Hitler's Commanders (15 page)

After the war, Seydlitz returned to Danzig with the remnants of his old regiment. He became a battery commander in 1919 and moved with his unit (now designated the 2nd Artillery Regiment) to Schwerin in 1920, when Danzig was taken away from Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Seydlitz remained there for nine years, serving on the staff of the 2nd Artillery and again as regimental adjutant and battery commander—this time under Baron Werner von Fritsch, the future anti-Nazi commander-in-chief of the army, whom he held in high esteem. From 1929 until 1933, he was in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin, where he served as adjutant of the Weapons Office. He was promoted to major in 1930.

Seydlitz’s pre–World War II career was unusual in a number of respects. He was a member of the clandestine General Staff but without the usual training and probationary periods. He also spent very little time in Berlin (one four-year tour in an active career of 34 years) and a disproportionate amount of time with his regiment (20 of his first 21 years’ service). Nevertheless, he returned to the artillery as soon as he finished his assignment in Berlin, this time as commander of the IV Mounted Battalion of the 6th Artillery Regiment, in the small Lower Saxony town of Verden/Aller. He remained here until the outbreak of the war, in what he later described as the happiest period of his military service. Seydlitz became a lieutenant colonel in 1934 and, on April 1, 1936, was promoted to full colonel and assumed command of his regiment, which was now designated the 22nd Artillery. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Seydlitz was ordered to the Dutch frontier and on September 20 was named Artillery Commander 102 (i.e., commander of Arko 102), a brigade-level command. He was promoted to major general on December 1 and was named commander of the Mecklenberger 12th Infantry Division in March 1940.

As commander of the 12th, Seydlitz saw his first combat in World War II. He took part in the breaching of the French Maginot Line east of Trelon in May and the forcing of the Somme River in June. He was awarded his Knight’s Cross on August 15, and his division remained in France on occupation duty until December, when it was transferred to the Netherlands. In May 1941, it entrained for Poland and crossed into the Soviet Union on June 22, penetrating 30 miles on the first day of the invasion.

Seydlitz again distinguished himself in the first months of the Russian campaign, taking part in the encirclement of Nevel and the desperate winter battles around Kholm, in which he played a pivotal role in preventing a decisive Soviet breakthrough on the northern sector of the Eastern Front. He was summoned to Fuehrer Headquarters and promoted to lieutenant general on December 31, 1941—the same day Adolf Hitler personally decorated him with the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. He was placed in Fuehrer Reserve the following day. Clearly his performance in France and Russia had impressed the dictator, who had him earmarked for greater things. Until then, however, he was on temporary duty at Supreme Headquarters. While there, he sat on the court-martial board of Lieutenant General Hans von Sponeck, a corps commander who had retreated without permission in December 1941. Seydlitz considered Sponeck’s actions fully justified and was very upset when the board convicted him and the court-martial’s president, Hermann Goering—acting on the instructions of the Fuehrer—pronounced the death sentence. Perhaps Seydlitz’s outrage was a factor in Hitler’s decision to commute the sentence to six years’ imprisonment.
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In any event, Seydlitz was quickly returned to the Russian Front, where he was charged with the task of rescuing the II Corps, now surrounded in the Demyansk sector, 30 miles behind Russian lines.

The hastily created Group von Seydlitz consisted of the 5th and 8th Jaeger and 122nd and 329th Infantry Divisions. It launched its relief attack on March 21, 1942, against stiff Soviet resistance. The men pressed on through thick forests and heavy snow, repulsing numerous counterattacks, until they reached the Demyansk perimeter and established a tenuous link on April 21. Even so, the six divisions of II Corps (originally 103,000 men but now considerably fewer) were in an exposed position, and Field Marshal Georg von Kuechler, the commander-in-chief of Army Group North, proposed that they be withdrawn from the salient—a move that would shorten his front by 120 miles. Accompanied by Seydlitz, he flew to Fuehrer Headquarters in early May to obtain permission to fall back.

Even though Franz Halder, the chief of the General Staff of the army, agreed with Kuechler, Hitler would not sanction the withdrawal. He wanted to use the area as a base for a future offensive. Seydlitz then took charge of the argument, pointing out that the swampy and wooded terrain around Demyansk would make it impossible to use tanks in an offensive role, as proposed by Hitler. All the general’s arguments fell on deaf ears, however. Hitler would not even look at photographs taken by Seydlitz’s cameramen, showing the deep forests and mud in the area. “Those are my orders!” Hitler finally snapped, bringing the conference to a close.

