After 15 days on the main plane, and 30 days after crossing the plane, Wang Fan's figure once again appeared on the Soviet-German battlefield in World War II and the scene of the Battle of Stalingrad. At this time, the date of crossing the plane is already December 20, so let's see what happened to the entire battlefield during the period from November 20 to December 19, 1942, when Comrade Xiao Wang was away:

On 19 November, when Paulus's 6th Army was stuck in a dilemma at Stalingrad, the two Soviet armies met in Karachi, encircling Paulus's Army. At this time, Hitler was lingering at his villa in the Alps. Faced with the encirclement of the 6th Army, Chief of Staff Zeitzler strongly advocated that Paulus lead his troops to immediately break through to the southwest. This was perfectly possible in the first week of the siege. Zeitzler had almost convinced Hitler. But then a Goering came out, and he swore to Hitler that his air force could transport 500 tons of war material to the encirclement every day. The reason why Goering was so irresponsible and made big remarks and delayed the fighter plane was that since the Battle of Britain, the status of his air force in Hitler's eyes had plummeted, and in order to regain Hitler's trust in him, Göring wanted to "show his hand" at such a critical time as Stalingrad. In the end, Hitler ordered Field Marshal Manstein to form the "Don Army Group" and take unified command of the Stalingrad front.

On 20 November, Manstein received orders, but the train he was on was damaged by a mine by Soviet partisans, delaying the time. It was only on November 24 that he reached the headquarters of Army Group B, Starobirsk. By this time, the Soviet army had completed the encirclement of Paulus. Because the Sixth Army was not allowed to break through, he had to organize relief troops, and the fact was that the Germans were extremely short of reserves, and the strength of the four infantry divisions in reserve and the strength of one armored division that could not be forced were nothing compared to the strength of the powerful 160 divisions in the Soviet encirclement. In desperation, Manstein could only organize his existing forces into two battle clusters, namely: the "Hollitt" campaign cluster with the armored 48th Army as the core (located in the Tormosin area 70 kilometers from Stalin) and the "Hoth" campaign cluster with the armored 57th Army as the core (located in the Kotelnikovsky area 130 kilometers from Stalin). He planned to carry out a centripetal pincer assault on Stalingrad in two directions, with the Panzer 57th Army carrying out the main attack and the Panzer 48th Army as the assist, and carrying out a combined attack on the Soviet army, in order to achieve its unexpected effect. However, due to the constant pressure exerted by the Soviet army from the north in the area of the Zil River, the "Hollitt" cluster has been pinned down and unable to move, and in fact the "Holl" cluster can only take on the rescue mission alone, and the entire rescue mission is codenamed "Winter Storm".

However, due to the delay in the arrival of reinforcements mobilized by Hitler, the battle to relieve the siege scheduled for 8 December had to be postponed, and the situation of the 6th Army became increasingly critical. On the 12th, with a heavy heart, Manstein strictly ordered the "Holt" cluster to launch an attack in the heavy snow. (Manstein had already been reported by this time that there were only 31 Leopard tanks left in the Sixth Army) This was a very risky move, and once the Soviets broke through the fragile defensive line on the flank of Army Group "Don", they could capture the fatal position that cut off all the rear lines of communication of the two German Army Groups on the southern flank. In order to save the 6th Army, Manstein was already desperate for the fate of Army Group Don and Army Group A, which he himself called "a race of life and death" (Manstein's memoirs mentioned this in detail, and he stayed up all night making this decision).

In the first week of fighting, Manstein went well. With 230 tanks as its core, the Hote cluster broke through the Soviet lines, reached the banks of the Meshkova River on the 19th, and advanced to a distance of only 54 miles from the 6th Army. By night, the besieged troops could already see the signal flares from reinforcements on the snow-covered grassland. Hitler's High Command was immersed in an atmosphere of optimism.

