This sounds like a grade school fight. "You only got a punch on me because I let you."
Do you even have a basic understanding of how the relief attempt unfolded? The Soviets were not confident they knew where the relief attempt would come from and which route it would take, so they held back a large reserve until the relief attempt began and was properly identified as the relief attempt while massing yet more forces elsewhere to smash. They then committed enough of that reserve to stop it, holding back the rest in case more German forces appeared or the 6th Army attempted a breakout. In the mean time, Soviet forces further to the north undertook Operation Little Saturn, which destroyed the Italian 8th Army and threatened to capture Rostov. Manstein's choice at that stage was one of two options. Either one, he could try and keep banging his head against the Soviet wall to get to the 6th Army which, even if the ASBs decided to personally intervene to let him get through, he would have to spend weeks waiting to get back up to strength in order to conduct a requisite fighting retreat, during which time the Soviets would take Rostov and thereby effectively reclose the encirclement (assuming they don't do so anyways by attacking the corridor following the arrival of the 2nd Guards Army) adding both Manstein's forces and the entirety of Army Group B too it. Or he could abandon the relief attempt, turn around, and deal with the threat to his rear while the 6th Army continued to tie down 7 Soviet armies. Being an intelligent general, Manstein went with the latter option.
Could three armies be committed instantly? Where were they at the time?
At the start of Operation Winter Storm, the Stalingrad Front had eleven armies, including the aforementioned 2nd Guards which was being deployed from the STAVKA reserve. Seven of those armies were guarding the encirclement itself and one manning the frontline to the southwest over which Manstein attacked. The remaining two (5th Shock and 5th Tank), along with some independent corps, were held as a Front reserve to block either a breakout attempt that got through the initial defending forces or a relief attempt. In the end, they only had to commit one army and one mechanized corps to stop Manstein, with further commitments later to push him back.
sixth army and elements of 4th panzer.
Even ignoring that Hitler won't let 6th Army do that, they were already too weak to even breakthrough the two armies guarding the end of the encirclement closest, much less deal with any potential reserves the Soviets send their way.
Pulling of Russian forces from one area has an effect on other areas where they could have otherwise been.
Nah, the Soviets don't need to pull forces from another area. They already had a powerful reserve on hand for just this eventuality and were even reinforcing it, with the 2nd Guards Army on the way, when Manstein's offensive began.
IOTL 10th Panzer was committed to Africa 8 days before the Soviet counteroffensive, and used in France before then (at Dieppe) due to the possibility of an Allied landing. It was refitting, but obviously kept for reserve due to fear of where the American landing would be.
And would most likely continue to do so because just because the American's enter in June 1942 instead of December 1941 (or, more probably, January-February 1942 instead of December 1941) does not mean they will automatically discount the prospect of an American landing somewhere in late-1942 as they can't be sure that the Americans haven't been preparing and coordinating for one with the British even before they officially entered the war.
That's completely possible. However, being that Nordlicht is a no go and the soonest 10th Panzer would be committed would be the beginning of Fall 1942, Stalingrad is the obvious destination as the Germans were (if my memory serves me right) pulling out replacements that would have gone to other parts of the front and sending them south to the Stalingrad sector.
So your pretending that it either replaces those replacements in their place on the front
and that it doesn't get thrown into the city battle and torn up there. The "ifs" just keep piling up...
plus hundreds of aircraft too.
Between improved Soviet air defense measures, a resurgent VVS, and the inclement weather, the Luftwaffe was unable to provide any meaningful assistance to the ground forces. Even before Uranus, in fact, they were failing to provide adequate support despite still having the upper hand. "Ironically, at a stage when the Luftwaffe held and almost unchallenged air superiority, its air attacks grew fairly ineffective." ["Black Cross, Red Star," vol.3, p.214] Flying in clear skies Stukas were not able to suppress Soviet artillery firing across the Volga, nor close the Volga to shipping or interdict the rail routes. Concentrations of Soviet flak were also able to deter and diminish Axis air attacks to manageable levels, even when their fighters were no longer flying.
