Enemy at the Gates (25 page)

Thirteen hundred miles to the west of Sixth Army Headquarters, Hitler slept soundly at the
Berghof
in the Bavarian Alps. The Führer had been there for nearly two weeks, dallying in his mountain retreat. But the problems he refused to acknowledge during the past summer and fall had pursued him. In Africa, the Allies were moving to trap Rommel's legions; in Russia, his Soviet Union Intelligence expert, Col. Reinhard Gehlen, had just warned him of the extreme likelihood of a Russian counteroffensive behind Sixth Army.

Despite these reports, Hitler remained convinced that his Third Reich would endure. He was incredibly proud of the fact that his armies ruled more than three hundred million people: from the Atlantic coastline in France to the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, from the northern capes of Norway to the bleached sands of Libya. He had reached an apogee of power. But on November 19, when the Red Army launched its massive counterattack at the Don, his Nazi empire bgan to wither imperceptibly. And though more than two years would pass before it finally collapsed, the decline would prove irreversible.

In a quiet conference room, Hitler peered intently at the latest battle maps and examined the terrain on the left flank of the Sixth Army. He showed no undue concern as he asked about the weather and Luftwaffe groups operating in the region. Unhurried, controlled, Hitler 'weighed the options and issued an order. It was the first of many fatal decisions he would make in the coming weeks.

That order reached Gen. Ferdinand Heim at 11:30
A.M.
, as he was leading his 48th Panzer Corps out to challenge the Russian Twentyfirst Army rampaging south of the Don. It instructed him to change direction and speed to the sector around Blinov, where the Soviet Fifth Army had also made a serious penetration. Irritated by the confusing orders, the general skidded to a halt and redirected his columns toward the new target almost 180 degrees in the opposite direction. When the 48th Panzer Corps clumsily started up again, it was inundated with remnants of Rumanian divisions, running across the snowfields. Heim absorbed as many of these troops as he could and kept going toward his new target.

No planes interfered with the drama on the steppe, for both air forces had been grounded by the foul weather. As a result, General von Richthofen had flown south to the Caucasus, where excellent conditions permitted strikes against the Red Army. Absorbed with bombing runs along the Terek riverfront, he was stunned to hear of the massive Soviet offensive at his rear. Unable to dispatch aircraft north into the storm along the Don, he excused his impotence by saying, "once again the Russians have made masterly use of the bad weather."

That bad weather had almost caused Marshal Vasilevsky to postpone Operation Uranus. Frantic phone calls with Generals Vatutin, Christiakov, Romanenko and STAVKA in Moscow had preceded the attack. Deprived of close air support, and fearful of sending tanks into a blinding cover of fog and snow on the exposed steppe, the Russians launched Uranus with a premonition of catastrophe. But the first hours had already brought incredible success. Masses of Rumanian prisoners swarmed into Soviet lines. Red Army tank patrols quickly penetrated twenty miles southward, and by afternoon were within firing range of German Sixth Army's supply dumps.

At the town of Bolshe Nabatoff, thirty miles south of Kletskaya, Quartermaster Karl Binder was trying desperately to save his carefully hoarded rations. He had collected eight hundred cattle to feed his division during the winter and now, fearful of Russian tanks, he acted to shift his ponderous burden eastward, across the winding Don before the enemy seized the bridge at Akimovski. As he issued instructions to eight herdsmen, the first Russian shells whined into the compound and the cattle broke in terror. The herdsmen managed to turn the mass which stampeded, snorting and lowing, toward the Don miles away.

After the cattle had gone, Binder began heaving huge sacks of flour into trucks while his men filled other vehicles with bread, clothing, and blankets. Retreating Rumanian troops helped themselves to as much food as they could carry and for once, no German officer demanded receipts.

Enemy fire increased, buildings began burning furiously. Convinced he had salvaged all he could, Binder led his convoy out of Bolshe Nabatoff while behind him, the depot burned like a bright red torch.

