ARMY HISTORICAL SERIES 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD: 

DECISION IN THE EAST 

by 

Earl F Ziemke 

arul 

Magna E. Bauer 

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY 

UNITED STATES ARMY 

WASHINGTON, D.C. , 1987 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Ziemke, £arl Frederick, 1922-

Moscow to Sta lingrad . 

(Army historical series) 

Bibliography: p. 

Includes index. 

Supl. of Docs. no.: 0 114. 19:M85 

I. World War, 1939- 1945-Campaigns-Soviet Union . 2. Soviet Union -

History- 1939- 1945. l. Baller, Magna E., 1902- 198 1. 11. Center of Military 

History. III. Title. IV. Series. 

D764.Z4927 1986 940.54'2 1 86-600063 

CM H Pub 30-12 

First Printing 

For sale by the Superintendem of Documems, U.S. Government I)rinting Office 

Wash ington, D.C. 20402 
ARMY HISTORICAL SERIES 

David F. Trask, General Editor 

Advisory Committee 

(As of I July 1985) 

Charles P. Roland 

University of Kentucky 

Roger A. Beaumont 

Texas A&M University 

Lt. Col. Robert A. Doughty 

U.S. Military Academy 

Col. Louis D.G. Frasche 

U.S. Army Command and General 

Starr College 

John H. Hatcher 

The Adjutant General Center 

L. Eugene Hedberg 

American Enterprise Institute 

for Public Research 

Maj. Gen. Edward J. Huycke 

Deputy Surgeon General, USA 

Archer Jones 

North Dakota State 

University 

Maj. Gen. Carl H. McNair, Jr. 

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine 

Command 

Jamie W. Moore 

The Citadel 

James O'Neill 

National Ardlives and Records 

Administration 

Brig. Gen . Richard L. Reynard 

U.S. Army War College 

Donald W. Smythe, S.J. 

John Carroll 

Un iversity 

U.S . Army Center oj Military History 

Brig. Gen . William A. Stoffl, Chief of Military History 

Chier Historian 

Chief, Histories Division 

Editor in Chief 

III 

David Ii-ask 

LL. Col. Richard O. Perry 

John Eisberg 

Foreword 

Moscow 10 Stalingmd: Decision in the East is the second to be completed in 

a projected three-volume history of the German-Soviet conflict in World 

War II. The first, Stalingmd 10 Berlin: The German Defeat in the East, covered 

the Soviet Army's liberation of its own territory and its drive across central 

and southeastern Europe. In the present volume, the German and Soviet 

forces initially confront each other on the approaches to Moscow, 

Leningrad, and Rostov in the late-1941 battles that produced ti,e first 

major German setbacks of the war and gave the Soviet troops their first 

tastes of success. Later, the pendulum swings to the Germans' side, and 

their armies race across the Ukraine and into the Caucasus during the 

summer of 1942. In the course of a year, the Soviet Command goes from 

offensive to defensive and, finally, at Stalingrad, decisively to the offensive-meanwhile, frequently in desperate circumstances, building the 

strength and proficiency mat will enable it to mount the relentless thrusts 

of the succeeding yea rs. 

In tracing the shifting Soviet and German fortunes, the autilOr has 

had full access to the German military records, most of which fell into 

American and British hands. He has also made extensive lise of the Soviet 

war histories, memoirs, and periodical literature. The resu lt is both a 

panorama of battles, among tI,em some of the greatest in the history of 

warfare, and an inquiry into the forces in war that shape and test the 

military power of nations. 

Washington D.C. 

I September 1985 

v 

WILLIAM A. STOH r 

Brigad ier General, USA 

Chief of Military History 
The Authors 

Earl F. Ziemke is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin , whe re he 

received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history. In World War II he served 

with the U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater. In 1951, he joined the 

staff of the Bureau of Applied Social Resea rch, Columbia University. 

From 1955 to 1967 he was a historian and supervisory historian with the 

Office of the Chief of Military History (now the Center of Military 

History), and since 1967 he has been a resea rch professor of history at the 

University of Georgia. 

Dr. Ziemke is the author of The German Northern Theater oj Operations, 

/ 940-/ 945; Stalingmd to Berlin: The GemlGn DeJeat in the East; and The U.S. 

Army in the Ocmpation oj Gennany, 1944-/ 946. He is a contributor to 

Command Decisions; A Concise History oj World War II; Soviet Partisans in 

World War If; New Dimensions in Military HistDly; U.S. Occupation in Euro/)e 

After World War If; Strategic Military Decet)tion; and Americans as Proconsuls: 

United States Militmy Government in Gennony and j apan. 

Magna E. Bauer was a member of the staff of the U.S. Army Cemer of 

Military History from 1947 until her retirement in 1970. Educated in 

Ital y, Germany, and the United States, Mrs. Bauer was proficient in 

German, Ita lian, French, and English. During he r tenure with the center, 

she did research studies and translations fo r several volumes in the 

cemer's World War II series. These included: Forrest C. Pogue, The 

Suprellle Com.mand; Hugh M. Cole, Th e A rdel111es: BaUle of the Bulge; Alben 

N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Su:mmder of Italy; 

and Charl es B. MacDonald, The Last OJJensive. Mrs. Bauer also taught 

Italian and German at the U.S. Depanmelll of Agriculture Graduate 

Schonl from 194 3 to 1980. Mrs. Bauer died in December 1981. 

VI 
Preface 

During 1942, the Axis advance reached its high tide on all fronts and 

began to ebb. Nowhere was this more true than on the Eastern Front in 

the Soviet Union. After receiving a disastrous setback on the approaches 

to Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942, the German armies recovered 

sufficiently to embark on a sweeping summer offensive that carried them 

to the Volga River at Stalingrad and deep into the Caucasus Mountains. 

The Soviet armies suffered severe defeats in the spring and summer of 

1942 but recovered to stop the German advances in October and encircle 

and begin the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalin grad in 

November and December. This volume describes the course of events 

from the Soviet December 1941 counteroffensive at Moscow to the 

Stalingrad offensive in late 1942 with particular attention to the interval 

from January through October 1942, which has been regarded as a hiatus 

between the two major battles but which in actuality constituted the 

period in which the German fortunes slid into irreversible decline and the 

Soviet forces acquired the means and capabilities that eventually brought 

them victory. These were the months of decision in the East. 

In the nearly two decades since Stalinf51·ad to Berlin: The German Defeat 

in the East was published, much new information has become available. 

When Stalingrad to Berlin was written, the cloak of secrecy had barely been 

raised on the Soviet side of the war. Since then, Soviet war histories, 

memoirs, and articles have come in a flood; consequently, the author has 

treated the Soviet aspect of the war somewhat differently in Moscow to 

Stalingrad than in Stalingrad to Berlin. Where contradictions or discrepancies occur, the present volume can be assumed to be the more nearly 

correct. It would, in fact, have been easily possible to have written Moscow 

to Sialingrad predominantly from Soviet sources. The author elected not 

to do so for two reasons: the active impetus in the operations was German 

during most of the period and the German military records constitute a 

reasonably complete and reliable body of direct evidence while political 

doctrine and policy color and limit the Soviet depiction of the war. The 

Soviet war history has, moreover, undergone two general revisions, and 

there could still be others to come. 

The reader may find a few explanatory remarks helpful. The order in 

which the volumes are appearing has necessitated a fairly comprehensive 

introduction. Military ranks above that of colonel are given in the Russian 

and the German forms because translation or conversion into U.S. 

equiva lents would have engendered in consistencies. Appendix A 

VII 
provides a table of equivalent ranks-and demonstrates the problem. To 

keep them readily distinguishable from one another, German unit names 

are set in roman and Soviet in italic type. Diacritical marks to indicate 

hard and soft signs have been omitted in the transliterations from the 

Russian, which otherwise follow the U.S. Board on Geographic Names 

system. The maps are based on the 1:1,000,000 German Army High 

Command Lage Ost (Situation East) maps corrected , with respect to Soviet 

deployments, from the Soviet official histories. 

The author is indebted to Professor Gerhard L. Weinberg, Dr. William 

J. Spahr, and Professor Bruce W. Menning, who took time from other 

pursuits to read and comment on the manuscript and who contributed 

insights from their extensive knowledge of German and Russian history. 

He is likewise grateful to his former colleagues at the Center of Military 

History, Dr. Maurice Matloff, Mr. George W. Garand, Mr. Charles V. P. 

von Luttichau , and Col. William E Strobridge, for their advice on the 

manuscript and for their help and counsel over the years. 

Members of the Editorial and Graphic Arts Branches in the Center of 

Military History carried the main burden of converting the manuscript 

into a book. Mrs. SaraJ. Heynen was the substantive editor. Mr. Lenwood 

Y. Brown was the copy editor, and Mrs. Joycelyn M. Canery assisted in the 

copyediting. Mr. Roger D. Clinton and Mr. Arthur S. Hardyman prepared the maps and photographs, and Sp 6e. Marshall Williams designed 

and executed the cover for the paperback edition. The author hopes that 

his work may prove worthy of' their efforts. 

Possible errors and omissions can only be attributed to the author's 

fa ilure to profit from the assistance available to him. 

Athens, Georgia EARL F. ZlEM KE 

I September 1985 

VIII 
Contents 

Chat)ter 

I. "THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 

The Dej)ioymenLs 

German Strateg)' 

Soviet Prej}(lredness 

II. THE BLITZKRIEG 

Barbarossa 

TaiJun 

Ill. TO MOSCOW 

On the Defensive in the H(!{lrtland 

The Tu mabo'll t . 

IV. THE COUNTEROFFE NS IVE: FIRST PHASE 

Hitler on the DeJensive 

Th.e Fuehrer Tahes Command 

V. THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 

Roles Reversed . . . . 

On the Flan"s. . 

The Question oj a Retreat 

VI. CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA 

SevastolJOI . . . . . . 

Kerch and FeodosiYG . . 

The Trap Does Not Close 

VII. HITLER AND STALIN 

Hitler Orders a Retreat . 

Stalin Projects a General Offensive 

VIII. THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

On the North Flank 

On the South Flank 

In the Center . 

IX. THE CLI NCH 

The Front. Feb11lary 1942 

Army croul) Center 

Arm)' Gr01l1) North. . 

IX 

Page 

3 

3 

13 

15 

25 

25 

34 

47 

47 

55 

69 

69 

80 

88 

88 

92 

100 

105 

105 

108 

115 

118 

118 

134 

143 

143 

155 

161 

173 

173 

178 

186 
Chapte!' 

X. THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

The PaTtisan Movement, Beginnings 

The Underground . . . . . . . 

GeTman Rear A'rea Security . 

The Partisan Movement Established 

XI. THE NORTHERN THEATER . 

CobelligeTents and BTOthers-in-Arm.s . 

A Thrust to Belomorsk 

The Soviet Spring Offensive . . . . 

The Arctic COnVO)IS 

XII. ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 

Stalin's Bid Jor the Initiative 

Army Group Center's Second Front 

Dem)'ansk and the \1olklwv Pocket. 

XIII. ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

Kerch Resolved 

The Izywn Bu I ge 

XlV. A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

Hitler's Strateg)1 

German Strategic Estimates 

Soviet Strategy 

Xv. PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

Preliminary Operations 

Deployment Jor BLAU 

Soviel Deplo)l11lent . 

0" tlze Eve . . . . 

XVI. OPERATION BLAU 

"The Enem)' Is Defeated" 

A Strategic Retreat. . 

XVI[. HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

"A Certain Crisis" 

Directive 45-0rde,. No. 227 

XVIII. OPERATION EDELWEISS 

The Kuban and lhe Caucasus 

Tuapse and the Taek . 

XIX. FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA. 

No Enemy West oj Stahngrad 

Confrontation. . . 

x 

Page 

199 

199 

206 

207 

209 

220 

220 

224 

226 

233 

238 

238 

240 

254 

261 

261 

269 

283 

283 

293 

299 

309 

309 

321 

325 

327 

333 

333 

340 

349 

349 

358 

366 

366 

373 

382 

382 

388 
Chapler 

XX. SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS. 

On the iWOSCOW Axis . 

Leningrad a.nd Dem),ansk . . . 

The Far Norlh 

XXI. THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

Dll ty and Country . . 

COll"teroJJensive Plans 

"This Year's Campaign Has Been Concluded" . 

The Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . 

A Winler OJJellsive - Where ? 

XXII. THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

The Baule all. Ihe Volga . 

Sixth Army Encircled _ . 

X)(!]1. STALINGRAD, FINALE 

The Relief ... 

Sixth Army Isolated 

Sixth Army Destroyed 

XXIV. CONCLUSION ... 

AI)/)fIl(lix 

"The Beginning of the Road" 

The Transitions 

The Decision . . . . 

A. TABLE OF EQUIVALENT RANKS 

B. COMPARATIVE SIZES OF MAJOR COMMANDS 

NOTE ON SOURCES 

GLOSSARY. 

CODE NAMES 

INDEX 

Maps 

No. 

I. German-Soviet Frontier, 22 June 194 1 

2. The German Advance, 22June-12 November 1941 

3. Army Group Center, 15 November-5 December J 941 

4. Army Group South, 28 November-3 December 1941 

5. Army Group Nonh, I December 194 1 

XI 

Page 

398 

398 

408 

423 

432 

432 

441 

447 

451 

454 

458 

458 

468 

478 

478 

483 

492 

503 

503 

506 

512 

5 17 

518 

519 

53 1 

534 

537 

Page 

6 

26 

38 

56 

58 
No . Page 

6. T he Moscow Counteroffensive, Phase I, 6- 15 December 194 1. 72 

7. The Moscow Counteroffensive, Phase 11 , 16 December 194 1-

I J anuary 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 

8. Soviet Kerch Offensive, 16 Decembe r 194 1- 18 J anuary 1942 107 

9. T he Fanatical Resistance, 1- 14January 1942 . . . . . 121 

10. The Soviet General Offensive, North Flank, 6 J anuary22 February 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 

II . T he Soviet General Offensive, South Flank, 16 J anuaryI February 1942 .. .............. 157 

12. The Ge neral Offe nsive, Army Group Center, 24 J a nuary18 February 1942 . . . . . . . . . 162 

13. Army Group Center, 18 February-20 April 1942 174 

14. Army Group North , 20 February-8 May 1942 187 

15. Partisa n Areas, April 1942 . . . . . . . . . 211 

16. Northern Theater, Winter 1942 . . . . . . . 22 1 

17. T he Kestenga- Loukhi Sector, April- May 1942 227 

18. The Zapadnaya Litsa Front, 27 April- 14 May 1942 230 

19. O peration HANNo\·ER, 24 May-2 1 June 1942 243 

20. O peration SEYDLlTZ, 2- 12July 1942 . . . 249 

2 1. O peration VOGELSANG, 6 June --I July 1942 . 253 

22. T he Reconquest of Kerch, 8-19 May 1942 . 263 

23. T he Soviet Offensive, Kh arkov, 12- 19 May 1942 274 

24. T he Ge rman Counteroffensive, Kharkov, 17-28 May 1942 277 

25. Plan for Summer Offensive, Army Group So uth, 19 February 

1942 .. .. .. ....... .... 288 

26. Summer Campaign Projected in Directive 4 1, 5 April 1942 289 

27. T he Battle fo r Sevastopol, 7 June-4 July 1942 313 

28. O peration WI LHELM, 10- 15 June 1942 . . . . . . . 3 15 

29. Operation FRIDERICUS II, 22-25 June 1942 . . . . . 3 17 

30. O peration BLAu-BRAUNSCHWElG, 28 June- I I Jul y 1942 335 

3 1. Operation BLAc-BR., cNSCHWElG, 14-3 1 Jul), 1942 . . 350 

32. O peration EDELWEISS. 31 Jul),-IO October 1942 . . . 368 

33. T he Adva nce to Stalingrad , 3 1 J ul),-3 Se ptember 1942 . 383 

34. Sta li ngrad , 8 September-6 October 1942 . . . . . . . 389 

35. Soviet Attacks, Rzhev and Vorya River Areas, 30 Jul),-

23 Septem ber 1942 .... 399 

36. O peration WI RBELII'IND, 11 - 24 August 1942. . . . . 401 

37. Army Group North,July-August 1942 . . . . 4 10 

38. T he MGA Bottleneck, 27 August-25 Se ptember 1942 4 17 

39. Operalions SC HLl NG PFLANZE and \OVI NKELR IED, 27 Seplembe r9 October 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 

40. T he Nalchik Operation, 25 October- 9 November 1942 453 

41. Sta lingrad-North , 13 October- 19 November 1942 461 

42. O peration URANUS, 19-23 November 1942 . . . . . . 469 

XII 
No. 

43. MALVY SATURN, 16 December 1942- 19 J anuary 1943 

44. Operation KOLrso, 10 January-2 February 1943 

Illustrations 

Page 

487 

498 

PlIgt! 

The German Field Artillery Moves Out . 5 

Marshal S. K. Timoshenko . . . . . . 9 

G. K. Zhukov . . . . . . 9 

Captured Soviet Troops March Past a Peasant Village 27 

SS-Men Cross the Beresina River Alongside a Wrecked Bridge 31 

Crew of 88-mm. Gun Searches for Targets on the Approach 

to Kiev . . . . . .. .... . ........ 35 

Women Fire Fighters Keep Lookout Over the Rooftops 

of Leningrad . . . . . . . . . . . 36 

Moving Supplies in the Rainy Season ........ 41 

KV Tank Headed for the Front Rumbles Through Pushkin Square, 

Moscow. . . . . . . . . . . . 48 

Panzer III Tank and I nfantry Advance Over Rutted but Frozen 

Road.. .................... 52 

Soviet Gunners Man a Machine Gun West of Moscow 59 

Crew of German s.F.H. 18, 150-mm. Howitzer, Bundled-Up Against 

the Cold . . . . . . .. ......... 64 

Half-Track Attempts To Haul a 150-mm. Howitzer 71 

A German Column Stalled in the Snow. 76 

German Mortar Squad on the March. 79 

Germans SUlTender to a Soviet Soldier . 85 

Soviet Infantry on the Attack . . . . . 91 

Trying On Winter Gear, Which Was Too Slow in Coming 92 

After a Pause It Is Time for the German Troops To Move On 

Again . . . . . . .. ..... 93 

Villagers Greet the Crew of a Soviet T - 60 Tank . . . 99 

Soviet Naval Craft Lays a Smoke Screen Off Sevastopol 109 

Soviet Troops Landing on the Kerch Peninsula III 

Civilians Shovel Snow To Open the Road Through a Village 119 

An Army Commander (Weichs. fourth from left) Sets Out 

for the Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 

German Infantry Enter a Village .... ...... 126 

Before a Sign Reading, "Defend Moscow! for Yourselves and for th e 

Whole Soviet People," Women Work on Artillery Shells. 136 

Soviet IS2-mm. Gun-Howitzer Firing North of Lake limen 146 

General A. I. Eremenko . . . . . . . 149 

Sled-Mounted German Antitank Gun 160 

German Sentl1' on the Ruza River Line. 165 

XIII 
German Machine Gunners Dig In West of Sychevka 

Germans Dug-In: Four Knocked-Out Soviet Tanks in the 

Distance 

Soviet Infantry Fire on a Village in the Enemy Rear 

Melting Snow Has Turned Roads Into Rivers 

German Outpost Line West of Rzhev. . . . . . 

Machine-Gun Nest on the Volkhov Front 

Poster Reads, "Partisans! Avenge Without Mercy! " 

Panisans Listen to a Soviet Newspaper Being Read 

Improvised Armored Train on Patrol Against Partisans 

Woman Partisan Hanged From Lenin Statue in Voronezh 

Outpost on the Verman River Line 

Infantry Take Cover in the III Corps Sector. 

German Ski Patrol, Kestenga Front. . . . . 

German Submarine on the Wait in the Arctic 

A Camouflaged Tank Trap in the Forest 

Bringing Up an Antitank Gun in the Belyy Gap. 

Machine-Gun Squad at the Volkhov Pocket . . . 

Generals Vlasov and Lindemann Talk at Eighteenth Army 

Headquarters .. ...... .... ... . 

General von Richthofen (second from right) Discusses an Air 

Strike With His Staff. . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Aiming a Six-Inch Rocket Projector ...... . 

Tankmen Flush Out Soviet Soldiers After the Battle 

T -34 Tank Crews Brush Up on Tactics. . . . . . 

PAK 40, 75-mm. Antitank Gun Crew on the Watch 

Hitler's "Young" Troops on the March . . . 

Improvised Mobility: The "Marder" (Martin), Captured 

Soviet 76.2-mm. Antitank Gun on an Obsolete Tank Chassis 

New T -34 Tanks Move Up to the Front ... 

German 150-mm. K-18 Guns Open Fire .. 

Soviet Rear Guards Engage an Enemy Armored Car 

Field Marshal von Bock (seated in car) . . . . . . 

New 75-mm. Self-Propelled Assault Gun at Practice 

Panzer III Tanks on the Attack 

Self-Propelled Assault Gun and Mounted Troops Cmssing the 

Oskol River .......... ..... . 

Panzer III Tank in Voronezh 

An Infantry Division Heads East at the Pace of Its Horses 

German Tanks Rove Over the Steppe in Search of Targets 

General Hoth (center) Gives an Order at the Don Crossing 

Soviet Antitank Gun Crew Comes Under Fire 

Abandoned T -34 Tank Provides Cover for a German Observer 

Soviet Machine Gunners Dug-In Outside Novorossiysk 

XIV 

Page 

168 

175 

181 

183 

184 

196 

201 

205 

210 

218 

224 

229 

231 

235 

248 

251 

256 

258 

265 

268 

271 

276 

280 

291 

295 

301 

311 

320 

323 

327 

334 

338 

341 

345 

352 

256 

359 

364 

367 
German 75-mm. Antitank Gun in the Caucasus Foothills 

German Mountain Troops in the Sancharo Pass . . 

Soviet Monar Squad Firing East of Tuapse 

Sixth Army's Tanks Crossing the Don at Vertyachiy 

German Machine Gunner Looks Across the Volga North 

of Staling1'ad . . . . 

General Paulus (right) Watches the Attack on Stalingrad. 

Behind Him the Commander of LI Corps, Seydlitz 

Fourth Panzer Army's Infantry on the Defensive at Kuporosnoye 

Machine-Gun Nest Nonh of Rzhev . . . . 

Quadruple Amiaircraft Guns Guard a Bridge on the 

Zhizdra River . . . . . 

A Tiger Tank WaiLS for a Tow 

Lookout Near Keslenga 

The Cruiser Koehl on Station in Alta Fiord 

The "Patriotic War": A Tank Crew and Their Tank Named 

"Kutuzov". . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Woman Sniper Lieutenant Poses With Her Rifle and Medals 

General N. F. Vatlltin, Commander of Southwest Front. 

On the Attack at the Stalingrad Gun Factory 

Rubble Provides Cover for Soviet Soldiers . 

German Field Artillery Fires into Stalingrad . 

T -34 Tanks Advancing at Speed. . 

Self-Propelled Assault Guns Allack in Operation W, NTERGEW,TTER 

A Column of T -34 Tanks in Operation MALYY SKruRN . . 

Soviet Infantry on the March Toward the Donets River . .. 

Sixth Army Survivors March Out of Stalin grad Under Guard 

xv 

Page 

373 

374 

380 

386 

388 

390 

392 

402 

406 

419 

425 

429 

433 

436 

442 

463 

466 

467 

475 

481 

486 

495 

500 
MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD: 

DECISION IN THE EAST 

CHAPTER I 

"The World Will Hold Its Breath" 

At first light on 22 June 1941 German troops stormed into the Soviet 

Union. Operation BARBA ROSSA had begun. The invasion achieved a total strategic surprise. The German offensive 

was well across the border before 

Moscow issued the first order to counterattack.' By then, several hours after 

sunrise, the Germans had taken every 

bridge on all the border rivers from 

the Baltic to the eastern tip of the 

Carpathians. Soviet troops were being 

captured in their barracks. At daylight 

the Luftwaffe had struck the airfields in 

western Russia destroying the Soviet 

planes on the ground, and German 

bombers had attacked the cities on a 

line from Murmansk to Odessa and 

Sevastopol. By afternoon, the Germans 

had broken Soviet frontier defenses, 

and panzer columns were gathering 

speed as they knifed into stunned and 

disorganized Soviet forces. 

Adolf Hitler had said, "The world 

will hold its breath and fall silent when 

BARBAROSSA is mounted .'" The world 

did not fall completely silent. British 

Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill 

proposed a military alliance to the SoIinstitul Marksizma-Leninizm3, !Slol';ya Velikay 

Olechestvennoy \loy1lY Sovetslwgo Soyuza, 1941 - /945 

(Moscow: Voyennoye IzdatelstvQ, 1961). vol. II , pp. 

11. 17 (hereafter cited as IVOVSS in footnotes and 

History of Ihe Great Patriotic Hflr in text). 

2Max Domarus, ed ., "lilln, Reden wid Proklamalionen, 1932-1945 (Munich: Sueddeulscher Verlag, 

1965). vol. II , p. 1664. 

viet Union on the day of the invasion, 

and President Franklin D. Roosevelt 

offered U.S. lend-lease aid two days 

later. But the world did hold its breath. 

In Washington, the War Department 

War Plans Division expected a Soviet 

defeat in one to three montlls'" Sir 

Stafford Cripps, the British ambassador in Moscow, predicted a German 

victory in three to four weeks, while the 

British Joint Intelligence Committee 

gave the Russians "a few months at the 

outside.'" Indeed, BARBARossA appeared to be, as Hitler claimed, the 

greatest military operation of all time, 

capable of defeating the Soviet Union 

in a single summer's campaign. 

The Deployments 

German and Allied Fm"Ces 

Hitler was the Fuehrer ("leader") and 

chancellor of Germany and supreme 

commander of the German armed 

forces. The latter role had emerged in 

1938 when Hitler had combined what 

had been the president'S constitutional 

powers (under the Weimar Constitution) as commander in chief of the 

armed forces with the minister of war's 

direct command responsibility. The 

Armed Forces High Command 

3Roben E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopki ns (Neh' 

York: Harper, 1950), p. 303. 

J. M. A. Gwyer. Grand Strategy (London: Her 

Majestys Stationery Office , 1964), vol. III, pI. I, p. 90. 
4 

(Oberlwmmando der Wehrrnacht, OKW), 

under the Chief, OKW, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel , had assumed 

the minister of war's former administrative roles, and the OKW Operations Staff did Hitler's military 

operational planning. General der ArtiUerie Alfred Jodi , the chief of the 

OKW Operations Staff, was Hitler's 

personal chief of staff. The service 

commands-the Army High Command (Oberlwmmando des fI em·es, OKH), 

the Air Force High Command (OberIwmmando der Luftwaffe, OKL), and the 

Navy High Command (ObeTkomnzando der Kriegsmarine, OKM)-executed operations on the basis of strategic directives from Hitler issued 

through the OKW Operations Staff. 

The service commanders in chiefGeneralfeldmarschall Walter von 

Brauchitsch (army), Reichsmarschall 

Hermann Goering (air force), and 

Grossadmiral Erich Raeder (navy) reported directly to Hitler and also received verbal instructions from him. 

The campaign in the Soviet Union 

brought a split in tl,e German command structure. Hitler limited the 

OKH's sphere of responsibility to the 

Eastern Front and gave the OKW control in the Western Theater, the Balkans, North Africa, and Scandinavia 

(including Finland). The OKH thereby 

lost control of army elements in the 

other theaters but did not achieve full 

independence in the East since Hitler 

continued to issue his strategic directives through the OK W Operations 

Staff. 

When BARBA ROSSA began , the military and political decision makers in 

Germany moved from Berlin to the 

forests of East Prussia . Berlin, with its 

centers of nlilitary comlTIunications, 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

could have served as well, but Hitler 

chose to build an elaborate special 

headquarters, me Wo/fsschanze ("Wolf's 

Lair"), in the Goerlitz Forest east of 

Rastenburg. A field headquarters apparently had two advantages that to 

Hitler made it worth the inconvenience 

and expense: it placed him symbolically at the head of the troops and 

physically at the top and the center of 

the command hierarchy. 

Situated astride the Rastenburg-Angerburg railroad, the Wo/fssclzanze consisted of painstakingly camouflaged, 

mostly concrete buildings and bunkers 

sealed off from the outside by rings of 

steel fences, palisades, and earthworks. 

Hitler lived and worked Witll his intimate military and political advisers in 

one compound; another, a short distance away, housed a detachment of the 

OKW Operations Staff and a communications center. About a dozen 

miles away and also on the railroad, 

which was closed to general traffic, the 

OKH maintained a compound in the 

Mauerwald just outside Angerburg. 

Elaborate as they were, the 'vl6/fssclzanze 

and the Mauerwald compound could 

only accommodate fractions of the 

OKW and OKH staffs; the rest stayed 

in and around Berlin and kept in contact with the Wo/fsschanze by air and 

courier train.s 

The German allies were Italy, 

Rumania, Hungary, and Slovakia. Bulgaria was an aUy but did not declare 

war on the Soviet Union. Finland did 

declare war on the Soviet Union on 26 

5Percy ErnSl Schramm , gen. cd .. Kriegslagebll ch des 

Oherkommamlos der Wehrmacht (FI"ankfun: Bernard & 

Graefe, 1961~1965), vol. I V, pp. 1752-53 (hereafter 

cited as OKW, KTB). Sec also R. Raibcr, "FHQ 'Wolfsschame,'" After the Battle, no. 19 (London: Ballic of 

Britain Prints, Lld., 1977). 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 5 

THE GERMAN FIELD ARTILLERY MOVES O UT 

June but as a "cobelligerent," not as an 

ally. Maintaining that it was useless to 

base operations on forces that could 

not be "counted on with certainty," 

Hitler had kept the allied commands, 

except tllOse of Rumania and Finland, 

out of tile planning. He had allowed 

the Rumanians and Finns to be 

brought in during the final stages because German forces would have to 

deploy on those countries' territoryand , in the case of me Finns, because 

their army's performance against the 

Soviet Union in the WInter War of 

1939-1940 had favorably impressed 

him.6 

The senior German field commands 

6Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch (Sluugart: W. 

Kohlhammer, 1964), voL II , p. 319 (hereafter cited as 

Halder Dim)'). 

were to be three army group headquarters, each responsible for operations in 

one of the main sectors: Army Group 

North , led by Generalfeldmarschall 

Wilhelm von Leeb, was to attack out of 

East Prussia, mrough the Baltic States 

toward Leningrad; Army Group Center, under Generalfeldmarschall Fedor 

von Bock, assembled on the frontier 

east of Warsaw for a thrust via Minsk 

and Smolensk toward Moscow; and 

Army Group South, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt commanding, was responsible for the sector 

between the Pripyat Marshes and the 

Black Sea and was to drive toward Kiev 

and the line of the Dnepr River. Seven 

armies and four panzer groups were 

assigned to the army groups: Sixteenth, 

Eighteenth, and Fourth Panzer to 

North; Fourth, Ninth , Second Panzer, 
6 

GERMAN - SOVIET FRONTIER 

22 June 1941 

o 100 Miles 

I ' 

o 

SEA 

HUNGARIAN 

FORCES 

HUNGARY 

MAP 1 

Mmsk.~ 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

and Third Panzer to Center; and Sixth, 

Eleventh, Seventeenth, and First Panzerto South. The panzer groups were in 

fact full-Aedged armored armies, but 

owing to conservatism among some of 

the senior generals, they were not yet 

designated as such. (Map 1.) 

The OKL attached an air force 

(Luftflolte) to each of the army groups: 

First Air Force to Army Group North, 

Second to Army Group Center, and 

Fourth to Army Group South. The air 

forces were operationally independent, 

and their relationship with the army 

groups was confined to cooperation 

and coordination. During the first five 

months of 1941, the Luftwaffe had been 

almost totally committed against Great 

Britain and would have to continue its 

attacks on a reduced scale during BARBAROSSA. Because a sudden drop in the 

number of Rights over Britain could 

have given BARBAROSSA away, the Luftwaffe also could not shift its planes east 

until the last minute. Moreover, the 

Balkans campaign (April 1941) and the 

invasion of Crete (May 1941) had required unanticipated expenditures of 

effort. Because of these complications, 

particularly the strain that fighting on 

two widely separated fronts would impose on his resources and organization, 

Goering had talked against attacking 

the Soviet Union. 7 

The navy also was heavily engaged 

against Great Britain, and Raeder, like 

Goering, would have preferred not to 

become engaged elsewhere. The navy's 

missions were to take control of the 

Baltic Sea and to conduct limited operations in the Arctic Ocean and the 

7British Air Ministry Pamphlet 248, The Rise a.nd 

Fall if" lhe German Air Force (London: I-lis Majesly's 

Stationery Office, 1948). I>p. 162- 66. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 7 

Black Sea. But Raeder did not believe 

the navy could carry out any of them 

until after German air and ground 

action had eliminated most of the Soviet ships and bases'" 

TI,e Finnish Army o perated independently under its own Commander 

in Chief, Marshal Carl Mannerheim. 

The main direction of its attack was to 

be to the southeast on bOtil sides of 

Lake Ladoga to increase the pressure 

on the Soviet forces defe nding 

Leningrad and thereby facilitate Army 

Group North's advance. An Army of 

Norway expeditionary force of two 

German and one Finnish corps, under 

OKW control , was to advance out of 

northern Finland toward Murmansk 

and the Murmansk (Kirov) Railroad . 

The primary assignment of the Army 

of Norway and its air support command , Fifth Air Force, was the defense 

of Norway. The Rumanian Third and 

Fourth Armies, attac hed to Army 

Group South, had the very limited 

initial mission of assisting in the conquest of Bessarabia. 

The OKH assigned 3,050,000 men 

and 148 divisions, including 19 panzer 

and 15 motorized divisions, or 75 percent of ti, e existing German Army fi eld 

strengtll to BARBA ROSSA. 9 TI,e Army of 

Norway deployed anotl,er 4 German 

divisions, 67,000 troops, in northern 

Finland. The Finnish Army added 

500,000 men in 14 divisions and 3 

brigades. Rumani a's contribution of 

about 150,000 men consisted of 14 divi8Dit: S(,plll'it'gslritllllg U11d die liJrgeschichte des Feld:wges 

gegel/. Russland, 1-122/439 file. 

lI Panze r di\'isions had about 17.000 men and 125 

tanks; motorized divisions, 14,000 men and 50 tanks. 

The infantry in both was tnlck mounted . Infantry 

divisions had 15.000 men and used horse-drawn 

equipmelll in pan. 

sions and 3 brigades, all und erstre n gt h . The BARBARossA force 

initially had 3,350 tanks, 7,184 artillery 

pieces, 600,000 motor vehicles, and 

625,000 horses. The number of German ground troops actually committed 

up to the first week of July apparently 

was 2.5 million. The OKL provided 

2,770 aircraft, 65 percent of its total 

first-line strength of 4,300.10 

SlJViet FOI'Ces 

Josef Stalin, the general secretary of 

the Soviet Communist Party, had become head of the Soviet government 

on 6 May 1941 when he made himself 

chairman of ti,e Council of People's 

Commissa rs. Although he undoubtedly could have done so, he had not, as 

of 22 June 194 1, assumed a clear statutory relationship to the armed forces, 

which were subordinated to several 

bodies. Nominall y the highest of these 

was ti,e Defense Committee of the 

Council of People's Commissars. Marshal Sovetskogo Soyu za Klim e nt 

Voroshilov was ti,e chairman, and Stalin , Vyacheslav M. Molotov (the deputy 

chairman of the Council of People's 

Commissa rs) and the people's commissars of defense and ti,e navy were 

members. The Defense Committee supervised and coordinated all the state 

agencies engaged in building up the 

a rmed forces. The People's Commissariat of Defense, unde r Ma rshal 

Sovetskogo Soyuza Seme n Timoshenko, and the People's Commissariat 

of the Navy, under Admiral N. G. 

Kuznetsov, were the top military agenIODepanmCIll of the Army, Pamphlet 20-26 Ia, Til, 

Gn'mall Campaign ill Russia - Planning and Op"alions, 

1940-1942 (WashinglOn, D.C. : GPO, 1955), pp. 

38- 41: OKU'-; KTB, vol. I , p. 12 13; British Air Minislry 

I)amphlcl 248, p. 165. 
8 

cies. Within the Defense Commissariat, 

the Main Military Council was the decision-making body. limoshenko was the 

chairman, and Sta lin , Molotov, and 

eight deputy defense commissars (of 

which the Chief of the General Staff, 

General Armii Georgi Zhukov, was 

one) were members. Zhukov was the 

council's secretary, and the General 

Staff drafted plans for it and acted as 

its channel to the lower commands. 

Additionally, the people's commissar of 

defense exercised command of the 

army through the General Staff and 

his deputy commissars. The navy had a 

separate command structure and its 

own main council." The war plans 

anticipated that in the event of a general war, an all-powerful war cabinet 

similar to one (the Defense Council, 

later Council of Labor and Defense) V. 

I. Lenin had headed from 1918 to 1920 

and a general headquarters modeled 

after the imperial Stavka ("staff") of 

World War I would be created, but 

neither of these existed on 22 June 

1941. 12 

The highest-level army field commands prior to the outbreak of the war 

were the military districts. In peacetime, they conducted training, supervised garrisons and cadres, and 

provided the machinery for mobilization. Those districts on the fronti ers 

LI M . V. Zakhal"O\', ed ., 50 lei iIOOI'uzhe1l 1l),kll sit SSSR 

(Moscow: Voycnnoyc ll-clatclslVo, 1968). pp. 199.234 ; 

InSli!ut Marksizm a- Le nini zma , Velikaya Otecheslven1Wya Vc})ma Swetslwgo Soyuw, /9-11-/ 945 (K ralka)'O Iswriya) (Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelslvo. 1970), p. 62 

(hereafter cited as VOV (Kratka)'a Istoriya) in footnotes 

and Short History in text. See also John Erickson, The 

Soviet High Commm id (New York: Sl. Martin's Press, 

1962). p. 478. 

121. Kil. Bagramyan , I stOriya va,,!11 i VO)'fIi Il OgO 

JSHusslva (Moscow: Voycnno)'c Izclatelst,·o. 1970). pp. 

67. 102. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

were set up to be converted into finnt 

(that is, army group) headquarters in 

the event of war. As of early 1941, there 

were sixteen military districts and one 

f ront, the FaT Eastern. ' 3 The military 

districts on the western frontier were 

. the Leningrad, Baltic Special, Western Special, Kiev Special, and Odessa districts. 

On 22June 194/, the five becamefinnts. 

Leningrad, with three armies and General Ley tenant M. M. POPo.v in command, became North Fmnt with 

responsibility for the Baltic coast and 

operations against Finland. Baltic Special, also with three armies and under 

General Polkovnik F. I. Kuznetsov, became Northwest Front and took over the 

defense on the East Prussian border. 

Western Special and Kiev Special became 

West Front (four armies under General 

Armii D. G. Pavlov) and Southwest Front 

(four armies under General Polkovnik 

M. P. Kirponos) and divided the vital 

zone from East Prussia to the Carpathians between them at the Pripyat 

River. The fifth, Odessa, which originally had just one army, became South 

Front several days later, after General 

Armii F. V. Tyulenev took command 

with what had been the Headquarters, 

Moscow M ilitary DistTiet, and built a second army from Southwest Fmnt divisions. The South-Southwest boundary 

was at Lipkan on the upper 3ug River." 

S. A. Tyushkc\'ich. et aI. , SovetskiJe voonnbel/I/ye 

si/)' (MoscO\\': Voycn noyc Izdatelslm, 1978), p. 233. (To 

help the reader disting uish between opposing fo rces, 

,ail Soviet mililal'Y organizations appear in ilalics 

thmugholll Ihis volume.) 

1oI1~ A . Zhilin . ed., Velikll\'O Dltches/vel/ 1/(ll'a VO)'IIO , 

Kratkiy llallcllllopOp"larn):\' ocjlerk. (Mosco\\': Izdate fsl\'O 

Politicheskoy Literalliry. 1970). p. 74 (hereafter cited 

as VO \! in footnotes and Po/m/al" Scientific Sketch in 

text); Instilu! Voyennoy ISLOrii f ... liniste rstv<l. Oborony 

SSS R, /s/ol" ;)'o Vloro) Mirovoy VO)'lI)', / 93 9-1945 

(Moscmv: Vo)'cnnoyc I zdarelstm, 1973- 1982), vol. IV, 

p. 38 (he rea fte r cited as IVMV in foolllotes and Hislu'ry 

olilie SerOllli World War in lext). 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 9 

MARSHAL S. K. TIMOSI-IENKO 

Sovie t command at all levels was 

complicated by political surveill ance 

and control embodied in the commissar system. As it had been developed in the civil war and reinstiulted 

in 1937 following a pe riod in which 

politica ll y reliable comma nders had 

been allowed to act as their own commissars, the system req uired all orders 

to be reviewed and countersigned by a 

commissar. So-called unity of command excluding the commissars from 

military decision making had been installed in August 1940, after the war 

with Finland , but the structure of the 

cOlnmissar system had re nlained in 

place." In the regimental and higher 

staffs the forme r commissars h ad 

stayed on as deputy commanders for 

VMV, vol. III. p. 418. 

GENERAL G. K. ZHUKOV 

politica l affairs and "members of the 

military councils," which consisted of 

themselves, the commanders, and the 

chiefs of staff. '" O n 16 July 1941, the 

Politburo reinstalled commissars in the 

military staffs and restored their authority to review and revoke commande rs' decisions; it a lso installed politrllils 

(" political leadership offi cers") at the 

lower echelons, down to the platoons. 

T he Chief of the Army's Main Political 

Administration, L. Z. Mekhlis, henceforth saw to it that ever y commander 

had a political officer at his e lbow 

watching his eve ry move and schooled 

to see sabotage or treason in war's 

ordina ry Inischances. 17 

A n organi zation tha t had no command functions but power at a ll levels 

16/VOVSS, vol. I, p. 463. 

11/VAIV, vol. IV. p. 55. 
10 

was the secret political police of the 

People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyy KomissaTial Vnulrennikh 

Del, NKVD). It had vast and elastic 

authority over state security and, 

through its special duty (Osobyi Oldel, 

0.0.) sections in the armed forces, 

maintained surveillance of officers and 

men. It also had troops of its own that 

were often formed into blocking detachments and used to prevent or stop 

retreats by passing summary judgment 

on anyone, officer or private, culpable 

under NKVD directives. TIle NKVD 

and the Main Political Administration 

provided Stalin with a constant stream 

of information, outside military channels, about officers' actions and 

behavior. 

In June 1941, the Soviet forces, the 

army in particular, were in a state of 

flux. In part it involved modernization 

and expansion, which had been going 

on throughout the 1930s and at an 

accelerated rate after war broke out in 

September 1939. Most immed iately, 

the changes were an effort to act upon 

the lessons learned in the war with 

Finland. Mannerheim, the Finnish 

Army's commander in chief, had compared the Soviet performance in that 

war to that of a badly conducted orchestra in which the players could not 

keep time. 's The trouble had not been 

primarily with manpower or equipment. Despite Soviet deficiencies in the 

latter, the Finnish Army had been so 

much smaller and more lightly armed 

that equipment should not have been a 

significant factor. Inexperience had 

cou nted heavily at all levels but most 

particularly in the upper ranks. Purges 

in the mid-1930s had carried away 

.SCari Mannerheim. Erillnerungen. (ZUlich: Atlantis 

Verlag, 1952), p. 374. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

many senior officers who had been 

hurriedly replaced by men advanced 

from posts far down the line . I. 

Beyond that, the Finnish War had exposed deep-seated rigidity, lack of initiative, and failure to grant and to 

assume responsibility. Since these failings stemmed directly from the autocracy Stalin had imposed to maintain 

his own position and that of the Communist Party, they were extraordinarily di fficult to correct. 

Efforts during 1940 to correct these 

shortcomings had met with mixed results. In the spring, the Commissariat 

of Defense and the army issued revised 

field regulations and training manuals 

condemning formula-ridden, oversimplified training. Commissariat of 

Defense Order 120 of 16 May 1940 had 

called for combat-oriented training 

during the summer and had emphasized military discipline and tradition. 

Also in May, general officer and admiral ranks, which had been abolished 

since the revolution, had been instituted to enhance commanders' authority and self-esteem. Unity of 

command was, of course, the major 

effort to boost their autllOrity. Still, by 

year's end, improvement "had only begun." After a conference of top army 

commanders in December 1941, tile 

19The military purge had begun in the summer of 

1937 with the arrest and execution of Marshal 50-

,"clSkogo So)'uza M. H. Tukhachevskiy and continued 

thereafter through 1938. In it the Soviet Army lost all 

of its military district commanders. all of its corps 

commanders, "nearl y aU" of its division and brigade 

commanders, and half of its regimemal commanders. 

The purge reduced the then existing officer strength 

in all ranks by one fifth. The navy and air force were 

hit equally hard. Institut Marksizma-Leninizma, 

Velikaya Otechestue-rmaya \0yt1a Sovetskogo SOYIlUl, 1941-

1945 (Kratkaya Istoriya) (Moscow: Voyennoye 

Izdatelstvo. 1965), p. 39. The information cited does 

not. appear in the 1970 edition of VOV (Kmlkaya 

Istoriya). 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 11 

Defense Commissariat issued Order 

30, "On the Tasks of Combat and Political Training for 1941," specifying aspects of troop and command training 

in which deficiencies persisted'O 

The effort to modernize equipment 

was also just beginning to take effect in 

June 1941, although, in strictly numerical terms, the Soviet forces may actually have been the best equipped in the 

world at that lime. By 1937, 15,000 

tanks had been produced , and tile output thereafter had been over 3,000 per 

year. Stalin may well not have exaggerated when he told Harry L. Hopkins, 

the U.S. lend-lease negotiator, in July 

1941 , thal tile Soviet Union had 24,000 

tanks when the war broke out. Military 

aircraft production from 1 January 

1939 to June 1941 totaled 17,745 airplanes, and the army had 67,335 artillery pieces and mortars (larger than 

50-mm.) in June 1941. 21 But many of 

the tanks and aircraft were obsolete, 

and most were below standard for the 

lime. 

1ivo new tank types, the T -34 and 

K V (Kliment Voroshilov), were far superior to any the Germans had, even 

on the drawing boards. The Soviet 

T -34 medium tank at twenty-eight 

tons outweighed by three tons the 

heaviest German tank, the Panzer IV, 

and had a top speed of tllirty-two mph 

against the Panzer IV's twenty-four 

mph. The Panzer lV's short-barreled 

75-mm. gun was no malch, either in 

2°/\lOV55, vol. I. pp. 463-69. Sec also John 

EI'ickson. Th e RtXUi liJ Stalingrad (London : WcidenfeJd 

a n d N ic ho lson , 1975), pp. 50 -54 a nd A . 1. 

Ercmenko. Pomni VOJ'I)' (Do nctsk: Do nbass, 1971 ). pp. 128-30. 

21 Zakharo\', 50 lei, pp. 202. 236: 8 agram)'a Il . /sron)'a 

1'0)11, p. 96: Shcr\\'ood , R OOSi'llell and /-Io/)HiIlS, p. 303: 

\ '0\1 (K mlkn)'fl hfOI"l)'a), p. 42. 

range or velocity, for the T - 34's 

longer-ban·eled 76-mm. gun. The KV, 

twenty tons heavier tllan tile T - 34 but 

powered with the same twelve-cylinder 

diesel engine, was slower (wim a top 

speed of twenty mph) but more heavily 

armored , and it also carried a 76-mm. 

gun . Despite their greater weights, 

wide treads on the T - 34 and KV gave 

them as much as 25 percent lower 

ground pressures per square inch than 

tile German tanks and yielded beLler 

traction on mud or snow. Moreover, 

their welded, sloping hull and turret 

armor made them impervioLls to all but 

the heaviest German antitank weapons. 

The Russians began producing both in 

1940 but had managed to build only 

639 KVs and 1,225 T -34s before June 

1941. 22 

A tllird new Soviet tank type was the 

light (6.5 tons) T -60. It was a two-man 

vehicle, mounting a 20-mm. cannon 

and a 7.62-mm. machine gun and carrying a maximum 30-mm. of armor. 

Roughly comparable to the German 

Panzer II, on whi ch it may, in part, 

have been modeled, the T - 60 was 

much inferior to the Panzer III or IV. 

Its outstanding virtue was that its chassis and gasoline engine could be built 

quickly III ordinary automobile plants 

using standard automotive components. In 1940, tile Russians hacl built 

2,421 T - 60s as against 256 KVs and 

117 T - 34s.'3 

Having assumed from experie nce in 

225. P. I va nov, NadllllllYY jH:rivd VO)'IIy (i\'l oscow: Voyc nnoyc lzdaleisl\'o, 1974). p. 200; IVMV, \'0 1. III. p. 

420. See .l1so B. Pcrreu. Fighlillg Vehicles if II/(' Red 

ArM) (Londo n: Ian Allen. 1969). pp. 32-36, 49-52. 

23Tyushkc\'ich. \w n llh t'1HJ)'e sit), p. 273; C. A. De· 

borin and B. S. Tclpukho\,skiy. ltog; i llroki t!t'likny 

otecJustvl!nllOY lIoyuy (M oscow: ILdalelstvo .. M ys l:' 

1975). p. 260. 
12 

the Spanish civil war as other armies 

also did that tanks would chiefly perform infantry support, the Soviet 

Army had disbanded several mechanized and tank corps organized in the 

early 1930s and did not reform large 

armored units until after the fall of 

France. In late 1940, it activated eight 

mechanized corps, each with 36,000 

troops and an allotment of 1,031 tanks. 

In February and March 1941, it began 

setting up another twenty. Apparently, 

few of the mechanized corps were fully 

equipped by June 1941. 24 

Although the great majority of the 

Soviet aircraft were not equal to the 

high performance types the Germans 

had introduced into ule war in 1939, 

Soviet designers had developed some 

newer models, particularly the MIG-3, 

YAK- I, and LAGG fighters and the 

lL-2 (Shtunnovik). The Shturmovik, 

publicized early in the war as a competitor with the German Stuka (JU -87) 

dive-bomber, was primarily a ground 

attack plane and dive-bomber, slow but 

well armored and difficult to shoot 

down. The three fighters had the features of the advanced western types, 

but only the MIG-3, at 370 mph plus, 

could match the speed of the standard 

German fighter (the ME- 109). By June 

1941, Soviet air units had received 

2,739 planes of these types. 

The Soviet preparations had concentrated on weapons but neglected the 

supplementary equipment needed to 

make them effective. The artillery, for 

instance, used ordinary farm tractors 

as prime movers, and the motorized 

divisions had less than half their 

HI . E. Krupchenko, ct al. , Savelski),e la llkoV)'e voyska 

(Moscow: VO),CIlIlOYC lzda1.elslvo , 1973). pp. 12- 14: 

Tyushkc\'ich, VOOl'llzltf'l/l/)'e sil)'. p. 240. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

planned allotments of trucks. The 

army was weak in all kinds of motor 

vehicles except tanks and would remain so until the flow of Americanbuilt trucks and cars through lendlease took effect. Railroad transportation also was deficient. Railroad investment during the 1930s had mostly 

favored industrial development projects and had slighted the existing network. The expansion into Poland, the 

Baltic States, and Bessarabia in 1939 

and 1940 had made the frontier military districts dependent on several different railroad systems, whose variations in gauge and other problems, 

often necessitated transloading from 

one railline to another at the old 

border." 

Still another weakness was signal 

communications. Moscow had contact 

with the military districts by telephone, 

telegraph , and radio but mainly by 

telephone, apparently over the lines of 

the civilian system. Communications in 

the field were uncertain. TIle radio 

networks were thin. The masses of 

booty the Germans took in 1941 contained only 150 radio sets. Zhukov's 

and other high ranking commanders' 

memoirs confirm that they spent much 

time out of touch with subordinate 

headquarters. Even the newest tanks 

did not carry radios. In the air forces, 

only the squadron commanders' planes 

had radios, of which, because of their 

poor quality, the /-lislO1Y of the Great 

Patriotic War states, "flight personnel 

1l1ade little use while in the air."26 

On 22 June 1941, according to most 

Soviet accounts, the western military 

districts had 2.9 million men in 170 

ZS/VOVSS, vol. I , pp. 417- 19, 453, 476. 

26/bid" p. 454. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 13 

divisions and 2 brigades; none of the 

divisions were at full strength. 27 This 

figure includes riAe (infantry) and cavalry divisions and, apparently, also tank 

and motorized divisions, altllOugh the 

Soviet accounts are not clear on the 

latter." As of early July, the number of 

divisions increased to 212, of which 90 

were at full strength. The western military districts also. had 7 of the newly 

formed mechal1lzed corps, and 13 

more were being set up there. 29 The 

Soviet accounts vary on the types and 

numbers of tanks the mechanized 

corps had. Two give a total of 1,800 

heavy and medium tanks-I,475 of 

them KVs and T -34s--plus "a significant number" of oldel~ lighter models.'· One gives the figure 5,500 for the 

heavy and medium tanks and does not 

mention others.'J The western military 

dlstncts' allotment of artillery pieces 

and mortars is given as 34,695, a specific enough number but one that 

lumps together two not exactly comparable weapons; and the air units are 

said to have had 1,540 planes of the 

new types and "significant numbers" of 

older models. 32 

nvov, p. 51; VOV (Kratka)'{/ /stori)'a), p. 54; Ivanov, 

Nachafnyy period, p. 208; IVMV, vol. IV, p. 25, gives 

2.680,000 men. 

2ij Kru~ henko, Tal/koU)'c vo)'slw, p. 21, indicmes that 

th e RUSSians formed 21 tank and 7 mOlOrized dj\'i~ 

sions and we re fonning 39 lank and 13 motori zed 

d,ivisions in the western military disu'iclS. lllC alHho~ 

n zed strength of rine di\'isions was SCI at 14 ,483 men 

in April 1941. down from a pl~\ ioLl S 18,000. A rifle 

?ivisio n consisted of 3 infamry and 2 al,tillery J'cglin en IS. IVM\!, \'01. Ill. p. 11 8: T yus hkcv ich, 

Vuol'laJU'lIII)'f :.if)" p. 236. 

zlIIVMV, vol. I V, p. 60; Krupchen ko, 'filllkm')'f lIoyska 

p 21. ' 

30 lvanov. NadUllllyy period. p. 215: VO ~ p. 51. 

:.II Kl"Upchenko. 7{mkov)'1' vO)'.ska. p. 14 ; Ivanov, 

NadU/!llJ)' period, p. 215. 32 1 va nov, Nachalll),Y period. p. 2 14; VOv. p. 51. 

C erman Strategy 

.on the last day of July 1940, when 

Hitler announced his decision to invade the Soviet Union to a smail group 

of hiS ~enerals, he described his grand 

strateS-lc deSign as follows: "England's 

hope IS RUSSia and America. If Russia 

is lost, America will be also, because the 

loss of Russia will result in an enormous rise of Japan in East Asia. If 

Russia is smashed, then England's last 

hope is extinguished. Then Germany 

will be the master of Europe and the 

Balkans."" Therefore, he concluded, 

the Soviet Union had to be "finished 

off in one go" and "the sooner tlle 

better. "34 

To Hitler and his military advisers, 

the strategic concerns associated with a 

war in the Soviet Union appeared to be 

mostly geographical. One was the climate, which was markedly continental 

with short, hot summers and long, ex: 

tremely cold winters and an astonishing uniformity from nortll to south 

considering the country's great ex: 

panse. Hitler observed at the group's 

first conference that it would be "hazardous" to winter in the Soviet Union 

and, tllerefore, it would be better t~ delay the invasion until the next 

spring." Finishing off the Soviet 

Union then in "one go" would mean a 

sll1gle summer's campaign of no more 

than five months. Its beginning and 

end would also have to be adjusted to 

tlle rasplilitsy ("times without roads") 

brought on by tlle spring thaw and the 

fall rains, which at both times turned 

the Soviet roads into impassable quagmires for penods of several weeks. 

33Halder DiaT)', vol. II , p. 49. 

34l bid. 

3·~ /bid. 
14 

The big strategic question was the 

one that had also confronted earlier 

invaders: how to accomplish a military 

victory in the vastness of the Russian 

space? Apart from the Pripyat Marshes 

and several of the large rivers, the 

terrain did not offer notable impediments to the movement of modern 

military forces. But maintaining troop 

concentrations and supplying armies in 

the depths of this country presented 

staggering, potentially crippling, difficulties. The entire Soviet Union had 

only 51,000 miles of railroad, all of a 

different gauge than those in Germany 

and eastern Europe. Of 850,000 miles 

of road , 700,000 were hardly more 

than cart tracks; 150,000 miles were 

allegedly all-weather roads, but only 

40,000 miles of those were hard 

surfaced'"· 

Hiuer and the OKH agreed that ule 

first objective in the campaign would 

have to be to cripple the Soviet resistance close to the frontier. In December, however, when they were 

drafting the strategic directive, their 

ulinking diverged on how to accomplish Ule second objective, the final 

Soviet defeat. Brauchitsch and the 

General Staff proposed to aim the 

main thrust toward the Moscow area. 

The roads were best in that direction, 

and the General Staff believed the Soviet Command could be induced to 

commit its last strength there, to defend the capital, which was also the 

center of a vital industrial complex and 

the hub of the country's road and railroad networks. Hitler, however, did not 

believe the war could be decided on the 

Moscow axis. Directive 21, "for Opera36Georges Jone. The Soviet Union (London: Long 

mans, 1961), pp. 183-84, 192. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

tion BARBAROSSA ," which Hitler signed 

on 18 December 1940, circumvented 

the issue by providing for simultaneous 

thrusts toward Leningrad, Moscow, 

and Kiev; a modified main effort toward Moscow; and a possible halt and 

diversion of forces from the Moscow 

th rust to aid the ad vance toward 

Leningrad. For the moment, the differences in opinion on strategy did not 

really interfere with the operation 

planning. TIle objectives were to trap 

the "mass" of the Soviet Army in sweeping envelopments close to the frontier, 

to annihilate it, and thereafter to occu py tile Soviet territory east to the line 

of Arkhangelsk and the Volga River. 

TIle initial main effort would be in the 

center toward Moscow, and staff studies showed that the Soviet Union could 

be defeated in eight weeks, ten at 

Jll0St. 37 

To compel tile Soviet forces to stand 

and fight appeared to be the chief 

requirement, and if they did that, they 

would be defeated. The Soviet Army, 

Hitler maintained , alluding to the military purge, "was leaderless." It had, he 

added, recently been given opportunities to "learn some correct lessons 

in the conduct of war" presumably by 

the German early campaigns and the 

war Witll Finland but whether it was 

exploiting them was "more than questionable," and, in any event, no substantive change could be accomplished 

by the spring of 1941. The Soviet armor, he believed , was no match even 

for the 24-ton German Panzer lll , 

mounting a 50-mm. gun, and the rest 

of the Soviet weaponry, "except for a 

37Der Fuehrer und Oberste Befehlshaber deT Wehl7nacht, 

OK~V. WFSt. Abt. L (I) NT. 33408140, H't-isung N,: 21, 

Fall Barbarossa, /8.1 2 .40, Ge rman High Level Directives, Cfo.,tH files; DA Pamphlet 20-26Ia, pp. 17-25. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 15 

few modern field batteries," was "copied old material."3. 

Under these circumstances, although Hitler did not entirely overlook 

other strategic problems, he did regard 

them as irrelevant to the kind of war 

being planned. One such problem was 

manpower potential. Greater Germany 

had a population of 89 million; tile 

Soviet Union had 193 million people.

39 

But the Soviet people, in Hitler's opinion, were "inferior."40 Also, Hitler had 

not yet shifted the German economy to 

a wartime footing. The early blitzkrieg 

campaigns had been so successful and 

so relatively cheap that he had kept the 

economy on a quasi-peacetime basis. 

War production in 1941 was at the 1940 

level, which itself had been lower than 

the original economic mobilization 

plans had specified . In the meantime, 

however, the Soviet Union had more 

than caught up with Germany in budgeting for war production. From 1935 

through 1938, the Soviet Union had invested tile equivalent of $4.7 billion in 

armaments, and Germany $8.6. The 

1939 figures had been $3.3 (Soviet) and 

$3.4 (German). In 1940, they had risen 

to $5.0 (Soviet) and $6.0 (German), and 

in 1941 , $8.5 (Soviet) and $ 6.0 

(German).' I 

But Hitler had no time for doubts. 

He made just one comparison: "In the 

Spring [of 1941], we will be at a discernable high in leadership, material, and 

troops, and the Russians will be at an 

38Halder Diary, vol. II, p. 214. 

3YNikoia i Voznescnskiy, The Ecotuflll)' of the USSR 

During WJrld Y1-hr /I (Washing ton . D.C.: Public Affairs 

Press, 1948), p. 8. 

4°Halder Diary, vol. 11 , p. 214. 

41 DCUlsches I nstilul fuer Wirtschaftsforschung, Die 

de11lsche Illdustrie illl Kriege, 1939-1945 (Berlin : Dttn kker & Humblodt. 1954), pp. 23, 27. 34, 87. 

unmistakable 10w."42 On 11 June 1941, 

he issued Directive 32, "Preparations 

for the Period After BARBARossA," in 

which he anticipated leaving sixty divisions on security duty in the Soviet 

Union and having the rest of the forces 

redeployed for other missions by the 

late falJ.43 

Soviet Preparedness 

Strategic Planning 

For the Soviet U mon, the French 

surrender in June 1940 made war with 

Germany a rea l and distinctly unwelcome contingency. Suddenly, the 

government and the armed forces, 

having just begun to digest the lessons 

of the war with Finland, found themselves alone on the Continent with a 

hugel y expanded Germany that had 

accomplished in less than six weeks 

what it had been unable to do in the 

four years of World War I. Nikita 

Khrushchev, who by his own account 

was with Stalin when the news of the 

French capitulation came in, has described Stalin's cursing the British and 

French for having failed to resist and 

the gloom in the Soviet government at 

being isolated and facing "the most 

pressing and deadly threa t in all 

history .... "44 

In July 1940, the Soviet Army General Staff turned to what from then 

until the following June would be its 

priority concern: devising a strategy to 

meet a German attack. Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Boris Shaposhnikov, who 

42Halder Diary. vol. II, p. 214. 

430KW, WFSt, Abt. L (lOp.) N.,-, 448864 J. Weisung Nr. 

32, 11.6.42, German High Level Directives, CMH 

files. 

HN ikita Khrush chev, Khrushche v R emembers 

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 134. 
16 

was then chief of the General Staff, 

assumed that Germany would have 

Finland, Hungary, Rumania, and Italy 

as allies, and, although he was "not 

excluding" the possibility of a two-front 

war involving Japan, he took the most 

pressing threat to be the one on the 

west'" Even though Japan had been an 

active enemy of the Soviet Union for 

the previous several years, Shaposhnikov concluded that Germany was 

obviously the stronger, was closer to the 

Soviet vital centers, and was thought to 

be the one most likely to attack first. He 

and his subordinates then undertook 

to devise a response to the problem as 

he had broadly defined it.'6 

In September 1940, General Armii 

Kiril Meretskov, who had taken Shaposhnikov's place as chief of the General 

Staff in August, presented the results 

of the General Staff's work during the 

summer to Stalin and the Politburo as a 

plan for strategic deployment on the 

western frontier. At the meeting, by 

Stalin's decision, two fu ndamental 

premises became fixed elements in Soviet preinvasion strategy. One of these 

concerned the direction of the German 

main effort; the other concerned the 

nature of the Soviet response to an 

attack. The Soviet literature offers two 

versions of how those decisions were 

reached. 

As Marshal A. M. Vasilevskiy, who 

was then the deputy operations chief, 

relates it, the General Staff view held 

that the probable main lines of the 

German attack would lie north of the 

lower San River; hence, in the center, 

toward Moscow, and on the north 

""A. M. Vasilevs ki y, De/a vsey zhizlli (Moscow: 

Izdaldstvo PoliLicheskoy Literatury. 1976), p. 101 ; 

Ivanov, Nacho/Il)'] period, pp. 202- 03. 

IVA ~ vol. III , p. 434. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

flank. Therefore, the General Staff 

proposed to deploy its strongest forces 

in the same area, specifically, between 

the Pripyat Marshes and the Baltic 

coast. However, according to Vasilevskiy, Stalin insisted the German 

main effort would be in the south, to 

capture the "rich resources and agricultural land of the Ukraine," and ordered the deployment reversed" 

Zhukov, who commanded the Kiev Special Milit01Y District, adds that Stalin was 

convinced the Germans would have to 

try to seize the Ukraine first and "it 

never occurred to anybody to question 

the correctness of his opinion."'8 The 

History of the Second H6rld 1#11; citing 

Vasilevskiy and Zhukov, gives a similar 

account without mentioning Stalin.49 

The three imply that the General 

Staff's purpose was to bring the Soviet 

main effort to bear in the direction of 

the probable strongest German attack. 

A study on the initial period of the 

war done under General Armii S. P 

Ivanov, who was at the time of the 

writing commandant of the Voroshilov 

Academy of the General Staff, sets the 

mislocation of the Soviet main effort in 

a differelll colllext. Ivanov says the 

General Staff had concluded that the 

German main effort would be directed 

southeast, to take the Ukraine, the Donets Basin , and, eventually, the Caucasus oil fields. It "did not exclude the 

possibility," however, that the main 

effort might be north of the Pripyat 

Marshes toward the "Smolensk Gate" 

and Moscow.'o The General Staff's 

concern in setting the location of the 

47Vasilcvskiy. Deto, pr. 101 , 106- 07. 

tllC. K. Zhukov, The Memoirs qfMarshal ZllIIkov (New 

York: Delacorlc Press, [971), p. 211. 

Illl\',HV, vol. III , p. 434. 

50 h 'anov. Nachaill),)' /Jeriod, p. 203. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 17 

Soviet main effort, the Ivanov study 

adds, was to mount the strongest possible blow with the aims of "repulsing 

aggression and carrying the war to the 

enemy's territory." Therefore, the General Staff proposed to deploy the Soviet main forces between the Pripyat 

Marshes and the Baltic coast, that is, in 

the center and on the north flank. At 

the meeting in September, the Ivanov 

study states, Stalin "expressed 

thoughts" on the enemy's main effort 

being in the south, and thereafter the 

General Staff reworked its plan to situate the Soviet main forces in the south 

as wellS! 

From the Ivanov study, which in 

point of time at least, supersedes Vasilevskiy's and Zhukov's writings on this 

period , it appears that Stalin and the 

Gen e ral Staff were independently 

agreed on the location of the German 

main effort, and were both wrong. 

They apparently also overestimated 

the Soviet ability to respond offensively 

to a German attack. Without reading 

too Bluch into Ivanov, it can be assumed then that the real difference of 

opinion was on the premises that 

would govern the choice of location for 

the Soviet main effort. The General 

Staff was looking for the shortest lines 

on which to carry the war to German 

territory. On the other hand , Stalin 

seems to have concluded that carrying 

the war to the enemy's terri lOry along 

the line of the main enemy advance 

better satisfied his own theoretical requirement to "organize the decisive 

blow in the direction in which it may 

produce 1l1aximUill results."52 

~' /bid ., p. 204. 

uJ. V. Stalin. SOdll/lfl/lyl (r-.toscuw: Izdatelsl\'o Poiilichesko) LilcraulI;:. 1947). \01. V, p. 163: I\'O\'SS, 

\'01. L p. 437. 

During the last week of December 

1940 and the first week of January 

1941, the Defense Commissariat held a 

conference of senior officers in Moscow. The Histmy o.f the Grea.t Pa.tl';o.t;c \#lr 

and the H;s/my o.f the Seco.nd \IIi:n'/d Wm' 

depict it as having been an extended 

symposium in which the generals exchanged views and had an opportunity 

to absorb the latest in Soviet military 

thought. Accounts in the m.emoirs of 

some of those who attended indicate it 

was also a war readiness review that 

disclosed deficiencies in the generals' 

ability to conduct large-scale operations and in armament, equipment, 

and training. 53 

After the conference closed, the military district commanders and their 

chiefs of staff stayed on to participate 

in a war game, which was played from 

8 to II January and was based on the 

strategic plan the General Staff had 

developed in the past summer and had 

just finished revising in December54 

The game, Zhukov states, "abounded 

in dramatic situations for the red (Soviet) side" t11at "proved to be in many 

ways similar to what really happened 

after June 22, 1941. ... "55 In brief, 

the Soviet side lost. When the chief 

of the General Staff, Meretskov, 

failed to explain this development satisfactorily, Stalin relieved him and appointed Zhukov (who had led the play 

on the "blue" [enemy) side) as his 

replacemen t. 56 

S3/VOVSS, \'01. I. p. 433: /\lMV, vol. III. pp. 409- 10. 

See A. I. Eremenko, V nocJlllLe lIoy tly (Moscow: 

lzdalelstvo ~Nall ka ,~ 1964 , pp. 36-48; K. A. Merc t· 

skov. Serving the Prople (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 

1971), pp. 125-26: Zhukov, Mnt/()irs, pp. IS3-S4 . 

. HSee V<tsilcvskiy, Delo, p. 106. 

sSZhukov, MemlJirs, p. IS5. 

s6/bid., p. lSi; M eretsko\', Serving the Prople, pp. 

126- 27. 
18 

Manifestly displeased with the outcome of the war game, Stalin critiqued 

it in the Kremlin on 13 January. In the 

last of his several memoirs, the late 

Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza A. I. 

Eremenko, who took part in the war 

game as a newly appointed military 

district commander, and who also attended the critique, has given the most 

explicit account to date of Stalin's comments.57 According to Eremenko, Stalin criticized the Commissariat of 

Defense and the General Staff for not 

having given the "military districts 

problems they will have to solve in 

actual war." He also reminded those 

present of the "complications" that had 

arisen in finding competent commanders and staffs for the Finnish War, and 

he laid down specific requirements: to 

prepare for a two-front war, to expand 

and rearm the forces, to create reserves, to "learn how to conduct" a war 

of fast movement and maneuver, and 

to "work out" the organizational "questions" evolving from the other requirements. Most significantly, Eremenko 

remembered Stalin's having said, "War 

is approaching fast and now is not 

distant. ... We must gain a year and a 

half to two years' time to complete the 

rearmament plan."5. For Stalin, time 

had become a most precious strategic 

resource. 

Operatwnal Planning 

The Soviet war literature offers two 

S7 Eremenko also deaJt with the critique in his first 

memoir, wriuen in the earl y 1960s. There he gave the 

impression that Stalin's remarks were haphazard and 

superficial. Comparison of the two versions shows 

that the va riances between them li e less in the J'cportiog than in the author's emphasis and imcrprclalion. 

See Eremenko, V lluchale, pp. 34-37. See also 

Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, p. 54. 

~8 Eremenko, Pomni voyny. pp. 129- 30. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

views of the state and nature of the 

nation's operational plans prior to the 

invasion: one asserts that such plans as 

did exist were tentative and not designed to do more than provide a limited capability to meet an attack; the 

other maintains that the plans were 

com prehensive and were believed to be 

adequate not merely to meet aggression but to repel it and to initiate 

operations to defeat it. The first view 

derives primarily from the ea rly postStalin version of the war given in the 

Hisl.ory of the Great PatriDtic War but is 

retained in the Hisl.ory of the Second Hbrld 

War. The second appears in Vasilevskiy's and Zhukov's memoirs, and 

the Ivanov study on the initial period 

of the war presents it in detail. 

The Hisl.ory of the Great PatriDtic War 

mentions two plans drafted in early 

1941, a mobilization plan (MP-41) and 

a "covering plan for the state frontier" 

(Plan 9). I t describes the mobilization 

plan as having been geared to a schedule that extended through the second 

half of 1941 and into early 1942 and the 

covering plan as no more than one to 

d istribute approximately two-thirds of 

the troops stationed in the western 

military districts more or less uniformly along the border, their mission 

in the event of war being to hold the 

border and to "cover" the mobilization 

and assembly of the main forces. The 

Hisl.ory of the Great PatriDtic War does not 

mention the strategic plan the General 

Staff worked on in the summer and fall 

of 1940 and concludes tlia t it is only 

"possible to speak of a plan of general 

operations" because the mobilization 

and covering plans "were infused with 

one idea," which was "to repel the enemy's aggression at the line of the state 

frontier and subsequently deal him a 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 19 

crushing defeat."59 The History of the 

Second W:>rld War gives some specifics of 

the mobilization and covering plans, 

alludes to the 1940 decision on the 

location of the main effort (but not to 

the associated strategic plan), and addresses the additional problem of 

border fortifications; but it also leaves 

the impression that fully developed operational plans did not exist.60 

On the other hand, Vasilevskiy 

speaks in his memoirs of an "operational plan to repel aggression" that 

was developed in the General Staff and 

conveyed to the commanding generals, 

chiefs of staff, and chiefs of operations 

of the frontier military districts in conferences held in Moscow between February and April 1941. 61 Zhukov 

mentions "operational-mobilization 

plans regarding preparations for repulsing possible aggression."62 

The Ivanov study on the initial 

period of the war describes two plans: 

an "operational plan" and a "special 

plan for the defense of the state frontier." The operational plan, which the 

General Staff completed in late 1940, 

was concerned with how "answering 

blows" would be delivered "after the 

strategic deployment of the main 

forces of the Red Army." The special 

plan, completed in early 1941 and the 

basis on which the frontier military 

districts "worked out their concrete war 

plans," dealt with "covering" and "active defense" in the first stage of hostilities, before the main forces had been 

mobilized and deployed 63 

~!l/VOVSS , vol. I , pr. 172- 74, 179. 

6°/VMV, vol. III, pp. 234 - 39. See also Erickson, 

Hood liJ Slalingrad, pp. 80-8 !. 

Sl Vasilevskiy, Delo, p. 113. 

62Zhukov,Me11Wirs, p. 211. 

63 I vanov. Nachlllnyy p(!riori, pp. 204-05. 

The special plan, as described in the 

Ivanov study, embraced what is refen'ed to in the History of the G"eat 

Patriotic Wm' as the covering plan but, in 

its active defense aspect, also included 

much ITIOre: "active air operations" to 

deliver blows against the enemy's concentrations and to achieve air superiority; concentration of the mechanized 

corps, antitank artillery brigades, and 

aviation to "liquidate" break-ins; and, if 

so directed by the General Headquarters, delivery of blows that would 

"smash" the enemy on the borders and 

carry the war to his territory. The military districts' initial mission would be to 

cover the concentration of the main 

forces, but that would be done in a 

three-echelon offensive deployment 

(infantry, armor, and reserves) from 

which the three could be merged to 

form a "first strategic echelon ." Combined, the three original echelons 

could begin to carry out the operational plan by dealing the enemy an 

"answering blow" and "possibly," by carrying the war to enemy territory before 

the main forces were assembled. 1 n 

that event, a "second strategic echelon" 

would form behind the first to support 

it and to fu rther develop the answering 

blow "in accordance with the general 

strategic idea.""4 The initial three-echelon deployment conformed to the best 

Soviet offensive doctrine of the time so 

much so, in fact, that it has been cited 

occasionally as evidence of a Soviet 

intention to attack Germany65 Vasilevskiy has said: 

... if our military units and formations 

had been mobilized at the proper time, 

64/bid., pp.205- 06. 

6SSee IVOVSS, \'01. I , p. 443. See also Reinhard 

Gehlcn, The Service (New York: World Publishing, 

1972), p. 26. 
20 

had been deployed as specified in their 

plans for border war, and had , in accordance with those, organized close coordination between artillery, armor, and 

aviation , it could be asserted that the enemy would have been dealt such losses 

already on the first day of the war that he 

could not have advanced further into our 

country.66 

War Readiness 

In March 1941 , rumors of war were 

circulating among the foreign diplomats in Moscow, and U.S. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles told the 

Soviet ambassador in Washington that 

the State Department had information, 

which it regarded as "authentic," of a 

plan for a German attack on the Soviet 

Union "in the not distant future ."·7 By 

then, no doubt, information about the 

planned attack as authentic as Welles' 

was available to the Soviet government 

from its own sources."8 The History of 

the G"eat Patriotic Wm' states: 

I n the existing situation it was necessary to 

be extremely careful to avoid provocations 

... while at the same time takmg all possible measures to bring the SovIet Armed 

Forces LO full readiness for war. But because J. V. Stalin made serious errors in 

evaluating the politico-military situation as 

it developed prior to the outbreak of the 

Great Patriotic War, such a dual policy did 

not exist. 69 

In Vasilevskiy's opinion , Stalin could 

not decide what to do.

70 The Hiswry of 

the Second World War maintains that " ... 

66Vasilevski y. Delo, p. 117. 

67U.S. Depanment of SlaLe. Foreign Relations if Ihe 

V 'lileli Slates, 1941 (WashinglOn , D.C.: GPO, 1958), 

vol. I, pp. 133, 712- 14 ; Eri ckson, Road 10 Slalil/grad, 

pp. 73-75. 

68S ee /VOVSS, vol. 1, p. 403. 

69/bid., p. 404 . 

7°Vasilevski y, Dew, p. 116. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

the military leadership of the Soviet 

Union [which included Stalin] knew a 

collision with Germany to be unavoidable," but "preparations to resist aggression were accompanied by a 

necessity not to give Germany a direct 

excuse to unleash a wa r, "71 

Stalin's effort to gain time failed . His 

most astute move, the signing of a neutrality treaty with Japan on 13 April 

1941 , valuable as it might be in the 

longer run , at best made only a negligible change in his position with regard 

to Germany. The treaty had no effect 

as a deterrent, and Hitler ignored its 

more likely intent as a gesture of Soviet 

willingness to collaborate. The treaty 

gave Stalin a none too dependable confirmation of what he already believed, 

namely, that Germany and Japan 

would not attack at the same time, and 

it created a remote possibility that 

Japan, freed to turn toward likely conAict with the United States, might draw 

Germany, its partner in the ihpartite 

Pact, in and away from the Soviet 

Union.72 

Stalin's play for time, however, was 

not nearly as detrimental to Soviet preparedness as some accounts make it 

appear. He gave the armed forces as 

much support as they believed they 

needed. The covering plan called for 

170 divisions and 2 brigades, and as of 

June 1941, those were deployed: 56 

divisions and 2 brigades in the first 

71 /VMV, vol. III , p. 439. 

12See also /VOVSS, vol. I, pp. 399- 401; EI'ickson , 

Road 10 S talil/grad, p. 76; Raymond James Sontag and 

James Stuart Beddie. eds., Nazi-Soviet Relatiolls,1939-

/94/ (WashinglOn, D.C.: GPO, 1948), pp. 212. 220; 

Gerhard ,",Veinberg, Germany ami lhe Soviet V I/ion, 

/939-19-11 (Le;deno L]. Brdl. 1954), 1'1'. 159-63; U.S. 

Depanmem of State, Documents 011 Gennml Forf'igll 

Policy, 1918 -1 945, Series D (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 

1960), vol. XI . p. 204. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 21 

echelon, 52 divisions in the second, and 

62 divisions in the third echelon . On 13 

May, the General Staff ordered 28 divisions and 4 army headquarters from 

the Urals, the Caucasus, and the Far 

East transferred to the western fronti e r 

and began organizing an army a t 

Mogilev on the Dnepr River behind the 

Western Special Military District. (The second strategic echelon was to form 

along the line of the Onepr and Dvina 

rivers.) A call-up of nearly 800,000 reservists in late May brought the total of 

men under arms to about 5 million, 

and early graduations from d, e offi ce rs' schools provided office·rs for the 

increase. In May, also, instructions 

went out to the Uml, North Caucasus, 

IVlga, and Kharkov Military Districts to 

have elements of their forces ready to 

move to the Onepr-Ovina linen 

These actions, of course, achieved 

far less than full war readiness. Aside 

from the gaps in personnel and equipment of the divisions and mechanized 

corps, the fronti er military districts' 

dispositions were loose-" The first 

covering echelon had seven divisions 

less than were planned; the third , 

seven divisions more. 11,e first echelon 

was mosdy in barracks up to 30 miles 

away from the border. The second echelon's divisions were 30 to 60 miles 

from the border, and those of the third 

echelon, as much as 180 miles back . In 

addition, nonmechanized units were 

going to have to depend for mobility 

on being able to draw some quarter 

million motor vehicles and forty thousand tractors from civilian use. Bringing up the reinforcements from the 

73/VMV; vol. Ill. pp. 338-41,440; vav (Kratkaya 

Istoriya), p. 53; Ivanov, NachaillYY perWd, p. 21 3: Deborin and Tclpukho\'skiy, Jlogi i Ilroki. p. 74. 

HSec p. 23. 

interior and integrating them into d,e 

plans would take time. Moreov ~ the 

border to be de fended was the 1940 

one, almost none of which had been 

under Soviet control before September 

1939 and some only since the spring 

and summer of 1940. Fortifications 

along d,e old borde r, the so-called Stalin Line built in the 1930s, had been 

abandoned and in part dismantled. A 

new line had been under construction 

since November 1939, and 2,500 reinfo rced concrete emplacements had 

been built, but o nly 1,000 of those had 

artillery; we rest had only machine 

guns." 

On the other hand , the shortcomings in the defensive deployment do 

not seem to have weighed very heavily 

in the Soviet strategic thinking of the 

time. The H islory of the Second " 6dd War 

says, "As a practical matter, the military 

leade rship left a strategic defensive o ut 

of consideration. Defensive operations 

in the initial pe riod of the war we re 

rega rded as significant only for parts of 

d,e strategic front and for the assignments of the cove ril~g armies."'G The 

Soviet planning apparendy also did not 

take the possibility of a surprise attack 

into account. Zhukov tells why: 

The Peopl es Commissariat of Defe nse 

and th e General Staff beli eved that lVa r 

between sLlch big countries as German y and 

Russia would follow the ex isting scheme: 

the rnain forces engage in battle after several 

days of fro ntier f.gfiting. As regards the concentration and de ployment deadlines, it was 

assumed that conditio ns for the two coun - tries were lhe same. 77 

!'>/VM\~ \'01. III. pp. 435. '139. 441; vav (KraIJul)'o 

/slon)'o). p. 54. See also Erickson, RomJ In Sroli"g1"(ld, 

pp. 70, 71 and Zhukuv.MrmoiYJ, pp. 211 - 14. 

76/VMV, vol. III, p. 415. 

17Zhuko\', A1emoiYJ, p. 2 15. 
22 

In short, the military leadership anticipated a lag between the outbreak of 

war, declared or undeclared, and the 

actual beginning of operations. Zhukov 

mentions "several days." Vasilevskiy 

says the plans from the summer of 

1940 until BARBAROSSA assumed ten to 

fifteen days.'s Ivanov gives "not less 

than two weeks," and Marshal V. D. 

Sokolovskiy, in his work on Soviet strategy, specifies fifteen to twenty days.'· 

T11is was the period, Sokolovskiy indicates, in which mobilization was to be 

completed and the covering plan 

would be in effectS. Moreover, and 

perhaps more significantly; Soviet theory assumed that, after the hiatus, the 

hostilities would fall into a predictable 

pattern , and the war would "inevitably 

take on a character of extended attrition, with battles being decided primarily by the abi lity of tl1e rear to 

provide the front with more material 

and human resources over a prolonged 

period of time than were available to 

the enemy."" I 

On the Eve of Invasion 

Since Stalin's deatl1 , some Soviet accounts of the war, particularly those 

written during the Khrushchev period, 

have maintained that up to the last 

minute Stali n refused to respond to the 

signs of an impending invasion. The 

most often cited evidence is a TASS 

news agency rel ease printed in Pravda 

on 14 June 1941. It quoted "responsible 

circles in Moscow" as condemning the 

"absurd rumors of war between Ger7BVasilcvski )'. Dell), p. 10 !. 

79 ! va nov,Nac!w/II)')' }Jrriod, p. 206; V. D. Sokolovski y, 

Soviet M ilitary Slrategy (Englewood Cliffs. N.J. : Prentice H .. II , 1963). p. 232. 

1I°50ko10\ ki y, Sl mlfg)'. p. 232. 

III I \'ano\', )\1(1(1,(1111),- jJrriod, p. 203. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

many and the Soviet Union" and dismissed the rumors as propaganda 

"concocted by forces hostile to Germany and the Soviet Union." The "circles" declared that Germany and the 

Soviet Union were abiding strictly by 

the terms of the nonaggression pact.S2 

Zhukov has added that on the same 

day, 14 June, he and Timoshenko 

asked to put the troops in the frontier 

military districts on alert, but Stalin 

refused, saying, "That means war. Do 

you understand that or not?"S3 The 

HisliJry oj the Great Patriotic War attributes "a negative inAuence on the 

military readiness of the Soviet Armed 

Forces and on the alertness of command and political personnel" to the 

TASS dispatch.s• One account infers 

that the dispatch sustained a peacetime 

atmosphere among the troops of the 

frontier districts when the Germans 

were about to overrun the countrys, 

On the other hand , Vasilevskiy states 

that the dispatch "at first" aroused surprise in the General Staff, "as it did a lso 

among the Soviet people," but "thereafter no new instructions were issued, 

whi ch made clear that it was not directed to the A rmed Forces or to the 

public." "At the end of the same day," 

Vasi levski y con ti nu es, "the De pu ty 

Chie f of the General Staff, General 

F. Vatu tin , explained that the objective 

of the TASS communique was to test 

the true intentions of the Hitlerites and 

did not otherwise require our allention ."s6 The HisliJlY of the Second \IIi,,'ld 

War maintains, as Vasilevskiy does, that 

R2/VMV, vol. III , p. 440. 

~3Z ll ov, MemoIrS, p. 230. 

8~ VO SS, vol. II , p. 10. 

H·\S. P. Pl ato no\" ed ., Vtora),o M n'ova),lI \ 0)' 1/(/ 

(~ o~cow: Vo)'c nno)'c Izdatclstm. 1958), p. 1979. 

~flVas il c"s ki y. Delo. p. 11 9. 
"THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH" 23 

the dispatch was a probe for a German 

reaction and says that the Soviet government quickly took the subsequent 

German silence as a sign that war was 

about to break out. Therefore, the 

History adds, the Commissariat of Defense, between 14 and 19 June, ordered 

the frontier military districts to set up 

command posts from which they could 

exercise their appointed wartime functions as army group commands and to 

camouflage airfields, military units, 

and "important military objectives."'7 

If Stalin and the military leadership 

were convinced war was impending, 

they also had a very good idea of 

exactly when to expect it. Richard 

Sorge, a Soviet master spy in Tokyo, 

who was a German newspaperman 

with extremely well-informed contacts, 

gave them that information. On 15 

June he sent a radiogram that read , 

"War will begin on 22 June .... " and 

another that stated , "Attack will proceed on a broad front commencing 22 

June. "" 

In any event, Stalin knew by midJune that "to escape war, even in the 

very near future, was impossible" and 

permitted the final preparations to begin. The rule, however, was "to do what 

was necessary to strengthen the defenses .. . but not do anything in the 

frontier zone that could provoke the 

fascists or hasten their attack on us. "'9 

The Defense Commissariat ordered 

the frontier military districts to shift 

their divisions closer to the border and 

into the positions designated for them 

in the special plan for defending the 

87/VMV, vol. HI , p. 44J. 

88 Deborin and TclpukhQyskiy, frogi i uroki, pp. 

102- 03. 

89 I vanov, NachalnYJ period, p. 212. 

state frontier. The movements began 

on 15 June, but, on the 22d, "only 

certain" of the divisions were in position90 On the 21st, the Politburo acted to 

create a single command for the armies 

being brought from the interior military districts to the line of the Dnepr 

and Dvina. On the night of the 21st, a 

war alert directive went out from 

Moscow. It ordered all units to combat 

readiness and those close to the border 

to man the fortifications and firing 

points in secret during the night. 

Troops on the border were not to respond to any German provocations or 

to take any other action without special 

orders"] The directive did not reach 

all the field commands in the hours left 

before the German attack, and the 

state of readiness otherwise was far 

from complete. Nevertheless, there 

was, in general, no conflict with "the 

concept of initial operations projected 

by the Commissariat of Defense and 

the General Staff, which assumed that 

the aggressor would first undertake to 

invade our territory with partial forces 

and instigate border battles under the 

cover of which both sides would complete their mobilizations and mass their 

forces."92 

First word of the German attack, 

reports of airfields and cities being 

bombed , reached the Commissariat of 

Defense at about 0400 on 22 J u ne"3 

Four hours later, after consulting with 

Stalin , Timoshenko issued a second directive. It ordered the ground forces to 

"attack and annihilate all enemy forces" 

90/bid. 

91Deborin and Tclpukho\'ski y, /lQgi i uroki, p. 75; 

Zhukov, Mt'1lwirs, p. 232; IVOVSS, vol. II , p. JJ ; /VMV, 

vol. IV. p. 28. 

92. I vanov, N achalnyy period, p. 213. 

93Vasilevski y, Delo, p. 119. 
24 

that had violated the frontier and the 

air units to strike sixty to ninety miles 

inside German territory and to bomb 

Koenigsberg and Memel 94 

In Moscow, apparently, most of tile 

day of the 22d was consumed trying to 

get information about what was happening from the jivnts, which, in turn, 

were trying to do the same with their 

subordinate commands. By evening, 

"regardless of incomplete reports ... 

the situation required an immediate 

decision to organize further resistance 

against the enemy.""' At 2115, Ti9~/VOVSS, vol. I I. p. 18. See also Zhukov,Memoirs, p. 

236. 

95NMV, vol. IV, p. 37. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

moshenko dispatched a third directive: 

Northwest and West Fronts were to mount 

converging thrusts by infantry and armor from Kaunas and Grodno to 

Suwalki, and Southwest Fmnt was to do 

the same toward Lublin to cut off the 

Germans on the sixty-mile stretch of 

frontier between Vladimir-Volynskiy 

and Krystynopol.·6 Therewith, the 

frontier forces were ordered to "the 

offensive in the main directions for the 

purposes of destroying the enemy's assault groupings and carrying the war to 

his territory."·7 

96/bid., p. 38. 971 vanov, Nachalnyy period, p. 260. 
CHAPTER II 

The Blitzkrieg 

Barbarossa 

Several hours before the third Soviet 

directive went out on the night of 22 

June, Generaloberst Franz Halder, 

Chief of the German General Staff, 

had enough information to conclude 

that the Soviet forces had been tactically unprepared and "must now take 

our attack in the deployment in which 

they stand.'" Halder's Soviet counterpart, General Zhukov, who arrived at 

General Kirponos' Headquarters, 

Southwest Front, that night on the first of 

what would become a long series of 

similar coordinating missions, held 

much the same opinion, believing that 

neither a counterattack nor any other 

concerted move ought to be attempted 

until a clear picture of what was happening at the front was formed. 2 Yet 

Zhukov would not have concurred in 

Halder's funher assumption that the 

Soviet leadership "perhaps cannot react operatively at all. " He found the 

Southwest Front staff confident and capable. That as much could be said for the 

other two fronts, however, was doubtful. 

West and Northwest Hunts had become 

increasingly confused on the first day, 

and their commanders Generals Pavlov 

and Kuznetsov, who were trying to 

rally their forces, had been out of conlHalder Dial), vol. III , p. 5. 

2Zhukov. MeI1wirs, p. 239. 

tact with their own headquarters most 

of the time.' 

On 23 June , the Main Military Council, reduced from eleven to seven members, became the Stav ka ("general 

headquarters") of the High Command. 

Six deputy defense commissars 

dropped out, and two new members, 

Marshal Voroshilov, the chairman of 

the Defense Committee, and Admiral 

Kuznetsov, people's commissar of the 

nav y, were added. Marshal Timoshenko continued as chairman, and 

Stalin, Molotov, people's commissar for 

foreign affairs, and Zhukov remained 

as members, as did Marshal Sovetskogo 

Soyuza Semen Budenny, who was first 

deputy people's commissar of defense. 

Kuznetsov's presence made the Stav ka 

an armed forces headquarters but did 

not resolve the ambiguity as to where 

the supreme authority really lay' As 

Zhukov later put it, there were two 

commanders in chief, limoshenko de 

jure and Stalin de facto, since, "Timoshenko could not make any fundamental decisions without Stalin 

anyway."5 This was, in fact, the longestablished Soviet practice, and it 

ought not to have impaired the actual 

conduct of the war-and perhaps did 

not. However, in February 1956, 

Khrushchev, as general secretary of the 

a/bid.; IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 29. 

4Zakharov. 50 let, p. 256. 

sZhukov, Memoirs, p. 238. 
BALTIC 

SEA 

POLAND 

ARMY 

THE GERMAN ADVANCE 

ARMY 

22 June - 12 November 1941 

German positions, 21 Jun 

ApprOll.imate front, 10 Jut 

Appro)llimate front, 12 Nov 

t

NORTH Lugs 0 200 Miles 

~I ---,---L-r----~! 

FAONT "",,~~~R~~~~~"TlL-__ c-________ ~2~do~K~i'o~m~.~te~,'o-__ ~ 

\.I;IGH~ EN TH "" ,,00 o.-""",, !!ussa Yaras/avl 

",," PSltuV ,," SIXTEENTH 

FOURTH ,,0 000 

PANZER " 

'---<i. GHQUP 

SIXTEENTH 't~~. 

NINTH 

ARMY 

Grodno 

SECOND 

Bialystok ARMY 

FOURTH 

, 

FRON;P 

Vyazma 

YartseVQ 

/" 

I 

Smolensk ARMY 

Mog,,!,v RESERVE 

FRONT 

Bryans/( , 

FRONT 

I 

Lublin " 

SIXTH 

ARMY " 

Ravno 000000 SOUTH\'\{EST t 

, ( ____ J 

\ 

ARMY r-) Lvov 

Lokh'",sta FIRST "0"0 Kiev 

PANZER 000000" \ 

0 00 \.., GROUP "" ,," FRONT Kharkov 

., "" " D S SEVENTEENTH 0"" r-" "-':.".1<9 EVENTEENTH .....-- ~~ ... .-? ARMY 

ARMY 

,,000 

" 

--.......~c- Uman 

~ ~enChUg 

~~ ~ 

SOUTH ~~:vom8YSk c HUNGARY 

: FRONT ~ 

00 

, 

RUMANIA 

BUCHAREST 

MAP2 

SOUTHWEST-" 

FRONT 
THE BLITZKRIEG 27 

C A PTURED SOVIET TROOPS M ARCI-I PAST A PEASANT VILLAGE 

Communist Party, told the Twentieth 

Party Congress, ': .. for a long time 

Stalin actually did not direct military 

operations and ceased to do anything 

whatever. "6 Soviet accounts written 

since then generally have had little to 

say about Stalin's role in the war between 22Juneand 3July 1941. Zhukov 

maintained that Stalin recovered 

quickly from a spell of depression on 

the morning of 22 June, but Zhukov 

was away from Moscow until the 26th 

and reported seeing Stalin only twice in 

the week after he returned.' 

The Baltles if the Frontiers 

Except at Southwest Front, w here six 

'YAmgresswllal R ecord, 84lh Cong., 2d sess. , June 4, 

1956, p. 9395. 

?Zhukov. M emnirs, pp. 253-61. 

mechanized and three rifle corps kept 

pressure on Army Group SOUtil to the 

end of the month, the principal effect 

of the order to counterattack was to pin 

Soviet units in exceedingly dangerous 

positions· Against West and NOTthwest 

Fronts, the German Second , Third , and 

Fourth Panzer Groups rolled ahead . 

By 29 June, on the direct route to 

Moscow, Second and Third Panzer 

Groups and Fourtll and Ninth Armies 

had closed two large encirclements 

around the fronts, east of Bialystok a nd 

east of Minsk, that would yield over 

three hundred thousand prisoners. In 

four more days, Third Panzer Group, 

under Generaloberst Herman Hoth , 

had a spearhead on the upper Dvina 

8/VMV. vol. IV, p. 42. 
28 

River west of Vitebsk, and Second Panzer Group, under Generaloberst Heinz 

Guderian, had one approaching the 

Onepr near Mogilev. Army Group 

North by then had cleared the line of 

the Ovina upstream from Riga to the 

army group boundary and had deep 

bridgeheads north of the river. Army 

Group South , still under pressure from 

Southwest Front, had passed Rovno and 

Lvov. Neither of the latter two had 

executed encirclements like those of 

Bialystok and Minsk but all had covered impressive distances: Army 

Group Center, up to 285 miles; Army 

Group North , 180 miles; Army Group 

South, 120 miles. 9 In the meantime, 

Finland had declared war on the Soviet 

Union (on 25 june), and Army of Norway had begun advances out of northern Finland toward Murmansk and 

Kandalaksha. (Map 2.) 

Looking at the progress as of 3 july, 

Halder concluded that "on the whole, 

one can say already now that the mission of smashing the mass of the Soviet 

Army forward of the Ovina and Onepr 

has been carried out. It is very likely 

not saying too much when I observe 

that the campaign against the Soviet 

Union has been won in less than fourteen days."'· Halder predicted that 

beyond the Ovina and the Onepr, the 

job would be less to destroy the enemy's 

forces than to take his means of production, and "thus to prevent him from 

creating new armed forces out of his 

powerful industrial base and his inexhaustible manpower reserves."l! 

90KW, KTB, vol. I , p. 1217; Kurt von Ttppclskirch, 

Geschichte des Zweilen Weltkrieges (Bonn: Alhenaeum· 

Verlag, 1956), pp. 181 - 88: Alben ScalDn, The RussoC" man Ub r, 1941 - 1945 (New York: Praeger. 1971), 

pp. 98- 106, 116- 225. 

'OHalderDiary, \'01. III. p. a. 

II/bid" p. 39. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAO 

The Soviet leadership, although 

aware that its situation was desperate, 

did not see itself as being as helpless as 

Halder thought. Once it was clear to all 

of its members that not only the third 

directive of 22 june but the whole 

previous concept of carrying the war to 

the enemy's territory was a mistakeand it was clear by the fourth day of 

the invasion-the newly formedStavka 

set about developing an "active strategic defense." The objectives would be 

to stop the enemy along the whole 

front, to hold him and wear him down 

while the strategic reserves were being 

assembled, and then to shift to a "decisive strategic counteroffensive." To 

accomplish the first two of these aims, 

the Soviet Command would deploy the 

second strategic echelon, provided for 

in the state defense plan, behind the 

first strategic echelon, already in action . The main effort was to be in the 

center where fou r reserve armies 

(thirty-seven divisions) would be 

moved up to the Onepr-Ovina line behind West Front. Northwest Front was to 

use its reserves to build a line between 

Pskov and Orlov, 160 miles south of 

Leningrad, and Southwest Front, together with the right flank of South 

Front, was to occupy and hold the "old" 

Stalin Line fortifications on the 

pre-1939 border" The Soviet manpower that Halder was concerned 

about was coming into play. An order 

of the Presidium of the Supreme 

Soviet, issued on 22 june, had called 

up all reservists aged twenty-three to 

thirty-seven and by I July, 5.3 million 

had been mobilized.'3 

l2!vanov, NachahlYJ period, p. 273; IVMV. vol. IV. p. 

44 . 

I3VOV; pp. 106. 110: IVMV, vol. IV. p. 53. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

In Moscow, on 30 June, Stalin created the State Defense Committee, the 

GKO (Gosudarstuennyi Komilet Oborony), 

which superseded the Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars and became the war cabinet 

that had been envisioned in the prewar 

plans. Stalin was the chairman; Molotov the deputy chairman; and the 

other members were Voroshilov and G. 

M. Malenkov, who was the party personnel chief and Stalin's right-hand 

man. The GKO was the highest wartime organ of the Soviet government, 

and its decrees had the force of law. Its 

authority encompassed both the military and civilian spheres, and the 

Stavka was subordinate to it, but the 

GKO concerned itself mainly with directing the nonmilitary aspects of the 

war effort. 14 

On the twelfth day of the war, 3 July, 

Stalin, who had made no prior public 

sta tement, addressed the nation by radio. He was obviously under strain. His 

voice was dull and slow. He sounded 

tired, and he cou ld be heard pausing to 

drink water as he ta lked. I. Addressing 

the people as "brothers and sisters" and 

"friends," he told them for the first 

time, after two and a half weeks in 

which government communiques had 

depicted the fighting as being confined 

to the border, that Soviet territory had 

been lost and that the Germans were 

UFour members were added ~a short while later": 

lhe Chief of the State Planning Commission, N. A. 

Voznesenski y: and Politburo members N. A. Bulganin. 

L. ~1. Kagano\'ich, and I. A. Mikoya n. InSliLUl ISlOrii 

SSSR, I storl),ll SSSR (Moscow: Izdatelstm "Nauka," 

1973). vol. X, p. 30. 

uAdam B. Ulam, Stalin (New York: Viking, 1973). 

p.541. 

29 

advancing. IS Reiterating instructions 

given to all party offices four days 

earlier, he called for evacuation and a 

scorched earth policy in threatened 

areas and partisan warfare in enemyoccupied territory. He asked the kolklwz 

("collective farm") peasants to drive 

their livestock eastward ahead of the 

Germans and the workers to follow 

their fellows in Moscow and Leningrad 

by organizing opoLcheniye ("home 

guards") "i n every town threatened 

with invasion ." The speech emphasized 

the national rather than ideological 

character of the war and referred to 

Great Britain and the United States as 

"trustworthy partners" in a common 

struggle for "independent and democratic freedom ."17 

To SmoLensk 

As the battles of the frontiers ended 

in the first week of July, both sides' 

attention became fixed on three places, 

Leningrad , Moscow, and Kiev, and 

most particularly on Moscow. Flanking 

the Vitebsk Gate, a fifty-mile-wide gap 

between them, the upper Dvina and 

Dnepr rivers afforded the most defensible line west of the Soviet capital. 

"Iimoshenko had taken command of 

West Front, including the four reserve 

armies on the Dnepr River line, on 2 

t"Alexander Werth, Russia at \-\0r: 194 J - /945 (Ne\v 

York: DUHon , 1964), pp. 162-65. 

Il/VOVSS. vol. lI, p. 57. British Prime Minister 

Winston S. Churchill had pledged assistance to the 

Soviet Union o n the day of the invasion . and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had opened the way for 

U.S. aid on 23 and 24June. See Gwyer, Grand Strategy, 

vol. III , p. 89; Robert H. Jo nes. The Roads to Ru.ttia: 

United Stales Ltfld-Lease to the Savitt U,IiQ1l (Norman, 

Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), pp. 

35-37; Richard M. LeighLOn and Robert W. Coakley, 

Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943 (WashingLOn, 

D.C.: CPO. 1955), p. 97. 
30 

JUly.18 By then, Army Group Center 

had regrouped for the crossing. Generalfeldmarschall Guenther von 

Kluge's Headquarters, Fourth Army, 

renamed Fourth Panzer Army, had 

taken over Second and TI1ird Panzer 

Groups, and an army headquarters 

from the reserve, Second Army, had 

assumed control of Kluge's infantry, 

which was then engaged with Ninth 

Army in mopping up the Minsk 

pocket. The panzer groups jumped off 

on 10 July, Hoth's Third Panzer Group 

north of the Vitebsk Gate and 

Guderian's Second Panzer Group 

south of it. In six days, _ one of 

Guderian's corps covered eighty miles 

and took Smolensk. Third Panzer 

Group went even farther, and Hoth 

had a spearhead at Yartsevo, thirty 

miles northeast of Smolensk, on 16 

July. In between the corps' and groups' 

advances, an elongated pocket was 

forming around the Soviet Sixteenth and 

Twentieth Armies. I ' 

In the meantime, on 10 July as the 

battle for the Dnepr River line was 

beginning, Stalin had emerged as the 

supreme commander of the Soviet 

armed forces. The Stavka of the High 

Command then became the Stavka of 

the Supreme Command with Stalin as 

chairman and the most experienced 

Soviet staff officer, Marshal Shaposhnikov, was added to the membership. 

(On 19 July, Stalin assumed the post of 

III/VMY, vol. IV, p. 46. Pavlov had been recalled to 

Moscow at lhe end of June together with his chief of 

staff and deputy for political affairs. All three were 

court-martialed and shot. The commander of Northwest Frrmt, KuznclSov, and his chief of staff and deputy 

for political affairs also were relieved-but with less 

severe consequences. See Khrushchev, Khntshchro Remembers, p. 132 and Ercmenko, V naclUlle, pp. 36- 48. 

IltTippelskirch, Geschichte, p. 191;IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 

66; Seaton, Russo-Cennan War, pp. 124-27. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

people's commissar of defense, and on 

8 August he entered the military hierarchy with the title supreme high commander, whereupon theStavka became 

the Stavka of the Supreme High Command.) Although directives and orders 

were issued in the names of GKO and 

the Stavka throughout the war, neither 

had any authority independent of Stalin. After he became supreme high 

commander, me"etings of the whole 

Stavka apparently were infrequent, and 

Stalin used the members as personal 

advisers and assistants and the General 

Staff as his planning and executive 

agency. Stavka representation in the 

field, either by its members or by Otl1-

ers acting under its authority, became 

an established feature of Soviet command technique. Zhukov, for instance, 

was almost always away from Moscow, 

either as a Stavka representative or in a 

major field command 20 

Also on 10 July, the GKO authorized 

theater commands for the main "strategic directions" (napravleniy): the 

Northwestern Theater, under Voroshilov; 

the Western Theater, under Timoshenko; 

and the Southwestern Theater, under 

Budenny?1 The theater commands 

corresponded roughly to the German 

army groups, but their roles appear to 

have been less clearly defined, and the 

fronts continued as the main operational commands. 

In mid-July, the Stavka set up a reservefront of four armies behind Northwest and West Fronts on the Staraya 

Russa-Bryansk line and another of 

three armies flanking Mozhaysk, sixty 

miles west of Moscow. Not yet ready to 

regard the battle for the Dnepr-Dvina 

20Zakharov, 50 let, p. 267. 

21/VMV, vol. IV. p. 53. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 31 

SS-MEN CROSS THE BERESINA RIVER ALONGSIDE A WRECKED BRIDGE 

line as lost, the Stav/w diverted twenty 

divisions from the reserve armies for 

counterattacks from the north and the 

south against the prongs of the German pincers. 22 Mobilization was 

providing men to fill new units, but not 

enough officers qualified to staff and to 

command higher headquarters; consequently, the Stavka disbanded the 

corps headquarters on 15 July, leaving 

the armies in direct command of their 

divisions. 

In part by design and in part out of 

necessity, the Soviet Army reorganized 

in July to a basis of smaller tactical 

units. Most riAe divisions were already 

30 percent below authorized strengths, 

at between nine and ten thousand men, 

22/VOVSS, vol, II, p. 69. 

and they were short 50 percent of their 

artillery, the equivalent of one regiment per division. Infantry brigades 

of forty-four hundred to six thousand 

men were a faster and cheaper means 

of bringing manpower to bear, and the 

army formed 159 of these between late 

July and the end of the year. During 

this period, motorized corps were broken down into tank divisions, brigades, 

and independent battalions, apparently because the field commands believed the armor would be more useful 

in direct infantry support than in large 

mobile formations. The authorized 

strength of a tank division (7 of which 

were formed in 1941) was 217 tanks; a 

brigade (76 formed in 1941), 93 tanks; 

and an independent battalion (100 

formed in 1941), 29 tanks. The actual 
32 

strengths of these tank units varied 

widely. The 8th Tank Brigade, for instance, when activated in September 

1941, had what it then considered a full 

complement: 61 tanks, 22 of them 

T -34s; 7 KVs; and 32 light tanks.23 

. Although the intensity of fighting 

1I1creased through the second half of 

July, and llmoshenko launched several 

determined counterattacks, the battle 

for Smolensk and the Dnepr-Dvina line 

was lost. In the fourth week of the 

month, the panzer armies closed the 

pocket east of Smolensk. By then, Generaloberst Adolf Strauss' Ninth Army 

and Second Army, under Generaloberst Maximilian von Weichs, had 

broadened the bulge east of the rivers, 

and the Stavka had had to divide the 

frontage, giving the southern arc to a 

newly created Headquarters, Central 

FlVnt, under Kuznetsov. On the 30th, 

Zhukov, whom Shaposhnikov had replaced the day before as chief of the 

General Staff, took over the reserve 

flVnts behind Northwest and West Fmnts 

and on the Mozhaysk line as the Reserve 

Fmnt. The Germans liquidated the 

Smolensk pocket on 5 August and 

counted over three hundred thousand 

prisoners and three thousand captured 

or destroyed tan ks. Soviet accounts 

maintain that Sixteenth and Twentieth 

Armies escaped practicall y intact. 24 

23/VMV, vol. ,IV, p. 61: I vanov, Nachalnyy period, p. 

277; TyushkcvlCh, Vooruzht'llnye sily. pp. 281 , 284 ; 

Krupchenko, Tan/wv)'1! voyska, p. 33: M. V. Zakharov, 

cd .. PrOllal gitlerol1skogo nastupleniya na Moskvu 

(Moscow: izdalclstvo ~Nauka ," 1966). p. 165. 

HS~ato , Russo-Gennan a hr, p. 130; Ttppelskirch, 

Gesdllchle, p. 19 1. For the Soviet position on the tWO 

armies in the pocket. which va ries somewhat among 

the sources but generall y holds that they withdrew in 

good o rder. see IVOVSS, vol. II , p. 72; IVMV, vol. IV. 

p. 75: VOV (Kratkaya Isroriya), p. 76: and K. K. 

Rokossovski y. A Soldier's Duty (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970). p. 39. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The North and South Flanks 

During the month of the battle for 

the Dnepr-Dvina line and Smolensk, 

Army Groups North and South covered as much and more ground as 

Army Group Center, though less spectacularly. For Army Group North in 

the first week of August, Generaloberst 

Erich Hoepner had the point of Fourth 

Panzer Group approaching Luga, seventy miles south of Leningrad. On his 

right, Generaloberst Ernst Busch's Sixteenth Army was keeping contact with 

Army Group Center on the Dvina, and 

on his left, Eighteenth Army, under 

Generaloberst Georg von Kuechler, 

was clearing Estonia, the northernmost 

of the three Baltic States. A Finnish 

offensive begun on 10 July was tying 

down North Fmnt forces, under General 

Popov, east of Lake Ladoga. 25 

Army Group South broke through 

the Stalin Line on the pre-1939 Soviet 

border at the end of the second week in 

July, and Generalfeldmarschall Walter 

von Reichenau's Sixth Army got to 

within ten miles of Kiev on the lith. 

Thereafter Sixth Army advanced 

slowly on its left against stubborn resistance from Soviet Fifth Army under 

General Mayor M. I. Potapov and 

stretched its right flank to cover Generaloberst Ewald von Kleist's First 

Panzer Group as the latter drove south 

and southeast into the Dnepr bend. In 

the first week of August, Kleist and Generaloberst Carl-Heinrich von Stuelpnagel, commander of Seventeenth 

Army, maneuvered parts of two Soviet 

armies into a pocket between Uman 

and Pervomaysk and took over a hundred thousand prisoners. At PervoUTippclskirch, Geschichte, pp. 192-94 ; IVMV, vol. 

IV, pp. 64 -66. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

maysk, Kleist's armor was in position to 

strike behind South Front, which, on the 

west, faced the Rumanian Third and 

Fourth Armies as adjuncts of the German Eleventh Army under Generaloberst Franz Ritter von Schobert. To 

avoid being trapped between the Germans and the Black Sea, General 

Tyulenev, commander of South Front, 

with the Stavkn's, that is Stalin's, approval , began a retreat toward the 

Dnepr, leaving behind an independent 

force to cover Odessa.'· 

A Change in Plans 

Meanwhile, the issue of the main 

effort side-stepped in the original BARBAROSSA plans, had raised a command 

crisis at the Fuehrer Headquarters. In 

two directives (numbers 33 and 34 of 

19 and 30 July, respectively) and supplements to them, Hitler had given 

Leningrad and the Ukraine priority 

over Moscow as strategic objectives. He 

had also ordered Army Group Center 

to divert forces, particularly armor, to 

the nonh and the south on a scale that 

would practically halt the advance in 

the cel1ler after tile fighting ended at 

Smolensk. The objective given in Directive 33 was "to prevent the escape of 

large enemy forces into the depths of 

the Russian territory and to annihilate 

them." In the final supplement, Hitler 

had added another: "to take possession 

of the Donets [Basin] and Kharkov 

industrial areas. "27 

26Seaton , RusSQ-GemuHI " hr, PI'. 136- 40: IVOVSS, 

vol. I I. pp. 98- 103. See also K. S. Moskalenko. Na 

yugu-wpadllolll naprav lenii (Moscow: Izdalelslvo 

- Nauka." 1969). pp. 46- 55. 

21Der Fuehrer Imd Qhente Bifehl.shaber der Wehmwchl, 

OKW, WFSI, Abl. L (lOp.) N r. 44123 014 1, H-eisulig Nr. 

33 , 19. 7.41; N r. 44 129814 1, H·'t.inmg Nr. 34, 30.7.41; N T. 

441376, Ergaenw ng der Weisullg 34, 12.8.41, Cemlan 

High Level Directives, CMH files. 

33 

The generals in the OKH , in the 

field , and even in the OKW, were dismayed at being told to turn to what 

they regarded as subsidiary objectives 

when it seemed the Soviet Command 

was clearly determined to make its decisive stand on the approaches to 

Moscow. During a month's debate , 

Hitler refused to change his mind except to settle for a weaker effort in the 

north , and on 21 August, he sent down 

orders that would dispatch Second 

Army and Second Panzer Group soutp 

into the Ukraine and divert a panzer 

corps and air support elements from 

Field Marshal Bock's Army Group 

Center to Army Group North.'s 

Guderian , whom Halder and Bock 

thought Hitler might listen to as a tank 

expert, failed to get the orders 

changed in a last-minute interview on 

23 August. 2 ' 

The advances of Army Groups Center and South in July had, by early 

August wrapped their lines halfway 

around the Soviet forces standing at 

Kiev and along the Dnepr north and 

south of the city, creating a potential 

trap for almost tile whole Southwest 

Front. Hitler, no doubt, had entrapment 

in mind , and Zhukov certainly also did. 

The danger was obvious, but Stalin 

could not bring himself to sacrifice 

Kiev, and after Zhukov proposed doing 

that, Stalin removed him as chief of the 

General Staff On 4 August, Stalin ordered Southwest and South Fronts to hold 

the Kiev area and the line of the lower 

Dnepr. In mid month, the Stavka set up 

the Bryansk Front, two armies under 

General Eremenko, between Central 

Front and West Front. Stalin's instructions 

t8DA Pamphlet 20- 261a, pp. 50- 70. 

29Heinz Guderian , Pmlu r Lealia (New York: DUIlon , 1952), pp. 198- 200. 
34 

to Eremenko were to prevent the armor of Guderian's Second Panzer 

Group from breaking through toward 

Moscow. On the 19th, Shaposhnikov 

told Zhukov that he and Stalin now 

agreed with Zhukov's prediction of an 

attack to come south, off Army Group 

Center's flank. The Stavka passed the 

same information , which apparently 

was based on intelligence, to Budenny 

at Headquarters, Southwestern Theater, 

and to Southwest and South Fronts and 

simultaneously reiterated its previous 

orders to hold Kiev and the line of the 

lower Dnepr. 3 • 

Second Army and Second Panzer 

Group started south against the relatively weak forces of Central Front on 25 

August. To make matters worse for it, 

Headquarters, Central Front, was just 

then, as the result of another Stavka 

decision, at the point of being deactivated and was turning its sector over to 

Bryansk Front. To check Bryansk Front, 

which might have endangered his flank 

and rear, Guderian left behind most of 

Second Panzer Group's infantry and a 

panzer corps. These units became 

Fourth Army under Kluge'S headquarters, which had reliriquished its panzer 

army designation. Guderian's course 

took him on an a lmost straight line 

toward Romny, 120 miles east of Kiev. 

When Guderian's point passed 

Konotop on 10 September, narrowing 

the open end of the bulge to less than 

150 miles, Kleist's First Panzer Group 

struck north from a bridgehead at Kremenchug on the Dne pr. From then on, 

most of the Soviet troops in the bulge 

had farther to go to escape than the 

panzer groups did to close the encircle30Zhukov. Memoirs, pp. 289. 296: Eremenko, Ibm1li 

\.byrlY. p. 143: VOV (Kratknya Istoriya), p. 90. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ment, and on the 11th, Budenny asked 

to withdraw SOllthwest Front from Kiev 

and the Dnepr upstream from Kremenchug. Stalin refused and sent Timoshenko to replace him. On the 16th, 

the German points met at Lokhvitsa, 

25 miles south of Romny, and the Germans wiped out the pocket in another 

week, counting 665,000 prisoners. The 

Short H istory gives SOllthwest Front's 

strength as 677,085 men at the beginning of the battle and 150,541 at its 

end." 

Taiflln 

The !VI ain Effort in the Center 

Describing the advances in the 

north, toward Leningrad, and in the 

south, east of Kiev, as being about to 

create "the basis" on which Army 

Group Center could "seek a decision" 

against "",st Front, Hitler, on 6 September, issued Directive 35 for what 

became Operation TAl FUN ("typhoon"). Under the directive, the main 

effort would revert to Army Grou p 

Center at the end of the month, and by 

then it would have its detached panzer 

and air units returned along with reinforcements in armor from the other 

two army groups and the OKH reserves. Thereafter, Army Groups 

North and South would continue their 

operations with reduced strength. 

Army Group orth wou ld make contact with the Finns on the Isthmus of 

Karelia east of Leningrad and push 

across tlle Volkhov River to meet them 

3lGuderian , Parizu Leader, pp. 202 -25; Tippclskirch. Geschichlf!, pp. 199-201 ; IVOVSS, vol. II , 

pp. 103- 11 ; IVMV; vol. IV, p. 85; VOV (Kralkn)'Q 

Istoriya), p. 91. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 35 

CREW OF 88-1\IM. GUN S EA RCH ES FOR TARGETS ON TilE ApPROACH TO KIEV 

a lso east of La ke Ladoga n Army 

Group South would continue east to 

take Kharkov and Melitopol and dispatch Eleventh Army south into the 

Crimea.33 

I n the last week of September, Army 

Group C~nter reca lled Second and 

Third Panzer Groups and acquired 

Headquarters, Fourth Panzer Group, 

from Army Group North togeth e r 

with panzer corps from Army Groups 

North a nd South. By then , Army 

Group 1 orth had taken Schluessel32 Hitler had already o rde red Army Group Nonh 

10 in vest Lening,dd but not COler it or accept a 

surrender if one were ordered. The city was to be left 

to starve. OKW, WFSt. Abt. L(/ Op.) Nr. 00 2119141, 

lfJrtragsllotiz inlil/grad, 21.9.41, OKW/1938 file. 

:l3Der Fuehrer tHld Oberstl! Befehlshaber der Wehnnacht, 

OKW, IVFSI, Abl. L(I 0P.J N,. 44 149214 1, 6.9.41, 

German High Level Directives. eMI-1 files. 

bu rg on th e N eva River a t La ke 

Ladoga, thereby cutting Leningrad's 

contact by land with the Soviet interior, 

and Finnish forces had lines across the 

Isthmus of Karelia north of the city 

and on the Svir Rive r east of Lake 

Ladoga. Army Group South had 

spearheads approaching Kharkov and 

closing up to Melitopol. Army Group 

Center held the line it had occupied 

east of Smolensk in August. 

On the Soviet side, the commands 

for the northweste rn and western thea ters, whose fun ctions the Gene ral 

Staff and the Stavka had assumed , had 

gone out of existence in August and 

September, leaving only Timoshenko's 

SOllthwestern Theater. In the fa r North, 

between Lake Onega and the Barents 

Sea , KaTelian F1'Ont, under General 

Ley tenant V. A. Frolov, was managing, 
36 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

WOMEN FIRE FIGHTERS KEEP LoOKOUT OVER THE ROOITOI'S OF LENINGRAD 

aided by the approaching winter, to 

hold the Germans and Finns away 

from Murmansk and the Murmansk 

Railroad. Against Army Group North , 

Leningrad Front, with Zhukov in command after 10 September, defended 

Leningrad , and Northwest Front, under 

General Ley tenant P A. Kurochkin, 

held the line from Lake Ladoga south 

to Ostashkov. On the south flank, Timoshenko took personal command of 

Southwest Front on 26 September and, 

with it, South Front, and Fifty-fint Inde-

/JI:tIdent Army on the Crimea, was responsible for the defense south of the 

level of Kursk . Against Army Group 

Center were ranged the West Front, under General Polkovnik Ivan Konev; 

Eremenko's Bryansk Front; and the Reserve Front, where Budenny had replaced Zhukov. The long pause in the 

center had given the Stav/1Ll time to 

rebuild the defense. The three fronts 

had a combined total of at least 

1,250,000 men 34 Army Group Celller 

had more men, 1,929,000 but those 

included a large auxiliary contingent. 

The army group's combat effective 

strength of sevellly-eight divisions 

would hardly have given it more than 

numerical equality'"· 

The March to Victory? 

The quiet west of Moscow ended on 

2 October. In bright fall sunshine, 

Army Group Center's tanks roared 

34/VMY, vol. IV, pp. 93, 110-19. 

35 Klaus Reinhardt, Die "~!7lde vor Moslum (Stullgart: 

Deutsche Vcrlags-Anstall. 1972). p. 57. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

eastward once more . Konev and 

Eremenko had West Front and Bryansk 

Hunt, respectively, concentrated west of 

Vyazma , on the direct route to 

Moscow, and west of Bryansk36 Bock's 

armor, Third Panzer Group on the 

north , Fourth Panzer Group in the 

center, and Second Panzer Group on 

the south, went around the outer 

flanks and between the two Soviet 

groupings. Within a week they had 

encircled six Soviet armies west of 

Vyazma and were forcing almost the 

entire Bryansk Front, three armies, into 

pockets southwest and northeast of 

Bryansk. Halder described the performance as "downright classical."37 The 

German final count of prisoners from 

the Vyazma pocket was 663,000 and 

from those near Bryansk about one 

hundred thousand.'" But the results of 

the operations in the extensive forests 

around Bryansk were not quite "classical." The fighting tied down parts of 

Second Army and Second Pan zer 

Group until late in the third week of 

the month, and many of Eremenko's 

troops eventually either made their 

way out to Soviet territory or hid in the 

deep woods where the Germans would 

later have to contend with them again 

as partisans. 39 

Zhukov, hurriedly recalled from 

Leningrad where he had succeeded in 

stabilizing the front, took over the combi ned West and Reseroe Fronts on 10 

October. His assignment was to man 

the Mozhaysk line with survivors from 

the Vyazma pocket, recent conscripts, 

and a sprinkling of seasoned troops 

36/VMV, vol. IV, p. 94. 

31Halder Diary. vol. III . p. 268. 

38Tippelskirch, ~schj hte, p. 206: Guderian. Pmuer 

/..ew/er, p. 238. 

3tReinhardt, Mosluw, pp. 63- 67. 

37 

rushed from other sectors and Siberia. 

The Mozhaysk line, however, began to 

crumble on the 14th when Third Panzer Group took Kalinin. On the 17th, 

the Stavka set up Kalinin Front under 

Konev to take over Zhukov's right Aank 

and to narrow his responsibility to only 

the direct western and southwestern 

approaches to Moscow. Around the 

capital, civilians, mostly women, were 

building three semicircular defense 

lines, and in the city, workers' militia 

battalions were preparing to man the 

lines'o While the most intensive Soviet 

effort was directed toward Moscow's 

defense, the main German thrusts 

were aimed past it. On the nortll, in the 

second week of October, Third Panzer 

Group had headed toward Yaroslavl, 

and Second Panzer Group had been 

coming from the southwest on a line 

taking it via Orel and Mtsensk (which it 

reached on 12 October) toward Tula, 

Ryazan, and Gorkiy. On 12 October, 

Hitler had given the same order for 

Moscow he had given for Lenin~·a d: 

German troops were to surround the 

city and to starve it out of existence. No 

German soldier was to set foot in 

Moscow until hunger and disease had 

done their work" (Mat) 3.) 

The crisis came in the second and 

third weeks of October 1941. Loss of 

Kalinin, on the 14th, set off panic and 

looting in Moscow and gave rise to 

symptoms of disintegration among tl,e 

troops. On the 19th, the State Defense 

Committee put Moscow under a state 

of siege. At the front, Zhukov says with 

astringent understatement, "A rigid 

order was established .... Stern meaO/OO/VOVSS, vol. II. PI'. 240-47; NMV, vol. IV, pp. 

97- 100. 

HOKW, KTB , vol. I. p. 1070. 
) 

Moscow· Volga 

, , 

Sm IfJnsk 

~ Yukhno", 

Roslevl 

ARMY GROUP CENTER 

15 November - 5 December 1941 

000000 Front line, 15 Nov 

-.---- Front line, 5 Dec 

~ German attack 

o 50 Miles f-I -----,-- ' 

o ~O Kilometers 

NOTE: Soviet ermies IIf. portrayed by 

use of numllrical dtuignation unless 

otherwise indicated. 

MAP 3 

SECOND 

PANZER 

'-,-_,ARMY 

00 

'J,.'f,.'J.. ~ 00000 

Kursk 

o 

: 

o 

o 

l 

) 

, 

\ 

WEST 

10th 

'-, , 

\3d 

, 

I 

SOUTHWEST ,-

, \ Ye/els ~~ __ I 

I 

Llvny _ "" , , 

, 

, 13th 

/ 

/' 

VOfonezh 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

sures were introduced to prevent 

breaches of discipline."42 The diplomatic corps and most of the government offices were evacuated to 

Kuibyshev. Hitler's address on 3 October opening the "Winter Relief" program had already sounded like a 

victory speech, and on the 9th, Dr. Otto 

Dietrich , secretary of state in the Propaganda Ministry and chief press 

spokesman, had told the Berlin foreign 

press corps that the campaign in the 

East was "decided."'" On the 10th, the 

OKW had called off Army of Norway 

operations out of northern Finland because it believed the war was about over 

on the main front." Much of the 

world , the British and United States 

governments especially, wanted to believe otherwise, but to do so, except as a 

desperate act of faitll, hardly seemed 

reasonable. The U.S. military attache 

in Moscow had reported on 10 October 

that it seemed "the end of Russian 

resistance is not far away."" The British government had suspected the end 

might be near in September, before 

TAl FUN began, when Stalin had called 

urgently on the British and the Americans for a second front on the Continent and, failing that, had asked for 

twenty-five to thirty British divisions to 

fight in Russia.46 

Bad as the Soviet situation looked , it 

was, for the moment, actually worse 

than either the Germans or the Western Allies imagined. Four months of 

war and territorial losses had reduced 

Soviet productive capacity by 63 per42Zhukov, Memoirs, p.331. 

~3Domarus.Hitler. vol. II . pp. 1758-67. 

HAOK Norwtgen, BtJe hissttlit Filin/ul/d , III 

Krltgstagebuch, 3.6.41-/3.1.42, 10 On 41, AOK 20 

35 1981 1 file. 

:i SherwCK>d, Roosroelt aud Hopki7LS, p. 395. 

46Cwyer,Grand Strategy, vol. III , pl. I, pp. 197-201. 

39 

cent II1 coal, 68 percent in iron, 58 

percent in steel, and 60 percent in 

aluminum. In October, after having 

risen during the summer, Soviet war 

production also dropped drastically, 

probably by 60 percent or more." During October the Moscow and Donets 

industrial complexes had to shut down 

and to begin evacuating. (The decline 

continued into November and December, during which months the 

Moscow and Donets basins did not 

deliver "a single ton" of coal, the output 

of rolled ferrous metals fell to a third 

of that of June 1941, and ball bearing 

output was down by 95 percent.)4. W. 

Averell Harriman, U.S. lend-lease expediter, who had been in Moscow at the 

end of September, had accepted a 

shopping list from Stalin for a billion 

dollars in lend-lease supplies, but their 

delivery would take months. 

On 18 October, Fourth Panzer 

Grou p, having pushed past Mozhaysk 

and Kaluga, began turning to skirt 

Moscow on the north and to open the 

way for Fourth Army's infantry to execute tlle encirclement. Fourth Army, 

anticipating a similar assist on its right 

from Second Panzer Group, had issued 

the orders for the encirclement on the 

16th and had set the line of the Moscow 

belt railroad as the closest approach to 

the city.49 At the speeds they had attained in the early days of the month , 

the tanks of Hoepner's Fourth Panzer 

Group would have been less than two 

days' from Moscow when they passed 

Mozhaysk, but tlley were not moving as 

fast as they had before. 

HPlalOllOV, Vtoraya Mirovaya Hryna, p. 243: IVOVSS, 

vol. II, pp. 158- 60. 

uVoznesenskiy,Eco'lOmyoJthe USSR, p.23. 

uFirsl and Second ))amer Groups were elevated to 

full army SlaLUS on 5 OclOber. 
40 

Mud and Frustration 

The Germans were having their first 

encounter with the rasputitsa. The first 

snow fell on the night of 6 October. 

From then on, alternating rain and 

snow and the pounding of tanks and 

trucks turned the roads into ever 

deeper quagmires of mud. By the end 

of the third week in the month, Fourth 

Panzer Group's and Second Panzer 

Army's (Second Panzer Group elevated 

to army status, 5 October 1941) spearhead divisions had become stretched 

out over twenty-five to thirty miles, and 

the infantry was sometimes outdistancing the tanks. Third Panzer Group 

contemplated dismounting the tank 

crews and going ahead on foot and 

with tJanje wagons, the Russian peasants' one-horse carts. Meanwhile, dismayingly strong counterattacks on 

Third Panzer Group at Kalinin and on 

Second Panzer Army along the Zusha 

River at Mtsensk had demonstrated 

that even though aerial reconnaissance 

reports showed Moscow being evacuated , the Russians would not give up 

the city without a fight.· o 

Because of the weather, the Russians, 

for almost the first time in the war, 

were able to meet their enemy on 

nearly equal terms. The Germans, 

moving slowly and confined to the 

roads, could be confronted head-on 

and forced to fight for every mile. The 

Soviet T -34 tanks, which had been too 

few to inAuence the fast-moving encirclement battles, came into their own. 

Having wider tracks than the German 

tanks made them more buoyant in the 

mud. Their heavy armament and ar50Guderian , Pallu r Leader, pp. 233- 44 ; DA Pam· 

phle' 20- 261 •. pp. 79-8 1. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

mor allowed one or two T -34s in a 

roadblock to stop an advance until the 

Germans could bring up either 88-

mm. antiaircraft guns or lO-cm. field 

guns, the only reasonably mobile artillery pieces capable of crackmg the 

T -34's armor. Both weapons, though, 

especially the 88s, were heavy and 

bulky, hence vulnerable, and aggravatingly difficult to move over rutted, 

potholed roads. 

At the end of October, Army Group 

Center was practically at a standstill on a 

line from Kalinin to the Oka River west 

of Tula, its center thirty-five miles from 

Moscow. Army Group North had, in the 

meantime, given up on closing the siege 

line around Leningrad west of Lake 

Ladoga in September, after the Finnswhose Commander in Chief, Marshal 

Mannerheim, had scruples about further involving his troops in operations 

against Leningrad because he had 

pledged in 1918 not to use the border on 

the Isthmus of Karelia to attack the 

city-declined to push any farther 

south. Being left then holding an uncomfortable six-mile-wide "bottleneck" 

east of Schluesselburg, Field Marshal 

Leeb , commander of Army Group 

North, on Hitler's orders, had begun a 

thrust east on 14 October aimed from 

Chudovo northeast past Tikhvin to the 

Finnish line on the lower Svir River. 

This drive also had slowed, and at tile 

end of the month, therasputitsa stopped 

it short of Tikhvin . In the last week of 

October Army Group South managed 

to take Kharkov and Stalino and to 

break through the Perekop Isthmus 

into the Crimea before the rasputitsa 

also stopped it.5l 

5'See E.,d F. Ziemke, The Gm nml NarlherPl Theaterq[ 

OperMW1LS, 1940 - 45 (Washington, D.C.: GPO. 1959), 

pp. 200- 02; 'Tippelskirch, Geschichte, pp. 202-06. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 41 

MOVING S UPPLIES IN THE RAINY SEASON 

As seen from the Soviet side, the 

German frustration, welcome as it was, 

did not lessen the mortal threats hanging over the country. If Army Group 

North r eached Tikhvin, it would cut 

the one railline to the south shore of 

Lake Ladoga and the reby further isolate Leningrad. At Stalino, Army 

Group South a lmost had control of the 

industry and coal mines of the Donets 

Basin. The panzer units northeast and 

south of Moscow were poised to devastate the industrial heart of central Russia and to leave the Soviet forces from 

the Arctic to the Caucasus hanging at 

the ends of a disconnected railroad 

system. 

Early on the morning of 7 November, the twenty-fourth anniversa ry of 

the Communist Revolution, Stalin reviewed an impromptu parade for the 

occasion from his accustomed stand 

atop the Lenin mausoleum. In his address to the troops, most of whom 

would go directly from Red Square to 

the front, he called on them to emulate 

the old Russian national heroes-Alexander Nevskiy who had defeated the 

Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century; Dimitry Donskoi who had defeated the Tatars a century later; and 

Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail 

Kutuzov who had served the tsars 

against the French Revolution and 

Napoleon. In a speech to the Moscow 

Communist Party organization the 

night before, he had adopted a similar 

Russian nationalist tone. H e had a lso 

told the party leaders about the recent 

billion-dollar-lend-lease agreementwhile blaming the de feats so far on the 

absence of a second front in the West. 
42 

I n both days' speeches he predicted 

Hitler's ultimate defeat but did not 

comment on the probable outcome of 

the current campaign. Before the party 

audience, he repeatedly spoke of the 

coalition with Britain and the United 

States as the guarantee of ultimate victory.." 

As Stalin looked out over Red 

Square on the 7th, where light snow 

and freezing cold signaled the end of 

the rasputitsa, the future must have 

appeared dark to him. Within days, the 

soldiers marching before him could be 

trapped in a pocket with Moscow at its 

center. He himself could become a refugee , not only driven out of Moscow, 

the world capital of communism, but 

into the eastern fringe of European 

Russia. Evidently, he regarded these 

possibilities as grimly potential realities. The Stavka had started forming 

nine reserve armies on a line from 

Vytegra on the southeastern tip of 

Lake Onega to the Rybinsk Reservoir 

and from there east and south along 

the Volga River· 3 If the Swvka contemplated having to defend that line, 

the future must have appeared dark 

indeed. When it was reached, the 

Leningrad and Moscow industrial regions would have been occupied, and 

the Soviet Union could be eliminated 

as a military power. Stalin had almost 

said as much the previous summer in 

52/VOVSS, vol. II, pp. 252-54; We rth, Russia at \Mzr, 

pp. 244-49. 

.:Ii3VOV (Kratkaya Istoriya), p. 124 ; IVOVSS, vol. II. p. 

257. The VOV (Kratkaya Istoriya) and IVMV (vol. I V, p. 

280) state that ten reserve armies were being formed 

and imply that First Siwek and Twentieth Armies were 

among lhem. IVOVSS gives the number as nine. not 

including First Shock and Twtmtieth Annies, and lists 

them as Tellth, TWlmty-sixlh, and Fifty-seventh Annies 

(formed in later October) and Twenty-ez'ghth, Thirtynillth, Fifty-eighth, Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth, and Sixt),-first 

(formed in the first half of November). 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

telling Hopkins, the U.S. lend-lease negotiator, that a German advance of 150 

miles-to the east of Leningrad , 

Moscow, and Kiev-would destroy 75 

percent of existing Soviet industrial capacity.54 

Toward the end of tlle first week in 

November, the front was beginning to 

stir again, on the flanks, though not yet 

in the center. Army Group North, after 

having been almost ready to fall back to 

the Volkhov River the week before, 

raised enough momentum in the mud 

and against constantly stiffening Soviet 

resistance to take TIkhvin on the 8th. 

Leeb observed that "[Leningrad] is 

now also cut off from contact across 

Lake Ladoga."55 In the south , Eleventh 

Army, under General der Infanterie 

Fritz-Erich von Manstein, who had 

taken command in September after 

Schobert died in an airplane accident, 

cleared the Crimea by 8 November 

except for the Kerch Peninsula in the 

east and the Sevastopol fortress on the 

west. 56 At Army Group Center, Bock 

had issued an order on 30 October for 

T Al FUN to resume, and he was waiting 

impatiently for the weather and 

ground conditions to improve.

57 

In the second week of November, as 

the weather began to clear and the 

ground to freeze, the armor could 

move again. The OKH and the fi eld 

commands contemplated a troublesome question raised by the lime 

$4Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 338 . 

~5 Wilhelm Ritte r von Leeb. Tagebuchaufuichnungen 

ulld Lagebeurleilungen aILS l.wei Weltkriegen (Stuttgart: 

Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1976), pp. 381-89. 

s8DA Pamphlet 20-261a, p. 81. See also Erich von 

Manslcin , Lost Victories (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 

1958), pp. 205. 220-22. 

57H. Gr. Mille, fa Nr. 2250141, Befehlfun die Forfsetmngder Opem/i01lt!tl, 30./0.41, Pz. AOK 4 22457/ 14 

file. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

lost in the rasputitsa: where to stop for 

the winter? The invasion plans and 

preparations had not included continuing active operations into the 

winter, but all levels of command had 

assumed the campaign would be successfully completed in 1941. On 7 

November, Hitler conceded to Field 

Marshal Brauchitsch, commander in 

chief of the army, that the German 

Army could not reach such vital objectives in the Soviet Union as Murmansk, 

the Volga River, and the Caucasus oil 

fields during 1941'8 Speaking in 

Munich the next day, the anniversary 

of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch , Hitler 

called blitzkrieg an "idiotic word" and 

declared himself ready to carry the war 

into 1942 and beyond-to the "last 

battalion," if necessary.59 The dream of 

a single-season victory had vanished, 

and winter winds were beginning to 

blow through the Russian forests and 

across the steppes. Halder had told 

Colonel Adolf Heusinger, his chief of 

operations, on 5 November, that the 

Germans needed some basis on which 

to close out the current campaign.so 

What such a basis could be appeared 

different to each of the principals 

involved. Leeb had exhausted his reserves getting to Tikhvin , could not go 

forward, was not inclined to go backward , and described Army Group 

North as existing " from hand to 

mouth."s, Bock had severe doubts 

about how much further he could go 

but, recalling the fateful consequences 

of the German decision to stop on the 

Marne in September 1914, he did not 

want to miss whatever chance of taking 

u l-/alder Diary. vol. III , p. 283. 

5l1Domarus, Hiller, vol. II , pp. 1776. 1778. 

fioHaltier Diary. vol. III, p. 281. 

6 1 Lecb, Tagebuchaufuich'lUngt!7l, p.391. 

43 

Moscow still existed . He could not, for 

the moment, imagine anything worse 

than having to sit out the winter just 

thirty-five miles from Moscow with tlle 

Russians in unimpaired control of the 

city and the half-dozen railroads running into it from the north, south, and 

east"2 Field Marshal Rundstedt, commander of Army Group South, called 

on the OKH to let him stop the army 

group where it was to conserve its 

remaining strength after the long summer's march and to give him time to 

rebuild for the next spring. Halder saw 

the possibilities as falling into two categories: one he called an Erhaltungsgedanken in which conservation of 

strength was the determinant; the 

other a Wirkungsgedanken in which exploitation of the existing strength to 

achieve the maximum effect in the 

time remaining would be the determinant. The two he maintained, would 

have to be weighed and balanced 

against each other and the results 

converted into guidance for the field 

commands. S3 

On 7 November, Halder sent each 

army group and army chief of staff a 

copy of an eleven-page top secret document and a map with notice to "the 

Gentlemen Chiefs of Staff" that both 

options would be the subject of a General Staff conference to be held in 

about a week at Orsha. The map (of 

European Russia) had two north-south 

lines drawn on it. One was designated 

"the farthest boundary still to be attempted"; the other "the minimum 

62See Alfred W. Turney, Disaster at Moscow (Albuque rque: Unive rsit y or N ew Mexico Press. 1970). pp. 

130-33 and Halder Dio.ry, voLIII.p. 287 . 

13 /-1 . Cr. Sued, la N,., 2090141 , (III den Chef del 

Gelleralstab,~ du I . Pz.. Anllu 4. 11 .4 1. Pz. AO K I 

58682 file: Hfllder DUllY, \"01. III, pp. 281, 28~. 
44 

boundary." The "farthest boundary" 

ran from Vologda on the north via 

Gorkiy and Stalingrad to Maykop. It 

would cut central Russia off from railroad contact with the northern ports, 

Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and with 

the Caucasus, and it would bring in 

hand the entire Moscow industrial 

complex, the upper and middle Volga, 

and the Maykop oil fields. Whether this 

action would end the war was doubtful, 

but it would, as Halder saw it, bring 

German forces into an alignment they 

could maintain indefinitely, "in case the 

highest leadersh ip should decide 

against resuming the attack in the East 

later." The "minimum boundary" terminated in the north on the middle 

Svir River, 30 mil es east of Lake 

Ladoga, and on the south at Rostov, a t 

the mouth of the Don River; in the 

center, it passed 160 miles east of 

Moscow. It would provide a secure tiein with the Finnish Army on the Svir, 

bring Moscow and the cluster of industrial cities to the northeast between 

Rybinsk and Yaroslavl under control, 

cut all the railroads running toward 

Moscow from the east, and position 

Army Group South for later advances 

to Stalingrad and the Caucasus. But it 

would still be an interim, not a final 

boundary, and another offe nsiv e 

would be needed to bring in Vologda, 

Gorkiy, Stalingrad, and the oil at Maykop and Baku·4 

Halder and his branch chiefs for 

operations, organization, intelligence, 

and supply arrived at Orsha , in the 

Army Group Center zone on the night 

of 12 November aboard a special train. 

6~ ehellswichligf russ. Rue·illduslrim tI. Verkehrsli1litm 

sowir Q1lZustrehende OperarimlSZiele, Karte I, AOK 18 

35945/1 file. See also Earl F. Ziemke, "Franz Halder at 

Orsha ,~ M ilitary Affairs, 39( 1975), 173- 76. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The General Staff conference began 

the next morning at 1000 and ran 

through the day and into the night. 

Halder's own thinking, in which he said 

Hitler had concurred, inclined strongly 

toward the Wirkungsgedanken. 65 He had 

given the chiefs his position in the 

paper he sent with the map. TI,e objective, before closing out the current 

offensive, he had stated, should at least 

be to get favorable starting positions 

for 1942 while "minimizing" the danger of the troops' being caught unprepared by the winter. In fact, he had 

added, it would be worthwhile "to take 

some risks" before the onset of winter 

to get to the "farthest boundary" or at 

least the "minimum boundary."·· 

At the Orsha meeting, Halder argued that carrying tl,e offensive at least 

to the minimum boundary was necessary as well as advantageous. The "fundamental idea" of the campaign, he 

said, had been to defeat the Soviet 

Union in 1941. TI,is was no longer "one 

hundred percent attainable" for various reasons, among them "natural 

forces," but primarily because of the 

enemy's "astonishing" military and material strength . Even though the Soviet 

Union was weakened "by at least fifty 

percent," its remaining potential was so 

great that it could not yet be dismissed 

as a military threat and simply "kept 

under observation" as had been intended. Consequently, the East would 

remain an active theater of war into the 

next year, and tl,at raised problems. 

For one, he explained, the OKH had 

been aware from the first that the 

forces assembled for BARBA ROSSA could 

65See H aid" Diary', vol. II I, p. 283 . 

66Drr Cluj des Generalstahes des H eeres, Op. Ahl., fa Nr. 

163014 1,7.11.41, AOK 1835945/1 file. 
THE BLITZKRIEG 

not be sustained beyond the end of 

1941, which meant that personnel 

losses thus far could not be replaced in 

the coming year, and cutbacks in motor 

vehicle allotments would reduce mobility. The Soviet Union , on the other 

hand, still had enough men and industry to rebuild its forces by the summer 

of 1942 if it could survive until then. 

Consequently, the German Army 

would still have to "strive to" inflict 

enough damage on the enemy before 

the end of 1941 "so that the troops will 

not have to pay in blood next year for 

what is neglected now."67 

The chiefs of staff, for their pan, 

reminded Halder of some things he 

already knew very well. German casualties stood, as of 1 November, at 

686,000 men-20 percent of the 3.4 

million, including replacements, commilled since june, the equivalent of 

one regiment in every division. Of haIfa-million motor vehicles on the Eastern 

Front, a third were worn out or 

damaged beyond repair; only a third 

were fully serviceable. Panzer divisions 

were down to 35 percent of their original tank strengths. The OKH itself 

rated the 136 divisions on the Eastern 

Front as equivalent to no more than 

83 full-strength divisions. All of these 

conditions could only ge t worse if operations continued-and one other, 

namely, that of logistics, wou ld get 

much worse. Every mile the armies 

moved eastward put an added strain on 

the railroads. Winter clothing for the 

troops was already having to be left in 

storage because it could not be brought 

forward without cutting off other supplies. German equipment could not 

67/_/. Cr. Nord, Dn Chif des Gellera/stabl's. la Nr. 

769141 . 21.11.41. AOK 183594511 hie. 

45 

run on the Soviet railroads until the 

tracks were relaid to the standard 

gauge; and in the entire territory occupied thus far only 500 Soviet locomotives and 21,000 cars had been 

captured, barely a tenth of what was 

needed 6. 

The chiefs' estimates of what might 

still be accomplished were equally 

bleak. Generalmajor Kurt Brennecke, 

Leeb's chief of staff, told Halder that 

Leeb's command , Army Group North, 

had no divisions for a drive east and 

could acquire these only by first eliminating the Soviet Eighth Army, which it 

had confined in a pocket west of 

Leningrad. Brennecke noted that 

Halder did not mention Vologda again. 

Bock's chief, Generalmajor Hans von 

Greiffenberg, was cold to a suggestion 

from Halder that Army Group Center 

not resume the advance toward 

Moscow for two weeks or so to let 

strength accu mulate for a deeper 

thrust. Generalmajor George von 

Sodenstern, the Army Group South 

chief of staff, pointed out that 

Rundstedt believed an advance to Maykop, if it were undertaken after the 

long march already made, would remove his only large armored unit, First 

Panzer Army, from action for most of 

the nex t yea r. 69 

After dinner on the evening of the 

13th, Halder gave his conception orthe 

meeting'S results. He had concluded , 

he said, that the extensive operations 

he had proposed on 7 November and 

in the morning session could no longer 

68/bid.; Halder Diary, vol. III. p. 286: OKIY, KTIJ , vol. 

IV, 1'1'. 1074 - 75. 69H . Cr: Nord, Der Cluj cJes Gmeralstabts. III Nr. 

76914 1, 21 .11 .4 / , AOK 18 35945/1 file. Sec Halder 

Diary, p. 287. H. Cr. SIU,d. Der Chef des Gellemislabf'S, 1(1 

N I". 2123141 , liJrlragslIotiz, AOK 6181117 file. 
46 

be considered. Nevertheless, he believed that the army groups would still 

have to get as much as possible from 

their troops until about mid-December. 

Army Group South would have to 

push ahead, though "apparently" not 

as far as Stalingrad. Army Group Center would not gain "substantial " 

ground beyond Moscow, but it would 

still, at least, have to "achieve a stronger 

pressure" on tl1e city. Army Group 

Nortl1 would be expected to resume its 

drive at Tikhvin , close in on 

Leningrad, and assist the Finnish 

Army east of Lake Ladoga. Vologda, 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Gorkiy, Stalingrad , and Maykop would 

have to be left for the next summer, 

when "the Russians [would) have a plus 

in strengtl1 and we a minus."'O On the 

other hand, Guderian's chief of staff, 

Lt. Col. Kurt von Liebenstein , alluding 

to me 1940 campaign, had already reminded Halder that the war was not 

being fought in France and the month 

was not May. 71 

7DH . Gr. Sued, Du Chef des Gtmeralslflbes. III Nr. 

2 J2J/4 J, li1rtrag.rnoliz, AOK 6181117 file; H . C r. NQrd, 

D" Chif des Gmaalstabes, III Nr. 769/4 J. 21 .11 .41, AOK 

18 35945/ 1 role. 

lIGuderian, Pamer Leader, p. 247. 
CHAPTER III 

To Moscow 

On the De[ ensive in the Heart/and 

The Soviet literature describes the 

strategic situation at the time of the 

November lull in somewhat contradictory terms. The official accounts maintain that Soviet resistance brought the 

Germans to a stop west of Moscow and 

dismiss the effect of the weather as a 

German excuse for failure, perpetuated by "falsifiers of history."' On the 

other hand, they indicate that the 

effect of the Soviet success was temporary, and the initiative remained entirely the Germans'. The picture, then, 

is one in which the Soviet armies 

fought the enemy to a total standstill 

and gained a brief respite. As the Papular Scientific Sketch gives it, the enemy 

needed two weeks to prepare his next 

moves, and the pause allowed the Soviet Command to reinforce the front 

and consolidate the Moscow defenses' 

The Soviet Conditwn 

For the Soviet Command, as for the 

German, the crucial strategic consideration in early November, aside from 

the approach of winter, which was as 

welcome on the Soviet side as it was 

unwelcome on the German, was the 

relative state of the two forces. The 

manpower and material that had kept 

IVOV (Kratkaya Istoriya), p. 122; IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 

250; fVMV, vol. IV, pp. 98-101. 

2See Zhukov. Mmwirs, p. 337; VOY, p. 99. 

the Soviet Union in the war thus far, 

despite enormous losses, were sufficient to sustain another round of operations. 3 As of 1 December the Soviet 

armies in the field would have 4.2 

million men, a slight numerical superiority in armor over the Germans, approximate equality with them in 

aircraft, and a small inferiority in artillery and mortars.' 

The Germans substantially underestimated the Soviet strength. Estimates given to the chiefs of staff on 13 

3111C Soviet literature provides virtually no information on Soviet losses and, except in the instance of 

the Kiev battle, dismisses the German counts as vaslly 

exaggerated. However, if, as a scauering of figures 

indicates, 461 divisions were commiued to the campaign between June and December (170 divisions 

were in the frontier military districts on 22 J line 194 1, 

and 291 divisions \vere commiucd from the Stavkil 

reserves between 22 June and 1 December) and only 

279 of these divisions were in the field in eady 

December, then the divisions lost alone could have 

totaled 182, or 39 percent. Since not all of the 

divisions and other units employed in the campaign 

were either in place on 22 June or deployed from 

Swviw reserves the"eafter, this number would have to 

be regarded as the minimum possible loss. The mililary districts, fronts, and armies undoubtedly mobilized a number of other divisions and units during 

this period. Additionally, peoples' militia divisions 

and so-called independent regiments and baualions, 

numbering about two million men, were recruited in 

the threatened areas. Whal became of them is impossible to determine. See V. Zemskov, "Nekotoriye voprosy 

souloniya ; ispolZDlJ(lniya strategicheskikh reurvov," M. 

Kaza kov, "Souumiya i ispolwvaniye slrategicheskikJl Ttsl!rvw," and V. Colubovich, "Sozdaniya stTaltg1chtskikh 

rezervav," Vayttull}-istorichtskiy zhurnal, 3( 1971), 12- 16; 

12( (972), 45-49; 41(1977), 10- 13. respeclively. 

4VOV (Kraliwya Istoriya), p. 129. 
48 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

KY TANK HEADED FOR THE FRONT RUMBLES THROUGH PuSHKIN SQUARE, Moscow 

November at the Orsha Conference 

put the totals of Soviet larger units at 

160 divisions and 40 brigades and rated 

their combat effectiveness at below 50 

percent because more than half of 

those units' troops and officers were 

believed to be untrained' The actual 

numbers as of 1 December, according 

to the Soviet sources, would be 279 

divisions and 93 brigades. In part, 

these units, particularly those from the 

reserves, lacked training and experience . Interspersed among them, howevel~ was a growing core of seasoned 

divisions. The individual principally, 

though indirectly, responsible for this 

increase in readiness was the Soviet 

5}_/ . Cr. Nord, Der Chef (Ies Generalslabes, /a NT. 769/4 1, 

Niederschrift uebl'T die Bes/Jredumg beim Chif des GtmStdJ-/ am 13. 11 .4 / , AOK 18 3594 5/llile. 

agent, Richard Sorge. He had apparently supplied enough information on 

Japanese plans to let the Soviet Command begin shifting some forces we,st 

even before 22 June. 6 Through Sorge, 

Stalin had undoubtedly then known 

about a Japanese decision of 30 June to 

uphold its neutrality treaty of April 

1941 with the Soviet Union and to risk 

war with the United States.' By the fall, 

Stalin had either become convinced of 

Sorge's reliability or desperate enough 

(or bOtll) to redeploy more troops from 

the east to the west. Some had appeared at the front in October, more in 

GGolubovich, "Souiani)'a ra egicl~skikh," p. 17; vav 

(Kratka),a Istoriya), p. 69; vav, vol. I. 

71nstiuIL ruer Zeitgeschidlle, DeI//sche Gesellichle seit 

dem erstcli Weltk6eg (Swtlgal"t : W. Kohlhammer, 1973), 

vol. 11. p. 11 5. 
TO MOSCOW 

November. The Stavka had held most 

troops back from the front to stiffen 

the reserve armies being formed. By 1 

December it had transferred 70 divisions from the Soviet Far East and had 

brought another 27 divisions out of 

Central Asia and the li-anscaucasus. 

Together these units constituted at 

least 30 percent of tile total strategic 

reserves committed during me 1941 

campaign 8 

Departing from previous practice, 

Stalin did not commit his main reserves 

when me German advance resumed. 

The reserve armies were still being 

formed, and it is possible that Stalin 

had not yet decided to undertake an 

all-out stand at Moscow. Nevertheless, 

in Stalin's view, the defense of the 

Moscow area would remain the paramount strategic requirement. (So far 

during the campaign-June tilrough 

November-Stalin had committed 150 

divisions, 51 percent of the SlaV/ILL'S 

total divisional reserves, in me West 

Front zone.) In late October, West Front, 

under General Zhukov, had received 11 

rifle divisions, 16 tank brigades, and 40 

artillery regiments from the reserve 

and from otilerfronts. Then in me first 

half of November, it acquired 100,000 

troops, 300 tanks, and 2,000 artillery 

pieces. Meanwhile, workers from 

Moscow and surrounding cities had 

been recruited to form 12 militia divisions and 4 line rifle divisions. On 10 

November Zhukov took over Fiftieth 

Army from B,)'ansk Front, which was 

be ing deactivated, and a week later he 

acquired Thirtieth Anny from Kalinin 

Front. These extensions of his flanks 

II Zemskov, "Nekoto?'j)'C voprosy soulmliya i ispolz.ovaniya 

strategicheskikh reurvov," p. 14. Sec also p. 42. 

49 

gave him control from just south of 

Kalinin to Tula. 9 

In mid-November, before the 

weather changed and the lull ended, 

the Slavka had incorporated almost all 

of its forces into the defense of 

Moscow. West Front was to hold me 

direct approaches and to counter anticipated strong-armored thrusts west of 

Klin and at Tula. Kalinin Fnmt, commanded by General Konev, and Southwest Front, under Marshal Tunoshenko, 

were to pin down Army Group Center's outer Ranks and thus prevent its 

commander, Field Marshal Bock, from 

shifting more weight toward Moscow. 

South Front, commanded by General 

Polkovnik Va. T Cherevichenko, and 

Leningrad F1'Ont, under General Leytenant M. S. Khozin, had orders to ready 

offensives near Rostov and at Tikhvin, 

respectively, to draw enemy reserves 

away from tile center. 10 

The Gennan November Offensive 

In the second week of November, 

Army Group Center retained the same 

general deployment it had had at the 

beginning of the lull. Ninth Army, under General Strauss, held the line from 

the Norm-Center boundary, west of 

Ostashkov, to Kalinin. Third Panzer 

Group, under Generaloberst Hans 

Reinhardt, who had replaced General 

Hoth ;n October, stood on the Lama 

River, thirty miles west of Klin, wim 

Fourth Panzer Group, under General 

Hoepner, on its right in a sector north 

of the Smolensk-Moscow highway. Un-

!lKazakov. "SOuJOIll)'{/ i ispolwvGni),{/ slralegicheskikh 

rezenJov," p. 48; Vov, p. 99; IVMV, vol. IV, p. 104; A. 

Sinitsyn, "/z istorii souiani)'G dobrovolduskikh chasley i 

so)'cdillcniy Sovetskoy Annii," VO)'enllo-islQricheskiy Zh1/Ynul, 1 (l973), 11 - 15. 

10VOV (Kratka),a iswl1)'a), p. 124 . 
50 

der Field Marshal Kluge, Fourth 

Army's left flank straddled the highway 

and its right tied in with Second Panzer 

Army, under General Guderian, on the 

Oka River. Second Panzer Army's main 

weight of armor was concentrated in a 

salient projecting eastward south of 

Tula. Second Army, commanded by 

General Weichs, covered the south 

flank east of Orel and Kursk. Against 

these, Kalinin Front, West Front, and the 

right flank of Southwest Front had twelve 

armles. 

In spite of his doubts about how 

much farther he could go, Bock had 

tried to retain his option for a deep 

thrust past Moscow. He had drawn his 

armor inward toward Moscow somewhat but still had it arching well 

around and to the east of the city. He 

aimed Third Panzer Group south of 

the Volga Reservoir toward the 

Moscow-Volga Canal; Fourth Panzer 

Group, via Klin, toward the canal; and 

Second Panzer Army, past Tula, to Kashira and Ryazan. Those lines of advance would bring Third and Fourth 

Panzer Groups out on the MoscowVolga Canal to strike toward Rybinsk 

and Yaroslavl, give Second Panzer 

Army a choice of going north from 

Kashira toward Moscow or east across 

the Oka River toward Gorkiy, and leave 

the close-in encirclement of the city to 

Fourth Army alone.

ll As the time grew 

shorte r, however, Bock's doubts increased, and he told Halder, chief of 

the General Staff, and the army commanders that he did not expect the 

army group to have enough troops, 

supplies, or tanks to get beyond the 

II H. Cr. Mine, la Nr. 2 250J.ll , Befehl f lier die Forlset1.1lllg der Opera/jonell , 30. 10. 41 , Pz. AOK 4 2254 7/ 14 

file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Moscow-Volga Canal on the north and 

the Moscow River on the south. But he 

let the armies' original orders stand , 

thereby, as Third Panzer Group put it, 

making their missions "undear."12 

On 14 November, Zhukov intervened-reluctantly-in what so far 

had been considered by both sides to 

be an exclusively German initiative. 

Forty-ninth Army-reinforced with a 

cavalry corps (2 cavalry divisions of 

3,000 men each), a rifle division, a tank 

division, and 2 tank brigades, hit the 

Fourtll Army right flank east of SerpUkhOV. 13 At the last minute, because 

Zhukov expected the renewed German 

offensive any day, Stalin had insisted 

on "counterblows," which Zhukov believed could accomplish nothing other 

than to complicate the defense." 

During the morning on the 15th, one 

infantry corps of Ninth Army, which 

was only supernumerary in the offensive, jumped off south of Kalinin and 

experienced what Halder noted as 

"something new in this war": Soviet 

Thirtieth Army gave way without a 

fight. 15 Although Third and Fourth 

Panzer Groups had less luck when they 

joined in a day later, the Soviet forces 

against them fared badly. A "counterblow" by Sixteenth Army's right flank, 

reinforced with a tank division and five 

cavalry divisions, ran head on into 

Fourth Panzer Group's attack east of 

Volokolamsk and collapsed. '6 On the 

18th, Second Panzer Army began its 

drive south ofTula, and one of its corps 

12PZ. AOK 3, 1(1 N r. 52 0142 , Crjl'chlsberir.hl RUSJ/mul 

/941-42, 29.4.42, Pz. AOK 3 21 8 18/2 file; Halder 

Diary, vol. II I. p. 287. 

13/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 256. 

I4Zhukov. MemQirs, p.338. 

15Ha/der Diary. vol. 111 , p. 290. 

16Rokossovskiy, Soldier's Duty, p. 70; IVOVSS, vol . II, 

p.256. 
TO MOSCOW 

covered nearly twenty-five miles during the day; the following day, Stalin 

asked Zhukov, "Are you sure we will be 

able to hold Moscow? It hurts me to ask 

you that. Answer me truthfully as a 

communist." Zhukov replied that 

Moscow would be held "by all means" 

but said he would need at least another 

two armies and two hundred more 

tanks.

17 Stalin agreed to provide the 

two armies, but not the tanks, and said 

the armies would not be ready until the 

end of the month, which left the situation around Moscow unlikely to improve anytime soon unless relief came 

from the operations about to begin 

elsewhere. 

West and north of Rostov, Timoshenko had doubled South Front's 

strength in the first half of the month 

by deploying two fresh armies, ThiTtyseventh Anny and Fifty-sixth Independent 

Anny. On the 17th, Thi-rty-seventh An"y 

together with elements of Ninth and 

Eighteenth Annies hit the shoulder of 

General Kleist's First Panzer Army fifty 

miles norU1 of Rostov. Timoshenko had 

thought to fulfill the Stavka's requirement for a diversion and to block the 

gateway to the Caucasus, but the first 

days' results were discouraging: XIV 

Panzer Corps stood· fast on the north 

while III Panzer Corps broke away to 

the southeast toward RostoV.1 8 

The outlook for an effective diversion at Tikhvin appeared even dimmer. 

There, General Meretskov took command of the shattered Fourth Independent Army on 7 November, just as 

Tikhvin was being lost. Twelve days 

later, responding to "urgent demands" 

from the Stavka, he went over to the 

!1Guderian. Panzer Leader, p. 25 1: Zakhamv. Pmval, 

p.39. 

18/VUVSS. \'01. 11. p. 222:IVMV, vol. IV. pp. 120-21. 

51 

offensive at Tikhvin with the one infantry division and two tank battalions of 

reinforcements he had received so far. 

These forces were actually enough, in 

view of Army Group North's straitened 

circumstances, to alter me balance in 

me Soviet . favor, but they were not 

likely to produce swift or devastating 

effects. I' 

Bock's armor had made good progress in the first three days of the 

offensive. The ground was frozen hard 

and dusted with light, dry snow. The 

Germans had painted their tanks, 

trucks, and guns white to blend with 

the landscape. Shortening days, lowhanging clouds, and snow flurries restricted air support, and temperatures 

ten to twenty degrees below freezing 

were new to troops so far accustomed 

to campaigning in warmer seasons. On 

the other hand, armor could move 

across country as if it were on paved 

roads. The fall mud and the summer's 

dust and mosquitoes were gone. The 

scenery was also improved . TI1e Belorussian forests and swamps had given 

way to the Moscow upland dotted wiu1 

prosperous-looking villages clean under the new-fallen snow. 

This, the Germans were uneasily 

aware, was not the real Russian winter. 

Fighting U1en would be altogeu1er different. Third Panzer Group had already told the OKH that while infantry 

could be made mobile in the coldest 

weather and the deepest snow, tanks 

and trucks did not respond like men 

and could not be ordered to master 

difficulties they were not built to meet. 

But meteorological statistics from as 

far back as the nineteenth century gave 

19Merctskov. Sf!1ving the People, pp. 157-70: IVMV, 

vol. IV. p. 11 3; Lecb, 1agebllchauJleichmmgen, pp. 

392-9'1. 
52 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

PANZER III TANK AND I NFANTRY ADVANCE OVER R UTI'ED BUT FROZEN R OAD 

no reason to expect heavy snow and 

extreme low temperatures before midDecember.20 

For the moment the weather was the 

least of the troubles that faced Army 

Group Center on the 18th. In three 

days of fighting, Fourth Army just 

barely had repulsed the Serpukhov 

"counterblow." When a second counterblow, in which some Siberian troops 

well fitted out for winter fighting, came 

at the same spot on the 18th, Kluge 

talked about pulling back ten to fifteen 

miles to cover on the Protva River. 

Since some of his regiments were reduced to four of five hundred men and 

20p 1.. AOK 3, fa Nr. 520142, Cefechtsbl!11.cht Russltl1ld 

1941-42,29.4.42, P,. AOK 3 21818/2 ~Ie ; P,. AOK 3, 

triA 0 , Kliml1lisrhe VerhaellllisSi! (III (Ier oberell Wolga illl 

Willlrr, 27.10.'11 , Pz . AOK :3 20H:l9/5 file. 

commanded by first lieutenants, his 

right flank, he said, was unlikely to be 

able to complete the southern sweep of 

the Moscow encirclement. 

Bock and Halder exchanged opinions late on the 18th on "what prospects the whole operation still had. " 

They concluded that both sides were 

close to the end of their strengths, and 

the victory would go to the one who 

had the most will 2 ! Two days later, 

determined to be the one to commit his 

last regiment, Bock, using his special 

train as a command post, moved out to 

the army group left flank behind Third 

and Fourth Panzer Groups. From 

there, he revised the plan again , ordering Fourth Panzer Group to bear east, 

south of Klin, and to add weight on 

21/-/alder Diary. vol. Ill. p. 294. 
TO MOSCOW 

Fourth Army's left Rank. He told Third 

Panzer Group to take Klin and dip 

southeast along the road and the KlinMoscow railroad toward Solnechnogorsk. But when Third Panzer 

Group took Klin on the 23d , Bock 

changed his mind again . Fourth Panzer 

Group's left Rank units were already in 

Solnechnogorsk, and Bock responded 

to a proposal from Reinhardt to turn 

his Third Panzer Group southeast toward Moscow anyway with an order to 

cover Fourth Panzer Group's Rank but 

also to push due east "as far as 

possible."22 

After the 23d, as Third Panzer 

Group headed east away from Klin , the 

blitzkrieg worked surprisingly well. 

The Russians retreated steadily and, 

for once, did not set fire to their villages as they left, which the group's 

intelligence officers took to mean either that they were becoming demoralized or, though that seemed much 

less likely, that they expected to return 23 The lead division, 7th Panzer, 

picked up a deserter, an NKVD lieutenant, who said the Russians were 

evacuating the area west of the Moscow-Volga Canal and were readying 

fresh troops off the panzer group's 

open Rank on the north for an attack 

toward Klin . T,1.lk among the Soviet 

officers, he said, was that "K1in will be a 

klin [in Russian, a wedge] against the 

Germans." The interrogation report 

did not find its way to panzer group 

headquarters until the second week of 

Decem bel'. 2. 

On 27 November, 7th Panzer DiviUpz. AOK 3, Gefeclttsbericht RussJWld /941-42, Pz. 

AOK 3 21818/2 file. 

2SPZ. AOK J, IdAO, Taetigkeitsberidtt Nr. 3, 23.//.41 , 

I',. AOK 3 16911/32 file. 

HI',. Cr. 3, Ie. Mitteihmgm. 26./2.41, Pz. AOK 4 

16911/36 file. 

53 

sion reached the Moscow-Volga Canal. 

The next morning, assuming its mission would still be to push east, Third 

Panzer Group took a bridgehead on 

the east bank of the canal at Yakhroma. 

During the day, Fourth Panzer Group's 

spearhead, 2d Panzer Division, came 

almost to a standstill twenty miles to the 

south, west of Krasnaya Polyana, and 

twelve miles north of Moscow. Echeloned in a fifteen-mile line on the 2d 

Panzer Division right, General Hoepner, commander of Fourth Panzer 

Group, had 11th Panzer Division , 5th 

Panzer Division, 10th Panzer Division, 

and the SS "Das Reich" Division all 

aimed toward Moscow but barely moving as they crunched head-on into the 

minefields and fiercely defended 

earthworks ringing the city. Kluge'S 

Fourth Army left Rank was inching 

ahead, but not enough to keep 

Hoepner's forces from having to 

stretch to maintain contact. Second 

Panzer Army had driven in a large 

bulge south of Tula, but Soviet Fiftielh 

Army held on grimly around the city, 

and a raid by one of Second Panzer 

Army's divisions north to Kashira was 

drawing a swarm of Soviet cavalry and 

tanks down on the 17th Panzer Division. On the night of the 28th, Bock, 

while changing the plan again, at least 

symbolically, committed his "last regiment." Giving Third Panzer Group 

the Lehrbrigade 900 (actually one battalion), the only reserve he had, he 

ordered Re inhardt to forget about the 

Yakhroma bridgehead, turn south 

along the west bank of the canal, and 

join Hoepner's push toward Moscow." 

Meanwhile, during the past week, 

Army Group South had undergone 

u p%. . AOK 3. la Nr. 520142, Gefechtsbericht Russ/mid 

1941 -42, Pz. AOK 3 2181812 file. 
54 

some decidedly unpleasant experiences 

at Rostov. The SS division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" had taken the city 

on the 21st. This was a notable but 

dangerous feat. In and around Rostov, 

II I Panzer Corps came under attack 

from tl,e south across the frozen Don 

River and from the north over the 

open steppe, and on its left, elements 

of three Soviet armies battered away at 

XIV Panzer Corps. Kleist, the First 

Panzer Army commander, had begun 

to realize several days earlier that lhis 

onslaught was more than he had anticipated , and on 22 November, he ordered III Panzer Corps to evacuate 

Rostov and to go behind the Mius 

River.'· He had to cancel this order a 

day later, however, after Field Marshal 

Rundstedt, commander of Army 

Group Soulh, lold him that he personally approved of the evacuation, but 

Field Marshal Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the army, had demanded tl,at the city be held because 

giving it up would have military and 

"far reaching political consequences."27 

The timing was indeed inopportune 

since Hitler was preparing to stage a 

publicity spectacle for the renewal of 

the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, the cornerstone of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo 

Axis. 

With Rostov lost, Leningrad isolated, 

and Moscow in imminent danger, the 

Soviet strategic position looked worse 

than ever. But Stalin apparently believed as strongly as Bock and Hitler 

did that the contest was one of 

willpower, and on 22 November, the 

Siav/w told Timoshenko that the loss of 

26P l.. AOK /, fa N,: 5108141, Pz., Armeebifehl N,: 3f, 

22.JJ.4J, pz. AOK I 19194/5 rile. 

27H. Gr. Sued, fa Nr. J-I63141. an DB de,- I. Pl... Armee, 

23.11.4J, Pz. AOK 1 19194/5 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Rostov did not abrogate the counterattack against First Panzer Army. A directive issued two days later gave 

Cherevichenko's South Front the mission 

of destroying First Panzer Army and 

retaking the Taganrog-Rostov area. 

However, Cherevichenko, apparently 

aware by then that he could not outfight the whole panzer. army, chose a 

smaller but more promising approach 

and in three days shifted the weight of 

his forces from the north front to the 

line at Rostov.'" 

Tension, no doubt already enormous 

for the Russians, was also gripping the 

Germans in late November. Brauchitsch, not yet recovered from a heart 

attack earlier in the month, became 

more and more querulous, impatient 

for successes to smooth his interv,iews 

with HiLler. Bock developed the "Russian disease, " diarrhea. Rundstedt 

lapsed into haughty silence, letting his 

Chief of Staff, General Sodenstern , 

talk to the OKH. Hitler circulated between the V/ol[sschanze and Berlin on 

. business of state that had some 

ominous undertones. On 21 November, he was in Berlin for the funeral of 

Generaloberst Ernst Udet, the Luftwaffe's chief of aircraft development, 

whose death , actually a suicide, was 

being attributed to an airplane accident. On the 25th, Hitler was back in 

Berlin to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact 

and to welcome two new and reluctant 

members, Finland and Denmark. He 

spent the next two days in ceremonies 

and festivities associated with the signing, and on the 28th, he auended another funeral, that of Germany's top air 

ace, Colonel Werner Moelders, who 

had been k,illed in an airplane crash. 

2S/ VMV, vol. IV. pp. 120- 21; IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 223. 
TO MOSCOW 

Hiller devoted the rest of the day to 

talks wiLil visiting diplomats. 

The Turnabout 

Retreat flu1/! Roslov 

At his return to the WolJsschanze, 

early on 29 November, Hiller found 

awaiting him the rarest kind of news 

thus far in the war: German troops 

were retreating. By the 28th, Cherevichenko had brought up twenty-one 

Soviet divisions against III Panzer 

Corps at Rostov. The corps commander, General der Kavallerie Eberhard von Mackensen, had reported 

several weeks earlier, before the last 

advance began, that his two divisions, 

the "Leibstandarte" and the 13th Panzer, were worn out, short on everything 

from socks to antifreeze, and down to a 

half to two-thirds their normal 

strengths. During the day on the 28th , 

as he expected to have to do, Kleist 

ordered Mackensen to give up Rostov." When Hiller arrived at the 'vti;lJsschanze, II I Panzer Corps had evacuated Rostov, and the advantage in 

position and numbers was still heavily 

on the Soviet side. 

On the morning of the 30th, as he 

had tried to do a week earlier, Kleist 

ordered his whole right Aank, including III Panzer Corps, to go behind the 

Mius River forty-five miles west of Rostov.'· 1:~ctically Kleist was making the 

right move. He had nothing to gain 

militarily from a prolonged stand in 

the open, and the short but relatively 

straight Mius offered a good winter 

29111 AX, Stichu.'Ort-Beurteiilmg der Lage, 29.10.4 J. Pl. 

AOK I 58682 file: Pl.. AOK I , fa Nr. 5119141 , Pz. 

Anlluh1eh/ Nr. 38, 28. 11.41, Pz. AOK I 19194/5 file. 

30P1. . AOK I, Pl.. Anneebefehl Nr. 40, 30.11.41, Pl. 

AOK I 19194/5 file. 

55 

line. On the other hand , a forty-fivemile German retreat in a strategically 

important sector at this stage was 

bound to have the psychological effect 

of a Soviet victory. Nobody could be 

more sensitive to such an implication 

than Hitler. In an afternoon interview 

with Brauchitsch on the 30th, Hiller, 

using "accusations and invective," 

browbeat Brauchitsch into trying to get 

Rundstedt to delay executing Kleist's 

order. When Rundstedt refused and 

offered his resignation, Hitler dismissed him early the next day and 

named Field Marshal Reichenau to 

succeed him at Army Group South. 

After insisting through the day that he 

could hold a line somewhere east of the 

river, Reichenau finally had to give in at 

dark and let the withdrawal to the Mius 

be completed that night. 31 (Map 4.) 

Before daylight on the morning of 2 

December, Hitler left East Prussia by 

air for Kleist's headquarters in Mariupol on the Black Sea. He stopped at 

Poltava later- in the morning to pick up 

Reichenau and change from his comfortable but vulnerable four-engine 

"Condor" transport to a faster and better defended Heinkel III bomber. The 

weatller was unusually cold for December in L1,e Ukraine, and from Mariupol east a five-mile-wide, foot-thick 

band of ice already fringed the Gulf of 

Taganrog. At Mariupol, Hitler and 

Reichenau, as Kleist obliquely put it, 

"visited" with Kleist and the commanding general of the "Leibstandarte," SS 

Obergruppenfuehrer Josef Dietrich. 

The visit was far from routine, if only 

because Hitler seldom traveled so near 

to ti,e front as an army headquarters. 

It was also not pleasant for the partici31Halder Dial)'. pp. 3 17-22. 
I 

, 

I 

I 

i 

MAP4 

• 

Staryy U"'Of,,', 

40th 

SIXTH 

38th 

FIRST 

ARMY GROUP SOUTH 

28 November - 3 December 1941 

Front line, 28 Nov 

000000 Front line, 3 Dec 

<:== Soviet attack 

q 50 Miles 

If-· --,,--" 

o 50 Kilometers 

" 

• 

SOUTHWEST 

I 

FfiONT 

\ 

, 

\ 

, 

.~ 

Don 

9th 
TO MOSCOW 

pants and was generally pointless since 

there was nothing more to be decIded . 

Hitler apparently wanted an assurance 

from Dietrich, one of h,s oldest party 

cronies and former bodyguard, that 

Rostov could not have been held and 

assurances from all three generals that 

the Mius line would be. After receiving 

those, Hitler switched to ta lk about 

restarting the offensive in the new year, 

promising Kleist everytlli ng from ta nks 

and self-propelled assault &,uns t~parachute troops and fresh d,v,s,ons. 

At the Wolfssclwnze, when he returned early on 4 December, after an 

overnight stop in Poltava caused by bad 

flying weather, HItler found. a predICtion of another Rostov awa Iting h1l11. 

Field Marshal Leeb, commander of 

Army Group Norm, believed the Russians were beginning LO see a chance 

not only to retake Tikhvin but to liberate Leningrad, which would constItute 

a substantial political and military success for mem. A German push north 

Out of the Tikhvin sa lient toward Lake 

Ladoga had been stopped on 1 December at Volkhov, thirty-five miles 

south of tlle lake. (Map 5.) I f the Russians retook Tikhvin and opened the 

railroad to Volkhov, they could readily 

slui ce the reinforcements they were 

bringing up northwest for an attack o.n 

the Leningrad bottleneck. (German aIr 

reconnaissance had reported twentynine trains headed west on the VologdaTikhvin line on 2 December.) What concerned Leeb most was less his own situation than that of Army Group Center. 

As he saw it, if a strong threat to Moscow 

could nOt be maintained , the enemy 

would surely be able to release enough 

3

2

PZ. AOK J, 1(1 N r. 1294/41, (m die Hem 'lI KommwI. 

dierenden Genera/e, 3.12.41, Pl. AOK I 19194/6 file. 

reserves to go after Tik hvin 

Leningrad. 33 

"Something Does Not Add Up" 

57 

and 

Although it was not exactly the 

brightest of days for Army Group Center 27 November was one of acute 

cri;is in the Soviet Moscow defense. 

North of the capital, the advances of 

Third Panzer and Fourth Panzer 

Groups past Klin and Solnechnogorsk 

had opened a twenty-seven-mile-wide 

gap between Dimitrov, on the MoscowVolga Canal, and Krasnaya Polyana, 

twelve miles north of Moscow. General 

Mayor D. D. Lelyushenko, who had 

taken command of Thirtieth A"I'my on 18 

November, had brought tlle army ba~k 

under control but had not done so 111 

time to prevent its being pushed into a 

comer in the angle of the Volga River 

and tlle Moscow-Volga Canal. There, 

for the moment, Thirtieth A"I'my could 

do nothjng to block German progress 

to the east and south." Sixteenth Army, 

under General Ley tenant Konstantin 

Rokossovskiy, had, since the front had 

broken open between Klin and Solnechnogorsk, been having to stretch ItS 

flank east to cover Moscow and to take 

the whole shock of the enemy's sweep 

toward the city. The 17th Panzer Division's mrust toward Kashlra was begll1-

ning to form a deep pocket around 

Tula and was putting a Second Panzer 

Army spearhead with in sixty-five miles 

of Moscow on the south . 

Thirtieth Anny's debacle had paid one 

dividend. It had given tlle Slavim early 

'J3H. Gr. Nord, 10 Kriegstagebuch, 1-3 Dec 41. H. Cr. 

Nord 75128/4 file; Leeb. 7bgebucliaujzeicJulIl1Igell , pp. 

401 - 03. . 3 4

0 . D. Lclyushcnko, Moskva-Sfalingrad-BerllTl _ 

Pmga (Moscow: Izdalelst\'O Nauka, " 1970), p. 73. 
ARMY 

( 

MAP5 

7th 

4th 

NORTHWEST 

FRONT 

22d 

1 December 1941 

---- Front Un8, 1 Dec 

I 50 Mile, 

~~ ------" _-----'I 

50 Kilometers 
TO MOSCOW 59 

\ _.6- - -

:.0-- . 

_ .. :-~"",,-----~II"! 

SOVlI:.T G UNNERS MAN A M ACHI NE G UN WEST OF Moscow 

warning of the trouble to come, and so 

when the crisis arrived, means were 

being assembled to meet it. Unlike 

Bock, Stalin was apparently not prepared to venture his last regiment in 

tl,e battle for Moscow, but he also had 

enough resources to stay in the fight 

for one more round. In late November, 

he gave West Front 9 riAe divisions, 2 

cavalry divisions, 8 riAe brigades, 6 

tank brigades, and 10 independent 

tank battalions. 35 Of those, 3 riAe divi3f> Marshal V. D. Sokolovski y puts the strengths of 

tank brigades al that lime at I battalion of fourteen 

medium tanks, 1 battalion of light tanks, and J 

motorized riAe baualion. He places the independent 

tank baualions at II T-34s and 3 KVs. Figures fOI" 

indi\"idual lank brigades given in Krupchcnko, T OII -

kotr)'e vOJSka, pp. 38-44. indicate strengths of thirty to 

sixty tanks. See V. D. Sokolm·skiy. "Die ~o1l1etische 

Kn egskullst ill de r Seli/aclLl vo r Moskau, ,. WehrWisSCllSChaftticlte Rlllld:)(hall , 1( 1963), pt. 2, 87. 

sions went to Thirtieth Army; a riAe 

division, tile 2 cavalry divisions formed 

into tile I Guards Cavalry Corps under 

General Mayor P. A. Belov, and a portion of the armor went to the Kashira 

area; and tile rest went to Sixteenth, 

Fifth, and Fiftieth Annies and the fmnl 

reserve. 36 

Additionally, as the Germans were 

passing Klin, Stalin and the SlaV/ILl had 

begun setting up two reserve armies to 

cover the gap that would be developing 

farther east. On 23 November, General 

Kuznetsov took command of one of 

tIlese, FiTSt Shock Anny, on the line of the 

Moscow-Volga Canal sou th of Dimitrov. The shock armies were con3 6V. N. Yevstigneyev. ed., Ve/ika)'a billla /xxi Moslrooy 

(Moscow : Voycnnoye Izdatelstvo. 1961). p. 178; 

Zhukov. Ml'I1wirs, p. 340. 
60 

ceived of as being particularly heavy in 

armor, motorization, artillery, and automatic weapons, but First Siwek (and 

the others of this category created during the winter of 1941- 1942) was not so 

well equipped. When Kuznetsov arrived in Dimitrov on the 23d, his command consisted of a rifle brigade. By 

the end of the month he had 1 ri fle 

division, 9 rifle brigades, 10 separate 

battalions, a regiment of artillery, and a 

contingent of rocket launchers. About 

70 percent of the troops were over 

thirty years old." 

The second of the two new reserve 

armies, Twentieth Army, was built in 

what, by 27 ovember, had become the 

most critical spot on the entire front, 

the sector between the right flank of 

Sixteenth Army and the Moscow-Volga 

Canal. This area included the muchfought-over village of Krasnaya Polya na . Because of the subsequent behavior of its comma nd e r, General 

Ley tenant Andrei Vlasov, the Soviet 

histories are reticent in dealing with 

Twentieth Annis role at Moscow. 3 • In 

late 1941, however, Vlasov was rega rded in the Soviet Army as one of 

the most brilliant younger Soviet generals. He had commanded the Thirtyseventh Anny, which had been destroyed 

in the Kiev pocket, but he and some of 

his staff had escaped. Like Kuznetsov, 

Vlasov initially had just odds and ends: 

he said later, a Siberian brigade, some 

ten thousand criminal prisoners, and 

fifteen tanks. 3 • No d oubt, Twentieth 

Army, which was also in position to take 

ove r some of Sixteenth Annis right fl ank 

elements, was quickl y brought up to a 

3iZakharov, Provol, p. 278. 

u See p. 259. 

39Sven Steen berg, Vlasov (New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf. 1970). PI'. 16- 19. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

strength at least equal to that of First 

Siwek. 

In the last week of November, the 

Stavlw also began bringing five of the 

newly formed reserve armies forward 

from the line of the Volga River. 

Three-Twenty:fourth, Twenty-sixth, and 

Sixtieth Armies-were stationed east of 

Moscow, and one, Sixty-first Army, behind Southwest Front's right flank. The 

other, Tenth Anny, was deployed west of 

the Oka Rive r, downstream from Kashira in position to block Second Panzer Army thrusts towa rd Kolomna and 

Ryazan.4o 

Tenth Anny, under General Ley tenant 

F. I. Golikov, was very likely typical of 

the ten reserve armies. Its main forces 

were seven reserve rifle divisions recruited in the Moscow region. It had 

approximately one hundred thousand 

troops. After receiving its marching 

orders on 24 November, Tenth Am!y 

had to negotiate the more than three 

hundred miles from its original station 

at Syzran on the Volga by rail and on 

foot, since it had almost no motor 

vehicles. 4 ' 

During the day on 29 November, 

Third and Fourth Panzer Groups 

made contact with e lements of FiTSt 

Siwek and Twentieth Annies at Yakhroma 

and west of Krasnaya Polyana. Late in 

the day, after Zhukov had assured him 

that the Germans would not commit 

any new large forces in the near future, 

Stalin turned over First Siwek, Twentieth, 

and Tenth Annies to Zhukov's control for 

a counterattack" During the day, also, 

40/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 271; IVMV, vol. IV, p. 280. See 

p.42. 

"I Zakharo\', Prauai, pp. 256-58. See also F. I. Golikov, 'R esenmllya armiya golfJvilSiya k zoshchite slnliL{y," 

l6yen,w-istoricheskiy vnmlai, 5(1966),65-76. 

42:Zh ukov. M emoirs, p. 348. 
TO MOSCOW 

Third Panzer Group made its turn 

south, and Fourth Panzer Group registered a small gain. Talking to Halder, 

Bock saId he was afraid that if the 

attack from the north did not succeed 

the battle would soon degenerate into a 

"soulless frontal confrontation" similar 

to the World War I Battle of Verdun.'" 

On the night of the 30th, while his 

one colleague, Leeb, worried about 

what might happen at Leningrad once 

tile pressu re was off Moscow and the 

otlleJ~ Rundstedt, was a few hours away 

from dIsmIssal over the Rostov affair 

Bock, musing about his own situation: 

concluded that "something does not 

add up." During the day, while the 

panzer groups were again reporting 

very small gains, Colonel Adolf 

Heusinger, the operations branch chief 

in the OKH, had been on the telephone to Bock talking as if encircling 

Moscow were only a preliminary to 

thrusts toward Voronezh and Yaroslavl. 

When Bock later called Brauchitsch to 

tell him that Army Group Center did 

not have enough strength to encircle at 

Moscow much less to do anything 

more, he had to ask several times 

wheuler Brauchitsch was still listening. 

Early the next mornll1g, wondering 

whether BrauchItsch had listened 

Bock repeated by teletype what he had 

saId the da~ before, adding that tile 

belIef m an Impending Soviet coUapse 

had been proved "a phantasy."" His 

troops, he said, were exhausted and 

the offensive had therewiul los't "all 

sense and purpose." The army group, 

he concluded , was shortly going to be 

at a standstill "before the gates of 

Halder Diary. vol. III , p. 3 16. 

H Cen e ralfeldmarsc h a l) Fedor von Boc k 

Kriegstagebuclt, Osten I, 30 Nov 41 , CM f-I files MS:# 

P-210 (hereaflcl' ciled as Bock Dill,)', Ostell I). 

61 

Moscow," and it was time to decide 

what to do then. 

At tlze Gates 

In the morning on 30 November 

Zhukov submitted to the StaV/1LI aWes; 

Front plan for a counteroffensive north 

and SOUtll of Moscow. The idea, of 

cou,!'se, was not new. As Zh u kov has pu t 

It, The counter-offensIve had been 

prepared all through the defense actions ... .:'" The continuing Soviet 

strategy, sll1ce June, had been "let tile 

enemy wear himself down, bring him 

to a stop, and create ule conditions for 

a subsequent shift to the counterattack. "'6 Counteroffensives had been 

launched on the frontiers in June and 

on the Dnepr- Dvina line in July, and 

the Stavka and the General Staff had 

considered others throughout the campaIgn , most recently, when the Germans had been stopped on the Moscow 

approaches in early November." 

However, neither tile plan Zhukov 

sent lI1.on the. 30th-in response to 

earlIer II1struclions from the General 

Staff-nor the circumstances under 

which the plan was expected to be 

executed actually conformed to preVIOUS thmkmg, whIch had envisioned a 

counteroffensive against an enemy 

who had been stopped. The plan was 

conceIved as a near-Io-Iast move in a 

battle that was likely to turn against the 

RUSSIans. Zhukov says he told Stalin on 

tile night of the 29ul that the Germans 

were "bled white" and gives the essence 

of the plan as having been to strike past 

Kim and Solnechnogorsk sixty miles to 

Teryaeva Sloboda and Volokolamsk in 

UZhuko\"Memoirs, p. 347. 

'~Soko ovsk y, 'Die sowjetische Kriegsklllts/," p. 76. ~7Vasile\'ski y. Dew, p. 151. 
62 

the north and up to the same distance 

past Stalinogorsk to -the U pa River in 

the south.4s On the other hand, General Vasilevskiy, acting chief of the General Staff, in briefing ule Kalinin Fmnt 

commander, Konev, who would have 

two of his armies included in the counterattack, said: "We can only halt the 

German attack toward Moscow and 

thereby ... lay the groundwork for 

beginning to inAict a serious defeat on 

the enemy by active operations with a 

decisive aim. If we do not do that in the 

next few days, it will be too late."'9 The 

order for the counterattack Kuznetsov, 

the First Shock Army commander, received on the morning of 2 December 

was to have the Zakharov group attack 

toward Dednevo and Fedorovka and 

"in the longer run" strike toward 

Klin 50 Dednevo and Fedorovka were 

villages directly opposite the army's left 

Aank, and the Zakharov group, parts of 

three divisions and a tank brigade under General Mayor F. D. Zakharov, had 

been the rear guard at Klin and were 

pinned down west of the MoscowVolga Canal by Th ird Panzer Group's 

spearhead 5 ' 

Zhukov's chief of staff at the time, 

General Ley tenant V D. Sokolovskiy, 

wrote later, "The main objective of our 

counterattack was to break up the enemy's attack conclusively and give him 

no opportunity to regroup and dig in 

close to our capital."52 Zh ukov a lso 

qualifies his statement of the objectives 

by saying the "initial task" was to be 

"removing the immed iate threat to 

d Zhukov. Memoirs. p. 348. 

n Vasilevski y. Drlo, p. 164. See also "O ~ p. 110. 

lioZakharov, Proval, p. 283. 

r.tl bid" pp. 278-81: Ycvstigne)'ev, VeliJw)'Cl biron, pp. 

144 - 47. 

~2 kolo\' ki y. "Die sowjetisd u Krugskll nsl," p. 92. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Moscow," and "we would need more 

forces to assign further-going and 

lTIOre categorical lllissions. "53 However, 

Stalin , who had been willing during the 

summer to commit reserve annies into 

counterattacks as fast as they could be 

formed, was being remarkably parsimonious in deaiing them out for this 

counterattack. The reserve armies stationed east of Moscow were earmarked 

to be used "in the defense, if necessary, 

or, if they were not required, in developing a counteroffensive." But the 

decisions as to how and when the armies would be committed were reserved to the Stavka, which meant to 

Stalin , and he had not yet made up his 

mind 5 ' 

In the first two days of December, it 

looked as though Bock might have 

been too pessimistic, and the Soviet 

counterattack might very well come too 

late. To the Germans' surprise as much 

as the Russians', Fourth Army's 258th 

Infantry Division broke through the 

Soviet line south of the Moscow-Smolensk highway on the 1st. Northeast of 

Tula, the next day, Second Panzer 

Army began a hook to the west which , 

if it succeeded in pinching off the city, 

could have brought tll e Fourth Army 

right Aank into motion. Bock at Army 

Group Center had reverted to fighting 

what he assumed to be the battle of the 

last regiments, vacillating between desperate hope and gloomy apprehension. Ea rl y on the 2d , he told Kluge, 

Reinhardt, and Hoepner that ul e enemy was close to breaking. Talking to 

Halder later in the day, however, he 

said that owing to declining strength, 

cold , and stiffening resistance, "doubts 

li3Zhukov. Memo;rJ. p. 348. 

MVOV. p. 11 0. 
TO MOSCOW 

of success are beginning to take definite form."55 

On the 3d, despite even more reasons for doubts, Bock's determination 

increased slightly. In the morning, 

when Kluge proposed giving up 

Fourth Army's attack because it would 

not get th rough to Moscow, Bock 

opted to wait two or three days to see 

what effect Third Panzer Group could 

have. By late afternoon, 258th Infantry 

Division was fighting its way westward 

out of an encirclement; Fourth Panzer 

Group had reported its offensive 

strength "in the main exhausted"; and 

Third Panzer Group was embroiled 

with Fint Siwek Army at Yakhroma. Second Panzer Army was still advancing 

northeast of Tula but through a blizzard that was piling up snow all along 

the army group front. Bock told General Jodi, Hitler's operations chief in 

the OKW, that a lthough his troop 

strengtll was almost at an end, he 

would stay on tile attack. The reason 

he was holding on "with too til and 

claw: Bock added, was because keeping the initiative was preferable to 

going over to the defensive with weakened forces in exposed positions 5 • 

During the previous two weeks the 

weather had been getting colder, with 

temperatures ranging between 0° F. 

and 200 F. On the morning of 4 December, after heavy snowfalls the day 

before, the temperature stood at _4° F. 

In his diary, Bock observed in passing 

that it was "icy cold." During that day, 

Fourth Army went over to the defen-

$~I-J . G,; Mille, la Kriegslagebllch, Deu mber 1941, I and 

2 Oec 41, H . Gr. Mine 2697416 file: Bock DIlI)"Y, Ostlm 

I , I and 2 Dec41 ; Gudedan. Pam.er Lellder, p. 257. 

:'6 1-1. Gr. Mille, la Kril'gstagebuch, Deumber 1941 , 3 

Dec 41 . H . Cr. ~Iine 2697416 file: Bock Dia,)', Os/ell I, j 

Dec 41. 

63 

sive, its front quiet. Fourth Panzer 

Group repelled several tank-led Soviet 

counterattacks southwest of Krasnaya 

Polyana but declared itself unable to 

advance until Third Panzer Group 

came fully abreast. Third Panzer 

Group, meanwhile, while trying to 

bring three panzer divisions to bear 

southwest of Yakhroma, was getting 

pressure on its front northwest of 

Yakhroma from Soviet reinforcements, 

some of which Reinhardt, its commander, believed were Siberian troops. 

And Second Panzer Army was regrouping to try again to pinch offTula. 

Again Bock had decided to stay on the 

offensive. Mildly disturbed by a reported half-dozen new enemy divisions 

in the front northwest of Moscow, a ll 

well provided with tanks and rocket 

launchers, he concluded that they were 

probably not new strength but units 

shifted from nearby quiet sectors. A 

counteroffensive, he stated in his last 

report of the day to tile OKH , was 

unlikely: the enemy did not have 

enough forces. 57 

Stalin, the Popular Scientific Sketch 

says, kept in close communications with 

Zhukov in the first days of December, 

calling him several times a day to inquire about the progress of the fighting. "In the complicated situation ... , 

it was very important to time the shift 

from the defense to the counteroffensive correctly. The most favorable moment for the shift to tile counteroffensive presented itself when the enemy 

was forced to stop his attack but cou ld 

not yet go on the defensive because his 

troops were not yet properly re-

:" H . Gr. Alitle, 1(1 Kr;f'gstagebllch, Deumbfr / 9-11 . 4 

Dec 41. H . C,', Mine 26974/6 hie; BMk D1011', Ostl'lI /, 

4 Dec4!. ' 
64 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

CREW OF R~IAN s.F.H. 18, I50-MM. HOWITlER, B UNDLED-UP ACAINST THE CoLD 

grouped, no reserves had been created, and the defense lines were not 

prepared. "58 While most Soviet accounts do not specify a day, according 

to Sokolovskiy, the decision was made 

to shift to the counterattack on 4 December. On that day, he says, the West 

Fmnt troops had brought the enemy 

near Moscow to a standstill, and it then 

became "urgently necessary" to go over 

to tlle counteroffensive "without any 

pause." Vasilevskiy says tlle Stavka set 

the date for the counterattack as 5 and 

6 December' 9 

Vasilevskiy went to tlle Kalinin Fmnt 

headquarters on tlle night of the 4th to 

deliver the directive from the General 

~IlVOV. p. III . 

9Sokolo ski . "Dip .f()wjelisclir KriegskullSl," p. 92; 

Vasilevskiy. Ddo, pp. 164 - 65. 

Staff to start the counteroffensiveand, possibly, to make certain it began 

on the 5th. Konev, claiming he had 

neither tlle tanks nor tlle infantry to 

attack, had opposed a counterattack 

when Vasilevskiy had talked to him 

about it three days earlierso Kalinin 

Fmnt's mission was to hit the German 

Ninth Army front southeast of Kalinin 

with the Twenty-ninth and Thirtyfirst Armies and to bear SOUtll and west "in the 

general direction of MinkulinoGorodishche," twenty-five miles east of 

Klin 6 ' Vasilevskiy indicates that he told 

Konev on 1 December to have Kalinin 

Fmnt ready to start "in two or three 

days."·2 Timoshenko, at Southwest Fmnt, 

6(1 Vasilcvski y. Delo, pp. 164-65. 

6lYevsligneyev. Vrlikoyl bitv(l , p. 177. 

62Vasilcvski y. Delo, p. 163. 
TO MOSCOW 

received orders on 4 December to 

strike against German Second Army 

on the 6th with the Third and Thirteenth 

Annies and to aim for Yefremov and 

past Yelets toward Livny63 Yefremov 

was just behind the front on the Second Army north flank , and Yelets, in 

the center, was then still in Soviet 

hands. 

Vasilevskiy's account indicates that 

the Stavka's orders to begin the counteroffensive on 5 and 6 December applied to "",st Front as well as Kalinin and 

Southwest Fronts. 6 4 However, Zhukov describes his telephone conversation with 

Stalin late on 4 December in which they 

talked about air and armor reinforcements for West Front and which Stalin 

closed by reminding Zhukov to "remember" that Kalinin Front would be 

going over to the counteroffensive on 

the 5th , and Southwest Front would follow on the 6th. 6 5 

During the night of 4 December, the 

temperature dropped to - 25° F. One 

German regiment on a night march 

had over three hundred frostbite casualties, and several of its wounded men 

froze to death. The next morning, 

tanks would not start; machine guns 

and artillery would not fire because 

their lubricants and the oil in their 

recoil mechanisms had congealed; and 

all the armies reported numerous 

frostbite cases. In the paralyzing morning cold, the Soviet Twenty-ninth Anny 

attacked across the ice-covered Volga 

west of Kalinin and broke into the 

Ninth Army line about a mile before 

being stopped·6 Reinhardt and Hoep63 Yc\'Sligneyev, VelikaJu bitva, p. 177. 

81Vasilevski y. Df'/o, p. 166. 

6~ Zhllk o\'. Memoirs, p. 349. 

66Ycvslignc)'c\', VeliknJa bitva, p. 183; IVOVSS, vol. 

II . p. 277. 

65 

ner both reported more fresh Soviet 

troops on their fronts and their own 

offensive capabilities evaporating. 

Reinhardt's Third Panzer Group tried 

to push a wedge south between the left 

flank of Hoepner's Fourth Panzer 

Group at Krasnaya Polyana and the 

Moscow-Volga Canal, but his automatic 

weapons did not work; the cold quickly 

drained the troops' energy; and the 

attack had barely begun before it had 

to be called back. In the morning, 

Guderian thought Second Panzer 

Army could still take Tula, but by evening his confidence had faded, and he 

proposed a gradual withdrawal from 

the whole bulge east of Tula to the Don 

and Shat rivers. His tanks, he complained, were breaking down in the 

cold, while Soviet tanks kept running. 61 

Zhukov's order to begin the counteroffensive on 6 December went to 

West Front's armies on the 5th 6 8 The 

Germans later believed that the drastic 

temperature drop on the night of the 

4th had much to do with Zhukov's 

timing. Early in 1942, too late to be of 

use, German intelligence circulated to 

the commands in the East a partial 

transcript of statements Timoshenko 

and Zhukov allegedly had made at a 

Moscow conference in late November 

urging a counteroffensive at Moscow. 

