This paper examines the military and diplomatic events
surrounding the German defeat at Stalingrad,
Russia, during
World War II. The battle of Stalingrad was a
key turning point in that conflict. The battle was the consequences of the
foreign policy of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler, which sought to obtain land
and economic resources through the conquest of Communist Russia.
While there is no doubt that the German army was superior to
its Russian counterparts, having suffered devastating defeats in 1941 and the
summer of 1942 Josef Stalin and the Red Army sought the opportunity to inflict
a decisive defeat on the invading Nazis. The Germans drastically underestimated
the capability of the Russian soldiers defending Stalingrad.
The inability of the German High Command to realize the inferiority of foreign
troops under their control was another oversight. These disregarded factors
would contribute to the stunning defeat of the German army at Stalingrad,
which marked the turning of the tide on the Eastern Front.
Steven R. Miller
The defeat of the German army at the battle of Stalingrad played an integral role in World War 1939-45.
It changed the tide of war on the Eastern Front. The battle for Stalingrad was one of the fiercest and bloodiest in the
history of warfare. Almost two million soldiers perished during the six-month
battle for Stalingrad. Vladimir Eliseev, head of
the Russian department at Moscow’s
Institute of Military History, estimates 800,000
German deaths to 1.1 million Russian deaths.
More than just a strategic port on the Volga River, Stalingrad
bore the name of the head of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin. This would
contribute to the symbolic nature of this battle, which became more than an
effort to capture or defend a military objective. It would become a battle of
egos between Stalin and Hitler, as neither would allow their troops to back
down.
As the German invaders pushed the Russians out of Stalingrad,
the Russians mounted a successful counterattack, destroying the foreign troops
occupying the German flanks around Stalingrad and trapping the German Sixth
Army within the city. Cut off from the rest of the German army, General
Friedrich von Paulus and his Sixth Army fought back valiantly as the Russians
tightened the noose on the entrapped soldiers. Starving and frozen, the German
Sixth Army eventually surrendered.
The battle for Stalingrad evolved from a standoff between the
armies of two egomaniacs into a horror beyond comprehension, resulting in the
annihilation of the German Sixth Army. The losses suffered by Germany halted
their advance into Russia. For the duration of the war against Russia, the
German army would be on the defensive. It is understandable many feel
Stalingrad was the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front.
The foreign policy of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler towards
the Soviet Union called for the destruction of Communism, the consolidation of
eastern lands under German control, and the movement of the Aryan population
into those eastern lands.
Hitler’s main reason for aggression against Russia was to
fulfill his ideology of Lebensraum,
or living space, for the Germanic people. Hitler felt, “An additional 500,000
square kilometers in Europe can provide new homesteads for millions of German
peasants, and make available millions of soldiers to the power of the German
people….”
Hitler concluded that, “The only area in Europe that could be considered for
such a territorial policy therefore was Russia.”
Harold Callender, a reporter for the New
York Times, wrote, “Here to the east is the great expanse of new
‘Lebensraum,’ of which Hitler dreamed as he wrote ‘Mein Kampf’ nearly twenty
years ago; the sources of new raw materials that the new German-dominated and
German-organized Europe will need….”
Hitler also possessed hatred for the Slavic people who
inhabited the eastern lands he wished to conquer. According to Donald Kagan, a
professor of history at Yale, “The Slavs were among the many nationalities
labeled Untermenschen (i.e.,
‘subhumans’ who did not need to be treated as full human beings).” To
a lesser degree, Hitler treated the Slavic people with the same contempt as the
Jews. Hitler stated, “Thus present-day Russia, or better said, present-day
Slavdom of Russian nationality, has received as master the Jew….”
Hitler degraded the Slavic people and argued that Jewish individuals were
ruling Russia.
When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 its repugnance
towards Communism was noticeable. Hitler believed Communist countries posed a
constant threat to the security of Germany. Hitler wrote, “[a] regime rules in
Russia which is permeated by only one aim: to carry over the Bolshevist
poisoning to Germany.”
Later in his book, Hitler’s Secret Book,
he stated, “[i]nternational Marxism as such has no other aim but Germany’s
destruction.” The
foundation of Nazism labeled Communists and Slavs as the enemy.
Hitler’s foreign policy towards the east centered on obtaining
land on which to settle Germans. Kagan states, “He [Hitler] considered the Volk [i.e., the German people] to be a
race, and he was determined to extend Germany’s boundaries to take in all the
Germanic parts of the old Habsburg Empire….”
