| Battle of Stalingrad | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Eastern Front of World War II | |||||||
 Soviet soldier waving the Red Banner over the central plaza of Stalingrad in 1943. | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Germany Romania Italy Hungary Croatia |  Soviet Union | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Adolf Hitler Erich von Manstein Friedrich Paulus  Hermann Hoth Wolfram von Richthofen Petre Dumitrescu C. Constantinescu Italo Gariboldi Gusztáv Vitéz Jány Viktor Pavičić † | Joseph Stalin Georgy Zhukov Nikolay Voronov A.M. Vasilevsky Andrei Yeremenko Nikita Khrushchev K.K. Rokossovsky Nikolai Vatutin Vasily Chuikov | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
| Army Group B: | Stalingrad Front
South West Front[Note 2] | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Initial: 270,000 men 3,000 artillery pieces 500 tanks 600 aircraft, 1,600 by mid-September (Luftflotte 4)[Note 3][1] At the time of the Soviet counter-offensive: 700,000 men (400,000 Germans, 200,000 Romanians, 100,000 Italians) [2][3] 10,250 artillery pieces 500 tanks [2][3] 732 (402 operational) aircraft[4]:225[5]:87 | Initial: 187,000 men 2,200 artillery pieces 400 tanks 300 aircraft[1]:72 At the time of the Soviet counter-offensive: 1,143,500 men 13,451 artillery pieces 894 tanks[6] 1,115[4]:224 aircraft | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| est. 750,000 killed, missing or wounded 91,000 captured 900 aircraft (including 274 transports and 165 bombers used as transports) 1,500 tanks 6,000 artillery pieces[1]:122–123 Total: 841,000 casualties | 478,741 killed or missing 650,878 wounded and sick 40,000 civilians dead 4,341 tanks 15,728 artillery pieces 2,769 combat aircraft [7] Total: 1,129,619 casualties | ||||||
| 1 Over 11,000 Axis soldiers continued to fight until early March, 1943. | |||||||
  Location of Stalingrad within modern Russia | |||||||
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to 7 July 1942
to 22 July 1942
to 1 August 1942
to 18 November 1942
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad commenced in late summer 1942, and was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing which reduced much of the city to rubble. The German offensive eventually became mired in building-to-building fighting; and despite controlling over 90% of the city at times, the Wehrmacht was unable to dislodge the last Soviet defenders clinging tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River.
In November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus; a two-pronged attack targeted at the inferior Romanian and Italian forces which were protecting the German 6th Army flanks. The success of these attacks caused the weakly held flanks to collapse and the 6th Army to be cut off and surrounded inside Stalingrad. As the Russian winter set in, the 6th Army weakened rapidly from cold, starvation and ongoing Soviet attacks. Command ambiguity coupled with Adolf Hitler's resolute belief in the "power of the will" and the value of "standing fast" further compounded the German predicament. Eventually, the failure to break the encirclement by relieving German forces, coupled with the failure of re-supply by air, caused the final collapse. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased and the remaining elements of the surrounded 6th Army had either surrendered or had been destroyed.[14]:932
Background
By the spring of 1942, despite the failure of Operation Barbarossa to decisively defeat the Soviet Union in a single campaign, the war had been progressing well for the Germans: the U-Boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk.[15]:522 In the east, they had stabilized their front in a line running from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south and while there were a number of salients in the line where Soviet offensives had pushed the Germans back (notably to the northwest of Moscow and south of Kharkov), these were not particularly threatening. Hitler was confident that he could master the Red Army after the winter of 1941, based on the fact that although Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) had suffered heavy punishment west of Moscow the previous winter, 65% of its infantry had not been engaged and had been rested and re-equipped. Army Groups North and South had also not been particularly hard pressed over the winter.[16]:144 Stalin in turn, had just issued his "not a step back" order[Note 4] after the Red Army had suffered losses of 259% of their initial strength in 1941[13]:476-477 and was expecting the main thrust of the German summer attacks to again be directed against Moscow.[13]:498The German summer offensive in the south of the Eastern Front was driven by two main objectives — time and material resources. Hitler was adamant to complete the offensive before the might of the United States joining the war came into play and secondly, he was determined to secure the oil resources in the Caucasus, which would deny them to the Soviet Union while securing an alternative petroleum resource for Germany.[15]:528
The Soviets realized that they were under tremendous constraints of time and resources and ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to defend the city.[17]:94 At this stage of the war, the Red Army was less capable of highly mobile operations than the German Army. However, combat in large urban areas tends to be dominated by small arms weaponry rather than armoured and mechanized units, much to the detriment of the German forces who were principally trained and experienced in fast-moving panzer led operations.
