January 1943-the last month for Stalingrad

http://216.198.255.120/diary/caljan.html

01
Hitler issued his New Year's message to General Paulus and the men of Stalingrad.
"You and your soldiers should begin the new year with a strong faith that I and the German Wehrmacht will use all strength to relieve the defenders of Stalingrad and make their long wait the highest achievement of German war history.

In the daily hours the Germans fought the Russians and at night they fought mice and rats. The rats attacked the soldiers while they slept. One infantryman with frostbitten feet lost two toes to a rat one night and did not even know it until the morning.

02
The German held airstrip at Morozovskaya, under the same orders not to evacuate as was Tatsinskaya, is seized by 3rd Guards Army.

03
General Rokossovsky was ordered by Stalin to destroy the German pocket at Stalingrad.

04
General Rokossovskiy had 212.000 men, 6500 pieces of artillery, 250 tank and 300
aircrafts to destroy the German pocket.

05
Manstein's attention was focused on the specific problems of extricating Army Group A from the Caucasus. His method was to leave General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army in position south of Stalingrad, with freedom to pull back gradually toward Rostov while keeping open the line of retreat for Army Group A. But this too depended on the ability of Paulus to hold out for one month.

07
The order was given to transfer six divisions from the Western Front to Army Group Center or North in the East, so that experienced eastern divisions could be transferred to Army Group South of the Eastern Front.

08
General Voronov, on behalf of the Red Army supreme command, and General Rokossovsky, commander of the Don Front, called the Germans to surrender.The ultimatum stated that General Paulus's representatives were to travel by car with a white flag to the Russian lines at ten o'clock on the morning of January 9.

09
The Russians waited through the whole they but no answer came.
Paulus asked Hitler again for freedom of action but it was refused.
Hitler told Paulus that every day the 6th Army holds out, it helps the entire front.

10
But when now answer came at eight o'clock in the morning the Russians started Operation Ring. After an hour long bombardment by thousands of artillery pieces and mortars, supplemented by the attack of Soviet aircrafts, bombing the center of the pocket, the Soviet ground attack on 6th Army begins.

11
The Germans suffered enormous casualties. The 76th Division, for example, was now
reduced from its pre-Stalingrad strenght of ten thousand men to six hundred men.

12
General Malinovsky's 2nd Guards Army command was south of the pocket.
Allied newspaper correspondents were allowed to visit the General. They asked
him question about the drive to crush the 6th Army. The General answered :
"Stalingrad is an armed prisoners camp and its situation is hopeless."
The Russians compress 6th Army to the east, up against 62nd Army and the Volga.General Paulus issued orders to his men to stand fast at their positions. He sent congratulations to the 44th Austrian Infantry Division, which was holding the approaches to the airfield at Pitomnik.

13
In the early morning the 1st Battalion of the 134 Infantry Regiment held its position
with some help from two antiaircraft guns which they turned level. During the morning they had to withdraw and leave the guns behind. The situation at Pitomnik airport was disastrous. Dead men, wrecked aircrafts, dead horses and dead vehicles were everywhere.And all the while aircraft were coming down, unloading, loading up and flying off again.

14
Pitomnik; the primary airstrip needed to supply Stalingrad is taken by the Russians. The Luftwaffe now resorts to airdrops, and attempts to fly supplies into Gumrak, which is under constant fire.

16
From this day on, untill the surrender of 6th army, 364 German soldiers were executed, a penalty for theft, insubordination, murder, self-inflicted wounds, etc...

17
The Russians completed the first phase of their attack on the Stalingrad pocket., stabilizing along a line that ran from Rossoshka on the north to Voronopovo Station in the south. The Stalingrad pocket had been reduced about two-thirds.

18
After the 18 th of january the 29 Mot. Div were still able to destroy, north of Karpowka and south of Pitomnik, 137 Russians panzers.

19
The 9. Flak Div. has shot down their 63rd Russian aircraft. The Russians on the Voronezh Front continued to make progress. Vauyki Vrazavo fell to the Russians and the Hungarians were driven from Ostrogozhsk.

