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Battle of Stalingrad
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The Battle of Stalingrad was a battle between Nazi Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The battle took place between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943, during World War II.
The results of these operations are often cited as one of the turning points of World War II. The Battle of Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in modern history, with combined casualties estimated to be above 1.5 million.
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The Battle of Stalingrad was a battle between Nazi Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The battle took place between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943, during World War II.
The results of these operations are often cited as one of the turning points of World War II. The Battle of Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in modern history, with combined casualties estimated to be above 1.5 million. The battle was marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties by both sides. The German offensive to take Stalingrad, the battle inside the city, and the Soviet counter-offensive which eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city was the first large-scale German defeat of World War II. Soviet and Russian studies identify ten campaigns, strategic and operational level operations.
Background
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa). The armed forces of Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, quickly advancing deep into Soviet territory. During December, having suffered multiple defeats during the summer and autumn, Soviet forces counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow and successfully drove the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) from the environs of Moscow.
By spring 1942, the Germans had stabilized their new front in a line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. There were a number of salients in the line where Soviet offensives had pushed the Germans back, notably to the northwest of Moscow and south of Kharkov, but neither was particularly threatening. In the far south the Germans were in control of most of the Ukraine and much of the Crimea, although Sevastapol remained in Soviet hands along with a small portion of the Kerch peninsula.
The Germans were confident they could master the Red Army when winter weather no longer impeded their mobility. There was some substance to this belief: while Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) had suffered heavy punishment, 65% of its infantry had not been engaged during the winter fighting, and had been rested and reequipped. Army Groups North and South had not been particularly hard pressed over the winter.
Importance of Stalingrad
The capture of Stalingrad was important to Hitler for two primary reasons. Firstly, it was a major industrial city on the Volga River – a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and Northern Russia. Secondly, its capture would secure the left flank of the German armies as they advanced into the oil-rich Caucasus region – with the strategic goal of cutting off fuel to Stalin's war machine. The fact that the city bore the name of the leader of the USSR, Joseph Stalin, would make its capture an ideological and propaganda coup. Stalin realized this and, despite being under tremendous constraints of time and resources, ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent out to defend the city. The Red Army, at this stage of the war, was less capable of highly mobile operations than the German Army; however, the prospect of combat inside a large urban area, which would be dominated by hand-held small arms rather than armored and mechanized tactics, minimized the Red Army's disadvantages against the Germans.
Operation Blau / Blue
Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there. Instead of focusing his attention on Moscow as his general staff advised, Hitler continued to send forces and supplies to eastern Ukraine. The planned summer offensive was code-named Fall Blau (trans.: “Case Blue”). It was to include the German Sixth Army, Seventeenth Army, Fourth Panzer Army and First Panzer Army. Army Group South had overrun the Ukrainian SSR in 1941. Poised in the Eastern Ukraine, it was to spearhead the offensive.
Hitler intervened, however, ordering the Army Group to be split in two. Army Group South (A), under the command of Wilhelm List, was to continue advancing south towards the Caucasus as planned with the Seventeenth Army and First Panzer Army. Army Group South (B), including Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army and Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army, was to move east towards the Volga and the city of Stalingrad. Army Group B was commanded initially by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock and later by General Maximilian von Weichs.
The start of Operation Blau had been planned for late May 1942. However, a number of German and Romanian units that were involved in Blau were then in the process of besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Delays in ending the siege pushed back the start date for Blau several times, and the city did not fall until the end of June. A smaller action was taken in the meantime, pinching off a Soviet salient in the Second Battle of Kharkov, which resulted in the pocketing of a large Soviet force on 22 May.
Blau finally opened as Army Group South began its attack into southern Russia on June 28, 1942. The German offensive started well. Soviet forces offered little resistance in the vast empty steppes and started streaming eastward in disarray. Several attempts to re-establish a defensive line failed when German units outflanked them. Two major pockets were formed and destroyed: the first northeast of Kharkov on July 2 and a second, around Millerovo, Rostov Oblast, a week later.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian Second Army and the German 4th Panzer Army had launched an assault on Voronezh, capturing the city on 5 July.
