Operation Barbarossa failed, shattered in the snow at the very gates of Moscow. So, in 1942, in the heat of another Russian summer, Hitler would try to defeat the Soviet Union once again, this time by hurling over 1.5 million men, 1500 panzers and the same number of aircraft at the Red Army’s southern front to reach the far-off oil fields of the Caucasus. No mention was made of Stalingrad – the city on the River Volga.
But, bizarrely, it was that very city that would become the focal point of the Wehrmacht’s entire campaign that year. Reached by the 6th Army in the middle of August 1942, the German commander – Friedrich Paulus – would ineptly fight a grinding battle of bloody attrition that would be nicknamed Rattenkrieg – Rats war – by his own bewildered and horrified men.
As the first winter snows fell in the middle of November, the Red Army counterattacked and in a matter of days surrounded the 6th Army. Just over two months later, 91,000 starving and exhausted Germans stumbled out of their bunkers and into Soviet captivity. Barely 5,000 would ever see their homeland again.
