Stalingrad

structured signal, which did not follow the correct format. Most crucially of all, Paulus failed to propose a firm course of action. He asked for ‘freedom of action if it proves impossible to achieve all-round defence on the southern flank’.
    At a quarter past ten that night, Paulus received a radio message from the Führer. ‘The Sixth Army is temporarily surrounded by Russian forces. I know the Sixth Army and your commander-in-chief and have no doubt that in this difficult situation it will hold on bravely. The Sixth Army must know that I am doing everything to relievethem. I will issue my instructions in good time. Adolf Hitler.’ Paulus and Schmidt, convinced despite this message that Hitler would soon see reason, began to prepare plans for a breakout to the south-west.
    Hitler, on that evening of 22 November, was setting out with Keitel and Jodl in his special train from Berchtesgaden for Leipzig, from where an aeroplane would take him to Rastenburg. During the journey north, he halted the train every few hours to speak to Zeitzler. He wanted to check that Paulus would not be given permission to withdraw. During one of these conversations, the Führer told Zeitzler: ‘We’ve found another way out.’ He did not say that he had been talking on the special train again to General Hans Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe chief of staff, who had already indicated, despite warnings from Richthofen, that an air-bridge to supply the Sixth Army might be possible on a temporary basis.
    Reichsmarschall Goering, on hearing what the Führer wanted, immediately summoned a meeting of his transport officers. He told them that 500 tons a day was needed. (The Sixth Army’s estimate of 700 tons was ignored.) They replied that 350 tons would be the maximum, and then only for a short period. Goering, with breathtaking irresponsibility, promptly assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could maintain the Sixth Army in its present position by air. Even on the lower figure, no allowance was made for bad weather, unserviceable aircraft or enemy action.
    Early next morning, 24 November, the hopes of all the generals involved in the fate of the Sixth Army were firmly dashed. Another Führer decision reached Paulus’s headquarters at 8.30 a.m. In it, the boundaries of what Hitler now termed ‘Fortress Stalingrad’ were clearly laid down. The front on the Volga was to be held ‘whatever the circumstances’.
    Zeitzler had been confident the evening before that Hitler was coming to his senses. Now, the Führer demonstrated indubitably that the opinion of all the generals responsible for the Stalingrad operation counted for nothing. Their feelings were summed up by Richthofen in his diary, when he wrote that they had become little more than ‘highly paid NCOs’. Hitler’s notion of the power of the will had completely parted company with military logic. He was fixated with theidea that if the Sixth Army withdrew from Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht would never return. He had sensed that this was the high-water mark of the Third Reich. Also, rather pertinently in the case of such an egomaniac, his personal pride was at stake after his boasts about Stalin’s city during the Munich Bierkeller speech less than two weeks before.
    Such a combination of circumstances was perhaps bound to produce moments of bitter irony. Just before the Führer decision was issued, General von Seydlitz, the commander of LI Corps in Stalingrad, had decided to jump the gun. He considered it ‘completely unthinkable’ that an army with twenty-two divisions ‘should go into all-round defence and thus deprive itself of all freedom of movement’. He prepared a long memorandum on the subject for headquarters Sixth Army. ‘Already the minor defensive battles over the last few days have used up our ammunition reserves.’ The supply situation was decisive. It was their duty to ignore the catastrophic order to stay put.
    On that evening of 23 November, Seydlitz ordered 60th Motorized Infantry Division and the 94th Infantry Division to burn their stores, and blow up their positions, then withdraw from their positions on the north side of Stalingrad. ‘In thousands of rapidly lit fires,’ wrote the quartermaster of the 94th Infantry Division, ‘we burned overcoats, uniforms, boots, documents, maps, typewriters as well as food supplies. The general burned all his own equipment himself.’ The Red Army, alerted by the explosions and flames, caught the already weakened division