Prelude
Case Blue
| “ | If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must finish [liquidieren] this war. | ” |
| —Adolf Hitler[18]:514 | ||
Hitler intervened, however, ordering the Army Group to be split in two. Army Group South (A), under the command of Wilhelm List, was to continue advancing south towards the Caucasus as planned with the 17th Army and First Panzer Army. Army Group South (B), including Friedrich Paulus’ 6th Army and Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, was to move east towards the Volga and Stalingrad. Army Group B was commanded initially by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock and later by General Maximilian von Weichs.[14]:915
The start of Case Blau had been planned for late May 1942. However, a number of German and Romanian units that were involved in Blau were then in the process of besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Delays in ending the siege pushed back the start date for Blau several times, and the city did not fall until the end of June. A smaller action was taken in the meantime, pinching off a Soviet salient in the Second Battle of Kharkov, which resulted in the pocketing of a large Soviet force on 22 May.
The initial advance of the 6th Army was so successful that Hitler intervened and ordered the 4th Panzer Army to join Army Group South (A) to the south. A massive traffic jam resulted when the 4th Panzer and the 6th both required the few roads in the area. Both armies were stopped dead while they attempted to clear the resulting mess of thousands of vehicles. The delay was long, and it is thought that it cost the advance at least one week. With the advance now slowed, Hitler changed his mind and re-assigned the 4th Panzer Army back to the attack on Stalingrad.
After German intentions became clear in July 1942, Stalin appointed Marshal Andrey Yeryomenko as commander of the Southeastern Front on 1 August 1942. Yeryomenko and Commissar Nikita Khrushchev were tasked with planning the defense of Stalingrad.[23]:25, 48 The eastern border of Stalingrad was the wide River Volga, and over the river, additional Soviet units were deployed. These units became the newly formed 62nd Army, which Yeryomenko placed under the command of Lt. Gen. Vasiliy Chuikov on 11 September 1942. The situation was extremely dire. When asked how he interpreted his task, he responded "We will defend the city or die in the attempt."[24]:127 The 62nd Army's mission was to defend Stalingrad at all costs. Chuikov's generalship during the battle earned him one of his two Hero of the Soviet Union awards.
Attack on Stalingrad
The battle began with the heavy bombing of the city by Generaloberst Wolfram von Richthofen's Luftflotte 4, which in the summer and autumn of 1942 was the most powerful single air formation in the world. Some 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped.[1]:122 The city was quickly turned to rubble, although some factories continued production while workers joined in the fighting. The Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment was the only non-German unit[25] selected by the Wehrmacht to enter Stalingrad city during assault operations. It fought as part of the 100th Jäger Division.
The burden of the initial defense of the city fell on the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment,[24]:106 a unit made up mainly of young female volunteers who had no training for engaging ground targets. Despite this, and with no support available from other units, the AA gunners stayed at their posts and took on the advancing panzers. The German 16th Panzer Division reportedly had to fight the 1077th’s gunners "shot for shot" until all 37 anti-aircraft batteries were destroyed or overrun. The German 16th Panzer Division was shocked to find that, due to Soviet manpower shortages, it had been fighting female soldiers.[24]:108[27] In the beginning, the Soviets relied extensively on "Workers' militias" composed of workers not directly involved in war production. For a short time, tanks continued to be produced and then manned by volunteer crews of factory workers. They were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line, often without paint or even gunsights.[24]:110
On 5 September, the Soviet 24th and 66th Armies organized a massive attack against XIV Panzerkorps. The Luftwaffe helped repulse the offensive by heavily attacking Soviet artillery positions and defensive lines. The Soviets were forced to withdraw at midday after only a few hours. Of the 120 tanks the Soviets had committed, 30 were lost to air attack.[1]:75
Soviet operations were constantly hampered by the Luftwaffe. On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army launched an offensive against VIII. Armeekorps at Kotluban. VIII. Fliegerkorps dispatched wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The offensive was repulsed. The Stukas claimed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks knocked out that morning, while escorting Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft.[1]:80 Amid the debris of the wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, anchored their defense lines with strongpoints in houses and factories.
