Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (5 page)

Reinhard Heydrich savoured the man’s death. After all, it was Raeder who had driven him out of a promising career in the Navy over a trifling affair with a woman in 1931. That strait-laced prig had drummed him out of the Navy for dumping one woman for another. That was just what was wrong with the old Germany, too many ideas whose time had passed. Heydrich had given himself to the new Germany that swept away the past and organized itself around the shining ideal of the
Volk,
the master race, whose advantage was the only real morality.

He paused only long enough in feeding his hatred to consider that he actually owed the late Grossadmiral Raeder a thank you. If he had not been set adrift from the Navy, he would never have found the brilliant calling that was truly his. He was Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, the choicest bits of the old Czechoslovakia. They called him the Blond Beast for the way he had crushed resistance in the protectorate and vastly increased war production. He fed the Czechs on plentiful carrots so their factories would continue to produce the torrent of high-quality weapons the Reich needed in its death struggle with the Bolshevik monster. When that task was completed, he had plans to ‘Germanize the Czech vermin’, but only after a rigorous racial classification of the population. He insisted that ‘making this Czech garbage into Germans must give way to methods based on racist thought’. That meant that up to two-thirds of the Czechs would eventually be deported to Russia or exterminated.
²⁶

This assignment had been a reward for his excellent organizational work as the chief of the Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service of the SS. He had become the right-hand man of the head of the SS himself, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, to whom he was personally devoted for their shared vision, and was rewarded with the highest SS rank of Obergruppenführer. It was he, after all who had forged the documents that had fooled Stalin into believing his officer corps was plotting against him and caused him to murder 35,000 of them. It was he of whom the Führer himself had stated that, had he a son, it would be someone like Heydrich. Perhaps it was that Hitler saw the same ruthlessness in Heydrich that he found in himself, and for both of them this focused on the Jews. It was Heydrich who had organized the concentration camps and began the first large-scale killing of Jews, beginning with the invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union where his Einsatzgruppen killed by the hundreds of thousands. When that proved too slow, he had headed up a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in January 1942 to plan the organized extermination of all eleven million of Europe’s Jews.

He had more than enough malice left over never to overlook the opportunity to injure the Navy, repeatedly backing Himmler and Goring, in their power-play attacks. So no one was more surprised than Heydrich when he received a call from Admiral Karl Dönitz, Raeder’s successor, asking him to lunch. He was even more surprised at the naval honour guard that awaited him at Navy headquarters and the appearance of Dönitz himself as his car drove up. As their hands fell from their mutual salutes, Dönitz reached out to shake Heydrich’s hand. He was shocked to feel how soft and moist it was. He almost recoiled but mastered himself to grip it strongly. At lunch they were joined by a number of officers, all of whom had been Heydrich’s friends before his dismissal from the Navy.

It was clear that Dönitz was courting him. The man positively purred. Heydrich had nothing against him; Dönitz had had no part in the court of inquiry or taken a stand against him. In fact, Dönitz was a good Nazi Party man, an officer in Hitler’s favour not only for his savaging of Allied shipping but for his political enthusiasm. He was that combination almost all his other flag officers were not - efficient and National Socialist.

After coffee the rest of the officers excused themselves. Brandy was poured, and Dönitz got to the point - slowly.

Heydrich’s cold face did not betray his annoyance. He thought that if he had known they were filling Navy orders, he would have put a stop to it. Just another way to torment Raeder. He was a man who enjoyed eating his revenge cold. But that dish was about empty. Raeder was dead, so what was the point? Perhaps there was advantage here. Dönitz was clearly there cap in hand.

‘It is time to let bygones be bygones. The Navy needs your help; said Dönitz. Ah, there it is, thought Heydrich. His blue eyes narrowed, and the faintest flicker of a smile broke his face.

The army staff learned quickly that their new acting commanding officer had more than just a sharp tongue. He was known to grab a man by the collar and shake him till his teeth rattled. Vasili Chuikov was a man to be reckoned with as he transformed this collection of reservists and cadre into a fighting formation. They would be needed soon, he knew, in the fighting that would erupt in the spring and flame all summer.

Chuikov dashed from his headquarters shouting for his driver. ‘Come on, Grinev, we’re going for the jugular!’ He had decided to relieve one of his division commanders, and the drama would rebound through the whole army as an object lesson in what Chuikov demanded from his subordinates. Grinev was waiting and leapt to the door of his Lend-Lease jeep for the boss. In seconds they were splattering mud on anyone close to the road. Time getting around was to be kept to a minimum, and Grinev was only too happy to comply as he shot down the road. He loved this American vehicle, so sturdy and reliable, and had become expert in manoeuvring down what the Russians shamelessly called roads.

