Stalin seemed to be withdrawing his forces. Perhaps he still imagined that Operation Blau was a feint. In any event, there was no decisive encounter, not yet, even as we launched Phase II.
On 6.7.42 we crossed the Don. On 9.7.42 our forces finally crushed all resistance in Voronezh, which is a very important railroad junction, and more flatcars heaped with Russian prisoners rolled westward to the concentration camps, thereby wrapping up Operation Wilhelm; but since that battle took four days, the Führer, so Paulus heard, expressed vehement displeasure with Field-Marshal von Bock. He was watching the calendar as much as everyone. After the misery of the Moscow campaign, everyone had learned better than to squander Russia’s golden summer days. That was why Operation Blau needed to be completed by the end of October at the latest. Paulus could hardly contest that the Führer held every right to be exasperated. The enemy had used the delay to withdraw eastward in good order, so the capture of Voronezh, necessary as it surely had been, left a sour taste in Germany’s devouring mouth. Kalach might not fall easily, either. According to Fremde Heere Ost Gruppe I, Army Group South, the enemy still had twelve infantry divisions and five armored brigades there. Although he was alone in the staff car, an embarrassed smile came to his lips. He did not want to be known as the man who couldn’t take Kalach. Major-General Schmidt had already volunteered that in his opinion the soldiers of Sixth Army stood ready for even greater exertions. Uncertain whether to approve the man’s zeal or rebuke an insinuation, Paulus replied, after a pause and perhaps a trifle drily: Sixth Army’s willingness to make efforts lies beyond a doubt. That will be all for now, Schmidt.—He began to visit the front line more often than before, although, not being a grandstander such as Field-Marshals von Manstein and von Reichenau, he tried not to let his soldiers see him. He remembered his father overwatching everything he did; he refused to distrust people in that fashion. His biographer Goerlitz describes him as frequently looking exhausted and dusty during this period. He was in the midst of preparing Operation Fredericus II, which would obliterate the enemy strongpoint of Kupiansk. Coca would have worried about him, although she ought to have known how it was; two of her brothers had been officers. Sometimes Sixth Army was fired on from one of those Russian peasant huts ringed with earth, and rather than accept more delay, Paulus adopted the extravagant solution of an antitank round, because in war as in any other endeavor one must spend something to get something; in this case one spends time, manpower or materiel. Of these, time, golden time, was currently most precious. The slave laborers of the Ostlands could always produce more tank shells, but summer was going, going.
On 15.7.42, the Führer made an alteration in Operation Blau. He’d removed Field-Marshal von Bock from command of Army Group A on account of timidity and insubordination. (In my opinion, sir, said Major-General Schmidt, there was always something half-hearted about him.) But this was really a pro forma decision; von Bock’s disgrace had actually occurred, as Paulus remembered all too well, during that conference back in Poltava, on that hot creosote-scented day when everyone gathered around the snow-white map—and here Paulus suddenly recalled that his wife, who was really very well read, possessed a uniform edition, in similarly snow-white bindings, of the complete works of Pushkin; and one of these volumes (he could almost see it) was entitled
Poltava. His memory for details approached the photographic: When he overgazed a map of, say, Stalingrad, various topographic features would recall to his mind the enemy troop concentrations at each strongpoint and the dispositions of Sixth Army which would be required to reduce them; in the case of Poltava, which remained literally a closed book to him (although he enjoyed it when Coca read to him, he’d never found much leisure for poetry, even in peacetime), his recollections had to do with mild German sunshine, whose bygone character invested it with more plenitude than it ever could have carried at the time; in that lost and now languorous-seeming epoch before our Führer came to power, those white volumes had spanned a bookshelf in their bedroom, and what he must be remembering, he supposed, was one of those summer mornings when Coca lay sleeping on his shoulder, and he with his far-sighted eyes picked out the title gilt-lettered on the spine of each white book, not in German; unlike most of us, he could sound out the Cyrillic alphabet, and although he didn’t know what the words meant it was surprising how often this capability of transliteration taught him something useful, particularly nowadays, of course, when he inspected captured enemy documents; very likely he’d been a trifle bored but hadn’t had the heart to wake Coca; where were the children? They must have been very little then. Ernst in particular always used to want to come into bed with them; the poor child suffered from