West of the Don, the withdrawal of 1st Tank Army, and Volsky’s 4th Mech Corps, put an end to the Operation Saturn. A master of the indirect approach, Manstein’s move into the gap north of Surovinko compelled Zhukov to move those forces. A lesser General might have left them near Morozovsk, but this was something Zhukov could not afford to do. The Shock Armies held their positions until Manstein began to press them. In the face of any determined German thrust, they had orders to withdraw in as good order as possible. The premature offensives had done much to delay the fall of Volgograd, but they had not been able to hold the hard won ground they earned, nor could they stop Manstein from methodically moving in the railroad crews to make good all they had spoiled on the lines leading east over the Don.
Yet after losing 2nd Guards Rifle Corps, half of 9th Corps, and both 24th and 25th Tank Corps, Zhukov wanted to keep all his remaining mobile forces in reserve. Somewhere, somehow, he still had to mount a winter offensive in 1942. The previous year it had come late, but achieved good results. This year it would be late as well. It would come, as Manstein had predicted, from the fattened units that had been on the lines west of Moscow, and its object was the capture of Smolensk.
Yet forewarned is forearmed. Halder had agreed with Manstein’s assessment concerning Smolensk, and so he moved most of Hoth’s Panzer Army west from Voronezh to stand in reserve there. They would be instrumental in frustrating Zhukov’s attack, a fast moving mobile reserve that was still in good enough shape to do the job. After that battle, he would then move Hoth to a position north of Minsk, and those divisions would go into static mode as they began to refit and replace old equipment. His staff was already working on the plans for Operation Untergang—the ‘Downfall’ planned for the final blow against the Soviet Union in 1943.
The Germans helped him in this planning by suspending most offensive operations through the early weeks of November. 2nd Panzer Armee under Model stopped at Anna, about 100 kilometers east of Voronezh. Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Armee would never come to its support now. In those two weeks of November, the Germans instead focused on reducing the Voronezh Pocket, which put an end to 14 more Soviet divisions. Then, rather than leaving a big bulge in the line that would point 2nd Panzer Armee nowhere, the Germans pulled back to the line of the Don in the Voronezh sector, and Model’s 2nd Panzer Army began to refit for the Spring.
The German Army of the Volga would not be fully supplied until December 1st, but the redistribution of divisions specified by Führer Directive 46 would be completed on schedule. It meant that Halder had to reluctantly give up precious infantry, but Hitler promised him that many more divisions were being raised to make up for the transfer orders.
The war was now going to move off in another dangerous direction, and it remained to be seen as to whether the Soviet Union could survive the loss of the Donets, and then the Kuban, if Manstein could work his will to carry out Hitler’s orders in the south. In the meantime, the specialists and pioneers began slipping potato masher grenades into their belt lines and shouldering their demolitions and flame throwers. The battle for the city of Volgograd was only just beginning.
Chapter 29
On the night of November 15th, even while the division itself was still reorganizing, the first assault groups of the Brandenburg Division began to slip forward over the ground that had been won and held by Grossdeutschland Division. Now the emblem of the ghostly mask and sword of steel would try the Soviet defense on the northern fringe of Novo Kirovka. The Russian Special Worker Brigade 160 had been moved up to infiltrate back into that area, and their 1st Battalion suddenly found itself surrounded on three sides as the expert commando teams poured out of the cemeteries where Hörnlein’s men had fought like the spirits of the fallen. They moved with great stealth, infiltrating silently through the suburbs.
The leading elements of the 1st Brandenburg Regiment continued on through the city, penetrating largely unchallenged all the way to a wide open area known as Resurrection Plaza, very near the main road and rail line leading north into Central Volgograd. Their presence there wasn’t discovered until about 2 AM, when artillery fire began to drop sporadically on the plaza itself.
Guriev’s 39th Guards had set up headquarters in the Univermag Department store, a major supply depot for Chuikov’s army. He had positioned his three battalions there, at the Nail Factory, and at the Gorki Theater. Now those last two were ordered to move over the partially frozen stream that separated Central Volgograd from the neighborhoods to the south.
2nd Brandenburg Regiment had been posted at the Hospital Hörnlein had taken, and its spirits arose from the small adjoining cemetery. The Russians had reoccupied some of the ground in the city Hörnlein had fought for, and now their lines were two kilometers west of the Nail Factory and the small 1st of May Plaza. That salient had been too deep to hold during the German reorganization, but now 2nd Regiment came to reclaim it. They found a very solid defense there, including tanks from the 56th Tank Brigade, and had to radio Division HQ to request Marders and Sturmgeschutz support.
3rd Regiment came out of the hard won Army Barracks near the Kirov Airfield where so many men of the Russian 196th Rifle Division had fought and died two weeks earlier. They pushed east towards the settlement of Mamayev, about five kilometers from the famous hill it was named after. No artillery prep was made for any of these attacks, and fires were held until the Brandenburg commando teams had achieved maximum infiltration, and identified targets to be shelled. Then the boom of artillery fire to the north resounded over the stillness of the city, a diversionary attack that had been planned by the newly arrived 24th Infantry Division. The 72nd Division that had relieved Leibstandarte also renewed the attack against the Samara Rifles, and those were the only actions authorized that night. The big push was scheduled to jump off at dawn, with every division on the line planning a series of blows designed to place the enemy defenses under maximum strain.
As the cold skies began to lighten, there came a roar of many guns opening fire in the north. Most were Volkov’s heavy shore batteries, now beginning to pound Rynok, where the 2nd Volga Rifles was still stubbornly defending. Three more battalions of the 11th Guards moved over the Volga Bridge and now Volkov’s best troops threw themselves at the balka just north of Spartanovka, where the stolid Soviet 13th Guards would meet them man to man.
West of that position near the river, most of the assault pioneers and heavy Sturmgeschutz companies left behind by Steiner were now massed in one great shock group. They pushed to break through the lines of the Samara Rifles, backed by the whoosh of Nebelwerfers and the pounding explosions from those 150mm rockets. Even the newly arrived 170th Division that had relieved Das Reich got into the act, making a concerted attack on the Big Mushroom position. It had been probed the previous night, but the leading German companies had been thrown back by shock groups of Soviet SMG troops. Now the Germans came for the Mushroom with a much heavier attack, two full battalions reinforced by a company of the division pioneers.