Enemy at the Gates

by William Craig

  Trucks bulging with torn and mutilated men pulled up at the hospitals but when drivers were waved off because of lack of space, they left their cargoes unattended. The temperature fell to twenty degrees below zero and the wounded cried feebly for help. When no one responded, they froze to death within a few yards of the operating table.

  At his bunker a mile away, Gen. Friedrich von Paulus filled the airwaves with messages to Manstein: “Airfield at Gumrak usable since the 15th of January, landing ground available for night landings…. Request quickest possible intervention. Gravest danger.”

  The Luftwaffe rejected Paulus’s claim about Gumrak. Declaring the field almost totally unfit for use, it insisted that adequate safety measures were needed to insure proper deliveries.

  Paulus was furious: “Objections raised by Luftwaffe regarded here as mere excuses…. Landing ground has been substantially extended. Fully competent ground organization with all necessary installations….Commander in chief has directly requested the Führer to intervene….”

  The reality of the situation, however, was that neither Paulus nor Schmidt understood that there was an almost total operational breakdown at the airport. The so-called “fully competent ground organization,” which had performed admirably at Pitomnik, was no longer a cohesive group. Though Col. Lothar Rosenfeld now tried to clear Gumrak for an intensive shuttle service, he was working with men exhausted beyond recall.

  When a Luftwaffe officer landed in Gumrak on the morning of January 19, he recognized these symptoms immediately. Major Thiel, who had come to the Kessel to reconcile differences between Sixth Army and the Luftwaffe, was appalled at the condition of the runways. The wrecks of thirteen planes littered the landing cross, forcing incoming pilots to touch down within a tight eightyyard radius. Bomb craters pocked the concrete. Newly fallen snow had not yet been cleared.

  Thiel descended into the cramped, brightly lit command bunker where he was quickly surrounded by Generals Schmidt, Paulus, Heitz, and other aides, all of whom began to insult him about the Luftwaffe.

  “If your aircraft cannot land, my army is doomed,” roared Paulus, who was particularly bitter as he unleashed his fury on the startled Thiel. “Every machine that does so can save the lives of one thousand men. An air drop is no use at all. Many of the canisters are never found because the men are too weak to look for them and we have no fuel to collect them. I cannot even withdraw my lines a few miles because the men would fall out from exhaustion. It is four days since they have had anything to eat…. The last horses have been eaten up.”

  While Thiel stood mute, someone else shouted, “Can you imagine what it is like to see soldiers fall on an old carcass, beat open the head and swallow the brains raw?”

  Paulus picked up the conversation again, “What should I, as commander in chief of an army, say when a simple soldier comes up to me and begs, ‘Herr General Oberst, can you spare me one piece of bread?’ ”

  “Why on earth did the Luftwaffe ever promise to keep us supplied? Who is the man responsible for declaring that it was possible? Had someone told me it was not possible, I should not have held it against the Luftwaffe. I could have broken out. When I was strong enough to do so. Now it is too late….”

  In his frustration and sorrow, Paulus ignored the fact that in November, his Luftwaffe friends Richthofen and Fiebig had warned him that the air force could not supply him. But now it was January, and the commanding general of Sixth Army needed to blame someone, so Major Thiel bore the brunt of his rage.

  “The Führer gave me his firm assurance that he and the whole German people felt responsible for this army and now the annals of German arms are besmirched by this fearful tragedy, just because the Luftwaffe has let us down….” Disdainfully waving aside Thiel’s attempts to explain the Luftwaffe’s terrible difficulties, Paulus continued, “We already speak from a different world than yours, for you are talking to dead men. From now on our only existence will be in the history books….”

  That night Major Thiel went back to his plane and found proof for the Luftwaffe’s charge that Gumrak was not “efficiently managed.” No one had unloaded the supplies from the Heinkel bomber, even though it had been on the ground for nine hours. Thiel left the Kessel to report his conviction that Sixth Army was beyond help.

