Stalingrad

Front, had not greatly revised his estimate of soldiers trapped in the
Kessel.
He now put them at 86,000, when asked to be precise. It was a figure which was to embarrass Red Army intelligence, especially when their NKVD rivals made sarcastic allusions later.
    The draft plan for Operation Ring was at last ready on 27 December, and flown to Moscow. The next day Voronov was told to rewrite it. Stalin insisted that the first phase of the attack, focused on the Karpovka-Marinovka nose in the south-west, should come from the north-west and be coordinated with another operation at the opposite corner of the
Kessel
, cutting off the factory district of Stalingrad and the northern suburbs.
    Stalin observed at a meeting of the State Defence Committee that the rivalry between Yeremenko, the commander of the Stalingrad Front, and Rokossovsky, the commander of the Don Front, had to be resolved before Operation Ring began. ‘Whom shall we make responsible for the final liquidation of the enemy?’ he asked. Somebody mentioned Rokossovsky. Stalin asked Zhukov what he thought.
    ‘Yeremenko will be very hurt’, Zhukov observed.
    ‘We are not high-school girls,’ Stalin retorted. ‘We are Bolsheviksand we must put worthwhile leaders in command.’ Zhukov was left to pass on the unwelcome news to Yeremenko.
    Rokossovsky, the commander-in-chief responsible for the
coup de grâce
on the Sixth Army, was allowed 47 divisions, 5,610 field guns and heavy mortars and 169 tanks. This force of 218,000 men was supported by 300 aircraft. But Stalin’s impatience again built up, just as he was planning a strike against the Hungarian Second Army. To his fury, he was told that transport difficulties had slowed the delivery of reinforcements, supplies and ammunition. Voronov demanded yet another delay of four days. Stalin’s sarcasm was bitter. ‘You’ll be sitting around there until the Germans take you and Rokossovsky prisoners!’ With great reluctance, he agreed to the new date of 10 January.
    German officers outside the
Kessel
had been wondering what would happen next. General Fiebig, the commander of VIII Air Corps, wondered after a long conversation with Richthofen: ‘Why don’t the Russians crush the
Kessel
like a ripe fruit?’ Red Army officers on the Don Front were also surprised about the delay, and wondered how long it would be before they received their orders to attack. Voronov, however, had received another call from Moscow now telling him that an ultimatum to the Sixth Army must be prepared.
    Voronov, in that first week of January 1943, wrote a draft addressed personally to Paulus. Constant calls from Moscow, with Stalin’s amendments, were necessary. When finally approved, it was translated at Don Front headquarters by ‘German anti-fascists from the group headed by Walter Ulbricht’. Meanwhile, NKVD representatives and Colonel Vinogradov of Red Army intelligence, displaying their usual rivalry, had begun to search for suitable officers to act as truce envoys. In the end, a compromise was reached. Late in the afternoon of 7 January, Major Aleksandr Mikhailovich Smyslov of army intelligence and Captain Nikolay Dmitrevich Dyatlenko of the NKVD, were selected to go together. Vinogradov, when interviewing Dyatlenko, suddenly asked: ‘Are you a
khokhol?’ Khokhol
, or ‘tufty’, was the insulting term for a Ukrainian, because Russians were often rude about their traditional style of haircut.
    ‘No, Comrade Colonel,’ replied Dyatlenko stiffly. ‘I’m a Ukrainian.’
    ‘So you’re just like a Russian,’ Vinogradov laughed. ‘Well done. You are a suitable representative of the Red Army to meet the fascists.’
    Smyslov and Dyatlenko were then briefed by General Malinin, the chief-of-staff, and by Voronov himself. One might have thought that Stalin was looking over their shoulder from the way both generals kept asking the envoys whether they fully understood the instructions from Moscow. In fact nobody really had a clear idea of the rules and ritual of a truce envoy. Dyatlenko admitted that his only knowledge came from the play
Field Marshal Kutuzov
by Solovyov.
    ‘So lads,’ said Voronov, ‘will you fulfil your mission?’
    ‘We will fulfil it, Comrade Colonel-General!’ they chanted as one.
    Malinin then ordered the front quartermaster-in-chief to kit out the two officers in the smartest uniforms available. The Germans had to be impressed. The quartermaster promised to have them ‘dressed like