Battle of Stalingrad
The battle for Stalingrad ran from August 1942 to February 1943 and killed something approaching two million people. The German summer offensive of 1942 had two objectives, the Caucasus oilfields and the Volga, and Hitler split Army Group South to pursue both at once. Stalingrad was a long industrial city strung along the west bank of the river, and the Luftwaffe reduced most of it to rubble in August — which turned out to be a mistake, because rubble suits defenders. The fighting inside the city was at a scale of metres. The 62nd Army under Chuikov held bridgeheads a few hundred metres deep, reinforced across the Volga at night under fire, and fought room by room in the grain elevator, the tractor factory and a apartment block held for two months by a platoon. Chuikov's method was to hug the German line so closely that artillery and air support could not be used. The decisive operation was outside the city. Uranus, launched on 19 November, struck the Romanian and Hungarian armies holding the long flanks north and south, broke both in days, and closed the ring behind the German Sixth Army on the 23rd, trapping some 265,000 men. Hitler forbade a breakout, Göring promised an airlift that delivered a fraction of what was needed, and a relief attempt stopped thirty miles short. Paulus surrendered on 2 February, the day after being promoted to field marshal on the reasoning that no German field marshal had ever surrendered. About 6,000 of the 91,000 prisoners came home.
- Year: 1942 CE
- Category: Military
