Battle of stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a massive warfare between the Red Army of the Soviet Union and the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany and its Axis allies for control of the Soviet city of Stalingrad, present-day Volgograd, between August 23, 1942 and February 2, 1943. The battle took place during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, within the framework of World War II. World War. With estimated casualties of more than two million people between soldiers from both sides and Soviet civilians, the Battle of Stalingrad is considered the bloodiest 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 it 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 the late summer of 1942 in the framework of Operation Blue or Fall Blau, an attempt by Germany to seize the oil wells of the Caucasus. On August 23, the 6th Army, supported by the 4th Panzer Army, manages to cross the bend in the Don River. A massive bombardment reduced a good part 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 ('war of rats'). 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 cut the city in two. In November 1942, a major Soviet counteroffensive overwhelmed the Allied Axis armies on the Don, pocketing General Paulus's German 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army inside Stalingrad, unable to break out of encirclement by Hitler's refusal to renounce the capture of the city. This encirclement, called by the Germans Der Kessel ('the cauldron'), meant the bagging of 330,000 soldiers, rapidly weakened by hunger and cold, combined with the failure of the plan to transport supplies and ammunition by air to the besieged Germans, as promised by Hermann Göring. Finally, dejected by General von Manstein's continued failure to break out of the encirclement, continued Soviet attacks would cause Friedrich Paulus, disobeying Hitler's orders, to surrender Hitler's 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 after in the new defeat that Germany would suffer in 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 assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. The city of Stalingrad would receive the title of Hero City.
Background
Influenced by the geopolitician Karl Haushofer, Adolf Hitler was attempting 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 (see Battle of France and Battle of Britain); However, Hitler never lost sight of his true goal: to invade Eastern Europe and annihilate the Slavs.
On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, even though Britain had not been defeated. Hitler, convinced of the weakness of the Soviet state, whom he considered a giant with feet of clay, believed that his people would turn against Joseph Stalin, allowing him to conclude the invasion before winter. Their generals were ordered to stick to the plan, disregarding their opinions. In this way, 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. Also about 950,000 soldiers from other nations allied with Germany.
In December 1941, the war in the Soviet Union had not unfolded 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 were faced with a major Soviet counter-offensive 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 High Command The Soviet Union, by agreeing to non-aggression with Tokyo, had managed to deploy sufficient reserves, in addition to the Siberian divisions led by General Georgi Zhúkov, until then located on the border with Manchuko, to launch a major counteroffensive. Belatedly, and as has been believed for decades, the invaders would understand that the enemy's reserves were apparently "inexhaustible."
Having failed to capture Moscow, Hitler —with his generals against it— decided to head towards the oil wells of the Caucasus, since oil was the fundamental element, which he barely had, to sustain the war and, furthermore, truly weaken Moscow. 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 on the Volga first and, later, the advance on the Caucasus.
“Operation Blue”: the road to Stalingrad
Advance to the Don
On April 5, 1942, Hitler issued the fundamental Directive 41 with which he defined the planned development of the new great offensive in tactical details and described, indeed rather nebulously, the geostrategic objectives of Operation Blue (Fall Blau in German), from which he expected decisive success. The German offensive involved two army groups, more than a million soldiers with around 2,500 tanks, supported by four Romanian, Italian and Hungarian armies (about 600,000 more men). It was to be unleashed on southern Russia with the aim of conquering the Don and Volga basins, destroy the important industries of Stalingrad (rail and river communication hub and very important center of mechanical production) and then target the oil wells of the Caucasus, assuring Germany enough energy resources to continue the war. This ambitious directive was based mainly on based on Hitler's erroneous assumption of a supposed irreversible material and moral exhaustion of the Red Army after the enormous losses suffered in the 1941-42 campaign.
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 operations to rectify the front and oppose some premature and ineffective Soviet spring offensive attempts at Kharkov (2nd Battle of Kharkiv). In fact, these German successes, which cost the Soviets less than a quarter million in losses, greatly aided the initial success of Operation Blue (Fall Blau).
«For Hitler, Stalingrad was the Soviet symbol, for its industry and for what it ideologically represented; For this reason, he placed a lot of emphasis on taking it, but the Soviets were aware of the consequences of defeat as well, and they did not intimidate before the Nazi might; the duel was served".
It was May 10th. 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 his previous commander, Walter von Reichenau, of a heart attack suffered after exercising in the Russian countryside in sub-zero temperatures.
Operation Federico meant the consolidation of the front in front of Kharkov, recently captured by Germany. However, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko went ahead of Paulus, launching a counteroffensive from Voronezh on May 12, whose objective was precisely the liberation of Kharkov, encircling the 6th Army in a pincer movement. When 640,000 Soviets with 1,200 tanks attacked Paulus's forces, he found himself on the brink of collapse. Only the timely arrival of Ewald von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army allowed the situation of the offensive to be reversed and, instead of being captured, Paulus' men helped von Kleist's men to capture the Soviet 6th and 57th Armies. º in Barvenkovo. On May 28, some 240,000 Soviet soldiers were bagged and captured, and 1,250 tanks and more than 2,000 guns were seized. It was the worst Soviet defeat of the war, ending 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 the unit's headquarters in Poltava. Paulus's 6th Army was given the task of clearing Voronezh, then proceeding to Stalingrad accompanied by Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army. Once there, they would be tasked with destroying the industrial complexes and protecting the Caucasus oil refineries from the North.
All transcription of Operation Blue orders was prohibited; everything had to be communicated verbally. On June 10, the 1st Panzerarmee and the 6th German Army, made up of 33 divisions, five of them Panzerdivisionen and two motorized, began the first advances in 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 they were delivered directly to Stalin by General Filipp Golikov, he rejected them as false, 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 Southwestern Front, pushing the Russians back to the banks of the Oskol, where they positioned themselves.
In Sevastopol, the German 11th Army entered the ruins of the fortress, after months of Soviet resistance, as they had been delaying the German (Fall Blau) offensive into the Caucasus. 11th Army General Erich von Manstein was promoted to Field Marshal for his brilliant Crimean campaign, culminating in the capture of the Sebastopol fort.
Operation Blue
On June 28 the German general offensive began towards the main objectives in the Voronezh direction, and on June 30 in the Donetsk region in southern Russia, Army Group South began its offensive well: Soviet forces offered little resistance on the vast empty steppes and began to withdraw to the east. 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 2 July, and a second, around Millerovo, Rostov Oblast, a week later. The initial advance by 6th Army and its Axis allies was successful. Meanwhile, fighting had been going on for days in the vicinity and on the periphery of the important southern Soviet city of Voronezh. Von Bock hoped that the Germans could take it soon, but Timoshenko had reinforced his garrison. Hitler gave the order to stop the attack in Voronezh, and to continue the Fall Blau offensive in the south. By July 6, the German 4th Panzer Army was still engaged in heavy fighting with the Soviets defending Voronezh, and they were unable to withdraw, as ordered by Hitler. But they partially captured the city. As the Russians began to retreat, the Führer ordered to conquer it. The 4th Panzer Army was fully involved in the battle for Voronezh for two days, and it took some time for the Germans to break the line until the arrival of the Hungarian 2nd Army which continued to fight for the rest of the city. On July 9, Hitler divided Army Group South, as part of the second phase of the operation, he ordered the 4th Panzer Army to head towards the Don and the Volga. However, it was subjected to a powerful counterattack by the Red Army, until July 13, in the Don and Donietsk area. Hitler would later acknowledge that these two days of delays in Voronezh, and the surprising ineffective Soviet attempts to stabilize the front, allowed Marshal Semyon Timoshenko to reinforce the Don and its great bend, preventing the capture of Stalingrad by the 4th Panzer Army..
