Battle of Stalingrad

Background

The first major military setback for the Third Reich occurred on the outskirts of Moscow at the end of 1941. Left in poor defensive positions, the Soviet Union counter-attacked and drove the Germans back.

The reasons for the scale of the defeat included the Germans' lack of preparation for the harshness of the Russian winter, the overextension of their supply lines across their newly-captured areas, and Hitler's unwillingness to consider retreat.

As the winter continued the situation for the Germans improved as more attention was put on equipping them. Meanwhile newly formed units were being sent forward from Germany, and by the early spring the army should be back in fighting condition. Everyone, the Soviets included, expected them to launch a summer offensive with another massive attack towards Moscow by the German Army Group Center.

However the German generals were aware of their weakness after the losses in front of Moscow, and demanded a more modest offensive. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) developed a plan involving Army Group South in an attack into the Caucasus, cutting Russia in two and capturing the majority of Soviet oil fields and grain producing regions.

This sort of surprise attack over great distances was the hallmark of the Blitzkrieg attack, which sought to avoid direct battle by attacking where least expected and then advancing as fast as possible so the enemy had no chance to plan a defence.

Operation Blue

Their plan, Operation Blue, split Army Group South into two groups. Army Group A consisted of two armies, commanded by Erich von Manstein and von Kleist, who were to attack south towards Rostov, and then fan out through the Transcaucasus heading for the Caspian Sea while taking the oil-fields at Maikop.

Army Group B included Friedrich von Paulus's 6th Army and Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, who would sweep through the corridor between the Don and Volga rivers to arrive on the Volga just north of Stalingrad (known today as Volgograd). Their primary task was to provide a strong northern flank along the Don, while cutting the vital Soviet freight traffic on the Volga.

While the plans were finallized, there was the little detail of the lingering Soviet presense at Sevastopol in the Crimean. The siege of this important city had been dragging on for four months at this point, the the Soviets still had 150,000 men in and around the city. Eventually Operation Blue was suspended to provide more troops for the siege, and the original launch date in May was cancelled.

Manstein was sent south with a number of fresh German and Romanian units under Operation Sturgeon, forming up for action by early June. By the end of the month the siege was over, the Soviets losing all 150,000, but 35,000 on the German/Romanian side as well. The battle was largely over by the 25th, and Operation Blue was released.

Commencing on June 28, 1942, the attack started off well. So well in fact that Hitler felt that the 4th Panzer Army was not needed with Army Group B, and sent them south to join Army Group A. By this point they had passed the 6th Army (as was expected, they were motorized) and had to cross the 6th's path of march on their way south.

The resulting traffic jam took several days to clear. This confusion, along with provisions originally intended for the 6th being given to the 4th instead, slowed the advance towards Stalingrad by almost two weeks. With the advance now delayed, Hitler then changed his mind again and ordered the 4th to rejoin the original line of march.

This delay would prove critical. The slow advance made the target of Army Group B clear to the Soviets, and gave Red Army General Andrei Yeremenko time to consolidate what forces he had into a new line on the eastern bank of the Volga to block them.

He ordered the troops reeling back from the Germans on the western side to head for Stalingrad, leaving the field to the Germans. This did not go unnoticed, von Weichs, in overall command of Army Group B, realised that the Soviets had figured out what was going on. Hitler instead chose to consider the same reports as proof of absolute victory.

By the end of August Army Group B had finally reached the Volga to the north of Stalingrad, before many of the Red Army troops to their south had. von Paulus asked for permission to turn south and take the city as soon as possible, but Hitler refused to allow this until his infantry had caught up to form a defensive line.

This delay would also prove critical, as it allowed the Soviet forces to pour into the city over the next few days, dramatically strengthening its defences.

Rattenkrieg

Units of the Red Army in Stalingrad were quickly organized into the new 62nd Army, under the command of General Lopatin. When Lopatin expressed his fears about the upcoming battle, Yeremenko immediately replaced him with Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, who had previously fought around Stalingrad against the White Army.

