“You mean the two Luftwaffe Field Regiments,” said Wietersheim. “They have no more than three infantry battalions each.”
“So combine them to make a single division. I wish I could get you more, but there is nothing else available close enough to get here in reasonable time. If necessary, we can pull Schmidt’s 50th Division out of the Donets Basin, and that fight will have to wait until we stabilize the situation here. As for the troops east of Wietersheim, the four Infantry Divisions on the line go to General Hollidt, who is presently setting up his HQ at Chern. Knobelsdorff will take the four mobile divisions. The last is arriving at Oblivskaya even now—3rd Motorized.”
“It is relieving my men as we speak,” said Eicke. “I am moving my division south of the Chir, right astride the road where they were advancing from Surovinko. Don’t worry, they won’t get any farther on that road now.”
“Good,” said Manstein. “Then, with three Panzer Divisions in hand, I think we can attack. General Eicke, it looks like Sheller’s 9th Panzer will be on your right, and then General Balck’s 11th. The enemy is occupying the ground south of Surovinko, and we must take it back. I want to control everything south and west of the Chir. So then, General Balck, work some of your magic, and swing around this feature here, State Farm 79 on my map, about twelve kilometers south of Surovinko. Then, if you swing up towards that town, the Chir will cover your right flank. I wish I had another infantry division to post there, and I will see about moving Schlomer’s 3rd Motorized later. For now, I think it best we keep it at Oblivskaya. Gentlemen, we attack tomorrow morning.”
The situation on the Volga Front was now markedly different from that of the old history. To begin with, the composition of forces involved was very different. On the Soviet side, Armies like the 62nd, 64th, 66th and 24th were composed of units very close to the old history. It seemed that certain units remained stubbornly embedded in this history’s order of battle, as if pulled there by some gravitational force of time. Yet Chuikov also had forces that were never present, like the crack 2nd Volga Rifles, and brigades arriving from Saratov, Samara, and as far away as Novgorod. 65th Army was instead replaced by the 9th and 11th Rifles Corps, but those two formations had about the same overall strength as Batov’s old Army. Beyond this, all the main forces that had been assembled in the Don Bridgeheads from Serafimovich to as far away as Boguchar, were all composed of the troops initially sent by Karpov to form those five Shock Armies. Four were now present, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and to these Zhukov had added Soviet Ski troops, tank Brigades, motorized regiments and most of the artillery and AT forces.
On the German side, the Rumanians, Italians and Hungarians were nowhere to be seen on this front. In their place, posted on the long line opposite the Don Bridgeheads, was the German 11th Army, with one Korps now withdrawn east of the Don by Steiner, and one more arriving to shore up the line after Zhukov’s counterattack. The presence of Steiner’s SS was in itself the most dramatic change. Here were gathered the cream of the Waffen SS troops, all divisions that had been greatly strengthened prior to Operation Blue. And with them was Grossdeutschland and the new Brandenburg Division, possibly the two best divisions in the Army. Yet in considering the units that were now arriving in response to Zhukov’s counterattack, there was Hermann Balck and his 11th Panzer Division, as if again fated to fight on this ground, and other divisions like 23rd Panzer, 336th Infantry, 294th Infantry that had once formed ad hoc detachments to try and stem the Soviet tide had also arrived, along with the 7th and 8th Luftwaffe Divisions.
Notably absent was von Paulus and his 6th Army. He would not suffer the sad fate that had befallen him when the Russians bagged some 20 Axis Divisions in the pocket near Stalingrad. Now, however, and largely by Steiner’s own willful choice, there were nine German Divisions and fourteen from Orenburg all east of the Don, a force about the same size as the one the Soviets once bagged, some 220,000 men. The troops from Orenburg were entirely ahistorical, a force that would have never existed at all if not for the alterations to the history caused by Kirov’s earlier interventions. Even more prominent was the fact that those troops now occupied all the ground east of the mighty Volga, except Ostrov Sarpinskiy and Krasny Sloboda Islands, which were both Soviet occupied.
The fact that Volkov’s troops now held Krasnoarmeysk, and were facing down the Soviet 64th Army in Beketova along the southern sectors of the battle zone, meant that all the troops east of the Don at least had some overland supply line available. They were not totally isolated, even though the most direct route, the roads and rails coming through Tatsinskaya, Morozovsk and along the Chir, had been cut by the Soviets with the capture of Surovinko.
The rail line east and south of the Don that went through Kotelnikovo to Sal’sk was also of no use. It had been torn apart during the fighting as Volkov advanced near Kotelnikovo, and beyond Sal’sk, the Kuban sector south of Rostov remained Soviet occupied. So supplies were only coming up on the rail line and river barges from Volkov’s stronghold at Astrakhan to Krasnoarmeysk, though the Germans would get only food and fuel. They would now have to depend entirely on the Luftwaffe to deliver ammo, spare parts and fresh troops.
That air link was by no means reliable. The Germans barely had parity in the air, and the enemy Sturmoviks were coming in increasing numbers, their circles of death darkening the skies overhead and making it very hazardous for unescorted Stuka squadrons. An infantry division might need 50 tons of ammo per day, more if on the offensive. One of Steiner’s SS divisions would need 70 to 100 tons, and this requirement could double if the division was in heavy combat. In the old history, the Luftwaffe delivered a total of 8350 tons over 72 days, or an average of about 117 tons per day. It would therefore only be capable of delivering a third of the ammo required for those nine German divisions Steiner now commanded. His solution was to take three of the four infantry divisions he had withdrawn, and use them to man the northern and western segments of his position, along the line of the Don itself from Vertyachi all the way to Kalach.
On that front, he only had two key areas to defend where there were sites that could support a river crossing. The 129th held a small bridgehead west of Kalach, the 102nd watched the area from Golubinskaya and north along the river; and the 87th held Vertyachi, with its lines extending east along the northern flank. Those three divisions were essentially static, and simply sitting on defense, so they would need no significant daily ammo ration at all unless the Soviets pressed a cross-river attack. This left him with his five mobile divisions, 1st and 2nd SS, Grossdeutschland, Brandenburg, and Wiking Division further south near Nizhne Chirskaya. That division, having fought hard, first at Golubinskaya and then at Surovinko, was now being relieved by Volkov’s 2nd Orenburg Army, and it would go into reserve for some much needed rest and refitting again.