Ever since Hitler ordered Army Group South to be split into two forces, he disregarded German fuel reserves, which were alarmingly low, and assumed that the enemy had largely depleted their reserves in the first winter of the war. 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's 6th Army and the Hermann Goth's 4th Panzer Army, commanded by Marshal Maximilian von Weichs, headed towards the Don and the Volga.
In a report from Halder, dated July 13, to the Führer: "Von Bock's German armies, engaged in the Fall Blau Offensive in southern Russia, they cannot annihilate the Soviet troops of Marshal Timoshenko, who retreat in perfect order to the east to avoid the German pincer maneuvers. Hitler will assume that it is a rout and change the plans of the operation: he orders the 4th Panzerarmee and the 40th Panzerkorps to abandon the objective of the Don bend, 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 13 July, caused Hitler to lose his temper and fire von Bock.
At the front, Hoth's 4th Panzer Army 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 rest of Timoshenko's forces, which was expected to take place near Rostov-on-Don, without fully achieving it. A massive traffic jam ensued in the advance as the 4th Panzer and 1st Panzer requisitioned the few roads in the area. Both armies were stopped while trying to clean up the resulting mess of thousands of vehicles. The delay was long and is believed to have cost him the advance at least a week. But Rostov was attacked and recaptured by the 17th Army and the 1st Panzer Army on 23 July.
The city
The city had an important military industry (Stalingrad had the Red October, tractor and Barricady cannon factories) and had the crucial railway junction of the line that linked Moscow, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, also existing a river port in service for navigation on the Volga. The city stretched about 24 kilometers along the west bank of the Volga, but less than ten kilometers wide. There was no bridge across the river, using large barges to connect both banks. The eastern shore was barely populated. It is important to consider that the temperature in the Caucasus is very extreme both in summer and in winter, during which the cold is such that the Volga is frozen with a layer of ice thick enough to allow the passage of heavy vehicles.
"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 under a state of total siege and that preparations to resist the approaching Germans begin. Civilians were not allowed to leave the city, wanting to encourage the Soviet militia by keeping their relatives among the inhabitants. However, specialized workers considered key to the arms industries were sent to the Urals, to continue working there.
On July 17, the German offensive towards the Don began, led by the 6th Army. As for the defense, Vasili Chuikov would arrive at the Stalingrad front; there he would be in charge of the Soviet 64th 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 German Messerschmitt 109s occupied until early August, relieved to the punished ground forces.
By mid-July, the Germans had pushed Soviet troops back toward the Don River bank, 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 would have repercussions later, since the Russians would position themselves strongly in the bend of the Don River. The Germans began to call on 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 low morale: in reality, the Italian divisions fought relatively well, according to a German liaison officer. The 3rd Mountain Infantry Division Ravenna and the 5th Cosseria Infantry Division proved to have good morale, and were forced to withdraw only after a massive armored attack in which German reinforcements had not arrived in time, according to a German historian. In fact, the Italians fell back. They 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 to attribute propaganda value to the city, based on its being named after 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 "completely 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 goal of securing these strategic oil resources for Germany. Target expansion 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 heavy resistance with a Soviet bridgehead west of Kalach. "We had to pay a high cost in men and material...on the battlefield of Kalach there were numerous burned or shot German tanks left." That day the main body of Kleist's 1st Panzerarmee crosses the Don River to the south., but some lagging 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 promulgated Order 227, ordering his commanders at the front not to allow under any circumstances the He withdrew his men and ordered the formation of a line in the rear of the infantry with authorization to summarily shoot any retreating Soviet soldier. Women were also forced to fight on a large scale. The document contained the phrase "Not a step back!", which would since then become the motto of the Soviet anti-fascist resistance.
For his part, confident in 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 quickly as possible, until it was 100 km from the Caspian Sea; they would never arrive. On August 9, the first Maikop oil field falls, but they find it completely destroyed. German units are short of supplies and exhausted; the companies rarely had more than sixty men, and the Panzerdivisionen eighty tanks, without further reinforcements and without fuel, the main oil fields of Baku being well out of reach. 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 in the Don River.
Advance to the Volga
In early August, Hitler, enraged by General Paulus's slow progress on the Don, ordered Hoth's 4th Panzer Army to head back to Stalingrad in support of 6th Army and smash the Soviet defenses for good on the Don. the meander of the Don, to the south. General Hoth complied with concern, due to the few remaining fuel reserves after the descent into the Caucasus. On August 8, the 16th and 24th Panzerdivisions of von Paulus's 6th Army, advancing with the aim of reaching Stalingrad, finished encircling the troops of General Kolpakchi's Soviet 62nd Army to the west. from Kalach, 60 km from Stalingrad. Seven divisions remain pocketed, two motorized brigades and two armored brigades with about a thousand tanks and 750 artillery pieces. The next day, Stalin appointed Andrei Yeriomenko commander of the Stalingrad Front, fed up with Marshal Timoshenko's continued defeats. By August 10, General von Paulus's German 6th Army defeated the troops of General Kolpakchi's Soviet 62nd Army, who were putting up a fierce resistance at the bend of the Don River. The Germans take about 35,000 Russian prisoners and seize 270 wagons and about 560 guns. The remnants of the 62nd Army cross the Don towards the outskirts of the city. General Vladimir Kolpakchi was removed from office and replaced by General Anton Lopatin. In this way the road to Stalingrad is open for the Axis forces; but first the Germans will have to destroy the Soviet redoubts in the area: it will take about eleven days. On August 22, after destroying the last redoubts of Soviet resistance, the 4th Panzerkorps penetrated 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; Seydlitz's 51st Army Corps penetrated through the breach. In this way, the first German units cross the bend of the Don River, and establish a bridgehead.
On August 23, Stalingrad received its first bombardment coming from the Heinkel 111 and Junkers 88, some 600 planes belonging to General Wolfram von Richthofen, chief of staff of the Condor Legion during the bombing of Guernica. A thousand tons of bombs were dropped and only three airplanes were lost. No fewer than 5,000 people died that day. In that week, 40,000 of the city's 600,000 inhabitants would die, damaging or destroying some 4,000 buildings. The Luftwaffe would lose, in total, ninety airplanes. That same day, the vanguard of the German 6th Army reached the Volga. The soldiers were thrilled that they had advanced with so much sacrifice from the Don bend (thanks in part to the outcome of the Battle of Isbucensky and the support of the Lutfwaffe), confident of a swift fall of Stalingrad. The 16. German Panzer-Division, commanded by General Hube, continued across the bend of the Don River on a pontoon mounted at Vertiachi, northeast of Stalingrad. In the afternoon, the broadcast company comes within sight of the city, some 40 km away, as it is being bombed by Stukas. It continues through the suburbs of Spartakovka, Hinok and Latashinika, enters the outskirts of the city and entrenches itself on the banks of the Volga.
To the south, Hoth's advance was slower, as Yeremenko had positioned most of his forces against 4th Panzer Army; Furthermore, Hitler had taken away an armored corps from General Hoth to integrate it into Paulus's 6th Army.
The Germans at the gates of Stalingrad
On August 24, units of the 16. Panzer-Division, under the command of Hube, advanced through the industrial suburbs of Spartakovka, northwest of Stalingrad, engaging in heavy fighting with troops of the Soviet 62nd Army. who employs some newly manufactured T-34s and are aided by armed citizens, who fight on the barricades. The Germans attack the railway, with their artillery they dominate the Volga and the Luftwaffe continues bombarding the city. The Soviet 35th Division isolates the Germans, who form a hedgehog awaiting the arrival of more German units. Some divisions will not be able to reach it, due to an unexpected Soviet counter-offensive of great proportions, and in a few weeks they will be defeated. The counterattack was carried out in the Kotluban sector north of the city, with newly formed armies: the Soviet 4th Tank, 24th and 66th Armies, and the Soviet 1st Guards. These new armies launched costly counterattacks on the German forces, so entire divisions of the 6th Army near Stalingrad had to be diverted north to contain the Soviet onslaught. Two other fresh Soviet armies, the 57th and 51st, followed suit from the south, where Hoth's forces were located, again relegating Paulus's advance and his forces to a quick takeover of the city.