  West and north of Gumrak, German detachments paused in their flight to hold back Soviet T-34 tanks that were close enough to shell the airfield’s runways. At the Gumrak railroad station, thousands of weary troops asked for information about their units. Almost everyone received the same answer: “Go into Stalingrad. You’ll find them there.”

  Sgt. Ernst Wohlfahrt wandered through this uproar in a mood of suppressed anger. He had just found an abandoned corps headquarters and inside the bunkers he picked through empty champagne and cognac bottles, plus canned meat delicacies which he had never dreamed were available during the encirclement. Wohlfahrt seethed at the thought that his leaders had been eating well while he starved.

  A short time later, he passed a half-burned shed. In disbelief, he counted huge stocks of new uniforms, overcoats, felt boots, and meat rations stacked from floor to ceiling. Wohlfahrt was now almost sick with rage. Besides his own need for warm clothing, he had seen hundreds of men clutching shawls or thin blankets to protect their shivering bodies from the cruel winds. Yet German quartermasters still guarded the supply depots with criminal disregard for the suffering around them. No German soldier was allowed to touch a single item.

  Private First Class Josef Metzler had already taken matters into his own hands. For weeks he had begged for warm footwear, and for weeks he had been told none was available. When his toes began to burn fiercely from frostbite, he stole a pair of felt boots from a hospital and ran off. A scrupulous man, who never before had stolen anything, Metzler felt no remorse. He was now desperate, and desperation encouraged rationalization for his misdeeds.

  Intent on survival, Metzler stopped at another field station to seek some food and treatment for his feet. Meeting a soldier carrying two mess tins, he asked him for one. When the man refused, Metzler waited patiently until his antagonist’s attention was diverted, then stole a tin and walked away. Unrepentant, the righteous Metzler stayed on at the hospital to care for his feet.

  One mile west of Gumrak, beneath timbered roofs and tons of snow, the staff of Sixth Army worked in semi-isolation from the procession of death moving past them into Stalingrad. Radio operators in the underground bunkers maintained close communications with Manstein at Taganrog over the single thousand-watt transmitter. Their commentary recorded the now commonplace mention of heroic deeds, and the transfer of key men:

  Oberst Dingier flew out yesterday, report arrival.

  Have left: Sickenius, Major Seidel, …Obertleutnant Langkeit….

  Proposal of knight’s cross Oberstleutnant Spangenburg. Spangenburg held on own initiative from 10 to 15 January the flank of the Seventy-sixth Inf[antry] Division against the great enemy attack at Baburkin….

  Proposal of knight’s cross, iron, to Oberleutnant Sascha…. Sascha repelled enemy attacks repeatedly on January 16 with only four usable tanks…in spite of heavy enemy fire Sascha left his vehicle to make the infantry get back into position without regard to his personal safety…. without his positive action an enemy entry into Gumrak would have been unavoidable.

  Signed Deboi [general]

  And the radio operators recorded other indications of behavior: “Oberleutnant Billert missing in action….Later: Oberleutnant Billert left without permission by air. Request court martialling procedures.”

  Beside the few officers who abdicated their responsibilities, some of the wounded flying out of the Kessel did so under false pretenses. They had shot themselves in order to reach safety and surgeons who operated on them failed to detect evidence of their self-inflicted injuries. The reasons were twofold. First, the malingerers had fired through a loaf of bread to eliminate close-range powder burns. Secondly, none of them followed patterns normally associated
with such cases. Instead of aiming into a leg or arm, areas less dangerous as well as less painful, these men blasted holes in their stomachs and chests to guarantee a successful escape. Since no doctor dared accuse a man of inflicting so grievous a wound on himself, the offenders flew unpunished from Gumrak to hospital beds and a hero’s welcome at home.

  Knowing that each transport touching down at Gumrak might be the last, the walking wounded thronging the runways eyed each other suspiciously and jockeyed for elbowroom in anticipation of where the aircraft would roll to a stop. The ensuing rush to hatch doors brought death to many who were trampled by half-crazed men.

  Now, with time at a premium, Paulus was stepping up the evacuation of specialists, ordering them out to form new divisions for the Wehrmacht. Armed with passes, this elite filtered through the wounded, who glared at them in open hostility.

