The Ghost of Stalingrad

Columnist Capt (Retd) AA JILANI studies the German defence of Stalingrad.

Towards the autumn of 1942 Hitler’s main objective for his Army Group South on the Russian front was Grozny and the Maikop oilfields, but the German advance into the Caucasus was slowing down due to overstretched L of C and the additional commitments for the North Africa campaign. The Wehrmacht had overrun the Maikop oilfields which were a shambles having been blown-up and destroyed by the retreating Red Army. Grozny lay a further 300 miles to the East of Maikop - in fact further eastward than Stalingrad - so the Fuehrer realised that there was scant hope of his troops reaching this city. On 7 October 1942 he ordered the Luftwaffe to destroy the Soviet oilfields around Grozny, and exactly 57 years later Boris Yeltsin ordered the Russian Army to capture Grozny and crush the rebels. In 1942 it was only when the Wehrmacht offensive in the Caucasus ground to a halt that the Fuehrer switched the prime objective to Stalingrad because he needed a symbolic victory to bolster up the declining progress on the Eastern front. It was the Moscow apartment bloc explosions of September 1999 which triggered the ghastly war in Chechnya, and the KGB had not discouraged the use of chemical weapons even if that involved killing children because they maintained that “Chechen children are the criminals of the future”. Boris Yeltsin’s stubborn determination to capture Grozny irrespective of the costs was no less than the Fuehrer’s burning obsession to conquer Stalingrad no matter how high the cost of human sacrifice.

The very name Stalingrad conjures up a glittering symbol of dogged and tenacious resistance, a desperate struggle for every inch of territory and an iron determination to stand fast against overwhelming odds. Colonel General Friedrich Paulus (held in high esteem by the Fuehrer) with his dispirited and exhausted 6th Army had already penetrated the outer fortifications of the city, fighting in the outskirts from house to house and street to street. On 8 January 1942 General Constantion Rokossovski publicly called on Paulus to surrender rather than face certain annihilation and destruction, but Paulus still believed that Paul Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps would soon arrive to enable the encircled 6th Army to break out. On the 17 January 1942 Paulus radioed: “Mein Fuehrer, your orders on the supply of my Army are not being obeyed” and one week later the German newspapers for the first time revealed the death throes of the encircled 6th Army. On 31 January 1942 the Fuehrer broadcast a special proclamation to the German people that they would emerge victorious from the sacrifices and the bloodshed at Stalingrad. He then telegraphically promoted Paulus to the rank of Field Marshal, thus putting the pistol in Paulus’ hand because no German Field-Marshal had ever surrendered. But the very next day, with more than 10,000 wounded Wehrmacht soldiers lying unattended in the wrecked streets, the dejected Field Marshal meekly surrendered his ragged and depleted Army as 11 Wehrmacht Generals and 108,000 troops went into Russian captivity, of whom only 6,000 would ever see their homeland again. So enraged was the Fuehrer that he summoned his naval aide in the middle of the night to find out whether the telegraph promotion order could be rescinded, but he was informed that the news had already been spread over the front pages of the newspapers. For days on end he fumed and cursed this “treacherous betrayal by a German Field Marshal which has brought disgrace and dishonour to the Fatherland”. For World War II, following closely after the Battle of EI-Alamein, this was the turn of the tide.

The rubble and the ashes of Stalingrad have emerged as a legendary beacon light of a century which eventually burned out in the flames and the ruins of Grozny. While the world celebrated the dawn of a new Millennium, Grozny was bleeding. When Boris Yeltsin boasted about turning Grozny into a huge bomb crater, it seemed that he was forgetting his own history. In 1942 the massive Luftwaffe air raids on Stalingrad had turned the smouldering city into the perfect killing ground where the gallant Red Army could ambush and destroy the German invaders. The present conflict in Chechnya is full of paradoxes and distorted parallels with Stalingrad. Today in Putin’s Russia, Chechnya has assumed a similar significance to Stalingrad in 1942, a symbol of heroic resistance.

Whatever their forlorn hopes of crushing the Chechen resistance before the forthcoming Presidential election, the Russians cannot risk any major reverse or heavy casualties. Much depends upon the Chechen reserves of ammunition; the Russian commanders may try to provoke them into wasting what they have, but they do not know how many armour-piercing weapons Chechnya has. The stubborn defenders of Grozny had implemented the Red Army’s Stalingrad methods against their own descendants. In 1942 General Chuikov’s 62nd Army had funnelled the enemy armour into minefields covered with anti-tank weapons, so the Wahrmacht found itself caught up in the Stalingrad Academy of street fighting - a very hard school in which so many young soldiers parished in the ruins. Of course the sewer and cellar clearance of 1942 with flame-throwers did not occur on the same scale at Grozny, nor did we hear of the sharpened spades and knives used at night by the fighting patrols in Stalingrad. To a certain extent there was an ironic reversal of roles. In 1942 the Wehrmacht soldiers were scared of operations in the dark which caused them to fire off millions of rounds at mere shadows. The Red Army, fully aware of this inherent German fear, maintained the night pressure which provoked stress and exhaustion. This was exactly the Chechen tactics against the Russian conscripts of the late 1990s who were never imbued with that great patriotic spirit of Stalingrad. The ailing Boris Yeltsin could not cut such an inspiring and commanding figure as Josef Stalin who so magnificently rallied his troops and also the entire civil population in the cause for the Great Patriotic War against the Nazi invaders.

The most pathetic and gruesome similarity between the two battles was the pitiless treatment of the hapless civilians. In September 1942 there were about 50,000 destitute civilians trapped in the sewers and cellars of Stalingrad, even in shell-holes. When the struggle finally ended in January 1943 there were still about 10,000 of them alive, an astonishing survival rate considering the savagery of the conflict. The battle for Grozny was not on the same scale nor could it drag on much longer because the Chechens had no re-supply route. Yet the fate of those civilians at Grozny was equally heart-rending due to the intense winter cold, the constant bombardment, the stress and starvation just as the population of Stalingrad had experienced.

The Western and the Islamic condemnation of the Russian assault on Grozny was of no benefit to the Chechens, rather it hardened the Russian resolve to crush the rebels without any mercy. The Russians are invoking the ruthless determination which was displayed by their forefathers half a century ago as though the valiant Chechens were somehow equivalent to the Nazi hordes. Perhaps the Germans had confused the cause and the effect in order to try and justify their invasion of the Soviet Union, but the Russian leaders of today are trapping themselves in a moral, political and blind alley. The fall of Grozny is not the end of the war because the stubborn Chechens will re-group in the hills and in the countryside to carry on the struggle to the bitter end. The costly destruction of Grozny is just the beginning of a low-intensity war that will drag on into the 21st century. The spirit of Stalingrad has been reincarnated after having enriched the 20th century so splendidly.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually out in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is no effort without error and shortcoming...... if he fails, at least he fails while daring bravely, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

(Richard Nixon 1974)