Some of the German infantry arrived in the suburbs of Stalingrad on September 1, with little mechanized support, due to recent events north of the city. At that moment the 29th and 14th Motorized Divisions were converging on Stalingrad to the south; from the west were approaching the 24th, 94th, 71st, 76th and 295th Armored Infantry Divisions; to the north and towards the center of the city, the 100th Chasseur Division, the 389th and 60th Motorized Infantry Division, while the city was defended at the time by only about 56,000 soldiers. The Soviet command could provide its troops in Stalingrad only with 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 from 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 from the Volga. Snipers and assault groups stopped the enemy as best they could. The Germans who moved into 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 locked in house-to-house, building-to-building, and street-to-street street 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 said enemy forces, replied:
Don't you understand that if they deliver Stalingrad, the south of the country will be separated from the center, and we probably won't be able to defend it? In addition to losing our main river path, it is not only a catastrophe for Stalingrad, but for the country, since oil will be lost too.
The Kotluban offensives at the end of August and September would partially alleviate the situation in the north of the city. Zhukov's order was final: "Don't surrender Stalingrad!"
The city-fortress
Arrival of Zhukov
Marshal Zhukov, who had recently been appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief, second only to Stalin, arrived in Stalingrad on August 29.
Hitler, who had not wanted guerrilla warfare in Moscow and Leningrad, now raged for the conquest of the city on that premise: that meant street-to-street, house-to-house warfare, a kind of combat for which neither neither the Wehrmacht nor the Waffen-SS were ready.
The failure to capture the Caucasus led Hitler to drastically rethink his goals. Without the long-awaited oil, he became convinced that if he conquered the city, in addition to covering his strategic defeat with a symbolic victory, he would once again have the chance to turn towards the Caucasus. It is not until September 3 that the German forces of Army Group A, with the 13th and 23rd Panzerdivisonen in the vanguard, begin to resume their march towards southern Russia, trying to reach the oil fields of the Caucasus. in Baku. However, the German units are short of supplies and are exhausted; companies rarely have more than sixty men, and Panzerdivisions have eighty tanks and cannot go any further. On September 7, the Führer sends General Jodl, head of the OKW, to Stalino, where Marshal List has his headquarters, with the intention that Army Group A continue advancing on all fronts, to the Black Sea ports, Tuapse, Sochi, Sujum, Batum, and finally, Baku, but he finds a different picture than he had been told. On September 8, at his headquarters in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, Hitler dismisses Von List, head of Army Group A. After a hard discussion with the marshal and Jodl about the state of the troops that does not allow an offensive, he personally assumes the command of his troops in the Caucasus. As for Jodl, he thought of replacing him with Von Paulus, the current commander of the 6th Army.
On the Stalingrad front, troops from the 6th Army and the 4th Panzerarmee reach the hills overlooking the city, cutting off the city's land communications; its garrison can only be supplied from the Volga. The commander of the Soviet 62nd Army, Anton Lopatin, considers the city lost and asks permission to flee across the river. Zhukov denies it. On September 8, Satlin orders the Red Army troops not to retreat under any circumstances before the Werhmacht push.
On September 10, the Wehrmacht, in collaboration with the SS, has used since that day the ex-Russian general Vlassov, captured that summer on the banks of the Vlochov, to demoralize Russian soldiers. Today he signs a leaflet where he says "Stalin's clique has ruined the country with the kolkhozes." We must fight his regime with all our might... & # 34; and urges Russian soldiers to go over to the Axis troops. As a consequence of these actions, more than 60,000 Russians will fight in the ranks of the German 6th Army during the assault on Stalingrad.
On September 12, Zhukov dishonorably dismissed General Anton Lopatin for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy by failing to contain it with the 62nd Army, and was replaced by the granitic and inflexible General Vasily Chuikov, an efficient and determined soldier, recently arrived from the East, until then in charge of the 64th Army, deployed to the south of the city and which had been resisting the attacks of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Kleist's Panzergruppe. The turnaround was drastic, as Hoth's 4th Panzerarmee reached the Soviet defensive circle of Stalingrad, and its vanguards met the 51st.er Von Seydlitz's German Army Corps arriving at Gumrak airfield, 8 km west of Stalingrad. The two Russian armies commanded by the newly reassigned General Chuikov and Eremenko retreat into the city, and regroup. The next day, the Soviets counterattack in the Annenskoe and Gorodik sector. From now on, tough fights will be fought, house by house. The Soviets use the sewers and underground channels that lead to the Volga, and receive reinforcements.
When Chuikov arrived at the scene of the battle, Yeriomenko and Khrushchev asked him: «—What is the objective of your mission, comrade? "Defend the city or die trying," Chuikov replied firmly. Eremenko looked at Khrushchev, and was certain that Chuikov had fully understood what was expected of him.
The new commander found himself with fewer than 20,000 men and 60 tanks, as well as poor defenses. Chuikov reinforced the city's anti-aircraft defenses (served by women soldiers) and also fortified those places where it was possible to contain the enemy, especially the Mamaev Kurgan hill and the Tsaritsa River ravine. In addition, he withdrew most of his artillery to the eastern bank of the Volga and encouraged the deployment of snipers, including the famous Vasily Zaitsev.
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 concerned about the flanks of his 6th Army, which were devoid of consistent mechanized units and were guarded by unarmed armies of various nationalities: Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians. These inferior forces would prove overwhelmed, unable to secure the flanks against the German forces at Stalingrad, some 20,000 strong at the time. In contrast, Chuikov, in charge of defending the city, has only three infantry divisions, remnants of four divisions, and two tank brigades, with a total of forty tanks, which are buried to be used as artillery pieces. However, Hitler downplayed this weakness, convinced that the Soviet front was on the brink of collapse, a false confidence that rubbed off on Paulus.
On September 13, von Paulus's German 6th Army launched an attack aimed at completing the conquest of Stalingrad. For this, the 71st, 76th and 295th infantry divisions advance from the Gumrak station towards the main hospital, to then take Mammaiev Kurgan; On the other hand, the 94th Infantry Division and another motorized division attacked the area of the mining suburb supported by the 14th and 24th Panzerdivisionen. But they fail. Another German attempt to take the city—thought to be the only attempt—began on September 14, and the German 76th Division reaches control of Stalingrad, coming dangerously close to the main landing stage, the arrival terminal for Soviet reinforcements, and opens a breach in the central sector of the Russian positions, some outposts arriving two hundred meters from Chuikov's bunker, which moves all his tanks to stop the attack, and uses the tactic of letting the enemy tanks pass to their positions of anti-tank guns. The Axis troops lose 8,000 men that day; the Soviets lose 2,000 soldiers and evacuate 3,500 wounded across the Volga. The Germans take 5,000 prisoners.
In these battles, Lieutenant Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri, the only son of La Pasionaria, is killed. The battle at the central station of the city, especially the conquest of the Mamaev Kurgan hill and the factories in the center of the city, lasted for more than two months and turned into a bitter fight in which the flags of both sides they waved alternately, for 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 all over the world. While Soviet soldiers continued to defend their positions by firing on the Germans, factory workers were repairing damaged Soviet tanks and weapons in the immediate vicinity of the battlefield, and sometimes on the battlefield itself. Specifics of fighting in the companies was the limited use of firearms due to the risk of ricochet: fighting was done with piercing, cutting and crushing objects, as well as hand-to-hand fighting. The Germans deployed a whole loudspeaker system inciting the defection of the Soviets. Many crossed over and became Hiwis, many others were shot for action or omission in the face of desertion.
