entire length, even in the best of circumstances, will not take place until the end of this year or even the middle of next year, and until then neither England nor the U.S. would see any serious cause for concern, especially if we carry out the measures provided for in my report, which are designed to give the Western powers the impression that the Soviet Union is liberating its territory out of its last strength and is unable to make a quick dash westward.”
“I remember your suggestion,” Stalin nodded, looking thoughtfully at the map, “Smolensk, Kiev, Minsk, the Baltics, Odessa… We still have a lot of work to do, Comrade Nagulin, you're right. If we manage it by the end of the year, it will really be a great success. Good. Consider that the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command have heard your point of view and taken it more than seriously, but we will take a decision on your report a little later, when the situation is more certain. And now I have a more concrete matter for you, which cannot wait.”
The Chief gave me a sharp look in the eye, and I didn't want to disappoint him.
“I'm ready, Comrade Stalin, give the order.”
“In the operation to break the blockade of Leningrad you, Comrade Nagulin, showed yourself a competent commander, capable of organizing a breakthrough of the enemy's defense and ensuring the unimpeded entry of the shock army into it. Of course, the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts did not achieve everything that was planned, but it is still a very great victory. Your success has been noted by the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, and now it's time to repeat it under different conditions and on a somewhat larger scale. You're right, we're not ready for a really big offensive, but we have another enemy besieged city. It is an important city that must not be given to the Germans under any circumstances. The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command give you three days to complete your current business in Moscow. We know that you are supervising the work on a new turbojet engine for our aviation, and this work should by no means stop after you leave. But only three days! And then you're flying to the Crimean front as a representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command[2]. Sevastopol needed to be unblocked, and Lieutenant-General Kozlov was never able to build on the initial success of the Kerch-Feodosiya landing. Manstein is outplaying him on all directions, and this situation must be fundamentally changed. If necessary, you can remove Kozlov from the command of the front – you will have the appropriate authority, but to do it or not, you will decide on the spot.”
Chapter 3
Erich von Manstein was well aware that together with his 11th Army he found himself on the periphery of the maelstrom of events that in a matter of months changed the entire course of military action on the Eastern Front. He began the war against the Soviet Union as part of Army Group North, commanding the 56th Motorized Corps, which invaded the Baltics. In the first week of fighting his corps crossed more than 200 kilometers and came to the Western Dvina, where it successfully repulsed a tank counterstrike by Soviet troops.
It seemed that the war was developing quite favorably, and Manstein even had the thought that Hitler was right, and before winter Red Army would be completely defeated, but already at the beginning of July his corps suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Lieutenant-General Morozov's army near Soltsy. Two groups of Soviet troops, supported by more than two hundred planes, encircled the Wehrmacht's 8th Panzer Division from the north and south, and it had to fight for some time in an encirclement. The Third Panzer Division was also in danger of having its communications intercepted.
That time Manstein managed to avoid a defeat. The SS Division "Dead Head" was given to him to restore the situation, and at the cost of heavy losses the 8th Panzer Division was unblocked, after which it had to be sent to the rear to be re-formed. The German troops were pushed back 40 kilometers, and the offensive of the Army Group North in Leningrad stalled for almost a month. It was then, at Soltsy, that Manstein first began to think seriously about the fact that things might not be as simple with this war as many German generals and politicians would have liked.
Then there were battles at Demiansk, and finally, in September 1941, Manstein was given command of the 11th Army, which by early November seized almost the entire Crimea and besieged Sevastopol.
While dealing with the problems of his own army, Manstein nevertheless closely monitored the situation on other fronts. The alarm bells started ringing as early as September, but they were barely audible then behind the roar of victory fanfares.
The Russians suffered a spectacular defeat at Kiev. Bryansk and Vyazma were next, but then something went wrong in the Wehrmacht machine, which was moving steadily eastward, to the point that it began to have a direct effect on the 11th Army, which did not seem to have directly related to the battle for Moscow.
At first the November attempt to capture Sevastopol failed. Manstein underestimated the power of the coastal batteries covering the city, and when a hundred and fifty heavy guns of the Sevastopol forts were joined by the volleys of the main guns of two cruisers and the battleship Paris Commune, which had come to the aid of the besieged city, he gave the order to stop the assault because of its obvious futility.
Manstein was deservedly considered one of the best strategists of the Wehrmacht. It was he who in 1940 proposed the plan to invade France with a tank strike through the Ardennes Mountains. Having crossed the Ardennes, the tanks were to cross the Meuse and, without waiting for infantry, reach the English Channel coast in a wide arc, cutting off the enemy's northern grouping. The German military command considered Manstein's plan too risky, but it was unexpectedly supported by Hitler, who categorically did not like the fact that the generals were offering him, in fact, to repeat Alfred von Schlieffen's plan, which the Germans had implemented at the beginning of World War I. Hitler, quite rightly, believed that the French and the British were expecting just that, and that the Wehrmacht would not be able to achieve any surprise. Manstein's proposal came just in time, and the Führer insisted on adopting his plan, which eventually led the Wehrmacht to such an impressive victory.
However, the talent of a strategist was not Manstein's only advantage. He was also a consummate specialist in squeezing reserves out of the command. No one else could so convincingly and persuasively explain to his superiors that he was the one who needed tanks, planes, infantry, and artillery more than anyone else now, and that if he was not given them, then, depending on the particular circumstances, either there will be a universal catastrophe or the Wehrmacht will miss the great victory, which he, Erich von Manstein, almost already has in his hands.
And now this tried and tested mechanism has begun to malfunction. The commander of Army Group South, Gerd von Runstedt, flatly refused to reinforce the 11th Army with tanks and aircraft, citing the fact that the grand battle for Moscow sucked out all the reserves, and he had already been stripped of too many divisions. The only thing Manstein was not denied was artillery. 200 batteries of heavy guns were placed at the disposal of the 11th Army. For the most part these were conventional large-caliber field howitzers, including 210-millimeter ones, but heavier artillery systems surviving from World War I came from Germany as well. Against their background, the Karl-Gerät self-propelled mortars with their caliber of 600 millimeters and the unique 800-millimeter railroad gun Dora, with its 7-ton shells, 32-meter barrel, and 250-man crew were perceived as real miracle weapons.
And still the assault failed. At the most crucial moment the Russians landed sea-borne troops in the rear of the 11th Army, they brazenly stormed the port of Feodosiya and landed the troops from the warships directly onto the piers. The 46th Infantry Division and the Romanian Mountain Rifle Regiment tried to halt the advance of the landing troops, but they were cut off at the Kerch Peninsula and almost completely destroyed.
The assault on Sevastopol had to be stopped in order to rush infantry and artillery to Feodosia. It proved extremely difficult to do this on icy roads, but the Russian forces were not limitless, and by mid-January the situation had stabilized. The Red Army continued to hold Feodosia, but was unable to move further west.
In real history, Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis was appointed as the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command 's representative on the Crimean Front; he was not actually a military man, but informally subordinated the front's command.
General Kozlov was unable or unwilling to resist the onslaught of the representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and, in fact, withdrew from his duties. Л. Z. Mekhlis wasted frontline forces in frontal offensives, unprepared and badly organized. The result was the depletion of the front and a heavy defeat during the German counteroffensive, which ended with the Red Army abandoning the Kerch Peninsula and, consequently, the fall of Sevastopol.
