Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Paulus is NOT to blame! Breakout at Stalingrad Part 1" video.

  1. Von Manstein and Guderian MADE France fall. (1940) Von Manstein was the brain. Adolf never forgot his contribution. Guderian was the executioner. Dittos. With a minor assist from Rommel. ( MUCH more Adolf's style ) Guderian was not enough of a Nazi to become a Field Marshall. Merely conquering France was not enough. ( he disobeyed/ faked out Adolf, get it ? ) He created the 116th Panzer Division for the expressed purpose of civil war against the Nazis. Yes, it was stuffed to the brim with anti-Nazi Germans. Guderian gave it two Panther battalions + a Mark IV battalion -- ultimately the 116th was a Panzer Corps in its own right. It had THAT much magic stuff. Right through until the last, the 116th Panzer was kept 'in reserve.' This formation is usually a mystery in most military histories. When the Mortain counter-offensive was commanded, the 116th became the primary panzer force. It was the only panzer force that had -- essentially -- escaped the Normandy campaign -- until then. For most readers, the question pops up: where the Hell did this oddly numbered super-panzer division spring from? BTW, it, the 116th Panzer, was presented by Guderian to Adolf as a BIRTHDAY GIFT. ( April 20, 1944 ) Yeah, he was happy as can be. Heh. The 116th Panzer Division was entirely equipped with that gear that was a surge of production. ie Gear that was not previously projected. The extra tanks -- and much else -- were a tribute to Guderian, himself. ( He was working in tandem with Minister Speer.) Yes, Guderian pulled two battalions of Panthers out of his azz. He was already trying to stop the formation of Panther brigades. Adolf thought that he could inject these puppies to bulk up virtually every infantry assault. [ Something like this happened against Elsenborn Ridge (Bulge) ... but that King Tiger assault didn't quite pan out. Crazy amounts of Nazi armor were employed in that micro-campaign. ] Guderian DID have a sense of humor.
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  2. What OKH, OKW, and Adolf Hitler didn't seem to remember was the the 6th Army hard upon the Volga was a WAR WINNING MOVE. It was no different that having the USA 9th Armored// 1st Army upon the Rhine. ( March 6, 1945 ) [ Remagen happened the very next day. ] What his meant was that the actual positions of 2nd Panzer Army and 3rd Panzer Army were largely irrelevant. They should've given ground -- which they eventually HAD to -- right off. That was the correct German response to Mars. The next move was for OKH to vector EVERY strategic reserve to counter-Uranus. For Uranus HAD TO BE the STAVKA attempt to push 6th Army off its economic jugular vein. OF COURSE 6th Army had to stay put. Its position would win the war in the east for the Nazis. You can't run a mechanized war economy on coal. The Nazis figured that out the hard way. The pain was already evident. It was ESSENTIAL that the 4th Panzer Army elements within the kessel leave it before it was formed, and that its 'missing corps' be returned to it,(*) but that Army Group B must shed at least two panzer corps ( 4p + 2m ) to reverse the flow of events. These latter formations would be at essentially FULL strength. Motoring across the steppe bores you, it doesn't kill you. { (*) Hitler took away a panzer corps from 4th Panzer Army way back in July-August. I'd have to look up the exact dates. The first to go was GD motorized division. It had to be extracted from Voronezh where it had gotten tied up in urban fighting consequent to its occupation of the western bank of the Don... where the Voronezh river borders the city to its west. (grab a map) "By July 6, the German army occupied the western river-bank suburbs before being subjected to a fierce Soviet counter-attack. In July 24 frontline was stabilised along Voronezh river. This was the opening move of Case Blue" The other divisions were shunted north to pump up 2nd Panzer Army - but mostly held in reserve... in a centralish position. The idea was that they'd throw their weight to stop any Soviet Winter Counter-Offensive, by which time, STAVKA held a patent on the content and execution thereof. The existence of this RQF was a HUGE factor in the Luftwaffe's air lift optimism. The top-of-the-head assumption was that THREE fully equipped reserved panzer divisions would be shooting down to 6th Army in very short order. A rail line heading off to the southeast had been under construction at a furious pace for months. (It was following a route that involved virtually no river crossings, hence its very long route. } It's nothing short of amazing that OKH's staff weren't barking like mad dogs about the cross-up in priorities. Backing away from Moscow was strategically meaningless. All of the ground east and west was already totally destroyed, militarily barren. Useless. Further, the twin panzer armies were ideally sited for logistics. Backing away from Moscow would actually release trucks and gasoline -- so dearly needed to stop Uranus.