The information was described as having come from a very good source. 

Timoshenko, whose Southwest Fmnt 

forces were at the time of the conference building toward victory at Ros67PZ. C,: 4, la, Lngebeurteilllllg, 5. 12 .41, AOK 4 

1376317 file; Pz. Gr. 3, Ie MQrgemneltlLmg, 6. 12.4 / , Pl.. 

AOK 3 16911/30 file; I/. Gr. Mille, l a Kriegslagebllth. 

Dez.ember 194 J. 5 Dec 41. H . Gr, Miue 26974/6 fil e; 

Glidelian. Panzer Leader, PI'. 258-59. 

68Zakharov. Pruvai, p. 284. 
66 

tov, recommended giving priority to 

Zhukov's West Front, stating: 

The great danger for the German ComlllanD is that the first big change in t~e 

weather will knock out all of their 

motorized equipment. We ~ust hold ,Ollt as 

long as in any way possible but IInmediateiy go over to the attack when the first 

few days of cold have broken the back of 

the German forces. 'Illis backbone conSists 

of the tanks and motorized artillery that 

will become useless when the temperature 

hits 20" [F.J below zero. 

Zhukov supposedly added that he proposed to let the "start and the course of 

the offensive be determmed by the 

weather" and expected its success to be 

in proportion to the "freezing off" of 

the German equipment69 

The Soviet accounts, however, totally 

ignore the possibility .of the weather's 

having had any part m the t1mmg of 

the counteroffensive. They respond to 

German and other contentions that it 

worked to the Soviet advantage by 

pointing out that both sides had to 

cope with cold and snow and that temperatures in December 1941 were not 

actually as low (-25° to -50° F.) as was 

claimed. One Soviet work assertmg 

these two points does give the December mean temperature as recorded 

by Soviet weather stations around 

Moscow as -28.6° C. (- 19.3° F.)-

which was, after all , quite cold. 70 The 

relationship between the weather. and 

the counteroffensive appears comcldental up to 4 December. After then , 

however, the probability of its having 

influenced the timing of West Front's 

operations increases. 

As of 5 December, Second Panzer 

SUP!. AOK 3, Gefechtsbericht Russland, 1941 -42 . Pl.. 

AOK 3 21818/2 file. 

7° Deborin and Tclpukhovskiy, flogi j llroki, p. 129. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Army and Third and Fourth Panzer 

Groups were at a standstill, enforced 

by the cold, regardless of whether Soviet resistance could have achieved the 

same effect. For the counteroffensive, 

West Front was to aim "blows" toward 

Klin, Solnechnogorsk, and !stra to 

"smash" the enemy on the nght flank , 

and to deliver "blows in the flanks and 

rear of the Guderian group [Second 

Panzer ArmyJ " to Uzlovaya and 

Bogoroditsk "to smash the enemy on 

the left flank."" The final order 

Kuznetsov's First Shock Army received on 

5 December instructed it again to clear 

the Dednevo-Fedorovka area and "in 

the longer run" to advance in "the 

direction of Klin."72 

Soviet postwar accounts treat the 

strengths of both sides' forces on the 

eve of the counterattack as a matter of 

outstanding historical significance . 

They em phasize that, as of 5 December, German forces outnumbered 

Soviet in the Moscow sector. However, 

the figures they employ vary and in the 

aggregate do not substantiate the existence of an actual Soviet numerica l 

inferiority. The latest, hence presumably most authoritative figures, those 

given in the History of lhe Second lMlrld 

Wm', are 1,708,000 German and 

1,100,000 Soviet troops on the approaches to Moscow.

73 The numbers 

used in earlier Soviet works were 

800 000 or "more than 800,000" Germa~ and between 719,000 and 760,000 

Soviet troops.74 The German strength 

as it appears in the History of lhe Second 

71/VAH; vol. IV, p. 28 1; Yevsti gneyev, Velik{l)'G bilva, 

p. 177. 

72 Zakharov, Provol, p. 284. 

/VJlH~ vol. IV, p. 283. 

14 \10V (Kralka)'a /stmi)'a), p. 130; VO Y. p. lID; 

Zakharov, 50 lel, p. 295. 
TO MOSCOW 

W1rld War comprises all personnel assigned to Army Group Center including air force troops.'5 The Soviet 

strength is that of the forces assigned 

to the counterattack.'· The strengths 

given in the other works are said to be 

those of the divisions and brigades in 

Army Group Center and those of the 

Soviet jrpnts, in other words, the combat strengths for the two sides." None 

of the Soviet strengths given include 

the eight armies still in the Stavka reserve, a total of about eight hundred 

thousand men. 

It is clear that, even without the 

reserve armies, the Soviet forces opposing Army Group Center were relatively stronger on 5 December than 

they had been in October when Operation TAIFuN began. While Army Group 

Center had not been able to replace its 

losses in troops and equipment, the 

Soviet armies in the Moscow sector had 

acquired a third more riRe divisions, 

five times more cavalry divisions, twice 

as many artillery regiments, and twoand-a-half times as many tank brigades 

by 5 December than they had had on 2 

October.'· 

Along the front around Moscow at 

daybreak on 6 December, the temperature dropped as low as - 38° F. 

During the night, Bock at Army Group 

7:'Anny Group Cente rs tot,11 complemcllI. which 

included .a very large re;u echelo n thal the army 

g n)up was having to maintain LO support its operations and 10 control and LO administer the Sovie l 

territory it occupied, was abOlI! 1.7 million men. 

Reinhardt. Moskou , pp. 57 .3 15. 

7RII M\~ \'01. IV, p. 283. 

17Thc 800,000 troops appear (0 be about the maximum Army Croup Cellle r could have had in the first 

\\'cck of December considering lhal iLS sevent y-eight 

di visio ns the n had 20 7.000 unreplaced losses. 

Zakhal"O\', 50 11'1. p. 295; Reinhardt. Moskau, p. 57. 

1II Vc\,slignerc\,. l'eIiM)'a bi/va, p. 178. 

67 

Center had approved Guderian's proposed withdrawal of Second Panzer 

Army, and he had told Reinhardt and 

Hoepner to "adjust" their plans for 

Third and Fourth Panzer Groups to 

pullbacks from Yakhroma and 

Krasnaya Polyana to a line covering 

Klin. He had also called General der 

Panzertruppen Rudolf Schmidt at Second Army, which had been drifting 

slowly eastward toward Yelets for the 

past several days, and had told him he 

had better come to a stop; otherwise, 

his army would soon find itself standing farther east than any of the 

others.'9 

The Soviet armies, entering the first 

day of the full counteroffensive, gave 

variously executed solo performances. 

Thirtyfirst Army joined in with the 

stalled Twenty-ninth Army at Kalinin Front 

but failed to get across the Volga south 

of Kalinin. Thirtieth Army made the 

day's best-and, for the Germans, 

most dangerous-showing by breaking into the Third Panzer Group deep 

flank northeast of Klin to a depth of 

eight miles. First Siwek and Twentieth 

Armies hit lllird and Fourth Panzer 

Groups from Yakhroma to west of 

Krasnaya Polyana, but only Twentieth 

Anny made a gain, a small one, on the 

southern edge of Krasnaya Polyana. 

Tellth Army, most of which was still on 

the march from Syzran , began its atrack on Mikhaylov, on the eastern rim 

of the Tula bu lge, with one riRe division and two motorized infantry regiments·o During the day Second 

Army took Yelets while Southwest Front's 

7!JH. Gr. Mille. /(1 Kriegsl(lgl!bllch, Deumber / 941 . 6 

Dec 41. H . Gr. i\'lilte 26974/6 file. 

80\fOV; pp. 112- 13: Z<tkhal"O\', Proval. pp. 135, 260; 

IVOVSS. vol. II , p. 280. 
68 

Thirteenth Army was shifting to the offensive there. S l 

Before noon on the 6th , Reinhardt 

told Bock that Third Panzer Group 

would have to start pulling away on the 

south during the night to provide some 

armor to put against Thirtieth Anny. 

That meant Fourth Panzer Group, 

Third Panzer's neighbor on the south , 

also would have to start back soon. The 

8 1H. Cr. Mme, fa Kriegstagebuch, Deumber 1941, 6 

Dec 41 , H. C ,', Mille 26974/6 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Soviet pressure subsided everywhere 

that afternoon, and Kluge talked to 

Bock about keeping the pace of the 

withdrawals slow to evacuate all the 

equipment and supplies. s 2 Nevertheless, in the bitter night that followed, the battl e turned. From 

Tikhvin , to Moscow, to the Mius River, 

the BARBA ROSSA campaign had run its 

course. 

82/bid" 6 Dec 41. 
CHAPTER IV 

The Counteroffensive: First Phase 

Hitler on Ihe De[ ensive 

Hitler and General Halder, chief of 

the German General Staff, talked 

about a directive for the winter campaign at Fuehrer Headquarters on the 

afternoon of 6 December. Neither of 

them had, until recently, anticipated 

having to devote much thought to the 

subject. Before the October rains had 

set in , they had expected German 

troops to be home by Chrisunas except 

for those infantry divisions left behind 

to watch over the remains of the Soviet 

Army. Since early November, recognizing by then that victory was not so 

close, the Germans had been trying to 

wring profit from what was left of the 

1941 campaign and to delay decisions 

on when, where, or whether to stop for 

the winter. 

TIle setback at Rostov and ominous 

reports from Army Groups Center and 

North had apparently at last moved 

Halder to send Hitler a statement on 

German strength, which was down 25 

percent, and to ask for a decision. 

Hitler made the decision on the afternoon of the 6th. Numbers, he said, 

meant nothing. The Russians had lost 

at least ten times as many men as he 

had. Supposing they had three times as 

many to start with, that still meant they 

were worse off. Single German divisions might be holding fifteen-mile 

fronts (as Halder apparently claimed), 

but tllat was more an indication of the 

enemy's weakness than the ir own. 

Army Group North should hold 

Tikhvin and be ready to advance to 

make contact with the Finns when it 

received tank and troop reinforcements. Army Group Center should remember that "the Russians never gave 

up anything of their own accord and 

neither should we." The weatl1er permitting and with some reinforcements, 

Army Group South ought to be able to 

retake Rostov, possibly also the entire 

Donets Basin. 1 

Hitler, as he must have known , had 

not made a decision but had evaded 

one. He did so again tile next day. 

Having received a request during the 

night of the 6th to approve Third and 

Fourth Panzer Groups' and Second 

Panzer Army's withdrawals then in 

progress, he agreed on the morning of 

the 7th to let Third and Fourth Panzer 

Groups straighten their lines but said 

nothing about Second Panzer Army or 

the Army Group Center situation in 

general. In schoolmasterly tones, he 

pointed out to the OKH that since the 

pressure on Moscow was released , the 

Russians could be expected to try to 

relieve Leningrad . Since Army Group 

North would need all of its strength to 

keep its hold on Leningrad , it could 

not attack past Tikhvin and ought to be 

IHllldl'r Diary, vol. 1 J 1, pp. 328-30. 
70 

permitted to shonen its front there 

somewhat but not enough to put the 

east-west road and railroad through 

Tikhvin out of German artillery 

range ' 

Black Days 

Sunday, 7 December, dawned clear 

and cold at the front. Early mornmg 

Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights 

brought back reports of contlllumg 

heavy rail traffic toward Moscow and 

toward Tikhvin. At ground level, 

plumes of blowing S~lOw restricted ~isibility, and roads dnfted shut. Dunng 

the night, the roads runnlllg east a~d 

southeast from Klin had filled with 

Third Panzer Group rear echelon 

trucks and wagons all heading west. 

How far west nobody knew. The front 

had begun to pull back from the 

Moscow-Volga Canal. First Siwek Anny 

was following hesitantly behllld the 

panzer group which because of the 

weather had already abandoned fifteen 

tanks, three heavy howitzers, a halfdozen antiaircraft guns, and dozens of 

trucks and passenger cars-more material than would ordinarily be lost in a 

week's heavy fighting. Troops could not 

tow the guns out of their emplacements. The motors of some vehicles 

would not start; the grease on bearings 

and in transmissions in others froze 

while they were running. The 1st Panzer Division, which had been headed 

toward Krasnaya Polyana, had turned 

around during the night with orders to 

block the Soviet thrust toward KIm. In 

the morning, it was extended over 

20KI-I , CmSltlH , Op. Abl. Nr. 32034141, an OKW, 

WFSt, 6.12.41 and OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abl. ':'!r. 

41957141, OKW (111 Ob.d.H ., 7.12.41. H . Gr. Mille 

26974/6 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

forty miles, bucking: snowdrifts on 

j ammed roads, With ItS tanks low on 

fuel. " (Map 6.) 

West Fmnt's strongest army, Sixteenth, 

under General Rokossovski y, joined 

the counteroffensive on the 7th along 

its front west of Krasnaya Polyana. But 

the most dangerous threat continued 

to come from ThiTtieth AT/ny, which had 

deepened its thrust toward Klin during 

the night.' Army Group Center put 

out a call for reinforcements to Third 

Panzer Group's neighbors, "even for 

the last bicyclist.'" Twenty-mnth and 

Thirty-fiTst Armies hammered at NlIlth 

Army west and southeast of Kalinin 

but as yet had nothing to show for It. 

First Siwek and Twentzeth Annzes, Jomed 

by Sixteenth Anny, kept Third and 

Fourth Panzer Groups under frontal 

pressure without acquiring an outright 

tactical advanta~e anywhere. Tenth 

Anny occupied Mlkhaylov after a skIrmish with the German rear guardS At 

Fourth and Second Armies the front 

was quiet. 

Although the counteroffensive was 

forming slowly, tension was IIlcreasl~g 

on the German side of the 700-ITIIle 

front from Tikhvin to the Army Group 

Center right Rank east of Kursk. The 

army group was being subjected to a 

prolonged shock as su~cesslve Soviet 

units entered the fightmg and broke 

radio silence. German radio monitors 

picked up signals from two. dozen 

more enemy brigades and diVISions on 

the army group front on 7 December 

than had been there on 15 November. 

:Ipz. Gr. ), Ie Avent/me/dullg. 7.12.42, Pz. AOK 3 

16911/36 fi le. 

"Ycvsligneycv. Veliktl)'fl hilva. pp. 188- 90. 

. Gr. MiUe, la Kriegstagebuch. Dezember 1941.7 Dec 

41. H . Gr. Miue 26974/6 file. 

6Zakharo\,. Proval, p. 262. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 71 

H ALF-TRACK Anuwrs To H AUL A 150-"M. H OWJl-ZER 

The army group intelligence had believed , as had Field Marshal Bock, the 

army group commander, that the Russians could not introduce significant 

new forces and were compelled to strip 

the from in some places to supply the 

battle elsewhere. Field Marshal Leeb 

had seen the consequences he feared 

for his command, Army Group North , 

as inevitable after Fourth Army's advance on Moscow collapsed on 4 December. And these consequences were 

soon felt. General Meretskov had regrou ped Fourth Independent Army and 

had assimilated enough reinforcements by 5 December to bear in on 

Tikhvin from three sides.' 

'/-1. Cr. Miltt ,la Nr. 2799J.1J, all Pl. Cr. 4, 7.12.41, Pz. 

AOK 4 22457/1-1 file; Leeb, 7ilgfIJll(hmifz.eiclm llllgen , p. 

404: Meret'ikov. SmJilig th e People, p. 171. 

At Tikhvin, on the 7th , in a blizzard 

that also spread over the Moscow region in the afternoon , the Army Group 

North spearhead was almost encircled. 

The Russians had brought in twentyseven trainloads of troops in the past 

three days, and the Germans were outnumbered two to one. Hitler had 

promised about a hundred tanks and 

twenty-two thousand troops in a week 

or two, but for the present, all Leeb 

had in Tikhvin were some half-frozen 

infantry and five tanks, four of which 

were not operable because of the cold. 

In the afternoon, Leeb gave the order 

to evacuate the town " 

On the 8th, when the Russians 

8H . Gr. Nord, fa K riegJ/agebllch, 1.12.-31./2.41. 7 Dec 

41, H . Gr. NOHI 75128/4 file. 
NINTH 

ARMY 

.~ Vyazma FOURTH 

Yukhnov 

THE MOSCOW 

COUNTEROFFENSIVE 

PHASE I 

6 - 15 December 1941 

Front line, e Ole 

Front line, 16 Dec 

lama - RUII lin. 

~ Soviet counte'ltl.ck 

~l------r' __ ..36

,0 Mllel 

o 50 Kilometer. 

MAP 6 

• SerPlJkhov 

'* • 

.,. ARMY 

", Mr$ftnsk 

SECOND 

ARMY 

.. 0

000 

.. ~ 

• 

Llvn., 00° 

• · 

• . 

WEST 

, \ 

")l K~/of!ln. 

r. 

1/ 

FRONT 

__ --13th FRONT 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 73 

passed westward across the Klin-Kalinin railline and bore down to within 

two or three miles of the Klin road 

junction that was crowded with mileslong columns of Third Panzer Group 

vehicles, Bock began trying to scrape 

reserves out of the front. All he could 

get for Third Panzer Group was a 

single infantry battalion. OKH told 

him not to expect replacement battalions before mid-January because the 

railroads could not handle them until 

then. When he asked Halder for 

trained divisions not replacements, 

Halder replied that OKH did not have 

any. Such divisions would have to come 

from the Western Theater that was 

under the OKW. Desperate to do 

someth ing, Bock put Third Panzer 

Group under Fourth Panzer Group 

that was itself under Fourth Army. 

Third Panzer Group saw this action as 

an abdication of the army group's responsibility for the panzer group; Bock 

said he thought it would make General 

Hoepnel~ Fourth Panzer Group commander, and Field Marshal Kluge, 

Fourth Army's commander, more inclined to help Third Panzer· Ninth 

Army, Third Panzer Group's neighbor 

on the north, was having more than 

enough trouble of its own as Thirty-first 

and Twenty-ninth Annies pressed their 

attack on Kalinin. How much help 

Fourth Panzer Group or Fourth Army 

would be or could be was problematical. The faster General Reinhardt extricated Third Panzer from the trap 

east of Klin the sooner Hoepner's armor would have to embark on the same 

kind of westward trek, and once the 

two panzer groups were out, Kluge'S 

9/bid., 8 Dec 41. 

front would be exposed. He would 

then have to decide whether to risk 

being overwhelmed where he was or to 

take Fourth Army out of its relatively 

well-built line into the snow and cold . 

Reinhardt, with the Russians before 

him, was in a hurry. Hoepner did not 

want to be rushed. Kluge would have 

preferred not to have to make a 

decision. 

Bock did not know it yet on the 8th, 

but he was about to have greater trouble on his south flank. General 

Guderian's Second Panzer Army had 

started the complicated job of reducing 

the bulge east ofTula, which in just two 

days cost Second Panzer Army many 

vehicles and guns that had to be abandoned. One corps alone had 1,500 

frostbite cases, 350 requiring amputations. Supplies were not getting to the 

panzer army's railhead at Orel because, 

as was happening all up and down the 

front, only the insulated Soviet-built 

locomotives could hold steam in the 

below-zero cold. The army group had 

promised to fly in diesel oil and gasoline on the 8th but had to divert the 

ai rpla nes to Thi rd Pa nzer Grou p. 

Moreover, at Mikhaylov, Tenlh Anny was 

throwing trainloads of troops into the 

front as fast as they arrived . German 

air reconnaissance on the 8th reponed 

fifty trains headed in each direction 

between Ryazan and Mikhaylov. Over 

the telephone, on the 8th and again on 

the 9th, the usually ebullient Guderian 

told Bock that a serious crisis in confidence had broken out among the 

troops and the NCOs. He refused to 

say against whom and declined Bock's 

suggestion to repon in person to Hitler 

but asked, as Bock said, "for tile hundredth time" whether the OKH and 

the OKW were being given a clear 
74 

picture of what was happening at the 

front. l • 

Second Army, Second Panzer Army's 

neighbor on the south, held a front of 

180 miles, which was longer than that 

held by any other army in the east. It 

had seven divisions with twenty-five 

miles of front for each, nearly two 

miles for every company. On the offensive, its mission had been to fill in 

between Second Panzer Army and 

Sixth Army, which had been easy as 

long as Soviet attention was fastened on 

Moscow and the Soviet Command had 

no time to worry about open space and 

a scattering of small provincial towns 

like Yelets, Livny, and Novosi!. On the 

defensive , though, Second Army with 

its one division per twenty-five miles of 

front became all that was standing before Kursk, its chief (and only) railhead , and Orel, Second Panzer Army's 

chief (and only) railhead . On 7 December, Second Army stopped after 

taking Yelets, the last town of any consequence within fifty miles. The army's 

commander, General Rudolf Schmidt, 

proposed in the next several days to 

devastate a ten-mile strip parallel to his 

entire line and then pull back behind 

that ready-made no-man's-land to settle in for the winter. 

The next day, even more suddenly 

than it had dropped , the temperature 

rose to above freezing along the whole 

Army Group Center front. At the Second Army center south of Yelets, in 

snow and rain that froze when it hit the 

stone-cold ground, half-a-dozen Soviet 

tanks created a hole between the 45th 

and 95th Infantry Divisions, and a So1"1-/. Cr. Mille, la Kriegstagebuch, Deumber 1941, 8 

and 9 Dec 41, I-I. Cr. Mille 2697416 file; Bock Diary, 

0 511.'111,9 Dec 41. See also Guderian, Panur Leader, pp. 

260- 61. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

viet cavalry division galloped through. 

The two German divisions' self-propelled assault guns could barely negotiate the ice, and by the next morning 

after heavy fresh snow had fallen and 

blown into drifts during the night, they 

could not move at all, which was almost 

immaterial since both divisions had by 

then also run out of motor fue!' In 

another day, two more cavalry divisions 

and a rifle division had opened the gap 

to sixteen miles and had driven a fiftymile-deep wedge northwest toward 

Novosil and Ore!. The 95th Division 

had lost half its strength. The 45th had 

lost more. Nobody knew how much . 

Both were out of motor fuel and short 

on ammunition and rations. Air supply 

was promised, but the airplanes could 

not fly in the snow and rain. Schmidt 

told Bock that Second Army was about 

to be cut in two and .driven back on 

Kursk and Orelleaving an 85-mile gap 

in between. II 

On 8 December, Hitler issued what 

purported to be a directive for the 

winter campaign. Because the cold 

weather had come early, he announced, all "larger offensive operations" were to cease-which they 

already had done. But there would be 

no withdrawals except to prepared 

positions. Ignoring the events then taking place at the front, he ordered tlle 

OKH to start recalling the panzer and 

motorized divisions to Germany for 

refitting.

12 

"The WJTSt Grisis in Two W,,·ld Wars" 

Ineffectiveness was something the 

llAOK 2. fa Krirgs/agebllch Russ/and, Tei/II, 8- 12 

Dec 41. AOK 2 16690/2 role. 

'%OK'¥, IVFSt, Abl. L (/ Op.) Nr . .J42090141, H'toisllllg 

Nr. 39.8.12.4/, German High Le,'el Direclives, CM H 

files. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 75 

German commands had not so far experienced. They had perfected the art 

of directing military operations. Breakthroughs like those at Klin and Yelets 

were nuisances that they were supposed to liquidate without fuss. TI,e 

first two or three days would reveal the 

measure of an enemy's effort, and by 

then the German divisions on the scene 

would e ither be back in control, or the 

corps, army, and army group staffs 

would have begun dispensing reinforcements, artillery, tanks, and air 

support. Somewhere the enemy might 

prevail no matter what, but he would 

have to possess more of the military art 

than the Russians did. The gentlemen 

of the General Staff would ordinarily 

have thrashed out ti,e problems that 

had arisen at Klin and Yelets in the 

evenings over cognac and cigars and 

would have directed these retreats by 

telephone and teletype the next morning. Meanwhile the commanding generals, if necessary, would have gone out 

to have a look for themselves and to 

pass out encouragement or reprimands, whichever seemed likely to do 

the most good . After all, everybody 

knew what he had to do. Corps and 

army staffs could take some battalions 

here, a regiment there, a scattering of 

companies someplace else, and a division or two, if necessary, and tllen get 

the troops on the march to where they 

were needed without stirring from 

their desks. An army group would 

have reserves or could make some by 

taking divisions out of the line. Usually 

a division or two was on the railroad 

going somewhere up or down the 

front. Withdrawals like those Third 

Panzer Group and Second Panzer 

Army had started were still novel for 

both troops and staffs, but the operations (" l a") officers and chiefs of staff 

knew how to move anything from a 

division to a whole army five or ten 

miles in a night, and the troops were 

seasoned enough to leave the enemy 

small satisfaction no matter what direction they were going. 

All of this the German Army could 

do-but not in December 1941. The 

1st Panzer Divisi on should have 

blocked the Russian drive to Klin, but 

how could it when it cou ld not get to 

the Russians? Third Panzer Group's 

and Second Panzer Army's withdrawals 

were, considering the complications, 

minor masterpieces of military art. But 

everywhere the troops pulled back they 

left equipment standing. Guns, tanks, 

and trucks that would not soon be 

replaced would make each successive 

move more difficult and more dangerous and would in the meantime 

silently encourage the enemy. Soviet 

attacks were still mostly extemporaneous. Yet worse would come when 

the Russians became certain of their 

advantage, which they could easil y deduce from the abandoned equipment. 

All the German armies needed fresh 

troops, but Bock had none to give. To 

create reserves out of what he had was 

hopeless; no army commander was 

going to relinquish even a battalion 

when he might need it desperately 

himself very soon. 

On the morning of the 9t1l, resuming a telephone conference begun the 

night before, Bock told Halder that 

Army Grou p Center had to have reinforcements because it could not stand 

off a determined attack anywhere on 

its whole front. He said he was already 

converting every kind of specialist except tank drivers into infantry. Halder 

speculated that the Russians were using 
76 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

.. ' 21'" ,." . 

A GERMAN COLUMN STALLED IN THE SNOW 

cadres and untrained troops that they ' 

really wanted to save for the coming 

spring, and so things could be expected 

to become quieter "by the middle or 

the end of the month." From there on 

the exchange trailed off into futility. 

Bock responded, "By then the army 

group will bekaputt [smashed]." Halder 

replied, "The German soldier does not 

go kaputt!" Bock said he did not want to 

"whine and complain," but he wanted 

reserves. Halder replied that the army 

group would "certainly get whatever 

small reserves [could] be scraped 

together."I3 

After that Bock instructed the army 

commands to plan to take the entire 

13H. Cr. Mille, fa Kriegstagebuch, Dez.ember 1941, 8 

and 9 Dec 41 , H. Gr. Mine 26974/6 file. 

army group back sixty to njnety miles 

to the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Orel-Kursk line. 

But he did not believe that would help 

either because it would take weeks to 

prepare the new line and to start back 

before then would be "an excursion 

into nowhere." Furthermore, the 

equipment losses sustained in the small 

withdrawals undertaken so far would 

be multiplied by the hundreds. At best, 

the potential relief would probably be 

negligible. As Kluge pointed out, the 

Russians could be hammering at the 

new line within three days. To Kluge, 

Bock confessed, "I am at the point of 

sending the Fuehrer a personal telegram telling him I am confronted with 

decisions here that go far beyond the 

military." What those might be he did 

not say. A general retreat, possibly of 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 77 

Napoleonic proportions, appears the 

most likely." On the 10th, an OKH 

promise of two or tJ,ree fresh divisions 

gave Bock a slim excuse for deferring 

the talk of retreat. However, these divisions would not start leaving the Western Theater until tJ,e 16m and could 

not be expected on the Eastern Fmnt 

for at least a month. 

Although he would scarcely have 

imagined it, Bock's situation could have 

been much worse. Soviet tactical performance in the first four days of the 

counteroffensive had been disappointing. A West Front directive issued on 9 

December read: 

Some of our units are pushing the enemy 

back frontally instead of going around hilll 

and encircling hilll. Instead of breaking 

through the enemy's fortifications, they stand before them and complain about 

problems and heavy losses. These negative 

modes of operations give tJ,e enemy tJ,e 

chance to redeploy to new lines, regroup, 

and organize resistance anew. IS 

Zhukov ordered the West Front armies 

to set up mobile gmups witJl tanks, 

cavalry, and infantry armed with automatic weapons to strike behind the 

enemy, particularly against his motor 

fuel dumps and artillery positions. 

On me 10th, the Russians cut the 

road OUt of Klin, Third Panzer Group's 

single route to the west. Third Panzer 

Group described the scene on the mad 

east of Klin: 

... discipline is breaking down . More and 

more soldiers are heading west on fOOL 

without weapons, leading a calf on a rope 

or pulling a sled loaded with potatoes. The 

road is under constant air attack. Those 

killed by the bombs are no longer being 

buried. All the hangers-on (corps troops, 

Ulbid., 10 Dec 4l. 

15VOV, p. 114 . 

Luftwaffe, supply trains) are pouring to 

the rear in full Right. Without rations, 

freezing , irrationally they are pushing 

back. Vehicle crews that do not want to walt 

out tJ,e traffic jams in the open are drifting off the roads and into ilie villages. Ice, inclines, and bridges create horrendous 

blockages. Traffic control is working day 

and I1Ight and barely maintaining some 

movement. The panzer group has reached 

its most dismal hour.16 

Guderian characterized his Second 

Panzer Army as a scattered assemblage 

of armed baggage trains slowly wending meir way to the rear. Second Army 

could not mount a counterattack 

against the fast-moving but vulnerable 

Soviet cavalry because it had no motor 

fuel and its troops were exhausted . In 

anomer dubious command shuffle, 

Bock PUt Second Army under 

Guderian . He admitted tJ,at Guderian's 

recent emotional outbursts raised a 

question as to his fitness to command 

two armies, but he said, "At least he has 

energy."" 

For Bock everything was going 

wrong. Ice and snow were tearing 

down the telephone lines in all directions. He had transferred a security 

division of overage and limited service 

tmops from railroad guard duty to 

Second Army where they were unlikely 

to be of much use, and the Soviet 

partisans had blown up a bridge on the 

army group's main line. At Vyazma, 

two trains crashed head on and 

blocked tJ,e track. A train of tank cars 

carrying motor fuel reached FourtJl 

Panzer Group empty. On the 12th, 

during an interval when the telephones 

were working, Ha lder heard some of 

161'1.. AOK 3, Gefeclttsbericht Russland 1941 - -12, Pz. 

AOK 32 181812 file. 

171-1 . Gr. MiUe, III Kriegs/agebllch, Dezembrl" 1941, 12 

Dec 41, H . Gr. Milte 26974/6 file. 
78 

the army group's troubles and, changing his opinion of two days before, 

pronounced the situation "the worst 

crisis in the two world wars."'8 

Hitler, meanwhile, had spent three 

days in Berlin on an errand he found 

as handy at tl1e moment as it would be 

problematical in its longer range implications. Recently he had been less 

well informed than Stalin about the 

plans of his ally Japan, and the attack 

on Pearl Harbor on 7 December had 

surprised him about as much as it had 

most of the world. Hitler would probably have welcomed more a Japanese 

attack on the Soviet Union, but he had 

known since midsummer that the Japanese would not commit themselves 

against the Soviets in East Asia except 

to reap what they could from a German victory. Also, he would have 

viewed a continuing Japanese threat to 

the United States in the Pacific as more 

useful than an outright war since his 

policy thus far had been to keep the 

United States out of the conAict. On 

the other hand, Pearl Harbor came 

when he needed something to turn 

attention from the Eastern Front and 

when he had convinced himself that 

the United States was going to be an 

annoying but not decisive opponent in 

or out of the war. On the llth , in a 

speech before the Reichstag, he declared war on the United States. 

B rau.chitsch at the Front 

Desperate, the army commanders, 

especially Guderian and Kluge , clamored for Field Marshal Brauchitsch to 

come to the front and see their plight 

for himself. They did not believe that 

the top leadership was getting accurate 

IS/bid. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

information about their situation. Bock 

denied any fault on his part for the 

poor communications but more than 

half agreed with them otherwise. What 

substantive help they could have expected from Brauchitsch is difficult to 

discern. In tl1e best times, his authority 

had not been commensurate with his 

post as commander in chief, army. 

Since October, he had been an ambulatory cardiac patient. Lately, Hitler 

had ignored him and used him, as 

Halder put it, "as little more than a 

letter carrier."" Brauchitsch had already decided to resign and was preoccu pied mostly with how to do so since 

he felt obligated to Hitler for his appointment and, apparently, for more 

personal favors. 2 • 

On 10 December, Brauchitsch had 

tried to keep himself aloof from Army 

Group Center's troubles by sending 

telegrams to Bock and each army commander telling them that he and Hitler 

were "aware of the difficult situation on 

the front in the battle with the enemy 

and witl1 nature."" When tllis effort to 

reassure them failed, Brauchitsch appeared shortly after 1200 on the 13th at 

Bock's headquarters in Smolensk. By 

then Bock and the army commanders 

had agreed that they had to take the 

army group back to the RzhevGzhatsk-Orel-Kursk line. Kluge , who 

had objected to the withdrawal when 

t11e army group had proposed it three 

days before, now said he had changed 

his mind. His troops, he warned , especially Third and Fourth Panzer 

'fl/'/alder Dia ry. "01. 111 , p. 332. 

20S ee Harold C. Deutsch. Hitler (lml His Generals 

1inn apoli s: Universit y of Minnesota Press. 1974). 

PI'. 220-30. 

21H. Gr. Mittl', /(1 Kriegstagebllch. Deumber / 94 1. 10 

Dec 41, H. Gr. Mille 2697416 fil e. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 79 

GERMA N MORTAR SQUAD ON THE MARCI-I 

Groups, would be destroyed in another 

eight or ten days the way things were 

going, and it was necessary, therefore, 

to sacrifice the equipment to save the 

men . General Adolf Strauss, who also 

had believed earlier that he could hold 

his position, said Ninth Army would 

have to give up Kalinin , the northern 

cornerpost of the army group front. 

In his first conversation with Brauchitsch, Bock said the question · was 

whether the army group should stand 

and fight and risk "being smashed to 

pieces" or withdraw and take substantial losses in material. 22 

Early on the 14th, Brauchitsch went 

to Roslavl to confer with Kluge and 

Guderian , and Generalmajor Rudolf 

Ulbid .. 13 Dec 41. 

Schmundt, Hitler's chief adjutant, 

arrived in Smo lensk. Although 

Schmundt held a relatively low rank, 

he was a member of Hitler's inner 

circle, which Brauchitsch was not. Most 

likely Hitler sent Schmundt to show the 

File/mer's concern and to protect his 

interests in any decisions Brauchitsch 

might make. Brauchitsch returned to 

Smolensk late that afternoon . He had 

learned that Guderian's front west of 

Tula was also beginning to tear, and he 

agreed that the army group would 

have to pull back to Bock's proposed 

line. For an hour or so it looked as if 

they had at last achieved a consensus. 

Schmundt called General JodI at the 

OKW Operations Staff to get a quick 

decision from Hitler who answered 

with a prompt but apparently qualified 
80 

"no." Hitler said Ninth Army and 

Third Panzer Group could draw west 

from Kalinin and Klin enough to 

"straighten" their lines. Second Panzer 

Army could do tlle same around Tula. 

Otherwise, he forbade "giving up any 

place or taking any evasive action" until 

"someiliing" was done to ready a line in 

the rear. Neither Brauchitsch nor Bock 

talked to Jodi, who had relayed Hitler's 

decision. Both assumed "some" preparation would satisfy Hitler, and Bock 

ordered the armies to get ready to go 

back and to prepare the RzhevGzhatsk-Orel-Kursk line "to tlle extent 

possible."'3 

A 7irne for Decisions 

The morning of the 15th saw 

Brauchitsch on his way back to East 

Prussia as another cold wave numbed 

the Eastern Front. During tlle night 

the temperature had dropped to - 330 

F. at TIkhvin. In the morning, Leeb 

telephoned Hitler, something his colleague Bock had ilius far avoided, and 

he told the FllehreT that the time had 

come to give up the idea of holding 

close to TIkhvin. To Hitler's familiar 

protest mat giving up their last handhold at TIkhvin would expose the 

Leningrad bottleneck, Leeb replied 

that tlle troops had to have some shelter and rest; therefore, mey had to take 

them forty-five miles west to the Volkhov River line. When Hitler failed to 

give a clear decision either way, Leeb 

assumed the choice was his and, at 1200, 

issued me order to start for the Volkhov. 

Seven hours later Field Marshal Keitel , 

chief of the OK W, called and asked 

Leeb to stop because Hitler could still 

23/bid., 14 Dec 41. 

MOSCOW TO STALTNGRAD 

not decide. Leeb thereupon chose to 

visit the FuehreT Headquarters" 

At Army Group Center that day, 

Ninm Army was ready to evacuate Kalinin, having set demolition charges 

tl1roughout the city and particularly on 

the Volga River Bridge. Third and 

Fourtll Panzer Groups were retreating 

in -ISO F. weather and snow that 

Hoepner predicted would cost Fourth 

Panzer Group most of its artillery. Bock 

urged him to "consider every step back 

a hundred times." Guderian had a tenmile-wide gap in Second Panzer Army's 

front west of Tula, and Schmidt reported mat Second Army could only 

hold forward of ilie Orel-Kursk railroad if the enemy made bad mistakes, 

which he showed no signs of doing. At 

noon on me 15tl1, the OKH operations 

branch chief, Colonel Heusinger, telephoned advance notice of a Fuehrer 

order he said would follow. Under it, 

he said, Ninth Army and Third and 

Fourth Panzer Groups could withdraw 

mirty to forty miles to Starit-sa and the 

line of the Lama and Ruza rivers. The 

army group, Heusinger added, would 

also be free to withdraw "gradually" to 

the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Orel-Kursk line." 

The Fuehrer Takes Command 

Hitler's "Yes" and "No" 

The 16th was a day of decisions at 

Fuehrer Headquarters. Hitler had returned mere the night before after he 

had prolonged his stay in Berlin for 

some minor diplomatic affairs. His absence from the MfJl[sschanze, however, 

'HI-/. Cr. Nord, la Kriegstagebuch, 1.12.+3 1.12 .41 , 15 

Dec 41. H . Gr. Nord 75128/4 file. 

2~AOK 2, la KriegslagelJ/lch Russ/and, 'leill/, 15 Dec 

41 , AOK 2 16690/2 file; H. Gr. Mille, Ia. Kriegslagebuch, 

Dezember 1941 , 15 Dec 41. H . Cr. Mille 26974 /6 flle. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 81 

did not mean he was out of touch with 

what was going on at the front. Everything he needed or wanted to know 

was available to him by telephone or 

through the army's communications 

center at Zossen , twenty miles south of 

Be rlin. But he was out of persona l 

contact with the military chie fs, which 

may have suited him since he tended to 

vacillate near letha rgy while making 

crucial decisio ns. On the 14th, he had 

given Bock and Brauchitsch a "no" that 

sounded like a "yes." On the 15th, he 

had bee n unable to decide abo ut 

1ikhvin after more than seven ho urs 

but had apparently agreed to a far 

more extensive withdrawal for Army 

Group Center. A day later, tllOugh, this 

thinking too would change. 

In a morning interview with Leeb on 

the 16th, Hitler, barely protesting, 

agreed to let Army Group Nortll give 

up the Tikhvin sa li ent. With 

Brauchitsch present, he blamed the 

current predi cament o n bad advice 

from tlle OKH. He had always known, 

he declared, tllat Army Group North 

was too weak. If the OKH had given 

T hird Panzer Group to Army Group 

North in August as he had wanted it to, 

Le ningrad wou ld have been completely surrounded , contact would 

have been made with the Finns, and 

there would be no problem.'· 

Havin g made his d ec ision o n 

1ikhvin, Hitle r considered tlle questions pertaining to Army Group Center. At 1200, Halder telephoned 

Hitler's decisions to Bock. Army Group 

Center, he sa id, would receive an order 

allowing Ninth Army and Third and 

Founh Panzer Groups to complete 

their withdrawals, "if no other choice 

26/_/. C,: Nord, la Kriegslagt'bllch , Dn.nllb" 1941 , 15 

Dec 41. H . Cr. Nord 75 128/4 file. 

existed." The other armies would close 

the gaps in their lines and stand fast. 

Halder had not attended the morning's 

meeting and was transmitting what he 

had hea rd from JodI. The order, as 

Hitler was having those in tile OKW 

Operations Branch write it, was much 

stronger than Halder knew. They were 

making a strategic decision equal to 

any tlllIS far in the war, and the OKH 

was out of the picture, primarily because Brauchitsch had ceased to function even as a "letter carrier." After the 

morning conference, Schmundt told 

Bock's chie f of staff, General Greiffenberg, that Hitle r had "sidetracked " 

Brauchitsch as far as the discussions of 

the current situatio n were concerned. 

For now Schmundt said he would be 

the army group's point of contact at 

Fuehrer Headquarters because Hitler 

"was taking everything into his own 

hands." 

When Bock asked later whether 

Brauchitsch had reported how close 

the army group was to being "smas hed 

to pieces," Schmundt said he had not. 

Implying that Hitler had not been told 

how serious Bock's situation was, 

Schmundt added that Hitler had said 

he "could not send everything o ut into 

the winter just because Army Group 

Center had a few gaps in its front." Still 

unwilling lO talk lO Hitler in person, 

Bock reca pi tula ted his trou bles to 

Schmundt and asked him to relay them 

to Hitler. Lamely he added that it was 

really impossible to tell which was more 

dangerous, lO hold or lO retreat. Either 

way the army group was likely to be 

destroyed. At midnig ht, Hitler ca lled 

Bock. Schmundt had reponed their 

ea rlier conve rsation, Hitler sa id , and 

there was o nly one correct decision, 

"not to go a step back, to close the gaps 
82 

and hold." He assured Bock that infantry reinforcements and air transport 

were in a state of readiness, and he was 

supervising their deployment himself. 

When Bock, trying to turn the talk to 

what might happen before the reinforcements came, remarked that the 

front "could rip open any hour," Hitler 

cut him off with a curt, "I will have to 

take that chance into the bargain ," and 

hung up." 

If Hitler prided himself on one thing 

above all, it was his ability to handle a 

crisis. He liked to describe himself as 

beset by crises throughout his life, 

many of which he mastered against 

seemingly hopeless odds. On that 

score, in fact, he did not have to boast; 

his record spoke for him. He had not 

only mastered crises; he had profited 

from them. Some he had even contrived. The one on the Eastern Front in 

December 1941 was a crisis he did not 

want, but when he knew he could not 

evade it, he did what he had done with 

all of the others. He set out to resolve it 

on the terms most satisfactory to himself, terms of power, his power which, 

whatever qualms he might have begun 

to have about the future, he judged 

would be more than enough to bring 

him through that winter in Russia . 

What the army could not do in its own 

fashion it would have to do in his. He 

could not control the weather or the 

Russians, but he could manipulate the 

German Army. 

"Fanatical R esistance" 

How he would do that began to 

emerge on tlle morning of the 18th 

when the order announced two days 

27H. G,: Mille, fa Kriegstagebuclt, Deumber 1941, 16 

Dec 41 , H. Gr. Mitte 2697416 file . 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

before came over the teletype to Army 

Group Center. It read: 

The Fuehrer has ordered : Larger evasive 

movements cannot be made. They will lead 

to a total loss of heavy weapons and equipment. Commanding generals, commanders, and officers are to intervene in person to compel the troops to fanatical 

resistance in their positions without regard 

to enemy broken through [sic] on the 

Ranks or Il1 the rear. This is the only way to 

gain the time necessary to bring lip the 

reinforcements from Germany and the 

West Il,at I have ordered. Only if reserves 

have moved into rearward positions can 

thought be given to wiilidrawing to those 

pOSltIOns. 28 

Within the army group the reaction 

ranged from resignation to outrage. 

Kluge predicted that no matter what 

tlle orders the army group could not 

hold the line. Reinhardt and Hoepner 

doubted that they could bring the 

Third and Fourth Panzer Groups' divisions to even a temporary stop on the 

Lama-Ruza line. Bock passed the order 

on without protest and told Hoepner 

to "hold your fist in the backs of these 

people." Guderian asked for an airplane to take him to Hitler. Over the 

telephone he told the army group chief 

of staff: 

The situation is more seriolls than one 

could imagine. If something does not happen soon, things will occur that the German armed forces have never before 

experienced. [ will take these orders and 

file them. 1 will not pass them on even 

under uueal of court-martial. I want at 

least to give my career a respectable 

ending. 29 

2"D er FlI ehrc'" u nd Oherste Befeltlshaber del" Wehmmcht, 

WFSt, Abt. L. (1 Op.) N,. 442182 , 16. 12.41, OKW 2018 

fil e; OKH, GenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 3170/41 , all H Cr. 

Mitte, 18.12.41, H. Cr. Mitte 6500517 file . 

291-1 . Gr. Mille, la Kliegstagebuch, Deumber 1941, 

17- 19 Dec 41. 1-1. Gr. Miue 26974/6 file. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 83 

With the order to stand fast, Hitler 

took all command initiative out of the 

generals' hands. Later some would say 

it was probably the best that could have 

been done under tl,e circumstances, 

but that was later. At the moment, 

Hitler had mercilessly saddled an entire army group with a suicide mission. 

Ru thless compulsion now replaced 

leadership and transformed Army 

Group Center into a mere agent for 

Hitler's will. 

What tl,e order would accomplish on 

the snowfields of Russia remained a 

question . It did abolish the last pretense of army autonomy within the 

Nazi state with remarkable ease. Talking to Schmundt on the 16th and aware 

then that he was about to be given an 

order that would very likely put him in 

the position of presiding over his army 

group's destruction , Bock had remarked about his own shaky health, 

which h e said was "hanging by a 

thread," and had added that Hitler 

might need "fresh strength" in the 

army group command. He did not 

mean , Bock hastened to assure 

Schmundt, to imply any kind of a 

threat but was merely stating fact. 

Whatever his intent had been, he was 

not prepared for the response he received tl,e next day when Brauchitsch 

called and told him Hitler wanted him 

to submit a request for leave. This now 

struck Bock as "somewhat sudden," 

and from then on he became more 

concerned with learning whether "the 

Fuehrer has a reproach to raise against 

me on any ground" tI,an with the fate 

of' ti,e army group. On the 19th, having 

promptly received leave until his health 

was "fully restored," he turned over 

command to Kluge and parted from 

his staff with a limp assertion that the 

"end of tl,e dirt period" was in sight. 30 

Bmuchitsch Resigns 

In tl,e meantime, after having been 

cut out of the decisions on the 16th, 

Brauchitsch had finally submitted his 

own resignation. Hitler accepted it on 

the 19th and immediately dispatched 

the following proclamation: 

Soldiers of the Army and the Warren SS! 

Our struggle for national liberation is approachmg Its clImax! DeCISions of world 

Importance are a~ul to be lTIc.td,e.! TIle 

Army bears the pnmary responsd)LIIlY for 

battle! 1 have tllerefore as of this day 

myself taken command of the Army! As a 

soldIer who rought m many World War 

battles I am closely tied to you in the will to 

victory.31 

Brauchitsch's going was no great surprise, and he, no doubt to Hitler's 

satisfaction, made it as banal and pointless an event as a commander in chiefs 

departure at the height of battle could 

possibly be. 

Hitler's taking command of the army, 

on the other hand, had the effect of an 

administrative eartllquake. In the tangle of agencies with overlapping functions Hitler used to run tl, e war-in 

particular OKW, OKH , SS, the Munitions Ministry, and the T!-ansport Ministry-a commander in chief, army, 

even one as weak as Brauchitsch , at 

least gave the army an identity. Without 

its own commander in chief, the army 

lay open to dismemberment; the offices which assumed its functions were 

clusters of power cut adrift. One such 

was the Office of the Chief of Army 

Armament and the Replacement Army 

30/bid., 16 Dec 41; /Jock Dimy, Osten I, pp. 300-04. 

:lIN . Gr. Mille, Ja Kriegstagebuch, Deumber 19-11 , 19 

Dec 41, H . Cr. Mine 2697416 file. 
84 

under Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm 

and another was the Office of the Chief 

of Army Personnel under Generalmajor Bodwin Keitel. Controlling army 

procurement and production and 

commanding all army troops inside 

Germany, Fromm had enough power 

at his disposal to control the German 

state. Keitel, younger brother to 

Wilhelm Keitel, the chief, OKW, kept 

the officer personnel files and could 

influence promotions and appointments in all ranks. Fromm and Keitel 

were directly subordinate to the commander in chief, army. Hitler, however, 

had no time for what he called "ministerial" functions and put both their 

offices, nominally at least, under Keitel , 

the chief, OKW. The OKW, having 

failed to establish itself as a true joint 

command over the three services, had 

for several years been acting as a kind 

of second army command, superior in 

its closer relationship to Hitler but unable to reach past the commander in 

chief, army, directly into army concerns. How much capital ti,e OKW 

could make out of the army personnel 

office and ti,e replacement training was 

perhaps a question, but in armament 

production, the OKW and the OKH 

were hard-bitten rivals. 

For the heart of OKH, the Army 

General Staff, the position was even 

more critical. JodI's A rmed Forces Operations Staff, aside from counseling 

Hitler on strategy, was already the general staff for all theaters except the 

East. When Hitler named himself commander in chief, army, if either OKW 

or OKH did not become superfluous, 

certainly eiilier the Armed Forces Operations Staff or the Army General 

Staff did. Hitler, who seldom objected 

to having two agencies doing one job as 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

long as he controlled boili, told Halder 

on the afternoon of the 19i1i to ca rry 

on activities in OKH as usual; but 

within hours word had leaked from 

Flleh-rer Headquarters iliat JodI soon 

would replace Halder as chief of the 

Army General Staff, and General Manstein would move from Eleventh Army 

to replace JodI. According to the 

rumor, the changes would occur as 

soon as Manstein finished his operations in ilie Crimea, which were then 

expected to last only a few more 

weeks. 32 Manstein stood well with 

Hitler, who had profited from his strategic ideas particularly in the 1940 campaign in the West, and not well at all 

witll ilie General Staff who had long 

viewed him as too importunate for 

Halder's post. JodI and Manstein could 

have spelled the end for the OKH as it 

had existed under Brauchitsch and 

Halder. 

If Hitler had deprived the field commands of their initiative, he had done 

even more to OKH. In the prevailing 

atmosphere of change charged with 

apprehension and ambition, he could 

do exactly as he pleased. No one was 

going to oppose him. On ilie 20th, he 

gave Halder orders on how he wanted 

the war in the East conducted. A "fanatical will to fight" would have to be 

instilled in the troops by "all, even the 

most severe, means." Soldiers had no 

"contracts" restricting them to specific 

duties. Those in support positions, 

such as bakers, could defend their own 

positions, and aU troops would have to 

learn to "tolerate breakthroughs." Rine 

pits were to be dug by blasting holes in 

32Der Chef der J-/eereSl"lustllllg lOW Bifehlshaber dts 

ErsatweeTes, Der Chrf des Srabes, Tagebucll, 19 Dec 41. 

CM H X-124 file. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: FIRST PHASE 85 

GERMANS S URRENDER TO A SoVIET SOLDIER 

the ground or by blowing them in with 

a rtillery fire. The Germans could take 

winter clothing from Soviet civilians; 

the army was solely obligated to take 

care of its own troops. And, he demanded , "Every man must defend 

himself where he is."" Halder transmitted a summary of these orders to 

the army groups as an "elucidation" of 

the stand fast order."' 

Guderian at the FllehTcr H eadqlla!-ters 

On the morning of the 20th , also, 

Guderian set o ut for the Fuehrer Headquarters by airplane- without stopping at the army group headquarte rs 

U/'lalder Diary, voL III. pp. 356-60. 

HOKt-f, GenStdU, Op. Abt. Nr. 32081141, (m H. Gr. 

Mitte, 21.12.41, H. G.', Mine 65005/7 fil e. 

as protocol would ordinarily have required . While Guderian's Second Panzer Army was in night, Kluge was occupied with tel egrams from his other 

army commanders. Fourth Army 

reported: 

Enemy auacking in the rm y'~ deep Rank, 

aiming LOward Kaluga. Army has no more 

rorces at ils disposal. Combat strength sinking. Holding present positions not possible 

in the long run ,35 

From Hoe pn e r a t Fourth Pan zer 

Group Kluge had heard that: 

The Commanding Genera ls of XXXXVI 

and V Corps have reported they ca nnot 

hold. Heavy losses of trucks and weapons 

in recent days. They had to be destroyed 

351-1 . c,: Mille, l a, WI OKH, ClmStdJl, 0/1. Abt. , 

20.12.4/, II. Gr. Mitte 65005/7 file. 
86 

for lack of gasoline. Weapons now 25-30 

percent of requirements. Only course to 

give orders to hold to the last man. TI,e 

troops will then be gone and ulere will be a 

hole in the front.'· 

And from Strauss at Ninth Army: 

Present baltle area wooded and has poor 

visibility. I f it has to hold there the army 

is like ly to be broken through and 

smashed. 37 

To Halder at OKH with whom he was 

in telephone contact throughout the 

day, Kluge presented various proposals 

for withdrawals. All of them Halder 

rejected , citing Hitler's diverse strictures against giving up positions. 

After nightfall, Kluge was back o n 

the telephone to Halder telling him 

that Guderian's courage had waned, 

and he did not intend to hold his line. 

On checking Second Panzer Army's 

reports and dispositions, Kluge said, he 

had discovered that GuderIan had 

moved one regiment from each of the 

army's divisions back forty miles to the 

Oka River, which cou ld only mean he 

was going to retreat. Guderian had by 

then arrived at the FuehTer Headquarters and was with Hitler when Halder 

phoned in the information from 

Kluge. I n a stormy interview, which 

Keitel, chief of the OKW, wItnessed 

in dismay, Hitle r accused Guderian 

of hav ing co n coc ted "an in sane 

scheme."'" Afterward, Halder called 

Kluge and told him that Hitler had 

"straightened out" Guderian and given 

38p l.. AOK 4, (HoeP1w) all H. Cr. Mitte, 18.12.41, H . 

Gr. Mine 6500517 file. 

31AOK 9, la Nr. 4517141, all f-I. Cr. Mitre, /9.12.4/, H . 

Cr. Mille 65005/7 file. 

3SCenemi Halder's Daily NOles, vol. I , 20 Dec 4 1, £A P 

21-g- I6I4/0 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

him a direct order to hold his front 

exactly where it stood.39 

Having exposed Guderian's plan , 

Kluge returned to his own proposals 

for witlldrawals. The trouble with what 

Guderian wanted to do, he said , was 

that it would have been a "full-blown 

retrea t," not a step-by-step withdrawal. 

Halde r, who did not want to have to 

discuss either alternative witll Hitler, 

tried the next morning to inAuence 

Kluge , through General Brenn e~ e, 

his chief of staff, to hold at all positions 

for another two weeks. He predicted 

the crisis would pass by tllen, and he 

said the army group would be sorry if it 

pulled back too soon.'· 

Finally, on the morning of the 22d, 

Bock, who had made the trip by stages 

in a sedan, arrived at the Fue/,,·er Headquarters. He was much relieved by the 

fri endly way Hitler received him tllat 

afternoon, and tlley proceeded to ta lk 

about Army Group Center in general 

terms. Bock apparently was satisfied 

when Hitler assured him that he knew 

how serious the army group's situation 

was. After Hitler also assured him 

that he could report back when he 

was recovered , Bock took his leave. 

Stopping only long enough to ask 

Schmundt again whether there were 

any "reproaches" against him, he resumed his winter's drive, this time 

toward Berlin.41 

As commander in chief, army, Hitle r 

was no more moved by the troubles of 

anyone group than he ever had been. 

He hated to lose ground, but human 

~9 . Gr. Mille. la KdegJtagebudl, Deumber 19'11, 20 

Dec 41. 1-1. G,', Mille 26974/6 file. See also Guderian. 

Panur Leader, pr. 264- 68. 

~oH . Cr. Mitlt:, la Kriegstagebllch. Deu mher 1941, 21 

Dec 41, I-I. C r. Mitte 26974/6 file. 

~lBQCk Dimy, Oslim I, p.304. 
THE COUNTEROFFE SIVE: FIRST PHASE 87 

misery did not touch him. In one of the 

late-night monologues he delivered to 

his secretaries and selected guests, he 

observed: 

Luckily nOlhing lasts forever-and that is 

a consoling thought. Even in raging winter, 

one knows that spring will follow. And if, at this moment, men are being turned into 

blocks of ice, that won't prevent the April 

sun from shmmg and restonng life Lo 

these desolate places" 

I n fact, his thoughts shifted readily 

away from human suffering to other 

concerns. He worried about a loss of 

prestige at Leningrad and discussed 

with Halder the possibility of using 

pOIson gas to end the resistance in the 

city fast. 43 

On the 23d, Hiller called Fromm in 

from Berlin to report on manpower 

and armaments. (Fromm appreciated 

this call as a significant triumph over 

his recently designated chief, Keitel, 

who had tried to make himself the 

channel for such reports.) Hitler talked 

to · Fromm for hours about rebuilding 

the army for a 1942 offensive and 

about a "tractor of the future," which 

would use far less raw material than 

would trucks. He said Dr. Ferdinand 

Porsche, the Volkswagen designer, 

would have a prototype ready "in a few 

days." As far as the Eastern Front was 

concerned, he expected to be "over the 

hump" in ten days to two weeks. He 

said "there had been a hole near Tula," 

but elsewhere, the front would hold4' 

42l-1itle)"'s Secret eoflversatiOtIS (New York: Farrar. 

Strause & YOllng. 1953). p. 140. 

43Gnlt~ral Halder's Daily Noles, vol. I, 23 Dec 41, EAP 

21-g- 16/4/0 role. 

HDer Chef del' Heeresnusllmg lind Bqehlshaber des 

Ersatzheeres. Der Chef des Slabes. Tagebuch, 23 Dec 41 . 

CM H X- 124 file. 

After the first few days, the generals 

found having Hiller in direct command, if ominous, also somewhat stimulating. For a long time none of them 

had known what went on between 

Brauchitsch and Hitler, if anything; 

and in recent weeks, Brauchitsch had 

virtually not communicated with Hitler 

or his own subordinates. From 19 December on, Halder and two or three of 

his branch chiefs saw Hitler every day. 

True, he lectured to them more than 

he consulted them, but they were at the 

center and no longer getting tlleir instructions second or third hand 

through Keitel, Jodi , or Schmundt. 

Fromm was even encouraged. He 

wrote to his military district commanders, "The Fuehrer's taking command 

is an honor for the Army. The Army's 

work will become easier, not more difficult."" After his conference with 

Hitler on ti,e 23d, he believed Ll,at 

either Ll,e OKH or the OKW would 

"disappear," but he had enough confidence in the OKH's prospect for survival to instruct his staff to "march with 

all energy" in the cause of the OKH46 

Kluge was commanding an army 

group in desperate peril, but he was, at 

last, holding a command commensurate with his field marshal's rank. When 

Bock arrived in Berlin, however, he 

learned-with anguish-that he was 

not the commanding general, Army 

Group Center, on leave, but had been 

put along with Rundstedt, ex-commanding general, Army Group South, 

in the command reserve pool.'H 

Ulbid" 22 Dec 4 J. 

-4 8Ibid., 23 Dec 41. 

41Bock Diary, Ostell I, p. 306. 
CHAPTER V 

The Counteroffensive: Second Phase 

Roles Revened 

The S{f1Jiet Initiative 

The first phase of the counteroffensive ended on 16 December with the 

German spearheads, which had been 

aimed at Moscow, eliminated and tl,e 

majority of the original Soviet objectives 

taken. Twentieth Anny had entered Solnechnogorsk on the 12th, and Tenth Anny 

was in Stalinogorsk the next day. A 

mobile group set LIp by Thirtieth Anny 

took Klin on the 15tll, and Thirty-first 

Anny o'oops marched into Kaliuin on tl,e 

16th. The armies had advanced over 

thirty miles on the nortll flank and better than fifty miles on tl,e SOUtll. No new 

armies had been deployed during the 

first phase; however, the number of 

troops committed had probably grown 

substantially during the ten-day period. 

General Lelyushenko, at Thirtieth Army, 

had been awaiting the arrival of the 

larger part of a half-dozen Siberian and 

Urals divisions when the counteroffensive began .! 

General Zhukov had issued an initial 

second phase directive to his right flank 

armies on 13 Decembec In it, he ordered them to advance to "an average 

distance of 130 to 160 kilometers [78 to 

96 miles] west and northwest of 

Moscow."' Zhukov believed that the ob-

'/VMV, vol. IV, p. 289; VO\~ p. 115: Yevstigneyev. 

\'f>lika)'a bi/va, p. 184: Lelyushenko. Moskva, p. 90. 

2Lel),lIshenko, Moskva , p. 110. 

jective for the rest of the winter should 

be to dlive the entire Army Group Center back 150 miles to tl,e line east of 

Smolensk from which it had Iaundled 

TAl FUN in early October. To do so, he 

estimated, would require resupply and 

replacements for the armies already in 

action and four fresh armies from tl,e 

Stavka reserves. Zhukov's thought was to 

keep the advance essentially frontal 

while using mobile groups, whim were 

being formed in all the armies (typically 

out of a cavalry division, a tank brigade, 

and a rifle brigade), to strike at targets of 

opportunity ahead of tl,e main forces." 

Stalin and tl,e Stav/ILI, however, were 

beginning to tllink in less conservative 

terms. TIley allowed West Front to go into 

the second phase as Zhukov proposed 

but without the four armies as reinforcements. Zhukov made this change, bringing his centel~ which consisted of Fifth, 

Thirty-third, Forty-third, and Forty-ninth Armies, into the counteroffensive on 18 

Decembec Elements of Fifth Anny, including a mobile group under General 

Mayor L. M. DovatOl~ had been in action 

since tl,e 11th, and Forty-ninth Anny's left 

flank had been engaged together with 

Fiftieth Army in the Tula sector since tl,e 

14th. Thirty-thir'd and Forty-third Armies 

took a week to move out of their starting 

positions.' (Mat) 7.) 

3Zhukov,Memoirs, p. 351. SecVOv' p. 11 5. 

4/VO\,SS, vol. lI , pp. 286-88: IVMV, vol. IV, pp. 

289- 9 1; vav, p. 11 8. 
'; 27th ~ ) 

/ ~~<c-~ '" LININ FRONT ~ "Volga OsttfShk v (,~_ ,22d Torzhole Aeservolr I 

_ XallniQ. 

~ . ,,"'. ' , 39th __ ~ 29th ___ '~S ~~ lstn. '~ loseow,vo,gs 

NINTH ;io~ -;r--~~-- /- - 30th ' 

"""NOVOYI",,> , :ce- Xlm < ARMY ........ SttmtstJ 'I ~ t Y.4.hromtl "" '0000000000 • ---! Is"~hock '\ I 

Third P~zer Group g ~ $olnachnogors/c 

--~-------J>RZhTV ~o~ms\ J 20th Krasnsya Po/yana 

'1-'1-VF;;u;,\ Four :i-.... Panzer \ ~ 16th MOSCOW 

kc \G,oup",,·,o·o ~:t It " 

Gzhlltsk \1':: ,o~ ..... 5t .~ - , \. MOZhBYSk( \ 33d , \ ij) \ ;"2. 

• Vyazms ~ "",. " ,,0 1,7-

~ {" ":"l. "oo -1', Sarplikho~_ FOURTH MB'Qt8(os'svers 8 ." '- C" \<;, I Oka R as fa 

. o/ensk ARMY Yukhnov ~ ~ ~ TsruslI ) 4 th 

o 

o 

0

0 

0,," I 

"0 0\ KtlIU91l_~sm 

P8!8m ~ 5 \, r~~50th n.~ \ ~ _J'h 

Venev 

WEST 

, 

, 

RYIJzIJn· 

"" Dubns ... ,..... Tulll ,"*.r 

r-------~ \~ 

Ros/ttvl 

, 

THE MOSCOW 

COUNTEROFFENSIVE 

PHASE II 

16 December 1941 - 1 January 1942 

-------- Front line, 16 Dec 

"""00<>00000 Front line, 1 Jan 

~=== Soviet counterattack 

o 50 Miles 

1-' ----~--" 6 50 Kilometers 

MAP 7 

SECOND ~o 

PANZER >00 Mrs,"s' _ 

ARMY <:5fl' :oo~ ./ ~------ Orel 

.~~00 ~~?~ 

- I 3d 

---~'""", 0 oVal" 

,,'/..y-Y- 0 I 

,.. \4=4 

o \ 

SECON D : ~ i Llyny 

~ 0 I 

ARMLJJU 13th .f2 f 

..:: \ 

o ~ '-, -----j,. 

, 

Ku'" • CENTER' 

XXX)(x I 

VOfonflzh .~.I 
90 

TI,e reinforcements went to the outer 

Aanks of the offensive, which were not 

under Zhukov's comro!. Thirtieth Anny, 

from West Front, and Thirty-ninth A,my, 

from the StavM reserves, went to Kalinin 

F1Vnt, and General Konev's orders as of 

18 December were to employ those and 

his 7iventy-second, 7iventy-ninth, and Thirtyfirst Annies in a drive west and southwest 

behind the Army Group Cemer left 

Aank to Rzhev. On the south, between 18 

and 24 December, the SWVM reactivated 

the Bryansk Front under General Cherivichenko, giving it Third and Thirteenth Armies and Sixty-jirst Almy from 

the reserve.' Cherivichenko had orders 

to break through Second Arm)' and 

strike northwest behind the Army 

Grou p Center right Aank to M tsensk. 

TI,e Stavka, at that point, had nothing 

less in mind than to encircle Army 

Group Center by having Kalinin Front 

head south past Rzhev to Vyazma while 

B,)'a.nsk F1Vnt came west and northwest to 

Vyazma and Bryansk.6 Ambition was 

high in Moscow. 

"When Things Start To Go l47ong" 

In mid-December, across the from on 

the German side, new Soviet units were 

still being identified in such numbers 

that the OKH almost did not want to 

hear the reports. General Halder sent an 

advisory letter through General Staff 

channels in which he said, "The large 

number of enemy units identified has 

sometimes had a paralyzing effect on 

our leadership .... The leadership must 

nOl be allowed to fall into a numbers 

JVOVSS, \"01. II. pp. 283. 288-89. 294; lVM\~ vol. 

IV. pp. 289. 291. 

6/VO\lS5, vol. II. p. 288; {VMV, vol. IV. p. 291. Sec 

also V. D. Sokolo\'skiy. ed., Rmgrom lumftskojashisilukil 

wysk /XXI Moskvo)' (Moscow: Vo)'cnnoye izdatclst\'o. 

1964). p. 270. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

psycllOsis. Imelligence officers must be 

trained to be discriminating."' TIle Soviet troops, as Halder meant to imply, 

were in fact often short on quality. Many 

were boys or middle-aged men, hal ftrained and thrown into battle sometimes witllOut hand weapons, often with 

inadequate artillery and automatic weapons support, always Witll a ruthless disregard for losses. In Tenth Army, 75 

percent of ti,e troops were in the thirtyto forty-year age bracket or older; in 

First Shock Anny, 60 to 70 percent." TI,e 

same was probably true of Ule oUler 

reserve armies. But the u'oops were 

warmly dressed and their levels of supplies and equipment appeared to be 

rising. Moreover, in their seeming ability 

to endure cold, they appeared almost 

superhuman. The Germans marveled at 

the Soviet troops' ability to remain in the 

open at temperatures far below zero for 

days in succession. Some did freeze, but 

most survived and kept on fighting" 

Like ule Soviet troops, the Soviet T -34 

tank was also proving itself in the wimer. 

Its compressed air starter could turn its 

engine over in the coldest weather, and 

its broad tracks could carry the T -34 

across ditches and hollows holding five 

feet of snow. 

Field Marshal Bock had remarked 

earlier in ule momh, "I n these situations, 

when some things start to go wrong 

everything does." By the middle of the 

month, the aphorism, as far as it applied 

to Army Group Cemer, had become a 

statemem of fact. [n the midst of wimer 

and under constant enemy pressure, the 

armies were beset with troubles. Nor10KI-I, GenSldll, Cluj des Genera/stabl's N,: 10/--12. 

Beurlt'illlllglirr F";Iullagf, 17.1.42, H 3/2 file. 

HZakharo\" Promi. pp. 257.278. 

tJp z. AOK. Ie Taeligkeitsbericht Nr.), 12.8.41 -)0,/,·'2, 

16 DedI. Pz. AOK 3 16911/32 file. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 91 

I • ... , 

.. 1 J/ - ~"II . • 

/ 

L. '" • 

SOVIET I NFANTRY ON THE ATfACK 

mally each had enough transport to 

move between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of 

supplies a day. Because of snow, cold, 

breakdowns, and losses, Second Panzer 

Army could manage no more than 360 

tons a day, and the others were no better 

off. Winter clothing, except for items 

overlooked in planning months before, 

such as fur parkas and felt boots, was in 

the army depots at the railheads. So far 

the Germans had not yet issued a third 

of the clothing to the troops because 

they could not deliver these items to the 

front. Movement of ammunition, gasoline, and rations had to receive an iron 

priorityJO Ti'ucks, tanks, and other vehicles, run down after six montlls in tile 

IOp1.. AOK 2, O. Quo , Beu)"teiitmg der VerMl)"gulIgslage, 

/9.12.41, Pz. AOK 2 250341154 file. 

field, could not take the strain of being 

driven through snow and over ice. 1lle 

Germans were having to abandon some 

every day, and others were simply worn 

out or had vital parts broken by tile cold. 

Lubricants froze in crankcases, on bearings, in artillery recoil mechanisms, even 

in the lightly oiled works of machine 

guns. Second Panzer Army had 70 tanks 

in running order and another 168 in 

repair out of 970 tanks which it had or 

had received since June. 1llird Panzer 

Group would, by tile time it reached the 

Lama River, have destroyed or abandoned 289 tanks. Hitler had ordered 26 

new tanks and 25 self~propelled assault 

guns driven from Army Group South to 

Second Panzer Army. On tile first 60-

mile lap, from Dnepropetrovsk to 

Krasnograd, 8 tanks and I assault gun 
92 

TRYING ON WINTER GEAR. WHICH WAS Too 

SLOW IN CoMING 

had broken down, and the rest still had 

300 miles to go-carrying their own 

fuel because the truck column u-ansporting the fuel was stuck in mud south of 

Krasnograd. " 

Against the Soviet tanks, the armies 

were having to rely more and more on 

their field artillery, most of which was 

not mobile enough or powerful enough 

to cope with the T -34s. In the fall, the 

Germans had tested what they called 

Rotlwpf ("redhead") ammunition, a hollow-charge artillery shell that could penetrate the Soviet armOl~ but Hitler had 

recalled the shells in November. The 

thought had struck him that if the Russians learned the secret, the hollowcharge would be vastly more effective 

llp1.. AOK 2, Pam.er·Lo.gt. /9.12.4/ , Pz. AOK 2 

25034/ 154 file: Pl.. AOK 3, Pallu rlw.mpJwagmlagt. 

19.1.42, Pz. AOK 3 1691 UB r,le: flOK 6, In t,"" 2938/4 1. 

all 1'1.. AOK 2, 19. 12.-11, I'z. AOK 2 250341154 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

against his own lightly armored tanks. 

Almost daily pleading by the army 

group and the armies had not persuaded him to release the Rotlwpf 

ammunition. 

On the Flanks 

PU1'suit Ends on the N01th. 

The crisis on tl1e Army Group Center 

left flank unexpectedly eased in the 

week after 15 December. Ninth Army, 

after giving up Kalinin, was falling back 

toward Staritsa with Twenty-second, 

1iventy-ninll!, ThirtY"fint, and Thirtiell! A rmies dose behind , but Thirty-ninth Anny 

was slow in preparing to move, and 

Konev would be unable to bring it to 

bear until late in tl1e month. '2 Despite 

earlier bleak forecasts, by Generals Reinhardt and Hoepner, Third and Fourtl1 

Panzer Groups came to a complete stop 

along the Lama and Ruza rivers by tl1e 

19th. After evacuating KJin and Solnechnogorsk, they had moved fast 

enough to break contact witl1 the Russians and reach the rivers a11ead of them. 

The troops tl1en had time to settle into 

the villages and organize them as strongpoints, get a night or two of sleep, and 

eat a few hot meals. TI1e infantry, which 

had served as the rear guard, saw for the 

first time how few tanks and how little 

heavy equipment had survived . Nevertheless their morale recoveredsomewhat to the commands' surprise. '3 

The Russians became aware that tl1e 

pursuit had ended on the 19th when 

Dovator, the commander of Fifth Army's 

mobile group, II Guards Cavalry Corps, 

was killed on the Ruza River trying to 

force a crossing witl1 dismounted cosI2/VOVSS, vol. II, p. 289. 

13P 2. AOK 3, Giftchlsbt'richl Russland 19-11-42, PI' .. 

AOK 32IBI8/21i1<. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 93 

AlTER A P AUSE IT I s TIME FOR TilE GER,\IAN TROOPS To MOVE ON AGAIN 

sack cavalry." As would be true for 

many of his countrymen in succeeding 

days, Dovator's sacrifice had gone for 

nothing. Five Soviet armies, ThiJ'tieth, 

First Siwe/{, nom!ieth, Sixteenth, and Fifth 

(from north to south), closed to the 

rivers and were stopped. 

Third Panzer Group was ready to sit 

the winter out on the Lama, and the 

command believed it could if irs neighbors were able to dig in solid ly." Fourth 

Panzer Group, however, was weak on its 

north Aank west of Volokolamsk where 

lhe Moscow-Rzhev rail\ine ran through a 

ten-mile ga p between the rivers. There 

V Panzer Corps, also weak because it 

had been closest to Moscow and had 

UYcvsligneyev. V~likaJa bitva, p. 197. 

l~pl". AOK J, Gefl'chtsbericht RlIss{mu! 19-11 -42, Pl.. 

AOK 3 21818/2 file. 

made the longest retreat, wavered under 

First Siwek Anny's attacks and by the 20th 

was beginning to drain strength from 

both panzer groups. 

On the north at Ninth Army, General 

Strauss' situation was less acute but in the 

longer run more dangerous. SU'auss 

went back slowly from Kalinin, a few 

miles a day, which enabled him to hold 

his front together but gave his troops no 

opportunity to break contact wilh the 

Russians, get some rest, and dig in as the 

two panzer groups had done. Moreover, 

he had no river line on which to fall 

back. Between Kalinin and Rzhev, Ninth 

Army would be moving parallel to ule 

Volga. Starirsa, Hitler's choice as Ninth 

Army's stopping point, was nothing 

more than a spot on the map and on the 

ground only a small break in the il de ~ 
94 

ness of forest and swamp Ranking the 

Volga from Rzhev to Kalinin. 

.on the morning of the 21st, when his 

NlIlth Army was about halfway between 

Kalinin and Staritsa, Strauss flew to 

Army Group Center headquaners in 

Smolensk, where he tried to persuade 

FIeld Marshal Kluge, its commander, to 

let the wIthdrawa l. continue by small 

stages, as It was dOlllg, past Staritsa to 

the K-Line (KOENIGSBERG Line). 

The K-Line was the Rzhev-GzhatskOrel-Kursk line that Bock had proposed and that the armies continued to 

talk about as the "winter line." Some 

work had been done to prepare the KLlIle, Strauss explained, while none had 

been or could be done at Staritsa. 

Kluge, in reply, cited Hitler's "definitive" 

order to the army to hold when it 

reached Staritsa that he said he was 

determ ined Lo execute. 16 

As far as Kluge was concerned, Ninth 

Army was still in one of the best posiLions of any of his armies. I t had a 

continuous front and some room to 

maneuver forward of Staritsa. But 

whether it would have either one much 

longer was doubtful. While Strauss was 

in Smolensk on the 21st, General Leytenant J. I. Maslennlkov, Commanding 

Gene~l , Tlnrty-nmth Army, was deploying 

two dIVISIons between Twenty-second and 

Twenty-ninth Amzies in the line east of 

St,uitsa to join the strike toward Rzhev. 

They were a bare beginning. MaslenIlIkov had another six divisions echeloned to the real; and they were beinl! 

brought to full rea(~ine s at top speed."7 

When the SIX dIVISIons came into play 

they would count for a great deal more 

ISC eneral der Infanteric a. D. Rudolf H ofmann 

;\15 P- 114b. Der Feilhllg gtgtll die Sowje/llmQ'1 ;111' 

Mille/a/)sch llltt der OsrJronl, vol. III , p. 135. ~IH fil es. I7/ VO\'SS. \ '0 1. II . p. 289. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

than Hitler ~ order or Kluge's determinaLion III deCldlllg where or when Ninth 

Army's retreat would end . 

General Guderian Does Not Obey 

While tl1e Army Group Center left 

Rank appeared after 15 December to 

have passed tl1e first crisis, tl1e same 

could hardly be said for the right Rank. 

There Second Panzer and Second A rIllies, now loosely joined in tl1e so-called 

Armeeg:ruppe Guderian, were beset by 

five SovIet a l-mles, by the wintel; and by 

ngldlty III tl1e hIgher headquarters that 

del1led tl1em even tl1e tittle leeway to 

maneuver tl1at the left Rank armies had. 

I n his decisions culminating in the standfast ordel; HItler had demanded tl1at 

Armeegruppe Guderian close the gaps 

In Its front west of Tula and north of 

Livny and hold the line Aleksin-DubnaLi 18 WI vny. 1en he issued the order on 

the 18t11, the Second Panzer Army nortl1 

Rank was already several miles west of 

Aleksin. Dubna was in the center of the 

ten-mile-wide gap west of Tula, and 

Llvny, at the southern end of a fifteenmile gap in the Second Army center, was 

half surrounded. 

Second Army, holding the Armeegruppe Guderian's south Rank and 

covering both its own and Second Panzer Army's main bases, Kursk and Orel, 

had succeeded in screening Novosil 

and Llvny after the Soviet breakthrough at Yelets. But to defend fifty 

mIles of from from Livny to northeast 

of Novosil, which included the fifteenmile gap nort11 of Livny, Second Army's 

commander, General Schmidt, had 

only three divisions. The known Soviet 

forces opposing t11em were 6 riRe divil8OKII, GmStdll, 01'. Abt. N,: 317014 1, (III fl. Gr. 

M ille, / 9. 12.-11. H . Gr. Mille 65005/7 me. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 95 

sions, 3 motorized divisions, I tank 

brigade, and 2 cavalry divisions. "Ilvo 

German divisions, the 45th and 134th 

Infantry Divisions, after being trapped 

in the Soviet breakthrough , were trying to battle their way west between 

Yelets and Livny. In a few days Lheir 

fight would be finished. What the Russians did not claim the cold and snow 

would. The rest of the a rmy was not 

much better off. From captured Soviet 

resupply orders, Second Army intelligence predicted that the Soviet drive 

lO tl, e west, toward Livny and Novosil, 

which had slackened on the 15th would 

resume in increased strength on the 

18th. When the drive did not pick up 

again , the army was far from reassured. Air reconnaissance reported Soviet reinforcements marching west past 

Yelets in three columns abreasLl 9 

On the morning of tl,e 19th, Schmidt 

asked Army Group Center for two 

more divisions because the Russians 

were forty miles from the Kursk-Orel 

railroad, he said, and tl,e divisions were 

needed because: 

Second Army's fate hangs on holding the 

railroad. In the l)3thless, scoured lana west 

of the railroad t le troops can neither sland 

nor retreat because they cannot be sup- plied. If the railroad cannot be held then 

what happens to Second Army will undermine the entire Eastern Front and every- thing will be set to rolling in the midst of 

wi nter.leo 

That night Schmidt went to Orel to 

depUlize for Guderian while the latte r 

was at the Fuehnr Headquarters and lO 

ask him for reinfo rcements from Second Pa nzer Army whi ch , after the 

"A OK 2, /(1 Kril'gsillgebllch, Teil lll, 17 - 19 Dec 41. Pl. 

AOK 2 16690/3 fil e. 

2°AOK 2. III NT. 690141, all H. Gr. Mille, /9.12.41 , II. 

Gr. Mine 6500517 file. 

wiLhdrawal from the bulge east ofTula , 

had a front o nly half as long as Second 

Army's. But instead, Guderian told him 

lO start work on a retreat order and to 

move his headquarters and supplies 

back to Bryansk. Guderian, "the gr eat 

optimist," Schmidt said , appeared to 

have reached "the end of his hopes."21 

Second Panzer Army had received 

Bock's permission on 5 December to 

withdraw east of Tula to the line of the 

Shat and Don rivers. Hitler neither 

approved nor specifically disapproved 

th e withdrawal. Befo r e the army 

reached tl,e rivers, Guderian came to 

believe he could not slOp tllere, and on 

the 12th , while giving him command 

also of Second Army, Bock authorized 

him to take his center and right flank 

another fifty miles west to the Plava 

River. By then he had two gaps in the 

front to contend with as well: the one at 

Yelets in Second Army's center tl,at he 

was expected to help close by supplying 

reinforcements for Second Army and 

the one west of Tula that steadily widened as his left Hank corps, XXXXIII 

Corps, holding fast to the Fourth Army 

Hank, fell back westward and slightl y 

nortlnva rd toward Aleksin and Kaluga 

while XXIV Panzer Corps on the south 

side of the gap withdrew southwestwa rd along the Orel-Tula road. 

For his part, Guderian, by the 12th , 

had appare ntl y considered it pointless 

to try eitl,er lO close the front or to stop 

east of the Oka and Zusha rivers along 

which Second Panzer Army had built 

some field fortifications in October before launching the attack past Tula. 

Going lO the Oka and the Zusha would 

have added approximately forty miles 

to the total distance of Second Panzer 

2lAOK 2, la Kn'egstagebllclt. rei/III , 19 Dec 4\. AOK 

2 16690/3 file . 
96 

Army's retreat. Both rivers were included in the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-OrelKursk li ne, the winter or K-Line, that 

Bock proposed on 14 December; and 

Guderian maintained in his nlelTIoirs 

that Field Marshal Brauchitsch gave 

him permission to go to the Oka and 

the Zusha during their meeting in 

Roslavl on the 14th22 However, Hitler's 

decisions culminating in the stand fast 

order on the 18th made it extremely 

uncertain whether Guderian could be 

allowed to continue his withdrawal 

even to the Plava. The uncertainty was 

particularly acute in the mind of Bock's 

successor, Kluge, who personally believed a retreat was necessary but as 

commanding general, Army Group 

Center, committed himself to executing Hitler's orders. 

On the 18th , Guderian had had most 

of four Second Panzer Army divisions 

strung out along the Orel-Tula road 

and had headed west. Gangs of drafted 

civilians kept the snow shoveled off the 

road, but motor fuel was short, and the 

speed of the traffic depended less on 

the condition of the road than on the 

interval between refuelings. The from 

was still five to ten miles east of the 

Plava. During the day Hitler called 

Guderian directly and urged him to do 

something about closing the gap on his 

left Rank west of Tula. Guderian replied that to close ti,e gap from the 

SOUtll was impossible. Second Panzer 

Army, he said, had conducted extensive reconnaissance and had found the 

whole area impassible owing to poor 

roads and deep snow. 23 

What, if anything, Guderian would 

do to assist Second Army was equall y 

UGudcrian. POllur Leader, p. 262. 

uHofmann. MS P- 114b. vol. Ill. p. 135. 

MOSCOW TO STALl NGRA D 

doubtful even though his Second Panzer troops on the Orel-Tula road were 

moving southwestward toward the Second Army Rank. Guderian was obligated morally to help Second Army 

since it was also protecting his own 

headquarters and main base Orel, but 

in his continuing argument with 

Schmidt over where and when to send 

reinforcements, Guderian insisted that 

Second Panzer Army was worse off 

tI,an Second Army and so far had 

refused to send a single man 24 

During the night on the 18th, Army 

Group Center had transfelTed XXXXIJI 

Corps from Second Panzer to Fourth 

Army and thereby had converted what 

had been a gap in ti,e Second Panzer 

Army front to one between the two armies. Henceforth tllere would be fewer 

prospects for closing the front than before. Kluge , whose replacement had 

not yet arrived, was still commanding 

Fourth Army as well as the army 

group, and relations between Fourth 

Army and Second Panzer Army and 

their commanding generals were anything but cordial. Second Panzer Army 

had been subordinated to Fourth 

Army in the early months of the Russian campaign, which Guderian resented, and Guderian had received 

more publicity and attention from 

Hitler, which Kluge resented. Obsessed 

with his own army's troubles and with 

his center of gravity lying to the south 

and the west, Guderian was not likely 

to exert himself for the benefit of his 

neighbor on the north, particularly 

since Fourth Army had so far had the 

advantage of fighting on a stable front 

in positions built before wimer set in . 

2"AOK 2, 10 Knegstagfbuch, Tei/lll, 17 Dec 41. Pz. 

AOK 2 16690/3 me. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 97 

Even after it took control of XXXXl II 

Corps, Fourth Army would still be unable to do anything about the gap west 

of Tula. During the day on the 18th, 

complying with the Stavka orders for 

the. second phase of the counteroffensive, Thirty-third, Forty-third, and Fortyninth Armies hit the whole length of the 

Fourth Army front. Fourth Army's line 

of trenches and dugouts on the Nara 

River stopped the Thirty-third and F01·tythird Armies, but Forty-ninth Army drove 

XIII Corps, XXXXlII Corps' neighbor 

on the north, back on both sides of Tarusa while Fiftieth Army began working 

its way around and behind XXXXIII 

Corps' open flank." 

While Guderian was at the Fuehrer 

Headquarters on the 20th, and Kluge 

was unhappily analyzing Guderian's 

dispositions, General Ley tenant 1. V. 

Boldin, Commanding General, Fiftieth 

Army was unleashing nasty surprises for 

both German generals. After having 

watched the gap in the German front 

widen for almost two weeks to a width 

of almost thirty miles by the 18th , 

Boldin had decided to exploit it. He 

assembled a mobile force of a tank, a 

cavalry, and a rifle division under his 

deputy army commander, General 

Mayor V. S. Popov, and sent it that 

night around the XXXXIII Corps' 

open flank in a sneak attack on Kaluga , 

Fourth Army's railhead and supply 

base. At the same time he reinforced I 

Goords Cavalry Corps with a rifle division for a strike forty miles due west to 

Chekalin on the Oka River. By nightfall 

on the 20th, Popov's group was fighting 

south of Kaluga, and I Guards Cavalry 

Corps had covered half the distance to 

Chekalin. On Boldin's left, several Tenth 

U/VOVSS. vol. II . p. 292. 

Army divisions had also come through 

the gap and were driving toward Belev 

on the Oka , fifteen miles south of 

Chekalin. 26 

When Guderian returned to Orel on 

the 21st he found awaiting him, in addition to the order Hitler had already 

given him orally to hold his line exactly 

where it stood, a second order from 

Hitler shifting the Second PanzerFourth Army boundary north to make 

Second Panzer Army responsible for 

defending the Oka River to Peremyshl, 

twelve miles north of Chekalin. The 

night before Soviet tanks had broken 

intQ Kaluga, and Kluge and his chief of 

staff talked to Hitler and Halder by 

telephone several times during the day 

about taking Fourth Army back and 

about letting Second Army, which was 

getting into deeper trouble, give up 

Livny. Hitler promised "every available 

aircraft on the whole Eastern Front" 

for the defense of Kaluga; and Halder, 

reverting to what was becoming his 

standard response, opined again that it 

would be a mistake to give up anything 

because the crisis would pass in two 

weeks and then the army group would 

be sorry'7 

The next two days were desperate 

ones for Fourth Army. On the 22d, in a 

driving snowstorm, Soviet Forty-ninth 

Army broke through the Fourth Army 

front at Tarusa, splitting XXXXIII 

Corps off from the army's main body. 

This action put the Russians in position 

to disrupt Fourth Army's center and simultaneously encircle XXXXll I Corps 

which already had the Popov group 

standing behind it at Kaluga. Kluge 

told Hitler that he had given orders to 

Ulbid., p. 293. 

27H. Gr. Mitte, la Kriegsillgebllch, Deumber 194/ . 21 

Dec 41, H. Gr. Milte 26974/6 file. 
98 

stand fast but believed that "tomorrow 

we cou ld be confronted with a big 

decision. "28 

In the afternoon o n the 23d, he told 

Hitler, "We must now answer the question whether we are to stand and let 

ourselves be killed or take the front 

back and sacrifi ce a certain amount of 

material but save the rest.' After asking 

in detail about how much would be lost 

and how much saved, Hitler replied , 

"If there is no other way, I give you 

liberty to issue the order to withdraw." 

Kluge assured him he would only use 

the autllOrity "if I see no other way out 

of the dilemma" and in any event not in 

less than twenty-four h ours. Later 

Ha lder came on tl,e telephone to remark tl, at the air force had reported 

that the enemy wh ich had broken 

through between XXXXlIi and XllI 

Corps was "only several ski units' and 

" history ought not to record that 

Fourth Army had given an OJ'der for its 

left flank and center to retreat because 

of a few skiers," The army group chief 

of staff, Genera l Greiffenberg, answered that the corps had orders to 

stand fast for the present, but when 

Halder called back an hour later, 

Greiffenberg told him that the corps 

had orders to retreat. 2. 

At Chekalin on the 22d, German 

construction troops, the onl y Germans 

nearby, had sighted several small Soviet 

sled columns approaching the town , A 

third of a German division, approximatelya regiment, was somewhere on 

its way to Chekalin , but could not get 

there through the snow in less than 

forty-eight to seventy-two h ours. 

Guderian was at the front all day, at 

Llll Panzer Corps. One of its divisions, 

2S1bid .. 22 Dec 41. 

ill/bid., 23 Dec 41. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

296th Infantry Division , had been broken through in severa l places; and 

after he returned to Orel shortly before midnight, Guderian told Kluge 

that in order to follow Hitler's orders, 

he would have to sacrifice the division 30 On the 23d, 296th Infantry Division fe ll back to the Oka River at 

Belev after its neighbor, the l67th Infantt'y Division , was almost totally destroyed. Second Panzer Army then 

reported that it would have to take its 

entire front behind tl,e Oka and Zusha 

rivers within the next two or three 

days. The army group pointed out that 

the 296th's withdrawal that day had not 

had Hitler's approval, and tl,at one to 

tl,e Oka and Zusha could not be made 

"under any circumstances" unless he 

agreed?' 

In tl,e morning on the 24tll, Kluge 

told Halder that Guderian had let 

296th Infantry Division go back fartl,er the day before than had been reported, h ad also taken XXXXVII 

Panzer Corps, his right £lank corps, 

back without prior authorization, and 

had not been getting troops to the Oka 

River between Belev and Chekalin and 

to the north of them on time, Halder 

the reu pan declared that Guderian 

should be court-martialed . Kluge , 

however, could not make up his mind. 

After all, he said, the snow had drifted 

badly on the routes to Belev and north, 

and Second Panzer Arm y had executed its withdrawals "under the compulsion of circumstances."32 The OKH 

3 0Guderia n mailllaincd in his memoirs that the 

purpose or his trip was to explain Hitler's order's. ll1is 

explanation. however, is inconsistent with his altitude 

as expressed to the army group. See Gudcl'ian, Pam.er 

Lead", p. 268. 

31H. Gr. Mitte, la K,.iegslage&lIch, Deumbt>r 19-11. 23 

Dec 41, H . Gr. !I,litte 26974/6 file. 

32lbid .. 24 Dec 41. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 99 

VILLAGERS GREET T H E CREW O F A SOVIET T - 60 T ANK 

then tried sending a direct order to 

Guderian in Hitler's name again forbidding any withdrawals, directing him 

to dispatch a division to Belev, and requiring him to report his dispositions 

directly to the OKH before midnight 

that nighl.33 

Whether Guderian could be made to 

stop or not, Second Army, which was 

tied in on his right flank , had to move 

along with it. During the afternoon of 

the 24th , Second Army's Schmidt told 

the army group that he was issuing 

orders to give up Novosil and Livny 

and to go to the winter line, and he 

could not wait for approval. Because of 

low visibility in blowing snow, he did 

330KH . GmSflIH, ap. Abt. Ny. 32096141, a1l H . Gr. 

M iltI'. 2-1 .12.4/ . H . Gr. Mille 65005/7 file. 

not know where Guderian's flank was 

or where the Russians were, but in 

another day he would be unable to 

make any kind of orderly retreat and 

maybe no retreat at all from Livny, 

which was almost encircled.34 

During that day and much of the 

night Kluge was alternately on the telephone to Guderian and Halder, warning Guderian against any further 

withdrawals without Hitler's explicit 

approval and telling Halder that 

Chekalin was in flames, the Russians 

had crossed the Oka, and the Kaluga 

defense was crumbling. Before midnight he called Halder once more, 

apologizing for "disturbing your 

HAOK 2, Itl Kriegslagebll(h, Teillll, 24 Dec 41. Pl. 

AOK 2 16690/3 file. 
100 

Christmas spu'n which probably was 

not very rosy anyway," to tell him 

Guderian had asked to be relieved and 

court-martialed, and the whole Oka 

line from Belev to Kaluga was in 

danger3' 

Christmas, Halder recorded, was "a 

difficult day: Schmidt reponed Soviet 

tanks across the Tim River, which had 

been part of ule winter line, and ca lled 

for 88-mm. guns and Rotlwpj ammunition. The guns and ammunition his 

troops had ,~ere useless against these 

tanks. Halder and his chief of operations, Colonel Heusinger, and Kluge 

argued WiUl Guderian over how to 

defend Chekalin and Belev. Guderian 

had the 3d and 4th Panzer Divisions 

free near Orel, but he said he needed 

3d Panzer Division to support Second 

Army. After nightfall, he reported 

some 4th Panzer Division troops at 

Belev but the roads from there north 

impassable except to sleds. I n the 

meantime, Hitler had intervened with 

an order to put the Belev-ChekalinPeremyshl sector under Headquarters 

XXIV Panzer Corps, which had commanded 3d and 4th Panzer Divisions 

but currently had no units of its own. 

Not until later in the night did Kluge 

look at we day's situation reports. 

When he did, he discovered that Second Panzer Army had, in the past 

twenty-four hours, retreated almost to 

the Oka-Zusha line. Calling Guderian , 

Kluge accused him of having deliberately given orders opposite to ulOse he 

had received-to which Guderian replied, "In these unusual circumstances 

[ lead my army in a manner 1 can 

3lli. Gr. Mille, fa Krit'gstagebllch, 1.12. -3/.12.-11, 24 

Dec 41, H . Cr. fI.·lil1e 26974/6 file: Fl'nlgespraer/i C.F.M. 

v. Kluge-Gen. Ubsl. /-Ialder, 24 Dec 41. H. Cr. Mine 

65005/7 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

justify to my conscience: Kluge then 

complained to Halder, "I have the 

greatest respect for General Guderian . 

He is a fantastic commander. But he 

does not obey, and 1 can only transmit 

and execute the Fue/"'er's orders if 1 can 

rely on my army commanders: Always 

the Hamlet, Kluge added, "1 am 

basically entirely on Guderian's side; 

one can not simply let himself be 

slaughtered, but he must obey and . 

keep me oriented." Wiulin the hour 

Hitler called to tell Kluge he would "do 

what is necessary with regard to Generaloberst Guderian," and in the morning an order arrived relieving 

Guderian of his command and transferring him to the command reserve3• 

A few hours later, as an afterthought, 

H iLler forbade Guderian to issue any 

farewell order to his troops37 

The Question of a Retreat 

Kluge Takes Time To Think 

During the night of the 25th, a cold 

wave swept the Eastern Front while 

wind and a heavy snowfall added to the 

drifts already left by the previous days' 

storms. In the morning Schmidt took 

command of the Armeegruppe Guderian , now Armeegruppe Schmidt, and 

General der Gebirgstruppe Lud wig 

Kuebler, just arrived from Berlin, set 

out from Smolensk into the snow to 

36H. Cr. Miltt', la Kriegstagebuch, 1.l2. - JI.12.4/, 25 

Dec 41. H. Gr. Mine 26974/6 file. 

37Cl'lIeraJ Halder's Daily Noles, Historical Division. 

Cnited States Army. Eumpe. EAr 21-g-16/4/0. ml. I. 

26 Dec 41. On 28 December. Hitler issued instructions 

through the:: Army Personnel Office Slating. RThc 

weather and battles have worn I he nerves of some of 

(he best commanders, and Lhey h·ilI have to be relicvcd. When they are relievcd. they are not to issue 

any farewell orders to subordinatc uni(s.H 11 . C,: Norl/. 

l a Kn'egslagebllch, 1.12.-31.12.4 1, 28 Dec 'I\. 1-1 . Gr. 

Nord 75128/4 file. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 101 

make his way east 120 miles to 

Yukhnov and take command of Fourth 

Army. Hitler told him by telephone 

before he left to make his army stand 

fast and not give up "a step" except 

under compulsion. 

Up and down the front, roads were 

drifted shut, and on the raillines locomotives were freezing. Frostbite casualties exceeded available replacements 

or those scheduled to come. Schmidt 

was expecting an attack through the 

winter line toward Kursk; a deep Soviet thrust across the Oka between 

Belev and Kaluga was clearly in the 

making; Hoepner did not think Fourth 

Panzer Group could hold much longer 

west of Volokolamsk; and Strauss was 

expecting a heavy allack on Ninth 

Army's left Rank west of Staritsa any 

day. 

Kluge was near-but true to his 

nature not quite at-the point of forcing a decision. In a long, rambling 

telephone conversation he told Halder 

that "ti,e time has come to consider 

whether it is necessary to take the entire east front of the army group back." 

Lateral movement, he said, had become im possible. Everything was 

snowed in. Reinhardt had tried to take 

over Fourth Army before Kuebler arrived and had not been able to get 

there by automobile, airplane, or sled. 

Roads were being drifted shut as fast as 

they were shoveled clear. The troops 

could not get anything to eat, and if 

they did not eat they could not fight. If 

the Russians made a strike at his lines 

of communication, he could not move 

troops fast enough to counter it. "The 

Fuehrer," he said, "must now come out 

of his castle in the clouds and be set 

with both feet on the ground ." Halder 

repeated Hitler's standard objection to 

a retreat: once it began it could probably not be stopped. And at the end 

Kluge admitted that he did not know 

what line he would want to go back to 

and would have to "think about it."38 

On 27 December, noting temperatures of - 150 F. in the daytime and 

-250 F. at night, the Army Group 

Center journal entry for the day 

opened with the following general 

remarks: 

All movements burdened by the enormous 

snowdrifts. Rail transport is stalled for the 

same reason, and the loss of locomotives 

owing to freezing increases the problem. 

The Shifting of the few available reserves is 

stopped by the snow. For the above reasons 

all tIme schedules are meaningless. The 

Russians must contend with the same difficulties, but their mobile, well-equipped 

cavalry, ski, and sled units (the latter used 

to bring rations and fodder to the cavalry and to transport infantry) give them tactical advantages that, together with larger 

manpower reserves, they are now trying to 

exploit operationally?' 

The armies' reports were alarming. 

Second Army had its back to Orel and 

Kursk and was not certain of holding 

either one. The OKH promised a division from the west for Kursk, but no 

more than a battalion or two could 

arrive before the end of the month. At 

Second Panzer Army, elements of the 

4th Panzer Division heading north 

along the Oka from Belev were 

stopped by snow and had to turn back, 

leaving the Oka open to Soviet Tenth 

and Fiftieth Armies, and they were beginning to push west another forty 

miles to Yukhnov and the Sukhinichi 

railroad junction. Fourth Army, besides its other troubles, had to deter3SH . Gr. Mille, Kriegstagebu{/i, Dezember 1941,26 Dec 

41. H . Cr. Mille 26974/6 file. 

39/bid., 27 Oec 41. 
102 

mine where to get troops and how to 

get them to Yukhnov and Sukhinichi to 

defend those critical points on its supply and communications lines. Hoepner's V Panzer Corps was barely 

surviving west of Volokolamsk, and he 

had to throw in a replacement battalion 

newly arrived by air from Germany 

armed with pistols and wearing laced 

shoes. Soviet Thirty-ninlh Army finally 

got all of its divisions into action against 

inth Army during the day. inth 

Army repelled the developing thrust 

toward Rzhev, and at the end of the day 

Strauss reported, "I will resume the 

battle tomorrow, but if this mode of 

fighting is continued, tl,e army will 

bleed to death."·· 

Army Group Center was disintegrating. On the 28th all tl,e armies reported sharply declining strengths 

owing to combat casualties and frostbite. Schmidt said Second Army was 

"blind" because its aerial reconnaissance had failed completely. The Luftwaffe planes could not start at low 

temperatures, and they were not 

equipped to take off or land in deep 

snow41 Kuebler at Fourth Army was 

having to consider how to defend his 

own headquarters. Soviet cavalry had 

crossed the Sukhinichi-Kaluga railroad 

and were coming toward Yukhnov with 

nothing in between to stop them. 

Hoepner said his troops, particularly V 

Corps, could not go on beating off 

Soviet attacks much longer; they were 

exhausted after fighting for weeks in 

the snow and cold without relief." 

The most alarming reports came 

lOl bid. 

~lAOK 2. 1(1 Kriegstagebllch, Tei/ III, 28 Dec 41. Pz. 

AOK 2 1669013 file. 

42/-1 . C,: MiNt', 10 Kriegslagebllch, 1.12. -3 1.12.-1/, 28 

Dec 'II. I-I. Cr. Mille 26974/6 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

from Ninth Army's 6th and 26th Infantry Divisions which were defending 

the front riorthwest of Staritsa against 

the Soviet Thirty-ninlh Army. The commanding general, 6th Infantry Division said: 

Today I was in Novara [sicl with the counterattack regiment al day. I saw the men. I 

can only say Illey are physically and psychologically finished. Today I saw men 

whose boots were frozen to their frozen 

reel. These men would rather let themselves be beaten to death than attack in this 

condition. 43 

The commanding general, 26th Infantry Division stated: 

Infantry Regiment 78 [one or 26th Division's regiments] can no longer be considered a regiment. It has only 200 men. The 

Russians nave cut its communications. Its 

radios are frozen and its machine guns are 

frozen ; and the machine gun crews are 

dead alongside their weapons." 

Having mu ll ed over his predicament 

for three days, Kluge phoned Hitler in 

the afternoon on the 29th. Hoping to 

make a partial retreat palatable to 

Hitler, he proposed giving up Kaluga, 

letting Strauss at Ninth Army go into 

the K-Line "gradually," and taking the 

whole Fourth Army front back ten to 

fifteen miles to shorten the line and 

release three divisions to defend 

Yukhnov and Sukhinichi. All Fourth 

Army then had at Yukhnov, he said, 

were a replacement battalion and an SS 

battalion , and Fourth Army's supplies 

depended on tl,ese two supply points. 

Hitler, after long hesitation and repeated questions as to how much material and su pplies would be lost, agreed 

. Gr. Mitte, la, an OKH, GenStdl-l. Op. Aht., 

28.12.41, H. Cr. Mille 6500517 file. 

Hlbid. 
THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE: SECOND PHASE 103 

to let Fourth Army evacuate Kaluga, 

which in fact was all but lost already. 

He forbade any other withdrawals, an? 

Kluge dutifully transmitted the deCIsions to the armies. 45 

The "Voice of Cold Reason" 

Twenty-four hours later Kluge tried 

again to secure permission for Fourth 

Army to withdraw. The RussIans had 

in the meantime smashed and broken 

through two of Fourth Army's divisions 

in the center of its front. HItler remarked that witlldrawals always "perpetuated" themselves, and once they 

started "one might as well head for the 

Dnepr [River] or tl,e PolIsh border 

right away." It was time f~r "the VOIce of 

cold reason to be heard , he saId. What 

sense was there in going from one line 

to anotl,er that was not any better? In 

World War 1, he had experienced "tenday barrages often," and the troops 

had held their positions even when no 

more man IO percent survived. When 

Kluge reminded him that World War I 

was fought in France where the temperatures were not -150 F. or -200 F. 

and that Fourth Army's troops were 

mentally and physically exhausted, 

Hitler replied, "If that IS so the~ It IS 

the end of the German Army, and 

hung up. Half an hour later he called 

to ask whether the proposed new Ime 

was fortified. Kluge said it was not, but 

the Protva River offered some natural 

protection. In that case, Hitler responded, Fourth Army would have to 

stay where it was until a new Ime was 

built "which the troops can claw themI Id "46 selves into and really 10 . 

UH. C,: Mit/e, Kriegstagebllch, De7.l'mber 1941 , 29 Dec 

41 , H. Cr. i\'linc 26974/6 fil e. 

46/bid., 30 Dec41. 

Kluge had talked to Hitler in the 

middle of the day on the 30th, before 

the armies reported to him. When they 

did there was more bad news. At 

Nin'tll Army, Staritsa was almost encircled, and Thirty-ninth Army was bearing down on Rzhev. Strauss saId hIS 

army was close to collapse, and that 

could spell doom for the whole army 

grou p if the Russians were men to 

pour south deep into its flank and rear. 

The most Ninth Army could sull do, he 

thought, was fight a delaying action to 

cover me flank while me army group 

fell back to escape the trap. 

TI,e next day Kluge was on the telephone repeatedly with Strauss, 

Kuebler, Hoepner, Reinhardt, and 

Halder. Of ti,e army commanders only 

Reinhardt spoke against going back. 

His line on the Lama RIver was sohd, 

and his equipment was so tightly 

snowed and frozen in that he did not 

think he could move any of it. If Third 

Panzer Group had to move, Reinhardt 

said, the troops could do so only wIth 

rifles on their shoulders. They would 

have to leave every tiling else standins. 

Halder's chief concern was to avoId 

having to take any proposals to Hitler. 

TI,e Fuel.,.,n; he protested, would never 

approve any withdrawal to a predetermined line and would certamly never 

order one. Finally Kluge told Halder 

that Strauss had already ordered VI 

Corps at Staritsa to fall back gradually 

"in three or four" days to me K-Lme. 

Half an hour before midnight Kluge 

talked to Hitler. Without telling him 

what he had told Halder, he asked for 

authority to withdraw Ninth and 

Fourth Armies and part of FOLlrtl, Panzer Group. Some of the exchange went 

as follows: 
104 

Kluge: I request freedom of action. You 

must believe that I will do what is right. 

Otherwise l cannOl function. We do not 

only want what is best for Germany we 

want what is best for you. 

Hitler: fine. How long can you hold the 

new line? 

Kluge: That I cannot say. Hitler: Enemy pressure will also force you 

out of the new line. 

Kluge: We are under compulsion . One can 

turn and twist as much as he pleases; we 

mllst get oul of this siLUation. 

Hitler then said he wou ld have to confer with his "gentlemen." An hour later 

he called again. He and all his "gentlemen," including particularly General 

Halder, he said, had come to one conclusion: no major withdrawals could be 

made. Too much material would be 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

lost. When Kluge then told him that 

the order to VI Corps had been given, 

he replied coldly, "It is impossible to 

initiate an operative movement without 

the approval of the Supreme Command. The troops will have to stop 

right where they are."4' Kluge thereupon sent the following teletype message to Strauss: 

The fuehrer has categoricall y forbidden 

any retrograde movement to the 

KOENIGSBERG Position. Only local evasive movements under direct enemy pressure will be allowed. All reserves are to be 

sent to the front, and [you are] ordered to 

hold every locality and support point.48 

47Jbid.> 3 1 Dec 41. 

48H. Gr. Mitte, fa Nr. 7142, an AOK 9, 1.1.42, H . Gr. 

Mille 65005/7 file . 
CHAPTER VI 

Crisis in the Crimea 

When winter broke over the Eastern 

Front in the first week of December 

1941, Army Group South was relatively 

the best off of the three German army 

groups. It had completed the retreat 

from Rostov and occupied a defensible 

front on the Mius and Donets rivers 

from Taganrog to the boundary with 

Army Group Center forty miles east of 

Kursk. On the left flank, Sixth Army 

held Kharkov, Belgorod, and Oboyan . 

Seventeenth Army, in the center, and 

Firsl Panzer Army, on the right along 

the Mius, covered the western half of 

the Donets Basin coal and industrial 

area. Eleventh Army occupied the 

Crimea except for the Sevastopol Fortress on the southwestern tip of the 

peninsula. Hitler's directive of 8 December that closed down the offensive 

for the winter everywhere else on the 

Eastern Front gave Army Grou p South 

two residual missions: to occupy the 

whole Donets Basin and retake Rostov, 

"in favorable weather," and to capture 

Sevastopol. I 

In conjunction with the operations at 

Rostov, Tikhvin, and Moscow, the 

Stavlw had decided to expand the 

counteroffensive to include the 7i-anscaucasus Front and the Black Sea Fleet. 

On 7 December, it instructed the 7i-anscaucasus Front to prepare and execute 

lOKW. WFSt, Abl. L (I 0P.J NT. 442090141, .f/l. ng 

NT. 39, 8.12.41, German High Level Directives, CMJ-I 

flIes. 

witllin two weeks an amphibious attack 

on the Kerch Peninsula. The objective 

was to encircle and to destroy the enemy on the peninsula by simultaneously landing troops of the Fiftyfint and FortyJourth Armies near Kerch 

and in the harbor at Feodosiya. The 

Stavka anticipated subsequently expanding the operation to relieve 

Sevastopol and to liberate the entire 

Crimea. The landings were put under 

the control of tile Commanding Admiral , Black Sea Fleet, Vitse Admiral F. S. 

Oktyabrskiy, and the operations on 

land under General Ley tenant D. T. 

Kozlov, the Commanding General, 

Transcaucasus Front. 2 

Sevastopol 

The Fortress 

Army Group South's second residual 

mission, to capture Sevastopol, was the 

only one of the two it actually pursued 

after 8 December. Sevastopol, which 

had been a fortress even under the 

tsarist regime, was the Soviet Union's 

main naval base and naval shipyard on 

the Black Sea. It had some fortifications dating back to the Crimean War 

(1854-1856) and others built more recently, in particular twelve naval gun 

batteries (forty-two guns in calibers 

from 152- to 305-mm.) in armored 

2/VMV, vol. IV. p. 295. 
106 

turrets and concrete emplacements 

and about two hundred antiaircraft 

weapons ranging from 85-mm. guns to 

multiple-mounted machine guns. In 

the last two weeks of October, ships of 

the Black Sea Fleet had brought in as 

much of the Independent Maritime Army 

as they could evacuate from Odessa, 

about thirty thousand troops. With 

these, plus some twenty-two thousand 

naval and other troops, and fire and 

supply support from naval vessels, the 

commander of the Maritime Army, General Ley tenant I. E. Petrov, prevented 

General Manstein's Eleventh Army 

from overrunning the fortress during 

the pursuit in early November." Manstein had an organized assault almost 

ready to start at the end of November, 

but then heavy rain set in and forced a 

three-week delay.· 

As time passed, however, taking the 

fortress had become more difficult. By 

late November, Oktyabrskiy, who had 

also assumed command of the 

Sevastopol Defense Region, had brought 

to completion three defense lines on 

the landward side: the "Outer Perimeter," twenty-seven miles long, running from three miles north of the 

Kacha River to three miles east of Balaklava; the "Main Line," twenty-three 

miles long, from the mouth of the 

Kacha to Balaklava; and the "Rear 

Line," eighteen miles long, just forward on an antitank ditch around the 

fortress proper. Behind all of the lines, 

artillery and machine guns had been 

dug-in-most densely behind the antitank ditch, which actually constituted 

the fourth and potentially strongest 

l G . I. Vaneyev. Cl al.. Gf'I"oichn ko),o oborono 

Sl'vastopol),a , 1941 - 19 42 (Mosco\\' : Voycnnoye 

Izdatclst\'o, 1969), pp. 50-67. 

Manslcin , Lost Victonfs, p. 223. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

line. Oktyabrskiy had also created another eight armored batteries at the 

fortress by emplacing the guns and 

turrets off two disabled cruisers. Only 

the antiaircraft defense was weaker, 

reduced to about one hundred guns by 

withdrawals of batteries to protect 

ports on the eastern coast. Petrov had 5 

rifle divisions, I cavalry division, 2 

naval infantry brigades, and "several" 

independent regiments. Soviet accounts do not give a total numerical 

strength, but they indicate it must have 

been at least ten thousand above the 

early November number' 

While Oktyabrskiy was strengthening the Sevastopol defenses, Eleventh 

Army's position on the Crimea was 

becoming less secure. Although the 

peninsula generally did not get as cold 

as the mainland, it did experience sudden, . drastic ups and down in temperature and frequent, violent rain or 

snowstorms. The likelihood of the latter, because of the effect they would 

have on the roads, restricted the lines 

of attack on Sevastopol to the north 

and northeast. There, besides the Soviet lines, the Germans faced three 

east-west river lines to be crossed-the 

Chernaya, the Kacha, and the Belbek. 

The Chernaya emptied into the Severnaya Bay, which shielded the heart of 

the fortress on the north. Bad weather 

of any kind, on the other hand , benefited the Black Sea Fleet by providing its 

ships, never more than half-a-day's 

running time from their base at 

Novorossiysk, with the cover from German air attack they needed to approach 

the coast safely anywhere between 

Sevastopol and Kerch. (Map 8.) More5Vaneyev, Ge-roicheska),o obortlno, pr. 109, 138-40, 

144; IVOVSS, vol. II , pp. 304 - 06. 
CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA 

ARMY 

MAP 8 

over, the strait between the Kerch and 

the Taman peninsulas, at places only 

two miles wide, froze over in winter 

and could be crossed on foot. Under 

these conditions, Eleventh Army's 

seven divisions, all at least 25 percent 

understrength , could not mount an 

attack on Sevastopol and guard the 

coast adequately at the same time. 

The Attack 

When the weather improved in the 

second week of December, Manstein 

decided to go ahead with the attack. He 

had orders to do so; he had a reputation as a skillful and daring tactician to 

defend and enhance; and he was enjoying his first army command. Besides, 

the whole German position on the 

Crimea would be precarious as long as 

107 

SOVIET KERCH OFFENSIVE 

16 December 1941 - 18 January 1942 

- - Front Ime, 16 Dec ' 

00000 Front line, 5 Jan 

_____ Front line, 18 Jan 

+---- Soviet landing 

50 Miles 

R 

the Soviet Army and Navy held a 

foothold at Sevastopol. On the other 

hand, even if he could not reduce the 

fortress, he could weaken it decisivel y, 

possibly in a few days, by driving a 

wedge approximately six miles deep 

through the northeastern perimeter. 

With that, his artillery could sweep the 

Severnaya Bay and cut off the naval 

lifeline supporting the fortress. 10 

stage the effort, however, he had to use 

two of his three corps headquarters 

and six of his seven divisions, leaving 

only three Rumanian brigades and 

Headquarters, XXXXII Corps with 

some corps troops and the 46th Infantry Division to cover 170 miles of coast 

and ports at Kerch , Feodosiya, Alushta, 

and Yalta . 

Eleventh Army Intelligence observed steady Soviet ship traffic to and 
108 

from Sevastopol which seemed to have 

two purposes: to evacuate machinery 

and naval supplies that would be lost if 

the fortress suddenly collapsed and to 

bring in reinforcements for the landward defenses. By mid-December, the 

Soviet resurgence along the front on 

the mainland and the troops pouring 

into the Taman Peninsula by ship and 

truck countered any assumption that 

the Russians would not stubbornly defend Sevastopol but raised forebodings 

of possibly even less convenient developments to come 6 

Eleventh Army's assault at Sevastopol 

began on the morning of 17 December 

along the entire 27-mile-long Outer 

Perimeter, the first of the three defense 

lines. Inside still lay the Main Line, the 

Rear Line, and thickets of forts, pillboxes, and antitank obstacles. The LI V 

Corps, on the north , carried the main 

effort because it was closest to Severnaya Bay, and heavy artillery in calibers 

up to 300-mm. could support its attack. 

On the south, XXX Corps could do no 

more than tie down the Soviet Outer 

Perimeter defense since it had to bring 

its supplies across the rugged and virtually road less Krymskiye Gory. 

Certain that the Russians, who had 

partisans and agents in nearby mountains and the cities, knew how short he 

was on strength as well as he did, 

Manstein gambled on surprise-and 

very nearly won. Oktyabrskiy was away 

at Novorossiysk planning the landings 

the Stavka had ordered at Kerch and 

Feodosiya when the attack began on 

the 17th. By the end of the day, the 

German 22d Infantry Division was 

through the Outer Perimeter, and dur-

'AOK II , !cIAO, Kriegltagebllclt. 22.6.41-31.).-12, 

1- 15 Dec 41. AOK II 2240911 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ing the next two days, it pushed along 

the valley of the Belbek River to the 

Main Line. But the Stavka reacted fast 

and on the 20th-as the 22d Infantry 

Division was beginning to crack the 

Main Line-put the fortress under the 

Transcaucasus Fmnt. The next day, 

Kozlov, the front's commander, sent by 

ship a rifle division, a naval infantry 

brigade, and 3,000 replacements, and 

the Black Sea Fleet brought a battleship, 

a cruiser, and 2 destroyers into action 

as a rtillery support. The 22d Infantry 

Division, having broken the Main Line, 

was into the Rear Line and approaching Mekenzlyevy Gory almost within 

sight of Severnaya Bay on 22 December, but its thrust was weakening, 

and by nightfall the newly arrived 

345th R-ifle Division and 79th Naval Infantry Brigade, with supporting fire 

from the warships, had entangled it in 

a desperate battle that would run on 

long enough for events elsewhere to 

take effect. 7 

Kerch and Feodosiya 

Oktyabrskiyand Kozlov initially had 

proposed to put 42,000 troops with 

artillery and tanks ashore simultaneouslyon the peninsula at a number 

of beachheads spread from northeast 

of Kerch to Feodosiya. The landings on 

the northeastern and eastern coasts 

were to be made by Fiftyfirst Army, 

under General Ley tenant V. H. Lvov; 

those on the south coast, at Feodosiya 

and Cape Opuk, by Fortyfourth Army, 

under General Ley tenant A. N. Pervushin. As it did for Manstein , the 

weather raised problems for Oktyabrskiy and Kozlov, slowing the as7/VOVSS, vol. II, pp. 305-08: IVMV, vol. IV, p. 300: 

Vaneyev, Cf!TOidttslwya O/Joroll11. pp. 14 5-63. 
CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA 109 

SOVI ET NAVAL CRAFT L AYS A S~IOKE SCREEN OFF SEVASTOPOL 

sembly of troops and air units on the 

Taman Peninsula and restricting the 

employment of smaller nava l vessels. 

The final objective of the landings was 

to destroy the Germans on the Kerch 

Peninsula by forcing them west against 

a line Forlyjourlh Army would build 

across the Isthmus of Pa rpach north of 

Feodosiya. 

Originall y scheduled for 21 December, the landings had to be postponed 

afte r Manstein attacked Sevastopol o n 

the 17th, and Kozlov had to send reinforcements th er e. To support the 

Sevastopol attack, men and ships had 

to be diverted from the landing forces, 

particularly from the Feodosiya force. 

During the delay of more than a week , 

the landi ngs on the eastern end of the 

peninsula were set to be made separate ly several days befo re the one a t 

Feodosiya 8 

German agent and Russian deserter 

re ports had a lerted Eleventh Army 

a nd 46th Infantry Division to expect 

landings on the Kerch Peninsula, but 

this knowl ed ge was not particularl y 

helpful since there were far more potential landing sites than the di vision 

could cover. The Russians could easil y 

bring forces out of the ports on the 

h,man Peninsula and put them ashore 

under the cover of a single night's 

darkness." 

The Landings 

In ul e earl y mo rning darkness o n 26 

"IVAIV'; wI. IV, PI'. 296-97. 

8AOK II, I e/AD, Kril'g /agtbll , 22.6.41 -31.3.42, 16 

and 19 Dec 41. AOK 112240911 file. 
110 

December and in gale-force winds, the 

Azov Naval Flotilla began putting troops 

ashore on the beachheads at the eastern end of the Kerch Peninsula. Having no proper landing craft, the troops 

had to wade to the beaches from the 

boats and ships that had brought them 

in and had to do without vehicles or 

artillery. Because of the weather and 

rough sea, some landings were made in 

the wrong places and others, including 

a strong one which was to have been 

made at Cape Opuk, were not made at 

all. Instead of requiring one or two 

days, nearly five were needed to get 

20,000 troops to the beaches, and 

many heavy weapons were lost.'· 

The weather and the Russians' complicated scheme of operations that involved merging the beachheads for 

drives first on Kerch and then westward toward the neck of the peninsula 

proved advantageous to the Germans. 

The beachheads were peppered over 

forty miles of coastline, none held 

strongly enough to constitute a crucial 

threat. The Germans could seal all of 

them off close to the coast, and in some 

instances they could also cut off parties 

that had advanced inland from the 

beaches. The forces in the beachheads 

and the ships offshore appeared much 

of the time not to know what to do 

next. The 46th Infantry Division, on 

the other hand, did not have strength 

enough to counterattack everywhere. 

By the 29th, it had all but wiped out 

two of the smaller beachheads and was 

preparing to go after the others 

systematically." 

IO/VOVSS, \'01. II, pp. 308- 10: IVMV, vol. IV, p. 

297. 

1146. Div;snm, Kommmufeur; anXXXXII AK., /0.1.42, 

AOK II 28654113 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

To sustain the counterattacks on the 

beachheads, 46th Infantry Division 

had brought east an infantry battalion 

it had originally stationed at Feodosiya 

on the south coast at the western end of 

the Isthmus of Parpach. Shortly before 

dark on the 28th, an engineer batta lion, also going east, arrived in 

Feodosiya and took up quarters there 

for the night. Although the battalion 

commander merely made a casual decision to stay rather than to continue east 

in the dark over an unfamiliar road, 

the engineers became the main element in the Feodosiya garrison that 

night. The rest consisted of two construction companies, a battery of artillery, and an antitank gun company. 

The engineers bedded down one street 

away from the waterfront without 

knowing what kind of an alert was in 

effect. 

At 0400 on dle 29th, the engineers 

were roused by the noise of machine 

g un and riAe fi re coming from the 

direction of the port. As the Germans 

learned later, ten naval cutters had 

landed parties of sailors on the harbor 

break water. if a defense had been 

ready, the parties might easil y have 

been driven back to sea because at first 

the only reinforcement they got was 

brought in by the small boats shutding 

back and forth to naval vessels lying 

outside the harbor. After about an 

hour, however, three destroyers, 

S haulIlyan, N eza.lIloz hnik , and 

Zheleznyakov, tied up at dle breakwater 

and began landing troops and heavy 

weapons. In dle next hour the cruisers 

Kmsniy Krilll and Krasniy Kavkaz also 

drew up to the breakwater, bringing 

the total number of troops put ashore 

by dle end of the second hour to just 

under 5,000. By then some of the 
CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA III 

SoVIET TROOPS LANDING ON THE KERCH PENINSULA 

German coast artillery was in action 

and had scored a hit on the Kmsniy 

Kavkaz. 12 

Before the engineers, who until then 

did not know that they were practically 

the only German troops in the city, had 

sorted themselves out, the Russians 

were holding the waterfront and probing along the streets running inland . 

At an impromptu council of war in the 

town mayor's quarters, the Eleventh 

Army chief of engineers, a Colonel 

Boehringer-who a lso by accident had 

happened to spend that night in 

Feodosiya-took command. At daylight, Boehringer ordered the engineer 

battalio n and the other smaller units to 

" AOK II. la N,. )54142. 24.2.42. AOK II 22279119 

file; IVOVSS, ,"01. II . p. 312. 

assemble half-a-mile inland at the junction of the roads to Simferopol and 

Kerch . One of the construction companies was already there as were some 

truck, artillery, and antitank gun crews. 

For an hour or so quadruple-mounted 

machine guns on one of the trucks kept 

the Russians off the roads, but they 

could still fire down on the Germans 

from the upper stories of buildings and 

from rooftops. Later in the day 

Boehringer took the line back to a hill 

flanked by an antitank ditch on the 

western outskirts of the town. From the 

hill the Germans could see the two 

cruisers and the destroyers in the harbor and a transport docked at the 

breakwater. Since the Germans had 

pulled away to the west along the Simferopol road , the Russians had th e 
112 

Kerch road open to them, but they appeared in no hurry to push out of Feodosiya either to the east or to the west. 

During the night the Rumanian 4th 

Cavalry Brigade arrived at the antitank 

ditch, and the Germans planned to 

counterattack the next morning. When 

they told the Rumanian commander, 

however, he insisted that he was due to 

be relieved and therefore could not 

give the order to attack because it could 

only be given by his replacement who 

had not yet arrived . At 0900 on the 

30th the Germans attacked alone under the cover of a sudden heavy snowstorm driven by a strong west wind. 

But the attack ended almost as soon as 

it began when nine Soviet tanks suddenly appeared out of Feodosiya, and 

the Germans could not fire their antitank guns because of ice in their breech 

mechanisms. The Rumanians, seeing 

the Germans drop back, mounted and 

decamped into the Krymskiye Gory 

leaving their baggage behind on the 

Simferopol road. When the Russians, 

who had been maneuvering cautiously 

until then, observed the Rumanians' 

headlong departure, their tanks advanced and pushed the Germans back 

in the succeeding several hours to a 

hastily formed screening line around 

Staryy Krym, five miles west of 

Feodosiya.1 3 By then the number of 

Fortyfourth Army troops at Feodosiya 

was nearing 20,000. 14 

SjJoneck's Retreat 

Generalleulllant Graf Hans von Sponeck, Commanding General XXXXII 

13PiOIl;er-Balaitwn -/6, Einsatz. des Pi. 811 . -16 in del' Zeit 

110m 28.12.-30.12.42, AOK 11 22279/19 file. 

14/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 311. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Corps, had his headquarters on the 

Kerch Peninsula about halfway between Feodosiya and Kerch. When 

word of the landing on the 28th at 

Feodosiya reached him, about an hour 

after the first Russians went ashore, he 

decided to seal off the beachhead as 

units under his command had done 

with the beachheads around Kerch. He 

ordered the Rumanian 4th Cavalry 

Brigade in from the west and dispatched the Rumanian 8th Cavalry 

Brigade, which he had stationed near 

Kerch , to seal off the beachhead from 

the east. At about daylight on the 29th 

he changed his mind after receiving a 

report (that later proved false) of another strong landing northeast of 

Feodosiya in position to cut the tenmile-wide Isthmus of Parpach. Apparently believing the Russians were about 

to trap XXXXII Corps, he ordered 

46th Infantry Division to do an immediate about-face and evacuate the 

peninsula. 

Having given the order, Sponeck departed with some of his staff by car to 

set up a new command post at 

Vladislavovka seven mil es north of 

Feodosiya. Although the trip was 

hardly more than twenty miles, motor 

trouble and air attacks kept him out of 

contact with his corps and with Eleventh Army until midafternoon . In the 

meantime, Manstein had learned of 

the order through routine radio channels and tried to countermand it, but 

XXXXII Corps radio had a lso closed 

down. By noon, 46th Division's regiments were turning and beginning to 

move west. 15 

lacell. Kdo. XXXXII A.K. fa Kriegs/ogl'vurh NI". 4, 29 

Dec 41. XXXXII A.K. 19649/ 1 file: AOK II, /(/, 

(Statemen t 0' Gen. L1. Graf Spo/Il'ck) 30.12.4/, AO K II 

28654/3 file. 
CRISIS IN THE CRIM EA 

On the nonhern face of the 

Sevastopol perimeter strong counteratlacks, apparently timed to coincide 

with the Feodosiya landing, forced LI V 

Corps to shift to the defensive on the 

29th. Consequently it wou ld not be 

able to take the initiative again for at 

least a day or two, which under the 

existing circumstances made the future 

of the Sevastopol offensive totally uncertain. From Vladislavovka at 1500, 

Sponeck reported that 46th Infantry 

Division would be a third of the way off 

the Kerch Peninsula at the end of the 

day. Manstein decided to let LIV Corps 

try to get its attack goi ng again and 

ordered Generalleutnant Franz Matenklott, who commanded XXX Corps, to 

take over XXXXll Corps from Sponeck. He shifted Sponeck "for t11e time 

being" to the quiet XXX Corps front. ' 6 

He then senl an order to the 46th 

Infantry Division to get into the Isthmus of Parpach as qu ickly as possible." 

By the end of the day, 46th Infantry 

Division had orders from XXXXII 

Corps and Eleventh Army to dear the 

Kerch Peninsula quickly. But by this 

stage of the campaign the infantry division was no longer mobile. In a condition report of a week ea rlier, the 

division had rated its motor vehicles as 

20 percent serviceable. T hose that 

were running were using captu red 

Russian gasoline, which was low in octane and high in water content. Having 

been fed mostly hay and not overly 

much of that, the horses did not have 

the strength to pull heavy loads long 

distances. On the morning of the 29th , 

the division actuall y had on ly 250 of its 

lllAOK 11 , Chef d"J CPlIl'm/j/l/hl's, Flier KT.B .. 

29.12.-12. AOK II 22279/19 fi le. 

l'AOK 11, III Xr. 4721/41 , Ar/llffbl'j/'hi. 29.12.41. AOK 

II 22279/19 file. 

11 3 

1,400 motor vehicles in working order, 

with most of the rest either disassembled in the shops or awa iting 

replacement parts.' 8 The distance the 

division had to go, on the other hand, 

was not excessive, only about sixty 

miles. Moreover, Sponeck's order authorized destruction of imm obile 

equipment, and he knew as well as 

anyone the division's condition . The 

division commander, Generalmajor 

Kurt Himer, therefore, assumed that 

his mission was to get his men out 

regardless of the cost. And during the 

day and through the night of the 29t11 

Himer did this brilliantly. What could 

be moved was and what could not be 

moved was rendered useless to t11 e 

enemy. The troops disengaged from 

the bridgeheads and were miles to the 

west, apparently before the Russians 

knew they were gone. By keeping on 

the move through the night they would 

be able to pass the Isthmus of Parpach 

in another day and a half. 

All day and all night on the 29th the 

division marched through rain mixed 

with occasional snow in temperatures 

just above freezing. lIvo hours after 

daylight the snowstorm that had 

provided momentary assistance to the 

engi n eers' coun te rattack west of 

Feodosiya hit the division head-on. In 

blinding, driving sleet and snow the 

temperature dropped below zero. Wet 

uniforms and shoes froze. The water), 

captured gasoline plugged carburetors 

with ice crystals. lowed guns and veh icles skidded into ditches and cou ld not 

be pulled o ut. Although the division 

was not under attack either from the 

18Ebl'I"/h, Cell. D . Arl., (III dell l\olllllw//(/terf'lIllfll G,,· 

lIf/wl drr ,'(.'(.'\XII A.K. 2).1,.12, AOK II 22279/ HI file : 

Obn:~ tll. A.ssm(t"". Bi'I'icht IlI'brr (/,,11 RUl'ckz.lIg dr,. 46. 

Division (111 der Halhillsel KI'I'tsrh, AOK II 22279/ 19 fi le. 
114 

east or the west, Himer still believed his 

mission was to save the troops; and the 

division moved on, leaving a trail of 

abandoned equipment.l9 

By midmorning Manstein knew the 

attempt to contain the beachhead at 

Feodosiya had failed. He then told 

Sponeck, who was still nominally in 

command at XXXXII Corps, to have 

the 46th Infantry Division add speed 

and attack through the Isthmus of Parpach toward Feodosiya.'o When the 

order reached Himer, his trucks and 

artillery, what was left of them, had 

already passed through the isthmus 

and were headed northwest away from 

Feodosiya over narrow, snow-covered 

roads on which they could barely advance, much less turn around. The 

infantry, which was just coming onto 

the isthmus, exhausted and freezing, 

Himel' dutifully redirected on an 

oblique march to the southwest, toward 

Feodosiya. 

Fortyfourth and Fiftyfirst A r/nies had 

more than forty thousand men ashore 

on the Kerch Peninsula by the 29th. 

Possession of Feodosiya and Kerch enabled them also to land several dozen 

tanks, over two hundred cannon and 

mortars, and better than three hundred motor vehicles. 2I Rain and snow 

helped by hindering German interference from the air but also forced 

FiftyfiTst Army to abandon a landing on 

the north side of the Isthmus of Parpach which, had it resulted as planned 

in the capture of the Ak-Monay 

Heights, could have turned the 46th 

1946. Diviswn, Kdr. , all den /-Iern/ KOmm(lIIdierendell 

General des XXXXII A.K., 10.1.42, AOK II 28654113 

file. 

2oAOK I J, Chef des cenera/stahts, Filer K. T.B ., 

30.12.41. AOK 112227911 9 file. 

21 /VOVSS, vol. II, p. 312. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Infantry Division's march into more of 

a shambles than it already was. The 

weather and the Germans' misadventures, however, were not enough to 

compensate for the two Soviet army 

commands' inexperience . Fortyfourth 

Army bore northwest out of Feodosiya. 

A quick thrust to the northeast, however, could have put it astride the isthmus in hours. Instead of pursuing the 

46th Infantry Division , Fiftyfint Army 

sorted itself out at the eastern end of 

the peninsula. German air reconnaissance observed tan ks moving into formation on the 30th , but the heads of 

two columns bearing west had only 

moved to within ten miles of Kerch by 

the afternoon of the 31st. 22 

After a short rest in the morning, the 

46th Infantry Division began its attack 

northeast of Vladislavovka during the 

afternoon of the 31st. Without artillery 

support, the exhausted infantry barely 

made an effort. For reasons he later 

found very difficult to explain, Himer 

appeared at the front only briefly and 

then went off to set up a command post 

outside the isthmus. After dark, fearing they would yet be cut off, the 

division's regiment commanders continued the march through the isthmus 

and set up a line west of Vladislavovka 

facing east. 23 The division's one success 

of the day had been to wipe out a 

hundred Soviet parachute troops who 

had jumped into the path of one of its 

columns in broad daylight. 

HAOK 11 , f a Tagesmeldung, 31.12.41, AOK II 

22279/19 fil e. 

2'JQbrrslit. i.C. Ass1II01m, Berida ueber den RuecJu.ug deT 

46. Division mif der Halbilisel Kertsch, 6.1.42, AOK II 

28654/ 13 file; Gen. Kdo. XXXXII A.K., la Kriegstagebuch 

Nr. 4, 31 Dec41 , XXXXII A.K. 19649/1 file. 
CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA 

The Trap Does Not Close 

nvu.bles on Bolh Sides 

Manstein , meanwhile, had stopped 

the attack on Sevastopol r ou r hou rs 

before the 46tl1 Infantry Division attack began , and he had begun taking 

the 132d Infantry Division out of tl1e 

Sevastopol perimeter. The decision to 

move tl1is division , which was initially a 

precaution , soon appeared to have 

been made barely in time , if not actually too late. When all of the 46th 

Infantry Division was off the Kerch 

Peninsula, it proved incapable of anything but a limited defensive mission . 

It had sacrificed four-fifths of its 

trucks, h alf of its communications 

equipment, and nearly all of its engineer equipment, not to mention two 

do.zen artillery pieces and sundry machll1e guns a nd mortars. Enough of its 

troops had vanished into the interior 

of the Crimea for Manstein to issue 

an order threatening all those who did 

not rejoin the ir units by nightfall 

on 2 January with execution for 

cowardice!' 

For a period of at least a week, if the 

Fo·rty-fou,·th and Fifty-fi1'St Army comma nd s had had enterprising leadership they could have created severe 

problems for Eleventl1 Army, and some 

daring on their pa rt could have endangered t11e whole German position on 

the Crimea. The Russians could very 

easil y trap Eleventh Army on the 

Crimea, Manstein pointed out to A,'my 

Group South. The enemy a lread y he ld 

HAO;': JI , CII"f dt'.{ G e1ll'Y(llstabt!s, Flier K.T./J ., 

}U2AJ. AOK 1122279119 file: II. Gr. Sued, la Nr. 

49/42, \fJr!ot'u}ig' M eldlmg Ilpbl'r Zlis/lwd 46. Dil-", 

6.1.42, H. Gr. Sucd 23208l29 1ilc: AOK ll, la Nr. 6/42, 

al/ Kommandiernu/r" CPllnat XXXXII A.K. , 1.1.-12, 

AOK II 22279/19 file. 

I 15 

tl1ree of tl1e five ports-Sevastopol, 

Kerch, and Feodosiya-and the Germans were not protecting me remaining two-Yalta, on the SOUtl1 coast, and 

Yevpatoriya, north of Sevastopol. What 

Manstein did not know was t11at the 

Russians were for me moment having 

troubles enough of their own: the cold 

weather had blocked the port at Kerch 

with ice, and tl1e roadstead at Feodosiya was littered with wrecks-tl1e 

work of German Stuka dive-bombe rswhich made it almost unusable 2 ' 

Whatever else the events on the 

Crimea might lead to, mey were an 

instantaneous and monumental embarrassment to t11e Germans. Sponeck of 

XXXXII Corps had flagrantly disregarded the stand fast order, and 

Hitler had him recalled to Germany to 

face a court-marlia[26 The 46tl1 Infantry Division had been reduced to a 

wreck witllOut actually having had contact with the enemy. Manstein opened 

an inquiry into the division's losses of 

equipment and weapons and the behavior of t11e officers. Without waiting 

for me results, Field Marshal Re ichenau, the commanding general of Army 

Group Soum, decla red , " ... the division has lost its honor. Until it has 

restored its honor [in combat] no decorations or promotions will be allowed 

in tl1 e division."27 Hitler demanded to 

50. . del" II. Armel', ulgff/rr I/. A'"1ul'f', -1.1.42. 1-1 . G,', 

Sued 23208129 file: Chif firr Lllftflnlll' -I, 5. 1.-12, I I. Gr. 

Sued 23208129 fi le. 

Z&A court sitting under Goering senlenced Sponeck 

LO death . 1l1C sentence was nOt ca lTied Oll t. howc\cr. 

umil 19-14 when lhe 55 cxc<:Uled him. Erich von 

Manstein . H"'I(lrene Siege (Bonn : Athenaeum Ve rl;tg. 

1955). p. 245. 

2711. Gr. Sued. III Nr. 4 7142. an dell O.B. drr/l. Anllet'. 

1.6.42, H. Cr. Sued 23208/29 fi le. l1le colllmanding 

gene l·a!. 46th Infantry Di"ision, Himel". died in (:0111-

bat before the disci plinary proceedings againsl him 

wCI'e complcted. 
116 

have the "situation on the Crimea 

solved offensively" by smashing the Soviet concentrations at Feodosiya and on 

the Ke rch Peninsula, and he wanted 

Manstein to do it without weakening 

the grip on Sevastopol28 

Manstein's Counterattack 

Manstein's own first thought was to 

attack toward Feodosiya and Kerch as 

the alternative to a precarious defense 

on two fronts, one in the east and one 

in the west. Without more troops and 

ammunition, neither of which he was 

likely to get during the winter, he could 

not take Sevastopol, but on the defensive there he could spare two divisions 

and some artillery from the Sevastopol 

perimeter for an attempt against the 

less solidly dug-in Russians on the e~st. 

One division, the 132d Infantry DIVIsion, would have to go east under any 

circumstances to support the 46th Infantry Division and the Rumanians. 

Before dark on 4 January, the lead 

regiment of the 132d Infantry Division 

reached Simferopol on the march toward Feodosiya. During the night Soviet troops landed in Yevpatoriya, 

thirty miles farther to the northeast, 

this time with the support of parachute 

troops and a partisan uprising in the 

town and the next 1ll0rnll1g the German; were forced to divert the regiment to Yevpatoriya. The fighting went 

on there for another three days accompanied by attempted Soviet landings 

along the fronts at Sevastopol a nd 

Feodosiya. These had been a (allure 

from the first, however, since the German coast artillery had heard the Russian ships coming in , had sunk one of 

28/ _/. Cr. Sill'll, la Nr. /9/42, (III AOK J 1,1. 1.42, 1-1. 

Gr. Sued 23208/29 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

two escort destroyers, and had driven 

off two large troop transports.

29 

As soon as he knew he had Yevpatoriya under co ntrol, Manstein 

pushed ahead with readying the attack 

at Feodosiya, which he set for the 11th . 

Every delay there was workll1g to the 

Russians' advantage because the Kerch 

Strait had frozen over and the Fortyjourth and Fiftyfirst Annies .were bringing troops across on the I~e. But the 

Crimean weather 111 wll1ter IS fickle. On 

the 8th and 9th, as suddenly as it had 

dropped below zero a week before, the 

temperature rose to well above freezing, which was not helpful to the Russians but was even less so for the 

Germans. I n the thaw the Crimean clay 

turned to oozing mud and left Manstein no choice but to wait for another 

cold spell,3O . 

Once more the weather dId not 

oblige. It stayed warm with beautiful 

springlike days and only an occasIonal 

touch of frost, and the mud stayed. 

The Russians helped most. Although 

Fortyfou,·th Anny had atleast three and 

more likely four dIVISIons and some 

tanks ashore it did not attempt to break 

out of the seve n- to ten-mile-deep 

beachhead it had established around 

Feodosiya at the end of December, and 

the FiftyfiTSt Army units opposite 46th 

Infantry Division busied themselves 

with digging in on the isthmus. How 

long the Russians would remall1 passive Manstein coLlid not know. SlI1ce a ll' 

reconnaissance reported a cot1linui.ng 

flow of reinforcements from the mall1-

land, he had to assume it would not be 

very long. Therefore, when he had 

29AOK II, fa N1: 173142. UlItl'TSUdlllllg j l'Zli/m/orijfl, 

11.1.42. AOK II 22279/ 19 file. 

JOCrll. Kdo. XXX A. A. .. 10 "lbgfslllridllllg, }O.1.42, 

AOK II 22279/19. 
CRISIS IN THE CRIMEA 

assembled the maximum force he 

could muster-three German divisions 

(46th, 132d, and 170th Infantry Divisions), the Rumanian 18th Division , 

and two Rumanian brigades-he let 

the attack begin on 15 January regardless of the mud. 

Although Fortyfo!lrlh Anny had held 

Feodosiya for nearly three weeks, it 

seemed on ly perfunctorily determined 

lO defend it. The strongest resistance 

existed around Vladislavovka and that 

was apparently aimed at holding the 

retreat route open inlO the isthmus. In 

the first two days, mud slowed the 

Germans. During tlle next two, frost 

set in , and they moved faster. On the 

night of the 18th the Fortyfourth and 

Fiftyfirst Annies withdrew into the isthmus to a line of trenches left from 

fighting in the fall of 194 1. 

The time seemed right to Manstein 

to keep the pressure on and lo drive 

through to Kerch. Army Group South 

contributed Panzer Detachment 60 

wh ich, with seventy-five tanks, had 

about one-tllird the strength in armor 

of a panzer division . In snow and sinking temperatures, tlle tanks worked 

117 

their way into position whil e tlle infantry regrouped for the breakthrough 

across the isthmus. Both were ready at 

nightfall on the 23d, except the Panzer 

Detachment 60, newly arrived from 

Germany, was waiting lo draw sidearms and other incidentals from Eleventh Army. The schedule was set: in 

one night's march on the 25tll the tanks 

would come up to the front line an'iving just after dawn; the infantry by 

then would be cutting a path for tllem 

tllrough the Soviet trenches. But that 

final march was not going to be made. 

Army Group Soutll needed the tanks 

more elsewhere and recalled them on 

the 24tl,. Thereafter Eleventh Army 

had to resign itself to a winter of defense on two fronts-if no worse. 

Meanwhile , the Kerch Strait had 

frozen over solidly and Fortyfoll'rlh and 

Fiftyfirst Armies were bringing trucks 

and tanks as well as infantry across the 

ice .

31 

31Ct'tI. Kdo. XXXXII A.K., l a K,il!gstagebuch Nr. 4, 

10-24 Jan 42. XXXXII A.K. 196'19/ 1 file; AOK II. J,j 

AO Kriegstagcbllch. 22.6.41-3/.3.42, 10- 24 Jan 42, 

AOK II 22409/1 file. 
CHAPTER VII 

Hitler and Stalin 

Hitler Orders a Retreat 

1 January 1942 

After 2400 on New Year's Eve, Radio 

Berlin broadcasted the sounds of bells 

from German cathedrals. Few on the 

Eastern Front had the time to listen, 

and to those who did they brought little 

cheer. Among the latter was the Fourth 

Panzer Group who saw the new year in 

while waiting for an order to withdraw. 

T he army group had told the staff 

members earlier in the night that they, 

along with Ninth and Fourth Armies, 

could expect it soon. After 2400, Genera l Hoepner, Fourth Panzer Group's 

comma nder, attempted to do what was 

expected of a panzer general and 

spoke brieAy about the past year's successes. In honesty, however, he could 

not avoid expressing what he and the 

others present most deeply felt, that at 

the turn of the year the forces in the 

east lay under "a deep shadow." The 

shadow deepened an hour later when 

he and his staff read off the pale violet 

prim on the teletype tape that the 

FlIehrer had forbidden all withdrawals.! 

At dawn on New Year's Day the temperature stood at -250 F., and the 

moisture in the air had frozen to form 

a cold white fog.The waist-deep snow 

blanketing central Russia was cut only 

by a thin network of roads cleared 

enough to take slow-moving, singlelane traffic. Soldiers and Russian civilians, men and women of all ages, shoveled, widening the lanes and opening 

new ones to keep the front from strangling. When and if the order to retreat 

came, whole a rmi es would have to 

march westward along these narrow 

tracks that could be drifted shut again 

in an hou r or two. On the roads, the 

armies calculated that infantry could 

cover six to eight miles a day, trucks 

sixteen or twenty miles. Shifting an 

infantry battalion a distance of twelve 

miles from one point on the front to 

another could take as much as four 

days. 11111ks cou ld do the same distance 

in two days, but as many as half could 

be expected to break down before they 

reached the destination . In the cold, 

machine guns jammed, and tank turrets wou ld not turn. Truck and tank 

motors had to be kept running continuously. Consequendy, vehicles that did 

not move at all burned one normal 

day's load of fuel every forty-eight 

hours.2 

On New Year's Day, no doubt LO raise 

their morale, the Third and Fourth 

Panzer Groups were elevated to army 

status. The commanding generals 

would henceforth be addressed as 

'!.P ... AOK 4. I II N ,: 58M2. No/hen uebel" jl'1:'lgf' 

Ipz.. AOK 'I, fa /\tU'I{\((lgfbw'h, Teil III, 3/.12.·11. Pl.. /;;u,/lI1wgs*lI. Kampfgnmd/agel/, 5.1.42. PI:. AOK I 

AOK 4 22-157/35 file, 22457139 rile. 
HITLER AND STALIN 1 19 

CIVILIANS SHOVEL SNOW To OPEN THE ROAD THROUGII A VILLAGE 

"Oberbefehlshaber" instead of "Befehlshaber," but the advancement, 

General Reinhardt observed, came at a 

time when Third Panzer Army's actual 

strength was more nearly that of a 

corps than an army. 

I n the Nazi party newspaper, the 

VOelkische Beobach/er, Hitler gave a New 

Year's proclamation to the German 

people, and he sent an order of the day 

to the troops til rough Wehnnaclz/ channels. In bolli he talked about the past 

year's victories and promised more to 

come, and he portrayed himself as a 

man of peace who had war forced 

upon him'" His private mood was dominated by the previous night's exchanges willi Field Marshal Kluge, 

3Domarus, Hilla, \'01. II , pp. 1820- 23. 

commander of Army Group Center. 

The generals were coming close to disputing his authority. General Strauss, 

commander of Ninth Army, had actually attempted to issue an order that 

contradicted both the word and the 

spirit of his instructions. The Army was 

being "parliamentarized.'" 

During the day, Hitler undertook to 

make his will finally and unmistakably 

clear. To Kluge and the army commanders he wrote that the Soviet leadership was using the last of its resources 

in men and material to exploit the "icy" 

winter and defeat the German forces. 

If the Eastern Front stood against t1lis 

assault, it would assure the final victory 

in the summer of 1942. Therefore, the 

~HaJd" Dia ry. vol. II, p. 372. 
120 

existing lines were to be held "even if 

they appear to those occupying them to 

have been outflanked." Gaps in the 

front were to be filled by divisions 

coming from Germany and the West, 

and columns of trucks with supplies 

and replacement battalions were on the 

way. "In the meantime," he concluded, 

"to hold every village, not give way a 

step, and fight to the last bullet and 

grenade is the order of the hour. 

Where single localities no longer can be 

held, the flames blazing from every hut 

must tell the neighboring units and the 

Luftwaffe that here courageous troops 

have done their duty to the last shot."' 

When Hitler talked about new divisions to plug the gaps, he was, from his 

point of view, not merely trying to 

create an illusion. Help for Army 

Group Center was on the way. When it 

would arrive was another question. 

The OKH had authority to mobilize a 

half-a-million trained men for the Eastern Front by the end of April and had 

two programs, code named WALKUERE 

and RHEINcoLD, underway. The first 

would produce four divisions from 

troops in the Replacement Army that 

could possibly be ready by late Jan uary 

or early February. The second wou ld 

draw previously deferred men from 

industry to make up six divisions, and 

those would take longer to outfit and 

train. WALKUERE, RH EINCOLD. and the 

additional men to round out the half 

million would cut into the German 

work force and \\'ould thereby mitiga te 

one shortage, while aggravating 

another· 

5/1. G,: Millt. la N r. 111-12, Loge lind KampffurJmmg 

illl OS/eli. 1.1.42. Pi'. AOK 4224 5;/36 file. 

~Dfr ell 1 eler /-I r('l"esnl('~t lll1 g lOul Bej"hfshalH'r drs £rm(;}Jerrl'.~, Dn- Chef del StabfJ. 7bgrbllch. 5 Jan 42. eM il 

X- 124 file . 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The OKH did not know where it 

could find the weapons, particularly 

artillery, mortars, and machine guns, to 

equip the WALKUERE and RHEINCOLD 

divisions. Current production of these 

was insufficient to cover the recent 

losses on the Eastern Front. The OKH 

also had two movements going, ELEFANT and CHRISTOPHORUS, the first to 

provide 1,900 trucks and the second to 

supply 6,000 vehicles of other kinds for 

Army Group Center; and the R eichspost 

was assembling 500 buses to transport 

troops into Russia. But the vehicles 

were having to be collected from all 

over Germany and as far away as Paris 

and driven east, and most would probably need repairs by the time they 

reached Warsaw. All across Germany, 

under Propaganda Minister Joseph 

Goebbels' sponsorship, Nazi party offices were collecting furs and woolen 

garments, and Goebbels was about to 

open a drive to requisition restaurant 

tablecloths for use in making camouflage snow pants and jackets. The 

OKH, however, seeing a public relations coup for the pa rty in the making, 

insisted that the fighting troops had 

adequate clothing and consigned the 

coll ected goods to storage until they 

could be issued to replacements going 

o ut later in the winter' 

A Thmst Past S uilhinichi 

The Soviet second phase objective, to 

encircle the Army Group Center main 

force, was only becoming faintl y discernible to the Germans at the beginning of 1942. The first indica tion , not 

'OKII, Cl'1IStdH, Org. Abt. Kn'l'gstagebuch, 1-5, 6-9 

Jan 42. H 1/2 13 file : Drr Chrf del" He(>l"rsrllfslllrig und BeJI'h1sllf/ber ties Ersatzherrl's, De,. Cluj des Stabl's. "IbWbllch. 

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SECOND 

ANZER ARMY 

THE FANATICAL RESISTANCE 

1 . 14 January 1942 

Front line, 1 Jan 

Front line, 14 Jan 

Soviet counterattack 

o 100 Miles 

----~--~~----~' 

o 100 Kilometers 

MAP 9 

AR 

, 

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VOfonezh . 
122 

yet actually taken for what it was, had 

come on Christmas Day when the Tenth 

and Fiftieth Armies' thrusts that had 

been directed toward Belev and Kaluga 

in the gap between Fourth and Second 

Panzer Armies began to bear westerly 

and north-westerly toward Sukhinichi 

and Yukhnov· The second, Thirty-ninth 

Army's southward drive toward Rzhev 

that had begun in fu ll strength on 27 

December, was still obscured four days 

later by wild fighting along the entire 

Ninth Army front. (Map 9.) 

On Army Grou p Cen ter's right 

Rank, circumstances were changing the 

Soviet plan. Zhukov's left Rank armies, 

Tenth and Fiftieth, were moving faster 

and in better position to pursue an 

envelopment from the south than was 

Bryansk Front. Of the latter's three armies, only Sixtyjirst Army, by riding on 

Tenth Anny's Rank, attained some momentum. Third and Thi,·teenth Armies 

were becoming "exhausted" by the end 

of December" Consequently, Army 

Group Center's right Rank was being 

left outside the southern a rm of the 

projected encirclement, which would 

bring quick changes for Armeegruppe 

Schmidt and its two armies, Second 

and Second Panze r. 

In late December, Second Army was 

straining to hold onto its "new winter 

line" on the Zusha and Tim rivers, 

some miles behind the original winter 

line although still thirty to thirty-five 

miles west of the Kursk-Ore! railroad. 

General Schmidt gave Kluge notice on 

30 December that Second Army cou ld 

have to give up both Ku rsk and Ore! 

and the railroad in-between. If it did , it 

would have to split in two parts to 

. Gr. Mitte. la Knt'gstagebllch. Deumber /9 -11 , 25 

Ol'C '11 . 1-1 . Gr. ~filte 26974/6 fi le. 

\lVOv. p. 120. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

follow tl,e railroads west. Doing so 

would open a sixty-mile-wide hole in 

the front, but tl,e army could not survive in the snow-covered wilderness 

away from the railroads'· The B,yansk 

Front, however, could not accomplish a 

breakthrough to force Second Army 

into another retreat, and by the end of 

the first week in January all of its 

armies were stopped. Bryansk Front's 

part in the cou nteroffensive ended at 

the Tim and the Zusha , leaving 

M tsensk, Kursk, and Ore! in German 

hands. II By mid-January, the new 

winter line was solid , and to reduce 

Kluge'S span of control Hitler then 

transferred Second Army to Army 

Group South. General Weichs, who 

had commanded the army in the summer and fall and had been on sick leave 

since early November, resumed his 

command; and Schmidt moved from 

Kursk to Ore! to become commanding 

general of the Second Panzer Army. 

During the first week in January, 

Second Panzer Army's front fa cing east 

also stabilized. But at the same time the 

army was acquiring a long and acutely 

unstable north front. The gap between 

Fourth Army and Second Pan zer 

Army was fifty miles wide and had 

become the mouth of a great bulge 

ballooning westward past Sukhinichi 

and arching northwestward almost to 

Yukhnov and southwestward toward 

Bryansk. Second Panzer Army was 

having to stretch its left Rank west from 

Belev across seventy and more miles of 

road less country. Headquarters, XXIV 

Panzer Corps, whi ch had been assigned-without troops-to defe nd 

'O AOK 2, la Nr. 70914 1, Utbn-(egllllgl'lI JlIl'r del 

ZlI nutkgehell da 2. Armel' t'OIl Kllrsk·Ore/lluch \\'1'111'11, 

31.12.41, H . GI', ~Iitle 6500517 file. 

II/VO\ISS. vul. II. pp. 294 . 295, 320; VOv, p. 120. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

the Oka River north of Belev, was shifting eighty miles west to Bryansk, still 

without troops, to try to stop the Soviet 

drive past Sukhinichi. It acquired a 

second mission on 3 January when 

Soviet Tenlh A m,y trapped 4,000 German troops in Sukhinichi. Hitler refused to let the garrison break out and 

demanded that the town be defended 

to the last man "as the Alcazar had 

been held during tile Spanish Civil 

War."12 

When Headquarters, XXIV Panzer 

Corps arrived in Bryansk on me 4t1l, it 

had command of a clutch of odds and 

ends, 2 infantry battalions, I engineer 

battalion, assorted construction troops 

that had been stationed in me towns 

around Sukhinichi, and an armored 

train. The latter had been involved in 

the fighting at Sukhinichi and had only 

its locomotive and one car still serviceable. An infantry division and a security division were coming into 

Bryansk by rail from the west, but 

Army Group Center had already diverted a regiment from each, and tile 

infantry division had left its motor vehicles in Poland. At Bryansk everything going to the front had to be 

unloaded and reloaded from German 

to Soviet-gauge trains. 

Meanwhile, Tenlh Army's cavalry, assisted by partisans and some Soviet 

soldiers who had hidden in me forests 

since the October 1941 battles, were 

fanning out rapidly west and south of 

Bryansk. On the 7th, after air reconnaissance reported two Soviet divisions 

headed southwest away from Sukhinichi, Schmidt, to protect the army's 

lifeline, the railroad through Bryansk, 

U l-lormann. ~IS P- 114b, \'01. III, p. 45. 

123 

stripped the Armeegruppe's front on 

the east of its last reserves, the 4th and 

18th Panzer Divisions, and sent them to 

XXIV Panzer Corps. Having done 

that, he tried for the next several days 

to secure Hitler's permission to bend 

the east front back slightly and thus 

acquire some reserves. Instead, Hitler, 

on the 13th, ordered him to keep the 

east front where it was, take more 

troops out of it if possible, and use me 

troops XXIV Panzer Corps had and 

was getting to mount a counterattack 

toward Sukhinichi. Occasional airdrops of ammunition and food interspersed with messages of encouragement from Hitler were keeping the 

Sukhinichi garrison fighting. 

A breakout from Sukhinichi had become impossible after 9 January when 

Tenlh Army reached Kirov, forty miles to 

the west, and Zhi zdra, thirty-five miles 

to the southwest. Having such distances 

to go, a relief also appeared impossible, 

particularly since XXIV Panzer Corps' 

infantry were mostly recent arrivals not 

hardened either to the weatller or the 

fighting in the Soviet Union. On the 

15th, XXIV Panzer Corps expected to 

start the attack in another four days-

"at the earliest."" Whether XXIV Panzer Corps would be driving toward Sukhinichi in four more days or fighting 

to hold Bryansk was actually still open. 

For more than a week, the Slavka had 

been shifting troops into the gap from 

the stalled Br)'ansk Hunt, and on the 

13th it had moved the Headquarters, 

Sixtyfirst Anny more closely in on Tenth 

Army's left." 

i3p ?. AOK 2. la Kriegstagebuch, Absdmitt b, 1- 15 Jan 

42. Pz . AOK 2 250341 162 file; AOK 4, /a Krit'gslagpbllch 

N,: 11 . 9 Jan 42, AOK 4 li380/1 fllc. 

14/VOVSS, \'01. II. p. 326. 
124 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

AN ARMY COMMANDER (Weichs,fourth from left) SETS OUT FOR T H E FRONT 

The Grand Envelopment 

By comparison with the center and 

left Aank armies, Army Group Center's 

right Aank armies, Second and Second 

Panzer Armies, were, nevertheless, In a 

virtually ideal situation. The storm of 

the Soviet offensive was passll1g away 

from Second and Second Panzer Armies as it mounted assaults of greater 

intensity against Fourth and Fourth 

Panzer Armies in the center and NlI1th 

Army and Third Panzer Army on the 

left. While the armies on the right 

faced threats, those of the center and 

left confronted outright destruction , 

both piecemeal and en masse. At the 

beginning of the year, each one of the 

four had good reason to assume that 

given its circumstances and the orders 

it was receiving, it was on an accelerating descent into oblivion. Their peril 

was in fact so great and appeared so 

imminent that it obscured for a lime 

the grand Soviet design to encircle and 

destroy them all. Consequently, the 

conAict assumed a dual character as the 

German armies, on Hitler's orders, 

each fought for survival of its own area 

while the Soviet Kalinin and West Fronts 

concentrated on a second objective, 

Vyazma. 

Vyazma, a small city on the MoscowSmolensk road and railroad, was 125 

miles west of Moscow and 90 miles east 

of Smolensk. It was a railroad junction 

from which lines ran due north and 

south to Rzhev and Bryansk, northeast 

to Moscow, and southeast to Kaluga 

and Tula. The line to Rzhev carried all 
H[TLER AND STALIN 

of the supplies for Third Panzer Army 

and most of those for Ninth Army. The 

Vyazma-Moscow line and road sustained Fourth Panze r Army, and 

Fourth Army depended on the 

Vyazma-Kaluga line for its supplies. 

The railroad to Bryansk had provided 

an alternate route for Fourth Army, 

but lost much of its usefulness when 

the Russians passed to the west of Sukhinichi. At the turn of the year, Kalinin Fmnl's right Rank armies were 90 

miles from Vyazma. West Fmnt's left 

Rank operating in the gap between 

Fourth and Second Panzer Armies had 

about 55 miles left to get there via 

Yukhnov. The farUlest easterly extensions of FourUl and Fourth Panzer 

Armies' fronts were 90 miles from 

Vyazma. Except possibly at Kiev, the 

Germans themselves had not attempted an envelopment on such a 

scale. 

The Soviet effort also differed markedly from the German in its combining 

of maneuver and brute force. The Germans had designed the so-called pincers movement to be accomplished 

with minimum effort; not so the movements of the Soviet forces. Zhukov, for 

one, appears to have had greater confidence in the frontal assaults that had 

served well enough on ule approaches 

to Moscow than in the more elegant 

but also more demanding envelopmenl. 15 Regardless of the envelopment 

being attempted, his command, the 

West Fmnt, never ceased baLtering the 

whole length of the Fourth, Fourth 

Pan ze r, and Third Panzer Armies' 

lines. Konev's Ka.lininFmnt did Ule same 

against Nimh Army. To the German 

commands. riveted in place by Hitler's 

'lZhukov. M (>11WIr.f, p.35 Ifr. 

125 

orders, the weight of ti,e Russian forces 

bearing in on Ulem from the east, 

therefore, made the envelopment almost an academic concern. 

) n the toe-to-toe contest that had 

gone on along nearly the whole from, 

both sides had had a month's experience in winter warfare, and patterns 

had emerged. The Germans clung to 

the villages. The peasant cottages, verminous as they invariably were, 

provided shelter where no other existed. [n ground frozen like rock six to 

eight feet deep, to dig or to build was 

impossible. The izbas, the cottages, 

were no small asset, and to deny their 

comfort to the Russians, the Germans 

destroyed any left standing when they 

retreated. Consequently, the Russians 

usually had to stay in the open which, 

although they were more accustomed 

to and beller prepared for the winter, 

was only relatively less hazardous for 

them than for the Germans, parti cularly when the temperature 

reached - 30° F. or -400 F. The villages 

the Germans held , on the other hand , 

were islands in a sea of snow, stationary 

and frequently jammed with iII-assorted troops whose presence in them 

was dictated by the elements rather 

than by any tactical purpose. The villages had the additional disadvantage 

of being acutely vulnerable, as the Russians were qui ck to appreciate, to standardized assault patterns. A single man 

who knew the lay of the land could 

direct fire from the back of a tank and 

smash a village from a distance with 

high explosives. At night, in snowstorms, or in fog, one or two tanks with 

infantry could drive straight into a 

village, blasting the buildings one by 

one. )fthe defenders came out into the 

open, the Soviet infantry occupied 10-
126 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

GERMAN INFANTRY ENTER A VILLAGE 

cal houses. If they stayed indoors, their 

position was equally hazardous since 

thatched roofs and wooden construction offered Ii ttle protection 

against 76-mm. shells. The German 88-

mm. guns and field howitzers with Rothotif hollow-charge ammunition , which 

Hitler had released in December, could 

knock out Soviet T-34 tanks. A direct 

hit with a ROlkopf shell could generally 

be counted on to kill the whole tank 

crew and any infantry riding on the 

vehicle. But the Germans guns were 

not maneuverable and were vulnerable 

to the tanks' cannon and, at close 

range, to the weapons of the Soviet 

infantry as well. The 88s, nicknamed 

"elephants," had a particularly high 

profile. In using field artillery as antitank guns, the Germans had to contend with a loss ratio of close to one for 

one and a consequent decline in their 

artillery strength. 

The German troops, particularly the 

infantry and artillery, had not been 

accustomed in the war thus far to accepting losses equal to those of their 

opponents, and they had not even 

imagined anything like the apparent 

Soviet disdain for life evidenced in a 

seeming unconcern for casualties either from cold or from enemy fire. 

Soviet forces could take the villages but 

not usually cheaply, and their commanders always seemed willing to pay the 

price no matter how high it might be. 

The Russian "tramplers," for instance, 

were unanned 1l1en whose sole function was to trample paths through the 

snow to German positions. By the time 
HITLER AND STALIN 

an attack began, the field was often 

littered with the bodies of these humble contributors to its success. l • 

General Hoepner Does Not Obey 

At the turn of the year, Army Group 

Center's newest crisis was at Fourth 

Army where on 2 January the Soviet 

Forty-third Army, after punchmg at the 

XX Corps-LVII Panzer Corps boundary for several days, opened a ten-mile 

gap between Borovsk and Maloyaroslavets. Therewith, Fourth Army, having already lost contact with Second 

Panzer Army, was practically cut adrift. 

Fourth Panzer Army was hardly any 

better off: V Panzer Corps' hold was 

steadily weakening ~est of Volokolamsk, and as the armies on their outer 

Aanks were driven back, Fourth Panzer 

and Third Panzer Armies' fronts were 

being left on the eastern face of a 

dangerous outward bulge. When 

Hoepner asked the army group, on the 

afternoon of 2 January, to review the 

latest stand fast order in light of these 

conditions, he received an expression 

of "the Fuehrer's greatest trust 111 the 

Fourth Panzer Army and its leadership," a "categori c~ " refusal to permit any kind of withdrawal , and an 

order to transfer two mfantry regiments and an artillery battalion to help 

XX Corps. Kluge then also gave 

Hoepner command of XX Corps.17 

In placing XX Corps under Hoepner, Kluge converted what had been a 

gap in an army front into one benveen 

two armies. Technically the deCISion 

was absolutely correct. The corps had 

contact with Hoepner's Fourth Panzer 

I'PI.. Diu, fa Baich! ueber nlssische Imd dl'llischl' 

Kampfesweise,30.1.42, Pz. AOK 3218 1817 file. 

I1PZ. AOK 4, l a Besprechu"gslIotiu'1l, 2 Jan 42. Pz. 

AOK 4 22457/45 file. 

127 

Army and no longer had any with 

Kuebler's Fourth Army. Therefore, 

Hoepner could give it support, and 

Kuebler could not. On the other hand, 

as had happened west of Tula, the gap 

now became the concern of two commands both of which had equally serious problems elsewhere. On the 3d, 

Kluge ordered Hoepner to. stage an 

attack from his side to close the gap 

between Barovsk and Maloyaroslavets. 

To do so Hoepner had to move one of 

his divisions out to the XX Corps nght 

Aank. That took two days, and on the 

morning of the 6th, when the division 

was in place and ready, Fourth Army 

reported that its flank had been 

pushed back durin~ the night thus 

opening the gap to eighteen miles bU,t 

leaving the POll1t at willch Hoepners 

attack was aimed under RUSSian control. 18 Also during the night, three 

Soviet divisions had turned north behind the XX Corps Aank. In the morning, Hoepner proposed bendlllg hiS 

Aank back, which Kluge, because of 

Hitler's orders, instantly forbade, countering with an order to begin the attack 

anyway. Fourth Arm~, he said, would 

help from its side-with one battahon . 

For two days Hoepner's one diVISion 

on the XX Corps right Aank attacked 

south while the Soviet division pushed 

north behind it and XX Corps, until 

finally on the morning of the 8th General der Infanterie Friedrich Materna, 

commanding XX Corps, told Hoepner 

he could no longer be responSible for 

the corps' situation. The RUSSians, he 

said, had cut his one cleared road to 

the west. He could no longer get any 

supplies in, and if they fastened their 

I8P1.. AOK 4.la, Nr. 72142,a1l H. Gr. Mitte. 6. 1.42 , Pz. 

AOK 4 224 57/39 file. 
128 

hold tighter, he would never get the 

corps out. Hoepner then told Kluge 

that XX Corps would "go to the Devil" 

111 a short time if it were not allowed to 

pull back. Kluge insisted the corps was 

"still a long way from going to the 

Devil," but said he would call General 

Ha lder. Two hours later, at 1200, Kluge 

saId he had "categorically" demanded a 

decision on XX Corps and Halder was 

on his way to Hitler to get it. Hoepner 

was to alert the corps because the order 

could come at any minute. An hour 

and three-quarters later, after having 

trIed several times and failed to reach 

Halder directly, Hoepner, on his own 

responsibility, issued the order for the 

corps to pull back. 

After nightfall, having been out of 

touch Witll Hoepner's army for seven 

hours, Kluge, who apparently had 

learned of the order, called and confirmed that Hoepner had given it. 

Kluge then said an order to retreat was 

"impossible"-not because it was 

wrong but because it went against 

Hitler's orders. Kluge saw this case as 

bell1g the same as the one involving 

GuderIan, and he hastened to dissociate himself from responsibility for it by 

pOll1tll1g out that at 1200 he had specifIcally used the word "prepare" and not 

the word "order." Kluge called again at 

2330. Hitler, he told Hoepner, had 

dIsapproved the order given to XX 

Corps 111 tile afternoon and had relieved Hoepner as commanding general, Fourth Panzer Army, effective 

immediately.'9 

[OPz.. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebllch, 7eil III, 6-8 Jan 42, 

Pz. AOK 4 22457/35 file ; Pl... AOK 4, la , BesjJreclHllIgslIotiun , 6--8 .1an 42, Pz. AOK 4 22457/45 file. Hiller 

al~o oT'dcred that Hoepner be expelled fm m the army 

wn!1. 1oss of pay. penSion, and the rights lO wear the 

uniform and decorations. The mililary courts, 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Fourth A TIny Adrift 

After XX Corps passed from Fourth 

Army to Fourth Panzer Army, four of 

Fourth Army's five remaining corps, 

outflanked on the north and the soutil, 

were caught in a detached loop of the 

front touching the Oka River west of 

Kaluga and reaching north thirty-five 

miles not quite to Maloyaroslavets, 

whIch the Soviet Forty-thij"{J Anny had 

taken on 2 January. What might befall 

the four corps from the north depended entirely on the Russians and 

on Fourth Panzer Army. The northernmost corps, LVIl Panzer Corps, 

barely had the strength to cover the 

Rank. The same was true of XXXXlll 

Corps on the south. The danger was 

greater at the moment on the south 

because Fiftieth A"my's spearheads 

northwest of Sukhinichi were forty 

miles behind the eastern face of the 

loop and less than ten miles from the 

Rollbahn, . the highway used by Fourth 

Army as Its one good road.'o 

By the 5th, Fourth Army had mustered enough strength at Yukhnov to 

deRect tile Russians from the Rollbahn 

there, but since the road ran across 

rather than away from the Russian line 

of advance, they had merely to shift 

theIr attack on the highway southward 

a few miles to cut it. The Fourth Army 

chIef of staff told Hitler's adjutant, 

General Schmundt, "If the Russian 

however, upheld Hoepner's contenti on that he could 

not be dep"i ved of those rights and benefi.ts without a 

court-manial; and he cominucd on inacti ve status 

with rank and full pay until he was arrested and 

subscquenli y tried and exccuted as a me mber· of the 

20 July 1944 plOl againsl Hillc r's lire. 

2o Founh Army's RollbaJm (the Gemlans also used 

the term for other through roads) was the Moscow· 

Warsaw Highway, one oftlle best in the Soviet Union 

and.one of the few all·weathel" roads in the occupied 

tel"rtlory. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

thrust gets through, it will be deadly. "2l 

All the army had on the whole western 

rim of the Sukhinichi bulge was the 

Headquarters, XXXX Panzer Corps, 

with parts of two divisions and several 

Luftwaffe construction battalions. 

On the night of the 5th, General der 

Infanterie Gotthard Heinrici, the commanding general of the XXXXIIl 

Corps, called the Fourth Army chief of 

staff and asked whether the army was 

being deliberately sacrificed and 

whether it was being treated the way 

the Soviet Command had treated its 

troops during the summer encirclements. His men and officers, Heinrici 

added, were well aware that the Russians were many miles behind them on 

the south, and they would have to be 

told what was in store for them. When 

the report on what Heinrici had said 

reached army group headquarters, 

which it did less than ten minutes after 

Heinrici sLOpped talking, Kluge came 

on the telephone to admonish the 

whole Fourth Army to keep its nerves 

under control. He would not leave his 

old army in the lurch , he insisted, but 

things had not gone that far yet. If the 

army stood fast, he believed a "state of 

balance" could be achieved." If it 

"marched off the field, " the consequences would be incalculable. 

1\vo days later, on the afternoon of 

the 7th, XXX X Panzer Corps reported 

that with the forces it had, it could not 

keep the Russians o[f the Rollbahn anywhere along the fifty-mile stretch 

southwest of Yukhnov. Giving up on 

achieving a "state of balance," Kluge 

then tried to persuade Hitler to allow 

Fourth Army's east front to go back 

21AOK 4. la Kriegslagebuch Nr. 1/, 5 Jan 42, AOK 4 

17380/1 file. 

22/bid. 

129 

thirty miles or so LO the vicinity of 

Yu khnov, which would shorten the 

front and release troops to defend the 

Rol/bahn. After a long telephone conversation late in the night, KJuge believed Hitler's "mind was no longer 

closed to the reasons for such a withdrawal."'3 But in the morning Hitler 

was full of ideas for small shifts that he 

insisted could solve the problem on the 

Rollbahn by themselves. 

Throughout the day, Hitler engaged 

Kluge and Halder in a tug-of-war, refusing time after time to be pinned 

down to a decision while tl,e reports 

from Fourth Army became progressively darker. At 1200, the Fourth 

Army chief of staff told Kluge that 

Soviet co lumns were behind both 

flanks of the four corps in the east, and 

the corps could no longer just withdraw; they would have to fight their 

way back. Kluge told him he was expecting a "big decision" from Hitler 

soon. Six hours later the decision had 

not come, and the army's chief of staff 

told him tl,e time was close when Kluge 

would have to give tl,e order himself, 

which Kluge had earlier said he would 

do if necessary LO save Fourtll Army. 

Finally at 2200 General Jodi, chief of 

the OKW Operations Staff, called 

Halder, and Halder called Kluge. 

Hitler had agreed LO let Fourth Army's 

four corps on tl,e east go back ten miles 

in stages and not the thirty miles the 

army and army group had proposed" 

"On the Razor's Edge" 

In the order put out on New Year's 

Day, Hitler had attempted to rivet 

23/bid .. 7-8 Jan 42. 

Hlbid .. 8 Jill 42; H (ddn- Diary. vol. II. p. 377. 
130 

Army Group Center's left Rank tight 

where it stood: Third Panzer Army 

facing east on the Lama River and 

linth Army in a 120-mile-long line 

running almost due west past Rzhev 

along the upper reaches of the Volga 

River to the junction with Army Group 

North south of Ostashkov. Rzhev was 

Army Group Center's northern 

cornerpost. Lying on the Volga at the 

junction of a north-south and east-west 

railroad , it gave the army group left 

Rank something to hang onto in what 

was otherwise a wilderness of forest 

and swamp in all directions for many 

miles. 

The sector north and east of Rzhev 

was the most threatened spot on the 

left flank. There, VI Corps was being 

battered by the Soviet Thirty-ninth, 

Twenty-ninth, and Thirtyfinl Annies and 

being made an example of by Hitler. 

On 29 December, after some airplane 

pilots had drawn a much more favorable picture of the situation around 

Staritsa than had VI Corps' reports, 

Hitler had dismissed the corps commander and appointed in his place for 

several days General der Flieger Wolfgang von Richthofen, who was also 

commanding general of the VIII Air 

Corps, Army Group Cel1ler's air support command." 

During tl,e night on I January Hitler 

forbade any except "local evasive movemel1ls," and in the morning he ordered 

the words "KOENIGSBERG Position" 

abolished because they represented a 

"dangerous myth." l\vel1ly-four hours 

later, he commanded Nimh ArmyVI Corps and its neighbor on the left, 

~~H. c/; Mitte, 10 Kriegs/agebuch. DI!Zl'mber /94/. 29 

Dec 41. 1-1 . Cr. Nliltc 2697416 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

XXIII Corps, in particular-not to retreat a "single step" for any reason 2 • 

Having been told that Hitler was 

highly annoyed by his attempt to order 

a retreat and having also been promised 300 JV-52 transports to fly in 

reinforcements for Nintll Army, General Strauss passed on Hitler's order to 

VI and XXIII Corps with his own 

emphatic endorsement. Privately, he 

and his staff believed Nintll Army was 

"on the razor's edge" and that it could 

not stand where it was more than a few 

days. Genera lleutnant Eccard von Gablenz, commanding general of the 

XXVII Corps that held an exposed 

sector between VI Corps and the Third 

Panzer Army left Rank, was even less 

confident. Fearful that VI Corps would 

coll apse no matter what orders it was 

given and tl,at his own corps would 

follow, Gablenz repeatedly asked 

Strauss on the 2d to disregard Hitler's 

order. The troops, he insisted , knew 

their position was hopeless, and he 

"could not put a policeman behind 

every soldier."27 After his corps and VI 

Corps lost more ground during the 

day, and Strauss ordered him again to 

hold, Gablenz sent a radio message that 

read, "I cannot carry the responsibility 

for my command any longer and 

therefore ask to be relieved of my 

post." Strauss ordered him to relinquish his command immediately and to 

proceed by air to the army group headquarters in Smolensk at daylight the 

next 1l1orning.28 

Before nightfall on the 2d, a gap had 

28AOK 9, Kriegsiligebllch. 1.1 -3/.3.42 , 1- 2 Jan 42, 

AOK 9 21520/1 file. 

np:::.. AOK J, Jo Kriegslagebllcil Nr. 2, 2 Jan -12 , P7. 

AOK 3 16911/1 Rle. 

UN},,: VOII Gab/em:., all dell "/ern! O.B. c/t'r 9. Armft', 

2.1.42. AOK 9 21520114 file. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

opened northwest of Rzhev between 

XXIII Corps and VI Corps, but when 

it did not widen the next day, the Ninth 

Army staff took heart. In -400 F. 

weather and snow the troops were 

fighting well; Richthofen's fighters and 

dive-bombers were Aying; and a battalion of reinforcements ;;.rrived in 

Rzhev by air during the day. The army 

also congratulated itself on having 

overcome the worst of the deficiencies 

it had experienced during the winter 

warfare. Frostbite casualties were still 

high, but the troops were outfitted with 

furs and felt boots requisitioned from 

the Russian civilians, and they had devised ways of keeping their machine 

guns and other automatic weapons 

working in low temperatures. 

When Thirty-ninth Army widened the 

breach northwest of Rzhev to several 

miles on the 4th , Strauss thought he 

could close it by attacks from the east 

and the west. He had a reserve of sorts, 

the SS Cavalry Brigade, stationed behind XXIII Corps on security duty. 

The SS Cavalry Brigade was noteworthy on two counts: it was one of only 

two active cavalry units in the I#hrmacht, and it was commanded by Brigadefuehrer ("Brigadier General") Otto 

Hermann Fegelein , who was married 

to Hitler's mistress' sister. As a regiment 

and later a brigade, it had been in the 

Eastern Front since early in the campaign as an anachronistic showpiece 

for the SS. I ts commander was an impassioned horseman with minimal military qualifications. To it, Strauss assigned the mission of attacking from 

the west while VI Corps created an 

infantry assault group to make the 

effort from the east. 

So flimsy a German effort could 

hardly have been expected to succeed 

131 

without more cooperation from the 

enemy than the Soviet commands were 

likely to give. Three Soviet armies were 

bearing in on Rzhev, and air reconnaissance had for several days been reporting a new Soviet buildup on the XXIII 

Corps left Aank south of Ostashkov. 

Early in the day on the 5th, Thirty-ninth 

Army opened the gap northwest of 

Rzhev to eight miles and began "pouring" troops through to the south. 

Strauss could not have the SS Cavalry 

Brigade into position for anotller day, 

and the mood at the army group and 

in the OKH was close to being hysterical. Kluge ordered Strauss to "tell 

every commander that Rzhev must be 

held. " Halder pronounced Rzhev to be 

"the most decisive spot on the Eastern 

Front" and added, "There must be a 

man who can put things to rights there, 

if not the division commander then 

some colonel and if not he then a major 

who has the necessary energy and 

determination. ,,'. 

Concurrently, Strauss and Reinhardt 

fell to arguing over a division sector. 

On the 3d, to let Hoepner's Fourth 

Panzer Army concentrate on the Borovsk-Maloyaroslavets breakthrough, 

Hitler and Kluge had transferred 

Third Panzer Army from Kluge's command and V Panzer Corps from 

Hoepner's to Strauss' Ninth Army command . To Reinhardt's huge annoyance, 

Strauss had refused to give him command of V Panzer Corps because General der Infanterie Richard Ruoff, the 

corps' commanding general, was somewhat Reinhardt's senior. (The seniority 

question was resolved ten days later 

when Ruoff replaced Hoepner at 

Fourth Panzer Army, and V Panzer 

29AOK 9, Nothen der Abt. la, 5 Jan 42, AOK 9 

21520/ 14 file. 
132 

Corps then passed to Third Panzer 

Army.) ParLly out of pique but also 

partly with reason, Reinhardt the n 

claimed that his 11lird Panzer Army, 

sandwiched be tween two Ninth Army 

corps, was gOll1g to be robbed of 

strength through both Aanks, and he 

refused an order from Strauss to take 

over a division sector from XXVII 

Corps on Third Panzer Army's left 

Aank. Kluge finally broke into the quarrel , threatened Reinhardt with a courtmartial if he did not obey orders, and 

for good measure extended the threat 

to all commanding generals under 

N inLil Army3. 

The SS Cavalry Brigade and VI 

Corps attacked at Rzhev on the 7th and 

were forced to a stop by the afternoon 

of the 8th. The next day two Soviet divIsions rolled over L1le thin line south of 

Ostashkov opening a gap on the army 

group bounda ry, and the gap west of 

Rzhev Widened by several mil es because the SS Cavalry Brigade ran out of 

am~llInitionand had to pull back. Four 

Soviet diVI SIOns were ranging south 

parallel to the Vyazma-Rzhev railroad 

with nothing between them and it. 

Strauss told Kluge and the OKH, "The 

Fourth Army, Fourth Panzer Army, 

Thll'd Panzer Army and Ninth Army 

are double~enveloped . The absolutely 

last IJosslblhty to prevent their destruclion IS to take them into the GzhatskVolga Position [the KOENIGSBERG 

Line that Hitler had declared nonexistent] which may free enoug h strength 

to ellllllnate the northern arm of the 

envelopment west of Rzhev. " Strauss 

added , "It is the last minute."3 1 Kluge 

30/bid.: Pz. AOK 3. la Kriegslllgebuch Nr. 2. 5 Jan 42. 

Pz. AOK 3 169 11 / 1 file. 

. 31AOK 9. /a Nr. 62142, 9.1.42, P7. AOK 3 169 1118 

hie. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

agreed but would not give an order unless Hitler approved it. 32 Halder and 

Kluge talked to Hitler, but Hitler insisted on seeing Kluge in person first. 

"A Sigh of Relief' 

During the night on the 9th, a blizzard blew down on Army Group Center and for twenty-four hours a ll but 

stopped L1le war. Kluge'S airplane cou ld 

not get off the grou nd the next morning for his Ai~ht to Fuehrer Headquarters ~ and nothll1g changed at the front 

dUring the day because even the Russians could not move. From Smolensk 

east, trains on the railroads and trucks 

on the roads were buried in snowdrifts. 

When Kluge finally arri ved at the 

Fuehur Headquarters on the 11th he 

found Hitler, who apparently ilad 

drawn encouragement from the temporary paralysis caused by the weather, 

eager to talk about any tiling but a withdrawal - snowshoe battalions, the 

method of gelling more men into a 

train , and the coming spring and summe r campaigns. And Hitler insisted 

that as far as withdrawal was concerned , "every day, every hour" it could 

be put off was a gain, and if the front 

cou ld be made to stand, "all the acclaim" would fall to Kluge." 

Kluge arrived back in Smolensk on 

the afternoon of the 12th. A few hours 

later, following a procedure he had recently established to eliminate any misunderstandll1gs, Hiller reinforced his 

previous day's remarks via teletype to 

Army. Gro"up Center under the superscnpllon, The Fuehrer and Supreme 

UAOK y, No/hen dpr Abl. la, 9 Jan 42, AOK 9 

21520114 rol e . 

33Gnlf'ral Halder's Daily Notes, vol. I, II Jan 42. EAP 

21-g- I6I4/0. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

Commander of the Wehrrnacht has ordered." "Every day of continued stubborn resistance," the message read, "is 

decisive. It provides the possibility of 

bringing reinforcements into action to 

buttress the front. Therefore the 

break-ins must be eliminated." As if 

there were no other causes for concern 

than the wide-open gaps west of Rzhev 

and between Fou rth Panzer and 

Fourth Armies, the message went on to 

order that German forces close them. 

Fourth Panzer Army would be allowed 

to take its front back about ten miles on 

the condition that in doing so it released enough units to restore contact 

with Fourth Army. Ninth Army would 

have to strip the rest of its front to get 

troops to counterattack and close the 

gap at Rzhev34 

Hitler's effort to uphold the standfast doctrine was now hopelessly at 

odds with reality. 1l1e order to Fourth 

Panzer Army only permitted it to complete the movement Hoepner had 

started four days earlier. During those 

days the troops had been fighting in 

the open in below-zero weather and 

snow, unable to go forward and forbidden to go backward. They were discouraged , confused , and exhausted. 

Surprise had been lost. The Russians 

knew what was afoot and would be on 

the army's heels all the way. Ninth 

Army did not merely have one gap to 

contend with as Hitler pretended. 

XXIII Corps had breakthroughs on 

both its flanks, and Ninth Army did not 

know for certain what was happening 

to this corps because all the telephone 

and telegraph lines were out. On the 

Third Panzer Army right flank, V 

3·'H. C,; M ille, 10. N r. 0455142, an AOK 9, /3.1.42, 

AOK 9 21520/11 file. 

133 

Corps was crumbling as Soviet armor 

and infantry chewed through its front, 

village by village. Reinhardt at Third 

Panzer Army was running out of amtTIunition , rations, and motor fuel, and 

he threatened, because of this and V 

Corps' trouble, to give the order to retreat himself. 3• Snow stalled traffic on 

the railroad north of Vyazma, and the 

Russian railroad men who operated 

the trains had disappeared . 

On the 12th, as they had for several 

days, Soviet airplanes bombed Sychevka on the railroad halfway between Vyazma and Rzhev. During the 

intervals when bombers were not overhead and at night, Strauss and his staff 

at the Ninth Army headquarters in 

Sychevka could hear the noise of battle 

coming from the northwest. After 

nightfall on the 12th, it grew louder 

and more distinct every hour?6 

In the early morning hours of the 

13th the Fuehrer order, dutifully forwarded by Army Group Center, 

reached the armies. Its tenor was already known to them, and the dismay 

it occasioned was overshadowed within 

hours by the events of the day. In the 

morning, the Soviet I euards Cavalry 

Corps pressing north toward Vyazma 

crossed the Rollbahn on Fourth Army's 

right flank. By nightfall the army was 

having to evacuate Medyn, its anchor 

on t11e left and Fourth Panzer Army's 

intended target for its attempt to close 

the gap. During the afternoon , Strauss 

and the Ninth Army staff could see as 

well as hear the battle then being 

fought in the Sychevka railroad yards. 

One last supply train for Ninth and 

35PZ. AOK 3, 10. Kriegstagebuch N r. 2, 12 Jan 42, Pz. 

AOK 3 1691 1/ 1 file . 

.16AOK 9, 10. Krif'gstogehuch, 1.1 .~3 3.42 , 12 Jan 42. 

AOK 9 21520/1 file. 
134 

Third Panzer Armies, however, did escape north toward Rzhev. When the 

next one would get through nobody 

could tell. Strauss sent part of his staff 

south to Vyazma before 1200 but 

stayed in Sychevka with his chief 

of staff until late in the afternoon to 

keep contact with V Panzer Corps and 

XXIII Corps, both of which reported 

themselves near collapse.37 

The OKH wrote up two "solutions" 

to the Vyazma-Rzhev problem for 

Hitler. The one, to have Army Group 

Center stand fast as it had been doing, 

could still produce about a division and 

a half in ten days or so for anod,er try 

at dosing the Rzhev gap. But if it failed 

in this effort, the Russians would also 

get Vyazma. The other, to order the 

retreat to the KOENIGSBERG Line, 

would give Fourth Army and Fourdl 

Panzer Army a chance to eliminate the 

gap between them and yield three divisions for a counterattack at Rzhev."8 

Kluge struggled through the day on 

the 13th, trying to convince the army 

commands in Army Group Center that 

the latest Hitler order was workable 

and relaying his mounting troubles to 

the OKH in a succession of desperate 

telephone calls. For the next two days 

he did d,e same, making himself the 

instrument for imposing the Fuehrer's 

will on the armies while trying to extract small concessions from Hitler. On 

the afternoon of the 14dl, he talked at 

lengdl to Hitler about the necessity for 

holding Rzhev as the army group's 

northern bastion to prevent a lateral 

collapse of the front. Hitler said he 

wanted to wait another day. Later, after 

37AOK 4, la KI'iegstagebllch NT. II, 13 Jan 42, AOK 4 

17380/ 1 file;AOK 9, l a Kriegstogebuch, 1.1. - 3/.3.42.13 

Jan 42. AOK 9 21520/1 file. 

3s/-falder Dim)'_ vol. Ill . p. 383. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the day's situation conference, Halder 

observed that Hitler knew a retreat was 

necessary but simply could not bring 

himself to make the decision.a9 What 

came finally, transmitted by Halder 

twenty-four hours later, was a grudging 

"agreement in principle" to a general 

retreat to the KOENIGSBERG Line.'o 

As the Third Panzer Army war diary 

put it, "A sigh of relief swept the whole 

front."" Hitler's own feeling found its 

way into d,e confirming order issued 

the next day, in which he wrote, "This is 

the first time in this war d,at 1 have 

issued an order ifor a major withdrawal."'2 It was undoubtedly for him 

the most difficult order he had yet 

given. 

Stalin Pmjects a General Offensive 

The Look of the New Year 

The war had taken on a new aspect 

for the Soviet Union by 1 January 1942. 

From the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea 

the Russians had stopped the enemy. 

At Rostov, at Ttkhvin , above all, at 

Moscow, the Germans had been driven 

back. In the dead cold of winter, the 

enemy was not likely to advance again 

soon. Japan had turned away into the 

Pacific. Turkey, an old opponent and 

doubtful neutral, would not move, nor 

would the Finnish Army, experienced 

though it was in winter warfare and 

standing on the doorstep of 

Leningrad. Life had returned to 

Moscow in December as government 

3'J/bid., p. 385. 

4oAOK 4,/a Kriegstagebuch Nr. II, 14 Jan 42, AOK" 

1738011 file. 

HPz. , AOK 3, fa Kriegslagebuch NT. 2, 15 Jan 42. Pz. 

AOK 3 1691111 file. 

42H. C,: Mitte, la Nr. 423142, lL/l AOK 9, /6.1.42 , 

AOK 9 21520/1 file. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

agencies reopened, and the German 

retreat from TIkhvin had vastly improved Leningrad's chances for survival. Stalin could receive British 

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in 

December and not only talk about a 

second front in western Europe, which 

he had been doing since summer, but 

begin to lay down his terms for the 

postwar settlement, which, to Eden's 

dismay, included Soviet retention of 

the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and territory taken from Poland and Finland 

before 1941 and certain territorial 

changes in Germany. For the last five 

days of the old year, the Soviet Information Bureau claimed the capture of 

60 German tanks, 11 armored cars, 287 

artillery pieces, 461 machine guns, 

2,211 riRes, a trainload of ammunition, 

and a trainload of clothing." 

I n its New Year's Day editorial, the 

government newspaper, Pravda, predicted victory in 1942. Pravda said that 

Soviet forces had reached the turning 

point of the war, and with their own 

"inexhaustible reserves" as well as tanks 

and aircraft from Britain and America, 

they would accomplish tl1e "complete 

defeat of Hitlerite Germany" during 

the year. The editorial also pointed out, 

as would all future Soviet writing on 

tl1e war during Stalin's lifetime, that 

Stalin had correctly observed the true 

basis for a successful strategy, namely, 

the "permanent operating factors," 

which were stability, morale, and quantity and quality of manpower and 

equipment. These, according to the 

newspaper, far outweighed the "tem43\Ninston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1950), pp. 328- 32; Embassyorlhe 

USSR. Washington. D.C., Information Bulletin No. I, 3 

Jan 42. 

135 

porary factors," such as surprise, on 

which tl1e Germans had relied." 

The counteroffensives brought to an 

end the evacuation of industries, made 

it possible to concentrate on developing u1e war economy, and in places, 

such as the Moscow region and the 

Donets Basin, made it possible to resume production in areas that had 

been evacuated. Weapons and ammunition production thereby increased during the first quarter of 

1942. On the other hand, these successes of the new year retrieved very 

little of what had been lost. Moscow's 

gross industrial output in January 1942 

was two-thirds less than it had been in 

June 1941. The Moscow Basin coalfield 

east of Tula, which before the war had 

yielded 35,000 tons of coal a day, in 

January 1942 yielded less than 600 tons 

a day. An equally drastic decline occurred in the Donets Basin. In comparison with the first six months of 

1941, electricity output from January to 

June 1942 would be down by nearly 

half, coal by nearly two-tl1irds, and pig 

iron and steel by close to threequarters. 45 

At Leningrad, in the dead of winter, 

one of t11e war's bitterest tragedies had 

begun. Two million civilians-men, 

women, and children-and the troops 

of two armies were trapped between 

the Finnish front, ten miles to the 

north , and the German from, somewhat closer on tl1e SOUtl1. New Year"s 

Day was the 123d day of this siege. 

Ti'ucks had begun to travel across the 

""Pravda, January 1, 1942. See also G. F. AIeksa ndm\', Cl a!., losif Vissarionov ich Slalin, KraIJ((jJa b;ogmji)'o, 2d ed. (Moscow: Izdmelst\'o Politicheskoy Lilcratu!"y, 1949), p. \95. 

45/VMV; vol. I V, p. 326; Voznescnskiy, EC01WIIlY if the 

USSR, pp. 30- 32; Tyushkevich, \borul.hf'1H1ye sily, p. 

269. 
136 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

BEFORE A S,GN READING. "DEFEND Moscow! FOR YOURSELVES AND FOR THE WHOLE 

SoVIET PWPLE." Wlmen Wlrk on Artilll!1Y Shells 

ice on Lake Ladoga on 22 November, 

but in the first weeks it was a perilous 

trip. A two-ton truck could not carry 

more than two or three hundred 

pounds added weight, and many broke 

through the ice. Moreover, as long as 

the Germans held the railroad through 

1ikhvin, all the supplies going across 

the lake had to make a long, roundabout, overland trip by truck from the 

interior. 

The December victory at 1ikhvin 

had saved Leningrad, but it came too 

late to prevent a winter of misery, starvation, and death. The railroad 

through T ikh vin was single-track, 

much of which , a long with several 

bridges, had been destroyed during 

the fighting. When the first train 

passed through to Volkhov and Voibokalo Stalion on I January, its benefit 

was mostly psychological. The fre ight 

still had to be hauled thirty miles to the 

lake shore by truck over a snow-covered, makeshift road and then across 

the ice, and the traffic control was not 

organized. The city's food stocks, including such marginal substances as oil 

cake, bran , and Rour mill dust, had 

been exhausted in mid-December, and 

the population thereafter subsisted on 

the supplies that came across tl,e lake 

each day. The daily minimum freight 

requirement was 1,000 tons of provisions, not including gasoline, ammunition , and other military supplies. A 

good day's haul in December after the 

railroad was opened was 700 to 800 

tons, never 1,000, and it always included one-third or more inedible sup-
HITLER AND STALIN 

plies. At the turn of the year, the 

civilians particularly were not just 

going hungry; they were starving and 

dying in rapidly growing numbers; and 

a third of the work force was too weak 

LO work. 46 

The Soviet Union had gained a reprieve, not a release, from destruction. 

The enemy had clearly underestimated 

the Soviet capacity to absorb punishment and to keep on fighting, and he 

had compounded his error by drifting 

into a winter campaign for which he 

was totally unprepared. He was 

trapped in a raw struggle with the 

elements that drained his strength and 

neutralized his advantages in military 

skill and experience. For the first time 

in the war, the initiative, the precious 

ability to make an opponent fight on 

one's own terms, had slipped from his 

grasp. To the Soviet Union it was a gift 

beyond price. It could not be refused , 

but it did not come free. It exacted a 

mortgage on the future: next year's 

armies with next year's equipment were 

marching into the winler's snow, and 

winter, though powerful, was a temporary ally. In four months the snow 

would melt and the ground would 

thaw. Then a balance would be cast. 

How it would read would depend on 

how the intervening four months had 

been used. That was the Soviet strategic problem. 

S ta lin's S tra tegy 

On Il December 1941 , the Stav ka. 

instructed Marshal Timoshenko , as 

Southwestern Theater commanding gen-

~6Dilllilri Pa\]O\', Ltlllllgmd 194 1 (Chicago: Uni,'crsill of Chicago Press. 1965). pp. 136-51; Ha'Tison E. 

Salisbuq. Tlu 900 Da)'s (New York: Harper & Row. 

1969). pp. 412- 15: IVOVSS, vol. 11. p. 334. 

137 

eral, to plan a winter operation by 

Southwest and South Fronts that would 

smash the Army Group South right 

Rank and restore the entire Donets 

Basin to Soviet control. On the following day, in Moscow, Stalin and Marshal 

Shaposhnikov, chief of the General 

Staff, instructed General Meretskov 

and General Ley tenant M. S. Khozin, 

the commanding general of Leningrad 

Front, also to prepare a winter offensive 

on the north Rank. Meretskov was appointed to command a newly created 

I0lklwv Front, which, with Fourth, Fiftysecond, Fifty-ninth, and Second Shock Armies, would occu py a line from Kirishi 

on the Volkhov River thirty-five miles 

south of Lake Ladoga to Lake limen. 

Meretskov and Khozin were to employ 

their forces to destroy the Germans 

besieging Leningrad and to liberate the 

city." 

During the night of 5 January 1942, 

the Politburo met with members of the 

Stavka to consider a projected general 

offensive. It was to consist of a continuing and expanded drive in the center and offensives to liberate Leningrad, the Donets Basin, and the 

Crimea. nvo of the offensives, in the 

center and on the Crimea, were already in progress; and the Stavka 

scheduled the other two to begin in two 

days (on the north Rank) and within 

two weeks (on the south Rank)." Stalin, 

who, as always, presided , said, "The 

Germans are in confusion as a result of 

their setback at Moscow. They are 

47 A. A. Grechko. Gody VOY rly (Moscow: Voycnnoye 

I zdatclstvo, 1976). p. 85: K. A. MercLSkov, "No vol. 

kllQvskikh nLbel.hakh," liryeull.o-islm7cheskiy ZIwnw{, I 

(1965), 54f. 

48Merclskov, "Na lIOlkhavshikh nlbezhakh," p. 184: I. 

