Battle of Stalingrad, the turning point of

the
Second World War

Thursday, 5 November 2015

Between August of
1942 and January of 1943 an epic battle
was waged in the Soviet city of
Stalingrad , which in the opinion of many
commentators determined the course of the Second World War and thereby
the path of history. Had the Germans taken the city early, many things now
we take for granted may have evolved very differently.
Having swept across the endless Russian plains with relative ease, the
German armies did not anticipate great difficulties in taking the city.
Stalingrad was not initially a strategic imperative, in the German plans it

was only to be an interim stop on their way to destroying the Soviet State.
On the other hand, for the beleaguered Russian troops, having retreated all
summer under terrible conditions, to forego the city that bore the name of
Stalin was no option. Less hopefully, but with a quiet determination, they
had decided that they would retreat no more.
The soldiers of the Red army fighting to defend the city on the Volga will
either hold their ground or perish in the process. As things turned out, there
was a lot more staked on the ensuing battle for Stalingrad than the mere
fate of a large city.
1941
As the surprise Soviet counter-offensive of the winter of 1941 petered out in
the freezing snows of the Russian wilderness, the minds of the German war
planners began to turn to the inevitable summer campaign ahead, their
successive offensive against a bloodied but defiant enemy.
Six months before, on 22 June 1941, the awesome and seemingly
unstoppable German war machine had launched itself at Russia, the largest
country in the world, with a sudden and devastating ferocity. For this
unprecedented attack the Germans had divided their four million strong
striking force into three large army groups. Army Group North was to dash
up to Leningrad, while bringing the Baltic area under its heel. The task of
the exceptionally strong Army Group Centre was to thrust in to the Russia
heartland with Moscow as the desired long stop. The Donets River was the
ambitious summer target for the Army Group South with the Ukraine and
Crimea as the rich prizes.
Only from an army in the class of the Wehrmacht could a task of such scale
and ambition be demanded. No army in history had to conquer a land as
vast and an enemy as formidable in just one furious campaign. To even
contemplate such an undertaking the attacker had to possess outstanding
soldiery as well as a capacity for extraordinary efficiency. Germany was
obviously blessed with both.
The war opened dazzlingly for the Teutonic warriors. Punching huge gaps in
the bewildered enemy defence lines the formidable Panzer divisions of the
Germans streaked across the Russian plains leaving the mopping up to the
slower infantry divisions. These highly trained men of the infantry, while
continuously fighting the retreating Russians marched a regular 30 miles a
day, determined to keep cohesion with their comrades in the fast moving
armoured units relentlessly moving east.
But the country, that Germany had now locked horns with was immense,
the enemy exceedingly tough. It is testimony to the superlative calibre of
German arms that they, hopelessly over-stretched after six months of
continuous fighting, almost achieved victory. In the north they surrounded

Leningrad and imposed a crippling siege on the city. In the centre, German
reconnaissance units stomped through knee high snow to the out skirts of
Moscow. In the south most of Ukraine was theirs.
The Russian bear was dreadfully mauled, but was refusing to lie down.
In the huge gamble the Germans had taken, even a near
victory amounted to a strategic defeat. Although the
Germans were now deep in Russia, given the size of the
country and the endless supply of men and material
Russia could command, it was still in a position to continue
resisting strongly. The fundamental failure of the
Wehrmacht to achieve a decisive win in 1941 now
necessitated a renewed offensive in 1942 to bring the
enemy to heel, once and for all.
But after the dreadful winter battles of 1941, when
Russians launched quite an effective counter punch,
Germans were not in a position to renew their attack on all
three fronts. After much consideration they picked on the
economically vital Southern Front, with the hope that their
superior military could administer such a crippling blow to
the Russians that they would be compelled to surrender.
The Army Groups North and Centre were to remain on a
defensive posture with a few local offensives to keep the Russian defenders
in those fronts pinned down.
1942
For the gigantic attack of 1942 the Army Group South was reorganised with
Field Marshall Von Bock in overall charge. Under his command were several
armies including the 2nd army, 17th army, the 6th army, the 1st Panzer
army and the 4th Panzer army. Any one of these armies was capable of
delivering a crippling blow to the enemy while the 6th was particularly
strong with 11 divisions and an entire Panzer Corps in its establishment.
Operation Blue, as the plan was named, was somewhat vague on its final
objectives, but envisaged reaching the Volga in the East, bringing the large
city of Stalingrad under control while reaching the Eastern Caucasus during
the campaign. Again it was hoped that by menacing this vital area they
could compel the Soviets to commit its precious reserves thus presenting
the Germans with an opportunity to force the issue.
The Germans had no doubts about the superiority of their fighting men.
Repeatedly, they had observed the clumsy battle tactics and the wooden
orthodoxy of the Russian commanders. In contrast the Germans were
trained and encouraged to fight unconventionally and resourcefully. Rather
than attempting to overwhelm the enemy with mere numbers and often

