Stalingrad Verdun Comparison

How significant was the Battle of Stalingrad and the Russian campaign as a ‘turning point’ in leading to the Allied victory in the European War?

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 British launched The Battle of the Somme to achieve two objectives. The first and most important goal was to relieve pressure on the French Army at Verdun, and the second was to inflict as heavy a loss as possible on the German Armies. The Battle of the Somme had to be fought to save the French Army from the crucifixion of Verdun. The head of the French Army, General Fock, and some leading British commanders did not believe this battle would help, but political masters in London and Paris supported the campaign. For many years The Battle of the Somme received much criticism for the way the battle was fought based on the number of casualties.

Stalingrad - Site of critical World War II Soviet victory that reversed Germany's advance to the East. In late 1942, Russian forces surrounded the Germans, and on Feb. 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered. First major defeat for the Germans in World War II.

The Battle of Fromelles was a horrific battle which didn’t help prevent the Battle of Somme. All the battle had done was make people very scared and worried about the Germans. The people who were majorly effected by this were the French British and Australia. The 5th Australian Division suffered 5,533 casualties, 1,547 61st British Division casualties and little less then 1,000 casualties for the Germans.

The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was a war between the Allies and Germany from July 31 1917 to November 6 1917. The Allied powers in this battle included France, Great Britain and Canada. The purpose of this battle was to get Germany’s attention off of France, to avoid a collapse of the western front in Belgium, undertaken by Britain. At the same time of helping France, this battle would gain the ridges South and East of Ypres for the allies. This battle was fought at Passchendaele, a town along the Western Front, 5 miles from Ypres. The location of this battle, chosen by Sir Douglas Haig, a British field marshall. This was a horrible location because of the fact that it was marshy and low lying, surrounded by hills with trees, which made a battlefield with poor drainage and hills where German artillery could watch the battlefield

The first of seven introduces the reader to the Battle of Stalingrad by mentioning dates, statistics, significant developments in

The battle of the Somme, intended to end the war that year, had ambitious objectives, it was significant for failing to achieve almost all of these. One of these was Beaumont Hamel, a fortified village behind the German lines. The Battle plan called for the village to be taken on the first day. The fact that the village was not taken until the very end of the battle on the 13th of November, illustrates how much the plan failed. Demonstrating the level to which the plan failed Private Anthony Stacey reports that this was a death trap for our boys as the enemy just set the sights of their machine guns on the gaps in the barbed wire and fired . Another objective, Serre, was not taken at all. In fact, the British staff were so unaware of modern weapons, that they had cavalry ready to attack after the infantry broke through. This is significant as it shows how inexperienced the British army was when it came to trench warfare. Had the staff understood the trench tactics better, they would not have

Battle of the Bulge was one of the most unforgiving engagements that the United States military has been involved with. Sacrifices on both sides were nearly unfathomable for that time period. In the past 15 years that we have been at war with the Middle East we have lost around 5,000 brothers and sisters in arms. Battle of the bulge was only one month in length and the Allied forces lost over 90,000 troops. War has evolved over the years to include planning and execution, by becoming more precise. Technology and lessons learned have profited our military actions in a sense that lives are no longer wasted. Although there were so many casualties during the battle, more lives could’ve been lost if not for the successful employment of indirect fires to stop German advances.

Imagine hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting in blizzard conditions, both sides fighting for their country, The Battle of the Bulge was one of the largest battles of the war and proved to be one of the most important. Some people ask how the Allied forces were able to stop the seemingly unbeatable Nazi war machine, this battle would be the last major offensive by the Third Reich in attempt to change the tides of the Second World War. The Allied forces were about to be a part of the true terrors of war.

On July 2 of the battle, more than “15,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in just six hours of the battling.” The casualties on just that one day are more than “three times the number of American casualties in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.” These numbers would be sure to find itself in American history as being the bloodiest battle in US history, but the battle 's greater importance

The Battle of Verdun was fought from 21 February – 18 December, during the First World War on the Western front between the German and French armies, on hills north of verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France.

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.

Referring to the Battle of Stalingrad, one soldier wrote, “But what is death in reality here? Here they croak, starve to death, freeze to death-it's nothing but a biological fact like eating and drinking. They drop like flies; nobody cares and nobody buries them,” (Schneider 344) making sense of the severe conditions and its effect on German soldiers in Stalingrad.

The First World War witnessed an appalling number of casualties. Due partly to this fact, some historians, developed the perception that commanders on both sides dependence on only one disastrous approach to breaking the stalemate. These historians attributed the loss of life to the reliance on soldiers charging across no-man’s land only to be mowed down by enemy machineguns. The accuracy of this, however, is fallacious since a variety of tactics existed on both sides. The main reason for battlefield success and eventual victory came from the transformation of battlefield tactics; nevertheless, moral played a major role by greatly affecting the development of new tactics and the final outcome of the war.