Battle of Stalingrad

gigatos | June 11, 2022

Summary

The Battle of Stalingrad was an immense warlike confrontation between the Red Army of the Soviet Union and the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany and its Axis allies for the control of the Soviet city of Stalingrad, present-day Volgograd, between August 23, 1942 and February 2, 1943. The battle took place in the course of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. With casualties estimated at more than two million people, including soldiers from both sides and Soviet civilians, the Battle of Stalingrad is considered the bloodiest battle in human history. The serious defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in this city meant a key and severe turning point in the final results of the war; representing the beginning of the end of Nazism in Europe, since the Wehrmacht would never recover its offensive capacity nor would it obtain more strategic victories in the Eastern Front.

The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in late summer 1942 as part of Operation Blue or Fall Blue, an attempt by Germany to seize the Caucasus oil wells. On August 23, the 6th Army, supported by the 4th Panzer Army, succeeded in crossing the bend of the Don River. A massive bombardment reduced much of the city; while the ground troops of the 6th Army had to take the city street by street and house by house, in what they called Rattenkrieg (”rat war”). Despite controlling most of the city, the Wehrmacht was never able to defeat the last Soviet defenders who clung tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River, which divided the city in two. In November 1942, a major Soviet counteroffensive overwhelmed the Axis Allied armies on the Don, and pinned General Paulus” German 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army inside Stalingrad, unable to escape the encirclement because of Hitler”s refusal to give up the capture of the city. This encirclement, called by the Germans Der Kessel (”the cauldron”), meant the bagging of 250 000 soldiers, rapidly weakened by hunger and cold, combined with the failure of the plan to airlift supplies and ammunition to the besieged Germans, as promised by Hermann Göring. Finally beaten down by the constant failures of General von Manstein to break the siege and the continuous Soviet attacks, Friedrich Paulus, disobeying Hitler”s orders, surrendered his 6th Army in February 1943.

The German defeat at Stalingrad confirmed what many military experts suspected: the logistical capacity of German forces was insufficient to supply and sustain an offensive on a front that stretched from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. This would be confirmed shortly thereafter in the further defeat Germany would suffer at the Battle of Kursk. The military failure convinced many officers that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster, accelerating plans for his overthrow and resulting in the failed attempt on Hitler”s life in 1944. The city of Stalingrad would receive the title of Heroic City.

Influenced by the geopolitician Karl Haushofer, Adolf Hitler intended to turn the lands of the Soviet Union into German colonies which he would call “Germania”. Between 1939 and 1941, Nazi Germany was busy fighting its historic enemies in the West: France and the United Kingdom (Hitler, however, never lost sight of his real goal: to invade Eastern Europe and annihilate the Slavs.

On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, even though England had not been defeated. Hitler, convinced of the weakness of the Soviet state, which he regarded as a giant with feet of clay, believed that its peoples would turn against Iosif Stalin, allowing him to complete the invasion before winter, and his generals were ordered to stick to the plan, disregarding his views. His generals were ordered to stick to the plan, disregarding his opinions. Thus, one day before the invasion, some three million German soldiers awaited the start of the largest military operation to date, distributed from Finland to the Black Sea. Some 950,000 soldiers from other nations allied with Germany.

In December 1941, the war in the Soviet Union had not developed as the German High Command had planned. Leningrad and Sevastopol continued to resist encirclement in the north and south respectively, and the offensive against Moscow had failed. Then, unexpectedly, the Germans encountered a major Soviet counteroffensive from the Russian capital and had to face the fact that, despite having annihilated and captured hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers in recent months, the Soviet High Command, by making a non-aggression pact with Tokyo, had managed to deploy sufficient reserves, in addition to the Siberian divisions led by General Georgi Zhukov, until then located on the border with Manchuko, to launch a major counteroffensive. Belatedly, and as had been believed for decades, the invaders would realize that the enemy reserves were apparently “inexhaustible”.

Having failed to capture Moscow, Hitler – with his generals against him – decided to head for the oil wells of the Caucasus, since oil was the fundamental element, which he had at his disposal, to sustain the war and, moreover, to really weaken his enemy. Operation Blue, as the German campaign in the south of the Soviet Union was called, had as its objective the capture of strong points in the Volga first and, later, the advance on the Caucasus.

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Advance towards the Don

On April 5, 1942, Hitler issued Basic Directive 41 with which he defined the planned development of the new major offensive in tactical detail and described, actually rather nebulously, the geostrategic objectives of Operation Blue (Fall Blau in German), on the basis of which he expected decisive success. The German offensive involved two groups of armies, more than 1 million soldiers with about 2500 tanks, supported by four Romanian, Italian and Hungarian armies (about 600 000 more men). It was to be unleashed in southern Russia with the aim of conquering the Don and Volga basins, destroying the important industries of Stalingrad (railway and river junction and very important center of mechanical production) and then targeting the oil wells of the Caucasus, assuring Germany sufficient energy resources to continue the war. This ambitious directive was based mainly on Hitler”s erroneous assumption of a supposed irreversible material and moral exhaustion of the Red Army after the enormous losses suffered in the campaign of 1941-42.

The operation, initially scheduled for early May, suffered considerable delays due to stiff Soviet resistance during the siege of Sevastopol. On the other hand, the need to carry out some preliminary front rectification operations and to oppose some premature and ineffective Soviet spring offensive attempts in Kharkov (Second Battle of Kharkov). In fact, these German successes, which cost the Soviets less than a quarter million losses, greatly contributed to the initial success of Operation Blue (Fall Blau).

“For Hitler, Stalingrad was the Soviet symbol, for its industry and for what it represented ideologically, so he put a lot of emphasis on taking it, but the Soviets were aware of the consequences of defeat as well, and they were not intimidated by the Nazi power; the duel was served”.

It was May 10, General Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army, presented Field Marshal Fedor von Bock with an outline of “Operation Frederick”. Paulus had recently taken command of the 6th Army following the death of its previous commander, Walter von Reichenau, from a heart attack suffered after exercising in the Russian countryside in sub-zero temperatures.

Operation Frederick meant the consolidation of the front in front of Kharkov, recently captured by Germany. However, Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko overtook Paulus, launching on May 12 a counter-offensive from Voronezh, whose objective was precisely the liberation of Kharkov, surrounding the 6th Army in a pincer movement. When 640,000 Soviets with 1,200 tanks rushed against Paulus” forces, Paulus found himself on the verge of collapse. Only the timely arrival of Ewald von Kleist”s 1st Panzer Army reversed the offensive situation and, instead of being captured, Paulus” men helped Von Kleist”s men capture the Soviet 6th and 57th Armies at Barvenkovo. On May 28, some 240,000 Soviet troops were bagged and captured, and 1250 tanks and more than 2,000 guns were seized. It was the worst Soviet defeat of the war, and ended with Timoshenko”s counteroffensive.

On June 1, Adolf Hitler and Marshal Fedor von Bock presented the final plans for Operation Blue to the generals of Army Group South at their headquarters in Poltava. Paulus” 6th Army was tasked with clearing Voronezh, and then proceeding to Stalingrad accompanied by Hermann Hoth”s 4th Panzer Army. Once there, they were to destroy the industrial complexes and protect the Caucasus oil refineries from the north.

Any transcription of the orders of Operation Blue was forbidden, everything had to be communicated verbally. On June 10, the German 1st Panzerarmee and 6th Army, consisting of 33 divisions, five of them Panzerdivisionen and two motorized, began the first advances into the Volchansk and Kupians sectors; the armored forces were deployed between the right flank of Army Group South and the Smolensk-Slaviansk sector. However, on June 19, a German plane carrying General Georg Stumme”s personal notes about the operation was shot down behind enemy lines, and the papers were captured by the Soviets. However, after General Filipp Golikov delivered them directly to Stalin, Stalin rejected them as forgeries, convinced that Moscow remained the main German target.

By June 26, the 1st Panzearmee and the German 6th Army, after 16 days of fighting, repulsed the left wing of the Soviet Southwest Front, pushing the Russians to the banks of the Oskol, where they are positioned.

At Sevastopol, the German 11th Army entered the ruins of the fortress after months of Soviet resistance, which had been delaying the German offensive (Fall Blau) into the Caucasus. General of the 11th Army, Erich Von Manstein was promoted to field marshal for his brilliant Crimean campaign, which culminated in the capture of the Sevastopol fortress.

