“Yes,” said Kirov sullenly. “I’m sure the Führer was delighted, particularly since his Generals also handed him Kursk and Kirov today. Damn! It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We should be stronger! Where are all our tank armies?”
Berzin stepped forward, nudging Kirov’s elbow, for Kirov’s remarks were opening a door that Zhukov had never walked through. The knowledge of what had happened in this war once before was still a closely guarded secret. Even though the old “Red Archives” had been deliberately burned by Berzin in those last hectic moments in Moscow, he had managed to save one book. Over many long nights since that time, both he and Sergei Kirov had poured over it like two high priests over a bible, until the pages were worn at the edges with their heavy use. And they could recite passages from that book as if they were scripture: Stalingrad, Chapter 7, verses 10 through 15. But it wasn’t happening that way this time, and they both seemed powerless to force the lines of battle into the shape they once assumed.
The Soviet Union was not producing anywhere near what it did in the old history. Oil was found in Siberia, but drilling was a slow and awkward process, delivery even slower. Factories had been relocated, but their output was sluggish. Now, to make matters even worse, the convoys had stopped coming to Murmansk and Archangelsk. PQ-17 had been slaughtered by the wolves of the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. The damage was so heavy that Britain cancelled the convoys for the foreseeable future. Kirov was promised that they would resume, and also promised that a Second Front would open soon, but not where he had hoped. It would come in North Africa, and not France—not this year or possibly even next year.
Those were verses Kirov and Berzin could also read of in their bible. They knew of Operation Torch, but wondered if it could succeed this time around. And yet, that history, the foreknowledge of what might come, was as much a mockery as a balm to them in these hours. There they could read of victories that could not yet be grasped, of massive tank armies sweeping over the steppes, but they were nowhere to be found.
At times Berzin marveled that Zhukov would conceive of the very same strategies and planned attacks that he had devised in the history. He was even calling them by the same names, operations named for the planets circling in their dark, cold orbits above—Mars, Uranus, Saturn. The plan that had been the undoing of the German attack on Stalingrad, Operation Uranus, was slowly taking shape now on the line of the northern Don. Yet there would be no southern pincer this time. All the ground that had been used to stage and build the armies in the south was now occupied by Volkov’s troops.
Now Zhukov was calling his new version of the plan Operation Mars. His war gods were lining up on the Don, gathering their strength each day in the slow process of rebuilding and delivery, and he hoped to unleash them in one mighty blow that would reach all the way to the lower Don, destroying anything in his path.
It was an agony of one kind for Kirov and Berzin to listen to him expound his plans. They could see what was done in the history, and see how it could not be done now, and that difference scalded their souls.
“He’s calling it Mars this time,” said Berzin when Zhukov had left them. “That was the big operation he planned around Rzhev where our losses were so heavy they would not be officially acknowledged for years.”
“Yes,” said Kirov, “the Rzhev Meat Grinder. It never happened, and thank god for that. Strange that he chose that name instead of Uranus as he did in the material. If we do launch the attack soon, let us hope it does not bear the curse of Zhukov’s old Operation Mars.”
On the 22nd of July, Zukov decided to act. The Germans already had a reinforced division over the Don at Kalach, but the local commander, Chiukov, had reacted by moving in some of his toughest infantry, the Volga Guards Rifle Corps. These hardened troops dug in and refused to move, in spite of every attack the Germans put against them.
In truth, Steiner’s divisions were now at the end of a very long logistics chain. They had come over 200 miles from their first assembly point at Kantirmirovka, and over terrain that had very poor roads along the line of their advance. The only rail line that directly served their present position ran southwest along the Chir River, through Morozovsk to reach the Donets at Belaya Kalivta before continuing west into the big industrial mining hub of the Donets Basin. This line was torn to shreds, and could not be used. The Germans were still fighting to seize its vital hubs and connection points, all on the south bank of the Donets.
Another line ran north to south, coming down from the German rail hub at Kantirmirovka through Millerovo where it split, with one line running southwest to Voroshilovgorad, and the second due south to Kamensk Shaktilinskiy on the Donets, and then into the basin again. So that meant Millerovo was now the closest rail hub the Germans would have in their effort to take Volgograd, and that was all of 150 miles behind the fighting.
Fuel stocks were running low in Steiner’s Korps, and ammunition was at a premium, with some units down below 30% of standard issue. The one good thing that had happened was the arrival of fresh infantry, which did much to aid the SS in eliminating the two stubborn Soviet Mountain Divisions that had been defending the western bank of the crossing at Kalach. Those divisions were broken, and the Germans pushed across, only to run into Chiukov’s Volga Rifles. Then, with his front line units in the Don bridgeheads reporting they were now at 100% supply status, Zhukov decided to spring a surprise attack. It was a long time until the first snows of Winter, and he knew he could not simply sit there, particularly with all that was happening in the center of the line as the Germans drove on Lipetsk.
At 04:00 he sent in the first waves of riflemen from 61st and 66th Rifle Corps. They had scouted out a weak point in the German line where the 530th Regiment of the German 299th Infantry Division had only just arrived, with no supporting units on either side for over five kilometers. 4th Mech and 7th Tank Corps were right behind them, ready to surge against the line at a point some 30 kilometers west of the Don.
Zhukov’s plan was to launch a series of attacks against that flank, like successive hammer blows all along the line. This first attack was Gerasimenko’s 21st Army, now heavily reinforced with the addition of two more mobile corps, the 1st Guard Tank, and 25th Tank Corps. Next up the line on their right were the 3rd and 4th Shock Armies in the Serafimovich bridgehead, with the 2nd Shock Army further west near Veshenskaya. This was the main attack, where Zhukov hoped the combined mass of all three armies would overwhelm the German infantry screen and punch through for rapid movement to the south.
Next came Lukin’s 58th Army, which was to put in a pinning attack near Kazanskaya. Then, at Boguchar, Cherivichenko would throw his 9th Army against the line, hoping to reach Kantirmirovka and cut the rail line south into Millerovo. Even as far away as Rossosh, over 200 miles from that opening attack near the Don, all the units were to at least begin a masking barrage of artillery, hoping to convince the Germans that a big push was imminent there as well.
The last force of note in his larders was the powerful 2nd Guards Army on the line at Chernvanka, about 60 kilometers north of Valuki. That was another key rail hub for the Germans, and though he did not think this single army could go that distance alone, he told it to try. The threat itself would be likely to pull in German reserves that might otherwise move east. Then, for good measure, he ordered a counterattack at Kursk to contest the Germans there. If nothing else, it would put a new headline in the papers, both east and west.