Stalingrad

whose soldiers had suffered serious frostbite casualties owing to clothing shortages, ‘above all boots, trousers and socks’. The rising number of desertions prompted Paulus to conclude that: ‘Counter-propaganda is necessary against Russian leaflets printed in Romanian.’
    Battalions and companies were so weak that they had become meaningless designations. Out of over 150,000 soldiers left in the
Kessel
, less than one in five were front-line troops. Many companies were down to a dozen men fit for duty. Fragments of units were therefore increasingly amalgamated into battle groups. The surviving panzer grenadiers of Sergeant-Major Wallrawe’s company found themselves mixed ‘with Luftwaffe companies and Cossack platoons’ and sent to defend a position near Karpovka. It was an unfortunate spot to be sent to. A glance at the map indicated that the ‘nose’ which formed the south-western extremity of the
Kessel
would be the Russians’ first objective when they decided to finish off the Sixth Army.
    There were a few days of comparatively mild, wet weather at thevery start of the year. Russian soldiers hated the thaw. ‘I don’t like the weather in Stalingrad’, wrote Barsov in the marine infantry. ‘It changes often and this makes the rifles go rusty. When it becomes warmer, the snow starts to fall. Everything becomes moist.
Valenki
[felt snow-boots] become soaking wet and we don’t get much chance to dry things.’ He and his comrades were, no doubt, happier on 5 January, when the temperature dropped to minus thirty-five degrees.
    Soviet forces adopted a deliberate tactic to exploit their superiority in winter equipment. ‘The Russians began with probing attacks’, wrote a Luftwaffe liaison officer. ‘If they breached the line, none of our men were in a position to dig new fire trenches. The men were physically too weak owing to lack of food, and the ground was frozen rock-hard.’ Stranded on the open steppe, even more would die. On 6 January, Paulus signalled to General Zeitzler: ‘Army starving and frozen, have no ammunition and cannot move tanks any more.’ The same day, Hitler awarded General Schmidt the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
    Now that the fate of the Sixth Army was certain, Soviet journalists were brought to Don Front headquarters at Zavarykino. A delegation of Soviet writers came down from the capital to visit the 173rd Rifle Division, which had been raised from the Kievsky district of Moscow, and contained many intellectuals. ‘From the command post of 65th Army, writers Aleksandr Korneychuk and Wanda Vasilevskaya’ watched the division attack the Kazachy Kurgan, a Tartar burial mound on the north-west of the
Kessel.
    Even before Hoth’s rescue attempt had been crushed on the Myshkova river, Stalin was harrying his generals to produce plans for the annihilation of the Sixth Army. On the morning of 19 December, he had telephoned Voronov, the
Stavka
representative overseeing Operation Little Saturn, and told him to move to Don Front headquarters. Voronov installed himself close to Rokossovsky’s ‘residenz’, spread across the adjoining villages of Zavarykino and Medvedevo, where the accommodation for each general, or department, consisted of a ‘five-walled’ peasant
izba
, a log cabin with a dividing wall down the middle. American Willys staff cars, with Soviet markings, lurchedin and out of the frozen ruts, taking generals off on tours of inspection to galvanize subordinate commanders in their efforts.
    Voronov rapidly assembled a planning staff to study the options. He insisted, despite Stalin’s insistence on having the results in two days, on first inspecting the terrain for himself. His visit to 57th Army headquarters took place on a clear day. He observed a group of Junkers transports that appeared overhead at about 9,000 feet without a fighter escort. The Russian anti-aircraft batteries grouped in the area opened fire too late; Soviet fighters also arrived too late to intercept. Not a single Junkers had been brought down. Voronov was even more furious when he discovered how little coordination there was between ground observers, anti-aircraft batteries and the fighter squadrons. The major-general in charge of anti-aircraft operations was terrorized into feverish activity.
    Back at Zavarykino, Voronov again examined the figures. In spite of the strong German resistance put up early in December, Colonel I. V. Vinogradov, the chief intelligence officer of the Don