STALINGRAD : Worst Battle of World History

STALINGRAD: July 17, 1942 - February 2, 1943

The Battle Of Stalingrad lasted from July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943. Two million Germans and Russians died. The entire city was destroyed. So was the myth of invincibility of the German War Machine

1942. Germans close into Stalingrad

Early on the morning of 23 August 1942, the 16th Panzer Division raced eastwards over the steppe from the river Don. That same evening, it halted on the bank of the Volga. The tank crews gazed across towards Asia. They had reached the designated boundary of the Third Reich's eastern territories. Messerschmitt fighters performed victory rolls above their heads. Many soldiers thought that the war was won. To their right, the city of Stalingrad blazed from the first of General von Richthofen's air raids, which killed 40,000 civilians. The only resistance the panzer crews faced came from anti-aircraft guns operated by young women barely out of high school. 'We had to fight shot for shot', the division reported, 'against thirty-seven flak positions manned by tenacious fighting women until they were all destroyed.' Thus began the most pitiless, and perhaps the most important, battle in history.

Hitler had told General Friedrich Paulus that with his Sixth Army, the most powerful in the Wehrmacht, he could 'storm the heavens'. But then, in a bold encirclement by Soviet armoured forces, over a quarter of a million Germans were trapped far from home, and increasingly far from help. Stalingrad marked not just the psychological turning-point of the war, it was the first major modern battle fought in a city, with thousands of helpless civilians caught up in its horrors. In this titanic struggle between Stalin and Hitler, men were driven beyond the limits of physical and mental endurance. National loyalties were also dislocated. Paulus's Sixth Army depended on 50,000 Soviet citizens in German uniform, while the NKVD used German Communist writers in its tactics to wear down the besieged.


In the harsh Russian winter of 1942, the German army was besieged at Stalingrad, their swift advance across the steppes halted by the bitter cold and fanatical Russian resistance. The entire German Sixth Army was surrounded by a ring of steel. The Germans’ supply lines were cut and the army was starving to death.





Christmas was coming and the soldiers were at the end of their strength. Without any hope of relief, that Christmas of 1942 became particularly poignant, writes Antony Beevor in Stalingrad, his mammoth account of the battle. “From quite early in the month, men started to put aside tiny amounts of food, not in preparation for a break-out across the snow, but for a Christmas feast or for gifts. A unit in the 297th Infantry Division slaughtered a pack-horse early so as to make horse sausage as Christmas presents. Advent crowns were fashioned from tawnysteppe grass instead of evergreen, and little Christmas trees were carved out of wood in desperate attempts to make it ‘just like at home’.

JULY 17, 1942
The German General Staff receives a report of a secret meeting of the Stavka ,13 July 1942, from an intelligence agent at Moscow : Retreat of the Soviet forces to the Volga and into the Caucasus. Defend there so that the German forces would be forced to spend the winter in inhospitable areas. Evacuation of all important industries to the Urals and Siberia. Hitler considered the report a hoax.



General Chuikov finds out that his troop do not have a high morale. It seems that they lost faith in their commanders and officers.

Hitler, who thinks that the Red Army is almost beaten, denies the stratigical redraw of the Red Army. Once Stalingrad and Astrachan are captured and the Volga is reached the war will be over at the Eastern Front. It will take only a few weeks.

German panzers reaching Voroshilovgrad, also the Don at Tsimlyansk is reached.

German Panzer moving on towards Rostov, Hitler tells General Franz Halder that the Russians are finished. Halder replies : I must admit, it looks like it.



The Germans are reaching Rostov. On their way to Rostov they are not capable to make any prisoners. The summer campaign had been a failure in the matter of prisoners.

For the second time the German Army attacks Rostov. Again General Eberhard von Mackensen III th Panzercorps attacks the city with 14th and 22th Panzer Division. The first time had been a failure.



Colonel Rodts 22th Panzer Division is fighting northeast of Rostow. 204th Panzer Regiment moves south and 14th Panzer Division is heading for Nowo Tsjetkask.

01, October, 1942
The Germans are attacking the Orlovka salient. The trapped battalion holds out for 5 days !

Some divisions of the 62nd Army are down to 2.000 men.

The luftwaffe attacked the city's oilreservoirs.

By radio Hitler ordered General Strecker personally to hold the northern Stalingrad pocket to the last man. The Russians were very angry at their refusal to stop fighting, and many of them were not allowed to surrender when they ran out of ammunition, but were shot down or clubbed to death.

02

08.40 AM : General Strecker sent a message to Hitler : " Eleventh Corps and its divisions have fought to the last man against vastly superior forces. Long live Germany."

The last German holdouts in Stalingrad’s northern pocket; the 11th Corps under General Strecker, capitulated at 10.00 am.