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.Often the Germans would occupy a part of the city after hand-to-hand fighting during the day and then would have to pull back to their bases for supply.The Russians would reoccupy the ruined buildings that night.The next day, the Nazis would have to retake the same building again.Russian soldiers, many ill trained, were poured into Stalingrad by the tens of thousands and died in equally great numbers.The sewers under the city also became the scene of a surreal parallel battle where the dead and wounded simply disappeared into the muck.By the time cold weather arrived, the Sixth Army controlled nine-tenths of the city.Their own casualties had been high, but the Russians’ casualty numbers were much higher.It was von Paulus’ stated hope that he was punishing the Russian Sixty-second Army so badly they soon would have to give up the city.He was wrong.On November 8, Luftflotte 4, a good portion of the Sixth Army’s bombers, had to be withdrawn.They were needed in North Africa.Just as the Russians had been forced into a strip less than a thousand yards deep, the German pressure began to ease.The Battle for StalingradOn November 19, everything changed.For months Marshal Zhukov had been accumulating fresh Russian armies and just waiting until winter and enough troops arrived.Now he had both.The Battle of Stalingrad itself had taken the efforts of the entire Sixth Panzer Army.With the Fourth Panzer Army gone, von Paulus had to use whatever else he had at hand to defend the flanks of the salient that ended in Stalingrad.The flanks north and south of the city were held only by thinly spread Romanian divisions and backed up by virtually nothing.These underequipped and often reluctant Romanians could see and hear the buildup as two tank armies and eighteen infantry divisions prepared to attack in just the north.They begged for reinforcements, but von Paulus had no one to send and was focused on completing his conquest of the city.At sunrise on the nineteenth, Russian Operation Uranus began when overwhelming numbers of Soviet tanks and infantry easily shattered the Romanian divisions north of Stalingrad.Two days later in the south, the Romanian IV Corps received the same treatment.The Romanians who were not killed or captured were forced into Stalingrad.Within days, both attacking Soviet armies had met and closed the trap.This time it was the Germans who were encircled.More than a quarter of a million men in the Sixth Panzer Army and allied formations were trapped in Stalingrad.The German high command wanted to order an immediate breakout.But a month earlier Hitler had told a crowd of thousands in the Berlin Sports Palace that the German army would never withdraw from Stalingrad.He would not take back his promise.He instead met with Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe.Goering promised that his flyers would be able to deliver 750 tons of supplies per day into the city.Unfortunately, the reality was far different.To haul 750 tons, the Luftwaffe needed every transport and most of the bombers on the eastern front to fly four supply missions each day.The trouble was there was not enough daylight for four missions, or often even two.Nor was there ever enough aircraft available.The most tonnage that was ever actually flown into the trapped army, in one day, was 289 tons on December 19.The average, though, was only ninety-four tons per day, or an eighth of the amount needed.Each day, the trapped soldiers had less ammunition and less to eat.By the end of the airlift, in January 1943, the Luftwaffe had lost almost 500 aircraft.One out of every two planes had been shot down or crashed trying to fulfill Goering’s promise.But Hitler himself ensured that the pilots’ efforts were all in vain.After they had joined up, the Russian armies formed a defensive position facing both Stalingrad and the Germans outside to the west.They formed lines of circumvallation, whose design would have looked familiar to Caesar’s legionnaires at Alesia.Unfortunately for the trapped Sixth Army and von Paulus, this worked just as well for Zhukov as it had for Caesar.Arguably the best commander the Germans had was sent to deal with the problem of saving the Sixth Panzer Army.This was Erich von Manstein.He mounted a counterattack using Hoth’s Fourth Panzer.It penetrated to within thirty-four miles of Stalingrad against determined Russian opposition.Again, the German high command asked for permission for the Sixth Panzer Army to break out and join up.Again, Hitler refused, and von Paulus, knowing that this decision likely doomed his army, obeyed.Facing overwhelming numbers of Russian tanks, Hoth eventually had to withdraw.A few weeks later, the Soviets launched an offensive named Winter Storm.This attack almost trapped all of Army Group South and forced a general withdrawal of more than 100 miles.The Sixth Army in Stalingrad was now separated by almost 150 miles from the new German defensive line
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