Stalingrad, a turning point.

Few would disagree that the loss of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad represented the turning point of the Eastern front, indeed of WWII in Europe. Heroic as the efforts of the Luftwaffe's air and ground crews were, the defenders could never have been adequately supplied by airlift alone.

Could the relief attempt mounted by General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army ever have reached the cauldron across150km of wintry steppe?

Once the panzers had punched a corridor through, 800 Lorries loaded with 3,000 tons of supplies were to restore 6th Army's fighting strength and evacuate the wounded; von Manstein intended that Paulus then initiate the breakout, spearheaded by his own remaining armor (some hundred-odd tanks).

By Christmas Eve, the relief attempt had stalled on the defenses recently manned by the 2nd Guards Army on the banks of the Myshkova river, less than fifty kilometers from the siege lines but still impossibly far for the defenders to have reached even had Paulus willed the abandonment of the city. By then the tank strength of the LVII Panzerkorps had been worn down by twelve days of bitter fighting and the men of its constituent 6, 17 and 23 Panzer-Divisions physically exhausted by constant combat in snow and cold, without any shelter on the open steppe.

Finally, the gallant and self-sacrificial relief attempt was doomed - even as the fighting for Vyerkhnye-Kumskiy approached its climax - by the Russian 'Little Saturn' onslaught (16th December) against Armee-Abteilung Hollidt and the Italian 8th Army; as the latter collapsed and Russian tank brigades threatened to overrun the airfields supplying Stalingrad, the strongest formation, 6 Panzer-Division, was urgently required on the far side of the Don.

On Christmas Eve, with tears in their eyes, the troops saluted their comrades in the cauldron - now doomed to death in combat or the slower agony of the camps, the fate most feared of all.