The Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942–February 2, 1943) was a pivotal conflict during World War II between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It is considered one of the bloodiest battles in history, with intense urban warfare and massive casualties on both sides. The Soviet victory marked a turning point in the war, halting the German advance into the Soviet Union and beginning a counteroffensive that would push German forces back. The battle’s significance lies in its strategic importance and the symbolic defeat of Hitler’s forces.

Stalingrad: Hitler’s Ambitions crushed

Introduction

In early 1941, Germany was at the height of its power and self-assurance. Its armies and blitzkrieg tactics had proved invincible. Its soldiers were highly trained, experienced, and battle-tested. The German army was at a peak size of 3.5 million men with 3,300 tanks. At the same time, the Russian army was the largest in the world and had as many modern tanks and aircraft as the rest of the world’s armies combined. But its men were demoralized, poorly trained, and almost entirely lacking in officers because of Stalin’s paranoid purges in the 1930s. Thus, although the Russian army was massive, it had low morale and no leadership. It was at this moment that Hitler would stab his former allies in the back and invade Russia.

Invasion of Russia

• (1) Considering the potential strength of Russia and the size of its army, it seems foolish that Hitler would elect to take on such an enemy and to provoke a war on two fronts, one of the classic errors of strategy. Why, then, did he choose to invade Russia? There are several likely explanations.
  (a) From Hitler’s perspective, by early 1941, it was reasonable to assume that the war in the West was more or less over. The United States had not entered the conflict and did not seem inclined to do so. The only enemy left was Britain, and although the British were safe on their island thanks to their navy, their army posed no threat. The German army was at a peak of training and efficiency, but without use, it would lose this edge.
  (b) Further, the racist ideology of Hitler and the Nazis led them to believe that the Russians would be easy prey. In Nazi ideology, the Russians were categorized as Slavs, a lesser race of human beings. Hitler assumed that the Russian armies would crumble before his legions of Aryan supermen.
• (2) The code name for the invasion of Russia was Operation Barbarossa, and it was to be a classic blitzkrieg. Armored spearheads would plunge through the Russian lines on narrow fronts, then rapidly speed deep within enemy territory. They would then curve back toward one another, encircling huge chunks of the Russian army. The panzers would carve up the Russians, and the infantry and artillery following the tanks would force the isolated Russian groups to surrender.
• (3) With its army obliterated, it was believed that Russia itself would then surrender. It was never a part of the initial planning to fight a prolonged war or to fight deep within Russia. The Russians unknowingly assisted the Germans in their strategy by deploying most of their army right along the border, thus playing right into the Germans’ hands.
• (4) Operation Barbarossa began on June 22, 1941, with a massive artillery barrage and air attacks. Then, the panzers rolled forward. The first few months were ones of unmitigated success and glory for the Germans. The panzers blasted through the Russian lines and cruised deep into Russia. Some panzer groups were averaging 50 miles per day, a rate previously unheard of in war.
• (5) As the invasion stretched into the fall, unease began to creep into the German’s minds. It seemed the Russia stretched on infinietly and that no matter how many hundreds of miles they advanced, there was always more ahead. And no matter how many men they killed and tanks they wiped out, new ones kept appearing. Even though the Germans were eliminating Russian armies at a phenomenal rate, the Russians were able to replace their losses seemingly infinitely.
• (6) The Germans, on the other hand, could not so easily make good their losses of experienced men or valuable tanks. By the winter of 1941, the Germans had reeled off a string of astonishing victories and had progressed 800 miles into Russia, but they had lost nearly 65 percent of their men and vehicles.
• (7) Finally, the rainy season turned the terrin into a sea of mud, and the German advance began to lose momentum and bog down. Worse was yet to come, however, because the traditional ultimate weapon of Russia was about to arrive—a powerful force that the Russians referred to as “General Winter.” By December 1, temperatures plummeted to -35°F.
• (8) Hitler had considered it unnecessary to provide the soldiers with winter clothing because he believed that the Russians would be beaten before winter arrived. As a result, the German troops suffered severe frostbite; the oil in guns jammed, and the guns would not fire; planes could not fly; tank engines froze up; even metal parts became brittle and snapped in the cold. The German advance finally ground to halt only 40 miles from Moscow, and the Germans settled in for the winter.

