[9.0] The Battle For Stalingrad (2)

* In early November 1942, the Germans seemed close to driving the Red Army out of Stalingrad, only to be surprised by a massive two-pronged Soviet counteroffensive, Operation URANUS, that trapped the German 6th Army in the city. Hitler refused to authorize a breakout; an attempt to relieve the 6th Army failed, and in February 1943 the Red Army stamped out all resistance in the city. To the south, the Germans performed a hasty withdrawal from their overextended position at the foothills of the Caucasus, and managed to escape being trapped by the Soviet advance.

[9.1] OPERATION URANUS / OPERATION MARS

* Paulus was not completely surprised by the Soviet counteroffensive, or at least he shouldn't have been. He had been getting plenty of reports that the Red Army was secretively building up forces above his northern flank, one intelligence officer telling him on 27 October that they were confronted with "an attack army, armed to the teeth, and of considerable size." Two days later, on 29 October, the commander of Rumanian forces in the area reported that Red Army units had been making continuous small attacks, clearly probing the strength of the defenses. Paulus acknowledged that there was a Soviet buildup in the area, but downplayed its size and significance. It would prove a fatal misjudgement.

* Plans for the counteroffensive had begun way back in mid-September. On 12 September, Stalin had conducted a strategy session with his senior generals concerning the relief of Stalingrad. Zhukov was in attendance, and he and General Vasilevsky, Chief of the General Staff, muttered a few comments to each other about the possibilities of the situation. Stalin did not like people trying to keep secrets from him, and challenged them.

They couldn't elaborate much, but Stalin was feeling open-minded and told them to consider various options, then report back to him at a meeting the next night. The two generals showed up at the appointed time on the night of 13 September. Stalin was feeling grumpy, complaining at length about the failure of the British to deliver satisfactory amounts of war material -- but having vented his frustrations, he then asked the two men: "Well, what did you come up with?"

Their plan was straightforward, if not necessarily easy to implement. The brute-force approach to relieving Stalingrad would be to send the Red Army into the city in force and push the Germans back. A more sensible plan, the two generals explained, would be to quietly build up forces on the flanks of the German salient at Stalingrad, then launch an encirclement operation, with pincers driving south and west to meet at the critical bridgehead at Kalach. The German 6th Army would be trapped and then wiped out.

Time would be needed to build up the forces. The counteroffensive would jump off in November, after the arrival of winter weather that would give the Red Army the tactical edge. In addition, although Stalin had been thoroughly unhappy to find out that Operation TORCH -- the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, scheduled for November -- had led his allies to suspend the Murmansk convoys following the current PQ 18 convoy due to demands on escort vessels, the North Africa invasion would hinder the ability of the Germans to react to a simultaneous Soviet offensive.

Chuikov would be given only the minimal amount of men and material needed to allow him to hang on, keeping Hitler and the Wehrmacht fixated on Stalingrad. In fact, while Paulus would try to take Stalingrad with the equivalent of ten divisions during his attacks in September and October, Chuikov would only get five to defend the city. The Red Army was going to hold Stalingrad with one hand and use the other for a sucker punch. Stalin liked the plan, telling the two generals: "No one except the three of us is to know about it." He approved the formal battle plan for Operation URANUS, as it was designated, on 28 September.

* The northern pincer was to be built up around Serafimovich, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Kalach. The Don flowed almost due east there, with the town on the south bank of the river. Serafimovich had been defensible enough to keep it in Red Army hands during the German drive east over the past summer. The German line opposite Serafimovich was held by the Rumanian 3rd Army; the Rumanians were spread thin along their section of the line, and were poorly equipped and led anyway. Italian and Hungarian divisions held the line to the northwest. They were not in much better shape than the Rumanians, and were unlikely to come to their aid.

The northern pincer would hinge on the southern suburbs of Stalingrad, along the Soviet defensive line on the west bank of the Volga to the south of the city. The target was elements of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, and particularly the Rumanian 4th Army. The buildup was performed quietly, with troops and equipment sent forward in groups at night to help conceal the overall size of the effort. There's a story that when Zhukov saw a truck turn its lights on, he went up to it and shattered its headlights with a stick. True or not, Zhukov was a good planner and took a personal interest in checking up on things himself -- sometimes seeming to be everywhere, making sure that things were done as he ordered them done.

Everything was hidden and camouflaged during the day. Since it was impossible to completely conceal the presence of Red Army forces in the area, considerable effort was spent to build fortifications to suggest a defensive posture. Red Army troops, who had traditionally tended to be unnerved by German armor, were put through exercises where they were required to remain in their trenches and let tanks roll over the top of them.

