Enemy at the Gates (35 page)

It would therefore be essential for the Army to learn in time whether Thunderclap is still intended. . . .

3. In case Operation Thunderclap is put into practice, it is necessary that

(a) part of the 8,000 wounded men who are still here at present, are taken out by air. We have an additional 500 to 600 casualties per day, so that if 1,000 wounded men were taken out daily…6 to 8 days would suffice to evacuate about half of them. The balance might be evacuated by truck or by air, during the operation….

4. If we form up for
Winter Storm,
it must also be kept in
mind,
that Thunderclap can follow immediately afterwards, if we have a 5- to 6-day preparatory period. Otherwise, we are compelled to leave much material behind or destroy it….

6….On this side everything has been prepared in accordance with your order of yesterday, so that movements for both operations can start at short notice. Ending.

Maj. Eugen Rettenmaier left his 576th Regiment at the Barrikady Gun Factory to go on detached duty at the
Gorodische Balka,
just west of the city. It was thirty degrees below zero. Rettenmaier's nose was running and the snot froze on his lips. Walking with his orderly along a plowed road, he noticed a man sitting in the snow. It was a soldier from one of his companies.

"Are you tired?" Rettenmaier asked. The soldier nodded apathetically.

"Get up, comrade, we'll help you," and they pulled him along.

At the
balka,
a surgeon examined the man, but he died an hour later. The doctor's first comment was that he had starved to death. Then he hurriedly hedged his diagnosis to include "exhaustion or even circulatory trouble."

Rettenmaier knew better. It had been starvation, nothing else.

* The Eismann mission caused controversy among the German leaders. Field Marshal Manstein said that Eismann's report of the conference convinced him that Paulus and Schmidt did not intend to break out under existing conditions. Arthur Schmidt has dismissed this conclusion by pointing out that he and Paulus merely outlined the tremendous problems they faced without adequate air supply. Further, Schmidt believes that Manstein used the remarks of the "lowly" major to justify his own subsequent actions. Friedrich von Paulus never referred publicly to the Eismann visit, thereby creating the impression that he did not attach any particular importance to it. No stenographic record of the conference exists.

Chapter Twenty-two

At the upper Don, west of Serafimovich, Lt. Felice Bracci, who had come to Russia because he wanted to see the wondrous steppe country, now ran across it to save his life. He had been rudely awakened the day before by an aide shouting that most of his 3rd Bersaglieri Regiment had scattered to the south. Bracci thought he was dreaming, that the orderly was playing a joke on him, but the man's terrified eyes quickly brought him to his senses.

Grabbing a rifle, he ran to the command post, where a bewildered officer ordered him to retreat thirty miles south to a place called Kalmikoff. The officer insisted that all heavy equipment except Bracci's two antitank guns must be destroyed prior to departure.

The 5th Company of Bersaglieri moved out shortly and, after several hours, other nondescript units joined the column. Marching at the rear, Bracci personally commanded the two heavy guns. Behind him there was no one—nothing but snow and wind that cut into his back. When night came, with the temperature well below zero, Bracci's guns became harder to move. The men hauling them had deep red creases on their hands and Bracci himself felt terribly weary. But he continued to shout encouragement and helped haul, lift, or push the cannon through the drifting snow.

More and more men were losing hope. One Bersaglieri threw himself under a passing truck. Another sat down on a hump of snow and started to cry. Still clutching his submachine gun, he sobbed his torment to Bracci, who tried to get him on his feet. The man refused and sat there while the column continued on out of sight.

At nine
A.M.
on December 20, Bracci reached Kalmikoff, now the magnet for thousands of exhausted and frightened soldiers. The town was a tangle of guns, trucks, baggage, and excited soldiers who ran about, trying to find their friends.

Bracci soon received new orders. His regiment, now reformed, led the retreat to Meshkov, a key road junction on the road to Millerovo. The sounds of thousands of boots crunching the crisp snow lulled the marchers until the sudden roar of engines in the distance alerted them. Bracci and his men went to the front of the march and hid their guns behind some tall shrubs.

