Back at Zavarykino, Voronov again examined the figures. In spite of the strong German resistance put up early in December, Colonel I. V. Vinogradov, the chief intelligence officer of the Don Front, had not greatly revised his estimate of soldiers trapped in the Kessel. He now put them at 86,000, when asked to be precise. It was a figure which was to embarrass Red Army intelligence, especially when their NKVD rivals made sarcastic allusions later.
The draft plan for Operation Ring was at last ready on 27 December, and flown to Moscow. The next day Voronov was told to rewrite it. Stalin insisted that the first phase of the attack, focused on the Karpovka-Marinovka nose in the south-west, should come from the north-west and be coordinated with another operation at the opposite corner of the Kessel, cutting off the factory district of Stalingrad and the northern suburbs.
Stalin observed at a meeting of the State Defence Committee that the rivalry between Yeremenko, the commander of the Stalingrad Front, and Rokossovsky, the commander of the Don Front, had to be resolved before Operation Ring began. ‘Whom shall we make responsible for the final liquidation of the enemy?’ he asked. Somebody mentioned Rokossovsky. Stalin asked Zhukov what he thought.
‘Yeremenko will be very hurt’, Zhukov observed.
‘We are not high-school girls,’ Stalin retorted. ‘We are Bolsheviks and we must put worthwhile leaders in command.’ Zhukov was left to pass on the unwelcome news to Yeremenko.
Rokossovsky, the commander-in-chief responsible for the coup de grâce on the Sixth Army, was allowed 47 divisions, 5,610 field guns and heavy mortars and 169 tanks. This force of 218,000 men was supported by 300 aircraft. But Stalin’s impatience again built up, just as he was planning a strike against the Hungarian Second Army. To his fury, he was told that transport difficulties had slowed the delivery of reinforcements, supplies and ammunition. Voronov demanded yet another delay of four days. Stalin’s sarcasm was bitter. ‘You’ll be sitting around there until the Germans take you and Rokossovsky prisoners!’ With great reluctance, he agreed to the new date of 10 January.
German officers outside the Kessel had been wondering what would happen next. General Fiebig, the commander of VIII Air Corps, wondered after a long conversation with Richthofen: ‘Why don’t the Russians crush the Kessel like a ripe fruit?’ Red Army officers on the Don Front were also surprised about the delay, and wondered how long it would be before they received their orders to attack. Voronov, however, had received another call from Moscow now telling him that an ultimatum to the Sixth Army must be prepared.
Voronov, in that first week of January 1943, wrote a draft addressed personally to Paulus. Constant calls from Moscow, with Stalin’s amendments, were necessary. When finally approved, it was translated at Don Front headquarters by ‘German anti-fascists from the group headed by Walter Ulbricht’. Meanwhile, NKVD representatives and Colonel Vinogradov of Red Army intelligence, displaying their usual rivalry, had begun to search for suitable officers to act as truce envoys. In the end, a compromise was reached. Late in the afternoon of 7 January, Major Aleksandr Mikhailovich Smyslov of army intelligence and Captain Nikolay Dmitrevich Dyatlenko of the NKVD, were selected to go together. Vinogradov, when interviewing Dyatlenko, suddenly asked: ‘Are you a khokhol?’ Khokhol, or ‘tufty’, was the insulting term for a Ukrainian, because Russians were often rude about their traditional style of haircut.
‘No, Comrade Colonel,’ replied Dyatlenko stiffly. ‘I’m a Ukrainian.’
‘So you’re just like a Russian,’ Vinogradov laughed. ‘Well done. You are a suitable representative of the Red Army to meet the fascists.’
Smyslov and Dyatlenko were then briefed by General Malinin, the chief-of-staff, and by Voronov himself. One might have thought that Stalin was looking over their shoulder from the way both generals kept asking the envoys whether they fully understood the instructions from Moscow. In fact nobody really had a clear idea of the rules and ritual of a truce envoy. Dyatlenko admitted that his only knowledge came from the play Field Marshal Kutuzov by Solovyov.
‘So lads,’ said Voronov, ‘will you fulfil your mission?’