* Although Stalin had caused repeated disasters in the first year of the conflict by refusing to accept realities, he had largely learned his lesson, and was now willing to be patient with the extensive preparations; in fact, he expressed concern that there weren't enough resources for a successful counter-offensive. On 13 November, Zhukov and Vasilevsky went to Moscow to brief Stalin and reassure him. Zhukov later wrote: "We could tell he was pleased, because he puffed unhurriedly on his pipe, stroked his mustache, and listened to us without interrupting."

Koba had good reason to purr. A million men were ready to move forward; they would be supported by 900 tanks, over 13,000 artillery pieces, and over 1,100 aircraft. Forces would not be committed in bits and pieces this time. On the other side of the coin, enough intelligence about Soviet activities behind the lines was coming in to make Hitler nervous, and on 10 November he ordered a panzer division into the area as reinforcement. Weather and equipment breakdowns hobbled the movement, and only a portion of the panzer division made it there in time to meet the assault.

The word to go ahead was sent from Moscow: SEND A MESSENGER TO PICK UP FUR GLOVES. Soldiers of the Soviet Fifth Tank Army and Twenty-First Army, under Major General Nikolai Vatutin, readied themselves to go forward in the dark hours of 19 November, and then 3,500 guns and Katyusha rocket launchers punched through falling snow and thick ground fog to give the Rumanian 3rd Army a memorable predawn wake-up call. Although in the past such barrages had usually been conducted all up and down the line, this time they were focused on important breakthrough sectors. Red Army troops began a push at 8:50 AM, and were soon followed by hundreds of tanks.

The Rumanians held their ground for a few hours, but they were completely outmatched and soon broke and ran in panic. The weather helped keep the Luftwaffe grounded, though it cleared enough by mid-morning to allow swarms of VVS Shturmoviks to add their weight to the attack, and soon Vatutin's troops had torn a huge hole in the enemy line. Soviet troops poured through and moved rapidly southeast, with a stream of messages flowing out of Stalin's office prodding them on.

* The southern pincer, consisting of the Soviet Fifty-Seventh and Fifty-First Armies under the command of Major General Konstantin Rokossovsky and under the overall direction of Yeremenko, was to jump off the next morning, 20 November. The delay between the first and second assaults was intended to draw German reinforcements away from Yeremenko's lines. Yeremenko had protested that the delay was too short, and been overruled. He still held back as long as he could on the morning of 20 November until orders came in to move out, period.

Yeremenko's guns and rocket launchers began their bombardment at 10:00 AM. He was pleasantly pleased to find that the Rumanian 4th Army quickly crumbled under his attack. The advance was hazardous, since obstructions -- such as gullies and ravines that could swallow up a tank -- could be almost invisible in the white-on-white conditions. A number of tankmen suffered broken arms and the like from being slammed around inside their vehicles in unexpected collisions with obstacles. It was so foggy in places that tank commanders had to try to steer by compass, but the Red Army was on a roll. The troops were cheerful, excited, and willing to put up with hardships. Wounded stuck in hospitals wrote home that they were upset that they were missing out on it -- though it should be remembered that they knew their mail was being read by security personnel.

The Germans, suffering from complacency -- plus command confusions caused by Hitler's attempts to control the front by remote control -- were slow to react. The initial assumption was that these attacks were just more Soviet probes that would be quickly turned back. The scale of the attack and its objectives didn't start to become apparent until the morning of 21 November. If Paulus had been perceptive and prompt, he might have been able to defeat the Soviet encirclement operation by parts, focusing his armor on the southern pincer first and then turning on the northern pincer.

It didn't happen. The southern pincer counteroffensive moved rapidly northwest toward the bridge at Kalach, but the northern pincer reached the bridge first and captured it intact. Lieutenant Colonel Grigor Filippov used two captured German tanks to drive up to the bridge and then opened fire on the guards, with T-34s following them up discreetly. The Germans knocked out two tanks that were still trying to cross the bridge, but Filippov radioed for help. His comrades weren't far away and arrived quickly, overwhelming the guards and securing the bridge.

The next day, 23 November, forward elements of the northern and southern pincers met each other about 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Kalach, firing off green signal flares to identify themselves, as well as celebrate a bit. Although the encirclement was now complete, the Germans were not inclined to sit idly by while they were being cut off, and there was fierce fighting to consolidate the ring around Stalingrad. It was done by the end of the day. The Red Army had lost over 100,000 men in the operation, but inflicted about 95,000 casualties on the enemy and taken 72,000 prisoners.

* In the meantime, to the north, on 25 November another offensive jumped off, against a salient in Soviet lines east of Smolensk, threatening Moscow further to the east. Operation MARS, as it was codenamed, was conducted by two Red Army fronts, with supporting elements from others, against German Army Group Center. The Red Army Western Front, under Colonel General Ivan Konev, was to attack the salient from its eastern border, while the Kalinin Front, under Army General M.A. Purkaev, was to strike into its western border, while secondary attacks were made in other locations. The operation was under the overall control of Zhukov.

