The Tide Turns: Stalingrad

Hitler’s Highwater Mark

The Battle of Stalingrad is one of three concurrent Allied victories in the winter of 1942 that marked the turning of the tide in World War II, when the military initiative shifted from the Axis powers to the Allies:

• El Alamein, (October 23^rd to November 11^th, 1942,) which turned the tide in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, when the British, Australian and New Zealand 8^th Army defeated the German and Italian Panzerarmee Afrika.
• Guadalcanal, (August 2^nd, 1942, to February 9^th, 1943,) when the US Navy and Marine Corps stopped the Japanese from advancing toward Australia and New Zealand.
• Stalingrad, (July 17^th, 1942, to February 2^nd, 1943,) which marked the limit of the Nazi conquest of Russia.

In my last blogs I discussed El Alamein and Guadalcanal; this time we’ll look at Stalingrad.

These were three very different battles, thousands of miles apart, but the fact that they occurred concurrently, and the fact that the Allies won all three, shifted the strategic balance away from the previously almost unstoppable Axis powers and toward the Allies.

• El Alamein was a tank battle involving more than 2,000 armored vehicles fought in the arid Sahara, along a fifty-mile frontline stretching south from the Mediterranean into the trackless sands of the deep desert.
• Guadalcanal was two distinct battles: a land battle fought on a humid, tropical, densely rain-forested island between two relatively small groups of undersupplied, poorly equipped troops, and a series of battles at sea between two large fleets each attempting to supply their own forces on Guadalcanal and starve the other.
• Stalingrad was a savage urban battle, fought street by street, house by house, cellar by cellar, in harsh winter conditions between two large armies.

• Victory at El Alamein would have given Hitler control of Egypt and the Suez Canal, and access to the Arabian oilfields.
• Combined with a victory at Stalingrad, the entire Middle East would have fallen into Axis hands, caught between two German armies marching south from Russia and north from Egypt.
• Victory at Stalingrad would have enabled Hitler to complete his conquest of Moscow and the rest of Russia west of the Urals.
• Victory at Guadalcanal by the Japanese would have opened the gateway to Australia and New Zealand.
• With an Axis victory at Guadalcanal combined with a victory at El Alamein, the Axis navies would probably have achieved dominance in the Indian Ocean, threatening British control of India.

Thus it is not hyperbole, I think, to see these three battles as decisive to the momentum and ultimate outcome of the war.

Stalingrad Strategic Background

Stalin and Hitler agreed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, shortly before World War II began in September.  Under its published protocols it was a mutual non-aggression and neutrality pact; its secret protocols divided eastern Europe between the two, including in particular the partition of Poland.

In June 1941, however, Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in a massive campaign known as Operation Barbarossa. This was an attack along an 1800-mile front involving almost 4 million Axis troops. The operation succeeded in swallowing Russian-occupied Poland and the Baltic Republics, Belarus and Ukraine, and Russia west of the Don.

It stalled only as the panzers reached the outskirts of Moscow in December and winter set in. Like Napoleon before him, Hitler could beat the Russian army but not the Russian winter.

Hitler’s conquests now stretched from the Baltic just west of Leningrad to the Black Sea just west of Rostov. The Axis suffered more than a million casualties and the Russians more than 4 million.

Fall Blau — Case Blue

The 1941 campaign had been too costly for Hitler to repeat an attack all along this vast front in 1942, so he elected to hold in the north and strike southeastward from southern Ukraine into the oil-rich Caucasus (Georgia and Azerbaijan) between the Black and Caspian Seas. If successful he would finally solve his perennial fuel problem while denying the fuel to Russia—Baku produced 80% of Russia’s oil.

If he conquered the Caucasus he would put the entire Middle East in play. The Caucasus was also the Allies’ vital backdoor into Russia, with supplies shipped from the Indian Ocean and overland through Iran, a route known as the ‘Persian Corridor.’ (The other supply routes were the endlessly long Alaska-Siberia route and the hideously dangerous convoy route through the Barents Sea to Archangel.)

Hitler’s plan was codenamed Fall Blau — Case Blue. Germany’s Army Group South would be divided in two. AGS (A) would advance south into the Caucasus to capture the oilfields, while AGS (B) would cover their flank by attacking west toward Stalingrad.

Germany’s strategic objective was to take the west bank of the Volga to secure their conquests in the Caucasus from Stalingrad to the Caspian, and to build a strong defensive position between the Don River and the Volga at Stalingrad. This new front line would protect German forces from Russian counterattacks from the north and from the east and prevent the Russians from shipping oil and other supplies up the Volga.