Minutes passed and Bracci felt hundreds of eyes staring at him, pleading for protection from the menacing sound. Then tanks, Soviet T-34s, appeared about a half mile ahead. Circling cautiously for a moment, as though focusing on Bracci, the tanks "sniffed the air" and finally turned away. The march to Meshkov continued.

Late that afternoon, Bracci saw the spires of a cathedral, "a fairy castle," that dominated the skyline. Spreading out in skirmish lines, the Bersaglieri approached the outskirts of Meshkov. Then a mortar shell plopped into the snow; machine guns chattered. In despair, Bracci realized the Russians had gotten there ahead of the regiment, and blocked the road south.

The beautiful stone church in the middle of town was the rallying point of the Soviet defense. Its thick walls defied destruction. In the darkness, thousands of Italians ran toward it, hollering their battle cry:
"Savoia! Savoia!"
Tracer bullets scoured a deadly pattern through them and screams echoed around the churchyard.

With a clear field of fire, Bracci shot round after round at the building, but the Russian fire never slackened. In the unnatural light, the church's basement glowed brightly from gunbursts and flames. But above the crescendo of combat, of orders being shouted and countermanded, Bracci also heard the moans and pitiful crying that marked the terrible cost Of the battle.

The price was too high. Italian commanders finally called back their troops, and the Bersaglieri reformed and trudged back to Kalmikoff.

There, at a tense meeting the next morning, Bracci was told to dig in with his guns until support troops arrived; his commanding officer promised that a German task force was on the way. It was wishful thinking on his part. Mortar fire suddenly descended from surrounding hills and induced immediate panic among most of the Bersaglieri, who stampeded. Bracci crouched beside a house, which exploded and showered him with debris. Dazed but unhurt, the lieutenant staggered out to the road and jumped on the running board of a passing car, which plunged into a drift and bogged down.

At that moment, Russian horsemen appeared on the brow of the hill. While mortar shells kept exploding, the trapped Italians raised their hands in surrender. A colonel beside Bracci looked at his watch. "This is the end for us,"
he
said mournfully. "We are prisoners."

It was 9:30
A.M
. on the morning of December 21.

That same morning, intelligence officers of Manstein's Army Group Don were entertaining an important guest.

German troops had intercepted the commander of the Russian Third Guards Army, Maj. Gen. Ivan Pavlovitch Krupennikov, in an ambush the night before and, after a running gunfight, he had surrendered with most of his staff. Treating Krupennikov with the honor due his rank, the Germans fed him generously, then asked him pertinent questions about his army. In turn, he inquired about his son, Yuri, who was missing after the firefight. The Germans promised to find him, sent soldiers to bring the lieutenant to his father, and the grateful Krupennikov began to talk.

He said he was only the acting commander; his superior, General Lelyushenko, had been sick for ten days. Because he knew the Germans would soon learn it from documents captured in his briefcase, he also revealed other information: His troop strength was approximately ninety-seven thousand men. His army mustered 274 tanks and more than five hundred artillery pieces heavier than .75 caliber. But when his interrogators pressed him for other information, such as new units at the front, their makeup and purpose, he balked and cited his soldier's honor.

The interrogators switched tactics, asking the general about conditions on the Russian home front. Krupennikov told them that food shortages did exist, due mostly to transportation problems. In parts of Siberia and Central Asia, he said, surplus crops had been harvested, but the government left them there in order to keep the railroads free to carry troops and heavy equipment to the fronts.

Gratuitously, Krupennikov offered the opinion that, at one point, he had thought Russia would lose the war. However, when he had seen the pitiful condition of German prisoners near Moscow, he no longer considered the Nazis to be "supermen." Now he did not think much of German expectations of victory.

Meanwhile, his hosts had checked his son's whereabouts. Soldiers who combed the surrounding fields reported no trace of the officer, and felt he must have succumbed to wounds somewhere on the snowfields. The interrogators went back and lied to Krupennikov, telling him that Yuri was wounded, could not be transported, but was not in danger of losing his life. Greatly relieved, the Russian general continued the question and answer period.

