STALINGRAD

POCKET
THE ADVANCE TO STALINGRAD AND THE
DESTRUCTION OF THE SIXTH ARMY

II

FOREWORD

I first read about the battle of Stalingrad in a Reader's Digest edition when I was
maybe 16. Excerpts from the book, Last Letters from Stalingrad, appeared at various parts of
the narrative, exemplifying the best human reaction to courage, duty, betrayal and oblivion.
But my interest waned over time and became sporadic. It returned after watching Enemy
at the Gates (1998) despite the movie's sappy and contrived plot, and 1993's Stalingrad, an
emasculating product of the German movie industry. The story is simple enough: crushing
defeat for one side and grudging victory for the other. But this general impression misses
the finer picture. The real battle contained such a tale of endeavor and inevitability that it
makes celluloid grandiosity redundant in the face of genuine human ordeal.

I first started on this monograph in 2004, just before going off to college. The bulk
of the manuscript was written then, complete with three or four maps, all of them in my
opinion, detailed works of art but maybe that is an exaggeration. Unfortunately, after I
left, a hard drive crash wiped out all the information, leaving me with a draft version of the
manuscript. This document represents the completion of what I had begun all those years
ago. I am not entirely satisfied with my replacement maps but the bright spot is that I have
had the benefit of new information and previously untapped sources.

My intention is that the reading of this material leave you with the same visceral
impact that I felt after reading about the battle all those years ago. If I have done my job as I
think I have, it should.
September 2011

I must thank David Glantz (Lt-Col. U.S. Army Retd.), researcher John Calvin and that
mysterious purveyor of colorized Eastern Front photographs, known only by his flickr handle,
Za Rodinu, for their feedback and help regarding certain aspects included in this study.

III

First Edition: June 2011

Current: February 2012

TYPEFACES USED: Adobe Font Battersea, Trajan Pro, Minion Pro and Confidential.
All work and artwork composed using the following software: Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator,
Microsoft Word and E-on Vue 9 CGI software.
In the interests of keeping the size of this document small, it has been rendered at low resolution.
Click the emblem at the bottom to find higher-resolution versions of the aerial photos on my website.

E-MAIL

IV

CONTENTS
A JOURNEY EAST 4
PAVING THE WAY FOR STALINGRAD

PLANNING THE ASSAULT 15

STALINGRAD UNDER SIEGE 20
RATTENKREIG 28
PUSHING THE SOVIETS BACK 34
THE RETURN OF THE RED ARMY

45

HEADING TOWARDS DISASTER 52

WINTER STORM 58
HOPELESS DEFIANCE 68
THE BITTER END COMES 71
THE LAST SONG 79
POSTSCRIPT 84
APPENDIX
Orders of Battle 87
Stalin Order No. 227 (NOT A STEP BACK)
93
BIBLIOGRAPHY 97

STALINGRAD POCKET

BUNDESARCHIV

he dark smoke blotted out the sun, bathing the city with a dusky light. A large group of
German pioneers assembled under the shadow of the massive Barrikady Ordnance factory, its
tall smokestacks towering over the ugly gray-green buildings of the citys industrial district that
dominated the skyline. Shattered freight cars once used to ferry munitions now lay rusting by
the tracks. Metal pillars once covered by brick work lay exposed and walls scarred by shellfire displayed
large sections of the interior to the outer world. The entire place had been scene of bitter fighting weeks
before until finally relenting to the men of the 100th Jger Division, a unit formed as a throwback to the
traditions of the old Imperial German Army.

The Germans had been sheltering outside then, waiting in foxholes as artillery blasted the place.
Russian snipers had picked off groups of men as they darted from one shell crater to the next. Tanks had
been sent in; proving useless and every inch of factory had been cleared in painstaking room-to-room
combat. Finally, the factory had been fallen and the Germans lay poised by the high cliffs over the river,
able to dominate the vulnerable crossings across the sprawling River Volga. But the Russians stubbornly
clung on to a scattering of buildings by the bluffs, hoping to buy time for reinforcements.

To prevent this the German Pioneers had a specific objective. Used as a substitute to cover heavy
infantry losses over the past weeks, they had been ordered to advance beyond the factory and clear out

WEARY WARRIORS German Panzergrenadiers of the 16th Panzer Division move up to the Volga. In
the lead a battle-weary machinegunner carries his MG34 on a shoulder. In the German Army, machine
gunners were known as Abzug or trigger, as if they were simply a part of a mechanized entity.

the nearby settlement that bordered the river, a collection of ordinary buildings that had taken on a grave
tactical importance. The most important of these were two structures nicknamed the Pharmacy and
the Commissars House, both of which dominated the Volga bank. But the retreating Russians had
booby-trapped the Barrikadys rooms and as the mass of Pioneers shuffled around, one of them trigged
a charge. It exploded, killing eighteen men. The rest of Germans froze and stayed put until after 3 oclock
that early morning when the German artillery finally began to bombard the Russian lines. Then the
Pioneers advanced, guns blazing.

A Russian joke had made the rounds a few weeks ago of how a soldier went into battle with 150
rounds of ammunition, and when he emerged to go to the field hospital afterwards, he went out with
151 rounds, without even having had a chance to fire his weapon. This nonchalant acceptance of combat
proved typical of the Russian reserve which had slowed German gains over the past month. The Germans
had no jokes. Only a relentless sense of destiny. Hitler, for whom many had a wide-eyed respect as the
greatest military commander of all time a title that would soon take on a sardonic tone as the weeks
passed, had ordered the city crushed and in true German fashion, the troops attempted to do just that.

After they captured the Pharmacy, the Pioneers reached the Commissars House only to find that
the Russians had boarded up every window and door. Soviet rifle and sub-machine gun barrels stuck out
of the gaps, shooting a brilliant hail of yellow-white fire. The Germans pushed on, taking heavy losses and
by daylight had smashed their way into the house.

The Russians retreated to the cellar. Tearing up the floorboards, the Pioneers dropped satchel
charges and Molotov cocktails. After the explosions subsided, a deathly silence descended. The Germans
announced the place secured and moved on to the banks of the Volga. Victory was within grasp of

STRATEGIC SETTING Stalingrad on the the grand scale. This map, albeit slightly modified, is from
the 1943 Deutscher Schulatlas. Pre-war German territory is colored in red.

that they were certain. But the cost had been high. Almost the entire force of Pioneers had been wounded
or killed except for one man, and as the Russians counterattacked, a patrol arrived to reinforce the
engineers only to suffer all but three men dead or wounded.

In five days, the Pioneers suffered a thousand men killed or wounded and the force of five
battalions was merged into one. On the other side, the Russian 138th Rifle Division, which had lost
nearly 90 percent of its strength in the defense of the area, dug in. For the survivors of this division, later
to be awarded the honorific title of Guards for their feats, this last bit of defensible ground measured
just four hundred yards wide and a hundred yards deep, with the river behind them. Their mission was
simple enough: hold on, and as their commander, General Vasili Chukov of the Sixty-Second Army
was often fond of saying: time was blood. Continued resistance bought capital for a long-term Soviet
investment in victory, but for the Germans, it dealt an unforgettable lesson in defeat.
LEFT The Guards Emblem. Units often won the
coveted Guards title after proving themselves in
combat.

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

BELOW German troops gather by the shattered

remnants of a building in the Tractor Factory
compound. On the road, two StuG assault guns rumble
forward to support the infantry. Three major factories
within Stalingrad became settings for ferocious
clashes with the Russians throughout the campaign.

A JOURNEY EAST

In the autumn of 1941, the spirit of the German Army on the Eastern Front was at its peak. In
the immediate months after Operation Barbarossa (the gargantuan Axis invasion of Russia on 22 June)
the German armies had swept 500 miles into Russian territory until on October 1, the frontline stretched
1,490 miles long from Leningrad in the north to the Crimean Peninsula in south. The advance had
reaped a catch that few German generals could have believed: three and a half million Russian soldiers by
the end of the year alone with another four million dead most as they followed Josef Stalins forceful
urgings to fight to the death.

Common German soldiers were certain that there was no more of the enemy to bring them a
proper fight. But they had disastrously underestimated the resilience of the enemy. That late July, as
German troops advancing on the Russian capital carrying signs reading To Moscow, the Russians were
busy establishing Stavka, a new Soviet High Command to reverse the failings of the previous months. In
August, three new commanders were designated to lead sectors opposite the German armies, including
Marshals Voroshilov (North-West Front), Semyon Timoshenko (West Front) and Seymon Budenny
(South-West Front). Orders were also sent out to create home-guard brigades, worker battalions and
divisions of partisans behind the enemy lines. Much of the effort was designed to buy Russia badly
needed time time enough for Stalin to mobilize the countrys massive resources for war and rebuild
the army by bringing in sixteen million men of military age.
RIGHT A German reconnaissance column
pauses before a burning Russian village.

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

BUNDESARCHIV

BELOW Although the Russians often outclassed

the Germans, especially in equipment, they
were poorly trained. These T-34 tanks have been
abandoned after being driven into a bog.

BUNDESARCHIV

TANK EXPERT Heinz Guderian was the undisputed

master of tank warfare, having written a pioneering
work on the subject in 1937, Achtung Panzer! German
tank forces in the Second World War were organized
on the theories written in the book.

At the start of the war, Guderian saw action in
Poland and France, famously being denied permission
to crush the last British pocket at Dunkirk. After
disagreements with Hitler over Moscow, he was relieved
of command in December 1941 and went into semiretirement. Although nominated as a replacement
for a bedridden General Rommel in North Africa
and denied, Guderian returned to active duty after
the Stalingrad campaign, first as inspector General of
the tank forces and then as Chief of Staff of the army.
He was sacked in March 1945 over contentions with
Hitler regarding operations, but later helped rebuild
the army after the war.

German losses began to mount. By 31 July, Hitlers armies had suffered 213,000 casualties
fifteen percent of their total attacking force while his panzer units reported the loss of 863 tanks to
enemy fire and irreparable damage almost twenty-five percent of the armored corps original strength.
Initially, the three main objectives of the attackers were Leningrad (for Army Group North), Moscow
(for Field Marshal Fedor von Bocks Army Group Center) and Rostov (for General Gerd von Rundstedts
Army Group South). In all places, stubborn resistance began to dog German ambition. At the ancient
fortress town of Smolesnsk, on the road to Moscow, German units from the Fourth Panzer Army overran
the city easily enough but then ran into a Soviet blockade 25-30 miles east of the city, reinforced by
Katyushas (Little Kates) rocket launchers and minefields. Behind this line, Russian units regrouped and
began to organize the defense of Moscow.

In any case, Hitler was only vaguely interested in the Russian capital. He believed that the Russian
capital was merely a geographical expression, not a real center of power. In its place, he substituted
the oil-rich Ukraine, an alluring prize from which the Fhrer could not avert his eyes. It was a fatal
miscalculation. The Ukraine was important; the oil fields in the Caucasus were vital to the continued
success of the German army, but they came second in importance after Moscow. The famed 19th Century
military tactician Carl von Clausewitz had written that It is not by conquering the enemy provinces
but by seeking out the heart of the enemy powerthat we can strike him to the ground. Hitler
considered himself a greater thinker than Clausewitz. History would prove him wrong.

Not only was Moscow the cradle of Bolshevism, it was the embodiment of Soviet Russia. More
importantly, it was a vital armament center and was the nucleus of the Russian communication and
transportation net. Stalin was determined to remain in the city until the end even as the majority of the
governments offices were evacuated to Kuybyshev, 430 miles east. Most of the citys industries were also
uprooted, their machinery, along with their workers, sent by train to Siberia where new plants were being
built. Furthermore, in mid-1941, Moscows defenses were in poor shape and only in October did work
start on new defensive lines.

To the fury of his generals, including General Heinz Guderian of Panzer Group 2 (itself part of
Bocks Army Group Center), Hitler seemed content with indecisive secondary objectives. Guderian, the

STAVKA ARCHIVES

CAPTIVE
DESTINY A
Soviet BT-7 tank
crew is led away
into captivity.
Awaiting them
were years of harsh
imprisonment
- if they first
survived the
callous treatment
by their new
German overlords
near the front.
father of Germanys armored tactics, formulated his own strategy. He would drive a wedge through the
Soviet blockade around Smolensk and reach Moscow. But on July 23 Hitler derailed this plan by ordering
Guderian to first eliminate the Smolensk pocket, and then after this was accomplished on July 30, move
south to join von Rundstedts armies in an advance on Kiev in the Ukraine. At the same time, Bocks
Panzer Group 3 (under the command of the able General Hermann Hoth) was detached and driven
north to aid German troops attacking Leningrad. Guderian seethed at these orders, convinced that it was
vital to get at Moscow first. He sent along a skeletal force towards Kiev while directing his main effort
against the capital.

By late August, Hitler had grown wise to his scheme and in an official dispatch declared that,
The essential target to be achieved before winter is not the capture of Moscow, but theCrimea and
Donets coal and industrial basin [in the Ukraine]. Hitlers reasoning for the directive was that he wanted
to cut the Russians off from their oil supplies, weakening enemy forces around Moscow and Leningrad,
now under attack by Army group North. Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, the commander in
chief of the Wehrmacht was told to personally ensure that Guderian diverted south to the Caucusus,
but Brauchitsch shared Guderians sentiments in spirit. On top of his mind was the fact that the Russian
transportation network was a shambles, ill-suited to support his armies over long-distances especially
when winter or the autumn rains came. Then there was the fact that his armor had long advanced
ahead of the infantry which was still slogging a hundred miles behind. Unfortunately, Brauchitsch was
a weak officer hesitant to voice his reservations with Hitler. Guderian decided that the only way to push
forward his argument would be to fly to Germany to have it out with Hitler. There, an irate Guderian
was intercepted by Brauchitsch who forbid him to mention the question of Moscow. The operation to
the south has been ordered, Brauchitsch said. The problem now is simply how it is to be carried out.
Discussion is pointless.

Guderian however was backed his immediate superior, Field Marshal Bock and General Franz
Halder, the Chief of the General Staff, but when he was announced into Hitlers presence, neither of
these two officers followed him in. Guderian was alone, but he pressed his case. Strangely enough, Hitler
did not interrupt him, even when Guderian pointed out the absurdity of his units in taking a 600-mile
diversion to Kiev when Moscow was just 220 miles away. But when he had finished, Hitler responded.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

HOPELESS ADVANCE Scenes of fighting in Russia were almost always like these. Insane rushes by
the Red Army across open Steppes towards heavily-armed Germans who almost always held their
ground. One man has already fallen while a T-34 tank moves swiftly ahead. The common Russian
practice of allowing the infantry to ride on the tank into battle seems to have been discarded on this
occasion possibly because such tactics often resulted in high casualties.

In a calm, cold tone, he explained his reasons for the diversion, speaking of the need to secure
raw materials and the agricultural basin of the Ukraine and of neutralizing the Crimean peninsula which
the Russians could use as an aircraft carrier for attacking the Romanian oil fields. By the time he had
stopped speaking, Guderian had little illusion that the matter had been settled. The advance on Moscow
would continue but only after Kiev had fallen.

At any rate, Kiev only fell in mid-September, and although it was tremendously successful,
yielding over 655,000 prisoners, 884 armoured vehicles and 3,718 guns, the Germans had let slip an
important strategic advantage in Moscow. It is interesting to note that while Hitler called the assault on
Kiev the greatest battle in the history of the world, his chief of general staff, General Halder, a more
pragmatic sort, called it, the greatest strategic mistake of the campaign in the east.

Rundstedt of Army Group South, meantime, received fresh orders. He later recalled: After
accomplishing a first part of my objective, encirclement and destruction of the enemy forces west of
the Dnieper, I was given my second objective. It was to advance eastwards and take Maikop oil fields
and Stalingrad. We laughed aloud when we received these orders... In fact, Stalingrad, on the sprawling
Volga River would fast become a preoccupation of Hitler, as did Leningrad, which were considered by the
Fuhrer as two holy shrines of Communism, whose capture would cause Soviet Russia to collapse.

An officer of the old school, Rundstedt detested his operations being interfered with by that
bohemian corporal who was Hitler, but he nevertheless followed Hitlers orders and advanced. The
city of Kharkov, the capital of Ukraine, fell to his panzers on October 24, as did Rostov on the Sea of
Azov on 21 November. The seizure of Rostov, the so-called door to the Caucuses, was a major political
coup for the German Propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, who gleefully trumpeted the opening of the
gateway over German radio and in the papers. Unfortunately, the citys seizure by German troops was
only momentary. Five days later a ferocious Russian counter-assault drove back Rundstedts troops.
With winter coming, Rundstedt now prepared to dig for the rest of the year, and began withdrawing his

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

GERMAN HUBRIS Confident

and boorish-looking German SS
troops drink Schnapps and relax
on the road to Rostov. Although
they seem oblivious of it, a hard
campaign awaits them, and after
that, if captured, brutal Soviet
retribution.
forward troops fifty miles to the rear where a permanent line was being established on the Mius River.
Hitler would have none of it. Remain where you are, came the stern message from Berlin. Retreat no
further.

Rundstedt was beside himself with rage. He wrote back, It is madness to hold. In the first place
the troops cannot do it and in the second place if they do not retreat they will be destroyed. Threatening
to resign if the order was not rescinded, Rundstedt fully expected Hitler to back down. Instead, Hitler
wired back: I accept your request. Please give up your command. It was not be the last time that Hitler
would put his own interests above the soldiers and the generals in the field, whose lives he held at stake.

Command of the Army Group South passed into the hands of Field Marshal Walther von
Reichenau, who quietly carried out Rundstedts withdrawal plan. Recriminations from Berlin were
curiously absent. It is probable that Hitler had finally realized the soundness of setting up camp for the
winter but more likely his attention was more focused on the belated German onslaught on Moscow, now
raging on the capitals outskirts.

Operation Typhoon was the German plan for Moscow and was scheduled to jump off during
the first week of October. On the other side of the line, the Russians had 800,000 men in the first of three
defensive line leading up to the city. Impressive as they were in numbers, Stalins troops were actually
poor in morale, were inadequately armed and had just 770 tanks and 384 aircraft for support. Ever wary
of Guderians advance in the Ukraine, which Stalin believed to be a massive outflanking maneuver to
come up behind Moscow, Stalin reinforced General Andrei Yeremenkos Bryansk Front in the south with
orders to stop that scoundrel. The legendary troubleshooter, General Georgi Zhukov, was also brought
in to conduct the defense of the city in October.

Zhukovs arrival was timely. Guderian, no longer needed by Army Group South, was racing
towards Moscow. His tankers took Orel, 75 miles behind Moscows first line of defense on 3 October
followed by Bryansk, 220 miles southwest of Moscow, three days later. At Orel, after an encounter with
an old retired Czarist general, Guderian realized his worst fears Russia; not even Moscow, would fall
as easily as Berlin believed. If only you had come twenty years ago, we would have welcomed you with
open arms, the old General said. Now its too late. We were just beginning to get back on our feet and
you arrive to throw us back twenty yearsNow we are fighting for Russia and in that cause, we are all
united. And united they were.

At Moscow, hordes of civilian volunteers had worked feverishly alongside the soldiers. They dug
60 miles of anti-tank ditches and 5,000 miles of trenches. Our backs ached and at times we could hardly

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

CIVIL ORDER In the repressive

Stalinist regimen, civilians were
often made to work alongside the
Red Army in the defense of the
Motherland. These civilians are
repairing a bombed railway line.
Most were genuinely patriotic and
volunteered for this sort of work.
lift our tools, wrote one worker, [but we toiled]some, old and exhausted, simply laid down their
tools and died.

Coupled with the spirit of the defenders, the ferocious Russian winter (General Winter as
the Germans bitterly called it) derailed all hope of success for Bocks Army Group Center. No one had
expected the campaign to last this long and the army faced a grave shortage of winter clothing. Worse
still, the bulk of Bocks weapons were not winterized. The bolts of guns froze in their chambers, oil
turned to paste, vehicle batteries iced over, and tank engines refused to start. On December 2, a single
motorcycle reconnaissance patrol from the 62nd Panzer Engineer Battalion came within sight of the
Kremlins spires but no free German would get beyond that. On December 1, Bock was reporting that his
troops were unable to break into the city. By December 5, it was all over. The assault had been called off.
Guderian in a forlorn letter to his wife admitted that, We have seriously underestimated the Russians,
the extent of the country and the treachery of the climate. This is the revenge of reality. Unfortunately
for the Reich, one singular person failed to grasp this message. Hitlers misunderstanding of the critical
situations would continue a year later at Stalingrad.

PAVING THE WAY FOR STALINGRAD

The year 1942 began uncertainly for German soldiers on the front, although Germany stood
high in the grand scale. Through the winter of 1941 and early 1942, exhausted German troops had
endured both the weather and a massive Russian counterattack all along the line, stemming from the
successful defense of Moscow. But by February 20, Stalins offensive had run out of steam. With the onset
of stalemate, both sides counted their losses. The Germans had taken a particular beating. An OKH
(Oberkommando des Heers)1 report of 30 March revealed that of the 162 German divisions in Russia,
only eight were fit for action and that three were capable of operations, provided they were given time
to rest; 47 others were capable of limited offensive action, 73 were only fit for defense, and 29 good only
for limited defense. Two divisions were completely unfit for battle and had to be withdrawn from the
field. The sixteen Panzer divisions in the theatre could bring to bear just 140 tanks between them. The
Wehrmacht (German Land Army) and the SS had lost nearly 397,000 men killed in action and 50,000
1

OKH: High Command of the (German) Army.

men had gone missing since the start of Barbarossa. The situation, in Halders words, was disastrous.
Although Germany still had 2.8 million soldiers in the country, the Russians had even greater. Although
their winter offensive had left the Red Army in bad shape, the losses were being replaced by the arrival of
freshly-trained divisions from the east. As an indication of the seemingly inexhaustible reserves available
to the Russians, in the battle of Moscow alone, Stalin had ushered in nearly thirty fresh divisions from
Siberia.

In the south, 640,000 Russians had massed with 1,200 tanks, many of them dangerous T-34s
which were more than a match for the German Panzer Mark III and Mark IVD. These troops, under
Marshal Symon Timeshenkos South-West Front (comparable to a German Army Group), had a singular
goal: recapture Kharkov. Unfortunately, the Russian offensive, which had started on 18 January, was cut
short by poor tactics and astonishing German resistance. By May 17, Timoshenkos armies had been
crushed, losing 70,000 men killed and over 200,000 captured. The Germans had lost just 20,000 men, and
this success paved the way for an offensive deep into the Caucuses and east, towards Stalingrad.

On June 28, the waiting ended. That summers day had been unusually heavily with dark clouds
hovering ominously overhead. Loud thunderclaps broke out as if announcing the onslaught of rain,
accompanied by distant flickers of lightning-like flashes. But instead of rain, a barrage of artillery shells
fell upon the Russians. Before the Russians could gather their wits, a large wave of German infantry
and armor surged through the lines. One entire Russian army (the Fortieth) was completely overrun by
General Hermann Hoths Third Panzer Army near Kursk. Ahead lay the industrialized city of Voronezh,
controlling the river traffic on the River Don, and dominating the road and rail network into central and
southern Russia.

It was the start of Operation Blau (Blue), an all-out drive for the Caucasus launched under
Hitlers direct order despite warnings by Halder that the depleted army should be rested for operations
in 1943. Hitler had misjudged the situation, but not entirely. He had been intelligent enough to reinforce
Army Group South (now under the command of von Bock) with almost half of Germanys troop strength
in Russia, including nine of nineteen Panzer divisions, four of ten motorized divisions and 93 of 189
Infantry divisions. He also split Army Group South into two task forces, Army Group B, under General
Maximilian von Weichs, and Army Group A, under Field Marshal Wilhelm List. While Lists Army
Group advanced in the south, Weichs forces were to hold the northern flank against possible Russian
counterattacks.

In Directive No. 41, one of the most important documents of the Eastern Front Campaign, Hitler
outlined the plan for his generals. In Section C of the directive, titled The Main Operation on the Eastern
Front, he stated:
The purpose is to occupy the Caucasus front by decisively attacking and destroying Russian
forces stationed in the Voronezh area to the south, west, or north of the Don. Because of the
manner in which the available formations must be brought up, this operation can be carried out
in a series of consecutive, but coordinated and complementary, attacks. Therefore these attacks
must be so synchronized from north to south that each individual offensive is carried out by the
largest possible concentration of army, and particularly of air, forces which can be assured at the
decisive points.
The general operation will begin with an overall attack and, if possible, a breakthrough
from the area south of Orel in the direction of Voronezh. Of the two armored and motorized
formations forming the pincers, the northern will be in greater strength than the southern.
The object of this breakthrough is the capture of Voronezh itself. Whileinfantry divisions
will immediately establish a strong defensive front between the Orel areaand Voronezh, the
armored and motorized formations are to continue the attack south from Voronezh, with their

10

left flank on the River Don, in support of a second breakthrough to take place towards the east,
from the general area of Kharkov.
The third attack in the course of these operations will be so conducted that formations
thrusting down the Don can link up in the Stalingrad area with forces advancing from the
Taganrog Artelnovsk area between the lower waters of the Don and Voroshilovgrad across
the Donets to the east. These forces should finally establish contact with the armored forces
advancing on Stalingrad. Every effort[should] be made to reach Stalingrad, or at least to bring
the city under fire from heavy artillery so that it may no longer be of any use as an industrial or
communications center.

Once the three blows had succeeded, the units in the Stalingrad area would protect the final drive
into the Caucasus. It was a grand scheme. Even the pragmatic Halder was impressed. He later wrote

11

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

BRUTAL MEASURES
Two SS men from the
Ukraine gaze upon dead
women and children
deliberately killed at
Warsaw. The brutal
German occupation
sparked the ardent
resistance movement
in occupied Europe.
of seeing a vision of German tanks rolling through the Steppes of the Ukraine and linking up General
Erwin Rommels Afrika Korps in the Middle East. But German prejudice was doomed to thwart German
ambitions.2

Operation Barbarossa was essentially a German plan for Vernichtungskrieg, a so-called war of
destruction. The primary enemy was not only the communist regime or the Red Army but the entire
population which was regarded as a sub-human Slavic race. The Russian peoples were to be turned into
a subservient group, their numbers reduced by extermination and birth control. Most of the German
troops in Russia were ordered to live off the land and plunder local resources, with industrial matter
shipped back to Germany. Once the war had been won, Russia would serve as a lebensraum (living
space) for a new generation of German settlers. In a speech on 30 March 1941, Hitler had made clear
his ambitions for the country: The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a
knightly fashion; the struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted
with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness.

As a consequence, captured Soviet troops could expect little mercy. Commissars were to be
shot on sight. Special energy was to be expended in killing Bolshevik agitators, guerrillas, saboteurs
[and] Jews, with a warning that the Asiatic soldiers of the Red Army in particular are inscrutable,
unpredictable, insidious and unfeeling.3 With everything to lose, Russian resistance began to stiffen.

But initially Blau was overwhelmingly successful and doubts of Hitlers strategic prowess
seemed settled. But Stalin, after sorting through initial fears that Moscow might be the target, acted
2
The historian, Robert Service, states that: If it had not been for Hitlers fanatical racism, the USSR would
not have won the struggle on the Eastern Front. Stalins repressiveness towards his own citizens would have cost
him the war against Nazi Germany, and the post-war history of the Soviet Union and the world would have been
fundamentally different. (See A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, Penguin: London, p.290)
3 Einsatzgruppen (German SS special extermination groups) were ordered to weed out so-called
intolerable elements among Soviet POWs. This meant killing all captured Jews along with Soviet party and state
functionaries, and intellectuals an estimated 140,000 in all between 1941 and 1945. Perhaps the most infamous
instance of this program of mass murder was the experimental gassing of 600 Soviet POWs at Auschwitz in
September 1941.

12

In the WWII-era Red Army, an army was comparable to a strengthened German Corps, a division to a reinforced
brigade and so on.
5 See appendix for the full text of this order.