The inhabitants of the conquered lands would be either forced into slave labor
or relocated; “The Russians were to be driven into central Asia and Siberia and
kept in check by frontier colonies settled by German war veterans.”
After the German army conquered Russia, Hitler planned to divide Russia between
Germany and Japan.
In 1934, the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin expressed concern
over the growing threat in Germany. Stalin responded to German claims of
Russian contempt for Germany, stating, “We never had any orientation towards
Germany, nor have we any orientation towards Poland and France. Our orientation
in the past and our orientation at the present time is towards the U.S.S.R.,
and towards the U.S.S.R. alone.”
He further argued, “Our foreign policy is clear. It is a policy of preserving
peace and strengthening trade relations with all countries. The U.S.S.R. does
not think of threatening anybody -- let alone of attacking anybody.”
Stalin made it very clear Russia had no intent of attacking Germany in the near
future.
Though Russia maintained a peaceful stance toward Germany,
Stalin expressed his abhorrence for National Socialism in a report to the
Seventeenth Party Congress:
In this connection the
victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded not only as a symptom of the
weakness of the working class and a result of the betrayals of the working
class by Social-Democracy, which paved the way for fascism…it is no longer able
to find a way out of the present situation on the basis of a peaceful foreign
policy, and, as a consequence, is compelled to resort to a policy of war.
Fearing the Soviet Union would have to face Germany alone,
Stalin looked to make an alliance with the Communists in France; “In July 1935
the left-wing parties overcame their mutual suspicions and united to form the
Popular Front.” Hitler
had always sensed a Franco-Soviet alliance. Hitler remarked, “Germany,
regardless on what grounds, regardless for what reasons, France will always be
our adversary. Whatever European combinations may emerge in the future, France
will always take part in them in a manner hostile to Germany.”
Diplomatic relations between Russia and Nazi Germany developed
quickly in the time period leading up to World War 1939-45. On March 15, 1939,
Nazi Germany took control of Czechoslovakia. The subjugation of Czechoslovakia
by the Germans would prove momentous in improving relations between Germany and
Russia.
In April of 1939, talks of a treaty of mutual benefit were in
the works. Representatives from both countries met frequently over a period of
four months. On August 23, 1939, Germany and Russia signed the Nazi-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact. According to article I of the Nonaggression Pact, “Both
High Contracting Parties obligate, themselves to desist from any act of
violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either
individually or jointly with other powers.”
In the public perspective, this document was very elementary.
However, the real significance lay behind the scenes, and great efforts were
made to keep it a secret. The agreement outlined the division of certain
countries in Eastern Europe, most importantly the country of Poland. The
document states that, “[i]n the event of a territorial and political rearrangement
of the areas belonging to the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany
and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers
Narew, Vistula, and San.”
The Pact divided the country of Poland between Germany and Russia, and gave the
Russians control over the Baltic States.
Kagan argues the agreement between Russia and Germany set
aside opposing political views, and focused instead on military strategy; “The
West had offered the Russians danger without prospect of gain, and Hitler had
countered with an offer of gain without prospect of danger. Stalin was not
about to allow ideological disputes to interfere with rational self-interest.”
The popular military historian Robert Leckie in The Story of World War II presents his argument concerning the
signing of the nonaggression pact as, “Two great enemies- Nazism and Communism-
had joined hands… Hitler could now invade Poland without opposition from
Russia.”
However, Hitler did not intend to keep the pact with Russia. He
saw it as a hindrance to his plan of Lebensraum.
Hitler said an alliance with Russia would be, “[o]ne of preserving Russia from
destruction and sacrificing Germany….”
This pact left no doubts to the fate of Poland, and it angered the Western
powers, who promised to come to the aid of Poland should it be threatened. One
week later Germany invaded Poland, and the world was at war.
On December 18, 1940, Adolf Hitler issued Directive Number 21.
This secret order was to the commanders in the German army, and outlined the
details for the planned invasion of Russia.
Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the German invasion of Russia, began on
June 22, 1941. The German army, known for their lightning fast attacks
involving infantry, armor and air support advanced swiftly across the Russian
countryside in the next few months. The German advance was halted at the gates
of Moscow in the winter of 1941.