20
Aircrafts carried out hundreds of men who were not wounded and not sick, whose papers were in order. Valuable personnel who were being sent out of the pocket to go back to Germany and form new divisions and fight again. Some of the Generals went out too. General Erwin Jaenecke, commander of the 389th Infantry Division and the 4th Corps who was badly wounded with sixteen shrapnel holes in his body and General Heinz Valentin Hube, commander of the 16th Panzer Division, and also lesser officers, one of them, Captain Eberhard Wagemann, carrying General Schmidt's will. Major Coelistin von Zitzewitz was carrying a few medals of General Paulus.

21
Paulus began to realize that the German forces in the Caucasus had retreated to
safety and were not immediately treatened. His attention was now focused on the idea of surrendering to the Russians.

22
After another huge Soviet artillery barrage announcing the start of renewed attacks, Sixth Army’s airstrip, at Gumrak, is assaulted by the Russians, and is soon lost, as Paulus evacuates his headquarters and moves into the city itself. (Univermag department store) He asked Hitler the permission to surrender. "Absolutely not" thundered Hitler.

23
Paulus added the argument that his ammunition was almost all gone, and repeated the request for authority to negotiate a surrender of 6th Army. Hitler refused again. He argued that it must fight to the last in order to gain time. (for what is not so clear), and informed Paulus of this personally by radio.

24
The Russians again offered surrender terms.
Now, the fighting in Stalingrad is sporadic and hopeless.

25
General Schmidt reported Paulus that a number of the generals were conspiring to disobey orders and arrange a mass surrender of the troops.
He went to the NKVD prison, where a number of the German generals were housed. He told them they would do nothing of the sort and that they would continue to hold out.

26
Rokossovski’s tanks from the 21st Army have reached and taken the heights of Mamayev-Kugan, that overlook Stalingrad, just west of the north/south rail line.
In the hell that has been Stalingrad, General Stempel, commanding the 371st Division, shoots himself in the head, General Drebber of the 297th Division takes the 1,800 survivors of his 10,000 man 297th Division, and leads them into Soviet captivity, and General Hartmann, in charge of the 71st Division, stands erect on a railroad
embankment and fires into the Russian lines, until he is cut down. The Russian 65th Army is first to establish a link from the west with Chuikov’s tenacious 62nd Army inside the city. Soon afterward, the 21st and 64th do likewise.

28
The Russians divided the city into three sectors. In one sector the Russian XI Corps surrounded the tractor factory, the VIII and the LI Corps were in the Mamayev Hill area
and the IV Corps surrounded the downtown business district. Inside Stalingrad, the Germans stop feeding the wounded and ill, so that the men capable of fighting may have something to eat.

29
Where there were German wounded, and this was everywhere in the city, the doctors
placed the most serious cases in the hallways and near the doors, where they would
frreeze to death quickly.The temperature was 39°-40° below zero (Celsius). Hundreds of wounded committed suicide, most of them using pistols and hand grenades.

30
The tenth anniversary of the "Thousand Year Reich". Hitler gave the honor to speak
to the nation to Marshal Goering, who lionized the men of Stalingrad.
"Rising above the gigantic battle like a mighty monument is Stalingrad. One day it will be recognized as the greatest battle in our history...
General Paulus sent a message to Hitler, congratulating him on the anniversary and swearing that the Stalingrad battle would be a lesson to future generations that the Germans never surrendered.General Von Seydlitz-Kurzbach is taken prisoner by the Russians in the middle of Stalingrad.

31
Hitler, in a bizarre effort to get Paulus and his men to die where they stand, promotes the General to the rank of a Field Marshal, since no-one of that rank has ever surrendered before. 118 other officers were also promoted, many of them had already surrendered. But Paulus surrendered to a Russian lieutenant who came into the 6th Army headquarters. Paulus was taken away by a car to the Headquartes of General Mikhail Shumilov, commander of the Soviet 64th Army. The center pocket was wiped out and their was no longer communication with the southern pocket in Stalingrad.

