Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  [ Yeremenko gives a rather more dramatic account of his visit {Stalingrad, pp. 233-4).

  "In talking on October 15 on the phone to Chuikov, I felt that the Army Commander's spirit had somewhat deteriorated. So I decided, without delay, to visit the 62nd Army.

  The situation that had developed there was, indeed, alarming. Mamai Hill and (the

  adjoining) height 107-5 ... were in enemy hands, and the Germans were dominating the city and keeping our river crossings under intensive fire, and so paralysing them...

  (Chuikov) rather strongly protested against my visit, since it meant crossing the Volga under intensive shelling, and then walking five miles along the shore under rifle,

  machine-gun and mortar fire... However, we were used to that kind of thing; we had

  experienced such fire hundreds of times; in August and September the H.Q. of the War Council of the Front, being situated in the centre of Stalingrad, had been under constant bombing and shelling."

  He then describes how he sailed for ten km. up the river, despite constant shelling, and landed near the Red October Plant. Owing to the constant German flares it was light all the time. Although all along the embankment mountains of wreckage were piled up and

  the whole area was riddled with shell-holes and bomb-craters, there was an

  "extraordinary animation" along this embankment: reinforcements and supplies were arriving all the time in a continuous stream, and the wounded were being evacuated—and all under constant shell-fire. Before Yeremenko had reached Chuikov's H.Q. near the

  Barricades Plant, "a number of the comrades accompanying me had been killed or

  wounded by bomb or shell splinters ". Yeremenko also tells how, while at Chuikov's H.Q., he talked to the commanders of

  some of the famous Stalingrad divisions. Particularly pathetic was his talk with Colonel Zholudev, who had lost practically all his men in the last German offensive. "Over a thousand German planes attacked us, and then we were attacked by 150 German tanks,

  followed by waves of infantry. And yet nobody abandoned his post." Zholudev spoke to Yerernenko with tears in his eyes...

  It appears from his account that while the War Council of the Front was now stationed on the other side of the Volga, some ten km. south of the main fighting, it had been in central Stalingrad during August and part of September. This is apparently also where Khrushchev (and Malenkov?) were stationed at the time.

  In his story, Yerernenko does not mention any disagreement with Chuikov.]

  Altogether, Chuikov does not seem to have cared for visitors: he vetoed a visit to

  Stalingrad by Manuilsky on behalf of the Central Committee. He declared that the

  Stalingrad troops did not need any pep talks from Manuilsky and it would only annoy

  Comrade Stalin if Manuilsky got killed— which was quite possible in the circumstances.

  With the Germans increasingly active on the bank of the Volga near the Tractor Plant, Chuikov found it necessary to move his headquarters farther south, to a ravine near

  Mamai Hill. These dugouts were to remain the Army H.Q. till the end of the Stalingrad Battle. This H.Q., inside the Volga cliffs was just over 1,000 yards from Mamai Hill—for that was now the maximum depth of the main Stalingrad bridgehead still in Russian

  hands.

  On October 19 and 20 the Germans continued their attacks, chiefly in the Barricades and Red October areas, but they already seemed to lack their former punch. Judging from the prisoners' statements, morale among the German troops, especially the newcomers, was low. The Russians were, however, also very short of troops, and Chuikov had to scrape the bottom of the barrel by drawing on all kinds of people in the Army's rear services—

  shoemakers, tailors, and men in charge of horses, stores, etc.

  These poorly trained or wholly untrained people became "specialists" in street fighting, as soon as they stepped on to the ground of Stalingrad. "It was pretty terrifying," they would say, "to cross over to Stalingrad, but once we got there we felt better. We knew that, beyond the Volga there was nothing, and that if we were to remain alive, we had to destroy the invaders."

  It should be added that, by this time, the "prestige value" of having fought at Stalingrad was enormous.

