For Nazi Germany, 1941 was a disaster.
After invading the Soviet Union in June, they had expected to defeat the Red Army in 6 weeks.
“We have only to kick in the door,” said Adolf Hitler “and the whole rotten structure
will come crashing down.”
But he was wrong.
By December, German forces had been held at the gates of Moscow, before being thrown back
by the Soviet winter counter-offensive.
And there were even bigger problems.
Germany had previously relied on the Soviets themselves for supplies of raw materials.
But now, at war with their former ally, those supplies were running short.
Worst of all however, in December of 1941 the United States entered the war of the Allies
side.
Above all, Hitler feared a war on two fronts, particularly against the industrial power
of the United States.
His window of opportunity to win the war was closing fast.
To defeat the US and its huge material superiority, Hitler needed to finish off the USSR quickly.
Germany’s insatiable need for raw materials was a key driver of the campaign in the East.
In particular, oil but Germany had nowhere near enough.
For Hitler the extensive oilfields of the southern Caucasus were the key to victory,
without them the war could not be won.
The campaign to capture that oil would culminate in the bloodiest battle of the Second World
War, the Battle of Stalingrad.
But although it is seen by many as the turning point of the entire war, the outcome of the
battle may have been decided well before the Germans even reached the city.
To find out why, we need to go right back to the inception of plan.
The German army that invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 was massive, the largest invading
force ever assembled to that point.
But a year later, that force was stretched over a huge frontline, over 2,500km long.
Army Group North’s siege of Leningrad was in full swing, and Army Group Centre was under
constant attack from Soviet forces around the city of Rzhev.
That meant that, for this supposedly war winning offensive Army Group South could only pull
together 72 German divisions – around 1m million men.
The Operation, codenamed Fall Blau or Case Blue, took place in stages.
First, Axis forces would breakthrough Soviet Lines, capture the city of Voronezh, and encircle
the Soviet forces in Eastern Ukraine.
Having destroyed them, Army Group South would split in two.
Army Group B would race to Astrakhan to create a blocking line along the rivers Don and Volga,
before Army Group A turned south towards to oilfield at Maikop and Grozny.
Having captured the farmlands of eastern Ukraine and the oilfields of the caucuses, Hitler
believed that Germany would have resources it needed to stay in the war and take the
fight to the US.
Additionally, by denying those resources to his enemy, he hoped to cause a collapse in
the Soviet war machine in the following year.
It was great in theory, but the plan had multiple flaws.
There were big problems with the plan for Operation Blau.
Logistics and supplies were already strained to breaking point.
The distances to be covered were vast, and the Germans did not have the resources to
capture it.
Instead, Hitler had to supplement his own forces with those of his allies – mainly
Romanians and Italians.
While substantial in number the Axis allied forces were relatively poorly equipped.
They did not for example have the benefit of the Flak 88 gun such as the one behind
me which the Germans used very effectively used in its anti-tank role.
And finally, Hitler had once again underestimated his opponent.
The Soviets could field over a million more fighting troops than the Germans and were
creating new air and tank armies all the time.
Making Blue a success would be a difficult challenge.
On the 28th of June 1942, Operation Blau began.
The Germans had anticipated tough Soviet resistance, but Stalin was expecting another attack towards
Moscow and his forces in the South were relatively weak.
When the Germans attacked, the Red Army fled before them in a retreat come rout.
In just over a week Voronezh was captured and it seemed that Soviet forces in the south
were finished.
Phase two began on the 9th of July, ahead of Schedule, as German forces moved on towards
Rostov and the Don bend.
Here they had planned to encircle and destroy the Soviets, but the Red Army continued to
retreat, and the German pincers came up empty.
At the same time back in Germany, Adolf Hitler was getting increasingly worried about the
Western Allies opening a second front.
Indeed, Allied forces would land at Dieppe on the French coast just a few weeks later.
But now, seeing the Red Army disintegrate before him, it seemed that there was nothing
standing in the way of his ultimate objective.
And so, on the 23rd of July 1942, Hitler changed the plan for Operation Blau and in so doing,
changed the course of history.
Both Army groups were now instructed to go for their objectives at the same time.
While Army Group A raced off towards the caucuses, Army Group B was given a new task.
Before setting up their blocking line from Astrakhan along the Don, Friedrich Von Paulus’s
6th Army was expected to take the city of Stalingrad.
From which they could intercept Soviet oil shipments moving up the Volga.
Splitting his forces like this was risky, but Hitler was so confident in victory that
he actually took units away from Army Group South and send them to Army Groups Centre
and North.
