Army Group Don
Although the LVII Panzer Corps was reluctantly released to Army Group Don, by Army Group A, the 17th Panzer Division was ordered back to its original area of concentration, and did not prepare to go back to Army Group Don until 10 days after it had been asked for. In light of the troubles in building up sufficient forces, and seeing that the Soviets were concentrating more mechanization on the Chir River, Manstein decided to launch Operation Winter Storm using the 4th Panzer Army. Manstein hoped that the 6th Army would launch an offensive of its own, from the opposite side, upon the receipt of the code signal Thunderclap. Manstein was gambling on Hitler accepting that the only plausible method to avoid the demise of the 6th Army was allowing it to break out, and assumed that General Paulus would agree to order his forces to escape the Stalingrad pocket. On 10 December, Manstein communicated to Paulus that the relief operation would commence in 24 hours.