The battle finally swung in favor of the Germans when Hitler released the 17th Panzer Division. Under the weight of three German armored divisions, the Soviet defenses began to buckle. By December 18, Hoth’s tanks were advancing rapidly to the Mishkova River, fighting off enemy attacks from the flanks as they drove forward.

It was the 6th Panzer that took the lead, with the 23rd Panzer covering the right flank and the 17th Panzer covering the left. In the early hours of December 20, the 6th Panzer’s armored group, commanded by Colonel Walther von Hünersdorff, reached the Mishkova near the town of Gromoslavka. There, the Germans ran into lead elements of the Second Guards Army, which had been streaming south to stop the attack.

By then, Hünersdorff’s tanks were running low on fuel and were faced by a numerically superior enemy. Nevertheless, while waiting for his supply columns to arrive, he deployed his tanks to engage the Soviets. As the panzers blazed away at the Soviet tank and anti-tank positions, the 1st Battalion/Panzergrenadier Regiment 114, commanded by a Major Hauschildt, crossed the river and secured a bridgehead after a bitter fight. Hünersdorff immediately sent reinforcements across and was able to expand the German hold to a 3-kilometer perimeter. Stalingrad was now only 48 kilometers away.

That was later seen as the high-water mark of Winter Tempest. The battered panzer divisions ran into a stone wall in the form of the Second Guards Army after they crossed the Mishkova, and there were ominous signs that the Soviets were ready to open a new attack against Army Group Hollidt and the XLVIII Panzer Corps, which held the Chir River line.

It was time for Thunderclap to commence. If the Sixth Army could begin its breakout, it would certainly take pressure off the panzer divisions at the Mishkova River and possibly allow them to continue their offensive. However, confusion and indecision were rampant in the highest ranks of the entrapped army.

On the 18th Manstein had sent an officer from his staff, a Major Eismann, into the Stalingrad pocket to discuss Thunderclap with Paulus. In his memoirs, Manstein says that he gave the order for Thunderclap to begin on the 19th and that Paulus replied that he would need four to six days to initiate the breakout. Hitler, however, still demanded that Stalingrad be held, so Paulus had to decide whom to obey, Army Group Don or the Führer.

One of Paulus’ immediate concerns was his supply of fuel for the panzers needed to spearhead Thunderclap. He had approximately 100 serviceable tanks, but his supply records show that there was only enough fuel for a 30-kilometer advance. That would put his forces 18 kilometers short of the LVII Panzer Corps’ position.

There is, however, another factor that must be taken into account in evaluating Paulus’ response. In dealing with the harsh realities of the Eastern Front, German supply personnel soon realized that if their particular unit was in better shape than another unit, excess men, equipment and supplies would soon be siphoned off to the needier formations. Therefore, the amount of fuel and other supplies on hand was often, in reality, more than was officially reported. Since supply officers at each level–company, battalion, regiment and division–hedged their estimates, the difference between reported amounts and actual amounts of supplies could be substantial. Hence, it is possible that there may really have been sufficient fuel supplies on hand to make the linkup with the LVII Panzer Corps.

Paulus used the fuel issue, coupled with Hitler’s order to hold Stalingrad at all costs, to delay a decision concerning Thunderclap. As the days slipped away, the LVII Panzer Corps’ hold on the Mishkova bridgehead became more precarious. At Stalingrad, heavy Soviet attacks forced Paulus to use some of his precious tanks to seal what could have been dangerous penetrations. In the end, Paulus decided not to initiate Thunderclap, thus sealing the fate of the Sixth Army.

Winter Tempest was over, but the agony of the Sixth Army was to continue for more than a month. Soviet pressure finally forced the LVII Panzer Corps out of the Mishkova bridgehead. By the end of December, the Soviets had driven the panzer divisions back to their original Winter Tempest jumping-off positions. That effectively negated any chance for another attempt to free the German forces at Stalingrad.

Winter had now set in, adding snow and freezing winds to the already appalling conditions in the city. Soviet advances west of the city had also caused severe hardships. The nearby airfields, which had been used as hubs for the Stalingrad supply operation, had been overrun, forcing the Luftwaffe to use installations farther west. That, in turn, cut the tonnage of materials that each aircraft could carry, since more fuel would be needed for each flight.

Losses through combat during the final days of December were severe. Karl-Heinz Niemeyer of the 94th Infantry Division wrote: ‘The 94th was so heavily decimated during December that the remaining men were combined with the remainders of the 16th and 24th Panzer Divisions to form a Kampfgruppe [battle group].’ A new problem had also appeared. German soldiers were dying at their posts for no apparent reason. Autopsies on the bodies showed that the men were dying from malnutrition and physical exhaustion.

