Stalingrad Turning Point

The battle of Stalingrad is said to be the turning point of the war. It took place from July 17th, 1942 to February 2nd, 1943. This is where the Soviet Union victoriously defended the city of Stalingrad during World War II. It is argued to be the greatest battle of the war. The allies stopped the Germans from pushing forward and capturing Stalingrad. Over two million casualties were produced during this battle, military and civilian, causing it to be one of the bloodiest battles in history. Why did all of this occur? Hitler wanted Stalingrad for two primary reasons: because it was located near the Volga River and because of his hatred of Joseph Stalin. Since they produced tractors and armaments, Stalingrad was perfect for Germany to invade.

They fell under Field Marshal Wilhelm List and Bock until his later replacement came shortly after (Field Marshal Maximilian von Weich). There were two operations at this time: Operation Edelweiss and Operation Fischreiher). These were the operations for capturing the Caucasus and then Stalingrad in that order respectively. Since German forces were split up, it gave a chance to the Soviets to escape being encompassed and allowed them to retreat to the east. As army group A was making progress into entering the Caucasus, group B was slowly making progress into Stalingrad. Hitler then switched Gen. Hermann Hoth from group B to group A in order to assist in the taking of the Caucasus. Joseph Stalin, along with Soviet forces, saw what was going on so they formed the Stalingrad Front in which the front fought first. All of this was under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko. This was a military subdivision of the red army. It consisted of the sixty second, sixty third, sixty forth, and twenty first armies along with the eighth air army. The Soviets wanted to vigorously withdraw to keep from being encircled or have massive casualties but on July 28th, Stalin issued order number 227 saying that basically they were not going to move. Citizens were not allowed to leave the city due to the fact that the army “might” fight better if they had someone

Temperatures were steadily dropping down below zero, and everything the Germans had were in short supply: food, ammunition, and heat. “My hands are done for, and have been ever since the beginning of December. The little finger of my left hand is missing and – what’s even worse – the three middle fingers of my right one are frozen. I can only hold my mug with my thumb and little finger. I’m pretty helpless; only when a man has lost any fingers does he see how much he needs then for the smallest jobs. The best thing I can do with the little finger is to shoot with it. My hands are finished” (anonymous German soldier). Hitler gave the orders to Paulus that they were going to stay in the fight until the last bullet. He tried to boost Paulus’ morale by promoting him to field marshal. Hitler gave orders to Field Marshal Erich von Manstein to try and rescue Paulus and his forces. This was called “Operation Winter Tempest”. This special corps sent out to rescue them was to fight eastward towards Paulus and Paulus was ordered not to try and fight westward at the same time in order to meet