Battle of Stalingrad but Paulus – ordered not to surrender by Hitler – did not respond. The German High Command informed Paulus, "Every day that the army holds out longer helps the whole front and draws away the Russian divisions from it." The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields, at Pitomnik on 16 January 1943 and Gumrak on the night of 21/22 January, meant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded. The third and last serviceable runway was at the Stalingradskaya flight school, which
Battle of Stalingrad later by General Maximilian von Weichs. The start of "Case Blue" had been planned for late May 1942. A number of German and Romanian units that were to take part in "Blau", however, were besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Delays in ending the siege pushed back the start date for "Blau" several times, and the city did not fall until the end of June. Operation Fridericus I by the Germans against the "Isium bulge", pinched off the Soviet salient in the Second Battle of Kharkov, and resulted in the envelopment of a large Soviet force between 17 May and