In the case of the battle at Korsun it must also be taken into account that the encirclement was comparatively shallow. This meant that elements of the units, especially rear services, were fortunate enough to find themselves outside the encirclement. For example, no less than 1,858 soldiers belonging to the rear services of the 88th Infantry Division found themselves outside the Soviet pincers.267 The net effect of all of this was that the surrounded German force numbered slightly less than 59,000 men.268
Still, this was a considerable force and the first major encirclement of German soldiers since Stalingrad in 1943. Aside from the numerical loss if this force were destroyed by the Red Army, the loss of so many of their comrades was likely to significantly lower the morale of the remaining German troops on the Eastern Front. Consequently, the German commanders seem to have felt a moral obligation to rescue the surrounded soldiers but were also undoubtedly aware of the importance of a rescue attempt on morale.
How the rescue attempt should be conducted was, however, not self-evident. Field Marshal von Manstein, commander of Army Group South, conceived a plan that, if successful, would not only save the surrounded forces, but also encircle and destroy the Soviet spearheads that had encircled the two German corps. The plan called for massing several Panzer divisions by both 1st Panzer Army and 8th Army. These were to attack in a northerly direction initially, and then turn towards the two encircled corps. In this way, the two corps would be liberated and the 5th Guards Tank Army and the 6th Tank Army, plus other Soviet units, would be surrounded instead.269
It was an ambitious plan, but Army Group South was far better provided with Panzer divisions than any other major German formation. Of the 26 combat-ready German Panzer divisions at the time, no less than 20 were subordinated to Army Group South.270 The main uncertainty was the weather.
For an army successfully to encircle its enemy had long been regarded as one of the pinnacles of military achievement. The battle between the Romans and the Carthaginians at Cannae in 216 BC is the classic example of an army encircled and annihilated. However, despite the temptations, in the two thousand years since Hannibal’s victory, his success had proven difficult to repeat. The advantage of encirclement is that it provides a way to defeat the enemy army completely, rather than just pushing it back and allowing it to fight another day. However, an army attempting to encircle a force may be at risk from encirclement itself, which is possibly why field commanders refrained from the attempt. Another plausible explanation is that vigorous pursuit offers an alternative to encirclement for the commander who intends to annihilate his opponent. Napoleon often emphasized the importance of a pursuit, when the fruits of victory in battle could be harvested.
Still, the idea of the encirclement battle retained its lure. The Schlieffen Plan was heavily influenced by the concept of encirclement, but few World War I battles can truly be described as encirclements. Partly this was because of lack of mobility except by railroads. However, the railroads were much more suitable for moving reserves behind the lines than for exploiting a breakthrough, and as they were the chief means of quick movement, encirclements were difficult to achieve, especially on the Western Front.
To the Germans the idea of an encirclement battle remained highly appealing in the interwar period, since they realized that a prolonged war was unlikely to end with a German victory. Thus a quick and decisive victory on the battlefield was regarded as indispensable in future conflicts. Merely pushing the enemy forces back would provide their opponents with time to gather overwhelming resources. At the height of the Blitzkrieg the Germans conducted numerous encirclement operations, where in particular German armor divisions cut through enemy defenses and quickly pushed behind the opposing forces, to cut them off from their supplies and place them in a hopeless situation. Encirclement operations were much in evidence on the Eastern Front in 1941, but although they inflicted immense losses on the Red Army, they failed to knock out the Soviet Union entirely.
Even though the Germans failed to achieve their aim, it does not follow that the encirclement operations were either conceptually flawed or ineptly implemented. It is common to evaluate military operations relative to the aims set forth, but that seems to be a mistake. After all, the outcome of an operation is not only the result of the planning and conduct of the operation. For example, the failure to achieve the planned result can be the result of an unrealistic ambition. Conversely, an ineptly planned and conducted operation can achieve its goal, if the goal is modest enough, or the opposition is very weak in comparison to the friendly forces. Thus, even if an operation failed to achieve its aim, it may still have been the best way to pursue an objective, even if perhaps the resources available were simply insufficient. The opposite scenario, in which a poorly planned and conducted operation succeeds only due to overwhelming resources, is also conceivable.271
German encirclement battles undoubtedly inflicted immense losses on the enemy, while keeping German losses comparatively low. The fact that the Germans did not defeat the Soviet Union can be attributed to an overwhelming task, rather than inherent flaws in the concept or poor execution of it. It is clear that the Red Army at least tried to use the same concept on the Germans during the Soviet winter offensive of 1941–42, but the results were mostly disappointing.
In many ways the German encirclement operations between 1939 and 1942 constitute the zenith of that kind of operation. Many factors converged to produce the outcome. One of the most important was the great differences in mobility between the relatively few mechanized units and the majority of the armies, which relied on the legs of humans and horses. As the German armored spearheads advanced at rates of up to 80 kilometers per day, it was almost impossible for the slower moving enemy units to escape encirclement, even if they had been ordered to retreat in time. However, when the Red Army tried to use the same idea against the Germans, it never managed to achieve the exceptionally high advance rates.272 Thus the Germans usually had time to take countermeasures. Another important factor was air supply. The Germans often managed to supply those forces that had been cut off by using the Luftwaffe. In the winter of 1941–42, air power had been instrumental in supplying several German ground formations. Stalingrad is another example where air power played a part, although the Luftwaffe did not have sufficient capacity to sustain such a large force as the 6th Army. Not only surrounded German army formations were supplied from the air. Advancing spearheads could also receive airborne supply, the most recent example being that of the 1st SS-Panzer Division during its offensive action near Lipovets on 27 January, the day before the Soviet pincers met at Zvenigorodka.273