William Craig - Enemy at the Gates

Exposed to incessant gunfire on Mamaev, and deprived of normal telephone and radio circuits, Chuikov suddenly told everyone in the crowded trench to pack up and leave for the Tsaritsa Gorge bunker, so hastily abandoned in recent days.

Following their orders of the night before, Marshals Vasilevsky and Zhukov were again closeted with Stalin. After shaking hands with them, an unusual thing for the premier to do, Stalin launched into an attack on his Allies, “Tens and hundreds of thousands of Soviet people are giving their lives in the fight against Fascism, and Churchill is haggling over twenty Hurricanes. And those Hurricanes aren’t even that good. Our pilots don’t like them.”

Without pausing, Stalin asked, “Well, what did you come up with? Who’s making the report?”

“Either of us,” Vasilevsky said. “We are of the same opinion.”

Stalin looked at their map and asked, “What have you got here?”

“These are our preliminary notes for a counteroffensive at Stalingrad,” Vasilevsky answered.

Zhukov and Vasilevsky then took turns explaining their idea: after breaking through both the German flank defenses a hundred miles northwest of the city along the Don River, and fifty miles south of the city around the Tzatza chain of salt lakes, two Russian pincers would then meet near the town of Kalach. Hopefully they would trap most of Paulus’s Sixth Army in the forty-mile-wide land bridge between the Don and Volga.

Stalin objected, “Aren’t you extending your striking forces too far?” When the marshals disagreed with him, he said, “We will have to think about this some more and see what our resources are.”

While they argued the merits of the bold plan, General Yeremenko called from Yamy on the BODO line and Stalin listened intently to the news that the Germans were entering Stalingrad from the west and south.

When Stalin hung up, he turned to Vasilevsky. “Issue orders immediately to have Rodimtsev’s 13th Guards Division cross the Volga and see what else you can send across the river tomorrow.”

The three men parted with this warning from the premier. “…We will talk about our plan later. No one except the three of us is to know about it.”

On the morning of September 14, the German 71st Division entered downtown Stalingrad on a two-mile-wide front. Captain Gerhard Meunch personally led the 3rd Battalion, 194th Infantry Regiment, as it tried to cross several city blocks and gain the river front. Until now, his men had suffered mostly from the heat or occasional Russian rear guards, and Meunch thought their chances of reaching the Volga before nightfall were excellent.

But once they reached the congested avenues of the city, casualties rose sharply. From third- and fourth-floor windows, snipers riddled the columns, and hidden light artillery blew gaps in the ranks. The Germans found few places to hide, for they always had to force the battle and dig the enemy from the ruins of buildings.

Still, by 2:00 P.M., the Third Battalion had closed to within a few hundred yards of the main railroad station just off Red Square, and Meunch received orders to seize the ferry landing at the Volga. Despite mounting losses, he was still confident. His men had captured several Russian couriers running through the streets with handwritten messages. Sensing that the Soviet Sixtysecond Army’s telephone communications had broken down, and that it was now increasingly dependent on isolated small groups to contain the Germans, Meunch assumed that his depleted battalion could manage the last half mile toward their goal.

Meunch’s estimate of enemy problems was amazingly accurate. General Chuikov was in a desperate situation. Back again in the underground bunker at Tsaritsa Gorge, he had just been told that the 13th Guards Division would come to his aid and cross the river that night. But in the meantime, he had to find enough troops to hold the main ferry landing. Without the ferry, the center of Stalingrad was sure to fall.

Around 4:00 P.M., Chuikov called in Colonel Sarayev, the NKVD garrison commander. General Krylov had already warned Chuikov about Sarayev’s attitude: “He considers himself indispensable and does not like carrying out the army’s orders.”

When Sarayev arrived in the bunker, Chuikov sized up his guest and dealt with him bluntly, “Do you understand that your division has been incorporated into the Sixty-second Army and that you have to accept the authority of the Army Military Council?” When Sarayev grumbled and looked annoyed, Chuikov made the ultimate threat. “Do you want me to telephone the Front Military Council to clarify the position?”

Faced with a reprimand or worse from Yeremenko and Khrushchev, Sarayev caved in and humbly answered, “I am a soldier of the Sixty-second Army.”

Chuikov sent him to organize his fifteen hundred militiamen into squads of ten and twenty in strategic buildings in the heart of the city. These “storm groups” were his answer to the German superiority in troops, artillery, and planes—especially planes. Throwing away the Red Army textbook on tactics, he was substituting an idea he had first conceived on the steppe, where he watched enemy blitzkrieg tactics against the Sixty-fourth Soviet Army, and became convinced that he could not compete against German firepower. He countered by creating a series of minifortresses, commanding various street intersections. The small storm groups could act as “breakwaters,” funneling Nazi panzers into approach roads already registered on by Russian artillery. When the tanks lumbered along these predictable routes, they would face a murderous fire from heavy weapons. With the tanks bogged down, the storm group could then deal with German infantry, exposed behind the flaming armor. And by fighting at such close range, the storm groups also eliminated the threat of the German Luftwaffe. Afraid to bomb their own troops, the Stukas and Ju-88s would be unable to attack the Soviet strong-points.

A mere half mile northeast of Chuikov’s bunker, a group of NKVD soldiers braced for the final German thrust to the river. Drawn up in an arc around the main ferry, the sixty soldiers waited for their commander, Colonel Petrakov, to return from a scouting mission along Pensenskaya Street. To figure out where the enemy was trying to break through, Petrakov and two aides walked as far north as the Ninth of January Square. The roar of small-arms fire was rolling over them from a distance, but they had neither seen a German nor heard any close-range shooting. The square was deserted, and Petrakov stood beside an abandoned car to assess his situation.

Submachine-gun bullets suddenly whistled through the car windows, forcing Petrakov to duck for cover. Almost instantly German shells exploded up and down the square and he was knocked unconscious. Rescued by his men, he awoke in a tunnel at the edge of the Volga where he lay under an overcoat and heard that the Germans had rushed for the river and taken a series of buildings near the shore. From the House of Specialists (an apartment house for engineers), from the five-storey State Bank, and from the beer factory, the Germans were hollering: “ Rus, Rus, Volga bul-bul! ” (“Russians will drown in the Volga!”).

Petrakov staggered to the tunnel entrance and looked out at the river for some sign of the 13th Guards Division. But the time for their crossing was still hours away and he had to keep the Germans from the ferry until then.

When a small Russian boy wandered into the tunnel, the curious Petrakov asked his name. “Kolia,” he replied and told the colonel that the enemy had sent him to spy on Russian strength between the House of Specialists and the Volga. Petrakov smiled and asked Kolia to tell him instead about the Germans. Kolia knew exactly who his captors were: the 1st Battalion, 194th Infantry Regiment, 71st Division, commanded by a Captain Ginderling. Protecting Gerhard Meunch’s left flank, Ginderling was also trying to sweep to the main ferry before dark.