Tigers East

Chapter 16

After his successful defensive action on the line of the Don, Balck’s 11th Panzer Division, and 23rd Panzer had been in reserve at Millerovo, but he was soon handed a new mission. Von Knobelsdorff came in and told him he was heading south.

“We need to secure the bridgeheads in the Donets Bend, Kamensk and Belaya Kalivta. The enemy has been stubborn at Voroshilovgrad, and we haven’t the infantry to conduct a street fight with them there. They have been relying on the fact that the Donets Bend is not threatened at the moment, and so they only have light screening forces there. We are about to change that.”

“You realize our Korps is the only mobile reserve behind the entire line of the lower Don?”

“Of course I realize that, but your intervention earlier, and the arrival of 14th Panzer Korps, has stabilized this front. Von Wietersheim will hold the line now. We must be off to other business.”

“Very well,” said Balck. “Where do you want my division?”

“Totenkopf has pushed over the river at Belaya Kalivta. They were supposed to be refitting back there, so you will relieve them, cross at Kamensk and push on to Sukovo. That will clear the rail line, which dips below the river before it heads west for Volgograd. Steiner’s supply situation there is not good, so we must open that rail line. No less than nine railway engineer regiments have been sent to get that line up and running before the weather turns bad. We will need it this winter.”

It was still high summer, the early September heat heavy on the steppe, but Balck understood. General Winter had been very hard on the Army in 1941, and he would be campaigning again, and all too soon.

“We still have six to eight weeks,” said von Knobelsdorff. “In that time I want to secure the east end of the Donetz Basin, and move on Rostov from that direction.”

“Will Totenkopf operate with us?”

“I’m afraid not. They are being recalled to the Kalach bridgehead, along with the Wiking Division for the push on Volgograd. Steiner needs everything he can get his hands on. But 16th Motorized has been operating independently there, and it will now be added to our Korps. I intend to take Rostov.”

Balck saluted, and was on his way. He knew who he wanted to see first, his incomparable Hauser. He would have him get his fast moving motorcycle battalion down south and scout out the situation while he got the rest of the division ready to move.

The fighting in the Kalach Bridgehead had been a grinding battle of attrition. Steiner had kept both the Brandenburg and Grossdeutschland divisions in the fight, eventually reinforcing their effort with Das Reich and all his Korps assets. They pushed relentlessly along the main road that led through Martinovka, a vital rail station and airfield and the site of Chiukov’s Volga Front headquarters. As Balck was moving into the lower Donets, Steiner continued to push up that road until they came up against a stolid wall of old steel.

It was a Soviet Armored Division, one of the last of the old formations that had once been their massive mobile arm. The 1st Division had been moved to Volgograd long ago by rail, but now had little transport and almost no fuel. Chiukov had simply placed it astride the road to block the way to Martinovka. Like water seeing the path of least resistance, Steiner’s troops simply washed up against it, then turned to attack the airfield to the southwest of that town. By the 30th of August, they were attacking the field, their tanks shooting up the hangers, what remained of them after the artillery preparation.

The 502nd Schwerepanzer Brigade, had been a part of the fighting in the bridgehead. It had arrived on the front with 45 of the new Tiger tanks, and an equal number of Lions. Now it was down to 67 tanks, an acceptable level of attrition given the normal rates on this front. Yet it had less than 10% of its normal supply issue, low on both ammunition and fuel, and had to be pulled off the line. So that unit sat in reserve 15 kilometers west of the river, and its brother unit the 503rd Brigade had also been pulled off the line to await supply at the rail depot of Surovinko on the Chir.

It was this lack of supply, as much as anything else, that was holding Steiner up. Once a unit got provisioned, he quickly moved it over the Don and back into the fight to relieve troops that had fought so hard for that bridgehead. Now some of the rifle companies in the Brandenburg Division had no small arms ammo at all. In spite of the massive effort, Steiner was told that it would be at least another two weeks before the rail line from Belaya Kalivta on the Donets could be repaired as far as Surovinko on the Chir.

Meanwhile Chiukov had retreated from the line of the Askay River and fell back on the Myshkova defense line to better consolidate his forces. The nose of Steiner’s attack was still about 50 kilometers west of the city, but many of his positions on the Myshkova were only 30 kilometers southwest of Beketova, the southernmost outlier to the main city of Volgograd. There Volkov had his 1st Khazak Field Army reinforced by the Kazakh Mobile Corps, and to its left, his Mountain Corps had joined with 9th Infantry Corps to fight their way up from Nizhny Chirskaya. They were now shoulder to shoulder with the Germans after linking up the previous week.

East of the Volga, the 4th Orenburg Army still sat in its fortified bunkers, with 5th Orenburg Army occupying the line of the Volga as it reached north from the city. All of Chiukov’s supplies still depended on that single rail line coming down from the north, and a second spur that ran northwest near Golubinskaya, the only rail crossing on the Don still retained by Soviet troops. That was a new line, never built in Fedorov’s history. It ran from Golubinskaya on the Don, through Kalmykov, Perelazovsky and then on to Veshenskaya on the upper Don, where it crossed the river again.

