A Tale of Two Dictators, Part Two

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
February 12, 2004

This is a continuation of last week’s column.

Planning the 1942 Campaign

The coming of good weather in 1942 found the German forces too stretched and too weak to recreate the heady days of the ‘Barbarossa’ offensive along the entire front. Still possessing a clear qualitative advantage, the Axis could seize the initiative but had to decide on a more limited, though hopefully decisive, offensive than during 1941. Axis prospects still seemed good. After all, during World War One, with fewer allies (Romania and Italy were Allied powers in that war and Finland was then part of the Russian Empire) and most of their forces tied up in the west, the Germans had defeated the Russian Empire.

Although many professional German officers felt that the front should be shortened and reserves accumulated to wear down Soviet attacks, Hitler felt that there was no time for a defensive strategy. If the Soviet Union could not be driven out of the war in 1942, the American and British forces would become a substantial threat by 1943, forcing the Germans to greatly reinforce their western forces and fight on two fronts. The events of 1943 would prove this assessment to be correct. Of course this situation was caused by a diplomatic strategy that had put Germany simultaneously at war with all of the most powerful nations on Earth. He had been at war with the still powerful British Empire from the start and declared war on the even more powerful United States to support his Japanese allies just as his front line was being swept back from the gates of Moscow.

German units on secondary fronts were thinned out to provide, along with a major reinforcement effort, enough soldiers and equipment for 1942’s one major Axis offensive. Many divisions on inactive fronts were left at the regimental strengths to which they had been reduced during the winter?s fighting. Even with extreme measures, a planned total of over 60 German divisions had to be reduced to just over 50 divisions for the offensive. As a substitute, Germany called on their Axis allies of Hungary, Italy and Romania to provide substantial additional raw manpower, although none of these armies approached the quality of the German units and their equipment put them at a major disadvantage against the better-equipped Russian units. Refitted Luftwaffe units returned to the east from Germany and the Mediterranean to add additional punch to any offensive. The means appeared to be available. The question was where the attack should be directed; as there were not enough resources for more than one major offensive and two or more smaller offensives could not possibly accomplish a decisive victory in 1942.

In the north, Leningrad was in the middle of a ghastly siege that would eventually drag on for 900 days and kill hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Taking Leningrad would secure that important city, make the Baltic Sea an Axis lake and enable the Germans and Finns to finally link-up. However, after that, the bogs, forests and rivers of the area would effectively shut down any further major advances. There was little scope to exploit the considerable German edge in mobile operations and little chance that operations in the far north would lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Near the center of the line, Moscow, site of the Kremlin, was a political, communications, cultural, historical and manufacturing hub - easily the largest and most important city in the country. Moscow had been the penultimate objective in 1941 and many automatically assumed that it would be the target of any 1942 offensive. However, there was excellent defensive terrain around Moscow, line after line of entrenchments and fortifications had been constructed during the winter and about two-thirds of the Soviet army and most of their superior new KV-1 and T-34 tanks were positioned to defend it. Hard fighting and heavy losses were guaranteed in any drive for Moscow but there was no guarantee of success.

After examining the rest of the front, what about an offensive in the south? You can guffaw and say this is exactly where Herr Hitler turned his moustache and look what it got him, but there are some excellent arguments for a drive to the south. Voronezh was the third-largest city in the Soviet Union at the time, which made it an important objective. Turning south, Rostov was also an important city and the seizure of the Caucasus oil fields would greatly help future Axis operations and greatly hinder Soviet ones. Turning north from Voronezh, there was a possibility of outflanking the Moscow defenses. The flat steppe terrain in the south positively invited blitzkrieg maneuvers. Subsidiary operations to capture the Crimea would shorten Axis lines, curtail sorties by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and make more troops available in the south as well as freeing giant siege guns to capture Leningrad, in another planned subsidiary offensive, after Sevastopol fell. In the south, the Axis armies could hit the Red Army where it was the least prepared, exploit the mobile strengths of the German army and capture valuable objectives. All-in-all, it was a plan with some promising prospects. The real problem with the Axis plan was that, as the campaigning season progressed; Hitler lost focus and attacked the wealth of possible goals like a starving man at a feast and, with the exception of a drive north on Moscow, tried to secure all of the offensive?s possible objectives and then some.

