Paulus, in contrast to his strongly pessimistic signals to Army Group Don and the letter to his wife, signed a stirring New Year message to the Sixth Army: ‘Our will for victory is unbroken and the New Year will certainly bring our release! When this will be, I cannot yet say. The Führer has, however, never gone back on his word, and this time will be no different.’
Thanks to Hitler’s insistence on time zones, the Russian New Year arrived two hours earlier than the German. General Edler von Daniels’s card game of ‘Doppelknopf’ was interrupted at ten o’clock by ‘a powerful firework display’, as the Soviet besiegers fired in their ‘New Year greeting’.
Daniels appears to have been in a good mood at this time. He had just been promoted to Lieutenant-General and awarded the Knight’s Cross. Then, as a New Year’s present from Paulus, he unexpectedly received a bottle of Veuve-Cliquot ‘Schampus’. Several of the Stalingrad generals still seemed to be almost more preoccupied with decorations and promotions than with the fate of the Sixth Army.
When German midnight arrived, only star shells were fired. High-explosive rounds could not be wasted. The very last bottles were opened in the Kessel for the toast: ‘Prosit Neujahr!’ Soviet divisions, on the other hand, suffered few restrictions on ammunition and alcohol. ‘Celebrating the New Year was good,’ wrote Viktor Barsov, in the marine infantry. ‘I drank 250 grams of vodka that night. The food wasn’t bad. In the morning to avoid a headache I drank 200 grams more.’
German soldiers tried to make light of their misfortunes, with the idea that everything would change for the better with the passing of the old year. ‘Dear Parents, I’m all right,’ wrote one soldier. ‘Unfortunately, I again have to go on sentry tonight. I hope that in this New Year of 1943, I won’t have to survive as many disappointments as in 1942.’
An almost obsessive optimism was produced by Hitler’s New Year message to Paulus and the Sixth Army. Only the more sceptical spotted that the text did not constitute a firm guarantee. ‘In the name of the whole German people, I send you and your valiant army the heartiest good wishes for the New Year. The hardness of your perilous position is known to me. The heroic stand of your troops has my highest respect. You and your soldiers, however, should enter the New Year with the unshakeable confidence that I and the whole German Wehrmacht will do everything in our power to relieve the defenders of Stalingrad and that with your staunchness will come the most glorious feat in the history of German arms. Adolf Hitler.’
‘Mein Führer!’ Paulus replied immediately. ‘Your confident words on the New Year were greeted here with great enthusiasm. We will justify your trust. You can be certain that we—from the oldest general to the youngest grenadier—will hold out, inspired with a fanatical will, and contribute our share to final victory. Paulus.’ New Year letters from many soldiers in the Kessel reflected a new mood of determination. ‘We’re not letting our spirits sink, instead we believe in the word of the Führer,’ wrote a captain. ‘We are maintaining a firm trust in the Führer, unshakeable until final victory,’ wrote an ΝCO. ‘The Führer knows our worries and needs,’ wrote a soldier, ‘he will always—and I’m certain of this—try to help us as quickly as possible.’ Even a sceptical general like Strecker seems to have been affected. ‘New hope arises,’ he wrote, ‘and there is some optimism about the present and immediate future.’
Paulus, on the other hand, was concerned at this time by the growing success of Soviet propaganda. The 7th Department at Don Front headquarters in charge of ‘operational propaganda’ had followed up their identification of 44th Infantry Division and General Edler von Daniels’s 376th Infantry Division as the formations on which they should concentrate their efforts.
Early on the morning of 3 January, Paulus went to the Austrian 44th Infantry Division, ‘following radio broadcasts by prisoners from the 44th Infantry Division’. They had spoken on the shortages of food and ammunition and about the heavy casualties. ‘The commander-in-chief,’ stated the Sixth Army report, ‘wanted warnings to be given about the consequences of partaking in such broadcasts. Any soldiers who did so should realize that their names would be known, and they would face court martial.’ During Paulus’s meeting with General Deboi, the divisional commander, there was yet another ‘heavy attack with tanks’.
The very next morning, Paulus visited the Romanian commander in the ‘Fortress area’, 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 the very 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.