Inferno - Max Hastings [206]
The fundamental cause of the disasters which befell the German armies in Russia in the winter of 1942–43 was that they had undertaken a task beyond their nation’s powers. The Wehrmacht was saved from immediate disaster only by the generalship of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Hitler had said grudgingly back in 1940, “The man is not to my liking, but he is capable.” Manstein was almost certainly the ablest German general of the war. In March he stabilised his line, launched a counterattack which retook Kharkov, and checked the momentum that had borne forward the Soviet spearheads from the Volga to the Donets, thus securing Hitler another breathing space.
But for what? The balance of advantage on the Eastern Front had shifted decisively and irrevocably against Germany. The power of the Soviet Union and its armies was growing fast, while that of the invaders shrank. In 1942, Germany produced just 4,800 armoured vehicles, while Russia built 24,000. The new T-34 tank, better than anything the Germans then deployed save the Tiger, began to appear in quantity—Chelyabinsk, one of Stalin’s massive manufacturing centres in the Urals, became known as Tankograd. That year also, Russia built 21,700 aircraft to Germany’s 14,700. The Red Army deployed 6 million men, supported by a further 516,000 NKVD troops. In the winter fighting of 1942–43, Germany lost a million dead, along with vast quantities of matériel.
The Wehrmacht’s combat performance remained superior to that of the Red Army: until the end of the war, in almost every local action the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But their tactical skills no longer sufficed to stem the Russian tide. Stalin was identifying good generals, building vast armies with formidable tank and artillery strength, and at last receiving large deliveries from the Western Allies, including food, vehicles and communications equipment. The 5 million tons of American meat that eventually reached Russia amounted to half a pound of rations a day for every Soviet soldier. Allied food shipments probably averted a starvation catastrophe in the winter of 1942–43.
Of the Red Army’s 665,000 vehicles in 1945, 427,000 were American-built, including 51,000 jeeps. The United States provided half the Red Army’s boots—loss of livestock made leather scarce—almost 2,000 railway locomotives, 15,000 aircraft, 247,000 telephones and nearly 4 million tyres. “Our army suddenly found itself on wheels—and what wheels!” said Anastas Mikoyan with a generosity uncharacteristic of Stalin’s ministers. “When we started to receive American canned beef, fat, powdered eggs and other foodstuffs, this was worth a lot of extra calories.” Mikoyan believed that Lend-Lease supplies shortened the war by a year to eighteen months.
It was plain to Hitler’s commanders that victory in the east was no longer attainable. The only issue for Germany was how long its armies could withstand Russia’s relentlessly growing strength. When spring prompted the melting of the Volga’s ice, among a host of horrors revealed by the thaw were the bodies of a Russian and a German, victims of Stalingrad, clasped in a death embrace. Yet already that German’s living compatriots were more than 300 miles westward, embarked upon a retreat that would never be reversed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIVING WITH WAR
1. Warriors
THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR was extraordinarily diverse. The Eastern Front, where 90 percent of all Germans killed in combat met their fate, overwhelmingly dominated the struggle against Hitler. Between 1941 and 1944, British and American sailors and airmen fought at sea and in the sky, but relatively small numbers of Western Allied ground troops engaged the Axis in North Africa, Italy, Asia and the Pacific. Much larger Anglo-American forces spent those years training and exercising: when the 1st Norfolks went into action at Kohima in June 1944, for instance, it was the battalion’s first battle since leaving France through Dunkirk in May 1940. Many other British and American units experienced equally protracted