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Operation Blue

On June 28, the German general offensive towards the main objectives in the direction of Voronezh began, and on June 30 in the Donetsk region of southern Russia, Army Group South began its offensive well: Soviet forces offered little resistance in the vast empty steppes and began to withdraw eastward. Several attempts to re-establish a defensive line failed as German units outflanked them. Two large pockets were formed and destroyed: the first, northeast of Kharkov, on July 2, and a second, around Millerovo, Rostov Oblast, a week later. The initial advance of the 6th Army and its Axis allies was successful. Meanwhile, fighting had been going on for days in the vicinity and on the outskirts of the important southern Soviet city of Voronezh. Von Bock hoped that the Germans would soon be able to take it, but Timoshenko had reinforced his garrison. Hitler gave the order to halt the attack on Voronezh, and pursue the Fall Blau offensive in the south. By July 6, the German 4th Panzer Army continued to engage in heavy fighting with the Soviets who defended Voronezh and could not withdraw as Hitler had ordered. But they partially capture the city. As the Russians begin to retreat, the Führer orders to conquer it. The 4th Armored Army was fully engaged in the battle of Voronezh for two days and it took the Germans some time before they could abandon the line until the arrival of the Hungarian 2nd Army which continued to fight for the rest of the city. On July 9, Hitler split Army Group South, as part of the second phase of the operation, the 4th Panzer Army headed for the Don and Volga. However, it was subjected to a powerful counterattack by the Red Army, until July 13, in the area of the Don and Donetsk. Hitler would later acknowledge that those two days of delays at Voronezh, and the surprise ineffective Soviet attempts to stabilize the front, allowed Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko to reinforce the Don and its great meander, preventing the capture of Stalingrad by the 4th Panzer Army.

Since Hitler ordered to split Army Group South into two forces as part of the second phase of the operation, he did not take into account that German fuel reserves were alarmingly low, and assumed that the enemy had largely exhausted its reserves in the first winter of the war. Despite the lack of reserves, Army Group A, commanded by Marshal Wilhelm List, was ordered to continue the offensive in the Caucasus. While Army Group B, including Friedrich Paulus” 6th Army and Hermann Goth”s 4th Panzer Army, commanded by Marshal Maximilian von Weichs, headed for the Don and Volga.

In a report of Halder, dated July 13, to the Führer: “The German armies of Von Bock, engaged in the Fall Blau Offensive in the south of Russia, cannot annihilate the Soviet troops of Marshal Timoshenko, who retreat in perfect order towards the east to avoid the German pincer maneuvers”. Hitler will assume that it is a disbandment and changes the plans of the operation, orders the 4th Panzerarmee and the 40th Panzerkorps to abandon the objective of the Don meander, leaving the 6th Army to go there alone.

On July 15, Hitler and von Bock, commander of Army Group South, discussed the next steps in the operation. The heated debate and continued Soviet counterattacks, which tied down the 4th Panzer Army until July 13, caused Hitler to lose his temper and dismiss von Bock.

The 4th Panzer Army from Hoth, headed south, as planned by the German high command (OKW), to join Army Group A, due to slow progress in the Caucasus campaign, and to assist in the capture of the remainder of Tymoshenko”s forces, which was expected to take place near Rostov-on-Don, without fully succeeding. In the advance a massive traffic jam occurred as the 4th Panzer and 1st Panzer required the few roads in the area. Both armies were held up as they attempted to clear the resulting mess of thousands of vehicles. The delay was long and is believed to have cost the advance at least a week. But Rostov was attacked and recaptured by the 17th Army and the 1st Panzer Army on July 23.

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The city

The city had an important military industry (Stalingrad had the Red October, tractor and Barricady cannon factories), and possessed the crucial railway junction of the line that united Moscow, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, and there was also a river port in service for navigation on the Volga. The city stretched some 24 kilometers along the western bank of the Volga but was less than ten kilometers wide. There was no bridge across the river, and large barges were used to connect the two banks. The eastern bank was scarcely populated. It is important to consider that the temperature in the Caucasus is very extreme both in summer and winter, during which the cold is such that the Volga freezes with a layer thick enough of ice to allow the passage of heavy vehicles.

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“Not one step back!”

Stalin had foreseen the rapid fall of Rostov. For this reason, on July 19, he had ordered that Stalingrad be placed in a state of total siege and preparations for resistance to the approaching Germans begun. Civilians were not allowed to leave the city, in order to encourage the Soviet militia by keeping their relatives among the inhabitants. However, specialized workers considered key to the armaments industry were sent to the Urals, to continue working there.

On July 17, he began the German offensive towards the Don, in charge of the 6th Army. As for the defense, Vasily Chuikov would reach the Stalingrad front; there he would be in charge of the 64th Soviet Army, whose main units had not yet arrived. Chuikov found his troops in very low morale, and there was little he could do to avoid being forced to cross the Don. The arrival of Russian aircraft, which kept the German Messerschmitt 109 occupied until early August, relieved the battered ground forces.

By mid-July, the Germans had pushed the Soviet troops back towards the bank of the Don River, despite fuel shortages. At this point, the Don and Volga rivers are only 65 km apart. In the advance the Germans left their main supply depots west of the Don, which will have important implications later in the course of the battle. Since the Russians will be strongly positioned in the bend of the Don River. The Germans began to use the armies of their Italian, Hungarian and Romanian allies to protect their left (northern) flank. Occasionally, Italian actions were mentioned in official German communiqués. The Italian forces were generally held in low regard by the Germans, and were accused of having low morale: in reality, the Italian divisions fought relatively well, according to a German liaison officer. The 3rd Ravenna Mountain Infantry Division and the 5th. In fact, the Italians distinguished themselves in numerous battles, such as the Battle of Nikolayevka.

On July 24, 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, greatly expanding them to include the occupation of the city of Stalingrad. Both sides began attributing propaganda value to the city, on the grounds that it bore the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. Hitler proclaimed that after the capture of Stalingrad, they would kill its male citizens and deport all women and children because its population was “thoroughly communist” and “especially dangerous.” The fall of the city was also supposed to firmly secure the northern and western flanks of the German armies as they advanced on Baku, with the aim of securing these strategic oil resources for Germany. The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germany”s failure at Stalingrad, caused by German overconfidence and an underestimation of Soviet reserves.

On July 25, the Germans faced stiff resistance with a Soviet bridgehead west of Kalach. “We had to pay a heavy cost in men and material … numerous German tanks were left on the Kalach battlefield burned or shot.” That day the bulk of Kleist”s 1st Panzerarmee crosses the Don River to the south, but some straggling units would not make it until a day later.

On July 28, concerned about the German advance towards the Volga, which threatened to split the Soviet Union in two, Stalin forbade surrender regardless of the reasons, and ordered the formation of a line in the rear of the infantry to shoot any Soviet soldier who retreated without permission. Stalin”s order, 227, soon became popularly known as the “Not a step back!” order. Women were also forced to fight on a large scale. In addition, the Red Army practiced sending massive frontal attacks at minimum distances, turning the battle into a massacre.

For his part, confident of the collapse of the Red Army in southern Russia, Hitler once again ignored the real state of his troops in the Caucasus and the enemy”s plans to position themselves strongly in the mountains, and ordered the immediate capture of the oil wells by the reinforced Army Group A, which was determined to advance as fast as possible, up to 100 km from the Caspian Sea, which would never arrive. On August 9, the first oil field of Maikop fell, but was completely destroyed. The German units lack supplies and are exhausted; the companies rarely had more than 60 men, and the Panzerdivisionen 80 tanks, without more reinforcements and without fuel, being very far from their reach the main oilfields of Baku. Hitler, exasperated, begins to turn his attention to the Stalingrad front, which had not been taken by the 6th Army, due to fierce Soviet resistance at the bend of the Don River. Finally, on September 9, Hitler dismissed Von List, head of Army Group A, and personally assumed command of his troops in the Caucasus for some time.

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Advance to the Volga

In early August, Hitler, enraged by General Paulus” slow progress on the Don, ordered Hoth”s 4th Panzer Army to head back to Stalingrad in support of the 6th Army and finally crush the Soviet defenses on the Don meander to the south. General Hoth obeyed with concern, due to the low fuel reserves remaining after the descent into the Caucasus. On August 8, the 16th and 24th Panzerdivisionen of Von Paulus” 6th Army, advancing with the objective of reaching Stalingrad, finish encircling the troops of General Kolpakchi”s Soviet 62nd Army west of Kalach, 60 km from Stalingrad. Seven divisions, two motorized brigades, and two armored brigades with about 1000 tanks and 750 pieces of artillery are encircled. The next day, Stalin appointed Andrei Yeryomenko as commander of the Stalingrad Front, fed up with Marshal Tymoshenko”s continuous defeats. By August 10, General Von Paulus” German 6th Army defeats General Kolpakchi”s troops of the Soviet 62nd Army, who were putting up fierce resistance at the bend of the Don River. The Germans take some 35,000 Russian prisoners and seize 270 tanks and some 560 guns. The remnants of the 62nd Army cross the Don to the outskirts of the city. General Vladimir Kolpakchi was removed from office and replaced by General Anton Lopatin. Thus the way to Stalingrad was open for the Axis forces, but first the Germans would have to wipe out the Soviet strongholds in the area: it would take about eleven days. On August 22, after wiping out the last Soviet pockets of resistance, the 4th Panzerkorps penetrates the Russian lines at Vertiachi, northeast of Stalingrad. General Wietersheim”s 14th Panzerkorps opens a gap in the Russian front with which they will be able to reach the bank of the Volga; through the gap penetrates Seydlitz”s 51st Army Corps. Thus, the first German units cross the bend of the Don River and establish a bridgehead.

