The Road To Berlin

Continuing The History Of Stalin's War With Germany

John Erickson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367295608
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000305265
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book traces Russian campaigns from the counterattack at Stalingrad to the fall of Berlin and the capture of Prague. It explores in detail Stalin's wartime relations with Roosevelt and Churchill and examines the evolution of his policies toward Poland and the Balkans.

1
'Surrender is Ruled Out': The End at Stalingrad

In a matter of only days, from 19 to 23 November 1942, the impossible, the unthinkable and the unimaginable happened on the Eastern Front. The formidable German Sixth Army commanded by General Friedrich von Paulus was caught in a giant Soviet encirclement west of Stalingrad.

Two powerful Soviet armoured thrusts, striking from Kletskava to the north of the city and from the 'Beketovka bell' to the south, hurled aside the flimsy Rumanian divisions covering the German flanks and raced to link up near Sovetskii, a dozen or so miles south-east of Kalach, on 22 November. The shock of the Soviet counter-offensive seemed to numb the Führer, who evinced great nervousness and whose headquarters gave no firm lead or instruction; at best there was only confusion or contradiction, with Col.-Gen. von Weichs, commander-in-chief of Army Group B, first receiving permission to act independently and then having it rescinded almost at once. For von Paulus, the extent of the disaster became all too plain at midday on 21 November, when Soviet tanks burst through not many miles from Sixth Army's own HQ at Golubinskaya and the headquarters had to be hurriedly transferred to the railway station at Gumrak, west of Stalingrad.

As events took a nightmarish turn on 21 November, von Paulus at his temporary command post at the mouth of the river Chir contacted Army Group Β and proposed pulling the seriously endangered Sixth Army back to the block of territory between the rivers Don and Chir, a move to which von Weichs apparently assented. However, the Führer's own radio message in the evening ordered Stalingrad and the Volga front to be held at all costs, requiring von Paulus and his staff to return to the Stalingrad area and Sixth Army to set up a circular defence. 'Further instructions' would follow. But time was running out for von Paulus, and on 22 November the shape of the Kessel—the trap—became clearer. Soviet tank columns had already covered almost 150 miles from their initial positions at Kletskaya and Beketovka; no less than seven Soviet rifle armies with up to sixty divisions piling up behind them were closing on Sixth Army, whose land communications were practically severed, hemming in the German divisions west and south of Stalingrad.

The Kessel, the Stalingrad 'cauldron', stretched for about thirty-five miles from the east at Stalingrad to the west and some twenty miles from north to south, the encirclement line assuming the sinister and gruesomeiy symbolic shape of a flattened skull with its 'nose' protruding to the south-west. Five German corps headquarters (4th, 8th, 11th, 51st, and XIV Panzer Corps) stood on the bare steppe, isolated like their component twenty German divisions (and elements of two Rumanian divisions) from the main body of the German army and sliced away from their nearest neighbour, General Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army whose units had also been sundered by the Soviet southern thrust. As von Paulus hurried to his Gumrak HQ, battle-fatigued German divisions dug in where they could along the perimeter line. Inside the shattered and fire-blackened ruination of Stalingrad six German battle groups defied blinding weariness to hold cellars, rooms, sections of skeletal factories won after weeks of the gruelling hand-to-hand fighting which raged by day and night. In round figures, some 240,000 men—though not the 400,000 first feared by the German High Command— with over 100 tanks, 1,800 guns and 10,000 assorted vehicles, were presently trapped, battered but maintaining good order, with the hard-bitten among them mocking their predicament of being 'the mice in the mousetrap' and impatient for release or relief, defiantly recalling that this was by no means the first Kessel to appear in the east.

At two o'clock on the afternoon of 22 November, von Paulus and his Chief of Staff, Maj.-Gen. Schmidt, flew into the 'pocket' and to their new HQ at Gumrak, alongside 51st Corps HQ. Encirclement appeared to be imminent, and in the evening von Paulus confirmed it. Though Sixth Army had to be saved from being chopped to pieces and the greater danger of being taken in the rear, von Paulus and his five corps commanders agreed on the need for an early breakout, with 51st Corps commander, General von Seydlitz-Kurzbach taking the lead in pressing this course, a break-out to the south-west. At 1800 hours (22 November), von Paulus summed up his position in a radio message to Army Group B: encirclement was now an accomplished fact, with Sixth Army attempting to build defensive lines; but fuel was fast running out, ammunition seriously depleted and rations sufficient only for six more days; the Sixth Army would strive to hold the area between the Volga and the Don though this must be contingent on plugging the gap ripped through the Rumanians to the south and on Sixth Army receiving supplies by air. Failing this, Sixth Army must perforce abandon Stalingrad itself and the northern sector, attack in full strength on the southern front in order to link up once more with Fourth Panzer Army. To attack westwards could only invite disaster.

