Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [114]
General von Seydlitz was deeply concerned. By the middle of November, Sixth Army headquarters judged that ‘42 per cent of his battalions must be considered “fought out”.’ Most infantry companies were down to under fifty men and had to be amalgamated. Seydlitz was also concerned about the 14th and 24th Panzer Divisions, which needed to refit, ready for the inevitable Soviet winter offensive. In his view, the fighting had been continued far too late into the year. Hitler himself had admitted to him during lunch at Rastenburg that German troops should start to prepare for ‘all the trials of a Russian winter’ at the beginning of October. The troops in Stalingrad had been specifically excluded from the instructions to prepare winter defences, and yet Hitler in Munich had boasted that time was of no importance.
The worst casualties were in experienced officers and NCOs. Only a small minority of the original combatants remained on both sides. ‘These were different Germans from those we had fought in August,’ remarked one Soviet veteran. ‘And we also were different.’ Front-line soldiers on both sides seemed to feel that the best and the bravest were always the first to die.
German staff officers were also worried about the next spring. Simple calculations showed that Germany could not sustain such casualties for much longer. Any notion of a heroic adventure had turned bitter. A strong sense of foreboding set in. As a symbol of determination for revenge, the new Red Army practice in Stalingrad, when saluting the death of a well-regarded commander, was to fire a volley or salvo ‘not in the air, but at the Germans’.
14
‘All For the Front!’
The plan for Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counterstroke against the Sixth Army, had an unusually long gestation when one considers Stalin’s disastrous impatience the previous winter. But this time his desire for revenge helped control his impetuousness.
The original idea dated back to Saturday, 12 September, the day that Paulus met Hitler at Vinnitsa, and that Zhukov was summoned to the Kremlin after the failed attacks against Paulus’s northern flank. Vasilevsky, the Chief of the General Staff, was also present. There, in Stalin’s office, overlooked by recently installed portraits of Aleksandr Suvorov, the scourge of the Turks in the eighteenth century, and of Mikhail Kutuzov, Napoleon’s dogged adversary, Zhukov was made to explain again what had gone wrong. He concentrated on the fact that the three understrength armies sent into the attack had lacked artillery and tanks.
Stalin demanded to know what was needed. Zhukov replied that they should have another full-strength army, supported by a tank corps, three armoured brigades and at least 400 howitzers, all backed by an aviation army. Vasilevsky agreed. Stalin said nothing. He picked up the map marked with the Stavka reserves and began to study it alone. Zhukov and Vasilevsky moved away to a corner of the room. They murmured together, discussing the problem. They agreed that another solution would have to be found.
Stalin possessed sharper hearing than they had realized. ‘And what’ he called across, ‘does “another” solution mean?’ The two generals were taken aback. ‘Go over to the General Staff,’ he told them, ‘and think over very carefully indeed what must be done in the Stalingrad area.’
Zhukov and Vasilevsky returned the following evening. Stalin did not waste time. He greeted the two generals with businesslike handshakes, to their surprise.
‘Well, what did you come up with?’ he asked. ‘Who’s making the report?’
‘Either of us,’ Vasilevsky replied. ‘We are of the same opinion.’
The two generals had spent the day at the Stavka, studying the possibilities and the projected creation of new armies and armoured corps over the next two months. The more they had looked at the map of the German salient, with the two vulnerable flanks, the more they were convinced that the only solution worth considering was one which would