  Gen. Hans Hube left; so did Maj. Coelestin von Zitzewitz, carrying some of Paulus’s medals. Gen. Erwin Jaenecke, commander of the Fourth Corps, departed with sixteen shrapnel holes in his body. Capt. Eberhard Wagemann flew out clutching General Schmidt’s last will and testament. From each division came officers and hand-picked enlisted men to form the cadre of a new Sixth Army that would fight again someday, somewhere.

  On the morning of January 21, Gerhard Meunch answered the field telephone in the basement of a house near the bread factory, and was told to go immediately to 51st Corps Headquarters.

  Puzzled by the summons, the captain reported to Colonel Clausius, General Seydlitz-Kurzbach’s chief of staff and heard the incredible words, “Captain Meunch, you will fly out this day.”

  “This cannot be true. I cannot leave my soldiers in the lurch,” he protested, but Clausius stopped him, saying that because he was a specialist in infantry tactics he was needed elsewhere. Then the colonel brusquely said good-bye.

  Meunch rushed to the airfield where an officer standing beside a car shook his head vehemently and told him that no more aircraft were going out that day. “Get in,” he shouted, “or else you will stay here. I am going to the city.”

  Exhausted from the tension and hunger of previous days, Meunch sagged into the car and rode on to the tiny auxiliary airstrip at Stalingradski, on the outskirts of Stalingrad itself, where he spent the night in the company of hundreds of soldiers, pacing through the snow.

  At 7:00 A.M. on January 22, a lone Heinkel 111 flew over several times, dropped food bombs into the fields, but would not land. The hours passed and the wounded had eyes only for the western horizon, where suddenly three specks appeared—Ju-52s. The “old reliables” grew bigger, circled, and came in for landings.

  Moments later, Meunch saw a sight he would never forget: The wounded rose from the snow to rush the doors of the taxiing aircraft. Clawing at each other, they kicked the weak to the bottom of the pile and hoisted themselves into the empty cabins.

  Meunch walked slowly up to a pilot and showed his special pass. The pilot shook his head:

  “You don’t intend to get in there?” he said, pointing to the “animals” at the side of the plane. “You won’t make it. Get in with me through the cockpit.”

  While Meunch clambered into the plane, Russian shrapnel sprayed the crowd. The pilot quickly gunned the motors and tried to lift off. He could not. Looking out the window Meunch saw nearly fifty men lying on the wings, holding on to anything they could with blue-cold hands as the Ju-52 picked up speed and raced down the strip. One by one, the riders fell off and tumbled back in the slipstream from the propellers. Shorn of its added burden, the plane rose swiftly into the bright sky and turned away from the Volga. Meunch tried hard to calm himself. For the first time in more than two months, he could not hear the sound of guns.

  Radio message:

  22 Jan. 43, 1602 hours

  To Army Group Don

  …For submittal to the Führer and to commander in chief, Army Group Don….The Russians are advancing on a six-kilometer frontage both sides of Voporonovo toward the east, [toward Stalingrad] in part with flying colors. There is no possibility to close the gap…All provisions are used up. Over twelve thousand unattended [wounded] men in the pocket. What orders am I to issue to the troops, who have no ammunition left?…

  Immediate decision is required, since symptoms of disintegration are noted in some places. However, the troops still have faith in their commanders.

  Paulus

  East Prussia had the answer ready within hours.

  Capitulation impossible.

  The troops will defend their positions to the last….The Sixth Army has thus made a historic contribution in the most gigantic war effort in German history.

  Adolf Hitler

  “A historic contribution,” Hitler had declared, so Paulus stopped trying to convince his superiors that further resistance was simply mass murder. Blocking out the reality of the men dying around him, he chose instead to be overwhelmed by the natural course of events, and he left Gumrak for a cellar in Stalingrad.

  In an anteroom just off Adolf Hitler’s conference room, Maj. Coelestin von Zitzewitz waited nervously for an audience. Snatched from the Kessel by direct orders from East Prussia, he had flown to the Wolf’s Lair to echo Capt. Winrich Behr’s graphic description of conditions at Stalingrad.

