At noon on December 21, 1942, as the German Sixth Army counteroffensive successfully achieved its operational objectives, it severely damaged the vital forces of the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front in the southern theater of the Soviet Union, so that the Soviet counterattack inside the city of Stalingrad was also abruptly stopped, and quickly recovered and established a defensive line. Subsequently, the flanks of the German 6th Army and the Soviet units behind them were either routed and disintegrated, or disarmed and surrendered. As a result, the 6th Army regained the initiative on the battlefield at Stalingrad, but Paulus was faced with another problem, that is, Hitler's order: to hold out until Easter, and to re-attack after reinforcements arrived, and completely occupy Stalingrad! Now that the 6th Army and its friendly units were completely supported by the happiness and happiness of living in the dead, if the troops were to be re-engaged in the battle for Stalin's street battles, the first thing they would face would be that without the addition of new forces, the combat units would be exhausted, and the offensive posture would be unsustainable. On the one hand, the order of the Supreme Führer, and on the other hand, the difficult status quo, Paulus was in a dilemma.

At this time, the "good guy" Bismarck came forward again, and he introduced Paulus to a new offensive method - targeted killing, a mode of attack born out of the 21st World cruise missile. Relying on the instantaneous map of the Stalingrad battlefield with a radius of 30 kilometers provided by the Plane Ring (of course, Bismarck still told Paulus to rely on his battlefield reconnaissance force to maintain and strengthen his sense of mystery), and used 500-kilogram aerial bombs to carry out free-fall "targeted killing" of the ruins of buildings in the area where the Soviet troops were located. Due to the lack of the inertia of the aircraft, the direct hit rate of the aerial bombs was close to 99% (a few were blocked by strong winds and other buildings), which cost 5,000 aerial bombs (because it was an accurate fixed-point drop, the effect was equivalent to the effect of 40~500,000 aerial bombs dropped by the aircraft at one time), and the vast majority of the Soviet defenders were submerged and buried in the blown up ruins, or were discovered, annihilated, and captured by the German combat units that attacked later. By the morning of December 22, 1942, the formed and threatening resistance forces in Stalingrad had been largely annihilated, and the remaining sporadic resistance could no longer change the fact that the Germans had completely occupied Stalingrad. In last night's battle, the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front, after learning about the current situation of the Soviet army in the city of Stalingrad (using the distress telegram of the Soviet 62nd Army stationed in the city of Stalingrad said that there were no more troops to command except for the headquarters and logistics), they immediately organized troops to go to reinforcements, but although the marching route of the reinforcements was difficult to be discovered and stopped by the Germans in the night, it was difficult to escape from Wang Fan's plane "radar", a rain of aerial bombs dumplings overhead, The rescue force was blown up in pieces, and there was not one out of ten troops who were able to enter Stalingrad alive, and they had just taken refuge in the building, but they were facing targeted killings. From the night of December 21 to the early morning of December 22, a total of more than 60,000 reinforcements were sent in two waves, and more than 30,000 people were annihilated on the way.

Thus, by noon on December 22, 1942, Stalingrad had largely fallen into German hands. The Germans formed a fortified stronghold in the Stalingrad area, connecting Army Group A, located in the Caucasus, and Army Group B, located in the upper reaches of the Don River. The Soviet Union and Germany fell into a "stalemate phase" in the southern theater of operations for a short time. On December 22, after receiving a telegram from Stalingrad, Hitler was very excited, and the word Stalin had important symbolic meaning for him. It was immediately decided to make Paulus the rank of marshal, and all the generals were promoted to one rank. When the top decision-makers of the Soviet Union received the news of the fall of Stalingrad, Stalin flew into a rage, roared at a tiger at the senior Soviet general in front of him, and shouted a counterattack. The top Soviet generals waited for their supreme leader to finish his roar and then tried to persuade Stalin.

