Stalingrad Research Paper

After the failure of Operation Barbarossa to completely crush the U.S.S.R. in one campaign, The Germans were

The little finger of my left hand is missing and – what’s even worse – the three middle fingers of my right one are frozen. I can only hold my mug with my thumb and little finger. I’m pretty helpless; only when a man has lost any fingers does he see how much he needs then for the smallest jobs. The best thing I can do with the little finger is to shoot with it. My hands are finished” this in example was the case for the entire German force at the time (Truman 5). The biggest turning point of the battle came with a huge Soviet counter offensive, code-named Operation Uranus which took place on November 19 through the 23. It was launched with two spearheads, some 50 miles north and south of the German hub whose tip was at Stalingrad. The counteroffensive utterly surprised the Germans, who thought the Soviets were incapable of mounting such an attack (Limbach 4). After the battle the Soviets recovered 250,000 German and Romanian corpses in and around Stalingrad, and total Axis casualties are believed to have been more than 800,000 dead, wounded, missing, or captured. Of the 91,000 men who surrendered, only some 5,000 to 6,000 ever returned to their homelands, the rest died in Soviet prison and labour camps. On the Soviet side, official Russian military historians estimate that there were over 1,100,000 Red Army dead, wounded, missing, or captured in the campaign to defend the

The German Luftwaffe controlled the skies, and Hitler’s Army Group South (B) had encircled much of Russia ground forces within Stalingrad. Unfortunately for Hitler, his mistrust of intelligence left him unprepared for the military tactic employed by Russian military leaders. The Soviets, unlike during the Battle of Moscow, had not placed all of their forces within the initial defense of Stalingrad. Rather, on October 11, 1942, German SIGINT assets reported a “comprehensive regroupment of Soviet forces between the Don and Volga” (Thomas, 1987). The early German intelligence reports concerning a large force mustered north of Stalingrad proved accurate, much to the dismay of Hitler and his senior military leadership. The Soviet military had changed course between its defense of Moscow and its defense of Stalingrad; in the latter case, the Soviets decided to withhold the majority of their forces until after the initial German onslaught concluded. Now an army divided geographically between multiple objectives, the German Army Group South (B) could not sustain its advance following initial victories surrounding Stalingrad. The German Luftwaffe proved ineffective as well in routing out a sizeable bunkered enemy force as a result of prior fortifications made by the Russians. What Hitler believed to be an easily won objective turned into nearly 10 months of face-to-face combat throughout the sprawling city

The Battle of Stalingrad was a battle that took place during World War II between the forces of Nazi Germany and their Romanian, Italian, and Hungarian allies, and the forces of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of World War II, Hitler focused on attacking Western Europe in order to create “living space” for his superior Aryan race. In 1941, Hitler turned his attention to the Soviet Union and decided that they needed to be destroyed before he was able to confront Great Britain and the United States. Hitler also believed that the Soviet Union was infiltrated by, and was under the control of the Jews (Walsh 8).

On June 22, 1941 the third reich (Nazi Germany) invaded Russia in an attempt crush the nation and the Red Army. Hitler had been planning the invasion at the since 1940 because Russia rejected to be a part of Tripartie, which was supposed to be an alliance between Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. Hitler wanted the best conditions for his army to succeed the invasion. He originally planned on the invasion taking place late April or early may, because that was when the spring thaw was over and the ground was dry enough for his tanks to move without getting stuck in the muddy terrain. (Patrick Shrier 08/06/2006)

The battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles in history. With military and civilian casualties combined there was over two million casualties. This battle was a turning point in the war for the Allies in the Eastern front. Hitler attacked Stalingrad for multiple reasons. Hitler thought that if Germany took control of Stalingrad it would boost the morales of the Nazi’s. Stalingrad was by Caucasus and near a trading post that could have been essential to Hitler. Hitler thought if he could capture Stalingrad it would help the Nazi’s launch more assaults to capture Caucasus. On September 3, 1942 the German Sixth Army, under the leadership of Commander Friedrich Paulus, reached the outskirts of Stalingrad. The Germans believed that they would take Stalingrad in a short amount of

The German army lead the offensive into Stalingrad using the German 6th Army and their elite 4th Panzer tank Army. The Luftwaffe, the German

In the end of March in 1942 the German operations were brought to a halt. Operation Barbosa had seized great amounts of territory and even Baltic States like the Ukraine but for the Germans it had eventually failed, and Nazi Germany faced a two front war that they could not win. Hitler was over zealous and did the one thing he set out to avoid, and that was having a war on two fronts. It would just be too much for the Germans to handle and that was proven when the Nazi’s surrendered, but it came with a large body count from Stalin. It is believed that 5.7 million Russians died in World War II fighting Germany.