However, at this critical juncture, the Soviet high command decisively revised the original battle attempt, and the Southwestern Front, which was preparing to carry out a far-reaching assault on Rostov-on-Don, now turned against Manstein. On December 16, the main force of the Southwestern Front under the command of General Vadudin and the first part of the Voronezh Front, with a total of more than 400,000 men and more than 1,000 tanks, with the support of more than 300 aircraft of the two armies of the Air Force, launched a powerful offensive against the Italian 8th Army, which was responsible for covering the entire southern flank, including the far-reaching rear of the German army in the Caucasus. Two days later (18 December), the entire front of Army Group Italy, held by 7 Italian divisions and 1 German division, was broken through, the Italians lost their ability to resist organized and fled in disarray, and the Soviets began to advance into the depth of the German defenses.

Sensing that this was the last chance to save the 6th Army, Manstein summoned great courage and resolutely defied Hitler's orders and issued an order to Paulus to break out immediately. However, Paulus, who was weak in character, stubbornly held his ground and gave up this line of life. Manstein asked the besieged Paulus to organize troops to attack to the southwest and break through the Soviet blockade, in order to form a confrontation with the "Hoult cluster" and jointly cut a "corridor". But Paulus telegraphed Manstein that the gasoline storage would only allow the tank troops to travel 19 kilometers, and that only when Hoss's rescue force reached a distance of 32 kilometers from the encirclement could countermeasures. But when Hoth's 57th Panzer Corps rushed across the Aksai River, only 45 kilometers from the encirclement, this was already the maximum limit of the advance of the rescue force.

After that, if history were to follow its original trajectory, it would look like this:

On the north bank of the Meshkova River, the "Hoth" cluster was stubbornly blocked by the new Soviet troops, and Manstein was unable to break through the Soviet defenses with the last reserves. For almost a week (around December 19 to December 24), the historical significance of the fierce battles and their aftermath is difficult to estimate. After the war, the German general Mehrinzin argued in his famous book "Tank Battles" that the turning point in the fate of Germany was decided in the battle here.

In order to stop the Soviet offensive, the Germans not only used the Hollitt cluster and invested all their aviation forces, but also transferred 8 divisions from other parts of the Soviet-German battlefield and Western Europe, but because they were engaged in the battle one by one, they could not reverse the defeat. By the 23rd, Vadudin's headquarters had moved 180 kilometers south to the north of Tormosin, threatening the flank and rear of the entire Don Army Group. The Hollitt cluster was forced to retreat from the Chir River to the Northern Donets River, and a gap more than 100 kilometers wide appeared on the German front north of Milerovo.

With a heavy heart, Manstein drew the most elite 6th Panzer Division from the Hoult cluster and turned to the northwest to stop the influx of Soviet troops. Until the end of the month, the Germans managed to hold the lower reaches of the Don River between the Severodonets River and the Sea of Azov with all their might, and secured the last retreat. However, both the Italian 8th Army and the Romanian 3rd Army had been routed, with more than 60,000 prisoners captured.

At this time, the strength of the Hult cluster was greatly reduced, and only 35 tanks remained, and the attack was at the end of the strong crossbow. The Soviet Stalingrad Front took the opportunity to turn into a counteroffensive against the Germans on the 24th, and by the 26th, the German armored 57th Army was completely wiped out, and the remnants of the troops on the left and right began to retreat. On the 29th, Kotelnikovsky fell into the hands of the Soviets, and by this time the Germans had been pushed back to an area 200 kilometers away from Stalingrad. The last glimmer of hope for the rescue of the 6th Army was practically dashed.

In the end, Stein had no choice but to abandon the 6th Army and leave it to its fate.

So now the "Hoth" cluster has just reached the banks of the Meshkova River and advanced to a place only 54 miles away from the 6th Army, and the Germans thought that they could successfully rescue the 6th Army, but as a result, the last reserves were mobilized and failed to break through the Soviet defenses, and later because other fronts were tight, they gradually withdrew from the critical point in time of the rescue force! After listening to Yadi Weilan's 30 days of absence, Wang Fan muttered a summary.