On January 9, thousands of leaflets were dropped over the German lines. General Rokossovsky offered surrender terms to the Sixth Army, and every man inside the pocket could read for himself what kind of provisions were included in the offer. The wounded and sick would receive immediate medical attention, and all those surrendering would be well fed. Prisoners were also promised a safe return to Germany after the war. There was also a warning: Anyone who offered resistance would be killed without mercy.

Receiving no reply, Rokossovsky resumed his offensive on January 10, unleashing a 7,000-gun barrage on the German positions. A combined armored and infantry attack followed, hitting the Germans and pushing them back. Local commanders hurriedly deployed 88mm guns from the 9th Flak Division to try to blunt the attack. The big guns destroyed more than 100 tanks, but the Soviets still kept advancing.

On January 14, the Soviets captured the Pitomnik airfield, leaving Gumrak as the only serviceable airstrip available to the Sixth Army. The capture of Pitomnik effectively ended the German aerial defense over Stalingrad. Only one German aircraft managed to escape, its pilot flying westward to safety. The following day, Paulus reported to OKW that several artillery pieces had been destroyed and abandoned because they no longer had any ammunition.

As Rokossovsky’s attack continued, losses mounted on both sides. German wounded lay unattended because of a lack of medical supplies, and morale inside the pocket rapidly began to plummet. During the final week of January, the carnage reached new heights as the pocket was steadily reduced. Soviet shells rained down everywhere within the pocket, forcing the starving defenders to seek shelter in the cellars of the ruins that were once Stalingrad.

The final blow for the Sixth Army came on January 25, when Gumrak airfield was lost. With the fall of Gumrak, the Sixth Army was completely isolated, and supplies would have to be airdropped. Making matters worse, there were now more than 20,000 wounded inside the pocket, with an equal number of men too sick or malnourished to bear arms. A sense of hopelessness now pervaded the highest levels in the entrapped army.

On January 26, the Sixty-second and Twenty-first Soviet armies linked up to split the pocket in two. The XI Army Corps, under General der Infanterie Karl Strecker, anchored itself around the tractor works in the northern part of the city. A larger pocket, consisting of the Sixth Army headquarters, the VII and LI Army Corps and the XIV Panzer Corps, was centered in an area around the railroad station. Another formation, the IV Army Corps, had been destroyed earlier in the day.

By now, some commanders were taking it upon themselves to end the killing. General der Infanterie Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, commander of the LI Army Corps, repeatedly asked for Paulus’ permission to surrender during the last week of January. When his pleas were refused, he ordered his troops to expend all of their ammunition, making any further resistance impossible.

January 29 saw the Soviet forces destroy the XIV Panzer Corps and further reduce the German pocket. By now, the meager rations of the Sixth Army were being given only to those capable of fighting, leaving nothing to sustain the wounded, and the command structure within the pocket had almost completely collapsed.

At midday on January 30, the newly appointed Field Marshal Paulus was taken prisoner. His sense of duty still held firm; taken before Maj. Gen. Laskin, chief of staff of the Sixty-fourth Army, Paulus surrendered only his immediate staff. He was then driven away to a lengthy captivity. He was held under house arrest in Moscow until 1953.

The commanders of the VIII Army Corps, Generals Seydlitz-Kurzbach and Walther Heitz, surrendered their commands on January 31, but Strecker’s XI Army Corps still held out in the northern pocket. Finally, Strecker’s division commanders convinced him of the futility of further resistance. On February 2, Strecker surrendered with 33,000 men. The XI Army Corps had begun the battle for Stalingrad with 80,000 troops.

On December 18, there had been approximately 249,000 officers and men inside the Stalingrad pocket. Of that number, 42,000 sick, wounded and specialists were flown out before the last airfield fell. Another 85,000 lay dead on the battlefield, leaving about 122,000 German soldiers, and their Italian and Romanian allies, to surrender. Only about 6,000 men ever returned home. The rest lay buried somewhere in the Soviet Union.

After the war, Paulus reflected on his decisions at Stalingrad: ‘What convincing and solid arguments could have been brought forward by the Commander-in-Chief of the Sixth Army for his conduct contrary to orders in the face of the enemy, especially when he had no way of knowing the eventual outcome?…Does the prospect of one’s own death or probable destruction or the capture of one’s troops relieve one of the responsibility of soldierly obedience?…Before the troops and officers of the Sixth Army as well as before the German nation I bear the responsibility that I carried out the orders to hold on issued by the supreme command until the collapse.’

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This article was written by Pat McTaggart and originally appeared in the November 1997 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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