Such was the outlook inside Stalingrad itself; it was no better in the open steppes, nearer the centre of the "ring", at Gumrak, or that airfield of Pitomnik which so few of the Junker 52's were now succeeding in reaching. The Germans in the west had been driven far away—into the Salsk steppes and beyond the Donets, and the Germans at Stalingrad were hopelessly isolated.
During the first week of January the troops of the Don Front under Rokossovsky and
Voronov were preparing, in the steppes between the Don and the Volga, for the final
onslaught. Knowing, however, that the Germans still had much equipment inside the ring, and in order to avoid "unnecessary bloodshed", General Voronov, "representative of the general headquarters of the Supreme Command of the Red Army", and General
Rokossovsky, commander of the Don Front, sent an ultimatum to Colonel-General
Paulus, on January 8.
The German 6th Army, formations of the 4th Panzer Army and units sent to them
as reinforcements have been completely surrounded since November 23... The
German troops rushed to your assistance have been routed, and their remnants are
now retreating towards Rostov... The German air transport force which kept you
supplied with starvation rations of food, ammunition and fuel, is frequently
compelled to shift its bases and to fly long distances to reach you... It is suffering tremendous losses in planes and crews and its help is becoming ineffective...
Your troops are suffering from hunger, disease and cold. The severe Russian winter is only beginning... You have no chance of breaking through the ring surrounding
you. Your position is hopeless and further resistance is useless.
Voronov and Rokossovsky therefore offered a termination of hostilities and a capitulation on the usual terms:
Arms, equipment and munitions to be turned over to the Russians in an organised
manner and in good condition; Life and safety guaranteed to all soldiers and
officers who cease hostilities; and upon the termination of the war their return to Germany or to any country the prisoners of war may choose.
All prisoners may retain their uniforms, insignia, decorations and personal
belongings and, in the case of high officers, their side-arms. All prisoners will be provided with normal food, and all in need of medical treatment will be given it.
The ultimatum finally stated where Paulus's representative, travelling in a passenger car flying a white flag, was to appear at 10 a.m. on the following morning, January 9. The ultimatum ended with the warning that if it was rejected, "the Red Army and Air Force will be compelled to wipe out the surrounded German troops" and that "you will be responsible for their annihilation".
The ultimatum was rejected. But not quite off-hand. The German generals must have
taken time to consult Hitler and to think it over. Afterwards, Russian officers at
Stalingrad told me that, after the presentation of the ultimatum there was a short uncanny truce, when no guns were fired on either side. Not only the official Russian envoys but also some other Russians (including a staff officer I knew) ventured right across the no-man's-land and actually talked to some Germans urging them to lay down their arms. But Hitler would not hear of any capitulation, and von Manstein, too, now thought it in his own interests to sacrifice the German and Rumanian troops in the Stalingrad "Bag", and failed to inform Paulus of the real situation, thus leaving him to grope in the dark.
[H. M. Waasen. Was geschah in Stalingrad? Wo sind die Schuldigen? (What happened at Stalingrad? Where are the guilty men?). (Salzburg, 1950), p. 69.]
At 8 a.m. on January 10, the Russian attack was begun with a barrage from 7,000 guns and mortars along the southern and western side of the pocket, the density of the barrage reaching in some places 170 guns or mortars per kilometre. Russian planes were
meantime bombing the German positions farther inland. After an hour, Russian tanks and infantry were thrown in. Despite some desperate resistance from the Germans, who had strongly fortified the whole area, the Russians advanced in some places during the first day between three and five miles. As a Russian writer wrote:
The enemy suffered enormous casualties from our barrage. Our infantry swiftly
advanced through the enemy front lines. At every step there were blackened
German bodies, wrecked enemy guns and mortars, shattered dugouts and pillboxes.
The country, white the day before, was now grey with soot and smoke and dotted
with thousands of black shell-holes... And yet the Germans, frightened by "Russian atrocity" stories, continued to resist like hounded wolves.
[Zamiatin, Stalingradskaya Bitva (The Battle of Stalingrad) (Moscow, 1946), p. 56.]
It took three days of heavy fighting to snip off the western extremity of the pocket—some 250 square miles. During the following days the advance was much more rapid; the
Russians captured the whole middle part of the pocket, including Pitomnik, with the
Germans' largest airfield.
On January 17, the Russian command sent Paulus another capitulation offer, and
although at least two German generals—von Seydlitz and Schlömmer—were in favour of
accepting it, Paulus still had no authority to do so. By this time the Russians had
recaptured nearly half the cauldron; but German resistance was still stiff; the western part of the cauldron was studded with hundreds of pillboxes and other firing points;
Sovinformbureau's interim report of January 17 spoke of 1,260 pillboxes and fortified dugouts, 75 fortified observation posts and 317 gun or mortar batteries that had been captured or destroyed during the first week's fighting; it also gave a long list of
equipment captured or destroyed, including 400 planes, 600 tanks and 16,000 trucks,
most of which had, however, been out of action through lack of petrol. The Germans
killed during that first week were put at 25,000, but, significantly, the number of
prisoners taken—less than 7,000—was still very low, and even many of these appear to have been Rumanians.
