Field marshal Friedrich Paulus sat in his makeshift headquarters in the basement of the Univermag department store in the heart of the Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. In his eyes, and on his face, he wore the weariness of his doomed struggle. His uniform was still clean and in good condition, yet his hands drooped casually to his side in a transparent signature of defeat. The fifty-two year old General carried no field marshal’s baton despite having that honoured conferred upon him only minutes earlier by the Führer. At the door stood the Russians. Despite his exhaustion and helplessness, he raised himself out of his seat to greet the enemy. He had held out to the last possible moment, as ordered, but he would not commit suicide as Hitler had intended. He knew that his part in the war was over.

Paulus was in no doubt aware, as soon the whole world would be, to the significance of the disaster that had befallen his forces. The mighty 6th Army, which just three months earlier had been the strongest military formation in the world, had been reduced to an emaciated wreck. It would soon become clear that the German defeat at Stalingrad marked the turning point in the greatest of all wars. The events that had started on November 19th 1942, had led to the greatest defeat in German history, and the destruction of Paulus’ army would forever change the world.

BLITZKRIEG

Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers in formation over enemy territory. The Stuka proved an essential and terrifying component of the Blitzkrieg in the early years of the war.

Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. Over the next 6 years, he put in place a plan to return the German military to a dominant position in Europe through which he intended to expand both German borders and influence. Hitler’s conceptions of race led to his desire to establish a new order in Europe, with a resurgent Germany as the continent’s leading nation. In his view, the communist Soviet Union, and it’s subhuman inhabitants, would need to be eliminated and the land absorbed into the Reich if Germany was to become the self-sufficient master of the world.

In the new and unstable Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, having come to power through adept and ruthless political manipulation in the late 1920s had done much to industrialize the backwards communist state. His reign had, by the start of the war, already resulted in the deaths of millions of Soviet civilians, but at the same time had sewed the seeds that would lead to eventual Soviet triumph over the Nazi invaders. The disastrous effects of his vast political purges on the Soviet population and administration, would contribute to the Soviet calamity in the early years of the war.

The Second World War started on September 1st, 1939. German armoured spearheads, the Panzers (the German word for ‘armour’ or ‘armoured vehicle’, commonly used to refer to tanks), the centrepiece of a new tactical masterpiece developed in the pre-war years by the German general staff, pierced through brave, yet hopelessly outmatched Polish resistance. Above the advancing armour, the Luftwaffe relentlessly attacked military and strategic strongpoints, and provided tactical support for the advancing tanks and infantry. In vast sickles strokes, the Panzers cut forward into the Polish heartland like great scythes, penetrating hundreds of miles into the enemy rear. The unprepared and slow-moving Polish troops soon found themselves outflanked and surrounded, and their forces eliminated by the follow-up infantry armies. Within weeks, Warsaw had fallen, and the Germans were able to claim a stunningly swift victory over their eastern neighbours. This was the advent of modern warfare, and Poland was its testing ground.

German cavalry parade before the Arc de Triumph in Paris. The German defeat of French and English forces on the continent in six weeks stands as one of the most impressive military victories in history.

The swift German victories repeated itself again in the low countries and France, where numerically and technologically superior French and British forces were routed and driven into the sea at Dunkirk, and then again in the Balkans and Greece. By 1941, not two years since the start of the war, Hitler’s Germany controlled the largest European empire since that of the Romans. When his Luftwaffe was unable to bomb the British into defeat, an overconfident and arrogant Hitler, despite the pleas from his general staff, turned his designs eastwards, towards the Soviet Union. To conquer this vast country would not just eliminate the great philosophical enemy of his Third Reich, but also the only real military threat left to Germany on the continent. In turn, the conquered Soviet Union would provide the German people with the great agricultural base of the Ukraine, which Hitler intended to harness as the breadbasket of his Empire.