For the Soviet forces, Stalingrad was probably the most critical moment of the battle. The Germans stormed the critically ill 62nd Army, which was 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 Guards Rifle Division. 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 Army Corps at Kotluban. VIII Fliegerkorps sent out wave after wave of Stuka dive bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The offensive was repulsed. The Stukas claimed that 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks knocked out that morning, while escorting the Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft. Amid the rubble of the destroyed city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the 13th Division of Soviet Guard Riflemen anchored their defense lines with strongpoints in houses and factories.
Stagnation in Stalingrad
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By September 20, German troops dominate the banks of the Tsaritsa and have artillery a few meters from the main pier. General Chuikov was forced to move his threatened headquarters from the Tsaritsyn bunker to Mamaeiev Kurgan. The central area of the city is stagnant, both armies are exhausted. The Soviets could still bring in reinforcements using the ferries from the northern end of the city and the underground, where they have their barracks, hospitals and shelters, unreachable by German artillery. The city is already a pile of rubble.
Fighting within the ruined city was fierce and desperate. Lieutenant General Alexander Rodimtsev was in command of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and received one of two Heroes of the Soviet Union awards during the battle for his actions. It was in this context that Order 227 was received in the detachments, which decreed harsh penalties for those who backed down. Deserters and suspected malingerers were captured or executed after the fighting. During the battle, the 62nd Army had the most arrests and executions: 203 in total, of which 49 were executed, while 139 were sent to penal companies and battalions. The Germans advancing towards Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
German military doctrine was based on the interaction of military branches in general and on the particularly close interaction of infantry, sappers, artillery and dive bombers. In response, the Soviet fighters tried to get within tens of meters of the 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 ladder. In this case, the German infantry had to fight on equal terms with the Soviet infantry: rifles, grenades, bayonets and knives. The struggle was for every street, every factory, every house, basement or stairway. Even individual buildings were put on the cards and got the names: Pavlov's House, Mill, Department Store, Prison, Zabolotny House, Dairy House, House of Specialists, L-shaped House and others. The Red Army constantly made counterattacks, trying to recapture previously lost positions. Several times they passed from hand to hand Mamaev Kurgan and the Stalingrad-I railway station. The assault groups on both sides tried to use any passage to the enemy: sewers, cellars, undermining.
Rattenkrieg
By mid-September, eight of the twenty divisions of the German 6th Army were fighting inside the city; however, the Soviets did not stop feeding the front with reinforcements from Siberia and Mongolia. General Paulus, sick with dysentery, was under such pressure to report the date Stalingrad would fall that he eventually developed a tic in his left eye, which then spread to the left side of his face.
At this time, German casualty statistics skyrocketed given the German soldier's inexperience in urban combat. Although Paulus knew that the Soviet casualties were at least twice the German, his manpower was rapidly dissipating, as he only had one division in reserve. German commando detachments sent into street combat losing between 50 and 70% of their strength were common.
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 rest, since the defenders of the city preferred to attack at night, neutralizing the danger of the 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 aviation during the night, because "the troops have no rest." If nighttime bombing raids, antipersonnel mines, and ambushes by enemy infantry were not enough to keep the Germans in Stalingrad on their toes, snipers did manage to capture 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 had to resort to premature promotions, in order to replace the fallen.
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The neurosis that a soldier could develop from being constantly subjected to the degree of tension of the so-called Rattenkrieg ('rat war') was no excuse for abandoning the battlefield, since so many Germans as Soviets they did not recognize this disease and characterized it as cowardice, which usually entailed immediate summary execution.
Heavy artillery became useless in this environment of urban fighting, since, due to its lack of precision, 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 shore of the Volga), up to 600mm mortars. There was the famous case of the so-called House of Pávlov in which the domain of the floors alternated bloodily between the sides.
Vasily Chuikov ordered the artillery to be moved to the eastern bank of the Volga and to attack behind German lines, with the aim of destroying lines of communication and infantry formations in the rear. To know where to shoot, an observation officer had to lean out on the roof of a building in the city, which in many cases meant death at the hands of a German sniper. Only the Katyusha were left in Stalingrad, hidden on the Volga sandbar.
Unlike the German command posts, the Soviet command posts were in the city and therefore open to attack. On one occasion a German tank stood at the entrance to the 62nd Army artillery commander's bunker and he, along with his staff, had to dig to safety.
Despite the fact that the initiative, the rate 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, it had ideal conditions for a street-by-street defense. Combined infantry and armored attacks were useless in the chaos of urban fighting.
To wear down the opponent, the measures imposed by Chuikov were extreme: for example, thousands of inexperienced soldiers were sent to seize German trenches, taking heavy casualties. Soon the city was covered in a repulsive and putrid atmosphere. The reason was obvious: the corpses of both sides were rotting under the rubble. In turn, on the German side, and under such an environment, the Nazi anti-Semitic policy was continued. The Feldgendarmerie (German Military Police) had been rounding up Jews and taking captive civilians who were fit for work and some 3000 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 nearly 4,000 civilians.
On September 27, Paulus decided to speed up the capture of the city and prepared a major offensive. The main German force attacked north of the Mamaev Kurgan, near the workers' settlements of the Red October and Barrikady factories. The Germans watched in amazement as civilians fleeing the settlements to seek refuge in the German lines were shot down by their own soldiers. Sometimes the Germans also shot civilians assisting the Red Army. A picked division of German soldiers captured the 'House of Specialists', where they fortified themselves and began firing at the boats that came and went up the Volga bringing soldiers. The 88 mm guns, the Stukas and the German artillery competed in sinking the barges that brought soldiers from the other side of the Volga.
Between the first and second day of combat the Germans had close to 2,500 casualties, the Soviets close to 6,000. For the Soviets the losses exceeded the already high daily casualties: almost 3,000 soldiers died per day (at the rate of a hundred every hour). Although the German troops managed to penetrate the city or what was left of it, they never fully took over the whole (the quay and the hill), since the former could not be reached, and as long as they remained in Soviet hands, the reinforcements and supplies needed to continue the battle could flow in regularly. German commando battalions and brigades that tried to reach the docks were reduced to 50% strength.
On September 30, in a speech at the Berlin Sports Hall, on the occasion of the start of the 4th Winter Relief campaign, Hitler claimed: «Stalingrad has been conquered (…) no one will ever be able to drive us out of this position."
For both Stalin and Hitler, the Battle of Stalingrad became a matter of prestige, in addition to the city's strategic importance. The Soviet command moved the reserves of the Red Army 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 Rokossovski, 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 make a fourth attack against the Soviet positions in Stalingrad, resulting in heavy fighting. 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 various events were taking place in the city.
On October 5, 1942, Stalin strongly criticized the leadership of the Stalingrad Front in a telephone conversation with A. I. Eremenko and demanded that immediate steps 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 intends for the first time to surround the 6th Army with lateral attacks against the Romanian units, and after breaking through the fronts, to unite in the Kalach-on-Don region. The headquarters considered Eremenko's plan, but later 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 staff, had agreed with the commanders of the three Soviet fronts in the Stalingrad area the operations to encircle Von Paulus's 6th German Army within of the city, in September. For the commanders who resist in Stalingrad they will not be detailed, until the start of the bagging operations.
On October 9, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet returned to the officers of the Red Army the care of military discipline, suppressing the Corps of Commissars. They were ordered to fire on groups of retreating Soviet fighters. That same day, the West agreed on the details for the shipment of weapons, raw materials and ammunition to Russia. But Stalin, in an interview with journalists from various American newspapers and magazines dated November 2, 1942, will state that the military aid from the allies is insufficient and he will continue to demand a second front.
On the morning of October 14, the German Sixth Army launched a decisive new attack against the Soviet bridgeheads near the Volga. It was supported by more than a thousand aircraft of the Luftwaffe's 4th 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. Soviet units defended themselves stubbornly, 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 manage to reach the banks of the Volga River, through the center of the city, splitting the 62nd Army in half. Pressed on all sides, the Soviet 62nd Army headquarters in the city requested reinforcements, fearing they would be pushed to the other bank of the river. Reinforcements arrived the next day from Colonel Ivan Lyudnikov's 138th Rifle Division, crossed the river on the north side of the city near the Barricadas (Barricady) factory, and immediately went into action, with great losses; the Germans were once again repulsed.