On January 22 the Russians started on their final onslaught. The Germans were now
retreating in disorder to Stalingrad, and by the 24th, the Russians had reached that line of Stalingrad's "outer defences" which they had themselves held till September 13. "The German troops, suffering incredible hardships," a Russian military expert, Colonel Zamiatin, wrote, "now began to realise more fully the complete hopelessness of their position, and began to surrender in groups." At the same time, some of the sick and wounded in the area the Germans were abandoning, were being killed off rather than
being left to the Russians.
But Hitler and Manstein were still insisting that the Germans in the Stalingrad pocket continue their resistance. Paulus was promoted to the rank of Field-Marshal, even though he continued to inform Manstein of the hopelessness of resisting any longer. According to some German accounts the demoralisation among both soldiers and officers was now
rapidly growing, and there were ugly scrambles at Gumrak, the last German airfield,
where officers paid large bribes to airmen for a seat on the last departing planes.
[Heinz Schröter. Stalingrad... quoted by IVOVSS, vol. 3, p. 60.]
On January 26 the Russian troops both from the north and the west broke into Stalingrad itself, and at last, at Mamai Hill, joined with units of Chuikov's 62nd Army which,
throughout December and January, had continued to harass the Germans, especially in
the Mamai Hill, Barricades and Red October areas.
[During the big Russian counter-offensive in November, troops of the Don Front broke through to Colonel Gorokhov's little bridgehead north of Stalingrad, in the Rynok area; but had failed to reach Chuikov's main bridgehead. As a result, for two more months, the bulk of the 62nd Army was still isolated from the rest of the Russian forces. Al
though, during these two months, the Germans were unable to attack the 62nd Army in force,
Chuikov speaks with some bitterness in his book of the "others'" failure to break through to Stalingrad from the north in November, when the conditions for doing so had greatly improved.]
Although the Germans and especially the Rumanians (including General Dimitriu) were
now surrendering in much larger numbers— the Rumanians appear, for one thing, to
have been deprived even of their starvation rations since January 20—some heavy
fighting still continued in the streets of Stalingrad for the next five days, and it was not till January 31 that Field-Marshal Paulus surrendered at his H.Q. in the basement of the Univermag department store.
Later, when I got to Stalingrad, I heard the story from the man who had captured Paulus: a youngster with a turned-up nose, fair hair and a laughing face, Lieutenant Fyodor
Mikhailovich Yel-chenko, whom one could not imagine being called anything but
"Fedya". He was bubbling over with exuberance as he told his story—the lieutenant who had captured the Field-Marshal.
On January 31—the day after the tenth anniversary of the Hitler régime, a day on which the Führer had failed to speak—the Russians were closing in on central Stalingrad from all directions. The Germans were frozen, starving, but still fighting. First, after a heavy artillery and mortar barrage, the whole square in front of the Univermag was captured by the Russians, who then began to surround the building. From time to time, flame-throwers also came into action. Yelchenko said that, in the course of the day, he had learned from three captured German officers that Paulus was in the Univermag building.
"We then began to shell the building (my unit was occupying the other side of the street, just opposite the side entrance of the Univermag), and as the shells began to hit it, a representative of Major-General Raske popped out of the door and waved at me. It was taking a big risk, but I crossed the street and went up to him. The German officer then called for an interpreter, and he said to me: 'Our big chief wants to talk to your big chief.
So I said to him: 'Look here, our big chief has other things to do. He isn't available. You'll just have to deal with me.' All this was going on while, from the other side of the square, they were still sending shells into the building. I called for some of my men, and they joined me—twelve men and two other officers. They were all armed, of course, and the German officer said: 'No, our chief asks that only one or two of you come in.' So I said:
'Nuts to that. I am not going by myself.' However, in the end, we agreed on three. So the three of us went into the basement. It is empty now, but you should have seen it then. It was packed with soldiers—hundreds of them. Worse than any tramcar. They were dirty
and hungry and they stank. And did they looked scared! They all fled down here to get away from the mortar fire outside."
Yelchenko and the two other men were ushered into the presence of Major-General
Raske and Lieut.-General Schmidt, Paulus's chief of staff. Raske said that they were going to negotiate the surrender on Paulus's behalf, since Paulus "no longer answered for anything since yesterday". It was all a bit mysterious, Yelchenko said; he couldn't quite figure out who was in charge. Had Paulus passed his authority on to Raske, or was he simply avoiding a personal surrender, or had there been some disagreement between
Paulus and the others? Probably not, for Raske and Schmidt kept going into Paulus's
room, apparently consulting him on the coming capitulation. Perhaps Paulus was merely unwilling to negotiate with the little Russian lieutenant direct. However, Yelchenko was, in the end, shown into Paulus's room. "He was lying on his iron bed," said Yelchenko,
"wearing his uniform. He looked unshaved, and you wouldn't say he felt jolly. 'Well, that finishes it,' I remarked to him. He gave me a sort of miserable look and nodded. And then, in the other room—the corridor, mind you, was still packed with soldiers— Raske said: 'There's one request I have to make. You must have him taken away in a decent car, under proper guard, so the Red Army soldiers don't kill him, as though he were some
vagabond.'" Yelchenko laughed. "I said 'Okay'". Paulus had a car duly sent for him, and was taken to General Rokossovsky's place. What happened after that I don't know. But for two days afterwards we were gathering in prisoners all over the place. And the other fellows, on the north side, also surrendered three days later. But even in this part of Stalingrad there was still some fighting for a few hours after Paulus had been caught; however, when they learned what had happened, they began to surrender without any
further trouble."