Fighting within the ruined city was fierce and desperate. Lieutenant General Alexander Rodimtsev was in charge of the 13th Guards Rifle Division, and received one of two Heroes of the Soviet Union awarded during the battle for his actions. Stalin's Order No. 227 of 27 July 1942 decreed that all commanders who ordered unauthorized retreat would be subject to a military tribunal. “Not a step back!” and "There is no land behind the Volga!" were the slogans. The Germans pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
Hugging tactics
The Soviets understood that, in Stalingrad, the best defense would depend on anchoring their defense lines in numerous buildings overseeing strategically important streets and squares. Such a strategy would hold for as long as possible all the ground the Soviets could take in the city. Thus, they converted multi-floored apartment blocks, factories, warehouses, street corner residences and office buildings into strongholds bristling with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, mortars, mines, barbed wire, snipers and small 5-10 man units of submachine gunners and grenadiers prepared for house-to-house combat.[28]
Bitter fighting raged for every ruin, street, factory, house, basement and staircase. The sewers were the sites of labyrinthine firefights. The Germans, calling this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("Rat War"), bitterly joked about capturing the kitchen but still fighting for the living room and the bedroom. In such desperate chaos, all battle lines vanished, and the major, armor-supported mobility to which the German soldiers were accustomed degenerated into vicious, fast-paced skirmishes ranging through bombed-out debris of residential neighborhoods, office blocks, basements and apartment high-rises. Some of the taller buildings, blasted into roofless shells by earlier German aerial bombardment, saw floor-by-floor, close-quarters combat, with the Germans and Soviets on alternate levels, firing at each other through holes in the floors.[28]
The 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to retake Mamayev Kurgan and Railway Station No. 1 on 13 September suffered particularly heavy losses. Over 30 percent of its soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours, and just 320 out of the original 10,000 survived the entire battle. Both objectives were retaken, but only temporarily. The railway station changed hands 14 times in six hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division had ceased to exist, but its men had killed approximately an equal number of Germans. Combat raged there for weeks near the giant grain silo. When German soldiers finally took the position, only forty dead Soviet fighters were found, though the Germans had thought there were many more due to the ferocious resistance. The Soviets burned heaps of grain during their retreat.
Snipers on both sides used the ruins to inflict heavy casualties. The most famous Soviet sniper in Stalingrad was Vasily Zaytsev with 225 confirmed kills during the battle. Zaytsev was one of a whole corps of snipers and had over thirty students, who were credited with killing over three thousand German soldiers during the war.
The strain on both military commanders was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, which eventually afflicted the left side of his face, while Chuikov experienced an outbreak of eczema that required him to have his hands completely bandaged. Troops on both sides faced the constant strain of close-range combat.
Air attacks
Determined to crush Soviet resistance, Luftflotte 4's Stukawaffe flew 900 individual sorties against Soviet positions at the Dzerzhinskiy Tractor Factory on 5 October. Several Soviet regiments were wiped out; the entire staff of the Soviet 339th Infantry Regiment were killed the following morning during an air raid.[1]:83In mid-October, the Luftwaffe intensified its efforts against remaining Red Army positions holding the west bank. Luftflotte 4 flew 2,000 sorties on 14 October and 600 short tons (540 t) of bombs were dropped while German infantry surrounded the three factories. Stukageschwader 1, 2, and 77 had largely silenced Soviet artillery on the eastern bank of the Volga before turning their attention to the shipping that was once again trying to reinforce the narrowing Soviet pockets of resistance. The 62nd Army had been cut in two, and, due to intensive air attack on its supply ferries, was now being paralyzed.