Hitler ordered Von Paulus that his troops from the 6th Army must hold the lines already reached at all costs, the starting point of an offensive planned for 1943. According to the Führer, the German soldiers are better prepared and willing to face this winter than they were in the past, and considers that the Red Army is "weakened after the last fighting". In short, Stalingrad must be resisted to the last man.
It was October 31st, Chuikov's Red Army troops, harassed by Von Paulus's German 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzerarmee, only dominate the ruins of two factories to the north of the city and a 2 km strip of port bank of the Volga, through which it receives reinforcements, supplies and supplies. During this month, the Axis troops have lost 400 tanks and some 40,000 soldiers, spending thousands of tons of ammunition. It was obvious that the Germans had not conquered the entire city, but they had occupied 80% of it. The factories, that of Barricady cannons and tractors, continue to be besieged by the Germans. Russian casualties increased at the rate of 4,000 soldiers per day. The Soviet wounded were dragging themselves to the banks of the Volga in the fleeting hope that they could be helped, and thousands of them would freeze to death with the arrival of winter. The fact of crossing the river was not a guarantee of receiving medical attention, since, due to the lack of resources, many soldiers were left to fend for themselves. What the Soviets could not see was that the Germans were on the edge of their offensive capability; in fact, they did not have enough forces to conquer the city, since their supply line was insufficient.
During that month of October, the cold had been felt and with it the diseases on both sides: paratyphoid fever, typhus, dysentery, and the Germans already had knowledge through prisoners that the Soviets were preparing a gigantic counteroffensive. They themselves had noticed the movements on their flanks. To protect himself from him, Paulus had erected a barrier on his left flank to prevent attacks from the north, using the Romanian units. But the German High Command in Berlin would continue to ignore such reports.
In effect, the Soviet high command, alerted by the Red Orchestra, the network of Soviet spies concentrated in central Europe and the German general staff, had informed him of the weakness of the flanks of the enemy army, made up of inexperienced soldiers Rumanians, and equipped with French guns without spare parts and with only two howitzers each, and prepared a major offensive directed against those northern and southern flanks. More than 1,000,000 men were amassing, that is, about 100 divisions, most of them Siberian, plus tanks and guns from Moscow and the Urals. The plan was for a pincer maneuver to encircle, corner and pocket the entire 6th Army, breaking into the German rear on the north and south 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 reverse the entire situation in Stalingrad, for which he supported the idea of the encirclement; even if this meant reducing the ammunition quota of the 62nd Army, which was defending the city on its own. The idea of encircling a German army in these conditions was absolutely daring, but there was no other viable possibility after the constant mistakes in the Soviet offensives at the beginning of '42.
Soviet counteroffensive
"Operation Uranus"
On November 2, the "STAVKA" o Red Army High Command, finalized plans to execute Operation Uranus aimed at pushing the Germans in the Don region to the west, encircling the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. That day, the Soviet 151st and 152nd Brigades launched a successful counterattack to relieve German pressure on the city.
As for Hitler, he continued to ignore reports of the Soviet offensive on the Don-Volga. Despite the meeting with Zeitzler, on November 7 he had informed him that the Red Army was preparing an offensive on the Don, defended by the Italian 8th Army and the Romanian 3rd Army. The information obtained from Soviet prisoners did not allow one 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 was ignorant of the facts. The next day, at the conference for the anniversary of his assassination attempt on the Löwenbraükeller brewery in Munich, Hitler told his supporters that the Volga river port of the city of Stalingrad was virtually in German hands; he declared: "No human force will be able to tear us from there." The conquest of the devastated city has become a political symbol, rather than a strategic objective.
On November 9, the first snowfalls fell, winter had arrived and the city was submerged in a blanket of white with temperatures hovering around -18 °C. At night, the opposing groups made temporary signs of truce with flags that hung from the holes in the ruins, allowing some of the fallen to be removed 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 fight resumed without quarter.
At the end of the day, on November 11, German troops launch their biggest and most decisive attack, using five divisions on a 500-meter front to capture the remains of the city. They manage to reach the Volga, near the Red October factory. After the advance, they capture part of the Barrikady gun factory, and manage to encircle the 138th Rifle Division, cutting its link with the 62nd Army. Lyudnikov's 138th Division or Division held on to a 500m wide × 200m long stretch of territory on the banks of the Volga, which became known as "Lyudnikov Island". The Soviet divisional artillery had to be evacuated to the east bank, after the encirclement of the unit. But the 138th will hold out for more than two months, with dwindling strength from the ferocious German assaults, as the reports sent to 62nd Army Headquarters proved, in a nutshell they meant a lot: " The fight is exceptionally hard." "14 enemy attacks repulsed by artillery fire". "Counterattack in hand-to-hand combat". "The enemy reaches the Volga from both sides, they fire directly at our formations." Chuikov will later acknowledge that the Axis troops could have driven the Russians across the river with the attack of just one more battalion.
On November 17, in Berchtesgaden, Germany, Hitler spoke to his commanders on the Stalingrad front, asking them to conquer the "Barricade" and the "Red October" from the narrow industrial city of the Volga, about 50 km long. The next day, at the end of the day, German troops take the "Djerjinski" tractor factory, and a large part of the "Barricade" (Barrikady), plus several hundred meters from the Volga bank. Chuikov informs Eremenko that the 62nd Army only holds 1/10 of the city, and that it is running out of ammunition and supplies. What the Soviets failed to realize from the Germans, however, was that their reserves had run out and they were morally affected by both Soviet resistance, their leaders, and their broken promises. Consequently, they were in a highly dangerous position in the face of reports of a Soviet winter counteroffensive.
As a result, after three months of bloody fighting and slow advances, the Germans only manage to capture 90% of the ruined city and split the remaining Soviet forces into three narrow pockets. Ice floes on the Volga now prevent boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders. However, the fighting continues, especially on the slopes of the Mamayev Kurgan, Red October factory and a narrow sector at the "Barrikady" gun factory, where the 138th is holding on. of Fusiliers. From 21 August to 20 November, the German 6th Army lost 60,548 men, including 12,782 killed, 45,545 wounded, and 2,221 missing.
It was November 19, 1942, and in the rear of Stalingrad and the Don, Zhukov's Red Army was prepared, made up of 1,005,000 soldiers, with some 13,541 guns, 894 tanks and 1,115 planes, commanded by Vatutin and Rokossovski, for the southeast and north of the Don, and Stalingrad, for Eremenko. At 07:30, the Red Army began the long-awaited counter-offensive to push the Germans west, cutting them off from their Stalingrad troops. The Soviets launch massive bombardments with some 3,500 artillery pieces, relentlessly on the weakest enemy lines between Serafimovih and Klestkaya, which consisted of Romanian troops with scant anti-tank materiel. 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 attack from the north and south. The Romanians of the II and IV Corps manage to briefly hold off the first waves of infantry, but were mowed down by T-34 tanks around noon. When the pillboxes were demolished, the Romanians fled in disarray across the white plain, followed by waves of Soviets. While there were some attempts to counter 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. The 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 target 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. If the objectives were achieved, it would mean the confinement of Paulus's 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad and its sector, with some 250,000 soldiers and without major supplies, plus another 60,000 of other auxiliary units (Hiwi), and 20,000 Romanian units, a total of 330,000 men, with about 150 tanks and about 5,000 artillery pieces. These troops were supported on their northwestern and southern flanks by some 700,000 Axis soldiers divided between the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, the 2nd Hungarian and the 8th Italian, this one with 220,000 soldiers; about 800 km of the lines lightly garrisoned with poorly armed troops. Together they numbered about 1,040,000 soldiers; 10,290 guns, 275 tanks and 1,260 aircraft.