Yeremenko directed Chuikov to hold the city at all costs, and issued an order similar to Stalin's own, "Not another step back". Countersigned by Nikita Krushchev, this order was backed up with instructions for the NKVD to shoot anyone who failed to comply.

By September 1st Stalingrad was completely surrounded by the German 6th Army. Chuikov refused to meet the Germans outside the city, and had instead set up a huge number of strongpoints in the houses and factories inside. The Germans found themselves facing dug-in troops, and the battle quickly developed into what the Germans referred to as Rattenkrieg, rat-war.

With both sides promoting a no-retreat, no-surrender policy, intense street fighting ensued � often descending into hand-to-hand bayonet contests � and parts of the city changed hands as many as three or four times a day.

German tactics during the battle increasingly relied on air power to block re-enforcements being sent in from the east side of the river. A running battle started between the Luftwaffe and the VVS and Soviet anti-aircraft guns.

Although German losses were high, they won control of the river. The re-enforcement operations simply switched to moving during the night, thereby eliminating the air threat. Meanwhile attempts were made to start the ground fight moving with increasingly heavy artillery barrages, eventually culiminating in the delivery of several gigantic 600mm mortars, but as time would prove, the Soviets were quick to take up positions in the resulting rubble.

Although losses were heavy, the 6th Army slowly pushed the 62nd back to the Volga. Eventually the Soviet forces were split in two and Chuikov lost communications with the other half. After another two weeks the 62nd Army consisted of less than a division's worth of men in a small sliver of land on the southern end of town, but continued to fight on as much as ever.

The strain on both commanders was immense, von Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, and Chuikov was experiencing an outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely.

In Berlin, the situation frustrated Hitler. He became increasingly convinced that the battle in the city represented the end of the war itself, and the ability to claim that they had captured "Stalin's City" was a victory worth more than the original battle plan.

With grave concerns over the exposed left flank, Franz Halder, chief of the OKW, continued to express his misgivings to Hitler. In mid-October 1942, with no immediate end to the battle in sight, Halder and Hitler quarrelled for the last time. Hitler dismissed Halder, replacing him with the more tractable General Kurt Zeitzler.

Meanwhile the rest of the line was being ignored. While the possibility of a counterattack along the long northern flank on the Don had been discussed on several occasions, Hitler's increasingly irrational orders meant no defensive work could be carried out.

On one particular stretch the line did not actually run on the Don, leaving the Red Army several beachheads directly in front of the Romanian 3rd Army. The 3rd had proven itself in combat at Sevastopol that summer, but were now stretched out along 150 km of the front after taking over from German and Italian units.

The Romanian commander had asked for tanks to clear out the pocket on several occasions, but in vain. His requests for bulldozers to cut through the frozen ground and make defensive works were also refused.

In early November Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights started showing a massive buildup of Red Army units just north of the Romanian 3rd Army, preparing for an offensive on the beachhead.

Increasingly desperate messages dispatched to the OKW from the 6th Army HQ were ignored, or returned with admonishment about getting on with the task at hand. von Paulus eventually gave up asking and moved the 22nd Panzer Division into position south of the Romanians.

However they arrived in terrible condition with only 50 serviceable tanks, but were nevertheless formed up with the only Romanian tank division to form the newly-named 48th Armoured Corps.

Operation Uranus

On November 19, 1942 the Red Army unleashed Operation Uranus. General Vatutin's attacking units consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guard, 5th Tank and 21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorised brigades, six cavalry divisions and one antitank brigade. The vast majority of these units were sent against two points in the Romanian lines.

The Romanian troops conducted an almost miraculous defence and managed to hold the line for one day. The situation was hopeless however, they were outnumbered some 3 to 1 (almost 7 to 1 in tanks), and had little modern equipment to face the fresh units being sent in against them. On the 20th their line had been breached and huge numbers of Red Army divisions started streaming south.

Also on the 20th a second attack was launched to the south of the city against points held by the Romanian 4th Army, made up primarily of cavalry, and this army collapsed almost immediately.

