Last Stand

BATTLE OF RUSSIA

(See Cover)

To the German burgher, this was the blackest New Year since Versailles. No oratory, no promise of retribution could conceal the vast and calamitous defeat in the East.

To the German soldier, this was January of 1943 all over again. For he was in flight, as he had been a year earlier. And again the icy road back was dotted with wrecked tanks, twisted guns, dead comrades.

Again Russian hamlets set afire by alien hands glowed in the bluish dusk, and misshapen figures dangled from the gallows. Again the thunder of Red artillery pursued the fleeing men through day & night, and white-painted Stormoviks hopped over the gaunt trees to bomb and strafe.

Adolf Hitler's year-end Order of the Day called 1943 "a second year of great crisis." His men at the front knew now that the crisis would grow, the retreat would go on. The Eastern Front was a heaving, bulging line, inexorably moving westward. No one could tell where it would be tomorrow, next week, next month.

Twin Perils. In the north, Armenian General Ivan Bagramian was hacking away methodically at the Vitebsk-Mogilev line (see map, p, 27). The great German stronghold of Vitebsk was engulfed. Orsha was in danger. And at any hour, the four huge Red Armies idling in the north might roll west, crush the thinly spread forces of Field Marshals von Kluge" and von Kuechler, pour into old Poland, the Baltic States.

But the danger was still greater in the south. There Nikolai Vatutin's army of half a million men had torn a 200-mile gap in the lines of Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein, and was now racing into the pages of history with furious momentum.

In ten days Vatutin's men had advanced 60-odd miles, captured 2,000 villages and towns. Korosten and Zhitomir, lately taken and lost, had been retaken. Berdichev, the bustling Jewish town once used by Manstein for his headquarters, was in danger. This week Vatutin pushed back the enemy, forced his way across Russia's Polish threshold.

The Gangrene. To a skilled tactician like Manstein, today's defeat was less grave than its impact on tomorrow. Already, his fleeing men had far outpaced the German armies in the north, exposing their flank. With each day, too, the position of his 20-odd divisions caught in the Dnieper bend became more desperate. A lone railroad of supply and escape was in grave danger.

He had failed to hold out behind the broad, free-flowing Dnieper. What chance did he have of making a stand behind the frozen Bug? The Dniester, alone, now some 100 miles behind the front, offered a potential line of defense. But the Dniester's right bank is in Bessarabia, and the echo of Russian gunfire there would echo throughout the Balkans.

Nor was the situation less desperate in Poland. Polish patriots may have no love for the Russians; for the Nazi despoiler they have only hate. And the Communist-dominated underground in eastern Poland may prove to be as effective as were Russia's guerrilla "armies of the forest."

Defeat was a gangrenous infection which grew and spread, and with each hour became more dangerous. Not even Manstein, with all his genius for war, knew how to end the infection. All he could do now was to retreat with all speed, and hope that the pursuer would wear himself out in the steadily widening belt of devastated land.

Battle For Survival. The retreat was not yet a rout: the Teutonic habit of obedience was still firm, the armies' strength was still great, the commanders still able. But, however masterly, it was a retreat. Momentary survival, a postponement of utter defeat, might lie somewhere in the rear. But victory could not lie there. Victory lay in the opposite direction.

In effect, the battle for the Ukraine was Manstein's last stand. For unless this battle was won--or even stalemated--it would soon be too late. Other armies would be gnawing at Europe's western and southern crusts. If, by then, the Red Army was at or near the gates of the Reich itself, or tearing at the Nazi structure in southeast Europe, Germany's end would be very near.

Manstein's was a battle for Germany, her government, her army. It was also a battle for his caste--the Junkers--who were the army's heart, mind and will power. By a subterfuge, the caste escaped the ignominy of defeat in World War I ("We were stabbed in the back," the Junkers said). But now no subterfuge would help. For the Allied intent was clear: "The twin roots of all our evils--Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism--must be extirpated. Until this is achieved there are no sacrifices that we will not make, no length in violence to which we will not go."*

Men of Ostelbien. Extirpation of the Junkers--the Mansteins, Kleists, Kuelers of the Wehrmacht--would end a long, bloody, turbulent German chapter.

The Junkers are more than a caste. To the Junkers their Ostelbien (east of the Elbe) is the heart of Germany; and Germany was the world's heart. They are a social system, a way of life, a thought pattern, a cancer on Europe's uneasy breast. Century after century, their dreams have become blueprints, their blueprints war. Even under Hitler the German army is in a sense their private weapon. (Between Versailles and Hitler, 60% of the Wehrmacht's officers came from Ostelbien's Junkers.)

