Operation Winter Storm: Out in the Cold
On December 12 Hitler launched his desperate attempt to relieve the Sixth Army, under the command of von Manstein, codenamed Operation
Unternehmen Wintergewitter, or Winter Storm. This was the final roll of the dice for the Nazis; if they could not break through to rescue the besieged army, they would have to surrender and be taken prisoner by the Soviets, or die of starvation and exposure. Army Group Don, created in the heat of battle to relieve the beleagured attackers, was to have been comprised of four Panzer and four infantry divisions, and three Luftwaffe, but these were hardly the cream of the crop. The air personnel were untrained and had never seen combat in most cases, much of the infantry has sustained heavy losses in fighting on the Eastern Front already, and other forces promised to von Manheim were held back and never sent, while some divisions were redirected to buttress the defence of the River Chir, where the Soviets were making ground.
Nevertheless, the strength of the sudden German offensive took the Russians by surprise. They had assumed their enemy was demoralised, losing heart and would soon be retreating back out of Russia. They sustained heavy casualties before organising themselves.
It Takes a Village: The Battle for Verkhne-Kumskiy
A small village that commanded the best approach to Stalingrad, Verkhne-Kumskiy became the scene of the climatic battle between Soviet and German tanks, a battle which raged on for three days, and while the Soviets were eventually beaten back and the Germans held the village, the delaying action had removed any hope that the Panzers might link up with Paulus and open the road to Stalingrad, thereby providing a route for the Sixth Army to escape the city. With artillery assistance and air support, the Germans were able to drive the hundred or so Soviet tanks – many of which already suffered from previous battle damage – back and on December 18 their allies, the Italian 8th Army were overrun by another Soviet offensive, leaving von Manstein unsure as to whether or not to press the attack on Stalingrad.
With the Soviet attack on the airfield at Tatsinkaya, much of the supplies Manstein would have needed to have continued his offensive were now no longer in his reach, and to make matters worse, Hitler had refused the Sixth Army permission to break out from Stalingrad, so the only way to save them was for Manstein to attempt to break through, which he no longer believed to be a viable option. With fuel running low, and no hope of resupply, Hitler's insane order to the surrounded and trapped Sixth Army, and a blizzard blowing hard, Manstein was forced to call off his attempt at rescue and breakthrough, and return to the defensive, leaving Paulus and his Sixth Army to fend for themselves.
By now, the Battle of Stalingrad was lost. The German Panzer divisions were in full retreat, and there was no hope of the Sixth Army breaking out on their own. The men were starving, weakened, disheartened and demoralised, there was no fuel for the tanks and the harsh Russian winter howled outside the shattered remains of the city, taunting them, daring them to face it. Forced to ignore Russian overtures towards their surrender, as Hitler would not countenance it on any condition, Paulus and his men remained inside the city, isolated, cut off, all but forgotten and left to their fate. Their expected martyrdom was to be the propaganda the Nazis would spew out in German cinemas to support their story of “the gallant defenders of Stalingrad, who gave their lives rather than surrender the city”. With their offer of peace dismissed, the Red Army began to move into the city and vicious house-to-house (or what remained of the houses anyway) fighting resumed, but the Germans were tired, weak and also running out of ammunition. They could not hope to survive long. Despite the generous terms offered them by the Soviets though, they had good reason not to surrender, even had it been allowed, as within the ranks of the Sixth Army were Russians who were fighting against their homeland.
Even amidst the horror you can find something to smile about. All right, it's hardly actually funny, but then it kind of is. It certainly demonstrates, if nothing else, the ingenuity of the Soviets, as they countered the attempts by the Germans to protect themselves from grenades being flung into the shattered houses by placing fishing nets over the windows. The Russians responded to this by embedding fish hooks into the grenades, thereby turning the Germans' defence tactics against them. Clever. Hook, line and... sorry.
On January 22, the Red Army made another attempt to force Paulus's surrender. With over 18,000 of his men wounded, and no medical supplies, no food and no water, he again requested permission to accept the terms, and was again refused. Hitler was determined to hold up the “heroic Germanic heroes” as role models for the nation, and told them they must fight “to the last man and the last bullet.” In a matter of four days, the number of wounded tripled to almost 50,000 but still Hitler told them to stand fast. What he hoped to achieve, we will never know, but who can fathom the mind of a megalomaniac? Presumably it was now just a point of pride and, um, honour to him that his army did not surrender, even though all it could do now was sit there and rot away. A metaphor, perhaps, for Berlin three years later, as an increasingly desperate Hitler descended into madness and fantasy, imagining Panzer groups coming to the aid of his version of Stalingrad, tanks that were already smoking, twisted wrecks on the outskirts of the German capital.
He and Goebbels put the best face on the defeat and entrapment of the Sixth Army that they could when Hitler celebrated the tenth anniversary of his coming to power, January 30 1943:
"The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody to do the utmost for the struggle for Germany's freedom and the future of our people, and thus in a wider sense for the maintenance of our entire continent."
