Shumilov nodded, but there was a vacant, empty look in his eyes. “How long can we hold, Vasily—not just here in the city, but out there?”
“Who knows? Zhukov is moving those Shock Armies, so he has something left up his sleeve. I think they will attack near Voronezh. That penetration all the way to Anna was quite alarming. If the Germans drive due east in the spring, they could go all the way to Saratov. Then everything in the well on that map will be yet another big pocket, three times the size of the Kirov Pocket. I don’t think Zhukov can let that happen. So he must attack somewhere this winter to take the pressure off… Somewhere….”
He was going to attack somewhere, and right where Chuikov, not Manstein, had called it. In fact, the warning the German General put in during his last visit to OKH had been enough to prompt Hitler to strongly reinforce the Smolensk sector as part of the general redistribution of forces he had ordered. But every place strengthened was another place that had to be weakened. Army Group Don had been strongly reinforced to stop the orbits of Zhukov’s planetary offensives. They had struck like successive blows, Mars was the spoiling attack, Uranus the daring drive to the Chir and into the Don Bend; then Saturn had even greater aspirations of breaking through between Tatsinskaya and Morozovsk to relieve the men trapped in the Donets Basin, but that hope was never realized.
Chuikov was correct, and now the offensive hopes would have to be directed elsewhere. His stoic nihilism had seen the whole of it, and he knew his fate was now to sit there and endure those hammer blows, to be the stubborn anvil, while the army fought elsewhere… Somewhere….
Zhukov was not quite done for the Winter of 1942. There were still planets orbiting in his mind, and the greatest of them he had saved for the last throw of the dice this year—Operation Jupiter.
Part XI
The Wrath of Jupiter
“Two Tigers of wrath are wiser than all the horses of instruction.”
Chapter 31
Nine mobile divisions had been extracted from the grand mailed fist the Germans had used to smash through at Voronezh. Six of them went first to Smolensk, where they joined with 4th Armee to launch a perfect spoiling attack against the Russian forces that had been gathering on that front as Manstein had predicted. It was a slow, but steady advance, for many of the divisions were still worn down from the long summer offensive. But the infantry there had been fresh, and it bore a good deal of the burden of attack in the heavily wooded area north of Smolensk. The Russians gave ground stubbornly, but Zhukov could see that his plan there had been discovered, and preempted.
Now he had other plans.
“Tank production has gone up considerably,” he explained to Kirov at the new STAVKA headquarters in Leningrad. “I have been getting good and very steady deliveries now that all our relocated factory equipment has been resettled to the east. We are building new formations at Kalinin, Yaroslavl, Novgorod and even Vologda in the far north. To the east, a new industrial city has been built, and we are calling it Kirovgrad, in honor of the city they already took from us.”
“Another city named for me?” said Kirov.
“This one is far enough to the northeast to worry about losing it. In fact, there was already a town at that site named after you. We just added the suffix when it became a city. 4th Guards Army is building there, and 2nd Guards is being re-established at Perm from veterans of the Volga Front. We are giving it to Malinovsky.”
“Then you are forming new Corps with all these tanks?”
“Of course, and several will be ready sooner than we expected. We expended the last of our front line reserves in those attacks to try and save Volgograd, but now I am pulling those shock Armies out.”
“To go where?”
“The closest place where they can make a difference—the Voronezh Front.”
“Then there will be no further effort to break through to the Donets Basin?” Kirov leaned over the map, his eyes on the beleaguered formations still trapped in the south.
“Not unless you order it, but I would not advise it. You insisted on retaining that ground, and all those troops have been cut off as I told you they would be.”
“Why not take these new tank corps and smash through?”
Zhukov folded his arms. “Mister General Secretary… If I did that, and we did manage to get through Steiner’s SS Korps to make contact with those troops, what then? Will you order them out? Are you prepared to pull everything out of the Kuban now?”
Kirov’s face hardened.
“I didn’t think so,” said Zhukov. “We would waste ourselves trying to maintain that link, and it will be the subject of endless pincer attacks from east and west. That road leads us nowhere. So I have decided to move operations to the center of the board. The Germans had been carrying out a major redistribution of forces in the last month. They pulled no less than nine mobile divisions out of that bunch they had east of Voronezh., and that was what spoiled our planned Smolensk Operation. That leaves six left in the 2nd Panzer Armee under Model near Voronezh, and now that sector is ripe for counterattack.”
“What do you propose?” Any mention of a possible offensive always got Kirov’s attention.
“An offensive to either side of Voronezh, and with the aim of trapping and isolating the 2nd Panzer Army. To do this I have extended the lines of 66th, 65th and 24th Armies. They now hold the ground gained by our earlier offensives. All the Shock Armies have been pulled out. In fact, this redeployment has been underway for a month, all while Steiner moved back west of the Don and then crossed the Donets to attack towards Rostov. They will take that city, and we must be grimly resigned to that. But… while the cat is away, the mice will play.”
“But surely they will have seen this redeployment,” said Kirov. “They will react, just as they did at Smolensk.”
“They may, but their own plans did not factor this option into their thinking. For that I credit your stubbornness in the south. We have learned that a Führer Directive has compelled General Manstein to continue operating there.”
“Berzin?”
“We just got it this morning,” said the Intelligence Chief. “Führer Directive Number 46. Manstein has orders to reduce Volgograd, take Rostov, clear the Donets Basin and then prepare for operations in the Kuban by January.”
“You see?” said Kirov, somewhat indignantly. “There was good reason to hold all that ground. They want it. The Kuban is the most natural land bridge linking Volkov’s Forces with German operations. All the really well developed oil sites are there at Maykop, Grozny and Baku. Hitler wants easy and unfettered access to that oil, and my Kuban Front armies are in the way.”
“For the moment,” said Zhukov. “They won’t have the armor to stop Steiner’s SS Korps, but any defense they do make will buy us the time we need at Voronezh. A little cloak and dagger from Berzin will hopefully help us as well.”
“What do you mean? Grishin?” Kirov looked to Berzin now.
“I had a little sit down with the Commissars. Afterwards I spoke with Khrushchev and told him we were determined to go forward with some offensive in the western sector, if not at Smolensk, then on the line from there to Moscow, aimed at Vyazma, Mozhaysk, and possibly as far as Kirov. I told him the Siberians were being pulled out of the south for redeployment to that front. Then I gave him specific orders to fly to the 11th Reserve Army headquarters at Kalinin and shake things up. Bridging equipment is also being moved to that sector.”