Hitler had no reason to be hopeful on that
New Year's Day. Along the northern half of the battle front, running 600 miles
from Leningrad to Orel on the Oka, his armies had been tied up in holding
operations for nearly a year. Far to the south, the possibility of future
encirclement hung over his Army Group A in the Caucasus; it was vastly
overextended. The situation in front of Stalingrad was merely Hitler's most
pressing problem.
So far, the Russians had been content to
contain the Sixth Army within a steel ring nearly 40 miles deep in places. But
that task required the efforts of no fewer than seven Soviet armies, and Stalin
needed those armies elsewhere. The time had clearly come to erase the Sixth
Army from the battle maps, and the Germans knew it. During the first days of
January 1943, German observation posts reported ominous evidence of Soviet
build-ups, especially in artillery, along the perimeter of the Stalingrad
pocket.
In fact, General Nikolai Nikolayevich
Voronov, chief of the Red Army artillery, was in the process of assembling
7,000 guns, more than enough to blast open Paulus' hedge- hog. But General
Chuikov, still locked with the enemy inside the ruins of Stalingrad, was also
to play a key part in the renewed Russian effort.
Chuikov had lately been feeling better
about his situation. The pressure on Stalingrad's defenders had of course been
eased by the encirclement of the Sixth Army. Beyond that, after a full month in
which drifting ice had virtually shut down traffic on the Volga, Chuikov was
getting supplies more regularly. Not long ago, in his bunker on the river's
west bank, he had heard a thunderous noise. Rushing outside, lie had seen a
gigantic crest of ice. "Smashing everything in its path, it crushed and
pulverized small and large ice floes alike, and broke logs like
matchwood." As Chuikov watched, the great ice wave slowed-and stopped. The
Volga was at last frozen solid, and Chuikov's supply ordeal was over since
supplies could cross by sled.
Now, to explain Chuikov's role in the new
Soviet offensive he commanded, Major General Konstantin Rokossovsky paid a
visit to the Volga bunker. During the assaults on Paulus' perimeter,
Rokossovsky said, Chuikov's Sixty- second Army must attract more enemy forces
in its direction, keeping them heavily engaged. Could Chuikov do the job?
Before Chuikov could answer, his aide broke in : "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." As
promised, Chuikov's battered little army made work for those German units that
chose to fight toward the east.
After talking to Chuikov and before
beginning his bombardment, Rokossovsky made an attempt to take the Sixth Army
out of action without firing a shot. On January 8, a Soviet captain bearing a
white flag appeared at a German position on the western nose of Paulus'
hedgehog and handed the local commander a letter offering surrender terms. News
of the offer crackled throughout the Sixth Army and, even before the document
reached him, Paulus sent out orders forbidding anyone to enter into surrender
negotiations of any sort. When he did receive the letter, Paulus flatly turned
it down and suppressed the contents.
Next day the Russians showered the entire
Sixth Army defense zone with air-dropped leaflets giving their terms along with
the warning that "anyone resisting will be mercilessly wiped out."
The wretched German troops must have thought the surrender offer more than
generous:
"We guarantee the safety of all
officers and men who cease to resist, and their return at the end of the war to
Germany or to any other country to which these prisoners of war may wish to go.
"All personnel of units which
surrender may retain their military uniforms, badges of rank, decorations,
personal belongings and valuables and, in the case of high-ranking officers,
their swords.
"All officers, non-commissioned
officers and men who lay down their arms will immediately be given normal
rations.
"All those who are wounded, sick or
frostbitten will be given medical treatment.
"Your reply is to be given in writing
by 3 p .m., Moscow time, 9 January, 1943 ."
The appeal for Paulus' surrender was
useless; he would obey his Fuhrer. In so doing, he would pin down Soviet forces
that would otherwise be used against the German armies in the Caucasus. And
then on the morning of January 10, the day after the ultimatum ran out,
Voronov's guns began to boom.
Above the barrage swarmed Soviet planes,
and surging through deep snow, came tides of tanks and infantry, red flags
flapping. Huge holes in the German lines were almost instantly ripped open. But
the German forces closed the gaps and doggedly fought a controlled retreat,
maintaining a solid perimeter for nearly a week.
In the west, the Austrian 44th Division
held on gallantly. One of its battalions, defending the approaches to the
airstrip at Pitomnik, was under the command of a major named Pohl, who had
recently received from Paulus a Knight's Cross, accompanied by a more useful
reward: a loaf of bread and a can of herring in tomato sauce. Pohl was
determined to hold the line at all costs, and so was the sergeant in charge of
the battalion's last heavy machine gun, who had told Pohl, "No one's going
to shift me from here, Herr Major." But suddenly Pohl saw Soviet soldiers
leaping into the firing pits; the sergeant was killed and Pohl joined the
retreat. By January 22, the Austrians, along with the rest of the Sixth Army,
were fleeing headlong into the city of Stalingrad. There they joined German
units that were battling Chuikov's troops.
Just outside the city at the Gumrak
airfield, Paulus was still insisting that the Luftwaffe supply his army even
though the wreckage of 13 planes scattered across the runways supported the
Luftwaffe's contention that Gumrak was no longer operable. Paulus was in a
pitiable state; the tic that had afflicted one eye now extended from brow to
jaw. A Luftwaffe liaison officer bore the brunt of Paulus' despair. "If
your aircraft cannot land, my army is doomed," Paulus shouted. "It is
four days since they have had anything to eat. The last horses have been eaten
up."
One of Paulus' officers joined in.
"Can you imagine," he asked the hapless Luftwaffe man, "what it
is like to see soldiers fall on an old carcass, beat open the head and swallow
the brains raw?"
Paulus continued, "What should I, as
the commander in chief of an army, say when a simple soldier comes up to me and
begs, 'Herr General, can you spare me one piece of bread'?" Paulus could
not stop. "Why on earth did the Luftwaffe ever promise to keep us
supplied? Who is the man responsible for declaring that it was possible? Had
someone told me it was not possible, I should not have held it against the
Luftwaffe. I could have broken out. When I was strong enough to do so. Now it
is too late."
It was indeed. Gumrak fell to the Russians,
who soon drove Paulus back to the place where his troubles began: Stalingrad. He
moved into a new headquarters in a basement warehouse beneath the shell of the
Univermag Department Store on Red Square. There he shared with his troops the
onslaught of an old enemy, Chuikov, and a new one: hordes of lice that covered
the emaciated bodies of the German men with angry red welts.
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