Kh. Bagramyan, Talc shli my Ie pobede (Moscow: VoyenlIoye Izdalelslov, 1977), p. 10. 
138 

badly prepared for winter. Now is the 

best moment to go over to the general 

offensive."" General Zhukov spoke 

against the general offensive, arguing 

that the entire effort shou ld concentrate in the center where the Germans 

were off-balance and should not divert 

to the Aanks where they were solidly 

dug-in . Nikolai Voznesenskiy, a member of the State Defense Committee 

and the chief of war production, added 

that there would not be enough weapons and ammunition to sustain offensives on a ll fronts. Finally, Stalin 

observed , "We must pound the Germans to pieces as soon as possible so 

they won't be able to mount an offensive in the spring"; and when no one 

else asked to speak, he adjourned the 

meeting. Afterward, Shaposhnikov 

told Zhukov he should not have argued 

because "the su preme commander had 

that question settled." When Zhukov 

asked why then had his opinion been 

sought, Shaposhnikov replied, "That, 

my dear fellow, I do not know."50 

Soviet postwar assessments of the 

idea of the general offensive vary. 

Zhukov regards it as a mistake brought 

on by the optimism that the success at 

Moscow had generated in Stalin's 

mind.51 At the Twentieth Party Congress, Zhukov cited the general offensive as evidence of Stalin's obsession 

with "ceaseless frontal attacks and the 

capture of localities o ne after the 

other."" One account treats it as an 

accident that occurred in late December 1941 when the Moscow countemffensive "transformed itself~ into a 

Zhllkov, Memoirs, p. 352; IVMV, vol. I V, p. 306. 

:l°Zhuko\" Memoirs, pp.352- 53. 

:' llbid .. p. 352. 

uC<Jngressimwl Record. 4 Jun 56, p. 9395. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

general offensive. 53 The History of the 

c,'ul/ Patriotic Wtr states: 

The Soviet Supreme High Command calcu lated that the defeat which had been 

inAiCLcd on the German-Fascist troops in 

the course of the counteroffensive had 

created the necessary prerequisites for the 

Red Army's fulfillment of this task. The 

Soviet Command's certainty of success was 

based on the high morale of the Soviet 

people and the Red Army, on the uninterruptedly growing possibilities of the Soviet 

economy, and on the steady rise of the 

strength and military mastery of the Soviet 

troops. 4 

The History of the Second l%T!d War 

hedges its comment as follows: 

The Soviet leadership'S certainly of success 

in the general offensive was based on we 

high morale of the troops, on the en- hanced possibilities of the Soviet war economy. and on the increased numbers and 

military skill of the troops. As subsequent 

events demonstrated, however, to support 

simultaneous offensives by all the Jronts 

fully, larger reserves and more armament 

were required than the Soviet Union possessed at this time. 5 5 

The Popular Scientific Sketch says that 

"the planning of such grandiose missions" did not conform "to the capabilities of the Soviet Army and Navy 

at thallilne."56 

Soviet sources attribute the Aaw in 

the concept of the general offensive to 

the absence of a significant Soviet. numerical advantage. By the Soviet count, 

the troop strengths (4.2 million men , 

Soviet, and 3.9 million, German and 

Allied) were almost eq ual. The GerS3 1~ A . Zhilin. ed .. Va weysh)'eoperatsiy Velikoy Otrcli est1!nl1wy \irytly (Moscow: Voyennoye Izdalelstvo, 1956), 

p, 142, 

VOVSS. \'0 1. II, p. 317. 

~sIVMV, vol. IV, p. 306. 

S6VOV, p. 122. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

mans are said to have had an advantage in mortars and artillery pieces 

(35,000 to 27,000) while the Soviet 

forces had an advantage in tanks (1 ,784 

to 1,500) and in reserves (14 divisions 

and 7 brigades to 8 divisions and 6 

brigades). According to the His/my of 

the Second HfJrld War, the Russians were 

counting mostly on an increase in their 

strength and a decline in the Germans' 

as the offensive progressed. These figures, however, do not reRect the whole 

Soviet status, particularly concerning 

reserves. At the beginning of the 

1941 - 1942 winter campaign, which includes the Moscow counteroffensive 

(and perhaps also the efforts at Rostov 

and Tikhvin), the Stavka had total reserves of 123 divisions, 31 brigades, and 

16 independent regiments. During the 

campaign it created or rebuilt 128 divisions, 158 brigades, and 209 independent regiments. Of the total of 665 

units (251 divisions, 189 brigades, and 

225 independent regiments), the 

Stavka committed only 181 (99 divisions, 82 brigades, and no independent regiments) during the winter 

campaign. 57 

The Missions 

The general offensive would set in 

motion nine of the ten Soviet Fonts, 

that is, all of those between the Gulf of 

Finland and the Sea of Azov. The one 

not included was Karelia.n FlVnt, which 

was holding the line from Lake Onega 

nortl1 to the Barents Sea. Four massive 

encirclements were to be accomplished 

initially: one southeast of Leningrad on 

a north-south span of 150 miles, one 

~11\ 'M\~ \'01. IV, p. 305: Golubovich. "SvuLalli),(I stratfgirhe ~kikh.'· p. 17. 

139 

west of Moscow spanning over 200 

miles, and one reaching west 120 miles 

from the Donets River near Izyum to 

Dnepropetrovsk and thence south, 

about again as far, to the vicinity of Melitopol. Liberation of the Crimea, already begun, constituted the fourth 

miSSion. 

The main force for the offensive in 

the nortl1 around Leningrad was the 

Volklwv Hunt. It had two new armies, 

Fifty-ninth, which was brought forward 

from the Stavka reserve , and Second 

Shock, which was the Twenty-sixth Am.y 

renamed and shifted from the reserve 

in the Moscow area. Meretskov's other 

two armies, FouI·th and Fifty-second, had 

been engaged at Tikhvin and stayed in 

action there until late December 

against the Germans retreating to the 

Vo1khov River. Leningrad Front would 

be able to take to the offensive only 

with one army, Fifty-fouTth, which was 

on the east face of the bottleneck, between Lake Ladoga and Kirishi. 

The tactical plan , and apparently almost all otl1er segments of the general 

offensive were worked out by the General Staff under Stalin's supervision 

and given to the fronts for execution. 

Meretskov's assignment was to cross the 

Volkhov with Second Siwek and Fi!tysecond and, after they had broken 

through the German front, to send 

Second Siwek Army on a wide sweep 

north toward Leningrad while Fiftysecond Army pushed south to Novgorod 

and then turned west to Luga. Fiftyjourth Army was to bea r in toward 

Leningrad south of Lake Ladoga. 58 

The most unusual role in the general 

5~ Meretsko\'. Sn"illg lhe Proplf, p. 180; IVMV, vol. 

IV, p. 314: Merelskov, "No volkhovskikh rube1.hakh," p. 

55. 
140 

offensive went to General Kurochkin's 

Northwest Front. Prior to the offensive, 

Kurochkin had three armies, Eleventh, 

Twenty-seventh, and Thirtyfourth. During 

the past fall their function had been to 

tie together the Leningrad-Tikhvin 

and Moscow sectors of the front by 

holding a line across the almost roadless stretch of swamp and forest from 

the southeastern tip of Lake limen to 

Ostashkov. For the general offensive, 

Kurochkin was given the newly activated Thi,'d Shock Anny, and his 1iuentyseventh A1'IIly was rebuilt with units from 

the reserves and renamed Fourth Siwek 

A1'IIlY, and his front was given three 

missions. On the north, Eleventh Anny 

was to drive west along the south shore 

of Lake limen and past Staraya Russa 

to Dno, then turn north and join FiftyseClJnd Anny's advance on Luga. On the 

south, Third and Fou,·th Shock Am,ies 

were to break through near Ostashkov 

and make two, long, parallel thrusts to 

the west and south, Third Siwek going 

via Kholm to Velikiye Luki and FouTth 

Siwek past Toropets and Velizh to Rudnya. At Rudnya, Fourth Shock Anny 

would have Army Group Center halfencircled and would stand about thirtyfive miles northwest of Bock's headquarters in Smolensk. Between the two 

thrusts would be left what remained of 

the German Sixteenth Army 's main 

force, which Thirtyfourth Anny was to 

"pin down" at its center around 

Demyansk 59 

The "western direction ," that is, west 

of Moscow and opposite Army Group 

Center, was the designated area of the 

main effort in the general offensive. 

~9 . Zhelano\" " / z Op)'la /lervo)' QPera lsli 110 

okruzlu1Iiy'," ·en ll Q-is oncluskl ~ ZllIlrtllll, 12( 1964 ). 

20--22 ; I VOVSS, vol. II, p. 32 1: I VM V, "01. I V, p. 3 14 . 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

What the Stavko proposed was to execute two envelopments, an outer one 

aimed at Smolensk and an inner one 

that would close at Vyazma. The inner 

envelopment would be accomplished 

by the operations Kalinin Front and West 

Front already had under way, the former going via Rzhev and Sychevka to 

Vyazma and the latter, from Kaluga 

past Yukhnov to Vyazma. In addition 

to those, the Stavka projected a vertical 

envelopment to be carried out by the 

IV Airborne Corps, which would be 

landed souu"vest of Vyazma in position to cut the Smolensk-Vyazma railroad"O The outer envelopment would 

trap whatever was left of the Ninth, 

Third Panzer, Fourth Panzer, and 

Fourth Armies and would push the 

front at least another seventy-five miles 

away from Moscow, if not all the way to 

the Dnepr-Dvina line. 

While Fourth Siwek Anny could be expected to provide the northern sweep 

of an outer enveloplnenl, what was to 

be done on the south was, apparently, 

much less certain . The Histmy of the 

c"eat Patriotic Wm' states that originally 

Bryansk Front was to carry out "the deep 

envelopment of the enemy . .. which 

was operatin g before Moscow" by 

reaching a line from Bryansk to Sevsk 

and sending a force to Sumy. T hat 

would have turned B'ryansk Hunt to the 

southwest, behind Second Panzer and 

Second Armies, rather than the northwest, but, a ccording to the History, 

"more mod era te tasks had to be assigned" to the front because the Stavka 

could not supply it with ule reinforcements it would have required. Therefore , Bryans" Front was ordered to 

collaborate with the two right flank ar6°/VMV, \'01. IV. p. 307. 
HITLER AND STALIN 

mies of Southwest F.-ont, For-tieth and 

7wentyjirst Armies, to capture Ore! and 

Kursk. 61 The H istmy of the Second Wo,-ld 

War gives Bryansk Fmnt's mission as having been to cover West Front on the 

south by active operations toward Orel 

and Br ya nsk 62 Moskalenko says 

Bryansk Front, together with FOTtieth 

Army, was to advance to Bryansk, Ore!, 

Sevsk , and Sumy and, thereafter, "depending on conditions, operate toward 

Smolensk and westward."63 What appears to have happened is that Bryans" 

Front, like Northwest F1'Ont, was given 

missions in two directions, one toward 

Smolensk and the other toward Ore!, 

Sevsk, and Sumy, and not given the assured strength to complete either one. 

Bryansk Hunt's being under the Southwestem Theater; however, added a complication for limoshenko who a lso had 

a second Inission in another direction . 

The History of the Creat Patriotic WaT 

gives the original objectives on the 

south Aank, for the Southwestem TheateT 

forces, as having been to retake the Donets Basin and advance to the line of 

the Onepr River. These plans, it says, 

also had to be "moderated" and, consequently, were changed to an assignment to Southwest Fmnt, under General 

Ley tenant F. Ya. Koste nko , to tak e 

Kharkov and one to South Front, under 

General Ley tenant R. Ya. Malinovskiy, 

to advance from the Oonets near 

lzy um to Onepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye on the Onepr"4 Bagramyan, 

Grechko, and Moskalenko, however, 

describe more extensive long-tenn 1l1is61 /VOVS5, vol. " , p. 339. 

62IVM\~ vol. IV, p. 307. 

63Moskalenko, Na )lllgo-zfI/Jadllom na/JrmrP/(,lIii, p. 

134. 

61/1/0\lS5, voL 11. pp. 339- 40. See also IVMV, vol. 

IV. p. 387. 

141 

sions. Bagramyan says South F1'Ont was 

to have encircled First Panzer Army, 

and parts of Seventeenth Army, in tile 

Oonets Basin by driving to tile Sea of 

Azov and cutting off their retreat 

routes to the west. Moskalenko says tile 

advance was to have gone south past 

Zaporozhye to Me!itopol and tllat the 

plans included a late winter push to tile 

lower Onepr and a spring campaign 

across the river to take Nikopol, Krivoy 

Rog, and Nikolayev. 65 Grechko states 

the intent as having been "to improve 

th e operational-strategic position of 

our forces in the entire Southwestem 

Theater; to force the enemy to give up 

the Crimea and the territory east of the 

lower Dnepr River, and to make it possible for our troops to cross the Onepr 

and to carry their later operations in 

the directions of Kiev and Odessa."·· 

Tmnscaucasus Front, having been 

charged with liberating the entire 

Crimea in December, submitted a plan 

on 2 January. In it, Kozlov projected 

thrusts from tile vicinity of Feodosiya 

to Perekop and Simferopol and landings at Alushta, Yalta, Yevpatoriya, and 

Perekop. The Independent Mar-itime 

Army had orders to attack to the northeast out of the north face of the 

Sevastopol perimeter. 67 

In sum, the Stav/w, indeed, planned 

a general offensive. It appears to have 

been designed specifically not to leave a 

single German army untouched. Its execution would a lso involve practically 

all of the Soviet front and army commands, most of which had little or no 

experience in conducting offensives. 

6[,Bagramyan. 7i.lk sltli Illy k pobf'de, p. 8: Moskalenko, 

iVa yugo-WJ)(UIIlOIll napmvlmii, p. 134. 

66Cl'cchko, God)' wyn)', p. 86. 

6,/VOVSS, vol. II , pp. 343-44; /VMV, vol. IV, p. 

390; Vaneyev, Geruirheska),a obO/vlla, p. 204. 
142 

On 10 January, the Stavka sent allfronts 

and armies a directive on the principles 

of offensive operations. In part, it 

read: 

IL is necessary that our forces learn how 

to break through the enemy's defense line, learn how to b,"eak through the full depth 

of the enemy's defenses and open routes of 

advance for our infantry, our tanks, and 

Qllr cavalry. The Germans do not have a 

single defense line; they have and can 

quickly build two and three lines. If our 

forces do not learn quickly and thoroughly 

how to break enemy defense lines our forward advance will be impossible. 

What is necessary to guarantee breaking 

through the enemy defense lines in their 

full depth? 

To do that two conditions are necessary 

above all: first, it is necessary for our armies, fronts, and divisions . . . to adopt the 

practice of concentrating in a single direction, and, second, it is necessary to convert 

the so-called artillery preparation into an 

artillery offensive. 

An offensive will have the best effect if 

we concentrate the larger part of our 

forces against those of the enemy on one 

sector of the front. To do that it is necessary for each army to undertake to break 

through the enemy defenses, to set up a 

shock group of three to four divisions, and 

to concentrate the attack on a specific part 

of the front." 

This was good advice but, on its face, 

somewhat elementary for senior com68Grechko, Cody lKIJUY, pp. 91 - 92. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

mands embarking on a major offensive. Actually, however, for most of the 

commands that received it, it was far 

from being redundant. Vasilevskiy says 

the General Staff regarded the instructions, which were Stalin's idea, as "extremely important," although in some 

respects "insufficient."69 The Hist01Y of 

the CTea.t PatTiotic WaT states that the 

guidance was based on the experience 

of the 1941 counteroffensives and was 

intend ed to correct "serious operational and tactical deficiencies in troop 

operations."'· Grechko says that 

"owing to lack of strength and of experience in directing offensive operations, our commands did not always 

mass strength and effort at the point of 

breakthrough and , consequently, did 

not fulfill their assignments. Many 

commanders attempted to organize simultaneous attacks in several directions. This dispersed the strength and 

effort along the front and did not produce the required superiority over the 

enemy in the direction of the main 

blow."" In the general offensive, then, 

the commands were going to be expected to apply a body of operational 

doctrine man y of them had not yet 

mastered. 

69Vasilcvs ki y, Dew, p. 169. 

70/VOVSS, vol. II, p. 318. 

7LGrechko, Cody ooYlly, p. 9 1. 
CHAPTER VIII 

The General Offensive 

On the North Flank 

The Army C1T)u.p North F1T)nt 

Army Group North finished the retreat from "r.khvin on the day after 

Christmas. On the situation maps its 

front appeared as a rough right angle 

with the transverse on the north running east and west and the vertical on 

the· east and oriented north and south. 

Eighteenth Army held the front on the 

north. West of Schluesselburg on Lake 

Ladoga at the head of the Neva River 

the front had not changed since September; an arc around Leningrad 

touched the Gulf of Finland 3 miles 

south of the city; and a second around 

Oranienbaum terminated on the coast 

50 miles west of Leningrad. East of 

Schluesselburg the so-called bottleneck, which had almost been eliminated during the drive to TIkhvin, had 

reappeared in the retreat. From a 10-

mile-wide hold on Lake Ladoga the 

front dropped off abruptly south for 10 

miles and then veered southeastward to 

the Volkhov River and the junction 

with Sixteenth Army on the river near 

Kirishi. (Map 10.) Under his Headquarters, Eighteenth Army, General Kuechler had seventeen divisions. 

Sixteenth Army's 200-mile-long front 

facing due east tied in on the Volkhov 

south of Kirishi and followed the river 

to L~ke limen. Taking up again south 

of the lake, it bulged eastward to the 

Valdai H ills east of Demyansk and then 

followed a chain of lakes south to the 

army group boundary near Ostashkov. 

The Sixteenth Army commander, General Busch, had eleven divisions, five 

north of Lake limen and six south of it. 

For Army Group North on the defensive, Lake limen was a far more 

significant reference point than the 

boundary between the two armies. The 

25-mile-wide lake divided the army 

group's front on the east almost exactly 

in two. Novgorod, at ti,e lake's northern tip and just barely inside the German line, controlled lateral roads and 

railroads running north all the way to 

the bottleneck. Tactically the front 

north of the lake cove red the rear of 

the line around Leningrad and the 

Oranienbaum pocket. It did that at a 

distance of 10 miles at the bottleneck 

and 60 miles midway on the Volkhov 

River. At the south end of the lake, 

Staraya Russa, 10 miles behind the 

front, straddled the sole railroad and 

the main road servicing the south 

Rank. From the lake to the army group 

boundary and beyond and from the 

front in the Valdai Hills west for 130 

miles stretched an expanse of tangled 

rivers, swamps, and forest in which the 

most important points were the road 

junctions at Demyansk, Kholm, and 

Toropets, each 50 or more miles distant 

from one another and from Staraya 

Russa. 
Narv. " 

Pskov 

MAP 10 

SIXl: ENTH 

ARMY 

Dno 

LAKE 

LADOGA 

lIIe elburg ./' 

1 .-------::-: "- VI'ltiokalo \I, fl<hov 

"",,:,,~.l.,,_-"\ Slallon 

\ 

\ 54th 

THE SOVIET 

GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

NORTH FLANK 

6 January - 22 February 1942 

- --- Front tine, 6 Jan 

~ 

000 00 '"00 Front line, 22 Feb 

Soviet a!tack 

? L ____ -~50 Miles , I 

o 50 Kilometer. 

VOLKHOV 

FRONT 

, 

, 

/ __ 4th Shock 22d 

/.. ---- -------

NINTH 

ARMY 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

Meretslwv's First Attempt on the 'lfJlklwv 

After the new year, in paralyzing 

cold Soviet bids to squeeze a last advant~ge out of the drive from likhvin 

by probing across the Volkhov River 

declined and then stopped completely 

on 4 January. Field Marshal Leeb, 

Army Group North commander, reported a quiet day on the 4th along his 

whole front, the first such In many 

weeks, but he hardly expected the respite to last long. For several days the 

army group's monitors had been pICking up radio traffic new to themfrom Second Siwek Army. The only real 

question, as Leeb saw it, was whether 

the Russians would try again on the 

Volkhov or regroup to the north and 

attempt to take the shorter route to 

Leningrad across the bottleneck: they 

would certainly do one or the other.' 

On the Soviet side, of course, the 

decision had already been made on a 

larger scale than Leeb suspected, and 

the Stavka had sent L. Z. Mekhlis, the 

army's chief commissar, to 'lfJlklwv Front 

to make certain that General Meretskov 

got an early start. Meretskov had, by 

6 January, deployed Fifty-ninth and 

Fourth Armies on the Volkhov between 

the Leningrad-Moscow railroad and 

Kirishi and Second Shock and Fiftysecond Armies south of the railroad. Second Siwek Army, under General Leytenant N. K. Klykov, was to break 

through across the Volkhov and advance northwest toward Lyuban with 

Fifty-ninth and Fourth Armies giving it 

support on the right and Fifty~second 

A,·my widening the breach on Its left 

and taking Novgorod . Fiftyfou,·th Army, 

W . Cr. Nord, 10 Kril'gs(agebllch, 1.-18./.42. I-4Jan 

42. H . Gr. Nord 75128 /5 file: Le eb. Ta -

gl'bllrhOlifwdwlIIIgclI, pp. 428- 29. 

145 

which belonged to Leningrad Front, and 

the right flank elements of Fourth A~"'I~, 

starting from the area around Kmshl, 

were to surround and wipe out the 

Germans in the bottleneck.' 

On the whole north flank , that is, 

including Northwest and Leningrad 

Fronts the Russians had comfortable 

num~rical su periorities: 1.5: 1 in troops, 

1.6: I in artillery and mortars, and 1.3: I 

in aircraft. 'lfJlklwv Front had received 

new troops and supplies, but in the first 

week of January, Meretskov did not yet 

have enough of either to start an offensive. Fifty-ninth Army, with apparentl~ at 

least eight rifle and two cavalry dIVIsions, was his strongest. Many of Second 

Shock Army's units, on the other hand , 

had not yet arrived, and, according to 

Meretskov, its one rifle division and 

seven rifle brigades gave it only the 

strength of an infantry corps. The armies' reserves of rations and fodder 

were small, and they had only about a 

quarter of tl1eir required ammunition 

stocks. In these respects, Second Shock 

and Fifty-ninth Armies were the worst off 

because supplies were distributed from 

the rear separately to each individual 

army, not through the front, and these 

armies were just establIshing their 

lines.

3 

Nevertheless, on the 7th , the front 

nortl1 of Lake llmen came to life, and 

the offensive started-in a somewhat 

loose order. Fourth and Fifty-second A,·-

mies led off, and Fifty-ninth and Second 

Siwek Armies joined in at intervals during the next several days:' For five days, 

the Germans stood off flurnes of atf Mcr'Clskm'. Sm,ing thl' Prol)i" pp. 180-86. 

3/VO\lSS, vol. II. p. 333: Mcretskov. Smmlg Ihe 

Prople. pp. 185. 187. Sec also /VMV, vol. IV. map 10. 

4/VMV, vol. I V. p. 3 15. 
146 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

SOVI ET 152-i\IM. GUN-HoWITZER FIRING NORTH OF L AKE ILM EN 

tacks conducted without much determination or, as far as they could tell, 

purpose. The danger was that one or 

another of the Soviet armies would 

strike a weak spot, of which there were 

several. On the morning of the 13th, 

that happened when Second Shock Anny, 

making its first real effort, brought 

down a heavy artillery barrage and 

then hit the boundary of the 126th and 

215th Infantry Divisions south of the 

railroad. Boundaries were always difficult to defend , and this one was more 

difficult because the l26th Infantry Division was a recent arrival to the Eastern Front. In a day, a gap four miles 

wide opened between the two divisions. 

Second Shock Army had almost executed 

the first stage of its assignment, but, 

during two more days of fighting, it 

was unable to open the gap wider' 

Something, much in fact, was going 

wrong on the Soviet side. On the 15th, 

Fourth Army and Fifty-second Army 

stopped and went over to the defensive. The History of the Great Patriotic War 

says, "There were serious defects in the 

organization of the offensive, such as 

the dispersion of the forces in many 

directions .... "6 On the 16th, Meretskov stopped to regroup. 

South of Lake Ilmen 

As the Germans watched Volkhov 

Front get off to a ragged start, they 

began to believe the actual Soviet main 

'/-I . cr, Nord, /a Krieg5tllgdmch, 1.-18.1.42, 13-16 

.Ian 42, 1-1. Gr. Nord 75128/5 file. 

6IVOVSS, vol. II. p. 335. 
T HE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

effort was going to be south of Lake 

lime n, wher e Gen er a l Kurochkin's 

Northwest Front also began the offensive 

on 7 January. Late in the day on the 

7th , Sixteenth Army outposts on the 

south shore of the la ke saw Soviet 

motor convoys and ski troops with 

sleds coming southwest across the lake. 

In the wilderness south of the lake, in 

fact over most of the distance to the 

army group bounda ry, Sixteenth Army 

had only established a line of strongpoints, not a solid fro nt. By daylight 

the next day, two Soviet di visions were 

across the lake and beginning to push 

south ten miles behind the front. On 

the 9th , whil e Sixteenth Army scraped 

togethe r a few batta lions to screen Staraya Russa , Russians on skis and pulling sleds moved south along the frozen 

course of the Lova t River to the Staraya 

Russa-Demyansk road . 

Eleventh A rmy was begi n n in g to carry 

out its share in the counteroffensive, 

and Leeb and Busch saw at o nce that 

the a rmy could be dangerous. Staraya 

Russa , close behind the front, was the 

railhead and main su pply base for all of 

Six teenth Army's line south of Lake 

limen and an Eleventh Army thrust past 

Staraya Russa to Dno, eighty mil es to 

the west, could crippl e the German 

lateral ra ilroad and road communi cations all the way nonh to Leningrad.' 

West of Ostashkov, o n Sixteenth 

Army's extreme right Rank, Third and 

FOllrth Siwek Annies went over to the 

offensive on the 9th . Their attack hit 

two regiments of the l23d Infantry 

Division which were holding a thirtymil e-long line of widely spaced stro ngpoints running north from the army 

group boundar y. Many of the strong7Lccb, Jilg"blldwu!u;ch,llIlIgm, p. 431 . 

147 

points were so far apa rt that the first 

Soviet waves simply marched west between them. In three days all of the 

stro ngpoints were wiped o ut and a 

thirty-mile-wide ga p had been crea ted . 

T h e brea kthro ug h o n the south 

ra ised the immediate prospect of an 

encirclement that seemed to be the 

onl y worthwhile purpose the Soviet initiative could se rve. 8 Kurochkin had , in 

fact, "amended" his instructions from 

the Stavka and ord ered Thirty-foul·th 

Anny to become "more active toward 

the west" and Eleventh An ny and Third 

Siwek Anny to dispa tch forces off their 

Ranks to block the line of the LovaL 

River against a Ge rman retrea t." Sixteenth Army was managing to cover 

Staraya Russa by bringing in police and 

security troops from the rear a rea, but 

the re were no reser ves to be had for 

the south Rank. O n the afternoon of 

the 12th , Leeb ordered Busch to have 

II Corps, his southernmost corps and 

the one standing farthest east, to get 

ready to pull back. Then he ca lled 

Hitler and proposed to begin taking 

the whol e front south of Lake limen 

back graduall y to the Lovat. Hitler 

replied that he had to consider the 

effect on the whole front and told Leeb 

to cOme to the FlIehTe1" Headqua rte rs 

the next morning when they wo uld 

"discuss the matte r in its full context." ' 0 

T he "discussio n" was brief and o nesided . Hitler o rdered Leeb to hold the 

line south of Lake limen where it was 

and to scavenge enough strength out 

of the existing front to coun terattac k 

and close the ga p on the south . A 

withdrawa l he sa id would ex pose the 

8Sec ibid. 

'1Zhcla nO\ , M/z. f)/l)'IlI, - p. 23. 

1011. Cr. Nord, fa Kriegs/agebllrh. 1.-/8. 1.42, 12 Jan 

42. H. Gr. Nord 7512815 file. 
148 

Army Group Center flank and that 

would be intolerable. The order had 

been cleared to g? Oul over the teletype 

before Leeb arrIved at Fuehrer Headquarters, and after his departure, Field 

Marshal Keitel, chief of the OK W 

called ahead to the Army Group Nortl~ 

command post in Pskov to leave the 

message that the Fuehrer "would be 

pleased" if Leeb, on his return, would 

personally impress on Busch "the unconditional necessity for holding the 

south flank."" Whatever the necessity, 

Leeb dId not beheve It was possible to 

hold the flank, either before he talked 

to Hitler or after." 

When Leeb returned to Pskov, Third 

Siwek Army was approaching the 

Kholm-Demyansk road. On the 15th 

the Russians were fanning out acros~ the road. Believing the whole front 

south of Lake limen would henceforth 

have to be drawn in toward Staraya 

Russa , Leeb asked either that he be 

relieved or that he be allowed to order 

the retreat while he still had some 

room for maneuver. A clue to what the 

answer would be came through General Halder, chIef of the General Stafr 

who called Lee b's chief of staff, General 

Brennecke, and told him to "put a ll of 

the powers of the General Staff in 

motion ... and extirpate this mania for 

operating. The army group has a clear 

order to hold," H alder added "and th e 

highest command will assun;e all the 

risk. "'3 On the 17th, Hitler relieved 

Leeb "for reasons of health" and appointed Kuechler to command the 

army group. 

II/bid., 13 Jan 42. 

11.Ha/der Dim)'. vol. III , p. 383. 

IlH . G,: Nord, /(1 Kril'gs/age!lIIrh, 1.-/8.1.42, 16 Jan 

42. H . G,', Nord 75128/5 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The "Bmw/" 

For Hitler the lines were drawn. The 

winter's battles on the north nank 

would be fought toe-to-toe wherever 

tI,ey occurred. Hitler had made his 

decision. Army Group North would 

stand fast. 

For the time being, Hitler's instinct 

was better than Leeb's professional 

Judgment. The encirclement Leeb had 

believed imminent did not developnot yet. Eleventh Army had a foothold 

on the Staraya Russa-Demyansk road 

but no more. Third and Fourth Siwek 

Armies we~'e bent on executing the operation laId out for them in December 

namely, to drive a wedge betwee~ 

Army Groups Nortll and Center, but 

both were advancing in two directions 

at once and their "strengths were not 

suffi cient for such assignments."" Like 

Second Shock Anny, they were not the 

powerful aggregations of combined 

arms that their designations implied. 

General Eremenko, who had been 

wounded in October 1941 while commanding Bryansk Front and had taken 

over FO!l1·tI, Siwek Anny after he returned from the hospital in December, 

had been short 1,000 officers and 

20,000 enlisted men when the offensive began . His table of organization 

had provIded for three tank and ten ski 

battalions. One of the tank battalions 

and five ski ballalions had then not 

arrived. Eremenko had been relatively 

beller off tI,an h,s colleague at Third 

Siwek Army, General Ley tenant M. A. 

Purkayev, because Fourth Shod, had the 

former 7iventy-sroenth Army as a basis on 

wh Ich to build. Thin/ Shod, A rmy was 

new from the ground up and could 

HZhcbnov, ~1z. np)'lli. ~ p. 23. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

only be made read y at the last minute 

by transfers of personnel from Fourth 

Shock Army, which also had to share its 

supplies. On the day the offensive began, both armi es had been close to the 

edge in ratio ns and ammunition , and 

the only gasoline Fourth Shock Army had 

was that which was in its vehicles' 

tanks. 15 

On 21 January, Fowrth Shock Army 

took Toropets, and a day later Third 

Siwek encircled Kholm. The distances 

were ilnpressive, sixty Inil es to 

Toropets, fifty-five to Kholm, but the 

substantive accomplishments were less 

so: Both armies had run out of supplIes, and a scattenng of German units 

was still able to hold Kholm. FOllrth 

Shock Army captured enough German 

stores at Toropets to keep on the move, 

but the Stavka 's plan now required 

Eremenko to head due south out of the 

Army Group North area into the rear 

of Army Group Center. On 22 Janua ry, 

T/urd and Fourth Shock Armies were 

shifted to the control of Kalinin Front 

which reduced Kurochkin's problem~ but increased those of the front'S commander, General Konev. l • To the Germans, although it further endangered 

Army Group Center, Eremenko's turn 

south was almost a reli e f. Halder remarked that it was better than if the 

turn had been to the north because 

then holding Leningrad would have 

become impossible. 17 

Seen from the German side, one of 

the most disconcerting features of the 

offensive against Army Group North 

thus far was its errati c execution . His 

Eremellko . l' 'Illchale, pp. 403- 07. 

16/bid., pp. 44 1- 45; I VOVSS, vol. II. p. 322. 

,1f/(Jlder Dillry. vol. III , p. 389. 

149 

GEN ERAL A. I. EREMEN KO 

tactical sensibilities offended, Halcler 

was even moved to complain that the 

whole war appeared to be "degeneratII1g II1to a braw!''' The drive by the two 

shock armies was "senseless" he said 

because .it could not in the' lo ng ru~ accomplIsh anythll1g decisive against 

e ith er of the two Germ an arm y 

groups. IS Unabl e to conceive that the 

Stavka would delibe rately fritter away 

strength 111 secondary attacks, Hitler, 

Halder, and Kuechl er concluded that 

the ma in blow was yet to come and 

would be a imed at the Leningrad bottleneck, where a te n-mile advance 

could break the siege. They were 

wron g. The "brawl" was goi ng to 

contmue. 

IS/bid .. p. 394 . 
150 

Breakthrough on the Volklwv 

I n the week after Volklwv Front's attacks had bogged down north of Lake 

limen, Meretskov had reassessed his 

prospects and had regrouped to exploit a weak spot Second Slwck Anny had 

found on the Volkhov. The Germans 

had managed 'to screen the gap but 

in doing so had had to leave the Russians h oldin g a three-by-five-mile 

bridgehead. On 2 1 January, Second 

Shock Anny, flanked on the left by Fiftysecond Army and on the right by Fiftyninth Army, began battering the western 

face of the bridgehead. The flanking 

armies were drawn in close to roll up 

the enemy front to the south and to the 

north when the breakthrough was 

made. I. In the meantime, the offensive 

had changed from a grand, five-army 

effort to chop up the whole front between Lake Ladoga and Lake limen 

into essentially a single thrust by Second 

Shock Army that was still seventy miles 

from the siege line at Leningrad. 

Second Shock Army did well in the first 

five days of the second attempt, getting 

through the front to a distance of almost twenty-five miles, but in doing so, 

it did not put itself within range of any 

significant objectives. The territory in 

which it was operating was the headwate rs country of the Luga and Tigoda 

rivers, a vast, almost unsettled stretch 

of swamps and peat bogs, that was 

mostly underwater except in winter. 

Having a Soviet army roving behind 

their front was, of course, disconcerting to the Germans, but the greater 

immediate danger was that the flanking armies would widen the breakthrough . Fifty-ninth Army, panicularly, 

~feret ko\ . Sl'rvillg Ihl' Pmpll'. p. 195. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

by pushing nortll as far as Chudovo on 

the Moscow-Leningrad railroad, could 

have opened a 25-mile gap and a clear 

approach a long the railroad to 

Leningrad. But the Germans kept a 

tight grip on Spaskaya Polist, twenty 

miles south of Chudovo, and by also 

tying Fifty-second Army down limited the 

breach to six miles and forced Second 

Shock Amly to operate in a pocket. 20 

A Mutual Frustration 

Vo/hilov and Northwest Hants were, in 

the Soviet postwar view, unable to exploit their numerical superiorities to 

the fullest because of three problems: 

difficult terrain, weaknesses in support, 

and inexperienced commands. Since 

the first affected bOtll sides about 

equall y, the latter two were the most 

significant. Supplies had been short in 

a ll the armies, but Meretskov experienced some improvement at Volkhov 

Front after late January when A. V. 

Krulev, who was the deputy defense 

commissar in charge of logistics, arrived to expedite the shipments. T he 

inexperience of the commands was, 

according to the H istory of the Guot 

Patriotic Wa>; the most persistent problem. Meretskov had already removed 

one commanding general of S econd 

Shock Anny a day or two before the 

offensive began , and later he wrote his 

account of the army's operations that 

reads in places like a roster of fa iled 

staff officers. Eremenko, writing from 

tl,e point of view of an army commander, sees his own and his subordinate staffs as confident and competent, 

and the flOnl command as elaborately 

cautious on the one hand and ca20Sce Iblli. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

pricious on the other'! The Germans 

became aware as the fighting went on 

that the commands of the lower echelons were having troubles. Army 

Group North's radio monitors intercepted messages from army NKVD 

0.0. sections to division and brigade 

sections calling attention to a large increase in "nonfulfillment of combat assignments" and ordering the sections 

to intervene "to reestablish proper 

order among the units."" 

As January ended, the fighting on 

the north Rank appeared to be settling 

into a state of slow motion. Snow over 

three feet deep covered the ground 

and below-zero temperatures persisted, but these were not the reasons 

for the slowdown. Mutual uncertainty 

had simply brought into being a neardeadlock. TI, e Germans' position was 

precarious, and they could do nothing 

to change it. The Russians had the 

initiative, but they could not exploit it. 

South of Lake limen, two German 

corps, II Corps and X Corps, were 

holding an eastward projecting salient 

around Demyansk. The Soviet Elevenlh 

Arm)' had driven a twenty-mile-deep 

wedge into the corps' north Ran k east 

of Staraya Russa that cut tlleir best 

supply routes and made a substantial 

start toward enveloping the salient. On 

the south Rank, II Corps had Third 

Shock Army standing at Kholm fifty 

miles to its rear and Thirt)'-jourlh Ann)' 

probing northward into the mostly vacant space in-between. 

Having no more than a scattering of 

reserves, Sixteenth Army had to thin 

21 /\lOVSS, \'01. J I. p. 338: Merclskov, Serv;'lg the 

Pea/Jle, pp. 196, 199-205. Sec Ercmcnko, V"(lclwle, 

pp. 405-20. 

22/1 . C,: NOI'd, la Kriegstagebllch, /8.1 - 12.2.42, 8 Feb 

42, H . Gr. Nord 75 128/6 file. 

151 

the front on the east to screen the 

corps' Ranks. Its commander, Busch, 

disgruntled at having been passed over 

for command of the army group and, 

as Leeb had been, fearful of an encirclement, wanted to strengthen the 

south flank against an enveloping 

thrust from that direction . Kuechler, 

irked by Busch's clinging to the idea of 

a potential threat on the south Rank 

that had already cost Leeb his command, agreed with Halder that tl,e 

greater danger was on the north. 

Halder insisted that as an old soldier he 

had "a certain nose for such things," 

and it told him the threat was not from 

the south but in the north, specifically 

at Staraya Russa which was the key to 

the entire German position south of 

L,ke IImen '3 

While the argument at the top ran 

on, the troops that 11 and X Corps 

were able to free were just barely 

enough, as long as the enemy moved 

slowly, to keep the Russians from 

swinging in behind the corps. On the 

Volkhov the situation was similar. Eighteenth Army, which had taken over the 

area of the breakthrough, was confident it could deal with Second Slwck 

Anny after it closed the gap in the front, 

but all the troops it could spare were 

having to be used just to keep the gap 

from widening." 

Toward the end of the first week in 

February, Army Group North for several days could report "nothing particularl y wrong. "2, The Soviet offensive 

seemed to be decaying into a succession 

of uncoordinated attacks, some locally 

dangerous, but none likely to alter the 

23/bid" 27 Jan 42. 

Hlbid" 28 Jan 42. 

'l~ bid .. 8 Feb 42. 
152 

situation drastically. For the moment 

Army Group North was almost less 

concerned about the Russians than 

about how its railroads were running. 

The problem was not a new one although the snow and cold had made it 

worse. It could be traced all the way 

back to the planning for BARBAROSSA 

that had left the operating of the railroads in the occupied areas as well as in 

Germany under civilian control. Working on the Eastern Front was the least 

popular of the railroad men's assignments, and there the Army Group 

North zone was apparently the most 

undesirable. The army group believed 

its raillines were being run by the culls 

of the whole system. Halder suggested 

arresting a few and turning them over 

to the Gesta.po as an object lesson for the 

olhers.26 

In Leningrad, time and the weather 

appeared to be working for the Germans. Prisoner-of-war and deserter 

interrogations indicated that Leningrad was in catastrophic condition 

owing to hunger and to cold . Hitler 

urged the army group several times to 

consider taking advanLage of t11e relative quiet on the front and to push in 

closer toward Leningrad , but Kuechler 

. refused because he could not spare 

enough troops to take the city, and any 

line closer than the one Eighteenth 

Army then held would be underwater 

when t11e spring thaw began. The approaching thaw, which could come in 

five or six weeks, also gave rise to speculation that the Soviet winLer offensive 

might be nearing its end. Ha lder 

thought the Russians would not attempt 

anything big so late in the season. 27 

2fi/hu/. 

27lb,,/ .. 9- 10 Feb 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

In the midst of what almost appeared to be an impending calm, Sixteenth Army identified two new Soviet 

units, I and II Gua.nls Rifle Corps, on 6 

February. The two corps were deployed back to back in the wedge Ellmmtl! Army had driven in east of Staraya 

Russa. From this position, the corps 

could split the German front in several 

directions, but for the moment their 

actions did not disclose any particular 

purpose, and they could themselves 

be trapped by an attack across the base 

of the wedge. General Brennecke, the 

Army Group Nort11 chief of staff, saw 

the deployment of the two Russian 

corps as the beginning of a final attempt to cut off II and X Corps around 

Demyansk. Halder, on t11e other hand , 

was puzzled as to what the Russians 

might do. The Soviet commanders 

were so browbeaten , he believed , that 

they would try almost anything just to 

have a tactical success to show. Rather 

than to wait and see what they would 

do, Sixteenth Army decided to strike 

east behind the two Soviet corps with 

the 5th Light Division. The division although fresh from Germany was 

forced to attack directly off the trains 

that brought it in , and half of it was still 

scattered along the ra ilroad as far back 

as Riga. The resu lt of the attack was 

almost instantaneous fai lure, and the 

few parties that had advanced had to 

be brought back under the cover of 

darkness on the night of the IOth. 2 ' 

The Germans' uncertainty had been 

more than matched by complications 

on the Soviet side of the front. I n the 

third week of January, Kurochkin had 

proposed concentrating first on encircling and then destroying II and X 

2~/bid. , 10 Feb 42. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

Corps west of the Lovat, but the Swvka 

had not been willing to delay the projected advance past Staraya Russa toward Dno and Luga. By then it had 

also begun thinking about turning 

Third Siwek Army northwest after it 

reached Kholm for a deep thrust to 

Pskov. Late in the month the Slavka 

had given Kurochkin the 1 and 11 

Guards Rifle Corps and the FiTSt Siwek 

Army with orders to do both the thrust 

to the west and the encirclement. Fint 

Shock Am,y, which had been shipped 

north from the front west of Moscow 

without a rest, was to spearhead the 

attack past Staraya Russa. The two rifle 

corps were to be used against II and X 

Corps, and the area to be encircled was 

much enlarged. Third Siwek Army, in the 

meantime transferred to Kalinin Front, 

would act as the southern arm, and 11 

Guards Rifle Corps would close the ring 

from the north by a long drive west of 

the Lovat to Kholm where it would join 

Third Shock Anny and subsequently take 

part in the advance to Pskov. Although 

it would be starting deep in Kurochkin's territory, 11 Guards Rifle Corps 

was subordinated to Kalinin Front. 29 

North of Lake Ihnen, in the second 

week of February, time was getting 

short. Leningrad was starving, and another four to six weeks could bring the 

mud and Roods of the spring thaw. 

VolkJwv Front had widened the gap 

enough at least to put Second Shock 

Army's supply line out of enemy riRe 

and machine gun range , but the Germans held tight at Spaskaya Polist on 

the crucial north shoulder. Under 

fierce pressure from tlle Stavka to accomplish something toward relieving 

Leningrad, Meretskov tried to get See2!1 Zhelanov. "/z op),la," PI'. 26~28. 

153 

ond Siwek Army aimed toward Lyuban , 

which would put it about halfway to 

Leningrad. Second Siwek Army, however, 

persisted in pushing due west where 

the German resistance was lighter. Neither the presence at thefivnt headquarters of Marshal Voroshilov as a 

representative of tlle Slavka nor the 

relief of Second Shock Anny's chief of 

staff and its operations officer was 

enough to get the army headed in the 

right direction3 • 

Encirclement at Demyansk 

Lyuban and Staraya Russa were 

going to stay in German hands for a 

long time, the latter long enough to 

become a legend on the Eastern Front. 

The winter, and Hitler, however, were 

going to give the Soviet forces their 

first opportunity in the war to execute 

a major encirclement. It was one that, 

once Hitler had tied tlle II and X 

Corps down around Demyansk, the 

Russians could hardly have helped 

ach ieving. The pocket had begun 

forming in the first days of the offensive, and from then on it was almost a 

collaborative work between the Soviet 

commands and Hitler. 

As Eleventh and Thi-rty:fouTth Annies 

turned in behind Demyansk in January, II and X Corps, which had been 

forbidden to maneuver, wrapped their 

lines around to the west. On the south, 

II Corps held Molvotitsy as a cornerpost. The 290th Infantry Division established a northern cornerpost fi fteen 

miles due east of Staraya Russa. By 

retaining the 5th Light Division at Staraya Russa , Sixteenth Army kept alive 

a hope that it cou ld strike across the 

aO Meretskov. Sf'Yving Ihl' Pro/Jle, pp. 196- 98. 
154 

gap to the 290th Infantry Division and 

turn the tables on the enemy, but the 

chances of doing that dwindled after I 

and II Guartis Rifle C01PS and Fint Shock 

Army put in their appearances. One of 

the first effects of the Soviet reinforcement was to compress the 290th Infantry Division's front into a narrow, fingerIike projection off the main line of 

the Demyansk pocket, which was 

pushed away to the south . 

I and II Gum-ds Rifle Corps had the job 

of completing the encirclement, and 

they had instructions on how to do it 

directly from Stalin, who told their 

commanders, General Mayor A. S. 

Gryaznov and General Mayor A. I. 

Lizyukov, "Move in strong groupings, 

and do not stretch out. 1 f you become 

extended, you cannot move fast. Maintain your groupings, and do not divide 

regiments and battalions. Do not lose 

contact with advance detachments."3! 

The instructions were good , but, "as a 

practical matter," the "exceedingly long 

distances" the corps had to cover made 

them "unfulfillable."32 

Since the Germans could not prevent 

it and did not propose to attempt to 

escape from it, completing the encirclement became almost a technicality. The 

II Guan/s Rifle C01PS cut the last German overland supply line on 9 February, and thereafter II Corps, under 

Generalleutnant Graf Walter von 

Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, became responsible for the six divisions in the pocket, 

since Headquarters, X Corps, was located outside, at Staraya Russa. A supply airlift began three days later, and 

Brockdorff reported on the 16th that 

he had 95,000 men in the pocket and 

31Zhelanov. ~1z 0/1),10. H p. 29. 

3'l/bid. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

needed at least 200 tons of supplies a 

day to survive. He was then getting 80 

to 90 tons a day.33 

The 11 Gual-tis Rifle Corps completed 

an outer ring on ]5 February when it 

made contact wilh elements of Thi-rd 

Shock Army northeasl of Kholm."' In 

fact, the Oliler ring had little more than 

token significance, since there were no 

Germans within miles of it over most of 

its length . A much more dismaying 

event for the Germans came on the 

18th, when the 290th Infantry Division 

had lO withdraw into the main line of 

the pocket. Until then the OKH and 

lhe army group had been able to talk 

about launching the 5th Light Division 

east "in a few days."35 Losing the northern cornerpost was also more imporlant to tl,e Germans tllan tl,e closing of 

the inner ring, which they were nOl 

aware of when it happened. Soviet accounts give two dates. The History of lhe 

Great Patriotic War gives 20 February, at 

Zaluchye, just outside the pocket and 

due east of Demyansk 36 Zhelanov says 

the inner encircle ment "adva nced 

slowly" and was not completed until 25 

February, when I Gum'tis Rifle COlj)S 

made contact at Zaluchye wilh a Third 

Siwek A-rmy rifle brigade coming from 

the sou th. 37 

On 22 February, Hitler designated 

the Demyansk pocket a "forLress." The 

next such fOrLress would be SLalingrad , 

and after it there would be many more, 

but in the winter of 1942 the term was 

new. It implied permanence. A Kessel 

33AOK 16, /(1 Kriegs/agelJ/lrh !JlJ1uJ 11 , 9 Feb 42. AOK 

1623468/3 ril e; /-I. Gr. Nord, III Kriegstageburh. /8.1.-

12.2.42, 16 Feb 42.1-1. Gr. Nord 75128/6 file. 

34Zhelanm'. Mh o/I)'ta, M p. 29. 

3~/-I. Cr. NOH!, l a Krirgs/agebll ch, /3 .2.-12.3.42, 

13 - 18 Feb 42. I-I. Gr. No rd 7512817 file. 

:HI/VOVSS, \"01. II , p. 337. 

.11Zhelanov. Mh O/,)'Ill ,M p. 30. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

("encircled pocket") was an accident of 

war. A fortress was a deliberate creation and, in Hitler's conception, a purposeful tactical device. On the 18th he 

had already talked about staging a 

thrust from Demyansk south to close 

the eighty-mile-wide gap to Army 

Group Center. By the 22d he and the 

OKH were mulling over several plans 

for restoring contact with the fortress. 

And the war was giving them time: a 

sudden quiet was falling over the whole 

Eastern Front, which was remarkable 

by itself because 23 February was the 

Day of the Red Army and attacks to 

commemorate it had been expected . 

Around Demyansk the perimeter of 

the pocket stabilized. The gap between 

it and the main front at Staraya Russa 

was twenty miles and somewhat less 

farther south on the Polist River. 

On !.he South Flank 

Bock Goes to PO/lava 

On the morning of l6 January, Field 

Marshal Bock, his intestinal ailment 

abated, was getting ready to follow his 

doctors' advice and take several weeks' 

rest in the Austrian mountains when 

an officer telephoned from the army 

personnel office to ask whether Bock 

would be willing to take immediate 

command of Army Group South. The 

army group commander, Field Marshal 

Reichenau, the caller explained, had 

suffered a stroke and was not expected 

to live. The next day, Bock was aboard 

a dirty, unheated sleeping car on a 

train to East Prussia that was late. He 

stopped on the morning of the 18th at 

the OKH command post in Angerburg, where he learned that Reichenau 

had died, and then went on to a late 

breakfast with Hitler in the V.b/fssclzanze 

l55 

compound. At the table Bock complained about the decrepit state of the 

railroads. Hitler agreed but added that 

he had recently put all the systems 

under the railroad minister and with 

that seemed to imply that he had done 

what was needed . 

Afterward, General Schmundt, 

Hitler's chief adjutant, told Bock that 

the current topic of concern at Fuehrer 

Headquarters was the exodus of the 

generals, not the condition of the railroads. First there had been Field Marshals Runstedt and Brauchitsch, 

Schmundt said, then Generals 

Guderian and Hoepner, and in the last 

few days, Strauss, Leeb, and Reichenau 

had followed. It was causing talk in 

Germany and abroad. To counteract 

the talk, Schmundt disclosed, Hitler 

had sent Brauchitsch, who had recently 

undergone a heart operation, a warm 

telegram, which was being released to 

the news services. Rundstedt was being 

asked to represent the Fueh,·er at 

Reichenau's funeral, and, Schmundt 

added as an aside that Hitler wanted to 

have some pictures taken with Bock 

before he departed to Army Group 

South. 

Bock's main qualification at the moment appeared to be his publicity 

value. His mission, as Hitler explained 

it, hardly seemed to justify his recall. 

The Army Group South front, Hitler 

said , was "secure"; a little "cleaning up" 

needed to be done. But all he really 

expected Army Group South to do was 

sit tight through the winter.'· 

When he alighted at the Poltava airfield on the morning of the 19th, Bock 

found General Hoth there to meet 

him. Hoth , who had commanded 

J8BucH. Dia!)', Ostfu ll. 16- ISJan 42. 
156 

Third Panzer Group in the summer of 

1941, was currently commanding Seventeenth Army, and for the past several days, had been acti ng commander 

of Army Group South. Hoth's presence 

was a modest courtesy. In better times 

and a better season-the temperature 

was several degrees below zero-a field 

marshal could have expected more. On 

the quiet, secure front to which Bock 

had been told he was going, he cou ld 

have expected a more ceremonious 

welcome even in such weather, but the 

front was no longer quiet, and it was 

far from secure. On the ride to Poltava, 

Hoth told Bock that the Russians had 

broken through at Izyum the day before and were streaming westward 

practically unimpeded. The army 

group, Bock also then learned, had no 

reserves. A Rumanian division and two 

German divisions were coming in, but 

the railroads in Russia were infinitely 

worse than what Bock had experienced 

in Germany, and moving the divisions 

would take weeks. 39 

The hymn Bulge 

lzyllln was an insignificant town on 

the Donets River. The lay of the front 

and the objectives of the general offensive had temporarily made it a focal 

point of Soviet strategy. I t was closer 

than any other locality on the front to 

the main southern crossings of the 

Dnepr River, Dnepropetrovsk and 

Zaporozhye. It was the key, as well, to 

the southern approaches to Kharkov 

and a good springboard for a thrust 

into the rear of Seventeenth and First 

Panzer Armies. (Map 11.) 

[n accordance with the Stavka plan, 

. 1!1lbid., 19 Jan 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Marshal 1imoshenko, commander of 

Southwestern Theatel; on 18 January, 

launched two related but separate 

thrusts across the Donets in the Izyum 

area. In one, to be conducted by Southwest Front, Sixth A rmy and VI Cavaby 

C01PS wou ld strike northwest to meet a 

thrust coming west off Thirty- eighth 

Army's right flank and would envelop 

Kharkov. In the other, South h ont's 

Fifty-seventh Anny would advance west 

to Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye 

and then south in the direction of 

Melitopol. Timoshenko held Ninth 

Army as his Southwestern Theater reserve 

and stationed 1 and V Cavaby C01PS 

behind Fifty-seventh Anny as General 

Malinovskiy's South Fl'Ont reserves. Malinovskiy and Timoshenko expected 

General Ley tenant D. 1. Ryabyshev, the 

Fifty-seventh Army commander, to reach 

Bolshoy Tokmak, just nonh of 

Melitopol, in twenty-two to twenty-four 

days.40 

The offensive on the south fl ank was 

simplified somewhat by the early elimination of the other parts of the general offensive origina ll y scheduled in 

the Sou.thwestern Theater. Its prospects of 

succeeding, however, were probably 

also reduced. Bryansk Fmnt and the 

right flank armies of Southwest Front had 

begun their attacks toward Orel and 

Kursk in the first week of January, had 

not made worthwhile ga ins, and were 

winding down to a stop by the middle 

of the month . General Manstein 's 

counterattack on the Crimea turned 

the tables there after 15 January. The 

Crimean Fmnt (Transcauwsu.s Front renamed) was created at the end of the 

4°Grechko, Cody voyny, pp. 86-92; Bttgramyan, 'rak 

shli my k /)()bede, pp. 20- 22 . 
I 

~ 

) 

SIXTH 

ARMY 

MAP 11 

, 

0° ooo:,,:~:!~:~!E?< 00 00 00'1 -~_ 

' .. 

gO 0"0 0"''' 

~OOOO 

.. 

~ .... 

THE SOVIET 

GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

SOUTH FLANK 

16 January - 1 February 1942 

-------Front line, 16 Jan 

oooooo ooo Front line, 1 Feb 

~ Soviet attack 

Miles 

FIRST PANZE ARMY 

-, 

.- SEA OF AZOV 
158 

month and given orders to resume the 

offensive, but it would not be ready 

until the last of February.'! 

Seventeenth Army's left Aank covered Izyum and the loop of the Donets 

and tied in with Sixth Army at Balakleya twenty-five miles to the northwest. On the morning of the 18th, the 

Soviet Fifty-seventh and Sixth Armies 

opened the attack on a sixty-mile front 

Aanking Izyum on both sides from 

Slavyansk to Balakleya. Although the 

ground in the Ukraine was more open 

than that of the northern forest zone, 

the weather and their shortage of 

troops had forced the Germans to resort to a strongpoint line there as well. 

Bypassing some of the strongpoints 

and overrunning others, the Russians 

had penetrated the front in a number 

of places before nightfall , and Seventeenth Army was beginning to evacuate 

hospitals and supply dumps close to 

the line. Before 1200 the next day the 

army had committed its last reserves, 

and by afternoon, one Soviet 

spearhead supported by a brigade of 

tanks was heading toward Barvenkovo, 

twenty miles southwest of Izyum on the 

army's main supply line, the railroad 

from Dnepropetrovsk to Slavyansk . 

Seventeenth Army was being pushed 

away to the east into a pocket on the 

river that could become a trap for both 

it and First Panzer Army if the Soviet 

drive carried through to the Dnepr 

crossings. 42 

By the 22d, Seventeenth Army's entire Aank north of Slavyansk was torn 

away, and Southwest Front units were 

turning behind Sixth Army. General 

~I/VOVSS , vol. II . p. 340, 344 . 

42AOK 17, Fuphnmgsableiillng, Kriegstllgebuch Nr. 2. 

18- 21 Jan 42. AOK Ii 14499/85 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus, 

who had taken command of Sixth 

Army just one week before, had to 

commit all of his reserves around Alekseyevskoye, forty-five miles northwest 

of Izyum, to cover the southern approach to Kharkov. In two more days 

the offensive secured an unanticipated 

dividend: during the night of the 24th, 

Bock decided to bring Panzer Detachment 60 north out of the Crimea that 

meant the end of Manstein's attempt to 

retake the Kerch Peninsula.·3 

Between 22 and 24 January, Malinovskiy committed the I and V Cavalry 

Corps on the left Aank of Fifty-seventh 

Army west of Slavyansk. 44 By the end of 

the day on the 25th, after one week on 

the offensive, the Russians had chewed 

a 3,600-square-mile chunk out of the 

German front and had covered better 

than half the distance from Izyum to 

Dnepropetrovsk. The next morning 

Hoth proposed that Seventeenth 

Army's mission henceforth be to cover 

Dnepropetrovsk. Late in the day he 

told Bock that there were only two 

possibilities left: either a "desperate" 

attack to the west across the line of the 

Soviet advance toward Dnepropetrovsk 

or "quick" action to organize countermeasu res with resou rces from elSewhere.'5 Especially after he heard that 

one or two of the corps commanders 

were talking about sacrificing their 

equipment to save the troops, Bock 

believed that Hoth was on the verge of 

turning the whole army around and 

4aAOK 6. Fllehnmgsableilung, Kriegstagebuch Nr. 10, 

22 Jan 42. AOK 6 17244 file: Bock Dim) , Osteu II , 22 

Jan 42. 

44Grechko, Cody VO]"y, p. 99. 

4t'AOK 17, FIIl'lmmgsabteilllllg, Kril'gs/flgelmch Nr. 2, 

26 Jan 42. AOK 17 16719/ 1 61e. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

heading west. Alarmed at this prospect, Bock the next morning ordered 

Hoth to hold the army where it stood 

under all circumstances until reserves 

could be brought up. Bock also had the 

feeling that Hoth and his staff were 

"overtired from the strain of the last 

days" and decided to put Seventeenth 

Army under General Kleist, the "enterprising" commander of First Panzer 

Army. Creating such ad hoc commands 

had been a favorite, and not uniformly 

successful, device of Bock's while he 

commanded Army Group Center. He 

believed it would spur Kleist to give 

more and faster help to his neighbor, 

Seventeenth Army, and Hoth, less a 

prima donna than many German army 

commanders, agreed.'s 

Early in its second week, the battle in 

the Izyum bulge was also reaching a 

climax for the Soviet commands-and 

producing some disappointments for 

them. The sharpest of t11ese was their 

failure to expand the opening in t11e 

front. The Germans held tight to Slavyansk and BalakJeya, which kept their 

lines north and south of those places 

firmly anchored and stable. Channeled 

into a fifty-mile-wide corridor, the Sovie t armies tended to lose momentum- and confidence. Sixth Army hesitated to make the turn nortl1 toward 

Kharkov while its neighbor on the 

right, Thirty-eighth Army, was stuck at 

Balakleya. Thirty-seventh Army, which 

was to have pinched off Slavyansk and 

to have accompanied Fifty-seventh Anny 

on its push south , did not do that, and 

Fifty-sl'venth Anny and the two cavalry 

corps, as they bore south , entered 

a region heavily dotted with towns 

iSllQck Dim"}. Osten II, 26-28 Jan 42. 

159 

which the Germans could exploit as 

strongpoints. 

Consequently, as t11e Histmy of the 

Great Patriotic War puts it, the StavRa 

"refined" the missions of Southwest and 

South Fronts. On 26 January, Timoshenko committed Ninth Army 

alongside Fifty-seventh A nny, and between then and the end of t11e month 

the Stavka gave Southwest Fl"Ont 315 

tanks, 4 rifle divisions, and 4 rifle brigades. Fifty-seventh and Ninth Armies 

and the cavalry corps were to head 

south to "coax" Seventeenth Army out 

of its line on the east and into battle in 

the open and to reach the coast between Mariupol and Melitopol. Sixth 

Anny, apparently putting its thrust toward Kharkov in abeyance, was to 

drive west toward the Dnepr.47 

In refining the missions, the Stavka 

and the Southwestern Theater seemed in 

actuality to have converted the offensive into a clutch of tank-supported , 

deep cavalry raids. Seventeenth Army 

captured Soviet orders of 25 January 

assigning the thrusts to the west and 

south to the three cavalry corps. The 

VI Cavalry Corps, still attached to Sixth 

Army, was to drive west via Lozovaya 

toward the Dnepr, and I and V Cava.b)' 

Corps were to push south ahead of Fiftyseventh and Ninth Armies. 48 Against 

these, Kleist was moving in from the 

south the "von Mackensen" Group14th Panzer Division, LOOth Light Division , and Panzer Detachment 60 under 

General von Mackensen-and from 

the west Xl Corps, which at first had 

only remnants of two divisions but was 

47/VOVSS, vol. II, pp. 339- 42; Grechko, C{J('iy VOJU)'. 

pp. 106- 12; Bagramyan, 7(,k sh!i 111)' k pobede. PI'. 

33 - 42. 

0KH, GmStdH, FHQ; U'esmtliche AlM'kmalr til'r 

Fei"dlllge am 27. 1.42, H 3/)97 fi le. 
160 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

SLED-MoUNTED GERJ\IAN ANTITA NK GUN 

getting an infantry division and several 

regiments via Dnepropetrovsk. General von Mackensen, who was commanding general, III Panzer Corps, 

brought his staff with him from its 

sector on the First Panzer Army right 

Rank. Paulus, at Sixth Army, had a lready set up two groups of mixed 

regiments (the Groups "Dostler" and 

"Friedrich") to cover the north face of 

the bulge. 

For three days, in snowstorms that 

closed the roads to everything but 

ta nks and horse-drawn sleds, Kleist's 

units maneuvered into position to meet 

the more mobile Soviet cavalry and 

tanks. On the 31st, the advance elements of Panzer Detachment 60 and 

14th Panzer Division came up against 

tile I and V Cavalry Corps' spearheads 

forty miles south of Barvenkovo, and 

the Soviet cavalry, having outdistanced 

meir own tanks, faltered and turned 

back. 

Observing that the Soviet forces "are 

split into three groups and have given 

way under loca lized counterattacks: 

Bock th en ordered the "von Mackensen" Group, XI Corps, and the 

"Dostler" and "Friedrich" Groups to 

attack from the sou til, west, and north 

"wim the aim of destroying the enemy."" After a week and a half of 

fighting in zero-degree weather, high 

winds, and drifting snow, the "von 

Mackensen" Group pushed north to 

with in ten mi les of Barvenkovo by II 

~9/ . G,: SUl'd, fa Nr. 210142, an AOK 6, Arll1pl'grltppl' 

lI01I Kleist, 3/./.42. I I. Gr. Sued 23208130 file. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

February. The XI Corps and the "Dostler" and "Friedrich" Groups did not 

succeed in driving the Russians back 

more than a few miles, but, together 

with Seventeenth Army and the "von 

Mackensen" Group, they had drawn a 

reasonably tight line around the bulge 

by the 11th, one that would stand up 

during the weeks before the thaw set in 

as a deterrent to repeated Soviet attempts lO break away to the west and 

south. 

In the Center 

The retreat lO the KOENIGSBERG 

Line, according to Hitler's order of 15 

January, was to be made "in small steps" 

and accomplished "in a [arm worthy of 

the German Army." The gap at Ninth 

Army west of Rzhev was to be closed as 

was the one between Fourth and 

Fourth Panzer Armies west of Maloyaroslavets, and Yukhnov was to be 

held "under all circumstances." The 

troops lO carry out these missions were 

to be acquired by thinning the front as 

it came back'· To ensure execution as 

Hitler had specified, Field Marshal 

Kluge , Army Group Center commander, told Third and Fourth Panzer 

Armies, both of which had thirty lO 

forty miles yet to go, that the withdrawal would not begin until he gave 

the order, and when it did begin, he 

would control the movements day by 

day" For Fourth Army he made an 

exception, allowing it to begin "as of 

now."52 (Mal) J 2.) 

SOH. Cr. Mil/f', la Nr. 423142, al/. AOK 9, 16 Jan 42, 

AOK 921520/ 11 file. 

SIP Z. AOK J. /a K'-iegstagebuch N,: 2, 16 Jan 42, Pz. 

AOK 3 169 11 / 1 file. 

s2H . (;r. A-liffl', la Nr. 426142. ZIl.saelu der H . Gr. l UY 

FIlt'hrenI1ti.51111g wm /5.1.42, /6.1.42, AOK 9 21520/ 11 

flle. 

161 

Fourth Anny Fights To Survive 

Fourth Army was an island, the remains of four corps jammed inlO a 

25-by-20-mile space east of Yukhnov 

with a fi fth corps struggling to hold 

open 40 miles of ti,e Rollbahn west of 

Yukhnov. The gap between Fourth 

Army and its neighbor on the north , 

Fourth Panzer Army, was 15 miles wide 

at the mouth and ballooned westward 

behind both armies to an unknown 

extent. The light Storch reconnaissance 

planes that occasionally Aew over parts 

of the area brought back conAicting 

reports, their pilots being understandably reluctant lo linger over a hostile, 

frozen wilderness where being downed 

meant certain deatll. After having been 

Cllt on the 13th, the Rollbahn was open 

again on the 15th, but the situation 

maps showed the front almost on ti,e 

road, and in places on the ground the 

Russians were only an easy riAe shot of 

400 yards away. Kluge's permission for 

Fourth Army to go back brought no 

sense of relief. The army chief of staff 

lOld the OKH that the army was fighting for its "naked existence" and all 

decisions were too late. General 

Heinrici, XXXXIII Corps commander 

and the senior officer at the front 

(army headquarters was at Spas-Demensk , 60 miles southwest of 

Yukhnov), said the troops' confidence 

in their leadership was collapsing. Orders lo hold at all cost had been read lo 

them only a day before, and now tlley 

were being told to pick up and move" 

To save itself, Fourtll Army would 

have to keep the Rollbahn open and, in 

coming west, stretch its from north lo 

UAOK 4, la KI;rgslage/mch Nr. 11, 15 and 16Jan 42. 

AOK 4 17380/1 file. 
o 

o 

. o 

-. 

R 

.. l·~ <;v 

/ 

.. . Vit.bsk 

:-/-

;rOrsha 

o 

, 

• ". 

". 

f 

3d Shock 

THIRD PANZER ARMY 

(from 1 Feb 1942) 

RosJllvl 

THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

ARMY GROUP CENTER 

24 January - 18 February 1942 

------ Approximate front, 24 Jan 

00000000 Approximate front, 18 Feb 

o 50 Miles ! --------,:c ! 

o sO Kilometer. 

MAP 12 

KALiNIN 

FRONT 

NZER 

ARMY 

KlJfuglJ 

Ld(hvm 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

meet Fourth Panzer Army and close 

the gap. Doing so meant shifting almost the whole army obliquely to the 

northwest a distance of some fifteen 

miles. That maneuver became vastly 

more complicated on the 18th when a 

Soviet force drove toward the Rollbahn 

from the north and another unit of 

Russian cavalry coming from the south 

cut the road in two places. The noose 

was closing. Soviet divisions were in 

front of and behind the army. Shuttle 

Rights of twenty to twenty-five planes 

were delivering troops and supplies 

every night deep at the rear of the 

army. I n the vast forested triangle between Vyazma , Spas-Demensk, and 

Yukhnov, partisan detachments were 

conscripting men from farms and executing village elders who had worked 

for the Germans. 

On the morning of 19 January, General Kuebler went to the Fu.ehrer Headquarters to report himself sick and to 

give up command of Fourth Army. 

Kuebler, who was not one of the better 

known generals, departed quietly on 

the 21st, and Heinrici took command 

of the army, also quietly. Nevertheless, 

the day brought a change of mood to 

the army. Heinrici, as commanding 

general, XXXXIII Corps, had been a 

prophet of catastrophe but had never 

yet failed to bring his corps out of the 

tightest spot. The staffs and troops 

obviously hoped he could do the same 

for the whole army. And the army did 

SeelTI at once to get a new start, if a 

coincidental one. On the 21st, the temperature was - 400 F. all day, and the 

fighting stopped. The next day, in 

weather - 100 F., LVII Corps took the 

Russians by surprise and reduced the 

gap to Fourth Panzer Army to about 

five miles. After XXXX Corps also 

163 

cleared the Rollbahn and kept it open 

for twenty-four hours, Heinrici told 

Kluge the situation was "beginning to 

turn"; although the gap on the north 

was not closed yet, "something" was 

beginning to happen. s4 

In knee-deep snow and temperatures ranging as low as -400 F., both 

sides had to prepare and time every 

move precisely. Frostbite and exhaustion could claim as many casualties as 

the enemy's fire. Soviet soldiers frequently fell dead of exhaustion minutes after being captured. No one 

knew how often the same thing happened to the troops in battle. 

Heinrici opened another attack to 

the north on tlle morning of the 25th 

with "enough artillery to cover the 

whole gap," but a fresh Soviet division 

had moved in, and the temperature 

was down to -400 F. again. One regiment advanced three miles, saw no sign 

of XX Corps, which was to have 

pushed south off Fourth Panzer 

Army's Rank, and fell back. Heinrici 

then proposed shifting the line of attack west to the Yukhnov-Gzhatsk 

road, but Kluge thought that also 

might fail because the Soviet forces 

behind Fourth Army "may be stronger 

than we suspect."55 

Kluge was, in fact, slightly prescient. 

Within the next few days, Soviet 

strength behind Fourth Army would 

be greatly increased. On the nights of 

the 26th and 27th, I Gu.ards Cavalry 

Corps, under General Belov, a mustachioed veteran cavalryman , crossed 

the Rollbah.n and headed north . The 

cavalry corps, 5 cavalry divisions, 2 riRe 

divisions, and artillery detachments, 

,H/bid., 21 - 22 Jan 42. 

~r, hid , 25- 26 Jan 42. 
164 

was Tenlh Al'my's mobile group. Belov 

was looking to gathe r up partisan detachments as he went and to make 

contact with IV Airborne Corps, which 

was land ing southwest of Vyazma. He 

and General Mayor A. F. Levashev, the 

airborne commander, were to coordinate their operations with Headquarters, ThiTty-third Army, under General 

Ley tenant M. G. Yefremov, which was 

setting up inside the gap between 

Fourth and Fourth Panzer Armies. Belov also had orders to link up with Xl 

Cavaby COTPS, which was bearing in on 

Vyazma from the northwest. 56 Fourth 

Army's position would have been even 

worse had the Soviet commands not 

been directing their efforts primarily 

toward Vyazma. 

Contact at S II khinichi 

In the midst of its own Aight for 

surviva l, Fourth Army received and 

recorded occasional radio reports from 

Sukhinichi. It could do nothing else for 

its 4,000 troops isolated there. When 

the weather permitted, the Luftwaffe 

dropped in enough suppli es to enable 

Generalmajor Werner von Gilsa, the 

commander of the garrison in Sukhinichi,to withstand a siege that was being 

conducted more than a bit lamely. But 

time was on the Soviet side. It hardly 

appeared possible that four batta lions 

could survive long in the dead of winter 

orthat Second Panzer A rmy could muster enough strength on its stretch of the 

Sukhinichi perimeter to stage a relief. 

On 16 January, however, as XXIV 

Panzer Corps was being assembled 

around Zhizdra to attempt to relieve 

Sukhinichi, one battalion of the 18th 

~6 See P. Belov, ;' y(ltim~s)'(ldl1laJ(I horba v IJill vraga, ~ 

b)'l'ww- is oricheskiy Zhunwl 8( 1962), 55-60. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

Panzer Division-the only one there at 

the time-made a sudden easy jump to 

the northeast. When it learned that the 

battalion had only met rear elements of 

Soviet divisions standing north of 

Zhizdra, the corps ordered 18th Panzer 

Division and the 208th Infantry Division to push ahead toward Sukhinichi. 

By the 19th , the day the attack had 

origina ll y been sc hedu led to begin, 

they were nearly halfway there, but the 

Russians were hanging on their heels 

and closing in behind them. Expecting 

not to have the momentum to reach 

Sukhin ichi, XXIV Panzer Corps told 

the garrison there to get ready to break 

out, but the army group also picked up 

the radioed message, a nd Kluge 

sharply warned Gilsa that Hitler had 

not lifted the order to hold the town. 

When the garrison passed to the control of Second Panzer Army on the 

20th, General Schmidt took the opportunity to ask Hitler whether the order 

was still in force and received the reply 

that it most definitely was. After a nother day, in -400 F. weather and 

against at least one fresh Soviet division, the Stavka had rushed in from the 

Moscow area, XXIV Pan zer Corps 

could no longer susta in thrusts by both 

of its divisions, and 18th Panzer Division had to attempt to go the last ten 

miles alone. On the afternoon of the 

24th, with just two battalions still in 

motion , 18th Panzer Division made the 

contact. 57 

To the K -Line 

Determined to retreat to the K-Line 

(KOEN IGSBERG Line) in as "worthy" 

a manner as Hitler desired, Kluge held 

~1 ?. AOK 2, 10 Kriegsillgebllch 27.12 .41 - 3/.3.42, 

15- 24 Jan 42. Pz. AOK 2 25034/ 162 file. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 165 

GERMAN SENTRY ON THE R UZA RIVER LINE 

Third and Fourth Panzer Armies back 

for three days. He waited until after 

1200 on the 18th before giving their 

commanders, Generals Reinhardt and 

Ruoff, permission to start the withdrawal, and then he stipulated that it 

was to be done in four stages of five to 

eight miles with a day's pause at each 

phase line. The main forces were to 

move at night, the rear guards in the 

daytime, with the final line to be 

reached on the morning of the 24th by 

the main forces and "if possible" not 

before the morning of the 25th by the 

rear guards. 58 Again, as they had on 

their march to the Lama and Ruza 

rivers in December, the armies would 

u p?. AOK 4, la, Fernspruch von H. Cr. Miue, IJ.JO 

Vh,. 18.1.42. P,. AOK 4 22457/36 file . 

have to fight their way back without 

breaking contact with the enemy and in 

the open in below-zero weather. 

The first night and day of the withdrawal showed that what was a tactical 

masterpiece on paper was working out 

as a near disaster. The Soviet infantry 

followed their every step, and it had 

tanks, T -34s, and some of the 52-ton 

KVs. Field howitzers with Rotlwpf hollow-charge ammunition and 88-mm. 

guns could handle the tanks, but they 

had to stay on the roads, and without 

protection they were not only vulnerable to direct hits, as were the tanks, but 

to near and sOlnetimes not so near misses. Among the infantry, many of 

whom were replacements or men 

combed out of the rear echelons, the 

sight or sound of tanks was often 
166 

enough to raise a panic. But the tanks 

were not the troops' most pervasive enemy; the cold was. The earth, a foot 

soldier's first and last refuge, became a 

menace. Frozen hard as iron, it drew 

heat from a man's body faster than the 

air did. The soldier who remained upright still did not have as good a chance 

of surviving as one who did not, but 

most had seen too many others never 

rise again to believe it. The cold destroyed the will to survive. Officers frequently had to drive their troops with 

pistols and clubs. The soldiers did not 

become cowards; they became apathetic, indifferent to what was going on 

around them and to their own fate. 

Growing losses in men and equipment 

and the expressed concern of the army 

commanders that the troops would be 

too few and too exhausted to hold the 

final line when they reached it persuaded Kluge at last to let the retreat 

be completed on the night of the 22d, 

two days earlier than he had originally 

ordered.'9 

Unknown to them, the two panzer 

armies, as they drew into the K-Line, 

were the possible recipients of a tactical 

"gift" from Stalin and the Stavka. The 

weakest point on tile Lama-Ruza line 

had been the wedge driven in at V Panzer Corps west of Volokolamsk. Pushed 

farther west past Gzhatsk, it could have 

cut Ninth and Third Panze r Armies 

adrift and left Fourth Panzer standing 

with bOtll Aanks exposed. On 19 January, however, General Zhukov received 

orders to take First Shock Army out of 

the Volokolamsk sector and transfer it 

to the Stavka reserve. Two days later, 

~lI6. Panzer Diviswn, 10. B(>nrh/ luther Russisrhe I/Ild 

Deutsche Kalfllifweise, 30.1.42, Pz. AOK 3 2181 817 file: 

Pl.. AOK J , f a Kriegstagebllch Nr. 2, 22 Jan 42. Pz. AOK 

3 1691111 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Headquarters, Sixteenth Army also was 

pulled out. 60 According to Zhukov, losing FiTSt Siwek Army in particular weakened his offensive at exactly the crucial 

moment. The History of the Great Patriotic 

War concurs that the two shifts "brought 

about undesirable circumstances."6! 

On the other hand, the "gift" to the 

Germans may not have amounted to all 

that much. First Shock Army was in poor 

shape when it reappeared in action 

south of Lake limen late in the month, 

and General Rokossovskiy, who commanded Sixteenth Army, states in his 

memoirs that his army had virtually 

evaporated by the time the headquarters was taken out.62 The wear and tear 

on the Soviet units was certainly no less 

than that on the German. They had 

been on the offensive without a pause 

for nearly a month and a half, and the 

Third and Fourth Panzer Armies had 

put up a murderous defense on the 

Lama-Ruza line. 

Model Closes the Rzhev Gap 

Two days before Hitler gave his consent, Kluge had established the release 

of enough strength to close the gap in 

the Ninth Army front as the first objective of the withdrawal to the K-Line . 

On the 14th, he had earmarked Headquarters, XXXVI Panzer Corps and SS 

Division "Das Reich" from Fourth Panzer Army and a reinforced infantry 

regiment from Third Panzer Army for 

transfer to Strauss' Ninth Army as soon 

as the movement to the K-Line began . 

Word of Hitler's approval the next day 

spread "great relief " in the Ninth 

Army staff, relief that turned to "em6°Zhukov, M emoirs, p. 355; IVOVSS, \'01. II , p. 325. 

61 /VOVSS, vol. II, p. 325. 

62 Rokossovskiy. So/diel-'s DUly, p. 95. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

bitterment" two hours later when the 

army learned Kluge had given XXIII 

Corps permission to fall back about ten 

miles but ordered it not to shorten its 

front that then stretched about forty 

miles from the west side of the Rzhev 

gap into the wilderness east of 

Toropets. Strauss, as Kluge no doubt 

knew, wanted to shorten the XXIII 

Corps front on the west and use the 

troops in the attack into the gap. K1uge 

apparently suspected, probably not 

mistakenly, that Strauss was also attempting to give the corps a better 

chance to save itself in case the attack 

failed. That was part of the cause for 

embitterment, but only part. Kluge's 

order to XXIII Corps also constituted 

hineinbefehlen ("issuing orders over the 

head of the responsible command"), 

something even Hitler, much as he 

liked to interfere in the workings at the 

lower levels, did not permit himself. 

Kluge's act could only be interpreted in 

two ways: as grossly bad form-which 

Kluge was too much a stickler for 

punctilio to commit-or as a deliberate 

ex pression of no confidence. When 

Kluge refused to change the order, 

Strauss asked to be put on sick leave·3 

The reply from Army Group Center 

stated, "Since Generaloberst Strauss 

has asked to be relieved of his post, ... 

General Model will assume command 

of Ninth Army without delay."6. General der Panzertruppen Walter Model 

had been the commanding general , 

XXXXI Panzer Corps, Third Panzer 

Army, until the afternoon of 14 January when he had been summoned to 

I3AOK 9, Fuehnmgsabll'i/utlg K";tgstagebllch. 1.1.-

)J.).n , 13- 15 Jan 42, AOK 9 21520/ 1 file. 

8~Atl nif Oberst Lalldu, J-I. Cr" /6.1.42, AOK 9 

2 1520/11 file. 

167 

the army group headquarters "to receive a neVl assignment."65 

In appearance the picture of a preWorld War I Prussian officer even to 

the monocle that he wore on all occasions and in demeanor outrageously 

self-assured, Model also had a solid 

reputation as an energetic commander 

and brilliant tactician. After a fast trip 

to the Fuehrer Headquarters to receive 

his charge from Hitler, Model arrived 

at Ninth Army headquarters in 

Vyazma on the 18th, stopped long 

enough to issue a characteristic order 

of the day expressing his "unshakable 

confidence and determination to withstand this crisis shoulder to shoulder 

with my troops," and headed north to 

Rzhev to take personal charge of the 

attack preparations66 

The breach west of Rzhev was two 

weeks old, and three large Soviet formations, Thil·ty-ninth Army, Twenty-ninth 

Army, and the Xl Cavalry Corps, had alread y passed th rough. Thirty-ninth 

Army was engaged at Sychevka, XI Cavally C01'PS was aiming for Vyazma, and 

7iventy-ninth Army was inside the gap, 

southwest of Rzhev67 Fortunately for 

the Germans, the Soviet commands 

were, as the Ninth Army staff observed, "almost lamentably slow" in exploiting the breakthrough. 6s They 

appeared to be having supply troubles 

and heavy casualties from tl,e cold and 

to be short on initiative and experience 

at all levels. Although the Russians 

were within four to six miles of the 

u P,-. AOK ) , la Kril'gslagflmrl/ Nr. 2, 14 Jan 42. J'z. 

AOK 3 16911/ 1 fi le. 

sSAOK 9, Fuehnmgsahteihlllg Kriegstagebllch. 1.1.-

)J.).42, 18 Jan 42, AOK 92152011 file. 

61/VOVSS, \'01. II, p. 322. 

68AOK 9, Fuehnm gslIbteihmg Kriegstagebllch. 1.1.-

3 /.3.42, 18 Jan 42. AOK 9 21520/1 file. 
168 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

GERMAN MACHINE GUNNERS DIG IN WEST OF SVCJ-IEVKA 

Vyazma-Rzhev railroad over the whole 

stretch from Sychevka to Rzhev, they 

did less to stop traffic on the line than 

the snow and cold did. At Sychevka, 1st 

Panzer Division, brought in from 

Third Panzer Army, acquired enough 

elbowroom in two days to raise the possibility of a subsidiary thrust northwest 

to XXIII Corps. At 1030 on the 21st 

the temperature was -42" F. The VI 

Corps, which was to begin the attack 

west from Rzhev the next day, asked 

for a 24-hour postponement because 

of the weather and because the unit 

from which it expected the most, the 

SS Division "Das Reich ," still had parts 

scattered a ll the way back into the 

Fourdl Panzer Army area. TI,e army 

staff was disposed to take the request 

"under serious consid eration ," but 

Model decided to hold to the schedul e 

and later in the day also turned down a 

proposal to reduce the objectives. At 

the start the next morning he was in 

Rzhev until full daylight and from then 

on hedgehopped along the front in a 

light plane, landing at command posts 

and looking for "hot spots" where he 

made it a point to appear in person to 

lend encouragement "in word and 

deed."6' 

Taking the enemy by surprise, the attack got off to a fast start in clear 

weather with well-directed air support 

and with some tanks, and more selfpropelled assau lt guns, whose crews 

managed to keep their machines running in spite of the cold. The short 

winter's day ended before the XXIII 

69/bid., 21 -22Jan 42. 
THE GENERAL OFFENSIVE 

Corps and VI Corps spearheads pushing along the Volga River were in sight 

of each other, but in the morning a 

company of the 189th Self-propelled 

Assault Gun Battalion shot its way 

across the remaining several miles to 

make the contact shortly after 1200, 

and Ninth Army had a continuous 

front again.'· Konev countered, however, by ordering General Eremenko to 

speed up Fourth ShoekArmy's drive south 

from Toropets. 71 

In the K-Line 

The closing of the Rzhev gap was the 

brightest event thus far in Army Group 

Center's dismal winter, and it would 

bring Model a promotion to Ceneraloberst and an oak-leaf cluster to his 

Knight's Cross of the I ron Cross. But it 

was for the moment also the only assured accomplishment of the retreat to 

the K-Line. Off the Ninth Army left 

Rank, where no front existed at allover 

a hundred-mile stretch on either side 

of the Army Group Center-Army 

Group North boundary, FOUl·th Siwek 

Army was pushing south from Toropets 

toward Velizh sixty miles north of 

Smolensk. Closer in on the Ninth 

Army flank, Twenty-second Army was 

bearing toward Belyy behind XXIII 

Corps. Between Fourth Panzer Army 

and Fourth Army, Soviet units were 

pouring through the gap and disappearing into the wide expanse of forest 

south and west of Vyazma. Four of 

Fourth Army's five corps were 

squeezed into a twenty-by-twenty-mile 

pocket around Yukhnov. The Rollbahn 

was closed more than it was open, and 

when it was open , which was usually no 

7°lbid., 23 Jan 42. 

11/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 322. 

169 

more than an hour or two at-a time, the 

Russians could bring it under machine 

gun and mortar fire. The telephone 

lines were out between the army headquarters in Spas-Demensk and the 

pocket, and to keep the command 

functioning, Heinrici and his operations officer commuted by airplane to 

Yukhnov. West and south of Spas-Demensk the army's front was paper-thin 

and shot through with holes, the 

largest of which was the twenty-milewide Kirov gap on the boundary with 

Second Panzer Army. 

Having reached Sukhinichi, Second 

Panzer Army was embroiled in an exposed salient and in an argument with 

higher headquarters over what to do 

next. The army wanted to evacuate the 

garrison and fall back. Hitler demanded that the town be held. Halder 

lamented that after "so great a moral 

success," giving up Sukhinichi, "although tactically correct," would be "a 

great loss." Kluge argued the army's 

point of view with Hitler and Hitler's 

point of view with the army. Finally, 

after being told that in accordance with 

earlier orders Gilsa had destroyed so 

much of the town that it could not be 

reoccupied in full strength, Hitler consented to let the garrison be evacuated 

but ordered the army to keep within 

artillery range.'2 

The Ninth Army staff, at Vyazma, 

was a helpless and unhappy witness to a 

remarkable piece of tactical incongruity. On the map, Vyazma was 

forty miles behind the front, yet, much 

closer by, Soviet forces were boxing it 

in from three directions. General Belov's I CUMds Cavalry Corps was coming 

12P Z. AOK 2, 10 Kriegstagebuch, 27.12.41 -31.3 .42, 

27-29 Jan 42. P,. AO~ 2250341162 file. 
170 

north after having brought all of its 

elements across the Rollbahn. Parachute 

troops were in the woods on the south , 

and Yefremov's Thirty-third Army was 

massing its infantry on the east. Most 

dangerous of all for the moment, was 

Xl Cavaby Corps.73 Its scouts were on 

the Moscow-Warsaw highway fifteen 

miles west of Vyazma on the morning 

0(' the 26th. The guards and drivers of 

the truck convoys on the road were 

able to drive them off, but during the 

night a strong detachment of the 18th 

Cavaby Division settled in astride the 

road which was the main supply and 

communications artery for Ninth, 

Third Panzer, and Founh Panzer Armies. The railroad running parallel to 

the road a few miles to the south was 

still open, but practically no traffic was 

moving on it because of snow, cold, and 

a lack of train crews, locomotives, and 

cars.74 

The Russians seemed to be everywhere, and all converging on Vyazma. 

They were reported to have been 

briefly on the railroad five miles northeast of the town. The Luftwaffe sighted 

a long column moving in from the 

southeast, and Fourth Army observed 

dozens of transport planes crossing its 

front and landing in the area south of 

Vyazma hOtll at night and during tlle 

day.75 

ZhullOv in Command 

The encirclement of Army Group 

Center was within an ace of being com1aSee IVOVSS, vo l. I I. p. 323 and Belov, 

"PJllliml'S')'och1Ul)'{f borha." p. 59. 

HAOK 9, FlI l'h nmg~ (l bJe g Knl'g5/agefmch, 1. 1. -

31 ,),-12.26-30 Jan 42. AOK 921 52011 file. 

'~AOK 4, 1(1 Kriegsragehuf/J N ): /I , 27 Jan 42. AOK 4 

17380/1 ~Ie. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAO 

pleted, and the Slavka had almost readied its two final moves. Fou,·th Siwek 

Army, on reaching Velizh and Rudnya, 

would be in position to cut the MoscowWarsaw highway west of Smolensk and 

take control of the land bridge between 

the Onepr and Ovina rivers. Belov, 

Levashev, and Colonel S. V. Sokolov, 

the commander of Xl Cavalry Corps, 

had orders to make firm contact with 

each other and lay a solid block across 

the road and railroad west of Vyazma. 

On I February, the Stavka reactivated 

the Headquarters, Western Theatel; giving Zhukov control of all operations 

against Army Group Center. 7• 

Victory may indeed have been close, 

but the two plays designed to achieve it 

had been easier to conceive than they 

would be to carry out. Of tlle IV Airborne Corps, only one brigade (out of 

tllree), 2,000 men, could be delivered. 

Zhukov says the Russians did not have 

enough transport planes to carry the 

men. 77 Unless the Stavka miscalcu lated 

in the first place, the likely reason for a 

shortage of planes was a sudden demand for air supply elsewhere. Ninth 

Army observed that three days after 

the Rzhev gap was closed Thirty-ninth 

Army was having to be provisioned by 

airdrop.7. 

Foul'th Siwek Army headed south out 

of Toropets without cover on its Ranks 

and running on captured supplies.

79 

At first, as far as the fighting was concerned , the going was relatively easy in 

a road less wilderness that the Germans 

76SCC Ercmenko. V naflia/e, pp. 445-53 . Belov. 

)'(l il1/l' )'adHlaJa borba," p. 60; IVOVSS, ,rol. II, p. 327. 

71 Be lo\'. HP)'alimes)'llchlluyll 00"&(1," p. 60n: Zhukov. 

Memoin, p. 356. 

7d AO/\ 9, Fuehrull gsob tet!ulIg l\"'I'gstogeb urh, 

1.1.- 31.3"/2, 27 Jail 42. AOK 9 2 152011 Ille. 

19S CC lrcmcnko, V nadlllle, pp. 449-54. 
THE GE ERAL OFFENSIVE 

had , in fact, neve r thoroughly occupied ; but Army Group Center was 

receiving reinforcements that it would 

rather have used farth er east but which 

it could divert to occupy Velizh, Demidov, Dukhovshchina, and Belyy. Fo r 

the effort at Velizh, the army group 

deployed a security division and two 

infantry divisions. One of the latter was 

the 330th Infantry Division, a WAL· 

KUERE division hastily put together 

from overage officers and NCOs and 

recent recruits in the Re placemen t 

Army, but the three divisions were 

enough to force Eremenko to carry out 

several exhausting sieges in the dead of 

winter in which the besieged, having 

shelter, had the uppe r hand in the 

constant, deadl y contest with the elements. On 1 February, Headquarters, 

Third Panzer Army, was shifted westby air because all roads were blocked -

to take command of the sector from 

Velikiye Luki to Belyy and to engage 

Fo"rth Shock Army in a duel that would 

last the rest of the winter.80 

I f the Russians were going to destroy 

Army Group Center, Zhukov's main 

forces would have to do it. But they 

were weakened by, as he points out, the 

loss of First Shock Army and more by the 

closing of the Rzhev gap behind Twentyninth and Thirty-ninth Annies. Then on 

30 Janu ar y Ninth Army's XXXXVI 

Panze r Corps, bucking snowstorms 

and drifts but facing an enemy whose 

confidence was shaken, broke away 

quickly from Sychevka. In six days it 

covered thirty miles, making contact 

with XXIII Corps on 5 February and 

sealing Twenty-ninth Army in a tight 

pocket southeast of Rzhev. 

SOPz. AOK 3,Ic. GtjedlUl1f'rirhr 1't)// 1.2.-25.-1 .42. PI;. 

AO K 3 21818/9 fi le. 

171 

On the south Zhukov's position was 

stronger. From 26 to 30 Janua ry 

Fourth Army's Rollbahn was closed 

completel y, and the army, which had 

for a long time not been getting 

enough supplies, began rapidly to sink 

into starvation. On the other hand, the 

Russians were not altogeth er bette r 

off; their radio traffic indicated that 

some of the units behind Fourth Army 

were actually starving. At the end of 

the month , Heinrici's Fourth Army and 

Ruoffs Fourth Panzer Army mounted 

a desperate push north and south 

along the Yukhnov-Gzhatsk road. To 

get the troops, Heinrici had , after 

much arguing with Kluge and Hitler, 

taken his front back to where it barely 

still covered Yukhnov. On the morning 

of 3 February, Xl I Corps going north 

and 20th Panzer Division coming south 

"bridged the gap. "81 A bridge was all it 

was. Thirty-third Army stood on the west 

and Forty-lhi,-d Army on the east; the two 

in places were no more than three or 

four miles apart. 

In the meantime, other bridges had 

been opened, and convoys were moving again on the Rollbahn -and on the 

highway west of Vyazma. For the moment the most dange rous ga ps were 

closed, and Army Group Center's vital 

arteries were functioning. For Twmty -

ninth, Thirty-ninth, and TMrty-thi,-d A,'-

mies and the two cavalry corps it was 

beginning to look like the entrapment 

was becoming a trap. 

On 12 February, Kluge submitted his 

first situation estimate in two 1l1 onths in 

which he had no imminent disasters to 

report. Dangers existed aplenty, but 

the armies were back o n their feet, a nd 

81AOK 4, Kril'gstllgebllch N r. /I, 26 Jan-3 Feb 42. 

AOK 4 17380/ 1 file. 
172 

the Soviet effort was becoming dispe rsed . It was not the end , but Kluge 

expected the next round to be fought 

on better terms." A week later, taking 

I2H. Gr. Mille , l a Nr. 1160142, Bellrieilllng der 

Feindlagevor H. Gr. Miue, 12.2.42, Pz. AO K 4 22457/36 

file. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

the larger view, Hitler told the a rmy 

group commanders that his first objective for the winter was accomplished: 

the "danger of a panic in the 18 12 

sense" was "elitninated."83 

83H. Cr. Nord, la Kriegstagebltch, 13.2. - 12.3.42. 18 

Feb 42. 1-1 . Cr. NOI"d 75 12817 1l1c. 
CHAPTER IX 

The Clinch 

The Front, February 1942 

Every day, cartographers in the Operations Branch of the OKH drew and 

printed on a scale of I: 1,000,000 the 

Lage Ost, a map depicting the Eastern 

Front as it appeared from the latest 

silUation reports. Classified Geheime 

Kommandosache, Chef-Sache ("top secret 

controlled"), copies of the seven-byfive-foot map showing, in blue, the 

front and all German units down to the 

divisional level and, in red, the known 

Soviet units, went to Hitler and the 

service high commands. They were 

used in the situation conferences at the 

Fuehrer Headquarters, sometimes with 

baneful results because there was no 

way of making a line in a map convey 

the actual strength of the positions it 

represented. 

Of those Lage Ost maps that survived 

the war, the most remarkable are those 

for tl,e month of February 1942. They 

look like the work of an operations 

corporal gone mad. From the Black 

Sea coast nonh to the boundary between Army Groups South and Center, 

even with the deep, square-cornered 

chunk carved out west of lzyum, the 

front appears conventional enough. At 

Belev, 80 miles north of tl,e SOlllhCemer boundary, however, it veers 

west, then south, then north nearly to 

Sukhinichi and then west again to a 

hairpin loop sOUlh of Kiro\" 80 miles 

west of Belev. (Mal) /3.) To the north of 

Kirov it becomes a train of intermittent 

squiggles bending 50 miles north and 

east along the Fourth Army's Rollbahn 

to Yukhnov. Between Yukhnov and 

Rzhev, Nimh, Fourth Panzer, and 

Fourth Armies stand back to back and 

in places face to face in a welter of 

fronts going in all directions that look 

from a little distance like a specimen in 

a Rorschach test. Beyond Ninth Army's 

north Rank, which is also its center 

because the army has another from 

facing west, a void bisected by the 

Army Group Center-Army Group 

Nortll boundary extends north to the 

edge of the Demyansk pocket and west 

130 miles. What passes for a Third 

Panzer Army front are blue circles and 

hooks around Velikiye Luki, Velizh, 

and Demidov. Nonh of the army 

group boundary. Sixteenth Army is 

represented by a scattered tracery of 

curves and dashes around Kholm, the 

same marks covering a broader area 

around Demyansk, and a short tail 

hanging off the southern tip of Lake 

limen . The Eighteenth Army front on 

the Volkhov River has only one gap, 

about 5 miles across, but behind it red 

numerals denoting Soviet units range 

40 miles to the north and west. Behind 

all of the armies the word Partisa.nen 

("partisans") appears printed in red, 

and red question marks indicate the 

probable presence of some kind of 

enemy forces. The maps more than 
o 

, 

~ 

'" 

tlhk!ye Luk! 

, 

" , 

.' • 

4th Shock 

ARMY GROUP CENTER 

18 February - 20 April 1942 

------ Approximate front, 18 Feb 

......... Approximate front, 20 Apr 

? ~O Mile. 

o 50 Kilometer. 

MAP 13 

KALiNIN 

FRONT r-•• '~ 

Kfm 

20th Volokoltlm!Jk 

Morheysk 

43d WES 

Mtlloy.,osf.lltJU ,/ 

FR T 

Pe'tlmyshl 
THE CLINCH 

... ... . • .. , 

• 

-.. ... -

175 

-

GERMANS D UG-IN: FOUR KNOCKED-OUT SoVIET TANKS IN THE DlsrANCE 

bear out the words of the officer who 

noted in Ninth Army's war diary, "This 

is the strangest front the army ever 

had."' 

The front was a lso extraordinary in 

another way. Convoluted as it was, the 

Soviet forces were in a sense as dangerously snared in its coils as the Germans were. At the critical points they 

were still operating through gaps that 

were potentially subject to enemy control. A German advance of five miles or 

less would close the front on the Volkhov behind Second Siwek Army. FarUler 

south to achi eve similar effects the 

patches would have to be bigger: 

ninety miles of new front between StaIAOK 9, Fuehnmgsabteillmg Kriegstagebuch, 1.1.-

31.3.42, 27 Jan 42, AOK 9 2152011 file. 

raya Russa and Rzhev and sixty-five 

miles between Yukhnov and Belev. But 

these were distances the Germans had 

at other times often negotiated easily, 

and successes in all three places could 

potentially decide the war since a 

dozen or more Soviet armies might be 

trapped, and the Germans could then 

restore a solid front ninety mil es west 

of Moscow. In the worst of the winter, 

Hitler had an eye o n those possibilities. 

When he authorized the retreat to the 

KOENIGSBERG Line on 15 January, 

he ordered Second Panzer Army to 

narrow and eventua lly "tie off" the Sukhinichi bulge east of the YukhnovSukhinichi road" Two days after Ninth 

ZI-I. Cr. M ille, fa NT. 423142, an Pt. AOK 2, 15. 1.42, 

Pz. AOK 2 2503512 file. 
176 

Army closed its front west of Rzhev, he 

was asking Ninth and Sixteenth Armies 

for estimates as to how soon they could 

repair the breach between them by 

making thrusts to Ostashkov. 3 

As Hitler was beginning to see the 

germ of a victory, the Soviet commands 

were becoming desperate for tile victory that was almost in their hands. 

The History of the Creat Patriotic War says 

a "compbcated situation had formed," 

and this caused "serious alarm" in the 

Stavka. 4 The History or the Second Hi>dd 

Httr says, "The situation of tile Soviet 

troops in the western direction became 

decidedly worse. Weakened by extended battles, they lost their offensive 

capabilities."' As had happened to tile 

Germans in December, suddenly the 

Russians had no good choice as to what 

to do next. To go ahead would probably be futile, and to stop might well be 

disastrous. Army Group Center's retreat had ended . Tzventy-ninth and 

Thil·ty-third Annies were cut off. Thirtyninth Army, two cavalry corps, and sundry airborne units were in trouble. 

On the other hand , the Germans still 

appeared to be in relatively much 

poorer shape, and the Stavka's appetite 

for victory was strong. On 16 February, 

it directed General Zhukov "to mobilize 

all the strengtll of Kalinin and West 

Fronts for the final destruction of Army 

Group Center." He was to smash the 

enemy in the Rzhev-Vyazma-Yukhnov 

area and drive west another sixty miles 

by 5 March to the line of Olenino, the 

Dnepr River, and Yeln ya. The armies 

of his left Rank were to "liquidate" the 

'JAOK 9, Fllthnl1lg.\abIPlhlllg Kriegstllgl'bllch , I./.-

3/,J,"2. 7 Fel> '12. AOK 92152011 fi le. 

'/V01'.505. \'01. II. p. 328. 

/VM V. \OI.IV.p.311. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

enemy in the Bolkhov-ZhizdraBryansk area and take Bryansk. 6 

Zhukov's implementing order was 

less categorical as to objectives and time 

but, in essence, only slightly less ambitious. He ordered Kalinin Front to 

smash the Ninth Army Rank west of 

Rzhev; Forty-thil'd, Forth-ninth, and 

Fiftieth Annies to break through at 

Yukhnov; and Sixteenth and Sixty]irst 

Armies to advance toward Bryansk. Following these assaults, Kalinin Front and 

West Front would proceed to surround 

and destroy illlh, Fourth Panzer, and 

Fourtll Armies in the Rzhev-Vyazma 

area.

7 

Any fresh effort was going to demand new muscle, and both sides were 

at the point where every move was 

a lready an exertion. The Stavka again 

reached into its reserves. Kalinin Front 

got a guards rine corps, 7 riRe divisions, and some air units. West Front was 

given 60,000 replacements, a guards 

riRe corps, 3 rine divisions, 2 airborne 

brigades, and 200 tanks· The reinforcements probably did not add 

strength commensurate with their 

numbers. The quality of the Soviet 

reserves, which had not been high in 

December, had declined progressively 

during the winter. They would a lso be 

facing an enemy whose morale was 

picking up simply because he had survived thus far. 

Hitler had been engaged since early 

January with variolls progranls for reinforcing the Eastern Front. He had 

directed the OKH to supply 500,000 

replacements, but these were to be defelTed men who would have to be 

recalled to active duty and given some 

6lbid. 

7/ VO\lSS, \'ui. II. p. 328. 

"Ibid. 
THE CLINCH 

training" In February, Army Group 

Center received nearly 70,000 replacements, three and one-half times as 

many as in the previous month, but the 

number was still 40,000 short of those 

needed to cover the month's losses, and 

the army group was left with a total 

deficit of 227,000 men for the period 

since December. The armies had received new men and returnees from 

hospitals as replacements for about one 

in four of their casualties.'o 

During January and February the 

army group also was given nine infantry divisions. Three were WALKUERE 

divisions. The others came from occupation duty in France and the Low 

Countries, and all were untl"a ined for 

winter warfare. Most had to be commined piecemeal by battalions and regiments as they arrived, and their artillery and other noninfantry components were left to make their way 

forward "on foot," which meant by 

whatever means they cou ld d evise 

other than on the already swamped 

and all but paralyzed railroads. The 

ELEFA T and CHRISTOPHORUS programs that were supposed to have 

brought in thousands of trucks and 

other vehicles from all over Eu rope 

had been completed , but only about 25 

out of every tOO vehicles reached the 

front." The other three-quarters had 

broken down and were awaiting repairs or had become snowed or frozen 

in on the roads back to Poland. 

With the winter's end approaching, 

9AOK 9, FlIl'llflll1gsaolt'ilulIg Kriegstagebllch, J.l .-

J/.J.-I2, 2[ Jan 42. AOK 9 2152011 file, 

IOCoulllcd in Ihe losses were lhe rroslbil e cases and 

the dead , wounded. missing, and sick. AOK -I , la 

I\rit'gstogebllr/t N,: 11 . 27 Feb 42. AOK 4 18710 file. 

I 'AUK 9, Fllehnmgsabtl'illl llg Kn'egsiligebllch, 1.1.-

J/.}.-I2. 21 Jan 42. AOK 921 52011 Ide. 

177 

a ll plans, no matter whose, were subject 

to a primeval force of nature, the 

m sputitsa. The Germans had had a taste 

of it in October 1941-but only a taste, 

as they learned from talking to the 

inhabitants. During the fall, heavy prolonged rain made the mud. How much 

depended on the amount of rainfall 

and on when the freeze came. The 

spring rasputitsa was something else: it 

was as inevitable as the change of seasons and varied little from year to year. 

During the winter the ground froze to 

depths of eight or nine feet locking in 

much of the previous fall's rain. Several 

feet of snow and ice accumulated on 

tile surface. The spring thaw worked 

from the top downward, first turning 

the snow and ice to water over the still 

frozen ground, then creating a progressively deepening layer of watery 

mud above the frozen subsoil. In the 

generally flat and at best poorly 

drained terrain, the water had no place 

to go until the thaw broke completely 

through the frost. The process usually 

took five or six weeks and included 

three weeks or more in which tile mud 

was too deep for any kind of veh icular 

traffIc other than peasant carts. The 

Panje wagon's high wheels and light 

weight enabled it to plow through mud 

several feet deep while riding on the 

frozen stratum beneath , and its 

wooden construction allowed it to be 

used almost as a boaJ:. Exceptionall y 

heavy snow and low winter temperatures assured a full-blown ras/mtitsa 

for 1942 but also made its onset difficult to predict. In normal years the 

thaw could be depended upon to begin 

in about the third week of March at the 

latitude of Moscow, a week or two 

earlier in the Ukraine, and at least a 

week later in the north . 
178 

Army Group Cent",· 

Second Pam",' Anny's "Small Solution" 

As Hitler had anticipated in the 15 

January directive, the Sukhinichi bulge 

afforded the fi rst practicable opportunity for a counterstroke. In spite of 

the Kirov gap and Fourtll Army's troubles along the Rollbahn and at Yukhnov, 

it had a comparatively stable configuration and at least theoretically manageable distances. Second Panzer Army's 

unexpected success at the stan of the 

Sukhinichi relief operation fueled 

Hitler's imagination, and on 21January 

he tried to get General Schmidt, the 

army's commander, to convert the relief into a drive past Sukhinichi to the 

northeast and to have General 

Heinrici, Fourth Army commander, 

stage a quick thrust south out of 

Yukhnov. The meeting of the two 

forces would have closed the northern 

two-thirds of the bulge, eliminated the 

problems of the Kirov gap and the 

Rollbahn, and trapped three Soviet armies. But XXI V Panzer Corps did not 

have the strength to go past Sukhinichi , and Heinrici declared that Fourth 

Army could not begin an attack south 

before the second week in February, if 

then. 

After XXI V Panzer Corps reached 

Sukhinichi, three potential "solutions" 

presented themselves. Hitler continued to want a "big" one, a push to 

Yukhnov, and, therefore, insisted on 

keeping a foothold close to Sukhinichi. 

Field Marshal Kluge, commander of 

Army Group Center, and Schmidt 

tried to substitute as an intermediate 

solution an attempt to extend the left 

side of XXIV Panzer Corps' line north 

to the Spas-Demensk-Sukhinichi road, 

which would reduce the bulge by about 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

half and close off the Kirov gap. The 

third solution was to close the Kirov 

gap. It was talked about as "small " 

because either of the other two would 

accomplish as much automatically, but 

it was the most feasible in terms of 

means available to achieve a solution. 

In the first two weeks of February, 

XXIV Panzer Corps received a succession of orders to prepare for or to 

ca ncel one or the other of the th ree 

movements, and at last the corps' ch ief 

of staff was moved to comment on the 

absurdity of the situation by acknowledging one transmission with the 

words, "Difficile est, satimm non scribem." 

("The difficulty is not to write satire.")12 

Because partisans who were being 

supplied through the gap were endangering Fourth Army's Rollbahn, Second 

Panzer Army, at Kluge's insistence, began an attack toward Kirov on 16 February. The succeeding days exposed 

the Germans' quandary. The d rive toward Yukhnov and the "inte rmediate 

solution ," attractive as they might be, 

could not be attempted without reinforcements that were nowhere in sight. 

The army was down to forty-five tanks 

that were operational, about a quarter 

of one panzer division's normal complement. Atthe same time, XXIV Panzer Corps, because it was having to 

hold the exposed salient reaching toward Sukhinichi, cou ld not bring 

enough strength to bear toward Kirov, 

and the attack there wavered and 

limped , and at the end of the month , 

while sti ll nominally in progress, was a ll 

but forgotten. As long as the three 

solu tions were kept on the docket, 

none or them would be executed. On 

121':.. AO}..· 2, In Kriegs!ngebll,h , 2i.12.41- 3J.J.42, 21 

.101n-16 Feb 42. P .... AOK 2 25034/ 162 file. 
THE CLINCH 

the other hand, however, Second Panzer Army's silUation may have been 

bener than it knew since the Soviet 

advance toward Bryansk also did not 

materialize. The Russians' activity 

stepped up after the middle of the 

momh, but as long as the Germans 

were standing close to Sukhinichi and 

pushing toward Kirov the Soviet commands were not disposed to attempt 

any sweeping maneuvers of their own. 

At the turn of the month the ..asp'lltitsa was possibly no more than a few 

weeks away, and tinle was running 

short. In a conference at the Fueim!' .. 

Headquarters on 1 March, Schmidt 

persuaded Hitler that an attack from 

Sukhinichi toward Yukhnov could not 

start until after ti,e rasputitsa. Hitler 

also agreed to let Schmidt prepare to 

move back the from projecting toward 

Belev since the possibility of a thrust 

from there toward Yukhnov had become even more remole.13 

On the 9th, Kluge, who had avoided 

personal contact with Second Panzer 

Army since the Guderian affair in December, met with Schmidt and his 

corps commanders at the army headquarters in Orel. '4 In an hours-long 

discussion the generals concluded that 

the "small solution" at Kirov was the 

only one that could succeed and therefore the Sukhinichi and Belev saliems 

were worthless. Kluge said he wou ld 

take the matter up with Hitler. Three 

days later he told Schmidt that Hitler 

"did not auach as much value as before" to the Sukhinichi salient and 

13Ibid., I Mar 42. 

"Kluge said during the meeting Lhal he -regreued 

the loss of so outstanding an army commander ~ and 

he implied lhal the reasons fur Guderian's dismissal 

\\cre tOO sensilive a maucr to be discllssed (Ibid. , 9 

Mar 42), 

179 

would not object to the army's pulling 

back from Sukhinichi and Belev as 

soon as adequate lines were built to the 

rear. IS 

In the meantime the attempt to close 

the Kirov gap had continued spo-

,·adically. On 20 March, Kluge told 

Schmidt that Kirov would "have to be 

cleaned up definitively" before the 

rasputitsa, which meant witllin the next 

two or three weeks at most; but on that 

same day he told Heinrici not to commit any Fourth Army forces to the 

Kirov operation until after the Rollbahn 

and the anny's rear area were secure. 16 

In another week the daytime temperatures were above freezing; the 

snow and ice were melting; the two 

sa lients were being evacuated; and the 

Kirov operation was still in progress 

mainly because no one had had as good 

a reason to stop it as the weather would 

soon provide. 

Fourth and Fou,·th Panur Armies 

Fourth Army's and Fourth Panzer 

Army's prospects for the future looked 

somewhat brighter after they bridged 

the gap between them on 3 February 

even though the bridge was narrow, 

and the enemy was behind as well as in 

front of them. They now had a cominuous from for the first time in weeks, 

which was a relief for them and apparently a disconcerting surprise to the 

Russians. Soviet radio traffic disclosed 

that Thirty-third Anny and the airborne 

units and cavalry behind the two armies had believed their mission was to 

block a demoralized German retreat. 

They had not expected to have to deal 

15lbid .. 12 ~I r 42. 

,s/bid., 20 ~IaT' 42: AOK 4 , fa KrirgslaW-!J//,h X I'. /1, 

20 Mar 12, AOK '-I 17380/1 file. 
180 

with determined opposition, and they 

showed it. Thirty-third Army stopped 

and seemed at a loss about what to do 

next. The airborne troops, youthful 

but undertrained, stayed scattered and 

became preoccupied with their supply 

shortages. Some who were captured 

said that they were often not aware of 

their actual situation." Encouraged , 

Fourth Panzer Army first shifted the 

5th Panzer Division in position to set 

up a perimeter defense around 

Vyazma and then brought in the 

Headquarters, V Panzer Corps. 

At mid month , having temporarily 

acquired elements of another panzer 

division and two infantry divisions, V 

Panzer Corps was getting ready to encircle and drive inward on Thirty-third 

Anny which was standing still southeast 

of Vyazma; but by then the Stavka had 

issued its order to renew the offensive. 

Forty-third Army thereafter tried desperately day after day to break down 

the German bridge between it and 

Thirty-thin/ Army. Forty-ninth and Fiftieth 

Annies battered Fourth Army around 

Yukhnov and along the Rollbahn; and 

waves of transports, Aying day and 

night-in weather the Luftwaffe considered too dangerous for Aying-and 

frequemly landing within sight of the 

Germans, delivered more airborne 

troops behind the fronl. Estimating 

twenty men to a plane and counting 

the planes, Fourth Panzer Army figured at least 3,000 troops were landed 

south of Vyazma in two days, 19 and 20 

February." Fortunately for the two 

German armies the Soviet units inside 

the front were not as aggressive as 

I7Pl.. AOK -I , fa Krit'g~lllgf"J/l rlt Nr. 8, 5 Feb 42. pz. 

AOK 4 24932117 fik. 

l~/hid., 20 Feb 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALfNGRAD 

those outside. The V Panzer Corps was 

reduced again to defending Vyazma, 

but it could do that since the new Soviet 

arriva ls appeared to have much the 

sanle uncertainty about their mission as 

the forces already there had. 

The decision hinged on the outer 

front where' a Soviet breakthrough 

anywhere cou ld be deadly. Fourth 

Army was the more vulnerable: both its 

Aanks were weak, and its cemer was 

jammed into a round-nosed bulge 

around Yukhnov. Beset everywhere 

and enmeshed in a constant battle for 

the Rollbahn, Heinrici on 18 February 

proposed giving up Yukhnov in favor 

of a shorter line behind the Ugra River 

ten miles to the west. Any attempt to 

close the Sukhinichi bulge, his chief of 

staff added, was going to be made 

farther west anyway, and the YukhnovGzhatsk road, which had been the original reason for holding Yukhnov, was 

"a fiction."" However, nobody was eager to pass the idea onto a higher level. 

Kluge'S operations officer said penn ission was going to be difficult to get 

because the Yukhnov-Gzhatsk road 

was shown as a major thorough fare on 

the maps and would , therefore, appear 

valuable to Hitler. 

Some days later, the OKH gingerly 

agreed to let Fourth Army start building a line on the Ugra, and after several 

more days, Kluge made an appointment for Heinrici to sce Hitler. At the 

Fuehrer Headquarters on I March, no 

doubt to Heinrici's considerable astonishment, Hitler gave his approval at 

once, explaining that before he had 

been "deliberatel y obstinate" but now 

whcther the army went five miles for-

!ltAOK 4, In Kriegs/(lgebuch N,: II, 18 Ft:/) 42. AOK" 

187 10 file. 
THE CLINCH 181 

SOVIET INFANTRY FIRE O N A VILLAGE IN THE E N EMY REAR 

ward or backward was no longer important to him 2 0 The decision having 

been made, Kluge added a requirement of his own : to "rescue" a particularly old and valuable icon of the 

Virgin Mary from the Sloboda monastery near Yukhnov2 ! The latter done, 

Fourth Army evacuated Yukhnov on 3 

March and went behind the Ugra on 

the 6th , which did not solve its problems but raised its prospects of at least 

su rviving after the onset of the m s/JUtitsa. 

While Fourth Army withdrew to the 

Ugra- which also shortened its bridge 

with Fourth Panzer Army-5th Panzer 

tOlbid., 2 Mar 42. 

21/bid. 

Division was mopping up part of I 

Guards Cavaby C01PS in a pocket south 

of Vyazma. Looking to build on that 

success, V Panzer Corps was again beginning to lay an encirclement around 

the ThiTty-third Army. 1l,e 5th Panzer 

Division finished its movement on the 

10th in the midst of a snowstorm and 

started to turn to move in on Thirtylhi,·d Anny from the west. Although 

snow was not a novelty by then , this late 

winter downfall was an event not even 

the local people had ever seen before. 

I t began on the 10th and by 1200 on 

the 12th reached such an intensity that 

every kind of movement stopped. 

Drifts piled up in minutes and made 

plowing and shoveling totally useless. 

The 5th Panzer Division was buried in 

its tracks. The Fourth Panzer Army 
182 

staff could barely keep contact between 

its sections which were housed in separate buildings along the village street in 

Boznya, eight miles east of Vyazma. 

Drifts covered the street and the buildings to beyond the tops of the doors.22 

The storm at last subsided enough 

for the digging out to begin on the 

16th. Eight days later, when the roads 

were about cleared, the thaw set in. 

Under warm sunshine the snow 

melted. The roads became torrents of 

water, their surfaces broken by potholes as much as several feet deep that 

froze at night into sheets of slick ice. 

Corpses of men , animal cadavers, garbage, and human waste that had been 

frozen for weeks and could not have 

been buried in any case began to thaw 

thus adding to the troops' discomfort 

and raising the threat of an epidemic. 

Since the full-blown msputitsa could 

not be long in coming it appeared thaL 

the active phase of the winter's operations was over, especiall y after Army 

Group Center ordered 5th Panzer Division to begin assembling at Vyazma 

on the 24th for transfer to Ninth 

Army. BUl as melting snow and ice 

filled the low areas, of which there were 

many, with waist-deep water, the fighting Aared up once more.'" 

On 20 March, the Stavka gave 

Zhukov a new directive. He was ordered to stay on the offensive for another thirty days and, in that time , 

drive Fourth, Fourth Panzer, and 

Ninth Armies back to a line about 

ha lfway between Vyazma and Smolensk. Zhukol' proposed to use Fortythird, Forty-ninth, and Fiftieth Armies to 

!1Ibirl .. 11 i\lar 42. 

23lbid" 16- 22 i\ lar 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

break through again from the east and 

to concentrate I Guards Cavalry Corps, 

IV Ai1'iJOme Corps, and Thirty-thil'd Army 

south and west of Vyazma. To General 

Belov, I Guards Cavalry Corps commander, who, having the most mobile 

force, was to maintain contact between 

the airborne troops, the partisans, and 

Tlzi-rty-thil'd Army's in fantry, the [nspector of Cavalry, General Polkovnik O. l. 

Gorodovikov, sent Belov a message 

congratu lating the I Guards Cavalry 

Corps on its accomplishments thus far." 

On the 28th, Army Group Center 

decided to leave 5th Panzer Division at 

Fourth Panzer Army to restore control 

over the road west of Vyazma, which 

was again threatened by the renewed 

Soviet offensive, a nd , after that, to 

complete the long-projected encirclement of Thirty-thil'd Army. Contrary, 

probably, to original Soviet and Ge rman expectations, the fighting roll ed 

on as the thaw continued into the 

msputitsa, and with the warming nights 

the ground turned rapidly to mud during the second week of A pril. The 

Soviet attacks, coming as they did at 

places that had already been held under the extreme winter conditions that 

had been less favorable for a defense , 

added to the general misery of the 

season for the Germans and delayed 

the ir long overdue rest and refining 

but otherwise served only to mark the 

definitive end of the winter campaign. 

The V Panzer Corps, on the other 

hand , managed at the last minute to 

bring 5th Panzer Division to bear 

against Thirty-third Army on 10 April. 

During the next five days in rapidly 

21/VOVSS. \01. II. p. 33 1: Belov, "Pyalilllf'syarhllfl),(1 

borba," p. 65. 
THE CLINCH 183 

MELTI NG S NOW HAS TURNED ROADS I NTO RIVERS 

deepening mud, the army was 

squeezed out of existence. At the end, 

on the 15th, an estimated five hundred 

to a thousand troops, among them 

Yefremov, the commanding general, 

escaped from the pocket into the 

woods along the Ugra River. Several 

days later, the Germans saw a single 

plane with a fighter escort attempt a 

landing: possibly to pick up Yefremov, 

but It faIled to do SO.25 When the last of 

his command was trapped and destroyed before it could make its way 

through the front to Forty-third Army, 

Yefremov committed suicide?6 

25 p::.. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebllch Nr. 8, 15 Apr 42, Pz. 

AOK 4 24932/17 file . 

2GZhukov, M emoirs, p.358. 

Ninth Army's Bridge 10 Osiashkov 

Of the late-winter possibilities to recoup his fortunes, the Ostashkov operation ;vas the one that most fir~ly held 

Hltlers attentIon, and It could , ll1deed , have been the most profitable. As its 

code name BRUECKENSCHLAG ("bridgll1~") suggested, its first objective was to 

brIdge the gap between Army Groups 

Center and North. If Ninth Army and 

Sixteenth Army cou ld do that tlley 

would entrap SIX, pOSSIbly seven, Soviet 

armies and deprive the Russians of a 

good third of all the territory they had 

reoccupied in tile winter offensive. 

General Model, the new Nimh Army 

commander, was the man to attempt 

the 55-mIle drIve to Ostashkov if anyone was. Nevertheless, the army's first 
184 MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

, 

GERMAN O UTPOST LIN E WESr OF RZl-II::v 

response to Hitler's 7 February request 

for an opinion on the operation was 

noncommittal: the army would be occupied for some time to come with the 

encircled Twenty-ninth Army and with 

the ferocious attempts Kalinin Flunt was 

making to reopen the Rzhev gap. On 

the 12th, Kluge and Model and their 

chiefs of staff concluded that Ninth 

Army's next concern after finishing 

with Twenty-ninth Army and stabilizing 

its north front would have to be Thirtyninth Army that was "twisting and turning in the army's bowels" west of Sychevka. Then, they agreed, it would be 

too late to start toward Ostashkov before the msputitsa. Furthermore, the 

railroad from Vyazma to Rzhev would 

have to be renailed to the standard 

gauge to accommodate German locomotives because the Soviet-built locomotives on the line were nearly all 

broken down. The time required to 

make this change would delay the logistical buildup." 

After several desperate attempts to 

break out, Twenty-ninth Anny collapsed 

on 20 February, but by then Kalinin 

Front, under Stavka orders to renew the 

offensive, was hammering at the curve 

of the front around Olenino trying to 

get direct contact with Thirty-ninth Army 

for the drive to Vyazma. Hider 

postponed a decision on the Ostash kov 

operation while making it 'c1ear, 

27AOK 9, Fuehru.ngsabteilllllg Kriegslagebltch, 1.1. -

3 /.3.42, 2,7.12 Feb 42, AOK 9 21520/1 file. 
THE CLINCH 

however, that preparations for it were 

to be carried out at the highest possible 

priority. Meanwhile, 6th Panzer Division had begun pushing Thirty-ninth 

Army away from the Vyazma-Sychevka 

section of the railroad by what it called 

a "snail offensive," namely, by occupying villages one by one at random 

along a 25-mile front wherever doing 

so was easiest. The 6th Panzer Division 

found that it could advance a mile or 

two a day without much effort, and 

Thirty-ninth Army appeared to be becoming progressively more nervous 

and uncertain . After almost daily exchanges between the army, army 

group, OKH, and Hitler, Kluge and 

Hitler gave Ninth Army a "basic order" 

on 1 March to encircle and destroy 

Thil·ty-ninth Army, but Hitler stipulated 

that the preparations for the Ostashkov attack had to continue and 

both operations were to be completed 

before the msputitsa. 2. Ninth Army sent orders for the attack on Thirty-ninth Anny to the corps 

on the 1st, but because Ka.linin Front 

redoubled its effort to smash the 

Olenino bulge, tlle orders could not 

begin to have any effect for another 

week. By then time was getting perilously short; tlle army group had set 

the 20tll as the latest date before the 

m sputitsa on which active operations 

could continue. On the 8th the pressure on the bulge eased , but two days 

later the great snowstorm began. In 

the midst of deepening snow, Model 

managed to secure a flight to tlle 

Fuehrer Headquarters on the 11th. 

There the next day, while reports from 

the front were describing the snowfall 

28Ibid .. 21 Feb- I Mar 42. 

185 

as "a catastrophe of nature," he promised Hitler to pursue the Ostashkov 

preparations "with force, " which, 

characteristically, he did after needing 

another two days to get back to his 

arnly. 

In spite of the snow and the rapid 

thaw that followed , Model had assembled 56,000 troops and 200 tanks 

for BRUECKENSCHLAG by the fourth 

week in March. In the meantime, 

however, the Stavlw had issued the 20 

March directive to Zhukov that included orders for Kalinin Front. General Konev was to cut off Olenino and 

take Rzhev and Belyy. He was not, in 

fact, going to be able to do any of those, 

but he had been given reinforcements 

in infantry and tanks, and those did 

make tlleir presence felt.'· 

Finally, on the 27th, frustrated by 

"two imponderables, the enemy and 

the weather," Model had to concede 

that BRUECKENSCHLAG was not possible. 

Hitler rejected a substituted plan for a 

truncated version of the operation that 

Model and Kluge had proposed and 

called tllem to the Fuehrer Headquarters on the 29th. By then, as elsewhere 

along the front, the roads became 

rivers during the day and were only 

passable at night and for a few hours in 

tlle early morning, and BRUECKEN. 

SCHLAG had become too daring even 

for Hitler. He shifted the objective of 

tlle German assault to ThiTty-ninthAnny, 

but that could only mean prolonging 

tlle snail offensive for a week or so until 

tile weather completely overtook it as 

wel!.3. 

29/VOVSS . vol. II, p. 33 1. 

30AOK 9, F!l.eJmmgsabteiiu ng Kliegstagebllch, 1.4-

30.6.42, I Apr 42. AOK 9 28504 file. 
186 

A nny Cmup NOTth 

The Stavka Faces the Rasputitsa 

In the last week of February, the 

Soviet commands opposite Army 

Group orth faced the unpleasant 

possibility that in a matter of weeks 

they might have no more to show for 

their winter's efforts than some thousands of square miles of forest and 

swamp. Northwest and Kalinin Fmnts had 

torn the Army Group North right 

flank completely loose from its moorings west of Ostashkov, encircled 

Kholm, and trapped one German 

corps plus half of another around 

Demyansk; but the key point south of 

Lake limen , Staraya Russa, stayed in 

German hands. North of the lake, Second Siwek Anny had cut deep behind 

Eighteenth Army's line on the Volkhov 

River without affecting thus far the 

German grip on Leningrad. TIle general offensive was swimming in successes on the one hand and promising 

little evidence of durable accomplishment on the other. (Map 14.) 

The Stavka's problems, aside from 

tile escalating pressure of time, were 

two: tile wide dispersion of command 

effort inherent in the general offensive 

from the start and the local offensive 

efforts occasioned by the operating 

methods of the field commands. The 

first, if it were perceived , which is by no 

means certain, was past the stage at 

which it could be reversed. The second, 

apparently, could not be eliminated , but 

it could be mitigated , and to do tllat, the 

Stavka applied what had become its 

standard correctives, fresh orders, exhortations, and reinforcements." 

3 1See lVMV, vol. IV, p. 327. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

On 25 February, the S/avka put all of 

the units operating against the Demyansk pocket under Headquarters, 

Northwest Front. It then also gave General Kurochkin, thefront's commander, 

an order to "squeeze" tile pocket out of 

existence "in four or five day's time" 

and get on with the drive past Staraya 

Russa.32 A week later, it gave him five 

artillery regiments, three mortar regiments, and air reinforcements and 

then followed with orders to intensify 

tile offensive and not only "squeeze" 

the pocket but also "crush the enemy in 

the directions of the main effort."33 

Volklwv Front, which had, by the last 

week in February, not yet managed to 

get Second Shock Anny turned north toward Lyuban in spite of repeated admonishments to do that, was an even 

more difficult problem for the S/avka. 

Unless the Russians could cut the 

Leningrad-Lyuban-Chudovo railroad, 

their prospects of accomplishing anything toward the relief of Leningrad 

were small. After sending Marshal 

Voroshilov to act as its representative 

on the spot, the Stavka, on 28 February, 

ordered General Meretskov, commander of Volkhov Front, to get an attack 

toward Lyuban going without, as he 

proposed , a pause to regroup. It also 

ordered General Khozin, at Leningrad 

Front, to set Fiftyfoul·th Anny in motion 

toward Lyuban from the northeast and 

promised strong air support for both 

of the thrusts 34 

The View From FuehTer Headquarters 

I n the last week of February, 3,500 

32ZhelanO\', "/z O/J)'UI," p. 30. 

33/ bid .. p. 31: IVOVSS, vol. II. p. 337f. 

3~/VOVSS, \'01. II , p. 335: Merelsko\', Serving the 

People. p. 199. 
SIXTEENTH 

ARMY 

ARMY GROUP NORTH 

20 February - 8 May 1942 

Approximate front, 20 Feb 

000000 Approximate front, 8 Mav 

o 60 Kilometer. 

MAP /4 

VOLKHOV 

FRONT 

FRONT 

22d 

NINTH 

ARMY 
188 

troops, commanded by Generalmajor 

Theodor Scherer were beginning their 

second month under siege in Kholm, 

and the perimeter that they held 

around the town had shrunk to the 

point at which supplying them by air 

became difficult and exceedingly dangerous. On 25 February, four out of 

ten planes flying to Kholm were shot 

down, bringing the Luftwaffe's losses of 

tri-motored JU-52 transports during 

the airlift to fifty. After the 25th, only 

gliders could land and then only on a 

cleared strip of ice on the Lovat River. 

Henceforth , planes making airdrops 

had to come in at very low altitudes to 

hit the target and in doing so were 

exposed to ground fire from all 

directions.as 

In the Demyansk pocket, II Corps 

needed 300 tons of suppli es a day 

which required a full-scale, sustained 

airlift, the first such in aviation history. 

To mount the airl ift the Luftwaffe had 

to divert almost all of the transports assigned to Army Group Center and half 

of those stationed in the Army Group 

South area. The slow JU-52s had to fly 

in groups of twenty to forty with 

fighter cover, and Soviet bombing of 

the airstrips in the pocket scrambled 

the flight schedules and created additional hazards for the planes and 

crews. Total deliveries up to 28 February were short by 1,900 tons, about 

one-half of the requirement.36 

German I Corps, holding the northeastern face of the Volkhov pocket, was 

31:>/-1. Gr. Nord. /(/ Kriegstllgelmch, /3.2.-12.3.42, 25 

Feb 42, H. Cr. Nord 7512817 fi le. 

36Hermanll I'locher, Tllr GI'1'111f11l Air Force Versus 

RlLSsia, 1942, USAF Hislorical Divisio n, USA F HiSlOrical Sludies. no. 15'1, pp. 78-81: H. Cr. Nord, la 

Kriegstagebllch, 0.2.- 12.3.42. 28 Feb 42, 1-1 . Gr. Nord 

75128/7 ~le . 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

shaken on 25 February when Soviet ski 

troops pushed north through frozen 

swamps along the Tigoda River to 

within five miles of Lyuban. The army 

group's intelligence had known for several days that the 327th Rifle Division 

was on the march northward from 

near Spaskaya Polist. Also knowing 

how deliberately the Soviet commands 

genera ll y operated, Army Group 

North had expected an attack, but not 

so soon-" What it had not known was 

that Meretskov and Second Siwek Anny 

were then under "categorical instructions" from the Stavka to get an attack 

going without delay.3. 

Nevertheless, when Hitler met with 

General Kuechler, the Army Group 

North commander; the commanding 

generals of Sixteenth and Eighteenth 

Armies; and the J, II, X, and XXXVIII 

Corps commanders at the Fuehrer 

Headquarters on 2 March, he spoke 

about initiatives with some confidence. 

AltllOugh Army Group North's situation had not improved, it had for more 

tl1an two weeks balanced on the edge 

of disaster without going over, which in 

itself gave encouragement to Hitler. 

On the other hand , the conference 

disclosed that no substantive improvement in the army group's position had 

yet occurred. At Kholm, half of the 

original garrison were dead or 

wounded. Replacements could be 

brought in by glid er, and enough to 

make up for about half the losses were, 

but each of these men reduced the 

space avai lable for carrying supp li es 

and increased consumption of those 

supplies transported in the remaining 

3 7N. Gr. Nord, la Kril'gsto.gebuch. 13.2.- 12.3.42, 25 

Feb 42, 1-1 . Cr. Nord 7512817 file. 

l!lMcrctskov. Serving the People, p. 199. 
THE CLINCH 

space. A relief force of half-a-dozen 

mixed battalions under Generalmajor 

Horst von Uckermann had cut 

through from the southwest almost to 

within sight of Kholm, but it was stalled 

in deep snow and practically encircled. 

General von Brockdorff, the commander of II Corps in the Demyansk 

pocket, told Hitler that his force depended completely on each day's supply !lights. For the Scherer and Uckermann groups at Kholm and II Corps at 

Demyansk, the margin of survival was 

thin. South of Lyuban, 1 Corps was 

having an expectedly easy success. 

Goaded by the Stavka, Meretskov had 

hastily pushed the 80th Cavalry and 

327th Rifle Divisions into the breach the 

ski troops had opened on 25 February, 

and I Corps had then closed the gap in 

its front, trapping about 6,000 Soviet 

troopS."9 But if Second Siwek Army on 

the south and FiJiyfourth Army in the 

northeast one day made good their 

bids to reach Lyuban, I Corps would be 

locked in a pocket exactly like the one 

at Demyansk. 

Hitler received the generals' gloomy 

reports with sympathetic detachment. 

He promised a regiment of reinforcements to get Uckermann's relief force 

back in motion, and he gave instructions to have an order of the day written honoring the Kholm garrison . To 

von Brockdorff, he made the limp observation that the hardships II Corps 

was having to endure resulted from 

having to defend the Demyansk pocket 

as if it were a fortress even though it 

was nol. "On the other hand ," he 

added, this imposed a moral obligation 

J9H. Gr. Nord, 10 Kriegstagebuch , 13.-31.3.42, 1 Mar 

42, H. Gr. Nord 75128/8 file. 

189 

on the troops outside tlle pocket to 

come to the corps' aid . 

When the conference turned to its 

main concerns, plans to close the Volkhov River line behind Second Siwek 

Arrny and to restore contact with II 

Corps, Hitler's tone changed. After 

General Busch, commander of Sixteenth Army, and General der Kavallerie Georg Lindemann, commander of Eighteenth Army, offered 

tentative proposals for counterattacks 

toward Demyansk and at the Volkhov 

gap, he set approximate starting dates 

for both-7 to 12 March for the Volkhov operation and 13 to 16 March for 

the one toward Demyansk. To compensate for shortages of ground forces, he 

said the Luftwaife would employ aircraft as "escort artillery," using the 

heaviest demolition bombs it had to 

blast the bunker systems the Russians 

had built in the forests. The Demyansk 

operation, he indicated, would also 

have to be coordinated with Ninth 

Army's proposed thrust from the south 

toward Ostashkov.40 

One item in the discussion took the 

generals completely by surprise. In the 

midst of talking about the Demya nsk 

and Volkhov operations, Hitler had 

offhandedly given the army group a 

new mission. With spring coming, he 

had observed, it would be necessary to 

tighten the siege of Leningrad and, 

particularly, to keep the Soviet Baltic 

Fleet from steaming out into the Baltic 

after the ice had melted. To do that, 

Army Group North would have to 

provide troops to take and occupy a 

group of islands at the eastern end of 

tlle Gulf of Finland. The islands, Suur4°/bid. , 2 Mar '12; Halder Diary, vol. 111. p. 408. 
190 

saari, Lavansaari, Seiskari, and lytarsaari, had Soviet garrisons on them, 

which presumably were small, but the 

Germans could not be certain of that. 41 

Raubti!?,. 

The army group and army staffs, 

working against time, the enemy, and a 

clutch of uncertainties, were given between five and ten days to get the 

Volkhov operation , code-named RAUBTIER ("beast of prey"), going. The thaw 

was beginning in the Crimea, and it 

would spread northward in the coming 

weeks. It had to be taken into account. 

On the other hand , a ir support could 

only be effective if it went one place at 

a time; therefore, Volkhov had to come 

before Demyansk, and a delay with the 

former operation could cripple the latter. Hitler's talk about takmg the Islands 

in the Gulf of Finland added a complication. That mission would also require troops and a ir support. No date 

had been set for it, and the army group 

regarded it as a waste of time. The 

OKH insisted , however, that HItler 

took it most seriously because he believed he would be made a "laughing 

stock" if the Soviet warships steamed 

out into the Baltic after the ice 

melted." 

That the Russians were not going to 

allow the Germans to ca rry out their 

plans without opposition went without 

saying. In the first week of Ma.rch , 

Politbu1V and State Defense Commltlee 

member G. M. Malenkov joined Vorosh ilov at Volklwv Front headquarters, 

and the Stavka sent General Vlasov, 

IiH. G,: Nord, 10 Kripgstagt'bllch. lJ .-JI,J.42, 2 Mar 

42, H . Gr. Nord 75 128/8 file. 

42/bid .. 2.4 Mar 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

who as commander of Twentieth Army 

had been one of the heroes of the 

Moscow counteroffensive, to be Meretskov's deputy. Before the week's end, 

Second Siwek Army was regroupmg for 

another push toward Lyuba~ , and 

Fifty-Jourth Army was hanunenng at 

Pogostye, twenty mIles northeast of 

Lyuban. 43 At Kholm, the RUSSIans 

were using tanks. One 52 -tonner 

stopped the Uckermann relief force 

for a day until it could bnng up an 88-

rnm. gun, and the Soviet T -34s were 

dueling with the strongpomts on the 

perimeter of the pocket. 

Eighteenth Army was ready on tlle 

7th to start RAUBTIER two days later if 

the air support Hitler had prescribed 

could be given by then. The "if" was 

substantial. The Luftwaffe was engaged 

at Kholm, trying to help the Uckermann force across the last few mIles to 

the pocket at Kholm before it was 

overrun by Soviet tanks. At the moment, the air support was keeping the 

pocke t in existence but was domg less 

to carry the Uckermann group forward. German planes could pin the 

Russians down when they were in the 

open, but they were not effective 

against the Soviet prepared defenses, 

which were concealed under the snow. 

On tlle 7th and for the next several 

days, Hitler could not bring himself to 

withdraw the air support for Kholm m 

part because hewas afraid the pocket 

would collapse If he dId and m part 

because he was casting about for a 

replacement for Uckennann whom a 

Luftwaffe lia ison officer had accused of 

lacking confidence. By tlle 11th, the 

Luftwaffe, also , was demanding 

4 3 r.,'!crClsko\·, Serving IIII! People, pp. 200-02: jI,'lerelskov, "Na volkhovskikh ntbeuwkh," p. 65. 
THE CLINCH 

postponements because the weathet' 

was causing icing conditions on planes 

that made it too dangerous for the 

German Stuka dive-bombers to carry 

the extra heavy bombs they were supposed to use, 

Meanwhile, Soviet FiftyfoUTth Army 

was beginning a drive from the northeast toward Lyuban that could cut off I 

Corps completely if, as one army group 

report put it, "RAUBTIER remained a 

rubber lion," Kuechler and Lindemann 

were ready to go ahead on the 12th, 

without illr support, but Hider would 

not agree to this action because he 

feared the losses would be too high, By 

then, the delays in RAUBTIER were beginning to cut into the time allotted for 

the Demyansk operation and to 

threaten the projected attacks on the 

islands in the Gulf of Finland. Internally the army group staff now regarded the latter assaults as "insane," 

but Hider insisted they had to be carried out while the ice was still dlick 

enough to be crossed. The Finns, who 

were to join in from their side of the 

gulf, had said that dley would be ready 

to attack on the 20th, Fog and lowhanging clouds forced another 

postponement on the 13th, but the 

Luftwaffe reported that it expected the 

weadler to clear by the next morning, 

and d,en its planes could start sometime between 0900 and 120044 During 

the night, however, the temperature 

fell to - 30" F. Anticipating having to 

choose between the effects of letting 

the troops stand in the open while 

waiting for the planes in such ferocious 

cold or letting d,e attack start before 

the planes arrived and having the 

HJ-I. Gr. Nord, In Kril'gslagl'buch, /3.-3/.3.42, 5- 14 

Iar 42. H . Cr. NOI"d 75 128/8 file. 

191 

bombs possibly drop on his own men, 

Kuechler decided to wait another 

day. 

The moudl of the Volkhov pocket 

was, as it had been since January, about 

six miles wide. The NovgorodChudovo road and railroad crossed the 

pocket from nordl to SOUdl, but there 

were no east-west roads, A pproximately at its center, about a mile apart, 

the Russians had cut two 100-foot-wide 

lanes running east to west through the 

trees and underbrush. Inside the lanes, 

they had laid down several feet of compacted snow, enough to cover the tops 

of the tree stumps, and these had 

served as Second Siwek Army's supply 

and communications lines. To distinguish between d,ese lanes, the Germans named the northern one Erika 

and its soudlern twin Dora, At nightfall 

on 14 March, the cold had not abated, 

but the Luftwaffe was certain its planes 

could make their first strikes at 

daylight the next morning, and Eighteenth Army had tents and stoves 

ready to be moved along widl the 

troops. Because of the cold, d,e risks 

were still extraordinarily high. In such 

weather, weapons, machine guns especially,jammed , and men lost the will 

to fight. But Kuechler decided that 

RAUBTIER could not be delayed again, 

At 0730 the next morning , the 

planes arrived over the front. After d,e 

Stukas had hit their targets, XXXVIII 

Corps and I Corps troops pushed into 

the gap from the south and north. 

During the day, 263 planes Rew missions for RAuBTIER, and , by dark, 

XXXVIII Corps had gained a half mile 

and I Corps slightly more than two 

miles. In the next two days, RA UBTIER 

went ahead but without gaining the 

distance it had on the first day. The 
192 

planes were not living up to Hitler's 

expectation in their role as escort artillery: when tlley laid their barrages 

close to the line of advance some o[ 

their bombs generally fell among their 

own troops; when they allowed a safe 

margin, the Russians usually had time 

to recover before the Germans, who 

were moving through deep snow, could 

reach them. 

The Russians, on the other hand, 

were defending static strongpoints, 

and each one that fell narrowed the 

mouth of we pocket somewhat. On the 

18th, I Corps crossed the Erika Lane, 

and the following day both corps 

reached the Dora Lane where their 

spearheads made contact late in the 

day." Second Shock Army, which had had 

trouble enough keeping tlle Lyuban 

operation going, now was going to 

have to fight for survival. On we 21st, 

Vlasov went into the pocket to take 

command of the army. 

B lUeckenschlag at Demyansk 

In the meantime, Sixteentll Army's 

attack toward the Demyansk pocket 

had fa ll en five days behind the date 

originally set for its latest possible beginning. Alwough, owing to weir experiences at Kholm and in RAUBTIER, 

the field commands had concluded 

that it was not worthwhile to sacrifice 

time, which was becoming precious, [or 

the sake of air support, Hitler had 

insisted on keeping all available planes 

commiued to RAUBTIER until that operation was finished and on holding the 

Demyansk operation in abeyance until 

he could shift full air support to it. At 

'UAOK 18. la Kriegstagt bllch. Band II, 14- 15 Mar 42, 

AOK 18 19601/6 file; AOK 18 . /(1 Kriegstagebllch, Band 

III. 16- 20 Mar 42. AOK 181960117 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

the same time, he had also insisted that 

the effort at Demyansk be part of the 

grand design to close the Ostashkov 

gap that had been given the code name 

BRUECKENSCHLAG, the same name 

which had been assigned to inth 

Army's projected drive to Ostashkov. 

The code name again was not inappropriate because Sixteenth Army's 

share of this larger BRUECKENSCHLAG 

effort was in fact also to build a 

bridge-across we twenty miles between X Corps' front south of Staraya 

Russa and the western face of the Demyansk pockeL. 

The plan, as approved during we 2 

March conference at Fuehrer Headquarters, was to have five more-or-Iess 

full-strengtll divisions strike east from 

the X Corps line to the Lovat River. 

When wey reached the Lovat, the distance to the pocket would be somewhat 

under five miles, and at tllat point II 

Corps would join in with a push from 

its side. During the conference, Halder 

had concluded tllat Busch and the II 

and X Corps commanders were "not 

sufficiently firm personalities," and afterward he prevailed on Kuechler to 

shift control of BRUECKENSCHLAG away 

from Sixteenth Army by constituting 

the forces for this operation as separate 

combat teams with authorization to 

commun icate directly to the army 

group and the OKH outside the normal channels. Command of the main 

force went to Generalmajor Walter von 

Seydlitz-Kurzbach and that of the secondary force in the pocket to Generalmajor H . Zorn, both of whom were 

senior division commanders. 

Seydlitz, working under the eye of 

the OKH, exercised his troops in loose 

order infiltration tactics modeled on 

tactics we Finnish Army had used dur-
THE CLINCH 

ing the Winter War of 1939-1940. To 

exploit these tactics, he laid the line of 

advance tJuough woods and swamp 

south of the Staraya Russa - Demyansk 

road. The questions were whether the 

Germans could be as effective fighting 

in the forest as the Finns had been, 

whether they could beat the oncoming 

thaw, and how much longer the pocket 

could survive. The answers to the latter 

two became critical as soon as RAUBTIER 

began consuming the time allotted to 

BRUECKENSCHLAG. 

On tJ,e 16th, Kuechler made a somewhat hazardous flight into the pocket 

to reassure Brockdorff, who was talking about staging a breakout. During 

the flights in and out, Kuechler had the 

opportunity to observe firsthand what 

would be a positive circumstance for 

BRUECKENSCHLAG: from an altitude of 

about 4,000 feet in clear weatJ,er he 

could see no evidence of combat between the pocket and the X Corps 

front. The Russians, by being set on 

breaking the pocket open from tJ,e 

north and south, at which tJ,ey might 

well succeed, were thereby allowing the 

Germans to have a stable basis from 

which to launch BRUECKENSCHLAG46 

In midafternoon on the 19th, after 

he knew the Dora Lane was cut and the 

Volkhov gap was being closed, HitJer 

gave the order for the final deployment for BRUECKENSCHLAG. The Luftwaffe would shift its full force south the 

next morning, and Seydlitz would have 

one day to bring his units, which were 

dispersed behind tJ,e X Corps front, 

up to their line of departure. 

When the advance began at daylight 

on the morning of the 21st, the objec4 6H. Cr. Nord, la ri('g.~ lagebu , 13 .-31.3.42, 2- 16 

Mar 42. H. Cr. Nord 75128/8 file. 

193 

tives were a succession of diminutive 

villages, some with imposing namesIvanovskoye, Noshevalovo, and Vasilievshchina, all otherwise insignificant 

except as reference points in the wilderness of trees and snow. The Russians responded with determination 

and confusion, holding fanatically to 

some places and giving way in others. 

After two days, the temperature rose 

above freezing. On the fourtJ, day, several regiments reached the Redya 

River, halfway to the Lovat. By then, 

too, the three feet of snow on the 

ground had turned to slush , and aerial 

reconnaissance had reported Soviet reinforcements moving along the valleys 

of the Redya and Lovat from the nortJ, 

and the south. Two Soviet parachute 

brigades had landed inside the pocket 

not far from Demyansk and tJ,e airfield . Like the paratroops who had 

landed behind Army Group Center, 

however, once on the ground they appeared uncertain as to what to do next. 

East of the Redya, Seydlitz's advance 

slowed almost to a stop. Ahead , all the 

way to the Lovat the forest was dense, 

unbroken by roads or settlements, and 

matted with underbrush. Against the 

Soviet troops dug-in there the German 

Stukas were useless: they could not spot 

the enemy positions through the trees 

and brush. By the 26th, a foot and a 

half of water covered the ice on the 

Redya, and if the thaw continued the 

entire stretch between the rivers would 

soon be swamp. On the 30th, Seydlitz 

told Kuechler that he was going to 

stop, regroup, and shift his line of 

attack north to the Staraya RussaDemyansk road· 7 

HAOK 16, fa Kriegstagebllch, Bamllll, 21-30 Mar 

42, AOK 162346814 f.Ie. 
194 

At the end of the month, the Slav/ILl 

also was engaged in planning a fresh 

start. It had, for two weeks, had Politburo member N. A. Bulganin as its 

representative at Northwest Front, but 

Bulganin's competence in military affairs was "small," and his presence had 

done more to complicate than to facilitate the front'S conduct of operations. 

On 29 March, the Stavka gave command of all troops on the perimeter of 

the pocket to General Ley tenant N. F. 

Vatutin, who had, until then, been the 

front's chief of staff, and made Kurochkin, the front'S commander, solely responsible for the defense against 

Seydlitz's relief operation. At the same 

time, it gave Kurochkin five regiments 

of antitank guns and "four divisions" of 

light antiaircraft artillery.'· 

A Month of Mud and Crises 

For both contestants, the Germans 

and the Russians, the final lap in the 

race with the msputitsa was on. The 

stakes were high . If BRUECKENSCHLAG 

failed, the Germans would not be able 

to hold the Demyansk pocket through 

the spring nor would Second Siwek Army 

be able to survive if its lines to the rear 

remained cut. The rasputitsa could save 

the German effort at Kholm and it 

might be all that could save I Corps 

from being cut off the way II Corps 

already was. While the mspulitsa was 

certain to have an effect, what that 

might be at anyone place was entirely 

uncertain . From Kholm, for instance, 

where the Soviet lines were long and 

the roads poor at best, Scherer reported on 26 March that some of the 

Russians appeared to be withdrawing. 

48Zhelanov. "h QjJ),la," pp. 3 1-33. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

His own position, however, was getting 

worse. The sudden and rapid thaw had 

completely melted the snowbanks that 

had given his troops concealment; the 

entrenchments had become mudholes 

half-filled with water; and the felt 

boots, indispensable as protec tion 

against the cold, were useless to the 

troops who now spent their days submerged to the hips in mud and melted 

snow. One half-way determined Soviet 

attack with artillery and tanks, he predicted, could well be enough to finish 

off the pocket." 

Eighteenth Army's grip on the Volkhov pocket was desperate but uncertain. Fifty-fourth Army had pushed a 

wedge past Pogostye to within five 

miles of Lyuban on the northeast, and 

Second Shock Army had no more than 

seven or eight miles to go to reach 

Lyuban from the south, which it appeared determined to do even after the 

RAUBTIER operation had closed the 

mouth of the pocket. On 23 March, the 

day the thaw began , the army group 

chief of staff told the OKH chief o[ operations that it was "gradually" becoming impossible for Eighteenth Army to 

keep the Russians from taking Lyuban 

because the army did not have enough 

men to do it. The thaw slowed the Russians as it did the Germans, but they 

were clearly not going to let it stop 

them. By keeping tanks in position to 

rake the Erika Lane with fire , they had 

managed to prevent the Germans from 

actually taking possession of it and to 

convert the lane into a no-man's-land. 

On the 27th, the tanks, with infantry 

behind them, drove through the lane 

and reopened it as a supply road [or 

~'iW. Gr. NQrd, la Kriegstagebllch, 13.- 31.3.42, 26 Mar 

42. H. Gr. Nord 75128/8 1L1e. 
THECLlNCH 

Second Siwek Arm)'. At the end of the 

month, Eighteenth Army did get one 

small bit of relief: Finnish troops, with 

some Estonian auxiliaries supplied by 

Eighteenth A rmy lOok the islands 

Suursaari, Lavansaari , and Tytarsaari, 

thus ending the army's worry that it 

would have to divert men of its own to 

those enterprises. 

BR UEC KE NSC HLAG resumed on 4 

April. Seydlitz had regrouped his 

force, and his Soviet opposition had 

been regrouped and reinforced. Soviet 

infantry were not only dug in on the 

ground but were firing from the treetops. Airplanes, mostly slow, single-engine biplanes, cruised over the German 

bivouac areas all night long dropping 

bombs from altitudes of from one to 

two hundred feet. On the softening 

ground , Soviet tanks were again showing the ir superiority, and the tank 

crews had discovered tllat the trees and 

underbrush gave them excellent protec tion because the Rotkopj hollowcharge she lls frequently exploded 

when they struck branches. The Germans were using a new weapon, the 

Panzersehreek. It fired a rocket-propelled, hollow-charge grenade and 

could knock out a T -34, but Seydlitz 

observed that manning it required 

nerve "and a generous endowment of 

luck" because it was not effective at 

ranges over fifty ya rdss • The nighttime temperatures were staying above 

freezing, and the roads, including 

those the Russians had surfaced with 

layers of packed snow and sawdust, 

were thawing. Maneuvering was out of 

the question. The only way 

BRUECKENSCHLAG cou ld succeed was by 

~0H. C. Nord, la Kriegstagebllch. 1-30.4.42 . 3 Apr 42, 

H . Cr. Nord 7512819 file. 

195 

punching tllrough to the Lovat by the 

most direct route. 

The six-mile distance to the Lovat 

was an ordinary two-hour walk. It took 

Seydlitz's troops eight days to get within 

500 yards of the river and to begin ;, 

slow turn upstream toward Ramushevo. The II Corps force under Zorn 

began its attack out of the pocket on 

the 14th. It was a gamble. Zorn was not 

supposed to have begun moving until 

Seydlitz had Ramushevo, but Seydlitz 

had over ten thousand casualties, and 

by the time he reached Ramushevo-if 

he did-the rasputitsa was certain to be 

in full swing. 

A pril was a month of mud and crises. 

Army Group North and the OKH considered having II Corps attempt a 

breakout. Since Army Group Center 

was giving up on its share of 

BR UECKENSC HLAG, the Demyansk 

pocket was at best a doubtful tactical 

asset, bu t no one wanted to argue that 

point with Hitler. Kuechler did tell 

Hitler that with three more divisions he 

could wipe out the Volkhov pocket. 

Hitler responded that henceforth 

Army Groups North and Center would 

be on the ir own because all troops and 

material not already committed would 

be going into the summer offensive . 

Ku echl er then scraped together five 

battalio ns that he could have used to 

pump strength into BRUECKENSCHLAG 

but that he had to put into the Kholm 

reli ef "because humanity and comradeship make it unthinkable to abandon the Scherer Group."" The 

Luftwaffe had a battalion of paratroops 

to land in Kholm. To drop them there, 

however, would necessitate diverting 

transports from the Demyansk airlift 

51 Ibid., 12- 14 Apr 42. 
196 MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

M ACHINE-GUN N EST ON TilE VOLKHOV FRONT 

which would probably result in substantial losses. The army group predicted dourly that if the drop were 

attempted half the men would land 

among the Russians and the others 

would "break all the bones in their 

bodies" coming down among the buildings in the lown.52 

The Luflwaffe, discontented with its 

support role, wanted to withdraw the 

Slukas from BRUECKENSCHLAG for operations against the Soviet naval vessels at 

Leningrad to assuage Hitler's concern 

about the ships. To capture Hitler's interest and circumvent the army group's 

objections to this action, the Luflwaffe 

raised the project's status to that of an 

Ul hifJ., 14 Apr 42. 

air offensive under the grandi loquent 

code name GOETZ VON BERLI CHI NGEN. 

The first raid, on the 24th , scored hits 

on the battleship October R evolulion and 

the cruisers Maxim Gorkiy and MaTly 

and drew down heavily on the ammunition for Eighteenth Army's longrange artillery then employed in suppressing Soviet antiaircraft fire . Subsequent raids, continuing into the first 

week in May with reduced artillery support, met more intensive antiaircraft 

fire than the pilots had experienced before , even in the London blitz. 

In and around the Volkhov pocket a 

disaster was almost certainly developing. The only real question was, for 

whom? After the Russians broke open 

the Erika Lane, Kuechler relieved the 

XXXVIII Corps commander. At the 
THE CLINCH 

Fuel"'er Headquarters, the feeling was 

lhal the 58lh Infantry Division commande r, in whose sector the mishap 

had occurred, should also be relieved 

because he was "more a professor than 

a soldier." While Kuechl er protested in 

vain for two days that being "educated 

a nd we ll-read " did nol necessarily 

make an officer ineffectual, the Russians also retook the Dora Lane 5 3 

The be nefit th e Russians gained 

from retaking the two lanes, however, 

did not quite equal the pain the loss 

occasioned for the Ge rma n s. The 

XXXVIII Corps and I Corps held the 

corridor formed by the lanes to a width 

of less lhan two miles, a nd, by midApril, the thaw and constant air and 

a rtillery bombardment had turned the 

lanes into cratered ribbons of mud. Second Siwek Army was not strangled but it 

was choking. Eigllleenth Army, for its 

pan, reported that ilS continuing hold 

on Lyuban owed entirely to "luck and 

entirely unfounded optimism" both of 

which could be dispe rsed at any time 

by Soviet infantry "and a few tanks."" 

All of Army Group North was indeed , as it put it to Hitler and th e 

OKH, "li ving from hand to mouth and 

on an almost inde fensible o ptimism."" 

On the other hand, the m sputitsa, at 

least, was nobody's ally. It was impartial. 

The winter had not been ; il had given 

the Russians the initiative; but that was 

inexorably melting away with snow and 

ice. Second Shock Army and Fiftyfourth 

Army he ld low ground, swamp, and 

bOllomland. T he Germans expected 

the Russians lO know how to deal with 

53H . Cr. NQrd, /a KI'iegs(agfburh, 1.-3/.3.42, 29 Mar 

42, H. Gr. Nord 7512819 file. 

M/bid" 16 Apr 42. $5Ibid. 

197 

the msputitsa better than their own 

commands did, and the Soviet armies, 

no doubt, did know how to deal with 

the inevitable thaw as well as anyone. 

Stalin, however, wanted more. The 

Leningrad h ont commander, General 

Khozin , had declared that if he were 

given full command , he could still 

bring off a victory despite therasputitsa. 

Marshal Shaposhnikov, chief of the 

General Staff, did not believe Khozin 

was capable of controlling operations 

by ten armies and several independent 

corps, but Stalin was for giving him a 

chance . On 23 April, the Stavka relieved Meretskov and abolished l.fJlklwv 

Front, turning it over as an operational 

group to Headquarte rs, L eningrad 

Front. Khozin then was given orders to 

step up the offensive and break the 

Leningrad siege 5 • The job that had 

been too big for Meretskov and Khozin 

together was not likely to be mastered 

by one of them alone, and the time was 

poor for experimenting with ad hoc 

commands-the Volkov River had an 

open channel down its center; the 

Erika and Do ra lanes were und e rwater; and Second Siwek Army's perime ter in the poc ke t was starting to 

shrink. 

On the a ft e rn oo n of th e 29th, 

Ku ec hl er ta lk e d by te le phon e to 

Brockdorff in the Demyansk pockeL 

Seydlitz's and Zorn's troops standing 

opposile each Olher o n the Lovat had 

strung a lelephone line across the river. 

Northwest Front would be denied its fin al 

viClory ove r II Corps. 

At Kholm , Third Siwek Army muslered artillery and tanks and broke into 

the pockel from the south o n I May, 

$6Vasilcvski y, De/I), p. 184[; Meretskov, Serving (III' 

Propl" p. 207. 
198 

the ninety-sixth day of the siege. The 

relief force under Generalmajor 

Werner Huehner, Uckennann's successor, was stalled a mile to the west 

where it stayed for three more days 

while the infantry probed for an opening and the Stukas rained bombs on the 

Russians. Hitler claimed that more 

bombs were dropped during this attack 

than in all of World War I. During the 

morning of the 5th, a predawn tank 

and infantry attack reached the western edge of the pocket at daylight. 57 

57H . Cr. Nord, fa Kriegslngebuch, 1.-31.5.42 , 1-5 May 

42, H . Gr. Nord 75 128/10 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

The winter had ended. The occasional snow that continued to fall was 

heavy and wet. The mud on the roads 

was a yard or more deep, and horses 

sometimes drowned in the potholes. 

Every gully and dip was filled with 

water. The woods were submerged, 

and in them and the swamps, which 

during this season were actually shallow lakes, populations of vipers were 

coming to life. As if in competition for 

a doubtful honor, Sixteenth and Eighteenth Army units lavished craftsmanship and some artistry on signs 

asserting, "The arse of the world begins here." 
CHAPTER X 

The War Behind the Front 

The Partisan Movement, Beginnings 

01ganization 

The Germans assumed throughout 

the war in the East that the Soviet 

leadership had prepared intensively 

for a partisan campaign well before the 

war broke out. Partisan warfare, after 

all, had been important in earlier Russian wars, and Soviet literature had 

highlighted the activities of the Red 

partisans in the 1918-1920 civil war. 

German analyses of the partisan movement made during the war took prior 

preparation for granted, as is shown in 

the following statements from the first 

"Bulletin on Partisan Warfare" put out 

by the Eastern Branch of Army Intelligence and from a similar Air Force 

Intelligence series: 

The use of partisans is a well known and 

tested means of ,varfare in the internal and 

external conflicts of the Russian people. It 

is, therefore, not surprising that the Soviet 

Government prepared for partisan warfare before the outbreak of the war 

through the use of the NKVD, creation of 

a plan of organization, recruitnlent of former partisans, secret courses of instruction, instructions for the responsible officers of all political organizations, and so 

forlll.' 

The Soviet authorities very carefully 

prepared for partisan warfare, even before 

'OKt-I, CClIStdH, FflQ, Nachrichten lI eber Bmulenkrieg 

Nr. 1, 1.5 .43. H31738. 

the war, within the framework of the secret 

state police of the Soviet Union [NKVDl' 

The German documents, however, 

do not contain any direct evidence to 

support their conclusions. Erickson 

states that Stalin stopped "experimentation and limited contingency planning connected with possible partisan 

operations on Soviet territory" after 

1937.0 In addition, the most comprehensive German postwar study 

states, "Before the war, Stalin repeatedly expressed the conviction that the 

Soviet Army was prepared to ward off 

an)' attack on its territory .... Because 

of this conception, preparations for 

popular resistance were not undertaken .... "4 As Erickson indicates, the 

theory of "carrying the war to enemy 

territory" and the possible untoward 

effects of fostering insurgency would, 

very likely, have kept the Soviet government from preparing for partisan warfare beforehand S 

Neverdleless, when the war started, 

the Soviet government immediately 

undertook to call a partisan movement 

to life. On 29 June 1941, the Council of 

People's Commissars and the Central 

20KL, Ie, FLO, EiTlulnachrichttm des Ie Die/ISles Ost der 

LuJtwafJ,. N,. 29, 2.8.42. OKU254. 

3Erickson, Road to StalinlJ1'ad, p. 240. 

4Eri ch Hesse, Dn sowjelmssiscJtr PO)"tisfllll'nklipg, 194 J 

his 1944 (Goeuingen : Mustcrschmidl, 1969), p. 41. 

5Eri ckson , Road to Sltllillgrad. p. 240r. 
200 

Committee of the Communist Party ordered all party and government organs 

in the frontier areas to create partisan 

detachments and to "kindle partisan 

warfare all over and everywhere." "For 

the enemy and his accomplices," the 

order read, "unbearable conditions 

must be created in the occupied territories. They must be pursued at ever y 

step and destroyed, and their measures 

must be frustrated. "· I n Belorussia , 

where the Germans were making their 

deepest advances, the republic centra l 

committee, on 30 June, issued its "Directive No. I on the o'ansition of Party 

Organizations to Underground Work 

in Enemy Occupation." The directive 

ordered party organizations to employ 

partisan detachments "to combat units 

of the enemy armies, to kindle partisan 

warfare everywhere, to destroy bridges 

and roads and telephone and telegraph lin es and set fire to supply 

dumps .. . :'7 

On 18 Jul y, the All-Union (national) 

Central Committee issued an order to 

all party committees in which it "expanded and concretized [sic]" the 29 

June directive· The order informed 

the committees that they would "receive in every town and also in every 

village willing support from hundreds, 

even thousands of our brothers and 

friends" and "demanded" that the committees assign "reliable, leading Party, 

Soviet, and Komsomol activists" to lead 

and spread partisan activity. I t called to 

the committees' notice also that "there 

6/VMV, vol. I V, p. 52. 

7 A. A. Ku znyaev, Podpobt)'e partiynye organy knmj>(l.l'tii 

beum.illi; v god)' velilwy otechestvlmnoy voyny (Minsk: 

Izdate!Slvo "Belarus," 1975), p. 6. 

8V. And rianov, "Ruknwd:;/vo Iwmmllnisticheskry partii 

vsenarodTW), borboy v tylu vragfl, " lvyemw-istoricheskiy 

Zhllmal, 10 (19i7), 61. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

are still cases in which the leaders of the 

Party and Soviet organizations of the 

myons [counties] threatened by the Fascists shamelessly leave their combat 

posts and retreat deep into the rear 

area to safe positio ns" and that "the 

Party and the Government will not hesita te to take the most severe measures 

in regard to those slackers a nd 

deserters. "9 

The centra l committee order, a lthough it designated partisan warfare 

as a party function, was supplemented 

by army instructions on organization, 

objectives, and tactics.' 0 These specified that the detachments were to consist of 75 to 150 men, organized into 

two or three companies, with the companies divided into two or three platoons. Operations, which were to take 

the form of "attacks on columns and 

concentrations of motorized infantry, 

on dumps and ammunition transpo rts, 

on airfields, a nd on railroad transports," were to be conducted primarily 

in company and platoon strengths and 

"carried out, as a rule , at night or from 

ambush." The detachments would 

have to locate in areas with enough forest to provid e cover, but each myon 

ought to have at least one detachment. 

The instructions went on to describe 

methods of laying ambushes, destroying dumps and bridges, and wrecking 

trains and the precautions to be ob9111e 18 Jul y o rder is OrlCn cited in Soviet public<l.-

Lions, but its content is not given. TIle full text of a 

co py found in German records is printed in John A. 

Amlslrong. ed., The Soviet Partisans ill ~itJrld Har II 

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1964). pp. 

653-55. 

IOTI1C "Instruction Conce rnin g the Organization 

and Activity of Partisan Detachments and Divcrsio nist Groups- issued by Nm'tJtlvest Frout o n 20 July 

1941 is p ri nted in Annslrong, Srwief Partisans, pp, 

655- 62. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

napTH3BHbl, 

T r 

P OSTER R EADS, "PARTISANS! AVENGE 

WITHOUT MERCY!" 

served on the march, in camp, and under pursuit." 

Under the instructions, a first stage 

in preparing for partisan warfare 

would be to set up "destruction battalions. " These, each consisting of 

about two hundred men who, because 

of age or for other reasons, were not 

eligible for regular military service, 

were to be organized in threatened 

areas by the local party and NKVD offices. Their tasks initially would be to 

fight against enetny parachutists, arrest 

deserters, hunt down "counterrevolutionaries" and enemy agents, and to 

employ massed riAe and machine gun 

fire against enemy aircraft. When ocII /bid., pp. 656-61. 

201 

cupation became imminent, the "besttrained, most courageous, and most experienced fighters" were to be detailed 

to fight as partisans'2 

The party involvement brought a 

massive apparatus to bear on the organization of the partisan movement. 

One line ran from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist 

Party through the central committees 

of the republics to dozens of provincial 

(oblast) and hundreds of myon party 

committees. At each level, a section "X" 

(Roman "10"), also designated "P01'-

tizanskiye Otryady" ("partisan detachments"), was responsible for creating 

and directing partisan units. A second 

line branched off below the All-Union 

Central Committee to the Main Administration of Political Propaganda of 

ule Army, which also created a chain of 

tenul sections extending down to the 

jivnls and armies. Alongside these, Ule 

NKVD, which had networks of offices 

in both ule civilian and military sectors, 

projected itself into the partisan movement through its functions related to 

the destruction battalions. While the 

party committees were the designated 

command channel for the partisans, 

the operational and tactical directives 

on partisan warfare came mainly from 

L. Z. Mekhlis, the chief political commissar and head of the Main Administration of Political Propaganda of the 

Army, and the NKVD, through the destruction battalions, probably supplied 

the largest single block of recruits to 

the early partisan movement'3 

12Earl Ziemke, The Soviet Partisan Movement in. 1941 

(Washington , D.C.: Air Research and Developme11l 

Command . 1954), p. II. 

13/bid., pp. 11 - 13. See also OKH, Ge1lSrdH, GenQu, 

1\bt. K-Venv., ·'Eifalmmgen lIeber A lifba II , A1ifg(lben, 

A uJtrelcn /l.lId Bekaempfimg der Parlis(lllellllbteilulIgen," 

15 Jan 42, WtllD 2.217 file. 
202 

All three of the organizing agencies 

worked on the Soviet side of the front, 

setting up destruction battalions and 

partisan detachments ahead of the 

German advance. What they accomplished from place to place depended 

on the speed with which the front 

moved, how much central direction 

could be given under often chaotic 

conditions, and how such direction was 

interpreted and applied at the local levels. The organizers, except for some 

who subsequently became members of 

underground party committees, were, 

for the most part, not themselves participants in the movement; consequently, when the front passed over 

an area, lhe partisans, who were often 

recruited or drafted only days before 

from factories and collective farms, 

were left to learn from experience, if 

tl1ey could. As a result, the effort, no 

doubt, was more impressive on the Soviet side of the front than its effects 

were on the German side. 

At its inception, the partisan movement was what the Germans termed 

Ortsansaessig, that is, the detachments 

operated out of fixed bases and over 

relatively short distances. In most instances, a detachment was identified 

with one rayon, which was also its primary operating area." This rema ined 

a predominant characteristic of the 

World War II Soviet partisan movement throughout its existence. 15 Geography, more than anything else, made 

HSee Kuznyae\', Podpolll)'e, which gives the partisan 

unils associated with the rayons of Belorussia. See p. 

2 15. 

I~The Soviet accollnts also desuibe roving and 

raiding types of partisan units. Outside of Kare lia. 

however, where the partisan bases were located on the 

Soviet side of the [!"OIlt, those did not come into 

existence until the summer of 1942. Even then , expeditions by roving dCl<lchmc11ls, such as those of S. A. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

it possible for fixed detachments to develop and survive. The partisan movement grew up and always was so'ongest 

east of the Dnepr-Dvina line, in eastern 

Belorussia and the western RSFSR 

(Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic). There an almost unbroken 

stretch of forest and swamp, reaching 

from the Pripyat Marshes to north of 

Lake limen, afforded excellent covel~ 

and the German troops, by preference 

as well as necessity, stayed close to the 

roads and railroads. Familiarity with 

the terrain and contacts with the inhabitants gave added protection . 

The Shmyrev Otryad 

The Shmyrev Otryad ("detachment"), 

while not typical, affords the most substantial existing example of an early 

partisan unit. While much of what happened to it was characteristic of the 

whole movement, it was not typical because it was, in all likelihood , much 

more active, better led, and effective 

than all but a very few of the original 

detachments. From it would evolve (in 

1942) the 1st Belorussian Partisan Brigade, one of the premier partisan units 

of the war. Its first commander, Mihay 

Filipovich Shmyrev, would be given the 

highest Soviet decoration , Hero of the 

Soviet Union , and under his nom de 

guerre, "Batya [' papa'] Mihay," would 

become a legendary figure in the 

movement. Important at the outset was 

thm Shmyrev had some actual previous 

Kovpak and A. N. Sahurov. were apparently staged 

primarily to cultivate local partisan activity in areas in 

which it had hitherto been weak or nonexistent. the 

Uk,·ainc. in particular. See Armstrong, SOlliet Parli.mns. pp. 114 - 16; IVMV, vol. V. p. 292; and A. 

Bryukhanov. ';Ccroir/lPsko),o bOl'bo sOlletskikh /JO rf/l.,(/ l/i v 

god), Veliko.v O/alles/vell/to)' \10)'1.\"" \lo."l'lIIw-l.sforicheski)' 

ZII1/1"1/(//, 3(1965). 36-42 . 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

experience in partisan warfare. In the 

literature of the movement, he is said 

to have been a partisan during the civil 

war. IS Actually, his experience apparently came from fighting anti-Soviet 

partisans, whom the Soviet authorities 

called "bandits," as the Germans later 

referred to the Soviet partisans. 17 What 

makes the Shmyrev Otryad a useful example is that it achieved sufficient 

prominence to be given more than 

ordinary treatment in the Soviet literature, and the Germans, as well, accumulated considerable information on 

its operations, primarily from two captured diaries that had been kept by officers in theotryad. I B 

The Shmyrev Otryad was formed in 

Surazh ra)'On, thirty miles northeast of 

Vitebsk, in eastern Belorussia. Its first 

recruits were the employees of a small 

cardboard factory in the village of 

Pudoti. Tsanava states that the detachment was founded on 9 July when 

Shmyrev called a meeting of the workers and proposed that they form a partisan unitl9 The two diaries indicate 

that the process of organization had 

started on 5 July when the secretary of 

the ra)'On party committee and the head 

of the ra)'on NKVD office "suggested" 

to Shmyrev that he start a partisan 

unit. 20 However, their backing stopped 

16 L T sanm<l, Vsenarmlllo),o /m rtIUllIsko.\'(I vo)'I/(1 11 

Belorussii protiv fashislskihh wll/tv(lclwiko1-' (i\linsk: Cosizdat , 1949- 1951 ), ,ul. I. p. 16H. 

17Sce Bolsho),{/ Sovftska)'o Entsiklopedi),a, 3d ed .. 1978, 

vol. 29. p. 446. 

18See Earl Ziemke and Ralph l'vlavrogordato,History 

if lhe First Belol'llssimt Partisan Brigade (Washington, 

D.C. : Air Research and Development Command , 

1954). p. 2. 

I!lTsanava, VSflwrod,W)'(I /Jarlizansha)'(J ilO)'1W, p. 169. 2011, 5S K(lv. Reg/' J "Parlisanell-'1agebuch N ,: I ," 5 

Jul- 5 OCl41 and "Partisollen-w gebllch N,: 2," 5 Jul- 17 

Aug 42. Waffen 55. I. a nd II. 55 Kav. Regls .. 

780371196Iile. 

203 

with that, and they refused Shmyrev's 

request for weapons, possibly because 

they did not have any. 

Shmyrev became the commander of 

the detachment, apparently, because 

he was tile director of the factory, not 

because of his earlier experience in 

partisan warfare. His commissar was 

one R. V. Shkredo, who had been the 

party secretary at the factory. At the 

ou tset, the detachment consisted of 

twenty-tllree men, all employees of tile 

factory. From 9 to 13 J ul y, the men 

worked at preparing a camp in the 

woods, and on the night of the 13th, 

they acquired weapons, including a 

machine gun, and ammunition from 

retreating Soviet troops, who also told 

them the Germans were close. The 

next day, German troops entered Surazh, the rayon center ten miles to the 

southeast. From then on, the detachment was behind the enemy front and, 

technically at least, in action. During 

the day, eight Soviet Army stragglers 

and two local men joined the detachment. However, there was no prospect 

of acquiring large numbers of recruits 

since all the men fit for regular military 

service had been drafted and sem to 

Vitebsk during the first week of July. 

On 17 July, eleven men did show up 

from a destruction battalion that had 

been organized in Surazh and had broken up, and on the 18th, six local policemen joined, setting off a dispute 

over who should have their revolvers, 

they or the more senior men in the 

detachment. 21 

The detachment saw its first action 

on 25 July when Shmyrev and ten men 

surprised a party of German cavalry 

bathing in a river and claimed twentyZl /bid., ~ 18 Ju142. 
204 

five to thirty casualties with no harm to 

themselves. The next day, for threeand-a-half hours, twenty of the partisans watched a German column move 

through Pudoti. They fired on the last 

four tru c ks, d estr oy in g one a nd 

damaging others. 22 After these ve nlUres, probably because no more Germans were passing through Pudoti , the 

detachment, for a month , engaged in 

looking for enemy collaborato rs and 

marauding Soviet stragglers. The Popular Scientific Sketch cr edits the Shmyrev 

Otryad with having carried out twentyseven raids in August and September 

in which it killed 200 "fascists," d estroyed fourteen enemy motor vehicles, and set eighteen tank trucks on 

fire 23 Neither the diaries nor the German records give evidence of activity 

on such a scale. 

In the first week of September, a 

dozen Soviet Army men arrived in the 

camp from the Soviet side of the front. 

At the same time, the detachment received 4 heavy machine g uns with 

15,000 rounds of ammunition , a heavy 

mortar, and a light mortar. With these, 

the partisans and the soldiers attacked 

Surazh on 13 September, killing several 

Germans a nd co llabo r ators" Remarkably, the Soviet Information Bureau in Moscow issued a press re lease 

on the attack almost as it was being 

made 2 ' 

The German efforts to get rid of the 

detachment had been sufficiently hap2'tlbid., 25 Jul 42; "Partisamm-Tagebllch Nr. J" and 

'"Nr. 2," 26Ju142, Waffen 55. I . and II . SS Kav. Regts., 

780371196 file. See also Tsanava. VSe1Ulrm/1Ill)'a. paytiumslwya 00)'110, p. 169. 

23VOv, p. 329. 

'l4"Partisalllm-Tagebuch Nr. I," 31 Aug and 1, 13- 14 

Scp 42, Warren 55. I. and II. SS Kay. RegLS., 

780371196 fi le. 

25Tsan3va, Vserwrodllaya partiumskaya wyno, p. 170. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

hazard to build the partisans' confidence. At first, the Germans apparently had taken them for army 

stragglers who were afraid to surrender. During the first week of August, they had found a peasant who 

had offered to lead them to the camp, 

but the partisans had gone before they 

arrived . T hey had tried also to spread a 

rumor that Shmyrev had been shot. 

Their assumption, not a lways incorrect, had been that the partisan rank 

and fil e would disperse if they believed 

tl1e leaders were out of the way. In 

A ugust, also, a small German detachment had taken up quarters in Pudoti 

fo r a time, and light aircraft had 

scou ted-unsuccessfully-over the 

forest. The Germans made their biggest effort on 17 September, after the 

Surazh raid, when 200 troops came 

into Pudoti, but they only fired into the 

woods and departed again tl1e same 

day. 2. 

The Shmyrev Otryad had been o ne of 

the most- possibly the most-active 

and successful original partisan detachments in Belorussia, but the course of 

its development in 1941, as far as that is 

known, had not indicated a surge of 

resistance to tl1e occupation. Although 

it was situated at the heart of potentiall y ideal territory for partisan warfare, the detachment only had contacts 

with three other, much smaller and 

apparentl y less active, bands. Out of its 

own original membership, fourteen 

men had deserted by the end of July. 

By the last week in August, tl1e detachment had increased to sixty-eight men , 

but by then thirty-eight others had 

'l.6"Parlismu!1I-Tagebllch Nr. 2," 3, 13,20 Aug and 17 

Scp 42, Warren SS, I. and II. 55 Kay. Regls., 

78037/196 fde. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 205 

PARTISANS LISTEN TO A SOVIET NEWSPAPER BEING READ 

deserted or been expelled for cowardice, and one had been shot. On the 

last day of September, the latest time 

for which either of the diaries gives a 

figure, the strength was eighty men, 

probably still including the twelve from 

the regular army.27 

Strength in 1941 

The Slwrt History Slates, "All Soviet 

people moullled a monolithi c resistance to the enemy forces. At the front 

and in the rear and in the areas ocw pied by the fascist oppressors, they 

did not spare themselves in fighting for 

the honor, freedom, and independence 

2" 'Parlisannl-7bgl'buch /\h;'" and "fh 2," 29 Jul-30 

Sep 42. Warren 55, I . and I I. S5 Kav. Regts .. 

780371196 file. 

of their socialist country."'S What dlis 

mealll in terms of the strength of the 

partisan movement, however, is uncertain . The Slwrt HisIJJry gives the number 

of partisan units formed in 1941 as 

3,500.'9 The HiSIJJry if the Second IMJrld 

War states dlat "more dlan two thousand" were in existence by the end of 

the year'"· The Great Soviet Encyclopedia 

(third edition) gives the partisan 

strengths by mOlllhs, but only for the 

period after 1 January 1942, for which 

it gives a figure of 90,000 men. The 

HisIJJry if the Second Vlbrld War gives 

about the same overall number and a 

breakdown by areas which yields fig211VOV (Kratktl)'{l /slori),(I). p. 11 3. 

29/bid., p. 110. 

30/VOVSS, vol. IV. p. 127. 
206 

ures of 20,000 partisans behind Army 

Group North , 40,000 behind Center, 

and 35,000 behind South. However, 

these numbers are based on Communist party records, which even for later 

periods when closer control and more 

accurate counts were possible, give 

numbers up to and over twice as high 

as those of the Central Staff of the 

Partisan Movement. 31 Most likely, what 

party records show are numbers of 

partisans recruited. Since no systematic 

control of the movement as it functioned behind the German lines had 

existed in 1941, the numbers in operation would have been unknown. 

The Underground 

Partisan detachments required space 

and cover; hence, they could not function in urban areas. Their targets were 

the remote stretches of road and railroad, the out-of-the-way places. The 

enemy would ordinarily be too strong 

and too much on his guard in or near 

towns and cities. There the resistance 

would have to take another form. 

Consequently, the directives of June 

and July 1941 that established the 

gu idelines for the early partisan movement also called for an "underground" 

(podpolya) of "diversionist" groups. 

These would consist of thirty to fifty 

men each and would ca rry out their 

operations in smaller groups of three 

to five, or at most ten , men. The members of one group would usually not 

know those of any other, and the organization would exist only to receive 

and transmit instructions and carry out 

recruitment. VVhereas the partisans 

31 BQI.)hfl)'a SOlll'lskfl)'fl EII/jlklupt!dl)'a, 3d ed ., 19iR. 

vol. 19, p. 235; /VMl', \"OJ. IV. p. 127. See p. 217. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

would have a combat capability, the 

diversionists would do tlleir work by 

stealth. Otherwise, the objectives of the 

two were much the same: to destroy 

telegraph and telephone lines, railroad 

lines, supply dumps, and trucks and 

other vehicles. The diversionists would 

also kill individual enemy officers and 

spread rumors designed to create 

panic among the enemy'" The particular advantages of the diversionists 

would be that they could operate in 

places where tile enemy was strong, 

stay close to him, and strike from 

within his midst. 

A specialty of the diversionist groups 

was railroad sabotage, since the railroads were the largest still functioning 

industry in the occupied territory and 

the most vital to the Germans. Two 

diversionists reportedly put the entire 

Minsk railroad water system out of 

commission for nearly a month in December 1941.33 A group operating in 

the railroad yards at Orsha, under one 

K. S. Zaslonov, is said to have derailed 

100 military trains and crippled "almost" 200 locomotives in the monUls 

December 1941 th rough February 

1942 34 Other groups were organized 

in power plants, factories, and among 

workers in mechanical trades. In 

Vitebsk , fifty groups, numbering more 

Ulan seven hundred persons, are said 

to have been recruited . The diversionist activity probably took its most 

unusual form in Odessa, where extensive catacombs beneath tile city made 

panisan warfare practicable in an urban setting. The outstanding success 

32AnnSll"Ong, Soviet Partisans, p. 656. 

33V. Yc. BY5 11"0\', ed .. Gem; podpol),lI (Moscow: 

Izdatelslvo I>oliticheskoy Litc nttul"Y. 19 70). p. 38r. 

34VOV, p. 336. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

attributed to diversionists in 1941 had 

been the destruction in one week, beginning on 19 September, of the Kiev 

railroad freight station, the shops of 

the Kiev locomotive works, and two 

factories. 35 

Under the ea rly directives, control 

and coordination of both the pa rtisan 

detachments and the diversionist 

groups were to be vested in another 

kind of underground organization , the 

"illegal" party committees. These, composed of several particularly trustworthy party men and established on the 

same territorial basis as the legal com111lttees, would stay behind in the occupied areas and assume a leadership 

role."" Reportedly, the sections "X" 

each had a member assigned to them 

whose identity was kept secret and who 

would take over as party secretary durmg the occupation." The Histnry of the 

G"eat Patriotic War states that in the first 

months of the war, in the Ukraine 

alone, 230blast ("district") committees, 

67 urban rayon committees, 564 rural 

rayon committees, and 4,316 lesser 

party committees, with membership totaling 26,500 people , had been 

formed. However, other figures indicate that in Belorussia, where partisan 

and underground activity had been 

much more widespread than in the 

Ukraine, particularly in the early 

penod of the war, these illegal party 

committees had existed in only 2 out of 

10 oblasts and 15 out of over 170 urban 

and rural rayons as of December 1941. 38 

35 B YSII"OV, Gervi podpol)'o, pp. 73-75, 297 -303: 

IVMV, vol. IV, p. 126. 

36Sce Armstrong, Soviet Partisans, p. 654. 

31GFP Gr, 725 . "Partislwen Erfalmmgsbericht," 

22.1.42, H . Geb. 30910/37 file. 

38/VOVSS, vol. VI. p. 275; Kuznyaev, Podpolnye, p. 

243. 

207 

German R ear Area Security 

The Germans had expected the Soviet regime to resort to partisan warfare, and Hitler had even anticipated it 

with a degree of satisfaction. On 16 

July 1941, he said, "The Russians have 

now ordered partisan warfare behind 

our front. This also has its advantages: 

It gives us the opportunity to ... exterminate ... all who oppose US."3. Two 

weeks later he embodied this thought 

tt1 an order to the forces on the Eastern 

Front stating, "The troops available for 

security in the conquered territories 

will not be sufficient if offenders are 

dealt with by legal means, but [will be 

sufficient] only if the occupation force 

inspires sufficient terror among the 

population to stamp out the will to 

resist."40 In an infamous "Order Conce rning Military Justice in the BARBAROSSA Area," issued before the 

invasion, he had already given the 

troops immunity from prosecution for 

atrocities committed during the campaign'l For him, partisan warfare was 

less a provocation than an excuse and 

pretext for the rudllessness with which 

he proposed to conduct the war in the 

Soviet Union. 

Although Hitler was perfectly willing 

to be merciless in stamping out a ny 

kind of resistance in the Soviet Union 

he was actually not ready to do so in th~ vast areas occupied during 1941 except 

on a hit-or-miss basis. Anticipating a 

39Reichsleiter Bannann, Aktenvenncrk ueher eine Besprechu1!g mil Reichsleiler Rosenberg, Reichsminister Lammers, Feldmarschall Keitel, und mit dem Reichs mnrschaU 

Goe>ing, 16.7.41 , NMT 221 - UUSA - S44 file. 

4~OKW. WFStlL (l Op.), Ergaenul11g wr Mm ung 33, 

23.1.4 1, N MT C-521GB- 485 file. 

41D(!T Fuehrer, ErillSS lI eher die Kriegsgerichtsbarkeil im 

Gebiel "Barbarossa" mul ueber besondere MosS1lahmen der 

-n-upp" 13.5.41, NMT C-SO file. 
208 

quick victory, he expected to be in ule 

mopping-up phase before rear area 

security could become a significant military problem. For that reason , and 

because he disliked giving the military 

what he considered to be political authority and also to save on Inanpower 

and equipment, the BARBAROSSA forces 

went into the Soviet Union with a 

stricuy limited capacity for controlling 

the occupied territory. 

The territory the army administered 

was restricted to the "ope rations zone," 

which was adjacent to ule front and 

which moved with it. The operations 

zone could be extensive-that of Army 

Group Center, for instance , in December 1941 extended 150 miles west 

of Smolensk and nearly to Moscow, 

which was over 200 mi les to the eastbut it was a lways temporary and primarily a Inaneuver and staging area. 

Within the operations zone a slice, 

often over 100-miles deep, directly behind the front came under tile control 

of the armies, each of which had appointed a KOl1leck (Kommalldant Rueckwaertiges Armeegebiet), the commandant 

of an army rear area. The remainder 

of the operations zone became the 

army group rear area. As ule front 

moved east, the army group rear area 

commande rs and the Koruecks became 

the military governors of broad 

stretches of Soviet territory'2 The 

K011lecks and the army group rear area 

commanders were subordinate to the ir 

respective army and arm y group commanders, but they LOok their direction 

for the most part from the chief supply 

and administration officer (GeneralquaTtierllleister) in the OKH. Before the 

-t'ZAOK oJ, o.Quo , Qu.2, Bf',5f)1lde,-e AllnrdllllTlgell flier 

Jus Opemlionsgt'uil'l, 8.6.41, AOK 4 111 93/9 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

invasion, the OKH had set up nine 

security divisions, composed mostly of 

officers and men in the uppe r-age 

brackets and equipped with caplLlred 

French and Czech weapons and vehicl es. Each a rmy group rear a rea command was assigned three of the 

security divisions. 

On I September 1941, what was approximately the western two-thirds of 

the entire German operations zone had 

passed LO two c ivilian R eich commissariats, the Reichskommissariat as/-

land (the Baltic States and Belorussia) 

and the R eichskommissanat Ukraine. In 

the R eich commissariats, military security was in ul e hands of an armed 

forces commander who came under 

the OKW and, hence, functioned outside normal OKH Eastern Front command channels. 

The SS, whidl exercised both police 

and military functions, also operated in 

the occupied territory, where it insta lled "higher" SS and police commanders (Hoeherer SS-uncl Poliziefuehrer) who 

were loosely affdiated with, but neither 

attached nor subordinate to, ul e R eich 

commissariats and the army group 

rear area commands. The SS and police commanders had at their disposal 

various kinds of police ranging from 

the secret state police (Gestapo) to the SS 

intelligen ce service (Sicherh.ei/sdiells/, 

SD) to German civil police and police 

auxiliaries recruited in the Baltic 

States.'" 

In a category by themselves were the 

SS Einsatzgruppen (" task groups"). They 

were neither police nor troops, although their personnel were drawn 

from both: their mission was mass kill43Bejll. d. Hlleckw. H. Gl'b. Mille, fa /loehm'" SS-lfIlll 

Poliz.l'i/llelirn; Stand 00111 1.8.42, H . Geb. 14 68-,1 /2 file. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

ing, pure and simple. They consisted of 

just four groups, designated by the 

letters "A" through "0," and their combined strength was barely over three 

thousand. But where they went, and 

they went nearl y everywhere in the 

occupied territory, thousands died. 

The J ews were their primary target, 

but they also did away with communists 

or any others who might threaten or inconvenience the occupa tion ." The latter aspect of their operations may have 

significantly reduced the numberof potential recruits for the unde rground. 

In general, from the German point 

of view, control of the occupied te rritory had been adequately organized 

in 1941. Its main purposes were to subjugate and exploit a conquered population and to keep the front commands' 

lines of communi ca tions open, and 

those were being accomplished. Conseq uently, the army g roup rear area 

commanders, Konlecks, and SS and police commanders did not stage extensive antipartisan campa ig ns. During 

the ra pid ad va nce, their other missio ns 

were more urgent. The partisans were 

seen as a temporary annoyance that 

could be eradi ca ted, in its turn , with 

minimum e ffort. The OKW ad vised, 

"The appropriate commanders are responsibl e for keeping order in the ir 

areas with the troops assig ned to them. 

Commanders must fi nd means for preserving order, not by d emanding more 

security troops, but by resorting to the 

necessary Draconi a n ln eas ures."45 

HSee Raul Hilberg, The Deslructum of the Eu ropeall 

j ewJ (Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 196 1), pp. 182-90 

and George I-I. Stein, The U'afftm 5S (Ithaca , N.Y.: 

Cornell University Press. 1966), p. 263. 

H'OKW, WPStlL (/ Op.), ErgaertwlIg wr H-eisu ng 33, 

23.7.41, NMT C-52/CB-485 fi le. 

209 

Army Group Center believed it could 

e liminate the partisans in its area after 

the front settled down for the winter by 

ha v in g eac h co rp s provide o n e 

motori zed company to hunt down the 

partisans in the army areas and by detaching o ne divisio n to do the same in 

the army group rear area.'s 

The Partisan Mavement Established 

Saviet Power Resurgent 

The winter of 1941-1942 was bound 

to have been d ecisive for the pa rtisan 

movement one way or the otl1er. If the 

Germans had kept the initiative, the 

movement would probably have withered. If the Germans had held their 

own , they could also have kept the 

partisans in check. But when they 

could not d o either, their latent vulnerability became outright weakness. 

General Ley tenant Sokolovskiy, chief 

of staff of the West Front, saw the German predicament in the late summer 

when he r e mark ed , "The e ne m y 

strong-points are separated by great 

stretches of territory. Many districts in 

his rea r have not yet been brought 

under his control, and his d e fenses are 

thus subject to the blows of our partisans."" The Army Group Center rear 

area commande r saw the danger in the 

first week of the Moscow counteroffensive and voiced his a larm o n 14 

December: 

As the Russians have become more active 

on the fronl, panisan acti vity has in48H. Gr. Mitte, fa Richtlil,ienfller Kamlif/lleJu'uflg im 

\Vinla !md Beslmderlieilnl des Winterkril!gej in RIISjland, 

10.11.41, P"L. AOK 3 154 15/42 fi lc;AOK 9, IdAO, O.Qu. 

2, Parlisanenbekaelllpfullg, /8.8.41, AOK 9 14 008/9 fi le. 

-47AOK 16, I e, AO, Feindlluchrichtellblatl Nr. 5 1, 

15.8.41. AOK 1675873 file. 
210 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

I MPROVISED ARMORED TRAI N ON PATROL A GA INST P ARTISANS 

creased. The troops left to this command 

are just sufficient to protect the most imporlalll installations and, to a certain extent, the railroads and highways. For active 

anti-pa rtisa n o perations there are no 

longer any troops on hand. lllerefore, it is 

expected that soon the partisans wi ll join 

together into larger bands and carry out 

attacks on our guard posts. Their increased freedom of movement will also 

lead to the partisans' spreading terror 

among the people, who wi ll be forced to 

stop supporting us and will then no longer 

carry out the orders of the military government 3uthorities.48 

The Moscow counteroffensive and 

the genera l offensive pumped new life 

into the partisan moveme nt and accomplished a physical and psychologi-

". d. Rueckw. H. Ceb. Mitte, la, Zufuehnmg 

wnt"n'Sichmmgskraifte. 14 .12 .4/, H . Geb. 14 684/file. 

cal transformation so complete as to 

constitute virtually a whole new beginning. T he History of the Second W:>rLd War 

concedes as much when it states, "The 

winter of 1942 initiated the mass participation of Soviet patriots in partisan 

activity."49 On the scene at the time, the 

Germans observed the phenomenon 

and ascribed it to influences othe r than 

patriotism. Fourth Army's Koruech 

reported: 

The situation in the army rear area has 

undergone a fundamental change. As long 

as we were victorious, the area could be 

described as nearly pacified and almost 

free of partisans, and the population with- out exception stood on our side . Now the 

people are no longer as convinced as they 

VMV, vol. IV., p. 347. 
~ 

Pskov 

'-----!Iob l1'--.c:..":-Y rshe 

Boriuov 

'----... 

"-

'-,-

. Bobruisk 

MAP 15 

PARTISAN AREAS 

April 1942 

--- Aeichskommissariat boundary 

- - Reaf area boundary 

--- Front line, 15 April 

Area of intense partisan activity 

Area of most inlense partisan activity 

0f-I ______ -,, ___ --'5,0 Miles 

o 50 Kilometers 

f~,""~~~-=~ ~ 

-l._/ 
212 

were before of our power and strength. 

New partisan bands have made their way 

into Qllr territory; and parachutists have 

been sent in who assume the leadership of 

bands, assemble the civilians suitable for 

service along with the partisans who up to 

now had not been active, the escaped prisoners of war, and the Soviet soldiers who 

have been released from the military 

hospitals. 50 

The Fourth Army Korueek was in a 

good, though , in that winter, hardly 

unique, position to watch the partisan 

upsurge. Situated on the northern arc 

of the Sukhinichi bulge, with the Kirov 

gap on its right Rank, Soviet cavalry 

and parachute troops behind its front, 

and its rear swept clean of security 

troops that had long ago been thrown 

into the front, Fourth Army was a 

prime target for partisan activity. What 

the Korueek believed it saw was not a 

mass patriotic uprising but Soviet 

power reaching into the occupied territory to bring the population back 

under its control. Through the Kirov 

gap, trained partisan cadres, under 

army and NKVD officers, were ranging deep behind the front, drafting the 

men to fill out their ranks. Their domain covered the entire Smolensk, 

Roslavl, Vyazma triangle, more than 

five thousand square miles" (Map 15.) 

To the south, around Bryansk , 

where the forest still harbored survivors of the Soviet units destroyed 

there during the fall, another partisan 

center had sprung up. From the great 

bulge Third and Fourth Siwek Annies occupied around Toropets, partisan 

organizers were fanning out in all directions. Since virtua ll y no front ex-

~O orueck 559, Abl. Qu" Lage im rueckwaertige'l AT"· 

meegebiet, 25.2.42, Konicek 2923615 file. 

~l bi . 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

isted there, access was open to dle deep 

rear areas of Army Groups North and 

Center and into dle Reiehskommissariat 

Ostland west to the Polish border. In 

February 1942, Field Marshal Kluge, 

dlen dle commander of Army Group 

Center, told General Halder (chief of 

dle General Staff): 

TIle steady increase in the numbers of 

enemy troops behind our front and the 

concomitant growth of the partisan movement in the entire rear area are taking 

such a threatening turn that I am impellea 

to point out this danger in all seriousness. 

While formerly the partisans limited 

themselves to disruption of communications lines and attacks on individual vehicles and small installations, now, under the 

leadership of resolute Soviet officers with 

plenty of weapons and good organization, they are attempting to Dring certain districts under their control and to use those 

districts as bases from which to launch 

combat operations on a large scale. With 

this the imtiative has passed mto the hands 

of the enemy in many places where he already controls large areas and denies these 

areas to the German adm.inistration and 

German economic exploitation. 5 2 

While the German and Soviet accounts agree, in general, on what happened to the partisan movement in the 

winter of 1941 - 1942, they diverge 

widely as to why and how. Concerning 

the impetus for dle partisans, the Hiswry of the Great Patriotic War asserts: 

The victory of the Soviet troops before 

Moscow had an exceptional significance 

for the strengthening of the moral-political 

feeling of the Sov.et people who were 

struggling in the enemys rear and for the 

development of the partisan movement. 

News of the destrucuon of the Hitlerite 

armies on the approaches to the capital 

n Oh. d. H. Gr. Mltte , all den Herru Chtf dts GtIIn-alstabes des Hurts, 24.2.42, Pz. AOK 3 20i36/6 ftle. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

quickly spread in the towns and villages of 

the occupied territory. This notable vIctory of the Red Army inspired the population 

of the occupied areas to a still more active 

struggle with the enemy. The Soviet peo- ple, who had suffered under the enemy 

yoke, strove to aid the Red Army in every 

way possible in order to expell the aggressors more quickly from the boundaries 

of our Motherland. They left their homes 

and went to the partisans . .. . 53 

The Hislmy describes the Soviet intervention as follows: "During the winter, 

the detachments and formations received new and qualified replacements 

from the rest of the nation. I n the 

enemy's rear, via the gaps that had 

formed in the enemy's front and from 

the air, came radiomen, mine planters, 

and also party and iwmsol1wl workers 

who were specially trained for carrying 

out partisan warfare ."54 

The Partisans of Ka·rdYl1wvo 

As was to be expected, the Germans 

seldom managed to penetrate the inner structure of the partisan network. 