The troops left to carry out these new orders did not have things easy.
Due to food shortages in Germany and the increasing difficulties of getting rations to the front,
the German Army in the East was expected to live mainly off the land.
But the destruction or absence of crops and other foodstuffs made this very difficult,
even with ruthless requisitioning from the rural population.
6th Army was already forced to eat their horses well before they even reached Stalingrad.
Despite the problems, Army Group A continued to make rapid progress against only scattered
Soviet forces.
On August 10th they reached the oilfields at Maikop – but found the wells destroyed
by Soviet engineers.
Repairing them would take time.
But Army Group B did not have things so easy.
They were slowed by logistical problems and by Soviet forces finally starting to get their
act together.
The Red Army held Paulus’s men for 3 weeks, taking terrible casualties but inflicting
heavy attrition on the German forces also.
This forced Hitler to divert units from Army Group A to speed things up, only when they
arrived was 6th Army able to resume its advance.
After crossing the Don on the August 23rd, they reached the northern suburbs of Stalingrad
– they were in for the fight of their lives.
The defence of Stalingrad was entrusted to 62nd Army under the command of General Vasily
Chuikov.
A veteran of the `Winter War’ between the USSR and Finland at the start of WW2, during
which his 9th Army suffered humiliating defeat.
Chuikov had a point to prove with Stalin therefore, he was determined that Stalingrad should not
fall to the Germans.
As the fight for the city got underway, a large proportion of Stalingrad’s civilian
population remained.
Surviving or dying in the ruins of their homes, Stalingrad’s people would share in the Red
Army’s fight.
The scene was set for one of the most desperate battles of the war.
The Battle of Stalingrad began with a huge barrage of the city, reducing it to rubble.
This took a terrible toll of the civilian population but failed to destroy the cities
defences and caused more problems that it solved.
The ruined buildings and rubble-strewn streets hindered the German advance whilst favouring
the Soviet defence.
Stalingrad was the Germans’ first real taste of urban warfare, a very different experience
from the `Blitzkrieg’ that had brought them this far.
The Red Army proved itself to be the superior practitioner of urban warfare.
Red Army snipers competed amongst themselves to inflict heavy casualties on the German
soldiers.
Perhaps even more than its actual toll on German lives, sniperism’s most effective
impact was the fear it created amongst German troops and a consequent reluctance to move
in the open during daylight.
By the end of September, the city had turned into a meatgrinder of huge propaganda value.
Hitler became obsessed with the citie’s capture, pouring more and more men into the
fight.
While Stalin himself expended huge losses ensuring ‘his city’ did not fall.
Meanwhile, outside of Stalingrad, the Red Army mounted constant counterattacks.
They failed to breakthrough, but Axis forces were stretched thinner and thinner.
Further south, Army Group A was also running into stiff Soviet resistance, and with most
of its aircraft diverted to Stalingrad, the Soviet air force now had the upper hand . Worst
of all were the logistical problems which affected all of Army Group South.
There were only 3 single track railway lines to Stalingrad, which weren’t fully converted
to the German gauge.
Despite running at full capacity there was a huge tailback of trains waiting to get to
Stalingrad.
This left 6th Army with shortages of ammunition, food, fuel, and spare parts for its tanks
and aircraft.
Paulus was hamstrung.
He needed more manpower to take the city, but he could barely supply the men that he
already had.
A problem the Soviets did not seem to have.
Against expectations, Chuikov’s forces received substantial reinforcements of war materiel
and other supplies across the Volga river into the.
This vital lifeline ensured that 62nd Army could hold the city.
Meanwhile the Germans could not match these replacements and reinforcements.
The Germans were at a disadvantage in other respects too.
Their panzers were numerically and technically inferior to Soviet T-34s like this one behind
me.
Ours is a later model, but you can still see its distinctive sloped armour which provided
enhanced protection with a lower armour thickness.
Hitler’s own armoured warfare specialists considered it to be the best tank they had
ever encountered.
As winter arrived Army Groups and A and B were running out of steam.
The Luftwaffe was forced to bomb the oilfields at Grozny to deny them to the Soviets.
Meanwhile, 6th Army in Stalingrad was exhausted, their units fighting on empty.
Still by mid-November they had captured 90% of the city, while Soviet forces clung on
by their fingernails to thin strips of land along the Volga.
Conditions for all side were grim.
Here we have a selection of letters, photographs and other documents belonging to Fritz Luederitz,
one of the German soldiers fighting in Stalingrad.