nightmares. In fact, he’d once come in early one morning when he and Coca were making love; at first neither of them had noticed the slowly opening door; then the plump little face was looking up at them, woebegone and bewildered; thank God they’d had the sheet over them; that memory distressed him. And then another time he’d been making love with Coca and it had been a very rich time; he felt that her moans were a boat which was carrying them both slowly down some broad wide river of sunlight; then they were finished and Coca was kissing him, weeping with happiness; she was a very emotional woman; while he for his own part, gripped by the extreme clarity which often takes over a man in the very first instant after orgasm, lay fixing his eyes upon the bookshelf, where he saw the word ΠОΛТАВА, Poltava. How many times in those years had he read the lettering on that particular volume without ever once troubling to open it? Often books of that nature contained frontispieces of old wars and such; it would have been interesting, come to think of it, to learn more about the history of this region. First invasions, then rebellions; he knew that much from military college. While Coca lay with her long soft hair across them both, sleepily licking his nipple, he deciphered ΠОΛТАВА again. Just then the door slowly, silently opened: Ernst was peeking in. Why was he remembering that now? He hadn’t thought of those Pushkin volumes in years; where had Coca hidden them? It seemed as if so much had happened during that one instant when the strengthening sunshine happened to strike that particular book that the moment had been practically infinite; he almost supposed that he could see and feel every strand of Coca’s hair that had been so warmly caressing them when Ernst crept in; and now, although his mind ranged over these details with a voluptuous completeness which itself approached infinity, all of this happened in the time it took to light another cigarette; then the orderly brought in the tray, polished like a mirror, upon which the communications of the day had been arranged, first the enemy situation report, then the signals intelligence report, both of them courtesy of Gehlen at Fremde Heere Ost, Gruppe I, Army Group B; but before he got to either, the orderly carried in a decrypted announcement from OKW at Poltava: The Führer had decided to strip him of Fourth Panzer Army, whose support thus far had greatly facilitated his lightning advance. Apparently someone had convinced OKW (he hoped it wasn’t “the nodding ass”) that Fourth Panzer should participate in the vast pincer movement against Rostov. This decision troubled Paulus; he’d already been sorry enough to see First Panzer go; without their help it would have taken him much longer to tie off the Barvenko salient, and now, with less manpower at his disposal, everything would be still more protracted; but orders are orders. Some of his officers complained; even Major-General Schmidt looked glum; but he had made up his mind to treat them all as we treat our Romanian allies—namely, with tactful firmness. He broadened his bridgehead at Kalach, which fell easily. The Führer was pleased; so he gathered from General Warlimont’s signal. Now that he had a moment, he sent a message of friendship and commiseration to Field-Marshal von Bock, whose command had now been turned over to Colonel-General von Weichs; within two hours the Field-Marshal replied: My dear Paulus, the important thing is to keep calm. Evidently he would be assigned to Führer Reserve, God help him. Weary and dusty from another inspection of the front line, he wrote a quick note to Olga, enclosing greetings for his grandson and son-in-law; he advised her to get her Mercedes serviced sooner rather than later, in case there were problems in obtaining spare parts. Then he returned to the business of constructing and guiding his spearheads. On 23.7.42 we finally captured Rostov, after beating down vicious enemy resistance. (Kerchiefed old Russian women were struggling on either side of a bicycle to which buckets of water had been strapped; they staggered slowly through the volcanic dust between the ruins, then vanished. Why hadn’t their High Command evacuated them? This negligence on Premier Stalin’s part seemed contrary to the basic conduct of humanitarian operations.) Congratulating all of us on the successful fulfillment of Operation Blau, Phase II, the Führer canceled Phase III and commenced Operations Edelweiss and Heron. Operation Heron was a lightning attack on Stalingrad, and the man charged with that operation was Lieutenant-General Paulus. Operation Edelweiss was the continuation of our drive infinitely southeast-ward, for whose sake Paulus was now commanded to give up fifty percent of his ammunition and fifty percent of his fuel. No matter: Panzergruppen were on the way to help him! Whose would they be? Probably Colonel-General Hoth’s. He had full confidence in that man. Unfortunately, aerial reconnaissance indicated that the enemy was taking full advantage of the delay (eighteen days) to regroup on the Volga, in that city called Stalingrad.