Free Stalingrad by Antony Beevor Page B

are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression.
Relations with the Civil Population:
In Germany just because somebody is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front.
General:
When on leave back in the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.’
    A certain cynicism even emerged over medals. When a winter-campaign medal was issued the following year, it quickly became known as the ‘Order of the Frozen Flesh’. There were more serious cases of disaffection. Field Marshal von Reichenau, the commander-in-chief of the Sixth Army, exploded in rage just before Christmas on finding the following examples of graffiti on the buildings allotted for his headquarters: ‘We want to return to Germany’; ‘We’ve had enough of this’; ‘We are dirty and have lice and want to go home’; and ‘We didn’t want this war!’ Reichenau, while acknowledging that ‘such thoughts and moods’ were evidently the ‘result of great tension and deprivation’, put full responsibility on all officers for the ‘political and moral condition of their troops’.
    And while a small group of well-connected officers led by Henning von Tresckow plotted to assassinate Hitler, at least one Communist cell was at work in the ranks. The following appeal in ‘Front Letter No. 3’ to set up ‘soldier committees in each unit, in each regiment, in each division’ was found by a Russian soldier in the lining of the greatcoat of a German soldier. ‘Comrades, who is not up to his neck in shit here on the Eastern Front?… It is a criminal war unleashed by Hitler and it is leading Germany to hell… Hitler must be got rid of and we soldiers can do this. The fate of Germany is in the hands of people at the front. Our password should be “Away with Hitler!” Against the Nazi lie! The war means the death of Germany.’
    The dynamics of power during total war inevitably strengthened state control even further. Any criticism of the regime could be attacked as enemy-inspired propaganda, and any opponent could be portrayed as a traitor. Hitler’s ascendancy over his generals was unchallenged and they became the scapegoats for the former corporal’s obsessions. Those commanders who disagreed with his policy of holding on at all costs in December 1941 were removed. He forced Brauchitsch to retire and appointed himself commander-in-chief instead, on the grounds that no general possessed the necessary National Socialist will.
    The German Army managed to re-establish a firm defence line east of Smolensk, but its eventual destruction had become virtually certain. We can now see, with the benefit of hindsight, that the balanceof power – geopolitical, industrial, economic and demographic – swung decisively against the Axis in December 1941, with the Wehrmacht’s failure to capture Moscow and the American entry into the war. The psychological turning point of the war, however, would come only in the following winter with the battle for the city of Stalingrad, which, partly because of its name, became a personal duel by mass proxy.

Part Two
BARBAROSSA RELAUNCHED

5
General Paulus’s First Battle
    The curious chain of events which brought General Friedrich Paulus to command the Sixth Army began with Hitler’s angry disappointment towards the end of 1941. And a year later, a very similar frustration would lead to the disaster which befell Paulus and his divisions.
    In November 1941, while the world’s attention was focused on the approaches to Moscow, the situation in the eastern Ukraine had fluctuated wildly. At the climax of Army Group South’s advance, the leading divisions of Kleist’s