Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (34 page)

In truth Seydlitz did not need the distraction of a madman at that moment when the fate of a quarter of a million German soldiers hung in the balance. The corps attempting to withdraw from the northern Don had met with disaster. The Russians were pouring across the crossing at Kalach and pushing back his weak XIV Panzer Corps. Even the commitment of the two divisions of XLVIII Panzer Corps had not stemmed their advance. At the same time the divisions pulling out of Stalingrad were in danger of being cut off. Behind them Soviet rifle divisions were filling the roads to join the battle.

At last the weather had cleared enough for the Luftwaffe to support the fight. The Red Air Force filled the skies to contest every German air mission, especially over the fighting at Kalach. Soviet antiaircraft units lined both banks of the river. Both sides watched the air battles, with burning aircraft plummeting to the ground again and again. Richthofen’s Stukas repeatedly struck at the bridge. The Soviet fighters were waiting in swarms and fought their way through the Me 109 escorts to down the dive-bombers. The Germans had never seen such suicidal determination on the part of the Russians to close for the kill. Although they lost two planes for every German, it was a price they willingly paid. The bridge remained intact and packed with units crossing to join the battle.

What struck both Seydlitz and Manstein was the size of the Soviet reserves, which the enemy had hidden so well. They would have been even more disconcerted had they known the size of the force that would have been available if the Soviet timetable had not been disrupted and advanced three weeks. It was not simply a question of numbers. The Soviet reserves were rested, well-fed, well-armed, and clothed for winter fighting. The men of 6th Army in contrast were exhausted after months of brutal fighting, their units shells of their former selves. Despite the horrific lessons of the previous winter, they had not even received their cold-weather clothing.

Manstein realized that the crisis of the battle was approaching. Sixth Army could shatter at any moment. Retreating while in contact with an aggressive enemy is probably the least attractive situation a soldier can find himself in. He’s liable to be infected with panic and be cut down by the enemy on his heels. To pull off a successful retreat takes hardened men under tight control.

As bad as the situation was, Manstein took a moment to imagine what the situation looked like to the enemy. His perceptions were remarkably accurate. Stavka at that very moment was optimistic over the developing battle at Kalach. Stalin on the other hand was shrewdly concentrating on the defeat of Stalingrad Front’s pincer by the LX Panzer Corps. That paled, however, at his apprehension over 1st Panzer Army’s rapid drive up the Volga’s eastern shore heading straight for Stalingrad. Powerful German forces were about to assail Yeremenko’s armies from both sides of the Volga. He dispatched Vasilevsky to oversee the battle there. He also parted with the pearl of the Stavka reserve, the 2nd Guards Army, telling Yeremenko of this by phone. ‘You will hold out - we are getting reserves down to you,’ he commanded menacingly. ‘I’m sending you the 2nd Guards Army - the best unit I have left.’
¹⁴

Stalin was fulfilling the primary role of the commander - the allocation of the reserve. Manstein was about to do that same thing. His remaining front reserves were the four divisions of V Corps (9th, 73rd, 125th, 198th Infantry Divisions) that had been transferred from the semi-tropical coast of the Black Sea to the snowy steppe, and the four Gebirgsjäger divisions that had scaled the Caucasus. The mountain divisions had not even arrived yet and were still entraining at Rostov. ‘Seydlitz, I’m sending you V Corps. It’s my last reserve. But I intend to constitute a new reserve in a few days. You must contain the enemy at Kalach in the meantime.’
¹⁵

That reserve was 11th Army and its panzer corps, but now it had another vital mission - to destroy Stalingrad Front. With that mission accomplished and all threat from southeast of Stalingrad eliminated, the 11th Army would then be able to countermarch to be thrown into the battle for Kalach. It was a logical plan. It reminded the field marshal of the German victory at Tannenberg in August 1914. He was also reminded of the great Moltke’s aphorism that no plan survives the first shot. The danger in his plan was that Southwest Front could be a tougher nut to crack than he anticipated. Timing here was everything. It did not matter if he destroyed Yeremenko’s command if it took so long that 6th Army collapsed in the meantime. Everything now depended on the panzers and on the men of the army he had led to victory at Sevastopol. He had been able to ensure that they were rested and equipped to fight in the winter.