Hitler and the Junkers bear no love for each other. But Ostelbien's generals and the Austrian ex-corporal have made a fine team.

When, on the wrinkled steppe before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht met defeat, Hitler did not turn for help to one of his Nazi henchmen--Jodl, List, Guderian; he turned to Junker von Manstein. In December 1942, in the marshlands hugging the Caspian Sea, Manstein met in combat the Russian ex-private, Rodion Malinovsky. Manstein's first punch--with massed tanks--sent the Russian reeling back. But soon Malinovsky received help, counterattacked, made the marshes a cemetery for Manstein's men, tanks, hopes.

The Road Back. In that winter of disaster, the Germans retreated some 400 miles, lost (according to Moscow) 1,200,000 men and 5,000 planes, gave up Vyazma, Rzhev, Kharkov, Belgorod, Rostov, a foothold in Voronezh. Manstein, retreating along the southern fringe of Russia, shrewdly caught advanced Russian tank columns in the March mud and out of fuel, recaptured Belgorod and Kharkov, subsequently wrote a sometimes brilliant, sometimes mistaken, always futile chapter in the tactics of retreat.

Sick with "armor fever," Manstein and his teammates brought up huge 60-ton "Tiger" tanks (Mark VI) and 70-ton "Ferdinand" self-propelled guns. Smaller tanks were given an extra skin of armor. In all, 17 tank and 18 infantry divisions were massed for the summer drive, Russians said this was history's highest ratio of tanks to infantry.

With this tremendous force Hitler made his last great bid for Russia. On July 5, 1943, huge columns of tanks, spearheaded by Tigers, rumbled forward. But the Russian lines did not snap; they merely moved back. By month's end, the Germans again were in general retreat.

For Manstein, retirement behind the Dnieper was inevitable. But he had to hold on until the Dnieper Line was ready, until his men had pulled out of the dangerous southern pocket. To achieve this he used hedgehogs--well-placed, well-fortified strongholds. The hedgehog at Stalino held until Manstein's units withdrew from the Don. The Poltava hedgehog held until the Germans reached the Dnieper.

The retreat was costly; all retreats are. But none of Manstein's units was trapped; the army was battered, but it was still an army. Now Manstein wanted to fatten and rest it behind the Dnieper, build defenses, perhaps prepare a new counteroffensive.

The Red command would give him no respite. At high cost, Russian troops pressed across the river, struck blows so well dispersed that Manstein's thin reserves could not plug all holes. Zhitomir and Korosten fell. It was then that Manstein again displayed his tactical brilliance.

Behind Zhitomir he had been hoarding vast masses of tanks. When Vatutin's mobile columns outraced their artillery and infantry support, Manstein struck. With more than 1,600 tanks in pursuit, the Russians abandoned Zhitomir, fled across the flat, muddy terrain. Kiev itself was in peril.

But in December 1943 Manstein repeated the mistake he made in July. He let the Russians whittle down his tank force, had no reserves when Vatutin struck again with tanks. After that, there was no alternative to flight.

Junker's Errors. But to the Russian Manstein was less a riddle than they were to him. His was the Junker's orderly, one-track mind whose processes could often be foretold--and thwarted. He had learned much since the easy conquests in Poland and France. But, like other Junkers, he still held abiding faith in the tank-airplane team. When it failed--as it did at Kursk --the solution was simple: more tanks, more planes.

Von Manstein thus turned to what the Russians called "buffalo strategy." But this strategy of massed-force-cum-surprise had two flaws: it overestimated the value of the tank-plane team; it underestimated the value of the grey, sturdy, patient Russian mujik as a military weapon.

Yet this mujik was now a first-rate soldier. In the ruins of Stalingrad he acquired confidence and knowledge. At Kursk, he put the knowledge to its harshest test ("Myi Stalingradtsi," these men boasted, "We're from Stalingrad. We chased them"). The veterans of these two battles became the backbone of every active army.

At Stalingrad, the Russians mastered the defensive weapons: the anti-tank rifle, the mine, the Molotov cocktail. In the winter drive which followed, they mastered the weapons of attack--artillery, tanks, cavalry.

Stalingrad also developed a cadre of top-drawer commanders: the weak, the slow, the incompetent were weeded out without mercy. Those who survived were young, tough, skilled in the combined use of all armed branches--and often underestimated by the German foe. Many generals took unnecessary risks, for rivalry was keen, and the pressure from below urgent. But boldness usually paid off, for it was buttressed by muscle.