The Battle

• (1) By early summer of 1942, the Germans were ready to resume the assault on Russia. Over the winter, Hitler had revised his goals, and oil played a central role. In this era of mechanized warfare, it had quickly become apparent that the machines required huge amounts of fuel to keep running. Germany’s only reliable fuel came from Romania, and Hitler was eager to find another source to supply the motors of his planes and tanks.
• (2) Most of Russia’s oil came from the Caucasus—80 percent from Baku alone. Obsessed with both the need to obtain new sources of oil for Germany and the idea of cutting Russia off from its own oil, Hitler decided to concentrate his attack on the southern front, with the aim of gaining control over the Russian oil wells in the Caucasus.
• (3) The advances of 1942 would have two objectives: One group would push toward Stalingrad on the Volga River, which contained a number of large factories and sat astride the railways that brought oil from the Caucasus. If the Germans could seize Stalingrad, in theory, they could cut off these supplies. A second German army group would drive even further to the south, directly at the oil fields themselves.
• (4) General Friedrich Paulus was charged with capturing Stalingrad, and his army drove to the city and prepared to assault it. But Stalin decided to make a stand at the city that was named after him. He issued a directive that the Russians would not yield one more step back. To enforce this order, all Russian army units were required to organize detachments of men armed with machine guns who would stand behind the front line with orders to shoot any man who retreated. In August, Stalin put General Zhukov in charge of resisting the German invasion.
• (5) The Germans at first bombarded Stalingrad with planes, reducing it to vast fields of concrete debris. The German soldiers then began moving in, squeezing the Russians into an ever-smaller section of the city. This was a slow process, and in this kind of streetfighting, the German edge in mobility was negated.
• (6) As 1942 wore on, Hitler grew obsessed with the symbolic value of Stalingrad, and he began to divert resources away from the more important drive toward the Caucasus oil fields.
  (a) Tank units that would have been better employed seizing the oil fields were instead routed to Stalingrad. As Hitler ordered more troops to be fed into the battle for the city, Stalingrad became the focal point of the entire war in Russia.
  (b) The Russians, too, had sent reinforcements, but they had been playing a clever game in which they committed the bare minimum to the city to keep the Germans occupied while secretly building up a reserve.
• (7) As the winter of 1942 approached, the all-important German drive to the oilfields eventually fell short because so many units had been diverted to Stalingrad. Meanwhile, the Russians were down to only a few hundred yards of ground as winter set in, but their objective had been achieved. The Germans had bled themselves dry in the useless battle. With the arrival of winter, the German offensive finally petered out, and now the Russian counterattack began.
• (8) By deliberately not reinforcing Stalingrad, Zhukov and the Russian commanders had amassed a large reserve; with these men, they now attacked the Germans. Two years of war had served to replace the officers killed in the purges of the 1930s with new officers who had experience in modern warfare. They imitated blitzkrieg tactics and turned them back against the Germans.
• (9) Just as he had at Khalkhin Gol, Zhukov used his center to hold the enemy in place while launching pincers to the left and right. Two powerful Russian armies blasted through the German lines on either side of Stalingrad, then trapped Paulus and his entire army. Hitler refused to acknowledge that his attack on Stalingrad had failed and utterly rejected any suggestion that Paulus and his army try to escape while they had the chance.
• (10) By late january 1943, the Germans were no longer able to fight effectively, and Paulus was forced to surrender the miserable remnants of his army. This was the first time that an entire German army had surrendered, and its loss was an enormous and crippling blow to the Germans, both materially and psychologically.

Outcomes

• (1) Although the Germans attempted several more offensives, for the rest of World War II, they were fighting a defensive war. Stalingrad, was the turning point of the war against Nazi Germany.
• (2) Before Stalingrad, the Germans retained an aura of invincibility that was utterly destroyed along with Paulus’s army. Before Stalingrad, the Germans were constantly advancing and expanding their empire, but after this battle, they were entirely on the defensive, struggling to protect a steadily contracting territory.
• (3) Zhukov and the Russians regained all their lost lands and rolled on into Germany, finally capturing Berlin itself. The Eastern Front ultimately became a war of attrition, one in which the Germans could not compete with Russia’s resources. Even though the Germans killed or captured infinitely greater numbers of Russians, the Russians were willing to accept the unequal ratio, and in the end, the Germans were helpless before the vast and unstoppable Red Army.

Conclusion

The Battle of Stalingrad was a defining moment in World War II, not only for its scale and brutality but for its strategic and symbolic significance. It marked the first major defeat of Nazi Germany, breaking the myth of their invincibility and shifting the momentum of the war in favor of the Allies. The Soviet victory, achieved through resilience, strategic brilliance, and immense sacrifices, halted the German advance into the Soviet Union and set the stage for a series of Soviet offensives that would eventually lead to the fall of Berlin. Stalingrad remains a symbol of courage and determination, underscoring the immense human cost of war.

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