One of the few instances in which they 

did occurred in March 1942 when the 

10th Panzer Division uncovered a partisan detachment that was being 

organized near Smolensk. The detachment was distributed among several 

villages clustered around the railroad 

fifteen miles east of Smolensk. What 

was unique was that the Germans were 

able to capture and interrogate not 

only rank and file partisans but nea rly 

all of the leade rs, a total of fifty-five 

Olen and wonlen. 

The action began when a civilian in 

one of the villages, Molokovo, reported 

:'3/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 355. 

~4Ibid. , p.349. 

213 

one of his neighbors as a partisan. The 

investigation led to the nearby village of 

Sokolovo and the arrest of a section 

leader, his commissar, 2 platoon leaders, 

4 liaison men , and 7 partisans. Rigorous 

interrogations of these people over a 

three weeks' period turned lip leads to 

some weapons caches, most of which 

had already been emptied, and to other 

echelons of the detachment. 

One trail led to Shaduby and the 

arrest of another section leader, who 

admitted to being an NKVD man who 

had been sent through the lines to 

organize partisans but who hanged 

himself in his cell before more information could be extracted from him. A 

second trail ended at Kard ymovo, 

which proved to have been the command center for the whole detachment, and there the 10th Panzer 

Division captured the commander, the 

commissar, and 38 partisans. The Kardymovo headquarters had consisted of 

a commandel~ a commissar, a deputy 

commissar, 4 liaison persons (women), 

8 section leaders (each assigned a village in which he directed the partisan 

activity), and a number of persons who 

carried out special assignments. 

The commander was a Major Gasparyan, a regular army officer detailed 

to command the partisans by the 

Headquarters, West Front. He had kept 

his subordinates in hand with utter 

ruthlessness, and those who were captured with him shook with fear even 

when they faced him in jail. From him 

the Germans learned nothing, and he 

was beaten to death during the interrogation. The commissar, who inspired 

almost as much fear as the commander, 

did disclose that he had come through 

the front several months earlier, after 

having been trained as a partisan 
214 

orgamzer, and that he had worked 

in Smolensk as a locomotive engineer 

before joining Gaspar yan at 

Kardymovo. 55 

Based on interrogations of all the 

prisoners, among whom were twelve 

women, the 10th Panzer Division report concluded: 

Terror was the most important motivation. 

Betrayal, hesitation to participate, or 

failure to fulfill missions were declared to 

be punishable by death. At the very least, a 

'certain and horrible' death was promised 

after the return of the Soviet forces. I L is 

important for the sovereignty of the German administration that the Russian fears 

his own 'Red' comrades far more than he 

fears the German aulhorities. For example. if a peasant has a cache of weapons in 

his house, he will not reveal it to the 

Germans out of fear of the vengeance of 

his comrades even though he is at the same 

lime threatened witll death by the 

Germans. 56 

The Movement Rellwdeled 

In late July 1941, the then Central 

Hunt set up a school to train partisan 

commanders, C0J11ntissars, mine and 

demolition specialists, and agents and 

radio operators. Taken over later by 

West Front, the school turned out over 

four thousand persons in the last four 

mondls of the year. Similar schools, 

apparently also under military auspices, were run in Kiev, Kharkov, Pollava, and other cities. On orders of the 

Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, three schools were established in January 1942: one to instruct 

party and kmnsol1wl members in underSSJO. Pl, Div., 7 Pl.. Ilgl., Pz, 'A'trkstauiwrnjxl1lie, 

Partisallenbekaemp/mlg, /1.3.42, 10 Pz. Div. 23245 file. 

f> 6/bid. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

ground and partisan activity, one to 

produce partisan leadership personnel , and the dlird to train radiomen" 

By March 1942, so-called operative 

groups were formed to work with and 

work under army commands, particularly in sectors where the lay of the 

front, or absence of it, gave ready access to dle enemy rear. Headed usually 

by a party functionary, dley were composed of party, army, and NKVD personnel who had some form of 

competence relative to partisan activity. 

Their functions were to recruit, 

organize, equip, and control dle partisans across dle front and make them, 

in effect, an adjunct of the army to 

wh ich the operati ve grou p was 

attached. 

Among the first and most effective 

of the operative groups was the one 

with Fourth Shnck Army in the Toropets 

bulge, where dle front practically had 

dissolved in January 1942. There a 

twenty-mile-wide gap on dle western 

rim of the bulge, sometimes called the 

Vitebsk Corridor and other times the 

"Surazh Gate; spanned the whole of 

the Usvyaty and Surazh rayons, northeast of Vitebsk. Through the gap, men 

and horse and wagon colu m ns kept up 

steady traffic in both directions, carrying in weapons and ammunition for 

the partisans and taking out supplies 

for Fourth Shock Army. The partisan 

units, the former Shmynro Otryad which, 

as a brigade, was the most prominent 

of them, reportedly passed thousands 

of lons of grain, hay, and potatoes and 

several thousand head of callie 

through the Soviet side. They are said 

also to have mobilized and delivered 

/VMv, vol. v, p. 4 18f. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

25,000 recruits for the Soviet Army.58 

Before the end of March 1942, the 

operative group with Fourth Siwek Anny 

had brought the strength of the partisan units in its area from 500 to 

almost 7,500, a fifteen fold increase.59 

As of December 1941, apparently, 

few partisan detachments had had 

strengths of more than fifty, the prescribed minimum. By February 1942, 

the average for bOtll old and new detachments had been between two and 

three hundred, and by April, some 

were over a thousand. Under the increasing army inAuence, those in the 

range of one to three mousand members were beginning to be called regiments and brigades and to adopt the 

organizational features of regular military units. The 1st S1rwlensk Partisan 

Division, which operated for a time in 

conjunction with Belov's I Gum'ds Cavaby Corps, claimed a strengm of over 

five thousand. The operative group 

with Third Shock Anny, on the northern 

arc of the Toropets bulge, united 7 

brigades and 3 otlyads to form the I 

Kalinin Partisan Corps. The operative 

group with Fourth Siwek Anny transformed what had been 14 average 

ollyads into 7 brigades, 2 regiments, 

and 7 independentotryads. llle shift to 

large units also brought into existence 

the partisan kray (a stretch of territory, 

sometimes a whole rayon, in which a 

brigade or several brigades held un-

~8 Ah.hough it appears to have been Soviet practice 

10 do mOl'c dClailed l]uantitauvc bookkeeping on the 

achievcmCIllS of the partisans and the underground 

than on almost an y other aspect of the war, the figures 

Ulllhcsc activities tend to \<!ry from place to place. See 

A. I. Zalcss kiy. Gtrojcheskl)' podvig mdljot/ot! v Iylll vraga 

(Minsk: Izdalclslm - Belarus," 1970). p. 141 and P. Vershigora , L,\'lldi s ,histo; saves/yll. (Moscow: SO\'clski)' 

pismcl. 195 1), p. 394. 

s9/VMV, vol. IV. p. 346. 

215 

challenged sway). Reportedly, 4 of 

those were established in Belorussia in 

the spring of 1942, and 4 in the Smolensk Oblast of the RSFSR~o 

The shift toward the brigade and 

territorial forms was accomplished by 

combining units as well as by expanded 

recruitment. As a result, me independent detachments, such as the Shmyrev 

Ollyad, had all but disappeared. There 

were ad vantages to consolidation bom 

for the partisans and for the Soviet 

authorities: for the partisans, more security and recognition , and, on the 

Soviet side, more effective control and 

surveillance. During the shift, also, me 

partisan movement became tied to the 

army and ceased to be more than a 

token party activity. The regiment and 

brigade commanders were often still 

party men, but they had military advisers at their sides, and their orders 

came through military channels. The 

units were organized on the regular 

army model, including the 0.0. sections of the N K VD to keep all personnel under political police scrutiny. 

From the Soviet standpoint, the partisan movement was a weapon to be 

exploited with caution as well as 

enthusiasm. When arms were placed in 

the hands of the citizenry at large, 

there was no telling how mey might 

ultimately be used. The winter's recruits, in me majority peasants and 

soldiers who had been hiding out since 

the last summer, were, in Soviet terms, 

far short of being the most reliable 

elements. And the peasants, who comprised the largest and least voluntary 

contingent of the partisan rank and 

file, harbored memories of the forced 

60/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 351; IVMV, vol. V. p. 347; Ibid. , 

vol. IV, p. 353. 
216 

collectivization of the 1930s. One example, perhaps from many, of the 

mixed loyalties of the Soviet population 

that did not escape the attention of 

Soviet authorities occurred in the 

Lokot raj'On, south of Bryansk. There, 

in the heart of partisan territory, an 

anti-Soviet Russian engineer of Polish 

extraction , Bronislav Kaminski, had 

organized a force of nearly fifteenhundred volunteers who had fought 

the Soviet partisans throughout the 

winter under the tsarist emblem, the 

St. George's Cross. The Kaminski organization also grew and reached a 

strength of 9,000 by late spring. In the 

early summer, the Germans, who 

themselves were able to do little against 

the partisans in this area, turned the 

entire rayon over to Kaminski as the 

Selbstverwaltungsbezirk ("autonomous 

district") Lokot. The History of the Second 

Mbrlcl War lists the task of convincing 

the people to boycott such autonomous 

areas as being among the priority m;ssions of the party underground 61 

While the remodeling and expansion 

of the partisan movement increased 

Soviet control of the movement, the 

effort and material expended were 

probably not repaid in operating effectiveness. The History of tlze Second Mbrld 

War maintains that it was "necessary" to 

combine the smaller units, and the 

brigade was the "most appropriate" 

form into which they could be combined.· 2 The History of the G"eat Patriotic 

Wm; on tl,e otl,er hand , says, " ... it was 

not expedient to develop large partisan 

1 Edgar M. Howell. The Souiel Partisan Movemelll, 

194 1- 1944 (Washington. D.G.: GPO, 1956), p. 89; 

VA t1~ vol. IV. p. 354. 

62/VMV, vol. V, p. 286. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

formations."·3 The big units lost mobility and tended to become preoccupied with self-defense , naturally 

enough , since concealment became 

more difficult. They were also neither 

heavily enough armed nor sufficiently 

proficient tactically to challenge the 

Gennans in open combat, and they 

were too conspicuous to operate 

covertly against really vital targets. 

They could establish territorial 

hegemony, but usually only in areas in 

which German control would have 

been superficial anyway. P. K. 

Ponomarenko, who as first secretary of 

the Belorussian Communist Party and 

chief of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement was closely associated 

widl the partisan activity throughout 

the war, has said d,at the trend toward 

larger units actually played into the 

hands of the Germans 6 ' 

In Ponomarenko's view, the root of 

d,e problem had been in the absence of 

central direction during 1941 and early 

1942, which resulted in "a variety of illconceived experiments and an outbreak of faulty tendencies."·s The History of the Great Patriotic War and the 

Short History also mention "errors" and 

"incorrect ... forms and methods" in 

the organization of the movement. 6. 

The History of the Second \1brld Wm' 

states, "Absence of a single directing 

organ frequendy resulted in duplication and occasionally also led to divergences on organizational questions."·7 

Committees had been appointed in the 

63/VOVSS. vol. II , p. 361. 

~See P. Ponomarenko, "Borba sovetJlwgo "a roda v lylu 

vraga," lbyen1lQ-iston'cheskiy Zhurnnl, 4( 1965), 35. 

6~/b ., p. 35. 

66/VOV55, vol. II , p. 349: VOV (K ratk(I)'a Istoriya). p. 

84. 

6i/VM V, \'01. V. p. 284. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

summer of 1941 to guide and organize 

the partisan activity at the republic and 

lower levels 6 8 Ponomarenko says a decision had been made in July 1941 to 

establish a national "commission" with 

him, Mekhlis, "and others" as members, but it had "stayed on paper." In 

November, Stalin had charged 

Ponomarenko with setting up a central 

staff that had not materialized, according to Ponomarenko, because Lavrenti 

Beria, the NKVD chief, had insisted he 

could manage the movement by himself, "widlOut a special staff."·9 

Finally, on 30 May 1942, Beria had 

lost his bid for control, and the State 

Defense Committee had established 

the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, with Ponomarenko as its chief. 

The State Defense Committee decision 

also, Ponomarenko indicates, made d,e 

central staff a command for the partisan movement, not merely an organ 

working under party direction. Although Ponomarenko and the chiefs of 

his subordinate staffs were party men, 

the directive setting up the central staff 

shifted the partisan movement closer 

to the military. Ponomarenko and his 

staff were attached to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander, Stalin , and staffs were ordered to be 

created and attached to Headquarters, 

Southwestern Theate1; and the BTyansk, 

West Kalinin, Leningrad, and KaTe/ian 

Fmnts. 70 

The establishment of the central 

staff a lso brought about a revision in 

the estimated strengdl of the partisan 

movement. The Great Soviet Encycwpedia gives a party figure of 125,000 

6~Andria o\', "Hu/wvodstvo:' p, 61. 

69Ponomarenko, "Borba," p. 34. 

7°lhid., p. 34f: IVMV, vol. V, p. 284. 

217 

persons in the movement on 30 June 

1942 and a separate central staff figure 

of 60,000.7J The Hisl.ory of the Second 

W,,-ld Wm' gives a total of 72,000 for 

"the spring of 1942: distributed as 

follows: 6,000 behind Army Group 

North and in Karelia , 56,000 behind 

Army Group Center, and 10,000 behind Army Group South.72 While it is 

said that these figures are based on 

incomplete records, it seems apparent 

that the numbers given above for the 

end of 1941 need to be revised downward.'3 By how much, may be roughly 

indicated by the factor of fifteen which 

the Hisl.ory of the Second W>rld War indicates applied in the area under the 

Fom'th Shock Army operative group's 

control. 

Accomplices Against the Bolshevik System? 

The Soviet successes in the winter 

made it certain that the war would last 

through another summer-very likely, 

much longer-and the partisan movement would be a genuine challenge to 

the Germans' hold on d,e occupied 

territory. Certainly a German victory 

was not going to come easily, if at all. 

Concentration and economy of effort, 

a lways worthwhile, had become absolute necessities, and forces diverted to 

antipartisan operations would be 

wasted as far as progress in the war was 

concerned. An alternative, the only 

one in fact available to the Germans, 

was to create an indigenous counterresistance. The obstacle was Hider's 

avowed determination not to allow 

natives of d,e occupied territory in the 

71 8 0Is"(I)'a Sovelska),o ElltsikiojJed()'O, 3d ed .. 1978, 

vol. 19, p. 235, 

72/lIM\I, vol. V. p. 342. 

73 Sec p. 205f, 
218 

WOL\·IAN P A RT ISAN HANGED FROM 

LEN IN STATUE IN VORONEZH 

Soviet Union to serve in any military or 

police capacity. 

During the worst of the winter, Army 

Group Center did , finally, get permission to experiment with some local 

police, who were called Ordnungsdienst 

("order service") and not police, and to 

recruit a few Cossack and Ukrainian 

detachments from prisoner-of-war 

camps and form them into what were 

called HundertsclzaJten ("hundreds") to 

give them only the most nebulous military character. Both had one asset, they 

had men who knew the language, and 

the Ordnungsdienst men usually knew 

the local countryside and its people, 

often including the partisans. 

What they did not have was a cause, 

and the Soviet effort had become too 

pervasive to be mastered by mercenaries and collaborators. Under the 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

strain of the winter, the German Army 

saw that. In evaluating the Ordnungsdienst, the Army Group Center rear 

area commander stated , "One condition for the successful organization 

of the Ordnungsdienst is that the population be kept [sic] friendly to the Germans by a distribution of land and by 

the recognition of certain national 

aspirations."74 

When Field Marshal Bock took command of Army Group South from 

Field Marshal Reichenau, he found in 

Reichenau's papers the draft of a letter 

to Hitler proposing an alliance with the 

Russian people. Bock forwarded it to 

the OKH with his endorsement. 75 

Later talking to a representative of the 

Ministry for the Occupied Eastern 

Areas, Bock urged making the Russian 

people "accomplices against the Bolshevik system" by giving them land and 

restoring religion . Only then, he contended, would the population have an 

interest in preventing the return of the 

Soviet regime.'6 Like Bock, most German observers believed that even after 

the winter, the peasants' longing for 

land of their own could still be exploited to draw them into an alliance 

against the Soviet regime. (The Germans had not abolished the collective 

farms because they found them a convenient means of economic exploitation.) For the commands in the East, 

such an alliance appeared to be worth 

the price and more. The Third Panzer 

Army counterintelligence chief observed , "An effective anti-partisan 

campaign is conceivable only if it in748(>}11 . d. RllecHw. H. Geb. Mitte, Vorschlacf{e W I" VerlI ichlullg del' Partisanen im RlIl!ckw. H. Gch. III/(/ den 

rueckw. Armeegebietell, 1.],42, H . Geb. 24693/2 file. 

n Boch Dltll-Y, Osten II, 24 Jan 42. 

16/bid., 5 rviar 42. 
THE WAR BEHIND THE FRONT 

dudes the assistance of dependable elements of the population."" 

Hitler, however, was not to be persuaded. During the worst of the winter, 

he was saying, "We'll get our hands on 

the finest [Soviet] land .... We'll know 

how to keep the population in order. 

There won't be any question of our 

arriving there with kid gloves and 

77Pt . AOK J, Ie/AD, Abwthrnachrichttmblau, /9.3.42, 

P,. AOK 3 20839/2 rde. 

219 

dancing masters."'8 In April , he dedared, "The most foolish mistake we 

could possibly make would be to allow 

the subject races to bear arms. So let's 

not have any native militia or police. 

German troops alone will bear the sole 

responsibility for the maintenance of 

law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories."'· 

78Stcrtl ConversalitmJ, p. 265. 

79/bid., p. 345. 
CHAPTER XI 

The Northern Theater 

Cobelligerents and Brothers-in-Arms 

The military objectives of the German-Finnish cobelligerency in 1941 

were to interdict the Murmansk 

(Kirov) Railroad and to secure overland contact between the German and 

Finnish forces. For Germany, or rather 

for Hitler both objectives served psychological and political ends more than 

they did strategic necessities. The first 

would demonstrate to the British and 

Americans, as well as to the Soviet 

Union, the futility of outside aid or 

intervention. The second would confirm German hegemony in the Baltic 

and Scandinavian areas. Neither of 

those effects would have been in any 

doubt if operations against the Soviet 

main forces went as planned. 

The OKH, for its part, was primarily 

concerned with employing the light but 

good Finnish Army as an adjunct to 

Army Group North' The dnve to tlle 

Murmansk Railroad , which was to be 

conducted by the German Army of 

Norway as a second assignment, indeed 

almost a summer exercise, Halder dismissed as a mere "expedition." To 

Finland, Hitler's objectives offered the 

opportunity to regain all of the territory ceded to the Soviet Ul1lon after 

the Winter War of 1939- 1940; nevertheless, for Finland, also, the real 

'For the preinvasion plans see Ziemke, Nordlcm 

Theater, PI'. Il3- 36. 

decision hinged entirely on the outcome of the contest between tlle German and Soviet main forces. 

The 1941 campaign ended without 

eithe r of Hitler's objectives being attained. In the summer, the Army of 

Norway, under Generaloberst Nikolaus 

von Falkenhorst, had staged a triO of 

attacks out of northern Finland toward 

the Murmansk Railroad : one by a German corps along the Arctic coast from 

the vicinity of Pechenga toward Murmansk; anothe r, 150 n:'iles to the south , 

by a German corps via Salla, 30 miles 

north of the Arctic Circle, toward Kandalaksha on the railroad; and the third 

by an attached Finnish corps, south of 

the Arctic Circle, toward Louklll also 

on the railroad. (Map 16.) The first had 

stalled com pletely the last week of September on the Zapadnaya Litsa River 

40 miles west of Murmansk. The other 

twO Hitler ordered stopped in the second week of October when it appeared 

that the drive on Moscow would end 

the war before eitller could be completed? The Finnish Army had pushed 

southeast along the Isthmuses. of Karelia and Olonets. After reachll1g the 

pre-1940 border on tll e Isthmus of 

Karelia and at tlle SVlr River east of 

Lake Ladoga in the first week of September, the army had stopped, consid2Der Fuehrer utld Oberst#! Br{ehlslwber der \Vehrmacht, 

WFSt, Abt. L (/ Op.), tVr. -141 696141 , lr\ nmg 37, 

/0./0.4/, AOK 20 1907013 file. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

BARENTS SEA NORTHERN THEATER 

WInt8r 1M2 ---- _h 

100M .. 1----,.---" 

1do IClom ..... 

( LI(S8 R 

~XXX--

ARMY \ 

lAP~:ND ' XXXVI ' "'tn J .. L hn~"'''h! 

.~~8f18 1 

RELIAN 

FRONT 

. ROlI(m/~mi ---::--f)(X­

. "- vt' ,LOUlchi 

Tornla \ " stsngs 

III FinJh 

I \ Ukhfll 

LAP~b I 

x,,¥<~ 

--. l BtI/omor:;A 

...... t.. ,~ , "'" J RugoZlJlo \ 

i~~~~~ , 

i!~':, Helsink" _J' ....... ,... 

MAPJ6 

221 

ering its contribution made, and had 

waited for Army Group North to complete the junction from the south. 

The OKW would have preferred a 

combined command for the front in 

Finland and had expected to offer it to 

Marshal Mannerheim, commander in 

chief of the Finnish Army, but the 

Finns had insisted on what they called a 

brotherhood-in-a rms that ke pt the 

commands separate except for the 

token attachment of Finnish III Corps 

to Army of Norway for the attack toward Loukhi and the German 163d 

Infantry Division to the Finnish Army 

as Mannerheim's reserve? As the summer campaign drew to a close, the 

Finnish conception of the brotherhood-in-arms changed markedly. On 

25 September, Mannerheim refused a 

request from the OKW to resume the 

advances on the Isthmus of Karelia 

and the Svir River stating that Finland 

could not afford to maintain 16 percent 

of its population in military service, as 

it had been doing, and his next task 

would, therefore, have to be to reorganize the army by reducing the 

divisions to brigades and returning the 

released men to civilian employment' 

Shortly afterward he asked to have 

German troops take over the II I Corps 

positions so that the corps could be 

returned to him for the reorganization . In mid-Novemb er, Kenraalimajuri ("Maj or General") H. 

Siilasvuo, the III Corps commander, 

after having agreed with Fa lkenhorst 

30K~V, WFSt, Abt. L, Nr. 44594141, VOTSchLagfuer dit' 

\0rbereil'Ung der Besprechungen ueber Beleiligung Finn· 

Lands am U nlernehmen "Barharossa," 28.4.4 J , 

OKWI1938 fi le; Mannerheim, Erillllerungen, p. 450. 

4VerbilUiungsstab Nord, l a NT. 84141, OberbefdLlslwber 

lier finnischen Welmllacht an Herrn GeneralfeldmarsdUlIl 

Keitel. 25.9.41. AOK 20 20844/2 hie. 
222 

that a late season breakthrough to 

Loukhi might succeed , suddenly cancelled the operation, saying only that 

he was "not in a position" to continue 

it. 5 

Pressures on Finland 

The Finns' successes in the field 

raised troubles for them in other respects. In late September and early 

October the British and United States 

governments had both warned them 

against invading Soviet territory. On 27 

October the United States had demanded that Finland cease all offensive 

operations, adding, " ... should material of war sent from the United States 

to Soviet territory in the north by way 

of the Arctic Ocean be attacked on 

route either presumably or even allegedly from territory under Finnish 

control in the present state of opinion 

in the United States such an incident 

must be expected to bring about an 

instant crisis in relations between 

Finland and the United States."· 

On the other hand, Finland was having difficulty keeping what political distance it had between itself and 

Germany. In October, the Germans, 

irked by the Finnish contacts with the 

West, pointedly invited Finland to join 

the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was 

due for renewal the following month. 

The pact was not a military alliance, but 

it was regarded worldwide as the cornerstone of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo 

Axis. At the same time, Finland was 

['Cmeralkommando III A.K., N. 652111113 .h., a n. Hem, 

Oberbifehlshaber der Annel! Nonvegen, 19.11.4 /, AOK 20 

20844/2 fi le. 

liWiliiam L. Lange r and S. Everett Gleason , Tlte 

Undeclared any, 40~1 4J (New York: Harper and 

Brothers, 1953). p. 831. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

finding itself forced to ask Germany 

for 150,000 tons of grain to tide its 

population over the winter and for 100 

to 150 locomotives and 4,000 to 8,000 

ra ilroad cars to keep its transportation 

system running. The Finnish railroads, 

which had a low hauling capacity to 

start with , had deteriorated rapidly 

after the war broke out and were on 

the verge of a complete collapse. Since 

the Army of Norway also depended on 

the railroads, the OKW promised some 

locomotives and cars, but it was less 

forthcoming on the request for grain. 

On 25 November, Finnish Foreign 

Minister Rolf Witting signed the AntiComintern Pact in Berlin under dle 

spodight of as much publicity as the 

German Foreign Ministry could arrange. Two weeks later, Britain declared war, and on 19 December, 

Germany agreed to supply Finland 

with 70,000 tons of grain before the 

end of February 1942 and a total of 

260,000 tons before the next harvest.' 

Command and Deployment 

At the turn of the year, Falkenhorst 

returned to Norway, and the Army of 

Norway forces in Finland became 

Army of Lapland , under General der 

Gebirgstruppe Eduard Dietl. 

Falkenhorst, whether deservedly or 

not, had been tagged as a hard-luck 

general by the 1941 campaign , and his 

abrasive personality did not make him 

the best man to deal with the Finns 

when relations were delicate. Dietl, 

7Der Cluf des Oberkommarulos da Welmnachl, WFSt, 

Abl. L (l Op.), Nr. 441 97914 1, (III SI! . Exullcll2 Gelll'-

ralfeldmarschall Freihar VOII M all llerlleim, 21.1 J A I , H 

22/227: Dir. Ha. Pol. , Auf u idl1umg, No. 226, 19.12.41 , 

Serial 1260, U.S. Department of State. German Foreign Ministry Records. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

who had commanded the attack toward Murmansk, had not been much 

more lucky in Finland , but he had been 

the hero of the 1940 campaign in Norway. He was also one of the few generals whom Hitler liked and trusted. In 

cr eating the Army of Lapland , the 

OKW also saw an opportunity to tie 

Mannerheim more closely to German 

interests by offering him the supreme 

command in Finland. Mannerhe im 

stated in his memoirs that in the winter 

of 1941 - 1942, such an offer was made 

to him, and he re fused itS Dietl's first 

task, with active operations by both 

sides having stopped six weeks before 

he took command, was to regroup 

Army of Lapland and return the attached Finnish units to Mannerheim. 

In the far north , Dietl's former command, Mountain Corps Norway, 

passed to Generalleutnant Ferdinand 

Schoerner. He had two mountain divisions and two infantry regiments, a 

ten-mil e front on the Zapadnaya Litsa 

River, and a four-mil e front across the 

neck of the Rybachiy Peninsula, which 

had been bypassed during tlle summer's adva nce. He stationed one division, 6th Mountain, in the river line; a 

regiment, the 288th Infantry, on the 

peninsula; and held the 2d Mountain 

Division and 193d Infantry Regiment 

in reserve at Pechenga. Schoerner was 

known by his troops-as he would be 

by the whole German Army before the 

war was over-as a ruthlessl y determined general. Told that the Arctic 

wimer's darkness and cold were affecting morale, he issued the order: "Arktis 

8General der Infamel'ie a.D. Waldemar EI-furlh, 

Comments on Part II of Ziemke. Norlhenl Theater, 6 

tVlay 1956. CM H files: Manncrheim. Erimlenmgrtl, p. 

472. 

223 

ist nichl." ("The Arctic does not exist.") 

The XXXVI Mountain Corps held a 

line on the Verman River forty miles 

east of Salla and sixty miles short of its 

1941 objective, Kandalaksha. The corps 

was a mountain corps by courtesy o nly. 

It consisted of one infantry division, 

tll e 169th, plus one infantry and o ne 

mountain regiment. General der Infanterie Karl. F. Weisenberger had 

taken command of the corps in 

November 1941 after the drive to Kandalaksha had failed. 

Finnish II I Corps had two fronts: 

one twenty-five miles west of Loukhi 

held by the SS Division "Nord" and 

Finnish Division J, the other held by 

the Finnish 3d Division eight miles west 

of Ukhta. The two were separated by 

forty miles of lake and forest. The 

Division "Nord" was composed of two 

SS "death's-head" regiments that were 

tra ined as police and concentration 

camp guards not as combat units. Division J had been crea ted in the summer 

by dividing the 3d Division. Since the 

SS Division "Nord" had performed e rraticall y during the su mmel~ it was to 

be returned to Germany and replaced 

by another SS division when o ne became available. One regiment departed 

in December, leaving tlle division with 

an actual strength of three infantry 

and two motorized ma ch in e gun 

battalions. 

Mannerheim's reorganization of the 

Finnish Army was less thoroughgoing 

than he had pla nn ed. During the 

winter he furloughed 100,000 older 

men and men with essential civilian 

occupations, but the conversion of divisions to brigades proceeded slowly, and 

he finally abandoned this effort in May 

1942, after he had converted two divisions. The III Corps stayed with Army 
224 

OUTPOST ON THE VERMAN RIVER LINE 

of Lapland through the winter because 

Mannerheim retained an interest for a 

time in an operation against the Murmansk Railroad and because Army of 

Lapland did not have any troops with 

which to take over the corps' front. The 

German 5th and 7th Mountain Divisions, originally earmarked as reinforcements for XXXVI Mountain 

Corps, could have done so, but only 

one regiment arrived before ice closed 

the Finnish Baltic ports? 

A Thrust to Belimwrsk 

On 25 September, at the same time 

as he refused to carry farther the Finnish offensives on the Svir and the 

Isthmus of Karelia, Mannerheim presented a proposal to the OKW for a 

9Ibi(I., p. 470. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

winter offensive to be directed against 

Belomorsk, the Soviet port on the 

White Sea at which the Murmansk Railroad branched sou thward toward 

Leningrad and southeastward via 

Obozerskaya toward Moscow. He 

thought that after Leningrad had 

fallen he would be able to spare eight 

or nine brigades for such an operation 

and that the German and Finnish advances toward Kandalaksha and 

Loukhi could be continued at the same 

time. lo Hitler and the OKW took up 

Mannerheim's proposal immediately. It 

was more than welcome at Fuehrer 

Headquarters as a chance for a fresh 

start for tlle tllen nearly moribund 

operations against the Murmansk Railroad, and Hitler promptly designated 

the 5th and 7th Mountain Divisions as 

reinforcements for the thrust to Kandalaksha. He also elevated XXXVI 

Corps to the status of a mountain 

corps. 

During the late fall, after the Germans and Finns had stopped everywhere else, part of the Finnish Army 

kept on the move through Eastern 

Karelia reaching Rugozero, sixty miles 

west of Belomorsk, in early December. 

Army Group North, meanwhile, had 

been stopped for more than two 

months around Leningrad and was 

stalled at TIkhvin. To the last of several 

OKW communications on the projected winter operation , Mannerheim 

replied on 4 December that he regarded the cutting of tlle Murmansk 

Railroad as extremely important; but, 

he pointed out, his proposal in September had been predicated on the 

IOVerbilldungsstab Nord, la Nr. 84141, OberbeJehlsltaber 

d,.,. jiltllLsChf:l1 hnllachl an Hern! Generalfeldmarschall 

Knl,l. 25.9.41. AOK 20 20844/2 role. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

assumption that Leningrad would fall 

and contact would be established on 

the Svir in a few weeks. Since then the 

condition of his troops had deteriorated and the war had created internal 

troubles for Finland. The attack on 

Kandalaksha, he thought, would have 

to begin on 1 March at the latest, and 

he added, somewhat bleakly, that Finnish troops would begin the drive to 

Belomorsk at the same time, "if the 

situation in any way pe rmits."!! 

On 14 December, following a staff 

confe r ence at Finnish Army Headquarte rs, Manne rhe im and Falkenhorst met at Fa lkenhorst's headquarte rs in Rovan iemi. By then, because of 

the railroad situation, which he described as catastrophic, Mannerheim 

was taking a dim view of the Kandalaksha operation-so dim, according 

to Falkenhorst, that he was unwilling to 

risk involving Finnish troops in it. On 

the other hand, he maintained that the 

British declaration of war on Finland 

and the United States' entry into the war 

had given the Murmansk Railroad 

greatl y increased sign ificance, and it 

would have to be cut. He believed Belomorsk was the key point and proposed converging attacks from th e 

west and southwest by combined German and Finnish forces. The OKW 

promptly accepted the change in the 

operation and offered him the 7th 

Mountain Division, then still expected 

to arrive in Finland during the winter. 12 

Be fore long, however, as the Soviet 

winte r offensive d eve loped , Manne rheim's determination Aagged again. 

IIObPrbeJeMslwher de,. ji"IIisclLrIl IVthrmll.cht (HI H,.rm 

GtlleralJeldmarsdUlIl Keitel, 4. J 2.4 J, H 22/22i file. 

12VfTbi1ldungsstab Nord, la, an OKH, CenSldH, Op. 

Abt .. /5. /2.4/ , H 221227 file. 

225 

On 20 January, General der Infanterie 

Waldemar Erfurtll, chief of the OKW 

liaison staff at Finnish Army Headquarters, reported that the question of 

a Belomorsk operation was completel y 

up in the air and Mannerheim would 

not make a positive decision unless the 

situation on the German front, particu larly around Leningrad, improved . 

Erfurth could only recommend that all 

possible means of persuasion b e 

brought to bear on Mannerheim. The 

other Finnish officers he thought were 

less pessimistic, but none of them had 

an y influen ce .' 3 In r es ponse, Fie ld 

Ma rshal Ke ite l, chief of the OKW, 

wrote to Mannerhe im, telling him that 

the Russians were wearing tll emselves 

out in their attacks and before spring 

wou ld have exhausted tI,eir rese rves. 

"This," he told ti,e marshal, "can be expected also to he lp your intended opera tion in the direc tion of Sorokka 

[Belomorskl ."14 

In ti,e first week of February, Dietl, 

who was by then commandin g the 

Army of Lapland, a lso discussed the 

Be lomorsk operation with Mannerheim. During th e conversation , 

Mannerheim avoided a direct refusal 

to involve his forces, repeatedly stating 

that things would be differe nt if the 

Germans were to take Leningrad, but 

he left no doubt that in the existing situation he would not stage a winter offensive. Erfurtll, who reported on the 

co nference to th e OKW, concluded 

that, in addition to his negative assessment of the war, Mannerheim was in-

,aVerbindungsslab Nord, 10 Ny. 13141, nachr. OKH , Cluf 

des GmStdH, 20./.4/, H 22/227 fi le. 

I~D" Chef des Obn-kommomWs der Welmnaehl, Nr. 

55208142, an den OberbeJehlshabfT deT Jitwisclull 

Ullmllacht,26.1.42, H 221227 fi le. 
226 

Auenced by Finnish domestic politics. 

He and Risto Ryti , the president of 

Fmland, had for months promised the 

people that the end was in sight and 

on ly another small effort would be 

needed. An offensive against Belomorsk would far exceed what the 

Fi~nish government had led the populatIOn to expect. Above all, Erfurth 

stated, Mannerheim would not undertake such an operation if it were possible that he might suffer a setback." 

On 3 February, Mannerheim answered Keitel's letter, saying that, if the 

war did not take a favorable turn soon 

he doubted whether he would be ab ~ to make troops available for a winter 

operation against Belomorsk, but he 

would not give up the idea.'· In Erfurth 's opinion, "a favora bl e turn" 

meant that Leningrad would have to be 

taken before Mannerheim would undertake another offensive. He needed 

the fall of Leningrad , Erfurth added, 

to make troops available and for the 

sake of morale at home; moreover as 

inquiries from the Finnish chief of s;aff 

revealed , he recently had become worned that the German 1942 offensive 

would be concentrated in the Ukraine 

and the northern sector of the Eastern 

Front would be left to languish. As far 

as Mannerheim's keeping th e Be -

lomorsk operation in mind was concerned, Erfurth believed it was merely 

intended to give his letter a courteous 

tone and could not be taken as a commitment either for the present or the 

future . 17 

rbillllllllgsstab Noul, la N,: 20142, Ul1 OKW, WFSt, 

Abt. L, 2.2.-12, H 22/227 fi le. 

ItlVf'rbilldllllgsstah Nord, l a Nr. 24142, an OKJ-I, GenSUiH, op. Abl. , 3.2.4 /, 1-1 22/227 fi le. 

l7Vel'billdllllgssfab Nord, la Nr. 25/42, all OKH , Op. 

Abt. , 9.2.-12, H 221227 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The Soviet Spring Offensive 

Initially, the Leningrad Militm) District, which became North Fmnt at the 

outbreak of the war, was responsible 

for the Finnish-Soviet frontier. It had 

Twenty-third Army between the Gulf of 

Finland and the nortll shore of Lake 

Ladoga, Seventh Army north of the lake, 

and Fourteenth Army in the MurmanskKandalaksha area. On 23 August 1941, 

North Fmnt became Leningrad Hunt and 

soon thereafter lost direct contact with 

its original armies except for Twentyth,,-d Army, whICh held the line across 

the Isthmus of Karelia north of 

Leningrad. Subsequently, Seventh Army 

became an independent army, and on I 

September, Karelian Fmnt was activated 

under General Ley tenant V. A. Frolov: 

to take over the 550-mile sector from 

Lake Onega north to the Arctic coast 

west of Murmansk.' 8 

Karelian Hunt did not figure in the 

SovIet general offensive, but neither 

was it out of the Stavka's eye, pa rticularly not in the late winter as the 

likelihood grew to a certainty that the 

Germans would be able to mount a second summer campaign. Frolov was 

given orders in early April 1942 to attack along the line from the Zapadnaya 

Lltsa River to Kestenga and to drive 

the enemy back to the Firll1ish border. 

Winter lingers long in the northern latitudes, and the Karelian Front ope ratIons, therefore , took on the appearance of a postscript to tlle general 

offensive. They evolved, in fact, from 

the Soviet strategy for the com in g 

spring and summer19 

ISSec IVMV, vol. IV, maps 2 and 5. 

19/bid" vol. V, p. 11 5. See pp. 238-40. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

.. ~ ... " 

• 

MAP 17 

".. C 

.~ .... 

... 8th -

Ski 

The Buildup 

Karelian Fmnt's deployment had remained static through the winter. 

Headquarters, Fourteenth Army, kept 

two divisions, two brigades, three 

border regiments, and two machine 

gun battalions standing against Mountain Corps Norway along the Zapadnaya Litsa River. Frolov kept the 

command on the approaches to Kandalaksha and Loukhi under his own 

headquarters. During the winter, he 

had two divisions, a border regIment, 

and two ski battalions on the Verman 

River line opposite XXXVI Mountain 

Corps and two divisions, two brigades, 

a border regiment, and three ski battalions facing Finnish III Corps.'· 

20AOK 20, Ie Taetigkeitsbericht f iler die Zeit vom J.4 -

31.12.42,6.3.42, AOK 20 27252119 file. 

227 

THE KESTENGA-LOUKHI SECTOR 

April - Mav 1942 _ Soviet attack 

..... --- German counterattack 

Or-, __ -.,-=-",0 Miles 

o 1'0 Kilometers 

In the first two weeks of April, the 

picture changed suddenly-and, for 

Army of Lapland, disconcertingly. A 

guards division and two ski brigades 

joined the Fow·teenth Army force on the 

Zapadnaya Litsa; Headquarters, 

liventy-sixth A,-my moved 111 opposIte the 

III Corps main force west of Kestenga, 

bringing with it two new divisions; and 

the ski battalions in the lines OppOSll1g 

XXXVI Mountain Corps and III 

Corps were raised to brigade strength. 

The buildup was diminutive by the 

standards of the main front but enormous for the Far North. It was possible 

for the Russians only because they had 

the Murmansk Railroad but impossible 

for the Germans and Finns to match . 

On 13 April, III Corps canceled a 

small attack it was about to start when 

air reconnaissance reported over 700 

cars in the Loukhi railroad yards, but 
228 

the weather thereafter was so bad that 

the on ly new Soviet units identified 

were the two ski brigades in the Mountain Corps Norway sector. Considering 

how late the season was, the tempo of 

the fina l Soviet deployment was, in fact, 

somewhat sluggish , and when the third 

week in April had passed and nothing 

had happened, it looked to Dietl as if 

the Russians had concluded that they 

could not outrace the oncom in g 

thaw." He was wrong, at least to the 

extent of having failed to appreciate 

the Soviet determination to seize the 

initiative and to exploit the fading 

winter by getting in one more blow. 

Double Strikes 

On the morning of 23 April, 23d 

Gum'cis Division and 8th Ski Brigade hit 

the thinly held III Corps left flank east 

of Kestenga. Frontal attacks on the center and right pinned the corps tight between Verkhneye Chernoye Lake and 

Top Lake. In two days the III Corps 

left flank cracked . By then enough was 

known about the extent of the Soviet 

buildup to make it apparent that the 

least to be expected was an effort to 

smash t11e corps front and drive it west 

of Kestenga. Dietl had in reserve one 

tank battalion, equ ipped with obsolete 

Panzer Is (armed with two 30-caliber 

machine guns), and a company of the 

Brandenburg Regiment (specialists for 

sabotage operations behind the enemy 

lines). These he threw in along with the 

e ntire XXXVI Mountain Corps reserve, one infantry battalion. The III 

Corps brought up one battalion from 

the Uk hta sector. German Fifth Air 

21AOK Lnppland, la Nr. 1750/-12, Zusammetifasst!1lder 

Bm'cht ueber die Abwehrkll(!mpfe ria Armee Lapp/and vom 

24.4-23.5.42, AOK 20 2725217 fi le. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Force, which was under orders to concentrate on the Allied Arctic shipping 

and the Murmansk Railroad except in 

crises, began shifting its fighters and 

dive-bombe rs from Banak and 

Kirkenes in nortl1ern Norway to Kemi 

behind the III Corps front. (Map 17.) 

On t11e 27t11, FouTtemth Army hit the 

6th Mountain Division lin e, on th e 

Zapadnaya Litsa, on the right with 10th 

Gua,-cis Division and on the left with 14th 

Rifle Division. During the night, 12th 

Naval Brigade, coming by sea, landed 

on the west shore of Zapadnaya Litsa 

Bay and began to push behind the German line. The landing was a complete 

surprise to Mountain Corps Norway, 

and it could have been devastating had 

it been made in greater strength. As it 

was, 6th Mountain Division had time to 

overcome the shock when, two days 

later, the worst snowstorm of the 

winter stopped everytl1ing for several 

days.22 (Map 18.) 

By I May, the Soviet spearheads were 

standing due nortl1 of Kestenga. Dietl 

then asked Mannerheim for the Finnish l2t11 Brigade (formerly the 6th Division) to reinforce III Corps. 

Mannerheim, unwilling to involve the 

brigade in what might develop in to a 

long, drawn-oUl fIght, refused but offered instead to give Dietl the I63d Infantry Division, which was still attached 

to the Finnish Army, and to take over 

the Ukhta sector after a German corps 

arrived to relieve III Corps. The offer 

did not promise any immediate he lp, 

but Dietl decided to accept, since, in 

the long run, he would ga in a division 

22Gell . Kdo. Geb.-Korps Nonvegm, f a Nr. 965/42, 

Bericht ueber die A bwehrluumpJe des Gebirgskorps gegetl die 

russische UmJasslmgoperati01I va", 27.4.-/6.5.42, AOK 

20 2725216 file. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 229 

I N FANT RY TAKE CoVER IN THE III CORPS SEcrOR 

and be freed of responsibility for the 

Ukhta sector. 23 

In the first week of May, seeking a 

showdown, Twenty-sixth Army put in two 

new units, 186th Rifle Division and 80th 

Rifle Brigade, against the III Corps left 

!lank. Dietl brought two more battalions from XXXVI Mountain Corps, 

and III Corps brought one from 

Ukhta. By also taking 2 battalions out 

of his right Aank, Siilasvuo managed to 

oppose the 2 Soviet divisions and 2 brigades with 9 baualions. Whether they 

would be enough was highly questionable from the first, and on 3 May when 

the 8th Ski Brigade and a regiment of 

the 186th Rifle Division swept wide to 

1. 3AOK Lapp/(wd, fa. Kriegstagefmch, Band I , Nr. 2, I 

and 4 May 42, AOK 20 2725211 file. 

the west and south to cut the III Corps 

supply road west of Kestenga, Siilasvuo 

wanted to evacuate Kestenga and withdraw to a line in the narrows between 

Pya Lake and Top Lake. Dietl, believing a retreat would entail too great a 

loss of men and su pplies, ordered 

Siilasvuo to hold even if he should be 

cut off. 

The Fade-out 

On the 5th, the ski brigade and the 

riAe regiment came within two miles of 

the road west of Kestenga and had advance parties out almost to the road, 

but in the swamps northwest of the 

town the main bodies lost momentum. 

I n another two days, the Germans and 

Finns were able to encircle the two Soviet units and virtually wipe them out. 
230 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

193d Regt 

I --... 

f

KurOVIIYII 

th Regt 

2d 

M . Pechengll tn Dlv I 

Norway M7torps 

Tirol/aya 

, ~ 

BAY 

'r Naval Bde /" ,...i~p.dn.ra titSII Bay 

Luostllfi ~ "" SJ/ ,,';..'" 6th )- ~~"o /-

t· 

/ 

l/r 

Mtn Oiv ;' 

-rFFt/// 72d Bde 

Urll Gubll 

14th 

5th Ski Bde , 

i#'",. 

'1~' 

6th Ski Bde • 

10th Gds Oiv! 52d Div 

" o· ~ ____________ -L ________________ -,~~ .~ 

THE ZAPADNAYA LlTSA FRONT 

27 April - 14 May 1942 

<if- Soviet attack 

o 20 Miles 

------~------~' o 2

1

0 Kilometers 

MAP 18 

The 8th Ski Brigade, according to prisoners' accounts, was reduced to between three and four hundred men , 

approximtely a tenth of its original 

strength. 

Elsewhere, too, Twenty-sixth Army's 

drive was coming apart, and on the 

6th, Dietl and Siilasvuo concluded that 

the crisis had passed. The defense had 

been successful, largely because of a 

failure by Twenty-sixth Army to employ 

its vastly superior numbers effectively. 

It had dissipated its strength in uncoordinated attacks by single divisions, with 

the result that 186th Rifle Division and 

Murmansk 

23d Guards Division were reduced to between 30 and 40 percent of their original strengths. The 80th Rifle Brigade 

fared ' almost as badly, and tl1e 8th Ski 

Brigade was nearly destroyed . At the 

end, the Soviet politr'llks were often no 

longer able to drive their men into battle. On the 7th , certain that Twenty-s~-v:t11 

Army could not launch another thrust 

without fresh units, Dietl decided to 

cou ntera ttack 24 

~4AOK Lappltmd, fa Nr. 1750142, Zusammnifassender 

Benchl ueber die AbwehrkiurmpJe der Annt'e Lapp/and W ill 

24.4.-23.5.42, AOK 20 2725217 file. 
THE NORTHER THEATER 

The fighting on the Zapadnaya Litsa 

front never reached a crisis like that in 

the II I Corps sector, but the Germans, 

Hitler in particular, believed the situation there to be tile more serious because of the su pposed danger of a 

United States-British landing on the 

Arctic coast. Since late December 1941, 

when a British cruiser and destroyer 

force staged a raid on the Lofoten Islands off northern Norway, Hitler had 

been expecting a British and American 

attempt to seize a foothold somewhere 

between Narvik and Pechenga, along 

the northern sea route. 

On 9 May, Dietl and Schoerner decided to stake everything on a quick 

decision. They ordered 2d Mountain 

Division to the front and stripped the 

coastal defenses between Tana Fiord 

and Pechenga Bay. But before the last 

reserves were in the line, the battle 

shifted. On tile 14th, 121h Naval Brigade, its overwater supply line under 

constant dive-bomber harassment, 

gave up its beachhead on the Zapadnaya Li tsa Bay. Thereafter Fourteenth 

Army, although it had brought in anotller division during the past week, 

also stopped the attack on the south 

flank. On tile 15t1l, Mountain Corps 

Norway regained its original positions 

along the whole front. 

North of Kestenga a thaw delayed 

the III Corps counterattack until 15 

May. Meanwhile the Russians, characteristically, had thrown up elaborate 

field fortifications. When a flanking 

attack by three Finnish regiments became bogged down in impassible 

ground, the Germans had to resort to a 

succession of frontal assaults that finally broke tile line on 21 May. With 

that, the Soviet resistance collapsed, 

and III Corps was almost back in its 

231 

GERMAN SKI PA fROL, K£STENGA FRON I 

original front when, on the 23d, contrary to his orders from Dietl, Siilasvuo 

stopped the advance." 

The last week and a half of the 

fighting north of Kestenga had seen a 

recurrence of constraint in the cooperation between the German and Finnish 

commands. Army of Lapland noted on 

23 May, "In the course of tile recent 

weeks tile army has received the growing impression that tile Commanding 

General, III Corps, either on his own 

initiative or on instructions from 

higher Finnish authorities, is avoiding 

all decisions that could involve Finnish 

troops in serious fighting."2. The German liaison officer with II I Corps reported that the German troops had 

UAOK Lappltl1ld, la Kriegstagl'buch, Balld " Nr. 2, 

15-23 May 42. AOK 20 2725211 fi le. 

26/bid., 23 May 42. 
232 

made all the heavy attacks since 15 May, 

and Army of Lapland recorded that 

Siilasvuo had repeatedly issued orders 

on his own authority that he knew the 

army would not automatically approve, 

the last of those being the order to 

break off the operation. 

Although III Corps had not regained the best defensive positions at 

several points, Dietl decided to let 

Siilasvuo's order stand, particularly 

since he saw a danger that otherwise 

the Finns would pull out entirely and 

leave the German troops stranded. On 

the 23d, he attempted to limit 

Siilasvuo's authority with regard to 

withdrawing troops from the line; but 

on the following day, disregarding that, 

Siilasvuo pulled all the Finnish troops 

out of the German sector of the front 

and demanded that within three days 

the Germans return all horses and 

wagons borrowed from the Finns. The 

last action would have left the German 

troops without supplies, and Dietl had 

to appeal to Siilasvuo in the name of 

"brotherhood-in-arms" not to leave the 

Germans in a hopeless position. 27 

Although the Finnish liaison officer 

with Army of Lapland assured him 

that the Finnish Army Command was 

not putting pressure on Siilasvuo to 

spare his Finnish troops or to get them 

out quickly, Dietl ordered the German 

units made independent of Finnish 

support as fast as possible and asked 

the OK W to speed up shipment of the 

7th Mountain Division. The headquarters and two regiments of the latter, 

however, were by then tied down in the 

fighting on tile Army Group North 

front. On I June, the XVIII Mountain 

Corps headquarters' staff arrived, and 

21/bid., 23-25 May 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Dietl proposed having it take over the 

Kestenga sector at the middle of the 

month, but Siilasvuo refused to relinquish command there unless the majority of the Finnish troops were out by 

then. On tile 18th Mannerheim finally 

agreed to an exchange at the end of the 

month, provided somewhat less than 

half of the Finnish troops were returned to him. On that basis, XVIII 

Mountain Corps took command at 

Kestenga on 3 July. One Finnish regiment remained in the corps area until 

mid-September, when it was relieved by 

the last elements of 7th Mountain 

Division.28 

The battles east of Kestenga and on 

the Zapadnaya Litsa were defensive 

victories for the Germans and the 

Finns-but ones which could not be 

exploited, and so they brought small 

profit. The III Corps claimed to have 

counted 15 ,000 Soviet dead and maintained that Soviet losses behind the 

lines from artillery fire and aerial bombardment also were high. One of 

Twenty-sixth Army's reinforcements, the 

85th Independent Brigade, for instance, 

was smashed by dive-bombers before it 

could get to the front. Mountain Corps 

Norway claimed 8,000 Soviet dead . 

The total German and Finnish casualties were 5,500 in the III Corps sector 

and 3,200 on the Zapadnaya Litsa!9 

Neitller of the major Soviet war histories says anything about the Kestenga 

offensive. With regard to the Zapadnaya Litsa operation, the H istory of the 

Second ""rid War says only that it was 

"without results."30 The Histo1) of the 

Great Patriotic War says the operation 

2l1Ziemke, Northem Thealel: p. 228. 

29lbid. 

30/VMv, vol. v. p. 141. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

failed but "tied up enemy forces, disrupted his planned offensive [sicl, and 

forced him to assume the defensive on 

the Murmansk axis." It adds, "For a 

long time, the situation on the northern sector of the Soviet-German front 

remained stable."31 

The Arctic Convoys 

The German Buildup 

In mid-August 1941 , the British had 

begun sending single merchant ships 

(and one small convoy) loaded with 

military equipment to Murmansk and 

Arkhangelsk. The first larger convoy, 

numbered PQ-I, sailed from Hvalfjord, Iceland , on 29 September. 

(Henceforth, until November 1942, 

convoys were given "PQ" numbers outbound and "QP" numbers homebound.)"' The Germans, unwilling to 

divert effort from profitable targets 

elsewhere, did not respond until 20 

December, when two aircraft attacked 

PQ_6.33 

During the winter of 1941-1942, 

Hitler's preoccupation with possible 

British (and American) landings put 

u1e German Navy in position to do 

something about the Arctic convoys. In 

late December, Hitler told Keitel and 

Admiral Raeder, the commander in 

chief of the navy, "I f the British go 

about things properly, they will attack 

northern Norway at seve ral points. In 

an all-out offensive by their Reet and 

ground troops, they will try to displace 

us there, take Narvik, if possible, and 

31 /VOVSS, vol. II , p. 468. 

32.See S. W. Roskill, The Hnr at Sea, /939-/945 

(London : Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1954). \'0 1. 

I. p. 492 and Samuel Eliot Morison. Tilt Battle of tht 

At/wIlie, September J939-May 194) (Boston: Little. 

BI"OWIl, 1947), p. 160. 

331VlvlV, vol. IV. p. 334. 

233 

thus exert pressure on Sweden and 

Finland. " He t11en gave Raeder an 

order to have "each and every vessel" of 

the navy stationed in Norway, including the battleships Scharnhorst and 

Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz 

Eugen, all three of which were docked 

at Brest and would have to break 

through the English Channel to get to 

Norway." 

The German Navy, taking advantage 

of the cover afforded by the long 

winter nights, began transferring its 

heavy ships to Norway inJanuary 1942. 

The battl eship Tirpitz, first to go , 

docked in Trondheim on the 16t11. The 

Tirpitz was the navy's most formidable 

ship. With a displacement of 42,000 

tons and eight fifteen-inch guns in its 

main batteries, it was a match for any 

vessel aRoat. The navy had been planning to move the Tirpitz to Norway 

since November 1941, for the effect it 

would have of tying down heavy British 

ships. In that sense, the move was an 

immediate success. Churchill, in January 1942, believed that if the Til'pitz 

could be removed from the scene, the 

world naval situation would be 

changed and the Allies could regain 

naval supremacy in the Pacific." In the 

second week of February, Scham/wl'St, 

Gneisenau, and PTinz Eugen broke 

through the English Channel, reaching 

Germany on the 13th. The two battleships had been damaged by mines 

and had to be held in Germany for 

repairs. The Prinz Eugen(l4,000 tons, 

eight-inch guns) proceeded to Norway 

together with the pocket battleship 

34FIlehrn Conferences 011 Mattl!Ts Dellliug Wit}1 the 

Cennan Navy, 1941 (Washington D.C.: Office of NavaJ 

Inlcll igencc. 1947), vol. II , p. 94. 

35/bid., p. 55; WinSlOll S. Churchill , The l-lingeoJFate 

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1950), p. 11 2. 
234 

Scheer (11,000 tons, eleven-inch guns) 

and docked at Trondheim on 23 February, but Prinz Eugen's rudder was 

blown off by a torpedo while en route, 

and the ship had to return to Germany. 

By late February, the navy also had 

eight destroyers and twelve submarines 

based in Norway. In his "each and 

every vessel " order, Hitler had originally included the whole German submarine fleet, but he had later been 

impressed by reports of submarine successes off the U.S. coast and had decided to leave the main submarine 

force there 3 • 

Meanwhile, the German Navy had 

recognized the target potential of the 

convoys, but, as of late February, it had 

only six submarines deployed against 

them. The other six were being kept on 

patrol off Norway, and the Naval Staff 

could not bring itself to allow the surface ships to burn precious fuel oil on 

what would be long, and perhaps fruitless, sorties. Convoy PQ-7 , which 

made the voyage north in January 

1942, lost one merchant ship out of 

eleven. The first convoy in which an 

American merchant ship made the 

run, PQ-8, had one ship damaged by a 

torpedo and a destroyer sunk. In February, three PQ convoys (9, 10, and 11) 

got through without being sighted."' 

German Fifth Air Force, which was 

responsible for air operations in Norway and Finland, might also have operated against the convoys. It had 60 

twin-engine bombers, 30 Stukas, 30 single-engine fighters, a nd 15 naval 

floatplane torpedo-bombers. However, 

36War Diary. Gmn{H1 Naval Sf tiff, Opemti01l.'i Divisu:m, 

Part A (WashinglOn: Office of Naval Intellige nce. 

1948). vol. 29. pp. 207. 217, 228. 

37Roskill, "~r at S,a, vol. II , p. Jl9; Modso n, Battle 

of tlte Atll1nlic, p. 160. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the Fifth Air Force commander, Generaloberst Hans-J uergen Sturn pff, believed the darkness of the arctic winter 

made air operations against ships at sea 

unprofitable, and, from his headquarters in Kemi , Finland, he directed his 

main effort against the port of Murmansk and the railroad. For a time in 

early 1942, Stumpff employed geologists in an attempt to locate spots 

along the railroad where bombing 

might set off landslides and bury 

stretches of the track. The Germans 

had recently acquired some costly 

knowledge about arctic geology. In late 

September 1941, a Soviet bomber, striking at Army of Norway's only bridge 

across the Pechenga River, had 

dropped a load of bombs that missed 

the bridge but by their concussion had 

caved in both banks of the river, completely burying the bridge and damming the river. The site of the collapse 

was in an area in. which glacial drift 

(sand and gravel) had been laid down 

over a substratum of oceanic sediment. 

The lauer, having never dried out, remained extremely unstable; and whenever it was cut, as by a river, it sustained 

its own weight and the drift overburden only in a highly precarious sort 

of equilibrium. Similar conditions were 

known to exist throughout northern 

Finland and the I,(ola Peninsula, but 

although they tried a number of times, 

the Germans did not succeed in exploiting these geologic factors in their 

attacks on the Murmansk Railroad ."" 

"TiI'Pilz" and PQ-12 

By early March, the Naval Staff had 

311Brilish Air Ministry Pamphlel 248, p. 11 3. See 

Ziemke, Nortlten! Theater, p. 236n. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 235 

G ERMAN S UBMARI NE ON THE WAIT IN THE ARCTIC 

come to think that the mere presence 

of the Ti,Pilz at Trondheim would not 

fuUy achieve the desired effect of tying 

down enemy forces, and it therefore 

o rdered the battleship to make a strike 

against the PQ- 12 convoy, which was 

then at sea northeast of Iceland. The 

TiTPitz and five destroyers put out on 6 

March. After failing to find the convoy 

in three days' cruising, they were ordered back to port on the 9th. The 

sortie had been a halfhearted enterprise from the start because the Naval 

Staff had qualms about risking a battleship in an action against merchant 

ships. Raeder concluded that anticonvoy operations were too dangerous for 

heavy ships without air cover, and he 

doubted whether they were justified in 

view of the ships' main task, defense 

against landings."- The Tirpilz operation did have one result: the steel allotment for building a German aircraft 

carrier, the Cra! Zeppelin, was increased, but the carrier could not be 

com pleted before late 1943. 

The Tirpilz's abortive attempt on 

PQ-12 may, pe rhaps, have had one 

other result. On 14 March , Hitler issued the first order for intensive anticonvoy operations. Stating that the 

convoys could be used both to sustain 

Soviet resistance and as a device for a 

surprise landing on the Norwegian or 

Finnish coasts, he ordered the sea traffic on tl,e northern route, "which so far 

has hardly been touched," to be interd;cted . He was more than right o n one 

39Naval ~1 r Diary, vol. 31, pp. 20, 53, 56,75,81,85. 
236 

score. By then, twelve PQ convoys had 

reached Soviet ports with a loss of only 

I ship out of 103 me rchant vessels and I 

British destroyer.4o Hitler's order directed the navy to increase its submarine commitment and the air force 

to strengthen its long-range reconnaissance, bomber, and torpedobomber forces. The air force , henceforth, was to keep Murmansk under 

constant bombardment, reconnoiter 

the sea area between Bear Island and 

the Murman Coast, and operate 

against convoys and enemy warshi ps4' 

When he received the Hitler order, 

Stumpff also suggested occupying 

Spitzbergen, which was being held by a 

small force of Norwegians. He pointed 

out t11at Fifth Air Force could use the 

airfield there to attack the convoys 

from two sides. Army of Norway believed a battalion would be enough to 

take and hold the island , but the OKW 

believed the occupation would tie up 

too much naval and air strength in the 

defense without offering sufficient 

compensatory advantages since, during most of the year, pack ice forced 

convoys to pass within 300 miles of the 

German air bases in Norway anyway. 

On 22 March , Hitler shelved Stumpffs 

proposal for the time being." 

In April , convoys PQ-13 and PQ- 14 

sailed, but bad weather and the spring 

thaw, which temporarily rendered the 

northern airfields unus able, kept 

nearly all of Fifth Air Force's planes 

grounded . The PQ- 14 convoy ran into 

~IJDavid h-ving. The Destruction oj Convoy PQ-17 

(New York: Simon and Schuster. 1968). p. 2. 

"OKW, WFSI, Op. (M ) N,. 55493142, /43.42. O KW 

119 file. 

420KW, WFSI. Op. Nr. 55518142, Vortragsflotit, 

/3.3.42; OKI¥, WFSt, 01'. (M) N, 55537142, B",." 

Spitum'g"', 223.42, OKW 11 9 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

pack ice north of Iceland and sixteen 

of its twenty-four ships turned back. 

One of the eight that went on was sunk 

by a submarine. Convoy PQ- 13, with 

ninetee n ships, fared poorly and 

provided a preview of worse to come. 

After the convoy was scattered by a 

heavy storm on 24 April, German 

planes picked off two stragglers, and 

three German destroyers sank ·another-at an eventual cost of one of 

their own number. Submarines sank 

two more ships. The Germans also lost 

a submarine, and the British had a 

destroyer and a cruiser badly 

damaged, the latter by one of its own 

torpedoes. One of three Sovie t destroyers t11at joined the escort off northern 

Norway was damaged . In gales and 

snow squalls, the action was haphazard 

on both sides. Neither t11 e German 

ships nor planes could determine the 

size of the convoy or the makeup of the 

escort; consequently, the Naval Staff 

declined to risk its heavier ships." 

By late April, the buildup Hitle r had 

ordered was taking effect. The heavy 

cruiser Hipper, sister ship to the Prinz 

Eugen, and the poc ket battleship 

Luetzow had arrived in Norway. The 

navy also had 20 submarines stationed 

in Norway, 8 for defense and 12 for use 

against the convoys; and the Luftwaffe 

had brought in a dozen newly converted HE-III torpedo-bombers. On 3 

May, 9 of the torpedo-bombers, on 

their first mission, attacked PQ- 15 and 

sank 3 ships." 

~3Roskill, lVar a/ Se{l, \'01. 11. pp. 124-27; Moriso n . 

Battle of the Atimllir, p. 166: IVMV, vol. IV. p. 335: 

Naval ~lur Diary, vol. 32. pp. 13- 18. 

HCeneralmajor a. D. Hans·Dedev Herhudl von 

Rohden. Die Kampffuehrtmg der LuftJlotte 5 in Nor· 

wegen, 1942. von Rohden 4376- 408 file. See also 

Roskill, H.br at Sea, vol. II , p. 129. 
THE NORTHERN THEATER 

On 21 May PQ-16 sailed. It was the 

largest convoy yet, 35 merchant ships, 

and, with 4 cruisers and 3 destroyers 

(joined in the north by 3 Soviet destroyers), the most heavily protected. 

By then , the lengthening days were 

making submarine operations, except 

against single, unescorted ships, too 

dangerous, but for the bombers, the 

best season was just beginning. On 27 

May, 100 twin-engine JU-88 bombers 

and 8 of the HE-Ills attacked PQ-16 

and sank 4 ships. The attack showed 

237 

that high-level dive-bombing combined 

with torpedo-plane strikes from just 

above the waterline could dissipate and 

confuse a convoy's antiaircraft defense. 

In four days under almost around-theclock attack, PQ-16 lost 8 ships and 

had several others so badly damaged 

that they reached port barely afloat. 45 

The war in the Arctic had moved out to 

sea. 

4&Roskill , \t\ilr at Sea, vol. II , pp. 130-32; Rohden, 

Die Kampffuehru ng, Rohden 4376-408 file. 
CHAPTER XII 

Active Defense, Center and North 

Stalin's Bid for the Initiative 

Ordinarily, the coming of spring is 

welcome in the Soviet Union. It brings 

lengthening days, sunshine, and the 

promise of renewed life to a frozen 

land. But, in 1942, it also brought an 

uncertainty for the Soviet Command 

that has not been entirely resolved a 

generation later and may not ever be. 

In March, although the winter had not 

yet abated, the general offensive, despite strenuous efforts to keep It alIve, 

was dying while the enemy still kept a 

hold on Leningrad and occupied the 

approaches to Moscow and the Caucasus. The Soviet General Staff, going 

by an intelligence report it received on 

18 March, believed the German Eastern Front had received enough new 

divisions and replacements between 

January and March to be capable of 

shifting to the offensive any time after 

mid-April. I 

The general offensive had imposed 

an unanticipated and, at times, nearly 

imolerable strain on the enemy, but it 

had also, in the end, disclosed that the 

Soviet leadership had not yet overcome 

some hazardous deficiencies in its conduct of operations. The Stavka had 

ordered attacks in too many directions 

at once, and the front and army commands had done the same. As a result, 

'/VMV, vol. V, p. 111. 

the forces had been divided and 

redivided, and none of the final objectives had been achieved. Reserves 

had been wasted by being sent into battle piecemeal to such an extent that, on 

16 March, the State Defense Committee undertook "to prohibit those practices categorically.'" 

The making of Soviet strategy in the 

spring of 1942 was in the hands of five 

men: Marshal Shaposhnikov, chief of 

the General Staff; his deputy, General 

Vasilevskiy; General Zhukov, the commander of Western Theat,,·; Marshal 

limoshenko, the commander of Southwestern Theater; and Stalin , the supreme 

commander of the Soviet Armed 

Forces, whose authority easily outweighed that of all the others together. 

In early March, they were agreed in 

believing, as the whole world did , that 

the Germans would make another 

strong bid to defeat the Soviet Union in 

the coming spring and summer. Consequently, they saw their task, as Vasilevskiy later put it, as being to "plan 

for the coming half year," or in otl1er 

words, to find a way of frustrating the 

next German onslaught while getting 

their own forces into condition to 

strike back later. 3 

Stalin , Shaposhnikov, and Vasilevskiy 

believed they would not be able to 

1lbid., vol. IV, p. 327 . 

3Vasilevskiy, Dew, p. 203. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 239 

develop any more major offensives in 

the spring or early summer. They believed, also, that Soviet operations up 

to the beginning of summer would 

have to be restricted to an active defense that would "ha lt the enemy's 

blows, wear him down and weaken 

him" and prepare the way for "a largescale offensive when adeq ua te reserves 

we re accumula ted .'" Zhukov concurred in the defensive strategy but 

wanted a buildup in earl y summer for 

an offe nsive to smash the Rzh evVyazma "bridgehead" west of Moscow' 

Ttmoshenko also favored the defensive 

strategy in general except for his own 

command. He and General Ley tenant 

l. Kh. Bagramyan, his chie f of staff, 

and Nikita Khrushchev, his member of 

the Military Council (commissar), had 

planned an offensive for his command 

on a broad front that they proposed to 

start in May.-

In mid-March , the State De fense 

Committee established the national requirements for May through June as 

being to train reserves and accumulate 

guns, tanks, aircraft, and other war 

material for later offensive operations. 

T he General Starf plan, drafted at the 

same time , envisioned a period of active defense through May durin g 

which reserves would be built up for 

"decisive operations" to follow. 7 

In a joint meeting at the end of 

March, the State Defense Committee 

and the Stavka undertook to settle on 

the " fin a l variant" of the plan. 

Shaposhnikov presented the General 

Staff conception of an active defense 

~J bi ., vol. V. p. JJ 3. See also Vov, p. 139. 

Zhukov, MtmI)irs, p. 365. 

6Bagramyan. Tak shli m)' k pobede, pp. 48- 54. See 

also IVMV, vol. V. p. 11 3 and Vasilcvskiy, Dew, p. 212. 

'IVMV, vol. V, p. 11 3. 

coupled with a buildup of reserves, and 

Zhukov and Ttmoshenko again offered 

their proposals for offensives in the 

center and on the south flank . Ttmoshenko supported Zhukov, but 

Zhukov was opposed to any offensives 

other than his own, which put him 

actua ll y in agreement w ith 

Shaposhnikov, since he did not expect 

to start the Rzhev-Vyazma operatio n 

before summers 

The crucial question, however, was 

whether Stalin would accept as "active" 

a defense that did not include any 

offensives. Shaposhnikov and Zhukov 

had reason to believe he would not, 

and when Shaposhrukov and Zhukov 

attempted to explain the difficulties of 

organizing an offensive in the south, 

Stalin bro ke in , saying, "Are we supposed to sit in defense, idling away our 

time, and wait for the Germans to 

attack first? We must strike several preemptive blows over a wide front and 

probe the enemy's readiness.'" 

Shaposhnikov and Zhukov had their 

answe r. According to the Hisrory of the 

Second "'brld Wm; "The meeting concluded with an order from ti,e Supreme Commander to prepare and 

carry out in the near future offensives 

in the vicinity of Kha rkov, on the 

Crimea, and in other areas."IO 

In the next several weeks, Stalin ordered or approved offensives alo ng the 

whole front from the Barents Sea to 

the Black Sea. On the Crimea, the 

objective would be to clear the enemy 

from the perunsula. Southwest Front was 

to strike toward Kharkov from the 

northeast and the southeast. B'ryansk 

8Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 366; IVMV, vol. V, p. 113. 

9Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 366. 

IO/VMV, vol. V. p. 11 3. 
240 

Front was ordered to advance past 

Kursk and Lgov. Aiming ultimately for 

Smolensk, West Front and Kalin;n Front 

were to top off the winter by smashing 

Army Group Center's Rzhev-Vyazma 

line. To assist in accomplishing this 

mission, General Belov's / Guards 

Cavalry Corps would hit the German 

railroads and bases between Smolensk 

and Vyazma . Northwest Fmnt would 

eliminate the Demyansk pocket, and 

Karelian Front would attack on the 

Zapadnaya Litsa River, west of Kandalaksha, and at Kestenga. Leningrad 

Front had the self-proposed mission of 

breaking the Leningrad siege with its 

own forces and those of the former 

Ihlklwv Front. I I 

The offensives were to be conducted 

between April and June and were expected to give the operations in those 

months "an active character." In the 

same period, the Soviet forces, in general, would be "on the strategic defensive," reorganizing and reequipping 

units and assembling reserves. 12 

The active defense with the "preemptive blows," in effect extended the 

general offensive into the spring. In 

doing so, it repeated the error which, 

under more favorable conditions, had 

eventually crippled the general offensive during the winter. And it added a 

complication: as Vasilevskiy puts it, a 

requirement "to defend and attack simultaneously."1 3 Zhukov maintains in 

his memoirs that he spoke against the 

preemptive blows, but Timoshenko 

seconded Stalin, and Shaposhnikov 

II/bid., p. 11 5 : ~l erC kO\', Sf'l'l'lIIg Ilu People, p. 207. 

12/VMV, \"01. V, p. 114 . 

IlA. M. Vasilevs kiy, "NeIwIQl)'l' vop rosy rll.kovotistva 

tI()(Jnnlim 1ll'Y borbo)' Ie{l)m 1942 go<ln," lV)'t'muriswricheskiy 

ZllIlnwl. 8(1965), 10. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

"kept silent."14 Vasilevskiy said after the 

war that people who did not know 

about the "difficult conditions" under 

which the General Staff worked during 

the war might justifiably find fault with 

the General Staff for not having demonstrated the "negative consequences" 

of the decision to Stalin." The PO/JU.larScientific Sketch states, "It must be said 

that the leading members of the General Staff, the Chief of the General 

Staff, Marshal B. M. Shaposhnikov, 

and his deputy, General A. M. Vasilevskiy, as well as the member of the 

Stavka, G. K. Zhukov, in principle, adhered to the same opinion as the Supreme Commander, only with some 

reservations." 16 

Army Group Center's Second Front 

A t the End of Winter 

As if it had settled through the 

melted snow, the Army Group Center 

line stabilized in April 1942 along the 

ragged leading edges of half-a-dozen 

once deadly, now stalled and blunted, 

Soviet thrusts. The winter had passed , 

too soon for the Russians, not soon 

enough for the Germans, but it had left 

behind many changes in the battlefield's configuration. The straightline distance from the army group's 

northern boundary near Velikiye Luki 

to its southern boundary ,;outllwest of 

Orel was about 350 miles. The front in 

between, including most though not all 

of its convolutions, was more like 900 

miles long. Its outstanding features 

were the 150-miles-deep and at least 

equally wide Toropets bulge on the 

UZhukov. M ell/olrs, p.366f. 

IlVasilevski y, "Nelwtory'l' lIOProsy," p. 10. 

16VOV, p. 139. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CE TER AND NORTH 24 1 

north , a 75-by-125-mile salient on the 

south that had evolved from the old 

Sukhinichi bulge, a nd , between the 

two, a dogleg projection occupied by 

the Ninth, Fourth Panzer, and Fourth 

Armies. On the rim of the Toropets 

bulge, Third Siwek Army's troops were 

285 miles west of Moscow and 50 miles 

west of the Army Group Center headquarters at Smolensk. At Gzhatsk , 

Fourth Panzer Army was within 90 

miles of Moscow. 

Rzhev, Vyazma, and Bryansk, commanding the immediate road and rail 

approaches to Moscow on the west, 

were in Army Grou p Center's hands 

and so kept alive a threat to the Soviet 

capital. Along a 250-mile line from 

Rzhev to south of Bryansk, however, 

the army group had acquired a second 

front that practically denied it territorial control east of Smolensk. From 

the army group boundary north to 

Brya nsk and from there north to 

Roslavl and Kirov, partisans held sway 

in the broad spaces between the roads 

and railroads. Between the SmolenskVyazma railroad and the RoLlbahn 

through Roslavl, Belov was the proconsul in a Soviet enclave dominated by his 

I G'lIanls Cavalry C01PS, parachute 

troops, partisans, and survivors of 

Thirty-thiTd ATmY. A network of partisan 

bands provided almost continuous contact between Belov's territory and the 

Brya nsk partisan concentration. North 

of the Smolensk-Vyazma rail road, 

Thirty-ninth Anny and XI Cavalry Corps 

occupied a 30-by-40-mile pocket east of 

the Dukhovshchina-Belyy road. By the 

end of April, Fourth Panzer Army had 

tightened its front south of the Rollbahn 

and at Kirov enough to deny Belov and 

the Brya nsk partisans unimpeded contact with Soviet territory, but Thirt:yninth Army still had free access to the 

outside through an 18-mile-wide gap 

northeast of Belyy. 

In late March, as a smaller alternative to BRUECKENSCHLAG, the Ostashkov operation, linth Army had 

proposed an attack west out of the 

Rzhev-Olenino area to Nelidovo. Taking Nelidovo wou ld not have done 

much toward eliminating the Toropets 

bu lge; but it would have deprived the 

Soviet forces in the bulge of a road and 

rail junction, could have been the first 

stage of a drive to Toropets, and would 

in particular have cut Thi,·ty-ninth 

Army's ground communications. By 

early April the Nelidovo attack, codenamed Operation NORDPOL, had replaced BRUECKENSCHLAG, which by 

then had drifted beyond the range of 

feasibility. But NORDPOL, too, had troubles, first the thaw and then the abnormally heavy spring rains that extended 

the msputitsa past its usual term. In the 

meantime, Fourth Army had prepared 

an operation, code-named HANNOVER, 

aga inst the Belov forces. Although 

NORDPOL and HANNOVER hardly added 

up to a major offensive effort, they 

were togedler more than Army Group 

Center could afford in the spring of 

1942. 

T he Row of reinforcements to the 

army grou p had stopped in March, 

and as soon as the rasputitsa had set in, 

Hider had reversed the Aow, using 

Army Group Center as a base from 

which to draw reinforcements for the 

south. In the first week of May, Headquarters, Fourth Panzer Army, departed, to be followed by five of the 

army group's twenty corps headquarters. From April to early June, Army 

Group Center had lost sixteen divisions, a good 20 percent of its overall 
242 

strength , 30 percent of its panzer divisions. In the divisions that stayed, personnel and other shortages were not 

gOll1g to be filled until summer; consequently, regiments had to be reduced 

from three battalions to two artillery 

batteries from four guns to three. Panzer and motorized divisions were such 

in name only. Most of the tanks and 

trucks that had survived the winter 

were awaiting repairs, and the shops 

could not keep more than 20 percent 

111 running condition. 

Army Group Center was to be a 

supernumera ry in the 1942 campaign. 

Field Marshal Kluge, the army grou p's 

commande r, told his generals on 18 

April, "We must economize on the 

forces we have le ft. "" By mid-May 

Kluge became convinced that NORDPO{ 

was too ambitious; and when Hitler, 

whose interest had drifted completely 

away from til e ~rea, did not object he 

canceled It and II1structed Ninth Army 

to work on SEYDLITZ, a smaller operation agall1st Thi"ty-ninlh Anny and Xl 

Cavalry Corps. In the meantime, Fourth 

Army would go ahead with HANNOVER 

and when it was completed turn the 

troops over to Ninth Al'my for 

SEYDLlTZ. HANNOVER a nd SEYDLITZ 

being directed against conventiona l So: 

viet forces, could be expected to take 

reasonably predictable courses. Kluge 

knew from expenence that operations 

agall1st the partisans around Bryansk 

promised much less. The a rea was 

larger and the anticipated return for 

the effort certainly would be smaller. 

SlI1ce he also did not have any more 

troops to spare, Kluge gave Second 

Panzer Army one security division and 

I7 H ofmann. MS P- 114b, \'01. IV, p. 153. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

left the army to deal with the partisans 

111 any way It could . 

H a'mwver 

.Be lov's territory stretched e ig hty 

miles from east to west and at its 

widest, forty miles north and' south 

occupying almost the whole of the tri~ angle formed by Smolensk, Vyazma, 

and Spas-Demensk. In April and early 

May, Belov was engaged in organizing 

til e partIsans, cavalry, and airborne 

troops to compl y with orders coming to 

him from West Front, which was attempting to devise another thrust toward Vyazma as part of the active 

defense. In the less critical western 

two-thirds of the pocket, he set up two 

"partisan divisions." On tile east, he 

had the cavalry, airborne troops, and 

more partisans. On 9 May, planes 

brought 111 a battalion of antitank guns 

and, with it, General Mayor V. S. Golushkevlch, the deputy chief of staff 

of West Front. Golushkevich delivered 

a secret o rder for Belov to be ready 

to stnke south , "not later than 5 June," 

to meet Fiftieth Anny, which was beII1g rell1forced with tank corps and 

would be advancing north across the 

Rollbahn. ' 8 (Map 19.) 

For HANNOVER, Fourth Army had a 

corps headquarters and three divisions 

from Third Panzer Army, which had 

taken over tile Fourth Panzer Army 

sector, and a corps headquarters and 

three divisions of its own . These forces 

were plenty to handle Belov's cavalry 

an~ other regular troops, which were 

estimated at between ten and twenty 

thousand, but not enough to scour the 

entire 1,500-square-mile pocket. (Bei8Belov, ''P)'fltimeJ)'OclI/w)'O borba," pp. 66- 69. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 

: NINTH -f 

: ARMY,\-++ , / VyazmB, 

/'"'--' 

---------- / --'....... - -----~ 

243 

, 

, 

\ 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

J , 

, /-- ~-----=-------- XXXVI pz Corps '" _______ 97th Di... ,,/ 

/ ...... --..... ,_ ",,,,,-- .................. t.3d DIY { 

", ",/ ......... / ..... -... h pz D.... ,/ 

)(..... Dorogobuz'h - -1-.0 ~- ..... '-------,.' 

I....... +---____ .. ,/;1 .. ~ ,_...... ' ... , 

j '.... - .... _-....r.:::: ~ --->,-13111 Drv. , ,,--- --_ A. ... 'b ~ ,J Co"" I " ..... - ---..:;. c..U!!O:' .'::J~ UgrB \ Yuk/.lnov ~ , ,I '\ ... -' .... __ Stallcn ) f 

l' I ~ -' I I I \ _---- ~...-"<. I 

I, \ ..- - - - Vskhody \ ,._- 34th Di... ;' 

.... -... \ ..... --- -. XXXXIll "" ........ _-" \ ,/- ,- Yeln'f/!. ,. .... -- \ -...... ,/ z Corps / '\ \ '--.... - ",." ;/ . .. .• /" 

t)\ 22151 Security Oi", .... _-- 19th pz IV,.. ... 

~ ',KIm t . '/ II> \ " I ' 

" 

SmoJensk 

., 

'" \ I \ I 

~-------------------,~' \ \\'0,0 FOURTH ARMY OPERATION HANNOVER 

24 May· 21 June 1942 

\ ~o , _ __ , 

\ ".' K"o~v :..Jf.--_~ ___ ~S_U*_h_;n_i'_h-1l ------Front line, 24 Mey 

...-German attack, Phase I 

.... - - - German attack, Phase II 

\- '--- \ - ______ -""I;"" ........ 

- - - - Probable route of Soviet retreat -\ - /'-" ',--- I / ................ , 

01- ' ___ -,-_---12,5 Miles 

6 2'5 Kilometers 

J ",/:1-" SECOND p. NZER ARM;"-:'>-, " /' , 

MAP 19 

lov's strength probably was close to 

twenty thousand, and he had a tank 

battalion with eighteen tanks.))9 Fur· 

thermore, SEYDLlTZ, although it had 

second priority in terms of time, was 

tacticall y more urgent than HANNOVER, 

since it was essential to the stability of 

the Rzhev salient. That, and Belov's 

presumed deployment, made a small, 

quick solution appea r worthwhile. a~ 

d io intercepts and informatio n from 

agents and prisoners placed his head~ 

1!J$ ec ibid. 

quarters and the main body of his 

regular troops in the eastern end of the 

pocket, east of the Ugra River.'· The 

estinlate was wrong in what was going 

to be a signifi cant respect: the elements 

of IV Ai'-/JOrne Corps and the "Zhabo" Partisan R egiment were east of the Ugra, but 

most of Belov's cavalry was west of iL2I 

T he army gro up and Fourth Army 

settled on a plan to run Belov down in 

one fa st swoop. Two divisions, striking 

2GAOK 4, III Kril'gsuIgl'buch Nr. 13, 15- 21 May 42, 

AOK 4 243361 1 fi le. 

21 Be1o\', 'Pyatiml'S)vlcll1ll1ya borba," p. 67. 
244 

south from Vyazma and one north 

[rom Spas-Demensk, would pinch off 

the eastern end of the pocket, trapping 

Belov east of the Ugra and the 

Vyazma-Kirov railroad. The other 

three would drive inward from a 

screening line around the tip of the 

pocket. Although it presented no exceptional tactical problems, HANNOVER, 

first set for 21 May, had to be 

postponed on several successive days 

because of prolonged heavy rains that 

turned the ground, still soft from the 

thaw, back to mud. As if the winter had 

not been enough, centra l Russia was 

experiencing a record wet spring. 

While it was being planned, HAN· 

NOVER acquired one esoteric feature. 

Late in 1941 , at Osintorf near Orsha, 

the Abweh,. (the OKW intelligence organization) had begun training several 

hundred captured Soviet soldiers and 

officers as diversionists. The Germans 

had tried out sumewhat similar grou ps 

earlier in the campaign, but those had 

been made up of emigres, members of 

minorities, or Russian-speaking Germans, and most had not lived in Russia 

recently or had lived on the fringes of 

Soviet life. The Osintorf trainees, except for their commander, an emigre, 

Colonel Konstantin Kromiadi, were all 

completely up-LO-date, authentic products of the Soviet system, most particularly of the Soviet Army. In Soviet 

uniforms they could be expected to 

merge easily into Soviet formations, especially heterogeneous ones like Belov's. For HANNOVER, 350 of them were 

assigned to Fourth Army as the Experimental Organization Center." T heir 

22Gerhard L. Weinberg, Th e Partisan Mavemenl in 

11I f' )'eI"Jll-Dorogvbllzh Arell of SIIIOlt'IISk Db/rut (WashingLOn , D.C.: Air Research and Dc\'ciopmem Command. 1954). p. 99; Svcn Sleenburg. IViassow 

(Cologne: Wissenschafl und I'olilik. 1968). pp. 60- 66. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

mission would be to disrupt the defense, if possible, by finding and killing 

Belov and his staff, or otherwise, by 

sneak attacks and by spreading false orders and information. 

On 23 May cloudbursts inundated 

the area, but General Heinrici , commander of Fourth Army, afraid of losing the element of surprise by another 

delay, decided to let HANNOVER start 

the next morning. The Experimental 

Organization Center went into the 

pocket from the south that night. 

Fourth Army's troops moved out in the 

nlornlng 111 pouring rall1, In some 

places up to their waists in mud and 

water. The 19th Panzer Division, advancing from the south, nevertheless 

covered almost ten miles before 1200 

when it arrived at the Ugra River near 

Vskhody-just in time to see the 

bridge there blow up, which was probably unnecessary effort by the Russians 

since the water was rising so fast that 

the bridge very likely would have been 

washed away anyhow. The division 

spent the rest of the day getting a 

bridgehead north of the river and 

building a pontoon bridge over the relentlessly rising water. Coming from 

the north, 197th Infantry Division took 

five hours to reach Ugra Station, where 

the railroad crossed the river. After ten 

more miles, the trap would be closed . 

From inside the pocket, what was taken 

to be Belov's radio was sending a constant stream of coded messages that 

seemed to give evidence of alarm, if not 

panic. Kluge congratulated the troops 

on their "fine successes," and Heinrici 

agreed that the performances were remarkable. He had not expected them 

to reach Vskhody and Ugra Station until the second day, because he had alllicipated a more solid defense. However, 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 245 

a disturbing thought occurred to him 

and Kluge both that the resistance so 

far had been more typical of partisans 

than of Soviet regular troops.23 

The downpours continued through 

the night and the next day. Amazed, 

the Germans saw the Ugra, already a 

hundred yards wide, spawn a second 

channel twenty yards wide. For two 

days, tanks, trucks, infantry, and artillery came to a standstill in mud and 

water. The rain was so heavy that even 

the reliable little Storch reconnaissance 

planes could not fly. Fourth Army had 

no idea what the enemy forces were 

doing. Although Kluge could not 

imagine how the Russians might get 

across the swollen Ugra River, he knew 

they would have to try, and on tile afternoon of the 25th he asked Heinrici 

to have his points bear ten miles west 

toward Fursovo, on the assumption 

that the Russians would have crossed 

the river by then. After another 

twenty-four hours passed without the 

encirclement being closed, Kluge and 

Heinrici agreed that if Belov had not 

already done so, he almost certainly 

would get away to the west, and HANNOVER would therefore have to go into 

a second phase. 

The points met at Fursovo shortly 

before nightfall on the 27t1l. The mopup, in the next five days, failed to bring 

either Belov or his main force to bay. 

Prisoners, deserters, and returned 

members of the Experimental Organization Center-of which about twothirds came back-corroborated each 

others' statements that several Soviet 

staffs had been in the pocket, including 

Belov's and those of the IV Airborne 

23AOK 4, In Kri'gsragebuch Nr. 13, 24 May 42. AOK 4 

2433611 file. 

Corps and the "Zhabo" Regiment. For 

Fourth Army, the results were disappointing. About two thousand Russians 

were captured and another fifteen 

hundred killed , but Belov had obviously escaped with most of his 

troops.24 

Prisoner interrogations indicated 

that Belov had had at least a day's warning about the attack through a deserter 

from the Experimental Organization 

Center. The Russians had known beforehand about the Experimental Organization Center, but they had not 

known where it would be operating. 

Consequently, according to the prisoners,just knowing tile unit was in the 

area, had raised confusion and some 

panic. Members of the Experimental 

Organization Center reported having 

observed instances of Soviet units firing 

on each other. 25 Belov, in his account, 

states that on 23 May, the 8th Airborne 

Brigade destroyed a group of "diversionists" whose mission had been to 

"wipe out" his staff and that he learned 

of tile coming German attack from one 

of its survivors. 26 

Hanrwver II 

At the conclusion of what the Germans were by then calling HANNOVER I, 

Belov still had 17,000 troops and his 

eighteen tanks, but he had been forced 

out of tile eastern, tactically most valuable, third of the pocket. By his acco unt, Belo" had , meanwhile, concluded that the "hope" of meeting with 

Fiftieth Anny was disappearing, and he, 

therefore, asked West Front, on 4 June, 

for permission to begin the march back 

Hlbid .. 27 May - 2 Jun 42. 

ulbid. , 1 Jun 42. 

'ZII BeJov, ';P),fltiml!S)'acJma),a borba," p. 70. 
246 

to the Soviet side of the front, which 

was granted because the tank corps 

and reserves for Fiftieth Army had, by 

then, been transferred to the Kharkov 

area" This, Belov says, left h;m with 

three possible choices: to head west 

into Belorussia and convert to partisan 

operations, to go north toward Kalinin 

Front, or to go south toward the weak 

spot in the German line at Kirov. He 

rejected the first two, he maintains, because his force would sacrifice its "significance" as regular troops by becoming partisans and because he did not 

have the means to get his artillery and 

tanks across the Dnepr River, which he 

would have to do if he went north. His 

decision was to march west to the 

vicinity of Yelnya and then head south 

and east into the northern part of the 

Bryansk partisan area, from which he 

could make his exit near Kjrov'8 

HA NNOVER II , of which Belov's acCOUIll takes no specific notice, began on 

3 June in more rain. Heinrici had 

turned his divisions on the near side of 

the Ugra pocket around to pursue Belov west between Yelnya and Dorogobuzh and to force him ba ck 

against the Dnepr River. The better 

way would have been to cut straight 

through and head him off east of the 

river, but, in mud and water, the infantry could not move fast enough, and 

trucks, tanks, and arti llerv could not 

move at all. Without ever ca'tching sight 

of Belov's main force, the Fourth Army 

troops reached Dorogobuzh and 

Yelnya after five days of slogging across 

an inundated landscape and skirmish27 According to Zhukov. Belov had been given Ofders in carl)' May Lo begin bringing his lfOOPSOlIl. See 

Zhukov.MNIWirs, p. 357. 

USda\,. ';P),atime5)'ach"llya borba," p. 71f. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

ing with numerous small parties that 

appeared mostly to be partisans. Belov 

was then confined in a 30-by-30-mile 

pocket blocked on the north by the 

Dnepr, which was a torrent 200 yards 

wide, and on the south, between Yelnya 

and the Dnepr, by the 221st Security 

Division ; but Heinrici and Kluge were 

beginning to doubt whether Belov was 

still around at a1l 2 • 

On the morning of the 8th, German 

pilots over the pocket saw an astonishing scene: columns of Soviet cavalry, 

airborne troops, trucks, wagons, and 

tanks weaving in and out of clumps of 

woods, all heading south. Belov had, at 

last, come into the open and was obviously getting ready to break out. 

Kluge ordered a motorcycle battalion 

from the north to the south side of the 

pocket, and Heinrici took part of tile 

19th Panzer Division out of his front 

north of Yelnya to backstop the 221st 

Security Division. The reinforcements, 

however, came too late . During the 

night, the Russians overran a weak spot 

in tile 221st Security Division's line and 

simply walked out. After daylight, the 

Luftwaffe reported about a thousand 

vehicl es and some thousands of troops 

heading into d eep forest around the 

headwaters of the Desna River south of 

Yelnya. When the motorcycle and panzer troops closed the gap later in the 

day, not much was left in the pocket. 30 

Aftet· passing Yelnya, Belov entered 

the area of the "Law" Partisan Regiment 

where ground troops could not readil y 

pursue him , but, he says, German 

planes bombed his positions "all day" 

and came back at night to try to bomb 

2IJAOK -I, la Kriegstagelmch Ny. 13, 3-7 Jun 42, AOK 

4 2433611 file. 

:so/bid" 8-9 JUIl 42. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 247 

his supply planes." In three days, 

Fourth Army built a screening line 

along the Rollbahn, which it now knew 

he would have to cross. In the meantime, Belov had halted in the woods 

near the village of Klin, halfway between Yelnya and the Rollbahn, to sort 

out his troops and receive air supply. 

After another two days, the Germans 

began to believe that he might have 

disappeared again. Monitors reported 

his radio operating near Klin, but deserters said he had been Aown out, and 

his force was breaking up. Finally, just 

before 2400 on the night of 15 June, 

Belov reappeared, where he had been 

expected , on the Rollbahn. 32 

Belov and the German records give 

somewhat different versions of what 

happened that night (which Belov says 

was the night of the 16th) and afterward . In Belov's version, the breakout 

was to have been made in two echelons, 

with General Mayor V. K. Baranov, the 

commander of 1st Guards Cavalry Division leading the first and Belov the 

second. When Baranov emerged from 

the woods a short distance north of the 

Rollbahn, Belov, who was several hundred yards behind, heard him shout, 

"Guards, advance! After me! Hurrah!" 

With more "Hurrahs," the cavalry 

charged and got across the road, but 

Belov soon learned that the infantry 

with the fi rst echelon had not been able 

to do the same. Consequently, Belov 

says, he reassembled the 2d Gum·ds Cavalry Division and elements of IV Airborne 

Corps and 32911. Rifle Division and withdrew into the woods. The next day, he 

says, he came out of the woods about 

ten miles north of the Rollbahn, made a 

:II Belov, "'Pyatimtsyachllo),o borba," p. 72. 

:l2AOK 4, 10 Kriegstagebuch Nr. 13, 10- 16 JUIl 42, 

AOK 4 24 336/ 1 file. 

wide sweep west and south, and 

crossed the road ten miles east of 

Roslavl. 33 

As the Germans saw it, t11ere were 

three simultaneous attacks, one of 

which was led by a general on horseback whom they took to have been 

Belov. TI1e first reports indicated that 

over three thousand Russians had broken out, but Heinrici could not quite 

bring himself to believe that so many 

men could have gone through three 

small gaps that were open less than an 

hour. Therefore, he concluded that, 

whether Belov had escaped or not, 

most of his men must still be north of 

the road. Patrols probing into the 

pocket during the day on the 16th 

found Russians still there, but they 

could not determine how many. Deserters said eight to ten thousand. 

Fourth Army thought six t1lOusand was 

a more likely number. 

During the afternoon of the 18th, a 

patrol found an order on a dead Soviet 

officer, which had been written that day 

and which bore Belov's signature. It 

gave detailed directions for a mass 

breakout across the Rollbahn and set 

the time for 2400 that day. The order 

could have been a deception, but one 

thing was certain: Belov would have to 

make his move soon. The noose was 

closing around him. Having nothing 

else at all to go by, Fourth Army hurriedly built three lines on the section of 

the Rollbahn the order specified-one 

on t11e road, two more farther back. 

TI1e Germans' earlier experience 

had shown t11at no single line was going 

to stop a charge by thousands of desperate men , and if the attack came at 

any other place it would very likely 

33Belov, "P),otimeS)'admo),a borba ," p. 73. 
248 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

A CAMOUFLAGED TANK TRAP IN THE FOREST 

succeed. But it did not. It began exactly 

on time, at 2400, straight into the 

muzzles of German artillery and machine guns. The fighting went on until 

after daylight. About fifteen hundred 

Russians got across the first line; five 

hundred got across the second; and a 

few across the third. The others were 

forced back into the pocket, and at 

1200 the next day, believing Belov had 

made his final bid and lost, Heinrici 

gave the order to push into the pocket, 

which, by nightfall , had been reduced 

to an area one and one-half by three 

miles. Then the rain began again, and 

an infantry company left a gap in the 

line, and Belov marched out with what 

Fourth Army estimated to be between 

two and four thousand of his men. The 

Russians were on the move , and the 

Germans were tired. In the afternoon 

on the 21st, saying that they "should 

not march the men to death," Kluge 

told Fourth Army to stop HANNOVER II 

and give the troops a rest."' 

Fourth Army's afteraction report on 

HANNOVER 1 and II claimed 11 ,000 

Russians captured and 5,000 killed. 

How many of these were Belov's troops 

and how many partisans or civilians 

was uncertain. Until the end of the 

month , monitors traced a radio signal 

in the woods north of the Rollbahn that 

they believed to be Belov's." Belov says 

he was brought out by plane to Tenth 

Anny on the night of 23 June and that 

34AOK 4, fa Kriegslogfbuch Nr. 13 , 16- 21 JUIl 42, 

AOK 4 24336/1 file. 

3r.lbid., 29 Jun-2 Jul 42. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 

OPERATION SEYDLlTZ 

2 · 12 July 1942 ------- Front line, 2 July 

4--:-- German attack 

+----- Soviet movement 

o 25 Mile. 

I f----:c~-" o 25 Kilometers 

._, __ ------' " v~~ KALI~~~-~1 ( / ... ----~ ~;P4" --- '" 

'" -- -1> \ f , ' ,_ O/Imino Rzhev : 

... " 5thP Iv .~\ 

(102d Oiv 14th Motor 01 ' .... 

1st p, D;Y;~-::---~~--\~--T86Ih D;y NINTH \, 

.I ~ (: ARMY : 

" " ObS " SychttvklJ I l 

249 

2d~D.~Y.l /'I' 39th \3281h 0 \, 

BIJIy¥-'-_ ~II '~) \ 

, ~ I ~ 

2461h ~ ,-' :'. h ... '201h p, D;y ~ \ WEST •• 1n I , , 

01\1 .. _' / Div I ; i ,,--<_./ I ) Gzh~tsk FRONT ~ , .__ I I • 

~ r ) I \) :+-1-: \ 

\ ( J-

~ " / 187th Oi\! j:. HIRD " . XI Cavalry Corps I ) " I ' (Soviet) / PANZER : I , 

/ _ -1/ VYillma ARMY : __ " I 

, . --------' ./ ... 

Sm~. 

MAP 20 

subsequently 10,000 of his troops 

crossed the front to the Soviet side near 

Kirov and that 3,000 more were evacuated by air3 • The History of the Great 

Patriotic Wa.r states that "some" of Belov's troops crossed the lines at Kirov 

and northeast of Smolensk in July, 

while others stayed to fight as partisans 37 Belov would command again, 

notably at Kursk and Berlin, and 

would be ranked as a hero in the Soviet 

Union for his raid behind the enemy 

36Beiov, "P),otimesyachna),o bo,.ba," p. 74f. 

" IVOVSS. vol. II. p. 475. 

i.:f.i-iFOURTH 

ARMY 

/ ~--: , 

, 

\ '-, , 

, 

r .' 

Yukhnov 

front during the first winter of the war. 

Although the Germans did not often 

admire Soviet generalship, Halde r was 

moved to remark, "The man did, after 

all, put seven German divisions on the 

jump."38 

Seydlilz 

Ninth Army's Operation SEYDLITZ 

had waited for the completion of 

HANNOVER to receive a corps headquarters, two divisions, and air suplHl-lalder Diary, vol . III . p. 458. 
250 

port. The delay afforded ample time 

for planning, and SEYOLITZ went 

through several revisions. In the final 

version, Kluge and General der Panzertruppen Heinrich-Gottfried von 

Vietinghoff, who was replacing Model 

as commander of Ninth Army while 

the latter was hospitalized recovering 

from a wound, settled on two thrusts, 

each by a panzer division backed by an 

infantry division , to close the Belyy 

gap. Single panzer divisions would 

make two other assaults from south of 

Olenino and east of Sychevka LO split 

the Thirty-ninth Army. The second two 

depended on 5th Panzer Division, 

which was engaged in HANNOVER, and 

20th Panzer Division, which was to be 

detached from Third Panzer Army. 

Four infantry divisions would hold the 

perimeter, and 14lh Motorized Division 

would be the reserve. Eleven divisions 

was no small number, but although 

they were res led and recovered from 

the winter, they were all greatly understrenglh. Two hazards could not be 

mitigated by any amount of planning. 

One was the weather, which continued 

rainy through June. The second was 

the enemy's intention. Other than tllat 

Thirty-ninth Anny and XI Cavalry Corps 

were somewhere in the forty-by-sixtymile expanse of forest between Belyy 

and Sychevka nothing else was known 

about them. Like Belov's force, they 

had virtually disappeared with the 

winter's snow. 

SEYOLITZ began in the early morning 

on 2 July, just after 2400, which at that 

lime of the year was only about two 

hours before dawn. Kluge's command 

lrain was parked at Sychevka, and he 

and Vietinghoff were out behind 1st 

Panzer Division on the north side of 

the Belyy gap. The day brought two 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

shocks: 1st Panzer Division made almost no headway, and what appeared 

to be several dozen Soviet tanks were 

reported heading toward the 2d Panzer Division Rank northeast of Belyy. 

At the end of the day, bOtll prongs of 

the attack were stopped, and the one 

on the south was having to brace for a 

counterattack. The next morning , 

after ground and a ir reconnaissance 

sighted over fifty Soviet tanks bearing 

toward Belyy, Kluge approved a 

change in the plan that would turn 5th 

Panzer Division weSl along the course 

of the Obsha River and bring it out 

northeast of Belyy behind the enemy 

tanks. But 5th Panzer Division was 

fighting through dense forest and was 

not yet on the Obsha, and at tlle day's 

end, SEYOLITZ was stalled everywhere. 

The Ninth Army journal entry for 3 

July closed with, "Severe and Ructuating battles are to be expected in lhe 

coming days and weeks. "39 (Map 20.) 

The morning of the 4lh broughl 

more discouragement: the 1st Panzer 

Division was at a standstill; enemy 

tanks were biting into 2d Panzer Division's Rank from the east; and Vietinghoff had to put in 14th Motorized 

Division to help 5th Panzer Division 

ahead . During the day, though , lhe 

picture changed dramatically. The 

20th Panzer Division began its push 

west of Sychevka and met astonishingly 

weak resistance. By nightfall , ISl Panzer Division had made a six-mile jump 

forward and 5th Panzer Division was 

turning into the Obsha Valley, leaving 

14th Motorized Division to continue 

south . In another twenty-four hours, 

1st Panzer Division had closed the 

39AOK 9, la Kriegstagtlmch Nr. 6, 3 Jul 42. AOK 9 

3162411 file. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 25 1 

BRI NGING Up AN ANTITANK GUN IN THE BELVY GAP 

Belyy gap, and 5th Panzer Division and 

20th Panzer Division were driving east 

to split the pocket into three parts. The 

question still was: Where were Thirtyninth Army and Xl Caval!y Corps? The 

tank attack had made it seem that they 

were massed in the north, ready to 

break out, but by the fourth day, it 

looked as if they were going to play the 

same onerous, disappearing game Belov had. 

The answer came in the morning on 

the 6th when Ninth Army's intelligence 

deciphered an intercepted radio message ordering all ThiTty-ninth Army units 

to withdraw toward the northwest. By 

then, the clearings were filling with 

columns of Soviet troops. Thirty-ninth 

Army after all was going to attempt a 

breakout, but depending on how far 

north and west they were, its elements 

would have to cross one, two, or three 

German lines. In the afternoon, 5th 

Panzer Division passed through the 

Obsha Valley and 197th Infantry Division pushing east met the 20th Panzer 

Division's point. At daylight the next 

morning, pilots flying over the southern loop of the pocket sighted a long 

column of cavalry, tanks, and infantry. 

The Xl Cavalry Corps was now a lso out 

in the open and-to Ninth Army's 

gra tified astonishment-marchi ng 

north into 20th Panzer Division's arms. 

The battle was over. The roads ahead 

and behind them blocked, the Soviet 

columns piled up on each other and 

became helplessly entangled . As the 

German divisions closed in, airplanes 

dropped a million leaflets telling the 
252 

troops how to surrender. By the lOth 

most of the Russians appeared to be 

waiting to be rounded up, and on the 

12th, Vietinghoff declared SEYOLITZ 

completed. On that day, the prisoner 

count stood at 25,000. In another 

twenty-four hours, it had risen to 

37,000 men, 220 tanks, and 500 artillery pieces. The Ninth Army had figu red the total Thi"ly-ninth Army and XI 

Cavalry Corps strength at about 50,000. 

No doubt, some thousands were still on 

the loose, but the army and the corps 

were destroyed. The Ninth Army chief 

of staff remarked, "This was a typical 

western European battle, no Belov performances, no hiding out in the 

wOOdS."40 

In August, the following Soviet proclamation was circulated by the partisans in the former SEYOLITZ area: 

All members of the armed forces who 

escaped from the pocket ... report to your 

regular units or join the partisan units! 

Those who remain in hiding . .. in order 

LO save their skins, and those who do not 

join in the patriotic war to help destroy the 

German robbers, also those who desert to 

the fascist army and help carryon a robber 

war against the Soviet people, are traitors 

to the homeland and will be liquidated by 

us sooner or later. Death to tile German 

occupiers! We are fighting for a just cause! 

In 1942, the enemy will be totally 

destroyed I" 

Vogelsang 

Concurrently with HANNOVER II and 

SEYOLITZ, Second Panzer Army was 

running VOGELSANG ("bird song"), an 

operation, the first of many, against the 

40/bid., 3- 13 Jul 42. 

HXX/ll A.K. , Ie, "Utberset?lmg, 7ilgebuch der KampJhalUlIlIlIgm der Partisanenabtl'ihmg des Obit. MorogofJ," 2 

Aug 42. XXIII A.K . 76156 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Bryansk partisans. In a 12,000-squaremile area, which was about the size of a 

small western European country (the 

Netherlands, for instance), the army 

had an ample selection of partisan centers to choose from. VOGELSANG was to 

be conducted in the V-shaped stretch 

of forest and swamp between the 

Desna and Bolva rivers due north of 

Bryansk, which on the northeast 

abutted the old Kirov gap and had 

during the winter been a highway for 

partisan traffic to and from the Soviet 

side of the front. The XXXXVII Panzer Corps, the tactical command, had 

the 707th Security Division and one of 

its own infantry divisions, the 339th, all 

told , about 6,000 men. (Map 21.) 

The partisan strength was not 

known. 1\\'0 regiments had been identified , one under a Lieutenant Colonel 

Orlov, the other, a Major Kaluga. Both 

had come through the front in the 

winter with several hundred Soviet officers and men to organize and command the partisans, who thereafter 

came under the control of the Tenth 

Army staff. Small industrial towns scattered along the rivers had provided a 

good recruiting base, and their nearness to the Kirov gap had made it 

possible for the partisans to be lavishly 

outfitted with automatic weapons, radios, mortars, antitank guns, and even 

some 76-mm. artillery pieces. 

VOGELSANG began on 6 June along 

the west side of the Bolva River. In two 

days, 707th and 339th Divisions had 

strung skirmish lines around two fiveby-ten-mile pockets west and north of 

Dyatkovo. The next and far more difficult step was to tLirn inward and Rush 

out the partisans, and the Germans 

hoped to drive them into a space so 

small that they would have to stand and 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 253 

FOURTH ARMY 

Rosl8Vf 

~ 

, 

, 

KletnYII 

OPERATION VOGELSANG 

6 June - 4 July 1942 

- - - - Front line, 6 Jun 

~ VOGelSANG I 

DIillIIlIIillll VOGELSANG II 

Q 25 Miles 

fl--------.,-----=, 

o 25 Kilometers 

MAP 21 

fight. This meant beating through 

mud, water, underbrush, and clouds of 

mosquitoes in pursuit of an invisible 

enemy who knew every trail and hiding 

place , might strike at any moment 

from the treetops or from concealed 

bunkers, but who would almost never 

come out into the open. The roads 

, 

, 

, 

, , 

, , 

/ Kirov 

I 

I 

I 

\ 

, 

, 

St. 

10th 

I DY8rkCiVO 

XXX II 

pz Corps SvyBroye L8ke 

8rysnsk 

SECOND 

PANZERA~ 

were as dangerous as the deep woods 

because of the "bell," an ambush laid in 

a loop. At the open end , the partisans 

would be far enough off to the sides to 

be just able to see and fire on the road. 

At the closed end , they would be near 

enough to pin the enemy in the cross 

fire. 
254 

On the other hand , VOGELSANG demonstrated that antipartisan warfare was 

a strain on the nerves more than anything. The casualties were usually not 

large, but the anxiety, effort, and misery were not balanced by any sense of 

satisfaction. The partisans were everywhere and nowhere. 

Dyatkovo myon was the stronghold of 

the Or/ov Regiment. The regiment regarded itself as a unit of Tenth Army and 

was the command and control center 

for the area. It was the hard core, the 

model, and the symbol of a relentless 

Soviet presence imposed upon satelljte 

local bands. Together, the regiment 

and bands pressed the populationmen, women, and children-into service as laborers, supply carriers, informants, and auxiliary fighters. Snjpers 

posted in treetops frequently were children. Under attack the objective was to 

save tlle organization. 

I n four days the two German divisions combed the north pocket, clashed 

several times with small partisan bands, 

were frequently under fire from the 

front and rear by an enemy they could 

not see, and came up empty-handed 

except for some hundreds of people 

who might have been partisans. The 

cleanup in the south pocket went the 

same way for a day and then was 

slowed by heavy fire from dugouts and 

bunkers. After working their way 

through a maze of defenses that they 

only managed to negotiate with help 

from a deserter, the Germans came 

upon the Orlov R egiment's base camp 

near Svyatoye Lake-it was empty. 

The partisans had gone out through a 

swamp over a path that the Germans 

were not able to follow. By then partisan activity had revived so strongly in 

the former north pocket that one batMOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

talion sent into the pocket to pursue a 

partisan band had to fight its way out of 

an encirclement. 

On 22 June , XXXXVII Panzer 

Corps began VOGELSA NG II in the 

woods, between tlle Vetma and Desna 

rivers, which were supposed to be the 

hideout of the Kaluga R egiment and the 

Rognedino myon bands. The tactics 

were the same as before: form a pair of 

pockets and drive inward. The corps 

staff had, in the meantime, concluded 

that a halfway effective pacification 

could only be achieved by destroying 

all buildings and evacuating the inhabitants. Again, tlle partisans fought sporadically, never letting themselves be 

pinned in one place, and finally they 

slipped through the net. The Kaluga 

Regiment's base camp, if it was there, 

could not be found. When VOGELSANG 

ended, on 4 July, XXXXVII Panzer 

Corps reported 500 presumed partisans captured and 1,200 killed . Over 

2,200 men aged sixteen to fifty had 

been taken into custody. The troops 

had picked up 8,500 women and children in the woods and evacuated 

12,500 from villages. The 23,000 civilians were passed to the Korueck, who 

could not feed and house them and 

could only resettle them in some other 

partisan-infested area." 

Demyansk and the 'vOlkhov Pocket 

Offensive Against JJ Corps 

To liquidate the Demyansk pocket 

was a logical objective of the Soviet 

spring offensive. As an exercise in the 

4'lpZ. AOK 2, fa Kriegslagebllch Nr. 2, Teillll, 5- 30 

Jun 42, Pz. AOK 2 28499/3 file; Ibid" TeilIV, 1-4 Jul 

42; 339 Ill! Diu., la Nr. 29)142, Bericht ueber Ulllernihil/eli Vogelsang, 11. 7.42, XXXXVII Pz. K. 28946/2 

file. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 255 

active defense this action could have 

smashed a substantial enemy force and 

would have reduced German prospects 

for operating against the Soviet armies 

west of Ostashkov and, in the longer 

run, against Moscow. In April, the 

Stavkn gave Northwest Front five nfle 

divisions and eight rifle and two tank 

brigades. General Kurochkin , the 

front's commander, distributed the remfOl"Cements to Eleventh Army and First 

Shock Army, and , with these, he proposed to drive into the pocket from the 

northeast and southwest, isolate it completely, and destroy II Corps by il"rinding it to pieces against the stationary 

front on the east. The attacks began on 

3 May and continued until the 20th, 

were resumed at the end of the month, 

and did not cease until late June. 43 

After having fought through the 

winter, in the cold, and on substandard 

rations, the German troops in the 

pocket were in poor condition . One of 

the divisions, the SS Totenkopf, whIch 

was probably no wor.se off than the 

rest was down to a thIrd of ItS normal 

stre~gth, and of that, a third were 

troops who would ordmanly have been 

considered unfit for further service 44 

Nevertheless, II Corps survived, not 

with ease, but without ever being in 

doubt about the outcome. Tactically, 

Northwest Front's performance was stereotyped: Kurochkin struck repeatedly 

in the same places at two- or three-day 

intervals. After a time, II Corps was 

more mystified than alarmed by the 

Russians' persistence. The "bridge". to 

Sixteenth Army's main front stayed m43/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 474; IVMV, vol. V, p. 139. . 

"'See Charles W. Syd nor, Jr .. SoLdiers cif Destnlchon 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 

222-29. 

tact, protected by being m.ostly underwater during that wet spnng. For the 

same reason, it was almost useless as a 

ground supply line, and the airlift had 

to be continued." 

Second Siwek Army Coes Under 

The failure at Demyansk was overshadowed by a concurrent Soviet disaster in the Volkhov pocket. Before he 

was relieved as commander of Volkhov 

Front, using a rifle division and other 

available reserves. General Meretskov 

had set up the VI Guards Rifle. Corps, 

with which he intended to remforce 

Second Shock Army after access to the 

pocket was restored. He did n~t, he 

says, know anything aboutStahns and 

Khozin's (commander, Lemngrad Front) 

plans until 23 April, after he had been 

relieved, when he also learned that 

Khozin had agreed to let VI CUa1"ds 

Rifle Corps be transferred to Northwest 

Hunt. On the 24th, in Moscow, he told 

Stalin that, in its current state, Second 

Shock Army "could neither attack nor 

defend" and, unless it could be gIven 

the VI Cuards Rifle Corps, it should be 

withdrawn from the pocket "at once." 

Stalin gave him a polite hearing, a 

noncommittal promise to consIder hIS 

views and sent him on his way to 

beco~e Zhukov's deputy briefly and 

then commanding general of Thirtythird Army. 46 

For the Soviet leadership to contemplate resuming the offensive in the 

Volkhov pocket in the sprIng, WIth or 

without reinforcement, was futIle. As a 

4$H. Gr. Nord, 10 Kriegstagebuch. 1.-31.5.42, 3-31 

May 42. H. Gr. Nord 75128/10 file. 

46 Meretskov, "Na volkhovskikh rubez.hakh," p. 67: 

Meretskov, Serving the People, pp. 202-07. 
256 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

MACHINE-GUN SQUAD Al THE VOLKI-IOV POCKET 

result of the thaw and the wet weather, 

Second Shock Army was sitting in a vast 

quagmire and was wholly dependent 

on a single tenuous supply line that, 

besides being mostly underwater, was 

also under constant enemy fire . On the 

perimeter, the Germans had hemmed 

the pocket in tightly on all sides. Stalin 

and Khozin, in fact, were able to indu lge in plans for an offensive only 

because the weather and the terrain 

had imposed a temporary standoff. By 

late April, Eighteenth Army had 

enough troops deployed to close the 

pocket and clean it out, but the army 

was having enormous trouble getting 

supplies to the troops where they were, 

and those would be doubled and redoubled by any movement. Local inhabitants said the ground dried out 

somewhat in the middle of June, and 

the army expected to wait until then, 

proposing, in the meantime, to inch 

into the mouth of the pocket and bring 

the Erika and Dora Lanes under belter 

surveillance." 

What happened on the Soviet side 

after the change in command is not 

clear. Khozin has stated tllat far from 

being in the "cheerful mood," which 

Meretskov attributes to him, he was 

nonplussed by his mission, concerned 

about Second Shock Army's condition, 

and had taken a substantial part of the 

army out of the pocket by 4 May" The 

~7J-/ . Gr. Nord, 10 Kriegstagebllch, 1. - 31 .5.42, II May 

42.1-1. Gr', NOI"d 75128/10 file . 

• 8See MereLSkov,Snvi"gthtProple, p. 207 and M . S. 

Khozin , "Ob odrwy mllIQ;ss[edovaunO)' &peralS),]," VO)'nwQistQridmkiy Zhurnal, 2(1966), 35-46. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 257 

History of Ihe Second W,'-[d Hilr, however, 

indicates that on 2 May, Khozin had 

submitted a proposal to execute the 

Leningrad relief." The History of Ihe 

Great Patriotic War states that the Stavka 

gave the order to withdraw Second Shock 

Army on 14 May, but "the Leningrad 

Front did not demonstrate sufficient 

operational capability in executing the 

order."50 The History of the Second W,rld 

War adds that, although the Stavka had 

given the order, Second Shock Army did 

not begin to withdraw until the 25th , 

"after the enemy had launched three 

simultaneous attacks against its weakened forces on 23 May."51 Vasilevskiy, 

says the Slavka ordered Khozin to take 

Second Shock Army out of the pocket 

"fast," but, "most regrettably, the order 

was not executed."" 

The Germans' observations tend, in 

small part, to vindicate Khozin. Eighteenth Army, which had an understandably close interest in what went on 

in the pocket, did not detect any outward movement in April or in the first 

three weeks of May. The traffic on the 

lanes appeared to be mostly in supplies, and very few troops went either 

into or out of the pocket. In mid-May, 

the number of deserters increased , 

which could be taken as a sign of disintegration. Some of tllem said that Second Shock Army was being evacuated, but 

probing attacks met sharp resistance all 

around tile perimeter. The first outward movement, of about a thousand 

men , was seen on the 21st. 

Anotller thousand went out on the 

22d, and General Vlasov's radio closed 

down , a sign that he was shifting his 

491\fM\~ vol. V. p. 139, 

.\0/\lOVS5, vol. II. p. 470. 

.l.J JVM\~ vol. V. p. 140. 

!'t2Vasilevskiy. Delo, p. 185. 

7iventieth Army command post. General 

Kuechler, commander of Army Group 

North, then called General Lindemann, commander of Eighteenth 

Army, and told him it would be 

"awfully bad" to let the Russians escape. Lindemann said he was ready to 

stop them, but the ground was too 

wet.53 On the 25t1l, after the Germans 

had seen another thousand men going 

out of the pocket during tile previous 

two days, Lindemann asked General 

der Infanterie Siegfried Haenicke, the 

XXXVIII Corps commander, whether 

he could attack "in good conscience" on 

the 27th if he had air support. 

Haenicke said he could. 54 But it was 

raining as Lindemann and Haenicke 

talked, and a day later tile ground was 

sodden and water was standing in 

every depression . 

Finally, early on 30 May, XXXVllI 

Corps, on the soutll, and I Corps, on 

the north, pushed across the mouth of 

the pocket over still wet ground . During the day, XXXVIII Corps lost 30 

percent of the troops it had committed , 

but the attacks continued through the 

night, and the two corps made contact 

near tile Erika Lane at 0130 tile next 

morning. By 1200 on the 31st, they had 

set up a front facing east, and in the 

afternoon, they turned west to lock in 

Second Shock Army.55 While XXXVIII 

and I Corps braced for counterattacks, 

the units on the perimeter opened up 

with all their artillery and began to inch 

toward the pocket through mud and 

water. 

The counterattacks did not start, 

though , until 4 June-and then they 

~3AOK /8, 10 Kriegs/llgebllch, 4c, 22 May 42, AOK 18 

2286412 file . 

:J 4/bid" 25 May 42 . 

!'t5Ibid., 30 and 31 May 42. 
258 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

GENERALS VLASOV AND LINDEMANN TALK AT EIGHTEENTH ARMY HEADQUARTERS 

did so in a curious manner. The first 

Russian assault, during the day on the 

4th, came from the west and could be 

beaten off easily because the troops 

were all drunk. The next came that 

night, from the east with tremendous 

artillery support, but the infantry 

troops, apparently green, stopped and 

fell back when they were hit by German fire. When nothing at all happened during the next two days, 

Kuechler and Lindemann talked about 

sending General Vlasov, the commander of Twentieth Army, a demand 

for surrender but decided to wait until 

his army had been pushed into tighter 

quarters. 56 

MW . Gr. Nord, fa Kn'egstngebllch, 1.-30.6.42, 4-7 Jun 

42. I-I. Cr. Nord 75128111 file. 

On 8 June, Stalin called Meretskov to 

Moscow and told him, "We made a 

great mistake in combining Volkfwv and 

Leningrad Fmnts. General Khozin sat 

and thought about the Volkhov direction , but the results were poor. He did 

not carry out a Stavka directive to evacuate Second Shock Army." Saying that 

Meretskov knew Volklzov Front "very 

well," Stalin told him to go there, together with General Vasilevskiy, deputy 

chief of the General Staff, and get 

Second Shock Anny out, "if necessary 

without heavy weapons and equipment."" By nightfall, Meretskov was 

back at his old headquarters, and 

Khozin, having been replace d at 

57 M eretskov, ;'Na VQlkhovskikh nlbtuUlkJl, " p. 67. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, CENTER AND NORTH 259 

Leningrad Front by General Ley tenant 

L. A. Govorov, was on his way to take 

over Thi,·ty-thi,·d Army. 58 

Beginning on the 10th, and for the 

next two weeks, Meretskov and Vasilevskiy engineered a succession of 

wild battles, carried on much of the 

time in pouring rain. On the 19th, they 

managed to open a con'idor 150 yards 

wide that a dozen T -34 tanks held 

through the night only to be trapped 

themselves the next morning. TIle two 

had somewhat better luck .on the 21st 

when Fifty-ninth Army opened a gap 

500 yards wide. But XXXVIII Corps 

kept the whole stretch under constant 

artillery and small arms fire and did not 

believe any Second Shock Army troops 

could have gotten OUt.'9 Meretskov, 

who gives the dates for the opening of 

the gap as the 23d to the 25th, maintains that the Russians brought out 

wounded and some others. GO At 2400 

on the 22d, the Germans sealed the 

pocket for the last time. 

By the next day, Second Shock Army 

was split into several pieces, crippled, 

and dying; and Kuechler decided not 

to bother with asking Vlasov to surrender. Some fifteen thousand of 

Vlasov's troops were piled up at the 

western ends of the Erika and Dora 

Lanes, and if they had made a concerted try, they might still have overrun 

the German lines holding them in , but 

they did not. Several hundred officers 

and politruks tried to break out on the 

28th. The Germans stopped them and 

drove them back. The men were not 

!lSMerClskov. Servi1!g the People, p. 2 15. 

~IIAOK 18.la Kri egstagebllch , 4c, 19-23 Jun 42, AOK 

1822864/2 file. 

fighting any longer, and on that day the 

battle of the Volkhov pocket ended for 

Eighteenth Army with 33,000 prisoners cou nted and more coming in every 

hour6! Hitler promoted Kuechler to 

the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. 

For the Soviet Union, the deepest 

psychological trauma was yet to come. 

On 12 Jul y, a patrol combing the territory around the former pocket 

stopped to pick up two supposed partisans that a village elder had locked in 

a shed . The two turned out to be 

Vlasov and a woman companion who 

Vlasov said was an old family friend 

who had been his cook. Intelligent, 

ambitious, aware that he had no future 

in the Soviet Union , and impressed 

with consideration shown him first by 

Lindemann and later by German intelligence officers, Vlasov soon lent his 

name to anti-Soviet propaganda and 

eventually became titular commander 

of the Russian Army of Liberation, a 

scattering of collaborator units recruited from the prisoner-or-war 

camps. To the Germans, he was a sometimes useful figurehead , but he was too 

much a Russian nationalist for the Germans to give him any kind of free rein. 

The propaganda actions in which he 

participated, however, indicated that 

he had the potential to achieve a strong 

popular appeal in the occupied-and 

unoccupied-territories of the Soviet 

Union. To the Soviet regime, however, 

he became and has remained the archetype of a traitor. No Soviet account 

of the battle for the Volkhov pocket 

fails to implicate him in the disaster 

either as a weakling or a treacherous 

GO Meretskov, ''Na volkhovsJcikh rubezhakh," p. 68f; 61H. Cr. Nord, la Kriegstagebuclt , 1.-30.6.42, 23-28 

Meretskov, Serving the Peopu, p.219. Jun 42. H . Gr. Nord 75128/ 11 file. 
260 

schemer. Vasilevskiy says, "The position 

of Second Shock Army was made even 

more complicated by the fact that its 

commander, Vlasov, turned out to be a 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

foul traitor to his country, who voluntarily went over to the enemy side."·' 

62Vasilevskiy, Dew, p. 185. 
CHAPTER XIII 

Active Defense, South 

Kerch Resolved 

Competing Plans 

In February of 1942, with the aid of 

an "ice bridge" over the Kerch Strait, 

Crimean Front had been raised to a 

strength of three armies. With these, 

General Kozlov, commander of Transcaucasus Front, resumed the offensive 

on 27 February. The Sevastopol Defense 

Region, its force increased by then to 

over eighty thousand men, joined in 

with a "demonstrative" attack by the 

Independent Maritime Army at the center 

of the fortress perimeter. I The collapse 

of a Rumanian division in the German 

line had allowed the Russians to drive a 

seven-mile-deep bulge into the northern half of the front on the Isthmus of 

Parpach before Kozlov stopped to regroup on 3 March. He made another 

start on the 13th, and thereafter, in 

waves that rose and receded every several days, he stayed on the attack into 

the second week of April, coming dose 

at times but never succeeding in breaking out of the isthmus.' 

As the key to the Black Sea and 

bridge to the Caucasus, the Crimea 

figured as heavily in the Soviet plans 

for the spring as it had in the winter 

offensive, and Kozlov had close to 

I Vaneyev, GeroidusJuI)'Q 0001rma , pp. 208- J I. 

2Manstein, Verloretll' Siege, pp. 250-53. 

three hundred thousand troops, not an 

insignificant force. In March, Mekhlis, 

the chief army political commissar, 

joined Crimean Front as the Stavlul representative, and on 21 April, the Stavlul 

created the Headquarters, North Caucasus Theater, under Marshal Budenny. 

Budenny assumed overall command of 

Crimean Front, the Sevastopol Defense 

Region, and all naval and air forces in 

the Black Sea-Caucasus area. His mission was to coordinate these forces in 

the projected spring offensive, and 

Kozlov's and Mekhlis' mission was to 

liberate the Crimeaa 

On 23 March, at about the same time 

as Stalin and the Stavka were laying out 

the Soviet spring offensive, Hitler conferred \Vitl1 his senior military advisers 

on the Fuehrer directive he was preparing for the coming summer's operations and ordered tl1at the first preliminary operation should be the 

retaking of the Kerch Peninsula ' In 

fact, Hitler was merely underscoring 

decisions and actions a lready taken. In 

February, the OKH had earmarked the 

22d Panzer Division and 28th Light 

Division, then being formed , for Eleventh Army, and the divisions had begun moving into the Crimea in the 

3VOV, p. 143f: IVMV, "01. v, p. J 14 . 

4Haldn' Dim)'. vol. III. 23 Mar 42, p. 417. 
262 

middle of March 5 Throughout the 

winter, the cleanup on the Crimea had 

had first priority because it would free 

a whole army and because the weathe r 

could be expected to improve the re 

ea rlier than elsewhere. The only question -assuming that tlle front would 

hold, which had been far from certain 

in February and Ma rch-had been 

whether to start the effort with Kerch 

or Sevastopol. Manstein had preferred 

Kerch and Bock Sevastopol. Hitler had 

agreed witll Manstein that to confront 

the enemy where he was strongest was 

better than to have him at one's back. 

On 3 1 March, Ma nstein issued the 

Eleventh Army preliminary directive 

for Operation TRAPPENJAGD ("bustard 

hunt"), the Kerch offensive.· 

Manstein's major problem was one of 

strength. The most he could commit to 

TRAPPENJAGD were five infantry divisions and one panzer division, plus two 

Rumanian infantry divisions and one 

Rumanian cavalry division. That left 

three German infantry divisions, one 

Rumanian infantry division, and one 

Rumanian mountain division to contain Sevastopol. The Rumanians were 

mostl y inexperienced troops, indifferel1lly led, and , as past experience 

had shown, they could be more a danger than a help. 

In the three Soviet armies on the 

Kerch Peninsula, Fortyfourth, FOI·ty-Seventh, a nd Fiftyfint, the Ge rman s 

r> Sock Dia ry, Os/ell II, 16 Mar 42. The 194 2 "lighC' 

divisio ns, of which the 28th Light Division was one. 

were light infantry di visions. They were laler renHmeci "Jaeger" divisions. See Manslcin, Vt"r/ol'ttle 

Sirge. p. 253. 

' Friedrich Wilhelm I-lauck, MS P- 114c, Die OperatiQIINI der deut.schen Heeresgnlppen all der OstJro1tl 1941 

bis 194.5, SIU·dliches Gebitl, Teil il. p. 42. eM H files: O.B. 

der IJ. Annu, Operatitmsabsidllen, 3/.3.42, AOK 11 

22279/23 fi le. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

counted 17 riRe divisions, 2 cavalry 

divisions, 3 riRe brigades, and 4 tank 

brigades. 7 The Crimean Front strength, 

as given by Vasilevskiy, was 21 riRe 

divisions. The front, according to Vasilevskiy's figures, also had superiorities 

over the Germans in artillery and mortars (3,577 to 2,472), tanks (347 to 180), 

and aircraft (400 to "up to" 400).' The 

Sevastopol Defense Region had 8 divisions 

and 3 brigades. 9 

Having more troops than they could 

conveniently deploy in the ten-milewide Isthmus of Parpach , the Soviet 

armies could stage a defense in depth 

that would potentially increase in 

strength farther east where the peninsu la widened to fifteen and twenty 

miles and all of their troops could be 

brought into play. Over the fifty-mile 

distance to the city of Kerch , they could 

force the en emy to chew his way 

through four prepared lines: the front; 

the Parpach line proper, which since 

the February offensive had been seven 

miles behind the front in the nortll and 

a mile or two to the rear on tile south; 

the Nasyr line, which ran parallel to the 

Parpach line five miles to the east; and 

the Sultanovka line, eighteen miles 

west of Kerch . The strongest were tile 

Parpach and the Sultanovka. The Parpach line was fronted by an anti tan k 

ditch that had been dug in 1941 and 

deepened, broadened , and rimmed 

with concrete emplacements during 

the winter. The Sultanovka followed 

the remains of ancient fortifications 

spanning the peninsula that the Germans called the "Tatar Wall" and the 

Russians the "Turkish Wall." (Map 22.) 

7Der O.B. der II. Amlt't, (HI Sollinlnl der Krim-Al'ttll'I', 

19.5.42. AO K II 28654/4 me. 8Vasilevsk.iy. Delo, p. 208. 

IIVaneyev, Ceri(){heskil)'ll oborrma, p. 208. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

..... /-?'f :;. ..... 

/ 

. --~-­

263 

----. . 

MAP 22 

To accomplish anything at all , Manstein had to break the Parpach line and 

do so before Kozlov could bring his 

massive power to bear. On the narrow 

isthmus, hardly any deviation from an 

outright frontal attack was possible: 

Manstein saw just one . The Soviet 

Command was sensitive about its extended north flank , which could be the 

springboard into the Crimean mainland but which was also vulnerable. 

Manstein had inadvertently enhanced 

that concern on 20 March by putting 

22d Panzer Division , which needed 

some seasoning, into an attack at the 

base of the bulge. A sudden rainstorm 

had deprived the division of its air 

support, and heavier Soviet armor had 

knocked out thirty-two of its tanks in 

the few hours before the affair was 

called ofr. During the following days, 

while Manstein and Bock were explaining the fiasco to Hitler, Crimean Fl'Ont 

command had drawn its own conclusions and shifted more strength to 

the north flank. Manstein, therefore, 

THE RECONQUEST OF KERCH 

8 - 19 May 1942 

----- Front line, 8 May 

+--- Germen advance 

...-- Soviet retreat 

.....--- A ... ult boats 

01 25MU .. 

r·-----------,,----~' o 25 Kilometers 

had judged his chances to be improved 

on the extreme south, where he would 

have to break tl1e Parpacl1 line right 

away and where the defense was less 

deep. Two or three miles would bring 

him through the line, and thereafter. a 

fast turn cou ld make the nortl1 flank a 

deathtrap for the Russians.lO 

TRAPPENJAGD was a gamble. Ifhe had 

his wits about him, Kozlov could 

quickly bring it to a calamitous finish. 

For Manstein everything had to work 

perfectly; even lhen, he could not expect to do more than unhinge the 

Parpach line. Manstein, who was not 

ordinarily one to underestimate himself or his troops, told Field Marshal 

Bock, the commander of Army Group 

South, and the OKH on 2 April that 

the discrepancy in the forces was too 

great. II The alternative was to wait 

1022. Pl.. Div., 1a Nr. 227142, Bench! ueber de11 Angri/J 

auf Korp"s<h am 20.].42. AOK II 22279/23 file: O.B. 

der I/. Annee, Operatio1L5absichtm. 3/.3.42, AOK II 

22279/23 file. 

IIBock Dia ry. Ostl!n II, 2 Apr 42. 
264 

until after the middle of May when 

another division or two might become 

available for Eleventh Army. Bock 

wanted to go ahead in April and not 

give the Russians another month or 

more to do whatever they might have 

in mind . 

Hitler was the one who su pplied t11e 

final and, very likely, crucial ingredient. The winter had made him a 

devotee of air support, and on 13 

April, he had told General Kuechler, 

the commander of Army Group 

North , that Toropets would not have 

been lost in January if the army group 

commands had understood the uses of 

air power. Three days later, when Manstein brought in the TRAI'PENjAGD plan, 

he approved everything except the 

Luftwaffe dispositions, announcing that 

he would see to them in person." He 

then ordered, over OKL protests, General Richthofen's VIII Air Corps, 

which was being transferred from 

Army Group Center to support Army 

Group South in the summer campaign, 

to set up first on the Crimea and support Eleventh Army. An air corps normally provided the tactical air support 

for an entire army group. TRAPPENjAGD 

had to wait while Richthofen brought 

in his squadrons of Stuka bombers and 

fighters and a whole flak division to 

protect their airfields, but it was, as 

Manstein said, going to have "concentrated air support the like of which has 

never existed." 13 

By the turn of the month , the 

rasputitsa had passed out of the Crimea. 

Under the influence of both the sea 

120KlV, SteiJv. WFSt, Kn'egsgeschichtliche AblnJlIllg 

Kril'gslagebllch, 1.4.-30.6.42, 16 Apr 42. LM .T. 1807 

file. 

I~XXX A.K., la Kriegs/(lgebuch. 1.-20.5 .42, 1 May 42, 

xxx A.K. 21753/1 rde. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

and the mainland, the weather was 

changeable. Temperatures ranged 

from below freezing to the middle 70s, 

and strong winds blew clouds and 

showers across the peninsula. On the 

south coast the trees were in bloom, 

while upper slopes of mountains a few 

miles inland were still covered with 

snow. Bock was stirred by the contrast 

when he toured the Eleventh Army 

area at the end of April. The fronts 

were quiet, and the ground troops 

were ready on the isthmus, but VIII 

Air Corps was not yet fully settled. 

After a firsthand inspection, Bock was 

impressed by the "careful preparations" for the attack and uneasy about 

the "extraordinary risk" it would still 

entail. 14 

Manstein held his final briefing for 

the corps and division commanders on 

2 May with Richthofen present. He 

described TRAPPENjAGD as a ground 

operation that had its main effort in 

the air, and he said the planes would 

have to "pull the infantry forward."" 

X-Day was set for 5 May but had to be 

put off until the 8th because 

Richthofen was not ready. By the first 

week in May, a complete surprise was 

out of the question. The Russians had 

already put up placards along the front 

reading, "Come on. We are waiting."I. 

How ready the Russians might be 

became an ominous imponderable as 

X-Day approached . Bock worried 

about how deep t11eir defense was echeloned and considered giving up the 

turn to the north. Manstein believed he 

had to stay with the original plan ." 

UBock Diary, Ostt ll II, 28 Apr 42. 

1$ XXX A.K., la KtUgstagebuch, } .-20.5.42, 2 May 42, 

xxx A.K. 2175311 file. 

IBBack Diary, Oslell /I, 5 May 42. 

I1lbid. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 265 

GENERAL VON RICIITHOFEN (secondfram right) D,SCUSSES AN AIR STRIKE W,TH HIS STAFF 

"The enemy," he said, "is certain that 

we are going to attack, but he does not 

know where or when."' · In the confined space on the isthmus, that was a 

small consolation and would have been 

none at all without help from the other 

side, which Manstein, although he did 

not know it, was about to receive in 

generous measure. 

The Soviet accounts agree that the 

attack was no surprise, even as to time. 

However, they give two versions of 

what was proposed to be done about it. 

Vasilevskiy says the Stavka gave Kozlov 

and Mekhlis a directive in the latter 

half of April in which it told them to 

ISAOK II, 10 AktewlOtiz.Jller K.TB. tuber Besprecluwg 

am 5.5.42, AOK 11 2865413 file. 

discontinue preparations for the offensive and organize a "solid de fense in 

depth" and to expect the German main 

effort to be against their left Rank. '9 

Th e History of the Great Patriotic Wm· 

states that Kozlov and Mekhlis failed to 

organize a defense in depth.>· The 

Hisl1Jry of the Second World War, on the 

other hand, says that Crimean Front was 

read y to lau nch an attack of its own on 

the same day as the Germans but 

"failed to institute measures for an 

effective blow."21 General Armii Sergei 

M. Shtemenko, who was at the time a 

colonel in the General Staff branch 

11IVasilevs ki y, Drlo, pp. 208, 210. 

20/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 405. 

21 /VMV, vol. V. p. 123. 
266 

responsible for the Caucasus and the 

Crimea, adds that Crimean Front was 

d e ployed for an offensive on the 

northern half of the line-exactly as 

Manstein had thought it would be" 

All blame Kozlov and Mekhlis. Vasilevskiy says Kozlov, his chief of staff, 

his chief political officer, and Mekhhs 

were "manifest incompetents."23 

Trappenjagd 

At dark on the evening of 7 May, 

thirty German assault boats eased out 

of the mine-strewn Feodoslya harbor 

and steered northeast along the coast. 

At 2300, they stopped on the beach to 

take aboard a company of infantry, a 

heavy machine gun I?latoon, and an 

engineer platoon. TheIr mIssIon was to 

land the troops just east of the SovIet 

antitank ditch at the same ume the 

attack on the isthmus reached it, which 

was to be shortly after dawn. While the 

boats were loading in bright moonlight, a Soviet patrol vessel appeared 

offshore, cruising slowly, and they had 

to stay on the beach another hour and 

a half until it had passed out of sIght 

and earshot. In tlle meantime, the temperature had dropped below Freezing, 

and a strong wind had sprung up. To 

reach the landing point on time , the 

boats had to take a course that carned 

them out on the open sea. Designed for 

ri ver crossings, they were propelled by 

outboard motors with straight shafts 

that gave them speed and maneuverability in quiet, shallow water. 

Against the wind and waves, two 1l1en 

opera ting each motor could barely 

22S. M . Shtcmenko, The Soviet General Staff at V;~1I; 

/ 94 / - /945 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), p. 

53. 

2JVasilevski y. Ddo, p. 209. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

keep the boats headed in a straight 

line.

24 

During the night of the 7th ,. the 

I70th Infantry Division took posIllon 

and completed the deployment for 

TRAPPENJAGD. The XXX Corps, under 

Gene ral der Artillerie Maximilian von 

Fretter-Pico, then had five of the six 

German divisions. To hold the northern half of the isthmus front, General 

Matenklott's XXXXII Corps had one 

German and three Rumanian divisions. Three divisions, 132d and 50th 

Infantry and 28th Light Divisions, 

would make the breakthrough. When 

they had crossed the antitank ditch and 

the engineers had bUIlt causeways for 

the tanks, 22d Panzer Division and 

170th Infantry Divison would pass 

through and begin the turn north. 

Manstein had set up as h,s own reserve 

the so-called Grodeck Brigade consisting of a Rumanian motorized regiment 

and two German truck-mounted infantry battalions. 

When the first gray streak of light 

appeared in tlle east, at about 031 5, tlle 

infantry jumped off behmd a rocket 

and artillery barrage. In one hour, 

RichtllOfen's Stuka and fighter squadrons, waiting on the airfields in the 

rear, would be hitting the Parpach lIne. 

At 0400, the assault boats were Iymg 111 

wait off the beach , just out of sight of 

land tlle lead boat's radio tuned for a 

sign~l from the shore. Forty minutes 

later it came. The 132d Infantry D,VIsion , hugging the coast, was almost up 

to the antitank ditch. The boats headed 

in. By then fighters were giving them 

cover overhead. A half mile out, they 

met artillery and small arms fire that 

24SlIIrmbootkomm(l.lulo 902 , AlIgl'if[ auf Parpa/schSlelhmg, 9.5.42, AOK II 28654/3 . 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

sank eleven boats, but only one man 

was killed and three wounded. At 

0600, 132d Infantry Division crossed 

the antitank ditch. An hour later, its 

neighbor on the left, 28th Light Division, which originally had a longer way 

to come, was fighting in the ditch . The 

50th Infantry Division had the most 

distance to cover and the most trouble. 

First, its rocket projectors failed to fire 

because their electric ignition system 

broke down; then it ran into a deep 

minefield and, behind that, a trench 

line with dug-in tanks." 

The early morning was hazy; the day 

sunny, bright, and warm. The Vill Air 

Corps had complete command in the 

sky, and a constant stream of its planes 

pounded the Soviet line. Behind 132d 

Infantry Division , which in midmorning was fighting its way through Soviet 

positions east of the antitank ditch, 

engineers leveled enough of the ditch 

with explosives to get two self-propelled assault gun batteries across. The 

worst possible mischance could still 

happen, though, if the Russians recovered their balance enough to bring 

the attack to a stop short of the breakthrough. In a few hours, they could 

muster a smothering numerical superiority. At 1200, Fretter-Pico began 

gathering whatever reserves he could 

for a late-afternoon push, but an hour 

later they were no longer needed. The 

enemy was retreating ahead of 28th 

Light Division and 132d Infantry Division "in droves." The divisions had 

advanced six miles by nightfall, and the 

air umbrella had expanded to reach 

east to Kerch. The VIII Air Corps had 

Aown over two thousand sorties and 

~~xxx A.K., la Kriegslligeburh, I. -20.5.42, 8 May 42, 

XXX A.K. 2175311 file. 

267 

shot down eighty Soviet planes'· 

Fretter-Pico ordered 22d Panzer Division to come forward during the night 

and asked Manstein for the Grodeck 

Brigade. 27 

In the morning, the infantry waited 

for an hour after dawn while the planes 

worked over the enemy line. The Soviet recovery overnight was less than 

expected, so little that in another hour 

or so, 132d Infantry Division appeared 

to have an open road to the east, maybe 

straight through to Kerch. Manstein 

wanted to stay with the planned turn to 

the north, but because the crossings on 

the antitank ditch were not wide 

enough or firm enough yet to take 22d 

Panzer Division's tanks, Fretter-Pico 

sent the lighter Grodeck Brigade 

across first. Before 1200, the brigade 

passed through 132d Infantry Division's line with orders to head east as 

far and as fast as it could . In the 

afternoon, 22d Panzer Division crossed 

the ditch and deployed alongside 28th 

Light Division. At 1600, with five hours 

of daylight left, it began to roll north. 

The Grodeck Brigade by then had 

passed the Nasyr line and was almost 

halfway to Kerch. If the tanks did 

nearly as well, they could close the 

pocket before dark, but the Crimea was 

about to li ve up to its reputation for 

changeable weather. In less than two 

hours, rain was pouring down on the 

peninsula, and everything was stopped. 

Rain continued through the night 

and into the forenoon on tlle 10th, and 

22d Panzer Division's tanks only began 

grinding slowly through the mud in 

26Flivo AOK 11, 7agesabschlussmeld1lllg VIII FliegelKo,p,. 9.5.42. AOK II 28654/3 file. 

27XXX A.K. , la Kriegstagebllch, 1.1.-20.5.-12, 8 May 

42 . XXX A.K. 21753/ 1 file. 
268 

AIMI NG A Six-INCH ROCKET PROJECTOR 

the afternoon. They had almost closed 

the pocket by dark, and by then, the 

Grodeck Brigade had crossed the Sultanovka line2s In the morning on the 

10th, the Slavka had ordered Crimean 

Front to pull its armies back to the 

Turkish Wall (the Sultanovka line) and 

defend it, but, Vasilevskiy says, theji-ont 

command delayed executing the order 

for forty-eight hours and then failed to 

organize the withdrawal properly?9 

The front command may have been 

somewhat more effective than Vasilevskiy had credited it with having 

been. During the night on the 10th, 

Fretter-Pico learned that the Russians 

had been manning the Nasyr line, forward of the Sultanovka, on the 9th , and 

28lbid. , 9 and 10 May 42. 

29Vasilcvski y, Delo, p. 209. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the Grodeck Brigade had been lucky 

enough to hit a still unoccupied section 

on the extreme south. Consequently, 

he decided to send the 132d Infantry 

Division east the next morning along 

the route the brigade had taken and 

put tile 170tll Infantry Division in right 

behind it for a thrust to the northeast. 

The objectives would be to overrun the 

Nasyr and Sultanovka lines and get to 

Kerch and tile coast on the Kerch Strait 

in time to prevent Crimean Front from 

organizing a beachhead defense or an 

evacuation . 

During the morning on the 11th, 22d 

Panzer Division closed the pocket to 

the east of the Parpach line and togetller witll 50th Infantry Division and 

28th Light Division drew tile ring tight. 

The tllree divisions then passed to 

XXXXII Corps for the mop-up, leaving XXX Corps to carry the drive east 

with two divisions and the Grodeck 

Brigade. Mud slowed all the movements and stopped the Grodeck Brigade, which was also running out of 

ammunition. At the day's end, the 

pocket was practically eliminated; 22d 

Panzer Division was turning east; 132d 

and 170th Infantry Divisions were halfway to the Sultanovka; and the Grodeck Brigade was standing off attacks 

on tile other side of tile wall with 

ammunition airdropped to it. 

By the 12th, the Soviet commands 

had completely lost control of the battle. Their units, everywhere, were broken and jumbled. The 132d and 170th 

Infantry Divisions came within sight of 

the Sultanovka line during the day and 

crossed it early the next morning. 

When 22d Panzer Division passed 

through the infantry line several hours 

later, Fretter-Pico had three divisions 

bearing in on Kerch and the coast to 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

the north and south. In the afternoon 

on the 14th, 170th Infantry Divisio n 

pushed into the city, and 132d Infantry 

Division brought the port under fire 

from the sou Ul. 

According to a ll previous experience, the batue should have ended on 

the 14th or, at the latest on the 15th 

when Kerch and ul e small peninsula 

northeast of the city fe ll. Eleventh 

Army's last concern had been that C,imean Front wou ld stage a Dunkirk-type 

evacuation across the narrow strait. 

That did not happen, and for the next 

six days, disjointed small batues continued all ule way back to the Parpach 

line. The first Germans on the heights 

overlooking the coast had seen Soviet 

troops boarding ships offshore, but afterward, very few ships had appeared. 

Later ule talk among ule prisoners was 

that those who had crossed to the 

ma inland were be ing "called to acco unt" and sometimes being fired 

upon. The prisoners claimed to have 

hea rd a Stalin order telling them not to 

expect to be evacuated because there 

were plenty of caves and gullies on the 

peninsula from which to carryon the 

resistance.

30 

Manstein , neverthe less, declared 

TRAPPENJAGD completed on Ule 19th. 

In the next several days, the prisoner 

count reached 170,000 3 1 One Soviet 

account gives the number of Crimean 

Front troops lost in the battle as 176,000 

and those evacuated as 120,000. Mekhlis lost his posts as deputy commissar 

for defense and as chie f of the Army's 

~()XXX A.K.. fa Kriegsfa gebllch, 1.1 .-20.5 .-12. 11 - 20 

Mar 42. xxx A.K. 21i5311 fil e. 

31XXXXII A.K., la Kriegst(lgehll c/J NT. 5, 18 May 42. 

XXXX II A.K. 29071/1 file; Drr O.B. der JJ. Anllet, (It! 

So/da/ell rliT Krim-AnnPl', 19.5.42, AOK II 28654/4 rile; 

Bock Dwry. OS/tll II. 24 \' 42. 

269 

Main Political Directorate and was reduced to the rank of a corps commissar. Kozlov, his chie f of staff, and his 

chief politica l offi cer and the commanders of Fortyfourth and Forty-seventh A,'-

mies were relieved of their posts and 

demoted'" 

The hymn Bulge 

p.mspects and P.roblems 

In early March, the Stavka asked the 

comma nd of Southwestern Theater to 

submit its strategic and operational estimates for the coming summer. On the 

22d, Marsha l Timoshenko, the theate r's commander, sent in a proposal 

[or a spring-summer offensive by 

B'yansk, Southwest, and Smtth Fronts. It 

would aim to clear the line of the 

Dnepr River from Gomel south to 

Cherkassy and would conclude with a 

drive across the lower Dnepr to the line 

Cherkassy-Pervomaysk-Nikolayev. In 

ul e first phase, to be begun in late April 

o r ea rly May, Southwest and South Fronts 

would chop off the German-held north 

and south cornerposts of the Izyum 

bulge at Balakleya and Slavyansk, and 

Southwest Front would then adva nce 

norul out of the western end of the 

bulge to take Kharkov. 33 Timoshenko 

asked for reinfo rcements amounting 

to 34 rifle divisio ns, 28 tank brigades, 

24 artillery regiments, 756 a ircraft, 

200,000 bulk replacements, and "large 

quantities" of weapons, equipment, and 

motor vehicles."' 

In th e last week of Ma r ch , T i32VOV, p. 144: IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 406. 

33Bagramyan. Jilk sltfi my k /)()bede, p. 48: IVMV. vol. 

V, p. 126f; Vasilcvski y, Deio, p. 212:IVOVSS, \'01. 11 , p. 

4 11. 

H Bagramyan. Tak sh/i III)' k pobede. p. 54 . 
270 

moshenko, Khrushchev, his member of 

the Military Council, and General 

Bagramyan, his chief of staff, went to 

Moscow to defend the proposal before 

the Stavka. The discussions appear, 

from Bagramyan's account, actually to 

have been between the three of them 

and Stalin with Marshal Shaposhnikov, 

chief of the General Staff, and General 

Vasilevskiy, his deputy, present. 

Shaposhnikov had convinced Stalin beforehand that the offensive should not 

be attempted on the proposed scale, 

and in the first conference in the 

Kremlin, on . the night of the 27th, 

Stalin said he only had a few dozen 

divisions in the whole reserve, not 

nearly enough to meet the requirements of the rest of the front and also 

give Southwestern Th eate,· what it 

wanted. 35 Stalin then said that the offensive would have to be restricted to 

the Kharkov region. 

I n another night meeting on the 

28dl Stalin and Shaposhnikov reviewed 

the first plan for a Kharkov offensive 

and required that it be reworked to 

limit it exclusively to the Kharkov area 

and to reduce the number of units 

requested from the reserves. 36 What 

had been proposed was apparendy an 

offensive by Southwest and South Fronts 

similar to the first phase of the original 

plan plus participation by Bryansk Fmnt. 

On the night of the 30th, Stalin 

accepted a proposal to develop an operation that could be executed with 

provision from the reserves of 10 rifle 

divisions, 26 tank brigades, 10 artillery 

regiments, and enough replacements 

to bring Southwest and South Fronts up to 

35Vasilevskiy, Dew, p. 212; Bagramyan, Tall shli my k 

pob,d" p. 60. 

36Bagramyan, Tak shli my k pobede, p. 62. See also 

VOV (Kratkll),o Istoriya), p. 161f. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

80 percent of authorized strengths. 

The idea was to have Southwest Front, 

alone, take Kharkov and dlereby set 

the stage for a subsequent d1rust with 

South Front to Dnepropetrovsk.

31 

Timoshenko took command of 

Southwest Front in person on 8 April, 

and on the 10th, he turned in a plan for 

a two-pronged attack on Kharkov. 

One, the main drive, was to go out of 

the northwest corner of the Izyum 

bulge, the other out of the smaller 

Volchansk salient. The Stavka approved this proposal 3 ' Shaposhnikov, 

Vasilevskiy says, pointed out the risks 

of launching an offensive out of a 

pocket like the Izyum bulge, but Timoshenko convinced Stalin that the operation would be a "complete success."39 Moskalenko, who saw the decision from dle point of view of an army 

commander (Thil·ty-eighth), says the 

Stavka made a mistake in approving the 

plan, but it did so at the "insistence" of 

the dleater command 40 

The plan, as written on 10 April and 

issued in final form on the 28th, projected not only the liberation of 

Kharkov but an extensive encirclement 

that would trap most of German Sixth 

Army. The attack from the Volchansk 

salient would go due west and be 

spearheaded by Twenty-eighth Army, a 

new army with 4 rifle divisions from 

the Stavka reserves. It would be under 

Ryabyshev, an experienced general, 

who had successfully commanded Fiftyseventh Army during dle winter offensive, and it would be supported on its 

flanks by elements of Twentyfirst and 

3 7Bagramyan, Tak shli my k pobede, p. 66; IVMV, vol. 

V, p. 127. 

38Bagramyan. Tak shli my k pobede, p. 212. 

39Vasilevskiy, Dew, p. 213. 

4°Moskalenko. No )'lIgo-Ulpadnom napravlcllii, p. 213. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 271 

TAN KMEN FLUSH O UT SOVIET SoLDIERS Al-TER THE BATrLE 

Thirty-eighth Armies. The main thrust, 

out of the Izyum bulge, was assigned to 

Sixth Army, under General Ley tenant A. 

M. Gorodnyanskov, and the "Bobkin 

Croup," under General Mayor L. V. 

Bobkin. The attack was to be made in 

two stages: the first, to break through 

the enemy's first and second defense 

lines and destroy his tactical reserves 

and the second, to smash the enemy's 

operational reserves and complete the 

encirclement. For the attack, Sixth Anny 

and the Bobkin Croup, between them, 

would have 10 rifle and 3 cavalry divisions, II tank brigades, and 2 motorized rifle brigades. To make the breakthrough on a fifteen-mile front, Sixth 

Anny had 8 rifle divisions, 4 tank brigades, and 14 regiments of supporting 

artillery. The Bobkin Croup was a newly 

formed mobile operational group composed of 2 rifle divisions, a cavalry 

corps, and a tank brigade. Its commander had successfully led a similar 

group in the Thirty-eighth Anny area 

during the winter. 'Timoshenko had 

560 tanks for the first stage and 269 

more to be put in during the second . 

He held as the reserve of the front a 

cavalry corps, 2 rifle divisions, and an 

independent tank brigade, which, according to Moskalenko, had about a 

hundred tanks. He also had close at 

hand the Ninth and Fifth-seventh Armies 

of South Front and , potentially available, 

South Front's reserve of a tank corps and 

7 rifle divisions.41 

"llbid .• pp. 182- 84 : Bagramyan , Tak sltli my k pobede, 

pp. 69, 71 - 74. 84 : IVMV, vol. V, p_ 127. 
272 

In the meantime, Army Group 

Sou th also had had its eyes on the 

Izyum bulge. A situation estimate Bock 

sent to the OKH on 10 March specified 

that the bulge would have to be wiped 

ou t as soon as the msputitsa passed , 

because, otherwise, the Russians would 

use it as a springboard for an attack on 

Kharkov and because the army group 

could not keep on defending the extra 

length of front. Getting rid of the 

bulge was essential to the army group's 

summer operations. Bock asked for 

two fresh divisions for Seventeenth 

Army and two for Sixth Army." 

On 25 March, Army Group South 

had issued a directive for Operation 

FRIDERICUS. In concept, FRIDERICUS was 

simple enough, a matter of two thrusts, 

one from the north, the other from the 

south, meeting at Izyum. But the staff 

work had brought to light an irritating 

complication: owing to the lie of the 

front in relation to the Donets River, 

the best route for the thrust from the 

north was east of the Donets, straight 

along the Kharkov-lzyum road, which, 

however, would be wide open to attack 

on the east. Sixth Army, already having 

two exposed fronts, would be hard put 

to hold a third. To avoid this problem, 

the FRIDERICUS directive put the Sixth 

Army thrust west of the Donets, which 

wou ld give it the protection of the river 

but which would also be awkward because of a double bend in the river. 

Because the river's protection would be 

greatest during the time of high water, 

the starting date was set for 22 Apri!." 

Army Group South had given FR I4"!Bock DWn, Ollell II , 10 ~I ar 42. 

u Obkdo. d. -II. Gr. Sued, la Nr. 585142, H't>isung Nr. I 

Jller den At/griff "Fridericus," 25.).42, ? z. AOK 1 

25179/3 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

DERICUS a name and an existence on 

paper. From there on, the operation 

acquired a life of its own. First off, it 

spawned a second version, FRIDERICUS 

II, after Hitler and Halder, chief of the 

General Staff, objected to the army 

group's choice and wanted the Sixth 

Army effort east of the Donets. Bock, 

in turn , complained that FRIDERICUS II 

was based on "all kinds of assumptions 

but not a single fact" and was convinced that the only practicable ve rsion 

was the army group's own, which became FRIDERICUS 1.44 When either 

could start depended on the weather 

and on tile railroads that were already 

labOl;ng at capacity under the weight 

of traffic for the coming summer campaign. The OKH released two new 

infantry divisions for FRIDERICUS in 

early April, but it could only deliver 

tllem by rail as far as Rovno and 

Grodno in Poland , and they had to 

make their way east another 500 miles 

by road. On 24 April, two days after 

the original starting date for the operation, Bock and Hitler were still debating the deployment. 45 

Finally, on 30 April, Bock issued a 

directive for FRIDERICUS II. It was 

"born in severe pain ," he renlarked, 

and "on tile whole not pretty" but it was 

also unalterable because of the Fu ehrer 's 

insistence.'s Setting the time for "probably" 18 May took another week:" 

While Army Group South's reinforcements came forward slowly, the rivers 

were subsiding, the roads were becomHBoCH Dim)', Osten II, :} I i>.l ar 42. 

45/bid., 24 Api' 42. 

4til bid., 30 Apr 42: ObkdQ. d. H. G,: S ued , III Nr. 

946142, i1'1ri.sllllg Nr. 2 J ll er den A nlJ'iff "FridericlLs," 

30.1.42, I)z . AOK I 25179/3 fil e. 

47AOK 17, la Nr. 331-12, Btfl'hl J ller AI/griff "Friden'ms; ' 8.5.42, Pz. AOK I 27179/3 file. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

ing passible, and the Russians were 

stirring ominously in the northwest 

corner of the Izyum bulge and in the 

Volchansk sa lient. Hitler and Halder, 

who had done the same with earlie r 

reports of similar Russian activity, dismissed the idea of an attack toward 

Kharkov, although, as the weathe r and 

condition of the ground improved , 

Halder did so "with less conviction than 

before."'8 

The Drive on Kharkov 

On the morning of 12 May, Soviet 

Sixth Army, the Bobkin GTOUP, and 

Twenty-eighth Army went over to the offensive, therewith opening what was 

going to be the Soviet battle of World 

War II that generated the most longlasting controversy. While Stalin lived, 

it would be made to disappear from 

history. In the 1950s, it would be resurrected as a chief exhibit in the deStalinization campaign; and in the late 

1960s, it would be turned against Stalin's critic and successor, Nikita Khrushchev. Consequently, as seen from the 

Soviet side, tl,e battle appears in several 

versions, a ll , to some extent, tailored to 

purposes other than purely histori cal. 

By both the Soviet and German accounts, the beginning was spectacular, 

in its impact, not a far second to the 

Moscow counterattack. The Soviet histories mainta in that their initial advantage was not great. The Slw1·t His/my 

gives a 3:2 advantage in infantry and 

2: I in tanks a t the points where the 

attacks were made. The History oj the 

Second W>dd War indicates an overall 

Southwest Front superiority of 1.51: 1 in 

troops and 2: I in tanks but says the 

tlJBock Dia/")', (hii'll II , 25 Apr nnd.5 a)' 42. 

273 

tanks were mostly light models'· The 

actual advantages could have been 

much greater, at least so it appeared to 

the Germans. Sixth Army reported 

being hit by twelve riRe divisions and 

300 tanks in the first waves. Veteran 

troops, who had fought through the 

winter, were overawed by tl,e masses of 

armor rolling in on them that morning SO Bock told Halder Sixtl, Army 

was fighting "for its life."51 

Heaviest hit on the first day was SiXtll 

Army's VIII Corps in the northwestern 

corner of the Izyum bulge. Against it, 

Soviet Sixth Army drove due north toward Kharkov, while the Babkin GTOUP 

pushed west and northwest to get the 

army elbow room on its left Rank. 

Twenty-eighth Army's attack out of the 

Volchansk salient was less powerful but 

more dangerous because it had the 

shorter distance to go. (Map 23.) Before 

1200, a ll three attacks had cracked the 

German lines, and by evening, Twentyeighth Army's tanks were ranging to within eleven miles of Kharkov. After pel' 

suading Halder that these were not 

nlere "cosmetic flaws," Bock released 

tl,e 23d Panzer Division and 71st and 

113tl, Infantry Divisions to General 

Paulus, the commander of Sixth Army. 

They were to have been Sixth Army's 

spearhead force for FRIDERl cus.52 

In two days, the Soviet armies 

opened broad gaps south and northeast of Kharkov, and the BaMin Group 

drove VIII Corps away from its contact 

witll the Armeegruppe Kleist and back 

against the Berestovaya Rive r. While 

49VOV (KroIH(I),a Istoriya), p. 162; IVMV, \01. V. p. 

128. 

50AOK 6, la Knegstagebl/c/t .Vr. II, 12 ~Iay -12. AOK 

622391 11 fi le. 

51 Boell D/(/I1'. 0.,11'11 II, 12 ro.la\ 42. 

~~/bid. , 12 ay 42. . 
THE SOVIET OFFENSIVE " \ ' 

KHARKOV \ 

12 - 19 May 1942 000000 ' 

o 00000 ' 

000000000 Front line , 17 May "0 r" 

Volchllnsk ----_ Front line, 12 May ooooo '} 

.. Soviet ettack, 12 • 19 M ay 00"-----~ I °Jefnov;;;-::::!. 28th 

01 2,5 Miles ooo ~~,..-..:...-.; I • 

o 25 Kilometers ';. ~ 

~ SIXTH •••••• ~.:\ ~? . • ' Khafkov ---- ~." 

", 

M~ra(a ( Chuguyev"'rli 

Offll R 

• 

• • 

6th 

/ 

\ 

I 

I 

\ 

, 

/ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

I 

r 

I 

I 

/ 

./dleys 

38th 

. 8afvankovo 

OUTHWEST 

FRON 

'\ 

~I 

,", ~I 

oj' 

/ 

( 

\ 

I 

SOUTH 

FRONT 

>-

,--v 

I \ 

I \ 

---~~,.,!.... \ 

9th /_:~:~Y.nsy , 

-------' K' ;:: EENTH 

.$amll.fa 

ARMY GROUP KLEIJ ARMY 

\ 

MAP 23 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

Paulus positioned the three divisions 

and elements of the 3d Panzer and 

305th Infantry Divisions to pa rry the 

thrusts at Kharkov, Generaloberst Alexa nder Loeh r, the Luftwaffe commander for the Army Group South 

zone, began shifting ground support 

units from Richthofen's VIII Air Corps 

north from the Crimea. T he attack had 

come just at the time Soviet resistance 

was beginning to collapse on the Kerch 

Pen insula, and the VIII Air Corps 

units, added to those of IV Air Corps 

already operating around Kharkov 

and the Izyum bulge, would create in 

some d ays' time an extraordinaril y 

powerful concentration of a ir support. 

By nightfall on the 13th, a ten-milewide gap had opened on the VIII 

Corps left Rank southwest of Zmiyev. 

On its right Rank, Soviet cavalry was 

probing westward toward Krasnograd 

through an even wider gap. The onl y 

obstacle in Tzvenly-eighlh Annis way on 

the Volchansk-Kharkov road was a 

party of Germans surrounded in the 

village of Ternovaya. On the 14th, it 

was time for Bock and his Soviet counterpart, Timoshenko, to make big 

decisions. 

Timoshenko still had the tanks for 

the second stage. By the 14th, even 

though the brcaku1roughs had been 

achieved, Timoshenko did not put the 

armor in . T he Histmy of the Second " bdd 

\!\i,r says that thefront and theater command did not take advantage of the 

favorable situation existing on 14 May 

and did not put in the mobile forces to 

complete the encirclement. 53 The H istory of lhe C,·eal Patriotic \!\i,r and U1e 

Popular Scientific Sketch maintain that 

Timoshenko was "misled" by mistaken 

~3IVM V; \'01. V. p. 129. 

275 

intelligence reports of strong enemy 

armor being concentrated near Zmiyev 

and , therefore, delayed committing the 

tanks" Bagramyan says that the "moment" had arrived, o n the 14th, when 

Tzventy-eighth Anny should have committed its mobile groups, but the army 

staffs "poor organization" prevented 

that. He also says Soulhwest Front sent a 

repon to the Stavka o n the night of the 

14th in which it described its successes 

but pointed out, as well , that two enemy panzer divisions still constituted "a 

serious impediment" to the advance on 

Kharkov.

55 The Short History implies 

that thefront command could not make 

up its mind, waited for "a more favorable moment," and, so, missed the 

chance'· Moskalenko also maintains 

that the trouble was wiu1 thefront command's indecision. 57 

Bock, of course, unaware of the help 

he was getting from the othe r side, had 

two choices on the 14th: he could act 

directly to save Sixth Army from an 

expensive trouncing, or he could try to 

accomplish the same effect and possibly more-whil e a lso risking two 

failures-by going a head with FRI. 

DERICUS. The circumstances were as 

peculiar as any in the wa r. No maLLer 

how successful the Kharkov battle was, 

it was going to be a dead end for the 

Russians. The Army Group South rear 

area, pa rti cula rl y the Kha rkov regio n, 

was beginning to fill up with divisions 

for the summe r offensive, more than 

enough to guarantee the strategic initiative. On the other hand , those divisions were under OKH control. Bock 

apparentl y did not even know where 

,H/VOVSS. \'01. II , p. 4 13; \lOY, p. 140. 

~5 Bagram ya n, Tak shli my k pobedt, pp. 95-97. 

56\10V (KmtkllJll /stori),a). p. 162. 

57Moskalcnko,Na YlIgu-w/xu/,wm Iwpmvlmii, p. 24 i. 
276 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

T -34 TANK CREWS BRUSH Up ON TACTICS 

all of them were or what their states of 

readiness were, and Hitle r, who was 

having to painstakingly husband his 

Inanpolve r for the SUITInler, was not 

disposed to r e lease them . Co nsequently, the battle would have to be 

fought practically, if somewhat a rtificially, in the hand-to-mouth style of 

the winter. 

From General Kleist, Bock lea rned 

that Seventeenth Army probably could 

carry out the southern half of FRIDERICUS. Doing so wou ld narrow the 

mouth of the l zyum bulge to about 

twenty miles. But Kl eist did not believe 

he could go any farther, and if his 

adva nce fell short, it would not have 

any effect at all. As an alternative, 

Kleist thought he could scrape together three or four divisions for a 

counterattack off the Armeegruppe 

left Rank acrnss the rear of the Bobkin 

Croup and Soviet Sixth Army. Bock inclined toward tl1e first possibility but 

felt compelled by prudence to recommend the second to Hitler. Having 

done this, he remarked to his chief of 

staff, " 'ow the Fuehrer will order the 

big solution [FRIDERICUS]. T he laurels 

will go to tl1e Supreme Command and 

we will have to be content with what is 

left." As expected, Hitler did promptly 

order tl1e big solution, which Bock 

then said he could "approach cheerfull y," particularl y since Hiller had a lso 

undertaken to send out of the Crimea 

"every aircraft that can possibly be 

spared."58 

58 80ck Oifll)', Ostell II, 14 r..'Iar 42. 
' VIICrps 

\ ARM r 

Male/s( 

/'-- .............. 

\ 

\ 28th 

\ 

\, 

\ 

\ 

Khllfkov 

" 

COUNTEROFFENSIVE THE GERMA~HARKOV 

17 - 28 May 1942 

Front line, 17 May 

Front line , 21 May 00000000 • .,0 • 24 May 

. .... ..... .. Front line, 26 May 

Pocket of resistance, 

• German attack 

Soviet retreat <I{---- 25 Miles 

o -----::c:;;;:::::;:' l 2

1

5 Kilom eters 

, 

\ 

, 

, 

, 

:':~Y!.'!.-

Chuguyev 

.. LI Corps 

\ , 38th , 

.. KUPYllnsk', \ --r-----) 

f >la'l8 ( 

6th B"es" '-, - ~ .. K "4snograd : 

" I "A,r>drIlVflvlc8 / 

, 

, 

I 

, 

, 

:. J "...-"-- ' __ -.. : .. \, Bobkin Group ." -- ;-\ 0: PIOIOPOPO'" 'M,zyum i Loz\:8nk..! -- :1':.1 0 

0 . ....... .... :: lJPI1t#I',r o .. .. 00000000 0" 0 , ~ P";;>vs'~~' 00 000'00 ~ • • ••••• 000 0000.0000 " 

-, '. ••••• 00 0 

L __ - xxxx .............. ,,-- ········1·· 000 0'000 

", :0 --. I

r

/-' , 

' 0 ¥ ....... 8.,.on*o,o I , 

XI Corps \ t Lowvsy. \00 v: ~ 9th ~'k( XXXXI~ \ - -~o _rr' Corps ' 0 _ . 

: 57th ... ) I __ / K"m"o"k ( RUMANIAN ~_-- " --- SEVEN'fEENTH 

FORCES I ,: /,- III Panz.r corl "" 

VI Ry manlan \,-------/ MY , 

'- AR \ 

pay/orad / Il-, ARMY GROUP KLEIS '\ 

, $~f!18ra / 

MAP 24 
278 

Fridericus 

On the morning of the 17th, Timoshenko committed his second-stage 

forces, and Kleist began FRIDERICUS. 

Timoshenko was playing primarily his 

two biggest trumps, XXi and XXITI 

Tank Corps, which had been waiting 

behind Sixth Army. They were gOll1g In, 

however, after the first-stage attack had 

crested and was beginning to subside. 5

' 

Nevertheless, during the day, in 90" F. 

heat, the Soviet tanks drove five miles 

deep into the loosely patched VIII 

Corps line south of Kharkov. (Ma.p 2-1.) 

FRIDERICUS was light on reserves but 

had powerful air support. The 22d 

Panzer Division, coming from the 

Crimea, probably would not arrive in 

time to count, but I V Air Corps, with 

the reinforceme nts from VIII Air 

Corps, had an imposing assemblage of 

fighter, Stuka, and bomber squadrons, 

all of which were able to take to the air 

when the day dawned bright and clear. 

The surprise was complete on the Soviet side and almost as great on the 

German-at how fast the Soviet Ninth 

Army collapsed. By sundown on that 

shimmeringly hot day, supported 

"most effectively by the Luftwaffe," II I 

Panzer Corps had gone fifteen miles to 

Barvenkovo , and the Seventeenth 

Army left flank divisions had covered 

sixteen or seventeen Iniies, lllore than 

two-thirds of the distance lO Izyum6 0 

During the day, the commander of 

South Front, General Malinovskiy, lost 

contact with the Ninth Army headquarters and with reinforcements he was 

59Moskalenko. Na YIlgrJ-wpatbwm /lapmllfmii. p. 201 ; 

/VAIV. vol. V, p. 129. 

60p1.. AOK J, /a Kriegstagebllch Nr. 8 . 17 May 42. Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file; AOK 17./0 Kn"egsiagf/mch tVl. 3, J7 

~Iay 42, AOK 172441111 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

trying lO deploy south of I~yum. 

Bagramyan says that Malinovsk,y had 

made two "errors" beforehand: he had 

put part of his reserves into the line on 

the south, and he and the army command had failed lO set up a sufficiently 

solid defense.B' According lO the Populm' Scientific Sketch, "The Ninth Army 

troops were not prepared to ward off 

the enemy blow."·2 

The 17th and the 18th were days of 

rising crisis for the Soviet Commandand of decisions made and not made 

that would remain in dispute decades 

later. The History of the C"eat Patriotic 

War passes over the events of the 17th 

in a single sentence confirming the 

German breaktl1rough. Bagramyan indicates that on tllat day, both the theater command and the Slavka believed 

South Fmnt's right flank could be 

strengthened enough to master the crisis. Timoshenko, he says, ordered 

Gorodnyanskov to take out XXiII Tank 

Corps and get it lO Fifty-seventh Army by 

the night of tlle 18th for a counterattack toward Barvenkovo, and the 

Stavka released two rifle divisions and 

two tank brigades from its reserves. 

The Short History maintains, however, 

that since the Stavka reserves could not 

have arrived in less than three days, 

Timoshenko should have stopped Sixth 

Anny and shifted all of its offensive 

strength to the SOUtll. The acting chief 

of the General Staff, Vasilevskiy, the 

Short History says (as he does also), proposed doing that, but Stalin refused 

after the Military Council of the Southweste,." Theater (Timoshenko, Khrushchev, and Bagramyan) told him it 

could continue the offensive and slOp 

61 Hagram),an. Hilt shli my k /){)bede, p. lOG!". 

62Vo\~ p. 141. 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

the German attack. 63 The Papular Scientific Sketch states, "The Supreme Commander let the Military Council of the 

Southwest Front [also Timoshenko, 

Khrushchev, and Bagramyanl persuade him that to continue the offensive was necessary and feasible and 

rejected the General Staffs arguments 

for breaking off the operation."·4 

On the 18th, lighter by a tank corps, 

Timoshenko's armor rolled against 

Sixth Army again . In places, the tanks 

broke through, but where they did, the 

Germans counterattacked, and at day's 

end , the front stood about where it had 

in the morning65 FRIDERICUS, meanwhile, almost became a rout. South 

Front, Ninth Army, and the latter's neighbor, Fifty-seventh Army, failed again to 

put together a cohesive defense . 

Against confused resistance, Seventeenth Army and TIl Panze r Corps 

fanned out and clea red the line of the 

Donets River north to Izyum and west 

to the mouth of the Bereka River. 

The H istory of the c,-eat Patriotic War 

and Bagramyan depict the 18th as the 

crucial day. The history states dlat 

Khrushchev, in his capacity as the 

member (political) of the Military 

Council of the theater and front, contacted Stalin and proposed to stop the 

offensive immediate ly and redeploy 

Sixth Army's and the Bobkin Croup 's 

forces to counter FRIDERICUS, but "d1e 

Sta.V/ILL insisted on the execution of its 

previous orders."·· Khrushchev told 

the liventieth Party Congress, in Feb63/VOVSS, vol. II, p. 413; Bagramyan , UlH shli Illy k 

/XJbedr, p. 11 5: vav (Kratknya /stori),a). p. 163. See also 

Vasilevski }'. De/o, p. 214. 

64VOV: p. 141 . 

65AOK 6, la Kriegstagebuch !'h; 'I, 18 May 42, AOK 6 

223911 1 fil e. 

66/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 4\4 . 

279 

ruary 1956, that he had talked to Vasilevskiy and indirectly, through 

Malenkov, a member of the State Defense Committee, to Stalin by tel ephone. Vasilevskiy, in Khrushchev's 

version, refused to take up the matter 

of stopping the offensive with Stalin. 

Stalin would not talk on the telephone 

but had Malenkov give d1e answer, "Let 

everyd1ing remain as it is. "67 

Bagramyan says he had concluded, 

on the night of the 17d1, d1at the offensive would have to be stopped and the 

mass of its forces shifted to the Barvenkovo area, but he had not succeeded in convincing 'Iimoshenko of 

"the urgent necessity to take that cal~ 

dinal decision. " In fact, he says, on the 

morning of the 18th, 'Iimoshenko told 

Stalin there was no need to take forces 

from Sixth Army or the Bobkin Croup to 

beat off the German attack. Bagramyan , by his account, then initiated an 

appeal to Stalin through Khrushchev, 

but Stalin declined to reverse Timoshenko's decision 6 • 

Vasilevskiy says he informed Stalin of 

the worsening situation in the Barvenkovo-Izyum area on the morning 

of the 18th. In writing his memoirs, 

Vasilevskiy remembered talking to 

Khrushchev by telephone, "either on 

the 18th or 19th," in approximately the 

sense Khrushchev described , except 

that he told Khrushchev he could not 

go to Stalin again with a proposal d1at 

contradicted what the military council 

of d1e theater was reporting6 ' According to the Short History, Vasilevskiy 

made another attempt to get Stalin to 

6 7Congressio1lal Record, 4 Jun [956. 

6SBagramyan . JaH shli my k pobl'r/I', p. 11 6f. 

6l1 Vasilevskiy, De/o, p. 214. 
280 MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

PAK 40, 75-MM. ANTITANK GUN CREW ON THE W ATCH 

stop the offensive on the 18th and was 

turned down after Stalin again consulted T1moshenko.

70 To this Zhukov 

adds, "The version about the military 

council of the theater sending alarming reports to Stalin is not true. I 

maintain this because I was present in 

pe rson when Stalin spoke over the 

telephone. "" 

No matter where the responsibility 

rested, with Stalin , with the military 

council of the theater, with Timoshenko, or with all three, Southwest 

Fmnt had indeed been kept on the 

offensive south of Kharkov too long. 

Because it had, the trap that was about 

70V0\1 (Kratka),<1 Istoriya ), p. 164. 

71ZllUkov, Mmwirs, p. 368. 

to be sprung was going to be in good 

part one of the Russians' own making. 

Bock conferred with Kleist at the latter's headquarters in Stalino on the 

18th. In the midst of an almost unbelievable success, the two were worried. When they reached Izyum and 

the mouth of the Bereka, which they 

were likely to do within hours, the 

FRlDERICUS forces would have gone as 

far north as Kleist had figured they 

could go; but so far, they had failed to 

accomplish their main mission, which 

was to draw Southwest Fmnt away from 

Sixth Army. The Russians had not reacted at all. The next stage, as planned , 

would be to turn [II Panzer Corps due 

west along the south side of the Bereka 

behind Fifty-seventh Anny, but that 

hardly seemed likely to produce an 
ACTIVE DEFENSE, SOUTH 

effect that the more threatening northward thrust had failed to achieve. Before Bock departed, Kleist offered to 

try to have III Panzer Corps take a 

bridgehead north of the Bereka from 

which it could advance northwest in 

case the Russians, as it seemed they 

very likely would, proved insensitive to 

the push to the west. 72 

By comparison with the previous two 

days, the Armeegruppe Kleist almost 

stood still on the 19th. The III Panzer 

Corps was wheeling to the west. It did, 

though, send 14th Panzer Division over 

the Bereka to take Petrovskoye. The 

distance gained was only about five 

miles, but it deprived Southwest Front of 

a Donets crossing and narrowed the 

mouth of the Izyum bulge to fifteen 

miles. During the day, Southwest Front 

finally did begin to react. The pressure 

on VIII Corps, strong in the morning, 

became disjointed by midmorning. In 

the afternoon, air reconnaissance detected an increase in road traffic away 

from the VIII Corps front to the 

southeast, and at the end of the day, 

Sixth Army reported , "The enemy's 

offensive strength has cracked. The 

breakthrough to Kharkov is therewith 

prevented."" 

In the evening on the 19th, an order 

went out to Soviet Sixth Army and the 

Bobkin Group to stop the offensive and 

redeploy to the southeast. The His/my 

of the Great Patriotic War implies that 

limoshenko had to give the order on 

his own responsibility and only later 

received the Stavka's approval." The 

History of the Second Widd War, the Slwrt 

72PZ. AOK I, 10 Kriegstagrburh Nr. 8, 18 May 42. Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file. 

,3AOK 6, 10 Kriegstagrbuch Nr. /I, 19l\'lay 42, AOK 6 

22391 file. 

H/VOVSS, vol, II. p. 414. 

281 

History, and Vasilevskiy present the decision, made "at last," as having been 

entirely up to the theater command.

75 

Bagramyan says, "the commanding 

general, Southwestern Theater, did not 

make the belated decision to stop the 

offensive until the latter half of the day 

on the 19th .... "'. 

Coming when it did, the most significant effect of limoshenko's decision 

was probably to hasten the destruction 

of the Soviet forces in the Izyum bulge. 

Relieved of their concern over what 

might happen to Sixth Army, Hitler 

and Bock conferred by telephone on 

the night of the 19t1l and quickly 

agreed it would now be a good idea to 

try to accomplish the whole original 

FRIDERICUS by having the Armeegruppe Kleist go the rest of the way 

from Petrovskoye to the Sixth Army 

line at Balakleya. As soon as they had 

finished Bock called Kleist's chief of 

staff, gave him the gist of what he had 

talked about with Hitler, and said he 

wanted Protopopovka, the next Donets 

crossing north of Petrovskoye, taken 

"under all circumstances and as soon as 

in any way possible."" 

The 14th Panzer Division took Protopopovka on the 20th, which reduced 

the mouth of the bulge between there 

and Balakleya to twelve miles. The 

bridgehead was then eight miles deep 

but orily a mile or two across. The III 

Panzer Corps main force, still on the 

westward orientation, gained almost 

twelve miles, however, with disappointing results. The object was to smash 

Fifty-seventh Army in the western end of 

l~/VMV, vol. V, p. 130; VOV (KmtkLI),a IstDriya), p. 

164 ; Vasilevskiy, De/o, p. 214 . 

76Bagraniyan . Tan shli my k pobede, p. 119. 

HBoek Diary, Osten //, 19 l\lay 42 . 
282 

the bulge, but the outer ring of front 

there was held by Rumanian divisio ns, 

and they showed little determination 

and less enthusiasm. One of the Rumani an di visio n commande rs had sent 

himself home o n leave when he heard 

the attack was abo ut to sta rt. Having an 

a lte rn a tive tha t h e a lso preferred , 

Kleist began turning the 16th Panzer 

Division, 60th Moto rized Division, and 

1st Mounta in Divisio n a round afte r 

dark and sending them into the Bereka 

bridgehead behind 14th Panzer Division. On Bock's urging, Paulus agreed 

to shift the 3d and 23d Panzer Divisions south from the Volchansk salient 

and tllUS partially to reconstitute his 

fo rmer FRIDERICUS force.

78 Bock obse rved, " ... tonight, I have give n orders a imed at completely seali ng off 

the Izyum bulge. Now everything will 

turn out well after all! "7. 

O n the 2 1st, 14th Panze r was the only 

division o n tl, e offensive . It jumped 

north four miles, reducing the distance 

to Balakleya to eight miles. The next 

day, 16th Panzer Division and 60th 

Motorized Division struck Oul northwestward from Petrovskoye, and 14th 

Panze r Division continued nortll. Well 

before da rk, 14th Panzer had contact 

with Sixtl, Army a t Bala kl eya. Ea rl y tl,e 

next morning, 23d Panzer Division met 

16th Panzer Division ten miles west of 

Bala kleya. With tha t, 14th Panzer Divisio n's na rrow bridgehead was conve rted into a ten-mil e-wide ba rri e r 

across tl, e mouth of the bulge. 

On tl, e west and south , the Soviet 

fronts were collapsing inward . In two 

more days, the Sixth and Fifty-seventh 

18p 1.. AOK 1, /(1 Kriegstllgebudt N,: 8.20 May 42. PI.. 

AOK I 24906 fi le: AOK 6, la Kriegstagebuch N". /I, 20 

Ma) 42, AOK 6 22391 file. 

1II8 ()(k OWl)" O~ w II, 20 a)' -12 . 

MOSCOW T O STALINGRAD 

Armies, the Babkin Gmup, and the remnants of Ninth Army we re piled against 

the III Panzer Corps line. An attempt 

at a breakout on tl,e a fte rnoon of tl,e 

25th ca rri ed a lmost to Petrovskoye. 

Anothe r, the next mornin , seve ral 

miles to the north , came Within fo ur 

miles of succeeding. By afternoon on 

the 26th , all that was left was a ten-bytwo-mile pocket in the Be reka Valley. 

From a hill south of Lozovenka, Bock 

could see over almost the whole of it. 

"An overpowering picture," he said, as 

shells exploded in the cloud of smoke 

hanging in the vall ey, and 23d Panzer 

Divisio n a nd 1st Mountain Divisio n 

troops, still on the attack, pushed past 

crowds of r risone rs streaming o ut of 

tl,e pocket. 0 

T he battle ended in bright sunshine 

on the morning of the 28tl, . After they 

finished counting, which took some 

more days, Armeegruppe Kl eist and 

Sixtl, Army found they had captured 

240,000 priso ners, over 1,200 tanks, 

and 2,600 a rtill e ry pieces 8 1 Seventeenth Army, which had ta ken over tl,e 

front on the Donets, observed "with 

astonishment" that during the whole 

ten-day ba ttl e, virtuall y no relie f had 

been attempted from the east.B2 According to Shtemenko, Stalin had told 

Timoshenko and Khrushchev, "Battles 

must be won not Witll numbers but 

by skill . If you do not learn to direct 

your troops better, all the armaments 

the country can du ce will not be 

enoug h for yoU."B 

8°l bilJ. , 26 May 42; Pl.. AOK /, la Vemichllwgssrhlnchl 

i", Dollez.bognl wl's/l. .~ lIm , PL. AOK 175 11 9/6 fi le. 

8'p ,. AOK I, /(1 , VemichluIlgsschlact im DollI!ZOOI:t11 

westl. h yum, Pz. AO K I 75U9/6 file; AOK 6, fa Sondermeldu1Ig,30.5.42, AOK 6 2239V7 file. 

g2AOK 17, la Krirgslagebllch Nr. 3, 28 May 42, AO K 

172441111 fi le. 

83Shlcmcnko, SlTIlift General Staff, p. 56. 
CHAPTER XIV 

A Time for Decisions 

Hitler's Strategy 

A 1942 campaign-contingent on 

how much was accomplished before 

the current operations stopped for the 

winter-came within Hitler's range of 

concerns in November 1941. He gave 

General Halder, chief of the General 

Staff, an order of priorities on the 19th. 

First would come the Caucasus, in 

March and April; tllen Vologda and 

Gorkiy, at me end of May. Other, more 

distant, objectives would be set later 

and would depend on the capabilities 

of tile railroads. I The directive of 8 

December, terminating the 1941 offensive, would still give Army Group 

South the tentative mission of reaching 

the lower Don and Donets and would 

urge Army Group North "to clean up 

tile situation" south of Lake Ladoga. 2 

These plans, however, were only wisps, 

already being buried in the Russian 

snows. Nevertheless, until well into 

December, Hitler appears not to 

have been thinking of a break between 

the two years' operations, but instead 

of mere pauses in tile action, more or 

less long depending on location 

and weather, after which me forces 

would continue in their previous 

deployments. 

IHalderDi(1)'. \'01. III, p. 295. 

20KW, WFSI, Abl. L (/ op.) Nr. 442090/41, "nnmg 

Nr. 39, 8./2.41, German High Level Directives, CMH 

files. 

Hitler did not begin to take account 

of a strategic discontinuity in tile operations until 23 December, when he 

talked to General Fromm, tile chief of 

Army Armament and the Replacement 

Army. He told Fromm the army's aim 

would have to be "to clear the table" in 

the East during 1942. Fromm, in reply, 

told him the army would no longer be 

on a full war footing in 1942 and, 

apparently, recommended going over 

to the defensive for the whole year. 3 

A Questwn oj Means 

TIle Hitler-Fromm exchange brought 

out what would be Hitler's most pervasive strategic problem during 1942: 

how to bring his means into consonance Witll his objectives. Not new, it 

had been there all along, masked to a 

degree by the war's early and easy 

successes. In the past, though , while 

the margins of strengm had often been 

less than they later appeared, he had 

always possessed some elasticity. The 

coming year was going to be different. 

The capacity to stretch would be gone. 

The knowledge of that also was not 

anything new. It accounted in major 

part for Hitler's-a nd Halder'sefforts in November and December to 

blanket as much as possible of the 

3Der Chef der HurfsrUeslullg Il1ld Befehlshaber des 

ErSGIUleerfs, tier Cluj des Stabes, Jbgebuch , 23 Dec 41 , 

CMH X~124 file. 
284 

unfinished business of the war in the 

Soviet Union into the 1941 campaign. 

Specifically, the problem involved two 

concerns: material and manpower. 

When Hitler conferred with Fromm, 

on 23 December, the army was five 

months into a decline that was in part 

mandated. In Directive 32, of 11 June 

1941, Hitler had laid down requirements for the period after the victory 

in the East. Since, as he saw it, no 

serious threat would exist any longer 

on the European mainland, he had 

announced that the army would be 

"substantially" reduced for the benefit 

of the air force and navy, the services 

that would henceforth carry the weight 

of the war against England. 4 

A month later, on 14 July, believing 

the victory to be almost at hand, he had 

issued an implementing directive. Under it, the Inain effort in armanlent was 

to be shifted immediately to the air 

force and navy. TIle only production 

increases for the army would be in 

tanks and heavy antitank weapons. 

How much the army was to be cut back 

would remain to be decided , but it 

would have to start, "at once," adjusting 

its replacement and procurement of 

"wea pons, amJTIunition , and equipment," to reduced force levels. Orders 

for items for which more than a six 

months' supply stockpile existed were 

to be canceled 5 

Fromm reminded Hitler that the 

army, expecting to disband about fifty 

divisions, had since curtailed all weapons' procurement other than tanks and 

40KW; WFSt, Abe. L (/ Op.) Nr. 448864141, Weisung 

N,: 32, 11.6.4/, German High Level Directives, CMH 

files. 

sDKW, WFSI, Abl. L (/I Org.) Nr. 4412/9/4/, Weislmg 

Nr. 32b, 14.7.41, German High Level Directives, CMH 

files. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

antitank guns. He added, too, that 

even with the new allotments of nonferrous metals, granted just hours before their meeting, the army would be 

unable to complete more than 80 percent of its tank and antitank weapons 

programs. 6 Hitler indicated that he 

had already instructed Dr. Fritz Todt, 

the minister for Armament and M unitions, to restart ammunition production, and he told Fromm, "Air Force 

and Navy [production] are now stopped 

for the benefit of the Army."' 

TIle stop was not quite as fast or as 

complete as Hitler's statement to 

Fromm seemed to imply, but he did 

issue a supplementary directive, "Armament 1942," on 10 January 1942. It 

upheld the air force and navy buildups, 

"in the long view," while specifying that 

the changed war situation "for the time 

being prohibits a decline in Army armament." The army was to be guaranteed a four months' stockpile of 

general supplies by 1 May 1942 and, in 

ammunition, one basic load plus six 

times tlle total August 1941 consumption in all categories. In armament, 

"preference" was to be given to the 

"elevated requirements of the Army."' 

The man to whom the job of executing 

tlle directive fell was Albert Speer, who 

replaced Todt on 8 February, the day 

the latter was killed in an airplane 

crash . Speer's appointment, as it 

turned out, was going to have several 

advantages: Speer very quickly displayed a high talent as a production 

organizer; he had Hitler's confidence; 

6Chej H. Ruest. und BdE, Stab OKH, Nr. 1441141 , 

Notiun ueber 0rlragheim Fllehreram 23.12.41, 28.12.41, 

CMI-I X-124 file. 

7lbid. 

tl Willi A. Boelcke, Delltsch/ands RileS/Wig im Zweiten 

Weltkrieg (Fran Hun: Alhenaion. 1969), pp. 61-64. 
A TIME FOR DEC[SIONS 

and he managed to acquire more authority than his predecessor had had . 

Nevertheless, neither a directive nor 

the promise of its brilliant execution 

could circumvent the hard realities 

pressing in on all sides. The Germans 

had run the 1941 campaign on stockpiles of supplies accumulated beforehand. By November, they had 

a lmost exhausted these, and from then 

on, they had had to provide for their 

armies in the Soviet Union out of current production, which, even without 

the cutbacks made during u1e summer, 

would have been insufficient to keep 

them adequately supplied. Some kinds 

of artiUery ammunition had been running short. Less than one in three of 

over two ulOusand tanks and self-propelled assault guns lost had been replaced 9 Trucks and other motor 

vehicles had been worn out, destroyed , 

or broken down in such numbers and 

their production cut back so far that 

Halder had told the chiefs of staff at 

the Orsha Conference that same 

month u1at the infantry division would 

have to be completely demotorized. 

In December and January, Hitler 

had counted on a several months' 

pause in the fighting, during which 

consumption would decline and production could catch up. What he was 

going to get was vast new wastage of a ll 

kinds of equipment during the winter 

and spring batues. The Aow from the 

pipelines would have to be strong just 

to keep up, much less get ahead, and it 

would have to draw from a depleted 

reservoir. Electricity output in Germany was cut back more uun 20 percent in January to conserve coal; even 

so, production of iron and steel in 

9Reinhardt. MosJwlt, p. J 14 . 

285 

tonnages declined in the first quarter 

of 1942. Nonferrous metals, particularly a luminum and copper, rationed since September 1941, could not 

be supplied to some high-priority industries in the a llotted quantities.!O 

The most pervasive deficiency was in 

manpower. The factories needed men 

and so did the army, and after u1e 

campaign began in the Soviet Union, 

either one cou ld only get more men at 

the other's expense. At least half of the 

July directive's purpose had been to get 

skilled workers out of uniform and 

back into the shops. A million and a 

half had been needed . As planned , the 

army reduction would have supplied a 

ha lf million!! By January, that prospect had vanished completely. On the 

5th, Fromm had told his senior generals in the Replacement Army, "We believed we would be able to put 500,000 

men back into industry. Now we will 

have, instead , to take 600,000 men 

OUt."12 For the most part, however, the 

loss to the labor force wou ld not be 

translated into a net increase in fighting strength . The OKH was committed 

to supply 500,000 replacements for the 

Eastern Front by I April and expected 

to need 340,000 more by 1 June.!' [n 

the 14July directive, H itler had wanted 

to delay calling up the men born in 

1922. That resolve had only lasted until 

October." By February, virtually all of 

the 1922 class was at the front or would 

be there "before the 1942 [offensive] 

operations begin," and the OKH was 

I 0lbicl. , pp. 284 - 86. 

1 II bid., p. 39. 

''lDcr Cluf der Heeresruesltmg lind Befehlshaber drs 

Erso/vleeres, der Cluj (Ies Slabr.J, Tagebuch, 5 Jan 42, 

CMH X- 124 file. 

13QK1-1, GenSMH, a,g. Ahl., K riegslagebuch, 1-5 Jan and 16- 22 Feb 42, H 1/21 3 File. 

HRcinharch , M os/ulIl, p. 40. 
286 

prepanng to stan taking 111 the 1923 

c1ass. 15 

A 11 Offensive in Ihe Soulh 

Hiller knew in Novembe r 1941 that, 

in all likelihood , he would be tied down 

in LI,e Soviet Union during the coming 

year, and he knew that he would not 

have the resources to mount another 

ge ne ra l offensive like BARBAROSSA. 

Nonetheless, he a t no time allowed 

those considerations o r the mischances 

of the winter to sway him from an early 

llIrn to the attack with as much force as 

he could assemble. T he directive of 8 

December 1941 set as one of its three 

obj ectives "a basis for the es umpti ~ 

of la rger offensive operanons 111 1942, 

with the other twO bell1g to hold the 

territory a lread y taken and to resta nd 

refi t the armi es in the East. The dlrecli ve specified a drive into the Caucasus 

in the spring and a "clean-u p" around 

Leningrad and south of Lake 6d oga 

"when re ll1 force ments a rrive. On 

the 20th , when he was having to revise 

his instructions o n resting and refitLin g, Hitler rema rked that Italy, Hungary, and Rumania we re g01l1 g to be 

"induced " to furl1lsh strong forces 111 

1942 and to have them read y to be 

brought east "befo re the snow melts: 17 

T h ree days later, he ordered Fromm to 

set up half-a-dozen new divisions by 

spring for an offe nsive to Rostov and 

May kop.'8 On 3 Janua ry, he told the 

OK/I , CI'IISIlIH , a'g. Abt., Krirgstagebllch. 10 - 13 

and 16- 22 Feb 42. H 1/2 13 file. 

1HOKW, WFSt. Aut. L (/ O/>.) N,: 442~90 ~1, \.1.~iJ lIlIg 

Nr. )9. 8.12.41. Cerman High Le\'el Directi ves, CMH 

filelt. 

17/-1 ahifrDairy, vol. III . p. 36 1. 

• 8Der Chef drr H l'l'rf'snustllllg IHld 8ifehl51mbv des 

Er5fllzlil'l'res. til'r Ch1 (II'S Slabfs, Tagl'bllch. 23 Dec 4 1. 

CMI-i X - 124 fil e. 

MOSCOW T O STALINGRAD 

Japanese Ambassador, General Hirosi 

Oshima, that he did nOL contemplate 

any mo re offensives in the center of the 

German front in the Soviet Ul1lon but 

would concentrate on the south , the 

Caucasus, "as soon as the wea th ~ is 

better." " On the 18th , he gave Field 

Marshal Bock two missions for Army 

Gro up South : "to hold for the present 

and attack in the spring."'o During LI,e 

winte r he often talked longingly about 

the campaigning season to come, and 

in March , making it clear that the mall1 

e ffort henceforth would be elsewhe re, 

he began leaving Army Groups North 

and Center to shift for themselves. 

Altho ugh Hitle r was unswervingly 

determined to have an offenSive on the 

south Rank in 1942, the planning, pa rticularly as compa red to the elaborate 

work done on BARBAROSSA the yea r 

before, appea rs to have been a lmost 

desultor y. O KH instructiolls, sent on 15 

Februa ry, dealing with procedures to 

be followed during the rasputztsa, alluded "in ver y broad terms" to .operati o n s "conte mpl a te d " la te r In th e 

spring" On the 20th, ~;k sent Hitle r, 

"on Halder's suggestion: a memorandum on the probable sllllalion 111 the 

spring and the conduct of an offe nSive. 

El eve n days la te r, Ha lde r Said Hiller 

had the memorandum but had not read 

it because he had "so little time for ex- . . " ! ? amining fa r-r each1l1 g o pe ra tI o ns. -

Ha lder talked to his branch chi efs on 6 

Ma rch abo ut r ebuilding the Easte rn 

Fro nt a rmi es, pa rti cul a rl y th ose tha t 

III Hans-Ado lf Jacobsen. /939- /945. Der Zweile 

U'ellkrifg;'1 Chrollik 111I(J Dokummlell (Darmstadl: Wehr 

und Wissen Vcrlagsgescllschaft. 196 1). p. 288. 

'l0Bo(k Dj(/I~ , ~lell II. 18 Jan 42 . 

