Posted on 11/09/2017 7:04:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded --and would soon destroy -- a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany's best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942-43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II.
Before Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler regularly boasted on German radio as his victorious forces pressed their offensives worldwide. After Stalingrad, Hitler went quiet, brooding in his various bunkers for the rest of the war.
During the horrific Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted more than five months, Russian, American and British forces also went on the offensive against the Axis powers in the Caucasus, in Morocco and Algeria, and on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific.
Yet just weeks before the Battle of Stalingrad began, the Allies had been near defeat. They had lost most of European Russia. Much of Western Europe was under Nazi control. Axis armies occupied large swaths of North Africa. The Japanese controlled most of the Pacific and Asia, from Manchuria to Wake Island.
Stalingrad was part of a renewed German effort in 1942 to drive southward toward the Caucasus Mountains, to capture the huge Soviet oil fields. The Germans might have pulled it off had Hitler not divided his forces and sent his best army northward to Stalingrad to cut the Volga River traffic and take Stalin's eponymous frontier city.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Just a clarification here ... only about 200,000 were captured at Stalingrad ... plus another 50,000 or so Romanians and Russians. The Romanians were German allies, of course, and had been trying to hold the German flanks while the Sixth Army was attacking STalingrad.
The Russians were called Hinis, meaning they were drafted by the Germans to do menial jobs like cooking and supporting the soldiers. They really had no choice and were slaves, yet Stalin treated them worse than the Germans. None of them would have survived long after the German surrender in February 1943.
You have hit on Hitler's strategy here. He knew that Communism was extremely unpopular throughout the USSR, and expected that after a season of military triumphs the people of Russia would overthrow their masters and welcome the German invader. When he invaded, he knew he was a military parity only, which any General knows is not sufficient to prevail long term.
As for stopping the campaign against Moscow for two months in 1941, Hitler made this decision in spite of this Generals' opposition. But Hitler wanted to protect his flanks and felt that maintaining a broad front would be preferable.
In retrospect, however, he should have gambled and continued on to Moscow in August 1941 rather than waiting until October. Had he captured it, and forced Stalin to flee, it might have been the turning point with the internal revolution. As it is, the people never revolted against their communist masters.
Some of them, Koreans conscripted to fight for the Japanese, were captured, fought for the Soviets, captured again, fought for the Germans and then were captured again by us in Normandy.
There is a highly fictionalized Korean movie called 'My Way' which, last time I watched it, was on Netflix.
I've always enjoyed pondering two turning points much earlier than 1942 or 43.
First, if Japan had honored its agreement to tie down the Soviet Siberian forces in the East, then Stalin would not have been able to transfer them to the defense of Moscow in December 1941. Even the exhausted German forces of Army Group Center might have succeeded in taking Moscow, therefore.
Second, Hitler declared war on the USA almost as an afterthought after the USA and Japan exchanged war declarations. Yes, Roosevelt was itching to fight in Europe -- he and Churchill had been plotting as much for two years -- but it was not a done deal that the American public would have gone for for fighting a two front world war, and providing the backbone behind both efforts. It's easy to consider that the Congress and American public would have said the the Pacific Theater was America's war, and the European Theater was Britain's war. It's also easy to see, therefore, that Lend Lease does not extend to Russia anymore, just Britain. That means Germany conquering Russia in 1941 or 42, or at least a stalemate, and a negotiated solution in 42 or 43 in Europe that included Germany keeping all Eastern Europe but eventually giving up France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
I've read dozens on books on this and after 20 years of pondering things, I'm not convinced that Hitler was more evil than Stalin, and that Nazi Germany would have been more oppressive to the peoples of Eastern Europe than Soviet style Communism.
When the invading German forces approached a city, it was not unusual for the Russians to create, on the spot, a new military unit that consisted of untrained men between 16 and 60 that that city who were forcibly conscripted into becoming cannon fodder for German machine guns.
There is one such story in a village on the outskirts of Rostov. The Germans grimly did their job as wave after wave of Russian men walked into their machine gun sights. The layers of bodies were four deep as wave after wave crawled over their dead countrymen headed for the German lines. Those that turned back, of course, were murdered by the local commissars who had their own machine guns.
Even the hardened German soldier was brought to tears as they realized how senseless the slaughter was.
Not quite true. The Cossacks were welcomed to fight with the Germans with open arms. By 1942, by now short of men, Hitler was willing to let his Generals make the decision whether to recruit local Russians.
Also, by 1942 and later there were many units of the SS that consisted of enlisted men from the conquered Russian territories, including the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. They fought hard and bravely for the Germans.
If they had gotten across the river either north or south of the city, they could have flanked the Russians supply line."
Roger that comment.
Hitler was initially obsessed with conquering the city that bore STalin's name. And it always seemed like victory was just around the corner, that's why the battle raged for three months.
Conquering Stalingrad meant sealing off the Volga and the rail lines. But that could have been done without the battle for the city. It would have been tense but there would have been a strong German force facing the Russians, not a depleted one, when Stalin did the pincer movement in November 1942.
