Hitler's Commanders (16 page)

Meanwhile, as early as the beginning of November, Seydlitz saw a major trap in the making. He called upon Paulus to pull the 14th and 24th Panzer divisions out of the street fighting, use his reinforcements and replacements to bring them up to strength, and use them as a fire brigade, in case the Soviets penetrated into the army’s rear, as he expected. Paulus and Schmidt rejected the idea.

The Soviets launched a major offensive against the Rumanian 3rd Army on November 19 and quickly scattered it to the four winds. The only German reserve in this sector was the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, which had only one German division (the 22nd Panzer) and which had an operational strength of only 20 tanks. It also was quickly defeated. The following day the offensive began against the Rumanian 4th Army and the depleted 4th Panzer on Paulus’s southern flank. By November 21, the two massive Soviet pinchers were advancing almost unopposed into the rear of 6th Army in a huge double envelopment. By noon one armored column pushed to within sight of Paulus’s headquarters at Golubinsky. The general and his staff hurriedly fled south, away from the bulk of 6th Army and the rapidly forming Stalingrad pocket. At 2 p.m. on November 22, Paulus and Schmidt flew back over enemy lines to Gumrak airfield, where they reestablished a command post and tried to regain control of the situation, although this proved to be no longer possible.

Later that day the two Soviet spearheads joined at Kalach. Sixth Army was encircled in a pocket 30 miles long (east to west) and 24 miles wide. Most of its rear-area supply depots and warehouses had been overrun or put to the torch to prevent them from falling into Soviet hands. Paulus’s reserves of food, clothing, fuel, and ammunition were already dangerously low. In the meantime, on November 21, Adolf Hitler issued a fatal order. Sixth Army was to stand fast where it was, in spite of the danger of encirclement. There was to be no breakout from Stalingrad.

From the beginning, virtually every general except Schmidt favored an immediate breakout attempt. On November 21, before he received Hitler’s decisive order, Paulus sent a message to Army Group B, recommending that 6th Army break out to the southwest and retreat more than 100 miles to the lower parts of the Chir and Don rivers. However, once he learned what the Fuehrer had ordered, Paulus accepted the dictator’s will with an attitude of almost detached resignation. This lifeless obsequiousness characterized Paulus’s attitude for the rest of the siege. The details of the battle he left to his more aggressive and energetic chief of staff, Arthur Schmidt.

On November 22, Paulus and Schmidt met with Hermann Hoth and Major General Wolfgang Pickert,
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commander of the 9th Flak Division. Schmidt asked his old friend Pickert what they should do now. “Get the hell out of here,” the Luftwaffe officer responded.
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Hoth, a veteran panzer commander and a fine tactician, also favored a breakout attempt. Schmidt, however, replied that there was no need for panic and nothing in the local tactical situation as yet justified making decisions independent of Berlin. Paulus did not open his mouth during the entire conference, except to agree with Schmidt.

Later that afternoon Paulus and Schmidt set up a new headquarters in the northern part of the pocket, in an old, primitive Russian bunker, about 30 yards from Seydlitz’s LI Corps headquarters. Perhaps they wanted to keep an eye on the independent-minded Seydlitz, who confronted them almost at once. He urged an immediate breakout and began drafting a message to be sent to Fuehrer Headquarters. At the end of almost every sentence, Paulus and Schmidt would ask, “Isn’t that too sharp?” or “Can we really say that?” In the end Paulus rejected Seydlitz’s plea for an unauthorized breakout, commenting, “I cannot go against Hitler or move without his approval.”
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Perhaps Paulus could not but Seydlitz certainly could. On the nights of November 23–24, he withdrew much of his corps southward, shortening his front by seven miles. His objective was obvious: he intended to disengage units, which would then be free to take part in an unapproved breakout attempt. Unfortunately for him, the Soviets observed the move and struck before it could be completed, inflicting heavy casualties on the 94th Infantry Division. Paulus quickly hurried to Seydlitz’s headquarters and demanded an explanation. Schmidt called the action “mutiny” and urged that Seydlitz be relieved of his command and court-martialed. Paulus would not go along with this idea, however; 6th Army’s morale was low enough as it was. Besides, by this time Paulus had already signaled Hitler directly, urging a breakout. He had even formed a battering ram of armor, artillery, and motorized infantry for that purpose, should the Fuehrer approve his request. He was not willing to give the signal for the attack against orders from Berlin, however. Ironically, Seydlitz’s standing with the Fuehrer was very high at this time. When he had earmarked Paulus to succeed Jodl after the conquest of Stalingrad, he had decided to simultaneously promote Seydlitz to the command of 6th Army. When he learned of the LI Corps withdrawal, Hitler assumed that Paulus was responsible for it and, completely misjudging his men, concluded that Paulus was planning an unauthorized breakout. To guard against this, on the evening of November 24, he ordered that the northern sector of the Stalingrad pocket be placed under Seydlitz’s command, made independent of 6th Army’s command, and be made directly subordinate to OKH. Paulus received this message about 6 p.m. on November 25 and personally carried it to Seydlitz. He seems to have appreciated the irony of the situation. “Now you can act on your own and break out!” he said.