Despite constant protest from his leading Generals, Hitler pressed forward urgently for a consolidation of the plans for an invasion of Russia. Dismissing several ideas, he finally landed upon a three-pronged attack into the Soviet Union. Army Group North would strike towards the old Czarist capital of St. Petersburg (at the time renamed Leningrad), Army Group Centre would attack towards Moscow, the capital and nerve-centre of the Soviet Union, and the weaker Army Group South would rush into the Ukraine, attempt to capture the capital of Kiev, and cross the River Dnieper. The plan was code named Operation Barbarossa.

BARBAROSSA

German armour prepares to advance near the Soviet frontier. The concentration of armour was a new tactic employed by the Wehrmacht to fantastic success.

At 4:00AM on June 22, 1941, after months of careful planning and secret preparation, nearly four million Axis troops crossed the frontier into Russia along a 2,900 kilometre front unprecedented in world history. Again, as in the campaigns of Poland and France, the combined use of infantry, aircraft, and concentrated tank formations resulted in one of the greatest victories of all time. In the coming weeks, the highly-trained and battle-experienced Wehrmacht would win some of it’s greatest and most famous battles.

In the north, the German Army Group North advanced rapidly into the baltic states and towards Leningrad. Initially hit hard by a massive Soviet counterattack, Erich von Manstein’s 4th Panzer army struck north, and in a coup, overtook the retreating Soviet armies and gained control of the bridgeheads across the Dvina River. By late August, they had reached the Leningrad Oblast and prepared to besiege the capital of the Czars.

Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners were captured in the great encircling movements of Operation Barbarossa. Most would die in captivity behind the front line fighting.

In the middle of the seemingly endless front, the generals Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth of Army Group Centre completed vast encircling movements around stunned and impotent Russian armies. The Soviets, who had been ordered not to retreat and fight in their positions to the last man by Stalin, were easily surrounded as the Panzer forces struck deep into the Soviet heartland, and their encircled forces were relentlessly reduced by attacks from the follow-up infantry. On July 27th, just over a month after the beginning of the invasion, Hoth and Guderian’s armoured spearheads met up east of Smolensk, trapping over 300,000 Soviet soldiers in a gigantic pocket. This titanic victory, among other stunning achievements in the centre of the front forced the remaining Soviet forces – often against orders from Stalin – to retreat east in the direction of Moscow in an effort to preserve their strength for a final stand around the ancient Russian capital.

In the Ukraine too, Army Group South achieved stunning victories. Between June 23 and 30, in the vicinity of the Ukrainian town of Brody, the 11th Panzer Division under the generalship of Paul Ludwig von Kleist, which had penetrated deep into Soviet territory, fended off simultaneous attacks from every direction from five Soviet armies in one of the fiercest engagements of the campaign. The miraculous victory was made even more impressive by the fact that the Russians had committed for the first time their T-34 and KV-1 tanks, both of which were far superior to the German Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks employed at the time. In the end, Kleist’s 700, matched against an overwhelming force of 3500 Soviet tanks, had destroyed 800 enemy tanks for a mere 200 losses of their own.

Field marshal Erich von Manstein (centre) discusses the campaign with subordinate officers in his staff. Manstein, the man who formulated the invasion of France, would prove to be one of Germany’s premier generals in the Second World War, and was particularly adept at aggressive tank warfare.

By the end of the summer, German forces had captured hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners, and had pushed back Soviet forces on every front. However, despite their unparalleled successes, the German armies were, by late September, at the extreme limit of their operational range. Their supply lines, stretching back to Germany, thousands of miles in the rear of the fighting, were near breaking point, and often times the Panzer formations at the tip of the advance were held up for days without fuel. As the advance of the armies gradually become more and more difficult as the transportation of ammunition and materiel to the front seized up, the advance slowed, and eventually ground to a halt. Further complicating the issues caused by the immense distances covered but he supply lines were the horrid conditions of the Russian roads, particularly after heavy rains. Most Russian roads were still not paved, and German trucks often became bogged down in the mud, requiring enormous effort to get them moving again.

Georgy Zhukov, who organized the successful defence of Leningrad, Moscow, and later, Stalingrad, would prove to be the Soviet Union’s most able commander as the war progressed. His troops were first to enter Berlin in 1945.

After a short pause in which to resupply and reorganize his armies, on October 2nd, Hitler launched Operation Typhoon. Typhoon pitted the forces of Feder von Bock and the brilliant Heinz Guderian, against those of Georgy Zhuvok, the masterful Soviet general responsible for organizing the successful defence of Leningrad, and Aleksandr Vasilevsky. The goal was a direct drive straight towards Moscow. As the German attack progressed, the Russian weather broke, and the horrendous state of the unpaved roads led to the stalling of the powerful German attack. Adding to the misfortune the Russian winter, one of the coldest on record, set in, and German soldiers found themselves in summer clothing and without proper supplies to brave the extreme cold. The Russian winter that had once defeated Napoleon, intervened again. After a successful Soviet counterattack in the deep freeze, Moscow would breathe easy, at least until the spring thaw.

THE STATE OF THE ARMIES

German soldiers consistently proved themselves as most professional and effective troops of the war, particularly in the war’s opening phases.

Hitler had announced, in preparation for the offensive into Russia, that ‘all you need to do is kick down the door, and the whole rotting edifice will come crashing down’. He believed that the Blitzkrieg, if it could catch the Soviet armies close to the border and destroy them, could win a stunning victory over a ponderous and ineffective Soviet Union in a matter of weeks. Hitler’s general staff protested relentlessly against the notion of attacking the Soviet Union, but the führer ultimately had final say in military matters. Many generals did share Hitler’s beliefs that the Red Army was incapable of mountain a successful operation against the Wehrmacht, but felt that the logistical problems were too great, and the distances too far. Hitler saw the Russians as subhuman, and weak; if he had beaten France and England in just over a month, despite the protests of his generals then, Russia would fall too. The embarrassing showing of the Red Army against Finland between 1939 and 1940 had further contributed to Hitler’s lack of respect for the Soviet forces. This thinking trickled down into the army, creating a distinct air of superiority.

That being said, the German soldier at the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union had reason to think himself superior, at least in fighting capability, to his Soviet counterpart. The average German soldier in the spring of 1941 was professional, disciplined, and a veteran of several successful campaigns against powerful western European nations. In training and preparation, the Wehrmacht was unmatched by any army in the world, and the far-thinking innovative strategies and tactics put forth first theoretically and then in practice by a list of brilliant generals – Manstein, Guderian, Rommel, and Kleist, to name a few – had in the preceding years already won some of the greatest victories in European history. The German army as a whole was incredibly well organized and extremely aggressive. Adept co-ordination between the infantry, armour, and the Luftwaffe would contribute to successful campaigns in the first three years of the war.

Furthermore, German generals and officers, particularly in this time period, were given a great deal of operational freedom, and were often free to make important decisions for their respective armies in the field. Hitler was still, in 1941, open to some criticism and advice from generals that had proved themselves in combat, but increasingly he began to take control of events himself at the detriment of the German armies. Later in the war, particularly after the reverses at Stalingrad and Kursk, his belief and confidence in his own understanding of military matters led him to dismiss generals that challenged the logic of his orders, replacing them with less-gifted sycophants.

Soviet soldiers, though not as well trained as those of the German army, proved their bravery and resilience on the battlefield. They gained increasing respect from their German counterparts as the war progressed.

The commanders of the Soviet army, however, found themselves hamstrung at the beginning of the war in the east by and overbearing and inept influence from Stalin and the Soviet political government. Joseph Stalin, a cruel, cold, and merciless leader, retained overall strategical control of the Russian forces, and, despite his lack of military training, often interfered in the affairs of Stavka, the Soviet high command. In the years directly proceeding the war, in 1937, he had ruthlessly purged the Soviet army executing massive percentages of officers and generals. The army, without effective leadership in the wake of the military purges, had fared horribly against the Finns in the Winter War of 1939-1940. The Soviet struggles against Finland helped convince Hitler of the general ineptitude of Soviet forces. Furthermore, Stalin’s decision to order Soviet troops in the opening phases of Barbarossa to stand their ground once surrounded and fight to the last man, resulted in calamitous defeats, as German pincers closed around giant pockets of hundreds and thousands of helpless Soviet troops.

