Hitler’s order was inscribed and circulated to all ranking officers, so there would be no uncertainty as to his wishes for the coming months.
1) The redistribution of forces involving the movement of fresh Infantry Divisions East of the Don will be carried out no later than 15 NOV 42, and involve the transfer of the following units to constitute the new Army of the Volga. General Hansen of the 11th Army HQ will assume overall command of the following forces:
2) Infantry Divisions: 24, 75, 87, 102, 129, 170, 294, 305 and 336
3) 3rd Motorized Infantry Division will constitute the reserve.
4) The above forces will cooperate with units of the 4th and 5th Orenburg Armies to invest and reduce Volgograd no later than 1 JAN 43.
5) Concurrent with this deployment, all elements of Steiner’s SS Panzer Korps presently east of the Don, with the exception of the Brandenburg Division, will be withdrawn west of the Don and remain under overall command of the Army Group Don. This Korps will now be composed of the following units: 1SS Leibstandarte, 2SS Das Reich, 3SS Totenkopf, 5SS Wiking.
6) Division Grossdeutschland will also be withdrawn into Army Group Don Reserve and rebuild as a full strength Panzer Division.
7) Division Brandenburg, presently structured as a Panzer Division, will remain East of the Don as an independent formation, and reorganize to the structure of a heavy Motorized Infantry Division. As such, the Panzer Regiment of the division and mechanized transport will be relinquished to Army Group Don Reserve, and the division will reform with four Motorized Infantry regiments, the last to arrive from Germany no later than 18 NOV 42. The addition of Specialized Assault Pioneers and Assault Gun Battalions will compensate for the loss of the Panzer Regiment. Division Brandenburg is to be the leading assault element for operations against Volgograd.
8) After securing the line of the Don itself, Army Group Don under General Manstein is to crush enemy resistance in the Donets Basin no later than 1 JAN 43, and prepare the Army for further offensives aimed at occupying the Kuban as part of the overall Spring Offensive.
9) Armeegruppe Center will temporarily suspend operations for the winter and detach 3rd and 4th Panzer Armees to the vicinity of Minsk to refit and prepare for the future operation against Leningrad.
Instructions for Intensified Action Against Banditry in the East will follow in Part II of this Directive.
All things considered, it was a more reasonable order than Manstein had feared. He would get his wish to withdraw Steiner’s Korps back under his overall command west of the Don, and Steiner’s failed promise to deliver the city was overlooked, if not forgotten by an increasingly brooding Führer. He would also see the fruitless drive into the hinterlands east of Voronezh halted, and plans being laid for what must surely be the coup de grace, the drive on Leningrad. Yet the onerous tasks ahead were the necessity of occupying the Donets Basin and Kuban, and Hitler would refuse to entertain any further discussion concerning Volgograd. He simply wanted the city taken, block by block.
The most interesting feature of this order was the complete restructuring of the Brandenburg Division, making it into a “square” Motorized Infantry Division with four regiments, which was the structure it had actually assumed in Fedorov’s history. To do so it was heavily reinforced with new forces raised in Germany, including a roundup of already existing commando units under overall control of the Abwehr. Each of the four regiments would include one full battalion of specialists in, demolitions, infiltration, and urban warfare. A call went out to all units in the Army to forward the names of suitable candidates to OKW.
Manstein made good use of the tanks received through the dissolution of the Brandenburg Panzer Regiment, using them to flesh out depleted companies in the other SS divisions. And all the mechanized transport, largely Spw-251 halftracks, mobile flak, Marders, and other AFVs that had lifted the two former Panzergrenadier Regiments in the division, were also used to restore lost or damaged vehicles in the other SS units. There were plenty of trucks to repay the Brandenburgers and keep them mobile, and plenty of towed guns to deliver, but the Panzergrenadiers in Steiner’s Korps needed those halftracks. The facelift, carried out with lightning speed and given the highest possible priority, would see Brandenburg Division soon brought up to strength for the task ahead.
Of the nine regular infantry Divisions assigned to the Army of the Volga, the 75th, 87th, 102nd and 129th were already east of the Don holding positions along the river itself and the aqueduct. In the next two weeks, as the remaining units arrived to relieve Steiner’s SS Korps, Manstein continued his offensive north from Kalach against the Soviet 24th Army, his objective being to clear the west bank of the Don and by so doing relieve both the 102nd and 129th Divisions of that defensive duty, making them available as reserve units for the city fight.
The 305th, 336th and 294th were the first three units sent over the bridge at Kalach, taking up positions held by the Wiking Division and Grossdeutschland Division nearest to Volkov’s 4th Army in the south. The Brandenburgers remained opposite the main city center, and the 24th, 294th and eventually the 170th moved to the north, relieving both 1st and 2nd SS. They were joined near the Volga Bridge by Volkov’s 11th Guards.
Hitler’s wish for specialized engineers was also taken to heart, and fresh units were combed from other Army Korps to constitute new Assault Pioneer Battalions. Instead of tanks, all the assault gun units that had been in the SS Korps, and all its special engineering units and heavy artillery, remained behind when Steiner departed. So the redistribution of forces created a leaner, infantry heavy force to reduce the city, and moved all the superb mobile divisions out of that meat grinder to the open steppe country where they could now ply their deadly craft of the mobile art of war.
Nothing further was discussed about Leningrad, though Hitler took all that Manstein had said to heart, and began ruminating inwardly on the battle ahead for the coming spring. If the fall of Volgograd and the capture of Rostov and the Donets Basin did not force the Russians to capitulate by January 1st, he had every intention of taking Manstein’s advice to heart, and quietly instructed Halder to begin a transfer of panzer units from the vicinity of Voronezh to a central reserve north of Minsk as he had specified in number 9 of his order. The German Army would not sit idle during the long winter ahead. They would take this time to rebuild, redeploy, and to guard against possible enemy counteroffensives, as Manstein had warned.
On the Soviet Side, Chuikov took advantage of the major shift in the enemy camp, using the time to raise more recruits from the remnants of the city’s able bodied population. Even women and girls were conscripted, trained in the use of AA guns and sent to crew batteries all along the Volga near the key ferry sites. While nothing was getting in via the river any longer, the Soviets still had a large bridgehead on Sarpinsky Island, and complete control of the significant mass of Denezhny Island. Their advantage in gunboat flotillas made them masters of the river in and around those islands, though the boats would mainly patrol at night to avoid enemy shore batteries.
Though the city itself was bruised and bombed, its four factories continued to work, including one that was not present in Fedorov’s history, the Steel Foundry in the heart of Novo Kirovka. The Russians were still building guns, producing ammunition, and even constructing tanks, though the output was small from the Tractor Factory. Chuikov would not receive any more reinforcements from the outside either, though Zhukov was quietly moving in divisions to shore up the aqueduct line, which now included the 99th, 116th and 332nd Rifle Divisions, and the newly arrived 284th “Tomsk” Division sent by Karpov. To these he added one newly reformed Tank Corps, the 13th.