All these forces surrounded the defenders of the city on three sides, the battle becoming a slow WWI style grind, with progress of one to three kilometers achieved per day. Further west, in the hard fought battle for Voronezh, the German 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies continued to apply relentless pressure on the defense. Hoth’s push for Lipetsk was called off. Instead his Army was directed southeast to close on Voronezh from the north. Model was pulling in units from the north near Tula, as they were slowly relieved by infantry still coming up from the Kirov Pocket. More than anything, it was this steady flow of one new infantry korps after another that would keep the panzers free to maneuver to weaker sectors of the Soviet defense without trying to hold ground they had already taken.

September 3 was a big day in the field there, when 2nd Panzer Armee punched through southeast of Voronezh and drove a deep wedge all the way to the Donets. Seeing his opportunity, Rundstedt gathered all the bridging equipment he could find and sent it to Model. If a crossing could be forced there, the entire Soviet position could come unhinged. Three Soviet armies that had fallen back from Kursk were still holding in a bulge south of that breakthrough. Their position was fed by one rail line running through Georgu Deza on the Donets, and Model had elements of 4th and 5th Panzer Divisions some 20 kilometers from that vital crossing point.

At his wits end, Sergei Kirov summoned Zhukov and demanded to know what he would do about the situation. “We cannot let them cross the Donets there,” he said. “It would cut off all those troops! Last month you argued that a timely withdrawal was needed when you pulled out of the Kursk Bulge, yet now all those same troops are at risk again.”

There was good ground where I posted them, but look at the map,” Zhukov pointed. There must be 15 or more Panzer Divisions, all massed in this drive to take or isolate Voronezh. I have thrown everything at them, 2nd Guards Army, and yes even the first of the new Tank Armies we were building. We have delayed them, but we simply cannot stop such force. I need another army.”

Kirov ran a hand over his forehead. “You say that like you are asking for a new pair of shoes, but I can read a map as well. Everything we have is tied up on the line.”

“Then we must pull something off that line,” said Zhukov. “I propose we take the 17th Siberian, and what little is left of the 24th. They were on the line well south of Tula at the point of the initial German breakthrough. Then they folded back to hold the northern shoulder. Now that the panzers have all pushed south, that sector is quiet again. There is nothing but German infantry there, and I could relieve those troops with reserves from the armies to either side. They can assemble at Yeremov and then move by rail to Voronezh.”

“What about the Shock Armies you used in Operation Mars?”

“I would rather leave them right where they sit. Those troops are still reasonably well equipped and supplied. If we are to mount any kind of a winter offensive, they will be the armies I must use again.”

“General Zhukov, you assume we will survive until winter. One more disaster and the entire front could collapse.”

“That danger is very real,” said Zhukov, “but given the circumstances, this is all I can do. There is not a single army remaining in reserve now. Anything we use must come off the line from somewhere else.”

“What about the line west of Moscow? That sector has been quiet for months.”

“Yes, and our men there have fattened up, as have the German Infantry they oppose. We could launch a spoiling attack, but as it is so far from Voronezh, it would do little to affect that battle. Better to leave those troops for a possible attack in the winter.”

“What about Karpov and the Siberians?

“He is obsessed with his effort to take Sakhalin Island from the Japanese. We can expect no further help from him now.”

“That is useless,” Kirov ran a hand through his thick hair, his frustration evident. “I must arrange a meeting with that man, and get him to understand the gravity of our situation. What good will it do if he takes Sakhalin while we lose Voronezh and Volgograd?” His eyes played over the map. “What about Rostov? What about the Donets Basin?”

“They moved the reserve panzer corps they used to blunt my Summer counterattack. It crossed the Don at Belaya Kalivta and so I have had to pull in everything I could in that sector to reform a front there. I have even pulled the Marines out of Novorossiysk and sent them through the Kerch Strait to Taganrog. We will hold Rostov, perhaps for another month. After that, I cannot guarantee you anything, unless we give ground somewhere else to get the troops. Take a good look at the map now. The Kuban and Donets Basin are the largest pocket ever formed in the annuals of military history. They must now fight with what they have, and supplies they can produce in Rostov and the other cities there.”

“Those troops you pulled back from Kursk,” said Kirov, pointing at the map. “Are you going to leave them there? The Germans are breaking through behind them.”

“I will attempt to get as many out as I can, but withdrawal from a prepared line in heavy contact with the Germans will not be easy. I expect casualties of 30% or higher. Yet if I do leave them in place, we get yet another pocket, and they have the infantry to digest this one after Kirov fell.”

Kirov was silent for a time, thinking, the lines around his eyes deep with worry. “And the morale of the troops?” He asked. “Will they fight?”

Zhukov could see his distress, and passed a moment of pity for him, wanting to be able to say something, anything that might bring him some comfort or relief. “Yes,” he said, “they will fight. They haven’t given up yet, not anywhere I have been on the front.”

“Then get them out of that trap. Save them. Pull them back to the Donets as you planned earlier, and god help us if we can’t stop those panzers after that. I approve your plan to extract those two Siberian Armies from the line south of Tula. Let us hope they still have some fight in them.”

The order for that withdrawal was given, and Zhukov was pleased that the casualty rate was much lower than he expected, perhaps no more than 5%. On the high ground southwest of Voronezh, troops in the 8th Panzer Division could see masses of brown infantry moving like a great herd of animals towards the river. More than 25 divisions had pulled back, all trying to get to any bridge the engineers could erect, or make it over the one bridge at Georgu Dezu.