On August 23, Stalingrad received its first bombing raid from the Heinkel 111 and Junkers 88, some 600 aircraft of General Wolfram von Richthofen, Chief of Staff of the Condor Legion during the bombing of Guernica. 1000 tons of bombs were dropped and only three planes were lost. No less than 5000 people died that day. In that week 40 000 of the 600 000 inhabitants of the city would die, damaging or destroying some 4000 buildings. The Luftwaffe would lose, in total, 90 planes. On the same day, the vanguard of the German 6th Army reached the Volga. The soldiers were thrilled to have advanced with so many sacrifices from the meander of the Don (thanks in part to the outcome of the Isbucensky Battle and the support of the Lutfwaffe), confident of a rapid fall of Stalingrad. The 16. German Panzer-Division under the command of General Hube, continued to cross the bend of the Don River on a pontoon mounted at Vertiachi, northeast of Stalingrad. In the afternoon, the transmissions compound comes in sight of the city, about 40 km away, while it is being bombarded by Stukas. It proceeds through the suburbs of Spartakovka, Hinok and Latashinika, enters the suburbs of the city and entrenches itself on the banks of the Volga.

To the south, Hoth”s advance was slower, as Yeremenko had placed most of his forces against the 4th Panzer Army; moreover, Hitler had taken an armored corps from General Hoth to integrate it into Paulus” 6th Army.

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Germans at the gates of Stalingrad

On August 24 units of the 16. Panzer-Division under Hube”s command, advance through the industrial suburbs of Spartakovka, northwest of Stalingrad, engaging in heavy fighting with troops of the 62nd Soviet Army using some newly manufactured T-34s and assisted by armed citizens, who fight on the barricades. The Germans attack the railroad, with their artillery they dominate the Volga and the Luftwaffe continues bombing the city. The 35th Soviet Division isolates the Germans, who form a hedgehog formation awaiting the arrival of more German units. Some divisions will not be able to arrive, due to an unexpected Soviet counteroffensive of great proportions, which will take several weeks to be defeated. The counterattack was carried out in the Kotluban sector north of the city, with newly formed armies: the 4th Tank, 24th and 66th armies and the 1st Soviet Guards. These new armies launched costly counterattacks on the German forces, so that entire divisions of the 6th Army near Stalingrad had to be diverted northward to contain the Soviet onslaught. Two other fresh Soviet armies, the 57th and 51st, did the same from the south, where Hoth”s forces were located, again relegating the advance of Paulus and his forces to a quick capture of the city.

Part of the German infantry arrived in the suburbs of Stalingrad, on September 1, with little mechanized support, due to the recent events to the north of the city. At that time the 29th and 14th Motorized Divisions were converging on Stalingrad from the south; from the west the 24th, 94th, 71st, 76th and 295th Armored Infantry Divisions were approaching; from the north and towards the city center, the 100th Fighter Division, the 389th and 60th Motorized Infantry Divisions. While in the city it was defended at that time only by about 56 000 soldiers. The Soviet command could provide its troops in Stalingrad only risky ferries across the Volga. Amid the ruins of the already destroyed city, the Soviet 62nd Army built defensive positions with firing points located in buildings and factories. The next day, troops of the German 6th Army and the 4th Panzerarmee reach the hills overlooking Stalingrad, cutting off the city”s land communications; its garrison can only be supplied by the Volga. Snipers and assault groups stopped the enemy as best they could. The Germans, who moved to Stalingrad, suffered heavy losses. Soviet reinforcements crossed the Volga from the east coast under constant shelling and artillery fire. In the course of time, the entire 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army will be fighting in the city. These troops were unaware that the Red Army was preparing a full-scale offensive against the German 6th Army in the coming months.

Stalin, who urged Zhukov to meet them and intercept these enemy forces, replied:

Don”t you understand that if you surrender Stalingrad, the south of the country will be separated from the center, and we will probably not be able to defend it? In addition to losing our main waterway, it is not only a catastrophe for Stalingrad, but for the country, since the oil will be lost as well.

The Kotluban offensives at the end of August and September would partially alleviate the situation regarding the north of the city. Zhukov”s order was categorical: “Don”t surrender Stalingrad!”.

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Arrival of Zhukov

Marshal Zhukov, who had recently been appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief, second only to Stalin, arrived at Stalingrad on August 29.

Hitler, who had not desired guerrilla warfare in Moscow and Leningrad, now bellowed for the conquest of the city on that premise: that implied street-by-street, house-by-house warfare, a type of combat for which neither the Wehrmacht nor the Waffen-SS were prepared.

The failure to take the Caucasus led Hitler to drastically rethink his objectives. Without the coveted oil, he became convinced that, if he conquered the city, in addition to covering up his strategic defeat with a symbolic victory, he would once again have a chance to turn towards the Caucasus.

On the Stalingrad front, Von Paulus” German 6th Army launched an attack aimed at completing the conquest of the city. To this end, the 71st, 76th and 295th infantry divisions advanced from the Gumrak station towards the main hospital and then took Mamayev Kurgan, while the 94th infantry division and another motorized division attacked the suburban area supported by the 14th and 24th Panzerdivisionen. The commander of the 62nd Soviet Army, Anton Lopatin, considers the city lost, and asks for permission to flee across the river. Stalin refuses. On September 12, Zhukov dishonorably dismissed him for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy by failing to contain him with the 62nd Army, and was replaced by the granitic and inflexible General Vasily Chuikov, an efficient and determined soldier, until then in charge of the 64th Army, deployed south of the city and who had been resisting the onslaught of Hoth”s 4th Panzer Army and Kleist”s Panzergruppe.

When Chuikov arrived at the scene of the battle, Yeriomenko and Khrushchev asked him: “-What is the purpose of your mission, comrade? -To defend the city or die trying,” Chuikov replied firmly. Yeriomenko looked at Khrushchev, and was certain that Chuikov had understood perfectly well what was expected of him.

The new commander found himself with less than 20,000 men and 60 tanks, as well as poor defenses. Chuikov reinforced the anti-aircraft defenses (manned by female soldiers) of the city and also fortified those places where it was possible to contain the enemy, especially the hill of Mamaev Kurgan and the ravine of the Tsaritsa River. He also withdrew most of his artillery to the eastern bank of the Volga and encouraged the deployment of snipers, among them the famous Vasily Zaitsev.

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German assault

The same day that Chuikov took command of the 62nd Army, Paulus was in Vinnitsa, in the Wehrwolf with Hitler, who wanted to know when the city would fall. Paulus was worried about the flanks of his 6th Army, which were devoid of mechanized units of consistency and were guarded by armies without heavy weapons of various nationalities: Romanians, Italians, Hungarians. These inferior forces would be outnumbered, unable to secure the flanks of the German forces at Stalingrad, some 20,000 troops at the time. Nevertheless, Hitler downplayed this weakness, convinced that the Soviet front was on the verge of collapse, a false confidence that rubbed off on Paulus.

On September 14, the other German attempt to take the city – which was thought to be the only attempt – began and the German 71st and 76th Divisions reached the control of Stalingrad. German Division arrived to the control of Stalingrad, approaching dangerously to the main pier, the terminal of arrival of Soviet reinforcements, and opening a breach in the central sector of the Russian positions, arriving some outposts to 200 meters of Chuikov”s bunker, that displaces the totality of its tanks to stop the attack, and employs the tactic of letting the enemy tanks pass up to its positions of anti-tank guns. The Axis troops lose 8,000 men today; the Soviets lose 2,000 soldiers and evacuate 3,500 wounded across the Volga. The Germans take 5000 prisoners.

In these combats Lieutenant Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri, the only son of La Pasionaria, was killed. The battle in the central station of the city, especially in the conquest of the Mamaev Kurgan hill and in the factories in the center of the city, lasted more than two months and became a fierce struggle in which the flags of both sides waved alternately, since if the Germans controlled this hill, their artillery would dominate the Volga. The battles for the Krasny Oktyabr factory, the Tractor factory and the Barricades artillery factory became known throughout the world. While Soviet soldiers continued to defend their positions by firing at the Germans, factory workers were repairing damaged Soviet tanks and weapons in the vicinity of the battlefield, and sometimes on the battlefield itself. The specifics of fighting in the enterprises was the limited use of firearms due to the risk of ricochet: fights were fought with piercing, cutting and crushing objects, as well as hand-to-hand fighting. The Germans deployed an entire loudspeaker system inciting Soviet desertion. Many went over and became hiwis, many others were shot by action or omission in the face of desertion.

For the Soviet forces at Stalingrad it was probably the most critical moment of the battle. The Germans assaulted the 62nd Army in critical condition, being saved from disaster by the intervention of General Rodimtsev”s 13th Guards Rifle Division (although this was later recognized) and the reactivation of the 8th Soviet Air Force, where a son of Stalin served. Soviet ground operations were constantly hampered by the Luftwaffe.

