Disaster at Stalingrad Page 16

  As 6th Army stalled on the Don Bend after its exhausting victory, Army Group A had plunged south across the 300-mile Kuban towards the Black Sea coast and the passes through the Caucasus Mountains. The Kuban stretched between the Black and Caspian Seas and was bound on the north by the Don Steppe and the south by the forbidding ranges of the Caucasus. It had been settled as a marcher land against the wild tribes of the mountains by even more ferocious Cossacks.3 The three German armies attacked on line with 17th Army crossing the Don and striking south along the Sea of Azov to move down the Black Sea coast. The 1st Panzer Army in the centre attacked towards Maikop and Armavir and 4th Panzer Army towards Pyatigorsk. Each of these last two objectives led to a major highway through the mountains. Across their path lay two major water obstacles, the Manych and Kuban Rivers, flowing east to west. Pyatigorsk in particular led to the Georgian Military Highway along which Allied aid from Persia flowed.

  It was a race. The Germans were intent on encircling the Russians. The Russians were intent on not being encircled as they conducted a fighting retreat into the ideal defensive terrain of the mountains. In their drive south the 16th Motorized and 3rd Panzer Divisions of 4th Panzer Army swept up to the 400-mile-long Manych River. It was the last great physical barrier before the mountains were reached.

  It had been made an even greater barrier by the hand of man. The river was essentially a series of dams and their reservoirs, often a mile wide. It was a thorny problem for the commander of the 3rd Panzer Division, General Hermann Breith. The banks of the narrowest parts of the reservoirs were strongly held by NKVD troops. Instead of attacking there, Breith’s infantry crossed in assault boats at the widest point, 2 miles across, just above a dam. The surprise was complete, and the Germans overran the dam to prevent its demolition. Within minutes the armoured columns of the division were crossing and heading south towards Asia.

  Northeastern Turkey, early August 1942

  The Turkish-German treaty of alliance may have been secret, but it did not take long for the British and the Soviets to discover its existence. Even if they had not, the sudden presence of hundreds of Wehrmacht officers and NCOs in Turkey, the transfer of an expeditionary corps, and the redeployment of the Turkish armies to the borders would have been a resounding tip-off.

  For both of them the imminent entry of Turkey into the war might turn out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The British had stripped just about every unit they safely could from their 10th Army guarding Syria, Iraq and Persia and sent them off to shore up 8th Army on the Egyptian border. They arrived just in time barely to stave off Rommel’s attack in July. There would be precious little left to stop any Turkish thrust into 10th Army’s area of operations.

  The Soviets had as much if not more to fear. This new threat meant that their forces between the Caucasus and the Turkish border would have to fight front and back. Now both the oilfields at Baku and the Persian Corridor route of supply from the Allies were in danger. With the greatest reluctance, Stalin released a few more armies from Stavka reserve to bolster the defences of the Transcaucasus Front that defended the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Turkic Azerbaijan.

  Things looked far more difficult from the perspective of the German advisory group in Ankara. Although captured French and Soviet weapons stocks had done much to modernize the Turkish Army as far as artillery and automatic weapons went, its logistics were, to put it kindly, primitive, consisting largely of pack animals in caravan trains and a very limited number of motor vehicles. Signals and communication remained grossly inadequate. The Turkish Air Force was simply in no condition to go up against the Russians. Goring was prevailed upon to scrape up a few Luftwaffe fighter units, pulling them from Norway now that the Allies had put a temporary halt to their convoys.

  That meant that the German expeditionary corps, XLIV Corps (97th and 101st Jäger Divisions), commanded by General der Artillerie Maximilian de Angelis, would be operating on a shoestring. These divisions, however, had been organized and trained to operate under difficult conditions. They were taken from Army Group A. Field Marshal List had raised a bloody fit over the loss of these two specialized divisions at the end of July. He was more than mollified by their replacement with the even more specialized LV Mountain Corps (3rd and 5th Gebirgsjäger Divisions) which were being wasted as normal infantry in Army Group North around Leningrad. Now List would have four of the German Army’s seven mountain divisions; the rest remained locked in battle in the desolate reaches of Lappland. At the last minute Hitler confirmed the transfer of the three excellent mountain divisions of the Italian Alpini Corps.4

