Not Another Stalingrad - The Matrix Games version of East Front II

Budy, SW of Kharkov: [Best played as Axis] By early February 1943, Stalingrad had fallen and Stalin's armies were again driving west through the snow-covered Donets Basin and reaching out towards Kharkov. Hitler's orders were implicit and had been heard before, especially at Stalingrad: "No retreat!" Kharkov was to be held to the last man! The hopeless task of defending the city fell to the recently arrived SS Panzer Corps under General Paul Hausser. By the 14th, encirclement by the Russian armies was almost complete. Hitler still refused to allow the SS Corps to withdraw. But to Hausser, orders, even the Fuhrer's orders, were not sacred commandments. Refusing to allow his divisions to be trapped in "another Stalingrad," on the 16th he ordered them to abandon the city and break out to the southwest towards Budy. The task of punching a hole through elements of the 15th Tank Corps and leading the indispensable SS Divisions to freedom was given to an armored kampfgruppe built around the 2nd SS Panzer Regiment.