The Soviet attackers met in a pincer movement near Kalach two days later, trapping 300,000 Wehrmacht soldiers of the 6th Army and about half of the 4th Panzer Army in and around Stalingrad, and shattering both Romanian armies in the process.

Hermann G�ring promised that all the necessary supplies for the 6th Army could be delivered by the Luftwaffe. This would allow them to fight on while a ground force was assembled to re-open the line.

If this worked, the tables could be turned, with the Red Army units on the "far side" of the Don suddenly surrounded by troops in the city and newly arriving units from the west.

This strategy had been used to great effect the year before, but on a much smaller scale and during the summer.

Supplying the 6th Army would require 300 tonnes to be delivered each day, and by any count the number of planes needed to achieve this was clearly not available. However the claim, once stated, could not be withdrawn, and Adolf Hitler backed G�ring's plan and re-iterated his order of "no surrender" to his trapped armies.

The supply mission failed almost immediately. The winter weather offerred few occasions when the planes could be flown in, with one or both ends of the flight-path covered in clouds and snow. On days with good weather about 280 tonnes would arrive, but there were only two of these over the next two months. In general only 1/10th of the needed supplies were able to be delivered.

By this point the Red Army had had enough time to set up defences of their own, so any hope of a forced breakout by the 6th Army was now futile.

Meanwhile the forces that had not been trapped were desperately setting up a defensive line along the Don and Chir rivers about 40 miles to the west of the city, organised into the new Army Group Don with von Manstein in command.

Although they were under constant attack by various Red Army units, the Soviets did not exploit this opportunity and focused entirely on taking the city.

By early December 1942 a battlegroup had been formed up southwest of the city from troops withdrawn from the Caucasus. Although these were excellent troops with an excellent commander, by this point they were tired and badly in need of rest and refit.

Moreover the majority of the troops in the Caucasus were left where they were in order to guard their hard-won advances in the months prior. Facing this newly-reinforced 4th Panzer Army was the 2nd Guards Army, one of the Soviet Union's better units.

On 12 December 1942 the Panzers launched their attack towards Stalingrad, but the attack ran out of momentum and stalled some 25 kilometers from the city and was called off on the 23rd. At this point any hope of rescue was dashed.

Operation Neptune

In January the Red Army launched Operation Neptune, another massive attack from the nothern flank, this time against the Italian 8th Army located just to the west of the former Romanian positions. Their aim this time was to drive to Rostov on the Black Sea, thereby cutting off all of Army Group South.

Hitler continued to make repeated "no retreat" demands to the troops, and von Manstein grew so tired of these he eventually demanded to either be left alone or replaced. Hitler relented, and von Manstein started a mobile defence using Panzers as "fire brigades" that would be ordered into holes in the line.

The defence was considerably more successful than might have been expected given the state of the troops, and the Red Army was unable to get anywhere near Rostov. Nevertheless their advance did drive the German lines back further, and now Stalingrad was some 250 km away.

The Battle Ends

Realizing all hope was lost, Friedrich von Paulus, in command of what remained of the 6th Army, started forming plans for surrender. Realising this, and hoping to rescue something of the battle, Hitler promoted him to Field-Marshal on January 30th, 1943. No German Field-Marshall had ever been taken alive in war, and it was hoped this would force him to fight on, or take his own life.

Instead von Paulus saw this as yet another example of Hilter's increasing irrationality. On January 31, 1943 von Paulus ordered the 6th Army to surrender on February 2.

A force of 300,000 was now reduced to only 91,000 tired and starved men. The Soviets force-marched them to detention camps, many dying of starvation on the way. Only some 5,000 would return to Germany after the end of the war.

The historian William L. Shirer, in his history of World War II, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, summarised the importance of the Battle of Stalingrad with these words:

Coupled with El Alamein and the British-American landings in North Africa it marked the great turning point in World War II. The high tide of Nazi conquest which had rolled over most of Europe to the frontier of Asia on the Volga and in Africa almost to the Nile had now begun to ebb and it would never flow back again.

The time of the great Nazi blitz offensives, with thousands of tanks and planes spreading terror in the ranks of the enemy armies and cutting them to pieces, had come to an end.