The initial advance of the Sixth Army was so successful that Hitler intervened and ordered the Fourth Panzer Army to join Army Group South (A) to the south. A massive traffic jam resulted when the Fourth Panzer and the Sixth both required the few roads in the area. Both armies were stopped dead while they attempted to clear the resulting mess of thousands of vehicles. The delay was long, and it is thought that it cost the advance at least one week. With the advance now slowed, Hitler changed his mind and re-assigned the Fourth Panzer Army back to the attack on Stalingrad.
By the end of July, the Germans had pushed the Soviets across the Don River. At this point, the Don and Volga Rivers were only 40 miles apart, and the Germans left their main supply depots west of the Don, which was to have important implications later in the course of the battle. The Germans began using the armies of their Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies to guard their left (northern) flank. The German Sixth Army was only a few dozen kilometers from Stalingrad, and Fourth Panzer Army, now to their south, turned northwards to help take the city. To the south, Army Group A was pushing far into the Caucasus, but their advance slowed as supply lines grew overextended. The two German army groups were not positioned to support one another due to the great distances involved.
After German intentions became clear in July, Stalin appointed Marshall Andrei Yeremenko as commander of the Southeastern Front on August 1, 1942. Yeremenko and Commissar Nikita Krushchev were tasked with planning the defense of Stalingrad. The eastern border of Stalingrad was the wide Volga River, and over the river additional Soviet units were deployed. This combination of units became the newly formed 62nd Army, which Yeremenko placed under the command of Lt. Gen. Vasiliy Chuikov on September 11, 1942. The 62nd Army's mission was to defend Stalingrad at all costs. Chuikov's generalship during the battle earned him one of two "Heroes of the Soviet Union."
Beginning of the battle
The Soviets had enough warning of the Germans' approach to ship virtually all the city's grain, cattle, and railroad rolling stock across the river out of harm's way. This "harvest victory" left the city short of food even before the German attack began. Production continued in some factories, particularly the one producing T34 tanks. Before the Wehrmacht reached the city itself, the Luftwaffe had rendered the Volga River, vital for bringing supplies into the city, virtually unusable to Soviet shipping. Between 25 July and 31 July, 32 Soviet ships were sunk with another nine crippled.
The battle began with the heavy bombing of the city by the Generaloberst von Richthofen's Luftflotte 4, which in the summer and autumn of 1942 was the mightiest single air command in the world. Some 1,000 tons were dropped. The city was quickly turned to rubble, although some factories survived and continued production whilst workers joined in the fighting. The Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment was the only non-German unit selected by the Wehrmacht to enter Stalingrad city during assault operations.
Stalin rushed all available troops to the east bank of the Volga, some from as far away as Siberia. All the regular ferries were quickly destroyed by the Luftwaffe, which then targeted troop barges being towed slowly across the river by tugs. Stalin prevented civilians from leaving the city on the premise that their presence would encourage greater resistance from the city's defenders. Civilians, including women and children, were put to work building trenchworks and protective fortifications. A massive German air bombardment on August 23 caused a firestorm, killing thousands and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins. Ninety percent of the living space in the Voroshilovskiy area was destroyed. Between the 23-26 August, Soviet reports indicate 955 people were killed and another 1,181 wounded as a result of the bombing. Casualties of 40,000 were exaggerated, and after 25 August the Soviets did not record civilian and military casualties as a result of air raids.
The Soviet Air Force, the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), was swept aside by the Luftwaffe. The VVS unit in the immediate area lost 201 aircraft from 23-31 August, and despite meager reinforcements of some 100 aircraft in August, it was left with just 192 serviceable aircraft, 57 of which were fighters. The Soviets poured aerial reinforcements into the Stalingrad area in late September but continued to suffer appalling losses; the Luftwaffe had complete control of the skies. However, due to the relocation of Soviet industry in 1941, Soviet aircraft production reached 15,800 in the second half of 1942. It was able to preserve significant strength and build up a strategic reserve that would overpower the Luftwaffe later on.
The burden of the initial defense of the city fell on the 1077th Anti-Aircraft (AA) Regiment, a unit made up mainly of young female volunteers who had no training for engaging ground targets. Despite this, and with no support available from other Soviet units, the AA gunners stayed at their posts and took on the advancing Panzers. The German 16th Panzer Division reportedly had to fight the 1077th’s gunners "shot for shot" until all 37 AA batteries were destroyed or overrun. The German 16th Panzer Division was also shocked to find that it had been fighting female soldiers, due to Soviet manpower shortages. In the beginning, the Soviets relied extensively on "Workers' militias" composed of workers not directly involved in war production. For a short time, tanks continued to be produced and then manned by volunteer crews of factory workers. They were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line, often without paint or even gunsights
By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had finally reached the Volga, north of Stalingrad. Another advance to the river south of the city followed. By September 1, the Soviets could only reinforce and supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the Volga, under constant bombardment by German artillery and aircraft.