Chuikov had not noticed that this time Grinev was drunk as the jeep gathered alarming speed. ‘Grinev, don’t drive so fast; Chuikov shouted. The jeep just kept going faster until it came to a bend in the road. Grinev lost control, and the jeep overturned. Chuikov awoke in hospital. The doctor told him he had injured his spine and that he had to stay on his back. He would write, ‘For a few days I lay on a special bed, strapped down by the shoulders and legs, being given traction treatment. However, healthy and hardy by nature, I was on my feet again in a week, though I walked with a stick.’
¹

Sappers and infantry of the Bavarian 132nd Infantry Division climbed silently into their assault boats on the beach east of Feodosiya on the southern flank of the Kerch Peninsula. It was the late evening of 7 May. They silently paddled down the coast in the dark until the German artillery exploded with a stunning barrage against the Soviet defenders of Kerch. Only then did the Bavarians turn on their motors whose noise was masked by the thunder of the guns. They entered the great water-filled antitank ditch that ran along the front right down to the sea. The Soviet infantry in their fighting holes did not have a chance as the Germans leapt from their boats, gunning them down.

Führer Directive 41 had set the opening act of the drive to the south as the destruction of the Soviet front on the Kerch Peninsula and the capture of the great naval base and fortress at Sevastopol. Manstein’s 11th Army pried open the Soviet defences and collapsed their defence. After that it was a rout. At a cost of only 7,500 casualties, Manstein had destroyed three Soviet armies and taken 170,000 prisoners. Hitler was more than pleased. This most talented general had cleared the southern flank for his drive to the Caucasus. Now he could concentrate on reducing the great naval fortress of Sevastopol.
²

Walther von Seydlitz arrived in the city with the memory of the last kiss from his wife as he left her in Konigsberg after a few days of hurried leave. The commander of Army Group South, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, eagerly welcomed the hero of the Demyansk Pocket to his command. The strong LI Corps of six divisions was his reward. Two of them were Austrian, one of which was the 44th Infantry Division, successor to the lineage and traditions of the famous
Hoch- und Deutschmeister
Regiment of the old Imperial Austrian Army.
³
He would serve under General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus who had been in command of the 6th Army since January.

Paulus greeted him cordially; he had been complimented by Hitler with the assignment of an officer of Seydlitz’s reputation and favour. Seydlitz, on the other hand, was uneasy. Paulus’s reputation in the Army was that of a plodder, a colourless General Staff officer, a protégé of the Chief of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder. He had been selected by Hitler for command because of his compliant diligence. Seydlitz would have been even more uneasy had he read the man’s efficiency report from his staff tour:

Paulus apparently had turned inside out the famous dictum of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke that a staff officer should appear less than he was, in other words hide his light under a bushel. With Paulus what you saw was what you got. ‘The quintessential staff officer had become a major field commander, a position to which he was strongly suited by education and intelligence but not, perhaps by temperament.’
⁵

Paulus had had little command experience before taking over 6th Army. He had seen action in 1914 but then spent the rest of the war as a staff officer. He had commanded a company in the Reichswehr and a battalion briefly, but his life became that of the staff. He served as chief of staff to a motorized corps in 1938 under Guderian, who described him as ‘brilliantly clever, conscientious, hard working, original and talented’, but already had doubts about his ‘decisiveness, toughness and lack of command experience’
⁶
Bock might have echoed these observations because in the crisis of a major Soviet attack, he felt Paulus had been far too slow in counterattacking.

Then there was the gossip that Paulus was too much under the influence of his sharp-tongued chief of staff, Colonel Arthur Schmidt. That could be a problem, Seydlitz reflected. He too had a sharp tongue and was not afraid to use it. Tilting at windmills was a family tradition.

Before Seydlitz could join his command he took the opportunity to tour Kharkov. The city had fallen so quickly that its factories had been captured intact. The Germans had converted the huge tractor plant into a tank repair and refurbishment facility, not only to mend German equipment but to put captured Soviet tanks, specifically the T-34 and KV-1, in condition. He spent a whole day as the guest of the plant director on a special tour. He was amazed to see the factory yard filled with Soviet tanks freshly painted in German colours and marked with the German black cross outlined in white.
⁷

Working on the premise that it was not enough to strike while the iron was hot, but that one had to strike first to make the iron hot, Hitler determined to clean up a very dangerous salient in Army Group South’s front. That was the Barvenkovo Salient just south of the great industrial city of Kharkov. Sixth Army would attack from the north while 1st Panzer and 17th Armies would strike from the south pinching off the salient. The attack was scheduled for 18 May. The Soviets beat them to the punch.

Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Timoshenko brought to Stalin the plan to strike out of the salient and encircle the enemy’s 6th Army with two fronts. He struck on 12 May, pressing 6th Army back as Paulus committed reserve after reserve. But the Germans were much more adept. In a masterful turnabout Bock counterattacked with 1st Panzer Army snapping off the spearhead Soviet armies. Bock’s troops eventually linked up with Seydlitz’s
Hoch- und Deutschmeister
Division. Timoshenko was not done, though. The trapped armies turned about and threw themselves at the blocking German divisions. A German division commander described what came next:

For three nights they came before they broke. By 22 May, Timoshenko had lost two full armies and seen two more savagely mauled at cost of almost a quarter of a million men in prisoners alone against 29,000 German casualties. Hitler showered Friedrich Paulus with honours, and the press eagerly focused on his humble origins. From this moment Paulus seems to have developed a case of hero worship for his Führer. Congratulations poured in to the embarrassment of the self-effacing Paulus. One of them was in a letter from Major Stauffenberg, who had stood by his side through part of the battle. He wrote,

Hitler was now pouring reinforcements into Army Group South. Ten panzer and seven panzergrenadier divisions were transferred from Army Groups Centre and North as well as large numbers of infantry by reducing the establishment of most of their infantry divisions from nine to six infantry battalions. Army Group South swelled from 20 to 68 divisions and almost 1,500 tanks.
¹⁰

Hitler was preparing Thor’s Hammer itself to wield against the Soviets. In addition to the German reinforcements, he ordered that all their allies should concentrate their contingents to cover the long front that would be opened between the Donets and Don Rivers. So hundreds of thousands of Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Romanians gathered for the great offensive. The most powerful force was the Italian 8th Army of ten divisions including three
Alpini
or mountain divisions, elite units of the Italian Army.

‘Wie dumm von mir!’
(‘How stupid of me!’) Dönitz exclaimed as he read the report forwarded from the German intelligence network in Switzerland. He was staggered, but now all the coincidences, the lost submarines and the Allied interception of various rendezvous between U-boats and oilers and supply ships, and the destruction of so many weather ships, all came together. He handed the report to the chief of his Operations staff whose eyes grew wide as he read the summary.

This was Bletchley Park’s worst nightmare, that sharing with the notoriously lax Americans would compromise their work.

The operations officer in turn handed the report to the chief of the Naval Communications Department. The man’s face went into shock and then righted itself. He stated with vehemence, ‘Continuous current reading of our radio traffic is out of the question.’

Dönitz’s reply could have been carved from ice, ‘You will notice that the agent has been verified. Read it aloud so everyone can hear.’ With clenched teeth, the signals officer read that the agent ‘was related to our Military Attaché, and often travelled to London with the US Navy delegation, so he should be well informed’.

The man looked up.
‘Herr Admiral,
this cannot be true. The system is just too complicated to break, with almost an infinite number of settings on the machine. We have even had the codebooks printed in water-soluble ink on pink paper to make them easy to destroy to prevent capture.’

Dönitz remained the only calm man in the room. ‘I call your attention to the obvious answer to all these bewildering coincidences in the loss of so many boats.’ He read on,

He looked at the staff. ‘Change the damned codes.’

Then he turned to his aide and said, ‘Get me Heydrich on a secure line at once.’

Heydrich was in the air from Prague within the hour after receiving Dönitz’s call. The admiral was waiting for him as his car sped to the naval headquarters at two in the morning. Dönitz whisked him to his office and showed him the reports. Even Heydrich’s impassive expression was broken as he read on.

‘You know, Dönitz, we can turn this to our advantage. I destroyed the best of Stalin’s senior officers with just such an opportunity to deceive the enemy.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘You know, that if the enemy has broken the naval Enigma code, they surely have broken the less complex Luftwaffe and Army Enigmas. Oh, how
dicke
[fat] Hermann will squirm.’

The irony was that Heydrich was only half right. Indeed, the British had broken Enigma and were reading the Luftwaffe and Army’s traffic, but the addition of a further rotor to the naval Enigma machines had slammed the door shut for the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Since February they had been unable to read any naval Enigma messages.

It did not occur to Dönitz that all the coincidental losses he cited had occurred before the upgrade of naval Enigma only two months before. For Heydrich, though, the thought of what this knowledge could do to his enemies within the Reich leadership was like a sweet taste on his tongue. Dönitz was struck by how vulpine the man looked at that moment; his normally ice blue eyes burned like those of a carnivore closing in for a kill.