Der Kessel
The Russian 26th Army Corps resumes the offensive, reaching near the Ostrov and Plesistovsky factories. The Russian 4th Army Corps advances towards the Don, breaking through the lines of the 14th Panzerkorps, reaching Golubinski; the Russian 21st Army advances towards Verjne, Formijinki and Raspopinskaia, breaking down the resistance of the sector; while another division harassed the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, which fled yesterday. From the south of Krasnoarmeisk, the Soviet 51st and 57th Armies mobilized, before which the German 29th Division held firm, but the first managed to cross their lines in the direction of Kalach. The German OKW proposed to withdraw the bulk of the 6th Army from Stalingrad south-west towards the Don, and thus avoid encirclement. Such a project could still be carried out since there were important gaps that were not yet closed, but Hitler refused to accept such a solution, and demanded that Paulus and his men stay in the conquered city by means of a direct counterorder, withdrawing the vanguards sent in a southwesterly direction to try to overcome the fence.
While the rear of von Paulus' German 6th Army is in serious trouble, the Romanian 4th Army has been crushed by General Yeremenko's Russian troops, taking 65,000 prisoners. The change of command post from the general to Gumrak creates communication problems between the different German units.
Hitler considered that the situation was not entirely lost and hoped to be able to repeat the situation produced in February of that same year in the Demyansk Stock Exchange, where a large mass of German soldiers was able to resist a prolonged Soviet encirclement by means of an airlift. Such an idea reached the ears of the top chief 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 Aviation General von Richtofen, as cloudy weather with blizzards would prevent the planes from flying steadily and even make it impossible for them to take off at all. Under these conditions Paulus radioed a direct message to Hitler:
My Fuehrer: We're out of ammunition and fuel. Sufficient and timely supply is impossible. Under these circumstances, I request full freedom of action. Paulus.
On November 23 at 4:00 p.m., 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 forces of the Red Army are thus to the west of Stalingrad, completing the encirclement of the forces of the German 6th Army of General von Paulus and part of the 4th Panzerarmee: 22 divisions in total, about 330,000 men, in a strip with a distance between the exterior and interior front of 13.5 to 19 km and about 40 km in length. To the northwest, at Raspopinskaia, the Romanian 5th Division surrenders. The Soviet pincers closed in less than four days of fighting. On November 24, Stalingrad was under a Soviet siege. The 94th Division under the command of 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 retreat. authorized. He barely left his position, the Soviet 62nd Army fell on him and many of his battalions were mercilessly annihilated; there were no prisoners.
Goering, irresponsibly, before the reports warning him of the impossible of the mission —which he received and ignored—, promised to supply the Kessel with 500 tons of supplies per day, but the planes barely managed to carry 130 tons in three days of operations at low horizon and in the middle of snow storms. This meant that the flights were never really permanent (as an efficient airlift should be) but because of the bad weather for several days the planes could not take off from their bases, or they simply took off, but could not land in Stalingrad. Adding to the woes, the Soviets boldly attacked the main air supply base, Pitomnik Airfield, eventually collapsing resupply bases and accentuating the shortage of cargo planes for airlift operations. Added to the inclement weather that was detrimental to the Germans, the Soviets launched flares from recently taken positions to make the supply planes believe that there were still German soldiers requesting supplies at that location. 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, some 150 km west of Moscow, aimed at encircling the 9th Army German commanded by Model, as a diversionary maneuver on the Stalingrad front. Attacked 3rd, 20th, 22nd, 29th, 31st.er and Soviet 41st Armies. Due to bad weather, the preparatory fire of the Russian artillery has no effect. The Germans were well entrenched along the entire front line and had reserves in the rear. The German Army Group Center was the most heavily armed on the entire Eastern Front. It had a total of 72 divisions, of the 266 that the Axis had in Russia, which included 1,680,000 soldiers and about 3,500 tanks, 2/3 of the total on the Eastern Front. Before the beginning of Operation Uranus, STAVKA had suggested a second phase of operation in northern Russia, given the danger that the Germans would transfer these large forces to the Stalingrad Front. To do this, Zhukov had two groups of armies under his command, the Western Front and the Kalinin Front, commanded by Koniev and Purkaev respectively, with 1,890,000 soldiers, 24,682 guns, 3,375 tanks and about 1,170 aircraft. It was used for the Operation Mars offensive.
In early December, the first starvation casualties emerged. Despite everything, the Germans tried to maintain discipline and the organization functioned regularly.
In Axis-occupied Europe, Benito Mussolini advises Hitler to cease hostilities against the Soviet Union, asking him to "close... the chapter on the war against Russia, one way or another, to the since there is no point in continuing it." Hitler will ignore the requests of the Duce.
In Stalingrad, the «Cauldron» (Der Kessel), where, without enough water or food, attacked by epidemics and amid the putrid smell of decomposition, the Germans prepared to suffer a long siege in the midst of the greatest hardships. In this way, some 330,000 Axis soldiers were trapped in a bag with the order, by Hitler, not to back down or surrender. Despite the fact that Göring, air marshal and supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, promised to supply the troops from the air, the arrival of resources to the German troops was almost impossible and only a few flights were carried out.
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 left to evacuate the wounded. Even so, the few planes could not cope and the lucky ones who could climb escaped from hell, the wounded hung from the doors and some desperate ones ventured to fly clinging to the wings, where none managed to survive. After the fall of Pitomnik, on January 16 only the Gumrak airfield remained improvised, smaller and in worse condition than Pitomnik, but Gumrak would also fall into Soviet hands on January 23. From that day on, the starving German troops could only receive supplies through boxes dropped by parachute by the Luftwaffe, which did not ensure that the cargo would reach 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 search for such 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.
Army Group Don Offensive
In December, the surrounded German soldiers had a slight 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's 6th German Army besieged in Stalingrad. This new grouping is currently made up of 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 the encircled forces of Von Paulus in Stalingrad, Marshal Erich von Manstein gets 9 more Axis divisions to abandon their positions in the Caucasus, Voronezh, Oryol and France and go to the southwest of Stalingrad to join Army Group Don, with them the remnants of the Romanian 3rd and 4th Army. Forming a total of 120,000 soldiers, 650 tanks and 500 aircraft, about 13 divisions.
Operation Winter Storm, which included two large 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 abandoned the 6th Army was something unthinkable, for which they felt hope of a possible rescue. In this way the Wehrmacht made sure to do everything possible to rescue this encircled elite army away from Germany. The objective is to break the siege of Stalingrad and help von Paulus's 6th Army, which is 120 km from Kotielnikovski, 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 railway to Stalingrad; strongly defended by the Russian 126th and 302nd Infantry Divisions. On the night of December 13, the 23rd Panzer Division advances to the north of Nebikovo. having crossed Aksai, but December 15 they are pushed back to the river with the same name. As for the 6th Panzer Division, it would reach the town 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, towards a new defensive line on the Myshkova River. The five-day delay of the Germans at Verkhne-Kumsky was an indisputable success for the Soviet troops, as it bought time to bring up the 2nd Guards Army. But by December 16, the offensive of the Voronezh Front had begun. In the Don River area, 3 Soviet Armies overwhelmed the Italian 8th Army, advancing towards Rostov with the possibility of isolating Marshal Manstein's Army Group Don, which was trying to break through to Stalingrad, and likewise Army Group Don of Armies A of General Kleist, who 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 remained in pursuit, out of 220,000 Italians; half will be killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
On December 20, German troops reached the Myshkova River, where the Russian positions lie. The distance to Paulus's 6th Army, surrounded at Stalingrad, was now 35–50 km, but heavy losses (up to 60% motorized infantry and 230 tanks) significantly undermined the offensive potential of the Hoth group. The situation called for an immediate start of a breakout of Paulus' army from the encirclement towards the 4th Panzer Army, as Goth had no opportunity to break through the 'corridor'. for his account. The breakthrough was to start with the Thunderbolt code signal. But Manstein did not dare to use the Donnerschlag Plan because he was not sure that the head of the 6th Army Friedrich Paulus would carry it out. First, according to Hitler's order, Paulus had to hold "Stalingrad Fortress, and breaking the encirclement meant abandoning the city. Secondly, the command of the 6th Army required 6 days to prepare an advance, since the available fuel would be enough to overcome only 30 km.