PS. I know there was the northern pocket for a few more days but I think the major "story" ends here.

 

Thank you for this Kai--you definately snagged my attention. Lots of good facts there too. I think that this would make for another great Stalingrad movie--if not then a mini-series on what happened to a certain German unit there--kinda Band of Brothersesque.

 

Very interesting, Kai. As my favourite battle it was very good to read some of the littlest details. How sad is that battle...

 

Stalingrad was a great battle. Here is a Measage Paulus Sent Hitler on Jan 24th.

"Troops without ammunition or food. contact maintained with elements of only six divisions. evidense of disintegration on southern, northern and Eastern Front: 18000 wounded without any supplies or dressings or drugs: 44th, 76th, 100th, 305th, and 384th infantry Divisions destroyed. Front torn open as a result of strong break throughs on three sides, strong-points and shelter only avalible in town itself, further defense senseless, colapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops."

Hitler answered with
"Capitulation is impossible. The Sixth Army will do its historic duty at Stalingrad until the last man, in order to make possible the reconstruction of the Eastern Front."

 

Thanks for that post Brad--Paulus with his message was bloody clear--shame the high command would not listen.

I have a set of Gebirgsjager Hauptmanns 100th Gebirge Rgmt shoulderboards which that Rgmt saw alot of action. That Rgmt was practically wiped out there--which made it the second time in the war on the Eastern Front that that Rgmt was almost completely destroyed.

 

Last radio message from Stalingrad's garrisson at the Tractors factory, February 3rd 1943:

"Hello! Is anyone there? There are six of us left, from the whole division. We have not eaten for a week and have been holding here for days. I have just shot my pistol's last bullet. Within a few minutes, thousands of Bolsheviks will get in and kill us. Please, tell my father I carried out my duty as I had to.

Long live to Germany! Heil Hitler!"



[ 08. March 2003, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

 

Do you know what happend to those men?

 

They were quite likely killed either while the Russians took their positions, or during the long marches and imprisonment which followed.

 

Pics of German officers in Stalingrad:

http://feldpost.mzv.net/Truppen/body_truppen.html

The fate of General officers at Stalingrad:

http://216.198.255.120/germanpart/sixth_army/fate_generalofficers.htm

The destroyed divisions in Stalingrad:

http://216.198.255.120/divisions/trapped_divisions.htm

The northern and southern pockets:

http://users.pandora.be/stalingrad/maps/stalingrad_map_15.htm

The commanders of the VIII Army Corps, Generals Seydlitz-Kurzbach and Walther Heitz, surrendered their commands on January 31, but Strecker's XI Army Corps still held out in the northern pocket. Finally, Strecker's division commanders convinced him of the futility of further resistance. On February 2, Strecker surrendered with 33,000 men.

General der Infanterie Karl Strecker

Born : 20 September 1884 - Radmannsdorf - Germany

Died : 10 April 1973 – Riezlern - Austria

Generaloberst* : 2 February 1943

Strecker was promoted to Generaloberst by radio message on 2 February 1943 at Stalingrad.
However, this is not confirmed by the official
sources.

http://216.198.255.120/divisions/generals/strecker.htm

 

Nice pics Kai, and believe it or not--I recently became acquainted with someone who is friends with Gen Carl Rodenburgs family. He wasnt allowed to tell me which unit the man was from when he gave me other sketchy details (but enough to be able to correctly guess)on him getting his KC at Stalingrad.

 

KC

 

Hi Erwin, KC means Knights Cross in English, im Deutsch ist Ritterkreuz.

If your not familiar with german Military awards and decorations--it is a slightly larger Iron Cross that has a Red-Black and White ribbon through a ring at the top of the cross. These were awarded to 7,313 Axis soldiers in ww2.

Also--a small icon of one is where all the medals and awards are listed under my name. It is the last one on the 2nd row of "awards" I have.

Hope this helps.