13

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

swiftly. He instructed Timoshenko to pull back to

defensive positions along the Don River to escape
encirclement. Without a doubt this belated order
saved the entire southern front from annihilation.
The Germans began to discover that their pincers
were netting few Russians. In one notable case,
a pocket created south of Kursk by the German
Fourth Panzer and Sixth Armies, was nearly devoid
of enemy troops.

At Voronzeh, the German caught a lucky
break when a forward patrol captured a bridge
before Russian engineers could blow it up. To
avoid being trapped, Timoshenko mounted a
fighting retreat back towards the River Volga and
Stalingrad. Still, since the start of Blau, 130,000
Red Army troops had fallen into enemy hands.

The emphasis now fell on Stalingrad.
Initially, no one foresaw the importance that the
battle for the city represented. The city occupied
a place on the bend of the Volga where the river
curved inwards to within fifty miles of the most
eastern bend of the Don River. By securing
the river, the critical flow of Russian oil being
transported up the Volga to central and northern THROUGH THE KILLING FIELDS German
Russia would be halted, while the capture of the troops move cautiously through wheat fields.
city itself could yield supplies as it was an industrial In the background is the peak of the Caucasus
hub in the region. The U.S. General Douglas Mountains. Fierce Russian resistance would blunt
McArthur would later say that the stake in the the German advance here.
Stalingrad campaign was Germanys ability to
wage war against the Soviet-Western alliance for another 10 years. But the Russians themselves saw little
worth to Stalingrad except that it was the next major Soviet city in the path of the German advance.

Stalin decreed that the city was to be held at all costs, and to hold it, Stavka established a new
Stalingrad Front on 12 July, encompassing the Sixty-Second, Sixty-Third and Sixty-Fourth Armies4 with
a total of 38 divisions (of which 20 were below strength). Timoshenko initially commanded the new
formation, but as he had already proven incapable of halting the Germans, was sacked a fortnight later.
Lt-General V.N. Gordov took temporary command until another senior officer could be found. From that
point on, Timoshenko found his star fading. Only his close friendship with Stalin prevented him from
dipping completely into obscurity, although as a Stavka member he lost much of his influence.

On July 28, Order No. 227 came down from Moscow, with Stalins personal command: Na shagu
nazad! (Not a step back!).5 The order became a rallying cry for the defenders and was later transformed
into the slogan: There is no land beyond the Volga. In short, it became the embodiment of the Russian
defense of Stalingrad. Any officer or political commissar who retreated was to be transferred to a
punishment battalion.

Hitler, unaware that Stalin had forbidden the retreat of his troops, gleefully declared in private
that the Russians are in full flight! Theyre finished. If these were just euphemistic expressions, Halder

would have been content, but Hitler went one step further. Believing the Blau was as good as won, he
put into motion Directive 45, arguably one of the most significant orders of the war. Issued on July 23,
it called for the continuation of Operation Blau, but now encompassed the capture of Stalingrad. In a
campaign which has lasted little more than three weeks, Hitler wrote, the broad objectives outlined by
me for the southern flank of the Eastern front have been largely achieved. Five divisions from General
Erich Mansteins 11th Army in the Crimea (which had recently fallen) were transferred to the Leningrad
sector. As it transpired, these units would be badly needed during the drive into the Caucasus. Two
elite units, the 1st SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler SS Panzer Division and the Grossdeutschland Motorized
Infantry Division were also moved to France, where Hitler believed an Anglo-American invasion was
imminent.

Halder was appalled. In his diary he confided that the continual underestimation of enemy
possibilities takes on grotesque forms and is becoming dangerous. Stormy scenes erupted between the
Chief of General Staff and the Fuhrer at their forward headquarters at Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. Halder
pressed for an immediate assault on Stalingrad but nobody cowed the Fuhrer. The Caucasus drive would
continue to receive top priority but as parting gesture to Halder, Hitler ordered large-scale bombing raids
on Stalingrad to disrupt the build-up. At the same time, he also made a mental note to fire Halder at the
next agreeable opportunity.

Hitler also extended the scope of Blau, which were initially the Maikop oil fields to entire oilproducing region of the Caucasus extending from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. To the generals in
the field this was clearly more than what their truncated units could muster. Just when things appeared
unable to worsen, Hitler had compounded bad judgment with an enormous blunder.

The German Fourth Panzer and Sixth Armies raced towards Stalingrad, unaware that the city
had become a haven for retreating Red Army units. If allowed to run their course, Stalingrad might
have well fallen into their hands that July. Instead, Hitler detached the Fourth Army and sent it south to
aid General Ewald von Kleists First Panzer Army in the crossing of the Don River. Left alone, the Sixth
Army proved too weak to take Stalingrad barely able to hold its own at times. Again, Clausewitz had
something to say on the matter: The condition in which an attacking force may find itself on attaining its
objectives maybe such that even a victory may compel a withdrawal, because the attacker may not have
enough offensive power left to enable the troops to exploit their victory or because he is unable to replace
casualties. At one stage, the XIV Panzer Corps, under Lt-General Gustav von Wietersheim, found itself
dangerously close to encirclement by the Russian First and Fourth Tank Armies. Another corps, the 51st
(LI), under General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, became short on ammunition and fuel, could well
have been routed if the Russians had struck back. Wietersheim, fearful that his corps would become
unable to protect Pauluss northern flank proposed that all German units forging towards Stalingrad
be withdrawn to an area behind the Don River, especially if no reinforcements were forthcoming.
Denounced by Berlin as a pessimist, Wietersheim would eventually be relieved of command.

Kleist in the meantime was surprised by the sudden arrival of General Hoths Fourth Army. His
units had already crushed the bulk of the Russian armies in the south, especially after the capture of
Rostov on 24 July. Rostov itself had been the scene of bitter street fighting. Unused to this type of combat,
the Germans had been taken aback. Only the concentrated use of self-propelled guns, machine guns
and grenades had cleared the neighborhoods, but the infantry had painstakingly cleared each house and
building, one by one.

Beyond the Don itself were hardly any Russians, save for a few stragglers and retreating columns.
As Kleist later said: The Fourth Panzer Army could have taken Stalingrad without a fight at the end of
July, but it was diverted to help me cross the Don. I did not need its aid. It only got in way. Too late,
Hitler realized this and sent Hoth racing back towards Stalingrad. By this time, Stalingraders had gained
valuable time to organize their defenses.

14


Kleist, in the absence of serious enemy defense was racing towards Maikop oil fields, and for a
time it seemed that Panzers might indeed break into Persia and Iraq. On 9 August, Maikop fell, but the
Germans found that the Russians had destroyed the oil rigs. It was closest the Reich ever got to Russian
oil. Ahead rose the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains. In this rugged area, 90,000 civilians had toiled
around the clock digging trenches and building pillboxes in the key approaches through the mountains.
There, on foothills of the mountains, Kleists armored spearheads found themselves blunted by a wall of
Russian determination. Blau, for all its brilliance had ended in failure at its most crucial stage.

There would be no link up with Rommel in Persia, and no oil from the sprawling oilfields at Baku
still more than 200 miles to the south. Field Marshal List of Army Group A was blamed for the debacle
and sacked. Hitler now turned his full attention on Stalingrad in August. By this time, however, it was
too late. The window of opportunity when the city could have fallen in late July had closed. The Germans
now faced a stiff fight.

BUNDESARCHIV

PLANNING THE ASSAULT

General Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the German Sixth Army had the honor of
conducting the main attack on Stalingrad. Paulus, a World War I veteran was no dynamic leader. He
was a mediocre officer at worst. A report from his commanding officer soon after World War I, when
Paulus was still a Major, described him politely: A
typical staff officer of the old school. Tall, and in
outward appearance painstakingly well groomed.
Modest; perhaps too modest, amiable, with extremely
courteous manners, and a good comrade, anxious not
to offend anyone. Exceptionally talented and interested
in military matters, and a meticulous desk worker,
with a passion for war-games and formulating plans
on the map-board or sand-table. At this he displays
considerable talent, considering every decision at
length and with careful deliberation before giving the
appropriate orders.
An official army assessment report, however, was
painfully candid: This officer lacks decisiveness.
How accurate this report would be clearly revealed
twenty years later. Although he was not a diehard Nazi,
Paulus was, however, an ardent supporter of Hitler, and
because of his close links with people of influence, had
risen swiftly through the ranks. At one time he had
been a serious contender for the post of commander
of the Afrika Korps, over the luminous star that was
Erwin Rommel.
He had acquired the coveted post of Sixth Army
FLAWED COMMANDER Paulus was an leader in the winter of 1941 after recommendations by
Field Marshal Walter Reichenau, then his immediate
urbane and respected commander, but his
superior. Unfortunately, the Sixth Armys shaky battle
loyalty to the Nazi leadership would cost him
at Kharkov in the summer that followed showed
and his command dearly.

15

STAVKA ARCHIVES

the mediocre skills of its unseasoned commander.

Alarmed, Field Marshal Bock resorted to the drastic
step of replacing Paulus chief of staff with an
experienced deputy, Major-General Arthur Schmidt.
Unfortunately, Schmidt was a Nazi to the end
doubly disastrous for the men of the Sixth Army, as
neither officer would dare question Hitlers orders
when crisis came.

Paulus and Schmidt began to plan their
assault. The attack was a twin pronged undertaking.
While the Sixth Army hit the city in the north, Hoths
Fourth Panzer Army would strike from the south.
The twin assaults, it was hoped, would catch the
defenders off guard and keep them dispersed. But
Stalingrad was already showing signs of being a hard
nut to crack. Holding the perimeter were three Soviet
armies the Sixty-Second, the Sixty-Fourth and the
Fifty-Seventh. The Sixty-Second Army, under the egg
bald Lt-General A. I. Lopatin, deployed in front, was
the citys primary guardian. For this reason, Lopatin
INEPT LEADER Anton Lopatin was the
was heavily reinforced, his command comprised
initial commander of the Sixty-Second Army,
of nine rifle divisions, three Guards rifle divisions,
as the Germans approached in August 1942.
six special independent brigades, a motorized Rifle
Incompetent and jittery, he twice attempted
Brigade, and three tank brigades although some
to withdraw his army across the Volga,
of these formations were still on the other side of the
only to be prevented from doing so by his
Volga, especially the elite Guards divisions. There was
superiors. He was later sacked and despite
even an NKVD (Narodniy Komissariat Vnutrennikh
his ineptitude, continued to command
De The Ministry of Internal Affairs) Division
other armies until 1944 when he was finally
a formation largely composed of Red Army
demoted and given command of a rifle corps.
disciplinary cases who served as expendables on
the battlefield. Their role was almost always suicidal,
with typical missions involving men in distinctively colored uniforms drawing enemy fire away from
regular army units, and Tramplers who were sacrificed in minefields so that their bodies would serve as
a pathway for following troops.

There was also the fact that the city was Stalins special city. He had been its commander for four
crucial months during the civil war of 1919-21 after the revolution. The city, then known as Tsaritsyn
was renamed in his honor in 1928, and kept the name until 1961 when it was renamed Volgograd after
Stalins death. In appearance, the city, with a population of 500,000, was a curious mixture of an elegant
European conurbation with overpowering industrial overtones. Stretching 20 miles long along the
western banks of the Volga River, Stalingrad was composed of distinct parts. To the north was the drab,
industrial basin dominated by four major factories the Tractor factory (by now employed in building
tanks), the Barricades (Barrikady) Factory, manufacturing small arms, the Red October Factory Steel
Plant and the Lazur Chemical Works. In effect, the city was capable of manufacturing its own weapons if
besieged and the plants were a major objective for Paulus. But the Russians knew their importance too.

To south was Stalingrad proper, with its many shops, offices, homes and avenues. Most prominent
was the Square of Fallen Soldiers, more famously known by its German name of Red Square. It
occupied a sprawling area in what was deemed the center of the city, resplendent with parks, fountains,

16

statues and flags, and surrounded by neat, white washed government buildings, stores and offices. In the
course of the battle, Red Square would change hands many times; its occupation a symbolic identifier for
whoever held Stalingrad. In between the two sectors to the west was the Mamayev Kurgan (or Mamayev
Hill as it was known), a large burial mound rising 330 feet above the ground, overlooking the central
district and the Lazur Chemical Works. The main docks were also near Red Square. As there was no
bridge connecting Stalingrad with the east bank of the Volga, the docks constituted the primary entry
point for Russian reinforcements streaming over in ferries in the early phase of the battle. Two railways
stations within Stalingrad proper normally kept the city connected to the outside world only now the
lines ran into German-held territory.

Stalin was determined that the city hold on. Initially, he even forbade the evacuation of civilians.
We shall evacuate nothing, he said. We must tell the army and the people of Stalingrad that there is
nowhere left to retreat. We must defend Stalingrad. In a shrewd observation, Stalin had recognized that
the Soviet forces would be better pressed to defend a live city than a deserted one. And indeed, Stalingrad
would continue to function as a normal city even as it crumbled under the relentless fighting. Electricity
continued to run through the lines and the factories would remain operational, ignoring parts of the
floor bombed or destroyed.

But most of all, Stalin feared that the capture of the city would allow the Germans to open
corridors into the Soviet hinterlands and leave Moscow vulnerable to attack from the east. Taking
advantage of the no retreat order, Stalin drafted the citys civilian population to build three strong

17

defensive lines in the shape of a wide cauldron in the area west of Stalingrad. To the east was the natural
barrier of the fast-swirling Volga. He also pulled thousands of men and teenagers from non-essential
work and threw them into the army. For many, a tearful parting was the last they ever saw of their
families and vice-versa. Women were inducted as nurses and worked in a non-combat capacity as radio
operators, translators and dispatch riders. Stalin later appointed the victorious Georgi Zhukov from
Moscow as the deputy supreme commander at Stalingrad on August 27. Zhukov therefore was expected
to manage the defense of the city as effectively as he had done at Moscow.

Stalingrad became a fortress. But defeatism was rife. On August 8, the Russian Sixty-Second
Army fought its first major battle against the advancing Sixth Army. Lopatins command was completely
routed and the Russians lost at least 57,000 soldiers captured and a thousand vehicles destroyed. Lopatin
was a jittery sort, secretly convinced that Stalingrad was indefensible. Fortunately, his immediate boss,
the experienced General Andrei Yeremenko, recently appointed leader of the Stalingrad Front (he took
over on the 13th), was a much more composed type and did much to restore troop morale.

On the German side, Hoths Fourth army was three corps strong with a total of nine divisions
(four of them Panzer), but his divisions had been racked by losses. Pauluss Sixth Army was five corps
strong and had sixteen divisions, including two motorized infantry divisions, two panzer divisions, and
the Italian Celere Division which could boast of the 6th Bersagleri Regiment, the Italian Armys elite
troops. It was the largest Axis army in southern Russia with an established strength of 250,000 men, 500
tanks, 7,000 heavy guns and mortars, and 25,000 draught horses. But for all its impressiveness on paper,
the Sixth Army was in worse shape than the Fourth.

Paulus had taken a beating ever since the start of Blau and twice upon approaching the Don,
his advance had petered out because of fuel shortages. The first occasion was at the end of July, when his
lead units had approached the Russian village of Kalach, just 3.7 miles from the Don. Since Army Group
As advance into the Caucasus had top call on all fuel reserves, it was not until August 7 that Pauluss
tanks began moving again. Incidentally, Kalach was on the western-most proximity of the Russian
Sixty-Second Armys lines. Seven days later on August 14, Paulus at last received the long-awaited order
from Hitler to move on Stalingrad. It took the Germans two days to actually reach Kalach and its key
bridge spanning the Don. Second Lieutenant Kleinjohann with units of 3rd Company, 16th Engineers
Battalion, conducted a daring coup, whereby his men rushed the bridge. The defenders, from the Soviet
20th Motorized Brigade, opened fire and set off a conflagration at the center of the span to destroy it,
but Kleinjohann and his managed to stifle the flames. Still, the damage was substantial, but it could have

18

Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

DRANG NACH OSTEN (Drive to the East) Panzer IIIs from Panzergruppe Kleist advance. The Mark
III, although a mainstay of the German Panzer forces in 1941-42, was no match for the Russian T-34
and KV-1. The above machine has attempted to improve its survivability by adding armor plates as is
betrayed by the bolts on the front hull.
been worse, and as matters stood an intact bridge was captured between the villages of Kamenski and
Verkhne-Kurmojarskaja in the north a day later.

The advance continued, but the Sixth Army had barely advanced five miles when it ran out of
fuel on the 18th. Berlin promised fuel, and it came, but not in the quantity to support a combined drive.
Accompanying the fuel was a declaration from Hitler to begin the attack on Stalingrad by August 25 at
the latest. Hard-hit by the fuel shortage, Paulus planned a moderate assault against Stalingrads industrial
basin in the North. He would throw in just one corps against the city, with the rest of his units following
only when more fuel arrived. Lt-General Wietersheims XIV Panzer Corps with its three divisions (the
16th Panzer; 3rd and the 60th Motorized infantry Divisions), was given the difficult task of advancing
ahead, clearing the way for the main force. Once this had been accomplished, Paulus planned to release
LI Crops with three divisions to capture central Stalingrad, and XI Corps with the 100th Jger Division to
aid Weitersheim in mopping up in the north. To the south in the meantime, Hoths Fourth Army would
punch through the combined defenses of the Sixty-Fourth and Fifty-Seventh Armies to take southern
Stalingrad.

Weitersheim had his work cut out for him. Ahead lay a tortuous 30 mile journey to Stalingrad
through enemy infested steppes and fields and through temperatures reaching 104 F (40C). In an
address issued on the 19th to his top commander, Paulus detailed their mission. What Weitersheim read
was far from comforting:
The Russian enemy will defend the Stalingrad area stubbornly. He holds the high ground
west of Stalingrad and has built defensive positions there in great depth. It must be assumed

19

that he has assembled forces, including armoured brigades, ready to counter-attack, both in the
Stalingrad area and in the area north of the isthmus betweenthe Don and the Volga.
Therefore in the advance across the Don towards Stalingrad the army must reckon
with enemy resistance in front and with heavy counter-attacks against the northern flank of
ouradvance.
As soon as XIV Panzer Corps shall have advanced eastwards from the bridgehead [at
Verctyachi], LI (51st) Army Corps will become responsible for occupying the high ground
west of Stalingrad, and will temporarily establish southwesterly contact with the advancing
mobile forces of the neighboring [Fourth] army to our right. The Corps will then capture and
occupy the central and southern parts of Stalingrad. XIV Panzer Corpswill push forward,
advancing eastwardsto the Volga north of Stalingrad. It will prevent all river traffic and cut
all rail communications immediately to the north of the city. Elements of the Corps will attack
Stalingrad from the northwest and occupy the northern parts of the city. Tanks will not be used
for this purpose. In the north a covering line will be established running along the high ground
southwest of Yersovka and south of theGratshevaia stream.

At last the battle for Stalingrad had started to take shape within the misty dreams of headquarters.

STALINGRAD UNDER SIEGE

August 23 marked the official start of the battle. Two days before, Seydlitz-Kurzbachs LI Corps
had established a two-span bridgehead near the villages of Loetsjinskoi and Vertyachi, from where the
whole of the Sixth Army would launch against Stalingrad. Weitersheims XIV Corps had already smashed
through the Russian outermost perimeter and was heading for the city. Slowly, the Russians began to
awake to the threat. On the 22nd, the Russian Air Force made a rare appearance, dropping bombs on
the newly erected bridgeheads. The attempt was a complete failure; not one of the bridges was knocked
down. In desperation, the Russians brought up artillery, but German engineers had been thorough in
their work. The bridges withstood the barrage, and by nightfall, the 14th Panzer Division, brought in
from army reserve as a breakthrough force, was poised to cross over at Loetsjinskoi. That same day,
Paulus received another boost of supplies and fuel needed to continue the advance. He planned to unfurl
his units against Stalingrad, at 4.30 a.m. the next morning.

BUNDESARCHIV

TWO STARS, ONE BATTLE Paulus watches

the battle with one of his corps commander,s
Lt-General Seydlitz-Kurzbach (left). At
the later stages of the campaign, both men
would be given quasi-equal responsibility
over the affairs of the Sixth Army. Both
would also become anti-fascists.

20

BOTH PHOTOS: BUNDESARCHIV

AIR ATTACK Stukas raid

the citys factory district.

At the appointed hour, the attack began. Weitersheims 16th Panzer Division carried out blocking
maneuvers in the front of the Sixty-Second Army, to prevent the Russians from counterattacking Paulus
s infantry. By dusk, Weitersheim had successfully blocked Russian counter-assaults and by nightfall, his
tanks emerged in front of the low cliffs above the Volga. Just south of them was the enemy-held suburb
of Rynok. Dismounting from their tanks for the night; the Panzer crews watched in awe as the Luftwaffe
took over, setting Stalingrad ablaze. Six hundred attack aircraft from Fliegerkorps VIII, mainly Ju87 Stuka
dive-bombers, were active over the city that night, bombing indiscriminately over a wide area. Some
specially-designated targets were knocked out, including the water works and the telephone exchange.
The power station was also hit and would eventually be destroyed. Thousand of terror-stricken civilians
were forced out into the streets, and fled to the docks with the hope of catching a ferry out. In the open
they were easy prey for the bombs; at least 40,000 lost their lives or were wounded by the nights end. So
intense was the bombing that thirty miles away, people were reportedly able to read the newspaper by the
light thrown up by the fires.

To any German who witnessed the attack it seemed like nothing could have survived the assault.
Yet, on the morning of August 24, when the 16th Panzer rolled against Spartanovka, in the industrialized
basin, it came against stiff resistance from Russians still holding out in the rubble. To General Lopatin,
the Germans seemed to have an incredible array of men, tanks and airplanes, backed up by an impressive
logistical line. In reality, the Germans were still precariously low on supplies and Weiterheims tanks,
encountering numerous low hills and ravines, were nearly stalled.

21

22

Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

LOST ARMOR A Russian KV-1 heavy

tank from the 133rd Tank Brigade
burns at the village of Spartanovka on
August 24, after a duel with tanks from
the 16th Panzer Division. Here, the
Russians counterattacked and punched
through the German lines, getting as
far as the headquarters of the 64th
Panzergrenadier Regiment before being
stopped. On 11 September, the brigade
had a top strength of 14 KV-1s.

On August 28, the 16th Panzer ran out of fuel and was about to expend the last of its ammunition
when unexpected help arrived in the form of German trucks delivering captured American and British
military supplies destined for the Russians. It is unknown what the Germans could have done with
Allied ammunition which was of a different caliber, but with the trucks also came the 3rd Motorized
Infantry Division. Weitersheim now had all three of his divisions on the front, but a dangerous gap of
eighteen miles separated him from LI Corps. Lopatin could have attacked along this salient and driven
the Germans back, but he did not. His troops had taken heavy casualties and supplies were running
thin. To his relief, Zhukov arrived personally at the Stalingrad Front headquarters on the 29th bringing
ammunition and replacements. But the Sixty-Second Army had barely refitted when a new threat arose
in the south.

Hoths XLVIII Panzer Corps, initially contained at the town of Abganerovo (38 miles southwest
of Stalingrad), broke out of its positions on the 29th and swooped northwards at astonishing speed.
General M.S. Shumilovs Sixty-Fourth Army was completely outflanked, and desperately pulled back to
avoid being trapped. By the end of the day, Hoth had advanced 21 miles and linked up with the Sixth
Army on the River Chervienaia on the 30th. Stalingrad was in danger of being surrounded. Paulus
quickly transferred the 24th Panzer Division from the rear to Karpovka, on the railroad to Stalingrad in
anticipation of a breakout towards the city, and by the last day of August, the Russians had been squeezed
into a pocket just 18 miles deep and 34 miles wide. If Paulus had sent in LI Corps as he had planned,
the Russians might well have been routed. But he was too cautious. Concerned about Russian jabs to his
flanks, he held back for nearly two weeks.

The respite was Godsend for Zhukov. On September 3, following a request by Stalin to
counterattack, Zhukov launched the First Guards Army against Weitersheims XIV Corps. The attack was
a disappointment. The Guards failed to assemble properly and attacked the German in piecemeal fashion.
The failure convinced Lopatin that the battle had been lost and he began an unauthorized withdrawal
of his army. Yeremenko, in his headquarters on the other side of the Volga, was horrified. Lopatin was
summarily sacked, making way for Lt-General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov.

Chuikov, then a little known Red Army officer recently returned from China, would assume
command on September 12. He was the perfect man for the job. Ruggedly handsome and rough, of
peasant stock, the 42 year-old former mechanic would use the harshness of his heritage to mould the
Sixty-Second Army into a formidable fighting force. He had first gained the attention of Stalin during
the fighting at Tsaristin (Stalingrad) in 1919. Chuikov had been only nineteen years old then, but he was
already a communist party member and a keen student of military affairs. During the Second World
War, he would emerged as the outstanding Russian commander at the army level, leading his force (later

23

STAVKA ARCHIVES

renamed the 8th Guards Army) through the Ukraine and

Poland in 1944-45 before being the first general to enter
Berlin. It was an honor made even greater when Chuikov
personally accepted the surrender of the capital on 1 May
1945.

Paulus, meantime, was under tremendous strain.
He was being overwhelmed by constant reminders
from Hitler to take Stalingrad at the soonest, at least by
September 15th. In frustration, Paulus confided to his chief
of staff, Maj-General Schmidt, that the Sixth army is not
strong enough to take the city an important remark
considering that he had 100,000 men. The attack was
postponed until he could personally meet Hitler to request
reinforcements. But if things were difficult in the German
camp, it was havoc on the Russian side.

By now Stalingrad was in chaos. Civilians crowded
the ferries in order to escape the burning city. As the slow
moving ferries crossed the Volga, they came under constant
attack by German fighters and Stukas. Hundreds perished
in the swirling waters of the river. Soldiers too might have
broken from the line if it were not for Political Commissars,
under orders from Moscow to shoot deserters. But the
Commissars were themselves part of the problem, often
interfering with army orders and divisional operations
(command of a major Red army unit was shared between
an army commander and a Commissar). On September
9, Stalin decreed that Commissars would no longer have
control over Red Army forces in the field and would instead
concentrate on raising morale. It was a step in the right
direction. Already, to raise the flagging spirits of citizen
and soldier alike, Yeremenko had issued Order No .4 on
September 1.

READY DISCIPLINARIAN
Vasili
Chuikov was the perfect man to
command the Sixty-Second Army.
Initially, after taking command, he
allowed subordinates to conduct the
battle, but was quick to to identify
stalwarts and ineffectual leaders who
were promptly sacked. Although a
popular leader, he was not above
resorting to harsh methods, including
executions to maintain discipline.

Comrade fighters, commanders and political workers, heroic defenders of Stalingrad! The bitter
fighting for the city of Stalingrad has been raging for months. The Germans have lost hundreds of
tanks and planes. Hitlers brutalized hordes are advancing towards Stalingrad and the Volga over
mountains of dead bodies of their own men and officers.
Our Bolshevik Party, our nation, our great country, have given us the task not to let the
enemy reach the Volga, to defend the city of Stalingrad. The defence of Stalingrad is of decisive
importance to the whole Soviet front. Without sparing our strength and with scorn for death, we
shall defy the Germans the way to the Volga and not give up Stalingrad. Each one of us must bear
in mind that the capture of Stalingrad by the Germans and their advance to the Volga will give
our enemies new strength and weaken our own forces.
Not one step back!
The War Council expects unlimited courage, tenacity and heroism in the fight with the

24

onrushing enemy from all the

fighters, commanders and political
workers, from all the defenders of
Stalingrad. The enemy must and
will be smashed on the approaches
to Stalingrad. Forward against the
enemy! Up into the unremitting
battle, comrades, for Stalingrad, for
our great country!
Death to the German invader!

