Sixth Army Isolated By the end of the 1942 summer campaign the
southern flank of the Eastern Front was split in two. Army
Groups A and B stood almost back to back nearly four hundred
miles apart, the one facing south along the high ridge of the
Caucasus, the other northeast along the west bank of the Don.
The whole Army Group B front on the Don had one function--to
protect the forces to the south, at first Sixth Army and Army
Group A, later also Army Group Don. That mission, not crucial as
long as the offensive kept rolling, had fallen chiefly to the
allied armies. In mid-December Hungarian Second Army and Italian
Eighth Army still held the 200-mile front on the Don south of
Voronezh. Their future performance was predictable: of the three
allied armies the Rumanians had been considered the best. A
glance at the map reveals how vulnerable Army Groups Don and A
were; they dangled like puppets on strings at the ends of the
few railroads that reached into the steppe east of the Don and
Donets. (Map 5) The critica