rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

THE GREAT TURNING POINT: 1942 STALINGRAD AND EL ALAMEIN835whole Army Group Don. On the night of December 22, Manstein telephonedHoth to prepare himself for drastic new orders. The next day they came. Hothwas to abandon his drive on Stalingrad, dispatch one of his three panzer divisionsto the Don front on the north, and defend himself where he was and withwhat he had left as well as he could.The attempt to relieve Stalingrad had failed.Manstein’s drastic new orders had come as the result of alarming news thatreached him on December 17. On the morning of that day a Soviet army hadbroken through the Italian Eighth Army farther up the Don at Boguchar and byevening opened a gap twenty-seven miles deep. Within three days the hole wasninety miles wide, the Italians were fleeing in panic and the Rumanian ThirdArmy to the south, which already had been badly pummeled on the opening dayof the Russian offensive on November 19, was also disintegrating. No wonderManstein had had to take part of Hoth’s armored forces to help stem the gap.A chain reaction followed.Not only the Don armies fell back but also Hoth’s forces, which had comeso close to Stalingrad. These retreats in turn endangered the German Armyin the Caucasus, which would be cut off if the Russians reached Rostov onthe Sea of Azov. A day or two after Christmas Zeitzler pointed out to Hitler,”Unless you order a withdrawal from the Caucasus now, we shall soon have asecond Stalingrad on our hands.” Reluctantly the Supreme Commander issuedthe necessary instructions on December 29 to Kleist’s Army Group A, whichcomprised the First Panzer and Seventeenth armies, and which had failed in itsmission to grab the rich oil fields of Grozny. It too began a long retreat afterhaving been within sight of its goal.The reverses of the Germans in Russia and of the Italo-German armies inNorth Africa stirred Mussolini to thought. Hitler had invited him to come toSalzburg for a talk around the middle of December and the ailing Duce, now ona strict diet for stomach disorders, had accepted, though, as he told Ciano, hewould go on one condition only: that he take his meals alone ”because he doesnot want a lot of ravenous Germans to notice that he is compelled to live onrice and milk.”The time had come, Mussolini decided, to tell Hitler to cut his losses inthe East, make some sort of deal with Stalin and concentrate Axis strength ondefending the rest of North Africa, the Balkans and Western Europe. ”Nineteenforty-three will be the year of the Anglo-American effort,” he told Ciano. Hitlerwas unable to leave his Eastern headquarters in order to meet Mussolini, soCiano made the long journey to Rastenburg on December 18 on his behalf,repeating to the Nazi leader the Duce’s proposals. Hitler scorned them andassured the Italian Foreign Minister that without at all weakening the Russianfront he could send additional forces to North Africa, which must, he said, beheld. Ciano found German spirits at a low ebb at headquarters, despite Hitler’sconfident assurances.The atmosphere is heavy. To the bad news there should perhaps beadded the sadness of that humid forest and the boredom of collectiveliving in the barracks . . . No one tries to conceal from me theunhappiness over the news of the breakthrough on the Russian front.There were open attempts to put the blame on us.At that very moment the survivors of the Italian Eighth Army on the Don