21 /bid .. 15 Feb 42. 

2~ bid .. 20 Feb and 1 Mar 42. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

would be on the offensive.

23 On the 

15th, in his annual Memorial Day 

(H eldengedenktag) address in Berlin , 

Hitler, in effect, closed the books on the 

winter and promised to wreak unspecified destruction on "the Bolshevik colossus" in the coming summer.24 

After mid-March, tlle pace of the 

planning did pick up. On the 18th, the 

OKH assigned a code name, SIEGFRIED. 

to the summer offensive. Halder and 

his staff went to work on the deployment, which they at first thought would 

take until August but later estimated 

could be mostly completed by the end 

of the first week in July with some elements left to come as late as August. 

Halder took the deployment plan to 

Hitler on the 28th, and in the subsequent discussion , Hitler gave him the 

objectives for the offensive and instructions for its execution." The OKW 

Operations Staff, in its capacity as 

Hitler's personal staff, took the results 

and worked them into a draft directive, 

which Hitler signed on 5 April after 

"heavily revising" and adding "substantial new parts" to it. In the interim, he 

had also dropped the code name SIEG· 

FRIED and substituted BLAu ("blue").26 

The directive, Weisung 41, in somewhat ambivalent terms, gave two objectives for the summer: to destroy the 

Soviet Union's defensive strength "conclusively" and to deprive it of the resources necessary for its war economy 

"as far as possible." The "general intent" would be to bring about the fall of 

23Halder Dial)" vol. III , p. 410. 

24Domarus, Hilfn; vol. II , p. 1850. 

2~OK , GenSldH, Op. Abt. NT. 420110/42, 18.3.42, 

1-1 22 215 file; Halder Dial)" vol. III , pp. 3 16, 417, 

420- 21. 

260KW; S{ellll. WFSI, Kriegsgeschichtliche Ableilung. 

Kriegstagebuch, 1.4.-30.6.42, 2 and 5 Apr 42. I.M.T. 

1807 file . 

287 

Leningrad and to break into the Caucasus area. The main effort would be 

on the south flank where the aims 

would be to destroy the enemy forces 

forward of the Don River, take the 

Caucasus oil area, and gain possession 

of the Caucasus crossings. The action 

against Leningrad would be held in 

abeyance pending favorable circumstances or availability of forces. 27 

Although much of Directive 41 can 

be, and in some accounts virtually all of 

it has been , attributed directly to Hitler, 

the plan for executing the offensive 

appears to have been derived from the 

memorandum Bock had submitted in 

February. In it, he and the Army 

Group South staff had maintained that 

a drive into the Caucasus would first 

have to be covered on the north and 

east by advances that would extend the 

front east of Kursk ninety miles to 

Voronezh and thence soutlleast along 

the Don River to the vicinity of Stalingrad, a distance of close to three 

hundred miles at the latitude of Stalingrad. To go that far in one sweep on 

a front over three-hundred-and-fifty 

miles long would have required more 

strength than Bock could imagine having in the spring or summer of 1942. 

Consequently, he had projected a 

phased offensive. The first phase 

would carry east to the Don between 

Voronezh and Novaya Kalitva , providing cover on the north. (Map 25.) In the 

second phase, the armor used in the 

first would move southeast from Novaya 

Kalitva toward the lower Don 

while the army group's right flank 

drove east to Rostov and the Don. A 

third phase would then be required to 

27 0KW, WFSt, Nr. 556/6/42, WelsulIg ·11, 5.4.42, 

German High Le\'e1 Directives, CMH files. 
288 

MAP 25 

take possession of the Don bend and 

the narrows between the Don and the 

Volga west of Stalingrad. Bock had 

believed he would need eighty-five divisions at the start, thirty-nine more 

than he had had in February 1942. 

Because he could not see where the 

divisions would come from or, considering the condition of the railroads, 

how they would get deployed in time , 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

PLAN FOR SUMMER OFFENSIVE 

ARMY GROUP SOUTH 

19 Februarv 1942 

-------- Front tine, 19 February 

--;;;:;;;:;:; pt88ummer limited offensive 

<: Phase 1 operation 

¢======= Phase 2 operation 

o 

I 

o , 100 Miles , 100 Kilometer, 

he had described the memorandum as 

a "theoretical inquiry into the operational possibilities. ·2. Directive 41 took the device of the 

phased offensive from the Bock memorandum, keeping the progression 

from north to south but altering the 

'l8Df'r OberbeJehlshaber drr II. Cr. Surd, fa Nr. 276142, 

BetT: Fortfll ehnmg der Operatioll im Sommer 1942 , 

/9.2.42, MS P- 11 4c, J>l. III. CMH files. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 289 

SUMMER CAMPAIGN 

PROJECTED IN DIRECTIVE 41 

5 April 1942 

- --- - Front line, 5 April 

- - Phase line 

01- ____ --., __ --1'9° Milas 

o 100 Kilometer. 

\ 0 

, '" I Vofchansko ..... PBV!OVSk. '-f::s 

'l, 

I 

. KhBrkQ.v 

\ 

, \ 

I 

I 

I 

BLAU '" II 

Jeupysnsk 

--------.,-

MAP 26 

distribution. The first two phases, subsequently known as BLAU I and BLAU 

II, by carrying the advance between 

the Donets and Don to the vicinity of 

Millerovo, only slightly enlarged on the 

first phase proposed in the memorandum. BLAU III, on the other hand, 

omitted the tllird phase proposed in 

the memorandum by merging it with 

the second phase to complete the drive 

", 

BOgUChj 

/ DonR 

c-1 .... ;. -9 

7-

~ • 

'" BLAU III 

Tsimlyanskiy -- BLAU IV 

to Stalingrad. A "BLAU IV," the advance 

into the Caucasus, was implicit in the 

directive but not described. (Map 26.) 

The rearrangement of the phases, 

far from being merely cosmetic or a 

matter of tactical taste , was for several 

reasons the actual heart of the plan. 

For one, it would let BLAU be run on a 

feasible schedule. The deployment, as 

Bock had pointed out in the memoran-
290 

dum, was going to be difficult and slow, 

and it would be most difficult and 

slowest on the south. In their compressed form, however, BLAU I could 

be completed and BLAU II be started 

and brought well along while troops 

and material for BLAU III were still 

being deployed. Secondly, BLAU was 

going to depend heavily on young, 

inexperienced, hastily trained troops. 

A small BLAU I and an only somewhat 

larger BLAU II would give opportunities to build experience and confidence, particularly confidence. As 

Hitler put it, "The operation must start 

with success: young troops cannot be 

exposed to setbacks. Setbacks must not 

occur."29 

Finally, the object of the summer 

campaign would be not just to advance 

but to destroy the Soviet forces while 

doing so. Hitler believed this had to be 

done by small, tight encirclements. The 

sweeping maneuvers of the previous 

summer, he maintained, had let too 

many of the enemy get away. The BLAU 

operations, he said, were designed so 

that "in each one of these attacks the 

ground and air forces can achieve the 

highest degree of concentration at the 

decisive points."30 

Obliquely, Dire ctive 41 also addressed the question of forces raised in 

the Bock memorandum. In a postscript to the operational plan , it assigned the long stationary front that 

would develop on the Don below Voronezh to the allies-Hungarians on the 

north, Italians in the center, and Rumanians on the southeast. The deployment was significant because the Hun29H alder Diw )', vol . III . p. 420. 

300KW, WFSt, Nr. 556 16142, Weisll llg 41 , 5.4.42, 

German High Le" el Directi ves. CMH files. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

garians and Rumanians, who would 

rather have fought each otller than the 

Russians, could not be stationed in adjacent sectors. All tl1ree would have to 

be backstopped by German divisions, 

but many fewer of those would be 

needed than if they had to man tlle 

whole line alone. Hitler, who had not 

particularly welcomed allied participation in the 1941 campaign, had let Field 

Marshal Keitel, chief of the OKW, do 

the recruiting during the winter. Hungary, jealous at earlier German favoritism toward Rumarua , had been the 

slowest to "volunteer." Italy had been 

the most willing because the Duee, Benito Mussolini, had wanted since June 

1941 to have his troops participate in 

the defeat of communism. 3 1 The allied 

troops were not trained or armed for 

fighting on the Eastern Front, and they 

were especially weak in armor and antitank weapons. Their sense of commitment and endurance also was doubtful , 

and Hitler's instructions were "to hold 

them to the cause" by showing them 

"fanatical loyalty" and by being "unstintingly generous" with praise."' 

Hitler's R estless Spring 

The coming of spring in Russia in 

1942 gave Hitler time to turn to other 

affairs: relations with the allies, the 

defense of the Atlantic perimeter, and 

the home front. On 6 April , the Rumanian Chief of the General Staff, General Ilia SteAea, visited the V.'o/fsschanze, 

and in the last week of the month , 

31 vV~h r Warlimolll. 1m H auptquarrier del" dell tscheu 

Welmn(u;hl, /939-/945 (Frankfurl: Bernard & Graefe, 

1962), p. 244 ; Waher Goe rlitz, cd .. Th e M emoirs of 

Field-M arshal Keitel (New York: Stein and Da y, 1966), 

pp. 174- 76. 32 0KW, Stef/v. WFSI, Kriegsgesrhichtliche Abteiilmg. 

KI'iegstagebuch, 1.4-30.6.42,5 Jun 4 2, l.M .T. 1807 file. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 291 

HITLER'S "YOUNG" TROOPS ON THE MARCH 

Mussolini came to Salzburg. In between, Hitler conferred decorations on 

the president of Finland, the king of 

Bulgaria, the " field marshal" of 

Croatia, and Admiral Miklos Honhy, 

the regent of Hungary. "" Some weeks 

later, on 4June, Hitler made a surprise 

trip by air to Finland to congratulate 

Marshal Mannerheim, commander in 

chief of the Finnish Army, on his seventy-fifth birthday. 

Hitler had fretted endlessly throughout the winter about possible AngloAmerican landings on the Atlantic 

frontier. That had been one of the 

r easo ns for sending General 

Falkenhorst, commander of the Army 

33 Domarus. /-l itler, vol. 11 , pp. 1860-62. 

of Norway, back to Norway. It had also 

motivated a train of orders on coastal 

defense and, in February, the dash 

through the English Channel by the 

warships Scharnhorst, Cneisenau, and 

Prinz Eugen, which were supposed to 

have gone on to Norwegian bases. 

Hitler had already sent the battleship 

Tirpilz, Germany's largest and one of 

the most powerful in the world, to 

Trondheim in January. In February, he 

had assigned Generalfe ldmarschal l 

Wilhelm List to inspect the defenses of 

Norway and nonhe rn Finland. Directive 40, of 23 March , dealt entirely with 

coastal defense, and a British raid on 

the naval base at St. Nazaire had 

prompted a shake-up of the commands 

in the West. Ta lking to Mussolini , on 30 

April , Hitler dwelled at length on the 
292 

dangers of British landings in Norway 

or France and supposed Swedish and 

Vichy-French hostility."' 

The winter was over but not forgotten, and Hitler decided to give an 

accounting to the German people on 

the afternoon of Sunday, 26 April. The 

forum he chose was the Reichslag, 

which having provided the stage for 

several authentic victory speeches, was 

now to furnish the window dressing for 

a somewhat spurious one. He had no 

conquests to claim. Instead, he undertook to elevate the winter campaign to 

a triumph over the elements, which he 

embellished with comparisons to 

Napoleon's experience in 1812. He said 

a battle had been fought during the 

winter that had raised problems "far 

exceeding what should or could be 

expected in normal wars," and he gave 

himself credit for having confronted, 

"with my own person, what destiny 

appeared to have in store for us."" 

Goebbels, the German propaganda 

minister, rated the speech a resounding 

success.36 Count Galeazzo Ciano, the 

I talian foreign minister, far less an admirer of Hitler than Goebbels was, 

found the tone "not very optimistic," 

and observed, " ... there is not a hint 

of what all are waiting for-the ending 

of the war."37 What struck Ciano particularly was that Hitler apparently 

took for granted a second winter of 

war in the Soviet Union, and he was 

sparing, for him almost diffident, in his 

predictions for the coming summer. In 

3~Dil'lIstlumder Adjllial/t (SchmulIdl), Bericht ueber Bespree/wlig am. 30.4.42, CMI-I X- IOIO file. 

3s Domarll s, /-liflfr, vol. II , pp. 1867-71. 

3 t1Louis P. Lochner, ed., The (Jebbel~ Diaries (Garden 

Cit y: Doubleday & Co., 1948), pp. 19 1- 93. 

37 Hugh Gibson, ed. , The Cia llo Diaries (Garden City: 

Doubleday & Co., 1946) p. 476. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

contrast, he talked at length about what 

he would do to be read y for the next 

winter "no matter where it finds US ."38 

For tile first time, Hitler was hedging 

on his own strategic initiative. 

The speech also did not impress 

Ciano, "because by now all his speeches 

are more or less alike." Ciano noted 

that Hitler had asked for additional 

powers (which, of course, were 

granted) but dismissed that as merely a 

dramatic gesture since Hitler already 

possessed complete power. 3 • What 

Ciano, and probably most otller outsiders, did not catch was that Hitler's 

request was aimed at a group over 

which he did not yet have complete 

power, namely, the German generals. 

Although Hitler at one point spoke of 

his confidence in "my . .. Reichs Marshal, field marshals, admirals, colonel 

generals, and nunlerous other conlmanders at the fronts," in other passages, he barely took the trouble to 

conceal his displeasure with the generals. He shared the credit he gave himself for the winter campaign with the 

soldiers, noncommissioned officers, 

and officers "up to those generals who, 

recognizing the danger, risked their 

own lives to urge the soldier onward." 

Elsewhere, he rema rked that he had 

been "compelled to intervene severely 

in a few individual cases where nerves 

gave way, discipline broke down, or 

insufficient sense of duty was displayed."'o Talking to Speer, some weeks 

later, he said "almost all" of the generals had failed him during the winter'l 

The request for more powerswhich was, of course, granted-while 

38 Domams, Hitler, vol. II, p. 1873. 

39Cibson, Ciant) Diaries, p. 476. 

'IODomarus,Hitler, vol. II , pp. 1872- 73. 

41 Boelcke, Rueslung, p. 127. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

ostensibly motivated by a recent court 

decision on a civilian case, was put in 

terms that could not have been lost on 

the generals. Hitler asked for, " .. . an 

explicit confirmation that I have the 

legal right to hold everyone to the 

fulfillment of his duty and to reduce to 

the common ranks or remove from 

post and position, without regard for 

acquired rights or status, anyone whom 

I find not to have done his duty."" To 

Goebbels, Hitler remarked afterward 

that he was determined "to invoke 

sharper measures against certain types 

of swivel-chair generals."" 

After the one-day Reichstag session, 

Hitler went south to meet Mussolini at 

Salzburg and spent several days at the 

Be1g/wf, his Bavarian retreat, and returned to the lMJl[sschanze on 3 May. He 

had intended to vacation longer at the 

Berglwf but had cut his stay short because of snow, which he claimed he 

could not stand the sight of after the 

last winter. He was restless, and in May, 

he made several excursions to Berlin. 

On I June, he went to Bock's headquarters in Poltava to congratulate the army 

commanders on the Kharkov battle. 44 

Three days later, he was in Finland on 

the birthday visit to Mannerheim. On 

the Stll, he went, aboard his private 

train, via Berlin to the Berg/wf to complete his interrupted vacation and did 

not return to the lMJl[sschanze until the 

24th. 

German Strategic Estimates 

Men, Firepower, and Mobility 

While Hitler was occupied with plans 

for the summer and other activities, 

42Domarus. H itler, vol. II, p. 1874. 

43Lochner. Goebbels Diaries, p. 192. 

HBocH. Diary, Osten II. I Jun 42. 

293 

the OKH was engaged in compiling a 

document that began as a precursor to 

Directive 41 and eventually became a 

subsidiary companion piece to it. On 19 

March , tlle OKW had announced that 

it proposed to compile an estimate of 

the Wehrm.acht's strength for the spring 

of 1942 and asked the armed services 

to supply data 45 The first army submission at the end of the month had 

been a gloomy recital. During the 

winter, the forces on tlle Eastern Front 

had lost nearly 7,000 artillery pieces 

ranging from 37-mm. antitank guns to 

21O-mm. howitzers. TIle new production, restarted in January, could not 

replace more than part of them. Of 

close to 75,000 motor transport vehicles lost, only 7,500 had been replaced; 

another 25,000 could be secured in 

Germany, but the absolute deficit 

would still be 42,500. More than 

179,000 horses had died, and only 

20,000 new animals had been secured. 

The 176 million gallons of motor fuel 

and 390,000 tons of ammunition consumed had cut deep into the stockpiles, 

wh ich would therefore be proportionately smaller in 1942. The conclusion was, "The shortages cannot, for 

the time being, be covered by new 

production or by rebuilding. This will 

compel cutbacks and sharp emphasis 

on priorities in all areas."4. 

Five weeks later, the OKH refined its 

estimate to eliminate what it pronounced (internally) to be "nonsense" 

in an OKW draft summary and to take 

into account readiness for the require450KW, WFSt, Org. (I), z.usammenJassende Dan tellllllg 

de,- Wehrkraft im Fn.tehj ahr 1942, 19.3.42, H I 382 !lIe. 

460KH, GellSlI1H, Gen. Qu .lQu.3 , Nr. 18270/42 , 

Darstellilng der H't.-hrknifl der Welmnachtfller 19-12 du.rch 

OKW, J I.3.42, H 1382 file. 
294 

ments established by Directive 41'7 

The resu lt was a mixed picture or as 

the OKH put it, a "review of efforts 

and accomplishments, taking into account also certain irremediable deficiencies." Of the latter, two were 

immediately acute: the inability of the 

industrial switchover to army production made in January to be effective 

before the start of the 1942 summer 

campaign and the pressures the winter 

had imposed on men, material, and 

time. They were affecting short-term 

readiness. 1\\'0 other, the strain on raw 

materials and the mutually interacting 

civilian and military manpower shortages, affected the short- and long-term 

readiness. To relate the "accomplishments" and the deficiencies, the OKH 

expanded the estimate to include 

"striking power" (Schlagkraft) as well as 

conventional force strength. 

Under the first ca tegory of dle three 

considered-men, firepower, and mobility-the estimate gave the a rmy's 

"stricdy numerical" strength (in terms 

of divisions) as of I May 1942 as greater 

than that of June 1941 by 7 infantry 

and 3 panzer divisions with 4 more 

infantry divisions to come before late 

June 1942'8 On the other hand, even 

though the Eastern Frol1l had received 

1.1 million replacements since 22 June 

194 I, it was short 625,000 men as of I 

HThe OKW draft has nOI been found. References 

lO it arc in OKI-I, lIStdJ-/ , Org. Abt. Nr. 389142. 

/0.5.42, H I 382 file. 

480 n 8 April 194 1, Halder had proposed eliminating tWO divisions because Lhey on ly existed on paper. 

and Hidei' had refused. OKW, KTB, m t. II, pt. 2, p. 

3 t 7. At the Orsha Con fe rence in November 194 1. the 

chief of the Organizational Branch, OKH , had talked 

abom disbanding eleven di\'isions on the Eastern 

FrolllLO bring the olhe rs ttp to strength. That also had 

not been done. H. Cr. Sued, Der Ch ff des Celleralstabes, 

/(1 ,vI", 2023141 , VorlragmQ/IZ., 17. 11.41 , AOK 6 

18 111i file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

May 1942. Army Group South had 50 

percent of its original infantry 

strength; Army Groups Center and 

North each 35 pe rcent. Army Group 

South could be full y replenished by the 

time the summer offensive began. but 

it would take until August to bring 

Cente r and North up to 55 percel1l of 

the ir original infantry strengths. Reserves in the form of new units could 

not be created. All of the men , wea pons, and equipment becoming available in the summer, including the 1923 

class of recruits, would have to be used 

to replace losses. The forces on the 

Eastern Front would have a solid core 

of veterans, but they would have to 

absorb large numbers of what formerly 

would have been regarded as unde rage 

and overage recruits, and owing to the 

losses during the winter, they would be 

short on experienced officers and noncommissioned officers. 

As an "accomplishment" in sustaining firepower in spite of curtailed production, the army had sent to the 

Eastern Front 725,000 riRes, 27,000 

machine guns, 2,700 antitank guns, 

and 559 pieces of light and 350 pieces 

of heavy field artillery. The weapons 

requirements for Army Group South 

would be "substantially" met by the 

time operations resumed. Army 

Groups Center and North would have 

enough infantry weapons to arm the 

troops they had , but their artillery batteries would have to be reduced from 4 

to 3 guns and some of those would 

have to be old or captured pieces. All 

told, 3,300 tanks would be on hand in 

the East, 360 less than inJune 1941 , but 

heavier armament would make up the 

difference" The most serious prob-

~1I 111e Mark III and IV tanks were being converled 

LO moullllong-barreled guns. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 295 

IMPROVISED MOBILITY, THE " MARDER" (MARTI N) , Captured Soviet 76.2-111111. Antitank 

Gun on an Obsolete Tank Chassis 

lem with firepower was likely to be 

ammunition . Output of artillery and 

some kinds of antitank ammunition 

would not get into full swing until the 

fall , and "strains" on the ammunition 

stocks could be expected by August. 

Mobility was the least satisfactory category. Army Group South's armored 

and motorized units would attain about 

80 percent of the mobility they had in 

1941. The infantry, however, would 

have to make do with horses in place of 

trucks. Army Groups North and Center would not be capable of "larger 

operations" except along railroads. 

The 75,OOO-vehicle deficit in motor 

transport would not be covered by 

much more than half, and new production in the corning months would not 

be enough to cover the expected summer's losses. Nearly a quarter million 

horses were being requisitioned in Germany and the occupied Soviet territory, 

but they would not be enough to compensate for the numbers lost and for 

those required to substitute for motor 

transport, and they would be lighter, 

less powerful animals than had been 

used in the past. 

"A complete replenishment," the estimate concluded , "ca n only be 

achieved at Army Group South. And 

there the deficiencies in mobility and 

the wear of the winter campaign on 

men, horses, and vehicles raise a likelihood that the endurance will be less 

than it was in the summer of 1941. In all 

other theaters, the Army can meet its 
296 

defensive obligations provided no presently unforeseeable events occur."'· 

The navy and air force estimates, as 

the OKW had probably desired, were 

cast in more general terms. The navy, 

which only had peripheral missions in 

the war in the East, balanced a "clear" 

German superiority in submarine warfare against an "oppressive" overall 

British and American naval superiority. The air force reported some decline in numbers of aircraft, compensated for by newer models, better armame nt , and more experienced 

crews 5 ! In fact, tl1e air strength in me 

East, 2,750 planes, would not be substantially less than it had been in June 

1941 (2,770 planes), and a larger proportion (1,500) would be assigned to 

support Army Group South.52 

On 20 June, eight days before the 

summe r offensive began, Halder made 

his own capsule estimate. BLAU I was 

read y. The buildup of men and material for BLAU II was still underway but 

would be satisfactorily completed in 

time. It was too early to make a judgment on BLAU III. The Germans 

would have the initia tive, and the morale and enthusiasm of the troops were 

"gratifying."53 

Of Soviet Capabilities 

At the Orsha Conference in November 1941, Halder told the chiefs of staff, 

"Although [we are] weak in the knees 

... , the enemy presently is worse off 

than we are; he is on the verge of 

:;OOKH, Clu1 H . Ruest. u. Bd£, AHA, Chef des Siahes 

N r. 4//42, Weltrkrafl (Ler H'elmfl(lclit im Fnuhjahr 1942, 

12.5.42, H I 382 fi le. 

'OK~ ~ Wl'hrkraJt dpl" Wehrmarht im Fruehjahr 1942, 

6.6.42, in Jacobsen, Cltronik, pp. 314 - 17. 

52Briush Air Ministry Pamphlet 248, pp. 162, 178. 

53Haidl'r Dim), vol. III , p. 46 1. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

collapse."54 In m e spring of 1942, 

Halder's aphorism acquired a renewed 

currency. Sober, even somber, as their 

view of their own condition was, the 

Germans felt compelled to believe that 

the Russians were worse off. Having 

endured me winter wimout breaking, 

the Germans felt mat they had proved 

memselves superior to the enemy at his 

best. This appeared to reconfirm what 

mey had, in fact, always be lieved, 

namely, mat the strategic problem me 

Soviet Union posed for tl1em was not 

qualitive but quantitative, a matter essentially of arimmetic. The winter had 

drastically altered tl1e German numbers, but had it not done the same and 

more on the Soviet side? 

Foreign Armies East, the OKH intelligence branch concerned with the Soviet Armed Forces, co mpil ed a 

comprehensive estimate of Soviet 

strengm in the coming summer as an 

annex to the first draft of Directive 41. 

It was a small masterpiece of staff intelligence work-logical, precise, and persuasive. It was also narrowly conceived 

and tied to its premises. The first and 

most crucial of the latter was that the 

Soviet Union used its manpowe r essentially the same way Germany did, which 

meant that me absolute ceiling on Soviet strength was roughly 18 million 

men. The losses in killed and captured 

between June 1941 and April 1942 (6.8 

million) and in eligibles left behind in 

the occupied territories had brought 

the number down to 9.73 million , not 

far from a 50 percent reduction. The 

Soviet Armed Forces, as of 1 April, had 

6.6 million men and were 20 percent 

below established strength. The dif-

~H. Gr. Nord, Chef des GeneralstabeJ, la Nr: 769141, 

NiederschriJl lI eber die Bespreclmllg beim Cluif des GenStdH, 13.11.41, AOK 1835945/1 file. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

ference between the potential and actual strengths, 3.13 million, Foreign 

Armies East figured, was the manpower reserve. After allowances were 

made for unreliables and physically 

unfit, it would yield l.2 million men to 

cover the existing deficit and l.12 m;llion for new units. From the 1.12 million, the Soviet Army could form sixty 

rifle divisions, twelve tank brigades, 

and some lesser units. Soviet armament 

output, Foreign Armies East predicted , 

would stay as it appeared to be, adequate for current operations, with 

chronic shortages of hand weapons, 

and not sufficient to build reserves. 

Coke and steel shortages, however, 

could cause cutbacks. The sixty rifle 

divisions and twelve tank brigades, 

then, were the last real Soviet trump 

and, on the scale of past experience, 

not a hugely important one. The estimate concluded: "The enemy can no 

longer withstand losses such as he took 

in the battles from Bialystok to 

Vyazma-Bryansk [June to October 

1941]. He also cannot for a second time 

throw reserves into the scales the way 

he did in the winter of 1941142."" 

After another month of study, Foreign 

Armies East reported, "The figure '60' 

keeps recurring as the number of units 

in the Soviet operational reserve. "56 

Hitler told the Reickstag, "The hour will 

come when the front frees itself from 

its torpor and then history will decide 

who won in this winter: the attacker 

who idiotically sacrificed his masses of 

550KH, GenStdU , FHO, Russischer KraeJtestalld. 

31.3.42, H 3/ 11 3A file; OKH, GenSldH, FHO, AuswerteGrupp/? All Cr. II, 4.4.42 and OKH, GenSldH, Fremde 

H em' Osl Nr. 803142, (III 01'. Abt. 4.4.42, H 3/ 198 file. 

f,6()KH, GenSfdH, Abt. Fremde HeeH' OSI, Brurleifllng 

deT Gesamifeindlage IImJ iilff! Enllllickltmgsmoeglichkeitell, 

1.5.42, H 3/198 file. 

297 

men, or the defender who simply held 

his positions."" 

Foreign Armies East had worked 

hard at counting Soviet divisions in the 

1941 campaign and had compiled volumes of reports on those actually and 

supposedly destroyed. In November, 

Colonel Eberhard Kinzel, then the 

branch chief, had admitted that the 

count so far had been inconclusive, to 

say the least, and had said that counting divisions did not mean much insofar as tlle Soviet Union was concerned. 

It had had (by his estimate) 140 divisions inJune 1941 , had suffered gigantic losses during the summer, and had 

had 190 divisions standing in the line 

just before the battles of Bryansk and 

Vyazma in October. Neve rtheless, he 

had maintained, the system had been 

improved and now reliably showed the 

total Soviet nominal strength to be 160 

divisions and the actual effective 

strength to be the equivalent of 75 

divisions and 40 tank brigades. By 

spring, he had predicted, the Soviet 

Union could have 150 divisions and 40 

tank brigades at full strength and no 

more. 58 As of 20 June 1942, the Foreign Armies East count stood at 270 

rifle divisions, 115 rifle brigades, 69 

tank brigades, and 2 tank divisions. 

Nevertheless, five days later, Hitler 

speculated that BLAu would go faster 

and more easily than had been expected because the Russians, by his 

count, had already lost 80 divisions in 

the German preliminary offensives.59 

7Domarus Hiller, vol. II , p. 1875. 

5~ . Gr. Nord, Cluf des Geueralslabes, la NT. 769141, 

Nie(JerschriJt ueber Bespredlllllg beim Chef des GellSldH , 

13.11.41. AOK 18 359451l file. 

59H alder Diary. vol. Ill . p. 461 ; OK~V, WFSl, 

Kriegsgeschichlliche Ablei/ll llg, KriegstagelJllch, 1.4.-

]0.6.-12,25 Jun 42, I.MT 1807 file. 
298 

The main German strategic interest 

had always been confined essentially to 

one question: Where would the Soviet 

forces have to stand and accept a fight 

to the finish? Most of the generals had 

thought that it would be in the Moscow 

region. Hitler had believed it would be 

in the south, the Ukraine and the Caucasus. In 1941, the Germans had tried 

both , had run out of time and had not 

proved-or disproved-the validity of 

either view. Late in the campaign , in 

November, the OKH contention, as put 

by Halder, still had been: 

The oil region [of the Caucasus] is not 

essential to the Soviet conduct of the war, so his defense there will be passive, that is, 

to deny us the oil, not to preserve his own 

existence. 

Moscow is the central point of all Russian life. It is also the western terminus of 

the land bridge between European and 

Asiatic Russia and has decisive operational 

import for Soviet offensive plans. 60 

Hitler, on the other hand, was more 

than ever certain , after ti,e Moscow offensive failed , that he had been right 

all along. As the gist of a talk with Hitler in March 1942, Goebbels recorded: 

TI,e Fuehrer had a plan that was bound 

to lead to victory. The Fuehrer had no intention whatever 

of going to Moscow. He wanted to cut off 

tJ,e Caucasus and thereby strike the Soviet 

system at its most vulnerable point. But 

Brauchitsch and his general staff knew 

better. 6 ! 

A1t1lOugh the points of view about 

them apparently remained as far apart 

as ever, Moscow and the Caucasus did 

not reappear as rival objectives in 1942, 

BOH . Gr. Sued, Der Chef des Genera/slabes, la Nr. 

212314 1 \'ortrags,wtiz, 17.11.4 1, AOK 6 18111 7 file. 

61 Lochne r, Goebbels Diaries. p. 136. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

and the debate was not reopened. 

While the Moscow offensive still 

seemed headed toward a successful 

conclusion in late 1941, Hitler had designated the Caucasus as the next objective. From December on, the choice 

had been between the Caucasus and 

nothing, and the determinant had 

been the German, not the Soviet condition. General Fromm, for instance, 

who believed no major offensive 

should be attempted in 1942, had conceded tI,at one in the south could be 

worthwhile for the sake of the oil but 

then doubted that the army would 

have enough strength to get to the oil 

fields.· 2 By the spring of 1942, Army 

Group South was the only one of ti,e 

three army groups anywhere near fit 

for an offensive, and a discussion of the 

strategic implications for the Soviet 

Union of an attack on Moscow would 

have been largely beside the point. 

Besides, Hitler was in no mood to listen . He was convinced, with some reason, that he had saved the army from a 

complete disaster in the previous 

winter by not paying attention to the 

generals. 

Hitler gave his view of the Soviet 

strategic situation-in, no doubt, deliberately enhanced colors-to Mussolini 

on 30 April 1942. The "Bolshevik" industrial capacity had declined drastically. Outside help could only come 

through M urmansk, via I ran (in small 

quantity), or through Vladivostok that 

the Japanese had cut off. Therefore 

the "Bolsheviks" could not expect substantial material assistance from the 

outside. Food was already extremely 

62Halder Diary. vol. Ill, p. 295; Chef /-l. R uest. und 

BdE, Stab OKH, Nr. 144 1141 , Notizell lIebr·)" Vortrag beim 

Fuehrer am 23. 12.41, 28.12.41 , CMH X- 124 Iile. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

short; cutbacks in the civilian rations 

would inevitably "radiate into the military sector"; and the Soviet Union 

would have to get alo ng for another 

five momhs on the stocks it had . If 

Germany cut off the oil , then Soviet 

transport would also be paralyzed . The 

Soviet explosives and powder programs could not keep pace with the 

"hig hl y developed German chemical 

industr y." The Soviet losses in dead 

were "almost incalculable," and "the 

masses being thrown aga inst us [now]" 

were "nowhere near" as effective as the 

Soviet troops had been in the 1941 campaign . He shied away, though, from 

predicting an outright victory, saying, 

"It can in no wise get worse [for Germany], onl y better. There can be no 

doubt that we will have classical successes in the forthcoming operations if 

we manage all of the time to concentrate our strength at the d ecisive 

points."63 

As he had in 1940 and 1941, Hitler 

professed to see the Soviet Union as 

primarily a tool of British strategy. It 

was, he told Mussolini, England's "most 

valuable and most dangerous all y." It 

tied down German strengtll ; if it defected, the British "could not do anything anymore"; and Stalin was blackmailing them by threatening a sepa rate 

peace. However, unless they wamed to 

rid themselves of this onerous a lly by 

conceding the German victor y, the 

British would have to try to help him. 

Consequentl y, Germany would have to 

be on the alert for landings in Norway 

or France and be ready to occupy Vichy 

France. 6 4 

630KM, J.SKL, /a, Bmcht Ilfher Besprech lwg am 

)0.4.42, CMH X- IOIO file. 

64lhid. 

Soviet Strategy 

The Soviet Condition 

299 

In mid-March 1942, Goebbels, as he 

did with nearly a ll of his best thoughts, 

confided to his diary, "Whether we shall 

succeed during the coming spring and 

summer in defeating the Bolsheviks---

this no man can say. We know what we 

have and what we must risk, but we 

don't know what the Bolsheviks have 

and what they can risk."·' There was---

and is---the mystery. T he Germans did 

not know then and the world does not 

know yet what the Soviet Union had 

and what it could risk. The Germans, it 

would appear from the result, must 

have been far off in their estimates. 

Soviet accounts, howevt'r, do not give 

sufficiem information to support clear 

judgmems about the extem of the German miscalculations. 

The first five months of war had 

done enormous economic damage to 

the Soviet Union, particularly in the 

output of basic raw materials, and that 

would be felt more in 1942 than it had 

been in 1941. As the following table 

shows, output in most key categories 

during the first six months of 1942 

would be less than half of that called 

for in the 1942 military-economic plan 

and substantiall y below 1941 levels. G• 

T he figures, of course, do not account 

for qu a ntities in the produ c ti o n 

pipeline o r stockpil es that may have 

existed. 

On the other hand, unlike Hitler, 

Stalin had not hesitated to convert to a 

total war economy. By 1942, the metalworking industries (almost totally en6~ oc hner. GQl'bbels Diaries, p. 129. 

66Based on Tyushkevich, Voomz}umllyt sily, p. 269, 

and IVQVSS, \'01. II, p. 49 1. 
300 

194 1 1942 

1st 2d 1st 

Ca egor~ 6 mos. 6 mos. Plan ned 6 mos. 

Electricity 

(bil. , kwh.) 27.4 19.3 3 1.0 15.0 

Coa l 

(mil. , tons) 9 1.9 59.5 96.9 35.7 

Oil 

(miL, LOllS) 17.3 15.7 26.9 11.7 

Pig LrOIl 

(miL , tons) 9.0 4.8 5. 1 2.3 

Steel 

(mil., lOns) 11 .4 6.5 9.4 4.0 

gaged in war production) constituted 

57 percent of all industry in the Soviet 

Union, up from 36 percent In 1940 

when the emphasis on military production had already been heavy.6' In comparison, only 43 percent of German 

industry was devoted to met lworkIn~, 

with only 30 percent of that engaged In 

armaments production.

6s The allocations of iron and steel for ammunition, 

which had been 830,000 tons in 1940, 

were 1.8 million tons in 1942.69 Output 

of artillery pieces went from about 

30,000 in the last six months of 1941 to 

over 53,000 in the first half of 1942. In 

the same period , output of mortars 

more than trebled , and production of 

hand weapons and machine guns increased substantially; however, ammunition production went up less than 

5 percent. Output of combat aircraft, 

8300 was about the same 111 the first 

six m~nlh s of 1942 as in the last half of 

1941, but it exceeded the German produ ction, which was approximately 

7,200.'0 

61Voznesenski y. ECOIwmy if tlte USSR, p. 43. 

GR DcuLSches Instiun fuel' Winschaftsforsch ung. 

Deutsche Indus/rie im Kriege, p. 159. 

6 9Voz.nesenski y, EC01wmy of lhe USSR, p . 43. 

7°/VMV, vol. IV, p. 158; Boelcke, Rllest'llllg, p. 25. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

The most notable single production 

increase was in tanks, of which 11,200 

were reportedly turned out in the first 

six months of 1942, more than tWICe 

the number for the last half of 1941 

and close to 4 times the German output 

of approximately 3,000 tanks. The 

number of T -34s produced was apparently close to double the total 1941 

output of 3,000. The achievement in 

tank production, however, great as it 

was, was less than it appeared to be 

because 60 percent of t11e output was in 

t11 e light T -60 and T - 70 types and 

mostly still T -60s. 71 The T -60, which 

had also made up more than half of the 

1941 output, had "not demonstrated 

outstanding qualities in combat," but It 

was easier to manufacture and not dependent on the availability of diesel 

engines as the medium and heavy 

tanks were. The T - 70, put into production in late 1941, was an upgraded 

T - 60, with a three-man crew, weighing 

somewhat over nine tons, and carrying 

slightly more armor and a 45-mm. 

gun. 72 The alterations made the T -70 

superior to t11e T -60 but left It II1fenor 

to the German Panzer HIs and IVs.'3 

In the spring of 1942, the Soviet 

armored forces were undergoing their 

second major reorganization of the 

war. One defect observed during the 

general offensive had been a tendency 

by commands to break u I' the tank 

brigades and battalions and to commit 

their vehicles singly or in small batches 

in infantry support. A Stavka order of 

22 January 1942 had required the bri7l/Vi\H-; vol. IV, p. 158; Boelcke, RlI estllllg, p. 24: 

Deborin and Telpukhovs ki y, ltogi i tauki, p. 260. 

12Tyushkevich, VontzJm!n)'e sity, p. 273. 

13See PelTeu , Fighting Vehicles, p. 20f and John 

Milsom. Russian Tanks, 1900-1970 (London: Arms 

and AnnoUl" Press, 1970). pp. 92-94. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 301 

NEW T -34 TANKS MOVE Up TO THE FRONT 

gades and battalions to be used only at 

full strength and with adequate infantry and air support, but that, to the 

extent that it was followed, had still not 

produced a capability to employ tanks 

in the mass. The units were too small. 

Consequently, in the spring, the armored forces began setting up Lank 

corps consisting of 3 tank brigades (168 

tanks), a motorized infantry brigade, a 

reconnaissance battalion, and artillery 

and rocket projectors. From May 

through August, 4 tank armies, First, 

Third, Fowrth, and Fifth, were activated. 

Each of these was projected to have 2 

tank corps, an independent tank brigade, infantry, and artillery.74 

H/VOVSS, vol. II, p. 360; Tyushkevich, \Wrlnlll'1II1)'e 

sily, p. 284; Krupchenko, 7(mkov)'t' 11())'ska, p. 55. 

In spite of losses in the winter and 

heavier ones in the spring, the numerical strengths of the Soviet forces appear to have grown steadily throughout the first six months of 1942. The 

History of the Second World War gives the 

total armed forces strength "in action" 

in "early 1942" as 5.6 million men, of 

which approximately 4.9 million were 

in ground forces. The armies "in action" had 293 rifle divisions (at 

strengths between 5,000 and 9,000), 34 

cavalry divisions, l2l riRe brigades, and 

56 independent tank brigades." At the 

beginning of the spring offensives, the 

ground forces had "over" 5.1 million 

men, "almost" 3,900 tanks, 44,900 artillery pieces and mortars, and the sup15/VMV, vol. V, p. 22. 
302 

port of 2,200 combat aircraft.

7 • At the 

end of June, the ground forces "in 

action" had 5.5 million troops, over 

6,000 tanks, 55,600 artillery pieces and 

mortars, and 2,600 combat aircraft in 

support. This amounted, with the brigades converted to an equivalent in 

divisions, to 410 divisions H Elsewhere, 

the number of divisions, brigades, and 

independent regiments is given as 348 

divisions, 239 brigades, and 329 regiments. 7• None of the above figures 

inciudesStavka reserves, which the HisImy of the Second Wlrld War gives as 

having been (in June) 10 field armies, 1 

tank army, 3 air a rmies being formed, 

and "more than" 50 independent 

units. 7 • Golubovich gives the reserves 

as 152 divisions, 107 brigades, and 225 

independent regiments·· 

Esti·mates of German Capabilities 

In an order of23 February 1942, the 

People's Commissariat of Defense initiated planning for the coming spring 

and summer with the admonition that 

it would be "inexcusabl y shortsighted" 

to be content with the winter's successes 

and assume from them that the German troops had been already beaten. 

The enemy had suffered defeats, but 

he was not defeated . He was still 

strong, and he would muster all of his 

forces to achieve successes· ' 

On 18 March, General Staff I ntelli gence submitted the following 

estimate: 

76/bid. , p. 121. It appears likely that the Soviet 

figures o n tanks for this stage of the war (perhaps also 

earlier) do not include the light tanks. See p. 300. 

77/bid. , p. 143. 

78See Golubovich, ~Sozdaniyc, " p. 17. 

79/VMV, vol. V, p. 143. 

8OGolubovich. "Sozdaniye," p. 17 . 

Hl VM ~ vol. V, p. 30. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

... Preparation for a [German] spring offensive is confirmed by deployment of 

troops and material. In the period from I 

January to IO March, as many as thirty-five 

divisions were brought in, and the field 

armies received a steady Aow of replacements. Restoration of the railroad network 

in the occupied territories of the USSR is 

being worked on more intensively, and 

comoat and transport aircraft are being 

supplied in greater numbers . ... 1t cannot be ruled out that the decisive 

German offensive wi ll be accompanied by 

a simultaneous Japanese attack on the 

USSR and that the Germans wi ll , besides, put pressure on Turkey to permit transit of 

German troops to the Caucasus . . .. TI'Ie 

Germans cannot again attack on a broad 

front, because they cannot regroup their 

forces to accomplish that. They mil concentrate all their efforts on prepa ring successive operations: first almmg at conquering the Caucasus and taking the 

Murmansk (Kirov) Railroad and subsequently at expanding the operations to 

take Moscow and Leningrad. 11'1 this manner tl'le main strategic objectives could be 

attained: the USSR would be cut off from 

her allies; she would lose her oil; and even 

if she were not totally defeated, the coun- try would be so weakened as to lose all 

significance. TI'Iis is the main objeClive of 

the German leadership. 

The main effort of the spring offensive 

will lie on the southern sector of the front, 

with a secondary attack on the north and a 

sim ultaneous feint in the center, towards 

Moscow. 

Germany is preparing a decisive offensive on the Eastern Front, which wi ll begin 

in the southern sector and expand to lhe 

north . For the spring offensive, Germany 

and her allies are bnnging in as many as 

sixty-five divisions .... The most likely 

time for the offensive will be mid-April or 

early May·' 

On 23 March , the secu rity organs of 

the State Defense Committee submitted a variant projection. The part of it 

uvov, p. 138r. See alsolVMV, vol. V. p. 111f. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

that has been made public read as 

follows: 

The main blow will be in the southern 

sector via Rostov to Stalingrad and into the 

North Caucasus-and from there toward 

the Caspian Sea. In this fashion , the Germans hope to take possession of the Caucasus a ll so ur ces. If the operation 

slicceeds, the Germans expect, o n reaching 

the Volga at Stalin grad, to continue the 

offensive northward along the Volga. [n 

this summer, they will not only want to get 

to the Volga and the Caspian Sea, but they 

will a lso unde rtak e m a in operatio ns 

against Moscow and Leningrad , because 

taKing those places is a matLer of prestige 

with the German Command. 83 

The History oj the Second \lliJrld War 

describes the two "prognoses" as having 

been "not without influence" on the 

decisions relating to the further conduct of the wars, However, their influence, apparently, was either small or 

virtua ll y nonexistent. The History of the 

Second \>Ibrld War, Zhukov, and the Popular Scientific Sketch indicate that Stalin, 

whose opinion was the deciding o ne, 

believed the Germans had strength 

enough to conduct simultaneous offensives in the center and the south, and 

he gave pa rticul a r importance to 

Moscow. 85 The History of the G,mt Patriotic War maintains that the Slavlw. 

recognized the possibility of a German 

offensive in the south but made "a 

strategic error" and assumed that the 

most probable Gennan attack would 

not be toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus but toward Moscow and the central industrial region S6 Vasilevskiy says 

that the enemy's strength on th e 

83/VMV, vol. V, p. 112. 

8.I/bid., p. 112. 

H5/bid., p. 11 3; Zh ukov, Memoirs, p. 364 ; vav, p. 139. 

86/V0\155, vol. 1[' p. 404. 

303 

Moscow approaches ("more than seventy divisions") led the Stavlw. and the 

General Staff to conclude that his main 

attack would be in the center. "This 

opinion," Vasilevskiy adds, "I know 

ver y well to have been shared by the 

majority of the front commands."8' 

Soviet accounts have ma intained that 

a crucial consideration for the Soviet 

Command , as it went into the second 

summer of the war, was a numerical 

infe riority in troop strength. T he most 

frequently given figure , since it was 

first used by Platonov in 1958, has been 

6.2 million German and allied troops at 

the outset of the 1942 summer campaignS8 The History of Ihe Second World 

\#Ir gives two figures: 5,655,000 German alone, as of 28 June 1942, and 

6,198,000 German and allied , as of I 

May 1942. Of these, 5,388,000 were 

Gennan.89 The Germans' own count 

was 3.9 million men in the ground 

forces, distributed as follows: 2.6 million (allies not counted) on the Eastern 

Front proper, 212,000 in the occupied 

Soviet territory, 150,000 in Finland , 

and 1.3 million in the occupied te rritories outside the Soviet Union , in the 

Replacement Army in Germany, a nel in 

North Africa."· 

lUVasilevs ki y, Delo, p.206. 

88 Platonov impli ed that the allied troops were not 

included in the 6.2 millio n. Plato no\', Vtoraya. MiI'Ulm)'a 

Voyn(l, p. 286. T he subsequent accounts give lhe 

figure as being inclusive. See VOV (Kl'alka)'Q fstor1),a), 

p. 157: Deborin and Telpukhovskiy, f tog; i uroki, p. 

356; and Vasil evskiy, De/o, p. 207. 

tllIThe figures for the allies are as follows: Finn ish, 

300.000; RUll1anian. 330,000; Hungaria n, 70,000; 

Ilalian, 68,000; Slonlkian, 28,000; and Spanish, 

14 .000. (Spain was nOl an all)' but supplied a division 

or"volulHcers.") /VMV, vol. V, pp. 121, 145. 

II°OKW,KTB , vol. ll , p.52. 
304 

A Second Fmnt 

In May 1941, Soviet Foreign Minister 

Molotov journeyed to the West, to 

London, to negotiate a treaty of alliance and to Washington to discuss a 

second lend-lease protocol. His most 

urgent task in both capitals was to 

secure a commitment from the Western Allies to open a second front in 

Europe in 1942. Prime Minister 

Churchill's response to the second 

front proposal was sympathetic but 

noncommittal.9l President Roosevelt 

told Molotov that the U.S. government 

"hoped " and "expected" to open a second front in 194292 On 11 june in 

Washington and 12 june in Moscow, 

the U.S. and Soviet governments released a joim communique, one sentence of which read, "In the course of 

the conversations full understanding 

was reached with regard to the urgent 

tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942."93 Molotov had drafted 

the communique, and Roosevelt had 

approved it, although General George 

C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of 

staff, had objected that the statement 

was "too strong."9. Marshall had told 

Roosevelt and Molotov earlier that the 

problem would be in getting the ships 

to transport U.S. troops and eqUIpment to Europe" On 10 june, in 

London , Churchill gave Molotov a 

statement which read, in part, ''It is 

\II]. R. 1\'1. Butler, Grand Strategy (London: H er 

Majesty's Stationery Office , 1964). vol. Ill , pt. II, p. 

594f. 

nMaurice Matlorf and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic 

Pll1llllillgfor Coalition Wmfare, 1941- 1942 (Washington, 

D.C GPO. 1953). p. 231. 

lJJlbid. , p. 232: IVMV, vol. V, p. 73. 

9~ f!,hllorfand Snell,Slmlegic P/mming, p. 232. 

~~S hel"\\ ood , Roose1lelt and Hopkins, p. 563: IVM V, 

vol. V, p. 72. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

impossible to say in advance whether 

the situation will be such as to make 

this operation [an invasion of Europe 

in 1942] feasible when the time comes. 

We can therefore give no promise in 

the matter . ... "96 

In the Soviet view, there could not 

have been any substantive reasons for 

the Western Allies' not opening a second from in 1942. In the Soviet view, 

also, a commitment was made during 

the May-june negotiations. The Hislory of Ihe C,·eat Patriotic War maintains, 

" ... the governmems of the USA and 

England assured the Soviet delegation 

that a second front would be opened in 

1942."97 The Short History states, "The 

pertinent communique pointed out 

that complete agreement had been 

reached concerning [the second 

front's] opening in Europe in 1942."98 

TI,e Hislory of Ilze Second I1brld War and 

the Popula!· Scientific Sketclz mallltalll 

that Washington and London were 

"forced to announce" the creation of a 

second front in 1942 by "progressive 

public opinion" and their obligations to 

the Soviet Union."' 

That the second front did not materialize in 1942 was, in the Soviet view, 

the result of deliberate British-American policy decisions made "behind the 

back of the Soviet Union."lOO The Sizort 

H istory asserts, " ... neither country, 

later events showed, had any IntentIon 

of living up to its commitment."lol The 

reason they did not, according to the 

History of Ilze Creat Patriotic Mitr and the 

~6 Butler, Grand Strategy. vol. I I I. pt. II. p. 597. See 

also IVMV, vol. V, p. 73. 

97IVOVSS, vol. II , p. 400. 

9SVOV (Kralka),a IswriJll), p. 152. 

~9IVMV. vol. V, p. 73; VOv, p.480f. 

IOOVOV, p.481. 

IOIVOV (Kratktl),(/ IS/())'iJa), p. 152. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

History of the Second " bdd War, was because the "ruling circles" in Great BrItain and the United States wanted to let 

Germany and the Soviet Union exhaust 

themselves "in h eavy and blood y battles,",o2 

In the Soviet accounts, the absence 

of the second front and the alleged 

duplicity of the Western Allies rel~tive 

to it are depicted as having had cntlcal 

bearing on Soviet strategic plannmg 

for the summer of 1942. The Soviet 

plans for spring and summer offensives, the History of the G"eat Patrwf:lc War 

implies, were based on an assumptJon 

that they would coincide with "attacks 

by Anglo-American forces on Germany from the west" and that the plans 

might have been dIfferent If the S~vlet 

Union had known "the real mtentJons 

of its '- allies."'03 Bagramyan has said 

Timoshenko and Khrushchev told him 

in March 1942, when Southwestern Theater began work on its plan, that there 

would be a second front created in the 

latter half of 1942, and it would "draw 

off part of the enemy's forces and his 

reserves."IO' The Hzstory of the Second 

I-IVrld War contends that the Soviet gove rnment was left in uncertainty, until 

mid-August 1942, as to whethe: there 

would be a second front, whIle the 

Germans, all along, "counted on" one 

not existing, and they made theIr dIspositions accordingly. I o. The Hzstory of 

the Great Patriotic War charges that the 

Germans knew there would not be a 

second front through "secret negotiations on a separate peace" conducted 

by "unofficial representatives of indusUI2IVJ\n~ \01. V, p. 71: IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 400. 

I03/VOVSS, \'01. II, p. 401. 

'O~Bagram)'an, Tak shli my k pobedt, p.51. 

'O~/VMV; vol. V. p. Ill. 

305 

trial and financial circles of the USA 

and England."'o. 

A Stmtegic Defe1ZSive 

As the Soviet spring offensives 

failed, one by one, the certainty that 

the initiative would change hands before summer became inescapable, and 

it became imperative for dle Soviet 

Command to devise a defensive stJ'ategy. The problem, potentially deadly 

though it was, was less complIcated 

than it had been the year before. The 

Germans' condition was known, and 

their options were limited, Time was on 

their side, but it was runnmg out because they were going to have to restart 

from a dead stop, By mId-February, 

German Foreign Armies East had believed an offensive in the south could 

hardly be a surprise to the Russians. It 

observed that, according to agent reports, Marshal Timoshenko, the commander of Southwestern Theater, had 

talked as early as December about the 

Germans' being compelled to attack 

again in the south to get oil and that 

British newspaper reports from the 

Soviet Union had repeated the same 

theme several times since.'o7 Estimates 

made in April and May b~ Foreign 

Armies East no longer questIoned Soviet knowledge of the Germans' plans 

for the spring and addressed pOSSIble 

Soviet responses "to the expected German offensive,"'o. The SovIet General 

Staffs and State De fense Committee's 

106/VOVSS, vol. I I , p. 400. 

I070KJ-I, CmStdH, Fremde Heere Ost, Nr. 61142, Rus. 

sucher AngriJJ;m Fnuhjahr 1942, 20.2.42, H 3/.2 file. 

I080KH, CellSrdH, Fremdl' /-lure 0 51, Bellrtnilmg drr 

Fei"dlage, 10.4 .42 and OKH,. GenStdH,_ H;mde Hel're 

OSl, Bnlrtnlung der GesamtJemdlage, 1.).4_. H 31198 

File. 
306 

estimates of German intentions cited 

above were singularly close to the 

mark, in fact almost prescient, considering that they were completed ten 

days to two weeks before Hitler put his 

own plans on paper. To them can be 

added, from the Popular Scientific 

Sketch, the general statement, "As the 

Supreme Command worked out the 

plans for further operations it had sufficient information concerning the intentions and measures of the enemy."'·9 

The General Staff completed its calculations in mid-March, and the strategic plan for the spring and summer of 

1942 was put into final form during the 

conference at the end of the month. 

Witllin that time, as has been seen, the 

General Staffs concept of an "active 

defense" against an expected German 

offensive gave way to Stalin's active 

defense, which aimed to forestall the 

German initiative entirely. ll1is, while 

it did not invalidate the estimates of 

German intentions, made t11em largely 

irrelevant to the plan. In the stage of 

the active defense, May through June, 

the Soviet offensives wou ld "improve 

the operative-strategic situation of the 

Soviet Armed Forces, uncover the enemy's intentions, deal his groupings a 

defeat, and by preemptive blows, frustrate the enemy's prospect of developing another large-scale offensive on the 

Soviet-German front." After the period 

of active defense, probably in July, the 

forces would develop "larger" offensives on a broad front "from the Baltic 

Sea to the Black Sea, with the aim of 

smashing the enemy's main groupings 

and bringing about the decisive turn of 

the war in favor of the Soviet Union 

l091'OV, p. 139. See p. 302f. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

that had been initiated at Moscow in 

the winter 1941/42.""0 In the second 

stage, the main offensive effort would 

be in the south, but beyond that, the 

plan was not worked out because the 

details would depend on the results of 

the first stage.'" 

At what point the Soviet thinking 

turned from the active defense to what 

is called the "strategic defensive" is not 

entirely clear. The Hisl.ory of the Second 

\;Ibrld War indicates that defensive elements were included in the March 

plan, and the fronts operating in the 

western and southwestern "directions" 

were required to build up their defense 

lines and create reserves to be used 

either to support their own offensives 

or to counterattack "in the case of an 

unexpected enemy offensive.""2 On 

the otller hand, me Hisl.ory implies that 

not until late June did the Stavka consider it necessary to observe Lenin's 

dictum that methods of warfare should 

change to accommodate changed circumstances. Then it decided to abandon its offensive plans and revert to the 

strategic defensive.'l3 The PollUiar Scientific Sketch states: 

By the end of June, the situation of the 

Soviet forces had worsened everywhere on 

tJle Soviet-German front. The spring operations of tJle year 1942, with which the 

Headquarters had wished to create conditions for development of a larger offensive 

in the summer, had been frustrated by tJ1C 

enemy . . . . The Slavko saw itself compelled 

to forego the offensive and resume the 

strategic defensive. 1 14 

1I0/VMV, vol. V. p. 117. Sec pp. 238~40. 

Ill/bid" p. 114. 

112/bid .. p. 116. 

'1 3lhid., p. 142. 

I HVOV. p. 146. 
A TIME FOR DECISIONS 

By Vasilevskiy's account, the Soviet 

forces wem over to the defensive in 

May, after Kharkov. l15 The timing of 

the Molotov mission appears also to 

have been the result of a change in 

Soviet thinking in the latter half of 

May. In March, Stalin had not believed 

the Soviet forces would be capable of 

"larger offensive operations" in the 

spring without a second from, but, by 

implication at least, he had thought 

they would have such a capability in the 

summer.116 The British government 

had invited Mo lotov to come to 

London on 8 April , but the Soviet 

response had been slow, and for the 

more than five weeks before he arrived, the main Soviet concern had 

been with getting better territorial and 

political terms for itself in the alliance 

treaty. At the first meeting in London, 

on 21 May, at the height of the Kharkov 

battle, Molotov said he had come to 

discuss two matters: the treaty and a 

second front, and the latter was now 

the more importam. In the subsequem 

sessions in London and Washington, 

he appeared to be talking in terms of 

two possibilities: a victory in 1942, with 

a second front that would draw at least 

forty German divisions off the Eastern 

Front, or a Soviet reversion to a defensive, the results of which could not be 

positively predicted. I I' The summer 

offensive had by then, most probably, 

become wholly contingem on the second front. 

The Histmy of the Second W"'ld 1-10.r 

gives a picture of preparation by stages 

for the shift to the defensive. Beginning in March , tile fronts and armies 

I ' SVasilevski y, Dt'w, p. 218. 

116/VMV, vol. V, p. 113. 

II7See Bulle r. Gra nd Strategy. vol. III , pt. II. pp. 

592- 96. 

307 

built up their lines to depths of six to 

seven miles. At the same time, and 

continuing into the summer, the theater commands and the Stavka saw to 

the construction of rear lines back to 

the Volga River, a distance of up to 

three hundred and fifty miles. This 

included renovating and improving 

works built in 1941, the Mozhaysk line, 

the Moscow and Oka River defenses, 

and lines on the Volga east of Moscow 

and on the Don, from Voronezh to 

Rostov. In May, work began on defenses for the Caucasus, between the 

Don and the Kuban, a long the Terek 

River, and, among other places, 

around Voroshilovsk, Krasnodar, and 

Groznyy."8 In May, "when the big battles in the south began," the Stav/w 

"took measures" to strengthen the defenses of Bryansk, Southwest, and South 

Fronts,I19 In May and June, when, as 

the History of the Second I#rld War puts 

it, "the We/mnacht attacked only on the 

south" and not toward Moscow, the 

Stavka "made corrections" and began to 

prepare for a strategic defensive, 

which inc luded building up the 

strength in the south. I'. 

Although the History of the Second 

I#rld War maintains that as part of the 

preparations for the strategic defensive, five or the ten reserve armies were 

redeployed from the center to the 

southwest (in early July, after BLAU 

began), Stalin , the Stav/w, and the General Starf, apparently, at no time believed the German main attack would 

be aimed anywhere other than at 

Moscow. Vasilevskiy says they did not 

"exclude" an attack from the vicinity of 

Kursk to Voronezh but believed the 

118/VMV, vol. V, p. 116. 

IHJ/bid., p. 146. 

1 20/b;(I. , p. 146f. 
308 

final objective would, nevertheless, be 

Moscow.'2l At the end of June, the 

main weight of the Soviet deployment 

was in the center. The former Westem 

Theater (Kalinin and West Fronts) was 

somewhat stronger than the Southwestern Theater (Bryansk, Southwest, and 

South Fronts). Expressed as percentages 

of total Soviet front line strength, relationships were as follows: 

Command Divisions Anillc!1 Tanks AircrafL 

WeSlcrn 

Theater 3 1.3 3 1.6 40.3 32.7 

Southwestern 

Theater 28.3 29.6 38.3 29.2 

These, however, did not comprise the 

whole difference. Of the reserve armies, six and the one tank army then 

operational were positioned to cover 

Moscow on the line Kalinin-Tula-Tambov-Borisoglebsk-Stalingrad, and four 

were ranged in a broad arc east of 

Moscow on the line Vologda-GorkiySaratov.'22 Moreover, close to a third of 

u'Vasi lcvskiy. De/o, p. 219. 

IUThe 11~ster1l Theater was terminated as a command on 5 Mav: the North CaucaslLs Theater on 19 

r>.lay: and the SdufhwesteNl Theater on 21 June. /VMV, 

vol. V. p. 143. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the former Southwestern Theater forces, 

almost all of Bryansk Front, were deployed on the north flank to defend 

the Tula approach to Moscow. 

The implication to be drawn from 

the deployment is that a stronger concentration in the south would have 

produced a better result in the summer 

campaign. The History oj the Great Patriotic War concludes: 

The incorrect determination by the Soviet Supreme High Command of the direction of the enemy's attack in the first stage 

of the summer campaign led to decisions 

that were in strategic error. Instead of 

concentrating forces in the operations 

zone of the Southwest and SO'uth Fronts and 

establishing on the left Aank a deeply echeloned defense that would have been insurmountable for the enemy, the Stavka 

continued to fortify the central sector of 

the front. ... 123 

On the other hand, the course of the 

war in the coming months would show 

the "error" at least to be self-compensating and, perhaps, to have been a 

stroke of high good fortune. 
CHAPTER XV 

Prelude to Summer 

Preliminary Operations 

Sevastopol B egun 

Harko 306 was Eleventh Army's artillery command. A Harko (Hoeheres 

Artillerie Kommando) ordinarily controlled an army's heavy artillery, but in 

early April 1942, Harko 306 surveyed 

the Sevastopol perimeter not to emplace just heavy artillery- but the 

heaviest. At various places in Germany, 

guns, originally built to crack massive 

concrete and steel French and Belgian 

forts, were be ing dismantl ed to be 

shipped in pieces by train to the Crimea. The lightest were twelve II-inch 

(2S0-mm.) coastal howitzers. The turret-mounted naval guns in several of 

the Soviet forts had calibers about an 

inch large r. Next heavier, and unmatched on the Soviet side, were a 

dozen 14-inch howitzers. But even 

those were dwarfed by GAMMA and 

KARL. Both were superheavy mortars. 

GAMMA, the "Big Bertha" of World 

War I, had a 17-inch (420-mm.) bore 

and fired a I-ton shell. KARL had a 21-

inch bore, and its shell weighed a ton 

and a half, four times more than the 

l4-inch howitzer's shells.' Harko 306 

was to receive three KARL and six 

I Ru dolf Lusar, Cennan Secret V\-tapons of lhe Second 

H6rld War (New York : Philosophical Library, 1959), 

pp. 15 16 . See also William G. Dooiy, J r., Greal 

\.'\-eapons if WJrld ailr I (New York: Walker and Co., 

1969). pp. 53-55. 

GAMMA weapons. Neither one was 

mobile, and KARL could only be assembled or disassembled with the aid 

of a 75-ton crane. But KARL, at 132 

tons, was almost a light fieldpiece when 

compared to DORA, which weighed 

1,345 tons and, to be dismantled and 

moved, needed a special sixty-car train. 

DORA had a IOI-foot-long barrel, a 

31 Y2 inch bore (SOO-mm.), and fired a 

7-ton shell to ranges up to thirty miles. 

In tests, it had demolished a concr ete 

wall 24 feet thick and punched 

through 90 inches of steel with single 

shots. The most powerful artillery 

piece in the world, DORA was also 

highly visible, hence vulnerable, and 

had to have antiaircraft artillery and 

smoke generator detachments to protect it. 2 

At Cottbus, in Germany, Panzer Abteilung 300 was crating its equipment 

for a move to the Crimea. It operated 

demolition vehicles known as GOLIATH which, standing about 2 feet high 

and weighing less than half a ton , 

looked like a midget World War I 

rhomboid tank. It could be steered 

over distances up to a half mile by wires 

2Cha rlcs B. Burdick. "DORA , The Germans' Biggest GUll," Militol)' Review 11 (196 1), 72-75; Lusa r, 

Secret Weapons, p. 20; Srhw. Art. Abr. (mot.) 833, fa Nr. 

17142, Einsah Karl·Genle!, 11. 4.42; L/V A.K. , la Nr. 

3 J 5142, Vorbereitllllg des Angriffs auf Sevastopol, /0.4.42; 

AOK 11 , fa Nr. 144--1142, Eillsat1. Karl-Gaaet, 10.4.42, 

AOK II 28654/2 file. 
3 10 

attached to a control panel. The 150 

pounds of superhigh explosive it carried made it most effective in confined 

spaces, but its blast could knock out a 

fully secured tank in the open at a 

radius of as much as 50 yards.

3 

In the winter, the OKH chief of 

artillery had looked at DORA and pronounced it to be "an extraordinary 

work of art but useless."4 So also, in 

fact, were GAMMA, KARL, and GOLIATH . 11ley were out of place in 

mobile war, th rowbacks to Verdun and 

19 16-but then so was Sevastopol. As 

an obj ective in any strategic sense it was 

equally useless. Even General Manstein , the command er of Eleventh 

Army, whose own work of art the operation was, could not say it would accomplish more than the release of 

"three to four divisions" from what 

would otherwise be an extended siege.' 

Hitler, who found it difficult to resist 

a challenge, especially one as visible as 

Sevastopol, also had doubts. In Directive 41 of 5 April 1942, he designated 

Sevastopol, the Kerch Peninsula, and 

the Izyum bulge as the targets for 

pre limina r y operatio ns before the 

main summer campaign. When on 16 

April he approved Eleventh Army's 

plan for the Kerch operation , he a lso 

reviewed one for Sevastopol, STOERFANG ("sturgeon catch"), but put off 

deciding when to execute it. By May, he 

had in mind staning the main offensive in mid-June, and on the 24th , he 

sa id BLAU I would have to start on 15 

June even if it meant giving up o n 

Sevastopol. A check by the OK W Oper3AOK 11 , la Nr. 1843142, Eillsalz 1.1011 fl!nlgelmkLt11 

SprcligstofJtraegem, 23.5.42, AOK II 28654/4 file. 

'-Halder Diary, vol. II J. p. 333. 

ei n. li>rlormt' Siege, p. 262. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ations Staff then indicated that STOERFANG pro bably would h ave to be 

abandoned because it could not begin 

enough ahead of BLAU I to be given 

full air support for more than three or 

four days· 

On tile night of 26 May, Hitler's 

thinking took a new turn. T he final 

reports of the Kha rkov battle were 

coming in , and he beli eved the speed of 

the victory permiued "favorable inferences to be drawn Witll respect to 

the entire enemy situation."' Conseq uentl y, it was not necessary any 

longer, he said , to hold rigidly to the 

schedule set for BLAU. It could be 

postponed for a while. He thought it 

more important to strike fast and destroy more Soviet units while they were 

still under the shock of Kharkov. To do 

that he wanted two new ope rations: 

one northeast of Kharkov near Volchansk, the other east of the Do nets 

Rive r in tile Izyum a rea." 11le first 

became Operation WILHELM. 11le second, which had an antecedent in the 

original FRlDERICUS plans, was designated FRlDERICUS II. WILHELM and FRIDERICUS II and the postponement of 

BLAU also provided time for STOERFANG, which Manstein expected to have 

ready to stan on 7 June. 

The artillery, some six hundred 

pieces in all , including the heaviest, 

opened fire on the Sevasto pol de fenses 

on 2 June. T he VIII Air Corps joined 

in. DORA and KARL concentrated on 

the forts no rth of Severnaya Bay and 

claimed hits o n o nes the Germans 

call ed Maxim Gorki y I, Malakov, and 

60KW, Slellv. IVFSt, Kriegsgeschichlliche Ableilrwg, 

Kriegsiligebllch, 1.4.-30.6.42, 2 and 5 Apr 42.24 May 

42, I.M .T. 1807 fi le. 

7l bid., 26 May 42. 

8lbid. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 311 

GERMAN l50-MM. K-18 GUNS OPEN FIRE 

White Cliffs (apparently ones with the 

Soviet designations Pillbox 2, 37, and 

38)9 The infantry, meanwhile, were 

still being redeployed from the eastern 

end of the peninsula. 

The defenders were ready, as ready 

as they could be. Admiral Oktyabrskiy's 

SevasIDpol Defe-me Region had worked 

th rough the winter to bring in men 

and supplies, and Oktyabrskiy had 

been told, on 19 May, to make his final 

preparations. On that day also, Crimean 

Front had gone out of existence, and the 

North Caucasus Theater had become 

Norlh Caucasus Front. Still under Marshal Budenny, it had the missions of 

holding Sevastopol and preventing a 

German crossing from Kerch to the 

9See Vaneyev, Geroichesknya oborotm. p. J 12. 

Taman Peninsula.'o General Petrov's 

Independent Maritime Army had eight 

full strengtll divisions and several brigades and separate regiments. The defenders also had about six hundred 

artillery pieces, although none were 

equal to the heaviest the Germans had; 

and their strengtll is given as having 

been [88,000 men (and some women), 

106,000 of them in "line units."" 

Manstein moved into his forward 

command post on tile night of 6 June. 

It was situated in a sheltering valley 

directly behind the front, about midway on the perimeter- From a nearby 

height, he could look out over the 

IlI/VMV, vol. V. p. 132. 

II/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 407. See also IVMY, vol. V. p. 

132: VOV (Kratka),Q Iswriya), p. 160; and Vaneyev. 

Ceroicheslul)'o oiJorollU, pp.249-57. 
312 

whole Sevastopol fortress. The distances were not great, at ITIOst, sixteen 

miles east to west, fourteen miles north 

to south. The LIV Corps stood on the 

north with four divisions and a reinforced regiment. The XXX Corps was 

on the south, with three divisions, and 

Rumanian Mountain Corps occupied 

the center with two divisions. The artillery was almost all on the north, not 

by choice but because the roads in the 

center and south were hopelessly inadequate for moving guns and ammunition . The north also afforded the only 

viable line of attack. The center crossed 

the western rim of the Yaila Mountains, 

a jumble of ridges covered with scrub 

forest. The south, almost equally rugged, offered one attraction, steep-sided 

valleys covering a road that ran from 

the coast near Ba laklava northwestward to Sevastopol, but the ground was 

studded with obstacles, and the fields 

of fire for artillery were restricted. 

There the GOLIATHS would have to 

be tried as substitutes for artillery. An 

attack in the center promised nothing; 

from the south, not much more; but if 

ones were not made, the defense could 

concentrate entirely on the north, 

where the approach was only somewhat less forbidding. Everywhere away 

from the coast, the daytime temperatures in June regularly rose above 

100" F1 2 

The infantry attack began on the 

north , in the LIV Corps sector, at dawn 

on 7 June. The XXX Corps, which had 

not full y r ed e ployed its units from 

Kerch, would have to wait another four 

days. Rumanian Mountain Corps' mission was to tie down the defense in the 

center. Having had the winter and 

12l\'la nstein. Verlorn lt' Siege, pp.263- 72. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

spring to get ready, the defenclers were 

prepared, even having swastika flags 

that they intended to layout to confuse 

the German aircraft. (Map 27.) 

In the late afternoon on the 7th, 

after LI V Corps reported having not 

yet found a single weak spot, Hitler 

sent word through Army Group South 

that th e operation would e ither have to make headway fast or be 

stopped and converted again into a 

siege. Hitler was seeing WILH ELM and 

FRIDERICUS II as a pair of quick, cheap 

victories, and he now tied STOERFANG to 

them. He wanted to start WILH ELM on 

7 June, FRIDERICUS II on the 12th, and 

have both of them and STOERFANG 

completed in time to begin BLAU I on 

the 20th.' 3 

Wilhelm, Fridericus II, 

and Sl.oerfang 

While STOERFANG had about it the 

aspect of head-on encounter of the 

World War I style, WILHELM and FRIDERICUS II depended on maneuver to 

an extent that made them almost reminiscent of the eighteenth century. A 

matched set of elegant double envelopments, they were designed to achieve 

tactical effects beneficial to BLAU. cut 

into tlle Soviet defensive strength, and 

accomplish a psychological mission 

Hitler had set for the preliminary ope rations in Directive 41, namel y, to restore the German troops' confidence 

and "hammer into tlle enemy" a sense 

of inferiority." 

t3AOK JI, la Kriegslagebuch Nr. 12, 7 Jun 42, AOK 11 

2865411 file; OK\¥, Stellv. WFSt, Kriegsgeschichtliche 

Abteilung, Kriegstagebllch, 1.4.-30.6.42, I Jun 42, 1.]\.1. 

T. 1807 fi le. 

I4OKW, WFSI, Nr. 55616142, Uiisu ng Nr. 41, 5.4.42, 

Gennan High Level Directives. Cl\·IH files. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

THE BATILE FOR SEVASTOPOL 

7 June - 4 July 1942 

--Approximate front. 7 Jun 

00000000 Approximate ftont, 27 Jun 

----- Approximate front, 4 Jul 

<i==:: Axis of attack 

• Soviet fort 

MAP 27 

• \ 

• • • • • 

~ , 

WILHELM would trap the Soviet 

1iventy-eighth Army in what was left of 

the Volchansk salient and provide 

cover on the soum for Sixth Army's 

main thrust in BLAU I, which was to 

carry northeastward from me vicinity 

of Belgorod. The objectives of FRIDERICUS II were to encircle the Soviet 

Ninth and Thirty-eighth Annies norm and 

east of Izyum and bring the First Panzer Army front east thirty miles into 

Maxim Gork iy I 

• 

• 

• 

• • • • 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

3 13 

LlV Corps 

,I, ~ ~~===== 

l~~-~/ ~ ... .... 0'" _ , 0 

I' ./'" 

~ XXX Corps 

starting posItIon for BLAU II, on the 

Oskol River below Kupyansk. The key 

to both operations was III Panzer 

Corps. The attack in May across the 

mouth of me lzyum bulge had brought 

it north into the Sixth Army sector. For 

WILHELM, it was attached to Sixth Army 

and was to strike northeastward along 

me Burluk River to form the southern 

arm of the envelopment. For FRIDERICUS II, it would revert to First 
314 

Panzer Army, make a 900 turn, and 

bear east and south, past Kupyansk, to 

complete the second encirclement 

from the north and bring itself into 

position for BLAU I115 

On the Soviet side, Marshal Timoshenko, commander of Southwestern 

Theate!' and Southwest Front, and 

Khrushchev and General Bagramyan, 

both members of his staff, knew they 

were headed for more trouble, but not 

how much or what to do about it. On 

29 May, they sent an appraisal to the 

Stavka predicting renewed German attacks in "five to ten days." However, 

limoshenko and his two staffs, both 

theater and front, believed, as the Stavka 

and the General Staff apparently also 

did, that the big German drive on 

Moscow was also about to begin and 

regarded whatever might happen in 

the south as secondary.16 Nevertheless, 

limoshenko knew he would need reinforcements, and not wanting at that 

point to face Stalin himself, he persuaded Khrushchev and Bagramyan to 

go and ask for them. They found Stalin 

less reproach ful than they had expected . Bagramyan says one of Stalin's 

outstanding characteristics as a wartime leader was his "iron self-control." 

And they were given reinforcements, 

but not on a lavish scale-7 rifle divisions, 2 tank corps, and 4 tank 

brigades. 17 

In WILHELM, speed was the first essential, as it was also for FRIDERICUS II. 

The envelopments would be shallow, 

ISAOK 6,10 Nr. 1999142 , Armeebefehl flh: 47,30.5.42, 

AOK 6 22391/7 file; A,'meel:,,'7'Uppe VOll Kleist, la Nr. 

43142, /. WeislIllg ftter FRIDERlCUS 2., 15.6.42, Pz. 

AOK I 25179/4 file . 

16IVM\~ vol. V, p. 138. See also Moskalenko, Na 

yugo-wpadnom IUlpravlenii, p. 221. 

17Bagramyan, Tak shli my k /JOhede, p. 131. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

not exceptionally difficult to evade, and 

wet weather in May had kept the roads 

muddy. The first week of June was dry 

and sunny, with temperatures in the 

80s until the 6th when an overcast sky 

dropped the temperature twenty degrees and brought intermittent rainsqualls. Because of the rain, III Panzer 

Corps reported that its tanks would 

have hard going on level ground and 

might get stuck on inclines, and IV Air 

Corps' landing strips became too soggy 

to let loaded Stukas and bombers take 

off. Sixth Army, which had been ready 

to start WILHELM on the 7th, ordered a 

day's delay. 18 

While Sixth Army waited one day 

and then another for the ground to 

dry enough to let WILHELM begin, Eleventh Army clawed its way into the 

Sevastopol north front at a disconcertingly slow pace. The heavy artillery 

scored hits on the forts, but it was all 

but useless against the hundreds of 

natural and man-made caves that gave 

the defenders cover and interlocking 

fields of fire in seemingly endless combinations. The infantry had to deal 

with these, 645 of them in the first five 

days, and at a high price, 10,300 casualties. On the 8th , Manstein already 

wanted to bring the 46th Infantry Division in from Kerch, which Hitler would 

not allow, although he added that he 

wanted STOERFANG to continue as long 

as it had a "chance" to succeed. The 

chance did not appear to be much of 

one, especially after XXX Corps began 

its attack on the 11th and, as Field 

Marshal Bock, the commander of 

Army Group South, observed, accomplished "nothing at all ." On the 12th, 

18AOK 6, Fuehnrngsabteillmg Kriegstagebuch N,: 12, 6 

Jun 42, AOK 6 22855/1 file. 
\ 

XXIX Corps 

\ 

• 

I 

IXTH 

KhtJr/(ov 

, 

VIII Corps 

XVII Corps 

/( - 21st 

\ 

I 

I 

/ 

/ 

/ 

I 

I 

J 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

\ 

\ 

\ 

, 

28th 

\ q, , ? 

" ~:.-:P U Corps ........... _--, 

/ 

/ 

OPERATION WILHELM 

10 - 15 June 1942 

------ Front line, 10 Jun 

•••••••••• " Front line, 15 Jun 

¢===Germlln attack 

+----- Soviet retreat 

o 20 Mil •• I -----,-, _-----..l, o 20 Kilometer' 

00 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

:1 

o : ... 

'" o ~ 

l 

o 

o 

OlkhovlJtb 

-~-7 

00 SOUTHWEST 

FRONT 

, 

\ 

o 

.. 

o 

00 

o \ 00 38th 

xxxx 

FIRST 

PANZER 

ARMY 

MAP 28 

/ 

/ 

/ 

/ 

/ 

J 0 0 ° / 0 

I 

\ 

\ 

I 

/ 

/ 

/ 

Y.81lItllc/~YII 
316 

Bock demanded a situation estimate, 

and Manstein answered that he believed he could complete the operation 

if he had three more infantry regiments. Bock passed the estimate to the 

OKH, adding that one thing was certain: without the reinforcements Manstein wanted, STOERFANG was a hopeless 

case.l!) 

In the mea ntime, WILHELM had 

started on 10 June, and for Bock, the 

first day's results had been "gratifying."2. In spite of occasional rain, II I 

Panzer Corps crossed the Burluk River, 

after capturing two bridges, and began 

the advance upstream. The VIII Corps 

did even better north of Volchansk. It 

took three bridges on the Donets and 

was passing Volchansk on the northeast 

by late afternoon ." (Map 28.) 

During the night on the 10th, Bock 

had gone by train from Poltava to 

Kharkov to be with III Panzer Corps 

the next day. He arrived at the front in 

the early afternoon, just in time to 

witness a downpour that in less than an 

hour engulfed the tanks in mud. 22 The 

VIII Corps, mostly infantry, kept moving in the rain and reached Belyy 

Kolodez, ten miles southeast of Volchansk, in the late afternoon . The 

tanks wer e supposed to have been 

there to meet it, but they were thirty 

miles away on the Burluk River}3 

When Bock had arrived back at Sixth 

Army headquarters after dark, he had 

19AOK /I, la Kriegstagebuch NT. 12, 8- 12 JUIl 42, 

AO K 11 28654/ 1 file : Bock Diary, Oslen II, 1I - 12 Jull 

42. 

tOBoch Dia,)', Osten II, 10 JUIl 42. 

2 1AOK 6, FuehruIIgsabtf!7'lullg Kn'egstagebuch Nr. 12, 10 

Jun 42. AOK 6 22855/1 file. 

22Bock Diary, Oslell II, II JUIl 42. 

23AOK 6, Fuehrungsabteihmg Kriegstagebuch Nr. 12, II 

Jun 42, AOK 6 22855/1 fil e. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

learned what General Paulus, the commander of Sixth Army, had known for 

several hours, namely, that Twentyeighth Army had abandoned its front 

west of tlle Donets and was marching 

east. Throughout the day on the 12th, 

III Panzer Corps, under orders from 

both Bock and Paul us to forget abou t 

everything else and close the encirclement, ground its way north , while Soviet columns headed southeast past 

Belyy Kolodez and out of the pocket. 

At the last, before it made the contact 

in the midmorning on the 13th , III 

Panzer Corps had to fight through 

several lines of Soviet tanks dug-in to 

hold open the pincers' jaws. Thereafter, the mopping-up went quickly, 

bringing in 24,800 prisoners.

24 

While WILHELM was not quite living 

up to its expectations, STOERFANG was 

looking more and more like a 

throwback to World War 1. The LIV 

Corps took the fort known as Maxim 

Gorkiy I, with its heavy naval guns and 

underground galleries, on the 13th. 

One of the armored turrets had been 

shattered beforehand by fire either 

from KARL or DORA. There were, 

though , a dozen similar forts north of 

Severnaya Bay and hundreds of 

smaller emplacements. Army Group 

South gave Manstein one fresh infantry regiment, let him exchange two 

worn-out regiments from LIV Corps 

for 46th Infantry Division regiments, 

and prepared to send him three more 

regilllents. 25 

But Bock was getting impatient. He 

had counted on having the air units 

H/ bid., 12- 15Jun 42: Bock Diary, Osten 11, 11 - 12 

JUIl 42. 

25AOK 11, la Kriegstagebllch NT. 12, 12- 15 Jun 42. 

AOK II 28654/1 file. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 317 

I OPERATION FRIDERICUS II 

22 - 25 June 1942 

----- Frontline, 22 Jun 

......... 0 Front line, 25 Jun 

German attack 

+-----Soviet ,etreat 

SIXTH 

ARMY / 

/ 

I Olkhov8tka 

I • 

o 20 Miles 

1-1 ---~I----'I 

o 20 Kilometers \ h------..::.::...:::=:-=-------! 

Chuguyev 

FIRST 

PANZER 

LI Corps (-, ,/ 

" I 

\ 

\ 

I 

xxxx 

/ 

/ 

I 

, 

, 

( 

---

r~ 

-=-\ 

ARMY 

MAP 29 

from Sevastopol in time to start BLAU 

on the 20th, and he observed that it did 

not make sense to keep the troops for 

the main operation standing by their 

loaded vehicles with no place to go. On 

the 13th, he considered going ahead 

with BLAu 1 and leaving the planes on 

the Crimea. That idea evaporated the 

, - ~ 

XXXXIV Corps -\~ 

next day when he noted with no pleasure at all, "FRIDERICUS II has surfaced 

again."2. Apparently he had thought 

FRIDERICUS II would be forgotten. 

Hitler, who was vacationing in Bavaria, 

had not shown any recent interest in 

26Bock Diary. Osten II, 12- 14 J lin 42. 
318 

it-or in BLAU either for that mauerand the OKH had seemed to sympathize with Bock's concern about 

time. Late on the night of the 14th, the 

OKH relayed an order from Hitler to 

execute FRIDERICUS II and begin BLAU I 

"as soon as the Luftwaffe can be spared 

from FRIDERICUS." The earliest first day 

for BLAU I would be the 23d.27 Meanwhile, STOERFANG would continue. 

After having had an impression the 

day before that the Soviet infantry was 

weakening, LIV Corps made a big 

sweep on the 17th, laking six fortsBastion, Malakov, Cheka, G.PU. Siberia, and Volga-and driving a wedge 

through almost to the north shore of 

Severnaya Bay. On the 18th, while LIV 

Corps engaged North Fort and batteries at the mouth of the bay, XXX 

Corps pushed two spearheads through 

to the Sapun Heights. Next they would 

have to clear the approaches to the bay 

and the heights. Then they would face 

the inner defenses's Manstein asked 

for time to regroup the infantry and 

reposition the artillery, time which 

Bock remarked would "also benefit the 

enemy."29 

FRIDERICUS 11 was scheduled to begin 

the 17tll, bUl because of daily rainstorms was not ready until the 20th, 

and did not actually begin until the 

morning of the 22d. The III Panzer 

Corps again was the main force. Its 

mission was to strike east from the 

vicinity of Chuguyev to Kupyansk and 

turn south along the Oskol River. On 

the south, XXXXIV Corps was to cross 

the Donets between Izyum and the 

mouth of the Oskol and head north. 

27/bid., 14 Jun 42. 

2aAOK ll, l a Kdegstagebllch Nr. 12, 16- 18 Jun 42, 

AOK II 28654/ 1 me. 29Bock Diary, Oslen ll, 18 Jun 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

In rain, III Panzer Corps went halfway 

to Kupyansk on the first day and began turning three divisions south, with 

22d Panzer Division in the lead. The 

XXXXIV Corps took a bridgehead on 

the Donets. The next morning, everywhere between Kupyansk and Izyum, 

the Soviet units were on the march 

toward the Oskol. Overrunning some 

of these, 16th Panzer Division was into 

the northwestern quarter of Kupyansk 

by nightfall. In the late afternoon on 

the 24tll, 22d Panzer Division, going 

south, met the lOlst Light Division, 

coming north , at Gorokhovatka on the 

Oskol northeast of Izyum, and FRI. 

DERICUS II was completed. In two more 

days, the pockets were mopped up and 

First Panzer Army's tally of prisoners 

reached 22,800. 30 (Map 29.) 

Bock congratulated First Panzer 

Army, saying, "TIle First Panzer Army 

can look on its latest victory with justifiable pride ." Kleist added his own 

thanks "to the officers and the troops, 

including our young comrades from 

the Labor Service."31 At the higher 

command levels, though , the reactions 

to FRIDERICUS II and WILHELM were 

mixed. As battles went, they had been 

easy, but they had also brought in comparatively few prisoners. Talking to 

General Halder, chief of the General 

Staff, Bock speculated that tlle Russians were waiting for the Americans to 

intervene and had decided, until then, 

to avoid exposing themselves to big 

30PZ. AOK I, la Nr. 43142, 1. \Veisultg!uer Fridericus 2., 

15 .6.42, Pz. AOK I 25179/4 file; P1.. AOK I , l a 

Kriegstagebuch Nr. 8, 22- 26 Jun 42, Pz. AOK 1 24906 

file; Pz. AOK I, Mil Kleist in den. Kaukastls, Pz. AOK I 

85602 fi le. 

l tpZ. AOK I, fa Kriegitagrbuch Nr. 8, 27 Jun 42, Pz. 

AOK I 24.906 file. 
PRELVDE TO SUMMER 

defeats."' One Sixth Army staff paper 

stated, "The Soviet capacity for resistance has declined markedly in comparison with the previous year. The 

infantry, in particular, lacks spirit:33 

Another, also from Sixth Army, added, 

however, "The objective of enemy 

operations in 1942 will be to slow 

the German advance to the Don and 

the turn toward the Caucasus . . .. 

[The Soviet Armies] will evade envelopments and attempt to build new 

fronts ... :34 

Stoerfang Completed 

By the time WILHELM and FRIDERICUS 

II were finished , STOERFANG had gone 

too far to be stopped without looking 

like a defeat but not far enough to 

bring an end in sight. The LlV Corps 

cleared the north shore of Severnaya 

Bay on the 23d, and thereby unhinged 

the outer defenses in the center and 

the south as well. But XXX Corps and 

Rumanian Mountain Corps needed another four days to bring themselves 

face to face with the line of the Sapun 

Heights. When they had, Eleventh 

Army confronted the inner Sevastopol 

perimeter. To breach it from the north 

meant crossing the bay, which acted as 

a half-mile-wide moat that could be 

raked by artillery and small arms fire 

from the steep south shore. From [nkerman, at the head of the bay, the 

Sapun Heights ran almost due south, 

forming a right angle with the bay. A 

continuous escarpment broken only by 

one road, the heights had lost none of 

32 80ck Diary, Osten II, 24 Jun 42. 

3~AOK 6, I dAD. Bf'urteilung del" Feilullage all/ 24.6.42, 

AOK 63015515 file. 

34AOK 6, la, /J cllrteilulIg der Fe-indlage am 24.6.42, 

AOK 6 30155/52 fdc. 

319 

their natural defensive potential since 

the British and French had used them 

in the Crimean War to hold off a 

Russian relief army while besieging 

Sevastopol on the other side. Behind 

them, still lay at least one other line, 

more forts, and the city itself. 

On the 22d, the day after Tobruk 

had surrendered in North Africa, 

Manstein had asked Halder to try to 

persuade the OKW to have the British 

garrison commander flown to the 

Crimea so that he could be dropped by 

parachute into Sevastopol as evidence 

of the surrender. Because Tobruk had 

become a symbol of resistance by withstanding a siege in 1941, Manstein had 

said he anticipated "a strong demoralizing effect."35 It was an idea that 

ignored practicality, and the Geneva 

Convention as well, and no more was 

heard of it or, for several days following, of anything better. On the 24th , 

Eleventh Army designated V-day as 

the day on which LlV and XXX Corps 

would simultaneously attack the inner 

defenses, but it did not say when V-day 

would be or where or how the attacks 

would be made. 

Finally, on the 26th , Manstein decided to gamble on surprise and strike 

straight across the bay. After dark on 

the 28th, engineers eased a hundred 

assault boats down the rock bank into 

the water. At 0100 on the 29th, the 

boats pushed off, carrying troops from 

the 22d and the 24th Infantry Divisions. Artillery was ranged and ready 

along the entire length orthe shore but 

under orders not to open fire until the 

enemy did. The first wave was across 

and landed east of the city before the 

3SAOK ll, /a Kriegslagebur/t Nr. 12, 22 JUIl 42. AOK 

" 28654/1 fde. 
320 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

SOVIET REAR GUARDS ENGAGE AN ENEMY ARMORED CAR 

defense reacted. From then on artillery 

spotters on the north shore and in the 

beachhead brought down fire wherever Soviet guns showed themselves. 

The XXX Corps' artillery opened fi re 

on the Sapun Heights just as the assault 

boats were landing, and its infantry 

moved out a half-hour later. By early 

afternoon, LIV Corps had a solid 

beachhead and XXX Corps a foothold 

on the heights. Manstein, expecting 

still to have to besiege the city, ordered 

both corps to carry the attack west past 

Sevastopol to Cape Khersones. 

On the 30th, LIV Corps took Fort 

Malakov, a refurbished relic of the Crimean War, on the city line; XXX Corps 

cleared the Sapun Heights and broke 

into Balaklava, the defensive anchor on 

the south coast; and VIII Air Corps 

and the artillery mounted a day-long 

bombardment designed to paralyze 

the resistance, particularly inside 

Sevastopol.36 

Meanwhile, the garrison had run out 

of reserves and was using its last ammunition, rations, and water. (Surface 

warships and submarines had brought 

in another 25,000 men and 15,000 tons 

of supplies during June.) Early on the 

30th, Oktyabrskiy asked Marshal 

Budenny, commander of the North 

Caucasus Front, to cancel a planned diversionary landing at Kerch and ordered him to organize an evacuation. 

The Stavka's approval came during the 

night, and Oktyabrskiy departed by air 

36/bid. , 24 - 30 Jun 42. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

to take charge of the evacuation at 

Novorossiysk, leaving Petrov in command at Sevastopol.37 

During the night on the 30th, the 

garrison troops began withdrawing to 

Cape Khersones and other likely evacuation points. Over the next four days, 

while some rear-guard actions went on 

and a few bypassed forts held out, 

several hundred officers and other priority personnel of the Black Sea Fleet, 

Seuastapol Defense Region, and Independent Coastal Army were evacuated by 

air3 • The last of the forts to fall (on 4 

July) was one the Germans called 

Maxim Gorkiy II, on Cape Folient. It 

was the strongest and most modern of 

the whole Sevastopol complex , and select Independent Coastal Army personnel, 

including women, defended it, apparently expecting to be evacuated by sea. 

The ships did not come, however, and 

those of the defenders who refused to 

surrender were buried alive by the 

Eleventh Army engineers as they demolished the fort and its underground 

galleries. 3• 

The battle ended on 4 July. Eleventh 

Army counted "over 90,000" prisoners. 40 According to the History of the 

Second \>\brul Wm; the cost to the Eleventh Army was "approximately 

150,000" casualties (a figure which 

seems high)' 1 

On 5 July, Manstein staged a victory 

celebration for the corps, division , and 

regimental commanders and bearers 

of the Knight's Cross of the I ron Cross 

37VOV (Kmrka)'Q /stori),a), p. 160; IVMV, vol. V, p. 

135; Va neycv, Ceroichesko),o ooomna, p. 3 13f. 

38/VOVSS. vol. II , p. 410. See also Vaneyev. 

CeroichesknJa oOOrr)1l(l, pp. 312- 20. 

39AOK n, /0 Kriegstagebuch N r. 12, 4 Ju1 42, AOK II 

2865411 file. 

"OManstcin , Vt'r/oreJ'le Siege, p. 282. 

"1/VMV, vol. V, p. 137. 

321 

and the German Cross in Gold. He had 

received his promotion to field marshal 

three days earlier. For the Eleventh 

Army officers and troops, Hitler authorized the Krim Schild ("Crimea 

Shield"), a bronze patch with an outline 

of the Crimea and the numerals "1941" 

and "1942" in low relief, to be worn on 

the left sleeve below the shoulder. It 

was one of only four similar devices 

awarded, the other being for Narvik 

(1940), Kholm, and Demyansk, all of 

which were victories by narrow margins. On the Soviet side, the medal "For 

Defense of Sevastopol" was instituted, 

and 39,000 were awarded. On 8 May 

1965, the Presidium of the Supreme 

Soviet awarded to the city of Sevastopol 

the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star 

medal.42 

Deployment for Blau 

Bock's Plan 

Bock's entry in his diary for 29 April 

reads, "In the evening, on the insistence of the OKH, the first draft of our 

directive for the [summer] offensive 

was hastily thrown together."43 Taken 

by surprise and not having had time to 

do terrain studies or solicit proposals 

from ti,e armies, Bock and his staff had 

done the draft entirely as a desk exercise. Contrary to past practice, there 

also had been practically no consultation between the army group and 

the OKH. Hitler had been in Berlin 

and at the Berghof and had been tending to diplomatic affairs. Bock had 

been on leave for twelve days, and 

Halder had gone to Berlin for a week 

beginning on the 27th to audit lectures 

~21bid. 

43Bock DI(II), Ostell II, 29 Apr 42. 
322 

at the War Academy and, among other 

things, to have his teeth fixed. Although Directive 41 had been dated 5 

April, it had not reached Army Group 

South until after the 10th, while Bock 

was on leave, and he had not seen it 

until the 23d." 

Aside from the contents of Directive 

41, about all Bock knew was that divisions were beginning to move into his 

area, that he would receive an additional panzer army headquarters, and 

that at some point in BLAU, Army 

Group South would be divided in two. 

He did not know how many divisions 

were to come, nor, probably, did anybody else. General Hoth, the commander of Seventeenth Army, had 

been told just before he went on leave 

that when he returned , in May, he 

would take command of Headquarters, 

Fourth Panzer Army, which was being 

transferred from Army Group Center. 

On 14 April, Hitler had ordered the 

OKH Organization Branch to set up a 

new army group headquarters that 

would come under Field Marshal List, 

who had commanded the 1941 campaign in the Balkans and had been 

there since as the Southeastern Theater commander. Bock had been informed that List's headquarters would 

come into BLAU sometime after the 

operation started and would have primary responsibility for the advance 

into the Caucasus. V.~1at Bock did not 

know-and he would, doubtless, not 

have been Raltered if he had-was tl,at 

several days before he gave the order 

to create the new army group, Hitler 

had sa id that he wanted on ly the best 

HHalder Dia ry. \'01. 111, p. 435; Bock Diary, Ost&7I/I, 

10- 22 Apr 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

commanders used in the a ll important 

drive into the Caucasus." 

Army Group South's Directive I, 

written on the night of 29 April, was, 

consequently, not much more than a 

detailed expansion of Directive 41. The 

three phases of BLAU, as given in Directive 41, were the framework. The one 

new element was the introduction of a 

second army group headquarters. 

Bock and his staff assumed that they 

would retain exclusive command until 

BLAU II was completed. Thereafter, 

they projected, Headquarters, Army 

Group South, would become Headquarters, Army Group B, and List and 

his staff would take over the sou til 

Rank as Headquarters, Army Group A. 

From then on, Army Group B's mission 

would be to hold a line from Kursk to 

Voronezh and along the Don River to 

the vicinity of Stalingrad. Army Group 

A would take the main responsibility 

for BLAU Ill, the drive to Stalingrad, 

and would be solely responsible for 

planning and executing the advance 

into the Caucasus (BLAU IV). 

For BLAU I, Army Group South had 

on the left Second Army, Fourth Panze r Army, and Hungarian Second 

Army-temporarily combined under 

General Weichs, the commanding general, Second Army, as Armeegruppe 

Weichs--and on the right SiXtil Army. 

Fourth Panzer was to make the main 

thrust east of Kursk to Voronezh. Second Army would cover Fourth Panzer 

Army on the left and build a front 

from ule Army Group Center boundary to the Don north of Voronezh . 

Sixth Army, at Belgorod, eighty miles 

OKH, GelISld/-I, Org. Abl., Kliegstagebllch, Band III, 

14 Apr 42. 1-1 1/2 13 file; OK~V, WFSt, KriegsgeschichtIlcht Abled,lllg. Kr-iegs/agebllcit, 1.4.-30.6.42, 11 Apr 42. 

I.M ~ 1807 File. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 323 

FIELD M ARSHAL VON BOCK (seated in car) 

south of Kursk, would put its mobile 

divisions under Headquarters, XXXX 

Panzer Corps for a secondary thrust to 

Voronezh. just short of the halfway 

point, Founh Panzer Army and XXXX 

Panzer Corps would each divert one 

panzer division off their inner flanks 

toward Staryy Oskol to create a pocket 

that would be tightened and cleaned 

out by Hungarian Second Army and 

some of the Sixth Army's infantry. 

After taking Voronezh, Fourth Panzer 

Army would make a fast right turn, 

pick up XXXX Panzer Corps, and 

drop south forty miles along the Don 

to Korotoyak where it would be in 

position for BLAV II. Hungarian Second Army and elements of Sixth Army 

would mop up the BLAV I area, while 

the Sixth Army main body also turned 

south and ranged itself on Fourth Panzer Army's right. If the offensive were 

to begin approximately on 15 june, 

Army Group South expected to finish 

the first phase during the second week 

of july. 

In BLAV II, First Panzer Army would 

strike east of Kharkov along the north 

side of the Donets, and Fourth Panzer 

Army would continue south along the 

Don . Their points would meet midway 

between the rivers, north of Millerovo. 

On the way and in conjunction with 

Sixth Army, they would divert forces to 

divide the large pocket being formed 

between them into two or three smaller 

ones. Italian Eighth Army, on First 

Panzer Army's right, would make a 

short drive south of the Donets to 

Voroshilovgrad. BLAV 11 would be 
324 

completed in the second week of August and end on a line from Boguchar 

on the Don to the conRuence of the 

Derkul and the Donets, its center approximately 180 miles due west of Stalingrad. Just before BLAU II began, 

Headquarters, Army Group A, would 

take command of Italian Eighth Army, 

Seventeenth Army, and Eleventh 

Army, which by then was expected to 

have come out of the Crimea to take 

over the front on the Mius River west 

of Rostov. 

Before BLAU III began, Army Group 

A would take control of First Panzer 

Army and Fourth Panzer Army. It 

would then use Eleventh and Seventeenth Armies to take Rostov and occupy the eastern Donets Basin and the 

two panzer armies to clear the lower 

Don and deve lop the main thrust to 

Sta lingrad. Army Group South, by 

then Army Group B, would participate 

in BLAU III with Sixth Army, which 

would advance east along the right 

bank of the Don. When BLAU III was 

completed, Army Group B would have 

Second Army, the allied armies, and 

Sixth Army dug-in on a front from the 

Army Group Center boundary to 

Voronezh to Stalingrad and from then 

on would cover the rear of Army 

Group A as its armies headed south 

across the lower Don toward the 

Caucasus 46 

The Buildup 

I n the first week of May, General 

Greiffenberg, who had been Bock's 

chief of staff at Army Group Center 

and wou ld be List's, began assembling 

46()bktlo. der H . Gr. SUM, la Nr. 820142, \'1i-uung Nr. J 

fuer <1m OstJeltb.ug 1942, )0.4.42, Pz. AOK I 25 179/7 

file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the Army Group A staff in Zeppelin, the 

OKH compound at Zossen south of 

Berlin. Tivo weeks later, he took a forward echelon to the Army Group 

South headquarters in Poltava and 

from there dispatched an advance 

party to Stalino, which would be the 

Army Group A headquarters. Until it 

took control in the front, the staff 

would go under the cover name 

"Coastal Staff Azov." To preserve security, Hitler's orders were that no new 

unit symbols, Rags, or other identifying 

markings were to be introduced in the 

Army Group South area until BLAU 

began , and the other staffs coming in 

were also assigned cover names. Fourth 

Panzer Army became "Superior Special Purpose Staff 8." Six corps headquarters were designated fortress 

staffs. Division headquarters became 

"sector staffs."" 

Between March and late June, new 

arrivals from the west and from Army 

Group Center brought the Army 

Group South strength to 65 divisions, 

of these 45 were infantry, 5 light infantry, 4 motorized infantry, and II panzer 

divisions. Tiventy-five allied divisions 

brought the grand tota l to 90. This was 

5 more than Bock had estimated he 

would need in the February proposal, 

but the allied divisions, being smaller 

and more lightly armed, even leaving 

aside any questions about their performance, could not be rated as equivalent 

to more tl,an half their number of 

German divisions. The German troops 

probably numbered close to a million 

men. The a lli es added another 

300,000. The panzer divisions had 

spaces for 1,900 tanks, but hardly any 

o/,70bkdo. d. H. Gr. Sited, III Nr. 1/31/42, TarmmgJller 

Operatum Blalt, 12.5.42, H. Cr. Don 55479/2 . 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

had their full allotments. Since they 

were being refitted in or near the front 

and some were in action until late june, 

It was Impossible to. tell how many tanks 

they had m operatmg condition at any 

one tilne.48 However, increasing numbers of tanks were carrying long-barreled 50-mm. (on Panzer Ills) and 75-

mm. guns (on Panzer IVs) that tests 

showed were capable of knocking out 

Soviet T -34s from all angles, though 

m the case of the Panzer Ills, only at 

ran~es less than 400 yards" A tank 

deSIgned to be su perior to any of the 

Soviet models, the Panzer VI "Tiger" 

that mounted an 88-mm. gun, had 

been ex pected to be read y in time for 

BLAU, but its debut had to be 

postponed in May and again in june 

because of mechanical troubles. 50 On 

the other hand , the output of 75-mm. 

heavy antitank guns had been unexpected ly high, and Hitler ordered 

them to be used to the maximum 

especially on the static front Second 

Army would be building west of 

Voronezh. 51 The hitch was that until 

ammunition production picked up in 

the summer, there would be only 70 to 

150 75-mm. rounds per gun, including 

those mounted on the Panzer IV sand 

only 30 to 50 rounds would be of the 

most effective armor-piercing types. 

Consequently, the gun and tank crews 

would have to be very sparing with the 

~8()KI , Org. Abt., (J) Nr. 854142, Clitdenlllg wul 

KampJkraft tier Verbamde U1Itl Tnlpptm der H. Gr. Sued, 

27.5.42, 1-1 1/382 file; Schematische Kriegsgliedenmg der 

H. Gr. Sutci, Stllnd: 24.6.42, 171 Hallck, Die Operatio'iell 

der del/tsehin! Heeresgrll/l'en a.n der Osifront, Suedliches 

Gebifl, 1tril lll, MS P- 114c. 

49P 1.. AOK 1, l a Kn'egslagebuch Nr. 8, 17 Apr 42, Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file. 

~OO KH, GUIStdH, Org. Abt., Kriegslagebuclt, Band Ill, 

1-6 JUIl 42, H U2 13. 

lilbid., 5 May 42; AOK 2, la NT. 658142, 17.6.42, 

AOK 2 29585/9 file. 

325 

75-mm. ~mmu.nition . S.econd Army instructedlts anutank Ul1lts to use the 75s 

only for head-on shots. If the Soviet 

tanks exposed their less heavily armored sides or rears, they were to be 

left to the 50-mm. pieces. 

Saviet Deployment 

The principal Soviet commands in 

the BLAU area were Bryansk Front (General Golikov), Southwest Front (Timoshenko), South Front (General Malinovskiy), and North Caucasus Front 

(Budenny). For the first three, Headquarters, Southwestern Theater, had apparently ceased being a fully effective 

command before it was abolished in 

june, and Timoshenko and his staff 

had been engaged mostly in the command of Southwest Front during May 

and june. Stalin had told Timoshenko 

and Bagramyan at the end of March 

that Bryansk Front would not be part of 

the theater much longer, and thereafter, It had been, as a practical matter, 

underStavka contro!.52 The fourfronts 

together had a total of seventeen field 

armies. Southwest, South, and Bry'ansk 

Fronts had five a piece, and No,·th Caucasus two. Each had one air army attached. Bryansk Front had the Fifth Tank 

Army in its reserve and gave up one 

army, Sixtyfirst, to West Front on 29 

june. 

In the first week of june, before 

WILHELM and FRIDERICUS II, Army 

Group South calculated that it would 

have to contend with 91 Soviet riRe 

divisions, 32 riRe brigades, 20 cavalry 

dIVISIons, and 44 tank brigades. 53 

~2 Bagrarnyan, Hlk shli m)' It pobede. p. 62. 

u fi. Cr. SlIed, IdAO, Vtmudele Feilidkral'ftt vor 

flurtsgnlppt Sued, Stolid 4.6.42,5 JUIl 42, H. Gr. Sued 

7512411 file. 
326 

These were the estimated combined 

totals for Bryansk, Southwest, and South 

Fronts. For them, as of 1 july, the History 

of the Second Wlrld War gives 81 rifle 

divisions, 38 rifle brigades, 12 cavalry 

divisions, and 62 tank brigades with 

totals of 1.7 million troops and 2,300 

tanks 5 ' Army Group South intelligence estimated another 36 rifle divisions, 16 rifle brigades, 7 cavalry divisions, and 10 tank brigades were 

deployed in the Caucasus. Grechko 

gives the strength in the Caucasus in 

june as 17 rifle divisions, 3 rifle brigades, 3 cavalry divisions, and 3 tank 

brigades. As is usual, the Soviet figures 

apparently do not include the available 

Stavka reserves. Four reserve armies 

were stationed behind the Don River, 

to the rear of Br)'ansk and Southwest 

Fronts-at Stalingrad, Tambov, 

Novokhopersk, and Novosnninskiyand two were farther back, at Saratov 

and Stalingrad. 55 

In the view of Stalin, the Stavka, and 

the General Staff, Bryansk Front was 

strategically the most critical front of 

the four. Its right flank, north and east 

of Orel, covered the Tula approach to 

Moscow, and its left flank straddled the 

Kursk-Voronezh axis. General Armii 

M. 1. Kazakov, who was at the time 

Golikov's chief of staff, has said, as has 

!> 4/VMV, vol. V, p. 144. Using the figures gi\'cn in 

Tyushkc\'ich, VQon.nlu!1!II)'1' 5il)' (p. 284), the avcrage 

strength of a tank brigade \\'ould be 56 tanks, or a lOtal 

of 3.4 72 for 62 brigades. Elsewhere , the actual 

strengths of tank corps al B')'Gllsk Front in June 1942 

are gi,'en as 24 K Vs, 88 T - 345, and 68 T --605, for a 

tolal of 180: a brigade strength of approximatel y 60: 

and a lOtal for 62 brigades of 3,720. From this, it 

appears that the 2.300 figure excludes all T --60 tanks. 

Sec j\'l . Kazako\" "Na VQTonezhskom 1I11pravle-nij Ie/om 

J 942 godll ," VV),tll l1Q.istoricheskiy ZIlIlnWJ, 10 ( 1964 ), 

2811 . 

$~ Cre hko . Cody voyny, p. 182; IVNn~ \'01. V, map 9. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Vasilevskiy, that two possible German 

th rusts were considered, one from 

Orel via Mtsensk toward Tula and one 

from Shchigry (northeast of Kursk) 

toward Voronezh, and the first was 

considered tl,e most likely·· 

On 23 April, the Stavka ordered Golikov to prepare a drive on Orel to run 

concu rrently with Timoshen ko's 

Kharkov offensive. Golikov could not 

get ready on time, and after the German counterattack began, all of his air 

support had to be diverted to Southwest 

Front. 5 7 For the operation, Golikov had 

been given 5 tank and 2 cavalry corps, 

4 rifle divisions, and 4 tank brigades·8 

'IllOse stayed with the front, and in 

june, Golikov was getting ready to 

counterattack in either of the two anticipated directions of German attack. His 

reserves, on 28 june, consisted of 2 

cavalry corps, 4 rifle divisions, 6 tank 

corps (including 2 in Fifth Tank Anny 

and 2 being transferred from the 

north flank of Southwest Front), and 4 

tank brigades, a total of 1,640 tanks. Of 

these, 191 were KVs, 650 were T-34s, 

and 799 were older models and T -60s. 

One problem Golikov had , according 

to Kazakov, was that the General Staff 

had activated the tank armies and 

corps without giving guidance to their 

commands or th efront and army commands as to how they were to be 

employed·· 

$6 Kazakov, "\vnmnhskom nllpmvltmii," p. 30. Sec also 

Vasilevskiy, Delo, p. 219. Sec p. 307f. 

!l7 Kazakov, ·;WJrrmezhskom. nllpmvlellii, " p. 29f. 

!l8Vasilevskiy. Ddo, p. 2 19. Kazakov gives the rein· 

forccmems received from theStavka reserves in April 

and earl y Mayas 4 tank corps, 7 rifle divisions, 11 rifle 

bl'igades, 4 lank brigades, and "a significant number 

of aniJlcr y regiments." Kazakov, "Vorone1..hskom 

lillpravJenii," p. 28n. 

!lIIKazakov, "\fmml'wkom lIopravlmii," pp. 30- 32. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 327 

NEW 75-"M. SELF-PROPELLED ASSAULT G UN AT PRACTICE 

On the Eve 

A Tmy Cmup SOllth's R eadiness 

Concurrently with the OKW's 

broader analyses of Wehrmacht 

strength, the OKH Organization 

Branch made a study of Army Group 

South's readiness for the summer offensive in terms of its basic units, the 

divisions. The study disclosed , in the 

first place, that whereas formerly all 

divisions of one type, say infantry, 

could be assumed to be nearly identical 

in quality, that was no longer true. The 

divisions for BLAU would fall from the 

outset into three categories. In the first 

were fifteen infantry and six panzer 

and motorized divisions which were 

either new or fully rebuilt behind the 

fronl. They would be at full allotted 

strength and would have had time to 

let their experienced troops rest and to 

break in the replacements. The second 

category, consisting of seventeen infantry and ten panzer and motorized divisions, would be the same as the first, 

but the divisions would be rebuilt in the 

front, and there would be no time to 

rest. In the third category were seventeen infantry divisions, a good quarter 

of the total number, that would neither 

be rested nor fully rebuill. They would 

be at "approximately" full strength in 

personnel and material, but they would 

be short on officers and noncommissioned officers, and they would have to 

depend on the output of the repair 

shops for equipment. 
328 

In all three categories, some corners 

had been cut. The infantry divisions' 

supply trains would be horse-drawn, 

and every division would have to take 

about a thousand of the so-called 

young troops, eighteen- and nineteenyear olds who had no more than eight 

weeks' training. In the panzer divisions, the rifle battalions would be reduced from five to four companies. 

The panzer and motorized divisions 

would also have fewer tracked personnel-carrying vehicles. They would 

reach about 80 percent of full mobility, 

but about 20 percent of that would 

have to be attained by using trucks and, 

in consequence, would entail some loss 

of cross-country capability. Since there 

was nothing in reserve , all equipment 

would have to come from current output, which meant that the schedules 

for rebuilding could not be accelerated, and unanticipated losses in preliminary operations could not be 

replaced 60 

Army Group South looked at the 

same divisions in terms of probable 

performance and concluded: 

Owing to diverse composition, partial lack 

of battle experience and gaps in their outfitting, the units available for the summer 

operation in 1942 will not have the combat 

effectiveness that could be taken for 

granted at the beginning of the campaign 

In the East. The mobile units, too, will not 

have the flexibility, the endurance, or the 

penetrating power they had a year ago. 

The commands will have to be aware of 

this. and in assigning missions and selting objectives, they wIll have to take into 

account tlle composition and battle-worthiness of the individual divisions. The 

6fJOKH, Org. Abl., (J) NT. 854142, Gliederung un.d 

Kampfkraft der Verbaende Itlld Tntppen der H. Gr. Sued, 

27.5.42. H 11382 file . See pp. 293-96. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

attack elements will have to be put together with painstaking care. 61 

The question ,Vas how serious the flaws 

would be. Army Group South saw reason for concern. Others, closer to the 

front, were downright worried, as the 

following letter from General Paulus, 

commander of the Sixth Army, to his 

corps commanders indicates: 

Recently numbers of reports have come 

to my attention and that of the higher 

leadership in which division commanaers 

have described the condition of tl,eir divisions with extreme pessimism. This I cannot tolerate. 

The personnel and material deficiencies 

afflicting the divisions are well known to 

the higher leadershir. Nevertheless, the 

higher leadership is determined to carrx 

out its intentions in the eastern theater of 

war to the full. Tllerefore it is up to us to 

get the most out of the troops in their 

present condition. 

I request that you exert influence on the 

division commanders in this sense.

62 

OperatUm K reml 

After Kharkov, the strategic initiative 

reverted to the Germans; any doubts 

about that fact that might have lingered on either side no longer existed. 

Welcome as this was to Hitler for its 

effects on his own troops' and the enemy's morale, by presumably putting 

the Soviet south flank on the defensive 

alert it could also impair BLAU'S chances 

for a smootll start. Surprise was going 

to be less easy to achieve--and more 

essential. On ti,e one hand, Hitler had 

seen to it, in person, that the deployment for BLAU was carried out in great61H. Gr. Sued, l aNr. 820142, Anlage 2, Richtlillie1lJuer 

die Kampffllehrlllig, 30.4.42, Pz. AOK 1 2517917 file. 

62Der O.B. der 6. Armee, la Nr. 55142, all die Herrell 

Kommmuiierenden Generate, 4.7.42. AOK 6 3934217 

file. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

est secrecy. All new headquarters and 

units were billeted well away from the 

front, in scattered locations, and disguised as elements of the permanent 

rear echelon. At the height of the 

Kharkov battle, to prevent giving their 

presence away, Hitler had refused to 

put in any of the new troops. On the 

otl1er hand , the new troops were still 

untested, and the losses and wear and 

tear on men and equipment in the 

veteran units that had fought at 

Kharkov were not going to be made 

good in time for BLAU. The objective 

was still to destroy the Soviet main 

forces, but having them on the alert 

and on the scene at the start would be 

very inconvenient. 

All in all, it was worthwhile to do 

whatever could be done to divert Soviet 

attention away from the south Rank. 

The mission fell to Army Group Cente r, which was low on muscle, butbecause of its proximity to Moscowhigh in potential for attracting Soviet 

notice. On 29 May, Headquarters, 

Army Group Center, issued a top secret directive. The first sentence read, 

"The OKH has ordered the earliest 

possible resumption of the attack on 

Moscow." All subsequent correspondence regarding the operation was to 

go forward under the code name 

KREML ("Kremlin")·3 

KREML was a paper operation, an 

out-and-out deception, but it had the 

substance to make it a masterpiece of 

this somewhat specula ti ve form of military art. In tl1e first place, it coincided 

with Soviet thinking-which, of course, 

fl3H . Cr:. M ittl', l a Nr. 4350142, BifeltlJuerdmA1lgrifJ 

auJ Moslwu, 29.5.42, AOK 4 24336125 file. On Opel'alion KREML see also Earl F. Ziemke, "Operation 

KREML: Deception, Strategy. and the Fortunes of 

War,H Po.mmelrrs, vol. IX. I (1978), 72-82. 

329 

the Germans did not know. In the 

second, its premise--to simulate a repeat of the late 1941 drive on 

Moscow-was solid; in fact, it made 

better strategic sense than did that of 

BLAu. The front, though badly eroded, 

was close to where it had been in midNovember 1941 , and Second and 

Third Panzer Armies, which had been 

the spearheads then, were in relatively 

the same positions southwest and 

northwest of Moscow that they had 

held when the fal l rains stopped and 

the advance resumed . The army group 

directive, which assigned the two panzer armies the identical missions they 

had received in the previous fall, could 

have been taken for the real thing even 

by German officers who were not told 

otherwise, and most were not. 

In the first week of June, the army 

group distributed sealed batches of 

Moscow-area maps down to the regimental level with instructions not to 

open them until 10 June. On that day, 

army, corps, and division staffs began 

holding planning con ferences on 

KREML with a target readiness date of 

about 1 August. Security was tight, and 

only the chiefs of staff and branch 

chiefs knew they were working on a 

sham. At the same time, the air force 

increased its reconnaissance flights 

over and around Moscow; prisoner-ofwar interrogators were given lists of 

questions to ask about the city'S defenses; and intelligence groups sent 

out swarms of agents toward Moscow, 

Tula, and Kalinin · ' Since very few 

agents sent across the lines in the past 

had been heard from again, it could be 

assumed that Soviet counterintelli-

~H. Gr. Mitte. 10. Nt: 4570142, "Kreml," 3.6.42, AOK 

4 34226125 file. 
330 

gence did its work thoroughly. That 

the prisoner-of-war compounds were 

loaded with Soviet agents and that almost every civilian in the occupied territory was at least an indirect informant 

for Soviet agents or partisans also 

could be taken for granted. The barest 

trickle of information would suffice. 

The Soviet postwar accounts have 

little to say about KREML. The History of 

the Second I%rld War, however, mentions 

it twice, once in conjunction with an 

actual order alerting Army Group 

Center to the possibility of a radical 

Soviet weakening in the center after 

BLAV began. The History describes the 

operation as comprising a "varied complex of desinformation [sic)" designed 

to mislead the Soviet Command and 

says, "However, Operation KREML did 

not achieve its aim."·5 In the Popular 

Scientific Sketch, where KREML is associated with the Soviet strategic planning 

in March 1942, it is said to have been an 

"attempt" to disguise the direction of 

the main attack and "arouse an impression" of a strong offensive in the 

Moscow direction. "But," the account 

continues, "the Fascists miscalculated. 

The plans of the enemy were uncovered in good time."·· 

Timing and Trouble 

As the deployment entered its final 

stage, the timetable for BLAV was coming into question from the two almost 

diametrically opposed points of view. 

Hitler saw W,LHELM and FRIDERICVS Il 

as having demonstrated that "the Soviet ability to resist has become substantially weaker in comparison Witll the 

previous year." He believed the phases 

65/VMV, vol. V. pp. 121 , 24 3. 

66VOV, p. 138. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

of BLAV would be executed "more 

easily and faster than had been assumed ," and he talked about taking 

some divisions out of BLAV II and 

transferring them to Army Group 

Center, where they could be used to 

acquire jump-off positions for a later 

attack toward Moscow. 67 Army Group 

South also believed BLAV would go 

faster than had been anticipated , but 

added, "The expe riences in FRIDERICVS 

II and W,LHELM have demonstrated 

that tlle enemy no longer holds on 

stubbornly and lets himself be encircled, hence, large-scale withdrawal 

of his forces must be taken into account." The army group considered 

merging BLAV I and BLAV II, which 

would give the Russians less chance to 

escape but would also force First Panzer Army back into action before it had 

time to rest and refit.· 8 

More immediately in doubt was the 

starting date for BLAV. After having 

talked about 15 June, Hitler had put 

WILHELM and FRIDERlCVS n into the 

schedule and then had gone to the 

Berghof for a vacation . By the 20th , 

waiting for the rain to let up enough 

for FRIDERICVS II to begin, Bock was 

worried that in the midst of the prolonged delay something untoward-a 

Soviet spoiling attack, for instance--

might occur. He did not know it yet, 

but something already had happened. 

Contrary to standing orders reinforced by the extraordinary security 

measures Hitler had demanded for 

BLAv, a 23d Panzer Division staff officer, Major Joachim Reichel, had, on 

670KW, WFSt, Kriegsgeschichtliche Ableilul/g, 

Kriegstagebuch, 1.4. - 30.6.42, 25 Jun 42, I.M.T 1807 

file. 

660bkdo. d. H. Gr. Sued, Gmeral del' Piol/ jerl!. Taeligkeirsberirhl, 29.6.42, H . Gr. Sued 34303 file. 
PRELUDE TO SUMMER 

the 19th, carried plans for BLAV I with 

him on a flight in a light airplane. The 

plane had strayed across the front and 

had landed two and a half miles in on 

the Soviet side. A German patrol found 

it some hours later, intact except for a 

bullet hole in the gas tank. Reichel, the 

pilot, and the papers had disappeared 

without a trace. Two days later another 

patrol found two bodies but no sign of 

the papers. 

Bock's first reaction, when a report 

reached him late on the 20th , was that 

il was high time to start BLAV before 

the Russians could exploit the information they might have acquired. The 

OKH apparently agreed and told him 

to arrange for the offensive to start, if 

ordered, on the 26th·· For the deployment, the 22d became X-day minus 

four, but the final decision to start 

depended on Hitler, and he was still in 

Bavaria. 

When Hitler returned to the Vlblfsschanze on the afternoon of the 24th, 

BLAV appeared for a time almost about 

to slip out of sight. Bock was summoned to report in person on tlle 

Reichel incident, and Halder grumbled 

about "a great agitation conducted 

against the General Staff' in the OKW 

over the affair.'o Field Marshal Keitel, 

chief of the OKW, "visibly nervous," 

mel Bock on his arrival the next day 

and "depicting the situation in black on 

black," told him that Hitler was convinced the generals were not obeying 

orders, was determined to make examples of some of them, and had directed 

that Bock be told not to try to persuade 

him otherwise. Hitler, however, ap69Bock Diary, Osten II, 18-22 J un 42. See also Walter 

Goerlitz, p(wltt.} {/I/(/ Sflilingmd (New York : Citadel, 

1963). Pl'. 183-89. 

70Halder Diw)'. vol. Ill , p. 464. 

331 

pea red more depressed than angry 

and interjected only a few questions as 

Bock told him the army group's investigation had not revealed any disobedience other tlun by the dead Major 

Reichel. If he or any of the senior 

generals suspected anything of the 

sort, Bock added, they would "intervene mercilessly." Hitler appeared to 

be reassured, and the rest of the interview, Bock observed appreciatively, was 

"very friendly."" 

By the time Bock arrived back in 

Poltava, BLAV I was on twelve to thirtysix hours' standby. The code word Dinkelsbuehl would be the signallo start the 

next morning. Aachen would postpone 

the decision until tlle following afternoon. Heavy rain was falling all along 

the front, and the code word on the 

26th was Aachen. The next afternoon, 

after consulting Weichs, who thought 

he could start, and Paulus, who 

thought he could not because of continuing rain, Bock sent out Dinkelsbuehl 

to Armeegruppe Weichs and Aachen to 

Sixth Army. 72 

BLAV was getting under way at lastbut not smoothly. An hour after the 

code words were sent, Keitel told Bock 

by telegram to relieve the commanding 

general and chief of staff of XXXX 

Panzer Corps and the 23d Panzer Division commander. Almost simultaneously, a p lane carrying their 

replacements landed al Poltava. Dismayed at having to make command 

changes in crucial units at the last minute, Bock called Halder and General 

Schmundt, Hitler's chief adjutant, who 

told him that Hitler had been reading 

the file on the Reichel affair and had 

71Bock Diary, Osten II, 25 JUIl 42. 

72AOK 6, fa Kriegslagebuch Nr. 12, 23- 27 Jun 42, 

AOK 6 22855/1 file. 
332 

concluded that an attempt was being 

made to shift the blame to a subordinate. (One report raised the possibility 

of bringing charges against a clerk in 

the 23d Panzer Division.) Later, Hitler listened while Bock explained that 

the charges against the clerk had 

been dropped several days before, but 

when Bock asked whether he still 

wanted the officers relieved, Hitler answered curtly, "Yes." 

On the 28th, the code word for Sixth 

Army was Aachen for one more day, 

and Paulus began talking about recommending a court-martia l for himself 

over the Reichel affair. Bock told him, 

"That is out of the question. It is time 

now to point your nose forward and 

follow it. "73 

Soviet Readiness 

By mid-June, Golikov had stationed 

his reserves to meet the anti cipated 

German attacks. Fifth Tank Army and 

Vill Cavalry Corps were at Chern, on 

the Orel-Tula road, and VII Caval!y 

Corps and two tank brigades were 

somewhat farther north. On his left 

flank, facing Kursk, he had tlle I, XVI, 

and IV Tank Corps. By then, also, air 

reconnaissance had begun sighting 

heavy enemy traffic in the KurskShchigry area, but these reports were 

regarded as less significant than one 

from General Staff intelligence on the 

18th concerning ten German infantry 

and four panzer divisions supposedly 

massed near Yukhnov, off Bryansk 

Front's north flank. 74 

On 20 June, Ttmoshenko talked to 

Stalin by telephone. He had the papers 

Reichel had been carrying. He told Sta73Bock Diary. Osten fl, 27-28Jun 42. 

H Kazakov, "Na Voronezhskom napravlenii," pp. 30, 

32. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

lin there had been three men [sic] in 

the plane, the pilot and two officers. 

The pilot and one officer had burned 

to death in tlle crash. The other officer, 

a major, had survived the crash but had 

been killed when he refused to surrender. To Ttmoshenko's report on the 

contents of tlle documents, Stalin replied, "First, keep it secret that you 

have intercepted the directives. Second, it is possible that what has been 

intercepted is only part of the enemy's 

plan. It is possible tllat analogous plans 

exist for other fronts."75 

Golikov had received copies of the 

documents from Ttmoshenko on the 

19th. On the 22d, Golikov reported the 

presence of "six or seven" panzer and 

motorized divisions in the KurskShchigry area. 1\vo days later, air reconnaissance observed enemy columns 

going south out of the vicinity of Orel 

toward Kursk. Bombers and Shturmovik 

dive-bombers went out to attack 

them.'· 

On the 26th, Golikov was summoned 

to Moscow, where Stalin told him he 

did not believe the BLAU plan was 

"plausible" and that it was a "big 

trumped-up piece of work by the intelligence people." It was necessary, Stalin 

said, to beat the enemy to the punch 

and deal him a blow, and he ordered 

Golikov to be ready to attack toward 

Orel by 5 July. 

Golikov and his staff finished drafting the plan for an Orel operation in 

the early morning hours, "between two 

and three o'clock," on 28 June. They 

expected to start work on the "details" 

during the day. 77 

7!>A. M. Samsonov, Stalingradsknya bilvG (Moscow: 

Izdalelstvo "Nauka,M 1968). p. 72f. 

76 Kazakov, "Na vQrQnezhskom napravlenii," p. 33. 

77lbid. 
CHAPTER XVI 

Operation BLAU 

"The Enemy Is Defeated" 

Breakthrough 

At daylight on 28 June, General 

Weichs, the commander of Second 

Army, ascended a low hill slightly east 

of Shchigry. From the top, he saw, on 

either side, lines of artillery and rocket 

launcher emplacements still partly 

obscured by the morning haze. Looking ahead through field glasses, he 

could make out Fourth Panzer Army's 

tanks standing in attack formations 

Witll their motors off. The troops were 

nearly as immobile as their vehicles and 

weapons. For the moment, everything 

that needed to be done had been done. 

Then, timed to a second, tlle artillery 

opened fire with a shattering crash and 

sa lvos from the rocket launchers 

screamed away trailing plumes of white 

flame behind tllem. The preliminary 

barrage lasted only half-an-hour, which 

was long enough, though, to give 

Weichs a clue as to how the battle 

would go. The Soviet artillery's response was slow and ragged; the enemy might have been taken by surprise 

after all. When the guns paused to lay 

their fire deeper, the armor rolled forward, and in the few minutes it took 

r or the new ranges to be set, the second 

wave of tanks began to file between the 

artillery positions. 1 

1 Ma.ximilian FreiheIT von Weichs, TageSflolize1l , 

Band 6, 1'pi! I, p. I , CMH X· I026 file. 

The morning was cloudy and warm, 

promising rain. Soon most of the action was not visible from where Weichs 

stood. The offensive swept east witllOut 

a hitch, and the armor disappeared 

into the distance. Fourth Panzer 

Army's spearhead, XXXXVIII Panzer 

Corps, had gone ten miles to the Tim 

Ri ver by 1200. There it captured and 

crossed an undamaged railroad bridge. 

That afternoon it moved another ten 

miles to and across the Kshen River. 

(Mat) 30.) Passing the Kshen put it on 

the so-called land bridge to Voronezh, a 

five- to ten-mile-wide divide between 

the basins of the Oskol and the Sosna 

rivers. Russian resistance was spottydetermined in some places, feeble in 

others. One thing was certain: the 

enemy had not pulled out beforehand. 

Battlefield evidence, prisoners, dead , 

abandoned command posts, and so 

forth, showed that all the units previously identified were still tllere fighting, at least they were trying to. Before 

dark, XXXXV II I Panzer Corps covered 

another ten miles, the last of these in 

heavy rain. By then its neighbor on the 

left, XXIV Panzer Corps, had drawn up 

to the Kshen.' For Sixth Army the code 

word again was Aa.chen, which meant 

another twen ty-foll r-holl r postponement. The rain in the Sixth Army sector 

2AOK 2, la Kn"egsragebuch, Tei! VI, 28Jun 42. AOK 2 

23617/2 rol e. 
334 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

PANZER III TANKS ON THE An'ACK 

had almost stopped during the day, but 

the roads were still impassable. 

At General Golikov's Bryansk Front, 

Thirteenth and Fortieth Annies were hardhit, but his reserve tank corps and 

brigades were intact. The IV and XXIV 

Tank C01·PS were on the way from Southwest Front, and the Stavka was sending in 

the XVII Tank C01PS from its reserve, 

which would bring the total complement of tank corps to seven. During 

the day, the front's air support was 

increased by four regiments of fighters 

and three of Shtunnovik dive-bombers. 

At the day's end , Golikov gave Fortieth 

Army two tank brigades and ordered 

the I and XVI Tank Corps to the Kshen 

River. The trouble was, Kazakov says, 

that thejivnt did not know how capable 

of "decisive action" the tank corps 

were, and there was not enough fuel 

for the fighters and Shtumwviks. 3 

The rain lasted until 1200 the next 

day. In the mud , XXXXVlIi Panzer 

Corps made just enough headway to 

confirm its breakthrough onto the land 

bridge . Th e XXIV Panzer Corps 

worked on bridgeheads across the 

Kshen. On FOllrth Panzer Army's 

right, Hungarian Second Army could 

not get past the Tim River, It was being 

held up less by the rain or by the 

enemy than by its command's inability 

to stage a coordinated attack. Sixth 

Army canvassed its corps in the afternoon; all of them reported their roads 

passable; and Field Marshal Bock, the 

commander of Army Group SOllth , 

3Kazakov, "Na voronezhskom lIaprov{enii," p. 34. 
I 

\ 

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OPERATION BLAUBRAUNSCHWEIG 

28 June - 11 July 1942 

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BRYANSK 

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SEVENTEENTH ARMY 

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336 

then issued the code word Dinkelsbuehl 

for Sixth Army, effective at daybreak 

on the 30th.' 

While Fourth Panzer Army was held 

up again by rain on the 30th, Sixth 

Army behaved like a panzer army and 

made a clean, twenty-mile-deep breakthrough to the Korocha River.' The 

code name BLAu, which had been compromised by the Reichel affair, went 

out of official existence on the 30th and 

was replaced by BRAUNSCHWEIG for the 

who le offensive. BLAu II became 

CLAUSEWITZ and BLAU Ill, DAMPFHAMMER ("steam hammer"). None of the 

three was going to be much used, 

however. Plans previously made were 

about to be overrun by events. 

On the 30th, Golikov had a blunt 

wedge driven into his line. It was bisected by the Kursk-Voronezh railroad . 

The I and XVI Tank Corps were on the 

north side, but the main weight of the 

German armor, XXIV and XXXXVIII 

Panzer Corps, was ranged on the railroad and south of it. The position of 

the panzer corps and Sixth Army's developing breakthrough on the south 

presaged an encirclement that would 

engulf Fortieth Army's left flank . Talking 

to Stalin late in the day, Golikov reponed that IV and XXIV Tank Corps 

were moving "extremely slowly," and 

theJront did not have any regular contact with them. The XVII Tcl'llk C01PS, he 

added, was coming west from Voronezh but running out of diesel oil because the corps staff had not organized 

its fuel supply properly. Golikov believed it would be best to take Fortieth 

Army's left flank back and out of the way 

'AOK 6, la Kriegslagebuch Nr. 12. 29 Jun 42. AOK 6 

2394811 file . 

:'/hid., 30 Jun 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

of the developing encirclement. But 

Stalin insisted on a counterattack by IV, 

XX I V, and XVII Tank CO"ps near 

Gorshechnoye, to stop the German armor south of the railroad and to drive 

it back. General Ley tenant Va. N. 

Fedorenko, the army's chief of tanks, 

had arrived at the front during the day 

to organize the counterattack. Finally, 

Stalin admonished Goli kov to "keep 

well in mind" that he had "more than a 

thousand tanks and the enemy not 

more than five hundred," that he had 

over five hundred tanks in the area of 

the proposed counterattack "and the 

enemy three hundred to three hundred and fifty at the most," and that 

"everything now depends on your abi lity to deploy and lead these forces. "· 

During the night, elements of IV Tcmk 

Corps engage d the enemy near 

Gorshechnoye, and XVII Tank Corps 

"maneuvered" in the area south of the 

railroad without getting into the fighting. All of the XXI V Tank Corps was 

miles away, at Novyy Oskol. 7 

In the morning, on I July, Bock went 

to the Fourth Panzer Army command 

post, where he and General Hoth , the 

army commander, agreed the army 

would have to head stra ight for 

Voronezh , "without looking to either 

side." Because the roads were clogged 

with supply columns bogged down in 

the mud, Bock could not get close to 

the frontS It was, to say the least, not 

good weather for tanks, and during the 

day, the Grossdeutschland Division's infantry took the lead at XXXXV III 

Panzer Corps and passed the headwaters of the Olym River, forty miles 

6 Kazako\', "No vorotltzll.S!tom lIopraviellii, " pp. 34-36; 

IVMV. voJ. V. p. 150. 

7 Kazako\', "No vorOTltrltskom tlapravlt'1lii," p. 36. 

RBork Diary', OS'"I/ II, 1 Ju142. 
OPERATION BLAU 

west of Voronezh. Meanwhile, the 16th 

Motorized Infantry Division , operating 

on the XXXXVlll Panzer Corps right 

Rank, had come abreast and , in the afte rnoon, turned south toward Staryy 

Oskol. 9 

By late afternoon, Sixth Army had 

smashed the whole right half of Southwest Front west of the Oskol River and 

had a bridgehead ac ross the river. 

Early in the day, however, the Stavka 

had realized that the counterattack by 

the tank corps was not likely to accomplish anything and had given Fortieth 

and Twentyjirst Armies permission to 

take their forces out ofthe pocket.'o In 

the afternoon, the Soviet units west of 

the Oskol we re going back so fast that 

Bock did not think enough of them 

could be trapped by closing the pocket 

at Staryy Oskol to make it worthwhile 

to turn Sixth Army nonh, and he 

talked to Hitler about letting the army 

go northeast, instead , "to cut off what is 

still to be cut off" by trapping the Russia ns between the Ranks of Sixth Army 

and Fourth Panzer Army somewhere 

farther east." General Paulus, the 

commander of Sixth Army, believing 

the Russians were in full retreat and 

would not le t th ems e lves be caught 

anywhere west of the Don, wanted to 

head due easl. 12 

On 2 Jul y, Kazakov says, "The road 

to Voronezh was, in effect, open to the 

enemy."'3 To close it on the Don, the 

Stavka, during the day, shifted two a r-

"A OK 2,1(1 Kriegstagl'bllch, Teil VI, I Jul 42, AOK 2 

23617/2 me. 

'OAOK 6, f a Kriegstagebuch Nr. 12, I Jul 42, AOK 6 

239481 1 file; Kazakov, "Na vorolltth.skom '1lopravlenii," 

p.37. 

1 I Bock DUll)', Ostel/ 11, 1 Ju142. 

12:\OK 6,1(1 Kneg5t(lge/)llch Nr. 12, 1 Ju142, AOK 6 

2285 ~1l file. 

uKa7akov, "Na vorollt'l.hskom nopmvlellii;" p. 38. 

337 

mies, Sixth and Sixtieth, out of its reserve, while at the same time ordering 

another reserve army, Sixty-third, up to 

the river behind Southwest Fmnt. Fifth 

Tank Anny, which had bee n und e r 

Stavka control, was released and orde red to assemble near Yelets. Golikov, 

leaving his headquarters in Yelets under General Ley tenant N. Yeo Chibisov, 

his deputy, went to Voronezh to take 

command of Sixth, Sixtieth, and F01·tieth 

Armies. 14 H e would not have much 

time. Vasilevskiy says, "By the end of 

the day on 2 July, conditions had drastically deteriorated in the Voronezh 

direction."15 

Hiller at Pollava 

At 0700 on the 3d, Hitler's Condor 

transport, carrying him, General Haider (chief of the General Staff), Field 

Marshal Keitel (chief of the OKW), 

General Schmundt (Hitler's chief adjutant), and others of his retinue landed 

at Poltava . The plane had taken off 

from Rastenburg at 0400, an unusual 

hour for Hitler to be abroad, pa rticularly on a mission that later appeared to have had no dis ce rnible 

purpose. 

All Hitler did of any substance was to 

put Bock "at liberty" to re frain from 

taking Voronezh if doing so would involve "too heavy fi ghting. " Momhs afterward , Keitel told Bock that this had 

been th e reason for the trip'J; 

However, Halder had given Bock the 

same instruction abo ut Voronezh by 

telephone the night before." 

14/VMV, \'01. V, p. 151 ; Vasilevskiy, 01'10, p. 220; 

Kazakov, 'No vorQ1U!zhskom lIopraviellii," p. 39. 

'!>Vasilcvskiy, Delo, p. 220. 

16Bock D/(/,.", OSfen 11, 2 1 r"lar 43. 

17/bid.,2 JtIl 42. 
338 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

SELF-PROPELLED A SSA ULT G UN AND MOUNTE.D TROOPS CROSSI NG THE OSKOL RIVER 

During the meeting, Halder revived 

a proposal that had been made before, 

namely, to give Field Marshal List's 

Army Group A command of First Panzer Army for BLAU IIICLAUSEWITZ. 

Bock, as he had before, objected because he believed it would do nothing 

but complicate the lines of command. 

Hitler said nothing; nevertheless, 

Halder's proposal may well have been 

the original reason for the flight to Poltava. On the 2d, the OKH had instructed Coasta l Staff Azov (Army 

Group A) to prepare to take command 

of the panzer army on 5 July or any 

time thereafter. 18 Perhaps Hiller had 

expected a more complaisant reaction 

181-1. Gr. A, l a Kriegstagtbuch, Band I. Teill, 2 Jul 42, 

H. Gr. A 7512611 file. 

from Bock, and when none was forthcoming, his nerve failed. He could at 

times be quite diffident about taking 

up unpleasant mallers with the older 

senior generals. 

To Bock, who one may suspect was 

not an exceptionally acute judge of the 

Fuehrer's moods, Hitler seemed in high 

good humor. Apparently having in 

mind the recent relief of Lieutenant 

General Neil M. Ritchie as commanding general, British Eighth Army, in 

North Africa, Hitler joked about what 

he saw as a peculiarly British tendency 

" to saw off every general for whom 

things do not go exactly right."19 At 

0900 he reboarded his aircraft, and by 

1200 he was back at the VI'ol[ssclzanze . 

'PBach Diary, Osten II, 3 Ju142. 
OPERATION BLAU 

The day was gratifying for Bock. He 

could assume he had the Fuehrer's full 

confidence, and the reports from the 

front registered nothing but successes. 

In only occasional light rain, XXXXVI I I 

Panzer Corps was making its final push 

to the Don, with just a few miles left to 

go. The pocket west of the Oskol was 

almost closed at Staryy Oskol. Sixth 

Army was pursuing an enemy who was 

not making even a pretense of coherent resistance. After the day's reports were in, Bock sent a teletyped 

message to Weichs and Paulus. The 

opening sentence read , "The enemy 

opposite Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army is defeated." For Paulus, he 

included an order to turn XXXX Panzer Corps east to cover Fourth Panzer 

Army's right flank. It would then drive 

to Korotoyak on the Don and Ostrogozhsk on the Tikhaya Sosna River. 

Paulus, Bock added , was to swing the 

infantry on XXXX Panzer Corps' right 

flank east and southeast to clear the 

line of the Tikhaya Sosna upstream 

from Ostrogozhsk20 In the morning, 

on learning that Paulus had all of 

XXXX Panzer Corps headed due east, 

Bock ordered him to divert 23d Panzer 

Division to the northeast toward Hoth's 

Rank2 1 

"5 tampede /0 U.mmezh" 

The offensive was rolling at full 

speed on the ninth day, 5 July. The XXXXVlll Panzer Corps had three solid 

bridgeheads a cross the Don in the 

morning, one reaching to within two 

miles of Voronezh. The XXXX Panzer 

'l°H. Gr. Sued. fa N r. /934142, an AOK 6, und A. Gr. 

I\"'i(h.~, 3.7.42, AOK 6 301 55/39 file. 

21AOK 6, la Kriegstllgebllch, N /" , 12, 4 Ju142, AOK 6 

22855/ 1 file. 

339 

Corps was bearing in on Ostrogozhsk 

and approaching Korotoyak. Bock , 

seeing himself as master of the battlefield , issued Directive 2 for Operation BRAUNSCHWEIG. In part it read: 

lllc enemy has not succeeded in organizing a new defense anywhere. Wherever he 

was attacked his resistance collapsed 

quickly and he Aed. It has been impossible 

to discern any purpose or plan in his 

retreats. At no point thus far in the campaign in the East have sudl strong evidences of disinte~Tation been observed on 

the enemy side.' 

Specifically, the object was "to exploit 

the present condition of tile Soviet 

Army for the furtllerance of our operations and not to permit the defeated 

enemy to come to rest." Sixth Army 

was to "stay on the enemy's heels," and 

Armeegruppe Weichs was to release 

Fourtll Panzer Army "at the earliest 

possible time" and put it at the disposal 

of the army group23 

While Bock was preparing to continue what he considered to be his 

display of virtuosity, his performance 

was being judged differently in the 

OKH and at Fuehrer Headquarters. 

Hitler and Halder believed that turning 23d Panzer Division north was a 

waste of time and effort. Both thought 

Bock and Hoth were launched on a 

mindless "stampede" toward Voronezh. 

Hitler, moreover, querulously asked 

Halder to find out why XXXX Panzer 

Corps had not yet reached the Don. 

Bock's high-handed reply that much of 

the reason why was the firing of the 

two best generals in ti,e corps because 

of the Reichel affair probably did not 

UH . Cr. Sued, /a Nr. / 950142, \\~isung N,: 2 wr 

OperatiOlI "BrmwsdulJeig," 5.7.42. AOK 6 301 55/39 file. 

23Jbid.; H. Gr. Sued, /(1 N r. 1956142 , 5.7.-1 2, AOK 6 

301 55/39 file. 
340 

improve the atmosphere at the upper 

levels'· 

During the evening, the OKH liaison 

officer with Fourth Panzer Army raised 

another doubt. (Liaison officers were 

attached to every army headquarters, 

and they reported independently to 

Hitler via the OKH.) The officer, a 

general staff major, radioed, "CoujJ de 

main at Voronezh has failed. 24th Panzer Division opposed by strong enemy 

south of the city. Grossdeutschland also 

strongly opposed in its bridgehead. 

Concerted attack being planned for 

tomorrow." The reality was not quite so 

dramatic. On the outskirts of Voronezh , the 24th Panzer Division's lead 

elements had encountered Soviet 

troops and workers' militia with mortars but no artillery and only a few 

tanks. Grossdeutschland Division was 

having to beat down some resistance to 

expand its bridgehead. 25 At Fuehre,' 

Headquarters, however, the liaison officer's message raised a vision of streetfighting and a debilitating battle for the 

city, and Hitler thereupon forbade 

using the " fast " divisions, Grossdeutschland or 24th Panzer, and instructed Bock and Hoth to leave Voronezh to less valuable divisions. 2 • 

One more day brought BLAU 11 

BRA UNSCHWEIG to a superficially 

glorious and profoundly anticlimactic 

conclusion . Voronezh was taken on the 

6th with hardly a shot having to be 

fired . The 24th Panzer Division patrols 

ranged through the streets in the 

morning without seeing an enemy. A 

motorcycle battalion from the 3d InH Halder Dim)', vol. III , p. 473; Bock Diary, Ostell 11, 5 

Ju142. 

2"AOK 2, la Kriegslagebllch, Teil VI, 5 .lui 42, AOK 2 

23617/2 file. 

26BocH. Diary, Ostell II, 5 Ju142. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

fan try Division did the same in tl,e 

afternoon. In acrimonious telephone 

calls to Halder, Bock asked permission 

to occupy the city, which Hitler granted 

late in the day. 

By then the Germans had had another, greater surprise : Southwest Front 

was retreating ali along the Sixth Army 

front on tl,e Tikhaya Sosna River even 

though tl,e army was stopped on most 

of its line west of Ostrogozhsk. No one 

knew for certain what this highly untypical Soviet behavior meant, but if 

the Russians were in full retreat, it was 

time to be heading south. That, however, was to have been FOUrtll Panzer 

Army'sjob, and Hoth's panzer divisions 

and the Grossdeutschland Division 

were still at Voronezh and north of it. 

Paulus only had one panzer division 

and one motorized infantry division. 

TI,e victory was turning sour, and 

the whole offensive was on the verge of 

being thrown into disarray. While Bock 

and Halder exchanged "enervating" 

telephone calis, Hitler talked about 

every hour being important, and Keitel 

showered "iii-judged" pronouncements 

on all. Halder longed for "time to contemplate quietly and then give clear 

orders." He also believed he knew the 

cause of the problern-Bock's generalship: Bock, Halder concluded, had 

let himself be taken in tow by Hoth and 

had piled too much of his armor into 

tl,e north Rank." 

A Strategic Retreat 

The Soviet Dilemma 

While the Germans were finding 

their success awkward, the Soviet 

forces were running more deeply into 

211-/alder DiOlY, vol. III. p. 475. 
OPERATION BLAU 341 

P ANZER III TANK IN VORONEZH 

genuine trouble. On 2 July, the best 

initial move seemed to be to bring 

Bryansk Front's still powerful armor into 

play against the enemy spearhead 

aimed for Voronezh. To do that, the 

front was able to gather, under Headquarters, Fifth Tank Army, five tank 

corps (the army's two plus I and XVI 

and VII Tank Corps from the Stavka 

reserves) and eight rifle divisions. This 

brought together about six hundred 

tanks, at least twice the number of 

Hoth's two panzer corps. But Golikov's 

departure to Voronezh and, apparently, a drop in confidence in him and 

his staff in Moscow created a hiatus in 

command. Kazakov says the General 

Staff and the Stavka took over on the 

night of 3 July and issued orders directly to Fifth Tank Army. The next day, 

Kazakov adds, General Vasilevskiy, who 

had become chief of t11e General Staff, 

came in person, explained the mission to the army staff "in very cautious terms," and departed again (on 

the 5th) before the counterattack began 2 • Vasilevskiy maintains that he 

and the Stavka had to intervene because Bryansk Front was not giving any 

orders. According to Kazakov, only 

Golikov could make decisions concerning the counterattack, and he was away 

at Voronezh. 2 !) 

The 4th through the 6th of July were 

days of high crisis in me Soviet Com1l1and , which, no doubl, accounts for 

28 Kazakov, "Na uorOllezltskom IIapravlellji," p. 39. 

2!1Vasiicvskiy. Dela, p. 220: Kazakov, "No 

vorotlezhskom lIapravle'Ill ," p. 39. 
342 

Vasilevskiy's abrupt coming and going 

at Bryansk Front. The Soviet literature is 

more than usually sparing in its treatment of the decisions taken at this 

stage. Nevertheless, it leaves a clear 

impression that Stalin, the Stavka, and 

the General Staff saw themselves as 

having to deal with a dangerous tactical 

surprise that confirmed their previous 

strategic estimates, specifically, that the 

march on Moscow had begun. In one 

version of his memoirs, Vasilevskiy said 

that the Stavka , in considering 

Voronezh as a possible German objective , "believed the subsequent development of the offensive would not be to 

the south, as actually occurred, but to 

the nordl, in a deep encirclement of 

Moscow from dle southeast."3. Consequently, the primary Soviet strategic 

concern was directed to the area north 

and northeast of the line KurskVoronezh. (Although the prospect of a 

successful deception had appeared 

vastly diminished after the Reichel affair, Operation KR£ML, had continued 

and the OKW had announced, on I 

July, that an offensive had begun "in 

the southern and central sectors" of the 

Eastern Front.31 (The History of the Second VliJrld War describes both as having 

been important in the German scheme 

but does not attribute any significance 

to them from dle Soviet standpoinL)32 

Against a drive on Moscow, the Soviet Command, apparently, saw itself as 

having two strong trumps still to play: 

the Orel offensive and the Fifth Tank 

Army's counterattack. These cou ld 

30A. iI.'l. Vasilevski),. "Dell) vsey l.lIi'mi;" Nov) Mil; 5 

(1975).251. vVhile Ihe excerpts prin ted in NmryMir 

arc otherwise idemical with the book, (his passage 

does not appear in the book (Sec De/o, p. 219). 

3IOKIV, KTB, vol. II , p. 73. 

USee IVMV, \'01. V. p. 243. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

change the picture swifdy and mightily. 

They would, in fact, do that, but not in 

the way expected. 

General Zhukov, whose West Front initially had a share in dle Orel operation, 

had taken it over entirely after Bryansk 

Front was hit. On 5 July, three of his 

armies, Tenth, Sixteenth, and Sixtyjirst, 

hurled a massive attack against the 

Second Panzer Army line from north 

of Orel to Kirov. Second Panzer Army, 

which had not anticipated such earnest 

evidence of its status as a dueat to 

Moscow, was shaken but, with much 

luck, managed to bring the attack to a 

standstill within a day and, thereby, to 

give the impression of much more 

strength than it actually had. 33 

Owing to the mix-up at the higher 

levels, responsibility for planning and 

executing Fifth Tank Anny's counterattack fell almost entirely to the army 

commander, General Lizyukov, and his 

staff. Lizyukov had been one of the 

first officers to win the decoration 

Hero of the Soviet Unjon in the war, 

and he was, Vasilevskiy says, "a very 

energetic and determined " commander, but neither he nor his staff 

were experienced in leading large armored forces.3' In Kazakov's account, 

Lizyukov coordinated his tanks, artillery, and Shturmovik air support 

"weakly" and gave his corps commanders uleir instructions in superficial 

map briefings that they, in turn , repeated to their subordinate comman33 P:. AD;.: 2, III Knegs/(lgebllclt N,.. 2, Tn/IV, 5-7 Jul 

42, Pz. AOK 2 28499/4 file; Zhukov, Mellwirs, p. 375. 

See also IVMV, vol. V, p. 243, which impli es that the 

purpose of the offensive was to draw away German 

reserves, and Bagramyan. 1ilk shli my k pobl'dl', p. 141, 

who says the purpose was to prevent the enemy fl'om 

using Army Gmup Cemcr as a resen'oir ofl'ci nfol'cements for the offensive in the somh , 

3~Vas il e"s ki )', Dew. p. 221. 
OPERATION BLAU 

clers."' By the time the tank army went 

into action on the 6th, it was already 

too late to save Voronezh. Moreover, 

Lizyukov and his corps commanders, 

unable to manage a quick thrust, reverted to tactics of attrition that were 

highly inconvenient to the enemy but 

more costly to themselves. During the 

day, 9th Panzer Division smashed two 

of the tank army's brigades in a single 

encounter,36 

On the 6th, the Soviet Command 

faced a dilemma. The prospects of 

halting a thrust toward Moscow in the 

first stage were evaporating. In fact, 

the attempts seem to have disclosed 

greater enemy strength than had been 

anticipated. On the other hand, the 

actual situation was worse on the south 

Rank tllan in the center. Southwest Front 

was dislodged , Roating loose between 

the Donets and the Don, and being 

shoved into and behind the Rank of its 

neighbor, South Front. Under these two 

pressures, me Stavka, for the first time 

in the war, ordered a strategic retreat. 

Unlike the previous year, when armies 

and fronts had been riveted in place 

regardless of the consequences, the 

whole south Rank was allowed to pick 

up and pull out to the east. 

The History of the Second l<I"rld War 

gives the date of the decision as 6 July 

and says the retreat started on the 

night of the 7th. German Sixth Army, 

however, observed a general withdrawal in full swing during the day on 

the 6th, which leaves open the possibilities that the decision was made 

earlier or that it was not as deliberate as 

the Soviet accounts present it. A captured officer from Southwest Front's 

!I~ Ka ako\', "Na voro1lezhskom n.apravkPlii," p. 40. 

31BoeN Diary, Osten II, G Jul 42. 

343 

TwentyjiTSt Army had told his interrogators on the 2d tI,at by then control 

had slipped entirely from tl1e army's 

COITIlnand. 37 

The actual order must be pieced 

together from a half-dozen sentences 

in three sources. The His/.()1)' of the Second I<Ibrid War, while it is specific as to 

time, merely says that theStavna undertook to "extricate" Southwest and South 

Fronts "from the enemy's blows."3' The 

History of the Great Patriotic War states 

that Southwest Front and the right Rank 

of South Front were ordered to withdraw 

to the line of Novaya Kalitva (on the 

Don)- Popasnaya (on the Donets), a 

distance of roughly 60 miles (100 kilometers), and dig in there."" The Popular 

Scientific Sketch states, " ... Supreme 

Headquarters ordered Southwest and 

South Fronts to retrea t to the Don ... ."40 

The decision to retreat did not appl y 

in the Voronezh area or anywhere to 

tile west and north. Golikov had orders 

to clear the enemy off the entire east 

side of the Don "at all costs" and to 

establish a solid defense on the river "in 

the whole sector."" On the 7th, Golikov's three armies became Voronezh 

Front, and General Rokossovskiy, who 

had been one of Zh u kov's best a I'm y 

cOlllmanders during the winter, was 

appointed to command B,)'ansk Front. 

Golikov had with him as Stavlw representatives, General Vatutin, the deputy 

chief of the General Staff, and Army 

Commissar Second Rank P. C. Stepanov, the chief air force commissar. 

General Vatutin was designated to take 

37/VMV, vol. V, p. 152; AOK 6, fa Kriegslagebuch Nr. 

12, 2 and 6 Ju142, AOK 6 22855/ 1 file. 

a8/VMv, vol. V, p. 152. 

39/VOVSS, vol. II. p. 42 1. 

VOv, p. 148f. 

I/VMV. vol. V, p. 152. 
344 

over thefront command and would do 

so in a week'2 Zhukov's Orel offensive 

ran for five days and dlen stopped as 

abrupdy as it had begun. Lizyukov was 

killed on 24 July while fighting to beat 

off German efforts to improve meir 

line that apparendy the Russians had 

taken as having had farther reaching 

objectives'3 

"Blau 11 Is Dead" 

That the Soviet Command might go 

over to a flexible defense was not exacdy a surprise to me Germans. They 

had talked about it as a possibility since 

WILH.ELM and FRID£RICUS II and during BLAU I, which, for all its apparent 

success, produced a disappointing bag 

of 70,000 prisoners. Bock had told 

Hider on 3 July mat the Russians were 

"gradually getting smart" and had 

learned to evade encirclements." Nevertheless, me entire BLAU concept had 

assumed a repeat of the Russians' 1941 

performance. BLAu's small, tight, deliberate envelopments were fine against 

an enemy who stayed put, but one 

inclined to disappear over me far horizon required different handling not 

easily administered by demotorized infantry and rebuilt armor. 

This was the Germans' problem, but 

to deal with it, they had to believe it 

really existed, and on that they could 

not make up their mind;." 5 Halder 

could not see Southwest and South Fronts' 

abandoning defenses they had worked 

42/bid., p. 152: Vasilevskiy. Delo, p. 223. 

43P Z. AOK 2, l a Kriegstagebu.ch N ,: 2, Teil/V, 10 Jul 

42, Pl. AOK 28499/4 file ; Vasilcvski y. Delo, p. 222; 

Rokossovs ki y, Soldier's Dllty. pp. 120- 22. 

4"Bock Diary, Osten 1/, 3 Ju1 42. 

4sThe first documented evidence of the retreat 

Army Group South had was an order of the day 

signed by Timoshenko, captured on 12 Jul y. (hal 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

on for half a year without a fight. 

Hider, going by foreign news reports, 

was "inclined" to think me Russians 

might be attempting an "elastic" defense, but apparently saw no profound 

implications in dlat46 Bock came closest to the point in a teletyped message 

he sent to Halder on dle afternoon of 

the 8m. In it he said BLAU II was 

"dead"; if dle armies maneuvered as 

mey were required to under existing 

plans, mey would "most likely strike 

into thin air"; therefore, me OKH 

needed "to consider" what the objectives ought to be and, in particular 

where me armored forces should g047 

Bock would have to wait for his answer. The Soviet retreat, whatever else 

it might yet do, had at its outset created 

a monumental distraction. In the week 

after 6 July, almost the whole German 

command effort was absorbed by the 

accelerating pace of the offensive. To 

switch the main effort from north to 

south, Bock ordered Headquarters, 

Fourth Panzer Army, XXXXVIII Panzer Corps with 24th Panzer Division 

and Grossdeutschland, and XXIV Panzer Corps with 3d and 16th Motorized 

Infantry Divisions away from 

Voronezh. On reaching dle vicinity of 

Rossosh-Novaya Kalitva , Hoth was 

also to pick up and take command of 

VIII Corps and XXXX Panzer Corps 

on Sixth Army's left flank . The latter 

two corps were already in motion 

south, toward the headwaters of me 

Derkui and Kalitva rivers. The others 

instructed commanders to evade encircl ements and 

not to make it a point of honor to hold their positions 

at all COSts. (Apparcml y, some Sovicl cOlllmanders also 

did not comprehend \\·hat \vas going on.) /-J. C,.. A, la 

N,.. 3 1714 2, all Pz. AOK I, 12 Jul 42, Pz. AOK I 

2490611 file. 

46/-lalder Diary, vol. J II , p. 475. 

HBock Dia!)', Ostell ll, 8 Ju142. 
OPERATION BLAU 345 

A N I NFANTRY DIV ISION HEADS EAST AT THE PACE OF ITS HORSES 

would first have to cross 110 miles of 

previously occupied territory on their 

own tracks and wheels. On the 6th , the 

OKH had transferred First Panzer 

Army, which was in the midst of refitting its panzer divisions, to the Coastal 

Staff Azov. To List it had given orders 

to have First Panzer Army ready to 

start on the 12th. ll1ese had been canceled within hours, and List then had 

been told to get First Panzer started on 

the 9th, at which time the Coastal Staff 

would become Army Group A's Bock, 

who had not been consulted, had observed wryly that the battle was now 

"sliced in twO."49 

41!H. Gr. A, fa Kriegstagebllch, Band I, Teil l, 6 Ju142. 

H. Ce. A 75126/ 1 fil e. 

49BQck Diw")', Osten II, 5 Ju142. 

By the 9th , when the second phase 

went into full swing, the offensive was a 

good two weeks ahead of its projected 

schedule and nearly as much behind in 

terms of current readiness. The 23d 

Panzer Division, after having run out 

of motor fuel two or three times, was 

just catching up to Sixth Army; 24th 

Panzer Division and the Grossdeutschland Division were stopped halfway between Voronezh and Novaya Kalitva, 

waiting to be refueled; and the 3d and 

16th Motorized I nfantry Divisions 

could not depart from Voronezh until 

infantry divisions arrived to relieve 

them. First Panzer Army had to lead 

off with its infantry. The panzer divisions were still in bivouac areas thirty 

or forty miles behind the front. Hitler, 

moreover, had begun to worry about a 
346 

British landing in the West and was 

holding back Army Group A's best 

equIpped motorized division the SS 

Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler," for transfer to the Channel coast. 

Strike at MilleTOvo 

Meanwhile, BLAU II was all but dead 

and it had no successor. First Panzel: 

Army put its right flank in motion on 

the morning of the 9th with instructions to strike across tile Donets at 

Lisichansk, then veer sharply north, 

crossing the Aydar River at Starobelsk 

and meet Fourth Panzer Army a~ Vysochanovka . The assumption was 

that SIXth Army would tie tile enemy 

down north and west of Vysochanovka 

and so set the scene for an envelopment from the south. 50 First Panzer 

Army, if it held to the assigned course, 

would hkely run Into Sixth Army's left 

flank about the time it reached 

Starobelsk. 

During the day on the 9th, it became 

apparent that while First Panzer Army 

would probably be across the Donets in 

another twenty-four hours, Sixth 

Army, with nothing ahead of it but 

long columns of Soviet troops heading 

east, would by then have passed the 

line of the Aydar from Starobelsk 

north , and XXXX Panzer Corps would 

be well south of Vysochanovka. Obviously there was no point in having 

First Panzer. Army continue past 

Llslchansk on ItS assigned course, and 

In the early morning hours on the 10th 

the OKH issued a new directive which ' 

in its general concept, reverted to th~ BLAU II plan. First Panzer Army was to 

SOH . Gr. A, la Kriegstllgebuch, Baud I, Teil I, 7 Ju142. 

H. Cr. A 75126/ 1 file; Pz. AOK I, f a. Kriegslagebuch N r. 

8, 7 Ju142, Pz. AOK 124906116 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

head due east past Lisichansk toward 

Millerovo. Fourtll Panzer was to aim its 

right flank at Millerovo, its left at 

Meshkovskaya between the Don and 

upper Chir, and to take a bridgehead 

on the Don at Boguchar as a springboard for a subsequent thrust left of 

the Don toward Stalingrad 51 

On the morning of the 11th, Hoth 

had command of XXXX Panzer Corps 

and VIII Corps, which were heading 

south and east, but XXXXVIII Panzer 

Corps and XXIV Panzer Corps were 

strung out behind. The Grossdeutschland Division and 24th Panzer Division 

were stalled, as they had been for two 

day~, in the valley of the Tikhaya Sosna 

waIting to be refueled, and the two 

motorized divisions were still at 

Voronezh, where Soviet counterattacks 

and the inexperience of the infantry, 

mostly "young" troops sent to relieve 

mem, slowed their disengagement. 

DUrIng the day, the 29th Motorized 

Infantry Division passed through 

Boguchar, and the OKH dropped the 

Idea .of taking a bridgehead after the 

dIVISIOn reported the bridge there over 

the Don destroyed. The offensive was 

now moving over open steppe in searIng heat and choking clouds of fine 

dust. First Panzer Army reached the 

Aydar River during the day, and Seventeenth Army reported the enemy 

pulhng away from its north flank. 

After 2400, fresh OKH orders came 

in over the teletype machines at Army 

Groups. A and B. First Panzer Army 

was to aim ItS left flank at Millerovo its 

right toward the Donets crOSSing' at 

Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy. Bock was to 

put all the forces he "could lay hands 

on" into a drive via Millerovo (which 

51lbid" 10 Ju142. 
OPERATION BLAU 

Fourth Panzer Army's advance elements reached during the day) to Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy and finally to the 

confluence of the Donets and the Don. 

He was to use any remaining strength 

to provide flank cover on the east and 

to "create conditions for an advance to 

Stalingrad." To Bock's protests that this 

was gomg to create a useless pileup of 

First and Fourth Panzer Armies' armor 

a round Millerovo and scatter his other 

panze r divisions "to the winds," the 

OKH replied that his mission was now 

in the south. Halder further admonished General Greiffenberg, Bock's 

chief of staff, by tele~ram "to avoid any 

unnecessary commitment o[ mobile 

forces toward the east." Fourth Panzer 

Arm~, ~ added, had to be ready "at 

any time to turn southwest and strike 

behind the Soviet forces holding north 

of Rostov.'2 

From ."a variety of reports," the 

OKH believed the Russians were going 

to make a stand on the line MillerovoKam e nsk-Shakh tinskiy- Rostov.' 3 

Bock knew differently, and after grumbling about It to hiI?self for a day, he 

could not resist tellmg Halder so in a 

telegram on the morning of the 13th. 

The enemy ahead of Fou rth and First 

Panzer Arnlies, he said, was retreating 

to the eaSl, southeast, and soulh, partIcularly the soulh . An operation centered on and past Millerovo would to 

some extent plow into the midst of the 

Soviet columns but would not accomplish a substantial encirclement. The 

place for Fourth Panzer Army's right 

flank to go was to Morozovsk, seventyfi ve miles east of Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy. There it might still calch some of 

~28Qck Diary, Osten II, 12Ju142. 

s31-/alder Dillry, \'01. III , p. 478. 

347 

the enemy, and [rom there it could 

turn either southwest or east as conditions required '· 

Bock Goes Home 

By then, the same or similar conclusions were beginning to come to 

mmd at Fuehrer Headquarters-with 

consequences for Bock that he had not 

anticipated. Hitler opened the afternoon situation conference with "expressions of utmost indignation" over 

the delays in getting 23d and 24th 

Panzer Divisions and the 

Grossdeutschland Division headed 

south. He also suddenly recalled that 

back in May, Bock had originated the 

"unfortunate proposal" to oppose the 

Soviet attack south of Kharkov frontally instead of pinching off the gap at 

Izyum" In an hour, a message was on 

the wire transfernng Fourtll Panzer 

Army to Army Group A and telling 

Bock to turn over the Army Group B 

command to Weichs. 

Over the telephone, Keitel "advised" 

Bock to report himself sick and added 

thal Army Group B was now "practIcall~ shut down" anyway. To Bock's 

question why he was being dismissed 

Just when he "presumed" he had produced a great success, Keitel said it was 

because the mobile divisions were too 

slow coming away from Voronezh, and 

lhelr fuel supplies were "not in order." 

When Bock protested that his dispositions around Voronezh had been "clear 

as the sun" and pointed out that the 

OKH, not me army group, was responSible forthe mOlor fuel supplies, Keitel 

urged him not to "make a racket right 

now." Things were not irreparable, he 

S4 BocN DUllY, Oslen II, 13 Ju142. 

u Halder 0101)', ml. III. p: 480. See p.275f. 
348 

said, and there would be time later to 

straighten them out. For the moment, 

though, he hurriedly added, any kind 

of discussion with the Fueh,·er was out of 

the question·· 

Later it would appear that the most 

consequential charge to be raised 

against Bock was that he had involved 

too much armor on the advance of 

Voronezh and thereby delayed the 

turn south. At the time, however, even 

Halder, who was the first to raise it, saw 

it as, at most, a tactical blemish, not as a 

major failing. As of 13 July, Hitler, in 

particular, with his armies seemingly 

on the edge of their greatest victory, 

had no compelling reason to resurrect 

the irritations of the past two weeks 

unless he was responding to some far 

more deep-seated impulse. One possibility is that he had become uneasy as 

he saw the enemy repeatedly slip from 

his grasp. The haul of prison e rs, 

88,000 thus far, was relatively low, and 

the unexpected Soviet retreat had unhinged his plans, but his subsequent 

actions indicate that his premonitions, 

if any, could not have been very strong. 

The 13t1l was for him a day of minor 

misgivings and great opportunity. In 

getting rid of Bock, he was not disposing of a failed general but of a rival in 

credit for the victory. 

8Bock Diary, OS/t ll 11, 13 Ju142. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Weichs caught a glimpse of that the 

first time he went to Fuehrer Headquarters as commanding general, Army 

Group B. Talking to Schmundt, he 

suggested that Hitler be persuaded to 

take notice of Bock's accomplishments 

in some form "for the sake of public 

opinion and troop morale." Schmundt 

replied that Hitler would never do any 

such thing because he had developed 

"a distinct antipathy for Bock." On the 

same occasion, in talking to the Reich 

press chief, Weichs learned that Hitler 

would not allow the General Staff to be 

mentioned in newspape r articles about 

himself because he believed it detracted from his image and his military 

reputation. 57 

On 15 July, Bock relinquished his 

command and, having been told his 

presence at Fuehre,· Headquarters 

would not be welcomed, went to 

Berlin. He would divide his time between there and his estate in East Prussia for the rest of the war, brooding 

about his downfall , searching for tile 

reason, and more than half hoping tile 

cloud would one day lift and the 

Fuehrer would find employment for 

him again. 

$7Maximi li an \'on Wcic hs, Nachlass dn Gel! fralJeldmarsdwlls Freiherr von \Velchs, Balld 6, 15 J ul 42, 

CM H X- I 026 file. 
CHAPTER XVII 

Hitler's Grand Design 

"A Ce1"lain Crisis" 

BLAU Il/CLAUSEWITZ, such as it had 

been came to an end between 13 and 

15 Ju'ly under clouds and in oppressive 

heat broken by intermittent rainstorms 

that settled the dust over the movmg 

columns but turned the ground beneath them to mud . Within a 25-mile 

radius of Millerovo, First and Fourth 

Panzer Armies' tanks hit line after line 

of Soviet columns headed east. In tlle 

melee, some were dispersed and some 

smashed. Others slipped through or 

veered south away from the onslaught. 

During the day on the 15th, First Panzer's 14th Panzer Division and Fourth 

Panzer's 3d Panzer Division met south 

of Millerovo tllereby technically completing the encirclement, but they did 

not form a pocket. With gaps in all 

directions, the armies were slicing 

through, not enveloping, the enemy. 

(Map 31.) Fourth Panzer Army reponed 

21,000 prisoners taken, First Panzer 

did not stop to count. It certalllly took 

as many, and it may have taken two or 

three times as many; nevertheless, the 

greater part of the potential catch escaped. The most remarkable capture 

was twenty-two trainloads of Amencan 

and British lend-lease tanks and supplies taken on the railroad b~twee~ 

Millerovo and Kamensk-ShakhtmskIY. 

IH. Cr. A, la Kriegstagebllch, Band /, Teil/,I7 Ju142, 

H. Gr. A 7512611 file; Pz.. AOK I, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 

8, 17 Ju142. Pz. AOK I 24906 file. 

Tactically, what Field Marshal Bock 

had predicted was happenmg; Army 

Group A was developing a knot of 

mostly superfluous armored muscle 

around Millerovo and on a lme to the 

south . Shoulder to shoulder, First and 

Fourth Panzer Armies were punching 

into thin air. Twentyfourth Army, South 

Front's reserve army, made a feeble and 

shon-Iived attempt to stand at Millerovo on the 13th. Southwest Front, which 

had its headquarters east of the Don, 

had lost control of its armies. They 

were turned over to South Front, but 

after the Germans reached Millerovo it 

had troubles enough of its own and did 

not succeed in establishing contact with 

any of them except Ninth Army.2 One 

thing the German armies did have was 

command of the field , and that at a 

low price. After better than two weeks 

in action, General Hoth, the commander of Fourth Panzer Army, rated 

the condition of his motorized and 

panzer divisions and the Grossdeutschland Division as vny good. Their mall1 

deficiencies were mechanical breakdowns and fuel shortages. General 

Kleist put First Panzer Army, after 

six days, at 30 percent of Its optimum efficiency, but it had started 

at below 40 percent because most of 

its troop and equipment replace2:/VOVSS, vol. II, p. '121. 
SECOND 

HUNGARIAN 

ARMY 

MAP 31 

56th 

VORONEZH 

P8vfovsk 

18th 

STALINGRAD 

FRONT 

000 

o 

o 

o 

12t:7 37th 

51st 

~~ASUSFRONT Tlkho,er~ 

OPERATION BLAUBRAUNSCHWEIG 

14 - 31 July 1942 

____ Approximate front, 14 Jul 

00000000 Approximate front, 31 Jul 

o ]-___ .---_.}5,0 Miles 

0

1 j 

50 Kilometers 

FRONT 

Ko(elnikovo 

00 

.. R8montnava 

Efists 

\ 
HITLER'S GRANO DESIGN 

ments were still en route from 

Germany.3 

New Missions 

Late in the night on 13 July, Army 

Groups A and B received orders "for 

continuing operations on the lower 

Don." The objective would be to prevent South Front and whatever was left 

of Southwest Front from escaping by closing the line of the Don down to Rostov. 

BLAU II had died, and BLAU III was 

forgotten. The orders did not mention 

Stalingrad, the original BLAU III obJective. The whole offensive was to be 

reoriented to the south and somewhat 

to the west to accomplish one grand 

encirclement inside the great bend of 

the Don . Field Marshal Keitel, chief of 

the OKW, had not exaggerated when 

he had told Bock that Army Group B 

was being shut down. Sixth Army's 

missions would be to estabhsh a front 

on the Don from northeast of Meshkovskaya to Pavlovsk and to turn over 

all units not needed to do this to Fourth 

Panzer Army. First Panzer Army was to 

turn south, cross the Donets at Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, and bear in on 

Rostov from the northeast. Fourth 

Panzer Army, running parallel to First 

Panzer east of the Donets, would keep 

its main weight on its right Rank, but 

(as Bock had proposed) would let its 

le ft sweep east to Morozovsk. From tl~e 

line between Kamensk-ShakhunsklY 

and Morozovsk, it would drop south to 

the Don , take bridgeheads at Konstantinovskiy and Tsimlyanskiy, and pre3/_1. Gr. A, l a Kritgstagebllch , Band J, Teill,I6 Jul 42, 

H . Gr. A 7512611 file. 

351 

pare to run along the south bank of the 

Don westward toward Rostov.' 

A day later, Hitler shifted the FuehTer 

Headquarters from East Prussia to 

Vinnitsa in the western UkraIne. This 

Fuehrer compound at Vinnitsa, codenamed Wen.voif, in contrast to the fortress-like VliJlfsschanze, consisted, exce[lt 

for two concrete bunkers, of prefabrIcated wooden buildings erected in a 

patch of pine forest half-a-dozen miles 

outside the town. General HaJder, chief 

of the General Staff, and the OKH 

occupied quaners in Vinnitsa .. The 

move appeared to lend emphaSIS to 

a statement in the orders of the 13th 

in which Hitler assigned control of 

the offensive to Headquarters, Army 

Group A "subject to my dil:ectives." 

Actually, he could have exerCIsed Just 

as close supe rvision from Rastenburg 

as from Vinnitsa. The WeTUJOif, however, 

did not place him symbolically on the 

battlefield and as he liked to claim, at 

the head of hi~ troops, which possibly 

enhanced his psychological leverage 

and undoubtedly would give him a 

personal claim to the victory when it 

caine . 

Coincident with the move to the We,'-

wolf Hitler released a strategic directive 

written four days earher, Directive 43 

for Operation BLUECHER. It gave Eleventh Army the mission of crOSSI~1g the 

Kerch Strait to the Taman PenInsula, 

from which it was to take the Soviet 

naval bases at Anapa and Novorossiysk 

and to strike along the northern frInge 

of the Caucasus to Maykop. General 

Manstein, t11e army's commander, was 

~OKH GnlStdH, op. Abt. (I) Nr. 420538142, 13.7.42, 

H 22/21 5 file; H . Gr. B, 10 Nr. 2043142, WeisungJuer die 

FortJuehrtmg der Opt'mlum an den wIlom Don, 13.7.42, 

AOK 6 30155/39 file. 
352 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

GERMAN TANKS R OVE OVER T H E STEPPE IN SEARCII OF T ARGETS 

to be prepared to execute BLUECH ER in 

early August. 5 

Stalingrad Fmnt 

For the Stav/Ia, the German entry 

into the great bend of the Don opened 

the contest for Stalingrad regardless of 

what Hitler's intentions for the moment might be. The Po/nt/aI- Scientific 

Sketch says, "Already in mid-July 1942, 

the Soviet leadership had discerned the 

enemy's aim to adva nce to the Volga in 

the Stalingrad area to occupy tllis imPOl-tant strategic point and at the same 

time , seize the country's largest industrial region . On 14 Jul y, a state of war 

50KW; WFSt, op. Nr. 551208142, H-eis1mg Nr. 43, 

11.7.42 and OKW, WFSI, 0/), Nr. 002353142, 13.7.42, 

Gel'man High Level Directives, CMI-I liles. 

was declared in the Stalingrad area."6 

Whetller the Soviet leadership had 

a ltered its fundamental assessment of 

German strategy, however, remains in 

doubt. Stalin's official biography published in 1949, undoubtedly written 

with his approval and possibly with his 

help , maintains, "Comrad e Sta lin 

promptly divined the plan of tll e German command. He saw tlut the idea 

was to create an impression that the 

seizure of the oil regions of Groznyy 

and Baku was the major and not the 

subsidiary objective of the German 

summer offensive . He pointed out 

that, in reality, the main objective was 

to envelop Moscow from the east." 

Consequently, the biography con6VOV, p. 149. 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

tinues he anchored the defense on 

Staling-rad. 7 It appears that again, as he 

had earlier in the month , StalIn drew 

the best possible conclusion fO.r the 

long-term from a mistaken premise. 

On 12 July, the Stav/w created the 

Stalingrad Front, using Marshal Timoshenko's Headquarters, Southwest 

Front and three reserve armies, Sixtysecond, Sixty-third, and Sixty-fourth, plus 

what was left of the former Southwest 

Front's Twenty-first Army. Timoshenko's 

mission was to defend the left bank of 

the Don from Pavlovsk to Kletskaya 

and, from K1etskaya south , to hold a 

line inside the Don bend to the pomt at 

which the river turned w~st forty miles 

east of Tsimlyanskiy. North Caucasus 

Front's Fifty-first Army was statIOned on 

the river's left bank between Stalmgrad 

Front's Rank and the Sea of Azov· 

The armies were far from being in 

full-fighting trim. General Ley tenant 

V. 1. Chuikov, acting commanding general of the Sixty-fourth Army, stopped at 

Headquarters, Twenty-first Army on the 

15th and observed that although it was 

supposedly defending the Don between Kletskaya and Serafimovlch It 

was "living on whee ls," that IS , operating out of trucks and vehicles as If to be 

ready to pick up and move at any moment. A day later, hiS own army, whICh 

was assigned to the southern half of the 

front inside the Don bend, was only 

beginning to detrain between the Volga 

and the Don. Another week would pass 

before all of it arrived. His neighbor on 

the north , Sixty-second Anny, was in position and, in accordance with orders 

7C. F. Aleksandrov, el aI. , 105if VissariOll ovich Slalill , 

Kratka),a biografi),{/ (Moscow: IzdatelSlvo Politichesko), 

Literatury, 1949), p. 197. 

SA. M. Borodin, ed., Bilva w Stalingrad (Volgogl"ad: 

Nizhni ye-Volzhskoye Knizhnoye Izdatelstvo, 1969), p. 

17 ; IVOVSS. vol. II , p. 426. 

353 

from the front, had a picket line on the 

Chir River, but it was keepmg ItS headquarters well behind the Don, fifty 

miles from the troops9 

Stalingrad Bypassed 

For the moment, Stalingrad Front had 

almost as little bearing on the Germans' 

real concerns as WJronezh Front had had 

a week before. Hitler's attention and 

the efforts of his generals were directed elsewhere. 

South of the Donets, opposite Seventeentll Army's center and right Rank, 

South Front held tight to ItS ongmal 

positions until the 15th, when it began 

to pull away from Voroshllovgrad to 

the southeast. Seventeenth Army was 

ready to attack, but the day before, 

Field Marshal List, the commander of 

Army Group A, had told General 

Ruoff, the army's commander, to walt 

until the pocket was closed on the east 

between the lower Donets and Rostov. 

By 1200 on the 16th, South Fmnt's right 

Rank was clearly in full retreat, and 

List, after giving Ruoff permission to 

let infantry follow, scheduled tlle general attack for the morning of the 18th . 

Ruoff believed that even though the 

Russians appeared to be standing firm 

on the southern half of the front m 

their heavily fortified line on the Mius 

Rivel~ he was not going to catch many 

of them if he waited another day and a 

half. The infantry advancing along the 

south bank of the Donets was hardly 

seeing a trace of the enemy. When it 

took Voroshilovgrad on the l7tll the . 10 City was empty. 

9Vasili 1. Chuikov, The Balile Jor Swlingrad (New 

York: Holt. Rineharl and Winston, 1964), pp. 15- 17. 

IOAOK / 7 fa Kriegsiagebllch NT. 3, 14- 17 Jul 42, 

AOK 17 244 11Jl file; N . Cr. A, fa Kriegstagebuch, Ba.nd 

I . T,;t I. 14- 16Ju1 42, H. Gr. A 75126/1 file. 
354 

1 n the Don bend, all the Sixty-second 

and Sixtyfourth Annies were to see for 

some days after the 15d1 were stragglers, not just single soldiers but frequently whole staffs-thirsty, dirty, 

and demoralized-coming out of d1e 

west over the steppe." The Germans 

were not all that far away, forty to fifty 

miles, but Sixd1 Army had slowed 

down, and General Paulus, the commander of Sixth Army, was dutifully 

turning his attention north toward the 

Don. And Fourth Panzer Army was 

running due south, parallel to the Soviet line that was forming off its left 

flank. By 1200 on the 16th, Fourth 

Panzer Army's tanks were in Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk, and before 

nightfall, Hoth had a spearhead standing at Tsimlyanskiy on d1e Don. By 

then , First Panzer Army was across the 

Donets and headed toward Rostov. 

During the day on the 17th, advance 

detachments of two of Paulus' divisions 

after meeting only light resistance entered Bokovskaya on the upper Chir 

River.'2 The appearance of d1e Germans on d1e Chir on 17 July is taken in 

the Soviet literature as the beginnin~ of 

the defensive battJe for Stalingrad.' 

An encirclement was forming on d1e 

lower Don, but an eighty-mile stretch 

of the river from the confluence of the 

Donets to the Gulf ofTaganrog was still 

open , and to reach the crossings, particularly at Rostov, the Russians in the 

pocket had shorter distances to go than 

did the Germans. Hider was determined not to let the quarry escape 

"Chuikov, Stalillgrad, p. 18r. 

12AOK 6, Ia. Kriegswgebuch NT. 12, 15 and 16 Ju142, 

AOK 6 22855/ 1 file ; fI. Cr. A, fa Kn'egstagebllch, Band I, 

TriIJ , 15 and 16 JuI42,H. Gr. A 7512611 file: AOK 6,Ia 

Kriegstllgebllch NT. 12, 17 Jul 42, AOK 6 22855/1 file. 

13VOV, p. 151: IVMV. vol. V, p. 159. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

aJthough there was reason to suspect it 

had in part aJready done so. On the 

night of the 17d1, disregarding Halder's protest that all he would accomplish would be to create a useless 

pileup of armor, Hider set all of List's 

armies on the shortest courses to Rostov. He instructed List to stop Fourth 

Panzer Army at Tsimlyanskiy and 

Konstantinovskiy and to turn it west 

along the north bank of the Don. Ruoff 

was to shift Seventeenth Army's attack, 

which had not yet started, fifty miles 

SOUd1 , from the upper Mius to the 

coast just north of Taganrog. When 

List and Ruoff both objected that while 

the distance to Rostov was somewhat 

shorter, the regrouping would waste 

d1ree or four days, Colonel Heusinger, 

the OKH operations chief, said he 

shared their opinion , but the Fuel,,'''' 

had given the order "and it is not to 

be supposed that he will alter his 

decision." " 

Hider included in the night's dispatches, also, an order to Army Group 

B. Sixth Army's mission would remain 

as it had been, to cover d1e flank on the 

Don, but it would be expanded. The 

two d ivisions whose advance detachments had reached Bokovskaya during 

the day would press on to the east, 

"advance detachments ahead!," occupy 

the whole northeastern quarter of the 

Don bend, and "by gaining ground in 

d1e direction of Stalingrad make it difficult for the enemy to build a defense 

west of the Volga."'5 

l4OKH , CenSldH, op. Abt. (ISlA) Nr. 420504142, an 

H. Gr. A, 17.7.42, H 22/215 file; Halder Diary. vol. I II, 

p. 48511; H. Gr. A, l a Kriegstllgebuch, BOlld I, Teill, 17 

Ju142, H. G ... A 75126/1 file. 

"OKH, CenStdH, Op. Abt. (ISIB) N,. 420505142, an 

H. C,. A , 17.7.42 , H 22/215 rde ; AOK 6, la 

Kriegstagebuch Nt: 12, 17 Jul 42, AOK 6 22855/1 file. 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

E nci'rclement at Rostov 

While the orders were being written 

in Vinnitsa, it was raining in the great 

bend of the Don, not just in local 

showers but as a continuous downpour 

that had begun in the early afternoon. 

The rain lasted through the rught and 

the entire next day. No motor vehicles 

moved. The panzer divisions were 

"paralyzed. " Seventeenth Army's redeployment could not begin, and Sixth 

Army's drift along the Don came to a 

standstill. The only significant change 

reported came from the Grossdeutschland Division that reached the lower 

Donets with its infantry and put some 

troops across. Hitler's mood matched 

the weather. Halder and Heusinger 

were on the phone to all the armies 

repeatedly during the day on the 19th 

voicing theFuehTe1"s impatience.'6 

In between times, they transmitted 

notices of impending changes in the 

army group's directives to List and 

General Weichs, the Army Group B 

commander, and their chiefs of staff. 

To Halder's professional relief-intermingled with personal annoyance at 

having had his advice to the same 

effect coldly ignored two days earherHitler had decided to hedge on the 

Rostov encirclement'7 Hoth was to 

send four of Fourth Panzer Army's 

panzer and motori zed divisions, including Grossdeutschland, toward Rostov along the north bank of the Don; 

but another four were to cross the river 

at Tsimlyanskiy and other places 

downstream to the mouth of the 00-

nets "as fast and in as much strength as 

road conditions and fuel supplies in 

16/-1. Gr . . 4, la Kriegstagebuch, Band I, Teill, 18 and 19 

Jul 42. H. Gr. A 75126/1 fi le .. 

17Ihid. , ]9 Jul 42: Halder Diary. vol. II I, p. 486. 

355 

any way permit." Those four would 

strike east twenty-five mIles to cut the 

Salsk-Stalingrad railroad and to take 

possession of the Sal River valley between Bolshaya Orlovka and Remontnaya. There they would position 

themselves "to proceed either southwest or west with tl,e object of destroying forces the enemy has witlldrawn 

south of the river." " 

TI,e greater change was in Army 

Group B's and Sixth Army's mission. 

Paulus was to leave light security on the 

Don and "take possession of Stalin grad 

by a daring high-speed assault." He 

would get as reinforcements from 

Fourth Panzer Army, the LI Corps 

with three infantry divisions, and XIV 

Panzer Corps with two motorized divisions and one panzer division.19 The 

Ll Corps was northeast of Morozovsk 

and XIV Panzer Corps north of Millerovo. Their transfers were accomplished by shifting the Army Group B 

boundary south to the line MillerovoMorozovsk and switching their heading from SOUtll to east. 

The stage was set on the 20th for the 

last act around Rostov. Seventeenth 

Army finished regrouping nortll of 

Taganrog, and First Panzer Army's 

point, slowed a little by Soviet rear 

guards, crossed the Kundryuchya 

River forty-five miles nortll of the city. 

When Seventeenth Army jumped off 

ti,e next morning against what had 

been the strongest sector of the whole 

Soviet south Rank, the Russians were 

gone. They had pulled out during the 

night. After picking their way. through 

minefields, Ruoffs lead diVISions had 

ISOKH, GenStdH , ap. Abt. (I) N r. 420508142, 011 J-I. 

Gr. A und /-I. Cr. 8 , 19. 7.42, H 22/21 5 file. 

IS/bid.; AOK 6, Ia. Kriegstagebl.lch Nr. 12, 19 and 20 J ul 

42. AOK 6 22855/1 file. 
356 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

GENERAL HOTIi (center) G,VES AN ORDER Kr THE DoN CROSSING 

covered thirty miles to the western arc 

of the Rostov defenses, which had been 

considered exceptionally strong, by 

1200 on the 22d and had broken 

through before dark. First Panzer and 

Seventeenth Armies both drove into 

the city on the 23d and secured it 

during the day after sporadic house-tohouse fighting. In less than another 

twenty-four hours, Seventeenth Army, 

which had brought bridging equipment in its train, had parts of three 

divisions across the Don; and on the 

25th, it had a five-mile-deep bridgehead on the south bank reaching past 

Bataysk20 

The Rostov pocket had never de20H . Cr. A, la Krit'gstagebuch, BatUll, Teill, 20- 25 Jul 

42. H. Gr. A 7512611 foIe. 

veloped. At the last, nobody expected it 

to. First Panzer Army's tally showed 

83,000 prisoners taken in the whole 

200-mile drive, not anywhere near 

enough to have clll decisively into the 

Soviet Union's supply of manpower. 

Several months later a First Panzer 

Army souvenir history featured the 

Don bridgehead as the big achievement of the campaign thus far" 

Halder's expectation of a traffic jam at 

Rostov, however, was amply fulfilled . 

On the 25th, twenty divisions were 

standing within a fifty-mile radius of 

the city, most with nothing useful to do. 

Fourth Panzer Army took bridge2IPZ. AOK I , Abt. I all e, Abschlussmeldwlg der I. P1.-

Annee, 3/.7.42, Pz. AOK J 24906119 file: Mit Kleist in 

den Kaukasus, Pz. AOK I 85602 fde. 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

heads at Tsimlyanskiy, Nikolayevskaya, 

and Konstantinovskiy on the 21st and a 

day later had one at the mouth of the 

Sal River, taken by the Grossdeutschland Division. The two at Nikolayevskaya and Konstantinovskiy were 

joined on the 23d and expanded south 

twenty miles to Bolshaya Orlovka on 

the Sal, but Hoth was still short of 

being ready to make a long sweep to 

the west and south . Losing two corps 

headquarters and six divisions had 

weakened his Rank on the east, and on 

the 22d, Hitler had also transferred 

Headquarters, XXIV Panzer Corps 

and the 24th Panzer Division to Sixth 

Army. 22 The Germans were beginning 

to feel the effects of operating simultaneously in two directions. 

On the Road ID S I1llingrad 

Sixth Army, after a ten-day hiatus, 

had the strength to come back into the 

offensive in earnest. Its opposition in 

the Don bend was still weak, but it was 

increasing. Sixty-second Army had 6 riRe 

divisions, a tank brigade, and 6 independent tank battalions on its half of 

the line, and Sixtyfourth Army had 2 

riRe divisions and a tank brigade. Between the Volga and the Don, Fiftyseventh Army was being reformed as the 

front reserve and the Headquarters, 

Thirty-eighth and Twenty-eighth Armies, 

together with those of their troops that 

had survived, were being used as cadres for building tile First and FouI·th 

Tank Annies. East of the Don, virtually 

the whole able-bodied population of 

Stalingrad was at work simultaneously 

building four concentric defense lines 

around the city. The Sl1lvka had given 

22H . Gr. A, 10 Kriegstagebuch , Band I, Tnl I, 21-25Jul 

42. H. Gr. A 7512611 file. 

357 

Eighth Air Army, which was supporting 

Stalingrad Hont, 10 air regiments with 

200 planes. On the 23d, General Leytenant V. N. Gordov, who had been commanding general, Twenty-first Army and 

had nominally commanded Sixtyfow·th 

Anny for a few days, replaced Ttmoshenko as commander of Stalingrad 

Front. 23 On that same day, Paulus submitted his plan to take the city. He 

proposed to sweep to the Don on both 

sides of Kalach, take bridgeheads on 

the run , and then drive a wedge of 

armor Ranked by infantry across the 

remaining thirty miles." 

Sixth Army had been running into 

and over Sixty-second and Sixtyfourth 

Armies' outposts since the 17t1l without 

knowing it. On the 23d, it did notice a 

change when it hit tlleir main line east 

of the Chir. The VIII Corps, on the 

north, encountered several Soviet riRe 

divisions in the morning, and those 

delayed its march east four or five 

hours. The XIV Panzer Corps, bearing 

in toward Kalach , reported 200 enemy 

tanks in its path and knocked out 40 

during the day. (I f the German tally 

after this date of the numbers of Soviet 

tanks was anywhere near accurate, 

more tank units must have been in the 

field than are given in the Soviet accounts.) On the 24th, VIII Corps 

c1ea red the northern quarte r of the 

Don bend except for a Soviet bridgehead at Serafimovich and another 

around Kremenskaya and Sirotinskaya. To the south, as the daily report 

put it, Sixth Army "consolidated," because XIV Panzer Corps ran out of 

motor fuel and the infantry could not 

2:)/VOVSS, vol. II. pp. 426- 28: IVMV; vol. V. p. 157; 

VOV (Kraliulya /SIo11)'lI), pp. 168-70. 

'!4AOK 6, la Kriegslagebuch Nr. 13, 23 Jul 42, AOK 6 

23948/ 11 hie. 
358 

make headway against stiffening resistance north and east of Kalach. The 

next day, while XIV Panzer Corps was 

still waiting to refuel, 60 Soviet tanks 

cut the road behind it, and 3d and 60th 

Motorized Divisions, the ones closest to 

Kalach, became entangled with 200 

Soviet tanks. The army chief of staff 

told the army group operations chief, 

"For the moment a certain crisis has 

developed." At the day's end, XIV Panzer, LI, and XXIV Panzer Corps were 

ranged shoulder to shoulder on the 

Stalin grad axis, but the Russians were 

still holding a forty-mile-wide and 

twenty-mile-deep bridgehead from Kalach to Nizhne Chirskaya. 25 

Directive 45 -Order No. 227 

Hitler Divides His Forces 

The battle for the line of the Don was 

joined everywhere downstream from 

Serafimovich on 25 July. Under the 

original BLAU concept, which had partially reemerged in the orders given 

during the previous week, the next 

stage would have been to establish a 

secure north flank anchored on the 

Volga at Stalingrad. During the day on 

the 25th, Directive 45 reached Army 

Groups A and B. It was entitled "for 

the continuation of Operation BRAUNSCHWEIG [BLAu]." However, the opening sentences indicated that the 

primary objective, the "conclusive destruction of the Soviet defensive 

strength," was already accomplished . 

The sentences read: "In a little more 

than three weeks the deep objectives I 

set for the south flank of the Eastern 

Front have in substance been reached. 

Only weak enemy forces have suc2!.lbid. , 23- 25 Jul 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ceeded in escaping encirclement and 

reaching the south bank of the Don." 

The intent of the directive was not to 

continue BRAUNSCHWEIG but to complete it, in one swoop, by conducting 

what was left of BLAU II (Stalingrad) 

simultaneously with BLAU IV (the Caucasus and the Caspian oil fields). 

What had been BLAU IV was for the 

first time spelled out, and it was assigned to Army Group A as Operation 

EDELWEISS. It was to be carried out in 

three stages. In the first, "the enemy 

forces that have escaped across the 

Don" would be "encircled and destroyed south and southeast of Rostov." 

The envelopment would be formed by 

Seventeenth Army's infantry on the 

west and First and Fourth Panzer Armies' armor on the east, and the ring 

would be closed ninety miles south of 

Rostov, near Tikhoretsk. Army Group 

A would concentrate in the second 

stage on clearing the Black Sea coast to 

eliminate the Soviet Navy, while at the 

same time employing "all the excess 

mountain and Jaeger divisions" to take 

the high ground around Maykop and 

Armavir and close the passes in the 

western Caucasus. In the third stage, a 

mobile force would head south and 

east to close the Ossetian and Grusinian Military Roads (across the Caucasus), take Groznyy, and strike along 

the Caspian coast to Baku. All three 

appeared to be so well within Army 

Group A's capabi liti es that the 

Grossdeutschland Division cou ld be 

taken out and shipped to the Western 

Theater and Operation BLUECH ER, the 

crossing from the Crimea to the Taman 

Peninsula, could be reduced to a much 

smaller BLUECHER II. Conseque ntl y, 

five of Eleventh Army's seven German 

divisions were to be shifted to Army 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

• 

, ' 

... , .~ ... .:. .. ;,.~-;, 

• " ~ t ~. ,: 

. "' . . " ." . . 

359 

SOVIET A NTITAN K G UN CREW COM ES U N DER FIRE 

Grou p North for an allack on 

Leningrad. 

Under the code name FlSCHREIHER 

("heron"), Army Group B would retain 

the two missions it already had, namely, 

to defend the line of the Don and to 

take Stalingrad. After it had possession 

of Stalingrad and had set up a solid 

front between the Don and the Volga, 

it would dispatch a mobile force downstream along the Volga to take Astrakhan. The Luftwaffe would assist 

FlSCHREIHER by "timely destruction of 

Stalingrad."26 

In Directive 45, Hitler committed 

the cardinal tactical sin of splitting his 

forces and sending them off in two 

260KW, WFSI, op. Ny. 551288/42, We1sung Nr. 45 f uer 

die Fortselzung der Operatum "Brau1LSchweig," 23.7.42 , 

German High Level Direc:tives. CMH flies. 

directions at right angles to each other. 