On September 5, the Soviet 24th and 66th Armies organised a massive attack against XIV Panzerkorps. The Luftwaffe helped the German forces repulse the offensive by subjecting Soviet artillery positions and defensive lines to heavy attack. The Soviets were forced to withdraw at midday after only a few hours. Of the 120 tanks the Soviets committed, 30 were lost to air attack.
Soviet operations were constantly hampered by the Luftwaffe. On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army launched an offensive against VIII Armeekorps at Kotluban. VIII Fliegerkorps dispatched wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The offensive was repulsed, and the Stukas claimed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks knocked out that morning, while escorting Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft.
Amid the debris of the wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, anchored their defense lines with strongpoints in houses and factories. Fighting was fierce and desperate. Lieutenant General Alexander Rodimtsev was in charge of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and was awarded one of two "Heroes of the Soviet Union" for his actions in the battle. The life expectancy of a newly-arrived Soviet private in the city dropped to less than 24 hours, while that of a Soviet officer was about 3 days. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27, 1942 decreed that all commanders who ordered unauthorized retreat would be subject to a military tribunal. “Not a step back!” was the slogan. The Germans pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
German military doctrine was based on the principle of combined-arms teams and close cooperation by tanks, infantry, engineers, artillery, and ground-attack aircraft. To counter this, Soviet commanders adopted the tactic of always keeping the front lines as close to the Germans as physically possible; Chuikov called this "hugging" the Germans. This forced the German infantry to either fight on their own or risk taking casualties from their own supporting fire; it neutralized German close air support and weakened artillery support. Bitter fighting raged for every street, every factory, every house, basement and staircase. The sewers became labyrinthine firefights. The Germans, calling this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("Rat War"), bitterly joked about capturing the kitchen but still fighting for the living-room .
Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a prominent hill above the city, was particularly merciless, and the position changed hands many times. By 12 September the Soviet 62nd Army had been reduced to 60 tanks, 700 mortars and just 20,000 men.
The 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to retake Mamayev Kurgan and Railway Station No. 1 on September 13, suffered particularly heavy losses. Over 30 percent of its soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours, and just 320 out of the original 10,000 survived the entire battle. Both objectives were retaken, but only temporarily. The railway station changed hands 14 times in 6 hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division did not exist, but its men had killed an approximately equal number of Germans.
Combat raged there for weeks near the giant grain silo. When German soldiers finally took the position only forty dead Soviet fighters were found, though the Germans had thought were many more due to the ferocious resistance. The Soviets burned the heaps of grain during their retreat. In another part of the city, a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov turned an apartment building into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later called “Pavlov's House,” oversaw a square in the city center. The soldiers surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and breached the walls in the basement for better communications. They were not relieved, and not significantly reinforced, for two months. Well after the Battle, Chuikov liked to joke that more Germans died trying to capture Pavlov's House than died capturing Paris. According to Beevor, after each wave, throughout the second month, of the Germans' repeated, persistent assaults against the building, the Soviets had to run out and kick down the piles of German corpses in order for the machine and anti-tank gunners in the building to have clear firing lines across the square. Sgt. Pavlov was awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his actions.
With no end in sight, the Germans started transferring heavy artillery to the city, including the gigantic 800 mm railroad gun nicknamed Dora, but made no attempt to send a force across the Volga, allowing the Soviets to build up a large number of artillery batteries on the east side. This artillery continued to bombard the German positions, and the Soviet defenders used the resulting ruins as defensive positions. German tanks became useless amid heaps of rubble up to 8 meters high. When they were able to move forward, they came under Soviet antitank fire from wrecked buildings.
Soviet snipers also successfully used the ruins to inflict heavy casualties on the Germans. The most successful, and most famous, sniper was Vasily Zaytsev with 242 confirmed kills during the battle and a grand total of more than 300; he was also said to have killed a, possibly fictional, specially-sent German sniper known by the names Erwin König and Heinz Thorvald. Zaytsev was one of a whole core of snipers and had over 30 students, who are credited with killing over 3,000 German soldiers.
