Manstein plunged immediately into his primary task: reaching Sixth Army. Assuming Goering’s airlift could keep Paulus’s troops alive, Manstein hoped to carve a corridor to the fortress by mounting a two-pronged attack. One would be a diversion from the west, aimed at Kalach. Hopefully, this diversion would draw Russian units away from the second drive which would start from Kotelnikovo, seventy-three miles southwest of the pocket.