As I noted to Crimson King below, the Germans retained the overwhelming bulk of their close air support in the Eastern Front, which is the part that would actually matter the most in the subsequent fighting. And yet, the Luftwaffe was unable to successfully detect nor check the sudden appearance of the Soviet tank armies during Operation Uranus, despite belatedly conducting furious air attacks on several of the advancing Soviet formations. In the end Stalingrad was one of the Soviet's greatest exploitation successes, and it was conducted into the teeth of Luftwaffe air power. Certainly the Germans at Stalingrad could have used the forces they sent to the Med to better resupply the 6th Army and keep it in the fight a little longer (assuming they don't get blown up when the Soviets overrun their air fields during Little Saturn anyways), but to argue that these aircraft would somehow have changed the results of Uranus is quite a reach.
The head of OKH on October 23rd, in a supplement to an earlier order, told the army that "the Russian is at this time hardly in a position to begin a large offensive with long-range goals" (Inside Hitler's High Command, Page 190).
The Fuhrer's Luftwaffe Adjutant also noted that Hitler was misinformed about the state of 6th Army's reserves, particularly the 14th and 22nd Panzer Divisions. (
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, page 231).
Interestingly enough, you never counter my argument that a 500-600% increase in German tank reserves may have a crucial impact on the battle,
If you actually read my post, that's because I all but flat out stated that (A) it would and (B) they wouldn't even need the 10th Panzer to do so. As Antony Beevor noted:
"Paulus has often been blamed for not disobeying Hitler later, once the scale of the disaster was clear, but his real failure as a commander was his failure to prepare to face the threat. It was his own army which was threatened. All he needed to do was to withdraw most of his tanks from the wasteful battle in the city to prepare a strong mechanized force ready to react rapidly. Supply and ammunition dumps should have been reorganized to ensure that their vehicles were kept ready to move at short notice. This comparatively small degree of preparation - and disobedience to Fuhrer headquarters - would have left the Sixth Army in a position to defend itself effectively at the crucial moment." -
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege Page 228-229.
Repairing the tanks from the mice problem was something they could have done at any time prior to the Soviet offensive. It was never done because the Germans just never saw the need. They even found it somewhat amusing when they first identified the problem prior to Uranus. They won't see the need to keep the 10th Panzer in reserve either, even if we handwave continued German concerns about the Americans and assume it gets deployed to the Eastern Front, the Stalingrad sector, and
not inside Stalingrad itself.
which in my mind concedes that a delay in Torch could have possibly had a big effect in the East for the Germans.
That's because your mind looks at what the Germans
could do and then automatically assume they
would do it. There is a significant difference. What the Germans could do is based on their physical resources. What they would do is based on their actual historical organization, beliefs and skills. As I noted above, even OTL, without the 10th Panzer, the Germans could have assembled an adequately strong enough panzer reserve for the 6th Army to beat off Operation Uranus. But they didn't and they didn't do so for reasons that had nothing to do with Operation Torch.
For example, according to Adam Tooze a Nazi Germany operating with perfect hindsight could have committed its limited stocks of strategic resources to maximize production in 1941/42, rather than in 1944/45 when it was too late, as they did historically. Tooze says that the argument that the Germans failed to mobilize is incorrect, or at least incomplete, and the issue was the Germans had a tightly time limited window in which they could go to maximum production due to limited stocks of resources, wear on machinery, and allocations of manpower. In any event, assuming that to be the case, then the Soviet materiel advantage in the Summer of 1943 could have been significantly offset or pre-empted had Hitler made the decision to industrially go for broke years earlier than he did. Of course the German's reason for NOT doing so was that it would have drained their war economy, and he was hoping for a quick war against Russia allowing Germany to then turn back and deal with the British Empire and America. Essentially, full commitment of resources against the Soviets would have meant a tacit admission that Germany would be unable to beat to the Western Allies, which wasn't the game the Nazis wanted to play.