With the Soviets forced into a 1,000 yd (910 m) strip of land on the western bank of the Volga, over 1,208 Stuka missions were flown in an effort to eliminate them.[1]:84 Despite the heavy air bombardment (Stalingrad suffered heavier bombardment than Sedan or Sevastopol), the Soviet 62nd Army, with 47,000 men and 19 tanks, prevented the 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army from taking the Volga's west bank.
The Soviet bomber force, the Aviatsiya Dal'nego Deystviya (Long Range Aviation; ADD), having taken crippling losses over the past 18 months, was restricted to flying at night. The Soviets flew 11,317 night sorties over Stalingrad and the Don-bend sector between 17 July and 19 November. These raids caused little damage and were of nuisance value only.[1]:82[29]:265
The situation for the Luftwaffe was now becoming increasingly difficult. On 8 November, substantial units from Luftflotte 4 were withdrawn to combat the Allied landings in North Africa. The German air arm found itself spread thinly across Europe, and struggling to maintain its strength in the other southern sectors of the Soviet-German front.[Note 6] Meanwhile, the Soviet Army was being supplied by the American government under the Lend-Lease program. During the last quarter of 1942, the U.S. sent the Soviet Union 60,000 trucks, 11,000 jeeps, 2 million pairs of boots, 50,000 short tons (45,000 t) of explosives, 450,000 short tons (410,000 t) of steel and 250,000 short tons (230,000 t) of aviation gas.[30]:404 The majority of the American boots, which Stalin requested first[citation needed], reached the troops. However, a part of the military equipment and food supplied by the USA was destroyed by German attacks,[citation needed] as that of Convoy PQ-17.
Germany reaches the Volga
After three months of slow advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90% of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow pockets. Ice floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders. Nevertheless, the fighting, especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the Red October Steel Factory, the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory and the Barrikady gun factory became world-famous.Soviet counter-offensives
These operations opened the Winter Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942–3 March 1943), which involved some 15 Armies operating on several fronts.
German exhaustion prior to Operation Uranus
The German offensive to take Stalingrad had been halted by a combination of stubborn Red Army resistance inside the city and local weather conditions. The Soviet counter-offensive planning used deceptive measures that eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city, becoming the second large scale defeat of the German Army during World War II.[31]During the siege, the German and allied Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting Army Group B's flanks had pressed their headquarters for support.[32]:209-211 The Hungarian 2nd Army, consisting of mainly ill-equipped and ill-trained units, was given the task of defending a 200 km (120 mi) section of the front north of Stalingrad between the Italian Army and Voronezh. This resulted in a very thin line, with some sectors where 1–2 km (0.62–1.2 mi) stretches were being defended by a single platoon. Soviet forces held several bridgeheads on the western bank of the river and presented a potentially serious threat to Army Group B.[14]:915
Similarly, on the southern flank of the Stalingrad sector the front southwest of Kotelnikovo was held only by the Romanian 7th Army Corps, and beyond it, a single German division, the 16th Motorized Infantry.
However, Hitler was so focused on the city itself that requests from the flanks for support were refused. The Chief of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder, expressed concerns about Hitler's preoccupation with the city, pointing out that if the situation on the weak German flanks was not rectified, "there would be a disaster". Hitler told Halder that Stalingrad would be captured and the weakened flanks would be held with "national socialist ardour, clearly I cannot expect this of you (Halder)", and replaced him with General Kurt Zeitzler in mid-October.[14]:917-918
Operation Uranus: the Soviet offensive
Russian advance, 19–28 November
On 19 November 1942, the Red Army unleashed Operation Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank Army, and 21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The preparations for the attack could be heard by the Romanians, who continued to push for reinforcements, only to be refused again. Thinly spread, outnumbered and poorly equipped, the Romanian 3rd Army, which held the northern flank of the German 6th Army, was shattered. On 20 November, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against points held by the Romanian 4th Army Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of infantry, collapsed almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west in a pincer movement, and met two days later near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around Stalingrad.[14]:926 This was not filmed at the time; the Soviets re-enacted the link-up for a propaganda film, which achieved worldwide fame.