Yeremenko’s front had just lost its first-echelon tank, mechanized and cavalry corps. Behind them were his rifle divisions pursuing the fleeing Romanians. They had emerged from their defences between the Sarpinsky Lakes, a chain of elongated lakes stretching for about 25 miles south of the Beketovka Bulge. The panzer corps now ploughed on northwest to round the northernmost Lake Sarpa. The two infantry corps were to penetrate the defences between the lakes as the whole 11th Army wheeled east. The speed of the two panzer divisions, however, would put them in combat again before the infantry could arrive along the line of lakes. Manstein calculated that this would work to his advantage. Yeremenko would concentrate on the threat from the panzers and commit his own tank reserves against them. He still had four tank brigades and the survivors of his decimated first-echelon corps. Russian tenacity would now be at a premium.

By the time
Grossdeutschland
was approaching the Beketovka Bulge, the short autumn night had come, but Hörnlein pressed his men on. The reconnaissance battalion was far ahead of his leading panzer battalion when, out of a side road, a Soviet tank column appeared heading west. The wind was blowing snow again, and the Soviet tank commanders were buttoned up. Soon both columns were on the same road but heading in opposite directions. One Soviet tank commander, though, did brave the elements to stand in his turret, the price of leadership. He could make out the T-34s heading east, but it was too dark to see their German markings. He yelled across to the men in the turrets and shouted with some annoyance,
‘Na frontu, tovarishche! Na frontu!
[To the front, comrades! To the front!]’ as he waved west, baffled that so many tanks could be leaving the battlefield.

He did not have time to wonder much more as he saw the turrets in the other column all turn simultaneously to face his tanks. With a boom, they fired almost all at once, and his brigade died at point-blank range. There were no misses, and every shot found a vital spot that ignited death by fire or explosion. The German tank commanders fell back into their turrets just as they fired to avoid the rain of exploding ammunition, flaming fuel, and jagged metal that flew between the columns. The burning column did wonders for the morale of the follow-on panzer grenadiers and artillery. That is what’s called a bonus affect.

The end point of Stalin’s secret railway supplying Stalingrad Front was boiling with activity as the advance elements of the 2nd Guards Army (two rifle corps and 2nd Mechanized Corps) began detraining and deploying to the east. At the same time artillery batteries that had been supporting 62nd Army just a short while before were arriving and also heading east. Overhead squadrons of the Red Air Force were also heading east. Stavka had directed that the 8th Air Army that had been supporting Yeremenko’s westward thrust now be diverted to supporting the defence of Leninsk from Kleist’s oncoming 1st Panzer Army.

Stalin had every right to fear Kleist. His four panzer divisions were flush with tanks - what was left of their original German panzers and hundreds of American Shermans and British Valentines. The excellent automotive characteristics of both tanks had resulted in relatively few breakdowns in the enormous distances covered from Baku and Ordzhonikidze. For the first time in the war, the Germans had a fully motorized field army - III Panzer Corps (3rd, 13th, 23rd Panzer Divisions), LVII Corps (5th SS
Wiking,
50th, 111th, 370th Infantry Divisions), and XLIV Corps (97th and 101st Jäger Divisions) - every man and pound of equipment and supplies rode in a combat vehicle or a truck, almost all of which were the big, robust American Lend-Lease ones.

For the commander of the 384th
Rhinegold
Infantry Division, it was the ultimate humiliation. He stood in the snow with his aide holding a white flag. In front of him was a nameless Soviet division commander to whom he was surrendering. His division had been trapped by the onrushing tank spearheads of Don Front. He had lost contact with the rest of XI Corps which had disappeared to the south more as a rabble than an organized force.

The news was radioed to the Don Front commander, who was riding that indescribable high of pursuing a retreating enemy. Rokossovsky had the scent of a kill in his nose; the Germans had littered their path with discarded equipment of every kind, a sign that panic was turning into rout. His Don Front armies were pressing forward everywhere. Already his 16th Tank Corps had taken the Don bridge at Akimovka, trapping thousands of Germans and Romanians on the west bank. So he was shocked that night when Stalin himself had called to tell him of Yeremenko’s defeat and to order him to redouble his efforts and link up with Southwest Front to crush the Germans between them.

He was even more shocked to hear a note of worry in Stalin’s voice, something he had never heard before. He was so shocked that it took him a few minutes after he hung up to realize that the
Vozhd
had threatened to shoot him if he failed.

He instinctively felt his jaw as his tongue ran over his stainless steel teeth. As a disciple of Tukhachevsky he had been arrested in the great purge that decimated the senior officer corps in 1937-8; his NKVD interrogators had made much of his aristocratic Polish ancestry as they broke nine of his teeth, cracked three ribs, smashed his toes with hammers, and pulled out every one of his fingernails. He endured three mock executions when the men around him were all shot. He survived because he proved that the officer who was claimed to have denounced him had actually died in 1921. He was unexpectedly released in 1940 and reinstated because Marshal Timoshenko was in desperate need of good officers to command the growing Red Army. Yes, Rokossovsky took Stalin’s threats seriously. Don Front would redouble its efforts. He had a trump that Stalin had given him. ‘I assign Chuikov’s army to you - 62nd Army is closer to the enemy than you are. Southwest Front’s 1st Tank Corps will cross the Don south of Kalach and take Lyapichev Station, cutting off a major supply route. You will link up with them.’ then Stalin hung up.

Chuikov was stunned when Rokossovsky gave him his new mission - attack 6th Army’s flank. ‘Comrade General, my army is not fit for manoeuvre in the open field. My divisions are mere skeletons. We have little ammunition and supplies; the floating ice in the river has nearly cut off our support from the east bank. All my artillery is on the east bank, and for the same reason can’t be brought across.’

Chuikov gave his orders. Then he visited one of the cramped field hospitals in a basement. He found Zaitsev to his surprise on the floor on a thin pallet. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘That damned German sniper nearly bagged this hare, Comrade General.’ Zaitsev laughed through a painful wince. He described how König and he had danced around each other as the Russian had followed the withdrawing Germans. ‘He got two of my team, and I forgot to be patient.’

‘There will be more Germans.’

‘But this one I especially wanted.’

Chuikov forced himself to smile. ‘We’ve been ordered forward; maybe we’ll get him for you.’

Rokossovsky’s men would have to run hard to catch up with Vatutin’s armies. Already most of 5th Tank and 21st Armies had crossed the Don and were pounding away at the increasingly fragile front that Seydlitz had thrown up. The 1st Tank Corps had crossed the Don just above its confluence with the Chir River, 25 miles southwest of Kalach, and cut the main rail line supporting 6th Army from the west. The Germans had only one more line: Rostov-Kotelnikovo-Zhutovo-Lyapichev. Unfortunately, Lyapichev was directly in the path of the oncoming 1st Tank Corps.

The next morning 1st Tank Corps hit Lyapichev. They burst into the town in the early morning scattering the support units clustered there. Tanks crossed the tracks in a dozen places to fire into the wagons packed in the sidings. Some of them were still full of men, troops of V Corps, which Manstein had ordered north to support 6th Army. One division had already detrained and was marching north.

Now Germans boiled out of the cars only to be run down or machine-gunned by the tanks. Their antitank guns were tied down on flatcars, and the only weapons they had were small arms, entirely useless against tanks. The Soviet
tankisti
would call this day ‘the German hunt’ as they killed and killed. Germans ran across the snow in all directions away from the town. A Soviet motorized brigade arrived next to disgorge its infantry to sweep through the streets and yards. The corps commander, General V. V. Butkov, surveyed the slaughter and carnage. For him revenge for his Motherland was indeed sweet. ‘Take no prisoners.’

The German 9th Division marching north from the station turned almost to a man to stare south at the sudden noise of battle. Within minutes commands were echoing up and down the column to about turn.

Another train with men of a third division was approaching the station from Zhutovo when the driver noticed smoke and fire ahead. He had just begun to slow the train down when a T-34 lumbered onto the track in front of him and turned to straddle the rails. The driver slammed on the brakes, and the wheels shot cascades of sparks as the brakes took hold and began slowing the train. Too late. The tank fired. The round struck the engine head-on, exploding the boiler and scalding to death the engine crew. As the shattered vehicle shrieked its death, it jumped the tracks, and careered over into the snow. Behind it car after car followed it off the tracks, to crash and splinter, spilling out hundreds of men.