On September 19, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army launched another offensive against General Walter Heitz”s 8th Corps at Kotluban. VIII Fliegerkorps sent wave after wave of Stuka dive bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The offensive was repulsed. The Stukas claimed that 41 of 106 Soviet tanks knocked out that morning while escorting Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft. Amid the rubble of the destroyed city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the 13th Rifle Division of the Soviet Guard, anchored their lines of defense with strongpoints in houses and factories.

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Stalemate in Stalingrad

On September 20 German troops dominate the banks of the Tsaritsa and have artillery within a few meters of the main quay. General Chuikov is forced to move his threatened headquarters from the Tsaritsin bunker to Mamaeiev Kurgan. The central area of the city is stalemated, both armies are exhausted. The Soviets could still bring reinforcements using the ferries at the northern end of the city and the subways, where they have their barracks, hospitals and shelters, unreachable for the German artillery. The city is already a pile of rubble.

Fighting inside the ruined city was fierce and desperate. Lieutenant General Alexander Rodimtsev was in charge of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and received one of the two Heroes of the Soviet Union awarded during the battle for his actions. Stalin”s Order No. 227 of July 27, 1942 decreed that all commanders who ordered unauthorized withdrawals would be subject to court-martial. Deserters and alleged simulators were captured or executed after the fighting. During the battle, the 62nd Army had the highest number of arrests and executions: 203 in total, of which 49 were executed, while 139 were sent to penal companies and battalions. The Germans advancing toward Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.

German military doctrine was based on the interaction of military branches in general and particularly close interaction of infantry, sappers, artillery and dive bombers. In response, Soviet fighters tried to position themselves tens of meters from enemy positions, in which case German artillery and aircraft could not operate without the risk of destroying their own infantry. Often, the opponents were divided by a wall, floor or stairs. In this case, the German infantry had to fight on equal terms with the Soviet infantry: rifles, grenades, bayonets and knives. The fight was for every street, every factory, every house, cellar or staircase. Even individual buildings were put on the cards and got the names: Pavlov”s House, Mill, Department Store, Prison, Zabolotny House, Dairy House, Specialist House, L-shaped House and others. The Red Army constantly carried out counterattacks, trying to regain previously lost positions. Several times they passed from hand to hand Mamaev Kurgan and the Stalingrad-I railroad station. Assault groups on both sides tried to use any passages to the enemy: sewers, cellars, undermines.

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Rattenkrieg

By mid-September, eight of the twenty divisions of the German 6th Army were fighting inside the city; however, the Soviets kept feeding the front with reinforcements from Siberia and Mongolia. General Paulus, ill with dysentery, was under such pressure to report the date of Stalingrad”s fall that he eventually developed a twitch in his left eye, which then spread to the left side of his face.

On this battlefield, the Germans were under constant stress, as the Soviet soldier had become a master of camouflage and ambushes were common. The night offered no respite, as the defenders of the city preferred to attack at night, neutralizing the danger of German bombers. However, it was not a limitation for the Soviet bombers, which passed over the city dropping small 400-kilogram bombs. Finally, the 6th Army asked the Luftwaffe to keep up the pressure on Soviet aircraft during the night, because “the troops have no rest.” If night bombardments, anti-personnel mines and enemy infantry ambushes were not enough to keep the Germans alert in Stalingrad, snipers did manage to catch the attention of German officers. Soviet snipers, using the ruins as shelters, also inflicted heavy damage on the Germans. Sniper Vasily Grigorievich Zaitsev during the battle killed 225 enemy soldiers and officers (including 11 snipers). The number of officers killed by snipers, especially observers, also skyrocketed and very soon premature promotions had to be resorted to, in order to replace the fallen.

The neurosis that a soldier could develop from being constantly subjected to the degree of stress of the so-called Rattenkrieg (”rat war”) was no excuse for leaving the battlefield, as both Germans and Soviets did not recognize this illness and labeled it cowardice, which usually entailed immediate summary execution.

Heavy artillery became useless in this urban fighting environment, as due to the lack of accuracy of the artillery, it was not possible to attack a house occupied by the enemy, because the neighboring houses were occupied by friendly troops. A large number of artillery batteries supported both sides of the fighting (Soviet large-caliber artillery operated from the eastern coast of the Volga), mortars up to 600 mm. There was the famous case of the so-called Pavlov”s House in which the dominance of the apartments alternated bloody between the sides.

Vasily Chuikov ordered the artillery to be moved to the eastern bank of the Volga and to attack behind the German lines, with the aim of destroying lines of communication and infantry formations in the rear. To know which way to shoot, an observation officer had to peek over the roof of a building in the city, which in many cases meant death at the hands of a German sniper. Only the Katiusha were left in Stalingrad, hidden on the sandbank of the Volga.

Unlike the German command posts, the Soviet command posts were located in the city and therefore exposed to attack. On one occasion a German tank was positioned at the entrance to the bunker of the 62nd Army artillery commander and he, together with his staff, had to dig for safety.

Although the initiative, the ratio of enemy casualties per capita and the best technical means corresponded to the German troops, the invading army had great difficulties in conquering a city that, having been savagely bombarded, had ideal conditions for a street-by-street defense. The combined infantry and armored attacks were useless in the chaos of the urban fighting.

To wear down the opponent, the measures imposed by Chuikov were extreme: for example, thousands of inexperienced soldiers were sent to seize the German trenches, taking heavy casualties. Soon the city was covered with a repulsive and putrid atmosphere. The reason was obvious: corpses on both sides were decomposing under the rubble. On the German side, in turn, and under such an atmosphere, the Nazi anti-Semitic policy was continued. The Feldgendarmerie (German Military Police) had been capturing Jews and taking captive civilians who were fit for work, and some 3,000 Jewish civilians of all ages were executed by the Sonderkommandos of the Einsatzgruppen. Another 60,000 were sent to Germany for forced labor. The Sonderkommandos withdrew from Stalingrad on September 15, having executed about 4,000 civilians.

On September 27, Paulus decided to accelerate the capture of the city and prepared a major offensive. The main German force attacked north of Mamaev Kurgan, near the workers” settlements of the Red October and Barrikady factories. The Germans watched in astonishment as civilians fleeing the settlements to seek shelter in the German lines were shot down by their own soldiers. Occasionally the Germans also shot civilians assisting the Red Army. A selected division of German soldiers captured the “House of the Specialists”, where they made themselves strong and began firing at the boats that came and went along the Volga bringing soldiers. German 88 mm guns, Stukas and artillery competed in sinking the barges bringing soldiers from across the Volga.

On September 30, in a speech at the Berlin Sports Palace, on the occasion of the beginning of the 4th Winter Relief campaign, Hitler claimed: “Stalingrad has been conquered (…) no one will ever succeed in driving us out of this position”.

For both Stalin and Hitler, the battle of Stalingrad became a matter of prestige, in addition to the strategic importance of the city. The Soviet command moved the Red Army reserves from Moscow to the Volga, and also transferred air forces from almost the entire country to the Stalingrad region.

But here, from the Headquarters reserve, the Don Front receives seven fully equipped rifle divisions (277, 62, 252, 212, 262, 331, 293 sd ). Soviet General Konstantin Rokossovsky, until recently commander of the Bryansk Front, is appointed commander of the Army Group or Don Front, decides to use new forces for a new offensive.

On October 4, the troops of the 6th Army made a fourth attack on the Soviet positions at Stalingrad, and heavy fighting ensued. That day Rokossovsky instructed to develop an offensive operation plan, and on October 6 the plan was ready. The operation was scheduled for October 9. But at that time several events were taking place in the city.

On October 5, 1942, Stalin sharply criticized the leadership of the Stalingrad Front in a telephone conversation with A. I. Eremenko and demanded that immediate measures be taken to stabilize the front and then defeat the enemy. On October 6, Eremenko makes a report to Stalin, in which he proposes to carry out an operation to encircle and destroy German units near Stalingrad. There he first proposes to surround the 6th Army with lateral attacks against the Romanian units, and after crossing the fronts, to unite in the region of Kalach-on-Don. Headquarters considered Eremenko”s plan, but then considered it impossible (the depth of the operation was too great, etc.). However, the very idea of a counteroffensive was discussed by Stalin, Zhukov and Vasilevsky on September 12.

In effect, Generals Zhukov and Vassilievksi, of the Stavka or Red Army General Staff, had agreed with the commanders of the three Soviet fronts in the Stalingrad area on operations to encircle Von Paulus” German 6th Army inside the city in September. For the commanders who resist in the city they will not be detailed to them truthfully.

On October 9, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet returned the care of military discipline to the officers of the Red Army, abolishing the Commissariat Corps. They were ordered to fire on groups of retreating Soviet fighters. On the same day, details were agreed in the West for the shipment of armaments, raw materials and ammunition to Russia. But Stalin, in an interview with journalists from various American newspapers and magazines on November 2, 1942, stated that the military aid from the Allies was insufficient and he would continue to demand a second front.