The German offensive resumed in the summer of 1942. One of its
new objectives would be Stalingrad. Winston Churchill, then prime minister of
Great Britain, said, “The lure of Stalingrad fascinated Hitler; its very name
was a challenge. The city was important as a centre of industry and also a
strong-point on the defensive flank protecting his main thrust to the Caucasus.”
General Georgi Zhukov, commander of the Russian troops around Stalingrad,
outlined the German objectives; “In its general outlines, Hitler’s political
and military strategy for 1942 called for the defeat of the Soviet forces in
the south, the conquest of the Caucasus, and advance to the Volga River and the
seizure of Stalingrad and Astrakhan, thus setting the stage for the destruction
of the U.S.S.R. as a state.”
Hitler stressed his desire to occupy the rich lands of Eastern Russia. Vasili
Chuikov, another Russian general at Stalingrad said, “Stalingrad was originally
envisaged as means to a more grandiose end; the Russians were to be deprived of
its “production and transportation facilities” and traffic on the Volga was to
be interrupted either by actual seizure of the city or by artillery fire.”
The German army reached Stalingrad in September of 1942.
General Friedrich von Paulus, commander of the German Sixth Army, was ordered
to secure Stalingrad. In the battle for Stalingrad, the German army, known for
its effective swift attacks, attempted to fight in a manner it was not designed
for; “The Germans were setting a trap for themselves. The Siege of Stalingrad
was a departure from the mobile warfare at which the Germans excelled.”
Prior to the Germans entering Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, had reduced the proud city to
ruin.
This was a disadvantage for the German army; it made their main attack force,
heavy German tanks, known as panzers, unable to maneuver in the rubble-filled
streets of the city.
The mobile German army was now a stagnant siege force,
attempting slowly to dislodge the Russians from the city. For months, the two
superpowers battled in the ruins of the great city, inflicting large numbers of
casualties on both sides. The bloody fighting moved from house to house, street
to street. Russian and German troops were dying by the thousands inside the
city. Because of the strategic and ideological importance of Stalingrad,
neither Hitler nor Stalin would allow their troops to retreat; the bloodshed
would continue. Advances in the city were slow. Territory gained by the Germans
during the day would be reoccupied by the Russians in the night. In spite of
heavy losses, the Germans continued to occupy most of Stalingrad, pushing the
Russians out of much of the city.
The German army had a distinct advantage over its Russian
counterpart. The German army was better
trained and well equipped. The Russians
did have two things in their favor. The
Russian army was significantly larger than the German army was. Josef Stalin referred to the German army as,
“a gnat seeking to destroy an elephant.” Russian troops were enthusiastic about
defending the “Motherland.” Although
both sides were suffering heavy losses, the Russians had virtually an
inexhaustible supply of men, whereas the Germans had a smaller population and
could only mobilize a much lower number of troops.
Throughout the battle for Stalingrad, the Russian army was
waiting for an opportunity to launch a counterattack against the German lines.
When the German army was in possession of Stalingrad in December of 1942,
General G.H. Zhukov, commander of the Soviet army in Stalingrad, seized the
opportunity. According to General Zhukov, “The Stalingrad Front was to attack from
the area of the Sarpa Lakes south of Stalingrad. Shock forces of the two fronts
were to meet near Kalach and Sovetsky, trapping the main forces of the enemy at
Stalingrad.” With
the German army inside the city, the plan was to circle around the Germans,
trapping them within the city (see figure 1).
On November 19, 1942, Operation Uranus, the counterattack
against the German army would commence. The Soviet armies north of Stalingrad,
led by General Nikolai Vatutin, and the Soviet armies on the western outskirts
of Stalingrad, led by General Andrei I. Yeremenko, would circle behind the
German Sixth Army and meet near the city of Kalach, thereby cutting of Paulus’s
forces.
When the attack commenced, it went better than planned. Josef
Bannert, a soldier in the German 62nd Infantry Division, fighting
along side the Italians and Romanians, wrote, “die [the] Romanian and Italian
units remained in their positions for only a little time. The Russian forces advanced on the left and
the right of the German units, which were used as ‘corsets’ between die [the]
Italians and the Romanians. As our
allies disintegrated, we were also forced to retreat or be surrounded.”