In all likelihood Paulus was being facetious when he made this remark. Seydlitz, however, took it seriously and unbraided the Hessian. “That is a utopian idea!” he replied. “How can I break out with only a part of the army? For a breakout to succeed, the army has to act as a unit.”
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He continued to urge Paulus to act on his own initiative, but the 6th Army commander again refused.

Meanwhile, back at Fuehrer Headquarters, Hermann Goering calmly assured Hitler that he could supply 6th Army by air. General of Fliers Martin Fiebig and Baron von Richthofen, the two principal Luftwaffe commanders in the sector, had already gone on record as stating that it could not be done, but their views were not solicited by the Reichsmarschall. General Kurt Zeitzler, who had recently succeeded Halder as chief of the General Staff of the army, called Goering a liar to his face, provoking a violent argument, but Hitler, in the end, sided with Goering because he
wanted
to believe the airlift could be accomplished. Back in Stalingrad, Arthur Schmidt reacted in the same manner. “It simply has to be done!” he exclaimed to Pickert and Hoth. The army could help, he said, by eating its horses first, to give the Luftwaffe time to organize the resupply operation.
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The soft-spoken Paulus, as usual, passively agreed with his chief of staff.

The decision to hold Stalingrad and resupply the garrison by air doomed 6th Army to total destruction—unless its commander could muster enough courage to act on his own.

On November 27, the corps commanders of 6th Army met with Friedrich Paulus and his chief of staff at army headquarters and unanimously urged Paulus to break out against orders. Seydlitz urged him to “take the course of the Lion,” a reference to General Karl von Litzmann, who had broken out against orders in similar circumstances in World War I and had thus saved his entire command from Russian captivity. The one-armed General Hans Hube, recently promoted commander of the XIV Panzer Corps and a favorite of the Fuehrer, exclaimed, “Breakout is our only chance!”

“We can’t just remain here and die!” Karl Strecker pleaded. Even the pro-Nazi General Heitz, commander of the VIII Corps, called for an immediate breakout, regardless of casualties. General Erwin Jaenecke, a personal friend of Paulus’s and commander of IV Corps, evoked the ghost of Paulus’s mentor. “Reichenau would have brushed aside all doubts,” he said.

“I am no Reichenau,” Paulus replied.

Jaenecke put great pressure on his old friend to save the army. Seydlitz then revealed that he had already ordered LI Corps to destroy all equipment that could not be carried on a long march. He had set the example personally by burning everything except the uniform he had on. All the corps commanders enthusiastically expressed their approval. Even those who were looked upon as Nazis called for a breakout, despite Hitler’s orders. Unfortunately, Schmidt had the last word. “We must obey,” he said.

“I shall obey,” Paulus responded.
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Later that month Lieutenant Colonel Hans-Juergen Dingler, the Ia of the 3rd Motorized Division, also suggested a breakout to Paulus. He replied, “I expect you as a soldier to carry out the Fuehrer’s orders. In the same manner the Fuehrer, as my superior, can and must expect that I shall obey his orders.”
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Even now, however, Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach refused to accept Hitler’s disastrous decision. He urged Baron von Weichs, the army group commander, to give the order for a breakout. “To remain inactive,” he signaled Army Group B, “is a crime from the military viewpoint, and it is a crime from the point of view of responsibility to the German people.”
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Colonel General von Weichs did not reply. And 6th Army did not move.

