ne, surrounded, and at the mercy of the Russians and the cold winter. Since Hitler had believed that this offensive would not take too long, and since it was started in the summer, the soldiers were not provided with winter clothes. They were running low on supplies thanks to the lack of supplies being delivered by the Luftwaffe. (The Luftwaffe could only fly in about 100 tons a day while they needed over 500.) Only one day did the airlift provide enough supplies. The planes brought wounded soldiers home and they also brought mail from the soldiers bidding farewell to the people they knew in Germany, because they knew they would die. When General Paulus saw the miserable conditions his soldiers were in, he sent someone to plead with Hitler. In response, Hitler told him to hold out and that reinforcements would arrive. Conditions were miserable. Temperatures dropped to negative thirty degrees Celsius. Because of the lack of supplies the daily ration for soldiers was dropped from an already low 100 grams of bread a day, to 50 grams a day. One German soldier described the misery that they faced, "Only the toe of jackboot or an arm frozen to stone could remind you that what was now an elongated white hummock had quite recently been a human being." German soldiers had to slaughter their horses for food and then later they had to dig up the horses' bones to eat.On January 8, 1943 the Russians demanded that the Germans surrender, but they refused and two days later the Russians attacked. Paulus radioed to Hitler that it was hopeless, but Hitler insisted that Paulus would not surrender. By the 25th of January 1943 the Russians took the last German airfield; thus totally cutting off the flow of supplies. By this point the German army was almost out of food and ammunition. Thousands of soldiers were wounded but could not be helped because there were no medical supplies. On January 31, 1943 Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal and ...
