occasion, he even had a big practical joke played on him by an obscure American parish priest.
PART FIVE Stalingrad
Chapter 1 STALINGRAD: THE CHUIKOV STORY
Broadly speaking, the Battle of Stalingrad may be divided into the following stages: (1) July 17 to August 4, when the main fighting was still inside the Don Bend. Here the Russians attempted, on the strength of the "not-a-step-back" slogan at least to slow down the German advance. On the north side of the Bend, the Russians fought stubbornly in order to preserve at least a few bridgeheads. It was also hoped that, by slowing down the German advance, time would be gained for strengthening the "defences" of Stalingrad, which were being built by thousands of people in a feverish hurry but, as time was to show, without much effect.
[Yeremenko admits that only a quarter of these defences had been completed by August, and badly at that. (Yeremenko, op. cit., p. 76.) Moreover, these rudimentary defences were neither properly manned nor armed.]
Nevertheless, authorities such as General Yeremenko claim that the fighting outside the Don Bend was very valuable in slowing down the German advance, and in preventing
them from either trapping large numbers of Russian troops inside the bend, or capturing Stalingrad at one fell swoop.
(2) August 5 to August 18. Having previously forced the south side of the Don at
Tsymlianskaya, large portions of the German 6th Army, supported by General Hoth's
panzer army, were now trying to outflank the Russians by striking towards Stalingrad via Kotelnikovo, Abganerovo and Plodovitoye, south-east of the city. By August 14 nearly the whole of the country inside the Don Bend (except for a few Russian-held bridgeheads in the north) had been overrun by the Germans. Besides attacking Stalingrad from the south, the Germans were also advancing on the city from the west and the north-west.
(3) August 19 to September 3. The fighting in the country between Don and Volga now
reached its height. Although, south-east of the city, the enemy was held for some days along the Axai and then the Myshkova rivers, the Germans broke through to the Volga
north of Stalingrad, forming there a five-mile-wide salient. This happened on August 23, a day which was also marked by a 600-bomber raid on Stalingrad. Despite the seemingly chaotic conditions created in the city by this super-air-raid, in which 40,000 were killed, neither the military nor the civilian authorities quite lost their heads; to avoid
encirclement and also to stop the Germans from striking south from their Volga salient north of Stalingrad, the Russians hastened to retreat to the city. The German Rynok-Yerzovka salient north of Stalingrad was "stabilised".
(4) Between September 4 and 13 the fighting was concentrated on the "outskirts" of Stalingrad, but with the Germans breaking through to the Volga south of Stalingrad as well, the Russian 62nd Army found itself isolated from the rest of the Russian forces. On September 12 General Chuikov was appointed commander of the 62nd Army.
(5) The period from September 13 to November 18 was marked by the historic battle
inside Stalingrad. By the middle of October, the Russians were holding only three small bridgeheads; but still the Germans were unable to dislodge them, despite a "final"
offensive in the first half of November. The bulk of the Russian artillery was on the other side of the Volga and so relatively invulnerable, despite great German air superiority.
Then came the Russian counter-offensive:
(1) November 19 to December 11, during which period the Russians succeeded in finally encircling the Germans and Rumanians at Stalingrad.
(2) December 12 to January 1, which was chiefly marked by the Hoth-Manstein attempt
to break through to the encircled Stalingrad troops, by its failure, a further widening of the Russian ring round Stalingrad and the complete rout of the Italians on the Don.
(3) January 10 to February 2, 1943 marked by the final liquidation of the German and Rumanian forces inside the Stalingrad "cauldron".
In considering the defensive stage of the Stalingrad battle, the most important piece of evidence available, both on the military aspects and on Russian morale, is the remarkable book The Beginning of the Road by General (now Marshal) Chuikov, who was the Commander of the 62nd Army throughout the Stalingrad siege. Published in 1959, it is the best account of this complicated battle. It is also one of the most candid books published by any Russian General.
[ An English version of the expurgated 1961 edition was published in London in 1963.]
Chuikov, who until the beginning of 1942 had been Soviet Military Attaché at
Chungking, was sent to the Stalingrad front at the beginning of July, when the Germans were advancing across the Don country. In his account of the retreat to Stalingrad he gives a very frank picture of the uneven morale of both troops and officers, including senior officers.
Thus at the railway station of Frolovo [west of Stalingrad] I ran into the
headquarters of the 21st Army. The H.Q. was on wheels. Everything, including
Army Commander Gordov's sleeping outfit, was on the move—in cars and lorries. I
did not like such excessive mobility. One could feel a lack of stability, and a lack of determination. They looked as though they were trying to get away from their
pursuers—everybody, including the Army Commander.
A few days later, travelling west towards the Don, he also saw evidence of very low
morale:
I saw how these people were moving along the waterless Stalingrad steppe from
west to east, eating up their last reserves of food, and overcome by the stifling heat.