  Stalingrad, 1 August 1942

  Chuikov handed over command of 64th Army to a replacement on 30 July. He had been relieved by the front commander, who summoned him to his headquarters in the city. Gordov told him, ‘The enemy has been pinned down in our defence positions, and he can now be wiped out with a single blow.’ Chuikov was astounded that the front commander could say such a thing after the drubbing the Germans had given them. Chuikov would write later, ‘I came to the conclusion that the Front Commander did not know the situation at the front. He took wishful thinking for reality, and did not realize that a new threat, a large-scale attack, was imminent.’ Gordov angrily dismissed his concerns and told him to write a report on his actions as army commander.

  Wishful thinking was also afflicting the commander of the remnants of 62nd Army, who reported that his army was ‘firmly holding its defensive positions’ and, with 1st Tank and 21st Armies, ‘is completing the encirclement of the enemy’. It reminded Chuikov of the anecdote about the man who caught a bear. ’“Bring it over here,” someone said, “I can’t,” he replied. “It won’t let me.”’5

  Two days later Chuikov was ordered by the Front Military Council personally to examine the situation south of Stalingrad and take whatever measures necessary. He found chaos. Divisions were retreating ahead of the oncoming Germans who had crossed the Don farther south. They had taken heavy losses. He took them under his command and ordered them to set up defensive lines north of the Aksay River.

  Another division was arriving at two railway stations in the area. The Luftwaffe, as ever informed of ripe prey by its reconnaissance, attacked both stations just as the troops were unloading. Chuikov was walking to the buildings where his communications had been set up at the Chilekov Station when he saw three flights of aircraft coming towards him. ‘Suddenly there was the roar of explosions… I could see the carriages and the station buildings on fire, with raging flames rapidly leaping from one building to another.’ Chuikov thought to himself if only air cover had been provided to the stations, all this loss could have been avoided.6

  He was out of touch with 64th Army headquarters for long periods inspecting, reorganizing, threatening, bringing hope to beaten men and getting soaked in frequent downpours. On one occasion his sudden arrival at a unit nearly cost him his life. He was wearing a British aid raincoat which a sentry recognized as foreign. And foreign to this man meant German. Chuikov missed death only by the barest of margins as he blurted out the response to the sentry’s challenge.

  The Luftwaffe continued to torment any Soviet unit on the road. It so savagely strafed and bombed his 29th Rifle Division marching to set up positions along the Aksay River that it suffered more casualties than in the fighting west of the Don. Nevertheless, Chuikov was confirmed in command of these forces, the Southern Group, which he had already positioned along the Aksay.

  On the 5th, the Germans attacked and drove a wedge over the river. Chuikov observed that they used the same battle drill as in the fighting west of the Don, ‘air attack, then artillery, then infantry, then tanks. They did not know any other order in which to attack.’ Chuikov determined to defeat this battle drill by an artillery strike on their assembly areas followed by an infantry attack. He fretted about taking these odds and ends of units into even a simple offensive operation. He had no tanks and no air support either, nor antitank weapons. He had to hit be
fore the Germans could ferry their tanks across the river. He struck at daybreak. The artillery thundered down on the unsuspecting Germans who broke and fled back across the river. Their tanks never crossed, and he did not even have to employ his infantry.7

  For the next ten days, the Germans again and again tried to cross the river in force. Chuikov threw them back each time, each time varying his tactics. He would counterattack at night or at dawn when the Luftwaffe could not be in the sky. His artillery ranged into the depth of the German positions disrupting their attempts to concentrate. Chuikov and his scratch force had shown that the Germans could be beaten.

  Stalingrad, 4 August 1942

  Colonel General Andrei Yeremenko’s leg still had not recovered from the last of the three wounds he had suffered so far in the war. He was thankful that he was flying in one of these comfortable American Dakota transport aircraft rather than taking an overland route to Stalingrad. The Vozhd had just appointed him to command both fronts defending Stalingrad. The plane landed at the small airport on the outskirts of the city. Waiting for him was People’s Commissar Nikita S. Khrushchev.

