City of Steel

 

    It was on this day in 1942 that Russian forces launched a counterattack on the German army in and around the city of Stalingrad. Stalin himself might have paraphrased Churchill by saying the coming battle would be not the beginning of the end of the war, but the end of the beginning.

   Back in 1939, Hitler and Stalin had signed a pact agreeing not to attack each other and to divide Eastern Europe between themselves. After taking two thirds of Poland, Germany conquered France in six weeks. Hitler was only prevented from defeating England in 1940 by the British Royal Air Force. 

   After losing the Battle of Britain, Hitler turned his attention to Russia. He hated communists almost as much as he hated the Jews. Hitler was a master twister of the facts. As he attacked Russia in June of 1941, he announced the attack was justified because Russia was plotting to attack him.

   Hitler's real motivation for invading Russia was for its grain and oilfields and for more "living room" for Germans. He saw the Slavic people as racially inferior. They would be enslaved to work in German factories or shipped off to Siberia.

   Hitler attacked Russia with three million personnel along a two thousand mile front. Stalin had ignored warnings that the attack was coming and the unprepared Russian army was pushed back all the way to Moscow. Germany took over the Ukraine and German settlers began moving in.

   By October, Stalin was on the verge of agreeing to an armistice. But then a funny thing happened. The Russian winter set in. A mix of rain and snow turned the roads to mud. German tanks got bogged down, while Russian tanks with wider treads kept moving. While the Germans reorganized, the Russians brought in more troops.

   When the ground froze, the Germans advanced again, reaching the suburbs of Moscow. Then the blizzards began. In December, the Russians launched a counterattack pushing the Germans back 100 miles. Which was good, because Hitler's plan after Moscow was captured was to raze the city to the ground.

   When the Germans had first invaded, Russian civilians began moving factory equipment east behind the Ural Mountains where they got busy cranking out tanks and planes. The Russian Army had initially collapsed, but at the urging of Mother Russia, the army got back on its feet. And Russia’s secret weapon came into play: an inexhaustible supply of new recruits.

   The next August Hitler decided to attack Stalingrad in the south rather than resuming the attack on Moscow. The German generals began muttering to themselves about Napoleon in 1812, but Germany was running out of oil and there were oilfields south of Stalingrad. The campaign went well for the Germans at first, but Stalin began pouring in reinforcements and told his commanders in Stalingrad, "Not one step back."

   Before the infantry moved into Stalingrad, the German Air Force reduced the city to rubble, which was a mistake because the German tanks were unable to move around inside the city. During street to street fighting, the railway station changed hands 14 times in a six hour period. German soldiers joked about capturing the kitchen of a house while still fighting for the living room and bedroom. The city was heaven for snipers on both sides.

   By November, the Germans controlled 90% of the city. Then the Russian winter moved in. When the Russian counterattack began on the 19th of November, the weather turned bad, which suited the Russians perfectly. It prevented the German Air Force from attacking them. The Germans were soon surrounded and forced into the center of the city. Though the army was cut off from supplies, Hitler refused to let it surrender. They soldiers were to fight to the last man. On Febuary 2, the German army of 100,000, now on the verge of starvation, surrendered. Sixty thousand of their comrades had died in the battle. This was just a fraction of the casualties during the whole battle. The Germans and their allies suffered over  800,000 casualties.  The Russians lost over a million, killed and wounded. Stalingrad remains the bloodiest battle in history, by a large margin.

   It's ironic that Stalin, who ordered the city be held at all costs, had led the army that saved the city during the Russian Civil War back in 1920. The city was renamed in 1925 in Stalin's honor. In 1961, eight years after Stalin's death, the city was renamed Volgograd. A few people wanted to bring back the city's original name of Tsaritsyn, but if Stalin was out, so were the czars.

The Motherland Calls