But there was still much work to
be done. Most worrying of all for Stalin
was the relentless progress of Hoths
Panzers. On September 10, the right
wing of Hoths pincer reached the Volga.
The last link in the wire had been made.
On the following day, Paulus made his
fateful journey to meet the Fuhrer at
his headquarters in Vinnitsa. Far from
receiving the promise of reinforcements,
Paulus attracted Hitlers ire upon
learning that the Sixth Army was still
bivouacked in its positions around the
city. Paulus returned to his headquarters
with orders to launch the attack on
the next morning, September 13. As
this was going on, on the other side of
the Volga, Yeremenko and his political
counterpart, Chief Commissar LtGeneral Nikita Khrushchev (the future
Soviet leader) received Lt-General Vasili
Chuikov who had come to take up his new command. Chuikov told Yeremenko: We shall hold the city
or die here. He was good as his word.

In Moscow with Stalin, Georgi Zhukov detailed his long term plans for Stalingrad. Like masterful
chess players, the Russians were already two steps ahead of their opponents. Zhukov had coldly evolved
a strategy in which Stalingrad became the bait of a mighty trap. To keep the Germans hemmed in, the
city would be reinforced but only just enough to keep the defenders fighting (Zhukov needed every
man he could get to strengthen his trapping armies). Once these armies were ready on the northern
and southeastern flanks of the frontline, Zhukov would spring his trap. In his own words: As long
as an active defense can be maintained in the city, large reserve forces can be massed tomount a
counteroffensive against the German flank, cutting the umbilical cord of supplies and reinforcements;
encircling the Germans.

Unaware of what had been planned for them, the Sixth Army rolled towards the city. On
September 14, Pauluss infantry, moving in massive file, five miles wide, railroaded their way through
Gumrak on the outskirts of Stalingrad. This small town, with its important airfield and rail center fell

25

COMBAT FORCES
In this astonishing
photograph, Russian
infantry oppose an
incoming German
pincer of two PzIIIs
accompanied by
Panzergrenadiers.

26

STAVKA ARCHIVES

quickly and the Germans marched on Stalingrads central sector. The predominant defensive feature in
this area was Mamayev Kurgan (Hill 102 on German maps), where Chuikovs first headquarters was
situated. Watching the approaching Germans with field glasses, Chuikovs heart filled with dread. He had
known the Germans before, as friends, while serving as a corps commander during the Russo-Germanic
invasion of Poland in 1939. This time they were the enemy.

In the lead were three of Paulus infantry divisions and four of Hoths Panzer divisions 200,000
men, 2,200 guns and mortars and almost 500 tanks. Against this armada, Chuikovs motley army had just
50,000 men, in poor morale, and with almost no tanks. His three tank brigades (each with an established
strength of 65-80 tanks) had been wracked by combat losses; one brigade had been reduced to a single
vehicle.

Advancing behind their artillery and Stukas, the Germans pushed forward. In the north, the 100th
Jger Division held a salient south of Orlovka. Fighting was heavy everywhere. In the south, Hoths 24th
Panzer Division bludgeoned its way towards Red Square and Train Station No. 1, while the 94th Infantry
and 29th Motorized Division advanced on Train Station No. 2. Further down, a second echelon of the 24th
Panzer Division moved towards the mining suburb of Yelshanka.

The vicious street fighting that erupted proved far worse than anything the Germans had
encountered before. Compared to the fighting here, the battle for Rostov had almost been a walk in the
park. Mamayev Kurgan in particular, became the setting for bitter fighting between German and Russian
infantry, and changed hands constantly. Bitter fighting eventually forced the Russians back until they
hung precariously to a strip of land by the river, pushed to the brink of defeat by the appearance of the
Romanian Third Army on the 15th. Only the prompt arrival of the 10,000-strong 13th Guards Division
by ferry that morning saved the city from collapse. Guards divisions were regular Red Army units that
had earned their Guards titles in combat and being highly-experienced units, were often better equipped
and contained a larger compliment of men. As a further incentive, Guardsmen also enjoyed higher rates
of pay. By the end of the day, the division had suffered 30 percent casualties. By day two, the unit had been
battered as a fighting force and was forced back from Train Station No. 1 by the 24th Panzer Division. Still,
in an incredible feat of arms, tinged by desperation, the Guardsmen, led by their redoubtable commander,

COURTESY OF ZA RODINU/FLICKR

Major-General Aleksander Rodimstev, re-took Mamayev Hill

on the 16th, effectively blocking further thrusts into central
Stalingrad. The cost was heavy. By the time the battle ended,
only 320 Guardsmen were still alive. Chuikov was grateful.
He would later write in his memories: had it not been for
Rodimtsevs division the city would have fallen into enemy
hands approximately in the middle of September.

On the 18th, the fighting switched to the Grain
elevator a squat, ugly building with a storage pillar, located
opposite Train Station No. 2. The fighting here exemplified
the dogged courage of the Russians. The Germans held the
bottom floors while the Guardsmen held the top, and the
battle was waged in the only place where it could be: the
stairs. Flamethrowers, sub-machine guns and grenades
became the weapons of choice, with each side pouring a hail
of lead and fire up and down the stairs in an effort to drive
the other out. One of the Russians later recalled: We sensed
and heard the enemy soldiers breathing and footsteps, but
we could not see them in the smoke. We fired at smoke.

Zhukov, in an effort to relieve the pressure on the
Stalingraders, launched another attack in the north on
Paulus VIII Corps. His intelligence officer had pointed
out what appeared to be a weakness in the German lines
and Zhukov threw in the weight of his First Guards Army.
Unfortunately what the Russians had expected to be a chink
in the enemys lines was only a forward position and soon
the attacking Russians found themselves deep in enemy lines,
pressed in by strong German forces on all sides. By the 19th,
the counter-attack had petered out. Thousands of Red Army
soldiers had lost their lives, but they had succeeded in easing
some of the pressure off Chuikov.

GUARDS
LEGEND
Aleksander
Rodimstev outside his command
bunker in the city. An intellectual and
a veteran of the Spanish Civil War
where he first won the coveted award of
Hero of the Soviet Union, Rodimstev
brilliantly conducted the operations of
the 13th Guards Division at Stalingrad,
winning his second Hero of the Soviet
Union award there. After the battle, he
became a corps commander.

Central MusEum of the Armed forces

HOUSE-TO-HOUSE
FIGHTING A Guards
flamethrower team
assaults a German position
in the ruined nest of
a collapsed building.
Note that the men are
wearing SN-42 bulletproof armor. Unlike the
popular image of the
Red Army unanimously
using men as cannon
fodder, great care was
actually taken to protect
special units and troops.

27

RATTENKREIG

The brutal street fighting evolved its own tactics. The Russians became unbeaten masters in this
sort of fighting, using rubble and broken buildings to their advantage. They evolved the concept of killing
fields, in which broken and wrecked buildings, covered by machine guns and snipers, became sites for
hidden minefields through which only the Russians knew their way. Red Army soldiers also became
adept in the art of silent movement and killing, using knives, cloth-covered boots to deaden noise and
sharpened shovels to cleave the skulls of their enemy. Special bands of storm squads were formed,
men unanimously armed with submachine guns and explosives, who then infiltrated the lines in small
groups. The Germans, who were relative novices at this sort of urban combat, found that they had to
adapt rapidly. Special Kampfgruppen (battlegroups) of specialists came into existence, also equipped with
automatic weapons and grenades, and for a time, the Germans even brought in specially trained Police
squads to match the Russians in this sort of the fighting.

On the 21st, the Grain elevator finally fell to the Germans. Using tank support and heavy
weapons, German troops clawed their way to the top floors to find only 30 Guardsmen and 18 Soviet
Marines alive. One Russian survivor later wrote: ...We heard the ominous sounds of tanks. From behind
a neighboring building, stocky German tanks began to crawl out. This clearly was the end. We said
goodbye to one another. With a dagger, I scratched on a brick wall: Rodimstevs guardsmen fought and
died for their country here. The tanks pushed the walls of [the grain elevator] down.

That night five other Guardsmen and myself, all wounded, escaped. We staggered toward the
Volga but ran into a patrol which fired flares. Knifing a German guard got us away unmolested. Later we
encountered another patrol and I silently knifed a German. We crossed the railroad line, went through a
minefield and reached the Volga. We built a raft from pieces of wood from the wreckage of a building. We
went into the river drifting for days until we were rescued.

With the collapse of resistance at the Grain elevator, Paulus believed the fighting in the city would
collapse. Even Hitler in far-away Vinnitsa declared that the battle of Stalingrad was a good as finished.
They were both mistaken. True, Germans troops controlled most of Southern Stalingrad, including the
city center, but Chuikovs men were still in force in the north.

BUNDESARCHIV

GRIM COMBAT
An officer (right)
keeps watch as his
sergeant extols the
rest of the squad to
move up. Both men
are armed with the
MP.40 submachine
gun, as are likely
the squad. The
Germans quickly
realized that
automatic weapons
and explosives were
the best arms for
street fighting.

28

29

CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARMED FORCES

On the 23rd, just as the Germans
seemed poised to push on and capture
the docks and the main ferry landings, the
2,000-strong 284th (Siberian) Division, led
by Lt-Colonel Nikolai Batyuk, landed near
the main docks to reinforce the defenders.
Despite the gallantry of the Siberians, the
German took the area around the docks.
Chuikovs army was now split in two. His
northern forces were still intact, but his
southern remnants were compressed into
a one-mile pocket on the other side of the
docks. A greater blow for Chuikov was
enemy command over the ferry landings.
Replacements could now only arrive by
small boats if they first survived the gauntlet
of Stukas marauding over the Volga. Despite
the odds stacked against river crossings,
General F.N. Smekhotorovs 193rd Division
landed between 27-28 September in the
factory district, while General S.S. Gurievs
39th Guards Division and General L.N.
Gurtievs 308th Division arrived on 1
October to defend the Barrikady ordnance
and the Red October steel factories.

Hitler, irate at the delay, demanded
to know why the Sixth Army still had not
PROLETARIAT ARCHITECTURE The utilitarian
taken the city. Paulus replied that the Sixth
Grain elevator became a major objective for the
Army was too battle-weary. At this moment,
Germans who finally captured it on September 21. In
General Halder, Hitlers Chief of Staff,
this photograph, German troops are shown taking a
decided to offer his own view of the matter
breather from combat, as is the crew of a PzIII.
saying that if Hitler had only refrained from
his Caucasus adventure there would have
been reinforcements available for Stalingrad. Hitler was furious at this insubordination. Halder had to go.
On this issue, Hitler was unmovable.

Officially, Halder was removed on September 24 because he was no longer equal to the mental
demands of his positions. Privately, Hitler told him, You and I have been suffering from nerves. Half of
my nervous exhaustion is due to you. It is not worth it to go on. Halders replacement was General Kurt
Zeitzler, who was believed to be a more pliable sort. Instead, the bald, clerkish-looking Zeitzler would
grow to protest Hitlers conduct of the war as Halder had done.

Also sacked was Lt-General Weitersheim after he had complained once too often of the heavy
attrition suffered by his corps. His command was taken over by one of Hitlers favorite Generals, LtGeneral Hans Hube, formerly of the 14th Panzer Division. By this time, Paulus had lost nearly 40,000
soldiers in the fighting and badly needed replacements. One bright mark was the hoisting of the swastika
over government buildings overlooking Red Square. But German soldiers despaired of ever reaching
their objectives. All day they fought to clear a block only to have the Russians infiltrate in by night,
forcing them to re-take it again. As one German officer wrote: We would spend the whole day clearing a

STAVKA ARCHIVES

street from end to end. But at dawn the Russians would start firing from their old positions They had
knocked down walls between the garrets and the attics, and during the night would run back like rats in
the rafters. The Germans soon coined a term for the fighting in the city: Rattenkrieg (War of the Rats)

The Luftwaffe set upon anything moving in the northern Russian zone. On the 27th, an oil
reservoir was hit by German bombs, giving the Russians a much-needed respite from the Stukas when
the smoke blanketed the city. But when one threat vanished, another took its place. German troops,
backed by tanks, assaulted the sprawling Red October Factory on the 29th. By this time, the Russians
on Mamayev Kurgan were also in danger of being ejected from their positions. Things were grim for
Chuikov. Unaware of Zhukovs long-term plans, he wondered why Stavka did not reinforce his army
with overwhelming force. By the end of September, he had lost 80,000 dead and wounded. Suffering
from exhaustion, Chuikov also discovered that he was affected by a severe eczema in his hands, brought
on by nerves. Paulus was in no better shape. He had developed a nervous tic around the left eye. He
had expected the city to be his by now, instead the Russians held out in every hole and behind every
pile of rubble. Even the presence of German troops near the ferry landings had not weakened Russian
resistance.

By night, while the Luftwaffe slept, the Russians poured a mass of supplies and men into the city
and took out the wounded and civilians using a large flotilla of ferries, tugboats, barges and steamers. Too
often, when the battle reached frenzied heights, these vessels and their crews made the dangerous journey
by day.

Replacements often made the journey quaking with fear. Most hardly felt the boat beneath their
feet as it slowly chugged towards the embattled city. One solider vividly described his first view of city:
As you get close to Stalingrad, you begin to realize that this is no ordinary sector of the front and what
you are going to see here has never been seen before, or described in any book about war. The road [to
the Volga] itself is a reminder of this. The walls of the old wooden cottages are covered with inscriptions,
in huge letters reaching from the eaves to the ground:

Hold Stalingrad!

CITY ON FIRE Stalingrad as it appeared to the troops on the other side of the Volga.

30


There it was, in front of us. You could not see the town, only the fire. The houses, the streets
seemed to float on a slow flame. Against the purple background of the sky you saw the skeletons of
buildings, the formless mass of crumbling walls and the fiery yellow slits of doors and windows. It does
not seem as if anything can be alive there. But up, out of the roaring flames, shoot green, red and white
rockets; tracer bullets tear into the sky, the blue beams of German and Soviet searchlights grope about
and then the bright sheaves of machine-gun bursts blaze out suddenly there are men there fighting.

As the days passed; the stories of courage and sacrifice in Stalingrad multiplied. The legend of
the ferryman was a story that few Russians could forget. The ferryman was an old anonymous old soul
who routinely made the voyage across the Volga with replacements. One night in October the ferry was
caught in a Luftwaffe attack and hit by a bomb. In terror, all hands fled the sinking vessel for the graygreen waters of the Volga. A lieutenant, resplendent in his heavy army overcoat, was being pulled under
the water when the ferryman came to his rescue. The old man took off his life jacket and gave it to the
officer.

Take it! he growled.

The young lieutenant brushed him aside.

Fool! cried the old man. Ive lost an arm. Im old and cant be of any use. But you can fight.
Take the jacket! Before the younger man could object, the ferryman had thrust the life jacket into his
arms and pushed away into the night.

Another celebrated story was the story of Pavlovs House.
Following the destruction of their division by German tanks, the
survivors of the 13th Guards Division, forced into groups, still clung
on to several pockets in central Stalingrad. In one such pocket,

STAVKA ARCHIVES

RIGHT: The divisional commander, Nikolai

Batyuk, nicknamed Bullet-proof Batyuk
for the apparently charmed life he led on the
frontline. He died of a heart attack in 1943
and was buried at Mamayev Kurgan where
his division had fought so valiantly.

RGAKFD ARCHIVES, Karasnogorsk

THE SIBERIANS
ARRIVE Men of
the 284th Division
come ashore at the
main landing stage
between September
24-25. Prohibited
from bringing
their heavy
weapons to avoid
congestion in the
city, the divisions
heavy weapons
compliment
began using
light AA guns.

31

HOUSE & PAVLOV: CENTRAL

MUSEUM OF THE ARMED FORCES

STRONGHOLD Pavlovs House as it stood after the battle. Yacov Pavlov

(right) became a Hero of the Soviet Union and was also awarded the
Order of Lenin for his outstanding work.
members of the 42nd Guards Regiment were ordered to seize a tactically
important building dominating 9th January Square, just 300 yards off the
Volga. For some reason, although the Germans occupied several nearby
structures, they had neglected this particular building, a large four-storied
apartment block known before the war as No. 4, The House of Soviets.
A single machine-gun platoon commanded by Lt I.F. Afanasyev was
given the job of securing the apartments. No easy task. The approaches
ran through the open ground around the square. But occupation of the
building would afford Russian forces a valuable defense post.

But early on, the Russians suffered a setback when Afanasyev was
badly wounded and unable to continue with the operation. His next in
command, Sergeant Yacov F. Pavlov took command, and led the platoon
forward. Moving by night on September 26, the Russians approached the
square. Ahead lay the tall, elegant whitewashed building, blasted and torn
by small arms and heavy fire. Initially, Pavlov and three men armed with
sub-machine guns crept forward to reconnoiter the area. All was quiet and
they moved in. The building was in near shambles. Part of the structure
had collapsed on one side, probably during a German air raid; all the
windows were blow out and some of the internal walls had been punched
in. But Pavlovs men found civilians living there.

The sergeant prepared his men for combat. His men knocked firing
ports through the walls, positioned machine guns and anti-tank rifles, and
waited for daylight. On the following morning, after a smattering of Soviet

32

THE ORDER OF
LENIN

BUNDESARCHIV

gunfire ruined their breakfast the Germans were stunned to discover the presence of a Red Army unit
just yards away. Pavlov and his group, reinforced by replacements and other Guardsmen from time and
time, held on for the next 58 days against repeated armored and infantry attacks. Pavlov House became
thorn in Hoths side. Whenever he sent his Panzers to deal with the Russians; they fled to the basement
to snipe with anti-tank rifles. The Germans tried many tactics to dislodge the Russians, including
sending in combat groups equipped completely with automatic weapons. Later, snipers were used, but
their employment backfired when the Russians brought in their own snipers. One soldier, Alexandrov I.
Chehov (eventually to become most famous sniper of the 13th Guards), killed 12 Germans while staying
at the house.

In one memorable battle on October 20, the house was attacked four Panzers accompanied by
several platoons of German infantry. Within the house were a mere handful of Russians. Still, the
Guardsmen managed to knock out one tank and scattered the infantry with machine-gun fire. The
Germans withdrew.

Soon Pavlovs house had become a pocket of its own. The Russians even laid a minefield and
threw barbed-wire around its perimeter. A 45mm anti-tank cannon was brought it from somewhere and
mortars were deployed on the roof. The Russians held on until November 25. By then a wounded Pavlov
and some of the original members had been relieved by fresh troops. Nevertheless, the houses unofficial
nickname stuck, even appearing so on divisional and army maps. Pavlov went on to be made a Hero of
the Soviet Union and after the war became the Archimandrite Kyrill at the Sergievo monastery, proving
immensely popular there.

For Paulus, the prospect of breaking into the Russian sector was growing distant by the days. He
placed his last hopes on a major push towards the factories, scheduled for the first week of October.

VETERAN TROOPS A seasoned German NCO directs his men. He wears the Iron Cross First Class
on his left tunic pocket with the Combat Assault Badge below, near the field glasses. One of the men
on his right has armed himself with the Russian PPsh41 submachinegun which German soldiers
believed superior to their own MP.40 machine-pistol. Although it had a tremendous rate of fire, the
PPsh also had extremely poor penetration.

33

PUSHING THE SOVIETS BACK

The preliminary phase of Paulus attack began on the first day of October. The XIV Panzer Corps,
under Hubes command drove southwards towards to cut off the industrial suburb of Orlovka from the
rest of the Russian-held zone. In a forewarning of what was the come, a trapped Russian battalion held
out for nearly five days, fighting against overwhelming odds. Three days later, Paulus final offensive
began. Acknowledging repeated pleas for reinforcements, Hitler had finally sent help by positioning the
V Romanian Corps north of the city. If necessary, the Corps ineffective 37 mm gun-armed tanks were at
least thought be suitable for infantry support in Stalingrad.

Chuikov had also been reinforced. On October 2, the paratroopers of the deceptively-termed 37th
Naval Guards Division had arrived by boats to take up positions in front of the factories, although the
divisions heavy equipment and tanks were still on the other side of the Volga being too heavy to be
ferried over. In any case, the Guards reinforced with armor built at the tractor Factory.

As Paulus made last minute preparations, the Luftwaffe blazed a trail for him. On the 3rd,
German bombers destroyed an oil reservoir in the north, just meters from Chuikovs headquarters. Then
on the 4th, the full force of Paulus assault went into action against the Tractor Factory, the Barricades
plant and the Red October works. The advance was dramatic. A German officer later recalled that
tanks clambered over heaps of mountains or rubble and scrapfiring at point-blank range into rubblefilled streets and narrow factory courtyards. All day, the Germans struggled to make progress against
determined Russian defenders. Even in far-away England, the momentous significance of the battle
became clear. Commenting for the BBC was George Orwell, the famous writer:

The battle for Stalingrad continues. Since last week the Germans have made a little progress
in their direct attacks on the city and savage house-to-house fighting is still going on. It is still
uncertain whether or not Stalingrad can hold
out. In a recent speech the notorious Ribbentrop
[Germanys
foreign
minister],
one-time
ambassador to Britain and signatory to the RussoGerman pact, was allowed to state that Stalingrad
would soon be in German hands. Hitler made the
same boast in his speech, which was broadcast on
September 10th.
Elsewhere, however, there has been a marked
note of pessimism in German pronouncements and
a constant emphasis on the need for the German
BRITISH BROADCASTING COMPANY

ANTI-TOTALITARIAN The British writer George

Orwell, like many Soviet commanders at Stalingrad,
was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War where his
initial flirtations with Communism turned sour.
During the Second World War, he frequently hosted
programs for the British Broadcasting Company
(BBC) and carefully watched events in Nazi Germany
and the Soviet Union. His condemnation of
totalitarian regimes reached its allegorical peak with
the publication of Animal House in August 1945.

34

people to prepare themselves for a hard winter and an indefinite continuation of the war. Hitlers
latest speech was broadcast on September 30. Although it mostly consisted of wild boasting and
threats, it made a surprising contrast with the speeches of a year ago. Gone were the promises
of an early victory, and gone also the claims made more than a year ago, to have annihilated the
Russian armies. Instead all the emphasis was on Germanys ability to withstand a long war. Here
for example are some of Hitlers earlier broadcast statements: On the 3rd September 1941: Russia
is already broken and will never rise again. On the third of October 1941: The Russians have lost
at least 8 to 10 million men. No army can recover from such losses. He also boasted at the same
time of the imminent fall of Moscow. That was a year ago and now, on 30th September, the final
boast upon which Hitler ended his speech was: Germany will never capitulate. It seems strange
to look back and remember how short a while ago the Germans were declaring not that they
would ever capitulate but that they would make everyone else capitulate.

At night of the 4th, under the blanket of dark, the 84th Tank Brigade also slipped over into
Stalingrad. The brigades T-34s went into action against the advancing Germans but succeeded in only
hindering the German onslaught. By October 6, Paulus had lost of equivalent of four infantry battalions
in the fighting and sixteen Panzers, but his troops continued fighting. On the 7th, a bathhouse near
the Red October factory fell to German troops, but it had been barely occupied when the Russians
counterattacked, capturing and re-capturing it five times before finally being driven out. By the 13th,
the Germans were breathing on the
doors of the Barrikady factory and the
Red October plant. Thankfully, the
Tractor Factory was un-threatened for
the moment. Russians workers, toiling
around the clock, rolled tank after tank
off the assembly. Determined to finish off
this last menace, Paulus sent in the 305th
German Infantry Division with tanks
from the 16th and 24th Panzer divisions.
The fighting was ferocious.

BOTH PHOTOS: BUNDESARCHIV

ABOVE A brand new

T-34-76, presumably
manufactured at
the Tractor factory,
knocked out on
October 8.
RIGHT: German
Stukas attack
Stalingrad on October
2. Smoke is seen
pouring out of oil
reserves near the
Tractor Factory.

35


On the morning of October 14, at 6 a.m., the German attack resumed. Every serviceable Stuka
dive-bomber in General Wolfram von Richthofens Fourth Air Fleet took off to attack the Russians.
The sky became dark with them. The Russians opened up as the planes came over, with every flak gun
firing, bombs roaring down- in the words of a German officer in the 389th Infantry Division -aircraft
crashing, an enormous piece of theatre which we followed with very mixed feelings in our trenches. In
all, about 2,000 Luftwaffe sorties hit the besieged Russian defensive position moments. Then the panzers
attacked.

Major-General Victor Zholudevs defending 37th Naval Guards Division was battered to a
pulp; 5,000 of its 8,000 soldiers were killed or incapacitated. Zholudev almost became one of the
casualties; buried alive in his bunker by an explosion. Some of his men dug him out and carried him
to army headquarters. The remaining troops of the division could barely offer token resistance to the
advancing Germans. Then what Chuikov had feared, happened. Two hundred German tanks shattered
the forward Russian perimeter, and rolled into the factory. Ignoring bullets, the workers stayed at their
posts, finishing the last batch of T-34s before the driving them into battle. Others dropped tools and
seized rifles women and boys among them. While the German 305th Division fought it out with the
defenders, the 24th Panzer Division outflanked the factory to appear in front of the Volga.

On the next day, October 15, the Sixth Army sent the signal that The major part of the tractor
works is in our hands. There are only some pockets of resistance left behind on our front. The 305th
Infantry Division continued to force the harried Russians across the railway lines, back to the brickworks.
That night, the 14th Panzer Divisions 103rd Panzergrenadier Regiment pushed on to reach the oil
tanks on the banks of the Volga, while under constant fire from nearby Russians firing from trenches
and gullies. They overran Sixty-Second Armys old headquarters nearby but Chuikov had already moved
because communications had been bad at the location.

Stories of heroism rose from the Russian side. The Russian 84th Tank Brigade, which had held its
position against overwhelming odds, reported that it had destroyed 30 heavy and medium German tanks
for the loss of eighteen of their own. Another unit, the battery of a light artillery regiment was cut off and

Central Museum of the Armed forces

IMMACULATE
TROOPS Men from
the 37th Guards
Division in action in
the Factory district.
Despite the intensity
of combat, the division
forged a reputation
for cleanliness. Most
accounts portray
the men as being
disciplined, tough
soldiers, always cleanshaven and their kit
always in tidy order.
On 14 October, the
division met its
match in the form
of the 14th Panzer
Division and suffered
terrific casualties.

36

under siege. The defenders sent out a message to headquarters: Guns destroyed. Battery surrounded. We
fight on and will not surrender. Best regards to everyone.

Taking up rifles, grenades and sub-machine guns, the gunners now took on the Germans and
miraculously restored the Russian lines. One of the units men, a Commissar by the name of Babachenko
was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. Despite the strength of these feats, the situation was dire. In the six
days from October 14, the Luftwaffe carried out a systematic program to reduce the Russian perimeter.
Troops-carrying boats and ferries crossing the river were strafed and bombed, and Chuikovs forward
positions repeatedly hammered with air strikes.
The political department of the Stalingrad Front
sent a desperate message to Moscow requesting fighter
support, but this point the Soviet Eighth Air Army
had fewer than 200 planes of all types and only two
dozen fighters. But the Luftwaffe found itself in awe of
continued resistance on the ground despite the strength
of German air power. I cannot understand, one flier
wrote. How men can survive such a Hell? Yet the
Russians sit tight in the ruins, and holes and cellars, and
a chaos of steel skeletons which used to be factories.
By nightfall on the 15th, Chuikovs headquarters
had been inundated with requests from the 112th Rifle
Division and 115th Special Brigade for permission to
withdraw across the river. Both units had been holding
the line near the stadium and the Tractor Factory and
both now reported that their regiments had been
destroyed. Chuikov sent Colonel Kamynin from his
staff to check the state of the units only to find that the
112th Division still had 598 men left while the 115th

BUNDESARCHIV

ABOVE The
positions of the ProGerman Croatian
Regiment which had
been charged with
the defense of the
Red October factory,
dated October 24
a page from the
commanders diary.
RIGHT Two
Croats shelter in a
dugout outside the
Tractor Factory.