  Yeremenko braced himself. The Ukrainian commissar was a Politburo member and close to Stalin. Cold and ruthless as his master, he had executed the created famine in 1931-2 that starved to death up to ten million of his fellow Ukrainians on Stalin’s orders. He had also supervised the building of the Moscow subway in which thousands died. Dread preceded him, and fear followed in his wake. Yeremenko in contrast was an affable man who always had time for his subordinates. Somehow they would have to get along. On one thing they were in complete agreement. Stalin’s ‘Not one step back’ order would be ruthlessly enforced.

  Even the rear was in panic. The port city of Astrakhan on the estuary of the Volga where it entered into the Caspian Sea was in fear after a German air raid. Astrakhan was a vital rail and water communications hub that fed supplies and reinforcements to Stalingrad. It was filled with terrified refugees and crated machinery from evacuated plants. Now huge, greasy clouds of black smoke poured from the burning oil storage tanks the Germans had hit.8

  The Big Bend of the Don, 7 August 1942

  By 7 August the spearheads of the 16th and 24th Panzer Divisions had met on the Don across the river from Kalach. Sixth Army had cut off the forward elements of 62nd and 1st Tank Armies — nine rifle divisions, two motorized and seven tank brigades. It took the Germans another four days to mop up the pockets, bagging 50,000 prisoners, 1,000 armoured vehicles, and 750 guns. Of the 13,000 men the 181st Rifle Division had begun the fight with, barely a hundred were able to escape across the Don. This was just the sort of encirclement that the Germans had been seeking but had so far eluded them. It took another four days to round up all the cut-off Soviet forces. It was almost like beating game as they set fire to the brush to drive them out of hiding. Paulus’s chief engineer, after meeting with his commander, said that ‘The Army was full of hope… my eyes met those of Paulus, questioning, almost unbelieving… were the Russians finally at the end of their tether?’9

  There were still more Russians to deal with on the west bank of the Don. Next Paulus attacked the smaller of the two bridgeheads to the north, but the Soviet armies there were able to avoid encirclement and withdrew across the Don. The fighting had not gone all one way. The Germans had taken heavy losses, the harbinger of more to come. One soldier wrote home, ‘Many, many crosses and graves, fresh from yesterday.’ Paulus’s infantry had marched, fought and bled for the last month. They were exhausted, and there was still farther to go. One pioneer observed hopefully, ‘The only consolation is that we will be able to have peace and quiet in Stalingrad, where we’ll move into winter quarters, and then, just think of it, there’ll be a chance for leave.’10

  Maikop, 9 August 1942

  Major Adrian von Fölkersam was one of those daring men attracted to special operations. The Brandenburg Regiment drew such men like a magnet, and among that elite Fölkersam was one of the best. He was the grandson of a Russian admiral and spoke the language fluently. Now he and the detachment of sixty men he called ‘the Wild Bunch’, Russian-speaking Balts and Germans, were miles behind the lines in the town of Maikop with its surrounding oil wells and refineries. The problem was that the Soviets still held the town and did not seem in any hurry to leave.

  The Wild Bunch had arrived in Maikop in a very ordinary way; they drove in dressed in NKVD uniforms. Fölkersam called on the commanding general and introduced himself as Major Turchin from the Stalingrad Front. The general seemed pleased to see someone who had been close to the action and assigned them good quarters in the town. For the next few days the Brandenburgers wandered about coolly, finding out where everything of importance was.

  On the evening of 8 August they could hear the rumble of guns to the north. Army Group A was driving south. A Russian officer told Fölkersam that the Germans were only ten miles away. That night he called his men together and issued them their final instructions. He wanted chaos and confusion among the enemy.

  In the morning Leutnant Franz Koudele walked into the main military telephone communications office and announced to the officer in charge that Maikop was being abandoned. The officer was not inclined to argue with an NKVD officer and promptly fled with his men. Koudele now found himself connected to every Soviet command in the Caucasus and flooded with messages demanding to know what was going on to the north. ‘We cannot connect you, sir,’ Koudele replied with just the proper tone of anxiety in his voice. ‘Maikop has been abandoned.’11

  The panic at the telephone office spread, abetted by the rest of the Brandenburgers, and triggered a Soviet stampede out of town, the general near the front. At the oilfields, Fölkersam’s men stopped the Soviet engineers from destroying the facilities on the authority of the general who had already fled. The engineers then joined the exodus.

