Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "Was Reaching the Volga North of Stalingrad the WRONG move? BATTLESTORM STALINGRAD E12" video.

Probably for two reasons. First, Paulus eventually lost the battle for Stalingrad, so this history was glossed over. Secondly, he was not a boastful man and lived more or less in obscurity after the war, unlike Manstein, Guderian and Co., who trumpeted they great battles in self-adulatory memoirs.
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@jamestheotherone742 I don't know. They may have done what they did in Normandy and the Ardennes, continue to pour troops into a losing proposition. In this they would not be alone. The Red Army did this several times (the May Kharkov offensive being one), as did the American Army in the Hurtgen Forest and the French Army in WWI in 1914. The issue is tunnel vision, and it has ruined many armies.
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At this point the Germans are very much in a Catch-22 situation. If they leave Stalingrad alone, it can act as a redoubt and focal point for offensive action by the Red Army. If the Germans take it, the city provides a strongpoint on their northern flank and supply hub for their army. At this point in the offensive, 6th Army's problem, and that of 4th Panzer Army, is trying to make bricks without straw. Their armies are heavily depleted in both men and material, and are having major supply issues to boot. The repeated attacks by the Red Army on the northern flank will continue to be a major drain on resources over the next 3 months as well. The real issue is that the Wehrmacht is over-extended, and it is really only the poor training and leadership of the Soviet forces at this time that is preventing a total collapse of the offensive. Indeed, even now, you can see signs of the cracks showing, as Paulus and Hoth are both frantically juggling their forces to counter Soviet attacks and marshal sufficient units to launch decisive attacks. It is something that Clausewitz warned about in his treatise on war, than one can easily surpass your limits because momentum allows you to continue an attack beyond the point where it should be halted. This is what we are seeing here at Stalingrad.
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Yes, I too would like to see the battles of Kohima-Imphal handled like this, and a similar treatment on Slim's 1944 offensive into Burma/Myanmar.
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benvolio mozart Well, the strategic trap at Stalingrad was more a case of happenstance than planning on the Russian's part. It is only during Uranus that there is actual planning taking place to ensnare the 6th Army rather than acting and reacting by both sides. One analogy I can think of is the Battle of Gettysburg. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy planned to have a battle there, it just happened. And, in a similar manner, Robert E. Lee made the same mistake as the German Army at Stalingrad - allowing himself/themselves to get sucked into a battle they didn't plan for, that shouldn't have started in the first place and which they (the commanders) should have halted so they could reconsider their options. Of course, in both cases, this is 20/20 hindsight and armchair strategizing. Since neither of us were in the "hot seat" and don't have the training (unless you happen to be a military officer), we will never truly be able to comprehend the pressure and constraints placed upon these commanders, both by higher command and wartime exigencies.
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Please keep up the fantastic work. Dealing with this complex battle on a division or even battalion and regiment scale really helps to put things into perspective. I like how you demonstrate with your explanation of logistics why certain decisions were made, and demonstrate why many armchair theorists are wrong in their conclusions. It's also great how you "clear the fog of war" that has lain over most of this campaign, and dispelled the facades of rewritten history created by many self-serving generals after the war. Well done.
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@Raskolnikov70 You're forgetting about the Chindits, but yes, the Burma theatre tends to be completely ignored.
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benvolio mozart No, it is not impossible to escape a strategic trap. But, it takes a leadership with vision and an appreciation of the overall picture to avoid it. Most importantly, you need to heed that refrain from the old Kenny Roger's tune "The Gambler", "you have to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run".
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Although, as we will see, Zhukov ends up wasting a lot of men in fruitless attacks. It is perhaps not his finest hour.
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@sergeontheloose Not arguing. I think Eremenko and Rokossovsky were better generals. However, they weren't Stalin's "friends", so never get the credit they deserved.
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@Gew219 Rorke's Drift? Bir Hakeim? The stand at Snipe?
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Thank you for the tip. I'll have to look into them. If they are done in the same style as TIK and TimeGhost, they should be great. More so because they will be given with a more regional, rather than European perspective. Sorta like living in the Philippines and watching the series "Without Seeing the Dawn", about the Filipino resistance to the Japanese occupation.
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