The Soviet army did however, contrary to popular understanding, outnumber the Germans drastically in terms of tanks, aircraft, and motorized transports. While many of these were outdated technologically, it must be noted that the Soviets had, in 1941, introduced a series of new tanks that far outclassed their German counterparts. The T-34, arguably the best overall tank design of the Second World War (and possibly of all time) was first introduced during the climactic Battle of Brody in the Ukraine during the opening phases of Barbarossa. The Germans quickly learned that they had neither the firepower on their existing tanks, nor with their field artillery to pierce the sloping armour of the new Russian tank. Only with the fantastic 88mm FlaK cannon, or by knocking out it’s treads and engaging with infantry were the Germans able to effectively take out the T-34 and it’s heavier counterpart, the KV-1. Soviet armour was undone in the opening battles primarily by poor tactics, lack of coordination between vehicles, and the failure of the Red Army to concentrate their tanks in enough density to engage the German armoured spearheads.

The average Soviet soldier had by the start of the German attack on Stalingrad, lived up to his reputation as hardy, steadfast, and loyal. In the frozen battle of Moscow, and in the fierce battles in the Russian interior, Soviet troops, despite being nowhere near as well trained as their German counterparts, proved their bravery and endurance in more than one occasion, and soon earned the begrudging respect of their enemies, despite being pushed further and further east. Most were peasants from the vast rural countryside of the Soviet Union, which had endured so horribly under the brutal rule of Stalin, however, when called to defend the motherland, they fought patriotically and with little regard for their individual selves against the invaders. The Red Army leadership was initially brutal and capricious, and often times summary executions of Soviet soldiers would be conducted for retreating, misinterpreting orders, and general operational failures. Loyalty was demanded by fear of brutal and swift punishment.

By the beginning of the German campaign against Stalingrad, the Red Army leadership, had, however, learned from the mistakes of 1941. Stalin was less inclined to overrule his general staff, and the Russian generals had finally been given permission by the Secretary General to enact fighting tactical retreats if the situation called for them. This meant that German armies could advance hundreds of kilometres, burning precious fuel, and straining already over-stretched supply lines for little or no actual gain; the Soviet armies would simply keep backing up. Gone also was the disastrous and overbearing influence of the communist political commissars in the army, removed by Stalin when it was found that their influence was seriously undermining the ability of Soviet commanders to make decisions on the battlefield. However, punishments were still severe, and cowardice and desertion were met with summary execution. Despite working to undermine morale, often times – particularly in the fiercest encounters of the campaign – Soviet troops fought desperately and with frenzied determination to the last man in fear of both the enemy, and their commanding officers.

CASE BLUE

The soldiers of the German army were shocked and eventually worn down by the vast expanse of the Russian steppes; their emptiness and bleakness contributing to a general disillusionment as the war progressed.

After the German reverse and near-collapse outside Moscow in the winter of 1941/42, both Soviet and German armies entered a period of relative calm in order to recoup their losses, reorganize their remaining forces, and bring up reserves. Hitler, convinced the Red Army was near collapse, was ever more determined to land a knockout blow on the Soviet forces. He supported a plan to attack through the Ukraine to cut off Russian river traffic on the Volga river, and at the same time capture the oil fields in the Caucuses. The plan was called Case Blue, and preparations began in the spring for a major offensive in the direction of Rostov, and later, Stalingrad. Hitler’s primary objective in attacking in the southern Soviet Union was economic. Germany, as a relatively small nation with no domestic source of oil depended heavily on the Romanian oil fields. When it became clear that, with a Soviet and American trade embargo, Romania’s reserves would not satisfy the army’s fuel needs, Hitler became convinced that the his most pressing aim was the capture of the oil fields of the Caucuses.

