the dead from the footpaths as the living pushed each other on to the boats that were to evacuate them. But the Stukas were sighting on them, too; they dropped to hundred-foot altitudes and machine-gunned the vessels.
In the hazy sunlight of the warm afternoon, the Volga erupted in a chain of fierce explosions, and several boats of the rescue fleet broke apart and sank with almost no survivors. The surface of the river was soon dotted with bodies, bobbing lazily in the current that carried them downstream to a rendezvous with the Caspian Sea.
There was no change in the pattern of fighting during the next three days. The Germans tried to consolidate their gains; Yeremenko's troops fought desperately to hold their positions to the north and south of the city, but it was becoming increasingly clear that drastic measures would have to be taken if Stalingrad was to be saved. The pressure of the German assaults was wearing down the defenders.
Late in the evening of August 27, a Red Army staff car sped from Moscow's Vnukovo Airport across the city to the Kremlin. Inside sat Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, a barrelchested, forty-six-year-old peasant. No stranger to crisis, in 1939 Zhukov had faced a surprise Japanese attack at the Khalkin Gol in Manchuria and won a tremendous victory over the vaunted Kwantung Army. That triumph earned him promotion at a time when Stalin was killing fifty percent of his Red Army officer corps in an orgy of paranoia. In September 1941, when Nazi tanks ringed Leningrad, Stalin sent him there to mastermind the defense. Zhukov raged around that city, executing derelict officers, sacking generals, molding a rigid discipline which helped the people of Leningrad brace and hold.
Later, Zhukov again plunged into battle, this time in front of Moscow, where enemy panzers had broken through on the road from Smolensk and precipitated a disorderly evacuation of the capital by many government employees: Zhukov toured the lines, rallying demoralized divisions and creating an elastic defense which, when aided by the advent of a brutal winter, crippled the Wehrmacht west of Moscow.
Now Stalin needed his special talents in the struggle for the Volga. Surrounded by members of STAVKA, the premier greeted Zhukov somberly and filled him in on developments around Stalingrad. Then he ordered the marshal to take personal charge of overall strategy in that crucial region.
During the dinner that followed, Stalin outlined the temporary measures he had introduced to harass the enemy. He was bringing elements of three armies—the First Guards, the Twenty-fourth and Sixty-sixth—against the fragile blocking corridor the Germans had created from the Don to the Volga. But these piecemeal attacks had proven ineffectual, Stalin admitted; he wanted Zhukov to find a workable solution. Before the two men parted, Stalin told him he was giving him a new title, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Red Army, which made Zhukov second only to Stalin in rank.
As the marshal prepared for his trip, he could not know that the first problem he would have to solve was the accelerating breakdown in morale among Russian troops. Few Russian soldiers believed the Germans could be stopped short of the Volga. Defeatism infected the conversations of both headquarters staffs and enlisted men. The Germans themselves were amazed at the torrent of prisoners coming into their lines. OKW in East Prussia received a cable from Sixth Army stating that the battle value of enemy soldiers was judged to be very poor: "Many deserters, some even coming in . . . with their tanks."
Inside the perimeter of the newly arrived Soviet 64th Division, stationed twenty-five miles due north of Stalingrad, morale was particularly bad. A German air raid had leveled the field hospital, killing many of its nurses and doctors. Wounded men back from the battlefield told horrifying stories of enemy superiority, and these tales spread fear among the inexperienced
In the hazy sunlight of the warm afternoon, the Volga erupted in a chain of fierce explosions, and several boats of the rescue fleet broke apart and sank with almost no survivors. The surface of the river was soon dotted with bodies, bobbing lazily in the current that carried them downstream to a rendezvous with the Caspian Sea.
There was no change in the pattern of fighting during the next three days. The Germans tried to consolidate their gains; Yeremenko's troops fought desperately to hold their positions to the north and south of the city, but it was becoming increasingly clear that drastic measures would have to be taken if Stalingrad was to be saved. The pressure of the German assaults was wearing down the defenders.
Late in the evening of August 27, a Red Army staff car sped from Moscow's Vnukovo Airport across the city to the Kremlin. Inside sat Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, a barrelchested, forty-six-year-old peasant. No stranger to crisis, in 1939 Zhukov had faced a surprise Japanese attack at the Khalkin Gol in Manchuria and won a tremendous victory over the vaunted Kwantung Army. That triumph earned him promotion at a time when Stalin was killing fifty percent of his Red Army officer corps in an orgy of paranoia. In September 1941, when Nazi tanks ringed Leningrad, Stalin sent him there to mastermind the defense. Zhukov raged around that city, executing derelict officers, sacking generals, molding a rigid discipline which helped the people of Leningrad brace and hold.
Later, Zhukov again plunged into battle, this time in front of Moscow, where enemy panzers had broken through on the road from Smolensk and precipitated a disorderly evacuation of the capital by many government employees: Zhukov toured the lines, rallying demoralized divisions and creating an elastic defense which, when aided by the advent of a brutal winter, crippled the Wehrmacht west of Moscow.
Now Stalin needed his special talents in the struggle for the Volga. Surrounded by members of STAVKA, the premier greeted Zhukov somberly and filled him in on developments around Stalingrad. Then he ordered the marshal to take personal charge of overall strategy in that crucial region.
During the dinner that followed, Stalin outlined the temporary measures he had introduced to harass the enemy. He was bringing elements of three armies—the First Guards, the Twenty-fourth and Sixty-sixth—against the fragile blocking corridor the Germans had created from the Don to the Volga. But these piecemeal attacks had proven ineffectual, Stalin admitted; he wanted Zhukov to find a workable solution. Before the two men parted, Stalin told him he was giving him a new title, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Red Army, which made Zhukov second only to Stalin in rank.
As the marshal prepared for his trip, he could not know that the first problem he would have to solve was the accelerating breakdown in morale among Russian troops. Few Russian soldiers believed the Germans could be stopped short of the Volga. Defeatism infected the conversations of both headquarters staffs and enlisted men. The Germans themselves were amazed at the torrent of prisoners coming into their lines. OKW in East Prussia received a cable from Sixth Army stating that the battle value of enemy soldiers was judged to be very poor: "Many deserters, some even coming in . . . with their tanks."
Inside the perimeter of the newly arrived Soviet 64th Division, stationed twenty-five miles due north of Stalingrad, morale was particularly bad. A German air raid had leveled the field hospital, killing many of its nurses and doctors. Wounded men back from the battlefield told horrifying stories of enemy superiority, and these tales spread fear among the inexperienced
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