Justin Benner

The battle for Stalingrad was a heavily decisive battle that took place from September of 1942 to January 31^st, 1943.  This battle signifies arguably Russia’s best battle in all of WW2.  However it did come at a cost; that cost was 2 million civilian and military casualties.  This was one of the entire wars bloodiest conflicts.  In the battle, Soviet forces surrounded the entire German army under General Friedrich Paulus, emulating Hannibal’s encirclement and destruction of a Roman army under Aemilius Paulus in 216 B.C.  This city was crucial to both sides due to its strategic location and morale.  Stalingrad was a huge open door to Southern Russia.  The Russians intended to keep it, since it was a huge industrial and transportation hub, while the Germans saw it as a key launch point for future assaults and a heavy morale blow for the Russians, seeing as the city is named after a Soviet dictator.

“Stalingrad was to be assaulted; with oilfields remaining a priority…the sixth army under General Friederich von Paulus was assigned the task of taking the city” (Jordan and Wiest 115).  Lieutenant General Valisy Chuikov was in control of Stalingrad’s defense with the 62^nd army.  He had the unfortunate luck of taking command of the 62^nd three days before the attack commenced on September 14, 1942.  The battle went on for weeks, with little progress on the German side.  “By November, the 6^th army had thrown six major attacks against Stalingrad’s defenders, who were by then confined along some 8km (5 miles) of the river bank around steelworks and armaments factories” (Bishop and McNab 94).  Conditions were described as hellish by soldiers.  One soldier’s diary reads, “When night arrives, on one of those howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank.  Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.”  This only goes to show just how bad conditions were on the banks of the Volga that animals would swim to the other side to flee the barrage of artillery, bullets, and mortar shells.

“While the battle raged, the Soviet High Command prepared a counter offensive.  Operation Uranus deployed over 1.05 million Russian troops, seeking to encircle Stalingrad from north to south” (Jordan and Wiest 116).  It started along the northern front on November 19^th, 1942 and started the next day on the southern front.  The forces met and fully encircled the besiegers on November 23^rd.  Russia’s plan with this “besiege the besiegers” plan counted on the line not breaking and cutting off supplies to the Germans inside.  When the Germans figured out they were trapped in a Soviet death circle, General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commanding officer of the 11^th army, which had been placed under the 6^th army, felt the best course of action would be to draw the Soviets westwards away from Stalingrad to take the pressure off the 6^th army and give General Paulus some time to organize a breakout.  This mission would be known as Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Storm).  However, due to bad weather and a lack of supplies to Paulus’s 6^th army, the operation failed.  On January 31, 1943, General Paulus surrendered.

However, the 6^th army was almost decimated after the surrender.  They had taken heavy casualties during the fight for Stalingrad, but they would take almost just as many from cold weather, starvation, and disease.  “More than half of the 300,000 men trapped in Stalingrad had been killed by the time of the surrender.  A fortunate few, some 35,000, had been evacuated by air, but the surviving 90,000 men were headed to Siberia on foot…only about 5,000 of the 6^th army ever returned to Germany” (Bishop and McNab 95).

This paper was written using 2 different World War 2 history books: Atlas of World War II by David Jordan and Andrew Wiest, and Campaigns of World War II Day by Day by Chris Bishop and Chris McNab.  Atlas has a heavy bias toward the Allies.  That is to say, all Allied victories are made to sound superior or better than the Axis victories.  It does not go into much depth when it comes to timelines and day to day events; however, it does go into the background and strategy of the battle including the aftermath and what it will affect relating to other battles.  Campaigns does exactly as it says.  This book goes heavily into timeline description of day-to-day events and the logic behind them.  It has a neutral feel to it, as it doesn’t give an opinion or even a bias toward either side.  It quite simply shows the facts, whereas the Atlas seems to lean toward Allies’ victories more.