Disaster at Stalingrad

Chapter 12 ‘Danke Sehr, Herr Roosevelt!’

Zaitsev snatched a pistol from a wounded soldier and took cover behind a smashed locomotive’s wheelhouse. In the building just ahead the Germans were firing from a second storey window and had just wounded his friend Misha. He took aim and dropped one of the Germans with a single shot. In the window above was another German rifleman. Zaitsev checked his pistol — only one round left. Wounded, he dragged himself through the rubble to underneath the window. The Russian’s injured leg would not support his weight so he rolled onto his back to aim the pistol:

A few days later, Zaitsev and his friends were pinned down in a bomb crater by a German heavy machine gun firing from 600 yards. One friend spotted the gun with a trench periscope and handed it to Zaitsev who also spotted it. Then he jumped up and almost without aiming fired his rifle. The German machine-gunner dropped. Another man took his place, and another quick shot killed him, followed by a third. The machine gun ceased to torment the Russians.

Zaitsev’s regimental commander, ‘Bulletproof Batyuk’, happened to be watching through his binoculars. He asked and was told it was Vassili Zaitsev. Batyuk grunted and said, ‘Get him a sniper’s rifle.’²

Stauffenberg took his visitor for an after-dinner stroll through the towering pinewoods outside the Führer Headquarters. Their aides followed respectfully out of earshot:

Standing there in the moonlight, his handsome features were eerily silhouetted — clean, honest, and determined. Tresckow commented, ‘Every one of them vetted on his honour to end this regime.’

Stauffenberg said, ‘Kluge is with us. But Manstein continues to deflect my appeals.’

Tresckow kicked some of the old pine needles aside with his boot. Their breath was already frosting in the air. You could feel the autumn coming and the Russian winter behind it, a thought that made every veteran of the war on the Ostfront shudder. ‘You know, Stauffenberg, there is an old saying that if you strike at a king, you must kill him. We cannot risk merely arresting Hitler as some of our more foolish generals and those civilians in Berlin advise. They want to put him on trial.’

‘No!’ hissed Stauffenberg. ‘One does not put the Devil through the criminal justice system. Then we would have civil war as the Nazis and the SS rallied to free him.’

‘What then of Goring and Himmler? Both of them are salivating to be his successor.’

The other man said, ‘We must decapitate the entire hydra or set them upon each other. It is the Army that must come out of this as the saviour of Germany.’

Tresckow took him by the hand, gripped it hard as he looked him full in the face. ‘Then we must be sure to place our trust in the true Saviour.’

Like raptors, Rudel’s Stukas fell screaming on the attacking line of Soviet tanks outside Baku. They were American M4 Shermans fresh out of the Baku Tank Training School, manned by the instructors and students. They died just like T-34s when a Stuka dropped its bomb with pinpoint accuracy. In fact, they died faster because the petrol engine ignited quickly.

The tank attack fell apart as the survivors tried to flee. Kleist had fixed the Soviet 53rd Army and the Indian XXI Corps in the plain outside Baku with his infantry now fairly mobile with all the American trucks captured at Ordzhonikidze. The Soviet tank attack had come close to breaking through when Rudel’s Stukas responded to the call for air support. With the Soviet and British attention on their front, Kleist enveloped the Soviets from the north with 3rd Panzer Division slicing down the coast. At the same time, 13th Panzer attacked along the join between the Soviets and British. Fierce counterattacks by the Indian 5th Division cut them off. They formed a hedgehog formation fighting off Soviet and Indian attacks.

At this moment, Kleist unleashed LVII Panzer Corps against the Indian left flank. The British 5th Division found 5th SS Wiking’s tanks in its rear as the Slovaks cut the road to Persia.