The Battle of Britain

A major conflict of World War II, the Battle of Britain covers the attempts of the German Luftwaffe to gain control of British airspace and destroy the Royal Air Force (RAF), and, later to demoralise the British population in the hope of either obtaining neutrality or, if that did not occur, make possible the invasion of Britain through the English Channel.

The Luftwaffe began to hit British convoys in the English Channel on July 10, 1940 but the Battle of Britain proper began in August 1940.

After the French collapsed under the Blitzkrieg and surrendered in June, the Germans were not exactly sure what to do next. Adolf Hitler (and the German people) believed the war was over and the Britons would come to terms very soon. Patriotic myth states that stubborn Albion refused to give in. In reality there was a considerable section of the public and politicians who believed it was time to negotiate with Hitler.

Winston Churchill, however, was the master of the Cabinet and would not countenance peace, putting Lord Halifax (one of the pro-peace members of the Cabinet) on the air to reject Hitler's terms.

More direct measures were thought of, but it was not until July that an invasion plan was prepared by the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). The operation, code-named Seel�we (Sea-Lion), planned for an invasion sometime in mid-September. The plan called for landings in the Dover area, first with two airborne divisions, and then with another nine delivered by sea. All preparations were supposed to be made by mid-June to late-August.

Much of the plan relied on makeshift solutions, including the use of river barges as troop transports, and using discarded aircraft engines for motorizing them. Others were better thought out, like swimming tanks or using snorkels on the heavier tanks so they could be landed further out on sea and march to land on the seabed.

Hindsight suggests that the entire operation was not seriously planned with actual execution in mind, especially when compared to the careful planning of Operation Barbarossa.

Regardless it was patently impossible to prepare for the invasaion in two months. Indeed Churchill did not take the invasion threat seriously, sending troops to Africa in the summer of 1940, but he was concerned over the potential air threat and energetic in securing resources for the RAF.

But before Seel�we could begin the Luftwaffe had to destroy the British RAF -- otherwise the ships for the sea invasion would have been destroyed by British aircraft.

Thus a plan was hatched to directly attack the RAF airfields and aircraft production centers, Hermann G�ring called his plans Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack), beginning on August 11 with Adlertag (Eagle Day). But even before this there was to be a month of attacks on Channel convoys and the RAF out over the water. This period of fighting was called Kanalkampf by the Germans.

The British were fully aware of the German goals, strategy, and often even tactics due to their ability to read the German Enigma cypher, which was used for most high-security German military radio communications. This fact, not revealed until the 1970s, was crucial in forming British tactics. They had also killed or turned all German agents in Britain.

The Germans didn't keep using any single strategy, even when it was on the verge of defeating the RAF largely because they didn't have any real idea of its success, but also because Hitler's style encouraged competing interests in the High Command to try their pet theories in tactics.

The Battle can be crudely divided into four sections:

•July - August 11: Kanalkampf
•August 12 - August 24: Adlerangriff
•August 25 - September 6: German's attack RAF planes and airfields almost exclusively. The critical period of the battle
•September 7 onwards: London and other major cities are bombed.
Adlertag began with the Luftwaffe bombing ports, airfields, aircraft industries, radar installations, etc. Over the course of the next weeks, they flew 12,039 sorties and dropped over 11,000 tons of high explosive bombs and over 616 tons of incendiary bombs.

At first, the main targets for the German Luftwaffe were radar installations and airports, in an attempt to destroy (either on the ground, or in the air defending the ground targets) or render useless the British fighter planes.

The attacks against the radar installations were not seen as very successful, and appears that G�ring continued to underestimate the value of the radar to the RAF, and so eventually called off attacks on the stations. In fact the radar was absolutely vital to the RAF and the attacks were generally succeeding -- a fact the RAF masked with a successful deception campaign.

Attacks on the airbases and factories were also successful, but it was largely impossible for the Luftwaffe to assess the damage on these inland targets.

Thanks to radar and the intelligence from the decoded Enigma messages the RAF reacted very effectively to the German raids. Hugh Dowding's communications and infrastructure linking radar and other information sources to the decision makers was arguably as important as radar.