Case Blue failed in inflicting a decisive defeat upon the retreating Soviet armies before they reached the Volga River. Every Soviet soldier that avoided capture in the German pincer movements would be able to fight again at Stalingrad.

Case Blue opened on the morning of June 28th, 1942. Army Group B, composed of 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army attacked eastward, towards the bend of the Don river in the southern Ukraine, while Army Group A, composed of the 1st Panzer Army and 17th Army attacked to the south. They quickly captured the major town and rail junction of Rostov in a bitter fight with Soviet rearguards, employed to delay the German advance so to allow the five Soviet armies in the region to retreat past the Don river. As the Soviet forces continued to retreat in the path of the advancing Germans, Hitler, once again, underestimated the power of the Red Army. In believing that the Russian tactical withdrawal from the path of his advancing armies in the Don bend to be a symptom of an impending Soviet military collapse in the region, he sent the 4th Panzer Army south to aid the push into the Caucuses, severely weakening 6th Army in its push towards Stalingrad.

A German tank commander surveys the endless steppe. On his head are radio headphones, and on his throat, the neck microphones used by the German military. The German use of radio between tanks led to far better coordination than was achieved between Soviet units.

Hitler had enacted his modifications to Case Blue on the false assumption that the Red Army had effectively been neutralized in the Don region, and that it was falling back in disarray. Unbeknownst to the Germans, the Russians had learned from the disasters of the first year of the war, and had in fact conducted a tactical retreat, saving most of their forces from encirclement. This underestimation of Soviet tactical progress, and of Soviet strength in the area would prove to be a major miscalculation that would cost the Germans dearly.

The drive of Army Group A into the Caucuses, though initially rapid and successful, became continually delayed as supply lines became stretched and adequate amounts of fuel could not be supplied to the advancing Panzers. Immobile, sometimes for days at a time, the German spearheads were unable to win the crushing lightning victories they had achieved in the earlier campaigns. When they finally reached the oil fields at Grozny, the Germans to their horror found them ablaze – destroyed by retreating Soviet troops. Bogged down in the mountains, and unable to advance further without the necessary fuel for their armour, the entire offensive stalled. Army Group A’s southern drive had also left a massive gap between their forces and those of Army Group B advancing towards Stalingrad.

Hitler soon turned 4th Panzer back towards the Volga river to link up with 6th Army and its Italian and Romanian allies in trapping several Soviet armies before Stalingrad. As the two armies converged creating a massive pocket in the Soviet lines, Russian resistance stiffened. The bitter and desperate Soviet fighting delayed the Germans long enough that the trap did not close on the out-of-position Soviet armies. Due to Hitler’s diversion of 4th Panzer Army earlier in the campaign, the German armies were unable to trap and decisively defeat the Soviet armies before they reached Stalingrad, leading to a significantly reinforced Soviet defence of the city.

STALINGRAD

Soviet soldiers hold defensive positions in the rubble of Stalingrad. The systematic destruction of the city by the Luftwaffe in preparation for 6th Army’s advance actually aided the defenders.

Forward elements of the German 6th Army soon reached the suburbs of Stalingrad. The city, already in ruins from a vicious and merciless Luftwaffe campaign over the previous weeks, was smoking when the Germans arrived. Soon, bitter fighting had broken out throughout the city. As the German advance slowed in the rubble of the bombed-out city, fighting raged over every block and apartment. Unlike the swift warfare over the Russian steppe, progress here was measured in feet and inches. Battles occurred over buildings, floors, and even individual rooms. In the close-quarters combat, the ferocity of the fight became ever more intense as both sides poured men and resources into the city.

The warfare ranged from the rooftops, apartment blocks, department stores, and even into to the basements and sewers of the city. Both sides planted mines, and booby-trapped important locations with grenades and other explosions. Overhead, snipers took aim at exposed troops, and German aircraft bombed strategic neighbourhoods.

German soldiers of the 6th Army eventually pushed deep into Stalingrad, despite fanatical Soviet resistance. In a war of attrition, the Germans were unable to replace their already outnumbered troops at the rate the Russians did.