It was an awesome sight for the men of 3rd Panzer to be driving through a forest of oil derricks that extended out into the Caspian Sea. Many of the derricks were on fire, like immense trees in the agony of a fiery death. Thick black smoke darkened the sky. Though it was a scene from hell, the Germans saw it in Wagnerian terms as the fiery death of Siegfried’s dragon.³

Roosevelt and the chiefs had studied Stalin’s letter carefully. After the loss of the Persian Corridor, Stalin was begging for a resumption of the convoys and an increased effort through Vladivostok. The tone of desperation was palpable.

Admiral King was adamant against the resumption of the convoys:

Roosevelt and Churchill had been desperate to keep the Soviet Union in the war, but their ability to do so seemed to be slipping away. It was General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, who said what everyone had been thinking. For once, King was in full agreement with the Army:

Roosevelt seemed to sag in his wheelchair:

King had the last brutal word. ‘The diversion of Japanese naval and army forces in such an attack would only make our job in the Pacific that much easier.’⁵

This Russian rail station, 73 miles southwest of Stalingrad, was throbbing with activity as one train after another delivered the seven infantry divisions of Manstein’s old 11th Army, veterans of Sevastopol. Interspersed among the troop trains, supply trains were feeding a number of growing depots. Railway engineers were busily extending spurs. Next to arrive were Grossdeutschland and 6th Panzer Divisions (LX Corps) with their 400 T-34s, an amazing sight to the infantry. Eleventh Army now numbered close to 200,000 men. Marching out of the Caucasus to join the army were the four infantry divisions of 17th Army’s V Corps.

Manstein had prevailed upon Hitler to leave the cleaning up of the Caucasus and Transcaucasus to one German corps and the Romanians and Turks. The victories at Sukhumi and Ordzhonikidze had revitalized the Führer, who claimed the credit for the Soviet collapse since it had happened after he had relieved List and assumed personal command. Then Kleist’s brilliant crushing of the Soviet-British force at Baku had even prompted him to dine with his generals again. Though much of the vast oilfield had been sabotaged, Hitler practically wallowed in the self-justification. He gladly tossed a field marshal’s baton to Kleist.

The credit line he had promised Manstein seemed to shrink in inverse proportion to the good news he was receiving. At Hitler’s order to throw 11th Army into the Stalingrad fighting, Manstein flew directly to Werewolf and flatly refused the order. ‘What are you worried about? Reichsmarschall Goring is supplying a reinforcement to the front as great as 11th Army. The sheet balances.’ He was referring to the establishment of twenty-two Luftwaffe field divisions, Goring’s brainchild to transform surplus personnel into his own ground army; if Himmler could have one in the Waffen SS, so could Göring.

Manstein’s response was ‘Sheer nonsense! Where is the Luftwaffe going to find the necessary division, regimental, and battalion commanders?’ For once Hitler had met someone with a personality as forceful and unyielding as his own and one that was immune to his charismatic power. More than one observer noted that Manstein’s ego equalled Hitler’s, but without the irrationality. This battle had already been fought. Against the entire weight of his General Staff and even his favoured Stauffenberg, Hitler had declined to deny Goring, who had proclaimed that he was not going ‘to hand over “his” soldiers, reared in the spirit of National Socialism, to an Army which still had chaplains and was led by officers steeped in the traditions of the Kaiser’.⁶

Hitler was clearly on the defensive but for once did not slip into a rage at being countered. Instead, he said, ‘There is Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army that will become available in a few weeks as well.’ It was all Manstein could do not to lecture the Führer of the German Reich like a green lieutenant. He summarized the deployment of forces:

He said nothing about his secret order to Seydlitz to pull back from close contact with Chuikov’s troops once the inevitable Soviet offensive kicked off. The order, codenamed Operation Quicksilver, was to disengage 6th Army and pull its left flank all the way back to Kalach should the Soviets attack the Romanian 3rd Army in strength. At the same time Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army was also to pull back immediately to reinforce the Romanian 4th Army should the Soviets attack there in strength. 6th Army’s right flank would hook up with 4th Panzer Army’s left flank thus reestablishing a strong front to serve as a springboard for a counterattack once the Soviets had overextended themselves. It was the perfect example of an elastic strategy. Sadly, the panzer corps of both armies had been wasted away in the city fighting for which they had never been intended, and each was lucky to muster the strength of one panzer division.