Officers who saw Paulus during this time expressed great sympathy for him, for he was clearly shouldering a greater burden than he could bear. Already plagued by a recurrence of the dysentery he had contracted during World War I, he now developed a nervous facial tic as well. Still, however, he trusted in the genius of the Fuehrer. On November 30, Hitler rewarded Paulus for his loyalty by promoting him to colonel general. Paulus, meanwhile, recommended Arthur Schmidt for advancement to lieutenant general. He received this promotion on January 17, 1943.
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In late November 1942, the incredibly gifted Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commander-in-chief of Army Group Don, took over operations on the southern sector of the Eastern Front. Despite overwhelming odds, in the dead of the Russian winter, he pushed a relief column (the LVII Panzer Corps) to within 40 miles of the Stalingrad perimeter and established a bridgehead across the Mishkova River on December 20. He could, however, go no further, so he sent Major Georg Eismann, his Ic, to Stalingrad, to persuade Paulus to break out. This time, even Hitler gave his conditional approval.

By now it was obvious that the airlift was failing. Virtually all the horses had been eaten, as well as all the cats and dogs and many of the slower rats in Stalingrad. Of 270,000 men originally trapped in the city, the effective infantry strength stood at 40,000. Most of the German soldiers slept in shell holes or on the frozen ground because there were only enough bunkers to accommodate one-third of them. There were no heating materials, almost all the wooden buildings had been burned, and thousands froze to death while tens of thousands contracted frostbite. Rations on December 7 consisted of one stale loaf of bread per day for every five men, but they declined after that. Men “no longer take cover from Russian shells,” one soldier wrote. “They haven’t the strength to walk, run away and hide.”
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Even now, however, Paulus refused to attempt a breakout until he received more supplies. He calculated that he had enough fuel to travel 18 miles—no more. Manstein’s vanguards must push forward another 20 miles before an attempt could be made.

Manstein dispatched one of his staff officers, Major Hans-Georg Eismann, to Stalingrad, to attempt to reason with Paulus and Schmidt, but he experienced no success. “Sixth Army will still be in position at Easter,” Schmidt said. “All you people have to do is to supply it better.” Paulus agreed automatically. “What ultimately decided the attitude of 6th Army Headquarters,” Manstein wrote later, “was the opinion of the chief of staff.” He concluded that all Eismann’s remonstrations “were like water off a duck’s back.”
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While Paulus hesitated, the Soviets concentrated against the Italian 8th Army and routed it. With almost nothing in reserve, Manstein had no choice but to withdraw the bulk of the LVII Panzer Corps to deal with this new threat, leaving only a holding force across the Mishkova. On December 27, this weak element began to give ground in the face of Soviet attacks, and the following day it retreated rapidly to avoid being surrounded. The last chance to save the Stalingrad garrison was gone.

On January 8, 1943, the Soviets issued Paulus an ultimatum. If he did not agree to surrender by 10 a.m. the following day, all the encircled Germans would be destroyed. Paulus did not even bother to answer. The final Soviet offensive began on January 10 and met extremely tenacious—indeed, desperate—resistance. Gradually, however, the weight of seven Soviet armies crushed 6th Army. Paulus had fewer than 100 tanks left, and they were almost out of fuel and ammunition. On January 22 the last airfield fell, the men could not be resupplied, and there were 12,000 unattended wounded lying in the streets. German soldiers had by now begun to desert in large numbers. The following day, the Russians broke through the western perimeter and cut the pocket in half. Paulus, however, still obeyed Hitler’s order not to surrender. He directed that food be withheld from the wounded; only those who could still fight were to be given what meager rations remained.

Walter von Seydlitz, on the other hand, had had enough of this slaughter. On the morning of January 25, he asked Paulus to surrender on his own initiative. When Paulus refused, Seydlitz issued an order to his corps giving his regimental and battalion commanders permission to surrender on their own if the front collapsed and their capitulation would prevent unnecessary casualties. When Paulus heard about these instructions the next day, he considered having Seydlitz arrested. Instead, he placed him under the command of the fanatical General Heitz, who issued an order that there would be no surrender and that anyone caught negotiating with the enemy would be shot. This order was clearly aimed at von Seydlitz. In fact, almost certainly on Heitz’s instructions, the command posts of VIII and LI corps now shared the same bunker, so Heitz could keep an eye on Seydlitz and prevent any unauthorized actions.