Drive on Stalingrad

A Soviet offensive near Kharkov, demanded by Stalin, started on May 12 and was crushed by an Axis counterstroke, which began on May 17. After that promising preliminary, the Nazis launched “Operation Blue’ in late June to officially open their 1942 offensive. The defeated and outnumbered Soviet troops, for the first time, retreated and fought rear guard actions instead of standing, being surrounded and destroyed. The Germans, spearheading the Axis drive but supported by some 30 Hungarian, Italian and Romanian divisions, drove forward relentlessly across the open steppes. Meanwhile, in a successful subsidiary operation, the Crimea was overrun by German and Romanian forces with the capture of 170,000 Soviet prisoners. The immense German siege guns used there were ordered to be shipped by rail to Leningrad while the powerful 8th Air Corps was transferred to support the main offensive.

Voronezh, evacuated by its defenders, fell to 4th Panzer Army on July 6. Pleased with the rapid and relatively easy advance, Hitler then ordered the Axis forces to advance as two diverging spearheads. One attack was aimed at the Stalingrad area to the southeast, while the other advance took Rostov and drove far to the south for the oilfields in the Caucasus Mountains. The drive on the oilfields eventually floundered in mountainous terrain, stubborn Russian defenses and a total inability to keep the powerful German forces there in supply. The drive on Stalingrad, originally intended to cover the deep left flank of the oilfields advance, made excellent progress and resulted in a number of minor Axis victories.

The Streets of Stalingrad

Aside from much vehicle wear and tear and some grit in their teeth, the Germans completed the drive to Stalingrad in good order. The leading German divisions triumphantly approached the city in late August and overran most of its outskirts and suburbs by early September. The Soviet troops in the city were supported by air, artillery and naval units based on the east bank of the Volga River. The German attackers had ample close air support but the huge siege guns from the Crimea were on their way to Leningrad, where they were essentially worthless as the reserve assault troops intended to follow up on their bombardments were diverted to Stalingrad. Although the Axis forces already dominated the stretch of the Volga River near Stalingrad and Stalingrad was only a medium-size city, Hitler decreed that the city had to be conquered for a propaganda victory over its namesake.

By 1942, the Russian people had some idea of the infamous Nazi death squads and concentration camps and the Red Army was prepared to fight with their historic stubbornness for “Mother Russia.” The Communist Party was happy to let the people rally for the nation and produced copious propaganda to encourage them to do so; the story could be changed in the history books after the war was won. Stalingrad’s city streets and huge factories offered no opportunities for blitzkrieg tactics and the Germans were tied down in endless rounds of street fighting at which the Russians proved to be very competent, indeed. For months on end the thunder of the guns and the whine of bombs never ceased. The city was almost totally destroyed in the fighting and untold thousands died there. Both sides fed in fresh units that were gradually ground to powder and, by mid November, most explosions were just redistributing rubble and only a few shallow Russian pockets of resistance remained on the west bank of the Volga. These final pockets proved to be just enough - the outnumbered defenders had not only engaged and bled the Germans, they had sucked in Axis reinforcements, fuel and ammunition that might have been allocated for the drive on the oilfields and, more immediately, forced the Germans to weaken their flanks in order to transfer fresh divisions into the maelstrom of Stalingrad’s streets.

Operation Uranus

Planning started for “Operation Uranus” in September, 1942, just as the Germans were starting to attack Stalingrad. Much of the planning was by Georgi Zhukov (1896 - 1974), who was already on his way to becoming the greatest Soviet commander of the war. While the Soviet Stavka dribbled in just enough reinforcements to hold parts of Stalingrad and draw the German attention there, they gradually massed attacking forces on both flanks of Stalingrad that numbered over 1,000,000 men. The Axis summer offensive had greatly lengthened the front and the positions of their spearheads had been essentially static for months. The overstretched Axis forces were faced by massed Soviet formations that comprised not only freshly-raised formations but transfers from the huge mass of units stationed around Moscow, now no longer needed to defend the capital with the best German forces located far to the south. The Red Army had learned many lessons in the war and skillfully moved their attacking units and mountains of supplies into position in great secrecy. Both attacks were aimed at parts of the line held predominantly by less well-equipped Romanian forces. The Axis high command was repeatedly warned about the weakness of the flanks around Stalingrad and intelligence reports revealed parts of the Soviet buildup, but the warnings were ignored. Hitler now accepted only intelligence reports that he wanted to believe and he wanted very much to believe that the Soviet army was too weak to mount a counteroffensive. By late 1942, Der Fuhrer was impervious to advice and impossible (and dangerous) to criticize.