While Hitler was planning this offensive toward the south, Stalin was guessing wrongly and concentrating his resources to the north to defend Moscow.

The battle can be envisioned as two phases: successful initial German advances which almost accomplished Hitler’s objectives, followed by strong Russian counterattacks which ended in a catastrophic German defeat.

Initial German Advances

The initial German advances in July were successful against relatively light opposition. By the beginning of August AGS (A) and AGS (B) had both crossed the Don.

Realizing that he was in danger of losing all of southern Russia, Stalin issued Order 227, an order to stand and fight which included the order ‘not one step back.’ The order included new blocking detachments instructed to shoot any Russian soldiers who retreated. Despite this order, the German 6^th Army and the 4^th Panzer Army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad by mid-September.

Not One Step Back

Then the advances slowed. To the south, AGS (A) had outrun its supply lines and was running short of ammunition, fuel, and supplies. To the north AGS (B) encountered heavier and heavier Russian resistance as Stalin rushed reinforcements to Stalingrad.

German Attack on Stalingrad

Stalingrad (modern day Volgograd) is a long narrow city stretched along the west bank of the Volga River. In 1942 it had a population of approximately 400,000 people plus perhaps 200,000 refugees fleeing the German advance.

The German 6^th Army and the 4^th Panzer Army attacked the city on September 12th. After two weeks of intense fighting the Germans took the southern part of the city and were within a mile of the river in the north. Now an epic struggle began, street by street, house by house, cellar by cellar.

The Russian defenders turned buildings into strongpoints and held them for weeks. For example, 20 to 25 men in Pavlov’s house, a four-story building, held out for two months. It is estimated that the Germans suffered up to 1,000 casualties attempting to take it.

Strategically important factories and industrial plants changed hands repeatedly as the battle ebbed and flowed. Demolishing the city by bombing and artillery fire, as the Germans did, had little value, because rubble was easier for infantry to defend.

The Battleground

Both sides struggled to bring up supplies and reinforcements. The Luftwaffe had air superiority and repeatedly bombed the remaining Russian defenses and shipping on the Volga, which was only way for the Russians to reach the beleaguered city.

The defenders had a grim choice: they could fight until they were shot by the enemy or try to escape across the Volga to be shot by their own side under Stalin’s Order 227.

By late November the Russians were clinging to a narrow band of riverfront at the northern end of Stalingrad but had not surrendered.

Operation Uranus — Russian Counterattacks

Then the Russians launched Operation Uranus on November 19^th. This massive attack involved five armies, three attacking from the north and two from the south. In both cases the Axis flanks were defended by Romanian armies which proved unable to stop the attacks. The Russian armies linked up on November 23^rd. The German 6^th Army was trapped within the Stalingrad area while the 4^th Panzer Army was badly damaged but survived to the southeast.

General Paulus, in command of the 6^th Army, wanted to fight his way out of the city but Hitler refused to let him retreat. Hitler and Goering insisted Stalingrad could be supplied by airlift although that was completely impractical: the Luftwaffe could fly in no more than 20% of supplies the 6^th Army needed.

On December 12^th the 4^th Panzer Army launched Operation Winter Storm in an attempt to reach the beleaguered 6^th Army but were unable to do so, and Hitler refused to let the 6^th Army fight it way out to reach the 4^th Panzer. The 4^th Panzer was facing three Russian armies and by Christmas the 4^th Panzer had been crushed.

Surrender

Now, without supplies, it was just a question of time before Paulus was forced to surrender. The fighting dragged on for another month until the Germans, half-starved, half-frozen, and out of ammunition, were forced to surrender.

The End of the 6th Army

The Cost

The Axis lost more than 900,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. Of the 300,000 men in the 6^th Army who were trapped in Stalingrad in December, approximately 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner in February. Of the 90,000 POWs, 9,000 are known to have returned to Germany by 1955.

The Russians lost approximately 1.1 million including civilians.

Stalingrad Before and After

It all began so well for Hitler … and ended so badly.

Aftermath

Once again, we must note that Hitler did the Allies an enormous favor by refusing to let his troops retreat in an orderly fashion, to live to fight another day, but insisted that they stand and be cut to pieces, just as he did at El Alamein. (The Japanese High Command was wiser and permitted a retreat from Guadalcanal.)

Churchill characterized El Alamein not as ‘the beginning of the end’ but as the ‘end of the beginning.’ If we take these three battles together, we could characterize them as the highwater mark of Axis power. From 1939 (indeed, throughout the 1930s,) Axis forces had flooded across the globe. As 1943 began, the tide began to recede.