On November 20, 1942, Manstein was appointed commander of the Don Army Group, but while he was in a hurry to implement the "Operation Winter Storm" plan to rescue Paulus's 6th Army, he was unexpectedly blocked by two strong Soviet brigades, which not only prevented the 48th Panzer Army in charge of assists, but also almost trapped the 57th Panzer Army in the encirclement. So, what contingencies did the 57th Panzer Corps encounter during the offensive?
For Manstein's command skills, even though he dumped the blame for his defeat on his superiors in his memoirs, he was still praised more than Zhukov because he always saved the German army at the most critical and dangerous moments.
Although Manstein's "sickle plan" in the German blitzkrieg in Western Europe made him stand out before taking over command of the Don Army Group, and in July 1942 he was appointed commander for the occupation of crimea, when he formulated the "Winter Storm" battle plan, he was hasty and ill-considered, resulting in the ineffective rescue of the 6th Army, and the 48th Panzer Army, which assisted, was almost completely destroyed.
Why, then, was manstein, the commander of the German high command used to fight fires on the battlefield, why did he still use adventure plans in rescue operations? There was a factor in which Manstein had too little information and no time for him to consider.
In his own right, after Manstein was appointed commander in the Crimean battlefield, he thought that the high command would give him direct command of the southern front, but he did not expect a paper order to dismember the entire wave of his 11th Army, he only came to the Leningrad front with some artillery units and army group headquarters, in two small operations, he had neither troops nor tanks, and by the end of October 1942, his headquarters was deployed to the flank of the 9th Army of modell on the central line, and the German army tried to let him play his due role in the center line.
However, on November 19, 1942, after Zhukov launched Operation Uranus, Manstein was suddenly sent to rescue Paulus, and it can be said that this order surprised him very much, because the troops assigned to his command were already fighting in Stalingrad, and he was asked to take command, just to let him change the way he played, to see if he could excel. To some extent, this was a temporary emergency measure for the German command to test his command skills.
In this sense, Manstein had only 20 days in between receiving the order and launching operation Winter Storm, and it was only a period of time, let alone a battle to reverse the situation at Stalingrad, that is, to make it clear that the troops could be assembled. Therefore, Manstein was also uneasy when he made an offensive plan, and the so-called adventure plan also began here.
After coming to the Stalingrad front, Manstein really had mixed feelings, what kind of battlefield was this? The encircled 6th Army was now under three levels of command, with the Headquarters sending a special communications aide-de-camp to Paulus's headquarters, and all his actions were subject to the German General Command; on the other hand, the newly appointed commander of Army Group B, Weix, was still in command of Paulus; and Manstein had received orders from which the 6th Army had been placed under his command.
If the german command system was chaotic and easy to solve, the Don Army Group was already under the command of The Romanian Marshal Anton Lescu, and the Romanian Army and several Italian and Hungarian armies were responsible for the security of the passage between the a and b battle groups, the responsibility was not small, but their combat effectiveness was limited, and the main target of the "Uranus Operation" launched by the Soviet Army was these servant army.
Therefore, after a brief understanding of some battlefield conditions, Manstein hastily introduced the "Winter Storm Plan" and prepared to continue to use the pincer offensive to rescue Paulus, one was assisted by the German 48th Panzer Army as the main force, responsible for attacking from the northwest, and the other was the 57th Panzer Army, responsible for detouring from the southwest flank.
But what Manstein did not expect was that the original plan was to carry out operations on December 5, but the two main forces were in different degrees of new situations, first the flank security of the 48th Panzer Army was cut off by the Soviets, the entire wave of the Romanian 4th Army was destroyed by the Soviet Army, the 48th Panzer Army itself was difficult to protect, and had to turn around to deal with the encirclement and annihilation of the Soviet Tank 5th Army; and then the 57th Panzer Army was unfavorable, not only the assembly time was postponed, until December 12, there was still a division that did not reach the designated position. The reason was that the Soviet 51st Army had set up ambushes one after another, so that they could not return to the construction on time.
Therefore, from the perspective of time span, the 48th Panzer Army did not participate in the "Winter Storm" operation, which is no wonder to others, when Zhukov formulated the "Uranus" action plan, the main target was several group armies of the minions of the nationalist army, but Manstein sent the 48th Panzer Army to the door, is there any reason not to fight? But Manstein did not expect that the Soviet tank 5th Army was too capable of fighting, and almost destroyed the 48th armor.
So, in this sense, the 57th Panzer Army was on its own to complete the "Winter Storm" action plan, which was not only due to the loss of the 48th Panzer Army's lead battle, but also encountered a situation that Manstein was more worried about, that is, the Soviet Army had increased the strength of the 51st Army and added an additional 2nd Guards Army. If the 5th Tank Army was the elite of the Soviet armored forces, then the 2nd Guards Army was the elite of the Soviet elite, so that the 57th Panzer Army was dealing with two powerful armies at the same time, and the disparity in strength was obvious.
It has been pointed out that since the 57th Panzer Army had reached a position 30 kilometers away from Paulus, no matter what the consequences were, even if Paulus did not break out to the west, and the 57th Panzer Army had exhausted and rushed into the encirclement, did Paulus still have more than 100 armored tanks in his hands?
In fact, Manstein's concern was not whether Paulus's 6th Army would be rescued, but that the Soviets would cut off his retreat, and if the Soviets occupied Rostov, let alone the 57th Panzer Army entering Stalingrad, it would not help to hit Moscow, because once the passage of the two battle groups a and b was cut off by the Soviets, not only would the successive positions of the German army on the southern front be divided, but the 450,000 German troops in the Caucasus would have no way to retreat, and the consequences would be unimaginable.
Of course, Manstein's decision to abandon rescue operations was also due to the Constantly Adjusting Operational Deployment of the Soviet Army, focusing on the 57th Panzer Corps. When "Operation Winter Storm" began, the Soviets quickly suspended the encirclement and annihilation of Paulus's 6th Army and focused on the counterattack on the Don Army Group, sending not only parts of the 4th Mechanized Army and the 13th Tank Army, but also the independent 234th Tank Regiment, the 235th Spitfire Tank Regiment and the 20th Anti-Tank Fighter Artillery Brigade to support, and after defeating the 48th Panzer Army, the 6th Mechanized Army and the 2nd Mechanized Army of the Guards were successively sent to the battlefield. The 57th Panzer Corps alone was difficult to cope with so many Soviet counterattacks.
Moreover, when the 57th Panzer Army was at its hardest, the 6th Panzer Division was withdrawn, and objectively speaking, the 57th Panzer Army had to face two or three times the Soviet army, at this time, the German Tiger tanks were not put into the battlefield, the Soviet t34 and Katyusha also fought as an army, and Manstein could only be a prisoner without retreating.
Through the above analysis, it can be seen that although the 57th Panzer Army alone undertook the rescue mission of "Winter Storm", it also almost destroyed the Soviet 51st Army. The difference was that the disparity in strength on the battlefield was too great, and Manstein did not know in advance that Zhukov had already assembled a strong reserve of 6 armies in the steppe behind Stalingrad, and although he wanted to make a bigger adventure, he did not expect that the Soviet army was not what it used to be, and on the basis of its poor strength, the risk was on paper.
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