General Hoth's attempt to relief the German 6th Army at Stalingrad
Hitler's early decision to hold 6th Army in the Stalingrad pocket and liberate it with a
makeshift force may have been his worst possible option when he imposed it but it
soon became the only one, short of surrender, as the army's low stocks of food, fuel,
and ammunition dwindled sharply. There was a time in the last week of November when
he might have pulled Army Group A out of the Caucasus and gone for Paulus with everything
he could put together, although it would have been very, very difficult. There was also a time,
it is not likely but a possibility, when Paulus might have fought his way out with heavy loss
of life. By early December, however, no course of action lay open other than the one the
Fuehrer had chosen. It was too late to assemble a strong force, and Paulus was almost
immobile. In the circumstances, the Germans mounted an effort that for spectacular futility
is reminiscent of the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854, with this difference, that instead
of the 673 British cavalrymen who rode into the valley of death at Balaclava they had three
panzer divisions (which were new to the area) and supporting units (which were dazed from
recent combat). It was a strange piece of business. Whether anyone at the High Command
seriously thought 75,000 men and 500 tanks could break through to Stalingrad seventy-five
miles to the northeast or whether this was a sacrificial operation that one conception of military
honor seems to demand may never be known. It is certain, however, they never had a
chance. Everything was against them, time, weather, the terrain, manpower, firepower,
long lines of communication and supply. There were guns to the right of them, guns to the
left of them, and, as always since late July, more Russians out ahead than the generals
realized or would acknowledge.
Hermann Hoth
Preparations were mighty on both sides of the line. On the German side, General Field Marshal
von Manstein was brought down from the Leningrad front to conduct the operation. Manstein
was a good general as generals go, but in this period he had an inhibiting desire to replace
Hitler through Hitler's favor as commander of all forces on the Russian front. Hoth's 4th Panzer
Army headquarters was charged with handling the infantry and cavalry that were largely
Romanian and the command staff of 57th Panzer Corps that was pulled in from the Caucasus
to control the armor 6th Panzer Division from France, the 17th from Orel near Moscow, and the
23rd from the Caucasus. Soon there was a plan. Fifty-seventh Panzer Corps with the Romanians
protecting its flanks would move out of the Kotelnikovo area along both sides of the rail line.
When it reached the Mishkova River, it would be joined for a lunge to the pocket by 48th
Panzer Corps that held a thin bridgehead at the Don crossings. At a suitable moment 6th Army,
without giving up what little territory it held, would come out to meet them. There were,
however, obvious difficulties. Fifty-seventh Corps would start without 17th Panzer because
it was delayed en route. Forty-eighth Corps with 11th Panzer was weak as a cat, and
Paulus was not getting by air lift anything like the supplies he needed to carry out his part
of the plan. There was another difficulty. The weather was rotten, rain, snow, rain again,
thaw, freeze, thaw again. D day was fixed for December 8, then the tenth, finally the twelfth.
Erich von Manstein
Meanwhile, the Russians, thinking they could destroy Paulus before the German attempt, fried
to eat their cake and have it. They strengthened their outer line of encirclement at the expense
of the inner line, then ordered reinforcements to the inner line from far away. On December 1st
they began moving men of the 51st Armyfrom the inner ring toward Kotelnikovo. The 51st had
34,000 men, 77 tanks, and 419 guns and mortars. On the third they activated Malinovsky's
1st Reserve Army as the 2nd Guards and ordered it in a wide sweep from the
distant upper Don to the inner ring. And on the ninth, getting wind of activity near the Don
Crossings where 48th Corps was gathering, they organized a new 5th Shock Army to meet
a threat from that direction. The 5th was hastily put together but it had 71,000 men, 252
tanks, and 804 guns and mortars, strong enough with the 51st, thought Stavka, to block the
Germans until Paulus was crushed. As late as the eleventh, Stalin (Vasiliev) told Vasilievsky
(Mikhailov) to go ahead with a new plan for destroying 6th Army: