Despite Lieutenant-Colonel Niemeyer's frank and pessimistic area briefings, Schmidt severely underestimated the build-up and capabilities of Soviet forces at Stalingrad following the initial Axis successes, a failing that he – unlike Paulus – subsequently did not attempt to excuse. Ignoring Hitler's 'Führer instruction' of 30 June 1942 that Axis formations should not liaise with their neighbours, Schmidt authorised an officer from Sixth Army, Lieutenant Gerhard Stöck, to be issued with a radio and join up with Romanian forces to the north-west of Stalingrad to help with intelligence gathering. Many false reports of the massing of Soviet forces were received from the Romanian sector, so when Stöck radioed at 5 a.m. on 19 November that an offensive (marking the start of Operation "Uranus", the Soviet encirclement of Axis forces) was about to begin, Schmidt, who was furious when disturbed by false alarms, was not informed, although he was awoken twenty minutes later when it became clear that this was no false alarm.