The field marshal had also left Seydlitz broad initiative in interpreting orders coming out of OKW. For example, Hitler had ordered all of the horses of 6th Army to be sent westward to cut down on the logistics burden of their support which in bulk exceeded the requirements of the troops by several times. Seydlitz realized that if he was to have any ability to manoeuvre, he would need those horses, for much of the German artillery and logistics services still relied on them. Hitler had also ordered him to employ as infantry any tank troops without tanks. When he received that order, he leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘Wanzig, heller Wanzig! [Madness, sheer madness!] Where does that man think I will find skilled Panzertruppen if and when new tanks arrive?’ The tankers were not used as infantry.

Manstein went on:

Hitler responded, ‘But I tell you, Manstein, that the Russians are beaten already. The loss of the oilfields at Baku has doomed them. One more push and the whole rotten structure will collapse. Bolshevism is as good as dead.’

‘Then, mein Führer, let us make sure and drive a great stake through its heart.’⁷

The catastrophe in the Caucasus actually accelerated the plan that Zhukov and Vasilevsky had presented to Stalin. The news of the fall of the Caucasus and the Transcaucasian republics had shaken Soviet morale to the core. Time was rapidly slipping away, and with each day, the oil reserves drained away as well. Hitler’s famous intuition had once again proven uncannily prescient. But he had not counted on Stalin’s determination to roll the dice one last time. Only Operation Uranus had a chance of reversing the inevitable.

The problem was that Uranus had been planned for the end of November. Now it would have to be executed far sooner. Manstein had been correct. Zhukov and Vasilevsky had read the same map, and their eyes had been drawn to the weakness of the flanks at Stalingrad. From the flanks their eyes had moved east to the Don crossing at Kalach. Six weeks more and the armies they would unleash would have been strong enough, but that would have depended on the flood of supplies and equipment, especially the trucks and other logistical means, especially plentiful oil from the south, they would need for the rapid thrust from the Volga to the Don. Now they must make do with what they already had and with what could be stripped from the other fronts to the north, immobilizing the northern forces to a degree that they could not put pressure on the Germans.

Zhukov was a hard man to beat, but even he knew how their chances of success were dwindling. All the odds seemed to be stacking up in the Germans’ favour. Now even the weather that had so often saved Russia seemed to support the Germans. The torrential rains of the autumn rasputitsa would be falling just as their armies needed firmly frozen ground for their success.

Now Stalin was truly afraid. He had more to worry about than the Germans. For the first time even those dogs who had licked his boots had cause to believe they had more to fear with Stalin than without. The loss of the Caucasus had done more than stagger the morale of the country. It had cracked the façade of his leadership as no other defeat had. Whispers compared it to the evaporation of the deep-seated faith in the tsar as benevolent ruler anointed by God after his Cossacks had sabred hundreds of peaceful petitioners in the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 1905.⁸

There were more than whispers. Abakumov was more than aware of this; he was behind it. In greatest secrecy he was showing Stalin’s Okrana file to members of the Politburo and to senior officers of the Red Army. He had never seen so many shaken men.⁹

Manstein threw the paper down on the floor. Hitler had gone back on his word to keep 11th Army as a front reserve. The order commanding its commitment to the renewed offensive at Stalingrad now lay at the field marshal’s feet.

Led by four specialized combat engineer battalions especially flown into the city, 90,000 Germans attacked on a 3-mile front to smash their way to the Volga and finally to destroy 62nd Army. Chuikov had thrown a small spanner into the works two days before by launching his own morning counterattack. It had gained 300 yards, but the German counterpunch was near mortal. Everywhere the Germans ground forward, consuming one Soviet division after another. By the end of the day 14th Panzer Division had cut through to the Volga, splitting Chuikov’s army in two.

