60 Years Ago Today: Red Army Counteroffensive at Stalingrad Begins

The Battle for Stalingrad ^

[alex]

It happend 11/19/1942.

[Burkeman1]

If the Romanians guarding the flank had adequete numbers of anti tank weapons history might look a bit different.

[alex]

Stalin won popularity contest vs. Hitler even among Ukrainians, after that Germany was doomed. German penetration up to Stalingrad and Caucasus Montains was just a measure of Stalin's gigantic ineptitude as a commander-in-chief.

[HumanaeVitae]

I don't know about that. The Romanians were demoralized and undisciplined. The 64th Red Army made mincemeat out of them in short order. Plus, after the Russians moved their industrial bloc to the Urals, they made more T-34 tanks (by many accounts the best tank produced in the war--excepting possibly the King Tiger) than all the other major powers produced of their main battle tanks. I doubt the Romanians could have held against a flood of T-34's for long, anti-tank weapons or not.

[HumanaeVitae]

Yep. Stalin purged the army of all its competent commanders in the 30's. Hitler didn't fail to notice.

[Burkeman1]

The Romanians offered a spirited fighting retreat when the assualt began despite the lack of anti tank weapons. Weeks before the offensive Romanian and German commanders were warning Paulus of the lack of anti weapons among the Romanians guarding their flanks. He ignroed the problem. T-34 production was under way in the Urals but the superiority of this production would not be felt by the Germans until the following year. Many of the T-34's present at Stalingrad had been rushed out of production so fast that they couldn't even be fitted with gun sights which made their fire only effective at almost point blank ranges. The Russians defeated the Germans at Stalingrad from brute strength of infantry mostly- not (IMO) from superior numbers of tanks.

[Argus]

Operation Barbarossa was lost when Hitler ignored Guderian's advice and diverted the main thrust of the attack from a drive to take Moscow immediately, to an offensive in the south to secure the Ukraine. The objective should have been to destroy Stalin's regime, not assure supplies of corn and oil. The war was Hitler's to lose, and his crazy race theories and grand strategy lost it.

[HumanaeVitae]

Hmm...well, I don't have Beevor's excellent 'Stalingrad' at my side for reference, so I'll concede these points until I can consult it. I distinctly remember, however, the Romanians as worn down by the brutal winter and short on supplies, like the rest of the German 6th. The 34th Red army began the assault with at least one armored division (again, it escapes me) and a fusillade of Katyushas and artillery. As I remember the Romanians were rolled pretty quickly.

[HumanaeVitae]

There's still a monument about 100m west of Moscow to mark the high point of Barbarossa.

I love talking/reading about this battle. Worst battle of the worst war in the history of mankind. Fought between the two most evil men in history for their very own survival. The 62nd Red army--the one that did the house-to-house battle within the city itself--has to be the most valiant fighting force ever (forced to) assemble.

One of the most amazing excerpts of Beevor's 'Stalingrad' is a story he relates of four 62nd Army regulars manning a pillbox in the face of overwhelming German infantry and armor. After they ran out of ammunition, they sent one soldier back to the mortar line with a message (paraphrasing): "Comrades, we are out of ammunition and there are fascists all around us. Please start shelling our position. Goodbye, we did not retreat."

[alex]

"Operation Barbarossa was lost when Hitler ignored Guderian's advice and diverted the main thrust of the attack from a drive to take Moscow immediately, to an offensive in the south to secure the Ukraine. The objective should have been to destroy Stalin's regime, not assure supplies of corn and oil. The war was Hitler's to lose, and his crazy race theories and grand strategy lost it."

Taking Moscow would not destroy Stalin regime.

Again, iniital phase of war with its 3.5 mln POWs showed pretty clear that Red Army soldiers do not have a lot of desire to fight for People's Commissars. In a few critical short months Hitler managed to convince practically everybody that it he is a much much much worse evil than Stalin.

After that the only practical matter was how long it would take Stalin to stop playing general. It took 8 months of war and a couple of real disasters (at Kerch and Kharkov) for him to learn it.

[alex]

"Fought between the two most evil men in history for their very own survival."

It was fight between the German Tribe and a loose union of Slav tribes for their own survival. The German tribe lost and was saved by Western Allies from complete extermination.

And about fight between the two most evil men, Stalin lost is hands down, however, fortunately for all of us Germans were bent on having tribal war with Slavs.