Rather than sending up large numbers of fighters to meet German raids (and thus running the risk of of having all the planes on the ground for refueling and repairs when another raid arrives), British commanders (such as Keith Park of 11 Group) ordered that only a very few fighters up to meet each raid, harassing the German bombers enough to make accurate bombing very difficult and causing far more British losses than German.

Despite the success of Dowding's measured response, soon after the Battle of Britain some proponents of the Big Wing theory would complain that large numbers of RAF fighters should have been gathered together to strike German attacks with greater force.

Because the reasons behind their strategy, the Enigma decrypts, were still secret, Dowding and Park could not defend their actions as they needed to, and were given much lower positions, Keith Park eventually climbing back to lead Malta's air strategy.

Both sides suffered horribly, but British pilot losses were smaller since most of the fights were fought over British soil, whereas every German crew that had to bail out was lost to the German war effort. Also R.J. Mitchell had designed the Spitfire with a lot of thought for pilot safety when attacked.

Thanks to the seemingly endless numbers of planes the Germans had at their disposal, the Fighter Command began to lose this battle of attrition. This remained largely unknown to the Luftwaffe, which was growing desperate to deliver on the original timetable.

What they could see is that for some reason the RAF always had at least a small number of planes to attack with, no matter how many times they sent in a raids. Something needed to be done to force the RAF to commit all of their planes -- or so they thought.

One thing that was sure to force their hand would be to attack a large, very public target. That target was London. The first such raid on 7th of September was intended as revenge for the British attack on Berlin on 25th/26th August, which in turn was a response to a German bomber accidentally dropping bombs on London. Although the docks of London were the main target attacked, the British suffered 448 dead and more than 1,300 wounded.

Together with the change of targets came a change in strategy. The success in the Battle of Britain was no longer seen as prerequisite for Seel�we, but was meant to be decisive in itself. G�ring believed that the British would surrender as soon as the RAF was beaten.

On 16th of September the Germans estimated British fighter strength to be no more than 300 planes, when they actually had 572 Spitfires and Hurricanes. What was even less clear was that switching off of the airfields would allow the RAF to work on their aircraft and allow their pilots rest.

But without a doubt the most damaging aspect of the switch to London was the ranges involved. By the time the German fighters arrived over the city, they were already so low on fuel as to have to turn home. This left all too many raids completely undefended as their fighters turned for home after minor combat on the way to target.

The result was a series of disastrous raids. On September 19th Operation Seel�we was postponed indefinitely. But the battle of Britain was not over.

From October 1940 until the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, almost 40,000 additional sorties were flown and more than 38,000 tons of high explosive bombs and more than 3,500 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped.

Between August and September the RAF stated German losses at 1600 aircraft destroyed and over 500 probables, however despite most of the fighting occurring over land only 315 wrecks were identified. British Fighter Command lost between 900 and 1900 Hurricanes and Spitfires (depending on which figures you care to believe).

Overall the Battle of Britain was a British victory, although on a small scale compared to later battles it was significant, especially in increasing American anti-Nazi opinion.

Although the Germans came very close to beating the RAF and thus setting the prerequisites for Seel�we, the switch to terror strategy allowed the RAF to recuperate and to defend against the attacks. The terror strategy in itself could not force the British to surrender.

Even though the Germans launched some spectacular attacks against important British industries, they could not destroy the British industrial potential.

Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,002 dead and 32,138 wounded with one of the largest single raids occurring on December 29, 1940 in which almost 3000 civilians died.

Battle of Dunkirk "Dynamo"

The Battle of Dunkirk lasted from around May 25 to June 3, 1940. After the Phony War, the Battle of France began in earnest in mid-May 1940.

German armour burst through the Ardennes region and advanced rapidly. The combined British, French and Belgium forces were rapidly split around Armentieres.

The German forces then swept north to capture Calais, holding a large body of Allied soldiers trapped against the coast on the Franco-Belgian border.