So it wasn't
overall inevitable that the Germans would find themselves outnumbered by Soviet equipment on the Eastern Front (ignoring for now questions of who out-generalled who), but it was inevitable by the end of 1942. The decisions that would ensure that it would be so had already been made years prior.
Similarly, at the operational level, had the Germans had far better intelligence on Soviet numbers and intentions then they would have been able to position what limited forces they still had for better effect, and absolutely achieve better results. I already gave an example as to how this could have worked at Uranus but another example is Citadel. Had 4th Panzer Army been reinforced and troops not dispersed to respond to diversions then it is absolutely the case that the Germans could have done better against the Belgorod-Kharkov offensive than they did historically. But again, barring some hand waving for a singular intelligence coup, achieving the kind organization capable of reliably providing this kind of insight requires a top to bottom shake up and reform of the whole broken German intelligence apparatus for the Eastern Front. It also requires leaders who still believed they could win the war to accept some very harsh truths such honest intelligence would have told them. However, in the historical context of poor German intelligence then defensive failures were inevitable, and postulating scenarios where the Germans consistently have their forces positioned perfectly to block the Soviets is hardly realistic.
So certainly had the Germans consistently had the intelligence to ideally position their forces in anticipation of Soviet moves it would have been possible for them to secure a far better result in the war than OTL. Once again however, fixing this problem would have required years of prior investment in a superior intelligence organization, and was not something that was suddenly going to be fixed in 1942 or '43.
On the contrary, it meant everything. If one imagines an ASB making both sides' numbers perfectly 1 against 1 equal on the Eastern Front in 1942, the Soviet Union would have been decisively defeated.
Way to miss my point. Read my quote again: I said that the Soviet numerical superiority
by itself meant nothing. We have repeated instances in history where the side with even more overwhelming numerical and material superiority loses battles, and occasionally even the whole war, loses them catastrophically. The Soviets in the first stage of the Winter War against the Finns. The Americans (with the notable exception of the Marine Corps) at the Yalu River against the Chinese First Stage Offensive. The Iraqis against the Iranians. The Arabs against the Israelis
repeatedly. The Libyans against the Chadians in the Toyota War. In some of these examples, the advantage in numbers and/or material by the loser was even more egregious then what the Soviets enjoyed against the Germans at any point in 1941-45. The Axis inferiority in numerical forces relative to the Soviets did not doom them to lose. Their failure to properly read their enemy in '42-'43 and deploy their limited forces accordingly did.
Very doubtful. The Axis forces were severely overextended and suffering from supply problems.
None of which prevented them from defeating Operation Mars, where their forces had been deployed properly to absorb an attack.
The Luftwaffe was not "overwhelmingly committed" to the Eastern Front by the end of 1942.
Yes it was. In approximately 2/3rds of its air strength was committed to the east in 1942, as was the bulk of the attrition inflicted upon it. And even as late as Kursk, nearly 85% of German close air support assets were deployed on the Eastern Front.
Because in the cases of Operation Blue and Operation Mars, they didn't apply to anything like the same extent. The big defeats suffered by the Red Army during the former occurred in the opening phases of the offensive,
Was there supper to be more to this thought? Because that's my point: Operation Blau ocurred when the Germans were already pretty far down their supply chain and well into their demotorization... and still inflicted major defeats on the Red Army. That the Red Army
then responded to those defeats by pulling off a fighting retreat until the German forces hit their culmination point doesn't change that the Germans inflicted those defeats.
and the defeat of the latter occurred in an area where the front had been static for months.
You are aware that the description "where the front had been static for months" is the describes the Stalingrad sector of the front in November 1942 quite perfectly, right? What, with the front having been static for months and all...
To an economy that was always on the brink of collapse (as the USSR's was in 1942) even relatively small amounts of assistance is very helpful.
Except the near-universal assessment by economic historians is that WAllied assistance in 1942 was inadequate. Whether it be Overy, Tooze, or Harrisson, to name the big ones, they all say the same thing: WAllied aid didn't make a difference in 1941-42.
