Hitler had appointed Field Marshal Erich von Manstein Supreme Commander of Operations in the Stalingrad region. Goebbels’s propaganda machine had trumpeted Manstein as the conqueror of the Crimea and the man who had captured the hitherto impregnable fortress of Sevastopol. Since then, he’d been widely seen as some kind of military miracle-worker. His name hung in the air in bunkers and trenches, at food distribution centres, field kitchens and latrines. ‘Have you heard? Manstein’s started his push!’ ‘Lads, I really think Manstein’s going to do it! I tell you, he’ll have us free within a week!’ ‘I’ve heard he’s got new tanks, amazing things they are, they just shrug off anti-tank fire!’ ‘That’s right! I’ve seen them myself… someone in Pitomnik told me… he’s just taken delivery of five hundred of them!’ ‘Manstein, now, he’s the one who…’ Manstein, nothing but Manstein! None of the troops had ever seen the field marshal in person, and hardly anyone even recognized his photograph. The besieged men of Stalingrad were investing all their heartfelt hopes in a name.
But there was another man whose name almost no one mentioned, and only the various staffs knew that he was playing a key part in the rescue operation that had just got underway. This was General Hermann Hoth, former commander-in-chief of the Fourth Panzer Army, some elements of which had been caught along with Paulus’s Sixth Army in the Stalingrad Cauldron. Many men of the Tank Corps still had a vivid image of the small, hyperactive general, who was in the habit of turning up unannounced at the spearhead of armoured thrusts, and whose sarcastic severity had earned him the nickname ‘the Poison Dwarf’. Hoth had been given overall command of the newly formed Army Group Don, made up of three German tank divisions and a number of Romanian infantry and cavalry formations. On the twelfth of December, he pushed up from the south, from the area around the railway station at Chir and from Kotelnikovo, to try to break the encirclement. And the miracle happened – despite the harsh Russian winter, which up until then had thwarted all attempts by German commanders to undertake major offensives, Hoth’s advance was a complete success. In the face of intense cold and snow and fierce enemy resistance, the tank formations crept ever closer to the Cauldron. The spirits of the trapped men rose with every passing day. The talk was of relief, rest, recreation and leave. The staffs of the Sixth Army awoke from the slumber they’d lapsed into after receiving Hitler’s order to let themselves be encircled. While Hoth stormed forward, the plan was for the troops in the Cauldron to hit the Russians from behind like a ‘Thunderclap’. At least, that was the auspicious code name given to the operation that was being planned inside the Cauldron. The intention was for the army’s mobile forces, primarily the flak batteries, tanks and assault guns, to form into combat groups and break out to link up with the vanguard of the advancing Army Group Don.
A period of feverish activity ensued. Field commanders and general staff officers sat in bunkers, hunched over maps; quartermasters worked out the available transport capacity and the munitions and fuel required; tanks and lorries were overhauled, units were dissolved and new ones formed, columns assembled to shuttle provisions to the front, and military police detachments were deployed to guard the roads, lest anyone took it into their head, once the Cauldron was opened, to escape from it under their own steam, never to be seen again.
The Tank Corps was charged with the tactical leadership of Operation Thunderclap. Colonel von Hermann was chosen to lead the first shockwave of the tank thrust. He was adamant that the operation should begin as soon as possible.
‘Even if we don’t manage to break through on the first day, we can still regroup into a tight defensive formation,’ he explained. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. We’ve done it often enough before, after all! Anyhow, it’d be a great relief to Hoth if we really put the cat among the pigeons by attacking the Russians from the rear!’
Though the Corps approved von Hermann’s suggestion, High Command did not act on it. They insisted on a guarantee that the operation could be completed in the hours between dawn and dusk.
‘We only have sufficient fuel to push forward eighty kilometres,’ was the official explanation. ‘We might well run into difficulties, and then we’d be stranded. We need to wait until Hoth has advanced to at least thirty kilometres away.’
However, the matter seemed about to resolve itself when it became clear that Hoth’s task force had already advanced to a point only around fifty kilometres away. It wouldn’t be such a problem to wait for a couple of days.
First Lieutenant Breuer rang his opposite number at the Corps on a daily basis, and Count Willms was very forthcoming with his reports. His apathetic attitude had largely dissipated in the interim.
‘Yes, right. What’s that? Yes, they’re making slow but steady progress… yes, steady … Yes, and huge supply camps are already in place for them, it’s absolutely phenomenal! Yes, and behind the tanks are long columns of trucks carrying ersatz honey…’
Even Corporal Herbert had become less of a pain. He jotted down recipes in his notebook for a whole new range of cakes that he planned to try out as soon as they were relieved, and waxed lyrical about the order of the menu for the banquet that would be held to commemorate the breakout from the Cauldron.
Fröhlich spent the whole day in the bunker, rubbing his bony hands together and delivering interminable lectures on the long-term military outlook. Lakosch caught sight of him ‘unburdening’ himself out in the open one time, and noticed how he waved his arms about like a grand orator as he rehearsed his speeches while squatting in the snow. More often than not, he could be found standing in front of the campaign map and explaining the current position to Geibel. ‘Look here, lad! Now here comes the big push from the west and – it stands to reason, doesn’t it? – that leaves the Russians right up shit creek! The result is that we bottle up at least three armies – that’s right, isn’t it, Lieutenant Breuer? – at least three Russian armies! And that means the war’s over, lad, don’t you see? The Bolsheviks are on their last legs anyhow, so this’ll spell the end for them.’
Geibel was only too eager to believe these predictions. He was thinking of his shop, and his wife, and that it was high time they had some more leave. His only worry was that there wouldn’t be enough room for all of them in the staff vehicles for the long journey back west. Some more cars had bitten the dust in the last few days. This worry had turned him into something of an expert on cars. Every day, he’d hang around the motor pool, lying under the cars in the snow with the unit’s drivers as they worked with cramped fingers on the vehicles’ ice-cold engines. Only Lieutenant Wiese remained the same as he had always been. When he wasn’t busy with his signals unit, which now had more work to do once again, he could be found immersed in his books, seemingly untroubled by the frantic activity going on around him. Lakosch, for his part, had largely lost interest in his vehicle. It had definitively had it, grinding to a halt every five minutes. Lakosch had resolved to leave it behind here as a memento. The task force would no doubt be bringing new vehicles with them. So he spent his time mooching round the camp with Senta, watching the aerial battles unfold above the airfield at Pitomnik, collecting bones and kitchen scraps for the dog and humming or singing to himself, to a tune of his own devising and with the words changed to reflect current events, the verses of an old soldiers’ ditty that he’d recently found in a book about the Thirty Years’ War: