Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [162]
‘Mein Führer!’ Paulus replied immediately. ‘Your confident words on the New Year were greeted here with great enthusiasm. We will justify your trust. You can be certain that we – from the oldest general to the youngest grenadier – will hold out, inspired with a fanatical will, and contribute our share to final victory. Paulus.’ New Year letters from many soldiers in the Kessel reflected a new mood of determination. ‘We’re not letting our spirits sink, instead we believe in the word of the Führer,’ wrote a captain. ‘We are maintaining a firm trust in the Führer, unshakeable until final victory,’ wrote an ΝCO. ‘The Führer knows our worries and needs,’ wrote a soldier, ‘he will always – and I’m certain of this – try to help us as quickly as possible.’ Even a sceptical general like Strecker seems to have been affected. ‘New hope arises,’ he wrote, ‘and there is some optimism about the present and immediate future.’
Paulus, on the other hand, was concerned at this time by the growing success of Soviet propaganda. The 7th Department at Don Front headquarters in charge of ‘operational propaganda’ had followed up their identification of 44th Infantry Division and General Edler von Daniels’s 376th Infantry Division as the formations on which they should concentrate their efforts.
Early on the morning of 3 January, Paulus went to the Austrian 44th Infantry Division, ‘following radio broadcasts by prisoners from the 44th Infantry Division’. They had spoken on the shortages of food and ammunition and about the heavy casualties. ‘The commander-in-chief,’ stated the Sixth Army report, ‘wanted warnings to be given about the consequences of partaking in such broadcasts. Any soldiers who did so should realize that their names would be known, and they would face court martial.’ During Paulus’s meeting with General Deboi, the divisional commander, there was yet another ‘heavy attack with tanks’.
The very next morning, Paulus visited the Romanian commander in the ‘Fortress area’, whose soldiers had suffered serious frostbite casualties owing to clothing shortages, ‘above all boots, trousers and socks’. The rising number of desertions prompted Paulus to conclude that: ‘Counter-propaganda is necessary against Russian leaflets printed in Romanian.’
Battalions and companies were so weak that they had become meaningless designations. Out of over 150,000 soldiers left in the Kessel, less than one in five were front-line troops. Many companies were down to a dozen men fit for duty. Fragments of units were therefore increasingly amalgamated into battle groups. The surviving panzer grenadiers of Sergeant-Major Wallrawe’s company found themselves mixed ‘with Luftwaffe companies and Cossack platoons’ and sent to defend a position near Karpovka. It was an unfortunate spot to be sent to. A glance at the map indicated that the ‘nose’ which formed the south-western extremity of the Kessel would be the Russians’ first objective when they decided to finish off the Sixth Army.
There were a few days of comparatively mild, wet weather at the very start of the year. Russian soldiers hated the thaw. ‘I don’t like the weather in Stalingrad’, wrote Barsov in the marine infantry. ‘It changes often and this makes the rifles go rusty. When it becomes warmer, the snow starts to fall. Everything becomes moist. Valenki[felt snow-boots] become soaking wet and we don’t get much chance to dry things.’ He and his comrades were, no doubt, happier on 5 January, when the temperature dropped to minus thirty-five degrees.
Soviet forces adopted a deliberate tactic to exploit their superiority in winter equipment.