great pocket.
We must retain a powerful operational reserve to throw into the battle once the enemy plays his hand. That is why I insist that 11th Army’s strength not be dissipated to deal with local emergencies but that it must be strengthened. And to it must be added 1st Panzer Army as part of the front’s strategic reserve.
Mein Fuhrer,
you can never be too strong at the decisive point.
Hitler responded, ‘But I tell you, Manstein, that the Russians are beaten already. The loss of the oilfields at Baku has doomed them. One more push and the whole rotten structure will collapse. Bolshevism is as good as dead.’
‘Then,
mein Führer,
let us make sure and drive a great stake through its heart.’
7