  Summing up the results of the fierce ten-days' fighting between October 14 and 23,

  Chuikov says:

  Both the Germans' strength and our strength were on the wane. In these last ten

  days, the Germans had once again cut our army in two, and had inflicted on us very serious losses. They had captured the Tractor Plant, but had failed to destroy either the northern group [under Gorokhov] or the Army's main forces south of it. Yet the Germans still had reserves, as we knew from our reconnaissance... But our forces

  had been decimated; the 37th, 208th and 193rd divisions were little more than

  numbers. All they represented was a few hundred rifles.

  The Germans renewed their attacks in the Barricades and Red October sectors, and

  between the two factories they were now within 400 yards of the Volga. The last Russian Volga crossing was then in range of machine-gun fire. Stone walls had to be erected

  across the ravines to stop these machine-gun bullets—no easy task in the circumstances.

  On October 27, parts of a new division under General Sokolov began to arrive at

  Stalingrad; but the crossing of the Volga met with great difficulties. Meantime, the Germans had struck another violent blow at the Red October Plant, and captured the

  north-west part of the factory's territory. It was here that one of the most famous and deadly battles was to be fought for weeks afterwards.

  Pending the arrival of reinforcements, Chuikov was reduced to all kinds of

  "psychological" expedients.

  One day we had the good luck of discovering on the battlefield three half-wrecked tanks, including one flame-throwing tank. We quickly had them repaired, and

  Colonel Wainrub, my tank commander, decided to throw in these tanks along

  Samarkand Street, where the Germans had nearly broken through to the Volga...

  The attack started early in the morning, on October 28, before daybreak. The attack was supported by artillery and katyusha fire. We failed to capture a large area, but the effect was very impressive all the same. The flame-throwing tank destroyed

  three enemy tanks, and the other two killed off the Germans in two trenches, which were promptly taken over by our men... The Nazi radio started screaming about

  "Russian tanks", as though trying to justify Paulus's failure to finish us off.

  [ This story of the three tanks is reminiscent of another piece of Russian "bluff" at Stalingrad, as described in one of Nekrasov's stories—that of a soldier who, with one machine-gun, pretended to have a whole trenchful of soldiers with him—a story which, he assured me, was based on fact.]

  After two more days of heavy German attacks against Ludnikov's, Gurtiev's and Batyuk's men, there came a lull.

  By October 30 we began to feel that we were winning the battle. It was clear that Paulus was no longer able to repeat his October 14 offensive which brought us to the brink of catastrophe.

  But it was not over yet. The bridgeheads held by the Russians were only a few hundred yards deep in some places, and during the first ten days of November, the Russians made many attacks, mostly at night, in a vain attempt to enlarge them, if only slightly.

  On November 11, the Germans launched their last major attack on the defenders of

  Stalingrad. Advancing along a three-mile front, five German divisions, supported by

  tanks and aircraft, tried to crash through to the Volga at one fell swoop. But the Russians were so well entrenched that the Germans made only little progress. The fighting went on, in Chuikov's words, "for every brick and stone, for every yard of the Stalingrad earth".

  At Mamai Hill Batyuk's troops fought desperately against advancing enemy forces.

  Factory ch
imneys were crashing down under the blow of shells and bombs. The

  heaviest blows were struck at Ludnikov's and Gorishnyi's men. By noon, out of the 250 soldiers of the 118th Guards regiment, only six men were left. The colonel of the regiment was severely wounded. Throwing in reserves, the Germans then broke

  through to the Volga along a 500-yard stretch; thus, for the third time, the 62nd Army was cut in two, and Ludnikov's division was cut off from the rest. But

  nowhere else did the Germans make any appreciable progress. Heavy fighting

  continued, as before, at the Red October and Barricades, and round Mamai Hill...

  The 62nd Army had received some reinforcements during the previous days; in particular a large number of sailors of the Pacific Fleet had been drafted into Gorishnyi's division.

  These Siberians were tough fighters.

  The German attacks continued on the following day, without much effect, and, by the

  middle of November 12 the offensive had petered out. Nevertheless, the Germans had

  gained a little ground and had reduced the area in Russian hands still further. In some places, the distance between the German lines and the Volga, now covered with ice-floes, was barely 100 yards wide. Also, the Ludni-kov division was now isolated from the rest of the 62nd Army on a small bridgehead south of the Barricades, now in German hands.