General von Paulus, aware of what was developing, appealed to
Hitler to allow his army to retreat from Stalingrad. Some members of the German staff felt the
Germans could not hold Stalingrad, and begged Hitler to allow Paulus to
retreat. General Kurt Zeitzler, Chief of
Staff of the German army, met with Hitler on November 22-24, 1942, to discuss
the possible withdraw of German troops from Stalingrad. General Zeitzler describes Hitler’s reaction
to his suggestion that Paulus retreat:
While I was speaking,
Hitler was visibly growing more and more angry. He had repeatedly tried to
interrupt me but I had not permitted this because I knew this to be my last
chance and I could not stay silent. When I was finally finished, he screamed,
'Sixth Army will stay where it is! It is the garrison of a fortress and it is
the duty of garrisons to withstand sieges. If necessary they will hold out
all winter and I will relieve them by an offensive in the spring.
There was no changing Hitler’s mind. If the German army backed
down, this would be seen as a weakness. Hitler sent a message back to Paulus.
He wrote, “The thoughts of the entire German people are in these heavy hours
with you. You must hold that position. So much blood has been spilled for
Stalingrad.” On
November 24, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, commander of the German Luftwaffe, convinced Hitler his air
corps could supply the Sixth Army, and a retreat was not necessary. There
were six airfields inside the “Stalingrad Pocket,” as it was known. Out of the six airfields, only one was
equipped to handle an operation as large as this one.
The situation inside the pocket quickly became desperate. Equipped with summer provisions, the Sixth
Army began to succumb to the harsh Russian winter. Food and supplies were in shortage. Before the airlift of supplies began, Paulus
agreed to allow his soldiers to consume the last of their food supply, and eat
the army’s 10,000 remaining horses.
The airlift did not go as Goering had planned.
On average, only 117 tons of supplies were airlifted to the troops,
nowhere near the 500 tons needed. A
writer for the New York Times
exclaimed, “The Germans have lost heavily in transport planes attempting to
relieve their men in the Stalingrad area. The Russians reported today that 407
German planes, including 225 three-motored transport planes, were destroyed
during the week of Dec 6-13.” German pilots were not accustomed to flying
in snowstorms and in heavy fog. It was
evident the air supply would not keep the soldiers in the pocket alive. The German army had to break through Soviet
lines and reestablish a link with the Sixth Army.
Marshal Zhukov wrote, “With this objective in mind, the
Germans formed a new Army Group Don under the command of Field Marshal Erich
von Manstein…Manstein planned to form two shock forces to try to relieve the
forces trapped at Stalingrad.”
The German offensive began on December 12, 1942.
Marshal Zhukov commented on the swift advances of Manstein’s force; “Within
three days the enemy succeeded in advancing twenty-five miles towards
Stalingrad.”
Twenty-five miles would be the closest Manstein would come to Stalingrad.
Massive forces pooled together by the Soviets succeeded in stalling the rescue
effort; “Manstein’s attempt to break through our outer front and free the
encircled forces at Stalingrad had thus failed,” remarked Zhukov.
The German attempt to relieve the pocket was defeated, and
General von Manstein was forced to retreat about 100 miles southwest of
Stalingrad. The length of the retreat, coupled with the Russian winter growing
increasingly severe, negated any chance of a second attempt at a breakthrough.
Hitler still refused to allow von Paulus to surrender. In
contrast to the earlier denial of surrender, Zhukov believed Hitler had a new
strategy in mind; “After the complete failure of the attempt to run the
blockade the military and political leadership of Hitler’s Germany now sought
chiefly not to relieve the encircled doomed troops, but to get them to fight on
for as long as possible so as to tie up the Soviet forces.”
This would keep the Russians in the Stalingrad area, preventing a break through
the German lines elsewhere.
With rescue foreclosed, the Sixth Army had no choice but to
hold on as long as it could. It was no longer a fighting force, rather a group
of soldiers struggling to survive. On January 26, the final phase of the
Russian attack began. On that day, Soviet forces claimed to have, “Killed or
captured all but 12,000 German troops of the huge forces trapped at Stalingrad
and have freed the three main railways radiating westward for the continuing
offensive….” The New York Times reported Russian claims
“to have killed more than 40,000 Germans and captured 28,000 leaving 12,000
split there in two pockets yet to be liquidated.” It was estimated that, “Twenty-two Nazi
divisions of some 220,000 men had been reported encircled in the Don-Volga
pocket….”
By this time, the emaciated and freezing German troops
realized their fate. Many of them wrote letters home, never to be delivered. A
German soldier trapped inside Stalingrad wrote, “Well, now you know that I shall
never return. Break it to our parents gently. I am deeply shaken and doubt
everything. I used to be strong and full of faith; now I am small and without
faith. I will never know many of the things that happen here; but the little
that I have taken part in is already so much that it chokes me….” The
end was drawing closer.