‘We will fulfil it, Comrade Colonel-General!’ they chanted as one.
Malinin then ordered the front quartermaster-in-chief to kit out the two officers in the smartest uniforms available. The Germans had to be impressed. The quartermaster promised to have them ‘dressed like bridegrooms’, and winked ‘like a magician’ at the two envoys. With Voronov’s backing, he had every general’s aide at front headquarters on parade in his department. He ordered them all to strip, so that Dyatlenko and Smyslov could try on their uniforms and boots. The two envoys soon found themselves in a Willys staff car, with Colonel Vinogradov. Their destination, they were told, was Kotluban station on 24th Army’s sector.
Russian troops in the area had received the order to cease firing from dusk. Then, all through the night, Red Army loudspeakers broadcast a message prepared by Ulbricht’s anti-fascists, telling the Germans to expect truce envoys. By the next dawn, 8 January, firing had ceased. Smyslov and Dyatlenko were allotted a tall corporal, equipped with a white flag and a three-note trumpet. ‘It was unusually quiet on the snow-covered plain’ when they advanced to the very front trenches. The corporal blew the trumpet call: ‘Attention! Attention! Everybody listen!’ They advanced for about a hundred yards, then firing broke out. The three men were forced to dive for cover behind a low rampart made in the snow by Russian reconnaissance groups for night observation. The ‘bridegroom’ uniforms soon looked less smart; they also offered little protection from the intense cold.
When the firing died away, Smyslov and Dyatlenko rose to their feet and cautiously recommenced their advance. The corporal also stood up, waving the flag and blowing his trumpet. Once again, the Germans opened fire, but without shooting directly at them. It was clear that they wanted to force the truce envoys to retreat. After several more attempts, a furious Vinogradov sent a message forward to call off this dangerous version of grandmother’s footsteps.*
Smyslov and Dyatlenko returned to Front headquarters to report, ashamed at the failure of their mission. ‘Why are your noses hanging down, Comrades?’ asked Voronov. ‘The situation is such that it is not we who should ask them to accept our proposals, but vice versa. So we’ll give them some more fire, and they will themselves come begging for them.’ During that night, Russian aircraft flew over German positions, dropping leaflets printed with the ultimatum to Paulus, and a message addressed to ‘Deutsche Offiziere, Unteroffiziere und Mannschaften!’, both signed by Voronov and Rokossovsky. To underline the message, ‘they supported the words with bombs’. Red Army radio stations also broadcast the text, read by Erich Weinert, on the frequencies most used by the Germans, and a number of German wireless operators acknowledged. The leaflets were certainly read. A captain in the 305th Infantry Division admitted after capture that officers as well as soldiers had read the Soviet leaflets in secret, despite the penalties, ‘because forbidden fruit is sweet’. Sometimes they showed leaflets in Russian to a trusty Hiwi and asked him to translate. ‘Everyone knew about the ultimatum,’ he said.
Smyslov and Dyatlenko had slept for only a couple of hours at front headquarters when they were woken at around midnight. A staff car was outside waiting for them by the time they had dressed in their old uniforms (the ADCs had immediately reclaimed their property). When they reached the intelligence department, they discovered that Colonel Vinogradov had been promoted to Major-General and that they had been awarded the Order of the Red Star. Vinogradov, having joked that he had been promoted ‘for all the trousers he had worn out during his service’, added that Smyslov and Dyatlenko would receive an even more important medal if they managed to carry out their mission at a second attempt.
The two envoys were told to climb into a staff car with Vinogradov and the officer appointed to replace him as chief of intelligence. As they drove through the night again, the two newly promoted generals sang songs and ‘kept interrupting each other with gener
als’ anecdotes’. (Although Dyatlenko’s respectful account does not say that they were drunk, they certainly appear to have been celebrating their promotions.) The rhythm of the songs was continually broken, as the staff car lurched in and out of huge potholes along the frozen dirt roads. It was a long journey round the southern side of the Kessel, crossing the Don westwards, then back across again at Kalach to the sector covered by 21st Army. Shortly before dawn, they reached the headquarters of the 96th Rifle Division, a few miles to the west of Marinovka.