MARS remains obscure -- being described in Soviet sources, when mentioned at all, as a diversionary attack to prevent German forces from being shifted south. No doubt that was one of its effects, but records of the Red Army forces committed show that MARS was a major offensive operation, on similar scale to URANUS, suggesting the main objective was to destroy the salient and deal a body blow to German Army Group Center. MARS was a failure; although the Red Army enjoyed some initial success, Army Group Center had reserves available to commit to the battle, and by mid-December the offensive had fizzled out, with substantial Soviet losses. The Soviets chose to forget about it; the Germans had other things to worry about; and MARS became the great battle that, supposedly, never actually happened.

[9.2] OPERATION WINTER STORM

* With the completion of the encirclement around Stalingrad, the Red Army had trapped about 300,000 enemy troops in Stalingrad. Paulus's complacency had vaporized. On 20 November, Paulus had radioed Berlin with a proposal for his forces to fall back to a defensive position. Hitler denied the request. On 22 November, Paulus asked for "freedom of action", requesting the right to break out of encirclement if the situation became dangerous enough. The word came down from the Fuehrer: REQUEST DENIED. On 23 November, when the situation was clearly becoming desperate, Paulus pleaded with Berlin for permission to pull out. A third time the answer came back: REQUEST DENIED. Paulus was informed that he would be kept resupplied by air.

Senior Luftwaffe officers were dumbfounded at the idea. The success of the airlift that had sustained the Demyansk pocket the winter before had suggested the same trick would work twice, but the German forces in the Demyansk pocket had been much smaller. The Luftwaffe didn't have the airlift capacity to keep 6th Army resupplied at the best of times, and the weather in the Stalingrad area was nasty even by Russian standards. However, in a meeting on 24 November, Reichsmarshal Goering assured Hitler that his Luftwaffe could do the job.

OKH had a new chief of staff, General Kurt Zeitzler, a hyperactive and rotund fellow nicknamed "General Lightning Ball" who had replaced Halder in September 1942. Zeitzler had been encouraging the Fuehrer to approve a breakout. Zeitzler angrily protested Goering's proposal, detailing the large quantities of material that would need to be delivered just to keep 6th Army minimally supplied. Goering replied: "I can manage that."

Zeitzler was outraged, firing back: "It's a lie!" It was, Goering's own staff having told him it was impossible. It made no difference. Hitler sided with Goering and the airlift went forward. Zeitzler was absolutely correct. Even on the best days, the Luftwaffe could only provide a fifth of the required tonnage. Worse, the Luftwaffe and the Army suffered from interservice rivalries, and the Luftwaffe refused to coordinate shipments of materials with Army quartermasters. Such supplies as were provided were often botched, with airlifts of such famously ridiculous items as large quantities of contraceptives, right shoes, and Christmas trees.

* Hitler did take more positive actions to deal with the crisis. On 20 November, he had created Army Group Don, under the command of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, which consisted of the encircled 6th Army; what was left of the Rumanian 3rd and 4th Armies; and most of Hoth's 4th Panzer army, which had been mostly deployed outside the Soviet encirclement. Due to the poor weather, Manstein had to take the train to his new assignment. He stopped to meet with Field Marshall von Kluge of Army Group Center, who warned him: "You will find it impossible to move any formation larger than a battalion without first referring back to the Fuehrer."

Manstein had no particular intention of giving much more weight to what the Fuehrer said than absolutely required. Manstein had sympathies with Naziism, supporting the harsh treatment of Jews in the occupied territories even though he had some Jewish ancestry himself, but he was no great admirer of the top Nazis. In fact, Manstein had trained his pet dachshund to raise a paw when told: "Heil Hitler!"

More to the point, Hitler was back in Berlin while Manstein was on the front, with a battle to fight and an army to rescue. Manstein devised a plan for a breakout. He would perform a diversion towards Kalach, and then a corps of Hoth's 4th Panzer would drive northeast to punch a hole through the Soviet ring around Stalingrad. That done, Paulus would be sent a simple message -- "DONNERSCHLAG (THUNDERCLAP)" -- as the signal to Paulus to lead the 6th Army through the hole out of its trap.

* The diversion towards Kalach was spearheaded by the 11th Panzer Division under Major General Hermann Balck. Balck was a competent, energetic, and imaginative commander, and when his panzers ran into two Soviet tank brigades near State Farm #79 on 7 December, he conducted a brilliant two-day battle of deception and maneuver that all but wiped the Red armor out, along with their supply train. However, the Red Army was in the area in force and Balck soon found himself in a slugging match, forced to fight a battle of attrition that favored the Soviets. By nightfall on 9 December, the Red Army had destroyed half of 11th Panzer.