On the morning of October 14, the German 6th Army launched a new decisive attack against the Soviet bridgeheads near the Volga. It was supported by more than a thousand aircraft of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet. The concentration of German troops was unprecedented: at the front, about 4 km away, three infantry divisions and two tanks attacked the tractor plant and the Barricades plant. The Soviet units stubbornly defended themselves, supported by artillery fire from the eastern shore of the Volga and from the ships of the Volga military flotilla, thus halting the German advance. However, the artillery on the left bank of the Volga began to experience a shortage of ammunition in connection with the preparation of the Soviet counteroffensive.

By October 15, German troops managed to reach the bank of the Volga River through the center of the city, splitting the 62nd Army in half. Pressed from all sides, the headquarters of the 62nd Soviet Army in the city requested reinforcements for fear of being pushed to the other side of the river. Reinforcements arrived the next day from the 138th Rifle Division under Colonel Ivan Lyudnikov, crossed the river on the north side of the city near the Barricades factory (the Germans were once again pushed back).

Hitler ordered Von Paulus that his troops of the 6th Army must at all costs hold the lines already reached, the starting point of an offensive planned for 1943. According to the Führer, the German soldiers were better prepared and ready to face this winter than they had been in the past, and he considered that the Red Army was “weakened after the last battles”. In short, Stalingrad must be resisted to the last man.

During the month of October, the cold weather had made itself felt and with it the diseases on both sides: paratyphoid fever, typhus, dysentery, and the Germans already knew from prisoners that the Soviets were preparing a gigantic counter-offensive. They themselves had noticed the movements on their flanks. To protect himself, Paulus had erected a barrier on his left flank to prevent attacks from the north, making use of the Romanian units. But the German High Command in Berlin would continue to ignore these reports.

In fact, the Soviet high command, alerted by the Red Orchestra, the network of Soviet spies in the German general staff, had informed him of the weakness of the flanks of the enemy army, formed by inexperienced Romanian soldiers, and equipped with French cannons without spare parts and with only two shells each, and a great offensive directed against those northern and southern flanks was prepared. About 1,000,000 men were being amassed, that is, about 100 divisions, mostly Siberian, plus tanks and guns from Moscow and the Urals. The plan consisted of a pincer maneuver to encircle, overrun and pocket the entire 6th Army, breaking into the German rear on the northern and southern flanks, attacking where the Axis forces were weakest. Although at first Stalin refused to divert resources from the urban combat itself, he saw in these plans the best opportunity to change the southern front and to reverse the whole situation in Stalingrad, so he supported the idea of the encirclement; even if this meant reducing the ammunition quota of the 62nd Army, which was defending the city alone. The idea of encircling a German army in these conditions was a daring one, but there was no other viable possibility after the constant mistakes in the Soviet offensives at the beginning of 1942.

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Operation Uranus

On November 2, the “STAVKA,” or Red Army High Command, finalized plans to execute Operation Uranus aimed at pushing the Germans in the Don region westward, encircling the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. On that day, the 151st and 152nd Soviet Brigades launched a successful counterattack to relieve German pressure on the city.

As for Hitler, he continued to ignore reports of the Soviet offensive in the Don-Volga. Despite the meeting with Zeitzler, he had informed him on November 7 that the Red Army was preparing an offensive on the Don, defended by the very weak Italian 8th Army and the Romanian 3rd Army. The information obtained from Soviet prisoners did not allow to think that it would be of immense proportions, since the prisoners had little knowledge of what was being prepared in the rear of the Stalingrad front; this was the reason why Hitler ignored the facts. The next day, at the anniversary conference of his assassination attempt on the Löwenbraükeller brewery in Munich, Hitler told his followers that the Volga river port of the city of Stalingrad was practically in German hands; he declared: “No human force will be able to wrest us from there”. The conquest of the razed city has become a political symbol rather than a strategic objective.

On November 9, the first snows fell, winter had arrived and the city was submerged in a white blanket with temperatures that hovered around -18 ºC. At night, the opposing groups made signs of temporary truce with flags that appeared in the holes of the ruins, allowing themselves to withdraw some fallen alive in no man”s land; also carrying out an unofficial exchange of supplies between small groups of both sides, carried out very secretly in spontaneously arranged truces. If discovered, the penalty was immediate execution for fraternizing with the enemy. By day, the fighting resumed without quarter.

At the end of the day, on November 11, German troops launch their largest and decisive attack, employing five divisions on a 500-meter front to capture the remnants of the city. They succeed in reaching the Volga near the Red October factory. After the advance they capture part of the Barrikady gun factory, and manage to surround the 138th Rifle Division, cutting its link with the 62nd Army. The 138th Division or Lyudnikov”s division held on to a 500 m wide × 200 m long stretch of territory on the banks of the Volga, which became known as “Lyudnikov”s Island”. Soviet divisional artillery had to be evacuated to the east bank after the encirclement of the unit. But the 138th will hold for more than two months, with a dwindling force of the fierce German assaults, as was left to prove in the reports sent to the headquarters of the 62nd Army, in a few words meant a lot: “The fighting is exceptionally hard.” “14 enemy attacks repulsed by artillery fire.” “Counterattack in close combat.” “The enemy reaches the Volga from both sides, they throw directly on our formations.” Chuikov would later acknowledge that the Axis troops could have thrown the Russians across the river with the attack of only one more battalion.

On November 17, in Berchtesgaden, Germany, Hitler spoke to his commanders of the Stalingrad front, asked them to conquer the cannon factory “Barricade” and the steel plant “Red October” in the narrow industrial town on the Volga, about 50 km long. The next day, German troops seize at the end of the day the tractor factory “Djerjinski”, and a large part of the cannon factory “Barricade” (Barrikady), as well as several hundred meters of the bank of the Volga. Chuikov informs Eremenko that the 62nd Army only dominates 1

On November 19, 1942, at 0730 hours, the Red Army launched a massive counteroffensive to push the Germans to the West, cutting them off from their troops in Stalingrad. The Soviets launch artillery bombardments with some 3500 pieces. The 3500 Soviet guns began firing relentlessly on the weaker enemy lines between Serafimovih and Klestkaya, which consisted of Romanian troops with little anti-tank material. After an hour of artillery fire, the rifle battalions advanced on the Romanian ranks.General Romanenko”s 5th Tank Army and General Chistyakov”s 51st Army attacked from the north and south. The Romanians of the 2nd and 4th Corps manage to briefly hold off the first waves of infantry, but were wiped out by T-34 tanks by noon. When the forts were demolished, the Romanians fled in disarray across the white plain, being pursued by Soviet waves. Although there were some attempts to respond to the attack, the 6th Army commanders underestimated the attack until it was too late. The fighting in the city of Stalingrad itself did not stop for several days after the Soviet attack began. Stukas came to support the Axis units, but the Soviet advance was by then unstoppable.

Although the southern attack was, by many factors, weaker, it worked, and the trap columns advanced without major setbacks, except for isolated counterattacks that produced only momentary halts. The objective where the pincers of the offensive converged was the small town of Kalach and its bridge, where the Germans did not possess a force to meet the threat and where their workshops and supply depots were exposed. The disaster was total, the 6th Army of Paulus was enclosed in Stalingrad with about 250 000 men and without major supplies, plus another 50 000 of other auxiliary units (Hiwi), about 150 tanks and about 5000 artillery pieces. These troops were supported on their northwest and south flanks by about 700,000 Axis troops divided between the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, the 2nd Hungarian and the 8th Italian, the latter with 220,000 troops; about 800 km of the lines poorly garrisoned with poorly armed troops. Between them they totaled about 1 040 000 soldiers; 10 290 guns, 275 tanks and 1260 airplanes, while the Red Army of Zhuvov had launched against them from the Southeast, commanded by Vatutin, that of the Don, by Rokossovsky, and of Stalingrad, by Eremenko, a total of approximately 1 005 000 soldiers, about 13 541 guns, about 894 tanks and about 1115 airplanes.

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Der Kessel

The 26th Russian Army Corps resumes the offensive arriving near the Ostrov and Plesistovsky factories. The 4th Russian Army Corps advances towards the Don, breaking the lines of the 14th Panzerkorps, reaching Golubinski; the 21st Russian Army advances towards Verjne, Formijinki and Raspopinskaia, ending the resistance in the sector; while another division harasses the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, which yesterday fled. From the south of Krasnoarmeisk the 51st and 57th Soviet Armies mobilized, against which the German 29th Division held firm, but the former managed to cross their lines in the direction of Kalach. The German OKW proposed to withdraw the bulk of the 6th Army from Stalingrad southwest to the Don, and thus avoid encirclement. Such a project could still be executed as there were important gaps not yet closed, but Hitler refused to accept such a solution, and demanded Paulus and his men to stay in the conquered city by a direct counter-order, withdrawing the vanguards sent in a south-westerly direction to try to overcome the encirclement.

