Stalingrad

has come for every sensible man in Germany to curse the madness of this war. It’s impossible to describe what is happening here. Everyone in Stalingrad who still possesses a head and hands, women as well as men, carries on fighting.’ Another German soldier also wrote home in bitter mood: ‘Don’t worry, don’t be upset, because the sooner I am under the ground, the less I will suffer. We often think that Russia should capitulate, but these uneducated people are too stupid to realize it.’ A third soldier surveyed the ruins around him. ‘Here a saying from the Gospel often passes through my thoughts: No stone will be left standing one upon another. Here it is the truth.’

13
Paulus’s Final Assault
    Out in the steppe, the routine of German divisions was a world apart from the fighting in the city. There were defence lines to be held and probing attacks to be repulsed, but life offered a much more conventional existence, especially back from the front. On Sunday, 25 October, the officers of a regiment in the Bavarian 376th Infantry Division invited General Edler von Daniels, their divisional commander, to a Munich
Oktoberfest
shooting contest.
    The main preoccupation at that time was the preparation of good winter quarters. ‘It’s not an enticing picture out here,’ a soldier in the 113th Infantry Division wrote home. ‘For far and wide there are no villages, no woodland, neither tree nor shrub, and not a drop of water.’ Russian prisoners and Hiwis were put to work digging bunkers and trenches. ‘We really need to make good use of these men because we’re so short-handed,’ wrote a senior NCO. Out in the treeless steppe, infantry divisions were forced to send trucks and working parties into Stalingrad to fetch beams from the rubble of destroyed houses for the roofs of their bunkers. South of Stalingrad, the 297th Infantry Division excavated man-made caves in the sides of
balkas
to form stables, stores and eventually an entire field hospital, for which all the equipment arrived by rail from Germany. During the Indian summer of early and mid-October, Germans were keen to get their ‘
Haus
’ ready. Even the youngest soldiers recognized the implications of digging in: they would now be there for the whole winter.
    Hitler issued his own instructions for the winter. He expected ‘a highly
active
defence’ and a ‘proud sense of victory’. Tanks were to be protected from the cold and bombardment in specially built concrete bunkers, but the necessary materials never arrived, so vehicles stayed in the open. Sixth Army headquarters also drew up elaborate plans for the winter. Even a Finnish training film,
How to Construct a Sauna in the Field
, was ordered, but none of these preparations carried much conviction. ‘The Fuhrer has ordered us to defend our positions to the last man,’ Groscurth wrote home to Germany, ‘something we would do of our own accord, since the loss of a position would hardly improve our situation. We know what it would be like to be stranded without shelter in the open steppe.’
    Fuhrer headquarters also decided that the majority of Sixth Army’s draught animals should be sent over a hundred miles to the rear. This would save on the supply trains required to bring forward the huge quantities of fodder. Altogether some 150,000 horses, as well as a number of oxen and even camels, had accumulated between the Don and the Volga. Motor transport and repair units were also moved back. The reasons behind such a move were understandable from a purely logistic point of view, but it would prove a serious mistake in a crisis. The Sixth Army, especially the vast majority of its artillery and medical units, depended almost entirely on horses for their mobility.
    Morale, according to a sergeant-major in the 371 st Infantry Division, ‘rises and falls with the quantity of incoming post’. Almost everyone seemed to be suffering from acute homesickness. ‘Here one must become a completely different person’, wrote a senior NCO of the 60th Motorized Infantry Division, ‘and that is not so easy. It’s exactly as if we were living in another world. When the post arrives, everybody rushes out of their “little houses” – and they just can’t be stopped. For the time being, I must stand by and watch with an indulgent smile.’
    Thoughts were already turning to Christmas: the ‘most beautiful festival of the whole year’. Soldiers began to discuss presents with wives. On 3 November,