"In the short term we could not organize enough forces for a counteroffensive, and at Stalingrad on the 21st we had already lost a fully manned combined army of all arms, a tank corps, three tank brigades, and more than 400 howitzers. On the 22nd, an air group army that we had deployed on the front line was also heavily damaged by an air raid carried out by the Germans, and most of the planes were seriously damaged and could not take off (Wang Fan discovered it when he was expanding the radius of reconnaissance and sweeping, so he used the old method to destroy it with a rain of dumplings). Vasilevsky suggested.

"The air supremacy held by the German air force is a great threat, this surprise attack on our army, a large part of the losses are due to the bombing of our army, especially the night bombing, several artillery positions have been devastated, after the retreat of the troops, heavy equipment losses are serious, now many infantry divisions of the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front have only rifles and other light weapons left, artillery and other heavy weapons have been discarded during the retreat, we need time to wait for the new production weapons to be in place! At the same time, it is necessary to find a way to solve the problem of battlefield intelligence, and this time the German army has accurately found several major artillery positions of our army, indicating that either there are spies among the senior officers of our army, there is an intelligence leak, or the German army has mastered a new method of battlefield intelligence collection, but I am inclined to the former, and I suggest that all the officers in the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front who have access to the topographic map of the artillery positions should be strictly investigated. Zhukov continued.

According to the reaction of the troops, the number of German tanks involved in the counterattack is estimated to exceed 700 (they have been stunned, and some misestimate the strength of the German army), which is the number of equipment that could only be had in the heyday of the German 6th Army, after the 3-month Stalingrad war of attrition, it is impossible for so many tanks to participate in the war, and we estimate that the number of tanks owned by the 6th Army does not exceed 120, The rest should be the new German support unit, and it is necessary to determine which unit of the German army, the number of personnel, and the armament situation. Vasilevsky added.

"Order the intelligence department to immediately reconnoiter the enemy's situation, and be sure to determine the number of the new unit participating in the battle as soon as possible!" Stalin, who had calmed down, began to give orders, "At the same time, the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front were telegraphed to strengthen the defense, prevent the German 6th Army from breaking through the defensive line, threaten the left flank of the North Caucasus Front and the rear of the Transcaucasian Front, and telegraphed the Southwestern Front to move closer to the Stalingrad Front, and in the event of a frontal attack by the Germans, be prepared to cut into the German troops from the flank, defeat the enemy who met and attacked, and regain the initiative on the Stalingrad battlefield, The internal affairs department was ordered to investigate the spies of the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front. ”

Let's turn our attention back to the direction of Manstein, after the German 6th Army Group successfully broke through and defeated the encircled Soviet army, the whole battlefield situation changed greatly, and the Soviet Southwestern Front quickly changed its offensive attack into a defensive retreat, so that he had time to gather the remnants of the defeated Romanian 8th Army, with the "Hollitt" campaign group and the "Hoult" group's most elite 6th Panzer Division, to form a new defensive iron fist, which has now been gathered and accumulated strength, and can complete the important task of blocking the Southwestern Front. What he is thinking about is the future of the 400,000 men and horses of Army Group A deployed by Germany in the Caucasus, as the elite of the German army attacking the Caucasus of the Soviet Union, their offensive momentum for attacking the Caucasus is on the verge of collapse due to the cold weather and poor logistics, and it is necessary to inject new reserves to continue the attack, but at this time the German army has no reserves to send. In the upper Don region, in the Kursk and Kharkov directions, the main forces of the German Army Group B are carrying out the important task of covering the left flank of the German Southern Group Cluster, and in the lower Don River area, on the Stalingrad side, the 6th Army Group has just turned the corner and avoided being completely annihilated, but it does not have the ability to break through the frontal Soviet army and attack the Soviet army from the left flank for the time being. As for his newly formed "fist" army (the original history plus Hitler's deployment of 8 divisions to form the Don Army), it was a patchwork of miscellaneous servant army units and part of the German army, and did not have the ability to attack fortifications. However, the supreme Führer Hitler sent a telegram asking him to take advantage of the situation and take the oil fields of the Caucasus, and Manstein smiled bitterly about the supplies, but his suffering changed with a telegram from Paulus.

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