Barbarossa by Alan Clark

Author:Alan Clark [Clark, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, War, History
Goodreads: 748526
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 1966-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

The real moment of crisis had come and passed on 8th January, when the Russians presented a demand for the surrender of the 6th Army, and it had been rejected. The appeal had been signed by Rokossovski and Voronov, and offered

Honourable surrender . . . sufficient rations . . care for the wounded . . . officers to keep their weapons . . . repatriation after the war to Germany or any other country.

Hitler was still in daily touch with Paulus by short-wave radio, and the army commander would not consider surrender without the Führer's permission. Nor is there evidence that any but a tiny proportion of the rank and file thought seriously of taking advantage of the Russian offer. "We did not have much faith in Russian promises." "Anything was better than Siberia." "We all knew 'Ivan' too well; one never knew what he would do next, promises or no promises." This was the typical reaction, although by that time the beleaguered army was suffering miseries which would have impelled any Allied commander to surrender, on humanitarian grounds alone. Some German authorities even attribute to the 6th Army more altruistic motives: ". . . we were surrounded by three Russian armies which would be free for other operations if we capitulated . . ." And there was always the hope—for man must have hope, however slender—that they would be relieved.

Until 10th January the Russians had mounted no serious attacks against Paulus' perimeter, but had been content to maintain harassing fire from their immensely superior artillery and conduct local operations aimed at paving the way for the final assault. Throughout December and the first week in January conditions within the perimeter got worse and worse.

Only twenty to thirty cartridges were distributed daily to each man, with the order to use them solely to repulse an attack. The ration of bread was reduced to 120 and then 70 grams—a slice only! Water came from melted snow. Because of a lack of potatoes a kilogram box had to make do for fifteen men. There was no meat; we ate our horses at Christmas.

The 6th Army's minimum requirements of supplies of all kinds had been estimated at 550 tons. The round trip from the airfields at Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk involved a flight time of nearly three hours—excluding that spent loading and unloading—so, with only one sortie per day likely, this meant that a force of 225 Ju 52 aircraft would have to be serviceable every day. In fact, there were never more than eighty Junkers operational at a time. Their efforts were supplemented by two squadrons of Heinkel 111's (which had a capacity of only 1.5 tons), but the largest amount ever brought into Stalingrad in one twenty-four-hour period was 180 tons, on 14th December. After Christmas, when Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk had been overrun, the nightly average fell to about 60 tons.

Virtually no gasoline was issued—until the very end the meagre supplies were being hoarded for a breakout, and the army's tanks and self-propelled artillery were dug into permanent positions in the frozen rubble.

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