William Craig - Enemy at the Gates

Yeremenko and Khrushchev felt that Chuikov’s dynamic manner far outweighed any deficiencies in temperament. Precisely because he was decisive, tenacious, and a brilliant improvisor on the battlefield, they believed that he was the right man to send into Stalingrad. Yeremenko phoned Stalin on the BODO line to get approval for the appointment, then called the general to Yamy for a conference.

On the evening of September 11, Chuikov appeared at the main ferry landing in Stalingrad. While waiting for a steamer, he wandered into a first aid station and immediately became furious at what he saw. Men with grievous wounds were lying on the floor, their blood-soaked bandages unchanged for hours. Unfed, they continually asked for water.

When Chuikov asked “Why?” of doctors and nurses, they shrugged their inability to cope with the staggering input of casualties. The reply seemed logical so Chuikov watched an operation, then went out to his jeep and sat brooding about the wounded until the ferry came in and transferred him to the far shore,

At 10:00 A.M. on September 12, he saluted Andrei Yeremenko and said: “ Tovarishch commander, General Chuikov has arrived according to your order.”

Yeremenko greeted him warmly and offered to share breakfast. When Chuikov refused, the two men talked about general conditions in the Stalingrad area. Outside, an occasional German shell exploded in the nearby trees.

“Vassili Ivanovich,” Yeremenko got to the point. “I asked for you in order to offer you a new position….” Though he had anticipated the new post, Chuikov looked genuinely startled as Yeremenko stared intently at him for a reaction, “…the position of commander of the Sixty-second Army. What do you think of that?”

Chuikov responded immediately, “V etom otnoshenii…” (“In this respect”), and Yeremenko remembered that Chuikov was fond of using this phrase in conversation, “… the appointment, of course, is extremely responsible.”

Yeremenko broke in, “The situation of the Army is very tense, and I am happy you realize the heavy load you bear.” Chuikov nodded. “I think that, in this respect, I will not let you down.”

Satisfied with Chuikov’s responses, Yeremenko took him to see Khrushchev, who was quickly convinced that Chuikov meant to stand fast in Stalingrad. The meeting broke up on the implicit understanding that Front Headquarters would not deny Chuikov help when he asked for it. Then the new commander of the Sixtysecond Army left to collect his belongings before the return trip to the west bank of the Volga.

On the same day, Gen. Friedrich von Paulus flew more than five hundred miles west to Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. There he spent hours with Adolf Hitler and discussed his chief concern, the left flank along the Don. Paulus asked the Führer to give him some “corset” units, a reserve for the puppet armies still moving into position. Hitler was most cordial and promised to look into the problem immediately. When he pressed Paulus about Stalingrad, the general told him the city should fall in a matter of days.

That evening Paulus dined with his old friend Franz Halder. Over good wine, they talked of the successful summer steppe campaign, and Paulus repeated his fears about the weakness of the puppet armies on his left flank. Halder told him he intended to keep after Hitler on the subject and the two men parted on an optimistic note.

Meanwhile, the three top men in Soviet military affairs were also in conference. Joseph Stalin, Georgi Zhukov, and Alexander Vasilevsky pored over the critical news coming from the battlefields. They noted that in the Caucasus, German Army Group A was beginning to slow down in its drive for the oil fields. But Stalin, still unsure that he had the strength to contain the enemy there, summed up the problem by saying, “They want to get at the oil of Grozny at any price.” Without pause he added, “Well now let’s see what Zhukov has to say about Stalingrad.”

Zhukov did. not have good news. His northern forces could not break the German corridor from the Don to the Volga. Stalin went to a map and studied his list of reserves in other sectors while Zhukov and Vasilevsky stood to one side and discussed in hushed tones the possibility of an alternative solution, another way out.

Suddenly Stalin snapped, “What other way out?”

Both generals were shocked by his keen hearing. Stalin continued, “Look, you had better get back to the general staff and give some thought to what can be done at Stalingrad and how many reserves we will need to reinforce the Stalingrad group. And don’t forget the Caucasus front. We will meet again tomorrow evening at nine.”

While Stalin and his brain trust maneuvered in Moscow, Vassili Chuikov came ashore in Stalingrad to assume command of the Sixty-second Army. A rabble ran to meet him. Old men and women, little children crowded around; faces black with grime, they were a pathetic sight. The whimpering children begged for water, and that bothered Chuikov most of all, for he had none to give them.

He drove off to the Tsaritsa Gorge to meet his staff, but the headquarters was empty and he had to ask soldiers in the streets for directions to the new command post. Someone told him it was on Mamaev Hill and, driving there through the wreckage from the bombings and shellings of previous days, he was appalled at the flimsy antitank defenses. From his own experience, Chuikov knew the Germans would roll over them in seconds. He noticed something else: Though it was still summer, every leaf had fallen from the trees.

Reaching the southeastern slope of Mamaev, Chuikov climbed upward and stumbled upon the new headquarters, just a wide trench with a bench of packed earth along one wall and a bed and table on the other side. The roof was made of brush covered only by a foot of dirt.

Two people were in the dugout, a woman telephone operator and Gen. Nikolai Ivanovich Krylov, a heavyset man with a serious face. Since Krylov was arguing heatedly on the phone, Chuikov slipped his identification papers onto the table and waited while Krylov glanced casually at them. When he finished his call, the chief of staff of the Sixty-second Army reached out and shook hands with his new superior.

Still very upset about his telephone conversation, Krylov explained that he had just been speaking with an officer who had moved his own headquarters back to the edge of the Volga without permission. “In other words,” Krylov said, “[his] …command post is now behind us. It’s disgraceful….”

Chuikov agreed and sat down. He needed time to grasp the situation; so, for the moment, he did not intrude on Krylov’s activities.

Toward midnight,. the general who had arbitrarily relocated his command post arrived with his deputy. At this point, Chuikov asserted himself as army commander and berated the man, “What would your attitude be as a Soviet general, in command of a military sector, if one of your subordinate commanders and headquarters left the front without your permission? How do you regard your own action?…”

The general and his deputy hung their heads and did not reply. Chuikov kept lashing out at them, accusing them of cowardice. Before dismissing them, he demanded they return to their former position by 4:00 A.M. Then the outraged Chuikov went back to a study of the tactical maps. The arrows on them pointed to disaster. Less than half a mile away, troops of the German 71st and 295th divisions were about to lunge toward the vital main ferry linking Stalingrad with the far shore.

At 6:30 A.M. on September 13, the enemy attacked and, with communications among his ground units frequently cut by explosions, Chuikov had great difficulty in maintaining control of the battle. By late afternoon he had “almost completely lost contact with the troops.” But the Germans still had not been able to break into the downtown section of Stalingrad.