Completely ignoring the blockade, which economically crippled the non-German portions of the post-Fall of France Grossraum and heavily weighed down even the German economy.
Which still left the Germans by the end of '42 with at least twice as large an economy as the USSR.
There is absolutely nothing "stunning" about four army groups with massive to one superiority in all categories of weaponry being able to destroy a single opposing army group.
Well, of course you aren't stunned, because you clearly don't have the first actual clue of how monumentally difficult a task it is to organize, supply, and coordinate so many men and machines in a free-wheeling advance over hundreds to thousands of kilometers. I bet you think Barbarossa was even less of big deal, right? After all, the Germans on 1944 could still at least put up a competent defense on the tactical-operational level unlike the Red Army of 1941...
Even leaving that bit of sarcasm aside, the Soviets didn't obtain as much as 40:1 local superiorities because they outnumbered the Germans by 40:1 across the whole front or even in that sector of the front... even a glance at the numbers show they didn't. They achieved such superiority the same way the Germans had: by maneuvering and concentrating their forces.
Because the Heer would be greatly outnumbered both in manpower and in equipment.
Not remotely. If the only difference between the 1941 Red Army and the 1944 Red Army was their manpower and equipment, then I would be saying the Germans would be the ones coming out on top. The real difference between the '41 and the '44 Red Army is in their skill and that gulf is
vaaaast. In 1941, they were still reliant on human wave assaults and haphazard artillery bombardments to make their breakthrough. In '44 and '45, they relied upon small, task-oriented assault groups with heavy engineer and firepower support closely coordinated with intricate artillery assault plans. Their '41 armored formations fumbled about, shedding equipment just by moving and shattered upon engaging in combat. By '44-'45, their armored formations used tactics relying on the firepower and maneuver of tanks and assault guns. They constantly probed, bypassed, and attacked deeply. They prevented the establishment of coherent defenses for as long as they could and, even in the event a German counter-attack managed to break them, they would quickly rally and reform. And in '41, only the senior operational and strategic commanders dared show initiative, whereas by '44-'45 it was present at all levels.
Rather hard to effect daring penetrations when the opposition massively outnumbers and outguns one's own side in every way.
Which didn't stop the Germans in 1941-42. They cut through Soviet tactical defenses in hours and the operational defenses in days despite facing similar or even worse numerical odds then they did in their failed attacks against the Soviets in 1943-1945.
There is absolutely nothing here that doesn't boil down to "overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers."
Clearly you didn't even read what I wrote, because there is nothing there which says that. A detachment of 6-700 men seizing a vital bridge before the enemy can even organize a defense so the forces behind them can pass over it. Or an advanced force leading the main body of armor
around an enemy strongpoint, thereby leaving it cut off and isolated and vulnerable to being destroyed by the follow-on forces is not "overwhelming the enemy with superior numbers". These work whether you outnumber the enemy 3:1 or are outnumbered by the enemy 3:1
Now it is true that the Soviets massed overwhelming local superiorities at the initial breakthrough stage of their successful offensives... but then so did the Germans. So did the Anglo-Americans. So did the
Japanese. Overwhelming local superiority is a basic military perquisite for a successful breakthrough. Indeed the failure of a number of Soviet offensives in 1941-43 (Mars included) and even a few Anglo-American ones in 1943-44 boil down to them failing to adequately deplpoy their forces for the attack so as to turn their strategic or operational numerical superiority into a tactical one. Similarly, the failure of a number of Axis defenses in this period (including their failure at Stalingrad) boil down to defend to the failure of the Germans to deploy their forces so as to the offset enemies offensive concentrations. Ditto for the failure of Soviet and WAllied defenses in 1940-42. And there-in lies the hypocrisy of it all: when the Germans maneuver to obtain massive local superiorities it's "German military genius tactics" but when the Soviets, or sometimes even WAllies, do the
exact same thing it's "blundering Soviets/WAllies overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers".