Battle of Stalingrad

Background

After the failure to take Moscow in 1941, Hitler turned his summer offensive of 1942, Operation Blue, to the south. Its main aim was the oil of the Caucasus, and a second thrust was to reach the Volga at Stalingrad, an industrial city of factories and workers' housing stretched for miles along the river's west bank. Taking it would cut Soviet river traffic and protect the flank of the drive to the oil fields. The German Sixth Army under General Friedrich Paulus crossed the Don and, on 23 August 1942, its tanks reached the Volga just north of the city while a huge Luftwaffe raid set much of Stalingrad on fire. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July, known as "Not a step back", forbade retreat.

The Battle

Through September and October the Germans fought their way into the city block by block. The Soviet 62nd Army under General Vasily Chuikov held on in the ruins with its back to the river, supplied by boats crossing the Volga under fire at night. Rodimtsev's 13th Guards Rifle Division crossed on 14-15 September and fought for the central landing stage and the hill of Mamayev Kurgan. The fighting moved to the great factories in the north, the Tractor Works, the Barrikady and Red October, where battles for a single workshop could last days. Chuikov ordered his men to stay as close as possible to the German lines so that the Luftwaffe could not bomb them without hitting its own troops. Small Soviet assault groups with submachine guns and grenades fought for cellars, stairwells and sewers. By November the Germans held most of the city, but the Soviets still clung to pockets along the bank. On 19 and 20 November the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which smashed the weaker Romanian armies guarding the flanks north and south of the city. The two Soviet pincers met at Kalach on 23 November, trapping the Sixth Army and parts of the Fourth Panzer Army, perhaps 250,000 to 300,000 men. Hitler forbade a breakout. Göring promised to supply the pocket by air, but the Luftwaffe delivered only a fraction of what was needed. A relief attack under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein in December came within about 30 miles before it was stopped, and a new Soviet offensive against the Italian army on the Don forced it to turn back.

Weapons

The street fighting favored weapons for close range. Soviet assault groups carried the PPSh-41 and grenades, while riflemen held the ruins with the Mosin-Nagant M1891 and the SVT-40 Rifle, and snipers made the Mosin Nagant 1891/30 Sniper Rifle famous. The Molotov Cocktail was used against German tanks. The Germans fought with the Karabiner 98k, the MP40, machine guns and the Model 24 Stielhandgranate, and both sides relied heavily on artillery and mortars.

Aftermath

The Soviet final offensive, Operation Ring, began on 10 January 1943. Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal on 30 January, expecting that no German field marshal would surrender, but Paulus gave himself up the next day, and the last Germans in the northern pocket surrendered on 2 February. About 91,000 prisoners were taken, and only some 5,000 to 6,000 of them returned home after the war. Estimates of total casualties on both sides run well over a million. Stalingrad destroyed a whole German army and ended Germany's offensive power in the south, and after it the initiative on the Eastern Front passed largely to the Red Army in World War II.