Winter Storm Succeeds - Any Impact?

I understand Operation Winter Storm wasn't going to succeed.

That said, let's just assume it does succeed in punching a corridor through to Stalingrad, evacuates 6th Army (personnel, not heavy equipment), and 4th Panzer Army successfully pulls back to start lines intact.

Ok. Germany has a couple hundred thousand extra men, the Soviets probably took higher losses than OTL during Winter Storm (but 0 losses reducing 6th Army), and the Germans lose 0 additional aircraft trying to support 6th Army.

Does this change anything in the short term? It isn't a war winner obviously, but is the Soviet Saturn offensive and subsequent operations seriously disrupted? I don't really see how.

It has been argued that 6th Army was most useful as OTL - holding until overrun. I don't see a compelling counter argument. Does anybody here have one?
 
I understand Operation Winter Storm wasn't going to succeed.

That said, let's just assume it does succeed in punching a corridor through to Stalingrad, evacuates 6th Army (personnel, not heavy equipment), and 4th Panzer Army successfully pulls back to start lines intact.

Ok. Germany has a couple hundred thousand extra men, the Soviets probably took higher losses than OTL during Winter Storm (but 0 losses reducing 6th Army), and the Germans lose 0 additional aircraft trying to support 6th Army.

Does this change anything in the short term? It isn't a war winner obviously, but is the Soviet Saturn offensive and subsequent operations seriously disrupted? I don't really see how.

It has been argued that 6th Army was most useful as OTL - holding until overrun. I don't see a compelling counter argument. Does anybody here have one?

Those around 200,000 men had began to starve well before operation Winter storm according to Wikipedia so they would be sent west to recover and reorganize and would be out of the fight for atleast one or two months, perhaps as long as three. Also, what do the Soviets do with the Manpower now not beeing needed for surrounding Stalingrad? Launch an operation to make an even larger pocket of army Group A that was down in Caucacus and create a much bigger German disaster?
 
That's what I'm thinking.

Of course, an extra 200k men refitting in France could cause knock on effects for Husky and Avalanche.
 
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