  That same day 13th Panzer Division of 1st Panzer Army overran the Maikop oilfields and was greeted by Fölkersam who, in a way, gave them the keys to the city. Somewhere behind the advancing columns were 10,000 oil industry workers ready to keep the fields running for Germany.12

  Krasnodar, Kuban River, 13 August 1942

  The Romanian 3rd Army made good progress working along the coast of the Sea of Azov while 17th Army’s V Corps was locked in bitter fighting to take Krasnodar on the Kuban River. The fighting for this former capital of the Don Cossacks had been bitter. The Germans had reached it on the 10th and met determined Soviet resistance in the orchards and suburbs. There were huge oil refineries around the city of 200,000 people. They went up in flames as the Soviets destroyed everything of value to the Germans while evacuating as much of the population and useful material as possible. They had to hold the bridge over the Kuban in the city centre.

  The next day 1st Battalion, 421st Infantry Regiment, had fought its way within 50 yards of the bridge unbeknownst to the Soviets. They watched the tightly packed flow of personnel and equipment crossing the bridge. It looked as if once again the Germans would be able to pull off another daring coup de main and seize the crossing. A company commander leapt to his feet pointing his pistol. He took three steps forward and was immediately shot through the head. His men charged. This time the Soviet engineer officer in charge of the bridge was alert. The racing Germans were only 20 yards from the bridge when he blew it.

  At half a dozen separate points the bridge went up with a roar like thunder, complete with the Russian columns on it. Among the smoke and dust, men and horses, wheels and weapons, could be seen sailing through the air. Horse-drawn vehicles, the horses bolting, raced over the collapsing balustrades, hurtling into the river and disappearing under the water.

  Without the bridge, it took the Germans until the night of the 13th and 14th to find a way across the river and resume their advance.13

  Mount Elbrus, 13 August 1942

  The men of the 5th SS Division Wiking at first saw what they thought was a great white cloud sitting in the distance. As they got closer the towering twin su
mmits of Mt Elbrus became clear. Its west peak was the highest point in Europe at 18,510ft. Its permanent icecap fed twenty-two glaciers.

  Most of the men of the Wiking Division were volunteers from northern Europe who had joined the Germans to help wage their anti-Bolshevik struggle. Of its three motorized regiments, Germania was recruited from ethnic Germans, Westland from Dutch and Flemish volunteers, and Nordland from Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. With them was the Slovak Fast Division (1st Slovak [Mobile] Infantry Division), together forming LVII Panzer Corps.

  Behind them came XLIX Mountain Corps with the 1st and 4th Gebirgsjäger Divisions and the three Italian Alpini divisions. Their objective was the Klukhor Pass with the glaciers of Mt Elbrus hanging above. Through the pass ran the Sukhumi Military Highway to the port of Sukhumi on the Black Sea coast, which was the southernmost of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet’s remaining three major naval bases.

  After the loss of its main base at Sevastopol, the fleet had occupied bases at Novorossiysk, Tuapse, and Sukhumi along the narrow coastal strip below the mountains. Each was also defended by an army, and each was now a target. V Corps was heading to Novorossiysk, the Romanian Mountain Corps was attacking through the foothills of the Caucasus to Tuapse, and XLIX and the Alpini Corps were to open the way to Sukhumi for the Vikings of the SS and the Slovaks. From Sukhumi it was only a hundred miles to the Turkish border at Batumi.

  Initially List had planned for LVII Panzer Corps to be the main force in the drive on Tuapse. However, he concluded that it would be wasted there. The Romanians would be enough to fix Soviet forces in that direction. It was not necessary to attack all three Soviet naval bases in strength. His mountain corps would punch through the mountain passes that would give the Germans access to the thin coastal strip and roads to Sukhumi. Take Sukhumi, and the other two bases would be cut off — another great battle of encirclement. Unfortunately, the Gebirgsjäger and Alpini would be spent in simply fighting through the mountains. That’s where LVII Panzer Corps came in as the exploitation force.