[Burkeman1]

Beevor and Carell are both my sources. Though Carell is German himself and there is a creepy hint of triumphalism and glorification of the German army and it's military accomplishments in his acount of Stalingrad (great pictures though!) without a shred of commentary on atrocities or the reasons the German army was even their.

[Burkeman1]

And while the winter had come early that year it was only late November. Though tired from the offensive of the past fall and summer they were not worn down. The wearing down would occur in the next two months of siege.

PS- have you read Beevor's "Battle for Berlin" yet? Just as good as Stalingrad.

[Burkeman1]

I tend to agree with you. Even if Moscow had fallen the Germans still had one supreme disadvantage - Hitler playing General and his ideologically driven occupation policy. Never before in human history had an enemy army been welcomed with such gratitude by a population only to be fiercely and fanantically hated within days by that same population. Some Nazis saw what Hitler's policy was doing early on- like Ribbentroff- but they were ignored. Even if Moscow had fallen- the German army was not on a full war footing and Hitler would have rebuffed any peace proposal from Stalin (as some say he did in the first months of the war.) It may have taken a year or more longer- but Russia would have prevailed over Germany even if Moscow had been occupied.

[alex]

"Some Nazis saw what Hitler's policy was doing early on- like Ribbentroff- but they were ignored."

They were ignored because Germans as a whole supported Hitler's policies, there is no doubt that Hitler was very popular and commanded huge population support in his own country.

[RightWhale]

the reasons the German army was even their

The German Army wasn't even supposed to be there. It was a natural trap with no military strategic value. Ordering the Army to stay and die was the biggest blunder of the war in the European Theater. News of German capitulation at Stalingrad was a lightning bolt heard instantly around the world. Finally, they were stopped.

[Burkeman1]

NO doubt about that- even until the end there were units that put up fantical resistance in Berlin. But Nazi ideology was not very well defined. When challenged by a student at an elite Nazi youth school to define National Socialism Goering said it was "whatever the Fuhrer commands." There was intense discussion among the Nazis leadership about the policies being carried out in regard to occupation on the "Ost Front". But Hitler's warped little racialistic world view held sway and only the toads who agreed with him got power. Some minor concessions to practicality were made (like using Vlasov and his "free Russians") and the Wermacht disobeyed Hitler's decrees on race purity in the army by using Russians and other minorities extensively as HIWIS or auxilary troops.

[Argus]

In a few critical short months Hitler managed to convince practically everybody that it he is a much much much worse evil than Stalin.

That's what I meant by Hitler's crazy race theories. He considered Germany's natural allies among the Slavs and subject peoples to be untermensch, fit only for slavery and extermination. The fate of eastern Europe, caught between Hitler and Stalin, is the great tragedy of the 20th Century (including the Holocaust as a subset). Given the correlation of forces in the long run, you are right. The Germans never could have "won". But Hitler's strategic failures guaranteed the loss.

[Burkeman1]

No- I don't mean just at Stalingrad. I was talking about Carell and his book. He has a tone that makes it seem the Germans were just all of sudden at war with the USSR and fighting "valiantly" against the "red menence" at Stalingrad. He makes it seem as if the German Army was on some grand anti Boleshevik crusade and that it was just. He never comes out and says it in his book "Stalingrad- the Defeat of the 6th Army"- but he barely mentions or uses words like Nazi- and never once mentions atrocities. He even seems to apologize or rationalize for some of Hitler's tactical and strategic mistakes. It is a good book when it comes to the tactics and what happened on the battlefield but it is a little creepy nonetheless.

[Moose4]

Looking at Beevor's Stalingrad (great book!), the Romanians on Paulus' left flank were attacked on the morning of 19 November by the Soviet 5th Tank Army (8th Cavalry Corps, 1st Tank Corps, 26th Tank Corps) and the 21st Army (4th Tank Corps, 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps). The Romanian divisions south of Stalingrad were hit the next day by the 64th, 57th, and 51st Armies.

It's interesting to read different accounts of the battle. I read Enemy at the Gates a while back and by reading that, you'd get the impression that the Romanians folded like a tent in a hurricane. Beevor is much more complimentary of the Romanians attempting to make a stand, but they were vastly outnumbered, short of anti-tank weapons, had no air support due to the weater, and generally had no chance. They were smashed quite quickly and the Soviets made a remarkable advance, sealing the Germans east of the Don on 26 November.

The world will never see battles again like those in World War II (at least, I pray it's so).

}:-)4