The Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle for Stalingrad
Introduction to the Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle for Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad's Importance
Statistics of the Battle of Stalingrad
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The German Invasion

On July 23,1942, Adolf Hitler, German dictator of Germany, ordered General FriedrichPaulus, the commander of the German Sicth Army, to capture Stalingrad, an important industrial and communications center near the Volga River. Hitler wanted the city to serve as a base for a german invaison of the Caucasus region where rich oil reserves could be used for the German war effort and denied to the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator of Russia, ordered the Red Army to defend Stalingrad at all costs, demanding that the soldiers of the Red Army to take "not a step back." In late August he clled on his two best military professionals: General Zhukov, who had organized a counteroffensive to defend Moscow,the Soviet capital in December 1941, and General Vasilyevsky, the army chief of the General Staff, to deal with the situation in Stalingrad. They proposed to wear the Germans down by locking their troops into a long and tiring fight for the city while the Red Army assembled for a counterattack.

By September 3 the German forces had pushed the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad back to the west bank of the Volga. Luftwaffe, the German air force, bombed the city until it was rubble, however the shattered buildings provided good cover for the Soviet defenders. German panzer tanks were unsuited to urban warfare and what became a long battle of attrition where progress, as one German general remarked, was measured not by the mile but by the yard.

Many series of German assaults on the Soviet forces that were occupying the west bank resulted in grueling and bitter hand-to-hand fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad. By the end of October the German were echausted and had very little ammunition, while the Soviet defenders, who had barely managed to keep their positions, were replenished across the Volga with troops, food, ammunition, tanks, and guns.

 

The Red Army's Counteroffensive

The Red Army assembled fresh armies for the counteroffensive or Operation Uranus, which was launched on November 19, catching the Germans by surprise. The German advance towards Stalingrad added about 680 miles to their line. No German troops were available to hold the extra distance, so Hitler used troops which were contributed by Hungary, Italy and Romania and all of these allied countries are known as the Axis powers.
 
When the Sixth and Fourth Panzer armies were held at Stalingrad in September and October of 1942, they were flanked on the laft and right by Romanian armies. Italian and Hungarian armies were deployed farther upstream on the Don River. Trial maneuvers by the Red Army exposed serious weaknesses in some of the Axis's armies. The ill-equipped and ill-trained Hungarian, Italian and Romanian armies guarding the Ferman supply route to Stalingrad collapsed in chaos in the face of the Soviet counteroffensive.
 
Soviet armored spearheads attacked the Romanians west and south of  Stalingrad on the morning of November 19. Their points met three days later at Kalach on the Don River. The Soviet forces encircled the entire Sixth Army, about half of the Fourth Panzer Army, and a few Romanian units, creating a pocket in which the Axis forces were trapped. Hitler then ordered Paulus to hold the pocket and promised the provide his troops with food and ammunition by aircraft, and sent Field Marshal Erich von Manstein to organize the relief effort.
 
When the airlift failed to provide the 300 tons of supplies for Paulus' army required, despite the assurances by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goring that the German air force could keep the Sixth Army adequately supplied by air, the Soviet forces caused the halting of Manstein's relief operation 34 miles short of the pocket in late December. The Sixth Army then began to run out of ammunition, fuel and food.

The Surrender of the Germans

Although a German panzer offenssive from the south sought to break through to relieve the Sixth Army, the Red Army repulsed this offensive on December 23. Souviet assaults split Paulus's forces further on January 26, 1943. The widespread and unmanageable German army fought until January 31, when Paulus finally surrendered to stop the inevitable failure to capture Stalingrad. By February 2 the remnants of his army had given up. About 200,000 Axis forces were killed or wounded in battle while the Red Army suffered about 1.1 million casualties, including about 485,000 that had died in the battle for Stalingrad.