Stalingrad

illusions. They knew that a minimum of 300 flights a day would be needed to restore the Sixth Army’s fighting capacity, and that was out of the question. In any case, the greatly strengthened and bolder Red Army aviation, as well as anti-aircraft fire round the edge of the
Kessel
, represented a formidable challenge to the lumbering Junkers 52 trimotors. Jeschonnek and Goering did not consider that the airfields might lie within range of Soviet heavy artillery. Worst of all, they made no allowance for the weather, even after the experiences of the previous winter. There would be many days with zero visibility, and many when the temperature would be so low that it would be almost impossible to start aircraft engines, even with fires lit underneath them. Apart from Richthofen, however, Luftwaffe officers, either within the
Kessel
or outside, did not dare speak out. ‘It was defeatism if you voiced doubts,’ said one of them.
    As well as bringing in fuel, ammunition and food – in theory twotons per Junkers 52, and rather less for a Heinkel 111 – the aircraft would fly out the wounded from the general field hospital next to Pitomnik airfield. Perhaps the best indication of officer pessimism was the secret decision to send out all German nurses, even before most of the wounded, to ensure that they never fell into Russian hands. Although great efforts were made to keep this secret, officers from the 369th Croat Infantry Regiment heard and lobbied the Luftwaffe to fly out their mistresses, disguised as nurses. The lieutenant whom they approached rather admired the Croats as soldiers and promised to help. His colonel, however, took a high moral line. ‘But surely it doesn’t matter’, the lieutenant replied, ‘whether they’re Croat whores, nursing sisters or whatever. They must be got out to save them from the Russians.’ The colonel still refused. The lieutenant later suspected that the Croats managed to smuggle their women on to planes.
    Encampments, bunkers and tents spread to the side of the airfield. There were numerous headquarters and signals detachments with radio masts and vehicles, as well as the general field hospital. Pitomnik rapidly became the main focus for Soviet fighter and bomber regiments. During the course of 10, 11 and 12 December, Soviet aircraft carried out forty-two air raids.
    The Russians, despite all their air activity over the
Kessel
, still did not realize how large a force they had surrounded. Colonel Vinogradov, the chief of Red Army intelligence at Don Front headquarters, estimated that Operation Uranus had trapped around 86,000 men. The probable figure, including allies and Hiwis, was nearly three and a half times greater: close to 290,000 men. The allies included the remnants of two Romanian divisions, the Croat regiment with 100th Jäger Division and a motor-transport column of Italians who had picked a bad moment to come to find wood in the ruins of Stalingrad. *
    In the fighting west of the Don and on the northern flank, Strecker’s XI Corps had suffered most. The Austrian 44th Infantry Division lost nearly 2,000 men, the 376th 1,600, and the 384th over 900. Officers throughout the Sixth Army sat down at makeshift tables in earth bunkers under the snow to write by candlelight to next of kin: ‘I have the sad duty to have to inform you that…’
    With the Sixth Army reduced to conditions very similar to those in the First World War, older soldiers found themselves remembering the existence of the Western Front and its gallows humour. After the cold of mid-November, a wet period of thaw had set in, with ‘General Mud’ reappearing briefly before ‘General Winter’. Some returned to the old practices of trench life, such as resorting to the only certain source of warm liquid, when relieving themselves, to rinse the caked mud from their hands.
    The construction of trenches and bunkers varied according to the circumstances of each division. Those who had been forced to withdraw or take up new positions faced heavy labour, although much of the work was given to Hiwis and other Russian prisoners. The Germans had learned from the street fighting in Stalingrad. They dug bunkers under knocked-out tanks and made better use of existing features. But in the first days after the encirclement, the ground had still been frozen, and even fires did little to soften the earth before digging. Out in the steppe, the greatest shortage was wood both for fires and for beams to cover the