Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

A period of feverish activity ensued. Field commanders and general staff officers sat in bunkers, hunched over maps; quartermasters worked out the available transport capacity and the munitions and fuel required; tanks and lorries were overhauled, units were dissolved and new ones formed, columns assembled to shuttle provisions to the front, and military police detachments were deployed to guard the roads, lest anyone took it into their head, once the Cauldron was opened, to escape from it under their own steam, never to be seen again.

The Tank Corps was charged with the tactical leadership of Operation Thunderclap. Colonel von Hermann was chosen to lead the first shockwave of the tank thrust. He was adamant that the operation should begin as soon as possible.

‘Even if we don’t manage to break through on the first day, we can still regroup into a tight defensive formation,’ he explained. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. We’ve done it often enough before, after all! Anyhow, it’d be a great relief to Hoth if we really put the cat among the pigeons by attacking the Russians from the rear!’

Though the Corps approved von Hermann’s suggestion, High Command did not act on it. They insisted on a guarantee that the operation could be completed in the hours between dawn and dusk.

‘We only have sufficient fuel to push forward eighty kilometres,’ was the official explanation. ‘We might well run into difficulties, and then we’d be stranded. We need to wait until Hoth has advanced to at least thirty kilometres away.’

However, the matter seemed about to resolve itself when it became clear that Hoth’s task force had already advanced to a point only around fifty kilometres away. It wouldn’t be such a problem to wait for a couple of days.

First Lieutenant Breuer rang his opposite number at the Corps on a daily basis, and Count Willms was very forthcoming with his reports. His apathetic attitude had largely dissipated in the interim.

‘Yes, right. What’s that? Yes, they’re making slow but steady progress… yes, steady … Yes, and huge supply camps are already in place for them, it’s absolutely phenomenal! Yes, and behind the tanks are long columns of trucks carrying ersatz honey…’

Even Corporal Herbert had become less of a pain. He jotted down recipes in his notebook for a whole new range of cakes that he planned to try out as soon as they were relieved, and waxed lyrical about the order of the menu for the banquet that would be held to commemorate the breakout from the Cauldron.

Fröhlich spent the whole day in the bunker, rubbing his bony hands together and delivering interminable lectures on the long-term military outlook. Lakosch caught sight of him ‘unburdening’ himself out in the open one time, and noticed how he waved his arms about like a grand orator as he rehearsed his speeches while squatting in the snow. More often than not, he could be found standing in front of the campaign map and explaining the current position to Geibel. ‘Look here, lad! Now here comes the big push from the west and – it stands to reason, doesn’t it? – that leaves the Russians right up shit creek! The result is that we bottle up at least three armies – that’s right, isn’t it, Lieutenant Breuer? – at least three Russian armies! And that means the war’s over, lad, don’t you see? The Bolsheviks are on their last legs anyhow, so this’ll spell the end for them.’

Geibel was only too eager to believe these predictions. He was thinking of his shop, and his wife, and that it was high time they had some more leave. His only worry was that there wouldn’t be enough room for all of them in the staff vehicles for the long journey back west. Some more cars had bitten the dust in the last few days. This worry had turned him into something of an expert on cars. Every day, he’d hang around the motor pool, lying under the cars in the snow with the unit’s drivers as they worked with cramped fingers on the vehicles’ ice-cold engines. Only Lieutenant Wiese remained the same as he had always been. When he wasn’t busy with his signals unit, which now had more work to do once again, he could be found immersed in his books, seemingly untroubled by the frantic activity going on around him. Lakosch, for his part, had largely lost interest in his vehicle. It had definitively had it, grinding to a halt every five minutes. Lakosch had resolved to leave it behind here as a memento. The task force would no doubt be bringing new vehicles with them. So he spent his time mooching round the camp with Senta, watching the aerial battles unfold above the airfield at Pitomnik, collecting bones and kitchen scraps for the dog and humming or singing to himself, to a tune of his own devising and with the words changed to reflect current events, the verses of an old soldiers’ ditty that he’d recently found in a book about the Thirty Years’ War:

In Rostov-on-Don, four hundred kilometres from Stalingrad, a group of men, wearing a variety of field-grey and slate-coloured uniforms embellished with gold and red and white and rows of glittering medals, were seated round a table. Some twenty heads whispering to one another, poring over documents and staring in deep concentration into the middle distance. These heads, moreover, belonged to the leading figures of the German army and air force. Their number included both forces’ quartermasters-general, the Luftwaffe generals Milch and Jeschonnek, the army group leaders von Manstein and Baron von Weichs and their respective staff officers. Also present – having been obliged to host this conference – was Colonel General Wolfram von Richthofen, head of the Fourth Air Fleet. And finally there were the opposite poles round which this whole martial world revolved. Sitting at one of the long sides of the table was the voluble and (albeit warily) blustering Hermann Göring, the white-and-gold-bedecked Reichsmarschall, while alone and aloof at the head of the table sat the silent, commanding presence of the Führer himself, Adolf Hitler – an extraordinary meeting of the Board of Directors. Dandified adjutants scurried about without a sound, assiduously whispering into reluctant ears. The oppressive spectre of dreadful events to come weighed heavily on the twenty heads gathered here. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people were at stake. The principal item on the agenda was how to supply the encircled Sixth Army.

The meeting began with a report by Baron von Richthofen on the Luftwaffe’s previous experiences in supplying German ground forces from the air. The colonel general, blond and clear-eyed, spoke softly and succinctly, though he found it impossible to fully conceal his irritation. The problem of air supply hung like a millstone around his neck. Because the supply canisters could only be dropped from the bomb bays of aircraft, pretty much all his bomber force had been doing of late was making supply runs. His offensive operations had been effectively paralysed. Nor had this just been the case since the start of the encirclement; it had been going on for months already, ever since September. The intention had been for German forces to press on to Astrakhan and Tbilisi and God knows where else, but no sooner had they set off than these advance forces found themselves running out of food and munitions and fuel. Small wonder, when everything was going awry here! And now they expected him to fly in three hundred tons of supplies to Stalingrad every day. Naturally, no one had told him how such a feat might be achieved.

‘Since the construction of forward airfields, at least we can fly in and land with Ju 52s,’ Richthofen explained, choking back his anger. ‘However, this has given rise to various new problems that clearly weren’t fully anticipated in forward planning. At this time of year, the weather conditions in the Stalingrad region are about as bad as can be. Most days we can only fly a limited number of sorties, and often none at all. That means we have to try to concentrate our efforts into limited windows, and we simply don’t have the aircraft numbers available for that. Plus, flying over the bare steppe the Ju 52s are sitting ducks for fighters. Our losses are appallingly high. We’ve lost—’