Zaytsev fixed a standard Mosin-Nagant (PEM) rifle scope to a Soviet PTRD-41 14.5 mm anti-tank rifle PTRD for use against Germans hiding behind walls when not firing from windows above: the heavy 14.5 mm rounds penetrated the brick walls. Zaytsev was awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union", primarily for his actions during the battle.
For both Stalin and Hitler, the battle of Stalingrad became a prestige issue in addition to the actual strategic significance of the battle. The Soviet command moved the Red Army's strategic reserves from the Moscow area to the lower Volga, and transferred aircraft from the entire country to the Stalingrad region.
The strain on both military commanders was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, which eventually afflicted the left side of his face, while Chuikov experienced an outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely. Troops on both sides faced the constant strain of close-range combat.
Determined to crush Soviet resistance, Luftflotte 4s Stukawaffe flew 700 individual sorties against Soviet positions at the Dzherzhinskiy Tractor Factory on 5 October. Several Soviet regiments were wiped out; the entire staff of the Soviet 339th Infantry Regiment were killed the following morning during an air raid.
In mid-October the Luftwaffe intensified its efforts against remaining Red Army positions holding the west bank. By now, Soviet aerial resistance had ceased to be effective. Luftflotte 4 flew 2,000 sorties on 14 October and 600 tons of bombs were dropped while German infantry surrounded the three factories. Stukageschwader 1, 2, and 77 had largely silenced Soviet artillery on the eastern bank of the Volga before turning their attention to the shipping that was once again trying to reinforce the narrowing Soviet pockets of resistance. The 62nd Army had been cut in two, and, due to intensive air attack on its supply ferries, was now being paralyzed.
With the Soviets forced into a strip of land on the western bank of the Volga, over 1,208 Stuka missions were flown in an effort to eliminate them. Despite the heavy air bombardment (Stalingrad suffered heavier bombardment than Sedan or Sevastopol), the Soviet 62 Army, with just 47,000 men and 19 tanks, prevented the VI Armee and IV Panzerarmee from taking the west bank.
Culmination point
The Luftwaffe retained air superiority into early November and Soviet daytime aerial resistance was nonexistent, but after flying 20,000 individual sorties, its original strength of 1,600 serviceable aircraft had fallen to 950. The Kampfwaffe (bomber force) had been hardest hit, having only 232 out of a force of 480 left. Despite enjoying qualitative superiority against the VVS and possessing eighty percent of the Luftwaffe's resources on the Eastern Front, Luftflotte 4 could not prevent Soviet aerial power from growing. By the time of the counter-offensive, the Soviets outnumbered them.
The Soviet bomber force, the Aviatsiya Dalnego Destviya (ADD), having taken crippling losses over the past 18 months, was restricted to flying at night. The Soviets flew 11,317 night sorties over Stalingrad and the Don-bend sector between 17 July and 19 November. These raids caused little damage and were of nuisance value only.
The situation for the Luftwaffe was now becoming increasingly difficult. On 8 November substantial units from Luftflotte 4 were removed to combat the Allied landings in North Africa. The German air-arm found itself spread thinly across Europe, and struggling to maintain its strength in the other southern sectors of the Soviet-German front.
After three months of carnage and slow and costly advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90% of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow pockets. Ice floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders across the river. Nevertheless, the fighting, especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the Red October Steel Factory, the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory, and the Barrikady gun factory became world-famous. While Soviet soldiers defended their positions, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks and weapons close to the battlefield, sometimes on the battlefield itself. These civilians also volunteered as tank crews to replace the dead and wounded, though they had no combat training.
Soviet counter-offensives
Stalingrad Strategic Offensive Operation 19 November 1942 - 2 February 1943
Recognizing that German troops were ill prepared for offensive operations during the winter and that most of them were redeployed elsewhere on the southern sector of the Eastern Front, the Stavka decided to conduct a number of offensive operations.
Seen in post-war history as a pivotal strategic period of war that began the Second Period of the Great Patriotic War (19 November 1942 - 31 December 1943), these operations opened the Winter Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942 - 3 March 1943), which involved some 15 Armies operating on several fronts.