While the rear of Von Paulus” German 6th Army is in serious difficulties, the Romanian 4th Army has been crushed by General Yeremenko”s Russian troops, taking 65,000 prisoners. The change of the general”s command post to Gumrak creates communication problems between the various German units.

Hitler considered that the situation was not completely lost and hoped to be able to repeat the situation that had occurred in February of the same year in the Demyansk Pocket, where a great mass of German soldiers were able to resist a prolonged Soviet encirclement by means of an air bridge. This idea reached the ears of the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, who, without consulting his technical advisers, promised Hitler that his planes could carry out a vast supply from the air. Goering”s promise exasperated Air General von Richtofen, for the cloudy weather with snowstorms would prevent the planes from flying steadily and even make it impossible for them to take off. Under these conditions Paulus radiated a direct message to Hitler:

My Führer: We are running out of ammunition and fuel. Sufficient and timely supply is impossible. Under these circumstances, I request full freedom of action. Paulus.

On 23 November at 16:00 hours, Soviet units of the 4th Armored Army Corps and units of the 4th Mechanized Army Corps link up in the vicinity of the Sovietski farm. The Red Army forces are thus west of Stalingrad, completing the encirclement of the forces of the German 6th Army under General Von Paulus and part of the 4th Panzerarmee: 22 divisions in total, about 300,000 poorly supplied men, in a strip with a distance between the outer and inner front of 13.5 to 19 km and about 40 km in length. To the northwest, at Raspopinskaia, the Romanian 5th Division surrendered. The Soviet pincers were closed in less than four days of fighting. On November 24, Stalingrad was under Soviet siege. The 94th Division under General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, seeing that Paulus lacked initiative, ordered his troops to evacuate his sector and force the blockade, hoping that the other divisions would follow him in his unauthorized retreat. No sooner had he left his position than the Soviet 62nd Army fell upon him and many of his battalions were unceremoniously annihilated; no prisoners were taken.

Goering, irresponsibly, in the face of the reports warning him of the impossibility of the mission -which he received and ignored-, promised to supply the Kessel with 500 tons of supplies daily, but the planes barely managed to carry 130 tons in three days of operations at low altitude and in the midst of snowstorms. This caused that the flights were never really permanent (as it should correspond to an effective airlift) but that because of the bad weather during several days the airplanes could not take off from their bases, or simply took off but could not land in Stalingrad. To increase the evils, the Soviets boldly attacked the main supply air base, the Pitomnik airfield, collapsing the resupply bases and accentuating the shortage of cargo planes for the operations of the airlift. In addition to the inclement weather detrimental to the Germans, the Soviets were dropping flares from newly seized positions to make the supply planes believe that there were still German soldiers at the site requesting supplies. Hitler, obsessed, told Von Richtofen: “If Paulus leaves Stalingrad, we will never take the square again”.

In the early morning of November 25, in the north of the Russian Front, Marshal Zhukov launched a major offensive in the Rzhev and Sychevka sector, about 150 km west of Moscow, aimed at encircling the German 9th Army commanded by Model, as a diversionary maneuver on the Stalingrad front. The 3rd, 20th, 22nd, 29th, 31st and 41st Soviet Armies were thrown into the attack. Due to bad weather, the preparatory fire of the Russian artillery has no effect. The Germans were well dug in along the entire front line and had reserves in the rear. The German Group of Armies of the Center was the most heavily armed of the entire Eastern front. It had a total of 72 divisions, of the 266 that had Axis in Russia, which comprised of 1.680.000 soldiers and about 3500 tanks, 2

At the beginning of December, the first casualties from starvation occurred. In spite of everything, the Germans tried to maintain discipline and the organization functioned regularly.

In Axis-occupied Europe, Benito Mussolini advised Hitler to cease hostilities against the Soviet Union, asking him to “close…the chapter of the war against Russia, in one way or another, in view of the fact that there is no longer any point in continuing it”. Hitler will ignore the Duce”s requests.

In Stalingrad the Cauldron (Der Kessel), where, without sufficient food and water, attacked by epidemics and amidst the putrid smell of decay, the Germans prepared to suffer a long siege in the midst of the greatest hardships. Thus, some 250,000 soldiers were trapped in a bag with Hitler”s order not to retreat or surrender. Although Göring, Air Marshal and supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, promised to supply the troops from the air, it was almost impossible to get resources to the German troops and only a few flights were made.

The Germans were able to use the Pitomnik airfield but it was subject to continuous Soviet attacks, the Junkers Ju 52 arrived with supplies and immediately departed back evacuating wounded. Even so, the few planes were not enough and the lucky ones who could climb up escaped from hell, the wounded hung from the doors and some desperate ventured to fly on the wings, where none managed to survive. After the fall of Pitomnik, on January 16, only the Gumrak airfield, smaller and in worse conditions than Pitomnik, was left as an improvised one, but Gumrak would also fall into Soviet hands on January 23. From that day on the starving German troops could only receive supplies by means of boxes parachuted by the Luftwaffe, which did not ensure that the cargo reached its destination: Soviet soldiers sometimes kept the supplies, they fell into the Volga River, or the German troops were simply too exhausted and hungry to look for supplies among the ruins of the city.

In addition, some 10,000 Soviet civilians were also trapped in the bag, never to be heard from again.

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The offensive of the Don Group of Armies

In December, the encircled German soldiers had a glimmer of hope: Erich von Manstein was coming to their aid. Manstein, who had just assumed command of Army Group Don, whose purpose will be to link up with Von Paulus” German 6th Army besieged at Stalingrad. This new grouping is formed for the moment by three Panzerdivisionen of General Hoth”s 4th Panzerarmee, a total of 60,000 men and 300 tanks. To carry out the next Operation Winter Storm, in order to liberate Von Paulus” encircled forces at Stalingrad, Marshal Erich von Manstein gets 9 more Axis divisions to leave their positions in the Caucasus, Voronezh, Oriol and France and come to the southwest of Stalingrad to join the Don Army Group, with them the remnants of the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies. Forming a total of 120 000 soldiers, 650 tanks and 500 airplanes, about 13 divisions.

Operation Winter Storm, which included two broad operations with a different starting point. One would come from Chirsk and the other from Kotelnikovo, 160 km from Stalingrad. Even for the most incredulous generals of the Nazi regime, the fact that Hitler would abandon the 6th Army was unthinkable, so they were hopeful of a possible rescue. Thus the Wehrmacht made sure to do everything possible to rescue this elite army encircled far from Germany. The objective is to break the encirclement of Stalingrad and rescue Von Paulus” 6th Army, which is 120 km away from Kotielnikovsky, the starting point of the attack.

The offensive began on December 12, General Hoth”s 6th and 23rd Panzer Divisions, supported by infantry and aviation, follow the railroad to Stalingrad; fiercely defended by the 126th and 302nd Russian Infantry Divisions. On the night of December 13, the 23rd Panzer Division advances to the north of Nebikovo, having crossed Aksai, but on December 15 they are pushed back to the river of the same name. As for the 6th Panzer Division would reach the village of Verkhne-Kumsky. The battles for Verkhne-Kumsky continued with varying success from December 14 to 19. Only on December 19, the strengthening of the German group by the 17th Panzer Division and the threat of encirclement forced the Soviet troops to withdraw to a new defensive line on the Myshkova River. The five-day delay of the Germans at Verkhne-Kumsky was an undoubted success for the Soviet troops, as it bought time to bring in the 2nd Guards Army. But on December 16, had begun the offensive on the Voronezh Front. In the Don River area, 3 Soviet Armies overwhelmed the Italian 8th Army, advancing towards Rostov with the possibility of isolating Marshal Manstein”s Don Army Group, which was trying to make its way to Stalingrad, and likewise General Kleist”s Army Group A, which had taken command in the Caucasus. That day, Hitler called Mussolini, asked him to order his soldiers to stop their flight and resist. The Soviet 1st Army was left in pursuit, of the 220,000 Italians; half will be killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

Days ago the Red Army undertook a new operation, a critical situation then developed on the left flank of Hollidt”s army group. Under pressure from Soviet troops, two Italian divisions of Army Group B had withdrawn and the left flank of Hollidt”s group was exposed. So would the 7th Romanian Infantry Division, which abandoned its positions without authorization. The Red Army vanguard detachments reached the crossing through the Seversky Donets near the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. It was evident the intention of the Soviet troops to break through in the direction of Rostov. Marshal Manstein, commander of the Don Army Group, sent the 6th Panzerdivisionen of General Hoth”s 4th Panzearrmee to the lower Chirsk region to try to stop the Russian offensive towards Rostov. Operation Wintergewitter continued, but the Russian offensive threatens the 200,000 men of Army Group Don, together with Army Group A Caucasus, and the remnants of Army Group B with the besieged 6th Army at Stalingrad: about 1,500,000 Axis troops are in danger of annihilation. The main task of Hollidt”s group and the Romanian 3rd Army was now to protect the Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya airfields, which were badly needed for the encircled 6th Army”s supplies, as well as holding important crossings across the Donets at Forkhstadt (Belaya Kalitva) and Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The halt meant that the Soviets attacked him with everything and pushed him back a further 200 km. The attack, which was carried out by the Soviet 6th Armored Division, relentlessly at first, was threatened by another Soviet counterattack in the rear, so it was decided to retreat for good. At the same time, the Tatsinskaya airfield, the main Ju-52 refueling airfield, fell into Soviet hands.

