HOW THE GERMAN ARMY FED ITSELF
While countries such as Britain and the United States were developing the concept of easily stored and transported pre-packed rations, the Germans were still using a fresh-food system that relied overwhelmingly on local procurement and preparation of foodstuffs.
At the forefront of this system was the famed German Gulaschkanone and its horse-drawn, wood-burning stoves and massive cooking pots, as well as the bakery and butchery companies (kompanien) that were essential to all German divisions. The Gulaschkanone came in two main sizes: the larger version served anywhere between 125 and 225 men, and the smaller one half that number. Each field kitchen had a minimum of two trained cooks and a number of assistants commonly nicknamed küchenbullen (kitchen bulls).
German soldiers in the frontline would typically eat three meals a day starting with a cold breakfast of bread and jam, perhaps with some cheese and ham, all kept in the soldiers’ brotbeutel (bread bag) haversack and washed down with a mug of coffee (by 1942 usually ersatz coffee made from acorns or chicory). Next would be the soldiers’ main meal of the day, a Gulaschkanone-cooked hot meal comprising half of his daily rations.
The evening meal was one-third his Portionsatz (daily ration), again centrally prepared, leaving the final one-sixth for the following morning’s breakfast. Bread was the soldiers’ main food, with every soldier receiving one 750g standard Army kommissbrot loaf per day, all freshly baked by the division’s own bakery kompanie. On hearing they were surrounded, Sixth Army headquarters ordered a cut in the daily bread ration from 750g to 350g – less than half a loaf.
Hermann Goering – without being in possession of the facts – told the dictator his Luftwaffe was able to supply the Pocket from the air and the decision was made that Paulus would sit tight and wait for relief.
A figure of 300 tons of supplies per day was set as the minimum needed by Sixth
Army, but with the weather worsening and a lack of available transport aircraft for the airlift, that amount was only ever achieved on a handful of occasions, with the average being around a third of the requirement. Fuel and ammunition were the priority, but as Sixth Army’s own stocks dried up the besieged Germans were increasingly immobile and forced to only fire back when directly attacked. As for food, at first Sixth Army relied on its reserves and the meat from the tens of thousands of horses the troops used to pull everything from artillery pieces to ammunition wagons and store carts.
Winter Storm – the relief attempt
The day after Uranus was launched, Hitler ordered the establishment of Army Group Don (Heeresgruppe Don) and put it under command of Erich von Manstein. Hitler instructed Manstein to take the offensive and relieve
Sixth Army by breaking through to Stalingrad. On 12 December Manstein launched Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen Wintergewitter), but the weakness of his own forces, coupled with the strength of Red Army resistance, reduced the initial advance to just 19km.
At the same time the Soviets keep up the pressure on the rest of the southern front, pushing the Germans back in the north and on 16 December hitting the Italian 8th Army with Operation Little Saturn. In a matter of days the Italians collapsed, with thousands fleeing to the rear across the snow-covered steppe as the Germans struggled to plug the gap.
Manstein’s offensive ground on, eventually getting to within 48km of the Pocket, but wasn’t strong enough to go any further. The only option was for Paulus to break out and reach Army Group Don before it was too late. In preparation for just such a move Manstein had placed 800 cargo-laden trucks at the heart of his advance. On board was 3,000 tons of fuel and ammunition to get Paulus moving and fighting and bring the bulk of his army to safety, but it wasn’t to be. In scenes reminiscent of the previous month when indecision had gripped him, Paulus once again refused to act and deferred to Hitler, loudly proclaiming his battered army was incapable of reaching Manstein unless he received significant resupply beforehand.
Defeat and surrender
With Manstein unable to advance any further and Paulus refusing to break out, the fate of Sixth Army was sealed. By Christmas Eve, Red Army pressure on Army Group Don forced it to retreat – Winter Storm was over. That same day the main airfield hub for the airlift operation, Tatsinskaya (nicknamed Tazi by the Germans), fell to the Red Army’s 24th Tank Corps. With no option but to now fly even further to reach the beleaguered Sixth Army, the Luftwaffe transport fleet struggled to keep on supplying the city. The day after Tazi fell only seven tons of supplies were flown in.