Still, the Soviets were distracted as planned. At dawn on 12 December, Hoth's push to relieve Stalingrad, codenamed Operation WINTER STORM, jumped off, led by the 6th Panzer Division, which had just been brought from France by train. For the first two days, the advance went well, though it was not a stroll in the park by any means. There was some resistance in the form of hit-and-run attacks by small groups of Soviet infantry by day and cavalry by night, with the attackers making use of the network of ravines that crisscrossed the landscape for concealment. The ravines also made the going difficult for German tanks.

There were two tributaries of the Don, the Aksai and the Mishkova, flowing roughly to the west that blocked the path of the drive. 6th Panzer reached the Aksai during 13 December and paused to allow the supply train to catch up. Having resupplied, the tankmen moved out towards the Mishkova -- and soon found themselves in a vicious fight with large numbers of Red tanks. Superior German skill and training prevailed and the Red Army was forced to fall back, but the Soviets remained in the area in force, continuing to contest 6th Panzer's advance. The Germans didn't reach the Mishkova until 19 December. On the morning of 20 December, Hoth reported to Manstein that 4th Panzer was prepared to begin one last push whenever Paulus felt ready to perform a breakout.

* By that time, Manstein was trying to deal with an unpleasant complication to his plans. The Red Army had obtained such excellent results with the attack on the Rumanian 3rd Army along the Don that the Kremlin decided to give the 225,000 troops of the Italian 8th Army, further upstream along the Don, the same treatment. The plan was codenamed Operation SATURN.

The Italians were a soft target -- poorly trained, equipped, led, and motivated. Three full Soviet armies fell on them early on 16 December 1942 and sent them running to the rear in terror. In two weeks of fighting, the Red Army would drive deep through Axis lines and take about 60,000 Italians prisoner; only a fraction of them would survive captivity. About half the Italians managed to escape, but the Italian 8th Army had ceased to exist. The Italians were mostly conscripts who had no enthusiasm for the Axis cause. When a whole battalion of Italian troops surrendered to the Red Army without offering any resistance, Soviet interrogators asked an Italian sergeant why they hadn't put up a fight. He replied, sensibly: "We didn't fire back because we thought it would be a mistake."

The Italians deserted in mass, some of them walking hundreds of kilometers west until they could jump on trains to carry them out of the war. The Germans, who had never regarded them as much of an asset in the first place, decided it would be more trouble than it would be worth to force them to fight, and charitably let them go. Many of the Italians died of exposure and starvation. Some Ukrainian peasants took pity on them and took them in. The peasants could somehow see Italian peasant boys in such desperate circumstances as not so different from their own sons. The collapse of the Italian Army in the East was yet another bitter tragedy flowing from Mussolini's foolish delusions of military glory, and another blow that would lead to his fall in the coming summer.

In the here and now, however, Manstein had a very difficult situation to deal with, trying to rescue the 6th Army in Stalingrad with one hand and deal with the crisis on his northern flank with the other. The Red Army had also detached units from SATURN to confront him, with SATURN downscaled to LITTLE SATURN as a result. The Soviets would certainly divert more forces to deal with Manstein as they became available. He had done about as much as he could do to help Paulus. Now Paulus had to make up his mind about what he would do to help himself.

The Soviets were jamming communications and it wasn't a secure way to communicate anyway, so on 19 December, as Hoth's panzers were approaching the Mishkova, Manstein sent one of his staff officers to Stalingrad in a Fieseler Storch lightplane to confer with Paulus. Manstein was reluctant to flatly tell Paulus to organize a breakout, and so the officer's instructions to Paulus were indirect. Not surprisingly, Paulus waffled. Hitler had not authorized a breakout attempt, the logistical and tactical issues were difficult, and his chief of staff, Brigadier General Arthur Schmidt, stubbornly insisted that if the supply situation were improved, 6th Army could hold out until spring, when the tables could be turned on the Soviets.

Paulus decided against a breakout. Manstein had been willing to disobey Hitler when he could, but though he could have ordered Paulus to conduct the breakout, he did not want to go that far. Manstein was a realist. If he added two plus two he would get four, whether that was the answer he wanted or not. On 23 December, he ordered Hoth to withdraw, effectively writing off Paulus and the 6th Army.

[9.3] PAULUS SURRENDERS

* The German troops surrounded in Stalingrad spent a miserable Christmas, frostbitten and starving. The impractical airlift had clearly failed, and as the Red Army tightened their grip on the city, fewer and fewer transports made it in. A visitor who visited Hermann Goering's office in late December was shocked to find the Reichsmarshal sobbing uncontrollably at his desk.

The surrounded German soldiers fought on, even though they had little chance of survival. They piled up the frozen bodies of their dead comrades for cover. The fighting dragged on through New Year's Day, into January. Their Soviet adversaries, in contrast, were happy with things. Although the weather was bitterly cold, that meant that the Volga had frozen over solidly, and plenty of food and supplies were coming across. The Germans had to conserve ammunition and were not able to seriously interfere with the supply runs.