The great Soviet offensive opened on November 19, 1942, with attacks by the Southwest and Don Fronts to the northwest of Stalingrad that tore a hole eight miles wide through the Axis lines. The Stalingrad Front, from south of the city, attacked the next day and soon ripped a gap of twenty miles through the Romanians and elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army. Driving fast and deep into the Axis rear areas, on November 23 the Russian spearheads met near Kalatch, trapping the German Sixth Army, with over 20 divisions and 300,000 men, in Stalingrad.

Winter Storm

Remembering the surrounded pockets that held the line during the previous winter, Hitler secured a (worthless) assurance from Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goring (1893–1946) that enough supplies to enable Stalingrad to hold could be flown in. The German high command, represented locally by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887 - 1973), also started assembling forces to relieve Stalingrad and the surrounded German Sixth Army as soon as the outlines of the crisis became clear. The Soviets placed their forces in an inner ring facing Stalingrad and in an outer ring to hold off any Axis relief efforts. General Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army started “Operation Winter Storm” on December 12, 1942 and the relief operation had to cross over 80 miles of open steppes to reach the German defense ring around Stalingrad. Russian cavalry had detected the massing of the German counterattack force but a lack of defenders and a German advance in an unexpected direction allowed the attackers to make good progress initially.

The German drive was successful in reaching the Askai River, but almost a week’s fighting was required by the three attacking panzer divisions to secure that area and drive on to the Mishov River, only some 30 miles from the Stalingrad pocket. At this point, the besieged Sixth Army might have launched “Operation Thunderclap” to break out of their encirclement, evacuate Stalingrad and join Fourth Panzer Army, but, General Friedrich von Paulus (1890 - 1957), the Sixth Army commander, citing lack of fuel and the Fuhrer’s orders to hold “Fortress Stalingrad,” never started this attack. Instead, “Operation Small Saturn,” another Soviet offensive, smashed the Italian Eighth Army and was threatening German forces along the Chir River by December 23, requiring detachments from Fourth Panzer Army to halt the attack. By sunset on Christmas Day, the German “Winter Storm” spearheads were driven back and the Sixth Army was doomed. All German efforts now had to be directed to extricate the Army Group south of Rostov that had never quite made it to the oil fields.

While further Soviet offensives continued further west, the inner ring around Stalingrad constricted the German lines around the city. Once the last airfield was overrun, the German garrison was well and truly hopelessly trapped. All the last working radios could pick up was the endlessly repeated Soviet message, “Stalingrad - mass grave!” The Fuhrer’s hold fast strategy had failed. The last Germans in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2, 1943. German propaganda tried to make their last stand the totalitarian equivalent of dawn at the Alamo. A German drawing showed spiffy and warmly-clad German soldiers fighting heroically to the last breath and the last bullet, but it just wasn’t so. The fight had gone out of the starving and freezing German soldiers, whose ragamuffin appearance led the Soviet soldiers to refer to them as “Winter Fritz.” Some of the best divisions in the German army were destroyed in “Stalin’s City.” It was one of the major turning points of the Second World War.

As a postscript, Hitler promoted Paulus a Field Marshal just before the surrender because no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered and then discovered that there is a first time for everything. Both Paulus and General Seydlitz, a corps commander and a descendant of Frederick the Great’s dashing cavalry commander, later broadcast propaganda for the Soviets. This drove Hitler crazy, as if mental health had ever been his strong suit. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. He never could understand why everybody wasn’t happy to die for him. Stalin, who allowed his son to die in a German POW camp, rather than conduct an offered prisoner exchange, had that same lack of understanding. They were two of a kind but, in the end, The Boss had the resources to afford to make more mistakes than Der Fuhrer.