The muscle came from training camps, turning out millions of men & women soldiers. It also came from the new or transplanted war factories. Russian engineers performed miracles in expanding production, modernizing old weapons, creating new ones. Russia's Katusha antedated the U.S. bazooka, the German rocket gun. New, high-velocity, armor-piercing shells enabled the Red Army to retain anti-tank guns once thought too light to tackle the German Tiger.

These men and these weapons thrice beat Manstein: at Stalingrad, Kursk, Zhitomir. But, thrice beaten, he still failed to understand the lesson. For understanding meant loss of hope and faith: the Slav commoner had negated the Junkers' wondrous Blitzkrieg.

Junker's Life. In this dark hour of defeat by the despised Slav, Fritz Erich von Manstein must have longed to shut his eyes to the dreary, hostile scene and think of friendly Ostelbien: of the small estate of impoverished Prussian Artillery General von Lewinski, whose tenth child he was; of the Castle of Colonel Baron Georg von Manstein, who adopted Erich von Lewinski when his father died.

Baron von Manstein brought Erich up as his own son--in the Junker tradition. When Erich emerged from the Kadetten-Schule and was commissioned lieutenant in the swanky, expensive Potsdam Guards, the baron gave him a handsome allowance. Lieut, von Lewinski von Manstein had few vices, studied much and hard.

Early in World War I Manstein was severely wounded. On recovery he fought at Verdun, drew attention by his energy, will power, harshness. He remained with the army after defeat, served on the hush-hush postwar General Staff, helped to build up the Wehrmacht for the war of revenge.

In the summer of 1932, while Germany and Russia were still slapping each other's backs, Manstein donned civilian clothes, went to Russia for a look. At the Kharkov station a leather-jacketed Soviet commissar bounced in, offered Manstein vodka and zakuska. While the surprised visitor was gulping the fiery drink, another commissar dashed in, pulled the first one aside. Both then approached Manstein, stuttering, red-faced: "Mistake. ... It was a mistake. . . . We thought you were Comrade Thaelmann. . . ."*

A year later Hitler came to power with Junker help, made able War Planner von Manstein a lieutenant general. Yet Manstein remained aloof from Nazi politics. After all, Nazis too were rabble.

In the drive on Poland, Manstein was Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who attacked from the south. Manstein did a flawless job of planning, intelligence and logistics, was promoted to a field commander. In the summer of 1940, his armies broke through the Somme line in France. A year later he became an army commander in Russia when Ukrainian guerrillas killed his chief, Colonel General Eugen Ritter von Schobert. For yet another year, Manstein marched from victory to victory--Odessa, Perekop, Kerch, Sevastopol. But victory was tinged with pain: his two boys, both lieutenants, died in action. And the sands of luck were running low.

A German Petain? At 56 Manstein is one of the youngest of Germany's field marshals. He has white hair, tired eyes, a beaked nose. Myopic, he wears the traditional Junker monocle. He dresses elegantly, sports a single decoration--the Iron Cross. He smokes thick cigars. In brief moments of leisure he plays the piano well, prefers solemn, well-ordered Bach to lighter, later composers. His hands are thin, well-manicured, almost feminine; his voice is quiet.

But this fac,ade is deceptive. Behind it hides a strong and active mind, a harshness of will and temper. Ability and toughness brought Junker von Manstein, with his discipline and logic, close to plebeian Adolf Hitler, with his psychoses and intuition. Hitler must have respect for this good soldier. Manstein may have no respect for his Fuehrer, but he bears him loyalty as the chief of state.

Above loyalty to the chief of state there is loyalty to the state and to the caste. Many an observer has guessed that on the eve of Germany's defeat the caste may betray Hitler, pick a Junker--perhaps Manstein--to play the Teutonic Petain. For, despite defeat and despair, the German burgher of today has no greater military idol than Manstein.

To straight-laced Manstein himself, such a betrayal may be acceptable. For like other Junkers he had been brought up on Junker Karl von Clausewitz's ageless lecture to Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm:

"The theory of warfare tries to discover how we may gain a preponderance of physical forces and material advantages at the decisive point. As this is not always possible, theory also teaches us to calculate moral factors: the likely mistakes of the enemy, the impression created by a daring action . . . yes, even our own desperation. . . . We must familiarize ourselves with the thought of honorable defeat. We must always nourish this thought within ourselves, and we must get completely used to it. Be convinced, Most Gracious Master, that without this firm resolution no great results can be achieved. . . ."

* Winston Churchill (Sept. 21).

*Ernst Thaelmann, famed German Communist, now reputedly on a prison farm outside of Hanover.

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