Von Paulus waited, brooded and pondered. Von Seydlitz-Kurzbach acted, determined to force the issue while time still remained. On his personal orders, elements of 51st Corps in the course of 23 November blew up or burned everything not needed for a break-out operation and began to pull back for about five miles on the Yersovka sector towards the northern edge of Stalingrad. Accompanied by spectacular, flaring explosions German units abandoned their deep-dug winter bunkers only to be caught on open ground where Chuikov's 62nd Army, manning their own positions in Stalingrad, decimated the German 94th Infantry Division with a mass attack. The few survivors of the 94th finally wound up with the 16th and 24th Panzer divisions, but the sacrifice of an entire division failed to start that south-westerly push which von Seydlitz believed to be the sole salvation of Sixth Army.

The gravity of the situation, together with further pleas from von Paulus for freedom of action, had by now fully impressed itself on von Weichs at Army Group B. In a lengthy signal sent on the evening of 23 November to the German high command, von Weichs fully supported plans for a break-out by Sixth Army, which could not be supplied effectively by air—only one-tenth of the essential items could be delivered in view of weather conditions and the lack of transport aircraft—while any attempt to break in to Sixth Army from outside the encircling ring must entail considerable delay, by which time Sixth Army would have run out of food and ammunition. Whatever the cost in weapons and equipment, Sixth Army must forthwith attempt to break out to the south-west: the alternative was for the army to starve to death. With the express permission of von Weichs, Paulus transmitted his own signal to the Führer, stressing that the gaps to the west and south-west could not be closed, that fuel and ammunition were running desperately low, and guns had fired off their remaining shells—Sixth Army faced being wiped out in a short time unless it fought its way out to the south-west, a move fully supported by all the corps commanders in Sixth Army.

Hitler arrived in his East Prussian 'Wolfsschanze' HQ on 23 November, having left Obersalzberg the previous evening. For all the frantic chatter of the teleprinters and the buzz of radio signals, no decision had as yet been taken to determine the fortunes of Sixth Army, even as heavier fighting developed on the northern and southern sectors of the 'pocket'. During the course of the evening conference at the Wolfsschanze it seemed at this stage that General Zeitzler, Army Chief of Staff, had persuaded the Führer of the logic and the overweening necessity of authorizing Sixth Army's break-out; Zeitzler even alerted Army Group Β that the relevant orders would soon be forthcoming. However, a hint of Hitler's obduracy and his deepest instinct to hold Stalingrad at all costs and to pinion Sixth Army came with his reaction to news of von Seydlitz's unauthorized withdrawal: ironically and fantastically, von Paulus became suspect as less than steadfast, whereupon Hitler detached 51st Corps from Sixth Army and put von Seydlitz in command of the north-east sector, personally responsible to the Führer. This hardly settled the fate of Sixth Army but the decisions of the morning of 24 November and the intervention of Reichsmarschall Göring, guaranteeing the supply of the encircled army—by air—tipped the scales decisively. Festung Stalingrad would hold and stand fast.

Göring's undertaking, which directly contradicted the advice of his own air commanders, was given 'frivolously', in the words of von Manstein, who was now summoned by Hitler to take command of the newly created Army Group Don comprising Sixth Army, Fourth Panzer Army and two Rumanian armies. The new army group would halt the Soviet advance westwards and mount a counter-blow, which would also accomplish the relief of Stalingrad. To sustain itself Sixth Army radioed that it required a daily delivery of 750 metric tons (380 tons of food, 250 tons of ammunition and 120 of fuel); the Luftwaffe transport command considered 350 tons to be a feasible daily target, though one dependent on the availability of aircraft, adequate ground organization outside the Kessel and four landing fields inside it. In spite of the fact that Luftflotte IV could muster only 298 aircraft—little more than half needed for the full lift— Göring nevertheless promised a daily delivery of 500 tons, apparently reckoning on the possibility of whisking transport planes from other theatres. Of the Russian winter and the vigorous presence of the Soviet air force, he took no account.