  When the door opened, Zitzewitz strode in and came to attention. Hitler walked forward and covered Zitzewitz’s right hand with both of his. Shaking his head, he said: “You’ve come from a deplorable situation.” And he waved his guest to a high stool beside a table.

  Zitzewitz tried to adjust his eyes to the dim half-light in the room. A huge map of the Russian front framed one wall. A fireplace dominated another. He noticed Generals Zeitzler and Schmundt sitting back in the shadows.

  Hitler opened the discussion. Pointing frequently to maps on the table, he spoke of German tanks striking across the Don and breaking into the Kessel with supplies. A battalion of them, he thought, could crush Russian resistance and reach Sixth Army.

  Zitzewitz listened in growing disbelief. When his chance came to speak, he rattled off statistics and comments he had jotted down on a piece of paper: casualty rates, ammunition stocks, food supplies, death, disease, frostbite, morale. The figures were catastrophic, irreversible, and damning. While Hitler stared in surprise, Zitzewitz summed up. “My Führer, permit me to state that the troops at Stalingrad can no longer be ordered to fight to their last round because they are no longer physically capable of fighting, and because they no longer have a last round.”

  Hitler looked right through Zitzewitz. Dismissing the shocked major, the Führer mumbled: “Man recovers very quickly.”

  The railroad station at Gumrak burned brightly against the snow. Russian artillery fire had blown the structure apart and ignited the corpses that had been stacked against its walls up to the level of the second-storey windows. The frozen bodies became a gruesome bonfire that Sgt. Hubert Wirkner witnessed as he was carried to the edge of the runway and a last opportunity to get away from the Kessel.

  Completely disabled by his arm and leg wounds which were complicated with frostbite, Wirkner lay unattended on a stretcher for hours while twenty-four transports screeched in, unloaded and took off with hundreds of soldiers. In disgust he watched some of the lesser wounded “play possum” in the snow until the doors of the planes opened, then leap into the aircraft before harassed officials could see them. Too weak and proud to consider doing such a thing himself, Wirkner felt only pity for those who stole seats from their comrades.

  One more plane glided in through the foggy mist and settled on the runway. From his prone position, Wirkner stared in disappointment as hundreds of ambulatory patients crowded around it and blocked access to the more seriously wounded.

  At one of the doors, Col. Herbert Selle helped check ongoing passengers. An engineering specialist, the colonel had received orders earlier that day to leave and train another unit for another battle. Surprised by the unexpected reprieve, he stifled his momentary guilt feelings and reported to General
Paulus for a few last words.

  Paulus’s appearance shocked Selle. The general was unshaven, bedraggled. His blue eyes, formerly so sparkling, “had become lifeless.”

  The general had a brief but bitter message for Selle. “Tell them,” he said mournfully, “wherever you think it is advisable, that the Sixth Army has been betrayed by the Supreme Command.”

  Selle had left the pathetic figure of his commander in chief and gone to Gumrak where he waited through the foggy night until the last Ju-52 landed. While the pilot kept the motors running, Selle counted “cases” into the plane. His orderly, who had accompanied him to the field in hopes of a free ride, hovered nearby. The colonel nodded his head and winked him into the rear section. Beside the runway, Hubert Wirkner craned his neck and watched the Ju-52 depart.

  Resigned to being left to die, Wirkner began to crawl on hands and knees in the general direction of the gutted railroad station. He passed an officer who stared incredulously at him and then begged Wirkner to go back to the hospital. The sergeant ignored him and pushed on into a snowfield. The wind tore at him, ice formed on his face, and he breathed torturously as his mouth filled with lumps of snow.

  He dragged his dead legs for nearly a mile, reached the main road to Stalingrad, and collapsed alongside the stream of traffic. When he tried to climb into the back of a truck, his legs collapsed and he fell down. With a final burst of strength, Wirkner rose once more to clutch a howitzer with his frozen hands. Grunting from the pain, he pulled himself over the gun barrel and dangled precariously, his head hanging down on one side, his feet on the other.