The attritional warfare had a significant impact on the German soldiers, who were not used to the close-quarters fighting. Being numerically inferior to the Soviet forces in and around the city, every casualty reflected a man who could not easily be replaced. Still, the troops kept marching into the inferno. In a desperate bid to increase the pressure on the Soviet bridgeheads, the German leadership poured in more and more resources to the heart of the city, stripping the flanks of the already dangerously overstretched and overcommitted 6th Army.

A German machine gunner with an MG 34 (left) and a German sharpshooter (right) with a pile of stielhandgrenate model 24s, prepare for a Soviet assault in the ruins of Stalingrad.

As the battle progressed, the fighting moved to the factory district of the city. These massive concrete structures became the battleground of month-long battles, and constantly switched hands as the attacks ebbed and flowed, and the engagements rose and fell. Buildings such as the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, which was still producing T-34 tanks during the battle, became the scenes of some of the most vicious fighting of the entire war.

Gradually, the Soviets were pushed back, and by mid-November, some German units were only several hundred metres from the Volga River, where fresh Soviet troops were being landed every minute from ferries and rafts. Thousands of these unfortunate Soviet troops died on their way across the river as explosives from German aircraft and artillery rained down on the helpless transports.

However, behind the front lines, Georgy Zhukov and Alexandr Vasileksky had begun formulating a plan by which they hoped to win the battle in a single stroke. Stalin, finally bowing to the wisdom of the brilliant Zhukov, allowed the two generals to work together to develop a plan to break the costly stalemate at Stalingrad. Their plan involved the concentration of strong Soviet mechanized units on the weakened flanks of the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army. In particular, the near-simultaneous attacks would be launched on the undermanned Romanian armies providing cover for the flanks of Army Group A. Once a breakthrough in the north and south were achieved, the Soviet pincers would race to meet each other just west of Stalingrad. The plan borrowed heavily on the enveloping tactics that had brought the Germans the great early successes of the Russian campaign. The Russians were learning from their mistakes.

URANUS

Soviet infantry advances behind the protection of a T-34. The T-34 is often considered one of the best tank designs of the war.

At 7:20AM, on November 19th 1943, Zhukov launched Operation Uranus. All along the line Soviet artillery opened up on the Romanian armies guarding the flanks of the German 6th Army. Overstretched, undersupplied, and undermanned, the Romanians quickly gave up ground in response to the monstrous Soviet onslaught. Spearheaded by the 5th Tank Army, Soviet forces advancing from the north pushed deep beyond the Axis frontier positions, and into the rear of the German 6th Army engaged in the ruins of Stalingrad. German attempts to reinforce the Romanian positions with the skeleton reserve forces they could muster were not enough to drive off the well-supplied and coordinated Soviet attack, and all along the northern flank, the Germans and their allies were forced back into a pocket around the city of Stalingrad.

The next day, November 20th, two more Soviet armies crashed into the weakened flanks of the 4th Panzer army to the south of Stalingrad. Despite a desperate counterattack by an exhausted German tank corps, Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army was forced north and west away from Stalingrad in a full retreat. Turning north, in a fierce blizzard, the Soviet armour raced to meet up with the rapidly advancing Soviet armies from the north at the town of Kalach, directly to the west of Stalingrad, and before the German 6th army could disengage from the battle in the city and attempt a break out of the encirclement. Their rush north split open the junction between the 6th and 4th Panzer armies, and forever separated the two forces. By November 22nd, three days after the beginning of the attack, the encirclement was complete. At Kalach, Soviet troops from either side of the attack met in the first major Soviet victory of the war; the event was soon to be recreated in a famous and well-deserved piece of Soviet propaganda.

The Soviet northern and southern pincers meet near Kalach in a famous scene. They had trapped the German 6th Army in Stalingrad in one of the greatest victories of the Second World War.