37

Central Museum of the Armed forces

SPECIAL WORKERS
Volunteers from the
Stalingrad workforce
who were not vitally
important to the arms
industry were formed
into Special Brigades.
Here one such set of
volunteers receives
instruction of how to
use a Mosin-Nagant
Rifle, the standard
Red Army Rifle. But
training was poor
and the quantities
of arms limited, and
the brigades proved
notoriously unreliable.
Brigade had 890 men. The divisions senior commissar, instead of rallying the defenders, had hid in his
bunker all day coming out only to implore his commander to withdraw across the Volga. Most of the
senior commanders and commissars from both units were later court-martialed by Chuikov. Their fate,
although unknown, was undoubtedly grim.

With the Luftwaffe dominating the river, supplies began to run low. Alarmed, Stalin finally
ordered the Russian Air Force to drop supplies to the embattled defenders and attempt to gain air
superiority. The arrival of the Russian planes on the 21st caught the Germans by surprise. Low-flying
attack aircraft and bombers shot up German convoys and frontline positions as fighters attempted to
hold back the Luftwaffe. German morale took a setback as Chuikov learned from captured prisoners.
Nevertheless, by the 23rd, Soviet resistance at the Tractor factory had been crushed and most of the
Barricades Plant had fallen to the Germans.

The Russians still stubbornly held on to the Red October Steel works, but fierce-fights emerged
between German and Russian infantry holding opposite ends of the foundry. But the entire line was
tenuous and in danger of snapping. Some of the militia units were especially fragile. On the night of
October 25, the 124th Special Brigade, formerly workers of the Stalingrad Tractor Works decided to
defect to the Germans. This decision was almost unanimous except for one man, a sentry who thought
the idea ludicrous. Threatened into the join the movement, he pretended a problem with a foot cloth,
lagged behind and escaped under fire only to be court-martialled by the Russians for failing to take
decisive measures to inform his commanders of the forthcoming crime and preventing the traitors from
deserting.

But if Chuikov faced grave issues with his troops, Paulus faced a jarring issues with numbers.
Incessant close combat was consuming his infantry at a rate of a division every five days. But he decided
to throw in his reserves to overrun the last enemy remnants at the Barricades Plant. The 100th Jger
Division was given the task but a fatalistic incident of friendly fire destroyed all hopes for success
when air-support Stukas mistakenly dropped their bombs on the Germans below. Undaunted, Paulus
tried again on the following day, October 26. This time, artillery, substituted in place of the Luftwaffe,
pummeled the Russian lines for half an hour. The approaches to the factory became a moonscape of nomans land. German troops gingerly advanced through dazed pocket of Russians to seize the factory.

38

RIGHT A long-barrelled PzIVF2 trundles past a

group of German infantry waiting in a ditch, most
likely dug by Stalingrad civilians that summer. The
PzIVF2s 75mm long cannon gave the Germans a
valuable weapon against the T-34.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Central Museum of the Armed forces

BELOW A Red Army trooper bandages a

wounded comrade as other Red Army men
assault a German position nearby.

The fall of the Barricades also imperiled a nearby emergency ferry wharf, established by the Russians
after the main docks in the south came under siege. The Jgers were overjoyed, certain that the battle for
Stalingrad was reaching its end. Even Paulus enthusiastically radioed Hitler on the 25th that he expected
to completely capture Stalingrad, at least by November 10.

Paulus had good reason for such cheer. Chuikovs troops had been compressed into slim pockets
along the low cliffs bordering the Volga; their largest pocket was an enclave (two miles deep and 3
miles wide at its longest along the river) around the Lazur chemical works. But all was not at a loss
for the Russians. Incredibly, a cut-off Red Army unit (the Siberians of the 284th Division) held on to
a few buildings atop Mamayev Hill against overwhelming odds. Even better for Chuikov, he was being
reinforced. Before dawn on the 27th, the Soviet 45th Rifle Division made its way towards the factories to
join other Russian forces desperately hoping to hold their positions.

The Germans tore a gaping hole through the right flank of the 347th Rifle Regiment and reached
the eastern part of Mezenskaia and Tuvinskaia Streets. The regiments parent division, the 308th Rifles,
fought on, under orders from headquarters. By the end of the day, only 30 men remained within the
entirety of the 347th Regiment, while its sister regiment, the 339th, had only 53 men. The 45th Rifles,
who had moved to reinforce the 193rd Rifle Division on Mashinnaia, Matrosskaia and Malaia Streets
had arrived with 1,588 men.6 The Germans attacked it in force. By 10:30 that morning, two battalions
of German infantry with seven tanks had attempted to batter their way towards the Smokestack while
another battlegroup of a battalion and 12 tanks thrust towards the Russians along Tsentralnaia Street,
capturing the northwest section of the Red October factory. By the days end, the inexperienced division,
outflanked from the left, had lost 70 percent of its troops.

By the 29th, the Germans controlled 95 percent of the city but their offensive was running out of
6

Its armaments amounted to 1,127 rifles, 11 heavy machine guns, 42 sub-machine guns, and 36 anti-tank rifles.

39

40

STAVKA ARCHIVES

LITTLE KATES The launch of a battery of Katyusha rockets was a tremendous sight as evinced
by this photograph. Despite the relative inaccuracy of the weapon, it could be used to bombard a
large sweep of enemy-held territory.
steam. The Russian autumn rains had come on schedule hindering supply columns in the rear, and to
make matters worse, the rain had turned to snow from the 19th. A greater headache was the discovery of
the Russian Sixty-Fifth Army crossing the Volga to the south of Stalingrad to become part of Zhukovs
bait. By mid-November, Zhukov had assembled 1,015,219 men on the western side of the Volga; he also
had 6,582 artillery pieces, 12,976 mortars, 1,041 anti-aircraft guns, 3,070 tanks, 381 armored cars and
1100 planes. Yeremenkos Stalingrad Front had swollen to five armies,7 accounting for 258,638 men, 5,079
guns and 621 tanks. By November 2, Pauluss depleted nine infantry divisions faced sixteen Russian ones,
although not by much (as a typical Russian infantry division was equivalent to half a German division).

Back in the city, the last attack by the German 79th Division against the Red October Factory
found itself under heavy artillery fire from Soviet batteries positioned on the other side of the Volga and
fell apart. The 94th Division, fighting in the Spartanovka sector was also forced into the defensive after a
period of fierce fighting. The Russians noted the change.

In the last two days, an officer wrote Moscow on November 6, the enemy has been changing
his tactics. Probably because of big losses over the last three weeks, they have stopped using large
formations. This was a discerning observation. Frustrated by increasingly debilitating artillery
bombardments, the Germans had organized into small forces to conduct a reconnaissance in force to
probe for weak points between the Soviet regiments. Almost all of these small groups were forced out of
cover and bombarded by artillery, called in by Soviet observers on the front line.

On November 3, the first batch of Red Army officers (from Generals Rokossovskys Don Front
and Vatutins South-East Front) were briefed on Zhukovs impending, ultra-secret counteroffensive,
codenamed Uranus. The operation would launch on November 19, and in keeping with its name,
would eclipse the Sixth Army.
7

62d, 64th, 57th, 51st and 28th Armies.

41


As Russian hopes sprung anew, German spirits ebbed. The Sixth Army was suffering grave
privations. Food and ammunition was running thin, and unlike the Russians, they had no hope of
reinforcements. By some marvel, Hitler released the 14th Panzer division to the Sixth Army, allowing
Paulus to resume his assault. He also sent five battalions of combat engineers8, experts at demolition,
by air on November 6. Commanded by Colonel Herbert Solle, the pioneers were ordered to finish off
the last Russian pockets of resistance in and around the factories. The Barrikady Factory was a special
nuisance for the Germans, as groups of Russians had managed to infiltrate in to take up positions around
key locations.

Apart from the factories, the engineers were also given special instructions to take the
Commissars House, and the Pharmacy, dominating the cliffs over the Volga. Further, Paulus split his
infantry divisions into small battlegroups to secure the area in between the factories. The assault was to
launch at 9 a.m. on November 9. That same day, winter chills arrived and the temperature plummeted to
-4 F (-18 C.) The ices floes on the Volga crashed into each other, grinding with a terrible noise, which
sounded to one Russian writer, Vasily Grossman, like shifting sandsan eerie sound for the soldiers in
the city.

Afraid that the Germans would use the frozen river to outflank Chuikovs men and come up on
their rear, Russian artillery batteries concentrated their guns on the crossing routes, blasting both enemy
troops and Russian boats in the same go. On one instance, a steamer from the Volga flotilla, carrying guns
and ammunition was struck and sank in shallow water. As the shelling continued, another Russian boat
pulled up alongside to save the precious arms.

In the city, Pauluss advance initially went well. The two buildings fell and the Russians were ejected
from the Barrikady. But Chuikov was determined to hold until the end. Dug in along the narrow corridor,
8

The 50th, 162nd, 294th, 336th and 389th Pioneer Bns

42

Novosty Press Agency

Central Museum of the Armed forces

STRANGE WEAPONS (Above) A

PTRS anti-tank rifle being used as
an anti-aircraft weapon. A Russian
crew claimed to have shot down
three Stukas with one. (Right) An
M1931 203mm Howitzer of the
Red Army. The crude finish belies
the potency of this weapon which
was used to reduce
German
strongpoints. It fired a 217lb shell.

on the edge of the low-cliffs bordering the Volga, his men had set up camp in nearby caves and assembled
an arms reserve. Chuikov himself lived the life of troglodyte, spending the hours with his staff deep in a
yawning cave. Here the Sixty-Second Army prepared to fight to the death.

Just feet away, men fought and bled on the pristine white-clad earth. A company from the 347th
Rifle Regiment, entrenched only 200 yards from the Volga, had only nine men left when it was attacked
on November 6 and overrun. Its commander, Lt. Andreev, organized the survivors and taking on submachine guns, rallied them into a counterattack just as a group of reinforcements arrived. Together, they
cut off the German advance and secured the Sixty-Second Armys northern crossing point.

On the 11th, Paulus played his final card. The equivalent of seven infantry divisions9 advanced on a
three-mile front on the Barricades Factory. The battle raged for five hours. Attacking Stukas knocked down
the factor chimney with bombs, sending up a spectacular cloud of dust, but that would prove the limit of
the Luftwaffes achievement on that day. On Mamayev Hill, Lt-Colonel Batyuks 284th Siberian Division
clung to their defensive posts. A fierce German attack by the 305th Division towards the Lazur Chemical
factory thrust through their lines, and several key buildings fell. Unperturbed, the Siberians retaliated on
the following day and retook some of the buildings, stalling the German attack.

In the north, the 138th Rifle Division, isolated at the Barrikady factory, fought until the end. Half
surrounded, the divisions 118th Regiment blunted one German attack after another, until at last, with
no more men able to fight, it fell aside and was simply destroyed. Only seven men, together with their
wounded commander, Lieutenant Kolobavnikov, escaped. By nightfall, some of the other regiments had on
average only 30 bullets left per man. A few antiquated Soviet U-2 biplanes attempted to make supply runs
but the amount received was minute and often damaged.

After some sporadic combat that night, the fighting resumed on the next day and carried on in the
weeks that followed, with the Germans making painful progress. At some places they broke through to the
Volga, but were stubbornly checked by the Russians in other locations. The Sixty-Second Army was split
into three distinct pockets around Rynok, the Lazur Chemical Works, and an even smaller outpost on
the western periphery of the Red October Steel mill. But the Sixth Army had lost its bite in fierce closequartered fighting. The infantry divisions were decimated, with losses among the newly-arrived engineers
being especially horrific (at least a thousand of the 3,000-strong force had been killed, with almost a similar
number wounded). Their commander, Colonel Selle, was forced to merge the survivors into a single group.

Stalingrad is no longer a town, wrote one battle-weary German officer, Lt. Weiner of the 24th
Panzer Division: By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the
reflection of the flames. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand fighting means in a fight, and
imagine Stalingrad, 80 days and night of hand-to-hand struggles. The streets are no longer measured in
meters but by corpses and when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights; the dogs
plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for
them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones can not bear it for long; only men endure.

To finish off the last Russian defensive points that mid-November, Hitler ordered that tank drivers
be gathered as infantry for a last push. Panzer leaders were aghast, but when Paulus failed to cancel the
order, they sent in their cooks, medical orderlies and signals staff instead of their valuable drivers. Losses
were again heavy.

Seydlitz-Kurzbach of LI Corps calculated that by the middle of that month, 42 percent of his
battalions had been fought out, with most of the infantry companies reduced to less than 50 men each.
In Germany, however, Hitler joyously boasted that the battle had been won. In an address to Nazi officials
at Berchtesgaden, he gloriously declared that no power on earth will force us from Stalingrad. But for all
of his bravado, Hitler had been perturbed by the activity on the Russian front. It was apparent to Zeitzler
and Weichs of Army Group B, that the Russians were intent on encircling the Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
9

71st, 79th, 100th, 295th, 305th and 389th Divisions, reinforced with four pioneer battalions.

43

44

BUNDESARCHIV

When Zeitzler proposed that the Sixth Army withdraw into

a more solid line on the Don, Hitler yelled: I will not leave
the Volga! I will not go back from the Volga! Where the
German soldier sets foot, he stays! But Hitler, concerned
of the threat to his flanks, withdrew Hoths XLVIII Panzer
Corps from Stalingrad (where it was still needed), and sent it
north to reinforce the Third Romanian Army.

He also urged Paulus to finish the job at Stalingrad.
When Paulus replied that there were difficulties, Hitler
snapped that the difficulties in Stalingrad are well known
to me, but the difficulties on the Russian side must be even
greater now with the ice drifting down the Volga (which was
hindering Russian re-supply efforts). If we make good use
of this period of time we shall save a lot of blood later on.
Therefore I expect that the commanders will once again fight
with their usual dash in order to break through to the Volga,
at least at the ordnance factory and the metallurgical works
and to take these parts of the city.

For Chuikov, the onset of large, floating ice floes SYMBOL OF CONSCIENCE Kurt
on the river was indeed a serious development. The flimsy Zeitzlers rise through the army was
ferries and supply boats of the Volga Flotilla could no longer meteoric. In just two years he had risen
operate without encountering serious hazards, and the fleets from a staff command at a Corps to
gunboats were unable to protect the convoys as all but two the Chief of Staff of the German Army
boats had been stored for the winter. When Yeremenko General Staff. Given this position because
attempted to airdrop supplies, much of the crates fell into the Hitler thought him malleable, Zeitzler
river and into German lines.
instead emerged as a moralist deeply

On November 18, Paulus, pushing his forlorn troops troubled by the suffering of the troops at
to their maximum, attacked the three Russian pockets. At the front. He finally left his appointment
Rynok, Major-General Gorokhov held a garrison of troops. in 1944 and was dismissed from the army
At the Red October-Barricades Front, troops under Colonel for this outrage in early 1945.
Lunikov held a salient half a square mile on the banks of
the Volga. Their left flank was defended by the remnants of the 13th Guards under Rodimstev holding a
sliver of land only a few hundred yards wide. South of them was the Lazur Chemical enclave, held by the
strongest concentration of Russians. It was here that Chuikovs new headquarters was based.

Exhausted, and advancing through driving rain, the Germans made slow progress, leaving the
artillery and machineguns to deal with the Russians. In the north, the 124th and 149th Special Brigades
fought off six savage attacks by two battalions of Germans with tanks, destroying eleven Panzers and killing
about 800 men. Only 12 Germans were captured. Northeast of the Barrikady Factory, the 138th Rifle
Division fought another German battalion, losing three factory buildings to adept German troops who
caved in their left flank. Southeast of the factory, the 95th Rifle Division, which had fought all day against
three waves of enemy attack, dug in and held its ground until the Germans pulled back.

The Sixth Army had spent its last chance for victory, and from that period on its momentum
passed irrevocably into the defensive. Rumors proliferated that the Red Army was preparing a massive
counteroffensive on the Don front. Berlin was unconcerned, but as Paulus soldiers settled into their bunks
and trenches, they did so with rising trepidation. History would show that they had good reason to be
worried. At dawn on the very next morning, Zhukovs massive offensive, Operation Uranus went into
action, sealing their fate.

THE RETURN OF THE RED ARMY

Even though Zhukov had taken great precautions
to keep his assembling armies hidden, by moving forward
troops only at night and during bad weather when the
Luftwaffe was grounded, the jig was up. Both Paulus
and General Weichs of Army group B were well aware
of Russian armies massing to the north and south of
Stalingrad deserters and scattered aerial reconnaissance
had revealed as much. What they did not know, however,
was the Russian intent. Paulus had a vague suspicion that
the Russians intended to surround him at Stalingrad but had
he known the true nature of Zhukovs plans, he would have
been horrified. Zhukov, the undisputed master of strategy
in the Russian army aimed to not only cut-off the Sixth
Army at Stalingrad, but also part of Army Group B in the
Don area in a gigantic pincer. Encircled, and forced into a
pocket, the Germans would then be systematically reduced
and crushed. If successful, Uranus would deal a blow
to Germanys armies in southern Russia from which they MASTER STRATEGIST Soviet Russia
was fortunate in that Georgy Zhukov
would never recover.

Whatever warning signs existed they were largely survived the Stalinist purges of the
ignored by Berlin. Hitler no doubt saw the intelligence army in the 1930s that nearly crippled
reports but his solution was to employ lightly-equipped the Red Army. A veteran of World War,
Luftwaffe Field Divisions (such was the megalomania of he saw action against Japans Kwantung
the Luftwaffe chief, Herman Goring, that he also wanted Army in 1938, clearing the enemy from
to command ground forces), to take over from some of the the Mongolian border. In August 1942,
veteran army units which needed to be relieved from the he became deputy commander-in-chief
line to refit. The most notable example of this was the 22nd of the armed forces and coordinated the
Panzer Division which had been relieved by second-rate conduct of the war against Germany (in
forces as it returned to the rear to taken on replacements. various capacities) until victory in 1945.
Matters were precarious for the Germans but few officers He became the first Soviet commander
of the line realized the overwhelming Soviet forces taking of the Russian zone of occupation in
shape against them. In manpower, artillery and armour, the Germany.
Russians outnumbered their opponents by almost 2:1.

This fatalistic sense of calm extended to even the Luftwaffe. In October, when aerial
reconnaissance revealed that Russian tanks and infantry were crossing the Don River at Sefrimovich, air
command proved fatalistically laid-back. General Wolfram von Richthofen, the commander of Luftflotte
4, was under the misguided impression that the Russians were largely finished and consequently he
failed to properly coordinate an attack on Zhukovs bridgeheads. His Fliegerkorps VIII at that time still
had over 400 serviceable aircraft of all types. Their employment against the bridges could have caused
serious delays in Zhukovs timetable time enough for Paulus to finish off the Sixty-Second Army. As an
indication of what the Luftwaffe was capable of, even limited air strikes on the 12th successfully destroyed
several pontoon bridges at Kletskaya and Serafimovich.

Still, even if Berlin recognized the gravity of the situation, arguably there was little they could
have done. The majority of German troops in Army Group B were fighting in Stalingrad. Aside from

45

Pavel Korin

Central Museum of the Armed forces

Luftwaffe ground forces, Hitler chose to substitute their absence with poorly-armed and unreliable allied
armies, including the Italian Eighth and Romanian Third Armies in the north, while the Romanian
Fourth Army held the line in the south.

Zhukovs attack would launch in three phases. First, three armies (the Fifth Tank, First Shock
and Twenty-First Armies) from General Vatutins South-West Front, would move past their positions
on the Don, and punch through the Italian and Romanian lines in the north. Then the Fifty-Seventh
and Fifty-First Armies would attack from the south and drive north to meet the South-West Front. If
the two armies met, the Sixth Army at Stalingrad would be cut-off.

But the Germans had not gone this far by being reckless. On November 16th, just a few
days before the Russian attack, the generals transferred the 22nd Panzer Division from the north
(beyond the Italian lines) to reinforce the Third Romanian Army. The division was earmarked to
become part of a new battle group, Panzer Reserve Heim, to protect the Sixth Armys northern
flank. Unfortunately, the division had been nearly catatonic for over two months for lack of fuel and
operations and when ordered to move out, many crews found that their tanks would not start. Rats,
making their homes in the straw and hay that had been used to protect the tanks had chewed through
much of the internal electrical wiring. A significant number were immobilized on the spot; still
others fell victim to iced-up roads and mud traps. When the division finally arrived on the front, the
glum Romanians noted that only 42 of the divisions 104 tanks had appeared. Their own tanks were
completely inadequate against the Russians. The 1st Romanian Armored Division could boast of only
21 German-made tanks and 87 of the smaller, Czechoslovakian-built Skoda 38(t) tanks.

The Russian armor, meantime, built around the formidable T-34 was more than a match
for the best German tanks in the area, including the 75mm long gun-armed Mark IVF. As the
German Armys Inspector General of Fast troops disclosed in a May 26 report, based on studies of
captured T-34 and combat experience: The T-34 is faster, more maneuverable, has better crosscountry mobility than our Pz.Kpfw III and the Mark IV. Its armor is stronger. The penetrating
ability of its 76.2 mm cannon is superior to our 50mm KwK and the 75 mm KwK40 cannons.
The favorable form of sloping all of the armor plates aids in causing the shells to skid off.

The night of December 18/19 was unduly harsh. Romanian and Italian soldiers in the north
faced the prospect of spending yet another freezing night in inadequate foxholes and tents. But this
would transpire as the least of their worries. At 7:20 that morning, the code word Siren went out to

SNUG DEFENDERS This group of

well-clothed and well-fed Siberians
were typical of the eclectic group of
Russians that the Germans encountered
at Stalingrad. The Soviets had even
massed one entire division, the 173rd
Rifles, completely outfitted with
intellectuals from the Moscow area.

46

Central Museum of the Armed forces

WHITEWASHED ARMOR A Russian T-34 at the start of Operation Uranus waits in ambush at a
village. The antenna indicates that it is a tank leaders vehicle. Note the Mosin-Nagant rifle fixed to the
side of the turret presumably for picking off German infantry at medium range.
Soviet artillery regiments, who began to load their guns. A freezing mist enveloped the front, swirling
in the words of one Soviet general, as thick as milk. Several senior commanders contemplated
cancelling the attack because of poor visibility, but ten minutes later, orders came through to fire the
artillery. The signal, heralded by trumpets relaying the order, woke up some of the Romanians. Sixth
Army headquarters received news of the event, prompting one staff officer, Captain Winrich Behr, to
accurately conclude that a massive Russian bombardment or attack was about to begin.

On schedule, ten minutes later, the artillery opened up. General N.F. Vatutins South WestFront had concentrated 3,500 guns and heavy mortars to blast open a corridor for a dozen rifle
divisions, three tank and two cavalry corps. Initially, the first salvos sounded like thunderclaps and as
the Romanians watched the misty sky, the shells began to land. The ground began to quake violently,
the shock waves intruding as far south as thirty miles where medical officers from the 22nd Panzer
Division woke up because of the trembling earth. The bombardment lasted for eight minutes but it
took an hour for the Russian infantry to make their move. The artillery still soared blindly over their
heads, to pummel targets further inside the Romanian Third Army perimeter. The shells tore through
concrete emplacements, earth and flesh; hundreds of soldiers were killed with minutes or buried alive
as their concrete bunkers collapsed under the salvoes.

Despite their limited arms, the Romanians proudly held their ground and repulsed the first
attack a fact corroborated by a German officer attached to the 13th Romanian Infantry Division.
A second attack, two hours later, brought large groups of Russian infantry out of the mist, completely
outfitted in white winter clothing, accompanied by the dreaded T-34 tanks over 200 hundred of
them. For the horror-stuck Romanians it seemed that every tank in Russia was streaming over the flat,
snow-covered steppes towards them.

They attempted to hold their ground as before and destroyed some of the tanks, but without
proper anti-tank weapons, it was a hopeless defense. Several groups of tanks trundled over the
forward perimeter and turning in the interior, blasted the inner lines. At mid-day, with the fighting

47

threatening to bog down, the Russians sent in the bulk of their armor to charge the Romanian lines.
In the Kletskaya sector, the 4th Tank Corps and the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps tore through the lines
held by Romanian IV Corps and rushed south. The Soviet cavalry, still equipped with horses in this
case, Cossack ponies sped across the Romanian-held territory, keeping pace with the tanks. In half
an hour, tanks from the 5th Tank Army reached the perimeter of the II Romanian Corps and blasted a
way in. Trenches collapsed as the armor rumbled over them, burying the unfortunate soldiers within.
The 8th Cavalry Corps followed, opened the penetration.

In terror, the Romanian lines finally cracked. Hundreds of troops abandoned their dug outs
and streamed back over the exposed fields, taking heavy losses. By the end of the day, they had
lost 55,000 troops and had left open a 50-mile breach in the axis lines. East of Vatutin, General
Rokossovskys Don Front launched a small attack to trap the German XI Corps just north of
Stalingrad only to be thwarted by German infantry. It was the only Axis success of the day.

News of the offensive did not reach the Sixth Army until 9:45 that morning. Paulus, instead
of calling off an attack by his tanks in the city, told them to continue mopping up operations.
Incredibly, at this stage, no senior officer seemed to have accurately identified the Russian offensive as
a significant event that threatened their futures.

48

Central Museum of the Armed forces

TANK DESCENT MEN

This was the so-called
designation of troops
who rode on top of the
attacking armor into
battle. These men have
started to dismount and
move forward into the
attack on the first day
of Operation Uranus.

At 10 a.m on the following day, the 20th, three armies (the Sixty-Fourth, Fifty-Seventh and the
Fifty-First) from the Stalingrad Front went into action in the south after a thousand Katyushas rockets
signaled the beginning of their assault. Moving forward in driving snow, the Fifty-Seventh Army
struck north on the right flank to the rear of the German Sixth Army with six rifle divisions, while the
Fifty-First Army raced north towards Kalach to meet the incoming troops of the South-West Front.

The Romanian Fourth Army was hard-hit. A single Soviet Marine Brigade from the FiftySeventh Army shattered their first two lines of defenses lines just south of Stalingrad, paving the way
for a rapid exploitation by Major General T.I. Tanashchishins 13th Mechanized Corps. By mid-day
the Romanians had suffered 35,000 casualties, and by 1 p.m., elements of both Russian armies were
speeding north towards Kalach.

General Shumilovs Sixty-Fourth Army was also in the attack, trying to fight its way into
south Stalingrad, only to be thwarted by the German 297th Infantry Division. Elements of the 4th
Panzer Army were also nearby and Hoth ordered the 29th Motorized Infantry Division to cut up
Tanashchishins flanks. Before they knew what was happening, Tanashchishins command found itself
being battered. It was in danger of being destroyed when abruptly Weichs ordered Hoth to pull his
division back into a defensive post on the Sixth Armys southern flank. The order left that the road
to Kalach open for the Russians. Then to compound the matter, and to Hoths fury, his divisions in
the Stalingrad area were then transferred wholesale to the Sixth Army. With almost no troops to
command, Hoth evacuated what little was left of his command out of Stalingrad. He was just in time
within forty-eight hours Stalingrad would be completely encircled by the Russians.

In Stalingrad, the concept that the Russian offensive was still a minor event was finally
dismissed at 6 p.m. Seydlitz-Kurzbach received orders to transfer the 24th Panzer Division to
Peskovatka and Vertyachy near the Don crossings. Then at 10 o clock that night, Weichs ordered
Paulus to break off the fighting in Stalingrad and move his forces to support the embattled Romanians.
Change of situation in area of Third Romanian Army compels radical measures with the objective of
moving forces [westwards] as rapidly as possible to cover the rear flank of Sixth Army and secure lines
of communication, he messaged.

The 16th Panzer Division, which contained a large number of Hiwis10 (the German nickname
for Russian volunteers), was also ordered to move westwards despite being in stiff combat at Rynok.
10

Hilfswilliger, literally one willing to help.

49

The divisions 2nd Panzer Regiment found itself unable to pull out until 3 in the morning of 21
November, nearly 46 hours after the launch of Uranus.

