Stalingrad: The Most Important Battle of World War Two.
By Stephen Burke, 4B
When war broke out in 1939 people expected the trench warfare of 1914-18. They were mistaken. World War 2 showed that new weapons and tactics could revolutionize the battlefield. Modern war began in 1939. However despite these changes the savagery and deathtoll remained as high as ever. The Battle of Stalingrad is a prime example of both of these points.
In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler described Russia as " the deadly enemy of Germany." He told his generals there were no rules in regard to fighting Russia as he considered the Soviets a race to be disposed of. With this in mind he launched Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. Operation Barbarossa went well at first, in fact it made such startling progress that Hitler slowed down the advance to consolidate his new territory. This gave the Russian cities time to defend themselves and an army of women, old men and children spent their every waking hour digging in.
The Germans knew that the Battle of Stalingrad would be catastrophic for the Soviet ability to withstand the German army because they would be cut off from their own oil supply. On July 22 1942 the German 6th army was given the task of assaulting the industrial heart of Russia- Stalingrad. The Soviets had over one million soldiers in reserve and to assault an enemy position you need a majority of 3:1. The Germans were outnumbered 4:1, yet many Germans mirrored the sentiment that with little effort the city should fall in two days. With this complacency, the 6th army assault began on 19 August 1942 supported by the 4th Panzer army. From the very first engagements in the western suburbs of Stalingrad it was clear that the Russian defenders were contesting every inch of ground.
On 23 August an airstrike of six hundred bombers was launched killing forty thousand civilians but not rousting the defenders. On that evening German troops reached Rynok, northern most suburb of Stalingrad. The Russians were mining and sabotaging buildings as they were ousted, creating death traps for the Germans, then reclaiming the same building after the Germans had detonated all explosives and killed themselves. The Germans, however, still pushed on.
On September 2nd "the Germans reached the Volga, north of Stalingrad". Stalingrad was under siege. Russian commander Marshal Zhukov was ordered to attack the north and northwest of Stalingrad. The next day saw one thousand German bombers fly missions over Stalingrad. On September 5, the first Soviet counterattack began and failed. The following morning saw Russian reinforcements arrive and the sides were now savagely attacking each other.
September 18 saw Soviet marines assault the western bank of the Volga, beating off German counterattacks in a single day. Four days later the very centre of Stalingrad was in German hands. The 23 September was marked by the arrival of two thousand Russian troops to help the marines. Slowly the Germans were pushed back. Two days later the 4 Panzer Army arrived, pushing the defenders back to the bank of the Volga. Between 25 September and 5 October more than one hundred and sixty thousand Russian troops reinforced the factories on the West Bank of the Volga.
On October 11, after fifty days of continuous hand to hand fighting, the Germans were preparing one final devastating assault. This came three days later, supported by three hundred tanks. But the key areas and factories still did not fall. Fighting took place in every attic, on every floor, on the ruins of floors and in cellars. That night three thousand five hundred Russian wounded were evacuated. The Soviets were pounded from the air, overrun by wave after wave of German troops. They were still defending by October 15. The German attack had failed, yet it was renewed by them three days later. By October 20 the Russians had no more than one thousand yards of Stalingrad. But they had more reserves and launched counter attacks on both flanks, surrounding the Sixth Army.
By November 8th Paulus and his 6th Army were suffering the hardships of starvation and the bitter Russian winter so airdrops were organised by the Luftflotte . But these failed because of the terrible weather. The Germans fought tenaciously and on the 11th of November reached the bank of the Volga on a five hundred-yard front, splitting the Russians in two. Hitler’s determination to push the city fight to an end forced him to put all available assault formations into Stalingrad. That left under-equipped and poorly motivated Romanians and Hungarians to guard the flanks. On November 19th Operation Uranus was launched and the Soviets smashed through these weak sides and encircled the 6th Army, "and by November 24th they had the city encircled."