Henceforth they would be conducting 

separate campaigns, each having to be 

sustained independently without either 

being fully independent. The effects 

were already beginning to be felt by 

both. The railroad between Millerovo 

and Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy was the 

only one taken reasonably intact, and 

the forces were having to share the 

motor transport out of the KamenskShakhtinskiy railhead. Whatever one 

received , no matter how inadequate it 

might have been , was always somewhat 

at the other's expense27 

Sixth Army felt the pinch first. Short 

on motor fuel and ammunition for two 

days and not likely to get a full re21 Pz. AOK J, O. Qu., Qu. J Nr. 647142, Beurlei/ulIg 

der Versorgungslage, 29.7. 42, Pz. AOK 1 24906/53. 
360 

plenishment for at least the next several, Paulus had to pull his spearhead 

around Kalach back on the 26th. Half 

of his daily supply tonnage was going 

to Army Group A that had divisions 

closer to the railhead and higher priority under Directive 45. By the 28th, 

Sixth Army was almost on the defensive, and XIV Panzer Corps was down 

to 100 rounds of artillery ammunition 

per battery and half of a normal load 

per tank2S At the Werwolf, Sixth Army's 

fuel trouble put Hitler into a state of 

"great agitation," and Halder confided 

to his diary that this was "intolerable 

grumbling" over mistakes the Fuehrer 

had provoked by his own previous 

orders.'· 

Army Group A's armies were no 

better supplied, particularly with 

motor fuel and ammunition, than 

Sixth Army was. They had panzer and 

motorized divisions standing all 

around Rostov and along the lower 

Don with nearly empty tanks. They 

had covered much more distance faster 

tl,an had been anticipated in calculating the supply schedule, and First Panzer Army had had to relinquish 750 

tons of transport to help get Sixth 

Army moving after the 19th.30 One 

complication Army Group A did not 

have to be concerned with was enemy 

resistance. Except at Fourth Panzer 

Army's bridgeheads, most notable the 

one at Tsimlyanskiy, the Russians were 

not showing any sign of even attempting to make a stand. 

List's problems were to get his divisions sorted out and refueled-and 

28AOK 6, fa Kriegstagebllch Nr. 13, 26- 28 JuJ 42, 

AOK 6 23948/ 11 ~Ie . 

u Halder Dia r),. vol. III. p. 493. 

301'1.. AOK J, O. QIL Kriegstagebllch, 1.4.- 31.10.42. 25 

Ju142. Pz. AOK 1 24906152 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

then to determine where they should 

go. The OKH told him on tl,e 27th not 

to let Seventeenth Army, which being 

mostly infantry was in the best condition to advance, go too fast south of 

Rostov because that might push the 

enemy east before First and Fourth 

Panzer Armies could make the sweep 

to Tikhoretsk and complete tlle encirclement specified in Directive 45. 

But List did not believe tl,ere was going 

to be an encirclement, especially not 

after Ruoff told him that the Russians 

were already in full retreat ahead of 

Seventeenth Army without having 

been pushed. Later in the day, List met 

with Kleist and Hoth at KJeist's headquarters in Krasnyy Sulin, north of 

Rostov. The tl,ree agreed that the Russians were not going to let tllemselves 

be encircled and , therefore, First and 

Fourth Panzer Armies ought not to 

bear southwest toward Tikhoretsk but 

due south and soutlleast. List, however, 

regarded himself as bound by Directive 

45.31 

On the 28th, Seventeenth Army 

reached and crossed the Kagalnik 

River, twenty miles south of Rostov, 

and First Panzer Army took a bridgehead on the Manich . The Manich, 

though, was going to be troublesome. 

It was a river emptying into tl,e lower 

Don that had been converted into a 

canal by damming and some canalization. The dams, which had sizable lakes 

behind them, were upstream from 

First Panzer Army's crossing point. 

The Russians had opened the dams; 

the river was Aooding; and, except for 

some infantry and engineers in tl,e 

3'1_1. Cr. A.la Kriegstageblldt. Band I, Tril l , 27 Ju142, 

H . C r. A 7512611 file; Pz. AOK It la Kriegsulgebuch Nr. 

8, 27 Ju142, Pz. AOK 1 24906 ~Ic . 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

bridgehead, ail of First Panzer Army 

was on the north side. 

"Not a Step Back!" 

While Army Group A's situation on 

28 July was not entirely satisfactory, 

and Sixth Army's was less so, the condition of their opponents was worse. 

The Soviet armies did not have a trace 

of a genuine front anywhere south of 

the Don bend. A. A. Grechko-then a 

major general and commander of the 

Twelfth Army and after the war, a Soviet 

marshal, defense minister, and historian of the Caucasus campaign-has 

written, "By the end of the day of 28 

July there were huge gaps between the 

armies. The defensive front was 

cracked."32 The strategic retreat was in 

danger of becoming a roul. 

On 28 July, Stalin, as people's commissar of defense, signed Order No. 

227. Under its familiar name, "Nishagu 

nazad!" ("Not a step back!"), it is regarded in the Soviet literature as a 

successful impetus to the Soviet Army's 

wiilto fight. In part, its most frequently 

quoted passages read : 

Evel1' commander, soldier, and political 

worker must understand that our resources are nOlunlimitcd . . .. After losing 

the Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltic, the 

Don Basin, and other areas we now have a 

much smaller territory, fewer people and 

facLOries, less grain and metal. We have lost 

more than 70 million persons, over 800 

millionpud [14.5 million tons) of grain per 

year, and more than 10 million tons of 

metals per year. We 110 longer have superiority over the Germans either in manpower reserves or in grain stocks. To 

rel.reat farthe r is to cast oneself and the 

H.omeland into ruin. Every clod of earth 

we give up strengthens the enemy and 

weaKens our defense and our nation. 

32Crcchko. Cotly voyny, p. 190. 

361 

Not a step back! Such must be our 

highest purpose now'"' 

The History of the Second WJrld War 

indicates that Order No. 227 was more 

than a patriotic appeal. "This order," it 

states, "contained the harsh truth about 

the dangerous situation on the SovietGerman front, condemned 'voices of 

retreat,' and pointed out the necessity 

to use all means to stop the advance of 

the fascist-German troops. It threatened all of those who showed 

themselves cowardly or unspirited in 

battle with the most severe punishments and projected practical measures to raise the fighting spirit of the 

soldiers and strengthen their discipli ne." The order, the history continues, " . .. was an extraordinary 

measure. TI,e Central Committee of 

the Communist Party of the Soviet 

Union and the military leadership undertook this step in view of the difficult 

situation that had come to exist. They 

utilized the experiences of the party in 

the years of the Civil War and let 

themselves be guided by V. I. Lenin's 

aclvice that the party must resort to 

extraordinary measures when conditions demand il."34 

The Soviet accounts do not give the 

whole Ni sh.agu na.uul! order. A full text 

has survived in the German recorcls, 

however. In it, the "harsh truth" includes the following: 

The people of the nalion, who have 

looked 011 the Red Army with love and 

respect, aloe disillusioned. They are losing 

faith in YOll. Many of them curse the Rea 

Army because it is abandoning our people 

to the yoke of the German oppressors and 

itself fleeing to the east. 

33/VOVSS , vol. II, p. 430: /VMY, vol. V. p. 166. 

34/bid., p. 165. 
362 

Another passage indica tes that the 

order stemmed from Hitler's example 

of December 1941 as well as from 

Lenin's precept and the experience of 

the Civil War. It read: 

The German troops were forced to retreat in the winter under the pressure of 

the Red Army. Their discipline was shattered. Then the Germans resorted to severe measures, and those have not shown 

bad results. As is well known, those measures have 

had their effect, and the German troops 

now fight better than they did in the 

winter. The German troops now have good 

discipline even though tney do not n ave 

before them the lofty mission of defending 

their homeland and have only the pred~ 

atory objective of occupying enemy 

territory. 

TIle "punishments and practical measures to raise the fighting spirit" were 

given as follows: 

In each front area, from one to three 

punishment battalions of five hundred 

men each are to be created. Into them are 

to be placed all intermediate and senior 

commanders and political officers of com- parable ranks who have shown themselves 

guilty of cowardice, of not preserving discipline, or of not maintaining resistance to 

the enemy. They will be committed in especially dangerous situations so that they 

may expiate their crimes against the homeland wIth their blood. 

Corps and division commanders who 

allow troops to retreat without an order 

from the army commander are to be uncond itionall y removed. They will be 

turned over to the military councils of the 

fronts to be condemned by court martials. 

I n each army area, three to five weHarmed blocking detachments of approximately two hundred men are to be created. They will be stationed directly behind 

unreliable divisions, and it will be their 

duty, in the event of panics or unauthorized retreats, to shoot spreaders of 

panic or cowards on the spot. 

In each army area three to five punishMOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ment companies of one hundred fifty to 

two hundred men are to be created in 

which all enlisted men and junior officers 

are to be placed who are gUIlty of cowardice, not preserving discipftne, or of failing 

to maintain resistance to the enemy. They 

will be committed in especially dangerous situations so that they may expiate tl,eir 

crimes against their homeland with their 

blood." 

The Missions Revised 

Army Group A's biggest-and virtually only-troubles in me last three 

days of July were supplies and the 

Manich . The panzer divisions were 

having to be given motor fuel by airlifts 

to keep them from running dry. The 

Aooded Manich was more than a mile 

wide, and water seeping outward was 

turning the ground on both sides to 

mud. The troops were having to manhandle and ferry their equipment 

across in intense summer heat. The 

Soviet resistance, though, if anything, 

was on the decline. First Panzer Army 

d escribed the enemy ahead of it as 

being "in wild Aight."36 An intercepted 

Soviet radio message read, "We are 

going back. No reprisals (against the 

troops) work any more."3' Seventeenth 

Army reached the Yeya River, forty 

miles south of Rostov; First Panzer 

Army had a spearhead fifty miles past 

the Manich and halfway to the Kuban 

River; and Fourth Panzer Army 

crossed the Salsk-Stalingrad railroad at 

Prolyetarskaya and Remontnaya. On 

the 29th, List asked the OKH to cancel 

3~ Z. AOK I, Jc Nr. 6329142, Feindnachriclilenblatt N r. 

69, An/age N< 6, 22.8.42, Pl. AOK I 24906129 file . 

36PZ. AOK I, fa Kri~gs age uch Nr. 8, 29 Jul 42. Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file. 

37H. Cr. A, la Kriegstagebuch, Bantil. Trill, 30 Ju142, 

H. C,. A 7512611 file. 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

the projected encirclement at llkhoretsk because he was sure there would 

not be any Russians there 3 ' 

Sixth Army's fuel and ammunition 

drought continued as did the tempestuous Soviet counterattacks a long 

the Kalach bridgehead , and Paulus was 

feeling pinched for infantry. Some 

help for the latter problem was on the 

way in the form of the Italian Eighth 

Army, whicll had earlier been attached 

to Seventeenth Army but had not been 

needed in the advance on Rostov. 

Eighth Army, with its six sonorously 

named divisions, Celere, Ravenna, 

Torino, Cosseria, Sforzesca, and Pasubio, was on the march via Millerovo to 

take over the Don front between 

Pavlovsk and the mouth of the Khoper 

River, which would let Paulus bring two 

of his infantry divisions east. In part, 

Sixth Army's continuing ammunition 

shortage was caused by the extraordinarily large numbers of Soviet tanks 

it was meeting in the Kalach 

bridgehead. The tally of XIV Panzer 

Corps alone ran to 482 tanks knocked 

out in the last eight days of the month, 

and the total Sixth Army claimed was 

well over 6003 • 

The Soviet accounts confirm that 

strong tank forces were in the Kalach 

bridgehead, but not as many tanks as 

Sixth Army claimed. General Mayor 

K. S. Moskalenko, who had taken command of First Tank Army three days 

before, began the counterattack on 25 

July, with General Vasilevskiy present 

as Stavka representative. The army, 

Moskalenko says, had XIII and XXVIII 

7lln" COIjJS (with just over three hun3111bid., 29 Ju142. 

39AOK 6. fa Kriegslflgebuch N,: 13 , 29 Jul -I Aug 42. 

AOK 6 23948/ 11 file. 

363 

dred tanks) and one rifle division. 

Fourth TankATmy, under General Mayor 

V. D. Kruchenkin, joined in on the 

28th with one tank corps·· 

Active as it was, the Soviet armor was 

apparently not giving fully satisfactory 

performance at this stage, and in early 

August, it became the subject of the 

following Stalin order: 

Our armored forces and their unils frequently suffer greater losses mrough mechanical breakdowns than they do in 

battle. For example, at Stalingrad Front in 

six days twelve of our lank brigades lost 

326 out of meir 400 tanks. Of those about 

260 owed to mechanical problems. Many 

of me tanks were abandoned on the battlefield. Similar instances can be observed 

on other fronts. 

- Since such a high incidence of mechanical defects is implausible, the Supreme 

Headquarters sees in it covert sabotage 

and wrecking by certain elements in we 

tank crews who try to exploit small mechanical troubles to avoid battle. 

Henceforth , every tank leaving the battlefield for alleged mechanical reasons 

was to be gone over by technicians, and 

if sabotage was suspected, the crews 

were to be put into tank punishment 

companies or "degraded to the infantry" and put into infantry punishment 

cOlnpanies.41 

The plans as outlined in Directive 

45, which wasjust going on a week old, 

were coming unraveled at the end of 

the month. At the situation conference 

on the 20th, General Jodi, chief of the 

OKW Operations Staff, announced , 

"in portentious tones" according to 

<l°Moskalenko, Na Yllgo-wpod1lom Iwpravlenii, pp. 

263-80; IVQVSS, vol. II, p. 429. 

HPi.. AOK J, Ie Nr. 6868142, Feil1dl1l1chriclttenbltllt NT. 

70, Alllllge NT. 6, Be/eM NT. 156595 tJ(Jm 10.8.-12, 

22.9.42, PL. AOK I 24906/29 file. 
364 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

ABANDONED T-34 TANK PROVIDES COVER FOR A GERMAN OBSERVER 

Halder, that the fate of the Caucasus 

would be decided at Stalingrad, and 

therefore some of Army Group A's 

strength would have to be shifted to 

Sixth Army. On the whole, though, 

Halder was gratified at this thought's 

having finally arisen in "the brilliant 

society of the OKW." On the other 

hand , General Jodi still wanted to have 

First Panzer Army turn west and make 

the Tikhoretsk encirclement, which 

Halder thought was "vapid nonsense." 

"The enemy," he maintained, "is running as fast as he can run and will be on 

the north slope of the Caucasus ahead 

of our mobile units."42 List, when 

Halder talked to him, of course, did 

i'lHaiderDiary, vol. III , p. 494. 

not oppose abandoning dle Tikhoretsk 

encirclement, but he did oppose giving 

up part of his strengdl to Sixdl Army. 

It would be "a great gamble; he insisted, to send a "relatively weak force" 

deep into the Caucasus. In response, 

with less than fauldess logic, Halder 

argued that it would at least mitigate 

the supply problems. Finally, Halder 

added that the Grossdeutschland Division, which List wanted to keep as a 

mobile reserve, would probably also 

have to go because Hitler had repeatedly said it would do him no good to 

win victories in the East if he lost the 

West. 43 

":W. Cr. A, la Kriegstagebltch, 8a1ll1 I , Tei/I, 30 Ju14 2. 

H. Gr. A 75t261t file. 
HITLER'S GRAND DESIGN 

During the day on the 31st, Hitler 

revised Directive 45. The cutting of the 

railroad between Stalingrad and the 

Caucasus, he said, had "torn to pieces" 

the enemy front south of the Don. 

Soviet forces would still make an effort 

to defend tl,e Caucasus, but "no reinforcements wortll mentioning" could 

get there from the interior of the Soviet Union. On the oilier hand, the 

enemy would throw "every bit of available strengili" into the Stalingrad area 

to hold open his "vital artery," the 

Volga . Therefore, Headquarters, 

Fourth Panzer Army with XXXXV[ [I 

Panzer Corps, IV Corps, and Rumanian VI Corps would be transferred to 

Army Group B. The Grossdeutschland 

Division would be left with Army 

Group A approximately eight mOl'e 

days, two weeks at the most. Army 

Group B's mission was not changed. 

Army Group A's "next and most important assignment" would be to take 

possession of the Black Sea coast to 

e liminate the Soviet Navy and to open 

sea-lanes for its own suppli es. The 

Tikhoretsk encirclement disappeared , 

but First Panzer Army, while sending 

365 

detachments southeastward to Voroshilovsk and Petrovskoye, was still to 

bear mostly toward the southwest toward Maykop "to waylay the enemy 

retreating to the Caucasus." From Maykop, it would dispatch elements west to 

Tuapse on the Black Sea coast and 

SOUtll along the coast to Batumi.44 

The revisions of the 31st completed 

the division of ilie offensive initiated in 

Directive 45. Fourth Panzer Army, 

which had provided a link between the 

two army groups, was split. Hoth 

would take his headquarters and tllree 

corps north toward Stalingrad. One of 

his former corps, XXXX Panzer, would 

go south with First Panzer Army. Army 

Group A had been weakened, and 

Army Group B had been strengiliened, but Jodi was right when he said 

the fate of the Caucasus would be decided at Stalingrad. What remained to 

be seen was whether Army Group B's 

gain (four German and four Rumanian 

Divisions) would be enough to ensure 

tl,e outcome. 

""OKH, GenSldH. op. Abt. (/J Nr. 420573142, all N . 

Gr. A lI.1ul H . Gr. B, 31.7.42, H 22/216 file. 
CHAPTER XVIII 

Operation EDELWEISS 

The Kuban and the Caucasus 

"Sunflower" would have been a more 

appropriate code name than EDELWEISS if such had been deSired. The 

regio~ Army Group A had entered 

into south of the Don was one of sunflowers, grain, and oil-but also of 

desert, mountains, few railroads, and 

hardly any roads worthy of the name. 

Between the Kuban River and the Don 

and from the Black Sea coast inland to 

the headwaters of the Kuban the land 

was as productive as any in Europe. At 

first glance, the agricultural specialists 

attached to the army group estimated 

the crops standing in the fields would 

be enough to feed the troops ~ld the 

population and leave a substantial surplus for export to Germany. Not easily 

impressed by Soviet farming methods, 

they were awed by the model state farm 

"Gigant," located near Salsk, which had 

three-quarters of a million acres and Its 

own laboratories, shops, and processing plants.' From the upper reaches of 

the Kuban and east of Salsk to the 

Caspian shore, however, the land 

shaded off rapidly into desert where 

survival , even for a modern army, 

could depend on widely scattered wells 

and water holes. Much of the territory, 

particularly in the east and south of the 

Kuban and in the mountams was m1J>l". AOK I, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 8, 5 Aug 42. Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file. 

habited by non-Slavic peoples, the Kalmyks, Adygei, Cherkess, Kabardms, 

Chechens, Ingush, Karachal, Bal.kars, 

and Ossetians. They were fiercely mdependent Moslem tribes who had ~ot 

been brought into the RUSSian empire 

until the nineteenth century, had been 

restive under the tsars, and for religious and other reasons had no taste 

at all for the Soviet regime.' 

The oil, which Army Group A hoped 

would sustain its own operations and 

from which Hitler expected to fuel tile 

entire Wehrmacht, was produced in 

fields situated at and to tile southwest 

of Maykop, around Groznyy, and near 

Baku on the Caspian coast. These were 

the summer's ultimate strategic objectives because of their va lue to the German war effort and the presumed 

effect of their loss on the Soviet ability 

to resist. Although after the march to 

tile Don they appeared to be easily 

within grasp, the actual distances the 

Germans would have to go to reach 

them were enormous. In straight lines, 

not taking into account ITIountains , 

rivers, deserts, road conditions, or tactically required twists and turns, Maykop was 180 miles from Rostov; 

Groznyy was 400; and Baku 700. The 

last was somewhat more tllan the whole 

distance of the advance across the Soviet Union to Rostov. 

2S t!C R. Conques t, Th e Soviet DI'/JO )'tatioll oj Nationalities (London: Macmillan &: Co .. 1960), pp. 1-41. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 367 

SOVIET MACHINE GUNNERS DUG-IN OUTSIDE NOVOROSSIYSK 

North Caucasus Front 

The greatest advantage Army Group 

A had at the beginning of August was 

that the Soviet grip on this vast area, 

for the moment, was weak. The armies 

defending it were, in the most part, 

shattered remnants of past defeats. On 

28 July, the Stavka had merged what 

was left of South Front into the NOI·th 

Caucasus FTOnt under Marshal 

Budenny. He then had the Twentyfourth, Ninth, Thirty-seventh, Fifty-sixth, 

Twelfth, Eighteenth, Fifty-jirst, and Fortyseventh Annies and one independent infantry corps and a cavalry corps. Six of 

the eight armies had made the retreat 

to the Don, and two, Ninth and 1iventyfOlLl·th, were so far gone that they had to 

be sent to the rear to be rebuilt. lIvo, 

Forty-seventh and Fiftyfirst Annies, had 

been resurrected after the defeat on 

the Kerch Peninsula in May. 

Having better than 250 miles on an 

al most quarter-circle arc to cover, 

Budenny had been compelled to divide 

his forces into a Maritime Operational 

Group under General Cherevichenko 

and a Don Operational Group under General Malinovskiy. The Maritime Group, 

with Eighteenth, Fifty-sixth, and Forty-seventh Annies and the two separate corps, 

was considerably the stronger, and its 

mission was to cover Krasnodar and 

the Black Sea naval bases at 

Novorossiysk and Tuapse. The Don 

Group had Fifty-jirst, Thirty-seventh, and 

Twelfth Annies and theoretical responsibility for the whole sweep of tern tory 

east of Krasnodar. By 31 July, Fifty-jirst 
BLACK 

SEA 

OPERATION EDELWEISS 

31 July - 10 October 1942 

Approximatll front, 31 Jul 

Approximate front, 9 Aug 

Approximate front, 19 Aug 

Approximllte front, 10 Oct 

I ________ .-___ ~o Miles 

o ~O Kilometer. 

MAP 32 

Don It /' 

VoroshilOllsk 

"'0 C~ ~ \.J 

.., 

A 0<£., 0 00' I J " 0 ! ; 18th ':II ! IIII\II 

Belorech'n,klv "" 0 0 0 

P, .. " ,., "0

0 

12th V "L U~:f'kiV P, .. 0" 

o 0 C 

SlInchllfO r J 00" 

P .. , 't...:s 

Marukh.k1v,,",u 

Pus 0 0 

Klukhof,kiy" 0 0 

/ 

, " PIIU 

S.jh.';~ ;_ 46th 
, 

, 

, 

, 

, 

'-' 

, 

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) 

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. 

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t? .. ~ 

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I , , I ~~ j ;-;/--/ ]1, ~ ~ ,. .... 0°"0 Mazdo! ",'-""'0 44th ~ A , ./0.. "0., 

';t j( "'O './oo~ ,.) A 71'J': ~ oooooo MlIlgobBlc v> A '>' 'Z, ~ , ~. ,,)./ 9th 

Mount ~~~ "~;' Elkllotovo\ ,)J r ___ G~, __ oz_n_,7" 

Elb,u. . ;- ~ S / 37th 

,--,,--,,--,'/ y I III i J OR H GROUP ~ J, I J' Ordzhonikidze , • J l 

Dongul·Orun lJ ~ J A j'" ; ~ I 

/ P'" TRANSCAUCA!uS s FRONT ,~ 

" , 

, , • O ... tian MlIitiry ROld 

58th 

\ , 

A$t,ekhlll. 

f 

( ( \ \ 

I 

-
370 

Army had been pushed away to the 

northeast, and it was then transferred 

to S talingrad Front. 3 

Behind North Caucasus Front, General 

Tyu lenev's Transcaucasus Front had Fortyfifth and Forty-sixth Armies and another 

of the Kerch armies, Forty-fourth, with 

which to hold the Black Sea coast from 

Tuapse to Batumi, the mountain 

passes, and the Turkish border and to 

defend the approaches to Baku on the 

Caspian. To do the latter, Tyulenev 

proposed to install Forty-fourth Army in a 

line on the Terek River and back it with 

a second line on the Sudak River' 

To the Caucasus 

Even though Fourth Panzer Army 

broke contact and turned away toward 

Stalingrad, Army Group A only had 

one real problem in the first week of 

August, and that was to get enough 

gasoline and d iesel oil to sustain the 

speed it was capable of achieving. On 

the 4th, General List, the commander 

of Army Group A, submitted a sweeping optimistic prediction: the enemy 

command most likely had in mind 

making a stand south of the Kuban 

River to protect Maykop and the naval 

bases, but the troops were "dispensing 

with any sort of unified command ," 

and it could be assumed "that a fast 

thrust to the southeast with sufficient 

mobi le forces will not encounter serious enemy resistance anywhere forward of Baku,"5 The succeeding days 

seemed to bear him out convincingly. 

Seventeenth Army, which had Rumanian Third Army coming along behind 

3/VMV, vol. V, p. 209. 

ICrcchko. Cody voyny, p. 234 . 

5/1 . Gr. A, la Kriegslagebuch, Ba nd I, Tei! 11 , 4 Aug 42, 

H . Gr. A 75126/2 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

it to guard the coast, reported the 

enemy retreating faster than before. 

First Panzer Army had a bridgehead 

on the Kuban ; on the 5th it threw 

a bridge across the river and captured fifty-one loaded trains on the 

Kropotkin-Armavir railline south of the 

river. (Map 32.) The army group readied the Headquarters, XXXXIX Mountain Corps to take over the advance into 

the mountains south of Armavir. On the 

6th, Seventeenth Army's infantry gained an astonishing thirty miles. In crossing the Kuban , First Panzer Army 

forced Twelfth Army westward into the 

area of the Maritime Group, thereby 

reducing Malinovskiy's Don Group to a 

single army, Thirty-seventh. 

6 

I n one respect, however, List's prediction was already beginning to break 

down. Off his left flank, on the Terek 

River, at the behest of the Stavka, Transcaucasus Front was building a North 

Group, under General Maslennikov, 

around Forty-fourth Army and Headquarters, Ninth Army. The North Group 

was not a force of much consequence 

for the moment, but seven divisions 

and four brigades were coming north 

from the Turkish border, and the 

Stavka was sending two guards rifle 

corps (seven brigades) and eleven separate rifle brigades by rail to Astrakhan 

and thence by sea to Makhach kala. 7 

Army Group A's race to the sea would 

not be uncontested. 

But what the Russians were doing on 

the Terek could not help them on the 

Kuban. First Panzer Army was across 

the river in strength and bearing west 

toward Maykop, guided night and day 

6Ibid., 4 - 6 Aug 42; Andrei Grechko. Battle for the 

Caucasus (Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1971), p. 67. 

1Grechko, Gody 00)'11)', p. 239. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

by sheets of flame thousands of feet 

high: the oil refineries and tank farms 

were burning. The 9th was a day of 

almost nothing but good news for 

Army Group A. In hundred-degree 

heat and a swirling dust storm, Seventeenth Army took Krasnodar on the 

north bank of the Kuban while First 

Panzer Army passed through Maykop 

and into the oii fields, where it was 

disappointed to find the above ground 

equipment thoroughly wrecked but relieved to see that the wells were not on 

fire. Air reconnaissance reported 

heavy Soviet columns streaming south , 

and List concluded that the enemy had 

probably given up all thought of staging strong resistance anywhere north 

of the main Caucasus range. Seventeenth Army was encountering more 

of a fight on the Kuban than it had 

anywhere else on the 140-mile march 

from Rostov; nevertheless, the army 

group's most urgent problem had 

nothing in particular to do with the 

enemy but resulted from its orders 

under Directive 45. Almost the whole 

weight of First Panzer Army was being 

drawn LO its right flank, and, as had 

happened at Rostov two weeks earlier, 

this development was creating a pileup 

of divisions around MaykopS 

This time , though, List and his staff, 

who earlier had let themselves be governed entirely by instructions from the 

OKH, had ready a plan of their own: 

one which would preserve the "intent" 

of Directive 45, stop the westward pull 

on First Panzer Army, under General 

Kleist, and make it possible to go after 

the opportunities beckoning in the 

east. It would also create another major 

gil. Gr. A, l a Kriegstagebllch, Band I, 1i>illl, 7- 9 Aug 

42. H. Gr. A 7512612 fi le. 

371 

division in the offensive, but that appeared to be an acceptable price for the 

ad vantages gai ned. The plan was to 

reorganize and, by transferring LVI [ 

Panzer Corps and XXXXI V Corps, 

both of which were in the Maykop area, 

from First Panzer to Seventeenth 

Army, to make General Ruoff responsible for cleaning out the Black Sea 

coast and release Kleist to head east to 

Groznyy, Makhachkala, and Baku. 

The mountains presented the one 

complication. The passes to the west of 

Mount Elbrus offered shortcuts, although somewhat arduous ones, to the 

coast between Tuapse and Sukhumi, 

and opening them would both assist 

and secure Seventeenth Army's advance. East of Elbrus, the Grusinian 

and Ossetian Military Roads gave potential access to the 1i·anscaucasus, and 

First Panzer Army would have to control them before it could continue past 

Groznyy to Makhachkala and Baku. To 

make the march into the mounta ins, 

the army group had Headquarters, 

XXXXIX Mountain Corps, two German mountain divisions, and one 

Rumanian mountain division. List 

wanted to put the corps headquarters, 

one of the German divisions, and the 

Rumanian division west of Elbrus and 

leave the other German division for the 

military roads. The OKH approved the 

plan in general, but Hitler insisted on 

having both German mountain divisions west of Elbrus, which left First 

Panzer Army, as Kleist later put it, with 

"a single untried foreign division" LO 

execute a very critical mission 9 

The reorganization was to take effect 

9N. Cr. i\ , In Nr. 6561-12. all Pl.. AOK 1. JJ.8.42, PI. 

AOK 1249061 1 fi le: H . Gr. A ./a KriegstageIJllc/i, /Jam/ I. 

7",f 11 . 9- 12 Aug 42. )-1. Cl', A 75 126/2 file. 
372 

as soon as First Panzer Army had full 

possession of the Maykop oil fields and 

Seventeenth Army had cleared the 

lower Kuban, which apparently would 

happen in a few days but turned out to 

take longer. Both armies found the 

going slower as they hit into the outlying mountains, which although they 

were not nearly as high as the main 

range, were steep and cut by heavily 

wooded gorges. South of Krasnodar 

and along the Kuban River east of the 

city, Seventeenth Army not only had to 

contend with tTIountainous terrain but, 

for the first time since it crossed the 

Don , met concerted Soviet resistance 

and had to go over to a metilOdical 

attack. 

But the unexpected slowdown was 

accompanied by an unanticipated success. On the 12th, XXXXIX Mountain 

Corps plunged into the mountains 

south of Armavir and in four days was 

engaging Soviet rear guards at the important K1ukhorskiy Pass, thirty miles 

west of Mount Elbrus, and was forming 

a party to climb Elbrus (18,481 feet) 

and pia III a swastika flag at the summit 

(which was done on 21 August). If the 

mountain troops reached the coast 

near Sukhumi, they would undermine 

the entire Soviet defense north to 

Novorossiysk. To assist in exploiting 

that prospect, the army group dispatched two battalions of special highmountain troops in motor buses from 

Stalino. lo 

Tl1e advance illlo the mountains was 

a tremendous shock for the Soviet 

Command. They had been presumed 

to be reasonably easy to defend. Transcaucasus FlUnt had Forty-s~~tI, Army to 

10J-/. Gr. A, Ia. KriegstagfiJUch. Band I. Tei/Il, 12-17 

Aug 42. H. Gr. A 75126/2 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

man the passes and the military roads, 

and it had supposedly been at work 

fortifying them since June. According 

to all the postwar Soviet accounts the 

blame for the failure to make a better 

initial showing rested with Transcaucasus FlUnt-for complacency-and 

on Forty-sixth Army-for general ineptitude in mountain warfare. 

Another, and different, problem is 

seldom alluded to and t11en obliquely 

as follows: 

The Fascist invaders placed great hopes in 

the instability of the Soviet rear area In the 

Caucasus. They estimated that as soon as 

the German forces broke through into the 

Caucasus, violence and uprisings would 

begin among its inhabitants. In order to 

facilitate this, Hitler's intelligence attempted to establish agent operations 

among the nationalistic elements in ule 

Caucasus both prior to and during the 

offensive. I I 

There were, as far as the Germans 

knew, no actual uprisings, but many of 

the mountain peoples welcomed the 

invaders as liberators. No doubt, a 

good part of the German mountain 

troops' early success depended upon 

the availability of willing native guides. 

Some men from the region , who had 

been taken prisoner earlier in the war, 

were already enlisted in the German 

service, and the high-mountain battalions had with them platoons of 

Cherkess, Chechens, and Dagestani. 12 

The crisis in the Caucasus brought a 

sinister figure to Transcaucaslls FlUnt, 

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrenti Beria, the head of the 

secret political police. Beria came as a 

l'I\lOVSS, vol. II , p. 455. 

12PZ. AOK I , fa Kriegslagebllch N,: 8, 16 and 18 Aug 

42, P,. AOK 1 24906 hie. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

Slavka representative. For a time, he 

apparently tried to take personal command of the mountain defenses, but 

his primary job was to hold the population in line, which he and his NKVD 

troops, of whom many were stationed 

in the Caucasus border area, did thoroughly and ruthlessly.13 

Tuapse and Ihe Terek 

The Tempo Swws 

When Seventeenth Army reached 

Krymsk, halfway between tl1e Kuban 

and Novorossiysk, on 17 August, List 

issued a directive putting the army 

group reorganization into effect the 

next day. Seventeenth Army then became responsible for all of the territory 

west of Mount Elbrus, and it acquired 

three interil11 nlissions. One was to 

complete the advance to Novorossiysk 

with its original forces; another to 

thrust along the road running southwest out of Maykop to Tuapse with tl1e 

two corps taken over from First Panzer 

Army; and the third to push XXXXIX 

Mountain Corps through the passes 

and down the south slope of the mountains to Sukhumi. First Panzer Army, 

which had XXXX Panzer Corps approaching t11e Terek Rive r and III Panzer Corps coming in from the 

northwest, had as its next missions to 

cross the Terek, take Ordzhonikidze 

and Groznyy, and open the Grusinian 

Military Road." 

None of the missions looked impossible or even very difficult. Seventeenth 

Army had twenty-five miles to go to 

13Erickson, Hoad to Sialingrad, p. 378; Scwcryn 

Bialer, Stalin and His Generals (New York: Pegasus, 

1969). p. 451. 

HH. G,: A, fa Kriegslagt'buch, Balld / , Teil ll, 17 Aug 

42. H. Gr. A 75126/2 file. 

373 

GER1'oiAN 75-~"M . ANTITAN K GUN I N THE 

CAUCASUS FOOTHILLS 

Novorossiysk and about the same to 

Tuapse. The approach to Sukhumi depended on which of a dozen passes was 

used. List and Ruoff preferred the 

Klukhorskiy Pass which was roughly 

fifty miles northeast of Sukhumi and 

necessitated a substantial bend to the 

east but offered a route that could be 

used by motor vehicles over most of its 

lengtl1 while the otl1ers were only accessible to men and pack animals. First 

Panzer Army's point nearing the Terek 

was about sixty-five mil es from 

Ordzhonikidze, ninety from Groznyy. 

But the tempo was changing. By the 

18th, the days of tl1irty-mile advances 

were already just a memory, and five 

miles a day or less was tl1e rule. Thereafter, local gains of a mile or two began 

to be considered significant, particul arl y in the Seventeent11 Army area. 
374 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

GERMAN MOUNTAIN TROOPS IN THE SANCHARO PASS 

The V Corps had been at Krymsk on 

the 17th and was still fighting there on 

the 20th. The LVII Panzer Corps and 

XXXIV Corps were completely tied 

down in seesaw battles in the mountains south and west of Maykop. The 

XXXXIX Mountain Corps was into the 

Sancharo Pass northeast of Sukhumi 

and through the K1ukhorskiy, but the 

going was getting slower. First Panzer 

Army, constantly pinched for motor 

fuel, reached Mozdok on the north 

bank of the Terek on the 24th and then 

had to contemplate crossing the fastRowing river that, being the last natural line forward of Groznyy and 

Makhachkala, was certain not to be 

given up without a fight.' 5 

/bid .. 17. 18,20,24 Aug 42. 

The Soviet forces, although they 

were to some extent still on the retreat 

everywhere, were beginning to benefit 

from being pushed into shorter lines, 

especially since these also traversed 

areas that were almost ideal for the 

defense. NOl·th Caucasus Front had Fo,-tyseventh and Fifty-sixth A,-mies around 

Novorossiysk, Twelfth and Eighteenth A,--

mies north and east of Tuapse. Transcaucasus Front's No,-th Cwup had Thi)·tyseventh, Ninth, and FOl·tyfou,-th A 1"1'I!ies in 

the line on the Terek and Fifty-eighth 

A1"1'I!y being raised at Makhachkala.'6 

Army Group A, on the other hand, 

was being relegated piecemeal to a supernumerary status. As General HaIder, chief of the General Staff, put it, 

16G,"echko, COlly 00),11)', p. 245. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

the "tempo" of the army group's operations was having to be permitted to 

decline to cope with demands in other 

sectors. The Grossdeutschland Division and the 22d Panzer Division left 

Army Group A in the second week of 

August, Grossdeutschland to go to the 

Western Theater via a detour to Army 

Group Center, 22d Panzer to go to 

Sixth Army. By the time they had departed, the army group was under 

notice to relinquish a Flak ("antiaircraft") division and two rocket 

launcher regiments. The Italian Alpini 

Corps, with the mountain divisions Tridentina, Cuneense, and Julia, appeared briefly in the Army Group A 

area at midmonth and then was diverted to Italian Eighth Army without 

having gotten near the front. General 

Richthofen, who was commanding 

Fourth Air Force, the air support arm 

for Army Groups A and B, told List on 

the 20th he was having to switch all of 

the planes, "except for very small remnants," to the attack on Stalingrad. It 

was "regrettable," he said, but the 

order had come from Hiller. He 

thought the planes could be back in 

"six to ten days." Two days later, Hitler, 

who was worried about what he 

lllOught might be a strong Soviet concentration west of Astrakhan, ordered 

List to station the 16th Motorized Infanu'y Division at Elista on First Panzer 

Army's extreme left flank. To get fuel 

to move ll,e division 150 miles from 

Voroshilovsk to Elista, General Kleist, 

the army's commander, had to drain 

the tanks of one panzer division." 

On the 24th , List went to Armavir to 

consult with Ruoff, Kleist's chief of staff 

17H. Gr. A , la Kriegslo.gebuch , Band I, Teilll, 13, 16. 

20, 22 Aug 42. H. Gr. A 75126/2 file . 

375 

and the commander of XXXXIX 

Mountain Corps. Later he sent a summary to the OKH. In it he said the 

army group's operations had "lost their 

fluidity"; the fuel shortage and losses of 

troops and air support had given the 

enemy opportunity to dig in and bring 

up reserves. As a result, the "whole 

progress of the fighting" was being 

retarded, which in view of the long 

distances and advanced season was "a 

cause for serious thought."'8 The extent of the retardation became more 

apparent the next day when First Panzer Army had to give up its attempt to 

strike to Groznyy by way of Ordzhonikidze-because it did not have enough 

fuel for the tanks-and to begin regrouping for a frontal attack across the 

Terek via Mozdok. '9 

List, on the 26th, returned to the 

subjects he had raised with the OKH 

two days before. When it crossed the 

Kuban, he said,. the army group had 

anticipated having Seventeenth Army 

in control of the Black Sea coast and 

First Panzer Army on ll,e Caspian by 

the end of September; but, for the 

reasons given earlier, ll,e operations so 

far had taken more than the time 'Justifiably allotted to them." Consequently, 

unless they could still reach the objectives, which would take substantial reinforcements and air su pport, they 

would soon have to be allowed to take 

up winter positions. "Unfortunately," 

he added, the time for doing ll,at was 

almost at hand as far as XXXXIX 

Mountain Corps was concerned. There 

had already been several snowstorms 

at the higher elevations, and the deci-

'Rlbid" 24 Aug 42. 

19PZ. AOK J, la Kriegst{/gebuch Nr. 8, 25 Aug 42, Pz. 

AOK I 24906 file. 
376 

sion could not be put off past 15 

September'o 

List at the Werwolf 

List's communications did have an 

effect but not the one he wanted . He 

did not get even a hint about reinfor.cements, and when his chief of staff tned 

to find out when the army group could 

expect to have air support again, he 

was told the planes would return 

"when Stalingrad is taken or ~iven up 

as impossible."2! In the Sltuauon ~o nFerence on the 29tll, though, HItler 

made "very irritated remarks" about 

the conduct of opera tions at Army 

Group A and asked to have List report 

in person. 22 The trouble, he InsIsted , 

was not in the ongInal plan but that 

List had not regrouped when he saw 

hitches developing. 23 Later Halder told 

List that Hitler had also raIsed several 

specific complaints. For one, he had 

heard through the an- force tl,at the 

terrain north of Novorosslysk was 

"comparable to the Grunewald [a pa rklike woods outside Berlin)" and tl,erefore believed "a vigorous attack" ought 

to take it easily. He a lso thought 

XXXXIV Corps had failed to concentrate its forces sufficiently for tl,e attack on Tuapse, and XXXXIX Mountain Corps ought not to have gone Into 

the eastern mountain passes, the 

Sancharo and Klukhorskiy, but shou ld 

have confined itself to those farther 

west. 24 

2GDer Oberbifehlshaber der /I. C,: A, la Nr. 174142, 

26.8.42, P,. AOK 124906/1 file . 

21H . Gr. A, fa Kriegstagebllch, 8mull, Tei/ II, 28 Aug 

42. H. Gr. A 75126/2 file. 

22HalderDiary, vol. III, p. 513. 

23Helmudl .yreiner, Die Obrr.ste Wehnnachifllehnmg, 

/939-19-13 ies~de : Limes Verlag. 1951), p. 407. 

'HH. Gr. A, la Kriegstagebuch, Balld I. TPi! II, 29 Aug 

42. H. Ce. A 75 126/2 fi le. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

When List arrived at the We/wolf on 

the 31st, however, the reception was 

altogether different from what he had 

been led to expect. [n the meantIme, 

Seventeenth Army had made some 

progress toward Novorossiysk, and List 

had begun putting more weight on th~ 

approaches to Novorosslysk . . Hltlers 

mood was so good that he InvIted LIst 

to lunch , and the atmosphere was so 

rel axed that later it was difficult to 

dete rmine what, if anything, had been 

decided. Hitler told List he reall y did 

not have any objections to the way 

Army Group A had deployed ItS 

forces, although he would "rather have 

had the mountain corps somewhat 

closer to the Tua pse road." . 

Hitler apparently belIeved that LISt, 

who had come armed WIth aenal photographs from which to show why the 

mountain corps ought to be stopped, 

had undertaken to keep the corps 

going and to shift its main effort west. 

List, on the other hand , apparently 

believed Hitler had agreed to let the 

mountain corps' future operations be 

contingent on whether the a rmy ~roup 

could find an airfie ld from whIch ItS 

supplies could be Aown in . Rechecking 

through the OK W did establish one 

solid result of the meeung: HItler had 

authorized BLUECI-IER II, the amphibious attack across the Kerch Strait. It 

would eliminate a pocket of Soviet 

troops holding out against Rumanian 

Third Army on the Taman penlllsuia 

and would bring over a German Infantry division and a RUlllanian 1l1QUntatn 

division. 2 5 

BLuECHER II was executed on 2 Septembe r. Hitler had diverted enough 

25/bid .. 3 1 Aug42; OKW; KTB, \'01. II , p. 662. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

aircraft from Stalingrad to give support on the beach and to hold off the 

Soviet Black Sea Fleet. On the same day 

First Panzer Army established a 

bridgehead on the Terek at Mozdok, 

and on the 6th, Seventeenth Army 

broke into Novorossiysk, taking the 

center of the city and the naval base. 

List then wanted to concentrate on 

Tuapse and commit all of XXXXIX 

Mountain Corps there except for light 

security screens to be left in the passes, 

but Hitler demanded that advances be 

continued both toward Tuapse and 

through the western passes toward 

Sukhumi.'6 

H itler Takes Command 

On the 7th, GeneralJodl, chief of the 

OKW Operations Staff, who seldom 

left the Fuehrer Headquarters unless 

Hitler did , went to Army Group A's 

command post in Stalino on an urgent 

request from List. There, with General 

der Gebirgstruppe Rudolf Konrad, 

comma nding general, XXXXIX 

Mountain Corps, present, List using 

aerial photographs and captured Soviet ma ps, showed him what continuing the mountain corps' operation 

as Hitler wished would entail: a long 

march over a single mountain trail, 

having to transport all supplies by pack 

animals of which tl1e corps had 1,900 

less than would be required, and exposure to attacks on both Ranks. Jodi 

returned to the Werwolf carrying a 

"unanimous" recommendation against 

co ntinuing the mountain corps' 

operations.

27 

26 H elnuILh Greinel", Greiner Dimy Noles From 12 Aug 

4210 J7 Mar 43,2-4 Sep 42, C-065a CMH file . 

21H. Gr. A, fa Kriegstagebllch, Band I, Teil lJl, 7 Sep 

42 . 1-1 . Gr. A 75126/3 file. 

377 

Captain Helmut Greiner, keeper of 

tl1e OKW War Diary, made the following entry in his notes for 8 September: 

The Chief of the Armed Forces Opera- tions Staff [JodI], following his conference 

with the Commanding General , Army 

Group A, at the latter's headquarters on 7 

September, has declared himself in agreement with Field Marshal List's contention 

that XXXXIX Mountain Corps, after leaving screening detachments in tJle passes, 

should be withdrawn to the north and 

recommitted in the Maykop area. 

The Fuehrer is extremely put out at 

General JodI's taking this position which is 

diametrically opposed to his own. He has 

demanded that all the records pertaining 

to Army Group A's conduct of operations since it crossed the Don River be brought 

to him.28 

To List, Hitler "declined" to give any 

further orders, saying that if List was 

convinced he could not get the mountain corps through to tl1e coast, tl1en he 

should "leave it gO."29 

In tl1e afternoon on the 9tl1, Keitel 

called on Halder, at Hitler's bidding, to 

tell him List ought to resign his command and to "infer" changes in other 

high posts, including Halder's and 

JodI's.'o Afterward, Keitel told JodI's 

deputy, General der Infanterie Walter 

Warlimont, whose status also was in 

doubt, that he too expected to be relieved. The morning after he talked to 

Hald t~ Keitel had a "private interview" 

with List at the latter's headquarters, 

and List thereupon "withdrew from his 

comlnand."31 

As far as can be told from Greiner's 

28G reiner Dillry Notes, 8 Sep 42, C-065a CMH file . 

29f1 aldcr Diary, vol. III, p. 519. 

30/&id.; Greiner Diary Notes, 9 Sep 42, C~065a CMH 

file. 

31H. Gr. A, la Kriegslagebllch, Band I, Tei/lIl, 10 Sep 

42, H. Gr. A 75 126/3 file. 
378 

notes or the Army Group A records, all 

of the fuss was raised ove r the deployment of one mountain corps. Warlimont recalled later that Hitler had also 

accused List of having consistently not 

followed orders and Jodi, who would 

have been responsible for detecting 

any such lapses, had maintained that 

List had scrupulously executed a ll of 

the orders given to him- hence, perhaps, the request for Army Group A's 

records. Jodi, according to Warlimont, 

belIeved-and regretted-that he PUt 

Hitler into tile position of either doing 

what he did or taking the blame himself for the errors he imputed to List. 

Warlimont's own opinion, not made a 

matter of record until a number of 

years later, was that Hitler, knowing he 

was on the edge of a severe crisis in the 

war, resorted to a tactic he had used 

be fore and sacrificed his subordinates 

to protect himself.'" 

The atmosphere of the situation conference at the Werwolf on 11 September 

was, as Halder described it, "icy." 

Hitler, who otherwise did most of the 

talking, barely said a word. For the 

next two weeks, he transacted very little 

business through either tile OKW o r 

the OKH. He also did not name a 

successor to List. Instead, he ordered 

Ruoff and Kleist to submit to him 

every otller day, situation reports and 

maps detailed down to the battalions. 

Tactical proposals and requests were to 

be sent to him by telegraph through 

the OKH."3 In e ffect, he assumed command of tile armies himself and left 

Headquarters, Army Group A, to do 

the housekeeping. 

32()K11', KTB, "01. II. pp. 697,702. 

33H . Gr. A, la KriegsUlgt'buch, Bamll, Tei! III, 12 Scp 

42, I-I. Gr. A 75 12613 fi le. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

"Stand ID the Dealh" 

The frustrations of fighting in the 

Caucas us h a d , meanwhile , a lso 

brou~ht command changes on the Soviet Side, though not nea rly as radical 

ones. On I September, as tile Germans 

were drawing up to Novorossiysk, we 

old cavalryman, Budenny, had been 

relieved as commanding general, North. 

Caucasus Front, thereby ending for 

good his career as a field commander. 

At the same time NOTth Caucasus Front 

went out of existence, and Budenny's 

replacement, General Cherevichenko 

took over its staff and armies as co ~ manding general of the Black Sea 

Gwup, Transcaucasus Front."' 

For the first time in that summer, it 

began to look as if the game could go 

either way, but the stakes were still far 

from even. Hitler had come to the 

point of having to contemplate a major 

dlSappomtment and possibly a massive 

faIlure. What confronted the Soviet 

Union , howeve ~ was no less than a 

national catastrophe. On 6 September, 

Moscow Radio broadcasted the following appeal from Stalin to the troops on 

the south Rank: 

T~1e enemY,is slo~vly advancing LOwarci the 

a!lClent RUSSian nve r, the Volga , and the 

nches of the Caucasus. Our existence depends on the outcomes of the battles now 

being fought. Not a step back! Stand to the 

deatl1! This is the summons of our country. 

The fate of lie Fatherland, lie future of 

our famjlies, and the destinies of our children lie in our hancls. 35 

Army Group B published the appeal to 

the troops of Sixth and Fourth Panzer 

Armies as evidence of Soviet despera34Grechko, BattleJor the Caucasw, p. 125. 

3:W. Gr. H, 10 Nr:. 2965142. F,nuprudt 110111 10.9.42, 

Pl. AOK 42818315 file. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

tion, but Army Group A let it pass in 

silence, possibly because the interpretation of it by Kleist's and Ruoffs troops 

was somewhat uncertain. On the lith , 

Seventeenth Army, indeed advancing 

slowly, came to a full stop at the wall of 

a cement factory on the southern outskirts of Novorossiysk. (And, in fact, 

the front would stay in that exact spot 

for just five days short of a year, that is, 

until the Germans withdrew from the 

Kuban entirely.)36 In the morning on 

the 14th, X Guards Rifle Corps hit First 

Panzer Army's open left flank north of 

the Terek River and came close to cutting off the bridgehead at Mozdok. 37 

In Slow Motion 

At midmonth, First Panzer Army 

and Seventeenth Army both needed either to complete their missions fast or 

to find tenable positions for the winter, 

and both were at a standstill. First Panzer was having to make its flank secure 

and clean out the Terek bend west of 

Mozdok to give itself a solid hold on 

the river before heading toward Ordzhonikidze and Groznyy. Hitler was 

sending the SS Viking Division from 

Seventeenth Army to give Kleist some 

additional weight when he started up 

again. Seventeenth Army was bringing 

two mountain regiments west out of 

the passes and preparing to direct its 

main effort to Tuapse, when and if it 

could get enough air support to make a 

start. 

In a "special" report on the 16th , 

Kleist told Hitler, through the OKH , 

that "in the gigantic fields of sunflowers 

and corn and in the ravines and nooks 

36Crechko, Battle/or the CauCfLslIs, p. 129. 

37Ib;d .. p. J08; H. Gr. A, la Kriegstagebuclt, Band J, Tnl 

III . II Sep 42. H. Ce. A 75125/3 file. 

379 

and crannies of the mountains," the infantry he had would be 'J ust barely 

enough" to keep on fighting until the 

SS Viking Division arrived . '!ivo days 

later, however, LlI Corps staged a tentative push against the west face of the 

Mozdok bridgehead and suddenly 

found itself plowing at a run through 

the lines of Soviet fortifications. The 

next eight days were almost like those 

of early August. Along the valleys and 

on the ridges inside the Terek bend, 

wherever the Germans turned the Russians gave way. On the 21st, Kleist made 

up his mind to commit the SS Viking 

Division as soon as it arrived and tllen 

strike south to Ordzhonikidze, with the 

13th Panzer Division going along the 

west bank of the Terek through the 

Elkhotovo Gate and SS Viking Division 

and the llith Infantry Division going 

to Malgobek and so uth a long the 

northern extension of the Grusinian 

Military Road. 

The SS Viking Division crossed the 

Terek after dark on the 25th and 

moved into the line north of Malgobek 

during the night. To the division commander, Kleist sent the message, "All 

eyes are on your division. The whole 

operation depends on its be ing unsparingly committed." The division 

went into action ti,e next morning and 

in the course of a day and half got to 

within a mile of Malgobek. but it stalled 

tI1ere witllOut getting onto the heights 

to the soutll from which it might have 

made a clean breakthrough. By then 

13th Panzer Division was at Elkhotovo 

and also stopped. Kleist believed the 

Viking Division had the numbers and 

the weapons to have gone the thirtyfive miles to Ordzhonikidze but lacked 

the internal cohesiveness. (The division 

had close to two thousand non-Ger-
380 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

SoVIET MORTAR SQUAD FIRI NG EAST OF TUAPSE 

man troops, half Dutch and Belgian , 

the others, except for a few Swiss, 

Scandinavian.) 

On 3 October, through the OKH , 

Kleist asked "to be informed when and 

in what strength the army can expect to 

get reinforcements to continue the advance to Makhachkala via Ordzhonikidze and Groznyy."38 A week later, 

after repeated inconclusive statements 

from the OKH, Hitler answered tllat 

depending on developments at Stalingrad , tlle army would get either one 

or two mobile divisions later in we 

month. Until then its mission would be 

"to create we best possible conditions 

38PZ. AOK I, fa Kril'gstllgebllch Nr. 8, 16 Sep-3 OCl 

42, P,. AOK I 24906 file. 

for an advance after the reinforcements arrive."39 

While First Panzer Army was maneuvering in the Terek bend, Seventeenth 

Army began its advance on Tuapse 

along we Maykop-Tuapse road on 23 

September, with LVII Panzer Corps, 

and two days later with XXXI V Corps. 

The straight-line distance was about 

thirty miles. On the ground, across the 

western end of the main Caucasus 

range, it was somewhat more than tllal. 

Shaumyan, twenty miles from Tuapse, 

was we first objective. From there the 

march would be more downhill wan 

up. The mountain regiments as tlle Di3IJ/-I. Cr. A, fa Kn'egslagebll ch. Band I, 'rei/ Iv, 10 Ou 

42. H. Gr. A 7512614 file. 
OPERATION EDELWEISS 

vision "Lanz," under Generalmajor 

Hubert Lanz, took the east Aank where 

the distance was longer and the terrain 

the roughest'· Richthofen provided 

adequate, but not lavish, air support. 

Ruoff had insisted that he could not 

start without it" The Soviet main 

force on the defense was Eighteenth 

Army. 

The advance on Tuapse went slowly 

from the start. Without the benefit of 

enemy lapses such as had occurred in 

the Terek bridgehead, momentum was 

hard to generate and quickly lost. The 

Russians were dug in everywhere, and 

squad and platoon actions were the 

rule. The weather was nightmarish: 

late summer, with tropical downpours, 

in the valley and near winter on ule 

mountains. On the sixth day, Ruoff reported that the experienced troops, 

having been on the march for more 

than two months, were eimer gone or 

worn out, and the replacements were 

undertrained and not sufficiently 

IO/bid" 23-25 Sep 42. 

IIAOK 17, III Kriegstllgebllch Nr. 4, 18 Sep 42. AOK 

1725601 file. 

381 

hardened. "What is missing," he said, 

"is the old , battle-tested private first 

class whom nothing can shake."" After 

ten more days, the battle was rolling in 

on Shaumyan, and Ruoff thought the 

defense might be weakening, since 

there had not been any counterattacks 

in the past day or two even though 

Shaumyan was endangered. 

On 10 October, at the same time that 

he told Kleist to wait for reinforcements, Hitler ordered Ruoff to "push 

ahead toward Tuapse formwith " after 

taking Shaumyan'3 On me 11m, ule 

Stavka relieved Cherevichenko from 

command of me Black Sea Group and 

appointed General Petrov in his place. 

Ruoff said he proposed to do as Hitler 

had ordered, but he reminded the 

army group and the OKH that the 

Tuapse operation, so far, had cost him 

10,000 casualties." 

"'llbid., 28 Sep 42. 

":W. C,: A,Ia Kriegstagebfldt, Band I, TrillV; 9-10 

OCl42. H. Ce, A 75 12614 role. 

HCrechko,Baulejor the Caucaslls, p. 156; H . Gr. A, /a 

Kriegstagebuch, Band /, TeillV; 12 Oct 42, H. Cr. A 

751261'1 file. 
CHAPTER XIX 

From the Don to the Volga 

No Enemy West of Stalingrad 

Fourth Panzer Army turned northeast from Tsimlyanskiy a nd Remontnaya o n 1 August. In another two 

days, after having captured several 

load e d Soviet troop trains near 

Kotelnikovo, the advance detachments 

of General Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army 

were on the Aksay River sixty miles 

southeast of Stalingrad. There they 

met Stalingrad Hunt's South Groul; that 

was being formed by General Chulkov, 

acting commander of Sixty-fourth Army, 

out of units from his army and some 

reserve divisions.' (Map 33.) 

Sixth Army, under General Paulus, 

while waiting for its motor fuel and 

ammunition stocks to be replenished, 

was getting Headquarters, Xl Corps, 

which had been held at KamenskShakhtinskiy with two infantry divisions as the 0 KH reserve. On the 4th, 

when his mobile units had enough fuel 

to go about thirty miles, Paulus ordered the attack on th e Ka la ch 

bridgehead to start on the 8th. The 

next day the OKH asked to have the 

attack start at least a day earlier because 

Hitler was worried that the Soviet 

troops would escape across the Don if 

Paulus waited longer.

2 

lP1.. AOK 4, /0 KriegsUlgebuch Notiu!1I Chef. 1-4 Aug 

42. Pz. AOK 28183/ 17 fi le: Chuikov. Slalingmd, pp. 

44 - 50. 

2AOK 6. fa Krlegst(lgebllch Nr. JJ, 2-5 Aug 42. AOK 

On the night of I August, General 

Eremenko was called to the Kremlin 

from the hospital where he had been 

since February when he had been 

wounded while commanding FouI·th 

Shock Army. After ascertaining that he 

was ready to return to duty, Stalin told 

Eremenko that Stalingrad Front was 

being divided into twoJronts, Stalingrad 

and Southeast, and he was the State 

Defense Committee's choice for command of one of them. In studying the 

situation in the Don-Volga area at the 

General Staff the next day, Eremenko 

learned that the boundary between the 

[ronts was laid from Kalach to the line 

of the Tsaritsa Rive r, which Rowed east 

through Stalingrad at about the center 

of the city. That night, at the Kremlin , 

Eremenko suggested it might have 

been better to assign the entire city to 

one front or the other, but Stalin and 

General Vasilevskiy, chief of the General Staff, told him the attacks would 

be coming from the north and the 

south, and Eremenko sensed they were 

not disposed to reconsider the decision. During the interview, Stalin gave 

Eremenko command of Southeast Front, 

which would take over the sector from 

the Tsaritsa south. 3 

The realignment took effect on 5 

62394811 file; H. Gr. B, Ja Nr. 2383142, an AOK 6, 

5.8.42, AOK 6 30 155/39 file. 

:l Eremcnko. fbmlli voyny. pp. 172-75. 
FROM THE DO TO THE VOLGA 

Mil/elova 

SIXTH 

ARMY 

'''' 

383 

J 

MOfozovsk ( 57th /00 

,) 0..0 I 0 

( 0 

/ 1- I 

, 

<! 

TSlm/yllnskiy -----~ f.... Kattllmkolla 

DO" ... I , FOURTH 

\ , \ 

" PANZER ARMY \ 

\ 51st 

I 

~~-? I 

(, 

-~ 

FIRST PANZER 

ARMY 

MAP)} 

August. General Gordov kept Stalingrad Fmnt and Sixty-third, Twenty:first, 

Sixty-second, and Fourth Tank A rm.ies. 

Eremenko acquired Sixty:f0u1'lh, Fiftyseventh, and Fifty:fi1'st Arm.ies plus First 

Guards Army, which was being brought 

out of the Slavka reserve. First Tank 

Army was disbanded. [ts staff became 

~.montn8V8 Station 

THE ADVANCE TO STALINGRAD 

31 July - 3 September 1942 

ApprOICimatll front, 31 Jul 

0000000 Approximate tront, 19 Aug 

Apprmllmate front. 3 Sep 

<:=== Garman attack, 31 Jut · 18 Aug 

~ Garman attack, 19 Aug - 3 Sep 

a 50 Miles 

0

1 \ 

50 Kilometers 

the nucleus for the staff of Southeast 

Front, and what was left of its u-oops was 

incorporated into Sixty-second Army. 4 

The headquarters of both jivnts were 

situated in Stalingrad. 

~/VA V. \'0 1. V, p. 164 : IVOVSS, vol. II. p. 43 1: 

Moskalenko, Na VllgQ-wjJ(Jdllom lw/Jrav/tllii, p. 288. 
384 

[n the Don Bend 

From the northeast and southwest, 

tight against the river, XIV and XXIV 

Panzer Corps struck into the Kalach 

bridgehead on the morning of 7 August. Their points had contact by late 

afternoon, and they had trapped the 

main body of Sixty-second Army. Together 

with the infantry of LI Corps, the two 

panzer corps cleaned out the pocket in 

four more days, eventually tallying 

nearly fifty thousand prisonerss 

At Kalach , Sixth Army was on the 

most direct route to Stalingrad, the one 

it had originally intended to take, but 

several considerations now spoke 

against using it. For one, the terrain 

between Kalach and Stalingrad was 

crisscrossed by balkas, deep gullies that 

often forced tanks into lengthy detours 

and could be used as trenches by the 

defense. Also, since Fourth Panzer 

Army was on the Aksay and had 

bridgeheads across it, the envelopment 

formed by a thrust due east from Kalach was likely to be shallow. Moreover, 

Fourth Tank and Twentyfirst Armies were 

still holding a bridgehead line from 

Kletskaya to Peskovatka across the 

northeastern loop of the Don bend. To 

keep the Russians confined there, 

Paulus reckoned, would take more 

troops than would be needed to hold 

them on the river, and the terrain 

north of Peskovatka appeared to afford a somewhat better-and about 

five miles shorter-approach to Stalingrad. On the 11th, Paulus ordered 

foAOK 6, la Kriegstagebuch N,: 13, 7- 15 Aug 42, AOK 

623948/ 11 fil e. In Moskalenko's account, Headquarters, First Tank Army turned over its troops to ysecond Ann)' du.-ing the day on the 7th, after havlIlg 

rece ived an order to do so th e night berore. 

MoskaJ cnko. Na )'ugo-Ul/)odIlOIll lIa/JmVlell ii, p. 288. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

XIV and XXIV Panzer Corps to shift 

north clean out the "northeast corner" 

of th; Don bend, and get bridgeheads 

there for the advance to Stalingrad 6 

The loss of the Kalach bridgehead 

brought the close-in defense of StaIingrad nearer to actuality on the S?-

viet side, and the Stavka was putting 111 

more of its reserves, fifteen rifle divisions and three tank corps between 1 

and 20 August. On the 9th, Vasilevskiy 

talked to Eremenko from Moscow and 

told him Stalin had decided to put Slaling.-ad and Southeast Fronts under 

Eremenko. He would have Gordov as 

his deputy for Stalingrad Hunt and General Golikov, the commander of Tenth 

Army, as deputy for Southeast Fmnt, and 

General Moskalenko, who had been hiS 

deputy for the past several days, would 

take command of First Guards A,·my. 

NKVD Colonel A. A. Sarayev, who was 

bringing the 10th NKVD Division, 

would take command of the Stalmgrad 

city defenses. While Eremenko's appointment ended the division of the 

city between two independent commands, it was, Eremenko has said , "an 

extremely heavy burden" to have to 

conduct operations through 2 deputies, 2 chiefs of staff, and 2 staffs. 7 

Eremenko took command on the 

10th, with Khrushchev as his political 

officer for both fronts. 8 On the 12th, a 

high-ranking trio, consisting of Malenkov, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, as 

8AOK 6, 1(1. Nr. 2948142, Al'11leebeJehi f uel' die Gewillmmg des Donbogem SII edweslfich Ilowlj'ISRa)'ft, J 1. 8. 42, 

AOK 6 301 55/42 hie. 

7Vasilevski y, De/o, p. 234; Moskalcnko, !Va. VugozlIJXldnolll IIl1prav/ellii, p. 292f; En!menko. POlll m VO)' lIy, 

p. l Si . 

8Eremenko, Paml1 ; vOY"Y, p. 187. See also IVOVSS, 

\'OJ. II , p. 432, which gives 13 August as the dale of 

Eremenko's appointment. 
FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA 

representative of the State Defense 

Committee; Vasilevskiy as Stavka representative; and General Ley tenant A. A. 

Novikov, commanding general, air 

force, as Stavka air representative, arrived in Stalingrad to assist and guide 

Eremenko." 

While Hoth, who in the meantime 

had moved his right flank up to 

Abganerovo Station on the railroad 

forty miles south of Stalingrad, waited, 

Paulus began the attack across the 

Kletskaya-Peskovatka line on the 15th. 

In two days, XIV and XXIV Panzer 

Corps cleared the entire loop of the 

Don, and VIII Corps took two small 

bridgeheads near Trekhostrovskaya. 

But complications had also begun to 

develop. The ground surrounding the 

bridgeheads proved to be marshy and 

not good for tanks, and Eremenko, on 

orders from the Stavka, was rushing 

First Cua,·ds Anny to the Don. 

Moskalenko had the first of his five divisions across the river on the 16th, and 

by the 18th, he had reestablished a 

twenty-mile-long bridgehead from 

Kremenskaya to Sirotinskaya. 10 

This turn in events gave Paulus the 

choice of accepting a prolonged contest 

for the Don, which was undoubtedly 

just what the Stavka wanted, or making 

the drive to Stalingrad with his deep 

left flank exposed. He took the latter, 

expecting that an imminent threat to 

Stalingrad would be enough to divert 

Eremenko's attention from the 

bridgehead. The decision gave Paulus 

one almost instant advantage: on the 

morning of the 21st, LI Corps attacking east across the Don toward VerII/VMV, vol. V, p. 168. 

10IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 432; l ... loska lenko, Na )rugo_ 

Ulpadnom noJ)Tavle'l!ii, pp. 294-96. 

385 

tyachiy took the Russians completely by 

surprise and in a few hours carved out 

a three-by-five-mile bridgehead. By 

daylight the next morning, the engineers had thrown up two twenty-ton 

bridges and XIV Panzer Corps' tanks 

were rolling across. I I 

For three days past, Fourth Panzer 

Army had been cutting its way slowly 

through the Stalingrad outer defense 

ring north of Abganerovo Station. In a 

letter to Colonel Heusinger, chief of 

operations, OKH, on the 19th, Hoth 

told why: 

Here on the border between steppe and 

desert the troops live and fight under unspeakably difficult conditions. In spite of 

shimmering heat that does not let up at 

night, in spite of indescribable dust and 

laCK of rest at night owing to vermin and 

air raids, in spite of the absence of any kind 

of shade or ground cover, in spite of scarcity of water and poor health , they are 

domg their best to carry out their assIgned 

missions. 12 

The Russians, of course, were no more 

comfortable. Eremenko says, "The 

days in Stalingrad were torrid and the 

nights were stifting."'3 

The Enemy Three Vents Away 

The plan for the last act at Stalingrad 

had been ready for more than a week. 

The main effort would fall to Sixth 

Army. It would strike east past Vertyachiy to the Volga north of StaJingrad 

and from there send a force south to 

take the city. Between the rivers, Paulus 

would send a secondary force southeast to meet Fourth Panzer Army and 

IIAOK 6, la Kriegstagebuch N,: IJ , 15-22 Aug 42, 

AOK 6 23948/1 1 file. 

uDer Obabefehlshaber del' 4. P aIlU1'01'11Iet>, all Genf>ral 

Heusitlger, 19.8.42, Pz. AOK 42818315 fi le. 

13Eremenko, fbmni OOylly, p. 185. 
386 MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

SIXTH ARMY'S TAN KS CROSSING THE DON AT VERTYACHIY 

to envelop the Soviet forces standing 

east of th e Don." Somewhat ambivalently, the Sixth Army final order 

added: 

The Russians will defend ule Stalingrad 

area stubbornly. 

In advancing across the Don to Stalingrad, the army will have to reckon with 

resistance at the front and heavy counterattacks on its north Rank. 

It is possible that the destructive blows of 

recent weeks have deprived the Russians 

of the strength for a decisive resistance. 15 

The XIV Panzer Corps pushed out 

of the Vertyachiy bridgehead on the 

'4AOK 6, la KliegJtagebuch N,: 13, 16 Aug 42, AOK 6 

2394811 file. 

~A OK 6, la Nr. 3044/42, ArmeebeJehlfuer den Angriff 

QujSla/ingrad, /9.8.42, AOK 6 30155/42 file. 

morning of 23 August behind a curtain 

of bombs laid down by VilI Air Corps. 

During the day, the planes dropped 

1,000 tons of bombs ahead of the panzer corps and on me northern quarter 

of Stalingrad. I n a bit more than twelve 

hours, the tanks covered thirty-six 

miles and took a handhold on the 

Volga north of the city.16 General 

Weichs, the commander of Army 

Group B, then ordered Paulus and 

HOtll to drive for a junction of their 

forces after which Sixth Army would 

take Stalingrad. 

Hath thereu pon gathered all the 

strengm he could and headed north, 

but Paulus had a long, exposed new 

front on his left flank to contend with. 

16Plochcr, Germall Air Force, p. 231. 
FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA 

The XIV Panzer Corps had stretched 

itself very thin on the dash to the 

Volga. On the 26th, a counterattack 

carried away three miles of its front between the rivers. In the afternoon, 

General der Panzertruppen Gustav 

von Wietersheim, the corps commander, radioed, "It is not possible 

with present forces to stay on the Volga 

and hold open communications to the 

rear .. .. will have to pull back tonight. 

Request decision." Paulus replied, "Do 

not retreat," and stopped everything 

else while he put LI and VI II Corps to 

work at stretching their lines east to 

close up with XIV Panzer Corps. Since 

Fourth Panzer Army had not yet managed to break away on its front, the 

whole attack appeared to be about to 

stall. 17 

The German's sudden appearance 

on the Volga was a deep shock to the 

Soviet leadership. On 23 August, the 

city authorities began evacuating from 

Stalingrad civilians who were not workers in war industries, and two days 

later, the Stavka declared a state of 

siege. During the night on the 23d, the 

Stavka sent Eremenko the following 

order: 

You have enough strength to 'annihilate 

the enemy. Combine the aviation of both 

fronts and use it to smash the enemy. Set up 

armored trains and station them on the 

Stalingrad belt railroad. Use smoke to deceive the enemy. Keep after the enemy not 

only in the daytime but also at night. 

Above all, do not give way to panic, do not 

let the enemy scare lOll, and Keep faith in 

your own strength.' 

l iP Z. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebut h Noliu ll Cluj. 23-26 

Au g 42 . Pz. AOK 4 28183/ 17 fil e: AOK 6, / a 

Kriegstagebllch Nr. 13. 23- 26 Aug 42. AOK 6 2394811 

file. 

lsVasilcvski y, Dd(), p. 236. 

387 

On the 26th , Stalin named General 

Zhukov, the commander of West Front, 

deputy supreme commander. The next 

day he recalled Zhukov from West Front, 

where he had been directing an operation that had been considered as impOl-tant as any on the south flank , and 

sent him to Stalingrad with instructions 

to assemble FiTSt Guards, Twenty-fow-th, 

and Sixty-sixth Armies for a counterattack from the north to break Sixth 

Army away from the Volga. 19 

Zhukov arrived on the scene on the 

29th, just in time to witness another 

blow. During the day, Fourth Panzer 

Army's XXXXVIII Panzer Corps 

reached the Karpovka River. The next 

morning it took a bridgehead at 

Gavrilovka, thirty miles southwest of 

Stalingrad. With that, Sixty-second and 

Sixty-fourth Armies were on the verge of 

being encircled and had to be withdrawn to the Stalingrad suburbs.'· 

In the afternoon on the 30th, at 

Sixth Army's command post, Weichs 

urged Paulus to strip his fronts east 

and west of the Don and put everything he cou ld into getting a junction 

with Hoth. Afterward, Paulus told XIV 

Panzer Corps and LI Corps to be ready 

to stri ke south on short notice regardless of their other troubles. When 

Fourth Panzer Army made a clean 

break away from the Karpovka on the 

31st, Weichs ordered Paulus and Hoth 

to seek a junction at Pitomnik due east 

of Stalingrad, smash the enemy west 

and south of there between them, and 

then turn east and drive into the center 

of the city along the Tsaritsa River. 

Events at the turn of the month 

appeared to substantiate a report at1!l/VlvlV, vol. v, p. 175; Zhukov, Mnrwirs. p. 377. 

2lJVasilcvski y. Delo , p. 239: IVOVSS, vol. II , p. 438. 
388 

GERMAN MACHI NE GUNN ER LOOKS A CROSS 

THE VOLGA NORTH OF STALI NGRAD 

tributed to General Richthofen, the 

commander of Fourth Air Force, that 

Stalingrad was virtually undefended. 

On the afternoon of 2 September, 

Fourth Panzer Army reported the territory ahead of it clear of enemy as far 

as Voroponovo Station six miles from 

the center of the city. Weichs thereupon told Hoth to turn east into Stalingrad without waiting for Sixth 

Army. On the 3d, VIII Air Corps, 

recently reinforced with practically all 

of IV Air Corps' planes from the Caucasus, staged a twenty-four-hour, 

round-the-clock raid on the city.21 In 

the early morning hours, Sixth Army 

and Fourth Panzer Army had made 

contact at Gonchary, seven miles north21 Creiller Diory Notes, 28 Aug 42, C-065q C~ 1 H fi le: 

Plocher, Germ(lll Air Force, p.234. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

west of Voroponovo. With that both 

armies were in position to head east, 

and at the Werwolf the word was, 

"There is no longer any enemy west of 

Stalingrad." Hitler issu ed orders to 

"eliminate the male inhabitants" and 

deport the women because the population, in his opinion , was strongly Communist and, hence, a danger22 During 

the day on the 4th, Paulus forwarded a 

plan to the OKH for going into winter 

quarters. It hardly seemed significant 

t11at Sixty-second and SixtyJourth Armies 

had avoided an encirclement and fallen 

back into the city. 

To the Soviet Command, as well, it 

looked like the end was in sight. On the 

3d, Stalin cabled to Zhukov: 

The situation at Stalin grad has worsened. 

The enemy is within three versts [a mile and 

a half] of Stalingrad. Stalingrad could be 

taken today or tomorrow if the northern 

group of forces does not render immediate 

support. Order the troop commanders to the 

north and northwest of Stalingrad to attack 

the enemy immediately ... 23 

But Zhukov was not ready and had to 

wait another day and a half to bring up 

ammunition for his artillery." 

Confmntation 

The City 

Stalingrad was nothing special, a regional admin istrative center in the 

steppe with some war industry, a populationjust under half a million, and a hard 

c1ilnate both in Slllnmer and winter. 

(Map 34.) Strung out over some twelve 

2'lGreillcr Dim) NOles, 2 Sep 42. C-065q Ci\1 H fi le. 

23/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 4 38. 

2 4Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 379. 
ARMY 

,. "",n,, .. Stalion 

PANZER ARMY 

------ ------

BekerovAa 

MAP 34 

o 

0/ 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

XIV Panzer Corps 

STALINGRAD 

FRONT 

STALINGRAD 

8 September - 6 October 1942 

Approximate front, 8 Sep 

0 00 000000 Approximate front, 13 Sep 

----- Approximate front, 26 Sep 

- - - Approximate front, 6 Oct 

o 5 Miles 

If----,---"' 

o ~ Kilometers 
390 MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

GENERAL PAULUS (right) WATCHES THE ATTACK ON STALI NGRAO. Behind H im, the 

Commander of LI Corps, Seydlitz. 

miles along the Volga and Ranked by 

suburbs extending several more miles 

to the north and south, it did not 

anywhere reach more than two-and-ahalf miles inland. Its most prominent 

physical feature was the 300-foot-high 

Mamai Hill (shown on maps as Height 

102), which was actually a kurgan, an 

ancient burial mound. The hill divided 

the city in two. On the south lay the old 

town, the prerevolutionary Tsaritsin. 

It, in turn , was bisected by the Tsaritsa 

River, to the south of which were railroad yards, light industry, grain elevators, and blocks of apartment 

buildings. North of the river were government buildings, clustered around 

the Red Square, the main railroad statio n, the waterworks and power plant, 

and more blocks of apartment buildings. The railroad ran north between 

Mama i Hill and an oil refinery and 

tank farm on the Volga. Ranged a long 

the river north of Mamai Hill we re the 

"Lazur" chemical plant, the Krasny Oktyabr metallurgical works, a bread bakery, the Barrikady gun factory, a brick 

works, a large tractor plant, and 

beyond it the suburbs of Spartakovka 

and R ynok. The plants and factories 

with their complexes of steel and masonry buildings were bordered on the 

west by workers' settlements made up 

mostly of small, tightly packed , unpainted, one-story, wooden houses, a 

type of structu re also to be fou nd in 

large numbers elsewhere in the city. 

Since, like other southern Russian 

rivers, the Volga's right bank is higher 

than the left, the Stalin grad river front 
FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA 

was a line of cliffs that was in places as 

much as a thousand feet high. 

Counterattacks 

During the day on 4 Septembe r, 

Sixth Army's Ll Corps took Gumrak 

Station, which put it in position to 

attack into Stalingrad between Mamal 

Hill and the Tsaritsa. Fourth Panzer 

Army was bearing in south of the 

Tsaritsa along the railroad east of 

Voroponovo and from the southwest 

by way of Peschanka. Paulus gave General Seydlitz, the Ll Corps commander, 

another infantry division and told him 

to attack into Stalingrad the next day." 

At dawn on the 5th, Zhukov was at a 

First Guards Anny observation post opposite the XIV Panzer Corps north 

front to watch the start of the counterattack. Moskalenko had made one 

start already on the 2d and then had 

stopped to wait for Twentyjourth and 

Sixty-sixth Armies to get into pOSItIon on 

his left and right. General Malll1ovsklY, 

who had taken over Sixty-sixth Army 

after his front was disbanded, had told 

Moskalenko on the night of the 4th 

that in the morning he would be starting the attack piecemeal because he sull 

had divisions on the march. The same 

was as much or more the case with 

General Kozlov, who commanded 

Twentyjourth Army.26 Consequently, the 

counterattack hinged mainly on First 

Shock Anny, which was the only one of 

the three that was fully deployed-and 

the only one to have seen previous 

action. First Siwek Army, however, was 

not experienced enough to carry the 

2~A()K 6, la KriegswgeblU:h !~h: 13, -1 Scp '12 .. AOK 6 

2394811 1 file: Pl.. AOK -I, 10 Kriegstageburh Notlun Chef. 

4 Sep 42. P, . AOK 4 28 183117 rol e. 

U~ oskalcnko .. Va )'lIg0':.<ljxulllOlII I/lIjJl'(lvll'llll, p. 

:12H. 

391 

other two along. The artillery and 

rocket barrages began at 0600, and 

Zhukov saw that the density of fire was 

low. The fire the infantry met as it 

moved out showed him "that we were 

not to expect any deep penetration of 

our assault units."" Sixty-sIXth Anny 

joined in at 0900 and Twentyjourth Anny 

at 1300. By then, Moskalenko's divisions were stopped and belllg hit by 

counterattacks.'" 

Nevertheless, Stalin told Zhukov to 

try again the next day. The counterattack he maintained , had already 

bougl1t some time for Stalingrad.29 Stalin was more right than he knew. At 

midday, Paulus had canceled the Ll 

Corps attack into Stalingrad and had 

diverted all of Sixth Army's air support 

to the north front. The XIV Panzer 

Corps cleaned up half-a-dozen breakins and had a tight front agal!l before 

dark but, in doing so, had lllcurr~d 

"perceptible losses in men and matenal 

. .. and a heavy expenditure of 

anlmunition."30 

The second day was no better for 

Zhukov but was somewhat worse for 

Xl V Panzer Corps, because ground 

fog prevented the planes from giving 

any help in the morning. I n the afternoon Wietersheim called Paulus and 

told him his front was "strained to the 

limit." He had to have more infantry, 

he said and constant air support, even 

if it m~ant putting off the attack into 

Stalingrad indefinitely, because that 

could only "be thought of' anyway 

after the north front was secure. Paulus 

UZh ukov. Mffl/()irs, p. 379. 

211 Moskalenko. Nfl YIIgo-wpadllQI/I uaprtlt'lellll, pp. 

:12M-:1I. 

uZhukov, M emoirs, p. 380. 

30AOK 6, la Kriegstllgl'buch Nr. 13, 5 Scp 42, AOK 6 

2394811 file. 
392 

FOURTH PANZER ARM Y'S I NFANT RY ON THE 

DEFENSIVE AT K U POROSNOYE 

replied that he knew Wietersheim's situation "clearly and exactly" but 

thought differently about how to handle it. "Stalingrad must fall," he said , 

"to free strength for the north front." 

The Xl V Panzer Corp's mission, 

Paulus concluded , was to hold out until 

thena , 

The LI Corps attacked at daylight on 

the 7th and in fourteen hours 

stretched its line east to Razgulyayevka 

Station, which put it five miles northeast of Mamai Hill. Seydlitz and his 

chief of staff went to the army command post the next morning with a 

proposal to drive into Stalingrad that 

day or the next, but Paulus now told 

them they could not. Paulus was not as 

sure about what to do next as he had 

31lbid" 6 Sep 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

been when he talked to Wietersheim 

two days before, and he said Ll Corps 

had to be kept loose for a while yet. Its 

next assignment, beginning on the 9th , 

would be to go northeast and to mop 

up behind XIV Panzer Corps to Orlovka. He added that for the time being 

Hoth would not be able to attack into 

the city either because he was having to 

turn south to take some of the strain 

off the infantry on his flank; so the 

advantage of a coordinated double 

thrust into the city would be lost 

anyway. 

After a day's pause, tlle Soviet pressure on XIV Panzer Corps' north front 

resumed on the 9th as Ll Corps began 

pushing northeast against an enemy 

who "tenaciously defended every single 

bunker." Late in the day, Seydlitz reported that the Soviet losses were high 

but "our own were not inconsequential. "32 Hoth's effort to free his flank 

had a notable success on tlle morning 

of the IOtll when the 29th Motorized 

Division got a battalion through to the 

Volga at the southern Stalingrad suburb of Kuporosnoye. The battalion lost 

tlle half mile adjacent to the river again 

during the night when it was overrun 

by furious charges from the north and 

south, and wild melees continued there 

for four more days."3 

The 10th was the darkest day yet for 

the defense. During the day, Fourth 

Panzer Army drove a wedge between 

Sixty-second and SixtyJollrth Armies isolating Sixty-second Army inside the city; 

and Stalin had to concur in Zhukov's 

assessment that on the north front, 

"further attacks with the same troops 

32 /hid., 7-9 Scp 42. 

33/. R. 71 (mot.), l a, CeJechlsbfricht des /I J./7 1 vom 

11.9.42,20.9.42, r,. AOK 4 28 183/5 rol e. 
FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA 

and the same dispositions would be 

useless.""' Moskalenko has pointed out 

that a tactical success had not been 

possible at any time because "me front 

command" underestimated the enemy's strength and because the enemy 

knew, after 5 September, that it only 

had to concentrate on one army, First 

Guards. 35 But the attacks had bought 

some tilne. 

On the other hand , time was running 

out, and the battle was at me point of 

being carried into the streets of Stalingrad. On the 10m, Hoth told General 

der Panzertruppen Werner Kempf, the 

commanding general, XXXXVII I Panzer Corps, to start into the south quarter 

me next day and to take it "piece by 

piece."36 In the morning on the 12th, 

Eremenko and Khrushchev briefed 

Chuikov, the newly appointed commanding general of Sixty-second Army. 

The previous commander, General 

Ley tenant A. 1. Lopatin, who had lost 

the greater part of the army in the Kalach bridgehead, "did not believe that 

his army could hold the city." Chuikov 

swore "to defend the city or die in the 

attempt."31 

Chuikov Against Paul-us 

I t was time also r or LI Corps to be 

heading east again; only the corps became stuck outside of Orlovka all-day 

on the 11th and was fighting off counterattacks until 2400. Paulus told 

Seydlitz the next morning to turn the 

line around Orlovka over to XIV Panzer Corps and to get ready to strike "to 

J4Zhukov, Menwirs. p. 381. 

3f>J'\'loskalenko, Na Yugo-ulpmll/.om lIapravlenii, p. 

329. 

36pz.. AOK 4, la Kriegslagebuch NOlhen Chef, 10 Sep 

42. P,. AOK 4 28 183/ 171i1e. 

3 1Chuiko\', Stalingrall, p. 76. 

393 

tile Volga" on the 13th. 38 Hoth was telling Weichs at the same time that tile 

attack was "going to take a while" because me fighting was "more rigorous 

man any the troops have yet experienced in this war." Weichs and Horn 

also talked about putting XXXXVIII 

Panzer Corps under Sixth Army in a 

day or two, which would give Paulus 

comp lete charge at Stalingrad and 

would let Horn start thinking about the 

terminal phase of Operation FISCHREIHER, the advance to Astrakhan 3 • 

On the morning of the 13th , 

Chuikov was in the Sixty-second Army 

command post, a dugout on Mamai 

Hill, when LI Corps' artillery opened 

up from behind Razgulyayevka. In tile 

wake of me barrage, me infantry came 

on from the nortlHvest, its left flank 

aimed at Mamai Hill, its right following 

tile Tatar Trench, another feature of 

ancient and indeterminate origin. By 

nightfall, the Germans were into a 

woods a mile west of the hill and at the 

terminus of the Tatar 1i-ench, where 

the built-up area of the city began. 

Chuikov moved his command post 

SOUtll during the night to a bunker 

close to the Tsaritsa River that had earlier been the Stalingmd Front headquarters. It was secure enough with forty 

feet of compacted earth overhead, but 

it put Chuikov right between LI Corps 

and XXXXVIII Panzer Corps that 

were aiming for a meeting on the 

river.40 

38AOK 6, /a Kril'gslagehuch Nr. 13 , II and 12 Sep 42. 

AOK 6 2394811 lile. 

aDp ]". AOK 4, la Fer1lSprech llotizen ZIlIll K.TB. Nr. 5, 12 

Sep 42, Pz. AOK 4 28183/ 19 file: Pl.. AOK 4, fa 

Krit"gsillgehuch Nolizen Chef 12 Sep 42. Pz. AOK 4 

2818317 file. 

4oAOK 6, la Kdegs/agdmcli N,: 13, 13 Sep 42, AOK 6 

2394811 file; Chuikov, Staiillgrad, pp. 86-88: Samsonov, Staliligradska),Q bilva, p. 190. 
394 

The 14th was another dark day for 

the defense. In the south quarter, 

XXXXVIII Panzer Corps reached the 

railroad station and forced a spearhead 

through to the Tsaritsa. North of the 

river, LI Corps rammed two divisions 

abreast into the center of the city, by 

1200 had the main railroad station, and 

at 1500 reached the Volga at the waterworks. By dark, the corps held almost a 

mile of river bank, and antitank guns 

set up there had sunk two ferries and a 

steamer.

41 

When the report on the day's events 

reached Stalin, he was conferring with 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy in the Kre.mlin 

on a maller that enormously enhanced 

the strategic value of holding any part 

of Stalingrad.42 He instructed Vasilevskiy to have Eremenko send in the best 

division in the Stalingrad area, the 13th 

Guards Order of Lenin Rifle Division 

under Hero of the Soviet Union, General Mayor A. I. Rodimtsev. Rodimtsev 

was at Chuikov's headquarters in the 

afternoon, and the 1O,000-man division crossed the river during the 

night. 43 

Seydlitz's LI Corps began to expelience 

on the 14th and 15th what XXXXV11I 

Corps already had for several days: 

street fighting in a city that was being 

contested block by block, building by 

building, even Aoor by Aoor. Nothing 

was conceded. Houses were fought over 

as if they were major fortresses. According to the History of the Great Patriotic War, 

th e main railroad station changed 

hands five times on the morning of the 

z.. AOK 4, fa Fernspreduwlizell W ill K.TB. Nr. 5, 14 

Sep 42. Pz. AOK 4 28183/ 19 file ; AOK 6 , /a 

Kriegstagebuch NT. 13, 14 Sep 42, AOK 6 2394811 file. 

41See p. 442. 

43Zhukov, Me11Wir;s, p. 384 ; Chuikov. Slalingrad, p. 

91; Samsonov.Stalingradsktl)'a bitva, p. 193 fr. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

14th and another thirteen times in the 

next several days. Who held what a t any 

particular time was almost impossible to 

tell. The LI Corps took Mamai Hill on 

the 15th. The next day, one of 

Rodimtsev's regiments stormed it, and 

some Soviet accounts maintain the regiment retook it and held it for at least 

another ten days" The Sixth Army records, on the other hand, indicate that 

repeated Soviet attempts failed to dislodge the Germans from the hill after 

the 15th. Rodimtsev, however, did succeed in breaking the German hold on 

the Volga east of the railroad station . 

Realizing that he did not have a secure 

grip on any part of the city, Paulus, who 

on the 14th had wanted Seydlitz to turn 

north next, on the 15th ordered him 

first to join forces with XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, which was being attached to 

Sixth Army, and to clean out the central 

and south quarters" 

On the 17th, LI Corps and XXXXVIll 

Panzer Corps made contact with each 

other on the Tsaritsa, less than a mile 

upstream from Chuikov's headquarters 

bunker. Chuikov and his staff moved 

north to the vicinity of the Krasny Oktyabr works during the night. His own 

situation was precarioLls, but during 

the day, he had received good news: 

Stal-inl5'·ad and South east Fronts were 

going over to the offensive , with the 

objective, no less, of pinching off the 

whole German Stalingrad force. First 

Gum·ds and 1iventyjourth Armies would 

strike from the north and Sixtyjourth 

Army from the south. First Guards Anny 

had been beefed lip to a strength of 

H/VOVSS , \'01. II. pp. 441-42: Chuiko\', Slalill[JYad, 

p.97. 

4f>AOK 6, l a Kriegstagebuch Nr. 13 , 14- 22 Sep 42, 

AOK 6 2394811 file. 
FROM T HE DON TO T HE VOLGA 

eight rifle divisions a nd three tank 

corps and had been shifted west, to the 

right of TwentyJourth Anny.46 

The offensive bega n in the north , on 

both sides of Kotluban on the 18th and 

continued at inte rva ls over the next 

four days, but it did not come nea r to 

making a breakthrough. Chuikov has 

sa id that th e one effect his army 

noticed was that the German planes 

disappeared from overhead for five or 

six ho urs at a time while the attacks 

were going on.47 Actually, although he 

may not have known it, Chuikov benefited more than that. The LI Corps advance in Stalingrad slowed almost to a 

stop on the 19th and 20th , and Paulus 

re ported on the 20th, "The infantry 

strengtll of the army has been so weakened by our own and the Russian a ttacks of recent days that a supplement 

is needed to activate it. "·18 

The "Main Effort" in Stalingrad 

T he "supplement: as Paulus saw it, 

could come from seven divisions he still 

had standing inside the Do n bend upstream to the mou th of the Khope r 

Ri ver. Although he had not been able 

to eliminate the Soviet bridgeheads at 

Kremcnskaya-Sirotinskaya o r at Se rafimovi ch and the Russians had in fact 

expanded them substantia ll y, he regarded the sector as being "in little 

danger," and he had divisions to substitute for those that would be taken 

away. T he Rumanian T hird Army, 

eleven divisions all lold , was coming in 

from Army Group A. I t was not being 

6ChuikO\ . Slallllgrad, p. 102; r>.loskalenko, No l'lIgv-

:l1/xulll om l/{/prm,lemi, p.336. 

l'Chuikov. Sialingrad. p. 11 3. 

'~AOK 6, fa Krirgsragrbllr/J Nr. IJ , 20 Scp 42, AOK 6 

239481 I file. 

395 

brought north because of its prowess 

on the battlefield ; in fact, the reason 

was just the o pposite: Army Group A, 

in spite of its chro ni c shortage in 

strengtll , had wanted to get rid of the 

Rumanians since ea rly August because 

they were unre lia bl e on the defense , 

and their offensive plans paid more a ttention to fall-back positions than to 

objectives to be a ttained'· 

Hitler had finally let Third Army be 

transferred, in ea rl y September, because he tllOught the fall of Stalingrad 

was imminent and he wanted to reward 

Rumanian Marshal Io n Antonescu, his 

all y strongest in divisions, by setting up 

a Rumanian army group under Antonescu. Hitle r's assumption had been 

that Rumanian Fourth Army, part of 

which alread y was with Fourtll Panzer 

Army, Ruma ni a n Third Army, a nd 

Sixth Army would make up the army 

group and it would take over what 

would by then have become a stationary front.'· Paulus' proposal of the 

20tl, would bring tl,e Rumanian Third 

Army into play ea rlie r and in a more 

critical rol e tl,an had been anticipated. 

Apparently, an alternative a lso 

crossed Paulus' mind , name ly, to go 

over to tl, e defensive in Stalingrad. He 

had rejected tha t idea earlier when 

Wietersheim proposed it; and on thc 

16th , after one or two more exchanges 

of a similar nature, Wietersheim had 

been "called away to ano ther assignment" and replaced at XIV Panze r 

Corps by Generalleutnant Hans Hube. 

He rejected it again on the 20th because "world-wide interest in the 'wall' 

4YOKH, GnlStdH, 01'. Abl. (I) Nr. 420618142. /8.8.42. 

l-! 22/216 file. 

~O()KH , CellSrlLlI, OIl, Alli. (I) ,vI". -1206621-12, /jell ' 

"SlllbDtm," 3.9.42, 1-1 22/216 hIe. 
396 

of Stalingrad makes it essential that the 

army's main effort now be at Stalingrad. " As a "supplement," Weichs let 

Paulus have the 100th Jaeger Division 

right away and agreed to consider releasing two more.divisions." 

On the 22d, LI Corps pushed two 

spearheads through to the Volga east 

of the railroad station but had to withdraw them again after dark. During 

the night Soviet p.\anes bombed Stalingrad, and heavy artiUery fire from 

across the river kept activity down on 

the 23d while SUdingrad Front's armies 

battered at the north front once more. 

The defense in the city's center, 

though , was breaking up on the 24th. 

The 71st Infantry Division took "half of 

what has been in enemy hands north of 

the Tsaritsa until now," and XXXXVIII 

Panzer Corps reached the Volga at the 

mouth of the Tsaritsa. In another day, 

7lst 1 nfantry Division had taken the 

party and government buildings and 

pushed through to the mouth of the 

Tsaritsa on the north bank. 

Paulus declared the center of the city 

secured on the afternoon on the 26th , 

after the docks, the last government 

buildings, and the big bunker in which 

Chuikov's headquarters had been were 

taken. "Since noon," he reported, "the 

German war Aag has been Aying over 

the party buildings." The resistance 

was actually far from over on either 

side of the Tsaritsa, but he had issued 

orders three days before to start the 

drive north on the 27th. In the meantime he had acquired one more division from the front on the Don." 

In troop strength, Sixty-second Army 

f> 'AOK 6.la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 13 , 20 and 21 Scp 42. 

AOK 623948 11 hie. 

s2Ibid .. 22- 26 Sep 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

was now more than keeping up. Within 

the next four or five days, it would have 

received , since mid-September, reinforcements amounting to 9 riAe divisions, 2 tank brigades, and I rifle brigade. And the front commands were 

being reorganized and tightened. General Rokossovskiy, who had proved 

himself during the summer at Bryansk 

Front, was being brought in to take over 

Stalingrad Front, which on 28 Septem bel' was rena med Don Front. 

Eremenko relinquished his double 

command but kept Southeast Fmnt, 

whi ch, renamed, became Stalingrad 

Front. 53 

Sixdl Army showed it was becoming 

accustomed to thinking in new orders 

of magnitude when it recorded the first 

day's accomplishments in the attack to 

the north. The objectives taken were 

"Height 107.5, the blocks of houses 

northwest of th e re , and th e gully 

northwest of Krasny Oktyabr [the 

worker's setdement]. " On the 28th, LI 

Corps took "about half' of the Barrikady setdement, "two-thirds" of a block 

of houses around the "Meat Combine" 

at the foot of Mamai Hill , and the 

"western part" of the Krasny Oktyabr 

works. The next day, while taking the 

blocks of houses west of the bread bakery that was situated be tween the 

Krasny Oktyabr and Barrikady plants, 

the corps lost the houses it had taken 

around the "Meat Combine" and lost 

and retook part of the Barrikady settlement. The 30th brought no change at 

LI Corps, but Xl V Panzer Corps broke 

into Orlovka from the north." 

~3IVOVSS, vol. II, pp. 242- 44 ; IVMV, vol. V, p. 187. 

~AOK 6, fa KriegstageblU:h Nr. 13 . 27 - 30 Sep 42. 

AOK 6 2394811 hie. 
FROM THE DON TO THE VOLGA 

Deadlock 

On 1 October, "in seesawing battle," 

Sixth Army held what it had so far 

taken and counted itself lucky to have 

done so. A day later, the war diary records, "The chief of staff informed the 

army group that in spite of the most 

intensive efforts by all forces, the low 

combat strengths of the infantry 

will prolong the taking of Stalingrad 

indefinitely if reinforcements cannot 

be supplied." Paulus told Weichs on the 

3d, "At present even the breaking out 

of individual blocks of houses can only 

be accomplished after lengthy regroupings to bring together the few 

combat-worthy assault elements that 

can still be found." The next afternoon, 

following a visit to the front, the chief 

of staff reported , " ... without reinforcements, the army is not going to 

397 

take Stalingrad very soon. The danger 

exists that were the Russians to make 

fairly strong counterattacks our front 

might not hold, because there are no 

reserves behind it."55 

Sixth Army's war diary entry for 6 

October reads, "The army's attack into 

Stalingrad had to be temporarily suspended [today) because of the exceptionally low infantry combat strengths." 

In the divisions, the diary continues, 

average battalion strengths were down 

to 3 officers, 11 noncommissioned offi cers, and 62 men. The army could 

scrape together enough replacements 

from the supply service to make small 

advances, but, "The occupation of the 

entire city is not to be accomplished in 

such a fashion." '· 

4S/bid" 1- 4 Oct 42. 

s6/bid" 6 Ocl 42. 
CHAPTER XX 

Summer on the Static Fronts 

On the Moscow Axis 

Believing that the enemy would , 

sooner or later, seek the decision there, 

the Soviet leadership did not in any 

wise regard the central sector as secondary in the summer of 1942. General 

Zhukov, who had been the chief troubleshooter the summer before, stayed 

in command of West Fmnt. The fmnts 

opposite Army Group Center-Kalinin, I*st, and the two right wing armies of Bryansk Hont-had, all told, 

140 divisions to the Germans' 70.' The 

Stavka held 4 field armies and the Third 

and Fifth Tank Armies as reserves in the 

Moscow area. 2 

The strategy of the active defense 

remained in effect on the Moscow axis. 

On 16 July, four days after the offensive north of Orel against Second Panzer Arm y was stopped , the Stavka 

instructed Zhukov and General Konev, 

Lhe commander of Kalinin Fmnt, to 

prepare an offensive in the Rzhev-Sychevka area. The objecLives were LO be 

to drive the enemy back to the Volga 

l/VMV (vol. v, p. 242) states thal the German 

divisions, however. were Malmost Iwice M the strength of 

SO\'icl divisions. Army Group Center's seventy divisions included IWO Hungarian divisions (used for fcar 

area security) and five German security divisions. See 

OK\\~ KTB, \'0 1. II. p. 1374. 

2/VMV, vol. V. p. 243. The headquarters and stafr of 

Fijth 1iwk Army reverted \0 the reserve in late Jul y, and 

the arm)' was rebuih with resulLS thal will be observed 

lat cr. See Ro kosso\'ski)'. Soldier's Dilly, p. 122. 

and Vazuza rivers and take Rzhev and 

Zubtsov. 3 

When Operation SEYDLlTZ ended, in 

the second week of July, Army Group 

CenLer, for its part, was ready to settle 

into a supernumerary role for the s~mmer. HANNOVER and SEYDLlTZ, by eliminating the most critical danger~ to the 

army group's rear, had made It once 

more an almost credible threat to 

Moscow and, consequently, a bit more 

tllan a bystander in the war; but active 

campaigning would be out of the question at least until a partial rebuilding 

was accomplished in August. The armies had three operations in the paper 

stage of planning: DERFFLINGER, ORKAN 

("torna d o"), and WIRBELWIND 

("whirlwind")' 

DERFFLINGER, descended from the 

old BRuEcKENSCHLAG, was LO be a Ninth 

Army drive from the front north of 

Rzhev to Ostashkov. ORKAN and WIR· 

BELWIND, as their code names suggesL, 

were related. Both were to be conducted by Fourth and Second Panzer 

Armies againsL the Sukhinichi salient. 

In ORKAN , the LWO arm ies, striking 

from the north and Lhe soulh, would 

eliminate the whole salient and carry 

the front out to Belev, Kaluga, and 

Yukhnov. WIRBELWIND, a considerably 

less ambitious alLernative LO ORKAN, 

J/VMV, vol. V, p. 244. 

~Georg von Dc rfflinger was a Pl"Ussian field marshal of the seventeenth century. 
4th 

Shock 

-' 

I 

/ 

/ 

/ 

22d 

~-----

41st 

/' 

, 

, 

'-

/ 

'-

/ 

I 

I 

I 

I 

/ 

\ 

\ 

I 

/ 

1/ "8elyy 

NINTH 

ARMY 

SOVIET ATIACKS 

RZHEV AND VORYA RIVER AREAS 

30 July - 23 September 1942 

----- Approximate front , 30 Jul 

000000000 Approximate front, 23 Sap 

( Soviet attacks 

o ~M~ 

1-1 ------,' -------'I 

o 50 Kilometers 

MAP 35 

30th ,_ 

/ 

29th 

THIRD 

PANZER / 

/ , 

I 

\ 

, 

\ 

ARMY ', 

/' 

I 

---_/ 

I 

/ 

J , 

WEST 

FRONT 

20th I.) 

5th 

33d 

~ 

Yukhno'o' \ 

\ 
400 

would only pinch off the western third 

of the salient and establish a line some 

miles east of Sukhinichi. Although 

ORKAN could have been substantially 

more effective than WIRBELWIND (by 

reopening the southwestern approaches to Moscow via Yukhnov and 

Kaluga), as of mid-July, barring a sudden Soviet collapse, there was almost 

no chance of its being attempted. Army 

Group Center was not likely to have 

enough troops or material to try anything that big. Whether DERFFLI NGER 

could be executed was also doubtful. 

The buildup for it would have to come 

out of the forces used for WIRBELWIND, 

which had priority; therefore, DERFFLINGER could not start until September, which, at best, would put it 

uncomfortably late in the season. 5 

Rzhev-Sychevka 

Konev was ready to start on 30 July. 

He had Thirtieth and Twenty-ninth Armies 

positioned north and northeast of 

Rzhev. Zhukov, who would carry the 

main effort and would coordinate the 

operations of both fronts after the offensive started, needed five more days. 

He had Th-iTtyfirst and Twentieth ATmies 

in the line and 2 tank corps, 2 guards 

cavalry corps, and 5 cavalry divisions 

standing behind them. Each of the armies also had a mobile grou p of 3 tank 

brigades. ThirtyfiTSt Army was to sweep 

south of the Volga toward Zubtsov, 

where it would be able to threaten 

Rzhev from the southeast. Twentieth 

Army would bear southwest toward the 

5AOK 9, fa Kriegswgebuch Nr. 6, 1- 20JuI42 , AOK 9 

3 1624/1 file; AOK 4, fa Kriegstagebuch Nr. 13, 1-3 1 JuJ 

42, AOK 4 2433611 file; Pz. AOK 2, fa Kriegsragebuch 

Nr. 2, nil/v, 1-3 1 Ju142, Pz. AOK 2 28499/4 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Vazuza River and Sychevka 6 (Mat) 35.) 

Ninth Army became aware of the 

buildups in the last week of the month. 

It identified several new divisions with 

Thirtieth Army and several more with 

Thi-rtyfirst Army. However, since West 

Front had already conducted several 

similar, seemingly vague, regroupments elsewhere, Ninth Army more 

than half suspected a deception, a Soviet counterpart to Operation KREM L.7 

At 0600 on 30 July, in pouring rain, 

after an hour-long artillery barrage accompanied by air strikes, Thirtieth Army 

hit Ninth Army's front on the Volga 

River bridgehead due north of Rzhev. 

By nightfall, it had broken open four 

miles of the line and had overrun artillery positions two miles in the rear. For 

the next four days, the Germans held 

tight to the cornerposts, the flanks of 

the breakthrough, and thereby prevented the attack from going deeper 

while they braced themselves also for 

the attack from the east, past Zubtsov 

toward Rzhev, that was now certain to 

come. The distances were short, on the 

north less than ten mil es and on the 

east twenty-five miles, and the stakes 

were disproportionately high. If Rzhev 

fell, Army Group Center would lose 

the anchor of its north flank , every 

chance of closing the gap to Army 

Group North, and most, if not all, of its 

status as a threat to Moscow. 

I n the morning on 4 August, Thirtyfint Army surged into and over the 16Ist 

Infantry Division on an eight-mile 

stretch east of Zubtsov. The breakthrough was complete almost at once. 

6/VMV, vol. V, p. 245. 

70KH , GenSldH, Frellu/e H('ere Oslo Kuru BeurleilulIgel/ der Ff'ilUllage, 23- 29 Jul 42, H 23/198 file ; 

AOK 9, la Kl'iegs/agebuch Nr. 6, 29 Jul 42, AOK 9 

31624/1 role. 
• Vyazma 

r 

\ 

ARMiY 

FOURTH ARMY 

11 - 24 August 1942 

--- Approximate front, 11 Aug 

00""0000 Approximate front, 24 Aug 

<E---- Axis of WIRBELWIND 

<:==== Projected axis, WIRBELWIND 

0 --0 Projected advance, WIABELWIND 

----- Projected advance, OAKAN 

o 25 Miles 

I f------,----------" 

o 2'5 Kilometers 

MAP 36 

o 

o 

o 

o 

000 

) 

( 

/J 

I' ' 

j I 

( .. 

, 

, 

\ 

Yukhflov 

33d 

WEST 

FRONT 

SECOND PANZER 

ARMY 
402 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

MACHiNE-GUN NEST NORTH Of RzJ-lEV 

By dark, the only trace of the former 

front was occasional white flares that 

were sent up, here and there, over 

some bypassed strongpoint. During the 

day, Ninth Army had received two 

more shocks: the attack through the 

breech on the east was not only going 

toward Zubtsov but southwest toward 

Sychevka as well, and Fourth Siwek Army 

appeared to be bestirring itself west of 

Belyy.· 

It thereupon became clear to General 

Vietinghoff, the acting Ninth Army 

commander; to Field Marshal Kluge , 

the commander of Army Group Center, 

who returned from leave in Germany in 

the early afternoon on the 4th; and to 

8AOK 9, l a Kriegstagehllch Nr. 6, 30 Jul- 4 Aug 42, 

AOK 9 3 1624/1 file; IVMV, vol. V, p. 245. 

Hitler that Ninth Army, which had no 

reserves of its own , could not hold 

Rzhev or the 175-mile northward loop 

of its front without early and substantial 

help. There was help to be had , and 

Hitler was more than usually quick to 

give it. It meant dismantling Fourth 

Army's force for WIRBELWI ND, but 

Hitler did notat that point want to allow 

the Soviet Union a prestige victory at 

Rzhev. So, he released the 1st, 2d, and 

5th Panzer Divisions and the 78th and 

102d Infantry Divisions and instructed 

Kluge to see that the panzer divisions 

were only used in a concentrated counterattack from the south across the 

mouth of the West Front's breakthrough" 

'JAOK 9, /a Kriegstagebllch Nr. 6, 4 Aug 42. AOK 9 

3 16241 1 fil e. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

The front held north of Rzhev and at 

Zubtsov on the 5th and 6th, but it disintegrated on the southwest, leaving a 

broad road open to Sychevka. To take 

advantage of the latter development in 

particul ar, Zhukov revised his plan. On 

the 6th, he secured the Stav/ill's permission to stop Twenty-ninth A rmy, which 

had made no progress anyway, and to 

leave Rzhev to the Thirtieth and Thirtyfirst Armies. At the same time, he shifted 

the weight of the operation south, putting his spare armor and cavalr y, VI 

and VIII Tank Corps and II and VIII 

Guards Cavalry C01PS, in Witll Twentieth 

Army. Sychevka, which had originally 

not been one of them, now became the 

first of the objectives as Twentieth Army's 

mobile group, VI and VIII Tank Corps, 

and IT Guards Cavahy Corps headed toward it. 10 

For Kluge and Vietinghoff, there was 

not time to assemble the panzer divisions for a counterattack. They had to 

be put in frontally along tlle Vazuza 

a nd Gzhat rive rs, ten miles west of 

Sychevka. Talking to Hitler's adjutant, 

General Schmundt, on the night of the 

6th, Vietinghoff said he might be able 

to counterattack if he could ge t o ne 

fully equipped panzer division (besides 

those coming, which were a ll und erstrength), but the actual chance of his 

doin g that was slight, and it disappeared entirely the next morning when 

VTTI Guards Cavalry Corps struck south 

off the Twentieth Army flank .

11 The reinforcements were having to be thrown 

into the expanding battle as fast as they 

arrived, and they were being set upon 

just as fast by waves of Soviet infantry, 

tanks. and cavalry. 

lO/VMV, vol. v, pp. 245- 47. 

llAOK 9, fa Kriegstagebuch Nr. 6, 6 Aug 42, AOK 9 

3 1624/ 1 fi le; IVMV, vol. V. Ill<tp 15. 

403 

On the 7th, Ninth Army was on the 

defensive ever ywhere and on the verge 

of being overwhelmed. Once more, 

help was to be had. Three or four panzer divisions and a couple of infantry 

divisions could have been ex tracted 

from Second Panzer Army's force for 

WIRBELWIND. During the day, Kluge 

went to tile Vlblfsschanze to get a decision-and got one that was completely 

different from what he had wanted or 

expected. As Hitler saw it, the offensive 

on the SOUtll flank had reached its terminal stage, and Soviet diversionary atta cks could be expec ted ever ywhere. 

These, such as the one against Ninth 

Army, he said, would have to be dealt 

with the way til e Soviet winter offensive 

had been, by holding fast in spite of 

occasional breakthroug hs. The correct 

way to proceed , he insisted , was to get 

WIRBELWI ND go in g " immediately." 

After it was completed, tile panzer divisions could be used to clean up at 

Nintll Army, and then Ninth Army 

could go on and finish off the summer 

with DERFFLI NGER. 12 When Kluge returned to Smolensk, he brought Gene r a l Model, who had been recalled 

from convalescent leave, with him to 

resume tlle Ninth Army command. 

Wirhelwind 

Since the starting date set in July for 

WIRBELWIND had been 7 August, Second Panzer Army was ready to begin 

almost "immediately." (Map 36.) Fourth 

Panzer Army's ci rcumstances, on the 

othe r hand , had changed completely in 

the mea ntim e, and its cO lnmander, 

General He inrici, told Kluge he could 

12Der O.B. rler H . Gr. Mille, la N,: 6200142, De,. 

Fuehrer hal sich I' II/schl()sSl'll, 8.8.42, Pz. AOK 2 

28499/42 fi le. 
404 

not do an operation that had been calculated to take seven or eight divisions 

with only two, which were all he had 

left. Hitler's order, however, included 

Fourth Army, and Kluge, therefore, insisted on at least a token th rust ten 

miles past its front to Mosalsk13 Nevertheless, that converted WIRBELWIND 

into a one-armed envelopment and 

lengthened the distance Second Panzer 

Army would have to cover from about 

forty to sixty-five miles. General 

Schmidt, Second Panzer Army's commander, proposed to do it in two phases 

with four panzer and three infantry divisions. In the first , the panzer divisions, starting in pairs from the east 

and west sides of a twenty-mile-wide 

dip in the front around Ulyanovo, 

would traverse fifteen miles of heavily 

wooded territory south of the Zhizdra 

River, converging on the river fifteen 

miles south-southeast of Sukhinichi. In 

the second, over open ground north of 

the river, they would sweep north fifty 

miles to Mosalsk, passing Sukhinichi on 

the way." 

Delayed two days by rain,WIRBELWI ND began on 11 August, in more 

rain." Coming from the east, 11th Panzer Division covered eight miles, about 

half the distance to tlle Zhizdra, before 

it was stopped just short of Ulyanovo. 

The two panzer divisions on the west 

gained about one mile. The day 

brought two surprises: the Russians 

13AOK 4, la Kriegslllgebuch Ny. /3, 8 Aug 42, AOK 4 

243361 1 role. 

u p ]. . AOK 2, [a. Nr. 85/42, BefeM filer die Operatum 

"Wirhelwilld" 10.8.42, Pz. AOK 2 28499/49 file. 

I Rain affected all operations in the central seClor 

during the summer. The pattern was one of localized 

sudden downpoul's and cloudbursts that rolled haphazardly over the landscape leaving flooded roads 

and mud behind them. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

had built fortifications at least all the 

way back to the river, and they were 

reacting with startling speed. In the 

late afternoon, pilots flying support 

missions reported columns of trucks 

and tanks on all the roads leading in 

from the north and east. The tank 

corps that had been used in the Ore! 

offensive in July, and which Second 

Panzer Army had thought were long 

ago transferred out, had been refitting 

east of Be!ev and nortll of the Zhizdra 

and were being thrown into the battle. 

In the trench lines laced through the 

forest, the infantry, observing Stalin's 

"no step back" order, frequently fought 

to the last man. One panzer division 

managed to claw its way to the Zhizdra 

in another two days and to get a small 

bridgehead on the 14th.'6 

Hitler could possibly have expected 

WIRBELWIND to arouse enough concern 

over Moscow to draw Soviet attention 

away from the rest of the Army Group 

Center front. That did not happen. 

Zhukov, who had all of his original 

force for the Rzhev-Sychevka operation committed by tlle 9th, a lso put the 

right flank of Fifth Army, Twentieth 

Anny's neighbor on the SOUtll, in motion east of Karmanovo. In four more 

days, Thirtieth Anny's tanks were ranging into the municipal forest three 

miles northeast of Rzhev. On the 13th, 

in a surprise attack, Thi,.ty-third Army 

broke through Third Panzer Army's 

right Rank on the Vorya River. After 

that, all of Kluge'S armies exce pt 

Fourth Army were embroiled in desperate battles, and Fourth Army was in 

16PZ. AOK 2, la Nr. 92142, Beurteilung der Lage am 

22.8.42, P,. AOK 2 28499/48 file ; h AOK 2. fa 

Kriegstagebuch Nr. 2, Ted/V, 11 - 14 Aug 42, Pz. AOK 

28499/4 file. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

some respects worse off than the others. Ithad to give an infantry division 

to Thll'd Panzer Army on the 13th, 

after havmg sent a reinforced regiment 

to Ninth Army two days before. What 

was left of Fourth Army's force for 

WIRBELWIND had evaporated, and its 

diVISIOns were holding from ten to fifteen miles of front apiece, hardly more 

than a picket line. The single bright 

spot 10 Army Group Center's picture 

was on Ninth Army's west front, where 

Fourth Siwek Army had so far not managed to pull itself together enough to 

do anythmg consequential. 17 

Kluge spent the day on the 14th at 

Second Pa~1Zer Army, giving pep talks 

to the diVISion commanders and privately concluding that the prospects 

for WIRBELWIND were too small to be 

worth the risks of losi ng Rzhev or hav109 the enemy "chew in" deep into 

Third Panzer Army. Later he told General Halder, chief of the General Staff 

the army group had no more reserves: 

and WIRBELWIND would have to be canceled to get some forces for Ninth and 

Third Panzer Armies. Halder, who, no 

doubt, knew what Hitler's reaction 

would be, "resisted" the thought of 

stoppmg WIRBELWI ND but, at the late 

situation conference, persuaded Hitler 

to give Kluge another two divisions, 

72d Infantry Division and the Grossdeutschland Division. The 72d Infantry Division , which had been scheduled 

to go to the Leningrad area with Eleventh Army, was just coming out of the 

Cnmea. Grossdeutschland was at Rostov awaiting shipment to the West. Nei17/VMY, vol. V, p. 247; AOK 9, fa Kriegstagebuch Nr. 

6, 13- 14 Aug 42. AOK 9 3162411 file' AOK 4 la 

Kriegstagfhuch Nr. 13, 13-14 Aug 42, AOK 4 24'336 

file. 

405 

ther one could get to Smolensk in less 

than a week, and because of the railroads, both could not be tllere before 

the first week in September. IS Kluge 

once more had reserves, but they were 

700 miles away. 

Crisis and Recovery 

Two days later, Model presented 

Kluge with what amounted to an ultimatum. He told Kluge that Ninth 

Army was just about finished and had 

to have three more divisions. If those 

could not be given, he said, the army 

group would have to take responsibility 

for what happened next and ·provide 

detailed instructions as to how the battle is to be continued:"I. Although neither could have Imagmed It at the time, 

Kl~ge and Model. were at the psycholOgIcal turnmg pomt for the summer's 

o])erations. Kluge needed to persuade 

Nmtll Army to stay on its feet, and the 

army needed to believe it could. Kluge 

did. that by offering tile 72d Infantry 

Dlv.lslOn and the "prospect" of another 

diVISion, which Model assumed to be 

the Grossdeutschland Division. The 

Ninth Army war diary registered "new 

hope for the coming difficult days and 

weeks. "20 That hope would have to go a 

long way. The first trainload of 72d 

Infantry Division troops and equipment was due in Smolensk on til e 17th 

but it took upwards of thirty u"ains l~ move a division. Hitler, not Kluge, controlled the Grossdeutschland Division 

and Hitler wanted it to be used i~ WIRBELWIND. 21 

18~rciner,Oberste Wehnnachifueltnmg, p. 401; AOK 4, 

fa Knegstagebuch Nr. 14, 14 Aug 42. AOK 4 26937 file. 

lllAOK 9, III Kriegslagebuch Nr. 6, 16 Aug 42. AOK 9 

31624/1 file. 

!Olbid., 16 Aug 42. 

21Greiner.Obersll! \1'th nrUlchtJllehrllng, p.403. 
406 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

QUADRUl'lE ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNS G UA RD A BRIDGE ON THE ZIIIZDRA RI VER 

By the third week of the month , 

Army Group Center was thoroughly 

ensnared in three World War I-style 

battles of materiel. Ninth Army had 

suffered over 20,000 casualties as of 17 

Augusl. 11lird Panzer Army was fighting in trenches on the Vorya Ri ver. At 

the bridgehead on the Zhizdra, Second 

Panzer Army's tanks were boxed in by 

minefi elds. Ninth Army's cornerposts 

were being shaved away east of Rzhev 

and around Karmanovo. On the 22d, 

Hitler finally gave up on WIRllELWIND. 

He wanted then to ta ke out two panzer 

divisions a nd , with those plus th e 

Grossdeutschland Division, try a new, 

sma ll er WIRBELII'IND north east of 

Kirov, but before he could get the 

divisions o ut, Second Panzer Army was 

hi t by furious counterattacks that 

forced it to evacuate th e Zhizdra 

bl'idgehead on the 24th.22 

According to the Soviet reckoning, 

the summer offensive against Army 

Group Center was "practicall y completed" by 23 August.23 In terms of 

tactical accomplishment, it probably 

was over, particularly after Zhukov's 

departure, three days later, removed its 

chie f architecl. Between 24 and 30 August, Third Panzer Army eliminated a 

breakth rough across the Vo rya, and 

thereafte r its front held. By the end of 

the mo nth , Second Pa nzer Army's 

front south of the Zhizdra was solid 

enough tha t Hitle r could begin to 

2:!p Z. AOK 2, / 11 Kril'gstageulIrh Nr. 2, Tell 1\ ', 22-24 

Aug 42, Ill.. AOK 28499/4 fi le. 

2~ VMV, \'01. V. p. 248. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

think about taking a panzer division 

out there. Kalinin and West Fronts were 

as close to Rzhev and Sychevka as they 

were going to get. 

As a test of endurance, however, the 

offensive, particularly its main component, the Rzhev-Sychevka operation, 

was by no means ended. On I September, Kluge went once again to the 

Fuehrer Headquarters, this time to report what Model had told him the day 

before: Ninth Army was at the point of 

having its whole front collapse. Its casualties were up to 42,000 and rising at 

a rate close to 2,000 a day. Hitler refused to consider shortening the front, 

since doing so would involve losing 

Rzhev. He also refused to release the 

Grossdeutschland Division, which was 

assembling at Sychevka. Grossdeutschland, he said, was "a guards division" 

and as such should be used only for 

short periods in acute crises 2 ' He 

would, he added , bring the 95th Infantry Division north from the Voronezh 

area in about two weeks and take 9tl1 

Panzer Division out at Second Panzer 

Army, but in the meantime, Ninth 

Army would have to get along as it was. 

"Someone," he concluded, "must collapse. It will not be us!"" 

For a brief period, the enemy did 

seem to be weakening. Ninth Army 

registered three quiet days on 6,7, and 

8 September, the first such since 30 

Jul y. But the 9th was different. Thirtieth 

Army hit the Volga River bridgehead 

around Rzhev, and Thi,·tyfirst Army 

broke open six miles of front west of 

Zubtsov. Thirtyfi1"St Army, in particular, 

came on with such intensity that Model 

24Gtmerall-lalder's Daily Notes, \'01. II, I Sep 42. EAP 

21-g- I6I4IO file. 

uAOK 9, la Kritgstagtbllch Nr. 6, I Sep 42, AOK 9 

31624/1 file. 

407 

suspected Zhukov was back in command. After much back and forth telephoning, Hitler, in the afternoon, 

allowed the Grossdeutschland Division 

to be deployed between Rzhev and 

Zubtsov. Finally, in the evening, he 

turned the division over to Model's 

command with strict instructions that it 

was only to be used offensively in a 

counterattack. 

Thirtyfirst Anny opened the next day 

at 0400 with an artillery barrage that, 

in fact , continued all day. Grossdeutschland began its counterattack an 

hour and a half later and ran head-on 

into Soviet infantry with sU'ong air support coming the other way. Ninth 

Army from then on heard about nothing but successive calamities-a regimental commander wounded , the tank 

battalion commander wounded, tanks 

lost right and left. The division , 

brought up on the hit-and-run tactics 

of the blitzkrieg, appeared to be about 

to wreck itself trying to negotiate a few 

miles of woods and swamp. 1\ventyfour hours later, the division's affairs 

were in such confusion that Model put 

it temporarily under the commander 

of the neighboring 72d Infantry Division to find out, if possible, at least 

what had happened. Some hours later 

he knew: all but five of the division's 

forty tanks were out of commission; 

the troops were suffering more from 

confusion than from losses; and the 

counterattack was beyond salvation. 

At the Fuehrer Headquarters on the 

13th, Model persuaded Hitler to let 

him have the 95th Infantry and 9th 

Panzer Divisions for another try when 

they became available. It looked as if, in 

the meantime, tl1e outcome at Rzhev 

would hang indefinitely, as Kluge put 

it, on a "knife edge," but the 15th was 
408 

an astonishing and for Ninth Army a 

"beautiful" day. In the morning, Thirtyfirst Army pulled itself together to hit 

72d Infantry Division with a tremendous rush of tanks and infantry. In the 

afternoon, one regiment, the 430th 

Infantry Regiment, stopped the Soviet 

main force, the IV Tank Corps; knocked 

out three dozen of its tanks; and reclosed the line. During three days of 

rain that followed, Thirtyjirst, Thirtieth, 

and again Fourth Shock Armies seemed to 

be getting poised for another 

onslaught, but when the rain stopped, 

only the Thi-rtyjirst went back on the 

attack, but not wholeheartedly. The 

artillery and air support subsided on 

the 22d, and two days later the infantry 

began breaking contact. Army Group 

Center had held its own through the 

summer-barely.'" 

Leningrad and Demyansk 

Both sides' half-successes and nearfailures of the past were tangibly evident on the fronts around the Oranienbaum pocket and Leningrad. As of 

July 1942, they had been stationary for 

almost ten months. The city was solidly 

in Soviet hands, and the landward approaches to it were equally under tight 

German control after the Volkhov 

pocket collapsed . The worst ofthe siege 

was over. Once navigation had resumed on Lake Ladoga in late May, 

boats and barges had been able to carry 

larger cargoes than could have been 

hauled across the ice in the winter. In 

June they had begun to evacuate 

women, children, old people, and some 

men with special skills on the return 

trips bringing out about a hundred 

26/bid. , 6-24 Sep 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

thousand during the month . (Over two 

hundred thousand were evacuated in 

July and another hundred thousand in 

August leaving an almost exclusively 

male population of between seven and 

eight hundred thousand.)27 

In June, a pipeline, laid in the lake, 

had gone into operation. It, henceforth, provided the troops in Leningrad and the Oranienbaum pocket 

with a secure motor fuel supply. Boats 

and barges would be able to bring in 

over a million tons of goods and military supplies and 290,000 military personnel during the summer. In late May, 

Leningrad Fmnt had submitted a plan to 

lift the siege by breaking through the 

bottleneck east of tlle N eva River. The 

Stavka had approved the plan "in principle" but had postponed its execution 

because it could not then supply the 

required reinforcements. Leningrad 

and WJlklwv Fronts' missions, as they entered the summer, were to improve the 

city's defenses and to stage limited offensives to weaken the enemy enough 

to prevent his mounting an assault on 

the city and to create the conditions for 

breaking the siege later'· 

Army Group North's concerns were 

for the future more than for the present. Until frost again afforded ground 

conditions suitable for extensive operations, tlle bottleneck appeared to be 

securely in German hands. The bottleneck had survived tlle winter and 

would be more difficult to break in the 

SUl11mer; nevertheless, in so confined a 

space, the German defense could not 

27v. M. KovaIchuk, Leningrad i bolslta),a zemlya 

(Leningr'ad: l zda leIstvo "Nauka," 1975), pp. 210, 262. 

/VMV (vol. V, p. 235) gives the total number of 

persons evacuated between 29June 1941 and I April 

1943 as 1.75 million. 

28/v,\-n.-: vol. V, p. 23Sr. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

afford any mistakes. Between the bottleneck and tbe Volkhov River, the 

Pogostye salient projected to within 10 

miles of Lyuban. The Russians were 

not likely to use it in the summer 

because the ground was underwater 

for miles around on all sides, but when 

winter came, it would again threaten 

the rear of the Eighteenth Army front 

around Leningrad. East and west of 

the salient, two small German bridgeheads on the Volkhov, at Kirishi and 

Gurzino, served as very exposed, and 

expensive, "lightning rods" for the 

front on the river. Farther south the 

Soviet Volkhov bridgehead possessed 

the same potential for future use by the 

Russians as the Pogostye salient, and 

each enhanced the other. South of 

Lake Ilmen, Sixteenth Army's anchor, 

Staraya Russa, was just 2 miles inside 

the front and the corridor to the Demyansk pocket was no more than 3 to 5 

miles wide over most of its 25-mile 

length. From the eastern tip of the 

pocket the mighty Toropets bulge 

reached west 125 miles before it 

dropped off into the Army Group 

Center zone north of Velikiye Luki. In 

the summer, particularly the wet summer of 1942, either side could profitably maintain only infantry outposts in 

the bulge's forests and swamps-and 

these were all Army Group North 

could afford. 

Nordlidlt and Other Operations 

Like Army Group Center, Army 

Group North was assigned a secondary 

role for the summer, but with a d ifference: it had a prospective strategic 

mission. Under Directive 41 (of 5 April 

1942), it was to finish off Leningrad, 

establish land contact with the Finnish 

409 

Army on the Isthmus of Karelia, and 

occupy Ingermanland (the area of the 

Oranienbaum pocket) "as soon as the 

[enemy] situation in the enveloped 

areas or the availability of otherwise 

sufficient forces permits."29 Although 

its execution was deferred, in Hitler's 

thinking the mission was much more 

than one of opportunity. His concern 

went back to the fall of 1941 and particularly to the failure in December to 

get contact with the Finns on tlle Svir 

River after which Marshal Mannerheim, the Finnish Army's commander in chief, had made it clear that 

the Finnish forces would not take the 

offensive anywhere until they were at 

least relieved of tlle necessity for holding a front north of Leningrad . In the 

early winter, on Hitler's orders, Army 

Group North had devised a plan , codenamed NORDLlcHT ("aurora borealis"), 

to take Lenin~ ad . Overwhelmed by its 

subsequent troubles, the army group 

had not taken the plan beyond the 

paper stage, but, for Hitler at least, it 

had continued to hold top priority as 

Directive 41 had demonstrated. One 

thing was certain: barring a near-total 

Soviet collapse, Leningrad, which during the winter had achieved heroic 

stature worldwide, was not going to 

come cheap. NORDLlCHT, in the summer of 1942, was therefore going to be 

a major operation and would require 

substantially greater resources than 

Army Group North had or had any 

near prospect of getting. (Map 37.) 

On 30 June, at the Vlbl[ssclzanze, General Kuechler, the commander of 

Army Group North, briefed Hitler on 

t9Der Fuehrer und Oberste Befehlshaber drr mnacht, 

OKW. WFSt N T. 55616142, ~irutmg 41 ,5.4.42, Ge rman 

High Level Directi ves, CMH meso 
GULF 

OF 

FINLAND 

\ 

\ 

NIAP 37 

Isthmus of Ka,eloa 

Fi ~!. FOrC~ 

Lug. 

ARMY 

EI " " , ., , 

\ . ' ,f 

~ 

~Q 

Novgorod . : 

, 

Lodeynoye Pols 

'--__ Tlkhvin 

VOLKHOV 

FRONT 

xxxx --.,....~ 

Shimsk 

, 

c::J

'" -' .. J --', 

" , ~ 

, , , . . 1

st . ' "--- Ottml'lInsll. ~\ I I - . 

, 

, 

, 

, 

, 

; WINKELRIED··, ~ _ --- I ,~, 

: q;. .: H,lIs 

; ~~ 

, 

, v . 

Kholm 

• " 

NO THWEST 

/-- KALiNIN , 

, 

:' FRONT , 

~ 

ARMY GROUP NORTH 

July - August 1942 

c:J Projected operations 

Approxim ate front, 1 Jut 

o 50 Miles 

If----r' ---" 

o 50 Kilometers 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

the operations aside from NORDLICHT 

that the army group might undertake 

after it had rested its units and received 

its scheduled troop and equipment replacements. He listed five possibilities: 

a joint attack with Army Group Center 

to Ostashkov (BRuEcKENSCHLAG); expansion of the corridor to the Demyansk pocket; elimination of the 

Volkhov bridgehead and/or the 

Pogostye salient; and occupation of Ingermanland. He rated three of thesethe Demyansk corridor, the Pogostye 

pocket, and the Ostashkov operationas "u rgent. "30 

Kuechler returned to his own headquarters on I July and put his staff to 

work on two operations, SCHLlNGI'FLA NZE ("vine") and MOORBRAND 

("moor fire"). SCHLlNGPFLANZE, which 

was to widen the cOITidor to the Demyansk pocket on its north side, was to 

come first because II Corps in the 

pocket still could not get along without 

air supply. Aside from being exposed 

to enemy fire from two sides, the lanes 

the Germans had hacked through the 

corridor were underwater whenever it 

rained and muddy all the time. MOOR. 

BRAND would pinch off the Pogostye 

salient and so, Kuechler believed, "constrict" the Soviet options for deployment between the Volkhov River and 

Lake Ladoga. Hider had liked the idea 

because, while the terrain generally was 

unsuitable for motor vehicles of any 

description, the German tanks might 

be able to run on the railroad embankment that conveniently crossed the 

base of the sal ient. 31 

3lJOK\Y, Siel/v. WFSI, f..:negsgl'schichtliche Abfl'ilullg. 

!\negstagebuch, 1.4.-30.6.42, 30 June 42, UII.T. 1807 

file. 

3111. Cr. Nord. fa Kl'il'gstagebuch, 1. -3 /.i.42, I Ju142. 

H . Gr. Nord 75128/12 file. 

411 

On 2 July, the OKH let Army Group 

North know a special artillery reconnaissance group was being sent to 

check the ground between the 

Leningrad front and the Oranienbaum 

pocket for emplacement of very heavy 

artillery. Hider was going to have 

DORA, which had finished its work at 

Sevastopol, transferred north [or use 

against Kronshtadt, the Soviet naval 

fortress on Kodin Island in the Gulf of 

Finland."2 Kronshtadt, with a ring of 

forts on surrounding small islands and 

three miles of water separating it from 

the mainland, was a worthy companion 

piece to Sevastopol. In the next two 

weeks, Hitler added to DORA, the 

GAMMA and KARL batteries, the 

other siege artillery from Sevastopol, 

and four batteries ranging in caliber 

from 240- to 400-mm. that had not 

been at Sevastopol. All, including 

DORA, for which a five-mile railroad 

spur would have to be built, were to be 

emplaced by the last week in August. 

Because so much artillery would not 

achieve tactical profits worth the cost 

of the ammunition by shelling Kronshtadt alone, most of it was to be sited 

to fire on targets in the Oranienbaum 

pocket as well. Eighteenth Army then 

also began planning an infantry operation against the pocket under the code 

name BETTELSTAB ("beggar's staff').33 

Before Eighteenth Army and Army 

Group North completed their first estimates for BETTELSTAB, Hitler's attention was turning toward Leningrad. In 

a teletyped message to the OKH Operations Branch on 18 July, he an320KN , Gt!1lSfdl-f, op. Abt. (Ill) Nr. 429456142, 

Zllflielml1lgdes Dora-Geraets z.u H. Gr. Nor(/, 2.7.'12. H . 

Cr. Nord 75129/62 file. 

33/./ . Gr. Nnrd, la KI·iegslagebllch. 1.-31.7.42. 11 - 22 

Ju142. I-I. Cr. Nord 75128112 file. 
412 

nounced that Operation BLUEcHER, the 

attack across the Kerch Strait, would be 

canceled as soon as the Don was 

crossed and the break into the Caucasus region from the north was assured. The German divisions thereby 

released would be transferred out of 

Eleventh Army and sent north to take 

Leningrad. He made the decision final 

in Directive 45 of23 July. Army Group 

North would get five divisions from 

Eleventh Army in addition to the heavy 

artillery already on the way and would 

be ready by early September to take 

Leningrad."' Two days before, in Directive 44, he had ordered Twentieth 

Mountain Army to get ready for a 

thrust together with the Finns to the 

Murmansk Railroad , on the assumption that "Leningrad will be taken at 

the latest in September and Finnish 

forces will be released (from the front 

on the Isthmus of Karelia)."3' First 

given the code name FEUERZAUBER 

("fire magic"), the operation against 

Leningrad was changed after a week to 

NORDLICHT for correspondence above 

the Eighteenth Army level and GEORG 

("George") within the army."6 

Hitler next instructed Kuechler to go 

through the docket of "local operations, SCHLlNGPFLANZE, MOORBRAND, 

and BETTELSTAB, in "short order" and 

have tllem out of the way by the beginning of September."' The army group 

~OKW. WFSt, ap. Nr. 551261142, arl G,m.sldH, ap. 

Abt. /8.7.42. H 22/215 file; OKW, WFSl, ap. Nr. 

551288142, Mi'i.nmg Nr. 45, FiU!T die rortsetzung dpr 

Operation "Braunschweig," 23.7.42, German High 

Level Directives, CMH files. 

3SOKW, WFSt, ap. Nr. 551275/42, WeisulIg Nr. 44, 

21.7.42, German High Level Direclives, CMH files. 

38()KH, GenStdH, ap. Abt. Nr. 420550142, an H . Gr. 

No,d,2.8.42, H. Gr. Nord 75129155 file. 

370Kl-/, GenStdH, Gp. Abt. Nr. 420550142 , an 1-1. Gr. 

Nord,24.7.42, H . Gr. Nord 7512915 5 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

knew from the outset, as Hitler in all 

likelihood also did, that anything of the 

sort was out of the question in the 

allotted time because troops, tanks, artillery, ammunition, and especially air 

support could not be mustered for 

more than one operation at a time. As 

it turned out, NORDLICHT in part afforded and in part compelled the solution. BETTELSTAB had from the first not 

raised real enthusiasm in the army 

group, and since it could probably be 

done more easily after NORDLlCHT than 

before, it was postponed. On the other 

hand, the army gro up regarded 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE and MOORBRAND as 

more vital to its survival in tlle approaching winter than NORDLICHT. But 

NORDLICHT was more important to 

Hitler and, presumably, to German 

grand strategy. When the early estimates showed that Eighteenth Army 

would in no way have enough strength 

to do MOORllRAND a nd NORDLICHT, 

even if one were done before the other, 

Kuechler "with a heavy heart" canceled MOORBRAND. Which left 

SCHLINGPFLANZE38 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE, besides being the 

sole survivor of the so-called loca l operations, was also the only one of the 

three that was anywhere near ready to 

execute. Sixteenth Army, under General Busch , had positioned the troops 

for it in mid-July and had been set to 

start on the 19th when bad flying 

weather and Soviet attacks on the II 

Corps perimeter forced successive 

postponements. Later, a lingering spell 

of heavy rain Aooded the entire area 

between the pocket and the main front. 

381-1 . Gr. Nord, la Kritgstagebuch. 1. -3/ .7.42. 24 

Jul-3 Aug 42, H. Gr. Nord 75 128/12 file. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

At the LUrn of the month, Kuechler 

and Busch were waiting for three or 

four dry days but were almost at the 

point of starting SCHLlNGPFLANZE regardless of the weather because II 

Corps was as badly off as it had been in 

the height of the winter. The corridor 

was underwater, and the airlift was only 

getting in 30 to 40 percent of the daily 

supply requirements. On 4 August, 

however, SCHLlNGPFLANZE had another 

setback when all of the ground support 

and fighter aircraft assigned for it were 

flown out to help Ninth Army at 

Rzhev.'9 

At Fuehrer H eadqum·ters 

Four days later, Hitler summoned 

Kuechler to the Werwolf to review 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE and NORDLICHT. He 

opened the conference with a surprise 

twist, something he liked to do to put 

the generals off balance and himself in 

control of the discussion. He told 

Kuechler that Army Group North 

would be getting the first of the new 

Tiger tan ks and proposed putti ng 

some of them into the Kirishi 

bridgehead. A few of the Tigers, he 

implied, ought to be able to hold the 

bridgehead practically by themselves. 

When Kuechler pointed out that the 

army grou p had no means of getting 

the sixty-tonners across the Volkhov 

River, he suggested using them in 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE, which Kuechler noncommittally agreed "would be easier to 

do than at Kirishi. " Later, in private, 

Field Marshal Keitel, chief, OKW, told 

Kuechler that the Tigers were not yet 

off the assembly line, and he had better 

not count on having them in time for 

SCHLlNGPFLA NZE. 

Ulbid. , 30 Jul-4 Aug 42. 

413 

Turning to the agenda, Hitler told 

Kuechler the aircraft transferred out 

of his area would stay with Ninth Army 

until the crisis at Rzhev had been overcome and would then be used to support Second Panzer Army's Operation 

WIRBELWIND , which would mean 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE could not start before 

20 August. He asked Kuechler how 

much time he would need for 

SCHLlNGPFLANZE. Kuechler said fourteen days. Hitler then asked when 

NORDLICHT, which would follow 

SCHLlNGI'FLANZE, would be completed, 

and Kuechler said at the end of October. Hitler said that was too late because NORDLICHT was itself not a 

terminal operation but a preliminary to 

the operation against the Murmansk 

Railroad that would have to be done 

before winter. He wondered, he added, 

why Army Group North was "insisting" 

on aiming SCHLlNGPFLANZE north of the 

Demyansk corridor when the enemy 

was less strong on the south side. He 

remembered that there had been a 

supply road on the south during the 

winter. Such a road indeed had existed , 

Kuechler replied, but it had been made 

of logs, sawdust, and ice and had long 

since melted and floated away. The 

only aCLUal road on either side of the 

corridor was the Staraya RussaDemyansk road on the north , and , he 

pointed out, taking it was essential also 

to the defense of Staraya Russa. 

After remarking t1,at he would "feel 

better" about SCHLlNGPFLANZE if the 

Tigers could be worked into it, Hitler 

turned to NORDLICHT. The object, he 

said, was to destroy Leningrad totally. 

General JodI, chief, OKW Operations 

Staff, who was present, added that t1,is 

was necessary because the Finns regarded the city "as a heavy burden on 
414 

their future. " Thejob, Hitler observed, 

could be compared to the one recently 

fll1ished at Sevastopol, but it would not 

be nearly as difficult. For one thing, the 

area was sma ll er. For another, at 

SevasLOpol the terrain was rugged and 

the fortifications exceedingly strong 

while Leningrad lay on Aat land and 

was not nea rly as well fortified. "The 

whole thing at Leningrad ," he asserted, 

"must actua ll y be done witl1 simple 

mass of materiel." Jodi at one point 

asked whether it might not be well LO 

put Field Marshal Manstein (Eleventh 

Army), the recent victor of Sevastopol, 

in command of the operation , but 

Hitler, Kuechler noted , "d id not take 

that up." 

When Kuech ler countered that "in 

the last analysis" the operation would 

have LO have adequate infantry, the 

conference reached what he and Hitler 

had both known a ll along was its real 

nub.'o The army group had asked for 

4 more divisions, 3 infantry and 1 panzer, before NORDLICHT started and 

eitl1er a constant flow of replacements 

or 2 to 3 more divisions to be supplied 

later41 Hitler maintained that the army 

group's estimates were too high . Anyway, he conti nued, he could not give 

what he did not have, and he had no 

more divisions. That was why he had 

provided the artill ery- "in a mass 

greater than any since the Battle of 

Verdun in the World War"-a thousand pieces to the enemy's less than five 

hundred. The thing to do wo uld be to 

drop hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs. "If the city really burns, 

40/_/. Cr. Nord. la Kn't'gs/agt'bllch. 1.-31 .8.42. 8 Aug 

42. H . Cr. Nord 75 128/13 file. 

H}_I. Gr. Norc/, fa Nr. 55/42, (m OKH. GnISMH, 0". 

Abl .. 26.7.42. H . Gr. Nord 75 129/55 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

no defender will be able to hold out 

lhere. "42 

After returning LO his own headquarters, Kuechler reexamined NORDLICHT. From Eighteenth Army's commander, General Lindemann , he 

learned that to get even two divisions 

out of its existing resources the army 

would have LO give up the Kirishi and 

Gruzino bridgeheads, which would 

weaken its hold on the Volkhov line 

and the Pogostye salient. Lindemann 

also LOld him that the number of artillery pieces was not going LO be 1,000 

but exactly 598.

43 On the 14th, apparently [or the first time , Kuechler went 

out LO look a t Leningrad. From the 

Alexander Tower, on the northern outskirts of Push kin , the highest point on 

the front, he saw clumps and masses of 

concrete and SLOne factories and apartment buildings. "These," he concluded, 

"one can presume will only be in small 

measure vulnerable to fire ."" 

A Mission fOI· Mamlein 

Meanwhile, SCI-ILI , CPFLANZE was 

waiting on its a ir support. Finally, o n 

the 16th, Colonel !-ieusinger, the OKH 

operations chief, LOld Kuechler's chief 

of staff not LO expect the planes in less 

than anothe r eight to ten days o r more 

and LO remember that Hitler was "hold-

. Gr. Nord. III I\flt'gMagebllch. 1.- 3 1.8.-12, 8 Aug 

42. H . C,', Nord 751281 13 file. 

4.3AOK IS. la Nr. 48142 , (III H. Cr. Nurd, 9.8.42, II. Gr. 

Nord 75 129/55 fi le. 111C figures on anillery vary. 

Kuechler lat.er used the number' 800. Apparcnll y lhc 

numbers depended on how much of the froTH was 

being talked aboll l: Leningrad only: Leningl":ul and 

the bouJencck: or Leningrad. the bottleneck. and the 

Oranienbaulll pocket. Some of the heaviesl pieces. 

DORA for instance. were considered nOI to have any 

worthwhile targel.s in Leningrad. 

HI_I. Cr. Nord, la Kril'gsillgebllch. 1. - 31 .8.42. 14 Aug 

42. H. Gr. Nord 751281 13 file . 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

ing onto NORDLICHT hard as iron ." "We 

must now," Heusinger added, "make 

some very sober calculations." In the 

next day or two, he went on, Halde r 

was going to propose evacuating the 

Demyansk pocket. I f that failed, as it 

most likely would, Army Group Torth 

was going to have to do whatever it 

could "in the few good weeks left" to 

prevent an "untenable situation" when 

the fall rains and winter came. A day 

later, Kuechler cance led SCHLlNGI'FLANZE and substituted WINKELRIED, 

an operation to widen the Demyansk 

corridor on the south. On the 21st, 

Halder called, on Hider's behalf, to ask 

Kuechler whether he could come to 

the Fuehrer Headquarters two days later 

to report on WINKELRIED and NORDLICHT. He had a lso just heard , to his 

surprise he said, that Manstein would 

be put in command of NORDLICHT. 

At the WerwolJ, Hitler greeted 

Kuechler with the remark that "a 

stone" had fallen from his heart when 

he heard the army group was turning 

away from SCHLlNGPFLANZE. He said he 

had "always regarded it as an extraordinarily difficult operation," and he 

added that Kuechler should be careful 

not to try to go too far south with 

WINKELRIED. Time was important. The 

Finnish Army's chief of staff and operations chief were coming the next day, 

and he wanted to give them a firm 

commitment on NORDLICHT, which he 

again characterized as an easy repeat of 

Sevastopol. When Kuechler brought 

out aerial photographs showing countless solid blocks of buildings still standing in Leningrad, Hitler admitted to 

being "impressed." But he had the answer: he was sending General Richthofen , commander of Fourth Air 

Force who was known as the master air 

415 

commander, to conduct the air support. That was why, he added, almost 

as an afterthought, he was giving Manstein command of NORDLICHT. Manstein and Richthofen had developed an 

"ideal collaboration" at Sevastopol.45 

A day later, Hitler gave Manstein his 

mission, which he was to execute in any 

way he saw fi t provided he accomplished two things: made contact with 

the Finns and "leveled Leningrad to 

the ground." As NORDLICHT commander, Manstein would be independent of Army Group North and would 

come directly under the OKH. Hitler 

also told Manstein he could ex pect 

some help from the Finns, and the next 

day Hitler secured a promise from 

the Finnish Chief of Staff, Jalkavaenkenraali ("Lieutenant General") 

Erik Heinrichs, to have the Finnish 

Isthmus Front assist NORDLICHT with 

artillery and a feigned attack'· Manstein would have liked a great deal 

more help from the Finns, but Hider 

had in fact gotten a ll that he could and 

possibly more than he had expected. 

Hider knew from long experience tllat 

Mannerheim was exceedingly skittish 

about involving his forces in a direct 

attack on Leningrad.· 7 

M eretslwv at the BoUleneck 

Seemingly, the Russians were going 

to allow Army Group North enough 

Ulbld., 18-23 Aug 42. 

~6Creiner, OberstI' IVl'ltnJ/(ulttfllehnlllg. p. 406: 

Greiner Diary Norel, 25 Aug 42, C-OG5q Ci\I H filc. 

47Mannerheim mailllained that he accepted COIllmand of lhe Finnish Army in 1941 on the condition 

that he never be ,"cquircd LO lead an offensi\'c againsl 

Leningrad because he did not want to lend credence 

to a long-standing Soviet claim lhal an independent 

Finland h'aS a manifest thrcallo the second cilY Oflhc 

Soviet U nion. Mannerhcim. E,·imunmgnl, p. 45'1. 
416 

time to itself to get NORDLICHT off the 

map tables and onto the ground. Northwest and Volkhov Fronts were busy 

through the summer gnawing at the 

Demyansk pocket and the Volkhov 

line, and Sixteenth and Eighteenth Armies were taking more casualties and 

heavier drains on their equipment and 

ammunition stocks than they could 

readily afford, but nothing big appeared to be in the making. 

The appearance was deceptive. T.fllkJlOV Fmnt, under General Meretskov, 

had been working in elaborate secrecy 

since early July on an offensive to 

break the Leningrad blockade at the 

bottleneck and, as the History of the Seeond W)rld War puts it, "deal the enemy a 

preemptive blow in tl1e Leningrad sector ... •• To do the job, Meretskov had 

Eighth Army, the IV Guards Rifle Corps, 

and Second SIwek Army, which was in the 

process of being reconstituted. 

Leningrad Front had set up several divisions with artillery that would join in 

from the west as the Neva Gmup. By the 

last week in August, Meretskov had a 

3: 1 superiority in troops, 4: 1 in tanks, 

and 2: 1 in artillery and monars; but, by 

his account, he did not know about the 

German buildup for NORDLlCHT,g 

Meretskov proposed to smash the 

whole 7 -mile bottleneck front north of 

the Mga-Volkhov railroad , take the 

Sinyavino Heights, and finish at the 

Neva bend west of Mga near the Village 

of Otradnoye. (Mat) 38.) The distances were not great: 4 miles to the 

Sinyavino Heights; another 6 from 

there west to the Neva; and, at the base 

of the bottleneck, 15 miles from tl1e 

48/VMY, vol. V, p. 238. 

49Merctskov. Serving the Ptople, pp. 224-26. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

front to Otradnoye. The terrain was 

another matter altogetl1er. The entire 

area was a patchwork of woods, 

swamps, and peat bogs. Large stretches 

were underwater, and the water table 

was so close to the surface nearly everywhere that fortifi cations had to be built 

above ground, which complicated tl1e 

defense but also made it impossible for 

an attacker to dig foxholes or trenches. 

The only really dry ground was on the 

Sinyavino Heights, which rose to a 

maximum of 150 feet and afforded 

unimpeded observation for miles in all 

directions. Meretskov expected his assets to be superiority in numbers and 

material, surprise, and speed; he 

hoped to have joined hands with 

Leningrad Front on the Neva in two or 

tl1ree days, before tl1e Germans could 

bring in reinforcements. For a highspeed operation, however, the Soviet 

plans were cumbersome. T.fllkhov Front's 

force was split into three echelons, 

which would have to be committed 

separately; and the Stavka, remembering bad experiences it had witl1 coordinated operations by the two fmnts in 

the winter, ordered the Neva Group not 

to make its bid until after Volkhov Front 

had made a clear breakthrough ·· 

Full-fledged surprise was going to be 

all but impossible to attain, and this, 

although Meretskov does not mention 

it, was T.fllkhov Front's number one problem. The Germans had worked on 

their defenses in the bottleneck for almost a year, and they knew exactly 

what the consequences of a lapse could 

be . During the summer, Hitler had 

constantly kept an eye on the bottleneck as a likely spot for Stalin to try 

r.°lbid" pp. 224-31. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

THE MGA BOTILENECK 

27 August - 25 September 1942 

------ Approximate front , 27 Aug 

",,000000 0 Approximate fr ont, 25 Sep 

-: German atta ck 

===::.: Soviet attack 

o 5 Miles 

I f----" --, 

o 5 Kilometers 

it' -

LENINGRAD _ 

FRONT 

MAP 38 

for a prestige victory to offset the defeats in the south. He told Kuechler in 

the conference on 23 August that the 

Russia ns would launch "rabid attacks 

... above all against the Mga bottleneck" as soon as they caught wind of 

NORDLLCHT. He advised Kuechler on 

that occasion to put the Tigers in behind the front. "Th e n ," h e said, 

"nothing can happen; they are unasLAKE LADOGA 

VOLKHOV 

~(, FR9NT ... - 'j 

4 17 

, 

, 

I 

I 

\ 

, 

, 

sailable and can smash any enemy tank 

attack."Sl 

Nevertheless, Meretskov did achieve 

some surprise. From the second week 

of August on, the OKH and the a rmy 

group became more and more convinced that an attack would take place 

5 1H. Gr. Nord, la Kriegstagebuch, 1. - 31.8.42, 23 Aug 

42, H. Gr. Nord 75128/ 13 file . 
418 

at the bottleneck, and even though 

they exchanged information a lmost 

daily, they could not reach conclusions 

as to when it would come or how 

strong it would be. The pattern of the 

buildup was more vague-deliberately 

so according to Meretskov-than they 

were accustomed to seeing, and the 

Kirishi bridgehead and Pogostye actually appeared to be more likely places 

for something big to happen. On the 

23d, XXVI Corps, which was holding 

the bottleneck with 227th Infantry Division nonh of the Mga-Volkhov railroad and 223d Infantry Division south 

of the railroad and whi ch had 12th 

Panzer Division in reserve at Mga, 

asked for another infantry division to 

pu t into the bottleneck. Fou r days later, 

early on the morning of the 27th , tl,e 

OKH alerted Kuechler to increasing 

signs of an attack at the bottleneck, and 

wid him to move in the 170th Infantry 

Division , one of the Crimean divisions 

standing by for NORDLICHT. Kuechler 

confirmed tl,at he wou ld do so and 

added that he would also put in the 

Tigers, several of which were reportedly aboard a train near Pskov52 

While Kuechler and the OKH were 

thus e ngaged , Meretskov's first echelon, Eighth Army, was opening the offensive. Shortly before 1200 on the 

27th , Lindemann reported attacks 

along the whole front north of the railroad. At one point twenty tanks had 

broken in , but no main effort could be 

detected . The situation was still much 

the same at nightfall, and XXVI Corps 

had not detected any units other than 

ones it had previously identified and 

had been ready to handle. Kuechler's 

main concern was for the NORDLICHT 

!>2Ibid., 23- 27 Aug 42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

timetable. He told Schmundt, "When 

the Russian attacks he keeps at it for 

weeks on end; consequently, substantial quantities of infantry and ammunition may become tied up in a direction 

that was not provided for in the army 

group's program."53 

The next morning at 0900, Kuechler 

and Manstein had their first meeting, 

and Kuechler was pleased to hear that 

Manstein believed taking Leningl·ad 

would be every bit as hard a proposition as Army Group North had 

claimed it was. In his experience, Manstein said, he had not found the Russians susceptible to "terrorization" by 

bombing and shelling, and he thought 

it would be simpler just to seal the city 

off "and let the defenders and inhabitants starve. " 54 Whil e the field marshals 

were talking, XXVI Corps reported a 

break-in two-thirds of a mile deep on 

the bottleneck between the Sinyavino 

Heights and the railroad. A battalion 

commander had lost his nerve and ordered a retreat. When the rest of the 

day brought evidence of several previously unidentified Soviet divisions in 

and around the break-in area, Kuechler ordered the 5th Mountain Division 

and 28th Jaeger Division out of the 

NORDLICHT staging area to Mga. At the 

day's end , Hitler, who was "exceedingly 

agitated over the situation at XXV I 

Corps," diverted the 3d Mountain Division, which was at sea in the Baltic on 

the way from Norway to Finland, w 

Reva l to be attached to Eighteenth 

Anny.55 

Eighth Army deepened the break-in to 

53/bid., 27 Aug 42. 

Mlbid., 28 Aug 42. 

Mlbid.; Greiner Dior.., Noles, 28 Aug 42. C-065q 

~IH fi le. . 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 419 

A TIGER TANK W AITS FOR A Tow 

three miles on the third day, almost to 

the Sinyavino Heights, and on the next, 

Kuechler committed the Tigers. He 

had four, but two broke down on the 

roads. Kuechler also went OUl to see for 

himself what was going on at XXVI 

Corps and reported lO the OKH that 

he "had no particularly bad impression 

of the situalion" but the fighting would 

"drag on for some time." On the 31st 

Lindemann pronounced the cris ~ passed and the break-in contained. 56 

Al the same time on the other side of 

lhe front Meretskov was ordering in 

his second echelon, IV Guards Rifle 

Cor/)s.57 

MJH . G,: Nord, fa Kril'gsillgrhllch. 1.-3/.8.42, 29-3 1 

Aug '12. H . Gr. Nord 75 128113 file. 

~7 clsko\', Snving lhl' Propll', p.234. 

Manstein at the Bottleneck 

For the next several days, XXVI 

Corps felt the presence of IV GUa!"ds 

Rifle Corps, not in a heavy onslaught, 

but as a steady, stubborn infiltration 

through the woods and swamps south 

and west of the Sinyavino Heights. On 

3 September, the Neva Group joined lhe 

battle briefly with attempts to cross the 

Neva in severa l places. These were 

beate? off so thoroughly by arti ll ery 

and an- stnkes that the Neva GnJLIp lost 

mOSl of its crossing equipment. 58 By 

lhe end of the day on the 4th , IV 

Guards Rifle Corps, in the woods southwest of the Sinyavino Heights, had 

deepened the penetration to almost 

r>tilbid., p. 235. 
420 

five miles and was two-thirds of the way 

across th e bottleneck. But XXVI 

Corps, troubled mostly by the terrain 

and thick forest growth that limited 

visibility to fifty feet or less, believed it 

had the push contained. Hitler, 

however, was "exaspera ted ." Army 

Group North, he said, had four NORDLICHT divisions tied up in the bottleneck and still was not able to bring 

the enemy to a stop, and that showed a 

lack of purposeful leadership.5. By 

telephone, he told Manstein to take 

command in the bottleneck, where he 

said there had been "atrocious developments," and to "restore the situation offensively." Headquarters, Eleventh 

Army, was to come directly under the 

OKH, and Manstein was to "report immediately failures on the part of any 

commanders."6. 

The XXVI Corps had been right. 

The Soviet advance was stopped on 4 

September, and Meretskov could not 

get it going again even though he put 

in his third echelon, Second Siwek Army, 

on the 5th. On the 9th and 10th, XXVI 

Corps handily beat off attacks by the 

Neva Group from the west and Second 

Siwek Army on the east.61 Nevertheless, 

the Soviet offensive was having one 

very considerable success: it was badly 

scrambling the timetables for NORDLICHT and WINKELRIED. NORDLICHT 

could not begin until the bottleneck 

was secure, and WI NKELRIED had to 

wait until the air support could be 

SIIll1C divisions were 5th MOllntain Division, 28th 

Jaeger Division , 170lh Infantry Division, and 24th 

InfanlTY Division. 'T11C 24th Infantry Division weill 

into the bottleneck on 4 September. 

60 Greiner Diary Notes, 4 Sep 42, C-065q CMH file; 

AOK II, la Krlegsragebllch Nr. 2, 4 Sep 42, AOK 11 

33 16711 file. 

6'Merclskov. Snvi"g the People, p. 235; AOK II, Ia 

Kriegsto.geb!lch Nr. 2,9-10 Sep 42. AOK II 3316711 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

shifted from the bottleneck. Hitler had 

already put off the operation against 

the Murmansk Railroad until the 

winter. The latter decision removed 

one source of time pressure on NORDLICHT and WINKELRIED but not another, 

namely, the approach of the fall rainy 

season. 62 

The last Soviet efforts to get the offensive going again gave Manstein 

what he thought might be an opportunity for a surprise, and on the 10th, 

he put the 24th and 170th Infantry Divisions and the 12lh Panzer Division 

into a thrust northward from the 

southeastern corner of the breakthrough to dose the gap behind the 

Russians. The infantry started at 0800 

and were stopped almost at once by 

shattering artillery and mortar fire. In 

the afternoon, another try, this time 

also using the 12th Panzer Division, 

ended as quickly as the first when the 

infantry was once more pinned down 

by the enemy artillery and mortars, 

and the tanks ran into minefields. The 

next day, while the infantry was fighting off counterattacks, Manstein canceled the attack and ordered reconnaissance to locate the enemy strongpoints so that they could be picked off 

one by one. To Keitel, he said he was 

going to have to knock out the enemy 

artillery first and then go over to setpiece attacks from the north and the 

SOUtl1 63 

Manstein was ready to make another 

attempt on the 18th but then had to 

wait three more days because of rain 

and fog. The rain did not make much 

62H . Gr. NQrd, la Kriegstagebllch, 1.-30.9.42, J Sep 

42. H. G,-. No,d 75128/14 file. 

63AOK II. In Kriegstagebllch NT. 2. 10- 11 Sep 42, 

AOK " 33167/1 file_ 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

difference to the infantry, because the 

ground was permanently sodden anyway, but the airplanes, which would be 

flying in close support, needed good 

visibility. In the meantime, artillery and 

Stuiws had worked over the Soviet artillery emplacements. Manstein had 

four divisions at the ready: on the 

north, under XXVI Corps, the 121st 

Infantry Division and on the south, 

under XXX Corps, the 24th, 132d, and 

170th Infantry Divisions. The objective 

for both thrusts was the village of 

Gaitolovo, which lay about midway in 

the mouth of the bulge astride the 

main-in fact the only-Soviet supply 

road. The start this time was good. The 

artillery and the Stuiws had done their 

work well. By nightfall on the second 

day, 22 September, one regiment of the 

132d I nfantry Division was just twothirds of a mile short of reaching 

Gaitolovo from the south. Having ample reason now to remember what had 

happened to Second Slwck Army in the 

spring, the Russians fought furiously 

to hold Gaitolovo, but 121st Infantry 

Division was at the northern edge of 

the village on the 24th, and the two 

groups joined the next day. The bulge 

had become a pocket. 64 

Winkelried 

While Manstein was engaged in tlle 

bottleneck, Kuechler raised the question with Halder of what to do about 

the Demyansk pocket. The season was 

getting late and soon would be too late 

even for WINKELRIED. With or without 

WINKELRIED, Kuechler maintained that 

the pocket would be horrendously difficult to hold through another winter. 

64/bid., 11 -25 Sep 42. 

421 

Since the Ostashkov operation (to close 

the gap to Army Group Center) could 

certainly not be done in 1942, and he 

knew of no plan to do it in the coming 

year, he "suggested" it might be better 

to forget about WINKELRIED and evacuate the pocket. Halder replied that the 

pocket had to be held because it was 

"the sole solution" to the problem of 

the Toropets bulge and because, "The 

Fuehrer completely rejects the idea of 

evacuating II Corps."6; Thereupon, 

Kuechler and Busch became desperate 

to get WINKELRIED going before the 

weather, which was beginning to turn, 

ruled it out altogether. Expecting Manstein's success at the bottleneck to release the air support, Kuechler, on the 

24th, set WINKELRIED for either the 

26th or 27th, depending on the 

weather and the speed with which the 

planes could be redeployed. When the 

OKH advised him, on the 26tll, that 

the Luftwaffe high command had ordered half the planes to stay with Eleventh Army until the envelopment at 

Gaitolovo was "one hundred percent 

secure," Kuechler decided to go ahead 

with WINKELRIED the next day 

anyway·6 (Map 39.) 

After a whole summer's preparations, first for SCHLlNGPFLANZE and 

then for WINKELRIED, Sixteenth Army 

hardly expected to achieve a surprise, 

but it did . The 5th Jaeger Division and 

126th Infantry Division, striking out of 

the east face of the pocket, encircled 

the J 51 Guards Rifle Division east of the 

Lovat River in five days, thereby completing WINKELRIED-OST ("east"). Because the divisions did not have means 

6SH. Gr. NonJ, fa Kriegsmgebuch, 1.-30.9.42, 14 and 

23 Sep 42, H. GL Nm'd 75128/14 file. 

"Ibid. , 24-26 Sep 42. 
422 

OPERATIONS SCHLlNGPFLANZE 

AND WINKELRIED 

Z7 September . 9 October 1942 

-- Approximlte front, 27 Sep 

••••••• ApproxNnlte front, 9 Oct 

........-- Direction of Germen .ttllck 

?f-__ ~,_----l"O M ... 

o 10 Kik)meter. 

MAP 39 

to cross the Lovat, 5th Jaeger Division 

then had to be drawn north and sluiced 

th roug h the corridor to the west side of 

the river where it was joined by the SS 

To te nkopf Division , whi ch afte r a 

winte r and a summer in the pocket was 

reduced to 350 e ffectives, and the Air 

Force Fi eld Divisio n "Meindle," a halfdozen battalions of surplus Luftwaffe 

pe rsonne l being used as infa ntr y. 

T hese began WI NKELRI ED-WEST on 7 

Octobe r and compl eted it in three 

days·' The corridor then was ten mil es 

wide at its narrowest point. 

6 7AOK 16, l a Kriegstagebucj" Band 11 .27-30 Sep 42. 

AO K 16 36588/2 file; AOK 16, la Kriegstagebllch. Band 

JII, 1- 10 Oct 42. AOK 16 36588/3 fi le. 

MOSCOW T O STALI NGRAD 

II Corps 

-

-

.... 

--

, NORTHWEST 

FRONT 

.... , _ , 34th 

.... \ -, ::" ; Valdai 

" , ..... Hills .... 

, 

\ 

'. 

53d 

Mop-up at Gaitolovo 

Meanwhile, Manstein had finished at 

the bottleneck, tho ugh not quite as 

quickly as he might have expected . For 

thre e d ays, beginning on 26 September, the Neva Grou.p had made its 

strongest e ffort ye t to cross the Neva 

and had taken three sma ll bridgeheads 

opposite Dubrovka. T he bridgeheads 

for a time raised a possibility of the 

German east front's breaking open just 

when the west front was closed , but 

afte r the Neva Group failed to ex pand 

them by the 29th , Manste in bega n 

mopping up the Ga itolovo pocket. The 

battle ended o n 2 October. I t had cost 

the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts over 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

twelve thousand men who were taken 

prisoner and an estimated three times 

as many wounded or killed, but it had 

also not come cheaply for the Germans 

who took over twenty-six thousand casualties. Several of the NORDLICHT divisions were "burned out," battle weary 

and weakened by losses. Manstein 

thought he could begin NORDLICHT in 

three weeks if he had to, but such an 

order was not likely to come. 68 

The Far North 

CrosscuI"Tenls 

In late April 1942, a day before the 

Soviet spring offensive against Army of 

Lapland began, General Dietl, the 

army's commander, had informed his 

superior headquarters, the OKW, that 

since the reinforcements allotted to 

him during the winter most likely 

would not all be delivered for another 

four or five months, he considered 

offensive operations by his army ruled 

out for the coming summer. A month 

later, in its directive on Army of 

Lapland operations in the summer, the 

OKW accepted his estimate and set 

only two specific tasks for his army: to 

reestablish a solid line east of Kestenga 

and then to transfer as many troops as 

could be spared from there to the 

Mountain Corps Norway. The Army of 

Lapland main effort, henceforth , 

would be in the Mountain Corps Norway sector, where the primary mission 

would be defense against possible 

United States-British invasion attempts. 11,e OKW also stated that it 

considered the Rybachiy Peninsula 

6SAOK fl, fa Kriegstagebuch Nr. 2,26 Sep- 2 Oct 42, 

AOK II 33 167/ 1 file. 

423 

very important to the conduct of the 

war in the far north (because, in Soviet 

hands, it impeded access to Pechenga 

and was a lingering ' threat to the rear 

of the Litsa River line) and instructed 

Dietl to make preparations for taking 

the peninsula. Since the OKW could 

not foresee the time when the troop 

and supply situations would permit 

anything of that sort, however, the date 

was left open-possibly to be in the 

late summer of 1942 or the late winter 

of 1942- 1943.69 

The OKW's concern over Allied 

landings, which was, in fact, mostly 

Hitler's, was exaggerated but not an 

absolute delusion. Early in the year, to 

satisfy in some measure the Soviet call 

for a second front, the British had put 

forward a plan known as Project 

SLEDGEHAMMER in which they envisioned large-scale raids along the coast 

of Europe from northern Norway to 

the Bay of Biscay. In the spring, 

SLEDGEHAMMER had evolved into a proposed cross-Channel operation, and 

Prime Minister Churchill had presented Operati<m JUPITER as an alternative . In JUPITER, Churchill envisioned landings at Pechenga and at 

Banak, the latter in northern Norway, 

as means of operating in direct conjunction with the Russians and of eliminating German air and naval bases 

that endangered Allied convoys on the 

arctic route. JUPITER aroused little enthusiasm among Churchill's own military advisers and none at all on the part 

6~OKW, Sid/v. WFSf, Knegsgeschichlltclle Au({'/hlllg, 

Kriegstagebuch, 1.4.·30.6.42, 23 Apr and 16 May 42, 

I.M.T. 1807 file; OK!¥, WFSt, Op. N,. 55798142. 

umg filer die weitere KampfJuehnmg <it's AOK Lapt)-

land, /6.5.42, AOK 20 27253/6 file. 
424 

of the Americans, but Churchill kept it 

alive in the Allied high councils.'o 

When Hitler made his surprise birtllday visit to Mannerheim on 4 June, 

which, incidentally, caused me Finns 

some anxiety and provoked a breach in 

consular relations between the United 

States and Finland, he conferred with 

Dietl, who told him that Army of 

Lapland would not have enough 

strengtll to take the Rybachiy Peninsula or to hold it if, by a stroke of luck, 

it were taken. Nevertheless, Hitler, unwilling to give up the effort, ordered 

Dietl to carryon the preparations and 

assured him that the weakness on the 

ground could be compensated for in 

the air. To General Stumpff, the Fifth 

Air Force commander, he then issued 

an order to ready me ground installations in normern Norway and Finland 

for "very strong forces."" 

In June, it appeared tllat Army of 

Lapland's next mission would be to 

occupy the Rybachiy Peninsula, and 

me plans were then given the code 

name WIESENGRUND ("meadow land"). 

Since Mannerheim was about to take 

over the Ukhta sector, which would 

release 7th Mountain Division, the 

troop problem appeared to be solved. 

In the first week of July, however, the 

OKW informed Dietl that 7th Mountain Division could not be transferred 

to the Pechenga area because it was 

impossible to bring up enough supplies 

to maintain anomer full strengm division there. The OKW proposed instead to send "in the long run" enough 

"static" troops (that is, without horses 

1°Churchill , Hinge of Fate, pp. 256. 323, 350, 448, 

477: Malloff and Snell, Strategic Plannillg, pp. 100. 

189. 235. 244 . 

110 KW, WFS1, Kriegsgtschichtlic}u Ableiflmg, Kriegstagebllch 1.4.-30.6.42, 5 Jun 42. I.M .T. 1807 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

or motor vehicles) to relieve 6th Mountain Division on the Litsa and to free it 

and 2d Mountain Division for 

WIESENGRUND. Dietl promptly protested that the Litsa line was no place 

for scantily equipped, third-rate 

troops, and WIESENGRUND was then 

shelved.72 

After the Russians fell back from 

Kestenga, in late May, me front in 

Finland became quiet. In June, Army 

of Lapland set up five recently received 

fortress battalions on me coast, and 

duringJuly and August it pushed work 

on coast artillery, emplacing twentyone batteries in the zone between Tana 

Fiord and Pechenga Bay. In the late 

summer, Headquarters, 210th Infantry 

Division, was brought in to command 

the fortress battalions and the coast 

artillery. In me meantime, Army of 

Lapland had been redesignated Twentieth Mountain Army. In July, XVIII 

Mountain Corps had staged a small 

attack to recover a hill off its left Aank 

mat had been left in Soviet hands when 

General Siilasvuo, commander of III 

Corps, had stopped his unit's operations. Omerwise, throughout the summer, tlle Germans and Russians both 

contented themselves with harassment, 

which for me most part took the form 

of starting forest fires in each other's 

areas. White phosphorus shells easily 

ignited the evergreen trees, and tlle 

fires occasionally burned across minefields or threatened installations. 73 

The one summer's operation that 

came near having strategic significance 

was Ope ra tion KLABAUTERMA NN 

12(Geb.) AOK 20, la Nr. 1405142, an Geb.-Korps NOTweg,n, 3.7.42, AOK 20 27252/8 file. 

7'JAOK Lllpplaml, la Kriegstagebuch NT. 2, AOK 20 

2725212 file; (Ceb.) AOK 20, la Kriegstagebllch, B011d 

III, I Sep 42. AOK 20 27252/3 file. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 425 

LooKOUT NEAR KESTENGA 

("hobgoblin"), which the German Navy 

and Air Force conducted from Finnish 

bases on the shore of Lake Ladoga. 

The idea of using small boats to interdict Soviet traffic on the la ke had occurred to Hitler in the fall of 1941, too 

late to be put into effect. It was revived 

in the spring o f 1942 wh e n th e 

Leningrad evacuation began. Hitle r 

was co n ce rn ed at the time that 

Leningrad would be completely evacuated; in which case, t11 e northern flank 

would lose its impo rta nce to the Soviet 

Union and large numbers of troops 

could be shifted to the south to oppose 

Operation BLAu. Consequently, he had 

ordered the Soviet boat traffi c on the 

lake to be "combated with all means."'· 

HOKW, WFSt, Krlt!gsgescllichtficht Abteilling. 

The German Navy brought German 

and Italian PT boats into action on the 

lake in early July. The Luftwaffe had its 

craft, Siebel-ferries, read y a month 

late r. The Siebel-ferries were twin 

hulled , powered by a irplane engines, 

and armed with antiaircraft guns. The 

invention of a Luftwaffe colone l, they 

had originally been built for the invasion of England. Born the navy and t11 e 

air rorce claimed the overall command 

and so further impaired an operation 

that was already hampered by lack or 

a ir cover and the hazards or naviga tio n 

on the lake that was studded with 

shoals and rocky olltcroppings. Soviet 

Kriegstagl!buch , 1.4. -30.6.42, 26 May 42. I.M.T. 1807 

fi le. 
426 

accounts claim a victory for the Soviet 

Navy, which had its own armed vessels 

on the lake. The Germans regarded 

KLABAUTERMANN as an enterprise that 

was foundering under the weight of its 

technical and command problems long 

before it was abandoned, which was 

done on 6 November when the lake 

began to freeze. 75 

The Murmansk Railroad 

Having a division to spare as a result 

of Operation WIESENGRUND'S being 

canceled , Dietl returned to the idea of 

a double thrust to the Murmansk Railroad-by XXXVI Mountain Corps to 

Kandalaksha and by the Finnish Army 

to Belomorsk. In conferences, on 8 

and 9 July, with General Erfurth, the 

OKW representative at Mannerheim's 

headquarters, and with JodI, on the 

13th, the project was further developed, and after Jodi carried it back 

to Flle/nw Headquarters, Hitler gave it 

his approva l in Directive 44 of 21 July 

1942. Twentieth Mountain Army was to 

prepare to take Kandalaksha in the fall 

and was assured that Leningrad would 

be taken in September at the latest to 

free the required Finnish forces and 

that 5t1l Mountain Division, which had 

been diverted to Army Group North in 

the winter and was still there, would be 

shipped to Finland by the end of September. To the Kandalaksha-Belomorsk 

operation, Hitler assigned the code 

name LACHSFANG ("salmon catch")." ; 

No doubt, Hitler wou ld have issued 

n Zicmke. Norther" Theater. p. 23 1: Ko\'alchuk . 

ulIingrati, pp. 273-84. 

76()K1 V; WFSI. OIl, Nr. 55 1275142, UWllng N r. 44, 

21.7.42, Ge rman High Level Directives, CMH files. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

the directive for LACHSFANG soon, in 

any case, to cap off the victory he 

believed was developing in the SOUtil 

and to isolate the Soviet Union in its 

defeat. He knew the Americans and 

British were opening an alternative 

route to tile Soviet Union through the 

Persian Gulf and I ran, but he expected 

to be able to close it as well and had 

Manstein in mind for the mission. 77 

The XXXVI Mountain Corps began 

its planning for LACHSFANG on 22 July. 

Success, it believed , hinged on two requirements, a fast breakthrough on the 

Verman River line and , subsequently, a 

quick thrust to Kandalaksha before the 

enemy could make another stand. The 

corps expected to have 80,000 troops, 

twice as many as it had employed in the 

summer of 1941; and Fifth Air Force 

agreed to provide 60 Stllkas, 9 fighters, 

and 9 bombers, more planes than had 

been available for the whole Army of 

Norway operations in the previous 

summer. lime was a critical element. If 

necessary, operations could be continued until I December, but they 

would be impossible thereafter because 

of deep snow and extremely short periods of daylight. T he late winter, midMarch to mid-April, would afford a 

second opportunity but a considerably 

less favorable one because the German 

troops were not trained for winter operations in the Arctic. The XXXVI 

Mountain Corps believed it would 

need four weeks for LACHSFA NG and 

wanted to time the operation to end in 

mid-November, since by then the 

length of daylight would be less [han 

seven hours, and in succeeding weeks, 

77Gl'1Ieml Halda's DlIil), Notes, \"01. II , 19 Aug 42. 

EAP 21 -g-I6I4/0 file. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

this amount would decrease by an hour 

a week. 18 

At Mannerheim's headquarters, Erfurth sounded out the Finnish reaction 

to LACHSFANG. In Directive 44, HiLler 

had described a companion Finnish 

thrust to Belomorsk as "desirable." 

DieLi and General Weisenberger, the 

commander of XXXVI Mountain 

Corps, regarded one as indispensable. 

Mannerheim's chief of staff, General 

Heinrichs, indicated that the Finnish 

attitude was "positive," but Leningrad 

would have to be taken first. The Finnish Command, he added, also regarded it "as necessary" that the left 

Aank of Army Group North be advanced east to the middle Svir.'9 The 

Germans had ex pected the first condition but not the second. At the OKH 

they told Mannerheim's representative, 

Keneraaliluutnami ("Major General") 

Paavo Talvela, that if the marshal insisted on the latter condition as a prerequisile , LACHSFANG would have to be 

dropped. This then became Llle subject 

of Heinrich's August visit to the Werwolf. In the talks there, Heinrichs exchanged a Finnish agreement to go 

ahead with LACHSFANG for a German 

promise to have Army Group North 

schedule an advance to the Svir River 

as its next assignment-after it had 

taken Leningrad. The Finns proposed 

to commit eight infamry divisions and 

an a rmored division in the Belomorsk 

operation. For Lllem also, time was critica l. Four of the divisions would have to 

come from the Isthmus Front north of 

7~XXXVI (Geb.) A.K., fiuill'lmgsautdlullg. Kriegstagebllcll lUl(l Ali/ligen ::1/ ';Lachsfimg," 22 Jul 42. XXXVI 

A.K. 29155/1 jile; XXXVI (Geb.) A.K. , Quo, Ulltedagm 

flier "ulfhsJallg:' 1.8.42, XXXVI A.K. 29155/2 file. 

a D" A:d,.. d. \'t'l'b. Stab Nord, Nr. 46142, KampJJlIl'hrllllf!. /1/ .Vonlfill1/lfllu/, 2.8. 42, H 221227 file. 

427 

Leningrad, and because of poor roads, 

their redeployment could not be accomplished in less than three or four 

weeks after Leningrad fell. so 

By itself LACHSFANG looked good; 

however, it depended on NORDLICHT, 

and NORDLICHT, as has been seen , was 

an uncertain enterprise. The German 

part of LACHSFANG also depended on 

XXXVI Mountain Corps' getting 5th 

Mountain Division, which would have 

had to leave Army Group Nordl by [5 

August to reach the front in Finland on 

time. But Kuechler insisted dlat Army 

Group North could not execute 'ORO· 

LICHT and defend the rest of its front if 

it had to release the division, and 

HiLler, finally, on [5 August, decided to 

leave 5th Mountain Division with Army 

Group North and send 3d Mountain 

Division to Finland instead. When 3d 

Mountain Division had to be diverted 

to Army Group North during the battle for dle botdeneck, Hitler drew the 

one conclusion left to him and, on I 

September, canceled LACHSFANG for 

[942 81 

The A retic Convo),s 

Early in June, German agents in 

Iceland reported Convoy PQ- 17 forming off the southwest coast of Iceland. 

Having that much lead time and 

twenty-four hours of daylight in the 

Arctic to assure good reconnaissance 

and air support, the German Navy 

800KH, CellSldH, 0/), Ahl. / ;V, Opera/ionell grgl!l/ fll,. 

M urmo nba}III, 5.8.42, H 22/227 file ; Grt'llIt'I' D'm'l' 

NOlI'S, 25 Aug 42, C-065q Civil-! file ; OKW, WFSf, 0,;. 

(1/) Nr. 55139142, Abscltrijt VOII FemscltreibCII Cw. 

Erfllrth , 10.8.42, OK'vV Ilg file . 

S IN. Gr. Nord, 10 Kriegstagebllch, 1. -31.8.42. 10 Aug 

42, 1-1 . Gr. Nord 75128/13 file; OKW, WFSI, OjJ. Nr. 

002820142, /5.8.42, German High Lc\'e1 DireC li\ e~. 

CMH files: H. Gr. Nord, la Kt'iegstagebllch , 1.-30.9.42. ) 

Sep -12. 1-1 . Gr. Nord 75 128/ 14 file. 
428 

undertook another try at getting its 

heavy ships into action. Luetww, Scheer, 

and six destroyers went to Alta Fiord , 

at the northernmost tip of Norway, and 

Tirpitz, Hipper, and six destroyers took 

up station in West Fiord, somewhat to 

the south on the Atlantic side of tile 

peninsula. After PQ- 17 left Iceland, 

on 27 June, the navy learned that, 

aside from cruisers and destroyers, the 

convoy also had a remote escort of two 

battleships and an aircraft carrier. 

(They were U.S.S. Washington, H .M.S. 

Duke of lin'k, and the British carrier 

Victorious.) The Nava l Staff then 

changed the deployment and ordered 

all the ships to Alta Fiord, where German air superiority would be sure to be 

sufficient to drive off the battleships 

and carrier. 8' 

As PQ - 17 approached the 

Spitzbe rgen- Bear Island passage, the 

time for the ships to set out had come, 

but the Naval Staff worried about the 

remote escort, and on 4 July, it concluded that a strike would be impossible. The next day, however, its confidence revived , when not only the 

battleships and the carrier but also the 

cruisers-there were seven in the escort-we re sighted steering west 83 

They were under orders, of which the 

Gennans, of course, were not aware, 

not to advance into the zone of German air dominance east of Bear Island 84 Admiral Raeder, commander in 

82Naval HiEr Diary. vol. 35, pp. 36, 57. For U.S. and 

British dispositions with regard to PQ- 17, see Morison. Battle of lilt! Atlantic. p. IBor and Roskill , War at 

Sea, vol. II , p. 136. 

83Na'/Jal War Diary, vol. 35, p. 70. 

8~ Ro kill , War at Sea. vol. II , p. 13 5. IVMV (vol. V, p. 

26 1) maintains that the escon would have been adequate to assure safe passage for PQ- 17, but the 

convoy was being used mel"ely as bait to lure out the 

1irpitz, and "the British Admiralty . .. regarded the 

security of the convoy as a secondary mission." 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

chief of the German Navy, and the 

Naval Staff then decided to let the 

ships sail, but Hitler strongly enjoined 

Generaladmiral ("Admiral") Rolf Carls, 

the commanding admiral, North, not 

to let them engage the convoy unless 

tile carrier could be located and eliminated first. At 1500 on the 5th, Tirpitz, 

Scheer, and eight destroyers put out 

from Alta Fiord. Luetww and four destroyers stayed behind because they 

had damaged their bottoms on the trip 

from West Fiord. 

Three ho urs after leaving Alta Fiord, 

Generaladmiral Otto Schniewind, in 

command aboard Tlrpitz, knew his 

ships had been sighted when his radio 

monitors intercepted a message sent in 

the clear by a Soviet submarine85 An 

hour later, a British aircraft on patrol 

off North Cape reported a second 

sighting. Both messages were picked 

lip in Berlin, where Raeder was torn 

for another hour between his desire to 

see the ships score a success against the 

convoy, which he knew by then was 

scattered and defenseless southeast of 

Spitzbergen, and his duty to respect 

Hitler's-not to mention his ownconcern for their safety. (The British 

Naval Staff had ordered the convoy to 

scatter at the time the cruiser force 

turned back.) At 2100, Raeder ordered 

Schniewind, through Carls, to break 

off the mission and return to base . 

Having second thoughts later, Raede r 

concluded that to attack convoys was 

made excessively difficult by Hitler's 

insistence on avoiding risks to the big 

ships. PQ-17, he concluded, had offered an opportunity that had not occurred be fore and was not likely to 

g:Waval \#,r Diary. vol. 35, pp. 70-72. See also 

Fu lm~r CmljrrmctJ, 1942 , pr. 86, 91 -93. 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 429 

-- -~ - ... 

- T il l:. CRUISER K OELN ON SrATION IN ALTA FIORD 

come aga in; there fore, it was probable 

that the big ships would never be used 

aga inst the convoys·6 

But Fifth Air Fo rce did not share the 

navy's doubts and troubles. It was in a 

position to hit PQ- 17 with devastating 

power. By the time the convoy depa rted from Iceland , Stumpff had assembled , in the vicin ity of North Cape, 

103 twin-engine J U-88 bombers, 42 

H E -III torpedo-bombers, 15 

Aoatplane torpedo-bombe rs, 30 S/llkas, 

and 74 lo ng-range reconnaissance 

planes, a total of 264 a ircraft." On 2 

Jul y, the reconnaissance planes deter86 Roskill. H'iJr at Sell, \'01. J I. p. 139: Irving. Thl' 

/J,.stnld;oll oj C01lVO)' PQ-17, pp. 163-66; N(wfll H(,r 

Diary. \'01. 35, p. 97. 

'11 13rilish Air r>.linislI) Pamphlct 24it p. 114. 

mined the positIOn and course of 

PQ- 17 , and on the 4th the bombers 

and torpedo-planes began the attack, 

claiming fo ur sin kings in the first 

strike. During the day, they saw the 

remote escort and the cruise rs turn 

back; and they saw the destroyers in 

the escort go off as well. (The commander of the destroyers, ex pecting 

"to see the cruisers open fire and the 

enemy's masts appea r on the horizon at 

any moment," had decided , without 

orders, to support the c ruisers.)BB 

T he reafter, PQ- 17 was left only with 

what protection two sublnarines and a 

few trawlers could give it, and Fifth Air 

Force hunted down the merchant ships 

88 Roskill, 1\(". (II SUI, \01. II, p. 141: M orison. /Jalllr 

f!! til,. Atlantic. p. 185. 
430 

ahnost at leisure. When it was over, the 

Germans believed they had sunk every 

last ship. I n fact, eleven of thirty-six 

merchant ships in PQ-17 did reach 

Soviet ports, but three of those we re 

almost to the point of sinking.s, 

The PQ- 17 disaster led the BriLish 

Admiralty to pro pose stopping the 

convoys until winter aga in brought the 

cove r of darkness, but Stalin, who rega rded any losses his allies might suffer 

in bringing aid to the Soviet Union as 

pe rfectl y acceptable, protested violently·· As a compromise, afte r an interval of nea rl y two months, PQ- 18 

sailed in early September. The Germans we re read y. Fifth Air Force had 

ra ised its H E-lJ 1 to rped o-bombe r 

strength to ninety-two planes, and the 

navy had a dozen submarines stationed 

in northern Norway. Raeder and the 

Nava l Staff struggled o nce more with 

their concerns about the surface ships 

and finally alerted Tilpitz, Scheel; Hipper, 

and the light cruiser Koeln for a sortie 

against eithe r PQ- 18 o r QP- 14, which 

was expected to be coming west at 

abo ut the same time. The hitch again 

was an a ircraft ca rrier in the escort, o n 

this occasio n, the U.S.-built, Britishmanned escort ca rrier Avenge>: To ge t 

rid of the ca rrie r, the navy organized 

seven submarines into a special gro up, 

Tra egerrod ("carrie r's death"), and Fifth 

Air Force agreed to direct a strong pa rt 

of its e ffort against the carri er. 

On 13 September, as PQ- 18 ente red 

the Spitzbergen- Bear Island passage, 

a submarine fired two torpedoes a t 

8uCcnc ra hnajo r (t. D. Hans- Dell e\" Hcrhu(h vo n 

Rohdcn, Die Kalllliffllelll'llllg dt'l' LII{tjfolle 5 ill Nom'egl'1l. 

1942, Ro hden 4376- 4408 fi le; Roskill, War at Sea, vol. 

II, p. 143; Irving, Convoy PQ- 17, p. 287. 

lIoChurchil 1. Hmgt' of Fate, pr. 269-73. Sec also 

~ \'01. V. p. 262 and I VOVSS, m l. II. p. 468f. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Avengl!1" and missed . On the same day, 

Fifth Air Force began its a ttack with a 

strike by fifty-six bombe rs. The bombe rs could not approach the ca rrie r that 

had its own aircraft defending it and 

that had the suppo rt of the antiaircraft 

cruiser Scylla. The German pilots a lso 

found it difficult to get at the merchant 

ships because they maintained a tight 

formation inside a screen of twelve 

destro ye rs. On the 14 th , fifty-fo ur 

bombers tried again, and from then on 

the attacks continued until the 19th . 

PQ- 18 fa red be tter than its predecessor but, nevertheless, lost thirteen out 

of fo rty ships. The price was a lso high 

fo r Fifth Air Force, which lost twe nty 

bombers in the first two strikes. When 

the carriel" continued on past Spitzbe rgen with PQ- 18 and then picked 

up QP- 14 on the return trip, the navy 

abandoned the sortie by the surface 

ships. In fact, it instructed the submarines as we ll to avoid QP- 14 since 

experience with PQ- 18 had shown that 

a ttacks on a convoy with surface and 

air protection were too risky·' 

Afte r PQ- 18 put in at Arkhangelsk, 

thus mollifying Sta lin fo r the time 

being, the convo ys we re aga in suspe nded . Shipping requireme nts fo r 

the North Afri ca n in vasio n , whi ch 

came in November, helped to justify 

the suspension, in Western Allied if not 

in Soviet eyes. The North Afri can landings also had a significant impact o n 

the anticonvoy fo rces. All of Fifth Air 

Force's HE-III torpedo-bombe rs and 

Illost of its J U -88s had to be transfe rred to the Mediterranean , leaving 

ki ll , HilT at Sea, \'01. II . pr. 278-86; Morison. 

Battle of Ihe AILal! ,ir, pp. j60--65 : BI-ilish Air jlli st \' 

Pamphlet 24 H. p. 115; Na-vol \Var Diary, mJ. 37. PI;. 

143. 153. 176. 212. 224 _ 
SUMMER ON THE STATIC FRONTS 

only the Aoatplanes, some Stllkas, and 

the long-range reconnaissance units in 

the north')2 With the winter's darkness 

!i2Roskill. " fir at Sea, voL J \ , p. 288; IVM\~ vol. V, p. 

262; British Air tvlinistry Pamphlet 248. p. 115. 

431 

setting in and the conditions for air 

operations becoming poor, the immediate effect of the loss was not significant. What was important was that the 

German Luftwaffe would never again 

be able to muster similar strength in 

the Arctic. 
CHAffER XXI 

The Change of Seasons 

Duty and Country 

A New Spirit 

The "Ni shagu nawd!" ("Not a step 

back! ") order was meant to do more 

than bring a halt to a retreat that was 

threatening to get out of hand. Alexander Werth , who was the London 

Sunday TImes correspondent in Moscow 

observed, " ... something must have 

happened . .. in high Government, 

Military and Party quarters, for on the 

30th [of July] the whole tone of the 

Press radically changed. No more lamentations and imprecations ... but orders, harsh, strict, ruthless orders. 

Clearly what was aimed at above all was 

precise military results . .. . '" W. Averell 

Harriman, who was in Moscow two 

weeks later as President Roosevelt's 

special envoy, reported that he had 

found Stalin and everyone else he saw 

"exactly as determined as ever.'" If, as 

Stalin most likely believed, the German's ultimate objective was neither 

Stalingrad nor the Caucasus but 

Moscow, then the nation and the 

armed forces were going to have to be 

readied by every means for tl,e decisive 

battle. 

IAlexandcr Werth . TlIP y('(ly ojSlalingrad (New York: 

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 194 7), p. 164. 

2W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, SPecial Envoy to 

Ch urchill (Iud Stalin, 194 J - /9-/6 (New York: Random 

House. 1975), p. 168. 

As the UNi shagu nazad! " order was 

being read to the troops, the massive 

apparatus of public communications 

was swinging into action to raise the 

will of the Russian nation , not just that 

of Stalin and the Communist party, 

behind it. A national, "patriotic" war 

had been proclaimed in 1941, but the 

government had preferred, particularly in the winter and spring of 1942, 

to emphasize the communist-fascist aspect of the conflict and the inevitable, 

and speedy, victory of communism. In 

his May Day order of the day, Stalin 

had called for a total German defeat 

during 1942-" The Pravda editorial 

marking the start of the second year of 

the war had stated that "all of Hitler's 

military as well as political plans have 

completely collapsed" and "all prerequisites have been created for defeat of 

the hateful enemy in 1942."4 

After July, the war became a "patriotic" Russian war, and the word 

"Russian ," hardly ever used before in 

con text with the Soviet state, was given 

prominence in print and in military 

orders. Heroes of the "old army," from 

Alexander Nevskiy, who defeated the 

Teutonic Knights in 1242, to Alexey 

Brusilov, who, in 1916, staged the best 

conducted (and most costly) Russian 

aUSSR Embassy, llIfonlllllioll Bulletin, no. 53, 2 May 

42. 

4Pravdll , 24 Jun 42. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 433 

THE "PATRIOTI C WAR" : A TANK CREW AND THEIR TANK NAMED " K UTUZOY " 

offensive of World War I, were publicized as examples for Soviet officers 

and troops. Newspapers printed accounts of Russian military achievements from the Middle Ages through 

World War I. In September, the prominent writer Sergey Sergeyev-Tsenskiy 

rushed into print several chapters of a 

novel entitled The Brusilov B,·eakthrough 

that portrayed the general as "a 

sagacious strategist and loyal patriot, 

trusting in the might of Russian arms 

and the adamant spirit of the Russian 

Army."5 The Stalin Prize winner, Konstalllin Simonov, staged a play, titled 

The Russians, in which one of the 

characters was a former Tsarist officer 

who put on his old uniform to fight 

again when his town was besieged by 

the Nazi Germans· Stalin's 6 September appeal to the troops concluded 

with the sentences, "The Russians have 

always defeated the Prussians. The military tradition of the Russian people 

lives on in the heroic deeds of Soviet 

fighting men. "7 

The duty of the patriot was also to 

hate the enemy. Mikhail Sholokhov, 

author of And Quiet Flows Ihe Don, wrote 

"The Science of Hatred." [n "Cherish 

Your Hatred for the Enemy," Alexey 

Tolstoy told the country, " .. . at this 

6USSR Embassy. Information Bulietin, no. 112. 19 Sep 

42. 

"USSR Embassy, Info rmalinn Bulletin, no. 116.29 Sep ;/-1. C r. B, la N r. 2 965142, Ferns/m.ult W in 10. 9 .42, Pz. 

42. AOK 4 28183/5 file . See p. 3i 8. 
434 

time our one overwhelming sentiment, 

our one passion must be hatred for the 

enemy. Man must rise from h,s bed 

filled with stubborn hatred, WIth the 

same hatred he must work and fight, 

and with hatred unsatisfied go to 

sleep."8 lIya Ehrenburg, who as columnist for the army newspaper Red Sial' 

would be in the vanguard of the "hate 

the enemy" campaign for the next two 

and one-half years, received the Stalin 

Pri ze for a novel , The Fall of Pans, m 

which he delivered two messages: that 

it was impossible to live under the 

Germans and that, in the words of one 

of the characters, "You won't get rid of 

them with tears. They're rats. You've 

got to kill them."" 

Out of the public view and that of the 

outside world, the "patriotic war" and 

"hate the enemy" campaigns produced 

an offshoot: mistrust of the Western 

Allies, in particular Russia's old imperialist rival, Great Britain. In August, 

Prime Minister Churchill , who had 

gone to Moscow to persuade Stalin to 

give up the idea of a second front m 

1942, proposed sending British and 

American air forces to help defend the 

Caucasus. Stalin had said that would be 

"a great help."'o When Generalmayor 

P. l. Bodin, the ch.ef of operatIons 111 

the General Staff, went to the 1i·al1.Scaucas1IS Front in September he reportedly told General Tyulenev: 

Are you aware that the Allies are trying to 

take advantage of our difficult posiuon 

and obtain our consent to the despatch of 

SUSS R Emb<lssy. Illformation Bulletin , no. 91. 30 Jul 

42. 

II ll ya Ehrenburg, The Fall of Paris (London : 

HUlchinson & Co., 1942), p. 368. 

'OChurchill , Hinge of Fate. p. 483; I-Iarriman and 

Abel, Special Envay, p. 161. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

British troops into Transcaucasia' That, of 

course, cannot be allowed. The State Defense Committee considers ule defense of 

Transcaucasia a task of vital state importance and it is our duty to take all measures 

to repel the enemy·s. attack, wear them out 

and defeat them. Hitler's hopes and the 

desires of tl, e Allies must be b une . ... . d 11 

The loss for a second time of vast 

stretches of Soviet territory and the 

conversion to the patriotic war brought 

the partisan movement to the forefront 

of the war effort in the late summer. By 

the Central Staffs reckoning, membership in the movement reached 

100,000 by September.' 2 At the end of 

August, the most successful partIsan 

commanders from Belorussia and the 

northern Ukraine had been brought to 

Moscow for a series of con ferences 

with Stalin and members of the Politbu.ro. These conferences had enhanced 

the status of the movement and had 

been, no doubt, also calculated to show 

that the Soviet authorities could reach 

at will into the territory behind the 

enemy's lines.' 3 To cap the conferences, 

Stalin, on 5 September, Issued an order 

"On the Tasks of the Partisan Movement" in which he called for a "broader 

and deepe r" development of partisan 

warfare and expansion of the movement "to encompass the whole peopl e."" The ca ll for a partisan 

movement "of the whole people" was 

taken up in party resolutions and the 

press. BrieRy, after 6 September, when 

Marsha l VOl'oshilov was named ItS commander in chie f, the partisan move11Shtemenko, Soviet General Suiff, p. 62. 

llBolsha),u S(JIJetskaya Entsiklopedi),a. 1978, vol. 19. p. 

235. 

13Vershigora , Lyudi, pp. 392-95. 

l.(/VMV, vol. V, p. 288. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

ment achieved the nominal status of a 

separate branch in the armed forces. 15 

ANew A "thorily 

During the revolution the word 'officer" had been excised from the Soviet 

military vocabulary and 'commander" 

substituted. Thereafter, through the 

first year of the war, rank and authority 

were counterbalanced by a concept of 

socialist equality and by political mistrust. After July 1942, 'officer" became 

an acceptable equivalent for "commander." More importantly, the relationship of the military, particularly the 

officer corps, to the state was redefined. Professional competence was 

recognized, rewarded, and given fuller 

play, and the mjJitary leadership was 

released from overt political tutelage 

and surveillance. 

By a decree of 29 July 1942, the 

Presidium of the Supreme Soviet authorized three medals for officers only, 

the Orders of Suvorov, Kutllzov, and 

Alexander Nevskiy. 16 The orders were 

to be awarded to 'commanders for 

outstanding services in organizing and 

directing war operations."" In effect, 

they declared the Soviet officers to be 

he irs to the old Russian military tradiL$ln November 1942, because Kthe Soviet forces 

were about LO go o\'er from the strategic defensive LO 

the strategic offensive," the post of commander in 

chicI' of the panisan movement was aboiished. and 

the Ccmnll Staff was reincorporated into the Supreme Headquaners. IVMV; vol. V. p. 290. 