Destruction of Sixth Army
Adolf Hitler had declared in a public speech (in the Berlin Sportpalast) on 30 September 1942 that the German army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviet encirclement, German army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west of the Don, but Hitler was at his Bavarian retreat of Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden with the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring. When asked by Hitler, Göring replied, after being convinced by Hans Jeschonnek,[4]:234 that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army with an "air bridge". This would allow the Germans in the city to fight on while a relief force was assembled.[14]:926 A similar plan had been used a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket, albeit on a much smaller scale: a corps at Demyansk rather than an entire army. Also, Soviet fighter forces had improved considerably in both quality and quantity in the intervening year. But the mention of the successful Demyansk air supply operation reinforced Hitler's own views, and was endorsed by Göring several days later. The head of Luftflotte 4, Wolfram von Richthofen, tried to get this decision overturned. The 6th Army was the largest unit of this type in the world and almost twice as large as a regular German army unit, plus there was also a corps of the 4th Panzer Army trapped in the pocket. It should have been clear that supplying them by air was impossible; the maximum 117.5 short tons (106.6 t) they could deliver a day—based on the number of available aircraft and with only the airfield at Pitomnik to land at—was far less than the minimum 800 short tons (730 t) needed.[4][Note 7] To supplement the limited number of Junkers Ju 52 transports, the Germans used aircraft wholly inadequate for the role, such as the Heinkel He 177 bomber (some bombers performed adequately—the Heinkel He 111 proved to be quite capable and was much faster than the Ju 52). General Richthofen informed Manstein on 27 November of the small transport capacity of the Luftwaffe and the impossibility of supplying 300 tons a day by air. Manstein now saw the enormous technical difficulties of a supply by air of these dimensions. The next day he made a six page situation report to the general staff. Based on the information of the expert Richthofen, he declared that contrary to the example of the pocket of Demjansk the permanent supply by air would be impossible. If only a narrow link could be established to sixth Army, he proposed that this should be used to pull it out from the encirclement. He acknowledged the heavy moral sacrifice the giving up of Stalingrad means but this is made easier to bear by the conservation of the combat power of Sixth Army and the regaining of the initiative...".[35] But Hitler backed Göring's plan and reiterated his order of "no surrender" to his trapped armies.
The air supply mission failed. Appalling weather conditions, technical failures, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire and fighter interceptions led to the loss of 488 German aircraft. The Luftwaffe failed to achieve even the daily supply of 117 short tons (106 t) that it had aircraft for. An average of 94 short tons (85 t) of supplies per day was delivered. The most successful day, 19 December, delivered only 289 short tons (262 t) of supplies in 154 flights. The supplies that did get through were often useless: one aircraft arrived with 20 t (22 short tons)[dubious ] of vodka and summer uniforms, another with supplies of black pepper and marjoram.[23] Hitler's indecision on the purpose of Operation Winter Storm (either to allow a breakout or to open a corridor) meant that large quantities of fuel that would have helped with a breakout were shipped when food and ammunition would have been more useful.[36]:153 The transport aircraft that did land safely were used to evacuate technical specialists and sick or wounded men from the besieged enclave (some 42,000 in all).
Initially, supply flights came in from the field at Tatsinskaya, called 'Tazi' by the German pilots. On 23 December, the Soviet 24th Tank Corps, commanded by Major-General Vasily Mikhaylovich Badanov, reached nearby Skassirskaya and in the early morning of 24 December, the tanks reached Tatsinskaya. Without any soldiers to defend the airfield, it was abandoned under heavy fire; in a little under an hour, 108 Ju 52s and 16 Ju 86s took off for Novocherkassk—leaving 72 Ju 52s and many other aircraft burning on the ground. A new base was established some 200 mi (320 km) from Stalingrad at Salsk, the additional distance another obstacle to the resupply efforts. Salsk was abandoned in turn by mid-January for a rough facility at Zverevo, near Shakhty. The field at Zverevo was attacked repeatedly on 18 January and a further 50 Ju 52s were destroyed.
The 6th Army slowly starved. Pilots were shocked to find the troops too exhausted and hungry to unload. Germans fought over the slightest scraps of bread. General Zeitzler, moved by their plight, began to limit himself to their slim rations at meal times. After a few weeks on such a diet, he had lost 26 lb (12 kg) and had become so emaciated that Hitler, annoyed, personally ordered him to start eating regular meals again.
