Soviet mechanized formations, which had been camouflaged well behind the lines, moved forward to their start-line positions. Smokescreens were laid to cover them crossing the Don into the bridgeheads, and just behind the front line, loudspeakers from propaganda companies blasted out music and political messages to cover the sound of engines.
On the three ‘Stalingrad axis’ fronts, just over one million men were now assembled. General Smirnov, chief of medical services, had 119 field hospitals with 62,000 beds ready for casualties. Orders were given three hours before the attack. Red Army units were told that they were to make a deep raid on the enemy’s rear. Encirclement was not mentioned. The troops were fiercely excited at the thought that the Germans did not know what was going to hit them. This was the start of the fight back. Vehicles were checked and checked again. They had huge distances to cover in front of them. Their engines were listened to ‘as a physician would a heart’. The time for writing letters, shaving, washing foot bandages, and playing chess or dominoes was over. ‘Men and commanders had been ordered to rest, but they were too keyed up. Everybody was turning over in his mind whether everything had really been done.’
On that eve of battle, the Germans did not sense that the next day would be any different. The Sixth Army’s daily report was brief: ‘Along the whole front, no major changes. Drift-ice on the Volga weaker than on the day before.’ That night, a soldier longing for leave, wrote home, reflecting on the fact that he was ‘2,053 miles from the German frontier’.
Part Four
ZHUKOV’S TRAP
15. Operation Uranus
Soon after five in the morning, on Thursday, 19 November, the telephone rang in Sixth Army headquarters. The operations staff were housed in Golubinsky, a large Cossack village on the right bank of the Don. Outside, it had started to snow, which, combined with freezing fog, prevented sentries from seeing more than a few yards.
The call was from Lieutenant Gerhard Stock, the javelin gold-medallist with the Romanian IV Army Corps on the Kletskaya sector. His message was logged in the war diary: ‘According to the statement of a Russian officer captured in the area of the 1st Romanian Cavalry Division, the expected attack should start today at five o’clock.’ Since there was still no other sign of the offensive starting, and it was after five, the duty officer did not wake the army chief of staff. General Schmidt was furious if disturbed by a false alarm, and there had been a good deal of those recently from the Romanian divisions to their north-west.
In fact, all through the night, Soviet sappers in white camouflage suits had been crawling forward in the snow, lifting anti-tank mines. The massed Russian artillery and mortar batteries loaded at 7.20 a.m. Russian time, 5.20 a.m. German time, on receipt of the code-word ‘Siren’. One Soviet general said that the freezing white mist was ‘as thick as milk’. Front headquarters considered a further postponement, due to the bad visibility, but decided against it. Ten minutes later, the guns, howitzers and Katyusha regiments received the order to prepare to fire. The signal was relayed by trumpets, which were clearly heard by the Romanian troops opposite.
At Sixth Army headquarters, the telephone rang again. Wasting few words, Stock told Captain Behr, who answered it, that trumpet calls had signalled the start of a massive bombardment. ‘I have the impression that the Romanians will not be able to resist, but I will keep you informed.’ Behr did not hesitate to wake General Schmidt this time.
On the two main sectors chosen for the offensive from the north, some 3,500 guns and heavy mortars had been concentrated to blast a route for a dozen infantry divisions, three tank corps and two cavalry corps. The first salvos sounded like sudden thunderclaps in the still air. Shooting into a haze which was impenetrable to their forward observation officers, the artillery and Katyusha batteries were unable to make any corrections, but having ranged in a few days earlier, their fire remained accurate.
The ground began shaking as if from a low-intensity earthquake. The ice in puddles cracked like old mirrors. The bombardment was so intense that thirty miles to the south, medical officers in the 22nd Panzer Division were woken from a heavy sleep, ‘because the ground trembled’. They did not wait for orders. ‘The situation was clear.’ They loaded up their vehicles ready to head for the front.
Russian soldiers on the Don and Stalingrad Fronts also heard the distant rumble of artillery and asked their officers what was happening. Commanders had to reply: ‘I don’t know.’ The obsession with secrecy was so great that no announcement was made until the outcome of the battle was well and truly decided. Most, of course, guessed, and could hardly contain their excitement. Stalin, in his speech twelve days before on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Revolution, had made a broad hint about a great counter-attack, with the words, ‘there will be a holiday in our street too’.
After one hour, Soviet rifle divisions, unsupported by tanks, advanced. The guns and Katyusha batteries, still shooting blind, increased their range to take on the Romanian second line and artillery. The ill-equipped Romanian infantry, although shaken by the heavy bombardment, straightened up in their trenches, and fought back bravely. ‘The attack was repulsed,’ reported a German officer with the 13th Romanian Infantry Division. A second assault, this time supported by tanks, was also beaten off. Eventually, after another round of shelling, the Soviet guns abruptly ceased shooting. The mist seemed to make the silence deeper. Then, the Romanians heard the sound of tank engines.
The massive artillery preparation, which had churned up the snow and mud of no man’s land, did not improve the going for the T-34s. It had also concealed the routes through the minefields. The sappers carried on the back of the second or third tank, ready in case the lead vehicle hit a mine, soon had to respond to the order ‘Sappers, jump off!’ Under fire from the Romanian infantry, they ran forward to clear a fresh route.
The Romanian soldiers stood up bravely to several more waves of Soviet infantry, and managed to knock out a number of tanks, but without enough anti-tank weapons, they were doomed. Several groups of tanks broke through, then attacked sideways. Unable to waste further time with infantry attacks, the Soviet generals sent their armoured formations straight at the Romanian lines en masse, and the main breakthroughs came around midday. The 4th Tank Corps and the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps smashed through the Romanian IV Corps on the Kletskaya sector, and headed south. The Soviet cavalrymen, with sub-machine-guns slung across their backs, cantered on their shaggy little cossack ponies over the snow-covered landscape almost as fast as the tanks. The T-34s, with their turrets hunched forward on their hulls, looked equally impatient to be at the enemy.