All day long, teams of Russian tanks roamed the white steppe, shooting into headquarters detachments, supply dumps, communications centers, and then pulling back into the mist to strike again miles away. Their tactics confused and demoralized the Germans. Radio reports flooding into Golubinka placed the Russians forty miles south of the Don, then fifty miles southeast of the Don— everywhere! Hysteria marked the voices that begged Sixth Army for reinforcements and advice.

Discipline broke; unit commanders arbitrarily ordered their men to the east, toward Stalingrad. Their troops had become fearful, sullen and were openly hostile to their superiors, who ran about screaming threats of courts-martial to maintain order.

In this bedlam, Lt. Hermann Kastle shepherded his mortars to the Don. He pushed ahead on the congested roads, and held his place against repeated attempts by other officers to jockey men and equipment in front of him. Panic frequently replaced reason, and 'Castle saw several arguments degenerate into fist fights as soldiers stood in the snow and smashed each other over trivial slights.

In late afternoon, Kastle neared a bridge crossing the Don. Suddenly another lieutenant appeared, waved a Luger in his face, and told him his tank held priority over lastle's mortars. When Kastle said his guns were equally important, the lieutenant pointed the pistol at his head and told him to back away.

Kastle searched the officer's eyes, and knew he faced death if he refused. Shaking his head in disbelief, he pulled the mortars aside and watched passively as the tank commander jumped onto his. machine and rode triumphantly over the river.

At Sixth Army Headquarters, Captain Behr kept the lines to Gerhard Stock open throughout the day. Stock had proved to be the most reliable witness to the unfolding chaos. He kept reporting the defection of Rumanian officers, who left thousands of soldiers to wander the steppe, and his account of the tragedy was distressingly accurate.

On his own maps, Behr had also watched the slow progress of General Heim's relief force. The 48th Panzer Corps finally reached Blinov in the afternoon. But the Russians had come and gone, hitting and running across the flatlands. General Heim took his panzers out of town again, seeking the elusive enemy, who was avoiding direct engagement.

In Stalingrad, ninety miles east of the fluid battleground, the city had again assumed its familiar crown of explosions and tracer bullets chasing each other through the darkening sky. On the edge of the Volga, Russian Col. Ivan Lyudnikov's trapped division still clung to its "island" under the cliff behind the Barrikady Gun Factory. Up above, German pioneers had spent another day trying to destroy them, but again they failed. Inside the Barrikady itself, Maj. Eugen Rettenmaier learned of the Russian counterattack back at the Don and sank into a deep depression. Unable to understand how his leaders had failed to prepare for the blow, he knew the situation at Stalingrad had become hopeless.

North of the Barrikady, past the shattered tractor works, the 16th Panzer Division had spent another torturous day on the outskirts of Rynok. But after dark, they received orders to turn their backs on the Volga. Mechanics labored hurriedly over tanks and trucks; soldiers received extra rations and ammunition. Then they filed out of their deep
balkas,
where they had lived since August, and went to shore up the gap in the line along the Don, ninety miles to the rear.

The weather was turning worse; a strong wind blew snow into the faces of the tankers and infantrymen. Masses of people wandered past them: Rumanians clutching their belongings, human flotsam from an unseen debacle beyond the western horizon.

At Golubinka, General Schmidt read the latest dispatches and tried to gauge the extent of the Russian penetration. Scattered rumors merged with verified reports to form a kaleidoscope of tank sightings, making it impossible to pinpoint the enemy's whereabouts.

At 10:30
P.M
., Schmidt suddenly announced: "I am going to bed now," and disappeared into his quarters. As he went back to the phone and Gerhard Stock, Captain Behr marveled again at Schmidt's coolness, a blessing in the face of the long day's discouragement.