Keyed up to expect orders to break out, the men of the Sixth Army received the Führer's order of 24 November to stand fast within their 'temporary encirclement' with a mixture of resignation, complacency and stoicism. Hitler's order to von Paulus not only stipulated that Sixth Army should remain on the Volga but also pinpointed the precise geographical area which the encircled divisions should hold; supplies would be delivered and in due course the relief of the entire army. With the break-out plans scrapped, divisions regrouped and redeployed within the Kessel with all possible speed, with 24th and 16th Panzer Divisions holding the northern front closest to the Volga; the 113th infantry Division and 60th Motorized to their left; three divisions (76th, 384th and 44th) clinging to the north-western sector; the 3rd Motorized Division stationed in the south-western 'nose'; and the southern sector manned by the 29th Motorized Division, 297th and 371st Divisions (plus the remnants of the 20th Rumanian Division). Two divisions, 14th Panzer and 9th Anti-Aircraft (Flak) Divisions, formed a mobile reserve; the German 71st, 295th, 100th, 79th, 305th and 389th Divisions held the eastern sector and positions in Stalingrad itself. The nearest German units were by now twenty-five miles away.

On 25 November, Luftwaffe transport aircraft took off for Pitomnik, fighting the deteriorating weather and steadily increasing forces of Soviet fighters. The loads delivered at once fell far short of the barest needs of Sixth Army. Inside the ring German troops attacked the frozen ground, grimly attentive to the task of hacking out weapon pits and blasting trenches, in many cases entrenchments to replace stout bunkers not occupied by Russians. Far away in distant East Prussia, the Führer remained unaffected, being on 25 November 'confident about the position of Sixth Army'—'Der Führer 1st hinsichtlich der Lage der 6. Armee zuversichtlich'. Thus were the first nails of procrastination and self-delusion driven into what was soon to become the coffin of the German Sixth Army. If Hitler's confidence was dangerously premature and grievously misplaced, Stalin could sensibly anticipate, growing and grandiose gains. Operation Uranus, the encirclement of enemy forces on 'the Stalingrad axis', was only one phase in the constellation of Soviet operations aimed at the entire southern wing of the German armies in the east. Uranus was to be followed in rapid succession by Saturn, a mammoth outer sweep aimed directly at Rostov-on-Don and designed to seal off the German Army Group A fighting in the Caucasus. With the German southern wing smashed in, the prospects were dazzling indeed and loaded with intimations of decisive strategic success. The road to the Dnieper would be opened, and with it access once more to the coalmines and power stations of the Donbas and the eastern Ukraine.

The Soviet war industry urgently needed more coal and increased supplies of power. Although a new industrial base had been expanded in Siberia and the Urals, these plants were also suffering from serious shortages of fuel, power and metals: total fuel resources presently available were only half of what they had been in 1941, a sombre point emphasized by Voznesenskii in his report to the Central Committee in November 1942. In particular, the vital Chelyabinsk tank factories were critically short of fuel, power and raw materials. With the liberation of the north Caucasus, at least a portion of the grain lands would be won back and oil resources also supplemented. Nor was Stalin's attention directed exclusively to the southern theatre. In Leningrad, suffering its own agonies in the fearful siege, Govorov had submitted plans for two offensive operations at Schlusselburg and Uritsk, designed to 'raise the blockade of Leningrad in order to secure rail traffic along the Ladoga canal and thus establish normal traffic between Leningrad and the rest of the country'. These plans went to the Stavka between 17 and 22 November; not much later, on 2 December, the Leningrad and Volkhov Front commands received orders to breach the German blockade with the 'Schiusselburg operation', timed for 1 January 1943 and codenamed Iskra ('Spark').