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  3. @TIK 1) Von Manstein was correct. The moment of decision was BEFORE von Manstein was even brought into the picture... BEFORE the 6th Army was even encircled. Once the army was encircled, it was too late. ANY attempt to break out past the first FEW DAYS was doomed to failure. 1) The army was already fatally weakened by hunger and lack of transport. In the conditions then prevailing, 6th Army would've been chopped up, Napoleon style, just by exposure marching westward through the cold. 2) Paulus WASTED 6th Army's reserve fuel supplies in the magic hours after Uranus was launched and before the army was encircled. This episode is ALWAYS omitted in the telling and re-telling of Uranus. To do so makes the Ostheer look like IDIOTS. Yes. The panzer regiments, the QRF for 6th Army that had been kept in reserve just for this possibility were run into the ground -- and then brought back into the kessel. To do so, they had to travel the LONG way back. The short route would've put them west of the Don bridgehead... a location that Paulus didn't bother to reinforce whatsoever in the early days of Uranus. (!!!) 3) The 29th Motorized// Mechanized division was held in reserve expressly to counter-attack any Soviet advance that might proceed across the lower Volga in an attempt to sweep 6th Army from the south. In the campaign it DID launch its pre-planned counter-attack into the Reds. This attack went off PERFECTLY. The 29th was just mowing down the advance elements of the Red army. The leading troops had absolutely no heavy weapons at all. They were still trapped east of the Volga, as no truck, no tank could cross the Volga -- the ice ridges were THAT BAD. ( They occur every year, so you can always re-examine the matter next winter.) It took DAYS for the Soviets to fix paths for their tanks and trucks. The primary reason that the southern pincer had cavalry was because horses could navigate the ice single file. Once to the west bank, the cavalry faced essentially no opposition of any kind, so it was a simple matter to trot westwards. When the cavalry ran into Germans, everyone dismounted and fought like Dragoons. ( Shades of the Australians of WWI fame in the Middle East.) 3a) The Soviets SPOOFED Paulus & Company into stopping the 29th's attack, by claiming the authority of Adolf Hitler. We now know for a fact that Hitler was in absolutely no position to issue the magic directive. He was on his train at the time. 3b) This event was mentioned in EVERY German account of the period. They just couldn't understand 'Hitler's interference.' Heh. Later von Manstein put it all together. He fed the Soviets garbage during his Winter Offensive and then bagged multiple Red armies. ( Spoofed them with 4-rotor Enigmas, sent true commands with 5-rotor Enigmas -- and shortly thereafter, the Ostheer went over to 5-rotor Enigmas across the whole front. This transition was one of the reasons for the lull before Kursk. OKH could not bear to have side by side transmissions of 4-rotor and 5-rotor signals. Any such folly would allow the Soviets to back into the 5-rotor system. (The IJN made this mistake with the USN. It resulted in the Midway fiasco.) By the time von Manstein showed up, the die was cast. 6th Army had become immobilized. Paulus is the man most responsible for that status. He was the man on the scene allowing the Reds to WALK across the snow to encircle him. Yes, the great advance proceeded at a tempo that Napoleon could identify with. The break-down rate of the T-34s in this campaign was astounding. The crews were so GREEN than even the slightest malfunction had them totally stumped. This is why 11 Panzer found themselves squared off against pathetically small T-34 formations. They had started life as tank regiments back at the Don. By the time they were confronted, they'd lost 65% of their strength do to motor-march grief. ( Later the Soviets would correct this epic gaff. They even put together a propaganda piece about cross-training the