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Stalingrad: Russians consider it to be the pivotal battle of the Great Patriotic War (WW2). Their defense of that city on the Volga stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning point of the entire conflict in favor of the Allies. It was a horrific struggle. Entire divisions on both sides disappeared in minutes amid smoke and flame and blood. In the same way that particular locations from the US Civil War have become iconic – The Cornfield (Antietam); The Peach Orchard (Gettysburg) – so have places in Stalingrad (now Volgograd):
The Grain Elevator
The Red October Tractor Factory
Pavlov’s House
And it went on in bloody stalemate for months. The brutality of the battle was noted in a journal found on German Lieutenant Weiner of the 24th Panzer Division:
The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.
The grinding brutality suddenly changed on November 19, 1942.
The city of Stalingrad formed the tip of a German salient held by the 1,000,000 men of German Army Group B. The hard core of Army Group B was in and around Stalingrad itself. The 300,000 men of the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army had been fighting not house to house but room to room in the city. Behind them, stretching away to the northwest and southwest of the city across dozens of miles of empty steppe, the shoulders of the salient were held by overextended and undergunned formations of Romanians, Hungarians, and Italians. On the 19th of November, their turn would come.
For their part, the Soviets had been thinking about a counteroffensive around Stalingrad since early fall. Although the fighting consumed men and material at a fearsome rate, the Soviet command poured in just enough replacements to keep the defense from being overwhelmed. They began compiling a strategic reserve. By mid-November, they were ready. There were 1,000,000 men, 13,000 artillery pieces, and 800 tanks aimed at the soft shoulders of the salient. The first hammer blows fell on the Romanians on the steppe west of the city. While they managed to repulse the first and second assault, the third broke through, and by the afternoon of the 20th they were in headlong retreat. So were the Hungarians on their left. The cold and snow-filled path of their withdrawals was marked by acrid columns of black smoke. A similar situation happened south. By the 23rd of November, the Soviet forces had encircled the Germans inside the city. Fewer than 5,000 of the 300,000 troops trapped in Stalingrad would ever see Germany again.
Discussion (10)
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An army whose operational strength was deep penetration throws away their advantages by attempting to occupy a city when the school solution is: invest and isolate.
In all the reading I’ve done on the war in the east, I’ve never seen a logical explanation.
Now, we can see the Germans were stuck in 1942. There were no critical strategic objectives leading to a knock out blow. Their fuel supply was poor, causing Hitler to prioritize a thrust into the oil fields of the Caucuses. Given the disparity in tactical abilities, Army Group B should have conducted a mobile flank guard of Army Group A.
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It was Hitler at his tactical worst. Early on ... before the Germans reached Stalingrad, the Soviets were in headlong retreat and the plan was to get the remaining Soviet forces across the Volga. No Soviet defense of the city was planned. The Soviets were going to abandon everything on the West bank of the Volga. Then Hitler decided to reinforce the Caucuses thrust and ordered the 4th Panzer Army to turn South (a right turn) to join Army Group A. The 4th had been heading East toward Stalingrad along with the 1st Panzer which was on the 4th's RIGHT. This movement put 4th Panzer making a right turn directly across the path of the 1st Panzer. It resulted in what might have been the largest traffic jam in history! It lasted for days and gave the fleeing Soviet formations some breathing room. It was only then that a decision was reached to hold a sliver of the west bank of the Volga including Stalingrad. And to rub salt in the wound, because of the extensive delay (that he had caused) Hitler reassigned the 4th back to attack on Stalingrad.
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Incredible, I can't even imagine a combined battle between several million men in a relatively small geographical space, battling hand to hand, tank to tank, and hand to tank. Rivers of blood and destruction in all directions. So, is this the Russian genealogy that Ukrainians must defeat today?
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Indeed, which is why some of us have called upon the unfortunate Ukrainians to sue for peace.
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I wager that the name of the city influenced Hitler's decisions.
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