This is episode 26 and Field Marshal Manstein is saddling up with a view to saving the Sixth Army and General Paulus trapped inside the Kessel or cauldron in an operation called Winter Storm.

Russian General Zhukov has a surprise of his own and its called Operation little Saturn.

With all these operations going on, we’ll need to do a little historical surgery to make sure it’s not too confusing.

What was apparent to Field Marshal Manstein as he took charge of the remnants of the Axis forces outside the Kessel was that there were none capable of serious resistance if the Russians decided to change direction and focus their attention westwards instead of the trapped Sixth Army.

Still more perilous was the situation in the south towards the Sea of Azov and across the communications of the extended Army Group A. The notion of “recapturing positions previously held by us” which was Hitler’s order was an absurdity.

The German units outside the Kessel were little more than the fighting strength of a corps, and they were spread over two hundred miles. Manstein’s first task was to collect sufficient strength to give him tactical options. The disorganized state of the railway system and the fact that Partisan activity had made large stretches of the line unusable prolonged any journey.

By now the Russians had moved 34 divisions across the Don River – twelve from Beketonskaya bridgehead and 22 divisions from Kremenskaya. The 48th panzer corps had been defeated by Russian tank units, and now the Red Army infantry turned eastwards and began building an iron-clad ring around the trapped Sixth Army.