new T-34 crews back at the factory. That newsreel footage is up on YouTube to this very day, BTW. This ^^^ is what separated the USA from the Red Army. GIs didn't need ANY training WRT mechanical trivia. And the USA gave its tankers about 18 months of training on their Shermans before being committed to combat. The USA originally ( on paper ) was scaled to invade France in May 1943. That's why the tankers had so much time to kill. &&& Strategy & Tactics Magazine ( Dunnigan ) cranked out cardboard war games forty-five years ago. One featured Uranus. They had to impose a Hitler-rule so as to achieve some semblance of history: the German contestant was prohibited from moving his panzers out of the pocket, of moving them to the Chir or Don rivers. For, during game testing, EVERY player was immediately sending his panzer corps to the west, while squatting in place with his infantry armies. ( 6th Army was really and army group in its own right. It had its own panzer army, and two Romanian armies and a Hungarian army and an Italian army -- all of whom were routing their command orders through Paulus. (!!!) And Paulus was in DIRECT subordination to Adolf Hitler. I don't know where you, TIK, ever came up with Paulus reporting to von Manstein. It's on the record from many sources that Hitler had jumped the queue and was calling the shots for Paulus VERY shortly after 6th Army was encircled. It was at this moment that Adolf had finally come up to speed -- and was in his Prussian lair. Keep in mind that Mars had OKH's attention, too. Mars caused Hitler to reneg on his commitment to Paulus -- which was to seen a panzer corps to his aid should anything go sideways at Stalingrad. IIRC the panzers involved were the exact divisions that Hitler had taken away from 4th Army a few months back: 17th panzer, 18th panzer and GD motorised... The panzers were actually sitting on flat cars south of AGC when Hitler committed them to Mars -- BEFORE he even scoped what was up with Uranus -- BEFORE things truly went sideways. He was reacting to the screams of 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies. Stupid. The correct play was to let the 2nd and 3rd bob and weave. They had PLENTY of power, short lines back to the rail heads. Whereas 6th Army was in a heap load of trouble -- so obvious that Zeitzler// OKH had been screaming about it for WEEKS. He'd been told that he should calm down because a spare panzer corps was on call if anything erupted. The Soviets knew all about this reserve panzer corps, and so actually turned over MANY secrets to the Germans so that it would not be sent south to bail out Paulus. Further research figures to show that the RUSSIANS used spoofing to get the panzers to return back into the kessel. Hoth, Rommel, Guderian, Hoepner, not one of them would've bought such missives -- purportedly from Hitler -- same as the BS used to freeze the 29th Motorized division. The infantry of 6th Army simply couldn't be shifted... not even before the encirclement. The ONLY troops that should've broken out were the panzers and motorized troops -- and they needed to break-out before they were even encircled. All later breakout attempts that were contemplated were TOO LATE. Paulus had already destroyed his panzer's gasoline reserve chasing ghosts. This ^^^^ brutal FACT is something that ALL Ostheer histories try to obscure. Don't let them. The chain of command jumped straight to Adolf Hitler. Von Manstein had to BEG Adolf to sign off on any orders he wanted to give to Paulus. Hitler duly threw in his two-bits. I've quoted from just a piece of Hitler's insistences, already. TIK, your thesis -- it doesn't fit the facts. BTW, it was Franz Halder who established in the mind of Adolf Hitler that Paulus was a "does as he is told" kind of guy. His own peers were SHOCKED when he was promoted to army command... by Franz Halder -- his patron. Later, Hitler decided that now that he had Paulus -- why hang on to the Catholic? And out Halder went.
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