North of that town, a small flotilla of Soviet river gunboats bravely patrolled the muddy waters, and they saw hordes of mechanical animals heading their way, in utter awe. Model had decided to cross north of their position, his engineers quickly building a pontoon bridge over which he pushed the massed armor of 1st, 4th and 18th Panzer Divisions, along with both the 101st and 103rd Schwerepanzer Brigades. There were over 400 tanks in the operation, a mailed fist that was driving right over the river bridge and then fanning out in all directions, pushing up to the rail line about 15 kilometers east of the crossing point.

It was there that a wild melee ensued, for the panzers arrived just as the troops of the 17th and 24th Siberian armies were leaping from the trains to deploy. The German tanks were advancing in rows, blasting at the long line of train cars that seemed to stretch over 20 kilometers. Soviet troops were throwing equipment from the flat cars, seized by the infantry, which then turned and began to set up makeshift positions for their AT guns, mortars, and machineguns. The armored assault was coming up against seven or eight Siberian Rifle Divisions, all deploying from the boxcars, clutching little more than a rifle and a few grenades. If they failed to stop Model’s thrust, those fast moving tanks could roll up behind Voronezh from the south, and that was the plan.

North of the city, Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Army was massing to form another pincer, and the Germans hoped to clamp down on the entire defense of the city with those two massive jaws of steel. There was no good news for either Zhukov or Kirov that day. Even in the south, Balck’s intrepid Ghost Division had punched through the thin Soviet line, and Hauser went dashing into the breach, soon finding his battalion alone on the road south to Rostov. On the 6th of September, Balck received a radio call from him.

“Where are you? I haven’t heard from you for two days.”

“I am five kilometers from Rostov. I sent a squad up to have a look an hour ago. The city is virtually undefended. There are heavy flak units, a few Marines and lots of service troops, but no line army here. Come on down! Bring the division and we can take it for the asking in three days!”

Hauptman Paul Hauser and General Hermann Balck were out to make a mockery of Zhukov’s prediction that he could hold Rostov for another month. It seemed that everywhere, Soviet hopes were failing, and the German summer offensive was reaching for its final objectives with the violence of its sweeping advance. If Rostov fell, Balck would literally cut the massive pocket Zhukov had spoken of right in two. The Donets Basin pocket would be separated from the Kuban Pocket, and he would be occupying the primary base of supply for both.

It was then that Zhukov decided on another desperate gamble. When the Germans had taken the Crimea the previous year, they extracted 17th and 11th Armies and replaced them with Rumanian troops, which simply invested Sevastopol, making no effort to take it. There were six Soviet infantry and two tank divisions in a small enclave around that port, and if he could get them out by sea, they might be enough to save Rostov. Sergei Kirov now had to choose which city to hold, and of the two, Rostov was by far the most important. His Black Sea Fleet would sortie to cover the operation, and then simply move south to base at Novorossiysk.

For Kirov it was the gravest moment of the war, even surpassing the holocaust in Moscow the previous winter. At one throw, four major Russian cities were all under threat of imminent capture. Sevastopol would surely fall once those divisions were moved out, Rostov’s fate was as yet in doubt. Voronezh was slowly being surrounded by two massive arms of German steel, and the citizens of Volgograd could hear the German guns at night, the sound growing louder day by day.

Chapter 17

Kirov sat in his office at the Smolny Institute in Leningrad, the one city that had been spared the fire of war. The news seemed so far off in the quiet of the night, but he knew it was only a brief respite. If we lose the south, he thought, then next year they will come for us here. If we lose Rostov…. Then the Kuban is next, and Hitler finally gets the one city and rail line he needs to move the oil home to Germany. Damn him and damn that traitor Ivan Volkov to hell. I have fought that man tooth and nail since the revolution, and all the while I knew there was one sure way I might eliminate him. Yet I let him live because the consequences of taking his life were too uncertain—potentially catastrophic. Yet that is what I see unfolding now—catastrophe.

Yes… One sure way….

“Grishin!” he shouted over his shoulder, wanting his Intelligence Chief Berzin.

“Sir?” The bristly haired Chief came in from the study.”

“Round up a team of the best men we have—the very best—company strength. Then get me an airship big enough to lift them.”

Berzin stood there with a puzzled look on his face. “May I ask what for? Are we going to move the headquarters?”

“You might say that, my friend. Yes, we are moving it to the one city that matters now, more than any other we fight for this day.”

Berzin could take his pick. “You want to go to Volgograd?” He chose that city because he knew Kirov prized it above all the others, even Moscow.

“Not yet,” said Kirov, a far off look in his eye. “We are going to Ilanskiy.” He stood up, opening his desk drawer, and taking out a pistol he had kept for decades. It was the weapon he had used as a young man to kill Josef Stalin.

“Ilanskiy?” said Berzin. “What are we to do there with a hundred men and a pistol?”

Kirov looked at him, a cold light in his eyes. “I am going to kill Ivan Volkov.”