Rather like condemned prisoners, Smyslov and Dyatlenko were given breakfast, boosted ‘by a Narkom’s [government minister’s] ration’. Vinogradov put a stop to a second helping, and told them to get ready. They then suddenly realized that they had handed the white flag back to the quartermaster at front headquarters. A new one had to be made, using one of the divisional commander’s sheets nailed crudely to a branch from an acacia.
The staff car drove them to the front line and parked in a balka, from where the party proceeded forwards on foot. Smyslov and Dyatlenko were joined by an elderly warrant officer, with a trumpet, who introduced himself as: ‘Commander of the musical platoon Siderov’. A lieutenant also stepped forward and offered to escort them through the minefields – ‘because my life is not worth as much as yours,’ he explained.
The three envoys put on camouflage suits just behind the front trenches, then set off across the white expanse which blurred into a heavy mist. Some two dozen humps of snow ahead were frozen bodies. General Vinogradov and the other two generals climbed on to a burnt-out Russian tank to watch proceedings. Siderov blew the trumpet. The call ‘Attention! Attention!’ sounded, in Dyatlenko’s ears, more like ‘The Last Post’.
As they came closer to the German lines, they saw figures moving. It looked as if the front-line bunkers and trenches were being reinforced. Siderov waved the flag and blew the trumpet again urgently. ‘What do you want?’ a warrant officer called.
‘We are truce envoys from the commander of the Red Army,’ Dyatlenko shouted back in German. ‘We are on our way to your commander-in-chief with a message. We ask you to receive us according to international law.’
‘Come here then,’ he said. Several more heads popped up and guns were levelled at them. Dyatlenko refused to advance until officers were called. Both sides became nervous during the long wait. Eventually, the warrant officer set off towards the rear to fetch his company commander. As soon as he had left, German soldiers stood up and started to banter. ‘Rus! Komm, komm!’ they called. One soldier, a short man, bundled in many rags, clambered up on to the parapet of the trench and began to play the fool. He pointed to himself in an operatic parody. ‘Ich bin Offizier’ he sang.
‘I can see what sort of an officer you are,’ Dyatlenko retorted, and the German soldiers laughed. The joker’s companions grabbed his ankles and dragged him back into the trench. Smyslov and Siderov were laughing too.
Finally, the warrant officer returned, accompanied by three officers. The most senior of them asked politely what they wanted. Dyatlenko explained, and asked if they would be received according to international convention, with guarantees for their safety. Complicated discussions followed on detail – whether they should remove their snow suits and have their eyes bandaged – before they were allowed forward. After the officers on both sides had exchanged salutes, Smyslov showed the oilskin packet, addressed to Colonel-General Paulus. The German officers whispered urgently among themselves. The senior lieutenant then agreed to take the Soviet representatives to their regimental commander. The black blindfolds issued by the front quartermaster the day before had been handed back with the white flag, so they had to improvise with handkerchiefs and belts. All Siderov could offer was the blouse of his snowsuit, and when that was fastened round his head, the German soldiers watching from their bunker entrance burst out laughing. ‘Bedouin! Bedouin!’ they called.
The senior lieutenant led Dyatlenko by the hand. After a few steps, he asked, ‘with a smile in his voice’, what was written in the message to Paulus. ‘That we should surrender?’
‘I am not ordered to know,’ Dyatlenko replied, using the formula of the Tsarist army. They changed the subject.
‘Tell me please,’ said the lieutenant, ‘if it is true that a German writer called Willi Bredel has been in Platonovsky? He has been addressing my soldiers on the radio for ten or maybe fourteen days. He appealed to them to surrender, and swore that their lives would be spared. Of course, my soldiers just laughed at him. But was he really here? It was clear from his accent that he was from Hamburg. So was it really him or a record of his voice?’
Dyatlenko longed to reply. Bredel was indeed one of the Germans working for his section and he got on well with him. But if he gave any hint, then the lieutenant would have understood immediately what his ‘real job’ was. An unplanned diversion occurred at that moment. The ice on which they were walking was both uneven from shell fire, yet also polished by the passage of boots wrapped in rags. Dyatlenko fell, knocking down the lieutenant. Smyslov, hearing the commotion, shouted in alarm. Dyatlenko reassured Smyslov and apologized to the lieutenant. He was not afraid of a trick. ‘About a thousand prisoners of war had passed through my hands by then,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘I knew their psychology sufficiently well as a result, and I knew that these men would not harm me.’