When I asked them: "Where are you going? Who are you looking for?" they gave senseless answers: they all seemed to be looking for somebody on the other side of the Volga, or in the Saratov region... In the steppe, I met the staffs of two divisions who claimed to be looking for the H.Q. of the 9th Army. These staffs consisted of a few officers sitting in three or fours cars, loaded to the brim with petrol tins. In reply to my questions: "Where are the Germans? Where are our units? Where are you going?" they didn't know what to say. It was, clearly, not going to be easy to restore the morale of these people and the fighting spirit of the troops in retreat...
Some of the generals were no better. General Gordov, who had been commander of the
21st Army, was appointed commander of the 64th Army, with Chuikov as his Deputy.
On the night of July 19 we met at the H.Q. of the 64th Army... I had never met him before. He was a general with greying hair and with tired grey eyes which seemed to see nothing, and whose cold expression seemed to say: "Don't tell me about the situation, I know all about it. There's nothing I can do about it, since such is my fate."
Being in a defeatist mood, Gordov ordered that only part of his Army should hold
positions inside the Don Bend, and that the reserves be left on the east side of the Don.
Chuikov was critical of this decision, but adds that "General Gordov was not a man who tolerated any contradiction from his inferiors."
Nevertheless, only a few days later, Gordov was summoned to Moscow and was
appointed to the even higher post of commander of the Stalingrad Front (i.e. Army
Group). Meantime, Chuikov was left as acting commander of the 64th Army. On July 25
the troops under his command made contact with the Germans at Nizhne-Chirskaya, in
the south-east corner of the Don Bend. After describing a ferocious two-day battle, in the course of which many German tanks were destroyed, and the Germans also suffered
heavy casualties from the Russian katyusha mortars, Chuikov then relates how the Germans nevertheless succeeded in breaking through the Russian lines inside the Don
Bend.
We had no tanks left, but I sent along several battalions of marines to fill in the gap... It seemed that we would manage, in the end, to close the breach. But here, unfortunately, a panic started. It did not start in the front
line, but in the rear. It started among the medical personnel, in the artillery park and our transport units, all of them on the right bank of the river. They had heard from somewhere that the German tanks were within a couple of miles. In those days such a piece of news was sufficient to drive all these people in disorder to the river crossing. Through
channels unknown to me this panic spread to the front line troops.
To stop this mass of people and vehicles from rushing towards the Don, I sent
several members of my staff and my artillery chief, Major-General Brout, to the
crossing. It was all too late and in vain. Enemy aircraft spotted this large
concentration of people and cars at the river crossing, and proceeded to bomb it. In the course of this bombing General Brout... and several other officers of the Army H.Q. were killed.
By nightfall the Germans had destroyed the bridge, but one infantry division and some other small units were still inside the Don Bend. What happened next was only too
typical of the lack of coordination at the top on the Russian side. In Chuikov's absence, the Chief of Staff of the 64th Army gave orders to these troops to retire beyond the Don.
Arriving back at headquarters, Chuikov was appalled by this news, and promptly
countermanded the order which might have led to another stampede and panic,
particularly in the absence of any crossing in that area. The troops successfully dug in inside the Don Bend, and so filled the breach at the end of three days' heavy fighting.
Generals the world over have axes to grind, and Chuikov is no exception. Throughout
this narrative he contrasts good troops with bad troops, good leadership with bad
leadership. Thus, when he learned, at the height of the fighting inside the Don Bend, that General Kolpakchi had been relieved of his command of the 62nd Army, and had been
replaced by Lieutenant-General Lopatin, he was far from pleased:
A cavalry man in the past, General Lopatin had lately been in charge of an army
which, during the fighting on the Don, had become so scattered across the steppes that it was extremely difficult to assemble it again.
Plump and fair and outwardly very calm, Lopatin treated me to an excellent lunch
at his command post, but informed me that, in the absence of munitions, the 62nd
Army could not carry out the orders of the Army Group's chief of staff... I at once felt he lacked self-confidence, and doubted whether he could hold the right flank on the Don, since his troops were half-encircled.
[Yeremenko in his book {Stalingrad) defends Lopatin by saying that, since he was commander of the 62nd Army in July-August, he deserves a little share of its fame. To Chuikov he was a person to be got rid of as quickly as possible.]
Under constant air attack, Chuikov spent the rest of the day circling about the Don
steppes, looking for Lopatin's "lost divisions" Meanwhile, General Shumilov had been appointed commander of the 64th Army, and Chuikov was ordered to report to Gordov at Stalingrad.
At Stalingrad on August I, I found Gordov (so downcast only a few days before) in a gay, almost jocular mood. In talking to air-force General Khrukin, he sounded
entirely self-confident, as though the Nazis were on the point of being wiped out at any moment. "The Germans," he said, "have got bogged down in our defences, and with one blow we can destroy the whole lot." Remembering my vain search in the steppe for the lost divisions, which had just vanished, I came to the conclusion that the Commander of the Stalingrad Front simply did not know what was going on. He
was full of wishful thinking, and did not even know that, having broken across the Don at Tsymlianskaya and pushing, as they were, towards Kotelnikovo, the
Germans were preparing to strike a mighty new blow, this time at Stalingrad itself.
He would scarcely listen to my explanations, and cut me short by saying: "I know about the general situation as well as you do."