Soviet order of battle
Southwestern, Don, Stalingrad Fronts
- Operation Uranus 19 November 1942 - 30 November 1942
- Southwestern Front 1st Guards, 21st, 5th Tank, 17th Air Armies, and the 25th Tank Corps
- Don Front 24th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
- Stalingrad Front 28th, 51st, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 8th Air Armies
- Kotelnikovo Offensive Operation 12 December 1942 - 31 December 1942
- Stalingrad Front 2nd Guards, 5th Shock, 51st, 8th Air Armies
- Middle Don Offensive Operation (Operation Little Saturn) 16 December 1942 - 30 December 1942
- Southwestern Front
- Don Front
- Operation Koltso (English: Operation Ring) 10 January 1943 - 2 February 1943
- Don Front 21st, 24th, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
German exhaustion prior to Operation Uranus
The German offensive to take Stalingrad had been halted by a combination of stubborn Red Army resistance inside the city and local weather conditions. The Soviet counter-offensive planning used deceptive measures that eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city, becoming the second large scale defeat of the German Army during the Second World War.
During the siege, the German and allied Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting Army Group B's flanks had pressed their headquarters for support. The Hungarian Second Army, consisting of mainly ill-equipped and ill-trained units, was given the task of defending a 200 km section of the front north of Stalingrad between the Italian Army and Voronezh. This resulted in a very thin line, with some sectors where 1–2 km stretches were being defended by a single platoon. Soviet forces held several bridgeheads on the western bank of the river and presented a potentially serious threat to Army Group B.
Similarly, on the southern flank of the Stalingrad sector the front south-west of Kotelnikovo was held only by the Romanian VII Corps, and beyond it a single German 16th Motorized Infantry Division.
However, Hitler was so focused on the city itself that requests from the flanks for support were refused. The chief of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder, expressed concerns about Hitler's preoccupation with the city, pointing out that if the situation on the weak German flanks was not rectified then 'there would be a disaster'. Hitler told Halder that Stalingrad would be captured and the weakened flanks would be held with 'national socialist ardour, clearly I cannot expect this of you (Halder)', and replaced him by General Kurt Zeitzler in mid-October.
Operation Uranus: the offensive begins
In autumn the Soviet generals Aleksandr Vasilyevskiy and Georgy Zhukov, responsible for strategic planning in the Stalingrad area, concentrated massive Soviet forces in the steppes to the north and south of the city. The German northern flank was particularly vulnerable, since it was defended by Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian units that suffered from inferior training, equipment, and morale when compared with their German counterparts. This weakness was known and exploited by the Soviets, who preferred to face off against non-German troops whenever possible, just as the British preferred attacking Italian troops instead of German ones in North Africa. The plan was to keep pinning the Germans down in the city, then punch through the overstretched and weakly defended German flanks and surround the Germans inside Stalingrad. During the preparations for the attack, Marshal Zhukov personally visited the front, which was rare for such a high-ranking general. The operation was code-named “Uranus” and launched in conjunction with Operation Mars, which was directed at Army Group Center. The plan was similar to Zhukov's victory at Khalkin Gol three years before, where he had sprung a double envelopment and destroyed the 23rd Division of the Japanese army. Zhukov and Vasilyevskiy were awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" for their generalship.
On November 19, the Red Army unleashed Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank Army, and 21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The preparations for the attack could be heard by the Romanians, who continued to push for reinforcements, only to be refused again. Thinly spread, outnumbered and poorly equipped, the Romanian Third Army, which held the northern flank of German Sixth Army, was shattered. On November 20, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against points held by the Romanian IV Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of infantry, collapsed almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west in a pincer movement, and met two days later near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around Stalingrad. This was not filmed at the time; the Russians re-enacted the link-up for a propaganda film, which achieved worldwide fame.
The Sixth Army encircled
Because of the Soviet pincer attack, about 290,000 German and Romanian soldiers, the Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment, and other volunteer subsidiary troops, found themselves trapped inside the resulting pocket. Inside the pocket there also were the surviving Soviet civilians—around 10,000, and several thousand Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle. Not all German soldiers from Sixth Army were trapped; 50,000 were brushed aside outside the pocket. The encircling Red Army units immediately formed two defensive fronts: a circumvallation facing inward, to defend against any breakout attempt, and a contravallation facing outward, to defend against any relief attempt.