Four days earlier Sixth Army had reported its first case of death from starvation – a soldier in Bernhard Steinmetz’s 305 Infanterie Division. One German soldier inside the Pocket wrote that “we are suffering terribly from hunger, and they are only issuing one loaf of stale bread for five men”.
Conditions inside the Pocket continued to deteriorate throughout the first week of January. Ammunition was in such short supply that the 5,000 or so remaining artillery guns were only allowed to fire with permission from their responsible regimental commander, while the few remaining panzers were more or less immobile from lack of fuel. Then, on 10 January, the Red Army launched Operation Ring to finally destroy the Pocket. Three days later the Soviets attacked the Hungarian
Second Army and it quickly collapsed, causing further chaos on the German southern front. On 16 January Pitomnik airfield – the main base for the airlift within the Pocket – fell to the advancing Red Army.
The Soviets offered terms to the Sixth Army, but Hitler forbade capitulation, telling Paulus: “Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round.” In an effort to stiffen his resolve, Hitler promoted Paulus to generalfeldmarschall on 30 January, knowing that no German officer of that rank had ever surrendered. Paulus saw it for what it was – an invitation to commit suicide, but he refused. Instead, the following day he walked out of his headquarters in the basement of the Univermag department store and surrendered to the Soviets.
Aftermath
One of Paulus’ staff officers – Wilhelm
Adam – witnessed the final surrender and wrote in his diary: “My God, what a contrast between the two sides! The German soldiers, ragged and in light coats, looked like ghosts with hollow, unshaven cheeks. The Red
Army soldiers looked fresh and wore warm winter uniforms… The march towards the Volga had ended.”
Wilhelm Gereke – a young gunner in 71 Infanterie-division – remembered how “some 250 of us were formed up as a column and under the guard of one sentry began to march south”. Gereke was one of 91,000 survivors taken prisoner by the Red Army in the rubble of Stalingrad. Half would be dead by spring, a minority shot by their guards when they were unable to continue marching, but most from hunger and disease.
The Red Army – much like their German counterparts in 1941 – had done virtually nothing to prepare for an influx of prisoners of war, and the subsequent lack of food, shelter and medical care was a death sentence for thousands. Marching to a reception camp, one soldier recalled how “we set out with 1,200 men and only a tenth, about 120, were alive when we reached Beketovka”. The noted historian Antony Beevor, in his book quotes an NKVD secret police report that admitted 55,228 German POWS from the battle had died in Soviet camps by 15 April 1943.
This was on top of those that had died in the fighting itself. The survivors were kept in Soviet forced labour camps, some even working on rebuilding the shattered city of Stalingrad, until only 5,000 remained alive. In a deal between the German and Soviet governments, those 5,000 were finally released and sent home in 1955-56.
Unsurprisingly given the chaos in Sixth
Army at the time, accurate figures for German losses in the battle are almost impossible to find, with a number of studies quoting wildly different numbers. The German historian Paul Carrell (pen name of the former SS officer Paul Karl Schmidt) insisted the number was 80,500, while the retired British Army Brigadier Peter Young opted for an incredible 280,000. A perhaps more reliable estimate of 162,000 killed is given by Brian Taylor in his book
As for Germany’s allies, according to the latest figures from Stephen Walsh in his book
Stalingrad,
“SIXTH ARMY WILL HOLD THEIR POSITIONS TO THE LAST MAN AND THE LAST ROUND”
Barbarossa to Berlin.
Stalingrad 1942-1943: The infernal Cauldron,
some 158,854 Romanians, 143,000 Hungarians and 114,520 Italians were killed, wounded or captured during the battle, effectively wiping out their countries’ contributions to the war in Russia.