Days ago the Red Army undertook a new operation, then a critical situation 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. The 7th Romanian Infantry Division would also do so, it left its positions without authorization. The forward detachments of the Red Army reached the crossing through the Seversky Donets near the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The intention of the Soviet troops to break through in the direction of Rostov was evident. Marshal Manstein, commander of Army Group Don, 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-strong Army Group Don, along with Army Group A Caucasus, and the remnants of Army Group B with 6th Army besieged in Stalingrad: near than 1,500,000 Axis soldiers are in danger of being annihilated. The main task of Hollidt's group and the Romanian 3rd Army was now to protect the airfields of Morozovsk and Tatsinskaya, which were badly needed for the supplies of the encircled 6th Army, as well as the retention of important crossings across the Donets in Forkhstadt (Belaya Kalitva) and Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The arrest meant that the Soviets attacked him with everything and drove him back another 200 km. The attack, which was carried out by the Soviet 6th Armored Division, relentlessly at first, was threatened by another Soviet counter-attack in the rear, so it was decided to retreat definitively. To all this, the Tatsinskaya airfield, the main one for the Ju-52 for resupply, fell into Soviet power.
In the days that followed, the situation on the Chirsk front deteriorated so much that on December 23, Manstein ordered the 6th Panzer Division to withdraw from their positions and head towards Morozovsk. At dawn on December 24, the 3rd Panzerdivisionen of General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army are attacked by General Malinovski's 2nd Guards Army, advancing towards Kotielnikovsky from the north, and the 51st Army. Soviet, advancing from the northeast, breaking through the defenses of the Romanian 4th Army, initiating an encirclement 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, he launched another offensive on Kotelnikovo. Faced with this situation, General Hoth gave the general withdrawal order that same day, thus eliminating any option to save the besieged troops in Stalingrad.
The Final Surrender
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, led by Zhukov, encircle Stalingrad and press inland to annihilate the defenders; due to his precarious air supply, starting tomorrow his daily ration of bread will drop from 200 to 100 gr. Paulus, sickened by the absurdity of Hitler's orders, realized that, to the Führer, the 6th Army, or what was left of it, was little more than a expendable piece in the game of war. The lives of the soldiers were of no importance to Hitler. Because while Nazi leaders like Erich Koch, the Gauleiter, or governor of the occupied Ukrainian territories, 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 ask for his 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. Civilians in the occupied territories hate them. By December 25, on the Kessel, 1,280 soldiers die of cold and hunger. For the new year, the Soviets set up a series of kitchens and parties on the south bank of the Volga with the dual aim of celebrating the year and demoralizing the beleaguered Germans.
On December 28, due to the Russian offensive against Rostov and Don, which threatened to cut the lines of Army Group A, General Ruoff's troops slowly retreated from the Caucasus. towards 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 it continued to be besieged by Russian troops, being the scene of heavy fighting. That same day, the Red Army's counter-offensive towards Kotielnovski began, where they annihilate the remnants of the Romanian 4th Army by Malinovski's 2nd Guards Army, while the 4th Panzerarmee beat a retreat until reaching between 200 and 240 km away from Stalingrad. Thus, Operation Winter Storm was repulsed. The Soviet forces of the Stalingrad Front arrive at the Verjne-Rubezhni-Tormosin-Gluboki line, having the possibility of launching a major offensive on the southern sector of the German front. But for the STAVKA, the main thing was to end the pocket of German forces in Stalingrad.
On January 9, two Red Army officers appeared on the western line of the German front with an ultimatum from the Stavka for Paulus. If this ultimatum was not accepted, the Soviets would launch a final offensive against the Kessel the following day. The ultimatum was rejected. The hardships multiplied in the German 6th Army: epidemics decimated the soldiers, discipline had disappeared and hunger was so excruciating that the Germans sacrificed all their horses, as well as dogs and rats in order to feed themselves. It should be noted that even in these dire conditions, the resistance of the 6th Army continued, since the front lines withdrew fighting and inflicting casualties on the Soviets who were executing the ring plan to finish off the Germans.
At 6:05 a.m., on 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 7,000 cannons, mortars and Katyusha rocket launchers that beat the German trenches for 55 minutes. Then waves of infantry supported by chariots charge. The offensive is focused on taking the Pitomnik airfield, where the Ju 52s land, bringing supplies to the besieged and taking their wounded. That day, The Führer radios 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 December 16, the only German Pitomnik airfield would fall into Soviet hands, the Germans had to rebuild the Gumrak airfield, seriously damaged by themselves, in order to continue receiving supplies.
The Soviets once again offer the encircled in Stalingrad the chance to surrender, but Von Paulus orders his troops to try to break the encirclement at any possible point to avoid its total annihilation. Romanian units that had formed a bulk of the 6th Army, which have been deprived of rations, were continuously surrendering in groups. Other Germans will begin to bribe pilots to take them out through Gumrak airfield.
On January 18, what will be the last German mail plane leaves Stalingrad. General Von Paulus sends a letter to his wife with her wedding ring, graduation ring and his medals. General Hube, the first to arrive in the city, is forced to leave in the Condor that takes off from the Gumrak airfield. He will protest to Hitler about the failure of the airlift, suggesting that those responsible, including Göring, be shot. Hitler ignored this, like much other advice.
At 04:00 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. By January 24, in the already ruined city, German troops form a hedgehog in Gorodishche while they retreat to the east, to the remains of a tractor factory. The combats are very hard. In the south, the Germans hold out in the suburbs. Some 20,000 German wounded were dragging themselves unaided among the ruins. There are thousands of corpses among them dead from cold and hunger, almost always unarmed. During the last 3 days, the Soviet forces advanced 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, dropped ammunition and supplies by parachute, but these frequently fell on territory defended by the Soviets.
By January 26, the 62nd Army meets Rodimtsev's 13th Rifle Division of the Soviet 21st Army on Mamayev Hill, dividing what remains of the Soviet 6th Army Von Paulus in two pockets of resistance to the north and south of the devastated capital. Russian T 34s drive through the ruins. In the North, what remains of the German 51st Corps hold out in the collapsed tractor factory. In the South, the remnants of another 4 Corps are fighting around the ruins of Red Square, where von Paulus had moved his headquarters, in the basement of the Univermag warehouse. The next day, the Soviet 21st, 57th, and 64th Armies attack the Axis troops pocketed south of the city, who are protecting Von Paulus. German resistance is fierce.
On January 29, in the pocket, the German 6th Army broadcasts a salute to the Führer, congratulating him in advance on his 10th anniversary of coming to power, saying that "... The flag of the swastika still flies in Stalingrad..." Hitler would do the same in a speech predicting "final victory". But he secretly calls on his Axis allies, Italy and Hungary, to withdraw their respective troops from the Don front. However, the Italians had already fled for days, and the inexperienced Hungarians had lost some 80,000 soldiers and another 63,000 wounded in the last ten days.
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 agreed 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 was not would commit suicide and other officers were forbidden to do so to follow the fate of their soldiers.
