William Craig - Enemy at the Gates

Several hours later, when his turn came to stand guard, he stared into the star-filled sky and tried to imagine his parents and wife, Irene, celebrating at home in Boblingen—the tree and the presents and Irene thinking of him and perhaps crying. Pacing up and down the trench, Brunnert wanted to cry himself.

On his way to a church service, Quartermaster Karl Binder had seen mounds of unburied bodies lining the road. Shocked by this breakdown of army organization, he brooded about it for hours until he wrote a letter to his family. Now filled with a sense of foreboding about his own fate, Binder sought to prepare his wife and children for the worst:

Christmas 1942

…During the past weeks all of us have begun to think about the end of everything. The insignificance of everyday life pales against this, and we have never been more grateful for the Christmas Gospel than in these hours of hardship. Deep in one’s heart one lives with the idea of Christmas, the meaning of Christmas. It is a feast of love, salvation and pity on mankind. We have nothing else here but the thought of Christmas. It must and will tide us over grievous hours…. However hard it may be, we shall do our utmost to master fate and try everything in our power to defeat the subhumanity that is wildly attacking us. Nothing can shake our belief in victory, for we must win, if Germany wants to live….

I have not received any mail from you for some time… there is a terrible longing for some dear words from home at Christmas, but there are more important things at present. We are men who know how to bear everything. The main thing is that you and the children are all right. Don’t worry about me; nothing can happen to me any longer. Today I have made my peace with God….

I give you all my love and a thousand kisses—I love you to my last breath.

Affectionate kisses for the children. Be dear children and remember your father….

Oblivious to the noise in his bunker, Lt. Emil Metzger sat reading a letter from his wife, Kaethe. It was the best Christmas present he had ever received, and at 10:00 P.M., he quietly withdrew from the celebration to go out—into the clear, frosty night, where a lonely sentry walked his post. Metzger relieved the shivering man of the responsibility and shouldered his rifle. He wanted this time alone.

Under a bower of brilliant stars he paced back and forth, ignoring the Russians and the war. Concentrating intensely on Kaethe, Emil relived their life together: the first dance when they fell in love, the exhilarating hikes through the cathedral hush of forests, the four brief days of honeymoon they shared before he rushed back to duty, the furlough he had given up in August because he believed the war was about to end.

For over an hour, Emil held a spiritual communion with Kaethe beneath a thousand miles of stars. It was the only gift he could give her.

While German soldiers sought escape in celebration, their generals were discussing the diminishing prospects of Sixth Army’s salvation.

Teletype: General Schmidt—General Schulz

+++ Dear Schmidt, tonight the field marshal and we all are particularly thinking of the entire Sixth Army. I do not have much new information for you today.

Hoth [the German relief column south of the Kessel ] is still engaged in defensive operations. It appears that the enemy… [around Vassilevska at the Mishkova] …has received further reinforcements…. As regards your situation, we still did not receive a decision from the Supreme Command of the Army. The field marshal wants you to know that you had better reconcile yourself to the idea that the solution will in all probability be “Thunderclap.” [Even Field Marshal Manstein did not believe this anymore, but Schulz did not have the heart to deny Schmidt one last hope of freedom.] We are waiting for better weather so that we may commit all available airplanes to provide you with the necessary fuel and provisions. What’s new on your side?

[Schmidt was querulous, demanding:] +++ Is it certain that the airplanes can start although Tatsinskaya is threatened? [Schmidt did not know that Tatsinskaya was already in Russian hands.]

[Schulz lied:] +++ Their start is ensured and alternative airfields were prepared.

[Sensing that Hoth’s relief attempt from the south had already failed, Schmidt asked:] +++ Will [Hoth]… be able to hold the Mishkova [river] section?

[Schulz:] +++ We hope so. However, there is a possibility that he will have to narrow the present bridgehead. [At that moment, the bridgehead had already been evacuated by the German rear guard.]

[Schmidt:] +++ Was an armored division withdrawn from… Hoth… to the west bank of the Don?

Again, General Schulz was unable to strip his friend of hope.

+++ One armored division [the 6th, which had left the previous evening] had to be withdrawn to the west bank of the Don in order to protect Morosovskaya [Airfield]. However, as of tomorrow the SS Division Viking [a fully motorized division] will be arriving in the area of Salsk by train and road….Besides, we have again urgently requested considerable reinforcements from Army Group A [in the Caucasus], but we are still waiting for the decision of the Supreme Command of the Army.

I have nothing else, the Commander-in-Chief and I cordially return your Christmas greetings.

During Christmas Eve, the Stalingrad front remained alarmingly quiet. Little was heard from the Russians, except the squawking of loudspeakers urging the Germans to lay down their arms and come over to good food, shelter, and friendly Tartar girls. Crouched in their snowholes, German soldiers still listened with detached amusement to the propaganda. Most of them feared the Russians too much to trust such alluring proposals.

In the early hours of Christmas Day, a violent blizzard broke over the Kessel. Visibility dropped to less than ten yards; fiftymile- an-hour gusts howled across the balkas, and the men of Sixth Army slept off the effects of wine, cognac, and rum. But at 5:00 A.M., the Katyusha rockets screamed in a multitudinous cadence as thousands of flaming missiles soared from beyond the perimeter into the Kessel. Heavy-throated mortars and artillery also overwhelmed the moaning wind. The ground heaved and trembled under a ferocious cannonade. “And then, out of the gray white… appeared tank after tank and, in between, trucks crowded with infantry….”

In the sector held by the 16th Panzer Division, groggy soldiers climbed from their bunkers to fight a desperate delaying action. The attack had come too fast and Russian tanks and soldiers were suddenly among them in the swirling mist of snow. Opposing infantry fired at shadows indiscriminately; dead men heaped up in front of field guns. German .88 artillery crewmen quiekly ran out of ammunition and blew up their pieces with the last shells before retreating to a second line of resistance.

As the morning of Christmas Day passed, Sixth Army intelligence officers stated positively that the Russians suffered a “frightening number of…casualties….” But they also had to acknowledge that they too had absorbed similar “shocking” losses.

The battle blazed on into the afternoon as, on the other flanks, Russians smashed against the reeling but well-dug-in Sixth Army. The entire Kessel reverberated to the terrifying sounds of thousands of big and small-caliber weapons.

At his overcrowded hospital, Dr. Kurt Reuber paused in his treatment of patients to conduct friends to the door of his private quarters. When he pushed it open, they sucked in their breath at what they saw.

On the gray wall facing the door, a lamp illuminated a picture of the Virgin and Child, whose heads inclined protectively toward each other. Both were shrouded in a white cloak.