It became clear the battle was lost and the question now became how many Allied soldiers could be removed to the relative safety of England before their resistance was crushed.

From May 22 preparations for the evacuation began, codenamed Operation Dynamo, commanded from Dover by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. He called for as many naval vessels as possible as well as every ship capable of carrying 1,000 men within reach.

It initially was intended to recover around 45,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force over two days, this was soon stretched to 120,000 men over five days.

On May 27 a request was placed to civilians to provide all shallow draught vessels of 30 to 100 feet for the operation, that night was the first rescue attempt.

A large number of craft including fishing boats and recreational vessels, together with Merchant Marine and Royal Navy vessels, were gathered at Sheerness and sent to Dunkirk and the surrounding beaches to recover Allied troops.

Due to heavy German fire only 8,000 soldiers were recovered.

Another ten destroyers were recalled for May 28 and attempted rescue operations in the early morning but were unable to closely approach the beaches although several thousand were rescued.

It was decided that smaller vessels would be more useful and boatyards were scoured for suitable craft, gathering them at Sheerness, Chatham and Dover.

The Allied held area was reduced to a 30 sq km block by May 28. Operations over the rest of May 28 were more successful, with a further 16,000 men recovered but German air operations increased and many vessels were sunk or badly damaged, including nine destroyers.

On May 29 there was an unexpected reprieve, the German armour stopped its advance on Dunkirk leaving the operation to the slower infantry, but due to problems only 14,000 men were evacuated that day.

On the evening of May 30 another major group of smaller vessels was dispatched and returned with around 30,000 men.

By May 31 the Allied forces were compressed into a 5 km deep strip from La Panne, through Bray-Dunes to Dunkirk, but on that day over 68,000 troops were evacuated with another 10,000 or so overnight.

On June 1 another 65,000 were rescued and the operations continued until June 4, evacuating a total of 338,226 troops aboard around 700 different vessels.

Why the Second World War Began

This second global conflict resulted from the rise of totalitarian, militaristic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan, a phenomenon stemming in part from the Great Depression that swept over the world in the early 1930s and from the conditions created by the peace settlements (1919–20) following World War I.

After World War I, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were anxious to regain or increase their power; all three eventually adopted forms of dictatorship (see National Socialism and fascism) that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. These three countries also set themselves up as champions against Communism, thus gaining at least partial tolerance of their early actions from the more conservative groups in the Western democracies. Also important was a desire for peace on the part of the democracies, which resulted in their military unpreparedness. Finally, the League of Nations, weakened from the start by the defection of the United States, was unable to promote disarmament (see Disarmament Conference); moreover, the long economic depression sharpened national rivalries, increased fear and distrust, and made the masses susceptible to the promises of demagogues.

The failure of the League to stop the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931 was followed by a rising crescendo of treaty violations and acts of aggression. Adolf Hitler, when he rose to power (1933) in Germany, recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest; in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered (1935–36) Ethiopia for Italy; and from 1936 to 1939 the Spanish civil war raged, with Germany and Italy helping the fascist forces of Francisco Franco to victory. In Mar., 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and in Sept., 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement toward the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Pact.

When Germany occupied (Mar., 1939) all of Czechoslovakia, and when Italy seized (Apr., 1939) Albania, Great Britain and France abandoned their policy of appeasement and set about creating an “antiaggression” front, which included alliances with Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Poland, and speeding rearmament. Germany and Italy signed (May, 1939) a full military alliance, and after the Soviet-German nonaggression pact (Aug., 1939) removed German fear of a possible two-front war, Germany was ready to launch an attack on Poland.

World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany, without a declaration of war, invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, and all the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, except Ireland, rapidly followed suit. The fighting in Poland was brief. The German blitzkrieg, or lightning war, with its use of new techniques of mechanized and air warfare, crushed the Polish defenses, and the conquest was almost complete when Soviet forces entered (Sept. 17) E Poland. While this campaign ended with the partition of Poland and while the USSR defeated Finland in the Finnish-Russian War (1939–40), the British and the French spent an inactive winter behind the Maginot Line, content with blockading Germany by sea.