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German advance (Summer 1942) into the oil-rich Stalingrad region. Now called Volgograd, it sits on the Volga River, which runs from north to south, toward the Caspian Sea.
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February 2, 2013 marks the 70th anniversary of the end, in 1943, of the 200-day Battle of Stalingrad.More is written in our "Anglosphere" about "Monty's" Second Battle of El Alamein than about the vastly higher casualty, more significant, more German-breaking, Battle of Stalingrad.
Language, the need to build up national symbols, create Monty the hero, the Cold War and ignorance of English speakers about warfare outside the Anglosphere, comes into the Russia ignoring mythology.
Russians have never been thanked enough, by the West, for Russians doing most of the fighting and dying against Hitler.
In this huge battle, the German commanding General (then Field Marshal) Paulus's Sixth Army suffered not only its first major defeat, but one that essentially paved the way for the collapse of the Third Reich.
In this huge battle, the German commanding General (then Field Marshal) Paulus's Sixth Army suffered not only its first major defeat, but one that essentially paved the way for the collapse of the Third Reich.
The battle of Stalingrad has also inspired two sharply contrasting films in recent years that are both available on home video. German director Joseph Vilsmaier's 1993 Stalingrad is a powerful antiwar film that focuses on the disintegration of the German army under the combined forces of the Russian Army and brutal Russian winter.
Made in 2001, Jean-Jacques Annaud's Enemy at the Gates is much less successful. Although Annaud is French and his film was made in Europe (with the largest budget in the continent's history), Enemy at the Gates represents a Hollywoodization of material that would defy such a treatment. Instead of focusing on the large unit battle that made the German defeat possible, Annaud would have us believe that victory revolved around the feats of an individual Russian sniper with needy Russian women snipers dependent on him.
Russia had something that Germany sorely lacked: sheer numbers. Vast numbers of inexperienced youth were drafted into action, with very little training. Often one rifle between 2 or 3 men during infantry assaults. This led to enormous casualties in face of the better-trained and equipped German Army.
In early autumn the fighting had concentrated in the rubble strewn streets of downtown Stalingrad.
While urban trench warfare proceeded through the end of 1942, Russia was operating munitions factories twenty-four hours a day in the Eastern part of the country not yet under German control, as Russia fed in huge numbers of reinforcements to grind down the German front which then was isolated as a pocket.
The stubborn fighting in Stalingrad prevented the Germans moving eastwards. New Russian Divisions assembled against weak Romanian and Hungarian divisions which were allies of the Germans, on the German line. In a pincer movement the Russians broke though these weak German-ally divisions and then surrounded the German Army from the north and south. This counter-attack coincided with the full extreme Russian winter for which the German army had little winter clothing and poor munitions (including German tank engines that simply froze).
Russian counterattack (Operation Uranus, November 1942 on) to trap German 6th Army at Stalingrad.
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The Germans became short of food, ammunition and water, many froze. Hitler had gambled that the fighting would be long over prior to the onset of winter. To survive, many Germans removed the underclothing of dead Russian soldiers or wrapped rags around their shoes.
German losses at Stalingrad were high. Paulus's German Sixth Army began its campaign with 600,000 soldiers. On January 31, 1943, he disobeyed Hitler and surrendered. On February 2 1943 Paulus had only 91,000 still alive when they became prisoners. Of those taken captive, only 6,000 lived to return to Germany, years after the war.
The Russians recovered 250,000 German and Romanian corpses in and around Stalingrad and total Axis deaths (Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) are estimated at 800,000.
At one key battle for control of (the tractor) factory, there were more casualties than during the entire German invasion of France. Official Russian military historians estimate that 1,100,000 Russian soldiers lost their lives in the campaign to defend the city, all this in a span of six months.
Russian children in Stalingrad (now Volgograd) honour the memory of the millions of Russian soldiers who died in World War Two fighting the Germans.
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