L61y ushkevich, \oorztzheml)'p sily, p. 506. Alexander 

Suvorov (1729- 1800) served the Empress Catherine 

II as a military reformer and as a field general who 

WOIl every battle he foughl. Mikhail KULUZOV 

(1745-1813) was the Russian com mander in chief 

against Napoleon from 1812 until his death. 

"USSR Embassy. /IiJonnalioli BulJelill, no. 101 , 22 

Aug 42. 

435 

tion. For the moment, it was also significant that each of those for whom an 

order was named had been notably 

successful at getting his troops to stand 

against a superior enemy-Alexander 

Nevskiy at Lake Peipus (1242), Suvorov 

at Ismail (1791), and Kutuzov at Borodino (1812). 

The Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov, 

and Alexander Nevskiy would go 

mostly to commanders of larger units 

and to staff officers. The Order of 

Kutuzov, for instance, was to be 

awarded for 'well worked-out and executed plans of operations by afronl, an 

army, or a separate formation, as a 

result of which a serious defeat is inAicted on the enemy .... "18 Recognition for junior officers and enlisted 

men had been provided for in May, in 

anticipation of a victorious 1942 campaign, with the official establishment of 

the designation "guards" and the 

founding of the Order of the Patriotic 

War. The latter was to be awarded for 

specific achievements: a certa in 

number of planes shot down or tanks 

knocked out, a successful assault on an 

enemy blockhouse , a certain number 

of enemy firing points destroyed by a 

tank crew, and so forth'" In the summer, to stimulate professionalism in the 

ranks and "popularize the heroism of 

the Soviet soldier," the army began to 

award honorar y titles , such as, 

IS/bid., no. 109. 12 Scp 42. 

I'/bid., no. 62. 23 fI.·lay 42. T)'lIshkcvich, \fJoruuU'/I1I)" 

si/)" p. 506. The Soviet Armed Forces were on Ihe way 

toward bccoming probably the most decorated in 

World War II. By the war's end, 7 million mcd;lls, 

including 11 ,600 Hcro of the Soviet Union awards. 

were given to individuals. Divisions and rcgimcills 

I'cccived 10,900 unit citations. and the designation 

"guards~ was giyen to II field armies. 6 tank armies. 

80 corps of various kinds, and 200 divisions. Dcborin 

and 1elpukhovski),. /lOgi i uroki, p. 357f. 
436 MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

WOi\'IAN S N IPER LIEUTENANT POSES WITH HER RIFLE AND M EDALS 

"Sniper," "Expert Machine Gunner," 

and "Expert Artillerist."2. 

Indirectly but, nevertheless, emphatically, Stalin let it be known that 

henceforth, professionalism, initiative, 

and merit would take precedence in 

decisions on appointments to command. In the late summer, Pravda, 

which did not ordinarily carry such 

material, published a play by Alexander Korneichuk called The Front. 

Korneichuk later told British correspondent Werth that Stalin had personally given him the "general idea" [or 

the plot. 21 In The Front, young army 

commander, Ognev, demonstrated 

mastery of the techniques of modern 

2°/VM V, vol. v, p. 307. 

2 1Wcnh, Russia at Wcu: p.423n. 

warfare. His opponents were the front 

commander, Godov, a fossili zed relic of 

the civil war, and afront staff filled with 

Gorlov's "yes-men." At the end, Ognev 

was given command of thefront with a 

speech that read: 

5Lalin says that talented yo ung generals 

have got to be promoted more boldly to 

leading positions on a level with the veteran commanders and that the men to be 

promoted are those who are capable of 

waging war in the modern way. not in the 

olef-fashioned way. men who are capable of 

learning from the experience of modern 

warfare ... ,22 

S. M. Shtemenko says, "We, the youth 

of the General Staff ... regarded The 

22Alexander Korncichuk, The Fmlll, in FOllr Soviet 

I1vr Plays (London : Hutchinson & Co .. 19'14), p. 57. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

Front as an expression of the Party's 

policy, as its appeal for an improvement in standards of military skill and 

leadership. "23 

Ro kossovski y, himself one of the 

younger generals being advanced, saw 

anothe r aspect of the new approach to 

command , which he describes in the 

following anecdote: 

Shortly before the Voronezh operation I 

came again to Moscow to report to the 

Supreme Comma nder. Wnen I had 

filllshed and was about to leave, Stalin said, "Don't go yet. " 

He f>honed Poskryobyshev [Stalin's secretary and asked him to call in a general 

just removed from the command of afmnt. 

The following dialogue took place: " You say we have punish ed yo u 

wrongly?" "Yes, because the GHQ [Slavka] representative kept getting in my way." "How?" 

"He interfered with my orders, held 

conferences when it was necessary to act, gave contradictory instructions ... In general he tried to override the commander." 

"So he got in your way. But you were in 

command of thefmnt?" "Yes." 

"The Party and the Government entrusted the[lVnt to you .... Did you have a tel:ph~ne? 

Yes. 

"Then wh y didn't ~ou report that he was 

getting in rour way? "I didn t dare complain about your 

representative." 

Well, that is what we have punished you 

for: not daring to pick up the receiver and 

phone up, as a result of which you failed to 

carry out the operation." 

I walked out of the Supreme Commander's office with the thought that, as a 

new-Aedged fnmt commander, 1 had just 

been taught an object lesson.

24 

With less publicity but, probabl y, as 

ZlShlemenko, Soviet GeliEral Staff, p. 66. 

24Rokossovskiy, Soldi~'s Du.ty, p. 11 8. 

437 

much or more consequence and e ffect 

than most or all of the other adjustments to the military system, Stalin also 

brought visibly to the fore his two best 

generals, Zhukov and Vasilevskiy. Genera l Zhukov's appointment, in August, 

as deputy supreme commande r elevated his status in the chain of command and diminished-although only 

a certain d egree-the distance between the supreme commander and 

the top milita ry professional. General 

Vasilevskiy had less field command experience than did Zhukov, but be had 

seen more service at or near the top of 

the General Staff than any other officer except Marshal Shaposhnikov. 

Owing to Shaposhnikov's d ecli ning 

health , Vasilevskiy had been ac ting 

chief of the General Staff several times 

and had carried a good deal of the 

chie f's work before his own appointment to the position in June 1942. 

Shaposhnikov had been known for his 

charm and excellence as a military theoretician but not for his ability to stand 

up to Stalin. Vasilevskiy, like Zhllkov, 

was self-confident and willing to take 

the initi a tiv e. H e had much of 

Shaposhnikov's cha rm, a nd "at tJl e 

same time, he knew how to defend his 

own point of view in front of the Supreme Commander."25 

After August 1942, Zhukov and Vasilevskiy, as a team, became Stalin's 

principa l military advis ers. He nceforth, at least until late in the war, he 

consulted both of them on strategic 

and operationa l d ec isions, whereas, 

formerly, Stavka decisions had often 

been made by him and whichever of 

the members he chose to draw lIpo n2~ Sht l1lenko, Souil'l Gmerai Staff, pp. 49. 126- 28. 

See also VOY, p. 88. 
438 

which, in effect, meant by him alone. 

As a team, Zhukov and Vasilevskiy also 

became the premier Stavka field representatives. They were not, as they and 

others had been in the past, attached to 

front headquarters. Instead, they coordinated groups of fmnts, and they bore 

the authority to issue orders and instructions to the field commanders. 

Zhukov apparently also acquired 

chain-of-command status that put him 

between the other officers and Stalin. 

General Moskalenko tells that when he 

was relieved of command of Fi,·st 

Guards Army and summoned to the 

Kremlin in September 1942, it was 

Zhukov who talked to Stalin (while 

Moskalenko waited in an anteroom) 

and delivered the decision on 

Moskalenko's next appointment. 26 

Although they held their powers entirely at Stali n's pleasure, Zhukov's and 

Vasilevskiy's superior positions in the 

command structure were later-again 

to a cenain degree-formalized . In 

December 1942, Vasilevskiy secured 

the appointment of General Antonov 

as his deputy, and thereafter, Antonov 

took over most of the chief of the 

General Staffs regular work. In May 

1943, the State Defense Committee 

named Zhukov and Vasilevskiy, both by 

then marshals of the Soviet Union, to 

be first and second deputy commissars 

of defense. 27 

After 3 September 1942, when he 

sent the Zhukov-Vasilevskiy team to 

take charge at Stalingrad , Stalin, apparently, was also willing to go into 

what may be described as voluntary, 

partial military eclipse. The winter and 

26 /VMV, \'01. V. p. 326: oska llko: Na rllgaUI/)(ufllom I/(lpravlenii, pp. 348, 36 J-i4. 

27Shtemenko. Sovid Gel/eral Staff. pp. 126-29: 

TYlishke,"jch, Vooruzherlll)t jlly, p. 3 16. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

spring offensives had been his brainchildren. The counteroffensives in the 

coming fall and winter were going to 

be Zhukov's and Vasilevskiy's. Concerning the initial plan for an attack at 

Stalingrad, the Short Hist01·Y states: 

"This plan was set down on a map 

signed by General G. K. Zhukov, Deputy Supreme Commander in Chief, 

and General A. M. Vasilevskiy, Chief of 

the General Staff, and endorsed by J. v. 

Stalin, Supreme Commander in 

Chief." At the meeting of the State 

Defense Committee that gave final approval to the plan in November, the 

Slwrt History says, "The Supreme Commander in Chief, who had devoted a 

great deal of time to tl1e preparations 

for the operation, listened attentively 

to the arguments put forward by 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy."28 

In the Soviet view, then and now, the 

near-ultimate recognition was given to 

the military professionals on 9 October 

1942, in a decree that abolished the 

political commissar system and established unitary command. The decree, 

issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, in its significant parts, 

read: 

The system of war commissars which was 

established in the Red Army during the 

Civil War was based on mistrust of the military commands, which at that time still had 

in them specialists who were opposed to 

Soviet power. 

I n the years after the Civil War the process of reorienting and training the military 

commands was completed. As a result of 

the training and of the success in all areas 

of Soviet life, the situation of the military 

commands in the Red Army had changed fundamentally. 

uvo v (Kratka),ll Istoriya), p. 213. See also I VM V; \'01. 

VI, p. 27 and Zhukov. Memoirs, pp. 380-88. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

The present patriotic war against the 

German invaders has welded our commands together and produced a large corps of talented new commanders who have 

gathered experience and who will remain 

true to their honor as officers to the death. Therefore, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet directs: 

I. The establishment of complete unity of 

command in the Red Army and the transfer of full responsibility to the commanders 

and chiefs of staff in all units of the Red 

Army. 

2. TI,e abolition of the war commissars . . . [in major units] and of politruks in lesser 

UllIts.

2 

The decree did not attribute any deleterious effects to the commissar system; it only found the commissars no 

longer necessa ry. The commissars had 

been and continued to be portrayed as 

dedicated men , frequently of heroic 

stature. In The Front, for instance, it was 

the commissa r, Gaidar, who, in the final 

scene, brought Gorlov to account and 

secured Ognev's promotion . 

In fact, the abolition was not as complete as it appeared. A "considerable 

number" of commissars who had acquired on-the-job experience, as it 

were, were conve rted to line duty and 

given commands of their own , but that 

may have owed mostl y to a shortage of 

officers 3 • As it had in 1940, tile structure of the commissar system survived . 

The 9 October decree removed the 

commissar but restored tile wmpolit, 

tl,e deputy commander for political 

affairs. Hencefortll, a commander did 

have authority to make and carry out 

decisions at his own discretion, and the 

zampo/it, in military matters, was under 

n pz. AOK 4, Ie Nr. 181l142, Anlage J, Er/.ass des 

Pratsidiu.trls des Dba-slm Sow jets deT UdSSR, 10.9.42, 

1).11.42, P,. AOK 4 29365/8 file. 

30/VOVSS, vol. II , p. 489. 

439 

his command , but the wmpolit could 

report his judgments of the commander's performance through a separate c h a nnel 3 ' In the high e r 

commands, armies and fivnts in particular, the deputies for political affairs 

continued (with the commanders and 

chiefs of staff) as membe rs of the military councils. While they could no 

longer dispute or countermand the 

commanders' orders, tIley were still 

very often consequential and well-connected political figures whom tile commanders could not lightly disregard. 

The abolition of the commissar system 

appears to have removed the stigma of 

potential unreliability from the officers 

and, in tl,e longer run, to have created 

a kind of partnership between tl,e political and tl,e military leaders that bOtll 

groups found useful, especially in promoting their careers. 

Most particularly, the abolition of the 

commissar system in no wise signaled a 

decline of party influence or interest in 

the armed forces . While the total 

number of Communist party members 

in the Soviet Union as of 1 January 

1943 was still down somewhat from I 

January 1941, 3.8vs. 3.9 million (after a 

large drop, probably as a result of war 

losses, to 3 million on I January 1942), 

the number of party members on military assignments had risen between 1 

January 1941 and I January 1943 from 

654,000 to 1.9 million . A full third of 

that increase had come in 1942, most of 

it between May and December, and as 

of I January 1943, slightly more than 

50 percent of the party membership 

was on military duty, as compared to 

3 1 Ra ymond L. earthoff. Soviet Military Doctrine 

(Glencoe. III.: Free Press, 1953), p. 240. 
440 

16.5 percent in 1941. 32 Concurrently 

with the "patriotic war" campaign, the 

Army's Main Political Administration 

undertook, by means of a special council, to improve the political education 

of the troops, which was found "often 

to have had a formal, bureaucratic 

character" in the past."" 

The Soviet Condition 

The advances to Stalingrad and the 

Caucasus brought the Soviet territory 

under German occupation to 1 million 

square miles. This was less than an 

eightll of the total Soviet land area, but 

it was almost half of the European 

Soviet Union, and it was equal to a full 

third of the United States (Alaska and 

Hawaii excluded). In those 1 million 

square miles, 80 million people, almost 

40 percent of the population, had 

lived, and this area contained 47 percent of the cultivated land-nearly all 

of the best land in the Soviet Union. 

From there also had come 71 percent 

of tl,e pig iron, 58 percent of the steel, 

63 percent of the coal, and 42 percent 

of the cou ntry's electrical energy'" 

However, as great as the damage was, if 

the Germans did not break out in some 

new direction and if Soviet confidence 

could be restored , the Soviet war potential was going to be substantially 

greater at the end of the 1942 summer 

than it had been at the same time in the 

prevIous year. 

Although the retreat forced another 

wave of evacuations, war production 

was on the rise. Reportedly, the factories turned out 22,681 combat aircraft 

HDcborin and Telpukhovskiy, /(ogi i IIwhi, p. 375 ; 

IVMV, vol. v. p. 313. 

33IVM\~ voL V, p. 307. 

34/bid., vol. VI , p. 14. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

and 24,446 tanks in 1942, a good twothirds more aircraft and better than 

three times as many tanks as in 1941. 

The German output was 15,456 aircraft and 5,958 tanks. In 1942, Soviet 

artillery output exceeded 33,000 pieces 

larger than 76-mm., more tl,an twice as 

many as had been produced in 1941. 35 

As of November 1942, the Soviet 

forces in the field numbered 6.5 million men"6 The German and allied 

troops in the four army groups on the 

main front totaled about 3.4 million, 

and the German and Finnish contingents in the far north would have 

brought the number to about 4 million. 

The Soviet figure, again, apparently 

does not include Stavka reserves, which 

are given as 162 divisions, 188 brigades, 

and 181 regiments at tl,e start of the 

1942-1943 winter campaign'" 

During the summer, organizational 

improvements continued. Since late 

1941, the armies had been using the 

mobile groups as partial substitutes for 

the disbanded corps. In the mobile 

groups, two or more divisions operated 

under the ad hoc command of one of 

their headquarters, which had to direct 

the group and its own troops as well 

and generally did not have the staff 

and the communications to do both. In 

1942, twenty-eight rifle corps headquarters were formed , enough to take 

over the functions formerly assigned to 

the mobile groups. In the tank corps' 

structure, the motorized rifle brigades 

were not providing enough infantry 

support to make the corps equal 

3~/bid., vol. V, p. 48; Deborin and Telpukhovs ki y, 

Iwgi i uroki, p. 260; Boelcke , Rllestung. p. 24 r. 

36/VMV, vol. VI , p. 20. 

370KH, GenSttlN, Fremde Heere 0 5t, N r. 2669142, 

Gegenuebnsiellulig lier verhuendelrn 1I11d der SOW4 

jelrussisdll!1l Kraefte, Stand 20.9.42, 1-1 22/235 file; 

Golubovich , "Souialliya strategicheskikh," p. 17, 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

matches for German panzer divisions; 

conseq uentl y, in September 1942 , 

mechanized corps began to be created. 

These consisted of three mechanized 

brigades (a regiment of motori zed infantry and a tank regiment in each) 

and one tank brigade, and they had 

175 tanks, 7 more than the tank corps 

had. During the course of the year also, 

the "guards" designation had come to 

be regarded as more than a formal 

mark of distinction , and guards formations were given larger allotments of 

troops and weapons. The strength of a 

guards rifle division , for instance, was 

set at 10,670 men; that of an ordinary 

rifle division was 9,435. A guards rifle 

division was also allowed a third more 

automatic weapons and 4 more artillery pieces (9 batteries rather than 8) 

than a normal infantry division'"· As 

had been the case with the shock armies, however, it appears that the 

guards designation was often given before the other requirements were met. 

The most effective weapons were 

being brought into play in increased 

numbers. The T - 34!76B, with a 

longer-barreled gun and an improved 

turret made its appearance in time for 

the Stalingrad fighting. The IL-2, 

Shtu.rmovik, which had proved its worth 

as a dive-bomber in an antitank role , 

accounted for better than a third of the 

1942 aircraft production (7,654 

planes). Although Soviet designers had 

developed a number of good automatic 

weapons, particularly submachine 

guns, the Commissariat of Defense had 

somewhat neglected production of 

these before the war."9 By mid-1942, 

3l1Tyushkevich , lbomzlml?l)'e sil)', pp. 284, 289, 3 17. 

39PelTen, Fighting Vehicles, p. 35; Deborin and 

Telpukhovskiy,Itogi i liroki. p. 260. SeeIVOVSS, vol. I, 

pp. 415. 452. 

441 

the troops were getting large numbers 

of what would become the infantry'S 

most distinctive weapon , the drum-fed 

PPSh41 (Postolet-Pulemyot Shpagina) 

submachine gun. Designed by G. S. 

Shpagin, it has been described as "one 

of the most crudely made guns ever 

issued on a large scale."4o Nevertheless, 

it was reliable and effective as well as 

cheap to manufacture, and simple to 

operate and maintain." 

Counteroffensive Plans 

Ope-ration Uranus 

While Churchill and Harriman were 

in Moscow in August, Stalin told them 

about "a great counteroffensive in two 

directions" that he was going to launch 

"soon" to cut off the Germans. Harriman went back to Washington believing Stalingrad would be held, and in 

November he thought the offensive 

begun then around Stalingrad was the 

one "Stalin had promised ... in AuguSt."42 In the sense that the idea of a 

counteroffensive at Stalingrad had occured to Stalin in August-as it had 

also to Hitler-the November offensive may have been what Stalin had 

mentioned to Harriman , but tlle counteroffensive, as it was prepared and 

executed , was not born until a month 

after the Stalin-Churchill-Harriman 

meeting, and the idea, apparently, was 

not Sta lin 's but Zhukov's a nd 

Vasilevskiy's. '13 

4° lan V. Hogg and John Weeks, M ilitary Small Anns 

of the Twentieth Century (New York: Hippocrcne Books, 

1977), p. 104. 

41/VOVSS, vol. I, p. 452. 

42 j-larriman and Abel, Special Envoy. pp. 162. 168, 

174 . 

43See p. 456. 
442 

GENERAL N. F. VATUTIN . 

COMMANDER OF SOUTHWEST FRONT 

As Zhukov tells it, he, Vasilevskiy, 

and Stalin were discussing on 12 September how to break Sixth Army's hold 

on the Volga north of Stalin grad when 

it occurred to him and Vasilevskiy that 

they "would have to seek some other 

solution [than the shallow Aank attacks 

then being triedl." Stalin's curiosity was 

aroused, and Zhukov and Vasilevskiy 

worked all the next day in the General 

Staff going over the possibilities. Late 

d1at night they returned to Stalin's office and proposed the following: "First, 

to continue wearing out the enemy 

with active defense; second, to begin 

preparation for a counteroffensive in 

order to deal the enemy a crushing 

blow at Stalingrad to reverse the strategic situation in the south in our favor." 

Then they went to Stalingrad , where 

the battle was in a critical phase, to 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

study the conditions first hand, Zhukov 

to Stalingrad Fmnt and Vasilevskiy to 

Southeast Fmnt. Late in the month , on 

the 27d1 or the 28d1, they returned to 

Moscow and presented their conception of the counteroffensive plotted 

on a map that both had signed and to 

which, after some discussion, Stalin 

added the word "Approved" and his 

signature" The counteroffensive was 

code-named URANUS. 

In October, while Sixty-second Army 

kept the battle alive in Stalingrad, 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy worked out the 

specifics of URANUS and supervised a 

buildup on Sixth and Fourth Panzer 

Armies' Aanks. A major requirement 

was to activate a new front headquarters, Southwest Fmnt, in the zone of the 

main effort on the Don upstream from 

Kletskaya. Southwest Fmnt would take 

over Sixth, First Guards, Sixty-third, and 

Twentyji1'St Armies, or better than half of 

Rokossovskiy's Don Front, and would 

also receive the Fifth Tank Army. Command of Southwest Front went to General 

N. F. Vatutin, who, at age forty-one, 

was apparently one of the younger 

generals being brought to the fore. His 

only previous field command in the 

war was W:>ronezh Front, for which he had 

nominated himself and to which, it is 

said, Stalin had appointed him on the 

spur of the moment." The command 

of W:>ronezh Fmnt, which General Golikov received as Vatutin's replacement, 

had not required a particularly high 

order of generalship, and Vatutin's selection for the crucial command in 

URANUS probably owed more to his 

HZhukov, Memoirs, pp. 382-87. See also Vasilevskiy. 

"Delo, " p. 242; Samsonov, Stalingradskaya bitva, p. 347; 

and NMV, vol. VI, p. 27. 

uVasilevski y, "Delo," p. 223; vav, p. 172 . 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

earlier service as Vasilevskiy's deputy in 

the General Staff. While his age, in fact, 

may have counted after Budenny (fiftynine) and Shaposhnikov (sixty) became 

inactive, the top Soviet generals were 

all rdativel y young men. Eremenko 

was fifty; Vasilevskiy and TImoshenko, 

forty-seven ; Zhukov, forty-six; Ro kossovskiy, forty-six; Meretskov, forty-five; 

Voronov, forty-three; Chuikov and Golikov, forty-two; and Grechko, thirtynine. 

The four field armies assigned to 

Southwest Front were reinforced with 

infantry and given mobile forces in the 

form of tank, mechanized , and cavalry 

corps. The same was also done opposite Fourth Panzer Army to Stalingrad Front's SixtyfouTth, Fifty-seventh, 

and Fiftyfirst ATm;es. Fifth Tank ATmY, 

under General Ley tenant P. L. Romanenko, consisted of 6 rifle divisions, 

2 tank corps, a guards tank brigade, a 

cavalry corps, and artillery, antiaircraft, 

and mortar regiments's It had been 

out of the front throughout the summer, being rebuilt and serving as a 

backstop against a German thrust towa rd Moscow via Orel and Sukhinichi. 

The initial o bjectives of URANUS 

would be to tie down Sixth Army on 

the front between the Don and the 

Volga and, in Stalingrad, to smash the 

Rumanian armies on its le ft and right, 

and to thrust behind Sixth Army to cut 

its lines of communication across the 

Don. Fifth Tank ATmY was to be the 

spearhead on the north, where, after 

its rifle divisions, four in lhe first wave 

and two in the second, opened a gap in 

Rumanian Third Army's front, the two 

tank corps would break through aim46(Ge neral Staff of the Red Army], Sbomik mal/!-

ria/ou po iz.ucheni)'u op),ta vo)'ny, Nomer 6, Apr-May 43. 

443 

ing for Kalach on the Don due west of 

Stalingrad. Following behind the tank 

corps, the cavalry corps and three of 

Sixty-thiTd Army's rifle divisions would 

fa n out on the right to cover the flank 

by establishing a line on the Chir River. 

Inside the arc of the tank army's advance, elements of Twentyfirst Army and 

Don Front's Sixtyfifth Anny were to break 

through past K1etskaya and to encircle 

fou r German divisions Sixth Army had 

stationed west of the Don. They would 

get help from TwentyfouTth Anny (also 

belonging to Don Hunt), which was to 

prevent the divisions from joining the 

Sixth Army main force by taking the 

Don crossings at Panshirski y and Vertyachiy. To complete the encirclement, 

Fifty-seventh and FiftyfiTSt A Tmies would 

c ut through t he Fourth Panzer- Rumanian Fourth Army line 

south of Stalingrad and would strike 

northwestward to meet Fifth Tank Army 

at Kalach. 47 

The whole plan hinged critically on 

keeping Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army locked in a contest for Stalingrad and on not allowing them to 

settle into a defensive deployment before URANUS was read y. Either of two 

eventualities would greatly becloud tl1e 

prospects for URANUS. One could have 

arisen from the fortunes of war. If the 

Gennans took Stalingrad, they could 

withdraw enough troops from the city 

to form a strong reserve. The other 

could bring about the same result even 

if the Germans only caught a scent of 

URANUS beforehand since they were 

tied down in Stalingrad by their own 

choice, not by necessity; consequentl y, 

the operation would need to achieve 

47Sbornik, Nomer 6. See also VOv, p. 172: 1\' 1\1\1; vol. 

V I. p. 28: Vasilevskiy, "Delo," p. 242f. 
444 

total surprise. To accomplish that goal , 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy devised an 

elaborate rnaskirovlw. ("camouflage") for 

URANUS" It consisted of three parts: 

concealment of the concept of the operation, the direction of the main 

effort, and the composition of the 

forces.'· 

To protect the concept of the operation, Zhukov and Vasilevskiy laid on a 

heavy blanket of security. They reduced the planning time allotted to the 

fronts and armies to an amount far 

below the previous norms. TIle firmt 

commanders were not told about the 

secret of URANUS until mid-October, 

and they were forbidden to initiate any 

planning of their own before the first 

week in November. To "disinform" the 

enemy, the Fonts were ordered to go 

over to the defensive on 15 October, 

and from then on all visible effort was 

put into building defenses. The civilians were evacuated from villages 

within 25 kilometers of the front, and 

those we re ringed with lrenches- to 

gIve enemy aIr reconnaIssance something to see. Orders pertaining to the 

defense were transmitted by telephone, a reliable and not too obvious 

way of getting them into enemy 

hands. 50 

Southwest Front made concealmel1l of 

the direction of the main effort a particularly difficult and dangerous problem . No doubt, it would have been 

as iTUVluj is defined in the SOU;ft Military EnC)'clqpe(lill as a complex of measures dirCClcd tOward 

deceiving the e nemy. It includes camouflage by concealment and simulation, secrecy and security. feintS 

and diversions. and disinformationM (deception). 

.. 1Iv. A . MalSulenko, "OperatiV'Ia),fl maskiraulul vo)'sk v 

kontmasillplerlii pod Stali1Igrtulom ," b)'e w-i.~ es iy 

Zlmnw.L. 1( 1974). p. 10. 

50lbid., p. IL/VAiV, vol. VI, 35. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

better not to have installed another 

front headquarters at all, since these 

were difficult to conceal and always 

objects of intense enemy interest. But 

URAN US was too complicated an operation for twofronts to handle themselves 

at that stage. To limit potential damage 

to the 17laskirovlw., Headquarters, Southwest Hunt, was not brought forward 

until 28 October. 51 

To prevent the enemy from determining the composition of the forces, 

the entire buildup, with the exception 

of Fifth Tank Anny, was done with units 

of less than army size. The reserves, 

usually brought in close before an offensive, were held at Saratov on the 

Volga 200 miles upstream from Stalingrad. Reinforcements moved only at 

night, under strict radio silence. Fifth 

Tank Anny made its 500-mile shift from 

the Orel-Sukhinichi area in three 

weeks of night marches, the last on the 

night of 9 November.52 

At the last, the 17laskirovka itself had 

to be protected against two Soviet practices that could have brought it to grief: 

the razvedlw. boy!!", ("battle reconnaissance") and the artillery preparation. 

Soviet commands regarded the 

razvedlw. boyem as an indispensable preliminary to an offensive to feel out 

"objectives of attack, systems of fire, 

and the nature of the terrain."" Conducted , as it customarily was, repeatedly and over extended periods in as 

much as divisional strengths, it usually 

alerted tile enemy well before an offensive began. Zhukov and Vasilevskiy 

could not convince the field commands 

S1Sbonlik, Nomer 6. 

52Ibid.; IVAlV, vol. VI. p. 36; MalSulenko. "Opl'rativ1W)'(l maskiravJw," p. 13. 

u A. Sinilskiy, "Sposoby vedm i)'lI wysknvoy rawrdki," 

VO)'emw-istoricheskiy Z/nlnwl, 4( 1976), 89- 94 . 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

to forego the razvedka boyem, but they 

undertook to reduce the risks it posed 

by requiring it to be conducted in 

strengths of no more than battalions 

and at the same time by all armies in 

the Stalingrad area. In the past, the 

commands had also engaged in artillery duels and staged lengthy fire preparations. For URANUS, the artillery 

preparation was limited to an hour and 

a half, and preliminary firing was 

prohibited 54 

MaTS and Uranus 

All of the Soviet accounts depict 

URANUS as the main operation in the 

initial phase of the 1942- 1943 winter 

offensive and most leave the reader to 

infer that it was the only one. There 

was, however, one other being prepared in October 1942-0peration 

MARS. The Soviet H isliJry of the Second 

I1brld War gives it just two sentences in 

which its purpose is stated to have been 

"to destroy the enemy in the regions of 

Rzhev and Novo Sokolniki."55 At Rzhev 

the objective apparently was to finish 

the work against Ninth Army started in 

the summer. Since Novo Sokolniki was 

already practically in the front on the 

western rim of the "taropets bulge and, 

by itself, a point of only modest tactical 

consequence, the aim there most likely 

was to strike deep to the soutlnvest 

behind Army Group Center. Also, 

since the Rzhev area was well-known to 

Zhukov, and he had advocated concentration aga inst Army Group Center, it can be assumed that he was as 

instrumental in devising MARS as he 

was in URANUS. After 16 November, he 

445 

left Vasilevskiy in charge at Stalingrad 

and went to Kalinin and West Fronts to 

take charge of the final preparations 

for MARS, which was scheduled to begin about a week after URANUS56 

MARS could, at the time, have been a 

great deal more important than can 

now be gathered from the few mentions of it given in the Soviet literature. 

It was laid in the area that, during 1941 

and 1942, had consistently been regarded in Soviet thinking as the most 

important strategic direction , the one 

in which Soviet forces had already conducted a successful winter offensive 

and in which they could expect to be 

able to stage another on better terms 

t1lan the first. URANUS, on the otl1er 

hand , was a highly speculative venture. 

The H isliJry of the Great PatTiotic War 

almost says as much in the following: 

"The Stavka ... assumed that the enemy, in spite of his desperate efforts 

would not have achieved his goals, that 

his offensive would have failed but, yet, 

neither would he have succeeded in 

going on the defense along the entire 

Stalingrad sector nor changed the operational deployment of his forces. In 

Stalingrad itself, large enemy forces 

would still continue to carryon the ir 

hopeless attacks."" Even understated 

as they are, these were enonnous assumptions. To expect that Sixth Army 

would not somehow manage to take 

Stalingrad sometime between the middle of September and the middle of 

November was a great deal. To anticipate the Germans' - with the memory 

of Moscow fresh in their minds-continuing a faltering offensive into the 

56Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 407. See also Ziemke, Sta.-

54 Matsulenko, "Operatilma)'o maskirovlm," pp. II , 18. /ingrad to Berliu, p. 106. 

55/VMV, vol. VI, p. 29. S1/VOVSS , vol. III, p. 19. 
446 

winter was even more. Furthermore, if 

the Germans did both , it then became 

necessary to assume that they would 

also not know how to extricate themselves from an encirclement. 

URANUS was a gamble; the logical 

prospects for MARS were far beller; 

and the deployment as of midNovember indicates strongly that the 

Stavka also took this view. On the 600 

miles of front between Kholm and 

Bolkhov, that is, opposite Army Group 

Center, 1,890,000 troops, 24,682 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,375 tanks, 

and 1,170 aircraft were deployed. Opposite Army Group B, on slightly less 

than 500 miles of front from Novaya 

Kalitva to Astrakhan , 1,l03,000 troops, 

15 ,501 artillery pieces and mortars, 

1,463 tanks, and 928 aircraft were deployed. The Kholm-Bolkhov sector, 17 

percent of the total frontage between 

Lake Ladoga and the Caucasus, had 

31.4 percent of the troops, 32 percent 

of the artillery and mortars, 45 percent 

of the tanks, and 38 percent of the 

a ircraft. The Novaya Kalitv aAstrakhan sector, 14 percent of the total 

frontage, had 18 .4 percent of the 

troops, 20.1 percent of the artillery and 

mortars, 19.9 percent of the tanks, and 

30.6 percent of the aircraft.,g 

URANUS, if the doubts beclouding its 

prospects resolved themselves favorably, did have one significant advantage 

over MARS; the forces for URANUS 

would have a substantially larger numerical advantage over the enemy. The 

His/my of the Second " orld War maintains 

that the 1.1 million Soviet troops deployed in the Novaya Kalitva -

Astrakhan sector were opposed by I 

million Germans and Rumanians; 

!'~ /VM V, vol. VI, table 4. p. 35. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

hence the Soviet advantage was only 

1.1 : I.'" The actual combined strength 

of Sixth Army, Fourth Panzer Army, 

and Rumanian 'Tllird Army, however, 

was very much less than a million men 

and in all probability just slightly more 

than a half million, which made the 

Soviet advantage 2:1. The ratio in the 

Army Group Center area was 1.9: I, 

using a German strength estimate of 

1,011,500 for the army group in September 1942. While tile ratios varied by 

onl y a tentll of a point, tile difference 

in the composition of the forces tlley 

represented was considerable. The 

Army Group Center troops were all 

German. or the total for the three 

armies in tile URANUS area, close to 50 

percent (245,000) were Rumanian 

troops.60 

One Soviet account, by a notable 

authority, General Mayor V A. Matsulenko, represents MARS as a deception incorporated into the URANUS 

mashimvka. Matsulenko states, "During 

the preparations for the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, tile Supreme High 

Command had tile forces of Kaiinin 

and West Fmnts display activity in the 

western direction against Army Group 

Center, creating tile impression that 

the winter operations were being prepared precisely there and not in the 

southwest. This measure produced 

positive results."·' In tllat mode, MARS 

would have repaid the Germans nicely 

for their own Operation KREML of the 

previous spring, but KREML was pure 

~~ bid., table 6. p. 45. 

8°M an fred Kehl'ig, Stalillgmd (Stuttgart: Deutsche 

Vcrlags-Anslah. 1974), app. 9, p. 667; OK/-I. GtmSldl-J , 

Frl!mde Hurl! Ost, Nr. 2669/42, Gegenul'bn"Stelflmg tier 

I1erb lll'ndelell Iwd dN" sowjelro.ssischen Kraefte. Stand 

20.9.42, H 221235 file. 

61 Matsulcnko, ··Oprm.tivno)'lI l1laskirovka," p. 15. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

sham and illusion, which MARS was not. 

More likely MARS figured in the URANUS plan not as a part of the maskiTOvkn 

but as a potential means of keeping the 

battle for Stalingrad going until the 

time was ripe for URA NUS. According to 

the His/my of the Second WlTld Wm; MARS 

was ready as of 23 October, and the 

start order would have been given anytime thereafter if the Gennans had 

begun taking troops from Army 

Group Center to reinforce the attack 

into Stalingrad. What the Soviet planners did was compromise MARS to preserve the essential condition for 

URA NUS. However, it will be seen that in 

doing so they befuddled the enemy as 

much as if MARS had been a deception that in fact "produced positive 

results,"62 

"This Year's Campaign Has 

Been Concluded" 

The Anny in Decline 

Musing unhappily on an old problem, General Halder, chief of the General Staff, in the first week of August 

observed , "According to our calculations of early May ... we expected the 

enemy to be able to set up sixty new 

divisions by the fall muddy period." 

But he noted that sixty-nine new Soviet 

divisions had already been identified , 

and the fall rains were still a good two 

months away. "All told," he added, "we 

can , perhaps, anticipate seeing another 

thirty new divisions."63 If the Soviet 

figures are correct, Halder erred substantially on the short side. Reportedly, 

in the period April to October 1942, 

fl2/VMV, vol. VI. p. 29. 

63J-lalder Diary, vol. 111 , p. 497. 

447 

the Slavkn had released from its reserves 189 rifle divisions, 78 rifle brigades, 30 tank and mechanized corps, 

and 159 tank brigades. 64 I t was apparent that the Soviet manpower pool was 

a long way from running dry. 

The same could scarcely be said for 

that of Germany. On 8 September, the 

Organizational Branch of the OKH 

announced, "All planning must take 

into account the unalterable fact that 

the predicted strength of the Army 

field forces as of I November 1942 will 

be 800,000, or 18 percent, below the 

established strength and that it is no 

longer possible to reduce those numbers. False impressions will result if 

units continue to be carried as before 

with this great loss of strength." The 

branch, thereupon, proposed reducing 

better than half the divisions on the 

Eastern Front from three regiments to 

tw0 6 5 The two-regiment divisions 

would remove the fiction of a temporary understrength but would do so 

essentially by building it into the tables 

of organization. 

After two summers and a winter in 

the Soviet Union, the German Army 

was having to conSUI11e its own inner 

substance. In Basic Order 1, the first of 

several issued in the fall of 1942, the 

OKH directed a 10 percent reduction 

in all staffs and the transfer of the 

personnel released to combat assignments. Additionally, all rear elements 

were to set up emergency detachments 

that could be sent to the front on short 

M Zemskov, "Nekotoriye voprosy, " p. 14 ; IVMV, vol. V I , 

lable 4 , p. 35: OKH, GenStdH, (11/) Nr. 42074Jf.J2, H 

22 file; OKH, GellStdH , Op. Abt. (Ill), P.me! Nr. 75940, 

Zahlenmnessige Uebe rsicht ueber die Vertei/llllg der Divi5iol1£ II , Stand 11 .9.42, H 22 file. 

65 0KH , GenStdI-l , Org . A bl. , NT. 92 2 142, 

Orga llisatorische PtawlIIgen , 8.9.42, H 22/235 file. 
448 

notice. Another basic order set a goal 

of 180,000 men to be secured from the 

rear echelons for front-line duty by 

replacing them with Hilfswillige, auxiliaries recruited among the Russian 

prisoners of war. 66 Another established 

"substitution of weapons for men" as a 

principle of command and specified 

that when new, improved weapons 

were issued the ones they replaced 

were to be left with the troops to augment their firepower. 6' 

These were gestures, not answers. 

Since May, General der lnfanterie WaIte r von Unruh, armed with the authOl'ity to order irrevocable transfers to 

the front, had been combing the rear 

areas as Hitle r's personal representative. Unruh's visitations had aroused 

dismay verging on terror and had 

ea rned him til e nickname General 

Heldenklau ("he ro snatcher") but could 

not be shown to have added significant 

numbers to the combat strengths.68 

Hilfswillige were already being so 

widely used in noncombatant roles that 

there was no large block of troops le ft 

for them to replace. The substitution 

of weapons for men depended on having the weapons. The Panther tank, for 

instance, Germany's most promising 

new wea pon, would for months yet be 

snarled in development and production difficulties. 

860KI-I , GenStdl-l , Org. Abt. (/I /), NT. 99001-12, 

Grtmdlegnuler BefeM NT. I, 8.10.42, AOK 30 155/57: 

OKH, Cf'nStdH , Org. Abt. K,-;egstagefmch, Bmld I V, 1- 10 

Oel 42. H 1/214 file. 

ft70KH, GenSldH, Op. Aht. (III), Nr. J414<)142, 

PlanlOlg flier AI/sball der Heerestrllppell illl Wmtrr 

1942143, 3.9.42, H 22/235 file: }-I. Gr: Nord, la 

Kriegstagebuch, 1. -3 1.10.42, 10 Oct 42. H . Gr. NOI"d 

75 128/ 15 fi le. 

uOKH, e,mSttlH, Org. Abt. KriegslligeblU:h, Band IV, 

21-3 1 Aug 42, H U2 14 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALl GRAD 

The air force had a manpowe r surplus that Hitler, in September, agreed 

to tap, but at the insistence of Reichmarschall Goering, commander in 

chie f of the air force, he decided not to 

use tile men as army replacements but 

to form a ir for ce field divisions 

manned and officered exclusively by 

air force personnel. In September and 

October, he ordered that twenty such 

divisions be set up with a combined 

strengtll of about two hundred thousand men. From the army point of 

view, a more unsatisfactory arrangement would have been diffi cult to devise. The air force troops had no 

training in land wa rfare, and because 

Goering restricted the army's inAuence 

on them, by claiming that the "reactio nary" spirit of tile army would impa ir his troo ps' ational Socia list 

indoctrination, they were not likely to 

be given enough training to make 

them anywhere near suitable for employment on the Eastern Front. Worse 

still, the army had to scrape toge ther 

enough equipment to outfit the twenty 

divisions, and the diversion of vehicles 

a lone forced postponement of plans to 

bring four or five panzer divisio ns to 

full strength.·9 Basic Order 3, which 

regulated the employment of the a ir 

force field divisions, required that they 

be given "only defensive missions o n 

quiet fronts."'· 

Hitler added his own reinforcement 

to the basic order. It read: 

The low combat strengths of the fighting 

troops are no longer tolerable. 

The fighting troops have many personnel vacancies; those not directl y engaged 

in combat almost none. That must cease! 

69IbhJ., 1- 10 Oct 42. 

1 0H . Gr. Nord, la KriegJlagebuch, 1.-31.10.42, 15 Oct 

42. H. Gr. Nord 75128115 ftle. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

1 will-aside from measures to be taken 

olltside the Army-also institute appropriate correctives within the Army. Tflose 

are to be carried out regardless of all 

opp'osition and appearances of impossibility. On this score every commander 

must display his competence as much as he 

does in troop leadership. 

[n every Instance in which a troop unit 

experiences a setback, the next highest 

commander is to investigate whether the 

commander involved exnausted all of the 

possibilities to raise his combat strength 

provided for under my orders. In special 

cases, I reserve to myself the right to order 

an investigation. 71 

Overhaul at the Top 

Hitler, as always, was inclined to 

transpose problems to which there 

were not pragnlatic answers into questions of leadership and will. A ppare"dy doing that also was uppermost in 

his mind on 24 September when he 

dismissed Halder as chief of the Army 

General Staff. I n their last interview 

together he told Halder that it was now 

necessary to "educate" the General 

Staff in "fanatical faith in the Idea" and 

that he was determined to enforce his 

will "also" on the army. The new chief 

of the General Staff, General der Infanterie Kurt Zeitzler, initially at least, 

appeared to be well suited to Hitler's 

purpose. He was a competent but not 

supremely outstanding staff officer. 

As chief of staff, Army Group D, 

which was stationed in the Low Countries and along the Channel coast, his 

energy and a rotund figure had earned 

him the nickname General Fireball. 

His physical activity-plus a friendship with Hitler's adjutant, General 

Schmundt-had brought him atten7IPZ. AOK I , 10. Kriegslagl'bll.ch Nr. 8, 13 Oct 42, Pz . 

AOK I 24906 file. 

449 

tion at the FllehTer Headquarters, and 

Hitler had remarked earlier tllat Holland would be a "tough nut" for tile 

Allies because Zeitzler "buzzes back and 

forth tllere like a hornet and so prevents the troops from falling asleep, 

from lack of contact with the enemy." 2 

Although Hitler, at the first, treated 

Zeitzler with "utmost friendliness," tile 

change in chiefs of the General Staff 

did not signal a new approach to the 

conduct of the war Sllch as the one 

Stalin was making.'3 Hitler valued 

Zeitzler for his energy. As a collaborator 

and adviser, he probably expected 

Zeitzler, who had been lofted from an 

army group staff on an inactive front 

to the highest command echelon, to be 

more complaisant and less independent-minded than Halder had been. 

The initial friendliness toward Zeitzler 

was also no mark of confidence in the 

generals. He had come to distrust them 

almost to a man, and after September 

1942, he insisted on having a stenographer present to take down every 

conversation he had with them. At the 

same time, he gave up eating his meals 

with his inner military circle, which had 

been his practice since early in the war, 

and henceforth, ate alone or with the 

nonmilitary members of his staff.'4 

In tile course of installing the new 

chief of the General Staff, Hitler also 

put himself in position to overhaul the 

whole officer corps, the General Staff 

and the general officer ranks in particular, by placing the Heerespersonalamt 

("army officer personnel office") under 

Scl1mundt. To Schmundt he outlined a 

72l-1enry Pickel", ed. , J-litie1"S TlSchgespraeche (Bonn: 

Athenaeum.Vedag, 1951), p. 166. 

730KW, KTB , \'01. II , p. 795. 

7~lhid , p. 697. 
450 

policy of rapid promotion for younger, 

batLie-tested , and presumably "ed ueatable" officers. Zeitzler, forty-seven 

years old and a general officer for less 

than a year at the ume of hIS appollltment was such an officer. HIller also 

prop~sed to break the General Staffs 

hold on the highe r commands by a llowing line officers to qualIfy for the 

top posts and by requIrIng General 

Stafr officers to show expenence as 

troop commanders. Eventually he expected to abolish the Genera l Stafrs 

marks of distinction , the red trouser stripes and si lver collar tabs. ,. 

Schmundt, who had bUIlt hIS eareer on 

subservience to Hitler, could be expected, without being told, to seek out 

and advance hke-mmded officers. 

When he took up his post, Zeitzler 

mad e a contribution of his own to the 

shake-up of the command system. The 

army had lo ng resented the inAuence 

of General Jod I's O K W OperatIons 

Staff on the drafting of strategIc dIrectives pertaining exclusively to the Eastern Front, which was an army theater. 

The resentment had increased after 

Hitl er had become commander in 

chief, army, and had con verted the 

Army General Staff into a second personal staff, and it had been sharpened 

by the freewheeling criticism Jodi and 

Field Marshal KeItel , chIef, OKW, had 

indulged in from theirtechnically loftier positions in the cham of command . 

Taking ad va ntage of J odi's havin g 

fallen into disfavor, ZeItzler demanded 

and secured the OK W's exclusion from 

the drafting of strategic directives that 

applied solely to the ~astern Front. 

Henceforth such dIrectIves were to be 

al'li pilJ ericht dl's Chefs df..5 Hel!'mpers()1wlamls, 

1-5 OCl '12, H 4/ 12 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

issued as "operations orders" by the 

OKH. T he orders, naturally, conunued 

to be written, as the directives had 

been, entirely in accordance WIth 

Hitler's wishes. 

Operatinns Order No. J 

A new course and style of command 

having been instituted, Ope ration s 

O rder No. I, issued on 14 October, 

purported to do the same ..r0r strategr 

Its first sentence read, T hIS yeal s 

summer and fall campaig ns, excepting 

operations underway and several loca l 

offe nsives still contemplated, has been 

concluded." Army Group Nortll , Army 

Group Center, and Army. Group B 

were told to get ready for wInter m the 

lines they held , and in this order and a 

su pplement issued some d ays later, 

Hiller elevated to the level of doctrIne 

the fanatical resistance formula he had 

employed during the 1941- 1942 Soviet 

winter offensive. He ordered that the 

winter positions were to be held unde r 

a ll circumstances. T here would be no 

evasive maneuvers or withdrawa ls. 

Breakthroughs were to be localized, 

and any intact part of the front was 

"absolutely" to be held . Troops cutoff 

and encircled were to defend themselves where they stood until they were 

relieved and Hitler made every commander' personally responsible to him 

for the "unconditional execution" of 

these orders.' · The supplement extended the doctrine down to the lowest 

leadership level. "Every leader," it read, 

"d own to squad leader must be convinced of his sacred duty to stand fast, 

come what may, even if the e nemy 

HJDer Flll'hrrr. OKH, GenSldH. 0/), Abl. (I) Nr. 

4208 171-1 2, Opemliotlsbifehl Nr. 1, f.I ./O.-I2 , AOK 6 

301 55/49 file. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

outAanks him on the right and left, 

even if his part of the line is cut off, 

encircled, overrun by tanks, enveloped 

in smoke or gassed." That was to be 

repeatedly "hammered into all officers 

and noncommissioned officers."" 

The Exceptions 

Operations Order No.1, while ostensibly keeping the promise Hitler made 

in the spring to bring the summer 

campaign to a more timely close than 

had been done in the previous year, 

excepted, as stated, offensives in progress or still contemplated. Those in 

progress were at Stalingrad and toward 

Tuapse. Contemplated were NORD· 

LICHT. against Leningrad, and TAUBEN· 

SCHLAG (" dovecote " ), a recently 

conceived operation aimed at 

Toropets. First Panzer Army's march 

on Groznyy, in abeyance but not abandoned , fell into both categories. The 

exceptions left three of the four army 

groups with substantial offensive missions to be completed or undertaken. 

Both of Army Group A's armies were 

in fact exempted from Operations 

Order No. I and were instructed to 

await other orders. 

Taubenschlag 

By the time Operations Order No.1 

appeared, NORDLICHT. however, was 

hardly a viable enterprise. The state of 

Field Marshal Manstein's troops (Eleventh Army) after the fighting in tl1e 

bottleneck and the lateness of the season spoke heavily against it. On 16 

October, Hitler shelved NORDLlCHT 

110KH, Chef des Generalstabes des Hurts, Abl. L (I) Nr. 

428858142, I. ErgaenZlmg W ill Operationsbefehl Ny. /, 

23./0.42. AOK 6 30155/42 file. 

451 

and instructed Manstein to use the 

artillery to smash tl1e Soviet defenses 

on the Leningrad perimeter and to 

inch his front forward. 78 While it 

would have been handy to have had 

Leningrad ou t of the way, another 

long-standing strategic liability of the 

north Aank, me Toropets bulge, was 

becoming an even greater concern as 

winter approached. From it the Russians could strike in all directions: east 

into Ninth Army's Aank, southeast behind Army Group Center, northwest 

behind Army Group North, north 

against Staraya Russa and tl1e Demyansk pocket, or even if they were 

daring enough , due west to the Baltic 

coast. The German line on the western 

rim of the bulge was atrociously weak. 

All that was there on over a hundred 

miles of front was the Gruppe von 

der Chevallerie, a corps headquarters 

under Generalleutnant Kurt von 

der Chevallerie , with five infantry 

divisions. 

On 14 October, maintaining that "the 

best defense is an attack of our own 

from the vicinities of Velikiye Luki and 

Kholm," Hitler ordered Sixteenth 

Army and the Gruppe von der 

Chevallerie to collaborate on Operation TAUBENSCHLAG that was to be 

aimed "in the general direction of 

Toropets."79 A week and a half later 

while Manstein was at the Werwolf to 

receive his individually designed and 

handcrafted marshal's baton (the time 

for production of which caused the 

delay in his receiving it) and to discuss 

78AOK 11, la Kriegstagebuch NT. 2, 17 Oct 42. AOK 11 

33 167/ 1 file. 

79H . Gr. Nord, la Kriegstagebuch, 1. -31.10.42, H. Gr. 

No rd 75128115 file; Gen. Kdo. LIX A.K., fa 

Kriegstagebuch Nr. 4, 14 Oct 42, LlX A.K. 3014511 fil e. 
452 

the artillery deployment against 

Leningrad, Hitler, apparently on the 

spur of the moment, gave him command of TAUBENSCHLAG. At the end of 

the month, Manstein moved his headquarters to Vitebsk. By then , Hitler, in 

oral instructions to Manstein, had 

made TAUBENSCHLAG contingent on a 

Soviet attempt against Army Group 

Center. Manstein thereupon became 

custodian of a dormant front and a 

tentative operation until the afternoon 

of 20 November when he was called 

back from an inspection trip to be told 

he was appointed commanding general, Army Group Don, and witll his 

headquarters would replace Headquarters, Army Group B in me Stalingrad sector. He and an advance 

party boarded a special express train 

the next day, and TAUBENSCHLAG. 

which would shortly be reduced to 

noming by furmer transfers to the 

south, reverted to the Gruppe von der 

Chevallerie."O 

Stalingrad 

That Sixtll Army's operations in Stalingrad wou ld be exempted from Operations Order No. I went without 

saying. At tlle end of September, as he 

had in the years past, Hitler opened 

the drive for the Winter Relief with a 

speech in the Berlin Sportpalast. 1 nit, 

he played on an old tbeme and 

ridiculed tlle publicity he had lately 

been receiving in the world news media. Pinpricks like the Dieppe raid in 

August, he complained, were touted as 

magnificent Allied victories while his 

own march from the Donets to the 

80AOK 11 , /0 Kl'iegstagebuch Nr. 2, 26 OCl-21 Nov 42, 

AOK 11 33 16711 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Volga and the Caucasus was "noming." 

"When we take Stalingrad," he went on, 

"and you can depend on it that we will, 

mat also is [sic] notlling." Later he 

vowed a second time to take Stalingrad 

and assured the audience, "you can be 

certain no one will get us away from 

there."8 1 

Tuapse 

Like Sixth Army, Seventeenth Army 

was on the march and expected to 

continue. Tuapse, the prize, was coming into reach . A push in me mountains, begun on 14 October, carried to 

Shaumyan the next day and through 

the town tlle next. Soviet Eighteenth 

Army almost broke, even though it was 

getting a steady flow of reinforcements, and Grechko, who had become 

an artist of the stubborn defense at 

Novorossiysk, had to be brought in as 

the army's new commanders2 Seventeenth Army reported on tlle 18th that 

the several days of easy going it had 

experienced had ended, and it was 

having to reven to dislodging the enemy piecemeal from positions he was 

again defending determinedly. A week 

of rain, flooding 1110untain rivers, and 

washed-out roads gave Grechko time 

enough to get his army in hand and to 

begin some counterallacks late in the 

month S3 What these might have accomplished, however, would never be 

known because , after 4 November, 

three weeks of rain in the lower and 

snow in the higher elevations brought 

both sides to a full stop. 

H1Domarus, Hitler, vol. II , p. 1914. 

82Grcchko, Bailie for the CauCllsus, p. 158. 

H3H. Cr. A, la Kriegstagebuch, Band I, TeiJ IV. 20- 25 

Oct 42, H . Gr. A 75126/4 file. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 453 

FIRST PANZER ARMY 

. ".. 

0°° ..... 1 j '" 

., •• 0

00 

2d Mtn Div (Rum) 

CAUCASUS r 

, 

~ 

'-

MOUNTAINS 

THE NALCHIK OPERATION 

25 October - 9 November 1942 

00000 Approximate front, 25 Oct 

- ---Approximate front, 9 Nov 

+-- Direction of German attack 

o 10 Mites 

Or-I -----:'''Oc:K::;'iI~m ter s 

MAP 40 

Nalchik 

First Panzer Army, although it was at 

a standstill in mid-October, was exempted from Operations Order No.1 

because it still appeared to have some 

prospects if it could be given better 

reinforcements than those it had received recently. The SS Viking Division 

had been an "acute disappointment," 

and a newer arrival, the Special Purpose Corps "Felmy," showed signs of 

being more exotic than effective. It was 

an aggregation (in actual strength less 

than one full division) of Mohammedans, mostly recruited from prisoner-of-war camps, commanded by an 

. . 

Terek R 

air force general, General del' Flieger 

Helmut Felmy. The Mohammedans 

were adequately anti-Soviet, but apparently many had not been told when 

they were recruited that tlley would 

also be expected to fight. Under orders 

to improve his positions pending arrival of reinforcements, General Kleist, 

commander of First Panzer Army, on 

14 October, proposed to attack off his 

right flank to Nalchik, which would 

level his front somewhat and ehmlllate 

a threat to his rearward lines· " Hitler 

gave his approval two days later. 

IHlbid., 14 OCl 42. 
454 

Rumanian 2d Mountain Division began the Nalchik operation on the 

morning of the 25th with air support 

diverted from Seventeenth Armywhich, no doubt, helped to slow the 

advance on Tuapse. The Rumanians 

were headed almost due south from 

the Baksan River. While the distance to 

Nalchik was only about ten miles, they 

had three swift mountain rivers to 

cross, the Baksan, Chegem, and Urvan. 

(Map 40.) Nevertheless, the day went 

exceedingly well. The division was 

across the Baksan in two hours and by 

nightfall had a spearhead on the 

Chegem three miles north of Nalchik. 

The 13th and 23d Panzer Divisions 

started west and southwest from the 

Terek the next morning. Running upstream in the valleys of the Cherek and 

Urvan rivers, they had easier going. 

For First Panzer Army, the operation 

was "progressing at a speed beyond all 

expectations."' The Rumanians were in 

Nalchik on the afternoon of the second 

day, and the panzer divisions had 

closed the river crossings to the south 

and east trapping over seven thousand 

Soviet troops 8' The attack had 

achieved a compound surprise: Transcaucasus Front's North Croup, intent on an 

offensive of its own it was preparing 

against Mozdok, had neglected Thirtyseventh Anny in the Nalchik area, and 

Thi,·ty-seventh Army had lost control over 

its troops after its command post was 

bombed on the morning of the 25th. 86 

Turning east along the face of the 

mountains on the 27th and 28th, the 

two panzer divisions discovered that 

the Russians had not recovered 

Rf>p Z. AOK J, 10 Kriegstagebllch Nr. 8, 25-26 Oct 42 , 

Pz. AOK I 24906 file. 

86Grechko, Battle for lhe Caucasus, pp. 169- 73. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

enough to make more than perfunctory stands on successive river 

lines, the Lesken, the Urukh, and the 

Chikola. Kleist then ordered them to 

keep going to the Ardon in the valley 

of which the Ossetian Military Road 

emerged from the mountains. When 

they reached the Ardon they would be 

a bare twenty miles from Ordzhonikidze, and on the 29th, seeing "a 

chance that will never come again," to 

take the city, Kleist told them to cross 

the Ardon and take Ordzhonikidze on 

the run. 87 In another two days, 13th 

Panzer Division was on the Ardon, and 

Kleist was beginning to talk about 

Ordzhonikidze as the "next," not the 

final objective. On 2 November, 13th 

Panzer Division took Gizel, five miles 

west of Ordzhonikidze, but by then the 

North Croup had brought in a guards 

riRe corps, 2 tank brigades, and 5 antitank artillery regiments. In two more 

days, the tanks could not get past Gizel; 

on the 5th, the division was almost 

encircled by Soviet troops that had 

moved in behind it from the north and 

the south; and on the 9th, the Nalchik 

operation ended when 13th Panzer Division broke out of Gizel to the westS' 

By then, as in the Tuapse area, the 

weather was bringing both sides to a 

stop. 

A Winter OJJensive-Where? 

Questionable as the other premises 

in Operations Order No. I were or 

would soon become , one was rock 

hard: there would be another Soviet 

winter offensive. No one in the German Command doubted it. On 28 Au87

PZ. AOK J, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 8, 27-29 Oct 42 , 

Pz. AOK I 24906 file. 

88Grechko, Battle for the CmtcaSIlS, pp. 17 3-81. 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

gust, Foreign Armies East had 

submitted its forecast for the coming 

months and had concluded that the 

current Soviet objective was to preserve 

enough manpower and materiel to sustain a second winter offensive. Since 

the Soviet Command had very likely 

figured on losing the North Caucasus 

and Stalingrad, and possibly Moscow 

and Leningrad, and could have anticipated casualties on the scale of the 1941 

summer campaign, the Foreign Armies 

East assumed that the final results for 

lhe Soviet Union would be better than 

had been expected , and the Soviet 

losses would be "[of a magnitude that 

would leave] combat-worthy forces 

available for the future .""' 

To identify the potential locales for a 

Soviet offensive was hardly a problem. 

The Army Group B and Army Group 

Center zones offered the best prospects and the greatest profitability. 

That the choice would be one of these 

could be assumed a priori. The trick 

was to know which one. At Army 

Group B, the extended front and relalively easy terrain invited a bid to recapture Stalingrad and raised the 

prospect of a thrust across the Don 

west of Stalingrad to Rostov, which, if 

successful, would collapse the greater 

part of the Army Group B front and 

would unhinge the entire Army Group 

A front. On the other hand , the Soviet 

Command would be under a heavy 

compulsion to liquidate the threat to 

Moscow posed by Army Group Center 

and would see the Toropets bulge and 

the Sukhjnichi salient as natural springboards for converging attacks toward 

890KH, GenSldH, Fremde Hu re 0 51 (/) Nr. 2492142, 

Gedlmken zur Weiterentwicklulig der Feilldlage im l-hrbst 

Itnd Winter, 29.8.42. H 3/190 fil e. 

455 

Smolensk, which could nOl only drive 

the front away from Moscow but possibly destroy Ninth , Third Panzer, and 

Fourth Armies in the bargain. Foreign 

Armies East assumed that the Russians 

were not yet capable of directing or 

sustaining offensives toward remote 

objectives, for instance Rostov or the 

Baltic coast, and so to an extent would 

be governed by their tactical limitations. They would, therefore, stand to 

profil mOSl reliably from an offensive 

against Army Group Center aimed at 

Smolensk .•• 

Six weeks latel~ on 12 October, Colonel Reinhard Gehlen, chief of the Foreign Armies East gave Zeitzler, for 

Hitler, a report "from a source described as generally reliable that allegedly has contacts reaching into the 

Russian leadership. " The report in the 

main duplicated his branch's earlier 

estimate, and from this he said" . . . it 

can be assumed that the stated lines of 

thinking have at least been taken into 

consideration in the enemy's decisionmaking process."'] In particular, 

Gehlen added, the idea of an operation 

in tlle Toropets bulge appeared to be 

attractive to me Russians. 

By then the Germans were so much 

impressed with the Soviet activity 

around Toropets that Hitler would be 

issuing the first order for T AUBEN· 

SCHLAC in two days. They believed the 

Russians would be ready to start as 

soon as the fall rains ended, which 

would be in another two to three 

weeks.92 Shortly before the middle of 

91Jlbid. 

9lFremde Hee-re OS(, Chef, Nr. 2819142, tvrlmgsnO(iz., 

12./0.42, H 3/1039 file. 

92GClI. Kdo. UX A.K. , fa Kn'egstagebllch Nr. 4, 14 O Cl 

42, A.K. 30 145/ 1 file. 
456 

the month , Foreign Armies East had 

also detected what seemed to be the 

beginnings of a Soviet buildup opposite 

Army Group B, but these did not appear to be on a scale that would indicate an offensive anytime soon. On the 

15th, the branch concluded that the 

Russians would eventually attempt 

something against Army Group B, but 

the main significance of the activity at 

the army group for the present was 

that to make the forces available, the 

Russians would have to give up whatever thoughts they might have had of 

enlarging the forthcoming operation 

against Army Group Center."3 

In the last two weeks of the month , 

the earlier impressions hardened. The 

Foreign Armies East reports indicated 

that the buildup against Army Group 

B was limited to the Serafimovich 

bridgehead in the Rumanian Third 

Army sector. On the 31st, the branch 

concluded that the activity in the 

bridgehead did not presage a major 

attack and would probably result in 

nothing more than a local effort of 

some kind . At the same time, in the 

Army Group Center zone, Ninth Army 

expected an offensive against it to begin any day, and as of 30 October, the 

army had anticipated at most no more 

than one more week's respite."' 

Hitler appears to have rated at least 

the long-run potential for trouble in 

the Army Group B zone somewhat 

higher than his intelligence people did. 

As early as mid-August, he began to 

worry that Stalin might attempt, as he 

9:IOKH , GmSldH, Fmnde Hure OSI, Kuru BeuTteilullg 

lenJ dey Fe-indlage 110111 13.10, /5./0.42, H 3/199 file. 

g~ bid., 26- 28 Oct. 3 1 OCl42: AOK 9, Fuehnmgsahleilllng Kriegstagebuch, Berichtszeit I. i.-31. /0.42, Band 

II, 30 Oct 42, AOK 9 31624/2 lile. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

put it, the Russian "standard attack"-

a thrust toward Rostov directed across 

the Don near Serafimovich-which the 

Bolsheviks had executed with devastating success in 1920 against the White 

Army of General Peter Wrangel. 95 On 

26 October, he reiterated his concern 

and ordered in air force field divisions 

to stiffen the Italian, Hungarian, and 

Rumanian fronts on the Don.'· Talking 

to Manstein the same day, he said he 

saw "an especial danger" in the front 

between Stalingrad and Voronezh" 

On 2 November, when aerial photographs revealed that the Russians 

had thrown several new bridges across 

the Don to the Serafimovich bridgehead, he once more predicted a major 

thrust toward Rostov. Realizing the air 

force field divisions would count for 

little in a real crisis, he canceled the 

order concerning them and substituted 

a panzer division and two infantry divisions from the Western Theater."' 

Hitler, however, did not see the "especial danger" as also an imminent 

one. He could not have expected the 

divisions he was sending, which were 

stationed on the Channel coast, to get 

to Army Group B before December. To 

Manstein, he said he anticipated an 

attack "in the course of the winter." On 

31 October, he shifted his headquarters 

from the Werwolf back to the Wolfsschanu, where he stayed barely a week 

before going on to Bavaria to give a 

speech on the anniversary of the 1923 

Beer Hall Putsch and to begin a twoweek vacation at the Berg/wf H is arrival 

9~ Greiller Diary Notes, 16 AlIg42, C-065q CM H file. 

DR/bid. , 26 Oct 42. 

97 AOK J I , la Kriegsfagf'bllch Ny. 2, 26 Oct 42. AOK 

11 33167/1lilo. 

9 8 Greiner Dim)' NolI'S, 4 Nm' 42. C-065q eM 1-1 file . 
THE CHANGE OF SEASONS 

in Munich on the morning of 8 November coincided with the Allied landings in North Africa, and the mood 

among his party comrades who had 

gathered that night to commemorate 

the Putsch was depressed. In his 

speech, for which he had no coherent 

theme, he virtually ignored North Africa and tried lamely to inflate the 

strategic significance of Stalingrad (as 

"a gigantic transshipment center") and 

to explain away his failure to finish the 

battle there. He was determined to 

avoid "another Verdun," he said, and 

therefore was employing "very small 

assault groups," and time was not important.99 For the next ten days, Hitler, 

at the Bf!'rghoJ, and the OKW, which 

had hurriedly followed him and had 

set itself up in Berchtesgaden and Salzburg, were preoccupied with the North 

African events and their first response 

to them, an invasion of unoccupied 

France. Of the top leadership, only 

Zeitzler stayed behind in East Prussia. 

In the meantime, Foreign Armies 

East was getting more clues on Soviet 

activity in the Army Group B area but 

not enough, in its opinion, to form a 

clear picture. As late as 6 November, 

the branch was certain the Soviet main 

offensive would be against Army 

Group Center and if there were to be 

one on the Don, it would come later. loo 

By then, signs were being picked up of 

a buildup also south of Stalingrad 

against Fourth Panzer Army, and on 

the 8th, a division of Fifth Tank Army 

was identified opposite Rumanian 

Third Army. Two days later, another 

99Domarus, Hitler, voL II, pp. 1932-38. 

looOKH, GenStdH, Fremde Heere Osl (I), Beurreilltllg 

der Feindlage vor Heeresgruppe Mitte, 6.1I.42 , H 3/185 

file. 

457 

Fifth Tank Army division and the Headquarters, Southwest Front, were tentatively detected. lol By the 12th, enough 

confirmation had come in to raise 

sharp ripples of concern in the staffs at 

Army Group B, Sixth Army, and 

Fourth Panzer Army. Foreign Armies 

East still regarded the situation as too 

obscure to warrant a definitive prediction but added that " . .. an attack in the 

near future against Rumanian Third 

Army with the objective of cutting the 

railroad to Stalingrad and thereby 

threatening the German forces farther 

east and compelling a withdrawal from 

Stalingrad must be taken into account."I02 For the next week, this remained the estimate from which the 

staffs worked . An attack was expected 

and soon. Because it would hit the 

Rumanians, it would be inconvenient 

and possibly more dangerous; but otherwise it was not expected to be different from the others that had gone 

before. Foreign Armies East could not 

find solid evidence of a major change 

in the Soviet deployment. The armies 

on the Don it had knowledge of were 

those that had been there since September. The Fifth Tank Army divisions it 

identified were all infantry. Not a single 

one of the army's armored elements 

could be located . Soviet radio traffic 

seemed clearly to indicate that Fifth 

Tank Army itself was still stationed in the 

Orel-Sukhinichi area and receiving reinforcements there. I03 

IOlOKH, CenStdH, Fremde Hu rt! Osl, Kuru BeurIt'ihmg[m] der Feindlage U011l 4.1l., 8.11., 10.11.42, H 

3/199 lile. 

I02/bid. , 12 Nov 42. Sec p. 467. 

I03Abl. Fremde Heere OSI, IAJrtrags1U)liz., 21.11.42, H 

3/1039 file. 
CHAPTER XXII 

Thrust and Counterthrust 

The Battle on the Wilga 

The river was the prize, specifically 

the nine to ten miles of its right bank 

from the refinery southeast of Mamai 

Hill to Rynok. Stalingrad had ceased to 

exist, except as a wreck and a ruin . 

Those who inhabited the city now were 

fighting over a corpse, and they knew 

it. On the other hand, the area left to 

be contested became more precious as 

it became smaller and more murderously expensive either to keep or to 

acquire. By the terms that had made 

the city an objective in the first place, 

the issue at Stalingrad was settled: the 

Volga was closed and every inch of 

ground still in Soviet hands could be 

brought under German fire. Strict military logic no longer applied on either 

side, however, particularly not on the 

German . The battle had acquired a 

reason for existence of its own. No 

longer only the last phase of 

BLAU-CLAUSEWITZ, it was a drama being 

played for the world; and as such, 

Hitler would not consider it terminated 

until every shred of organized Soviet 

resistance was eliminated from the 

right bank of the Volga. By what 

amounted to mutual agreement, the 

summer campaign was being fought 

again in miniature on the river. For 

Stalin, each fraction of a mile that was 

held one more day partially redeemed 

the near collapse of July and August 

and brought Operation URANUS a small 

step closer to reality. For Hitler, to have 

denied the enemy the last fraction of a 

mile could have driven from mind the 

memory of the victory lost. The stakes, 

however, were not even. Stalin had little 

to lose and, possibly, much to gain. 

Hitler, if he wanted to possess the river 

bank, had to accept the suspension of 

the initiative and fight on his opponents' terms, not his. He did that on 6 

October when he "reaffirmed the total 

occu pation of Stalin grad as Army 

Group B's most important mission."' 

Troops and Tactics 

During the next week, Hitler and 

General Weichs, commander of Army 

Group B, worked with Sixth Army's 

commander, General Paulus, to get 

Sixth Army in trim for another push 

into the city. Hitler canceled Fourth 

Panzer Army's projected advance to 

Astrakhan and ordered its commander, General Hoth, to give the 14th 

Panzer Division, his last full-fledged 

armored division, to Sixth Army. 

Weichs and Hitler concurred in letting 

Paulus take another two infantry divisions, 79th and 305th, off his flank on 

the Don. Sixth Army had been engaged for a month on plans to advance 

its front northward somewhat, between 

the Volga and the Don, and to secure a 

'AOK 6, la Kriegstagebllch Nr. 14, 6 Oct 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 file. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

better winter line. These now were 

dropped, and Weichs instructed Paulus 

to have the troops on dle north front 

dig in for the winter where they stood.' 

I rked at having to wait for me divisions 

to be moved, Hider ordered intensified 

bombing "to deprive me enemy of the 

opportunity to rebuild his defenses."3 

But dle Russian defense was getting 

stronger. On 8 October, massed Soviet 

heavy artillery began firing into me city 

from east of the Volga . 

On me 10m, Rumanian Third Army 

took over the Don front east of me 

Khoper River. The German sU'ength 

was being drawn inward on Stalingrad 

as if by a powerful magnet. Fourth 

Panzer Army was also having to rely on 

the Rumanians to man most of its loose 

front on me chain of lakes south of 

Beketovka . Everyone, especially the 

Rumanians themselves, knew they 

were not trained, equipped , or motivated for fighting in the Soviet Union. 

Fou rth Panzer Army had seen the 

Rumanians in action. On 28 September, several of their divisions on me 

army's right flank south of Beketovka 

had given way before a halfhearted 

Soviet attack and had fallen into a 

panic and retreat that took two days 

and a German panzer division to stop. 

Hoth had commented , "German commands which have Rumanian troops 

serving under them must reconcile 

themselves to the fact that moderately 

heavy fire, even without an enemy attack, will be enough to cause these 

troops to fall back and mat the reports 

they submit concerning their own situation are worthless since they never 

2Ibid .. 6-8 Oct 42. 

3Creillel" Oi(ll)' Notes, 7 On42, C-065q CI\'IH file. 

459 

know where their units are and their 

estimates of enemy strengm are vasdy 

exaggerated. ". 

The 14th Panzer and 305th Infantry 

Divisions were ready at LI Corps on 13 

October. The 79th Infantry Division 

was coming east but not yet in place, 

and Sixth Army was still awaiting the 

arrival of several ammunition trains. 

Nevertheless, although he might be 

pinched for ammunition in forty-eight 

hours if the trains did not get there in 

time, Paulus decided to resume the 

offensive me next day anyway.5 To delay any longer had its danger as well. 

The weadler was becoming unsetded, 

and although a spell of rain might not 

affect the fighting in dle city too much, 

it could paralyze the army's supplies. 

Lacking the strength to make a single sweep and having few other alternatives, Paulus proposed to take what 

was left of me city by pieces, working 

from nordl to south. In the first stage, 

Xl V Panzer Corps would push 

through Rynok and Spartakovka to dle 

mouth of dle Gorodishche River, while 

LI Corps occupied the tractor factory 

and the brickworks and took a hold on 

the Volga south of the Corodishche. 

The LI Corps would then turn south 

and take the gun factory, the bread 

bakery, the metallurgical works, and 

the chemical plant6 On the advance, 

engineers would take the lead and 

carve out corridors by leveling entire 

blocks of buildings with explosives; 

panzer grenadiers, as shock grou ps, 

would establish and maintain the for-

"Pz. AOK 4, la Kdegstagebuch Nr. 5, Tei/ IlI, 30 Scp 

42, P, . AOK 4 28 18311 file . 

5AOK 6, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 14, 13 OCl 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 file. 

'AOK 6, lao NI: 3843142, 8.10.42, AOK 6 30 155/43 

file. 
460 

ward momentum; and infantry would 

do the clearing and mopping-up, the 

grueling job of stamping out the resistance yard by yard and man by man. 

For the first, the formula was going 

to work. Describing the events of 14 

October, General Chuikov, then commander of SixthjouI·th Army, has said, 

"Those of us who had already been 

through a great deal will remember 

this enemy attack all our lives.'" Sixth 

Army would later remember the assault on the tractor factory as "the one 

really complete success in the battle for 

the northern part of Stalingrad."· 

Stalingrad-North 

Early in the morning on tile 14th, 

Paulus set up his forward command 

post in Gorodishche, west of the tractor 

factory. The tanks and panzer grenadiers of the 14th Panzer Division had 

moved out at daylight in light rain. 

They were into the tractor factory by 

1000. On their left, 305th Infantry 

Division pushed through the workers' 

settlement toward the Gorodishche 

River. North of the river, XIV Panzer 

Corps had begun clearing several hills 

west of Spartakovka, and in the afternoon, 14th Panzer Division's right flank 

reached the brickworks. The division 

kept going through the night, and by 

0700 the next morning, it had one of 

its panzer grenadier regiments 

through to the Volga east of the tractor 

factory. With that, Sixty-second Army's 

bridgehead was cut in two. By dark, 

Xl V Panzer Corps was at the western 

edge of Spartakovka; the tractor fac7Chuikov. Stalillgrad, p. 180. 

'AOK 6, ia Kriegstagebtlch Nr. 14, 3 Nov 42. AOK 6 

33224/2 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

tory and brickworks were occupied; 

and 14th Panzer Division's line south of 

the brickworks was just 300 yards from 

Chuikov's command post that was dug 

into the cliff above the Volga east of the 

gun factory. (Map 41.) 

The 14th Panzer and 305th Infantry 

Divisions turned south in the morning 

on the 16th. They had half of the gun 

factory by 1200. During the day, LI 

Corps and XIV Panzer Corps also 

made contact on the Gorodishche 

River west of Spartakovka and encircled parts of several Soviet divisions 

between tllere and Orlovka. When the 

gun factory and the blocks of houses to 

the west of it were taken on the 17tll, it 

looked as if the battle could not last 

more than another two or three days. 

But Paulus decided to bring in the 79th 

Infantry Division anyway, "to be ready 

for all eventualities." The resistance 

had toughened in the last two days, 

particularly on the 17tll, and numbers 

of fresh enemy battalions were being 

identified. At the same time Paulus' 

strength was fading again. His whole 

front was now within reach of the Soviet artillery across the river, and tlle 

nights were as wearing as the days 

because Soviet planes kept up a running bombardment from dark to daylight. The OKH liaison officer reported, "The Russians' air superiority 

over Stalingrad at night has assumed 

intolerable proportions. The troops 

cannot rest. Their endurance is 

strained to the limits. The losses in men 

and material are unbearable in the 

long run."" 

One of Hitler's adjutants, a Major 

Engels, arrived at Sixth Army on the 

17th "to gather personal impressions of 

9/bid., 15 OCI 42. 
Corps 

SIXTH ARMY 

':ombi 

J~ 

MAP 41 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

o 

~ ::i~ LI Corps f 

HeIght 

.1075 , 

/ 

~ 

an,dlT.nk Farm 

STALIN GRAD-NORTH 

13 October - 19 November 1942 

Approximate front, 13 Oct 

Approximate fron t, 19 Nov 

? ~ __ ~_~~, ___ ~f Mites 

o 2 Kilometers 
462 

the battle for Stalingrad." Paulus and 

his chief of staff took him to an army 

observation post where he could see 

some of the fighting and then gave him 

a statistical rundown . Since 13 September, the army had lost 343 officers 

and nea rly 13,000 enlisted men (killed, 

wounded, and missing), bringing its 

total losses since it crossed the Don on 

21 August to 1,068 officers and 39,000 

men. Enemy losses, judging from the 

numbers of prisoners taken-17,900 

after 13 September and a total of 

57,800 since 21 August-were much 

high er than Sixth Army's but not 

nearly as high as til e Soviet losses had 

been in previous battles. The intensity 

of the fighting could be deduced from 

the ammunition consumed , which for 

the month of September amounted to 

25 million rounds of riRe and machine 

gun ammunition, a half-million antitank rounds, and three-quarters of a 

million artillery rounds of all calibers. 1• 

On the 18th , while the infantry 

worked on cleaning out pockets of resistance in the gun factory, LI Corps 

repositioned its artill er y and rocket 

projectors to bring them to bear on the 

next objectives, the bread bakery and 

metallurgical works. Heavy rain had 

set in during the night, and by midday, 

the approaches to the Don bridges, 

over which all of the army's supplies 

had to come, were "passable only wim 

difficulty." Paulus tllOught he might be 

able to resume the advance the next 

afternoon if the artillery and infantry 

were ready by then, if the roads did not 

get worse, and if tile weather did not 

keep the airplanes grounded. But the 

roads did get worse as the rain, inter-

'Olbid. , 17 OCl42. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

spersed with snow showers, continued 

for two more days, and pockets of 

Russians were still holed up in tile gun 

factory shops on the 21st when the sky 

began to clear. 

The LI Corp s, und e r General 

Seydlitz, went back into motion on the 

23d Witll 79th Infantry Division in the 

lead. It had half of the metallurgical 

works, the blocks of houses west of the 

bread bakery, and most of the bakery 

itself in its hands by afternoon and, at 

nightfall, had a spearhead o n the 

Volga. The next day, XIV Pa nzer 

Corps, which had been diverted by 

Soviet attacks on its norm front, took 

me western two-thirds of Spartakovka. 

But the momentum dropped off fast at 

both corps. The XIV Panzer Corps' 

troops had been in action without a 

break for ten days, and 79th Infantry 

Division , which had been at the Don 

bridgeheads for weeks before coming 

into Stalingrad, had, from the first, 

onl y been fresh by compa rison with 

Seydlitz's other divisions. Infantry 

strength was being dissipated in a 

dozen or more small but costl y actions 

around or inside sho ps and buildings 

in the metallurgical plant and against 

Soviet contingents dug-in along th e 

river as far north as the brickworks. 

For a week after the 24th, LI Corps' 

effort was totally absorbed by day in 

fighting for what previously would 

have been conside red miniscule objectives-shops number 1, 5, and 10 in the 

metallurgical plant and a furnace in 

the same plant-and by night in trying 

to disrupt boat traffic on the Volga that 

was bringing Chuikov re placements 

after dark for his losses in th e 

daylight. 11 

Il/bid. , 18- 30 Oct 42. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 463 

O N THE A TTACK AT T H E STA LI NGRAD G UN FACTORY 

The Clock Runs Down 

Paulus, Weichs, and their chiefs of 

staff met on 1 November to discuss the 

question "how the attack on Stalin&rad 

can be nourished with new forces, smce 

the strength of the 79th Infantry Division has so far declined that it can no 

longer be considered for larger missions."!' Paulus thought of exchangmg 

the 79th Infantry Division for the 60th 

Motorized Infantry Division, whIch 

was on the Xl V Panzer Corps north 

front. Getting the one division into the 

line on the north , however, and the 

other out would take some time, and 

the 60th Motorized Infantry Division, 

which had not exactly been in a quiet 

12/bid., 1 Nov 42. 

spot, would also need ~ few days rest. 

Weichs proposed possIbly takmg two 

regiments from the 29th MotOrIzed 

Infantry Division, which was closer to 

and acting as the mobile reserve for 

both Fourtll Panzer Army and Rumanian Third Army. General Richthofen, 

the commander of Fourth Air Force, 

had made an offer that was welcome on 

the one hand and troublesome on the 

other. He had said he would be willing 

to relinquish some of the air force's 

railroad haulage space to allow the 

army to ship in more artillery ammunition-because the fighting was getting 

to be at such close quarters that he 

believed "the Luftwaffe cannot be very 

effective any more."!3 

'3/bid. 
464 

Two days later, Weichs' chief of staff, 

General Sodenstern, told General 

Schmidt, the Sixth Army chief of staff, 

that the OKH would not allow the two 

regiments to be detached from the 

29th Motorized Infantry Division but 

had instructed Weichs to let Paulus 

have five pioneer (combat engineer) 

battalions from divisions in the line on 

the Don. The idea to use the engineers 

had come to Hitler, through air force 

channels, from the inveterate dabbler 

in the ground war, Richthofen, who 

had been impressed with the engineers' 

performance in the assault on t11e tractor factory.I4 Sodenstern said that the 

Army Group B staff believed getting 

t11e engineer battalions would not be 

"bad at all" for Sixth Army. Schmidt, 

however, replied that the engineers 

could "in no way be a substitute for 

infantry." They were specialists, he 

said , "particularly accomplished in 

cracking bunkers and other large objects," but what the army needed was 

the "strength" of infantry. The attack 

on the tractor factory, he pointed out, 

had succeeded because the army then 

had infantry to do the "permanent 

mopping up" behind the engineers and 

the panzer grenadiers." 

Chuikov, who had shifted his command post on the 17th, to the river 

bank east of the chemical plant, also 

had an interest, though of a different 

son, in Sixth Army's problems. Watching the pressure on his front drop in 

the last days of the month , he knew his 

anny would survive for at least one 

more round. On the other hand , his 

position was not all that good. As he 

HKehrig, Stalingmd. p. 4 1. 

l"AOK 6, f a K riegslagdmch N ): 1-1 , 3 Nov 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 fil e. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

has put it, he and his troops were 

sitting "dangling our legs in the 

Volga."16 All Sixty-second Army held on 

the west bank were two small bridgeheads about a half-mile deep, the one 

taking in parts of Rynok and Spartakovka, the other around the chemical 

plant with a narrow, ragged tail reaching into the metallurgical plant and 

upstream along the river bank to the 

brickworks. Replacements continued 

to come across in as large numbers as 

t11e area could accommodate, and the 

artillery on the east bank had come 

prominently-perhaps decisivelyinto play. Sixth Army attributed the 

79th Infantry Division's rapid decline 

primarily to t11e "effect of the enemy's 

massed artillery."" 

But t11e predominant Soviet effort 

was being directed elsewhere. The 

buildup for URANUS was being brought 

to its conclusion. The Southeastern 

and Ryazan-Ural divisions of the railroad system, the ones serving the Stalingrad region, were running at ten 

times their normal capacities. Railroad 

workers were stationed along the track 

to supplement the mechanical signal 

systems and to make it possible to run 

trains at closer intervals, and cars were 

being heaved off the tracks at terminal 

points to avoid having to backhaul 

empties. From the railheads, 27,000 

trucks and horse-drawn vehicles delivered cargo to the front. Troops moved 

only at night and bivouaced under 

cover during the daytime. IS Between I 

and 19 November, vessels of the lV/ga 

Flotilla carried 160,000 troops, 430 

16Chuikov, Slalilllfmd. pp. 197- 99. 

17AOK 6, 10 Krii'gslagdmch NT. 14. I Nov 4 2. AOK 6 

33224/2 fil e. 

18/VOVSS, vol. III, pr. 20- 22. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

tanks, 600 artillery pieces, and 14,000 

motor transport vehicles across the 

river to Stalingrad Hunt. " 

Between 1 and 10 November, Generals Zhukov and Vasilevskiy, as Slaviw 

representatives, conducted a round of 

conferences and inspections to make 

certain the plans were understood and 

preparations properly made. 20 These 

were things that could not yet be taken 

for granted in the Soviet Army, and 

they required a great deal of on-thespot checking and coaching of the 

staffs. In his speech on 7 November 

commemorating the anniversary of the 

Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin dropped 

the "Not a step back!" appeal and, 

instead, struck a note of high confidence saying, "The enemy has already 

felt the force of the Red Army's blows 

at Rostov, at Moscow, at Tikhvin . The 

day is not far off when the enemy will 

feel the force of new blows by the Red 

Army. There will be a celebration in 

our street toO!"21 On 13 November, 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy explained URA. 

NUS to the members of the Politburo and 

the Stavka and assured them that all 

commands, "from fivnt to regiment," 

knew and understood the plan, the 

nature of the terrain, and the techniques of infantry, armor, artill ery, and 

air coordination." But Sixth Army was 

still on the offensive, and there would 

be another round in the contest for the 

city. Weichs told Paulus on 3 

November, "The general situation requires that the battles around Stalingrad be ended soon." Sixth Army, he 

19Malsulcnko, "OpemtiVlIa),a maskirovka ," p. II. 

2°Zhukov. Memoirs, pp. 402-04; Vasilevskiy, "Delo," 

p.247. 

21/\fMV, vol. VI , p. 48. 

22Vasilevskiy, "Delat " p. 247[; Samsonov, Slalingrtulskaya bitvQ, pp. 350-52. 

465 

added, would be getting the five pioneer battalions in the next week, and 

they should be combined with infantry 

under panzer grenadier regimental 

staffs. The next objective would be the 

chemical plant at Lazurn Two days 

later, however, Soden stern called 

Schmidt to tell him the army grou p 

had just received word that Hitler had 

"expressed the opinion" that the 

ground east of the gun factory and 

metallurgical plant ought to be taken 

first. The two chiefs of staff agreedas later did General Zeitzler, chief of 

the General Staff-that doing so 

would consume too much strength and 

would most likely rule out a subsequent 

attack on the chemical plant. Nevertheless, the next day Paulus received 

the following by teletype from the 

army group: 

The Fuehrer has ordered: Before resuming the attack to capture the Lazur Chemicar Plant, the two sections of the city the 

enemy still holds east of the gun factory 

and east of the metallurgical plant are to be 

taken. Only after the bank of the Volga is 

entirely in our hands in those places is the 

assault on the chemical plant to be 

begun. 24 

On the 7th, the artillery began counterfire against the Soviet artillery across 

the river, and Paulus told Weichs he 

would start to move east of the gun 

factory on the 11th and at the metallurgical plant, "at the earliest on the 

15th."" 

While it waited , the army made some 

random observations that were not 

causes for high alarm but were not 

23AOK 6, /a Kriegstllgebllch Nr. /4, 3 Nov 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 file. 

H/bid. , 6 Nov 42. 

2~/bid. , 8- 10 Nov 42. 
466 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

- - . , - ... ... . * - .... 

.- ~,-

-- .,. _ "'I <0 •• 

~-u::: :.,-

R UBBLE PROVIDES CoVER FOR SOVIET SoLDIERS 

reassuring either. For one, in a short 

course the army was giving to qualify 

NCOs from other branches as infantry 

lieutenants, a number of the candidates declared they would rather not 

be infantry officers and asked to be 

returned to their original branches. 

Paulus ordered the men dropped from 

the course and sent to the infantry. For 

another, several days of below freezing 

temperatures signaled the end of the 

fall rains. On the 8th and in the days 

thereafter, reports on the Soviet 

buildup in the Don bridgeheads opposite Rumanian Th ird Army became 

more frequent. On the 10th, the army 

group transferred the Headquarte rs, 

XXXXVIII Panze r Corps, into the 

Rumanian Third Army area and 

alerted the 29th Motorized Infantry 

Division for a move in behind the 

Rumanians "on the shortest notice."2. 

On the other hand , owing to a quirk 

of nature, Sixty-second Army was confronted with the most immed iate ly 

ominous new development. Unlike 

other Russians rivers, the Volga does 

not freeze quickly. It first forms slush , 

then ice Aoes that pile up along the 

banks, then a massive coat of drifting 

ice than can sink the strongest boat but 

is too treacherous to be crossed on foot 

by men or animals. Weeks, in some 

years, months, pass before the surface 

freezes solid, which could have meant 

an extended period of isolation for 

Sixty-second Army during the approach 

of winter in 1942 . 

26/bid. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 467 

.. 

-

GERMA N FIELD ARTILLERY FIRES I NTO STALINCRAD 

The Last Round 

Four hours before daylight on the 

11th, in freezing weather, Seydlitz 

struck east of the gun factory. When 

Paulus arrived at his forward command post, just before 1000, word 

awaited him that the attack was moving-but slowly. By nightfall, one 

spearhead had reached the cliff overlooking the river and another was on 

the shore. Sixth Army reported to the 

OKH "The attack east of the gun 

facto':y in Stalingrad achieved a partial 

success against a numerically strong 

enemy who defended himself bitterly." 

Paulus added that he would regroup 

the next day and resume the advance 

on the 13th'7 

27/bid" II Nov 42. 

By the 12th, Paulus was having also 

to keep an eye on Rumanian Third 

Army. During the day, Weichs told him 

to squeeze 10,000 men out of his engineer and artillery units to man a support line behind the Rumanians. 

Meanwhile, Hoth was trylllg to IIlterpret the meaning of heavy enemy 

movements opposite Fourth Panzer 

Army. One thing was certain , he remarked , the Russians were not going 

through all the trouble just to 

strengthen their defenses." 

East of the gun factory, on the 13th , 

LI Corps conducted what the arlllY 

described as "successful shock troop 

actions," taking two blocks of houses 

and one large building called "the COIll-

~lJ 'Z. . AOK 4 , la Kliegslagebuch Nr. 5, Teil lll, 13 Nov 

42. P,. AOK 4 28183/1 role . 
468 

missar's house." On the Volga, ice was 

beginning to pile up along the bank. 

Two days later, after having regrouped 

once more, LI Corps launched more 

shock troop actions and "further narrowed the bridgehead east of the gun 

factory. During the night on the 15th, 

Sixty-second Army counterattacked along 

the whole line and was beaten off. 

Seydlitz's dispositions were unsettled 

enough , however, to rule out even 

shock troops actions for the next day. 

In the meantime, the drifting ice on 

the Volga had compacted into an almost solid cover extending as much as 

seventy-five yards out from the shore. 

There could not be any more 

thought or talk of one last big push in 

Stalingrad. Artillery and troops were 

standing by to go out of-not intothe city to Rumanian Third Army and 

Fourth Panzer Army. On the morning 

of the 17th, a somewhat lame exchange 

took place between Hitler and Paulus. 

Hitler sent the following Fuehrer order: 

1 am aware of the difficulties of the fighting in Stalingrad and of the decline in 

combat strengths. But the drift ice on the 

Volga poses even greater difficulties for 

the ~lIssians. If we exploit this time span, 

we wilJ save ourselves much blood later. 

I therefore expect that the leadership 

and the troops will once more, as they 

often have in the past, devote all their 

energy and spirit to at least gelling 

through to the Volga at the gun factory and the metallurgical plant and taking 

these sections of the city. 

Paulus replied: 

I beg to report to the Fuehrer that the 

commanders III Stalingrad and I are acting 

entirely in the sense of this order to explOIt 

the Russians' weakness occasioned during 

the past several days by the drift ice on the 

Volga. The Fuehrer's order will give the 

troops a fresh impulse. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Hitler's expectation had become 

smaller, but Paulus' capabilities were 

smaller still." The only progress of any 

kind on the 17th and 18tll, and tllat not 

substantial, was on the north where 

XIV Panzer Corps had been chipping 

away at Spartakovka and Rynok for 

weeks. Paulus proposed, after more regrouping, to try a thrust to tlle Volga 

out of the northern part of the metallurgical plant on the 20tll . 

Sixth Army Encircled 

Operation Uranus 

During the night of 18 November, it 

snowed along the Don, so heavily that 

visibility at times fell to zero. The temperature was 20° F. At 0720 on the 

19th, Fifth Tank Army's artillery, in the 

Serafimovich bridgehead on the Don 

110 miles northwest of Stalingrad, arid 

Twenty-first Army's artillery, on the Don 

west of Kletskaya, received the alert 

code word Sirena ("siren"). Ten minutes 

later, the command ogon ("fire") came 

through, and 3,500 guns and mortars 

opened up on Rumanian Third Army. 

At 0850, the first infantry echelon, Fifth 

Tank Anny's 14th and 47th Guards Rifle 

Divisions and 119th and 124th Rifle Divisions, went on the attack.'· (Mat) 42.) 

In Stalingrad and at Fourth Panzer 

Army, at daylight, the sky was overcast 

with low-hanging clouds and the temperature was just above freezing. At 

1100, Soden stern told Schmidt the offensive against Rumanian Third Army 

had begun. The Rumanians, he said, 

had reported several "weak" attacks 

earlier in the morning and a stronger 

2!1AOK 6, fa Kriegstagebudl Nr. 14 , 17 Nov 42, AOK 6 

3322412 lile. 

30Samsonov, SlalillgrfUlska),a hilva, p.375. 
SOUTHWEST 

63d 1st Guards 

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EIGHTH-j---"" 

ITALIAN \ 

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" 

THIRD 

FRONT 

5th Tank 

Seraflmovich r 

21st Kremenskil~a 

RUMANIAN 

ARMY 

GROUP 

B 

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DON 

FRONT I 

62d 

STALINGRAD 

( 

- xxxx--/-, $aversA.¥ ( 

STALINGRAD 

64th 

Nlzllne 

Cf!!fsl<.a'lil 

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I 

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(' 

PANZER 

ARMY 

Korelmkovo 

OPERATION URANUS 

19 - 23 November 1942 --- Approximate front, 19 Nov 

¢::::=:=: Direction of Soviet attack 

o 50 Miles 

'i-b -------:5':O~K::;"'-"':-.::t~,,:::-.. 

MAP 42 

8eherr\vAIl 

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FRONT 

57th 

Abg/lnerovo I 

I 

\ 51st 

I 

I 

\ 

\ 

" 

, 

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470 

one at about 0900. 31 In the meantime, 

a momentary break in the clouds had 

given "a revealing insight into the enemy's movements" opposite Fourth 

Panzer Army. At an altitude of 300 

feet, a scout plane had flown over a 

miles-long column of Soviet tanks 

headed west. 32 In Stalingrad, the first 

part of the day was somewhat better 

than usual: two more blocks of houses 

were taken east of the gu n factory, and 

Paulus reponed he would try to stay on 

the offensive there for another day. 33 

Fifth Tank and Twenty]irst A,'mies had 

both cracked the Rumanian line by 

1200, and between 1300 and 1400, Fifth 

Tank Army's I and XXVI Tank Corps began to move through. General Mayor 

I. M. Chistyakov committed IV Tank 

COIPS and III Guards Cavalry Corps in the 

Twentyfirst Army breakthrough an hour 

later. Rumanian Third Army had practically collapsed under the first assault, 

and the Soviet tanks, against which the 

Rumanians had no antitank weapons 

heavier than 47-mm. , completed its demoralization. Sixty]ifth Army, under 

General Ley tenant P. I. Batov, also had 

begun its attack in the morning, but it 

faced German divisions on the left 

flank of Sixth Army and made almost 

no progress except against a Rumanian 

cavalry division on its right flank and 

there advanced only about three miles 

as opposed to thirteen to fourteen 

miles gained by the other two armies."' 

At 2200, the following message, 

31AOK 6, fa Kriegstagebllch N,: 14, 19 Nov 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 file . 

32PZ. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebllch NT. 5, Teil lll, 13 Nov 

42, P,. AOK 4 28 18311 file. 

33AOK 6, l a Kriegstagebuch NT. 14, 19 Nov 42, AOK 6 

3322412 file. 

34Sbonllk, NOllieI' 6. See a lso Samsonov. S ta -

lillgradsku)'a bitva, pp. 378-81. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

signed "Weichs," came off the teletype 

at Sixth Army: "The development of 

the situation at Rumanian Third Army 

compels radical measures to secure 

forces to protect the deep flank of 

Sixth Army. All offensive operations in 

Stalingrad are to be halted at once." 

Along with the message came an order 

to take three panzer divisions and an 

infantry division out of the city and to 

deploy them to meet the attack on the 

army's left flank.35 

Stalingrad Front began the offensive 

on the 20th after General Eremenko 

had delayed the start for several hours 

because of fog. With ease, Fifty-seventh 

Army, under General Ley tenant F. I. 

Tolbukhin, and Fifty]irst Army, under 

General Ley tenant N. I. Trufanov, 

broke through the Rumanian VI 

Corps front along the lake chain south 

of Beketovka.'6 Fourth Panzer Army 

recorded that the Rumanian corps disintegrated so rapidly that all measures 

to stop the fleeing troops became 

useless before they could be put into 

execution. At nightfall, the army concluded that by morning the Rumanian 

VI Corps would have no combat value 

worth mentioning. Hoth said the work 

of weeks had been "ruined in a day"; in 

many places, the Rumanians had offered no resistance at all-they had 

fallen victim to "an indescribable tank 

panic." He wanted to pull back Rumanian VII Corps, which was holding the 

army right flank south of VI Corps, but 

Weichs refused permission because he 

feared the Rumanians would not stop 

once they began to retreat. 37 (Heada:iAOK 6, /a Kn'egstagebuch NT. 14, 19 Nov 42, AOK 6 

3322412 file . 

36/VMV, vol. VI, p. 56. 

:npz. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 5, 'Tei/llI, 20 Nov 

42, Pz. AOK 42818311 file. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

quarters, Rumanian Fourth Army, and 

VII Corps, with three divisions, had 

been brought in at the end of October.) 

During the morning on the 20th , 

Headquarters, XIV Panzer Corps and 

the four divisions from Stalingrad 

shifted to the west side of the Don 

where, together with three divisions 

already on the scene, they prevented 

the Twentyji1"St and Sixtyjifth Armies 

from forming a secondary pocket west 

of the river. But, confronted by superior 

forces and unable to achieve full mobility because they were short on gasoline, 

they could not operate against the more 

important outer arm of the envelopment. The only obstacles in Fifth Tank 

Anny's path were the XXXXVIIl Panzer 

Corps and remnants of Rumanian 

Third Army. The Rumanians hardly 

counted any longer, although some, especially elements of one division under 

the Rumanian General Mihail Lascar, 

fought determinedly3' 

Hitler at first pinned all his hopes on 

XXXXVIII Panzer Corps. It, however, 

could not establish contact between its 

two divisions and in the end, barely 

managed to escape to the west bank of 

the Chir River. (After XXXXVIII Panzer Corps got across the Chir, several 

days later, Hitler had its commanding 

general, Generalleutnant Ferdinand 

Heim, recalled to Germany, stripped of 

his rank, and jailed without trial.)39 At 

most, all the Germans and Rumanians 

38AOK 6, III Kriegstllgebllch Nr. 14, 20 Nov 42, AOK 6 

33224/2 lile. 

3Y Hei m was released in August 1943, without having been t.-ied . !-Ie was restOl'ed to rank a year latCl' 

and appointed to command the Boulogne Fortress in 

France. Walter Goerlilz. Der Zweile Weltkrieg, 1939-

1945 (Stuttgart: Sleingruben Verlag. 1951 , 1952), vol. 

I , p. 398. vol, II.. p. 363: Walter Goerlitz, Paulus and 

SlaJillgrad (New York: Citadel Press, 1963), p. 20111. 

471 

accom plished was to set the Fifth Tank 

Army timetable back about twenty-four 

hours, and this was less their doing 

than a consequence of the tank army's 

allowing itself to be drawn into local 

engagements contrary to its original 

orders. After the delay, the army's two 

tank corps continued on toward Kalach 

and Chir Station while VIII Cavall'y 

C01PS, aided by several riRe divisions, 

cleared the line of the Chir, east of 

which the Germans and Rumanians 

had no hope of holding.'· 

Founh Panzer Army was spl;t in two 

by the end of the day. The bulk of its 

German contingent, IV Corps and the 

29th Motorized Infantry Division, was 

trapped inside the pocket forming 

around Stalingrad. Outside the pocket, 

Hoth had left only the Headquarters, 

Rumanian Fourth Army, Rumanian VI 

and VII Corps, and the 16th Motorized 

Infantry Division . The latter, protecting the army's outer Rank, was cut off 

at Khalkuta on the 20th and had to 

fight its way west to Jashkul. In such 

condition, Fourth Panzer Army could 

not stem the advance around Stalingrad, and it had no real prospect of 

preventing the Russians from advancing southwest along the left side of the 

Don" 

AltllOugh Hoth did not know it at 

the time, a command problem on the 

other side was doing more for him 

than anything he could have managed. 

After the breakthrough, Fifty-seventh 

Anny had the relatively limited mission 

of turning in on the flank of Sixth 

Army while Fiftyjirst Army had the dual 

of°Sbornik, Noma 6; AOK 6, la , AlIgabcl/ lIeber 

Vorgaenge seil dem 20.11.42, AOK 6 75107/6 file. 

41 Pl.. AOK 4, la Kriegstagebuch Nr. 5, Tei/Ill, 20- 21 

No\· 42. Pz. AOK 4 28183/ 1 file. 
472 

mission of send ing its mobile forces, IV 

M echanized Corps and IV Tank Corps, in a 

wide sweep northwestward to complete 

the encirclement near Kalach and of 

simultaneously directing its infantry divisions southwestward toward Kotelnikovo to cover the left Aank. Considering the shattered state of Fourth Panzer Army, Fiftyfirst Army should not 

have had trouble, but Trufanov and his 

staff had difficulty dealing with the 

comp li cations of controling forces 

moving in divergent directions. As a 

result, the advances toward Kalach and 

Kotelnikovo were conducted more 

slowly and hesitantly than was necessary." Toward Kotelnikovo, in partiCldar, Fifty-first Army moved so 

cautiously as to make Hoth wonder. 

Nevertheless, Fourth Panzer Army was 

in near mortal danger. On tile 22d , 

Hoth described Rumanian VI Corps as 

still presenting "a fantastic picture of 

Aeeing remnants."43 

Sixth A'rmy Stays 

An encirclement of a modern army 

is a cataclysmic event. On the map it 

often takes on a surgicall y precise appearance. On the battlefield it is a 

rending operation that leaves the victim to struggle in a state of shock with 

the least favorable of all military situations: his lines of communications are 

cut; his headquarters are often separated from troops; support elements 

are shattered; and his front is opened 

to attack from all directions. The moment the ring closes, every single individual is in the pocket. Escape is upper12Sbornik, NomH 6. 

<63P1.. AOK 4, fa ri~gslllgtbuc" Nr..5, Teil lIl , 22 No\' 

42. PI. AOK 4 28 18311 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

most in the thoughts of commanders 

and men alike, but escape is no simple 

matter. With the enemy on all sides, with 

rivers to cross, turning around an army 

that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, with all of its men , weapons, vehicles, suppli es, and equipment, and 

marching it ten, twenty, thirty, or more 

miles is cumbersome and perilous. 

The first effect of an impending encirclement is to intensify vastly the normal confusion of battle because the 

attack is carried into the areas most difficult to defend and because, as the advance continues, the forces being 

encircled progressively lose the points 

of reference, the means and the ability 

to orient themselves for a coherent response. It was seventy miles from the 

Serafimovich bridgehead to the bridge 

at Kalach, a few miles more to Sixth 

Army's railhead at Chir Station. I n between, in the angle of me Chir and the 

Don, lay army and corps staffs, ammunition and supply dumps, motor 

pools, hospitals, workshops-in short, 

the nerve center and practically the 

whole housekeeping establishment of 

the army. All of tllese merged into one 

southward rolling wave of men , horses, 

and trucks trying to escape the Soviet 

tanks. The Don was frozen and probably could have been crossed even by 

trucks, but few would retreat east as 

long as they had any other choice." 

[n the Fuehrer Headquarters the 

events were not clear, but their probable consequences were obvious. Short 

of a miracle, Sixth Army would either 

have to be permitted to retreat Ollt of 

Stalingrad, which from Hitler's point of 

HA graphic, semi fictionalized accounl or lhe encirclemenl is gi"en in Heinrich Gerlach. Die ~rmlelle 

A"mu (Munich: NYlllphcnhurger, 1959). 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

view was unthinkable, or a relief would 

have to be organized . On 20 

November, Hitler created a new army 

group, Army Group Don, which would 

be composed of Sixth Army, Rumanian 

Third Army, Fourth Panzer Army, and 

Rumanian Fourth Army, and he gave 

Field Marshal Manstein the command. 

Manstein would need about a week to 

transfer his headquarters. 

Manstein's appointment completed 

the Stalingrad triumvirate of Hitler, 

Manstein, and Paulus. At Stalingrad, 

Hitler had publicly staked his personal 

prestige; no small matter for him . In 

Operations Order No.1 of 14 October 

he had established the rigid defense, 

successful in the previous winter, as his 

answer to whatever the next winter 

might bring. Manstein had a reputation to uphold, and possibly enlarge, as 

an engineer of victories and as an inspired, even daring, commander and 

tactician. Had Hitler decided to appoint another commander in ch ief, 

army, Manstein would have been one 

of the likeliest candidates. I n his own 

mind , Manstein seems to have begun to 

envision at least an appointment as 

chief of tl,e General Staff, Witll enough 

added authority to make him Hitler's 

Ludendorff. 45 Paulus, in his first army 

command, had fought the campaign 

well thus far. Like Manstein's, his career 

was on the rise. Reportedly, Hitler 

planned to bring him to the Fuehrer 

Headquarters after Stalingrad to replace General Jodi, chief, OKW OperauGenCl'al def I nfalllcrie Erich Ludendorff, although nominally subordinate to the head of Slate 

and commander in chief, Emperor William II , and to 

the chief of the General Slaff. Ceneralfeldmarschall 

QltO \'on Hincienburg, had directed the entire German war effort during the last two years of World 

War I. 

473 

tions Staff, who was in lin gering 

disfavor.4s 

On the 21st, from the Be-rghof where 

he had been vacationing, Hitler ordered Sixth Army to stand where it was 

"regardless of ti,e danger of a temporary encirclement."4' On the same day, 

he told Manstein to expect reinforcements totaling 6 infantry divisions, 4 

panzer divisions, an air force field division , and an antiaircraft artillery division , but of these, only 2 infantry 

divisions would be avai lable immediately, the others were not to be expected until the first week of 

December.4' 

Hitler's order reached Paulus at 

Nizhne Chirskaya behind the Chir 

River and outside the developing encirclement, where Sixth Army's winter 

headquarters had been built. He had 

stayed in his forward command post at 

Golubinskiy, on the Don ten miles 

north of Kalach , until nearly 1200 on 

the 21st, when Soviet tanks heading toward Ka lach came into sight on the 

steppe to the west. 4' 

When Paulus left, the XIV Panzer 

Corps staff took over the Golubinskiy 

command post and from there, with 

parts of the 14th and 16th Panzer Divisions, tried to lure the Soviet spearheads into a stationary battle. Wherever they could, the Soviet tanks ignored the Germans and roared past 

them . The I V Tank Corps lost some 

speed; I Tank Corps let itself get tied up 

in a fight; but XXVI Tank Corps was not 

460KW, KTB, vol. II , p. 12. 

~7H . c,: B, l a, an AOK 6, FuelirerenLschrid, 21 .11.42, 

AOK 6 75107/6 file. 

"OKH, C",StdH , Op. Abl. (I SIB) N, 420947142. au 

H . Gr. B, 22.11.42, H . Cr. Don 39694/3b file. 

49 Heinz Schroeter, Sra/illgmd (New York: E. ~ Dul· 

lon, 1958), p. 80: KcllIig, Sralingrad, p. 163. 
474 

affected at all. In a daring raid before 

dawn on the morning of the 22d, a battalion from XXVI Tank Cm'ps captured 

the Don Bridge at Kalach and formed 

a hedgehog around it. 5 • 

That morning, Paulus Aew into the 

pocket. From the Gumrak airfield, he 

informed Hitler by radio that the Russians had taken Kalach and that Sixth 

Army had been encircled. 51 I n the 

strict sense, Paulus' report was not 

quite correct. The Germans in Kalach 

held out until the next day, and the 

southern arm of the encirclement was 

not completed . It was late on the 23d, 

that, after an exchange of green recognition Aares, IV Tanks Corps, which had 

crossed the Don and covered another 

ten miles, met IV Mechanized Corps at 

Sovetskiy and closed the ring. 52 

In the message to Hitler, Paulus had 

a lso stated that he did not have any 

kind of a front on the south rim of the 

pocket, between Kalach and Karpovka; 

therefore, he would have to call XIV 

Panzer Corps back and use its divisions 

to close the ga p. If enough su pplies 

could be Aown in and the gap could be 

closed-the latter being doubtful because of a shortage of motor fuel-he 

intended [0 form a perimeter around 

Stalingrad. If a front could not be built 

on the SOUtll, the only solution , as he 

saw it, was to evacuate Stalingrad, to 

give up the north front, pull the army 

[Ogetller, and [0 break out to tlle southwest toward Fourtll Panzer Army. He 

requested discretionary autllOrity LO 

5°Schroeler, StaJingro.d, pp. 81 , 83-85; Kehrig. Sta~ 

lingrad, pp. 163-65, 170- 72: Samsonov, Sla~ 

/i1lgradska)'(l bitva, pp. 382-84. 

51AOK 6, la, KH·PlIllks/mlch all !-I. Cr. B, 22.11.42, 

AOK 6 75107/3 file. 

52/VOVSS, vol. III . p. 40. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

give such orders if they became 

necessary'3 

Paulus waited in vain throughout the 

day on the 23d for a decision from 

Hitler, who was making his way back to 

the 'vIb/fsschanze by rail and plane and, 

who at intervals, was admonishing 

Zeitzler by telephone not to make any 

decisions until he arrived." Aware by 

nightfall that the Soviet ring had 

closed, Paulus radioed a second appeaJ 

[0 the OKH in which he stated that the 

gap in the front on the south would 

expose the army to destruction "in the 

very shortest time" if a breakout were 

not attempted. As the first step, he 

said, he would have to strip the northern front and deploy the troops south 

for the escape effort. He again asked 

for freedom of decision, buttressing his 

request with the statement that his five 

corps commanders concurred in his estimate" In a separate message, Weichs 

seconded Paulus' request. 

During the n;ght, Seydlitz, having 

concluded that a breakout was inevitable and that Hitler would have to be 

presented a fait accompli, began pulling back several Ll Corps divisions on 

the northeastern tip of the pocket. The 

next morning, Hitler demanded a full 

report on the Ll Corps withd rawal and 

forbade any further actions contrary to 

Operations Order No . 1. Weichs attempted to gloss over the matter by explaining that tile troops had been taken 

back to prepared positions to gain a division for other employment; but 

Hiller was not convinced and, suspecting Paulus, gave Seydlitz, of whose ac53AOK 6 la, KR·Fllnks/mu ll 011 H. Gr. 8, 22.11.42, 

AOK 6 75107/3 file. 

54 Kehrig, Slali1!/J"nd, p. 218. 

!)SPOIl/US, Flmkspmch (lit OK/'I, Nachrichtlich /-I. Gr. n, 

23.11 .42, AOK 6 75107/6 file. 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 475 

• 

• 

. - T -34 TANKS ADVANCINC AT SPEED 

tion he apparently was not aware, 

command of the entire north front, 

making him personally responsible for 

holding that side of the pocket. 56 

Manstein and part of his staff arrived 

al Weich's headquarters on the morning of the 24th, where Weichs told him 

Sixth Army's position was untenable. 

After making his own calculations, 

however, Manslein sent the OKH a less 

pessimistic estimate than those of 

Paulus and Weichs. He agreed that a 

breakout was the safest course and that 

lO hold out would be extremely dan-

~6(JKJ-I, GenStdH, OJ), Abt. (I SIB) Nt: 420964142, {HI 6 

Anllte, H . Cr. B, H. Gr. Don, 24.11.42 and OKH, 

CmStdH, Op. Abt. (I SIB) Nr. 134142. all H . Gr. n, AOK 

6, 24 .11.42, AOK 6 75 107/6 file: H. Cr. B, fa NT. 

4242142, (111 H. Gr. Doll, 24 .lI.-12, H . Gr. Don 39694 

file. 

gerous, but he said he could not concur 

"at present" with Army Group B's 

stand in favor of a breakout. He said he 

believed a relief operation could start 

in early December if the promised reinforcements were supplied. At lhe 

same time , he warned that the breakout could still become necessary if a 

relief force cou ld not be assembled" 

Whether Hitler would have been 

persuaded by tlle unanimous voices of 

Manstein, Weichs, and Paulus is doubtful. That he was not going to be inAuenced by the olher two with Manstein 

dissenting was certain . In fact, Hitler 

had made whal was going to be his final 

510b. Kdo. H . Gr. Dotl . la Nr. 4580142, {HI OKH, Of}. 

Aht., 24.11.42 , H. Gr. Don 3969413b file: Kehrig, 

SwLiTlgmd, pp. 222-2'1. 
476 

decision on Sixth Army early on the 

24th , without waiting for Manstein's 

opinion. He instructed Paulus to draw 

his northwest and southwest fronts inward slightly and then to hold the 

pocket, and he promised to su pply 

Sixth Army by air. To Fourth Panzer 

Army, he sent orders to stop the Russians north of Kotelnikovo and to get 

ready to counterattack north to reestablish contact with Sixth Army. In 

Hitler's mind , the correctness of the 

decision was probably confirmed less 

by Manstein's estimate than by an assurance from ReichsmarschaU Goering, commander in chief, air forceaccepted over Zeitzler's strenuously expressed doubts-that the air force 

would be able to fly 600 tons of supplies per day into the pocket.'8 

1\vo days later, Hitler put down his 

thoughts on Stalingrad in a message to 

Manstein. To evacuate the city, he said, 

would mean giving up the "most substantial achievement" of the 1942 campaign; therefore, the city would have to 

be held regardless of the cost, especially since to retake it in 1943 would 

require even greater sacrifices. Fourtll 

Panzer Army would have to "extend a 

hand" to Sixth Army from the Kotelnikovo area and would have to hold a 

bridgehead around the confluence of 

the Don and Chir rivers to facilitate a 

secondary thrust toward Stalingrad 

from the west. When contact with Sixth 

Army was reestablished, supplies 

would be moved in ; the city would be 

held; and Army Group Don could beSIIKehrig, Stalingrad, p. 220; OKH, GenSldH, an AOK 

6. 24.IIA2. AOK 6 7510713 file; OKH, GenStdH, Op. 

Abt. (I S18) N,.. 420961142, an H. Gr. B, H. Gr. Don 

39694/3b file: MS T-9, Der Feldz.llg in RtLSSland eill 

operativer Ueberblick (Generalobersl a.D. GOlthard 

Heinrici), eh. X, pp. 8 1-82. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

gin to prepare for an advance north to 

clear out the area of the breakthrough 

between the Don and the Chir" 

Hitler had made his decision and was 

confident, but his confidence was not 

shared at the front. On seeing the 

order of 24 November, Seydlitz told 

Paulus there could be no question of 

holding; the army either had to breakout or succumb within a short time. He 

believed supplies, which had already 

been running short before the counteroffensive began, would decide the 

issue. To found any hopes on air supply, he added, was to grasp at a straw 

since only thirty JU-52s were at hand 

(on 23 November), and even if hundreds more could be assembled, a feat 

which was doubtful, the army's full 

requirements could still not be met. 

Paulus told Seydlitz to keep out of 

affairs that were no concern of his but, 

nevertheless, agreed with Seydlitz in 

substance and, on the 26th, in a personal letter to Manstein, again asked 

for authority to act at his own discretion, pointing out that tlle first three 

days of air supply had brought only a 

fraction of the promised 600 tons and 

300 JU-52 flights per day.so 

Manstein knew Hitler's thinking and 

did not answer. After Army Group 

Don was formally activated on the next 

day, the 27tll, Manstein learned more. 

Zeitzler told him that he, too, would 

not be given the amhority to order a 

breakout-which he had asked for in 

f> IJOKH, GenSldH, op. Abt. (I SIB) Nr. 420964142, al/ 

H eml Celleraljeldmarschall VOII Mal1Slnn, 26.11.42, H . 

Gr. Don 3969413b file . 

6°Der Kommrwdiert1uJe General des LI A.K., Nr. 

603142, an den H errn Oherbefehlshaher cia 6. Armft, 

25.11.42, AOK 6 7510713 file; O.B. der AOK 6, an 

Gelleraljeidmlmdwll 11011 Manslein, 26.11.42, AOK 6 

7510713 file . 
THRUST AND COUNTERTHRUST 

the 24 November estimate. Later, 

Richthofen, who was running the airlift, told him the planes would not be 

able to deliver even 300 tons of supplies a day. In the meantime, that 

morning, Hitler had called on the 

477 

troops in the pocket to stand fast and 

to convert the breakthrough into a 

Soviet defeat as they had the one at 

Kharkov in tlle springS I 

61 Keill'ig, Stalingrad, pp. 264 , 279. 
CHAPTER XXIII 

Stalingrad, Finale 

The Relief 

Bad as the German situation was at 

Stal;ngrad, it could easily have been far 

worse. However, once Southwest, Don, 

and Slalinl5rad Fronts completed the encirclement, they devoted the greater 

part of their forces to fastening the 

grip on Sixth Army, and they virtually 

discontinued the offensive in the Chir 

River sector and against Fourth Panzer 

Army. By 28 November, they had concentrated 94 divisions and brigades 

against Sixth Army and had only 49 

units opposing Fourth Panzer Army 

and Rumanian Third Army, no more 

than 20 of these actually in the line. ' 

On the Army Group Don front, 

XVII Corps held the line of the Chir in 

the north, and Rumanian Third Army 

held the rest south to the confluence of 

the Chir and Don. Actually, XVII 

Corps had most of the remaining 

Rumanian troops, and the only sizable 

German units in the line were two 

infantry divisions. Rumanian Third 

Army existed in name only; German 

staff officers manned its headquarters; 

and a scratch force of small German 

units held its front.' In the Fourth 

Panzer Army sector, the remnants of 

Fourth Panzer Army and Rumanian 

VI and V II Corps were redesignated 

'Sbornik, Nomer 6. 

2Der O.B. der J-I. Gr. B, 10 Nr. 4200142, (HI den Fuehrer 

lind Oberbefehlshllbl'r des Hu res, 26.11.42 , H. Cr. Don 

39694/3b hie. 

Armeegruppe Hoth. Under General 

Hoth , Headquarters, Rum an ian 

Fourth Army, took command of the 

two Rumanian corps. Hou) had reported that if the Russians made anything approaching a serious effort 

against his Anneegroppe, they cou ld not 

help but have the "greatest" success. By 

27 November, Kotelnikovo was within 

Soviet artillery range; but Fifty-firsl 

Anny was advancing cautiously; and in 

the last four days of the month, the 

first transports of German troops for a 

relief operation began to arrive. 3 

Winlergewitter 

Hitler had based his decision to keep 

Sixth Army at Stalingrad on two assumptions: that sufficient forces to 

conduct a successful relief operation 

could be assembled and that Sixth 

Army could be sustained as a viable 

fighting force by air supply until the 

relief was accomplished. The air supply 

problem appeared to be one of simple 

arithmetic-matching the number of 

planes to the required tonnages. Such 

was not the case, but even ifit had been, 

the problem would still have been 

beyond solution. In late November 

1942, the German Air Force was undergoing its greatest strain since the start of 

the war. At Stalingrad and in North Af3PZ. AOK 4. 1(1. Kriegstagt'IJUdt Nr. 5, "lei/III, 24- 30 

Nov 42, pz. AOK 42818311 file. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

rica, it was fighting a two-front war in 

earnest. By the end of November, 400 

combat aircraft had been transferred 

from the Eastern Front to North Africa, 

reducing the front's numerical strength 

by a sixth and its effective strength by 

nearly a third. Moreover, of 2,000 

planes left on the Eastern Front, the 

OKW estimated that no more than 

1,120 were operational on 29 

November. 4 

General Richthofen, the commander 

of Fourth Air Force, reported on 25 

November that he had 298 JU - 52 

transports; he needed 500 to supply 

Stalingrad. And he recommended that 

Sixth Army be allowed to break out, a 

suggestion that Hider "rejected out of 

hand."' He then began to use HE-lll 

twin-engine bombers as transports, 

which reduced the number of aircraft 

available for combat missions without 

decisively improving the air supply. In 

any event, even those aircraft at hand 

could not be made fully effective because they had to operate across enemy-held territory, through contested 

airspace, in uncertain weather, and 

without adequate ground support 

(particularly on the Stalingrad end of 

the run). On 29 November, 38 JU-52s 

(maximum load I ton per plane) and 

21 HE-Ills (max imum load 1,000 

pounds per plane) took off. Of these, 

12 JU-52s and 13 HE- Ills landed inside the pocket. The following day, 30 

JU-52s and 36 HE-Ills landed out of 

39 and 38, respectively, committed· At 

~Briti h Air Ministry Pamphlel 248, p. 182; Greiner 

Diary Notes, 29 Nov 42, C-065q CM H file. 

5Greiner Diary Noles, 25 Nov 42, C-065q eM 1-1 file. 

6Sec Kchrig, SlaLingrad, pp. 283-98. OKH, GmSrdH, Gen. Qu. , Abl. I, Qu. J Nr. 118807142, an H. G,; 

Doll, 26.11.42; H. Gr. D01l , Eil/sa/l. Luftwaffe, 29.11.42 

479 

that rate, Sixth Army would have to be 

saved soon. 

On 1 December, Army Group Don 

began preparing the relief, under the 

code name WINTERGEWITTER ("winter 

storm"). The main effort went to 

Fourth Panzer Army's LVII Panzer 

Corps, which, with two fresh panzer divisions (6th and 23d) then on the way, 

would push northeastward from the 

vicinity of Kotelnikovo toward Stalingrad. Rumanian VI and VII Corps 

would cover its flanks. For a secondary 

effort toward Kalach, out of a small 

German bridgehead on the lower 

ChiI~ Fourth Panzer Army was given 

XXXXVIII Panzer Corps. Headquarters, XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, left its 

two original divisions, 22d Panzer Division and 1st Rumanian Armored Division, in the front on the Chir and 

assumed command in the bridgehead 

of three divisions coming in-the llth 

Panzer Division, 336th Infantry Division, and 7th Air Force Field Division. 

General Paulus, the commander of 

Sixth Army, was to bring together all of 

his armor on the southwest rim of the 

pocket and to be ready to strike toward 

LVll Panzer Corps if ordered. He was 

also to be prepared to break out toward 

Kalach but was at the same time to hold 

his fronts on the north and in Stalingrad . Field Marshal Manstein, commander of Army Group Don, wanted 

to be ready to start d1e relief operation 

anytime after daybreak on 8 

December.' 

and H. Cr. Don, £illsat1. (leI' Fluguuge zur Versorgung del' 

6. Armel' am 30.11.42, H. Cr. Don 39694/3b file. 

70b. Kdo. del' H. Cr. DOll, fa NI". 0343142, Wei.Htng 

Nr. I filer O/Jeratioll "Willtelgewilter, " 1.12.42, 1-1 . Gr. 

Don 39694 /3 b fil e. 
480 

Doubts and Delays 

The outlook for WINTERGEWITTER 

was not auspicious from the first and 

grew less promising with each passing 

day. Sixth Army shifted two motorized 

divisions and a panzer division to the 

southwest as ordered , but after 2 December, Don and Stalingrad Fronts hit 

the pocket hard for a week and tied the 

three divisions down in defensive fighting' On 3 December, Southwest Front 

again became active along the Chir, in 

the Rumanian Third Army sector, 

forcing Manstein to commit the three 

divisions for XXXXVIIl Panzer Corps 

there and , in e ffect, to drop the corps 

out of WINTERGEWITTER. Further, the 

two divisions for LVII Corps were slow 

in arriving, and the OKH instructed 

Manstein to use air force field divisions, of which he had two, for defensive missions only. 

By 9 December, WINTERGEWITTER 

had dwindled to a two-division operation. Nevertheless, the next day, Manstein decided to go ahead , and he set 

the time for the morning of 12 December. Any more delay, he believed, 

could not be tolerated because supplies 

were running short and because Soviet 

armor had been detected moving in 

opposite Fourth Panzer Army. Sixth 

Army reported that an average of only 

seventy tons of supplies a day were 

being flown in, and rations, except for 

odds and ends, would run out by 19 

December.9 

IIA OK 6, la, NotiulI wr Bcurleii1l11gder L,oge 6. Armer, 

7.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/4 file; Plaluno", Vloraya 

Mirova)'G. \fryna, p.391. 

90b. Kdv. dey H Cr. 0 011 , Ja NT. 0356142, (/1/ OKH, 

ChefGellStdH, 10. 12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/4 fi le; AOK 

6, 10 Nr. -1727142, {III H . Gr. DOli , I J . 12. 42, H . Gr. Don 

39694/4 fil e. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Hitler was still confident. On 3 Decembe r, answering a gloom y Army 

Group Don report, he cautioned Manstein to bear in mind that Soviet divisions were always smaller and weaker 

than they at first appeared to be and 

that the Soviet commands were probably tluown off balance by their own 

success. A week later his confidence 

had grown, and concluding that the 

first phase of the Soviet winter offensive could be considered ended without 

having achieved a decisive success, he 

returned to the idea of retaking the 

line on the Don. By 10 December, he 

was at the point of planning to deploy 

the 7th and 17th Panzer Divisions on 

the Army Group Don left flank and to 

use them to spearhead an advance 

from the Chir to the Don . The next 

day he ordered Manstein to station 

17th Panzer Division in the XVII 

Corps sector on the Chir, thereby, for 

the time being, ending the possibility of 

its being used in WINTERGEWITTER.

10 

WintergewilleT Runs f ts CouTSe 

Jumping off on time on tl1e morning 

of the 12th, LVII Panzer Corps made 

good, though not spectacula r, progress. During the afternoon situation 

conference at Fueh'-eT Headquarters, 

General Zeitzler, the chief of tl1e General Staff, tried to persuade Hitler to 

release the 17th Panzer Division for 

WI NTERGEWITTER, but Hitler refused 

because a threat appeared to be developing on the Army Group Don left 

flank where it jOined the right of ItallOAm/a 7851, Bezug: H . Gr. Don, fa NT. 0341142, H . 

Cr. Don 39694J3b fil e; Grei1ler Diary' Noles, 10 Dec 42, 

C-065q Cl\IH fi le; OKJ-I, CwStdH, 01'. Abt. N /". 

1014/42, all. H . Cr. Don, /1 .12.42, H. Cr. Don 39694/4 

file. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 481 

... - -- .... - .: 

SELF-PROPELLED ASSAULT G UNS ATTACK IN OPERATION WI NTERGEWITITR 

ian Eighth Army. In the conference, he 

restated his position on Stalingrad, saying, "I have reached one conclusion, 

Zeitzler. We cannot, under any circumstances, give that [pointing to Stalingradl up. We will not retake it. We 

know what that means . . . if we give 

that up we sacrifice the whole sense of 

this campaign . To imagine that I will 

get there again next time is insanity."" 

On the second day, LVII Panzer 

Corps reached the Aksay River and 

captured a bridge at Zalivskiy; but on 

the Chir and at the Don-Chir 

bridgehead, XXXXVIII Panzer Corps 

ba rely held its own against the Fifth 

Tank and Fifth Shock Armies, which were 

IISte1logr. Dienst im F.H. Qu., Lagebespreclwng VOIn 

12.12.42, CMH files. 

trying to tighten the grip on Sixth 

Army by enlarging the buffer zone on 

the west. I2 Fifth Shock Army was newl y 

formed out of two riAe divisions and a 

tank corps from the Stavka reserves. 13 

Before 1200 Manstein told HitJer that 

the trouble on the Chir had eliminated 

every chance of XXXXVIII Panze r 

Corps' Aeeing forces for a thrust out of 

the bridgehead and tJ,at without sllch 

help, LVII Panzer Corps could not get 

through to Sixth Army. 

Manstein asked for 17tJ, Panzer Division, to take over the attack from the 

It[General Slaff of the Red Army], Sbornik mareriakw po huchelliill opyta voyny, Noma 8, Aug-Oct 43; 

Pl. AOK 4, la Krieg5lagebll.ch Nr. .5, Tei/lIl, 13 Dec 42. 

Pz. AOK 4 28183/ 1 role. 

13VasiJevskiy.Delo. p. 264r. 
482 

bridgehead , and for 16th Motorized 

Infantry Divison (then stationed at 

Elista, between the Army Group Don 

and Army Group A flanks) to reinforce 

LVII Panzer Corps. Hitler released ti,e 

17m Panzer Division but not the 16t1, 

Motorized Infantry Division. The decision about 17th Panzer Division was 

made easier by a growing impression in 

the OKH that the Russians were only 

simulating a buildup on the Army 

Group Don left flank.'4 

For another four days, WINTERGEWITTER went ahead without 

gathering enough momentum to ensure an early success. On the 14th, 

however, the part of the Don-Chir 

bridgehead east of me Don had to be 

evacuated. The attack out of the 

bridgehead would have been abandoned in any case, since 17th Panzer 

Division was having to be sent to LVII 

Panzer Corps. On the 17th and 18th, 

LVII Panzer Corps, increased to three 

divisions by 17th Panzer Division , became tied down in fighting around 

Kumskiy, halfway between the Askay 

and Mishkova rivers. 

On the 19th, LVII Panzer Corps 

shook itself loose and drove to the 

Mishkova, thirty-five miles from the 

pocket. Manstein, however, told Hitler 

that LVII Panzer Corps, because of its 

own losses and stiffening enemy resistance, probably could not get tl1rough 

to Sixth Army and certainly could not 

open a permanent corridor to the 

pocket. He had, he added , sent his intelligence officer into the pocket, and 

he had reported that SiXtil Army only 

had rations for another three days. 

HO.B. der }-I. Gr. D Oli. la Nr. 259142, (HI Chef d,s 

Gt'llerafstabes, OKIJ, 13.1 2.42, H. Cr. Don 39694/4111c; 

Greiller Dia ry N011!5, 13 Dec 42, C-065q CMH fil e. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Consequently, Manstein said , he believed the only answer was to order 

SiXtil Army to break out, gradually 

pulling back its fronts on the north and 

in Stalingrad as it pushed toward LVII 

Panzer Corps on me SOUtil. That, he 

maintained, would at least save most of 

the troops and whatever equipment 

could still be hauled.'5 

To Paulus, Manstein sent notice to 

get ready for Operation DONNERSCHLAG ("thunderbolt"), which would 

be the breakout. The army's mission, 

Manstein said, would have to include 

an initial push to me Mishkova. There, 

after contact with LVII Corps was 

made, truck convoys, which were 

bringing up 3,000 tons of supplies behind the corps, would be sluiced 

through to the pocket. Subsequently, 

Sixm Army, taking along what equipment it could, would evacuate the 

pocket and withdraw southwestward. 

Paulus was to get ready but was not to 

start until ordered." 

Hitler, encouraged by LVII Panzer 

Corps' getting to the Mishkova, refused 

to approve DONNERSCHLAG. Instead , he 

ordered the SS Viking Division transferred from Army Group A to Fourth 

Panzer Army. Sixth Army, he insisted , 

was to stay put until firm contact was 

established with LVlI Corps and a 

complete, orderly withdrawal could be 

undertaken. In the meantime, enough 

supplies were to be flown in, particularly of motor fuel , to give the army 

mirty miles' mobility. (Hitler had heard 

n o .B. (Ier H. Cr. Don, 10 Nr. 0368142,011 Cluj des 

Getleralstabes des Hu rts !IIr soJortigen Vorlagt bt!;m 

Fllehrer, / 9. 12.42, H. Cr. Don 3969415 file. See also 

Kehrig, Slallllgrad, pp. 390-93. 

16()b. Kdo, H. Gl: Do,l, la Nr. 03 69/42 , (III 6. A "met. 

/9.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 
STALlNGRAD, FINALE 

that the army had only enough fuel to 

go eighteen miles.)17 

On the 21st, after LVII Panzer Corps 

had failed to get beyond the Mishkova 

in two more days of fighting, Generalmajor Friedrich Schulz , Manstein's 

chief of staff, conferred with General 

Schmidt, Paulus' chief of staff, by 

means of a newly installed high-frequency telecommunications system. 

Schulz asked whether Sixth Army 

could execute DONNERSCHLAG. The operation had not been approved , he 

added, but Manstein wanted to be 

read y to go ahead as soon as possible 

because of the unlikelihood of LVII 

Panzer Corps' getting any closer to the 

pocket. Schmidt replied that the army 

could start on 24 December, but he did 

not believe it could continue to hold 

the pocket for any length of time thereafter if the first losses were heavy. If 

Stalingrad were to be held , he said, it 

would be better to fly in supplies and 

replacements, in which case the army 

could defend itself indefinitely. In the 

case of DONNERSCHLAG, he and Paulus 

thought the chances for success would 

be better if the evacuation followed immediately upon the breakout, but they 

regarded evacuation , under any circumstances, as an act of desperation to 

be avoided until it became absolutely 

necessary.IS The conference ended on 

that indeterminate note. 

Manstein transmitted the results of 

the exchange to the OKH. He could 

give no assurance, he added , that if 

Sixth Army held out, contact with LVII 

Panze r Corps could be reestablished , 

11Greiller DiGl)'Noles, 19 Dec 42, C-065q CMH file . 

18FS -Gespraech Cell. Schmidt· Gen. SclUlh, 2 J .12,42, 

AOK 6 75107/2 fi le. 

483 

since fu rther substantia l gains by the 

panzer corps were not to be expected!9 In effect WINTERGEWITTER 

had failed, and both Manstein and 

Paulus had sidestepped the responsibility for DONNERSCHLAG, which nei .. 

th e r could legally order without 

Hitler's approval. Later in the day, on 

the 21st, Hitler talked at length with 

the chiefs of the Army and Air Force 

General Staffs, but to those present, 

"the Fuehrer seemed no longer capable 

of making a decision."'· 

Sixth Army Isolated 

After it turned over the Stalingrad 

sector to Army Group Don, Army 

Group B had just one function-to 

protect the rear of its neighbors to the 

south , Army Groups Don and A. On 

the critica l 200-mile stretch of the Don 

from Voronezh downstream to Veshenskaya, that function fell to the 

Hungarian Second Army and Italian 

Eighth Army. How well they might be 

expected to perform under attack was 

predictable because the Rumanians 

had been considered the best of the 

German allies. 

A glance at the map (Map 44) reveals 

how vulnerable Army Groups Don and 

A were and how much their existences 

depended on the few raillines that 

reached into the steppe east of the 

Dnepr, the Donets, and the Don. The 

crucial points on these lines were the 

river crossings. Everything going east 

out of the Dnepr bend depended on 

the bridges at Dnepropetrovsk and 

' 90 .B. d. H. Gr. Don, fa NT: 03 72142, ,II Fernspnlch 

OKH. Op. Abt. Nr. 521021142, 21 .12.42, H. Gr. Don 

39694/5 hie. 

20Greiller DiGl)' Notes, 21 Dec 42. C-065q CMH file. 
484 

Zaporozhye . The distance from 

Dnepropetrovsk to the Soviet line at 

Novaya Kalitva , in the center of the 

Italian Eighth Army sector, was 250 

miles, while from Dnepropetrovsk to 

the Army Group Don front on the 

Chir River was 330 miles; to the left 

flank of Army Group A, 580 miles. But 

the Russians did not need to strike as 

far west as Dnepropetrovsk. On the left 

flank of Army Group Don they were 

within 80 miles of three Donets crossings: Voroshilovgrad , KamenskShakhtinskiy, and Belokalitvenskaya. A 

150-mile march from the left flank of 

Army Group Don would take them all 

the way to Rostov. Both Army Group A 

and Fourth Panzer Army were tied to 

the railroad through Rostov, and the 

Army Group A left flank was 350 miles 

and the Fourth Panzer Army right 

Rank 220 miles from Rostov. 

Saturn and Koltso 

The anomalies of the German situation , of course, did not go unnoticed 

on the Soviet side, and on the night of 

23 November, Stalin instructed General Vasilevskiy, chief of the General 

Staff, to work up a plan for an offensive by Southwest Hont, under General 

Vatutin , and the Vomnezh Front , left 

wing, under General Golikov, "in the 

general direction of Millerovo and RostoV."2l Apparently Stalin also talked to 

General Moskalenko, commander of 

First Guards Army , that same night 

about something possibly even bigger, 

an offensive to liberate Kharkov and 

the Don Basin. In the last week of the 

month , Vasilevskiy and General 

Voronov, who would be coordinating 

2lVasiJ evskiy. "Delo," p. 252. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

the operation asStavka representatives, 

worked on the plan with tlle jivnt commanders, Vatu tin and Golikov. General 

Zhukov, first deputy commissar for defense, who had gone to Kalinin and 

West Fronts to take charge of MARS, nevertheless, stayed in close touch with 

Stalin and Vasilevskiy22 

On 2 December, Stalin and the 

Stavka approved the plan as Operation 

SATURN and set the readiness date as iO 

December. The objectives were to encircle Italian Eighth Army and the 

Army Group Don elements inside the 

Don bend and, by taking Rostov and 

the line of the lower Don , to cut off 

Fourth Panzer Army and Army Group 

A. On the right, Southwest Front's First 

Guards and Third Gum-ds Armies, the 

latter to be formed by dividing First 

Guards Army and adding rifle divisions 

and a mechanized corps from the reserves, would break through the Italian 

Eighth Army's left flank near Boguchar, 

head almost due south to Millerovo, 

cross the Donets at Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, and continue south to Rostov. 

On their right, W>ronezh Hvnt's Sixth Army 

would provide flank cover and strike 

toward Voroshilovgrad . To form the 

second arm of the envelopment, Fiflh 

Tank Army would break through across 

the Chir and run along the right side of 

the lower Don to Rostov.z 3 

In Moscow, on 4 December, Sta lin 

and Vasilevskiy decided also to finish 

off Sixth Army, and Stalin gave the op22 Moskalcn ko, Na Yllgo-za padnom IW /Jrtlv/l'lIji, p. 

357; Vasilevskiy, "Delo," pp. 255-57; Zhukov, Memoirs, 

p. 412 . See also Moskalenko, Na Ytlgo-Ulpadnom 

napravienii, pp. 360- 65. 

23 VOV, p. 178; Vasilevskiy. "Delo," pp. 256 f, 258; 

lVMV, vol. VI, p. 63 and map 2; Sbornili, Nomer 8; D. 

D . Lelyushenko , Moskva -Slalillgrad-Berlill -Praga 

(Moscow: Izdate lslvo "Nauka," 1970), p. 134 . 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

eration the code name KOLTSO ("ring"). 

The object would be to split the pocke t 

o n an east-west axis and then wipe out 

the two parts in succession. The main 

effort wo uld be a thrust through the 

pocket from the west by Den Front, 

which would be given Second Guards 

Army from the Stavka reserves and 

would be ready to start by the 18th . In 

the same meeting, Stalin and Vasilevskiy decided to strengthen Southwest Hunt's left flank for SATURN by putting in Fifth Shock Anny. Zhuk ov 

indicated that he had devised the general scheme for KOLTSO and had proposed it to Stalin on 29 November." 

SATURN had not started, and KOLTSO 

was no t ready when Manstein bega n 

WINTERGEWITTER. By Rokossovski y's 

account, Vasilevskiy was at Headquarters, Don Hunt, on the morning of 12 

December and, immediately after news 

of the German attack came in , te lephoned Stalin to ask for and get Second 

Guards Army transferred to Stalingrad 

Front .25 Vasilevskiy says he did not 

make the request until later in the day 

and did not get the Stavka's decision 

until that night. 26 In any event, the loss 

of Second Guards Army put KOLTSO in 

abeyance. 

On the night of the 13th, according 

to Vasilevskiy, the Stavka made "the 

very important decision" to reduce SATURN .

27 Zhukov says that he and Vasil evskiy a nd the General Staff h ad 

already decided for a "sma ller SATURN " 

at the end of November, when he had 

a lso told Stalin to expect a German at24 Vasilcvskiy, "Delo," p. 264; IVMV. vol. V I, p. 64; 

Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 4 J 2. 

'l~ Rokossovs ki y. Soldiers Dilly, p. 152. 

26Vasilevskiy. "Delo," p. 270f. 

27/hid" p. 272. 

485 

tack toward the Stalingrad pocket from 

the Kotelnikovo a rea 2S In any event, 

SATURN became MALYY SATURN ("small 

Saturn"). Instead of going south on the 

lin e Millerovo- K a m e nskShakhtinskiy-Rostov, the right arm of 

the envelopment would bear southeast 

inside the Don bend; and the left arm, 

instead of going southwest, would go 

west. The two wo uld meet near Tatsinskaya and Moro zovsk.2 9 The 

changes in direction reduced the projected depth of the advance by half. 

The conversion to MALYY SATURN 

may also have , in pa rt, been the result 

of a mood of caution induced by events 

elsewhere. West Front and Kalinin Front 

bega n MARS o n the morning of 25 

November. In its initial phase the offensive repeated the pattern at Stalingrad, with massive thrusts from the 

east and the west to pinch off the Rzhev 

salient. MARS, however, had to do with 

the battle-tested German Ninth Army. 

After Twentieth Army, carrying the main 

effort in the West Front sector on the 

east face of the salient, lost more than 

half its ta nks by comm itting them 

piecemeal in trying to get a breakuuough, one panzer corps handled the 

d e fe ns e there with ease. 30 Ka.linin 

Front's attacks on the west, south of 

Be lyy and along the Luchesa River, 

went be tter and achieved depths of 

twenty and ten miles respectively; but a 

Ninth Army counterattac k o n 7 December turned the break-in south of 

Belyy into a pocket, in which the Germans eventually counted 15,000 Soviet 

28Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 413. 

't9Sbomik, Nomu 8; Samsonov. Stalingradslul),lI bitva, 

pp. 470-72; Lelyushc nko, Moskva, pp. 134-36. 

30[Generai Staff of the Red Army], Sbomik /lUll/!-

ria{(JIJ po uucheniiu opyta voyny, NomeI' 9, 1944. 
486 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

, , 

:,-, 

.. '

.-

A COLUMN OF T -34 TANKS IN OPERATION MAL"Y SATURN 

dead and 5,000 prisoners. On 11 December, West Front launched a second 

attempt during the first two days of 

which Ninth Army counted 295 Soviet 

tanks knocked out. On the 13th and 

14th, MARS slackened rapidly, leaving 

onl y the penetration along the Luchesa 

River to be fought over into the new 

year."t 

Mal)')' Saturn Begins 

On 16 December, Sixth Arm)" under 

General Ley tenant F. M. Kharitonov, 

and First Guards Arm)" under General 

Kuzn etsov, broke into the Italian 

Eighth Army's line on the Don east of 

31AOK 9, Futhnmgsabteihmg, Kriegstagelrnch, Band J. 

1- 16 Oec 42. AOK 9 3 1624/3 file. 

Novaya Kalitva. The next day, Third 

Guards Ann)" under General Ley tenant 

D. D. Lelyushenko, joined them to extend the push downstream along the 

river." By the third day, all three armies had broken through , and on the 

20th, the Celere and Sforzesca Divisions on the Italian Eighth Army right 

Aank collapsed, carrying with them two 

Rumanian divisions on the left Aank of 

Army Group Don. In four days, Southwest Front had ripped open a 100-milewide hole33 (Mat) 43.) 

For the Germans, the problem now 

32Samsonov, Sirdingradskaya bitva, p. 472. See also 

Lelyushenko, Moskva , p. 139. 

33Kriegs/agebuch des dtulsc/ten Generals heim ital. AOK 

8 v. 11.7.42-3 /./.43, 15-20 Oec 42, AOK 8 3618811 

file: J-I. Cr. 0 011 . la, Lage H. Cr. DOli, /9-21. 1.43, H. 

Cr. Don 39694/ 16 fi le. 
( 

- --------xxxx----- EIGHTH 

ITALIAN 

Khark"v 

\ 

SEA 

OF 

BLACK 

SEA 

MAP 43 

63d 

SOUTHWEST 

MALYY SATURN 

16 Dec 1942 - 19 Jan 1943 

--- Approximate front, 16 Dec 

00000 0 .. Approximate front, 19 Jan 

~ Axis of Soviet attack 

58th 
488 

was somehow to screen the deep northern flank of Army Group Don. Fifth 

Tank Army had not managed to get its 

share of MALYY SATURN going, but a 

single envelopment could be just as bad 

as a double one. The OKH transferred 

a corps headquarters, commanded by 

General Fretter-Pico, from Army 

Group North to take over the Army 

Group B right flank as Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico. It gave the Armeeabteilung one fresh infantry division, the headquarters and elements of 

3d Mountain Division, and remnants 

of a weak German corps that had been 

stationed as a backstop behind the I talians. With them, Fretter-Pico was to 

protect the Donets bridges at 

Voroshilovgrad and KamenskShakhtinskiy (which were open, even 

though the Russians were, for the moment, not aiming toward them) and 

somehow stretch a line east of the Donets to tie in with Army Group Don. 

On the 23d, Manstein told Hitler 

that he would have to take at least one 

division, perhaps two, away for LVII 

Panzer Corps to cover Army Group 

Don's left flank . Doing so, he added, 

would mean giving up the idea of relieving Sixth Army anytime soon and 

would necessitate long-term air supply 

for the army. Paulus needed 550 tons a 

day, but Richthofen believed 200 tons 

were the most that could be delivered. 

If, as it appeared, air supply could not 

be guaranteed, Manstein saw a breakout as the only solution despite the risk. 

The appearance of Soviet reinforcements (Second GuaTtis Army) along the 

Mishkova, he pointed out, meant that 

the Russians would soon be going over 

to the offensive there also, which 

would be extremely dangerous since 

Fourth Panzer Army was having to rely 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

on Rumanian troops to cover its 

flanks." 

Hitler's decision , which was, in fact, 

no decision at all, came early the next 

morning. He authorized Manstein to 

transfer "elements" of LVII Panzer 

Corps to the army grou p left Rank to 

protect the air bases at Morozovsk and 

Tatsinskaya, which were essential for 

Sixth Army's air supply. But LVII Panzer Corps was to stay on the Mishkova 

until the advance to Stalingrad could 

be resumed. As if it would make all the 

difference, he informed Manstein that 

one battalion of TIger tanks being sent 

to the army group by railroad would 

cross into Russia near Brest Litovsk 

during the day3' 

Sixth A,my's Last Chance 

A month is a long time to an encircled army. Its moral and physical 

sustenance reduced, it begins to wither. 

Most dramatically and dismayingly affected are the men tllemselves. In 1941 

the Germans had noticed, and then 

forgotten, that large numbers of Russians captured in the great encirclements died suddenly without detectable symptoms. In December 1942, the 

same sort of deaths began to be reported in the Stalingrad pocket. A pathologist flown in to perform autopsies 

in secret discovered that undernourishment, exhaustion, and exposure had caused the complete loss of 

fatty tissue, changes in the internal 

organs and bone marrow, and, as the 

apparent direct cause of these deaths, a 

340.B. d. H. Gr. Don, f a NT. 0374142, an Cluj des 

GenStdH, 22.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 

350Kl-l, CenStdH, Op. Abt. (/ SIB) Nr. 421026142, an 

Generalfefdmarschall von Ma1lSlein, 23.12.42, H. Gr. 

Don 39694/5 file. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

shrinking of the heart except for the 

right ventricle, which was greatly enlarged. Such heart damage, in normal 

medical practice, had been regarded as 

a condition that chieOy affected the 

aged; among the soldiers at Stalingrad, 

as the days passed, it was observed to be 

common in both the dead and the living.'· In the Stalingrad pocket death 

was no novelty. Sixth Army had lost 

28,000 men between 22 November and 

23 December. 

On 18 December, the army reported 

a ration strengtll of 246,000, including 

13,000 Rumanians, 19,300 Russian 

auxiliaries, and 6,000 wounded; but 

these numbers were far from representing its effective combat strength. 37 

Already in mid-October, the army had 

reported that it was reduced to a frontline infantry strengtll of 66,500. By 21 

December, it had only 25,000 infantry."· Service troops were converted to 

infantry, but experience showed that 

even under the exceptional conditions 

of an encirclement, such conversions 

were not easy to accomplish or especially worthwhile in terms of combat 

effectiveness. 

At the end of the first month, tlle 

hard winter had not yet set in. The 

temperature lingered close to freezing-some days above, some below. 

Cold days were likely to be clear with 

only occasional snow or wind. Warmer 

days brought clouds, fog, light rain , 

snow, and, always when there were two 

or three such days in succession, mud. 

36Hans Dibold, Arz./ ill Sudillgrad (Salzburg: 0. 

Mueller, 1949), p. 18. 

n '11C figures arc from Helmut Arntz, "Die Wende 

des K.-icges in $lalingrad ," a manuscript apparently 

wrillcn Ime in the \!J3f from official German records. 

38Schroelcr, Stali"grad, p. 208: Kehrig. Stalingrad, 

p. 407. 

489 

Not as extreme as it might have been, 

the weather, nevertheless, was not 

easily borne by soldiers who were inadequately sheltered and clothed and 

were living on slender rations of bread, 

soup, and occasional horse meat 3 • The 

instability of the weather also affected 

the airlift. In the early winter, continental and maritime air masses met 

over the region of the lower Don and 

Volga , producing not only frequent 

and rapid changes in the weather but 

great variations within relatively short 

distances. Consequently, when the skies 

over the air bases at Tatsinskaya and 

Morozovsk were clear, the Stalingrad 

pocket was sometimes buried in fog. 

The relief attempt had failed. That 

another could be made or that Sixth 

Army could survive until then was becoming more doubtful every day. On 

the afternoon of 23 December, Manstein called for a conference via teletype with Paulus. He asked Paulus to 

consider whether, if no other course remained open, the breakout (which by 

then was assumed automatically to include the evacuation) cou ld be executed provided limited quantities of 

motor fuel and rations cou ld be Rown 

in during the next few days. Paulus replied that the breakout had become 

more difficult because the Russians 

had strengthened their line, but if an 

attempt were to be made, it was better 

done right away than later. Then he 

asked, "Do you empower me to begin 

the preparations? Once begun , they 

cannot be reversed ." 

Mansrein replied, "That authority J 

cannot give today. J am hoping for a 

decision tomorrow. The essential point 

39Hauck. MS P- 11 4c, \'01. IV, table Xa. 
490 

is do you consider the army capable of 

forcing its way through to Hath if 

su pplies for a longer period cannot be 

assured?" Paulus answered, "In that 

case , there is nothing else to be done." 

He added that he thought the army 

would need at least six days to get 

ready and 300,000 more gallons of 

motor fuel plus 500 tons of rations 

before it could attempt to break out'O 

Within the hour, Manstein dispatched a situation estimate to Hitler in 

which he outlined three possibilities: 

(I) leave Sixth Army where it was and 

assure a daily air supply of a minimum 

of 500 tons; (2) order Paulus to break 

out, taking the risk that the army might 

not get tllrough; (3) transfer the 16th 

Motorized Infantry Division and two 

panzer divisions from First Panzer 

Army immediately to enable Fourth 

Panzer Army to resume the advance 

toward Stalingrad .

41 Again , Hitler 

could not make up his mind and countered with a series of questions. Was a 

breakout actually possible, and wou ld it 

succeed? When could it start? How 

long could Paulus stay in the pocket, 

given the current level of supplies or, 

perhaps, "somewhat" increased air supply? When could the relief operation 

be resumed if Manstein were given 

both the SS Viking Division and 7th 

Panzer Division? Did Manstein think 

the Russians would soon be stopped by 

their own fuel and supply shortages? 

Wou ld Manstein "welcome" being 

given command of Army Group A as 

well as Don?42 

"OFS-Cespraech, Gm. FeJcJmarst:luLlI von Ma,nsteill an 

Gm. Obst. Paulus, 23. 12.42, AOK 6 75107/51i1e. 

'IIMaIlSlelll, all Chef Cell. Slab, Alltworl auf he-ulige 

Art/rage, 23. 12.42. H. Cr. Don 39694/5 file. 

0KJ-/ . CenStdH, Op. Abt. Nr. 421030142, ml H. Gr. 

/)011, 24. 12.42, H . Gr. Don 39694/5 file. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Manstein answered that the breakout could begin, as reported, in six 

days. Nobody could predict whether it 

would succeed or not, and ti,e only way 

to secure a moderate degree of assurance of its success would be to transfer two more panzer divisions from 

First Panzer Army. The SS Viking Division and 7th Panzer Division would be 

needed on the army group left Aank 

when they arrived. There were no reasons to think the Russians were going 

to run out of supplies. As far as Manstein's also taking command of Army 

Group A was concerned , nobody 

would "welcome" it in the existing circumstances, but it was unavoidable. 

Even so, it appeared that for Sixth 

Army, and possibly Army Groups Don 

and A as well, all subsequent decisions 

would come too late. Manstein concluded, "I ask that it be considered how 

the battle would develop if we commanded on the other side."43 

Operations Order No.2 

On 24 December, First Guards Anny 

pushed a spearhead through to Tatsinskaya, and Third Guards Al1ny came 

within artillery range of Morozovsk . 

That same day, Second GuaTds Army, 

General Malinovskiy commanding, 

forced LVII Panzer Corps back to the 

Aksay River'4 To hold the air-supply 

base for Sixth Army at Morozovsk and 

recapture the one at Tatsinskaya, Manstein had to take the II th Panzer Division from Fourth Panzer Army. Out of 

the staff of XVII Corps, he created the 

'lao.B. d. H. Gr. [Am, III Ny. 0376142, an Chef des 

GerlStdH, 24.12.42, H . Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 

HVOV, pp. J83-8 7. Sec also Samsonov. Sto -

/illgradskaJa bitvll, pp. '178- 80 and Lclyushenko, 

Moskva , p. 147. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

Headquarters, Armeeabteilung Hollidt, under General der Infanterie Karl 

Hollidt, the XVII Corps commander, 

and gave it command of the whole 

north front. Manstein sent the Headquarters, Rumanian Third Army, behind the Donets to collect Rumanian 

stragglers and to start building defe nses downstream from KamenskShakhtinskiy.45 

To get a respite at Tatsinskaya and 

Morozovsk, Manste in had bee n forced 

to reduce Fourth Panzer Army's effecti ve strength by a third; nevertheless, 

Hitler still hoped to bring in the SS 

Viking Division and 7th Panzer Division in time to restart the advance 

toward Stalingrad. Manstein's situation 

report of 25 December demonstrated 

how slight that hope actually was. In a 

few days, he said, Fiftyfint and Second 

Guards Armies wou Id attem pt to enci rde 

Fourth Panzer Army on the Aksay 

River. Nothing could be expected of 

the Rumanian VI and VII Corps, and 

the two divisions of LVII Panzer Corps 

could muster no more than nineteen 

tanks between them. If Sixth Army 

were not to be abandoned e ntirel y at 

Stalingrad , a panzer corps (two divisions) and a n infantry division would 

have to be shifted from Army Group A 

to Fourth Panzer Army, and at least 

one infantry division would have to be 

added on the Army Group Don left 

Rank.'" 

T he next two days proved that Manstein was by no means painting too 

dark a picture. On the 26t1l, Paulus 

4~H. Cr. Oon, la, uige !-l. G,: Oon 22-27.12.42, H . 

Gr. Don 39694116 file. 

460KH, GCIIStdH, OJ}, Abt. 421 030142, all H. Or. 

DOli, 24.12.42, H . GI', Don 39694 /6 file: 0 .8. d. H. Cr. 

0011 , la Nr. 378142, all Chef d. GwStdH, 25.12.42, H. 

Cr. Don 39694/6 file . 

491 

reported that casualties, cold (the temperature that day was - 150 F.), and 

hunger had so sapped his army's 

strength that it could not execute me 

breakout and evacuation unless a supply corridor to me pocket were opened 

first. The next day, Rumanian VII 

Corps, on LVII Panzer Corps' east 

Ra nk, collapsed and fell into a disorganized retreat. After mat, the best 

Hoth, commander of Fourth Panzer 

Army, t1lOught he could do was to take 

LVII Panzer Cor ps ba c k to 

Kotelnikovo and, maybe , make anotller 

temporary stand mere. 47 

Hitler, however, was still looking for 

a cheap way out, and on the 27th, he 

ordered Army Groups Don and A to 

hold where mey were while Army 

Group B, to protect the rear of Don, 

retook the line of the Rossosh-Millerovo railroad . Army Group A, he told 

Manstein, could not spare any divisions, and Army Group Don would 

have to make do with me SS Viking and 

7th Panzer Divisions and the battalion 

of Tiger tanks" Manstein protested 

mat Fourth Panzer Army's two panze r 

divisions and the 16th Motorized Infantry Division faced a total of fortythree e nemy units (divisions, brigades, 

and tank, cavalry, and mechanized 

corps) while First Panzer Army, in a 

well-constructed line , was opposed by 

only an equal number of enemy uni ts, 

and Seventeenth Army had to deal 

with no more tha n twenty-four Soviet 

HAOK 6, la Nr. 6010142, an O.B. H. Cr. Doll, 

26.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file; Pz. AOK 4, la 

Kriegstagebllch Nr. 5, Tei/lIl, 27 Dec 42, Pz. AOK 4 

28 18311 hie. 

460KH, GenStdH, Op. Abl. (I SIB) N ,: 421033/42 all 

den O.B. d. H. Gr. Don, 27.12.42 and OKH, GenStdH, 

Dp. Abt. Nr. 321034142, Weimngf uer dip wrilere KamJiff luJinlllg, 27.12.42, H. G,·. Do n 39694/6 fil e. 
492 

units. He was convinced , he wrote , that 

events would compel a shift of forces 

from A to Don . TIle sooner the decision was made, the less costly it would 

be in the lo ng run 4 • 

Hitle r counte red with Operations 

Order No. 2. Under it, Army Group A, 

holding its line on the Black Sea coast 

and in the Caucasus, was to swing its 

left Rank back by stages to Salsk, where 

it would be able to take over its own 

Rank defense. Fourth Panzer Army, if 

forced , could fall back to the line 

Tsimlyanskiy-Salsk. To coordinate 

these movements, Manstein would assume command at a time to be decided 

by himself. Hitler ignored an earlier 

contention of Manstein's that his taking 

control of Army Group A would be 

wortllwhile only if it included his having fu ll operational freedom.50 

The last days of the year brought 

another crisis. On the afternoon of 28 

December, Hoth had to rescue LVII 

Panzer Corps by allowing it to withdraw past Kotelnikovo to the Sal River. 

That opened up the left bank of the 

Don to Rostov and exposed the deep 

right Rank of Armeeabteilung Hollidt, 

and the next day, the Russians pushed 

out of a small bridgehead they held 

near Potemkinskaya. Hollidt then had 

to shift the 11th Panze r Division to 

Tsimlyanskiy, seventy miles downstream on the Don, to block their advance toward Rostov. Hitler, in 

consequence, ordered the 7th Panzer 

Division to be held at Rostov for a 

4YO.B. d. 1-1 . Cr. Do1l, fa Nr. 0384/42, an Chef des 

GenStdH, 27.12.42, H. G,', Don 39694/6 fi le. 

"'OKN, C,mS/dN , Op. Ab/. Nr. 421042142, Oprra· 

tumsbefehl Nr. 2, 28.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file; 

O.B. d. H. Cr. DOli, 10 Nr. 0376142, Oli Chef des Generalslabes 2U Fer1lspnlCh vom 24. 12.42, H. Cr. Don 

3969416 fi le. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

possible last-ditch defense of the city." 

On the 28th , Manstein had told 

Hitler that Fourth Panzer Army was no 

longe r capable of holding a broad 

front south of the Don and that the 

Armeeabteilung Hollidt line could be 

penetra ted from the north or south at 

anytime. He said he intended to turn 

Fourth Panzer Army east south of the 

Sal Rive r to protect tlle rear of Army 

Group A, taking the chance that the 

Russians might cut through to Rostov 

between the Sal and Don . Armeeabteilung Hollidt would have to be pulled 

back, possibly to a line slightly forward 

of tlle Donets, more likely to tlle river 

itself. 52 

Sixth Army Destroyed 

On New Year's Eve, Manstein told 

Paulus that Army Group Don's prima ry objective was to liberate Sixth 

Army, but the army would have to hold 

out in tlle pocket a while longer. Hitler, 

he said, had ordered Reichsmarschall 

Goering, commander in chief, air 

force, to raise the air supply to at least 

300 tons a day.·3 Whether he knew it or 

not, Manstein had said farewell to Sixth 

Army. Army Group Don would hencefortll be fi ghting for its own life. 

To the M anicl! and the Donets 

When they reached the general line 

Millerovo-Tatsinskaya-Morozovsk on 

~lp1.. AOK 4, fa Kriegstagebuch Nr. 5, Teil lll, 28- 3 1 

Dec 42. Pz. AOK 4 28183/1 file ; H . Cr:. Don, Lage H . Cr. 

Don, 28-)1.12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694116 fi le; OKH, 

GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I SIB) N y. 1959142, EillUlmlOrdlltl1l -

gen des Futltrers Nr. 79, 30. 12.42, H . C r. Don 36964/6 

fi le. 

52 0 .B. d. H. Cr. DOll , la Nr. 0394142, an OKJ-J, Chef 

des GeneralSlabts, 31. 12.42, H. Gr. Don 39694/6 file. 530 .8 . d. H. Gr. Don, la Nr. 0396/42. an. AOK 6, 

31.12.42, H. Gr. Don 3969416 file. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

24 December, Sixth, First Guards, and 

Third Guards Armies had essentially 

completed their share of MALYY SATURN, and Second Guards and Fifty-first 

Armies on taking Kotelnikovo, which 

they did on the morning of 29 December, had wiped out the last of WINTERGEWITTER. By then , Zhukov was 

back in Moscow working with Stalin on 

plans for a general offensive similar to 

the one in the previous winter" The 

orders for the first phase in the south 

went out on the night of 31 December. 

I n what Vasilevskiy refers to as Operation DON, Stalingmd Front (renamed 

South Front as of I January) was required to leave behind its three armies 

on the Stalingrad pocket and strike 

toward Salsk and along the south side 

of the Don toward Rostov with Second 

Gum-ds, Fiftyfirst, and Twenty-eighth Armies (the latter being brought in from 

the east into the area north of Elista). 

Fifth Shock Army, which would be attached to South Hunt, would run along 

the north side of the Don toward Rostov. Southwest Front would take Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya and veer its 

armies west to and across the Donets to 

execute what Zhukov refers to as "Bigger Saturn." On 29 December, Zhukov 

had also instructed Transcaucasus Front 

to prepare to strike out of the area 

between Novorossiysk and Tuapse to 

Krasnodar, likhoretsk, and Rostov'5 

If all of the operations worked, the 

Soviet forces would have cleared the 

Donets Basin west to the line of Slavyansk-Mariupol and encircled FOI.'rth 

Panzer, Seventeenth, and First Panzer 

Armies. 

HVOV, p. 186f. See IVMV, vol. VI , p. 91 and map 5. 

u Vasilcvskiy, "Delo," p. 287: I VMV, \'01. VI, pp. 72, 

92 and maps 5 and 7; Zhukov, Memoirs, p. 4 18 ; 

Grechko. Gody voyny, p. 405. 

493 

For his part, Hitler ignored Manstein's report of 28 December and, on 

New Year's Day, announced in a supplement to Operations Order No. 2 

that h e was going to se nd the 

Grossdeutschland Division in additio n 

to the SS divisions Adolf Hitler and 

Das Reich and the 7th SS Division to 

relieve Stalingrad. Army Groups B and 

Don were to hang on to the most 

favorable positions for the jump-off. 

All the provisions of Operations Order 

No.2, in which he had directed Hollidt 

not to withdraw any farther than to the 

line Morozovsk-Tsimlyanskiy were to 

remain in effect.56 

Even Hitler did not expect the divisions for the relief to be de ployed 

before mid-Februa ry. To imagine that 

fate and the Russians would allow the 

Germans that much time was pure selfdeception . However, altho ugh what 

might come next, as Manstein had said, 

could easily be imagined , very little had 

been done by the til rn of the yea r to 

improve the German position. The 

withdrawals Hitler had approved were 

piecemea l, and he still talked in terms 

of "definitive" lines and was beginning 

to lose himself in nebulous plans for a 

counteroffensive. The decision to bend 

back the left Rank of Army Group A 

was a significant step, but after Hitler 

had issued the orde r for it he showed 

no desire to see it executed quickly 

and , on the contrary, seemed to welcome delays. 

On 2 J a nuary, in a disp a tch to 

Zeitzler, Manstein pointed out tha t altho ugh it could have been seen as soon 

as Sixth Army was encircled that the 

"OKH, Cn,StdH, op. Abl. (I SIB) N,. 421052142. 

ErganlZung wm Operatiollsbefehl NT. 2, 1.1.43, H . Cr. 

Don 39694/6 fi le. 
494 

Russians were deve loping a major offensive on the south Aank of the Eastern Front and might strike in the rear 

of Army Group A, the OKH (Hitler) 

had done nothing until the last few 

days about evacuating the wounded 

and the heavy equipment from the 

Caucasus. The consequences of that 

neglect would be either to slow Army 

Group A's movements or to force a 

sacrifice of large quantities of equipment. Because the OKH was controlling all the substantial shifts of Army 

Group A's forces, Manstein added, no 

purpose would be served by his taking 

over Army Group A. Since the OKH 

had also ordered the divisions intended for Fourth Panzer Army-the 

7th and lith Panzer Divisions-sent 

elsewhere, all he could do to protect 

Army Group A was to order HOtll to 

hold out as long as he could keep his 

Aanks free. Army Group A would have 

to speed up its withdrawal and take a 

hand in defending its rear by transferring a corps to Salsk. 57 Unlike some 

that had gone before, this communication did have at least one effect: Hitler 

did not again mention Manstein's taking command of Army Group A. 

In the first week of the new year, as 

First and Third Guards and Fifth Tank 

Armies bore in on it from the north and 

east, the Armeeabteilung Hollidt began a hectic ninety-mile retreat to the 

Donets. On 3 January, the Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico warned that the 

304th Infantry Divisio n , which had 

been deployed to keep touch with Hollidt's left Aank, could not be depended 

upon. It lacked training and combat 

:'70.B. du J-I. Gr. DOli , la Nr. OJ99142, all Chef des 

Generaistabes des Hu res, 2.1.43, H . Cr. Don 39694/6 

file. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

experience and could panic easil y.58 

Since it was then known that Vatu tin 

had massed two tank corps east of the 

Fretter-Pico-Hollidt boundary for a 

probable a ttack toward the Donets 

crossing at Be lokali tvens kaya, Hitle r 

had to release the 4th Panzer Division 

on 4 January to prevent a breakthrough . On the 5th , having retreated 

forty miles in six days, Hollidt gave up 

Morozovsk, the air base closest to Stalingrad. The next day, Hitler tried to 

call a halt "for the sake of morale and 

to conserve the strength of the troops"; 

but Witll the Russians probing across 

the Don in the south and tllreatening 

to ad vance down the Donets from the 

nortll, Hollidt had no chance to stay in 

any line east of the Donets for more 

than a few days.5. 

On the other side of the Don, Fourth 

Panzer Army ranged its two panzer 

divisions and the SS Viking Division 

along the Kuberle River, which Aowed 

into the Sal from ti,e south. In the gap 

between the Don and the Sal, the III 

Guards Tank Corps pushed downstream 

along the SOUtll bank of the Don and, 

at the end of the first week in Janua ry, 

sent reconnaissance patrols to within 

twenty miles of Rostov. Hitler urged 

Manstein to commit the Tiger tan ks, 

which he predicted would be able to 

destroy the whole tank corps; but when 

the Tigers went into action , which was 

the first combat expe rience for their 

crews, they failed to live up to Hitler's 

notice. They claimed to have knocked 

out eighteen enemy tanks, but of the 

twenty Tigers in the battalion, half 

58A. Aht. Fretter-Pico, la Kriegstagebtuh, /8.12.42-

2.2.43, 3 Jan 43. A . Abt. Frcucr-Pico 31783/11i1e. 

:l9(JKH, GellSldH, op. Abt. Nr. 17J143, an H. Gr. Don , 

6.1.43, I-I. Cr. Don 39694/7 file. 
STALlNGRAD, FINALE 495 

SOV IET I NFANTRY ON THE MARCH TOWARD T HE D ONETS RI VER 

were damaged . Hoth reported that 

the crews needed more training and 

experience.6o 

When a mechanized corps and a 

guards riRe corps began making their 

way around Fourth Panzer Army's 

north Rank, Hitler, on 6 January, had 

to let Manstein take the 16th Motorized 

Infantry Division away from Elista. 

Manstein warned that the division 

could do no more than stabilize the 

Fourth Panzer Army line temporarily, 

and protesting that everything was expected of Army Group Don while 

nothing was possible for Army Group 

600KH, GenS/lIH, Op. Abt. Nr. 233143, all O.B. der H. 

Cr. Don. 6.1.43 and Pl.. AOK 4, la, Eifolgsmeldung IigerPanzer, 7.1.43, H . Gr. Don 3969417 file. 

A, he again asked for a corps from 

Army Group A.6' 

In the second week of January, even 

though new trouble was developing in 

the north against Hungarian Second 

Army, the fronts of the two southern 

army groups began to assume some 

coherence62 Armeeabteilung Hollidt, 

shifting its panzer divisions back and 

forth to counter threats from the north 

and the south, continued its march to 

the Donets, and Hitler allowed Fourth 

Panzer Army to swing back to a line 

facing north along the Manich Canal.63 

6IOKH, GenSldH, op. Abt. Nr. 249143, (III H. Gr. 

DOli . 6.1.43, H. Cr. Don 3969417 file; O.B. der H. Gr. 

Don, fa. Ny. 0402143, all Chef GenStdH, 7.1.43, H . Gr. 

Don 39694/7 file. 

62See Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, pp. 8 1-84. 

"OKH. GenStdH, Op. Abt. (I SIB) Ny. 430028143, H. 

Gr. Don 39694/7 file. 
496 

First Panzer Army, though slowed by 

its heavy equipment and by what Manstein, at least, considered exaggerated 

worries about what the Russians might 

do, gradually narrowed the gap between the army groups. 

By the end of the third week in the 

month, Armeeabteilung Fretter-Pico, 

after having extricated some fourteen 

thousand of its troops from an encirclement near Millerovo, was in a line 

behind the Donets. Armeeabteilung 

Hollidt likewise had gained the slight 

protection of the frozen river. On the 

Manich Canal, between the Don and 

Prolyetarskaya, Fourth Panzer Army 

had set up a strongpoint defense, and 

First Panzer Army had extended its left 

flank nonh to tie into Fourth Panzer 

Army east of Salsk64 At the closest 

point, Armeeabteilung Hollidt was 165 

miles from the Stalin grad pocket, and 

Fourth Panzer Army was 190 miles 

from it, but by then for Sixth Army, the 

distances, no matter what they were, no 

longer made a difference. 

The Stalingrad Ring 

During the year-end planning for 

Operation DON and the enlarged SATURN, the Stavka also revived Operation 

KOLTSO for action against the Stalingrad pocket. After Stalingrad Front 

relinquished three of its armies for 

Operation DON on 1 January, General 

Rokossovskiy's Don Front controlled the 

entire perimeter of the pocket with 

seven armies, 281 ,000 troops.65 Gen6 4A . Abt. Fretier-Pico, fa Kriegstagebuch, 18. 12.42-

2.2.43, 14- 18 jan 43, A. Abt. Freuer-Pico 3 1783/1 file ; 

N, Gr. DOll. la. LAge H. Gr. DOli , 15.-19. 1.43, H. Cr. 

Don 3969417 file. 

6~Sbo rn ik , Nome r 6; I VAl V, \'01. VI, p. 76 gives the DOli 

Front slrenglil as 212,000 and Sixth Army's as 250,000. 

/ V,\/V gives the weapo ns' strengths as 6 ,860 (Soviet) 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

era I Voronov took over as Stavka representative with Don Front. Since 

Rokossovskiy would not have a fresh 

mobile force, such as Second Guards 

Army had been, the KOLTSO plan had to 

be revised. The initial objective was still 

to split the pocket on a west-east line, 

but it would be done by stages instead 

of in a single sweep and would be 

directed more against the weaker western and sou thern faces of the pocket. 

In the first stage, Sixtyjifth Army would 

carry the main effort with a thrust 

from the northwest to the southeast 

toward Karpovskaya Station. In the 

second stage, Twentyjirst Army would 

take over and lead a drive to 

Voroponovo Station, and in the third, 

five armies would storm in from the 

northwest, west, and southwest aiming 

to split what was left of the pocket by 

making contact in Stalingrad with S·ixtysecond Anny. 66 KOLTSO, originally scheduled to begin on 6 January and to take 

seven days, was postponed to the 10th. 

In the meantime, Rokossovskiy sent 

Paulus a surrender ultimatum, which 

was rejected·' 

By the beginning of the year, Sixth 

Army at Stalingrad was dying a lingering death from starvation and exhaustion. Between 1 and 23 December, 

and 4,130 (German) artillery pieces, 257 (Soviet) and 

300 (German) tanks, and 300 (Soviet) and 100 (German) combat aircrarl. Sbomik NO III('r 6 gives them as 

6,200 (Soviet) and 3,770 (Genml.ll) artillery pieces, 

1,800 (Soviet) and 250 (German) tanks, 13,700 (Soviet) and 7,300 (German) machine guns, and 18,000 

(Soviet) and 9 ,400 (German) mOLOr vehicles. TIle 

Sbom ik adds thal the figures on German equipment 

probably include pieces knocked out or Olhen vise 

J'endered unusable bero re the final battle began. 

Sixth Arm y repo ned a su'ength or about one hundred tanks as or cad y December, 

66/VMV, vol. VI , p. 75, 

61Sbornik, Nome r 6; IVM V, vol. VI. pp. 75- 77 ; 

Ro kossovski y, Soldier's Dilly, pp, 157- 65. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

supplies airlifted in had averaged 90 

tons a day and on only one day, 7 

December, did they reach the army's 

daily minimum requirement of 300 

tons. In the first three weeks of January, the average was 120 tons a day, but 

that was still far short. 68 

Nevertheless, Sixth Army was not yet 

totally at the Russians' mercy. All of Don 

Front's armies had been in constant action a long time, and losses, the 

weather, hunger, and fatigue had also 

taken their toll of them. In fact, Sixth 

Army had some advantages. One was 

that the pocket encompassed nearly all 

of the built-up areas in and around 

Stalingrad; consequently, the German 

troops had some shelter and could 

obtain wood for fuel from demolished 

buildings, while the Russians had none. 

The Germans also had the advantage 

of field fortifications they had built 

during the siege and, particularly, of 

the Soviet defense lines constructed in 

the summer. Between the lines, the 

terrain was generally flat and treeless 

but cut by deep balkas ("gullies"), which 

favored the defense. 

On the morning of IO January, 

Rokossovskiy was with General Batov, 

commander of Sixty:fifth A Tmy, at the 

latter's command post when Sixty:fifth, 

Twenty:first, and Twenty:fouTth ATmies began KOL'rso against the western "nose" 

of the pocket.69 The first day brought 

gains of two or three miles, which was 

disappointing for Rokossovskiy but dismaying for Paulus. In the night, Paulus 

reported that after the day's fighting 

there was no longer any prospect of 

holding out until mid-February; relief 

GSTageseillSflll. (/1'1" i.1I/lflo/(1' 4, 1.-23. 12.-12, H . Cr. 

Don 30694/3 b-5 file. 

69 Rokossovskiy. Sohiiey's Dilly, p. 166. 

497 

would have to come much sooner; the 

promised quantity of supplies would 

have to be delivered; and replacement 

battalions would have to be flown in at 

once. 70 

The Germans managed to prevent 

an outright breakthrough in the next 

two days by maneuvering back nineteen miles to the line of the Rossoshka 

River. (Map 44.) When they reached 

the Rossoshka on the night of the 12th, 

the Soviet armies, which had kept the 

offensive going night and day, completed the first stage of KOLTSO , but 

they faced, next, on the river, what had 

been the original outer ring of the 

Stalingrad defenses. On the 13th and 

14th, Rokossovskiy regrouped to shift 

the main effort to Twenty:fiTSt Army, 

which would be heading due west toward Voroponovo Station while Sixtyfifth Army aimed past Pitomnik .

71 

After Sixty:fifth and Twenty:first ATmies, joined on the north by Twentyfourth Army and on the south by Fiftyseventh and Sixty:fourth Armies, cracked 

the Rossoshka line on 15 January and 

after repeated pleas from Paulus, 

Hitler appointed Generalfeldmarschall 

Erhard Milch to direct the air supply 

for Sixth Army. In the appointment, 

Hitler gave Milch authority to issue 

orders to all branches of the Wehm1£lcht 

and, for the first time, established a 

command powerful enough to override all other claims on planes, fuel , 

and ground crews and to organize the 

air supply on the scale which had been 

promised for Stalingrad .

72 Daylight 

10AOK , la, all H. Cr. Doll O.B. , 10.1.43, H. Gr. Don 

39694/7 file. 

71 Kchrig, Stalil/grad, pp. 506- 11 ; IVMV. vol. V, map 

11 ; Rokossovskiy, Soldier's Dllty, p. 167. 

72[)er Fllehrl:'T, OKW, WFSt Ny. 00284143, /5. 1.43, H . 

Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 
498 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Don II 

24th 66th 

--- -~'--' v- ,/ .... _-; ' .... _---)" 

..-,,/ ( '. . (-

] ~ 0.. VIII Corps .. )'====:::::;:::::::-~ 

65th ,'" - j :. Rossosh/(a <...... ",I ooo~ 

/... : rf ,//----\ /f , . 21st \ :0 XIV pz Corps \ Tstmtu II I STALINGRAD 

\, I(lIfpovk.1I ... 0 ....... =======::=== VOloponoyo // 1 .... _,,_ .. '-' \ :- .. 51 I r; /. ~-pJ 57th \.,,~aIPovska"'8 51el1 n ~ .,1/>/ 

I ~.Ivpzcorps , 

OPERATION KOL TSO ! __ . t= ",,_:7--- /. 

10 January - 2 February 1943 __ '. 

------ ApprOJumate front, 10 Jan I B k k \-1 ,. e .rov II 

00000000 Approltimate front , 12 Jan \J-...... _ _"'----' 

• -- " Approximate front, 17 Jan -

<:==::=:=: Soviet attack , 10 Jan - 25 Feb 

~ 1,0 Mite. 

of-----,,'O,......,K'-'o-'mataf. 

MAP 44 

landings in the pocket were becoming 

exceedingly dangerous, and in another 

four days, Southwest Front would take 

the air base at Tatsinskaya, forcing the 

planes to shift to fields at Rostov and 

Novocherkassk, over two hundred 

miles from the pocket. 

Early on the 16th, Sixth Army lost 

Pitomnik, the better of its two airfields 

in the pocket. Six of fourteen fighters 

based there took off under fire. Five 

attempted to land and crashed on the 

airstrip at Gumrak, which was still in 

Sixth Army's hands. Tl1e pilot of the 

sixth Rew out to the west, thus ending 

the fighter defense over the pocket. On 

the 17th, Fourth Air Force for a time 

also suspended landings at Gumrak 

64th 

after a pilot mistakenly reported the 

troops were retreating past it. 73 

Don Front completed the second 

stages of KOLTSO on the 17th, reaching 

a line running from Voroponovo Station northwest to Rossoshka. The area 

of the pocket had been reduced by 

about two-thirds, but the seven days 

allotted to K OLTSO were used up. Sixth 

Army, moreover, had once more managed to hold its front together and was 

now, on the south , occupying the original main Stalingrad defense lin e. 

Something had gone wrong. Sbomik 

Nome.- 6 and Rokossovskiy put the 

73Schroeler, Srulingrad, p. 166; Fernspruch VOl! 

Luftfolle 4, la, 17.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/8 file. 
STALlNGRAD, FINALE 

blame on faulty intelligence. Don Front, 

they said, had gone into the offensive 

believing Paulus had eighty to eightyfive thousand troops, but it turned out 

he had closer to two hundred thousand.'4 For four days after the 17th, 

Rokossovskiy again regrouped. During 

the pause, Paulus reported , on the 

20th, that the "fortress" could not hold 

out more than a few days longe r. In 

some sectors, he said, the defenders 

had all been wiped out, and the enemy 

could march through the front "at 

wi11."75 

The final stage of KOLTSO began on 

22 Janua ry. Fifty-seventh Army's infantry, 

pressing in from the southwest on a 

three-mile-wide front along the railroad , broke through at Voroponovo 

Station and marched east into Stalingrad with battle Rags Rying. To close 

the gap this time was impossible. Ammunition had run out on that stretch of 

the front, and neither troops nor ammunition could be brought in from 

other sectors. 

That night, Paulus radioed to Hitler 

via the OKH: 

Ratio ns ex hausted. Over 12,000 unat- tended wounded in the pocket. What orders should I give to troops who have no 

more ammunition and a re subjected to 

mass attacks supported by heavy artillery 

fire? Th e quickest decision is necessary 

since d isintegration is already starting in 

some places. Confidence in the leadership 

still exists, however.76 

Hider answered: 

H/VMV, vol. V I . p. 78; SbQrllik, Noma 6; 

Rokossovs ki y. Sohlicr's Dilly, p. 168. 

7sOKH, GenStdlf, Chef des GenStdH, N,: 38143, an 

a.B. d., H. Ge. Don 39694/8 fi le. 

760.B. AOK 6, an Gm. Zritz.ler %.IIr \-\i>iterKabe an den 

Furhrer wm fl . Gr. Don, 22.1.43, H. Gr. Don 39694/9 

fil e. 

499 

Surrender is ouL of the question. 

The tro0l's will defend themselves to the 

last. If pOSSible, the size of the fortress is to 

be reduced so that it can be held by the 

troops still capable of fighting. 

T he courage and endu rance of the fortress have made it possible to establish a 

new front and begm preparing a counteroperation. Thereby, Sixth Army has 

made an historic contribution to Germany's greatest struggle." 

As the front fell back from the west, 

the inner city, which after months of 

bombardment had the appearance of a 

landscape in hell, became a scene of 

fantastic horror. Sixth Army reported 

twenty thousand uncared-for wounded 

and an equal number of starving, freezing, and unarmed stragglers. Those 

who could took shelter in the basements 

of the ruins, where tons of rubble overhead provided protection against a constant rain of artillery shells. There, in 

darkness and cold , the sick, the mad , the 

dead, and the dying crowded togetller, 

those who could move daring not to for 

fear of losing their places. '8 Ove r the 

tallest of the ruins in the center of tl,e 

city, Sixth Army ran out the R eich battle 

Rag, "in order to fight the last battle 

under this symbol."" 

On 26 January, Sixty-second Army LOok 

Mamai Hill, and ta nks of Twenty-fint 

Army, coming from the west, linked up 

th ere to split the pocke t in tw0 80 

Thereafter, XI Corps formed a perimeter around the tractor works on the 

northern edge of the city while SiXtll 

71/-1 . Gr. Don, la, Abschrift VO Il FUlIkspruch an 6. Armee 

wr \trlage an H errll Ceneraifeldmnrschall VOll Mansteill, 

22.1.43, H. G,·. Don 39694/9 file . 

78 f-{ . Gr. Don, la, lilgesmeldllllg, 24.1.43, 1-1. Cr. DOll 

39694/9 file. 

79H. Gr. Doll, la, MmgenmelduIIg, 25.1.43, H . Gr. Don 

39694/9 file. 

8o/VMV, vol. VI, p. 79; VOv, p. J89f. 
500 MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

'. 

... . ': :, . 

,. 

c. 

o' ..... 

SIXTH ARMY SURVIVORS M ARCH O UT OF S IALINGRAD UNDU{ GUARD 

Army headquarters and LI and VIII 

Corps and XIV Panzer Corps dug in 

around and northwest of the main railroad station. The I V Panzer Corps, 

which had been holding the south 

front, was destroyed on that day by a 

Soviet push across the Tsa ritsa River 

from the south. Sixth Army, by then, 

had asked the air force to drop only 

food: ammunition was not needed , 

there were too few guns. 81 

Sixth Army stopped issuing rations 

to the wounded on 28 January to preserve the strength of the fighting 

troops. That day the main theme of the 

midnight situation conference at the 

81AOK 6, la, ali H. Gr. JJo11 ueber OKl-l, 26. 1.43. H . 

Gr. Don 39694/9 file: AOK 6, Chef, an H . Cr. Doll, 

25.1.43, H . Cr. Don 39694/9 file. 

Fuehrer Headquarters was Hitler's desire to have "an Sixth Army reco nstituted quickly, using as many survivors of the original army as could be 

found .

82 

By 29 January, the south pocket was 

split, leaving Paulus, his staff, and a 

small assortment of troops in an enclave in the south and the remnants of 

LI and VIII Corps in the north. The 

XIV Panzer Corps ceased to exist on 

that day. During the night, ten small 

groups departed in a forlorn attempt 

to make their way out to the west across 

almost two hundred miles of enemy 

territory. By the nex t night, LI and 

82AOK 6 , la, atl H. Gr. Don IIthl'T OKH, 28.1.43 and 

AOK 6, la, an H. Gr. Do", 30.1.43 , H . Gr. Don 39694/ 10 

file: Greiner, O/Jerste H'Phnllachtfliehrung, p. 69. 
STALINGRAD, FINALE 

VI II Corps had been pushed into a 

small area a round a former Soviet 

Army engineer barracks, where they 

s~rrendered the following morning. 

SIXth Army headquarters was inside a 

300-yard perimete r around the Red 

Square held by the survivors of the 

1941h Grenadier Regiment. 83 

At 0615 on the morning of 31 January, the radio operator a t Sixth Army 

headquarters in the basement of the 

Univermag ("department store") on Red 

Square sent the fo llowing message: 

"Russians are at the door. We are preparIng to destroy [the radio equipm e nt]." An h our late r, the last 

transmission from Sixth Army came 

thro ugh: "We are destroying [the 

equipment]."8' Paulus surrend ered 

himself, his staff, and those troops with 

him but refused to give an o rder to Xl 

Corps to do the sameS5 Promoted to 

field marshal just the day before, he 

became the first German officer of that 

rank ever to have been taken prisoner. 

Hitler, who had expected the promouon to lead Paulus to a diffe rent 

choice, declared, "Paulus did an aboutface on the threshold of immortality."86 

I n the pocket a round the tractor 

works, 33,000 men of XI Corps, under 

General del' Infante rie Karl Strecker, 

fo ug ht on for another forty-eight 

hours. On I February, Hitler called on 

the corps to fight to the last man , 

saying, "Every day, ever hour that is 

won benefits the rest of the front de8

3

AOK 6, la., all H . Gr. Doll , 29.1.43 and AOK 6, (1" H . 

Gr, I)(m, 30.1.43, H . Gr. Don 3696419 fi le. 

~AOK 6, Ja, aT, /-I. Cr. Don, 31.1.43, 0615 and AOK 6, 

la, ml H . Cr. Doll, 31.1.43, 0714, H . G,', Don 39694/ 10 

fil e. 

IIsRokossovski)'. Soldier's Dilly, p. 171 . 

81IAmll.. "Die WeI/de liel Krleges.·· 

50 1 

cisively."87 At 0840 the next morning, 

Army Group Don received the last 

message from Strecker: 

X I Corps, with its six divisions, has done its 

duty to the last. 

Long li ve the Fuehrer! 

Long live Germany!-Strecker" 

I n the Stalingrad pocket the Germans lost somewhat over two hundred 

tllOusand men. The exact total was 

apparentl y never dete rmined . During 

the fighting , 30,000 wounded were 

flown OUt.89 The Soviet accounts state 

th at 147,000 German d ea d were 

counted on the battlefield and 91,000 

Germans were taken prisoner, including 24 generals and 2,500 officers of 

lesser rank9 • The Soviet Union has not 

released figures o n its own losses in tll e 

Stalingrad battle. However, if the casualties given for two units, III Cavalry 

and VIlI Cavalry Corps-36 percent 

and 45 percent, respectively, from 19 

November to 2 December-are in any 

way representative, the Soviet losses 

must a lso have been substantial. An 

impression of the magnitude of Ope ration KOLTso can be derived from Don 

Front's ammunition expenditure between 10 January and 2 February 1943: 

9 11 ,000 artillery rounds of calibers up 

to 152-mm., 990,000 mortar shells, and 

24,000 ,000 machin e gun a nd rifle 

rounds.!) ! 

As Hitler frequently stated , Sixth 

Army had performed a service at a 

critical time by tying clown several hun870KH, Gl'TlSldll, op. Abt. (/ SIB) Nr. 1433143 , all 

Gen. KtkJ. XI A.K., 1.2.43, H . G r. Don 39694110 fi le. 

" XI A.K., (III H . Gr. Don , I ll, 2.2.43, 0840, I-I. Gr'. 

369641 10 file. 

~9Arn z, "Oil' Wnule (lt5 KriegI!5." 

90IVO\,SS, \'0 1. III. p. 62; VOV; p. 190: VO\l 

(Kratkn),o IJlori)Yl), p. 223. 

9ISbOl'fIIH, Noml'r Y. 
502 

dred thousand Soviet troops; on the 

other hand , it was a service performed 

for the wrong reasons. Hitler did not, 

in tl,e first place, keep Sixili Army at 

StalingJ-ad for even so modestly valid a 

purpose. He was concerned entirely 

with preserving an appearance of success for a campaign he already knew 

had failed. At the last, having kept 

what was happening at Stalingrad from 

the German public until after KOLTSO 

began, he had nothing better in mind 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

than iliat he believed a fight to tl,e last 

man would be less damaging to tl,e 

national morale and his own image 

ilian a surrender·' Certainly one can 

imagine a less disastrous development 

of tl,e battle on tl,e southern Rank of 

the Eastern Front for Germany if SiXtll 

Army had been allowed to get its 

twe nty divisions away from Stalingrad 

in tilne. 

USee Domarus, Hitler, vol . II . p. 1973. 
CHAPTER XXIV 

Conclusion 

"The Beginning of the Road" 

Marshal Chuikov entitled his memoir of the Stalingrad battle Nachalo puti 

(The Beginning of the Road). As of 19 November 1942, he said, "'Not a step 

back!' now meant go forward ... now 

meant we have to advance to the west." , 

The road would be long in distance 

and in time, to Berlin 1,500 miles and 

twenty-nine and a half months. Although it was new to Chuikovs Sixtysecond Army, which later, rebuIlt and 

renamed Eighth Guards Army, would be 

on it all the way to Berlin, the road, of 

course, was the same one on which 

German Sixth Army had begun its 

thousand-mile march from the Soviet 

border to Stalin grad seventeen months 

earlier. 

On 25 January 1943, in the first 

congratulatory order of the day to be 

issued during the war, Stalin thanked 

the commands and troops of t11e southern /ivnls and gave them a new slogan: 

"Onward to defeat the German occupationists and to drive them out of 

our country!" His order of the day for 

23 February 1943, which was the Red 

Army's twenty-fifth anniversary, asserted, "Three months ago Red Army 

troops began an offensive at the approaches to Stalingrad. Since then the 

'Chuikov. The Battle for Slniit/grad, p. 218. Originally 

published as NachalQ Pill; (Moscow: Voyennoye 

I7dale!stvo, 1959). 

initiative has been in our hands .... 

The balance of forces on the SovietGerman front has changed."2 

In his anniversary order of the day, 

Stalin also declared "t11e battle at the 

walls of Stalingrad" to have been "the 

greatest in the history of wars." Those 

who had participated in it were rewarded accordingly. A hundred and 

twelve officers and troops received the 

title and decoration Hero of t11 e Soviet 

Union; 48 generals were awarded the 

Order of Suvorov or the Order of 

Kutuzov; 10,000 in all ranks received 

other decorations; and 700,000 were 

given the campaign medal "For the 

Defense of Stalingrad." Forty-four 

units were authorized to incorporate 

place-names associated with the battle 

into their designations; 55 receIved 

unit commendations; and 183 earned 

the title "guards."3 

Charles E. Bohlen, the U.S. State 

Department's chief Soviet analyst, 

noted with some concern that Stahn 

omitted the Western Allies from the 

celebration. On 6 November 1942, in 

his annual speech on the eve of the 

anniversary of the 1917 revolution, Stalin had talked at length about the advantages a second front in Europe 

'1USSR Embassy,lnfonnatioll Bulletin, no. 10,28 Jan 

43, p. I; Ibid., no. 19,25 Feb 43, p.2. 

3/VMY, vol. VI. p. 82: VOV; p. 190; USSR Embassy. 

InJormation Bulletin, no. 12.28 Jan 42. p. 5. 
504 

would bring. In the 23 February 1943 

order of the day, he merely remarked 

that in the absence of a second front, 

the Soviet Army had borne "the whole 

burden of the war" thus far, and he 

suggested that it alone would be capable of defeating Germany in the war. 

On 6 November, he had said, "We are 

not waging [the war] alone, but in 

conjunction with our a llies." And he 

had proposed the slogan: "Hail the 

victory of the Anglo-Soviet-American 

fighting alliance!" He did not mention 

the alliance in the 23 February order of 

the day· 

The OKW's Armed Forces Report 

issued from the FuehTer Headquarters 

on 3 February awkwardly attempted to 

transform a disaster into an epic. The 

opening sentences read: "The battle 

for Stalingrad has ended. True to its 

oath to the last breath , Sixth Army, 

under the exemplary leadership of 

Field Marshal Paulus, has succumbed 

to the overwhelming strength of the 

enemy and to unfavorable circumstances. The enemy's two demands for 

capitulation were proudly rejected. 

The last battle was fought under a 

swastika Rag flying from the highest 

ruin in Stalingrad." Depicting the end 

as Hitler had wanted it to be but as the 

world, including most Germans, a lready knew it had not been, the report 

concluded, "Generals, officers, noncommissioned officers and men fought 

shoulder to shoulder to the last bullet. 

They died that Germany might live!'" 

That the war in the East had 

changed course drastically was obvious 

~Dept. of State. Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. lIl , p. 

506; USSR Embassy, In/ormation BIIlIelhl, no. 135, 

1942, pp. 1- 6; Ibid., no. 19, 25 reb 43, pp. 1-3. 

Domarus, I-iitl". vol. II , p. 1985. 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

a lso to the Germans by January 1943, 

and Hitler and Propaganda Minister 

Goebbels were trying to convert the 

calamitous outcome of tlle 1942 campaign into a national commitment to 

total war. On 13 January 1943, Hitler 

issued a decree stating, "The total war 

confronts us with tasks .. . that must 

unequivocally be mastered"; he named 

a tllree-man committee, consisting of 

Field Marshal Keitel, the chief, OKW; 

Martin Bormann, the chief of the Nazi 

Party Chancellory; and Hans Lammers, the chief of the Reichs Chancellory, to mobilize all military, party, and 

state agencies for the effort." Speaking 

for Hitler on 30 January, the tentll 

anniversary of the Nazi seizure of 

power, Goebbels called "the gigantic 

winter battle in the East the beacon of 

total war for tlle German Nation." On 

18 February, in an hour-long speech 

devoted solely to the total war theme, 

he declared Europe to be under an 

assault "ou t of the steppe" that only the 

German Wehrmacht and its allies could 

stop. The battle of Stalingrad, he said, 

had been "the great tocsin of German 

destiny," and the nation's watchword 

henceforth had to be "People ariseand storm break loose!'" 

Germany was in fact far from being 

on a total war footing in early 1943 . 

War production had been over 40 percent greater in 1942 than in 1941 

(largely owing to Armament and Munitions Minister Speer's organizational 

improvements), and 1942 had been the 

first year in which consumer goods 

production had been cut significantly, 

but the assumption that the war would 

6Jacobsen. Der Lweill! 't1'ellkrieg, pp. 373-75. 

7Helmut Heiber. ed., Goebbels-Redell (Duesseldol"f: 

Droste Verlag. 1972), pp. 165, 173-75,208. 
CONCLUSION 

soon be over had governed economic 

planning until the end of the year. 

Consequently, although the output of 

consumer goods was 10 percent less in 

1942 than in 1941 (but only 12 percent 

less than in the last prewar year, 1938), 

the tendency had been to preserve the 

consumer sector of the economy, and 

the numbers employed in such industries had held steady even though the 

war industry work force had declined 

almost 10 percent between 1939 and 

1942." 

The declaration of total war terminated the phase in which the prospect 

of an early victory had governed policy; however, total war connoted a 

much more cogent and purposeful 

policy shift than actually occurred. 

After the 13 January decree was published, Hitler told the committee of 

three that what he really wanted them 

to do was to squeeze another 800,000 

men out of the work force for military 

service, not to reorient the whole war 

effon. To the extent that it materialized at all tllereafter, the total war 

program conformed to Hitler's request. On 27 January, the Office of the 

Generalplenipotentiary for Labor declared all men sixteen to sixty-five and 

all women seventeen to forty-five subject to a labor draft. After granting 

blanket exemptions in numerous categories, it registered 3.5 million persons 

and-over the next year and a halfput 700,000 of them to work. On 4 

February, the Ministry of Economics 

ordered all non-war-related businesses 

to close and defined those as nightclubs, luxury bars and restaurants, 

jewelry stores, custom garment shops, 

8DcUlsches Inslitul fu e l' Winschaftsforschun g, 

DeI/helLe indllsrrie illl Kriege, pp. 37, 46f, 49, 159, 178. 

505 

and , among others, establishments 

trading in postage stamps.9 

Paulus' surrender brought the road 

to a dead end for Germany's allies. By 

31 January, the headquarters for the 

Rumanian, Italian, and Hungarian Armies were all out of tlle front and 

engaged in trying to reassemble what 

was left of their troops. (Hungarian 

Second Army had been smashed by a 

Soviet offensive begun on 12 January.) 

