Had Paulus to break out? Discussing TIK's video

In this video we'll discuss what TIK argued about in his last release: "Could Paulus Have Abandoned Stalingrad". One should be careful not to mix things up. Could or should 6th Army have abandoned Stalingrad to save itself is one thing, but would such a breakout benefit the entire German front and the war: this is a completely different discussion.

Had 6th Army retreated behind the Don to join the rest of Army Group B, The Red Army could have pushed the frontline up to Rostov one month earlier than it actually did, and trapped Army Group A in the Caucasus. This would have amounted to trade one army group for another.
On the other hand the Luftwaffe and a significant part of 6th Army would have been spared. Also, a trapped Army Group A didn't necessarily mean it could have been easily defeated. The Caucasus is a large area...

Still it's probable that the path to Soviet ultimate victory would have been shorter in this configuration. That means that from a general strategic point of view, to tie down Soviet forces around 6th Army for another two months was probably beneficial to Germany short term.

But from 6th Army's perspective, holding Stalingrad and wait for hypothetical rescue was certainly not the right thing to do. Now let's see if a retreat could have been seriously considered, and if it could have succeeded.

TIK rightly points out, with excellent arguments, that a coordinated retreat wasn't possible. We won't argue about this because we fully agree. But here's the keyword: coordinated. Yes, the situation didn't allow for a coordinated retreat, neither early nor late after the encirclement. Yet, an uncoordinated retreat could have taken place.

We're speaking about an all-out retreat, but not necessarily a rout. As it appeared, the Soviet Command underestimated the number of troops of its opponents from the beginning of the counteroffensive. And as we'll explain in the next videos of our series, Operation Uran barely succeeded in encircling 6th Army: the Soviet brigades ended up on their knees as they tied their net around so large a group of forces. So it's obvious that they could not prevent 6th Army from disengaging everywhere at once and fall back to new positions.

Of course this retreat would have been catastrophic, fuel was lacking, most of the troops would have been on foot, and all the heavy weapons would have been lost. But compare that to the ultimate outcome, and you'll see that it could hardly have been worse.

More or less 300,000 were trapped in the cauldron. From those, about 25,000 wounded were evacuated by the Luftwaffe, and about 5,000 POWs eventually returned to Germany after the war.
That's it: 10%. 30,000 out of 300,000.
Could anyone imagine a worse outcome in case of an uncoordinated breakout? Even in a later stage, for instance during operation Wintergewitter in December, it's hard to imagine that only 10% would have made it. And in case of an early breakout, it's almost certain that a lot more than 10% would have reached the German lines safely.

Obviously, retrospective plays a lot here. If 6th Army's Command and its troops would have known the issue, they almost certainly had considered a breakout, even an uncoordinated one.

In 1972, for the 30th anniversary of the battle, the French TV released a documentary on Stalingrad, which included several interviews from key leaders, Soviet and German. It offers a unique occasion to watch interviews of key leaders in the Battle of Stalingrad, such as Generals Chuikov, Zhukov or Rokossovsky, and on the German side Colonel Selle (Chief of 6th Army's Pioneer Troops) remembering about the day General Paulus received the order to stand fast in Stalingrad.

And there's also this interview of colonel von Kielmansegg, a staff officer on the terrain back then, who points out this distinction between coordinated and uncoordinated retreat, comparing it to releasing open the floodgates of a dam. In his opinion, this was the only real solution for 6th Army...

Excerpts from the French documentary series "Les Grandes Batailles: Stalingrad" by Jean-Louis Guillaud, Daniel Costelle and Henry de Turenne, ORTF, 1972.

TIK's channel @TheImperatorKnight https://www.youtube.com/user/TheImperatorKnight

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