Full of foreboding, Chuikov returned to the front; but was no longer able to cross the Don; practically all the country inside the Bend had now been overrun by the Germans.
As an example of the chaotic lack of liaison between Russian units fighting inside the Bend, Chuikov tells how, while the 33rd Guards Division of the 62nd Army held up the Germans along a narrow sector of the front for several days, destroying or putting out of action no fewer than fifty German tanks and fighting almost literally to the last man, the troops on either side of them were doing nothing, "simply waiting for something to happen"; before long, they were attacked by strong German forces which broke through their lines.
The heroic stand of the 33rd Guards Division, had thus been almost in vain.
Yet as late as July 26 General Lopatin was sending optimistic reports to headquarters about important German forces being on the point of being encircled. "It was like the story of the man," Chuikov commented, "who said he had caught a bear. 'Well, bring him along.' 'I can't, the bear won't let me.' "
By the time the 62nd Army had retreated beyond the Don, it had been decimated, and
needed strong reinforcement.
On returning to the Front on August 2, Chuikov found that the situation had badly
deteriorated. Large German forces, outflanking the main Russian forces, had forced the Don at Tsymlianskaya, and after capturing Kotelnikovo, were advancing north towards
Stalingrad in a wide semi-circle through Plodovitoye and Tinguta in the Kalmuk steppes.
In many places, the Russians were being smashed by heavy air and tank concentrations.
Thus, two days later Chuikov learned that a troop train unloading fresh Siberian troops at Kotelnikovo station had been attacked by German aircraft and tanks and the losses had been so appalling that the colonel in command of these troops now retreating in disorder towards Stalingrad, was found in a state of complete nervous collapse.
I remember his pale face and his trembling voice. He was in a bad state... "Comrade General," he said, "I am a Soviet officer, and I cannot survive the death of a large part of my division. It is hard for me to assemble the survivors, who are completely demoralised. I cannot therefore continue to command the division."
I could not leave this without doing something about it... A few hours later when Colonel Voskoboinikov came to himself, I called in to see him, the chief of staff and the head of the division's political department. I ordered all three to establish contact with the troops scattered between Zhutovo and Abganerovo, and to take up
firm defensive positions on the north side of the Axai river.
Despite heavy losses among the Russian troops, Chuikov succeeded in organising a
defence line on the Axai river, and, on August 6, launched some successful counter-
attacks against the Germans and Rumanians.
As a result of this battle of August 6, the enemy suffered heavy losses. We captured eight guns and many small arms. I found that the scattered troops I had assembled during the retreat, had not lost their fighting spirit, and fought well. They boldly went into attack, and did not panic when the enemy counter-attacked. That was the main thing.
Farther east, at Abganerovo and Tundutovo, where other units of the 64th Army were
now concentrated, the Germans had also failed to break through. On that day, Chuikov was also glad to learn that Gordov had been replaced by Yeremenko as commander of the Stalingrad Front—though later he was not to remain on the best of terms with him.
The German advance on Stalingrad from the south and south-west was being slowed
down; but other difficulties were still in store. A large ammunition dump south of
Stalingrad had been destroyed by the German bombers, and the troops were, before long, to experience a serious shortage of ammunition. Even so, Chuikov, assisted by Ludnikov and other future heroes of the defence of Stalingrad, held the Axai line for over a week; but with the Germans outflanking all these troops from the east, they were ordered to withdra
w north to the next natural defence line, the Myshkova river, some forty miles south of Stalingrad. During this fighting in the country between Don and Volga, virtually on the outskirts of Stalingrad, despite all the setbacks suffered inside the Don Bend, the Russians began to fight as seldom before. Chuikov gives many examples of suicidal
resistance when Russian soldiers, with grenades tied round them, would throw
themselves under enemy tanks. Many of the fresh troops that had only recently been
incorporated in the 62nd and 64th Army were "acquiring new experience every day, and were rapidly turning into mature and hardened troops". The German plan—to break through to the Volga and at the same time to encircle both the 62nd and 64th Army—
failed. These two armies were to bear the brunt of the Stalingrad fighting, the former inside Stalingrad, the latter south of it.
Hitler had ordered that Stalingrad be taken on August 25. On the tragic day of August 23
the Germans broke through to the Volga north of Stalingrad, on a five-mile front; on the same day, 600 planes attacked the city, killing some 40,000 civilians.
The enormous city, stretching for thirty miles along the Volga, was enveloped in
flames. Everything around was burning and collapsing. Sorrow and death entered
into thousands of Stalingrad homes.
Many thousands of civilians fled across the Volga; but Chuikov stresses the
determination shown by both the army and the civilian authorities to save Stalingrad at any price. North of the city, the Germans failed to widen their five-mile salient, while, in the south, the 64th Army was still preventing them, at that stage, from breaking through to the Volga.
But, during the days that followed, the German pressure grew worse and worse.
The troops of the 62nd and 64th armies were retreating towards their final
positions, inside Stalingrad. The roads were crowded with refugees. Peasants from collective and state farms were migrating, with their families and their livestock, many also taking their agricultural implements with them, and converging on the
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