By this point, the northern forces General Kravchenkos 4th Tank Corps had covered thirty
miles from its original positions towards Kalach. Directly in its path was Paulus headquarters at
Golubinskaya, ten miles northeast of Kalach. Fleeing the incoming Russians, Paulus evacuated a
mere two hours before the headquarters was overrun. Flying to his new command center at NizhneChirskaya, forty miles southwest on the Don, he realized for the first time the full scale of the
debacle that had befallen Army Group B. Even from the air, the fleeing mass of the Romanians was
clearly visible, as were the advancing Russians hordes, plumes of snow clouds marking the trails of
speeding T-34s. The German 376th Infantry Division was forced to move into gap left open by the
Romanians, as did the Austrian 44th Division, which had to abandon some of its heavy equipment
because of fuel shortages in its transport fleet.

On Sunday, the 22nd, in the north, Russians from Major General A.G. Rodins 26th Tank
Corps approached Kalach and its important bridge over the Don. It was ironical that the span which
had initially supported the Sixth Armys attack on Stalingrad in August would now be used to turn
the tables on the Germans. Rodin knew that the Germans had set explosives on the bridge and
resorted to cunning to win the day. Early that morning, at 6:15, a crack Russian detachment from
Lt-Colonel G.N. Filippovs 19th Tank Brigade approached the bridge behind two captured Panzers
and a reconnaissance vehicle, headlights blazing. The befuddled German garrison waved them
on, realizing too late that they were Russians. By then Rodins men had already cut the wires and
secured the bridge. That same day, Paulus sent a frantic message to Hitlers headquarters requesting
permission to withdraw his army from Stalingrad to a new defensive line along the Don. General
Zeitzler supported the plan, but met stiff opposition from Hitler who said: Sixth Army will stay
where it is. It is the garrison of a fortress and it is the duty of garrisons to withstand sieges. If
necessary they will hold out all winter and I will relieve them by an offensive in the spring.

In a conversation with Albert Speer, the German Minister for Armaments, Hitler condemned
the over-cautiousness of his commanders, saying that our generals are making their old mistakes
again. They always overestimate the strength of the Russians. According to all the front-line reports,
the enemys human material is no longer sufficient. They are weakened; they have lost far too much
blood. But of course nobody wants to accept such reports. Besides how badly the Russian officers

50

Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

INFANTRY SUPPORT In addition

to its quantities of PzIII and Mark IV
tanks, the German Sixth Army also
possessed a significant contingent
of StuG self-propelled assault guns,
which could be found in the anti-tank
battalions of the infantry divisions.
They were instrumental in carrying
the German advance through Russia,
although the limitations of tank
support became apparent in the sort
of street-fighting that prevailed at
Stalingrad.

51

U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

are trained. No offensive can be organized with such officers. We know what it takes. In the short or
long run the Russians will simply come to a halt. Theyll run down. Meanwhile we shall throw in a
few fresh divisions; that will put things right.

Paulus staff set up a new headquarters at the rail junction at Gumrak, eight miles from
Stalingrad, while Paulus and Schmidt flew to Nizhne-Chirskaya to meet General Hoth for a
conference. As they left, Hitlers order arrived at the headquarters, Sixth Army stand firm in spite
of danger of temporary encirclement. Ironically, that Sunday, 22 November, was for Protestants
the day of remembrance of the dead. A somber Totensonntag 1942, Kurt Reuber, a priest serving
as a doctor with 16th Panzer Division, wrote. Worry, fear and horror. All too often, the phrase,
We are surrounded, spread in the German lines. Unlike the rosy picture in Berlin, the situation
in Russia was one of harsh reality. The far-ranging Soviet Cavalry presented a surreal picture to
the harried Germans. Out in the open, fighting off repeated cavalry thrusts as if it were 1870,
according to one Wehrmacht officer, the Germans found that with all the horses that Russians
seemingly had, a shortage of horses on the German own side, to pull supplies, was proving the
biggest headache. A solution was found that would become an example of German inhumanity.

Nearly starved Russian prisoners were removed from the stockade and put to work as
draught animals. We were put instead of horses to drag carts loaded with ammunition and food,
one prisoner later wrote. Those prisoners who could not drag the carts as quickly as the Feldwebel
(Sergeant) wanted were shot on the spot. In this way, they were forced to pull carts for four days,
almost without any rest. The rest of the prisoners, the sickest of the lot, were left behind to starve
and freeze in the snow. By the time the attacking Russians from the Sixty-Fifth Army arrived, only
two of the 98 POWs (Prisoners of War) at the Vertyachy camp were still alive. Photographers were
sent in to record the event and the Russians formally
accused the Germans of a war crime. This would
become important later. The long Russian memory
would not forget.

On the 23rd, troops from the Vatutins
South-West Front met the Stalingrad Fronts 4th
Mechanized corps at Sovetsky, thirteen miles
southeast of Kalach. In the forward German lines,
the men and the officers could clearly see through
field glasses, both armies meeting, one from the left
and one from the right, until the contrasting waves
of men, merged, embracing each other happily, their
jubilation displayed by a shower of kisses on the
cheeks (in typical Russian style). The Axis troops
stared with mute apprehension. They had been
effectively trapped. Encircled in a pocket measuring
40 miles by 25 were 242,000 axis soldiers, of which
over 230,000 were Germans.

Apart from fencing in 21 German and two
Romanian divisions at Stalingrad, the Russians had
also snared the entire headquarters of the Sixth
Army and its commander. Just a day before the
encirclement, Paulus and his staff had flown into WORLD VIEW The irony that the attacking
the pocket under imprudent orders from Hitler, and Germans had trapped themselves at
here, Paulus would stay with his men come twilight Stalingrad was not lost on the world as is
demonstrated by this wartime U.S. cartoon.
and oblivion.

HEADING TOWARDS DISASTER

BUNDESARCHIV

At his headquarters at the Gumrak Train station, Paulus attempted to convince high command of
the dangers surrounding his troops. Army headed for disaster, he wrote, It is essential to withdraw all
our divisions from Stalingrad the army has only food for six days. Paulus was fully prepared to get the
Fuhrers acquiescence but he had overestimated Hitlers altruism. Hitler, although initially unconcerned
about the depth of the Russian pincers, was alarmed to learn that the Sixth Army had been cut off. Paulus
had gone to extent of planning a breakout on the 27th when Hitler had a brainstorm. The Luftwaffe
would save the save the day by airlifting supplies to the besieged army. Reichsmarschall Hermann
Gring the Luftwaffe chief, being not the instigator of the plan, could have well discredited it. Instead, he
grandly proclaimed that it could be achieved with little cost or effort . It was a gross overstatement. But
intriguingly enough, there was precedence.

In January 1942, a hundred thousand men of the German II and X Corps had been trapped
at a pocket at Demyansk, south of Leningrad. The Luftwaffe had been given the job was supplying the
beleaguered men until relief came or until the corps was strong enough to break out. The daily supply
requirement was put at 270 tons of supplies. Colonel Freidrich Morzik, the Luftwaffe Commander of Air
Transport in the East, had organized a massive airlift with his entire fleet of multi-engined aircraft. But
initially his Ju52 force (the Luftwaffes reliable tri-motor transport plane) numbered only fifty machines.
In time, sixty He111 bombers pulled from regular combat units gave the transport fleet the ability to
airlift sixty tons a day, but more was needed and in time, Morzik swelled his command with a further
eight groups of transports by depriving other fronts.

But the task facing his pilots and crews had been daunting. For one, the Demyansk pocket had
possessed only one airfield poorly suited to accommodate heavy aircraft. In part due to Morziks
competence, a second landing ground was built from scratch inside the pocket at Pyesky. That March,
German troops under none other Seydlitz-Kurzbach had widened a narrow corridor through which
relief could be achieved. By April, the Luftwaffe was flying 300 sorties daily into the encircled area. Later
that month, when the army finally broke through to the defenders, Morziks squadrons had flown in
24,000 tons of supplies and 15,000 fresh troops, taking out 20,000 wounded on the homeward flight. But
the cost had been high. Some 265 planes had been lost on operations mostly in accidents during take

BACKBONE The venerable Junker Ju52, affectionately nicknamed Auntie Ju by the troops was
expected to form the mainstay of the airlift attempt. This machine is from Kgr.zbV 1.

52

53

BUNDESARCHIV

off and landing. An estimated 385 Luftwaffe men had died. On

the other side, the Russians had lost 408 planes, the majority of
them fighters, while attempting to crush the air supply.

Gring was certain that the same feat of logistics
could be achieved at Stalingrad. Paulus was horrified. Even
at the height of the fighting in Stalingrad, his divisions had
experienced constant shortages in fuel and ammunition
even in the presence of reliable air and rail links. With the loss
of the rail link to Soviet pincers, disaster threatened. What was
more, Luftwaffe officers in the field were openly critical of the
airlift plan.

General Martin Fiebig, the chief of Fliegerkorps VIII,
warned Paulus deputy, General Schmidt as early on the 22nd
that the Sixth Army could not be supplied by air alone. His
immediate superior, General Wolfram von Richthofen was
more specific, pointing out that it would take 225 Ju52s, and
a minimum of at least 550 tons of supplies per day to equal
the demands of the Sixth Army. The losses at Demyansk had
been made up (500 Ju52s had been built in 1942 alone) but
GERMAN TACTICIAN Erich
the Hitler-Gring proposal would call for one-third of the
von Manstein was perhaps best
Luftwaffes transport force of 750 Ju52s to be actively engaged
responsible for Germanys soaring
in the Stalingrad area at the cost of other equally important
fortunes during the war, first in
fronts.
France and then on the Eastern

Furthermore, two supply airfields closest to the
Front. A brilliant tactician, he
Stalingrad pocket, Tatsinskaya and Morosovskaya, 150 miles
became a Field Marshal in June
to the southwest, would have to bear the brunt of the effort. If
1942 and was responsible for several
they were snowed in or worse if they were to be captured by
spectacular actions before and after
the Red Army, the airlift faced disastrous consequences.
Stalingrad. But Hitlers interference

Then there was yet another major factor that had
in operations resulted in fierce
emerged since the Demyansk incident. Although the
arguments over strategy. Relieved of
confidence of the Soviet Air force was still shaky, it was
command in March 1944, Manstein,
stronger than before. It no longer flew antiquated machines
never returned to another combat
but a new breed of aircraft, fresh from factories in the
assignment again. Although secretly
east, including the Yakovlev Yak-9 fighter (a match for the
of Jewish heritage, he was strangely
Luftwaffes Fw190), and the Pe-2, a fast, light bomber. Four
tepid in post-war criticisms of the
entire Russian Air Armies had been concentrated in the
Nazi leadership.
Stalingrad area and Soviet fighters routinely patrolled the skies
over the city, replacing the once-familiar sight of German
Stukas by dreaded silhouettes of Russian Il-2s, a formidably-armored attack aircraft. Even Weichs
declared that the Luftwaffe would at best, be able to provide ten percent of the armys minimum daily
requirements. He also endorsed Pauluss plans to breakout of Stalingrad, stating that although it will
mean heavy lossesit will be far less than those that must ensue if the situation is left to develop. Hitler,
however, saw a far different picture. He saw the warm and well-fed soldiers of the Sixth Army holding
their lines, supplied by air, denying Stalingrad to enemy until being relieved.

On the 24th, he radioed Paulus: I will do everything in my power to supply [the Sixth Army]
adequately, and disengage it when it the time is convenient. Paulus took this message to his corps
commanders. They were aghast and urged Paulus to break out before the Russians consolidated their

STAVKA ARCHIVES

WINTER BATTLES A line of Russians

leaves their trenches for the attack. They
are covered by a squad armed with a
Degtyarev DP.28 light machine gun.
Courage was often reinforced by drink.

RGAKFD, Karasnogorsk

Daily Red Army rations included a

100 grams of Vodka for each man,
approximately a quarter of a pint. (Below)
One man drinks his daily ration from an
appropriated and prized German mess
canteen. Another waits for his turn.

54

gains. Maj-General Hube of XIV

Panzer Corps, one of Hitlers choice
men, but a popular commander
whose troops nicknamed him der
Mensch (The Man), adamantly
told Paulus that a breakout is our
only chance. LI Corps commander,
Seydlitz-Kurzbach, a fierce antiNazi, went one step further. He
sent an unsuccessful petition
(countersigned by all four corps
commanders) urging Paulus to
withdraw the army without waiting
for official authorization from
Berlin. But already on the evening
of November 23, Seydlitz-Kurzbach
had acted without authorization,
ordering the 60th Motorized, 4th and 94th Infantry
Divisions to burn their stores and withdraw from the
northern side of the city. As smoke from thousands of
fire filled the sky, the quartermaster of the 94th Division
recorded men burning overcoats, uniforms, boots,
documents, maps, typewriters, and even worse, food.

The sight of this destruction alerted the
Russians who moved in as the division withdrew
from Spartanovka, dealing 1,000 casualties. Hitler
was furious and unfairly put the blame on Paulus.
Then, in an extraordinary decision on the 25th, he
decided to separate command of the forces within
the pocket. Oblivious of Seydlitz-Kurzbachs antiNazi sentiments and convinced that he was a brilliant
officer in defense, Hitler appointed him leader of the
northeastern sector.

Paulus took the message to Seydlitz-Kurzbachs
headquarters. Now, you have your own command,
he told Seydlitz-Kurzbach. You can break out.
Seydlitz-Kurzbach, unable to hide his embarrassment,
took the message and turned away. Their superior,
General Manstein, was appalled at this halving of
command. But this man, who became a receptacle
for all of Paulus concealed emotions, would share
complicity in Hitlers folly for not passing on vital
information to the Stalingrad garrison when the
opportune moments arose. Still Paulus placed great
faith on Manstein. In a remarkable letter to him dated
that November, Paulus betrayed his overwhelming
struggle of conscience. While accepting that the

11 Incarcerated in England until 1948, Heim returned to Germany afterwards and died in 1977.

55

BUNDESARCHIV

Sixth Army was doomed if Hitlers orders were

maintained, Paulus also maintained that he
could not willingly disobey the Fuhrer as he had
taken an oath of loyalty to Germany before the
war. All Manstein could do was offer a few pithy
words of encouragement, and worse, despite his
contempt for Hitler and the high command, told
Paulus to continue following Hitlers orders. The
Fhrers order relieves you of all responsibility
other than the most appropriate and resolute
execution of the Fhrers order. What happens
when, in execution of the Fhrers order, the army
has fired off its last bullet for that you are not
responsible, he said.

Back in Germany, Hitler was still seething
over Stalingrads encirclement and the poor
performance of the Romanians. By a feat of
imagination, he charged Lt-General Ferdinand
Heim, the commander of XLVIII Panzer Corps,
as the man responsible for the debacle as he
had pulled some of his tanks out of the line to
reinforce the under-gunned Romanians. Heim
was relieved of his command and General
Schmundt at the Wolf s Lair, Hitlers East
Prussian headquarters, noted that, the Fhrer
STALINGRAD SCAPEGOAT Lt-General
himself will decide on all further measures of
Ferdinand Heim, who by turtous logic, was
military discipline in this matter [in Heims case].
made responsible for the Russian success of

In January 1943, Heim was, at Hitlers
Operation Uranus.
personal order, dismissed from the Army, arrested
and placed in solitary confinement. He was released in April 1943, only to be transferred to a
military hospital at Ulm. In a post-war interview, Heim stated that the only documentation for his
arrest was Hitlers order with a complete absence of sentence or explanation. In May 1943, Heims
dismal was rescinded and he was officially retired. Brought out of retirement in August 1944, he
commanded German forces at Boulogne and when given instructions to the fight to the last, set
about preparing the defenses with the minimal resources available. Shelled and bombed, he and the
garrison surrendered to the 3rd Canadian Division on 23 September.11

By now, the airlifts had begun. To anyone watching it was clearly apparent that Hitlers
ostentatious plan was unrealistic in practice. For the Sixth Army to hold out, it needed at least 250
tons of ammunition, 120 tons of fuel and another 180 tons of food per day. On paper, it appeared
that the Luftwaffe could easily achieve the total considering that it would have to launch only 150
Ju52s per day (each capable of lugging nearly five tons). In reality, there were several teething
problems. First of all, as this was not an airdrop operation; the Ju52s would have to actually land
inside the pocket to discharge their cargo provided that they had successfully run the gauntlet of
Russian fighters. To accommodate them, the Sixth Army initially had seven airfields (later reduced
to two), including those at: Karpovka, Bolshaia Rossoshka, Voroponovo, Basargino, the Stalingrad
Flying School and two major fields at Gumrak and Pitomnik. Of all, Pitomnik, situated 15 miles

west of the city, was the most suitable, as it had good concrete runways and had lights, flare paths
and signal flares. Sixth Army officers were none to slow in realizing that the existence of the army
had become inexorably tied to the airfields if they fell, supply would be impossible. Yet, from the
beginning, the airlifts were a fiasco.

At the start on November 23, Richthofen could only amass 350 Ju52s and a hundred He111s
of which only about one-thirds were operational at any given time. In mid-1942, the air fleet
had been centralized around five Kampfgruppen zur besonderen Verwendung (KGr.zbV), literally
translating into Battlegroups for special operations, in simple terms denoting the Luftwaffes
transport units. While his units had performed admirable during Blau by evacuating 51,619
wounded soldiers, flying in 27,044 fresh troops, 4,614 tons of fuel, 1,787 tons of ammunition and 73
tons of supplies to the army,12 Richthofens units had been badly depleted by combat losses and the
normal wear and tear of continuous operations. For example on 9 November, Richthofens KGr.zbV
900 had possessed only 12 serviceable Ju52s out of a total strength of 41, while KGrzbV 50 had only
13 out of 35. It was the same story with the other groups.

Understandably, when the airlifts began, Richthofen could put up only 30 of his 295 cargo
planes setting a trend that would prove hard to break. Losses came quickly. On November 24, 22
transport planes were lost through enemy action and another nine were shot on the 25th.
Units of the Airlift
UNIT
1st KgrzbV
5th KgrzbV
50th KgrzbV
102nd KgrzbV
172nd KgrzbV
200th KgrzbV
900th KgrzbV
Viermotorige
Transportstaffel

AIRCRAFT
Junkers Ju52
Heinkel He111
Junkers Ju52
Junkers Ju52
Junkers Ju52
Focke-Wulf Fw200
Junkers Ju52
Junkers Ju90 &
Junkers 290

STRENGTH
N/A
N/A
35
N/A
N/A
20
41
7
3

NOTES

Two Squadrons (from January 1943)

The Russian Air Force on the other hand, was a force to reckon with. Three Russian Air
Armies in the area (the Sixteenth, Eighth and Seventeenth) and could boast of 480 fighters, 359
bombers and 418 attack aircraft. On 1 December, Stalin gave the official order to destroy the
German airlift, but even before that, the Russian Air Forces had struck all along the line to gain
the initiative. The supplying airfields outside the pocket were routinely hit by marauding droves of
Russian bombers and attack fighters causing havoc to the airlifts. In December alone, the soviets
flew 2,856 sorties against the German airfields. Those Ju52 and He111s that successfully took off
found their way to Stalingrad barred by treacherous weather and enemy fighter screens. Losses were
heavy. In the 48 hours between November 28 and the 30th for instance, of 36 Ju52s that departed
for the pocket, only 12 landed, bringing just 24 tons of supplies. The remaining lost their way in the
clouds or fell victim to enemy fighters.

Between November 30 and December 1, the airlift took a heavy blow when the Russian
Air Force destroyed 28 transports (mostly Ju52s) in strafing and bombing runs inside the pocket.
By the 4th, the Luftwaffe had a lost a grand total of 38 Ju52s and 15 He111s in just nine days of
12 The transports had also ferried 20,173 ton of aviation fuel, 9,492 tons of ammunition, 2,764 tons of supplies and
3,731 tons of equipment to the Luftwaffe in the theatre.

56

BUNDESARCHIV

operations. In the pocket, the besieged soldiers were receiving on average a meager 70 tons of cargo,
with the transports rarely managing over 180 tons. On a rare occasion, on December 7, the Luftwaffe
managed 362 tons a record for the airlift, and 360 tons on the 20th. Much of the supplies were
fuel and ammunition as Paulus had agreed to keep the food supply balanced by slaughtering ten
thousand of the armys horses.

Even then, shortages in food began to become chronic by mid-December. In desperation,
the Luftwaffe transferred the Viermotorige Transportstaffel (Four-Engined Transport Squadron)
to the Russia, equipped with seven Ju90s (a militarized version of a pre-war airliner), and three of
the even larger Ju290s (including one prototype), each capable of carrying ten tons of cargo. The
squadrons entry into the battlefield in January 1943 was just short of disaster. On January 14, one of
the Ju290s (the prototype), overloaded with wounded, took off from Gumrak at such a steep angle
that it stalled and crashed; another was shot down by Russian fighters. Several examples of the indevelopment He177 two-engined bomber were also pressed into service, but the aircraft still had
several teething problems and five were lost mostly in crashes.

NAZI SUPERWEIGHT The Junkers Ju290 was an experimental modification of the older Ju90 airliner.
It was meant to replace the Fw200 Condor (which was also used at Stalingrad), because of the latters
slow speed and vulnerability to enemy fighters. Eight examples had been built by the time of the
Stalingrad airlifts and one was lost in a crash. Two others were lost in other airlifts over North Africa,
the following year.

57

WINTER STORM

STAVKA ARCHIVES

By early-December, it became apparent that the

Luftwaffe was falling short of its objectives. Senior
German commanders in Russia began to look for
alternatives. A first step was Hitlers reorganization of
the southern armies, including Paulus Sixth Army, the
derelict Romanian and the Fourth Panzer Armies into
Army Group Don, under Manstein, on November 21.
He charged Manstein with bringing the enemys
attack [on the Stalingrad front] to a standstill and
recapture positions previously held by us. Another
key order was to breakthrough to the Sixth Army at
Stalingrad. Manstein went to his task with a heavy
heart. He was realistic enough to know that whatever
he planned, all he could ever hope to prolong the
life of the Sixth Army. But his plan, codenamed
Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Storm) was bold
and imaginative. It called for the shattered remnants of
the Romanian armies and a Panzer Corps from Hoths
Fourth Army to punch a gap through the Russian lines
in the south through to Stalingrad. But unknown to
Manstein, the Russians had already predicted all of this.
Zhukov, who had intended to follow Uranus with
VIGILANT The commander of a PzIII of the Saturn, a second shattering blow at the weakest link
23rd Panzer Division keeps watch for enemy in the German line, the Italian Eighth Army south of
forces. The Panzer III, by now hopelessly Rostov, wanted to get underway as soon as possible.
outclassed by Soviet armor had started to Saturn would cut off the rest of Army Group Don
become ineffectual. By December 26, the and trap the First Panzer and Seventeenth Armies in
23rd Panzer Division had been reduced to the Caucasus. But first they had to deal with whatever
about a dozen tanks by combat losses.
Manstein intended to do to save the Sixth Army. Stalin
was especially impatient. He ordered the Second Guards
Army (the most powerful army in the Red Army) to take up position west of Stalingrad to move on
Rostov when the order came. In the meantime, on November 28, he asked Zhukov for an estimation of
the German intent. Zhukovs report was prompt: the Germans would attempt a relief from the direction
of Nizhne-Chirskaya and Kotelnikovo. His assessment would prove remarkably accurate.

In the meantime, Manstein made hasty preparations to get his force underway. The headquarters
of the unit-less LVII Panzer Corps13 from the Caucasus was organized to conduct the operation with
Hoth running the show at Fourth Panzer Army headquarters. Three panzer divisions joined it
the 17th, the 23rd and 6th the latter recently arrived from France. Other units were also promised,
including four infantry and three Luftwaffe Field Divisions which never arrived because they were never
released by their parent units or did not have enough transportation to move. Still Hoth was especially
pleased by the arrival of the 6th Panzer Division. The unit had recently refitted at Brittany and contained
a full complement of armor and support, including 160 long-barrelled Panzer Mark IVFs and forty
assault guns.
13

Under General Friedrich Kirchner

58


In all, he had 75,000 men and 500 tanks to punch his way to Stalingrad. On the Corps right flank
were the Romanians, to guard against counterattacks from the Russian Fifty-First Army, a potential
threat with 34,000 men and 77 tanks. On December 3, Hoth produced his plan for Winter Storm, under
the patently unexposed sub-head of: Fourth Panzer Army relieves Sixth Army. But to Mansteins dismay,
the operation was delayed first by the 17th Panzer Division which was held back on Hitlers order to act
as a reserve for the Italian Eighth Army, and then by the weather which took a turn for the worst from
December 2. A battalion of new Tiger tanks14 armed with formidable 88mm guns were also promised
but these did not set off to join Army Group Don until December 21 and would miss the operation all
together. Snow and sleet set back the operation for nearly a week but on the 12th, Manstein gave the go
ahead to Hoth.

Advancing out from the village of Kotelnikovo, Hoths LVII Panzer Corps drove hard for
Stalingrad, 80 miles away. The Russians, who had not expected the Germans to start so quickly, were
caught off guard. Yeremenko warned that the attack, if not checked in time, could cut through the 57th
Army on Stalingrads south flank. Stalin immediately ordered the 2nd Guards Army, under Lt-General
Malinovsky, into the path of the LVII Corps. At the same time, he ordered the Sixth and the First Guards
Tank Armies to launch a counterattack on the Italians, to force Manstein to divert valuable reserves in
their aid.

Operation Neptune as the Russian counter-attack was codenamed, unfurled against the Italians
in all its might. The Italians held the line for 48 hours but after that fell back in disarray. Manstein
watched in horror as his left flank crumbled, but kept Winter Storm on its course. Yeremenko ordered
the 4th Mechanized Corps and the 13th Tank Corps to block Hoths thrust. The 6th Panzer Division
made significant progress, covering 32 miles in the first day and even reaching the Aksay River. On the
second day, they rolled into the village of Verkhne-Kumsky and as they did so, a heavy rain began to fall,
thawing the snow. The division pushed on to the high ground around the village and blundered straight
into the incoming Russians. A ferocious battle erupted, which, in the words of the German divisional
commander, Maj-General Erhard Raus, was a gigantic wrestling-march, that raged for three days.
From the 503rd Felderrnhalle Schwere Panzer Abteilung.

Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

14

ICE COMBAT A
German
heavy
machine-gun team
sets up in the frozen
steppes south of the
Aksay River.

59

German Divisions
involved

6th Panzer

17th Panzer

23rd Panzer

Elements of the 11th Panzer Regiment rumbled east and attacked the tank force of the Russian
13th Mechanized Corps, inflicting heavy casualties. A Soviet mechanized brigade which had been sent
after the tanks came in from the northeast, only to be pinpointed by German reconnaissance. Before the
Russians knew what had happened, they were being attacked from the flanks. The Russians fled, but they
had barely gone when a second mechanized brigade appeared from the northwest, blundering straight
into a German defensive line. Hoths troops held their position but Russians started to appear behind
them and two Russian tank brigades attacked from the west. Several T-34s carrying infantry on their
backs actually broke into Verkhne-Kumsky but were destroyed by German troops who closed in with
explosive charges.

Word then came that other Russians had occupied the Saliyevsky-Verkhniy Kumsky road, cutting
off the 6th Panzers supply route. Raus quickly turned his forces around and rumbled south to reopen
the road. The attack forced the Russians to commit their tank reserves. Hoth quickly ordered it smashed.
The entire German pincer then withdrew south to a bridgehead at Saliyevsky to regroup. Although they
had gained no ground, the Germans had cause to cheer. A massive amount of soviet armor had been
destroyed. Elsewhere, the 23rd Panzer Division reached the southern bank of the Myshkova River near
Kapinsky. From these positions, the Stalingrad pocket was a mere 40 miles away. Alarmed, the Russians
sent in a scratch force from the Second Guards Army15 to destroy the German bridgehead but as matters
15

The Second Guards Army had: 1st and 13th Guards Rifle Corps and the 2nd Guards mechanized Corps. In addition,

60

Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst

stood, it would take them three days to arrive

by train.

