Essay On Stalingrad

It was the first major German loss during World War Two (it significantly decreased their front line power and determination): Prior to Stalingrad the German’s had been on an immense roll since the beginning of the war, and their defeat proved to the Allies that Germany wasn’t invincible. After Stalingrad, there was not any significant German victory in the war. Hitler commented: “the God of war has gone over to the other side”(1943).

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 is book written by the British military historian, Antony Beevor. Stalingrad covers the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II. Stalingrad was a city in Russia where Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union fought for control. This was part of Adolf Hitler’s plan to crush the Soviet Union and extend his Third Reich into Russian territory. The battle lasted from August 1942 to February 1943. However, the battle ended up with the destruction of the entire German 6th army and with a victory for the Soviet Union. Beevor has won three awards for this book. I wish to give brief summaries of the five sections of the book and give reviews on their main content.

The defeat of Germany in World War Two was due to many factors. All of these factors were influenced by the leadership and judgment of Adolf Hitler. Factors such as the stand fast policy, Hitler's unnecessary and risky decision making in military situations, for example when attacking the USSR, and the declaration of war on the US. Plus other factors, like Hitler's alliance with Italy, despite its obvious weaknesses, and the pursuit of the final solution, can all be attributed to the poor leadership and judgement of the Fuhrer, which would eventually lead to the downfall of the Third Reich.

“While the German army had success the first day, it was Hitler’s desire to occupy the entire city that cost him the battle” (Background). Despite being in a favorable position early on, Hitler decide to continue to push on and quickly take over the city of Stalingrad. Logically, Hitler would have been content with the position he had, and held it for some time. Despite throwing large amounts of men into the fighting the Germans only made small amounts of progress, losing absurd amounts of men and supplies to take over a single building. Once Hitler had started this push, however, he could not pull out of it. It would be a defeat in his eyes, and avoiding defeat was more important to him than the lives of his men. “Fresh divisions were thrown in and were soon ground to pieces in the inferno (a fiery hell). To Hitler [Stalingrad’s] capture was now a question of personal prestige” (Document 1). After a certain point, a victory under his name became won important to Hitler than the territory won in the battle. Especially due to the city's importance to Stalin himself, it was more of a personal battle for Hitler than a battle between nations. The Battle of Stalingrad became a test of Hitler’s prestige and what he was willing to do to protect it. The answer to that question would turn out to be too much, as the Soviets would be on the front foot for the

The battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the eastern front of world war two where Nazi Germany and all of its associates fought the Soviet Union over control over the city of Stalingrad. The battle of Britain was a large scale battle in which the Britain’s fought the Germans to protect the UK.

Captain Dennis W. Dingle’s dissertation, presented before the faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 1977, concerns the significance of the Soviet Union’s decisive victory at Stalingrad and its impact on the outcome of the Second World War. While much of this information is irrelevant for the purpose of answering the thesis question I have proposed, it does contain indispensable statistics showcasing the economic and military might of the two most pertinent combatant nations in the Second World War in the timeframe of December of 1941 and July of 1943.

The battle of Stalingrad was a very intense battle for the Russians as the Germans closed in on them with support from the sixth panzer division and bombings from the Luftwaffe. This battle lasted from April to February, and was mostly house to house fighting. The Germans managed to push the defending Russians back to the Volga River. The Russians were desperate, so they formed the idea of “Project Uranus”. This was a plan to surround the Germans on two sides with the Mongolians and the Romanians. Finally, in February, the attacking German forces were repelled and Stalingrad was held. If the Germans had taken Stalingrad, they could attack the Russians on two

It was when German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviets had to defend Stalingrad to keep the Germans from advancing further into the Soviet Union. There were over two 2,000,000 casualties on both the Soviet and German sides. Some say that it marked the turn of the tide of the war for the Allies.

Battle of Stalingrad (Rough Draft) The battle of Stalingrad was a bloody war with over two million casualties. For Russia, it was the turning point in the war. Germany attacked Stalingrad, Russia during the winter of 1942.

The battle of Stalingrad raged from August 1942 until the German surrender on 2 February 1943. Significantly, it was the first catastrophic defeat to befall the Wermacht Army who not only lost the battle but were severely humiliated. Indeed, the German Army never fully recovered from this blow to its morale. Upwards of 270,000 troops were killed and 91,000 prisoners were taken by the Red Army; included in this latter number were 23 German Generals. Conversely, morale in the Red Army soared as a consequence of Stalingrad giving the Russians increased strength and confidence. This battle represented a turning point in the Second World War.