The advance had been reminiscent of the early German victories of the war: cut off before they could react, the weakened German forces bogged down in Stalingrad soon found themselves enveloped in a massive ring of Soviet forces. Operation Uranus served as an unwelcome surprise for the German military planners who had now realized that the Soviet army was capable of mounting highly-coordinated and effective offensive operations. As the days passed, Soviet reinforcements streamed into the ring around the city, and major efforts were made to prepare against a breakout by the 6th Army. No attempt ever came.

THE END OF THE GERMAN SIXTH ARMY

Soviet troops fighting in Stalingrad amid the immense cold of January, 1943.

Realizing he had been surrounded and cut off from the front, Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the German 6th Army, now requested permission from Hitler to break out of the Soviet encirclement. Soviet forces had advanced at a blistering pace, and large holes still existed in the ring they had formed around Stalingrad in the early days following the Soviet victory. Paulus knew that if the army was to breakout to return to the German side of the front, now was the time. Hitler, in characteristic obstinance, refused. He would allow no retreat from the Volga despite the increasing calls from his generals to sanction a breakout. Stalingrad, the city that held Stalin’s name, would be held on to and never abandoned. Paulus would not take one step back from the Volga. Stalingrad was to be made into a fortress to be defended against the Soviets, and would be supplied by air (at the fantastical and outrageous promise of Goering), until a force could be organized to relieve it and break the siege.

Without fuel, ammunition, or rations, Paulus, a highly disciplined soldier, attempted to make the most of his orders, but to not avail. Between late November 1942, and early February 1943, the 6th Army fought a desperate and vicious battle against Soviet armies on every side. In the end, the Luftwaffe could only supply 1/5th of the minimum necessary supplies to the besieged Germany army, and starvation and the effects of the extremely cold winter that had set in, eventually reduced his once-proud army to a skeleton formation. As increasing pressure fell on the trapped army and the Russian winter set in, casualties mounted and the living conditions of the German troops, already horrendous before the encirclement, were further degraded as the fighting continued. And the fighting did continue, as the ragged, brutalized, and increasingly desperate men of the trapped army attempted to hold out until they could be relieved.

Here, a captured German soldier and his Russian captor are photographed; the state of the two is telling of the disaster that had befallen the 6th Army.

In mid-December, Erich von Manstein was finally given permission by Hitler to use the 4th Panzer Army to attempt to break the Soviet encirclement and relieve Paulus’ besieged army in Stalingrad. Despite initial successes, the German attack soon slowed as Manstein’s forces, outnumber 3-1, met stiffened Soviet resistance. As the weather worsened, and the Soviet defensive ring around the besieged city grew more menacing every day, it became apparent to the Germans that 6th Army was doomed.

Goering’s ‘air-bridge’ also quickly disintegrated under increasing pressure from a numerically superior and increasingly effective Red Air Force, and the Luftwaffe gradually lost the total air dominance in the region it had enjoyed during Barbarossa and Case Blue. When, a month after the launch of Uranus, Soviet ground forces reached the primary German airfield to the west of Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe’s campaign to supply the beleaguered army collapsed all together. By New Years’ Day, the 6th army found itself entirely abandoned.

Over 90,000 German soldiers surrendered or were captured by Soviet forces. Only 5,000 returned to Germany, the rest having died in captivity.

Of the 200,000 men of the 6th Army that had been trapped in the cauldron of violence at Stalingrad, less than half surrendered, the rest had either been evacuated by airlift, or had been killed during the fighting. With the closing of the Soviet pincers, the Sixth Army found itself trapped in a massive bubble. Isolated, and hundreds of miles from the reach of effective German reinforcements, Paulus sent Hitler several messaged requesting permission to break out of the encirclement. To the dismay of the General and his staff, Hitler refused each time. As Soviet troops moved closer towards eliminating the last bastions of Nazi resistance, the general became aware of the inexorable destiny he had been dealt by his commander-in-chief.

Friedrich Paulus, made Field Marshall minutes before his capture, ignored Hitler’s inferred order to commit suicide. His surrender marked the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.

