Opening any history textbook, you will find out that Paulus's 6th army was surrounded on November 23, 1942. However, the Soviet media hid this fact almost until January 1943! And yes, you got it right - this is a sensation.
What kind of media - you ask? Yes, the most reliable are the central newspapers of the USSR for November and December 1942. I read all the issues of Krasnaya Zvezda and Izvestia in three months, watched the official newsreel, as well as this book.
So, on November 24, Krasnaya Zvezda published the first data on our offensive, which, it would seem, almost completely fit into the well-known context - they took the city of Kalach and interrupted both railways to Stalingrad. However, there is nothing about the encirclement and about the fact that our armies have united in the Kalach area.
So what, you ask? Of course, on the 24th it was still too early to talk about the environment, the information needed to be checked, clarified and all that - a day, another had to wait and then announced. Well, let's wait.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that there was an obvious time lag of about a day between the newspapers and radio messages of the Sovinformburo. Accordingly, what was published in Krasnaya Zvezda on November 24, the country heard on the radio from Levitan on November 23.
We wait, wait, open the Red Star for November 27, 1942 and carefully read it. So what? And "nothing" - there is no environment! There is an offensive, we take cities, we take trophies, everything is fine, but there is no "boiler"!
By the way, in the Soviet newspapers of that time there was a very entertaining heading - "Exposing Goebbels' false messages." There, our people were annealed from the heart - Scandals, Intrigues, Investigations from NTV are resting (just the term "Master of Lies" is worth something).
Promotional video:
And on November 27, this section is just coming out! Well, here God himself ordered to expose and publicly declare the truth - we surrounded you, and you, Germans, lie further!
But no! They exposed some kind of electric machine gun and a new supertank flamethrower. Environment? No, you haven't!
December 1 comes, we open the newspaper once again and see … well, you guessed it.
The Fuehrer's headquarters has already developed a plan for Operation Wintergewitter to unblock Paulus's army, and we have complete silence. It is only from indirect evidence that we can guess that something strange is happening. For example, information that 72 German transport planes were shot down in less than one week. This number can be shot down only on one condition - if they fly across the front line.
Accordingly, our hypothesis is as follows. The silence of the situation of the formal encirclement of the 6th Army of Paulus means that the Soviet command assessed the situation at Stalingrad as so unstable that it simply did not dare to call it encirclement.
Before their eyes stood Rzhev, the successful breakthrough of the Germans from the Demyansk boiler and the understanding that Manstein could strike at any moment.
Thus, the Soviet leadership at the beginning of December 1942 did not assess the operational situation at Stalingrad as a "final encirclement", which was objectively reflected in the suppression of the fact that Paulus was blocked in the media.
As you may have guessed, there is no point in waiting for a message about the environment before they deal with Manstein. Therefore, we immediately moved to December 23, 1942, when it became known that our offensive on the Middle Don was crowned with success and, accordingly, the immediate threat of blockade hung over Manstein himself.
The field marshal put his troops into trucks and drove out of harm's way - back in the direction of Rostov-on-Don.
In fact, it was on this day that the fate of Paulus' 6th army was decided - the encirclement became a reality.
Newspaper for December 23 - no information about the environment …
By the way, one must understand that in addition to the official reports, the newspapers apparently also published "exclusive materials" of war correspondents from various sectors of the Battle of Stalinrad.
And as you may have guessed, until the end of December, the word "environment" or "cauldron" was not mentioned in any such article. That is, the editorial staff of the newspapers had a clear direction neither sideways nor jump-wise to use this term.
On the other hand, we know perfectly well how the "propaganda machines" (in the good sense of the word) of the belligerent countries worked in those days. All failures were hushed up or leveled out, and the smallest successes, on the contrary, were exorbitantly inflated.
Thus, we come to a paradoxical conclusion (and there is no other way in conspiracy theories) - the silence in the media of the actual state of affairs tells us that the surrounding of the Stalingrad group of Germans on November 23, 1942, was perceived by the Soviet command as a failure!
Accordingly, our hypothesis is this - Operation Uranus was not planned, as the encirclement and gradual contraction of the ring, as we are now presented with hindsight! Apparently, they planned to instantly surround and immediately, in the coming days, crush the entire enemy grouping - right up to Stalingrad itself.
This hypothesis is supported by the well-known fact that our Headquarters underestimated the resources of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht. It was assumed that no more than 100,000 soldiers would be surrounded, but in reality there were about 300,000 of them.
Therefore, when by the end of November it became clear to the Soviet command that "the blitzkrieg did not work out," an order was given in the media - to be silent about the actual encirclement. Away from sin.
Krasnaya Zvezda for December 25, where the Stalingrad cauldron is first mentioned.
Moreover, so that you understand how shaky everything was, I will remind you of one more significant fact. At the end of December 1942, General Larin, commissar of the Second Guards Army of Malinovsky, shot himself at a hotel in Moscow.
The general committed suicide because he was sure that everything was over and Manstein broke through to Stalingrad.
As a result, only on December 25, 1942, the country learned that the Germans at Stalingrad, it turns out, were surrounded. Such is the conspiracy story.