Stalingrad, battle of

Stalingrad, battle of. This was the turning-point of the German–Soviet war. Hitler had expected the German blitzkrieg, after having swept across the Ukraine and into the Caucasus, to complete the Soviet Union's reduction to military impotence there, on the River Volga, at the edge of Asia. But before the battle had ended, the USSR had made its debut as a military superpower, blitzkrieg was no more, Hitler was the beleaguered one, and he would henceforth have to fight on Stalin's terms.

General Paulus's Sixth Army had the mission of taking Stalingrad and, together with General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army, extending downstream on the Volga to Astrakhan, which would give Army Group B, under General Maximilian von Weichs, a solid line on the Don and Volga rivers covering the eastern Ukraine and the Caucasus. Paulus and Hoth faced a problem generals prefer never to contemplate: having to take a large city street by street. An even more unpleasant possibility confronted Stalin: having an already disastrous summer end with the loss of the city that bore his name. On 12 September 1942, the day German troops entered it, Stalin decided some part of the city would have to be held regardless of the cost; and Maj-General Chuikov, whose Sixty-Second Army was in Stalingrad, began receiving heavy reinforcement.

In a radio speech on 30 September, Hitler assured the German people and the world that Stalingrad would be taken. Paulus and Hoth then had two-thirds of the city, but counter-attacks by Don front (army group) on the north and Stalingrad front on the south, and the constant stream of fresh troops to Chuikov were bringing them to a stop.

The next seven weeks were crucial for both sides—in the battle and the war. To increase the concentration in Stalingrad, Weichs turned over half of Paulus's front on the Don and half of Hoth's south of Stalingrad to the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies, both of which had poor performance records (see Romania, 4). For Zhukov and Vasilevsky, the Romanian armies were a godsend from which they derived the basis for a counter-operation (URANUS, see Map 98). Opposite the Third Romanian Army and its neighbour on the left, Eighth Italian Army, they built a new South-West front (four field armies and a tank army), and they attached the equivalent of a tank army (two armoured corps) to Stalingrad front's Fifty-First Army opposite the Fourth Romanian Army. URANUS, however, was vulnerable: because it had to wait until the autumn rains ended, it could become a wasted effort if Stalingrad fell or the Germans detected the build-up in the interim. The last two weeks, when ice floes blocked the Volga, were the most hazardous.

On 19 November, Lt-General N. F. Vatutin, the South-West front commander, threw two field armies and his tank army against the Third Romanian Army. At Stalingrad front, Lt-General Eremenko joined in against Fourth Romanian Army with his armour and Fifty-First Army a day later. The Romanian armies collapsed under the first assaults, and the Soviet armour completed an almost perfect encirclement near Kalach on 23 November.

Paulus—who had twenty divisions, six of them panzer or motorized, nearly a quarter of a million troops in all—asked permission to break out. Hitler, insisting that Stalingrad was the ‘most substantial achievement of the 1942 campaign’, demanded that the pocket be held until contact was restored from the outside, and he promised massive air supply. To make the contact, he created Army Group Don (initially, two panzer divisions, one infantry division, Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army headquarters, and the remains of the Romanian armies) and gave the command to Field Marshal von Manstein. Göring pledged his air force to deliver 300 tons of supplies a day to the pocket.

Zhukov and Vasilevsky had apparently not anticipated the German response; and while they and Stalin deliberated on what to do next, Manstein had time to assemble a relief force of three panzer and two infantry divisions under Hoth. The operation (WINTER STORM) began 100 km. (62 mi.) south of the pocket on 12 December. Four days later, Zhukov opened an operation (LITTLE SATURN) to force Army Group Don away from Stalingrad. South-West front overran the Eighth Italian Army and struck south deep behind Manstein's north flank. Stalingrad front, with WINTER STORM going on literally in its midst, turned south-westward, towards the River Donets and the lower Don.

On 23 December, after Hoth's armour had been stopped for four days on the River Mishkova, 57 km. (35 mi.) south of the pocket, Manstein told Hitler that he was going to have to take at least a panzer division away from the river and Paulus would have to attempt a breakout even though he was perilously short of motor fuel and rations. (The airlift had averaged barely 90 tons per day.) Hitler talked about taking ‘some elements’ from Hoth's forces on the Mishkova, and also holding there until the advance could be resumed, but by 28 December Hoth's entire force had been engulfed, and Manstein had to allow him to withdraw.

LITTLE SATURN left the final reckoning with Sixth Army to Lt-General Rokossovsky's Don front as a separate operation (RING). In early January, the pocket had about the same dimensions as in November, roughly 60 km. (37 mi.) east–west and 45 km. (28 mi.) north–south. For three weeks, Hitler managed to force the airlift up to 120 tons a day. Rokossovsky began RING on 10 January. Driving across the pocket from west to east, he covered about half the distance by 17 January; but then, having underestimated the German resistance, he had to pause for four days to regroup. On 22 January, after having lost his last airfield, Paulus suggested—and Hitler rejected—a surrender, and by 29 January, Sixth Army was confined to two small pockets in Stalingrad. On 31 January, a day after Hitler advanced him to field marshal, Paulus surrendered the pocket in which his headquarters was located, but refused to order the other to do the same. Hitler, who had expected more of Paulus after his promotion, ordered the six divisions in the second pocket to fight to the last man. Contact with them ceased on 2 February. According to German Red Cross estimates the Germans lost 200,000 troops at Stalingrad, a figure which did not include any of the 30,000 wounded evacuated by air.

Earl Ziemke

Bibliography

Beevor, A. , Stalingrad (London, 1998).
Chuikov, V. I. , The Battle For Stalingrad (New York, 1964).
Goerlitz, W. , Paulus and Stalingrad (London, 1963).