"Yes, if we help the 6th Army now, they should be able to break through from Stalingrad smoothly, and then round out with the "Hoth" in a cluster, and achieve the reversal of the whole campaign! ”

"Is it just a breakout? I'm thinking about more than that!! Wang Fan said as he sketched a weird smile at the corner of his mouth, and then disappeared in place.

Paulus, born in Breitnow, was the son of a teacher, whose father had tried to get Paulus a degree from the Naval Academy, but was unsuccessful. Paulus was then sent to study law briefly at the University of Marburg in Hesse, but he was soon eliminated. Frustrated, Paulus joined the 111th Infantry Regiment as an alternate officer in February 1910. After World War I, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles and was forced to disarm. But Paulus was left behind and transferred to the disarmament of the 11th Infantry Regiment in Stuttgart as a company commander. He held various positions during the tumultuous period from 1921 to 1933 and was commander of the motorized brigade from 1934 to 35. In 1939, he was promoted to Major General.

Paulus became commander of the German 10th Army in 1939. He was also the main mastermind of Nazi Germany's "Barbarossa" plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union. On September 1, 1939, the German army officially invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Paulus's 10th Army had been involved in battles against Poland, Belgium, and France (the 10th Army had been renamed the 6th Army at the time of the latter's two battles), which gave him a certain amount of practical experience that would be indispensable for his future positions on the Eastern Front. In September 1940, he was recommended by General Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, to serve as Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army General Staff (First Quartermaster General). In December 1941, on the recommendation of Field Marshal Reichenau, he was awarded the post of commander of the 6th Army. Subsequently, the 6th Army was sent to the Eastern Front for the Soviet-German war and was entrusted with the Battle of Stalingrad.

On the whole, Paulus was a diligent and capable officer, and he did most of the work he did with his own eyes. Hitler clearly valued him, for in just 11 months in 1942 he was rapidly promoted from lieutenant general to general. Paulus, with his humble origins and humble appearance, was favored by the Nazi Party. He has always respected and has a deep friendship with Halder, and he is not the kind of villain who is good at flattery. But Paulus lacked the kind of resolute character that was necessary to be a great commander in a pinch. Although Halder once said that Paulus was calm, passivity may be a more appropriate description for him. He was a staunch obedient to Hitler's orders, even if the requirements of the orders were very different from the actual situation on the battlefield, he always obeyed Hitler's orders and adjusted his forces according to his orders, even when he was later surrounded by enemy troops.

On December 20, somewhere in Stalingrad, at the Provisional Command of the German Sixth Army, General Paulus was alone, in the innermost room of the headquarters, looking at the entire battlefield map, and the "Hoth" cluster had reached the banks of the Meshkova River yesterday and advanced to a distance of only 54 miles from the 6th Army. This news was very inspiring and morale-boosting, but today their advance was very unsmooth, and they met with stubborn resistance from the Soviet troops on the north bank of the Meshkova River, and Marshal Manstein asked him to immediately lead the Sixth Army to the southwest to quickly attack, break through the Soviet blockade, and join forces with the "Hote cluster", but thinking of the order of the Fenders to "hold out until Easter, re-attack after reinforcements arrive, and completely occupy Stalingrad" and the fact that the Sixth Group was running out of gasoline, the tanks could not move much far, Paulus thought about it and still didn't give the order to break out. The street fighting in the surrounding cities continued, and became more intense, the Soviet troops who had been shrinking in a corner of the city, heard that the Soviet troops outside were counterattacking, and they also began to attack, and the entire Sixth Army was attacked on its back, and Paulus had a hunch that the day had come when he and the 6th Army would decide their fate.

"As an army decision-maker, indecency is the most terrible!" Suddenly there was a voice behind Paulus, and he turned around sharply and reached for the pistol at his waist, but when he saw the appearance of the person behind him, he couldn't help but be stunned on the spot, and his hand stopped in mid-air and was dazed.

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