Red Army troops were getting hot food and hot tea, and they were marched across the Volga to clean up and delouse in sweaty steam baths. Chuikov had got himself into trouble while making such a journey across the river on foot in mid-December to attend a party, stumbling back sloppy drunk to fall through thin ice into the river. He was promptly fished out, no doubt having sobered up in a hurry. Back on the fighting lines, Red Army soldiers liked to bait the miserable Germans, with Soviet night patrols setting up dummies dressed to look like Hitler, tagged to suggest that German troops take a shot. The dummies were mined in case some hardcore Nazi took offense and decided to have them removed. Leaflet drops were performed on the Germans to encourage them to surrender, with the leaflets written by German Communists working for the Red propaganda machine.

Stalin was reverting somewhat to his old style of impatience and pushing his commanders to wipe out the Germans in Stalingrad, but he did have good cause for haste. The Germans trapped in the city were tying down seven Soviet armies that could be used elsewhere, most particularly against Army Group A in the Caucasus, and so the Soviets needed to eliminate the 6th Army as quickly as possible. In early January, the Germans in the city observed that the Red Army was building up concentrations of men, armor, and particularly artillery outside the outskirts of the city, in preparation for a final push. The plan was codenamed Operation RING, and Rokossovsky would be in command. Zhukov had suggested to Stalin that Yeremenko might better deserve the honor, but Koba answered sarcastically: "We are not high-school girls!"

Chuikov's troops were to take part in the offensive, tying up the Germans by exerting pressure on them from the east. Rokossovsky paid a visit to Chuikov in his bunker and asked him if his troops were up to moving against the Germans to keep them pinned down. One of Chuikov's aides couldn't restrain himself and burst out: "If in the summer and autumn all Paulus' forces were unable to drive us into the Volga, then the hungry and frozen Germans won't even move six steps eastward!"

On 8 January, Rokossovsky sent a messenger under a white flag through German lines with a letter outlining surrender terms. The letter made its way to Paulus, who turned it down flat, refused to reveal its contents, and passed out orders to his men ordering them not to discuss surrender terms with Red Army representatives. On the next day, 9 January, the Soviets dropped leaflets on the 6th Army giving terms of surrender, but Paulus wouldn't budge. The Fuehrer had made it clear that surrender was not an option, and there was the issue of Army Group A, still stuck out on a limb in the south. Paulus had to stall for time.

The final push to retake Stalingrad began on the morning of 10 January 1943 with a tremendous barrage of 7,000 artillery pieces and Katyusha launchers. The wretched Germans fought back as well as they could, and it was a week before the Soviets cracked the outer ring of defenses. The survivors fell back into the city proper to conduct a last stand.

Manstein begged Hitler to allow Paulus to surrender, but the Fuehrer refused to consider the idea, instead coming up with wild and completely impractical schemes for rescuing the situation. As January ground on towards its end, the Red Army rooted out the German defenders, building by building. German soldiers began to surrender. Some officers committed suicide; others performed reckless attacks on the Soviets and died fighting, which was just as well since the Soviets were sometimes inclined to shoot German prisoners anyway. A substantial number of Hiwis -- Soviet citizens in German uniforms -- were captured by Red troops, to be shown very little mercy.

On 30 January, Paulus was informed that he had been promoted to field marshal by the Fuehrer. This was not so much as an honor as to encourage him to commit suicide rather than surrender. Paulus considered suicide a breach of military discipline and against his religious principles; he not only wouldn't consider it himself, he had issued orders forbidding his troops from doing it as well, or even standing up to let the enemy shoot them. The next morning, 31 January, after sending a final radio message, he personally surrendered to Soviet troops who were just outside his command bunker. When Hitler got the news, he just stared silently. The next day he was raving with anger.

Paulus didn't give the order to 6th Army to surrender, but his troops no longer had much fight left in them. Resistance faded out over the next two days, with the last die-hards finally calling it quits. One Red Army colonel shouted at a group of prisoners, waving at the ruins all around them: "That's how Berlin is going to look!" He was prophetic.

The ruins of the city fell quiet. Civilians -- astonishingly, roughly ten thousand had survived through the entire battle -- began to emerge from the rubble. On 2 February, a Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111 bomber made a flight over Stalingrad in order to drop supplies to survivors, if they could be found. After searching for a time, the radio operator told the pilot: "Nothing anywhere." The bomber flew back to its home base.

* The Battle of Stalingrad was over. The Russian-born correspondent Alexander Werth of the LONDON SUNDAY TIMES documented the ghastly scenery of the city after the shooting had stopped: "Trenches ran through the factory yards and through the workshops themselves. And now at the bottom of the trenches there still lay frozen green Germans and frozen gray Russians and frozen fragments of human shapes; and there were helmets, Russian and German, lying among the brick debris, and now half-filled with snow."