The toll on the Transportgruppen was heavy. Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed, one-third of the fleet's strength on the Eastern Front. The He 111 gruppen lost 165 aircraft in transport operations. Other losses included 42 Ju 86s, nine Fw 200 Condors, five He 177 bombers and a Ju 290. The Luftwaffe also lost close to 1,000 highly experienced bomber crew personnel.[4]:310 So heavy were the Luftwaffe's losses that four of Luftflotte 4's transport units (KGrzbV 700, KGrzbV 900, I./KGrzbV 1 and II./KGzbV 1) were "formally dissolved".[1]:122
Aftermath
Operation Little Saturn
The 6th Army now was beyond all hope of German reinforcement. The German troops in Stalingrad were not told this, however, and continued to believe that reinforcements were on their way. Some German officers requested that Paulus defy Hitler’s orders to stand fast and instead attempt to break out of the Stalingrad pocket. Paulus refused, as he abhorred the thought of disobeying orders. Also, while a motorised breakout might have been possible in the first few weeks, the 6th Army now had insufficient fuel and the German soldiers would have faced great difficulty breaking through the Soviet lines on foot in harsh winter conditions.
Soviet victory
On 22 January Paulus requested that he be granted permission to surrender. Hitler rejected it on a point of honour. He telegraphed the 6th Army later that day, claiming that it had made an historic contribution to the greatest struggle in German history and that it should stand fast "to the last soldier and the last bullet". Hitler told Goebbels that the plight of the 6th Army was an "heroic drama of German history".[41]
On 30 January 1943, the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler got Goebbels to read out a proclamation which included the sentence: "The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody to do the utmost for the struggle for Germany's freedom and the future of our people, and thus in a wider sense for the maintenance of our entire continent".[42] Also on that day Hitler promoted Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall. Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life. However, when Soviet forces closed in on his headquarters in the ruined GUM department store the next day, Paulus surrendered. The remnants of the Axis forces in Stalingrad surrendered on 2 February; 91,000 tired, ill, wounded, and starving prisoners were taken, including 3,000 Romanians (the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and “Col. Voicu” Detachment).[43] To the delight of the Soviet forces and the dismay of the Third Reich, the prisoners included 22 generals. Hitler was furious and confided that Paulus "could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow."[44]
On 18 February, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels gave his famous Sportpalast speech in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war which would claim all resources and efforts from the entire population.
Of more than 91,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 5,000 ever returned. Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent to labour camps all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of their wounds, disease (particularly typhus), cold, overwork, mistreatment, and malnutrition. Some were kept in the city to help with rebuilding. In March 1943, 40,000 Germans were buried in a mass grave, victims of a typhus epidemic.[23]:369 A handful of senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes, and some of them joined the National Committee for a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements which were broadcast to German troops. Paulus lived in the Soviet Union until 1952, then moved to Dresden in East Germany, where he spent the remainder of his days defending his actions at Stalingrad and was quoted as saying that Communism was the best hope for postwar Europe.[23]:280 General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept. It was not until 1955 that the last of the 5-6,000 survivors were repatriated after a plea to the Politburo by Konrad Adenauer.