“What? Kill Volkov? At Ilanskiy? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Kirov. “You know what I have told you about that place, and you also know what I have told you about Volkov. He doesn’t belong here. He came from another time, and his presence here is a blight on all these events. How many divisions do we have facing Volkov’s troops? Do you know what I could do with those men if I had them now? I could defend Volgograd, stop the German offensive, save Rostov! All the oil Volkov is sitting on would be mine, and I would not have to scrimp and dig for it in Siberia under Karpov’s guard, and then transport it a thousand miles before I can use it. What if the Siberian Rail goes down? Our armies would be frozen like ice this winter!”

“But sir…. Think about this. To begin with, Karpov is sitting on Ilanskiy with three divisions. After Volkov’s raids, he won’t let anyone come within a hundred miles of the place. He’s got airships on constant patrol, particularly after the German airship incursion. We would never get through.”

“Oh, yes we would. I’ll simply send him a message requesting an emergency meeting there, a wartime summit to plan the defense of the motherland. I can waltz right in. He’ll even provide me an honor guard, and all proper diplomatic niceties. We’ll get through. All I need to do is get to that railway inn with a handful of our best men. From there it’s just a short walk to victory.”

“Victory? What in God’s name do you plan to do?”

“I’ve said that—kill Volkov.”

“But where? How?”

“At Ilanskiy. With my pistol—the same one I used to kill Stalin. I’ll put an end to this madness once and for all. Let’s see what the front looks like after I eliminate Volkov in 1908.”

“In 1908? You think you can get back there again—by using that stairway?”

“I got here from there once, didn’t I? Where do you think the material all came from? I went up that stairway and brought it back. This time I’ll start at the top.”

“You think you can get to the past—to 1908—simply by walking down that back stairway?”

“Why not? Volkov did it. That’s how he got here in the first place. So I can do it as well.”

“Madness…” Berzin did not know what else to say. “Madness! Suppose you did do this. Then what? You expect to find Ivan Volkov sitting there having tea and waiting for you to put a bullet in him? Think, Sergei. Think! You say Volkov came here that way, but how do you know it will work for you?”

“I’ll test that proposition with my feet.”

“Alright. Suppose it does work. You have told me you were there yourself, as a young man—back when you called yourself Mironov. How can you go there now? Can there be two of you—two versions of the same man, one young, one old? This is madness!”

That caught Kirov off guard. He had never considered that possibility. Could he go there and really find his younger self? He would be right there, having breakfast on the day it all first happened, the day the sky shuddered with the fire of a second dawn—Tunguska.

“Finally you make a good point,” he said slowly, but a solution to the problem immediately dawned on him. “Ah…” He turned with new light in his eyes. “Suppose I write a letter—about all of this—Volkov, the war, the goddamned Orenburg Federation. Yes! That is all I would really have to do. Grishin, you are correct. Perhaps I can’t go there myself if I already exist there as a young man. Nor can I take this pistol, because it will already exist there as well.”

“At last,” said Berzin. “You finally begin to see reason in all of this nonsense.”

“Oh, do not be so hasty,” said Kirov. “You are correct in what you suggest, but I don’t have to go there personally to do what I am planning. I’m already there! All I have to do is get a message back to myself—to the young Mironov. I will tell him what to do, what he must do after he finishes off Stalin. I will tell him he must put one more bullet in his pistol, and go find a man named Volkov.” He looked at Berzin now, smiling.

Outside the thunder of a storm rolling in off the Baltic Sea rattled the windows. Lightning flashed in the sky, and Kirov’s eye was drawn to it. He found himself looking out on the city, the last stronghold of the Soviet Union he had struggled all his life to build. The darkness in the clouds over the brown stone buildings seemed ominous. The Germans had leveled one great city after another, Kiev, Minsk, Kharkov, Moscow, and now they were about to devour all that remained. He had to stop them—stop Volkov from skewing the history of this war so badly that the material he had found as a young man now seemed like nothing more than a fairy tale.

He could do this thing. He knew he could get there safely, get close, get inside that railway inn. Then all it would take is a message in a bottle. He could stand at the top of that stairway, and simply roll it down.

Mironov will know what to do. I will know what to do, he told himself. He will read it and believe, because I know exactly what to say to him—things that only I will know.

Yet Berzin could still hardly believe that he was hearing all of this. He had to find some way of convincing Kirov that this plan was absolute lunacy.

“You want to send a letter? Down those stairs? Who will deliver it? Can’t you see how crazy this sounds now?”

“I can send a nice young man down, someone who was not yet born to that time. He could get back.”

“You assume he will arrive at the precise moment you were there having breakfast as you told me? Why? Why make such an assumption?

“Fedorov got there that way, and yes, at precisely that moment.”

“But not Volkov,” said Berzin quickly. “You see? Not Volkov. He was nowhere to be found while you had your chat with Fedorov. Correct? So what makes you think this man you send will arrive that same morning. Suppose he arrives months earlier, or later—even years. Then what? Does this man scour the countryside looking for Mironov? How would he find you—even recognize you?”

“I have a photograph of myself at that age. I can give it to him, and if he is good, one of our very best, then he will find me.”

