Hitler’s absurd optimism at the beginning of October scarcely accorded with the growing anxieties of his military advisers about the situation in Stalingrad. Winter was now no longer far off. Paulus, Weichs, Jodl, and Zeitzler all favoured pulling back from a target which, largely in ruins, had by now lost all significance as a communications and armaments centre, and taking up more secure winter positions. The only alternative was to pour in heavy reinforcements.274 Hitler’s view — he had said so to Goebbels in mid-August — was that this time winter had been so well prepared for that the soldiers in the east would be living better than most of them had done in peacetime.275
On 6 October, after Paulus had reported a temporary halt to the attack because his troops were exhausted, Hitler ordered the ‘complete capture’ of Stalingrad as the key objective of Army Group B.276 There might indeed have been something to be said for choosing the protection of even a ruined city to the open, exposed steppes over the winter had the supplies situation been as favourable as Hitler evidently imagined it to be, had the supply lines been secure, and had the threat of a Soviet counter-offensive been less large. However, the indicators are that only insufficient winter provision for the 6th Army had been made. Supply-lines were now overstretched on an enormously long front, and far from secure on the northern flank. And intelligence was coming in of big concentrations of Soviet troops which might pose real danger to the position of the 6th Army. Withdrawal was the sensible option.277
Hitler would not hear of it. At the beginning of October, Zeitzler and Jodl heard him for the first time, in outrightly rejecting their advice about the danger of being bogged down in house-to-house fighting with heavy losses, stress that the capture of the city was necessary not just for operational, but for ‘psychological’ reasons: to show the world the continued strength of German arms, and to boost the morale of the Axis allies.278 More than ever contemptuous of generals and military advisers who lacked the necessary strength of will, and convinced that he alone had prevented an ignominious full-scale retreat through his unbending insistence on standing fast the previous winter, he now refused to countenance any suggestion of withdrawal from Stalingrad. But his ‘halt order’ of the previous winter had had tactical merit. This time, it had none. Fear of loss of face had taken over from military reasoning. Hitler’s all too public statements in the Sportpalast and then to his Gauleiter had meant that taking Stalingrad had become a matter of prestige.279 And, though he claimed the fact that the city bore Stalin’s name was of no significance,280 retreat from precisely this city would clearly compound the loss of prestige.
In the meantime, Hitler was starting to acknowledge mounting concern among his military advisers about the build-up of Soviet forces on the northern banks of the Don — the weakest section of the front, where the Wehrmacht was dependent on the resolution of its allied armies — the Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians.281
The situation in North Africa was by this time also critical. Montgomery’s 8th Army had begun its big offensive at El Alamein on 23 October. Rommel had quickly been sent back from sick-leave to hold together the defence of the Axis forces and prevent a breakthrough. Hitler’s initial confidence that Rommel would hold his ground had rapidly evaporated. Lacking fuel and munitions, and facing a numerically far superior enemy, Rommel was unable to prevent Montgomery’s tanks penetrating the German front in the renewed massive onslaught that had begun on 2 November. The following day, Hitler sent a telegram in response to Rommel’s depressing account of the position and prospects of his troops. ‘In the situation in which you find yourself,’ ran his message to Rommel, ‘there can be no other thought than to stick it out, not to yield a step, and to throw every weapon and available fighter into the battle.’ Everything would be done to send reinforcements. ‘It would not be the first time in history that the stronger will triumphed over stronger enemy battalions. But you can show your troops no other way than victory or death.’282 Rommel had not waited for Hitler’s reply. Anticipating what it would be, he had ordered a retreat hours before it arrived. Generals had been peremptorily dismissed for such insubordination during the winter crisis at the beginning of the year. Rommel’s standing with the German people — only weeks earlier, he had been feted as a military hero — was all that now saved him from the same ignominy.283