On the morning of January 31st, 1943, Paulus slept in his underground headquarters in the basement of the bombed-out Univermag department store. He was awoken by a knock on the door. Getting up, the soldier at the door gave him the news that he had been granted the title of field marshal by Hitler, the highest rank in the German army. While normally this would be the greatest news an enlisted man in the German military could receive, Paulus read between the lines. Historically, no German field marshal had ever been captured, and the conventional action as a field marshal in a disastrous defeat was suicide; an honourable military death. Hitler, in promoting Paulus in the final days of his operational command, was, for all intents and purposes, ordering him to commit suicide before being captured.

For Paulus, increasingly frustrated with Hitler’s decision making as the war progressed, particularly in his orders to stand firm in Stalingrad, this was too much, and he declared that he would not kill himself. When the man who had delivered the news to the field marshal next announced that Soviet soldiers were at the door, Paulus stood up and announced he would surrender himself to the Soviet soldiers; a final snub to Hitler. As Paulus was whisked off to the Soviet army command in the region, resistance collapsed across the city. Several pockets of German soldiers did continue to fight for another month or so in increasingly squalid conditions and against insurmountable odds either out of ideological fanaticism, personal devotion to Hitler, or fear of their lives as Soviet captives, but for the most part the German advance into Russia had ended at Stalingrad.

COLLAPSE

In just over two years after the disaster at Stalingrad, Soviet troops would capture the German Reichstag while Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker.

With the elimination of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, came the end of the major German advance into the heart of the Soviet Union. Despite the superior training, discipline, and tactics of its armies, the Wehrmacht could not afford to replace its casualties and materiel as quickly as the Soviet Union could. Lacking the manpower and resources to win the war decisively, the German army fell into a defensive mode. Only at the Third Battle of Rostov, and at Kursk were they ever capable of major offensive operations again.

As the power of the Wehrmacht waned, that of the Red Army grew. Much of the significance of Operation Uranus was that Stalin had, for the first time in the war, given up the planning and direction of a major campaign. In light of his successes at Leningrad and Moscow, Georgy Zhukov was given freedom in the planning, preparation, and execution of Uranus. The general and his fellow officers had drawn heavily from the mistakes of the earlier Soviet campaigns during 1941 and early 1942, and employed the tactics pioneered by the Wehrmacht against them. Stalin had also restrained the political commissars that had earlier in the war harassed and incriminated able generals for political and ideological infractions. By the end of Operation Uranus, it was clear that the Red Army was not the ‘rotten edifice’ the Germans had expected.

At the same time, as Stalin relinquished his domineering control of the Red Army, Hitler increased his on the Wehrmacht. He had already committed huge errors in judgement, at Dunkirk, in several instances during the invasion of the Soviet Union, and in ordering the 6th Army to stand firm at Stalingrad. As Hitler began to disintegrate mentally, his decision-making became less rational, and he doomed the Wehrmacht to several unnecessary defeats that hastened the total collapse of the German military under the numerical and industrial weight of the allied war effort. He became obsessed with the idea of holding onto defensive positions, and would allow no tactical withdrawals from his generals. The German general staff continuously lobbied Hitler for permission to withdrawal in order to regroup tired armies, but to no avail. German forces, denied the freedom to retreat in the face of numerically superior Soviet attacks were routinely cut off and forced to surrender as the war drew on, contributing to widespread disintegration of the German war effort in the later years of the war. Contrary to Stalin, he also increase the politicization of the army, elevating the previously paramilitary Waffen-SS as the elite core of the German armies, and increasing the appointment of generals and officers on the basis of their political loyalty, ideological firmness, and submission to his orders, at the expense of more talented and independent generals such as Guderian, Rommel, and Manstein. While most likely doomed anyways, these moves contributed greatly to the destruction of the Wehrmacht during the great Soviet offensives of 1944 and 1945 that ended above Hitler’s bunker in Berlin.

Ultimately, Operation Uranus was the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany, and with it, the Second World War. The stunning Soviet victory achieved on the Volga proved the decisive turning point of the war, and would eventually lead to the destruction of Nazi Germany and the consolidation of Soviet control over half of Europe.

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