Posted on 01/31/2020 3:51:19 AM PST by Bull Snipe
German Field Marshal Fredrick Paulus surrenders to Soviet forces in Stalingrad. Two days later, the last remnants of the German 6th Army would also surrender to the Soviets. The 6 month Battle of Stalingrad was over. The cost of the Soviet victory was staggering. Over 1,129,000 Soviet soldiers killed missing or wounded. Also lost, 2,700 aircraft, 4,300 tanks and 15,000 artillery pieces. The Germans and their allies lost 868,000 men, 900 aircraft, 3,100 tanks and 5,700 artillery pieces. Of the 91,000 German prisoners captured by the Soviets, fewer than 6,000 would live to return to Germany. The Wikipedia article on the Battle of Stalingrad is a good recap of this titanic struggle.
Stalingrad was brutal combat. No quarter was given in the battle.
a fight to the death for both sides.
“Of the 91,000 German prisoners captured by the Soviets, fewer than 6,000 would live to return to Germany.”
What happened to the other 85,000 Germans?
They died.
When Winter comes I often think of the conflict on the Eastern Front and the Battle of the Bulge. To be in bitter cold for so long is a testimony to the toughness of the men who fought on both sides of the battles.
They joined adolf in hell?
They ended up on the Clinton kill list.
I have read history pretty much my entire life (in fact, my degree is in History), and I’ve read scores of books and articles on Operation Barbarossa, and in particular the Battle of Stalingrad. Brutal is too weak a word for that carnage.
All for the whims of one man.
The German invasion of Russia started on June 22, 1941.
“When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comment!”
Adolf Hitler
Operation Barbarossa was the name for Germany’s invasion of Russia. It commenced on June 22, 1941. It was the biggest invasion in history. The numbers boggle the mind.
Over the course of the operation, about four million Axis powers personnel, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare, invaded the western Soviet Union along a 1,800 mile front. In addition to troops, the Wehrmacht employed some 600,000 motor vehicles, and between 600,000 and 700,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked an escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition.
This was Hitler’s greatest blunder, resulting in the destruction of the Third Reich by Spring of 1945. Hitler boasted of a thousand year Reich. But due to Barbarossa and D-Day the Third Reich lasted only twelve.
Within a single week, German forces advanced 200 miles into Soviet territory, destroyed nearly 4,000 aircraft, and killed, captured, or wounded some 600,000 Red Army troops. To give some perspective we lost around 400,000 during the entire war.
Germany suffered a million military casualties, Russia 4,973,820 (with civilians, 26.6 million Soviet lives were lost), 1,129,619 of which were lost at Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in history. Make no mistake, the Red Army bled the Germans white.
Americans can justifiably be proud of our role in World War II. But Russian children are proud to learn of the battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943), the great tank battle of Kursk (1943) and the breaking of the siege of Leningrad (1944) as moments that turned the tide of the war. For good reason the Russians call it “The Great Patriotic War.”
Marshall Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was Stalin’s top general. Hard to imagine Russia winning without him. He never lost a battle. He once said, “It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.”
Not to be preachy but I’ll close with a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge:
“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”
Long live the memory of General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov and the Soviet 62nd Army.
This tribute should not be construed as an attempt to denigrate the roll of the US or any other Soviet ally during WW II. Far from it. But make no mistake, it was the Red Army that bled the Germans white. Russian losses were staggering. They lost more soldiers at Stalingrad than we lost during the entire war.
Todt im Osten
I have read history pretty much my entire life (in fact, my degree is in History), and I’ve read scores of books and articles on Operation Barbarossa, and in particular the Battle of Stalingrad. Brutal is too weak a word for that carnage.
Marshal Chuikov is the only MSU not buried in the Kremlin. His wish was to repose near the men that had served him at Stalingrad. His grave is near Mamamayv Kurgan Memorial in Volgograd.
The 62nd was refitted and retitled 8th Guards Army in 1943.
Two years later some its soldiers would raise the Sickle and Hammer flag over the Reichstag in Berlin. After the war, 8th Guards stayed in German until 1990.
The definite turning point in the war for the Wehrmacht. They would launch one more offensive in July 1943 against the Red Army at Kursk. It failed too. After that it was a long slow retreat all the way to Berlin.
They died in Soviet labor camps. Of malnutrition, of exposure, of various and sundry other ailments. I had a German colleague whose father was a POW in the Soviet Union; he didn't come home until 1951.
“This was Hitler’s greatest blunder”.
I disagree. Hitler, and the Germans in general, biggest mistake was the incredible brutality leveled on the people of the invaded countries. The Germans gave them two options, yield to the Germans and die or fight and maybe live to avenge yourself.
Stalingrad was Case Blue, and the initial objective was to take the Caucasus oil fields. The Battle of Stalingrad was stumbled into. And the Germans were at the end of a 1500 mile supply line. Hitler was warned they could be cut off and surrounded. He ignored those warnings. Paulus was only promoted Field Marshal near the end. Hitler expected him to kill himself. Instead he lived to a ripe old age in what became East Germanny (the DDR).
Put to hard labor and short rations, often in places like Siberia, quartered in inadequate shelter, given little to no medical support, supervised by people that didn’t care much if the prisoners lived or died - and often would prefer that they died - and worked to death.
It was hard, brutal and bluntly inhumane. But it wasn’t much worse than what the Germans themselves did to the Russians and others, both military and civilian, in their push east. Ivan, it turns out, has a surprisingly long memory and is a very good hater if you exceed his rules of conduct; the surrendered Germans found out *all* about that the hard way.
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