wasteful firepower, the Wehrmacht embraced the idea of paralysing their

foe with speed and effectiveness.
On 28th of June 1942 Von Bock opened his offensive with predictable
ferocity, within days splitting the Russian front in to rapidly disintegrating
fragments. Once again the vaunted armoured divisions of the Germans
advanced East across the massive steppe seeking an opportunity to
mortally wound the enemy. Not only were they assured of their military
supremacy, the Germans were also convinced of their racial superiority
over an enemy whom their internal military magazines routinely described
in terms such as- degenerate looking Orientals, begging whining Asians, a
mixture of low and the lowest humanity, truly subhuman.
By 22 August elements of the German 6th Army, now under the command
of General Friedrich Paulus, had reached the Volga, in the borders of the
Asian continent, a remarkable advance since June 1941. Stalingrad, the city
carrying the name of the Soviet dictator was tantalisingly within grasp.
The next day, 23 August, with predictable efficiency the German Air Force
began carpet-bombing the ill-fated city. The resulting fires turned Stalingrad
in to a burning inferno of collapsed buildings, rubble and thick smoke. No
human force could resist the German firepower in those conditions. Hitler
who had baulked at the idea of committing his troops to city fighting in
Moscow and Leningrad the previous year, now decided that he must have
Stalingrad. Perhaps less sanguinely, but certainly with grim determination,
Stalin had also decided that Russia would not retreat any further.
So began the titanic struggle between these two implacable enemies for a
burnt out patch of the earth, which finally became the turning point of the
Second World War. For the valiant Russian defenders there was little choice.
They faced the fury of the German guns well aware that retreat only meant
drowning in the freezing waters of the Volga. Besides, Joseph Stalin who
knew how to impose his will had placed Secret Service Police detachments
in the rear with strict orders to summarily execute any Russian soldier
disobeying the order to hold his ground.
For the Germans, the battle for Stalingrad turned their world upside down.
Their armoured divisions trained to capture something like 50 miles a day,
were now advancing at snail pace, and attempting to subdue a burning city
against an enemy who rarely showed himself. One single building would
change hands several times in a day, each battle only adding to the corpses
lying on the floor. In such close quarter fighting German planes and tanks
were unable to join effectively through the fear of hitting their own.
A German Lieutenant with the 24th Panzer division described the battlefield
thus Stalingrad is no longer a city. By day it is an enormous cloud of
burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the
flames. And when the nights arrive, one of those scorching, howling,
bleeding nights, the dogs plunge in to the Volga and swim desperately to

gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals
flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for any longer; only men
endure.
While the climacteric battle was raging in this man made hell-hole of a
burning city hundreds of powerful German divisions were holding their
impossibly long front line from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus Mountains,
many almost on an R&R mode. General Paulus himself could only commit
eight of the divisions of the 6th Army to the crucial battle in the city while
assigning eleven divisions under his command to guard the large area
under the Armys administration and his almost 200 mile long exposed
flanks.
As the battle dragged on in to the Russian winter many a General warned of
the dangers inherent in a prestige battle, where the German army was
paying a price totally out of proportion to the citys fast diminishing
strategic importance. But the Majority of the high command including
Hitler, who held the Russians in contempt, could not conceive of a largescale counteroffensive by them. The Wehrmacht, which had traditionally
prided itself on its cold rationality, was now acting increasingly on hateful
prejudices, arrogance and unwarranted optimism. So General Paulus, the
harried commander of the 6th Army who was considered a competent staff
office, if slow-witted and unimaginative in the field, continued with tactics
designed to grind down the enemy inch by inch, an approach which was
essentially counter-productive to the numerically weaker but technically
superior Germans.
The German battle order in the Stalingrad area now presented Marshall
Zhukov the Russian commander, legendary for his coolness under pressure,
with a situation where he could turn tables on the enemy. The German 6th
Army intent on gaining Stalingrad at any cost was fully absorbed in city
fighting. Its long and difficult flanks guarded mainly by satellite divisions
from Rumania and Hungary with a sprinkling of German units, were
vulnerable. These satellite armies were far inferior to the Germans in
equipment as well as in fighting qualities. The nearest German formations
of any size were far away in the Caucasus absorbed in heavy fighting in
that mountain region.
Realising the latent opportunity in the situation, Zhukov decided to keep the
battle of Stalingrad going even at a heavy price while secretly accumulating
huge forces at the extremities of the German flanks. It was a hard decision.
The men he ferried across the Volga to battle the Germans in the inferno of
Stalingrad had extremely low chances of returning alive. But in order to
keep the Germans firmly focused on the city, Zhukov was willing to pay with
blood for time. For almost four months the two armies waged a ferocious
battle for the few remaining square miles of the city of Stalingrad.

Then in the early hours of 19 November 1942, when the freezing winter of
Russia was well advanced, Zhukov struck. The Russians, in two huge pincer
attacks, pierced the flanks of the 6th Army and moved rapidly towards the
town of kalach their intended meeting point. On their advance the Russians
met only feeble resistance from the Rumanians and the Hungarians, the
satellite troops, to whom the Germans had entrusted the task of guarding
the rear of the 6th Army.
When the two pincer arms of the Russians met at Kalach on 22 November,
they had entrapped the great 6th Army of the Germans. In the bleak icy
Russian Steppe, covered by a numbing winter mist, the turning point of the
Second World War had been reached. Although the Germans were to fight
on doggedly for another two and half years, they had lost the initiative.
From then on they were largely an Army in defence.
Posted by Thavam