Why did Manstein fail to bail the 6th Army out at Stalingrad?

Answer 1

That's easy, Mainstein did not have enough armour and men to breakthrough. Paulus' 6th Army made no attempt to breakout to meet him, the result was the destruction of the 6th Army.

Answer 2

Fail to bail out? He tried, but was not given enough resources or support to carry out the breakthrough needed to rescue 6th Army. Add that to the fact that the weather was atrocious, Goering's promised help from the Luftwaffe never materialized, and that Hitler gave specific instructions for 6th Army to NOT try and break out westward, towards von Manstein's relief effort. I would not fault von Manstein on this at all, but Hitler himself. If he had allowed the breakout while 6th Army still had sufficient strength, then I believe a great part of the army would have survivied, though most material would have been lost. Huge military blunder attributed to Hitler.

Answer 3

he couldn't! didn't have the resources to do so. the Logistic in Russia where a nightmare at best, hitler gave him the impossible, they had stayed there way to long, it was bast critical mass as could be said. He could not expose his own glaring weaknesses to the Soviets, and reaching out to relive the 6th would have done so, an for a long period of time, which would have doomed his forces as well, and a lot quicker. Hitler was his own worst enemy as the war went on, he as never a genius as some seem to think, he had superior equipment and the blitz surprise working for him, but a time went on, and it got down to the drudgery of war, he mad to many very costly decisions, and the whole Stalingrad thing was a test of stubbornness, not strategy. Manstien did what could do best with what he ad, an it's easy to arm chair it, and make decisions when your not in the thick of it, and don't really know all the ramifications weather real or not at the time.

Answer 4

One reason only..The Colossal Arrogant Stupidity of Adolf Hitler who would not allow Manstein to evacuate Stalingrad and therby save The 6th Army under any circumstances.

Answer 5

In addition to the other responses given, Goering backed himself into a corner by promising that he could resupply the German Army At Stalingrad by air. Didn't work. Not enough planes and awful weather. Even the aircraft engines would freeze.

Answer 6

His commander in chief was an aggressively ignorant strategist who insisted on no surrender, under penalty of death.

Answer 7

1) Not enough armour & manpower
2) Reluctance of Paulus to fight his way out
3) Superior Russian numerity

Answer 8

Hitler gave the order to stay.

Answer 9

January 1943, the same month the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad, the unconditional surrender proclamation prompted Ulrich von Hassel to conclude that the Allies had bailed out Hitler from his disaster at Stalingrad. Hassel was a conservative lawyer and career diplomat who served in Spain, Denmark, Yugoslavia, and finally as German ambassador to Italy from 1932 to 1938 when he was dismissed for opposing Germany's military alliance with fascist Italy. He opposed Hitler's foreign policy from the outset, predicting that it would lead Germany to war. During World War II, Hassel used his international contacts to arrange secret meetings with British and American officials, and hoped that a successful coup would translate into an honorable peace treaty with Britain and the US. He also worked closely with co-conspirators Dr Carl Goerdeler, who in 1937 resigned his post as mayor of Leipzig in protest over the removal of the statue of Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn, finance minister Johannes Popitz who submitted his resignation over Hitler's persecution of Jews, and army chief-of-staff general Ludwig Beck who was the leader of the planned coup, to lay the foundations of the new Germany they hoped to build after a successful coup. Like Goerdeler, Hassel dreamed of uniting Europe into a family of nations under the principle of mutual respect and adherence to international law. He joined the inner circle of the conspiracy and became intimately involved in the political planning of the coup.

Operation Valkyrie was the official code name for an emergency contingency plan designed to protect the Nazi regime against the potential threat of serious internal disturbances or uprisings during World War II. The presence of millions of foreign workers, compelled to work as forced laborers, was the most likely reason for such concern. Valkyrie was the brainchild of General Friedrich Olbricht who served under Home Army Commander General Friedrich Fromm. What Hitler did not know was that Olbricht and later home army chief of staff Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg were secretly transforming Valkyrie into an elaborate coup d'etat plan to overthrow the Nazi regime.

A number of British and US government officials, diplomats, intelligence officers, and even generals, opposed the unconditional surrender demand, including General George C Marshal and secretary of state Cordell Hull. But Roosevelt was adamant because he understood that the US public, with its long isolationist tradition, only went to war to fight evil, which required unconditional surrender. There was a divergence between Roosevelt and Churchill in their separate world views. Roosevelt envisioned a post-war cooperative alliance with the Soviet Union to prevent the emergence of neo-fascism while Churchill saw the need to use a conservative if not neo-fascist Germany as a post-war bulwark against communism. In deference to the more powerful partner, Churchill throughout his tenure as prime minister during World War II never dared deviate from his policy of absolute silence toward the German resistance from both the left and the right and the conservative conspirators who sought to overthrow Hitler. Despite repeated appeals from such conservative figures as Dr Carl Goerdeler, Churchill's government gave no quarter to any peace overtures from the German conspirators for fear that Stalin could offer a better deal to the German left.

The fact that the Soviet Union was bearing the brunt of the war against Nazi Germany was undoubtedly the overriding factor in Churchill's policy of absolute silence and Roosevelt's unconditional surrender demand. For Roosevelt, it was vital not to give Stalin any incentive that would tempt him to strike a separate deal with Nazi Germany that would lead to a separate peace. Generals Paul Von Hindenberg and Erich Ludendorff had pulled off such an affair with new Soviet Russia in early 1918, but too late to allow them to move their forces westward to smash the Anglo-French lines before US forces arrived. It was very likely that the Allies might never have won if Stalin, having regained the 1939 Soviet border, suddenly backed out of the war.

The fact that the Western powers had not yet opened a second front (and would not do so until June 1944) was tempting enough for Stalin to seek a separate peace. Churchill and Roosevelt were fully aware of this. Moreover, the United States was eager to get the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan since the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb was still years away from completion in 1942 and success was not totally guaranteed.

Throughout 1942-43, Hitler irately refused to negotiate a ceasefire with the Soviet Union. But the staunchly anti-communist German conspirators were far more intent on securing peace first with the West. Stalin made no effort to conceal his peace feelers to Germany, most likely to frighten his Western allies into speeding up their opening of a second front. Thus an obstacle to a negotiated peace with Germany was locked in place by a balance of calculations from both the left and the right among the Allies.

In Japan, the unconditional surrender requirement that included the prospect of eliminating the emperor led to the need to use nuclear weapons to end the war. In the end, the US kept the emperor despite his less-than-titular role in the planning and prosecution of the war, which had been the key condition in Japanese overtures to surrender before Hiroshima. There was no regime change in Japan after the war as in President George W Bush's aim for the "axis of evil" - Iran, Iraq and North Korea