Adolf Hitler had declared in a public speech (in the Berlin Sportpalast) on September 30 that the German army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviet encirclement, German army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west of the Don. But Hitler was at his Bavarian retreat of Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden with the head of the Luftwaffe, Göring. When asked by Hitler, Göring replied, after being convinced by Hans Jeschonnek, that the Luftwaffe could supply the Sixth Army with an "air bridge". This would allow the Germans in the city to fight on while a relief force was assembled.
A similar plan had been used successfully a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket, albeit on a much smaller scale: it had been an army corps at Demyansk rather than an entire army. Also, Soviet fighter forces had improved considerably in both quality and quantity in the intervening year. But the mention of the successful Demyansk air supply operation reinforced Hitler's own views, and was endorsed by Hermann Göring several days later.
The head of the Fourth Air Fleet (Luftflotte 4), Wolfram von Richthofen, tried unsuccessfully to have this decision overturned. The Sixth Army, the largest unit of this type in the world and almost twice as large as a regular German army, together with a corps of the Fourth Panzer Army also trapped, would be supplied by air. It should have been clear that supplying the pocket by air was impossible – the maximum 117.5 tons they could deliver a day was far less than the minimum 800 tons needed. To supplement the limited number of Junkers Ju 52 transports, the Germans used aircraft wholly inadequate for the role, such as the He-177 bomber (some bombers performed adequately – the Heinkel He-111 proved to be quite capable and was a lot faster than the Ju 52). But Hitler backed Göring's plan and reiterated his order of "no surrender" to his trapped armies.
The air supply mission failed. Appalling weather conditions, technical failures, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire and fighter interceptions led to the loss of 488 German aircraft. The Luftwaffe failed to achieve even the daily supply of 117 tons that it had aircraft for. An average of 94 tons of supplies per day was delivered to the trapped German Army. The supplies that did get through were often useless: one aircraft arrived with 20 tonnes of vodka and summer uniforms. The transport aircraft that did land safely were used to evacuate technical specialists and sick or wounded men from the besieged enclave (some 42,000 were evacuated in all). The Sixth Army slowly starved. Pilots were shocked to find the troops too exhausted and hungry to unload. General Zeitzler, moved by the troops' plight at Stalingrad, began to limit himself to their slim rations at meal times. After a few weeks of such a diet he became so emaciated that Hitler, annoyed, personally ordered him to start eating regular meals again.
The expense to the Transportgruppen was heavy. Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed, one-third of the fleet's strength on the Soviet-German front. The He 111 gruppen lost 165 aircraft in transport operations. Other losses included 42 Junkers Ju 86s, nine Fw 200 "Condors", five He 177 bombers and a Ju 290. The Luftwaffe also lost close to 1,000 highly experienced bomber crew personnel.
So heavy were the Luftwaffe's losses that four of Luftflotte 4s transport units (KGrzbV 700, KGrzbV 900, I./KGrzbV 1 and II./KGzbV 1) were "formally dissolved".
Operation Saturn
Soviet forces consolidated their positions around Stalingrad, and fierce fighting to shrink the pocket began. Operation Wintergewitter (Operation Winter Storm), a German attempt to relieve the trapped army from the South, was successfully fended off by the Soviets in December. The full impact of the harsh Russian winter set in. The Volga froze solid, allowing the Soviets to supply their forces more easily. The trapped Germans rapidly ran out of heating fuel and medical supplies, and thousands started to die of frostbite, malnutrition, and disease.
On December 16, the Soviets launched a second offensive, Operation Saturn, which attempted to punch through the Axis army on the Don and take Rostov. If successful, this offensive would have trapped the remainder of Army Group South, one third of the entire German Army in Russia, in the Caucasus. The Germans set up a "mobile defense" in which small units were to hold towns until supporting armor could arrive. The Soviets never got close to Rostov, but the fighting forced von Manstein to extract Army Group A from the Caucasus and re-establish the frontline some 250 km away from the city. The Tatsinskaya Raid also caused significant losses to Luftwaffe’s transport fleet. The Sixth Army now was beyond all hope of German reinforcement. The German troops in Stalingrad were not told this, however, and continued to believe that reinforcements were on their way. Some German officers requested that Paulus defy Hitler’s orders to stand fast and instead attempt to break out of the Stalingrad pocket. Paulus refused, as he abhorred the thought of disobeying orders. Also, while a motorised breakout might have been possible in the first few weeks, Sixth Army now had insufficient fuel, and the German soldiers would have faced great difficulty breaking through the Soviet lines on foot in harsh winter conditions.