“But not easily. Yes? Weren’t you hounded and pursued by the Okhrana all that time? I know you, Sergei Kirov. You are a very clever man, very cagey. You would spot this man in an instant, and try to evade him. You would think he was an agent of the Okhrana and avoid him like the plague. Even if your man did find you in the past, do you honestly think you would believe what he tells you—believe anything you might write in that letter you hope to send yourself?”

“Yes! Of that I am certain. You don’t understand, Grishin. Couldn’t you write such a letter to yourself right now? Don’t you know things that you alone are privy to—things that no one else could ever possibly know about you? That is how I will convince my younger self. Understand? He will believe that letter, because he will know the truth hidden in that back stairway as well. Remember, I went up those stairs many times as a young man.”

“That is another thing that has always bothered me,” said Berzin. “How could you have done that, come to this time, when you were already alive here?”

“Because I wasn’t alive here. I was assassinated in 1934. It was Fedorov who first put me on to that—warned me. Then, when I first went up those stairs, I found material that explained it all to me. That was just one more reason for me to kill Stalin, because it was Stalin who arranged that little scenario. He found someone—Leonid Nikolaev. That’s the man who did his dirty work for him.”

“Alright… Even if all this could happen, then what? You say you know Volkov came here that way, but you have no idea when he arrived, where he went, what he did after that. The history is largely mute on all that, until he emerges in the White movement as an aide to Denikin. So it could take our man months to find out where he went—even years. Will we just stand there like a pair of idiots and wait for our man to come tramping back up those stairs with the good news?”

“You don’t understand. He could go there and spend ten years, then come back and return before we had time to finish a cigar. He would be ten years older, but for us only a few minutes might pass. Start thinking about who we can send. We will need one of our very best.”

“But you assume he could return here at all. You are making one outrageous assumption after another, but it is all mere speculation. Anything could happen if you try such a thing, anything. It’s a very dangerous world back there. The revolution was just beginning to seed itself, and the Tsar was still a dangerous opponent. The Okhrana was very powerful, and very efficient.”

“Our man will get the job done. We must believe that.”

“And what if he does succeed? Suppose it all works as you believe. He finds you—delivers your letter. Your younger self believes it, and knows he must now find a man named Ivan Volkov and kill him, which is all another rack of balls on the billiard table. You really have no idea whether he could pull such a thing off, and if he did, then do we expect to wake up one morning for the intelligence briefing and find the Orenburg Federation no longer exists? All Volkov’s troops simply vanish? Madness! I cannot believe such a thing could ever happen.”

“I have come to believe in the impossible many times in the last year,” said Kirov. “You forget; I was acquainted with the impossible as that young man Mironov. Then, imagine that impossible day when this young Russian Captain sends me a message inviting me to a meeting in Murmansk. Lo and behold, there he is, the very same man I met in that railway inn. But he had not aged a day. Lo and behold, there is a massive battlecruiser sitting out in the bay, a ship so powerful that it can single handedly challenge entire fleets! Yes, I have seen the impossible many times, Grishin. This will only be one more impossible thing that comes true. You will see.”

Berzin rubbed his forehead, confused, and still shocked to hear all of this from Kirov. He’s desperate, he thought. He knows we are losing this war, and the pressure on him has been mounting and mounting with each passing month. We have no more divisions to send Zhukov, no more armies, so now he dreams up this crazy scheme to try and sweep half the black pawns right off the chess board. It is all utter lunacy, but what if it did happen as he says? He asked that question next.

“I have granted you the benefit of every doubt thus far,” said Berzin. “We go there, get the welcome you expect, get our men close enough to that railway inn to reach the top of those stairs. Our man goes down and arrives at just the correct year to take action. He finds Mironov, convinces him that he must kill Volkov too.”

“That may not even be necessary,” said Kirov. “We could just send our man to do the job. He does not need to find me at all with that letter.”

“Again I grant you the impossible benefit of the doubt,” said Berzin. “Our man seeks out a man named Ivan Volkov—of all the hundreds of men who might bear that name. He has no idea what he looks like, but he knows he will be thick as thieves with Denikin, so he eventually narrows down who this man must be, gets to him, and does the job. He puts a bullet into Volkov…. Then this entire world collapses before our very eyes. Yet only you and I know about it? We wake up one day as I said earlier, and the Orenburg Federation is gone. All of Volkov’s troops are now ours to command. Alright, mister General Secretary. I have stacked up all the plates, forgetting that if even one thing in this impossible stack slips, it all comes tumbling down. Here we sit on that fine morning when everything becomes more agreeable for us and Volkov’s armies disappear. This is how you think to win your victory? Magic and mayhem?”

Kirov shrugged. The rain was beginning now, a cold rain that promised the long weeks of the Rasputista were coming. Soon the country would see every road become a quagmire, and the land would be a sea of mud. The German Summer Offensive was in its last throes. They were so very close to achieving all their objectives, but soon the mud would slow them down, and then the cold. The temperatures would fall, and for a brief time the ground would freeze hard enough for armies to move and fight again. Then the real winter would begin, the snows coming so deep that nothing could move again.