Soviet troops enter Stalingrad's former urban center, Red Square, now reduced to a pile of rubble tonight. German positions succumb to successive waves of the Red Army. A Soviet tank approached Paulus's headquarters, carrying an interpreter sent by Paulus, Major Winrich Behr. On January 31, at 05:45, Paulus surrendered to the Red Army. Some 80,000 dead lie among the ruins, 23 generals, some 2,000 officers, 91,000 soldiers and 40,000 auxiliaries of Russian origin surrender to the Soviets; less than 6,000 of all of them will return alive after the war. They will join in captivity the 16,800 already taken captive during the battle; some 42,000 were luckier and were able to be evacuated as previously wounded. General Streker's group of Germans still resists, north of the demolished city. But on February 2, the 51st Army Corps, commanded by General Streker or Schrenck, surrenders. In this way the 6th Army was destroyed, Von Paulus was the first marshal to capitulate in German history, thus disobeying Hitler, gripped by Soviet troops, lack of food and the polar cold of the Russian steppe, for the that his troops did not have enough material, quite the opposite, to what Hitler claimed. An unprecedented gesture.
This was the end of the battle for the devastated city, the biggest battle of World War II. Since 10 January, the Red Army has eliminated 22 Werhmacht divisions, with another 160 units sent to the relief of 6th Army. About 11,000 German soldiers did not accept the surrender and continued fighting until the end, in early March the Soviets finished off the last strongholds of resistance in the cellars and tunnels.
Losses
The Third Reich lost its best army in Stalingrad, with which Hitler boasted that "could storm the skies". Losses also include part of 4th Panzer Army and Army Group Don and countless material resources that could not be replaced as easily as the USSR had. In fact, among the dead, wounded, missing or taken prisoner, the Wehrmacht had lost from August 21 until the end of the battle, more than 400,000 combatants, many of them experienced, elite troops that could only be largely replaced. by conscripts. If the losses of Army Group A, Army Group Don, and German units of Army Group B are included during the period from 28 June 1942 to 2 February 1943, German casualties were more than 600,000. On the other hand, the Allied Axis armies suffered similar devastating losses, being the breaking point in satellite relations with Germany.
The Germans also lost 900 aircraft (including 274 cargo planes and 165 bombers), as well as 500 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces. According to a Soviet report at the time, Soviet forces confiscated 5,762 artillery pieces, 1,312 mortars, 744 aircraft, 1,666 tanks and assault guns, 261 other armored vehicles, 571 semi-tracked vehicles, 10,722 trucks, 10,679 motorcycles, 12,701 heavy machine guns, 80,438 submachine guns, 156,987 rifles. Losses of parts unknown Hungarian, Italian and Romanian.
The Soviets, apart from having secured a practically destroyed city, had suffered more than a million casualties. Of these, some "13,000 had died executed by their own compatriots& #34;, accused of cowardice, desertion, collaborationism, etc. Although, Soviet reports from the NKVD cite only 278 executions. The excessive figure provided by Western historians could well have been the more than 55,000 Hiwis (Soviet soldiers dressed in German uniform), who died or were taken prisoner in the battle of Stalingrad, although they were taken prisoner, their final whereabouts are unknown. Notably, it was not until the fall of the USSR that Russian historians were able to openly discuss the casualty figures of the battle, for fear of acknowledging that the sacrifice of life was excessive.[citation needed], although these will never be exact (due to the absence of reliable records and the proliferation of uncounted mass graves), it is believed that they were very high, perhaps more than those considered, echoing that phrase of the Soviet generals "Time is blood." By the highest estimate, if all the forces that fought on the Volga and Don are included, 741,000 Axis soldiers were killed, missing and wounded and 108,000 were captured, about 1,130,000 Soviet soldiers (including dead prisoners). in captivity, killed in combat, wounded after being evacuated, missing or captured) and more than 300,000 civilians disappeared or met their end (including refugees and people living in towns and cities where there was also fighting). It should be noted that a quarter of a million civilians were evacuated to the east of the country.
Consequences
When the German 6th Army surrendered with more than 91,000 soldiers, they were condemned to walk on the snow in the so-called “death march”, with 40,000 perishing from the walk and the beatings. The rest were confined in the Lunovo, Suzdal, Krasnogorsk, Yelabuga, Bekedal, Usman, Astrakán, Basianovski, Oranki and Karaganda concentration camps, and even 3,500 of them in Stalingrad itself to rebuild the city. Most of them, with temperatures of -25 and -30 °C degrees below zero, fell ill with typhus, dysentery, jaundice, diphtheria, scurvy, tuberculosis, dropsy and malaria. Of the 91,000 prisoners, only 5,000 would survive.
The consequences of this catastrophe were immense and far-reaching. The tragedy could not be hidden from the German people, decreeing three days of national mourning. For the first time, Germany lost the initiative in the war and had to go on the defensive. In fact, the Wehrmacht already lacked the logistical elements necessary 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 enlarged and with the initiative of the war in the hands of its leaders. In addition, the commander of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, fell out of favor with Hitler, losing credit among the elite of the Nazi regime, as well as prestige among the military, by failing to carry out the order to supply the encircled German forces by air, as had promised.
As for the Führer, the surrender of Von Paulus in Stalingrad and the great breach opened in the Eastern Front caused Adolf Hitler to undergo an acute depressive crisis. He will take sleeping pills every night, and 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 the success of Stalingrad as his own, but all the credit was given to Vasily Chuikov, who was promoted to captain-general and placed in charge of an army that would later march on Berlin. However, the Battle of Stalingrad was a true military catastrophe for the Nazis and one of their main defeats in World War II, also marking the turning point in the war, after which they would not stop retreating before the Soviets until they surrendered. before Zhúkov, in the same Berlin, two and a half years later.
The triumph of this battle transcended the limits of the Soviet Union and inspired all the allies. The 62nd Army, commanded by Vasili Chuikov, was encouraging resistance everywhere. King George VI of England presented the city with a sword specially forged in his honour, and even the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote the poem "Canto de amor a Stalingrado ", recited for the first time on the 30th. of September 1942, and the poem “New love song to Stalingrad” in 1943, celebrating the victory, which transformed this fight into a symbol and a turning point for the whole war. Today Western historians regard the Battle of Stalingrad as Germany's second Verdun.
Honors and commemoration
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 1 As of January 1995, this medal had been awarded 759,561 times. In the staff building of the unit No. 22220 in Volgograd, the huge mural is determined by the representation of the medal. It shows a group of soldiers with rifles pointed forward and bayonets planted under a waving flag. On the left you can see the outline of tanks and a squadron of aircraft, above it the Soviet five-pointed star.
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/nickel rubles.
To mark 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 inscribed “СТАЛИНГРАД” (Stalingrad) shows attacking soldiers and a heavy rolling tank in front of the ruins of houses.
Commemoration in Germany
In the main cemetery of Limburg an der Lahn, the central German memorial was unveiled on October 18, 1964 to commemorate all the 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 Monument through the existence of the "Former Stalingrad Fighters& #3. 4;. 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. The picture painted in 1942 by the Protestant pastor, physician and artist Kurt Reuber in a shelter in Stalingrad with coal on the back of a Soviet map, bears the inscription "1942 Christmas in the Cauldron - Stalingrad Fortress - Light, life, love". Although Reuber himself did not survive captivity, the image came into the hands of the family 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 to remember the 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.
Commemoration in Austria
Each February in Austria, Stalingrad Memorial Masses take place in many churches, which are usually organized by the Austrian Comrades Association or other traditional associations. In addition, numerous memorabilia from the battle are on display at the Vienna Military History Museum, including war relics such as steel helmets, boots, and equipment that were recovered from the Stalingrad battlefield.
Commemoration in France
There is a Stalingrad metro station in Paris. It is located on the Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad.
Commemoration in Italy
In Italy, there are several streets named Via Stalingrad in various cities.
Temporary name change 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 revert to its old name of Stalingrad six days a year. War veterans had requested this. The decision sparked heated discussions in Russia. Human rights officer Vladimir Lukin condemned the temporary name change, calling it an "insult to the fallen of Stalingrad." They deserve appreciation, "but not like this". Communists in Russia are calling for a permanent return to the city's old name.