Marshal Mannerheim, commander in 

chief, Finnish Army, had asked Twentieth Mountain Army to release all the 

Finnish troops (five battalions) still attached to it.' 0 

The governments of Finland, Hungary, and Rumania, whose countries 

lay athwart the Soviet road to the west 

and would be tlle first to experience 

the assault "out of the steppe," were 

looking to their own salvation , as was 

Italy's Mussolini, who was watching the 

British and Americans open another, 

and to him more dangerous, road in 

North Africa. Mussolini proposed 

making a separate peace with the Soviet Union. Rumanian Marshal Antonescu proposed doing tlle same, only 

with the Western Allies. In the early 

montl1S of 1943, Finland , Hungary, 

and Rumania all began casting about 

For contacts and understandings with 

the Western Allies that might shelter 

them from the full consequences of a 

Soviet victory" 

90KW, Stellvertretel/de Chef des WehrmachtJllelll1l11gsslabes, Kriegstagebuch 00111 1.1.-31.3.43, 16 and 22 Jan 

43, I.M.T. Doc. 1786 PSi Jacobsen, Dcr zweitl! Weitkrieg, 

p. 378; Heiber, Goebbels, pp. 189, 199. 

IOJucrgen Foerster, Stalingrad, Risse im Buendlliss, 

1942- 1943 (Freiburg: Verlag Rombach, 1975), pp. 

46- 66; (Gch.) AOK 20, la NT. 133143, 01/ OKW, WFSl, 

29.1.43, AOK 20 36560/2 file. 

IIFocrslcr, Stalingrad, p. 68; Paul Schmidt, Stntist 

auf diplomatischer Buehne, / 923- 1945 (Bonn: Athenaeum Verlag, 1949), p. 555. 
506 

The Transitions 

In Ihe High Commands 

From the outset of the war, Hitler 

and Stalin were the actual as well as 

titular supreme commanders of their 

respective armed forces. Both had sufficient power as heads of government 

in totalitarian states to conduct the war 

as they saw fit, and both made the 1942 

campaign the definitive test of their 

generalship. How each construed the 

results of the campaign set the German 

and Soviet Commands on the courses 

they would follow to the war's end. 

Until the late summer of 1942, Stalin 

maintained an appearance of collegial 

command vested in the Slavka and directed the war in person through the 

Stavka and its adjunct, the General 

Staff. At a higher level, he also controlled the whole war effort through 

the State Defense Committee, the 

GKO. In 1941, he could not have done 

differently without setting the state 

and the military systems that he had 

built around himself hopelessly adrift. 

He had preserved the systems, thereby 

probably also saving the nation; but his 

generalship after tile Moscow counterattack had failed to capitalize decisively on that success and had paved 

the way for the second German summer offensive. Finally, with the "Ni 

shag" naUld!" ("Not a step back! ") order 

of 28 July 1942, Stalin reached what 

could have been tile last stop short of 

strategic bankruptcy: he had to demand that his forces sacrifice themselves to buy time for him. A month 

later he had to call on Zhukov and 

Vasilevskiy to augment his generalship. 

The History of the Second W,,-ld War 

states that by appointing a deputy supreme commander, Stalin "introduced 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

a new element in the leadership at tile 

strategic level" and that Zhukov and 

Vasilevskiy "were provided Witll plenipotentiary powers and possessed great 

authority in the fighting forces." !2 Specifically, Stalin had, in making Zhukov 

deputy supreme commander, for the 

first time installed a military professional in tile direct chain of command 

above the operational level and had, by 

granting plenipotentiary powers to 

Zhukov and Vasilevskiy, created the 

nucleus of at least a provisional military 

high command. 

The development of the high command continued through the rest of 

tile year and into the early months of 

1943. The planning and execution of 

the counteroffensive at Stalingrad 

brought the commanding general of 

the air force and the chiefs of artillery 

and armor, whose posts in the Defense 

Commissariat had until then been 

mostly administrative, into the line of 

command under Zhukov and Vasilevskiy. In December 1942, the artillery and armored and mechanized 

forces had a cquired branch status 

(which the air force already had) and 

their chiefs had become commanding 

generals and deputy defense commissars. The mostly ad hoc command 

structure of late 1942 was formalized in 

May 1943 when Zhukov's and Vasilevskiy's appointments as first and second deputy defense commissars, 

respectively, put them at the heads of 

both the line and staff military chains 

of command.!3 

Stalin also gave the military professionals tangible evidence of his confidence and their worth to the extent 

I2/VMV, vol. V, 236. 

I3Zakharov, 50 let, p. 333. 
CONCLUSION 

that they probably gained more in 

ranks and titles than they did in actual 

influence on the conduct of the war. 

On 18 january 1943, Zhukov became a 

marshal of the Soviet Union, the first 

general to be promoted to that rank in 

the war, and General Voronov became 

a marshal of artillery under a less than 

two-week-old Central Committee decree authorizing branch marshalships. 

Vasilevskiy advanced to general annii 

also on 18 january and to marshal of 

the Soviet Union a month later. The 

commanding general of the air force , 

Novikov, became a general pollwvnik in 

january, a general armii in February, 

and received his star as marshal of 

aviation in March 1943. Three field 

commanding generals-Malinovskiy, 

Rokossovskiy, and Vatutin-moved 

through the ranks from general leytenant to general annii by April 1943. 

Stalin's generosity with promotions was 

lavish but measured. Fedorenko, the 

commanding general of armored and 

mechanized forces, had become a general pollwvnik in january 1943, but 

apparently because the armored 

branch 's performance had not yet 

equaled that of the artillery or the air 

force, Fedorenko was left to wait more 

than a year for his promotion to marshal of the armored forces. Stalin also 

made pointed distinctions between offensive and defensive success. Malinovskiy, whose army had smashed 

Operation WINTERGEWITTER, moved 

up two grades in rank and became 

afTOnt commander in 1943 and a marshal in 1944. Chuikov, who had held 

the Stalingrad bridgehead through the 

siege, stayed an army commander and 

ended his service in the war as a general 

pollwvnik. Rokossovskiy, who had wiped 

out the Stalingrad pocket, became a 

507 

marshal in 1944. General Eremenko, 

who had conducted the defense, was a 

general armii when the war ended. 

Eremenko and Chuikov eventually became marshals, but not until 1955, two 

years after Stalin died 14 

The military'S relationship to Stalin 

had changed. He had come as close to 

creating a high command and appointing a commander in chief as he ever 

would, and he had accepted the professionals' guidance. Vasilevskiy described 

the new relationship as it affected himself, Zhukov, and Stalin when he wrote, 

"The Stalingrad battle was an important turning point [in Stalin's development as a military leader]. J. V Stalin 

began not only to understand military 

strategy well ... but also found his way 

about well in the operational art. As a 

result, he exercised a strong influence 

on the working out of operations .... " 15 That Stalin had discovered 

an effective system of command, which 

was also satisfactory to himself, was 

evident in his own entry into the military as a marshal of the Soviet Union in 

March 1943. What is most remarkable, 

however, is that after late 1942, Stalin 

had managed successfully to foster and 

exploit military professionalism witllout relinquishing any of his authority 

over or within the armed forces. The 

army had performed as if it had a high 

command, but it did not. Orders continued to be issued in the name of the 

Stavka. Zhukov, as deputy supreme 

commander, and he and Vasilevskiy, as 

first and second deputy defense comI4See the biographical entries in MinisterSlvQ 

Oborony SSSR, Institut Voyennoy Istorii, Sovetskrq a 

Voyennaya Entsiklopediya (Mosco w: Vo yenno ye 

lzdatelstvo , 1980) and in the registers of names in the 

appropriate volumes of rvovss. 15/VMY, voL V, p. 326. 
508 

missars, wielded great authority when 

Stalin desired them to, but it was his 

authority not theirs. In terms of real 

power, the distance between Stalin and 

his deputies always was, when he 

wanted it to be, at least as great as that 

between a marshal and a private. 

Like the Soviet, the German Command underwent a transition in 1942, 

in its instance completing the one begun in February 1938 when Hitler had 

made himself commander in chief of 

the armed forces. Although Hitler had 

progressively expanded his role in military affairs, especially during the early 

campaigns of the war, the Armed 

Forces High Command, the OKW, had 

not evolved into a true armed forces 

command, and during the 1941 campaign in the Soviet Union the service 

high commands had continued as 

semi-autonomous parts of the command structure represented in the 

high-level decision-making process by 

their commanders in chief. r n BARBAROSSA and TAIFUN, the Army High 

Command , the OKH, had also figured 

as the designated high command for 

operations on the Eastern Front. 

However, following Field Marshal 

Brauchitsch 's dismissal in December 

1941, the OKH had ceased to be a high 

command in all but name, and Hitler 

had assumed direct personal control of 

the Eastern Front. Subsequently, the 

1942 operations were planned and executed according to his specifications, 

and victory, nevertheless, eluded his 

grasp, bringing him at the end of August into about as close an encounter as 

Stalin's with strategic bankruptcy. 

Stalin's response was rational and 

self-serving; Hitler's only self-serving. 

In September 1942, he further dismantled the command structure, leavMOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

ing himself alone atop the "heap of 

wreckage."'· The clean sweep-of Keitel and Generals Jodi and Halderthat Hitler threatened did not materialize. Keitel and JodI kept their posts 

in the OKW until the end of the war. 

But Hitler secured everything he 

wanted : an OKW and General Staff 

firmly brought into agreement with 

him and subservience to him and, 

through General Schmundt and the 

army officer personnel office, a direct 

hold on every officer from lieutenant 

to field marshal. On 30 September,just 

two weeks before he was going to have 

to issue Operations Order No. 1 putting the Eastern Front on notice to 

expect another bad winter, Hitler announced a victory, not over the enemy 

but over "an old world ," that of military 

tradition . He told the German people 

they were about to see the Nazi social 

system take full effect. Birth, background, and schooling, he said, had 

ceased to be criteria for military preferment, which henceforth would go only 

"to the brave and loyal man , the determined fighter who is suited to be a 

leader of his people."'7 To Schmundt, 

he talked about advancing line officers 

to the top commands and abolishing 

the General Staffs distinctive red trouser stripes and silver collar tabs'S In 

short, Hitler placed the army under his 

tutelage. 

But the winter was far worse than 

Hitler could have imagined it would be 

in September 1942, in fact, worse than 

he already thought it had been on the 

day Paulus surrendered in Stalingrad; 

I6Warlimolll, lm Hlwptqua rtier, p. 274 . 

I7Domarus, Hitler, vol. II. p. 1922. 

I8Taetigkeitsbencht des Chefs des Hu respersfJ1U1lamts, 

1- 5 Oct 42. H 4112 file. 
CONCLUSION 

consequently, his relationship to the 

military came into question again. On 

I February 1943, Soviet forces began 

operations aimed toward Kursk, Kharkov, and the Dnepr River crossing at 

Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye that 

could have engulfed not just armies 

but Army Groups Don and Center. l

' 

On the 6th, Hitler called Field Marshal 

Manstein, the Army Group Don commander, to the Fuehrer Headquarters 

and-although it was not evident at 

the time-laid the groundwork for a 

renewed partnership between himself 

and the military "old world" that would 

get him past the current crisis and 

sustain him through another twentysix months of war. 

Manstein came to the meeting as the 

representative of his world, that of the 

General Staff in the pre-Nazi tradition, 

and its leading candidate to be a chief 

of the General Staff with clear responsibility and genuine authority. Hitler 

had ignored the idea of a strong chief 

of the General Staff when it first arose 

in early 1942, and he dismissed it as 

impossible when Manstein proposed it 

on 6 February. But, although he tried 

for four hours, he could not do the 

same when Manstein confronted him 

with what he had come to regard as the 

General Staffs most pernicious principle, namely, that maneuver had to take 

precedence over position on the defensive as well as on t11e offensive. The 

events at Stalingrad had not shaken his 

conviction derived from the previous 

winter's experience that voluntary 

withdrawals always sel ved tI1e enemy 

better than they did oneself, but he 

nrnlC post-Slalingrad phase of the Sm'tet 1942-

J94 ~ wimer offensive is treined in detail in eh. Vof 

Ziemke. Stalingmd to Berlill. 

509 

stopped short of putting his conviction 

to another test and authorized Manstein to take the Army Group Don 

[ront inside the bend of the Donets 

River back a hundred miles to the Mius 

River line.

20 

In the succeeding weeks, Manstein 

repaid Hitler's reluctant concession 

handsomely. On 20 February, he 

launched an operation that in the next 

twenty-six days demolished four Soviet 

armies and established a front on the 

Donets River north to Belgorod. (On 

the 20th, Soviet spearheads were seventy miles west of Kharkov, within artillery range of Dnepropetrovsk, and 

less than forty miles east of Manstein's 

headquarters at Zaporozhye.) In the 

second week of March , the recapture 

o[ Kharkov, an event that would attract 

worldwide attention, was taking shape, 

and on the 10th , Hitler went to 

Zaporozhye to add an Oak Leaf Cluster to Manstein's Knight's Cross of the 

Iron Cross and to greet and hear reports [rom all of the army and air corps 

commanders in the south. He was amiable, even jocular, and he found the 

generals' morale to be " fantastic." 

Three days later, he staged a similar 

scene at Army Group Center with Field 

Marshal Kluge and his generals, who 

were then completing a phased evacuation of the Rzhev salient that was releasing enough troops to block the 

Soviet advance past Kursk 2l 

Manstein stopped the offensive on 

18 March at Belgorod, thirty miles 

north of Kharkov, which had fallen on 

7°Manstein, Verlorene Siege, pp. 437- 44. 

l!I David Irving, Hitler's H·flr (New York: Viking 

Press, )977), pp. 497-99: Louis P. Lochner, ed., The 

Goebbels Diarin (Garden City. N.V.: Doubleday & Co .. 

1948), p. 294. 
510 

the 14th. The full onset of the spring 

thaw forced him to make this decision , 

and he had to leave a deep bulge 

around Kursk, but Hitler could proclaim a victory in his annual Memorial 

Day address on the 21st (which he had 

postponed for a week in anticipation of 

such an announcement). From the 

Potsdam Armory, the shrine to Prussian and German feats of arms, he told 

the nation and the world that Europe 

had been saved, and preparations were 

under way to secure additional successes in the coming months and to 

assure the final victory. On 13 March , 

he had signed Operations Order No.5 

alerting Manstein and Kluge to be 

ready to seize the initiative again as 

soon as the spring muddy season 

ended. 22 

The field marshals and the rest of 

the "old world" military establishment 

would be ready with few exceptions in 

the spring of 1943 and for as long 

thereafter as Hitler wanted them. In a 

long ta lk with Goebbels on 9 March, 

the day before his visit to Manstein , 

Hitler had revealed how he meant to 

reciprocate. He said he did not trust a 

single one of the generals; they all tried 

to swindle him whenever they could; 

they did not even understand their 

own trade-war; the entire officertraining system had been wrong for 

generations. "Slowly but surely," he 

concluded, leadership selection for the 

armed forces would be changed; 

Schmundt would see to that.'3 

U Domarus, Hiller, vol. II. p. 1999; OKH, GenStdH, 

Op. Abt. Nr. 430163143. Opemtwmbifehl N, 5, 13.3.43, 

CMH fdes. 

23 Jacobsen, Der zweil, U'eJtkrieg, pp. 383-85. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

In Operations 

The primary components of the 

blitzkrieg were the doctrine of combined arms, the deep operation, and 

the envelopment. The first two were 

late developments of World War I. The 

Germans and the Allies had used combined arms in 1918 to achieve deeper 

penetrations of the enemy front than 

they had previously managed at any 

time since 1914. During the inte rwar 

period, the deep operation (essentially 

as it had been conceived in the German 

General Staffs tactical instructions 

"The Attack in Positional Warfare" of 

January 1918, a coordinated frontal 

thrust designed to break through multiple defense lines to depths of twentyfive or thirty miles in several weeks) was 

regarded as the most practicable means 

of averting another trench deadlock 

such as had occurred in World War 1. 24 

The envelopment dated back to 2 Au-

~ust of 216 B.C. when a Carthaginian 

force unde r Hannibal encircled and 

a nnihil a ted a mu ch larger Roman 

force unde r the Consul Terentius 

Varro at Cannae. Hannibal's accomplishment had been long admired but 

seldom repeated, The pre-World War I 

Chief of the German General Staff 

Generalfeldmarschall Alfred Graf VOI~ Schlieffen, analyzed the several dozen 

eighteenth and nineteenth century battles in whicll enveloping maneuve rs 

had been employed and found o nl y 

one full y successful encirclement-the 

Battle of Sedan in Septembe r 1870, 

which decided the Franco-Prussian 

UErich Lud endodT, Urkunden der Oberstfll 

J-Ieeresieitllllg ueber illre 'filetigkeil19J61J8 (Berlin: E. S. 

MinIer u. Sohn. 1920), pp. 64 1-66; Herma nn 

Focnsch . Kri'gsku,ISI lit/III' Imd morgen (Berlin: 

Wilhelm Andermann, 1939), pp. 228-35. 
CONCLUSION 

War against France. 25 Schlieffen concluded, and military opinion generally 

concurred during and after World War 

I, that to attempt an encirclement, unless the opportunity for one arose by 

chance in the course of a battle, was an 

almost pure gamble because an envelopment, even by a numerically superior force, was difficult to complete 

and easy to evade. In Schlieffen's opinion, a complete battle of encirclement 

required a daring and imaginative 

Hannibal and a stubbornly inflexible 

Terentius Varro, "both cooperating for 

attainment of the great goal."'· 

I n the German campaigns against 

Poland in September 1939 and France 

and the Low Countries in May and 

June 1940, strategic envelopments and 

combined arms deep operations conducted at high speed and to greater 

depths than had previously been 

thought possible produced the blitzkrieg. For the 1941 campaign against 

the Soviet Union, the envelopment was 

incorporated into the deep operation 

to form the ZangenangriJJ ("pincers 

movement"), the double envelopment 

repeatedly executed along the strategic 

lines of attack. The blitzkrieg attained 

the highest state of its operational development in the 1941 campaign in the 

East but did not achieve a decisive 

strategic result. On 6 July 1942, when 

the Stavka ordered the retreat in the 

southern sector, Stalin stopped playing 

USchlieffen himself designed the next envelop. 

IllCI11 lO be 3ucmpled afkr Sedan. Execmcd aflcl' his 

death, it failed in September 1914. TIle battle of 

T.,nnenberg. the German vi ctory on the Eastern 

Front in August 1914 , produced the onc successful 

encirclement in World War J. 

26Alfrcd "on Schlie ffen, CallI/at (FOI'l Leavenworth : 

11le Command and General SlaffSchool Press, 193 1), 

pp. 297- 306: FoerLSch, Kritgskunst, p. 246. 

511 

Terentius Varro to Hitler's Hannibal, 

and the encirclements accomplished 

thereafter were mostly of empty space. 

In November 1942 , the roles 

changed , and Hitler cooperated in 

German Sixtll Army's encirclement 

and annihilation. Soviet histories rank 

the battle as "the Cannae of the twentieth century"; as "the first example in 

the history of war of such a powerful 

enemy grouping, equipped with the 

latest technology, being encircled and 

totally liquidated"; and as having "enriched the military art with a classical 

example of the modern offensive operation ."27 The envelopment is stated to 

have been the Soviet main form of 

maneuver in the operations conducted 

from late 1942 until the end of tile 

war.28 

In the months from November 1942 

to February 1943, the envelopmem was 

indeed the main form : the Soviet record shows ten major enveloping operations to have been initiated and to have 

been components of a second winter 

general offensive on the entire front 

from Leningrad south to the Taman 

Peninsula. Had they been completed 

by March 1943 as planned, the Soviet 

forces in the center and the south 

would have reached the Dnepr River 

seven months earlier and those in the 

north the Narva River-Lake Peipus 

line eleven months earlier t1lan tlley 

actually did . Howevel~ only t1l1'ee of the 

operations were completed, the one at 

Stalingrad and two of lesser magnitude 

and effectiveness carried out against 

German Second Army and Hungarian 

l1Bagramyan .lswn)'a 'VQY", p. 205; IVOVSS, \'01. III, 

p. 65; VOV (KralJuI),a /5Iori)'0), p. 174. 

n plalonov, Vlora)'(j Mirova)'u H1)7W, p. 867; /VOVSS, 

\·01. VI, p. 235; Bagramyan, /stonY' voyn, p. 479. 
512 

Second Army in late January 1943. Of 

the others, MARS failed; SATURN was 

reduced to providing support on the 

approaches to the Stalingrad pocket; 

and two, on the Narva River-Lake 

IImen line and on the Taman Peninsula, did not materialize. The three 

directed toward Kursk, Kharkov, and 

the Dnepr bend regained substantial 

and important territory but also 

brought on a reverse that restored the 

initiative to the Germans in the spring 

of 1943 29 The victory at Stalingrad, 

great as it was, was not economica l in 

either time or effort. On the whole, in 

the 1942- 1943 winter offensive, the 

Soviet commands did not demonstrate 

a capability to employ the envelopment 

as a consistently effective form of 

Inaneuver. 

The Slavka did not include a single 

envelopment in its plans for the year 

1943. The Soviet Military Encycwpedia 

lists nine encirclements completed between January 1944 and May 1945, but 

all of those, except possibly the last, 

resulted from opportunities that ocCUlTed in operations during which they 

had not been planned ao When Zhukov 

and Vasilevskiy proposed to open the 

1943 summer offensive with envelopments, Stalin told them he had had 

enough of envelopments; they were a 

luxury; the mission was to drive the 

Germans off Soviet territory fast a l In 

his memoirs, General Shtemenko states 

that the General Staff, in which he was 

29/VMV, vol. VI , maps 2.10, 11. 

3(lThe last, the encirclement of Army Group Center 

east of Prague, was completed on II May 1945, four 

days after the war against Germany had ended. 

\0)'en/w)'a Enlsik/ojJedi)'o, vol. VI. pp. 37.494- 96. 

31G. K. Zhukov, Vospomittaniya i razmysltleniya 

(Moscow: Izda telslvo Agenstva Pechati Novosti , 

1969). p. 5 18. 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

tl1e operations chief during the war, 

eva luated the envelopment in 1943 and 

concluded that "because of the time 

required, the complications of the maneuver, and other considerations, it 

was far from profitable to encircle 

every enemy grouping."" 

In the summer of 1943, the Soviet 

forces abandoned the blitzkrieg tactics 

they had employed in the previous 

winter campaign and took up the 

"cleaving blow" (rassekayushchiy udar), a 

less sophisticated and inherently more 

ponderous mode of conducting operations but one vastly more reliable in the 

hands of Soviet commands and troops. 

The cleaving blow derived from a form 

of combined arms deep operation 

(based on the German General Staff's 

"The Attack in Positional Warfare" of 

1918) developed in the Soviet Army in 

the early 1930s and emerged as the 

true main form of Soviet World War II 

operations in the 1943 summer offensive, the advance to the Dnepr River. In 

August, six fronts launched massive 

cleaving blows, frontal thrusts running 

parallel to each other."" The objectives 

were to overwhelm tl1e enemy's defenses and to force him back on a 

broad front (over seven hundred miles 

broad in that instance). 

The Decision 

The eleven and one-half months 

from 5 December 1941 to 19 November 

1942 were tl1e time of decision on all 

fronts in World War II. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet forces counterattacked at Moscow. The Japanese 

32S. M. Shtemenko, Genl'raill),Y stab v godY IN.IJ1!Y 

(Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo, 198 1), vol. I, p. 236. 

33011 The operations and their form at this <itage see 

Ziemke , Sialingmd 10 Berlin , cll . V III. 
CONCLUSION 

attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 

and the German declaration of war 

four days later brought the United 

States into the war. During the summer 

of 1942, the Germans achieved their 

farthest advances in the Soviet Union 

and North Africa and the Japanese 

theirs in the Pacific. In November 

1942, the British broke through at El 

Alamein on the 3d; American and 

British forces landed in Morocco and 

Algeria on the 8th; the Japanese Navy 

abandoned the fight for Guadalcanal at 

sea on the 15th; and the Soviet offensive began at Stalingrad on the 19th. 

After November 1942, the Axis was on 

the defensive and in recession on all 

fronts. 

However, the Soviet victory at Stalingrad resulted from both sides' commitment of their main forces to a 

seventeen-month contest for the strategic initiative. By comparison, the Western Allies achieved their succesSeS at 

Guadalcanal and in North Africa much 

more cheaply and easily. 1 n the Soviet 

analysis, this disproportion in the scale 

of effort confirms the Eastern Front as 

the "main and decisive front" in the war 

and the decision there as having also 

"caused Germany and its allies to go 

over to the defensive in all of the World 

WarlI theaters." In theSovietview, also, 

the Western Allies first roused themselves to genuine participation in the 

war "after it became apparent [in the 

winter of 1942-1943) that the Soviet 

Union was in the position to liberate the 

peoples of Europe from the fascist yoke 

by means of its own strength ."34 

But the Soviet Union did not liberate 

Europe by its own strength, and it remained a bystander to the Pacific war 

34/VMV, voL VI , pp. 3 18, 504. 

513 

until Japan's defeat was assured. The 

Soviet Union did not single-handedly 

open the road to victory in World War 

[l by the decision over Germany in the 

East. From December 194/ on, the 

United States carried the burden of a 

two-front war with Germany and Japan 

and assumed the tremendous task of 

building sufficient strength in ground, 

sea, and air forces to impose a second 

front on Germany. The roads that 

began at Stalingrad for the Soviet 

forces and in North Africa for those of 

the Western Allies converged in the 

heart of Germany. After the U.S. Navy 

had forced the Japanese Navy to withdraw from the waters around Guadalcanal, the "retreat of the Japanese 

armed forces would not end until Japan surrendered."" 

The period of the decision over Germany as it is construed in this volume 

does not figure in the Soviet periodization of the Soviet-German war, the 

Great Patriotic War. It falls within two 

larger periods: that of the strategic defensive (22 June 1941 to 19 November 

1942), in which the Moscow counteroffensive begun on 5 December 

1941 produced a "radical change" (povorol) in the war, and that of the "radical 

turn" (perelorn) (19 November 1942 to 

December 1943), which the encirclement at Stalingrad initiated. This treatment enables Soviet war history to do 

justice to the full unfolding of Soviet 

military power by bringing the battle of 

Kursk in July 1943 (a German offensive smashed at the start) and the summer offensive begun in August 1943 

(proof that the Soviet forces did not 

3!> paut S. Dull , A BattLe History oj the ImjH:rial japanl'se 

Navy (/941 - 1945) (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 

1978), p. 247. 
514 

need the help of "General Winter") into 

the period of the radical turn while also 

preserving the stature of the two great 

turning points, at Stalingrad and Moscow, without slighting either of them. 

On the od1er hand, non-Soviet war history is concerned with German failure 

as well as Soviet success and with the 

circumstances of and reasons for both. 

These concerns have determined the 

time span of this volume. 

During the interval covered in this 

volume, the courses of the war and of 

world history turned. At Moscow, on 5 

December 1941, d1e Soviet reserves and 

the weather transformed what would 

in any event have been a most unsatisfactory ending to the German 1941 

campaign into a disaster. The United 

States' entry into the war made Germany's defeat inescapable if the German forces cou ld not overcome the 

Soviet Union before the American 

power came into play, and that they 

could not have done after 5 December 

1941. Germany could not have done 

more thereafter than to keep the strategic initiative out of Soviet hands, and 

it failed at that on 19 November 1942. 

The battles at Moscow and Stalingrad 

were indeed the radical povorot and the 

radical peTelom of the war in the East. 

The first terminated Germany's bid for 

world power; the second put the Soviet 

Union on the road to a full share in the 

victory and to superpower status. 

The governing factors in the Soviet 

decision over Germany were the Soviet 

manpower, industrial base, and territory. German strategies designed primarily to destroy Soviet manpower 

proved inadequate in 1941 and abortive in 1942. Despite the Germans' best 

efforts, d1e Soviet strength at the front 

grew from 2.9 million men in June 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

1941 to 4.2 million in December 1941 

and then to 5.5 million in June 1942 

and to 6.1 million in November 1942."" 

In March 1943, Hider still rated the Soviet Union's running out of manpower 

"sooner or later" as his best strategic 

prospect in the war but conceded that 

he no longer counted on it. 37 

The Soviet industrial base figured in 

the December 1940 plan for Operation 

BARBA ROSSA primarily as a German war 

aim . Had BARBAROSSA been terminated 

as planned on the Arkhangelsk-Volga 

River line, it would have brought the 

centra l (Moscow- Upper Volga) and 

southern (Donets Basin) industrial regions, which then accounted for over 

80 peJ'cent of productive capacity, under German control. Hider's decision 

in August 1941 to shift the main effort 

from the center to the south and 

thereby make the industrial base also a 

strategic objective closed down the 

southern region, which accounted for 

over half of Soviet output particularly 

of coal and steel, but in d1e subsequent 

course of events put Moscow and d1e 

central region ou t of German reach."8 

The drastic declines in Soviet coal (63 

percent) and steel (58 percent) production in d1e last quarter of 1941 resulted 

from the disruption and partial loss of 

the southern industrial region. But the 

German reverse at Moscow in December 1941 left the Soviet Union in 

possession of d1e central region, and it 

and two other regions, the Urals and 

the western Siberian (Kuznets Basin), 

36/VMV, vol. V, p. 143 and vol. VI, p. 35. table 4. 

37Jacobsen, De,. lwei!f Weltkrieg, p. 384. 

" l1le estimates of the relative imporlance of the 

central and sOlilhern regions are based on Theodore 

Shabad. Geogm/Jhy of the Soviet U nW1l: A Regumal S lIruey 

(Ncw York: Columbia Univel'sity Press, 195 1), pp. 79, 

107. 
CONCLUSION 

sufficed to decide the contest for the 

industrial base in the Soviet favor."9 

The German 1942 offensive totally 

crippled the southern industrial region 

and caused a drastic decline in oil output in the Caucasus. The following 

table shows that coal, steel, and oil production , in millions of tons, did not recover during the war:

40 

Commodity 1940 194 1 1942 1943 1944 1945 

Coal 

Steel 

Oil 

. 165.9 15 1.4 75.5 

18.3 17.9 8. 1 

. 31.1 33.0 22.0 

93. 1 121.5 149.3 

8.5 10.9 12.3 

18.0 18.3 19.4 

German ou tput, also in millions of 

tons, during roughly the same period 

was as follmvs: 41 

Commodity 

Coal 

Steel 

Oil 

194 1 

246.0 

3 1.8 

4.8 

1942 

258.0 

32.1 

5.6 

1943 

269.0 

34.6 

6.6 

1944 

28 1.0 

35.2 

Nevertheless, in 1942, Soviet output already had surpassed that of Germany 

in tanks and other armored vehicles 

(24,400 Soviet; 4,800 German), in aircraft (21,700 Soviet; 14,700 German), 

in infantry riAes and carbines (4 million Soviet; 1.4 million German), and in 

artillery (for which comparable figures 

are not available). Soviet accounts attribute this remarkable fea t entirely to 

the Communist system's ability to overcome adverse circumstances, but it also 

appears Ijkely that stocks of strategic 

materials, particularly steel and other 

metals, had been accumulated before 

39The decision could probably be attributed equa ll y 

well to the fi ve-year plans for industrialization. which 

during the 1930s had promoted industrial development in the eastern regions (for the purpose of 

pUlling the plants out of bombing range). 

~o VMV; vol. XII, p. 161. 

~I Deutsches Institut fuel' Wirtschaftsforschung. 

Deuts(he illdus/r;e im Kriegf, p. 52. 

5 15 

the war." Certainly, the 3 million tons 

of lend-lease supplies delivered by 30 

June 1943 and the Western Allies' commitment to provide much greater 

quantities thereafter (all told 17.5 million long tons, 16.4 million of them 

from the United States) helped the 

Soviet Union to devote its own resources to weapons and ammunition 

production'3 

The vastness of its territory had been 

the most vexing strategic problem the 

Russian Empire presented to a wouldbe conqueror. In June 1811, a year before Napoleon I made his attempt, 

Tsar Alexander put it in classic form to 

General Armand de Caulaincourt, the 

French ambassador in St. Petersburg: 

"We have plenty space," Alexander 

said, ..... which means that we need 

never accept a dictated peace, no matter what reverses we may suffer."" 

During the civil war of 1918-1921 and 

before that contest for the territory 

of the emp ire was resolved, Stalin 

propounded the principle of "the stability of the rear." In it he maintained 

that the Communist military success 

in the war then going on or in any 

other required possession or the Russian heartland , tl1e broad belt of ethnic 

Russian territory lying roughly between Moscow and Leningrad in the 

west and reaching eastward into the 

Ural Mountains." 

12 /VMV. vol. XII. pp. 16 1-68: Zakharov, '0 11'1, p. 

457f: DCUlsches InSlillll rue r WirtscharlSrorschung, 

Deutsche I lIdllstrtf' lin KriegI', pp. ii, 183. 

d Jones, Roafif /J) RILfJia, app. A, table I. 

HAnnand de Caulaincourt. Memoires (JII gel/eral de 

C(llIiainamrl (Paris: Libricrie Pion, 1933), vol. 1, p. 

292. 

HSta lin defined the stable "ear as being ~or prime 

importance to the rro nt. because it is rrom the rear, 

and the rear alone. that the fronl obtains not only all 

kinds or supplies, but also its manpower. semimc llls, 

(Colllllllled) 
516 

Alexander's principle of space 

(which, of course, was so generally accepted even in his time as to hardly 

need to be stated) and Stalin's of the 

stability of the rear dominated the 

strategies of both sides in the struggle 

for the decision. The Soviet leadership 

used space as a last resort, not as the 

weapon of choice Alexander had 

seemed to imply it was. It was ready on 

22 June 1941 to fight a war of attrition 

but not one dee p in its own territory; 

nevertheless, it did that-involuntarily 

in 1941 and delibera tely from 6 July to 

19 November 1942. On the other hand , 

it applied the principle of the stability 

of the rear, in the terms Stalin had 

stated it two d ecades earlier, as soon as 

the likely course of the war became 

apparent. From early July 1941 to 19 

(Colltllilled) 

and ideas," During World \.var II , he established the 

stability of the rear as the chief of several so-called 

permanent operatin g factors in war. Stalin, 

Sochineniya, \"OJ. IV, pp. 284-88. 323-26; K. E. 

Voroshilov, Sialill alld the Arnud Forus of tire USSR 

(Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House . 

195 1), pp. 107-23. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

November 1942 (and for at least some 

weeks after), the Soviet main e ffort was 

always in tJ,e center, on the approaches 

to Moscow, the citadel of the heartland. 

The German blitzkrieg, the most effective form of the war of annihilation yet 

devised, had to come to grips with tJ,e 

Soviet main forces. It did not do that. 

Hitler had diverted the ma in effort 

from me center to the south in August 

1941 and again in the summer of 1942, 

thereby, in the first instance, dissipating his best chance and, in the second, 

his last chance of annihilating the mass 

ofthe Soviet Army, which had been tJ,e 

stated primary objective in the original 

BARBA ROSSA directive of Dece mbe r 

1940 and all those issued thereafter. 

WhetJ,er the outcome could have been 

different if the diversions had not been 

made is now at best a moot question. 

However, their having been made 

could have had no omer result than to 

substantiate a prediction Alexander 

had based on the principle of space, 

which was that under its conditions, the 

would-be conqueror was likely in the 

end to have to accept the terms of his 

intended victim. 
Appendix A 

Table of Equivalent Ranks 

German 

Reichsmarschall * 

General f e1dmarschall 

None 

None 

Generaloberst 

General der lnfanterie, 

der Artillerie, der 

Flieger, and so forth 

Generalleutnant 

Generalmajor 

Soviet 

None 

Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza 

Glavnyi Marshal 

Marshal 

General Armii 

General Polkovnik 

General Ley tenant 

General Mayor 

*Crealed for Hermann Goering in July 1940 and held only by him. 

U.S. Equivalent 

None 

General of U1e Army 

None 

None 

General 

Lieutenant General 

Major General 

Brigadier General 
Appendix B 

Comparative Sizes of Major Commands, 

November 1941 to January 1943 

GennLln 

I. Army Groups 

On the Eastern Front 4 to 5 plus the 

'TIventieth Mount.,un Army and the 

Finnish Army to September 1944 

2. Armies 

2 to 4 in an army group 

3. Corps (including Panzer Corps) 

2 to 7 in an army 

4. Divisions 

2 to 7 in a corps 

AUTHORIZED STRENGTHS. DIVISIONS 

Panzer Division 14,000 

(103 to 125 tanks) to 

17,000 

MOlOt;zed Division 14,000 

(48 tanks) 

Infantry Division, 9 battalions 15,000 

Infantry Division, 6 battalions 12,700 

Artillery Division 3,380 

(113 guns) 

Suuiet 

I. Fronts (Soviet army groups) 

10 to 12 

2. AI"mies 

3 to 9 in a front. Probable average 

5 to 7 

3. Rifle Corps 

Disbanded August 1941, reactivated 

late 1942 with 3 to 9 divisions 

4. Divisions 

2 to 3 in a corps 

AUTHORIZED STRENGTHS. ARMORlD CORPS 

AND DIVISIONS 

Tank Corps (189 tanks) 

Mechanized Corps 

(186 tanks) 

Rifle Division 

Guards RiAe Division 

Artillery Di vision 

(2 10 guns) 

10,500 

16,000 

9,375 

10,585 

6,550 
Note on Sources 

1 

When the Center of Military History 

volumes on World War II in the Soviet 

Union were planned in the late 1950s, 

the German military records then in 

the custody of the National Archives 

were almost the only primary sources 

available. Although a vast quantity of 

Soviet literature having to do with the 

war has since been published, the accessible Soviet documentary evidence 

remains sparse. Consequently, the German records are still the source closest 

to the events. They are a vast collection 

even after having been selectively microfilmed under the auspices of the 

Committee for the Study of War Documents of the American Historical Association. Although the originals, from 

which this volume was written, have 

been returned to Germany, the documents cited can, for the most part, be 

located by unit or agency and folder 

number through the Guides In German 

Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, Va. 

(1974 to 1977) prepared and published 

by the National Archives and Records 

Administration, Washington, D.C. 

20408-0001. 

In the German military records, 

those of the Armed Forces High Command (OKW), Army High Command 

(OKH), and army field commands 

(army groups, armies, corps, and divisions) are the most useful. Relatively 

few German Air Force operational records survived the war. TIle best general 

summary of those that did is British 

Air Ministry Pamphlet 248, The Rise 

and Fall of the Germ.an Air Force (London: 

His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1948). 

Hermann Plocher, The German Air Fone 

Versus Rtl.Ssia, 1942, USAF Historical 

Studies No. 154, published by the U.S. 

Air Force Historical Division, treats the 

1942 operations in general from an air 

force point of view. The German Navy 

and the High Command of the Navy 

(OKM) were only peripherally involved in the war on the Eastern Front. 

The OKM, however, received and preserved a complete set of strategic directives, the OKM, Weisungen OKW 

(Fuehrer), 1939-45, which are cited in 

the text as German High Level Directives, CMH files, and have been published with a few variations and 

omissions as Walter Hubatsch, ed., 

Hitler's Weisungen Fuer die Kriegsfuehrung 1939-1945 (Frankfurt: Bernard 

und Graefe, 1962). 

Although the OKW occupied the 

next to highest place in the German 

chain of command and acted as Hitler's 

personal staff, its position with regard 

to the Eastern Front was somewhat 

anomalous because the East (Finland 

excepted) was designated as an OKH 

theater and because by 1941 rivalry 

between the OKW and the OKH had 

ripened into outright hostility. The 

conversion of the Army General Staff 

into a second personal staff after Hitler 

became commander in chief, army, in 

December 1941, added a complication. 

Nevertheless, until late Se ptember 

1942 when it was bypassed almost com-
520 

pletely, the OKW received detailed 

daily reports on the operations in the 

East, and the OKW Operations Staff 

had a significant hand in strategic decision making for the Eastern Front. A 

convenient compilation of OKW materials is Percy Ernst Schramm, gen. ed., 

K riegstagebuch des Oberlwmmandos del' 

Wehrmacht (Wehrmachifuehrungsstab) 

(Frankfurt: Bernard & Graefe, 

1961 -1965). Volume 1, 1940-1941 

(Hans-Adolf Jacobsen , ed .), and Volume II, 1942 (Andreas Hillgruber, ed.), 

contain the so-called OKW War Diary 

for 1941 and 1942 with commentary by 

the former deputy chief of the OKW 

Operations Staff, General Walter Warlimont, and related documents. The 

most useful OKW document is the 

OKW, WFST, Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung, Kriegstagebuch, the war diary 

fragment for the months April 

through June 1942 by Colonel Walter 

Scherff, Hitler's official war historian, 

that became International Military Tribunal Document 1809 PS. It is supplemented by Helmuth Greiner's Aufzeichnungen ueber die LagtroOrtraege und Besprechungen im Fuehrerhauptquartier vom 

12. August 1942 bis zum 17. Maerz 1943 

(C"einer Diary Notes, Historical Division, 

United States Army, Europe, MS # 

C-065a). A description of the OKW 

role in the conduct of the war by an 

eyewitness who was also a professional 

historian is in Helmutll Greiner, Die 

Oberste Welmnachtfuehrung, 1939-/943 

(Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1951). 

The OKH was the central staff for 

the conduct of the war against the 

Soviet Union, and after September 

1942 the Eastern Front was its exclusive 

and sole responsibility. 'TI,e OKH records that have survived, though substantial in bulk, are fragmentary. The 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

two most valuable are the Halder Diary 

and the Lage Ost situation maps. The 

Halder Diary, published as Franz 

Halder, Kriegstagebuch (Stuttgart: W. 

Kohlhammer, 1964), is the personal 

diary kept by the chief of the General 

Staff until September 1942. It is supplemented by Ceneral Halder's Daily 

Notes (Historical Division, United States 

Army, Europe, EAP 21-g-16/4/0 file). 

The Lage Ost maps, printed daily by the 

Operations Branch, OKH, at a scale of 

1:1 ,000,000, are the source, Witll corrections and additions to the Soviet 

dispositions, for the maps that appear 

in this volume. 

Among the OKH records, those of 

the most important branch, Operations, are the least complete, but, fortunately, Operations Branch documents and communications of other 

kinds frequently found their way into 

tl,e files of otl,er branches and of the 

field commands. The Organization 

Branch records still in existence give 

information concerning German 

strengilis, losses, replacements, manpower resources, and changes in the 

army organizational structure. A 

branch war diary (OKH, CenStdH, Org. 

Abt., K,iegstagebuch) also exists for the 

months January through June 1942. 

The most nearly continuous of the 

OKH files are those of Foreign Armies 

East (Fremde Heere Ost), the Eastern 

Intelligence Branch. The branch 

turned out a vast number of intelligence estimates dealing with individual sectors and with the whole Eastern 

Front. It also issued frequent long- and 

short-range summaries and from time 

to time made comparisons of German 

and Soviet strengths. Enough of those 

have survived to form a complete intelligence picture for the Eastern Front as 
NOTE ON SOURCES 

it appeared to the Germans. Unfortunately, the Eastern Intelligence 

Branch much of the time was more 

diligent than perspicacious. The most 

tantalizing of ule OKH records is Der 

Chef der H eeresruestllng lind BefehLshaber 

des E"satzheeTes, Der Chef des Stabes, Tagebueh, ule intermittent diary of the 

chief of staff to the powerful chief of 

Army Armament and the Replacement 

Army. 

For me history of the war in ule 

Soviet Union the army group records 

are prime sources. TI,e army group 

headquarters were me direct link between the German High Command 

(Hitler and me OKH) and the front 

and were, within the limits Hitler imposed, themselves originating agencies 

for operational decisions. In accordance with German practice, me army 

group and OUler field commands each 

kept an Ia ("operations") war diary in 

which were recorded the incoming and 

outgoing orders, summaries of reports 

and conferences, situation estimates, 

the progress of operations, weamer, 

temperature, and other items of operational or historical significance. The 

orders, reports, and other papers were 

filed separately in annexes (Anlagen) 

that were me central records of the 

field commands. At the army group 

level, the war diaries were generally 

kept wim a conscious eye to history, 

sometimes by trained historians; and 

frequently the commanding generals 

and chiefs of staff confided matters to 

the diary that were not recorded 

e lsewhere or transmitted outside the 

headquarters. The army group records 

also provide operational plans, afteraction reports, transcripts of telephone 

and other conferences, message files, 

and files of Chefsaehen-top secret doc521 

uments that were not entered in the 

war diaries. 

For the period this volume covers, 

ule la war diaries of Army Group 

North and Army Group A are complete. The Army Group A Anlagen are 

missing; mose for Army Group North 

are partial. Only the December 1941 

segment of the la war diary and scattered Anlagen surv ive from Army 

Group Center, and from Army Group 

South (B), only a very few Anlagen. For 

me monms January to July 1942, Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock's 

Kriegstagebueh, Osten (ule Boek Diary) is 

an adequate and in some respects superior substitute for the missing Army 

Group South Ia war diary. Wilhelm 

Ritter von Leeb's TagebllehallJzeiehnllngen lind Lagebrurtcilllngim aus zwei 

Weltkrieglm (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1976) supplements the 

Army Group North Ia war diary for 

the period to February 1942. 

The army records, which are 

organ ized in the same manner as those 

of me army groups, provide tactical 

information and compensate in the 

main for ule missing parts of ule army 

group collections. While me army commands did not have as continuous access to me top or as broad a view as the 

army groups had, they were a great 

deal closer to the batuefield; consequently, the actual conduct of operations, even in the period of Hitler's 

ascendancy, was determined much of 

the time by the interaction of an army 

with the army group and the OKH 

(Hitler). The army records are sufficiently complete to give reasonable 

and, in the majority of cases, detailed 

coverage of all important operations. 

Operations and aspects of command 

at various levels are dealt wim from the 
522 

points of view of participants in Walter 

Warlimont, Inside HiLler's H eadquarters 

(New York : Praeger, 1961); Walter 

Goerlitz, ed. , The Merrwirs of Field Marshal Keitel (New York: Stein and Day, 

1966); Erich von Manstein , Lost Victories 

(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1958); 

Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (New 

York: Dutton, 1952); and a biography 

with papers, Paulus in Stalingrad (New 

York: The Citadel Press, 1963), by Walter Goerlitz. F. W. Mellenthin, German 

Generals of World War J/ (Norman, 

Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 

1977) and Otto E. Moll, Die deutschen 

Generalfeldrnanchaelle, 1939 -1945 

(Rastatt/Baden: Erich Pabel, 1961) 

provide general biographical information and assessments. 

Some aspects of the German cond uct 

of the war in the Soviet Union that 

have been regarded as peripheral to 

this volume have been given extensive 

treatment elsewhere: occupation policy 

and practice in Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945 (New 

York: St. Martin's Press, 1957); the 

mass murder of Soviet Jews in Raul 

Hilberg, The Destruction of the European 

J ews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 

1961); and the Waffen SS in George H. 

Stein, The Waffen SS (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966); Charles W. 

Sydnor, Jr. , Soldiers of Destruction 

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 

Press, 1977); and James J. Weingartner, 

Hitler's Guard (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974). 

II 

Except for scattered captured documents, interrogations, and analyses 

which filtered through the German 

wartime intelligence agencies, the only 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

materials available for the study of the 

Soviet side of the war are those that 

have been processed by the Soviet publishing machinery. They are indispensable because there are virtually no 

others, but they pose problems, sometimes of credibility, more often of exegesis. The approved Soviet picture of 

the war is not false, but it is always 

controlled, often contrived, and, in 

spite of its earnestness and bulk, in 

some respects gives an impression of 

being historical trompe l'oeil. A comprehensive overview and an expert 

analysis of the Soviet World War II 

literature are available in Michael Parrish , The USSR in W,rld War II: An 

A nnotated Bibliography of Books Published 

in the Soviet Union 1945-1975 With Addendafor the Thars 1975-1980 (New York: 

Garland Publishing, 1981). 

The Great Patriotic War is, next to 

the Bolshevik Revolution , the most important event in the history of the 

Soviet state. As such it has retained an 

immediacy for the Soviet government, 

military forces, and society that has 

long ago faded among the other participants in World War II. Consequently, in the Soviet official view, the 

war is not just history or nostalgia, it is 

a matter of present consequence with 

implications for the future. Marshal A. 

A. Grechko, in The Armed Forces of the 

Soviet State (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 

1977; Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo, 

1975), ranks the known lessons of the 

war and those still to be discovered 

equally with new technology and military theory as guidance for the Soviet 

armed forces in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The Soviet concern, therefore, goes 

beyond description and analysis and 

extends to protecting much that is considered still to be security information 
NOTE ON SOURCES 

and to translating the war and its 

lessons into currently meaningful 

terms. As a result, the Soviet literature 

on the war has emerged incrementally, 

accumulating substance at times very 

slowly, at times in bursts, always stopping short of complete disclosure, always subject to revision in substance as 

well as in interpretation. 

Although the Soviet Army's Directorate of Military History had been at 

work under Boris Shaposhnikov, the 

former chief of the Army General 

Staff, since late 1942, war history did 

not begin to appear in the Soviet Union 

in open form until more than a decade 

after the war ended. As long as Stalin 

lived, problems of security and credit 

(and blame) prevented release of anything beyond panegyrics to Stalin, 

blasts against former allies and enemies, and compilations of the wartime 

TASS communiques. One exception 

was the partisan aspect of the war, 

about which several substantial books 

appeared, notably P. Vershigora's Lyudi 

s chisloi savestyu (Moscow: Sovetskiy 

Pisatel, 1951). Nikita Khrushchev 

launched the systematic Soviet study of 

World War II in his speech to the 

l"iventieth Party Congress in 1956. He 

announced then that he had ordered a 

comprehensive history of the Great Patriotic War to be written, and during 

the hours-long speecll he made a series 

of revelations about the conduct of the 

war that by themselves constituted a 

major act of revisionism. 

While the big work was being written 

a number of single-volume histories 

were put into print to preview it and 

apparently to establish parameters of 

approach and treatment. The first of 

these was Vazneyshy e operatsiy VeLikoy 

Olechestvemwy \0yny (Moscow: Voyen523 

noye lzdatelstvo, 1956) edited by Col. P. 

A. Zhilin. As a collection of battle studies rather than a continuous picture of 

military infallibility, this work dealt 

with the early defeats-as defensive 

successes. Stalin's name virtually disappeared, and the glory and credit were 

redistributed to the party, the army, 

and the Soviet people. Scattered mentions of mistakes and errors, none big 

enough or reaching high enough to 

roil the smootll surface, gave a touch of 

critical analysis. In 1958 General S. P. 

Platonov published a history of World 

War 11 , Vtoraya Mirovaya Voyna 

(Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo). The 

Platonov history carried somewhat further the trend toward limited objectivity Zhilin had begun and broached 

aspects of the Soviet conduct of tile war 

that Zhilin's episodic approach had 

sidestepped. Both Zhilin and Platonov 

were associated with the Soviet Army 

Directorate of Military History, and 

Zhilin would later be its longtime chief. 

The Vazneyshye operatsiy and Vloraya 

Mirovaya Voyna established standards 

for Soviet World War II historiography 

that have prevailed ever since. The 

deviations, though numerous, have 

never been in more than degree. l"ivo 

other early works are K. S. Kolganov, 

Rawitye Taktiku Sovetskoy Armii v Gody 

VeLikoy Otechestvemwy Voyny 1941-45 

(Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo,. 

1959) and B. S. Telpukhovskiy, VeLikaya Otechestvennaya \0yna Sovetskogo 

Soyuza 1941 - 45 (Moscow: Voyennoye 

lzdatelstvo, 1959). 

iSl.oriya VeLikoy Otechestvennoy \0yny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941-45 [Hisl.ory of the 

Great Patriotic War} (Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo) began appearing in 

1960 and was completed in six volumes 

in 1963. Prepared by the Institul of 
524 

Marxism-Leninism (Institut Marksizma-Leninizma), it covers in substantial detail the whole military, political, 

and economic history of the war in the 

Soviet Union, including its origins and 

its aftermath . The authorship is collective and includes prominently three of 

the writers mentioned above, Zhilin, 

Platonov, and Telpukhovskiy, among 

some dozens of otl,ers. Certain sections 

dealing with military operations appear to follow, in places almost word 

for word, the Platonov history. On the 

whole, the accounts of military operations carry forward the trends observed in the Zhilin and Platonov 

works without approaching full frankness or objectivity. Names, dates, units, 

tactical maneuvers, and operational 

plans are given more coherent treatment than in tl,e earlier works. Soviet 

mistakes, defeats, and setbacks, with 

relatively few known exceptions, 

though not ignored, are often handled 

so obliquely as to escape all but the 

closest attention. Strengths, losses, production figures, and otl,er statistics are 

given in detail for the German and 

other armies but not for the Soviet 

forces. For the first time Soviet 

strengths are occasionally given in concrete figures, but Soviet casualties and 

losses continue to be generally ignored, 

and Soviet statistics are most often presented as percentages and ratios derived from undisclosed bases. The 

volumes are heavily documented with 

sources published outside the Soviet 

Union but only with meaningless filenumber references to Soviet documents. The process of high-level decision making is left nebulous except for 

frequent citations of presumably unanimous decisions and directives from 

the Stavka. Notable in the volumes is 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

the all but total disappearance of Stalin 

and Marshal Zhukov and Khrushchev's 

eleva~ion to a position of military 

prommence. 

During the Khrushchev years the 

war history became or at least came to 

be regarded as a significant asset to the 

government, the party, and the armed 

forces and to many individuals in each. 

The credit Stalin had formerly monopolized could be redistributed and in the 

process increased not diminished. 

Even the mistakes, Khrushchev had 

demonstrated, could be interpreted to 

advantage. And the victory was there, 

indisputable, to be celebrated without 

end. 

Particularly when it came to persons, 

however, past achievement had to be 

coordinated with current status; consequently, Khrushchev's enforced retirement in 1964 made the History of the 

Great Patriotic Wm· politically obsolete a 

few months after its concluding volume was published. The History was not 

disavowed and has continued since as 

ostensibly the definitive work on the 

Great Patriotic War, but publication of 

book-length war history of any kind 

dropped markedly through the rest of 

the 1960s, apparently because a new 

orientation was being sought. In the 

interim, the organ of the Ministry of 

Defense, the Voyenrw-istoricheskiy Zhumal 

(Military History Joumal), became tl,e 

forum for competing approaches and 

an outlet for persons and inte rests that 

had been slighted during the Khrushchev years. Articles from the journal 

form a substantial part of the source 

material for this volume. 

The twenty-fiftll anniversary of the 

victory brought a wave of war history 

publication in ]970. Most of the works 

were merely commemorative . One, 
NOTE ON SOURCES 

however, established a landmark: it was 

the second edition of the Institut Marksizma-Leninizma, Velikaya Otechestvennaya W:>yna Sovetslwgo Soyuza, 1941 -45 

(Kratkaya 1swriya) (Moscow: Voyennoye 

lzdatelstvo). The first edition of the 

Kratkaya 1swriya (Slwrt Hiswry), printed 

in 1964, had been a one-volume summary of the six-volume history. In it 

already the larger work's frequent and 

often fulsome references to Khrushchev had disappeared, and Stalin 

had been partially rehabilitated as supreme commander in chief. The second edition, also later published in 

abridged form in English as the Great 

Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941 -

1945 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 

1974), was presented as a revision and 

expansion incorporating five years' 

progress in research and the results of 

recently published memoirs and monographs. It was in actuality a new work, 

more an interim substitute for the sixvolume history than a short version of 

it. Like the Platonov volume in the late 

1950s, it apparently also was designed 

to establish new standards for the future. Its chief attributes were factualness, meaningful use of statistics 

(by comparison with previous practice), 

determinedly evenhanded treatment 

of persons, and a he ightened effect of 

objectivity in judgments on events. 

Also in 1970, apparently as a companion piece to the Kratkaya 1storiya, P. 

A. Zhilin edited and the lzdatelstvo 

Politcheskoy Literatury (Moscow) published Velikaya Otechestvennaya W:>yna, 

Kratkiy nauch-rw-popu.lamyy ocheTk (Grwll 

Patriotic War, Polm/aT Scientific Sketch). 

Since no Soviet work on the whole war, 

particularly one edited by the chief of 

the Military History Directorate, is 

meant to be merely a popularization , 

525 

the Popular Scientific Sketch must be 

taken, along with the Platonov history, 

the Kratkaya Istoriya, and A. A. 

Grechko's Gody voyny (Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 1976), as a major part 

of Soviet war literature. 

The l\venty-fourth Party Congress, 

held in early 1971, took note of recent 

Soviet achievements in military history 

and charged the historical profession 

with two tasks for the future: one was 

to delineate the Soviet collaboration 

with aU "progressive" peoples in World 

War II; the other was to combat "falsifications" perpetrated in World War II 

history by bourgeois historians.' Witll 

that guidance and Witll tile tllen Minister of Defense, Marshal A. A. Grechko, 

as chairman of the editorial commission, the historical organizations in the 

Ministry of Defense, the Institute of 

Marxism-Leninism, and the Academy 

of Sciences set about writing a comprehensive history of World War II in 

twelve volumes, the Istoriya Vtomi 

Mimvoi Voyny, 1939-1945 (Moscow: 

Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 1973-1982). 

Aside from establishing an official Soviet version of tile whole wal~ the History of the Second Vlbdd War has provided 

a vehicle for rewriting the Great Patriotic War on a scale substantially the 

same as tile six-volume history of the 

Khrushchev period. The approach 

parallels the Kratkaya 1swriya in treatment of information and persons. Notable are the reappearance of Stalin as 

the central figure, thoroughgoing discussions of strategic decision making, 

and lavish provision of statistics. 

The Hiswry of the Second Vlbrld WaT is 

I "XXIV S'eu/ KPSS i vel/l1o)'e-is/orirheski)' /I(ll/lm ," Vo-

)'cllllO-;slorirheskiy Zhllrl/al, 5( 1971 ), 1-13. 
526 

currently the most authoritative Soviet 

work on the war, and all others conform to it in fundamental matters of 

substance and interpretation (as they 

did previously to the His/my of the GTeat 

Patriotic War). It has brought Soviet 

historiography of the war to the state of 

being highly informative without being 

truly enlightening. On the latter score, 

it does somewhat less then the Sbomik 

materialov po izucheniyu opyt.a voyny (Collection of Materials for the Study of the War 

Experience) produced by the Directorate of Military History under the former chief of the General Staff, 

Shaposhnikov, between late 1942 and 

1945 (for distribution only to division 

commanders and above). 

The publication of the general histories in the 1960s and 70s was accompan ied by a flood of memoirs of all 

desniptions. A generous sampling of 

the memoirs published in the early to 

mid-1960s is to be found-together 

with commentary and an extensive "selected " bibliography-in Seweryn 

Bialer's Stalin and His Generals (New 

York: Pegasus, 1969). Because of the 

roles of their authors in the war, the 

most significant memoirs are those of 

the Marshals G. K. Zhukov and A. M. 

Vasilevskiy, which were published as 

The Mellwirs of Manhal Zhukov (New 

York: Delacorte Press, 1971) and Delo 

vsey zhizni (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Politicheskoy Literatury, 1976). 

Vasili Chuikov's The Battle for St.alingrad (New York: Holt, Rinehart & 

Winston, 1964), published in Russian in 

1959, has the distinction of being the 

first major war memoir, and it remains 

one of the best. The most prominent 

figure in many of the memoirs is Stalin, 

and some of the most revealing recollections of him are given in A. I. 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Eremenko's The A"duous Beginning 

(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966) 

and Pomni wyny (Donetsk : Donbass, 

1971). In two books, The Swiet General 

Staff at War, 1941-45 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) and The Last Six 

Months (Ga rden Ci ty: Dou bleday, 

1977), S. M. Shtemenko has provided 

the closest, though still fragmentary, 

look into the workings of the Soviet 

General Staff. Nikita Khrushchev's 

Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1970) offers sidelights on the 

war and the text of his speech to the 

Twentieth Party Congress. K. K. 

Rokossovskiy, in A Soldie," s Duty 

(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 

and K. A. Meretskov, in Serving the 

Peaple (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 

197 I), give army group commanders' 

views of the war. At the army level are 

I. Kh. Bagramyan's Tak shli my k pobede 

(Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 

1977); D. D. Lelyushenko's Moskva-Stalingrad-B erlin-Praga (M oscow: 

lzdatelstvo "Nauka," 1970); and K. S. 

Moskalenko's Na yugo-zapadnom 

napravlenii (Moscow: Izdatelstvo 

"Nauka," 1969). 

In the accounts of campaigns and 

battles, the line between history and 

reminiscence frequently is somewhat 

indistinct. Andrei Grechko's Battle for 

the Caucasus (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971) is a history written by a 

former minister of defense who had 

commanded armies in the Caucasus, 

where Leonid Brezh nev had also 

served-as a political officer. Naclzalnyy 

period voyny (Moscow: Voyennoye 

Izdatelstvo, 1974) is a study of the 

prewar plans and tl1e first phase of the 

war done under the supervision of S. P. 

I va nov, commandant of the Voroshilov 

Academy of the General Staff. G. l. 
NOTE ON SOURCES 

Vaneyev, et aI., Ceroicheskaya oborona 

Sevastopolya, 1941 - 1942 (Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo, 1969) is a collective work with participants in the Sevastopol siege among the authors. The 

most intensively researched works are 

A. M. Samsonov"s Stalingradskaya mtua 

(Moscow: lzdatelstvo "Nauka," 1960, 

1968); Dimitri Pavlov's Leningrad 1941 

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

1965); and V M. Kovalchuk'sLeningrad 

i bolslzaya zemlya (Leningrad: Izdate1stvo 

"Nauka," 1975). Among the many 

works in which the contributors were 

also participants in the battle are Bitua 

za Slalinf51'ad (Volgograd: Nizhniye-Volzhskoye Knizhnoye Izdatelstvo, 1969), 

edited by A. M. Borodin; Stalinf51'ad: 

ymki istorii (Moscow: lzdatelstvo "Progress," 1976), edited by V I. Chuikov; 

Razgrom nemetsko-fashistikh voysk pod 

Moskvoy (Moscow: Voyen noye 

lzdatelstvo, 1964), edited by V. D. 

Sokolovskiy; Velikaya bitva pod Moskvay 

(Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 

1961), edited by V. N. Yevstigneyev; and 

Pl"Oval gitlerovskogo nastupleniya na 

Moskvu and 50 let vooruzhennykh sil SSSR 

(Moscow: lzdatelstvo "Nauka," 1966 

and 1968, respectively), edited by M. B. 

Zakharov. "l\vo works not of Soviet authorship but written from an intimate 

acquaintance with the eve,'ts they describe are Harrison E. Salisl.,'lry's The 

900 Days (New York: Harper & Row, 

1969) and Alexander Wirth's, Tlze Year 

of Stalingrad (New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, Inc., 1947). 

Background and miscellaneous information on a broad range of subjects 

having to do with the Soviet war experience are to be found in the following: 

G. A. Deborin and B. S. Telpukhovskiy, 

Ilogi i uTOki velikay olechestuennoy vayny 

(Moscow: lzdatelstvo "Mysl," 1975), on 

527 

the results and lessons of the Great 

Patriotic War; Embassy of the USSR, 

Washington, D.C., Information Bullelin 

(1942-1948); Ministerstvo Oborony, 

SSSR, 1 storiya va)'n i vayennogo iskustva 

(Moscow : Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 

1970), on the history of war and the art 

of war; Ministerstvo Oborony, SSSR, 

Institut Voyennoy lstorii, Sovetslwya 

voyennaya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Voyennoye lzdatelstvo, 1976-1980), a 

military encyclopedia; and S. A. Tyushkevich, et aI., Sovelskiye vooruzhennye sily 

(Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 

1978), on the organization and development of the Soviet armed forces. 

The Information Bulletin is tile sou rce 

for a number of the illustrations in this 

volume. ltogi i uroki also includes an 

essay on "bourgeois falsifiers" of World 

War II history, the present writer 

among them. The same subject is given 

book-length treatment in V. S. 

Makhalova and A. V. Beshensteva's 

Voyna, istoriya, ideologiya (Moscow: 

lzdatelstvo Politicheskoy Literatury, 

1974). 

Partisan and underground operations are treated separately in the general histories and have a literature of 

their own. The works cited here are a 

miniscule sample of the many that have 

been published. V. Yeo Bystrov, ed., 

Cerai podpolya (Moscow: lzdatelstvo Politicheskoy Literatury, 1970) and A. A. 

Kuznyaev, Podpolnye paTtinynye organy 

kompartii belorussii v gody ve likoy 

otechestuennoy voyny (Minsk: Izdatelstvo 

"Belarus," 1975) deal with the underground. In addition to Vershigora's 

Lyudi s chisloi sovestyu, already mentioned, representative works on partisan warfare are L. Tsanava's Vsenarodnaya partizanskaya voyna v Belnrussii 

protiv Jashislskiklz w khvachnikav (Minsk: 
528 

Gosizdat, 1949-1951) and A. I. 

Zalesskiy's Geroicheshiy podvig millionov v 

tylu vTaga (Minsk: Izdatelstvo 

"Belarus," 1970). The more analytical 

accounts are those in the Soviet general 

war histories and in studies of partisan 

warfare done outside the Soviet Union. 

The most comprehensive of the latter 

are the monograph series published as 

War Documentation Project, Project 

"Alexander" Studies (Washington, D.C.: 

Air Research and Development Command, 1953-55). Others are The Soviet 

Partisans in I1brld WadI (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), edited by John A. Armstrong, which 

presents some of the War Documentation Project monographs in condensed 

form with an introduction and extensive bibliography; Erich Hesse's Der 

sowjetrussische P artisanenkrieg, 1941 bis 

1944 (Goettingen : Musterschmidt, 

1969); and Edgar M. Howell's The Soviet 

Partisan Movement, 1941-1944 (Washington, D.C. : GPO, 1956). 

/11 

To provide the Army with a comprehensive record of the German military experience in World War 11 , the 

Foreign Military Studies Program of 

the Historical Division , United States 

Army, Europe, produced , by the time 

it was terminated in 1961, some 2,400 

manuscripts. The authors were, for the 

most part, former high-ranking German officers. At first they wrote mainly 

from memory about events in which 

they had played key roles. Beginning in 

1948 more comprehensive projects 

were initiated. These were assigned to 

teams that then made use of records in 

the custody of the United States Army, 

records secured through private 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

sources, interviews, and the menlbers' 

own experience. Overall su pervision 

and direction of the projects was in the 

hands of a Control Group, headed 

throughout its existence by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder. In 1954 

the Historical Division , United States 

Army, Europe, published a complete 

list of the manuscripts, then completed 

or projected, in the Guide to Foreign 

Military Studies 1945-54. A full set of 

the manuscripts is on deposit in the 

Center of Military History, Department 

of the Army, Washington , D.C. A second set has been furnished to the historical office of the German Bundeswehr. That part of the war in the 

Soviet Union with which this volume is 

concerned is covered by the series at 

the strategic level by MS # T - 9, Generaloberst a.D. Gotthard Heinrici,Der 

Feldzug in Russland ein ojJeTativeT 

Ueberblick; and at the operational level 

by MS # P-1l4a, Generalleutnant a.D. 

Friedrich Sixt, Der Feldzug gegen die 

Sow jet-Union im Nordabschnitl de,. Ostfront 

and by MS # P-114c, General der 

Artillerie a.D. Friedrich Wilhelm 

Hauck , Die Operationen der deutschen 

I-I eeresgruppen an der Ostfmnt 1941 bis 

1945 suedliches Gebiet. 

The Center of Military History, Department of the Army, has projected in 

its Army Historical Series a three-volume history of the German-Soviet conAict. The present volume is the second, 

and the third is Earl F. Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in tlze 

East (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968). 

Additionally, the Center of Military 

History has published Department of 

the Army Pamphlet 20-26Ia, George 

B lau , Tize Gennan Campaign in R ZlssiaPlanning and Operatiolls, 1940- /942 

(Washington, D.C. : GPO, 1955) a nd 
NOTE ON SOURCES 

Earl F. Ziemke, The German Northern 

Theater of Operations, 1940-1945 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959). 

The Historical Office of the German 

Bundeswher has published Manfred 

Kehrig's Stalingrad (Stuttgart: Deutsche 

Verlags-Anstalt, 1974) and Klaus Reinhardt's Die Wende vor Moskau (Stuttgart: 

Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1972), and is 

engaged in publishing a ten-volume 

official history, Das Deutsche R eich und 

der lweite Weltk1ieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche 

Verlags-Anstalt, 1979- ). The 

Academy of Sciences, Central1nstitute 

for History, of the German Democratic 

Republic is publishing a projected 

eight-volume history, Deutschland im 

zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1974- ). 

IV 

The body of general literature dealing with the German-Soviet conflict is 

large and growing. Comprehensive 

bibliographies, periodically brought 

up-to-date, are to be found in the Revue d'Histoi1-e de la Deuxieme GueTTe Mondiale and the Bue chenchau deT 

Weltkriegsbuecherei. Both list books and 

articles in all languages and carry bibliographic articles and reviews of significant works. 

livo comprehensive studies in English are John Erickson's The Road to 

Stalingmd (London : Weidenfeld and 

Nicholson, 1975) and Albert Seaton's 

The Russo-Gerl7lan 1Mu- 1941 - 1945 (New 

York: Praeger, 1971). A noteworthy account in German is Kurt von lippelskirch's Geschichte des lweiten 

Weltkrieges (Bonn: Athenaeum-Verlag, 

1956). The author was both a trained 

historian and a corps and army commander on the Eastern Front. Brief 

529 

authoritative accounts of the whole war 

are to be found in Vincent J. Esposito's 

A Coneise History of IMlrld War II (New 

York: Praeger, 1964); Martha Byrd 

Hoyle'S A IMlrid in Flames (New York : 

Atheneum, 1970); and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen's1939-1945, Der lweite Weltkrieg 

in Chronik und Dokumenten (Darmstadt: 

Wehr und Wissen Verlagsgesellschaft, 

1961). 

The German-Soviet conflict has been 

set in the contexts of politics and grand 

strategy in a variety of works. The 

Soviet Union's relations with its Western Allies are treated in, among others, 

Winston S. Churchill's The Hinge of Fate 

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950); 

Herbert Feis' ChuTchill, Roosevelt, Stalin 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 

1957); J. M. A. Gwyer's Grand Strategy 

(London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1964), vol. 111 , pt. I; Maurice 

Matloff and Edwin M. Snell's Strategic 

Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-

1942 (Wash in gton, D.C.: GPO 1953); 

Robert E. Sherwood's Roosevelt and 

Hopkins (New York: Harper, 1950); and 

Llewellyn Woodward 's B,-itish F01-eign 

Policy in the Second World War (London: 

Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1962). 

Hitler, Reden und Proclamationen, 1932 -

1945 (Munich: Sueddeutscher Verlag, 

1965), edited by Max Domarus, is a 

mine of information on Hitler's war 

leadership including relations with his 

allies, as is also, in a more limited 

fashion, Goebbels-Reden (Duesseldorf: 

Droste Verlag, 1972), edited by Helmut 

Heiber. Other works dealing with the 

German coalition are Wipert von Bluecher's Gesandter zwischen Diktatur und 

Del7wcratie (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 

1951); Galeazzo Ciano's The Ciano Diaries 1939- 1943 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1946); Waldemar Erfurth's Da 
530 

Finnische Krieg, 1941-1944 (Wiesbaden: 

Limes Verlag, 1977); Mario D. Fenyo's 

HitleT, Horthy, and Hungary (New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); 

Juergen Foerster's Stalingrad, Risse im 

Buendniss, 1942-1943 (Freiburg: Verlag Rombach, 197 5); a nd Paul 

Schmidt's Statist auf diplomatischeT 

Buehne, 1923 -1945 (Bonn : Athenaeum-Verlag, 1949). 

Albert Speer, in Inside the Third R eich 

(New York: Macmillan , 1970), and 

Nikolai Voznesenskiy, in The Economy of 

the USSR Dming "vrld WaT 11 (Washington , D.C. : Public Affairs Press, 

1948), describe their countries' war 

economies from the points of view of 

the men who ran them. 1\vo other 

significant works on German war production are Willi A. Boelcke, Deutschlands Ruestung im Zweiten Weltkrieg 

(Frankfurt: Athenaion , 1969) and 

Deutsches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung , Die Deutsche IndustTie im 

Kriege, 1939- 1945 (Berlin : Duncker & 

Humboldt, 1954). The Soviet war economy is covered in the general histories. 

Allied aid shipments to the Soviet 

U nion through the Arctic ports and the 

Persian Gulf are treated in David Irving, The Destruction oj Convoy PQ-17 

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968); 

Robert H. jones, The Roads to Russia: 

United States Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union 

(No rman , Okla.: University of 

Oklahoma Press, 1969); Richard M. 

Leighton a nd Robert W. Coakley, Gwbal 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943 (Washington , D.C.: GPO, 1955); Samuel 

Eliot Morison , Battle af the Atlantic, Septe",beT 1939-May 1943 (Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1947); T. Vail Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia (Washington , D.C.: GPO, 1952); a nd S. W. 

Ros kill , The War at Sea, 1939 - 1945 

(London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954). 

Information on weapons, fighting vehicles, a nd aircraft is available in John 

Batchelor and Ian Hogg, Artillery (New 

York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972); 

Peter Chamberlain and Hilary L. Doyle, 

Encycwpedia afGerman Tanks (New York: 

Arco, 1978); Ian V. Hogg and John 

Weeks, Military Small Arms af the Twentieth Century (New York: Hippocrene 

Books, 1977); john Kirk and Robert 

Young,Jr., GTeat Weapons afWorld War JJ 

(New York : Bonanza Books, 1961); 1. E. 

Kru pchen ko et aI. , Sovetskiye tankovye 

voyska (Moscow: Voyennoye Izdatelstvo, 

1973); Rudolf Lusar, German Secret 

Weapons of the Second Vl6rld War (New 

York: Philosophical Library, 1959); 

john Milsom, Russian Tanks, 1900-1970 

(London: Arms and Armour Press, 

1970); Ian Parsons, ed., The Encycwpedia 

oj Air Waifare (London: Salamande r 

Books, 1974); B. Perrett, Fighting Vehicles af the Red Anny (London : Ian Alle n, 

1969); and Christopher Shepherd, German Aim'aJt af Vl6rld War JJ (London: 

Sidgwick & Jackson, 1975). 
Active defense 

A,meeabteilung 

A rmeegroppe 

Army group 

Balka 

Bng/wJ 

Commissar 

DORA 

Jmnt 

Fuehrer 

GAMMA 

Gestapo 

Guards 

Hero of the Soviet U nion 

Glossary 

A Soviet theory of defense conducted by generally offensive means, espoused particularly by 

Stalin. 

A German command intermediate benveen a 

corps and an army, usually under an enlarged 

corps headquarters. 

A German command arrangement in which one 

army headquarte rs was subordinated to 

another. 

H eeresgroppe (Ger.), Jront (Russ.)-a headquarters established to command two or more 

armies. 

Deep gullies in the steppe regions of the Soviet 

Union. 

Hitler's Bavarian re treat. 

A cabinet minister in the Soviet government. In 

the Soviet Armed Forces, prior to October 

1942, a political officer assigned to each military headquarters with the power to countermand orders given by the commander. 

German 800-mm. gun. 

A Soviet army group. 

Hitler's title as German chief of state. 

German 420-mm. gun. 

Geheime Staatspolizei, the German Secret State 

Police. 

An honorific designation given to elite units and 

to Soviet units that had distinguished themsel·,es in combal. 

Title given for acts of exceptional bravery or 

exceptional performance in command. The 

award consisted of the Order of Lenin, the 

highest decoration for valor, a ce rtificale 

signed by the chairman of the Presidium of 

the Supreme Soviel, and the Gold Star Medal, 

which was awarded only to Heroes of the 

Soviet Union and Heroes of Socialist Labor. 
532 

Hiwi, Hilfswillige 

Jaeger 

JU-52 

KARL 

Knight's Cross of the Iron 

Cross 

Komsomol 

NKVD 

OKH 

OKL 

OKM 

OKW 

Pa'll:je 

Panther 

Panzer III 

Panzer IV 

P anzergrenadier 

Politruk 

rasjmlit.sa 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

Russian auxiliaries. mostly prisoners of war, who 

served with German units on the Eastern 

Front in various noncombatant capacities. 

Term used to designate German light infantry. 

The German Junkers 52 trimotor transport 

plane. 

German 540-mm. siege mortar. 

The highest class of the I ron Cross and the most 

prized of the German World War II military 

decorations. 

Komrnunisticheskiy Soyuz Mowdyezlti, the (Soviet) 

Communist Youth League for adolescents 

and young adults aged 14 to 28 years. 

Nadrvdnyy Komissariat Venutrennikh Del (People's 

Commissariat of Internal Affairs), the Soviet 

internal security and secret political police 

ministry. 

Oberkarnmando des H eeres, the German Army 

High Command. 

Oberkamrnando der Luftwaffe, the German Air 

Force High Command. 

Oberkomrnando de'r KTiegsmarine, the German 

Navy High Command. 

Oberkommando de,. Wehnnacht, the German 

Armed Forces High Command. 

German World War I army slang for Poles and 

Russians. Used in World War II to describe 

the Soviet peasant wagons. 

A German tank, designated Panzer V. It 

mounted a long-barreled 75-mm. gun, and in 

its sloping armor and low silhouette was patterned after the Soviet T -34. It was not in 

quantity production until early 1943. 

A German prewar-model lank, mounting in its 

latest version (1942) a long-barreled 50-nun. 

antitank gun. 

The latest of the prewar German tanks, and 

mounting in its latest version (1942) a longbarreled, high-velocity 75-mm. gun, which 

supplanted a short, 75-mm., low-velocity gun. 

Armored infantry. 

Polit rukavoditel, a low-echelon political officer. 

Literally, time without roads. The fall and 

spring muddy periods in the Soviet Union. 
GLOSSARY 

RSFSR 

Rollbahn 

SS 

Self-propelled assault gun 

Shock army 

Shtllrmovik 

Slavka 

Stuka 

T-34 

Tiger 

Totenkopf 

WifJen-SS 

Wehr1llacht 

WenvolJ 

,,\linter War 

VlblJssclzanze 

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the 

largest of the Soviet republics, comprising 75 

percent of the USSR's LOtal land area and 55 

percent of its population. 

A highway. 

SclzutZSlafJel, elite guard of the Nazi Party. 

533 

A lightly armored, tracked vehicle mounting a 

relatively heavy gun and intended to be used 

as close-support artillery. 

An army (Soviet) reinforced to lead breakthrough operations. 

Soviet Ilyushin 11 -2 ground attack bomber. 

Slavka Verkhovnogo Glavnokolnlllandovani)'a (Staff 

of the Supreme High Command), under Stalin, 

the top-level Soviet military executive commitlee. Decisions made in the name of the Slav/w 

appear frequently LO have been made by Stalin 

alone. 

SturtzkalllpJllugzeug (dive-bomber). Although all 

German bombers in operational use during 

World War 11 were built to have a divebombing capability, ule "Stuka" as such was the 

Junkers J U -8 7. 

The tank that was tile mainstay of the Soviet 

armored forces throughout World War II. It 

mounted (1942) a short-barreled 76.2-mm. 

gun. Sloping armor on the turret and glacis 

plate gave it particularly good protection 

against antitank fire. 

A German tank, designated Panzer Vl, mounting an 88-mm. gun. At 57 LOns, the heaviest 

lank on the Eastern Front in 1942 where it 

appeared first (in small numbers in the late 

sLimmer). 

Death's head. The emblem of the SS concentration camp guards. 

The combat units of ule SS. 

The German Armed Forces. 

Hitler's headquarters at VinniLS3 in the Ukraine. 

The Soviet-Finnish war of 1939- 1940. 

Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. 
Code Names 

B ARBAROSSA 

BErrE!.sTAB ("Beggar's Staff") 

BLAU ("Blue") 

B LUECH ER 

B RAUNSCHWEIG ("Brunswick") 

BRUECKENSCHLAG ("Bridging") 

CHR ISTOPI-IORUS 

CLAUSEWITZ 

D AM PFIiAMM E.R ("Steam 

Hammer") 

D ERFFU NGER 

D ONNERSCJ-ILAG 

("Thunderbolt") 

EDELWEISS 

ELEFA NT 

FEU>.RZAUBER ("Fire Magic") 

FISCII REIHER ("H eron") 

FRIDERI Cl'S 

GEORG>. 

Go~ I Z VON ERLlCIII~GEN 

H ANNOVER 

K LABAU r[R A:-';l'\ 

(" Hobgoblin") 

K OENIGSBERG position 

German 

TI,e 1941 offensive in th e Soviet Union. 

Proposed operation against the Oranienbaum 

pocket, summer 1942. 

The 1942 summer offensive in the Soviet Union, 

with phases I, II, and II I. 

Attack across Kerch Strait, August 1942. 

BLAU renamed , 30 June 1942. 

Projected offensive to close the Toropets bulge, 

spring 1942. 

Program to secure vehicles from the civilian 

sector for Army Group Center, January 1942. 

BLAU II. 

BLAU III. 

Projected Ninth Army dri ve from Rzhev to 

Ostashkov, summer 1942. 

Proj ected Sixth Army breakout from Stalingrad, December 1942. 

Advance into the Caucasus, July-November 

1942. 

Program to secure trucks from the civilian sector, January 1942. 

Original code name for NORDLICIIT. 

Army Group B final attack to Stalingrad, 

July-Novembe r 1942. 

Operation against the Izyum bulge, May 1942. 

Eighteenth Army share of NORDLlCIlI. 

Air operation against Soviet naval forces at 

Leningrad, April 1942. 

Operation against the Soviet-held pocket west of 

Vyazma, May-June 1942. 

Boat operation against Soviet traffic on Lake 

Ladoga, July 1942. 

German rear line west of Moscow, winter 1942. 
CODE NAMES 

KREML (" Kremlin") 

LACHSFANG ("Salmon Catch") 

MooRBRAND ("Swamp Fire") 

NORDLlCHT ("Aurora 

Borealis") 

NORDPOL ("North Pole") 

ORKAN ("Tornado") 

RAUBTI ER ("Beast of Prey") 

RHEI NGOLD 

SCHLl NGPFL'NZE ("Vine") 

SEYDLlTL 

STOERFANG ("Sturgeon 

Catch") 

T AIFUN ("Typhoon") 

TA IlENSCH~G ("Dovecote") 

T RA I'ENJAGD ("Bustard 

Hunt") 

VOGELSANG ("Bird Song") 

WALKUERE ("Valk yrie") 

WI ESENGRUN D ("Meadow 

Land") 

WILH E!.>I 

WI N KELRIED 

WI NTERGEWITrER ("Winter 

Storm") 

W,RBELW,ND ("Whirlwind") 

535 

German deceptive operation, May-July 1942. 

Proposed German-Finnish drive to Kandalaksha and Belomorsk, summer 1942. 

Operatio n to pinch off the Pogostye salient, 

summer 1942. 

Projected operation to take Leningrad , fall 

1942. 

Projected attack into the Toropets bulge, March 

1942. 

Proposed o peration to eliminate the Sukhinichi 

salient, summer 1942. 

Operation against the Volkhov pocket, March 

1942. 

Program to create six new divisions with calledup deferred men, January 1942. 

Operatio n to widen the corridor to the Demyansk pocke t, October 1942. 

Operation west of Sychevka, July 1942. 

Operatio n against Sevastopol, June 1942. 

Drive o n Moscow, October- December 1941. 

Projected attack on Toropets, October 1942. 

Operation on the Kerch Peninsula , May 1942. 

Anlipanisan operation 111 the Bryansk Forest, 

June 1942. 

Program to set up fOllr new divisions, January 

1942. 

Army of Lapland projec t to occupy th e 

Rybatchiy Peninsula, June 1942. 

Operation against the Volchansk salient, June 

1942. 

Substitute for SCHLl NGPFLANZE, executed October 1942. 

Operation to relieve Sixth Army at Stalingrad, 

December 1942. 

Operation to pinch off part of the Sukhinichi 

salient, August 1942. 
536 

KOLTSO ("Ring") 

M ALYY SATURN ("Litlle 

Saturn") 

MARS 

SATUR8 

URANUS 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Soviet 

Final attack on Sixth Army at Stalingrad, January 1943. 

Reduced version of SKI URN and the one actually 

executed. 

Offensive against the Ninth Army Rzhev salient, 

fall and winter 1942. 

Projected offensive west of Stalingrad aimed at 

Rostov, November 1942. 

Counteroffensive at Stalingrad , November 

1942. 
Index 

Ahgancrovo Station: 385 

Abwehr: 244 

Aerial reconnaissance: 40, 57, 70, 73, 95, 116, 123, 

13 1, 161,227,236,250,281 ,329,332,37 1 

Air Force. German: See Air units. German; Luftwaffe. 

Air Force. Sovicl. See Air units, Soviet. 

Air Force High Command. See Oberko'nmando der 

L>iflwaffe (OKL)_ 

Air strength , German: 7.296,300,440,478-79,515 

Air strength. Soviet: 12-13, 19, 145, 170,262,302, 

308,440,446,460,5 15 

Air units, German: 425,448.478 

IV Air Corps: 275, 278, 314, 388 

VlIl Air Corps: 130,264,267,275,278, 3 10,320, 

386, 388 

First Air Force: 6 

Second Air Force: 6 

FOUl'th Air Force: 6, 375. 388, 415, 463. 479, 498 

Fifth Air Fo'-ce' 7.228.234.236,424,426,429- 30 

Air Force field Divisions: 

Meindle: 422 

7th: 479 

Air units. Soviet 

Eighth Air Army: 357 

Aircraft, German: 3, 192,296,308 

HE- III, 55. 236-37, 429-30, 479 

J U-52, 130, 188, 476, 479 

JU-87 (Sluka), 12, 191 , 193. 196, 198,234,278, 

3 14 

J U-88, 237. 429 

ME-109, 12 

Storch: 161, 245 

Aircraft, Soviel: 3, 12, 195,332,334,342.44 1 

Aircraft production: II . 300 

Ak-Monay Heights: 114 

Aksay Rive" 382, 384, 481-82, 490-9 1 

Alekscycvskoye: 158 

Aleksin: 94-95 

Ale.xander. Tsar: 5 15- 16 

Algeria: 513 

All-Union Central Committee: 200-0 I 

Allies. Western: 3, 39. 233, 304-05, 307,423-24, 434, 

449.503,505,513,515 

Aha Fiord: 428 

Aluminum: 39, 285 

Alushta: 107, 141 

Ammunition shortages, German. See Logistics, Germa n, shortages, ammunition. 

Ammunition shortages, Soviel. See Logistics, Soviet, 

shortages, ammunition. 

Anapa: 351 

Angerburg: 4, 155 

Anti-Comimem Pact: 54-55. 222 

Antipartisan operations, German: 207-09, 213-14. 

217-19,244 

Antilank weapons, German: 11, 112. 126, 228. 

293-94, 325, 470 

Antitank weapons, Soviet: II 

Amonescu, Marshal Ion : 395, 505 

Antonov, General Ley tenant A. I. : 438 

Arctic, operations in: 41, 220, 226, 228. 231, 233-37, 

423,427-31 

Arctic Ocean: 6, 134,222-23 

Ardon River: 454 

Arkhangelsk: 14,44,233,430,5 14 

Armavir: 358, 370, 372, 375 

Armed Forces High Command. See Oberlwmmalldo der 

Wehnnachl (OKW). 

Armed Forces Operations Staff. See III/der Oberkommat/do der WehnnachJ (OK W). 

Amleeabtei1ungen 

Fretter-Pico: 488, 494, 496 

HoJlidc 491-92, 494-96 

Armeegruppen 

Dostler: 160-61 

Friedrich: 160-6 1 

Guderian: 94, 100 

Hoth : 478 

Kleist, 273, 276, 281-82 

Scherer: 188-89, 195 

Schmidt: 100, 122-23 

von Mackensen: 159-61 

\\'eichs: 322, 331, 339 

Annies, German. See also Anneeabteilungcn. 

Army of Lapland, 222-25, 227,231-32,423-24 

Army of Non\'ay: 7, 28, 39, 220-22,.234, 236, 291. 

426 

First Panzer: 6, 45, 51. 54, 156, 158-60, 451. 

453-54, 490-9 1,493,496 

and BLAU, 313-14, 318, 323-25, 330, 333, 338. 

345-47,349-5 1,354-56,358,360-62 

mO\'cs toward Stalingrad: 364-65, 370-73, 375. 

377, 379-80 

winter campaign , 1941 - 1942: 105 

Second: 37, 50. 512, 536 

as B ARIiAROSSt\ begins: 30, 32-34 
538 

Armies, German-Colllinued 

and SLAU: 322,324 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive. 1941 - 1942 : 

65,67,70,74,77,80,90,94-97,99-102, 122, 

124, 140-4 1 

Second Panzer: 5, 242, 252 

allacks Moscow: 40. 50, 53, 57, 60, 62-63 

and BLAu: 329, 342 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive, 1941 - 1942: 

65-67, 69,73-75, 77, 80, 86, 90-91, 94-98, 

100-101, 122, 124-25, 127, 140, 164, 169, 

175, 178-79 

and WIR8ELWIND: 398, 403-07, 41 3 

Third: 395 

Third Panzer: 6, 118, 124-25, 127, 130-34, 140, 

161, 165-68, 170- 71 , 173,218,239,242,250, 

404-06, 455 

Founh: 5,30, 34,402,404-05, 455 

dri\"t! on Moscow: 39, 50, 52-53, 62-63, 70-73 

and HANNOVER: 241-48 

and Soviet wimer coumcroffensivc, 1941-1942: 

70, 85, 95-98, 101-03, 118, 122, 124-25, 

127-29, 133-34, 140, 161-64, 169-71,210, 

212 

in the Yukhno\'-Vyazma area: 173, 176, 178-82 

Founh Panzer: 5, 30 

and BLAU: 322-24, 333-37, 339-40, 344, 

346-47 

moves toward Stalingrad: 349-51, 354-56, 358, 

360, 362, 365, 370, 374, 378, 382, 384-85, 

387-88,391-92,395,398,403 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive. 1941 - 1942: 

122, 124-25, 127-28, 131-34, 140, 161 -66, 

168-70, 173, 176, 179-82 

spring offensive, 1942 : 241-42 

and Stalingrad: 442-43, 446. 457-59. 463, 

467-68, 470-74, 476, 478-80, 482, 484, 488, 

490-96 

Sixth: 6, 32, 158, 160,375,378 

and BLAu: 313-16, 319, 322-24, 328, 331-37, 

339-40, 343-46, 357 

in the Don bend: 35 1, 354-55, 357, 359-61. 

363-64, 382-88 

and FRIDERICUS: 270, 272-73, 275, 279-82 

at Stalingrad: 391, 393-97. 442- 43, 445-46, 

452, 457-60, 462, 464-65, 467-68, 470-76, 

478-84,488-93,496-502,503,504,511 

wimer campaign, 1941 - 1942: 74,105 

Ninth 

as B ARBAROSSA begins: 5, 27, 30. 32 

baule for Moscow: 49-50. 65 

the From, February 1942: 173-76, 182-85. 189, 

192 

Rzhev-Sychevka opel"ation: 398. 400. 402-03. 

405-08,413,445,451,455-56,485-86 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive. 1941 - 1942: 

65,70,73,79-81 ,86,92-94,101-03,118-19, 

122, 124-25, 130-33, 140, 161 , 166-67, 

169-71 

spring offensive. 1942: 241-42. 249-52 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Armies, German-Continued 

EIC'o'enth: 6. 33. 84 

and Leningrad : 351,358,405,412,414,420-21, 

451 

and SevaslOpo1: 106,309-10,314,3 19, 32 1,324 

and war in the Ct;mea: 35.42.105-09,111-13. 

115, 117,261 -62,264,269 

Sixteenth: 5. 32, 140, 143, 147, 151 -52, 173, 176, 

183, 188-89, 192, 198,255, 409,4 12,4 16,42 1, 

451 

Seventeenth: 6, 32, 105, 141. 156-59, 161 , 272, 

276-79, 282, 322, 324, 346, 353-56, 358, 360, 

362-63,370-73,375-76,379,454,491,493 

Eighteenth: 5, 32,143,151 - 52,173,186,188-90, 

194-98,256-57,259,409,4 11-12,4 14,41 8 

Twemielh Moumain : 412, 424, 426, 505 

Armies. Rumanian. Su also Rumanian forces. 

1lllrd:7,33,370,376,395,443,446,456-57, 459, 

466-68,470-71,473,478,480,491 

Fow"th : 7, 33, 395, 443, 471 , 473, 478 

Armies, Soviet 

lruupenthnl Coastal: 321 

Ittdepmthnt Marl1;J1U : 106, 141, 261, 3) 1 

First Guards: 383-85, 387, 391, 393-94, 438, 442, 

484,486,490,493-94 

Firs/ Siwek: 59-60, 62-63, 66-67, 70, 90, 93, 

153-54,166,171,255,391 

First Tank: 301, 357, 363, 383, 384n 

Second Guards: 485, 488, 490-91, 493, 496 

Seco"d Shock: 137, 139, 145-46, 148, 150-51 , 153, 

175,186-92, 194-95, 197,255-60,4 16,420-2 1 

Third: 65, 90, 122 

Third Guards: 484 , 486, 490, 493-94 

Third Shock: 140, 147-49, 151 , 153-54, 197,212, 

215,241 

Third Tank: 301, 398 

Fourth: 137, 139, 145-46 

Fourth htdepetuutlt: 51 

Fourth Shock: 140, 147-49, 169-71,212, 214-15, 

217,382,402,405, 408 

Fourth Tank: 30 I , 357, 363, 383-84 

Fifth: 32, 59, 88, 92-93, 404 

Fifth Shock: 481,485,493 

Fifth To"k : 301, 325-26, 332, 337, 341-42, 398, 

442- 44, 457, 468,470-71 , 481,484,488,494 

Sixth: 158-59,27 1,273,276,278-79,281-82,337, 

442,484,486,493 

Snltmth: 226 

Eighth : 45, 416, 418 

Eighth Guards: 503 

Ni,,/h: 5 1, 156, 159, 271 , 278-79,282, 313,349, 

367,370,374 

T""h : 60, 67, 70, 73, 88-90, 97, 101 , 122- 123, 164, 

248,252,254,342,384 

EinJetlth: 140. 147-48, 151-53,255 

Tweljlh: 36 1, 367,370,374 

Thirteenth: 65. 68, 90, 122. 334 

Fourletnth: 226-28, 231 

Six/,m/h: 30,32,51,57,59-60,70,93, 166, 176, 

342 
INDEX 

Armies, Soviet-Continued 

Eightttllth: 5 1, 367, 374, 38 1, 452 

Tw, ,,tieth: 30, 32, 60, 67, 70, 88, 93, 190,257-58, 

400, 403-04,485 

Tw'''ty-ji''t: 141 , 270,337,343,353.357,383-84, 

442-43,468,470-71,496-97,499 

Twenty-secotld: 90. 92. 94. 169 

TWt1Ity-third: 226 

Tw'''tyiaurlh: 60, 349, 367, 387, 39 1, 394-95, 443, 

497 

Twenty-sixth: 60. 139,227.229-30,232 

Twenty-seventh: 140. 148 

Tw,,,ty.,ighth: 270, 273- 75, 3 13, 3 16, 357, 493 

Twtllty-lIillth: 64-65, 67, 70, 73, 90, 92, 94, 130, 

167, 171, 176, 184,400,403 

Thi,ti, th: 49-50, 57, 67-68, 70, 88-90, 92-93, 400, 

403-04, 407-08 

Thi,ty-ji"t: 64, 67,70,73,88-90,92, 130,400,403, 

407- 08 

Thirly·third: 88,97,164,170-71,176,179-82,24 1, 

255,259,404 

Thirty{Qtlrlh: 140, 147, lSI , 153 

Thirty-seventh: 51, 60, 159,367,370,374, 454 

Thirly-eighth: 156, 159,270-7 1,3 13,357 

Thi'ty."inth: 90, 92, 94, 102-03, 122, 130-3 1. 167, 

170-7 1, 176, 184-85,24 1-42,250-52 

Fortieth: 141 . 334-37 

Fa'ty·thi,d: 88, 97,127-28.171. 176. 180, 182-83 

Farlyia"rlh : 105, 108-09. 112, 114- 17, 262,269, 

370, 374 

Farly-jifth: 370 

FMty.,ixth: 370, 372 

Fa'ty."",,,th: 262, 269, 367, 374 

Fa'ty."inth: 50, 88, 97, 176, 180, 182 

Fijiieth: 49, 53, 59, 88, 97, 101, 122, 128, 176, 180, 

182, 242, 245-46 

Fifty-ji"': 105, 108, 114- 17, 262,353,367,383, 

443.470-72,478,491.493 

Fifty-first 1lldepe1ident: 36 

Fifty-second: 137, 139-40. 145-46, 150 

Fiftyiau,tI" 139, 145, 186, 189-91, 194, 197 

Fifty-Stxth: 367, 374 

Fifty-sixth Independent: 5 1 

Fifty.""",tI,, 156, 158-59, 270-7 1, 278-82, 357, 

383,443,470-71,497,499 

Fifty-eighth: 374 

Fifty-lIi1lth: 137. 139, 145. 150,259 

Sixtieth: 60, 337 

Sixty-ji"" 60, 90, 122-23, 176, 325, 342 

SixtY-Sec01,d: 353-54. 35 7, 383-84, 387-88, 

392-93,396, 442,460,464,466,468,496,499, 

503 

Sixty·thi,d: 337,353,383,442-43 

Sixtyi""")" 353-54, 357, 382-83, 387-88, 392, 

394, 443,460,497 

Sixty-jifth: 443, 470-7 1, 496-97 

Sixty.,ixth: 387,391 

Armor Slrength, German: 7, 45, 139,294,308,325. 

440.515. See also Tanks, German. 

539 

Armol"slrength,Soviel: II , 15,3 1,40.59n, 139,262. 

273,300,308,326,363,4 16,440,446,5 15. Su 

also Tanks, Soviet. 

Army, Hungarian Second: 322-23, 334, 483, 495, 

505,512. See also Hungarian forces. 

Army, Italian Eighth: 323-24, 363, 375, 480. 483- 84. 

486. See also halian forces. 

Army Groups, German 

A: 322, 324, 338, 345-47, 349-51, 353, 358, 

360-62, 364-71, 374-79, 395, 45 1, 455, 

482-84, 490-95 

B: 322, 324, 346-48, 35 1, 354-55, 358-59, 365, 

375, 378, 386, 446, 450, 452, 455-58, 464-66, 

475,483,488,491,493 

Center: 44, 509 

autumn-winter cam paign, 1942 : 445-47 , 

450-52, 455-57 

as BARBAROSSA begins: 5-6, 28. 34 

batlle for Moscow: 36, 40, 45-46, 49, 52, 57, 

6 1-62,67 

and Dnepr-Ovina line: 30, 32-33 

and the Front, February 1942: 173, 176-85, 188, 

193, 195 

and Soviet partisans: 206, 208-09, 212-13, 

2 17- 18 

and Soviet spring offensive, 1942: 238. 240-54, 

264,286,294- 95,322,324, 329-30,375 

summer campaign, 1942: 398.400,402.404-06, 

408-09,411,421 

and TAl FUN: 34-40, 42 

winler campaign, 1942: 67, 69-70, 74-75, 78, 

80- 83, 86-92, 94-96, 101 -02, 105, 11 9-22, 

122-24, 127, 130, 132-34, 140, 148-49, 155, 

159, 16 1, 167, 169-7 1, 178, 182 

0 : 449 

Don : 452, 473, 476, 478-80, 482-84. 486, 488, 

490-93,495,501,509 

Nonh:57,257,264,400, 450-5 1 

as BARBAROSSA begins: 5-7. 28 

and finnish Army: 7, 220-2 1, 224 , 232, 426-27 

and Leningrad : 32, 34-36, 40-43, 45-46, 69, 8 1, 

359,408-09,4 11 - 15,4 17- 18.420.488 

missions, spring 1942: 283, 286. 294-95 

and Soviet panisans: 206. 212, 2 17 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive, 194) - ) 942: 

116, 130, 143-45, 148-49, 151 -52, 169,173, 

183, 186-98 

at TIkhvin : 51. 69, 71 , 8 1. 224 

South 

as B ARBAROSSA begins: 5-7, 27-28 

and BLAu: 3 12 , 3 14- 16, 322-28, 330, 334 

battle for Dnepr-Dvina line: 32-35 

evacuation of Rostov: 53- 55, 69 

the Front, February 1942: 173, 188 

missions, spring 1942 : 283, 286-87, 294-96, 298 

under Rundstedt: 5,43-46,54,87 

and Soviet panisans: 206, 217-18 

takes Kharkov and Stalino: 35, 40-41 

and war in the sollth: 44-45, 263,272,275 
540 

Army Croups, German-Continued 

South-Continued 

winter campaign, 1941 - 1942: 69, 87, 9 1, 105, 

115,117, 122,137, 155-56 

First Panzer: 6, 32, 34 

Second Panzer: 5. 27-28, 30, 33-35. 37-40 

Third Panzer: 6, 27, 3D, 35, 37-40, 49-53, 57, 

60-63, 65-70, 73, 75, 77-78, 80-82, 91-93, 

103,118, 156 

Fourth Panzer: 5, 27, 32, 35, 37-40, 49-50, 52-53, 

57,60-61,63,65-70,73,77-78,80-82,92-93, 

101,103,118 

Army Groups, Soviet 

Black Sea: 378, 38 1 

Don Operational: 367 

Maritime Operational: 367,370 

Neva: 416, 419-20,422 

North: 370.374 

South: 382 

Army High Command, German. See Oberkommalldo 

<Us Hems (OKH). 

Anillery strength. German: 7, 92, 116, 126, 139. 

293-94,309-12,411,414,515 

Artillery strength, Soviet: 11 , 13. 3 1,47.49, 139, 145, 

262,300-302,308,416,440,446 

Astmkhan: 359,370,375,393,446,458 

Avulger: 430 

Aydar Rh'er: 346 

Azov, Sea of: 139. 141, 353 

Azov Naval Flotilla: 110 

Bagramyan , General Armii Ivan: 141 , 239,270.275, 

278-79,281,305,314,325 

Baksan Riycr: 454 

Baku: 44,352,358,366,370-71 

Balaklava: 106,3 12.320 

Balakleya: 158-59,269,281-82 

Balkans: 4, 6, 13,322 

Baltic coast: 16- 17 

Ballic Fleet, Soviet: 189 

Baltic Sea: 3, 6, 189-90,224,306,36 1,418,45 1,455 

Baltic States: 5, 12,32,135,208, 220 

Banak: 228,423 

Baranov. General Mayor V. K. : 247 

BARBAROSSA: 3-7, 13-15, 22, 25-34 , 44, 68, 152, 

207-08,286,508,514, 516 

Barents Sea: 35, 139,239 

Barovsk: 127 

Barrikady gun factor),: 39 1. 396 

Barvenkoyo: 160.278-79 

Basic Orders: 447-48 

Bataysk: 356 

Batal', General Lcytcnant P. I. : 470, 497 

Baualion, German, 189lh Self-propelled Assault Gun: 

169 

Balumi: 365, 370 

Bavaria: 3 17, 33 1, 456 

Bear Island: 236, 428, 430 

Beketovka : 459. 470 

Scibek River: 106, 108 

MOSCOW TO STALIN GRAD 

Belev: 97-98, 100-101, 122-23, 173-75, 179,398, 

404 

Belgian troops: 380 

Belgorod: 105,3 13,322,509 

Belokalilvenskaya: 484,494 

Belomorsk: 224-26, 426- 27 

Belorussia: 200, 202-04 , 207- 08, 215, 246, 36 1, 434 

Belov, General Mayor P. A.: 59.163-64,169-70, 182, 

215,252,402 

BeIyy: 169, 171, 185,24 1,250-5 1,485 

Belyy Kolodez: 316 

Berchtesgaden: 457 

Bereka River: 279-82 

Bereslovaya River: 273 

Berghof: 293, 32 1, 330, 456-57, 473 

Bena, Lavrenti: 217, 372 

Berlin : 4, 54, 78, 86-87, 249, 32 1, 452, 503 

Bessarabia: 7, 12, 135 

BETTELSTA8: 411-12 

Bialystok: 27-28, 297 

Black Sea: 5, 7, 33, 55, 105,134,173,239,261,306, 

358,365-67,370-7 1,375,492 

Black S,a Fle,t: 105-06, 108, 32 1, 377 

BLAU 

deployment: 321-32 

execution of: 333-49, 351, 358, 458 

planning: 287-90, 296-97, 307, 310, 3 12- 14, 

3 17- 18,425 

Blitzk,ug campaigns: 15, 43.53, 407,510-12.516 

BUUECHER: 351-52,358-59,376-77,4 12 

Bobkin, General Mayor L. V.: 271 

Bobkin GTOUP: 271, 273, 276, 279, 281-82 

Bock, Gcneralfeldmarschall Fedor von 

and Army Group Center: 5, 33, 42, 45, 49-50, 7) , 

75-77,86-87,140,155-60,218 

and Army Group South: 262-64. 272-76, 3 14-16 

and attack on Moscow: 37. 43.51-54,59,61-63 

Operation BLAu: 318, 321-24, 330-32, 334-39. 

344-51 

Operation FRlDERlcus: 272-76, 281-82, 3 18 

Operation STOERFANC: 316, 318 

and operations in the Crimea: 262, 264 

plans spring 1942 offensive: 286-90, 293 

and Soviet partisan warfare: 218 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive, 1941- 1942: 63, 

67- 68, 71-83, 86-87, 90, 94-96, 140, 155-60 

turns over command to Weichs: 347- 48 

Bodin, General Ma)'or P. I. : 434 

Boehringer, Colonel fmc 111 

Bogol'oditsk: 66 

Boguchar: 324, 346. 484 

Bohlen. Charles E.: 503 

Bokovskaya: 354 

Boldin. General Leytenalll I. V.: 97 

Bolkhov: 176. 446 

Bolshaya Orlovk.a: 355, 357 

Boishoy Tokmak: 156 

80lv3 River: 252 

Borisoglebsk: 308 

Bormann, Martin: 504 
INDEX 

Borodino: 435 

Borovsk: 127, 131 

Soznya: 182 

Brauchitsch, Ceneralfeldmarschall Walter von: 4, 14 , 

43,54-55,61,78-81,83-85,87,96, 155,298, 

508 

BRAUNSCHWEIG: 336, 339-40, 358 

Brennecke, Generahnajor Kurt: 45. 86, 148. 152 

Brest: 233 

Brest Litovsk: 488 

B";dge" 3, 80:200, 234, 333, 385, 419, 488 

Brigade, Finnish 12th: 228 

Brigades, German 

Grodeck: 266-68 

Lehrbrigadc 900: 53 

SS Cavalry: 131 -32 

Brigades, Rumanian: 1 J 7 

4th Cavalry: 112 

8th Cavalry: 112 

Brigades, Soviet: 31, 440-41 

ht Belorussia" Partisan: 202 

8th Airborne: 245 

8th Ski: 228-30 

8th Tank: 32 

12th Naval: 228, 231 

79th Naval Infantry: 108 

80th Rifle: 229-30 

85th 1".4e/Jelldenf: 232 

Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, Generalleutnant Graf Walter 

von: 154, 189, 193, 197 

BRUECKENSCHLAG: 183, 185, 192-96,241,398,411 

Brusilov, Alexey: 432 

Bryansk: 37, 90, 95,122-25,140-41,176,179,212, 

216,241-42,246,252,297 

Budenny, Marshal SovcLSkogo Soyuza Semen: 25, 30, 

34,36,261,311,320,325,367,378,443 

Bug River: 8 

Budget, German armament: 15 

Budget, Soviet armament: 15 

Bulganin, N. A.: 194 

Bulgaria: 4, 291 

Burluk River: 3 13, 316 

Busch, Generaloberst Ernst: 32, 143, 147-48, 151 , 

189, 192,412-13,421 

Cannons, Soviet: 11, 126 

Caris, Generaladmiral Rolf: 428 

Carpathian Mountains: 3,8 

Caspian Sea: 303, 358, 366, 370, 375 

Casua lties 

German: 45, 65, 73,102.131.167,177,188,314, 

321,381,392,406-07,462,489,491,499,501 

Soviet: 47n, 126. 163, 232, 245, 248, 259, 269, 

296-97,392,423,462,485-86,501 

Caucasus 

and German planning: 16, 238, 283, 286-87, 289, 

298,322-24,351,358,432,446,452,492,515 

oil in: 16,43-44,287,298-99,371,5 15 

operations in: 44, 326. 361, 364, 366-81, 388, 412, 

494 

541 

Caucasus-Continued 

and Soviet planning: 21, 41. 51, 261, 266, 302-03, 

307,319,434,455 

Caulaincourt, General Armand de: 515 

Cavalry, Soviet: 53, 102, 163 

Central Committee, Communist Parry: 200-201. 214, 

361,384,507 

Chegem River: 454 

Chekalin: 97-100 

Cherek River: 454 

Cherevichenko, General Polkovnik Va. "[: 54-55, 90, 

367,378,381 

Cherkassy: 269 

Chern: 332 

Chernaya River: 106 

Chevallerie, Generalleutnant Kun von der: 451 

Chibisov, General Ley tenant N. Ye.: 337 

Chikola River: 454 

Ch;, Rive" 346, 353-54, 357, 443, 471-73, 476, 

478-82, 484 

Chistyakov, General Mayor I. M.: 470 

CHRISTOPHORUS: 120, 177 

Chudovo: 40, 150, 186. 191 

Chuikov, General Ley tenant V. I.: 353, 382, 393-96, 

443,460,462,464,503,507 

Churchill, WinslOn S.: 3, 233, 304,423-24,434,441 

Ciano, Coulll Galeazzo: 292 

Civilians: 29,49,85,96, 125, 13 1, 135, 137,208-09, 

294,330,357,387,408,418,444,505. See also 

Partisans. Soviet. 

CLAUSEWITZ: 336, 338, 349, 458 

Climate. See Weather. 

Coru: 39, 105, 135,285,440,515 

Coastal Staff Azov: 324, 338, 345 

Collaborators: 204 

Combat effectiveness: 48, 489 

Command structure, German: 3-7, 80-85 

Command structure. Soviet: 7-13, 25-29 

Commissar system, Soviet: 9-10, 439 

Commissariat of Defense: 7, 10-11, 18,23,25,302, 

361,441,506 

Communications. See also Radio; Telegraph; 

Telephone. 

German: 4, 78, 8 1, 147,483 

Soviet: 12,24-25,241 

Communist Party, Soviet: 7, 10, 27, 41, 138, 206, 361, 

384,432,437 

Conscription, German: 423 

Convoys: 233-37, 423, 427-30 

Coppe" 285 

Corps, Finnish III: 221. 223, 227-29, 231-32 

Corps, German 

Felmy (Special Purpose): 453 

Mountain Corps Norway: 223, 227-28, 231-32, 

423 

I: 188-89, 191-92,197,257 

II : 147, 151 -54, 188-89, 192, 194-95, 197, 

254-55,411-13,421 

Ill: 424 
542 

Corps, Gennan-Continued 

III Panze" 5 1,54-55, 160,278-82,313-16,318, 

373 

IV, 365, 471 

IV Panzer: 50 I 

V, 85, 102, 133-34,374 

V Panze" 93, 102. 127, 13 1,1 34, 166, 180-82 

VI, 104, 130-32, 168-69 

VIII, 275, 278, 281, 3 16, 344-46, 357, 385, 387, 

500-50 1 

X, 151 -54, 188, 192-93 

XL 159-60,382,499,50 1 

XII, 171 

XIII,97-98 

XIV Panze" 5 1, 54, 355, 357-58, 360, 363, 

384-87,39 1-93,395-96,459-60,462-63,468, 

471 .473-74,500 

XVII, 478, 480, 490-91 

XVIII Mountain : 232,424 

XX, 127-28, 163 

XXIII , 130-31 , 133-34, 167-69, 171 

XXIV Panze" 95,100, 122-23, 164, 178,333-36, 

344,346.357-58,384-85 

XXVL 418-21 

XXVII, 130, 132 

XXX, 108, 11 3, 266, 268,3 12, 3 14,3 18- 20, 421 

XXXIV, 374, 380 

XXXVI Mountain: 223-24 , 227-29. 426-27 

XXXVI Panzer: 166 

XXXV III, 188, 19 1, 196-97,257.259 

XXXX, 163 

XXXX Panze" 129, 323, 33 I, 339, 344, 346. 365, 

373 

XXXXI Panzer: 167 

XXXXII , 107, 112- 15,266,268 

XlO(X III, 95-98, 128-29, 16 1-63 

XXXXIV, 3 18,37 1,376 

XXXXVI,85 

XXXXVI Panzer: 171 

XXXXVII Panzer: 98, 252,254 

XXXXVIII Pan,e" 333-37, 339, 344. 346, 365, 

387,393-94,396,466,47 1,479-8 1 

XXXXIX Mountain: 370-77 

LI, 355, 358, 384-85, 387, 39 1-96, 459-60, 462, 

467-68,474,500 

LlI , 379 

LIII Panzer: 98 

LlV, 108, 11 3,3 12,3 16,3 18-20 

LVII , 163.480 

LVII Panze" 127-28,37 1. 374, 380, 479-83, 488, 

490-92 

Corps, Rumanian: 3 12,3 19 

VI M ountain: 365,470-72,479,49 1 

VII Mountain : 470-71, 478-79, 491 

Corps, Soviel: 12,440-4 1 

I (Avalry' 159-60 

I Guards (Avalry' 59, 97. 133. 163, 169. 18 1-82, 

215,240-41 

I Guards Rifle: 152-54 

J Kalinin Parti.5(w: 215 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Corps. Soviet-Conunued 

I Ta"k , 332, 334-36, 34 1, 470, 473 

II Guards Cavalry: 92. 403 

/I Guards Rifle: 152-54 

11/ Cavalry, 50 I 

III Guards Cavalry: 470 

1/1 Guards Tank: 494 

N AirbcnJe: 140. 164, 170, 182,243,245.247 

N Guards Rijle: 416.419 

N MuJumiud: 472. 474 

N Ta"k, 332,334-36,408,470,472-74 

V Cavalry: 159- 60 

VI Cavalry: 156, 159 

VI Guards Rifle : 255 

VI Tanir.: 403 

VII (Avalry' 332 

VII Tank: 341 

VIII Cavalry, 332, 47 1, 501 

VI/I Guards Cavalry : 403 

VIII Tank, 403 

X Guards Rifi" 3 79 

Xl (Avairy' 164, 167, 170,24 1-42,250-52 

XlII Tanir.: 363 

XVI Ta,," 332, 334-36, 34 I 

XVII Tank: 334 -36 

XXI Tank: 278 

XXIII Tallk: 278 

XXIV Tank: 334-36 

XXVI Tank: 470, 473-74 

XXVIII Tallk: 363 

Cottbus: 309 

Council of Labor and Defense: 8 

Council of People's Commissars: 7, 29, 199 

Counterinsurgency, Set Anlipanisan o perations, 

German. 

Crete: 6 

Crimea, 35-36, 40, 42,85, 105- 17, 137, 139, 141 , 

156, 190,239,26 1-69,275-78,309,3 17 ,319, 

321,324,358,405,418 

Cripps, Sir Stafford: 3 

Croatia: 29 1 

DAM PFHAMMER: 336 

Deceptions. German: 328 

Deceptions. Soviet: 444-47, 464 

Decorations. German military: 32 1 

Decorations. Soviet military: 32 1, 435, 503 

Dednovo: 62, 66 

Defense Commissariat. Stt People's Commissariat of 

Defense. 

Defense Council, Soviet: 7-8 

Demidov: 171 , 173 

Demyansk, 140.143, 147-48,151-55, 173, 186-95, 

197.240, 254-55,321,409,411,413,415-16, 

421 ,45 1 

Denmark: 54 

D ERFLINGER: 398-400, 403 

Derkul River: 324, 344 

Desna River: 246, 252. 254 

Detachment. German, Panzer 60: 117, 158-60 
INDEX 

Dieppe' 452 

Dietl. General def GebirgsLmppe Eduard: 222-23. 

225,228-32,423-24 ,426-27 

Dietrich. Dr. Guo: 39 

Dietrich, 5S Obergruppenfuehrer Josef: 55-57 

Dimiu"()v: 57, 59-60 

Dircctives, German. Su Fuehrer Directives. 

Divisions, Finnish 

l223 

3d, 223 

6lh , 228 

Divisions, German: 7. 45 

Adolf Hiller (SS), 493 

Das Reich (SS), 53, 166, 168,493 

Flak, 375 

Grossdeutschland: 336, 340, 344-47, 349, 355, 

357-58,364-65,375,405-07,493 

j aege" 358, 396, 418, 422 

Lam: 381 

Leibstandal1.e Adolf Hiller (55): 54-55, 346 

Nord (5S), 223 

Too:nkopf (SS), 255, 422 

Viking (5S), 379, 453, 482, 490-9 1, 494 

1st Mountain : 282 

1st Panzer: 70. 75, 168,250-5 1, 402 

2d Mountain: 223, 231, 424 

2d Panzer: 53, 250, 402 

3d Motorized Infantry: 340, 358 

3d Mountain: 418. 427, 488 

3d Panze" 100,275,282,349 

4th Panze" 100-10 I, 123, 494 

5th jaege" 421 -22 

5lh Ligh" 152-54 

5th Mountain: 224, 418, 426-27 

5lh Panzc" 53, 180-82,250-5 1,402 

6th Infantry: 102 

6th Mounlain : 223, 228. 424 

6th Panzer: 185,479 

7th MoulHain: 224-25, 232, 424 

7th Panzer: 53, 480, 490-92. 494 

7lh (S5), 493 

9th Panzer: 343, 407 

10th Panzer: 53, 213-14 

Illh Panzc" 53,404,479,490,492,494 

12th Panzer: 41 8, 420 

13th Panzer: 55, 379, 454 

14th MotOlized: 250 

14lh Panzc" 159, 281-82,349,458-60,473 

16th Motorized Infantry: 337, 344-45, 375, 47 1, 

482, 490-91 , 495 

16th Panzer: 282, 3 18, 473 

17th Panzer: 53, 57. 480-82 

18th Panzer: 123, 164 

19th Panzer: 244.246 

20th Panzer: 17 1, 250-5 I 

22d I nfanlry: 108, 319 

22d Panzer' 261,263,266-68,278,3 18,375,479 

23d Panzer, 273, 282,330-32,339,345,347,454, 

479 

24 th Infantl)': 3 19, 420-2 1 

Divisions, German-Continued 

24th Panzer: 340, 344-47, 357 

26th Infantry: 102 

28lh jaege" 418 

28lh Ligh" 261, 266-68 

29th Motorized Infantry: 346 

45th Infantry: 74, 95 

46lh Infan<ry' 107, 109- 10, 112, 11 7 

50th Infa ntry: 266-68 

58th Infantry: 197 

60th Motorized Infantry: 282, 358, 463 

71stlnfantry: 273, 396 

72d Infantry' 405, 407-08 

78th Infantry: 402 

79th Infantl)': 458-60, 462-64 

95th Infant!")': 74,407 

100th j aege" 396 

I OOth Ligh" 159 

lOist Light: 3 18 

102d Infantry: 402 

1 J Ith Infantry: 379 

11 3th Infanu),: 273 

J2 1s1 Infantry: 421 

123d Infantry: 147 

126th Infantry: 146,42 1 

132d Infantry' 115-1 7,266-69,42 1 

134th Infantry: 95 

lfilst Infantry: 400 

163d Infantry: 221,228 

167th Infantry: 98 

169th, 223 

543 

170lh Infantry' 117,266, 268-69,41 8, 420-2 1 

197th Infantry : 244, 251 

2081h Infantry: 164 

210th Infantry: 424 

215th Infa ntry: 146 

221s1 Securicy: 246 

223d Infantry: 418 

227th Infantry: 418 

258th Infanll)': 62 

288th InfanllY: 223 

290th Infantry: 153-54 

296th Infantry: 98 

304th Infantry: 494 

305th Infanu),: 275, 458-60 

330th Infantry: 171 

336th Infanll)': 479 

339th Infantl)': 252 

707tb Securicy: 252 

Divisions. Rumanian: 371 

1st Armored: 479 

2d Mountain : 454 

18lh, 117 

Divisions, Soviet: 13, 3 1, 440-4 I 

lsi Guards Cavalry: 247 

l si Guards Rifle: 42 1 

1st Smolmslt Partisan: 2 15 

2d Guards Cavalry: 247 

10th GlUirds, 228 

10th NKVD, 384 
544 

Divisions, Soviet-Continued 

J 3th Guards Order of Lenin Rifk: 394 

14th Guards Rifle: 468 

14th Rifk 228 

18th Rifk 170 

23d Gwm/', 228, 230 

47th Guards Rifle: 468 

80th Cavalry: 189 

1I 9th Rifle, 468 

124th Rifle' 468 

186th Rifle' 229-30 

258th Infantry: 63 

327th Rifle, 188-89 

329th RijI" 247 

345th Rifle , 108 

Dnepr bend: 32 

Dnepr Ri\"er: 5, 21 , 28-29. 33-34, 103, 141, 156-59, 

170, 176,202,246,269,483,509,511-12 

Dnepr·Ovina line: 21, 23, 28-30, 32, 61,140,202 

Dnepropetrovsk: 9 1, 139, 141 , 156-58, 160, 270, 

483-84, 509 

Dno, 140, 147, 153 

DON Operation: 493, 496 

Don River: 44. 54, 65, 95, 283, 287, 289- 90, 307,3 19, 

322-24, 326, 337, 339, 343, 346-47, 349-61, 

363, 365, 36/j-67, 372, 377, 382, 396, 412, 

442- 43, 455-57, 458-59, 462, 468, 471 - 74, 

476,478,480,482-84,486,489,492-94,496 

Don River bend: 288, 352-61, 384-87, 395-96, 485 

Donets Basin: 16,33,39,4 1,69, 105. 135, 141,324, 

493, 5 15 

Donets River: 105, 137, 139, 141, 156-58,272.279, 

281-83, 289, 3 10, 316, 3 18, 323-24 , 343, 

346-47, 349, 353-55, 452, 483-84, 488 , 

49 1-96,509 

DONNERSCHLAG: 482-83 

Donskoi, Dimitry: 41 

DORk 309- 10, 3 16, 411 

Dora Lane: 191-93, 197,256.259 

Dorogobuzh: 246 

Double envelopment: J 32, 312. 511. See also Encircle· 

ment operations, German; Encirclement opera· 

tions. Soviet. 

Dovator, General Mayor L. M .: 88, 92-93 

Dubna: 94 

Dubrovka: 422 

Duke of York, H.M.S.: 428 

Dukovshchina : 171 ,24 1 

Dutch troops: 38 1 

Dvina River : 21. 23, 27-30, 32, 61,140,170,202 

Dyatkovo: 252. 254 

East Prussia: 5, 8, 55, 80, 348, 351 

Economy, German wartime: 15,299.504- 05 

Economy, Soviet wartime: 135,299,440 

Eden, Anthony: 135 

Ehrenburg, llya: 434 

EDELWEISS: 358, 366-81 

EI Alamein: 5 13 

Elbrus, Mount: 371-72 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Electricity: 135, 285,440 

ELEPHANT: 120, 177 

Elista: 375, 482, 493, 495 

Elkhotovo: 379 

Encirclement operations, German: 14, 27-28, 30, 

33-34,37,39-40,52, 182-83,290,314 , 316, 

336,344,349,354,358,387,488,511 

Encirclement operations, Soviet: 71 , 120-22, 125, 

129, 139-40, 153-55, 170-7 1, 270, 275, 443, 

472,474, 478,485, 488,493,496,5 11 - 13 

Engels, Major: 460 

English Channel: 233, 291 , 346, 423, 449, 456 

Envelopment. See Double envelopment; Encirclement 

operations, German; Encirclement operations, 

Soviet. 

Eremenko, Marshal So\,etskogo Soyuza A. I.: 18,443 

and Bryallsk Fro"t: 33-34, 36-37, 148, 150 

and Soviet offensive, January 1942: 148-49, 169, 

171 

and Stalingmd, 382-85, 387, 393-94, 396, 470, 

507 

Erful1.h. General der Infanterie Waldemar: 225-26, 

426-27 

Erika Lane: 191 -92, 194, 196-97.256-57,259 

Estonia: 32 

Experimental Organization Center: 244-45 

lkenhorst, Generaloberst Nikolaus: 220-22, 225, 

29 1 

Fedon:nko, General Ley tenant Va. N.: 336, 507 

Fedorovka: 62, 66 

Fegeiein, Brigadefuehrer Otto Hermann : 131 

Felmy, General der Flieger Helmut: 453 

Feodosiya' 105, 107-17, 141,266 

Finland, 4, 8-10, 14-16, 28, 39-40, 54, 135, 220, 

303, 418, 424. 426-27, 505. See also Winter War, 

1939-1940. 

Fm1and, Gu1foL 139, 143, 189-91,4 11 

Finnish Army: 4-5, 7, 10,32,35,37,40,44,46.8 1, 

134, 192-93, 195, 220-33, 291, 409, 4 12-13, 

415, 426-27, 440, 505. See also Army, Finnish 

11 th; Corps, Finnish I I I ; Divisions, Finnish. 

FISC HRE1HE R: 359, 393 

Folient, Cape: 32 1 

Foreign Armies, East: 296-97, 305, 455-57 

Foreign Ministry, German: 222 

Fortifications: 21 , 316, 321 

Fortresses: 42, 105- 08, 154-55,324,4 1 I 

Forts, Soviet: 310, 316, 318, 320-21 

France: 15, 177,292,299, 457,5 11 

Freuer·Pico, General der Artillerie Ma.ximilian von: 

267-68, 488 

FRIO ERIC US: 272-73, 275-82, 3 10, 3 12- 14, 3 17- 19, 

325,330,344 

Frolov, General Ley tenant V. A.: 35, 226-27 

Fromm, Generaloberst Friedrich : 84, 87 

Frollts, Soviet: 8 

BrymMk' 36-37, 148, 156,2 17,396,398 

and BLAu, 325-26, 332, 334, 34 1-42 

composition of: 33-34,49 
INDEX 

Fronts, Soviet-Continued 

Bryansk-Continued 

and Soviet winter counteroffensive. 1941 - 1942: 

90,122-23.140-41 

and spring offensive, 1942 : 239, 269-70, 307-08 

Celltml: 32-34, 2 14 

Crimean: 156.26 1-63,265-66,268-69,3 11 Do,,, 396,442-43, 478, 480,485,496-99,501 

Far Easlem : 8 

Kalini,,, 217, 240, 246, 308, 398, 406 

and defense of Moscow: 37, 49-50 

and MARS, 445-46, 484-85 

winter cOllnteroffensive, 194) - 1942: 62. 64-65, 

67,90, 124-25, 140,149, 153, 176, 184-86 

Kareliall: 35,139.217,226-27.240 

ullillgrad: 8, 36, 49, 137,145.186.197,217,226, 

240,255,257-59, 408,416,422 

No,th, 8, 32, 226 

North CatiCasllS: 31 1, 320, 325, 353, 367-70, 374, 

378 

Northwest: 8. 24-28, 30, 32. 36,140-41 . 145. 147, 

150, 186,194, 197, 240,255,416 

Resl!11Je: 32, 36-37 

South, 8, 28, 33-34, 36, 353, 493 

and BLAV, 325-26,343-44,349-5 1 

and defense of Moscow: 49, 5 1, 54 

merged into NQrth Caucasus: 367 

spring offensive, 1942: 269-7 1, 278-79, 307-08 

wimer coumeroffensi,'c, 194 1-1942: 137. 141. 

156, 159 

Southeast, 382-84, 394, 396, 442 

Southwest: 36 

as B ARBA ROSSA begins: 8, 24-28 

and BLAU , 314, 325-26,334, 337,340,343-44, 

349-51 

defends Moscow: 50. 54, 60 

ordered to hold Kiev: 33-34 

spring offensi\<e. 1942 : 239. 269-70. 273. 275. 

279-81, 307-08 

and Stalingrad: 353. 442- 44, 457, 478. 480, 

484-85, 493, 498 

wimer offensive. 1941-1942: 64-65, 67, 137. 

141, 156, 158-59 

Stalh'gmd, 353. 357, 363, 370, 382-84, 393-94. 

396, 442-43, 465,470,478,480,485,493,496 

TranscQllcasus: 105, 108, 141. 156.26 1. 370,372, 

374,378.434,454,493 

Volkhov: 137, 139, 145-46, 150, 153, 186, 190. 197, 

240,255,258, 408,416,422 

Voronezh: 343. 353, 442, 484 

West: 387 

as BARBA ROSSA begins: 8, 24-30. 32-34 

battle for MoscO\\': 36-37. 49-50, 59, 61 

and MARS, 445-46. 484-85 

and partisans: 209. 213-14, 217 

and Rzhev-S)'chevka operation: 398, 400, 402. 

407 

spring-summer offensive, 1942: 240. 242. 245, 

308. 325,342 

Fronts. Soviet-Continued 

West-Continued 

545 

winter counteroffensive, 1941-1942 : 64-66, 

76-77,88-90,124-25,140-41,176 

FW!hrer Directives: 261 

2 1, 14 

32, 15, 284 

33,33 

34,33 

35,34 

41,74,105,286-88,290, 293,296,310,312,322, 

409 

43, 351 

44,412,426 

45,358- 65.371,412 

Fueh," Headquane", 33, 69, 80-81, 84-87, 95, 97, 

132, 147-48, 155, 163, 167, 173, 179-80, 

185-90, 192, 197,224,339,347-48,351, 407, 

413-14,426,449,472-73,480,500,504,509. 

See also Werwolf; Wolfssclumu. 

FUERZAUBER. See NOKDLlCIiT. 

Fursovo: 245 

Gablenz. Generalleutnalll Eccard von: 130 

Gaitolovo: 421-22 

GAMMA, 309-10, 411 

Gasoline shOltages, German. Set Logistics, German, 

shortages, fuel. 

Gasoline shonages, Soviet. See Logistics. Soviet, shortages. fuel. 

Gasparyan, Major: 213-14 

Gavrilovka: 387 

Gehlen, Colonel Reinhard : 455 

General Staff, German Army: 512 

Chief of, 25, 69, 148,212,272. 283, 318, 337, 35 1, 

374,382,447,449,465,473,480,509 

early role: 14 ,43-44,84.90 

and Hitler. 348, 450,483,508-09 

Genera l Staff, Soviet Army: 

Chief of, 8,16-17,33,50,62. 137, 197,238,240. 

270,278-79,283,341,437-38,484 

carl)' planning: 8, 15-19, 21, 23. 30, 35 

and spring offensi\<c. 1942: 238-40, 303, 305, 314 

and Stalingrad: 436. 485 

strategic role: 38, 61, 64, 139, 142,258,305-07, 

326.332,342.506,512 

Gestapo, 152.208 

Gilsa, Generalmajor Wemer von: 164, 169 

Gizel: 454 

GKO (Goslldarstvetmyi Komitet OOOr01lJ): 29-30. 37, 

138, 190, 21i, 238-39, 279, 302, 305, 382, 385, 

438, 506 

Glleisenall: 233. 291 

Goebbcls, joseph, 120,292-93 

Goering, Reichsmarschall Hermann : 4, 6. 448. 476, 

492 

Goerlitz Forest: 4 

GOEr!.: VON BERLICHI NCEN: 196 

GOLIATH, 309-10, 3 12 
546 

Goliko\,. GeneraJ Ley tenant F. I. : 60. 325-26. 332, 

334-37,341,343,384,442-43,484 

Golubinskiy: 473 

Golusbkevich, General Mayor V. S.: 242 

Cornel: 269 

Conchal),: 388 

Gordov. General Ley tenant V. N.: 357. 383-84 

Co'~y:37,44,46,50,283,308 

Gorodische: 460 

Gorodische River: 459-60 

Gorodnyanskov. General Ley tenant A. M.: 271,278 

Gorodovikov, General Polkovnik O. I. : 182 

Gorokhovatka: 3 J 8 

Gorshechnoye: 336 

Govorov, General Leylenanl L. A. : 259 

Ora! Zepptli71: 235 

Creal Britain: 3, 6,13.29,39.42,135,222,225,231, 

233,299,304-05,307,338,346,349,423,426, 

428.434,505,513 

G,~chko, A. A.: 141 -42,326,36 1,443,452 

Greiffenberg, GeneralmajoT Hans von: 45, 8 1, 98, 

32;,347 

Greiner, CapUlin Helmut: 377 

Crodno: 24, 272 

Groups, German. Stt Anny Groups, German. 

Croups, Soviet 

Black Sea: 378, 381 

Don Operational: 367 

Maritime Operatio,lal: 367-70 

Neva: 416, 419-20,422 

Norlh:370,374.454 

South: 382 

Groznyy: 307, 352, 358, 366, 371, 373-74, 375, 

379-80, 451 

Gruppe \"011 der Chevallene: 451-52 

C,'usinian Military Road: 358,371,373.379 

Gruzino: 409, 414 

Gryaznov, General Mayor A. S.: 154 

Guadalcanal: 513 

Guderian. Gencraloberst Heinz: 46, 50. 179 

relieved of command: 100. 128, 155 

and Second Panzer Group: 28, 30 33-34 

and Soviet coullleroffensive, December 194 I: 

65-67,73,77-80,85-86,94-100,128 

Gumrak: 391.474,498 

Guns, German: 74. 294, 515. Ste also Howitzers, 

German; Machine guns, German. 

10-cm. field: 40 

50-mm.: 13,325 

75-mm.: II , 325 

88-mlll.: 40,100.126,165,190,325 

CUllS, Soviet: II , 105, 126, 300,44 1,5 15. Ste also 

Cannons, Soviet; Machine guns. Soviet. 

Gzhat River: 403 

GzhalSk: 76,80,94.96,163.166,171,180,241 

Gzhatsk-Volga Position: 132 

I-Iaenicke, General der Infamerie Siegfried: 257 

Halder, Generaloberst Franz: 37, 212. 220, 249, 

318-19,321,405,447,508 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Halder, Generaloberst Franz-Continued 

and BLAu: 33 1, 337-40, 344, 347-48 

and Directive 45: 364 

early strategy: 25, 28, 33 

and encirclement at Rostov: 354-56, 360 

and evacuation of Demyansk pocket: 415, 421 

and FRIOERtCUS: 272-73, 3 18 

and Hitler's strategic objectives, November 1941 : 

43-46,283,285-87,296,298 

and offensi\'e, November 1941: 43-46. 50, 53, 

61-62 

and operations in the Caucasus: 374,376-77,379 

plans campaign, wimer 1941 - 1942: 69, 75-78, 8 1, 

84,86-87, 192 

replaced as chief, Army General Staff: 84-85,449 

and Soviet counteroffensive, December 1941 : 

61-62,73,75-78,81,84,86-87,90,97-101. 

103-104, 192 

and Soviet offensive, January 1942: 128-29. 

131-32, 134, 148-49,151 -52, 169 

Hannibal: 510-11 

HANNOVER: 241, 250, 252, 398 

Hacko: 306, 309 

Harriman, W. Averell : 39, 432, 441 

Heim, Generalleutnam Ferdinand: 471 

Heinrichs, Jalkavaenkenraali Erik: 415, 427 

Heinrici. General del' Infanteri Gouhard: 129, 

161-63,169, 171,178-80,244-48,403 

Heminger, Colonel Adolf: 43, 61, 80, 100, 354-55, 

385,4 14- 15 

Himel', Gencralmajor Kun: 11 3- 14 

HipJm': 236,428,430 

Hille" Adolf: 4-5, 35, 42, 382, 388, 395, 432, 451 , 

453. Set also Fuehrer Directives. 

Anti-Comimern Pact: 54-55 

MArmament 1942" of 10January 1942: 284 

and armaments procul'emem: 87. 91-92 

assumes command of anny: 80-85, 87, 450, 508 

and attack on Pearl Harbor: 78 

and BARBAROSSA : 3, 13-15,33 

and BLAU (SIECFRIED): 287, 290, 297, 310, 318, 

32 1-22,324-25,328,33 1,337-40,344-48 

and BRUEC KENSCHLAC: 192-93, 196-98, 409 

and campaign, winter 1941 - 42: 69-74, 79-87, 91, 

94-104, 105, 115, 123, 12;- 134, 147- 149, 

178-80, 183-85, 188, 195 

and Caucasus operations: 366. 371, 376-8 1 

commitment to RAUBTIER: 189-92 

and conversion to total war economy: 299 

and the Crimea : 105, 115, 3 10,3 12, 3 14 ,32 1 

decision making: 69-70, 80-84, 130, 134, 354, 

474-77.483,490,493 

directi,'e, 8 December 1941 : 74,105,286 

eSlimates of Soviet strength: 13- 15, 69 

and evcnts leading to encirclemcnt at Demyansk: 

147-49, 152-55 

"fanatical resistance": 81-84, 94, 97-104, 118-20, 

123, 125, 130-33.450,472-73,475-77,499 

and Finland: 5.40. 189-90,220,223-24,23 1,233, 

409,411,415,424,426 
INDEX 

Hider, Adolf-Continued 

and FRIO ERICUS: 272-73, 276, 281, 3 10, 312, 3 17, 

330 

and his generals: 4, 33, 63, 78-87. 94. 100, 122. 

132, 155,259,29 1-92,331,337-38,348,354, 

449-50,471,473,508-10 

and German Navy: 233-35, 425. 428 

and Hungary: 290 

and Japan: 78, 286 

and the KOEN I GSBERG Line: 130, 132, 134, 161, 

164, 166-67,169, 171 -72, 175 

leadership principles: 8 1-85. 362, 448-49 

and Leningrad operation: 409. 411-18. 420. 

451-52 

and manpower procurement: 15,87, 120.176 

and Mussolini: 290-91, 293, 299 

names commiuee for lOlal effort: 504-05 

and Nonh Africa: 457 

and No""ay' 233-34,236,291 -92,299 

and offensi\·e, November 1941: 43- 44. 54-57. 286 

plans attack on Moscow: 37-39 

and possible Anglo-American landings: 231, 233, 

291 - 92,346,423 

and Reichel incident: 330-32 

retreat from Rostov: 54-57, 116 

and Russo-Japanese neulralil)' treaty: 20 

and Soviet partisans: 207. 217-19, 372 

speech of 26 April 1942: 292-93 

and Stalingrad: 375. 441. 457. 458-60. 464-65, 

468, 471-77, 478, 480-83, 488, 490-95, 497, 

499-502,504 

statements after Stalin grad: 504 

and STOERFANG: 310, 3 12. 3 14. 3 18. 321 

strategic options, spring 1942: 188-92, 241-42. 

261,263-64,283-93,297-99,306 

as a strategist: 4. 13- 15, 33. 84-87, 93, 122. 

129-30, 147-49, 152-55, 176, 178, 283-93, 

306, 329, 351-55, 357-59, 364-65, 412, 

475-77,5 14,516 

supreme commander of armed forces; 3-4, 450, 

506, 508- 10 

and TAU BENSCHLAG: 451 -52. 455 

at lVernolf: 35 I, 360, 4 I 3, 4 I 5, 45 I -52, 456 

and WILHELM: 310, 3 12, 330 

and "Winter Relief " program: 39. 452 

and WIRBELWINO: 402-07, 413 

at Wolfssclw.tlu: 4. 54-55. 80. 155,290,293,33 1. 

338,403,409,456,474 

Hoepner, Generaloberst Erich: 32, 39. 49. 53, 62, 65, 

67,73,80,92, 101-03, 11 8, 127-28, 13 1, 133, 

155 

Hollidl, General der Infamerie Karl : 491-94 

Home guards. Soviet: 29 

Ho pkins. Harry L. : 11 ,42 

Horses: 7, 113, 293, 295. 464 

Horthy, Admiral Miklos: 291 

Hoth. Generaloberst Herman 

and BLAu ,322,336,339- 41,344,346 

commands Fourth Panzer Army: 336,340-4 1, 349, 

354-55,357,360,365,49 1 

547 

Hiller, Adolf-Continued 

and the byum bulge: 156. 158-59 

and Stalingrad, 382, 385-88, 392-93, 458-59, 

467,470-72,478,490-92,494-95 

and Third Panzer Group: 27. 30. 49, 155-56 

Howitzers. German: 126, 165,293.309 

Howiuers. Soviet: 70 

Hube, GeneraUeutnant Hans: 395 

Huehner. Generalmajor Werner: 198 

Hungarian forces: 286, 290, 456, 495, 505. Ste also 

Army. Hungarian Second. 

Hungary: 4, 16,286.505 

Hvalfjord: 233 

Iceland, 233, 235-36, 427- 29 

Jlmen, Lake, 137, 140, 143-48, 150-5 1, 153, 166, 

173, 186, 202,409,5 12 

Indusuial base. German: 285, 514-15 

Industrial base, Soviet: 28. 42, 135.514-15 

Information Bureau, Soviet: 135,204 

Ingermanland: 409, 411 

Inkerman: 319 

Intelligence, German: 65, 71,107,188,199,208.244. 

251,259,296,302,326,329,332,455-56 

Intelligence, Soviet: 275.302,329,332 

Iran : 298. 426 

Iron, 39, 135,285,300,440 

Ismail: 435 

Isthmus Front. Finnish: 415, 427 

Istra: 66 

Italian forces: 290, 363. 375, 425, 456. 505. Ste also 

Army, Italian Eighth. 

italy' 4, 16,286, 292,505 

Ivanov, Genera l Armii S. P.: 16-19, 22 

Jvanvo\'skoye: 193 

Izyum ' 139, 141 , 156-61, 173, 269-81, 310, 3 13, 

318,347 

Japan, 13, 16,20,48,78, 134,302,512 

Jashkul, 47 I 

Jodi, General der Artillerie Alfred: 4. 63,79-8 1,84. 

87, 129,363-65,377-78,4 13- 14,426,450,473, 

508 

J U PITER: 423 

K-Line ' 94, 96, 103-04, 130, 132, 134, 161 , 164-66, 

169-70, 175 

Kacha River: 106 

Kagalnik River: 360 

Kalach, 357-58, 360, 363, 382, 384, 393, 443 , 

471-74,479 

Kalinin: 37, 40 49- 50, 64-65, 67, 70, 73. 79-80, 88, 

93-94,308,329 

KalitV3 River: 344 

Kalugao 39, 95, 97, 99- 103, 122, 124-25, 140,398, 

400 

Kaluga, Major: 252 

Kamensk.Shaktinskiy: 346-47. 349-5 1. 359, 382. 

484-85,488,491 

Kaminski, Bronisla\': 216 
548 

Kandalaksh" 28.220.223-27.240.426 

Kardymovo: 213-14 

Karelia: 202n, 2 17, 224 

Karelia. Isthmus of: 34-35. 40. 220-2 1. 224. 226. 

409.4 12 

KARL: 309- 10. 316. 41 1 

Karmanovo: 404, 406 

Karpovka: 474 

Karpovka River: 387 

Karpovskaya Station: 496 

Kashira: 50. 53. 57-60 

Kaunas: 24 

Kazakov, General Annii M. I. : 326 

Keitel, Generalmajor Bodwin: 84, 87 

Keitel, Ge neralfeldmarschall Wilhelm: 80, 84, 148, 

290.340.347.4 13.420.450.508 

chief. OKW: 4. 86. 33 1. 337. 35 1. 504 

and List's resignation: 377 

and war in Finland: 225-26, 233 

Kemi : 228. 234 

Kempf, General der Panzcrnuppen Werner: 393 

Kerch : 105-08. 110- 12. 114 - 15. 262. 267-69. 

3 10- 12.3 14.320.370 

Kerch Peninsula: 42, 105, 109-13, 115- 16. 158, 

261-62.269.275.3 10.367 

Kerch Strait: 11 6-17.261.346.351.376.412 

Kestenga: 226-29.23 1-32.240.423-24 

Khalkula: 471 

Kharitonov, General Ley tenant F. M.: 486 

Kharko" : 33. 35. 40. 105. 141 . 156-59.214.239.246. 

269-75.278.28 1.293.307.3 10.316. 323.326. 

328-29.347.477.484.509.5 12 

Khersones, Cape: 320-21 

Kholm: 140. 143. 149. 151. 153-54. 173. 186-90. 

192, 194-95, 197.32 1,446,45 1 

Khoper Rive r: 363, 395, 459 

Khozin, General Leylcnant M. S.: 49, 137, 186, 197, 

255-58 

Khrushchev, Nikila S.: IS, 22, 25. 239, 270. 273. 

278-79,282,305.314,384.393 

Kiev: 5.14.29.32-34.42.60. 125.141.207.214 

Kinzel, Colonel Ebel"hard: 297 

Kirishi: 137. 139, 143.145.409.4 13-14,4 18 

Kirkenes: 228 

Kiro" : 123, 173, 178-79,212,241.244,246,249, 

252.342,406 

Kirponos. General Polkovnik M. P.: 8, 25 

KLAB/\UTERMANN : 424. 426 

Kleist, Generaloberst Ewa ld von 

and first Panzer Army: 51, 54-57, 159-60.318. 

349,360.371.375,378-80.453-54 

and First Panzer Group: 32-34 

and lzyum bulge: 159-60,276-78.280-82 

at NaJchik: 453 

and operations in the Caucasus: 37 1, 375, 379-8 1 

and retreat from ROSlOV: 5 1, 54-57 

Kletskaya: 353. 384-85, 442-43. 468 

K1in: 49, 52-53. 57-59, 6 1-62. 64, 66-67, 70. 73, 75, 

77,80.88,92.247 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Kluge. Gene ralfeldmarschall Guenther von: 30. 34. 

50, 52-53 

auempts LO close Kirov gap: 178-8 1, 184-85 

and HANNOVER: 242, 244, 246. 248. 250 

receives Operations Order No.5: 5 10 

and retreat to K-Line: 161 -64, 166-67. 169. 

171 -72 

and Rzhe,,-Sychevk.a operation: 402-05. 407, 509 

and SEYDLlTL: 242. 250 

and Soviet counteroffensive. December 1941 : 

62-63, 68. 73. 76, 78-79, 82-83, 85-87, 94, 

96- 104, 11 9. 122, 127- 129, 13 1-32, 134 

and Soviet offensive. J anuary 1942: 127-29, 

13 1-32, 134 

on Soviet partisan warfare: 2 12 

Klukhorskiy Pass: 372-74. 376 

Klykov, General Ley tenant N. K.: 145 

Koelll: 430 

Koenigsberg: 24 

KOENIGSBERG Line: See K-Line. 

Kola Peninsula: 234 

Kolomna: 60 

KoLTSO: 484-85, 496-98, 501-02 

Ko nev. General Polkovnik Ivan: 36-37,49.62,65.90. 

92, 125, 149, 169, 185,398, 400 

KonOlop: 34 

Konrad, General del' Gebirgstruppe Rudolph: 377 

KOIlSlanunovskiy: 35 1. 354,357 

Korneichuk, Alexander: 436 

Korocha River: 336 

Korotoyak: 323, 339 

Kostenko, General Leytenam F. Va.: J41 

Kotelnikovo: 382,472.476,478-79.485,492-93 

Kotlin Island: 411 

Kotluban : 395 

Kovpak, S. A.: 202n 

Kozlov, General Ley tenant D. T.: 105. 108-09, 141 , 

26 1,263,265-66,269,39 1 

Krasnaya Polyana: 53, 57, 60, 63, 65, 67, 117 

Krasniy KavJrm.: 110- 11 

Krastliy Krim: 11 0 

Krasnodar: 307. 367.37 1-72.493 

Krasnograd: 9 1, 275 

Krasny Oktyabr metallurgical works: 390,394.396 

Krasny Sulin: 360 

Kremenchug: 34 

Kremenskaya : 357, 385, 395 

KREML: 328-30,342.400 

Krivoy Rog: 141 

Kromiadi, Colonel Konstamin : 244 

Kronshtadt: 411 

KropOlkin: 370 

Kruchenkin, General Mayor V. D.: 363 

Krulev, A. V.: 150 

Krymsk: 373-74 

Krymskiye Gory: 108. 112 

Krysl)'nopol : 24 

Kshell River: 333-34 

Kuban Ri"er: 307, 362. 366, 370-73 . 375, 379 
INDEX 

KuberJe River: 494 

Kuebler, General cler Gebirgsrruppe Ludwig: 100-

103, 127, 163 

Kuechler. GeneralfeidmarschaJl Georg von: 32, 264, 

421 

and BR U ECKENSCHLAG: 192- 93, 195, 19', 409 

and MOORBRANO: 411 - 12 

and NORDLICHT: 413-15, 417-19, 427 

promoted to Generaifeldmarschall: 259 

and S CHLI NGPLANZE: 411-15 

and Soviet counteroffensive. winter 1941-1942: 

143, 148-49, 151-52, 188, 19 1-93, 195-97 

and Volkhov pocket: 257-59 

Kuibyshev: 39 

Kumskiy: 482 

Kundryuchya River: 355 

Kuporosnoye: 392 

Kupyansk: 3 13-14, 3 18 

Kurochkin, General Ley tenant P. A.: 36, 140, 147, 

149, 152-53, 186, 194,255 

Kursk: 36, 50, 70, 74, 76, 80, 94, 96, 101 , 105, 122, 

141 , 147, 149, 152-53, 156,240,249,255,287, 

307, 322-23, 326, 332, 336, 342, 509- 10, 

512- 13 

Kutuzov, Mikhail: 41 , 435 

Kuznets Basin: 514 

KuzneLSov, Admiral N. G.: 7, 25 

Kuznetsov, General Polkovnik F. I.: 8, 25, 32, 59-60, 

62,66,486 

UCHSFANG: 426-27 

Ladoga, Lake: 7, 32, 35-36, 40-42, 44, 46, 57, 

136-37, 139, 143, 150, 220-26, 283, 286, 408, 

411, 425-26, 446 

Lama River: 49, 80, 82, 91-93, 103, 130, 165-66 

Lammers, Hans: 504 

Lanz, Generalrnajor Hubert: 381 

Lascar, General Mihail: 471 

Lavansaari: 190, 195 

"Lazur" chemical plant: 390. 465 

Leeb, Generalfe ldmarschall Wilhelm von: 5, 40, 

42-43, 45 ,57,6 1, 71,80-8 1, 145, 147-48,151, 

155 

Lelyushenko, General Leytenanl D. D.: 57, 88, 486 

Lend-lease to U.S.S.R.: 3.11-12,39,41-42,349,5 15 

Lenin, V. 1.: 8, 306, 36 1- 62 

Leningrad 

baltle for: 29, 32, 34-37, 40- 42, 45-46, 57, 69, 

80-81, 134-37, 139- 40, 143-45, 147, 149-50, 

152-53, 186, 189, 196- 97, 224- 26, 238, 240, 

257,286,302,359,405,408-09 

as a German objective: 5, 7. 14 , 28-29.34,37, 54, 

61,87, 286-87, 303, 411-15, 419, 425-27, 

451-52,455,511,515 

and Soviet strategy: 416, 455 

Lesken River: 454 

Levashev, General Mayor A. F.: 164, 170 

Lgov: 240 

Liberation, Russian Army of: 259 

Liebenslein, Lt. Col. Kurt von: 46 

549 

Lindemann, General der Kavallerie Georg: 189, 191 , 

257-59,414,418-19 

Lipkan: 8 

Lisichansk: 346 

List, GeneralfeldmarschaU WLihelm: 291. 322, 324, 

338, 345-46, 353-55, 360, 362-64 , 370-71, 

373, 375-78 

Litsa River: 423-24 

Uvny: 65, 74, 94-95, 97, 99 

Lizyukov, General Mayor A. I.: 154,342-44 

Loehr, Generalobersl Alexander: 275 

Lofoten Islands: 23 1 

Logistics, German. See also Air strength, German; 

Armor strength, German; Railroads; Roads; individual items by name. 

materiel strength: 7, 86, 293-97, 406, 479 

shortages 

ammunition: 74, 91 , 116, 126, 133, 145, 149. 

268,293,295,325,359,363,382,499 

clothing: 45, 55, 91,120 

food: 91,133, 145,149,171,496,499 

fuel: 74,87,9 1, 133, 149,293,359-60,362-63, 

370,374- 75, 382,474 

supply operations: 91, 154, 164, 188,284,328,362, 

412,474,478,488-90,497, 500 

supply operations, ground: 33, 73, 77, 91, 120, 131, 

408, 478-83 

war production: 15. 39, 284-85, 293-96, 300. 

504-05,514-15 

Logistics, Soviel. See also Air strength, Soviet; Armor 

strength, Soviet; Artillery strength, Soviet; Railroads; Roads; individual items by name. 

materiel strength: 12- 13,47,135,50 ],515 

shortages 

ammunition: 149,300,320,50 1 

food: 136, 149,320 

fuel: 149 

weapons: 145 

supply operations: 136, 145, 150, 170,320,408 

war production: 11-12, 15,39, 135, 299- 300,440, 

515 

LokhviLSa: 34 

Lokol: 216 

London: 304, 307 

Lopatin, General Leytenam A. I.: 393 

Loukhi: 220-24, 227 

Loval River: 147, 153, 188, 192-93, 195, 197,421-22 

Lozovaya: 159 

Lozovenka: 282 

Lublin: 24 

Luchesa River: 485-86 

Ludendorff, General de r Infanterie Erich: 473 

Luet;ww: 236, 428 

Luftwaffe: 3, 6, 54,70, 77, 102, 120, 129, 164, 170, 

180, 188-91, 193, 195-96,236,246,264, 275, 

278,318,359, 421-22, 425,431 , 463. See also Air 

Force, German. 

Luga: 32, 140, 153 

Luga River: 150 

L\'ov: 28 
550 

L..,ov, General Ley tenant V. H.: 108 

Lyuban: 145, 153, 186-94, 197.409 

Machine guns, German: 120.228. 294,300 

Machine guns, Soviet: 11,21,106,300,441,501 

Mackensen, General der Ka\l!lIerie Eberhard von: 55, 

159-60 

Main Administration of Political Propaganda of the 

Anny: 201 

Main Political Administration: 9- 10 

Main Political Directorate: 269 

Makhachkala: 370-7 1,374,380 

Malenkov, G. M.: 29, 190,279,384 

Malgobck: 379 

Malinovskiy, General Ley tenant R. Va.: 141, 156-58, 

278,325,370,391,490,507 

MaJo)'arosJavclS: 127-28, 13 1, 161 

Mamai Hill: 390-94, 396, 458, 499 

Manich Rh'ec 360, 362, 492, 495-96 

Mannerheim. Marshal Carl: 7, 10,40,221 ,223-26. 

228,232,291,293, 409,415,424, 426-27,505 

Manpower, German: 15,276,284-85.294, 44B. See 

also Troop strength, German. 

Manpower, Soviet: 15,28,31,47-48. 135, 139, 145, 

296-97,361,447,514. Su also Troop sLrength, 

Soviet. 

Manslein, General der Infamerie Fritz·Erich von: 42. 

351,426 

and auack on StaJingrad: 473, 475-76, 479-83 , 

485, 488-99 

allacks toward Feodosiya and Kerch: 108-09, 112. 

115- 17, 156-58 

leads Army Group Don to Belgorod: 509-10 

and NOROLICHT: 414-15, 418- 23, 451 

rumored to replace Jodl: 84 

al Se"aslopoi: 106-08, 112-13, 115, 3 10-11, 

314-16,318-21 

and TAUBENSCHLAG: 452, 456 

and TRAPPENJAGO: 262-67. 269 

Mariupol: 55, 159,493 

MARS: 445-47, 485-86, 512 

Marshall, General George C.: 304 

Marty : 196 

Maslennikov, General Leylenallt I. I.: 94, 370 

MatenkJou, Generalleutnam Franz: 113. 266 

Matel;el. Set! Logistics, German; Logistics, Soviet. 

Malerna. General der Infanterie Friedrich: 127 

Matsulenko, General Mayor V. A.: 446 

Mauenvald: 4 

Maxi,n Gorki): 196 

M.ykop:44-46,286,35 1,358,365-66,370-74,380 

Mediterranean Sea: 431 

Mekenzlyevy Gory: 108 

Mekhlis, L. Z.: 9, 145,201,2 17,261,265-66,269 

Melilopol: 35, 139, 141 , 156, 159 

Memel: 24 

Meretskov, General Armii Kiril: 16- l i. 443 

commands Volkov FrO'lt: 137. 139. 145-46, 150. 

153, 186,189-90,197,255-56,258-59,4 16-20 

offensive to break Leningrad blockade: 416-20 

MOSCOW TO STALlNGRAD 

Meretskov, General Annii Kiril-Continued 

offensive at iikhvin: 51. 7 1 

offensive, wimer 1941-1942: 137, 139, 145-46. 

150, 153, 186, 189-90, 197 

and push tmvard Lyuban: 188-89 

reinforces Stco"d Shock Army: 255-56 

Meshkovskaya: 346, 351 

Mga: 416-18 

Mikhaylov: 67, 70, 73 

MiJch, Generalfeldmarschall Erhard: 497 

Military Council, Soviet: 239, 270, 278-79 

Military Districts. Soviet: 8, 12, 18- 19, 23. Ste also 

Fronts, Soviet. 

Ballic Sptcial: 8 

Kiulrkov: 21 

Kiev Special: 8, 16 

u'lillp;rad: 8. 226 

Moscow: 8 

North Caucasus: 2 I 

DiU".: 8 

Ural: 21 

Volga: 21 

Westen! Special: 8, 21 

Millerovo: 289, 328, 346-47, 349, 355, 359, 363, 

484-85,492,496 

Minefields, Soviet: 406, 420 

Minkulino-Gorodishche: 64 

Minsk: 5, 27-28, 30. 206 

Mishkova River: 482-83. 488 

MillS River: 54-55,57,68,353-54,509 

Mobilization, Soviet: 8, 18- 19, 23, 28, 30, 105, 324 

Model, General der Panzertruppen Walter: 166-69, 

183-85,250,403,405,407 

Moelders, Colonel Werner: 54 

Mogilev: 21, 28 

Moloko\'o: 342 

Molotov, Vyacheslav M.: 7-8,25,29,304.307 

MohoolSy: 153 

MOORBRA ND: 411-12 

Morale 

German: 73, 77, 92.102,161,166, 176,223 

Soviet: 90, 135. 138, 212, 354, 418 

Morocco: 513 

Morozovsk: 347, 351, 354-55, 485, 488-94 

Mortars, German: 139,300, 309 

M0I1ars, Soviet: II. 13. 47.145.262,30 1,416,446, 

501 

Mosalsk: 404 

Moscow: 5, 14, 16, 23, 29, 34, 90. See also under 

Railroads. 

battle for: 36-46.47-68,69-71,88 

and German strategy: 29. 33, 44. 50, 52, 55, 57, 

175 ,24 1,255,298.302-03,3 14, 329-30,398, 

400,404,435,443.465 

Military Dislrict: 8 

and panisans: 208, 210 

resumes presiege SL:1.lUS: 135 

and &Mel s"""'SY: 16,23, 47,49,57-59, 64, 74, 105, 

125, 134, 137, 139-40, 238-39, 302-03, 307-08, 

326,34 1-42,352,443,455,506,512-15 
INDEX 

Moscow River: 50 

Moscow-Volga Canal: 50, 53, 57-60, 62, 65, 70 

Moskalenko. General Mayor K. S.: 141,270-71 ,275, 

363.384-85.391.393. 438.484 

Motor vehicles, German: 7,45. 113, 120, 177,285. 

293.295.328 

MOtor \·ehides. Soviet: 12, 70 

~lozdok, 374-75.377.379.454 

Mozhay,k, 30. 32. 37-39. 307 

MlSen,k, 37.40.90.122.326 

Mud, 40.116-17.177.183. 194.244-45.267.3 14 

Munich: 43. 457 

Munitio ns Ministry: 83 

Murman Coast: 236 

Murmansk: 3, 7, 28, 36. 43-44, 220, 223-28, 

233-34.236.298.4 12- 13.420.426 

Mussolini. BenilO: 290-9 1, 293, 298-99, 505 

NKVD, 10.53.199.201.203.212-15.217.372-73. 

384 

NKVD 0.0., 10. 151 .215 

Nalchik' 453-54 

Napoleon: 4 1, 292, 435n, 5 15 

Nara River : 97 

Nan'<l Ri\'er: 5 11-1 2 

Narvik, 231. 233. 32 1 

Nasyr line: 262, 267-68 

Navy, British: 231, 236, 296. 428-30 

Navy. German: 4, 6-7, 233-37, 29 1, 296. 425, 

427-31 

Navy. sovi." 8.105.107-08.110-11.190.196.320. 

358.365.426 

Navy. U.S., 296.428.5 13 

Navy High Command. See Oberkommando de.,.. 

Kriegsmnri1ll!. 

Nelidovo: 24 1 

Neva River: 35,143,408.4 16,419,422 

Nevskiy, Alexander: 41, 432, 435 

New7noz)mik: I 10 

Nikola)'cv: 141 ,269 

NikoJa)'evskaya: 357 

Nikopo1: 141 

Nizhne Chirskaya: 358, 473 

NORDLICHT: 409-18. 420, 423. 427, 45 1 

NOROI>OL: 241-42 

No"h Afric", 4. 303. 319. 338. 430. 457. 478-79. 

505.5 13 

North Cape: 428-29 

Norway, 7.223.228.231.233-37.291-92.299.418. 

423-24.428.430 

Noshevalovo: 193 

Novaya Kalil''3.: 287, 343-45, 446, 484, 486 

Novgorod: 139, 143, 145, 19 1 

Novikov, General Ley tenant A. A.: 385, 507 

Novo Sokolnik.i: 445 

Nomchcrkassk: 498 

Novokhopersk: 326 

No\'o!'Ossiysk: 106, 108, 32 1, 35 1, 367, 372-74. 

376-79.452.493 

Novosi1: 74,94-95,99 

Novosnninskiy: 326 

Novyy Oskol: 336 

OKH. Su Oberlwmmando tUS Hteres, 

OKL. Su Obtrkomrrumdo d£r Luftwaffe. 

OKM. Su Oberkommando d£r Kritgsmari11t. 

55 1 

OKW. See Oberkomrruwdo d£r Wehrmacht. 

Oberkommando des Hurts (OK H): 54, 324, 375, 

378-81.417-18.494.508 

and baltle for Moscow: 51, 6 1, 63, 69 

and BRUECKENSCHLAG: 192, 194-95 

and campaign, spring.summer 1942: 272, 275, 

285-87.293-94. 296.298.310.3 16.3 18.32 1. 

329. 33 1. 339-40. 344-47. 35 1. 360. 37 1. 

414-15.421 

and campaign, winter 1941- 1942: 73-74, 77, 90, 

98-99.101. 120. 131-32.134. 155. 161.180.185 

and Directive 45: 37 1 

early strategy: 7, 14 ,34,42-45 

and Finnish Anny: 220, 415, 420, 427 

and Hill." 33. 80-8 1. 83-84. 86-87. 99. 176. 190. 

285. 457 

and Leningrad: 69,4 11 , 416-17 

Operations Branch: 80, 173,354,4 11 

Organizational Branch: 322, 327, 447 

and RAUBTIER: 190, 194, 197 

and retreat to RzhC\'·GzhalSk-Orel·Kursk line: 76, 

80 

!'Ole: 4. 7, 84, 450 

and Soviet partisans: 208,218 

and slalingrad, 354. 362. 382. 385. 388. 460. 464. 

467.474-75.480.482-83. 488.499 

and war in the Crimea: 190,26 1, 263 

ObtrkmmTumdo tier KriegS1Mrine (OKM): 4 

ObtrJwmmando tier Luftwafft (OKL): 4,6-7,264 

Obtrkommando der Wthnnacht (OKW): 63, 3 19, 364, 

479 

Al'med Forces Operations Staff: 44, 79, 129, 287, 

310.377.4 13.450.473 

Chie[ 4. 84. 86. 148.290.337.35 1.413.450 

and Hitler: 83, 87, 378 

intelligence organization (Abwehr): 244 

Operations Branch : 8 1 

Operations Staff: 4, 79, 129,363,377,450,473 

and partisans: 209 

plans. spling 1942: 293, 296, 423-24 

role' 4. 7. 73. 83-84. 208-09. 378. 508 

'''''legy' 33. 22 1. 236. 33 1. 342. 426. 457. 504 

and war in Finland : 7, 39, 222-25, 232 

Oboyan: 105 

Obozerska)'3.: 224 

Obsha Ri,'er: 250-5 1 

October Revolution: 196 

Odess", 3. 33. 106. 14 I. 206 

Oil. Soviec 16. 43-44 . 287. 298-99. 352. 358. 366. 

371.515 

Oka Rive" 40. 50. 60. 86. 95-10 I. 123. 128. 307 

Oktyab"kiy. Admi ... 1 F. 5.,105-06.108.3 11.320 

Olenino: 176, 184-85. 241, 250 

Olonets. Isthmus of: 220 
552 

Olym River: 336 

Onega, Lake: 35, 42, 139, 226 

Operations Orders. Su also Fuehrer Directives. 

I: 450-54,473-74,508 

2: 490-93 

5: 510 

Opuk, Cape: 108, 110 

Oranienbaum: 143. 408-09, 411 

Ordzhonikidze: 373, 375, 379-80, 454 

Orel: 37, 50, 73-74, 94-98,101,122,141,156,179, 

240,326,332,342,344,398,404,443-44,457 

ORKAN: 398-400 

Orlo\': 28 

Orlov, Lieutenant Colonel: 252 

Orlovka: 392-93, 396, 460 

Orsha: 43-44, 48, 206, 244, 285. 296 

Oshima, General Hirosi: 286 

Osintorf: 244 

Oskol River: 313. 3 18. 333, 337, 339 

Osselian MiJilary Road: 358, 371,454 

Ostashkov: 36, 49, 130-31, 140, 143, 147, 176, 

183-86,189, 192, 241 ,255,398,411 , 421 

Ostrogozhzk: 339-40 

Otradnoye: 416 

Pacific Ocean: 78. 134, 233. 513 

Panjt wagons: 40, 177 

Panshirskiy: 443 

Panzer Abteilung 300: 309 

Panzer annies. See under Armies. German. 

Panzer groups: 3, 5-6. See also «ruler Armies. German; 

Corps, German; Divisions. German. 

Pa11UTschrtck : 195 

Parpach, Isthmus of: 109-10, 112-14,261-63,266. 

268-69 

Partisans, Soviet: 29, 37,108, 123, 163-64, 173,178, 

182.199- 219,241-49,252-54,330,434-35. See 

also Antipartisan operations, German. 

Paulus, General del' Panzertruppen Friedrich: 3 16 

and BLAu : 328, 332, 337, 339-40 

and !.he hyUln bulge: 158, 160,273,275,282 

moves toward Stalingrad: 354-55, 357, 360, 363, 

382 

and Stalingrad : 382, 384-88, 39 1-97, 458-60, 

462- 68, 470, 473-76, 479, 482-83, 488-92, 

496- 97,499-502,504-05,508 

Pavlov, General Annii O. C.: 8, 25 

Pavlovsk: 351, 353, 363 

Pearl Harbor: 78, 513 

Pechenga: 220,223,231,234,423-24 

Peipus, Lake: 435, 511 

People's Commissariat of Defense: 7- 8, 17- 18, 23, 

302, 506 

People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. See NKVO. 

People's Commissariat of the Navy: 7 

Perekop: 71 , 141 

Peremyshl: 97, 100 

Persian Gulf: 426 

Pervomaysk: 32-33. 269 

Pcrvllshin. General Ley tenant A. N.: 108 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Pcschanka: 391 

Peskovatka: 384-85 

Petrov, General Leytenanll. E.: 106,311,321, 38 1 

Petrovskoye: 281-82, 365 

Pitomnik: 387, 497 

Plava River: 95-96 

Pog"'~'e: 190, 194, 409,411 ,4 14,418 

Poland : 12, 123, 135, 177,212,272,511 

Polist River: 155 

poritlm,.: 9, 16,23, 137, 190, 194,434.465 

Pollava: 55-57, 155-56,2 14,293,3 16,324,33 1, 337 

Ponomarenko, P. K.: 216- 17 

Popasnaya: 343 

Popov, General Leytenalll M. M.: 8, 32 

Popov, General Mayor V. 5.: 8, 97 

Porsche, Dr. Ferdinand: 87 

Potapov, General Mayor M. I. : 32 

Potemkinskaya: 492 

Prinz Eugen: 233-34, 236, 29 1 

Pripyal Marshes: 5,14,16-17.202 

Pripyat River: 8 

Prisoners of war 

German: 501 

Soviel: 27, 32, 34, 37,152,252,269,316,3 18,330, 

344,348-49,356,423,448,462,486 

Production. See Logistics, German; Logistics. Soviet. 

Prolyetarskaya: 362, 496 

Propaganda 

Cennan: 22,39,251-52,259,504 

Soviet: 201 

Propaganda Ministry, German: 39 

Protopopovka: 281 

Protva Ri\'er: 52, 103 

Pskov: 28, 148,153,4 18 

PudOli: 203-04 

Purka)'ev, General Leytenalll M. A.: 148 

Pushkin: 414 

Pya Lake: 229 

Radio 

German: 70, 118,243,501 

Soviet: 12, 14, 145, 151 , 444,457 

Raeder. Grossadmiral Erich : 4, 6-7, 233, 235. 428-30 

Railroads: 12, 14,41 , 43,45,123, 147,1 52.156,170. 

184,302,483 

Klin·Kalinin: 73 

KJin·Moscow: 53 

Kropotkin.Anna\'ir: 370 

Kursk-Orel: 80, 95, 122 

Kursk-Voronezh: 336 

Leningrad.Lyuban-Chudovo: 186 

Mga-Volkhov: 416. 418 

Millerovo- Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy: 359 

Moscow belt: 70 

Moscow·Leningrad: 145. 150 

Moscow·Rz.hev: 93 

Moscow·Smolensk: 124 

Murmansk (Kirov): 7. 36, 220, 224-25, 227-28, 

234,302,412-13,420, 426 

NovgoJ"(xi·Chudovo: 191 
INDEX 

Railroads-Continued 

Rastenburg·Angerburg: 4 

Rossosh-Millero\'o: 491 

Salsk-Stalingrad: 355 

Slalingrad region : 387, 391, 464 

Sukhinichi-Kaluga: 102 

through likhvin: 136 

Vologda-Tikhvin: 57 

Vyazma-Kaluga: 124 

Vyazma-Kiro\': 244 

Vyazma-Moscow: 124 

Vyazma-Rzhev, 124, 132-33, 168 

Vyazma-Smolcnsk: ) 40, 241 

Vyazma-Sychc"ka: 185 

Ramushcvo: 195 

Raspulil"" 13, 40-43, 177, 179, 181-86, 194-95, 

197-98,24 1,264,272,286 

Rastenburg: 5, 337, 351 

RAUBTIER: 190-94 

Razgulya)'evka Station: 392-93 

Readiness. German combat: 294, 327-28 

Readiness. Soviet combat: 17, 20-23, 49 

Red)'3 Rh"er: 193 

Regiments, German 

Brandenburg: 228 

78th Infantry: 102 

J93d Infantry: 223 

288th Infantry: 223 

430th Infantry: 408 

Regiments, Soviet 

Kaillga: 501 

"Law" Pariuml: 246 

Orlov: 254 

"ZJw.bo" Partisan: 243. 245 

194th Gre"adier: 501 

Reich commissariats: 208. 212 

Reichel. Major Joachim: 330-32. 336, 339, 342 

Reichenau, Generalfeldmarschall Walter \1)11: 32, 55. 

115, 155,218 

Reinhardt. Generaloberst Hans: 49, 53, 62-63. 65, 

67-68,73,82,92,101,103,119,131-33,165 

Remontnaya: 355, 362, 382 

Replacements. German: 59, 83, 171. 176, 283. 285, 

294, 303 

Replacements, Soviet: 21, 28, 34, 48-49, 62, 139, 176, 

235. See also ullder Stavka. 

Reval: 418 

RHEINGOLD: 120 

Richthofen, General der Flieger Wolfgang von: 

130-3 1, 264, 266, 275, 375, 38 1, 388, 4 15, 

463-64,477,479,488 

Riga: 28, 152 

Ritchie, Lieutenant General Neil M .: 338 

River crossings: 14 

Roads: 13- 14 ,40, 118. 413,462.SeealsoRolibahn. 

Dukhovshchina-Belyy: 241 

Kharkov-Izyum: 272 

Kholm-Demyansk: 148 

Moscow-Smolensk: 124 

Moscow-Warsaw: 170 

Roads-Continued 

Novgorod-Chudovo: 191 

Orel-Tula: 96 

Smolensk-Moscow: 49, 62, 124 

5pas-Demensk-Sukhinichi: 178 

5taraya Russa-Demyansk: 147- 48. 193 

Volchansk-Kharkov: 275 

Vyazma-Moscow: 124 

Yukhnov·Ghatsk: 163. 180 

Rodimtsev. Gcneral Mayor A. I. : 394 

Rognedino: 254 

553 

Rokossovskiy, General Ley tenant Konstantin : 57. 70, 

166, 343 ,396, 437,442-43,485,496-99,507 

Rollbah,,, 128-29, 133, 161-63, 169-70, 173, 

178-80,241-42,247-48 

Romanenko. General Leytenam P. L. : 443 

Romny: 34 

Roosevelt. Franklin D. : 3, 304, 432 

Roslavl: 79,96,212,241, 247 

Rossosh: 344. 491 

Rossoshka: 498 

Rossoshka River: 497 

Rosto\' 

German campaign for: 44. 61, 69, 105. 286-87. 

303,324, 347, 35 1, 353-56, 358, 360, 362-63, 

366,37 1,405,455-56,484-85,492 

Soviet offensive at: 49, 51, 54-55. 57. 65-66, 134, 

307,465,493-94,498 

Rotkopfammunition: 92, 100, 126. 165, 195.268 

Rovaniemi: 225 

Rovno: 28, 272 

Rudnya ' 140, 170 

Rugozero: 224 

Rumania: 4-5, 16, 286. 290, 505 

Rumanian forces: 4-5, 7, )07, 11 6, 156.26 1-62,266. 

282,286, 290,3 12,365,371 ,376,395,443,446, 

459.478,483,486-89.49 1,505. See also Armies. 

Rumanian. 

Rundstedl. Ceneralfeldmarschall Cerd m n: 5,43.45. 

54-55,61,87, 155 

Ruoff, General der InfanlCric Richard: 131 , 165. 171 . 

353-55,360,371,373,375,378-79,381 

Russian Army of Liberation: 259 

Ruza River: 80, 82. 92, 165-66 

Ryabyshev. General Leytenam D. I. : 156.270 

Ryazan: 37, 50. 60. 73, 464 

Rybachiy Peninsula: 223.423-24 

Rybinsk: 42, 44. 50 

Rynok,390, 458-59, 464 , 468 

Ryti, Risto: 226 

Rzh,," 90, 93-94, 102,122, 124, 130-34, 140, 161, 

166-71, 175-76, 184-85, 239- 41 , 243, 398, 

400-407,4 13,445,485,509 

Rzhev-Czhatsk-Orel-Kursk Line: 76, 78. 80, 94. 96. 

See also K-Line. 

5abumv, A. N.: 20211 

51. Nal .. , ire: 291 

Sl. Pelersburg: 515 

Sal River: 355, 357, 492. 494 
554 

Sail" 220, 223 

Sa1sk, 362, 366, 492-94, 496 

Salzburg: 29 1, 293, 457 

San River: 16 

Sancharo Pass: 374,376 

Sapun Heights: 318-20 

SaralOv: 308, 326, 444 

Sal'<lyev, NKVD Colonel A. A.: 384 

SATuRN'484-88,493,496,512 

Scandinavia: 4, 220 

ScharFIhorst: 233, 29 1 

Seh"" 234,428,430 

Scherer, Gcneralmajor 111codor: 188-89, 194 

Schlidfcn, Genera lfeldmarschall Alfred Graf mn: 

510- 11 

SCHLlNCPFLANZE: 411 - t 5, 42 1 

Schluesselburg: 35, 40, 143 

Schmidl, General def Panzenruppen Rudolf: 404 

and attack o n Stalin grad: 464-65, 468, 483 

and Soviet counteroffensive, December 1941: 67. 

74,80,94-96,99- 102,122-23, 164, 178-79 

Schmundt. Generalmajor Rudolf: 79,81-83,86-87, 

128, 155,331,337,348,403, 418,449-50,508, 

510 

Schniewind, Generaladmiral OtlO: 428 

Schobert, Generaloberst Franz Ritter von: 33,42 

Schoerner, General1cUlnanl Ferdinand: 223, 231 

Schulz. Generalmajor Friedrich: 483 

Scylla, 430 

Second from on lhe Cominem: 39. 4 1. 304-05 

Security troops. Gennan: 10. 171. 207-09, 252 

Seiskari: 190 

Serafimovich, 353, 357-58, 395, 456, 468, 472 

Sergcyev-Tsenskiy. Sergey: 433 

Serpukho\': 50, 52 

SevaslOpo1, 3, 42, 105-09, 113, 11 5-16, 141, 262, 

309-12 ,3 14,317,3 19-21,4 11 ,4 14-15 

Sevaslopol Defmse Region: 106,26 1-62,3 11 .321 

Severnaya Bay: 106-08,3 10,316,318-19 

Sevsk: 140-41 

SEYOLITZ,242-43,249-52,398 

Seyd litz-Kurzbach, Gene ralmajor Walter vo n : 

192-95,197,391-94,462,467-68,474,476 

Shaposhnikov, Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Boris: 

15-16, 30, 34, 137-38, 197, 238-40, 270, 437, 

443 

Shat River: 65, 95 

Shaumyan: 380-81, 452 

Shaumyan: 110 

Shchigry' 326, 332-33 

Shkredo, R. v., 203 

Shmyrcv, Mihay FiJipovich : 202-03 

Shmy"" Otryad, 202-05, 214- 15 

Sholokhov, Mikhail: 433 

Shortages. See Logistics. German ; Logistics, Soviet. 

Shpagin, G. 5., 441 

Shtemenko, General Armii Sergei M.: 265,282.436. 

5 12 

Siberia: 514 

SIECFRIED: 287 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Signal communications, Soviet: 12 

Siilas\,uo, Kenraalimajuri ('"Major General") H.: 221. 

229-32, 424 

Simferopol: I I 1- 12, 116. 141 

Simonov. Konstamin: 433 

Sinyavino Heights: 4 16. 418-19 

Sirotinskaya: 357,385.395 

Ski trOOps, Soviet: 148. 188,227-30 

Slavyansk, 158-59,269,493 

SLEDCEHAMMER: 423 

Sloboda monastery: 181 

Slovakia: 4 

Smo1ensk, 5, 16,29-30,32-33,35,49,62,78-79,88, 

94, 100, 124, 130, 132, 140-41 , 169-70, 182, 

208,212,2 14-15,240-42,249,403,405,455 

Sodenstern, Generalmajor George von: 45, 54. 

464-65, 468 

Sokolov. Colonel S. V.: 170 

SokoIO\'O: 2 13 

Sokolovskiy, Marshal V. D.: 22, 59n, 62. 64, 209 

Solnechnogorsk,53,57,61,66,88,92 

Sorge, Richard: 23. 48 

Sosna River: 333 

Sovelskiy: 474 

Spanish fotces: 303n 

Spanakovka,390, 459-60, 462,464,468 

Spas-Demcnsk, 16 1-63, 169, 178,242,244 

Spaskaya Polis" 150, 153, 188 

Speer, A1bc", 284,292,504 

Spitzbe,·gen, 236, 428, 430 

Sponeck. Generalleutnant Graf Hans \'On: 112-1 5 

55 (Sehutzs"'iJ,l) force" 83, 102, 208-09, 223, 255 

Stalin, Joser, 8, 10, 15- 16,363,378, 416 

addressof3 July 194 1: 29 

address of 7 November 1941 : 4 1-42 

and batlle for Kiev: 33-34 

and BLAU : 326, 336, 342 

and British-American second front: 39, 135,434. 

503-04 

and convoys: 430 

and defense of Moscow: 49-5 1,54,61-63 

and defense of Stalingrad: 352, 382. 384. 387-88, 

391-92,394,458,484-85,493,503-04 

and his generals: 16- 18, 23, 30, 34, 65, 197, 

255-56,3 14,436-37,442,506-08,5 12 

and GKO: 29 

and Kharkov offensive: 270, 273. 278-80, 282 

leadership qualities: 30, 135. 138. 3 14, 506-08 

and lend-lease: II. 39, 42 

member. Council of People's Commissars: 7, 29 

and neutrality treaty with Japan: 20, 48, 78 

and Operation DON: 493 

Order No. 227 : 36 1 

and partisans: 29, 199,2 17 , 434 

plans strategy. spring 1942: 238-40,256,258,261. 

269-70,303,306-07,325 

policy of "Not a step back! ": 36 1,378.404, 432-33. 

465,503,506 

preinvasion strategy: 16-18,20-23,27 

principle of "stability of the rear": 516 
INDEX 

Stalin, Josef-Continued 

and the Reichel papers: 332 

and Stavka : 25, 30, 33, 65, 88, 261, 506 

as a strategist: 16- 18,49, 134-42, 154, 166. 197. 

270,273,299,352-53,456,493,507,5 11 ,516 

as supreme commander: 25-27. 30, 33, 154, 217. 

361, 437-38,506-08 

and total war economy: 299 

and URANUS: 441-42, 449. 458 

Stalin line: 21, 28, 32 

Staling.-ad: 308, 324, 326, 346, 364-65 

batLie far: 458-77, 478-502, 503-04, 506-09, 

511 - 14 

defensive battle begins: 352-57, 432. 438, 440-47, 

455-57 

German Army moves toward : 357-59, 362, 370, 

375-76,380,382-97,451-52 

Sta1ina: 40- 41 , 280, 324, 372, 377 

Stalinogorsk: 62, 88 

Staraya Russa: 30, 140, 143, 147-48. 151-55, 175. 

186, 192-93,409,413,451 

Staraya Russa.Bryansk line: 30 

Staritsa: 80, 93-94, 101-03, 130 

Starobelsk: 346 

Staryy Krim : 11 2 

Sta,1'Y Oska1: 323, 337, 339 

Stale Defense Committee. Set GKO. 

Stavka of the High Command: 8. 25, 28-30, 387. 416. 

5 J l. See also StavJra of the Supreme High 

Command. 

Stavka oCthe Supreme High Command: 35, 352, 5 12 

and BLAu: 320, 325-26, 334, 337, 34 1-43, 507 

and Bryanslt Front: 33-34,90 

and Caucasus: 367,370,373,38 1 

and counteroffensivc, winter 1941-1942: 6 1-62. 

65,67,88-90,97, 105, 108. 123, 137, 139-42, 

147,149,153,156,159,164, 166,170, 176, 180, 

182, 184-86, 188-89, 194 

and dcfense of Moscow: 49, 51, 54, 326, 398. 403 

early strategy: 30-32, 35-37, 42, 49 

field representatives: 153,261,343.363,373,385. 

437-38,465,484,496 

and general offensive, january-February 1942: 145, 

147,149, 153, 156,159,164,166,170,180,182, 

184-86. 188-90, 194 

and LeningTad : 408, 416 

and offensive, spring 1942 : 197,226.238-40,255, 

257-58,300,303,306-08,314 

reserves: 37,42, 47., 49, 57-60, 62, 88-90, 139, 

166, 176, 238, 270, 278, 302, 326, 334, 341, 

383-84,398,440,447,481,485 

role: 30-31. 35, 42 

and SATURN: 485, 496 

and Soviet General Staff: 30, 137 

and Stalin: 25,30,33.65,88.506 

and Stalingrad: 352-53, 445-46 

and war in the south: 105, 108, 261, 265. 268-70, 

275,278-79,370 

Steel: 39, 135,285,297,300,440,5 15 

555 

Stefiea, General Ilia: 290 

Stepanov. Anny Commissar Second Rank P. C.: 343 

STOERFANC: 3 10, 312, 314- 16. 3 18-21 

Strategic objectives, Gennan: Stt War aims, Gennan. 

Strategy, German: 3, 13- 15. Stt also under Hitler, 

Adolf: Obtrko11tTfUWdo des Hurts (OKH). 

Strategy, Soviet: 18-2 1.28. Stt also under Stalin, j osef; 

StavJw of the Supreme High Command. 

Strauss, Generaloberst Adolf: 32, 49, 79, 86. 93-94, 

101-03, 11 9, 130-34, 155, 166-67 

Strecker, General der Infanterie Karl: 501 

Stuelpnagel. Generaloberst Carl He inrich von: 32 

Stumpff, Generalobcrst Hans-juergen : 234, 236, 424, 

429 

Submarines: 234,236-37.428-30 

Sudak River: 370 

Sukhinichi: 10 1-02, 120, 122-23, 125, 128-29, 164, 

169, 173-75, 178-80,2 12,241,398,400,404, 

443-44,455,457 

Sukhumi: 37 1-74, 377 

Sultanovka line: 262, 268 

Sumy: 140-41 

Superior Special Purpose Staff 8: 324 

Supreme Command, Soviet: 30, 47, 138, 238, 306, 

308, 438, 446. Stt also Stalin, josef; StavM of the 

Supreme High Command. 

Surazh: 203-04, 214 

Suursaari: 189, 195 

Suvorov, Alexander: 4 1, 435 

Suwalki: 24 

Svir Ri''er: 35, 40, 44, 220-2 1, 224-25, 409, 427 

Svyatoye. Lake: 254 

Sweden : 233, 292 

Sychevb: 133-34, 140, 168, 171 , 184-85,250,398, 

400,402-04,407 

Syzran: 60. 67 

Tactics, German: 25. 33, 5 10- 11. See also Encirclement operations, German. 

Tactics, Soviet: 5 11-12. Stt also Encirclemcm opeldlions, Soviet. 

Taganrog: 54. 105,354-55 

Taganrog, Gulf of: 55 

TA<FUN: 34-46,67,88,508 

Talvela, Keneraaliluurnanti Paa\'O: 427 

Taman Peninsula: 107-09, 31 1, 35 1, 358, 376, 

511-12 

Tambov: 308, 326 

Tana Fiord: 23 1, 424 

Tank strength. Set Armor strength, German; Armor 

strength, Soviet. 

Tanks, German: 3, 7, 65, 91, 11 8,300,5 15. Su also 

Armor strength, German. 

effect of mud on: 40 

Pamher: 448 

Panzer I: 228 

Panzer II: I I 

Panzer III: II. 14, 300, 325 

Panzer IV: 11 ,300.325 
556 

Tanks. German-Continued 

Panzer VI (TIger): 325, 413, 417-19, 488, 491, 494 

Tanks, Soviet: 12,31 ,65,301-02,363,5 15. See also 

AmIoT strength, Soviet. 

KV (Kli""''' VoroshilQv): 11,13,32, 165,326 

T -34 (Stalin): II, 13,32,40,90,92, 126, 165, 190, 

195,259,300,326,44 1 

T -60: II, 300, 326 

T -70: 300 

Tarusa: 97 

Tatar Trench: 393 

"Tatar Wall": 262 

Tatsinskaya: 354, 485, 488-93, 498 

TAUBENSCHLAG: 451-52, 455 

Telegraph: 12 

Telephone: 12,77,169,200,444 

Terek River: 307, 370, 373-75, 377, 379-81, 454 

Temovaya: 275 

Teryaeva Sloboda: 61 

TIleaters, German 

Southeastern: 322 

Western: 4, 73, 77, 358, 375, 456 

Theaters, Soviet 

North Caucasus: 261, 30811, 311 

Northweslnn: 30 

Southwestem: 30, 35, 137, 141 , 156, 159,217,238. 

269-70,278,281,305,308,314,325 

Western: 30, 170,238, 308, 358 

Tigoda River: 150, 188 

Tikhaya Sosna River: 339-40, 346, 358, 360, 363-65, 

493 

TIkhoretsk: 358,360,363-65,493 

TIkhvin: 40-43, 46, 49, 51, 57, 68-71, 80-81, 105, 

134-36, 139-40, 143-45,224,465 

'lim River: 100. 122,333-34 

Timoshenko, Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Semen: 

7-8,24,34-36,49,65,443 

and BLAu: 325-26, 332 

and Dnepr·Ovina line: 29-30, 32 

and the Izyum bulge: 156,269-7 1, 275, 278-82 

and Kharkov offensive: 326 

plans strategy. spring 1942: 238-40, 269-71, 275, 

305, 314 

preinvasion strategy: 22-23 

and the Reichel papers: 332 

at Rostov: 51, 54, 65 

and Southwestenl Thtater: 35, 137, 141 . 156. 159 

and Soviet counteroffe nsive, winter 1941-1942: 

137,141,156,159 

and Stalin: 25, 314, 325, 332 

and Stalillgrad Front: 353,357 

Tirpitz: 233-35, 291, 428, 430 

Tobruk: 319 

Toot, Dr. Fritz: 284 

Tolbukhin. General Ley tenant F. I.: 470 

Tolstoy, Alexey: 433 

Top Lake: 228-29 

Toropets: 140, 143, 149, 167, 169-70, 212,214- 15, 

240-41,264,409,421,445,451,455 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Tractors, Soviet: 12 

Traegtrtod: 430 

TranscallC3SlIs: 49. 37 1. 434 

Transport Ministry: 83 

TRAPPENJAcn: 262-69 

TrekhoslfOVskaya: 385 

Trench warfare: 406. 444, 510 

Trondheim: 234-35.291 

Troop strength, German: 7.36,45,66-67, 107, 138. 

294,303,324,327,397,441,446-48,489 

Troop strength, Soviet: 12- 13, 21, 28, 36, 48-49, 

66-67, 106, 138, 145, 262, 273, 296, 301-03, 

308,326,416,440,446-47,514 

Trucks, American·buih: 12 

Trucks, Gennan: 85, 91,120,177,328,482 

Trucks, Soviet: 12, 136,464 

Trufanov, General Ley tenant N. I.: 470,472 

Tsaritsa River: 382, 387. 390-91. 393-94, 396, 500 

Tsimlyanskiy: 351, 353-55, 357, 360, 382, 492-93 

Tuapse:365,367,370-71,373-74,376-77,379-81, 

451-52,454,493 

Tukhachevskiy. Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza M. H.: 

10" 

Tula: 37, 40, 49-50, 53, 57, 62-63, 65, 67, 79-80, 

87-88,94-97, 124, 127, 135,308,326,329,332 

Turkey: 134,302,370 

Turkish Wall: 262. 268 

Tylarsaari: 190, 195 

Tyulenev. General Armii F. V.: 8. 33, 370, 434 

Uckermann. Generalmajor Horst von: 189-90, 198 

Udet. Generalobcrst Ernst: 54 

Ugra River: 180-8 1, 183,243-45 

Ukhta: 223, 228-29, 424 

Ukraine: 16,33,55, 158, 177,207,226,298,35 1, 

361,434 

U1yanovo: 404 

Uman: 32 

Unconventional warfare. See Partisans. Soviet. 

United States: 13, 20, 29, 39, 42, 78, 135, 222, 225, 

231,234, 304-05, 307, 349, 424 , 426, 504-05, 

513-15 

Unruh, General der Infanterie Walter von: 448 

U pa River: 62 

Ural Mountains: 21, 5 15 

URANUS: 442-47,458,464,468-72 

Urukh Rin~r: 454 

Urvan Ri\'er: 454 

Uzlovaya: 66 

Valdai Hills: 143 

Varro, Consul Terentills: 5 10- 11 

Vasilevskiy. Marshal A. M.: 142,506 

and BLAu: 326, 337, 341-42 

and Crimean FrmU: 262, 265-66. 268 

and defense of Stalingrad: 363, 382, 384-85. 394, 

441-45,465,484-85,493 

early strategy: 16-20, 22 

and the Izyum bulge: 270, 278-79, 281 
INDEX 

Vasilevskiy. Marshal A. M.-Cominued 

and Operation DON : 493 

and Soviet counteroffensive. December 1941 : 62, 

64-65 

Slr3tegy, spring 1942: 238, 240, 257-60, 303, 307 

and Zhukov; 437-38. 441-42, 444-45. 465, 

484-85, 506-07, 512 

Vasilievshchina: 193 

ValUlin, General N. F.: 22, 194, 343,442,484,494. 

507 

Vazuza River: 398, 400. 403 

Vel;k;ye Luki: 140,171 , 173,240,409,451 

Velizh: 140, 169-71,173 

Verkhneye Chernoye, Lake: 228 

Yerman River: 223, 227, 426 

Vertyach;y: 385-86, 443 

Veshenskaya: 483 

Velma River: 254 

Victcmous: 428 

Vietinghoff, General def Panzcnruppen HeinrichGottfried von: 250-52.402-03 

VinnilSa: 351, 355 

Vitebsk: 28, 203, 206, 214, 452 

Vilebsk Gale: 29-30 

Vladimir-Volynskiy: 24 

Vladislavovka: 112-14. 117 

Vladivostok: 298 

Vlasov, General LeytenaOl Andrei: 60, 190, 192. 

257-60 

VOGELSANG: 252-54 

Voibokalo Station: 136 

Volchansk: 270, 273, 275, 282, 310, 313, 316 

Volga Flotilla: 464 

Volga Reservoir: 50 

Volga River: 14, 42-44, 57, 60, 65, 67, 80, 93-94, 

130, 169, 288, 303, 307, 352-54, 357-59, 365, 

378,382,385-87,390,392,394,396,398,400, 

407,442-44,452,462,464-68,489,515 

Volkhov:57,80, 136, 188-9 1, 193-96,255,408,41 1, 

416,418 

Volkhov River: 34,42,80,137,139,143-45, 150-51, 

173, 175, 186, 189, 197,254-55,258-59,409, 

411,413-14,416 

VOlogda: 44-46,57,283.308 

Volokolamsk: 50,61,93, 101 -02, 127, 166 

Voronezh: 61, 287, 290, 307, 322-26, 333, 336- 37, 

339-48,407,437,456,483 

VoronO\'. General Polkovnik Nikola i: 443, 484. 496. 

507 

Voroponovo Station: 388. 391. 496-99 

Voroshilo\', Marshal Soveukogo Soyuza Kliment: 7, 

25,29, 153, 186, 190,434 

VomshiJovgrad: 323, 353, 484. 488 

Voroshilovsk: 307, 365, 375 

Varya River: 404, 406 

Voznesenskiy. Nikolai: f38 

Vskhody: 244 

Vyazma: 37, 77, 90, 124-25, 132-34, 140, 163-64, 

557 

Vyazma-Continued 

167-71 , 176, 180-82, 184-85, 212, 239-42, 

244, 297 

Vysochanovka: 346 

Vylegra: 42 

Wagons. See Panje wagons. 

WALKUERE: 120. 171, 177 

War aims, Gemlan: 13- 15 

War Department. U.S., 3 

War games, Soviet: 17- 18 

War plans. Soviet: 8 

Warlimont. General def Infanterie Walter: 377-78 

Warsaw: 5, 170 

Washington, U.S.S.: 428 

Weapons. German: 7,40,131, 195,284-85.294. See 

also Antitank weapons, German: Guns, German. 

Weapons, Soviet: 12, 14-15, 135,300,441 

Weather: 13,40,42,5 1-52,63-67.80.87,90. 110, 

113,116,133,152,156,163,166,177,267,462, 

467-68,489,514. Stt also Rasputitsa. 

Weichs, Generaioberst Maximilian von 

and BLAu: 322, 331, 333, 339, 347-48 

and Second Army: 32. 50, 122 

and SlaJingrad: 355, 386-88, 393. 396-97, 

458-59,463-65,467,470,474-75 

Weisenberger, General dcr Infalllerie Karl F.: 223. 

427 

Welles. Sumner: 20 

Werth, Alexander: 432.436 

Wuwolf: 351, 360, 376-77, 388, 413, 415, 427, 451, 

456 

West Fiord: 428 

Western Powers. Set Allies, Western. 

White Sea: 224 

WIESENGnUND: 424. 426 

Wietcrsheim, General der Panzertruppen Gustav \'on: 

387,391-92,395 

WILHELM: 310. 3 12- 16. 3 18- 19. 325, 330. 344 

WINKELRIEO: 415, 420-22 

"Wimer Relief": 39. 452 

Winter War, 1939-1940: 5. 10, 14 - 15, 18. 193,220 

WINTERGEWITfER: 479-80, 482-83, 485, 493. 507 

WIRBELWIND: 398-406, 413 

Wilting. Rolf: 222 

Wolfssclumu: 4, 54- 55. 57, 80. 155. 290, 293. 33 1, 

338,351,403,409,456,474 

Wrangel. General Peter: 456 

Yaila Moulllains: 312 

Yakhroma: 53, 60. 63. 67 

Yalta: 107, 115, 141 

Yaroslavl: 37, 44, 50. 6 1 

Yal'tsevo: 30 

Yefrcmov: 65 

Yefremov. General Ley tenant M. C.: 164 , 170. 183 

Yele<s: 65, 67, 74-75, 94-95, 337 

Yelnya: 176,246-47 
558 

Yevpatoriya: 115- 16. 141 

Veya River: 362 

Yukhnov: 101-02, 122, 125, 129. 140, 161-63, 169, 

171 , 173-76, 178-8 1, 332, 398, 400 

Zakharov, General Mayor F. D.: 62 

Zalivskiy: 481 

Zaluchye: 154 

ZapadnaY3 LilSa River: 220, 223, 226-28. 231-32, 

240 

Zaporozhye: 141 , 156,484,509 

Zaslonov, K. S.: 206 

Zeitzler, General del' Infanterie Kun: 449-50, 455, 

457,465,474,476,480-81,493 

Zeppelin: 324 

ZkleUlyaJr.av: 110 

Zhizdra: 123. 164, 176 

Zhizdra River: 404, 406 

Zhukov, General Armii Georgi: 8, 13, 33, 280, 303, 

343 

appointed deputy supreme commander: 387, 

437-38, 506 

becomes first marshal of the Soviet Union: 507 

MOSCOW TO STALINGRAD 

Zhukov. General Armii Georgi-Continued 

and counteroffensive, December 1941 : 61-63, 

65-66,77,88-90 

and defense of Leningrad: 36-37 

and defense of Moscow: 49-51, 60-63 

and defense of Stalingrad: 387-88, 391-92, 394, 

441,444-45,465,484-85,493 

early strategy: 16- 19,2 1-22,25,27,34 

and encirclement of Army Group Center: 170-72, 

176, 182 

and Orel offensive: 342, 344 

plans strategy, spring 1942: 238-40,255,303 

and Rzhev-Sychevka offensive: 398, 400, 403-04, 

406-07 

and Soviet offensive, winter 1942: 122, 125. 138. 

166,170-72, 176,182,185 

and Stavka: 25, 27, 30,176, 182, 185 

works closely with Vasilevskiy: 437-38, 441, 

443-44,465,484,506-07,512 

Zmiyev: 275 

Zorn. Generahnajor H.: 192, 195, 197 

Zossen: 81, 324 

ZUblSOV: 398, 400, 402-03, 407 

Zush. Rjver: 40, 95-96, 98, 100, 122