The Battle Of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad marked the end of Germany’s advances into Eastern Europe and Russia. After Germany's failure to take Stalingrad, their Eastern front army was practically destroyed and they were forced to flee outside of the Soviet Union. This became a turning point for World War Two as it put the Russians on the offensive. Consequently, this directly aided in the destruction and conquering of Germany by the Allied Forces throughout 1944 and 1945. Germany was, essentially, surrounded with the Americans and British in the West, and the Russians in the East.

They were relying on the capture of the Russian oil fields to supply their army with fuel after their stockpiles had run out. Their lack of fuel is evident even in this battle as Friedrich Von Paulus, who was commanding the sixth army’s assault on Stalingrad, advance towards the city was very slow due to the fuel rations and at one point his army was even brought to a complete halt outside Kalach, as they had completely exhausted their fuel supply. The outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad exacerbated the Germans shortage of fuel, limiting the vital supply for their planes and tanks. Without fuel, the German panzer tanks and the mighty German Luftwaffe would be useless, thus rendering two of Germany’s greatest assets worthless. The Germans could not win the war without a reliable source of fuel. Therefore, the Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War Two because it stopped the German advance into Russian thus denying them access to the Caucasus oil wells, exacerbating Germany’s fuel crisis and crippling the German army.

The battle of Stalingrad was fought between the invading forces of Nazi Germany and the

The strategies of these two battle were both equally successful and had a large impact on the opposite side in the case of the battle of Stalingrad they had operation blue and in the case of the Britain’s they had no specific strategy other than to deny the Luftwaffe the freedom of action by attacking the incoming raids, get through the protective screen of fighters,

As Germany advanced on the city of Stalingrad, Hitler decided to rush the battle and try to finish it quickly. Because of this mindset, his army was severely underprepared to fight a drawn out battle in the Russian winter. German general Blumentritt recalled “The railheads (train tracks) were as much as 200 kilometers behind the front, and the bare nature of the countryside meant that there was little timber (wood) available for constructing defenses. There were no proper trenches or fixed positions” (Document 3). The Soviets had a major advantage over the Germans of the aspect of being resupplied. While they could receive support from nearby or within the city, Germany had to rely on supplies coming from a long way out. If supply shipments were cut off by the Soviets, the Germans were forced to continue fighting with limited resources. Also, the Battle of Stalingrad is a prime example of how much changed between the first and second world war. The vast majority of World War I was fought out of trenches, with soldiers moving very little. World War II was fought in the style of urban warfare, surrounded by streets and buildings, nearly the polar opposite of trench warfare. The Germans were not trained to fight an urban style battle, and thus struggled upon reaching the city of Stalingrad. When the cold Russian winter came, German suffering reached an all time high. A soldier named Wilhelm

Other than causing the liberation of France and the establishment of a new battlefront, the invasion also relieved the Soviet Union’s pressure. Before the Invasion, Germany had over two million troops fighting against the Red Army in the Eastern Front, and many of Soviet’s cities were captured. The Russians fought desperately to protect their cities. However, after the invasion, with the launch of a new major battlefront in the West, Hitler had to transport many of his forces to the West in order to defend his own country. Without as many troops to fight against, the Soviet army was able to push through Czechoslovakia, Poland and eventually penetrate into Germany; the Soviet Union’s progress greatly sped up the endof the war. (Naval History and Heritage- D-Day, the Normandy Invasion, 6 - 25 June 1944)

The Battle of Stalingrad is considered the turning point of the Second World War as the German forces failed to overcome the defense of the Russian army leading to their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Russians. It is commonly believed that this loss was due to Hitler’s lack of trust in his own generals and his selfish desire to conquer an essentially useless piece of land. American writer Edwin Palmer Hoyt believes that if Hitler had granted his generals more flexibility, then Von Paulus could have saved some of his divisions from complete annihilation. Another perspective of the outcome is that it stemmed from Stalin’s decision to allow for how own generals and commanders to take control over the battle while he put his focus on other things which would lead to the Soviet domination over the German army in a seemingly hopeless situation.

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

Operation Barbarossa was another crucial battle in World War II. It began on June 22, 1941 and ended on December 5th. It was when Germans invaded the Soviet Union in hopes of advancing farther. The Germans had three million soldiers, 3,500 tanks, and 150 divisions cross into the Soviet Union. The Soviets destroyed the German advance. It was considered the most crucial turning point in the

The Russians had surrounded Germany that was within the city. Everyone worked hard and fought fiercely. The Russians knew if Germany took Stalingrad, it would be just that much harder to win the war. Everything rested upon the soldiers who fought, and won this battle. This was the turning point in the war.

The Battle of Stalingrad was the most important battle on the eastern front that ultimately changed Germany’s momentum. Germany never won another battle for the remainder of the war. It became known as the single biggest defeat of the German Army’s history. The Battle of Stalingrad resulted in the largest number of casualties in the history of warfare and produced more civilian casualties than the civilian death toll from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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.

death, and even ranked him to field marshall and reminding Paulus that no general of that rank had ever surrendered.(Britannica.com) Consequently, on January 31 Paulus disobeyed Hitler and surrendered along with twenty other generals. A few days later on February 2 the remaining ninety one thousand men also surrendered, and were eventually killed or put into concentration camps, and Prison. After this extraordinary battle ended, an estimated 250,000 German and Romanian Corpses in and around Stalingrad were recovered, and the total of Axis casualties, wounded, or missing was believed to be an estimated 800,000. On the Russian side they suffered quite a bit more casualties having an estimated 1,100,000 deaths, wounded, or missing.(Britannica.com) The Battle of Stalingrad proved to be very significant in history because it not only had a large impact on World War Two but also the whole the world. For instance, this battle alone had over a million deaths, which caused many families to suffer and and changed the city of Stalingrad greatly. Also, it demonstrated how strong and great the Russian defense was to not give up or surrender to the Germans, whom were very close to taking over this industrious city. Thus, because the Russians were brave, and had

Hitler had two aims while he was in the USSR, which were capturing Stalingrad and capturing the oil fields in Caucasus. As he had these two aims, he decided to split the German Army into two parts where one could take on Caucasus and the other take Stalingrad. The division that had gone to Stalingrad, the 6th Army, lacked enough resources and knowledge to defeat the Soviet Army. The army consisted of 1,000,000 men, 675 tanks, 1,200 aircrafts, and 10,000 guns and mortars, where a lot of the men were poorly trained. The lack of knowledge of the 6th Army was a tactical error, as they did not know how to fight in Stalingrad, nor were they thought how to. The 6th Army were used to fighting in the open and wide areas of the USSR, but Stalingrad consisted of many buildings and streets, and the German Army made another tactical error by bombing Stalingrad prior to the 6th Army’s entrance, as they thought that it would have weakened Russian resistance, but the opposite had occurred. The bombing had caused buildings to collapse and large pieces of cement to fall, which were used by the Soviet Army as cover. In To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations Historian David M. Glantz states, “The Luftwaffe’s rubbling of the city only exacerbated things,” reinforcing the fact that it was a

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