Despite this success, Manstein’s attention was still drawn to the flanks where Soviet forces continued to build up like black thunderclouds. He obeyed Hitler’s order only so far as slowly redeploying 11th Army as far forward as the rail hub at Zhutovo station, 55 miles north of Kotelnikovo.

Already it was growing cold. The freezing rains had soaked the ruins of the city making life even more miserable for both sides. They continued to fall day after day. The nights now brought frost. Chuikov had more to concern him than a natural phenomenon that apportioned its misery impartially. The huge German guns from Sevastopol had been devastating. They were unlike the German’s aerial bombardment or even their normal artillery fire that simply transformed the urban architecture into a rubble-strewn fortress maze. Seven-ton shells reduced the ruins to mounds of shattered brick and concrete under which only the dead lay.

The Germans kept smashing their way forward, forcing Chuikov to move his headquarters behind the Red October factory. The one division he received as reinforcement was quickly burning out. The northern element of his command had been reduced to a small cut-off pocket. Sixty-Second Army had been pushed so far back that its heels were almost on the Volga’s edge.

And they did. One German regimental commander talking on the field telephone with his forward elements could hear the Russians shouting, ‘Urrah!’ A Soviet regimental commander when his command post was being overrun did not hesitate to call down a Katyusha strike on his own position. The German fighting men gave the Russians the ultimate soldier’s salute when they said, ‘the dogs fight like lions’.¹¹

If there was a bright spot for Chuikov, it was that Vassily Zaitsev had been knocking off a half dozen fascists a day. The young sniper’s kill score had already reached forty; he had become the darling of the war correspondents and the pride of the 62nd Army. The sniper team he had trained was killing another dozen or so Germans every day. Although the Germans would lose far more men in the course of the Rattenkrieg, the nature of sniper kills, coming out of nowhere to strike down men who thought they were safe, was far more unnerving to German morale.

Chuikov would have been immensely relieved to know that the build-up for Operation Uranus was steadily progressing, but even he had not been informed of it for security reasons. The Red Army was making such good use of concealment and deception measures that Gehlen’s Foreign Armies East seriously underestimated its scale. It was paying far more attention to the build-up in front of Army Group Centre. This was Operation Mars, designed to encircle a German army on that front at the same time as Uranus was to encircle 6th Army. Nor did Gehlen detect that the forces assembled for Mars were now being bled away to support Uranus. Stavka had no choice. There were just not enough resources to support two major operations. There was no question as to which was more important — Stalingrad. Operation Mars was cancelled.

Ironically, Hitler had come to the same conclusion three days before when he issued Operations Order No. 1, suspending all offensive action on the Eastern Front outside of the fighting for Stalingrad. All the resources of the front were to be directed to the city on the Volga.¹²

The lead elements of 1st Panzer Army had already passed this town on the Caspian just north of the Caucasus. The highway and parallel railroad from Baku had been too far inland to see the sea, but they now turned east to Makhachkala and the Caspian. Suddenly the men could see the blue waters disappearing into the horizon. It was a grand sight that few of them would forget, and it lifted their spirits.

Kleist’s objective was Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga 240 miles away. After what they had been through, 240 miles was nothing, especially since many of them rode in the backs of American trucks, ate American canned food, and wore excellent American boots captured in the dumps at Baku. Most remarkable, though, was that Kleist was able to reequip all his panzer shortfalls with American and British tanks from the same depots. The men had even composed a ditty of appreciation for all their comforts, ending with a resounding refrain, ‘Danke sehr, Herr Roosevelt!’¹³

Stalin raged, banged the table. He had just received the joint cable from Roosevelt and Churchill that the resumption of the Arctic convoys was impossible. The excuse was the collapse of morale among the merchant seamen of both countries. ‘Put a few hundred up against the wall, if you want to improve the morale of the rest!’ he shouted.

