The Battle of Stalingrad has become one of the most important events of the 20th century. As a result, the Wehrmacht lost 16% of its personnel and a huge amount of military equipment. After this battle, it became clear to the whole world that Hitler would not win the war, and his collapse was only a matter of time.
However, today some historians argue that the victory of the Red Army could have caused the complete defeat of Nazism back in 1943, and they have good reasons for this.
The Battle of Stalingrad became the line beyond which the collapse of Hitlerism began. Conventionally, it can be divided into two stages: defensive and offensive. From mid-July 1942 to November 18, the troops of General Weiss, who commanded Army Group B, attacked the Stalingrad Front. The enemy had a certain superiority in manpower and equipment, and within a month he managed to push the positions of the defenders of the city. At this moment, namely on July 31, Hitler made a strategic mistake that could lead the Wehrmacht to a complete military defeat. He transferred the fourth tank army to the Volga from the Caucasian direction in the hope of crushingresistance.
It seemed to the German command that the battle for Stalingrad was about to end in success. They managed to break into the city, and even capture most of it. After massive bombardments and stubborn attacks, the half-ring of the advancing with its edges rested on the river. The Goebbels Propaganda Ministry boasted that the tankers of the 4th Army poured Volga water into the radiators of their vehicles, and this was true. The defenders of the city lost the possibility of land supplies, and the delivery of ammunition, medicines and food by water was extremely difficult.
In the heat of victorious reports, only some military experts paid attention to the fact that the battle for Stalingrad took on a positional character, and the German 6th Army lost the opportunity to maneuver, bogged down in street battles among the ruins of houses. Her forces were scattered in tens and hundreds of directions. The huge casu alties suffered by the Wehrmacht during hundreds of attacks exhausted the offensive potential.
At that moment, the Soviet General Staff developed a plan according to which the Paulus army was to be surrounded and destroyed, and with a subsequent attack on Rostov, the entire Caucasian group was cut off and also blocked, which would mean the complete collapse of the German military machine. Reserves were brought into the strategically important area, the forces of the parties amounted to millions of groups, and the advantage was already on the Soviet side. To implement this large-scale plan, it was necessary to deliver counter strikes from the Don Front of Rokossovsky andSouthwestern Front Vatutin. The main part of the plan was the battle for Stalingrad. The date of November 19 was the start of an offensive operation to encircle the 6th German Army.
Success was facilitated by weather conditions (frost combined with a small amount of snow), the next strategic mistakes of Hitler, who forbade Paulus to retreat, the weak fighting qualities of the Romanian and Italian soldiers, allies of Germany, who defended the flanks. Near the Kalach station on November 23, counter attacks from the Southwestern and Don fronts closed the encirclement. Gott's tank army, trying to break through the blockade, "was embarrassed".
The Soviet attack on Rostov did not take place due to the stubborn and prolonged resistance of the encircled German troops. Wehrmacht soldiers, and there were more than 300 thousand of them, fought in a hopeless situation until February 1943, supplied only by air. In order to avoid huge losses, the Red Army did not storm the city, limiting itself to shelling and bombing. Seven Soviet armies kept the Germans in the encirclement, preventing them from escaping.
The stubborn resistance of the Paulus army allowed the German command to save and withdraw from the Caucasus a group of troops, without which further military operations would have been doomed to an early defeat.
History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. About what would have happened if Paulus capitulated earlier, today one can only make bold assumptions. The facts, however, show that the battle for Stalingrad became the frontier after which the Soviet people and theirthe allies no longer doubted victory.