Then it will be our time, he thought, our time to move and fight as we always have in the winter. But will we have anything left to fight with? Zhukov tells me he still has the Shock Armies on the line of the Don, rested, fat with supplies and equipment, and ready to try again. They failed in Operation Mars. What will he call the next one, Uranus? Saturn? Will it work? Can we survive the winter of 1942 if we do not make a Stalingrad out of Volgograd? The damn German 6th Army isn’t even fighting there. It’s all of Steiner’s SS Korps there this time—Hitler’s mad dogs, braying at the gates of the city, and Ivan Volkov on the other side of the Volga, salivating as he thinks to finally get his hands on Volgograd….

Chapter 18

“Sergei…” came the voice of Berzin again. He was watching Kirov as he gazed out the window, looking at the storm blowing in, hearing the rain on the windows, the thunder. “I know it looks black as hell for us now, but you must have hope. You must believe we can still win through. If not you, then how can we expect our soldiers to fight on? Look here at the map. The SS have been fighting tooth and nail in the Kalach bridgehead for over a month. That never happened. The Germans just waltzed right through in the material. We’ve done better this time. We avoided the pocket that formed northeast of Kharkov when Zhukov pulled out of Kursk, and we pulled everything back to the Don instead of trying to form a line west of the river. The Millerovo pocket never happened either. Don’t you see? It looks grim now, but it is not as dark as you believe.”

“You think we can win?” asked Kirov. “Tell me, Grishin. You know everything going on out there, my faithful Chief of Intelligence. You honestly think we can prevail?”

“I know we have avoided those errors I just spoke of. And in the material, the Germans captured Voronezh on the 5th of July! We are still fighting for it! They were approaching Stalingrad by late August, and here it is mid-September, and our troops still hold the line in the Kalach Bridgehead—against the very best they have. In the Material, they already had Rostov, and all the Kuban was overrun, but we still hold Rostov and the Kuban as well. That maneuver Zhukov pulled by moving the rifle Divisions out of Sevastopol was brilliant! They arrived just as the damn Germans were pushing tanks into the suburb of the city. We stopped them. Don’t you see? We are doing better than Stalin ever did. It may not seem that way, but it’s the truth.”

Kirov inclined his head, looking at the map, thinking.

“We can win, Sergei,” said Berzin with a hand on Kirov’s broad shoulder. “It won’t take miracles and magic, or all this cloak and dagger you spoke of just now. It will just take backbone, and the men who still fight so bravely for us out there in that storm. They aren’t going to sit down to a nice meal with wine tonight as we might here. For them it is live or die, and even a crust of bread is something to be grateful for. Give them that bread, Sergei. Give them the chance to win here. The Germans took most of Moscow last winter, but what did that get them but the burned out city they still huddle in? We can stop them. We can still win, not at Ilanskiy with a single man, or a mysterious letter and a string of impossible events that must all line up and salute us as we wish in order to come true. No! But we can win right here, right now. We can win at Volgograd, at Rostov, at Voronezh!”

The radio had been playing quietly in the background, the sonorous strains of Tchaikovsky, his movements slowly rising, rising to the inevitable crescendo that once shook the world. The 1812 Overture commemorated that day, the day Russia stopped that other mad dog, Napoleon. Then, the music suddenly cut off, the signal tones of Radio Leningrad sounded, and a voice began speaking. There came at that same moment the sound of footsteps in the outer hall, men rushing, an urgency beat out with every footfall, and a hard knock at the door.

Berzin instinctively reached for the pistol in his side holster, but Kirov raised a hand, his head inclined, listening. The news on the radio began to make the announcement. “This morning in the predawn hours, a combined British and American armada landed troops in Lisbon and Casablanca…”

Berzin was at the door. “Who is it?” he said sternly.

“Sir,” came the voice of a trusted Lieutenant, giving him relief. “Important news. I bear a message that just came over the teletype.”

Berzin opened the door, seeing the man salute, then he handed off a plain white paper. “Is it true sir?” asked the Lieutenant. “Is this the Second Front we’ve been hoping for?” He was not supposed to read the messages he delivered. They were supposed to be placed in a secure pouch, meant only for Berzin’s eyes, and the eyes of Sergei Kirov. Under the circumstances, Berzin did not correct him.

“Thank you Lieutenant. That will be all.”

The man saluted stiffly, and withdrew. Berzin took the paper, scanning the lines of bold type there: 15 SEP, 1942. INTELLIGENCE CONFIRMS ALLIED LANDING AT BOTH LISBON AND CASABLANCA. GENERAL EISENHOWER DECLARES SECOND FRONT AGAINST GERMANY HAS NOW BEEN OPENED. MORE TO FOLLOW….

Berzin turned, seeing that Kirov had moved to the radio, turning up the volume, hanging on every word of the announcement. “At last,” he said, turning to Berzin.

“Our network confirms,” said Berzin, waving the paper he held. “The Second Front! You see, Sergei. They haven’t quit the fight. The convoys may have stopped after the disaster of PQ-17, but they haven’t abandoned us. Here they come! All we have to do now is hold on. We have to keep fighting.”

“Get me more information,” said Kirov quickly, all business now. “I want to know how big this operation is, how many divisions, how many troops and tanks, how many planes. Get it all for me.”

“You can rely on me, sir,” said Berzin. “And I hope to god the nation can now still rely on you.”

Kirov looked at him, and he smiled. “How many divisions did Zhukov pull out of Sevastopol?”

“Six, and they all made it safely to Azov and Taganrog. They are in Rostov, fighting as we speak.”

