Originally Posted by wolfheart

For reasons of strength of the enemy encirclement, for sure it seems that any attempt on a breakout should start as soon as possible after the encirclement has been accomplished, as it is evident that the enemy will broaden and strengthen his encirclement forces with every day. This was certainly the case at Stalingrad as the Soviet operation was well planned and well executed.
However starting a breakout at an early moment is not as opportune as it might seem for several reasons. Firstly the encircled troops have to disengage from the front they are fighting on. Secondly they have to change their direction of operation by 180 degrees and have to redeploy for the new task, something that costs time when forces as massive as the German 6th army are involved.
But most important of all: When attempting to break through an encirclement in a retreating way, fall back positions that can be held have to be prepared, and as few in the German command structure had expected a Soviet encirclement operation of this size, (air general von Richthofen seem to have been one of the very few who had pointed out the danger to the exposed and relatively poorly manned Don flank), nothing such was in existance.
The German troops facing the outer ring of encirclement in the West had already enough problems of their own and had to largely depend on improvisations. A sudden influx of massive numbers of worn out, supply less and heavy armor less troops of the sixth army would with certaintly have resulted in utter chaos, with the supply situation rapidly collapsing.
Given the great strength of the Soviet forces in the theatre of operations this would have opened the way for them to put the Germans to rout, which would have almost certainly have also led to the loss of Hoth"s panzer army still in the Caucasus.