He was explicit about Russian plans. The main Soviet strategy was to thrust to Rostov and cut off the Germans in the Caucasus. Their first attacks on November 19 and 20, between Serafimovich and Kletskaya and south of Stalingrad, had served only a limited objective, trapping the Sixth Army at the Volga. The second phase, the current attack, was intended to "break through the front of the Italian Eighth Army west of Serafimovich at the Don and fall on the back of the German troops at Morozovskaya…"

The final order, to drive due south from the Don to Rostov, had not been issued as of the day Krupennikov was captured. But he believed that "due to slight losses in rolling up the Italian part of the front," such an operation was possible. This final bit of information was important enough to rush to Field Marshal von Manstein at Novocherkassk, and a typist began to write up a statement on Krupennikov's disclosures.

The interrogation room was filled with gloom. German intelligence officers could only assume that what they had learned was bound to produce an adverse effect on Army Group Don's plan to reach the Sixth Army at Stalingrad.

That plan was already in jeopardy. While the Germans questioned Krupennikov, Russian soldiers were blocking further passage to the
Kessel
by the 6th Panzer Division. Unable to move beyond Vassilevska, only forty miles south of Stalingrad, the German tankers tenaciously held to their bridgehead on the northern bank even though their supply problems had become truly desperate. They had run out of drinking water as well as gasoline. Now, almost crazed with thirst, they crammed dirty snow into their mouths while they huddled inside their immobilized Mark IV panzers. Unable to move, they were easy targets for enemy gunners and Russian infantrymen, who probed to within fifty feet of Colonel Hunersdorff's command post before he personally led a counterattack that drove them away.

So many wounded Germans lay unattended, officers wondered where they could put them in case an order came for retreat. While shells whined overhead, some of the less seriously hurt men suddenly stopped moaning and died. The subzero temperature had claimed them.

Teletype conversation General Schmidt—General Schulz:

21 Dec. 42-1605 hrs. to 1705 hrs.

+++ Here General Schmidt.

+++ Here Schulz.

[The general had vital questions for Sixth Army:] 1. What is your present fuel supply? Give the amounts of Diesel and Auto separately.

2. How many kilometers does that mean? Does this amount of fuel suffice to extend the pocket toward the south while still holding the remaining fronts?

3. If the fuel situation permits you to advance that far, can you do it in view of the available troops?

4. How much fuel is used up daily for the most urgent supply trips within the pocket? Can you answer these questions right away?

[Schmidt had the answers within minutes:] +++ 1. The presently available amount is about 130 cubic meters Auto and 10 Diesel, including today's air supply and the amounts needed for supply trips during the next few days.

2. This amount would permit the combat troops to advance 20 km including assembly for attack.

3. Even considering the troop situation we could make 20 km, but we cannot hold the breakthrough front [south] and the fortress for any length of time without the troops committed in the attack and, in particular, not without the armored vehicles. On the contrary, we need replacements in the fortress in the very near future, if we are supposed to hold it. Any sortie with the inevitable casualties involved will jeopardize the defense of the fortress itself.

4. The daily amount used for supply trips is 30 cubic meters.

[Schulz countered with bad news:] +++ The Supreme Command of the Army still has not given approval for
Donnerschlag
["Thunderclap," the complete evacuation of the
Kessel]...

In view of the number of troops committed by the enemy
,
it is doubtful whether a speedy advance toward the north [by Hoth's relief force] is possible, as long as the enemy does not feel the counterpressure against his forces from the pocket of the Sixth Army. It is therefore necessary that the Sixth Army starts
Wintergewitter
["Winter Storm," the physical linkup of the relief force with the Sixth Army] as soon as possible. When can you form up for the attack?

The question was almost impossible to answer. Sixth Army was trying to form up for the attack, but Paulus's uncertainty about an actual date for the breakout, plus his worries about the lack of gasoline, caused confusion among his troops. The new recruit from Boblingen, Pvt. Ekkehart Brunnert, suffered from one of these command failures.