  Most of the Red October Plant had also been captured by the Germans. During the days that followed, the Russian attempt to break through the 500 yard German salient on the Volga dividing them from Ludnikov's men, failed. These had to be supplied by small PO-2 reconnaissance planes at night, and it was not until several days later that a few small

  "armoured" [According to Yeremenko, any bullet could have pierced this "armour"]

  cutters) of the Volga Flotilla reached the Ludnikov bridgehead through the ice-floes and evacuated 150 wounded men.

  But Ludnikov's men had to fight on for more than another month before breaking out of their virtual encirclement.

  It was only a week after the Germans' last all-out attempt to dislodge the Russians from the remaining Stalingrad bridgeheads that the great counter-offensive started, the Russian troops of the Don and North-West Fronts striking out from the north, and those of the Stalingrad Front from the south, and the two closing the ring at Kalach, at the eastern end of the Don Bend only four days later.

  The news of the counter-offensive [See pp. 493 ff.]—which had been expected for some time—was received with immense joy and relief by the men of the 62nd Army. Stalin's

  forecast of November 7 that "there would soon be a holiday in our street" was coming true.

  For all that, the position of the 62nd Army at Stalingrad continued to be a highly

  uncomfortable one. In the north, there was the small bridgehead held by Gorokhov's men.

  Then, near the Barricades, there was another small bridgehead of half a square mile held by Colonel Ludnikov's men. The main bridgehead, about five miles long, was, in

  Chuikov's words, "a narrow strip of ruins".

  The left flank of the main bridgehead, held by Rodimtsev's men, was a strip of land only a few hundred yards wide. The maximum depth of the bridgehead, east of Mamai Hill,

  was only a little over a mile. Chuikov's H.Q. was inside the Volga cliffs, east of Mamai Hill; he also had an observation post between the two, on the railway embankment. All the Russian positions were under German shell-fire, and most of them were even exposed to machine-gun fire. With the Germans holding part of the Mamai heights, they were able to subject the Russian Volga crossings to precision shelling. So Chuikov's two immediate targets were to join up with Ludnikov's men and to recapture the Mamai heights, which would in effect double the depth of the bridgehead there.

  By November 20 the Volga, covered with ice-floes, was no longer navigable, and, with the great counter-offensive having begun, the 62nd Army could no longer expect any

  reinforcements in either men or equipment, anyway. Only small quantities of food and ammunition could be flown over by PO-2 reconnaissance planes. It was not till December 16 that the Volga froze, and individual soldiers could now bring ammunition over the ice in small sleighs.

  The problem of dislodging the Germans from their Barricades salient on the Volga was no easy one. They had entrenched themselves in the ruins of factory buildings, and two days of heavy shelling from the other side of the Volga did not make them give up. It took several days of often hand-to-hand fighting, with Ludnikov's men attacking from the north, and Gorishnyi's men from the south, before the salient was eliminated, with heavy casualties on both sides. The junction was not made till December 23.

  On December 25 Guriev's men stormed the parts of the Red October Plant in German

  hands; here it also came to hand-to-hand fighting for every room and workshop. The

  Germans had turned the main office of the Red October Plant into a powerful firing-

  point; and their resistance ended only when the whole building was smashed by artillery fire at close range. This kind of house-to-house fighting was to continue almost to the end. As Chuikov says:

  The streets and squares of Stalingrad continued to be deserted.

  Neither we nor the Germans could act openly. Whoever stuck his head out or ran

  across the street was inevitably shot by a sniper or tommy-gunner.

  Chuikov says that, even after they knew they were encircled, the German troops

  continued to fight well, and remained confident that Manstein's tank army would break through to relieve them.

  Up to the end of December they continued to live in hopes and put up a desperate

  resistance, often literally to the last cartridge. We practically took no prisoners, since the Nazis just wouldn't surrender. Not till after Manstein's failure to break through did morale among the German troops begin to decline very noticeably.

