Montgomery had forced Rommel’s Afrika Corps into headlong retreat, and would drive the German and Italian army out of Libya altogether during January 1943.330 Encouraged by Göring, Hitler was now convinced that Rommel had lost his nerve.331 But at least the 50,000 German and 18,000 Italian troops rushed to Tunis in November and December had seriously held up the Allies, preventing their rapid domination of North Africa and ruling out an early assault on the European continent itself.332 Even so, Hitler knew the Italians were wobbling. Göring’s visit to Rome at the end of November had confirmed that.333 Their commitment to the war was by now in serious doubt.334 And when Ciano and Marshal Count Ugo Cavalero, the head of the Italian armed forces, arrived at the Wolf’s Lair on 18 December for three days of talks, it was in the immediate wake of the catastrophic collapse of the Italian 8th Army, overwhelmed during the previous two days by the Soviet offensive on the middle stretches of the Don. Hitler concealed his fury and dismay at what he saw as the military weakness of his Axis partner, alluding only in a single sentence to the Italian setbacks. His chief interest in the talks was in pressing upon the Italians the urgent need to intensify efforts — through greater sacrifices from the civilian population — to ensure sufficient transport for vital supplies to the forces in North Africa, emphasizing that this was ‘decisive for the war’. From the Italian point of view, the central concern was to suggest to Hitler that the time had come to end the war in the east and seek a settlement with the Soviet Union.335
It was the first time a summit with the Italians had taken place in East Prussia. Ciano referred to ‘the sadness of that damp forest and boredom of collective living in the Command barracks’. ‘There isn’t a spot of colour,’ he continued, ‘not one vivid note. Waiting-rooms filled with people smoking, eating, chatting. Kitchen odour, smell of uniforms, of boots.’336 The talks produced little that was constructive for either side. When Ciano put Mussolini’s case for Germany coming to terms with the Soviet Union in order to put maximum effort into defence against the western powers, Hitler was dismissive. Were he to do that, he replied, he would be forced within a short time to fight a reinvigorated Soviet Union once more.337 The Italian guests were non-committal towards Hitler’s exhortations to override all civilian considerations in favour of supplies for North Africa.338
For the German people, quite especially for the many German families with loved ones in the 6th Army, Christmas 1942 was a depressing festival. A radio broadcast linking troops on all the fighting fronts, including Stalingrad, brought tears to the eyes of many a family gathered around the Christmas tree back home, as the men at the ‘front on the Volga’ joined their comrades in singing ‘Silent Night’. The listeners at home did not know the link-up was a fake.339 Nor did they know that 1,280 German soldiers died at Stalingrad on that Christmas Day in 1942.340 They were, however, aware by then of an ominous fate hanging over the 6th Army.
The triumphalist propaganda of September and October, suggesting that victory at Stalingrad was just around the corner, had given way in the weeks following the Soviet counter-offensive to little more than ominous silence. Indications of hard fighting were sufficient, however, to make plain that things were not going to plan. Rumours of the encirclement of the 6th Army — passed on through despairing letters from the soldiers entrapped there — swiftly spread.341 It soon became evident that the rumours were no less than the truth. As the sombre mood at home deepened by the day, the terrible struggle in the streets of Stalingrad headed towards its inexorable dénouement.