[It is amusing to note that there should be no mention in the official History of Lieutenant Yelchenko, or of his unconventional and presumably "undignified" story of how the German C. in C. at Stalingrad surrendered. Instead, it merely says that the Univermag was surrounded, and that while the firing was continuing, Paulus's A.D.C. "came out of the basement and expressed his willingness to negotiate. Soon afterwards representatives of the Soviet Command arrived on the spot and presented an ultimatum which was
accepted by the German command. After all formalities had been completed, Field-
Marshal Paulus, his Chief of Staff Lieut-General Schmidt, and his A.D.C. Colonel Adam, together with a group of staff officers, were delivered to the H.Q. of the 64th Army."
(IVOVSS, vol. 3, p. 61.)]
One of the sulking ones in the background then said something about hunger and cold.
When somebody suggested that the Russian Army was perhaps better than the German
Army and certainly better led, von Arnim snorted and went almost purple with rage. I then asked how he was being treated. Again he snorted. "The officers," he said reluctantly, "are correct. But the Russian soldiers— das sind Diebe, das sind Halunken.
So eine Schweinerei!" He fumed. "Impudent thieves! They stole all my things. Eine Schweinerei!" Vier Koffer! Four suitcases, and they stole them all. The soldiers, I mean,"
he added as a concession. "Not the Russian officers. Die Offiziere sind ganz korrekt,"
These people had looted the whole of Europe; but what was that compared with his four suitcases? When a Chinese correspondent asked about Japan, he said stiffly, with another devastating glare: "We immensely admire our gallant Japanese allies for their brilliant victories over the English and the Americans, and wish them many more victories." Then he was asked what all those crosses and mantelpiece ornaments were, and he rattled them off one after another—the golden frame with the black spider of a swastika was, he said, the Deutsche Kreuz in Gold, and the Führer himself had designed it. "One would have thought that you'd have a slight grudge against the Führer," somebody suggested. He glared and merely said: "The Führer is a very great man, and if you have any doubts, you will soon have occasion to put them aside." The man was one of the few German generals who was to keep completely aloof, during the rest of the war, from the Free German
Committee.
One thing was astonishing about these generals. They had been captured only a couple of days before—and yet they looked healthy and not at all undernourished. Clearly,
throughout the agony of Stalingrad, when their soldiers were dying of hunger, they had continued to have more or less regular meals. There could be no other explanation for their normal, or almost normal, weight and appearance.
The only man who looked in a poor shape was Paulus himself. We weren't allowed to
speak to him [ I later learned that he had firmly refused to make any statement.]; he was only shown to us so that we could testify that he was alive and had not committed
suicide. He stepped out of a large cottage—it was more like a villa— gave us one look, then stared at the horizon, and stood on the steps for a minute or two, in a rather awkward silence, with two other officers, one of whom was General Schmidt, his chief of staff.
Paulus looked pale and sick, and had a nervous twitch in his left cheek. He had a more n
atural dignity than the others, and wore only one or two decorations. The cameras
clicked and a Russian officer politely dismissed him, and he went back into the cottage.
The others followed and the door closed behind him. It was over.
In the village the soldiers were joking about some of the German generals. "They're damn lucky.," one of them said, "living in decent nouses, and getting three big meals a day.
And some of them have still got plenty of cheek. I must tell you a funny story. It's a fact.
They have a girl barber—a Russian Army girl—to go and shave them every morning.
One of them got fresh with her the very first day, and pinched her bottom. She resented it and slapped his face. He's now so scared of having his throat cut that he won't shave any more, and is growing a beard! "
We were driven to another village where we were received by General Malinin, General Rokossovsky's chief of staff. Malinin had a strong, typically North-Russian face; he was a native of Yaroslavl, and was now forty-three. He had fought in the Civil War, and had attended the Military Academy for two years in 1931-3; he fought in Finland, and had been with Rokossovsky during the Battle of Moscow. Later, he was to become Zhukov's
chief of staff and, in that capacity, took part in the capture of Berlin.
For the last two or three days "Cannae" had suddenly become a catchword with the Red Army; the papers were full of it and Stalingrad was being described as an ideal "Cannae"
operation, the most perfect since Hannibal's. Malinin also talked about it; it seemed almost as odd to hear this former Yaroslavl peasant lad talk of Cannae, here in the middle of the Don steppes, as if he had suddenly started reciting the Aeneid... He then paid a tribute to Stalin, under whose direction this operation had been carried out and then spoke with obvious feeling of the ordinary Russian soldiers:
Russia at war Page 62