His motivation for the invasion increased when he saw the potential opportunity to colonise Russian soil and extract its natural resources. Hitler believed that a blanket cover of fear and death which involved the physically annihilating Jews, Communists and any other people deemed to be threatening to the establishment of a long-term German rule on Soviet territory was to be wiped out. Hitler was also unhappy about the Soviet control over areas such as the Baltic States, Bessarabia and North Bukovina placed soviet soldiers close to the Romanian oil fields which the Nazis relied heavily on. Hitler signed Directive 21 or operation Barbarossa on the 18th of December

The initial German invasion of the Soviet Union was known as Operation Barbarossa. It began on June 22, 1941, after months of delay and years of planning. The general goals were to gain more land for Germany, control the oil fields of Azerbaijan, and exterminate Bolshevism—the radical Communism that Vladimir Lenin had installed in Russia during the Russian Revolution. Moreover, Hitler wanted to exterminate the “racially inferior” Russian people from Leningrad, Moscow, and the rest of the western USSR while pushing the rest of the population eastward beyond the Ural Mountains. It was after this invasion that the plan for a ‘Final Solution’ was introduced.

The opening moves of the battle began as the Nazi forces pushed from the west across the Volga River. Chasing the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies into Stalingrad. Civilians did not have time for evacuation. The Soviet’s new of the upcoming invasion as they recently lost the supply depots west of the Don River. Germany had thought the taking of Stalingrad would be a short undertaking, this oversight of planning left the Nazi forces ill equipped to fight through the harsh Soviet winter. Soviet forces were pushed to the banks of the Volga, this actually gave them a viable logistical lane for resupplying and troop movement. The Soviets used this to their advantage keeping the line stocked in total secrecy to the Nazi’s. Through Human intelligence gained from

Its because the main reason being that the germans wanted to secure the oil fields in the caucasus. So stalin defend it for the oil fields but also because it was named after him he also took it as a great threat to the propaganda of the war and that it would be bad morale for troops and russian people. So stalin knowing that he had very little firepower gave the wild order of Order No. 227 issued on July 28, 1942 was an order issued by Joseph Stalin who was acting as the People's Commissar of Defence. More famously known as “not one step back” which became the slogan for the russian military during this time but what it meant was. It basically was to help with the mass retreat and desertion the russians were facing and was said that if you do retreat or refuse to fight you will be killed on site. This helped but the russian troops were deserting manly due to the fact that they were being forced to join the military and then having little to no combat experience. Until stalingrad was very daunting to the once illiterate peasant farmers now suppose to protect the city from well trained nazis. So the order helped with troops

Germany had originally scheduled the invasion of the Soviet Union for mid – May 1941, but the unforeseen necessity of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April of the year forced them to postpone the Soviet campaign to late June. The swiftness of Hitler’s Balkan victories enabled him to keep to this revised timetable, but the five weeks’ delay shortened the time for carrying out the invasion of the U.S.S.R. and was to prove the more serious because in 1941 the Russian winter would arrive earlier than usual. Nevertheless, Hitler and his generals were convinced that the Red Army could be defeated in two or three months and that by the end of October the Germans would have conquered the whole European part of Russia and Ukraine. The invasion of the Soviet Union was originally given the code name Operation Fritz, but as preparations began, Hitler renamed it Operation Barbarossa, after Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa (reigned 1152–90), who sought to establish German predominance in Europe.

The German side had around 250,000 troops. The bulk of the seasoned forces for the German army where in the city limits. Those flanks were vulnerably exposed on the open steppes surrounding the city and were weakly defended by undermanned, undersupplied, overstretched, and under motivated Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops (Limbach, 2015). On November 23, the maneuvers to encircle from the north and south were successful 6th and 4th Panzer Armies. The German High Command suggest to Hitler to order General Paulus to fight through the Russian troops to rendezvous with other German forces west of Stalingrad. Hitler does not allow this. Hitler main goal is to push pass Stalingrad in order to reach Caucasus. The region had vast resources and oil that would greatly increase the power and influence of the Nazi Empire. Hitler also deems the victory of Stalingrad as a political statement for his regime (Limbach, 2015). Instead, Hitler orders air convoys to resupply his surrounded armies. The convoys were poor and unsuccessful in delivering the

On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler gave the green light for the commencement of Operation Barbarossa to capture the heart of USSR, Moscow, in order to diminish the power of the Allied forces in WWII gradually. However, Hitler’s masterminded plan eventually began falling apart due to his own carelessness and over-confidence. For instance, Hitler’s postponement of the operation proved to be crucial as the ferocious Russian winter arrived significantly earlier, causing many German soldiers to freeze to death, while the Russians, accustomed to the weather, used it to their advantage. Hitler also underestimated Stalin’s ability to prepare enough troops, yet Stalin’s men were able to squeeze out close to double that of the Germans proving to be one of