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I am about two thirds of the way through Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad" and have reached the point where Operation Uranus has reached Kalach and the 6th Army has been encircled East of the Don. Beevor's repeated comments on the inaction of Paulus and a number of his staff to the impending threat has led me to wonder whether an officer of different origins and beliefs could have prevented the disaster than occurred OTL.

It seems to me that Paulus' nature as a staff officer made him more hesitant and timid when it came to action. Could another General such as a surviving Reichenau at the head of the 6th Army have an effect on the siege? For example, could a 6th Army still under his command, or under the command of another capable field officer, be more likely to capture Stalingrad either on the march or quickly into the siege? What effect would an early capture have on the remainder of the campaign? Would it enable the 6th Army to spread it's divisions along the Volga and Don and reduce the frontage manned by Romanian troops?

Now, if this mystery commander has no effect early on and the siege goes mostly as OTL, could the general have an effect on the late siege/Soviet Offensive? What I mean is could another general besides Paulus be more aware and worried about his weak flanks and take action to respond, such as keeping the XIV. Panzerkorps and it's Panzer/Motorized Divisions relatively intact rather than sending them into the city. The same goes for the 14th and 24th Panzer division, both having lost tremendous sums of men and equipment in brutal claustrophobic street fighting that their units were not suited for. Say these had either been kept fresh or pulled back out of the fighting when a Soviet offensive was apparent, could they fight off the mechanized thrusts from the Northwest and Southeast? Beevor even states that a Soviet Mechanized Corps was roughly equivalent to a German Panzer Division, and a Mechanized Army roughly equal to a Panzerkorps.

These of course are just assumptions based off of the narrative presented by Beevor in his book, and aren't based off of multi-source in depth research. I just wanted to get an idea of what all of you fine ladies and gentlemen think about the possibility of another Commander of 6th Army impacting events at Stalingrad
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