German soldiers who came to lift the two fallen men slipped over in their turn, making a sprawling mass of bodies. Dyatlenko compared it to the Ukrainian children’s game called ‘A little heap is too little: someone is needed on top.’
The lieutenant kept up his questioning when the blindfold march resumed, then returned to the question of Bredel. Dyatlenko was less than frank. He said that the name was known to him and he had even read some of his books. Finally, the lieutenant warned him that they were coming to some steps.
The three truce envoys found themselves, when their blindfolds were removed, in a well-built bunker lined with tree-trunks. Dyatlenko noticed two sacks with spoiled grey grain, which they were trying to dry out. ‘That serves you right, you snakes,’ Dyatlenko thought. ‘You burned the Stalingrad grain elevator and now you have to dig food for yourselves out from under the snow.’ He also observed the coloured postcards and Christmas paper decorations still in place.
A senior German officer entered and demanded to know the authority for their mission. ‘The Stavka of the Red Army command,’ replied Dyatlenko. The senior officer then left the bunker, presumably to telephone. During the colonel’s absence, the German officers and Dyatlenko discussed Christmas celebrations. They then discussed pistols and the Germans admired Dyatlenko’s Tokarev. He rapidly surrendered it when the Russian truce envoys realized, to their great embarrassment, that according to international convention they should have left behind their personal weapons.
To maintain the fairly cordial atmosphere, Siderov opened the packet of ‘Lux’ cigarettes – what Dyatlenko called ‘general’s cigarettes’ – which had been specially issued to them to impress the German officers. ‘With great dignity, Siderov offered the packet to the Germans as if he had always smoked the best, and not makhorka.’ He asked Dyatlenko to tell them that this was his third war: he had fought in ‘the Imperialist War, the Civil War and now the Great Patriotic War’. Dyatlenko expected him to add ‘against German fascist invaders’, but in fact Siderov smiled and said: ‘And during all these three wars, I have never had the chance to talk to the enemy so peacefully.’ The German officers agreed and added that this little assembly consisted of the most peaceful people on the whole front. Conversation rather came to a halt after that. In the ensuing silence, they heard heavy firing. The Russians were horrified. One of the Germans dashed out of the bunker to discover what was happening. He returned with the accusation: ‘It was your people.’ Fortunately, the firing soon ceased. (The truce envoys discovered later that it had been Russian antiaircraft batteries unable to resist the temptation when German transport aircraft appeared overhead.)
br /> Tension rose during the long wait for the colonel’s return. But when he came, it was not to announce as expected that a staff car had been sent from Sixth Army headquarters. He had, in Dyatlenko’s words, ‘a very different expression – like a beaten dog’. The junior officers, guessing what had happened, rose to their feet ‘as if a sentence was about to be pronounced on all of them’.
‘I am ordered’, the colonel announced to the Russians, ‘not to take you anywhere, not to accompany you, nor to receive anything from you, only to cover your eyes again, to lead you back, to return your pistols and to guarantee your safety.’
Dyatlenko protested most volubly. He offered, even though it was against his instructions, to give the oilskin packet to a specially authorized officer in return for a receipt.
‘I am ordered to take nothing from you,’ replied the German colonel.
‘Then we ask you to write on the package that you, in accordance with orders received from higher command, refuse to accept the letter addressed to your army commander.’ But the colonel refused even to touch the packet. There was nothing left, Smyslov and Dyatlenko concluded, but to allow themselves to be blindfolded again and escorted back. The same senior lieutenant guided Dyatlenko back.
‘How old are you?’ Dyatlenko whispered after they had set off.
‘Twenty-four,’ he replied. There were only a few years between them.
‘This war between our peoples is a tragic mistake,’ Dyatlenko said after a short pause. ‘It will finish sooner or later and it would be good for me to meet you on that day, wouldn’t it?’