Orders of battle
- Red Army
Main article: Red Army order of battle at the Battle of Stalingrad
During the defence of Stalingrad, the Red Army deployed six armies[Note 8] in and around the city and an additional nine armies in the encirclement counter offensive.[24]:435-438[Note 9]- Axis
Casualties
Various scholars have estimated the Axis suffered from 500,000-850,000 casualties (killed, wounded, captured) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies, many of them POWs who died in Soviet captivity between 1943 and 1955. Of the 91,000 German POWs taken at Stalingrad, 27,000 died within weeks[47]:396 and only 5-6,000 returned to Germany by 1955. The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity.[48]:196[49]:36 According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,129,619 total casualties;[50] 478,741 men killed or missing and 650,878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Stalingrad area; in the city itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded. The Soviet authorities executed approximately 13,500 Soviet soldiers during the battle[citation needed], equivalent to almost two rifle divisions. Also, anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing as the German 4th Panzer and 6th armies approached the city;[51] the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7-2 million Axis and Soviet casualties.Scope of the battle
German mobility had been a significant factor in the Wehrmacht's earlier victories. Before Stalingrad, the Soviets had been able to amass their forces in sufficient numbers to achieve victory only around Moscow. Stalingrad, which had limited military value and had already been stripped of its assets, could have been bypassed and invested by the 6th Army in its drive to the Caucasus with Army Group A. Instead, Hitler chose to sacrifice many of his most experienced troops in vicious street fighting among urban rubble, which favoured the defenders and gave the Soviet Union time to amass and concentrate its forces for its pincer movement. Some Germans felt Hitler had sacrificed one of his largest and finest armies for prestige. The 6th Army was reconstituted in time for the Battle of Kursk, but was made up mostly of conscripts, and was never again the force it had once been.[23]:386
A significant factor in Germany's failure at Stalingrad was Hitler's pursuit of too many simultaneous objectives. To the South of Stalingrad, Army Group A was committed to capturing oilfields in the Caucasus and in particular at Baku in Azerbaijan. These oil fields were the original objective of the 1942 campaign, and he could have used Army Group A to bolster Army Group B's flanks around Stalingrad and perhaps to aid in fighting within the city. Clearly Hitler's ambitions were well beyond German means.[36]
Besides being a turning point in the war, Stalingrad revealed the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days. Their sacrifice is immortalized by one of General Rodimtsev's soldiers, about to die, who scratched on the wall of the main railway station—which changed hands 15 times during the battle—“Rodimtsev’s Guardsmen fought and died here for their Motherland.”
A significant historical debate concerns the degree of terror in the Red Army. The British historian Anthony Beevor noted the claim from the Stalingrad Front’s Political Department on 8 October 1942 that: “The defeatist mood is almost eliminated and the number of treasonous incidents is getting lower” as an example of the sort of coercion that the Special Detachments (later to be renamed SMERSH) subjected the Red Army soldiers to.[52]:154-168 On the other hand, Beevor noted the often extraordinary bravery of the Soviet soldiers in a battle that was only comparable to Verdun, and argued that such self-sacrifice cannot be explained by terror alone.[24]:154-168
For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945. Twenty-four years after the battle, in October 1967,[53] a colossal monument, Mother Motherland, was erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city. The statue forms part of a War memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they were after the battle. The Grain Silo, as well as Pavlov's House, the apartment building whose defenders eventually held out for two months until they were relieved, can still be visited. Even today one may find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the battle and the successful yet costly resistance.
Many women fought on the Soviet side, or were under fire. At the beginning of the battle there were 75,000 women and girls from the Stalingrad area who had finished military or medical training, and all of whom were to serve in the battle. Women staffed many of the anti-aircraft batteries that fought not only the Luftwaffe but also German tanks.[54]:180-192 Soviet nurses not only treated wounded men under fire but were involved in the highly dangerous work of bringing wounded soldiers back to the hospitals under enemy fire.[54] Many of the Soviet wireless and telephone operators were women who often suffered heavy casualties when their command posts came under fire.[54]:193-197 Though women were not usually trained as infantry, many Soviet women fought as machine gunners, mortar operators, snipers and scouts.[54] With three entirely female air regiments, women were fulfilling the role of pilots, as well.[54] At least three women won the title Hero of the Soviet Union while driving tanks at Stalingrad.[55]:204-207
The German Army showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale. During the latter part of the siege, short of food and clothing, many German soldiers starved or froze to death. Yet, discipline was maintained until the very end, when resistance no longer served any useful purpose. Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler's orders, against many of Hitler's top generals' counsel and advice, and did not attempt to break out of the city. German ammunition, supplies, and food became all too scarce.
Paulus knew that the airlift had failed and that Stalingrad was lost. He asked for permission to surrender to save the lives of his troops, but Hitler refused and instead promoted him to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. No German officer of this rank had ever surrendered, and the implication was clear: if Paulus surrendered, he would shame himself and would become the highest ranking German officer ever to be captured. Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or commit suicide. Paulus surrendered, commenting, "I have no intention of shooting myself for this Bohemian corporal". (Beevor, p. 381.)[Note 10]
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