Roughly 100,000 German troops went into captivity. The catch included 22 generals, who were given good food and comfortable quarters. Werth got to interview them after the battle, finding them all clearly far better fed than their troops, though Werth noted that Paulus "looked pale and sick, with a nervous twitch in his left cheek." The embittered Paulus would eventually perform propaganda broadcasts for the Soviets. As far as his men went, they weren't as valuable as prizes and were treated accordingly. Only about 5,000 would ever return from Soviet prison camps.

Stalingrad was the German high tide in the East. 20 German divisions had been effectively destroyed, 6th Army had been completely wiped out, and six months' German war production had been lost. The armies of Italy, Hungary, and Rumania had suffered major blows. Both sides had lost very roughly 750,000 men each. To the Germans, it was a disaster; Hitler blamed it all on the failings of his weakling allies. Heinz Guderian visited the Fuehrer in the aftermath and found him lacking his customary energy: "His left hand trembled, his back was bent, his gaze was fixed, his eyes protruded but lacked their former luster, his cheeks were flecked with red."

Goebbels' propaganda machine played up the German troops who had fallen in the battle as martyrs to the Nazi cause, and declared that Germany was now committed to "Total War", a total mobilization to obtain final victory in the face of adversity. Hitler still thought he could win through sheer power of will, telling Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch: "We will end the war this year. I have accordingly decided on a gigantic mobilization of all German popular strength."

For the Soviets, the losses that they had suffered did not obscure the all-important fact that they had won. One soldier wrote his wife: "I'm in an exceptional mood. If you only knew, you'd be just as happy as I am. Imagine it -- the Fritzes are running away from us!"

Rebuilding the city began immediately. Red Army sappers had to clear mines and dud munitions, starting by establishing marked "safe routes" to allow workers to get from one place to another. Soon there would be 200,000 workers set up in tent cities. The first thing they did was bury the dead, then salvage what could be salvaged and put things back together. By mid-March, the phones were working again, and by mid-June the Tractor Factory was back in operation, rolling out refurbished tanks that had been damaged in combat. Construction workers would continue to find remains of the dead in Stalingrad for years. One tale has it that well after the war, the raggedy skeletons of a German and a Soviet soldier were uncovered. Each had stuck his bayonet into the other, and then both had been covered by rubble from a shell blast.

[9.4] STALINGRAD: THE AFTERMATH

* The final surrender at Stalingrad did not put a stop to the fighting in the region; the Germans were off-balance and had to be pressed. Most importantly, German Army Group A was way out on a limb in the Caucasus, and if the Red Army moved fast they could cut off the Germans and bag the lot of them, just as they had bagged 6th Army at Stalingrad.

Alexander Werth observed Red soldiers on the move through the dark and frost, the path lit by a string of bonfires along the road:

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Army Group A's Kleist was perfectly aware that his head was in a noose that was going to cinch lethally tight around his neck at any moment. The Red Army was ten times closer to Rostov, his escape hatch out of the region, than he was. He wanted to withdraw immediately, but the order came back from Hitler: STAND YOUR GROUND.

Kleist knew it was a death sentence, but Hitler quickly came around to the realization that any course of action other than withdrawal was complete lunacy. The next day, Kleist received orders to pull out and bring everything he could carry with him. He didn't need to be told twice. When the Red Army reconquered Rostov (again!) on 14 February 1943, Army Group A was already out of reach. Hitler was so relieved that he made Kleist a field marshal, in essence rewarding him for conducting a retreat. Obviously, circumstances were now looking much different to the Fuehrer than they had a year or two earlier.

By this time, the Soviet drive west was bogging down as troops outran their supply lines and German resistance solidified. In any case, the German excursion into the Caucasus was over, and they wouldn't be back there again. It was the German high-tide mark in the East.

* In the meantime, the Red Army had launched yet another offensive on the northern flank of the Axis lines, retaking the town of Kursk on 8 February and then grabbing Kharkov back from the Germans on 16 February. The city had been depopulated by the war, reduced from its prewar population of 900,000 to about 300,000. Large numbers of its citizens had fled, tens of thousands had died of deprivation or been murdered by the Germans, and about 120,000 young people had been carted off to Germany in slavery.

The recapture of Kharkov was another bright moment for the Red Army, but the celebration was short-lived. Within days, the Germans performed a counterattack of their own, Manstein's Army Group South (as Army Group B had become in the meantime) driving back on Kharkov. The assault was spearheaded by the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, consisting of the "Das Reich", "Leibstandarte (Bodyguard) Adolf Hitler", and "Totenkopf (Death's Head)" divisions under the command of Lieutenant General Paul Hausser.

