Battle of Stalingrad, a turning
point of World War II in Europe
Image: Motherland
Calls in Volgograd(ex-Stalingrad)
Battle of Stalingrad left behind one
of the bloodiest pages of history. It was a battle that
changed the destiny of countries that were involved in the fight. The loss of an entire German army will remain a gap that will never be
filled by any subsequent action of the Wehrmacht. USSR was able to highlight its numerical superiority and encircle 290,000
soldiers following the conclusion of Operation Uranus. Stalingrad was a white
inferno, in which victory belonged to the one who was able to adapt their
strategies to circumstances on the ground. There was fighting over
not just every street, but every house, every entrance and every flat.
The German attack on Stalingrad and
the strategic mistakes committed by Hitler
Source: http://en.ria.ru/photolents/20130202/179173756_2/Bitva-za-Stalingrad-arkhivnye-kadry.html
Aware that he cannot win a protracted war against the
alliance between the USSR, Britain and the U.S., Hitler concluded that only a
military strike can bring decisive victory in the USSR. Nazi
Germany was aware that if she adopted the tactics of a war of attrition, it
would have had no human resources or materials to defeat the USSR.
Fuhrer Directive No. 41 of 5 April 1942 set as target
capturing oil resources of the Caucasus (oil fields from Maycop, Grozny and
Baku). German war machine urgently needed an additional source of
oil to wage a war against the alliance between the USSR, USA and Great Britain.
In
terms of military strategy, Wehrmacht sought to annihilate the Red Army south
of the Don River through a series of encirclements. Hitler's
directive was merely a statement of the German strategy, not a document based
on a detailed plan.
In the plans developed by the Nazi leadership, the capture of
Stalingrad was a secondary endpoint in the occupation of the Caucasus oil
fields and the elimination of the Red Army in the south.
Operation Blau was designed to have 4 phases. In the
first phase, the 4th Panzer Army and the 2nd Army commanded by
general von Weichs had to move quickly
to the east of Kursk region. In phase II, the 6th Army had to advance to the banks
of the River Don near Voronezh and encircle the Red Army formations in the west
bank of the river. In phase II, the 6th Army should have advanced to the
banks of the River Don in Voronezh in order to encircle the Red Army formations
in the west bank of the river. In the next phase, the German forces had to cross the
Volga north of Stalingrad and await further orders to continue the offensive in
the Caucasus.
In the run-up to Operation Blau, the German troops had to
eliminate "pockets of resistance" Soviet of Crimea.
In 1942 German offensive mobilized three million soldiers,
seeking a decisive victory to finish the campaign. The failure
to capture Moscow in the winter of 1941 showed, however, that Nazi Germany did
not have a good plan in place regarding obtaining a decisive victory. Hitler
wanted to occupy some large territories but with fewer troops, which of course
was not a feasible plan. In addition, bad roads and bad weather hampered much
of the military supply lines of the Reich. The advancement of the army was not
followed by a corresponding increase of supply lines. Despite the
obtained victories at the start of the campaign in the east, the German Army
was unable to sustain a strategic offensive along the entire eastern front.
The
only realistic option was the offensive on a single front. Seizing the
oil fields of the Caucasus would have deprived USSR of 90% from the total oil
reserves.
Army Group South ,responsible for executing the mission, was
split on July 9, 1942 in Army Group A (1 Panzer Army and 17th Army) and Army Group B (the 6th Army and
4th Panzer Army). Among the allied forces of Germany who participated in the
Battle of Stalingrad, Romania had two armies: the 3rd Army commanded by Army
General Petre Dumitrescu and the 4th Army commanded by General Constantin
Constantinescu-Claps. Italy has the 8th Army and Hungary was present with
the 2nd Army.
On July 23, 1942, through Directive No. 45, Hitler ordered a
simultaneous attack towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus. While Army
Group A advanced to the oil fields of the Caucasus (Maycop was occupied on
August 9), General von Paulus and the 6th Army were ordered to attack
Stalingrad on August 19, 1942. The strategy was to secure the advancement of Army
Group A in the Caucasus. By September 26 most of Stalingrad was in German
hands.
However, German troops failed to stop the penetration of
Soviet reinforcements from the other side of the river Volga. What
follows is a battle of attrition in which the Germans could no longer applies
favorite strategy of "lightning war"(Blitzkrieg). Following intensive
aerial bombardments, Stalingrad became a huge pile of rubble that prevented
access for tanks. The last major German offensive in the city took place on
November 11, 1942. The main mistake made by Hitler was one
psychological. Germany showed an attitude of superiority to Russia due to
the fact that since Peter the Great, German culture has played a major role in
developing the institutions of Tsarist Russia. The administration and army
of Russian empire was organized after the German model.
This
superior attitude displayed by Hitler was completed by his volcanic character
that often ignored the recommendations of his generals. The poor
logistic planning of the operation in the Caucasus was Hitler’s mistake, who
thought that the victory at Stalingrad can be obtained in a short time. German
troops were completely unprepared to face a Siberian winter. Many German
soldiers died because of keen frost, hunger or diseases such as typhus and
dysentery. Hitler's strategy to not consider a strategic withdrawal from
the Stalingrad area ultimately cost him the loss of the entire 6th Army.
How Red Army did won one of the most
important battles in history
Regarding Soviet strategy, the most important decision was moving
its entire war industries (about 1,500 factories) in the Urals region. The fact
that the Nazi army managed to advance so rapidly in the first phase of the
campaign in the east was due to poor training and equipping of the Red Army.
Soviet counteroffensive strategy was devised by the Soviet
High Command (Stavka). At the start of operations of Army Group South on June
28, 1942, Stalin was not yet sure whether Moscow was or not on the agenda of
the German High Command. German aircraft piloted by Major Joachim von Reichel
(operations officer in the Office of Operations of the 24th Panzer Army) who had in possession the
plans of the Operation Blau, crashed on June 19, 1942 in the area controlled by
the Red Army. Although they owned the battle plans, the Soviets were skeptical
of the veracity of the information, taking into account a German plan of
deception.
On July 12 the Stalingrad front is formed, and with the
beginning of German offensive, the state of siege is declared in the city on
August 25, 1942. But the most important was the political mobilization of the
Soviet Union to rally the entire population against the German invader. An
atmosphere of homeland in danger had settled among the entire Soviet society.
The
occupation of Rostov(July 23, 1942) by
the Wehrmacht accentuated the grave crisis through which the USSR was passing.
Stalin's
first political response to the crisis was the issuance of Order No. 227 (July
27, 1942) known by name “Not one step back”. The order acknowledged the
grave situation through which the country was passing. Stalin
understood finally that the army officers must be elected not according to
political criteria, but on their professionalism. Marshal
Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky were the main strategists of victory at
Stalingrad.
Also, we should not underestimate the role of General Vasily
Chuikov , the commander of the 62nd Army. With reduced military forces, Chuikov
manages to maintain positions in Stalingrad, establishing a bridgehead for
Soviet forces stationed on the other bank of the Volga. He developed the tactic of “hugging the enemy", which
consists in keeping the front lines very close to each other (10-15m). This
tactic put Luftwaffe unable to launch air strikes without the risk of hitting
their own positions.
Unlike Chuikov, who was an excellent field commander, von
Paulus did not have the necessary qualities to lead directly an army in a
theater of operation, although previously it was an excellent officer in the
Office of Planning. General von Paulus failed to match the previous
commander of the 6th Army, Walter von Reichenau.
The Soviets were preparing their counteroffensive, training
approximately 1 million soldiers to launch Operation Uranus, who will lead to
the encirclement of the 6th Army led by von Paulus. Information provided by
Romanian troops ( 3rd and 4th army) that flank the German army made it very
clear that the USSR is mobilizing its troops for an attack in order to encircle
the Axis forces in Stalingrad. All warning signals sent by Romanian commanders were
overlooked by the German High Command, which decided to delay sending
reinforcements to defend the flanks.
Operation Uranus begins on
November 19 with attacks on the flanks guarded by Romanian forces in the south
and north. Although they rejected the first attack, Romanian troops come to be
completely outnumbered and with poor endowment. Nearly 27,000 Romanian soldiers
fall into captivity. Soviet forces were able to close the ring of encirclement
near the town Kalach. 290,000 Axis
soldiers come to be trapped east of the river Don. Hitler refused to approve the withdrawal on time,
relying on Goring's plan who claimed that troops in the area can be supplied by
air. In Hitler's mind, the encirclement of the 6th Army in Stalingrad was just
a temporary matter. Erich von Manstein
and 4th Panzer Army, under Operation Winter Storm (13-23 December 1942), failed
to break the Soviet encirclement of the German 6th Army. Soviet counteroffensive managed to seal the fate of
the 290,000 soldiers trapped in the encirclement. Of these only 6000 will be able to return home.
The consequences of the Battle of Stalingrad
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After the defeat at
Stalingrad and the subsequent catastrophe in the battle of Kursk, the Germans
have completely lost the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front. As General Douglas Macarthur later said , at stake in
the Stalingrad campaign was Germany's ability to wage war against the
Soviet-Western alliance for another 10 years. Even after the Battle of Stalingrad, Nazi Germany did not give up the
war of annihilation which he practiced early in the campaign in the East.
The retreating Nazi Army set fire to villages
and towns and dynamited railways and bridges to slow the advance of the Red
Army. A lot of civilians located in the
occupation zones of Nazi Germany were executed in retaliation for the defeat at
Stalingrad.
Victory at Stalingrad was
the hope of victory for the Allies, showing that the Wehrmacht was not
invincible. Neutral states which until
then had a friendly attitude towards Nazi Germany (Spain, Sweden and Turkey)
will interrupt diplomatic relations with the Reich. In the Battle of Stalingrad,
the casualties and material losses of Nazi Germany exceeded all summed up
losses until then, from the beginning of war. This loss will not be replaced by
Germans who were already outnumbered early in the invasion of the Soviet Union.
For the Soviets, victory
at Stalingrad created cohesion between the Red Army and political leadership,
resulting in fewer errors in the planning of military operations. Equally important was the cohesion of the Soviet
society. For Stalin, the turning point in
the war was still the victory at Kursk.
Stalingrad was ultimately
a battle of resources, both human and material between the two forces equally
determined. The winner was the one that
managed to mobilize forces in a better way and adapt to unpredictable
circumstances. Thank y
Bibliography
1.
Geoffrey Roberts, Victory
at Stalingrad: The Battle that
Changed History , Pearson Education,London, 2002.
2. Peter D. Antill, Stalingrad 1942 ,Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2007, pp.31-38.
3. Geoffrey Jukes, Hitler's Stalingrad Decisions,
University of California Press, Berkley,1985.
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