Oberjäger Friedrich Pohl was a very calm man as befitted a successful sniper.¹⁴ His arrival at the airfield southwest of Stalingrad had tested this self-possession as his Ju 52 transport had weaved and dodged repeated attacks by Soviet aircraft from the moment it crossed the lower Don. Had it not been for the daring Me 109 pilots escorting his transport, he would be dead. As deadly a shot as he was, his Kar 98k rifle with a 5x scope remained useless in its leather case.

The talents of this 27-year old Austrian had become in great demand as the Soviet snipers had been exacting a greater and greater toll on German lives and morale in the fighting for the city. Like every other German soldier on the Eastern Front, he had heard of the desperate fighting for the city. It was a sniper’s happy hunting ground. Obviously they had need of his skill. That’s all his company commander could tell him as he departed his Gebirgsjäger regiment. Waiting for him was a young General Staff officer who introduced himself as Captain von Boeselager, aide to 6th Army Chief of Staff Tresckow. German privates were not used to being greeted by officers upon arrival in a new assignment, especially such exalted ones.

He was even more surprised when the captain escorted him into a tent. Pointing to a major’s uniform, he ordered Pohl to put it on. During the ride into the city, smoking and rumbling with the ongoing German assault, they had the most interesting conversation.

‘Pohl, you have been temporarily promoted to major for a special mission. Henceforth, you are Major Werner König.’

‘Who is that, Herr Hauptmann?’

‘He’s head of the sniper school at Zossen. That will be your cover. You are not to associate closely with anyone not in the line of duty. I will have a sergeant as an escort and spotter for you.’

‘If I may ask, sir, what is the reason for all this acting?’

‘As well you might, Oberjäger, or I should say, “Herr Major!”’

Staying calm while stalking Russians was one thing, but to be addressed as an officer completely flustered Pohl.

Boeselager had personally selected Pohl; it had been a difficult search to find an expert sniper and someone with a burning grievance. In Pohl he had found both. His combat record was clear, but the grievance was buried deep and took some finding: Pohl’s childhood sweetheart had been declared a Mischling and disappeared into the hands of the Gestapo.

In response to Pohl’s question, Boeselager explained, ‘We want you to hunt down and kill Vassili Zaitsev. He is the best of the enemy snipers. The Russians have made a great propaganda story about him. We will build a similar story around you as Major König.’ Then he turned an intently focused face on Pohl. ‘You must kill this Russian.’

The captain then thought to himself, ‘And then we will want you do something else for us.’¹⁵

Here and there the surviving men of artillery and antitank units among others were withdrawn from the death machine of Stalingrad. Taken to the east bank of the Volga, they were fed and deloused, given hot baths and rest. Then their shrunken ranks were filled with replacements. The reconstructed units were sent back across the Volga to the Beketovka Bulge, the remaining Soviet lodgement, 5 miles south of the city, held by 64th Army. Into the bulge were carefully fed the new tank and mechanized corps of the 51st and 57th Armies where they were hidden in villages and gullies with great skill. Although strict operational security ensured that they were told nothing, the smell of an offensive was in the air. The Red Air Force was doing its best to make sure that any German reconnaissance flight over the build-up area was a death sentence.

Nevertheless, the loss of Western aid was having a rippling effect. The number and strength of units being deployed for Uranus was not what had been planned, and now the date of the attack had been advanced by almost three weeks. The cut-off of aluminium from the West reduced tank and aircraft engine production by half. Food was not as plentiful. Lieutenant Hersch Gurewicz was one of those men brought out of Stalingrad to take part in the offensive. Given his first can of spam, he thought that the bloodbath in the city had a reason if the Soviet Union was actually getting help. Then the mess sergeant told him, ‘Enjoy it, lieutenant, that’s the last of it.’

Tresckow realized that he could have talked himself blue in the face and still would not have convinced the commander of Army Group B to commit himself to treason. His visit to army group headquarters had been ostensibly for operational discussions, but the removal of Hitler was uppermost in his mind. Stauffenberg had been pressing him to continue to work for the field marshal’s support. The two young officers had been unexpectedly successful in placing sympathizers in critical positions, but Manstein was the key. Without him, success was problematical.

