DBWI: What could France have done better to save the French army at Stalingrad?

Titus_Pullo

Banned
On June 22, France launches Operation Charlemagne.
The armed forces of France and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, quickly advancing deep into Soviet territory. During December, having suffered multiple defeats during the summer and autumn, Soviet forces counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow and successfully drove the French Army (Grande Armee) from the environs of Moscow.

The capture of Stalingrad was important to Napoleon V for two primary reasons. Firstly, it was a major industrial city on the Volga a vital transport route between the Caspain and Northern Russia. Secondly, its capture would secure the left flank of the French armies as they advanced into the oil-rich Caucasus region – with the strategic goal of cutting off fuel to Stalin's war machine.

Napleon V had declared in a public speech in Paris on September 30 that the French army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviet encirclement of the French 6th army. French army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west of the Don.

Why was Napoleon V so adamant to outdo his more famous relative in invading Russia? Why couldn't he have just left well enough alone?
 
The USSR was agitating communists all across Europe, including the French Empire. Certain terrorist outrages in Paris provided an excuse to invade. This action united the dissendent factions with the French Empire, including royalists and other conservatives. The people of France and the Napoleonic Union as a whole supported this move, distracting the people from various social woes.
 
Mind you that it were France's weak allies that bore the responsibility for the encirclement of the 6th Army. The unreliable Prussians in the north and the ill equipped Bavarians in the south surrendered to Soviet assault.

But the 6th Army had to hold out, otherwise the 4th Armée des Chars, which had been advancing towards the Caucasus, would have been cut off too.

Napoléon V was quite correct in his decision, the 6th Army had to be sacrificed in order to save the rest of the French Southern Army Group.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
The rise of the Third Empire was reliant on victories, and you can't have victories without wars. So Nappy V needed another war, and the USSR was the ideological enemy of France.
 
Thank God the Chinese Empire dropped the Atomic Bomb on Moscow 3 months after the Stalingrad defeat, thus ending the war.
 
That victory ushered in a new Dark Age for humanity as rather than the totalitarian powers exhausting themselves they were able to focus against the British Empire, leading to the placing of missiles on Cuba and the One day war which saw almost all of Europe annihilated and did an enormous amount of damage to China and British America. Thank God my parents moved to Australia in '62, if they had stayed at home I would never have been born.
 

Titus_Pullo

Banned
Mind you that it were France's weak allies that bore the responsibility for the encirclement of the 6th Army. The unreliable Prussians in the north and the ill equipped Bavarians in the south surrendered to Soviet assault.

But the 6th Army had to hold out, otherwise the 4th Armée des Chars, which had been advancing towards the Caucasus, would have been cut off too.

Napoléon V was quite correct in his decision, the 6th Army had to be sacrificed in order to save the rest of the French Southern Army Group.

Why are the Germans always blamed for the encirclement of the 6th Army? Mind you, the Bavarians fought rather well but as you said ill-equipped they couldn't hold. Bavaria has always payed a high price for France's ill-concieved military adventures.

As for the Prussians, let me remind you that the Prussian Second Army was instrumental in aiding De Gaulle's 4th Armee de Chars in capturing Voronezh.
 
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