Soviet victory
The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields at Pitomnik on January 16 and Gumrak on January 25 meant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded. Other sources indicate Luftwaffe's last flight from Gumrak was the night of January 21-22, 1943. Third and last serviceable runway was Stalingradskaja flight school which reportedly had the last Luftwaffe landings and takeoffs on the night of January 22-23, 1943. After daybreak on January 23, 1943, there were no more reported landings except for continuous air drops of ammunition and food until the end. The Germans were now not only starving, but running out of ammunition. Nevertheless they continued to resist stubbornly, partly because they believed the Soviets would execute those who surrendered. In particular, the so-called "HiWis," Soviet citizens fighting for the Germans, had no illusions about their fate if captured. The Soviets, in turn, were initially surprised by the large number of German forces they had trapped, and had to reinforce their encircling forces. Bloody urban warfare began again in Stalingrad, but this time it was the Germans who were pushed back to the banks of the Volga. They fortified their positions in the factory districts and the Soviets encountered almost the same tooth-and-nail ferocity that they themselves displayed a month earlier. The Germans adopted a simple defense of fixing wire nets over all windows to protect themselves from grenades. The Soviets responded by fixing fish hooks to the grenades so they stuck to the nets when thrown. The Germans now had no usable tanks in the city. Those tanks which still functioned could at best be used as stationary cannons. The Soviets did not bother employing tanks in areas where the urban destruction ruined their mobility. A Soviet envoy made Paulus a generous surrender offer—if he surrendered within 24 hours, the Germans would receive a guarantee of safety for all prisoners, medical care for the sick and wounded, prisoners allowed to keep their personal belongings, "normal" food rations, and repatriation to whatever country they wished to go to after the war—but Paulus, ordered not to surrender by Adolf Hitler, did not respond, ensuring the destruction of the 6th Army.
On January 30, 1943, the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler promoted Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall. Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life. However, when Soviet forces closed in on Paulus' headquarters in the ruined GUM department store the next day, Paulus surrendered. The remnants of the German forces in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2; 91,000 tired, ill, and starving Germans were taken captive. Out of the 91,000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3,000 were Romanian, the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and “Col.Voicu” Detachment. To the delight of the Soviet forces and the dismay of the Third Reich, the prisoners included 22 generals. Hitler was furious at the Field Marshal’s surrender and confided that Paulus "could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow."
According to the German documentary film Stalingrad, over 11,000 German and Axis soldiers refused to lay down their arms at the official surrender, seemingly believing that fighting to the death was better than what seemed like a slow end in Soviet camps. These forces continued to resist until early March 1943, hiding in cellars and sewers of the city with their numbers being diminished at the same time by Soviet forces clearing the city of remaining enemy resistance. By March the remaining small and isolated pockets of resistance had surrendered. According to Soviet intelligence documents shown in the documentary, 2,418 of the men were killed, and 8,646 were captured.
Of the more than 500,000 Germans, Italians, Romanians, and Hungarians taken prisoner, few ever returned to their homes. Of the 91,000 German prisoners, only about 5,000 ever returned. Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent to labour camps all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of cold, overwork and malnutrition. Some Axis troops were kept in the city to help with rebuilding. In March 1943 40,000 Germans were buried in a mass grave, victims of a typhus epidemic. A handful of senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes, and some of them joined National Committee for a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements which were broadcast to German troops. Paulus lived in the Soviet Union until 1952, then moved to Dresden in East Germany, where he spent the remainder of his days defending his actions at Stalingrad and was quoted as saying that Communism was the best hope for postwar Europe. General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept. It was not until 1955 that the last of the handful of survivors were repatriated after a plea to the Politburo by Konrad Adenauer.
The German public was not officially told of the disaster until the end of January 1943, though positive reports in the German propaganda media about the battle had stopped in the weeks before the announcement. It was not the first major setback of the German military, but the crushing defeat at Stalingrad was unmatched in scale. On February 18 minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels gave his famous Sportpalast speech in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war which would claim all resources and efforts from the entire population.