Tresckow realized that despite Manstein’s continuous expressions of contempt for the GroFaZ within his own small circle, he would not lift his hand against the man who was destroying Germany. The field marshal had taught his little dachshund to lift its tiny paw in a mockery of the Hitler salute, but that was about as far as he was willing to go. Tresckow had even recommended his nephew, Lieutenant Alexander von Stahlberg, to replace Manstein’s wounded aide, hoping he might persuade him to come around, but although the two were to develop a mutual respect and devotion, the field marshal remained unconvinced.¹⁶

Still Tresckow persisted but only succeeded in making the field marshal more obdurate. ‘Listen, Tresckow, Prussian field marshals do not mutiny. And do not bring up Tauroggen. Stauffenberg already tried that.’

‘But, Herr Feldmarschall…’

‘No, you listen. I am responsible for an army group in the field, and I do not feel I have the right to contemplate a coup d’état in wartime. It would lead to chaos inside Germany. I must also consider my oath and the admissibility of murder for political objectives.’¹⁷

Tresckow responded, ‘Do you really think that you are bound by an oath to the anti-Christ? The Evil One is surely enjoying the trick we have played upon ourselves. Once our personal oath was given to the kings of Prussia and the German emperors, men of Christian honour. It has been perverted by Hitler and put at the service of unspeakable crimes.’¹⁸

Clearly Manstein did not want to hear this. He had his back up now. ‘No senior military commander can for years on end expect his soldiers to lay down their lives for victory and then precipitate defeat by his own hand.’ He looked pointedly at his guest. ‘Besides, I do not think events have reached the stage where such action is necessary.’

He got up and went over to the map. ‘Let’s get to the business at hand.’ He pointed to the 6th Army rear between Stalingrad and Kalach:

The 29th Motorized Division had already been pulled out as an army group reserve, brought up to strength, and readied for an attack on Astrakhan, another one of Hitler’s ideas. This was before Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army began its drive on the city. Manstein smacked the map at a place called Yeriko-Krepinski, the rail station 25 miles southwest of the city. ‘Concentrate them here.’²⁰

Tresckow was taken aback. ‘Hitler will immediately countermand the order.’

‘Then we won’t tell him — yet.’ The younger man realized with a shock that this was the first time Manstein had actually disobeyed the Führer.

The rains had stopped. Outside it was snowing. The ground was freezing.

Rudel’s Stukas hung over the city, diving again and again to strike its oil tanks and shipping. Huge clouds of smoke from the burning oil roiled into the sky. The flames were consuming the last of the oil shipped by sea from the Baku fields. Kleist’s panzers were fewer than 20 miles from the city. It was a rich prize, a combination of rail hub and river- and sea-port. Its loss would cripple much of the ability of the Soviets to draw on the resources of Central Asia and western Siberia. Yet nature had provided a defence for the city. It was not located on the Caspian shore but rather many miles inland amid the vast Volga delta, surrounded by the numerous channels of that mighty river. Defending the city was 28th Army with almost 35,000 men and 60 tanks. Originally scheduled to reinforce Stalingrad Front, this army was going to have its hands full defending Astrakhan.

Hitler had been beside himself with self-righteous delight at the fall of the Caucasus — a victory that his generals had done their best to persuade him not to attempt. Once again, he told the OKW staff, it was his understanding of the economic aspects of war that had guided the road to this splendid victory. Once again, his intuition and will had trumped all the arid professionalism of his generals. Now that Astrakhan was on the point of falling, he began to count all the economic resources and military booty.

Manstein encouraged him in this distraction because it gave him the cover to concentrate German theatre resources in the decisive battle. He shook his head when he thought how lucky Army Group A had been to subdue the Caucasus and Transcaucasus. He had certainly thought it would be a mountain pass too far. By all the rules of war, the campaign should have bogged down and thus dissipated German forces too much to concentrate decisively anywhere. The field marshal had to conclude that it was only some sort of miracle of the sort the devil seemed to favour Hitler with that had brought such a victory. But just when he had thought that he could count on Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army in the final showdown on the Volga, Hitler had insisted that it seize Astrakhan instead.