“Good,” said Kirov. “Good….”

Berzin’s arguments were closer to the mark than even he realized. Steiner’s SS, the very best the Germans had, were still in a death grip with the defenders of the Volga Front, but the line had held. All of 2nd and Third Panzer Armies had delivered terrible blows to the Central Front, but Voronezh was still in Soviet hands, and Zhukov’s second withdrawal of the three armies he had extricated from the Kursk Pocket was now providing a pool of fresh manpower to hold the line of the upper Donets. The German infantry opposite those Armies had not pushed aggressively to pin them in place. All the supplies and most of the available fuel had gone to the panzer divisions, and they had broken through, but now the river, and all the men Zhukov could find, stood between them and further advances.

The General had thrown 2nd Guards Army in to slow the advance, then struck with the three tank corps of his 1st Tank Army, the first and last that he had. They could not stop the Germans, but they surely slowed them down. Model had sent a massed armored attack over the Donets, but the 17th and 24th Siberian Armies had arrived in the nick of time. For now, at least, on that morning of much needed good news, the line had held.

The Soviet Armies had not broken. Ragged, burned out units fought on, with bravery and tenacity that defied description. The Motor Rifle Division in 19th Tank Corps had started the war with 300 rifle squads and 80 AFVs and tanks. Now there were ten squads, with a single engineer squad and a few companies of military police, with 28 AFVs, including three armored cars. But they still fought. Some divisions had to be fought to the very last man. Divisions were shattered, but the stragglers were rounded up, formed into a new regiment, and sent back to the front. They were holding. It was as if the Soviets were simply piling up sand before the seemingly unstoppable bulldozer of the Wehrmacht. Sooner or later, with enough sand, it would grind to a halt, its heavy tracks unable to gain traction, the sand all around it, smothering deep sand.

That was what the Red Army had become in late 1942. Their potential for counterattack was severely limited, but the recruitment effort had put hundreds and hundreds of divisions in the field. Each one was perhaps the equivalent of a British regiment in actual combat power, with a single Allied division being the equal of a Russian Corps at this stage. But there were hundreds and hundreds of those grains of sand on the line, and the bull dozer was slowing to a crawl.

It was early autumn, the rains thickening in the grey skies, the mud beginning. The Germans had been fighting for two months, over 60 days of ceaseless offensive operations. Manstein’s southern front had come some 350 kilometers, occupying the whole of the Don Bend and pushing over the river at Kalach. Rundstedt, Model and Hoth had gobbled up another 275 Kilometers, and more ground had been lost in the Donets Basin. Yet the Russians fought on. They had seen the enemy formations slow for lack of fuel and supply, and the casualties had mounted on the German side as well.

Steiner’s SS Korps was easily half the size it once was in raw manpower, though its equipment had suffered perhaps only 25% attrition. The Germans now had much more infantry available after the demise of the Kirov Pocket, and it had helped to get Model and Hoth moving again, but none of that infantry had reached Steiner. He got one division that had been attached to the 48th Panzer Korps. The other went on the line of the Don. His plan to force open a corridor to the city and then feed in hordes of infantry for the street fighting was well behind schedule, and now the Germans were running out of time. The Rasputista was coming again, the thick endless sea of mud and grime. The high summer of the German offensive was fading, waning, and though they continued to push, it was clear to the Generals that the offensive was beginning to stall.

But it was not clear to Hitler.

All he could see was the ground gained by each new breakthrough, the latest being the startling and unexpected dash of Hermann Balck’s 11th Panzer Division and the rest of 48th Panzer Korps to the very doorstep of Rostov. This news had come on the very day that Rommel arrived at Werewolf HQ to seek permission for his withdrawal to Buerat, and he would find Hitler a happy man instead of the snarling beast that he had been in Fedorov’s history. The Führer had been brooding over the loss of the Hindenburg, ready to sack Admiral Raeder and order all building programs to convert to U-Boats. He was eyeing Doenitz for the new Fleet Commander, but then he was pulled into the drama unfolding on the east front, and his mood brightened considerably.

“Rommel? What a surprise to find you here. Are you getting bored in the desert? I hear the British are pushing again.”

“That is what I have come to discuss,” said Rommel. “Yes, they are pushing, and it will be a slow grind.”

“That is all I hear from Manstein these days,” said Hitler. “He pushed over the Don three weeks ago, but he still hasn’t taken Volgograd. Yet have you heard the good news? Knobelsdorff has pushed all the way to Rostov. 11th Panzer has tanks in the city even now. This will cut off the entire Donets Basin, and isolate all the remaining resistance there from any support they might get from the Kuban. What, have you returned to celebrate your Birthday early? What is it you need?”

“As always, tanks, fuel, weapons.”

“7th Panzer Division wasn’t enough?”

“Ah, that was a most welcome gift. I am assuming it will be sent to Tripoli, which is perfect for what I have planned. With that division, I can resume the offensive in a matter of a week or two.”

“Offensive? I have not heard that word from you for a very long time. Frankly, after Gazala I was beginning to think you had lost your edge. What offensive?”

Rommel cleared his voice, knowing this would be the moment of truth. Hearing the word “plan,” Halder and Keitel drifted over, standing by the map table.