Like many Germans in their underground hideaways, he describes how they celebrate Christmas
as best they can, singing the traditional carols and writing to their loved ones in
the hope that the next Christmas might be a better one.
In an improvised ceremony beneath the ruins, Fritz tied the knot of marriage with his fiancée
by proxy, perhaps in the expectation that he may never see her again.
He was indeed later reported as missing presumed dead.
By this point Operation Blau had all but failed.
The oilfields were either destroyed or in Soviet hands, Axis logistics were at breaking
point, and their forces overextended on a front more than 4,000km long.
Worse, the Soviet forces which Hitler believed he had vanquished remained on the field of
battle They had been growing in strength all the
time and were now ready to launch an all-out attack to take advantage of the vulnerable
Axis position – Operation Uranus.
On the 19th and 20th of November, two huge Soviet pincers swung out from the North and
East of Stalingrad.
The force of over a million men, 1,500 aircraft and 800 tanks went up against thinly spread
and poorly equipped Axis allied forces.
Though the Romanian troops fought well, they were unable to resist the onslaught and Soviet
tanks poured in behind German lines.
With limited reserves to stem the tide, Axis forces were forced to pull back and on November
23rd the Soviet pincers met at the town of Kalach.
6th Army was now encircled – Hitler’s gamble to win the war had become a disaster.
So we have here a copy of the message which Hitler sent to his beleaguered forces in an
attempt to boost their morale “in these difficult hours my thoughts and those of the
entire German people are with you!”
the Fuehrer assured them: “Everything that lies in my power will be done to support you
in your heroic struggle”.
But the practical support Hitler could actually provide was far too little and far too late.
Despite their weakness, many German commanders wanted 6th Army to attempt a breakout from
the Stalingrad.
But no attempt was made - Hitler was not willing to give up the city.
Instead, he organised a Luftwaffe airlift to supply the encircled men and a relief force
under Erich Von Manstein to relieve them.
But neither had the strength or resources to succeed.
When Soviet forces attacked again in Operation Little Saturn, breaking though Italian lines,
the relief attempt was abandoned.
As Army Group A withdrew from the Caucasus, 6th Army were left on their own.
By the end of January 1943, the starved, frozen and disease-ridden remnants of 6th Army had
no other choice but to give up the fight.
In a final ironic twist of fate, at the very moment he was preparing to surrender his forces
to the Soviets, Hitler promoted von Paulus to Field Marshal.
When this failed to stiffen his resolve to fight on, the Fuhrer expected von Paulus to
commit suicide, as no German Field Marshal had ever been captured alive before, but von
Paulus refused.
Although resistance inside the city would continue for many months longer, the battle
for Stalingrad was over.
Between August 1942 and January 1943 some half a million Axis soldiers were taken prisoner,
wounded or killed in and around Stalingrad.
Over 200.000 POWs went into Soviet captivity, but only the lucky ones, including von Paulus
himself, would return to their homeland.
Soviet casualties were much higher, at well over a million.
Deaths account for around half that number.
Some 14,000 Red Army soldiers (the equivalent of 2 or 3 Soviet divisions) were deliberately
killed by their own side, shot by special units of the Security Police for `cowardice’
or other un-Soviet behaviour.
An estimated 40 – 45,000 civilians were also killed inside the city during the fighting.
It was the bloodiest battle of the Second World War.
Stalingrad did have significant impacts on the course of the war, all to Hitler’s detriment.
It marked the high tide of his ambitions in the East, after which retreat and defeat were
irreversible.
It marked too the coming of age of the USSR as a military power, set to challenge the
Western Allies for the spoils of a vanquished Nazi Germany.
Domestically, Hitler’s already tarnished image as the inspired battlefield strategist
was further eroded.
Not even the public relations genius of Joseph Goebbels could hide the catastrophe from
the German public.
This was a milestone on the road to the July 1944 bomb plot against him.
In truth, the odds were already stacked against Nazi Germany well before Operation Blau and
the battle of Stalingrad took place.
The plan was a risky one and they had neither the forces or logistics to pull it off.
Meanwhile their Soviet opponents were growing in strength, and despite immense sacrifices,
were able to take advantage of the German situation.
The entire campaign was another gamble of the kind that Hitler had become used to winning
early in the war, but was now increasingly losing at great cost.
At the same time Germany’s fortunes elsewhere were also receiving fatal setbacks.
Axis forces were routed at El Alamein, and major Allied landings in French North Africa
set the scene for the collapse of Hitler’s Italian ally.
Germany’s war was now a defensive one, increasingly desperate, and with only one likely outcome.