Legacy
Casualties
The Battle of Stalingrad claimed almost two million casualties, more than any other battle in human history, and was also one of the longest: it raged for 199 days. In the early stages of the battle the Germans inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet formations; the German Sixth Army later took heavy casualties in street fighting.
Various scholars have estimated the Axis suffered 850,000 casualties (killed, disabled, captured) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies, many of them POWs who died in Soviet captivity between 1943 and 1955. 400,000 Germans, 120,000 Romanians, 120,000 Hungarians, and 120,000 Italians were killed, wounded or captured. Of the 91,000 German POW's taken at Stalingrad 27,000 died within weeks and only 5,000 returned to Germany in 1955. The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity. In the whole Stalingrad area the Axis lost 1.5 million killed, wounded or captured. 50,000 ex-Soviets Hiwis (local volunteers incorporated into the German forces in supporting capacities) were killed or captured by the Red Army. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 men killed and captured and 650,878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Stalingrad Area; in the city itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded. Also, more than 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing as the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies approached the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis and Soviet casualties.
The scope of the battle
At different times the Germans had held up to 90% of the city, yet the Soviet forces fought on fiercely. At the end of the battle the Soviet armies had encircled and besieged the remainder of the Sixth Army. Some elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army also suffered casualties in operations around Stalingrad during the Soviet counter-offensive.
German mobility had been a significant factor in the Wehrmacht's earlier victories. Before Stalingrad, the Soviets had been able to amass their forces in sufficient numbers to achieve victory only around Moscow. Stalingrad, which had limited military value and had already been stripped of its assets, could have been bypassed and invested by Sixth Army in its drive to the Caucasus with Army Group A. Instead Hitler chose to sacrifice many of his most experienced troops in vicious street fighting among urban rubble, which favoured the defenders and gave the Soviet Union time to amass and concentrate its forces for the pincer movement. Some Germans felt Hitler had sacrificed one of his largest and finest armies for a prestige objective. Sixth Army was reconstituted in time for the Battle of Kursk, but was made up mostly of conscripts, and was never the force it had once been.
Besides being a turning point in the war, Stalingrad revealed the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days. Their sacrifice is immortalized by a soldier of General Rodimtsev, about to die, who scratched on the wall of the main railway station (which changed hands 15 times during the battle) “Rodimtsev’s Guardsmen fought and died here for their Motherland.”
For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945. Twenty-four years after this battle, in October 1967, a colossal monument, Mother Motherland was erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city. The statue forms part of a War memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they were after the battle. The Grain Silo, as well as Pavlov's House, the apartment building whose defenders eventually held out for two months until they were relieved, can still be visited. Even today, one may find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the battle and the successful yet costly resistance against the German invasion.
On the other side, the German Army showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale.
During the latter part of the siege, short of food and clothing, many German soldiers starved or froze to death. Yet, discipline was maintained until the very end, when resistance no longer served any useful purpose. Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler's orders, against many of Hitler's top generals' counsel and advice including that of von Manstein, and did not attempt to break out of the city. German ammunition, supplies, and food became all too scarce.
Paulus knew that the airlift had failed and that Stalingrad was lost. He asked for permission to surrender to save the life of his troops but Hitler refused and instead promoted him to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. No German officer of this rank had ever surrendered, and the implication was clear. If Paulus surrendered, he would shame himself and would become the highest ranking German officer ever to be captured. Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or commit suicide. Choosing to live, Paulus surrendered, commenting that: "I have no intention of shooting myself for that Austrian corporal".
Stalingrad in the media
The extreme conditions of the battle, including the paralyzing Soviet winter that precipitated massive German fatalities due to starvation and freezing, have been immortalized in several films of German, , and American origin. The struggle is also remembered and reflected upon in numerous books, for its significance in thwarting the German invasion, as well as its significance as a landmark of military barbarism and human suffering in which the loss of life was unprecedented.
See also
External links
- Original reports from The Times
- This site is sponsored by the main historical and culture organizations of Volgograd.
- Written with strong Socialist/Communist political under and overtones.
- The Battle of Stalingrad in detail.
- Roberts, Geoffrey. , , February 28, 2003
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- on Google Video
- (German)
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