Friendly To The Germans Before Stalingrad example essay topic

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 war... 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 of Moscow. William Craig describes the mood in Russia as follows: Battered for over a year by the Nazi juggernaut, most soldiers in the Soviet Army had become convinced the Germans were unbeatable. Thousands of men streamed into enemy lines to ask for succor.

Thousands more bolted from the front lines and ran away. In unoccupied Russia, the civilian population fell victims to the same despair. With millions dead or under German control, with food clothing, and shelter under increasingly short supply, the majority of the Russian people had begun to doubt their leadership and their armies. Just how widespread these feelings were among the people of Russia is open to debate but it was very clear was that something had to change soon. The historical Russian strategy of sacrificing men and land for time had run its course; a major triumph was imperative for the morale of the nation. On the surface, 1942 seemed like the most unlikely time imaginable for a Soviet victory.

The Red Army had reached its low point in terms of manpower early in the year. Germany's advantage in the production of key war materials such as steel, coal, and iron was enormous. It is true that aid from Britain and the U.S. via Lend-Lease aid could have leveled some of these disparities, but in 1942 the Allied contribution to the Russian war effort was negligible-" a drop in the ocean" in Churchill's own words. However, it was very clear that a shift in the balance of forces was coming. The Russian army was growing in size daily, as fresh recruits from Siberia and Central Asia were being trained in millions. Just as importantly, the Russian war industry was staging an incredible revival.

In one of the most amazing achievements of the war, the Soviets had managed to evacuate hundreds of factories in the Western parts of the country to new industrial centers in the Ural Mountains as the Germans advanced in 1941. These factories were quickly reassembled and were producing weapons in large quantities in a matter of weeks or months. In fact, by late 1942, the Russians were actually producing more tanks, airplanes, and artillery than the Germans, who had four times as much steel. These newly produced weapons were all modern in their design and proved to be some of the best in the world. Additionally, the Americans and British were promising significant increases in their aid to Russia in the near future.

Clearly, if the Russians could just hold the fort in Stalingrad, their fortunes would change. Stalingrad was the last major battle on the Eastern Front in World War II where the Germans had a material advantage over the Russians. Against a Soviet force of 10 divisions, 2000 artillery pieces, 120 tanks, and about 400 planes, the Germans and their Axis allies fielded 25 divisions, 3000 artillery pieces, 500 tanks, and 1000 planes. To hold the fort against such a superior enemy would be a very difficult task. In fact, few in the German army had really expected to have much resistance in Stalingrad. Elting and Weaver summarize the German view: "Stalingrad lay in the path of the offensive, so there was bound to be some fighting there, but probably not enough to throw the German's timetable off seriously".

Stalin, however, had different ideas. On July 28, he issued the famous Order No. 227. Among other things, this order said the following: It is necessary... to stop the talk that we have the possibility of unlimited retreat, that we have a lot of territory, that our country is big and rich, with many people, and bread in abundance. Such talk is lying and harmful, it weakens us and strengthens the enemy, because if there is no end to the retreat, we will be left with no bread, no fuel, no metals, no raw materials, no enterprises, no factories, and no railways. It follows from this that it is time to finish with retreat. Not a step back!

That must now be our chief slogan. It is necessary to defend to the last drop of blood every position, every meter of Soviet territory, to cling onto every shred of Soviet earth and defend it to the utmost... Pa nickers and cowards must be eliminated on the spot. Stalingrad would serve as the end of the retreat. The Russian troops would fight to the end (if not they would be shot as cowards).

At this point, some mention needs to be made about the significance of the name of Stalingrad to determining the importance of the battle. Conventional wisdom implies that a battle in the "city of Stalin" would have held a special significance in the eyes of the Germans. In reality, however, this does not appear to have been the case. The Germans originally viewed the Caucasus region, and not Stalingrad, as the central target in their offensive. As the battle raged, this view seems to have changed, especially in the eyes of Hitler, who became entirely obsessed with capturing the city of his nemesis.

For the Russians, the name of the city had been important from the beginning. Stalin had even refused to allow for the evacuation of Stalingrad's civilians, saying " [w] e shall evacuate nothing... we must tell the army and the people that there is nowhere left to retreat. We must defend Stalingrad". In an address by the most the most prominent citizens of Stalingrad to the soldiers assigned to defend it, the importance of the city's name was emphasized: Remember, dear friends, remember son and daughters, our people will never forget you. They will never forget the names of those who fought heroically for their happiness, who spared neither their strength nor their lives for the defense of the city of Stalin.

The stage was now set for a titanic encounter. The German soldiers who began the assault on Stalingrad in early September had no conception of the hell that was in store for them. The battle of Stalingrad may well be the most ferocious, brutal, and horrifying encounter in the history of human combat. Observers over the years have struggled to fully describe the carnage. Richard Overy describes the scene of battle as resembling "the epicenter of a giant earthquake". To the German soldiers who took part in the fighting, Stalingrad was known as the Rattenkrieg, or the "War of the Rats".

Perhaps the most telling description was given by Lieutenant Weiner of the 24th Panzer Division: Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure".

Undoubtedly, the incredible terms of this life and death struggle added to its significance. They gripped the imagination of all the people in the world. The war on the Eastern Front was truly a total war and Stalingrad would serve as its crescendo. The Germans had received hints of what awaited them in Stalingrad in their earlier confrontations with the Red Army. The long siege of the fortress city of Sevastopol, finally taken by the Germans in July of 1942, was in many ways a premonition of things to come. The city had withstood Nazi battering for 8 months, despite Germany's overwhelming superiority in men and equipment, by forcing the invaders into a street fight.

Stalingrad's defenders, led by General Vasili i Ivanovich Chuikov, would now employ the same strategy. The key for the defense was that the Russian troops would have to be resolute in maintaining a grip on a part of the city. If necessary, they would have to give their lives. In a letter sent to Stalin by the men, commanders, and political instructors on the Stalingrad front in November 1942 (the darkest point in the battle for the Russians), their willingness to make this sacrifice was expressed: In this letter from the trenches we vow to you that we shall fight to defend Stalingrad to the last drop of our blood, to the last beat of our heart, to our last gasp.

The enemy will never reach the Volga. While there is obviously some hyperbole and propaganda involved in statements such as this, the reality on the ground did not lie. Soldiers on both sides of the conflict performed extraordinary feats of heroism. Key positions, such as the high ground of Mamayev Kurgan and the Central Railway Station were attacked and defended with a ferocity that defies expression, with small groups of Russian soldiers attacking at night to reverse the German gains of the day. The railway station alone changed hands at least fifteen times. In a famous story, a Russian platoon led by a Sergeant Pavlov held a single house in an important strategic position against numerous German attacks for fifty days.

Fittingly, the building came to be known by the Russians as "Pavlov's House". An account from a soldier in a Siberian division states that their regiment successfully fought off 117 separate German attacks over a period of one month, including 23 attacks in one day. This is not to imply that the German soldiers did not perform well in the fighting (given the circumstances, they performed quite impressively), but rather to show just how hard it was for them to advance. Progress in the fighting was counted in inches, feet and yards.

By the end, the streets were "no longer measured by metre's but by corpses". The longer the battle went, the more both sides invested in its outcome. The eyes of the world were on Stalingrad; it dominated the headlines of every major newspaper in the world for four months. The battle was seen as a symbol, a supreme test of wills between Stalin and Hitler, between Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia, between Aryan and Unter mensch.

In October, when German victory seemed near, Hitler had proudly told the German people, "Where the German soldier sets foot, there he remains. You may be assured that nobody will ever drive us away from Stalingrad". In a bizarre way, Hitler would be proven correct; most of the German soldiers in the 6th Army were not driven out of Stalingrad. Instead, they fought, starved, froze, and ultimately died right there.

Germany's defeat at Stalingrad was a definitive and unambiguous one. It was also a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. The consequences of the battle of Stalingrad, on the military, political, and psychological fronts were enormous. Firstly, Stalingrad was a military debacle of the first rank for the Germans. The 6th Army, one of the elite fighting forces in the entire German army, had been completely destroyed.

On November 21, 1942, the Germany's conquests had reached their peak; the Wehrmacht had reached the west bank of the Volga River but would go no further. In the months to come, all of the German gains of the campaign in Southern Russia were wiped away. On December 12, when the 6th Army was already trapped inside the Russian encirclement, Hitler explained what the cost of losing in Stalingrad would be: I have, on the whole considered one thing. We must not give [Stalingrad] up now under any circumstances. We won't win it back again... We can't possibly replace the stuff we have inside.

If we gave that up, we surrender the whole meaning of this campaign. To imagine that I shall come here another time is madness... That is why we must not leave here. Besides, too much blood has been shed for that. It is estimated that the total Axis losses in the Stalingrad fighting were in the neighborhood of 850,000 men killed, wounded and missing in action. The Germans alone lost almost 400,000 men.

Considering the fact that Germany was already fighting the war against a numerically superior enemy, these losses were ruinous. In addition, Germany's Axis allies sustained terrible losses. Italy lost more than 130,000 men. Hungary lost a further 120,000. The Rumanians lost 200,000 men of their own. Not only had Germany's allies lost hundreds of thousands of men to a struggle they had no real stake in, but they were also immediately targeted by the Nazis as being the cause of the disaster.

While it is true that the Russian breakthrough had come at the positions defended by these allies, there had been many mistakes made by the Germans that had made that breakthrough possible. The effects of the losses and the German scapegoating were predictable. Within weeks, the Romanians and Hungarians were sending peace feelers to the Western Allies. Even Finland, which had not even been a part of the Stalingrad fighting, could see the writing on the wall, and began to make peace overtures to the Russians. Additionally, neutrals such as Spain, Turkey, and Sweden, which had been friendly to the Germans before Stalingrad, now began to take a more pro-Allied position. Italy, Germany's closest ally in the Axis, did not try to make peace yet.

Instead, Mussolini attempted to convince Hitler to do what the Japanese had been advocating all along: make peace with the Russians and concentrate on fighting the Anglo-Saxons. Looking at the situation from a longer-term perspective, the loss of the whole Italian 8th Army at Stalingrad-combined with severe setbacks in North Africa and the Mediterranean-certainly set the stage for Mussolini's ouster in 1943. For the Russians, Stalingrad was a deliverance. At the low point in its strength, when all the odds seemed to be against it, the Red Army had taken on the full mass of a German offensive and emerged victorious. Gone was the sense of inferiority amongst the regular Soviet soldiers. Gone was the mystique of the unbeatable Wehrmacht.

The common post-war German refrain that they had been defeated by the sheer numerical mass of the Soviet war machine rings hollow in the face of the fact that at Stalingrad this advantage had been with the Germans. In fact, Stalingrad was the last time that the Wehrmacht would enjoy any kind of numerical advantage. The Russians had indeed held the fort and after Stalingrad their advantage in men and equipment would grow at an almost exponential rate. Never again in the entire course of the war would the Germans be able to launch a successful offensive on any front of the battle. Just as important as the emergent Russian material superiority was the transformation of the Red Army that began in Stalingrad.

As Baldwin puts it, "Stalingrad marked the beginning of a new chapter in Soviet military art, from the mass armed hordes of the past to a better trained, more integrated, and more skillfully commanded army". The key to this transformation was a new relationship between Stalin and his generals. Stalin had left the planning and execution of the battle at Stalingrad in the hands of professional soldiers, and the victory served to increase his confidence in their abilities. Henceforth, he would let his generals control most of the military aspects of the war. He still dominated them but was far more inclined to listen to them. For Hitler, the effects of the defeat on his relationship with his generals were exactly the opposite.

He had never really trusted the German military elites, feeling that they were insufficiently attuned to the National Socialist ideology. Now, he decided to blame them entirely for the Nazi losses. After Stalingrad, Hitler-who was gradually growing insane-began to rely less and less on his generals and more and more on his own military judgment, a disastrous proposition for Germany's army. The political and psychological impact of Stalingrad was also tremendous. In Germany, the battle had been presented to the German people as the culmination of the struggle against Bolshevism. Therefore, the impact of the defeat could not be minimized.

