Stalingrad: The Greatest Victory

Stalingrad: The Greatest Victory

"Stalingrad is the scene of the costliest and most stubborn battle in this war. The battle fought there to its desperate finish may turn out to be among the decisive battles in the long history of warÐ'...In the scale of its intensity, its destructiveness, and its horror, Stalingrad has no parallel. It engaged the full strength of the two biggest armies in Europe and could fit into no lesser framework than that of a life-and death conflict which encompasses the earth"

New York Times, February 4, 1943

The battle fought between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht over the "city of Stalin" for four long months in the fall and winter of 1942-3 stands as not only the most important battle of the Eastern front during World War II, but as the greatest battle ever fought. Germany's defeat at Stalingrad ended three years of almost uninterrupted victory and signaled the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. In this way, Stalingrad's significance was projected beyond the two main combatants, extending to all corners of the world.

This paper is not meant to be a military history of the battle; I am not qualified to offer such an account. It is also not an examination of why Russia won (and Germany lost). The goal of this paper is to explain why this particular conflict, fought at this particular point in time, and in this particular place became the defining moment of World War II.

During the late summer of 1942, Germany's position in the Soviet Union appeared to be dominant. The Russian winter offensive in front of Moscow had succeeded in relieving the pressure on the capital but had failed to make any substantial gains beyond a few miles of breathing space. The Germans had managed to stabilize the situation, inflicting severe casualties on the Russians before opening their own offensive in southern Russia in the spring and summer of 1942. This offensive, like the initial attack on the Soviet Union, caught the Russians (who expected a second assault on Moscow) completely off guard. Germany's success was immense, and by the end of July the Wehrmacht had reached the Caucasus Mountains and the Volga River, with the oil-rich cities of Astrakhan, Grozny, and Baku in its sights.

The first fourteen months of the war had been a debacle of monumental proportions for the Russians. During this time, the Germans had occupied more than a million square miles of Soviet territory. This area included approximately 40 percent of the Soviet population and 50 percent of the nation's cultivated land. In industrial terms, the captured territory had accounted for the production of 70 percent of Russia's pig iron, 60 percent of steel and coal, and 40 percent of electricity. The military losses were equally staggering: approximately 8 million casualties (dead, wounded, and missing) had been recorded and tens of thousands of tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces were lost or destroyed. It is no wonder that when Hitler told General Halder, his chief of staff, "The Russian is finished" on July 20, Halder's response was "I must admit it looks that way." Appearances can be deceiving.

The problem for Hitler, Halder, and the rest of the Wehrmacht was that the Red Army was not quite finished. In spite of their hideous losses, the Russians were still there, still resisting fiercely. Additionally, America, with its enormous industrial capacity and wealth of natural resources, had just had entered the war. What the Germans needed was a way to simultaneously weaken, if not destroy, the Red Army's capacity to wage war while assuring themselves the resources necessary to carry on a protracted struggle against the Western Allies. A strike towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus seemed to offer an opportunity to achieve both of these goals.

First and foremost, southern Russia is an area fabulously rich in resources, especially oil and grain. For the Germans, capturing this area would mean depriving the Russians of fuel for their war machine. Basic logic dictates that no army can fight without fuel. A Russian army cut off from its main supply of oil and other important materials would not be able to fight a war against Germany for any sustained period of time. Even if some oil supplies from America were sent to Russia, they could not possibly be sufficient. Conversely, capturing Russia's oil supply would be a tremendous gain for the Germans. From the beginning of the war, Hitler had set his eye on the famous natural wealth of southern Russia and a chance to take all that wealth for the Third Reich was irresistible. All the Allies understood the paramount importance of preventing this. As General McArthur wisely observed, "at stake in the Stalingrad campaign was Germany's ability to wage war against the Soviet-Western alliance for another 10 years."

Furthermore, the Stalingrad itself was of vital strategic importance. By the start of the war, Stalingrad was Russia's third largest industrial center, behind only Moscow and Leningrad. Large amounts of armaments were being produced there and a German capture of the city would further reduce the already weakened productive capacity of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the city was seen as a key to control of the Volga River. If the Germans captured it, they would essentially cut off all Soviet forces in southern Russia from the major Russian armies in the north and center. Another important point is that the Volga was the main route used in shipping materials from the Caucasus and Caspian Sea to the rest of Russia. Even if the Germans failed to capture those resource centers in the near term, their control of the Volga at Stalingrad would make it very hard for the Russians to actually get their hands on these supplies.

Looking more broadly, German success in southern Russia could have opened the door for several possible courses of action for their armies. Firstly, by moving north after the capture of Stalingrad, an attack on Moscow from the east would have been possible. Moving south through Persia would open the door to either the Middle Eastern oil supplies or even to India. Of course, in August of 1942 these were just dreams for the Nazis. Unfortunately for the Russians and their allies, they were dreams that had the possibility of coming true.

The Soviet leadership, led by Stalin, understood the importance of all these factors. Additionally, the Russians had their own reasons for making Stalingrad the site of a great stand. The losses in the summer of 1942 had been utterly demoralizing for the Red Army as well as the Soviet population, removing much of their satisfaction at having stopped the Wehrmacht in front