MYTHS ABOUT THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD

Article published on 29 Jan 2023

       There are a lot of sources of information about the well-known battle. In my opinion, this is the most documented battle in the military history. One can easily find movies, documentaries, books, articles on this matter. Anyone who is interested can find out all kind of details, more or less significant: units and subunits involved, operations, equipment, tactics and so on. Everyone can figure out even details about fights inside certain buildings: names of the subunits, actions performed during different periods of times, sometimes the names of the combatants. Despite all of these, there are still some myths about Stalingrad.

          First myth: the reason for this battle was the name of the city (Stalingrad stands for the Soviet leader’s name, Stalin, and the Russian noun gorad, which means city). Hitler’s ambition to conquer “Stalin’s city” and Stalin’s ambition to defend his honor by keeping the city, led to an awful slaughter. Indeed, it was an awful slaughter. But the real reason was different. The strategic operation conducted by German forces in 1942, in order to occupy the oil fields in Caucasus and Caspian Sea area, had not achieved its purposes. The German HQ tried, by occupying Stalingrad, to disrupt the oil deliveries from the above-mentioned areas to the northern Soviet industrialized areas. The oil was transported on Volga river to north. Stalingrad was an important point in the oil delivery network (maybe the most important, because, at that time, most of the oil used in the Soviet economy was extracted from those oil fields). By occupying the city and the surrounding areas, the German forces would have provoked the collapse of both the soviet economy and armed forces. That is why none of the parties wanted to cede. The result of war could be established there. The city itself was an industrial base, too.

          The second myth: The Soviet HQ let the German forces to move toward Stalingrad and even encouraged them to do so, and also allowed them to occupy a part of the city, in order to use them in urban operations, provoking huge losses in terms of personnel and equipment. Some also think that the Soviets did not evacuate civilians intentionally, in order to better motivate their combatants to fight. On contrary, the reality was that the Soviets were not interested to allow Germans troops to reach the city because this could affect the oil deliveries for the industrial bases. The columns of German troops on their way to Stalingrad were noticed late, by an air patrol, and the Soviet organized the defense of the city in emergency. This is why the Germans took the city quite easily. If one can accuse the Soviets that did not evacuate the civilians intentionally, he or she cannot say the same about the industrial equipment. The Soviets were very interested to evacuate it far away but they did not have enough time. They evacuated some installations, but most of them remained on place. Many factories (one of them produced tanks) were functioning during the urban combats.  For sure, some of the civilians were evacuated, but many of them remained inside the city. Is is very complicated to evacuate over 450,000 people under the German Air Force fire.

          The third myth: general Paulus, the 6^th Army commander, obeyed Hitler’s order to hold the lines in the city and did not try to break away, when a task force consisting of German troops and allied forces succeeded to break through the Soviet lines and were at about 50 km away from the besieged troops. I cannot find any logical argument in this. The operation Winter Storm, planned by general Manstein to relieve the besieged army, would not have been conducted without Hitler’s approval. Basically, Paulus should have sent some of his troops to break the Soviet lines from inside and to make the link-up. But this was not possible.  Because general Paulus, after the Soviet offensive, was reorganizing the troops and redeployed them in order to repel any other attack. He also needed to adjust the logistic system, accordingly. It is clear that the German intelligence failed and could not figure out if the Soviet forces were planning new offensive actions. This is why the German HQ in Stalingrad needed to assign the available units to defend all the lines. If most of the German forces had left the city, the Soviets would have launched attacks form the enclaves located on the Volga river right bank, which they succeeded to keep by sustaining huge losses. Basically, the Germans were preparing an all-around defense. This was a complex activity, taking into consideration all the aspects involved: disorganized units, little resources available, cold weather, many wounded PAX, subunits which ignored orders and were trying to leave the area and so on. They needed time to reorganize everything. For these reasons, they could not conduct operations to break through the Soviet lines. All they could was to hold the lines, to wait for air supply and other forces to break through the Soviet lines from outside the encirclement. It was not needed Hitler’s decision for this. There was no other way.

          Well....one can say, but look a counter argument: The Soviet forces pointlessly kept enclaves on the Volga river right bank. Their losses were useless. In order to keep the enclaves, they sustained huge losses due to the German repeatedly attacks. The troops and equipment necessary to defend the lines were brought by crossing Volga river, under the German Air Force and artillery fire, which caused losses. At the tactical level, those enclaves were useless. The Soviets forces fighting there were not able to stop the enemy’s operations. The German forces could engage every asset floating on the river and far behind the river. The soviet lines on the right bank became “meat grinders”. It was just a matter of ambition, obviously.

          At the tactical level, yes, it seems so. But at the strategical level, those enclaves were very important. What happened? The German troops movement toward Stalingrad took the Soviets by surprise. They could not counter it but tried to do their best to defend the city and succeeded to keep some strongpoints on the right bank, although this cost them a lot in matter of personnel and means. In order to eliminate them, the Germans had to maintain many units inside the city and tasked the allied forces (which were inferior in matter of equipment and motivation) to keep the flanks. There were few German units assigned to support the allied troops in case of emergency. After the Soviets blocked most of the German forces inside the city, they enjoyed freedom of movement and conducted efficient offensive operations. In this way, they succeeded to break through the allied lines and to encircle the city. Their main advantage: enough space for maneuvers and time.

          After they encircled the German forces in Stalingrad, the Soviet Army did not rush to neutralize them, although this operation could be, most probably, successful. German troops were reorganizing and part of them were in disorder. But the Soviet HQ preferred just to consolidate the own lines. In this way, they forced the German HQ to gather a task force assigned for saving the encircled army. To do this, they took all the South-Eastern front reserves, from Stalingrad to Caucasus. The German Air Force did the same: they brought airplanes from different areas of operations in order to set up an air bridge and to support the ground operations. However, due to the rush, all these operations failed. The troops deployment was very quick, despite the lack of information about the Soviet forces. The air bridge could not provide enough support. They needed many planes and the losses were high. A large number of fighters were deployed to protect the transportation planes, to attack the Soviet flaks and to perform close air support for encircled troops. The failure of Winter Storm operation and air bridge had serious consequences: without reserves and relying on few air assets, German HQ was compelled to retreat all the forces from Caucasus and Cuban. They could not know if the Soviets intended to conduct other strategic operations while there were not enough forces to counter them. The whole front started to retreat and the encircled troops in Stalingrad were sacrificed: they had to hold up, to keep the Soviet forces busy, to not allow them to disrupt the retreat of all the other forces from the South-Eastern front.