Posted on 08/23/2022 4:50:09 AM PDT by FarCenter
The Second World War’s deadliest battle – and one of the most brutal of all time – started on August 23, 1942, when Adolf Hitler’s forces went all out to seize the city bearing Joseph Stalin’s name. If ever a battle was like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, it was Stalingrad. But when the USSR finally prevailed amid inhuman circumstances, it unleashed their inexorable momentum towards the moment three years later when troops raised the Soviet flag over the Reichstag as a devastated Berlin smouldered.
The most vivid chronicler of Stalingrad was the Soviet novelist and journalist Vasily Grossman, especially in his Tolstoyan epic Life and Fate. Countless lines jump from the pages of Grossman’s masterpiece, but the starkest phrase leaps from his diary: “It is like Pompeii”.
Even for people unfamiliar with the details of World War II, the battle’s ferocity and consequence give the word Stalingrad an “electric charge”, as British historian Dominic Sandbrook put it on the podcast The Rest is History.
There were two other pivotal moments in 1942, the year the Second World War’s dynamic shifted in the Allies’ favour. The British turned the tide for the Western Allies against Nazi Germany when Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s forces smashed Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt in October-November. The US turned the tide against Japan in the Battle of Midway in June. But neither El Alamein nor Midway quite carries the electrifying resonance of Stalingrad.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
We remember all human fodder in that terrible conflict. May a world war never happen again.
Another excellent book about Stalingrad is “Enemy at the Gates” by William Craig. They made a movie of the same name, but it bears very little relation to the book. The movie chooses to focus on a sniper duel in Stalingrad and makes it appear that the duel turned the tide there — which is laughable. The 6th army was cut off and slowly starved & frozen to death — a horrible way to go. It could have broken out in the first days of its encirclement, but Hitler ordered it to stay put as he hated the concept of retreat.
The Soviets , with the help of the Allies , won WW2 . Many people haven’t a clue .
In Europe that is .
“The Soviets , with the help of the Allies , won WW2 .”
Yes, I notice the USA and its support doesn’t get much credit in the article.
Without our help the Red Army would have completely collapsed.
L
The Soviets carried. We didn’t do much. Sure we did D-Day but we took on their “JV team” in Normandy.
I recall reading a book (or it may have been an article) when I was in university with the author postulating about what might have happened had the United States not entered the war in Europe against Nazi Germany (even though the attack on Pearl Harbor gave the American entry against Imperial Japan that sort of justification one can suppose).
In any event, the author mentioned that the British on their own by about 1941 and certainly 1942 had basically broken the back of the German air force, so the American effort was not a be all and end all necessity in that part of the war in Europe. And the interesting point would have been the war between the Soviets and Nazis after Hitler broke the non aggression pact and what would have happened there without American intervention in the Soviets’ favour. As a further note, while not ignoring the Holocaust and being insensitive to the plight of the Jews, that was allegedly ignored for the most part by the Allies anyway until the camps were discovered and liberated.
I am not trying to upset or aggravate people here, but I would be curious to see if others are aware of this topic or discussion in World War II history and what their thoughts would be.
Without the Soviets we would never have won Europe .
What a slaughterhouse it was. And the effective end of the Wehrmacht’s offensive operations In Russia.
“Without the Soviets we would never have won Europe.”
Yes, we should have. It would have taken another 2 years, but we would have won.
L
Kursk
Not until we've invented atomic bombs.
If you get the chance watch the movie “Stalingrad”.Follows members of 6th Army from Italy to Russia. It actually .akes you feel sorry for the individual soldiers, the German machine, not so much.
Your misunderstanding is profound
The reason the American allies made progress from Normandy to Germany was the destruction of the Wehrmacht by the Soviet tide in the east
Without our help the Red Army would have completely collapsed.
The amount of aid they got from us, the British, and the Canadians is incredible. The Red Army would have been barefoot and starving. Yet, to this day, we get little thanks for it.
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