Stalin was known for his ruling by terror, criminal activity, and heavy interest in politics. Just as Hitler had done with concentration camps, Stalin executed or forced his potential enemies into labor camps. Stalin had originally made a pact with Hitler, but ended up joining forces of the Allies. Britain and the United States during World War II. In 1939 Stalin and Hitler had signed a nonaggression pact. Although Hitler and Stalin had made an alliance, the Germans broke the pact they had originally made and made a surprise attack invading the USSR in 1941. The Battle of Stalingrad happened from August 1942 to February 1943 when German troops approached Moscow, however the Red Army defeated the Germans and drove them out of Russia. Due to the attack Stalin had no other choice but to look to the Allies for help in order to defeat the Germans, and with the help of Britain and the United States, Germany fell short of a victory. During Stalin’s rise to power he became a very controlling individual. He had cities renamed in his honor, history books rewritten to mention his leadership, had full control over the Soviet media, and became the main subject of most things including art, music, even the national anthem. Stalin in later years passed away on March 5, 1953, due to a stroke at the age of 74. His body, which was originally preserved in Lenin’s mausoleum was removed and buried near the Kremlin walls

On June 22, 1941, Hitler sent 148 army divisions consisting of 3,350 tanks,7,100 cannons, 2,000 planes, and 3 million men to the Soviet border. Germany attacked Russia along an 1,800 mile long front. In the beginning, Germany was very successful, and by the start of July Germany had destroyed 1,000 Soviet aircrafts, 1,200 tanks, and 600 big guns and in addition had captured 150,000 Russian soldiers (Rice 30). The Blitzkrieg continued to roll into Moscow, the capital of Russia, Moscow and it pushed Russian forces back 600 miles. However, suddenly the German offensive seemed to take a toll for the worst. Germany made the mistake of only packing for a month's worth of supplies and the rapid advance across Russia had spread the German tanks thin and undersupplied. Also, the muddy terrain made it very hard for the tanks and other German vehicles to advance. The Germans had underestimated the real strength and fortitude of the Soviet Union army. Taking advantage of the turning momentum, the Soviet army began to repel the undersupplied German army. Hitler's generals recommended they stop fighting until spring, but Hitler declined the request and forced them to keep pushing through the winter. The main reason Hitler forced his army to keep going was because he wanted the oil and the grain fields that Leningrad and Moscow would give him. With all this happening, Hitler lost focus on his original goal of destroying the Soviet Army. On December 6th, 1941, the Russians launched an unexpected offensive along the two hundred mile front of Moscow. Many of the Germans couldn't fight back because their automatic weapons were frozen and couldn't fire. The 100 Soviet divisions struck the Nazis so badly, they never had time to recover. Nazi generals asked Hitler for a retreat but he refused, and because of such poor decisions, he lost a majority of the

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922-1953, when he died. He was responsible for one of the most notable and devastating genocides, the Great Purge. His vicious reign took the lives of around 20-60 million people by his rigid and cruel treatment. Through his exploitation of the lower class and his manipulative abuse of power, Stalin created one of the worst examples of leadership in history. It takes an interesting character to be able to execute the cruelties displayed in his regime and the traits that Stalin developed into his cult of personality were likely acquired as a child and adolescent.

During World War II, the battle of Stalingrad began in the city of Stalingrad, Russia and was fought between August of 1942 and February of 1943. http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-stalingrad It is still considered today to be one of Russia’s greatest battles in which the Russian army defended itself from invasion by the German army. This battle essentially stopped Germany’s determined advance into Russian territory. This marked a huge turning point in the war for the Allies. It was a very important war because it crippled the German offensive as well as destroying much of its army.

One may wonder why Stalingrad was so important to Hitler. Well, Stalingrad was the capital of the Soviet Union, the heart of their industry and their largest city. As an industrial city, Stalingrad contained numerous factories that provided tanks, guns and ammunition for the Soviet war effort. Without the war supplies and the oil fields in Caucasus, nothing would be supporting the Soviet forces. And more importantly, a World War Two database describes Stalingrad as a “city [that] bore the name of Hitler’s nemesis, Joseph Stalin, [which] would make the city’s capture an ideological and propaganda coup” (http://en.allexperts.com). As both Hitler and Stalin recognized, taking Stalingrad would prove essential to their country’s propaganda, boosting their nation’s morale and destroying the others. Stalingrad was named after Stalin and thus symbolic to both sides of the war. Basically, to the Germans, taking Stalingrad meant the crushing the Soviets; taking them out of the war once and for all.