On December 24th 1942 the air supply base of the 6th Army was moved away from Stalingrad due to Russian attacks along the entire front. The supply of Stalingrad by air was therefore a failure and one of the most important causes of the German surrender. This fact was not lost on Field Marshal Paulus, who told Hitler that he was in fact addressing himself to men who were effectively already dead. The Panzer 4th Army which had taken part in the October 14th assault were beaten back well past the suburbs of Stalingrad.
The besieged army, by January 10th, 1943, were now living on two and a half ounces of bread, two fifths of an ounce of fats and sugar per day. The ordeal of hunger was increased by the cold because the winter kit of the 6th Army had got no further than Kiev. For weeks the temperature was between twenty-five and thirty-five degrees centigrade. Artillery, ammunition and fuel were in short supply, which excluded all but very localised counter attacks. The usual German battalion strength of eight hundred and fifty was down to seventy- five during this siege. And as Paulus had dryly noted, the occupation of the entire city was not to be accomplished in such a fashion.
The Russian situation could not have been better, though. They had half a million reserves and had about ninety brigades and divisions against twenty decimated and starved divisions of the 6th Army. On January 8th, two Soviet officers carried a flag of truce to Paulus and submitted the conditions of the German surrender. On January 10th, a massive barrage of over seven thousand artillery pieces opened up on German positions. An hour later the barrage crept forward giving the signal for the final Soviet attack of the battle. By the seventeenth, over two thirds were in the Russian pocket. On January 22nd Paulus noted that the German forces had run out of ammunition.
On January 30th, Paulus, trapped in the basement of a department store, surrendered. "In the basement they found hundreds of German soldiers, dirty, reeking, fearful." The Germans lost seventy thousand dead, while the Russians suffered forty six thousand seven hundred dead soldiers. The Germans had "ninety-one thousand taken prisoner by the Russians," 5fifty thousand of whom died within two months. The Germans also lost seven thousand pieces of artillery, which in total reduced the entire capability of the German forces by twenty-five per cent. This caused the Germans to forever abandon their hopes of conquering Russia. The Soviets capitalized on their success and pushed the Germans back to Berlin.
Short Questions
Review - Russia's War, Richard Overy.
One of the sources used for this research topic was ‘Russia’s War’ by Richard Overy. The book tells of how German armies stampeded through the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.Overy shows how at the time, Nazi politicians and Western statesmen alike predicted the USSR’s collapse. This book contains a balanced and acute portrayal of a combat theatre that claimed more than 40 million Soviet lives. Overy tells of how Stalin and his commanders held off defeat and engineered the most significant military achievement of World War Two: the destruction of the Wehrmacht. Overy attributes the Soviet victory to the tough Russian spirit, which was hewn by the bitter climate, cruelly harsh working conditions and Stalin’s heinous purges and farm collectivization programs.
It was a valuable source because it made excellent use of newly available presidential archive material and KGB film collections, Overy’s book is a penetrating and compassionate account of Russia’s struggle with Germany during WWII.
We learnt in history class that it is very difficult to write the history of anything. Most of the time it can only be a history. The is a definitive statement and it is very hard to find definitive history. This is because of bias and subjectivity. While doing my research topic I became aware that to read one book might lead to the essay being one-sided. This is because of bias and subjectivity. I solved this problem by using many books, the Internet and Encarta.
Why did this topic merit study?
This topic merited study because:
1 It was probably the single most important battle of World War Two,
2 The battle showed that technology is not enough to win a war, but that a determined enemy can win,
3 Despite the fact that it’s the most important battle of the war, it only gets one page of the L.C text.
Bibliography:
1 Overy, Richard Russia’s war, Penguin Group, USA, 1997.
2 Carvel, Robert (ed), Chronicle of the 20th century, Chronicle Communications Ltd., Farnborough, Hampshire.
3 Tierney, Mark, Europe since 1870, C.J Fallon, Dublin 1984.
4 Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, 1924.
5 Gilbert, J, Hitler's Army, 1990.