What if the German armies in Stalingrad attempted to break out?

Petre Dumitrescu reported about Soviet buildup in the southwest, he also suggested to attack the Soviet bridgehead at Kletskaya. How did the Romanians know and the Germans didn't.

 

As I said above, what reports there were of the impending offensive were disrmissed as 'hysterical Romanians whining'.

I'm home now, and I am at last looking at some proper books, like Albert Seaton's "Russo-German War", Erickson's "Road to Stalingrad", Keegan's "Second World War", and also von Mellenthin's "Panzer Battles" and a couple of soldiers memoirs like Schröter's "Stalingrad to the last round" and Pliever's "Stalingrad", the last two in French editions.

So apparently all the Romanians got were not much more than rumours that something was afoot. And they couldn't know much more as visibility was lousy (Ukrainian November) and the troops themselves simply knew nothing of what they were doing or where they were, so nothing much could be gained from interrogating whatever prisioners or deserters there were. The troops themselves knew they were going into a big offensive only three hours before! General Chuikov, the guy commanding 62 Army inside Stalingrad who wasn't receiving any reinforcement for some days already while 1.500.000 men were being massed on his sides without him knowing, only knew there was going to be a offensive the day before! Now that was secrecy.

But better than I, I'll let Seaton speak, pages 310-312.

Better than any History Channel docummentary, eh?

 

Thank you very much, Za.

Arrogance, arrogance, and more arrogance. Did Germany estimate the number of the Russian population before the war?

 

Welcome, IC, glad to help. Frankly, it would be best if you could get some books on the subject, the book I quoted is an excellent primer and I'm sure you can get it cheaply from Abebooks, which is where I bought it. Better than relying on Discovery or Hist. Ch.

This Reinhard Gehlen that is mentioned was the top intelligence guy on Red Army intelligence matters, responsible for the department centralising all collected info (recon, comms tapping, code breaking, interrogations, etc), made final assessments and supplied all information to troops. He reported daily to Hitler in person, so whatever he did not know, nobody would. After the war as top specialist he was taken over by the Americans on exactly the same work, later on founding the German Federal Intelligence Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen

 

Just as a side note, I have read that, as soon as late october 42, the breakthrough in the Rumanian sector (I mean at the north of Stalingrad, where the frontline more or less followed the Don river's bends exactly at the Serafomivich sector) was foreseen by Germans, because some Luftwaffe units were specialy sent to destroy bridges and pontoons that Red army built across the Don in late october to prepare the big Uranus rush.

I'll check this to provide more info/source, but I know the Stuka units sent there were not only a few, but very significative when compared to the number of Stuka operating over Stalingrad city at this time.

Like Tovarich Za says, Uranus was hardly a surprise, they knew that something was coming, they knew where Russian intended to pass through, and they even diverted a significate part of their Stukas to destroy bridges just behind the Russian bridgehead on the Don...but they probably underestimated the Soviet offensive.

Why is that ? I believe the usual WWI-wermacht's superiority complex against Red Army but also the fact that since summer 1942, Germans had already blown to pieces very large Soviet offensives, like near Mga, south of Leningrad, for example, they probaly thought they could inflict their enemy the same kind of terrible defeat in the Stalingrad area.

 

From Glanz " Zhukov´s greatest defeat"

The operation Uranus was due to begin earlier ( even something like mid to late October) but the weather conditions were so bad that the operation was postponed twice until November 19th.

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The Germans definitely did their best to destroy the Soviet bridges to the bridgeheads but many were built under the water level during the autumn so I think several were not found or difficult to bomb and also the Luftwaffe was so widely dispersed it´s hard to see they could do much damage anywhere. The area from Stalingrad to Caucasus was about as huge as Germany in 1939 alone.

 

Any info on the strenght of the Luftwaffe at the time of the encirlclement of the 6th army?

 

first I give more precise and correct info about the fact I mentioned above.

book : Bergstrom's Black Cross Red Star Vol. 3

"By that time [late october 42], Soviet 65th Army was establishing bridgeheads on the Don river's bank, in the forested areas at Kletskaya and Serafimovich northwest of Stalingrad.

The Romanian 3rd army (...)was unable to interfere effectively against this move.

Von Richtofen dispateched some of his air reconnaissance units to the area, and the fliers returnedwith the alarming reports that the Soviets had already constructed a number of bridges at this place.
(...)
This in itself brought a relief to Stalingrad's defenders.
From the 1st week of november, Fliegekorps VIII's main operations werez shifted from close support in Stalingrad to attacks against the Soviet Don bridgeheads. [and not at the end of october as I posted above]
(...)
On 9 and 10 november, formations up to 40 He 111s and Ju 87s carried out repeated attacks against the Soviet build up northwest of Stalingrad.
(...)
All efforts to neutralize soviet 65th army's bridgeheads failed, largely because the Soviets responded to the Luftwaffe's attacks by building more bridges with their surface just below the river at Kletskaya and Serafimovich."