On the 18th, the 6th Panzer Division
crossed the river in strength to establish a
small bridgehead on the Russian side, nearly
overrunning Malinovskys headquarters, who
prudently withdrew his staff north. Much
of the Second Guards Army was still in the
rear, but determined divisions of Rifles and
Tanks marched all day for the Myshkova. To
Malinovskys relief, Moscow also sent the 4th
Mechanized Corps, the 87th Rifle Division
and the remnants of a depleted Cavalry
Corps. The reinforcements poured in on
the 19th, a Saturday, when the 98th and 3rd
Guards Rifle Divisions were hauled in by
trains which started to run around the clock.
The reinforcements had the desired effect. By
the 21st, Hoth was stuck.

Stalingrad was just 30 miles away.
Yeremenko fully expected Paulus tanks to
break out from the pocket and link up with
their comrades in the south, but the tanks
never moved. At this moment, according to
the post-war accounts of German generals, a
breakout by Paulus from Stalingrad towards
LVII Corps would have succeeded. Certainly,
DEFEAT Two Germans, trailed by a winterized
Paulus was encouraged to do so by Manstein,
StuG self-propelled gun, dejectedly fall back from
even though losses would have been terrific.
the Myhskova River.
Manstein took the case up with Zeitzler at
Berlin, but Hitler was adamant. The Sixth
Army could break out, he said, only if it could still hold on to Stalingrad. It was the logic of a madman.

When Manstein personally wired the Wolf s Lair for the withdrawal order, Hitler did not even
deign to send him a reply. Exasperated, Manstein urged Paulus to breakout, even without Hitlers
consent. It was Paulus last chance to save his army but he chose not to take it. In any case, his seventy
remaining tanks had enough fuel for only about a dozen miles worth of travelling and he genuinely
believed that they could hold out as long as they were fed. His self-propagated optimism was painfully
apparent in a letter to his wife in which he wrote: After the winter, there is another May to follow.

Meantime, Stalin and Zhukov had realized that the best way to destroy Winter Storm was to
check the advance at the Mishkova, while delivering the actual blow elsewhere. Operation Saturn was
quickly modified and now became Little Saturn, in which the Sixth and First Guards Armies were to
smash through the Italian Eighth Army on the Don, opening a massive fissure through the Axis lines,
instead of concentrating at Rostov.

The attack went underway on December 16. In two days of fighting, the entire frontline along
the lower Chir River began to give way. The long-awaited 17th Panzer Division had finally joined Hoths
fighting troops but by this point it was already too late. Massive groups of T-34s were already on the
loose, rampaging behind the Italian lines, shooting up depots and rail junctions. One Soviet pincer was
it had been reinforced with the 7th Tank, 4th Mechanized and 4th Cavalry Corps.

61

62

BUNDESARCHIV

GENERAL MARTIN FIEBIG

STAVKA ARCHIVES

of graver concern than the others. This was Major-General

Vasily Mikhailovich Badanovs 24th Tank Corps which
was making hard for the main Luftwaffe supply airfield for
Stalingrad at Tatsinskaya.

Badanov, a formidable commander with the great
brush of a large handlebar moustache protruding past his
face, drove his men hard. On the afternoon of December
23, his troops captured Skassirskaya, just north of Tatsi
the German name for Tatsinskaya. The local Luftwaffe air
commander, General Martin Fiebig had received strict
instructions from Hitler not to abandon the airfield unless
it came under artillery fire. But the tanks had come without
artillery fire and the planes were still on the ground.

Furious at the incompetence at High Command,
Fiebig ordered his motley crew of ground personnel to defend
the airfield. All they had were seven 88mm flak guns which
were positioned to cover the road. While this was going,
Fiebig ordered the massive fleet of 196 planes on the airfield
to prepare for departure. The airfield broke out into a mass
of activity until around the runway, it looked like chaos,
Richthofens chief of staff wrote. With engines running, one
could hardly understand a single word.

Visibility that early pre-dawn morning was poor with
a thick mist from low clouds covering the area as light snow
fell. Then at 5:20 a.m., to everyones shock, the first Russian
shells struck the outer perimeter. Up to this point, not a single
plane had taken off and the Russians had wily come up crosscountry, ignoring the road.

Initially, many of the pilots in their noisy planes
did not realize what was happening, even after two Ju52s
inexplicably caught fire. Then Fiebigs voice came crackling
the radio: Off you go, head for Novocherkassk.

The noise multiplied as the planes increased throttle.
Despite the near presence of the Russians, there was
surprisingly little panic and the planes took off in a steady
stream. The Russians watched in awe as a veritable shooting
gallery unfolded before them. Some of the tankers began to
shoot wildly. One T-34 even sped across the airfield and
rammed a Ju52, blowing both plane and tank to eternity.
A slight strain of haste overtook the Luftwaffe men now,
for there were some collisions as pilots jostled to get on the
runway. A steady pile of burning wrecks began to pile up,
but then at 6:15 that morning, the last wave of survivors took
off. Fiebig himself was in one of the last planes to depart.
In all, 108 Ju52s and 16 Ju86 trainers managed to get away,
but 72 planes had been lost (including a dozen that had
been reportedly captured intact), constituting 10 percent of

Major-General
Vasily Badanov

the Luftwaffes total transport fleet.

Badanov was immediately promoted,
awarded the new order of Suvorov
and made a national hero. Soviet
propaganda claimed that his force,
now renamed with the illustrious
title of 2nd Guards Tank Corps, had
destroyed 431 planes an incredible
exaggeration.16

On the ground, the situation
was just as dire. By the 22nd, the
weight of the Russian armies against
LVII Panzer Corps had precluded
all chance of success. The unreliable
Romanians for one had already
abandoned their positions on Hoths
flank, leaving LVII Corps in danger
of being surrounded. This event
signaled the death of Winter Storm.
On the evening of the 23rd, Hoth
received orders to pull his men back.
Raus noted that Right down to the
most junior soldier it was absolutely DEBRIS OF WAR The aftermath of the Russian attack. A
clear that this signified defeat at shattered Junkers Ju52 at Tatsinskaya.
Stalingrad.

On Christmas Day, Manstein,
with the threat of sweeping Russian armor hanging above his ahead, told Hoth shift the emphasis of his
army into countering the Russian armies advancing from the north. With the withdrawal of the Panzers,
the Second Guards Army pushed on and took Kotelnikovo on December 29 - effectively restoring the
lines. The men at Stalingrad were now completely alone.
16

See Appendix for order of battle. The unit was later cut off by attacking Panzers and the Russians were forced to
withdraw after abandoning much of their equipment. The Corps became a Guards unit in December.

63

STAVKA ARCHIVES

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

LITTLE SATURN A column of Soviet

T-34s advance on a snow covered
road during the Russian offensive.

THE WINTER OF MISERY

By now, Stalingrad was a charnel house. Deprived of ammunition and food, but still in good
morale, the Germans endured. But men were dying on an alarming scale. Paulus sanctioned the slaughter
of 400 draught horses on the 29th alone, but the meat would not last long.

The Russians, well-defended and maintained, now that the Volga had completely frozen over
allowing trucks to cross over toyed with the Sixth Army. On December 2, Chuikov, well aware of
Paulus difficulties, launched a harassing raid against the 297th Infantry Division near Red Square, to
make them waste ammunition. By the 8th, the besieged axis troops were reduced to less than a thousand
calories per day. To get a true picture of what was happening at Stalingrad, Zeitzler dispatched a sixmember fact-finding team to the city on the 24th, headed by his adjutant, Major Coelestin von Zitzewitz.

You will fly to Stalingradtaking with you a wireless section of the Supreme Command Signals
Regiment, Zeitzler had said. What I want you to do is to send direct to me, by radio, a rapid report
on the situation there. Make it as full as possible. You have no command powers of any sort. Were not
worried about that and have the fullest confidence in General Paulus ability. The team had a 70 watt
short-wave radio and a 15 watt ultra-shortwave transmitter to broadcast the reports, and Zitzewitz
went to work. Despite Lt-General Arthur Schmidts Pro-Nazi propagandist interference at Sixth Army
headquarters, the Major painted an untarnished image of the conditions within the city. In clear and
painstaking detail, he pointed out the debilitating toll that the winter and the shortage of food was taking
on the Sixth Army; how the hospitals were overflowing with the wounded and the trenches frozen over
with ice. In one shocking broadcast, he described how a mans frostbitten fingers were eaten by rats as
he slept. It was a shattering blow to rosy faade built up in Berlin. But shroud of self-delusion closed
quickly when Gring announced that the enemy must have captured the transmitter and sending these
defeatist messages.

Zeitzler, however, cut his own rations in a movement of camaraderie with the men in Stalingrad,
losing 26 pounds in two weeks. Hitler, informed of this measure by Martin Bormann, finally ordered
Zeitzler to return to normal diet, banning champagne and brandy at headquarters as a concession, in
tepid recognition of the heroes of Stalingrad.

Back in the city, Russian snipers were making life hell for the Germans. The soviets had
established a snipers school in the remains of the Lazur Chemical factory run by Vasili Zaitsev, a
formidable shot from the Urals. Zaitsev had come to Stalingrad with the Siberians of the 284th Rifle
Division on 20 September and quickly showed his handiness with a rifle, a skill learnt as a boy in his
native village of Elininski, on the foothills of the Urals. Zaitzevs and his pupils used the ruins of the city
to their advantage and quickly emerged to become formidable headaches for the Germans. Together, they
were worth an entire brigade to Chuikov.

In one ten-day period, before November 10, Zaitzev, whose name means hare, shot and killed 32
Germans with a standard issue Mosin-Nagant rifle.17 Soviet propaganda turned the simple shepherd into
a national hero and boasted of his ability to kill Germans with a single shot. So great was the menace that
the Germans flew in their own expert sniper to deal with Zaitsev. SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald, the chief
of the SS sniper school at Zossen, near Berlin, came to Stalingrad with the specific mission of eliminating
top Red Army snipers in the city. By this time, a mysterious Red Army sniper, identified only by the
codename Zikan had already killed 224 Germans by November 20. As little else is known about him,
including his name, he is probably a propagandist creation.

Thorvalds ultimate objective was Zaitsev. The story too, carries a trace of legend making, making
17

Zaitsev had crossed the Volga with 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th Division on September 22, as a Sergeant
Major. He was awarded a Medal of Valor and a sniper rifle after killing a German officer at 800 yards with a single shot and
two others who came to check on the body. His commander had been nearby to witness the event.

64

Central Museum of the Armed forces

ACE SNIPER Vasili Zaitsev

(far left) studies the German
lines with two of his comrades
from the 284th Division. All
are well equipped for the
winter weather with white
parkas, gloves and Valenki
boots. For his battlefield
accomplishments,
Zaitsev
became a Hero of the Soviet
Union (depicted on the right).
Today, the scope of Zaitsevs
rifle is on display in Moscow.
it suspect. According to the story, Thorvald began by making a careful study of
the area. His cover had been already blown as a German prisoner had revealed
his presence to Red Army officers, resulting in the SS officer supposedly being hunted by Zaitsev and his
team of snipers. For three days, the opponents stalked each other around the 9th of January Square
in central Stalingrad. Thorvald killed a Red Army Commissar named Danilov who was reporting the
duel for the Soviet Press. Unhappily for Thorvald, his shot gave away his position and Zaitsev set a trap.
The Russian waited until the sun was behind him and persuaded his apprentice, Sniper Kulikov, to raise
his helmet to draw the Germans fire. When Thorvald fired, Kulikov cried out as if he was hit. When
Thorvald raised his head to check, Zaitsev shot him between the eyes. Although the story is impressive, it
may be a little apocryphal as there is conflicting evidence that the duel ever took place. It is confirmed by
Chukiovs memories but not by the recollections of other senior commanders. Thorvald himself existed
(in that there is one man in records with precisely that name and rank), but he was likely only an officer
with theoretical experience as he was not awarded any major awards. Zaitzev ultimately went on to kill
242 Germans (according to Russian sources) before being blinded by a mortar shell.18

Aside from Zaitsev, there were other formidable snipers in the area. When a sniper reached a tally
of 40, he was awarded the tile of Nobel Sniper. At least three other Nobel Snipers crossed the one
hundred mark during the battle, they being: Sergeant Maxim Passar from a division in the 21st Army
who was credited with 103 kills, Corporal Studentov who killed 170 enemy soldiers, and an unverifiable
Commissar named Iln of a Guards division, who supposedly killed 185 men.

Aside from the snipers the freezing winter was also taking a toll on the Sixth Army. It was
a cruel irony for the Germans that the winter chose to be the fiercest at the time of their occupation.
Even the Russians, snug in their underground bunkers and sheltered behind thick screens of winter
clothing, complained. By day, the temperature was a mind-numbing -13 F (-25C) or less, while by night
the temperature dropped even further to -47 F (-44C). A Russian war correspondent described the
conditions: If you breathe on your glove a thin film of ice immediately forms. You cannot eat anything
because all our food, bread, sausage, and eggs, have turned into stone. Even wearing valenki (felt boots)
and two pairs of woolen socks you had to move your toes all the time to keep the circulation going.
Without valenki, frostbite would have been certain, and the Germans had no valenki. To keep your hands
in good condition you had to clap half the time or play imaginary scales. Once I took out a pencil to write
18 The efforts of Professor Vladmir Filatov, a noted Russian ophthalmologist, saved Zaitsevs sight. On 22 February

1943, Zaitsev became a Hero of the Soviet Union. He late returned to action and ended the war as a Captain, fighting in the
Seelow Heights. After the war, he managed a factory in Kiev, dying in 1991 at the age of 76, just 10 days before the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

65

Central Museum of the Armed forces

down a few words. The first word was all right, the second was written by a drunk, and the last two were
the scrawl of a paralytic. I quickly blew on my purple fingers and put them back in the lined glove.

A German officer recalled how one of his men had said that when it gets really cold, one only has no
interest in living or fighting, only to lie down and die. It was hardly an exaggeration. The cold coupled with
meager food rations was sapping the strength of the Sixth Army. By late-December, five men were living on
a single-loaf of bread and a bowl of soup. There seemed little hope of the situation improving. The airlifts had
suffered a grievous blow after Tatsinskayas loss. The capture of the main airlift bases (Morosovskaya fell a few
days later), prompted Gring to transfer his squadrons to Salsk, over 200 miles to the southwest. From here,
Stalingrad was more than an hours flight away and the flight line ran straight over airfields of the Soviet Eighth
Air Army. In what was a bitter pill to swallow, at about the same time, the Russian supply lines improved
significantly. On December 16, a mass of ice of floes crashed into each other and stuck. The Russians quickly
established a small footway over the ice with wooden planks. Then an ice highway came into existence as the
Russians positioned wooden branches over the floes and poured water to act as freezing cement.

In the next seven weeks, 18,000 trucks and 17,000 other vehicles crossed the iceway into Stalingrad.
The Russian wounded were evacuated across the river and badly needed supplies and munitions arrived,
including a 122mm howitzer, which went straight into action against the German-held part of the Red
October factory. The main office building which had become an integral part of the German defense was
reduced to rubble.

The freezing temperatures might have aided the Russian lines of communications, but the frigid
conditions escalated the miseries of the Sixth Army. Frost-bite cases escalated from the middle of December.
German doctors noted that for the first time, feet were not merely swollen and tinted purple as on previous
occasions, but most cases were black and required immediate amputation. Another more worrisome
development was the widespread deaths of soldiers without having received a wound or suffering from
a diagnosable sickness. Doctors cited numerous cases, citing exposure, exhaustionand [an] unidentified
disease, conveniently ignoring the actual cause: starvation. The truth came out after the Sixth Armys chief
pathologist, Dr. Hans Girgensohn performed about 50 autopsies, which showed clear signs of death by
starvation: atrophy of the heart and liver, a complete absence of fatty tissue, a severe shrinkage of muscle.

Girgensohns eight year study (including seven of those years while spent in a Russian POW camp),
came to the conclusion that debilitating environmental conditions played as much a part in the degeneration
of the body as did actual malnutrition. He wrote that a combination of exhaustion, stress and the cold upset
the metabolism of most soldiers so that even when they ate, their bodies absorbed a mere fraction of the
nutrients. And the Russians had made little attempt to alleviate the wastelandic, stressful conditions that had
overtaken the city.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY The

Red Army was the only regular
combatant of the Second World War
to actively employ women in combat
roles albeit only in the sniper
division (as these women in the
photo) and the Air Force. Famously,
female combat aviators from the
588th Night Bomber Regiment
also operated over Stalingrad.

66


Every day, propaganda briefs running up
to half an hour blared towards the German lines on
loudspeakers, broadcasting news intermingled with
poems and songs. Some of the most effective items
were the revelations that the Italian Eighth Army had
disintegrated and fled and that Mansteins Winter
Storm had been thwarted. Other measures were the
ominous ticking of a clock, crackling messages that said
that Stalingrad was the mass grave of Hitlers army, and
tango music, which when played against the icy, wintry
sweeps of destroyed streets took on an ominous quality.
A propaganda leaflet showing a child crying over the
body of a German soldier made many of the hardened
EFFECTIVE PROPAGANDA Once it was
Germans weep with despair.

Conditions failed to improve in the days leading realized that German morale was eroding the
up to Christmas which many German troops saw as Russians did everything they could to force the
a marker of better times to come. In the early morning capitulation of individual troops. This leaflet,
hours of Christmas, both the 16th Panzer and 60th air dropped over German lines reads: I am
Motorized Divisions came under stiff attack by the following your advice. Accept my surrender,
Russians. Elsewhere along the line, those units not comrade, Do not shoot!
under attack found the opportunity to sing Christmas
songs, the tones of which cast prosaic memories of home and family. In a characteristic incident, a group of
Germans celebrated Christmas at the Red October Factory in front of makeshift Christmas tree constructed
from carved-up wooden boxes. Their celebratory meal consisted of a slice of horse, a loaf of bread and
cigarettes. By some miracle, someone had even scrounged up rum and wine. A large group clustered around
a radio to listen to a special broadcast of Grossdeutsche Rundfunk19 (German Radio), which blared with
characteristic pomp, announcing greetings from all corners of the Reich. To the surprise of many, the speaker
announced: And now from Stalingrad! Followed by a cheerful song, to show that all was well in the city.
Most of the soldiers were furious. Others reasoned that it was a necessary subterfuge to comfort families with
men in Stalingrad that conditions in the city were still tolerable, even though, realistically, it was far from so.
An estimated 1,280 Axis soldiers had died of starvation, frostbite and disease on that day alone.

At seven oclock in the morning of Christmas Day, as the temperature fell to a near unbearable -13
F (-25C), the Sixth Army War Diary recorded the unavoidable facts: No supply flights arrived in the last
forty-eight hours.20 Supplies and fuel coming to an end. To Zeitzler, Paulus sent the message: If we do not
receive increased rates of supplies in the next few days we must expect a greatly increased death rate through
exhaustion. In stark contrast, the Russians had celebrated New Years Eve with a large party of ballerinas,
actors and musicians. At Kotelnikovo, Russian generals of the 2nd Guards Army dined on a kingly scale
on newly ferried supplies from the Soviet rear and on captured German food provisions headed for Paulus,
ranging from French cheese to tinned jams and fish from Norway. Food had become the overwhelming
concern for most German troops, an item that had become irrevocably tied to morale, sense of self and duty.
One soldier, Wilhelm Hoffman, a member of German 94th Infantry Division, compiled a tragic entry in his
diary for December 26th: The horses have already been eaten. I would eat a cat; they say its meat is tasty. The
soldiers look like corpses or lunatics. They no longer take cover from Russian shells; they havent the strength
to walk, run away and hide.
19
20

A State controlled radio stationed which could be vaguely equated to the British BBC.
Historian Anthony Beevor contends that this is a slight exaggeration as a handful of supplies had arrived during that
period. On December 26, 108 tons of supplies arrived, including 10 tons of sweets for Christmas, but no fuel.

67

HOPELESS DEFIANCE

With the passing of 1943, the Sixth Army now looked to New Years Day and the onset of 1943
with the glimmering eye of hope. But Paulus was particularly eager to impress upon Hitler and the other
brass at headquarters of the desperation in the city. His chance came when der Mesnch, Lt-General HansValentin Hube of XIV Corps was informed that he had been awarded the Swords to his Knights Cross
which he was to receive in person from Hitler.

Paulus quickly told Hube to take all the necessary documents on matters ranging from
shortages in fuel to medicine with the hope that Hitler would finally realize that the Luftwaffe was failing
to satisfy the necessary supply quotas. Hube was scheduled to fly out in a weeks time but in the interim,
the painful struggle continued.

On New Years Day, Hitler sent a carefully worded message that lifted everyones spirits.

In the name of the whole German people, I send you and your valiant army the heartiest good
wishes for the New Year. The hardness of your perilous position is known to me. The heroic stand
of your troops has my highest respect. You and your soldiers, however, should enter the New Year
with the unshakeable confidence that I and the whole German Wehrmacht will do everything in
our power to relieve the defenders of Stalingrad and that with your staunchness will come the
most glorious feat in the history of German arms Adolf Hitler.

Paulus, with a quick relief that all would ultimately turn out well, wrote back: Mein Fhrer, your
confident words on the New Year were greeted here with enthusiasm. We will justify your trust. You can
be certain that we, from the oldest general to the youngest grenadier, will hold out, inspired by fanatical
will, and contribute our share to final victory.

But by this point, Paulus command was in the process of simply fading away. Russian propaganda
and constant attacks had exacted a heavy toll from his divisions, notably the Austrians of the 44th
Division and Maj-General Edler von Daniels 376th Division, which had already suffered a large number
of men to desertions. In the Romanian sector, in the so-called Fortress area, the men had suffered
heavily to frostbite because of clothing shortages. After the battle, the Romanians would systematically

BUNDESARCHIV

ANGUISH A wounded
German prisoner is
marched away at gunpoint.
The misery on his face
is apparent, but more
was to be endured until
he reached the relative
safety of a POW camp.

68

charge Paulus with having neglected them of food and clothing in favor of German troops. All battalions
and companies had become so diluted with casualties that their designations on maps had little meaning.
Even though 150,000 Axis soldiers were within the pocket, only one in five were combat troops. Many
companies had less than a platoon of men. The ad-hoc German military entity, the battlegroup, became
the most prevalent military small-unit formation, each carrying its own eclectic range of troops, with
service personnel gathered alongside combat soldiers, with Cossacks and Hiwis manning guns alongside
Luftwaffe ground crews, and Panzer crews branded together with artillery men. On January 6, Paulus
signaled Zeitzler: Army starving and frozen, have no ammunition and cannot move tanks anymore.
When told of this, Hitler did not respond except to award Lt-General Schmidt with a Knights Cross.
Increasingly, the bestowment of awards and promotions on the trapped garrison was seen as an adequate
measure when no physical measure could actually be undertaken.

The Russians, on the other side, were busy planning the annihilation of the pocket. A new
operation, codenamed Koltso (Ring) had taken shape at the end of December. Under the Polish-born
General Konstantin Rokossovsky, the 21st, 24th, 64th, 65th and 66th Armies with 47 divisions, backed
by 5,610 field guns and mortars and 169 tanks was to smash through the Sixth Army perimeter with 300
planes from the 16th Air Army in support. The start date for Operation Ring was January 10.

To give the Germans one last chance to surrender, the Russians put together a party of two
officers on January 8, Major Aleksander Symslov, an army intelligence officer and Captain Nikolay
Dyatlenko of the NKVD, to meet with Paulus. The terms were honorable. In return for surrender, all men
would be given food, medical aid and the right to keep their uniforms, including medals. The officers
would be allowed to keep their ceremonial swords and to return home after the war ended. After the two
officers, with an NCO in the lead, managed a hazardous journey to the German lines, Paulus refused to
even meet with them.
The Luftwaffe airlift attempts still continued despite heavy losses over the previous weeks.21 The
21 The third best day for the airlift had been on December 19, when 154 airplanes had brought in 289 tons of

STAVKA ARCHIVES

supplies. On three important days, 19 and 20 December and 4 January, over a thousand men were taken out of the pocket.

CRASHED BEHEMOTH A Focke-Wulf Fw200 Condor that had crashed during the airlifts. The
famous ring around the world emblem which once adorned German bombers from KG40 (bomber
wing 40), raiding England in 1940, has been extended to this unit, Kgr.zbV 200, a specially-formed
unit. After the airlifts ended, the unit returned to its old designation of Kampfgeschwader (KG) 40.

69

airfield at Pitomnik within the pocket had been battered by artillery and air strikes to such a degree
that the shattered wrecks of planes and wreckage littered the sides of the runway, forming a veritable
machine graveyard. In order to augment the losses, larger Focke-Wulf 200 Condors, originally used for
maritime work were added to the transport fleet as each could carry six tons. The even larger Junker
Ju290 which could manage 10 tons was also in limited operation but these planes were vulnerable to
enemy fighters and were difficult to operate from forward airfields. Even worse, the new main airbase at
Salsk came under attack in mid-January, forcing the planes to move again, this time to Zverevo, north of
Rostov, to a place which was little more than a snowy runway on an agricultural field.

The ground crews and pilots erected tents to shelter from the cold and conduct operations
under dismal conditions. Being a temporary location, Zverevo had little anti-aircraft defenses, and the
Russians exploited this flaw with devastating result. On January 18, eighteen waves of Russian fighters
and bombers, struck, destroying about fifty Ju52s on the ground.

By now in Stalingrad, the Axis troops shuffled around like stiff caricatures, piling on more and
more clothing to keep from freezing. The level of hygiene falling dramatically as there was little water
for bathing or even shaving. Lice populations exploded in these conditions and the half-starved and
suffering men dreamed of hot baths and warm food as the epitome of a luxurious existence. The bread
ration had fallen to 200 grams a day and at times went down to a hundred grams. The last of the draught
horses were slaughtered but the frozen meat proved difficult to cut up. Hardly any fuel existed for
cooking or melting snow, much less for running tanks. Suicides took place on an alarming scale but the
numbers are difficult to distinguish from combat deaths. For many a hardened veteran, the toughest pill
to swallow was the possibility of breaking down in front of their comrades. Men left their bunkers and
dug outs to cry in solitude, with memories of home, of parents, wives, children. On one occasion, the
sight of a starving horse desperately gnawing on a piece of wood moved men to tears.

When Hube returned to the pocket on January 9, he reported that Hitler had refused to believe
that Stalingrad was in danger of falling. Instead, Hitler had spoken of a second relief attempt, this time
by SS troops an irrational idea which rapidly spread among the troops who clung to desperate hope
despite the painful lure of reality.

STAVKA ARCHIVES

ESCAPE When it
became clear that
the Sixth Army was
doomed, provisions
were made to get
some of the more
valuable men out. A
few of the generals
made good their
escape this way, but
so did irreplaceable
specialists such as
these men. Feelings
of guilt predictably
overtook many
who got away.

70

THE BITTER END COMES

On the morning of January 10, a Sunday, Operation Ring went into effect as planned. When
Rokossovsky gave the fire order, 7,000 field guns, Katyusha launchers and mortars opened up, heralding
in the words of one Soviet commander, an incessant thunder rolling over the steppes in dark spouts of
fountain-like bursts. Colonel Ignatov, the Russian artillery commander, remarked that the barrage was so
heavy that there was only two ways to escape death or insanity. Von Daniels, in a letter to his wife,
described the day as a very peaceful Sunday. This attempt at indifference was not shared by his men. The
grenadiers of one regiment were so astonished at the scale of the barrage that they offered little resistance
when the Russians appeared.

After an hour, the bombardment eased but then three waves of Russian troops attacked, with a
tank every fifty or a hundred yards as far as the eye could see. On the southwest part of the perimeter,
held by the 44th, 29th Motorized and 3rd Motorized Divisions, the front started to cave. By the afternoon,
the 29th and the 3rd Motorized found themselves being outflanked. In the 3rd Motorized, resistance
was especially slack. Replacements, mostly sick or worn out did little to fight off the Russians and only
contemplated, in the words of one officer, of slipping away to the rear at night.