As soon as Uranus reached its final stage, Vasilevskii raced north on Stalin's express instruction to complete the operational planning for Saturn with the Voronezh and South-Western Front commànds. Before leaving Serafimovich, Vasilevskii had held a series of preliminary conversations with Vatutin on the role of the South-Western Front in the forthcoming offensive. On 25 November with the hazards of the journey behind them, the Stavka officers left Golikov's HQ on the Voronezh Front and went by truck to the area of 6th Army which was under the command of Kharitonov. Like Volskii, Kharitonov was another of Vasilevskii's protégés; as 9th Army commander in May 1942, Kharitonov had been closely involved in the bloody disaster of the Kharkov offensive, after which Stalin had relieved him of his command and wanted him tried by court-martial, or rather the special tribunals which formally degraded the luckless and the scapegoats. On Vasilevskii's intervention Stalin waived the retribution and gave Kharitonov another chance, this time with 6th Army.

After examining the terrain and investigating enemy dispositions facing Lt.-Gen. Kharitonov's 6th Army, the Stavka officers left: for a further conference on 26 November with Vatutin. The next day they conducted a final survey of the operational area. That night Vasilevskii submitted his proposals to Stalin for launching Saturn:

To facilitate the administration of the forces of the South-Western Front for the forthcoming operation, it is suggested that as expeditiously as possible the troops of 1st Guards Army, which at the moment are included in Lieutenant-General V.I. Kuznetsov's operational group, be reorganized into the 1st Guards Army, Kuznetsov be appointed commander and an administration be set up for him. The remaining formations of 1st Guards Army, operating on the line river Don, Drivaya and Chir as far as Chernyshevskaya, be split off into an independent [army]—3rd Guards under Lieutenant-General D.D. Lelyushenko (who is at present in command of these troops). The front from Chernyshevskaya to the mouth of the river Chir, that is, as far as the junction with the Stalingrad Front, be assigned primarily to the troops of 5th Tank Army.

Most immediate aim of the operation to be the destruction of the 8th Italian Army and Operational Group 'Hollidt', for which South-Western Front to establish two assault groupings: one on the right flank with 1st Guards Army (six rifle divisions, one tank corps, and reinforcements) to attack from bridgehead south of Verkhnyi Mamon in a southerly direction towards Millerovo; second [grouping]—on 3rd Guards Army front to the east of Bokovskaya (five rifle divisions and one mechanized corps) to attack simultaneously from east to west also on Millerovo to tighten encirclement ring. Further, after destruction of 8th Italian Army, after the exit of mobile forces at the Northern Donets and seizure of crossings in the area of Likhaya, to establish favourable positions for a renewal of the offensive against Rostov.

To secure the operation from the north-west and west a shock group of 6th Army Voronezh Front (five rifle divisions and two tank corps) must attack from south-west of Verkhnyi Mamon in direction of Kantemirovka-Voloshino.

Readiness of troops for operations—10 December. By that time it is necessary to complete movement of reinforcements assigned by the Stavka to South-Western Front, five rifle divisions, three tank corps, one mechanized corps, six independent tank regiments, 16 artillery and mortar regiments: and for 6th Army Voronezh Front—three rifle divisions, one tank corps, seven artillery and mortar regiments.

5th Tank Army must be committed in the immediate future to the destruction of enemy forces in the area of Chernyshevskaya-Tormosin-Morozovsk to obtain a more definite isolation in the south-west of enemy forces encirded in Stalingrad, with a view to developing its offensive further towards Tatsinskaya in order to exit on the line of the Northern Donets. [VIZ, 1966 (1), p. 19.]

Stalin raised no objection to these proposals. Vatutin and Golikov were now to get down to detailed operational planning, so that all plans could be submitted, scrutinized and approved by early December. The reinforcements would be forthcoming, and the General Staff would report separately on the movement of these units. To free Vatutin for Saturn, Chistyakov's 21st Army with 26th and 4th Tank Corps, would be handed over to the Don Front for operations along the inner encirclement. Even more important, Vasilevskii would be free to devote his full attention to reducing 'the rin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 'Surrender is Ruled Out': The End at Stalingrad
• 2 The Duel in the South: February-March 1943
• 3 Breaking the Equilibrium: Kursk and its Aftermath
• 4 The Drive to the Western Frontiers: October 1943-March 1944
• 5 Breaking the Back of the Wehrmacht: April-August 1944
• 6 Soviet Liberation, Soviet Conquest: August-December 1944
• 7 The Assault on the Reich: January-March 1945
• 8 No Time to Die: April-May 1945
• References and Sources
• Bibliography
• Index