Hausser had lost an eye and a chunk of his jaw during the fighting in the USSR in 1941, giving him something of the appearance of an old chewed-up alley cat. He was just as combative, and his men were all dedicated SS troops, an elite, totally dedicated to Naziism and Adolf Hitler. The Fuehrer was not happy with Hausser at the moment, since the general had been ordered to stand and fight to the last man in Kharkov. Hausser didn't see the point of it, and broke out on his own initiative. The 2nd SS was still on the run when Papa Hoth, Hausser's commander, ordered the counterattack on 19 February. Hausser, now able to fight a battle of maneuver, turned on the Soviet Sixth Army, and with the help of the 48th Panzer Corps gave the overextended Soviets a brutal beating, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties and destroying hundreds of Red tanks for minimal losses of his own.

Hausser's panzers arrived at the outskirts of Kharkov on 9 March. He had been ordered to simply surround the city, but was allowed to make a "reconnaissance" into it if he thought it best. Taking a liberal interpretation of the meaning of "reconnaissance", he sent the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division into the center of the town while the Das Reich and Totenkopf divisions performed the encirclement, joining hands on 15 March. By this time, Soviet troops in the city had been almost completely crushed. The SS troops were merciless, charging into a hospital to shoot the wounded in their beds, then torching the building.

The Red Army had proven at Stalingrad that they could beat the Germans; at Kharkov the Germans had proven that they should not be underestimated. The Soviets took the hint, and in fact it was the last major defeat they would ever suffer at German hands.

* The Germans had stabilized the battlefield situation, for the moment, by the hardest exertions, fighting lingered on in the Kuban region around the Taman Peninsula, the eastern gate to the Sea of Azov across from the Kerch Peninsula on Crimea. Red Army forces had landed on the Taman in early February to pose a threat to the German rear, but the Germans had kept them bottled up, and in mid-April they launched a massive counterattack to push the Soviets back into the sea. The Germans were halted, with the Red Army performing a counter-counteroffensive that didn't do much better. The fighting finally fizzled out in early May.

The ground force action in the Kuban was inconclusive, but it was a major Soviet victory in another respect: the Red Air Force finally achieved air superiority over the Germans on a level playing field. Soviet pilots flying Yak-1s, the Bell P-39, and other fighters managed to take the measure of German pilots in their Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs, with a dozen or more VVS pilots claiming ten or more kills of German aircraft.

A Ukrainian pilot, Lieutenant Dmitri Glinka, was the star of the show, claiming 21 kills, while Alexander Pokryshkin, who had been a leader in trying to encourage the VVS to adopt more modern fighter tactics, scored 20. Both flew P-39s, a type that was not widely liked back in America because it had poor high-altitude performance, and some handling problems. The handling was troublesome because its engine was mounted in the middle of the fuselage, which enhanced its turning abilities, but gave it a tendency to slide into a deadly flat spin when the ammunition in the nose had been expended, shifting the aircraft's center of gravity towards the tail. It was, however, sturdy and heavily armed, and in the hands of a Red pilot that knew how to use it, dangerous to the enemy at low altitudes. VVS pilots liked it greatly, calling it the "Little Shaver".

Soviet aircraft were undergoing an evolution at the time as well, with the good Yakovlev Yak-1 being developed into the better Yak-3 and the "heavy" Yak-9, and the disreputable LaGG-3 undergoing a make-over with a new, more powerful engine to become the formidable Lavochkin La-5, which would lead to the improved La-7.

The Germans would no more prove to be a pushover in the air than they were on the ground, but the days when the Luftwaffe regarded fighting the Red Air Force as "infanticide" were over, and as Soviet aircraft improved in quantity and quality the balance would tip steadily against the Germans in the air.

[9.5] SOVIETS RESURGENT

* The thaw in early spring had brought most ground combat operations to a halt until the ground dried out. Both sides spent several months reorganizing, resupplying, and preparing for the next round.

Stalin was in fine form, having himself declared "Marshal of the Soviet Union". Soviet propaganda played up all the successes of the war as due to the genius of the Great Leader, even recasting the disasters of 1941 as part of a brilliant master plan. He wasn't the only one feeling good about things, however. The morale of the officers and troops of the Red Army had grown by leaps and bounds. They felt like winners now, not losers.

Although in revolutionary days distinctions of rank and military protocol had been suppressed, they were now back in full force. Troops now had to salute officers, and the officers had to conduct themselves according to their station. While Red Army officers had not traditionally worn shoulder boards -- during the Revolution, some officers captured by bloodthirsty mobs had their shoulder boards nailed on -- they were restored by decree, much to the shock of some of the enlisteds, the old sergeants griping: "They'll bring back the Tsar next!"

A Red Army officer wrote his wife: "Nina, don't worry about our uniforms. We dress better these days than any commander from the capitalist countries." The British got another pushy Soviet demand for supplies: over 27,000 meters (30,000 yards) of silver and gold braid.