“I agree with everything you said in there,” General of Artillery Alfred Jodl, the chief of operations of OKW, told Seydlitz after the conference.

“Then why didn’t you back me up in the Fuehrer’s presence?” Seydlitz asked. There followed a painful silence; Jodl did not reply.
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And the men of the II Corps were condemned to nine more months of holding a useless salient against several Soviet armies. Hitler’s impossible offensive never was launched, and the salient was not evacuated until February 1943, after the fall of Stalingrad.

Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach was given command of the LI Corps (part of Paulus’s 6th Army) on May 8, 1942, and was promoted to general of artillery on June 1. He fought in the Second Battle of Kharkov, as the Soviet summer offensive of 1942 is now called. Here his corps and Karl Hollidt’s XVII (six divisions in all) delayed 16 Red Army divisions and five armored and motorized brigades for several days until Colonel General Ewald von Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army could strike the Soviets in the rear, forming a huge pocket south of Kharkov, between the 6th and 1st Panzer armies. When the battle ended, 239,000 Soviet soldiers had surrendered, and 1,250 tanks and 2,026 guns had been captured or destroyed.
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For the Germans, however, this victory was only a prelude to disaster.

Hitler began his summer offensive of 1942 (Operation Blue) on June 28. Finally learning (from their previous mistakes, the Soviets retreated rapidly, thus avoiding the massive battles of encirclement that had cost them so much in the previous 12 months. On July 7, even though he had not achieved the kind of decisive success he had hoped for, Hitler divided Army Group South into Army Groups A and B and sent them off on divergent axes of advance. Army Group A (Field Marshal Wilhelm List) was sent south to capture the Caucasus oil fields, while Army Group B (Colonel General Baron Maximilian von Weichs) headed east, toward Stalingrad. Had Hitler chosen one or the other as the primary objective and concentrated his forces against it, his offensive might well have achieved some success. As it was, neither army group had the resources to accomplish its mission.

Paulus’s 6th Army, later supported by Hermann Hoth’s 4th Panzer, spearheaded the drive on Stalingrad. His advance was very slow, and on more than one occasion he was immobilized due to a lack of fuel and ammunition. Nevertheless he won an impressive tactical victory over the Soviets at Ostrov; by July 28 he had destroyed more than 1,000 enemy tanks and had taken more than 55,000 prisoners. Overly impressed by his success, Paulus reported the destruction of the Soviet 1st Tank and 62nd armies. Then on August 23, when his supplies were fully replenished, Paulus ordered Wietersheim’s XIV Panzer Corps to push to the Volga north of Stalingrad—more than 30 miles away. This Wietersheim did, reaching the Volga the next day. However, Paulus had grossly underestimated the Soviets’ strength and powers of recuperation. They promptly counterattacked in XIV Panzer’s rear and cut it off completely. Wietersheim had to hedgehog (i.e., form an all-around defense) and await relief.

Paulus moved slowly and could not reestablish contact with the panzer corps until September 2—after 4th Panzer Army joined the battle and forced the Soviet 62nd Army (which Paulus had claimed he had destroyed more than two months before) to fall back into the outer defenses of Stalingrad. Paulus’s drive to the Volga had already cost 6th Army 38,000 men—10 percent of its total strength. Naturally, the proportion of casualties in the infantry units was much higher than this.

General von Weichs wanted Paulus to attack the city on September 2, before the Russians had time to regroup. Already depressed by his heavy losses, however, the indecisive Hessian staff officer hesitated for five days, during which Stalin poured reinforcements into the sector. Finally, on September 7, the attack began, spearheaded by Seydlitz’s LI Corps. Seydlitz’s advance was very methodical because he had to clear a block at a time, and the Soviets fought fiercely for every building and launched repeated local counterattacks. Seydlitz finally captured the 300-foot Mamayev Hill in the center of the city on September 13, but this only intensified Soviet resistance. It took him another week to penetrate the remaining one-third of a mile to the Volga, thus cutting the Soviet 62nd Army in two. But the battle was far from over.

