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Volgagrad is in the middle of fking nowhere. Most of the city was on the West Bank the Germans never got across the river. They did come within a coupla blocks of the river in the city center though.

When the Germans lines stretched out the Romanian and Italian Armys were guarding the German 6th Armys flanks. The Russian after the freeze in November launched an attack on both flanks, easily cutting through the Italian and Romanians Armys to meet up about 75 miles west of Stalingrad.

It seemed at first that Goerings promise to supply the 6th Army might be feasible, but weather and loss of planes soon sank any hopes and things started going from bad to worse. There were several opportunities to break out, AH ordered no retreat and Paulus wouldn't disobey or take it upon himself to take the iniative to breakout. AH had ordered no retreat the previous winter and it had worked out, but this time it didn't.

Manstein was able to get the 4th Panzer Army back from the Caucauss and try an break throught to Stalingrad, I think he got to within 40 miles when his offensive stalled. The rest of the winter it was firebrigade time for Army Group Sud, fighting off one Soviet thrust after another (there was no established front line, just a gapping hole). One thing that the sacrafice of the 6th Army accomplished was being able to tie down massive amounts of Soviet troops until the end of January.

Of the 90,000 Germans who surrendered only 5000 of them ever returned to Germany by 1955. The rest had died in Soviet Prison camps. Only one man broke out from the Stalingrad Pocket and made it back to German lines. Ironically he was soon killed by a Russian Motar shell while in an Aide Station.