Later the authors says that the increasingly bad weather from the 11th november drasticaly lowered the number of Luftwaffe daily sorties, even after the huge columns of the Soviet 5th tank army had been spotted on its way by a recon plane on november the 13th

@ Sloniksp : figures in the same book :

by october 20, very Luftflotte 4 had 600 serviceable planes out of 974 operating at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus (but since october 14, most of the Lf4 units operating in Caucasus had been taken back to support the battle at Stalingrad.)

by mid november, the author says there were around 400 serviceable planes available for the whole Luftflotte 4.

You have to add Hungarian, Italian and Romanian air forces, I guess.

I don't know how many were left at the time the encirclement was done.

 

Thank you

 

Here´s a book to read Sloniksp:

Joel Hayward : Stopped at Stalingrad
( Luftwaffe in the east 1942-1943 )

 

Have not read that one I will get on it immediately!!

Thanks Kai

 

The event with the mice chewing up the wiring of the tanks of the 22nd panzer brigade was at least mentioned in Beevor's book "Stalingrad". It's incredible to me that this force was the only one the germans had to counter the northern pincer of Uranus...

 

Like Za said, the Germans in the South were exhausted at this time, the "final" assault on Stalingrad really finished them.

On a larger scope, it was overextended all over USSR at this time. Large scale combats had also occured in the North and Central sectors since spring 1942.


I think numbers I posted here are significative : by october 20 : 1000 planes available but only 600 of them were serviceable, which means the lack of spare parts, tools and mechanics (pilots I doubt ?) grounded 40% of the Luftwaffe planes !

This obviously means they also were counting each bomb, shell and fuel gallon they put in the serviceable planes.

I think this example might be representative of the state of logistical crisis - to say the least - of the Germans at this place and time, and it's one full month before the encirclement !

 

So that's where it is. As I said, not implausible, I simply had no source for this.

Well, 22 PzDiv was the only German force. There were two armies, a Romanian and an Italian, covering the north flank of 6 Army, and 22PD was part of 48th PzKorps with a Romanian Division, in 3 Romanian Army reserve.

 

In Beevors book there is also accounts of well trained german tankers having to fight as infantry in the city. The battle was like a hungry wolf swallowing sheep.

 

Zhukov's Greatest Defeat by Glanz

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/glazhu.html

In my opinion if you have not read this you should if you think you want to know all about Ostfront...( I am reading the last pages of the book right now)

"The twin operations Mars and Uranus formed the centerpiece of Soviet strategic efforts in the fall of 1942. Designed to dislodge the German Army from its position west of Moscow, Mars cost the Soviets an estimated 335,000 dead, missing, and wounded men and over 1,600 tanks."

BTW, at the same time as Stalingrad was besieged some 40,000 Red Army soldiers were getting surrounded in the battles of the city Belyi, but managed to escape...

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I am pretty sure this was also one of the reasons why Hitler wanted to hang onto Stalingrad. He must have believed the Red Army could not feed troops and tanks to the Southern sector after the massive losses in the Rzhev area battles and the 6th Army could be relieved quite easily at the latest in January.

 

I just saw this last week on the History Channel, actually I was only flipping channels. They had interviews with both Soviet and German survivors.

If I recall correctly,Manstein's? relief effort has been forced to stop not so much by Russian resistance but by supply factors?(off road) 30 even 10km from the German lines?

Was it 50,000 or more troops that could have left their vehicles and heavy equipment behind and marched out? The interviews left the clear impression from both sides that the Russians couldn't have stopped the Stalingrad men from at least trying to walk once their vehicles were dry to the relieving lines.

It came across as a miserable situation even from the Russians interviewed. And it sounds like Manstein himself had told Paupus? or others in open radio to dis-obey orders and come to him.

Can anyone confirm the program?

 

Be very wary of thi kind of programs, with edited and selected interviews. They tend to provide the ants eye-level view, what appears right to the seargeant's point of view may not appear so from the division, corps, army point of view. Skepticism is the rule.

And congratulations for a post with no bold letters, different sizes, extravagant use of colour...

 

I blieve there was a German Division that tried thir "own" break-out un-beknoweth to Paulas and in turn got massacred. Can't remember that Officer that did this right off.

 

The distance seems like 100 kilometers ( minimum ) before and after the release attack in Dec 1942 so definitely a suicide mission on foot.