Paulus showed little tactical skill in the Battle of Stalingrad, which he fought as a series of frontal attacks, in an area that allowed no room for maneuver and in which all the advantages of terrain and position accrued to the defense. General Victor von Schwedler, the veteran commander of the IV Corps, foresaw disaster and called upon Hitler to withdraw from this costly and tactically unsound battle. He was immediately sacked and sent into retirement. The bad blood between Paulus and Gustav von Wietersheim, who also criticized 6th Army’s conduct of the battle, boiled over on September 15, and Paulus relieved him of his command. Luftwaffe Colonel General Wolfram von Richthofen, nephew of the Red Baron and commander of the 4th Air Fleet in southern Russia, nevertheless called on the Army General Staff to replace Paulus with a better commander. Hitler, however, still had confidence in Paulus, who was, after all, obeying his orders; in fact, he had already earmarked Paulus to succeed Jodl as chief of operations of OKW. No action was taken against the pro-Nazi Richthofen, but no changes were made either.

As we have seen, Friedrich Paulus could be mentally dominated by people of stronger will. Prior to 1942 he had been under the influence of Field Marshal von Reichenau. Following Reichenau’s death, Paulus allowed himself to be guided by the perceived infallibility of the Fuehrer. Now he was dominated by the strong will of his chief of staff, Major General
arthur schmidt
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Schmidt, a bachelor, was born in Hamburg on October 25, 1895, the son of a merchant. Like Paulus, he did not come from a family with a military tradition, but he had been a dedicated soldier since he volunteered for the army when World War I broke out. He was commissioned second lieutenant in 1915 in the 26th (1st Magdeburger) Infantry Regiment, which fought in Belgium, on the Marne, in the Battle of the Somme, and in other bloody battles on the Western Front. Schmidt successively served as a platoon leader, battalion adjutant, company commander, and regimental adjutant. Among other decorations, he earned the Hohenzollern House Order with Swords, both grades of the Iron Cross, and the Wounded Badge in Black. He served in the Freikorps in 1919 and joined the Reichsheer’s 12th Infantry Regiment at Halberstadt in Saxony in 1920 and was later assigned to the 11th Company in Magdeburg. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1923.

Schmidt began in General Staff training in 1924 as a staff officer with the 1st Infantry Division, which headquartered in Koenigsberg. He attended the secret Reinhardt Course in Berlin (1926–1927) and returned to Halberstadt as an unofficial member of the General Staff. He was promoted to captain in 1928.

Arthur Schmidt was transferred to the Troop Office (as the clandestine General Staff was called) in Berlin in 1929 and was adjutant to General Wilhelm Adam from 1930 to 1931. Replaced by Major General Georg von Soderstern, he was transferred to the Foreign Armies Intelligence Office, was promoted to major in 1934, and posted to Headquarters, Wehrkreis VI, in Muenster. He became the corps Ia (chief of operations) in 1937. A true believer in the genius of the Fuehrer, Schmidt advanced rapidly under the Nazi regime, rising from major in 1937 to major general in 1942 and to lieutenant general in early 1943. During the previous four years he had served as chief of operations (Ia) of VI Corps (1937–1939), 5th Army (1939), and 18th Army (1939–1940) and as chief of staff of V Corps (late 1940–1942), before becoming chief of staff of 6th Army on June 20, 1942.

Like Paulus, the bug-eyed, thin-faced Schmidt was a master of detail, but there the similarity ended. Schmidt lacked Paulus’s conscience, good breeding, and polished manners. He was an autocratic, overbearing bully who rudely interrupted people anytime he felt like it. Unlike Paulus, Schmidt was thoroughly disliked by most of the officers with whom he came into contact. Unfortunately, as Paulus’s confidence declined and the situation deteriorated, he allowed himself (and 6th Army) to be guided more and more by the opinions of his chief of staff, until it reached the point where Schmidt was virtually conducting the battle for the German side.

Not a man of great daring or initiative, Schmidt was characterized by a stubborn optimism, tenacity, and a willingness to obey the orders of his superiors without question. He might have done well in other situations, but not under a commander like Paulus and not at Stalingrad.

While Paulus bled his army white in Stalingrad, Baron von Weichs had very few German soldiers available to guard against a Soviet offensive into his rear. Therefore he covered Paulus’s northwest flank with the 8th Italian and 3rd Rumanian armies, while his southern flank was protected by the 4th Panzer and 4th Rumanian armies. Unfortunately, 4th Panzer Army had been used as a reservoir from which to send reinforcements to other sectors, including 6th Army’s. By November 19, it retained only three understrength German divisions.