* The Red Army was still not a particularly crisp organization. The troops tended to get drunk whenever they could, and not without fair reason. As one Soviet soldier wrote in a letter home later in the war: "It is nearly impossible not to be drinking. What I am going through is indescribable; when I am drunk, everything is easier."

Drunkenness led to other problems. Brawls were not rare, and murders were not unknown. There was also considerable pilferage and black marketeering of supplies all up and down the ranks. Worse, although Red Army soldiers were often greeted warmly by peasants in areas they liberated, the welcome went sour when the soldiers stole everything they could get their hands on. It wasn't that surprising, the soldiers were poorly supplied, and the livestock on any farm within their reach only too tempting a meal. Nonetheless, the peasants they looted were on the main very poor, and the losses ruinous to them.

On the other hand, the soldiers were willing to fight hard and they could be benign; companies would sometimes adopt orphan children as mascots, putting them to work on various small chores. Some of the youngsters had fought as partisans, and were not strangers to violence. When a 15-year-old mascot was handed a German prisoner to escort to a holding pen, the boy immediately gunned him down. The Germans had murdered his family, and as far as the lad was concerned, the only good German was a dead German.

The state was calling on the energies of youths in more formal ways. Boys as young as 8 or 9 were enrolled in military schools such as the Alexander Suvorov Academy, where they were drilled and indoctrinated. To be sure, where the Germans had gone they had left hordes of orphans behind, and the Soviet state had to care for them somehow -- but as long as they had to be cared for, they would also serve the Motherland as future officers of the Red Army. Teenagers were called into the ranks as drafts came by more and more often, pulling in younger men each time.

Women were pulled into home defense units, staffing anti-aircraft batteries, learning the dangerous trade of disarming bombs, and serving in fire fighting and rescue squads. At the front, they served in frontline medical units, operated radios, drove trucks, and tended aircraft, which they sometimes flew in combat. They were not generally front-line fighters, but they would fight when the occasion demanded it. Many had lost family members to the Germans and were after revenge.

As mentioned, there were all-woman aviation units. Soviet women aviators became particularly famous as the "die Nachthexen (Night Witches)", as the Germans called them. The Night Witches flew sorties over German lines in the dark at low level in antique Polikarpov U-2 / Po-2 biplanes, called "Sewing Machines", idling the engine to glide in silently on any group of Germans foolish enough to light a fire in the open and then plastering them with machine-gun fire and small bombs. The practice of using the low-and-slow biplane for night attacks had begun in the early phases of the conflict in the East, when the Luftwaffe had absolute air superiority and such tactics were the only useful way to strike back from the air. It turned out to work well, and the Soviets became enthusiastic about it.

Of course males flew the Po-2 as well, but it was the "Witches" who established its legend. The Germans, with a certain grudging admiration, made up stories about how a Po-2 would fly into the window of a house, shoot it up, and then fly back out again. The intruders rarely caused serious damage but they were an insufferable nuisance, the Germans calling the Po-2 the "Duty Sergeant" because of its nighttime "bedchecks" on them.

The Germans took to moving around searchlight-equipped flak batteries, called "flak circuses", to areas where the Po-2s might be judged likely to show up, setting up the guns in the dark in hopes of surprising the intruders. It was clearly a major expenditure of effort to deal with a relatively petty nuisance that didn't cost the Soviets very much. Po-2 pilots countered by flying their machines in pairs, one acting as noisy and troublesome as possible at range to draw fire, and then dodge away while the other hit the target. Incidentally, the little machine could land on almost any piece of level and solid ground and was also enthusiastically used in different versions as a transport, air ambulance, and courier aircraft. The Soviets would manufacture about 40,000 of them, making the Po-2 one of the most heavily produced aircraft in history.

However, although Soviet propaganda made much of the liberation of their women, as with so much else in the USSR, there was less to it than met the eye. Women rarely, if ever, attained positions of authority, and at worst they were implicitly or even blatantly treated as something like beasts of burden. The more attractive women soldiers could end up being officer's aides, serving their superiors at attention during the day and on their backs at night as "campaign wives". To be sure, such arrangements existed to an extent in other armies, but Stalin had specifically approved the practice. Rumors made such a scandal of women in uniform that some families were as embarrassed when a daughter enlisted as if she had gone to work in a whorehouse. When female veterans wore medals, muttered remarks would go around to suggest they had won them on their backs.

Although there was great enthusiasm for the struggle among the Soviet people, the fighters in the front lines, the "frontoviki", still had to be reminded of what might happen to them if their enthusiasm faltered. In April 1943, the NKVD Special Departments in the Red Army were reorganized as SMERSH, from "Smert Shpionam (Death to Spies)", under Beria's henchman Viktor Abakumov. Soldiers never much cared for their NKVD watchdogs, who were pale because they worked mostly at night and looked at soldiers as if they were all potential traitors, and the name SMERSH would become hated and dreaded.