Three days of mourning were declared and Siegfried's Funeral March from Wagner's Gotterdammerung was played repeatedly throughout the Reich on February 2, 1943. In an effort to salvage something from the carnage, the Nazi propaganda machine decided to use the heroic sacrifice of the 6th Army as an example of the kind of total sacrifice that would be expected of all German soldiers and civilians in the total war. Goebbels tried to use fear as a motivating tactic by asserting that "in this war there will be neither victors nor vanquished, but only survivors and annihilated". Stalingrad was a boon for Russians' propaganda efforts. They had begun to use their triumph against the German soldiers before the battle had even been completely won. Surrounded German soldiers trying to listen to Christmas carols and messages of hope from Germany by radio during Christmas of 1942 instead heard the following: Every seven seconds a German soldier dies in Russia.

Stalingrad-mass grave. One... two... three... four... five... six... seven... Every seven seconds a German soldier dies. The capture of a German Field Marshal, Friedrich von Paulus, and 23 other generals was exploited fully as a propaganda tool. Paulus and his fellow generals were soon making appeals by radio for Germans on the Eastern Front to stop fighting.

For Stalin, Stalingrad was as much of a personal triumph as it was an embarrassment for Hitler, whose air of invincibility had disappeared into the rubble on the Volga. The fact that the great victory had been won in the city that bore Stalin's name gave him an almost mythical aura of genius and military prowess. His cult of personality, which had been strong in Russia before the war, would now reach towering heights. This cult would extend beyond Russia, into the West.

In January of 1943, Stalin was named Time magazine's Man of the Year 1942. The increase in Stalin's personal prestige was accompanied by a commensurate increase in the international standing of the Soviet Union. Bolshevik Russia had been seen from its birth as an outcast nation. Now, it was not only legitimate, but a superpower. Most observers in the West began to understand that this war would be won primarily by the Red Army and that the terms of peace would thus be largely dictated by the Russians. In many people's eyes, Stalingrad symbolized the triumph of the Soviet system, whose survival for the next 50 years was significantly based on its victory in the war.

In the West, the politics of the Cold War led to an attempt to minimize the importance of the Russian contribution to the war effort. During the war, however, no such efforts were made. A column in the Washington Post on February 2nd had asserted that "Stalingrad's role in this war was that of the Battle of the Marne, Verdun, and the Second Marne rolled into one". Churchill declared, "At Stalingrad, the hinge of fate had turned" and at Tehran in November 1943 he presented Stalin with the honorary "Sword of Stalingrad" as a gift from King George VI and the British people. In May 1944, President Roosevelt also offered a gift, a scroll, from the American people to the city of Stalingrad. This scroll read as follows: To commemorate our admiration for its gallant defenders whose courage, fortitude, and devotion during the siege will inspire forever the hearts of all free people.

Their glorious victory stemmed the tide of invasion and marked the turning point in the war of the Allied nations against the forces of aggression. One additional aspect of Stalingrad has to be mentioned, the enormous psychological impact it made on the two parties. William Craig wonderfully sums up this impact in Enemy at the Gates: Psychologically buoyed by this magnificent triumph against the 'Nazi supermen,' both civilians and military braced for the grueling tasks ahead. And though the ultimate destruction of the Third Reich would prove a long and costly struggle, the Russians never again doubted that they would win... For the Germans, Stalingrad was the single most traumatic event of the war. Never before had one of their elite armies succumbed in the field.

Never before had so many soldiers vanished in the vast wilderness of an alien country. Stalingrad was a mind-paralyzing calamity to a nation that believed it was the master race. A creeping pessimism began to invade the minds of those who had chanted 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!' at Hitler's rallies... In furtive conversations, men once too timid to move against the regime began to make concrete plans to overthrow it.

Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. World War II was filled with turning points, including Midway, El Alamein, and Moscow. Stalingrad, however, was not simply a turning point. It was the decisive battle of the most violent and destructive war ever fought.

It is a fitting testament to the importance of Stalingrad that General Chuikov, the tough-as-nails commander of the 62nd Army that defended the city, would later lead his men in the final battle of the European war, the assault on Berlin. Writing Sample

Bibliography

Baldwin, Hanson. Battles Lost and Won. New York: Smith mark Publishers, 1966.
Craig, William. Enemy at the Gates. New York: Readers Digest Press, 1973.
Elting, Mary and Robert T. Weaver, Battles: How They Are Won. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944.
Overy, Richard. Russia's War. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
Roberts, Geoffrey. Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle that Changed History. London: Pearson Education, 2002.
Stalingrad, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1943.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World At Arms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.