At the fortified towns of Marinovka and Karopovka, near the perimeter, the Twenty-First and
Sixty-Fifth Armies attacked the Germans in strength who were only able to respond with doomed, smallscale counter-attacks. Elsewhere, the Sixty-Sixth Army attacked the 16th Panzer and 60th Motorized
Divisions. The last remaining tanks of the 2nd Panzer Regiment held its ground against incoming T-34s
charging across the open ground, destroying droves until the survivors fled. In the south, the Sixty-Fourth

71

BUNDESARCHIV

DESPERATE
WORK
As the noose tightened
around the Sixth Army,
coupled
with
heavy
snowfall, the Germans
worked frantically to
keep the airlifts going.
Here a group attempts to
free a Ju52 from a heavy
snow bank.
Army first bombarded the partly-Austrian 297th Infantry Division and the 82nd Romanian Regiment
with artillery, and then attacked. As the shelling lifted, the local German commander, Lt-Colonel Mder,
received word that, those pigs of Romanians have made a run for it. An entire battalion had packed it
in and fled, leaving a gaping hole a mile wide open for the Russians. Pioneers, under the command of
Major Gtzelmann, rushed in and only just managed to plug the gap after a few Russian tanks had broken
through. Mders men would continue to fight bravely for the next two days against overwhelming odds,
thwarting the 36th Guards Rifle, the 422nd Rifle Division, two marine infantry brigades and a portion of
the 13th Tank Corps.22 On January 11, Marinovka and Karopovka fell and the following day, the TwentyFirst and Sixty-Fifth Armies reached the west bank of the frozen Rossoshka River despite the gallantry of
the 14th Panzer Division which fought nearly until the last bullet.

Realizing the front was faltering and that they would be overrun until something was done, Paulus
decided to send a young, highly-decorated soldier to Hitlers headquarters to press the urgency of breaking
out. The officer chosen was a Knights Cross holder, Captain Winrich Behr, a Panzer man currently with
the inglorious job of updating the situation map in Sixth Army headquarters. Behr received word of his
mission just hours before his departure and did not even have time to collect farewell letters from his
comrades before he took off.

Miraculously, he survived the Russian aerial gauntlet in a He111 teeming with German wounded
and reached Taganrog on the Sea of Azov where he met with Manstein. After this, on the following day,
the 13th, he flew on Rastenburg to meet Hitler. Reaching the Wolf s Lair that evening, he was escorted to
the briefing room where he discovered a reception party of between twenty and twenty-five senior officers.
Hitler appeared after ten minutes and immediately began a monologue on Operation Dietrich, the
supposed SS relief attempt towards Stalingrad.

Behr had been warned about this tactic by his brother-in-law, Nicholaus von Below, who was
Hitlers Luftwaffe adjutant. He waited for the longest time as Hitler spoke on until finally ending with the
words, Herr Hauptmann, when you return to General Paulus, tell him this and that all my heart and my
hopes are with him and his Army an attempt to send the younger man packing without making his
case, a favorite technique used by the Fhrer to circumvent discussions on touchy subjects.
22 Mder escaped the pocket on January 21-22, after an order came down for one man to be nominated from each
division for evacuation. Mder was the man from the 297th Division designated to be a part of this Sixth Armys equivalent of
Noahs Ark.

72

History in the Making (HITM)

UNCOWED
MESSENGER
Captain
Winrich Behr, the reluctant but defiant
messenger of the Sixth Armys woes.

Behr would have none of it. He went on to describe with great detail the conditions at Stalingrad,
the growing numbers of German deserters going over the Russians, the hunger, the cold and the lack of
supplies. At one point his honesty took on such a brutal tone that General Keitel angrily shook a fist at
him from behind Hitlers back. Other senior officers attempted to diffuse the tension by asking ridiculous
questions but Hitler himself proved surprisingly attentive to Behrs criticism. But when the young Panzer
commander had finished, Hitler returned to his maps and pointed to great array of divisions on the board
(little more than skeletal forces in reality) that would restore the balance. Hitler also pointed out an entire
SS Panzer Army which was already supposedly assembling around Kharkov ready to strike towards
Stalingrad. Behr remembered in his discussions with Manstein the day before, that this force still needed
weeks to organize.

I saw then that he had lost touch with reality, Behr later said. He lived in a fantasy world of maps
and flags. It was the end of all my allusions about Hitler.

Instead of returning Behr to Stalingrad, the senior leadership had him moved to the Black Sea
Coast to work in Melitopol with a new Special Staff under the command of Luftwaffe Field Marshal
Erhard Milch to better coordinate airlifts to Stalingrad. Meantime, again as if in recompense, Hitler
ordered another series of awards for the men of the Sixth Army, approving a total of 178 decorations,
including Oak Leaves to Pauluss Knight Cross on the 15th.

Back in Stalingrad, the 16th Panzer and 60th Motorized Divisions had been forced back from the
northern perimeter while Chuikovs veteran Sixty-Second Army attacked their old opponents, the 100th
Jger and 305th Infantry Division in the factory district. On the western side of the pocket, the 29th
Motorized Division was reduced to a handful of men and the 3rd Motorized Division as forced to abandon
much of its transport and heavy weapons, and fall back on foot. The relentless Russian Sixty-Fifth and
Twenty-First Armies rolled on towards Pitomnik, a breakthrough which was helped by the progress of the
Fifty-Seventh and Sixty-Fourth Armies on the southern flank. Mders 297th Division there managed to
pull back, just escaping a Russian trap, but von Daniels 376th Division was cut off. On the afternoon of the
14th, Paulus sent out the message to Army Group Don: 376 Infantry Division is destroyed.Pitomnik
airfield will only be useable until 15 January.

The assessment was accurate. On the 15th, Pitomnik indeed fell to Russian troops. A small force of
Messerschmitt Me109 fighters which had been based there rapidly took off as the Russians appeared and
landed at Gumrak, only to find heavy snow on the runway. In the afternoon, artillery fire began to land on
Gumrak and the planes took again, for the last time, headed west, under Richthofens orders. By now, the
air transports had the same ideas of escape.

Already, chaos was overtaking the airfield with a horde of squatters occupying the dispersal
eager to get out while other men, military police and officers without units attempted to hold them back.
A chance to have supplies landed on the 16th was missed after hectic conditions in the airfield resulted

73

in none of the landing lights being turned on, and with ground-control radios seemingly out of action.
Fearing that the end had finally come, Paulus sent Zeitzler a message that same day, recommending that all
units still capable, should be allowed to break out. Zeitzler initially did not respond and Paulus issued his
own orders: Regimental commanders were to assemble battlegroups of 200 of their best menand break
out.

Yet for some reason, the breakout plan did not come to pass. It may have succeeded on a small
scale. These days were a period of a relative calm as Rokossovsky was busy regrouping his forces for a final
dash to the city. Several small groups made the attempt by themselves. One group from XI Corps used
skis and actually broke out of the lines to the southwest during the last day of the siege, only to meet their
end at the hand of other soviet units to the south. By all accounts, no German ever escaped the Stalingrad
perimeter. Paulus himself never entertained any personal notions of escape, writing just one line of farewell
to his wife to be carried out by one his evacuating officers. Lt-General Hube was also ordered to evacuate
and flew out on January 20. Other officers also left before escape became impossible. Then on the 25th,
Hitler, in act of callous disregard, and perhaps finally conscious of the imminent demise of the Sixth
Army, ordered his chief adjutant, General Schmundt to form a new Sixth Army with a strength of twenty
divisions.

The Russians attack again on the morning of the 20th. Gonchara was captured by the Sixty-Fifth

74

Army. Gumrak was now a few miles away. Field Marshal

Milch received a message relaying that Gumrak would
be unusable from January 22 onwards. The airfield at
Stalingradsky will be clear for landing, the message
read. Unfortunately, large planes were incapable of
landing at the Stalingradsky Flight Schools solitary
runway and this effectively spelled the end of the airlifts.
When a Luftwaffe liaison officer told Paulus that
there would be no more landings, Paulus knew that
there was no more hope left. He raged at the man
helplessly: We have had it. Our men have no strength
left. Its four days since they had had anything to eat!
The last horses have been eaten! Why on earth did
the Luftwaffe ever promise to keep us supplied? Then
he appeared to deflate. When a Major attempted to
inform him of the situation facing Army Group Don,
he muttered: Dead men are no longer interested in
military history.
At the airfield, men waited in anguish for the planes
to come. Some of the last planes had carried out final
letters from the dying army (the regular Luftpost had
effectively cease after January 13). Most of the letters
were scribbles written by men in haste. Almost all were

brutally honest.23

The mood here is very mixed, an army doctor wrote to his father. Some take it badly, others
lightly and in a composed way. An unknown Major von R, wrote to his wife: Perhaps this will be the last
letter from me for a long time. You are always my first and last thought. Our men have been and still
are achieving the impossible. We must not be less brave than them. Some letters were bitter towards the
regime that had condemned them to die here. Were quite alone, without any help from outside, one man
wrote. Hitler has left us in the lurch. Another told his wife: Do not stay single for long. Forget me if you
can, but never forget what we endured here.

The letters were never delivered. The Fourth Panzer Armys field censorship bureau had ordered
that the letters be studied for sentiments on Nazi leadership and morale. The names of the writers were
scrubbed out and the letters became mere pieces of data to be studied. Captain Count von Zedtwitz,
the bureau chief attempted to do this as best he could, while avoiding all references to defeatism. Joseph
Goebbels, the propaganda chief, eventually ordered the entire lot destroyed although apparently a junior
officer, Heinz Schrter (sanctioned by the propaganda ministry to write an epic historiography of the
Stalingrad campaign) copied some of the best letters for posterity.

At Gumrak, 500 wounded men had been abandoned in freezing cold by the 9th Flak Division as
the Russians came. One man who had lost both legs crept along the road leading out where he was found
by a car full of fleeing Germans. There was no room for him in the car but the Germans tied a sled to
the back of their car. They had barely started off when the sled overturned. They stopped again and one
officer told the man to hang on to the front. The man stared at them. The Russians were close now and
23 A few samples of the immense collection of letters were published anonymously in Germany in 1954, under the title,

Last Letters from Stalingrad. Some historians now consider them forgeries. Others consider them genuine. French president
Franois Mitterrand reputedly carried the French edition with him until the end of his life, using it for his speech for the 50th
anniversary of the end of the war on the 8 May 1995.

75

Novosty Press Agency

AN AIRFIELD FALLS Red Army men rush through one of the airfields in the Stalingrad perimeter,
with German planes still on the ground.
the amputee made a decision that affected the officers deeply. Leave me, he told him in a harsh voice. I
havent got a chance anyway.

The officers reluctantly drove away. The soldier waited in the snow by the side of the road for
the Russians to come. Elsewhere in Stalingrad, such stories of men reconciling with the end became
commonplace. Men now openly wept that they would never see home again, would never have a chance
to all the say the things they had hoped to, dreamed about under a hundred wintry nights. I am thinking
about you and our little son, an unknown German wrote in a letter that never reached his wife. The
only thing I have left is to think of you. I am indifferent to everything else. Thinking about you breaks my
heart.

The advancing Russian tanks ran over some of the wounded lying at Gumrak, but those that
survived faced a grimmer existence slow death. The Russians had made little provisions to treat enemy
wounded and Gumrak was reportedly left under the care of just two medical orderlies and a chaplain.
Other accounts question even this and state that the men were left to survive alone on water from snow
and horse carcasses, to survive ten horrific days in the open before being moved to Camp Beketovka. By
the 22nd, the Russians had appeared on Stalingrads door. That same day, Hitler radioed the Sixth Army:
Surrender out of the question. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and
by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution to the salvation of the Western world.

Sixth Army officers received this message with a mixture of disbelief and contempt. The city had
now been reduced virtually to rubble. Many of the buildings were empty shells with the facades standing
tall, gaunt windows open to the sky. Some 20,000 wounded clogged dank, musty cellars under buildings
still standing, while another 20,000 soldiers wandered the city, most weaponless, looking for a warm place
to rest, completely isolated from their commanders and units. At the Gorki theatre alone, 600 wounded
lived a troglodytic existence without light and water, with constant, near unison moans for help, mingled
with prayer. In one terrible incident, a three-storey building, sheltering hundreds of wounded was hit by
shelling and caught fire, consuming most of the infirm.

The divisions and regiments which had once proudly held the line had simply ceased to exist on
the streets. The 14th Panzer Division had only about 80 men still capable of handling weapons and its once
impressive numbers of tanks had been reduced to none. If men continued to fight, it was out of fear of

76

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Russian retribution.

On January 25, finally unable to take much
more, the Germans started to give up in masse.
General Moritz von Drebbers 297th Infantry
Division surrendered wholesale, three miles from
the mouth of the Tsaritsa. The Russians who
quickly appeared to take charge, found only a
skeletal force.

Where is your division? a Russian Colonel
asked von Drebber. The German general looked
at him wearily, at the surviving cluster of men,
wracked by hunger, frostbite and disease. Do I
really have to explain to you, Colonel, where my
division is? he asked.

At dawn on the next day, a semi repeat of
what had transpired at Kalach months before
CAPTURED GENERAL Lt-General Werner
occurred when Russians from the Twenty-First
Sanne of the 100th Jger Division at the moment
Army linked with Rodimstevs 13th Guards Rifle
of his surrender to Russian troops. As Sanne and
Division near the Red October Factory worker
his staff were led away, bursts of machinegun
settlements. At long last, the Sixty-Second Army
fire were aimed at them from the German lines.
had been relieved. As before, the Russians danced
Two German officers were killed. Surrender had
and leapt with joy. For Chuikov, the moment was
been forbidden in some sectors by fanatical Nazi
emotional. The eyes of the hardened soldiers
officers. Sanne survived but died in 1952 in a
who met were filled with tears of joy, he wrote.
Russian POW camp.

By now, Paulus, in his new headquarters, in
the basement of the Univermag Department store, was in a state of mental torment. Large numbers of
his men and generals had been captured and the Russians were just up the street. All captured prisoners
were rapidly shuffled off to the rear with the officers moved on to interrogation centers by the NKVD and
Army Intelligence. Many of the captured generals were bitter about their leaders in Germany, referring
to Goebbels as a lame duck, and criticizing Luftwaffe chief, Herman Gring for not have gone on a
Stalingrad diet. The Russians were far from fooled. Most cynical intelligence officers saw these late hour
condemnations reflective of a crop of men who had followed the Third Reich only as long as things had
been profitable.

On January 29, near the eve of the tenth anniversary of Hitlers rise to power, the Sixth Army sent a
message of congratulation to Berlin: To the Fhrer! The Sixth Army greets their Fhrer on the anniversary
of your taking power. The swastika still flies over Stalingrad. May your struggle be an example to present
and future generations never surrender in hopeless situations so that Germany will be victorious in the
end Paulus.

It is unclear if Paulus sent this message or whether his pro-Nazi chief of staff, Lt-General Schmidt
did. The next day, more empty platitudes crossed the airwaves. Goring conducted a radio broadcast in
which he compared the Sixth Army to the Spartans at Thermoplae. But already some of the Spartans had
decided to relinquish victory to the Persians. On January 25, Seydlitz-Kurzbach had granted his divisional
commanders permission to surrender if they wished. Paulus immediately sacked him. Seydlitz-Kurzbachs
divisions were moved to General Walter Heitzs VIII Corps. Heitz proved a hypocritical sort, commanding
his men to fight to the last bullet while ordering his staff to rig up white flags. Seydlitz-Kurzbach and three
other generals24, meantime, decided to give up. As they were led away, shots rang out from the German
lines at them, wounding two generals. The act of surrender had been forbidden by some of the more
24

Max Pfeffer, Otto Korfes and Werner Sanne, along with a large contingent of their staffs.

77

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

INTO ENEMY LINES Paulus,

haggard and unshaven stumbles,
forward towards the Soviet Front
headquarters and eventually the
stockade. Beside him is his chief
of staff, Lt-General Schmidt, and
another staff officer.
FAR LEFT The collar tab of the
German Field Marshal which
Paulus had not even received by the
time of his capitulation, a fact that
caused him some embarrassment as
he relayed to Soviet interrogators.

fanatical Nazi officers.

But the Russians really hoped to get Paulus. The fear was so great that he would escape that
General Nikolai Voronov, the Soviet commander of Artillery, awoke that night, jarred with the thought
that Paulus might escape on an aircraft landing on the frozen Volga. Ringing up his men on the east bank,
he ordered them to train their guns on the river.

In reality, Paulus had no desire to escape. Unlike many other commanders, he was determined to
remain with his men until the end. Hitler thought half as much but hoped that the man would go one step
further. On the morning of the 31st, he promoted Paulus to Field Marshal. The motives were transparent.
No German Field Marshal had ever been captured alive. In his mind, Paulus had only two options left:
fight to the death or commit suicide. Paulus was furious. One his men remembered him as saying, I have
no intention of shooting myself for that Bohemian corporal.

By mid-morning, the Sixty-Fourth Army had nearly captured all of central Stalingrad. Red Square
was witness to an intense artillery bombardment that further ravaged its pockmarked grounds. At 7:35
a.m., Milchs headquarters on the Black Sea received the message: Russians at the entrance. We are
preparing to surrender. Ten minutes later, a Russian party led by Senior Lt. Fyodor Ilchenko of the 38th
Motorized Brigade went down into the basement. Led in by a German officer who had been instructed to
show the Russians in, Ilchenko and his men went past an improvised cloth door and into a small clean
room. A makeshift open-flame made from a spent cannon shell stood on a big table, an ornate accordion
occupied a place on a sofa by a wall and a tall, elderly, despondent-looking man wearing a sweater sat
on a bed nearby. It was Paulus. His uniform hung on a chair. As this was taking place, one last German
message went over the air waves. We are surrendering.

Captain Behr, who had done much to describe the conditions at the city, received the signal.
He passed it on to Mansteins headquarters. In Germany, the official communiqu for the day read:
Stalingrad, situation unchanged. The defenders spirit unbroken.

78

THE LAST SONG

In Germany, Hitler was secretly furious at the capitulation. They have surrendered there formally
and absolutely, he told Keitel and the other senior generals at the Wolf s Lair. Otherwise they would
have closed ranks, formed a hedgehog and shot themselves with their last bullet. When you consider that
a woman has pride to leave, to lock herself in, and to shoot herself right away just because she has heard
a few insulting remarks, then I cant have any respect for a soldier who is afraid of that and prefers to go
into captivity.

As large numbers of German troops surrendered, the Russians scoured the captured ranks for
Hiwis and fascist troops, their meaning for SS men, Gestapo officers, Feldgendarmerie and Panzer
troops who wore the Deaths Head badge resembling the emblem worn by SS troops. Paulus was driven
into captivity in his own staff car25 to Don Front headquarters outside Zavarykino, fifty miles away. Here
he met some of his other generals, captured days or moments before and was given a small country
cottage house, little more than a common Russian gable-roofed log house called an Izba. Unlike most of
his men who were led off into captivity with only the clothes on their back, Paulus and his entourage had
been allowed to take their luggage. Now, NKVD officers appeared to check the contents, to circumvent
suicide.

General Schmidt was furious at the intrusion. A German field marshal does not commit suicide
with a pair of nail scissors, he told them. Paulus, whose mind still struggled to grasp capture and fates
of the rest of his army still fighting, exhaustedly waved a hand of dejection and gave the Russians his
shaving kit. That evening he was summoned to a meeting with Rokossovsky, Voronov and other Russian
officers, including Captain Dyatlenko.

Voronov went straight to the point, asking Paulus to sign a decree commanding the rest of the
Sixth Army to surrender. Paulus declined with any angry outburst. Voronov attempted to point the
humanitarian benefits of surrendering as the last German pockets of resistance would be cleared up in a
day or two anyway. Paulus still declined. At last, frustrated, Voronov warned that his refusal would sign

STAVKA ARCHIVES

25 This vehicle, a Mercedes, was seized by General W.I. Kazakov, the Don Fronts artillery commander, as war loot.

THE INTERROGATORS A rare photograph of Paulus being questioned by the Russians. From left:
General Konstantin Rokossovsky of the Don Front, Marshal of Artillery N. Voronov, translator Captain
Dyatlenko of the NKVD, and a dejected-looking Paulus.

79

would warrant grave repercussions on the lives of his men.

Paulus did not speak. The tic on his face still twitching, he stared emptily at a wall. When at
last the Russians interrupted him to ask if his lodgings were favorable, Paulus stirred. The only thing I
would like to request is that [you] feed the many prisoners of war, and give them medical attention,
he said. Voronov responded by saying something that it was difficult to cope with such a mass of
prisoners, but that they would try. But already the Russians had envisaged terrible repercussions for
their new charges. Once final German resistance ended two days later, after a pocket around the tractor
factory with six divisions held by General Streckers XI Corps surrendered, the prisoners were put in
work gangs and sent back into the city to clear the rubble.

On February 2, when it became clear that the last Germans had given up, the Sixty-Second
Army went into a frenzy of celebration. Flares arched up into the sky like fireworks and sailors from
the Volga flotillas crossed over to bring over food, especially for the bedraggled civilians who started to
reappear in strength from cellars, hiding places and broken houses. Despite the mass of people in the
broken streets, the city felt ominously dead. In five months of combat that constituted the Stalingrad
campaign, the Russians had lost 1.1 million men, including 485,751 men killed.

Axis losses were smaller but also heavy. Some 488 planes of the Luftwaffe had been lost trying
to supply the Sixth Army with the loss of a thousand airmen, and at Stalingrad and in other parts of
the pocket, 300,000 Germans had died, as had 450,000 Romanians, Italians, Hungarians and Croats.
An estimated 98,000 men had been taken prisoner, including 22 German generals. The victory was a
tremendous morale boost for the Russians. After Stalingrad, not a single soldier had doubts about the
[ultimate] outcome of the war, a Red Army officer said. The victorious divisions who had fought were
split up from their armies and sent to other armies so that the high morale could spread. Another Red
Army officer told a captive group from the 297th Division, pointing to the wrecked city: Thats how
Berlin is going to look. The word was as good as the intent.

ABANDONED BY THE
REICH Two despondent
German prisoners stare at a
Russian camera. A significant
percentage of Germans
captured at Stalingrad
would become anti-Nazis.

80

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

STAVKA ARCHIVES

TO OBLIVION A long, snake-like

column of German prisoners are
marched to join work gangs and
prisoner camps. Most would be dead
in a year.

COURTESY OF ZA RODINU/FLICKR

COLLATERAL VICTIMS
Children, mostly made destitute
by the fighting began to emerge
in unexpected numbers after the
German surrender. Few had any
prospects except a state-run home
or a distant relative somewhere.

German prisoners who had expected to be marched off to prisoner camps, found themselves
cleaning the mess which they had helped to create. Much of the work involved removing the dead
which proved hazardous work. Disease and infection ran rampant through the decomposing piles and
the majority of the German work gangs died of typhus. By the onset of spring 1943, nearly half of the
captured prisoners had died an incredible high death rate that has no concrete figures although
sources state that only 15,000 out of the 98,000 enemy captives were still alive. The Russians themselves
state that the care of prisoners had been ignored, with many shot out of hand in the long march to a
POW camp. The luckiest prisoners were those that were marched off almost at once to prisoner camps.
Certainly the most fortune were men from the northern pocket who were marched to the Dubobvka
camp, only 12 miles away. Other, unfortunate men were taken on a long death march through dismal
weather to Beketovka, following a deliberately cruel zig-zag route through temperatures reaching -13
F (-25 C). Men who collapsed were abandoned to the cold or shot. One man from the 305th Infantry
Division recalled setting out on one march with 1,200 men only to reach Beketovka with a tenth, about
20 men.

One historian recorded that time and again, the [POW] columns were raided for personal
belongings, sometimes by Red Army troops but more often by civilians. The prisoners were only
lightly guarded but the many men who dropped out through sickness or fatigue were at the mercy of
marauding bands of armed civilians who roamed the outskirts of the columns. None of those who
dropped out was ever seen again. Eventually the columns were loaded on to trains and transported
through Saratov, Orenburg and Engels to Tashkent, north of Afghanistan. At each stop the dead were
unloaded from the cattle trucks and only fifty per cent of those who had been entrained arrived at the
destination. Rations for the prisoners were almost non-existent as the Red Army had shortages of food
for its own men.

Beketovka soon had a strength of 50,000 prisoners, including wounded. By 21 October 1943,
45,200 men had died. In comparison, the captive German generals lived a life of comparative kingly
comfort. Moved to a camp26 near Moscow in a plush train bitterly called The White Train by the
junior officers, the generals contemplated ways to remain useful. Seydlitz-Kurzbach set about trying to
organize an anti-Nazi corps with an approximate strength of 45,000 men, to be formed with volunteers
from the POW camps, apparently oblivious of massive attrition rate of the POWs to disease and illtreatment. Stalin never really trusted him and afraid that the Western Allies would see the formation of
26
First a camp at Krasnogorsk, then a monastery at Suzdal, and then to a semi-permanent location, Camp 48 at Voikovo,
a luxurious old inn and health spa, dubbed the Castle.

81

BUNDESARCHIV

VICTORY The Soviet flag is once again waved over Red Square in February 1943 after nearly five
months of combat. The soviets brought together the debris of war, especially captured German material
and piled it on Red Square to hammer home Soviet victory.
a German army within the Red Army as indication of pro-German sentiment within Russia, dismissed
the idea.

Paulus, for his part, now became another anti-Nazi. His most prominent efforts included
an appeal to Army Group North in August 1944, calling on his fellow Germans to surrender. Stalin
reputedly refused a German offer to exchange Paulus for his son Yakov, a POW who eventually perished
in a German prison camp. It is unclear why the Germans wanted him back. Perhaps it was to stand trial.
Certainly, he had already been denounced by Berlin. Gestapo officers had also attempted to have Paulus
condemned by his family. His wife refused and was then bundled off to an internment camp. In 1946,
after the war, Paulus reappeared in the public, this time as a witness at the Nuremburg trials. The Soviet
press observers dubbed him the ghost of Stalingrad. But he refused to incriminate any of the major
Germans on trial on the charges of war crimes and was returned to Russia where he shut himself up,
playing cards and writing his version of the Stalingrad campaign. His wife died in 1947 without ever
having seen her husband again. In 1953, he was finally released and allowed to live in East Germany,
where his old opponent, Chuikov, now a Marshal, was commander of Soviet forces. Here, residing in
Dresden, Paulus composed treatise after treatise examining the campaign that had dominated his life. In
1956 he published his account of the battle for Stalingrad, ironically entitled, I stand here under orders!
But his Atlas-like struggle was drawing to an end. A year later he contracted motor neuron disease and
died in a Dresden clinic on 1 February 1957 at the age of sixty-seven.27 He was buried next to his wife at
Baden-Baden. Still, Pauluss increasingly insipid life had been better than that of his men.

By the mid-1950s, Russia still held 9,626 German prisoners of war. The majority were men
27 The war had not only decimated Pauluss reputation but had nearly destroyed his family. One son, Friedrich, had
died at Anzio in 1944, and the other had been detained by the Nazis after Paulus had gone into captivity.

82

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Ilya Yefimovich Repin

captured at Stalingrad. This fact is telling. In all three million Germans had been captured by the
Russians during the war and about two million were repatriated after the war. The same could hardly
be said of Russian POWs who were systematically persecuted by the Nazi leadership. Soviet policy
concerning German prisoners was remarkably progressive on paper, with a ruling that prisoners be
treated in accordance with international law even though the Soviet Union had not ratified the Geneva
Convention. But harsh measures were taken on the front by common soldiers and officers against
captured enemy troops. On the Stalingrad front alone, at Krasnoarmeyskoe and Grishno, an estimated
600 Germans, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians were killed by Soviet troops after their capture.

A personal appeal by the post-war West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who visited
Moscow in September 1955 resulted in action. The Soviets finally opened the gates for the last remaining
cadre of prisoners, and the men came out. Among them was Seylditz-Kurzbach and General Schmidt,
who with about 5,000 Stalingrad veterans, comprising the last echo of the Sixth Army, finally returned
home.