In the following days, the situation on the Chirsk front deteriorated so much that on December 23 Manstein ordered the 6th Panzer Division to withdraw from its positions and move towards Morozovsk. At dawn on December 24, the 3rd Panzerdivisionen of the 4th Panzer Army of General Hoth, are attacked by the 2nd Guards Army of General Malinovsky, advancing towards Kotielnikovsky from the north, and the 51st Soviet Army, advancing from the northeast, breaking the defenses of the 4th Romanian Army, initiating an encircling maneuver. With the withdrawal of the German column, Malinovsky”s 2nd Guards Army went on the offensive against the extended flank of the German 57th Panzer Corps. At 16:30, Soviet troops recaptured Verkhne-Kumsky. With the forces of the 2nd Guards Army with three mechanized corps, launched another offensive on Kotelnikovo. Faced with this situation, General Hoth gave the order for a general retreat on the same day, thus eliminating any serious chance of saving the besieged troops in Stalingrad.

In Stalingrad there is violent fighting between Russians and Germans; the troops of the 6th Army are decimated, exhausted, suffering from cold and disease. The lack of food has led the besieged to eat some 12,000 horses. Seven Soviet armies, under the command of Zhukov, surround Stalingrad and press inland to annihilate the defenders; due to their precarious air supply, from tomorrow their daily ration of bread will drop from 200 to 100 grams. Paulus, disgusted by the absurdity of Hitler”s orders, realized that, for the Führer, the 6th Army, or what was left of it, was little more than a sacrificial piece in the game of war. The lives of the soldiers were of no importance to Hitler. For while Nazi hierarchs like Erich Koch, the Gauleiter, or governor of the occupied territories of the Ukraine, chartered a Luftwaffe plane to Rostov to bring him 200 pounds of caviar, his men were dying of starvation, typhus or dysentery on the outskirts of Stalingrad. The German hierarchs will call for their dismissal; but the Reich is infested with these corrupt politicians. The Führer defends them for their bloodthirsty and efficient ability to exploit the resources and manpower necessary for the war. The civilians in the occupied territories hate them. By December 25, in the Kessel, 1280 soldiers die of cold and starvation. For the New Year, the Soviets set up a series of kitchens and held parties on the south bank of the Volga with the dual purpose of celebrating the year and demoralizing the encircled Germans.

On December 28, due to the Russian offensive against Rostov and the Don, which threatened to cut the lines of Army Group A, the troops of General Ruoff, slowly retreat from the Caucasus to Taman, in the following days they would form a bridgehead in Kuban. Hitler was against this decision, but Manstein and other officers managed to convince him. But in the Rostov area continued to be besieged by Russian troops, being the scene of heavy fighting. On the same day, began the Red Army counteroffensive towards Kotielnovski, where they annihilate the remnants of the 4th Romanian Army by Malinovsky”s 2nd Guards Army, while the 4th Panzerarmee fought in retreat to reach between 200 and 240 km away from Stalingrad. Thus Operation Winter Storm was repulsed. The Soviet forces of the Stalingrad Front reach the line Verjne -Rubezhni -Tormosin -Gluboki, having the possibility of launching a great offensive on the southern sector of the German front. For the STAVKA, the main thing was to finish off the pocket of German forces in Stalingrad.

By January 9, two Red Army officers appeared on the western front line of the German front with an ultimatum from the Stavka to Paulus. If this ultimatum was not accepted, the Soviets would launch a final offensive against the Kessel the next day. The ultimatum was rejected. Hardships multiplied in the German 6th Army: epidemics decimated the soldiers, discipline had disappeared and hunger was so atrocious that the Germans slaughtered all their horses, as well as dogs and rats in order to feed themselves. It is noteworthy that even under these distressing conditions, the resistance of the 6th Army continued, as the front lines retreated fighting and inflicting casualties on the Soviets who were executing the ring plan to wipe out the Germans.

At 6:05 a.m., January 10, the high command of the Stalingrad Front gave the order to attack the German positions in Stalingrad. Operation Ring began with the firing of some 7000 Katyusha guns, mortars and rocket launchers, which for 55 minutes battered the German trenches. Then waves of infantrymen supported by tanks charge. The offensive is focused on taking the Pitomnik airfield, where Ju 52s land, bringing supplies to the besieged and taking their wounded. That day, the Führer radiated to Von Paulus “I forbid capitulation. The troops must defend their positions to the last man and the last cartridge, so that with their heroic behavior they contribute to the stabilization of the front and the defense of the West”. By the 16th of December the only German airfield Pitomnik would fall in Soviet hands, the Germans had to rebuild the one in Gumrak, severely damaged by themselves, to be able to continue receiving supplies.

The Soviets again offered the encircled in Stalingrad the possibility of surrendering, but Von Paulus ordered his troops to try to break the encirclement at any possible point to avoid their total annihilation. Romanian units that had formed the bulk of the 6th Army, which had been deprived of rations, were surrendering in groups on a continuous basis. Other Germans will begin to bribe pilots to fly them out of the Gumrak airfield.

On January 18, the last German mail plane leaves Stalingrad. General Von Paulus sends a letter to his wife with his wedding ring, graduation ring and medals. General Hube, the first to arrive in the city, is forced to leave in the Condor which takes off from Gumrak airfield. He protests to Hitler about the failure of the airlift, suggesting that those responsible, including Göring, be shot. Hitler ignored this, as well as much other advice.

At 04:00 hours on January 22, Gumrak, the last German airfield about 8 km from Stalingrad, is abandoned by German forces in the face of the Soviet Army”s thrust. For the day January 24, in the already ruined city the German troops form in hedgehog in Gorodishche while they retreat to the east, to the remains of a tractor factory. The fighting was fierce. In the south, the Germans hold out in the suburbs. Among the ruins, some 20,000 wounded Germans crawl without help. There are thousands of corpses among them dead from cold and hunger, mostly unarmed. During the last 3 days, the Soviet forces advanced from 10 to 15 km, pushing the Germans and their allies to occupy an area of 90 square km. With the airfields lost, the Luftwaffe, in a desperate attempt to bring supplies to what was left of the 6th Army, parachuted ammunition and supplies, but these frequently fell into Soviet-held territory.

By January 26, the 62nd Army encounters Rodimtsev”s 13th Rifle Division of the Soviet 21st Army on Mamayev Hill, dividing what remains of Von Paulus” 6th Army into two pockets of resistance north and south of the razed capital. Russian T 34s break through the ruins. In the north, what is left of the German 51st Corps holds out in the collapsed tractor factory. In the south, the remnants of 4 other corps fight around the ruins of Red Square, where von Paulus had moved his headquarters, in the basement of the Univermag warehouses. The next day, the 21st, 57th and 64th Soviet Armies attack the Axis troops holed up to the south of the city, who protect von Paulus. German resistance is fierce.

On January 29, in the stock exchange, the German 6th Army radios a greeting to the Führer, congratulating him in advance on his 10th anniversary of his accession to power, saying that “…. The swastika flag still flies at Stalingrad…” Hitler would do the same in a speech predicting “final victory.” But he secretly called on his Axis allies, Italy and Hungary, to withdraw their respective troops from the Don front. However, the Italians had already been on the run for days, and the inexperienced Hungarians had lost some 80,000 soldiers and another 63,000 were wounded in the last ten days.

On January 30; The Führer promotes General von Paulus to the rank of Field Marshal, Hitler confesses to Keitel: “-In the history of war there is no recorded case in which a Field Marshal has accepted to be taken prisoner…”. In reality this promotion was met with another suicide order. Paulus then declared: “-I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal”, in reference to Hitler, and informed other generals (such as Arthur Schmidt, Seydlitz, Jaenecke, and Strecker) that he would not commit suicide and the other officers were forbidden to do so in order to follow the fate of their soldiers.

Soviet troops enter tonight the former urban center of Stalingrad, Red Square, now reduced to a pile of rubble. German positions succumb to successive Red Army waves. A Soviet tank approached Paulus” headquarters, in which came an interpreter who had been sent by Paulus, Major Winrich Behr. On January 31, at 05:45, Paulus surrendered to the Red Army. Among the ruins lay some 80 000 dead, 23 generals, some 2000 officers, 91 000 soldiers and 40 000 auxiliaries of Russian origin surrendered to the Soviets; less than 6000 of them will return alive after the war. They will be reunited in captivity with the 16,800 who were already captured during the battle; some 42,000 were luckier and could be evacuated as wounded earlier. General Streker”s group of Germans still held out north of the demolished city. But on February 2, the 51st Army Corps under General Streker or Schrenck surrendered. Thus the 6th Army was destroyed, Von Paulus was the first marshal to capitulate in German history, thus disobeying Hitler, overwhelmed by the Soviet troops, the lack of food and the polar cold of the Russian steppe, for which his troops did not have enough material, contrary to Hitler”s claims. An unprecedented gesture.

