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).

STALINGRAD, BATTLE OF

The Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942–February 2,1943) was the most significant Red Army victory during World War II. It included the Red Army's defense against Operation "Blau" (Blue), the German Army's summer 1942 advance to Stalingrad, and offensive operations in the fall of 1942 and winter of 1943 to defeat German and other Axis forces in the Stalingrad region.

The defensive phase of the battle began on July 17, after German Army Groups "A" and "B" smashed the defenses of the Red Army's Briansk,

Southwestern, and Southern Fronts in southern Russia and advanced to the Don River west of Stalingrad. Initially, the newly formed Stalingrad Front, commanded by marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko, defended the Stalingrad region with the 21st, 62d, 63d, 64th, and 57th Armies, the 1st and 4th Tank Armies, and the 8th Air Army, which opposed the 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army of Army Group "B." After overwhelming the 62nd and 64th Army's defenses west of the Don River in late July and defeating a major counterstroke by the 1st and 4th Tank Armies, in late August General Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army broke through Soviet defenses along the Don River and reached the Volga River north of Stalingrad, while General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army reached the city's southwestern suburbs. The twin blows isolated the Soviet 62d and 64th Armies in Stalingrad and initiated two months of vicious and costly fighting for possession of the city. The fighting consumed the bulk of German forces and forced them to deploy weak Italian and Rumanian armies along their overextended flanks north and south of the city. While Stalin fed enough forces into Stalingrad to tie German forces down, the Stavka planned a counteroffensive, Operation "Uranus," orchestrated by General A. M. Vasilevsky, to encircle and destroy Axis forces at Stalingrad.

The offensive phase of the battle commenced on November 19, 1942, when the forces of General N. F. Vatutin's and A. I. Eremenko's Southwestern and Stalingrad Fronts pierced Axis defenses north and south of the city and joined west of Stalingrad on November 23, encircling more than 300,000 German and Rumanian forces in the city. Offensives by the Southwestern and Stalingrad Fronts along the Chir, Don, and Aksai Rivers in December destroyed the Italian 8th Army and frustrated two German attempts to rescue their forces besieged in Stalingrad. On February 2, 1943, after Bryansk, Voronezh, Southwestern, and Southern (former Stalingrad) Front forces attacked westward from the Don River and toward Rostov, General K. K. Rokossovsky's Don Front defeated and captured Paulus's 6th Army and almost 100,000 men.

At a cost of more than one million casualties, including almost 500,000 dead, missing, or captured, during the battle the Red Army destroyed or badly damaged five Axis armies, including two German, totaling more than fifty divisions, and killed or captured more than 600,000 Axis troops. The unprecedented German defeat was a turning point indicative of eventual Red Army victory in the war.

See also: world war ii

bibliography

Beevor, Antony. (1998). Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1941–1943. New York: Viking

Erickson, John. (1975). The Road to Stalingrad. New York: Harper & Row.

Glantz, David M. (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

David M. Glantz

Stalingrad, Battle of (World War II) (Sept.1942–Jan.1943) The decisive battle on the Eastern Front, and in many ways the turning point of the war, when Germany switched from offensive to defensive warfare. The German 6th Army under von Paulus and the 4th Panzer (tank) Army under Ewald von Kleist led the summer offensive of 1942, extending the gains made in the Barbarossa campaign to include Kursk, Kharkov, all the Crimea, and the Maikop oilfields. In September, they reached the key city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) on the Volga in September. Stalingrad was a centre of communications and munitions production, and had, by virtue of its name, tremendous symbolic value to both Stalin and Hitler. Soviet resistance successfully prevented the river being crossed, though through prolonged house-to-house fighting, most of the city was taken by the Germans. However, a Soviet counter-attack in November saw six armies under Marshals Zhukov, Koniev, and Rokossovsky advancing from north and south. They annihilated the Romanian forces that were fighting on Germany's side, and encircled the 6th Army. German efforts to relieve Paulus remained unsuccessful due to insufficient air- and manpower, while Paulus was unable to break out of the encirclement. Weakened by bitter cold and frost, and incessant Red Army bombardments, on 31 January 1943 Paulus decided to surrender his troops, against Hitler's explicit orders to fight to the last man, with the last troops surrendering on 2 February. The battle claimed 146,000 German and Romanian lives. Of 90,000 exhausted and malnourished prisoners of war, only 6,000 returned home after the war.

Stalingrad, Battle of (1942–43) A long and bitter battle in World War II in which the German advance into the Soviet Union was turned back. During 1942 the German 6th Army under General von Paulus reached the key city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) on the Volga. Soviet resistance continued, with grim and prolonged house-to-house fighting, while sufficient Soviet reserves were being assembled. The Germans were prevented from crossing the Volga and in November Stalin launched a winter offensive of six Soviet armies under Marshalls ZHUKOV, Koniev, Petrov, and Malinovsky. By January 1943 the Germans were surrounded and von Paulus surrendered, losing some 330,000 troops killed or captured. This defeat marked the end of German success on the Eastern Front.

Stalingrad, Battle of a long and bitterly fought battle of the Second World War, in which the German advance into the Soviet Union was turned back at Stalingrad (now Volgograd, until 1925 Tsaritsyn) in SW Russia in 1942–3. The Germans surrendered after suffering more than 300,000 casualties.
Sword of Stalingrad given by Britain to the Soviet people in 1943 in recognition of the defence of Stalingrad; the sword, presented by Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, had engraved on its blade, ‘To the steelhearted citizens of Stalingrad, a gift from King George VI as a token of the homage of the British people.’

Stalingrad, Battle of a long-running World War II battle in 1942 and 1943 for control of the Russian city of Stalingrad. In mid–1942 German troops had reached the outskirts of the city, their deepest penetration of their forces into Russia. They met fierce resistance and were unable to prevail, finally being circled and forced to surrender along with 90,000 troops. The Axis forces suffered losses of more than 800,000, but the Russians lost more than a million in trying to defend their city.

Stalingrad, Battle of (1942–43) Decisive conflict marking the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War 2. The city (now Volgograd) withstood a German siege from August 1942 to February 1943, when the German 6th Army under Friedrich von Paulus, surrounded with no prospect of relief, surrendered to the Russian General Zhukov. Total casualties at Stalingrad exceeded 1.5 million.