  The growing shortage of both food and ammunition began to tell. Nevertheless, in

  numerous places in Stalingrad, even after January 10, when the final liquidation of the

  "cauldron" had begun, the stiff resistance of the Germans continued, notably in the Mamai Hill area, which they were determined to hold to the last. Here they continued to resist and even to counter-attack up to January 25, i.e. a week before the final surrender of the German Stalingrad forces.

  Chapter II THE "STALINGRAD" MONTHS IN MOSCOW—The

  Churchill Visit and After.

  Unlike the early months of the Invasion, when the communiqués were cagey in the

  extreme, the war communiqués in the summer and autumn of 1942 were, on the whole,

  remarkably candid. The loss of this or that town was sometimes only admitted after a few days' delay and the communiqués often used euphemisms such as "the approaches of Stalingrad" when in reality the fighting was already inside the city; but the general picture was almost perfectly clear throughout. From the beginning of August (after the post-Rostov reforms) to August 25—which started, as it were, a new phase in the fighting

  —the communiqués were almost calculatedly cruel in their candour. As early as August 8, the communiqué spoke of fighting "north of Kotelnikovo", which meant that the Germans had crossed the Don in strength and were now advancing on Stalingrad from the south. More depressing still were the parts of the communiqués dealing with the German lightning advance into the Kuban and the Caucasus. In quick succession the losses of Krasnodar, the capital of the Kuban, of the oil city, Maikop, of Mineralnyie Vody,

  Piatigorsk, Essentuki and Kislovodsk, the famous watering-places in the foothills of the Caucasus were announced. It was also admitted that the Germans were breaking through the mountains on their way to Novorossisk and the Black Sea Coast, and that, in the

  Eastern Caucasus, they were pushing on towards the oil city of Grozny and the Caspian, with Baku as their target.

  No doubt, there were stories of outstanding heroic deeds performed by individual units, and on August 19, Sovinformbureau p
ublished some more than improbable figures of

  German losses. On the same day, the Red Star found some solace in the thought that the Germans were attacking on a much smaller front than in 1941, and with less "sureness of touch" than even in July 1942; more and more, the German offensive was working "in fits and starts", and the Russian resistance in the Don Bend had already upset Hitler's time-table.

  The swift German advances into the Kuban and the Caucasus had a very depressing

  effect in Moscow, though some experts were saying that the real test would come once the Germans had reached the mountains. Nevertheless, the loss of the Kuban country, one of the richest agricultural areas of Russia, was keenly felt. Even more was the thought that millions more Russians would now be under German occupation. But as the

  Germans approached Stalingrad, there was a curious feeling from the start that here it would come to a real showdown. The very name Stalingrad, with all the legends woven round it since the Civil War, suggested that the place had a sort of symbolic (therefore political) significance, and that Stalin's own prestige was directly involved. It is hard to say by what subtle propaganda this idea was put across, but the germs of the "Stalingrad legend" were there even before the battle had started.

  [ I find that in my Diary I wrote as early as July 13: "Black as things are, I somehow feel that Stalingrad is going to provide something very big. Stalin's own prestige is involved."

  (Quoted in The Year of Stalingrad, p. 140).]

  Yet it would be absurd to say that the possibility of the loss of Stalingrad was excluded; on the contrary, between the end of August and, roughly, the last week of October,

  everybody was extremely conscious that the situation at Stalingrad was highly critical.

  It was while the military situation in Russia looked particularly desperate that Churchill arrived in Moscow on August 12. The Russians were in full retieat in the North

  Caucasus, and the Germans were approaching Stalingrad, and about to break through to the Volga north of the city.

  Since the brief Anglo-Soviet honeymoon, which had culminated in the meeting of the

  Supreme Soviet of June 18, relations had been rapidly deteriorating. The correspondence between Churchill and Stalin, especially in July and the beginning of August, points to growing exasperation on both sides. The three main points were the Second Front, the sending of convoys to Northern Russia and the Poles.