Their homecoming was to a country, split in half, still trying to
rebuild, with an ethos and a culture that had sprung out of the deaths
of millions. Most of all it was a country that few recognized with any
sort of certainty, but one which they had inevitable played a hand in
creating.

THE SYMBOL OF DEFIANCE Barmaley Fountain at the heart of Red Square as photographed after
the battle. The fountain is an allegorical representation of Korney Chukovskys poem, Barmaley.
Little children! / For nothing in the world / Do not go to Africa / Do not go to Africa for a
walk! / In Africa, there are sharks, / In Africa, there are gorillas, / In Africa, there are large /
Evil crocodiles / They will bite you, / Beat and offend you / Dont you go, children, / to Africa
for a walk / In Africa, there is a robber, / In Africa, there is a villain, / In Africa, there is terrible
Barmaley! / He runs about Africa / And eats children / Nasty, vicious, greedy Barmaley!
During the battle, Chukovskys references to Barmaley and Africa could be an easy allusion to Germans
and The Third Reich. (ABOVE RIGHT) Repins portrait of Chukovsky.

83

POSTSCRIPT

Central Museum of the Armed forces

Although few thought it at the time, but Stalingrad emerged as one of the decisive events of the war.
This coupled with other German defeats at the time, especially at El Alamein and the failure of the U-Boats
in the Atlantic, spelt the end of the Third Reichs good fortunes. Although this did not resonate at German
High Command, most Allied observers were quick to realize it. The journalist, Barnet Novers wrote in The
Washington Post on 2 February 1943, the day of the Sixths Armys surrender, that: Stalingrads role in this
war was that of the Battle of the Marne [1914], Verdun [1916] and the Second Marne [1918] rolled into
one.

In November that year, at the Tehran conference, Churchill presented Stalin with the Sword of
Stalingrad, a gift from King George VI. Stalin kissed the sword and handed it to one of his marshals for
safe keeping. The next year, in May 1944, U.S. President Roosevelt presented a scroll from the people of the
United States to the city of Stalingrad: To commemorate our admiration for its gallant defenders whose
courage, fortitude, and devotion during the siege will inspire forever the hearts of all free people. Their
glorious victory stemmed the tide of invasion and marked the turning point in the war of the Allied Nations
against the forces of aggression.

Commoners in Germany also saw the momentous consequences defeat at Stalingrad portended
for the Third Reich. The debacle created rifts in Germanys alliance with other Axis countries, including
Romania and Italy, who were outraged at the poor treatment meted out to their men in the field by their
German allies. This rift extended to neutral but friendly countries such as Spain, Sweden and Turkey who,
after the Stalingrad campaign, began to tone down their involvement with the Nazi government.

The Western Allies, beyond their words and symbolic gifts, recognized after Stalingrad, the
emergence of the Soviet Union as a significant, if not overriding power in the war against Germany, and one
that could dominate post-war Europe. Steps were taken to include the Soviets in plans for the future of the
continent. These meetings and conferences would ensure the emergence of a new Europe, one borne out the
rubble of war; a new Europe that would persist until the fall of the Soviet Union, almost half a century later,
in 1991.

REUNITED IN CAPTIVITY In a group of captured generals, Paulus (second from left) and SeydlitzKurzbach (in white, fourth from left) contemplate their fates.

84

STAVKA ARCHIVES

Orphaned children wandered the Stalingrad battleground for the entirety

of the campaign. Here, two are put to work, pounding cereals for the
commissary at Gumrak.

Property! Whole fucking things about property.

-First Sergeant Welsh, The Thin Red Line

85

86

APPENDIX
ORDERS OF BATTLE

German Forces

Note In the following orders of battle actual German and Soviet ranks used, albeit anglicized.

SIXTH ARMY (Field Marshal Freidrich Paulus)

General of Panzer Troops Major-General Arthur Schmidt

la Operations: Colonel Elchleppf (KIA)
Ib Quartermaster: Major von Kunowski
Ic Intelligence: Lieutenant-Colonel Niemeyer (KIA)
Ha Adjutant: Colonel W. Adam
Chief of Artillery: Major-General Vassoll
Chief of Signals: Colonel Arnold (replaced by Colonel van Hooven)
Chief of Engineers: Colonel H. Selle(replaced by Colonel Stiotta)
Chief of Medical Corps: General Renoldi
OKH liaison officer: Lieutenant-Colonel von Zitzewitz
Army Troops
Mortar regiments: 51st, 53rd
Nebelwerfer regiments: 2nd, 30th
Artillery regiments: 4th, 46th, 64th, 70th
Artillery battalions: 54th, 616th, 627th, 849th
Heavy-artillery battalions: 49th, 101st, 733rd
Pioneer battalions: 6th, 41st
IV CORPS General of Pioneers Erwin Jaenecke, Colonel Crome, Max Pfeffer (from 17 Jan)
29th Motorized Infantry Division Maj-General Hans-George Leyser
297th Infantry Division Lt-General Max Pfeffer, Maj-General von Drebber (from 16 Jan)
371st Infantry Division Lt-General Richard Stempelt
VIII CORPS General Walter Heitz, Colonel Schildknecht
76th Infantry Division (178, 203 & 230 Rgts) Lt-General Carl Rodenburg
113th Infantry Division (260, 261 & 268 Rgts) Lt-General Hans-Heinrich Sixt von Arnim
XI CORPS Lt-General Karl Strecker, Colonel Groscurth
44th Infantry Division (131, 132 & 134 Rgts) Lt-General Heinrich Deboi
376th Infantry Division (672, 673 & 767 Rgts) Lt-General Alexander Edler von Daniels
384th Infantry Division (534, 535 & 536 Rgts) Lt-General Eccard von Gablenz, Maj-General Hans Dorr (from 6
Jan)
XIV PANZER CORPS General Hans-Valentin Hube, Colonel Thunert, Lt-Gen Helmut Schlmer (from 17 Jan)
3rd Motorized Infantry Division (8 & 9 Mot. Rgts) Lt-General Helmut Schlmer, Colonel Frieherr von Hanstein
(from17 Jan)
60th Motorized Division (92 & 120 Mot. Rgts) Maj-Generals Kohlermann, Hans-Adolf von Arenstorff
16th Panzer Division (2 Pz, 64 & 79 PzGr Rgts) Lt-General Gunther Angern (Suicide 2 Feb 43)

87

LI CORPS General Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, Colonel Clausius

71st Infantry Division (191, 194 & 211 Rgts) Lt-General Alexander von Hartmann (KIA 26 Jan 1943)
79th Infantry Division (208, 212 & 226 Rgts) Lt-General Richard Graf von Schwerin
94th Infantry Division (267, 274 & 276 Rgts) Lt-General Georg Pfeiffer
100th Jger Division (54 & 227 Rgts, 369 Croat Rgt) Lt-General Werner Snne
295th Hanover Infantry Division (516, 517 & 518 Rgts) Maj-General Dr. Otto Korfes
305th Infantry Division (576, 577 & 578 Rgst) Maj-General Bernard Steinmetz
389th Infantry Division (544, 545 & 546 Rgts) Maj-Generals Erich Magnus, Martin Lattmann (from 19 Jan)
14th Panzer Division (36 Pz, 103 & 108 PzGr Rgts) Maj-General Martin Lattmann
24th Panzer Division (24 Pz, 276 Inf, 21 & 26 PzGr Rgts) Lt-General Arno von Lenski
LUFTWAFFE GROUND TROOPS

9th Flak Division Maj-General Wolfgang Pickert

LUFTWAFFE AIR SUPPORT

4th Air Fleet Colonel-General Wolfram von Richthofen
VIII Flieger Korps General Martin Fiebig
1st Romanian Cavalry Division Maj-Gen. Constantin Bratescu
369th Croat Regiment Colonel Victor Pavicic (Attached to 100th Jger Division)
Flown out before surrender
Died in Captivity

Sixth Army Orders of Battle

4 July 1942
XXIX Corps: 57th, 168th & 75th Divs
XXXX Corps: 100th Jager, 23rd Pz,
336th, 29th and 3rd Pz Divs
VIII Corps: 389th, 305th & 376th Divs
XVII Corps: 113th, 79th & 294th Divs
LI Corps: 297th, 71st, 44th & 62nd Divs

12 August 1942
XXIV Pz Corps: 16th & 295th Divs
LI Corps: 44th & 71st Divs
XI Corps: 100th Jger Div & Croat 369 Reg
XIV Panzer Corps: 60th Mot, 16th
Pz & 3rd Mot Divs.
VIII Corps: 384th, 305th, 389th & 376th Divs
XVII Army Corps: 22d Pz, Italian
Celere Division with 6th Bersagleri
Regt, 79th & 113th Divs

Tank Strengths (operational

only), September 12
3rd Mot Div: 7 PzII, 20 PzIII, 1 PzIVF,
1 PzIVD
29th Mot Div: 2 PzII, 5 PzIII, 2 PzIVF
60th Mot Div: 6 PzII, 20 PzIII, 8 PzIVF,
3 PzIVD
14th Pz Div: 3 PzII, 14 PzIII, 3 PzIVF,
1 PzIVD, 4 Command Panzers
16th Pz Div: 55 PzIII, 7 PzIVF, 2 PzIVD
24th Pz Div: 7 Pz II, 11 PzIII, 3 PzIVF,
1 PzIVD, 1 Command Panzer

October 8
V Romanian Corps: 14th, 5th, 6th &
13th Infantry Divs, 1st Cavalry
& 1st Romanian Tank Divs
XI Corps: 376th, 44th & 384th Divs
VIII Corps: 113th & 305th Divs
XIV Pz Corps: 60th Mot, 3rd
Mot, 16 Pz & 94th Divs
LI Corps: 389th, 24th Pz, 100 Jger & 295 Divs
Attached : 76th & 79th Divs

88

November 5
XI Corps: 376th, 44th & 384th Divs
VIII Corps: 113th & 76th Divs
XIV Pz Corps: 60th Mot, 3rd Mot,
16 Pz & 94th Divs
LI : 389th, 305th, 24th Pz, 100 Jger,
295th, 71st & 79th Divs

Soviet Forces
SIXTY-SECOND Army Order of Battle, 1942

Maj-Gen A.I. Lopatin From Aug 1942

Maj-Gen V. Chuikov From 12 Sept 1942

Rifle Divisions
(Unless Specified)
13th Guards
37th Naval Guards
35th Guards

Regiments

Commander

34, 39 & 42
109, 114 & 118

Maj-Gen. Aleksander Ilyich Rodimstev

Maj-Gen. Viktor Grigorivich Zholudev
Maj-Gen. Vasili A. Glazkov(KIA 8
Sept 1942), Col. V.P. Dubyanski
Maj-Gen. Stepan Savelivich Guriev
Lt-Col. Vasili Pavlovich Sokolov
Maj-Gen. Vasili Akimovich Gorishny
Lt-Col. Vasili Pavlovich Sokolov
Maj-Gen. Ivan I.G. Lyudnikov
Maj-Gen. Fedor N. Smekhotvorov
Brigade Commissar Averin,
later Col. S.P. Ivanov
Col. G.A. Afanasiev
Col. Nikolai F. Batuyk
Col. Leonti Nikolayevich Gurtiev
Col. A.A. Sarayev. Later Col. Rogatin

39th Guards
45th
95th
112th
138th
193th
196th

112, 117 & 120

10, 61 & 253
90, 161 & 241
385, 416 & 524
344, 650 & 768
604, 683 & 685
863, 884 & 893

244th
284th
308th
10th NKVD
Rifle Division

907, 911 & 913

1043, 1045 & 1047
339, 347 & 351
269, 270, 272 & 282

84th Tank Bde

200 & 202 Tank

Bns, 84th Mot. Bn
N/A

137th Tank Bde

189th Tank Bde

135 & 178 Tank Bns,

189th Mot. Bn

Col. DN Bely. Evacuated in Dec.

Disbanded in October. Men and equipment
used as replacements for other units.
15 x T-60s
Col. KS Udovichencko. Evacuated in Oct.
8 x T-34, 6 x T-70

89

92nd Marine Infantry Bde: Colonel Tarasov (abandoned Brigadeduring heavy fighting in Stalingrad. Courtmartialled; probably executed), Major I.I. Samodai
38th Motorized Rifle Bde: Colonel Ivan D. Burmakov
Special Brigades:
42nd: Colonel M.S. Batrakov (WIA 23 Sept 1942)
115th: Colonel K.M. Andryusenko
124th: Colonel Seymon F. Gorokov
149th: Lt-Colonel V.A. Bolvinov (KIA 2 Nov 1942), Major I.D. Durnev
160th: N/A
Tank strengths 11 September 1942

Red Army Order of Battle, Operation Uranus, 19 November 1942

REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STAVKA:
General G. K. Zhukov
Colonel-General of Artillery N. N. Voronov
Colonel-General A. M. Vasilevsky
Stalingrad Front Colonel-General A. I. Yeremenko, N. S. Khrushchev

62nd Army General V.l. Chuikov

Rifle Divisions: 13th Guards, 37th Naval Guards, 39th Guards, 45th, 95th, 112th, 138th, 193th, 196th,
244th, 284th, 308th, 10th NKVD
Marine Infantry Brigade: 92nd
Special Brigades: 42nd, 115th, 124th, 149th, 160th
Tank Brigades: 84th, 137th, 189th
64th Army General M.S. Shumilov
Rifle Divisions: 36th Guards (MI Denisenko), 29th (AI Losev), 38th (GB Safiulin), 157th (AV Kirsanov,
204th (AV Skvortsov)
154th Marine Infantry Brigade
Special Brigades: 66th, 93rd, 96th, 97th
Tank Brigades: 13th, 56th
57th Army General F.I. Tolbukhin
13th Mechanized Corps: T.I. Tanashchishin
Rifle Divisions: 169th (JF Eremenko), 422nd (IK Morozov)
143rd Special Brigade
Tank Brigades: 90th, 235th
51st Army General N.I. Trufanov
4th Mechanized Corps (V.T. Volsky)
4th Cavalry Corps (Shapkin)

90

Rifle Division: 15th Guards (EI Vasilenko), 91st, 126th & 302d
38th Special Brigade
254th Tank Brigade
28th Army
Rifle Divisions: 34th Guards (II Gubarevich), 248th (LN Alekseev)
Special Brigades: 52nd, 152nd, 159th
6th Guards Tank Brigade
Stalingrad Front Reserve: 330th Rifle Division & 85th Tank Brigade
8th Air Army General T.T. Khryukin
Don Front Colonel-General K. K. Rokossovsky
66th Army (Major General A.S. Zhadov)
Rifle Divisions: 64th (AM Ignatov), 99th (VJ Vladimirov), 116th (IM Makarov), 226th (NS Nikichenko),
299th (GV Baklanov), 343rd (PP Chuvashev)
58th Tank Brigade
24th Army General I. V. Galanin
16th Tank Corps (Maslov)
Rifle Divisions: 49th (AV Chizhov), 84th (PI Fomenko), 120th (KK Dzhakhua), 173rd (VS Askalepov),
233rd (IF Barinov), 260th (AV Chizhov), 273rd (NI Krasnobaev)
10th Tank Brigade
65th Army Lieutenant-General P.I. Batov
Rifle Divisions: 4th Guards (GP Lilenkov), 27th Guards (VS Glebov), 40th Guards (AI Pastrevich), 23th
(PP Vakhrameev), 24th (FA Prokhorov), 252nd (ZS Shekhtman), 258th (IJ Fursin), 304th (SP Merkulov),
321th (IA Makarenko)
121st Tank Brigade
16th Air Army Major-General S.I. Rudenko
South-West Front General N. F. Vatutin
21th Army (General I.M. Chistyakov)
4th Tank Corps (A.G. Kravchenko)
3rd Guards Cavalry Corps (P.A. Pliev)
Rifle Divisions: 63rd (ND Koznin), 76th (NT Tavartkiladze), 96th (GP Isakov), 277th (VG Chernov),
293rd (PF Lagutin), 333rd (MI Matveev)
Tank Regiments: 1st, 2nd, 4th Guards
5th Tank Army General P. L. Romanenko
1st Tank Corps (V.V Butkov)
26th Tank Corps (A.G. Rodin)

91

8th Cavalry Corps (Borisov)

Rifle Divisions: 14th Guards (AS Griaznov), 47th Guards (JS Fokanov), 50th Guards, 119th (IJ Kulagin),
159th (AI Belov), 346th (AI Tolstov)
1st Guards Army General D.D. Lelyushenko
24th Tank Corps (Badanov)
13th Mining Engineer Company
158th Mobile Repair Base

4th Guards Tank Brigade (Colonel G.I. Kolypov) (1st & 2d Tk Bns, 4th Gds Mot Bn)

54th Tank Brigade (Colonel V.M. Polyakov) (54th & 108th Tk Bns, 54th Mot Bn)

130th Tank Brigade (Colonel S.K. Nesterov) (1st & 2nd Tk Bns, 130th Mot Bn)

24th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Colonel V.S. Savchenko) (454, 455 & 446 Rifle Bns)
Reinforcements:

658th Anti Aircraft Artillery Regiment (12 x 37mm guns)

413th Guards Mortar (Rocket) Battalion (8 x BM-13 launchers)
Rifle Divisions: 1st (AI Semenov), 153rd (VS Askalepov), 197th (MI Zaporozhchenko), 203rd (GS
Zdanovich), 266th (LV Vetoshnikov), 278th (DP Monakhov)
South-West Front Reserve: 1st Guards Mechanized Corps
2nd Air Army
17th Air Army Major-General S.A. Krasovsky
- First-wave breakthrough formations for Operation Uranus

92

STALIN ORDER NO. 227 (NOT A STEP BACK)

PEOPLES COMMISSAR FOR DEFENCE
28 JULY 1942

The enemy throws at the front new forces and, big losses notwithstanding, is penetrating
deep into the Soviet Union, invading new regions, devastating and destroying our towns and
villages, violating, robbing and killing the Soviet people. The battle rages in the area of Voronezh,
in the Don, in the south at the gateway to the Northern Caucasus. The German occupiers are
breaking through towards Stalingrad, towards the Volga and want at any price to seize the Kuban
and the Northern Caucasus and their oil and bread resources. The Germans had already taken
Voroshilovgrad, Starobelsk, Rossosh, Kupyansk, Valuiki, Novocherkassk, Rostov-on-Don, and
half of Voronezh. Units of the Southern Front, succumbing to panic, abandoned Rostov and
Novocherkassk without serious opposition and without orders from Moscow, thereby covering
their banners with shame.

The people of our country, for all their love and respect for the Red Army, are beginning
to be disappointed by it, are losing faith in the Red Army, and many of them are cursing the Red
Army for giving our people over to the yoke of the German oppressors, while itself escaping to
the east.

Some silly people at the front comfort themselves by saying that we can retreat further
east, that we have much territory, many lands, lots of people and that we will always have plenty
of bread. With this they excuse their shameful conduct on the front. But, through falsehoods and
lies, such talk helps our enemies.

Every commander, soldier and political worker must understand that our resources
are not unlimited. The territory of the Soviet state is not an empty desert but people workers,
peasants, the intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers and children. The territory of
the Soviet Union, which the enemy has seized, or is striving to seize, is bread and other products
for the army and the rear, metal and fuel for industry, factories, enterprises, the railways, and
supplies for the armed forces and its reserves. After the loss of the Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltic
Republics, the Donbass and other areas we have much less territory, much less metal, much less
bread, and many fewer people, factories and enterprises. We have lost more than 70 million in
population, and more than 8,000 million pounds of bread a year and more than 10 million tons
of metal a year. We no longer have more people reserves than the Germans, nor any reserves of
bread. To retreat further would mean the ruination of our country and ourselves. Every new scrap
of territory we lose will significantly strengthen the enemy and severely weaken our defense, our
motherland.

It is necessary, therefore, to stop all talk that we have the possibility of unlimited retreat,
that we have a lot of territory, that our country is big and rich, with many people, and bread in
abundance. Such talk is lying and harmful, it weakens us and strengthens the enemy, because if
there is no end to the retreat, we will be left with no bread, no fuel, no metals, no raw materials,
no enterprises, no factories, and no railways.

It follows from this that it is time to finish with retreat.

Not a step back! This must now be our chief slogan.

It is necessary to defend to the last drop of blood every position, every meter of Soviet
territory, to cling on to every shred of Soviet earth and defend it to the utmost.

Our motherland is going through difficult days. At whatever the cost, we must stop
and then throw back and destroy the enemy. The Germans are not as powerful as they seem to

93

panickers. They are advancing with their last forces. Withstand their blows now, for the next few
months, and this will mean the guarantee of our victory.

Can we absorb the attack and then throw the enemy back to the west? Yes we can, because
our factories and enterprises in the rear are now working excellently and the front is receiving
more and more planes, tanks, artillery and mortars.

What do we not have enough of?

We do not have sufficient order and discipline in companies, battalions, regiments,
divisions, tank units and air squadrons. This is now our chief shortcoming. We must establish
in our army strict order and iron discipline if we want to save the position and defend the
motherland.

It is not permissible to tolerate any more commanders, commissars, political workers,
units and formations who willfully abandon military positions. It is not permissible to tolerate
any more commanders. Commissars and political workers who allow panickers to determine the
position on the field of battle and entice other soldiers to retreat and so open the front to the
enemy.

Panickers and cowards must be eliminated on the spot.

Henceforth iron discipline is demanded of every commander, soldier and political worker
not a step back without orders from higher authorities.

Commanders of companies, battalions, regiments and divisions, and the responsible
commissars and political workers retreating from military positions without orders from above
are traitors to their country. Such officers and political workers will be treated as traitors of their
country. Such are the calls of our motherland.

To implement this order means the defense of our lands, the salvation of the motherland,
and the extermination and destruction of a hateful enemy.

After its winter retreat before the vigorous pressure of the Red Army, when the discipline
of the German forces began to crack, the Germans implemented severe measures to restore
discipline, and with not bad results. They organized more than 100 penal companies for soldiers
guilty of disciplinary offences of cowardice or wavering and placed them on the most dangerous
sections of the front, ordering them to atone for their sins with their blood. They organized a
further 10 or so penal battalions for officers guilty of disciplinary offences of cowardice or
wavering, deprived them of their medals and placed them on even more dangerous sections
of the front and ordered them to atone for their sins. Finally, they organized special blocking
detachments, placed them behind wavering divisions and directed them to shoot panickers on
the spot in the event of attempts at willful abandonment of positions or attempts to surrender to
captivity. As is well known, these actions had their effect and now the German forces fight better
than they fought in winter. It turns out that the Germans have good discipline, although they have
no noble aim of defending their motherland, only a predatory aim to subjugate someone elses
country whereas our forces, having the noble aim of defending their desecrated country, do
not have such discipline and therefore tolerate defeat.

Should one learn from the enemy in this matter, as in the past our ancestors learnt from
the enemy and then went on to achieve victory?

I think that we ought to.


The Supreme Command of the Red Army orders:
1. Front Military Councils and, above all, Front Commanders:
To unconditionally liquidate the retreatist atmosphere among the troops and to cut with
an iron hand propaganda that we could and should retreat further east, as if such a retreat

94

would not be damaging;

To unreservedly remove from post and send to headquarters for court-martial Army
Commanders permitting willful retreat of troops from occupied positions without orders
from the Front Commander;
To organize on the front-line 13 (depending on the situation) penal battalions (of 800
people), to which will be sent middle-ranking and senior officers, and the corresponding
political workers of all types of forces, guilty of disciplinary offences of cowardice or
wavering, and to place them on the more difficult sections of the front in order that they
have the possibility of atoning with blood for their crimes against the motherland.
2. Army Military Councils and, above all, Army Commanders:
To unconditionally remove from posts commanders and commissars of corps and divisions
permitting willful retreat of troops from occupied positions without orders from Army
Commanders and to send them to the Front Military Council for court-martial
To organize within the army 35 well-armed blocking detachments (of up to 200 people
each), place them in the immediate rear of wavering divisions, with the responsibility in the
event of panic and disorderly retreat of the divisions units, of executing on the spot panickers
and cowards, thereby helping the honest soldiers of the division fulfill their duty to the
motherland
To organize within the army 510 (depending on the situation) penal companies (of 150200
people each), to which will be sent soldiers and junior offices guilty of disciplinary offences
of cowardice or wavering and which will be placed in the most difficult sections of the army
in order that they be given the chance to atone with their blood for their crimes against the
motherland.
3. Commanders and Commissars of Corps and Divisions:
To unreservedly remove from post commanders and commissars of regiments and battalions
permitting willful retreat of units without orders from Corps or Divisional Commanders,
taking away their medals and decorations and sending them to the Front Military Council for
court-martial;
To render all assistance and support to the blocking detachments of the army strengthening
order and discipline in units. The order to be read in all companies, troops, squadrons,
batteries, commands and staffs.

Peoples Commissar of Defense I. Stalin

95

OFFICERS RANK EXPLANATION TABLE

For simplicity, I used the western equivalent throughout the text. For the sake of simplicity, I
have also refrained from employing German or Soviet language descriptions for the ranks.
German Wehrmacht
Field Marshal
Colonel-General
General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel
Major
Captain
Senior Lieutenant
Lieutenant

96

Soviet
General of the Army
Colonel-General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Colonel
Lieutenant -Colonel
Major
Captain
Senior Lieutenant
Junior Lieutenant

US Army/Western Standard
General of the Army
General
Lieutenant-General
Major-General
Brigadier-General
Colonel
Lieutenant -Colonel
Major
Captain
First Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Official Documents
Oberkommando des Heeres, Kriegsgliederung des Feldheeres, 1 July 1942, RHD 18/57-I & II,
Bundesarchive-Militrarchiv, Freiburg i. Br.
Kontrnastuplenie pod Stalingradom v tsifrakh (Operation Uranus), Voenno isloricheskii zhumal 3, 1968
Books
Antill, Peter, Stalingrad 1942, London: Osprey, 2007.
Baxter, I.M., Battle of Stalingrad: Russias Great Patriotic War, Hong Kong: Concord Publications, 2004.
Beevor, Anthony, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943, New York: Penguin, 1999.
Bergstrm, Christer, Stalingrad: Bitva ve Vzduchu: Leden 42-Leden 43, Prague: Ian Allen, 2009.
Bezymenski, Lev, Hitler and Stalin before the struggle, Moscow, 2000.
Cornish, Nik, Stalingrad Victory on the Volga, Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2009.
Glantz, David, et al. Slaughterhouse: The Handbook of the Eastern Front, Bedford, PA: The Aberjona Press,
2004.
Glantz, David M. & Johnathan House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, Lawrence,
KS: University of Kansas Press, 1998.
Hoyt, Edwin P., 199 Days The Battle for Stalingrad, New York: Forge Books, 1999.
Mellenthin, Friedrich F.W. von, Panzer Battles, New York: Ballantine, 1991.
Mitcham, Samuel W., Hitlers Legions: The German Army Order Battle, World War II, New York: Stein and
Day, 1985
Roberts, Geoffrey, Victory at Stalingrad, London: Pearson Education Ltd, 2002.
Rottman, Gordon, Stalingrad Inferno The Infantrymans War, Hong Kong: Concord Publications, 2006.
Rotundo, Louis (ed.), Battle for Stalingrad, the 1943 Soviet General Staff Study, London: PergamonBrasseys International Defense Publishers Inc., 1989.
Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
Schneider, Wolfgang, Tiger Tanks in Combat I, Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004.
Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich, New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Zeitzler, Kurt, Stalingrad in The Fatal Decisions: Six decisive battles of the Second World War from
the viewpoint of the vanquished, edited by William Richardson and Seymour Freidin, London:
Michael Joseph, 1956.
Monographs
Sharp, Charles C., School of Battle: Soviet Tanks Corps and Tank Brigades, 1942-1945, Vol. II, The Nafziger
Collection.
Articles
Glantz, David M. The Struggle for Stalingrad City: Opposing Orders of Battle, Combat Orders and
Reports, and Operational and Tactical Maps. Part 2: The Fight for Stalingrads Factory District-14
October-18 November 1942, The Journal of Slavic Studies, 21: 2, 377 471.

97

98