South of Stalingrad, more Russian forces waited through the bitterly cold night to begin the second part of Operation Uranus. From the suburb of Beketovka down to the shores of the salt lakes, Sarpa, Tzatza, and Barmantsak, the Sixty-fourth, Fifty-seventh, and Fifty-first armies were massed along a 125-mile front. Confronting them was the vastly overextended Fourth Rumanian Army, stretched thin across the wintry steppe to protect the German Sixth Army's right flank. It was the Russian High Command's intention to punch quickly through the Rumanian positions and race northwest toward the Russian armies descending from the Don.

In the early hours of November 20, shivering Red Army soldiers cleaned their weapons again, and wrote last letters to relatives in unoccupied Russia. Sgt. Alexei Petrov had no one to write; Lt. Hersch Gurewicz thought wistfully of his father and brother, but had no idea where they were.

At his headquarters cottage, General Yeremenko could not sleep. Convinced that the southern-front attack should be delayed until all the German reserves had been drawn north to meet the first phase of the Soviet offensive along the Don, he had spent hours arguing his case with STAVKA in Moscow. But STAVKA had refused his plea, and now Yeremenko brooded about the possibility of failure.

At dawn he had more worries. The weather had not changed, and a thick fog, mixed with snow, shrouded his armies. Troops had great difficulty forming into assault groups. Tanks ran into each other. Airplanes poised to the east, across the Volga, sat helplessly on runways.

Yeremenko delayed H-hour. From Moscow, STAVKA demanded the reason and Yeremenko sat at his desk and patiently explained his decision. STAVKA was not happy, but Yeremenko held his ground. For more than two hours, past nine o'clock, he waited for the weather to clear. As STAVKA came back on the BODO line to plague him, his meteorologists promised sunlight within minutes.

At 10:00
A.M
., Yeremenko's artillery commenced firing and the soldiers of the Rumanian Fourth Army fled wildly in every direction. Within a few hours, the astonished Yeremenko excitedly called STAVKA to say that ten thousand prisoners had already been processed. STAVKA demanded he recheck his figures. They were correct.

Pvt. Abraham Spitkovsky had seen the prisoners coming almost as soon as the bombardment ceased. Rising from his hole when the "Urrahs" from his comrades sounded the charge, he plunged through the snow toward hundreds of black figures walking toward him with hands raised over their heads. Up and down the front beside him, Russian soldiers shot blindly into the ragged ranks and when Spitkovsky thought of the weeks and months of running, of cringing among the corpses, and of lice he, too, brought up his machine pistol and fired long bursts into their columns.

While Spitkovsky paused to reload his gun, he looked down at the rows of dead men and was completely unmoved.

One hundred twenty miles northwest of General Yeremenko's almost effortless breakthrough, the Germans were still trying to contain the Russian forces moving down from Serafimovich and Klatskaya.

At the village of Peschanyy, thirty miles south of Serafimovich, General Heim's 48th Panzer Corps finally met the enemy. His 22nd Panzer Division plunged into a firefight with T-34s, but the 22nd was already crippled; its mouse-eaten wiring had reduced tank strength to twenty.

Antitank guns acting as support helped explode twenty-six Russian tanks, but that was not enough. The Soviet armor broke away and the Germans hobbled after it. By the afternoon, the panzers were surrounded by new Russian formations and fighting for survival.

The steppe battleground resembled islands in a sea. Trapped units retreated into hedgehog defenses and lashed back at the enemy closing in around them. The Rumanians who continued to fight were almost totally isolated. A meteorological officer in the 6th Division kept a diary, later captured by the Russians:

November 20

In morning enemy opened heavy . artillery fire at sector held by 13th Pruth Division….Division wiped out….No communication with higher command….Currently encircled by enemy troops. In pocket are the 5th, 6th and 15th divisions and remnants of the 13th Division.

The report spoke for the entire "puppet army."

During the night, German Quartermaster Karl Binder had crossed and recrossed the Don, bringing out food and clothing for his 305th Division. Back again on the western side of the frozen river, he found that his old supply depot at Bolshe Nabatoff still remained in German hands. The Russian tanks had merely burned some of the buildings before racing off again into the fog.