German Juggernaut Halted at Stalingrad
Seventy-two years ago on Nov. 19, the Soviet Red Army began Operation Uranus, the counteroffensive that led to the encirclement of German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Nazi Germany unleashed its massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. Despite early successes and a deep advance into enemy territory, the operation failed as the Soviets repelled the assault against Moscow and as the campaign at Leningrad broke down into a two-year siege. Barbarossa’s failure in the autumn and winter of that year was disastrous for the Third Reich. With supply lines of 2,000 miles, it now faced an Eastern Front that stretched from Leningrad in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Hitler and his commanders had underestimated his enemy along with its critical ally, the Russian Winter, as well as Germany’s ability to supply and reinforce its own troops.
In 1942, Axis forces directed their offensives south toward the industrial city of Stalingrad and the oil-rich Caucasus. Hitler decided to split the campaign into two groups: Army Group A would push toward the oil fields, while Army Group B would protect its flank along the Volga River and capture Stalingrad, whose name was a matter of pride to the feuding dictators and of propaganda value to both sides.
By late August, German armies had reached the city with Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting the Germans’ flanks. Massive bombings reduced most of the city to rubble. Stalin rushed thousands of soldiers and commanded all retreating soldiers and officers to be executed with his “Not One Step Back” order. The urban warfare led to heavy casualties on both sides. The Soviets lost nearly 10,000 men in a single day at the park Mamayev Kurgan in September. Stalingrad’s tractor factory became another site of intense battle. By November, the German Sixth Army, under Friedrich von Paulus, controlled almost the entire city, but small pockets of Red Army held on.
The Soviet High Command, the Stavka, realized that the approaching winter and vast Russian steppes could be used to their advantage. The Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian forces charged with defending the German flanks were poorly equipped and stretched thin across hundreds of miles.
Rather than directly take on the Germans at Stalingrad, the Soviet commanders, Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky, planned Operation Uranus, a counteroffensive to cut off and encircle the enemy forces around the city. After weeks of preparation and several delays, Soviet artillery opened up against the Third Romanian Army north of the city on the morning of Nov. 19, 1942. The Germans’ allies lacked the anti-armor needed to stop a sustained tank assault. Soviet tanks and troops attacked through fog. Only a small German Panzer division arrived to assist the Romanian troops. By the end of the day, the Romanians had been routed, but both sides' positions became confused amidst heavy snow.
The Red Army opened its attack to the south of Stalingrad the following day. Although the Germans inflicted significant losses on Soviet tanks, the Romanian line here collapsed. The pincer attacks continued toward the town of Kalach on the Don River. The Germans defending the town were largely supply personnel caught off guard by the flanking maneuvers. By Nov. 22, the Soviets had crossed the river and taken Kalach. As they cut off the German supply lines, the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth Armies were encircled around Stalingrad.
Operation Uranus marked a critical turning point on the Eastern Front. Not only was it a strategic blow to the Axis, it was the first sign of Stalin trusting his marshals. As British historian Antony Beevor has stated:
I think that the point was that Stalin had realized what mistakes he’d made. Hitler refused to acknowledge any mistakes, but Stalin realized the mistakes he’d made and that’s when he started to listen to his generals and that is why Stalingrad was not just a turning point psychologically in the war, it was a real turning point in the handling of Soviet armies. It was also a turning point in the confidence of generals being able to face up to Stalin a little bit more, and also have less fear of the NKVD [the Soviet Secret Police], and I think that this is a very important thing.
Nearly 300,000 Axis soldiers were trapped in the defensive position, but Hitler refused to abandon the city. Hermann Goering convinced him that the Luftwaffe could mount an airlift to assist the trapped forces, while reinforcements would come to their aid. In December, as part of Operation Little Saturn, the Soviets destroyed the airfield used to supply Sixth Army. By January, the Germans were starving.
Defying Hitler’s orders to commit suicide rather than surrender, Paulus capitulated on Feb. 2. He became the first German field marshal ever to be captured, and while in captivity, he became a vocal critic of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Zhukov and Vasilevsky would both become heroes for their military brilliance and become two of the most prominent generals of the Second World War (or the “Great Patriotic War” as it is remembered by Russia and other former Soviet republics that fought in the Eastern Front).