“My Führer,” said Rommel. “The point of all these operations in North Africa has always been one thing—to beat the British 8th Army. We have been at it like a pair of bulldogs for well over a year, and though the new tanks we are beginning to receive have helped a great deal, that British heavy tank is still unbeatable. But the British have grown overbold this time. Even though most of their veteran Commonwealth divisions have gone home to fight the Japanese, they have replaced them with three new divisions sent from England. O’Connor now has six infantry divisions and two armored, with an additional supporting armored brigade.”

“That heavy brigade you fear so much?”

“No my Führer, that is the good news. The Luftwaffe spotted that unit moving towards Tobruk. It is deep in reserve, and it appears O’Connor has a mind to attack without it. After losing 10th Panzer to von Arnim, and all of Goring’s troops, I still had no option other than to sit stubbornly on defense. I cannot fight eight British Divisions with four of my own, and we both know the four Italian divisions I still have would be useful on defense, but not in the attack. Their equipment is simply obsolete now. The British are fielding armored cars with better armor and guns than the Italian medium tanks!”

“Yes, yes,” Hitler waved his hand. “No one ever expected to see the Italians leading the way to Alexandria. I had hope in your promise, Rommel, but instead you gave the British all of Cyrenaica.”

“Useless sand,” said Rommel. “If you want it, I can give it back to you after 7th Panzer arrives, but as I said at the beginning, that is not the point of these operations. If I ever have a chance to win through to Egypt again, I must first beat the British 8th Army, and decisively.”

“Yes, but the opposite has been true,” said Keitel.

“None of those so called British victories was ever decisive,” said Rommel quickly. “But I did not come here to fight those battles again with OKW staff. When I got the news of 7th Panzer Division, I knew everything had changed. I don’t have to sit behind my minefields and wire any longer, taking a pounding day after day from the British artillery and the RAF.”

“You plan to attack?” said Halder, crossing his arms.

“Of course, but certainly not from where I sit now. I need room to fight a mobile battle, not a grinding battle of attrition. So this is what I plan to do. The British have all that useless sand in Cyrenaica, and they are flushed with what they perceive as a victory. That was nothing. I gave them that to preserve the Afrika Korps. That was the only important thing that happened at Gazala. I preserved the bulk of the Army entrusted to my command—so we could fight again another day. And now I believe that day has come. Look here,” he pointed to the map. “That is some of the worst ground for mobile operations in all of North Africa. Now look here—Tripolitania has good terrain for such a battle. There I can put the maxims of Truppenführung to good use—combined arms, maneuver, speed in the attack. On such ground I can dance around the British Army and chop it to pieces. When I have done that, then they will give all the useless sand in that desert behind them back to me, and my Führer, I will pass it on to you.”

“Exactly where do you propose to fight this battle?” asked Halder.

“In Tripolitania. The exact place does not matter, and the time will be the right moment of opportunity as I see it. A battle of maneuver needs room, and good footing for the panzers. That is the only place I will find it now, because I will certainly not waste my forces trying to push through the narrow defile where I presently sit. So this is what I plan.”

He leaned over the map, pointing as he spoke, indicating where he had positioned his reserve fuel at Buerat, telling them how he would lure O’Connor forward, thinking he had won yet another victory at Mersa Brega, stressing how the British might feed only one or two infantry divisions through that bottleneck at a time, making them vulnerable to defeat in detail. Nowhere in his discourse did he ever use the word ‘withdrawal,’ and certainly not its surly brother, ‘retreat.’ Instead he said I will redeploy here, maneuver there, command the ground on the enemy flank, envelop, enfilade, engage, crush. They were just the sort of words the Führer liked to hear, and to finish it all off, he seized upon the startling progress made by Knobelsdorff’s 48th Panzer Korps in the last few days.

“Look what Knobelsdorff has done in just 48 hours when he can fight a battle of maneuver—Blitzkreig! Angreifen! He has gained more ground than all of Steiner’s SS has in the last three weeks. Let me do this, my Führer, and I promise you I will smash the 8th Army, and eliminate the threat of further advance from the east. Then we can turn and smash the Americans in the west, and when we have finished with them, Kesselring and I will turn and chase O’Connor all the way to the Nile.”

Hitler stood in silence for a moment, his eyes looking over the map. Neither Halder nor Keitel said anything, as they expected the plan to be immediately rejected, because it required the abandonment of the Mersa Brega Line. To their great surprise, Hitler straightened, clasped his arms behind his back, looked his favorite General in the eye, and smiled.

“Herr Rommel,” he said. “I have heard such boastful talk from you before, and the Nile River is still very far away. That said, you have my permission to fight your battle. The Italians will squeal a bit, but I will settle them down. I will tell Mussolini that we are reinforcing the Afrika Korps and planning this big new offensive, because that is what we will do. In addition to the 7th Panzer Division, you will receive the best weapons; the best new tanks we have, and adequate air support. Did you get a close look at the new Tigers? You can have the pick of the litter as they come out of the factories. Take all the 88s you need. But if I give you this latitude, all this new equipment, you must not let me down. Take these new tanks and kick the British back into Egypt. Earn that Field Marshall’s baton I have just given you. General Rommel, take your Tigers east!”