He would throw a sop to the Führer but still concentrate most of 1st Panzer Army for the counterstroke to the Soviet offensive he knew was coming. Gehlen kept insisting that the heavier blow was aimed at Army Group Centre. Be that as it may, Manstein was certain that Kluge was not nearly in so dangerous a situation as Army Group B.

He had sent a staff officer by aircraft with his oral order to Kleist to leave the Turkish corps of former Soviet POWs to invest Astrakhan. It was an act of supreme ruthlessness. He knew they stood little chance against the Soviet 28th Army, but all he needed them to do was divert the enemy and buy him time. The remaining panzer, infantry and Gebirgsjäger corps were to cross the Volga north of Astrakhan and strike northwest parallel to the river in the direction of Stalingrad.

Manstein knew that his callous treatment of the former Soviet POWs fighting for the Germans would appeal to Hitler and smooth the way for what he wanted to do in any case. He might not have been as forthcoming had he not needed Hitler’s approval of supporting 1st Panzer Army by air in its long dash from Astrakhan to Stalingrad. He needed Goring’s Ju 52 transports. To his relief, Hitler jumped at the idea of taking Stalingrad from the rear, and to his surprise Goring was eager to throw the resources of the Luftwaffe into the effort. He realized this was the opportunity for him to make a decisive contribution to the victory.

The patrol dragged in the German prisoner with a potato sack over his head. He could not wait to talk. The news that had run through the 6th Army was that the greatest sniper in the Wehrmacht, Major König, head of the sniper school itself, had been summoned to kill the Soviet ‘head rabbit’, a play on Zaitsev’s name, which meant hare. Colonel Batyuk took Zaitsev aside, ‘So now you’ve got to eliminate this super-sniper. But be careful and use your head.’

It did not take Zaitsev long to realize he was, indeed, up against a super-sniper. Reports began to come in of one Soviet sniper after another being shot. These were experienced men, not beginners. The deaths surged along the entire front. This Major König was ranging wide, giving no indication of where he might show up. Zaitsev was truly puzzled:

Ironically Pohl was thinking almost exactly the same thing about Zaitsev. The army’s propaganda unit had begun to copy the Soviet practice of showing how many of the enemy the major had shot by prominently displaying a hammer and sickle with an x drawn over it for each kill. It had a great effect along the firing line. Germans were now shouting over to the Soviets about how long it would be before König bagged Zaitsev. That was punctuated by the four or five Red Army men that the major was picking off each day, usually officers and forward observers. Even Chuikov became concerned and urged Zaitsev on.

That morning Manstein received the news of the death in combat of his older son, Gero, who had fallen while assigned to his father’s old division. It was as if someone had struck him in his soul. His grief was intense, of the kind that Herodotus had written of two and a half thousand years before. In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war it is the fathers who bury their sons.

As men stricken with such a numbing loss do, he spoke of Gero the boy in his sweet innocence. He spoke of how frail Gero had been as a child and the efforts his wife had made to build his strength. ‘We made no attempt to influence his choice of profession, but he was drawn to the calling of his ancestors. It was simply in his blood to become a regular officer.’ The most poignant lines of Manstein’s later war memoirs were of his son.

As soon as the word spread through the headquarters, Tresckow flew down from Stalingrad immediately and called on his old master to offer his condolences:

Manstein was shaken from his grief by Tresckow’s linking of his son and Hitler. The younger man went on:

Manstein was getting angry, but Tresckow did not relent:

It was a discouraged Tresckow who returned to 6th Army headquarters that night. The signals NCO brought him a message and said, ‘This arrived from the army group commander while you were in the air, sir.’

Tresckow signed. What now, he thought? He read and at first could not believe. It said, ‘Count me among the righteous. Manstein.’