Thus ended the battle for the razed city, the largest battle of World War II. Since January 10, the Red Army eliminated 22 divisions of the Werhmacht, and another 160 units sent to the relief of the 6th Army. Some 11,000 German soldiers did not comply with the surrender and continued to fight until the end, in early March the Soviets wiped out the last remnants of resistance in the cellars and tunnels.

The Third Reich lost at Stalingrad its best army, with which Hitler boasted that “he could storm the skies”. The losses also included part of the 4th Panzer Army and the Group of Armies Don and countless material resources that could not be replaced with the same ease available to the USSR. In fact, between dead, wounded, missing or fallen prisoners, the Wehrmacht had lost from August 21 to the end of the battle, more than 400,000 fighters, many of them experienced, elite troops that could only be replaced mostly by conscripts. If the losses of Army Group A, Army Group Don and German units of Army Group B during the period from June 28, 1942 to February 2, 1943 are included, the German casualties were more than 600,000. The Axis Allied armies, on the other hand, suffered similar devastating losses, being the breaking point in the relations of the satellites with Germany.

The Germans also lost 900 aircraft (including 274 cargo planes and 165 bombers), as well as 500 tanks and 6,000 pieces of artillery. According to a Soviet report of the time, Soviet forces confiscated 5,762 pieces of artillery, 1. 312 mortars, 744 aircraft, 1,666 tanks, 261 other armored vehicles, 571 semi-tracked vehicles, 10,722 trucks, 10,679 motorcycles 12,701 heavy machine guns, 80,438 machine guns, 156,987 rifles. The losses of the Hungarian, Italian and Romanian sides are unknown.

The Soviets, apart from having secured a practically destroyed city, had suffered more than a million casualties. Of these, about 13,000 had been executed by their own countrymen, accused of cowardice, desertion, collaborationism, etc.. That is if one takes into account that thousands of Soviet soldiers went over to the German side. It is estimated that more than 50,000 hiwis (Soviet soldiers dressed in German uniform) died or were taken prisoner in the battle of Stalingrad. Their final whereabouts are unknown. It is noteworthy that it was not until the fall of the USSR that Soviet historians were able to openly discuss the casualty figures of the battle, for fear of acknowledging that the sacrifice of lives was excessive. while these will never be exact (due to the absence of reliable records and the proliferation of unaccounted mass graves), it is believed that they were very high, perhaps more than considered, echoing that phrase of Soviet generals “Time is blood”. According to the highest estimate, if all forces fighting on the Volga and Don are included, 747 000 Axis soldiers were killed, missing and wounded and 102 000 were captured, about 1 130 000 Soviet soldiers (including prisoners killed in captivity, killed in combat, wounded after evacuation, missing or captured) and more than 300 000 civilians disappeared or met their end (including refugees and people living in villages and towns where they also fought). It should be noted that a quarter of a million civilians were evacuated to the east of the country.

When the German 6th Army surrendered with more than 91,000 soldiers, they were condemned to walk in the snow on the so-called “death march”, 40,000 perished from walking and beatings. The rest were interned in the concentration camps of Lunovo, Suzdal, Krasnogorsk, Yelabuga, Bekedal, Usman, Astrakhan, Basianovsky, Oranki and Karaganda, and even 3500 of them in Stalingrad itself to rebuild the city. Most of them, in temperatures of -25 and -30 degrees below zero, fell ill with typhus, dysentery, jaundice, diphtheria, scurvy, tuberculosis, dropsy and malaria. Of the 91,000 prisoners, only 5,000 survived.

The consequences of this catastrophe were immense and far-reaching. The tragedy could not be hidden from the German people, who declared three days of national mourning. For the first time, Germany lost the initiative of the war and had to go on the defensive. In fact, the Wehrmacht already lacked the necessary logistical elements to advance further east, the banks of the Volga being the easternmost point reached by German troops in Europe. After this battle, the Soviet Union emerged in a great state of aggrandizement and with the initiative of the war in the hands of its leaders. In addition, the commander of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, fell in disgrace before Hitler, losing credit among the elite of the Nazi regime, as well as prestige among the military, when he was unable to fulfill the order to supply the encircled German forces by air, as he had promised.

As for the Führer, the surrender of Von Paulus in Stalingrad and the great breach opened in the Eastern Front will cause in Adolf Hitler an acute depressive crisis. He will take sleeping pills every night, and will have nightmares about the encirclement, until almost the end of the war.

Marshal Paulus survived the war and returned to Germany in 1952, living in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR.

The historical Soviet general; Zhukov claimed for himself the success of Stalingrad, but all credit was given to Vasili Chuikov, who was promoted to captain general and put in charge of an army that would later march to Berlin. However, the battle of Stalingrad was for the Nazis a real military catastrophe and one of their major defeats in World War II, marking the turning point in the war, after which they would not stop retreating before the Soviets until surrendering to Zhukov, in Berlin itself, two and a half years later.

The triumph of this battle transcended the boundaries of the Soviet Union and inspired all the Allies. The 62nd Army, commanded by Vasily Chuikov, was encouraging resistance everywhere. King George VI of England presented the city with a sword specially forged in its honor, and even the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote the poem “Canto de amor a Stalingrad”, first recited on September 30, 1942, and the poem “Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrad” in 1943, celebrating the victory, which transformed this fight into a symbol and a turning point for the whole war. Today Western historians consider the Battle of Stalingrad as Germany”s second Verdun.

The Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad was awarded to all members of the Soviet armed forces and also to civilians who were directly involved in the defense of Stalingrad from July 12 to November 19, 1942. As of January 1, 1995, this medal had been awarded 759,561 times. In the staff building of unit no. 22220 in Volgograd, the huge mural is determined by the depiction of the medal. It shows a group of soldiers with rifles pointing forward and bayonets planted under a waving flag. On the left can be seen the outline of tanks and a squadron of aircraft, above it the Soviet five-pointed star.

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Russian commemorative coins

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the battle, a commemorative coin honoring the city of Stalingrad was issued in 1993 with a face value of 3 copper rubles.

On the occasion of the celebrations on the 55th anniversary of the end of the war, a coin honoring the heroic city of Stalingrad was also released in 2000 as part of the Heldenstädte series. The coin with the inscription “СТАЛИННГРАД” (Stalingrad) shows attacking soldiers and a heavy rolling tank in front of the ruins of houses.

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Commemoration in Germany

At the main cemetery of Limburg an der Lahn, the central German memorial was inaugurated on October 18, 1964 to commemorate all soldiers who died in Stalingrad and died in captivity. In 1988, the city of Limburg took over the “Stalingrad Fighters Foundation”, thus ensuring the maintenance and care of the Stalingrad Memorial through the existence of the “Former Stalingrad Fighters”. V. Germany”. The federal government decided to dissolve in 2004.

For many people, one image remains associated with the Battle of Stalingrad: that of the Virgin of Stalingrad. Painted in 1942 by Protestant pastor, physician and artist Kurt Reuber in a shelter in Stalingrad with charcoal on the back of a Soviet map, the image bears the inscription “1942 Christmas in the cauldron – Fortress of Stalingrad – Light, life, love.” Although Reuber himself did not survive captivity, the image came into the family”s hands with one of the last planes, which Federal President Karl Carstens suggested to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in 1983 in Berlin to commemorate the fallen and remember peace. In the church (on the wall behind the rows of chairs on the right side) hangs an image of Mary that encourages remembrance and prayer. The Madonna is the motif on the coat of arms of the 2nd Medical Regiment of the Bundeswehr Medical Service.

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Commemoration in Austria

Every February in Austria, Stalingrad memorial services take place in many churches, which are usually organized by the Austrian Comrades Association or other traditional associations. In addition, numerous objects from the battle are exhibited in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, which include: a. also war relics such as steel helmets, boots and equipment that were recovered from the Stalingrad battlefield.

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Commemoration in France

There is a Stalingrad metro station in Paris. It is located at Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad.

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Commemoration in Italy

In Italy, there are several streets named after Via Stalingrad in various cities.

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Temporary change of name of the city from Volgograd to Stalingrad

75 years after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Volgograd City Council decided in late January 2013 that the city should return to its former name of Stalingrad six days a year. War veterans had requested this. The decision sparked heated discussions in Russia. Human rights official Vladimir Lukin condemned the temporary name change and called it an “insult to the fallen of Stalingrad.” They deserve appreciation, “but not in this way.” Communists in Russia are calling for a permanent return to the city”s former name.

Also read, battles – Battle of Bosworth Field

Bibliography

Sources

1. Batalla de Stalingrado
2. Battle of Stalingrad