We're 25 years away from US secretary of state Kyle Rittenhouse saying something along the lines of "The Holocaust may have killed 200 people but that didn't justify the Soviet war of aggression against Germany" on C-SPAN
A lot more mummified officials will have to crumble away before we see zoomer chuds in high office, may take longer than 25 years for Rittenhouse to get his opening
TBH, he didn't have other options, because if he commited most of the available forces to Caucasus direction, the Red Army would just cut them off (and basically tried to do this after Stalingrad, although Germans managed to pull most of the forces out already).
Fair point but we can all agree he fucked up by denying the 6th army at Stalingrad to get out before the Soviets sprung the trap even though Paulus was begging for it. It's a small consolation that one of history's greatest monsters was a delusional fuckhead who got worse and worse as the war was nearing the end. But it's also pretty funny.
Paulus only began to ask Hitler for allowing retreat after the operation Uranus had started, and it was already too late. Breakout was discussed later, but it was deemed too risky, because if Germans left fortified positions, they would be easily overrun by Soviet tanks.
It was less because he was an idiot and more because the Soviets had managed to completely fool German intelligence services, who mistakenly assumed that the Red Army has no more reserves.
You might ironize but this is really the position of tons of Slavic neonazis: "Hitler had good ideas, but he fucked it up because Germans were just a half-Jewish mongrels and WE (insert specific ethnic group of whomever is speaking that) are the TRU ARYANS!"