On January 30, 1943, Field Marshal General von Paulus,
recently promoted, was taken prisoner by the Russians. The Russian armies, “Having wiped out one of
the last two remaining German suicide garrisons at the Volga city, crushing the
enemy pocket west of the central part of Stalingrad….” Finally,
On February 2, remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered, ending the battle
of Stalingrad. Earlier that day, the
German High Command announced that, “Russian forces, following ‘a most violent
artillery preparation,’ broke into the last bastion of the German army in
Stalingrad. A broadcast by the Berlin radio simply
claimed, “Stalingrad is silent.”
Two major factors contributed to the German defeat at
Stalingrad. The first was incompetence on the part of foreign fighters, and the
second was that the German High Command drastically underestimated the
capabilities of the Russian soldiers.
Marshal Zhukov, in his memoirs, comments on the Romanian
troops at Stalingrad; “The satellite forces were found to be less well armed,
less experienced and less capable, even in defense, than the German units. And,
most important, their soldiers and even many of their officers had no desire to
die for others on the distant fields of Russia….”
When the German Sixth Army moved into Stalingrad, “[t]he German command shifted
German forces from the flanks and replaced them by Rumanian troops, thus
greatly weakening its defensive positions….”
Zhukov noticed the unreliable troops, and decided to attack the German forces
on their flanks, where they were weakest.
Hitler and the German High Command greatly underestimated the
Russian troops defending Stalingrad. In his foreign policy towards the east,
Hitler planned for Russia to fall “within a few weeks” after a German invasion. The
Germans believed, based on Nazi ideology, Communists were inferior and weaker
to the Aryan race. This view of thinking would be disproved at Stalingrad. One
German soldier in Stalingrad said, “The Russians are not men, but some kind of
cast-iron creatures; they never get tired and are not afraid of fire.”
The German army greatly underestimated Soviet nationalism and
pride towards the Motherland. They did not feel the Russians were capable of
sustaining such a long battle. Marshal Zhukov wrote, “Failure of all Hitlerite
strategic plans for 1942 was due to an underestimation of the forces and
potentialities of the Soviet State, the indomitable spirit of the people. It
also stems from an overestimation by the Nazis of their own forces and
capabilities.”
Churchill remarked about the battle of Stalingrad, stating,
“This crushing disaster to the Germans ended Hitler’s prodigious effort to
conquer Russia by force of arms, and destroy Communism by an equally odious
form of totalitarian tyranny.” The battle of Stalingrad played a significant
role in the sphere of the war; “The Battle of Stalingrad was even more
important politically and psychologically than it was militarily. An entire
German army was destroyed for the first time in World War II….” This
caused a major lift in Russian morale, since it had been continually beaten
back by the Germans. The status of Marshal Zhukov greatly increased; “After
Stalingrad no one really challenged Zhukov’s primacy. His fellow marshals still
competed with him for top honors. But he was No. 1.”
The battle of Stalingrad also had an effect on the German
army; “Because of the rout of the German, Italian, Hungarian and Roumanian
[sic] armies in the Volga and the Don area, Germany’s erstwhile influence on
it’s allies declined drastically.”
The sheer number of German losses at Stalingrad affected the German army.
According to Marshal Zhukov, “They no longer, in his opinion, possessed the
means to mount a major offensive at the far reaches of the Soviet front, that
is, in the lower Don, Volga and North Caucasus area. They did not have
groupings of armies sufficient to carry on a major offensive in the north
around Leningrad….”
C.L. Sulzberger, a writer for the New
York Times, wrote, “The Stalingrad victory is not only shattering to Nazi
morale but is bound to have a profound effect on the actual divisional strength
of the Wehrmacht.”
The battle will also affect Germany on the home front, as men and provisions
are in short supply due to the lack of labor.
It was after Stalingrad that the German army on the Eastern
Front was severely crippled, and would fight a retreating campaign for the
duration of the war. The effects of Stalingrad would linger until the German
surrender in May of 1945. The German army would be unable to replenish its
numbers to those of the pre-Stalingrad period.
Author Bio
Steven R. Miller is a senior undergraduate student from the
Department of History at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. His academic
interest is centered in the field of American history, with emphasis on modern
military history.
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| Soviet advances on the Eastern Front, November 1942 to March 1943. |