As for MacA's strategy, you have to realize that the armed cities he bypassed were not connected by land. So since the USA dominated the air, those Japanese strongholds were essentially isolated. There was zero risk that the bypassed city (for example, Rabaul) could backstab him. There was no air force or navy to bring that force forward. Such was not the case in Russia. Any bypassed force could be moved and strategically repositioned.
The Russian Pincer movement exploited a very clear weakness in the German lines, namely the allied Romanian and Italian armies.
The Italian 8th Army, already poorly equipped, was covering 60+ miles of frontage with just three weakened Corps, that were hardly the size of a division, including a cavalry division.
With the exception of 4 medium guns, the entire Corps Artillery had been removed for use in Stalingrad. The Romanian Armoured Battalion that was supposed to back them up in the event of an attack, couldn’t move due to snow.
When the Russians hit, at the gap between the Italians and Romanians, entire Battalions of men were simply destroyed in place, without a single survivor.
The Germans never expected the Russians to launch such a large offensive in such horrible weather, even though they had done exactly that just the winter before.
A Hiwi ( Hilfswilliger ) was a foreigner who volunteered to serve the Nazis. The nameHiwis acquired a thoroughly negative meaning following Operation Barbarossa in World War II. Between September 1941 and July 1944 the SS employed thousands of collaborationist auxiliary police recruited as German Hiwis directly from the Soviet POW camps.
I get more good laughs on FR than just about any place else.
I'll check it out - interesting idea. Maybe there's a way to make war more painful for those who cause it rather than just for the innocents who fight it...
Had he captured it, and forced Stalin to flee, it might have been the turning point with the internal revolution.
As it is, the people never revolted against their communist masters.
________________________________
However, the historical significance of Napoleon's short occupation of Moscow then, a retreat in defeat, must have played in Hitler's mind when deciding a battle plan. 1941 was a different ballgame though. Moscow was home to the snake (Stalin) and he was already shaken by the rapid advances of the Wehrmacht. Stalin was making plans to leave Moscow for the East. He waffled for hours and finally (too his credit) decided to stay.
Hitler erred when he halted in front of Moscow. He ordered the advance to resume after a muddy fall,then winter but it was too late!
The capture of Moscow and causing the communist government to flee, would have done three things:
The old adage "to kill a snake, cut off it's head," applies here.
” a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River.”
Not the Volga River; the “Nieva” river (not sure of transliteration)
Interesting...never much considered that.
“Curiously, the one ethnic group that embraced the German invasion wholeheartedly was the Cossacks.”
Looks as though the Cossacks are both Russian and Ukrainian. I can certainly understand the Ukrainian Cossacks jumping at the chance to help Hitler, considering what they had just gone through.
>We should ALSO remember that if the Russians had not colluded with Germany over the invasion and seizure of Poland, millions of lives on ALL SIDES would not have been lost.
Stalin was playing a game with Hitler. He was planning to stab Hitler in the back once he was fully engaged in France. On paper, France had the best army in the world, more & better tanks the Germans, just as many planes, ect.
When France unexpectedly fell in 6 weeks Stalin was screwed.
>I respect your point, in time, and probably a lot of it, the Germans would’ve lost a war of attrition in the East. We can’t ignore the pressures from other Allied fronts either and what that did to force them to shuffle limited forces.
>While the American production miracle was unprecedented, what is also amazing is what Russian industry pulled off, being as most of the pre-existing infrastructure and supply chain had been overrun by the Krauts.
>Both sides were essentially morally bankrupt. The Germans killed innocents on their way in, the Russians raped what was left on the way out. There was a lot of under-toned sentiment that said ‘let them bleed each other to death.”
Russian production numbers mostly lies. Telling Stalin the truth about Soviet Industry was a good way to get shot so actual production was 1/2 to a 1/3 of the reported levels. It was American gear, food, gasoline, weapons, radios, planes, ect that kept Russia in the war.
Without American support, Russia would have collapsed in 1943 once Germany took away their primary farming zones. As it was, Russia was completely out of fresh manpower by 1944.
>I understand the fixation that Hitler seemed to have on that city. But I have often wondered why they just did not bypass it like MacArthur did in the Pacific. Just bypass the city and level it with air forces.
>If they had gotten across the river either north or south of the city, they could have flanked the Russians supply line.
>But, if wishes were horses...and all that.
Germany stopped pushing into Stalingrad pretty early on. Their goal was to destroy its industry and prevent shipping on the Volga. Russia held a small section of the city but the German kill ratio was a comfortable 8 to 1 and German made no push to take the rest of the city and generally spent their time killing Russian troops from defensive positions.
It was the encirclement of Stalingrad by the Red Army that made the place a death hole for Germany, but the majority of deaths were from sickness or hunger, not combat.
The Russians lost 1.2 million souls, and the Germans lost 780,000... all in that one battle alone. I think you can count this battle as a significant loss for both sides.
(Canada only had 800,000 total troops in the entire war, Australia 700,000.)
Yeah, umm, when you sacrifice an entire generation of men who bled themselves white on those fields, you don't exactly chalk up the victory to the folks who supplied some of the hardware. They deserve the national pride that came from Stalingrad. It saved millions of lives, and possibly the world, and easily many thousands of American lives (if not hundreds of thousands). We should be grateful, not they.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.