It was a cleverly calculated ploy of Hitler's to promote Paulus to Field Marshal that same day, as the desperate commander, noting that his men were likely to collapse before day's end, hinted he would surrender, even against orders. Hitler told him no Field Marshal in the history of Germany had ever surrendered, leaving Paulus with a quandary: should he continue as ordered, he and all his men would die, probably from hunger, thirst and weakness, but should be surrender, he would be bringing great shame upon the tradition of German military history he had always served. In the end, though captured he maintained he had been “taken by surprise” and had never surrendered, though all of his other units did.
In the early hours of February 2 the final surrender signal was sent, and the Battle of Stalingrad was finally over.
Hitler, of course, lost it, calling Paulus a traitor, but that was no surprise. The city had been lost long ago, and I don't think you can accuse the recently-promoted Field Marshal of cowardice or of taking the first opportunity to betray his leader and lay down his arms. In fact, as noted, twice he refused the offer to surrender (although requesting permission to take the terms) and even at the end he attempted to fudge the issue by claiming he had been “surprised” by the Red army and had not surrendered. (Quite how he could say he had been surprised, when he had expected to be overrun any moment, is open to speculation, but we can assume he was trying to walk the difficult tightrope between duty and history here).
Why will this battle be remembered?
Stalingrad marked the first ever defeat for the Nazi forces in World War II. Up to then, the speed of Hitler's
blitzkrieg attack on Europe had taken everyone by surprise, and he had easily pushed out the British forces from France, leaving all of western Europe at his command. In Africa, Rommel had won a decisive – at the time – victory at the Battle of Tobruk, the Americans were busy with a war on two fronts after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, and were unable to turn the full might of their military on the war in Europe. Russia was believed – by the Allies as well as by Hitler – to be all but doomed; the rapid progress his armies had made into the heart of the Soviet Union had mirrored the fall of Europe, and everyone expected it to be only a matter of time before Russia, too, fell.
So Stalingrad became a rallying cry for Hitler's enemies. It was proof, at last, of the Germans' not being invincible, of there being hope in the war against them. It emboldened the Red Army, who began moving west as the Germans retreated, and demoralised the German nation, who had until now believed nothing could stop them. As 1942 turned to 1943, Italy would soon surrender, changing sides in an almost Stalin/Hitler move, and Germany would lose one of its strongest allies. Stalin's fame spread after the battle, and he was not shy about making propaganda about the stunning victory. Friendly powers praised him – Turkey's consul in Moscow prophesied that the “land which the Germans had destined for their living space will become their dying space”; King George VI had a special commemorative sword made and presented to Stalin and Britain celebrated Red Army Day (bet that didn't last long!) on August 23 1943. Oh, I think it was a one-off; doesn't say it became an annual thing.
In the wake of the victory at Stalingrad, British forces in Egypt scored another in the Battle of El Alamein, which effectively spelled the beginning of the end for the Germans in the desert war, and across the Pacific, the US Marines took Guadalcanal, a major turning point in the war against the Japanese. From here, the war began to turn against the Axis, and D-Day loomed closer. Pushed out of Russia in humiliated defeat, Germany regrouped in Europe, determined to consolidate and hold what it had. But it would not hold it for long.
It should not, however, be lost in the stream of euphoria and self-congratulations by nations and leaders how many casualties this one battle produced. As I said in the introduction, it's believed that just short of two million people died in the battle for Stalingrad, a very large percentage of them the civilian population of the city. Historians argue over what period of time constitutes the actual battle, as opposed to the campaign itself, but either way the lowest estimates give us 647,000 (including those wounded or taken prisoner) while at the higher end we have a figure of 968,000 – almost a million, just for Germany and its allies. Factor in the Russian casualties and you get just over a million, including wounded, sick and missing – bodies are still, believe it or not, being recovered from the ruins of the city.
Apart from the terrible cost in human lives, there was a significant loss to the German Army in terms of machinery, with over 900 aircraft, 1,500 tanks, 6,000 guns destroyed and a further 744 aircraft, 1,600 tanks and almost 6,000 guns captured, making a total of over 1,500 aircraft, 3,000 tanks and 12,000 guns the Germans could no longer put into their war effort. With their factories being bombed and sabotaged, the chances of them replacing even half of their armaments were unlikely, and it can be said with reasonable confidence that Stalingrad effectively pulled most of the teeth out of the German tiger and left it, not defenceless by any means, but seriously crippled and ill-prepared for the invasion to come.
I'd have to check, but I don't recall any other time in modern history where the defenders or at least the inhabitants of a city were forced to remain, and die, by the occupying force. There are certainly examples where the attackers have ensured the defenders remained inside as they besieged the city, and in those cases nobody was allowed escape, but I'm not certain I'm familiar with an order to stay put such as Stalin decreed for the doomed citizens of Stalingrad.
If there was ever proof of Stalin's contempt for his own people, this was it. He effectively threw his own citizens in with the wolves, then barred the gate and set sentries on it to ensure they could not escape. And rather than be vilified for it, he was feted and praised and congratulated. They even made him a Marshall of the Soviet Union, for Christ's sake.
God, we're just as thick as sh
it really, aren't we?